Gray

Per­son­als, any­one?

• GrayMay 2, 2011, 4:34 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Leonhart’s comment on: [Altru­ist Sup­port] How to de­ter­mine your util­ity function

  I think you’re technically correct, but especially on the internet, the term “awesome” has been used more and more loosely such that it nearly does have the super-general meaning that STL is talking about. To say that X is awesome is usually just a strong, emphatic way of saying that “I like X”.

• GrayApr 27, 2011, 4:52 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Amanojack’s comment on: What is Me­taethics?

  And that’s what morality always was in the first place. It’s a way of getting other people to do otherwise than what they wanted to do. No one would be convinced by “I don’t want you to kill people”, but if you can convince someone that “It is wrong to kill people”, then you’ve created conflict in that person’s desires.

  I wonder, in the end, if people here truly want to “be rational” about morality. Myself, I’m not rational about morality, I go along with it. I don’t critique it in my personal life. For instance, I refuse to murder someone, no matter how rational it might be to murder someone.

  Stick to epistemic rationality, and instrumental rationality, but avoid at all costs normative rationality, is my opinion.

• GrayApr 27, 2011, 4:39 PM

  −9 points

  in reply to: Amanojack’s comment on: What is Me­taethics?

  This pretty much sums up a very large reason why I think metaethics itself is a diseased discipline. I don’t even know why this site likes to talk about “metaethics” whenever it wants to moralize, other than, perhaps, saying the prefix “meta” makes it sound more technical and “rational”, when it is really just another layer of obscurity.

  I think, just like politics, this site should avoid the topic of ethics as much as possible. Most of the “science” of ethics is just post-Christian nonsense. Seriously, read Nietzsche. I don’t trust any of this talk about ethics by someone who hasn’t read, and understood, Nietzsche.

• GrayApr 27, 2011, 2:15 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Build Small Skills in the Right Order

  I somewhat relate to his comment, and for me it’s because of how much persona, holding myself back, and not letting myself go it requires to be accepted by others. When, and if, it actually does work, it feels like here all I was trying to do was be a nice guy, and now the ruse worked? Now it’s like you’ve committed yourself to it.

• GrayApr 24, 2011, 5:03 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Desrtopa’s comment on: The benefits of mad­ness: A pos­i­tive ac­count of arationality

  Let the people suppose that knowledge means knowing things entirely; the philosopher must say to himself: When I analyze the process that is expressed in the sentence, “I think,” I find a whole series of daring assertions that would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove; for example that it is I who think, that there must necessarily be something that thinks, that thinking is an activity and operation on the part of a being who is thought of as a cause, that there is an “ego,” and, finally, that it is already determined what is to be designated by thinking—that I know what thinking is. For if I had not already decided within myself what it is, by what standard could I determine whether that which is just happening is not perhaps “willing” or “feeling”?

  Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, aphorism 16

Spirit­ed­ness and docility

• GrayApr 22, 2011, 11:20 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: ata’s comment on: The Black Team—A Parable of Group Effectiveness

  I agree entirely. I hate the idea that “rationality” is being identified with the way your dress and compose yourself. Also, I know there’s a sequence post somewhere that basically says that being rational doesn’t mean being dispassionate.

• GrayApr 21, 2011, 7:35 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: AnnaSalamon’s comment on: Offi­cial Less Wrong Redesign: Call for Sugges­tions

  Maybe it would be useful to show a frequency score (karma points per week/​day) on the main page next to your username, rather than your overall score. You can still get your overall score on your profile page.

• GrayApr 21, 2011, 4:42 PM

  4 points

  on: How can I make money?

  I know you guys are all well-credentialed, pretty solidly middle class people; but I was wondering, what would be the rational thing to do for someone without any sort of educational credentials, and doesn’t make a high wage? At what income does “investment” begin to make sense, lets say if you’re upper lower class or lower middle class?

• GrayApr 21, 2011, 4:28 AM

  5 points

  in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Things That Shouldn’t Need Point­ing Out

  That’s a good point, which means that heat is too general to function as the hypostatic object. I would guess that it’s a particular way in which heat is applied. The heat has to be applied to the surface, and it has to be transmitted through the air. And, at least relative the reflexes of the cook, the temperature can’t be too high.

  Makes you wonder if a marshmallow can be toasted with a hair dryer :D

• GrayApr 21, 2011, 4:12 AM

  3 points

  on: Things That Shouldn’t Need Point­ing Out

  I think I see where you’re going with this, but to be more analytical than you intended, the answer to one of your questions is hypostatic abstraction. It’s an immediate (and therefore deductive) logical inference that, in this case, goes like this:

  1. You can toast marshmallows with an open flame.

  2. There is some means/​power/​virtue/​relationship by which you can toasts marshmallows with an open flame.

  This relationship inferred is called the hypostatic object. It’s a deductive inference, so if it seems like this hasn’t actually added any information, you’re right. But it is often a useful inference in that it brings out the hypostatic object which is latent in proposition (1) above, but isn’t itself (yet) an object of thought. In this case, obviously, the hypostatic object is to be identified with heat. A lot of our scientific concepts were once nothing more than hypostatic objects: think of electrons (the whatever that produces electricity) and photons (the whatever that produces light); eventually more is learned about these objects, so that saying something like “electrons are responsible for electricity” is no longer tautological.

  The point being, when you were associating roasting marshmallows with an open flame, you were thinking too concrete. So how do we stop and think about these daily, ordinary things, at a more abstract level? I don’t know. There are probably all sorts of things like that which I’m hardly aware of. Maybe I should just go through a brainstorming sessions about ordinary things and try to think at a more abstract level.

• GrayApr 19, 2011, 6:59 PM

  12 points

  in reply to: Dustin’s comment on: Learned Blankness

  I don’t think that it is “old way” versus “new way”; but it seems clear to me that someone has to know the recipe. If you buy a pre-made can of mushroom soup, obviously the manufacturer must have used the recipe. And then there’s the issue if none of the brands of mushroom soup are of adequate quality for your purposes.

  It’s like the difference between a programmer writing his own routines or using a pre-packaged library. I think, in order to be considered a competent programmer, you should be able to write your own routines, even if you don’t have to in the majority of cases. A cookbook is open source for food. “Buy 3 cans of Kraft spaghetti sauce” is cheating.

• GrayApr 19, 2011, 6:50 PM

  3 points

  in reply to: lukeprog’s comment on: Build Small Skills in the Right Order

  I gotta admit that he has a point. I don’t know that published studies should be the only way of producing rationalist self-help; I think the way is open for sound DIY empirical studies (but hasty generalization is an inductive fallacy). But look at it this way—you can imagine a lot of really bad advice being given front page status, and the problem is that there is no threshold, no point at which enough is enough.

  I think your post is interesting as an abduction instead, and should probably be in the discussion pages. This should be a way of describing your experiences, and indicating what possible explanations and hypotheses could explain those experiences. By no means should we discount our experiences, that would be anti-empirical. The problem is unsound generalization of those experiences.

  That said, I find your post valuable as abductive material, and the discussion it resulted in was stimulating.

• GrayApr 19, 2011, 6:34 PM

  11 points

  in reply to: CuSithBell’s comment on: Learned Blankness

  It’s like falling and missing the ground. Happens all the time. For some reason people don’t let me borrow their computers anymore.

• GrayApr 19, 2011, 4:41 PM

  15 points

  in reply to: SilasBarta’s comment on: Learned Blankness

  I was going to ask where the constant for the exponent came from, but with a calculator and the Wikipedia page on exponentiation, I figured it out myself. This site is good for me.

• GrayApr 19, 2011, 3:52 PM

  9 points

  on: Learned Blankness

  I think a lot of learned blankness comes about because of fear of being wrong, or more correctly, fear of someone else blaming them for being wrong. In certain social strata, you aren’t supposed to think about a problem, or let others know you’re thinking about a problem, unless it is your job to think about it. If you think about a problem, and get it wrong, then you are irresponsible for not going to an expert with the problem.

  So that’s where learned blankness gets it’s traction, in my opinion, and this is the reason why you’ll find people spending an incredible amount of money, for example, going to Best Buy and having them install an operating system for you. (I’m sure this site could come up with numerous similar examples of this.)

  But the alternative to this is inevitably being wrong time and again, but this needs to be understood as a part of learning, and as a part of the process of inquiry. We need to learn how to make mistakes, how to know when you’re making a mistake, and how to learn from it. But you’ll inevitably hear “Why didn’t you call the X-man!”

• GrayApr 19, 2011, 3:34 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Risto_Saarelma’s comment on: Build Small Skills in the Right Order

  I think what you say is plausible. But I also think that it is also plausible that a “likable impression” isn’t just an appearance, but the effect of you actually starting to like the guy. I think that’s the sort of thing that concerns me, that at a certain point our social instincts take over and we lose the ability to detach ourselves from the situation.

• GrayApr 19, 2011, 4:15 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: Risto_Saarelma’s comment on: Build Small Skills in the Right Order

  I wonder about this idea that knowing how someone will be manipulating you is any defense at all from being manipulated by that person. It sounds plausible, but is there any evidence at all that knowledge can have this affect?

  Or is knowledge not wholly intellectual, and can be considered a species of manipulation, but not manipulation of the dark arts variety. Maybe even “light arts manipulation”? Sorry, had to throw this last paragraph in there because I thought it was interesting.

• GrayApr 19, 2011, 4:03 AM

  6 points

  0

  in reply to: David_Gerard’s comment on: Build Small Skills in the Right Order

  Thanks for your post, but this is the first time I’ve heard of what sounds like practical mind-hacking at all. Where’s the good mind-hacking stuff? I mean, the page you link to make it sounds like all of this brainwashing/​mind manipulation stuff is standard understanding, but is it only standard in the dark arts sense, or is there a more general understanding about this sort of thing that can be used for good as well as for evil?