Back in July 2010 Kerry Howley published a nice New York Times Magazine article on the tensions between my wife and I resulting from my choice to do cryonics. The very next month, August 2010, is the date when, in Howley’s new and already-celebrated book
Yes, but this is neither a peculiarly female phenomenon nor a peculiarly rationalist one. In general, people in any group pretend they are more interested in, accomplished at, and devoted to the values of the group than they are in order to increase their status within the group. Since the aim is to deceive, of course they don't "baldly state their aims".
Rationalists are probably more rational than average and may do this less than most, but they are far from 100% rational, so naturally they do it some.
All groups attempt to detect and punish such hypocrisy since doing so is another way people can increase their relative status within a group (by diminishing that of others). Rationalists may judge such false presentation as being more anti-group values than other groups, but I think they are also more naive and less likely to detect it, so I don't know that they police it any more or more successfully than other groups.
Uh, not Dickens I don't think. I recall The Catcher In the Rye and The Color Purple (or some other depressing Oprah bookclub fiction) being particularly painful.
Being forced into Siddhartha in 9th grade was similar to your experience with Dickens: just too young. I enjoyed recently reading Sam Harris' Waking Up, so I assume I'd like Siddhartha now too, but c'mon, they gotta be realistic about what normal 14 year olds can grasp. And that's true outside literature too: 9th graders below the 99.5th percentile can't grok geometry, yet it was standard in the school I went to. [Good for inculcating learned helplessness.]
Hm, I dunno about it being a self-defense mechanism. I just think some of us are more excited by dinosaurs, and spaceships, and by admiring heroes like Feynman and Franklin and John Galt and astronauts than we are by perverted psychopaths.
Steven Pinker has recently complained that this is not necessarily so. His argument is that because the whole phrase is the objective case, that doesn't mean that the two component conjuncts necessarily are. (The phrase is "between my wife and I [sic].") He provides supporting examples.
Perhaps Robin might be more persuaded to do it the conventional way by pointing out that "between my wife and I" sounds pretentious.
Children (if they go to schools like mine, years ago) read Charles Dickens in the 9th grade. The experience disinclined me to read Dickens until recently; you can't appreciate Dickens (or I couldn't) without some life experience and intellectual maturity.
Was it a to a Dickens novel that you think E.Y.'s strictures apply?
[I sense that, by way of novels, E.Y. restricts himself to fan fiction. I think that those who simply detest reading about the deranged can't (subconsciously) tolerate seeing the deranged in themselves, which is the real insight obtained from such works.]
1) Love God, who is near-perfect and loves you when you are virtuous and love him. If He doesn't exist the comfort from this relationship can still work (if you think He does exist).2) Get a dog, as they were bred to love and obey humans.3) Choose good people, but if they betray you remember the Serenity Prayer (very stoic) and find another.
Being force-fed the Broken People genre as a 9th grader by delusionally sentimental 60 year old women- who resemble these reviewers- was an efficient way to turn me off from learning. As a 14 year old you can't articulate the thoughts Eliezer does above, even if you feel them. The best you can do is: why am I reading about these psychotic losers; I don't get it; Sparknotes it is, this time, next time, forever! Literally unlearned a love for reading instilled in me by Michael Crichton when I was 8.
In everything I've read about Cryonics (not that much admittedly), I've never seen any discussion about what incentives future humans/robots/ems would have to unfreeze you. Why would they want to mess around with a frozen body/head? What's in it for them?
True, but on whom is the joke? I take the book to be in part satire (of the narrator, Kit--but then I haven't read the book, as I suppose Robin has; but he asked). Kit's narcissism and self-delusion seem to be the joke.
No, I don't think Kit was making a joke, although the author was. Checking out the quote in Amazon for context, I find the following line in the same paragraph:
"I had dared to make the unknowable show itself, and I was in my investigations resurrecting old works of philosophy thought irrelevant by their contemporary critics."
This book is available for a buck-99 on kindle today only. Bought it myself
Yes, but this is neither a peculiarly female phenomenon nor a peculiarly rationalist one. In general, people in any group pretend they are more interested in, accomplished at, and devoted to the values of the group than they are in order to increase their status within the group. Since the aim is to deceive, of course they don't "baldly state their aims".
Rationalists are probably more rational than average and may do this less than most, but they are far from 100% rational, so naturally they do it some.
All groups attempt to detect and punish such hypocrisy since doing so is another way people can increase their relative status within a group (by diminishing that of others). Rationalists may judge such false presentation as being more anti-group values than other groups, but I think they are also more naive and less likely to detect it, so I don't know that they police it any more or more successfully than other groups.
by admiring heroes like Feynman and Franklin and John Galt and astronauts
The last is more uplifting.
Uh, not Dickens I don't think. I recall The Catcher In the Rye and The Color Purple (or some other depressing Oprah bookclub fiction) being particularly painful.
Being forced into Siddhartha in 9th grade was similar to your experience with Dickens: just too young. I enjoyed recently reading Sam Harris' Waking Up, so I assume I'd like Siddhartha now too, but c'mon, they gotta be realistic about what normal 14 year olds can grasp. And that's true outside literature too: 9th graders below the 99.5th percentile can't grok geometry, yet it was standard in the school I went to. [Good for inculcating learned helplessness.]
Hm, I dunno about it being a self-defense mechanism. I just think some of us are more excited by dinosaurs, and spaceships, and by admiring heroes like Feynman and Franklin and John Galt and astronauts than we are by perverted psychopaths.
Steven Pinker has recently complained that this is not necessarily so. His argument is that because the whole phrase is the objective case, that doesn't mean that the two component conjuncts necessarily are. (The phrase is "between my wife and I [sic].") He provides supporting examples.
Perhaps Robin might be more persuaded to do it the conventional way by pointing out that "between my wife and I" sounds pretentious.
Is it that most 'literary' novels are in that genre?
The scare quotes around "literary" so suggests.
I suppose that what we should prefer is superhero fiction. No "broken people" there!
Children (if they go to schools like mine, years ago) read Charles Dickens in the 9th grade. The experience disinclined me to read Dickens until recently; you can't appreciate Dickens (or I couldn't) without some life experience and intellectual maturity.
Was it a to a Dickens novel that you think E.Y.'s strictures apply?
[I sense that, by way of novels, E.Y. restricts himself to fan fiction. I think that those who simply detest reading about the deranged can't (subconsciously) tolerate seeing the deranged in themselves, which is the real insight obtained from such works.]
I conceive that nobody's perfect...therefore God must not be perfect. Proof: 1/0 = #NA. QED.
"Near-perfect"? There goes the ontological argument! How do you figure near?
[I love dogs but they have often disappointed me. They aren't as loyal as folks think, their affection easily won by anyone who feeds them.]
What would make this especially challenging for any legal system to handle?
per finding good love objects:
1) Love God, who is near-perfect and loves you when you are virtuous and love him. If He doesn't exist the comfort from this relationship can still work (if you think He does exist).2) Get a dog, as they were bred to love and obey humans.3) Choose good people, but if they betray you remember the Serenity Prayer (very stoic) and find another.
Being force-fed the Broken People genre as a 9th grader by delusionally sentimental 60 year old women- who resemble these reviewers- was an efficient way to turn me off from learning. As a 14 year old you can't articulate the thoughts Eliezer does above, even if you feel them. The best you can do is: why am I reading about these psychotic losers; I don't get it; Sparknotes it is, this time, next time, forever! Literally unlearned a love for reading instilled in me by Michael Crichton when I was 8.
Answer is here, first written, second in video:
http://alcor.org/FAQs/faq01...
https://www.youtube.com/wat...
Will you ever learn that the object of a preposition takes the objective case: me, not I?
In everything I've read about Cryonics (not that much admittedly), I've never seen any discussion about what incentives future humans/robots/ems would have to unfreeze you. Why would they want to mess around with a frozen body/head? What's in it for them?
True, but on whom is the joke? I take the book to be in part satire (of the narrator, Kit--but then I haven't read the book, as I suppose Robin has; but he asked). Kit's narcissism and self-delusion seem to be the joke.
No, I don't think Kit was making a joke, although the author was. Checking out the quote in Amazon for context, I find the following line in the same paragraph:
"I had dared to make the unknowable show itself, and I was in my investigations resurrecting old works of philosophy thought irrelevant by their contemporary critics."