AndySimpson

Karma: 235

AndySimpson Apr 24, 2009, 8:57 AM
0 points
in reply to: mattnewport’s comment on: This Didn’t Have To Happen
Peaceful coexistence is not something I object to. Neither does anything oblige agents to perfectly align their values, each is free to choose. I strongly endorse people with wildly different values cooperating in areas of common interest: I’m firmly in Anton LaVey’s corner on civil liberties, for instance. It should be recognized, though, that some are clearly more wrong than others because some people get poor information and others reason poorly through akrasia or inability. Anton LaVey was not trying hard enough. I think the question is worth asking, because it is the basis of building the minimal framework of rules from each person’s judgement: How are we supposed to choose values?

AndySimpson Apr 24, 2009, 8:38 AM
2 points
in reply to: mattnewport’s comment on: This Didn’t Have To Happen

Why do you think it needs to be confronted? … I don’t however feel the need to ‘prove’ that my underlying preference for preserving the lives of myself and my family and friends (and to a lesser extent humans in general) is a fundamental principle—I simply take it as a given.

I think it needs to be confronted because simply taking things as given leads to sloppy moral reasoning. Your preference for self-preservation seems to be an impulse like any other, no more profound than a preference for chocolate over vanilla. What needs to be confronted is what makes that preference significant, if anything. Why should a rationalist in all other things let himself be ruled by raw desire in the arena of deciding what is meaningful? Why not inquire, to be more sure of ourselves?

Most problems in the world seem to arise from conflicting goals, either internally or between different people. I’m primarily interested in rationality as a route to better meeting my own goals and to finding better resolutions to conflicts.

Again, this is the ultimately important part. Wherever the goals come from, we can cooperate and use politics to turn them into results that we all want. Further, we discipline ourselves so that our goals are clear and consistent. All I’m saying is that you may want to look into the basis of your own goals and systematize them to enhance clarity.

AndySimpson Apr 24, 2009, 8:11 AM
3 points
in reply to: knb’s comment on: This Didn’t Have To Happen

In theory, the westerners would just be sending their money to desperately poor people.

I’m not an economist, and but I think you could model that as a kind of demand. And I don’t think I stipulated to there being a transfer of wealth.

Unless you believe in objective morality, then a policy of utilitarianism, pure selfishness, or pure altruism all may be instrumentally rational, depending on your terminal values.

For me, the interesting question is how one goes about choosing “terminal values.” I refuse to believe that it is arbitrary or that all paths are of equal validity. I will contend without hesitation that John Stuart Mill was a better mind, a better rationalist, and a better man than Anton LaVey. My own thinking on these lines leads me to the conclusion of an “objective” morality, that is to say one with expressible boundaries and one that can be applied consistently to different agents. How do you choose your terminal values?

AndySimpson Apr 24, 2009, 6:46 AM
0 points
in reply to: mattnewport’s comment on: This Didn’t Have To Happen
Ok, here is what I don’t agree with:

Choosing those goals is not something that rationality can help much with—the best it can do is try to identify where goals are not internally consistent.

I think rationality absolutely must confront the question of purpose, and head-on. How else are we to confront it? Shouldn’t we try to pin down and either discard or accept some version of “purpose,” as a sort of first instrumental rationality?

I mention objectivity because I don’t think you can have any useful ethics without some static measure of comparability, some goal, however loose, that each person can pursue. There’s little to discuss if you don’t, because “everything is permitted.” That said, I think ethics has to understand each person’s competence to self-govern. Your utility function is important to everyone, but nobody knows how to maximize your utility function better than you. Usually. Ethics also has to bend to reality, so the more “important” thing isn’t agreement on theoretical questions, but cooperation towards mutually-agreed goals. So I’m in substantial agreement with:

Morality is then the problem of developing a framework for resolving conflicts of interest in such a way that all the agents can accept the conflict resolution process as optimal.

And I would enjoy thoroughly a post on this topic.

AndySimpson Apr 24, 2009, 5:39 AM
0 points
in reply to: mattnewport’s comment on: This Didn’t Have To Happen

It’s hard to reconcile any western lifestyle with traditional utilitarianism though so if that’s your main concern with cryonics perhaps you need to reconsider your ethics rather than worry about cryonics.

One of the beauties of utilitarianism is that its ethics can adapt to different circumstances without losing objectivity. I don’t think every “western lifestyle” is necessarily reprobate under utilitarianism. First off, if westerners abandoned their western lifestyles, humanity would be sunk: next to the collapse of aggregate demand that would ensue, our present economic problems would look very mild. We can’t all afford to be Gandhi. The rub is trying to avoid being a part of really harmful, unsustainable things like commercial ocean fishing or low fuel-efficiency cars without causing an ethically greater amount of inconvenience or economic harm.

All that said, I’d be really interested in reading a post by you on rationalist but non-utilitarian ethics. It seems to me that support for utilitarianism on this site is almost as strong as support for cryonics.

AndySimpson Apr 24, 2009, 5:00 AM
3 points
on: This Didn’t Have To Happen
This may be a naïve question, but could someone make or link me to a good case for cryonics?

I know there’s a fair probability that we could each be revived in the distant future if we sign up for cryonics, and that is worth the price of admission, but that always struck me as a mis-allocation of resources. Wouldn’t it be better, for the time being, if we dispersed all the resources used on cryonics to worthwhile causes like Iodized salt, clean drinking water, or childhood immunization and instead gave up our organs for donation after death? Isn’t the cryonics things one big fuzzy, or at least a luxury?

AndySimpson Apr 24, 2009, 4:35 AM
1 point
on: LessWrong Boo Vote (Stochastic Downvoting)
Why a 0.3 chance? Is that totally arbitrary? Also, it seems like a “boo” button would quickly become a means for people to indulge in inappropriate down-voting and feel insulated from responsibility for the outcome. It would also be a tempting false compromise between actually down-voting and doing nothing. Usually, one or the other is the right choice.

AndySimpson Apr 24, 2009, 4:22 AM
1 point
in reply to: Mulciber’s comment on: LessWrong Boo Vote (Stochastic Downvoting)

I really do think we’re all getting too worked up over the minutia of the karma system.

Agreed, but:

This isn’t a game.

We must admit that to a great extent, it is. We are all attempting to make ourselves appear more useful to the community, and karma is the only quantitative way to tell if we’re making progress. Like so many things, it feels like it trivializes but it is there for a purpose.

AndySimpson Apr 23, 2009, 1:04 AM
2 points
on: Escaping Your Past
An important, so-often-useful distinction. This reminds me of the Buddhist notion of fetters. Fetters are personal features that impair your attainment of enlightenment and bind you to suffering. You can cast them off, but in order to do so, you have to cut the crap and practice doing without them, with the full knowledge that it may takes many lifetimes to free yourself. It is not sufficient to announce your adhesion to the creed of enlightenment. The only things that make you do better are the things that make you do better. Everything else is window-dressing, or at best means to that end.

On another note...

I feel bad blogging about rationality, given that I’m so horribly, ludicrously bad at it. I’m also horribly, ludicrously bad at writing.

Is that hyperbolic self-effacement I detect?

AndySimpson Apr 21, 2009, 11:30 PM
4 points
on: Atheist or Agnostic?
I used to be worried about this, too. Then I found this beautifully concise term that resolves the whole question and ends semantic arguments over this arbitrary, imaginary distinction: agnostic atheist. This correctly describes me and I think it describes most other people who would call themselves agnostic or atheist. I encourage you to spread the term, and, when it’s necessary or convenient, collapse the term into what you mean: atheist, which signifies only a lack of positive theism.

Also, Bertrand Russell explored this question thoroughly in his essay, “Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?” I commend it as well for anyone who is confused about how to identify themselves.

On a side-quibble, I’m also careful about saying I’m “an atheist,” with the article. I’m not “an” atheist in the same way a methodist is a methodist: my atheism doesn’t mean I’m part of a discrete association of people. I don’t go to atheist non-church with my fellow atheists on my unholy day. Think of how odd and even offensive it would seem, for instance, if we said each person with blue eyes was “a blue-eyed.” Why? Socially, we would falsely be tagging him or her as merely a part of a greater faction of blue-eyed people. This is how nouns work in English: we have a set of social assumptions about “a doctor”, but no such assumptions about “someone trained in medicine.”

So “I am atheist” or, if you must, “I am agnostically atheist,” work well.

AndySimpson Apr 21, 2009, 10:55 PM
0 points
in reply to: MrHen’s comment on: Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism
Which was terrible and sitting at −1? I don’t understand. All I was trying to indicate is that I’ve noticed a pronounced deviation from standard upvoting and downvoting practices in this thread, mostly towards downvoting.

AndySimpson Apr 21, 2009, 10:52 PM
0 points
in reply to: Paul Crowley’s comment on: Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism

Really must set up my LessWrong dev environment so I can add a patch to show both upvotes and downvotes!

Indeed. If that is the only change to this site’s system or ethic that comes out of this discussion, it will have been worth it.

AndySimpson Apr 21, 2009, 4:06 PM
−1 points
in reply to: infotropism’s comment on: Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism
Agreed—What seems to be happening, funny enough, is an echo chamber. Eliezer said “you must downvote bad comments liberally if you want to survive!” and so everyone’s downvoting everyone else’s comments on this thread.

AndySimpson Apr 21, 2009, 1:54 PM
11 points
in reply to: MrHen’s comment on: Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism
I have the same apprehension. I’m somewhere between “complete poser” and “well-established member of the community,” I just sort of found out about this movement about 50 days ago, started reading things and lurking, and then started posting. When I read the original post, I felt a little pang of guilt. Am I a fool running through your garden?

I’m doing pretty well for myself in the little Karma system, but I find that often I will post things that no one responds to, or that get up-voted or down-voted once and then left alone. I find that the only things that get down-voted more than once or twice are real attempts at trolling or otherwise hostile comments. Then again, many posts that I find insightful and beneficial to the discussion rarely rise about 2 or 3 karma points. So I’m left to wonder if my 1-point posts are controversial but good, above average but nothing special, or just mediocre and uninteresting.

Something that shows the volume of up- and down-votes as well as the net point score might provide more useful feedback.

AndySimpson Apr 20, 2009, 11:13 PM
6 points
on: The Sin of Underconfidence
gjm asks wisely:

What would you think of a musician who decided to give a public performance without so much as looking at the piece she was going to play? Would you not be inclined to say: “It’s all very well to test yourself, but please do it in private”?

The central thrust of Eliezer’s post is a true and important elaboration of his concept of improper humility, but doesn’t it overlook a clear and simple political reality? There are reputational effects to public failure. It seems clear that those reputational effects often outweigh whatever utility is gained from an empirical “test” of one’s own abilities: this is why international relations theory isn’t a rigorous empirical science. We live in an irrational kaleidescope of power, driven by instinct and emotion, ordered only fleetingly by rhetoric and guile. In this situation, we need to keep our cards close to our chest if we want to win.

Mulciber adds something along the same lines:

By increasing the challenge the way you suggest, you may very well be acting rationally toward the goal of testing yourself, but you’re not doing all you can to cut the opponent. To rationally pursue winning the debate, there’s no excuse for not doing your research.

And Eliezer does seem to approve of this mode of thinking in some cases:

Of course this is only a way to think when you really are confronting a challenge just to test yourself, and not because you have to win at any cost. In that case you make everything as easy for yourself as possible. To do otherwise would be spectacular overconfidence, even if you’re playing tic-tac-toe against a three-year-old.

So, to sum up my concern, how is this principle of pragmatism reconciled to your choice not to prepare? Isn’t it best to test yourself in the peace and safety of your dojo, or in circumstances where the stakes are not high, and use every means available to resist on the actual field of battle?

AndySimpson Apr 19, 2009, 2:47 PM
0 points
in reply to: Furcas’s comment on: The Epistemic Prisoner’s Dilemma
But in this case, someone with a degree of astronomical knowledge comparable to yours, acting in good faith, has come up to you and has said “I’m 99% confident that a meteor will hit your house today. You should leave.” Why not investigate his claim before dismissing it?

AndySimpson Apr 18, 2009, 8:57 PM
0 points
in reply to: Furcas’s comment on: The Epistemic Prisoner’s Dilemma
What if you’re wrong?

AndySimpson Apr 18, 2009, 8:54 PM
0 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Rationality Quotes—April 2009
I get the same sense.

AndySimpson Apr 18, 2009, 7:55 PM
12 points
on: Rationality Quotes—April 2009

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

--Aldous Huxley

AndySimpson Apr 18, 2009, 7:51 PM
7 points
on: Rationality Quotes—April 2009

Life is short, and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.

--Arthur Schopenhauer