I wonder how much of your complaints should really be addressed to Roko (in the parent of Z. M. Davis’s comment).
Roko’s claims:
greed and self-interest are preconditions for the motivation necessary to achieve financial success
another useful motivation is the desire for sex with extremely attractive women, which generates a desire for status
yet another useful motivation is an animosity towards society based on a desire to be seen as right
Z. M. Davis’s claim:
the attitude promulgated by Roko requires one to look on life as a zero-sum game
Incidentally, while wealth acquisition is obviously not a zero-sum game, Robin Hanson has argued that status acquisition is in some sense a zero sum game: you can’t have high status without there being someone having lower status than you.
ETA: This post was made redundant while I was writing it. Darn it.
greed and self-interest are preconditions for the motivation necessary to achieve financial success
another useful motivation is the desire for sex with extremely attractive women, which generates a desire for status
yet another useful motivation is an animosity towards society based on a desire to be seen as right
Yes, I wholeheartedly endorse this summary of my position. The problem of whether it feels “somehow wrong” to adopt this kind of persona is logically independent from the likely effects it will have on reality.
I wonder how much of your complaints should really be addressed to Roko (in the parent of Z. M. Davis’s comment).
Roko’s claims:
greed and self-interest are preconditions for the motivation necessary to achieve financial success
another useful motivation is the desire for sex with extremely attractive women, which generates a desire for status
yet another useful motivation is an animosity towards society based on a desire to be seen as right
Z. M. Davis’s claim:
the attitude promulgated by Roko requires one to look on life as a zero-sum game
Incidentally, while wealth acquisition is obviously not a zero-sum game, Robin Hanson has argued that status acquisition is in some sense a zero sum game: you can’t have high status without there being someone having lower status than you.
ETA: This post was made redundant while I was writing it. Darn it.
greed and self-interest are preconditions for the motivation necessary to achieve financial success
another useful motivation is the desire for sex with extremely attractive women, which generates a desire for status
yet another useful motivation is an animosity towards society based on a desire to be seen as right
Yes, I wholeheartedly endorse this summary of my position. The problem of whether it feels “somehow wrong” to adopt this kind of persona is logically independent from the likely effects it will have on reality.