I think this conversation could use a dose of alternate perspective, and this seems like as good of a spot to drop it as any; zaogao, this is not directed at you personally.
LessWrong as a community makes a point, a lot of the time, of accepting a rather large amount of variance in its members’ values. Except, some of us seem to be better than others at noticing when values-variance is relevant to the conversation at hand. It seems to me that a failure to notice that that’s relevant is the bulk of the problem, here.
Alicorn has made it pretty clear, as far as I can see: Given the choice between a lifestyle in which she sweats regularly, and a lifestyle where she’s less fit and more prone to health problems, she really does prefer the latter—that’s what her values specify. She’s not in denial about it, she’s not complaining about having to make the choice, she’s not making drama. All she’s doing is describing the situation, pointing out the options she knows about, and asking if anyone knows of options that she’s missed. This shouldn’t be a problem, as far as I can tell: Looking for third (or fourth, or fifth) options is a very LessWrong kind of thing to do. But even if we collectively decide that we don’t want to devote resources to this kind of concrete discussion of specific cases, the respectful-of-values-differences thing to do is to say that, not try to shame her for having the values she does.
It might also be worth noting that this kind of thing contributes to LW turning into an echo chamber. If we can’t trust each other to stay respectful and on-topic about values differences that don’t significantly affect anything beyond a single user’s life, how can we trust each other with values differences that do affect other things?
I think this conversation could use a dose of alternate perspective, and this seems like as good of a spot to drop it as any; zaogao, this is not directed at you personally.
LessWrong as a community makes a point, a lot of the time, of accepting a rather large amount of variance in its members’ values. Except, some of us seem to be better than others at noticing when values-variance is relevant to the conversation at hand. It seems to me that a failure to notice that that’s relevant is the bulk of the problem, here.
Alicorn has made it pretty clear, as far as I can see: Given the choice between a lifestyle in which she sweats regularly, and a lifestyle where she’s less fit and more prone to health problems, she really does prefer the latter—that’s what her values specify. She’s not in denial about it, she’s not complaining about having to make the choice, she’s not making drama. All she’s doing is describing the situation, pointing out the options she knows about, and asking if anyone knows of options that she’s missed. This shouldn’t be a problem, as far as I can tell: Looking for third (or fourth, or fifth) options is a very LessWrong kind of thing to do. But even if we collectively decide that we don’t want to devote resources to this kind of concrete discussion of specific cases, the respectful-of-values-differences thing to do is to say that, not try to shame her for having the values she does.
It might also be worth noting that this kind of thing contributes to LW turning into an echo chamber. If we can’t trust each other to stay respectful and on-topic about values differences that don’t significantly affect anything beyond a single user’s life, how can we trust each other with values differences that do affect other things?