/ratanon/ - Rationalists Anonymous

>>13460

Does he say all human behaviour is signaling or anything like that? I've noticed a lot of fans implying it but that seems nonsensical.

>>13850

The core thesis is that everything we do is ultimately selfish or genetically selfish, or a currently maladaptive execution of a selfish adaptation - you get the idea, even though it's not in our interest to be consciously aware of it. That's the elephant in the room/brain, something that's really obvious but rarely discussed.

That means a huge chunk of human behavior is signaling, including a lot of less obvious things. Like voting, for example - the miniscule probability of changing the outcome isn't selfishly worth the time investment, but it's an excellent opportunity to signal that you're smart/knowledgeable/loyal. It even claims much of healthcare is signaling.

Not absolutely everything is signaling, but there's a lot more of it than you'd think.

>>13850

> Does he say all human behaviour is signaling or anything like that?

Not as much in the book than in his blog.

> I've noticed a lot of fans implying it but that seems nonsensical.

It is.

I honestly found this book echoing thoughts I already have. I have a big deterministic hardon. I have yet to find a counter argument.

>>13869

>deterministic hardon

this sounds like something out of rationalist doujinshi.

>>13877

> “Please, onii-san. I want to you to be my first. I want to feel you inside me before anyone else.”

> “But you're my little sister,” I said. “We can't… *I* can't do it, it's *wrong*.”

> “And yet you can’t *not* do it, can you? Ultimately, humans are just state machines. Every stimulus”—here she looked me in the eye and started to lazily shrug off her pink pajamas top, exposing a nipple—“triggers a chain reactions of chemicals and firing neurons, which eventually lead to a response.” She glanced downwards and smiled knowingly.

> “Onii-san, whatever will happen in this room was was determined by the laws of nature. There is no ‘ought’ without a ‘can’. You don’t have any moral responsibility, because you never had a choice.”

>>13886

except the whole point of the book is that were are not practicing incest for example because of the pregnancy risk, practical birth control is only something recent

>>13869

are you hard enough for superdeterminism?

Honestly, I think this book is basilisk-shaped. If the thesis is false, then it doesn't matter. If it's true, then sharing it and offering supporting arguments is basically malicious. (I'm not comparing severity of consequences or truthfulness of the argument to the basilisk, just its hazardous shape.)

>Humans routinely engage in self-deception, because this behavior is useful for accomplishing social goals.

Okay great, Robin. I'm glad my brain has this advanced capability that's helping me all the time without me even noticing.

>As evidence, here's a catalog of self-deceptions you personally might engage in, and here's why these selfish reasons are more likely to be the real reasons for the corresponding behaviors.

Fuck OFF. If the self-deceptions help me, then I want to remain deceived. Seriously, why would you write this?

It doesn't even have a spooky warning name, like "basilisk" or "Tome of Forbidden Knowledge". It's distilled infohazard packaged in some cheap book whose title is an autistic mangling of a barely-related English idiom.

>>14726

It didn't harm me and helped me a little by resolving a lot of existing confusion.

Before it I kept worrying "{social ritual} doesn't make sense, wouldn't it be better to change it or not do it?" and then did it anyway but felt weird about it.

After the book it's intuitively clear that it's some kind of signaling thing and I can just participate in it without overanalyzing the (incorrect) stated reasons for it.

This new state might be worse than the optimum where I'm blissfully unaware, but it's better than the state I actually had before.

And if you can stomach hundreds of pages of Robin Hanson then you're probably prone enough to overanalysis to benefit in the same way, or at least not be worse off.

>>14726

>>14728

It sounds like a Tome of Forbidden Knowledge that can only harm neurotypical.