I don't know how long you've held the position, or much care - I don't think it's relevant. But it is signaling, I think, for 2 reasons:
This is the sort of thing that causes unnecessary splintering in groups. I have a very visceral reaction to this sort of signaling (which I would label preening, actually). Perhaps I should examine that.
You didn't read Eliezer's post very carefully, did you? You need more practice in agreement and conformity. There are a limited number of "right" answers out there. It's alright to agree on them, when they are found.
I don't believe you.
That would be a great feature, I think. Ditto on on broad disagreements.
Other than the misspelling, absolutely - Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus)
A highlight:
This terror, then, this darkness of the mind, Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light, Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse, But only Nature's aspect and her law, Which, teaching us, hath this exordium: Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.
Did see Reading Rainbow, although I think this was later ... late 80s?. We had Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego as a computer game, late 80s, also, I believe. The game was boring as sin.
Nice work. Clean up the meter and I'll print it out to read to my daughter. You can never start 'em too young.
3-2-1 Contact - that was the name of that show - not the Electric Company. That's the bad 80s hit, isn't it ...?
I don't remember seeing anything called Mathnet. My 3-2-1 Contact memories are roughly 1980-1984, somewhere thereabouts. Yours?
I believe the segment on the Electric Company is where that group derived its name. Although I'm not sure. No taste for that sort of thing.
How about The Hardy Boys? I read dozens of these as a young kid, and the thing that stands out in mind now is, there was always an answer to the mystery, one that could be arrived at via clues and deduction. Looking back now, I think they had a major impact on my manner of thinking, reading them as young as I did (kindergarten and 1st grade, I'm talking) such that years later I was inclined to look favorably upon a 'rationality technique' when I encountered the idea of one on OB.
Agree that fiction that relies solely on spoilers isn't worth reading. Though I would not concur that textbooks are better than any fiction. Unless school has gotten waaaaaay better than I remember.
Scooby Doo, absolutely. The mystery was always solved; the reason was always given.
How about The Bloodhound Gang on that PBS show Electric Company? Same formula as Scooby Doo.
Although admittedly this is not fiction, exactly.
Exactly. Descartes laid the foundation for future progress.
To take one example: Aristotle laid down the foundation of what became modern science. Modern science became modern science as we think of it by rebelling against Aristotle's a priori assumptions; without Aristotle, what science we have today would be very different, indeed.
I don't think you can so easily dismiss Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, et al: without them we we wouldn't be where we are today.
This is part of the problem I often detected at OB and see again here at LW: people with little respect for intellectual history.
Hear, hear. Practice and practical techniques. Isn't that what we're after here?
But there are simply far too many areas of life involving putative "orthonormally diagonalizable matrices" for any one individual to be able to rationally investigate. At some point you have to take someone's word for it; so rather than taking one expert's word, you're likely better off trusting a community of experts. A current example might be with global warming - most scientists seem to feel it's a major issue.
Unfortunately, though, radical changes in thinking come usually come from the margin, e.g., Galileo. The hard part, it seems to me, is to distinguish between mere status quo convention and genuine expert agreement.
I wouldn't say you need to repeal patents entirely. Just limit them better, and enforce those limitations. Same with copyrights.
Agreed. Discussions of dogmatisms such as libertarianism in any of its forms is boring, boring, boring and now what I'd like to read here.
Not that the original post here is an example of that, per se, although I think it comes close.
Big one for me: cutting the Gordian knot of the philosophical antimonies, e.g., those philosophical dilemmas with no answers. Someone somewhere at Overcoming Bias commented that the "useful" parts of philosophy evolved into the natural sciences; the rest became the muted academic wordgames we see today (or something like that - the poster was much more incisive).
And just like that, my interest in those endless philosophical dilemmas dissolved. What a timesaver.
If anyone can locate that post / commenter, I'd be grateful.
One hopes. I don't know if it's possible to generalize on this point though. With some education takes, with some, it doesn't.
I've also found this very helpful in my initial surveys.
Saying you're "Fine" to a doctor, when you are not, would be a little foolish, would it not? As opposed to your standard workaday white lies.
Thanks.
I certainly will. She's only 18 months, though, so it's going to be a while before the reports start flowing.
Me neither. My daughter's going to be a test case, though.
That's great stuff. I feel like I should be taking notes.
I'm talking about from the perspective of a child, MBlume. We live in a society where lots of folks teach their kids lots of silly myths. It isn't your job to teach your kid to go around exposing them all the time. At least not unless you want to raise an intolerable pedant.
I also remember hearing of a community (wish I could remember which) in which it was absolutely forbidden to give negative feedback under certain circumstances
I am living (and about to leave) an Asian society very much like this. It yields some very odd results indeed: corruption, consumerism, lemming-like religious behavior, and vast - feudal - social gaps.
Me neither. Are the people around you really paying so much attention to you that they would go such effort? Ones who aren't related to you?
That is a good point.
Nice link - thanks. My daughter's going to be Santa Claus age soon enough. Maybe I'll print this out for future reference. Probably unbearably saccharine to the childless, but hey, they may have some crumbgobblers of their own someday, and then it will make more sense.
Seems to me (maybe I'll report back on this in, say, a decade) that the "Santa Claus shock" won't be as bad as a "God shock" because people who lie to their kids about Santa Claus know they are lying and every kid finds out the truth sooner or later; whereas theists don...
This is ridiculous. A "truth twister"? This isn't hypocrisy. This is lying. To yourself, mostly. Unless you live in a cave, you tell white lies every day. Ever say Good Afternoon when you didn't feel like it?
This sort of moral highhorsing gets us nowhere. Stop it, please.
Sorry, Nazgul. That makes no sense.