“Why Truth? And…” & “…What’s a Bias, Again?” were both very good. Discounting that one moment, the writing was very fluid, and I enjoyed reading just for the way the words felt in my mind. Content-wise, I’m familiar enough with the community that I didn’t learn anything completely new, but I feel I understand the concepts better after seeing them so concretely laid out. Nothing huge to say here, everything huge has already been said in the essays themselves.

Why truth? And…

I’m genuinely excited to read more of Eliezer’s writing. Whether I agree or disagree with his points, I can aways appreciate lhis style.

“…this has the advantage of letting us regard calm as an emotional state, rather than a privileged default.”

I’ve never thought about this before, but it makes perfect sense. Calm is not the lack of emotion, that would be something closer to apathy. Yet it is still considered the default, desirable state. Why?

I would suspect that its is because the calm state is perceived as balanced, yet mildly positive. It is a state in which one can act deliberately with little effort, and while it can coexist with joy or sadness, it eliminates stress, anxiety, fear, anger, and panic, all of which are seen very negatively in our society. Of course, it also removes excitement, euphoria, anticipation, enthusiasm, and thrill, but as Eliezer pointed out in the last post I read, frequent strong displays of emotion are discouraged in general.

Still, I think calm (if possible, calm+generally happy) is a good baseline to aim for, and I’m trying to make it my personal default.

”To make rationality into a moral duty is to give it all the dreadful degrees of freedom of an arbitrary tribal custom.  People arrive at the wrong answer, and then indignantly protest that they acted with propriety, rather than learning from their mistake.”

I haven’t actually seen anyone fall into this exact failure mode, but I have witnesses many cases of its cousin, “It Couldn’t Be Helped”.

It’s easy to say, “I did nothing wrong, therefore I couldn’t have done anything”; much harder to admit “I did nothing wrong, but I obviously missed something”. Yet the latter is so often true. Sometimes the best methods you have, the most powerful techniques at your disposal, just aren’t enough. And when that happens, it’s important to realize that “nothing wrong” doesn’t equal “nothing can be improved”, and work to find better tools rather than resigning yourself to your fate.

OK, I know that was part 1 of 2, but I’m already half an hour past my bedtime. I will begin “What’s a Bias, Again?” at 10 AM EST exactly. After reading it, I will do an end review of both halves at once. 

Good night!

“A trickier challenge, with a greater probability of failure, may be worth more effort than a simpler one, just because it is more fun.“

I wish I could feel this way, and I do sometimes. But currently I am irrationally risk-adverse, and I’m not exactly sure how to fix it.