Comment author: NancyLebovitz 22 April 2011 04:21:27PM 2 points [-]

Another (semi)related goal is acquiring a collection of humanist and rational music that is as evocative as "religious" music, optimized for communal singing. I think Humanism and science have been kind of dragging their feet when it comes to producing inspirational artwork (or at least, they've been dragging their feet when it comes to publicizing it).

That's an interesting project. I can see two difficulties which might explain why there isn't a lot of such music. One is that lyrics at a high level of abstraction tend to not work very well, and the other is that many of the emotions associated with rationality aren't easy defaults for expressing through music.

This doesn't mean it's impossible, just that there might be some new territory to explore.

Comment author: murat 08 May 2011 05:04:27PM *  0 points [-]

What are some of the emotions associated with rationality?

In response to How to Be Happy
Comment author: a363 18 March 2011 04:30:06PM 2 points [-]

It seems the statement "I am happy" can mean one is experiencing an fleeting positive reaction to external reality or it can describe the speaker as someone who does a lot of BEING happy, who is mindful of the way the impact of positive and negative stimuli on their consciousness is integrated into their perception of the world and tries to steer the process in a way that shifts the baseline of their perceived happiness higher. One could just decide to be happy all the time and through practice achieve this, but the rationalizations required to sustain that seem, AFAIK, to have a real danger of trespassing into the deeply irrational.

I had a weird moment some years back when I realized I was personally responsible for how I actively perceive the world and that I had a surprising amount of control over it. It seemed clear that the only thing keeping me from being happy was myself and that I could change my mind about unconsciously keeping myself unhappy for most of the time. Instead I decided to perceive everything in a way that would make me feel good and just adopted a casual attitude of noticing how thoroughly nice my lot in life was more than noticing the many thing that could be better but that I could not change.

It seemed that there is no deep truth or value in the way I see the world, inasmuch I as a singular observer can believe my rationalizations about the objective fairness/goodness etc of the world, sub specie aeternitatis, are factual statements, rather it is more like a matter of taste: like preferring beef to chicken. I knew there can be objective reasons for either preference, but it seemed silly and childish that I, deprived of access to the metaphorical beef, should go through life eating chicken and complaining about it because I thought it was the right thing to do when I could just steep it in some delicous sauce and have at it. I was sick of being unhappy so I had to stop making myself unhappy and spend the time doing something better. This took a few minutes of thought and then it seemed I was grinning most of the time for over a year...

In response to comment by a363 on How to Be Happy
Comment author: murat 23 April 2011 06:42:29PM 1 point [-]

So what happened after that? Did your technique stop working?

Comment author: murat 02 July 2010 08:59:04AM *  3 points [-]

I have a few questions.

1) What's "Bayescraft"? I don't recall seeing this word elsewhere. I haven't seen a definition on LW wiki either.

2) Why do some people capitalize some words here? Like "Traditional Rationality" and whatnot.

Comment author: ata 20 March 2010 10:26:14PM *  4 points [-]

You can believe that it leads to a 100%-always-true-in-every-possible-universe conclusion, but the strength of your belief should not be 100% itself. The difference is crucial. Good posts on this subject are How To Convince Me That 2 + 2 = 3 and Infinite Certainty. (The followup, 0 And 1 Are Not Probabilities, is a worthwhile explanation of the mathematical reasons that this is the case.)

Comment author: murat 21 March 2010 11:05:18AM 0 points [-]

Thank you for the links. It makes sense now.

Comment author: murat 20 March 2010 10:21:10PM 1 point [-]

How do Bayesians look at formal proofs in formal specifications? Do they believe "100%" in them?

Comment author: cousin_it 12 March 2010 12:42:48PM *  -1 points [-]

Yes, absolutely. The former path (working or contracting for many small companies) is the one I'd heartily recommend to novices. The latter path... scares me.

Comment author: murat 12 March 2010 01:51:12PM 2 points [-]

Maybe you are scared because you are aware that writing maintainable code is harder than writing code without that constraint?