I liked this post on a personal level, because I like seeing how people can, with extremely fine subtlety, trick themselves into thinking the world is cooler than it is, but I had to downvote because that is not what LessWrong is for, or at least to the extent that self-deceiving memes are being shared then it’s supposed to be explicitly intentional; “Instructions For Tricking Yourself Into Feeling That The World Is Cooler” is a thing you could plausibly post and explain, such that your beliefs about which tricks actually work pay rent in anticipated experiences.
My objection about specific contents of this post: you cannot make good things more plausible-about-reality by writing stories where realistic events happen plus good unrealistic events happen; the unrealistic events do not gain plausibility-about-reality by association-through-fiction.
Some clarifications about my objection, and some questions to help you hold your ground if you should and if you can: I don’t take for granted that this observation is necessarily mutually exclusive with what you have written, but the observation is ostensibly mutually exclusive; the relation of ‘subjectively-unresolved ostensible mutual exclusivity’ between your post and my observation is what we might call ‘tension’. Can you explain how the intended spirit of your post survives my objection? What do you think is the right way to resolve the tension between our world models?
One option for resolving the tension is to fix your world-model by removing this meme from it because you realize my model about reality, which does not contain your meme, is more consistent with what is noticeable about reality. Another option is to explain how I’ve misinterpreted the differences between what your argument should have been (which could be considered close enough to what you articulated), versus the worse version that it actually sounded like, followed by explaining that what your argument was close to is more important than how it sounded to me even if I heard right. This latter option could be considered ‘rescuing the spirit of the post from the letter of it’.
(Sidenote: I will concede to you the merit that having to explain the trick makes it less subtle, and might make it work less for people who care about their beliefs paying rent in anticipated experiences. This is not fun, and I think there should be a place where you can post specifically rationalism-informed tricks like that; maybe a forum called FunTricks. Arguably this would boost epistemic security for the people who do care about beliefs paying rent in anticipated experiences, as content posted to FunTricks would serve as puzzles for experienced Bayescrafters to learn more about the nature of self-deception from. The irrationalists can get lost in a fun hall of mirrors, and the Bayescrafters can improve their epistemic security; it would be win-win.
FunTricks posters could rate posts by how subtle the trick was; whether they noticed the mistake. Subtlevote vs “Erm, wait”-vote)
Imagine that your meme is importantly inconsistent with what is noticeable about reality. After all my criticisms, what merits about your post, do you think, are still true? I am interested in this! I do not want to deny your post any credit that is due to it, even if I tentatively must downvote it because that credit is outweighed by the fact that it can mislead people about how cool reality is, which is something LessWrongers care about!
It is, on principle, possible that I am in the wrong; that your model is better due to the presence of your meme(s). That would be great if it were demonstrated, because I would have the privilege of learning more from you than what you would learn from me, which is a serious kind of ‘winning’ in debates! I am especially excited about opportunities for viewquakes!
Finally, thank you for posting on LessWrong! Thank you for engaging with philosophy and the memetic evolutionary process! Every interaction can make us wiser if we have the courage to admit error, forgive error, and persist, in the course of memetic negotiation! If you post memes (idea-genes) on LessWrong, please make those memes pay rent in anticipated experiences; those are the memes we do want here! :)
Thank you for the feedback, which is very much appreciated!
First of all I confirm that I do believe in everything I said and I did not intend to explore the topic of self-deception.
I understand you saw my writing as a story with a mix of realistic and unrealistic events happening (whereas I hoped for everything to be realistic enough, besides the examples that were wonky on purpose to discuss various points of course).
the unrealistic events do not gain plausibility-about-reality by association-through-fiction.
Unless I am misunderstanding you, I very much agree that an unrealistic event doesn’t become realistic just because it’s hidden, or carefully placed, between realistic ones in a story. It indeed only sounds (at most) more realistic by association.
I don’t take for granted that this observation is necessarily mutually exclusive with what you have written, but the observation is ostensibly mutually exclusive;
Now, I wonder if this impression you got is due to the fact you saw some specific elements as unrealistic, or as presented unrealistic, and more importantly, maybe it sounded like I myself presented them as unrealistic, and plowed ahead regardless?
Because if, instead, all of the events were to be understood as presented as realistic on my part, then there wouldn’t be much doubt about my belief about “association” being seemingly alike to yours. In that case I instead suppose you would have more readily took a gripe with a specific event or more that I wrote about. I wasn’t trying to introduce unrealistic events and swiping them under a rug (tricks of a association); I intended for the events to be taken as realistic (and challenged for failing at that).
I also did not intentionally strive to prove anything “good/nice to believe”, it just so happened, unless I unintentionally guided my reasoning through means of personal tastes for conclusions I wished for.
I liked this post on a personal level, because I like seeing how people can, with extremely fine subtlety, trick themselves into thinking the world is cooler than it is, but I had to downvote because that is not what LessWrong is for, or at least to the extent that self-deceiving memes are being shared then it’s supposed to be explicitly intentional; “Instructions For Tricking Yourself Into Feeling That The World Is Cooler” is a thing you could plausibly post and explain, such that your beliefs about which tricks actually work pay rent in anticipated experiences.
My objection about specific contents of this post: you cannot make good things more plausible-about-reality by writing stories where realistic events happen plus good unrealistic events happen; the unrealistic events do not gain plausibility-about-reality by association-through-fiction.
Some clarifications about my objection, and some questions to help you hold your ground if you should and if you can: I don’t take for granted that this observation is necessarily mutually exclusive with what you have written, but the observation is ostensibly mutually exclusive; the relation of ‘subjectively-unresolved ostensible mutual exclusivity’ between your post and my observation is what we might call ‘tension’. Can you explain how the intended spirit of your post survives my objection? What do you think is the right way to resolve the tension between our world models?
One option for resolving the tension is to fix your world-model by removing this meme from it because you realize my model about reality, which does not contain your meme, is more consistent with what is noticeable about reality. Another option is to explain how I’ve misinterpreted the differences between what your argument should have been (which could be considered close enough to what you articulated), versus the worse version that it actually sounded like, followed by explaining that what your argument was close to is more important than how it sounded to me even if I heard right. This latter option could be considered ‘rescuing the spirit of the post from the letter of it’.
(Sidenote: I will concede to you the merit that having to explain the trick makes it less subtle, and might make it work less for people who care about their beliefs paying rent in anticipated experiences. This is not fun, and I think there should be a place where you can post specifically rationalism-informed tricks like that; maybe a forum called FunTricks. Arguably this would boost epistemic security for the people who do care about beliefs paying rent in anticipated experiences, as content posted to FunTricks would serve as puzzles for experienced Bayescrafters to learn more about the nature of self-deception from. The irrationalists can get lost in a fun hall of mirrors, and the Bayescrafters can improve their epistemic security; it would be win-win.
FunTricks posters could rate posts by how subtle the trick was; whether they noticed the mistake. Subtlevote vs “Erm, wait”-vote)
Imagine that your meme is importantly inconsistent with what is noticeable about reality. After all my criticisms, what merits about your post, do you think, are still true? I am interested in this! I do not want to deny your post any credit that is due to it, even if I tentatively must downvote it because that credit is outweighed by the fact that it can mislead people about how cool reality is, which is something LessWrongers care about!
It is, on principle, possible that I am in the wrong; that your model is better due to the presence of your meme(s). That would be great if it were demonstrated, because I would have the privilege of learning more from you than what you would learn from me, which is a serious kind of ‘winning’ in debates! I am especially excited about opportunities for viewquakes!
Finally, thank you for posting on LessWrong! Thank you for engaging with philosophy and the memetic evolutionary process! Every interaction can make us wiser if we have the courage to admit error, forgive error, and persist, in the course of memetic negotiation! If you post memes (idea-genes) on LessWrong, please make those memes pay rent in anticipated experiences; those are the memes we do want here! :)
Thank you for the feedback, which is very much appreciated!
First of all I confirm that I do believe in everything I said and I did not intend to explore the topic of self-deception.
I understand you saw my writing as a story with a mix of realistic and unrealistic events happening (whereas I hoped for everything to be realistic enough, besides the examples that were wonky on purpose to discuss various points of course).
Unless I am misunderstanding you, I very much agree that an unrealistic event doesn’t become realistic just because it’s hidden, or carefully placed, between realistic ones in a story. It indeed only sounds (at most) more realistic by association.
Now, I wonder if this impression you got is due to the fact you saw some specific elements as unrealistic, or as presented unrealistic, and more importantly, maybe it sounded like I myself presented them as unrealistic, and plowed ahead regardless?
Because if, instead, all of the events were to be understood as presented as realistic on my part, then there wouldn’t be much doubt about my belief about “association” being seemingly alike to yours.
In that case I instead suppose you would have more readily took a gripe with a specific event or more that I wrote about.
I wasn’t trying to introduce unrealistic events and swiping them under a rug (tricks of a association); I intended for the events to be taken as realistic (and challenged for failing at that).
I also did not intentionally strive to prove anything “good/nice to believe”, it just so happened, unless I unintentionally guided my reasoning through means of personal tastes for conclusions I wished for.