2017-10-02 RRG Notes
- One of the likely characteristics of someone who is a rationalist is a lower than usual tolerance for flaws in reasoning
- Even if we can't be nice to idiots, we should tolerate those who are being nice to idiots
- Don't punish non-punishers
- Only judge people for the mistakes they make, not the mistakes they tolerate others making
- People in the atheist/libertarian/technophile cluster set their joining prices too high
- The group doesn't have to be perfect for you to join and make a positive difference by taking part
- And this is why rationalists should get involved in politics
- If the objection you have doesn't outweigh the net positive impact you would make on the world, swallow your objection and join the group anyway
- People tend to underestimate group inertia
- "In the age of the Internet and in the company of nonconformists, it does get a little tiring reading the 451st public email from someone saying that the Common Project isn't worth their resources until the website has a sans-serif font."
- Make sure that your objection is your true rejection
- "If the issue isn't worth your personally fixing by however much effort it takes, and it doesn't arise from outright bad faith, it's not worth refusing to contribute your efforts to a cause you deem worthwhile."
- Is it possible to have a group rationalists as motivated and as coordinated as the Catholic Church?
- If mental energy is limited, then it may be the case that some false beliefs are more strongly motivating than any true belief
- Can we make rationalists match the real de-facto output of believing Catholics
- Use cognitive behavioral therapy and Zen meditation to enhance motivation and reduce akrasia
- If rationalists were co-located, they'd accomplish more, just through having the motivation of being an group
- Empirically, that has not been true, at least, so far as I can tell from the output of the Bay Area Rationalists
- Have regular meetings of people contributing to the same task, for the purpose of motivation, rather than coordination
- Have a group norm of being applauded for caring strongly about something
- If rationalists can combine even half the motivation that religious people have with better targeting for more efficient causes, then it's possible that rationalists can have an even greater impact on the world than the Catholic Church
- How can we fill the emotional gap, once religion is no longer an option?
- Most of the things that fulfill our desire for community are not organized explicitly to give us community, and thus, don't optimally fulfill our need for community
- Church, for example
- Getting up early on a Sunday
- Wearing formal clothes
- Listening to the same person give sermons
- Cost of supporting a church and a pastor
- Medieval morality
- I'm not sure that all of those are actually suboptimal
- Is it possible to have a community that's just a community, with no other purpose?
- Maybe the rationalist community model should be more focused on task forces rather than communities
- Communities should be organized around common purposes that bind them together
- Let's have a real higher purpose, instead of the illusory ones that religions offer
- The problem is, what happens after that purpose has been fulfilled? NASA was a damn good organization... right up until it fulfilled its purpose of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth. The nice thing about religion's higher purposes is that they can't ever be acheived
- The purpose of Less Wrong is to create more rationalists
- However, more rationalists is just an means
- The end is to have more support for causes that would benefit from more rationalists existing
- All of the causes that benefit from increased rationality should work to increase the number of rationalists
- Your cause won't benefit 100% from the work you do to increase rationality, but in exchange you'll pick up a bit of a benefit when someone else also works to increase the number of rationalists
- Instead of positioning your cause as the best thing, you should position it as a good thing
- Going from "good" to "best" doesn't increase motivation substantially, but it does increase the burden of proof
- Instead of trying to figure out the best project, we should a have a portfolio of "good" projects that can collaborate to increase the number of rationalists, all benefiting each other
