My first encounter with rationalists was indeed of this type.
If I’m chatting with other rationalists I will use a term like akrasia but in other contexts I will say procastination.
I’m prefectly able to use different words in different social contexts.
In my experience spending time with rationalists and studying aspects of it myself
There are ways of studying rationality that do have those effects. I don’t think going to a CFAR workshop is going to make a person less likely to convince the average person.
I tried to explain that science can certainly tell us what is going on at various stages of development, but that it cannot tell us what is a “human deserving of right” as that is a purely moral category. This was to no avail.
Conving a person who believes in sciencism that science doesn’t work that way is similar to trying to convince a theist that there’s no god. Both are hard problems that you can’t easily solve by making emotional appeals even if you are good at making emotional appeal.
I claim that to convince another human being, you must be able to model their cognitive processes.
I don’t believe that to be true. In many cases it’s possible to convince other people by making generalized statements that different human beings will interpret differently and where it’s not important that you know which interpretation the other person chooses.
In NLP that principle is called the Milton model.
As many rationalists realize, humans have a tendency to model other humans as similar to themselves.
I think it would be more accurate to say humans have a tendency to model other humans as they believe themselves to be.
I pointed out that within the context of fetuses being humans deserving or rights, abortion is obviously murder and that he was missing the point of his opponents.
From an LW perspective I think abortion is obviously murder is an argument with little substance because it’s about the definitions of words. My reflex through ratioanlity training would be to taboo murder.
I actually find it hard to identify those beliefs because I hold many of them. Nonetheless, a chat with many other human beings regarding the theory of the mind, metaphysics, morality, etc will reveal gaps the size of the grand canyon between the average rationalist and the average person. Maybe at some level, there is agreement, but when it comes to object-level issues, the disagreement is immense.
I don’t think that the average rationalist has the same opinon on any of those subjects. There a sizeable portion of EA people in this community but not everybody agrees with the EA frame.
I had a Hemming circle at our local LW meetup where pride was very important to the circled person. He choose actions because he wanted to achive results that make him feel pride. For myself pride is no important concept or emotion. It’s not an emotion that I seek.
The Hamming cirlce allowed me to have a perspective into the workings of a mind that in that regard significantly different then myself. Hamming circles are a good way to learn to model people different than yourself.
There are people in this community who focus on analytical reasoning and as a result are bad at modelling normal people. I think those people would get both more rational and better at modeling normal people if they would frequently engage in Hamming circles.
I think the same is true for practicing techniques like goal factoring and urge propagation.
If you train Focusing you can speak from that place to make stronger emotional appeal than you could otherwise.
If I’m chatting with other rationalists I will use a term like akrasia but in other contexts I will say procastination. I’m prefectly able to use different words in different social contexts.
There are ways of studying rationality that do have those effects. I don’t think going to a CFAR workshop is going to make a person less likely to convince the average person.
Conving a person who believes in sciencism that science doesn’t work that way is similar to trying to convince a theist that there’s no god. Both are hard problems that you can’t easily solve by making emotional appeals even if you are good at making emotional appeal.
I don’t believe that to be true. In many cases it’s possible to convince other people by making generalized statements that different human beings will interpret differently and where it’s not important that you know which interpretation the other person chooses.
In NLP that principle is called the Milton model.
I think it would be more accurate to say humans have a tendency to model other humans as they believe themselves to be.
From an LW perspective I think
abortion is obviously murderis an argument with little substance because it’s about the definitions of words. My reflex through ratioanlity training would be to taboomurder.I don’t think that the average rationalist has the same opinon on any of those subjects. There a sizeable portion of EA people in this community but not everybody agrees with the EA frame.
I had a Hemming circle at our local LW meetup where
pridewas very important to the circled person. He choose actions because he wanted to achive results that make him feelpride. For myselfprideis no important concept or emotion. It’s not an emotion that I seek.The Hamming cirlce allowed me to have a perspective into the workings of a mind that in that regard significantly different then myself. Hamming circles are a good way to learn to model people different than yourself.
There are people in this community who focus on analytical reasoning and as a result are bad at modelling normal people. I think those people would get both more rational and better at modeling normal people if they would frequently engage in Hamming circles.
I think the same is true for practicing techniques like goal factoring and urge propagation.
If you train Focusing you can speak from that place to make stronger emotional appeal than you could otherwise.