Be careful. So will the less-than-best essays and teachers. It’s a form of hindsight bias: you think this thing is obvious, but your thoughts were actually quite inchoate before that. A meme—particularly a parasitic meme—can get itself a privileged position in your head by feeding your biases to make itself look good, e.g. your hindsight bias.
When you see a new idea and you feel your eyes light up, that’s the time to put it in a sandbox—yes, thinking a meme is brilliant is a bias to be cautious of. You need to know how to take the thing that gave you that “click!” feeling and evaluate it thoroughly and mercilessly.
(I’m working on a post or two on the subject area of dangerous memes and what to do about them.)
Be careful. So will the less-than-best essays and teachers.
Less often. Learning bullshit is more likely to come with the impression that you are gaining sophistication. If something is so banal as to be straightforward and reasonable you gain little status by knowing it.
Yes, people have biases and believe silly things but things seeming obvious is not a bad sign at all. I say evaluate mercilessly those things that feel deep and leave you feeling smug that you ‘get it’. ‘Clicking’ is no guarantee of sanity but it is better than learning without clicking.
Yes, I suspect I’m being over-cautious having been thinking about memetic toxic waste quite a lot of late. This suggests that when I’m describing the scary stuff in detail, I’ll have to take care not to actually scare people out of both neophilia and decompartmentalisation.
That said, I recall the time I was out trolling the Scientologists and watched someone’s face light up that way as she was being sold a copy of Dianetics and a communication course. She certainly seemed to be getting that feeling. Predatory memes—they’re rare, but they exist.
That said, I recall the time I was out trolling the Scientologists and watched someone’s face light up that way as she was being sold a copy of Dianetics and a communication course. She certainly seemed to be getting that feeling. Predatory memes—they’re rare, but they exist.
Scary indeed. I suspect what we are each ‘vulnerable’ to will vary quite a lot from person to person.
Yes. I do think that a particularly dangerous attitude to memetic infections on the Scientology level is an incredulous “how could they be that stupid?” Because, of course, it contains an implicit “I could never be that stupid” and “poor victim, I am of course far more rational”. This just means your mind—in the context of being a general-purpose operating system that runs memes—does not have that particular vulnerability.
I suspect you will have a different vulnerability. It is not possible to completely analyse the safety of an arbitrary incoming meme before running it as root; and there isn’t any such thing as a perfect sandbox to test it in. Even for a theoretically immaculate perfectly spherical rationalist of uniform density, this may be equivalent to the halting problem.
My message is: it can happen to you, and thinking it can’t is more dangerous than nothing. Here are some defences against the dark arts.
[That’s the thing I’m working on. Thankfully, the commonest delusion seems to be “it can’t happen to me”, so merely scaring people out of that will considerably decrease their vulnerability and remind them to think about their thinking.]
This sort of thing makes me hope that the friendly AI designers are thinking like OpenBSD-level security researchers. And frankly, they need Bruce Schneier and Ed Felten and Dan Bernstein and Theo deRaadt on the job. We can’t design a program not to have bugs—just not to have ones that we know about. As a subset of that, we can’t design a constructed intelligence not to have cognitive biases—just not to have ones that we know about. And predatory memes evolve, rather than being designed from scratch. I’d just like you to picture a superintelligent AI catching the superintelligent equivalent of Scientology.
My message is: it can happen to you, and thinking it can’t is more dangerous than nothing.
With the balancing message: Some people are a lot less vulnerable to believing bullshit than others. For many on lesswrong their brains are biassed relative to the population towards devoting resources to bullshit prevention at the expense of engaging in optimal signalling. For these people actively focussing on second guessing themselves is a dangerous waste of time and effort.
Sometimes you are just more rational and pretending that you are not is humble but not rational or practical.
I can see that I’ve failed to convince you and I need to do better.
In my experience, the sort of thing you’ve written is a longer version of “It can’t happen to me, I’m far too smart for that” and a quite typical reaction to the notion that you, yes you, might have security holes. I don’t expect you to like that, but it is.
You really aren’t running OpenBSD with those less rational people running Windows.
I do think being able to make such statements of confidence in one’s immunity takes more detailed domain knowledge. Perhaps you are more immune and have knowledge and experience—but that isn’t what you said.
I am curious as to the specific basis you have for considering yourself more immune. Not just “I am more rational”, but something that’s actually put it to a test?
Put it this way, I have knowledge and experience of this stuff and I bother second-guessing myself.
(I can see that this bit is going to have to address the standard objection more.)
I can see that I’ve failed to convince you and I need to do better.
This is a failure mode common in when other-optimising. You assume that I need to be persuaded, put that as the bottom line and then work from there. There is no room for the possibility that I know more about my relative areas of weakness than you do. This is a rather bizarre position to take given that you don’t even have significant familiarity with the wedrifid online persona let alone me.
In my experience, the sort of thing you’ve written is a longer version of “It can’t happen to me, I’m far too smart for that” and a quite typical reaction to the notion that you, yes you, might have security holes. I don’t expect you to like that, but it is.
It isn’t so much that I dislike what you are saying as it is that it seems trivial and poorly calibrated to the context. Are you really telling a lesswrong frequenter that they may have security holes as though you are making some kind of novel suggestion that could trigger insecurity or offence?
I suggest that I understand the entirety of the point you are making and still respond with the grandparent. There is a limit to how much intellectual paranoia is helpful and under-confidence is a failure of epistemic rationality even if it is encouraged socially. This is a point that you either do not understand or have been careful to avoid acknowledging for the purpose of presenting your position.
I am curious as to the specific basis you have for considering yourself more immune. Not just “I am more rational”, but something that’s actually put it to a test?
I would be more inclined to answer such questions if they didn’t come with explicitly declared rhetorical intent.
I am curious as to the specific basis you have for considering yourself more immune. Not just “I am more rational”, but something that’s actually put it to a test?
I would be more inclined to answer such questions if they didn’t come with explicitly declared rhetorical intent.
No, I’m actually interested in knowing. If “nothing”, say that.
Regarding Scientology, I had the impression that they usually portray themselves to those they’re trying to recruit as being like a self-help community (“we’re like therapists or Tony Robbins, except that our techniques actually work!”) before they start sucking you into the crazy?
I’m sure that whatever it is that Tony Robbins preaches is less crazy than the Xenu story. (Although Scientology doesn’t seem any crazier than the crazier versions of mainstream religions...)
I’m sure that whatever it is that Tony Robbins preaches is less crazy than the Xenu story.
Here’s a video in which he lays out what he sees as the critical elements of human motivation and action. Pay extra attention to the slides—there’s more stuff there than he talks about.
(It’s a much more up-to-date and compact model than what he wrote in ATGW, by the way.)
I got through 11:00 of that video. If that giant is inside me I do not want him woken up. I want that sucker in a permanent vegetative state.
Many years ago I had a friend who is a television news anchor person. The video camera flattens you from three dimensions to two, and it also filters the amount of non-verbal communication you can project onto the storage media. To have energy and charisma on the replay, a person has to project something approaching mania at record time. I shudder to think what it would be like to sit down in the front row of the Robbins talk when he was performing for that video. He comes across as manic, and the most probable explanation for that is amphetamines.
The transcript might read rational, but that is video of a maniac.
A bit of context: that’s not how he normally speaks.
There’s another video (not publicly available, it’s from a guest speech he did at one of Brendon Burchard’s programs) where he gives the backstory on that talk. He was actually extremely nervous about giving that talk, for a couple different reasons. One, he felt it was a big honor and opportunity, two, he wanted to try to cram a lot of dense information into a twenty minute spot, and three, he got a bad introduction.
Specifically, he said the intro was something like, “Oh, and now here’s Tony Robbins to motivate us”, said in a sneering/dismissive tone… and he immediately felt some pressure to get the audience on his side—a kind of pressure that he hasn’t had to deal with in a public speaking engagement for quite some time. (Since normally he speaks to stadiums full of people who paid to come see him—vs. an invited talk to a group where a lot of people—perhaps most of the audience—sees him as a shallow “motivator”.)
IOW, the only drug you’re seeing there is him feeling cornered and wanting to prove something—plus the time pressure of wanting to condense material he usually spends days on into twenty minutes. His normal way of speaking is a lot less fast paced, if still emotionally intense.
One of his time management programs that I bought over a decade ago had some interesting example schedules in it, that showed what he does to prepare for his time on stage (for programs where he’s speaking all day) -- including nutrition, exercise, and renewal activities. It was impressive and well-thought out, but nothing that would require drugs.
One of Tony Robbins’ books has been really helpful to me. Admittedly the effects mostly faded after the beginning, but applying his techniques put me into a rather blissful state for a day or two and also allowed for a period of maybe two weeks to a month during which I did not procrastinate. I also suspect I got a lingering boost to my happiness setpoint even after that. This are much better results than I’ve had from any previous mind-hacking technique I’ve used.
Fortunately I think I’ve been managing to figure out some of the reasons why those techniques stopped working, and have been on an upswing, mood and productivity-wise, again. “Getting sucked into the crazy” is definitely not a term I’d use when referring to his stuff. His stuff is something that’s awesome, that works, and which I’d say everyone should read. (I already bought my mom an extra copy, though she didn’t get much out of it.)
You need to apply some filtering to pick out the actual techniques out of the hype, and possibly consciously suppress instinctive reactions of “the style of this text is so horrible it can’t be right”, but it’s great if you can do that.
I will post a summary of the most useful techniques at LW at some point—I’m still in the process of gathering long-term data, which is why I haven’t done so yet. Though I blogged about the mood-improving questions some time back.
You need to apply some filtering to pick out the actual techniques out of the hype
It’s not so much hype as lack of precision. Robbins tends to specify procedures in huge “steps” like, “step 1: cultivate a great life”. (I exaggerate, but not by that much.) He also seems to think that inspiring anecdotes are the best kind of evidence, which is why I had trouble taking most of ATGW seriously enough to really do much from it when I first bought it (like a decade or more ago).
Recently I re-read it, and noticed that there’s actually a lot of good stuff in there, it’s just stuff I never paid any attention to until I’d stumbled on similar ideas myself.
It’s sort of like that saying commonly (but falsely) attributed to Mark Twain:
“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
Tony seems to have learned a lot in the years since I started doing this sort of thing. ;-)
It’s not so much hype as lack of precision. Robbins tends to specify procedures in huge “steps” like, “step 1: cultivate a great life”. (I exaggerate, but not by that much.)
That’s odd—I didn’t get that at all, and I found that he had a lot of advice about various concrete techniques. Off the top of my head: pattern interrupts, morning questions, evening questions, setback questions, smiling, re-imagining negative memories, gathering references, changing your mental vocabulary.
(I’m working on a post or two on the subject area of dangerous memes and what to do about them.)
I’m very interested in that, I think I need it. I just read this article about Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, and I was like “what the hell is wrong with me, that I didn’t see at least some of those points myself?” It really scared me, and made me wonder what other nonsense I believe in, that I ought to have seen through right away...
It might be worth doing some analysis on the authoritative voice (the ability to sound right), and I speak as someone who’s been a CS Lewis, GK Chesterton, Heinlein, Rand, and Spider Robinson fan. At this point, I suspect it’s a pathology.
Dude. AN ASSERTION IS PROVEN BY SOUNDING GOOD. It’s a form of the Steve Jobs reality distortion superpower: come up with a viewpoint so compelling it will reshape people’s perception of the past as well as the present.
(I must note that I’m not actually advocating this.)
Argument by assertion amusement from my daughter: “I’m running around the kitchen, but I’m not being annoying by running around the kitchen.” An argument by assertion of rich depth, particularly from a three-year-old.
Nuh. Still in the Pile(tm) with yer talk, which I have watched the first 5 min of … I hate video so much.
Did you dislike your talk’s content or your presentation? So far it looks like something that should be turned into a series of blog posts, complete with diagrams.
Neither really, it’s the video itself I dislike. I’ve put the slides on Scribd, and I’m thinking of re-recording the soundtrack. Only trouble is, I’d have to watch the video first to remember what I said… and I hate video so much.
This was over a year ago but I see that you’re still around. I wanted to ask you more about this. How does Spider Robinson fit in with the others? I would also add Orwell, Kipling, and Christopher Hitchens. Maybe even Eliezer a bit.
A big part of it is that these authors talk about truth a lot and the harm of denying that it’s there, and rail against and strawman other groups for refusing to accept the truth or even that truth exists.
What do you mean by a pathology? You think there was something wrong with those authors? Are you talking about overconfidence?
Spider Robinson is very definite and explicit about how things ought to be. Unfortunately, he extends this to the idea that people who are worth knowing like good jazz, Irish coffee, and puns.
I meant that there may be a pathology at my end—being so fond of the authoritative voice that I could be a fan of writers with substantially incompatible ideas, and not exactly notice or care.
I suspect you may be reading his exaggerated enthusiasm for these things as a blanket statement about people who aren’t worth knowing. For instance, I might, in a burst of excitement, say that people who don’t like the song Waterfall aren’t worth talking to, but I wouldn’t mean it literally. It would be a figure of speech.
For instance, in one of the Callahan books he states (in the voice of the author, not as a character, IIRC) that if he had a large sum of money he’d buy everyone in the US a copy of “Running, Jumping, Standing Still” on CD because it would make the world so much better. I read this as hyperbole for how much he likes that CD, and I don’t take it literally.
I may be misremembering or have missed something in his writing, though.
As far as you liking the voice, I doubt it’s a pathology. I feel the same way you do and it’s not surprising to me that a lot of people would find that kind of objectivity and confidence appealing. It is a bias, if you confuse the pleasure of reading those writers with their actual ideas, but since I vehemently disagree with most of the above writers I’m not too worried about it. (Do you still read or like those writers?)
I recently started rereading Atlas Shrugged, and was having fun with it—no matter what else, Rand created a world where interesting things happen. It was also interesting because some things have changed. Her bad guy rich people were bad because they were slack—they weren’t interested in running their businesses, they had barely enough energy to get government favors. The modern type who’s energetically taking as much money as possible out of the business with the intent of going somewhere else is barely present.
I can’t stand Robinson any more. The tone of “we’re cooler than the mundanes” has revolted me to the point where even the milder earlier version gets on my nerves. It’s possible that I should give Stardance another chance some time. It’s also possible that the effects of Very Bad Dreams have faded. Robinson has a sadistic imagination.
Back when, I bought a copy of Running Jumping Standing Still when I happened to see it, and was annoyed to find that I liked it.
I reread “Magic, Inc.” recently, and liked it very much. I haven’t read much Lewis or Chesterton lately.
My concern about pathology is a suspicion that what I like is the comfort of being told what to think in a palatable way.
I obviously haven’t completely lost my taste for didactic fiction.
The modern type who’s energetically taking as much money as possible out of the business with the intent of going somewhere else is barely present.
Yeah, that’s one of the major criticisms of her book, that the poor honest robber-barons were being exploited by the mean old federal regulations, which has nothing to do with the real world.
I actually liked Anthem best of Rand’s books, since it didn’t pretend to take place in our world, but was set in a dystopian world instead.
You have to admit Rand can really write a page turner, even though her ideas are shit.
Heh, why were you annoyed that you liked Running Jumping Standing Still? You’re opposed to music recommendations from writers?
I haven’t read Stardance or Very Bad Dreams: what had the tone of being cooler than the mundanes, and what was the sadistic imagination? Why can’t you stand him? I’m really not familiar with the tone you’re talking about. The only tone that bothers me about SR is the whole “Let’s be hippies and work everything out and it’ll all be ok” thing. “Free Lunch” in particular. And his argument in one of the Callahan stories that his AGI character would have to be friendly because it wouldn’t have human fear or insecurity. And have you read his “Night of Power”?
My favorite Heinlein are any of his short stories, and the novels Methuselah’s Children, Time Enough for Love, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, The Cat Who Walked Through Walls, Number of the Beast, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
As far as Lewis, you have to get past the religious stuff obviously, but I loved The Great Divorce.
I’m guessing you might like Robert Sheckley, who has some of the same “telling you what to think” but it’s couched in extremely clever, biting satire. Sheer brilliance. He’s SF’s Mark Twain.
Yeah, that’s one of the major criticisms of her book, that the poor honest robber-barons were being exploited by the mean old federal regulations, which has nothing to do with the real world.
One of the things I find incredibly interesting about Rand and her followers is that Rand is rather good at capturing the spirit of the envious and the bureaucratic, but not very good at making likeable heroes. They tend to be the Steve Jobs sort- it’s nice that he exists somewhere far away from me and will sell me things, and he should be as unregulated as possible, but I’d rather not work for him or be his friend.
And so when I’ve gone to Objectivist meetings, most people there have the same hatreds and same resentments and feel them pretty strongly, but that seems to be the primary binding factor, rather than interest in rationality or personal kindness or shared goals. (I’m not counting everyone wanting to make a bunch of money for themselves as a shared goal.)
Rand looks like she’s talking about production, but her real interest is in envy. And I agree with her that it’s a terrible thing we shouldn’t reward.
I’ve always thought—even when I was fourteen and reading it for the first time—that Atlas Shrugged would have been a better book along every conceivable dimension if Dagny and Rearden had told Galt where to stuff it when they got the chance. Never mind what would have happened later. The guy had all the personality of a wind-up pocketwatch; more importantly, though, (allegedly) charismatic figures brandishing totalizing economic ideologies and apocalyptic predictions tend to get a lot of people killed, and Rand as a child of the Soviets should have known that. Bright engineers and executives that actually struggle and solve problems on-page and appear to feel empathy are a lot more fun to read about.
Of course, then it wouldn’t have been a Rand book. You wouldn’t be too far wrong if you said—of any of her books—that all the economic and political content was window dressing for her depiction of her ideal man, and not the other way around.
The only tone that bothers me about SR is the whole “Let’s be hippies and work everything out and it’ll all be ok” thing. “Free Lunch” in particular.
Are we both thinking of the book where vg gnxrf n qrhf rk znpuvan gb cerirag uhznavgl sebz qrfgeblvat vgfrys? Gur obbx va juvpu ng yrnfg bar punenpgre’f rkgencbyngrq ibyvgvba jbhyq cebonoyl qrfgebl uhznavgl, cnvashyyl?
Now the AI does seem absurd. I’m tempted to give SR a pass on that one because he had the characters talk about science fiction so much, they almost break the fourth wall to explain his motives. But the same author went on a rant elsewhere about the dangers of Star Trek science fantasy. His apparent exception for Callahan’s seems a little forced.
Are we both thinking of the book where vg gnxrf n qrhf rk znpuvan gb cerirag uhznavgl sebz qrfgeblvat vgfrys? Gur obbx va juvpu ng yrnfg bar punenpgre’f rkgencbyngrq ibyvgvba jbhyq cebonoyl qrfgebl uhznavgl, cnvashyyl?
When and which character? I’m not sure where you’re getting that.
Now the AI does seem absurd.
Well, it’s a pretty common error to think that with enough intelligence, an AI (or person) will be ethical and friendly. Eliezer himself made that mistake back in 2000 before he realized that intelligence is optimizing the world towards goals and those goals can be arbitrary. Spider was right that an AI would probably not have human emotions like greed or revenge, but he missed the idea that we’re made of atoms that the AI could use for something else.
I’d have to reread to have a strong opinion, but Sheckley at least has a lot about how thought works. Example: the short story about being stuck in a spaceship with a replicator which refuses to repeat itself. It’s a comic story (iirc, they need six copies of something to get the spaceship to work properly, and the only source of food is the recalcitrant replicator), but it’s got something to say about how categories work.
I distantly remember that… I don’t suppose you happen to recall the name of the story? If Sheckley has been teaching “how to think” then I really should read to find out how one of my favorite authors does it.
Night of Power was the alarm bell that made me realize Robinson was off the rails.
I’m not sure what the two of you mean by “Very Bad Dreams—” perhaps a misrecollection of “Very Bad Deaths?” If so, Very Bad Deaths is almost certainly the sadistic one.
I don’t know the book Very Bad Deaths. Why is it sadistic?
And I loved Night of Power. What made you think he was “off the rails”? It’s speculative fiction, remember. I don’t read him as actually supporting a racial war or saying one is likely.
Very Bad Deaths has a fair amount of torture-porn and also contains extended descriptions of the effects of an extraordinarily painful medical condition.
Night of Power made me realize Robinson was off the rails because his didactic tone and self-righteous presentation continued even when he was describing horrible and outrageous actions, cold-blooded murders on the parts of the protagonists, etc. Essentially, it was the book that made me stop trusting Robinson as an author, since it demonstrated his ability to justify (and even advocate for) ridiculous excesses, leading me to evaluate the rest of his work much more critically.
That makes me want to read Very Bad Deaths very much, which was probably not your intended effect.
his didactic tone and self-righteous presentation continued even when he was describing horrible and outrageous actions, cold-blooded murders on the parts of the protagonists, etc.
Are you sure you’re not making the mistake of confusing a character’s beliefs with the authors?
As far as the murders, have you ever seen an action movie?
it demonstrated his ability to justify (and even advocate for) ridiculous excesses
please give me more details on this. I take it you’re not a rational anarchist and don’t support Michael’s revolution? What ridiculous excesses?
I’m just very surprised that you think it’s didactic or self-righteous; I didn’t see it that way at all.
Just curious, have you read Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”? Night of Power is full of allusions to it and it may not make as much sense if you haven’t.
Robinson’s fiction has a sadistic streak (very bad things happening to the unattractive characters) that Heinlein’s doesn’t. One of the later Callahan’s novels has a plot turn which indicates that Robinson had some idea that this was problematic.
In any case, I hope you read some Robinson and let us know what you think.
That makes me want to read Very Bad Deaths very much, which was probably not your intended effect.
Oh no, I thought it was quite good, but it’s not really for the weak of stomach. One of the main characters is also basically Spider Robinson himself, so if that’s not your cup of tea I would suggest looking elsewhere—personally, though, I did find it quite entertaining.
Are you sure you’re not making the mistake of confusing a character’s beliefs with the authors?
No—in fact I’m nearly positive that I am making that mistake, but I find it comparatively hard to not make given Robinson’s general style. The whole thing just squicks me out.
I would also argue that, for much of Robinson’s work, the characters’ beliefs are those of the author (and indeed the characters themselves are essentially the author)-- though I don’t think Night of Power suffers from this.
Just curious, have you read Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”? Night of Power is full of allusions to it and it may not make as much sense if you haven’t.
Certainly I have. Robinson has always struck me as sort of a bargain-basement Heinlein.
I’m trying to understand exactly what squicks you, and I’m not doing a very good job… the Revolution in Night of Power was pretty peaceful as revolutions go.
Ok, but… wouldn’t the same objection apply to virtually any action/adventure movie or novel? Kick Ass, all the Die Hard movies, anything Tarantino, James Bond, Robert Ludlum’s Bourne Identity novels and movies, et cetera. They all have similar violent scenes.
I can’t think of any point in Die Hard where John McClane kills prisoners in cold blood (in fact, there are two times where he almost dies because he tries to arrest terrorists instead of just shooting them). And I do consider all such scenes objectionable—for instance, in Serenity, when Zny fubbgf gur fheivivat Nyyvnapr thl sebz gur fuvc gung qrfgeblrq Obbx’f frggyrzrag, or when gur Bcrengvir fnlf ur vf hanezrq, fb Zny whfg chyyf n tha naq fubbgf uvz, I had the same squicky reaction.
See, I liked that scene. Gur Bcrengvir jnf gelvat gb pngpu crbcyr haqre Zny’f cebgrpgvba fb gurl pbhyq or neerfgrq naq gbegherq be rkrphgrq. Ur jnf jvyyvat gb xvyy Zny naq rirelbar ryfr ur pnerq nobhg va beqre gb qb fb. Pngpuvat uvz bss thneq naq xvyyvat uvz jbhyq unir fnirq n ybg bs yvirf, rira vs vg jnfa’g va nal jnl snve. Squicky? Sure. Actually the wrong thing to do? Not so much.
I can’t think of any point in Die Hard where John McClane kills prisoners in cold blood (in fact, there are two times where he almost dies because he tries to arrest terrorists instead of just shooting them). And I do consider all such scenes objectionable
Which scenes are you saying are objectionable? The ones where MClane puts the lives of himself and all those he is trying to protect in danger by not shooting terrorists when he should have? Those squick me out. Utter negligence when so many lives are at stake.
McClane is probably too far in the other direction, but to be fair he’s a cop (so he has extra rules to abide by, not just normal morality) and he definitely doesn’t understand the magnitude of the situation at first.
Are you sure you’re not making the mistake of confusing a character’s beliefs with the authors?
As far as the murders, have you ever seen an action movie?
Have you ever read a novel and gotten an insistent background vibe from it that says “something isn’t quite right with the person who wrote this”? I got this pretty strong from John C. Wright’s The Golden Age trilogy, even though I started reading it knowing next to nothing about Wright.
This doesn’t seem very consistent though. Most people I’ve talked with seem to like The Golden Age a lot.
Hm, I’m a fan of Heinlein too, I guess I’d better not start reading those others. ;p
Any idea where I can look for clues about the ‘authoritative voice’?
I’m very interested in that, I think I need it. I just read this article about Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, and I was like “what the hell is wrong with me, that I didn’t see at least some of those points myself?”
The strength of C. S. Lewis’s works seem to be that they were a whole lot less bad than the alternate sources of the same message.
The hard part with something like that not being how to question your ideas, but to notice that you have an idea that needs questioning. It’s like reading Michael Behe’s books on intelligent design and trying to understand the view inside his head, how a tenured biology professor could come up with such obvious-to-others defective arguments and fail to notice the low quality of his own thinking.
Be careful. So will the less-than-best essays and teachers. It’s a form of hindsight bias: you think this thing is obvious, but your thoughts were actually quite inchoate before that.
Given a clear explanation, it’s more probably correct than secretly wrong. We don’t live in a world dominated by true-sounding lies. Incorrect things should be generally more surprising than correct things, even if there are exceptions.
(It’s confirmation bias, not hindsight bias. Hindsight bias is overestimation of prior probability upon observing a positive instance of an event.)
Be careful. So will the less-than-best essays and teachers. It’s a form of hindsight bias: you think this thing is obvious, but your thoughts were actually quite inchoate before that. A meme—particularly a parasitic meme—can get itself a privileged position in your head by feeding your biases to make itself look good, e.g. your hindsight bias.
When you see a new idea and you feel your eyes light up, that’s the time to put it in a sandbox—yes, thinking a meme is brilliant is a bias to be cautious of. You need to know how to take the thing that gave you that “click!” feeling and evaluate it thoroughly and mercilessly.
(I’m working on a post or two on the subject area of dangerous memes and what to do about them.)
Less often. Learning bullshit is more likely to come with the impression that you are gaining sophistication. If something is so banal as to be straightforward and reasonable you gain little status by knowing it.
Yes, people have biases and believe silly things but things seeming obvious is not a bad sign at all. I say evaluate mercilessly those things that feel deep and leave you feeling smug that you ‘get it’. ‘Clicking’ is no guarantee of sanity but it is better than learning without clicking.
Yes, I suspect I’m being over-cautious having been thinking about memetic toxic waste quite a lot of late. This suggests that when I’m describing the scary stuff in detail, I’ll have to take care not to actually scare people out of both neophilia and decompartmentalisation.
That said, I recall the time I was out trolling the Scientologists and watched someone’s face light up that way as she was being sold a copy of Dianetics and a communication course. She certainly seemed to be getting that feeling. Predatory memes—they’re rare, but they exist.
Scary indeed. I suspect what we are each ‘vulnerable’ to will vary quite a lot from person to person.
Yes. I do think that a particularly dangerous attitude to memetic infections on the Scientology level is an incredulous “how could they be that stupid?” Because, of course, it contains an implicit “I could never be that stupid” and “poor victim, I am of course far more rational”. This just means your mind—in the context of being a general-purpose operating system that runs memes—does not have that particular vulnerability.
I suspect you will have a different vulnerability. It is not possible to completely analyse the safety of an arbitrary incoming meme before running it as root; and there isn’t any such thing as a perfect sandbox to test it in. Even for a theoretically immaculate perfectly spherical rationalist of uniform density, this may be equivalent to the halting problem.
My message is: it can happen to you, and thinking it can’t is more dangerous than nothing. Here are some defences against the dark arts.
[That’s the thing I’m working on. Thankfully, the commonest delusion seems to be “it can’t happen to me”, so merely scaring people out of that will considerably decrease their vulnerability and remind them to think about their thinking.]
This sort of thing makes me hope that the friendly AI designers are thinking like OpenBSD-level security researchers. And frankly, they need Bruce Schneier and Ed Felten and Dan Bernstein and Theo deRaadt on the job. We can’t design a program not to have bugs—just not to have ones that we know about. As a subset of that, we can’t design a constructed intelligence not to have cognitive biases—just not to have ones that we know about. And predatory memes evolve, rather than being designed from scratch. I’d just like you to picture a superintelligent AI catching the superintelligent equivalent of Scientology.
With the balancing message: Some people are a lot less vulnerable to believing bullshit than others. For many on lesswrong their brains are biassed relative to the population towards devoting resources to bullshit prevention at the expense of engaging in optimal signalling. For these people actively focussing on second guessing themselves is a dangerous waste of time and effort.
Sometimes you are just more rational and pretending that you are not is humble but not rational or practical.
I can see that I’ve failed to convince you and I need to do better.
In my experience, the sort of thing you’ve written is a longer version of “It can’t happen to me, I’m far too smart for that” and a quite typical reaction to the notion that you, yes you, might have security holes. I don’t expect you to like that, but it is.
You really aren’t running OpenBSD with those less rational people running Windows.
I do think being able to make such statements of confidence in one’s immunity takes more detailed domain knowledge. Perhaps you are more immune and have knowledge and experience—but that isn’t what you said.
I am curious as to the specific basis you have for considering yourself more immune. Not just “I am more rational”, but something that’s actually put it to a test?
Put it this way, I have knowledge and experience of this stuff and I bother second-guessing myself.
(I can see that this bit is going to have to address the standard objection more.)
This is a failure mode common in when other-optimising. You assume that I need to be persuaded, put that as the bottom line and then work from there. There is no room for the possibility that I know more about my relative areas of weakness than you do. This is a rather bizarre position to take given that you don’t even have significant familiarity with the wedrifid online persona let alone me.
It isn’t so much that I dislike what you are saying as it is that it seems trivial and poorly calibrated to the context. Are you really telling a lesswrong frequenter that they may have security holes as though you are making some kind of novel suggestion that could trigger insecurity or offence?
I suggest that I understand the entirety of the point you are making and still respond with the grandparent. There is a limit to how much intellectual paranoia is helpful and under-confidence is a failure of epistemic rationality even if it is encouraged socially. This is a point that you either do not understand or have been careful to avoid acknowledging for the purpose of presenting your position.
I would be more inclined to answer such questions if they didn’t come with explicitly declared rhetorical intent.
No, I’m actually interested in knowing. If “nothing”, say that.
Regarding Scientology, I had the impression that they usually portray themselves to those they’re trying to recruit as being like a self-help community (“we’re like therapists or Tony Robbins, except that our techniques actually work!”) before they start sucking you into the crazy?
Wait… did you just use Tony Robbins as the alternative to being sucked into the crazy?
I’m sure that whatever it is that Tony Robbins preaches is less crazy than the Xenu story. (Although Scientology doesn’t seem any crazier than the crazier versions of mainstream religions...)
Here’s a video in which he lays out what he sees as the critical elements of human motivation and action. Pay extra attention to the slides—there’s more stuff there than he talks about.
(It’s a much more up-to-date and compact model than what he wrote in ATGW, by the way.)
I got through 11:00 of that video. If that giant is inside me I do not want him woken up. I want that sucker in a permanent vegetative state.
Many years ago I had a friend who is a television news anchor person. The video camera flattens you from three dimensions to two, and it also filters the amount of non-verbal communication you can project onto the storage media. To have energy and charisma on the replay, a person has to project something approaching mania at record time. I shudder to think what it would be like to sit down in the front row of the Robbins talk when he was performing for that video. He comes across as manic, and the most probable explanation for that is amphetamines.
The transcript might read rational, but that is video of a maniac.
A bit of context: that’s not how he normally speaks.
There’s another video (not publicly available, it’s from a guest speech he did at one of Brendon Burchard’s programs) where he gives the backstory on that talk. He was actually extremely nervous about giving that talk, for a couple different reasons. One, he felt it was a big honor and opportunity, two, he wanted to try to cram a lot of dense information into a twenty minute spot, and three, he got a bad introduction.
Specifically, he said the intro was something like, “Oh, and now here’s Tony Robbins to motivate us”, said in a sneering/dismissive tone… and he immediately felt some pressure to get the audience on his side—a kind of pressure that he hasn’t had to deal with in a public speaking engagement for quite some time. (Since normally he speaks to stadiums full of people who paid to come see him—vs. an invited talk to a group where a lot of people—perhaps most of the audience—sees him as a shallow “motivator”.)
IOW, the only drug you’re seeing there is him feeling cornered and wanting to prove something—plus the time pressure of wanting to condense material he usually spends days on into twenty minutes. His normal way of speaking is a lot less fast paced, if still emotionally intense.
One of his time management programs that I bought over a decade ago had some interesting example schedules in it, that showed what he does to prepare for his time on stage (for programs where he’s speaking all day) -- including nutrition, exercise, and renewal activities. It was impressive and well-thought out, but nothing that would require drugs.
One of Tony Robbins’ books has been really helpful to me. Admittedly the effects mostly faded after the beginning, but applying his techniques put me into a rather blissful state for a day or two and also allowed for a period of maybe two weeks to a month during which I did not procrastinate. I also suspect I got a lingering boost to my happiness setpoint even after that. This are much better results than I’ve had from any previous mind-hacking technique I’ve used.
Fortunately I think I’ve been managing to figure out some of the reasons why those techniques stopped working, and have been on an upswing, mood and productivity-wise, again. “Getting sucked into the crazy” is definitely not a term I’d use when referring to his stuff. His stuff is something that’s awesome, that works, and which I’d say everyone should read. (I already bought my mom an extra copy, though she didn’t get much out of it.)
What book?
Awakening the Giant Within.
You need to apply some filtering to pick out the actual techniques out of the hype, and possibly consciously suppress instinctive reactions of “the style of this text is so horrible it can’t be right”, but it’s great if you can do that.
I will post a summary of the most useful techniques at LW at some point—I’m still in the process of gathering long-term data, which is why I haven’t done so yet. Though I blogged about the mood-improving questions some time back.
It’s not so much hype as lack of precision. Robbins tends to specify procedures in huge “steps” like, “step 1: cultivate a great life”. (I exaggerate, but not by that much.) He also seems to think that inspiring anecdotes are the best kind of evidence, which is why I had trouble taking most of ATGW seriously enough to really do much from it when I first bought it (like a decade or more ago).
Recently I re-read it, and noticed that there’s actually a lot of good stuff in there, it’s just stuff I never paid any attention to until I’d stumbled on similar ideas myself.
It’s sort of like that saying commonly (but falsely) attributed to Mark Twain:
Tony seems to have learned a lot in the years since I started doing this sort of thing. ;-)
That’s odd—I didn’t get that at all, and I found that he had a lot of advice about various concrete techniques. Off the top of my head: pattern interrupts, morning questions, evening questions, setback questions, smiling, re-imagining negative memories, gathering references, changing your mental vocabulary.
He does, but they’re mostly in the areas that I ignored on my first few readings of the book. ;-)
Well, there’s crazy, and then there’s crazy...
I’m very interested in that, I think I need it. I just read this article about Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, and I was like “what the hell is wrong with me, that I didn’t see at least some of those points myself?” It really scared me, and made me wonder what other nonsense I believe in, that I ought to have seen through right away...
It might be worth doing some analysis on the authoritative voice (the ability to sound right), and I speak as someone who’s been a CS Lewis, GK Chesterton, Heinlein, Rand, and Spider Robinson fan. At this point, I suspect it’s a pathology.
Dude. AN ASSERTION IS PROVEN BY SOUNDING GOOD. It’s a form of the Steve Jobs reality distortion superpower: come up with a viewpoint so compelling it will reshape people’s perception of the past as well as the present.
(I must note that I’m not actually advocating this.)
Argument by assertion amusement from my daughter: “I’m running around the kitchen, but I’m not being annoying by running around the kitchen.” An argument by assertion of rich depth, particularly from a three-year-old.
Did you ever get around to reading either of the papers I linked you to there btw?
Nuh. Still in the Pile(tm) with yer talk, which I have watched the first 5 min of … I hate video so much.
Did you dislike your talk’s content or your presentation? So far it looks like something that should be turned into a series of blog posts, complete with diagrams.
Neither really, it’s the video itself I dislike. I’ve put the slides on Scribd, and I’m thinking of re-recording the soundtrack. Only trouble is, I’d have to watch the video first to remember what I said… and I hate video so much.
This was over a year ago but I see that you’re still around. I wanted to ask you more about this. How does Spider Robinson fit in with the others? I would also add Orwell, Kipling, and Christopher Hitchens. Maybe even Eliezer a bit.
A big part of it is that these authors talk about truth a lot and the harm of denying that it’s there, and rail against and strawman other groups for refusing to accept the truth or even that truth exists.
What do you mean by a pathology? You think there was something wrong with those authors? Are you talking about overconfidence?
Spider Robinson is very definite and explicit about how things ought to be. Unfortunately, he extends this to the idea that people who are worth knowing like good jazz, Irish coffee, and puns.
I meant that there may be a pathology at my end—being so fond of the authoritative voice that I could be a fan of writers with substantially incompatible ideas, and not exactly notice or care.
I suspect you may be reading his exaggerated enthusiasm for these things as a blanket statement about people who aren’t worth knowing. For instance, I might, in a burst of excitement, say that people who don’t like the song Waterfall aren’t worth talking to, but I wouldn’t mean it literally. It would be a figure of speech.
For instance, in one of the Callahan books he states (in the voice of the author, not as a character, IIRC) that if he had a large sum of money he’d buy everyone in the US a copy of “Running, Jumping, Standing Still” on CD because it would make the world so much better. I read this as hyperbole for how much he likes that CD, and I don’t take it literally.
I may be misremembering or have missed something in his writing, though.
As far as you liking the voice, I doubt it’s a pathology. I feel the same way you do and it’s not surprising to me that a lot of people would find that kind of objectivity and confidence appealing. It is a bias, if you confuse the pleasure of reading those writers with their actual ideas, but since I vehemently disagree with most of the above writers I’m not too worried about it. (Do you still read or like those writers?)
I recently started rereading Atlas Shrugged, and was having fun with it—no matter what else, Rand created a world where interesting things happen. It was also interesting because some things have changed. Her bad guy rich people were bad because they were slack—they weren’t interested in running their businesses, they had barely enough energy to get government favors. The modern type who’s energetically taking as much money as possible out of the business with the intent of going somewhere else is barely present.
I can’t stand Robinson any more. The tone of “we’re cooler than the mundanes” has revolted me to the point where even the milder earlier version gets on my nerves. It’s possible that I should give Stardance another chance some time. It’s also possible that the effects of Very Bad Dreams have faded. Robinson has a sadistic imagination.
Back when, I bought a copy of Running Jumping Standing Still when I happened to see it, and was annoyed to find that I liked it.
I reread “Magic, Inc.” recently, and liked it very much. I haven’t read much Lewis or Chesterton lately.
My concern about pathology is a suspicion that what I like is the comfort of being told what to think in a palatable way.
I obviously haven’t completely lost my taste for didactic fiction.
Second the confusion about this. I don’t see what changed in him unless you mean the author’s fictionalized daughter.
Yeah, that’s one of the major criticisms of her book, that the poor honest robber-barons were being exploited by the mean old federal regulations, which has nothing to do with the real world.
I actually liked Anthem best of Rand’s books, since it didn’t pretend to take place in our world, but was set in a dystopian world instead.
You have to admit Rand can really write a page turner, even though her ideas are shit.
Heh, why were you annoyed that you liked Running Jumping Standing Still? You’re opposed to music recommendations from writers?
I haven’t read Stardance or Very Bad Dreams: what had the tone of being cooler than the mundanes, and what was the sadistic imagination? Why can’t you stand him? I’m really not familiar with the tone you’re talking about. The only tone that bothers me about SR is the whole “Let’s be hippies and work everything out and it’ll all be ok” thing. “Free Lunch” in particular. And his argument in one of the Callahan stories that his AGI character would have to be friendly because it wouldn’t have human fear or insecurity. And have you read his “Night of Power”?
My favorite Heinlein are any of his short stories, and the novels Methuselah’s Children, Time Enough for Love, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, The Cat Who Walked Through Walls, Number of the Beast, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
As far as Lewis, you have to get past the religious stuff obviously, but I loved The Great Divorce.
I’m guessing you might like Robert Sheckley, who has some of the same “telling you what to think” but it’s couched in extremely clever, biting satire. Sheer brilliance. He’s SF’s Mark Twain.
One of the things I find incredibly interesting about Rand and her followers is that Rand is rather good at capturing the spirit of the envious and the bureaucratic, but not very good at making likeable heroes. They tend to be the Steve Jobs sort- it’s nice that he exists somewhere far away from me and will sell me things, and he should be as unregulated as possible, but I’d rather not work for him or be his friend.
And so when I’ve gone to Objectivist meetings, most people there have the same hatreds and same resentments and feel them pretty strongly, but that seems to be the primary binding factor, rather than interest in rationality or personal kindness or shared goals. (I’m not counting everyone wanting to make a bunch of money for themselves as a shared goal.)
Rand looks like she’s talking about production, but her real interest is in envy. And I agree with her that it’s a terrible thing we shouldn’t reward.
I’ve always thought—even when I was fourteen and reading it for the first time—that Atlas Shrugged would have been a better book along every conceivable dimension if Dagny and Rearden had told Galt where to stuff it when they got the chance. Never mind what would have happened later. The guy had all the personality of a wind-up pocketwatch; more importantly, though, (allegedly) charismatic figures brandishing totalizing economic ideologies and apocalyptic predictions tend to get a lot of people killed, and Rand as a child of the Soviets should have known that. Bright engineers and executives that actually struggle and solve problems on-page and appear to feel empathy are a lot more fun to read about.
Of course, then it wouldn’t have been a Rand book. You wouldn’t be too far wrong if you said—of any of her books—that all the economic and political content was window dressing for her depiction of her ideal man, and not the other way around.
Are we both thinking of the book where vg gnxrf n qrhf rk znpuvan gb cerirag uhznavgl sebz qrfgeblvat vgfrys? Gur obbx va juvpu ng yrnfg bar punenpgre’f rkgencbyngrq ibyvgvba jbhyq cebonoyl qrfgebl uhznavgl, cnvashyyl?
Now the AI does seem absurd. I’m tempted to give SR a pass on that one because he had the characters talk about science fiction so much, they almost break the fourth wall to explain his motives. But the same author went on a rant elsewhere about the dangers of Star Trek science fantasy. His apparent exception for Callahan’s seems a little forced.
When and which character? I’m not sure where you’re getting that.
Well, it’s a pretty common error to think that with enough intelligence, an AI (or person) will be ethical and friendly. Eliezer himself made that mistake back in 2000 before he realized that intelligence is optimizing the world towards goals and those goals can be arbitrary. Spider was right that an AI would probably not have human emotions like greed or revenge, but he missed the idea that we’re made of atoms that the AI could use for something else.
In the book you’re talking about, what do we learn in the big reveal? What happens immediately after the big reveal? Do we both mean this book?
Yes, that book. By big reveal, do you mean gung gur vagehqref ner gvzr geniryref? Please elaborate.
Jura Ubezng gur gvzr geniryre rkcynvaf uvf zbgvirf, ur rkcyvpvgyl fnlf gur uhzna enpr vf “qbbzrq” va uvf gvzr. Gurl pna’g ercebqhpr cebcreyl, naq gurl qba’g frrz gb unir nal cebfcrpgf sbe vzzbegnyvgl. Gurl ubcr gvzr geniry jbexf va rknpgyl gur evtug jnl gb yrg gurz punatr uvfgbel sbe gur orggre, orpnhfr jung qb gurl unir gb ybfr? V pnyyrq guvf n qrhf rk znpuvan (nffhzvat vg jbexf).
Nsgre Ubezng rkcynvaf rirelguvat, gur onq thl’f Qentba be ungpurg-zna erirnyf gung ur urneq vg nf jryy naq cynaf gb xvyy gurz. Ur frrzf snveyl vagryyvtrag, pregnvayl fznegre guna uvf rzcyblre. Ohg ur oryvrirf ur cersref n jbeyq jurer ur trgf gb xrrc gur wbo ur ybirf, naq yngre nyy uhznaf qvr.
I’ll get the refrigerator.
Hmm?
There was this post on LessWrong about thinking an AI could be prevented from being angry by cooling it down using a freezer.
I can’t seem to find it now though.
Heh, I like to joke about giving my computer cocaine to make it run faster.
I love Sheckley—but when does he tell you what to think? I read him when I was young, so maybe I didn’t notice...?
I’d have to reread to have a strong opinion, but Sheckley at least has a lot about how thought works. Example: the short story about being stuck in a spaceship with a replicator which refuses to repeat itself. It’s a comic story (iirc, they need six copies of something to get the spaceship to work properly, and the only source of food is the recalcitrant replicator), but it’s got something to say about how categories work.
I distantly remember that… I don’t suppose you happen to recall the name of the story? If Sheckley has been teaching “how to think” then I really should read to find out how one of my favorite authors does it.
I’m heading out for the weekend, but if there isn’t a definitive answer by the time I’m back, I’ll look into it.
There’s also a very cool story about a man who tries to get computerized therapy, but the program is optimized for treating aliens.
I want to say it’s The Necessary Thing.
Night of Power was the alarm bell that made me realize Robinson was off the rails.
I’m not sure what the two of you mean by “Very Bad Dreams—” perhaps a misrecollection of “Very Bad Deaths?” If so, Very Bad Deaths is almost certainly the sadistic one.
I don’t know the book Very Bad Deaths. Why is it sadistic?
And I loved Night of Power. What made you think he was “off the rails”? It’s speculative fiction, remember. I don’t read him as actually supporting a racial war or saying one is likely.
Very Bad Deaths has a fair amount of torture-porn and also contains extended descriptions of the effects of an extraordinarily painful medical condition.
Night of Power made me realize Robinson was off the rails because his didactic tone and self-righteous presentation continued even when he was describing horrible and outrageous actions, cold-blooded murders on the parts of the protagonists, etc. Essentially, it was the book that made me stop trusting Robinson as an author, since it demonstrated his ability to justify (and even advocate for) ridiculous excesses, leading me to evaluate the rest of his work much more critically.
That makes me want to read Very Bad Deaths very much, which was probably not your intended effect.
Are you sure you’re not making the mistake of confusing a character’s beliefs with the authors?
As far as the murders, have you ever seen an action movie?
please give me more details on this. I take it you’re not a rational anarchist and don’t support Michael’s revolution? What ridiculous excesses?
I’m just very surprised that you think it’s didactic or self-righteous; I didn’t see it that way at all.
Just curious, have you read Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”? Night of Power is full of allusions to it and it may not make as much sense if you haven’t.
Robinson’s fiction has a sadistic streak (very bad things happening to the unattractive characters) that Heinlein’s doesn’t. One of the later Callahan’s novels has a plot turn which indicates that Robinson had some idea that this was problematic.
In any case, I hope you read some Robinson and let us know what you think.
I love what I have read. I’ve only read a few of his novels though. Which one has that plot turn and what’s the plot turn?
It was a Callahan’s novel which came out in the past ten years or so. It might have been Callahan’s Key.
Wnxr, gur ivrjcbvag punenpgre, chavfurf na vashevngvat naq culfvpnyyl htyl punenpgre engure frireryl (snvag zrzbel fhttrfgf yvgrenyyl qhzcvat fuvg ba ure). Xnezn rafhrf.
I’m really sorry, but I don’t remember the details.
Thanks… I’m still going through the most recent Callahan novels. Jake Stonebender does kinda have a temper.
I checked with a friend who’s a Robinson fan. It was Callahan’s Key, and it was n yvgre bs hevar.
Oh no, I thought it was quite good, but it’s not really for the weak of stomach. One of the main characters is also basically Spider Robinson himself, so if that’s not your cup of tea I would suggest looking elsewhere—personally, though, I did find it quite entertaining.
No—in fact I’m nearly positive that I am making that mistake, but I find it comparatively hard to not make given Robinson’s general style. The whole thing just squicks me out.
I would also argue that, for much of Robinson’s work, the characters’ beliefs are those of the author (and indeed the characters themselves are essentially the author)-- though I don’t think Night of Power suffers from this.
Certainly I have. Robinson has always struck me as sort of a bargain-basement Heinlein.
I’m trying to understand exactly what squicks you, and I’m not doing a very good job… the Revolution in Night of Power was pretty peaceful as revolutions go.
Gur cneg jurer gur znva punenpgref zheqre n pncgvir (be pncgvirf? Vg’f orra n juvyr) ol fcenlvat tyhr vagb gurve abfr/zbhgu naq pnhfvat gurz gb nfculkvngr vf n tbbq rknzcyr bs jung V sbhaq fdhvpxl nobhg gung obbx.
Jura gurl’er nobhg gb encr Wraavsre? Ur qrfreirf gung naq vg’f frys-qrsrafr
Ertneqyrff bs jurgure fbzrbar “qrfreirf vg,” zheqrevat pncgvirf va tehrfbzr naq rkpehpvngvat znaaref vf orlbaq gur cnyr. Gung’f nyfb abg frys-qrsrafr ol nal fgnaqneq gung V xabj bs, fvapr gur crefba va dhrfgvba jnf nyernql haqre gurve pbageby.
Ok, but… wouldn’t the same objection apply to virtually any action/adventure movie or novel? Kick Ass, all the Die Hard movies, anything Tarantino, James Bond, Robert Ludlum’s Bourne Identity novels and movies, et cetera. They all have similar violent scenes.
I can’t think of any point in Die Hard where John McClane kills prisoners in cold blood (in fact, there are two times where he almost dies because he tries to arrest terrorists instead of just shooting them). And I do consider all such scenes objectionable—for instance, in Serenity, when Zny fubbgf gur fheivivat Nyyvnapr thl sebz gur fuvc gung qrfgeblrq Obbx’f frggyrzrag, or when gur Bcrengvir fnlf ur vf hanezrq, fb Zny whfg chyyf n tha naq fubbgf uvz, I had the same squicky reaction.
See, I liked that scene. Gur Bcrengvir jnf gelvat gb pngpu crbcyr haqre Zny’f cebgrpgvba fb gurl pbhyq or neerfgrq naq gbegherq be rkrphgrq. Ur jnf jvyyvat gb xvyy Zny naq rirelbar ryfr ur pnerq nobhg va beqre gb qb fb. Pngpuvat uvz bss thneq naq xvyyvat uvz jbhyq unir fnirq n ybg bs yvirf, rira vs vg jnfa’g va nal jnl snve. Squicky? Sure. Actually the wrong thing to do? Not so much.
Which scenes are you saying are objectionable? The ones where MClane puts the lives of himself and all those he is trying to protect in danger by not shooting terrorists when he should have? Those squick me out. Utter negligence when so many lives are at stake.
McClane is probably too far in the other direction, but to be fair he’s a cop (so he has extra rules to abide by, not just normal morality) and he definitely doesn’t understand the magnitude of the situation at first.
Have you ever read a novel and gotten an insistent background vibe from it that says “something isn’t quite right with the person who wrote this”? I got this pretty strong from John C. Wright’s The Golden Age trilogy, even though I started reading it knowing next to nothing about Wright.
This doesn’t seem very consistent though. Most people I’ve talked with seem to like The Golden Age a lot.
I get this a lot from A Song of Ice and Fire.
Yes, Very Bad Deaths.
Hm, I’m a fan of Heinlein too, I guess I’d better not start reading those others. ;p Any idea where I can look for clues about the ‘authoritative voice’?
That’s odd. I’ve been a fan of Heinlein and Spider Robinson but never Rand or Lewis. Haven’t tried Chesterton.
You’re actually the reason I started reading Spider Robinson.
The strength of C. S. Lewis’s works seem to be that they were a whole lot less bad than the alternate sources of the same message.
The hard part with something like that not being how to question your ideas, but to notice that you have an idea that needs questioning. It’s like reading Michael Behe’s books on intelligent design and trying to understand the view inside his head, how a tenured biology professor could come up with such obvious-to-others defective arguments and fail to notice the low quality of his own thinking.
Given a clear explanation, it’s more probably correct than secretly wrong. We don’t live in a world dominated by true-sounding lies. Incorrect things should be generally more surprising than correct things, even if there are exceptions.
(It’s confirmation bias, not hindsight bias. Hindsight bias is overestimation of prior probability upon observing a positive instance of an event.)