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Keeping costly promises/contracts after changing into someone who no longer would have agreed to them.
In response to
The Fable of the Burning Branch
Well, first, I'll admit up front that I logged off and metaphorically hid for a day after posting this, so I would not be tempted to engage in a pointless argument in the comments. And yet, I was somehow still too optimistic about what I'd find when I looked.
First point of order, this isn't about me. I've been on this site a while, it should be obvious by now that I have no qualms sharing gooey personal details about myself. So. Stop making it about me. If it was about me, you'd know.
Second point of order, the pronouns assigned to the characters do not matter and I think it says more about you than me that you fixated on that. So. Stop making it about sexism. Perhaps I could have chosen some other combination of genders, but I had hoped that commenters here of all places would be egalitarian enough to see those genders as the placeholders they are.
Third point of order, the parable was never meant to reflect reality. If it seems one-sided, that's because it is. It is meant to reflect a generalized emotional journey that I think is valid for a lot of people, of all sexes and orientations, who are too scared to speak up because they, rightly, expect to get nothing but vitriol for doing so.
Fourthly, if the parable even has a moral, it is about prostitution and modern attitudes towards prostitution and not really anything else. If you think the parable is advocating anything else you don't like, that, again, says more about you than me. I am astounded that I have to explicitly point this out, but there is a difference between not actively helping a person and actively interfering with help reaching a person. So. Stop putting words in my mouth. We should be above that, here.
...oh. I was about to PM you with a personal account from the other side of the story to defend the people I thought you were accusing of not saving you, personally, at a small cost or themselves. I still want to point out that had I read your story in the past, I would have taken it for an accusation of practically murdering someone like the author and tortured myself over it.
Follow up question: has anyone on LessWrong ever actually consulted a psychic for any reason?
I'm technically on LessWrong and my biggest reason was desperation. I could PM you most of their answer if you're curious.
It would be fun to know of a rationalist's experience
Even conditional on someone having those experiences I find it unlikey that the person would write an reply to a question on LW that posed as the question above.
Can you think of any good reason to consult any so called psychic?
I can think of a good reason for anything. I ask my brain "conditional upon it being a good idea, what might the situation be?" and the virtual outcome pump effortlessly generates scenarios. A professional fiction writer could produce a flood of them. Try it! For any X whatever, you can come up with answers to the question "what might the world look like, conditional upon X being a good idea?" For extreme X's, I recommend not publishing them. If you find yourself being persuaded by the stories you make up, repeat the exercise for not-X, and learn from this the deceptively persuasive power of stories.
Why consult a psychic? Because I have seen reason to think that this one is the real deal. To humour a friend who believes in this stuff. For entertainment. To expose the psychic as a fraud. To observe and learn from their cold reading technique. To audition them for a stage act. Because they're offering a free consultation and I think, why not? (Don't worry, my virtual outcome pump can generate reasons why not just as easily as reasons why.)
What is the real question here?
You got me, there was no real question. It was all made up for fun. It would be fun to know of a rationalist's experience and interpretation or desire to visit a psychic and whatever unusual circumstances and reasoning led them to it.
In response to
Open Thread, January 11-17, 2016
Can you think of any good reason to consult any so called psychic?
people are reincarnated, without any possibility of remembering their past lives
What does that even mean? What would be the mechanism?
If you have two competing hypotheses which are experimentally undistinguishable, Occam's Razor requires you prefer the hypothesis that makes fewer assumptions. Positing reincarnation adds a lot of rules to the universe which it doesn't really need for it to function the way we already see it function.
Does occam's razor require you to prefer the likelier hypothesis? I don't see why I should act as if the more likely case is definitely true.
In response to
Open Thread, January 4-10, 2016
How long till someone, in the vain of state assisted suicide, intentionally commits a capital offence in-order to be executed by a state?
For instance, there are few barriers to an individual entering Singapore, then using the dark net to buy a great deal of drugs, then being caught and executed for it.
The principle barrier I see is: having sufficient capital to fund the project.
Potentially, suicidal individuals could partner with drug entrepreneurs who could loan the suicide candidate's the funds to purchase the drugs, which are then passed off to the drug entrepreneurs. The profit from the venture could fund more capital intensive lifestyle interventions to improve the suicidal individuals mental health.
Alternatively, the drug entrepreneurs could rent the 'red herring' services of the suicide candidate, to take their place if there is heat from law-enforcement.
An altruistic suicide candidate may accept the risk of execution in exchange for the opportunity to make massive amounts of profit to then donate to LessWrong's upkeep!
How often do they actually execute those arrested for buying drugs, as opposed to other punishments? Is the chance of "success" even bigger than that of suicide by hanging, for example? Because ending up imprisoned is not necessarily better than ending up mutilated. On the other hand, if someone is going to purchase illegal drugs for an overdose, is there any reason not to do it in a country with capital punishment as opposed to one in which they'd definitely face years in prison? (OK, those aren't the only two options...)
In response to
Polling Thread January 2016
I got 65%, but don't have the karma to vote.
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