LessWrong 2.0 Reader

I feel like this should be a lw question post. and maybe an lw admin should be tagged?

I'm also wondering the same question.

I think putting the conclusion in the title is good insofar it's a form of anti-clickbait: It's the most informative title possible. Yes, people may be motivated to read it in order to confirm their pre-existing opinion, or to search for counterarguments, but the alternative is often that they don't read the article at all, for a lack of motivation.

People who are motivated to write a comment from a disagreement with the title are, more or less, forced to read the actual post in order to compose their rebuttal. Which is better than not receiving any engagement from this person at all. And perhaps this post even changes their mind, or they agree with the title but find the arguments in the post too weak.

Overall, having the conclusion in the title seems good for similar reasons a summary in the beginning is good.

Though a reason to avoid the bottom line in the title is if it is some generally unpopular opinion. Many people will reflexively downvote the post without reading, causing it to be seen by fewer readers.

By blackmailing powerful people into doing good, I assume.

This sounds individually, but the question is about collectively. 

The question is zooming out from the humanity itself, and view from out-of-human kind of angle. I think it is an interesting angle, and remind ourselves that many things we do, may not be as altruistic as we thought.

Also, I think maybe that would mean suffering risks would need more attention.

That's alright! And I'm happy some of it resonated with you.

While science seems to solve a lot of problems, I think it creates new problems as it solves the old ones, and that most of the problems were trying to solve now wouldn't be as bad if they weren't amplified by technology. I think science will always both solve and create problems, and that this is unavoidable because science itself is unbiased and free-for-all, and that they problems will get worse since technology is a power-amplifier (by the way, as technology allows for stronger tools over time, society needs more laws and restrictions in order to keep people from being able to harm one another, and if you try to design a video game in which players progress like this you will notice that no player is going to enjoy the end-game)

I also don't think we should give science the entire credit. The knowledge of humanity is mainly  improved by few, extremely intelligent people (Einstein, Newton, Tesla, Hawking, and so on). Even before the scientific method, a few highly influential people accounted for most changes in the world. Most peoples education consist of studying other peoples discoveries and theories, with the hope that they can reach a level where they provide more benefit than harm. This almost makes common people sound superficial, but that's also because science is getting harder to use. 200 years ago you'd likely be alright if you could operate a shovel and a wheelbarrow, whereas you're at a disadvantage today if you can't make it through college.

It is impossible to understand the world. At best you can make a mental model which can predict it because, in some sense, your internal model is a bisimulation (I'm not sure if that's the right term, but the idea should be close). We refine theories so that they predict the world with less and less error. But the human brain already does this by its own, and intelligence isn't actually required, nor is understanding. It's just trial and error, you try things, and if their outcome is good, you keep them, and otherwise you get rid of them. But isn't this how darwinism works? And how cultures and traditions originate? But they don't need to know why something works, only that it does. We don't give tradition much credit because traditional explanations are irrational, but as far as pure results go I think traditions do quite well. Most arguments against tradition aren't rational but rather moralistic, and society doesn't seem aware of this, but morality and truth are at great conflict.

Besides the psychological consequences of understanding something (a kind of disillusionment), I think Moloch might be the greater danger. Moloch seems to me a result of legibility, and glorifying science makes people think that legibility (and order) are good-in-themselves, i.e. something where more is always better. This is not the case. I didn't yet know this when I wrote my previous comment, but the issue is known as "high modernity". Nassim Taleb has written about how forcing orderliness on society is dangerous, and it's my personal belief that a lack of legibility is what holds back Moloch. The game theoretical collapse of society is only happening now, in the modern age, since the modern age is what has made it possible, by creating enough order and simplicity (or given the illusion of these) that we now have enough information available that the dilemmas are visible. And now that they're visible you're either required to join them or to put yourself at a disadvantage by not joining them. I believe that online social media is unhealthy, whereas real-life socialization is often healthy, because the latter is more chaotic (literally) and has less visible metrics that one could start optimizing for.

To generalize, most undesirable mechanics in life are caused by excess legibility, and by the belief that something singular is good and ought to be optimized for. Rationality, legibility, morality, equality, happiness... Whatever metric we choose, the outcome will be terrible. The alignment problem in AI should perhaps teach us that focusing on anything singular is bad, i.e. that balance is key. But Taoists knew this more than 2500 years ago. I've often been told that religious people are just stupid and that the category of people who speak of Heaven/Nature/GNON and warn against "playing god" don't include hyper intelligent people, but from my limited experience with rationalism and science, this is wrong.

Of course, this community will largely disagree with me, since it believes that society is clearly improving while I believe it's clearly getting worse.

We moved just a few meters over due to construction: hope you can still find us:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/f3QCSocG3U2rqKvv9

@Elizabeth [LW · GW] suggested that I share here the quick tips I gave her for finding cool history and philosophy of science books, so let's do it.

• I like using awards as starting points. They're not exhaustive, but often they point to particularly good references in a field that I don't know about.
  • For philosophy of science, often with a decent dose of history, there is the Lakatos Award.
  • For history of science, there is the Sarton Medal, which is given to individuals, not works
• Same with book reviews by journals focused on the topic
  • My favorite are from the British Journal for The Philosophy of Science reviews
• Knowing the terminology helps. I find that "History and Philosophy of X" is often a good google query
  • I recently discovered https://hiphilangsci.net/ on linguistics that way!
• Obviously, follow the citations: cool books tend to reference cool books. (And terrible ones, but let's not mention that)
• Also known, but just in case: going to https://scholar.google.com/ and searching for the most cited books that cite a book you liked often leads to great reading material.

Screw that.  That's just stupid.  Delete it without a qualm.

Nope. No no no. Nononononono. Our happiness baselines are part of us. Those with high happiness baselines have less utility in other ways in the form of not needing to look for things to make them happier. Those with low happiness baselines have less utility simply by having a lower happiness baseline. It's part of who we are. You are welcome to delete it in your brain without a qualm, but I'm fine with my set level of happiness. The lowness of my baseline is what makes me create, what makes me think of interesting ideas of things to do.

Should have made it much scarier. "Superhappies" caring about humans "not in the specific way that the humans wanted to be cared for" sounds better or at least no worse than death, whereas I'm concerned about s-risks, i.e., risks of worse than death scenarios.