My personal and professional development keep leading me back to the LessWrong sequences, so I’ve gathered up enough humility to join in the discussions. I hope to meet your high standards.
I’m 27 and my background is in business and the life sciences; I see rationality as a critically important tool in these areas, but ultimately a relatively minor tool for life as a successful human animal. As such I see this community as being similar to a bodybuilding/powerlifting community, where the interest is in training the rational faculty instead of physical strength.
Edit: Wow, all my comments downvoted? That’s a pretty strongly negative response. Care to explain?
From what I can see, people probably thought you were belaboring a point which was not a part of the discussion at hand. You said you were answering the moral value of “there exists 3^^^3 people AND...” versus the situation without that prefix, but people discussing it did not take that interpretation of the problem, nor did Eliezer when he asked it. You might say that to determine the value of 3^^^3 people getting specks in their eye you would have to presuppose it included the value of them existing, but nobody was discussing that as if it were part of the problem. It sucks, yeah, but the way that people prefer to have discussions wins out, and you can but prefer it or not, or persuade in the right channels. A good lesson to learn, and don’t be discouraged.
Hello everyone!
My personal and professional development keep leading me back to the LessWrong sequences, so I’ve gathered up enough humility to join in the discussions. I hope to meet your high standards.
I’m 27 and my background is in business and the life sciences; I see rationality as a critically important tool in these areas, but ultimately a relatively minor tool for life as a successful human animal. As such I see this community as being similar to a bodybuilding/powerlifting community, where the interest is in training the rational faculty instead of physical strength.
Edit: Wow, all my comments downvoted? That’s a pretty strongly negative response. Care to explain?
From what I can see, people probably thought you were belaboring a point which was not a part of the discussion at hand. You said you were answering the moral value of “there exists 3^^^3 people AND...” versus the situation without that prefix, but people discussing it did not take that interpretation of the problem, nor did Eliezer when he asked it. You might say that to determine the value of 3^^^3 people getting specks in their eye you would have to presuppose it included the value of them existing, but nobody was discussing that as if it were part of the problem. It sucks, yeah, but the way that people prefer to have discussions wins out, and you can but prefer it or not, or persuade in the right channels. A good lesson to learn, and don’t be discouraged.
Thank you.