I remembered it vaguely, and found the more exact quote on the ASOIAF Quotes page on TvTropes since I didn’t want to search through the Arya chapters to find the exact quote, though I was prepared to.
deathpigeon
Karma: 21
I could’ve sworn it was from both of them, and, thus, from the books originally...
Gods? There are no ‘gods’, young bravo. There is only one God, and his name is Death—Him of Many Faces. And there is only one prayer that one says to him - ‘Not Today’.
Syrio Forel, Game of Thrones based on A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin
“Sure, but surely 2 orgasms are better than 1, so, since you’re at 1⁄399 for turning into a whale, and a single orgasm is equal to 1⁄400 chance of turning into a whale, so wouldn’t two orgasms be good enough to at least require 1⁄398 chance of turning into a whale?”
“What if I give you two orgasms?”
A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting.
The Third Doctor
If the number of deontologists isn’t big enough to power our inference, the stats should tell us this. There are some though.
That’s true. Perhaps we could sort them by what their results with “good” show us about which normative ethical theory they follow, then compare the results of each of the groupings between “good” and “awesome”. That would show us the results without consequentialists acting as white noise.
And I think going outside LW is unnecessary. This essay is hardly aimed at people-in-general.
Good point, though it would be interesting to see if it could be applied to people outside of LW.
...Am I the only who is wondering how being turned into a hale would even work and whether or not that would be awesome?
Probably not possible since it isn’t even a noun.
I meant that we should be looking at the awesomeness of outcomes and not actions, and that “awesome” is more effective at prompting this behavior than “good”. It looks like you get it, if I understand you correctly.
Oh! That does make sense. I can see your point with that.
I find that somewhat implausible. If they are a hardcore explicit deontologist who,against the spirit of this article, has attempted to import their previous moral beliefs/confusions into their interpretation of “awesomism”, then yeah. For random folks who intuitively lean towards deontology for “good”, I think “awesome” is still going to be substantially more consequentialist.
Possibly. I’m honestly not sure which hypothesis would be more correct, at the moment. Testing it would probably be a good idea, if we had the resources to do it. (Do we have the resources for that? I wouldn’t expect it, but weirder things have happened.)
Maybe next year’s survey could have some scenarios that ask for an awesomeness ranking, and some other scenarios that ask for a goodness raking, and some more with a rightness ranking. Then we could see how people’s intuitions vary with whether they claim to be deontologist or consequentialist, and with prompting wording. This could put the claims in the OP here on a more solid footing than “this works for me”.
I don’t think that would work. People here tend to be more consequentialist than I’ve seen from people not from here, so we’d probably not be able to see as much of a difference. Plus, the people here are hardly what I’d call normal and are more homogeneous than a more standard set of people. To effectively test that, we’d have to conduct that survey with a more random group of people. I mean, that survey would work, but the sample should be different than the contributors of LessWrong.
Am I to understand that you’re suggesting that we apply awesomeness to the consequences, and not the actions? Because that would be different from what I thought was being implied by saying “‘Awesome’ is implicitly consequentialist.” What I took that to mean is that, when one looks at an action, and decides whether or not it is awesome, the person is determining whether or not the consequences are something that they find desirable. That is distinct from looking at consequences and determining whether or not the consequences are awesome. That requires one to ALREADY be looking at things consequentially.
I think that, after thinking of things, when people use the term “awesome” they use it differently depending on how they view the world. If someone is already a consequentialist, that person will look at things consequentially when using the word awesome. If someone is already a dentologist, that person will look at the fulfillment of duties when using the word awesome. This is just a hypothesis, and I’m not very certain that it’s true, at the moment.
I’m not entirely sure how to prompt that sort of behavior, to be honest.
It was blue because its color was within the set of colors that were commonly perceived as blue. It’s the color that is defined by human perception, not each individual instance of said color.
Except Watson was intended to be above average intelligence, but below Sherlock level intelligence, so he fails on the last account. He was very intelligent, just not as absurdly inelligent as Sherlock, so he appeared to be of average or lower intelligence.
Those are both good points. I view it as a bug because I feel like too much ethical thought bypasses conscious thought to ill affect. This can range from people not thinking about the ethics homosexuality because their pastor tells them its a sin to not thinking about the ethics of invading a country because people believe they are responsible for an attack of some kind, whether they are or not. However, Nyan_Sandwich’s ethics of awesome does appear to bypass such problems, to an extent. It’s hardly s, but it appears like it would do its job better than many other ethical systems in place today.
I should note that it wasn’t ever intended to be a very strong objection. As a matter of fact, the original objection wasn’t to the conclusions made, but to the path taken to get to them. If an argument for a conclusion I agree with is faulty, I usually attempt to point out the faults in the argument so that the argument can be better.
Also, I apologize for taking so long to respond. life (and Minecraft playing) interfered with me checking LessWrong, and I’m not yet used to checking it regularly as I’m new here.
That misses my point. When people say awesome, they don’t think back at the consequences or look forward for consequences. People say awesome without thinking about it AT ALL.
That’s a good point, but, in that case, we should be making the judgement that they’re holding contradictory beliefs for believing the snake is Satan and the Bible is true, rather than make the judgement that they’re believing the ridiculous claim that there once was a talking snake.
It’s not actually important for the purposes of this discussion what the Bible says or not. What’s important is what people believe. If many Christians believe the snake was Satan, then it doesn’t matter what the Bible actually says when we discuss whether or not their beliefs are true, absurd, or, in some way, ridiculous.
In the same way, it doesn’t actually matter, for the purposes of this discussion, what evolution actually says, but, rather, what people who believe in evolution believe it says.
Greetings! I am Viktor Brown (please do not spell Viktor with a c), and I tend to go by deathpigeon (please do not capitalize it or spell pigeon with a d) on the internet. (I cannot actually think of a place I don’t go by deathpigeon...) I’m currently 19 years old. I’m unemployed and currently out of school since my parents cut off me off for paying for school. I consider myself to be a rationalist, a mindset that comes from how I was raised rather than any particular moment in my life. When I was still in university, I was studying computer science, a subject that still interests me, and I learned some programming in C++. When I get a positive enough income flow that I can afford to continue my schooling, I plan on continuing to study computer science. Around the internet, I tend to hang out in the TvTropes fora, where I also go by deathpigeon. I make a point of regularly reviewing my beliefs, be they political, religious, or something else. I’m not entirely sure what else to say, since I’m terrible with social situations, and introducing myself to a bunch of strangers is a situation I’m especially bad with.
“Awesome” is implicitly consequentialist.
Not necessarily. If I tell a story of how I went white water rafting, and the person I’m talking to tells me that what I did was “awesome,” is he or she really thinking of the consequences of my white water rafting? Probably not. Instead, he or she probably thought very little before declaring the white water rafting awesome. That’s an inherent problem to using awesome with morality. Awesome is usually used without thought. If you determine morality based on awesomeness, then you are moralizing without thinking at all, which can often be a problem.
Thanks. Fixed it.