I like the sentiment, but the advice is too often not practical. Also, not much to do with rationality.
An internal combustion engine is like Carol's subjective cold-sensation in her left hand - one way among others to bring about the externally-observable behavior. (By "externally observable" I mean "without looking under the hood".) In Carol's case, that behavior is identifying 20 C water. In the engine's case, it's the acceleration of the car.
The subjective cold-sensation in her left hand should be part of the observable behavior, surely? To mix the analogies, if it were my job to disguise the fuel cell as a combustion engine, I ...
Can anyone recommend good sources on the social dynamics of witch-hunts?
Not necessarily about witches, of course. I'm interested in the hand of Moloch in these situations: social incentives to go along, status rewards for being more morally outraged than your fellow citizen, self-protection by avoiding looking insufficiently outraged, the not necessarily intended but still unescapable prosecutorial traps, the social impossibility of denying the actual existence of the outrageous facts...
Would you attribute essentialist thinking to someone who prefers that watch?
Yes, I don't see why not. The only difference is a mental tag on their map.
(not that I would look down on anyone who has these preferences, or feel particularly inclined to work on diminishing my own similar preferences).
But there are readily perceivable differences. Just look under the hood.
Ok, no differences that would make her prefer the actual combustion engine, besides it having the essence of a real combustion engine.
To the extent that there really are no perceivable differences, it looks like essentialist thinking. But I wouldn't call a desire irrational (or rather, I wouldn't call it especially irrational), even a desire for a perceived essence.
A similar example would be two identical watches, one of which was given to you by your grandfather. Or the loss of value when you discover that the autographed picture you bought on e-bay is a forgery.
(maybe it's because I'm primed by a discussion on the stupid questions thread, or because I perceived hints that the third part would be controversial, but the example I had in mind as I read the post was of a heterossexual man rejecting trans women)
(The people producing those videos say he's "producer and co-writer". Cynical-me suspects that "Gamergate fans" think he must be the real driving force because Anita Sarkeesian is a girl and therefore not to be taken seriously. I do hope cynical-me is wrong. Not-so-cynical me thinks Sarkeesian is more likely to be the real driving force because, other things being equal, a woman is more likely to feel strongly about this stuff than a man.)
Since it's been brought up...
As far as I can tell the best evidence they have for this is a wide...
?
No, I mean people sometimes accuse leftists of holding positions motivated by hate. It's more common for this accusation to be made against right-wing positions (which is what the grandparent was talking about), but I don't think the reverse is all that rare.
Oh, that's quite close to my experience as well. Any disagreement about policies is actually a smokescreen - people only oppose leftist policies because they benefit from the status quo, you see, but they will invent anything to avoid admitting that (including, I gather, the entire field of Economics).
It's not that rare.
Consider accusations of hate against: Israel/Jews; straight cis white men; Christians; America; Freedom; rich people...
The entire domains of boys toys and girls toys diverge. Previously often one set of toys was sold for and used by boys and girls alike. The play differentiated along roles but still overlapped. But ot any longer. I wondered: Why is that?
I think I'm seeing the opposite (in Brazil). I see a lot of for-girls versions of toys that used to be made for boys when I was a child. Like RC Barbie racing cars, or pink Nerf guns with matching fashion accessories. Traditional girl toys also look more varied than they used to be (e.g. horror-themed dolls).
I was wondering more about the happiness/wellbeing part than the my terminal goal part.
But about that: it would mean it's one of my terminal goals. I'm also not seeing how it would be incompatible with a "transactional relationship".
I feel there's an intended connotation that it should rank high among his terminal goals (in the example, high enough that he shouldn't end the relationship), but this doesn't necessarily follow from "seeing her as an end in herself".
(I think the "intended correct answer" in the scenario is that he...
A healthy attitude to a relationship makes the other person an end in herself.
What does it mean for a person to be an end? In the example, is the end the continuity of the relationship, her happiness, or what?
If the end is the continuity of the relationship regardless of quality, or her happiness regardless of his, it doesn't look very "healthy". But if it's conditional on quality or on his own satisfaction, it doesn't look like the "end".
What I can't figure out is why some noticeable proportion of heterosexual men hate prostitutes.
My bet is that they process it as a purity/sacredness violation.
I am, however, stronger than most of the villagers, and could take some of the food that the raiders don't scavenge for.
You'd have to be stronger than the group of villagers.
The way status works looks analogous to the way Schelling points work: members of the group expect the other members to act a certain way towards member X, and also expect that everyone will expect everyone else to expect that, and so on. This is clearly how authority works (each grunt obeys the boss because he expects the other grants to obey and punish him if he doesn't, which is what all of them are thinking), and I suspect it might be a special case of the general case of status.
The value of strength, wealth, talent and etc. for high status would then ...
I'm not sure I see what "dominance" is here. If you mean something like the OP's "general purpose ability to influence a group", then my guess is that this person is only "not-dominant" to the extent that they choose not to overtly use it. For instance, I expect the answer to the following questions would be "yes":
When the group is uncertain about an outsider, or someone new, is this person's support more important than that of the average member of the group?
Regarding trivial choices, like ambient temperature or whe...
Maybe I'm missing something, but the mystery of people wanting to be low status appears to vanish if we don't think of binary high/low status, but as a continuum going from highest to lowest status. Then we can see people not wanting to go for highest status (including, perhaps, because they don't think they can manage it), but that doesn't mean they want to be low status.
I find it useful to see status as "fuzzily ordinal", in that it's often possible to identify one or some higher status members of a group, one or some lower status members (or m...
1- I am not sure it would happen, but I think that someone who does shout "fire!" is indeed quite sure people will run.
2 - I don't know Australia's laws, so I don't know what would be protected. But Hugh's speech goes in my first box (the only information being transmited is Hugh's preferences. Also, by analogy: if it were "should I kill him?", both would be responsible).
Thanks, this is what I thought. That would be the difference between my first and third types of speech, and an example of a controversy about how to draw the line.
Looking at my thought process, I think I'm using this differentiating test:
Look at the probability of the outcome, given the speech - if it's high enough that you can ignore the receiver of the message as an independent agent whose response generates uncertainty, the causation looks pretty direct. But if the outcome is dependent on people freely considering the information and acting on their own conclusions (as they would if the information was known by other means), then it looks indirect enough that I consider "transmiting information" as the function of the speech.
Consider e.g. whisteblowing. Or pretty much any political speech -- are you saying engaging in political speech specifically in order to influence the elections "isn't really protected"?
No, I'm saying that causation is sufficiently less direct in this case (than in cases like shouting "fire" and ordering a murder) that it's more reasonable to put it in the "intent to transmit information" box.
By the presence of this additional element, the intent for the speech to cause a concrete effect besides transmission of information, and its ability to cause it.
ETA: For some reason I only now noticed the "other hand" on your first response. Yes, all speech transmits information (even if just the information that I think A or desire B), and most speech intends some goal (even if just the goal that people think like me). When I think of the problem of putting a speech act in the first or second boxes my mind follows paths similar those used in d...
Sorry, that was supposed to be "falsely shouting fire". I'll be surprised if someone is punished for shouting "fire" if there really was a fire and they were only transmiting this information. For that reason, I also expect that "I thought there was a fire!" would be an effective defense.
I've read the comments, and nobody seems to have mentioned the different functions of speech, and the different goals of limitations. Yvain's examples of Holocaust denial and "shouting fire" are not the same sort of thing.
Speech as an act causally linked to a desired consequence unrelated to communication, like falsely shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, or commanding a subordinate to shoot someone, or etc., isn't really protected (I'm not very familiar with US Law, but I can't think of counterexamples). These limitations don't usuall...
"Algorithms" feels more related to the Sequences, but may not be the strategic choice. I don't expect non-math/CS types to go "yay, a book about algorithms!".
The first link doesn't work...
Don argues for God and Christianity on Bayesian reasons.
That is significantly more burdensome. And it seems that the argument presented here doesn't stretch enough to reach a God compatible with Christianity.
My first reaction as well.
But that is easy. What I haven't figured out yet is how to get them to read it.
The point was just that we should be allowed to weight expected positives against expected negatives. Yes, there can be invisible items in the "cons" column (also on the "pros"), and it may make sense to require extra weight on the "pros" column to account for this, but we shouldn't be required to act as if the invisible "cons" definitely outweigh all "pros".
I agree with this.
But then we look, and this turns into "we haven't looked enough". Which can be true, so maybe we go "can anyone think of something concrete that can go wrong with this?", and ideally we will look into that, and try to calculate the expected utility.
But then it becomes "we can't look enough - no matter how hard we try, it will always be possible that there's something we missed".
Which is also true. But if, just in case, we decide to act as if unknown unknowns are both certain and significant enough to override...
(thank you for helping me try to understand him on this point, by the way)
This seems coherent. But, to be honest, weak (which could mean I still don't get it).
We also seem to have gotten back to the beginning, and the quote. Leaving aside for now the motivated stopping regarding religion, we have a combination of the Precautionary Principle, the logic of Chesterton's Fence, and the difficulty of assessing risks on account of Black Swans.
... which would prescribe inaction in any question I can think of. It looks as if we're not even allowed to calculate the...
I agree with the apparent LW consensus that much of religion is attire, habit, community/socializing, or "belief in belief", if that's what you mean. But then again, people actually do care about the big things, like whether God exists, and also about what is or isn't morally required of them.
I bet they will also take Taleb's defense as an endorsement of God's existence and the other factual claims of Christianity. I don't recall him saying that he's only a cultural Christian and doesn't care whether any of it is actually true.
...I would also add
It can also help to illustrate ideas. Taleb basically says that religion1 is a very useful concept. New atheists spend energy arguing that religion2 is a bad concept. That's pointless if they want to convince someone who believes in religion1. If they don't want to argue against a strawman they actually have to switch to talking about religion1.
But you could say that the new atheists do want to argue against what Taleb might call a strawman, because what they're trying to do really is to argue against religion2. They're speaking to the public at large, ...
(I haven't read the book)
The way I usually come in contact with something like this is afterwards, when Elinor and her tribe are talking about those irrational greens, and how it's better to not even engage with them. They're just dumb/evil, you know, not like us.
Even without that part, this avoids opportunities for clearing up misunderstandings.
(anecdotally: some time ago a friend was telling me about discussions that are "just not worth having", and gave as an example "that time when we were talking about abortion and you said that X, I kn...
Ambivalent about this one.
I like the idea of rational argument as a sign of intellectual respect, but I don't like things that are so easy to use as fully general debate stoppers, especially when they have a built-in status element.
My source were his tweets. Sorry if I can't give anything concrete right now, but "Taleb GMO" apparently gets a lot of hits on google. I didn't really dive into it, but as I understood it he takes the precautionary principle (the burden of proof of safety is on GMOs, not of danger on opponents) and adds that nobody can ever really know the risks, so the burden of proof hasn't and can't be met.
"They're arrogant fools" seems to be Taleb's charming way of saying "they don't agree with me".
I like him too. I loved The Black Swan an...
Yes, but my point is that this is also true for, say, leaving the house to have fun.
Opportunity costs?
I would say it should be the one with best expected returns. But I guess Taleb thinks the possibility of a very bad black swan overrides everything else - or at least that's what I gathered from his recent crusade against GMOs.
I would say it should be the one with best expected returns.
True, but not as easy to follow as Taleb's advice. In the extreme we could replace every piece of advice with "maximize your utility".
Are they really not communicating, though? They seem to be signalling to each other their willingness to cooperate in the prisoner's dilemma.
I'd be very surprised if judges and regulators failed to classify this as a cartel.
They're communicating in an information-theoretic sense, but probably not in a legal sense.
Hello again...
I am this guy. For some reason one year ago I thought that translating the name "Less Wrong" into Portuguese would be enough differentiation, but I'm not comfortable with it anymore. It's a wonderful name, but it's not mine.
So I figured I'd just post under my actual (first) name.
I'm still in love with this place, by the way.
At last. Wouldn't miss it.