But rationalism doesn’t have a well-defined set of norms/desirable skills to develop. As a result, we Less Wrongians unsurprisingly also lack a well-developed practical system for implementation.
Implementation of what? What’s the purpose of these hypothetical norms? There’s no point in propagating arbitrary norms. You are describing it backwards.
But rationalism doesn’t have a well-defined set of norms/desirable skills to develop
I’m not sure that “norms” are the same as “desirable skills to develop”. The LessWrong community definitely has a list of desirable skills: improve understanding of Bayes, for example.Maybe not well-defined though.
Honestly, I think I would have balked if calcsam had offered specific answers to this question, rather than the general principle of deriving them from the “theology”. He is a relative outsider, and I think this is something we should be hashing out for ourselves.
I’m not sure it makes sense to build an idea around a premise that there is a central problem of propagating norms before we have some examples of norms which should be propagated.
I don’t know the LDS example “Your purpose on earth is to become like God” is pretty big. Big goals are good if they are back up with supportive low-level goals.
It seems that the proper answer to this is to develop our norms in a rational manner, and reject arbitrary norms that have no purpose. Edit—please disregard this post
Implementation of what? What’s the purpose of these hypothetical norms? There’s no point in propagating arbitrary norms. You are describing it backwards.
I’m not sure that “norms” are the same as “desirable skills to develop”. The LessWrong community definitely has a list of desirable skills: improve understanding of Bayes, for example.Maybe not well-defined though.
Honestly, I think I would have balked if calcsam had offered specific answers to this question, rather than the general principle of deriving them from the “theology”. He is a relative outsider, and I think this is something we should be hashing out for ourselves.
I’m not sure it makes sense to build an idea around a premise that there is a central problem of propagating norms before we have some examples of norms which should be propagated.
What about things like “overcome your biases”, “raise the sanity waterline”, and “win the stars”?
Or, rather, norms which achieve these goals. These don’t seem low-level enough to be norms in themselves.
I don’t know the LDS example “Your purpose on earth is to become like God” is pretty big. Big goals are good if they are back up with supportive low-level goals.
You can’t get all that much higher than ‘win the stars’! :P
It seems that the proper answer to this is to develop our norms in a rational manner, and reject arbitrary norms that have no purpose.
Edit—please disregard this post