I like your lens! For my purposes you are both sitting firmly in true-but-not-quite-the-point, which I consider a good outcome; I realize it is normally good practice to clearly articulate what the larger point is at the outset, but I am walking deliberately into ineffable territory so the usual method of telling readers what the conclusion is seems disingenuous. That being said, I can provide more detail about the lens(es) from which I wrote the post:
1) I have different intuitions about the value of human life from most of the community. These intuitions have been heavily shaped by my experiences in war.
2) I can’t assume anyone else has similar experiences, and they are famously difficult to communicate directly—I need a different way to bridge the inferential gulf.
3) I opted for a concrete question about the reader’s perspective (are you expendable) and provided a concrete personal experience (which says yes) to start.
Speaking to the questions of warrior ethos etc, I put it to you that this is not as distant and exotic a thing as most people suspect. Rather it is made up of things which are closer and you already understand, like trust, common knowledge, and reliability. The hard-to-grok part is exactly how they are arranged, and why they are arranged that way. One important detail is that it does not require understanding, merely execution: in example, lots of soldiers wouldn’t be able to articulate why common knowledge is important even to themselves, but they are perfectly good soldiers because they accept the knowledge-which-is-common and conduct themselves in such a way that it is maintained.
I have decided to write a follow up, which will include a little clarification and a counterfactual to help illustrate. I will continue to use game-theoretic metaphors, but my motivation is not to achieve agreement about any particular detail of military affairs but rather to interrogate the intuitions which allow one to accept them.
A math metaphor, which I may repeat if it makes sense: we could probably come to an agreement about the details of some combat-related point, but my interest is in communicating the parallax between our perspectives of that point.
I strongly suspect that if I do well enough at this, the shift in perspective will allow more nuance about the important problems we are concerned with and our relationship to them. I think this would be valuable to the community.
I’m interested in seeing where you go from here. With the old lesswrong demographic, I would predict you would struggle, due to cryonics/life extension being core to many people’s identities.
I’m not so sure about current LW though. The fraction of the EA crowd that is total utilitarian probably won’t be receptive.
I’m curious what it is that your intuitions do value highly. It might be better to start with that.
I like your lens! For my purposes you are both sitting firmly in true-but-not-quite-the-point, which I consider a good outcome; I realize it is normally good practice to clearly articulate what the larger point is at the outset, but I am walking deliberately into ineffable territory so the usual method of telling readers what the conclusion is seems disingenuous. That being said, I can provide more detail about the lens(es) from which I wrote the post:
1) I have different intuitions about the value of human life from most of the community. These intuitions have been heavily shaped by my experiences in war.
2) I can’t assume anyone else has similar experiences, and they are famously difficult to communicate directly—I need a different way to bridge the inferential gulf.
3) I opted for a concrete question about the reader’s perspective (are you expendable) and provided a concrete personal experience (which says yes) to start.
Speaking to the questions of warrior ethos etc, I put it to you that this is not as distant and exotic a thing as most people suspect. Rather it is made up of things which are closer and you already understand, like trust, common knowledge, and reliability. The hard-to-grok part is exactly how they are arranged, and why they are arranged that way. One important detail is that it does not require understanding, merely execution: in example, lots of soldiers wouldn’t be able to articulate why common knowledge is important even to themselves, but they are perfectly good soldiers because they accept the knowledge-which-is-common and conduct themselves in such a way that it is maintained.
I have decided to write a follow up, which will include a little clarification and a counterfactual to help illustrate. I will continue to use game-theoretic metaphors, but my motivation is not to achieve agreement about any particular detail of military affairs but rather to interrogate the intuitions which allow one to accept them.
A math metaphor, which I may repeat if it makes sense: we could probably come to an agreement about the details of some combat-related point, but my interest is in communicating the parallax between our perspectives of that point.
I strongly suspect that if I do well enough at this, the shift in perspective will allow more nuance about the important problems we are concerned with and our relationship to them. I think this would be valuable to the community.
I’m interested in seeing where you go from here. With the old lesswrong demographic, I would predict you would struggle, due to cryonics/life extension being core to many people’s identities.
I’m not so sure about current LW though. The fraction of the EA crowd that is total utilitarian probably won’t be receptive.
I’m curious what it is that your intuitions do value highly. It might be better to start with that.
I am also uncertain. But it appears to me that even an informed rejection will still be valuable. Follow up here.