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Nisan comments on On the unpopularity of cryonics: life sucks, but at least then you die - Less Wrong
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Comments (465)
To be absolutely clear, the commenter you are responding to is a troll and a fictional character.
I'm curious as to how you know "Voldemort" is a troll?
LW has a few role-playing characters identifiable by usernames, while others don't appear to be playing such games and don't use speaking usernames. So "Voldemort" is likely a fictional persona tailored to the name, rather than a handle chosen to describe a real person's character.
Correct, though I prefer to think of it as using another man's head to run a viable enough version of me so that I may participate in the rationalist discourse here.
Who are the other role-playing characters on LessWrong?
GLaDOS started as one, though the account seems to be being used for regular interaction now.
Quirinus Quirrell.
True evil geniuses don't reveal their intentions openly. (They also don't post this blog comment.)
That's what you'd like us to think.
LOL! You don't have to be a genius to be evil and, speaking from long, hard and repeated experience, you don't have to be a genius to a great deal of harm - just being evil is plenty sufficient. This is especially true when the person who has ill intentions also has disproportionately greater knowledge than you do, or than you can easily get access to in the required time frame. The classic example has been the used car salesman. But better examples are probably the kinds of situations we all encounter from time to time when we get taken advantage of.
I don't know much about computers, so I necessarily rely on others. In an ideal world, I could take all the time necessary to make sure that the guy who is selling me hardware or software that I urgently need is giving me good advice and giving me the product that he says he is. But we don't live in an ideal world. Many people have this kind of problem with medical treatment choices, and for the same reasons. Another, related kind of situation, is where the elapsed time between the time you contract for a service and the time you get it is very long. Insurance and pension funds are examples. Lots of mischief there, and thus lots of regulation. It doesn't take evil geniuses in such situations to cause a lot of loss and harm.
And finally, while this may seem incredible, in my experience those few people who are both geniuses and evil, usually tell you exactly what they are about. They may not say, "I intend to torture and kill you," but they very often will tell you with relish how they've tortured others, or about how they are willing to to torture and kill others. The problem for me for way too long was not taking such people seriously. Turns out, they usually are serious; deadly serious.
Right, I'm just saying, that's how I know it's not the real Voldemort posting.
We may have different standards for "genius"; I don't think I've ever heard of someone who I would classify as both malicious (negated utility function, actually wants to hurt people rather than just being selfish) and brilliant. I also doubt that any such person exists nowadays, because, you see, we're not all dead.
That's how you know it's not Voldemort posting?
A person who greatly enjoys abducting, torturing, and killing a few people every couple months is plausible, whereas a person who wants to maximize death and pain is much less so. A genius of the former kind does not kill us all.
The people who cause the most damage do it because they have disproportionate power rather than disproportionate knowledge.
Voldemort is the taken name of the main antagonist of the popular fantasy book series Harry Potter.
Eliezer Yudkowsky, one of the founders and main writers for lesswrong.com, also writes a Harry Potter fanfiction, called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. (HPATMOR)
Because of this, several accounts on this forum are references to Harry Potter characters.
[edit] Vol de mort is also french for Flight of Death.
I feel obligated to point out that one of the links at the end of the OP was a link to Darwin's review of the last Harry Potter movie; he knows who Voldemort the character is.
I have seen all the movies, most more than once. I have not yet read the books.
I hate to repeat myself but let me ease your mind.
Despite the risk of cluttering I even made a posts who's only function was to clear up ambiguity:
I thought it was more than probable the vast majority of readers here would be familiar with me. Perhaps I expect too much of them. I do that sometimes expect too much of people, it is arguably one of my great flaws.
When you say: "I thought it was more than probable the vast majority of readers here would be familiar with me," you imply a static readership for this list serve, or at least a monotonic one. I don't think either of those things would be good for this, or most other list serves with an agenda to change minds. New people will frequently be coming into the community and their very diversity may be one of their greatest values.
Voldemort is a fictional character from one of the most popular novel and movie series in the last 20 years (of which one of the top posters of this site is writing a fanfiction). I don't think it's too much to expect almost all english speakers with an internet connection who might have an interest in this site to have at least heard of him, regardless of whether we have a "static readership".