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This is an excellent post, which I'll return to in future. I particularly like the note about the convergence between Superforecasting, Feynman, Munger, LW-style rationality, and CFAR - here's a long list of Munger quotations (collected by someone else) which exemplifies some of this convergence. http://25iq.com/quotations/charlie-munger/
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[LINK] Waitbutwhy article on the history and future of space exploration, SpaceX and more
This post seems better suited for the Discussion section.
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I'm not fine with it becoming such a point of fixation or an element of group identity.
So, maybe this is just my view of things, but I think a big part of this conversation is whether you're outside looking in or inside looking out.
For example, I'm neither poly nor signed up for cryo, but I'm open to both of those things, and I've thought them through and have a balanced sense of what facts about the world would have to change for my identification / recommendations to have to change. In a place where most people have seriously considered the issue, that gets me no weird looks.
But saying "I'm open to cryo" to an audience of stereotypical skeptics comes across as an admission of kookery, and so that's the relevant piece about LW they notice: not "they don't scoff at ideas" but "they believe in cryonics more than normal."
people here love to score cheap points by criticizing religion.
Is that true? I mostly don't notice people scoring cheap points by criticizing religion; I mostly notice them ignoring religion.
Religion is basically politics... The fact that things like the "secular solstice" have become part of rationalist community norms and identity is indicative of serious errors IMO.
Mmm. I would say that "religion is basically community"--they're the people you spend a lot of time with, they're the people you have a shared history / myth base with, they're people you can trust more than normal. And any community, as it becomes more sophisticated, basically becomes a 'religion.' The Secular Solstice is part of making a genuine sophisticated rationalist community--i.e., a rationalist religion, of the "brownies and babysitting" variety rather than the "guru sex cult" variety.
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So, maybe this is just my view of things, but I think a big part of this conversation is whether you're outside looking in or inside looking out.
I'm on the inside and I think we should get rid of these things for the sake of both insiders and outsiders.
Is that true? I mostly don't notice people scoring cheap points by criticizing religion; I mostly notice them ignoring religion.
See for instance Raising the Sanity Waterline, a post which raises very important points but is so unnecessarily mean-spirited towards religion that I can't particularly show it to many people. As Eliezer writes elsewhere:
Why would anyone pick such a distracting example to illustrate nonmonotonic reasoning? Probably because the author just couldn't resist getting in a good, solid dig at those hated Greens.
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annoying cultural problems and weird fixations
Not that they aren't here, but which ones are you talking about? What's a weird fixation to some might be an attractor for others, and visa-versa.
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In terms of weird fixations, there are quite a few strange things that the LW community seems to have as part of its identity - polyamory and cryonics are perhaps the best examples of things that seem to have little to do with rationality but are widely accepted as norms here.
If you think rationality leads you to poly or to cryo, I'm fine with that, but I'm not fine with it becoming such a point of fixation or an element of group identity.
For that matter, I think atheism falls into the same category. Religion is basically politics, and politics is the mind-killer, but people here love to score cheap points by criticizing religion. The fact that things like the "secular solstice" have become part of rationalist community norms and identity is indicative of serious errors IMO.
For me, one of the most appealing things about EA (as opposed to rationalist) identity is that it's not wrapped up in all this unnecessary weird stuff.
I think LessWrong has a lot of annoying cultural problems and weird fixations, but despite those problems I think there really is something to be gained from having a central place for discussion.
The current "shadow of LessWrong + SSC comments + personal blogs + EA forum + Facebook + IRC (+ Tumblr?)" equilibrium seems to have in practice led to much less mutual knowledge of cool articles/content being written, and perhaps to less cool articles/content as well.
I'd really like to see a revitalization of LessWrong (ideally with a less nitpicky culture and a lack of weird fixations) or the establishment of another central hub site, but even failing that I think people going back to LW would probably be good on net.
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Social class amongst the intellectually gifted
My impression significantly differs, though I'm far from confident. I'd be interested in seeing an expanded version of this point because it seems potentially very valuable to me.
If the point of exercise is to strengthen the body and thus prepare it for potential adverse circumstances
Because that is not the only possible point. Looking better and feeling better and living longer are often more important ones.
Quite frankly I don't expect to ever encounter adverse circumstances. I live a safe modern urban life.
I agree, that comment was written during a somewhat silly period of my life. :)
[LINK] Yudkowsky's Abridged Guide to Intelligent Characters
Some of you have likely seen this already, but for those of you who haven't, Eliezer recently finished a series of Tumblr posts on writing intelligent characters in fiction. It can be found at http://yudkowsky.tumblr.com/writing and is IMO worth a read.
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A Day Without Defaults
Its sequel will be written on Sunday, Oct. 27th.
My plan is to spend the next week doing the same thing that I did today and then report back. I'm excited to let you all know what I find!
I didn't find a sequel - how did it go? I've tried this sort of thing various times, and it's always great at first, but it's tough to maintain.
It went very well - too well, in fact! Writing a LessWrong post did not feel alive to me, so I didn't do it.
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I'm pretty sure that was "black pride". All the successful black people you mentioned are basically dancing bears.
Gay pride is somewhat less so, i.e., they do have Alan Turing and a few artists, but still not very impressive. Heck you had to pad out the list with "Tim Cook, CEO of the world's most successful company", even though it is pretty clearly not his efforts that lead to this state of affairs.
This has much the same ultimately pathetic feel of going to places like Turkey and seeing every mathematics institution named after Cahit Arf, the one decent mathematician the country has ever produced, even though he was a mediocre mathematician by world standards.
This is one of the worst comments I've seen on LessWrong and I think the fact that this is being upvoted is disgraceful. (Note: this reply refers to a comment that has since been deleted.)