Let’s contrive an example: If everyone abandoned the cause ‘prevent global warming over the time scale of 30 years’ it would still be less of a lost cause than the cause “raise this child with faith in God such that she is accepted into eternal life in heaven” even though there may be several people diligently and actively working toward said cause.
First, you haven’t supported your first statement at all—if everyone stopped trying to prevent global warming, what is the probability of successfully preventing global warming? Global warming could be averted by events such as a supervolcano or comet impact, but “preventing global warming” is a subgoal of “preserve the environment” or “reduce existential risk” so such disasters would not really count as accomplishing the task.
Second, if your mission is to raise a child that is accepted into heaven, it could be successful if somebody creates an AI which simulates the Christian God and uploads dead people into simulated realities in engineered basement universes or something.
First, you haven’t supported your first statement at all—if everyone stopped trying to prevent global warming, what is the probability of successfully preventing global warming? Global warming could be averted by events such as a supervolcano or comet impact
I didn’t support the first statement at all because it didn’t need supporting. In fact, I chose a goal that is extremely unlikely to succeed so that it couldn’t be claimed that the selected ‘cause’ was too redundant a cause to be meaningful. The reason the first statement needs little support is because the alternative includes the subgoal of making an omnipotent being exist, rewriting history such that He created the universe and all that is in it and causing an entirely new ‘heavenly’ reality to come into being. You yourself provided two ways that make ‘prevent global warming’ less of a lost cause than that of making God exist, have always existed and be the cause of all that is. (The capitalisation of ‘God’ indicating reference to the specific god that did those things, not some computer that someone wants to call a ‘god’). If you want another example that is less destructive, just try “someone builds an FAI and the FAI fixes global warming as a side effect”—that is at least possible within the laws of physics, even if it is rather difficult.
but “preventing global warming” is a subgoal of “preserve the environment” or “reduce existential risk” so such disasters would not really count as accomplishing the task.
Prevention of global warming could be adopted as a cause due to it being instrumentally useful in achieving some other goal. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a cause or that achieving the goal doesn’t mean the goal is achieved. Ultimately all causes could be declared to be the mere subgoals of another goal, right up to an ultimate cause of “maximise expected utility”.
Second, if your mission is to raise a child that is accepted into heaven, it could be successful if somebody creates an AI which simulates the Christian God and uploads dead people into simulated realities in engineered basement universes or something.
If I asked the believers in question whether a simulation of an upload of their dead child is what their goal is they would disagree. Causes being abandoned and substituted for other more practical goals is a boon for those adjusting their strategic priorities but still means the original cause is lost.
The quote “The only truly lost cause is that which has been abandoned” is simply denotatively false even though it can be expected to be the kind of things people may use to be inspirational. The kind of quotes that I like to see are those that manage to be actually correct while also being insightful or inspirational.
I agree with you that a cause does not become “truly lost” simply because you abandon it—you might just get lucky and have your goal state realized by some unforseeable process. So yes, the quote is strictly denotationally false. But “we might get lucky and see our goal realized through dumb luck even after we’ve given up” is not a really valuable heuristic to have. “shut up and do the impossible” is a valuable heuristic, and that’s what I got from the quote, reading between the lines.
Quotes that have to have to have the meaning of the words redacted and replaced with another meaning from your own cached wisdom that is actually a sane message are not rationalists quotes. They belong on the bottom of posters in some corporate office, not here.
There are billions upon billions of statements people of made, millions of which can be shaped as quotable sound bites. Among those there are still countless thousands which are both correct and contain an insightful message. We just don’t need to scrape the bottom of the barrel and quote anything that triggers an applause light for a desired virtue regardless of whether it actually makes sense.
Point taken. Its not raising the level of discourse on Less Wrong or this quote thread—its just a fun quote that pattern matches to approved Less Wrong virtues, as you say. I’m defending the quote mostly because your first reply seemed kinda uncharitable.
I mean, a quote I posted last month “If at first you don’t succeed, switch to power tools” got voted up to +14, and nobody said “Actually that is incorrect, there are situations where switching to power tools won’t help at all LOL.”
I mean, a quote I posted last month “If at first you don’t succeed, switch to power tools” got voted up to +14
Perhaps the difference in reception (and certainly the difference in my reception) is that this example barely even pretends to be a rationalist quote. It’s more a macho-engineer joke. The quote here on the other hand does pretend to be rationalist—giving advice and making declarations about optimal decision making. This means it triggers my ‘bullshit’ detectors. It is a claim being made for reasons completely independent of whether it is actually true or not. This means that while I don’t see why the power tools joke managed to get to +14 in a rationalists quote thread rather than, say +5, it isn’t going to outrage me to see it upvoted significantly.
, and nobody said “Actually that is incorrect, there are situations where switching to power tools won’t help at all LOL.”
Note that ancestor quote about causes made an absolute claim about the nature of reality whereas the power tools thing just offers a problem solving heuristic that works sometimes. There difference is significant (to some, including myself).
First, you haven’t supported your first statement at all—if everyone stopped trying to prevent global warming, what is the probability of successfully preventing global warming? Global warming could be averted by events such as a supervolcano or comet impact, but “preventing global warming” is a subgoal of “preserve the environment” or “reduce existential risk” so such disasters would not really count as accomplishing the task.
Second, if your mission is to raise a child that is accepted into heaven, it could be successful if somebody creates an AI which simulates the Christian God and uploads dead people into simulated realities in engineered basement universes or something.
I didn’t support the first statement at all because it didn’t need supporting. In fact, I chose a goal that is extremely unlikely to succeed so that it couldn’t be claimed that the selected ‘cause’ was too redundant a cause to be meaningful. The reason the first statement needs little support is because the alternative includes the subgoal of making an omnipotent being exist, rewriting history such that He created the universe and all that is in it and causing an entirely new ‘heavenly’ reality to come into being. You yourself provided two ways that make ‘prevent global warming’ less of a lost cause than that of making God exist, have always existed and be the cause of all that is. (The capitalisation of ‘God’ indicating reference to the specific god that did those things, not some computer that someone wants to call a ‘god’). If you want another example that is less destructive, just try “someone builds an FAI and the FAI fixes global warming as a side effect”—that is at least possible within the laws of physics, even if it is rather difficult.
Prevention of global warming could be adopted as a cause due to it being instrumentally useful in achieving some other goal. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a cause or that achieving the goal doesn’t mean the goal is achieved. Ultimately all causes could be declared to be the mere subgoals of another goal, right up to an ultimate cause of “maximise expected utility”.
If I asked the believers in question whether a simulation of an upload of their dead child is what their goal is they would disagree. Causes being abandoned and substituted for other more practical goals is a boon for those adjusting their strategic priorities but still means the original cause is lost.
The quote “The only truly lost cause is that which has been abandoned” is simply denotatively false even though it can be expected to be the kind of things people may use to be inspirational. The kind of quotes that I like to see are those that manage to be actually correct while also being insightful or inspirational.
I agree with you that a cause does not become “truly lost” simply because you abandon it—you might just get lucky and have your goal state realized by some unforseeable process. So yes, the quote is strictly denotationally false. But “we might get lucky and see our goal realized through dumb luck even after we’ve given up” is not a really valuable heuristic to have. “shut up and do the impossible” is a valuable heuristic, and that’s what I got from the quote, reading between the lines.
Quotes that have to have to have the meaning of the words redacted and replaced with another meaning from your own cached wisdom that is actually a sane message are not rationalists quotes. They belong on the bottom of posters in some corporate office, not here.
There are billions upon billions of statements people of made, millions of which can be shaped as quotable sound bites. Among those there are still countless thousands which are both correct and contain an insightful message. We just don’t need to scrape the bottom of the barrel and quote anything that triggers an applause light for a desired virtue regardless of whether it actually makes sense.
Point taken. Its not raising the level of discourse on Less Wrong or this quote thread—its just a fun quote that pattern matches to approved Less Wrong virtues, as you say. I’m defending the quote mostly because your first reply seemed kinda uncharitable.
I mean, a quote I posted last month “If at first you don’t succeed, switch to power tools” got voted up to +14, and nobody said “Actually that is incorrect, there are situations where switching to power tools won’t help at all LOL.”
Perhaps the difference in reception (and certainly the difference in my reception) is that this example barely even pretends to be a rationalist quote. It’s more a macho-engineer joke. The quote here on the other hand does pretend to be rationalist—giving advice and making declarations about optimal decision making. This means it triggers my ‘bullshit’ detectors. It is a claim being made for reasons completely independent of whether it is actually true or not. This means that while I don’t see why the power tools joke managed to get to +14 in a rationalists quote thread rather than, say +5, it isn’t going to outrage me to see it upvoted significantly.
Note that ancestor quote about causes made an absolute claim about the nature of reality whereas the power tools thing just offers a problem solving heuristic that works sometimes. There difference is significant (to some, including myself).
Fair enough. I will shut up now.