ZY

I try to practice independent reasoning/critical thinking, to challenge current solutions to be more considerate/complete. I do not reply to DMs for non-personal (with respect to the user who reached out directly) discussions, and will post here instead with reference to the user and my reply.

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Answer by ZY*61

Oxford languages (or really just after googling) says "rational" is "based on or in accordance with reason or logic."

I think there are a lot of other types of definitions (I think lesswrong mentioned it is related to the process of finding truth). For me, first of all it is useful to break this down into two parts: 1) observation and information analysis, and 2) decision making.

For 1): Truth, but also particularly causality finding. (Very close to the first one you bolded, and I somehow feel many other ones are just derived from this one. I added causality because many true observations are not really causality).

For 2): My controversial opinion is everyone are probably/usually "rationalists" - just sometimes the reasonings are conscious, and other times they are sub/un-conscious. These reasonings/preferences are unique to each person. It would be dangerous in my opinion if someone try to practice "rationality" based on external reasonings/preferences, or reasonings/preferences that are only recognized by the person's conscious mind (even if a preference is short term). I think a useful practice is to 1. notice what one intuitively want to do vs. what one think they should do (or multiple options they are considering), 2. ask why there is the discrepancy, 3. at least surface the unconscious reasoning, and 4. weigh things (the potential reasonings that leads to conflicting results, for example short term preference vs long term goals) out.  

ZY*10

When thinking about deontology and consequentialism in application, it is useful to me to rate morality of actions based on intention, execution, and outcome. (Some cells are "na" as they are not really logical in real world scenarios.)

In reality, to me, it seems executed "some" intention matters (though I am not sure how much) the most when doing something bad, and executed to the best ability matters the most when doing something good.

It also seems useful to me, when we try to learn about applications of philosophy from law. (I am not an expert though in neither philosophy nor law, so these may contain errors.)

Intention to kill the personExecuted "some" intentionKilled the person"Bad" levelLaw
YesYesYes10murder
YesYesNo8-10as an example, attempted first-degree murder is punished by life in state prison (US, CA)
YesNoYesna 
YesNoNo0-5no law on this (I can imagine for reasons on "it's hard to prove") but personally, assuming multiple "episodes", or just more time, this leads to murder and attempted murder later anyways; very rare a person can have this thought without executing it in reality.
NoYesYesna 
NoYesNona 
NoNoYes0-5typically not a crime, unless something like negligence
NoNoNo0 
     
Intention save a person (limited decision time)Executed intention to the best of abilitySaved the person"Good" Level 
YesYesYes10 
YesYesNo10 
YesNoYesna 
YesNoNo0-5 
NoYesYesna 
NoYesNona 
NoNoYes0-5 
NoNoNo0 
     
Intention to do goodExecuted intention to the best of personal ability1[1]Did good"Good" Level 
YesYesYes10 
YesYesNo8-10 
YesNoYesna 
YesNoNo0-5 
NoYesYesna 
NoYesNona 
NoNoYes0-5 
NoNoNo0 
  1. ^

    Possible to collaborate when there is enough time.

ZY*30

If you look into a bit more history on social justice/equality problems, you would see we have actually made many many progress (https://gcdd.org/images/Reports/us-social-movements-web-timeline.pdf), but not enough as the bar was so low. These also have made changes in our law. Before 1879, women cannot be lawyers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women_lawyers_in_the_United_States). On war, I don't have too much knowledge myself, so I will refrain from commenting for now. It is also my belief that we should not stop at attempt, but attempt is the first step (necessary but not sufficient), and they have pushed to real changes as history shown, but it will have to take piles of piles of work, before a significant change. Just because something is very hard to do, does not mean we should stop, nor there will not be a way (just like ensuring there is humanity in the future.) For example, we should not give up on helping people during war nor try to reduce wars in the first place, and we should not give up on preventing women being raped. In my opinion, this is in a way ensuring there is future, as human may very well be destroyed by other humans, or by mistakes by ourselves. (That's also why in the AI safety case, governance is so important so that we consider the human piece.)

As you mentioned political party - it is interesting to see surveys happening here; a side track - I believe general equality problems such as "women can go to school", is not dependent on political party. And something like "police should not kill a black person randomly" should not be supported just by blacks, but also other races (I am not black). 

Thanks for the background otherwise. 

ZY10

Thanks so much! Joined.

ZY10

Saw a post about "left leaning/liberal" rationalist discord channel earlier this month, but the discord channel invitation link got expired when I tried today, and I could not find the original post anymore. Could anyone in that group post the invitation link again if possible? Much appreciated. (Apologize in advance if this is something that is not allowed.)

ZY*10

I am not sure if going back to ancient times is very meaningful though. A lot of things may have biological origins but humans have evolved for a good reason from them.

ZY*52

99% of people reading these words

There might already be a selection bias for people who read lesswrong. For people who are in war, having some malaria, and etc - they may not get the chance to access internet, nor have time to gain interest in lesswrong. My point is while we are grateful, we probably would want to reflect on our own privileges on access to peace (not sure unprecedented), and recognize there are still a lot of work needed to be done for people outside our circles. Additionally, sometimes bad things could happen all in a sudden - maybe the country you are in suddenly is war zone, maybe you got some accidents/mental health issues, or maybe the worry about dying is just a healthcare disaster away. The health risk, especially, increases with age.

ZY10

Interesting find! Thanks for sharing. Curious to see what related training data could be contributing

ZY30

I have a second-handed source hearing this view from a theoretical physics 4th phd student at Stanford - he believes less breakthroughs nowadays as the field becomes more and more established, and this was exactly why he was a bit discouraged/sad. Not sure if things has changed, and that may or may not be his personal view.

ZY10

I very much agree with the approach and the values in virtue; in case for humans, we enforce virtues either through empathy or law/punishments (in modern societies); wondering how that can be most effectively translated to machines in a consistent way

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