Welcome to Less Wrong!

48 Post author: MBlume 16 April 2009 09:06AM

If you've recently joined the Less Wrong community, please leave a comment here and introduce yourself. We'd love to know who you are, what you're doing, or how you found us. Tell us how you came to identify as a rationalist, or describe what it is you value and work to achieve.

If you'd like to meet other LWers in real life, there's a meetup thread and a Facebook group. If you've your own blog or other online presence, please feel free to link it. If you're confused about any of the terms used on this site, you might want to pay a visit to the LW Wiki, or simply ask a question in this thread.  Some of us have been having this conversation for a few years now, and we've developed a fairly specialized way of talking about some things. Don't worry -- you'll pick it up pretty quickly.

You may have noticed that all the posts and all the comments on this site have buttons to vote them up or down, and all the users have "karma" scores which come from the sum of all their comments and posts. Try not to take this too personally. Voting is used mainly to get the most useful comments up to the top of the page where people can see them. It may be difficult to contribute substantially to ongoing conversations when you've just gotten here, and you may even see some of your comments get voted down. Don't be discouraged by this; it happened to many of us. If you've any questions about karma or voting, please feel free to ask here.

If you've come to Less Wrong to teach us about a particular topic, this thread would be a great place to start the conversation, especially until you've worked up enough karma for a top level post. By posting here, and checking the responses, you'll probably get a good read on what, if anything, has already been said here on that topic, what's widely understood and what you might still need to take some time explaining.

A note for theists: you will find LW overtly atheist. We are happy to have you participating but please be aware that other commenters are likely to treat religion as an open-and-shut case. This isn't groupthink; we really, truly have given full consideration to theistic claims and found them to be false. If you'd like to know how we came to this conclusion you may find these related posts a good starting point.

A couple technical notes: when leaving comments, you may notice a 'help' link below and to the right of the text box.  This will explain how to italicize, linkify, or quote bits of text. You'll also want to check your inbox, where you can always see whether people have left responses to your comments.

Welcome to Less Wrong, and we look forward to hearing from you throughout the site.

(Note from MBlume: though my name is at the top of this page, the wording in various parts of the welcome message owes a debt to other LWers who've helped me considerably in working the kinks out)

Comments (1953)

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Comment author: pluto 22 February 2016 04:11:26PM 4 points [-]

Hello, my friends. I'm a brazilian man, fully blind and gay...

I knew Fanfiction.net, HP MOR and LessWrong. I hope to learn more :)

Comment author: lifelonglearner 30 December 2015 09:10:16PM 5 points [-]

Hey everyone,

My name is Owen, and I'm 17. I read HPMOR last year, but really got into the Sequences and additional reading (GEB, Thinking Fast and Slow, Influence) around this summer.

I'm interested in time management, with respect to dealing with distractions, especially with respect to fighting akrasia. So I'm trying to use what I know about how my own brain operates to create a suite of internalized beliefs, primers, and defense strategies for when I get off-track (or stopping before I get to that point).

Personally, I'm connected with a local environmental movement, which stems from a fear I had about global warming as the largest threat to humanity a few years ago. This was before I looked into other ex-risks. I'm now evaluating my priorities, and I'd also like to bring some critical thinking to the environmental movement, where I feel some EA ideals would make things more effective (prioritizing some actions over others, examining cost-benefits of actions, etc.).

Especially after reading GEB, I'm coming to realize that a lot of rather things I hold central to my "identity" are rather arbitrarily decided and then maintained through a need to stay consistent. So I'm reevaluating my beliefs and assumptions (when I notice them) and ask if they are actually things I would like to maintain. A lot of this ties back to the self-improvement with regards to time management.

In day-to-day life, it's hard to find others who have a similar info diet/ reading background as me, so I'm considering getting more friends/family interested in rationality a goal for me, especially my (apparently) very grades-driven classmates. I feel this would lead to more constructive discussions and a better ability to look at the larger picture for most people.

Finally, I also perform close-up coin magic, which isn't too relevant to most aspects of rationality, but certainly looks pretty.

I look forward to sharing ideas and learning from you all here!

Comment author: moridinamael 18 September 2014 05:50:33PM *  1 point [-]

snip

Comment author: GabrielC 18 September 2014 04:03:52PM 1 point [-]

Hi! I'm Gabriel, and i'm a 20 year old medical student in London. I (like many of you maybe) found my way here through HPMOR. Having spent the last few years of university mentally stagnating due to the nature of my studies this site and the resources were a breath of fresh air. I'm currently working my way through the sequences, where one comment led me to this thread - apologies if commenting on old posts is frowned upon.

I was born to an educated Muslim family, and until recently I had been blindly following the beaten track, although with little interest in the religion itself. It is only now that I have begun to think about what I know, and how I know it that I am forcing myself to adopt an objective and skeptical standpoint. Over the next 12 months or so, I plan to fully examine the texts and writings of both Islam and it's opponents, and aim to come to an unbiased, rational conclusion. It is my hope that I can update my map to define the true territory and I must thank Mr. Yudkowsky for being a catalyst for my intellectual re-awakening. Although perhaps I will get some flak when I try to give him some constructive criticism: I cannot be the only person in the position I find myself in, wanting to examine my religion and come to a true conclusion. It is abundantly helpful to read arguments for both sides which are logical, and well reasoned...but most of all, courteous. There are parties far more guilty than Mr. Yudkowsky, but it really is horrible when atheist writings have a strong undertone of contempt for those who follow a religion. I am indeed delighted that those atheists have given the matter some thought and come to conclusions that satisfy them (and indeed as Mr. Yudkowsky mentions above, consider theism an open-and-shut case!) but perhaps for those younger students of rationality such as myself, it would be wonderful if we could read these writings without being looked down upon as mind-numbingly stupid. Despite this, I very much enjoy reading Mr. Yudkowsky's writings and I look forward to reading much more!

I suppose I feel very comfortable with the anonymity provided by the internet and since I have given relatively little information about myself on a relatively smaller website I doubt anyone I know will see this and cry out in horror that I could potentially leave my faith. I would love to have some discussions with anyone on this website that has been in a similar position to me, although I have noticed a bias towards discussions around Christianity as I suppose many users here are American and that is a major force for you guys over the pond.

I think above all else, the reason i'm so happy to have found this intellectual sanctuary is because I don't have much else other than my trusty mind. Unlike my peers, chasing girls would be a fruitless effort, and small talk always seemed a bit pointless. Books, learning and thinking have always been my allies and I cannot wait to read about the biases I can try to eliminate. At the end of the day, if you have only one treasure in life it would be prudent to look after and improve it wherever possible.

Well met gents, and again I apologise if I shouldn't be commenting on a very old post!

Comment author: Lauryn 22 March 2013 07:23:32PM 2 points [-]

Hello all. I'm Lauryn, a 15-year old Christian- and a Bayesian thinker. Now, I'm sure that I'm going to get criticized because I'm young and Christian, but I undertand a lot more than you might first think (And a lot less than I'd like to). But let me finish first, yeah? I found LessWrong over a year ago and just recently felt that I just might fit in just enough to begin posting. I'd always considered myself clever (wince) and never really questioned myself or my beliefs, just repeated them back. But then I read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, and was linked over here... And you can guess most of the story from there on. I devoured the sequences in less than a month, and started reading gobs and gobs of books by people I'd never heard of- but once I did, I realized that they were everywhere. Freud, Feynman, Orwell... And here I am, a good year later, a beginning rationalist. Before I get attacked, I'd like to say that I have seriously questioned my religon (as is implied above), and still came back to it. I do have ways that I believe Christianity could be disproved (I already posted some here ), and I have seen quite a bit of evidence for evolution. All right, NOW you may attack me.

Comment author: CCC 22 March 2013 07:43:35PM 1 point [-]

Hello all. I'm ... a ... Christian- and a Bayesian thinker.

Hey. Me too.

Just so you know you're not the only one. I think I've seen one or two others around as well.

Comment author: GloriaSidorum 06 March 2013 11:24:39PM 3 points [-]

Hello. My name is not, in fact, Gloria. My username is merely (what I thought was) a pretty-sounding Latin translation of the phrase "the Glory of the Stars", though it would actually be "Gloria Siderum" and I was mixing up declensions.

I read Three Worlds Collide more than a year ago, and recently re-stumbled upon this site via a link from another forum. Reading some of Elizier's series', I realized that most of my conceptions about the world were were extremely fuzzy, and they could be better said to bleed into each other than to tie together. I realized that a large amount of what I thought of as my "knowledge" is just a set of passwords, and that I needed to work on fixing that. And I figured that a good way to practice forming coherent, predictive models and being aware of what mental processes may affect those models would be to join an online community in which a majority of posters would have read a good number of articles on bias, heuristic, and becoming more rational, and will thus be equipped to some degree to call flaws in my thinking.

Comment author: Taily 07 December 2012 09:28:02PM 2 points [-]

Hello, please call me 'Taily' (my moniker does not refer to a "tail" or a cartoon character). I'm an atypical 30 year old psychology student, still working to get my PhD. I also spend a significant amount of time on thinking, writing, and gaming. Among other things.

One reason I am joining this community is my mother, oddly. She is a stay-at-home mom with few (if any) real life friends. She interacts on message boards. I...well I don't want to be like that at all honestly, and I've only on occasion been a part of a message-board community. But I recognize the value of social exchange and community, and as my real-life friends are limited by time and location in how we can meet, this forum may be a good supplement.

My MAIN reason though - why did I choose this 'place'? It seems Very Interesting. I've read a bunch of EY's writings (the five PDF files?), and I've gotten to the point where I've wanted to interact - to ask questions and give opinions and objections - and I'm hoping that's some of what this message board is about.

Also to note:

-I first became acquainted through this community via Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, as, Harry Potter fan-fiction is a 'guilty pleasure' of mine.

-I am not an atheist, although I personally cannot stand organized religion. I very much respect the idea of coming to conclusions and developing opinions without the aid of "religion" or "spirituality" though.

-I have read a significant amount of each of those aforementioned PDF files - fun theory and utopias, quantum physics, Bayesian, all that - but I'm not done yet (and I don't yet get quantum mechanics nearly as much as I would like to).

-I consider myself rather well-versed in psychology and associated theories and I am sure I have something to contribute in that area. I wish I were an expert on all the cognitive theories and heuristics/biases, but I'm not (yet). But that's one reason I became interested specifically in EY's writings and this message board.

-One of my main personal philosophies is on doubt and possibility. Nothing's a 100% certain, and considering the way the universe is made, I have trouble believing anything we 'know' is 100% accurate. Conversely, I don't believe 'anything' is 100% inaccurate. So...I tend to hedge a lot.

-I think that the general use of statistics in current psychological research is flawed, and I'm looking to learn more about how to refine psychology research practices, such as by using Bayes' Theorem and all that.

-That's probably more than enough of an introduction for now. I hope I find a place to fit in!

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 24 November 2012 08:45:14AM 10 points [-]

Hello! I'm a first-year graduate student in pure mathematics at UC Berkeley. I've been reading LW posts for awhile but have only recently started reading (and wanting to occasionally add to) the comments. I'm interested in learning how to better achieve my goals, learning how to choose better goals, and "raising the sanity waterline" generally. I have recently offered to volunteer for CFAR and may be an instructor at SPARC 2013.

Comment author: [deleted] 29 November 2012 02:30:44AM 2 points [-]

I've read your blog for a long time now, and I really like it! <3 Welcome to LW!

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 29 November 2012 02:49:25AM 2 points [-]

Thanks! I'm trying to branch out into writing things on the internet that aren't just math. Hopefully it won't come back to bite me in 20 years...

Comment author: aspera 08 October 2012 02:52:26AM 1 point [-]

Hi all. I'm a scientist (postdoc) working on optical inverse problems. I got to LW through the quantum sequence, but my interest lies in probability theory and how it can change the way science is typically done. By comparison, cognitive bias and decision theory are fairly new to me. I look forward to learning what the community has to teach me about these subjects.

In general, I'm startled at the degree to which my colleagues are ignorant of the concepts covered in the sequences and beyond, and I'm here to learn how to be a better ambassador of rationality and probability. Expect my comments to focus on reconciling unfamiliar ideas about bias and heuristics with familiar ideas about optimal problem solving with limited information.

I'll also be interested to interact with other overt atheists. In physics, I'm pretty well buffered from theistic arguments, but theism is still one of the most obvious and unavoidable reminders of a non-rational society (that and Jersey Shore?). In particular, I'm expecting a son, and I would love to hear some input about non-theistic and rationalist parenting from those with experience.

Comment author: aspera 08 October 2012 03:11:40AM 1 point [-]

By the way, I wonder if someone can clear something up for me about "making beliefs pay rent." Eliezer draws a sharp distinction between falsifiable and non-falsifiable beliefs (though he states these concepts differently), and constructs stand-alone webs of beliefs that only support themselves.

But the correlation between predicted experience and actual experience is never perfect: there's always uncertainty. In some cases, there's rather a lot of uncertainty. Conversely, it's extremely difficult to make a statement in English that does not contain ANY information regarding predicted or retrodicted experience. In that light, it doesn't seem useful to draw such a sharp division between two idealized kinds of beliefs. Would Eliezer assign value to a belief based on its probability of predicting experience?

How would you quantify that? Could we define some kind of correlation function between the map and the territory?

Comment author: DanielH 11 July 2012 03:00:02AM *  4 points [-]

TL;DR: I found LW through HPMoR, read the major sequences, read stuff by other LWers including the Luminosity series, and lurked for six months before signing up.

My name, as you can see above if you don't have the anti-kibitzing script, Daniel. My story of how I came to self-identify as a rationalist, and then how I later came to be a rationalist, breaks down into several parts. I don't remember the order of all of them.

Since well before I can remember (and I have a fairly good long-term memory), I've been interested in mathematics, and later science. One of my earliest memories, if not my earliest, is of me, on my back, under the coffee table (well before I could walk). I had done this multiple times, I think usually with the same goal, but one time in particular sticks in my memory. I was kicking the underside of the coffee table, trying to see what was moving. This time, I moved it, got out, and saw that the drawer of the coffee table was open; this caused me to realize that this was what was moving, and I don't think I crawled under there again.

Many years later, I discovered Star Trek TNG, and from that learned a little about Star Trek. I wanted to be more rational from the role models of Data and Spock, and I did not realize at the time how non-rational Spock was. It was very quickly, however, that I realized that emotions are not the opposite of logic, and the first time I saw the TOS episode that Luke references [here][http://facingthesingularity.com/2011/why-spock-is-not-rational/], I realized that Spock was being an idiot (though at the time I thought it was unusually idiotic, not standard behavior; I hadn't and still haven't seen much of the original series). It was around this time that I thought I myself was "rational" or "logical".

Of course, it wasn't until much later that I actually started learning about rationalism. Around Thanksgiving 2011, I was on fanfiction.net looking for a Harry Potter fanfic I'd seen before and liked (I still haven't found it) that I stumbled upon Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I read it, and I liked it, and it slowly took over my life. I decided to look for other works by that author, and went to the link to Less Wrong because it was recommended (not realizing that the Sequences were written by the same person as HPMoR yet). Since then, I've read the sequences and most other stuff written by EY (that's still easily accessible and not removed), and it all made sense. I finally understood that yes, in fact, I and the other "confused" students WERE correct in that probability class where the professor said that "the probability that this variable is in this interval" didn't exist, I noticed times when I was conforming instead of thinking, and I noticed some accesses of cached thoughts. At first I was a bit skeptical of the overly-atheistic bit (though I'd always had doubts and was pretty much agnostic-though-I-wouldn't-admit-it), until I read the articles about how unlikely the hypothesis of God was and thought about them.

I did not know much about Quantum Mechanics when I read that sequence, but I had heard of the "waveform collapse" and had not understood it, and I realized fairly quickly how that was an unnecessary hypothesis. When I saw one of the cryonics articles (I'm cryocrastinating, trying to get my parents to sign up) taking the idea seriously, I thought "Oh, duh! I should have seen that the first time I heard of it, but I was specifically told that the person involved was an idiot and it didn't work, so I never reevaluated" (later I remembered my horror at Picard's attitude in the relevant TNG episode, and I've always only believed in the information-theoretic definition of "death").

After I read the major sequences, I read some other stuff I found through the Wiki and through googling "Less Wrong __" for various things I wanted the LW community opinion on. I found my favorite LW authors (Yvain, Luke, Alicorn, and EY) and read other things by them (Facing the Singularity and Luminosity). I subscribed to the RSS feed (I don't know how that'll work when I want to strictly keep to anti-kibitzing), and I now know that I want to help SIAI as much as possible (I was planning to be a computer scientist anyway); I'm currently reading through a lot of their recommended reading. I'm also about to start GEB, followed by Jaynes and Pearl. I plan to become a lot more active comment-wise, but probably not post-wise for a while yet. I may even go to one of the meetups if one is held somewhere I can get to.

Now we've pretty much caught up to the present. Let's see... I read some posts today, I read Luke's Intuitive Explanation to EY's Intuitive Explanation, I found an error in it (95% confidence), I sent him an email, and I decided to sign up here. Now I'm writing this post, and I'm supposed to put some sort of conclusion on it. I estimate that the value of picking a better conclusion is not that high compared to the cost, so I'll just hit th submit button after this next period.

Edit: Wow, I just realized how similar my story is to parts of Comment author: BecomingMyself's. I swear we aren't the same person!

Comment author: shminux 11 July 2012 04:57:42AM 1 point [-]

I did not know much about Quantum Mechanics when I read that sequence, but I had heard of the "waveform collapse" and had not understood it, and I realized fairly quickly how that was an unnecessary hypothesis.

I recommend learning QM from textbooks, not blogs. This applies to most other subjects, as well.

Comment author: DanielH 18 July 2012 02:03:47AM *  3 points [-]

I did not mean to imply that I had actual knowledge of QM, just that I had more now than before. If I was interested in understanding QM in more detail, I would take a course on it at my college. It turns out that I am so interested, and that I plan to take such a course in Spring 2013.

I also know that there are people on this site, apparently a greater percentage than with similar issues, who disagree with EY about the Many Worlds Interpretation. I have not been able to follow their arguments, because the ones I have seen generally assume a greater knowledge of quantum mechanics than I possess. Therefore, MWI is still the most reasonable explanation that I have heard and understood. Again, though, that means very little. I hope to revisit the issue once I have some actual background on the subject.

EDIT: To clarify, "similar issues" means issues where the majority of people have one opinion, such as theism, the Copenhagen Interpretation, or cryonics not being worth considering, while Less Wrong's general consensus is different.

Comment author: TGM 10 July 2012 08:21:23PM 2 points [-]

I’m 20, male and a maths undergrad at Cambridge University. I was linked to LW a little over a year ago, and despite having initial misgivings for philosophy-type stuff on the internet (and off, for that matter), I hung around long enough to realise that LW was actually different from most of what I had read. In particular, I found a mix of ideas that I’ve always thought (and been alone amongst my peers in doing so), such as making beliefs pay rent; and new ones that were compelling, such as the conservation of expected evidence post.

I’ve always identified as a rationalist, and was fortunate enough to be raised to a sound understanding of what might be considered ‘traditional’ rationality. I’ve changed the way I think since starting to read LW, and have dropped some of the unhelpful attitudes that were promoted by status-warfare at a high achieving all-boys school (you must always be right, you must always have an answer, you must never back down…)

I’m here because the LW community seems to have lots of straight-thinking people with a vast cumulative knowledge. I want to be a part of and learn from that kind of community, for no better reason than I think I would enjoy life more for it.

Comment author: gunnervi 09 July 2012 02:00:24AM 1 point [-]

Hello!

I'm an 18 year old American physics undergraduate student (rising sophomore). I came here after reading HPMOR and because I think that being Rational will improve my ability as a scientist (and now I've realized, though I guessed it after reading Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, that I need to get better at not guessing the teacher's password I know a bit of pure mathematics but little of cognitive sciences (take this category as you will. If you think something might be in this category, then I likely don't know much more about it than core Sequences + layperson's knowledge).

Also, please yell at me if I make claims about history and give no sources. (one of my friends growing up was a huge history buff, so I have a bunch of half remembered historical facts in my head (mostly WWII and Roman era) that I tend to assume are not only true but undisputed and common knowledge). Even in informal settings I should link to, at the least, Wikipedia. (This also ensures that I am not making false claims)

Comment author: Ruairi 03 July 2012 01:48:43PM 2 points [-]

Hello!

I'm an 18 year old Irish high school student trying to decide what to do after I leave school. I want to make as much happiness as I can and stop as much suffering as I can but I'm unsure how to do this. I'm mostly here because I think reducing x risk may be a good idea, but to be honest I think there are other things which seem better, but anyway I hope to talk to people here about this!

Some of you may be members of 80000hours I imagine, so heres me on 80k : http://80000hours.org/members/ruairi-donnelly

Comment author: Laoch 03 July 2012 01:52:07PM 1 point [-]

Hey welcome to lesswrong.com fellow Irish person.

Comment author: Ruairi 03 July 2012 10:34:14PM 1 point [-]

Your name means "hero" in Irish! I have actually used the same username as you! on youtube for example! where do you live if you don't mind me asking? :)

Comment author: Laoch 04 July 2012 08:33:16AM 1 point [-]

I live in D4 actually. My Irish has faded drastically but then again it never really was that good, tá brón orm.

Comment author: Ruairi 08 July 2012 12:46:59AM 1 point [-]

Sure thats grand, personally I like speaking it and go to an Irish school but I think its pretty shocking that the government spends half a billion a year trying to keep it alive (and its not working) and apparently it takes up 15% of ones schooling time.

I live in Bray, Wicklow :) Maybe we can make a meet up sometime :)

Comment author: Ruairi 04 July 2012 12:35:31AM 1 point [-]

An bhfuil Gaeilge agat? Ha, I bet we know each other in some way.

Comment author: zslastman 24 June 2012 04:30:18PM 6 points [-]

I'm a 24 year old PhD student of molecular biology. I arrived here trying to get at the many worlds vs copenhagen debate as a nonspecialist, and as part of a sustained campaign of reading that will allow me to tell a friend who likes Hegel where to shove it. I'm also here because I wanted to reach a decision about whether I really want to do biology, if not, whether I should quit, and if I leave, what i actually want to do.

Comment author: kajro 23 June 2012 12:06:26AM 4 points [-]

I'm a 20 year old mathematics/music double major at NYU. Mainly here because I want to learn how to wear Vibrams without getting self conscious about it.

Comment author: Kevin 23 June 2012 01:11:12AM 3 points [-]

I get nothing but positive social affect from Ninja Zemgears. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=zemgear

Cheaper than Vibrams, more comfortable, less durable, less agile, much friendlier looking.

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 23 June 2012 01:05:22AM 3 points [-]
Comment author: kajro 23 June 2012 03:05:46AM 3 points [-]

Is this some kind of LW hazing, linking to academic papers in an introduction thread? (I joke, this looks super interesting).

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 23 June 2012 03:24:02AM *  1 point [-]

It was either that or the Psychology Today article. (Pretty sure Psychology Today is where I learned about the concept, but googling found the paper.)

Comment author: phonypapercut 20 June 2012 11:35:39PM 6 points [-]

Hello. I've been browsing articles that show up on the front page for about a year now. Just recently started going through the sequences and decided it would be a good time to create an account.

Comment author: SwingDancerMike 20 June 2012 07:37:47PM 7 points [-]

Hi everyone, I've been reading LW for a year or so, and met some of you at the May minicamp. (I was the guy doing the swing dancing.) Great to meet you, in person and online.

I'm helping Anna Salamon put together some workshops for the meetup groups, and I'll be posting some articles on presentation skills to help with that. But in order to do that, I'll need 5 points (I think). Can you help me out with that?

Thanks

Mike

Comment author: SwingDancerMike 20 June 2012 09:57:18PM 1 point [-]

Yay 5 points! That was quick. Thanks everyone.

Comment author: mapnoterritory 02 June 2012 07:02:11AM *  3 points [-]

Hi everybody,

I've been lurking here for maybe a year and joined recently. I work as an astrophysicist and I am interested in statistics, decision theory, machine learning, cognitive and neuro-psychology, AI research and many others (I just wish I had more time for all these interests). I find LW to be a great resource and it introduced me to many interesting concepts. I am also interested in articles on improving productivity and well-being.

I haven't yet attended any meet-up, but if there was one in Munich I'd try to come.

Comment author: kmacneill 15 February 2012 06:52:04PM 4 points [-]

Hey, I've been an LW lurker for about a year now, and I think it's time to post here. I'm a cryonicist, rationalist and singularity enthusiast. I'm currently working as a computer engineer and I'm thinking maybe there is more I can do to promote rationality and FAI. LW is an incredible resource. I have a mild fear that I don't have enough rigorous knowledge about rationality concepts to contribute anything useful to most discussion.

LW has changed my life in a few ways but the largest are becoming a cryonicist and becoming polyamorous (naturally leaned toward this, though). I feel like I am in a one-way friendship with EY, does anyone else feel like that?

Comment author: Alex_Altair 16 February 2012 05:05:04PM 2 points [-]

I am also in a one-way friendship with EY.

Comment author: [deleted] 14 February 2012 05:18:53PM 3 points [-]

Hello,

I am a world citizen with very little sense of identification or labelling. Perhaps "Secular Humanist" could be my main affiliation. As for belonging to nations and companies and teams... I don't believe in this thrust-upon, unchosen unity. I'm a natural expatriate. And I believe this site is awesomeness incarnate.

Though some lesswrongers really seem to go out of their way to make their readers feel stupid... though I'd guess that's the whole point, right?

Comment author: Dmytry 29 December 2011 06:56:04PM 4 points [-]

I am a video game developer. I find most of this site fairly interesting albeit once in a while I disagree with description of some behaviour as irrational, or the explanation projected upon that behaviour (when I happen to see a pretty good reason for this behaviour, perhaps strategic or as matter of general policy/cached decision).

Comment author: [deleted] 24 December 2011 08:44:37AM 5 points [-]

Uh...uhm...hello?

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 24 December 2011 06:24:01PM 1 point [-]

Hi!

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 19 December 2011 07:28:45AM 3 points [-]

Hello. I expect you won't like me because I'm Christian and female and don't want to be turned into an immortal computer-brain-thing that acts more like Eliezer thinks it should. I've been lurking for a long time. The first time I found this place I followed a link to OvercomingBias from AnneC's blog and from there, without quite realizing it, found myself archive-binging and following another link here. But then I stopped and left and then later I got linked to the Sequences from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

A combination of the whole evaporative cooling thing and looking at an old post that wondered why there weren't more women convinced me to join. You guys are attracting a really narrow demographic and I was starting to wonder whether you were just going to turn into a cult and I should ignore you.

...And I figure I can still leave if that ends up happening, but if everyone followed the logic I just espoused, it'll raise the probability that you start worshiping the possibility of becoming immortal polyamorous whatever and taking over the world. I'd rather hang around and keep the Singularity from being an AI that forcibly exterminates all morality and all people who don't agree with Eliezer Yudkowsky. Not that any of you (especially EY) WANT that, exactly. But anyway, my point is, With Folded Hands is a pretty bad failure mode for the worst-case scenario where EC occurs and EY gets to AI first.

Okay, ready to be shouted down. I'll be counting the downvotes as they roll in, I guess. You guys really hate Christians, after all. (Am I actually allowed to be here or am I banned for my religion?) I'll probably just leave soon anyway. Nothing good can come of this. I don't know why I'm doing this. I shouldn't be here; you don't want me here, not to mention I probably shouldn't bother talking to people who only want me to hate God. Why am I even here again? Seriously, why am I not just lurking? That would make more sense.

Comment author: Ezekiel 26 December 2011 11:04:07AM 10 points [-]

Hi, AspiringKnitter!

There have been several openly religious people on this site, of varying flavours. You don't (or shouldn't) get downvoted just for declaring your beliefs; you get downvoted for faulty logic, poor understanding and useless or irrelevant comments. As someone who stopped being religious as a result of reading this site, I'd love for more believers to come along. My impulse is to start debating you right away, but I realise that'd just be rude. If you're interested, though, drop me a PM, because I'm still considering the possibility I might have made the wrong decision.

The evaporative cooling risk is worrying, now that you mention it... Have you actually noticed that happening here during your lurking days, or are you just pointing out that it's a risk?

Oh, and dedicating an entire paragraph to musing about the downvotes you'll probably get, while an excellent tactic for avoiding said downvotes, is also annoying. Please don't do that.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 02:13:08AM 6 points [-]

As someone who stopped being religious as a result of reading this site, I'd love for more believers to come along.

Uh-oh. LOL.

My impulse is to start debating you right away, but I realise that'd just be rude.

Normally, I'm open to random debates about everything. I pride myself on it. However, I'm getting a little sick of religious debate since the last few days of participating in it. I suppose I still have to respond to a couple of people below, but I'm starting to fear a never-ending, energy-sapping, GPA-sabotaging argument where agreeing to disagree is literally not an option. It's my own fault for showing up here, but I'm starting to realize why "agree to disagree" was ever considered by anyone at all for anything given its obvious wrongness: you just can't do anything if you spend all your time on a never-ending argument.

The evaporative cooling risk is worrying, now that you mention it... Have you actually noticed that happening here during your lurking days, or are you just pointing out that it's a risk?

Haven't been lurking long enough.

Oh, and dedicating an entire paragraph to musing about the downvotes you'll probably get, while an excellent tactic for avoiding said downvotes, is also annoying. Please don't do that.

In the future I will not. See below. Thank you for calling me out on that.

Comment author: Emile 27 December 2011 11:47:01AM 3 points [-]

I'm starting to fear a never-ending, energy-sapping, GPA-sabotaging argument where agreeing to disagree is literally not an option.

There isn't a strong expectation here that people should never agree to disagree - see this old discussion, or this one.

That being said, persistent disagreement is a warning sign that at least one side isn't being perfectly rational (which covers both things like "too attached to one's self-image as a contrarian" and like "doesn't know how to spell out explicitly the reasons for his belief").

Comment author: TheOtherDave 27 December 2011 02:22:33AM 12 points [-]

Talk of Aumann Agreement notwithstanding, the usual rules of human social intercourse that allow "I am no longer interested in continuing this discussion" as a legitimate conversational move continue to apply on this site. If you don't wish to discuss your religious beliefs, then don't.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 02:52:02AM 5 points [-]

Ah, I didn't know that. I've never had a debate that didn't end with "we all agree, yay", some outside force stopping us or everyone hating each other and hurling insults.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 27 December 2011 03:30:24AM 2 points [-]

Jeez. What would "we all agree, yay" even look like in this case?

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 03:36:56AM 6 points [-]

I suppose either I'd become an atheist or everyone here would convert to Christianity.

Comment author: lessdazed 27 December 2011 04:32:52PM 3 points [-]

Beliefs should all be probabilistic.

I think this rules out some and only some branches of Christianity, but more importantly it impels accepting behaviorist criteria for any difference in kind between "atheists" and "Christians" if we really want categories like that.

Comment author: Prismattic 27 December 2011 04:57:57AM 8 points [-]

The assumption that everyone here is either an atheist or a Christian is already wrong.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 05:01:11AM 5 points [-]

Good point. Thank you for pointing it out.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 27 December 2011 03:56:48AM 5 points [-]

There are additional possibilities, like everyone agreeing on agnosticism or on some other religion.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 27 December 2011 04:13:56AM 3 points [-]

Hm.

So, if I'm understanding you, you considered only four possible outcomes likely from your interactions with this site: everyone converts to Christianity, you get deconverted from Christianity, the interaction is forcibly stopped, or the interaction degenerates to hateful insults. Yes?

I'd be interested to know how likely you considered those options, and if your expectations about likely outcomes have changed since then.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 05:00:39AM 7 points [-]

Well, for any given conversation about religion, yes. (Obviously, I expect different things if I post a comment about HP:MoR on that thread.)

I expected the last one, since mostly no matter what I do, internet discussions on anything important have a tendency to do that. (And it's not just when I'm participating in them!) I considered any conversions highly unlikely and didn't really expect the interaction to be stopped.

My expectations have changed a lot. After a while I realized that hateful insults weren't happening very much here on Less Wrong, which is awesome, and that the frequency didn't seem to increase with the length of the discussion, unlike other parts of the internet. So I basically assumed the conversation would go on forever. Now, having been told otherwise, I realize that conversations can actually be ended by the participants without one of these things happening.

That was a failure on my part, but would have correctly predicted a lot of the things I'd experienced in the past. I just took an outside view when an inside view would have been better because it really is different this time. That failure is adequately explained by the use of the outside view heuristic, which is usually useful, and the fact that I ended up in a new situation which lacked the characteristics that caused what I observed in the past.

Comment author: Incorrect 27 December 2011 03:45:07AM *  2 points [-]

I tried to look for a religious debate elsewhere in this thread but could not find any except the tangential discussion of schizophrenia.

However, I'm getting a little sick of religious debate since the last few days of participating in it.

Then please feel free to ignore this comment. On the other hand, if you ever feel like responding then by all means do.

A lack of response to this comment should not be considered evidence that AspiringKnitter could not have brilliantly responded.

What is the primary reason you believe in God and what is the nature of this reason?

By nature of the reason, I mean something like these:

  • inductive inference: you believe adding a description of whatever you understand of God leads to a simpler explanation of the universe without losing any predictive power

  • intuitive inductive inference: you believe in god because of intuition. you also believe that there is an underlying argument using inductive inference, you just don't know what it is

  • intuitive metaphysical: you believe in god because of intuition. you believe there is some other justification this intuition works

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 04:04:39AM 1 point [-]

I tried to look for a religious debate elsewhere in this thread but could not find any except the tangential discussion of schizophrenia.

It's weird, but I can't seem to find everything on the thread from the main post no matter how many of the "show more comments" links I click. Or maybe it's just easy to get lost.

What is the primary reason you believe in God and what is the nature of this reason?

None of the above, and this is going to end up on exactly (I do mean exactly) the same path as the last one within three posts if it continues. Not interested now, maybe some other time. Thanks. :)

Comment author: EvelynM 26 December 2011 10:45:55AM 7 points [-]

What do you aspire to knit?

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 01:54:57AM 5 points [-]

Sweaters, hats, scarves, headbands, purses, everything knittable. (Okay, I was wrong below, that was actually the second-easiest post to answer.) Do you like knitting too?

Comment author: EvelynM 27 December 2011 04:54:30PM 1 point [-]

Yes, I do. This year, I'm mostly doing small items, like scarves and hats.

Knitting is an over-learned skill for me, like driving, and requires very little thought. I like both the process and the result.

Comment author: [deleted] 25 December 2011 08:58:56PM *  33 points [-]

Wow. Some of your other posts are intelligent, but this is pure troll-bait.

EDIT: I suppose I should share my reasoning. Copied from my other post lower down the thread:

Hello, I expect you won't like me, I'm <group you dislike for allegedly irrational reasons>

Classic troll opening. Challenges us to take the post seriously. Our collective 'manhood' is threatened if react normally (eg saying "trolls fuck off").

dont want to be turned onto an immortal computer-brain-thing that acts more like Eliezer thinks it should

Insulting straw man with a side of "you are an irrational cult".

I've been lurking for a long time... overcoming bias... sequences... HP:MOR... namedropping

"Seriously, I'm one of you guys". Concern troll disclaimer. Classic.

evaporative cooling... women... I'm here to help you not be a cult.

Again undertones of "you are a cult and you must accept my medicine or turn into a cult". Again we are challenged to take it seriously.

I just espoused, it'll raise the probability that you start worshiping the possibility of becoming immortal polyamorous whatever and taking over the world.

I didn't quite understand this part, but again, straw man caricature.

I'd rather hang around and keep the Singularity from being an AI that forcibly exterminates all morality and all people who don't agree with Eliezer Yudkowsky. Not that any of you (especially EY) WANT that, exactly. But anyway, my point is, With Folded Hands is a pretty bad failure mode for the worst-case scenario where EC occurs and EY gets to AI first.

Theres a rhetorical meme on 4chan that elegantly deals with this kind of crap:

implying we don't care about friendliness
implying you know more about friendliness than EY

'nuff said

Okay, ready to be shouted down. I'll be counting the downvotes as they roll in, I guess. You guys really hate Christians, after all.

classic reddit downvote preventer:

  1. Post a troll or other worthless opinion
  2. Imply that the hivemind wont like it
  3. Appeal to people's fear of hivemind
  4. Collect upvotes.

You guys really hate Christians, after all. (Am I actually allowed to be here or am I banned for my religion?)

again implying irrational insider/outsider dynamic, hivemind tendencies and even censorship.

Of course the kneejerk response is "no no, we don't hate you and we certainly won't censor you; please we want more christian trolls like you". EDIT: Ha! well predicted I say. I just looked at the other 500 responses. /EDIT

I'll probably just leave soon anyway. Nothing good can come of this. I don't know why I'm doing this. I shouldn't be here; you don't want me here, not to mention I probably shouldn't bother talking to people who only want me to hate God. Why am I even here again? Seriously, why am I not just lurking? That would make more sense.

And top it off with a bit of sympathetic character, damsel-in-distress crap. EDIT: Oh and the bit about hating God is a staw-man. /EDIT

This is not necessarily deliberate, but it doesn't have to be.

Trolling is a art. and Aspiring_Knitter is a artist. 10/10.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 27 December 2011 01:50:45AM 6 points [-]

Wow, I don't post over Christmas and look what happens. Easiest one to answer first.

  1. Wow, thanks!
  2. You're a little mean.

You don't need an explanation of 2, but let me go through your post and explain about 1.

Classic troll opening. Challenges us to take the post seriously. Our collective 'manhood' is threatened if react normally (eg saying "trolls fuck off").

Huh. I guess I could have come up with that explanation if I'd thought. The truth here is that I was just thinking "you know, they really won't like me, this is stupid, but if I make them go into this interaction with their eyes wide open about what I am, and phrase it like so, I might get people to be nice and listen".

dont want to be turned onto an immortal computer-brain-thing that acts more like Eliezer thinks it should

Insulting straw man with a side of "you are an irrational cult".

That was quite sincere and I still feel that that's a worry.

Also, I don't think I know more about friendliness than EY. I think he's very knowledgeable. I worry that he has the wrong values so his utopia would not be fun for me.

classic reddit downvote preventer:

Post a troll or other worthless opinion Imply that the hivemind wont like it Appeal to people's fear of hivemind Collect upvotes.

Wow, you're impressive. (Actually, from later posts, I know where you get this stuff from. I guess anyone could hang around 4chan long enough to know stuff like that if they had nerves of steel.) I had the intuition that this will lead to fewer downvotes (but note that I didn't lie; I did expect that it was true, from many theist-unfriendly posts on this site), but I didn't think consciously this procedure will appeal to people's fear of the hivemind to shame them into upvoting me. I want to thank you for pointing that out. Knowing how and why that intuition was correct will allow me to decide with eyes wide open whether to do something like that in the future, and if I ever actually want to troll, I'll be better at it.

And top it off with a bit of sympathetic character, damsel-in-distress crap.

Actually, I just really need to learn to remember that while I'm posting, proper procedure is not "allow internal monologue to continue as normal and transcribe it". You have no idea how much trouble that's gotten me into. (Go ahead and judge me for my self-pitying internal monologue if you want. Rereading it, I'm wondering how I failed to notice that I should just delete that part, or possibly the whole post.) On the other hand, I'd certainly hope that being honest makes me a sympathetic character. I'd like to be sympathetic, after all. ;)

This is not necessarily deliberate, but it doesn't have to be.

Thank you. It wasn't, but as you say, it doesn't have to be. I hope I'll be more mindful in the future, and bear morality in mind in crafting my posts here and elsewhere. I would never have seen these things so clearly for myself.

10/10.

Thanks, but no. LOL.

I'd upvote you, but otherwise your post is just so rude that I don't think I will.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 27 December 2011 02:25:41AM 18 points [-]

Note that declaring Crocker's rules and subsequently complaining about rudeness sends very confusing signals about how you wish to be engaged with.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 27 December 2011 03:09:34AM 3 points [-]

For what it's worth, I generally see some variant of "please don't flame me" attached only to posts which I'd call inoffensive even without it. I'm not crazy about seeing "please don't flame me", but I write it off to nervousness and don't blame people for using it.

Caveat: I'm pretty sure that "please don't flame me" won't work in social justice venues.

Comment author: Crux 26 December 2011 02:33:43AM *  5 points [-]

Excellent analysis. I just changed my original upvote for that post to a downvote, and I must admit that it got me in exactly every way you explained.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 25 December 2011 10:48:59PM 9 points [-]

You've got an interesting angle there, but I don't think AspiringKnitter is a troll in the pernicious sense-- her post has led to a long reasonable discussion that she's made a significant contribution to.

I do think she wanted attention, and her post had more than a few hooks to get it. However, I don't think it's useful to describe trolls as "just wanting attention". People post because they want attention. The important thing is whether they repay attention with anything valuable.

Comment author: [deleted] 25 December 2011 11:44:26PM 11 points [-]

I don't have the timeline completely straight, but it looks to me like AspiringKnitter came in trolling and quickly changed gears to semi-intelligent discussion. Such things happen. AspiringKnitter is no longer a troll, that's for sure; like you say "her post has led to a long reasonable discussion that she's made a significant contribution to".

All that, however, does not change the fact that this particular post looks, walks, and quacks like troll-bait and should be treated as such. I try to stay out of the habit of judging posts on the quality of the poster's other stuff.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 26 December 2011 08:32:18AM 3 points [-]

I don't know if this is worth saying, but you look a lot more like a troll to me than she does, though of a more subtle variety than I'm used to.

You seem to be taking behavior which has been shown to be in the harmless-to-useful range and picking a fight about it.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 December 2011 08:59:33PM 9 points [-]

Thanks for letting me know. If most people disagree with my assessment, I'll adjust my troll-resistance threshold.

I just want to make sure we don't end up tolerating people who appear to have trollish intent. AspiringKnitter turned out to be positive, but I still think that particular post needed to be called out.

Well Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 26 December 2011 09:55:35PM 5 points [-]

You're welcome. This makes me glad I didn't come out swinging-- I'd suspected (actually I had to resist the temptation to obsess about the idea) that you were a troll yourself.

If you don't mind writing about it, what sort of places have you been hanging out that you got your troll sensitivity calibrated so high? I'm phrasing it as "what sort of places" in case you'd rather not name particular websites.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 December 2011 10:21:39PM 10 points [-]

what sort of places have you been hanging out that you got your troll sensitivity calibrated so high?

4chan, where there is an interesting dynamic around trolling and getting trolled. Getting trolled is low-status, calling out trolls correctly that no-one else caught is high-status, and trolling itself is god-status, calling troll incorrectly is low status like getting trolled. With that culture, the art of trolling, counter-trolling and troll detection gets well trained.

I learned a lot of trolling theory from reddit, (like the downvote preventer and concern trolling). The politics, anarchist, feminist and religious subreddits have a lot of good cases to study (they generally suck at managing community, tho).

I learned a lot of relevant philosophy of trolling and some more theory from /i/nsurgency boards and wikis (start at partyvan.info). Those communities are in a sorry state these days.

Alot of what I learned on 4chan and /i/ is not common knowledge around here and could be potentially useful. Maybe I'll beat some of it into a useful form and post it.

Comment author: Vaniver 26 December 2011 10:37:37PM 5 points [-]

Maybe I'll beat some of it into a useful form and post it.

For one thing, the label "trolling" seems like it distracts more than it adds, just like "dark arts." AspiringKnitter's first post was loaded with influence techniques, as you point out, but it's not clear to me that pointing at influence techniques and saying "influence bad!" is valuable, especially in an introduction thread. I mean, what's the point of understanding human interaction if you use that understanding to botch your interactions?

Comment author: wedrifid 27 December 2011 07:40:18PM 4 points [-]

but it's not clear to me that pointing at influence techniques and saying "influence bad!" is valuable, especially in an introduction thread.

There is a clear benefit to pointing out when a mass of other people are falling for influence techniques in a way you consider undesirable.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 26 December 2011 10:49:11PM 4 points [-]

That's interesting-- I've never hung out anywhere that trolling was high status.

In reddit and the like, how is consensus built around whether someone is a troll and/or is trolling in a particular case?

I think I understand concern trolling, which I understand to be giving advice which actually weakens the receiver's position, though I think the coinage "hlep" from is more widely useful--inappropriate, annoying/infuriating advice which is intended to be helpful but doesn't have enough thought behind it, but what's downvote preventer?

Hlep has a lot of overlap with other-optimizing.

I'd be interested in what you have to say about the interactions at 4chan and /i/, especially about breakdowns in political communities.

I've been mulling the question of how you identify and maintain good will-- to my mind, a lot of community breakdown is caused by tendencies to amplify disagreements between people who didn't start out being all that angry at each other.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 December 2011 11:25:29PM 3 points [-]

In reddit and the like, how is consensus built around whether someone is a troll and/or is trolling in a particular case?

On reddit there is just upvotes and downvotes. Reddit doesn't have developed social mechanisms for dealing with trolls, because the downvotes work most of the time. Developing troll technology like the concern troll and the downvote preventer to hack the hivemind/vote dynamic is the only way to succeed.

4chan doesn't have any social mechanisms either, just the culture. Communication is unnecessary for social/cultural pressure to work, interestingly. Once the countertroll/troll/troll-detector/trolled/troll-crier hierarchy is formed by the memes and mythology, the rest just works in your own mind. "fuck I got trolled, better watch out better next time", "all these people are getting trolled, but I know the OP is a troll; I'm better than them" "successful troll is successful" "I trolled the troll". Even if you don't post them and no-one reacts to them, those thoughts activate the social shame/status/etc machinery.

I think I understand concern trolling, which I understand to be giving advice which actually weakens the receiver's position, though I think the coinage "hlep" from is more widely useful

Not quite. A concern troll is someone who comes in saying "I'm a member of your group, but I'm unsure about this particular point in a highly controversial way" with the intention of starting a big useless flame-war.

Havn't heard of hlep. seems interesting.

but what's downvote preventer

The downvote preventer is when you say "I know the hivemind will downvote me for this, but..." It creates association in the readers mind between downvoting and being a hivemind drone, which people are afraid of, so they don't downvote. It's one of the techniques trolls use to protect the payload, like the way the concern troll used community membership.

I've been mulling the question of how you identify and maintain good will-- to my mind, a lot of community breakdown is caused by tendencies to amplify disagreements between people who didn't start out being all that angry at each other.

Yes. A big part of trolling is actually creating and fueling those disagreements. COINTELPRO trolling is disrupting peoples ability to identify trolls and goodwill. There is a lot of depth and difficulty to that.

Comment author: Jonii 26 December 2011 01:50:40AM 1 point [-]

I had missed this. The original post read as really weird and hostile, but I only read after having heard about this thread indirectly for days, mostly about the way how later she seemed pretty intelligent, so I dismissed what I saw and substituted what I ought to have seen. Thanks for pointing this out.

Upvoted

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 24 December 2011 03:00:31AM 3 points [-]

I'll bet US$1000 that this is Will_Newsome.

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 29 December 2011 05:14:07AM 4 points [-]

I said

I'll bet US$1000 that this is Will_Newsome.

I think it's time to close out this somewhat underspecified offer of a bet. So far, AspiringKnitter and Eliezer expressed interest but only if a method of resolving the bet could be determined, Alicorn offered to play a role in resolving the bet in return for a share of the winnings, and dlthomas offered up $15.

I will leave the possibility of joining the bet open for another 24 hours, starting from the moment this comment is posted. I won't look at the site during that time. Then I'll return, see who (if anyone) still wants a piece of the action, and will also attempt to resolve any remaining conflicts about who gets to participate and on what terms. You are allowed to say "I want to join the bet, but this is conditional upon resolving such-and-such issue of procedure, arbitration, etc." Those details can be sorted out later. This is just the last chance to shortlist yourself as a potential bettor.

I'll be back in 24 hours.

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 30 December 2011 05:30:20AM 12 points [-]

And the winners are... dlthomas, who gets $15, and ITakeBets, who gets $100, for being bold enough to bet unconditionally. I accept their bets, I formally concede them, aaaand we're done.

Comment author: wedrifid 30 December 2011 06:43:43AM 7 points [-]

You know I followed your talk about betting but never once considered that I could win money for realz if I took you up on it. The difficulty of proving such things made the subject seem just abstract. Oops.

Comment author: Solvent 30 December 2011 06:52:21AM 2 points [-]

And thus concludes the funniest thread on LessWrong in a very long time. Thanks, folks.

Comment author: ITakeBets 30 December 2011 05:32:07AM 1 point [-]

Thank you.

Comment author: Steve_Rayhawk 30 December 2011 05:12:30AM 2 points [-]

I'll stake $500 if eligible.

When would the answer need to be known by?

Comment author: ITakeBets 29 December 2011 05:25:36AM *  2 points [-]

I am interested.

Edit: Putting up $100, regardless of anyone else's participation, and I'm prepared to demonstrate that I'm not Will_Newsome if that is somehow necessary.

Comment author: dlthomas 27 December 2011 10:05:51PM 1 point [-]

I'll take up to $15 of that, at even odds. Possibly more, if the odds can be skewed in my favor.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 26 December 2011 09:50:51PM 7 points [-]

Why did you frame it that way, rather than that AspiringKnitter wasn't a Christian, or was someone with a long history of trolling, or somesuch? It's much less likely to get a particular identity right than to establish that a poster is lying about who they are.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 December 2011 10:17:43AM 4 points [-]

That's really odd. If there were some way to settle the bet I'd take it.

Comment author: steven0461 26 December 2011 11:31:24PM *  7 points [-]

For what it's worth, I thought Mitchell's hypothesis seemed crazy at first, then looked through user:AspiringKnitter's comment history and read a number of things that made me update substantially toward it. (Though I found nothing that made it "extremely obvious", and it's hard to weigh this sort of evidence against low priors.)

Comment author: TheOtherDave 27 December 2011 02:34:42AM 1 point [-]

Out of curiosity, what's your estimate of the likelihood that you'd update substantially toward a similar hypothesis involving other LW users? ...involving other users who have identified as theists or partial theists?

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 26 December 2011 11:01:21AM 7 points [-]

It used to be possible - perhaps it still is? - to make donations to SIAI targeted towards particular proposed research projects. If you are interested in taking up this bet, we should do a side deal whereby, if I win, your $1000 would go to me via SIAI in support of some project that is of mutual interest.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 26 December 2011 08:30:02AM 4 points [-]

Unfortunately, I don't have the spare money to take the other side of the bet, but Will showed a tendency to head off into foggy abstractions which I haven't seen in Aspiring Knitter.

Comment author: J_Taylor 28 December 2011 09:54:05AM 1 point [-]

Will_Newsome does not seem, one would say, incompetent. I have never read a post by him in which he seemed to be unknowingly committing some faux pas. He should be perfectly capable of suppressing that particular aspect of his posting style.

Comment author: katydee 26 December 2011 01:34:30AM 4 points [-]

Wow. Now that you mention it, perhaps someone should ask AspiringKnitter what she thinks of dubstep...

Comment author: katydee 26 December 2011 02:26:04AM 3 points [-]

Holy crap. I've never had a comment downvoted this fast, and I thought this was a pretty funny joke to boot. My mental estimate was that the original comment would end up resting at around +4 or +5. Where did I err?

Comment author: wedrifid 26 December 2011 11:30:12AM 6 points [-]

I left it alone because I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Dubstep? Will likes, dislikes and/or does something involving dubstep? (Google tells me it is a kind of dance music.)

Comment author: katydee 26 December 2011 06:56:46PM *  7 points [-]
Comment author: Will_Newsome 27 December 2011 11:09:07AM 7 points [-]

(Er, well, math intuitions in a few specific fields, and only one or two rather specific dubstep videos. I'm not, ya know, actually crazy. The important thing is that that video is, as the kids would offensively say, "sicker than Hitler's kill/death ratio".) newayz I upvoted your original comment.

Comment author: thomblake 27 December 2011 05:17:27PM 7 points [-]

sicker than Hitler's kill/death ratio

Do we count assists now?

Comment author: TheOtherDave 27 December 2011 05:29:44PM 2 points [-]

And if so, who gets the credit for deaths by old age?

Comment author: katydee 27 December 2011 11:01:16PM 2 points [-]

Post edited to reflect this, apologies for misrepresenting you.

Comment author: shminux 26 December 2011 02:42:22AM 3 points [-]

Here is an experiment that could solve this.

If someone takes the bet and some of the proceeds go to trike, they might agree to check the logs and compare IPs (a matching IP or even a proxy as a detection avoidance attempt could be interpreted as AK=WN). Of course, AK would have to consent.

Comment author: lessdazed 28 December 2011 05:09:56PM 1 point [-]

Why didn't you suggest asking Will_Newsome?

Comment author: shminux 28 December 2011 10:09:43PM 1 point [-]

DIdn't think about it. He would have to consent, too. Fortunately, any interest in the issue seems to have waned.

Comment author: wedrifid 28 December 2011 07:21:53PM 1 point [-]

Why didn't you suggest asking Will_Newsome?

Ask him what? To raise his right arm if he is telling the truth?

Comment author: lessdazed 29 December 2011 12:23:13AM 1 point [-]

I missed where he explicitly made a claim about it one way or the other.

The months went by, and at last on a day of spring Ged returned to the Great House, and he had no idea what would be asked of him next. At the door that gives on the path across the fields to Roke Knoll an old man met him, waiting for him in the doorway. At first Ged did not know him, and then putting his mind to it recalled him as the one who had let him into the School on the day of his coming, five years ago.

The old man smiled, greeting him by name, and asked, "Do you know who I am?"

Now Ged had thought before of how it was always said, the Nine Masters of Roke, although he knew only eight: Windkey, Hand, Herbal, Chanter, Changer, Summoner, Namer, Patterner. It seemed that people spoke of the Archmage as the ninth. Yet when a new Archmage was chosen, nine Masters met to choose him.

"I think you are the Master Doorkeeper," said Ged.

"I am. Ged, you won entrance to Roke by saying your name. Now you may win your freedom of it by saying mine." So said the old man smiling, and waited. Ged stood dumb.

He knew a thousand ways and crafts and means for finding out names of things and of men, of course; such craft was a part of everything he had learned at Roke, for without it there could be little useful magic done. But to find out the name of a Mage and Master was another matter. A mage's name is better hidden than a herring in the sea, better guarded than a dragon's den. A prying charm will be met with a stronger charm, subtle devices will fail, devious inquiries will be deviously thwarted, and force will be turned ruinously back upon itself.

"You keep a narrow door, Master," said Ged at last. "I must sit out in the fields here, I think, and fast till I grow thin enough to slip through"

"As long as you like," said the Doorkeeper, smiling.

So Ged went off a little way and sat down under an alder on the banks of the Thwilburn, letting his otak run down to play in the stream and hunt the muddy banks for creekcrabs. The sun went down, late and bright, for spring was well along. Lights of lantern and werelight gleamed in the windows of the Great House, and down the hill the streets of Thwil town filled with darkness. Owls hooted over the roofs and bats flitted in the dusk air above the stream, and still Ged sat thinking how he might, by force, ruse, or sorcery, learn the Doorkeeper's name. The more he pondered the less he saw, among all the arts of witchcraft he had learned in these five years on Roke, any one that would serve to wrest such a secret from such a mage.

He lay down in the field and slept under the stars, with the otak nestling in his pocket. After the sun was up he went, still fasting, to the door of the House and knocked. The Doorkeeper opened.

"Master," said Ged, "I cannot take your name from you, not being strong enough, and I cannot trick your name from you, not being wise enough. So I am content to stay here, and learn or serve, whatever you will: unless by chance you will answer a question I have."

"Ask it."

"What is your name?"

The Doorkeeper smiled, and said his name: and Ged, repeating it, entered for the last time into that House.

--A Wizard of Earthsea Ursula K. LeGuin

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouDidntAsk

Comment author: dlthomas 28 December 2011 07:30:15PM 1 point [-]

This was my initial interpretation as well, but on reflection I think lessdazed meant "ask him if it's okay if his IP is checked." Although that puts us in a strange situation in that he's then able to sabotage the credibility of another member through refusal, but if we don't require his permission we are perhaps violating his privacy...

Briefly, my impulse was "but how much privacy is lost in demonstrating A is (probably - proxies, etc) not a sock puppet of B"? If there's no other information leaked, I see no reason to protect against a result of "BAD/NOTBAD" on privacy grounds. However, that is not what we are asking - we're asking if two posters come from the same IP address. So really, we need to decide whether posters cohabiting should be able to keep that cohabitation private - which seems far more weighty a question.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 December 2011 02:57:03AM *  2 points [-]

I can't believe I'm getting involved in this, but...

Will could know someone in AK's supposed location who is posting for him (from emails). Is Mitchell_Porter willing to donate $1000 to airfare for either AK or an impartial third party to converse with AK in person about similar-level subject matter? Even this wouldn't be airtight.

Comment author: gwern 24 December 2011 03:04:30AM 7 points [-]

That's remarkably confident. This doesn't really read like Newsome to me (and how would one find out with sufficient certainty to decide a bet for that much?).

Comment author: wedrifid 26 December 2011 11:38:07AM *  6 points [-]

That's remarkably confident.

Just how confident is it? It's a large figure and colloquially people tend to confuse size of bet with degree of confidence - saying a bigger number is more of a dramatic social move. But ultimately to make a bet at even odds all Mitchell needs is to be confident that if someone takes him up on the bet then he has 50% or more chance of being correct. The size of the bet only matters indirectly as an incentive for others to do more research before betting.

Mitchell's actual confidence is some unspecified figure between 0.5 and 1 and is heavily influenced by how overconfident he expects others to be.

Comment author: Maelin 30 December 2011 09:11:19AM *  3 points [-]

But ultimately to make a bet at even odds all Mitchell needs is to be confident that if someone takes him up on the bet then he has 50% or more chance of being correct. The size of the bet only matters indirectly as an incentive for others to do more research before betting.

This would only be true if money had linear utility value [1]. I, for example, would not take a $1000 bet at even odds even if I had 75% confidence of winning, because with my present financial status I just can't afford to lose $1000. But I would take such a bet of $100.

The utility of winning $1000 is not the negative of the utility of losing $1000.

[1] or, to be precise, if it were approximately linear in the range of current net assets +/- $1000

Comment author: FAWS 26 December 2011 11:00:24PM *  1 point [-]

In a case with extremely asymmetric information like this one they actually are almost the same thing, since the only payoff you can reasonably expect is the rhetorical effect of offering the bet. Offering bets the other party can refuse and the other party has effectively perfect information about can only lose money (if money is the only thing the other party cares about and they act at least vaguely rationally).

Comment author: gwern 26 December 2011 04:18:56PM 1 point [-]

Risk aversion and other considerations like gambler's ruin usually mean that people insist on substantial edges over just >50%. This can be ameliorated by wealth, but as far as I know, Porter is at best middle-class and not, say, a millionaire.

So your points are true and irrelevant.

Comment author: wedrifid 26 December 2011 04:20:12PM 1 point [-]

So your points are true and irrelevant.

We obviously use the term 'irrelevant' to mean different things.

Comment author: Bugmaster 24 December 2011 03:20:54AM 1 point [-]

I have no idea who this Newsome character is, but I bet US$1 that there's no easy way to implement the answer to the question,

how would one find out with sufficient certainty to decide a bet for that much?

without invading someone's privacy, so I'm not going to play.

Comment author: Emile 24 December 2011 09:28:04AM 1 point [-]

Agree on a trusted third party (gwern, Alicorn, NancyLebowitz ... high-karma longtimers who showed up in this thread), and have AK call them on the phone, confirming details, then have the third party confirm that it's not Will_Newsome.

... though the main problem would be, do people agree to bet before or after AK agrees to such a scheme?

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 27 December 2011 12:30:20PM *  2 points [-]

A sidetrack: People seem to be conflating AspiringKnitter's identity as a Christian and a woman. Female is an important part of not being Will Newsome, but suppose that AspiringKnitter were a male Christian and not Will Newsome. Would that make a difference to any part of this discussion?

More identity issues: My name is Nancy Lebovitz with a v, not a w.

Comment author: Emile 27 December 2011 02:40:19PM 2 points [-]

Sorry 'bout the spelling of your name, I wonder if I didn't make the same mistake before ...

Well, the biggest thing AK being a male non-Will Christian would change, is that he would lose an easy way to prove to a third party that he's not Will Newsome and thus win a thousand bucks (though the important part is not exactly being female, it's having a recognizably female voice on the phone, which is still pretty highly correlated).

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 27 December 2011 03:15:31PM 3 points [-]

Rationalist lesson that I've derived from the frequency that people get my name wrong: It's typical for people to get it wrong even if I say it more than once, spell it for them, and show it to them in writing. I'm flattered if any of my friends start getting it right in less than a year.

Correct spelling and pronunciation of my name is a simple, well-defined, objective matter, and I'm in there advocating for it, though I cut people slack if they're emotionally stressed.

This situation suggests that a tremendous amount of what seems like accurate perception is actually sloppy filling in of blanks. Less Wrong has a lot about cognitive biases, but not so much about perceptual biases.

Comment author: Alicorn 24 December 2011 03:52:47PM 8 points [-]

I know Will Newsome in real life. If a means of arbitrating this bet is invented, I will identify AspiringKnitter as being him or not by visual or voice for a small cut of the stakes. (If it doesn't involve using Skype, telephone, or an equivalent, and it's not dreadfully inconvenient, I'll do it for free.)

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 24 December 2011 09:38:42AM 9 points [-]

How would gwern, Alicorn or NancyLebowitz confirm that anything I said by phone meant AspiringKnitter isn't Will Newsome? They could confirm that they talked to a person. How could they confirm that that person had made AspiringKnitter's posts? How could they determine that that person had not made Will Newsome's posts?

Comment author: Bugmaster 04 January 2012 12:02:29AM 2 points [-]

At the very least, they could dictate an arbitrary passage (or an MD5 hash) to this person who claims to be AK, and ask them to post this passage as a comment on this thread, coming from AK's account. This would not definitively prove that the person is AK, but it might serve as a strong piece of supporting evidence.

In addition, once the "AK" persona and the "WillNewsome" persona each post a sufficiently large corpus of text, we could run some textual analysis algorithms on it to determine if their writing styles are similar; Markov Chains are surprisingly good at this (considering how simple they are to implement).

The problem of determining a person's identity on the Internet, and doing so in a reasonably safe way, is an interesting challenge. But in practice, I don't really think it matters that much, in this case. I care about what the "AK" persona writes, not about who they are pretending not to be.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 January 2012 12:07:31AM 2 points [-]

In addition, once the "AK" persona and the "WillNewsome" persona each post a sufficiently large corpus of text, we could run some textual analysis algorithms on it to determine if their writing styles are similar; Markov Chains are surprisingly good at this (considering how simple they are to implement).

How about doing this already, with all the stuff they've written before the original bet?

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 24 December 2011 03:32:35AM 3 points [-]

And what do I have to do to win your bet, given that I'm not him (and hadn't even heard of him before)? After all, even if you saw me in person, you could claim I was paid off by this guy to pretend to be AspiringKnitter. Or shall I just raise my right hand?

I don't see why this guy wouldn't offer such a bet, knowing he can always claim I'm lying if I try to provide proof. No downside, so it doesn't matter how unlikely it is, he could accuse any given person of sockpuppeting. The expected return can't be negative. That said, the odds here being worse than one in a million, I don't know why he went to all that trouble for an expected return of less than a cent. There being no way I can prove who I am, I don't know why I went to all the trouble of saying this, either, though, so maybe we're all just a little irrational.

Comment author: dlthomas 27 December 2011 09:59:04PM 1 point [-]

He can look like a moron or jerk, though, and there is even less risk for you in accepting it: he can necessarily only demand the $1000 from Will_Newsome.

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 24 December 2011 09:48:56AM 3 points [-]

And what do I have to do to win your bet

Let's first confirm that you're willing to pay up, if you are who I say you are. I will certainly pay up if I'm wrong...

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 24 December 2011 09:55:33AM 3 points [-]

Let's first confirm that you're willing to pay up, if you are who I say you are.

That's problematic since if I were Newsome, I wouldn't agree. Hence, if AspiringKnitter is Will_Newsome, then AspiringKnitter won't even agree to pay up.

Not actually being Will_Newsome, I'm having trouble considering what I would do in the case where I turned out to be him. But if I took your bet, I'd agree to it. I can't see how such a bet could possibly get me anything, though, since I can't see how I'd prove that I'm not him even though I'm really not him.

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 24 December 2011 10:10:08AM 3 points [-]

if I took your bet, I'd agree to it.

All right, how about this. If I presented evidence already in the public domain which made it extremely obvious that you are Will Newsome, would you pay up?

By the way, when I announced my belief about who you are, I didn't have personal profit in mind. I was just expressing confidence in my reasoning.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 24 December 2011 10:25:10AM 2 points [-]

All right, how about this. If I presented evidence already in the public domain which made it extremely obvious that you are Will Newsome, would you pay up?

There is no such evidence. What do you have in mind that would prove that?

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 24 December 2011 10:47:03AM 7 points [-]

You write stream-of-consciousness run-on sentences which exhibit abnormal disclosure of self while still actually making sense (if one can be bothered parsing them). Not only do you share this trait with Will, the themes and the phrasing are the same. You have a deep familiarity with LessWrong concerns and modes of thought, yet you also advocate Christian metaphysics and monogamy. Again, that's Will.

That's not yet "extremely obvious", but it should certainly raise suspicions. I expect that a very strong case could be made by detailed textual comparison.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 25 December 2011 08:09:49PM 21 points [-]

AspiringKnitter's arguments for Christianity are quite different from Will's, though.

(Also, at the risk of sounding harsh towards Will, she's been considerably more coherent.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 December 2011 10:18:55AM 15 points [-]

I think if Will knew how to write this non-abstractly, he would have a valuable skill he does not presently possess, and he would use that skill more often.

Comment author: [deleted] 25 December 2011 08:11:21PM 8 points [-]

Wow, is that all of your information? You either have a lot of money to blow, or you're holding back.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 December 2011 01:06:05AM 3 points [-]

“Deep familiarity with LessWrong concerns and modes of thought” can be explained by her having lurked a lot, and the rest of those features are not rare IME (even though they are under-represented on LW).

Comment author: shokwave 24 December 2011 03:11:12AM 2 points [-]

I'll bet US$10 you have significant outside information.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 24 December 2011 07:35:19AM 4 points [-]

He doesn't.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 27 December 2011 10:46:23AM 2 points [-]

As far as we know.

Comment author: shokwave 24 December 2011 07:57:08AM 3 points [-]

See, I'd like to believe you, but a thousand dollars is a lot of money.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 24 December 2011 07:58:52AM *  4 points [-]

Take him up on his bet, then.

(Not that I have any intention of showing up anywhere just to show you who I am and am not. Unless you're going to pay ME that $1000.)

Comment author: shokwave 24 December 2011 08:34:07AM 3 points [-]

What about if I bet you $500 that you're not WillNewsome? That way you can prove your separate existence to me, get paid, and I can use the proof you give me to take a thousand from MitchellPorter. In fact, I'll go as high as 700 dollars if you agree to prove yourself to me and MitchellPorter.

Of course, this offer is isomorphic to you taking Mitchell's bet and sending 300-500 dollars to me for no reason, and you're not taking his bet currently, so I don't expect you to be convinced by this offering either.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 24 December 2011 09:25:04AM 7 points [-]

What possible proof could I offer you? I can't take you up on the bet because, while I'm not Newsome, I can't think of anything I could do that he couldn't fake if this were a sockpuppet account. If we met in person, I could be the very same person as Newsome anyway; he could really secretly be a she. Or the person you meet could be paid by Newsome to pretend to be AspiringKnitter.

Comment author: Alicorn 24 December 2011 03:54:40PM 4 points [-]

he could really secretly be a she

Nope, plenty of people onsite have met Will. I mean, I suppose it is not strictly impossible, but I would be surprised if he were able to present that convincingly as a dude and then later present as convincingly as a girl. Bonus points if you have long hair.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 24 December 2011 03:29:01PM *  4 points [-]

Excellent question. One way to deal with it is for all the relevant agents to agree on a bet that's actually specified... that is, instead of betting that "AspiringKnitter is/isn't the same person as WillNewsome," bet that "two verifiably different people will present themselves to a trusted third party identifying as WillNewsome and AspiringKnitter" and agree on a mechanism of verifying their difference (e.g., Skype).

You're of course right that these are two different questions, and the latter doesn't prove the former, but if y'all agree to bet on the latter then the former becomes irrelevant. It would be silly of anyone to agree to the latter if their goal was to establish the former, but my guess is that isn't actually the goal of anyone involved.

Just in case this matters, I don't actually care. For all I know, you and shokwave are the same person; it really doesn't affect my life in any way. This is the Internet, if I'm not willing to take people's personas at face value, then I do best not to engage with them at all.

Comment author: shokwave 24 December 2011 12:35:28PM 5 points [-]

Well, I don't know what proof you could offer me; but if we genuinely put 500 dollars either way on the line, I am certain we'd rapidly agree on a standard of proof that satisfied us both.

Comment author: [deleted] 24 December 2011 03:03:28AM *  2 points [-]

You're clearly out of touch with the populace. :) I'm only willing to risk 10% of my probability mass on your prediction.

Comment author: Gust 21 December 2011 04:59:32PM *  5 points [-]

Welcome! And congratulations for creating what's probably the longest and most interesting introduction thread of all time (I haven't read all the introductions threads, though).

I've read all your posts here. I now have to update my belief about rationality among christians: so long, the most "rational" I'd found turned out to be nothing beyond a repetitive expert in rationalization. Most others are sometimes relatively rational in most aspects of life, but choose to ignore the hard questions about the religion they profess (my own parents fall in this category). You seem to have clear thought, and will to rethink your ideas. I hope you stay around.

On a side note, as others already stated below, I think you misunderstand what Eliezer wants to do with FAI. I agree with what MixedNuts said here, though I would also recommend reading The Hidden Complexity of Wishes, if you haven't yet. Eliezer is more sane than it seems at first, in my opinion.

PS: How are you feeling about the reception so far?

EDIT: Clarifying: I agree with what MixedNuts said in the third and fourth paragraphs.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 21 December 2011 06:41:24PM *  4 points [-]

I think I've gotten such a nice reception that I've also updated in the direction of "most atheists aren't cruel or hateful in everyday life" and "LessWrong believes in its own concern for other people because most members are nice".

The wish on top of that page is actually very problematic...

Oh, and do people usually upvote for niceness?

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 27 December 2011 12:39:01PM 2 points [-]

Oh, and do people usually upvote for niceness?

The ordinary standard of courtesy here is pretty high, and I don't think you get upvotes for meeting it. You can get upvotes for being nice (assuming that you also include content) if it's a fraught issue.

Comment author: [deleted] 24 December 2011 10:39:12AM *  2 points [-]

I've also updated in the direction of "most atheists aren't cruel or hateful in everyday life"

I'm not sure atheist LW users would be a good sample of “most atheists”. I'd expect there to be a sizeable fraction of people who are atheists merely as a form of contrarianism.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 27 December 2011 12:42:12PM 1 point [-]

I'd expect there to be a sizeable fraction of people who are atheists merely as a form of contrarianism.

I don't think that's the case. I do think there are a good many people who are naturally contrarian, and use their atheism as a platform. There are also people who become atheists after having been mistreated in a religion, and they're angry.

I'm willing to bet a modest amount that going from religious to atheist has little or no effect on how much time a person spends on arguing about religion, especially in the short run.

Comment author: dlthomas 21 December 2011 06:52:51PM 2 points [-]

The wish on top of that page is actually very problematic...

Yes, that was a part of the point of the article - people try to fully specify what they want, it gets this complex, and it's still missing things; meanwhile, people understand what someone means when they say "I wish I was immortal."

Comment author: TheOtherDave 21 December 2011 07:13:32PM 1 point [-]

Well, they understand it about as well as the speaker does. It's not clear to me that the speaker always knows what they mean.

Comment author: dlthomas 21 December 2011 07:27:43PM 2 points [-]

Right - there's no misunderstanding, because the complexity is hidden by expectations and all sorts of shared stuff that isn't likely to be there when talking to a genie of the "sufficiently sophisticated AI" variety, unless you are very careful about making sure that it is. Hence, the wish has hidden complexity - the point (and title) of the article.

Comment author: wedrifid 21 December 2011 06:43:20PM 2 points [-]

Oh, and do people usually upvote for niceness?

For a certain value of niceness, yes.

Comment author: dlthomas 21 December 2011 05:03:41PM 3 points [-]

Upvoted for linking The Hidden Complexity of Wishes. If Eliezer was actually advocating adjusting people's sex drives, rather than speculating as to the form a compromise might take, he wasn't following his own advice.

Comment author: lavalamp 20 December 2011 07:48:02PM 5 points [-]

... I'd rather hang around and keep the Singularity from being an AI that forcibly exterminates all morality and all people who don't agree with Eliezer Yudkowsky.

Upvote for courage, and I'd give a few more if I could. (Though you might consider rereading some of EY's CEV posts, because I don't think you've accurately summarized his intentions.)

You guys really hate Christians, after all.

I don't hate Christians. I was a very serious one for most of my life. Practically everyone I know and care about IRL is Christian.

I don't think LW deserves all the credit for my deconversion, but it definitely hastened the event.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 December 2011 03:38:07AM 8 points [-]

Hello. I expect you won't like me because I'm Christian and female and don't want to be turned into an immortal computer-brain-thing that acts more like Eliezer thinks it should.

I don't think you'll be actively hated here by most posters (and even then, flamewars and trolling here are probably not what you'd expect from most other internet spaces)

it'll raise the probability that you start worshiping the possibility of becoming immortal polyamorous whatever and taking over the world.

I wouldn't read polyamory as a primary shared feature of the posters here -- and this is speaking as someone who's been poly her entire adult life. Compared to most mainstream spaces, it does come up a whole lot more, and people are generally unafraid of at least discussing the ins and outs of it.

(I find it hard to imagine how you could manage real immortality in a universe with a finite lifespan, but that's neither here nor there.)

You guys really hate Christians, after all. (Am I actually allowed to be here or am I banned for my religion?)

You have to do a lot weirder or more malicious than that to get banned here. I frequently argue inarticulately for things that are rather unpopular here, and I've never once gotten the sense that I would be banned. I can think of a few things that I could do that would get me banned, but I had to go looking.

You won't be banned, but you will probably be challenged a lot if you bring your religious beliefs into discussions because most of the people here have good reasons to reject them. Many of them will be happy to share those with you, at length, should you ask.

I probably shouldn't bother talking to people who only want me to hate God.

The people here mostly don't think the God you believe in is a real being that exists, and have no interest in making you hate your deity. For us it would be like making someone hate Winnie the Pooh -- not the show or the books, but the person. We don't think there's anything there to be hated.

Why am I even here again? Seriously, why am I not just lurking? That would make more sense.

I'm going to guess it's because you're curious, and you've identified LW as a place where people who claim to want to do some pretty big, even profound things to change the world hang out (as well as people interested in a lot of intellectual topics and skills), and on some level that appeals to you?

And I'd further guess you feel like the skew of this community's population makes you nervous that some of them are talking about changing the world in ways that would affect everybody whether or not they'd prefer to see that change if asked straight up?

Comment author: Bugmaster 20 December 2011 12:43:06AM 8 points [-]

the possibility of becoming immortal polyamorous whatever and taking over the world.

I think I just found my new motto in life :-)

You guys really hate Christians, after all.

I personally am an atheist, and a fairly uncompromising one at that, but I still find this line a little offensive. I don't hate all Christians. Many (or probably even most) Christians are perfectly wonderful people; many of them are better than myself, in fact. Now, I do believe that Christians are disastrously wrong about their core beliefs, and that the privileged position that Christianity enjoys in our society is harmful. So, I disagree with most Christians on this topic, but I don't hate them. I can't hate someone simply for being wrong, that just makes no sense.

That said, if you are the kind of Christian who proclaims, in all seriousness, that (for example) all gay people should be executed because they cause God to send down hurricanes -- then I will find it very, very difficult not to hate you. But you don't sound like that kind of a person.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 20 December 2011 01:31:12AM 4 points [-]

If you can call down hurricanes, tell me and I'll revise my beliefs to take that into account. (But then I'd just be in favor of deporting gays to North Korea or wherever else I decide I don't like. What a waste to execute them! It could also be interesting to send you all to the Sahara, and by interesting I mean ecologically destructive and probably a bad idea not to mention expensive and needlessly cruel.) As long as you're not actually doing that (if you are, please stop), and as long as you aren't causing some other form of disaster, I can't think of a good reason why I should be advocating your execution.

Comment author: CronoDAS 22 December 2011 12:26:20AM 5 points [-]

Calling down hurricanes is easy. Actually getting them to come when you call them is harder. :)

Comment author: Bugmaster 20 December 2011 01:35:14AM 5 points [-]

Sadly, I myself do not possess the requisite sexual orientation, otherwise I'd be calling down hurricanes all over the place. And meteorites. And angry frogs ! Mwa ha ha !

Comment author: thomblake 19 December 2011 03:41:13PM 17 points [-]

people who only want me to hate God

I don't think there are any of those around here. Most of us would prefer you didn't even believe in gods!

Comment author: juliawise 19 December 2011 11:44:14AM 14 points [-]

Hi, Aspiring Knitter. I also find the Less Wrong culture and demographics quite different from my normal ones (being a female in the social sciences who's sympathetic to religion though not a believer. Also, as it happens, a knitter.) I stuck around because I find it refreshing to be able to pick apart ideas without getting written off as too brainy or too cold, which tends to happen in the rest of my life.

Sorry for the lack of persecution - you seem to have been hoping for it.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 19 December 2011 06:30:07PM 9 points [-]

Very glad not to be persecuted, actually. Yay!

Comment author: Nornagest 19 December 2011 09:04:51AM *  21 points [-]

That's some interesting reasoning. I've met people before who avoided leaving an evaporatively cooling group because they recognized the process and didn't want to contribute to it, but you might be the first person I've encountered who joined a group to counteract it (or to stave it off before it begins, given that LW seems to be both growing and to some extent diversifying right now). Usually people just write groups like that off. Aside from the odd troll or ideologue that claims similar motivations but is really just looking for a fight, at least-- but that doesn't seem to fit what you've written here.

Anyway. I'm not going to pretend that you aren't going to find some hostility towards Abrahamic religion here, nor that you won't be able to find any arguably problematic (albeit mostly unconsciously so) attitudes regarding sex and/or gender. Act as your conscience dictates should you find either one intolerable. Speaking for myself, though, I take the Common Interest of Many Causes concept seriously: better epistemology is good for everyone, not just for transhumanists of a certain bent. Your belief structure might differ somewhat from the tribal average around here, but the actual goal of this tribe is to make better thinkers, and I don't think anyone's going to want to exclude you from that as long as you approach it in good faith.

In fewer words: welcome to Less Wrong.

Comment author: TimS 19 December 2011 03:43:06PM 6 points [-]

Welcome to LessWrong. Our goal is to learn how to achieve our goals better. One method is to observe the world and update our beliefs based on what we see (You'd think this would be an obvious thing to do, but history shows that it isn't so). Another method we use is to notice the ways that humans tend to fail at thinking (i.e. have cognitive bias).

Anyway, I hope you find those ideas useful. Like many communities, we are a diverse bunch. Each of our ultimate goals likely differs, but we recognize that the world is far from how any of us want it to be, and that what each of us wants is in roughly the same direction from here. In short, the extent to which we are an insular community is a failure of the community, because we'd all like to raise the sanity line. Thus, welcome to LW. Help us be better.

Comment author: Emile 19 December 2011 09:44:12AM *  15 points [-]

Welcome to LessWrong!

You guys really hate Christians, after all. (Am I actually allowed to be here or am I banned for my religion?)

Do we? Do you hate Hindus, or do you just think they're wrong?

One thing I slightly dislike about "internet atheists" is the exclusive focus on religion as a source of all that's wrong in the world, whereas you get very similar forms of irrationality in partisan politics or nationalism. I'm not alone in holding that view - see this for some related ideas. At best, religion can be about focusing human's natural irrationality in areas that don't matter (cosmology instead of economics), while facilitating morality and cooperative behavior. I understand that some Americans atheists are more hostile to religion than I am (I'm French, religion isn't a big issue here, except for Islam), because they have to deal with religious stupidity on a daily basis.

Note that a Mormon wrote a series of posts that was relatively well received, so you may be overestimating LessWrong's hostility to religion.

Comment author: cousin_it 19 December 2011 11:45:25AM *  9 points [-]

EY has read With Folded Hands and mentioned it in his CEV writeup as one more dystopia to be averted. This task isn't getting much attention now because unfriendly AI seems to be more probable and more dangerous than almost-friendly AI. Of course we would welcome any research on preventing almost-friendly AI :-)

Comment author: CronoDAS 19 December 2011 10:16:17AM 10 points [-]

You guys really hate Christians, after all. (Am I actually allowed to be here or am I banned for my religion?)

Technically, it's "Christianity" that some of us don't like very much. Many of us live in countries where people who call themselves "Christians" compose much of the population, and going around hating everyone we see won't get us very far in life. We might wish that they weren't Christians, but while we're dreaming we might as well wish for a pony, too.

And, no, we don't ban people for saying that they're Christians. It takes a lot to get banned here.

I shouldn't be here; you don't want me here, not to mention I probably shouldn't bother talking to people who only want me to hate God.

Well, so far you haven't given us much of a reason to want you gone. Also, people who call themselves atheists usually don't really care whether or not you "hate God" any more than we care about whether you "hate Santa Claus".

Why am I even here again? Seriously, why am I not just lurking? That would make more sense.

Because you feel you have something you want to say?

Comment author: Bugmaster 20 December 2011 04:02:32AM 2 points [-]
Comment author: Alicorn 19 December 2011 03:21:06PM 9 points [-]

while we're dreaming we might as well wish for a pony, too.

Do you want a pony?

Comment author: CronoDAS 20 December 2011 08:25:54AM 2 points [-]
Comment author: Vaniver 19 December 2011 07:35:02PM 2 points [-]

Amusingly, one of the things I've found after becoming a brony is that I mentally edit "wish for a pony" to "wish to be a pony."

Comment author: JoachimSchipper 19 December 2011 10:48:10AM *  6 points [-]

Not everyone agrees with Eliezer on everything; this is usually not that explicit, but consider e.g. the number of people talking about relationships vs. the number of people talking about cryonics or FAI - LW doesn't act, collectively, as if it really believes Eliezer is right. It does assume that there is no God/god/supernatural, though.

(Also, where does this idea of atheists hating God come from? Most atheists have better things to do than hang on /r/atheism!)

Comment author: Anubhav 10 January 2012 01:52:22AM 2 points [-]

Not everyone agrees with Eliezer on everything; this is usually not that explicit, but consider e.g. the number of people talking about relationships vs. the number of people talking about cryonics or FAI - LW doesn't act, collectively, as if it really believes Eliezer is right

Classic example of bikeshedding.

Comment author: Bugmaster 10 January 2012 02:33:27AM 1 point [-]

Well, I personally am one of those people who thinks that cryonics is currently not worth worrying about, and that the Singularity is unlikely to happen anytime soon (in astronomical terms). So, there exists at least one outlier in the Less Wrong hive mind...

Comment author: Ben_Welchner 10 January 2012 05:05:33AM *  3 points [-]

Judging by the recent survey, your cryonics beliefs are pretty normal with 53% considering it, 36% rejecting it and only 4% having signed up. LW isn't a very hive-mindey community, unless you count atheism.

(The singularity, yes, you're very much in the minority with the most skeptical quartile expecting it in 2150)

Comment author: Bugmaster 10 January 2012 08:49:15PM *  1 point [-]

Regarding cryonics, you're right and I was wrong, so thanks !

But in the interest of pedantry I should point out that among those 96% who did not sign up, many did not sign up simply due to a lack of funds, and not because of any misgivings they have about the process.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 19 December 2011 06:34:12PM 7 points [-]

I got the idea from various posts where people have said they don't even like the Christian God if he's real (didn't someone say he was like Azathoth?) and consider him some kind of monster.

I can see I totally got you guys wrong. Sorry to have underestimated your niceness.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 19 December 2011 06:46:48PM 26 points [-]

For my own part, I think you're treating "being nice" and "liking the Christian God" and "hating Christians" and "wanting other people to hate God" and "only wanting other people to hate God" and "forcibly exterminating all morality" and various other things as much more tightly integrated concepts than they actually are, and it's interfering with your predictions.

So I suggest separating those concepts more firmly in your own mind.

Comment author: CronoDAS 19 December 2011 09:21:22PM 7 points [-]

Well, if there were an omnipotent Creator, I'd certainly have a few bones to pick with him/her/it...

Comment author: CuSithBell 19 December 2011 07:23:18PM 10 points [-]

To be fair, I'm sure a bunch of people here disapprove of some actions by the Christian God in the abstract (mostly Old Testament stuff, probably, and the Problem of Evil). But yeah, for the most part LWers are pretty nice, if a little idiosyncratic!

Azathoth (the "blind idiot god") is the local metaphor for evolution - a pointless, monomaniacal force with vast powers but no conscious goal-seeking ability and thus a tendency to cause weird side-effects (such as human culture).

Comment author: kilobug 19 December 2011 07:16:32PM 7 points [-]

Azathoth is how Eliezer described the process of evolution, not how he described the christian god.

Comment author: Document 09 January 2012 11:23:39PM *  1 point [-]

She's talking about TGGP. (Edited to change the link from this one.)

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 19 December 2011 07:35:14PM *  5 points [-]

She's possibly thinking about Cthulhu.

Comment author: wedrifid 19 December 2011 09:49:20AM 6 points [-]

You guys really hate Christians, after all.

The ten people I care about most in the world all happen to be Christians - devout, sincere Christians at that.

Comment author: kilobug 19 December 2011 09:53:26AM 5 points [-]

Welcome to Less Wrong.

I don't think much people here hate Christians. At least I don't. I'll just speak for myself (even if I think my view is quite shared here) : I have a harsh view on religions themselves, believing they are mind-killing, barren and dangerous (just open an history book), but that doesn't mean I hate the people who do believe (as long as they don't hate us atheists). I've christian friends, and I don't like them less because of their religion. I'm a bit trying to "open their mind" because I believe that knowing and accepting the truth makes you stronger, but I don't push too much the issue either.

For the "that acts more like Eliezer thinks it should" part, well, the Coherent Extrapolated Volition of Eliezer is supposed to be coherent over the whole of humanity, not over himself. Eliezer is not trying to make an AI that'll turn the world into his own paradise, but that'll turn it into something better according to the common wishes of all (or almost all) of humanity. He may fail at it, but if it does, he's more likely to tile the world with smiley faces then to turn it into its own paradise ;)

Comment author: [deleted] 19 December 2011 07:54:39AM 1 point [-]

Welcome!

I'm Christian and female and don't want to be turned into an immortal computer-brain-thing that acts more like Eliezer thinks it should.

Only one of those is really a reason for me to be nervous, and that's because Christianity has done some pretty shitty things to my people. But that doesn't mean we have nothing in common! I don't want to act the way EY thinks I should, either. (At least, not merely because it's him that wants it.)

You guys really hate Christians, after all. (Am I actually allowed to be here or am I banned for my religion?)

If you look at the survey, notice you're not alone. A minority, perhaps, but not entirely alone. I hope you hang around.

Comment author: XangLiu 19 December 2011 03:23:24PM 33 points [-]

"Only one of those is really a reason for me to be nervous, and that's because Christianity has done some pretty shitty things to my people."

Oh, don't be such a martyr. "My people..." please. You do not represent "your people" and you aren't their authority.

Comment author: [deleted] 19 December 2011 06:22:14PM *  2 points [-]

Whoa, calm down.

I'm not claiming any such representation or authority. They're my people only in the sense that all of us happen to be guys who like guys; they're the group of people I belong to. I'm not even claiming martyrdom, because (not many) of these shitty things have explicitly happened to me. I'm only stating my own (and no one else's) prior for how interactions between self-identified Christians and gay people tend to turn out.

Comment author: [deleted] 24 December 2011 11:11:04AM 1 point [-]

Still, I didn't get who “my people” referred to (your fellow citizens?). “To us gay people” would have been clearer IMO.

Comment author: XangLiu 19 December 2011 06:46:26PM 30 points [-]

The point has been missed. Deep breath, paper-machine.

Nearly any viewpoint is capable of and has done cruel things to others. No reason to unnecessarilly highlight this fact and dramatize the Party of Suffering. This was an intro thread by a newcomer - not a reason to point to you and "your" people. They can speak for themselves.

Comment author: [deleted] 22 December 2011 05:38:34AM 5 points [-]

They can speak for themselves.

Why berate him for doing just that, then? He's expressing his prior: members of a reference class he belongs to are often singled out for mistreatment by members of a reference class that his interlocutor claims membership with. He does not appear to believe himself Ambassador of All The Gay Men, based on what he's actually saying, nor to treat that class-membership as some kind of ontological primitive.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 19 December 2011 06:59:49PM 11 points [-]

To the extent that you're saying that the whole topic of Christian/queer relations was inappropriate for an intro thread, I would prefer you'd just said that. I might even agree with you, though I didn't find paper-machine's initial comment especially problematic.

To the extent that you're saying that paper-machine should not treat the prior poor treatment of members of a group they belong to, by members of a group Y belongs to, as evidence of their likely poor treatment by Y, I simply disagree. It may not be especially strong evidence, but it's also far from trivial.

And all the stuff about martyrdom and Parties of Suffering and who gets to say what for whom seems like a complete distraction.

Comment author: Bongo 19 December 2011 06:57:48PM *  5 points [-]

I wonder how this comment got 7 upvotes in 9 minutes.

EDIT: Probably the same way this comment got 7 upvotes in 6 minutes.

Comment author: LWMormon 19 December 2011 07:04:08PM 23 points [-]

LW has a bunch of bored Bayesians on Mondays. Same thing happened to your score, mate.

Comment author: Vaniver 19 December 2011 07:36:36PM 2 points [-]

They can speak for themselves.

Unless, of course, it's in an intro thread by a newcomer. ;)

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 19 December 2011 08:39:53AM 10 points [-]

Wow, thanks! I feel less nervous/unwelcome already!

Let me just apologize on behalf of all of us for whichever of the stains on our honor you're referring to. It wasn't right. (Which one am I saying wasn't right?)

Yay for not acting like EY wants, I guess. No offense or anything, EY, but you've proposed modifications you want to make to people that I don't want made to me already...

(I don't know what I said to deserve an upvote... uh, thanks.)

Comment author: Bugmaster 20 December 2011 12:47:33AM *  3 points [-]

[EY had] proposed modifications you want to make to people that I don't want made to me already...

I am actually rather curious to hear more about your opinion on this topic. I personally would jump at the chance to become "better, stronger, faster" (and, of course, smarter), as long as doing so was my own choice. It is very difficult for me to imagine a situation where someone I trust tells me, for example, "this implant is 100% safe, cheap, never breaks down, and will make you think twice as fast, do you want it ?", and I answer "no thanks". You obviously disagree, so I'd love to hear your reasoning.

EDIT: Basically, what Cthulhoo said. Sorry Cthulhoo, I didn't see your comment earlier, somehow.

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 20 December 2011 01:32:44AM 2 points [-]

Explained one example below.

Comment author: Bugmaster 20 December 2011 01:49:48AM 1 point [-]

I was under the impression that your example dealt with a compulsory modification (higher sex drive for all women across the board), which is something I would also oppose; that's why I specified "...as long as doing so was my own choice" in my comment. But I am under the impression -- and perhaps I'm wrong about this -- that you would not choose any sort of a technological enhancement of any of your capabilities. Is that so ? If so, why ?

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 20 December 2011 02:08:30AM 4 points [-]

No. I apologize for being unclear. EY has proposed modifications I don't want, but that doesn't mean every modification he supports is one I don't want. I think I would be more skeptical than most people here, but I wouldn't refuse all possible enhancements as a matter of principle.