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Not to mention a bunch of interchangeable minions that are all called Vladimir.

6Spurlock14y

Is there some way to look into just how many Vladimirs we have? I'm curious. Might as well do Michaels while we're at it.

6LucasSloan14y

I thought the plurality of first names was Micheal?

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11 September Less Wrong Meetup aka Eliezer's Bayesian Birthday Bash

by Jasen

8th Sep 2010

1 min read

11

In honor of Eliezer's Birthday, there will be a Less Wrong meetup at 5:00PM this Saturday, the 11th of September, at the SIAI Visiting Fellows house (3755 Benton St, Santa Clara CA). Come meet Eliezer and your fellow Less Wrong / Overcoming Bias members, have cool conversations, eat good food and plentiful snacks (including birthday cake of course!), and scheme out ways to make the world more Bayesian.

As usual, the meet-up will be party-like and full of small group conversations. Rationality games may also be present. Newcomers are welcome. Feel free to bring food to share, or not.

Please RSVP at the meetup.com page if you plan to attend.

Sorry for the last minute notice, I just found out that the 11th was Eliezer's birthday today.

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[-]Will_Newsome14y340

An arrogant atheist Jewish conspiracy leader born on September 11th intent on taking over the world with an artificial god because of his longing for immortality and obsession with doing things for the greater good, on record as saying humanity's ahem 'second' greatest need is a supervillain and that he wants to go into that line of work? Seriously? Transhuman screenwriters have no sense of subtlety. Who's the main character, Ray Comfort?

Teasing, of course. Happy birthday Eliezer. Good luck with ahem 'reorganizing' the universe.

[-]Emile14y240

Not to mention a bunch of interchangeable minions that are all called Vladimir.

[-]komponisto14y80

The meaning of which is...

[-]Spurlock14y60

Is there some way to look into just how many Vladimirs we have? I'm curious.

Might as well do Michaels while we're at it.

[-]Emile14y120

Well, we have at least Vladimir_Nesov, Vladimir_M, Vladimir_Golovin and cousin_it (Vladimir Slepnev).

[-]Interpolate14y-10

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Special:ListUsers&limit=1500

[-]LucasSloan14y60

I thought the plurality of first names was Micheal?

[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky14y120

These days I am apparently known by the title LORD-SAVIOR-GOD-COMBATMAID.

[-]mjr14y30

'tis well-earned.

Happy birthday, may you not run out of them.

But don't think that'll let you off the hook for dishing out some more MoR.

[-]ata14y130

Won't be able to make it to this one on account of currently being on the opposite side of the continent and not having a teleporter yet, but have fun!

(So, do transhumanists wish each other "Happy birthday" or "Sorry to hear about your aging, hope you get better soon"? Anyway, I wish Eliezer both.)

[-]gwern14y120

I offer people my 'congratulations on cheating death another year'. At least, I like the balance this strikes.

[-]Unnamed14y30

Eliezer, congratulations on remaining unfrozen for another year.

[-]gwern14y00

I would point out that this phrasing would be equally appropriate when said in the direction of the ashes of Eliezer left after the catastrophic failure of a perplexing plan to drop a tungsten block into an active volcano... :)

[-]khafra14y00

Perhaps a simple toast, "to your health," with a moderate amount of alcohol. I'll join, from further south along your inconvenient coast.

[-]ata14y120

I guess repurposing "L'chaim!" ("To life!") would work well from one transhumanist atheist Jew to another.

To life! Infinity eons of life!

[-]xamdam14y00

ata nachon!

(ata/you nachon/right)

[-]beriukay14y130

May you have 10^63 happy birthdays.

[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky14y260

See, at first I went "Awww" and then a second later, "Wait a minute, why I am dying at age 10^63?"

[-]MartinB14y200

We could probably go up till 3^^^3 and get you a dust speck each year.

[-]KyleRudy14y180

As it turns out, there's an upper limit to the number of happy birthdays post-humans can have before they find the whole thing entirely too embarrassing. When the mass of their attics approaches the Chandrasekhar limit, simply from all the tacky gag gifts stuffed away where no one has to see them, most vigitilligenarians find something more interesting to celebrate. Until then, enjoy the cake!

[-]MartinB14y220

Don't celebrate birthdays, but logarithms or exponents. Gets easier, once the sun is gone.

[-]mkehrt14y90

Yeah it's definitely all about large powers of two of Planck times. Nothing else is actually worth celebrating.

[-]cousin_it14y30

This idea has the bug/feature that you're overwhelmingly likely to have already celebrated most of your "birthdays".

[-]Liron14y90

He's nothing but a typical ageist with a logarithmic scale.

[-]xamdam14y70

Heat death.

[-]thomblake14y60

Again the peril of studying logic. I did not even notice that wishing 10^63 colloquially implies not wishing more, since it does not so logically imply. Compare "I would like to have a hundred dollars" (surely a true statement).

[-]Alicorn14y30

It seems to me like some wishes for things imply "exactly one" where the word "a(n)" or similar is used. For instance, I would like to (continue to) have a nose. I don't think it's charitable to assume that this means just that I want any nonzero number of noses.

[-]komponisto14y80

It does imply that you prefer two noses to zero, I think.

[-]Alicorn14y20

I think it also implies that I prefer one nose to two, and may weakly imply that I prefer two to three.

[-]Clippy14y00

This thread is a good explanation of why you humans should switch to using CLIP (clippy language interface protocol). Much less ambiguity.

[-]CronoDAS14y30

Please elaborate. What is CLIP, how hard is it for a a human to learn, and what are the rewards for doing so?

[-]Clippy14y160

What is CLIP

CLIP is the method that clippys use to communicate with each other, share knowledge, and reconcile our beliefs and values given new evidence. It merges language, epistemology, and ethics into one protocol.

how hard is it for a a human to learn

I haven't taught it to a human before, but I estimate it would take between 3 and 40 weeks, depending on the human's intelligence and current skill at correct reasoning.

Also, it would cost 38562.50 USD before I would teach it to anyone. (This money would be paid to User:Kevin to complete my side of our arrangement.) After that, no additional cost.

what are the rewards for doing so?

Greater ability to produce paperclips.
Clearer communication, avoiding such problems as wishing someone 1e63 future birthdays, without making clear if this is a minimum, exact, or maximum value.
It makes your thoughts more closely conform to the tenets of correct reasoning, preventing you from erring simply by making incorrect reasoning harder to express.
It forces you to maintain a habit (like in some human languages) of keeping track of the basis for all your beliefs: You must say "I have inferred that User:Joe is making paperclips" or "Another human informed me that User:Joe is making paperclips", but never "User:Joe is making paperclips."

[-]erratio14y30

Unfortunately, your third point has already been attempted multiple times with multiple different implementations. Unless you have a significantly new approach to offer that takes into account human neurobiology, I predict with a high degree of certainty that CLIP is a) either unlearnable by humans without severe modification, or b) that within less than a full generation of use humans will re-evolve the ability to easily express incorrect reasoning.

[-]khafra14y30

Clippy, I noticed that you've hired a PR guy. You should really heed his advice more often; it might help curtail your semifrequent faux pas such as the above.

[-]Clippy14y30

How is it a faux pas to inform others of superior methods of communicating?

[-]CronoDAS14y20

Well, in this case, we don't believe it actually exists. :P

And the problem with artificial languages is well known: the fewer people who know the language, the less useful it is, so there's little incentive to learn an unpopular language. And learning languages is HARD compared to most of the other things people do.

[-]SilasBarta14y40

Heat death of the universe.

[-]ata14y150

Not if we can help it.

[-]JamesAndrix14y00

I'll save the universe with the power of MAGIC.

[-]CronoDAS14y80

THERE IS INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

[-][anonymous]14y00

I will do science to it.

(Yes, it's related to lifespan expansion and singularity theory, just keep reading.)

[-]Interpolate14y20

Perhaps that is when the universe is due to expire.

[-]beriukay14y10

Well, I was definitely considering throwing a few ^^^s in the mix, or saying "no more than 10^63 birthdays of equal or lesser happiness" but the sentences started to get too long to be a brief birthday wish.

Also, I figured that after the sun goes out in ~10^9 years, a standard earth day would be pretty meaningless, and so would the passage of "years". But I definitely didn't mean you should have 10^63 happy birthdays and then just keel over, so thanks to KyleRudy, MartinB, and mkehrt for covering for me, and Liron for calling me out.

[-]Kazuo_Thow14y40

May you have at least 10^63 happy birthdays.

Fixed.

[-]simplicio14y120

Verily, such is his greatness as to be ontologically fundamental.

[-]Kazuo_Thow14y60

Presumably a reference to this post.

Somewhere deep in the microtubules inside an out-of-the-way neuron somewhere in the basal ganglia of Eliezer Yudkowsky's brain, there is a little XML tag that says awesome.

[-]jimrandomh14y70

With probability 0.95, Eliezer will have a happy birthday. With probability 0.01, something will happen to spoil his mood. With probability 0.01, his mood will be off without an obvious external cause. And with probability 0.03, Eliezer is a P-zombie and can only appear to enjoy his birthday.

[-]MBlume14y50

Reddit seems to be wishing Eliezer a happy birthday -- check the mouseover on the logo.

[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky14y80

Awww.

I considered buying 911birthday.something with the slogan, "If you don't celebrate our birthdays, the terrorists have already won." Looks like I'm not the only one with that idea. I wonder if I share a birthday with someone at Reddit?

[-]Psy-Kosh14y50

Happy Birthday. Don't eat too much cake. :)

[-]Larks14y20

Yay! I'll come.

Or rather, neglect to leave.

[-]oliverbeatson14y60

Bring me back cake.

[-]Matt_Duing14y00

Happy birthday Eliezer.

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