All of PhDre's Comments + Replies

Has this experiment been repeated since? On kids who weren't growing up in the near aftermath of a great war?

Would you argue that there is some attribute that is fundamentally different between children growing up in the post WWII era and today (or any other era for that matter)? My very anecdotal evidence is that once any sort of division into groups occurs, children act in a matter very similar to the Ratters and Eagles. There was a gifted and talented program at my elementary school, which consisted of students from across the county who were bussed... (read more)

Thank you for the reading suggestions! Perhaps my mind has already packaged Spock / lack of emotion into my understanding of the concept of 'Rationality.'

To respond directly -

Your purely emotion / empathetic desire for altruism governs setting your goals, your pure rational thinking governs how you go about reaching your goals.

Though if pure emotion / altruism sets my goals, the possibility of irrational / insignificant goals remains, no? If for example, I only follow pure emotion's path to... say... becoming an advocate for a community through politi... (read more)

1Kawoomba
There is no "correct" way whatsoever in setting your terminal values, your "ultimate goals" (other agents may prefer you to pursue values similar to their own, whatever those may be). Your ultimate goals can include anything from "maximize the number of paperclips" to "paint everything blue" to "always keep in a state of being nourished (for the sake of itself!)" or "always keep in a state of emotional fulfillment through short-term altruistic deeds". Based on those ultimate goals, you define other, derivative goals, such as "I want to buy blue paint" as an intermediate goal towards "so I can paint everything blue". Those "stepping stones" can be irrational / insignificant (in relation to pursuing your terminal values), i.e. you can be "wrong" about them. Maybe you shouldn't buy blue paint, but rather produce it yourself. Or rather invest in nanotechnology to paint everything blue using nanomagic. Only you can (or can't, humans are notoriously bad at accurately providing their actual utility functions) try to elucidate what your ultimate goals are, but having decided on them, they are supra-rational / beyond rational / 'rational not applicable' by definition. There is no fault in choosing "I want to live a life that maximizes fuzzy feelings through charitable acts" over "I'm dedicating my life to decreasing the Gini index, whatever the personal cost to myself."

I think one key in not being offended is being secure in your own person and position

I am very new to LW, but this seems like a dangerous position to take for a rationalist! From "What Do We Mean By 'Rationality'": [Italics Mine]

This is why we have a whole site called "Less Wrong", rather than simply stating the formal axioms and being done. There's a whole further art to finding the truth and accomplishing value from inside a human mind: we have to learn our own flaws, overcome our biases, prevent ourselves from self-deceiving, g

... (read more)
0TheOtherDave
It is sometimes useful not to artificially exclude the middle when using natural language. In this case, for example, I suspect it's possible to have a level of what we're calling "security" here that is not so high that it precludes updating on evidence (supposing you're correct that too high a level of security leads to the inability to update), while at the same time being high enough to avoid offense (supposing bobneumann is correct that too low a level of security leads to an increased chance of taking offense). I do agree that keeping your identity small is also helpful, though.

Hello, I'm a 21 year old undergraduate student studying Economics and a bit of math on the side. I found LessWrong through HPMOR, and recently started working on the sequences. I've always been torn between an interest in pure rational thinking, and an almost purely emotional / empathetic desire for altruism, and this conflict is becoming more and more significant as I weigh options moving forward out of Undergrad (Peace Corp? Developmental Economics?)... I'm fond of ellipses, Science Fiction novels and board games - I'll keep my interests to a minimum her... (read more)

7Kawoomba
Those are not at all at odds. Read e.g. Why Spock is Not Rational, or Feeling Rational. Relevant excerpts from both: and Your purely emotion / empathetic desire for altruism governs setting your goals, your pure rational thinking governs how you go about reaching your goals. You're allowed to be emotionally suckered, eh, influenced into doing your best (instrumental rationality) to do good in the world (for your values of 'good')!

It's a well proven fact that many other people would not do that in the same situation

Do you have any sources that suggest that emotional reactions (such as ease of incitement to anger) are significantly different from individual to individual? I feel it more likely to be the case that you are still using the correspondence bias when you say that you'll kick the vending machine when "the bus was late, the train was early, my report is overdue, and now the damned vending machine has eaten my lunch money for the second day in a row" - these circ... (read more)