Too strong.
Nobody EVER got successful from luck? Not even people born billionaires or royalty?
Nobody can EVER be happy without using intelligence? Only if you're using some definition of happiness that includes a term like "Philosophical fulfillment" or some such, which makes the issue tautological.
The quote always annoyed me too. People bring it up for ANY infringement on liberty, often leaving off the words "Essential" and "Temporary", making a much stronger version of the quote (And of course, obviously wrong).
Tangentially, Sword of Good was my introduction to Yudkowsky, and by extension, LW.
Honestly, I did read the source, and it's very difficult to get anything useful out of it. The closest I could interpret it is "Theory (In what? Political Science?) had become removed from "Other fields" (In political science? Science?)".
In general, if context is needed to interpret the quote (I.E. It doesn't stand on it's own), it's good to mention that context in the post, rather than just linking to a source and expecting people to follow a comment thread to understand it.
Sorry if this is overly critical, that was not my intention. I just don't get what the "internecine conflict" you are referring to is.
Also more than have died from UFAI. Clearly that's not worth worrying over either.
I'm not terrified of Ebola because it's been demonstrated to be controllable in fairly developed counties, but as a general rule this quote seems incredibly out of place on less wrong. People here discuss the dangers of things which have literally never happened before almost every day.
My moral position different from (in fact, diametrically opposed to) Alice's, but I'm not going to say that Alice's morals are wrong
You do realize she's implicitly calling you complicit in the perpetuation of the suffering and deaths of millions of animals right? I'm having difficulty understanding how you can NOT say that her morality is wrong. Her ACTIONS are clearly unobjectionable (Eating plants is certainly not worse than eating meat under the vast majority of ethical systems) but her MORALITY is quite controversial. I have a feeling like you ac...
There's no law of physics that talks about morality, certainly. Morals are derived from the human brain though, which is remarkably similar between individuals. With the exception of extreme outliers, possibly involving brain damage, all people feel emotions like happiness, sadness, pain and anger. Shouldn't it be possible to judge most morality on the basis of these common features, making an argument like "wanton murder is bad, because it goes against the empathy your brain evolved to feel, and hurts the survival chance you are born valuing"...
This is a somewhat frustrating situation, where we both seem to agree on what morality is, but are talking over each other. I'll make two points and see if they move the conversation forward:
1: "There's no reason to consider your own value system to be the very best there is"
This seems to be similar to the point I made above about acknowledging on an intellectual level that my (factual) beliefs aren't the absolute best there is. The same logic holds true for morals. I know I'm making some mistakes, but I don't know where those mistakes are. ...
What basis do you have for judging others morality other than your own morality? And if you ARE using your own morality to judge their morality, aren't you really just checking for similarity to your own?
I mean, it's the same way with beliefs. I understand not everything I believe is true, and I thus understand intellectually that someone else might be more correct (or, less wrong, if you will) than me. But in practice, when I'm evaluating others' beliefs I basically compare them with how similar they are to my own. On a particularly contentious issue,...
So if my morality tells me that murdering innocent people is good, then that's not worse than whatever your moral system is?
I know it's possible to believe that (it was pretty much used as an example in my epistemology textbook for arguments against moral relativism), I just never figured anyone actually believed it.
It's also worth mentioning that cleaning birds after an oil spill isn't always even helpful. Some birds, like gulls and penguins, do pretty well. Others, like loons, tend to do poorly. Here are some articles concerning cleaning oiled birds.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127749940
http://news.discovery.com/animals/experts-kill-dont-clean-oiled-birds.htm
And I know that the oiled birds issue was only an example, but I just wanted to point out that this issue, much like the "Food and clothing aid to Africa" examples you often...
Obviously your mileage may vary, but I find it helps to imagine a stranger as someone else's family/friend. If I think of how much I care about people close to me, and imagine that that stranger has people who care about them as much as I can about my brother, then I find it easier to do things to help that person.
I guess you could say I don't really care about them, but care about the feelings of caring other people have towards them.
If that doesn't work, this is how I originally though of it. If a stranger passed by me on the street and collapsed, I wo...
I'm actually having difficultly understanding the sentiment "I get annoyed at those who think their morals are better than mine". I mean, I can understand not wanting other people to look down on you as a basic emotional reaction, but doesn't everyone think their morals are better than other people?
That's the difference between morals and tastes. If I like chocolate ice cream and you like vanilla, then oh well. I don't really care and certainly don't think my tastes are better for anyone other than me. But if I think people should value the w...
I have say I didn't find this post particularly useful.
On my first reading, I was having some difficultly understanding what point you were making. You seem to use some words or phrases in highly non-standard ways, I still have no idea what some sentences like "Its fairly easy to make sense on a mid-level" mean. I get the general impression of a post by someone whose first language isn't English, or who didn't proofread their own work, and that makes reading it a chore, not predisposing me to like it. Cleaning the post up and using more simpl...
This quote reminded me of a quote from an anime called Kaiji, albeit your quote is much more succinct.
...Normally, those people would never wake up from their fantasy worlds. They live meaningless lives. They waste their precious days over nothing. No matter how old they get, they'll continue to say, "My real life hasn't started yet. The real me is still asleep, so that's why my life is such garbage." They continue to tell themselves that. They continue. And they age. Then die. And on their deathbeds, they will finally realize: the life they lived
Edit: I misunderstood what you said by "rationalize", sorry.
As Polymath said, rationalization means "To try to justify an irrational position later"", basically making excuses.
Anyway, I wouldn't worry about the downvotes, based on this post the people downvoting you probably weren't being passive aggressive, but rather misinterpreted what you posted. It can take a little while to learn the local beliefs and jargon.