Some of which are quite dangerous. Either the JSTOR or PACER incidents could have killed any associated small nonprofit with legal bills. (JSTOR’s annual revenue is something like 53x that of SIAI.)
As fun as it is to watch Swartz’s activities (from a safe distance), I would not want such antics conducted on a website I enjoy reading and would like to see continue.
As fun as it is to watch Swartz’s activities (from a safe distance), I would not want such antics conducted on a website I enjoy reading and would like to see continue.
Wait, are you saying this aaronsw is the same guy as the guy currently being (tragically, comically) prosecuted for fraud? That’s kinda cool!
I don’t think it’s fair—I think it’s a bit motivated—to mention these as mysterious controversies and antics, without also mentioning that his actions could reasonably be interpreted as heroic. I was applauding when I read the JSTOR incident, and only wish he’d gotten away with downloading the whole thing and distributing it.
But there’s a difference between admiring the first penguin off the ice and noting that this is a good thing to do, and wanting to be that penguin or near enough that penguin that one might fall off as well. And this is especially true for organizations.
Even if so, one should still at least mention, in a debate on character, that the controversy in question just happened to be about an attempted heroic good deed.
Good grief. You said, ‘Aaron’s achievements of type X are really awesome and we could use more achivements on LW!’ Me: ‘But type X stuff is incredibly dangerous and could kill the website or SIAI, and it’s a little amazing Swartz has escaped both past X incidents with as apparently little damage as he has*.’ You: ‘zomg did you just seriously say Swartz posting to LW endangers SIAI?!’
Er, no, I didn’t, unless Swartz posting to LW is now the ‘actual track record of achievement’ that you are vaunting, which seems unlikely. I said his accomplishments like JSTOR or PACER (to name 2 specific examples, again, to make it impossible to misunderstand me, again) endanger any organization or website they are associated with.
EDIT: * Note that I wrote this comment several months before Aaron Swartz committed suicide due to the prosecution over the JSTOR incident.
I did once suggest a similar heuristic; but I feel the need to point out that there are many people in this world with track records of achievement, including, like, Mitt Romney or something, and that the heuristic is supposed to be, “Pay attention to rationalists with track records outside rationality”, e.g. Dawkins and Feynman.
Mitt Romney strikes me as a fairly poor example, since from my knowledge of his pre-political life, he seems like a strong rationalist. He looks much better on the instrumental rationality side than the epistemic rationality side, but I think I would rather hang out with Mormon management consultants than atheist waiters. (At least, I think I have more to learn from the former than the latter.)
1 seems true only in the sense that, in general, immorality is more attractive to bad decision-makers than to good decision-makers, but I would be reluctant to extend beyond that.
What if it had no effect on morality, but just made people more effective? As long as the sign bit on people’s actions is already usually positive, rationality would still be a good idea.
Well, if you don’t mind me answering a question with a questions, more effective at what? If it just makes you more effective at getting what you want, whether or not what you want is the right thing to want, then it’s only helpful to the extent that you want the right things, and harmful to the extent that you want the wrong things. That’s nothing very great, and certainly nothing to spend a lot of time improving.
But if rationality can make you want, and make you more effective at getting, good things only, then it’s an inestimable treasure, and worth a lifetime’s pursuit. The ‘morally good’ seems to me the right word for what is in every possible case good, and never bad.
He looks much better on the instrumental rationality side than the epistemic rationality side, but I think I would rather hang out with Mormon management consultants than atheist waiters.
He has no epistemic rationality to speak of. He can convince himself that anything is true, no matter what the evidence.
He has no epistemic rationality to speak of. He can convince himself that anything is true, no matter what the evidence.
Having only interacted with his public persona, I am unwilling to comment on his private beliefs.
His professional life gives a great example of looking into the dark, though, in insisting on a “heads I win tails you lose” deal with Bain to start Bain Capital. I don’t know if that was because he was generally cautious or because he stopped and asked “what if our theories are wrong?”, but the latter seems more likely to me.
He has no epistemic rationality to speak of. He can convince himself that anything is true, no matter what the evidence.
Having only interacted with his public persona, I am unwilling to comment on his private beliefs.
The public persona, that which you can actually interact with, is the only one that matters for the purpose of choosing whether to believe what people say. If this person (I assume he is an American political figure of some sort?) happens to be a brilliant epistemic rationalists merely pretending convincingly that he is utterly (epistemically) irrational then you still shouldn’t pay any attention to what he says.
I agree that, in general, public statements by politicians should not be taken very seriously, and Romney is no exception. I think the examples of actions he’s taken, particularly in his pre-political life, are more informative.
I assume he is an American political figure of some sort?
Yes. Previously, he was a management consultant who helped develop the practice of buying companies explicitly to reshape them, which was a great application of “wait, if we believe that we actually help companies, then we’re in a perfect position to buy low and sell high.”
I fail to see how finding more already-rationalists with a track record would benefit LW specifically*, unless those individuals are public figures of some renown that can attract public attention to LW and related organisations or can directly contribute content, insight and training methods. Perhaps I’m just missing some evidence here, but my priors place the usefulness of already-rationalists within the same error margin as non-rationalists who are public figures that would bother to read / post on LW.
Paying attention to (rationalists with track records outside rationality)** seems like it would be mostly useful for demonstrating to aware but uninterested/unconvinced people that training rationality and “raising the sanity waterline” are effective strategies that do have real-world usefulness outside “philosophical”*** word problems.
* Any more than, say, anyone else or people with any visible track record who are also public figures.
** Perhaps someone could coin a term for this? It seems like a personspace subgroup relevant enough to have a less annoying label. Perhaps something playing on Beisutsukai or a variation of the Masked Hero imagery?
*** Used here in the layman’s definition of “philosophical”: airy, cloud-head, idealist, based on pretty assumptions and “clean” models where everything just works the way it’s “supposed to” rather than how-things-are-in-real-life. AKA the “Philosophy is a stupid waste of time” view.
I think the idea here is to find people who have found the types of rationality that lead to actual life success—found a replicable method for succeeding at things. Such an individual is expected to be a rationalist and to have a track record of achievement.
See, even as no fan of his whatsoever, I suspect Mitt Romney is a very smart fellow I would be foolish to pay no heed to in the general case, and who probably has a fair bit of tried and tested knowledge he’s gained in the pursuit of thinking about thinking. Even given qualms I have about the quality of some things he’s been quoted as saying of late, but then presidential campaigns select for bullshit.
My filtering criteria (maybe flawed) is “people whose biographies are still read after a few decades”. This way “non-rationalist” like Churchill gets read; looking for “rationalists” will end up selecting people too similar to you yourself to learn interesting things.
Here’s one: Attracting sufficient attention from people with track records of achievements for said people to begin engaging in active discussion that will further improve LW and related endeavors, namely through public exposure and bringing fresh outside perspective. Example: aaronsw
The whole point is in the detail about getting more people into it, and admitting that stuff is wrong so we can make it less so.
He’s also someone with an actual track record of achievement. Could we do with some of those on LW?
Some of which are quite dangerous. Either the JSTOR or PACER incidents could have killed any associated small nonprofit with legal bills. (JSTOR’s annual revenue is something like 53x that of SIAI.)
As fun as it is to watch Swartz’s activities (from a safe distance), I would not want such antics conducted on a website I enjoy reading and would like to see continue.
Wait, are you saying this aaronsw is the same guy as the guy currently being (tragically, comically) prosecuted for fraud? That’s kinda cool!
What are the JSTOR and PACER incidents?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#Controversies
I don’t think it’s fair—I think it’s a bit motivated—to mention these as mysterious controversies and antics, without also mentioning that his actions could reasonably be interpreted as heroic. I was applauding when I read the JSTOR incident, and only wish he’d gotten away with downloading the whole thing and distributing it.
I agree they were heroic and good things, and I was disgusted when I looked into JSTOR’s financial filings (not that I was happy with the WMF either).
But there’s a difference between admiring the first penguin off the ice and noting that this is a good thing to do, and wanting to be that penguin or near enough that penguin that one might fall off as well. And this is especially true for organizations.
Even if so, one should still at least mention, in a debate on character, that the controversy in question just happened to be about an attempted heroic good deed.
Did you really just assert that having Swartz post to LessWrong puts SIAI at serious legal and financial risk?
Good grief. You said, ‘Aaron’s achievements of type X are really awesome and we could use more achivements on LW!’ Me: ‘But type X stuff is incredibly dangerous and could kill the website or SIAI, and it’s a little amazing Swartz has escaped both past X incidents with as apparently little damage as he has*.’ You: ‘zomg did you just seriously say Swartz posting to LW endangers SIAI?!’
Er, no, I didn’t, unless Swartz posting to LW is now the ‘actual track record of achievement’ that you are vaunting, which seems unlikely. I said his accomplishments like JSTOR or PACER (to name 2 specific examples, again, to make it impossible to misunderstand me, again) endanger any organization or website they are associated with.
EDIT: * Note that I wrote this comment several months before Aaron Swartz committed suicide due to the prosecution over the JSTOR incident.
I did once suggest a similar heuristic; but I feel the need to point out that there are many people in this world with track records of achievement, including, like, Mitt Romney or something, and that the heuristic is supposed to be, “Pay attention to rationalists with track records outside rationality”, e.g. Dawkins and Feynman.
Mitt Romney strikes me as a fairly poor example, since from my knowledge of his pre-political life, he seems like a strong rationalist. He looks much better on the instrumental rationality side than the epistemic rationality side, but I think I would rather hang out with Mormon management consultants than atheist waiters. (At least, I think I have more to learn from the former than the latter.)
If: 1) being more rational makes you more moral
2) he’s saying things during this campaign he doesn’t really believe
3) dishonesty, especially dishonesty in the context of a political campaign, is immoral
Then: c) His recent behavior is evidence against his rationality, in the same sense his pre-political success is evidence for it.
1 seems true only in the sense that, in general, immorality is more attractive to bad decision-makers than to good decision-makers, but I would be reluctant to extend beyond that.
This is probably not something we should argue about here, but I think the whole project of rationality stands or falls on the truth of premise 1.
Why?
What if it had no effect on morality, but just made people more effective? As long as the sign bit on people’s actions is already usually positive, rationality would still be a good idea.
Well, if you don’t mind me answering a question with a questions, more effective at what? If it just makes you more effective at getting what you want, whether or not what you want is the right thing to want, then it’s only helpful to the extent that you want the right things, and harmful to the extent that you want the wrong things. That’s nothing very great, and certainly nothing to spend a lot of time improving.
But if rationality can make you want, and make you more effective at getting, good things only, then it’s an inestimable treasure, and worth a lifetime’s pursuit. The ‘morally good’ seems to me the right word for what is in every possible case good, and never bad.
He could expect to do enough good as president to outweigh that.
I doubt it, though.
He has no epistemic rationality to speak of. He can convince himself that anything is true, no matter what the evidence.
Having only interacted with his public persona, I am unwilling to comment on his private beliefs.
His professional life gives a great example of looking into the dark, though, in insisting on a “heads I win tails you lose” deal with Bain to start Bain Capital. I don’t know if that was because he was generally cautious or because he stopped and asked “what if our theories are wrong?”, but the latter seems more likely to me.
The public persona, that which you can actually interact with, is the only one that matters for the purpose of choosing whether to believe what people say. If this person (I assume he is an American political figure of some sort?) happens to be a brilliant epistemic rationalists merely pretending convincingly that he is utterly (epistemically) irrational then you still shouldn’t pay any attention to what he says.
I agree that, in general, public statements by politicians should not be taken very seriously, and Romney is no exception. I think the examples of actions he’s taken, particularly in his pre-political life, are more informative.
Yes. Previously, he was a management consultant who helped develop the practice of buying companies explicitly to reshape them, which was a great application of “wait, if we believe that we actually help companies, then we’re in a perfect position to buy low and sell high.”
I fail to see how finding more already-rationalists with a track record would benefit LW specifically*, unless those individuals are public figures of some renown that can attract public attention to LW and related organisations or can directly contribute content, insight and training methods. Perhaps I’m just missing some evidence here, but my priors place the usefulness of already-rationalists within the same error margin as non-rationalists who are public figures that would bother to read / post on LW.
Paying attention to (rationalists with track records outside rationality)** seems like it would be mostly useful for demonstrating to aware but uninterested/unconvinced people that training rationality and “raising the sanity waterline” are effective strategies that do have real-world usefulness outside “philosophical”*** word problems.
* Any more than, say, anyone else or people with any visible track record who are also public figures.
** Perhaps someone could coin a term for this? It seems like a personspace subgroup relevant enough to have a less annoying label. Perhaps something playing on Beisutsukai or a variation of the Masked Hero imagery?
*** Used here in the layman’s definition of “philosophical”: airy, cloud-head, idealist, based on pretty assumptions and “clean” models where everything just works the way it’s “supposed to” rather than how-things-are-in-real-life. AKA the “Philosophy is a stupid waste of time” view.
I think the idea here is to find people who have found the types of rationality that lead to actual life success—found a replicable method for succeeding at things. Such an individual is expected to be a rationalist and to have a track record of achievement.
See, even as no fan of his whatsoever, I suspect Mitt Romney is a very smart fellow I would be foolish to pay no heed to in the general case, and who probably has a fair bit of tried and tested knowledge he’s gained in the pursuit of thinking about thinking. Even given qualms I have about the quality of some things he’s been quoted as saying of late, but then presidential campaigns select for bullshit.
There are too many accomplished people in the world contradicting each other to not filter it somehow.
My filtering criteria (maybe flawed) is “people whose biographies are still read after a few decades”. This way “non-rationalist” like Churchill gets read; looking for “rationalists” will end up selecting people too similar to you yourself to learn interesting things.
Here’s one: Attracting sufficient attention from people with track records of achievements for said people to begin engaging in active discussion that will further improve LW and related endeavors, namely through public exposure and bringing fresh outside perspective. Example: aaronsw
The whole point is in the detail about getting more people into it, and admitting that stuff is wrong so we can make it less so.
Less… Wrong.