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XiXiDu comments on References & Resources for LessWrong - Less Wrong
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Thank you, I was about to comment on this; you've given me a needed data point.
Permutation City is the only work of fiction I've enjoyed that I do not go around recommending, because I'm wary that to a reader without the requisite specialized background to separate the parts based on real science from the parts that are pure fiction, it might actually be something of a memetic hazard.
If you are going to recommend it, I would suggest accompanying the recommendation with a link to the antidote
I introduced a new label M for Memetic Hazard and added a warning sign including a accompanying text to the fiction section.
And I see a number of other things that merited the memetic hazard label also now have it, good idea. I'd suggest that it also be added to the current links in the artificial intelligence section, and to the link on quantum suicide.
Maybe also add a link to Eliezer's Permutation City crossover story, now that we have the requisite memetic hazard label for such a link?
I thought quantum suicide is not controversial since MWI is obviously correct? And the AI section? Well, the list is supposed to reflect the opinions hold in the LW community, especially by EY and the SIAI. I'm trying my best to do so and by that standard, how controversial is AI going FOOM etc.?
Eliezer's Permutation City crossover story? It is on the list for some time, if you are talking about the 'The Finale of the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover' story.
I agree MWI is solid, I'm not suggesting that be flagged. But it does not in any way imply quantum suicide; the latter is somewhere between fringe and crackpot, and a proven memetic hazard with at least one recorded death to its credit.
Well, AI go FOOM etc is again somewhere in the area between fringe and crackpot, as judged by people who actually know about the subject. If the list were specifically supposed to represent the opinions of the SIAI, then it would belong on the SIAI website, not on LW.
So it is, cool.
I hadn't heard of this -- can you give more details?
Everett's daughter, Elizabeth, suffered from manic depression and committed suicide in 1996 (saying in her suicide note that she was going to a parallel universe to be with her father)
Not even the most optimistic interpretations of quantum immortality/quantum suicide think it can bring other people back from the dead. Does it count as a memetic hazard if only a very mistaken version of it is hazardous?
Why not? If you kill yourself in any branch that lacks the structure that is your father, then the only copies of you that will be alive are those that don't care or those that live in the unlikely universes where your father is alive (even if it means life extension breakthroughs or that he applied for cryonics.)
ETA: I guess you don't need life extension. After all it is physical possible to grow 1000 years old, if unlikely. Have I misunderstood something here?
The way I understand quantum suicide, it's supposed to force your future survival into the relatively scarce branches where an event goes the way you want it by making it dependent on that event. Killing yourself after living in the branch where that event did not go the way you wanted at some time in the past is just ordinary suicide; although there's certainly room for a new category along the lines of "counterfactual quantum suicide," or something.
edit: Although, to the extent that counterfactual quantum suicide would only occur to someone who'd heard of traditional, orthodox quantum suicide, the latter would be a memetic hazard.
No, that's not what would happen. Rather, being faithful to your commitment, you would go on a practically infinite suicide spree (*) searching for your father. A long and melancholic story with a suprise happy ending.
(*) I googled it and was sad to see that the phrase "suicide spree" is already taken for a different concept.