Where does our community disagree about meaningful issues?

Cryonics, supporting free market policies, and the value of the social justice movement.

• "Bayes vs Science": Can you consistently beat the experts in (allegedly) evidence-based fields by applying "rationality"? AI risk and cryonics are specific instances of this issue.

• Can rationality be learned, or is it an essentially innate trait? If it can be learned, can it be taught? If it can be taught, do the "Sequences" and/or CFAR teach it effectively?

You could look on the surveys: what questions are closest to 50%?

The actual effectiveness of MIRI

Moral realism, apparently

The historical importance of the modern era.

Everything except the value of probability theory and statistics?

what "the garden" (of LW) should ultimately look like. (we enjoy that topic more than actually bringing about the version of the garden we think is best)

How/whether to do rationality outreach

I've deleted my previous post here but I'd like to point out the relationship elephant in the room.

It's seemingly a never-ending topic and looking at it from aside, it reminds me of an Escher painting - some sort of strange loop where people continuously argue about what's effective in a relationship with only one gender involved.

The value of the Effective Altruism movement.

How important is money?

• To have
• To earn
• To donate

Are EA causes bottlenecked on money or talent?

Politics, if you consider it meaningful.

Maybe not so much in Berlin - I'm guessing the libertarian count there is lower than in Brit derived countries.

Genetic determinism.

Should we try to grow the community? How? How much?

Keeping costly promises/contracts after changing into someone who no longer would have agreed to them.

I'll add some sub-points:

1) AI risk is important

• ToolAI: http://lesswrong.com/lw/cze/reply_to_holden_on_tool_ai/
• Ng's position: "Worrying about AGI is like worrying about overpopulation on Mars"
• MIRI's actual effectiveness.
• item 1

2) Everybody should be vegan.

• Veganism is healthier than other diets (e.g. paleo, keto)
• Even if veganism is less healthy, it is still morally superior to other diets.

Other people have mentioned:

• Cryonics
• Relationships / PUA

Political topics:

• Free Market Policies
• Social Justice Movement
• The importance of environmentalism

When, if ever, is it morally acceptable to lie or deceive?

Whether we should encourage more motivated growth or appreciation and contentment with what we have. (for reasons of overpopulation maybe we shouldn't grow outwards across the galaxy. Especially when we haven't figured out how to stop destroying this planet yet)

Quantum/big world/mutliverse immortality? (Whether it's true, whether it's relevant, whether it's good or bad, what implications it has if any)

Communalism versus individualism.

It may sound vague, but it is the difference between Effective Altruists and people like me whose response to EA is basically, "Well, that's better than what you had before, good luck with that." Which is to say, I harbor no animosity towards EA, I just see no point in participating, because it starts from an axiom, or perhaps set of axioms, I don't share.

Which isn't to say I haven't donated money to causes, but rather that I donate money to causes which I think will make my life better. I have some kind of interest in AI risk, for a Less-Wrong appropriate example, but little to no interest in malaria in third-world nations.

1) AI risk is important

Not sufficiently informed. My general idea which might be flawed is that it's significant risk, as in an AI can incrementally improve itself rather quickly, but that's all intuition.

2) Everybody should be vegan.

I'd like to say something here. People might feel a little bit of hostility toward pro-vegan propaganda which is completely justified. I'd explain further, but it'll be great if people separate the agenda and the people.

More often than not I see manipulative nonsense which is basically propaganda. Examples include altruism abuse ('Eating animals is bad and terrible!'), scientific abuse ('Meat is bad for your health!'), and truth misrepresentation ('This roidhead lives on a pure diet of vegetables!').

I believe that probably gives rise to plenty of contempt toward vegans. They didn't do anything wrong, but personally it gives me the "Go to the libraby and look for Cialdini" vibe; I'd have to use some exotic mind trick to actually convince them that the evidence is wrong or just plainly bad. The difference between talking with a wall that talks back to these type of arguments are, from a consequental point of view, not that much different.

TLDR too much propaganda, absolutes are bad, and this is one of the dieting culture 'fields of belief' - isomorphic to relationships and PUA.

3) It's good to make being an aspiring rationalist part of your identity.

Not going to answer this because it's vague. What does aspiring rationalist mean? I don't know enough math? Haven't read the sequences? I'm not psuedo-omniscient? The mental models in my head don't have clear shapes? Are there any levels and does the Dojo hand out belts?

There's no reason to push it too strongly, but there's no reason not to pursue it either, so I can't really come up with a good enough answer. Maybe if 'identity' could be unpacked I could give one.

4) Being conscious of privacy is important

Is there a reason not to? Go ahead and tell me where you live. 'No'? Then privacy is important.

Here's a nice essay on it though: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565

I suspect we disagree on what is a meaningful disagreement. Until you can state a proposition of future experience, you don't know if you're disagreeing about anything, or only affiliating with a general idea.

Paternalism.

Users of Krokodil are highly likely to die as the result of their use, often within a year of starting (a few have made it as long as five, although this is very rare), and the few addicts who make it into rehab face around a month of severe withdrawal symptoms; the pain is so horrific that people frequently need to be put in an induced coma.

-Krokodil on rationalwiki

If you knew someone was going to try krokodil, would you stop them?

Would you support a law to stop them?

I feel like the schizophrenic opinions that arise around paternalism here owe to claims that it is politics. I think that's a bit of a cop-out personally.

Second level consequentialism

Does smoking cost as much as it makes for the Treasury?. Just one of many high quality articles on full fact. What, if anything, can they do better?

Given that smoking costs the legitimate decision makers more ('bad for the economy'') and hurts the population ('bad for society'), is that sufficient reason to intervene in the market?

Why even think through such things! We ought we pander to those who don't understand these issues and keep away, since if we didn't understand them intervention in the market sounds pretty scary?

Sanders vs. Trump.