All of Old_Gold's Comments + Replies

Is altruistic deception really necessary? Social activism and the free market

True, however, the civil rights movement did.

1PhilGoetz9y

Oh. True.

Is altruistic deception really necessary? Social activism and the free market

For instance, suppose my cause is to prevent the growth of a hole in the ozone layer. I tell people they must stop using CFCs.

Well, that raises issues about just how serious a threat was the "hole in the ozone layer", and how much if anything it had to do with CFCs.

1DanArmak9y

Suppose for the sake of the example that it was a huge threat, caused purely by CFCs, but limiting CFCs (instead of stopping using them entirely) would have been enough to resolve the issue.

Old_Gold9y00

Stop hyper-focusing on individual words to try to score debating points when the intent behind their use is clear from the context, everybody on LessWrong.
There were good arguments for all of those things when they were still in use. There are no good Arguments today for favoring Aristotelian physics over Newtonian physics, Ptolemaic over Copernican, or the phlogiston theory over the oxygen theory, where an Argument means a complete consideration of the evidence and the individual arguments.

I'm not trying to score debating points. I have a serious poin... (read more)

0PhilGoetz9y

I did not appeal to any authorities. I relied on the readers here being well-educated. I am and was familiar with the history of these ideas, and with the specific arguments that at one time made Ptolemaic astronomy seem more reasonable, such as the apparent diameter of stars caused by atmospheric refraction, and that made phlogiston (which was just "negative oxygen") seem reasonable, which are recounted in detail in Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I'm not familiar with any arguments giving Aristotelian physics advantages over Newtonian physics. It probably wasn't immediately obvious to some people why things floated in water, or why hot air balloons rose; I suppose that could count. I don't think questions of appealing to authorities are relevant here. There are theories that are wrong. There seems to be a positive correlation between theories of action that require lies to inspire action, and theories that are wrong. My post asks about the strength of that correlation. Not knowing which theories are correct makes it harder to answer the question, but neither ignorance, nor knowledge, of the correctness of theories makes that question itself go away.

Is altruistic deception really necessary? Social activism and the free market

Is altruistic deception really necessary? Social activism and the free market

Slavery, suffrage, Christianity or Prohibition aren't right or wrong in some objective non-moral sense. Arguments for or against such things are inevitably about convincing people, not about some objective truth.

Well three of those four things are essentially government/societal policies, and one can argue about what the consequnces of adopting or not adopting those policies are.

3DanArmak9y

It's possible to make predictions and arguments about how letting women vote would affect society, or men in particular. But the people who fought for women's suffrage did so on moral grounds of equal rights; even if they had believed suffrage would in fact harm society in some way they wouldn't have changed their minds. Fiat justitia ruat caelum. Christianity is even more clearly about moral precepts and not about "worldly" benefit. Anti-slavery is too, although the US civil war mixed that up with a lot of other causes. About Prohibition I don't know enough to say.

Is altruistic deception really necessary? Social activism and the free market

Let's test your idea that "There are no good arguments for X" is simply how having a successful social taboo against X feels from inside:
"There are no good arguments for the phlogiston theory of chemistry" is simply how having a successful social taboo against the phlogiston theory of chemistry feels from inside.
"There are no good arguments for Ptolemaic astronomy" is simply how having a successful social taboo against Ptolemaic astronomy feels from inside.
"There are no good arguments for Aristotelian physics" is si

... (read more)

2PhilGoetz9y

There were good arguments for all of those things when they were still in use. There are no good Arguments today for favoring Aristotelian physics over Newtonian physics, Ptolemaic over Copernican, or the phlogiston theory over the oxygen theory, where an Argument means a complete consideration of the evidence and the individual arguments. Viliam's comment, which I'm sad to see has 10 points on LessWrong, uses the impreciseness of what I meant when I said "no good arguments" to crowbar in a claim that we just can't say some theories are wrong. We can. It should be obvious to anybody reading my original post that digressions into what is a "good argument" are irrelevant; the point is that many activists motivate people by advocating ideas that are false, or deceptively one-sided to the point that they are lies of omission. My question is what the distribution of the degree of necessary lying is as a function of a cause's social utility.

Old_Gold9y40

Ideally, I would estimate the negative effects: how many people would later learn I lied and abandon my cause, and how enemies of the cause might use the fact I lied against it, and the reputational harm to my other causes and to my allies.

Not to mention the damage the people who believe your lies might do by acting on them.

2DanArmak9y

I had in mind lies that were intended to be acted on, to further my cause. For instance, suppose my cause is to prevent the growth of a hole in the ozone layer. I tell people they must stop using CFCs. Actually it would be enough to limit the use of CFCs below some sustainable limit. But not everyone is going to listen to me, and I need to offset their CFC-use with even lower levels of usage from my followers. So I lie to my followers and tell them everyone in the world must stop using CFCs absolutely for the ozone hole to mend. That's a lie I want them to act on. There are other kinds of reasons why one might lie in the service of a cause, where my logic doesn't hold. For instance, suppose my cause is to win a war. I need to convince my people to keep fighting and not accept the enemy's armistice terms. So I lie to them, saying the enemy is building a magical doomsday weapon that can strike our people from afar, and only taking over the enemy's lands can prevent its construction. After we win the war, my people torture and kill many of the enemy population because they refuse to reveal the location of the doomsday weapon I made up. In this case, I didn't want people to actually act on the lie; I just wanted its side effect of making them fight in my war. There are other cases. For example, the main supporters of my cause happen to come from the Purple Tribe, whose religion says the germ theory of disease is false. I know they're wrong, but to gain their support for my cause, I must lie and publicly say they are right. Then they help me win my cause, while I help them stop effective disease prevention measures - a successful alliance.

Is altruistic deception really necessary? Social activism and the free market

[+]Old_Gold9y-60

4PhilGoetz9y

That's false. The abolition movement never claimed there were no significant differences between blacks and whites. Read the transcripts/summaries of the Lincoln / Douglas debates.

6bogus9y

Um, this is just plain wrong historically: "I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, ... and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. ... I will add to this that I have never seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman, or child who was in favor of producing a perfect equality, social and political, between [blacks] and white men." --Abraham Lincoln It's not at all clear that this is the case. Alcohol consumption before Prohibition was quite high, and this was definitely a significant social problem. One could even make the case that Prohibition was in some sense successful; some studies estimate that alcohol consumption after repeal was as much as 20% lower compared to the pre-Prohibition level.

Open Thread Feb 16 - Feb 23, 2016

Open Thread Feb 22 - Feb 28, 2016

What might be the cause of the perceived difference between the atheists/nontheists in Europe and in the USA?

Where in Europe? Richard Dawkins is from England and organized things like the infamous atheist bus campaign.

Also numerous European countries used to have atheist militants, of the priest-killing or at least send-priests-to-labor-camps variety.

Old_Gold9y50

Both Western governments and countries like Sierra Leone and Saudi Arabia. If he's simply talking bullshit why do government seek him out as a highly-payed advisor?

Because the official who made the proposal gets to look good for consulting with someone high status. There's a reason consultants have the reputation they do in the business world and governments have even worse internal incentive problems.

1ChristianKl9y

My main point is that Simon Anhold is a high status consultant and not a hippy. Lumifer rejects him because he thinks Simon Anhold is simply a person who isn't serious but a hippy. He's payed by governments to advice them how to achieve foreign policy objectives. The solution he proposes does happen to be more effective than the status quo of achieving foreign policy objectives. He also gives data-driven advice in a field where most other consultants aren't.

The map of global catastrophic risks connected with biological weapons and genetic engineering

Open Thread, January 11-17, 2016

Anything about adding symptoms to currently harmless bacteria?

1turchin9y

Will update the map, some information about it is here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3815869/.

Should we admit it when a person/group is "better" than another person/group?

The argument isn't that logic is inherently sexist and racist and therefore bad but that it's frequently used in places where there are other viable alternatives.

Such as?

3ChristianKl9y

Interviewing lot's of people to understand their view points and not to have conversations with them to show them where they are wrong but be non-judgemental. That's basically what YC teaches. Reasoning by analogy is useful in some cases. There's a huge class of expert decisions that's done via intuition. Using a technique like Gendlin's Focusing would be a way to get to solutions that's not based on logic.

Should we admit it when a person/group is "better" than another person/group?

There are no pure-blooded aryans here. There are no pure-bloods at all.

There's also no such thing as 100% pure water, that doesn't mean "water" or even "fresh water" is a meaningless or "socially constructed" concept, and it definitely doesn't mean it's a good idea to drink a glass of sea water.

[+]Old_Gold9y-50

Should we admit it when a person/group is "better" than another person/group?

Should we admit it when a person/group is "better" than another person/group?

There's far more difference between a black-skinned person whose ancestors have lived in America for five generations and a black-skinned person whose ancestry remains rooted in Africa, than there is between the black-skinned American and a white-skinned American

Genetics science says otherwise. Or do you believe that genes have no impact on who someone is?

Am I from a small tribe in Polynesia because I have an unusual crown formation? Maybe I'm American Indian because of the way my roots wrap around my jawbone?

I don't know, are you? You can trace your ancestry or get genetic tested if your curious.

0OrphanWilde9y

This fails to even remotely respond to what I wrote. Yes, in all cases, and since you apparently don't understand the concept being conveyed here: There are no pure-blooded aryans here. There are no pure-bloods at all.

[+]Old_Gold9y-50

5OrphanWilde9y

No. I don't think in words, and the translation from the thing-I-think-in into words is frequently very lossy.

Should we admit it when a person/group is "better" than another person/group?

[+]Old_Gold9y-60

2OrphanWilde9y

No. I mean treating race as a meaningful property of a person in the first place. You start from where you responded to me - the conversation began before that, so my context for this conversation is apparently different from yours. Which is to say - the problem is not the relevance of what I say to your point, but the relevance of what you say to mine. No. Not as a statement of solipsism, but because "race" isn't a well-defined category system, but a product of people's absurd need to draw well-defined boundaries where no well-defined boundaries exist. There's far more difference between a black-skinned person whose ancestors have lived in America for five generations and a black-skinned person whose ancestry remains rooted in Africa, than there is between the black-skinned American and a white-skinned American - yet these two are grouped together in "black" as if that were a meaningful category. And then the concept of mixed-race; the insistence on treating edge cases as between categories, rather than demonstrating that the joints can't actually be carved there. It's a bit like insisting that the two ends of ring species are, in fact, distinct species - and the middles are mixed-species. If races can mix - and, indeed, if they've spent the past few centuries doing so - there aren't races anymore, just a spectrum of individuals who can't be sorted in any meaningful way. At which point, well, you might as well just treat people as individuals. Am I from a small tribe in Polynesia because I have an unusual crown formation? Maybe I'm American Indian because of the way my roots wrap around my jawbone? Well, what about my blonde hair and blue eyes? What about my red beard? Where the hell am I in that spectrum? Well, today, I'm "white", because US slavery made that distinction important in our culture, and nothing else. And the fact that I'm "white" instead of a convoluted mess of a dozen different races - mixed race, in point of fact - means that the categorizatio

Should we admit it when a person/group is "better" than another person/group?

[+]Old_Gold9y-80

0OrphanWilde9y

Yes. If you want to talk to the world, feel free. Right now you are not. I will note you fail to address the point. Perhaps you missed it, perhaps not. The identification of individuals as their race, rather than themselves. That is the whole of my use of it. It is an assertion that the way you treat others should reflect the way you wish to be treated. Your interpretation makes no sense. I am not one of them. I do not regard people's religions relating to race as being truths.

Should we admit it when a person/group is "better" than another person/group?

Old_Gold9y20

But what's going on here is just our old familiar dilemma of justice vs. truth. It SHOULDN'T be profitable to use someone's skin color as a quick proxy for what's inside their heads. That would be monstrously unfair. People can't help their skin color.

People largely can't help what's inside their head either.

0Good_Burning_Plastic9y

I was about to nitpick your point before I remembered it'd be even easier to nitpick WalterL's. :-)

Open Thread, January 11-17, 2016

Should we admit it when a person/group is "better" than another person/group?

Can rationality be lost?

Sure, when formerly rational people declare some topic of limits to rationality because they don't like the conclusions that are coming out. Of course, since all truths are entangled that means you have to invent other lies to protect the ones you've already made. Ultimately you have to lie about the process of arriving at truth itself, which is how we get to things like feminist anti-epistomology.

Is Spirituality Irrational?

and all our heuristics on beliefs about non-trivial groups say - don't have them, and certainly don't say them out loud.

Of course, if you refuse to discuss race and crime, someone will point out that more blacks get arrested than whites and claim that this is due to police racism. More generally, once you start lying the truth is ever after your enemy.

For example, you may have heard that social science is in the midst of a replication crisis, well there is one area of social science where that isn't the case, namely IQ research and its correlates. Of ... (read more)

-1OrphanWilde9y

The only person who might be considered as pointing this out here is you, I will observe. The difference between my intelligence and the intelligence of the average person who makes this argument makes this look, to me, like a bunch of bank robbers, engaged in an argument about how to split their latest prize, accusing one another of theft for trying to argue they should get a bigger take for their particular roles. Which is to say - almost everybody is less intelligent than me, by quite a margin, and certainly a larger margin than may exist between the races. If you want to argue that racism is acceptable on the not-nearly-as-solid-ground-as-you-seem-to-think that black people are less intelligent on average, you're going to have to justify what makes the measures your side intends to take against black people less appropriate if I intended to take them against you. If you think they're subhuman, well, you're sub-me. But even if you leave me out of it, and there's still somebody smarter than you. While you consider what to do to -your- lessers, consider whether you want your betters to follow your example. I have little patience for affirmative action and other "social justice" forms of collectivism, because I see where that leads. I have less patience still for collectivists who pretend that their collectivism isn't really collectivism, or who espouse a different kind of social justice - because racial meritocracy is just social justice by another name. Indeed, racism is and was widely practiced in collectivist societies, whose crimes you allude to here.

[+]Old_Gold9y-80

Is Spirituality Irrational?

Is Spirituality Irrational?

That surprises me.

It shouldn't. Unfortunately, "taking offense" is some people's standard reaction to arguments they can't refute.

0polymathwannabe9y

Have you had spiritual experiences? How do you explain them? How would you convince others of the reality of those experiences?

2gjm9y

It's also some people's standard reaction to being insulted. And an argument can be irrefutable (1) by being right, (2) by being too vague and allusive to get a grip on, or (3) by being nonsense. Or (4) by there actually being no argument to refute. In this case, lisper hasn't made any actual argument for characterizing not having "spiritual experiences" as a kind of blindness, he's just gone ahead and done it. (There's no shame in being colour-blind, says lisper. Quite true. There should be no shame in being unintelligent either, but most people here would be greatly displeased at being called unintelligent. There should be no shame in being ugly, but most people -- perhaps fewer here than in most venues -- would be greatly displeased at being called ugly.)

He answered that he doesn't have any strong spiritual experiences and most of his classmates also haven't. A few have and he considered them a bit strange because they were than also serious about things like no-sex-before-marriage.

This person sounds like an atheist who wants to cosplay as religious and considers the people who are actually religious to be "strange".

4ChristianKl9y

That's religion in Germany for you.

[+]Old_Gold9y-170

[+]Old_Gold9y-70

7ChristianKl9y

That's mistakes my perspective. You are likely either Eugine trying to circumvent his ban or somone without a real stake in this forum. I do care about this forum and also regularly attend LW meetups. I know that there are woman who don't participate on the LW forum but who do participate on meetups. Reinventing LW2.0 means shifting LW into being more welcoming to those people. Even before reading Richard posts I predicted the post to drive away people and my prediction was accurate. Far from being mind-killed I made an accurate prediction. Most people who leave LW also don't post publically about the reasons why the leave. I have little to gain by calling LW sexist. As a result of mind-kill you confuse the issue of what's true from the social level of complaining and winning arguments. As far as truth goes it's irrational to think that a the actions in a single case determine who someone happens to be. That's basically if you don't know how to setup the debate. Part of my upbringing as far as having political conversations was a debating seminar by people from the Cambridge debating society who considered it important that and position can be defended. EphemeralNight and you hide behind anonymity, and can therefore speak without much personal consequences anyway. My own real world identity is linked to this account. Richard's also is. It's not good for LW to move to a point where only people who want to hide their idenity want to participate. Most of the time people don't try to make points on LW by telling stories. Can you point to a single parable that someone posted on LW that you think I should have opposed based on my standards but didn't?

Where does our community disagree about meaningful issues?

[+]Old_Gold9y-90

6gjm9y

I don't see anything CAE_Jones has said or done here that can possibly be described as witch-hunting or mob-joining.

You seem to be conflating who someone expects to win with who he is supporting.

[+]Old_Gold9y-110

5ChristianKl9y

No, you get that sense because you mislabel me as SJW when I'm not. I guess that says more about your model of the world than about me. Or that the topic is heavily mind-killing. If you read through my LW history you will find my quite civilly discussing the issue of pedophila with a person who wants to legalize it. On Omnilibrium he have been called right-wing because of how I see the perfomance of the post-apartheid government of South Africa. My position is that everybody should be allowed to argue any position but not that everybody should be allowed to argue any position in any way they like. The more extreme a position the more important it is that the person focus on focusing on having a fact based discussion.

[+]Old_Gold9y-140

3CAE_Jones9y

No, I'm afraid of the witch-hunters. (So far, polling indicates that this was not the right hypothesis for the commentary in general.) I avoided commenting until my previous comment because I was pretty sure I'd regret it--probably missing the point or getting drawn into the political deluge--and it seems this was the correct expectation.

Many LWers are careful enough to notice when even the slightest signaling towards a hot button issue crops up.

This is a horrible thing to do from a rationality stand-point since it amounts to pre-mindkilling yourself.

I'm not sure that distinction is relevant to the point under discussion, which isn't about reality so much as it is about how perceived "coolness" informs people's ideas about what policy proposals are reasonable.

0Good_Burning_Plastic9y

Who is considering what policy reasonable for tobacco but overly restrictive for marijuana, or reasonable for marijuana but overly liberal for tobacco?

No, tabacco is the stuff those old guys smoke.

2Good_Burning_Plastic9y

Are you seriously saying that there is a sizeable fraction of people who regularly smoke marijuana but not tobacco? I haven't met many, whereas I have met plenty of people who smoke both or neither. EDIT: I think what's going on might be that you noticed that many young people smoke marijuana and think it's cool and many young people don't smoke tobacco and think it's old people's stuff, but didn't notice they aren't the same people. But just because Muhammad is a common first name and Wang is a common last name doesn't mean Muhammad Wang is a common full name.

Yes, all the cool kids are doing it.

0Good_Burning_Plastic9y

And not tobacco?

and more importantly the people with a political agenda, who stay.

Well, the political agenda is also a natural evolution. After getting laid enough times, it gets dull. Also if one is at all philosophically inclined, one notices that the very existence and need for PUA is a symptom of how dysfunction certain aspects of society are. Thus one is naturally led to politics.

0Crux9y

That's what I was getting at, though I didn't mention the mechanism. People who are not philosophically inclined will tend to learn the basics of PUA, get a bit of success going, and then go back to their life. Those who are, well, there's a natural evolution which leads into politics related to growing older, losing interest in closing with many women per year, and so forth. I suppose mentioning the "perpetual failures" in the same sentence and also using the negative-connotation word "agenda" may have made it seem like I was criticizing PUA practitioners who develop an interest in the political side of PUA theory. But I meant nothing of the sort. I myself have a strong philosophical demeanor and a deep interest in understanding the current tides of human organization and the pathologies underlying the modern-day erosion of proper societal coordination.

Instead of getting told to force myself to do approaches that make me feel unconfortable I get told that it would be good for me to do more non-violent communication style expressions of my own desires.

So how does that actually help with seducing girls? Because that sounds like it simply decayed into yet another "generic self-help movement".

2ChristianKl9y

The person in question does write articles about how to get girls to have sex in the bathroom of a nightclub and make his money with the blog hosting those articles. That was the specific personal advice he gave me at the end of spending 10 days at a retreat in nature together. Actually changing the substance through "generic self-help" seems to work better for the goal of getting woman than focusing on learning tactics for getting woman. The idea of learning a bunch of techniques to change woman into liking you instead of working to change yourself doesn't seem to be successful.

not paying attention to the fact that feminism is a discredited cause

Tim Hunt will be glad to hear that, so when is he getting his job back?

0OrphanWilde9y

Discredited doesn't mean toothless.

[+]Old_Gold9y-360

5ChristianKl9y

The whole reason he wrote a parable instead of a fact-based article was hidding. Hidding was part of my critcism from the start. I don't think saying "no really I didn't mean it" and appologizing are the same thing. Sincerely apologizing does earn respect. Falsely pretending that you didn't actually wanted to say what you said doesn't earn respect. It's again a symptom of not wanting to communicate openly and sincerely and that's one of the core criticisms I had from the beginning. As far as me being SJ In the days where I actually did run a forum where I had moderator power I took the side of the right of an African to speak of homosexuality as a crime that's legalized in some countries. I don't have a problem with people sincerely arguing for positions that aren't PC.

8polymathwannabe9y

You seem to pressupose a quite peculiar definition of respect. Also, you're generalizing too much about what's inside women's heads. The conditions in the story were rigged so that he had no other course of action open except begging. That's one of the 5,429,236 reasons why it fails as a metaphor.

But when I put forward a policy position, it isn't to maximise political tractability, but rather to maximise public health gains.

So why didn't you simply propose a ban?

1Lumifer9y

Oh, maximising public health gains would probably require force-feeding vegetables (in prison, if necessary) and mandatory exercise (ditto). But in the meantime you can start by banning sugar.

(assuming it actually is -- it doesn't look like it's much more popular than tobacco or than it was 50 years ago to me, at least here in [country redacted])

I said "fashionable" not "popular". I have no idea which is more popular, I mean fashionable in the sense of high status.

0Good_Burning_Plastic9y

Marijuana is... high status?

0[anonymous]9y

Marajuana is only high status in certain sub cultures and low status in others and among the general public, unless it's for medicinal use. I'd estimate it's overall far more less status.

Do you think the people advocating for marijuana legalization would be satisfied with legalization under the terms you proposed for tobacco?

0[anonymous]9y

I think there were be different strata of marajuana legalisation advocates who would be satisfied with different things. But when I put forward a policy position, it isn't to maximise political tractability, but rather to maximise public health gains. Political tractability can itself be advocating for with spin, coalitions, maneuvering and other such politics. The fact is. marajuana is not tobacco. They are not interchangeable, in the same way that meth and marajuana aren't interchangeable, or chocolate for that matter. They all have different weights of costs and benefits.

Here's a hint, replace "tobacco" with "marijuana", or some drug that's currently fashionable. Note, how your intuition changes.

1Good_Burning_Plastic9y

You realize that there are pretty relevant differences between tobacco and marijuana other than the latter being "currently fashionable"? (assuming it actually is -- it doesn't look like it's much more popular than tobacco or than it was 50 years ago to me, at least here in [country redacted])

4[anonymous]9y

I don't follow. Can you elaborate?

0[anonymous]9y

Here is another hint: Replace "Eugine Nier" with "OId Gold" (or Alternatively "Azathoth123", "VoiceOfRa" or previous incarnations of "Username2"). Note how your karma changes.

Request for help with economic analysis related to AI forecasting

So apparently he wants rape to be legal as long as it happens on private property.

I believe the relevant term is "satrie". Or should we start accusing Swift of promoting cannibalism.

0[anonymous]9y

Note to moderators: I have a strong suspicion that Old Gold is Eugine Nier. Based on this suspicion, I made a comment from the anonymous "Username2" account. This comment was deleted almost immediately by someone else logged in as Username2. I see this as additional evidence in favor of the Eugine_Nier hypothesis. The suspicion was based on the following observations: (1) As Lumifer has previously hinted, Old Gold's writing style is recognizable (2) The political opinions that he has stated so far are also recognizable (3) The rapid increase in Karma on Old Gold's comment above is anomalous. (4) Around the same time as the comments above were posted (within a 15 minute time period), the username2 account was used for a personal attack on Nancy corresponding closely to Eugine's modus operandi.

You'd be amazed what people can do "by hand". Keep in mind, computer was originally an occupation.

1Lumifer9y

No, I don't think I would be amazed. But do tell: how would you do AI by hand? The Chinese Room is fine as a thought experiment, but try implementing it in reality...

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