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How to Be Happy

lesswrong.com

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Re: How to Be Happy

#11

Post by gnoway »

__Joker wrote: post #6

I hardly agree with "Develop the skills and habits associated with extroversion". Why I need to be comfortable with social company if my predisposed nature and comfortableness is to be alone ?

You don't. This is another example of an extrovert assuming that introversion is just a circumstance that is both undesirable and fixable.

Re: How to Be Happy

#12

Post by ansible »

adamzerner wrote: post #9
__Joker wrote: post #6

I hardly agree with "Develop the skills and habits associated with extroversion". Why I need to be comfortable with social company if my predisposed nature and comfortableness is to be alone ?

Because you have a lot to gain by doing so. Humans are capable of deriving a lot of happiness from social matters, so there's a large opportunity cost to being alone. That said, it obviously depends on the person's situation. I don't think the advice is good for everyone. But it's probably good for most. Edit: I found http://www.succeedsocially.com/allarticles to be really insightful and useful.

There is also quite a difference between not choosing to socialize, vs. feeling depressed because you are not able to socialize successfully.

Re: How to Be Happy

#13

Post by jeremyjh »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #10

Just for those of you who aren't aware, LessWrong is a site devoted to the cult of the "singularity." The site founder, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is a secular humanist who is probably most well-known for his Harry Potter fanfiction, "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality." His core beliefs include that the obvious goal of the human race is immortality, that it is justifiable to kill a man if it would remove a spec of…

You forgot to take a jab at cryonics. Eliezer sincerely believes that people who do not sign-up their kids with a cryonics package are "lousy parents".

http://lesswrong.com/lw/1mc/normal_cryonics/

Re: How to Be Happy

#14

Post by spindritf »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #10

Just for those of you who aren't aware, LessWrong is a site devoted to the cult of the "singularity." The site founder, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is a secular humanist who is probably most well-known for his Harry Potter fanfiction, "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality." His core beliefs include that the obvious goal of the human race is immortality, that it is justifiable to kill a man if it would remove a spec of…

You should take Slate[1] with an even bigger grain of salt. While Less Wrong is a canonical illustration of all the problems with high IQ people, at least they try to be accurate in their beliefs.

Which is the actual purpose of the site. Singularity, consequentialism/utilitarianism, and so on are side effects.

[1] I'm guessing http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/07/rok... right?

Re: How to Be Happy

#15

Post by lolpep8 »

kstop wrote: post #5

Pretty sure the last thing the world needs is Less Wrong cross-pollinating with Hacker News.

You've got it backwards. In the Glorious Hacker News Golden Age that people sometimes speak of, Hacker News tended to gravitate towards pure-market solutions, deny the existence or relevance of social issues that don't affect white middle class men (i.e. everything but ageism in tech), and gave weight to Eliezer Yudkowsky's Bayesian equation-driven morality, and everything else that looked and sounded scientific (imagine how many old-HN readers would be guzzling Soylent now).

The HN readership had lots in common with LessWrong, but they were diluted and displaced by people who don't share their same, ahem, qualities.

Re: How to Be Happy

#16

Post by Traubert »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #10

Just for those of you who aren't aware, LessWrong is a site devoted to the cult of the "singularity." The site founder, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is a secular humanist who is probably most well-known for his Harry Potter fanfiction, "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality." His core beliefs include that the obvious goal of the human race is immortality, that it is justifiable to kill a man if it would remove a spec of…

> that it is justifiable to kill a man if it would remove a spec of dust from the eye of every other person on Earth

Maybe Eliezer has argued that too, but I doubt it. He has said it about a much, much, much larger number of people than everyone on Earth.

Re: How to Be Happy

#17

Post by adamzerner »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #10

Just for those of you who aren't aware, LessWrong is a site devoted to the cult of the "singularity." The site founder, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is a secular humanist who is probably most well-known for his Harry Potter fanfiction, "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality." His core beliefs include that the obvious goal of the human race is immortality, that it is justifiable to kill a man if it would remove a spec of…

Maybe you disagree with some of the conclusions, but do you disagree with the methods it preaches? Ie. reductionism, awareness of our biases, bayesian inference.

There do seem to be a lot of extreme viewpoints on LessWrong, so I think it is justified to take those extreme viewpoints with a grain of salt. But I also think that the core beliefs/approaches are valid, and so that should be factored in to how big a grain of salt you take things with.

Re: How to Be Happy

#18

Post by Jweb_Guru »

spindritf wrote: post #14
Jweb_Guru wrote: post #10

Just for those of you who aren't aware, LessWrong is a site devoted to the cult of the "singularity." The site founder, Eliezer Yudkowsky, is a secular humanist who is probably most well-known for his Harry Potter fanfiction, "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality." His core beliefs include that the obvious goal of the human race is immortality, that it is justifiable to kill a man if it would remove a spec of…

You should take Slate[1] with an even bigger grain of salt. While Less Wrong is a canonical illustration of all the problems with high IQ people, at least they try to be accurate in their beliefs. Which is the actual purpose of the site. Singularity, consequentialism/utilitarianism, and so on are side effects. [1] I'm guessing http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/07/rok... right?

I'm not sure what you mean. I've been following LessWrong for a while now, but I've never seen that Slate article before. I should be clear that most posters do not agree with the idea itself, as it is fairly absurd. What's more interesting are the thought processes that might lead one to consider such an idea, which are in full evidence throughout the site.
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