christina

Karma: 285

christina 17 Mar 2013 0:40 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Questions for Moral Realists
Interesting thoughts. Definitely agree that morality comes from people, and specifically their interactions with each other. Although I would additionally clarify that in my case I consider morality (as opposed to a simple action decided by personal gain or benefit) comes from the interaction between sentients where one or more can act on another based on knowledge not only of their own state but the state of that other. This is because I consider any sentient to have some nonzero moral value to me, but am not sure if I would consider all of them persons. I am comfortable thinking of an ape or a dolphin as a person, but I think I do not give a mouse the same status. Nevertheless, I would feel some amount of moral wrongness involved in causing unnecessary pain to the mouse, since I believe such creatures to be sentient and therefore capable of suffering.

I’m not sure how the rest of my morality compares to yours, though. I don’t think there is any one morality, or indeed that moral facts exist at all. Now, this does not mean that I subscribe to multiple moralities, especially those whose actions and consequences directly contradict each other. I simply believe that if one of my highest goals is the protection of sapient life, and someone else’s highest goal is the destruction of it, I cannot necessarily expect that I can ever show them, with any facts about the world, that their morality is wrong. I could only say that it was a fact about the world that their morality is in direct contradiction with mine.

Now I don’t believe that anything I’ve said above about morality (which was mostly metaethics anyway) precludes my existence or anyone else’s existence as a moral actor. In fact, all people, by their capability to make decisions based on their knowledge of the present state of others, and their ability to extrapolate that state into the future based on their actions, are automatically moral actors in my view of things. I just don’t necessarily think they always act in accordance with their own morals or have morals mutually compatible with my morals.

Nevertheless, I think that facts are very useful in discussing morality, because sometimes people are not actually in disagreement with each other’s highest moral goals—they simply have a disagreement about facts and if that can be resolved, they can agree on a mutually compatible course of action.

christina 2 Mar 2013 6:35 UTC
0 points
in reply to: ikrase’s comment on: Politics Filtering and Higher Standard Discussions
Are you afraid of people who agree with you because you worry some will chime in with badly supported arguments? I imagine there are few things people enjoy less than seeing someone making a bad argument with the same conclusion as theirs, regardless of the quality of their own argument. Of course, I could be misinterpreting your statement here. Obviously, you could point out that their argument is flawed.

If they are making the same argument as you, though, and the only difference is how they make it, then you cannot say their argument is flawed (since from your perspective it is not and their attitude is not relevant to the truth value of the argument). In that case you just have to accept that you won’t necessarily like everyone who holds the same position as you.

Are you worried that people may not be willing to discuss the issue at all if they feel too strongly about it? That does happen, but I think it is to be expected. Everyone has strong emotions sometimes, and one way a person might choose to deal with that is not to engage someone. That doesn’t mean that everyone will do that, and it doesn’t mean that the information on opposing viewpoints you are looking for can’t be obtained through other means. So I think it’s best not to worry about that.

I guess I’m not entirely sure what it is about strong opinions that troubles you, regardless of whether people would be expected to have them about a particular argument or not. The amount of emotion felt or expressed in an argument is not indicative of its quality. Only the logic contained therein is, and that is the only part that needs to be addressed if trying to understand other people’s points of view. Perhaps I have addressed your concern above? You can let me know if I haven’t, though.

christina 23 Feb 2013 20:37 UTC
0 points
in reply to: passive_fist’s comment on: Recommended reading on the ethics of Animal Cognitive Enhancement
It’s also been said that ancient humans were more intelligent than modern ones. In fact, both the argument for human intelligence and the wolf-dog argument have put forward the idea that being domesticated lowers intelligence (in the case of humans, it can be said we domesticated ourselves). I don’t really think this is a simple hypothesis to investigate at all given the complexity of investigating intelligence.

Some references:

News Article on Human Intelligence—News article discussing this hypothesis.

Gerald Crabtree—This is the researcher I’ve seen quoted a lot lately on the idea that ancient humans were more intelligent than modern ones. From the article above, and looking at his published work, it sounds like this is just a hypothesis he wants to test, rather than something that he has thoroughly investigated.

News Article on Dog-Wolf intelligence—This news article has some discussion of an experiment trying to determine differences between wolf-dog intelligence.

christina 23 Feb 2013 6:27 UTC
1 point
on: Politics Filtering and Higher Standard Discussions
I think there isn’t really a problem with people discussing ‘political’ subjects, because the problem isn’t politics. Really, anything that involves ‘philosophy’ and the word ‘should’ can be a potential problem, even if this is only implicit in the conversation. If you don’t want to feel angry or to have people angry at you, the solution is simple—only talk to people you already agree with.

In fact, people can happily discuss politics and philosophy all day long, and do so all the time—as long as both parties already agree with the other’s conclusions.

Now, I am assuming what you actually wanted to know was how to discuss politics with someone you don’t already agree with. In order to do that one has to be able to separate the argument the person is making from their emotional response to it. if you can’t do that, then anything that is significantly meaningful to you will be something you cannot meaningfully discuss with anyone you disagree with.

The goal of such discussions shouldn’t be to convince someone that you are right, but to find the root cause of the disagreement to begin with. It’s very important to make logical arguments and not use fallacies as arguments. When you feel strongly about a subject, this may be difficult. Also, if the other person has already made an argument for their case, you need to respond to the points they made. Otherwise you’re just talking past each other. I agree that you shouldn’t be obscure—that is a way to create a monologue, or perhaps talk with people who know whatever linguistic password you’ve set up, which may mostly be people you already agree with. I guess that works in the sense that one avoids confronting people they don’t agree with.

The truth of the matter is that if you want to discuss anything at all important with someone you disagree with, there’s going to be strong feelings involved. If someone presents a logical argument, regardless of the emotions involved, your response needs to address their argument, and not their or your emotional response. If you can’t do that, then you might try understanding your opponent’s side by choosing to read work from the most intelligent people who hold the same opinion they do. If you think those people’s arguments are worthless (not merely wrong, but unintelligent and without any logical scaffold) then you probably won’t be able to have a logical discussion of the subject with people you disagree with. And that is because if you think that, you are probably having trouble putting aside your own emotions on the subject. There is no such thing as an argument that cannot be argued using logic, or that has never been argued using logic. The question merely becomes what that logical infrastructure has been built on. Somewhere in there is the basic component that you and your equally logical countepart (who nevertheless believes the opposing viewpoint) disagree on.

christina 8 Feb 2013 20:54 UTC
2 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: LW Women- Minimizing the Inferential Distance
My thought is that it would be best not to offer in the particular situation you gave. That is, it was night, and presumably there was no life-threatening danger to her from the rain.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with being generous, but there are always other factors to consider. If, for example, you want to hold doors open for people or offer to carry heavy things, that is fine, as long as you do that for everyone consistently and don’t take offense if anyone refuses. Also, you may want to consider the context. Even if you are not a scary person, offering to help somone with a minor task if the area is dark and/or deserted can be perceived much differently than in a more typical context.

I would advise you to continue to make the effort to recognize when you may be conforming to undesireable cultural norms, as you have been doing here. That is the first step to taking action on this extremely pervasive issue.

christina 8 Feb 2013 6:17 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: Having Trouble Posting
Thanks. I will take a look at it. Once I finish setting it up and sift through the codebase to find the templates and other frontend interface things, I’ll see what I can do.

christina 8 Feb 2013 3:17 UTC
3 points
in reply to: NancyLebovitz’s comment on: Having Trouble Posting
There are a number of issues with post visibility on this site. When I first posted here, it actually took a week for me to figure out just how to make my post visible. And when I posted here again recently after not posting for a while, I had this problem again, although the last time it was actually a different issue, I believe.

As a programmer, my analysis is that many of the issues about post visibility that bother me would not really require major code changes. Most are just usability-type things, like better placement or sizing for interface functionality. The search issue you mentioned might require slightly more tweaking. Unfortunately, it sounds from your comment below that there really is no one actively maintaining the site.

Honestly, I wish I could try fixing some of it myself, but even if I could get access the code (I heard somewhere that it is open source?), I have no idea how I would get approval for the changes.

christina 8 Feb 2013 3:02 UTC
1 point
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Having Trouble Posting
Thank you! I can see my posts now when following those instructions. I confess, I didn’t want to post an entire discussion article just to ask this question, but I was going crazy trying to figure it out.

Having Trouble Posting

christina7 Feb 2013 9:09 UTC

0 points

14 comments1 min readLW link

christina 7 Feb 2013 8:46 UTC
4 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: LW Women- Minimizing the Inferential Distance
Why wouldn’t you offer to assist a male who had no umbrella? That seems rather uncharitable of you.

christina 7 Feb 2013 7:11 UTC
2 points
on: How to offend a rationalist (who hasn’t thought about it yet): a life lesson
I am confused why your friend thought good social justice arguments do not use logic to defend their claims. Good arguments of any kind use logic to defend their claims. Ergo, all the good social justice arguments are using logic to defend their claims. Why did you not say this to your friend?

EDIT: Also confused about your focus on axioms. Axioms, though essential, are the least interesting part of any logical argument. If you do not accept the same axioms as your debate partner, the argument is over. Axioms are by definition not mathematically demonstrable. In your post, you stated that axioms could be derived from other fundamental axioms, which is incorrect. Could you clarify your thinking on this?

What Longevity Research Most Excites You?

christina14 Jul 2012 21:54 UTC

7 points

21 comments1 min readLW link

christina 12 Jul 2012 7:02 UTC
3 points
on: Do you have High-Functioning Asperger’s Syndrome?
I got a 22 on that test. I am fairly convinced I do not have Aspergers Syndrome, not only because I’ve not been diagnosed and that’s lower than the cutoff point given, but the experiences described for those who have it seem quite different from mine in several respects. I am convinced that I am intensely introverted, however. It’s not that I don’t like other people, but that I have a lot more energy and enthusiasm when I have plenty of time to myself.

christina 12 Jul 2012 6:36 UTC
3 points
on: Moderate alcohol consumption inversely correlated with all-cause mortality
I see this type of thing a lot. It’s kind of only interesting to me in an academic sense, because even if that amount of alchohol promotes longevity, I am not willing to drink due to being an utter control freak (and several relatives of mine had severe substance abuse problems, so if there’s any genetic component to that I want to avoid it). In any case, if it does, I wonder what the mechanism is?

christina 6 Feb 2012 5:43 UTC
0 points
on: What math should I learn?
Wait. You dropped algebra? Do you just not need educational instruction in mathematics? If you are self-taught and just looking for an interesting course, go meet the professor before you choose one. If they seem like a fun person, sign up for it. Otherwise, go retake algebra at your earliest convenience—unless you were just taking it again for fun...

christina 6 Feb 2012 3:43 UTC
22 points
on: Which College Major?
The most important question you’ve asked here is:

“Should I care more about making money or doing something that I have a “passion” for?”

And my answer is: You should care about both, approximately equally.

I would advise that you don’t ever choose something that makes you want to gouge your eyes out with a metal fork just because the average yearly salary is six or seven figures. Most likely the result will not be anything like what you are visualizing (eg. early retirement, actually having time to enjoy your money, reasonable mental and physical health...) . I suspect this kind of choice tends to lead either to dropping out of your major, and thus losing both time and money, or to far too much agony when you do enter the workforce. The more interest and enjoyment you get from your chosen field, the better. In a similar vein, be wary of fields that sound cool or tolerable if you have very little idea of what the work in them is actually like. If you have some familiarity with doing whatever is done in your chosen field, that helps a lot. I majored in Computer Science, but I had been programming as a hobby for many years before that, so I already kind of knew how I felt about it. I knew about the frustrating parts, but also knew that overall I enjoy it immensely. I would definitely recommend considering which hobbies you enjoy most when you think about what you want to major in.

On the other hand, I would not ignore the importance of money. Please consider: how much would you like to have the independence to make your own decisions, because your money is your own? For me, this was very important, so I was unwilling to go into a field where the average (the mode, not the mean or median) salary was small, or where money seemed to be very unreliably distributed. For example, some fields have a few very prominent successes who make crazy amounts of money and a large number of talented, hardworking individuals who make almost nothing. Do not assume you will be one of the few prominent successes, regardless of your talent or ability to work hard. Also consider how important financial security is to you. Even if you are well off now, circumstances can change. So try to choose something where you will be able to put some of your money aside into savings (I think the amounts most people advise for this always sound a bit low...). When I was younger, there were times that money was extremely tight for my family—I knew that wasn’t how I wanted to live once I was an adult, because it always felt so financially insecure. On the other hand, some people thrive on very little money, so you will need to consider how much your temperament matches mine. This is not to say I didn’t take great pride in spending as little money as possible—but this was largely because I wanted the number in my savings account to be as large as possible. Because I did take this into consideration, I don’t currently have to worry about money or debt, which is rather nice.

So, that’s my advice. Hope you found that helpful in some way. It did at least work for me. I have a career that I can actually enjoy doing, and I don’t have to live in poverty.

christina 6 Feb 2012 2:47 UTC
0 points
in reply to: erratio’s comment on: How is your mind different from everyone else’s?
Actually, I used to have a similar ability as well, although that was primarily for life experiences + written material (came in handy on tests—read once-write anywhere, heh). It faded and largely disappeared sometime during high school. I feel I compensated fairly well afterward, so the loss doesn’t bother me too much. Not that I wouldn’t be interested if I found a way to get it back, though.

It seems different people may experience changes in this type of memory at different times. Maybe those adults who are considered to have really good memories just never had their childhood mnemonic abilities fade over time.

christina 22 Dec 2011 4:54 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Prismattic’s comment on: Talking to Children: A Pre-Holiday Guide
Upvoted for your very relevant article selection.

Yes, I was aware of both the pink/blue reversal and the unbreeched boys practice. The insanely rapid (at least if considered on an evolutionary timescale) pink/blue reversal in particular indicates to me that some things are entirely culture.

I think the young Louis XV is even more apropos to illustrate the sentence you responded to from my post. In fact, I’ll go add that link in now...

Still, regardless of where my preferences come from, I don’t particularly want our culture to return to dressing all children in frilly little dresses. I see this as entirely consistent with my dislike of frilly little dresses. Even so, I understand that not everyone has my preferences, so my hope is to live in a society that increasingly doesn’t demand that people conform to whatever the majority preference is. Rather than, say, living in a world where wearing frilly little dresses is banned for people of any gender.

christina 21 Dec 2011 23:40 UTC
2 points
on: Talking to Children: A Pre-Holiday Guide
Just thought I would comment on this:

I know it’s hard, but DON’T tell little girls that they look cute, and DON’T comment on their adorable little outfits, or their pony-tailed hair.

Actually, I don’t think I would ever find this difficult. An adorable child is one who is using their toy dragon to level their toy castle. But I do agree that this is a behavior our society encourages, and that it is quite widespread. I feel a bit ambivalent about this kind of advice, though. I think there are benefits to discouraging this type of behavior in the adults, but mostly the benefits fall to those of us who are annoyed by it.

I remember being a child with zero interest in wearing dresses or being considered pretty. I am now an adult who feels much the same. This was not because my parents or the people around me were in any way atypical in their reinforcement of gender roles. So I think people could get the wrong impression and believe that this behavior has more impact than it really does. On the other hand, I am also somewhat dubious that people actually have any sort of innate reaction by gender to, say, pink frilly dresses specifically. I suspect there’s a very complex interaction going on between genetics and culture here. So while I agree that it is senseless to encourage or engage in behavior that you don’t approve of, regardless of its cause, I would also caution anyone you give this advice to that there are a lot of influences on children, and that they are by no means the only one.

I would add that if a person compliments a little girl’s ponytail, that will not annoy me if they also compliment a little boy’s ponytail in the same way.

christina 3 Dec 2011 8:50 UTC
1 point
in reply to: lessdazed’s comment on: Rational Romantic Relationships, Part 1: Relationship Styles and Attraction Basics

Practically speaking, I don’t think it is important to achieve the sort of goals humans generally want to achieve.

Should be read as “Practically speaking, I don’t think it (doing the thing we are talking about, knowing others’ preferences) is important to achieve the sort of goals humans generally want to achieve.”

Upvoted for clarifying this point. This changes my interpretation of this sentence considerably, so perhaps I can now address your intended meaning. This statement does have a truth value (which I believe to be false). I disagree that knowing another human’s preferences is not important to achieving most of their goals (ie. their preferences). Since you make a weaker statement below (that they only need to vaguely know the other’s preferences), I assume you intend this statement to mean something more along the lines of needing very little preference information to achieve preferences than needing no preference information to achieve preferences (and it is probably not common for humans to have zero initial information about all relevant preferences anyway).

Knowing the temperature of the ice cream or the composition of the flour is important only in the sense that there can be human preferences in this direction.

But I don’t need to know them if you do and we share knowledge about states of the world.

I disagree. If I want to buy something from you, I benefit from knowing the minimum amount of money you will sell it for. This is a preference that applies specifically to you. Indeed, other people may require more or less money than you would. It is, therefore, optimal for me to know specifically where the lower end of your preference range is. Knowing other facts about the world, such as what money looks like or how to use it, would not, by themselves, resolve this situation. Likewise, if you wish to sell me something, you must know how much money I am willing to pay for it. You must also know whether I am willing to pay for it at all.

A very, very hazy idea of others’ preferences is sufficient, so improved knowledge beyond that isn’t too useful. Alternatively, with no idea of them, we can still trade by saying what we want and giving a preference ranking rather than trying to guess what the other wants.

If I were trading with someone, I might not be inclined to believe that they would always tell me the minimum they are willing to accept for something. Nor would I typically divulge such information about myself to them. Sure, you can trade by just asking someone what they want, but if they say they want your item for free, that’s not going to help if you want them to pay.

Since you state (“There are a lot of facts more important than understanding the other’s opinion,”) is not a logical assertion but generally true, I assume you mean to say that it is true in the world we live in but would not have to be true in all possible worlds.

I did not mean it is always true in this universe but not like that in other universes. Instead I meant it is almost always true in this universe. If you are in a situation in this world, such as a financial one or one in which you disagree over a joint action to take, it will almost always be better to get a unit of relevant information about consequences of actions than a unit of relevant information about the other person’s preferences, particularly if you can communicate half-decently or better.

By the lack of truth value, I meant that it was not clarified what preference the word important referred to. If the preference referred to is explained, then the expanded sentence has a truth value. Perhaps this is like the other sentence, and you meant it to refer to satisfying the preferences of others. Also, the consequences of actions can only be assigned a value if the preferences are known. No preferences = No consequences.

This depends heavily on an intuitive comparison of what “random relevant” information of a certain quantity looks like. That might not be intelligible, more likely a formal treatment of “relevant” would clash with intuition to settle this decisively as tru or false, but it wouldn’t fail to have a truth value.

Yes, these statements lead me to believe that you were stating something similar to your original sentence, and meant something like “There are a lot of facts more important for satisfying the preferences of the other person than understanding the other person’s opinion”. This seems incorrect to me. Also, I believe that you will find that all pieces of relevant information relate to one or more of the preferences involved. This relation is not mutually exclusive, since these pieces of relevant information could also relate to facts external to the person. Consider your example of the unfortunate cheese-loving person who believes the moon is made of cheese. This belief gives them both a false picture of the world and a false picture of their own cheese-related preferences. A belief that Saturn was made of salami would give them a false picture of the world, but not of those same cheese-related preferences.

I do not know which I find more tragic, the person who knows the goal but not the path to get there, or the person who knows perfectly all the paths, but not which one to take.

We’re discussing the goals of other people. Each type might be equally tragic, but if you had the opportunity to give a random actual person (or random hypothetical being) more knowledge about their goal or knowledge about the world, pick the world and it’s not a close decision!

My view on this discussion is that I have been saying “pick the world”...

It sounds like there is some misunderstanding of what I mean. Let me try to restate my position in a completely different way.

Preferences are, of course, facts. They could even be thought of as facts about the world, in the sense that they refer to a part of the world (ie. a person). This is true in the same way that the color orange is a fact about the world, assuming that you clarify that it refers to the color of, say, a carrot, and not the color of everything in the world. If you remove the carrot, you remove its orange-ness with it. If you remove the person, you remove their preference with them. Similarly, if you remove the preference involved, then you remove its importance with it. The importance is a property of the preference, just as the preference is a property of the person. This was why I was saying that the statement of importance (referring to a preference) had no truth value—because the preference it was important to was not stated. As such, I read it as ′ There are a lot of facts more important for x than understanding the other person’s opinion’. Since x was unknown to me, the statement could not be evaluated to true or false any more than saying ‘x is orange’ could. The revision I posted above (based on your earlier revision of your other sentence) can be evaluated as true or false.

My position is that one should know the preferences involved with great precision if one wishes to maximally satisfy those preferences, since this eliminates time establishing irrelevant facts (of which there is an infinite number). Furthermore, one needs to know about the people involved, since the preferences are a property of the people. Therefore, many of the facts about the preferences will also be facts about people. There may, in any given case, be more numerous facts about the world that are relevant to these preferences than facts about the person. Nevertheless, one unit of information about the person which relates to the preferences to be satisfied can easily eliminate over a million items of irrelevant information from the search space of information to be dealt with.

Here is an example: Two programmers have a disagreement about whether they should try to program a more intelligent AI. The first programmer writes a twenty page long email to the second programmer to assure them that the more intelligent AI will not be a threat to human civilization. This person employs all the facts at their disposal to explain this and their argument is airtight. The second programmer responds that they never thought that the improved program would be a threat to civilization—just that hiring the extra programmers required to improve it would cost too much money.

The less you understand a person, the less you can satisfy their preferences. Whether that decreased satisfaction is good enough for you depends on a number of factors, including the magnitude of the decrease (which may or may not vary widely for a given unit of preference information, depending on what it is), how much time you are willing to waste with irrelevant information, and your threshold for ‘good enough’.

christina

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