It seems that in this article, Robin is co-defining "opinion" with "belief". This isn't, exactly, incorrect, but I don't think it maps completely onto the common use, which may be causing misunderstanding. If I say "it's my opinion that [insert factual proposition here]", then Robin's remarks certainly apply. But if it's my opinion that chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream is delicious - which is certainly a way people often use the word "opinion" - then in what way might I not be entitled to that? Unless I turn out to be mistaken in my use of the term "chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream", or something, but assume I'm not.

I think this is a good distinction, and anyone somehow trying to shift social norms (perhaps within a subcommunity) might be well-advised to shift the norms in order: First, teach people that others have a right to criticize their opinion; then, teach them that they have no right to an opinion.

Another fun read: Civilization-Level Quantum Suicide

Quantum Suicide Reality Editing

If you accept the idea of quantum suicide then you should be open to the idea of using it for editing reality. You could construct some system that monitored events for you and would immediately cause you to cease to exist if events did not happen as you wanted them. The idea would be that you would continue to exist only in those future worlds in which events happened as desired, so that from your point of view, events would always happen as you wanted. You would be using quantum suicide to control your reality.

Quantum Suicide Computing

Suppose you had some computing problem which would take a long time to solve, but you have some way of checking possible answers. You could set up some system which uses quantum events to generate a random answer to the computation and then automatically causes you to cease to exist if the answer is not the correct answer, or if it is not better, in some sense, than the previous answer that you obtained. The idea would be that future worlds would exist in which all possible answers were generated and you would only exist in those worlds where the answer was correct or better than previously generated hours, thereby giving you the perception of having enormous computing power.

Quote, please?

Most of what he said condenses to "people who are not practicing rationality are irrational", which is only an insult if you consider 'irrational' to be an insult, which I didn't see any evidence of. I saw frustration at the difficulty in dealing with them without social awkwardness, but that's not the same.

Have I missed something?

I don't at all disagree that the skills are good to learn, especially if you're going to be focusing on tasks that involve dealing with non-rationalists. I think it may be a bit of an over generalization to say that they should be a high priority for everyone, but probably not much of one.

I do have a problem with judging people for not having already mastered those skills, or for having higher priorities than tackling those skills immediately with all their energy, though, which seems to be what you're doing. Am I inferring too much when I come to that conclusion?

Social cohesion is one of the enemies of rationality.

It's not necessarily so in that it's not always opposed to it, but it is incompatible with the mechanisms that bring it about and permit it to error-correct. It tends to reinforce error. When it happens to reinforce correctness, it's not needed, and when it doesn't, it makes it significantly harder to correct the errors.

I thought I would get away with that simplification. Heh.

Those skills do come naturally to some people, but not everyone. They certainly don't come naturally to me. Even if I'm in a social group with rules that allow me to notice that a faux pas has occurred (not all do; some groups consider it normal to obscure such things to the point where I'll find out weeks or months later, if at all), it's still not usually obvious what I did wrong or what else I could do instead, and I have to intentionally sit down and come up with theories that I may or may not even have a chance to test.

I think you're underestimating the degree of social intelligence required. To pull that off while still keeping the rationalistic habits that such people find offensive, you'd have to:

• Recognize the problem, which is nontrivial,
• Find a way of figuring out who falls on which side of the line, without tipping people off,
• Determine all of the rationalistic habits that are likely to offend people who are not trying to become more rational,
• Find non-offensive ways of achieving those goals, or find ways of avoiding those situations entirely,
• Find a way not to slip up in conversation and apply the habits anyway - again, nontrivial. Keeping this degree of focus in realtime is hard.

You'd also probably have to at least to some degree integrate the idea that it's 'okay' (not correct, just acceptable) to be irrational into your general thought process, to avoid unintentional signaling that you think poorly of them. If anything, irrational people are more likely to notice such subtle signals, since so much of their communication is based on them.

I agree completely. If intelligence-generated problems cannot outpace the solutions total destruction awaits.

I apologize if the stupid pill characterization feels wrong, I just was trying to think of a viable alternative to increasing intelligence.

I think those problems weren't caused by too much intelligence, but by too little. I know, intelligence enables these problems to form in the first place -- These entities wouldn't be making the problems if they weren't volitional agents with intelligence, but that seems like a kind of cop-out complaint -- Without intelligence there wouldn't be any problems, sure, but there also wouldn't be anything positive either, no concepts whatsoever.

Pollution is a great example: It's intelligent thought that allowed us to start making machines that polluted. Intelligence allowed us to realize we could capitalize on the well-being of the environment and save money by trashing it.

More intelligence realizes that this is still a value trade off, that you aren't getting something for nothing -- Depending on the rate at which you do this, you could seriously damage yourself and the people around you for the trade-off. You have to weigh the costs with the benefits, and if the benefit is 'some money' and the cost is 'destroying the world', the intelligent choice becomes clear. To continue to act for the money isn't intelligence, it's just insanity, overpowering greed.

The cuban missile crisis may have been caused by intelligence building the structures that led up to it, but the solution wasn't making everyone dumber so they couldn't build that kind of thing -- that just reduces overall utility. The solution is to act intelligently in ways that don't destroy the world.

I see your point about moral intelligence being considered separately though, I hadn't thought of that in the context. It's a more elegant package to wrap everything up together, but not always the right thing to do... Thanks for the reply.