[gglitch]

I feel you. I'm reminded of Robert Kegan's stages of development, whereof the rare individual who reaches stage four, the stage where one learns to transcend irrational personal attachments and instead cultivate logical, systematic principles and practices to guide behavior, nevertheless sooner or later starts to find niche problems or, let's say, glitches within his or her system, and hopefully is able to eventually reach a stage five, wherein one is able to move among systems freely, picking them up and setting them down as needed, because the whole damn thing, the human situation, is funny and crooked and lovely and not a neatly determined algorithm. Kegan's is of course an overdetermined system. It has problem spots. It can be picked up and set down. It's funny. Lesswrong on the other hand, I personally haven't yet found the part where someone shrugs and says, Hey, this works pretty well for me, but it won't yield you an e.e. cummings poem to appreciate on a snowy day. It feels like the beginning of an effort to evolve into something like that mysterious race of human computers who own the monopoly on space travel in Dune.

[johann28]

In my time at LW I saw so many people becoming anxious, struggling with how to "escape themselves", how to transcend their biases, and meta-biases, knotting themselves into paradoxes with the elaborate hypothetical constructions, it was just sad after some point. They convinced themselves that rationality means trusting an external system so that if it leads to something counterintuitive, it must surely be seriously accepted. I mean it's kind of how it works, you shouldn't rule out your potential conclusions at the outset, but real life is a lot messier than theories. And I know one can say, this sounds like an excuse to be lazy and unreflective and uninterested in the world's problems, but actually all I'm saying is you can't obsess over this sort of thing and keep your mental hygiene at the same time. This sort of thing can make people burn out or become actually depressed or paranoid.

One must keep the ability to laugh at oneself, to be able to humorously see a kind of futility in what one does but dance the dance anyway. Clenching too hard, making one more nested iteration in the prisoner's dilemma or the chicken game won't help.

Also don't take stuff more seriously than a certain ceiling.

For me, reading about Zen ideas helped me get out of this narrow, "rationalized", neatly ordered, algorithmic, packaged-and-labeled way of thinking. Metaphorically it's kind of the difference between a probabilistic machine learning system vs. a symbolic knowledge system where everything is defined precisely and unambiguously and every rule is laid out etc.

I'm still materialist and atheist, but I think being too deeply involved in any ideology is harmful (be it Marxism or Fascism or Scientology or LW). Yeah, you can reflect upon whether it's possible to live truly independent of ideologies without making or finding a new one for yourself. But there are certain indicators, like when you feel you're getting distanced away from the people around you physically, when you start feeling superior for belonging to the in-group etc., it usually means you're just not noticing some aspects and are obsessing over something. Sure one can say that if innovators thought like this and always stayed in line of the mainstream, we never would have gotten Ford or Jobs etc. And there is truth to this, but it kind of sounds like "X dropped out of college and went on to be successful therefore dropping out of college is a good idea". No, generally the good idea is to be humble and positive about the people around you, be open and reflective but not obsessive and be able to relax.

[tangled_zans]

It's sound advice, I'd second it.

It's not so much that we "hate" Elizer, like Aljik suggests, it's just that on the whole - compared to the many mindblowing authors mentioned in this thread - Elizer just isn't particularly outstanding. Someone has to say it, lest anyone reading this for the first time gets the wrong impression.

Anyone's welcome to still read him, for all we care, but you may as well be getting your philosophy education from Cosmopolitan.

[johann28]

> Anyone's welcome to still read him, for all we care,

Of course, but I'd qualify this a bit. If you are in a life situation where you feel alone or in need of a community, you feel you're not included enough, or feel "smarter" and more reflective than your environment, then spending time at LW can amplify your smugness and stroke your ego to the point of not noticing what you are turning into. I saw many people there with milder psychological problems. Really, a psychologist would probably have an interesting time analyzing the "life advice/coaching/coping" parts of that forum.

However, if you're living a balanced, good life, reading this stuff won't matter much. It's similar in many ideologies. If you're in a receptive situation, then Scientology, or Reddit's Redpill, or basically any elitist, enlightening type of subculture along the lines of "you now understand what it all really is about" can be harmful.

[tangled_zans]

Yeah, agreed! It's no surprise that LW has been known to attract a few PUA followers as well.

[Aljik]

> Someone has to say it, lest anyone reading this for the first time gets the wrong impression.

Sorry what? You have to say that isn't outstanding, unless some one gets the impression he is?

Maybe this is crazy idea, but if Elizier wasn't outstanding... wouldn't that be something people would figure out for themselves? On the otherhand if people are reading his works, and walking away with the impression that he is outstanding, couldn't it simply be that it is? And even so, who are you to say that is wrong?

On the other hand, if there really are authors who write about similar things,but better than Yudkowsky I would be interested in reading (I haven't found any).

So, since you claim to know of such things, could you pick something Yudkowsky has written about and name me another who does it better?

[tangled_zans]

Who am I? WHO AM I?

I am some random anon posting their views on the internet, as is every other person here. It's called having a conversation.

"So, since you claim to know of such things, could you pick something Yudkowsky has written about and name me another who does it better?"

Yes, I could. But since you've so far been a total arrogant assface, and since your tone implies that - rather than a genuine interest - you simply want to bait me into a further argument so you can show off how much you're in love with Elizer... I'm going to pass. Do your own research if you're so "interested".

[Aljik]

>Yes, I could. But since you've so far been a total arrogant assface, and since your tone implies that - rather than a genuine interest - you simply want to bait me into a further argument so you can show off how much you're in love with Elizer... I'm going to pass.

For a conversation you being pretty insulting. But, no, contrary to your assumption its actual curiosity.

If you are worried about this argument continuing if you refer me to such works, I promise not discuss them if you post them.