I think the fuzzies vs rationality thing goes a way to explain why some people, even those who appreciate rationality, might want to turn down an unfavorable offer in the ultimatum game. The sour feeling from accepting that, may not be worth the money you didn’t even loose. I am entirely fine with being irrational in that game. This makes me wonder how the general LW populace would play that game, if it was okay to not be rational
Entraya
Karma: 30
I just jumped straight into the chat without reading this post, because hell, the link was there and I might as well take a looksie. Turns out it was study time, and I quickly found myself grabbing that book i had to read for school out of ‘oh shit sorry to interrupt’, and read the remainder of that school day. This will be my new routine.
And now I’m looking at my case of delicious candy, considering whether I should only be allowed to eat one for every session I work outside of school time..
I’ve seen a quoted piece of literature in the commentssection, but instead of the original letters, they all seemed to be replaced by others. I think i remember seeing this more than once, and I still have no idea why that should in any way be like that is
It feels odd replying to a 4 year old comment, but I am simply too curious as to why all that text in written in what at first glance seems to be random assemblies of letters in the format of whatever Greg Egans story was
Sometimes, I find myself just smirking at this community with the sense of ‘I fukken love this place’. Often I find it pulling out vague thoughts and concepts I hadn’t fully thought out, and then add to it. This is one of the more useful thoughts that has been fleshed out for me; that polyhacking is a possibility and quite possibly worth considering in the future. It could be a way to suit something to myself, because monogamy seems impossible to work into a successful scenario. I would like some intimate romantic company, without the responsibility of being the one sole person to satisfy anothers’ needs, and not being grounded to one person would keep me from getting bored and exploring more. Self-hacking is a fun practice, although I prefer the term ‘mental rearrangement’
When I was way younger and mildly depressed (and blessed with an incredibly stable hedonic setpoint), I used this quite a bit. First I made a ‘I am not a serious person’ identity (which unfortunately still bites me in the ass today) so I didn’t take that sadness serious and could just dismiss it (seriously, use the right identity traits; I became way too good at dismissing sadness), and later a compartment/helper identity of ‘going through this phase is normal and you’ll likely grow out of it, you may not feel at all like it; probability is on your side’, which helped tremendously in making me stay positive
It’s incredible how far you can get just by implementing false identities and beliefs and habits and merge them into yourself. It’s almost ridiculous, really
I called my math teacher over to help. We couldn’t find the answer. This isn’t promising, as I had hoped to summon him for help whenever I needed help to understand something above my highschool math education. I will make a quick request for what steps of math i should follow to have a better chance of wrapping my mind around this probability stuff, since part of my exam test seriously has ‘there are four playing cards, one is red, what is the probability of randomly picking red’ or something like that.
Regardless of such concerns; I’m pretty sure the ‘I don’t care, I just want to know’ part of it is simply curiosity, and doesn’t mean that Brennan would in any way accept silly theologies as truth, even should he be curious as to what they were teaching. I find myself plenty curious about Buddhist teachings, but in the same way I am curious about the way magic works in the TypeMoon worlds
I wouldn’t let one persons powerful writing alone decide such a thing, but for the compassion you show to everyone’s’ lives, I suppose the least i can do to repay that, would be by learning more about it. I don’t happen to care much about what happens after the lights first goes out, and extending the care for my life to beyond my own death isn’t really a part of my reasoning. I’ve never been religious or thought of an afterlife, so I don’t even have that practice. The dead don’t care
A recommended use for the site as it currently is:
A major use of LessWrong is an introduction to many fields of knowledge. It’s like a catalog, presenting summarized subjects in tasty bites, which can be used to direct your focus towards what you’re really interested in, or create said interest. It’s a nice representation of rationality, and gives you a sense of what it is and why you should desire it. Posts on scholarship and the like will teach you the best ways to learn. And sprinkled along this road, is lots of eyeopeners and quick updates to your thinking, things to help you to notice your own faults so you can fix them (this article is an example of such) as well as presenting many topics and ideas which can help direct your thinking towards the best way to learn and improve.
This is the pleasant little pond for us little fish to grow in, eating the delicious shinies and preparing for a journey into the sea. Devour everything, plan, make some maps, pack your mental backpack, and know that if you truly wish to learn, you’ll one day have to leave. This whole process need only take a few months, and soon I will have eaten everything on this site, and my plan is being refined, books are being found, goals clarified..
The reason i love Elizier is how many people he must have attracted this art of rationality, and that without him and this site i wouldn’t even know where to begin or where to look, and how he is one of surprisingly few people able to convey the information in such tasty little bits. He may not be the smartest in his field, and may ‘just’ be passing on things he learned from others, but his work is super valuable, for he does what the others don’t. Also, Methods of Rationality happens to be on my top 3 list of Greatest Pieces of Writing IMO, so that adds a bit. I just have to separate and clear the lines between the two kinds of reverence, which can be surprisingly difficult if you don’t pay attention to it which this post reminded me of, so thanks
I was just casually returning to continue reading this, took a bite of my muffin, instantly read the “I have this fantasy—” part and i blew crumbs over my desk. What a mess..
This subject is just fascinating. That’s the only way i can really express myself right now. The oddities of a human mind makes for great puzzles and curious situations, and an understanding of how it works when it actually does things right
Well, that reminds me.. Should anyone stumble across this article and comment and know a good way to enter the fields of cognitive psychology, functional neuroanatomy, computational neuroanatomy, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology, then please respond. I doubt i should make an attempt right away, but still, i have a functioning brain and a brain can learn, and one day i would like for it to learn about brains and learning and intelligence. I just don’t know how i would even begin to find resources and trying to understand it all, and i was somewhat lucky to find this fairly comprehensive site of articles to even begin this whole adventure
That post scriptum.. It’s just so amusing to have someone write out your exact thoughts and worries like that. It is very rarely that i get tears in my eyes from giggling, and I can’t stop smirking about that. It is quite bothersome indeed that I am so unskilled in this art of reasoning that the best i can do is follow your words and hope they lead me to somewhere where i can eventually realize said flaws. I feel my journey will be riddled with such flaws no matter how hard i try to to avoid it. It’s the nagging feeling I have almost constantly, and of which i have trouble explaining
I have never really had a problem with the complete neutrality of life. It doesn’t really change what happens, since it’s inevitable. I think there is a certain art to learning and not let what you learn consume you with despair. If there is no inherent meaning of life and it is all just what happens, so what? It won’t really change anything about your life or how you live it unless you allow it to. And if you die and the part of reality that is your consciousness will entirely seize to exist, so what? You won’t be alive to give a dahm about it.
Acknowledge the truth, give it a polite nod, and continue on with your life. It will be there regardless, as will your immediate life
On a related note to such despicable people; I just had a few minutes talk with a very old friend on mine who matched this description. I just wanted an update on his situation and see if the boundless rage and annoyance I experienced then still fit. It’s not super relevant, but the exact moment i started writing to him, my hands started shaking and i could feel a pressure on my chest, and my mind started clouding over. It’s probably something that’s shot into my system, but the exact reason why and what i dont know. Do any of you happen to know about this?
Also, there’s the added danger than someone otherwise smart, may lure in people to the dark side of things, and make them believe things like 9/11 conspiracies. It also taught me to trust my gut feeling sometimes instead of what seems to be factual evidence, and not to have belief in belief. This is one of my most embarrassing things I’ve ever experienced
I read an article on Cracked about suicide. It seems that even the smallest of inconveniences can make a big difference in numbers of suicides, which is why guns are a terrible ideas to have easily accessible in your house. Humans are lazy. The amount of times I’ve postponed something, like moving the stuff I constantly have to walk over to reach my room, is way too high. I’d rather walk over a big crate 20 times a day than moving the things
I think the whole thing about dwelling on the negatives of our society, is because there’s a deeper level to the concerns. Like a sort of collective lacking of something, lacking in Romantic relations to nature and society and such things, but without knowing where such things can be found. Just basic yearning that shows up in the extremes of our modern society, which manifests in media and overromantized movies about how ‘spiritually connected’ Indians were, or the peace of Buddhists, or the good old ways; you know what I mean. The movie Avatar is basically a big blop of such wishes, and I’d be lying if i claimed that living as a blue cat person in a hippies heaven doesn’t sound nice as fuck. There’s a big drive underneath it that goes beyond countersignaling, and the amount of that is what separates the countersignaling hippies from those simply yearning to the extreme
It would seem that my skills for this are lacking. All i saw was ‘Silly story, most likely fake, bullocks and to be ignored’. If i had to carefully pick apart everything wrong with similar stories, I wouldn’t do anything but that, considering the internet. I can’t in any way deny that it’s a bad skill and that i shouldn’t learn it, since it’s a basic ground for avoiding the higher level challenges. Simply having a sense of ‘something is wrong with this, and this person wants something, and i don’t trust this’ won’t get me anywhere near as far, but hopefully it’s sufficient to keep me skeptical enough to not fall for such things. Thank you. I may practice this whenever i see more of such silliness
I’d like to know who the authorities are, and send them a complaint. Just about everything that has had a chance of being great and fantastic or just nice, has either turned to shit, been underwhelming (and that’s with my already low expectations) or just fallen apart after a while. It’s not like it has put me in a state of ‘oh nothing good is ever going to happen to me and i will now expect and make everything shitty for myself’, it’s just rather annoying that it’s a strategic advantage to never have any positive expectations about nearly everything, and enjoying the few good surprises when they come.
That being sad; I understand why hope is needed for everyone else, but I still have yet to see why it’s needed in my case. Whatever happens, happens, and if it’s good, then it’s a nice surprise, and if it stays the same, then so be it. I just don’t get the whole hope concept. I can hope that my friend doesn’t get raped by a gorilla, but that seems pointless, like everything else that doesn’t change reality or likelihood of pleasant things to happen
I would like it if you didn’t linger so much on a mere spelling mistake. I had no muscle memory for how to spell this entirely foreign name. Eliezer Yudkowski; i hope you are satisfied, for thy name is surely glorious and worthy of praise.
I’ve also first discovered the mail-notification system, hence why it took me so long to respond