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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Epistle to the New York Less Wrongians - Less Wrong
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It's not the same thing. Picking locks is a hack. Cryonics is something more, which is why even most people who can pick locks don't go for it.
I get the impression that you draw the distinction between 'hacking' and 'munchkining' as "They both work, but would the average guy think that it's clever or dismiss it as crazy / unfair / uncustomary?" Am I correct?
Not really. It involves the ability to do things that would make other people look at you funny, and a relentlessly optimizing attitude toward all of real life and not just computer science problems or particular locks. There may be something more to it, too. In any case Timothy Ferriss != John McCarthy (albeit McCarthy himself may also have the Munchkin-nature) and people who build championship Magic decks don't think in quite the same way as great programming hackers, though you can also be both.
So, new attempt:
Closer?
A hacker is just a satisficer that places little value on a norm or norms. A munchkin is an optimiser.
Removing one constraint allows a satisficer to achieve better results on all the other constraints; by contrast, an optimiser will violate as many constraints as it takes to get the best result on the optimised criterion.
I came back to ask a similar question. I would not call the issue of choosing cryonics more then a hack. I think it is the difference is that a hacker is often some one who has optimized well in a narrow area while a munchkin will look at the whole system and optimize it and constantly look for new rules to exploit. The difference I see EY drawing is one of local optimization verses global optimization(or at least an attempting to).
Munchkinism in gaming is also generally connected to zero-sum games, so when gaming against a munchkin you either lose or have to out-munchkin them. The meaning is generally pejorative because more collaborative games tend to become unfun at this point. I've never seen gamers who do odd and massively optimized things that aren't intended for winning zero-sum games, such as building a working CPU in Minecraft, called munchkins. There always seems to be the aspect of outshining the other players within the game in munchkinism.
The analogy of this to the social sphere might be why Tim Ferriss got flak from his 4-Hour Workweek.
Not all hackers go for the same type of hacks.
I wonder if it's accurate to say that for hacks, it's the means that's considered "cheating", whereas for cryonics, it's the end itself that's considered "cheating".
That seems like a good distinction between Munchkinism and Hacking, as I've seen them used by their respective cultures. Munchkinism is about using the rules to accomplish an "unacceptable" goal, whereas Hacking is about accomplishing acceptable goals via "unacceptable" methods. Thank you for helping me cement why the two terms felt like very separate ones :)
http://home.netcom.com/~shagbert/pages/munchkins.html :
No, it's quite the same thing.
-- rms, "On Hacking"
Does not the bolded section describe cryonics? Isn't death a "silly rule"? I think your sense of the word "hacking" is too strict.
As another example, the Jargon file has a general definition of 'hacker':
That seems to fit pretty well.
It certainly fits 'hacker' (and myself) well. It doesn't fit people who are indifferent to intellectual challenge but just want to live (and so do cryonics) or just want to win (and so min-max the @#%$ out of life).
"Min-maxer". Now that could be a reasonable label.
Slang meaning's very similar to 'munchkin', but doesn't make people who aren't gamers think of fairy-tale midgets. Sounds good to me. It's also got decision theory connotations as a bonus.
Min-maxing connotes being extremely good at some things by being extremely bad at some others (the "min" part), so it's not quite the right fit.
Recognizing things that are not worth putting effort in as well as things that are isn't a bad thing, given that there is an infinite number of skills you could use your time to get good at. Such as shaping gravel into mounds exactly 17 centimeters tall, memorizing telephone directories, or playing chmess competitively.
Okay, but that's not what defines munchkins. Munchkinism, as I see it, is less about getting points in good areas by burning points in bad areas (min-maxing) than it is about getting points in good areas by burning the spirit of the game.
I think that willingness to burn the spirit of the game when it comes to things like signing up for cryonics instead of confronting the inevitability of your mortality, drinking extra-light olive oil instead of trying to diet by sheer willpower, or building a recursively self-improving AI instead of trying to solve the world's problems the normal way, is exactly what distinguishes Munchkinism from mere hacking.
--game theory connotations, to be specific.
Upvoted for this:
I think your model of the space of human attitudes is insufficiently nuanced. I like the 'hacking' attitude as well as that which is being referred to as being a munchkin but they are two complementary features.
The part of your quote that you didn't bold is loosely relevant to the distinction.
Though I agree "hacking" isn't quite the right word,
Only under the most anemic criteria. Overlap between lock pickers and hackers does not make lock picking hacking. Using something not-as-it-was-intended is the start of many hacks, but a simple reversal of function or overcoming of function by itself doesn't make the cut.
I am sorry, are you really saying that people don't go for cryonics because it is something more than a hack? I find this causal relationship hard to believe. Do people in general don't go for things that are more than hacks?
I think it is a lot more likely that people don't go for cryonics because it is weird, and maybe because it requires thinking about your own mortality. And most importantly, because it is not the default option.
Probably a third cause. There is some reason why people don't go for cryonics, which is also the reason it isn't a hack. Too weird might be that cause.