trendoid

Hmm, haven't noticed it since people around me dont speak enough English. "Apathy" is what I still see more to describe "low level of feeling or lack of caring".

Yes, I agree with the music bit. I had other examples in mind that Sivers mentioned like his opinions about Indonesia and gym that changed overtime as he got more exposure to both.

Science might not be the best way to view everything but I was pointing out to the practice of constantly changing ones beliefs without putting extensive emotional investment in any of them.

If I love someone today and tomorrow they turn out to be a betrayer, I will be hurt but knowing humans are complex, I shouldn't be too surprised and change my views about that person instead of living in denial.

ambivalence : "the state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone"

This is what scientific/rational beliefs are all about, open to new data and susceptible to change. Normally, when your long held beliefs somehow become part of your identity, it becomes harder to let go off them when contradicting data arrives. Being ambivalent is also seen as a negative trait since it signifies indecisive mind. There are shit loads of behaviors and expectations that evolution has invented which not only are not relevant today but also harm the society and individual in the long run.

Not sure why he put atheism bit but considering how many pills Ray Kurzweil takes per day(200?) to increase his age by keeping himself young, it wont be surprising if he has a genuine fear of death.

Some of his claims are quite ridiculous and PZ has done a good job of pointing out why so :

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/21/kurzweil- still-doesnt-understa/

You should probably read this first as a starting point: http://www.newstatesman.com/2014/04/challenge-islam

If thats your concern, hope you stop having drugs when sick. Almost all allopathic drugs are tested on animals first and the conditions in which they live in arent great.

Most of the parabiotic procedures on mice had two organisms almost always connected to each other. Not sure if the case you described above is feasible in near future.

For eg, This one had them connected for 2 weeks : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24145664

anyway, we need to wait for more research on similar methods.

Lack of free will invalidates any form of extreme torture or death penalty. People think that the perpetrator should have known better and hence "deserves" the punishment. This is nonsense since we now know from neuroscience that "we" are not authors of our own thoughts.

There is no hard evidence that shows that capital punishment acts as a deterrent for future crimes, there is some contradictory data though[1][2].

Interesting study which found out that instead of acting as a deterrent, pickpockets were picking pockets during the hanging of a pickpocket![3]

[1]http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/studies-fbi-preliminary-crim... [2]http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-... [3]http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/content/4/2/295.short

Thanks, I would love to see more reporting done on such practices. If you still have those links you shared with friends, please share them here.

>But if you take such a job, you know the dangers. So you can take the job or don't.

Watch the documentary I posted below, in most cases they are not aware of such dangers. They are promised high returns and better living conditions than their original home by various agents.

>Why don't we try to advance 3th world countries instead of raging over this?

Almost every human rights violation has its root in poverty. This doesn't mean we ignore the dangerous practices of middle-eastern government. The fact is that these countries have enough money to easily avoid such conditions but choose not to, hence the outrage.

>I refuse to have anything more to do with professional sports.

Genuine question, what exactly have you stopped doing? I guess not watching FIFA 2014 world cup is on the list?

For many people, hacker news is the only source of knowing shit happening in the world, be it innovation or injustice. Hence, if once in a while such stories do pop up, I like that.

Vice did a documentary on similar shit happening in Dubai : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMh-vlQwrmU

There are so many issues occupying the world currently that I doubt anyone from governments will raise an eyebrow for 'just 900 deaths over 2 years'.

It really depends on what ones priorities are. If someone is really in the middle of starting up or even immensely enjoying the current work that she ends up spending most of the time in office, why the hell would you want kids?

Raising decent kids requires proper planning and you need time to observe them and change those plans accordingly if required. Only when you have decided to chill down on work and consider yourself ready for another interesting venture should you go ahead and have kids. Think about your priorities, period.

I was hoping to see something along the lines of "Intelligent people take time in stereotyping or judging people until sufficient data is collected. Hence initially they trust what people say at face value. This obviously depends on what sort of information they are dealing with. If its something that logically sounds ridiculous at face value itself(which less intelligent people cannot calculate so quickly), they dont believe the person even if its an initial conversation. But if its some trivial gossip/anecdote which doesn't hugely affect their choices in future, then they go ahead trusting the person." Personal example, if I hear some gossip about 3rd person, the conclusions drawn from that gossip about the character of that person doesnt affect my future interaction with him. I need to collect more data than few gossips to stereotype someone. On the other hand, in this case I am NOT trusting gossips because I am aware of their nature and people producing them.

Research says that intelligent people instinctively know whom to trust or not which I am not so sure about. I have seen people who are extremely bad at thinking about problems like maths, physics or algorithms in general but brilliant at analyzing people. So we need more evidence on this I guess.

I think u misunderstood the game. u need to get the number 2048, not 2,0,4,8 in some order. Your score will be around 6k atleast if u win. Also, shit loads of time 'wasted'.

>You'd inevitably learn to feel good at the prospect of not having to yield cash to a good cause.

Are you really saying this is like Pavlov's dog experiment? Since, the money goes for good cause, I think it might not act as a good motivation in the first place to finish the task. But yeah, publicly announcing this stuff can lead to many people comprehending this as unethical.

Anything that shows a big corp doing bad to small corp will attract interest. Go ahead and write a blog with evidence and all. I am sure it will raise eyebrows on atleast HN.

I think its nonsense also due to this :

"Many physicalist philosophers argued that this scenario eliminates itself by its description; the basis of physicalist argument is that the world is defined entirely by physicality, thus a world that was physically identical would necessarily contain consciousness, as consciousness would necessarily be generated from any set of physical circumstances identical to our own."

Also this :

"Artificial intelligence researcher Marvin Minsky sees the argument as circular. The proposition of the possibility of something physically identical to a human but without subjective experience assumes that the physical characteristics of humans are not what produces those experiences, which is exactly what the argument was claiming to prove."

from the wiki of p-zombie.

I was actually addressing this line of yours :

>There will always be some people who waste their time and others that produce.

The people who are producing are creating content which encourages people to waste time. Producers will say 'we are just making what people want' but the problem is that most people don't know what they want. Its not like they watch 5-6 hours of TV and go to sleep feeling good about themselves. Producers will keep creating that since it equals shit loads of money but concomitantly it also ends up making majority of population less creative, less informed and more distracted.

Its not just about creating, its also what these people are creating and whats the incentive to create? Do these creators ever think about the repercussions of their creations on the society? If your creation is not motivating people to create themselves or even making them learn something interesting, I am not sure if its the ideal creation.

I think the main issue is that people ge excited about a topic and buy the book. They enjoy few chapters but soon they come across something more interesting on internet and then buy that book too. Almost all non-fiction has some boring bits which you just have to struggle through to reach interesting parts. Its in this struggle stage I find myself most vulnerable to start reading another book and leaving the current one. Do this for years and you end up having lots of unread books. I thought this is what OP was referring to.

I highly recommend 'Practical Ethics' by 'Peter Singer'. You will start seeing how you can apply critical thinking to various moral questions in life without clinging to any religious book. If there are facts to learn about human happiness then 'science' only(this includes economics, history, philosophy etc, basically all forms of rational discourse which are open to criticism and change) should suffice.

There is some good advice in Bible but there is lot of crap too and if you choose to cherry pick, its fine. Just keep in mind that your innate morals themselves are making you pick and choose. It was not written for a person in 21st century whose world is unfathomable for the Bible's author.

> I don't claim that you're wrong, but it is very hard to preserve moral values in an atheistic ideology

What do you mean by 'preserve'? Why can't moral values evolve overtime? At this moment, people eat mammalian meat happily without concerning about torture that those animals go through. I have no doubt that 100 years from now, people will look at this tradition similar to how we find slavery now. Slavery was so prevalent(and useful) that there seemed to be nothing 'wrong' with it. No surprise, that Bible didn't mention anything against it. But society evolved and soon it became something unthinkable. Some act which was not wrong, suddenly became very wrong. Similarly many moral values were not 'preserved'. I hope you see my point(literally and metaphorically).

is-ought problem is a false problem. Hume says u cannot derive an ought from an is. So if science tells us that a society which treats women as subordinates, kills homosexuals, inhibits dissenting opinions is not a healthy society, you saying we cannot say its not what we ought to strive for? And i guess you can see which sort of society I am hinting towards.

Interesting. I was curious because how can the era which had slavery, didn't treat women equal to man and killed homosexuals could possibly teach something unique. There are bunch of atheist ethics philosophers who talk about good and bad. I read Practical Ethics by Peter singer and even left eating mammalian meat after that. And I totally realize that person who wrote Bible could not have possibly thought about these eternal truths(which are always evolving) :

1) Love people unconditionally without keeping them in shackles. 2) Males and females(of all races) as it turns out have equal right to learn, earn and decide. 3) Fuck conformity, think for yourself and accept who you are even if different. 4) Don't condemn people for their inborn nature because genetics! 5) Understand anything in the world(including humans) without bias.

I am curious, impact How?

thanks, looks intriguing, something to look forward for 2014.

Reading 'How Mind Works'. Do you think his proposal matches the recent discoveries in neuroscience? Till now(120 pages in) he seems to be an evangelical of Computational theory of mind

We are not sure what will work but thats why new models need to be experimented starting now. Coming up with tools for teaching critical thinking and morality should be on high priority in SV. Yes, magic pill invented 300 yrs ago would have had devastating consequences. But I am not sure whether that sort of thing is practically possible. It seems there is somewhat direct correlation between scientific revolutions(like renaissance) and moral values of the society(dont have data to back that up, just using history as an example).