I’m fairly sure this comment was not exactly intended as a compliment, but I can think of worse insults than having my writing put in the same category as Nick Bostrom. As the author of the first of these parables, even I recognize that these two stories differ very significantly in quality
The Blue and Green Martians parable was an attempt to discuss a question of ethics that is important to many members of this community, and which it is almost impossible to discuss elsewhere. The decision to use an analogy was an attempt to minimize mindkill. This did not succeed. However, I am fairly sure that if I had chosen not to use an analogy, the resulting flamewar would have been immense. This probably means that there are certain topics we just can’t discuss, which feels distinctly suboptimal, but I’m not sure I have a better solution.
Well I don’t like the dragon parable either. It’s overlong, a bit condescending and ignores the core problem that anti-aging research has done a pretty poor job of showing concrete achievements, even if it’s right that it’s under-prioritized. I was not a fan of yours exactly because I think the parable elides the most important parts of the actual topic. Even if a direct discussion would be flamey, it’s not better to discuss a poor proxy. I’m not trying to pick on you, I just think you tried to define the problem with some premises that were well worth dispute.
There are all sorts of other bad analogies out there though: “If canada launched missiles at the US, how would it respond?”, even though the US hasn’t turned Canada into a prison-state over the course of 50 years, is one on the news a lot right now.
Parables about the danger of nuclear weapons that ignore the fact that this danger was successfully handled (there was something on here using it as an analogy for AI).
Also, when parables are kind-of-but-not-really trying to be coy about what they’re actually about is a bit annoying, leading to stilted writing (but that’s the least of my issues).
EY also has a lot of dubious parables, but tackling those is a subject for a bigger post.
And of course there’s the whole genre of parables where two fictional interlocutors are arguing, the strawman ‘loses’ the argument, and that’s supposed to convince us of something. I think LW manages to avoid overt versions of this.
In the realm of politics (both Red/Blue and further-from-mainstream) people often apply “argument by utopia”, which suffers similar issues in that it attempts to prematurely define convenient facts and use a narrative to elide gritty, worthwhile details of an issue.
Parables about the danger of nuclear weapons that ignore the fact that this danger was successfully handled (there was something on here using it as an analogy for AI).
The danger wasn’t successfully handled for a lot of values of “successful”. The fact that you survive playing Russian roulette doesn’t show that you successfully handled danger. Once a nuclear bomb nearly exploded in the US where 3 of 4 safety feature of the bomb failed.
If I remember right it would have needed 3 of 3 people in the Russian submarine in the Cuban missle crisis to lunch a nuclear weapon and 2 of them wanted to lunch it. There are various lost nuclear weapons.
If I remember right it would have needed 3 of 3 people in the Russian submarine in the Cuban missle crisis to lunch a nuclear weapon and 2 of them wanted to lunch it.
Two of them got sick of their jobs and decided to just go to lunch. Luckily the third guy stayed at his post and just snacked on a sandwich.
Well I don’t like the dragon parable either. It’s overlong, a bit condescending and ignores the core problem that anti-aging research has done a pretty poor job of showing concrete achievements, even if it’s right that it’s under-prioritized.
Hmm. I suppose I thought the point of “Dragon Tyrant” was not to narrowly advocate for the anti-aging research program; but rather to get people to take seriously the “naïve” idea that death is bad.
Or, more specifically, to say that even though ① defeating death seems like an insurmountable goal because death has always been around, and ② there are people advocating on a wide variety of grounds against attempting to defeat death, it is nonetheless reasonable and desirable to consider.
“Dragon Tyrant” uses the technique, common to sociology and “soft” science fiction (e.g. Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams), of making the familiar strange — taking something that we are so accustomed to that it is unquestioned, and portraying it as alien.
Well, solving death without solving aging wouldn’t be that great, so I tend to look at anti-aging as the main path.
I think that people who don’t get on the “death is bad” train do so because they don’t take seriously the idea that there’s any alternative. And certainly, if you’re 80 years old and in poor health and going around denying your own mortality, you’re probably in a worse mindset than somebody who accepts that they will soon die. Until research gets to a certain point, being a proud anti-deathist is just pretentious windmill-tilting.
In a few decades maybe technology will hold the serious possibility of living indefinitely, and people will be making choices about whether to receive certain therapies or genetically modify their children in some way; and the arguments to make will be much clearer.
But also, “Dragon Tyrant” is definitely kind of narrow because it very transparently calls politicians murderers for not putting more effort and funds into anti-death research, which is a bit more than the broad stuff you’re saying.
I feel like the dragon parable correctly shows, if anything, negative progress being made towards dealing with the dragon, until suddenly, it is dealt with. I suppose one difference is that the anti-dragon projectile seems so much more achievable and imaginable than a cure for aging.
Announce ‘I would like to have conversations about the controversial topic Pick-up Artistry. Because talking about it publicly can result in problems, If you want to talk with me about that topic, please send me a message stating your position on the topic.’
By keeping it open like that and not stating your own position, it seems to be about as not prone to mindkill as you could get.
The downside is, private conversations don’t have as much bounce effects. For instance in the prior mentioned thread, Viliam_Bur essentially created a post which I don’t think would ever get paralleled in a series of private conversations.
I’m fairly sure this comment was not exactly intended as a compliment, but I can think of worse insults than having my writing put in the same category as Nick Bostrom. As the author of the first of these parables, even I recognize that these two stories differ very significantly in quality
The Blue and Green Martians parable was an attempt to discuss a question of ethics that is important to many members of this community, and which it is almost impossible to discuss elsewhere. The decision to use an analogy was an attempt to minimize mindkill. This did not succeed. However, I am fairly sure that if I had chosen not to use an analogy, the resulting flamewar would have been immense. This probably means that there are certain topics we just can’t discuss, which feels distinctly suboptimal, but I’m not sure I have a better solution.
Well I don’t like the dragon parable either. It’s overlong, a bit condescending and ignores the core problem that anti-aging research has done a pretty poor job of showing concrete achievements, even if it’s right that it’s under-prioritized. I was not a fan of yours exactly because I think the parable elides the most important parts of the actual topic. Even if a direct discussion would be flamey, it’s not better to discuss a poor proxy. I’m not trying to pick on you, I just think you tried to define the problem with some premises that were well worth dispute.
There are all sorts of other bad analogies out there though: “If canada launched missiles at the US, how would it respond?”, even though the US hasn’t turned Canada into a prison-state over the course of 50 years, is one on the news a lot right now.
Parables about the danger of nuclear weapons that ignore the fact that this danger was successfully handled (there was something on here using it as an analogy for AI).
Also, when parables are kind-of-but-not-really trying to be coy about what they’re actually about is a bit annoying, leading to stilted writing (but that’s the least of my issues).
EY also has a lot of dubious parables, but tackling those is a subject for a bigger post.
And of course there’s the whole genre of parables where two fictional interlocutors are arguing, the strawman ‘loses’ the argument, and that’s supposed to convince us of something. I think LW manages to avoid overt versions of this.
In the realm of politics (both Red/Blue and further-from-mainstream) people often apply “argument by utopia”, which suffers similar issues in that it attempts to prematurely define convenient facts and use a narrative to elide gritty, worthwhile details of an issue.
The danger wasn’t successfully handled for a lot of values of “successful”. The fact that you survive playing Russian roulette doesn’t show that you successfully handled danger. Once a nuclear bomb nearly exploded in the US where 3 of 4 safety feature of the bomb failed. If I remember right it would have needed 3 of 3 people in the Russian submarine in the Cuban missle crisis to lunch a nuclear weapon and 2 of them wanted to lunch it. There are various lost nuclear weapons.
Two of them got sick of their jobs and decided to just go to lunch. Luckily the third guy stayed at his post and just snacked on a sandwich.
Hmm. I suppose I thought the point of “Dragon Tyrant” was not to narrowly advocate for the anti-aging research program; but rather to get people to take seriously the “naïve” idea that death is bad.
Or, more specifically, to say that even though ① defeating death seems like an insurmountable goal because death has always been around, and ② there are people advocating on a wide variety of grounds against attempting to defeat death, it is nonetheless reasonable and desirable to consider.
“Dragon Tyrant” uses the technique, common to sociology and “soft” science fiction (e.g. Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams), of making the familiar strange — taking something that we are so accustomed to that it is unquestioned, and portraying it as alien.
Well, solving death without solving aging wouldn’t be that great, so I tend to look at anti-aging as the main path.
I think that people who don’t get on the “death is bad” train do so because they don’t take seriously the idea that there’s any alternative. And certainly, if you’re 80 years old and in poor health and going around denying your own mortality, you’re probably in a worse mindset than somebody who accepts that they will soon die. Until research gets to a certain point, being a proud anti-deathist is just pretentious windmill-tilting.
In a few decades maybe technology will hold the serious possibility of living indefinitely, and people will be making choices about whether to receive certain therapies or genetically modify their children in some way; and the arguments to make will be much clearer.
But also, “Dragon Tyrant” is definitely kind of narrow because it very transparently calls politicians murderers for not putting more effort and funds into anti-death research, which is a bit more than the broad stuff you’re saying.
I feel like the dragon parable correctly shows, if anything, negative progress being made towards dealing with the dragon, until suddenly, it is dealt with. I suppose one difference is that the anti-dragon projectile seems so much more achievable and imaginable than a cure for aging.
Right; literally having a “magic bullet” solve the problem of the story, even if it takes a lot of development, is another flaw of the story.
What would you think of the following solution?
Announce ‘I would like to have conversations about the controversial topic Pick-up Artistry. Because talking about it publicly can result in problems, If you want to talk with me about that topic, please send me a message stating your position on the topic.’
By keeping it open like that and not stating your own position, it seems to be about as not prone to mindkill as you could get.
The downside is, private conversations don’t have as much bounce effects. For instance in the prior mentioned thread, Viliam_Bur essentially created a post which I don’t think would ever get paralleled in a series of private conversations.
(Viliam_Bur’s post for reference: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/klx/ethics_in_a_feedback_loop_a_parable/b5oz