tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post1185286719013261446..comments2023-10-10T08:02:18.073-04:00Comments on Rationally Speaking: Vices of our tribeUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-38698149800658363572012-07-31T02:35:59.572-04:002012-07-31T02:35:59.572-04:00"I have never heard a self-described rational..."I have never heard a self-described rationalist argue against homosexuality (except, once, to decry its mixed Greek and Latin etymology!)."<br /><br />I'm reminded of a t-shirt: "Polyamory is wrong! It's multiamory or polyphilia, but mixing Greek and Latin roots? Wrong!"The Uncredible Hallqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09565179884099473943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-70297318667862794822012-07-30T23:17:19.956-04:002012-07-30T23:17:19.956-04:00Kevin, a more generalized view of the site might b...Kevin, a more generalized view of the site might be that it has a tendency to ignore Karl Popper's warning, if that reference helps. The idea would be to extend knowledge whither it may go as long as it applies widely to recognizable facts. It might be a completely new way of ordering existing facts in a testable way, as it would need a deductive structure anyway. To focus on existing deductive theories to extend them deductively by probablility to be Less Wrong, for example, is a foolish restriction to creativity to reshape the entriety of nature if one wishes, in a more rationally satisfying way. It's creativity versus incrementalism, as a tendency, when it should be both, equally.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10010508932327837220noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-51087201293733217482012-07-30T14:50:24.735-04:002012-07-30T14:50:24.735-04:00"(like a good consequentialist)"
I'..."(like a good consequentialist)"<br /><br />I'm not (at least not only) a consequentialist. There is no "correct" or "true" morality. Unless you want to pull another Sam Harris, you should not assume that all reasonable people agree on the veracity of consequentialism. And saying that all rational agents strive to maximize their utility is meaningless (and borders on a tauntology, depending on how "utility" is defined). Even if they do, it doesn't mean it's a good thing. Hume's law and all that.<br /><br />But I appreciate the language you use, Ian. Makes you LessWrongians all the easier to spot: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/LessWrong#How_to_spot_a_LessWrongian_in_your_sceptical_discussionPyrrhushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06438949273236249842noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-49782964203980116822012-07-30T14:48:28.327-04:002012-07-30T14:48:28.327-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.Pyrrhushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06438949273236249842noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-41958080008521203332012-07-30T12:40:46.090-04:002012-07-30T12:40:46.090-04:00Good post, Ian, and a lot to agree with. What I di...Good post, Ian, and a lot to agree with. What I did find strange was why fiction has to be written by a rationalist. Don't you read fiction for entertainment? If the story is well constructed, I personally could care less... (For non-fiction I agree, though.)chbieckhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11038854944875543524noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-57673541825126824012012-07-30T08:57:59.265-04:002012-07-30T08:57:59.265-04:00"That website you sometimes link to (LW) posi..."That website you sometimes link to (LW) positively overflows with that mode of thinking"<br /><br />No, not really.<br /><br />For vice #1, while evolutionary psychology is popular on LW, meta-ethics is one of the most frequently discussed topics. Search for utilitarianism, consequentialism, desirism, virtue, deontological...<br /><br />For vice #2, read <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/hp/feeling_rational/" rel="nofollow">Feeling Rational</a>. In general, see <a href="http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Egan%27s_law" rel="nofollow">Egan's Law</a>.<br /><br />For vice #3, read <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/gt/a_fable_of_science_and_politics/" rel="nofollow">A Fable of Science and Politics</a> and related posts. (I think that the "politics is the mind-killer" meme is often taken too far at LW, but that's a separate problem.)Kevinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07890247476626589820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-79723411238520151302012-07-30T02:21:31.822-04:002012-07-30T02:21:31.822-04:00Massimo, thanks for your comment, I agree in part....Massimo, thanks for your comment, I agree in part. I like mavericks if they make progress (obviously, I love those ones) as our understanding of nature might only be half finished (in the figurative sense that "children and fools should never be shown half-finished work"), but I will try not to be mean. My view, consistent with my attempos at analysis here, is that sites like Less Wrong tend to "creeping paralysis" to discovery from secure incremental change. I also object to their approach in not answering argument and hiding behind secret votes. If it helps to understand my approach, consider my thread continued with Roy after you left off at the Shapiro comments in Prinze's Beyond Human Nature. Maverick views, to be answered until satisfied, and learning is achieved in the process, no prejudice. Ian would do well to inform his friends at Less Wrong how to deal with mavericks responsibly.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10010508932327837220noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-35933774594166505542012-07-30T01:24:28.941-04:002012-07-30T01:24:28.941-04:00You have deduced whether it is wrong or right by d...You have deduced whether it is wrong or right by deductive criteria applied to the induction, would how I explain it.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10010508932327837220noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-12832688037206516462012-07-30T00:56:23.140-04:002012-07-30T00:56:23.140-04:00"Any judment of wrong or right is a deductive..."Any judment of wrong or right is a deductive judgment, not an inductive hypothesis (which is the thing tested for it's rightness)."<br />If you test a thing for its rightness and it fails the test, haven't you "induced" its wrongness?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07573847127040276949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-30962604174634929922012-07-30T00:46:03.086-04:002012-07-30T00:46:03.086-04:00I should make a specufic objection to the idea tha...I should make a specufic objection to the idea that I am "just misleading" about the voting. I don't know if one person has only one vote, and I don't care either way. My earlier post is general, and covers a situation where anyones' vote will tip it into obscurity, or be a basis for others to follow their lead. Re-read my post (was it an attempt to provide chapter and verse on the voting process?). I allow for what I do now know by general comments. <br /><br />It is not "just misleading". You just show your tendentious ignorance to say. Be real Ian, and use real words, don't continue the prejudicial usage. You know the site promotes explanations to back up negativity, but you don't mention it (because my comments are "just misleading"). Ian, when will you learn analyze properly and speak the truth, if you haven't already?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10010508932327837220noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-39516246322388680262012-07-30T00:25:35.754-04:002012-07-30T00:25:35.754-04:00I don't agree with the Karma syatem, and would...I don't agree with the Karma syatem, and would never have it on a Blog, but it's their Blog so they can do what they want. I am sure people can make up their own minds about posts without a public poll of subscribers to the status quo (I don't trust public polls either). I am now a troll on their terms, so I won't be visiting to provide any insights, which defeats their purpose.<br /><br />You didn't mention that they are supposed to back up their voting with explanation, which none of my posts received, so don't apply a system unless its followed, in any case. As for who votes, I guess someone wasted a lot of votes across my posts, and assorted others have followed that strong lead (being a very closed little shop of friends). In any case it's a bent little prejudicial system without explanation, and with it it's only marginally better.<br /><br />I have no idea why you do not understand how deduction and induction work together, and how to be less wrong is to use deduction. Any judment of wrong or right is a deductive judgment, not an inductive hypothesis (which is the thing tested for it's rightness). Do you realize that? The site's title is a proclamation of a one-sided approach, by definition, its inescapable logic, so I have no idea why you can't understand it. It is also prevalent in application at the site, and in their stated aims. You have failed to convince me of anything there, except your lack of understanding of induction - deduction. I don't see that your site has much future, Ian.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10010508932327837220noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-19044604644287357042012-07-29T15:02:43.849-04:002012-07-29T15:02:43.849-04:00>Ian, I like the part near the end; on my blog,...>Ian, I like the part near the end; on my blog, I identify myself as a skeptical left-liberal (for America, at least) and say that that includes being skeptical of left-liberalism, too.<br /><br />That's more or less how I feel, though I am wary of even that label.<br /><br />>...is Massimo going to do an obit-type post about Cockburn?<br /><br />I'm curious, to whom are you referring?ianpollockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15579140807988796286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-85955578656662441702012-07-29T14:58:51.090-04:002012-07-29T14:58:51.090-04:00Paul/Massimo: for one thing, LW is hardly a monoli...Paul/Massimo: for one thing, LW is hardly a monolithic entity, at least not anymore. For another, their stated purpose is definitely NOT "making arguments less wrong by deduction" (I'm still not altogether sure I know what you mean by that).<br /><br />That said, there are some silly things about LW, most of which LW is itself aware of. The biggest one is, as Massimo says, the reinvention of epistemology in isolation from philosophy. (See <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/4vr/less_wrong_rationality_and_mainstream_philosophy/" rel="nofollow">Luke Muelhauser's post here on LW's relation to philosophy.</a> Again I stress that Yudkowsky's problems are not LW's problems. If you're interested, however, I can tell you a couple of LW innovations in epistemology that I haven't heard anywhere else.<br /><br />Also, what Paul said about the 'karma' points system on LW is just misleading. If you post a comment, each member has one and exactly one upvote/downvote. It is not possible for an old timer acting alone to downvote your comments/posts to death, it takes several people. Maybe they were in fact unfair to you, but if so it was more than one person. In general, the karma system on LW is great; it keeps the signal/noise ratio high and makes the trolls all but invisible.ianpollockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15579140807988796286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-12052363608453661322012-07-29T14:43:17.935-04:002012-07-29T14:43:17.935-04:00>Any recommendations on good rationalist fictio...>Any recommendations on good rationalist fiction?<br /><br />Well, Yudkowsky has a few more stories that showcase his usual mix of wit and hubris; <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/169/the_sword_of_good/" rel="nofollow">The Sword of Good</a> is one of my favourites.<br /><br />Anything by Rebecca Goldstein (also see RS podcast featuring her). Vernor Vinge and Greg Egan are really great examples, although Vinge occasionally drops a libertarian anvil. Terry Pratchett is always worth reading, though he's more a humanist than rationalist.ianpollockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15579140807988796286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-42457589827368924022012-07-29T14:34:31.445-04:002012-07-29T14:34:31.445-04:00Absolutely. To generalize even further, "guil...Absolutely. To generalize even further, "guilt by association" style thinking, in which your opinions on X are strongly influenced by what kind of people believe X, what they historically did & didn't do, etc.ianpollockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15579140807988796286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-90756403056281711362012-07-29T11:40:05.687-04:002012-07-29T11:40:05.687-04:00Paul,
I must admit that I haven't read much f...Paul,<br /><br />I must admit that I haven't read much from LW lately, but the whole idea of them re-inventing epistemology, apparently (willfully?) ignoring what professionals have done in that field is bizarre. But as you can see from Ian's enthusiasm for LW (not to mention Julia's) I'm somewhat ecumenical on this blog...Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09099460671669064269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-20988018068790571662012-07-29T07:46:55.946-04:002012-07-29T07:46:55.946-04:00Yes, I say 'deductive induction' to sugges...Yes, I say 'deductive induction' to suggest they are defeating their purpose somewhat by strictly limiting their hypothese too much. The approach is in the aim of the site, to make argument less wrong by deduction, but a good example where I tried to post some corrections to methodology in 'Solominoff Induction'. I made some posts about the trade-off when making induction as strict as Soliminoff seems to propose, and directly challenged the author to answer them (which he didn't, last time I checked). Instead, he just gave several negative votes which bumped a couple of my posts off the blog, as they have a system where, if you get into a good argument with someone and they have "points" (I have none to save myself as a new person) they can just dump negativity on your post and its disappears, or mine did. Very sad methodology, and method. No future in it, really. I don't play with words as others do in posts, or crawl incrementally (or generally).Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10010508932327837220noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-59680657469935969902012-07-28T23:05:16.613-04:002012-07-28T23:05:16.613-04:00OK, because it bugs me when some scientists still ...OK, because it bugs me when some scientists still speak of altruistic versus selfish genes when n fact we all share both qualities, but have such differences in what other scientists call our personalities. However, personality differences are relative to each other, hierarchically, and not fixed.<br />A nice article here, http://news.discovery.com/animals/bugs-personality-insects.html , shows that "Even Bugs have Personality", but different traits aren't noted by the absence of others.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07573847127040276949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-67929837477437452542012-07-28T22:30:57.593-04:002012-07-28T22:30:57.593-04:00Roy, not ignoring your comment, I just get busy so...Roy, not ignoring your comment, I just get busy sometimes, even on weekends.<br /><br />I am not at all committed to a 'genetic' explanation of altruism; the point is more that even if we were to settle on such an explanation it would still leave a lot of questions unanswered.<br /><br />I do not consider myself a neo-Darwinian; I have no particularly strong opinions about the details of evolutionary theory, and I doubt that anybody would give them much weight if I did.ianpollockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15579140807988796286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-45613331268432375652012-07-28T15:44:42.183-04:002012-07-28T15:44:42.183-04:00I note that Ian has ignored this comment, so I sup...I note that Ian has ignored this comment, so I suppose, like a true neoDarwinian, he does believe that there's such a thing as non-cooperative genes.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07573847127040276949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-80091331239300287172012-07-28T15:10:25.452-04:002012-07-28T15:10:25.452-04:00Paul, I don't think I follow. Maybe you could ...Paul, I don't think I follow. Maybe you could give an example from LW of what you mean?ianpollockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15579140807988796286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-77848747586091825852012-07-28T15:06:56.686-04:002012-07-28T15:06:56.686-04:00'Evil' seems to me an indispensable word t...'Evil' seems to me an indispensable word to describe certain phenomena of human behaviour, such as the Uzbek government's occasional practice of boiling political dissidents to death (please take a moment to imagine what that would be like). I tend to reserve the word for extreme cases where terrible means are employed in the furtherance of terrible ends. Basically by evil I mean "extremely ethically terrible actions & character traits."<br /><br />Seems to me many skeptics instinctively think of evil as a "force" in the world with agency of its own (which is a hangover from religious traditions), and then in the process of denying that such agency exists, deny altogether that evil could possibly mean anything.ianpollockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15579140807988796286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-36161097257759573002012-07-28T14:57:26.400-04:002012-07-28T14:57:26.400-04:00That may be on the right track, but it has also ba...That may be on the right track, but it has also barely left the station. How do desires give us normativity?ianpollockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15579140807988796286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-71998307035656383382012-07-28T14:03:53.799-04:002012-07-28T14:03:53.799-04:00Thanks Ed G, you beat me to the punch. I was abou...Thanks Ed G, you beat me to the punch. I was about to post something similar: <br /><br />Groups usually have very little tolerance for freeloading coasters. <br /><br />If you fail to cooperate, you'd better keep it pretty well hidden, or the group is likely to beat the snot out of you. Often, the situation makes it difficult or impossible to hide non-cooperation: you're forced to stand and fight with the group against a common enemy or run away.<br /><br />Some (hidden) cheating may sometimes be possible, but over the long run the cheaters would be found out and eliminated.Tom D.https://www.blogger.com/profile/16005219519644708237noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-39249287348238720472012-07-28T11:24:15.458-04:002012-07-28T11:24:15.458-04:00I'm having trouble understanding what Vice #2 ...I'm having trouble understanding what Vice #2 is supposed to be. The extended example is hard to follow. In statement 1, the "just" is not a necessary corollary to the notion that only the ontologically existent is truly real. (Also, I don't think that statement 1 is technically an equivocation, it seems to consistently hold that belief, instead of switching.)<br />In statement 2, the phrase "high-level" doesn't really have any meaning. It tacitly suggests that there is a kind of higher reality beyond simple ontological reality, and "love" is part of it. Both statements seem to share the assumption that "love" must be justified by something beyond simple experience of the phenomenon, in person or by observation of others. <br /><br />The second example I don't understand at all. I gather that to "cash out" means to provide an understanding of the term. But the few examples I know of people denying the reality of evil tend to be the philosophical types who reject empricism and hold that you cannot attain knowledge about psychology, society, morality and God. It's not an issue I've had much interest in, as I rather hear references to "evil" as personal emotional expression rather than an argument.<br /><br />The third example seems to be a typo for "Choice is just an illusion." You could just as well say that consciousness is a kind of symbolic display of the multifarious unconscious processes of the brain. Or to put it another way, the consciousness is a point of view, the projected center of the sensorium, adapted to other purposes. I suppose you could pretend to imagine a person who doesn't actually "see" as he or she walks along, but I don't think you really could.<br /><br />The distinction between statements 1&2 in the love example seems, as I said, that the one attributes a kind of reality to love, while the other reduces it to chemicals. In the free will example, again the charge seems to be that denial of free will reduces the notion of choice to, well, nonexistence. Could your vice #2 be what the anti-scientism people call reductionism?S Johnsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11610068751705809284noreply@blogger.com