So they should avoid having their Real Life personas being linked to LW in any way, shape, or form. This might be difficult if LW grows famous and their influence in the secret apostate is too obvious… How would one go about being a rationalist “with the serial numbers filed off”.
Yes, if I’m in an environment where being associated with LW is potentially costly, I ought to avoid having my real identity linked to LW. The same goes for pretty much every other website and organization in the world.
How would one go about being a rationalist “with the serial numbers filed off”.
My first suggestion would be to drop the whole formulation of “being a rationalist,” which is more about identity than practice. I find that when I think about X as an identity rather than a practice, it starts to feel important that I express my affiliation with X, that I associate with other X-identifiers, that I talk about myself as an X, and so forth. In an environment like you describe, that’s counterproductive. (Personally, I find it counterproductive in general, but YMMV.) Relatedly, our hypothetical hotheaded youth should take care not to indulge in the impulse to declare their superiority to the people around them by virtue of their greater rationality.
My second suggestion is basically the one I gave before: when I infer opportunities to achieve my goals, and the expected cost of taking those opportunities is one I am willing to pay, and the expected value of those opportunities is positive, I should take them.
Keep in mind the idea that Rationalists Win. Rationalism is a collection of methods for knowing more and using that knowledge to get more of what you want. If you learn that greeting the local police with “Allahu Akhbar” will lower your chance of being arrested, then all other things being equal, it is quite rational to greet them that way.
Extending that, unless you have a particular plan in mind, you should not put yourself in danger merely to avoid “lying” about your connection to or sympathy with or hatred of certain ideas.
Personally, I am a big fan of getting out of there. Every country whos intelligent youth leaves in noticable numbers is being sent a message that is received at some level by both the populace and the government of that country. Either that society fixes itself and its intelligent people stay, or it whithers and has smaller and smaller impact on the world as a whole, but at least the steady flux of intelligent people out of it provides an “infrastructure” that future intelligent youth can use to get out more efficiently.
Over the last 40 years, the west has made tremendous inroads against the communist oppression. Soviet Union is GONE. Communist China is a capitalist success story. Defectors and then later students leaving to study were a tremendously valuable part of that process.
If you need to stay in an evnironment where wearing a vertically striped shirt might get you killed, by all means wear a horizontally striped shirt. That is the rational choice.
Many of those governments ardently desire their intelligent, rational people leaving, and will even facilitate that movement. They get in the way of a stable tyranny.
More importantly, the more they appropriate a foreign culture, the more the locals will see them as “foreign”. A “Return of the Elites” might not be welcome: see Iran after the Shah was deposed,
Capitalism as the source of a nation’s prosperity might also be a red herring: notice how America and Africa are full of perfectly capitalist, utterly miserable nations.
I will argue against you, but let me first tell you that your exposure to this stuff means there is a lot of stuff you know that I don’t know. I’ll argue against to perhaps provide some support for some alternative approaches that might give a good idea when considered.
Many of those governments ardently desire their intelligent, rational people leaving, and will even facilitate that movement. They get in the way of a stable tyranny.
Unfortunately, there is probably no winning in the short term. Cuba is a case American’s no something about. The US Gov’t has tried starving Cuba (by embargoing trade) and their brains have been highly drained. Even so, Cuba persists in a very non-free state even as its dictator is old and weak.
It SEEMS to me that the community of rich and effective Cubans in the United States do much more towards putting pressure on the Cuban government than do any “dissidents” who stay behind and operate with few resources, and quietly enough to avoid arrest. I certainly don’t know for sure.
More importantly, the more they appropriate a foreign culture, the more the locals will see them as “foreign”. A “Return of the Elites” might not be welcome: see Iran after the Shah was deposed,
This is something you “fight” against by not fighing against it. Appropriate the foreign culture and stay connected to your friends and relatives back home. Be a “reasonable” non-Muslim. Give them all the reason in the world to see that a non-Muslim is not the devil creature they think. But it will take a long time, and there is probably no getting around that. Another path would be to pretend to be a moderate Muslim. Certainly many westerners pretend to a level of christianity that is so weak as to be nearly non-existent, because it doesn’t cost much to do so and gains you some benefits. I would probably do that if I had to, I don’t perceive the price I pay for being atheist-agnostic to be even vaguely high enough to make faking it worthwhile, but I live in California, not Morocco.
Capitalism as the source of a nation’s prosperity might also be a red herring: notice how America and Africa are full of perfectly capitalist, utterly miserable nations.
I believe a consistent practice of rationality will move you away from dogmatic fights. Of course you are right, places that could reasonably be called capitalist do not all do equally as well by any means. There are other principles at play that are important. In my opinion, having read a lot, markets are very important. Better to have relatively open economic competition in markets with few or no government granted monopolies. WHen the government does intervene, MUCH more efficient to intervene in a way that preserves markets (charging for licenses to emit pollutants instead of mandating certain levels of pollution or certain non-polluting technologies for example).
But of course the big thing is the extent to which the government picks winners and losers. If a friend of the king is getting rich in business, the less bad part is that his money is coming from overcharging the people, the more bad part is the overall drag this kind of interference creates reduces productivity to fractions of the levels achieved in western countries. Western countries certainly have problems picking winners and losers, but it is done from a baseline of so many openly competitive markets that its impact, while bad, is simply not on the same scale as what happens in a third world country.
The west’s advantage is not ideological it is technical. Markets WORK to find optima and get the most out of all the economic inputs, that is a technology. To the extent that a call for Capitalism sounds like an ideological call, it is totally rational to resist it. Just don’t replace it with an even worse ideology, an ideology that promotes the use of way inferior technologies.
Argue against? I can’t find a single thing here that I disagree with. Except the bits where you argue in favour of mercantilism, but I never argued against that. I would (mostly along the lines of “freemarkets need specific cultural memes specific social and political infrastructures to function well: it’s a great engine but you can’t put it in just any car or in the hands of just any driver, otherwise people will die, and even in the right conditions it’s still massively dangerous, but it’s just so much more awesome than other crappier engines...”), but I reserve judgement until after I’ve read the classics and grown more familiar with the meme-space’s historical evolution.
“Reasonable Muslim” does seem to be a good approach, what with learning not to be a smug idiot and such. One would want to practice it, if only because one would know how painful and confusing a paradygm shift can be in that domain, and wouldn’t wish to inflict it on people who don’t explicitly seek it out. Though, the law being the way it is, even people who are struggling with religion should be left alone to have their own epiphanies.
The “No True Scotsman” fallacy (or, more specifically, the “This Scotsman Who Went And Was Educated In England And Has All The Mannerisms And Accents And Beliefs Of Our English Overlords Is No True Scotsman”) is an authentic problem. I have seen a west-educated boy from country X who, hearing another X-educated X boy who complained that meeting parties in the international organization they worked in were too focused on “disgusting” alcohol and pig. The “western” boy told the “genuine X” boy that he could drink alcohol-free beer or even a soft drink if he so wished, and that there was a sufficient selection of non-pigful food, including vegetarian food if he worried about Halal. The “genuine X” boy flat-out told the “westen” boy that he was “NOT X”. He did not look like he was from X, he did not speak X-ian as well as X, he did not dress like an X, move like an X, and he was waaaay too comfortable with pig and alcohol for his taste. He did so more with the tone of someone who is making an observation that frightens them than with a tone of censorship or condemnation. The “western” boy exused himself politely then spent the afternoon being very, very pissed off and profoundly offended, though that confused him: he thought he had outgrown something as irrational as “nationalism”, “group identity”, and “the desire to belong”, but, he said to me later, he was deepy hurt by that.
There really is a point after which cultural difference becomes so gaping that, while one may have a passport from X, one will be treated exactly as a foreigner by the “authentics”, especially in extremely uniform, totalitarian societies, with a rather sharply defined collective identity. How to reach them, then? Should one even try?
It must be incredibly frustrating to be told you are not X.
How to reach them, then? Should one even try?
If the US went to crap and I was able to move to Australia or New Zealand or France or UK, I think I would. I actually think the flow of people from worser places to better places is a feature, not a bug. That it provides a great deal of useful feedback in the world, and reallocates human resources to places where they will be way more useful and possibly happier as well. But it is a personally painful thing for the individual to face.
Capitalism as the source of a nation’s prosperity might also be a red herring: notice how America and Africa are full of perfectly capitalist, utterly miserable nations.
I would not describe crony-capitalist, corrupt societies as “perfectly capitalist”. Mind you, a lot of nations are sliding down that path, including the United States (see TARP, Cash for Clunkers, Obamacare etc.)
How would one go about being a rationalist “with the serial numbers filed off”.
There is plenty of support for rationality science and math in Arab history. There is probably plenty of support for rationality in the koran. While in Morocco, there is no reason to flaunt your atheism or disdain for much of what religion concludes: this is the shiny tip of the iceberg to a rationality you are developing whose real benefits are from the much more massive rational workings under the surface. So you could learn the support for rationality in the koran and the islamic traditions, and in any discussions cite these as support for a more rational position.
So they should avoid having their Real Life personas being linked to LW in any way, shape, or form. This might be difficult if LW grows famous and their influence in the secret apostate is too obvious… How would one go about being a rationalist “with the serial numbers filed off”.
Yes, if I’m in an environment where being associated with LW is potentially costly, I ought to avoid having my real identity linked to LW. The same goes for pretty much every other website and organization in the world.
My first suggestion would be to drop the whole formulation of “being a rationalist,” which is more about identity than practice. I find that when I think about X as an identity rather than a practice, it starts to feel important that I express my affiliation with X, that I associate with other X-identifiers, that I talk about myself as an X, and so forth. In an environment like you describe, that’s counterproductive. (Personally, I find it counterproductive in general, but YMMV.) Relatedly, our hypothetical hotheaded youth should take care not to indulge in the impulse to declare their superiority to the people around them by virtue of their greater rationality.
My second suggestion is basically the one I gave before: when I infer opportunities to achieve my goals, and the expected cost of taking those opportunities is one I am willing to pay, and the expected value of those opportunities is positive, I should take them.
Keep in mind the idea that Rationalists Win. Rationalism is a collection of methods for knowing more and using that knowledge to get more of what you want. If you learn that greeting the local police with “Allahu Akhbar” will lower your chance of being arrested, then all other things being equal, it is quite rational to greet them that way.
Extending that, unless you have a particular plan in mind, you should not put yourself in danger merely to avoid “lying” about your connection to or sympathy with or hatred of certain ideas.
Personally, I am a big fan of getting out of there. Every country whos intelligent youth leaves in noticable numbers is being sent a message that is received at some level by both the populace and the government of that country. Either that society fixes itself and its intelligent people stay, or it whithers and has smaller and smaller impact on the world as a whole, but at least the steady flux of intelligent people out of it provides an “infrastructure” that future intelligent youth can use to get out more efficiently.
Over the last 40 years, the west has made tremendous inroads against the communist oppression. Soviet Union is GONE. Communist China is a capitalist success story. Defectors and then later students leaving to study were a tremendously valuable part of that process.
If you need to stay in an evnironment where wearing a vertically striped shirt might get you killed, by all means wear a horizontally striped shirt. That is the rational choice.
Many of those governments ardently desire their intelligent, rational people leaving, and will even facilitate that movement. They get in the way of a stable tyranny.
More importantly, the more they appropriate a foreign culture, the more the locals will see them as “foreign”. A “Return of the Elites” might not be welcome: see Iran after the Shah was deposed,
Capitalism as the source of a nation’s prosperity might also be a red herring: notice how America and Africa are full of perfectly capitalist, utterly miserable nations.
I will argue against you, but let me first tell you that your exposure to this stuff means there is a lot of stuff you know that I don’t know. I’ll argue against to perhaps provide some support for some alternative approaches that might give a good idea when considered.
Unfortunately, there is probably no winning in the short term. Cuba is a case American’s no something about. The US Gov’t has tried starving Cuba (by embargoing trade) and their brains have been highly drained. Even so, Cuba persists in a very non-free state even as its dictator is old and weak.
It SEEMS to me that the community of rich and effective Cubans in the United States do much more towards putting pressure on the Cuban government than do any “dissidents” who stay behind and operate with few resources, and quietly enough to avoid arrest. I certainly don’t know for sure.
This is something you “fight” against by not fighing against it. Appropriate the foreign culture and stay connected to your friends and relatives back home. Be a “reasonable” non-Muslim. Give them all the reason in the world to see that a non-Muslim is not the devil creature they think. But it will take a long time, and there is probably no getting around that. Another path would be to pretend to be a moderate Muslim. Certainly many westerners pretend to a level of christianity that is so weak as to be nearly non-existent, because it doesn’t cost much to do so and gains you some benefits. I would probably do that if I had to, I don’t perceive the price I pay for being atheist-agnostic to be even vaguely high enough to make faking it worthwhile, but I live in California, not Morocco.
I believe a consistent practice of rationality will move you away from dogmatic fights. Of course you are right, places that could reasonably be called capitalist do not all do equally as well by any means. There are other principles at play that are important. In my opinion, having read a lot, markets are very important. Better to have relatively open economic competition in markets with few or no government granted monopolies. WHen the government does intervene, MUCH more efficient to intervene in a way that preserves markets (charging for licenses to emit pollutants instead of mandating certain levels of pollution or certain non-polluting technologies for example).
But of course the big thing is the extent to which the government picks winners and losers. If a friend of the king is getting rich in business, the less bad part is that his money is coming from overcharging the people, the more bad part is the overall drag this kind of interference creates reduces productivity to fractions of the levels achieved in western countries. Western countries certainly have problems picking winners and losers, but it is done from a baseline of so many openly competitive markets that its impact, while bad, is simply not on the same scale as what happens in a third world country.
The west’s advantage is not ideological it is technical. Markets WORK to find optima and get the most out of all the economic inputs, that is a technology. To the extent that a call for Capitalism sounds like an ideological call, it is totally rational to resist it. Just don’t replace it with an even worse ideology, an ideology that promotes the use of way inferior technologies.
Argue against? I can’t find a single thing here that I disagree with. Except the bits where you argue in favour of mercantilism, but I never argued against that. I would (mostly along the lines of “freemarkets need specific cultural memes specific social and political infrastructures to function well: it’s a great engine but you can’t put it in just any car or in the hands of just any driver, otherwise people will die, and even in the right conditions it’s still massively dangerous, but it’s just so much more awesome than other crappier engines...”), but I reserve judgement until after I’ve read the classics and grown more familiar with the meme-space’s historical evolution.
“Reasonable Muslim” does seem to be a good approach, what with learning not to be a smug idiot and such. One would want to practice it, if only because one would know how painful and confusing a paradygm shift can be in that domain, and wouldn’t wish to inflict it on people who don’t explicitly seek it out. Though, the law being the way it is, even people who are struggling with religion should be left alone to have their own epiphanies.
The “No True Scotsman” fallacy (or, more specifically, the “This Scotsman Who Went And Was Educated In England And Has All The Mannerisms And Accents And Beliefs Of Our English Overlords Is No True Scotsman”) is an authentic problem. I have seen a west-educated boy from country X who, hearing another X-educated X boy who complained that meeting parties in the international organization they worked in were too focused on “disgusting” alcohol and pig. The “western” boy told the “genuine X” boy that he could drink alcohol-free beer or even a soft drink if he so wished, and that there was a sufficient selection of non-pigful food, including vegetarian food if he worried about Halal. The “genuine X” boy flat-out told the “westen” boy that he was “NOT X”. He did not look like he was from X, he did not speak X-ian as well as X, he did not dress like an X, move like an X, and he was waaaay too comfortable with pig and alcohol for his taste. He did so more with the tone of someone who is making an observation that frightens them than with a tone of censorship or condemnation. The “western” boy exused himself politely then spent the afternoon being very, very pissed off and profoundly offended, though that confused him: he thought he had outgrown something as irrational as “nationalism”, “group identity”, and “the desire to belong”, but, he said to me later, he was deepy hurt by that.
There really is a point after which cultural difference becomes so gaping that, while one may have a passport from X, one will be treated exactly as a foreigner by the “authentics”, especially in extremely uniform, totalitarian societies, with a rather sharply defined collective identity. How to reach them, then? Should one even try?
It must be incredibly frustrating to be told you are not X.
If the US went to crap and I was able to move to Australia or New Zealand or France or UK, I think I would. I actually think the flow of people from worser places to better places is a feature, not a bug. That it provides a great deal of useful feedback in the world, and reallocates human resources to places where they will be way more useful and possibly happier as well. But it is a personally painful thing for the individual to face.
I would not describe crony-capitalist, corrupt societies as “perfectly capitalist”. Mind you, a lot of nations are sliding down that path, including the United States (see TARP, Cash for Clunkers, Obamacare etc.)
There is plenty of support for rationality science and math in Arab history. There is probably plenty of support for rationality in the koran. While in Morocco, there is no reason to flaunt your atheism or disdain for much of what religion concludes: this is the shiny tip of the iceberg to a rationality you are developing whose real benefits are from the much more massive rational workings under the surface. So you could learn the support for rationality in the koran and the islamic traditions, and in any discussions cite these as support for a more rational position.
Just an idea that occurred to me.