Allow me to gently point out that you have written several articles here, and as of now, most of them received 0 karma points (and one of them received 1 karma point). Considering that downvotes are currently disabled, this is practically as bad as possible. Unlike some other places on internet, on LessWrong you won’t get banned or have your content censored by moderators merely because someone disagrees with you. But with the downvotes enabled, I believe your articles would be downvoted.
This is not a big problem per se; I am just trying to point out here that your current style… uhm… seems incompatible with LW in some aspects. Please don’t take this the wrong way; I think you are a nice and smart person; however, there is something about LW philosophy that you don’t get, and I am not sure whether you are even aware of this fact. I might explain in more detail later, but the point I want to make is that...
When you somewhere online associate yourself with LW or Yudkowsky, to a reader unfamiliar with LW you are providing a very misleading picture of what LW is about; and I would say it is quite damaging picture. More bluntly, you writing somewhere about LW is a negative advertising. I would appreciate if you could stop doing this until… I guess, until some of your posts on LW gets at least 10 karma points, which would suggest that you finally understood what this website is about. Also, I don’t think that reposting your older articles here is the way to achieve that; if the former articles didn’t get the community approval, “more of the same” is not a reasonable strategy.
Now about what you wrote here… I think that your feelings about LW at the moment are a bit unhealthy, and you already noticed that yourself—the parallel with “Guardians of Ayn Rand”. I can understand how that can happen, but this is not what we are trying to cultivate here; it’s actually the other way round, we consider this to be a failure, and a dangerous one because it seems to be a natural human way to react to things that seem awesome at the moment. This website is about overcoming our natural biases.
Hey, I’m also pretty impressed with LW / RAZ / Yudkowsky, and a few times I shared an article or two on my Facebook page, etc. But my goal was simply to show the articles to potential readers who were unknowingly looking for the same thing, just like I was when I found this website. Turned out, no one in my social circle was actually interested. And that’s okay. Actually, no, that’s not okay, but… it’s not something I could improve by proclaiming my devotion or whatever. That would look silly, and probably further repel the potentially right kind of people, and perhaps attract the wrong kind of people.
Rationality is practiced by thinking and acting rationally. Or, in the LW lingo, by “winning”. Not by public displays (well, unless doing that would be the optimal way to achieve our goals, but is it? looking at the outcomes, I don’t think so), nor by participating in the special olympics of the online debates. (Speaking about myself, my greatest benefit from reading LW was that I started participating less in the online debates, because I understood better the futility and the opportunity costs of doing so. Actually, Facebook reminds me that it is an anniversary of me posting “the victories of rationality are not the online battles that you won, but the online battles that you avoided”. I still think so.)
Just calm down. Yudkowsky is awesome. Yeah. So are many other people. So can be you. Stop looking for a god outside you; try to become (the best possible approximation of) a god yourself. Or, in the LW lingo, “become stronger”. What can you do better today than you did yesterday? What kind of mistake or a personal flaw can you improve? How can you achieve your goals better? Go ahead and win, or at least learn while failing, and then try again smarter. To give you some inspiration: are you healthy? fit? rich? emotionally balanced and happy? satisfied with your sexual life? are you helping your neighbors? making this world a better place? Choose an area, do some short background research and start working on it. Then enjoy the outcomes! Much better than having frustrating debates, whether online or not. Quoting Twelve Virtues of Rationality:
The Art must have a purpose other than itself, or it collapses into infinite recursion.
I’d say it even more easily collapses into fruitless online debates about the Art, but the point is: unless you have a goal, rationality is not only useless, but actually impossible to practice. Returning to the original point, one of the signs of a cultist is that his goals only consist of bullshit and promoting the cult itself. Stop doing that, find a better goal, and practice rationality as a tool to achieve that goal.
I bless you in the name of Eliezer, go and sin no more! Also, read three non-Yudkowsky books recommended on LW as a penance. :D
Allow me to gently point out that you have written several articles here, and as of now, most of them received 0 karma points (and one of them received 1 karma point). Considering that downvotes are currently disabled, this is practically as bad as possible. Unlike some other places on internet, on LessWrong you won’t get banned or have your content censored by moderators merely because someone disagrees with you. But with the downvotes enabled, I believe your articles would be downvoted.
This is not a big problem per se; I am just trying to point out here that your current style… uhm… seems incompatible with LW in some aspects. Please don’t take this the wrong way; I think you are a nice and smart person; however, there is something about LW philosophy that you don’t get, and I am not sure whether you are even aware of this fact. I might explain in more detail later, but the point I want to make is that...
When you somewhere online associate yourself with LW or Yudkowsky, to a reader unfamiliar with LW you are providing a very misleading picture of what LW is about; and I would say it is quite damaging picture. More bluntly, you writing somewhere about LW is a negative advertising. I would appreciate if you could stop doing this until… I guess, until some of your posts on LW gets at least 10 karma points, which would suggest that you finally understood what this website is about. Also, I don’t think that reposting your older articles here is the way to achieve that; if the former articles didn’t get the community approval, “more of the same” is not a reasonable strategy.
Now about what you wrote here… I think that your feelings about LW at the moment are a bit unhealthy, and you already noticed that yourself—the parallel with “Guardians of Ayn Rand”. I can understand how that can happen, but this is not what we are trying to cultivate here; it’s actually the other way round, we consider this to be a failure, and a dangerous one because it seems to be a natural human way to react to things that seem awesome at the moment. This website is about overcoming our natural biases.
Hey, I’m also pretty impressed with LW / RAZ / Yudkowsky, and a few times I shared an article or two on my Facebook page, etc. But my goal was simply to show the articles to potential readers who were unknowingly looking for the same thing, just like I was when I found this website. Turned out, no one in my social circle was actually interested. And that’s okay. Actually, no, that’s not okay, but… it’s not something I could improve by proclaiming my devotion or whatever. That would look silly, and probably further repel the potentially right kind of people, and perhaps attract the wrong kind of people.
Rationality is practiced by thinking and acting rationally. Or, in the LW lingo, by “winning”. Not by public displays (well, unless doing that would be the optimal way to achieve our goals, but is it? looking at the outcomes, I don’t think so), nor by participating in the special olympics of the online debates. (Speaking about myself, my greatest benefit from reading LW was that I started participating less in the online debates, because I understood better the futility and the opportunity costs of doing so. Actually, Facebook reminds me that it is an anniversary of me posting “the victories of rationality are not the online battles that you won, but the online battles that you avoided”. I still think so.)
Just calm down. Yudkowsky is awesome. Yeah. So are many other people. So can be you. Stop looking for a god outside you; try to become (the best possible approximation of) a god yourself. Or, in the LW lingo, “become stronger”. What can you do better today than you did yesterday? What kind of mistake or a personal flaw can you improve? How can you achieve your goals better? Go ahead and win, or at least learn while failing, and then try again smarter. To give you some inspiration: are you healthy? fit? rich? emotionally balanced and happy? satisfied with your sexual life? are you helping your neighbors? making this world a better place? Choose an area, do some short background research and start working on it. Then enjoy the outcomes! Much better than having frustrating debates, whether online or not. Quoting Twelve Virtues of Rationality:
I’d say it even more easily collapses into fruitless online debates about the Art, but the point is: unless you have a goal, rationality is not only useless, but actually impossible to practice. Returning to the original point, one of the signs of a cultist is that his goals only consist of bullshit and promoting the cult itself. Stop doing that, find a better goal, and practice rationality as a tool to achieve that goal.
I bless you in the name of Eliezer, go and sin no more! Also, read three non-Yudkowsky books recommended on LW as a penance. :D
Thank you! I wanted to write something similar, but couldn’t put it as gently as you did.