You mean my original “let’s talk about Jesus!” comment? I think I bolded the answer in my original comment: having fun. (If I’d known LW was going to interpret what I wrote as somehow representative of my beliefs then I wouldn’t have written it. But I figured it’d just get downvoted to −5 with little controversy, like most of my previous similar posts were.)
Why is it fun? (That is, can you take a guess at why your brain’s decided it should be fun? This way of posing the question was also the primary intended meaning for my assertion about countersignaling, although it assumed more introspective access. You gave what looked like an excuse/justification on how in addition to being fun it’s also an exercise of a valuable skill, which is a sign of not knowing why you really do stuff.)
Bleh, I think there may be too much equivocation going on, even though your comment is basically correct. My original “insane” comment is not representative of my comments, nor is it a good example of the skill of charitable interpretation.
When I give justifications they do tend to be pretty related to the causes of my actions, though often in weird double-negative ways. Sometimes I do something because I am afraid of the consequences of doing something, in a self-defeating manner. I think a lot of my trying to appear discreditable is a defense mechanism put up because I am afraid of what would happen if I let myself flinch away from the prospect of appearing discreditable, like, afraid of the typical default failure mode where people get an identity as someone who is “reasonable” and then stops signalling and thus stops thinking thoughts that are “unreasonable”, where “reason” is only a very loose correlate of sanity. My favorite LW article ever is “Cached Selves”, and that has been true for two years now. Also one of my closest friends co-wrote that article, and his thinking has had a huge effect on mine.
I think saying it was “fun” is actually the rationalization, and I knew it was a rationalization, and so I was lying. It’s a lot more complex than that. I wrote it more because I was feeling frustrated at what I perceived to be an unjustified level of contempt in the Less Wrong community. (/does more reflection to make sure I’m not making things up.) Okay. Also relatedly part of it was wanting to signal insanity for the reasons outlined above, or reasons similar to the ones outline above in the sense of being afraid of some consequence of not doing something that I feel is principled, or something that I feel would make me a bad person if I didn’t attempt to do. Part of it was wanting to signal something like cleverness, which is maybe where some of the “fun” happens to be, though I can only have so much fun when I’m forced to type very quickly. Part of it was trolling for its own sake on top of the aforementioned anti-anti-virtuous rationale, though where the motivation for “trolling for its own sake” came from might be the same as that anti-anti-virtuous rationale but stemming from a more fundamental principle. I would be suspicious if any of these reasons claimed to be the real reason. Actions tend to follow many reasons in conjunction. (/avoids going off on a tangent about the principle of sufficient reason and Leibniz’s theodicy for irony’s sake.)
It’s interesting because others seem to be much more attached to certain kinds of language than I am, and so when they model me they model me as being unhealthily attached to the language of religion or spirituality or something for its own sake, and think that this is dangerous. I think this may be at least partially typical mind fallacy. I am interested in these languages because I like trolling people (and I like trolling people for many reasons as outline above), but personally much prefer the language of algorithmic probability and generally computationalism, which can actually be used precisely to talk about well-defined things. I only talk in terms of theism when I’m upset at people for being contemptuous of theism. Again there are many reasons for these things, often at different levels of abstraction, and it’s all mashed together.
You mean my original “let’s talk about Jesus!” comment? I think I bolded the answer in my original comment: having fun. (If I’d known LW was going to interpret what I wrote as somehow representative of my beliefs then I wouldn’t have written it. But I figured it’d just get downvoted to −5 with little controversy, like most of my previous similar posts were.)
Why is it fun? (That is, can you take a guess at why your brain’s decided it should be fun? This way of posing the question was also the primary intended meaning for my assertion about countersignaling, although it assumed more introspective access. You gave what looked like an excuse/justification on how in addition to being fun it’s also an exercise of a valuable skill, which is a sign of not knowing why you really do stuff.)
Bleh, I think there may be too much equivocation going on, even though your comment is basically correct. My original “insane” comment is not representative of my comments, nor is it a good example of the skill of charitable interpretation.
When I give justifications they do tend to be pretty related to the causes of my actions, though often in weird double-negative ways. Sometimes I do something because I am afraid of the consequences of doing something, in a self-defeating manner. I think a lot of my trying to appear discreditable is a defense mechanism put up because I am afraid of what would happen if I let myself flinch away from the prospect of appearing discreditable, like, afraid of the typical default failure mode where people get an identity as someone who is “reasonable” and then stops signalling and thus stops thinking thoughts that are “unreasonable”, where “reason” is only a very loose correlate of sanity. My favorite LW article ever is “Cached Selves”, and that has been true for two years now. Also one of my closest friends co-wrote that article, and his thinking has had a huge effect on mine.
I think saying it was “fun” is actually the rationalization, and I knew it was a rationalization, and so I was lying. It’s a lot more complex than that. I wrote it more because I was feeling frustrated at what I perceived to be an unjustified level of contempt in the Less Wrong community. (/does more reflection to make sure I’m not making things up.) Okay. Also relatedly part of it was wanting to signal insanity for the reasons outlined above, or reasons similar to the ones outline above in the sense of being afraid of some consequence of not doing something that I feel is principled, or something that I feel would make me a bad person if I didn’t attempt to do. Part of it was wanting to signal something like cleverness, which is maybe where some of the “fun” happens to be, though I can only have so much fun when I’m forced to type very quickly. Part of it was trolling for its own sake on top of the aforementioned anti-anti-virtuous rationale, though where the motivation for “trolling for its own sake” came from might be the same as that anti-anti-virtuous rationale but stemming from a more fundamental principle. I would be suspicious if any of these reasons claimed to be the real reason. Actions tend to follow many reasons in conjunction. (/avoids going off on a tangent about the principle of sufficient reason and Leibniz’s theodicy for irony’s sake.)
It’s interesting because others seem to be much more attached to certain kinds of language than I am, and so when they model me they model me as being unhealthily attached to the language of religion or spirituality or something for its own sake, and think that this is dangerous. I think this may be at least partially typical mind fallacy. I am interested in these languages because I like trolling people (and I like trolling people for many reasons as outline above), but personally much prefer the language of algorithmic probability and generally computationalism, which can actually be used precisely to talk about well-defined things. I only talk in terms of theism when I’m upset at people for being contemptuous of theism. Again there are many reasons for these things, often at different levels of abstraction, and it’s all mashed together.
I’m still not clear on what makes it unjustified.
Okay.