The fundamental problem of ignoring gut over reason as a rule is that
some people are able to reason themselves into believing pretty much
anything.
A ‘gut’ heuristic might lead us astray on average, but by embracing
the totality of our sources of judgement can help avoid making grave
mistakes – like the subgroup of EA that was proposing engineering
efforts to mass extinct the wild animals because (they reason)
that wild animals live a life full of suffering that isn’t worth living,
so genociding them all would achieve the greatest reduction in
suffering.
Monomanics are much more able to talk themselves into crazy
positions– because a crazy position might look great from a single
narrow perspective–, so any philosophy that pushes people away from
being complete people and towards being some kind of monomaniac is going
to have the potential for creating problems – it doesn’t really matter
if the monomania is utilitarianism, the word of “The Sun King”, or some
“rationalism” cult predicated on misunderstanding Bayesian
inference.
this sort of logic coming from the radical vegan crowd has always greatly unnerved me. a sort of moral totalitarianism that extends into humanity utterly dominating nature's processes to the point of us declaring predators illegal seems like something you'd see from a saturday morning cartoon villain.
I don't think we should consider ourselves responsible for how nature is. that seems backwards and insane.
I don't make an exemption, but I consider the logic of "We must extend the iron-clad grip of the state to subjugate all living things to stop predation" to be the same as "We should invade and subjugate these humans to stop these social practices we disagree with." As an anti-imperialist I am against both.
That's a good point. I think we are responsible for ourselves but I'm not comfortable with us assuming responsibility for all creatures on the earth. I don't think it makes any sense for me to think that a lion is evil. I can make a judgement about how invasive species might destabilize an ecosystem because that's humanity taking responsibility for its errors.
I'm surprised the other user who seemed more on the side of this idea deleted their post, as much as I didn't agree with them I thought it was interesting and on topic.
How is this even a topic for debate?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding but anyone advocating for a removal of predators from the environment for any reason is advocating for the destruction of all natural ecosystems wholesale, no?
At a certain point we may as well just let climate change run its course in that case.
“Yudkowsky’s mind was blown by meeting the Sparkly Elites: “These
CEOs and CTOs and hedge-fund traders, these folk of the mid-level power
elite, seemed happier and more alive.” My dude, have you never heard of
cocaine. Yudkowsky posted this piece just before the elites in question
crashed the world economy. Whoops!”
That was one of the first lesswrong articles I read, and it still
makes me wonder how anyone can take this guy seriously. It’s like being
wowed by how friendly and confident the typical grifter is, or how
strong a professional weight lifter is.
You don't even have to invoke coke or anything. It is *entirely unsurprising* to me that a group of people characterized by their access to large amounts of resources with which to solve problems would appear happier and less stressed. It's like looking at a homeless guy who's got some serious issues and concluding "wow, this person is inherently bad in a way that has lead to him becoming homeless" rather than "wow, it seems like being homeless is a real nightmare that ruins your life".
You don't get to be a CEO without presumably developing people skills and kissing up.
You may be miserable inside but if your huge paycheck requires you to be able to schmooze people effectively then that's what you'll do. It's not necessary to believe that these people are any more or less content than anyone else.
As someone else said, thinking the stripper is in love with you because that's how they maximise their income.
> Steve Jurvetson talked fast and articulately, could follow long chains of reasoning, was familiar with a wide variety of technologies, and was happy to drag in analogies from outside sciences like biology—good ones, too.
I gotta wonder about this sentence because as far as I understand it, Yud has near-zero actual expertise in tech (or biology), so should I trust him to be able to distinguish between "familiar with a wide variety of technologies" and "knows enough buzzwords to dazzle laymen"?
Oh god that whole post is just ridiculous.
The only way humanity will ever benefit from Yuds writing is if some psychologist somewhere uses it for an in depth psychological profile.
The fundamental problem of ignoring gut over reason as a rule is that some people are able to reason themselves into believing pretty much anything.
A ‘gut’ heuristic might lead us astray on average, but by embracing the totality of our sources of judgement can help avoid making grave mistakes – like the subgroup of EA that was proposing engineering efforts to mass extinct the wild animals because (they reason) that wild animals live a life full of suffering that isn’t worth living, so genociding them all would achieve the greatest reduction in suffering.
Monomanics are much more able to talk themselves into crazy positions– because a crazy position might look great from a single narrow perspective–, so any philosophy that pushes people away from being complete people and towards being some kind of monomaniac is going to have the potential for creating problems – it doesn’t really matter if the monomania is utilitarianism, the word of “The Sun King”, or some “rationalism” cult predicated on misunderstanding Bayesian inference.
“Yudkowsky’s mind was blown by meeting the Sparkly Elites: “These CEOs and CTOs and hedge-fund traders, these folk of the mid-level power elite, seemed happier and more alive.” My dude, have you never heard of cocaine. Yudkowsky posted this piece just before the elites in question crashed the world economy. Whoops!”
That was one of the first lesswrong articles I read, and it still makes me wonder how anyone can take this guy seriously. It’s like being wowed by how friendly and confident the typical grifter is, or how strong a professional weight lifter is.
I thought I’d randomly look into one of the people described.
The very first person EY mentions in the ‘Competent Elites’ post stepped down and was placed on a leave of absence and then voted out of his company after an internal investigation into allegations of sexual harassment. Classic.
Good one, David. Several things that I had caught wind off, but hadn’t looked into too much.
Informative even if I follow these people a little.