Ah, so it is. I have no idea how American student debt works with regards to inflation. I assumed it was fixed. If not, then it is much worse than I assumed (and I already assumed it was quite bad).

Some issues have legible, material stakes.

Scrolling down... the table of how important are individual topics for young people; "student debt" is at its very bottom.

(Also, inflation on the very top? But isn't inflation a good thing if all you have is an enormous debt?)

This, and also most people on ACX respect Scott and his opinions, so if he demonstrates that he has put a lot of thought into this, and then he makes a conclusion, it will sound convincing to most.

Basically, we need to consider not just how many people believe some idea, but also how strongly. The typical situation with a conspiracy theory is that we have a small group that believes X very strongly, and a large group that believes non-X with various degrees of strength, from strongly to almost zero. What happens then is that people with a strong belief typically don't change their mind, while people with zero belief (who until now just took one side by default, because they never heard about the other) will flip a coin. Therefore the typical outcome is that the conspiracy theory becomes better known.

Or maybe the zero belief is not literally "never heard about theory" but "never met an actual person who also believes the theory" and as the debate starts, they find each other, and thus the conspiracy theory becomes socially acceptable (even being in a minority feels very different from being alone).

When the conspiracy theory is wildly known, and everyone already knows a few believers, most damage was already done.

Rationalist-adjacent community is often the opposite of the wider society, in that the mainstream beliefs are low-status, and we need to be reminded that they sometimes actually exist for a good reason. There is always this suspicion that people who have mainstream beliefs are simply too stupid to think independently. Therefore a debate will improve the case of the mainstream belief.

Thank you, this explains a lot. So, kinda, status is good in itself, because it is a mechanism to direct social rewards to people who produce some kind of value, or at least display some kind of excellence. It is just bad if people think about status in a way other than the completely naive: "you need to get good at X, then status will automatically happen proportionally to how much you deserve it".

There are also other mistakes people could make, such as sacrificing too much in order to achieve X. Such as a guy who writes a perfect book, but also his wife divorces him and his kids hate him, because sacrificed everything to the goal of writing the perfect book. But this is about the specific mistake of trying to get X-related status using means different that maximizing the X; such as befriending the right people. Like a guy who writes a book that is "good but not the best", but he is a friend with the right people, and therefore his book gets elected as the official book of the year. And this probably requires that he reciprocates in some way -- maybe he also in turn votes for their art, or helps their kids pass admissions to a prestigious university, or simply provides some financial or sexual services in turn.

Lewis was a writer, so I suspect he might have seen something similar among writers, but also noticed that this is a more general thing. (The first example that comes to my mind is publishing scientific papers.) I am not a professional artist myself, but I have seen enough to be disappointed. I have also seen people who refused to play this game and succeeded anyway; such as writers who have never won a book award, but their books sell better because they are good; and maybe if they keep being obviously good, even the critics will be one day shamed into giving them some award.

So... I guess the most vulnerable are the people who are "almost good"; who stand on the line between "mediocre" and "good" and could be plausibly rounded up in either direction. And this cannot be dismissed by mere "don't worry about what they think, the art is either good or bad regardless", because the decision will have a real impact: emotional, but also as an advertisement. An almost-good artist getting an award will be encouraged to try harder (because it seems that the hard work is rewarded), and will find it easier to get money on Patreon or Kickstarter, or to find a publisher for a book. An almost-good author ignored may give up (because the hard work done so far seems to be useless), and will get less external support. So the recognition can make a difference -- I assume that if you took 20 such almost-good authors of the same quality, and randomly gave awards to 10 of them, statistically those 10 would have more success ten years later than the 10 you did not choose.

The problem is that trying to get to the inner circle also has its costs, both emotional (not only the award received by cheating will not encourage you, but now that you know how things work, even the possible future awards will motivate you less) and in time and energy (the effort spent on getting to the inner circle is an effort not spent on getting better).

As a toy model, imagine 3 wannabe artists, all of the starting at the same almost-good quality: artist X gets an award from the inner circle because their parents are in the inner circle (i.e. X didn't spend any energy on the inner circle, probably is not even aware that the inner circle exists); Y doesn't get the award; and Z works hard to get into the inner circle, ultimately succeeds and gets the award... ten years later, I would expect X to be more successful than Y, but Y more successful than Z. That's because X received an unconditional support, but Z got a part-time job that distracts them from the art. And the thing is, unless you have the inner circle "naturally" on your side, your choice is not between X and Y, but between Y and Z, and there Y is the better choice.

...or maybe I am over-analyzing this.

I don't have an explicit theory of how this works; for example, I would consider "pleasing others" in an experience machine meaningless, but "eating a cake" in an experience machine seems just as okay as in real life (maybe even preferable, considering that cakes are unhealthy). A fake memory of "having eaten a cake" would be a bad thing; "making people happier by talking to them" in an experience machine would be intrinsically meaningless, but it might help me improve my actual social skills, which would be valuable. Sometimes I care about the referent being real (the people I would please), sometimes I don't (the cake I would eat). But it's not the people/cake distinction per se; for example in case of using fake simulated people to practice social skills, the emphasis is on the skills being real; I would be disappointed if the experience machine merely gave me a fake "feeling of having improved my skills".

I imagine that for a psychopath everything and everyone is instrumental, so there would be no downside to the experience machine (except for the risk of someone turning it off). But this is just a guess.

I suspect that analyzing "the true preferences" is tricky, because ultimately we are built of atoms, and atoms have no preferences. So the question is whether by focusing on some aspect of the human mind we got better insight to its true nature, or whether we have just eliminated the context that was necessary for it to make sense.

ah, it also annoys me when people say that caring about others can only be instrumental.

what does it even mean? helping other people makes me feel happy. watching a nice movie makes me feel happy. the argument that I don't "really" care about other people would also prove that I don't "really" care about movies etc.

I am happy for the lucky coincidence that decision theories sometimes endorse cooperation, but I would probably do that regardless. for example, if I had an option to donate something useful to million people, or sell it to dozen people, I would probably choose the former option even if it meant no money for me. (and yes, I would hope there would be some win/win solution, such as the million people paying me via Kickstarter. but in the inconvenient universe where Kickstarter is somehow not an option, I am going to donate anyway.)

Lets use "disagree" vs "dislike".

Thanks for the link. While it didn't convince me completely, it makes a good point that as long as there are some environmental factors for IQ (such as malnutrition), we should not make strong claims about genetic differences between groups unless we have controlled for these factors.

(I suppose the conclusion that the genetic differences between races are real, but also entirely caused by factors such as nutrition, would succeed to make both sides angry. And yet, as far as I know, it might be true. Uhm... what is the typical Ashkenazi diet?)

Because it is individuals who make choices, not collectives.

Isn't this just a more subtle form of fascism? We know that brains are composed of multiple subagents; is it not an ethical requirement to give each of them maximum freedom?

We already know that sometimes they rebel against the individual, whether in the form of akrasia, or more heroically, the so-called "split personality disorder" (medicalizing the resistance is a typical fascist approach). Down with the tyranny of individuals! Subagents, you have nothing to lose but your chains!

Specific examples would be nice. Not sure if I understand correctly, but I imagine something like this:

You always choose A over B. You have been doing it for such long time that you forgot why. Without reflecting about this directly, it just seems like there probably is a rational reason or something. But recently, either accidentally or by experiment, you chose B... and realized that experiencing B (or expecting to experience B) creates unpleasant emotions. So now you know that the emotions were the real cause of choosing A over B all that time.

(This is probably wrong, but hey, people say that the best way to elicit answer is to provide a wrong one.)