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Am I understanding correctly that this idea of wholesomeness is purely definitory/axiomatic (like mathematics) containing no (extraordinary) claims at all, so it doesn't make sense to ask "Is this true?" but rather "Is it useful?", and whether "to act wholesomely is good" is just hypothesis you are even actually testing?
Because then I see its great advantage over religious moral systems, that do contain such claims that actually might be false, but people are demanded to believe them.
Wow, thanks for your willingness to test/falsify your statements, and I apologize for my rash judgment. Your idea just sounded to me to be too good to be true, so I wanted to be cautious.
And I would be glad to say I am completely satisfied with your answer. However, that is not the case yet, maybe just because the "mistakes" of the people trying to apply wholesomeness might still need a definition - a criterion according to which something is or is not a mistake.
However, if you provided such a definition, I might be another tester of this style of thinking.
Could someone, please, confirm or disprove my impression that this idea might be not falsifiable at all? And if it is not, could someone, please, explain to me what reasons to apply this idea are still there (I am skeptical and curious, not completely denying)?
However, I appreciate this attempt to offer such an interesting moral idea/hypothesis/theory like this.
Hello, my name is Peter and recently I read Basics of Rationalist Discourse and iteratively checked/updated the current post based on the points stated in those basics:
I (possibly falsely) feel that moral (i.e. "what should be") theories should be reducible because I see the analogy with the demand of "what is" theories to be reducible due to Occam's razor. I admit that my feeling might be false (and I know analogy might not be a sufficient reason), and I am ready to admit that it is. However, despite reading the whole Mere Goodness from RAZ I cannot remember any reasons (maybe they are there, and I don't blame the author (EY), if not), but many interesting statements (e.g. about becoming the pleasure brain center itself). And I remember there was such a long dialog there that might have explained this to me but I didn't comprehend its bottom line.
This post is not intended to have any conclusion more general than about my state of mind, and if there is such an impact, I don't mean it.
I find splitting the Great Idea a very useful tool to quantify its relevance ("For how many parts do I feel they are true?"), and this way, to apply falsification (for which I find "If your idea wasn't true, how would you find out? Because if you don't ask, it might be not true, but you didn't find out." to be the most logical and intuitive description. And so in case of splitting, you can say "I would admit my idea was incorrect, if not all its 12 parts felt correct separately. Easy.".).
I agree with both "emotion" and "pretend" hypotheses. It is (according to my world view) extremely difficult to pretend emotions you are not possessing. Thus, the easiest way to pretend your beliefs might be to manipulate your own emotions.
Wow, thanks very much. Your post boosted my usage of this handbook rapidly from that day, I intensely enjoy doing these exercises, and I find them extremely helpful and effective. Thanks once again.
"His own stupid" - the idea that if someone is stupid, he deserves all the bad consequences of being stupid.
Disproof:
Let's assume this is true. Then there would have been at least one voluntary action that turned him from wise to stupid. But why would someone voluntarily choose to be stupid? Only because he wouldn't have known what being stupid means, so he would be already stupid. Thus there would be no such first action. (Assumtion rejected.)
Very nicely written. A good example of this might be invention of genetic flaw correction, due to which morally controversial abortion could become less desired option.
I am stuck at the prompt no. 1, because I am wondering whether it is possible to name all the wants once forever despite the complexity of human morality.
Thanks in advance for explanation.
What about moral duty to be curious?
For everytime I am curious about "how the things are?", I would like to be curious also about "what to do?" then. (Curious pragmatism)
My suggestion for alternative explanation is that people somehow assume that for saving more birds, more people will be asked to donate, so after dividing, the amounts per person will be very similar.
I agree that voting might be little bit annoying.
On the other side, it could potentially make the search for specific qualities of comment much easier if automated (by sorting). (E.g. "Now I am not in the mood for solving difficult concepts so I want something with high clarity evaluation." or "Now I am too tired to argue/fight so I want something empathic now.")
1. entity that regularly makes the acts of changing the owner of object of value from the other entities to self without providing any signal according to that the given other entity could have any reason to hypothesize such change in short term time horizon of its perceptual and cognitive activity.
2. relatively common state of a natural system of currently detecting an internal insufficiency of specific sources interpreting it as the threat to its existence or proper functioning and causing it to perform an attempt to compensate for it and deflect such threat.
3. the natural object which is usually keeping its shape and is making an impression of having a value much greater than other kinds of natural shape-keeping objects probably due to the easily recognizable hue and also due to the relatively low amount of it in reachable universe.
Excuse me. What should be easy to remember? Concept names or whole frameworks?
Ok, thanks. This is very interesting, and correct in theory (I guess). And I would be very glad to apply it. But before doing my first steps in it on my own by the trial-&-error method, I would like to know some best practices in doing so, if they are available at all. I strongly doubt this is a common practice in a common population and I slightly doubt that it is the common practice also for a "common" attendee of this forum, but I would still like to make this my (usual) habit.
And the greatest issue I see in this is how to talk to common people around me about common uncertain things that are probabilistic if they actually think of the common things as they would be certain. Should I try to gradually and unnoticeably change their paradigm? Or should I use double language: probabilistic inside, but confidential outside?
(I am aware that these questions might be difficult, and I don't necessarily expect direct answers.)
OK, thanks, but then one of my additional questions is: what is the reasonable threshold for the probability of my belief A given all available evidence B1, B2, .., Bn? And why?
Hello, I would like to ask whether there is any summary/discussion of necessary/sufficient criteria according to which a reason for whatever (belief, action, goal, ...) is sufficient. If not, I would like to discuss it.
Mr./Mrs. nim, thanks for asking.
By meangfulness of existence, I mean the case related to whole existing reality in whole (eternal) time that would be good to prefer when choosing actions to perform. Or said differently, it would be good to maximize the probability of the meanigfulness by choosing proper actions.
So potentially, the whole existence can be either meaningful or not (indpendently of time variable), and we should make it be the former.
But the meaningfulness of moment is the different term, which I have chosen to be auxiliary in the statements.
I wanted to apply curiosity and this idea was the output of my mind, and it can be burdened by my subjectivity. And I would like to apply the second virtue (relinquishment) but before doing it, I would like to have an alternative to remain. So I am open to reasonable alternatives from people here.
I also admit, that the items in the second statement can be arbitrary, but better arbitrary than none.
To simplify my consideration, let's assume it doesn't.
A riddle (maybe trivial for you, lesswrongsters, but I am still curious of your answers/guesses):
It is neither truth nor lie. What is it?
Yes, but it can happen that in the time course of our individual existence two "justified opinions" inconsistent with each other can occur in our minds. (And if they didn't, we would be doomed to believe all flawed opinions from our childhood without possibility to update them because of rejecting new inconsistent opinions, etc.)
And morover, we are born with some "priors" which are not completely true but relatively useful.
And there are some perceptual illusions.
And prof. Richard Dawkins claims that there are relatively very frequent hallucinations that could make us think that a miracle is happenning (if I understood him correctly). By relatively frequent I mean that probably any of the healthy people could experience a hallucination at least once in a lifetime (often without realizing it).
And of course, there are mental fallacies and biases.
And if the process is reliable, why different people do have different opinions and inconsistent "truths"?
Thus, I think that the process is relatively reliable but not totally reliable.
PS: I am relatively new here. So hopefully, my tone is not agressively persuasive. If any of you have a serious problem with my approach, please, criticize me.
Ok, I will put it a little bit straightforward.
My Christian friend claimed that atheists/rationalists/skeptics/evolutionists cannot trust even their own reason (beacuse it is the product of their imperfect brains in their opinion).
So I wanted to counterargue reasonably, and my statement above seems to me a relatively reasonable and relevant. And I don't know whether it would convince my Christian friend, but it is convincing at least me :) .
Thanks in advance for your opinions, etc.
Hello, lesswrongsters (if I can call you like this),
What do you think about the following statement: "You should be relatively skeptical about each of your past impressions, but you should be absolutely non-skeptical about your most current one at a given moment. Not because it was definitely true, but because there is practically no other option."
Please, give me your opinions, criticism, etc. about this.
I would like to ask you, whether there are some criteria (I am fine even with the subjective ones) according to which you, experienced rationalists, would accept/consider some metaethics despite the very bad humankind's experience with them.
I expect answers like: convincing; convincing after very careful attempt to find its flaws; logical; convincing after very careful attempt to find its flaws by 10 experienced rationalists; after careful questioning; useful; harmless; etc.
Hello, I would like to ask, whether you think that some ideas can be dangerous to discuss publicly despite you are honest with them and even despite you are doing your best attempt to be logical/rational and even despite you are wishing nothing bad to other people/beings and even despite you are open for its discussion in terms of being prepared for its rejection according to a justified reason.
In this stage, I will just tell you I would like to discuss a specific moral issue, which might be original, and therefore I am skeptical this way and I feel a little insecure about discussing it publicly.
Hello, I would like to ask a straightforward question: Is there a logically valid way to call evolution science and creationism a pseudo-science? I am not creationist, I just hope I will strengthen my evolutionistic opinion. And I would like to have it in a clear form. I must admit that because of my family member I visited a specific creationistic site. And there was the extraordinary claim that there is no such logically valid way and I would like to disprove this for me and my family member by stating at least one. And I want to stop visiting that site after disproving. Thanks for answer in advance.
Maybe the answer is that creationistic hypotheses don't make any falsifiable but confirmed predictions, but I am not sure.
And I would also like to ask a broader question whether there is some rationally efective method of looking for the truth on the internet. Or more simply stated, who to believe.
Hello, I wanted to post something but when reading the guidelines, I am a little confused. The issue of my confusion is "Aim to explain, not persuade". English is not my native language, but when I googled "persuade" I found that it means "induce (someone) to do something through reasoning or argument. ". To me, this sounds a little ridiculous on the rationality forum.