Jay_Schweikert

Karma: 720

Jay_Schweikert 18 Dec 2014 5:02 UTC
18 points
on: Rationality Quotes December 2014

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation, For fear they should succumb and go astray; So when you are requested to pay up or be molested, You will find it better policy to say: --

“We never pay any-one Dane-geld, No matter how trifling the cost; For the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that pays it is lost!”

--Rudyard Kipling, “Dane-Geld”

A nice reminder about the value of one-boxing, especially in light of current events.

Jay_Schweikert 3 Dec 2014 4:40 UTC
37 points
on: Rationality Quotes December 2014

All the logical work (if not all the rhetorical work) in “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” is being done by the decision about what aspects of liberty are essential, and how much safety is at stake. The slogan might work as a reminder not to make foolish tradeoffs, but the real difficulty is in deciding which tradeoffs are wise and which are foolish. Once we figure that out, we don’t need the slogan to remind us; before we figure it out, the slogan doesn’t really help us.

--Eugene Volokh, “Liberty, safety, and Benjamin Franklin”

A good example of the risk of reading too much into slogans that are basically just applause lights. Also reminds me of “The Choice between Good and Bad is not a matter of saying ‘Good!’ It is about deciding which is which.”

Jay_Schweikert 7 Dec 2013 22:05 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Cthulhoo’s comment on: Personal examples of semantic stopsigns
I’m torn on “it’s complicated.” Clearly, you’re correct that it can function as a powerful semantic stopsign. But increasingly, I also find that it’s actually an entirely appropriate and even useful response (or at least an initial response) to many questions, especially political/policy/legal/normative questions.

For example, imagine a poll asking American citizens the following question: “In one sentence, what would you say is the major problem with the American health care system?” Now imagine the people who respond with something like “It’s complicated,” and ask yourself whether these individuals might ultimately have something interesting and productive to say about health care (compared to the average responder).

Jay_Schweikert 7 Dec 2013 21:57 UTC
6 points
on: 2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Answered every question to which I had an answer. I haven’t spent much time on Less Wrong recently, but it’s really pretty remarkable how just answering Less Wrong surveys causes me to think more seriously than just about anything else I come across in any given week.

Jay_Schweikert 22 Sep 2013 17:45 UTC
9 points
on: Rationality Quotes September 2013

Zortran, do you ever wonder if it’s all just meaningless?

What’s “meaningless?”

It’s like… wait, really? You don’t have that word? It’s a big deal over here.

No. Is it a good word? What does it do?

It’s sort of like… what if you aren’t important? You know… to the universe.

Wait… so humans have a word to refer to the idea that it’d be really sad if all of reality weren’t focused on them individually?

Kinda, yeah.

We call that “megalomania.”

Well, you don’t have to be a jerk about it.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Jay_Schweikert 7 May 2013 4:04 UTC
4 points
on: Using Evolution for Marriage or Sex
I’m not quite sure what to make of this post as a whole. I find myself appreciative of the general point, and a lot of it seems to register with me, but I also agree that more precise sourcing would be desirable for such a controversial and empirically open-ended subject.

But the main reason why I wanted to comment is that Bang With Friends seems like such an obvious and obviously value-adding concept that I was surprised I’d never heard of anything like it before. If I were in the position of looking for additional sexual partners right now (and if the privacy was functional), I don’t see any good reason not to use something like that. If people feel comfortable sharing on this subject, has anyone out there had positive experiences with this app or something like it?

Jay_Schweikert 15 Apr 2013 20:52 UTC
8 points
in reply to: Eneasz’s comment on: Help us name the Sequences ebook
I like the general point about something catchy with pizzazz. “Being Less Wrong” is my favorite so far, but it could probably be improved on. “Winning: Theory and Practice” is also pretty good, though I wonder whether there’s too much of an association between “winning” and Charlie Sheen. Maybe that’s a silly concern, but we wouldn’t want anyone to think this was just a joking reference to that.

Jay_Schweikert 15 Apr 2013 20:46 UTC
20 points
on: Help us name the Sequences ebook
Is it helpful for the phrase “The Sequences” to appear in the title? My sense is that anyone who’s already familiar enough with the Sequences to know what it means isn’t going to need that phrase to be interested in the book, and that the phrase doesn’t add much value for someone who’s never heard of the Sequences before. It’s sort of a weird word that doesn’t immediately suggest anything about rationality.

The only people for whom it would add value would be those who (1) have at least sort of heard of the Sequences and are somewhat interested; (2) need to know that this ebook is about the Sequences to decide to read it; and (3) wouldn’t understand that this was the Sequences ebook without that word in the title. I doubt that’s a very large class, so my initial sense is that it’s not necessary in the actual title. But then, that’s just what occurred to me in the last 10 minutes, and the people who have thought about this more carefully may well have other reasons.

Jay_Schweikert 4 Apr 2013 14:18 UTC
53 points
on: Rationality Quotes April 2013

Jack Sparrow: [after Will draws his sword] Put it away, son. It’s not worth you getting beat again.

Will Turner: You didn’t beat me. You ignored the rules of engagement. In a fair fight, I’d kill you.

Jack Sparrow: Then that’s not much incentive for me to fight fair, then, is it? [Jack turns the ship, hitting Will with the boom]

Jack Sparrow: Now as long as you’re just hanging there, pay attention. The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can’t do. For instance, you can accept that your father was a pirate and a good man or you can’t. But pirate is in your blood, boy, so you’ll have to square with that some day. And me, for example, I can let you drown, but I can’t bring this ship into Tortuga all by me onesies, savvy? So, can you sail under the command of a pirate, or can you not?

--Pirates of the Caribbean

The pirate-specific stuff is a bit extraneous, but I’ve always thought this scene neatly captured the virtue of cold, calculating practicality. Not that “fairness” is never important to worry about, but when you’re faced with a problem, do you care more about solving it, or arguing that your situation isn’t fair? What can you do, and what can’t you do? Reminds me of What do I want? What do I have? How can I best use the latter to get the former?

Jay_Schweikert 5 Feb 2013 19:46 UTC
9 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Rationality Quotes February 2013
Well, but in the universe of the commercials, it clearly did, so long as you went to the appropriate expert.

Jay_Schweikert 29 Jan 2013 18:30 UTC
2 points
in reply to: FiftyTwo’s comment on: Rationality Quotes January 2013
And to think, I was just getting on to post this quote myself!

Jay_Schweikert 29 Jan 2013 16:20 UTC
3 points
in reply to: pragmatist’s comment on: [minor] Separate Upvotes and Downvotes Implimented
Same thing happened to me, and I also had moved an article from Discussion to Main after it had gotten a lot of upvotes. So that’s almost certainly the explanation.

Jay_Schweikert 16 Jan 2013 18:25 UTC
−1 points
on: Rationality Quotes January 2013

[After analyzing the hypothetical of an extra, random person dying every second.] All in all, the losses would be dramatic, but not devastating to our species as a whole. And really, in the end, the global death rate is 100%—everyone dies.

. . . or do they? Strictly speaking, the observed death rate for the human condition is something like 93%—that is, around 93% of all humans have died. This means the death rate among humans who were not members of The Beatles is significantly higher than the 50% death rate among humans who were.

--Randall Munroe, “Death Rates”

Jay_Schweikert 10 Jan 2013 17:16 UTC
2 points
in reply to: DaFranker’s comment on: Rationality Quotes January 2013
Ah, okay, thanks for clarifying. In case my initial reply to MugaSofer was misleading, Dennett doesn’t really seem to be suggesting here that this is really what most theists believe, or that many theists would try to convert atheists with this tactic. It’s more just a tongue-in-cheek example of what happens when you lose track of what concept a particular group of syllables is supposed to point at.

But I think there are a great many people who purport to believe in “God,” whose concept of God really is quite close to something like the “anthropomorphic representation of natural processes, or of the universe and its inner workings.” Probably not for those who identify with a particular religion, but most of the “spiritual but not religious” types seem to have something like this in mind. Indeed, I’ve had quite a few conversations where it became clear that someone couldn’t tell me the difference between a universe where “God exists” and where “God doesn’t exist.”

Jay_Schweikert 10 Jan 2013 15:53 UTC
1 point
in reply to: DaFranker’s comment on: Rationality Quotes January 2013
Sorry, can you clarify what you mean here? None of what passes an ideological turing test? Are you saying something like “theists erroneously conclude that the proponents of evolution must believe in God because evolutionists believe that evolution is what produced all creatures great and small”? What exactly is the mistake that theists make on this point that would lead them to fail the ideological turing test?

Or, did I misunderstand you, and are you saying that people like Dennett fail the ideological turing test with theists?

Jay_Schweikert 10 Jan 2013 15:04 UTC
1 point
in reply to: MugaSofer’s comment on: Rationality Quotes January 2013
In large part, yes. This passage is in Dennett’s chapter on “Belief in Belief,” and he has an aside on the next page describing how to “turn an atheist into a theist by just fooling around with words”—namely, that “if ‘God’ were just the name of whatever it is that produced all creatures great and small, then God might turn out to be the process of evolution by natural selection.”

But I think there’s also a more general rationality point about keeping track of the map-territory distinction when it comes to abstract concepts, and about ensuring that we’re not confusing ourselves or others by how we use words.

Jay_Schweikert 9 Jan 2013 16:39 UTC
14 points
on: Rationality Quotes January 2013

Suppose you’ve been surreptitiously doing me good deeds for months. If I “thank my lucky stars” when it is really you I should be thanking, it would misrepresent the situation to say that I believe in you and am grateful to you. Maybe I am a fool to say in my heart that it is only my lucky stars that I should thank—saying, in other words, that there is nobody to thank—but that is what I believe; there is no intentional object in this case to be identified as you.

Suppose instead that I was convinced that I did have a secret helper but that it wasn’t you—it was Cameron Diaz. As I penned my thank-you notes to her, and thought lovingly about her, and marveled at her generosity to me, it would surely be misleading to say that you were the object of my gratitude, even though you were in fact the one who did the deeds that I am so grateful for. And then suppose I gradually began to suspect that I had been ignorant and mistaken, and eventually came to the correct realization that you were indeed the proper recipient of my gratitude. Wouldn’t it be strange for me to put it this way: “Now I understand: you are Cameron Diaz!”

--Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell (discussing the differences between the “intentional object” of a belief and the thing-in-the-world inspiring that belief)

Jay_Schweikert 9 Jan 2013 16:22 UTC
6 points
in reply to: simplicio’s comment on: Rationality Quotes January 2013
I answered “rarely,” but I should probably qualify that. I’ve been an atheist for about 5 years, and in the last 2 or 3, I don’t recall ever seriously thinking that the basic, factual premises of Christianity were any more likely than Greek myths. But I have had several moments—usually following some major personal failing of mine, or maybe in others close to me—where the Christian idea of man-as-fallen living in a fallen world made sense to me, and where I found myself unconsciously groping for something like the Christian concept of grace.

As I recall, in the first few years after my deconversion, this feeling sometimes led me to think more seriously about Christianity, and I even prayed a few times, just in case. In the past couple years that hasn’t happened; I understand more fully exactly why I’d have those feelings even without anything like the Christian God, and I’ve thought more seriously about how to address them without falling on old habits. But certainly that experience has helped me understand what would motivate someone to either seek or hold onto Christianity, especially if they didn’t have any training in Bayescraft.

Jay_Schweikert 9 Jan 2013 16:10 UTC
3 points
in reply to: NoisyEmpire’s comment on: Rationality Quotes January 2013
Upvoted. I actually had a remarkably similar experience reading Lewis. Throughout college I had been undergoing a gradual transformation from “real” Christian to liberal Protestant to deist, and I ended up reading Lewis because he seemed to be the only person I could find who was firmly committed to Christianity and yet seemed willing to discuss the kind of questions I was having. Reading Mere Christianity was basically the event that let me give Christianity/theism one last look over and say “well said, but that is enough for me to know it is time to move on.”

Jay_Schweikert 25 Dec 2012 20:42 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: New censorship: against hypothetical violence against identifiable people
Is that your true rejection? That is, if this poll were posted to Main, and all readers were encouraged to answer, and the results came back essentially the same, would you then allow the results to influence what kind of policy to adopt? Or are you just sufficiently confident about the need for such a moderation policy that, absent clear negative consequences not previously considered, you’ll implement it anyway?

I don’t mean at all to suggest that the latter answer is inappropriate. Overall I trust your moderating judgment, and you clearly have more experience with and have thought more about LW’s public image than probably anyone. If you decide the strong version of this policy is needed, notwithstanding disagreement from most LW members, I’m happy to give substantial deference to that decision. But does it matter either way whether this post is selectively read?