[Joining the Quakers] would be a money-cheap way to signal pacifism, but for me it is a socially-expensive way to attempt it. Paying for donations to orgs would probably be cheaper overall in my preference ordering.
For better or worse, this kind of willingness to do trade-offs in your ordinary life makes it seem more like a personal philosophy (not protected) rather than a duty higher than human relationships (which is protected). Your core concern is projecting sincerity, which is socially expensive.
In my case, because I am sincere, I feel the need to make sure that I seem sincere. I agree that, societally, we often think that a wish to seem sincere implies lack of genuine sincerity. That’s why I would only ask this question in the confines of a place like LessWrong, where other users might more frequently understand that thinking carefully and planning to seem sincere does not necessarily mean that you aren’t actually sincere. As Andrew Gelman likes to say, “Just because it is counterintuitive doesn’t make it true!”
This is precisely why I think it is an interesting problem. If you are a sincere person but you do not believe in “higher than human” duties in the senses that are traditionally used to qualify as a conscientious objector, and you believe you need to do something to better the odds of qualification, what should you do?
The complainer in me wants to also stamp my feet about how unfair it is to be penalized for willingness to do tradeoffs. I don’t like penalizing people for taking a decision seriously and making well-conceived plans.
I’m sympathetic to your problem. Perhaps the only useful advice I’ve given you is that spending money is not perceived as correlating with sincerity in this context. Just about any relevant non-monetary act would be better for your purposes.
spending money is not perceived as correlating with sincerity in this context. Just about any relevant non-monetary act would be better for your purposes.
Yes. People treat money differently than other things, because with money they understand the fungibility: you make trade-offs all the time, whether to buy this thing or that thing—so it is easy to imagine that any financial decision you did was a similar conscious trade-off.
Other things seem different. On LW we try to understand that they are not so completely different, but for the communication with the non-LW world it is important to remember how they see it.
For example, for a rationalist spending one week creating an anti-war website should be equivalent to spending one week working at some job and paying the money to someone else to create the website. The only thing that matters is the effect of the resulting website. However for most people, spending a week of your time creating the website (unless you are a professional website-maker) signals that you care, while paying someone else does not work this way. (Paying someone else may be a rational decision, but people assume that if you cared, you would prefer to do everything first-hand, even if that would be an irrational decision. This is how people model emotions of others; and this model is rather correct for a non-rationalist.)
Elsewhere, you said:
For better or worse, this kind of willingness to do trade-offs in your ordinary life makes it seem more like a personal philosophy (not protected) rather than a duty higher than human relationships (which is protected). Your core concern is projecting sincerity, which is socially expensive.
In my case, because I am sincere, I feel the need to make sure that I seem sincere. I agree that, societally, we often think that a wish to seem sincere implies lack of genuine sincerity. That’s why I would only ask this question in the confines of a place like LessWrong, where other users might more frequently understand that thinking carefully and planning to seem sincere does not necessarily mean that you aren’t actually sincere. As Andrew Gelman likes to say, “Just because it is counterintuitive doesn’t make it true!”
This is precisely why I think it is an interesting problem. If you are a sincere person but you do not believe in “higher than human” duties in the senses that are traditionally used to qualify as a conscientious objector, and you believe you need to do something to better the odds of qualification, what should you do?
The complainer in me wants to also stamp my feet about how unfair it is to be penalized for willingness to do tradeoffs. I don’t like penalizing people for taking a decision seriously and making well-conceived plans.
I’m sympathetic to your problem. Perhaps the only useful advice I’ve given you is that spending money is not perceived as correlating with sincerity in this context. Just about any relevant non-monetary act would be better for your purposes.
Yes. People treat money differently than other things, because with money they understand the fungibility: you make trade-offs all the time, whether to buy this thing or that thing—so it is easy to imagine that any financial decision you did was a similar conscious trade-off.
Other things seem different. On LW we try to understand that they are not so completely different, but for the communication with the non-LW world it is important to remember how they see it.
For example, for a rationalist spending one week creating an anti-war website should be equivalent to spending one week working at some job and paying the money to someone else to create the website. The only thing that matters is the effect of the resulting website. However for most people, spending a week of your time creating the website (unless you are a professional website-maker) signals that you care, while paying someone else does not work this way. (Paying someone else may be a rational decision, but people assume that if you cared, you would prefer to do everything first-hand, even if that would be an irrational decision. This is how people model emotions of others; and this model is rather correct for a non-rationalist.)