Completely agreed, though I do often wonder whether following both of your advices (that is, conditioning myself to pick the highest-EV profile picture just because it “feels right” rather than deliberately doing so in order to signal some attribute I think will cause people to behave in some way I want them to) leaves me better or worse off than just following your advice. (In practice it’s mostly moot, since I don’t bother to do the work of fully conditioning myself, but I’m still curious.)
Tangentially, the idea that it’s OK to do something which has a consequence as long as I’m ignorant of that consequence is one of the most pervasive and pernicious moralisms I know of.
Tangentially, the idea that it’s OK to do something which has a consequence as long as I’m ignorant of that consequence is one of the most pervasive and pernicious moralisms I know of.
I agree. In a similar vein I find that I value ‘sincerity’ far, far less than I once did.
In a similar vein I find that I value ‘sincerity’ far, far less than I once did.
Is this of the “sincere intentions” or “sincere goodwill” kind? I’m a bit curious, because I’ve never valued the ‘intentions’ part of sincerity or goodwill or such. However, I’ve always valued the “deploy giant space lazers!” kind of sincere, really-actually-putting-forth-all-effort-and-resources type of actions, and now value them even more since reading the Sequences.
If nothing else, surely “sincere goodwill” is instrumentally valuable? I think “sincere intentions” is tied to virtue ethics, though; you shouldn’t consider some one a Bad Person just because they made a mistake (this is one of the reasons I abandoned virtue ethics.)
I’m not quite sure. I’m inclined to counter that humans are just as likely to have “sincere goodwill” (or even pay tiny costs to display it when convenient) uncorrelated with their actions, intent to get the world to a certain state, or resource / effort allocation to the something to which they have “goodwill” for.
I’ve never observed this kind of “goodwill” in myself to have any sort of positive effect on my actions, their observable results, or my experiences, but faking such goodwill has brought me some positive-E.U. social gains. On the other hand, I’m generally not close to typical human minds, as expected for LW users.
So all things considered, I usually regard “sincere goodwill” as something rather trivial to be overshadowed by other considerations.
All good points. I would argue that all humans (well, all neurotypicals, and most others) have “sincere goodwill”, so clearly it can be overshadowed by their beliefs, say, or cached thoughts. Still, I guess it’s better then if everyone really was out to get you, an a terminal level.
I still value sincerity a lot, but I no longer think that showing your best side in situations where you’re expected to show your best side¹ counts as insincere. See also this Will Newsome comment.
e.g., wearing a suit and speaking standard language in a job interview even though you usually wear jeans and t-shirts and speak dialect outside job interviews, or wearing make-up and high heels when going to a night club where pretty much all people of your gender do that.
It seems to me that dressing/acting informally in a job interview is simply signalling that you don’t care about the interview—so unless you genuinely don’t care (in which case why hire you) then you’re either pretending to be sincere or you’re just really bad at job interviews (which probably includes actually sincere people, at that.)
Tangentially, the idea that it’s OK to do something which has a consequence as long as I’m ignorant of that consequence is one of the most pervasive and pernicious moralisms I know of.
I think that’s a virtue ethics thing, which is why it breaks when you try to use it consequentially.
Alternatively, ” it’s OK to do something which has a consequence as long as I’m ignorant of that consequence”, but it’s Bad to deliberately create such a situation.
Completely agreed, though I do often wonder whether following both of your advices (that is, conditioning myself to pick the highest-EV profile picture just because it “feels right” rather than deliberately doing so in order to signal some attribute I think will cause people to behave in some way I want them to) leaves me better or worse off than just following your advice. (In practice it’s mostly moot, since I don’t bother to do the work of fully conditioning myself, but I’m still curious.)
Tangentially, the idea that it’s OK to do something which has a consequence as long as I’m ignorant of that consequence is one of the most pervasive and pernicious moralisms I know of.
I agree. In a similar vein I find that I value ‘sincerity’ far, far less than I once did.
Is this of the “sincere intentions” or “sincere goodwill” kind? I’m a bit curious, because I’ve never valued the ‘intentions’ part of sincerity or goodwill or such. However, I’ve always valued the “deploy giant space lazers!” kind of sincere, really-actually-putting-forth-all-effort-and-resources type of actions, and now value them even more since reading the Sequences.
If nothing else, surely “sincere goodwill” is instrumentally valuable? I think “sincere intentions” is tied to virtue ethics, though; you shouldn’t consider some one a Bad Person just because they made a mistake (this is one of the reasons I abandoned virtue ethics.)
I’m not quite sure. I’m inclined to counter that humans are just as likely to have “sincere goodwill” (or even pay tiny costs to display it when convenient) uncorrelated with their actions, intent to get the world to a certain state, or resource / effort allocation to the something to which they have “goodwill” for.
I’ve never observed this kind of “goodwill” in myself to have any sort of positive effect on my actions, their observable results, or my experiences, but faking such goodwill has brought me some positive-E.U. social gains. On the other hand, I’m generally not close to typical human minds, as expected for LW users.
So all things considered, I usually regard “sincere goodwill” as something rather trivial to be overshadowed by other considerations.
All good points. I would argue that all humans (well, all neurotypicals, and most others) have “sincere goodwill”, so clearly it can be overshadowed by their beliefs, say, or cached thoughts. Still, I guess it’s better then if everyone really was out to get you, an a terminal level.
I still value sincerity a lot, but I no longer think that showing your best side in situations where you’re expected to show your best side¹ counts as insincere. See also this Will Newsome comment.
e.g., wearing a suit and speaking standard language in a job interview even though you usually wear jeans and t-shirts and speak dialect outside job interviews, or wearing make-up and high heels when going to a night club where pretty much all people of your gender do that.
It seems to me that dressing/acting informally in a job interview is simply signalling that you don’t care about the interview—so unless you genuinely don’t care (in which case why hire you) then you’re either pretending to be sincere or you’re just really bad at job interviews (which probably includes actually sincere people, at that.)
I think you misparsed my comment. I said that being formal is not insincere; I didn’t say anything on whether being informal would be.
Oh, I know. I was agreeing with you, and pointing out that it’s arguably more sincere than being informal.
I think that’s a virtue ethics thing, which is why it breaks when you try to use it consequentially.
Alternatively, ” it’s OK to do something which has a consequence as long as I’m ignorant of that consequence”, but it’s Bad to deliberately create such a situation.