Thanks for this! I recently tried to find this story, but couldn't remember who wrote it or what the title was.

Hi. Too bad High Five Day went already.

Cross one's fingers?

I can imagine meeting another Vance aficionado in person: we just nod politely, in silent agreement, or talk in cryptic sentences like vorlons.

H. R. Giger is an excellent painter and sculptor, anyone can see that, but for most people his sculptures are just too... alien. I discoved that I really like Giger and Vance, but I can see that others would have to acquire the taste.

Then the person asks why we think it's bad, and our unconscious supplies whatever rationale it thinks is most plausible and feeds it to us.

Don't blame the unconscious. It only makes up explanations when you ask for them.

My first lesson in this was when I was 17 years old, at my first programming job in the USA. I hadn't been working there very long, maybe only a week or two, and I said something or other that I hadn't thought through -- essentially making up an explanation.

The boss reprimanded me, and told me of something he called "Counter man syndrome", wherein a person behind a counter comes to believe that they know things they don't know, because, after all, they're the person behind the counter. So they can't just answer a question with "I don't know"... and thus they make something up, without really paying attention to the fact that they're making it up. Pretty soon, they don't know the difference between the facts and their own bullshit.

From then on, I never believed my own made-up explanations... at least not in the field of computers. Instead, I considered them as hypotheses.

So, it's not only a learnable skill, it can be learned quickly, at least by 17 year-old. ;-)

Some people are 'immune' to exercise.

Post in this thread if you live in Finland.

Martial arts can be a good training to ensure your personal security, if you assume the worst about your tools and environment. If you expect to find yourself unarmed in a dark alley, or fighting hand to hand in a war, it makes sense. But most people do a lot better at ensuring their personal security by coordinating to live in peaceful societies and neighborhoods; they pay someone else to learn martial arts. Similarly, while "survivalists" plan and train to stay warm, dry, and fed given worst case assumptions about the world around them, most people achieve these goals by participating in a modern economy.

As a martial arts enthusiast I have to concur that the practical survivability impact of my training is somewhat limited. In fact, I would go as far as to say that my martial art training is far less likely to save my life than is my previous sporting hobby, running.

The martial arts metaphor for rationality training applies as much to my motives for participation as it does for the training itself. I don't expect to beat many armed assailants to a pulp in a dark alley and nor do I expect elimitating biasses from my cognition to make a dramatic impact on my success or life satisfaction. However, I relish every opportunity to push both my body and mind to their limits in elegance and performance. I am also attracted to subcultures that tend to non-exclusivity with skill based elitism.

I unashamedly confess that I'd be a rationalist even if it had absolutely no direct benefit (over participation in the activities of any other arbitrary non-rationilist subculture to a similar degree). But at the same time I have to concur with Robin on the best way to go about finding truth.

But for those of us who respect the opinions of enough others to want to work with them to find truth, it makes more sense to design institutions which give each person better incentives to update a common consensus.

Absolutely. There is just something comforting in knowing that if the information I am relying apon is flawed, someone is losing money because of it. It's even better to know that if you do find flaws you'll be rewarded for doing so, not hunted down and persecuted as a 'whistleblower' or a heretic.

Unfortunately 'designing institutions' doesn't sound like the hard part. The hard part is taking these institutions and making them an active reality. Diluting the influence of authority tends to go against the interests of those in authority, at least how they perceive it. Of course, that particular robotic rampage of human stupidity is not something I personally need to overcome with my own rationalist-fu. I can respect the opinions of Robin et. al. and eagerly keep abreast of their instights and practical solutions.

What we need is a rationality equivalent of a katana or a machine gun. One for each student, some basic training and even ninja masters go down pretty quickly (unless they really can dodge bullets). Occupatio "weapon of mass rationality".

If I were talking to a Muslim (on this level) about evolution, my next questions would probably be: "Are you aware that humans give birth to deformed babies?" and "Do you think a monkey could give birth to a deformed baby that looks like a human baby?"

Do I think that a snake could produce sounds that can be interpreted as words? Well, yeah. "Can I eat this apple?" "Sssss..." "Sounded like yessss to me, let's eat."