Not something I claimed. I re-assert my previous position. I oppose the style of persuasion used in the grandparent. Specifically, the use of a chain of connotatively-fallacious rhetorical questions.
That’s a lovely assertion and all, but I wasn’t responding to it, sorry. (I didn’t find the questions all that fallacious, myself; just a little sloppy.) Immediately before that statement you said “So you had a specific agenda in mind.”
It was this, and the (perceived?) implications in light of the context, that I meant to reply to. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
There often going to be others that happen to have more instrumental value for achieving many instrumental goals for influencing the universe. For example if someone cares about the survival of humanity a lot (ie. more than about selfish goals) then the life of certain people who are involved in combating existential risk are likely to be more instrumentally useful for said someone than their own.
Oh, come on. I didn’t say it was more instrumentally valuable than any conceivable other resource. It has greater instrumental value than other lives. Individual lives may come with additional resources based on the situation.
That’s like responding to the statement “guns aren’t instrumentally useful for avoiding attackers because you’re more likely to injure yourself than an attacker” with “but what if that gun was the only thing standing between a psychopath and hundreds of innocent civilians? What if it was a brilliant futuristic gun that knew not to fire unless it was pointing at a certified Bad Person? It would be useful then!”
If someone says something that sounds obviously wrong, maybe stop and consider that you might be misinterpreting it? Principle of charity and all that.
(I really hope I don’t turn out to have misinterpreted you, that would be too ironic.)
I didn’t find the questions all that fallacious, myself; just a little sloppy.
A complementary explanation to the ones I have already given you is that this post is optimised for persuading people like yourself, not people like me. I prefer a state where posts use styles of reasoning more likely to be considered persuasive by people like myself. As such, I oppose this post.
Why are you against diversity?! We should have posts for both people-like-you and people-like-me! Stop trying to monopolise LessWrong, people-like-wedrifrid!!
EDIT: This has been a joke. We now return you to your regularly scheduled LessWrong.
That’s a lovely assertion and all, but I wasn’t responding to it, sorry. (I didn’t find the questions all that fallacious, myself; just a little sloppy.) Immediately before that statement you said “So you had a specific agenda in mind.”
It was this, and the (perceived?) implications in light of the context, that I meant to reply to. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
Oh, come on. I didn’t say it was more instrumentally valuable than any conceivable other resource. It has greater instrumental value than other lives. Individual lives may come with additional resources based on the situation.
That’s like responding to the statement “guns aren’t instrumentally useful for avoiding attackers because you’re more likely to injure yourself than an attacker” with “but what if that gun was the only thing standing between a psychopath and hundreds of innocent civilians? What if it was a brilliant futuristic gun that knew not to fire unless it was pointing at a certified Bad Person? It would be useful then!”
If someone says something that sounds obviously wrong, maybe stop and consider that you might be misinterpreting it? Principle of charity and all that.
(I really hope I don’t turn out to have misinterpreted you, that would be too ironic.)
A complementary explanation to the ones I have already given you is that this post is optimised for persuading people like yourself, not people like me. I prefer a state where posts use styles of reasoning more likely to be considered persuasive by people like myself. As such, I oppose this post.
Well, if you phrase it like that …
Why are you against diversity?! We should have posts for both people-like-you and people-like-me! Stop trying to monopolise LessWrong, people-like-wedrifrid!!
EDIT: This has been a joke. We now return you to your regularly scheduled LessWrong.
If exerting influence is indistinguishable from trying to monopolize the community, then I reluctantly endorse trying to monopolize the community.
Sorry, I wasn’t actually being serious. I’ll edit my comment to make that clearer.