If you can run queries on the backend database, it's rather easy to discover voting shenanigans. The problem, as I understand it, is that right now mods have to ask Trike specific questions and Trike isn't speedy about getting back to them.

Cool. Thanks for publishing this.

Out of curiosity, does any of CFAR's "competition" (other personal-effectiveness, productivity, growth, etc. workshops and similar things) publish any similar sort of post-workshop followup, and what sorts of tools they use/results they get if so?

Let's suppose that you had reason to believe that the sky is blue, but found yourself believing that it was green. This would not stop you from telling people, "I found out that the sky is blue," and giving the reasons that show that it is blue (since we are assuming you had reason to believe that it is blue.) Likewise, suppose someone comes up to you and says, "I would like to bet you $100 that the sky is green and propose the following test..." No matter how you feel about the color of the sky, you are perfectly free to accept the bet and win if the sky is blue.

So in other words, as I said, you have direct write access to pretty much everything that matters about a belief: you can say it is true, argue for it, and act on it.

But since then, you've concluded that being queer isn't actually something (at least some people, like me) differentially approve of.

I'm not sure what I wrote that gave you this idea. I do think that queer people approve of being queer. What I'm talking about when I say "approval" is preferences that are ego-syntonic, that are line with the kind of person they want to be. Most queer people consider their preference to be ego-syntonic. Being queer is the kind of person they want to be and they would not change it if they could. Those who do not are usually motivated by mistaken religious ideas, rather than clearly reasoned disapproval.

What I am trying to say is that being queer is a statement about what people want to do. When we say that someone is queer that means that they have a desire to engage in romantic and sexual relationships that are different from the heterosexual norm. This desire is ego-syntonic, it is approved of.

Being deaf, by contrast, is a statement about what people are able do. They lack the ability to hear things.

If you removed someone's deafness, none of their desires would change. They would still want everything they wanted before they were deaf. If they were really attached to their current lifestyle they could buy earplugs. By contrast, if you changed a queer person into a straight person, they would stop wanting to have non-heteronormative relationships. They'd be able to continue their current lifestyle (or at least, as able as anyone is in a heteronormative society), but they wouldn't want to.

There are some people who claim that they prefer being deaf to being able to hear, and that being deaf is ego-syntonic. I believe that they are confused. I think what they really value isn't being deaf, it's the community that they have built with other deaf people. They are confusing their preference to display loyalty to their community with with a preference to not be able to hear. In addition I think they are confused for some other reasons:

• Sour grapes. When people are unable to do something, they often convince themselves they didn't want to do it anyway in order to assuage their ego.
• Confusing "life could be better" with "life is not worth living." As I said before, a lot of disability rights advocates seem to think that if you admit that their disability makes their life even slightly worse, that means their life is not worth living at all and they should be euthanized. This is not true.
• If people got hit in the head with a baseball bat every day.....
• Happy death spirals around their community. They love their community and want to say more and more good things about it. So they say that their community is so awesome that living in it is worth being significantly less good at sensing one's surroundings.

To sum it up, I believe that being queer is an ego-syntonic desire. I believe that being deaf is not ego-syntonic, but people say it is out of a desire to have self-esteem and be proud of and loyal to the deaf community.

Do we know that saying "I don't know" is a failure? Clearly accepting the one-sixth answer given by the guide would be a failure, and stubbornly sticking to a different wrong answer is probably a failure as well, but saying "I need more time and equipment to figure this out" might very well be tolerated.

I meant it in the sense you understood first. I don't know what to make of the other interpretation. If a concept is well-defined, the question "Does X match the concept?" is clear. Of course it may be hard to answer.

But suppose you only have a vague understanding of ancestry. Actually, you've only recently coined the word "ancestor" to point at some blob of thought in your head. You think there's a useful idea there, but the best you can for now is: "someone who relates to me in a way similar to how my dad and my grandmother relate to me". You go around telling people about this, and someone responds "yes, this is the brute fact from which the conundrum of ancestry start". An other tells you you ought to stop using that word if you don't know what the referent is. Then they go on to say your definition is fine, it doesn't matter if you don't know how someone comes to be an ancestor, you can still talk about an ancestor and make sense. You have not gone through all the tribe's initiation rituals yet, so you don't know how you relate to grey wolves. Maybe they're your ancestors, maybe not. But the other says : "At least, you know what you mean when you claim they are or are not your ancestors.".

Then your little sisters drops by and says: "Is this rock one of your ancestors?". No, certainly not. "OK, didn't think so. Am I one of your ancestors?". You feel about it for a minute and say no. "Why? We're really close family. It's very similar to how dad or grandma relate to you." Well, you didn't include it in your original definition, but someone younger than you can definitely not be your ancestor. It's not that kind of "similar". A bit of time and a good number of family members later, you have a better definition. Your first definition was just two examples, something about "relating", and the word "similar" thrown in to mean "and everyone else who is also an ancestor." But similar in what way?

Now the word means "the smallest set such that your parents are in it, and any parent of an ancestor is an ancestor"..."union the elders of the tribe, dead or alive, and a couple of noble animal species." Maybe a few generations later you'll drop the second term of the definition and start talking about genes, whatever.

My "fuzziest starting point" was really fuzzy, and not a good definition. It was one example, something about being able to "experience" stuff, and the word "similar" thrown in to mean "and everyone else who is conscious." I may (kind of) know what I mean when I say a rock is not conscious, since it doesn't experience anything, but what do I mean exactly when I say that a dog isn't conscious?

I don't think I know what I mean when I say that, but I think it can help to keep using the word.

P.S. The final answer could be as in the ancestor story, a definition which closely matches the initial intuition. It could also be something really weird where you realize you were just confused and stop using the word. I mean, the life force of vitalism was probably a brute fact for a long time.

What it is, to know what one is referring to? If I see a flying saucer, I may be wrong in believing it's an alien spaceship, but I am not wrong about seeing something, a thing I also believe to be an alien spaceship.

pangel says:

The fuzziest starting point for "consciousness" is "something similar to what I experience when I consider my own mind".

and that is the brute fact from which the conundrum of consciousness starts. The fact of having subjective experience is the primary subject matter. That we have no idea how, given everything else we know about the world, there could be any such thing as experience, is not a problem for the fact. It is a problem for those seeking an explanation for the fact. Ignorance and confusion are in the map, not the territory.

All attempts to solve the problem have so far taken one of two forms:

1. Here is something objectively measurable that correlates with the subjective experience. Therefore that thing is the subjective experience.

2. We can't explain it, therefore it doesn't exist.

Discussion mostly takes the form of knocking down everyone else's wrong theories. But all the theories are wrong, so there is no end to this.

The actual creation of brains-in-vats will certainly give more urgency to the issue. I expect the ethical issues will be dealt with just by prohibiting growing beyond a certain stage.

As an instance of the limits of replacing words with their definitions to clarify debates, this looks like an important conversation.

The fuzziest starting point for "consciousness" is "something similar to what I experience when I consider my own mind". But this doesn't help much. Someone can still claim "So rocks probably have consciousness!", and another can respond "Certainly not, but brains grown in labs likely do!". Arguing from physical similarity, etc. just relies on the other person sharing your intuitions.

For some concepts, we disagree on definitions because we don't know actually know what those concepts refer to (this doesn't include concepts like "art", etc.). I'm not sure what the best way to talk about whether an entity possesses such a concept is. Are there existing articles/discussions about that?

Is there any particular reason to focus on anecdotes and not focus on the percentage of millionaires who have specific degrees?

http://time100.time.com/2013/11/11/these-are-the-most-popular-college-degrees-earned-by-millionaires/ gives for example a list.

"The thing is, I actually do endorse polyamory. I mean, not in the sense of thinking everyone should do it, but in the sense of thinking it should be an option. I think there are some people who tend to do better in monogamous relationships, some people who are naturally polyamorous, and some people who can go either way." - Eliezer Yudkowsky

According to the 2014 LessWrong Survey Results, 15.1 % of the LessWrong community prefers polyamorous relationships to monogamous ones. If you don't know what polyamory is, it's been described as "consensual, ethical, and responsible non-monogamy. (Source). This excludes (formerly) monogamous relationships where one party is "cheating", i.e., engaged in an additional sexual or romantic relationship in secret. Semi-monogamous, or "monogamish", marriages and relationships may be count as polyamorous in the minds of some, but may be eschewed by the couple in question themselves. Among LessWrongers and almost all secular crowds, at least, "polyamory" is also not the same as the common thought of "polygamy", usually polygyny (one man, many women), which is practiced by some religious sects, and adheres to norms not shared by the polyamorous.

Anyway, I'm wondering if Eliezer Yudkowsky's position, that monogamy or polyamory will work better for different people, is the consensus opinion among poly people. I'm not sure if poly folk tend to think polyamory is, in some sense, superior to monogamy, and that if people think they prefer monogamy, or that monogamy is better in general, they're mistaken. I know lots of monogamous people state polyamory is unsustainable, and so poly folk defend poly as equal in validity and usefulness to monogamy, depending on one's preferences. I'm curious about something different. Do poly folk tend to think polyamory is a superior relationship style for people, that almost everyone would do better in polyamory, because it is a more valid and useful relationship style?

I'm also aware there have been different waves of polyamory. I'm aware a large portion of poly population in North America hail from the tradition of "free love" among hippies. This is the second wave. Polyamory is and was more of a fuzzy concept within this wave However, I know several polyamorous people or relationships among LessWrongers/rationalists, as well as some hailing from the skeptic community. While the hippie generation of poly folk also correlates New Age beliefs, people who became poly via explicitly secular communities, or by learning about it through the Internet, tend to accept it merely on the grounds of rejecting monogamy as the only relationship style as an outdated cultural/religious tradition. Do the perspectives of the New Age, and most recent, waves of polyamory greatly differ on the validity of monogamy or polyamory?

If you yourself hold a position on this topic, please feel free to share.