Then say "a fair portion of", not "50%". Saying "50%" gives an illusion of actual data.
I don't think it is unrealistic to assume that an overwhelming majority of folks getting married, feel that they are getting married to "the one"
I'm not so sure.
I wrote "probably 50%". I guess it could be reasonably inferred that this is an extrapolation using my best guess coupled with actual numbers.
Interesting idea. For some reason it has a very "Robin Hanson feel" to it. (I had to scroll back up to check if he was the author, in fact)
Agreed! In fact I was toying with the idea of emailing Robin this idea in a couple of lines as a potential idea for a future post at overcomingbias. I finally overcame inertia and went on to compose this :)
But can you keep the 50% figure while changing what it denotes? Where does the figure come from?
The 50% american divorce rate is mostly in line with published statistics. I don't think it is unrealistic to assume that an overwhelming majority of folks getting married, feel that they are getting married to "the one", so I am just keeping the 50% figure. In any case getting this number to be very accurate is not important to the argument, so I didn't care to get the best possible estimate of this possible.
The individuals themselves might get carried away by emotion and believe that they have found "the one" and assign a much lower probability of divorce or forcible concessions that they would need to make in future when faced with the threat of divorce. In such a situation, they would fail to realize that 50% of Americans who went on to eventually get divorced probably felt that they found "the one" as well prior to their wedding.
The interesting figure should be the fraction of Americans who divorced, among those who "felt they found the one", not the fraction of Americans who "felt they found the one" among those who divorced.
Yeah that's what I meant but wrote the sentence clumsily. Have corrected it now.
I decided a few weeks ago that upon getting married I will sign a pre-nup which specifies that all of my children will receive paternity testing without exception. This constrains my options in a way that prevents goal distortion in myself and certain types of mistrust in the hypothetical husband.
I think the legal details of this will need to be worked out but this is certainly very interesting! In theory, such a move ought to make you a more desirable wife and ought to prevent certain types of mistrust in the hypothetical husband. I doubt both of these would pan out in practice though, unless you are fairly certain to restrict your pool of potential husbands to the ultra-rationalists (who probably barely even exist in practice), or to guys who would a priori have preferred paternity testing, even before you bring it up to them.
One general question, folks. This is my first lesswrong post. What do I need to have this post as part of the "promoted posts" and consequently accessible to more readers of this site. Till today I never even noticed the new tabs post, which is currently the only easy way to reach my post.
Thanks.
Three comments, in decreasing order of seriousness.
1) The law prevents you from waiving some rights, and this could be viewed as waiving such an "inalienable right". Also, how do you define a bullet-proof pre-nup? What if its constraints conflict with the other party's pre-nup?
2) So would you call such a contract a "pre-pre-nup"? What if someone did a pre-pre-pre-nup where they agree not to marry anyone's who's signed a pre-pre-nup?
3) Why don't you post something of actual RELEVANCE to the people who come he...
Ideally, the individual in question could sign such a contract when they were single or not seriously seeing anyone with the intention of getting married.
Oh. Nevermind. Good advice!
(1) and (2) seem pretty easy.
If there is a contradiction in pre-pre nups, either one party reneges on the contract and pays the stiff price or the marriage doesn't take place. When you opt for such a pre-pre-nup you are presumably willing to eliminate the pool of potential partners who are fundamentally opposed to the terms of your pre-pre-nup. Think of this as ideally no different from a situation when community property and other similar laws were abolished. In such a situation, you are free to turn down suitors who want pre-nups that enforce community property laws, or have pre-pre-nups which bind them to the same.
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Of course, I don't know enough of the issue of "inalienable rights" and what kind of
contracts are made illegal by law. With my limited knowledge it seems that it should be possible to make contracts that achieve these, possibly by some circuitous means. Of course I am no lawyer and don't know the fine points.
I am puzzled by Eliezer's confidence in the rationality of signing up for cryonics given he thinks it would be characteristic of a "GODDAMNED SANE CIVILIZATION". I am even more puzzled by the commenters overwhelming agreement with Eliezer. I am personally uncomfortable with cryonics for the two following reasons and am surprised that no one seems to bring these up.
(a) Have my life support system turned off and die peacefully.
(b) Keep the life support system going but subsequently give up all autonomy over my life and body and place it entirely in the hands of others who are likely not even my immediate kin. I could be made to put up with immense suffering either due to technical glitches which are very likely since this is a very nascent area, or due to willful malevolence. In this case I would very likely choose (a).
Note that in addition to prolonged suffering where I am effectively incapable of pulling the plug on myself, there is also the chance that I would be an oddity as far as future generations are concerned. Perhaps I would be made a circus or museum exhibit to entertain that generation. Our race is highly speciesist and I would not trust the future generations with their bionic implants and so on to even necessarily consider me to be of the same species and offer me the same rights and moral consideration.
Last but not the least is a point I made as a comment in response to Robin Hanson's post. Robin Hanson expressed a preference for a world filled with more people with scarce per-capita resources compared to a world with fewer people with significantly better living conditions. His point was that this gives many people the opportunity to "be born" who would not have come into existence. And that this was for some reason a good thing. I suspect that Eliezer too has a similar opinion on this, and this is probably another place we widely differ.
I couldn't care less if I weren't born. As the saying goes, I have been dead/not existed for billions of years and haven't suffered the slightest inconvenience. I see cryonics and a successful recovery as no different from dying and being re-born. Thus I assign virtually zero positives to being re-born, while I assign huge negatives to 1 and 2 above.
We are evolutionarily driven to dislike dying and try to postpone it for as long as possible. However I don't think we are particularly hardwired to prefer this form of weird cryonic rebirth over never waking up at all. Given that our general preference to not die has nothing fundamental about it, but is rather a case of us following our evolutionary leanings, what makes it so obvious that cryonic rebirth is a good thing. Some form of longetivity research which extends our life to say 200 years without going the cryonic route with all the above risks especially for the first few generations of cryonic guinea pigs, seems much harder to argue against.
Unfortunately all the discussion on this forum including the writings by Eliezer seem to draw absolutely no distinction between the two scenarios:
A. Signing up for cryonics now, with all the associated risks/benefits that I just discussed.
B. Some form of payment for some experimental longetivity research that you need to make upfront when you are 30. If the research succeeds and is tested safe, you can use the drugs for free and live to be 200. If not, you live your regular lifespan and merely forfeit the money that you paid to sponsor the research.
I can readily see myself choosing (B) if the rates were affordable and if the probability of success seemed reasonable to justify that rate. I find it astounding that repeated shallow arguments are made on this blog which address scenario (A) as though it were identical to scenario (B).
...while not being quite sane enough to actually notice you're driving away the very gender you're trying to seduce from our nascent rationalist community, and consequentially shut up about PUA... In the end, PUA is not something we need to be talking about here, and if it's giving one entire gender the wrong vibes on this website, I say the hell with it."
Very unfortunate that we are suggesting censoring a rather important and fertile topic that fits bang in the middle of the overcomingbias/lesswrong framework because:
PUA related discussions are certainly of enormous practical importance; it offers enormous insight into the working of attraction, though I dare say folks at lesswrong may be able to push the frontier way more particularly with their knowledge of evolutionary psychology etc.
PUA related discussions are all the more important and relevant to lesswrong since attraction is an area that conventional wisdom doesn't say enough about, in part due to political correctness.
One thing I have really liked about lesswrong is its manner of addressing politically incorrect questions with honesty; and not having a long list of taboo topics.
PUA tells us a number of uncomfortable things about the human condition, which are true. If Alicorn does like that she would be better off understanding what the reality is and probably figuring out if she can come up with some kind of mass consciousness raising exercise that would ensure that PUA methods are useless and that "Nice guys" without a "game" are seen as attractive (I think it will be a mammoth task to beat the internal attraction hardwiring of people though). At any rate, closing herself to the reality of the world, calling it offensive serves no purpose.
Where do we go from here? We can ban all hard discussions relating to race, religion, IQ differences, inherent difference in people's abilities, inherent mean differences in group abilities etc. We can turn this blog into something with trite and obvious posts or one that simply lies and obfuscates the truth on sensitive topics in the name of political correctness. In that case, this blog would just not be worth reading.
With a ban on this kind of discussion, I think one part of lesswrong and the rationality community here just died...
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I have been heavily leaning towards the anti-cryonics stance at least for myself with the current state of information and technology. My reasons are mostly the following.
I can see it being very plausible that somewhere along the line I would be subject to immense suffering, over which death would have been a far better option, but that I would be either potentially unable to take my life due to physical constraints or would lack the courage to do so (it takes quite some courage and persistent suffering to be driven to suicide IMO). I see this as analogous to a case where I am very near death and am faced with the two following options. (a) Have my life support system turned off and die peacefully.
(b) Keep the life support system going but subsequently give up all autonomy over my life and body and place it entirely in the hands of others who are likely not even my immediate kin. I could be made to put up with immense suffering either due to technical glitches which are very likely since this is a very nascent area, or due to willful malevolence. In this case I would very likely choose (a).
Note that in addition to prolonged suffering where I am effectively incapable of pulling the plug on myself, there is also the chance that I would be an oddity as far as future generations are concerned. Perhaps I would be made a circus or museum exhibit to entertain that generation. Our race is highly speciesist and I would not trust the future generations with their bionic implants and so on to even necessarily consider me to be of the same species and offer me the same rights and moral consideration.
Last but not the least is a point I made as a comment in response to Robin Hanson's post. Robin Hanson expressed a preference for a world filled with more people with scarce per-capita resources compared to a world with fewer people with significantly better living conditions. His point was that this gives many people the opportunity to "be born" who would not have come into existence. And that this was for some reason a good thing.
I couldn't care less if I weren't born. As the saying goes, I have been dead/not existed for billions of years and haven't suffered the slightest inconvenience. I see cryonics and a successful recovery as no different from dying and being re-born. Thus I assign virtually zero positives to being re-born, while I assign huge negatives to 1 and 2 above. This is probably related to the sense of identity mentioned in this post.
We are evolutionarily driven to dislike dying and try to postpone it for as long as possible. However I don't think we are particularly hardwired to prefer this form of weird cryonic rebirth over never waking up at all. Given that our general preference to not die has nothing fundamental about it, but is rather a case of us following our evolutionary leanings, what makes it so obvious that cryonic rebirth is a good thing. Some form of longetivity research which extends our life to say 200 years without going the cryonic route with all the above risks especially for the first few generations of cryonic guinea pigs, seems much harder to argue against.