What exactly is an applause light? Based on Eliezer’s post, I see it as a description of a goal, without any specifics on how to achieve that goal. I’m not sure I see that in this poster; the poster presents an implied suggestion on how to reason better (look for fallacies like these in the speech of yourself and others).
If you’re suggesting that being able to avoid these logical fallacies falls out of reading Less Wrong automatically, and the poster is therefore preaching to the choir here, that’s a different allegation.
Applause lights are when you say a meaningless or almost meaningless phrase meant to evoke good feelings about your position. “Freedom” “America” “Democracy” “The greater good” etc. The poster is really more to make you feel good about yourself and your knowledge of biases than for anything useful.
Contrast a math textbook to a poster that just has Euler’s Identity. One is useful for teaching you about math, the other is just to show off that you’re a fan of math to other people in your in-group. This poster is for people that want to point to a box during an argument and feel smug. There’s nothing terribly wrong with that, but it’s still basically just saying “yay math”.
I have friends who admit they fill their shelves with math textbooks partially to signal that they’re intellectual. It’s possible to have both an educational payload and a signaling payload.
What exactly is an applause light? Based on Eliezer’s post, I see it as a description of a goal, without any specifics on how to achieve that goal. I’m not sure I see that in this poster; the poster presents an implied suggestion on how to reason better (look for fallacies like these in the speech of yourself and others).
If you’re suggesting that being able to avoid these logical fallacies falls out of reading Less Wrong automatically, and the poster is therefore preaching to the choir here, that’s a different allegation.
Applause lights are when you say a meaningless or almost meaningless phrase meant to evoke good feelings about your position. “Freedom” “America” “Democracy” “The greater good” etc. The poster is really more to make you feel good about yourself and your knowledge of biases than for anything useful.
I see, and math textbooks are to make people feel good about their knowledge of math? How did you determine this?
Contrast a math textbook to a poster that just has Euler’s Identity. One is useful for teaching you about math, the other is just to show off that you’re a fan of math to other people in your in-group. This poster is for people that want to point to a box during an argument and feel smug. There’s nothing terribly wrong with that, but it’s still basically just saying “yay math”.
I have friends who admit they fill their shelves with math textbooks partially to signal that they’re intellectual. It’s possible to have both an educational payload and a signaling payload.