I thought about believing that people are nicer than they really are before reading this and the previous article and I was worried I did that thing where I believed I succeeded in deceiving myself. Then I unpacked it to be “it is beneficial to act like you expect the next person you meet to be nice because if you believe that they are likely to turn out mean then you will start acting as if you expect them to be a jerk, which is more likely to make them act like a jerk; therefore just act as if you already think they’re nice but be prepared to appropriately react to evidence that they’re a jerk if they present it.” Which I think is straight-forward and not contradictory, right? Because it doesn’t tell me to believe anything that conflicts with reality, it just tells me how to act.
I’m curious if this maps at all onto the existence of God. Does acting like you believe God exists cause you to do certain good things that you wouldn’t do otherwise?
it is beneficial to act like you expect the next person you meet to be nice
Are you suggesting a strategy different from “default to acting nice to people”? You can justify this strategy without phrasing it in terms of acting as if you have a belief you don’t have.
Does acting like you believe God exists cause you to do certain good things that you wouldn’t do otherwise?
Probably, but as someone who reads LW, you hopefully recognize that you can just do those things anyway without making any statements about your beliefs.
Are you suggesting a strategy different from “default to acting nice to people”?
Oops, sorry! I am suggesting the strategy “continue meeting strangers and being nice to them” for the problem of finding nice people. As opposed to “after meeting 5 jerks in a row, conclude that everyone is a jerk and hide from humans forever.”
You can justify this strategy without phrasing it in terms of acting as if you have a belief you don’t have.
Exactly! And I think I phrased it more or less this way when I computed it for personal use. But I keep encountering people who try to argue that there’s no point of meeting the next person because the past 5 people they’ve talked to turned out to be jerks. And I think arguing with those people turned my argument into “Well you shouldn’t BELIEVE the next person is going to be a jerk because that’s probably skewing your data.” Which isn’t quite what I meant; it just got stuck in my head in that flawed form. I wasn’t trying to get them to believe their data away; I was trying to get them to act nice in spite of it. =P
Does acting like you believe God exists cause you to do certain good things that you wouldn’t do otherwise?
Yeah, I was trying to sorta-direct the comment at the person mentioned in the body of the post who is probably long gone by now. I was wondering if there was a “useful action” component in their desire to keep a God node around in their head that they consciously keep from melting away.
I thought about believing that people are nicer than they really are before reading this and the previous article and I was worried I did that thing where I believed I succeeded in deceiving myself. Then I unpacked it to be “it is beneficial to act like you expect the next person you meet to be nice because if you believe that they are likely to turn out mean then you will start acting as if you expect them to be a jerk, which is more likely to make them act like a jerk; therefore just act as if you already think they’re nice but be prepared to appropriately react to evidence that they’re a jerk if they present it.” Which I think is straight-forward and not contradictory, right? Because it doesn’t tell me to believe anything that conflicts with reality, it just tells me how to act.
I’m curious if this maps at all onto the existence of God. Does acting like you believe God exists cause you to do certain good things that you wouldn’t do otherwise?
Are you suggesting a strategy different from “default to acting nice to people”? You can justify this strategy without phrasing it in terms of acting as if you have a belief you don’t have.
Probably, but as someone who reads LW, you hopefully recognize that you can just do those things anyway without making any statements about your beliefs.
Oops, sorry! I am suggesting the strategy “continue meeting strangers and being nice to them” for the problem of finding nice people. As opposed to “after meeting 5 jerks in a row, conclude that everyone is a jerk and hide from humans forever.”
Exactly! And I think I phrased it more or less this way when I computed it for personal use. But I keep encountering people who try to argue that there’s no point of meeting the next person because the past 5 people they’ve talked to turned out to be jerks. And I think arguing with those people turned my argument into “Well you shouldn’t BELIEVE the next person is going to be a jerk because that’s probably skewing your data.” Which isn’t quite what I meant; it just got stuck in my head in that flawed form. I wasn’t trying to get them to believe their data away; I was trying to get them to act nice in spite of it. =P
Yeah, I was trying to sorta-direct the comment at the person mentioned in the body of the post who is probably long gone by now. I was wondering if there was a “useful action” component in their desire to keep a God node around in their head that they consciously keep from melting away.