Vladimir_Nesov comments on A Rationalist's Tale - Less Wrong

82 Post author: lukeprog 28 September 2011 01:17AM

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Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 12 September 2011 12:28:21AM *  6 points [-]

This makes the debate really rather difficult--a Bayesian debate much more than a scientific one--and not one where inferential distances can be quickly bridged or where convincing arguments can be made with less than many paragraphs of observations about trends of systems or the nature of modern decision theories.

At this point, I would worry more about the difficulty of producing thoughts that relate to the correct answers than about convincing others, if I didn't think the difficulty is insurmountable and one should lose hope already.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 12 September 2011 12:45:31AM *  1 point [-]

There is a wiser part of me that invariably agrees with that, it's just this stupid motivational coalition of mine that anti-anti-wants to warn others when they're absolutely certain of something they shouldn't be absolutely certain about where my warning them has some at least tiny chance of convincing them to be less complacent or notice confusion, so that I won't be blamed in retrospect for having not even tried to help them. And when the wiser part starts talking about semi-consequentialist reasons why I'm doing more harm than good the other coalition goes "Oh, you're telling me to shut up and be evil. Doesn't this sound familiar..."

Comment author: Will_Newsome 12 September 2011 02:28:08AM -1 points [-]

if I didn't think the difficulty is insurmountable and one should lose hope already.

Hm, are you implying I should perhaps just lose hope in non-insignificantly affecting direct efforts to improve decision theory? If so I'd like to make a bet.

(I parsed your comment like three different ways when I used three different inductive biases.)

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 12 September 2011 10:24:20AM 1 point [-]

Efforts to figure out what otherworldly superintelligences are up to.