Being rational means many things, but surely one of them is making decisions based on some kind of reasoning process as opposed to recourse to emotions.
No. CFAR rationality is about aligning system I and system II. It’s not about declaring system I outputs to be worthy of being ignored in favor of system II outputs.
You might, for example, have very strong emotions about matters pertaining to fights between your perceived in-group and out-group, but you try to put those aside and make judgments based on some sort of fundamental principles.
The alternative is working towards feeling more strongly for the fundamental principles than caring about the fights.
emotions are not easy to fake and humans have strong intuitions about whether someone’s expressed feelings are genuine.
A person who cares strongly for his cause doesn’t need to fake emotions.
Sure, you can work towards feeling more strongly about something, but I don’t believe you’ll ever be able match the emotional fervor the partisans feel -- I mean here the people who stew in their anger and embrace their emotions without reservations.
As a (rather extreme) example, consider Hitler. He was able to sway a great many people with what were appeals to anger and emotion (though I acknowledge there is much more to the phenomena of Hitler than this). Hypothetically, if you were a politician from the same era, say a rational one, and you understood that the way to persuade people is to tap into the public’s sense of anger, I’m not sure you’d be able to match him.
Julian Assange was one of the first people to bring tears to my eyes when he spoke and I saw him live.
At the same time Julian’s manifesto is rational to the extend that it makes it case with graph theory.
Interestingly the “We Lost The War”-speech that articulated the doctrine that we need to make life easier for whistleblowers by providing a central venue to which the can post their documents was 10 years ago.
The week ago there was a “Ten years after ‚We Lost The War‘” at this CCC congress.
Rop Gonggrijp closes by describing the new doctrine as:
Know there are probably not be a revolution magically manifesting itself next friday, probably also no zombie acopolypse but still we need to be ready for rapid and sizable changes of all sorts and kinds the only way to be effective in this and probably our mission as a community, is to play for the long term, develop a culture that is more fun and attractive to more people to develop infrastructure and turn around and offer that infrastructure to people that need it. That is not a thing we do as a hobby anymore. That’s also something we do for people that need this infrastructure. Create a culture that capable of putting up a fight, that gives it’s inhabitants a sense of purpose, self worth, usefulnes and then lunch that culture over time till it becomes a viable alternative to the status quo.
I think that’s the core strategy. We don’t want eternal september so it’s no problem if the core community uses language that’s not understood by outsiders.
We can have our cuddle pies and feel good with each other. Cuddle pies produce different emotions than anger but they also create emotions that produce strong bonds.
If we really need strong charismatic speakers that are world class at persuasion I think that Valentine currently is at that level (as is Julian Assange in the hacker community). It’s not CFAR mission to maximize for charisma but nothing that CFAR does prevents people from maximizing charisma.
If someone wants to develop themselves into that role Valentine wrote down his body language secrets in http://lesswrong.com/lw/mp3/proper_posture_for_mental_arts/ .
A great thing about the prospects of our community is that there’s money seeking Effective Altruistic uses. As EA grows there might be an EA person running for office in a few years. If other EA people consider his run to have prospects for making a large positive impact he can raise money from them. But as Rop says in the speech, we should play for the long-term. We don’t need a rationalist to run for office next year.
No. CFAR rationality is about aligning system I and system II. It’s not about declaring system I outputs to be worthy of being ignored in favor of system II outputs.
I believe you are nitpicking here.
If your reason tells you 1+1=2 but your emotions tell you that 1+1=3, being rational means going with your reason. If your reason tells you that ghosts do not exist, you should believe this to be the case even if you really, really want there to be evidence of an afterlife.
CFAR may teach you techniques to align your emotions and reason, but this does not change the fundamental fact that being rational involves evaluating claims like “is 1+1=2?” or empirical facts about the world such as “is there evidence for the existence of ghosts?” based on reason alone.
Just to forestall the inevitable objections (which always come in droves whenever I argue with anyone on this site): this does not mean you don’t have emotions; it does not mean that your emotions don’t play a role in determining your values; it does not mean that you shouldn’t train your emotions to be an aid in your decision-making, etc etc etc.
Being rational involves evaluating various claims and empirical facts, using the best evidence that you happen to have available. Sometimes you’re dealing with a domain where explicit reasoning provides the best evidence, sometimes with a domain where emotions provide the best evidence. Both are information-processing systems that have evolved to make sense of the world and orient your behavior appropriately; they’re just evolved for dealing with different tasks.
This means that in some domains explicit reasoning will provide better evidence, and in some domains emotions will provide better evidence. Rationality involves figuring out which is which, and going with the system that happens to provide better evidence for the specific situation that you happen to be in.
Sometimes you’re dealing with a domain where explicit reasoning provides the best evidence, sometimes with a domain where emotions provide the best evidence.
And how should you (rationally) decide which kind of domain you are in?
Answer: using reason, not emotions.
Example: if you notice that your emotions have been a good guide in understanding what other people are thinking in the past, you should trust them in the future. The decision to do this, however, is an application of
inductive reasoning.
but this does not change the fundamental fact that being rational involves evaluating claims like “is 1+1=2?” or empirical facts about the world such as “is there evidence for the existence of ghosts?” based on reason alone.
On of the claims is analytic.1+1=2 is true by definition of what 2 means. There’s little emotion involved.
When it comes to an issue such as is there evidence for the existence of ghosts? neither rationality after Eliezer’s sequences nor CFAR argues that emotions play no role. Noticing when you feel the emotion of confusion because your map doesn’t really fit is important.
Beauty of mathematical theories is a guiding stone for mathematicians.
Basically any task that doesn’t need emotions or intuitions is better done by computers than by humans. To the extend that human’s outcompete computers there’s intuition involved.
“True by definition” is not at all the same as “trivial” or “easy”. In PM the fact that 1+1=2 does in fact follow from R&W’s definition of the terms involved.
I learned math with the Peano axioms and we considered the symbol 2 to refer to the 1+1, 3 to (1+1)+1 and so on. However even if you consider it to be more complicated it still stays an analytic statement and isn’t a synthetic one.
If you define 2 differently what’s the definition of 2?
When you write “1+1” you may mean two things: “the result of doing the adding operation to 1 and 1“, and “the successor of 1”. It just happens that we use “+1” to denote both of those. The fact that successor(1) = add(1,1) isn’t completely trivial.
Principia Mathematica, though, takes a different line. IIRC, in PM “2” means something like “the property a set has when it has exactly two elements” (i.e., when it has an element a and an element b, and a=b is false, and for any element x we have either x=a or x=b) and similarly for “1” (with all sorts of complications because of the hierarchy of kinda-sorta-types PM uses to try to avoid Russell-style paradoxes). And “m+n” means something like “the property a set has when it it is the union of two disjoint subsets, one of which has m and the other of which has n”. Proving 1+1=2 is more cumbersome then. And PM begins from a very early point, devoting quite a lot of space to introducing propositional calculus and predicate calculus (in an early, somewhat clunky form).
No. CFAR rationality is about aligning system I and system II. It’s not about declaring system I outputs to be worthy of being ignored in favor of system II outputs.
The alternative is working towards feeling more strongly for the fundamental principles than caring about the fights.
A person who cares strongly for his cause doesn’t need to fake emotions.
Sure, you can work towards feeling more strongly about something, but I don’t believe you’ll ever be able match the emotional fervor the partisans feel -- I mean here the people who stew in their anger and embrace their emotions without reservations.
As a (rather extreme) example, consider Hitler. He was able to sway a great many people with what were appeals to anger and emotion (though I acknowledge there is much more to the phenomena of Hitler than this). Hypothetically, if you were a politician from the same era, say a rational one, and you understood that the way to persuade people is to tap into the public’s sense of anger, I’m not sure you’d be able to match him.
“The best lack all conviction, and the worst / Are full of passionate intensity”—W B Yeats
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt”—Bertrand Russell
Julian Assange was one of the first people to bring tears to my eyes when he spoke and I saw him live. At the same time Julian’s manifesto is rational to the extend that it makes it case with graph theory.
Interestingly the “We Lost The War”-speech that articulated the doctrine that we need to make life easier for whistleblowers by providing a central venue to which the can post their documents was 10 years ago. The week ago there was a “Ten years after ‚We Lost The War‘” at this CCC congress.
Rop Gonggrijp closes by describing the new doctrine as:
I think that’s the core strategy. We don’t want eternal september so it’s no problem if the core community uses language that’s not understood by outsiders. We can have our cuddle pies and feel good with each other. Cuddle pies produce different emotions than anger but they also create emotions that produce strong bonds.
If we really need strong charismatic speakers that are world class at persuasion I think that Valentine currently is at that level (as is Julian Assange in the hacker community). It’s not CFAR mission to maximize for charisma but nothing that CFAR does prevents people from maximizing charisma. If someone wants to develop themselves into that role Valentine wrote down his body language secrets in http://lesswrong.com/lw/mp3/proper_posture_for_mental_arts/ .
A great thing about the prospects of our community is that there’s money seeking Effective Altruistic uses. As EA grows there might be an EA person running for office in a few years. If other EA people consider his run to have prospects for making a large positive impact he can raise money from them. But as Rop says in the speech, we should play for the long-term. We don’t need a rationalist to run for office next year.
I believe you are nitpicking here.
If your reason tells you 1+1=2 but your emotions tell you that 1+1=3, being rational means going with your reason. If your reason tells you that ghosts do not exist, you should believe this to be the case even if you really, really want there to be evidence of an afterlife.
CFAR may teach you techniques to align your emotions and reason, but this does not change the fundamental fact that being rational involves evaluating claims like “is 1+1=2?” or empirical facts about the world such as “is there evidence for the existence of ghosts?” based on reason alone.
Just to forestall the inevitable objections (which always come in droves whenever I argue with anyone on this site): this does not mean you don’t have emotions; it does not mean that your emotions don’t play a role in determining your values; it does not mean that you shouldn’t train your emotions to be an aid in your decision-making, etc etc etc.
Being rational involves evaluating various claims and empirical facts, using the best evidence that you happen to have available. Sometimes you’re dealing with a domain where explicit reasoning provides the best evidence, sometimes with a domain where emotions provide the best evidence. Both are information-processing systems that have evolved to make sense of the world and orient your behavior appropriately; they’re just evolved for dealing with different tasks.
This means that in some domains explicit reasoning will provide better evidence, and in some domains emotions will provide better evidence. Rationality involves figuring out which is which, and going with the system that happens to provide better evidence for the specific situation that you happen to be in.
And how should you (rationally) decide which kind of domain you are in?
Answer: using reason, not emotions.
Example: if you notice that your emotions have been a good guide in understanding what other people are thinking in the past, you should trust them in the future. The decision to do this, however, is an application of inductive reasoning.
Sure.
On of the claims is analytic.
1+1=2is true by definition of what2means. There’s little emotion involved.When it comes to an issue such as
is there evidence for the existence of ghosts?neither rationality after Eliezer’s sequences nor CFAR argues that emotions play no role. Noticing when you feel the emotion of confusion because your map doesn’t really fit is important.Beauty of mathematical theories is a guiding stone for mathematicians.
Basically any task that doesn’t need emotions or intuitions is better done by computers than by humans. To the extend that human’s outcompete computers there’s intuition involved.
Russell and Whitehead would beg to differ.
“True by definition” is not at all the same as “trivial” or “easy”. In PM the fact that 1+1=2 does in fact follow from R&W’s definition of the terms involved.
I learned math with the Peano axioms and we considered the symbol
2to refer to the1+1, 3 to(1+1)+1and so on. However even if you consider it to be more complicated it still stays an analytic statement and isn’t a synthetic one.If you define 2 differently what’s the definition of 2?
When you write “1+1” you may mean two things: “the result of doing the adding operation to 1 and 1“, and “the successor of 1”. It just happens that we use “+1” to denote both of those. The fact that successor(1) = add(1,1) isn’t completely trivial.
Principia Mathematica, though, takes a different line. IIRC, in PM “2” means something like “the property a set has when it has exactly two elements” (i.e., when it has an element a and an element b, and a=b is false, and for any element x we have either x=a or x=b) and similarly for “1” (with all sorts of complications because of the hierarchy of kinda-sorta-types PM uses to try to avoid Russell-style paradoxes). And “m+n” means something like “the property a set has when it it is the union of two disjoint subsets, one of which has m and the other of which has n”. Proving 1+1=2 is more cumbersome then. And PM begins from a very early point, devoting quite a lot of space to introducing propositional calculus and predicate calculus (in an early, somewhat clunky form).
One popular definition (at least, among that small class of people who need to define 2) is { { }, { { } } }.
Another, less used nowadays, is { z : ∃x,y. x∈z ∧ y∈z ∧ x ≠ y ∧ ∀w∈z.(w=x ∨ w=y) }.
In surreal numbers, 2 is { { { | } | } | }.
In type theory and some fields of logic, 2 is usually defined as (λf.λx.f (f x)); essentially, the concept of doing something twice.