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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30623 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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This kind of dilemma seems to be catnip for rationalists. If I for some reason wanted to take the world's rationalist community out of commission for a few days, I could craft a series of these kinds of dilemmas and release them on the Internet once every day or so. For extra effectiveness, throw in some Aella posts and a controversial statement about AI risk.

it's xkcd 356 for rats. as @hbtz pointed out on another medium

its a pretty good question! its a idiot economist, commons problem, and altruism problem triple whammy
its also prolly a spiritual problem cuz mottecels prolly dont rate the psychological cost of living as a red pill picker as opposed to a blue pill picker

The psychological cost of living as red picker vs. the cost of dying as a blue-picker.

HMMMMM.

The psychological cost of living as red picker vs. the cost of dying as a blue-picker.

It didn't occur to me until reading this, but also there's the possibility of the psychological cost of living as a blue-picker - which is the knowledge (at least with very high confidence) that I futilely risked my life for no gain. The odds that my vote was the decisive one that brought blue from 49.99% to 50.00% or whatever is minuscule, which means that, almost certainly, regardless of what I picked, all the blue pickers were going to live anyway. My picking blue meant nothing in terms of causing good, but I was able to manipulate my brain into convincing myself that it was worth it to pay the real cost of a real fear of real risk of dying, when removing that fear was as simple as picking a different color which, again, would have caused no negative consequences.

but I was able to manipulate my brain into convincing myself that it was worth it to pay the real cost of a real fear of real risk of dying, when removing that fear was as simple as picking a different color which, again, would have caused no negative consequences.

Yes, one should expect that your natural instinct is to generate any plausible justification for a choice you made in the past, and that the justification needs to pass social muster.

I'm partially solving that by straight up precommitting to picking red in all cases and broadcasting this intent. I won't have much cognitive dissonance later.

the psychological cost of living as a red pill picker as opposed to a blue pill picker

What psychological cost?

Yeah, I would quite easily pick Red and go on with my life no different from yesterday.

Mottcels? Really?

Also I think the vast majority of blue pill pickers are liars. If faced with the actual choice, they pick red.

the psychological cost of living as a red pill picker as opposed to a blue pill picker

What cost would that be? I'd pick red, and I'm sticking with that choice, and the only 'psychological cost' I'm suffering is all the blues declaring I'm a selfish murderous monster. I'm happy with my choice otherwise, and maybe a bit sorry that the blues are too stupid to come in out of the rain ("choose red and all live"/"but what about the blind three-legged puppy who will lick the blue pill by mistake???? I must save them by throwing myself off the cliff alongside them! by the power of snuggles and friendship, magic will happen and we will gain the ability to fly if I do that!")

What cost would that be?

negative reactions to surviving where someone else didn't are common. this is not a hard concept to understand nor grasp.

by the power of snuggles and friendship, magic will happen and we will gain the ability to fly if I do that!")

in this scenario, i think you have to realize that 50%+1 picking blue does save everyone, including those who misread the question or whatever.

negative reactions to surviving where someone else didn't are common.

It turns out that the sort of people who will pick red are also resistant to survivor's guilt (Deisach, 2019)

I have to admit, I had some serious thoughts about whether or not this was some leaked GPT4.5-generated infohazard. The, "my 12 year old came up with this," framing seems a little weird, but it appears to check out.

I could see a 12 year old inventing this because they think it's so cool and smart. What I don't get is all the adults imagining this is a test of moral fibre and if you don't pick blue, well Stalin and Pol Pot's genetic lovechild surrogated by Hitler was Pollyanna by comparison with you, you monster of uncaring self-centred hatred for all that is good and fluffy!

you've been spamming this sorta content all over this very thread and it's gotten incredibly annoying. you've been pretending that no one in their right mind would talk about how it relates to morality (note: links to multiple comments here) when this is a pretty clear angle that people would talk about it from.

i cannot buy that you had no idea people would talk about the morality of decisions. reference to morality is there from the bloody title of the post and discussing the moral turpitude of a choice or another is an incredibly obvious discussion point when we're talking about a problem like this. this is also the culture war thread ffs, discussion of morality of a certain thing is a pretty obvious jumping off point even if the darn title didn't mention it.

people've responded to your points and you keep ignoring them and insisting an incredibly uncharitable form of the argument. name calling by calling people virtue signalers, sarcastically making the strawman that people who disagree with you are calling you fascist with the implicit assumption that these are The Outgroup™, and just general uncharitablity and being a complete jerk.

which while there are strong opinions that some of the people you disagree with probably hold, your refusal to engage at any level but the most in-group signaling way is incredibly boring, unproductive, way more heat than light, and annoying. if you don't care so much as you say, just don't participate, or make a comment detailing your problem with the poll rather than pretending to be shocked shocked that people would have a long form discussion on something that has multiple different angles in the culture war thread of all places.

Honestly, looking at FarNearEverywhere's comments here and on abortion, this seems like a pattern of assuming the their opponents are stupid and/or evil and spending no effort to make his comments less inflammatory.

It did give me the vibe of: “Just told my 10yo daughter about #RBG. She had tears in her eyes. And then she did the Wakanda pose and said ‘#Ruthkanda forever’”

However, as per your link, maybe there is cause for cautious optimism.

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