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Sam Harris has argued that the physical and biologic facts of the human species can serve as an objective basis for a universal, scientifically-sound ethical system. I agree. The next step is the extrapolation of interpersonal ethics to large group ethics, which is politics. Again, the objective facts of humanity should also serve as a basis for the design of public policies that could be applicable to all humans. That's what I'd like to see discussed.

[anonymous]10y00

Sam Harris has argued that the physical and biologic facts of the human species can serve as an objective basis for a universal, scientifically-sound ethical system

Only after certain values like "happiness" or "optimal functioning" or "health" are nailed down.

0DanArmak10y

I thought the word politics was used to mean not the design of ethics or policies, but the process of making other humans agree with the policies you have already selected.

See in context

30 What subjects are important to rationality, but not covered in Less Wrong?

by casebash

27th Feb 2015

1 min read

30

As many people have noted, Less Wrong currently isn't receiving as much content as we would like. One way to think about expanding the content is to think about which areas of study deserve more articles written on them.

For example, I expect that sociology has a lot to say about many of our cultural assumptions. It is quite possible that 95% of it is either obvious or junk, but almost all fields have that 5% within them that could be valuable. Another area of study that might be interesting to consider is anthropology. Again this is a field that allows us to step outside of our cultural assumptions.

I don't know anything about media studies, but I imagine that they have some worthwhile things to say about how we the information that we hear is distorted.

What other fields would you like to see some discussion of on Less Wrong?

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[-]gjm10y380

I have felt for a long time that LW is short of discussion of what you might call "collective rationality": the art of effective collaborative truth-seeking. Of course LW is itself an attempt at collective rationality; but most of us, much of the time, are engaged in activities that (1) involve multiple people, (2) would benefit from better truth-finding techniques, and (3) are not Less Wrong.

[-]Vaniver10y180

the art of effective collaborative truth-seeking.

It seems to me that industrial organization and industrial psychology have put quite a bit of effort into asking how to get committees and groups to think together effectively. Perhaps someone could do a literature survey / find some good books to review for LW?

[-]TheAncientGeek10y10

If Mercier and Sperber's theory is correct, people are already optimized for arguing things out in groups ..which would mean that rationality training is really solo rationality training...and perhaps not that useful for many people.

[-]Vaniver10y70

If Mercier and Sperber's theory is correct, people are already optimized for arguing things out in groups

Not really, no. People are optimized for winning arguments against untrained humans. The point of group rationality training is figuring out what norms / individual training / etc. makes it so that the best ideas (by some external metric) are most likely to win in a group discussion, rather than the best-championed ideas. Even if, say, I can identify why someone's argument is not helping push towards truth, there needs to be a group norm that I can call them out on that and that will be effective. (Think of "Objection!" or pointing out fallacies in debate club; both of those rest on the common acceptance on what things are worth objecting to or calling fallacious.)

[-]TheAncientGeek10y00

The average person isn't as well optimized at group debate that the best debates, but people are still optimized for group debate in the sense of individual pondering.

[-]evand10y40

Definitely agreed.

Of course LW is itself an attempt at collective rationality

In particular, it seems like it is a remarkably unexamined, unplanned attempt. Surely we've learned some ways to improve it. Surely there are better approaches out there than "hey, Reddit seems to work ok, let's modify a couple things, call it good, and leave it alone for a while".

Not that I know how to improve it. Predictably, I have a few complaints and a few minor tweaks to suggest, but I'd really prefer a more evidence-based approach than that. Actually, I don't even really know what process I would advocate for improving LW, let alone what the actual improvements would be that would come from that process.

[-]ChristianKl10y00

In particular, it seems like it is a remarkably unexamined, unplanned attempt.

As far as I see we do have plenty of meta discussion that examine LW.

[-]evand10y00

There is plenty of talk, less data, and only very tiny amounts of tested changes. Surely the rationalist approach to solving a problem like this should involve empirical examination, not just armchair discussions.

[-]ChristianKl10y00

LW isn't very big and as such it's not clear whether there are strong returns to experimenting with software changes.

[-]lukeprog10y150

In descending order of importance:

Instrumental rationality.
How to actually practice becoming more rational.
Rationality via cluster thinking and intelligent imitation.

[-]sentientplatypus10y20

Could you elaborate on these or point to some place they are discussed? I'd like to learn more on those subjects, but aside from LW I don't see people using the phrase 'instrumental rationality' or even using the word rational to mean what it means here.

[-]Vaniver10y150

For example, I expect that sociology has a lot to say about many of our cultural assumptions. It is quite possible that 95% of it is either obvious or junk, but almost all fields have that 5% within them that could be valuable. Another area of study that might be interesting to consider is anthropology. Again this is a field that allows us to step outside of our cultural assumptions.

Both of these are highly politicized fields, which suggests to me that an attempt to extract value is going to run into many difficulties. Even presenting correctly extracted value is fraught--if the moral of the story is "by the way, an entire field of academia threw away the truth fifty years ago and has been a joke since then" that moral cannot be presented without being recognized as a partisan position, and thus seen as a political move.

[-]Epictetus10y60

Politics may well be unavoidable when trying to study human society. Any substantial result is going reflect well or poorly on certain public policies. Economics has its political side but that field still has plenty to offer.

Even presenting correctly extracted value is fraught--if the moral of the story is "by the way, an entire field of academia threw away the truth fifty years ago and has been a joke since then" that moral cannot be presented without being recognized as a partisan position, and thus seen as a political move.

Yes, that's certainly a polarizing position to take.

[-][anonymous]10y10

Yet history of anthropology, with all the frauds and lost collections and mistakes and actual stuff...

[-]fortyeridania10y140

Business, and the many subfields thereof.

I've been hanging around LW for a number of years now, and only recently have begun learning anything about business. I've often been struck at how relevant much of what we cover is to "the art of human rationality." The following topics or oft-repeated themes are potential gold mines:

marketing (both the analytical and the strategic sides)
sales
finance (a wealth--ha!--of material on value measurement, risk/uncertainty/probability, discount rates, and prediction)
cross-cultural communication
habituation and effective training methodology
human resources
time management
project management
motivation and morale
group dynamics
conflict management
communication styles
goal definition
measurement of outcomes
effective means of keeping accountable to goals
the importance of admitting mistakes early (stubbornness can pay off, but it's usually veeeeery costly)
the importance of learning from mistakes--yours and others'
the importance of continuous incremental improvement (e.g., the role of Six Sigma at GE and Motorola)

Business scholarly literature includes theoretical articles and case studies. The theoretical articles are often trivial or ill founded. But the case studies are very valuable for me--I naturally err on the side of excessive abstraction. Like fiction, case studies provide the reader with vicarious experience from which s/he can learn--but of course the events in the case study are real and nothing is obscured or exaggerated for the sake of entertainment.

A great strength of business literature is its clarity. Perhaps because the audience is assumed to be exceptionally impatient and busy, most articles are neatly paragraphed, feature helpful graphics, and have the business equivalent of "tl;dr" all over the place.

Another reason LWers might be interested in business is, of course, that business success leads to more wealth, which enables more philanthropy.

Edited: fixed a word and added a bullet

[-]Val10y110

History.

A lot of people support their ideological views by popular history, which is full of biases.

[-][anonymous]10y00

Yes, but it is not fixed by just randomly reading history. Many historians have political agendas, it is unfortunately a profession like that. The main reason is governments, systems needing historical legitimacy. So historians end up being loyal or opposition.

[-]TheAncientGeek10y90

I'd like to see more discussion of the problems with the scientific approach. It would show that LW is up to speed with current developments , rather than laboriously reinventing logical positivism. The approach up to now has been more about cheerleading.

[-]is4junk10y20

What are the current developments? Is anything dominant now? Wiki claims Logical Positivism was dominant until 1960.

Also do the current developments matter? Would any of the hard sciences do things differently? Did the change affect the soft sciences?

[-]TheAncientGeek10y00

There's nothing as self confident as L.P. now, Having adopted naturalist, many philosophers are finding plenty of problems with it. There's a lot of interest in Kripkean theory, but it's not really a movement,

Mainstream philosophy hasn't affected how science Iis done. Neither has LessWrongian philosophy. Both are aimed at clarifying and promoting the scientific approach. In neither case is it clear why affecting science iwould be a necessary or expected upshot. LessWrongians seem to think that clarifying and promoting science is important enough in itself. You can only fail at what you are trying to do, or what you can reasonably be expected to do.

[-]SanguineEmpiricist10y10

I think Curt Doolittle's advancements in the area are worth looking at and he responds to comments.

[-]TheAncientGeek10y00

To be clear , I don't particularly need critique of naturalism for my own purposes.

Doolittle seems to write mostly about politics. He isnt a notable philosopher, scientist, or philosopher of science.

[-]SanguineEmpiricist10y10

I think he has made significant advancements himself and would encourage a further look at the very least.

[-]TheAncientGeek10y00

Coold young least point me to where he deals with science?

[-]TheAncientGeek10y-10

I can't find any evidence of him saying anything about science, and I am beginning to think you are some kind of troll.

[-]SanguineEmpiricist10y10

??? It's just a synthesis of things I haven't been able to post much because I found out I had sleep apnea and have been very very tired and just fixed it thanks to Romeo & Yvain.

If you want regular philosophy of science contributions just read Kyburg's "Science and Reason" or any of Isaac Levi's corpus, there's also Hintikka & Hendricks.

Many people I've shown Curt's work to consider the moral constraints argument to science relatively profound among other things.

In regular philosophy of science if you read only one either Hendrick's introduction to Formal Epistemology or Kyburg's Science and Reason, and if you want a relatively strong probabilistic introduction to formal epistemology Levi's "Enterprise of Knowledge" is pretty great.

For the question you asked "Problems with scientific approach", the relevance of scientific knowledge to decision making is pretty much all of Levi's ballgame.

[-][anonymous]10y70

A retooling of references to people that includes people. Much talk of we, us, humans, people, minds in a way that indicates all. But what is meant is high intelligence, high education and mentally conventional people.

Discussion of all people that doesn't include low intelligence, low education, mentally variant people is not discussion of all people. Infants and sleeping people should also to be included in discussions of all people and they usually are not. The minds of infants and sleeping people is different as can be from adults and waking people. And then there's drunk people and high people.

Or less wrong could rely on 'you know what I mean, all people but not all people' as it does now.

I try to either say I'm talking about some people or talk about all people as all people but not confuse the two in my posts.

[-][anonymous]10y60

...and kin selection. Don't forget kin selection!

In many ferns, two or more (close) species can cross, giving viable progeny, which can have a range of outcomes. Often, whole new species are founded and enter the competition. There are Strategies (hybrids don't develop female reproductive organs, meaning they aren't 'polluted' by parents' genomes; yetthey produce sperm and so can fertilize parents etc.) and Counter-Strategies (inhibiting others' growth, having faster sperm etc). It's a whole world and it gives one this utterly breathtaking feeling that evolution is:)

[-][anonymous]10y40

I don't know if this is highly relevant, and moreover interesting to the majority here, but shouldn't AI-designers also read things like 'Leprosy spreads by reprogramming nerve cells into migratory stem cells'? I know about how you mustn't just make blind analogies, but - this is a strategy designed by evolution, highly successful on human wetware - are there any analogies to be made with how computers are fallible?

Anyway, I would welcome posts about complex mechanisms of neural diseases, but maybe that's just my thing. I would like to see illness demystified, and maybe fear it less.

[-]Lumifer10y30

almost all fields have that 5% within them that could be valuable

The problem is that different people consider different 5% to be valuable X-)

[-][anonymous]10y30

I know its supposed to be considered a "dark art" here, but what about debate techniques and styles, persuasive writing, rhetoric, that sort of thing? Not to trick people into believing something that's false, but to effectively persuade people to believe something that's true, using time-tested methods of getting your point across. I don't believe anything is actually a dark art; anything can be good or bad depending on how you use it.

[-]palladias10y230

I've done a couple LW posts on speaking skills (none intended to be Dark Arts-y), in case you find any helpful:

Four Tips for Public Speaking - The four tips that seemed to improve speeches the most, fastest, when I was mentoring other speakers in college

False Friends and Tone Policing - Ways to recognize if you're giving inadvertent offense that is making it impossible for your audience to listen to you

Change Contexts to Improve Arguments - Putting thought into choosing good environments for disagreement (my living room, with freshly baked cookies, makes people feel safer and more inclined to engage with ugh fields, than rapid-fire and in public on facebook)

[-]imuli10y10

Different methods are more and less likely to lead one to the truth (in a given universe). I see little harm in calling those less likely arts dark. Rhetoric is surely grey at the lightest.

[-]unconscious10y70

Presentation will influence how people receive your ideas no matter what. If you present good ideas badly, you'll bias people away from the truth just as much as if you presented bad ideas cleverly.

[-]polymathwannabe10y20

It should be possible to have a sane discussion of politics here. Even if we accept the idea that politics naturally leads to mind-killing (which I still don't agree it does), the rationalist approach should be to be constantly aware of the bug in our heads and devise mechanisms to compensate for it.

[-][anonymous]10y20

I think the explicit goal should be to develop discussion strategies that kill the mindkiller i.e. put people into less tribal and more open minded moods. A good one is "what are people you dislike right about and people you like wrong about?" If you say "I dislike global warming skeptics but they seem to be right in certain things", you are killing the mind-killer, because you are putting people out of the "I like you and your ideas, therefore I think you are right" mood. So one tribe will think "cool, this person thinks we are right" and the other "cool, this person dislikes the same people we do" and all pay attention.

[-]DanArmak10y00

Engaging in politics leads to mindkilling, pretty much by definition. Discussing politics may not, but is it really that interesting?

It's possible to have a civil, rational, productive, non-mindkilled discussion about e.g. global warming, or evolution, or gender, or any other issue that is often politicized. But that would be a discussion about ecology, biology, psychology, etc. It wouldn't be a discussion about politics, and it wouldn't be political in itself, unless it goes wrong. And we can and do have all of these, except maybe the ones about gender, which tended to blow up.

It's also possible to have a discussion about politics. This would be a discussion of the tactics used by various politicians, the rhetoric, the campaigns, the alliances, all the ways in which people do politics. Is this what you'd like? Personally I find it uninteresting, but that's no reason for you not to talk about it.

[-]Lumifer10y00

Engaging in politics leads to mindkilling, pretty much by definition.

Why?

I don't see why you can't engage in politics in a rational (albeit cynical) way.

[-]DanArmak10y10

If 'rational' means 'effective' or 'optimized', then that is true, almost tautologically. And it's also true that you can, and often rationally should, use politics as a tool or instrumental goal.

However, the actual process of politics is mostly about convincing people, making impressions, et cetera. And it seems that politicians never conduct epistemically fair or honest debates. They sway people by lying, taking advantage of their biases, appealing to emotions, using rhetorical tricks, and so on. It just seems to be an empirical fact(1) that it's much harder to convince people(2) of some truth by rational argument, than it is to sway them by other means.

As a result, political discourse is almost always antagonistic and tribal. It doesn't help that elections and allocations of funds are inherently zero-sum games.

Many people believe that when someone makes a claim consistently and publicly, an important claim which becomes part of their (political or personal) identity, then even if originally it started as a lie or half-truth or evasion, they will eventually come to subjectively believe in that claim. This is (said to be) an evolutionary adaptation: a human won't be good at arguing for something, won't come up with clever arguments and rationalizations, won't sound honest, unless he believes what he's saying. Humans just aren't that good at pretending(3).

So to put it all together, a successful politician will be dishonest, will come to believe their own lies, will try to manipulate others instead of convincing them, and will be antagonistic instead of truth-seeking in debate. And a rational politician may choose to behave like that to be successful.

If someone doesn't do any of that, they may be engaging in a political process, but they aren't engaging in primate politics in the sociological sense of the word. That's why I said politics is mindkilling by definition. Of course it's pointless to disagree over definitions, and maybe other people don't use the word as I perceived.

Notes:

(1) It is obvious that politicians' public behavior is mainly concerned with signalling. But even beyond that, I believe that there is very weak correlation, at best, between political success and politicians' public beliefs or predictions about almost any factual question. Predictions made by the proponents of new policies are rarely tested a few years later to see who was right. Politicians tend to be praised for good things, and blamed for bad things, that occurred during their stay in power, regardless of whether their policies caused those things.

(2) Apart from some small and unrepresentative communities like rationalists, people with domain knowledge, etc. Political discourse naturally aims at the typical citizen.

(3) Except Tom Riddle.

[-]Lumifer10y00

the actual process of politics is mostly about convincing people, making impressions, et cetera.

We may have different things in mind. What you described I would call "electioneering in a democracy". The actual politics I would define as "acquisition and exercise of power in a society".

a successful politician will be dishonest, will come to believe their own lies, will try to manipulate others instead of convincing them, and will be antagonistic instead of truth-seeking in debate.

I kinda agree, but would like to point out that being a cynical manipulator is likely to make you a more successful politician.

If someone doesn't do any of that, they may be engaging in a political process, but they aren't engaging in primate politics in the sociological sense of the word.

That looks awfully similar to a No True Scotsman argument :-/

[-]DanArmak10y00

What you described I would call "electioneering in a democracy". The actual politics I would define as "acquisition and exercise of power in a society".

That's true, I described things involved in convincing or performing for non-politicians. Private negotiations between politicians are different. But still manipulative, dishonest, and performative.

being a cynical manipulator is likely to make you a more successful politician.

Yes it does: I listed 'manipulation instead of [honest] convincing' as one of the four characteristics of politicians.

That looks awfully similar to a No True Scotsman argument

No, it's merely stressing the narrow meaning of 'politics' I was using. Like I said, let's not argue over definitions.

[-]polymathwannabe10y00

[-][anonymous]10y00

Sam Harris has argued that the physical and biologic facts of the human species can serve as an objective basis for a universal, scientifically-sound ethical system

Only after certain values like "happiness" or "optimal functioning" or "health" are nailed down.

For example one thing that trips me up is that I see ethics as "what I respect" and that is mainly aesthethical. I like acts of heroism, they are beautiful. Therefore I consider courage a moral virtue. It is irrelevant if it was necessary or not. If in a certain future everything risky is done by machines and humans would become extremely timid as a perfectly rational strategy, I would want to prevent that future, because that is ugly, disrespectable, repulsive, disgusting.

I know that it is all an evolved bias, a heuristic that makes me respect those virtues that used to be useful in an ancestral environment. Still. Why cannot I still make things we find instinctively beautiful and respectable into terminal values? Why should only happiness, functioning or health be terminal values?

[-]DanArmak10y00

I thought the word politics was used to mean not the design of ethics or policies, but the process of making other humans agree with the policies you have already selected.

[-][anonymous]10y20

Parenthood as Optimizing for Multiple Goals.

I mean, when your kid is born, you are expected to be a parent first and foremost, yet (at least in my case) you often want to actually be someone, do something that keeps you immersed in life as you knew it. (I apologise if I offend anyone here.) It's easy to say to people: 'Hey, just wait until he goes to school, you'll get more time!' - you might not get more time, not ever. And I don't mean it just as missed career opportunities.

I have watched (still do) my Mom entertain herself with hand-crafts, etc., trying her hand at drumming (she plays piano, but she prefers drums because it's easy to do in groups), now that her daughters all grew up and she has spare time when she's not at work. And I keep thinking: is she just filling in holes, or is this what she's really wanted to do?.. It seems so sad. (Not that I'm against hand-crafts, or anything, but I don't want it to happen to myself.)

(Maybe this is a sub-clause of 'instrumental rationality', dunno.)

[-][anonymous]10y10

We decided to have a kid when we realized we are not doing anything with our lives and will not, probably. I think this is when people should make this decision.

We were just working and then being tired in the evening and then just having drinks and watching films or something.

And it was horrible. To think our life will be this ennui, boredom, grayness forever, except we also get older and thus our bodies will suck more and more, was intolerable.

A child can fill that kind of emptiness, lack of goals well. A child is like being young again, being reborn, having a second chance, seeing life through the eyes of a person who still enjoys it and expects interesting things out of it.

For some reason it sounds bad to say you don't want anything from your life other than a comfortable existence and sooner or later to reproduce, but biologically, evolutionarily it made sense. We really did not want to, and maybe your Mom didn't either.

I mean, I don't think we are really evolved to want things, to have goals, I think we are mostly evolved to keep deal with hardship and suffering. It is hard, really hard to find goals once your life is okay-ish. Well fed, safe, and reproduced, maybe some social life and respect and status, all our genetic drives are satisfied.

The issue is the lack of hardship, risk, challenge. And on the other hand, the lack of opportunities to win or make something big.

This may be a welfare state issue, we live in Vienna, Austria, at the moment, maybe same policies that take away the risk and challenge also take away the opportunities. But as of now, it seems everybody is being tepidly mediocre here not doing anything but just enjoying comfort.

[-]Lumifer10y00

Well fed, safe, and reproduced, maybe some social life and respect and status, all our genetic drives are satisfied.

Maslow would disagree. And empirically, people who are not satisfied with just being "well fed, safe, and reproduced" always exist -- they are not the majority, but they are very very important.

One way to deal with your problem would be to sacrifice safety. Ditch Europe, move to some place with a higher risks and higher rewards, for example.

My impression is that many East Europeans who found themselves in Germany (and Austria, I would expect) grabbed at the welfare blanket too quickly and found themselves in grey mediocrity. Other East Europeans who ended up in places where you have to fight to live well, turned out much better (possibly at the price of some of them crashing and burning).

[-][anonymous]10y30

Yes, there is a minority of people who have an adventurous spirit. Or entrepeneurial. But let's keep Maslow out of it - that was purely speculation, entirely unevidenced.

I think loyalty is a concept I cannot really explain in a way that is easly understood on LW. Let's just say that I already have guilt pangs living merely a few hours driving outside the borders of my home country, and especially stronger guilt pangs when we visit family and come back. I feel I belong to a land and people even a few hours driving living outside it makes me feel traitor-ish. This is not so much tribalism but the idea that if you belong to a group of people, and they generally suffer or don't have it well, it sounds like a fax from fate telling you you are supposed to help them and not run away from their problems. This is 75% irrational but still has an effect on me, also because of social pressure. Besides my chaotic emotions, denying grandparents the right to see their grandkinds every month by moving half a planet away would be more or less objectively cruel. My mother at 60 absolutely nothing going in her life beside that. Just being alone, cleaning the house, watching TV and waiting for our next visit. Seriously, I think people who leave their old parents to twiddle their thumbs all year in boredom and just visit them once a year because they decided living 10K km away is better are not being ethical.

[-]Lumifer10y20

I feel I belong to a land

Hungary is one of those places with higher risks and higher rewards X-/

You sound like you're entirely lacking in purpose. What do you want?

[-][anonymous]10y00

What do you want?

Do I have to? Is this necessary for happiness? And how do people learn to want things? I mean. Your parents raise you like this: you must study or you will be a low status street cleaner. You must dress up nice or your classmates will laugh at you. So it is focused on what you must do in order to avoid negative outcomes. At what point do people normally learn to want also positive outcomes, not just avoiding negative ones? Or my parents are unusual in this regard? I think they themselves did not really want things, just securing a comfortable middle-class existence and raising me was kind of hard enough for them.

[-]Lumifer10y70

Do I have to? Is this necessary for happiness?

Yes.

I think this is the point I want to make rather strongly. While there are exceptions to everything, people with no pressure (internal or external) on them to do things will generally go soft, flabby, passive, dull, and dumb. And often will start to medicate themselves (alcohol is typical) to keep themselves floating in grey nothingness without anything happening to them.

That's why retiring (or becoming a housewife) can be dangerous.

Fighting for something you really want will both improve you and make your feel alive.

Or my parents are unusual in this regard?

I think they're typical, but I also think you don't want to be typical.

[-]seer10y10

That's why retiring (or becoming a housewife) can be dangerous.

Um, being a housewife can be a lot of work.

[-]Lumifer10y20

The point is not the amount of work, the point is pressure and challenge. But, of course, see also "there are exceptions to everything".

[-]seer10y00

Well, I suppose that depends on whether the housewife has children.

[-][anonymous]10y00

I think you are very right. I also think I totally have no idea how to do it and it seems hard.

Everybody I know fights for things I already have.

Let me think it over and discuss it later. Or if you have some basic ideas, go on. Perhaps, meta-values. Is it possible to have goals if neither your happiness or not that of other people motivates you much, or are these necessary etc.

That's why retiring (or becoming a housewife) can be dangerous.

This feels weird, because it suggests people who still work are not in a high danger of it. I think it is not the case, only for special kinds of works but just doing office stuff to pay bills i.e. most people does not qualify in this. In other words, once a career reaches a point where diminishing marginal utilities become clear, the next improvement is hard and brings little change, and it becomes routine, I think it happens.

And yes, I see how it is a typical West Euro issue. The whole society is set up for floating in riskless, unchallenging dullness. People usually fix it with hobbies. The average Austrian is an alpine skier at heart and accountant work, not the other way around.

[-]Lumifer10y00

And I keep thinking: is she just filling in holes, or is this what she's really wanted to do?

I think it's unusual for people to know what they really want to do -- maybe it's even unusual for people to have such a clear and pronounced desire at all. Most just muddle through life, especially once middle age hits.

[-]Slider10y00

Some old dated worldviews have been critisised for their lack of technical accuracy. However I have seen tendency to take technical statements and turn them into worldviews. I am suspecting that this is not a valid operation and it is used to hide cultural imports. That are fo the form "A->B" where A is heavily supported by evidence but the implication is very suspect. Statements like "if the moon is made of rocks, then the moon is a evil place. We have moon rock samples so clearly the moon is evil". These are tricky in the sense that while it is clear what is meant by moon being rocky the actual payload is made of terms that are not (at least handily or unambigiously) turnable into technical details. This kind of gist that seems to be a different thing from technical accuracy seems to be often dismissed as giberrish or nonsense by those that want to focus on facts (thus it becomes true->false which is a true implication). However seems to be that even if all your thoughts would be "literally" or techincally accurate there would still be something essential missing from full sanity. What it could be and if any "canditates" for it are known to be defective or adeqaute approximations would be interesting to read about.

[-]Evan_Gaensbauer10y00

For example, I expect that sociology has a lot to say about many of our cultural assumptions. It is quite possible that 95% of it is either obvious or junk, but almost all fields have that 5% within them that could be valuable.

While I agree, doesn't it take already possessing a measure of rationality, or something, to pick out the valuable 5% of a field from between the pile of 95% junk. Sociology is presently as popular as it is because enough people thought it was a field that was valuable. They thought a lot of the 95% wasn't junk, even though it still was. What would we do different to do a better job extracting value? There are two failure modes:

either we end up believing junk has value.
or, we end up throwing the valuable in with the junk, passing it over, and being no better off.

[+]is4junk10y-60

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