The same reason fat people can derail trolleys and businesspeople have lifeguard abilities, I’d imagine.
Ben_Welchner
Karma: 172
You pretty much got it. Eliezer’s predicting that response and saying, no, they’re really not the same thing. (Tu quoque)
EDIT: Never mind, I thought it was a literal question.
We encourage you to downvote any comment that you’d rather not see more of—please don’t feel that this requires being able to give an elaborate justification. -LW Wiki Deletion Policy
Folks are encouraged to downvote liberally on LW, but the flip-side of that is that people will downvote where they might otherwise just move on for fear of offending someone or getting into an argument that doesn’t interest them. You might want to be less sensitive if someone brings one of your posts to −1 - it’s not really an act of aggression.
I sympathize. One of my professors jokes about having discovered a new optical illusion, then going to the literature and having the incredible good luck that for once nobody else discovered it first.
This all seems to have more to do with rule consequentialism than deontology. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and rule consequentialism has indeed been considered a halfway point between deontology and act consequentialism, but it’s worth noting.
Disliking meetings and reading in a crowded environment doesn’t seem like much evidence that you’re neither introverted nor extroverted (except that you’re not one of Those Nasty Extraverts that keep supposedly fawning over meetings), which doesn’t seem like much evidence that the introvert/extrovert split isn’t helpful. I can’t enjoy parties or meetings, prefer to read in silence and work alone.
In accordance with ancient tradition, I took the survey.
If I unpacked “disbelieves in God” to “has not encountered a concept of God they both believed (“did not disbelieve”, if you prefer) and did not consider a silly conception of God”, would atheism still be meaningless? Would that be a horrible misconception of atheism?
Are you sure there’s nothing bundled in with “God is Reality” beyond what you state? Let’s say I said “God is Reality. Reality is not sapient and has never given explicit instructions on anything.” Would you consider that consistent with your belief that God equals Reality?
I’m not trying for Socratic Method arguing here, I’m just not quite sure where you’re coming from.
As a psychology student, I can say with some certainty that Watson is a behaviorist poster boy.
I figured it was because it was a surprising and more-or-less unsupported statement of fact (that turned out to be, according to the only authority anyone cited, false). When I read ‘poor people are better long-term planners than rich people due to necessity’ I kind of expect the writer to back it up. I would have considered downvoting if it wasn’t already downvoted, and my preferences are much closer to socialist than libertarian.
I don’t have an explanation for the parent getting upvoted beyond a ‘planning is important’ moral and some ideological wiggle room for being a quote, so I guess it could still be hypocrisy. Of course, as of the 2011 survey LW is 32% libertarian (compared to 26% socialist and 34% liberal), so if there is ideological bias it’s of the ‘vocal minority’ kind.
Explain?
Caledonian hasn’t posted anything since 2009, if you said that in hopes of him responding.
Depends on if you’re hallucinating everything or your vision has at least some bearing in the real world. I mean, I’d rather see spiders crawling on everything than be blind, since I could still see what they were crawling on.
It was grammar nitpicking. “The authors where wrong”.
Unless you expect some factual, objective truth to arise about how one should define oneself, it seems fair game for defining in the most beneficial way. It’s physics all the way down, so I don’t see a factual reason not to define yourself down to nothing, nor do I see a factual reason to do so.
Good point.
I’m not talking about SI (which I’ve never donated money to), I’m talking about you. And you’re starting to repeat yourself.
You guys are only being supposedly ‘accurate’ when it feels good. I have not said, ‘all outsiders’, that’s your interpretation which you can subsequently disagree with.
You’re misusing language by not realizing that most people treat “members of group A think X” as “a sizable majority of members of group A think X”, or not caring and blaming the reader when they parse it the standard way. We don’t say “LWers are religious” or even “US citizens vote Democrat”, even though there’s certainly more than one religious person on this site or Democrat voter in the US.
And if you did intend to say that, you’re putting words into Manfred’s mouth by assuming he’s talking about ‘all’ instead.
If you know of any illusions that give inevitably ceasing to exist negative utility to someone leading a positive-utility life, I would love to have them dispelled for me.
In the above examples, there may well be more net harm than gain from staying in an unpleasant relationship or firing a problematic employee. It’s pretty case-by-case in nature, and you’re not required to ignore your own feelings entirely. If not, yes, utilitarianism would say you’d be “wrong” for indulging yourself at the expense of others.