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mni200

Hello.

I've been reading Less Wrong from its beginning. I stumbled upon Overcoming Bias just as LW was being launched. I'm a young mathematician (an analyst, to be more specific) currently working towards a PhD and I'm very interested in epistemic rationality and the theory of altruist instrumental rationality. I've been very impressed with the general quality of discussion about the theory and general practice of truth-seeking here, even though I can think of places where I disagree with the ideas that I gather are widely accepted here. The most interesting discussions seem to be quite old, though, so reviving those discussions out of the blue hasn't felt like - for lack of a better word - a proper thing to do.

There are many discussions here of which I don't care about. A large proportion of people here are programmers or otherwise from a CS background, and that colors the discussions a lot. Or maybe it's just that the prospect of an AGI in recent future doesn't seem at all likely to me. Anyway, the AI/singularity stuff, the tangentially related topics that I bunch together with them, and approaching rationality topics from a programmer's point of view I just don't care about. Not very much, at least.

The self-help stuff, "winning is everything" and related stuff I'd rather not read. Well, I do my best not to. The apparent lack of concern for altruism in those discussions makes me even wish they wouldn't take place here in the first place.

And then there are the true failings of this community. I had been thinking of registering and posting in some threads about the more abstract sides of rationality, but I must admit I eventually got around to registering and posting because of the gender threads. But there's just so much bullshit going on! Evolutionary psychology is grossly misapplied (1). The obvious existence of oppressive cultural constructs (2) is flatly denied. The validity of anecdotes and speculation as evidence is hardly even questioned. The topics that started the flaming have no reason of even being here in the first place. This post pretty well sums up the failures of rationality here at Less Wrong; and that post has been upvoted to 25! Now, the failings and attitudes that surfaced in the gender debate have, of course, been visible for quite some time. But that the failures of thought seem so common has made me wonder if this community as a whole is actually worth wasting my time for.

So, in case you're still wondering, what has generously been termed "exclusionary speech" really drives people away (3). I'm still hoping that the professed rationality is enough to overcome the failure modes that are currently so common here (4). But unfortunately I think my possible contributions won't be missed if I rid myself of wishful thinking and see it's not going to happen.

It's quite a shame that a community with such good original intentions is failing after a good start. Maybe humans simply won't overcome their biases (5) yet in this day and age.

So. I'd really like to participate in thoughtful discussions with rationalists I can respect. For quite a long time, Less Wrong seemed like the place, but I just couldn't find a proper place to start (I dislike introductions). But now as I'm losing my respect for this community and thus the will to participate here, I started posting. I hope I can regain the confidence in a high level of sanity waterline here.

(Now a proper rationalist would, in my position, naturally reconsider his own attitudes and beliefs. It might not be surprising that I didn't find all too much to correct. So I might just as well assume that I haven't been mind-killed quite yet, and just make the post I wanted to.)

EDIT: In case you felt I was generalizing with too much confidence - and as I wrote here, I agree I was - see my reply to Vladimir Nesov's reply.

(1) I think failing to control for cultural influences in evolutionary psychology should be considered at least as much of a fail as postulating group selection. Probably more so.

(2) Somehow I think phrases like "cultural construct", especially when combined with qualifiers like "oppressive", trigger immediate bullshit alarms for some. To a certain extent, it's forgivable, as they certainly have been used in conjunction with some of the most well-known anti-epistemologies of our age. But remember: reversing stupidity doesn't make you any better off.

(3) This might be a good place to remind the reader that (our kind can't cooperate)[http://lesswrong.com/lw/3h/why_our_kind_cant_cooperate/]. (This is actually referring to many aspects of the recent debate, not just one.)

(4) Yes, I know, I can't cooperate either.

(5) Overcoming Bias is quite an ironic name for that blog. EDIT: This refers exclusively to many of Robin Hanson's posts about gender differences I have read. I think I saw a post linking to some of these recently, but I couldn't find a link to that just now. Anyway, this footnote probably went a bit too far.

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[anonymous]20

mni, I followed in your footsteps years later, and then dropped away, just as you did. I came back after several months to look for an answer to a specific question -- stayed for a bit, poking around -- and before I go away again, I'd just like to say: if this'd been a community that was able to keep you, it probably would have kept me too.

You seem awesome. Where did you go? Can I follow you there?

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4Vladimir_Nesov
The evils of in-group bias are getting at me. I felt a bit of anger when reading this comment. Go figure, I rarely feel noticeable emotions, even in response to dramatic events. The only feature that could trigger that reaction seems to be the dissenting theme of this comment, the way it breached the normal narrative of the game of sane/insane statements. I wrote a response after a small time-out, I hope it isn't tainted by that unfortunate reaction.
-1Vladimir_Nesov
I assume that you are overconfident about many of the statements you made (and/or underestimate the inferential gap). I agree with some things you've said, but about some of the things you've said there seems to be no convincing argument in sight (either way), and so one shouldn't be as certain when passing judgment.
See in context
by MBlume
2 min read
2000

58

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)

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[-][anonymous]480

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

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 a

... (read more)
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[-]NancyLebovitz130

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.

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[-][anonymous]180

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.

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5NancyLebovitz
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.
[-][anonymous]140

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.

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7NancyLebovitz
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.
[-][anonymous]160

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.

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8Vaniver
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?
5wedrifid
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.
5NancyLebovitz
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 Making Light 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.
7[anonymous]
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. 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. 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. 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.
8AspiringKnitter
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. 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". 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. 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. 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
[-]TheOtherDave290

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

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4NancyLebovitz
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.
8Crux
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.
[-]BecomingMyself430

Hi, I am Alyssa, a 16-year-old aspiring programmer-and-polymath who found her way to the wiki page for Egan's Law from the Achron forums. From there I started randomly clicking on links that mostly ended up leading to Eliezer's posts. I was a bit taken aback by his attitude toward religion, but I had previously seen mention of his AI Box thing (where (a) he struck me as awesome, and (b) he said some things about "intelligence" and "wisdom" that caused me to label him as an ally against all those fools who hated science), and I just loved his writing, so I spent about a week reading his stuff alternately thinking, "Wow, this guy is awesome" and "Poor atheist. Doesn't he realize that religion and science are compatible?" Eventually, some time after reading Religion's Claim to be Non-disprovable, I came to my senses. (It is a bit more complicated and embarrassing than that, but you get the idea.)

That was several months ago. I have been lurking not-quite-continuously since then, and it slowly dawned on me just how stupid I had been -- and more importantly, how stupid I still am. Reading about stuff like confirmation bias and overconfidence, I gra... (read more)

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5lukeprog
Welcome, Alyssa! Finding out how "stupid" I am is one of the most important things I have ever learned. I hope I never forget it! Also, congrats on seriously questioning your religion at your age. I didn't do so until much later.
4[anonymous]
You should check out the lesswrong for highschoolers facebook page
[-]wedrifid340

It's not that I'm having trouble communicating; it's that I'm not trying to.

So it is more just trolling.

The contents of my comments are more like expressions of complexes of emotions about complex signaling equilibria.

Which, from the various comments Will has made along these lines we can roughly translate to "via incoherent abstract rationalizations Will_Newsome has not only convinced himself that embracing the crazy while on lesswrong is a good idea but that doing so is in fact a moral virtue". Unfortunately this kind of conviction is highly resistant to persuasion. He is Doing the Right Thing. And he is doing the right thing from within a complex framework wherein not doing the right thing has potentially drastic (quasi-religious-level) consequences. All we can really do is keep the insane subset of his posts voted below the visibility threshold and apply the "don't feed the troll" policy while he is in that mode.

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2Will_Newsome
Good phrase, I think I'll steal it. Helps me quickly describe how seriously I take this whole justification thing.
[-]CuSithBell280

Turns out LW is a Chesterton-esque farce in which all posters are secretly Wills trolling Wills.

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3Normal_Anomaly
Then I'm really wasting time here.
9wedrifid
Yes, I all are!
[-]Nornagest280

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.

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[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky240

Erm. I can't say that this raises my confidence much. I am reminded of the John McCarthy quote, "Your denial of the importance of objectivity amounts to announcing your intention to lie to us. No-one should believe anything you say."

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2Mitchell_Porter
I feel responsible for the current wave of gibberish-spam from Will, and I regret that. If it were up to me, I would present him with an ultimatum - either he should promise not to sockpuppet here ever again, and he'd better make it convincing, or else every one of his accounts that can be identified will be banned. The corrosive effect of not knowing whether a new identity is a real person or just Will again, whether he's "conducting experiments" by secretly mass-upvoting his own comments, etc., to my mind far outweighs the value of his comments.
[-]thomblake240

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!

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[-]Normal_Anomaly240

My name's Normal Anomaly, and I'm paranoid about giving away personal information on the Internet. Also, I don't like to have any assumptions made about me (though this is likely the last place to worry about that), so I'd rather go without a gender, race, etc. Apologies for the lack of much personal data. I can say that my major interest is biology, although I am not yet anything resembling an expert. I eventually hope to work in life extension research. I’m an Asperger’s Syndrome Sci Fi-loving nerd, which is apparently the norm here.

I used to have religious/spiritual beliefs, though I was also a fan of science and was not a member of an organized religion. I believed it was important to be rational and that I had evidence for my beliefs, but I was rationalizing and refusing to look at the hard questions. A couple years ago, I was exposed to atheism and rationalism and have since been trying to make myself more reasonable/less insane. I found LW through Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality a few months ago, and have been lurking and reading the sequences. I'm still scared of posting on here because it’s the first discussion forum where I have known myself to be intellectual... (read more)

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6shokwave
I have found that some of the time you can make up for a (perceived) lack of intellect with a little work, and this is true (from my own experience) here on LessWrong: when about to comment on an issue, it pays big dividends to use the search feature to check for something related in previous posts with which you can refine, change, or bolster your position. Of the many times I have done it, twice I caught myself in grievous and totally embarrassing errors! For what it's worth, commenting on LW is so far from normal conversation and normal internet use that most intellects haven't developed methods for it; they have to grind through mostly the same processes as everyone else - and nobody can actually tell if it took you five seconds or five minutes to type your reply. My own replies might be left in the comment box for hours, to be reread with a fresh mind later and changed entirely. tl;dr Don't be afraid to comment!
6NancyLebovitz
This is interesting-- LW seems to be pretty natural for me. I think the only way my posting here is different from anywhere else is that my sentences might be more complex. On the other hand, once I had a choice, I've spent most of my social life in sf fandom, where the way I write isn't wildly abnormal, I think. Anyone who's reading this, do you think what's wanted at LW is very different from what's wanted in other venues?
7Emile
I find writing on LW pretty 'normal', on par with some other forums or blog comments (though with possibly less background hostility and flamewars). I suspect the ban on discussing politics does more to increase the quality of discourse here than the posts on cognitive bias.
6taryneast
Yes. I get the sense that here you are expected to at least try for rigor. In other venues - it's totally ok to randomly riff on a topic without actually having thought deeply about either the consequences, or whether or not there's any probability of your idea actually having any basis in reality.
6katydee
LW is substantially higher-level than most (all?) forums that I've been to, including private ones and real name only ones. The standard of discourse just seems better here in general.
6shokwave
Wow, that is interesting ... conditional on more people feeling this way (LW is natural), I might just have focused my intellect on rhetoric and nonreasonable convincing to the point that following LW's guidelines is difficult, and then committed the typical mind fallacy and assumed everyone had too.
[-]NihilCredo170

Actually, I've come to notice that rhetoric and other so-called Dark Arts are still worth their weight in gold on LW, except when the harder subjects (math and logic) are at hand.

But LessWrong commenters definitely have plenty of psychological levers, and the demographic uniformity only makes them more effective. For a simple example, I guesstimate that, in just about any comment, a passing mention of how smart LessWrongers are is worth on average 3 or 4 extra karma points - and this is about as old as tricks can get.

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3Jack
But LessWrongers are really smart.
4wnoise
That is a true but banal observation that shouldn't be worth karma. Of course, so was this response. And so forth.
6Alicorn
Do you have a preferred set of gender-neutral pronouns?
3Jack
FYI, this had a "don't think of a pink elephant" effect on me. I immediately made guesses about your gender, race and age. I'm betting I'm not the only one. Sorry! Anyway welcome! Sounds like you'll fit right in. Don't be too scared to comment, especially if it is just to ask a question (I don't recall ever seeing a non-sarcastic question downvoted).
[-]EStokes230

I'm Ellen, age 14, student, planning to major in molecular biology or something like that. I'm not set on it, though.

I think I was browsing wikipedia when I decided to google some related things. I think I found some libertarian or anarchist blog that then had a link to Overcoming Bias or Lesswrong. Or I might've seen the word transhumanism on the wiki page for libertarianism and googled it, with it eventually leading here somehow. My memory is fuzzy as it was pretty irrelevant to me.

I'm an atheist, and have been for a while, as is typical for this community. I wasn't brought up religiously, so it was pretty much untheism that turned into atheism.

My rationalist roots... I've always wanted to be right, of course. Partly because I could make mistakes from being wrong, partly because I really, really hated looking stupid. Then I figured that I couldn't know if I was right unless I listened to the other side, really listened, and was careful. (Not enough people do even this. People are crazy, the world is mad. Angst, angst.) I found lesswrong which has given me tools to much more effectively do this. w00t.

I'm really lazy. Curse you, akrasia!

It should be obvious how I came up with my us... (read more)

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5Eliezer Yudkowsky
Welcome on board! You're a key segment of my target audience, so please speak up if you have any thoughts on things I could have done better in my writing.
3Kevin
I strongly recommend people go to school for something they find interesting, but since I don't think it's commonly known information, I would like to note that salaries for biologists are lower than for other scientists. Lots more people graduate with PhDs in biology than PhDs in physics which really drives down the salaries for biologists that don't have tenure. Though if you plan on going to professional school (medical school, business school, etc.), a molecular biology degree is a good thing to have if you enjoy molecular biology. Again, I really think people should go to school for something they like, but if you want to make a lot of money, don't become a researching biologist. Biology researchers with MD's do a lot better financially.
[-]juliawise220

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.

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[-]AspiringKnitter110

Very glad not to be persecuted, actually. Yay!

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[-]free_rip220

Hi, I'm Zoe. I found this site in a round-about way after reading Dawkin's The God Delusion and searching some things related to it. There was a comment in a forum mentioning Less Wrong and I was interested to see what it was.

I've been mainly lurking for the past few months, reading the sequences and some of the top posts. I've found that while I understand most of it, my high-school level math (I'm 16) is quite inadequate, so I'm working through the Khan Academy to try and improve it.

I'm drawn to rationalism because, quite simply, it seems like the world would be a better place if people were more rational and that has to start somewhere. Whatever the quotes say, truth is worthwhile. It also makes me believe in myself more to know that I'm willing and somewhat able to shift my views to better match the territory. Maybe someday I'll even advance from 'somewhat' into plain ol' 'able'.

My goals here, at this point, aren't particularly defined. I find the articles and the mission inspiring and interesting and think that it will help me. Maybe when I've learnt more I'll have a clearer goal for myself. I already analyze everything (to the point where many a teacher has been quite annoyed), so I suppose that's a start. I'm looking forward to learning more and seeing how I can use it all in my actual life.

Cheers, Zoe

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2[anonymous]
Welcome! Hope now a few months later you still find some utility from our community. Overall, I just wanted to chime in and say good luck in getting sane in your lifetime, its something all of us here strive for and its far from easy. :)
7free_rip
Thank you! I am still enjoying the site - there's so much good stuff to get through. I've read most of the sequences and top posts now, but I'm still in the (more important, probably) process of compiling a list of all the suggested activities/actions, or any I can think of in terms of my own life and the basic principles, for easy reference to try when I have some down-time.
6thomblake
Such a list should be worth at least posting to discussion, if you finish it.
[-]wedrifid210
  • Cousin it's comment doesn't leave much room for doubt.
  • Baiting and switching by declaring Crocker's rules then shaming and condescending when they do not meet your standard of politeness could legitimately be considered a manipulative social ploy.
  • I didn't consider Crocker's rules at all when reading nyan's comment and it still didn't seem at all inappropriate. You being outraged at the 'vulgarity' of the phrase "damsel in distress crap" is a problem with your excess sensitivity and not with the phrase. As far as I'm concerned "damsel in distress crap" is positively gentle. I would have used "martyrdom bullshit" (but then I also use bullshit as a technical term).
  • Crocker's rules is about how people speak to you. But for all it is a reply about your comment nyan wasn't even talking to you. He was talking to the lesswrong readers warning them about perceived traps they are falling into when engaging with your comment.
  • Like it or not people tend to reciprocate disrespect with disrespect. While you kept your comment superficially civil and didn't use the word 'crap' you did essentially call everyone here a bunch of sexist Christian hating bullies. Why would you expect people to be nice to you when you treat them like that?
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[-]cousin_it210

That doesn't sound right. Here's a quote from Crocker's rules:

Anyone is allowed to call you a moron and claim to be doing you a favor.

Another quote:

Note that Crocker's Rules does not mean you can insult people; it means that other people don't have to worry about whether they are insulting you.

Quote from our wiki:

Thus, one who has committed to these rules largely gives up the right to complain about emotional provocation, flaming, abuse and other violations of etiquette

There's a decision theoretic angle here. If I declare Crocker's rules, and person X calls me a filthy anteater, then I might not care about getting valuable information from them (they probably don't have any to share) but I refrain from lashing out anyway! Because I care about the signal I send to person Y who is still deciding whether to engage with me, who might have a sensitive detector of Crocker's rules violations. And such thoughtful folks may offer the most valuable critique. I'm afraid you might have shot yourself in the foot here.

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[-]Emile210

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.

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[-]mni200

Hello.

I've been reading Less Wrong from its beginning. I stumbled upon Overcoming Bias just as LW was being launched. I'm a young mathematician (an analyst, to be more specific) currently working towards a PhD and I'm very interested in epistemic rationality and the theory of altruist instrumental rationality. I've been very impressed with the general quality of discussion about the theory and general practice of truth-seeking here, even though I can think of places where I disagree with the ideas that I gather are widely accepted here. The most interesting discussions seem to be quite old, though, so reviving those discussions out of the blue hasn't felt like - for lack of a better word - a proper thing to do.

There are many discussions here of which I don't care about. A large proportion of people here are programmers or otherwise from a CS background, and that colors the discussions a lot. Or maybe it's just that the prospect of an AGI in recent future doesn't seem at all likely to me. Anyway, the AI/singularity stuff, the tangentially related topics that I bunch together with them, and approaching rationality topics from a programmer's point of view I just don't care about. Not ... (read more)

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8orthonormal
Upvoted for this in particular.
5SoullessAutomaton
I appreciate your honest criticisms here, as someone who participated (probably too much) in the silly gender discussion threads. I also encourage you to stay and participate, if possible. Despite some missteps, I think there's a lot of potential in this community, and I'd hate to see us losing people who could contribute interesting material.
4Vladimir_Nesov
The evils of in-group bias are getting at me. I felt a bit of anger when reading this comment. Go figure, I rarely feel noticeable emotions, even in response to dramatic events. The only feature that could trigger that reaction seems to be the dissenting theme of this comment, the way it breached the normal narrative of the game of sane/insane statements. I wrote a response after a small time-out, I hope it isn't tainted by that unfortunate reaction.
7Wei Dai
I don't think it's in-group bias. If anything, people are giving mni extra latitude because he or she is seen as new here. If an established member of the community were to make the same points, that much of the discussion is uninteresting or bullshit, that the community is failing and maybe not worth "wasting" time for, and to claim to have interesting things to say but make excuses for not actually saying them, I bet there would be a lot more criticism in response.
4[anonymous]
Interesting. You provide one counterexample to my opinion that the biased language wasn't driving away readers. I now have reason to believe I might have been projecting too much.
3MrHen
Welcome. :) One thing I hope you have noticed is that there are different subgroups of people within the community that like or dislike certain topics. Adding content that you prefer is a good way to see more growth in those topics.
2[anonymous]
mni, I followed in your footsteps years later, and then dropped away, just as you did. I came back after several months to look for an answer to a specific question -- stayed for a bit, poking around -- and before I go away again, I'd just like to say: if this'd been a community that was able to keep you, it probably would have kept me too. You seem awesome. Where did you go? Can I follow you there?
2Nisan
I see people leave Less Wrong for similar reasons all the time. In my optimistic moods, I try to understand the problem and think up ways to fix it. In my pessimistic moods, this blog and its meetups are doomed from the start; the community will retain only those women who are already dating people in the community; and the whole thing will end in a whimper.
4shokwave
This needs to be a primary concern during the setting-up of the rationality spin-off SIAI is planning. It needs to be done right, at the beginning.
[-]Vaniver190

Easiest first: I introduced "dark arts" as an example of a label that distracted more than it added. It wasn't meant as a reference to or description of your posts.

In your previous comment, you asked the wrong question ('were they attempting to persuade?') and then managed to come up with the wrong answer ('nope'). Both of those were disappointing (the first more so) especially in light of your desire to spread your experience.

The persuasion was "please respond to me nicely." It was richly rewarded: 20 welcoming responses (when most newbies get 0 or 1), and the first unwelcoming response got downvoted quickly.

The right question is, what are our values, here? When someone expressing a desire to be welcomed uses influence techniques that further that end, should we flip the table over in disgust that they tried to influence us? That'll show them that we're savvy customers that can't be trolled! Or should we welcome them because we want the community to grow? That'll show them that we're worth sticking around.

I will note that I upvoted this post, because in the version that I saw it started off with "Some of your other posts are intelligent" and then show... (read more)

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4[anonymous]
Ok. That makes sense.
[-]Jack190

I sometimes feel discriminated against here for not being autistic enough.

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[-]JoshuaZ180

Sorry, where does God say this? You are a Christian right? I'm not aware of any verse in either the OT or NT that calls for monogamy. Jacob has four wives, Abraham has two, David has quite a few and Solomon has hundreds. The only verses that seem to say anything negative in this regard are some which imply that Solomon just has way too many. The text strongly implies that polyandry is not ok but polygyny is fine. The closest claim is Jesus's point about how divorcing one woman and then marrying another is adultery, but that's a much more limited claim (it could be that the other woman was unwilling to be a second wife for example). 1 Timothy chapter 3 lists qualifications for being a church leader which include having only one wife. That would seem to imply that having more than one wife is at worst suboptimal.

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[-]AspiringKnitter230

That is a really good point. (Actually, Jesus made a stronger point than that: even lusting after someone you're not married to is adultery.)

You know, you could actually be right. I'll have to look more carefully. Maybe my understanding has been biased by the culture in which I live. Upvoted for knowledgeable rebuttal of a claim that might not be correct.

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7MixedNuts
Is that something like "Plan to take steps to have sex with the person", or like "Experience a change in your pants"? (Analogous question for the "no coveting" commandment, too.) Because if you think some thoughts are evil, you really shouldn't build humans with a brain that automatically thinks them. At least have a little "Free will alert: Experience lust? (Y/n)" box pop up.
[-]Filipe Marchesini170

WHO I AM: I have 24 years of existence. I give math, chemistry and physics lessons to high school students since 17. I am pretty good at it and I never announced anywhere on planet that I give lessons - all new students appear from recommendations from older students. On the end of 2016 I already had 38 months going to the university, trying to get mechanical engineering credentials. I wasn't interested on the course - I really liked the math and the subjects, but the teachers sucked and the experience was, in general, terrible. I hated my life and was doing it just to look good for my parents - always loved arts and I study classical music since 14. I heard about "artificial intelligence" just once, and I decided all my actions in life should be towards automate the process of learning. I started a MIT Python course and then dropped out university. I am completely passionate about learning.

WHAT I'M DOING: (short-term) I am currently learning and doing beautiful animations with the python library called MANIM (Mathematical ANIMations). I am searching for people to unite forces to transform tens of posts in The Sequences into video content with this library. I h... (read more)

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4habryka
Welcome! Your story sounds exciting and I am looking forward to seeing you around!
2TurnTrout
Welcome :)
[-]Qiaochu_Yuan170

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.

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3[anonymous]
I've read your blog for a long time now, and I really like it! <3 Welcome to LW!
3Qiaochu_Yuan
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...
[-]Bugmaster170

But pointing this out to you doesn't change your mind because you value having most people be willing to engage in casual sex (am I wrong here? I don't know you, specifically)

I can't speak for Emile, but my own views look something like this:

  • I see nothing wrong with casual sex (as long as all partners fully consent, of course), or any other kind of sex in general (again, assuming fully informed consent).
  • Some studies (*) have shown that humans are generally pretty poor at monogamy.
  • People whose sex drives are unsatisfied often become unhappy.
  • In light of this, forcing monogamy on people is needlessly oppressive, and leads to unnecessary suffering.
  • Therefore, we should strive toward building a society where monogamy is not forced upon people, and where people's sex drives are generally satisfied.

Thus, I would say that I value "most people being able to engage in casual sex". I make no judgement, however, whether "most people should be willing to engage in casual sex". If you value monogamy, then you should be able to engage in monogamous sex, and I can see no reason why anyone could say that your desires are wrong.

(*) As well as many of our most prominent politicians. Heh.

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7AspiringKnitter
I'm glad I actually asked, then, since I've learned something from your position, which is more sensible than I assumed. Upvoted because it's so clearly laid out even though I don't agree.
2Bugmaster
Thanks, I appreciate it. I am still interested in hearing why you don't agree, but I understand that this can be a sensitive topic...
[-]Arandur170

Hello, Less Wrong.

I suppose I should have come here first, before posting anything else, but I didn't come here through the front door. :3 Rather, I was brought here by way of HP:MOR, as I'm sure many newbies were.

My name is Anthony. I'm 21 years old, married, studying Linguistics, and I'm an unapologetic member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Should be fun.

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2MatthewBaker
Enjoy :)
[-]apophenia170

Hello, Less Wrong.

My name is Zachary Vance. I'm an undergraduate student at the University of Cincinnati, double majoring in Mathematics and Computer Science--I like math better. I am interested in games, especially board and card games. One of my favorite games is Go.

I've been reading Less Wrong for 2-3 months now, and I posted once or twice under another name which I dropped because I couldn't figure out how to change names without changing accounts. I got linked here via Scott Aaronson's blog Shtetl-Optimized after seeing a debate between him and Eliezer. I got annoyed at Eliezer for being rude, forgot about it for a month, and followed the actual link on Scott's site over here. (In case you read this Eliezer, you both listen to people more than I thought (update, in Bayesian) and write more interesting things than I heard in the debate.) I like paradoxes and puzzles, and am currently trying to understand the counterfactual mugging. I've enjoyed Less Wrong because everybody here seems to read everything and usually carefully think about it before they post, which means not only articles but also comments are simply amazing compared to other sites. It also means I try not to post too much so Less Wrong remains quality.

I am currently applying to work at the Singularity Institute.

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6Paul Crowley
Hi, welcome to Less Wrong and thanks for posting an introduction!
[-]TheOtherDave160

OK.
FWIW, I agree that nyan-sandwich's tone was condescending, and that they used vulgar words.
I also think "I suppose they can't be expected to behave any better, we should praise them for not being completely awful" is about as condescending as anything else that's been said in this thread.

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[-]AspiringKnitter100

Yeah, you're probably right. I didn't mean for that to come out that way (when I used to spend a lot of time on places with low standards, my standards were lowered, too), but that did end up insulting. I'm sorry, nyan_sandwich.

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[-]CronoDAS160

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?

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[-]Alicorn140

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

Do you want a pony?

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3CronoDAS
Can I have a kitty instead?
2Vaniver
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."
3Bugmaster
No pony for you
[-]Sarokrae160

Greetings, LessWrong!

I'm Saro, currently 19, female and a mathematics undergraduate at the University of Cambridge. I discovered LW by the usual HP:MoR route, though oddly I discovered MoR via reading EY's website, which I found in a Google search about Bayes' once. I'm feeling rather fanatical about MoR at the moment, and am not-so-patiently awaiting chapter 78.

Generally though, I've found myself stuck here a lot because I enjoy arguing, and I like convincing other people to be less wrong. Specifically, before coming across this site, I spent a lot of time reading about ways of making people aware of their own biases when interpreting data, and effective ways of communicating statistics to people in a non-misleading way (I'm a big fan of the work being done by David Spiegelhalter). I'm also quite fond of listening to economics and politics arguments and trying to tear them down, though through this, I've lost any faith in politics as something that has any sensible solutions.

I suspect that I'm pretty bad at overcoming my own biases a lot of the time. In particular, I have a very strong tendency to believe what I'm told (including what I'm being told by this site), I'm particularly... (read more)

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7[anonymous]
Welcome! I wouldn't necessarily call that a failing in and of itself -- it's important to notice the influence that tone and eloquence and other ineffable aesthetic qualities have on your thinking (lest you find yourself agreeing with the smooth talker over the person with a correct argument), but it's also a big part of appreciating art, or finding beauty in the world around you. If it helps, I was raised atheist, only ever adopted organized religion once in response to social pressure (it didn't last, once I was out of that context), find myself a skeptical, materialist atheist sort -- and with my brain wiring (schizotypal, among other things) I still have intense, vivid spiritual experiences on a regular basis. There's no inherent contradiction, if you see the experiences as products-of-brain and that eerie sense that maybe there's something more to it as also a product-of-brain, with antecedents in known brain-bits.
4CaveJohnson
Welcome! Honestly that made me cringe slightly and I wanted to write something about it when I came to the second paragraph: You are bad at overcoming your own biases, since all of us are. We've got pretty decent empirical evidence that knowing about some biases does help you, but not with others. The best practical advice to avoid being captured by slogans and inspirational tones is to practice playing the devils advocate. Check out LW's sister site Overcoming Bias. Robin Hanson loves to make unorthodox economical arguments about nearly everything. Be warned his contrarianism and cynicism with a simile are addictive! He also has some interesting people on his blogroll. I'm afraid hanging out here probably will not make it any better. Seek different treatment. :)
4Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg)
Welcome! Sweet, another girl my age! Kind of similar to how I discovered it. I think I googled EY and found his website after seeing his name in the sl4 mailing list.
3Oscar_Cunningham
Welcome! Note to self: Organise Cambridge meet-up.
[-]KND160

Hello fellow Less Wrongians,

My name is Josh and I'm a 16-year-old junior in high school. I live in a Jewish family at the Jersey Shore. I found the site by way of TV Tropes after a friend told me about the Methods of Rationality. Before i started reading Eliezer's posts, i made the mistake of believing I was smart. My goal here is mainly to just be the best that I can be and maybe learn to lead a better life. And by that I mean that I want to be better than everyone else I meet. That includes being a more rational person better able to understand complex issues. I think i have a fair grip on the basic points of rationality as well as philosophy, but i am sorely lacking in terms of math and science (which can't be MY fault obviously, so I'll just go ahead and blame the public school system). I never knew what exactly an logarithm WAS before a few days ago, sadly enough (I knew the term of course, but was never taught what it meant or bothered enough to look it up. I have absolutely no idea what i want to do with my life other than amassing knowledge of whatever i find to be interesting.

I was raised in a conservative household, believing in God but still trying to look at the world r... (read more)

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3[anonymous]
Great to have you here Josh! Most of all as you read and participate in the community, don't be afraid to question common beliefs here, that's where the contribution is likley to be there I think. Also if you plan on going through one or more of the sequences systematically consider finding a chavruta. To quote myself: Also a great great resource for basic math are the Khan Academy videos and exercises.
[-]GDC3160

HI, I'm GDC3. Those are my initials. I'm a little nervous about giving my full name on the internet, especially because my dad is googlible and I'm named after him. (Actually we're both named after my grandfather, hence the 3) But I go by G.D. in real life anyway so its not exactly not my name. I'm primarily working on learning math in advance of returning to college right now.

Sorry if this is TMI but you asked: I became an aspiring rationalist because I was molested as a kid and I knew that something was wrong, but not what it was or how to stop it, and I figure that if I didn't learn how the world really worked instead of what people told me, stuff like that might keep happening to me. So I guess my something to protect was me.

My something to protect is still mostly me, because most of my life is still dealing with the consequences of that. My limbic system learned all sorts of distorted and crazy things about how the world works that my neocortex has to spend all of its time trying to compensate for. Trying to be a functional human being is sort of hard enough goal for now. I also value and care about eventually using this information to help other people who've had simi... (read more)

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4TheOtherDave
I think that's the most succinct formulation of this pattern I've ever run into. Nicely thought, and nicely expressed. (I found the rest of your comment interesting as well, but that really jumped out at me.) Welcome!
[-]taryneast160

Hi, I'm Taryn. I'm female, 35 and working as a web developer. I started studying Math, changed to Comp Sci and actually did my degree in Cognitive Science (Psychology of intelligence, Neurophysiology, AI, etc) My 3rd year Project was on Cyberware.

When I graduated I didn't see any jobs going in the field and drifted into Web Development instead... but I've stayed curious about AI, along with SF, Science, and everything else too. I kinda wish I'd known about Singularity research back then... but perhaps it's better this way. I'm not a "totally devoted to one subject" kinda person. I'm too curious about everything to settle for a single field of study.

That being said - I've worked in web development now for 11 years. Still, when I get home, I don't start programming, preferring pick up a book on evolutionary biology, medieval history, quantum physics, creative writing (etc) instead. There's just too damn many interesting things to learn about to just stick to one!

I found LW via Harry Potter & MOR, which my sister forwarded to me. Since then I've been voraciously reading my way through the sequences, learning just how much I have yet to learn... but totally fascinated. This site is awesome.

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[-][anonymous]160

[Hi everyone!]

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[-][anonymous]160

Hi, I'm Sarah. I'm 21 and going to grad school in math next fall. I'm interested in applied math and analysis, and I'm particularly interested in recent research about the sparse representation of large data sets. I think it will become important outside the professional math community. (I have a blog about that at http://numberblog.wordpress.com/.)

As far as hobbies go, I like music and weightlifting. I read and talk far too much about economics, politics, and philosophy. I have the hairstyle and cultural vocabulary of a 1930's fast-talking dame. (I like the free, fresh wind in my hair, life without care; I'm broke, that's Oke!)

Why am I here? I clicked the link from Overcoming Bias.

In more detail, I'm here because I need to get my life in order. I'm a confused Jew, not a thoroughgoing atheist. I've been a liberal and then a libertarian and now need something more flexible and responsive to reason than either.

Some conversations with a friend, who's a philosopher, have led me to understand that there are some experiences (in particular, experiences he's had related to poverty and death) that nothing in my intellectual toolkit can deal with, and so I've had to reconsider a ... (read more)

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7mattnewport
I don't know if it will help you, but the concept of comparative advantage might help you appreciate how being valuable does not require being better than anyone else at any one thing. I found the concept enlightening, but I'm probably atypical...
[-]Rain160
  • Persona: Rain
  • Age: 30s
  • Gender: Unrevealed
  • Location: Eastern USA
  • Profession: Application Administrator, US Department of Defense
  • Education: Business, Computers, Philosophy, Scifi, Internet
  • Interests: Gaming, Roleplaying, Computers, Technology, Movies, Books, Thinking
  • Personality: Depressed and Pessimistic
  • General: Here's a list of my news sources

Rationalist origin: I discovered the scientific method in highschool and liked the results of its application to previously awkward social situations, so I extended it to life in general. I came up with most of OB's earlier material by myself under different names, or not quite as well articulated, and this community has helped refine my thoughts and fill in gaps.

Found LW: The FireFox add-on StumbleUpon took me to EY's FAQ about the Meaning of Life on 23 October 2005, along with Max More, Nick Bostrom, Alcor, Sentient Developments, the Transhumanism Wikipedia page, and other resources. From there, to further essays, to the sl4 mailing list, to SIAI, to OB, to LW, where I started interacting with the community in earnest in late January 2010 and achieved 1000 karma in early June 2010. Previous to the StumbleUpon treasure trove, I had been ... (read more)

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[-]AspiringKnitter150

Downvoted, by the way. I want to signal my distaste for being confused for you. Are you using some form of mind-altering substance or are you normally like this? I think you need to take a few steps back. And breathe. And then study how to communicate more clearly, because I think either you're having trouble communicating or I'm having trouble understanding you.

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5NancyLebovitz
I'm not quite in a mood to downvote, but I think you were wildly underestimating how hard it would be for Will to change what he's doing.
[-]David Althaus150

hi everybody,

I'm 22, male, a student and from Germany. I've always tried to "perceive whatever holds the world together in its inmost folds", to know the truth, to grok what is going on. Truth is the goal, and rationality the art of achieving it. So for this reason alone lesswrong is quite appealing.

But in addition to that Yudkowsky and Bostrom convinced me that existential risks, transhumanism , the singularity, etc. are probably the most important issues of our time.

Furthermore this is the first community I've ever encountered in my life that makes me feel rather dumb. ( I can hardly follow the discussions about solomonoff induction, everett-branches and so on, lol, and I thought I was good at math because I was the best one in high school :-) But, nonetheless being stupid is sometimes such a liberating feeling!

To spice this post with more gooey self-disclosure: I was sort of a "mild" socialist for quite some time ( yeah, I know. But, there are some intelligent folks who were socialists, or sort-of-socialists like Einstein and Russell). Now I'm more pro-capitalism, libertarian, but some serious doubts remain. I'm really interested in neuropsychological research of mystic exp... (read more)

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5Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg)
I can personally support this. I've never taken LSD or any other consciousness-altering drug, but I can trigger ecstatic, mystical "religious experiences" fairly easy in other ways; even just singing in a group setting will do it. I sing in an Anglican church choir and this weekend is Easter, so I expect to have quite a number of mystical experiences. At one point I attended a Pentecostal church regularly and was willing to put up with people who didn't believe in evolution because group prayer inevitably triggered my "mystical experience" threshold. (My other emotions are also triggered easily: I laugh out loud when reading alone, cry out loud in sad books and movies, and feel overpowering warm fuzzies when in the presence of small children.) I have done my share of reading "absurb and useless" books. Usually I found them, well, absurd and useless and pretty boring. I would rather read about the neurological underpinnings of my experience, especially since grokking science's answers can sometimes trigger a near-mystical experience! (Happened several times while reading Richard Dawkins' 'The Selfish Gene'.) In any case, I would like to hear more about your story, too.
[-]AlexGreen150

Good day I'm a fifteen year-old high school student, Junior, and ended up finding this through the Harry Potter & MOR story, which I thought would be a lot less common to people. Generally I think I'm not that rational of a person, I operate mostly on reaction and violence, and instinctively think of things like 'messages' and such when I have some bad luck; but, I've also found some altruistic passion in me, and I've done all of this self observation which seems contradictory, but I think that's all a rationalization to make me a better person. I also have some odd moods, which split between talking like this, when usually I can't like this at all.

I'd say something about my age group but I can't think of anything that doesn't sound like hypocrisy, so I think I'll cut this off here.

  • Aaaugh, just looking at this giant block of text makes me feel like an idiot.
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3fortyeridania
Don't be so hard on yourself. Or, more precisely: don't be hard on yourself in that way. Bitter self-criticism could lead to helpful reforms and improved habits, but it could also lead to despair and cynicism. If you feel that you need to be criticized, post some thoughts and let other LWers do it.
[-]SwingDancerMike140

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

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2SwingDancerMike
Yay 5 points! That was quick. Thanks everyone.
[-]DSimon140

Do you really think it's only a bit overstated? I mean, has anybody been banned for being religious? And has anybody here indicated that they hate Christians without immediately being called on falling into blue vs. green thinking?

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[-]Suryc11210

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.

From her other posts, AspiringKnitter strikes me as being open-minded and quite intelligent, but that last paragraph really irks me. It's self-debasing in an almost manipulative way - as if she actually wants us to talk to her like we "only want [her] to hate God" or as if we "really hate Christians". Anybody who has spent any non-trivial amount of time on LW would know that we certainly don't hate people we disagree with, at least to the best of my knowledge, so asserting that is not a charitable or reasonable expectation. Plus, it seems that it would now be hard(er) to downvote her because she specifically said she expects that, even given a legitimate reason to downvote.

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2[anonymous]
I agree. See my other post deconstructing the troll-techniques used.
3Kaj_Sotala
Well, some of Eliezer's posts about religion and religious thought have been more than a little harsh. (I couldn't find it, but there was a post where he said something along the lines of "I have written about religion as the largest imaginable plague on thinking...") They didn't explicitly say that religious people are to be scorned, but it's very easy to read in that implication, especially since many people who are equally vocal about religion being bad do hold that opinion.
[-]TheatreAddict140

Hello everyone,

My name is Allison, and I'm 15 years old. I'll be a junior next year. I come from a Christian background, and consider myself to also be a theist, for reasons that I'm not prepared to discuss at the moment... I wish to learn how to view the world as it is, not through a tinted lens that is limited in my own experiences and background.

While I find most everything on this site to be interesting, I must confess a particular hunger towards philosophy. I am drawn to philosophy as a moth is to a flame. However, I am relatively ignorant about pretty much everything, something I'm attempting to fix. I have a slightly above average intelligence, but nothing special. In fact, compared to everyone on this site, I'm rather stupid. I don't even understand half of what people are talking about half the time.

I'm not a science or math person, although I find them interesting, my strengths lie in English and theatre arts. I absolutely adore theatre, not that this really has much to do with rationality. Anyway, I kind of want to get better at science and math. I googled the double slit experiment, and I find it.. captivating. Quantum physics holds a special kind of appeal to me, but unfortunately, is something that I'm not educated enough to pursue at the moment.

My goals are to become more rational, learn more about philosophy, gain a basic understanding of math and science, and to learn more about how to refine the human art of rationality. :)

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[-]Tuesday_Next140

Hello everyone!

Name: Tuesday Next Age: 19 Gender: Female

I am an undergraduate student studying political science, with a focus on international relations. I have always been interested in rationalism and finding the reasons for things.

I am an atheist, but this is more a consequence of growing up in a relatively nonreligious household. I did experiment with paganism and witchcraft for several years, a rather frightening (in retrospect) display of cognitive dissonance as I at once believed in science and some pretty unscientific things.

Luckily I was able to to learn from experience, and it soon become obvious that what I believed in simply didn't work. I think I wanted to believe in witchcraft both as a method of teenage rebellion and to exert some control over my life. However I was unable to delude myself.

I tried to interest myself in philosophy many times, but often became frustrated by the long debates that seemed divorced from reality. One example is the idea of free will. Since I was a child (I have a memory of trying, when I was in elementary school, of trying to explain this to my parents without success) I have had a conception of reality and free will that seemed fa... (read more)

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[-]Ezekiel130

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.

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9AspiringKnitter
Uh-oh. LOL. 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. Haven't been lurking long enough. In the future I will not. See below. Thank you for calling me out on that.
[-]TheOtherDave180

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.

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6AspiringKnitter
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.
3TheOtherDave
Jeez. What would "we all agree, yay" even look like in this case?
7AspiringKnitter
I suppose either I'd become an atheist or everyone here would convert to Christianity.
[-]Prismattic110

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

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7AspiringKnitter
Good point. Thank you for pointing it out.
8NancyLebovitz
There are additional possibilities, like everyone agreeing on agnosticism or on some other religion.
4TheOtherDave
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.
[-]AspiringKnitter100

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.

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3lessdazed
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.
4Emile
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").
2Incorrect
I tried to look for a religious debate elsewhere in this thread but could not find any except the tangential discussion of schizophrenia. 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
[-]AspiringKnitter130

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?

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3Bugmaster
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.
3A1987dM
How about doing this already, with all the stuff they've written before the original bet?
[-][anonymous]130

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, ... (read more)

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[-]Bugmaster130

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.

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6AspiringKnitter
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.
6CronoDAS
Calling down hurricanes is easy. Actually getting them to come when you call them is harder. :)
6Bugmaster
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 !
[-][anonymous]130

Hey everyone.

I'm Jandila (not my birth, legal or even everyday name), I'm a 28-year old transgendered woman living in Minnesota. I've been following EY's writings off and on since many years ago on the sl4 mailing list, mostly on the topic of AI; initially I got interested in cognitive architecture and FAI due to a sci-fi novel I've been working on forever. I discovered LW a few years ago but only recently started posting; somehow I missed this thread until just recently.

I've been interested in bias and how people think, and in modifying my own instrumental ability to understand and work around it, for many years. I'm on the autistic spectrum and have many clusters of neurological weirdness; I think this provided an early incentive to understand "how people think" so I could signal-match better.

So far I've stuck around because I like LW's core mission and what it stands for in abstract; I also feel that the community here is a bit too homogenous in terms of demographics for a community with such an ostensibly far-reaching, global goal, and thus want to see the perspective base broadened (and am encouraged by the recent influx of female members).

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[-]JenniferDavies130

Hey everyone,

My name is Jennifer Davies. I'm 35 years old and am married with a 3 year old daughter. I live in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.

Originally a computer programmer, I gave it up after spending a year coding for a bank (around 1997). Motivated by an interest in critical thinking, I earned a BA in Philosophy.

Currently, I'm completing a one year post-grad program to become a Career Development Practitioner. I plan to launch a private practice in 2012 to help people find and live their passions while providing them with the tools to do so.

A friend introduced me to Harry Potter: Methods of Rationality and Less Wrong. I have never enjoyed a piece of reading more than that fanfic -- I even saved a PDF version to introduce to my daughter once she's able to benefit from it.

My main motivations (that I'm aware of) for becoming a member of this community are to: improve my thinking skills (and better understand/evaluate values and motivations), help clients to think more rationally, better encourage independent, critical thought in my daughter.

Although it can be painful at times (for my ego) to be corrected, I appreciate such corrections and the time put into them.

Any tips for teaching young children rationality? I'm at a loss and wonder if I need to wait until she's older.

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4beoShaffer
Hi Jennifer. There's been quite a bit written about teaching children rationality. Unfortunately, the relative newness of LW and the low percentage of parents means its all somewhat speculative. The following links cover most(but probably not all of what LW has on the subject). * http://lesswrong.com/lw/25/on_the_care_and_feeding_of_young_rationalists/ * http://lesswrong.com/lw/2q/on_juvenile_fiction/ * http://lesswrong.com/lw/3c/rationalist_storybooks_a_challenge/ * http://lesswrong.com/lw/63f/rational_parenting/ * http://lesswrong.com/lw/3i/little_johny_bayesian/ * http://lesswrong.com/lw/4uw/preschoolers_learning_to_guess_the_teachers/ * http://lesswrong.com/lw/70b/raise_the_age_demographic/ (You have to go down to the comments section for this one)
[-]Oligopsony130

I've existed for about 24 years, and currently live in Boston.

I regard many of the beliefs popular here - cyronics, libertarianism, human biodiversity, pickup artistry - with extreme skepticism. (As if in compensation, I have my own unpopular frameworks for understanding the world.) I find the zeitgeist here to be interestingly wrong, though, because almost everyone comes from a basically sane starting point - a material universe, conventionally "Western" standards of science, reason, and objectivity - and actively discusses how they can regulate their beliefs to adhere to these. I have an interest in achieving just this kind of regulation (am a "rationalist",) and am aware that it's epistemically healthy to expose myself to alternative points of view expressed in a non-crazy way. So hopefully the second aspect will reinforce the first.

As for why I'm a rationalist, I don't know, and the question doesn't seem particularly interesting to me. I regard it beyond questions of justification, like other desires.

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8Blueberry
Welcome to Less Wrong! I'd love to hear more about this: I also like exposing myself to alternative points of view expressed in a non-crazy way, and I'm interested in your unpopular frameworks. Specifically: cryonics is highly speculative, but do you think there's a small chance it might work? When you say you don't believe in human biodiversity, what does that mean? And when you say you don't believe in pickup artistry, you don't think that dating and relationships skills exist?
4Oligopsony
Thanks for the friendly welcome! "I'd love to hear more about this: I also like exposing myself to alternative points of view expressed in a non-crazy way, and I'm interested in your unpopular frameworks." Specifically, I've become increasingly interested in Marxism, especially the varieties of Anglo post-Marxism that emerged from the analytical tradition. I don't imagine this is any more popular here than it is among normal people, but the general mode of analysis is probably less foreign to libertarian types than they might assume - as implied above, we're both working from materialist assumptions (beyond what's implied above, this applies to more than one meaning of "materialist," at least for certain types of libertarians.) In general, my bias is to assume that people's behavior is more rational (I mean this in a utility-maximizing sense, rather than in the "rationalist" sense) than it initially appears. In general, the more we know about the context of a decision, the more rational it usually appears to be; and there may be something beyond vanity for the tendency of people, who are in greatest possession of their own situations, to consider themselves atypically rational. I see this materialist (in the "latter," economic sense) viewpoint as avoiding unnecessary mulitiplication of entities and (not that it should matter for truth) a basically respectful way of facially analyzing people: "MAYBE they're just crazy, but until we have more contextual knowledge, let's take as a working assumption that this is in their self-interest." This is my general verbal justification for reflexively turning to materialist explanations, although the CAUSE of my doing so is probably just that I studied neoclassical economics for four years. "Specifically: cryonics is highly speculative, but do you think there's a small chance it might work?" Of course. The transparent wish-fulfillment seems inherently suspect, like the immortality claims of religions, but that doesn't mean
[-]erratio130

Hi all, I'm Jen, an Australian Jewish atheist, and an student in a Computer Science/Linguistics/Cognitive Science combined degree, in which I am currently writing a linguistics thesis. I got here through recommendations from a couple of friends who visit here and stayed mostly for the akrasia and luminosity articles (hello thesis and anxiety/self-esteem problems!) Oh and the other articles too, but the ones I've mentioned are the ones that I've put the most effort into understanding and applying. The others are just interesting and marked for further processing at some later time.

I think I was born a rationalist rather than becoming one - I have a deep-seated desire for things to have reasons that make sense, by which I mean the "we ran some experiments and got this answer" kind of sense as opposed to the "this validates my beliefs" kind of sense. Although having said that I'm still prey to all kinds of irrationality, hence this site being helpful.

At some point in the future I would be interested in writing something about linguistic pragmatics - it's basically another scientific way of looking at communication. There's a lot of overlap between pragmatics and the ideas I've seen here on status and signalling, but it's all couched in different language and emphasises different parts, so it may be different enough to be helpful to others. But at the moment I have no intention of writing anything beyond this comment (hello thesis again!), the account is mostly just because I got sick of not being able to upvote anything.

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3Morendil
Welcome to Less Wrong! Please do! I have a keen interest in that topic.
[-]Mitchell_Porter120

I freely admit that I have one sockpuppet, who has made less than five comments and has over 20 karma.

I have a private message, dated 7 October, from an account with "less than five comments and [...] over 20 karma", which begins, "I'm Will_Newsome, this is one of my alts." (Emphasis mine.)

Will, I'm sorry it's turning out like this. I am not perfect myself; anyone who cares may look up users "Bananarama" and "OperationPaperclip" and see my own lame anonymous humor. More to the point, I do actually believe that you want to "keep the stars from burning down", and you're not just a troll out to waste everyone's time. The way I see it, because you have neither a job to tie you down, nor genuine intellectual peers and collaborators, it's easy to end up seeking the way forward via elaborate crazy schemes, hatched and pursued in solitude; and I suspect that I got in the way of one such scheme, by asserting that AK is you.

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2Will_Newsome
I have those! E.g. I spend a lot of time with Steve, who is the most rational person in the entire universe, and I hang out with folk like Nick Tarleton and Michael Vassar and stuff. All those 3 people are way smarter than me, though arguably I get around some of that by way of playing to my strengths. The point is that I can play intellectualism with them, especially Steve who's really good at understanding me. ETA: I also talk to the Black Belt Bayesian himself sorta often.
2wedrifid
With no offense intended to Steve, no, he isn't.
6Will_Newsome
If you know any rationalists that are better than Steve then please, please introduce me to them.
[-]wedrifid120

I'm confused. What happened overnight that made people suddenly start appreciating Will's advocacy of his own trolling here and the surrounding context? -5 to +7 is a big change and there have been similar changes to related comments. Either someone is sockpuppeting or people are actually starting to appreciate this crap. (I'm really hoping the former!)

Edit: And now it is back to -3. How bizarre!

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4thomblake
I've been appreciating it all along. I would not be terribly surprised if there were a dozen or so other people who do.
[-]Dorikka120

Okay good, it took awhile for this to get downvoted and I was starting to get even more worried about the local sanity waterline.

I suspect that the reason for this is that the comment tree of which your post was a branch of is hidden by default, as it originates from a comment with less than -3 karma.

Um, on another note, could you just be less mean? 'Mean' seems to be the most accurate descriptor for posting trash that people have to downvote to stay hidden, after all.

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3Will_Newsome
No, I ran an actual test by posting messages in all caps to use as a control. Empiricism is so cool! (ETA: I also wrote a perfectly reasonable but mildly complex comment as a second control, which garnered the same number of downvotes as my insane set theory comment in about he same length of time.) Re meanness, I will consider your request Dorikka. I will consider it.
[-]TidPao120

Stick around. Your contributions are fine. Not everyone will be accusatory like nyan_sandwich.

Read through the Sequences and comment on what seems good to you.

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[-]Bugmaster120

In addition to what APMason said, I think that many Christians would disagree with your second statement:

I doubt it'd be useful to go around trying to police people's morals.

Some of them are campaigning right now on the promise that they will "police people's morals"...

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[-]cousin_it120

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 :-)

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[-]JoachimSchipper120

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!)

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8AspiringKnitter
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.
[-]TheOtherDave350

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.

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[-]CuSithBell130

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).

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[-]kilobug110

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

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6MarkusRamikin
She's possibly thinking about Cthulhu.
9CronoDAS
Well, if there were an omnipotent Creator, I'd certainly have a few bones to pick with him/her/it...
3Anubhav
Classic example of bikeshedding.
[-]gscshoyru120

Hi, my handle is gscshoyru (gsc for short), and I'm new here. I found this site through the AIBox experiment, oddly enough -- and I think I got there from TVTropes, though I don't remember. After reading the fiction, (and being vaguely confused that I had read the NPC story before, but nothing else of his, since I'm a fantasy/sci-fi junkie and I usually track down authors I like), I started reading up on all of Eliezer's writings on rationality. And found it made a lot of sense. So, I am now a budding rationalist, and have decided to join this site because it is awesome.

That's how I found you -- as for who I am and such, I am a male 22-year-old mathematics major/CS minor currently working as a programmer in New Jersey. So, that's me. Hi everyone!

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[-]wedrifid110

What about when information is obscured by deliberate impoliteness?

Basically, no. If you want to criticize people for being rude to you just don't operate by Crocker's rules. Make up different ones.

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[-]thomblake110

Crocker's rules don't say "explain things in an insulting way", they say "don't soften the truths you speak to me". You can optimize for information-- and even get it across better-- when you're not trying to be rude.

A lot of intelligent folks have to spend a lot of energy trying not to be rude, and part of the point of Crocker's Rules is to remove that burden by saying you won't call them on rudeness.

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[-][anonymous]110

Being honest and having reasonable expectations of being treated like a troll does not disqualify a post from being a troll.

Hello, I expect you won't like me, I'm

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 tha

... (read more)
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7DSimon
I don't follow how indicating that she's actually read the site can be a mark against her. If the comment had not indicated familiarity with the site content, would you then describe it as less trollish?
[-]Bill_McGrath110

Hello, Less Wrong!

I'm Bill McGrath. I'm 22 years old, Irish, and I found my way here, as with many others, from TVTropes and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

I'm a composer and musician, currently entering the final year of my undergrad degree. I have a strong interest in many other fields - friends of mine who study maths and physics often get grilled for information on their topics! I was a good maths student in school, I still enjoy using maths to solve problems in my other work or just for pleasure, and I still remember most of what I learned. Probablity is the main exception here - it wasn't my strongest area, and I've forgotten a lot of the vocabulary, but it's the next topic I intend to study when I get a chance. This is proving problematic in my understanding of the Bayesian approach, but I'm getting there.

I've been working my way through the core sequences, along with some scattered reading elsewhere on the site. So far, a lot of what I've encountered has been ideas that are familiar to me, and that I try to use when debating or discussing ideas anyway. I've held for a while now that you have to be ready to admit your mistakes, not be afraid of being wrong som... (read more)

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[-]lincolnquirk110

Hi, I'm Lincoln. I am 25; I live and work in Cambridge, MA. I currently build video games but I'm going to start a Ph.D program in Computer Science at the local university in the fall.

I identified rationality as a thing to be achieved ever since I knew there was a term for it. One of the minor goals I had since I was about 15 was devising a system of morality which fit with my own intuitions but which was consistent under reflection (but not in so many words). The two thought experiments I focused on were abortion and voting. I didn't come up with an answer, but I knew that such a morality was a thing I wanted -- consistency was important to me.

I ran across Eliezer's work 907 days ago reading a Hacker News post about the AI-box experiment, and various other Overcoming Bias posts that were submitted over the years. I didn't immediately follow through on that stuff.

But I became aware of SIAI about 10 months ago, when rms on Hacker News linked an interesting post about the Visiting Fellows program at SIAI.

I think I had a "click" moment: I immediately saw that AI was both an existential risk and major opportunity, and I wanted to work on these things to save the world. I fol... (read more)

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[-]bigjeff5110

Hello, I'm Jeff, I found this site via a link on an XKCD forum post, which also included a link to the Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality fan-fic. I read the book first (well, what has been written so far, I just couldn't stop!) and decided that whoever wrote that must be made of pure awesome, and I was excited to see what you all talked about here.

After some perusal, I decided I had to respond to one of the posts, which of course meant I had to sign up. The post used keyboard layouts (QWERTY, etc.) as an example of how to rephrase a question properly in order to answer it in a meaningful way. Posting my opinion ended up challenging some assumptions I had about the QWERTY layout and the Dvorak layout, and I am now three and a half hours into learning the Dvorak layout in order to determine which is actually the better layout (based on things I read it seemed a worthwhile endeavor, instead of too difficult like I assumed).

I would have posted this in Dvorak layout, but I only have half the keys down and it would be really, really slow, so I switched back to QWERTY just for this. QWERTY comes out practically as I think it - Dvorak, not so much yet. The speed with which... (read more)

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[-][anonymous]110

Greetings, fellow thinkers! I'm a 19-year-old undergraduate student at Clemson University, majoring in mathematics (or, as Clemson (unjustifiably) calls it, Mathematical Sciences). I found this blog through Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality about three weeks ago, and I spent those three weeks doing little else in my spare time but reading the Sequences (which I've now finished).

My parents emigrated from the Soviet Union (my father is from Kiev, my mother from Moscow) just months before my birth. They spoke very little English upon their arrival, so they only spoke Russian to me at home, and I picked up English in kindergarten; I consider both to be my native languages, but I'm somewhat more comfortable expressing myself in English. I studied French in high school, and consider myself "conversant", but definitely not fluent, although I intend to study abroad in a Francophone country and become fluent. This last semester I started studying Japanese, and I intend to become fluent in that as well.

My family is Jewish, but none of my relatives practice Judaism. My mother identifies herself as an agnostic, but is strongly opposed to the Abrahamic religions and their co... (read more)

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[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky170

I've been an egoist for as long as I can remember

No offense intended, but: If you could take a pill that would prevent all pain from your conscience, and it could be absolutely guaranteed that no one would ever find out, how many twelve-year-olds would you kill for a dollar?

(Perhaps you meant to say that you were mostly egoist, or that your deliberatively espoused moral principles were egoistic?)

PS: Welcome to Less Wrong!

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[-][anonymous]130

Eliezer, I've been thinking about this a lot. When I backed up and asked myself whether, not why, I realized that

1) I'm no longer sure what "I am an egoist" means, especially given how far my understanding of ethics has come since I decided that, and

2) I derive fuzzies from repeating that back to myself, which strikes me as a warning sign that I'm covering up my own confusion.

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5[anonymous]
Eliezer, please don't think you can offend me by disagreeing with me or questioning my opinions - every disagreement (between rational people) is another precious opportunity for someone (hopefully me!) to get closer to Truth; if the person correcting me is someone I believe with high probability to be smarter than me, or to have thought through the issue at hand better than I have (and you fit those criteria!), this only raises the probability that it is I who stand to benefit from the disagreement. I'm not certain this is a very good answer to your question, but 1) I would not take such a pill, because I enjoy empathy and don't think pain is always bad, 2) peoples' deaths negatively affect many people (both through the ontologically positive grief incurred by the loss and the through ontologically negative utility they would have produced), and that negative effect is very likely to make its way to me through the Web of human interaction, especially if the deceased are young and have not yet had much of a chance to spread utility through the Web, and 3) I would have to be quite efficient at killing 12-year-olds for it to be worth my time to do it for a dollar each (although of course this is tangential to your question, since the amount "a dollar" was arbitrary). I should also point out that I have a strongly negative psychological reaction to violence. For example, I find the though of playing a first-person shooting game repugnant, because even pretending to shoot people makes me feel terrible. I just don't know what there is out there worse than human beings deliberately doing physical harm to one another. As a child, I felt little empathy for my fellow humans, but at some point, it was as if I was treated with Ludovico's Technique (à la A Clockwork Orange)... maybe some key mirror neurons in my prefrontal cortex just needed time to develop. Thank you for taking time to make me think about this!
4jimrandomh
If your moral code penalizes things that make you feel bad, and doing X would make you feel bad, then is it fair to say that not doing X is part of your moral code? I think the point Eliezer was getting at is that human morality is very complex, and statements like "I'm an egoist" sweep a lot of that under the rug. And to continue his example: what if the pill not only prevented all pain from your conscience, but also gave you enjoyment (in the form of seratonin or whatever) at least as good as what you get from empathy?
5[anonymous]
You're right, human morality is more complex than I thought it was when "I am an egoist" seemed like a reasonable assertion, and all the fuzzies I got from "resolving" the question of ethics prevented me from properly updating my beliefs about my own ethical disposition.
3wedrifid
How much do bullets cost again? :P
3TobyBartels
If you mean that mathematics is not a natural science, then I agree with you. But ‘science’ has an earlier, broader meaning that applies to any field of knowledge, so mathematical science is simply the systematic study of mathematics. (I don't know why they put it in plural, but that's sort of traiditional.) Compare definitions 2 and 4 at dictionary.com.
9[anonymous]
You're right! I've been so caught up (for years now) with explaining to people that mathematics was not a science because it was not empirical (although, as I've since learned from Eliezer, "pure thought" is still a physical process that we must observe in order to learn anything from it), that I've totally failed to actually think about the issue. There goes another cached thought from my brain; good riddance, and thanks for the correction!
[-]JJ10DMAN110

I originally wrote this for the origin story thread until I realized it's more appropriate here. So, sorry if it straddles both a bit.

I am, as nearly as I believe can be seen in the present world, an intrinsic rationalist. For example: as a young child I would mock irrationality in my parents, and on the rare occasions I was struck, I would laugh, genuinely, even through tears if they came, because the irrationality of the Appeal to Force made the joke immensely funnier. Most people start out as well-adapted non-rationalists; I evidently started as a maladaptive rationalist.

As an intrinsic (maladaptive) rationalist, I have had an extremely bumpy ride in understanding my fellow man. If I had been born 10 years later, I might have been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. As it was, I was a little different, and never really got on with anyone, despite being well-mannered. A nerd, in other words. Regarding bias, empathic favoritism, willful ignorance, asking questions in which no response will effect subsequent actions or belief confidences, and other peculiarities for which I seem to be an outlier, any knowledge about how to identify and then deal with these peculiarities has been ex... (read more)

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4HughRistik
That's really cool. I'd be curious to know some examples of some ideas you've read here that you found useful.
5JJ10DMAN
Rationalist blogs cite a lot of biases and curious sociological behaviors which have plagued me because I tend optimistically accept what people say at face value. In explaining them in rationalist terms, LW and similar blogs essentially explain them to my mode of thinking specifically. I'm now much better at picking up on unwritten rules, at avoiding punishment or ostracism for performing too well, at identifying when someone is lying politely but absolutely expects me to recognize it as a complete lie, etc., thanks to my reading into these psychological phenomena. Additionally, explanations of how people confuse "the map" to be "the territory" have been very helpful in determining when correcting someone is going to be a waste of time. If they were sloppy and mis-read their map, I should step in; if their conclusion is the result of deliberately interpreting a map feature (flatness, folding) as a territory feature, unless I know the person to be deeply rational, I should probably avoid starting a 15-minute argument that won't convince them of anything.
[-]Relsqui110

I suppose it's high time I actually introduced myself.

Hullo LW! I'm Elizabeth Ellis. That's a very common first name and a very common last name, so if you want to google me, I recommend "relsqui" instead. (I'm not a private person, the handle is just more useful for being a consistently recognizable person online.) I'm 24 and in Berkeley, California, USA. No association with the college; I just live here. I'm a cyclist, an omnivore, and a nontheist; none of these are because of moral beliefs.

I'm a high school dropout, which I like telling people after they've met me, because I like fighting the illusion that formal education is the only way to produce intelligent, literate, and articulate people--or rather, that the only reason to drop out is not being one. In mid-August of this year I woke up one morning, thought for a while about things I could do with my life that would be productive and fulfilling, and decided it would be helpful to have a bachelor's degree. I started classes two weeks later. GEs for now, then a transfer into a communication or language program. It's very strange taking classes with people who were in high school four months ago.

My major area of inte... (read more)

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5Alicorn
Upvoted for the amusing phrase "electric meatball".
[-]Skepxian110

Greetings, all. Found this site not too long ago, been reading through it in delight. It has truly energized my brain. I've been trying to codify and denote a number of values that I held true to my life and to discussion and to reason and logic, but was having the most difficult time. I was convinced I'd found a wonderful place that could help me when it provided me a link to the Twelve Virtues of Rationality, which neatly and tidily listed out a number of things I'd been striving to enumerate.

My origins in rationality basically originated at a very, very young age, when the things adults said and did didn't make sense. Some of it did, as a matter of fact, make more sense once I'd gotten older - but they could have at least tried to explain it to me - and I found that their successes too often seemed more like luck than having anything to do with their reasons for doing things. I suppose I became a rationalist out of frustration, one could say, at the sheer irrationality of the world around me.

I'm a Christian, and have applied my understanding of Rationality to Christianity. I find it holds up strongly, but am not insulted that not everyone feels that way. This site may be... (read more)

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[-]LauralH110

My name is Laural, 33-yo female, degree in CS, fetish for EvPsych. Raised Mormon, got over it at 18 or so, became a staunch Darwinist at 25.

I've been reading OvercomingBias on and off for years, but I didn't see this specific site till all the links to the Harry Potter fanfic came about. I had in fact just completed that series in May, so was quite excited to see the two things combined. But I think I wouldn't have registered if I hadn't read the AI Box page, which convinced me that EY was a genius. Personally, I am more interested in life-expansion than FAI. I'm most interested in changing social policy to legalize drugs, I suppose; if people are allowed to put whatever existing substances in their bodies, the substances that don't yet exist have a better chance.

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[-]TobyBartels110

I also found this blog through HP:MoR.

My ultimate social value is freedom, by which I mean the power of each person to control their own life. I believe in something like a utilitarian calculus, where utility is freedom, except that I don't really believe that there is a common scale in which one person's loss of freedom can be balanced by another person's gain. However, I find that freedom is usually very strongly positive-sum on any plausible scale, so this flaw doesn't seem to matter very much.

Of course, freedom in this sense can only be a social value; this leaves it up to each person to decide their own personal values: what they want for their own lives. In my case, I value forming and sustaining friendships in meatspace, often with activities centred around food and shared work, and I also value intellectual endeavours, mostly of an abstract mathematical sort. But this may change with my whims.

I might proselytise freedom here from time to time. There would be no point in proselytising my personal values, however.

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3TobyBartels
Now that I think about it, I may have found HP:MoR through this blog. (I don't read much fan fiction.) I can't remember anymore what linked me to HP:MoR, but I think that I got there after following a series of blog posts linking to blog posts on blogs that I don't ordinarily read. So I might well have gone through Less Wrong (or Overcoming Bias) along that way. But if so, I wasn't inspired to read further in Less Wrong until after I'd read HP:MoR.
[-]WrongBot110

Hi all.

I found this site through Methods of Rationality (as I suspect many have, of late). I've been reading through the sequences and archives for a while, and am finally starting to feel up to speed enough to comment here and there.

My name is Sam. I'm a programmer, mostly interested in writing and designing games. Oddly enough, my username derives from my much-neglected blog, which I believe predated this website.

I've always relished discovering that I'm wrong; if there's a better way to consistently improve the accuracy of one's beliefs, I'm not aware of it. So the LW approach makes an awful lot of sense to me, and I'm really enjoying how much concentrated critical thinking is available in the archives.

I'm also polyamorous, and so I'm considering a post or two on how polyamory (and maybe other kinds of alternative sexualities) relates to the practice of rationality. Would there be any interest in that sort of thing? I don't want to drag a pet topic into a place it's unwanted.

Furthermore, I am overfond of parentheses and semicolons. I apologize in advance.

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5RobinZ
Hello! I like your blog. I have a bit harsher filter than a number of prolific users of Less Wrong, I think - I would, pace Blueberry, like to see discussion of polyamory here only if you can explain how to imply the insights to other fields as well. I would be interested in the material, but I don't think this is the context for the merely interesting.
5WrongBot
The post I'm envisioning is less an analysis of polyamory as a lifestyle and more about what I'm tentatively calling the monogamy bias. While the science isn't quite there (I think; I need to do more research on the topic) to argue that a bias towards monogamy is built into human brain chemistry, it's certainly built into (Western) society. My personal experience has been that overcoming that bias makes life much more fun, so I'd probably end up talking about how to analyze whether monogamy is something a person might actually want. The other LW topic that comes out of polyamory is the idea of managing romantic jealousy, which ends up being something of a necessity. Depending on how verbose I get, those may or may not get combined into a single post. In any case, would either of those pass your (or more general) filters?
5Vladimir_M
I certainly find quality discussions about such topics interesting and worthwhile, and consistent with the mission statement of advancing rationality and overcoming bias, but I'm not sure if the way you define your proposed topic is good. Namely, you speak of the possibility that "bias towards monogamy is built into human brain chemistry," and claim that this bias is "certainly built into (Western) society." Now, in discussing topics like these, which present dangerous minefields of ideological biases and death-spirals, it is of utmost importance to keep one's language clear and precise, and avoid any vague sweeping statements. Your statement, however, doesn't make it clear whether you are talking about a bias towards social norms encouraging (or mandating) monogamy, or about a bias towards monogamy as a personal choice held by individuals. If you're arguing the first claim, you must define precisely the metric you use to evaluate different social norms, which is a very difficult problem. If you're arguing the second one, you must establish which precise groups of people your claim applies to, and which not, and what metric of personal welfare you use to establish that biased decisions are being made. In either case, it seems to me that establishing a satisfactory case for a very general statement like the one you propose would be impossible without an accompanying list of very strong disclaimers. Therefore, I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to set out to establish such a general and sweeping observation, which would, at least to less careful readers, likely be suggestive of stronger conclusions than what has actually been established. Perhaps it would be better to limit the discussion to particular, precisely defined biases on concrete questions that you believe are significant here.
4WrongBot
I think I grouped my ideas poorly; the two kinds of bias you point out would be better descriptions of the two topics I'm thinking of writing about. (And they definitely seem to be separate enough that I shouldn't be writing about them in the same post.) So, to clarify, then: Topic 1: Individuals in industrialized cultures (but the U.S. more strongly than most, due to religious influence) very rarely question the default relationship style of monogamy in the absence of awareness of other options, and usually not even then. This is less of a bias and more of a blind spot: there are very few people who are aware that there are alternatives to visible monogamy. Non-consensual non-monogamy (cheating) is, of course, something of a special case. I'm not sure if there's an explicit "unquestioned assumptions that rule large aspects of your life" category on LW, but that kind of material seems to be well-received. I'd argue that there's at least as much reason to question the idea that "being monogamous is good" as the idea that "being religious is good." Of course my conclusions are a little different, in that one's choice of relationship style is ultimately a utilitarian consideration, whereas religion is nonsense. Topic 2: Humans have a neurological bias in favor of (certain patterns of behavior associated with) monogamy. This would include romantic jealousy, as mentioned. While the research in humans is not yet definitive, there's substantial evidence that the hormone vasopressin, which is released into the brain during sexual activity, is associated with pair-bonding and male-male aggression. In prairie voles, vasopressin production seems to be the sole factor in whether or not they mate for life. Romantic/sexual jealousy is a cultural universal in humans, and has no known purpose other than to enforce monogamous behavior. So there are definitely biological factors that affect one's reasoning about relationship styles; it should be obvious that if some people prefer t
5RobinZ
Let me give an example of a topic that I think would pass my filter: establish that there is a bias (i.e. erroneous heuristic) toward monogamy, reverse-engineer the bias, demonstrate the same mechanisms working in other areas, and give suggestions for identifying other biases created by the same mechanism. Let me give an example of a topic that I think would not pass my filter: establish that there is a bias towards monogamy, demonstrate the feasibility and desirability of polygamy, and offer instructions on how to overcome the bias and make polyamory an available and viable option. Does that make sense?
[-]ValH110

I'm Valerie, 23 and a brand new atheist. I was directed to LW on a (also newly atheist) friend's recommendation and fell in love with it.

Since identifying as an atheist, I've struggled a bit with 'now what?' I feel like a whole new world has opened up to me and there is so much out there that I didn't even know existed. It's a bit overwhelming, but I'm loving the influx of new knowledge. I'm still working to shed old patterns of thinking and work my way into new ones. I have the difficulty of reading something and feeling that I understand it, but not being able to articulate it again (something left over from defending my theistic beliefs, which had no solid basis). I think I just need some practice :)

EDIT: Your link to the series of posts on why LW is generally atheistic is broken. Which makes me sad.

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5ata
Welcome! The page on LW's views on religion (or something like that page — not sure if the old wiki's content was migrated directly or just replaced) is now here. The Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions, Reductionism, and How To Actually Change Your Mind sequences are also relevant, in that they provide the background knowledge sufficient to make theism seem obviously wrong. Sounds like you're already convinced, but those sequences contain some pretty crucial core rationalist material, so I'd recommend reading them anyway (if you haven't already). If there's anything in particular you're thinking "now what?" about, I and others here would be happy to direct you to relevant posts/sequences and help with any other questions about life, the universe, and everything. (Me, I recently decided to go back to the very beginning and read every post and the comments on most of them... but I realize not everyone's as dedicated/crazy (dedicrazy?) as me. :P)
[-]ThoughtDancer110
  • Handle: thoughtdancer
  • Name: Deb
  • Location: Middle of nowhere, Michigan
  • Age: 44
  • Gender: Female
  • Education: PhD Rhetoric
  • Occupation: Writer-wannabe, adjunct Prof (formerly tenure-track, didn't like it)
  • Blog: thoughtdances Just starting, be gentle please

I'm here because of SoullessAutomaton, who is my apartment-mate and long term friend. I am interested in discussing rhetoric and rationality. I have a few questions that I would pose to the group to open up the topic.

1) Are people interested in rhetoric, persuasion, and the systematic study thereof? Does anyone want a primer? (My PhD is in the History and Theory of Rhetoric, so I could develop such a primer.)

2) What would a rationalist rhetoric look like?

3) What would be the goals / theory / overarching observations that would be the drivers behind a rationalist rhetoric?

4) Would a rationalist rhetoric be more ethical than current rhetorics, and if so, why?

5) Can rhetoric ever be fully rational and rationalized, or is the study of how people are persuaded inevitably or inherently a-rational or anti-rational (I would say that rhetoric can be rationalized, but I know too many scholars who would disagree with me here, either explici... (read more)

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5MBlume
I rather like Eliezer's description of ethical writing given in rule six here. I'm honestly not sure why he doesn't seem to link it anymore.
[-]zslastman100

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.

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[-]phonypapercut100

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.

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[-]Nornagest100

Well, as best I can tell my maintainer didn't install the religion patch, so all I'm working with is the testaments of others; but I have seen quite a variety of such testaments. Buddhism and Hinduism have a typology of religious experience much more complex than anything I've seen systematically laid down in mainline Christianity; it's usually expressed in terms unique to the Dharmic religions, but vipassanā for example certainly seems to qualify as an experiential pointer to Buddhist ontology.

If you'd prefer Western traditions, a phrase I've heard kicked around in the neopagan, reconstructionist, and ceremonial magic communities is "unsubstantiated personal gnosis". While that's a rather flippant way of putting it, it also seems to point to something similar to your experiences.

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[-]thomblake100

I appreciate Will's contributions in general. Mostly the insane ones.

They remind me of a friend of mine who is absolutely brilliant but has lived his whole life with severe damage to vital parts of the brain.

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9Jack
I often appreciate his contributions as well. He is generally awful at constraining his abstract creativity so as to formulate constructive, concrete ideas but I can constrain abstract creativity just fine so his posts often provoke insights-- the rest just bumps up against my nonsense filter. Reading him at his best is a bit like taking a small dose of a hallucinogenic to provide my brain with a dose of raw material to hack away at with logic.
3Will_Newsome
Folks like you might wanna friend me on Facebook, I'm generally a lot more insightful and comprehensible there. I use Facebook like Steven Kaas uses Twitter. https://www.facebook.com/autothexis Re your other comment re mechanisms for psi, I can't muster up the energy to reply unfortunately. I'd have to be too careful about keeping levels of organization distinct, which is really easy to do in my head but really hard to write about. I might respond later.
8Will_Newsome
That's interesting. Which parts of the brain, if you don't mind sharing? (Guess: qbefbyngreny cersebagny pbegrk, ohg abg irel pbasvqrag bs gung.)
3thomblake
I believe that is spot on, but I can't recall specifics. Certainly in the neighborhood.
3wedrifid
I enjoy following Will's contributions on facebook (and here when he isn't being willfully obnoxious). They remind me of, well, myself only worse.
[-]Emile100

The impression I have is that calling Crocker's rules being never acting offended or angry at the way people talk to you, with the expectation that you'll get more information if people don't censor themselves out of politeness.

Some of your reactions here are not those I expect from someone under Crocker's rules (who would just ignore anything insulting or offensive).

So maybe what you consider as "Crocker's rules" is what most people here would consider "normal" discussion, so when you call Crocker's rules, people are extra rude.

I would suggest just dropping reference to Crocker's rules, I don't think they're necessary for having a reasonable discussion, and they they put pressure on the people you're talking to to either call Crocker's rules too (giving you carte blanche to be rude to them), otherwise they look uptight or something.

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4AspiringKnitter
Possible. I'm inexperienced in talking with neurotypicals. All I know is what was drilled into me by them, which is basically a bunch of things of the form "don't ever convey this piece of information because it's rude" (where the piece of information is like... you have hairy arms, you're wrong, I don't like this food, I don't enjoy spending time with you, this gift was not optimized for making me happy-- and the really awful, horrible dark side where they feel pressured never to say certain things to me, like that I'm wrong, they're annoyed by something I'm doing, I'm ugly, I sound stupid, my writing needs improvement-- it's horrible to deal with people who never say those things because I can never assume sincerity, I just have to assume they're lying all the time) that upon meeting other neurodiverse I immediately proceeded to forget all about. And so did they. And THAT works out well. It's accepted within that community that "Crocker's rules" is how the rest of the world will refer to it. Anyway, if I'm not allowed to hear the truth without having to listen to whatever insults anyone can come up with, then so be it, I really want to hear the truth and I know it will never be given to me otherwise. But there IS supposed to be something between "you are not allowed to say anything to me except that I'm right about everything and the most wonderful special snowflake ever" and "insult me in every way you can think of", even if the latter is still preferable to the former. (Is this community a place with a middle ground? If so, I didn't think such existed. If so, I'll gladly go by the normal rules of discussion here.)
[-]TheOtherDave100

My experience of LW is that:

  • the baseline interaction mode would be considered rude-but-not-insulting by most American subcultures, especially neurotypical ones
  • the interaction mode invoked by "Crocker's rules" would be considered insulting by most American subcultures, especially neurotypical ones
  • there's considerable heterogeneity in terms of what's considered unacceptably rude
  • there's a tentative consensus that dealing with occasional unacceptable rudeness is preferable to the consequences of disallowing occasional unacceptable rudeness, and
  • the community pushes back on perceived attempts to enforce politeness far more strongly than it pushes back on perceived rudeness.

Dunno if any of that answers your questions.

I would also say that nobody here has come even remotely close to "insult in every conceivable way" as an operating mode.

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5daenerys
YES! There seem to be a lot of new people introducing themselves on the Welcome thread today/yesterday. I would like to encourage everyone to maybe be just a tad bit more polite, and cognizant of the Principle of Charity, at least for the next week or two, so all our newcomers can acclimate to the culture here. As someone who has only been on this site for a month or two (also as a NT, socially-skilled, female), I have spoken in the past about my difficulties dealing with the harshness here. I ended up deciding not to fight it, since people seem to like it that way, and that's ok. But I do think the community needs to be aware that this IS in fact an issue that new (especially NT) people are likely to shy away from, and even leave or just not post because of. tl;dr- I deal with the "rudeness", but want people to be aware that is does in fact exist. Those of us who dislike it have just learned to keep our mouths shut and deal with it. There are a lot of new people now, so try to soften it for the next week or two. (Note: I have not been recently down-voted, flamed, or crushed, so this isn't just me raging.)
2thomblake
I should hope not. I can conceive of more ways to insult than I can type in a day, depending on how we want to count 'ways'.
[-]TheOtherDave110

How do I insult thee? Let me count the ways.
I insult thee to the depth and breadth and height
My mind can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the lack of Reason and the craft of Bayes.

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8J_Taylor
Turning and turning in the narrowing spiral The user cannot resist those memes which are viral; The waterline is lowered; beliefs begin to cool; Mere tribalism is loosed, upon Lesswrong's school, The grey-matter is killed, and everywhere The knowledge of one's ignorance is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
3dlthomas
This should be strongly rejected, if Crocker's Rules are ever going to do more good than harm. I do not mean that it is not the case given existing norms (I simply do not know one way or the other), but that norms should be established such that this is clearly not the case. Someone who is unable to operate according to Crocker's Rules attempting to does not improve discourse or information flow - no one should be pressured to do so.
[-]cousin_it100

someone's attempt to convey information to me has obvious room for improvement

Do you mean improvement of the information content or the tone? If the former, I think saying "your comment was not informative enough, please explain more" is okay, both publicly and privately. If the latter, I think saying "your comment was not polite enough" is not okay under the spirit of Crocker's rules, neither publicly nor privately, even if the other person has declared Crocker's rules too.

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[-]EvelynM100

What do you aspire to knit?

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6AspiringKnitter
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?
[-]Oligopsony100

Acts 10:9-16:

On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour:
And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance,
And saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending upon him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth:
Wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air.
And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat.
But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.
And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.
This was done thrice: and the vessel was received up again into heaven.

If you read the rest of the chapter it's made clear that the dream is a metaphor for God's willingness to accept Gentiles as Christians, rather than a specific message about acceptable foods, but abandoning kashrut presumably follows logically from not requiring new Christians to count as Jews first, so.

(Upon rereading this, my first impression is how much creepier s... (read more)

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[-]wedrifid100

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.

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[-]jwhendy100

Hi, I've been hanging around for several months now and decided to join. My name is John and I found the site (I believe) via a link on CommonSenseAtheism to How to actually change your mind. I read through many of those posts and took notes and resonated with a lot. I loved EY's Twelve Virtues and the Litany of Gendlin.

I'm a graduate in mechanical engineering and work as one today. I don't know that I would call myself a rationalist, but only because I haven't perhaps become one. In other words, I want to be but do not consider myself to be well-versed in rationalist methods and thought compared to posts/comments I read here.

To close, I was brought to this site in a round-about way because I have recently de-converted from Catholicism (which is what took me to CSA). I'm still amidst my "quest" and blog about it HERE. I would say I'm not sure god doesn't exist or that Christianity is false, but the belief is no longer there. I seek to be as certain and justified I can in whatever beliefs I hold. LessWrong has seemed to be a good tool toward that end. I look forward to continuing to learn and want to take this opportunity to begin participating more.

Note: I also post as "Hendy" on several other blogs. We are the same.

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[-]RedRobot100

Hello!

I work in a semi-technical offshoot of (ducks!) online marketing. I've always had rationalist tendencies, and reading the material on this website has had a "coming home" feeling for me. I appreciate the high level of discourse and the low levels of status-seeking behaviors.

I am female, and I read with interest the discussion on gender, but unfortunately I do not think I can contribute much to that topic, because I have been told repeatedly that I am "not like other women." I certainly don't think it would be a good idea to generalize from my example what other women think or feel (although to be honest the same could be said about my ability to represent the general populace).

I found my way here through the Harry Potter story, which a friend sent to me knowing that I would appreciate the themes. I am enjoying it tremendously.

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[-]Emile100

Yup, our only flaw is modesty.

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5taryneast
I've noticed that karma points accrue for witty quips too.
[-]Axel100

My name's Axel Glibert. I'm 21, I just finished studying Biology and now I'm going for a teaching job. I found this wonderful site through hp and the methods of rationality and it has been an eyeopener for me.

I've been raised in a highly religious environment but it didn't take very long before I threw that out of the window. Since then I had to make my own moral rules and attempts at understanding how the universe works. My firsts "scientific experiments" were rather ineffective but it caused me to browse through the science section of the local library... and now, more then a decade later, here I am!

I have long thought I was the only one to so openly choose Science over Religion (thinking even scientists were secretly religious because it was the "right thing to do") but then I found Less Wrong filled with like-minded people! For the past 3 months I've been reading through the core sequences on this site and now I've finally made an account. I'm still too intimidated by the sheer brilliance of some of the threads here to actually post but that's just more motivation for me to study on my own.

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4David_Gerard
Just to go cross-site (RW is slightly anti-endorsed by LW), would the Atheism FAQ for the Newly Deconverted have been of conceivable use to your recovering religious younger self?
3Axel
Yes, that list has a lot of the answers I was looking for. However, for my younger self, breaking from religion meant making my own moral rules so there is a good chance I would have rejected it as just another text trying to control my life (yes my younger self was quite dramatic)
[-]flori86100

I'm Floris Nool a 24 year old recently graduated Dutch ex-student. I came across this site while reading Harry's new rational adventures, which I greatly enjoy by the way. I must say I'm intrigued by several of the subjects being talked about here. Although not everything makes sense at first and I'm still working my through the immense amounts of interesting posts on this site, I find myself endlessly scrolling through posts and comments.

The last few years I increasingly find myself trying to understand things, why they are like they are. Why I act like I do etc. Reading about the greater scientific theories and trying to relate to them in everyday life. While I do not understand as much as I want to, and probably never will seeing the amounts of information and theories out there, I hope to come to greater understanding of basically everything.

It's great to see so many people talking about these subjects, as in daily life hardly anyone seems to think about it like I do. Which can be rather frustrating when trying to talk about what I find interesting subjects.

I hope to be able to some day contribute to the community as I see other posters do, but until I feel comfortable enough about my understanding of everything going on here I will stay lurking for a while. Only having discovered the site two days ago doesn't exactly help.

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[-]Alex_Altair100

I recently found Less Wrong through Eliezer's Harry Potter fanfic, which has become my second favorite book. Thank you so much Eliezer for reminding my how rich my Art can be.

I was also delighted to find out (not so surprisingly) that Eliezer was an AI researcher. I have, over the past several months, decided to change my career path to AGI. So many of these articles have been helpful.

I have been a rationalist since I can remember. But I was raised as a Christian, and for some reason it took me a while to think to question the premise of God. Fortunately as soon as I did, I rejected it. Then it was up to me to 1) figure out how to be immortal and 2) figure out morality. I'll be signing up for cryonics as soon as I can afford it. Life is my highest value because it is the terminal value; it is required for any other value to be possible.

I've been reading this blog every day since I've found it, and hope to get constant benefit from it. I'm usually quiet, but I suspect the more I read, the more I'll want to comment and post.

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6Vladimir_Nesov
* AGI is death, you want Friendly AI in particular and not AGI in general. * "Life" is not the terminal value, terminal value is very complex.
[-][anonymous]100

Hello! I'm Sam. I'm 17, a newly minted high school graduate, and I'll be heading off to Reed College in Portland, Oregon next month.

I discovered Less Wrong through a link (whose origin I no longer remember) to "A Fable of Science and Politics" a couple of months ago. The post was rather striking, and the site's banner was alluring, so I clicked on it. The result, over the past couple of months, has been a massive accumulation of bookmarks (18 directly from Less Wrong at the time of this writing) accompanied by an astonishing amount of insight.

This place is probably the most intellectually stimulating site I've ever found on the internet, and I'm very much looking forward to discovering more posts, as well as reading through the ones I've stored up. I have, until now, mostly read bits and pieces that I've seen on the main page or followed links to, partially because I haven't had time and partially because some of the posts can be intimidatingly academic (I don't have the math and science background to understand some of what Eliezer writes about), but I've made this account and plan to delve into the Sequences shortly.

To some degree, I think I've always been a rationa... (read more)

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[-]chillaxn100

Hi. I'm Cole from Maryland. I found this blog through a list of "greatest blogs of the year." I've forgot who published that list.

I'm in my 23rd year. I value happiness and work to spread it to others. I've been reading this blog for about a month. I enjoy reading blogs like this, because I'm searching for a sustainable lifestyle to start after college.

Cheers

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[-]taiyo100

My name is Taiyo Inoue. I am a 32, male, father of a 1 year old son, married, and a math professor. I enjoy playing the acoustic guitar (American primitive fingerpicking), playing games, and soaking up the non-poisonous bits of the internet.

I went through 12 years of math study without ever really learning that probability theory is the ultimate applied math. I played poker for a bit during the easy money boom for fun and hit on basic probability theory which the 12 year old me could have understood, but I was ignorant of the Bayesian framework for epistemology until I was 30 years old. This really annoys me.

I blame my education for leaving me ignorant about something so fundamental, but mostly I blame myself for not trying harder to learn about fundamentals on my own.

This site is really good for remedying that second bit. I have a goal to help fix the first bit -- I think we call it "raising the sanity waterline".

As a father, I also want to teach my son so he doesn't have the same regret and annoyance at my age.

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4[anonymous]
I'm just realizing this myself; probability theory is epistemology.
[-]clarissethorn100

I go by Clarisse and I'm a feminist, sex-positive educator who has delivered workshops on both sexual communication and BDSM to a variety of audiences, including New York’s Museum of Sex, San Francisco’s Center for Sex and Culture, and several Chicago universities. I created and curated the original Sex+++ sex-positive documentary film series at Chicago’s Jane Addams Hull-House Museum; I have also volunteered as an archivist, curator and fundraiser for that venerable BDSM institution, the Leather Archives & Museum. Currently, I'm working on HIV mitigation in southern Africa. I blog at clarissethorn.wordpress.com and Twitter at @clarissethorn.

Besides sex, other interests include gaming, science fiction and fantasy, and housing cooperatives.

I've read some posts here that I thought had really awful attitudes about sexuality and BDSM in particular, so I'm sure I'll be posting about those. I would like it if people were more rational about sex, inasmuch as we can be.

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3Eliezer Yudkowsky
?? Not any of mine, I hope. EDIT: I see, Phil Goetz on masochism. Well, I downvoted it. Not much else to say, aside from noting that it had net 4 points and that karma rules do make it easier to upvote than downvote. This is a community blog and I think it's pretty fair to say that what has not been voted high or promoted ought not to be blamed on "Less Wrong".
4clarissethorn
That's fair. And I'll add that for a site populated mainly by entitled white guys (I kid, I kid), this site does much better at being generally feminist than most within that demographic. PS It's kind of exciting to be talking to you, EY. Your article on heuristics and biases in the context of extinction events is one of my favorites ever. I probably think about it once a week.
[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky100

But my dilemma is that Chris Langan is the smartest known living man, which makes it really hard for me to shrug the CTMU off as nonsense.

Eh, I'm smart too. Looks to me like you were right the first time and need to have greater confidence in yourself.

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[-]RobinZ100

Ignoring the more obvious jokes people make in introduction posts: Hi. My name is Robin. I grew up in the Eastern Time Zone of the United States, and have lived in the same place essentially all my life. I was homeschooled by secular parents - one didn't discuss religion and the other was agnostic - with my primary hobby being the reading of (mostly) speculative fiction of (mostly) quite high quality. (Again, my parent's fault - when I began searching out on my own, I was rather less selective.) The other major activity of my childhood was participation in the Boy Scouts of America.

I entered community college at the age of fifteen with an excellent grounding in mathematics, a decent grounding in physics, superb fluency with the English language (both written and spoken), and superficial knowledge of most everything else. After earning straight As for three years, I applied to four-year universities, and my home state university offered me a full ride. At present, I am a graduate student in mechanical engineering at the same institution.

In the meantime, I have developed an affection for weblogs, web comics, and online chess, much to the detriment of my sleep schedule and work ethic.... (read more)

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4Alicorn
What gave you the idea that anyone cares about age and experience around here? ;)
[-][anonymous]90

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 environme... (read more)

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[-]thomblake90

Wikipedia and Google seem to think Eliezer is the authority on Crocker's Rules. Quoting Eliezer on sl4 via Wikipedia:

Anyone is allowed to call you a moron and claim to be doing you a favor.

Also, from our wiki:

The underlying assumption is that rudeness is sometimes necessary for effective conveyance of information, if only to signal a lack of patience or tolerance: after all, knowing whether the speaker is becoming angry or despondent is useful rational evidence.

Looking hard for another source, something called the DoWire Wiki has this unsourced:

... (read more)
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[-]Alicorn90

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.)

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[-]JoachimSchipper90

More sex does not have to mean more casual sex. There are lots of people in committed relationships (marriages) that would like to have more-similar sex drives. Nuns wouldn't want their libido increased, but it's not only for the benefit of the "playahs" either.

Also, I think the highest-voted comment ("I don't think that any relationship style is the best (...) However, I do wish that people were more aware of the possibility of polyamory (...)") is closer to the consensus than something like "everyone should have as many partners ... (read more)

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[-][anonymous]90

Hello Lesswrong

I am a nameless, ageless, genderless internet-being who may sometimes act like a 22 year old male from canada. I have always been quite rational and consciously aiming to become more rational, though I had never read any actual discussion of rationality, unless you count cat-v. I did have some possibly wrong ideas that I protected with anti-epistemology, but that managed to collapse on its own recently.

I got linked to lesswrong from reddit. I didn't record the details so don't ask. I do remember reading a few lesswrong articles and thinking ... (read more)

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[-]Michelle_Z90

Hello LessWrong!

My name is Michelle. I am from the United States and am entering college this August. I am a graphic design student who is also interested in public speaking. I was lead to this site one day while browsing fanfiction. I am an avid reader and spend a good percentage of my life reading novels and other literature. I read HPMOR and found the story intriguing and the theories very interesting. When I finally reached the end, I read the author's page and realized that I could find more information on the ideas presented in the book. Naturally, ... (read more)

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5[anonymous]
Greetings! While I naturally feel superior to people who came here via fanfiction.... I want to use this opportunity to peddle some of the fiction that got me here way back in 2009.
3Alicorn
Here, have some more fanfiction!
[-]Ronny Fernandez90

Hello Less wrong.

I've been reading Yudkowsky for a while now. I'm a philosophy major from NJ and he's been quite popular around here since I showed some of my friends three worlds collide. I am here because I think I can offer this forum new and well considered views on cognition, computability, epistemology, ontology, valid inference in general and also have my views kicked around a bit. Hopefully our mutual kicking around of each others views will toughen them up for future kicking battles.

I have studied logic at high levels, and have an intricate und... (read more)

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4[anonymous]
Awesome. Finally someone. Reading the intros I was starting to think only HP:MOR was still bringing people here.
3Benquo
Welcome! It sounds like you have a lot to offer here. You could put your Godel post in the discussion section now, it only requires 2 Karma to do that, and transfer it to the main page later if/when it's popular.The karma threshold is not very high, but asking for free karma instead of building up a record of commenting/discussion posts defeats the purpose of the 20-karma threshold.
[-]DavidAgain90

Hi

Didn't realise that this thread existed, so this 'hello' is after 20 or so posts. Oh well! I found Less Wrong because my brother recommended TVtropes, that linked to Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, and THAT led me back here. I've now recommended this site to my brother, completing the circle.

I've always been interested in rationality, I guess: I wouldn't identify any particular point of 'becoming a rationalist', though I've had times where I've come across ideas that help me be more accurate. Including some on here, actually. There's a secon... (read more)

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[-]Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) 90

Hi everyone!

I found this blog by clicking a link on Eliezer's site...which I found after seeing his name in a transhumanist mailing list...which I subscribed to after reading Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near when I was fifteen. I found Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality at the same time, and I've now successfully addicted my 16-year-old brother as well.

I'm 19 and I'm studying nursing in Ottawa. I work as a lifeguard and swim instructor at a Jewish Community Centre. (I'm not Jewish.) I sing in a girls' choir at an Anglican church. (I'm not C... (read more)

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[-]Jack90

Er. For example, it is really hard to communicate here without being totally literal! And people don't get my jokes!:-)

I wasn't complaining. I was trying to point out that the risk of being discriminated against for having Aspergers Syndrome here was very low given the high number of autism spectrum commenters here and the general climate of the site. I thought I was making a humorous point about the uniqueness of Less Wrong, like "We're so different from the rest of the internet; we discriminate against neurotypicals! Take that rest of the world!&quo... (read more)

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[-]luminosity90

Hi there,

My name is Lachlan, 25 years old, and I too am a computer programmer. I found less wrong via Eliezer's site; having been linked there by a comment on Charles Stross's blog, if I recall correctly.

I've read through a lot of the LW backlog and generally find it all very interesting, but haven't yet taken the time and effort to try to apply the useful seeming guidelines to my life and evaluate the results. I blame this on having left my job recently, and feeling that I have enough change in my life right now. I worry that this excuse will metamorphose... (read more)

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5Alicorn
Love the username!
3luminosity
Completely coincidental -- just a word I liked the sound of 10 years ago. It does fit in here rather well though.
[-]Gigi90

Hi, everyone, you can call me Gigi. I'm a Mechanical Engineering student with a variety of interests ranking among everything from physics to art (unfortunately, I know more about the latter than the former). I've been reading LW frequently and for long sessions for a couple of weeks now.

I was attracted to LW primarily because of the apparent intelligence and friendliness of the community, and the fact that many of the articles illuminated and structured my previous thoughts about the world (I will not bother to name any here, many are in the Sequences).

Wh... (read more)

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3Vive-ut-Vivas
Why "unfortunately"? I'd love to see more discussion about art on Less Wrong.
[-]mitchellb90

Hi, I`m Michèle. I'm 22 years old and studying biology in Germany. My parents are atheists and so am I.
I stumbled upon this blog, started reading and couldn't stop reading. Nearly every topic is very interesting for me and I'm really glad I found people to talk about these things! Sometimes I find myself over emotional and unable to get the whole picture of situations. I'm trying to work on that and I hope I could get some insight reading this blog.

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[-]Hook90

Hello.
My name is Dan, and I'm a 30 year old software engineer living in Maryland. I was a mostly lurking member of the Extropian mailing list back in the day and I've been following the progress of the SIAI sporadically since it's founding. I've made a few donations, but nothing terribly significant.

I've been an atheist for half my life now, and as I've grown older I've tended more and more to rational thinking. My wife recently made a comment that she specifically uses rational argument with me much more so than anyone else she has to deal with, even ... (read more)

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3orthonormal
That's a pretty compelling way to start a conversation on existential risk. I like it.
[-]Karl_Smith90

Name: Karl Smith

Location: Raleigh, North Carolina

Born: 1978

Education: Phd Economics

Occupation: Professor - UNC Chapel Hill

I've always been interested in rationality and logic but was sidetracked for many (12+) years after becoming convinced that economics was the best way to improve the lives of ordinary humans.

I made it to Less Wrong completely by accident. I was into libertarianism which lead me to Bryan Caplan which lead me Robin Hanson (just recently). Some of Robin's stuff convinced me that Cryonics was a good idea. I searched for Cryonics and found ... (read more)

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[-]Psilence90

Hi all, my name's Drew. I stumbled upon the site from who-knows-where last week and must've put in 30-40 hours of reading already, so suffice to say I've found the writing/discussions quite enjoyable so far. I'm heavily interested in theories of human behavior on both a psychological and moral level, so most of the subject matter has been enjoyable. I was a big Hofstader fan a few years back as well, so the AI and consciousness discussions are interesting as well.

Anyway, thought I'd pop in and say hi, maybe I'll take part in some conversations soon. Looks like a great thing you've got going here.

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[-]hrishimittal90

Hi, I'm Hrishi, 26, male. I work in air pollution modelling in London. I'm also doing a part-time PhD.

I am an atheist but come from a very religious family background.

When I was 15, I once cried uncontrollably and asked to see God. If there is indeed such a beautiful supreme being then why didn't my family want to meet Him? I was told that their faith was weak and only the greatest sages can see God after a lot of self-afflicted misery. So, I thought nevermind.

I've signed up for cryonics. You should too, or it'll just be 3 of us from LW when we wake up on... (read more)

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[-]Alicorn90
  • Handle: Alicorn
  • Location: Amherst, MA
  • Age: The number of full years between now and October 21, 1988
  • Gender: Female

Atheist by default, rationalist by more recent inclination and training. I found OB via Stumbleupon and followed the yellow brick road to Less Wrong. In the spare time left by schoolwork and OB/LW, I do art, write, cook, and argue with those of my friends who still put up with it.

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[-]Alicorn80

ugly little lump.

Will is good-looking, normal-sized, and not at all lumpy. If you must insult people, can you do it in a less wrong way?

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[-]wedrifid80

What did they win money for?

Betting money. That is how such things work.

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[-]Bugmaster80

And I would never have dreamed of the stupidity until someone did it, but someone actually interpreted metaphors from Proverbs literally and concluded that "her husband is praised at the city gates" actually means "women should go to the city limits and hold up signs saying that their husbands are awesome"

As a semi-militant atheist, I feel compelled to point out that, from my perspective, all interpretations of Proverbs as a practical guide to modern life look about equally silly...

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[-]MixedNuts80

There are places for this debate and they're not this thread. You're being rude.

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8Laoch
My apologies. Interesting questions none the less.
3MarkusRamikin
And more disappointingly, confirming what should have been completely off-the-mark predictions about what reception Knitter would get as a Christian. I confess myself surprised. Hi, Knitter. What does EC stand for again?
[-]MixedNuts230

The boring explanation is that Laoch was taught as the feet of PZ Myers and Hitchens, who operate purely in places open for debate (atheist blogs are not like dinner tables); talk about the arguments of religious people not to them, but to audiences already sympathetic to atheism, and thus care little about principles of charity; and have a beef with religion-as-harmful-organization (e.g. "Hassidic Judaism hurts queers!") and rather often with religious-people-as-outgroup-members (e.g. "Sally says abortion is murder because she's trying to manipulate me!"), which interferes with their beef with religion-as-reasoning-mistake (e.g. "Sadi thinks he can derive knowledge in ways that violate thermodynamics!").

The reading-too-much-HPMOR explanation is that Laoch is an altruistic Slytherin, who wants Knitter to think: "This is a good bunch. Not only are most people nice, but they can swiftly punish jerks. And there are such occasional jerks - I don't have to feel silly about expecting a completely different reaction than I got, it was because bad apples are noisier.".

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[-]MarkusRamikin100

I would have thought there ain't no such critter as "too much MoR", but after seeing that theory... ;)

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4AspiringKnitter
It stands for evaporative cooling and I'm not offended. It's a pretty valid point. (Laoch: I expect God not to abuse his power, hence I wouldn't classify him as a whimsical tyrant. And part of my issue is with being turned into a computer, which sounds even worse than making a computer that acts like me and thinks it is me.) I can't decide which of MixedNuts's hypotheses is more awesome.
[-]TheOtherDave140

I'd be interested to hear more about your understanding of what a computer is, that drives your confidence that being turned into one is a bad thing.

Relatedly, how confident are you that God will never make a computer that acts like you and thinks it is you? How did you arrive at that confidence?

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3Bugmaster
(this is totally off-topic, but is there a "watch comment" feature hiddent around the LW UI somewhere ? I am also interested to see AspiringKnitter's opinion on this subject, but just I know I'll end up losing track of it without technological assistance...)
8jaimeastorga2000
Every LW comment has its own RSS feed. You can find it by going to the comment's permalink URL and then clicking on "Subscribe to RSS Feed" from the right column or by adding "/.rss" to the end of the aforementioned URL, whichever is easier for you. The grandparent's RSS feed is here.
2AspiringKnitter
For one thing, I'm skeptical that an em would be me, but aware that almost everyone here thinks it would be. If it thought it was me, and they thought it was me, but I was already dead, that would be really bad. And if I somehow wasn't dead, there could be two of us and both claiming to be the real person. God would never blunder into it by accident believing he was prolonging my life. And if it really was me, and I really was a computer, whoever made the computer would have access to all of my brain and could embed whatever they wanted in it. I don't want to be programmed to, just as an implausible example, worship Eliezer Yudkowsky. More plausibly, I don't want to be modified without my consent, which might be even easier if I were a computer. (For God to do it, it would be no different from the current situation, of course. He has as much access to my brain as he wants.) And if the computer was not me but was sentient (wouldn't it be awful if we created nonsentient ems that emulated everyone and ended up with a world populated entirely by beings with no qualia that pretend to be real people?), then I wouldn't want it to be vulnerable to involuntary modification, either. I'd feel a great deal of responsibility for it if I were alive, and if I were not alive, then it would essentially be the worst of both worlds. God doing this would not expose it to any more risk than all other living beings. Does this seem rational to you, or have I said something that doesn't make sense?
[-]Bugmaster140

I'm going to scoop TheOtherDave on this topic, I hope he doesn't mind :-/

But first of all, who do you mean by "an em" ? I think I know the answer, but I want to make sure.

If it thought it was me, and they thought it was me, but I was already dead, that would be really bad.

From my perspective, a machine that thinks it is me, and that behaves identically to myself, would, in fact, be myself. Thus, I could not be "already dead" under that scenario, until someone destroys the machine that comprises my body (which they could do with my biological body, as well).

There are two scenarios I can think of that help illustrate my point.

1). Let's pretend that you and I know each other relatively well, though only through Less Wrong. But tomorrow, aliens abduct me and replace me with a machine that makes the same exact posts as I normally would. If you ask this replica what he ate for breakfast, or how he feels about walks on the beach, or whatever, it will respond exactly as I would have responded. Is there any test you can think of that will tell you whether you're talking to the real Bugmaster, or the replica ? If the answer is "no", then how do you know th... (read more)

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[-]AspiringKnitter100

That's a REALLY good response.

An em would be a computer program meant to emulate a person's brain and mind.

From my perspective, a machine that thinks it is me, and that behaves identically to myself, would, in fact, be myself. Thus, I could not be "already dead" under that scenario, until someone destroys the machine that comprises my body (which they could do with my biological body, as well).

If you create such a mind that's just like mine at this very moment, and take both of us and show the construct something, then ask me what you showed the construct, I won't know the answer. In that sense, it isn't me. If you then let us meet each other, it could tell me something.

If you ask this replica what he ate for breakfast, or how he feels about walks on the beach, or whatever, it will respond exactly as I would have responded. Is there any test you can think of that will tell you whether you're talking to the real Bugmaster, or the replica ? If the answer is "no", then how do you know that you aren't talking to the replica at this very moment ? More importantly, why does it matter ?

Because this means I could believe that Bugmaster is comfortable and able to... (read more)

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7Prismattic
I realize that theological debate has a pretty tenuous connection to the changing of minds, but sometimes one is just in the mood.... Suppose that tonight I lay I minefield all around your house. In the morning, I tell you the minefield is there. Then I send my child to walk through it. My kid gets blown up, but this shows you a safe path out of your house and allows you to go about your business. If I then suggest that you should express your gratitude to me everyday for the rest of your life, would you think that reasonable?.... According to your theology, was hell not created by God? I once asked my best friend, who is a devout evangelical, how he could be sure that the words of the Bible as we have it today are correct, given the many iterations of transcription it must have gone through. According to him, God's general policy of noninterference in free will didn't preclude divinely inspiring the writers of the Bible to trancribe it inerrantly. At least according to one thesist's account, then, God was willing to interfere as long it was something really important for man's salvation. And even if you don't agree with that particular interpretation, I'd like to hear your explanation how the points at which God "hardened Pharaoh's heart", for example, don't amount to interfering with free will.
4AspiringKnitter
I have nothing to say to your first point because I need to think that over and study the relevant theology (I never considered that God made hell and now I need to ascertain whether he did before I respond or even think about responding, a question complicated by being unsure of what hell is). With regard to your second point, however, I must cordially disagree with anyone who espouses the complete inerrancy of all versions of the Bible. (I must disagree less cordially with anyone who espouses the inerrancy of only the King James Version.) I thought it was common knowledge that the King James Version suffered from poor translation and the Vulgate was corrupt. A quick glance at the disagreements even among ancient manuscripts could tell you that. I suppose if I complain about people with illogical beliefs making Christianity look bad, you'll think it's a joke...
7Nornagest
I don't really have a dog in this race. That said, Matthew 25:41 seems to point in that direction, although "prepared" is perhaps a little weaker than "made". It does seem to imply control and deliberate choice. That's the first passage that comes to mind, anyway. There's not a whole lot on Hell in the Bible; most of the traditions associated with it are part of folk as opposed to textual Christianity, or are derived from essentially fanfictional works like Dante's or Milton's.
5Gust
That made me laugh. Calling Dante "fanfiction" of the Bible was just so unexpected and simultaneously so accurate.
4Prismattic
Upvoted for self-awareness. The more general problem, of course, is that if you don't believe in textual inerrancy (of whatever version of the Bible you happen to prefer), you still aren't relying on God to decide which parts are correct.
3Bugmaster
As Prismattic said, if you discard inerrancy, you run into the problem of classifications. How do you know which parts of the Bible are literally true, which are metaphorical, and which have been superseded by the newer parts ? I would also add that our material world contains many things that, while they aren't as bad as Hell, are still pretty bad. For example, most animals eat each other alive in order to survive (some insects do so in truly terrifying ways); viruses and bacteria ravage huge swaths of the population, human, animal and plant alike; natural disasters routinely cause death and suffering on the global scale, etc. Did God create all these things, as well ?
4MixedNuts
That's not a very good argument. "If you accept some parts are metaphorical, how do you know which are?" is, but if you only accept transcription and translation errors, you just treat it like any other historical document.
2Oligopsony
Well, that really depends on what your translation criteria are. :) Reading KJV and, say, NIV side-by-side is like hearing Handel in one ear and Creed in the other.
2khafra
When I feel the urge, I go to r/debatereligion. The standards of debate aren't as high as they are here, of course; but I don't have to feel guilty about lowering them.
5Kaj_Sotala
Upvoted for dismissing the inclination to respond sarcastically after remembering the inferential distance.
4Bugmaster
That's what I thought, cool. Agreed; that is similar to what I meant earlier about the copies "diverging". I don't see this as problematic, though -- after all, there currently exists only one version of me (as far as I know), but that version is changing all the time (even as I type this sentence), and that's probably a good thing. Ok, that's a very good point; my example was flawed in this regard. I could've made the aliens more obviously benign. For example, maybe the biological Bugmaster got hit by a bus, but the aliens snatched up his brain just in time, and transcribed it into a computer. Then they put that computer inside of a perfectly realistic synthetic body, so that neither Bugmaster nor anyone else knows what happened (Bugmaster just thinks he woke up in a hospital, or something). Under these conditions, would it matter to you that you were talking to the replica or the biological Bugmaster ? But, in the context of my original example, with the (possibly) evil aliens: why aren't you worried that you are talking to the replica right at this very moment ? I agree that the issue of the soul would indeed be very important; if I believed in souls, as well as a God who answers specific questions regarding souls, I would probably be in total agreement with you. I don't believe in either of those things, though. So I guess my next two questions would be as follows: a). Can you think of any non-supernatural reasons why an electronic copy of you wouldn't count as you, and/or b). Is there anything other than faith that causes you to believe that souls exist ? If the answers to (a) and (b) are both "no", then we will pretty much have to agree to disagree, since I lack faith, and faith is (probably) impossible to communicate. Well, yes, preaching to me or to any other atheist is very unlikely to work. However, if you manage to find some independently verifiable and faith-independent evidence of God's (or any god's) existence, I'd convert in a heartbeat. I conf
3AspiringKnitter
Okay, but if both start out as me, how do we determine which one ceases to be me when they diverge? My answer would be the one who was here first is me, which is problematic because I could be a replica, but only conditional on machines having souls or many of my religious beliefs being wrong. (If I learn that I am a replica, I must update on one of those.) Besides being electronic and the fact that I might also be currently existing (can there be two ships of Theseus?), no. Oh, wait, yes; it SHOULDN'T count as me if we live in a country which uses deontological morality in its justice system. Which isn't really the best idea for a justice system anyway, but if so, then it's hardly fair to treat the construct as me in that case because it can't take credit or blame for my past actions. For instance, if I commit a crime, it shouldn't be blamed if it didn't commit the crime. (If we live in a sensible, consequentialist society, we might still want not to punish it, but if everyone believes it's me, including it, then I suppose it would make sense to do so. And my behavior would be evidence about what it is likely to do in the future.) If by "faith" you mean "things that follow logically from beliefs about God, the afterlife and the Bible" then no. No, but it could act like one. When I say "feel like a human" I mean "feel" in the same way that I feel tired, not in the same way that you would be able to perceive that I feel soft. I feel like a human; if you touch me, you'll notice that I feel a little like bread dough. I cannot perceive this directly, but I can observe things which raise the probability of it. But something acting like a person is sufficient reason to treat it like one. We should err on the side of extending kindness where it's not needed, because the alternative is to err on the side of treating people like unfeeling automata. Since I can think of none that I trust enough to, for instance, let them chain me to the wall of a soundproof cell in the
7TheOtherDave
So... hm. So if I'm parsing you correctly, you are assuming that if an upload of me is created, Upload_Dave necessarily differs from me in the following ways: it doesn't have a soul, and consequently is denied the possibility of heaven, it doesn't have a sense of smell, taste, hearing, sight, or touch, it doesn't have my hands, or perhaps hands at all, it is easier to hack (that is, to modify without its consent) than my brain is. Yes? Yeah, I think if I believed all of that, I also wouldn't be particularly excited by the notion of uploading. For my own part, though, those strike me as implausible beliefs. I'm not exactly sure what your reasons for believing all of that are... they seem to come down to a combination of incredulity (roughly speaking, no computer program in your experience has ever had those properties, so it feels ridiculous to assume that a computer program can ever have those properties) and that they contradict your existing religious beliefs. Have I understood you? I can see where, if I had more faith than I do in the idea that computer programs will always be more or less like they are now, and in the idea that what my rabbis taught me when I was a child was a reliable description of the world as it is, those beliefs about computer programs would seem more plausible.
2AspiringKnitter
Mostly. More like "it doesn't have a soul, therefore there's nothing to send to heaven". I have a great deal of faith in the ability of computer programs to surprise me by using ever-more-sophisticated algorithms for parsing data. I don't expect them to feel. If I asked a philosopher what it's like for a bat to be a bat, they'd understand the allusion I'd like to make here, but that's awfully jargony. Here's an explanation of the concept I'm trying to convey. I don't know whether that's something you've overlooked or whether I'm asking a wrong question.
[-]TheOtherDave150

If it helps, I've read Nagel, and would have gotten the bat allusion. (Dan Dennett does a very entertaining riff on "What is it like to bat a bee?" in response.)

But I consider the physics of qualia to be kind of irrelevant to the conversation we're having.

I mean, I'm willing to concede that in order for a computer program to be a person, it must be able to feel things in italics, and I'm happy to posit that there's some kind of constraint -- label it X for now -- such that only X-possessing systems are capable of feeling things in italics.

Now, maybe the physics underlying X is such that only systems made of protoplasm can possess X. This seems an utterly unjustified speculation to me, and no more plausible than speculating that only systems weighing less than a thousand pounds can possess X, or only systems born from wombs can possess X, or any number of similar speculations. But, OK, sure, it's possible.

So what? If it turns out that a computer has to be made of protoplasm in order to possess X, then it follows that for an upload to be able to feel things in italics, it has to be an upload running on a computer made of protoplasm. OK, that's fine. It's just an engineer... (read more)

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3Bugmaster
I would say that they both cease to be you, just as the current, singular "you" ceases to be that specific "you" the instant you see some new sight or think some new thought. Agreed, though I would put something like, "if a person diverged into two separate versions who then became two separate people, then one version shouldn't be blamed for the crimes of the other version". On a separate note, I'm rather surprised to hear that you prefer consequentialist morality to deontological morality; I was under the impression that most Christians followed the Divine Command model, but it looks like I was wrong. I mean something like, "whatever it is that causes you to believe in in God, the afterlife, and the Bible in the first place", but point taken. Ooh, I see, I totally misunderstood what you meant. By feel, you mean "experience feelings", thus something akin to qualia, right ? But in this case, your next statement is problematic: In this case, wouldn't it make sense to conclude that mind uploading is a perfectly reasonable procedure for anyone (possibly other than yourself) to undergo ? Imagine that Less Wrong was a community where mind uploading was common. Thus, at any given point, you could be talking to a mix of uploaded minds and biological humans; but you'd strive to treat them all the same way, as human, since you don't know which is which (and it's considered extremely rude to ask). This makes sense to me, but this would seem to contradict your earlier statement that you could, in fact, detect whether any particular entity had a soul (by asking God), in which case it might make sense for you to treat soulless people differently regardless of what they acted like. On the other hand, if you're willing to treat all people the same way, even if their ensoulment status is in doubt, then why would you not treat yourself the same way, regardless of whether you were using a biological body or an electronic one ? Good point. I should point out that some people d
7Dreaded_Anomaly
Also: transcranial magnetic stimulation, pharmaceuticals and other chemicals, physical damage...
8TheOtherDave
Makes sense enough. For my own part, two things: * I entirely agree with you that various forms of mistaken and fraudulent identity, where entities falsely claim to be me or are falsely believed to be me, are problematic. Indeed, there are versions of that happening right now in the real world, and they are a problem. (That last part doesn't have much to do with AI, of course.) * I agree that people being modified without their consent is problematic. That said, it's not clear to me that I would necessarily be more subject to being modified without my consent as a computer than I am as whatever I am now -- I mean, there's already a near-infinite assortment of things that can modify me without my consent, and there do exist techniques for making accidental/malicious modification of computers difficult, or at least reversible. (I would really have appreciated error-correction algorithms after my stroke, for example, or at least the ability to restore my mind from backup afterwards. So the idea that the kind of thing I am right now is the ne plus ultra of unmodifiability rings false for me.)
4Laoch
Who wants to turn you into a computer? I'm confused. I don't want to turn anybody into anything, I have no sovereignty there nor would I expect it.
2AspiringKnitter
EY and Robin Hanson approve of emulating people's brains on computers.
9Nornagest
Approving of something in principle doesn't necessarily translate into believing it should be mandatory regardless of the subject's feelings on the matter, or even into advocating it in any particular case. I'd be surprised if EY in particular ever made such an argument, given the attitude toward self-determination expressed in his Metaethics and Fun Theory sequences; I am admittedly extrapolating from only tangentially related data, though. Not sure I've ever read anything of his dealing with the ethics of brain simulation, aside from the specific and rather unusual case given in Nonperson Predicates and related articles. Robin Hanson's stance is a little different; his emverse is well-known, but as best I can tell he's founding it on grounds of economic determinism rather than ethics. I'm hardly an expert on the subject, nor an unbiased observer (from what I've read I think he's privileging the hypothesis, among other things), but everything of his that I've read on the subject parses much better as a Cold Equations sort of deal than as an ethical imperative.
8Laoch
And? Does that mean forcing you to be emulated?
9AspiringKnitter
Good point.
3Laoch
I'm sure you're pro self determination right? Or are you? One of the things that pushed me away from religion in the beginning was there was no space for self determination(not that there is much from a natural perspective), the idea of being owned is not nice one to me. Some of us don't want watch ourselves rot in a very short space of time.
2[anonymous]
Um, according to the Bible, the Abrahamic God's supposed to have done some pretty awful things to people on purpose, or directed humans to do such things. It's hard to imagine anything more like the definition of a petty tyrant than wiping out nearly all of humanity because they didn't act as expected; exhorting people to go wipe out other cultures, legislating victim blame into ethics around rape, sending actual fragging bears to mutilate and kill irreverent children? I'm not the sort of person who assumes Christians are inherently bad people, but it's a serious point of discomfort with me that some nontrivial portion of humanity believes that a being answering to that description and those actions a) exists and b) is any kind of moral authority. If a human did that stuff, they'd be described as whimsical tyrants at the most charitable. Why's God supposed to be different?
9[anonymous]
While I agree with some of your other points, I'm not sure about this: We shouldn't be too harsh until we are faced with either deleting a potentially self-improving AI that is not provably friendly or risking the destruction of not just our species but the destruction of all that we value in the universe.
2Raemon
That.... is a surprisingly good answer.
[-]Catnip80

Hello, Less Wrong.

I am Russian, atheistic, 27, trying to be rational.

Initially I came here to read a through explanation of Bayes theorem, but noticed that LessWrong contains a lot more than that and decided to stay for a while.

I am really pleased by quality of material and pleasantly surprised by quality of comments. It is rare to see useful comments on the Internet.

I am going to read at least some sequences first and comment if I have something to say. Though, I know I WILL be sidetracked by HP:MoR and "Three worlds collide". Well, my love for SF always got me.

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[-]Phasmatis80

Salutations, Less Wrong.

I'm an undergraduate starting my third year at the University of Toronto (in Toronto, Ontario, Canada), taking the Software Engineer specialist program in Computer Science.

I found Less Wrong through a friend, who found it through Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, who found that through me, and I found HP: MoR through a third friend. I'm working my way through the archive of Less Wrong posts (currently in March of 2009).

On my rationalist origins: One of my parents has a not-insignificant mental problem that result in subtl... (read more)

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[-][anonymous]80

I'm 17 and I'm from Australia.

I've always been interested in science, learning, and philosophy. I've had correct thinking as a goal in my life since reading a book by John Stossel when I was 13.

I first studied philosophy at school in grade 10, when I was 14 and 15. I loved the mind/body problem, and utilitarianism was the coolest thing ever. I had great fun thinking about all these things, and was fairly good at it. I gave a speech about the ethics of abortion last year which I feel really did strike to the heart of the matter, and work as a good use of ra... (read more)

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6XiXiDu
You are 17. See Yudkowsky_1998, there is room for improvement at any age.
[-]dvasya80
  • Handle: dvasya (from Darth Vasya)
  • Name: Vasilii Artyukhov
  • Location: Houston, TX (USA)
  • Age: 26
  • Occupation: physicist doing computational nanotechnology/materials science/chemistry, currently on a postdoctoral position at Rice University. Also remotely connected to the anti-aging field, as well as cryopreservation. Not personally interested in AI because I don't understand it very well (though I do appreciate its importance adequately), but who knows -- maybe that could change with prolonged exposure to LW :)
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[-]jslocum80

Hello, people.

I first found Less Wrong when I was reading sci-fi stories on the internet and stumbled across Three Worlds Collide. As someone who places a high value on the ability to make rational decisions, I decided that this site is definitely relevant to my interests. I started reading through the sequences a few months ago, and I recently decided to make an account so that I could occasionally post my thoughts in the comments. I generally only post things when I think I have something particularly insightful to say, so my posts tend to be infrequent... (read more)

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[-]MoreOn80

Okay. Demographics. Boring stuff. Just skip to the next paragraph. I’m a masters student in mathematics (hopefully soon-to-be PhD student in economics). During undergrad, I majored in Biology, Economics and Math, and minored in Creative Writing (and nearly minored in Chemistry, Marine Science, Statistics and PE) … I’ll spare you the details, but most of those you won’t see on my resume for various reasons. Think: Master of None, not Omnidisciplinary Scientist.

My life goal is to write a financially self-sustainable computer game… for reasons I’ll keep secre... (read more)

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[-]hangedman80

Hi LW,

My name's Dan LaVine. I forget exactly how I got linked here, but I haven't been able to stop following internal links since.

I'm not an expert in anything, but I have a relatively broad/shallow education across mathematics and the sciences and a keen interest in philosophical problems (not quite as much interest in traditional approaches to the problems). My tentative explorations of these problems are broadly commensurate with a lot of the material I've read on this site so far. Maybe that means I'm exposing myself to confirmation bias, but so ... (read more)

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[-]EchoingHorror80

Hello, community. I'm another recruit from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. After reading the first few chapters and seeing that it lacked the vagueness, unbending archetypes, and overt because the author says so theme that usually drives me away from fiction, then reading Less Wrong's (Eliezer's?) philosophy of fanfiction, I proceeded to read through the Sequences.

After struggling with the question of when I became a rationalist, I think the least wrong answer is that I just don't remember. I both remember less of my childhood than others seem... (read more)

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[-]AndyCossyleon80

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6SilasBarta
Welcome to Less Wrong! You seem to know your way around pretty well already! Thanks for introducing yourself. Also, I really appreciate this: The article says that of naturalistic pantheism: Wow, I had no idea you could believe all that and still count as a kind of theism! Best. Marketing. Ever.
[-]Lorenzo80

Huh, I guess I should have come here earlier...

I'm Lorenzo, 31, from Madrid, Spain (but I'm Italian). I'm an evolutionary psychologist, or try to be, working on my PhD. I'm also doing a Master's Degree in Statistics, in which I discovered (almost by accident) the Bayesian approach. As someone with a longstanding interest in making psychology become a better science, I've found this blog a very good place for clarifying ideas.

I've been a follower of Less Wrong after reading Eliezer's essays on Bayesian reasoning some 3-4 months ago. I've known the Bayes t... (read more)

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[-]misterpower80

Bueno! I'm Jason from San Antonio, Texas. Nice to say 'hi' to all you nice people! (Nice, also, to inflate the number of comments for this particular post - give the good readers of Less Wrong an incrementally warmer feeling of camaraderie.)

I've been reading Overcoming Bias and Less Wrong for over a year since I found a whole bunch of discussions on quantum mechanics. I've stayed for the low, low cost intellectual gratification.

I (actually, formally) study physics and math, and read these blogs to the extent that I feel smarter...also, because the admitted... (read more)

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[-]Mass_Driver80

Hi everyone!

I'm graduating law school in May 2010, and then going to work in consumer law at a small firm in San Francisco. I'm fascinated by statistical political science, space travel, aikido, polyamory, board games, and meta-ethics.

I first realized that I needed to make myself more rational when I bombed an online confidence calibration test about 6 years ago; it asked me to provide 95% confidence intervals for 100 different pieces of numerical trivia (e.g. how many nukes does China have, how many counties are in the U.S., how many species of spiders a... (read more)

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[-][anonymous]80

Hello All,

my name is Markus, and just decided, after, well, years? of lurk-jumping from sl4 to OvercomingBias to LessWrong that maybe I should participate in the one or another discussion; not doing so seems to lead to constant increase of things I have a feeling I know but actually fall flat on the first occasion of another person posing a question.

The process of finding to (then non-existing) LW started during senior high, when I somehow got interested into philosophy, soon enough into AI. The interest in AI lead to interest in Weiqi (Chess was publicly ... (read more)

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[-]Morendil80

However intelligent he is, he fails to present his ideas so as to gradually build a common ground with lay readers. "If you're so smart, how come you ain't convincing?"

The "intelligent design" references on his Wikipedia bio are enough to turn me away. Can you point us to a well-regarded intellectual who has taken his work seriously and recommends his work? (I've used that sort of bridging tactic at least once, Dennett convincing me to read Julian Jaynes.)

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6Cyan
"Convincing" has long been a problem for Chris Langan. Malcolm Gladwell relates a story about Langan attending a calculus course in first year undergrad. After the first lecture, he went to offer criticism of the prof's pedagogy. The prof thought he was complaining that the material was too hard; Langan was unable to convey that he had understood the material perfectly for years, and wanted to see better teaching.
[-]Zvi80
  • Handle: Zvi
  • Name: Zvi Mowshowitz
  • Location: New York City
  • Age: 30
  • Education: BA, Mathematics

I found OB through Marginal Revolution, which then led to LW. A few here know me from my previous job as a professional Magic: The Gathering player and writer and full member of the Competitive Conspiracy. That job highly rewarded the rationality I already had and encouraged its development, as does my current one which unfortunately I can't say much about here but which gives me more than enough practical reward to keep me coming back even if I wasn't fascinated ... (read more)

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[-]pluto70

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 :)

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[-]DanielH70

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 ... (read more)

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[-]kmacneill70

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?

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3Alex_Altair
I am also in a one-way friendship with EY.
[-]AspiringKnitter70

I used to be an atheist before realizing that was incorrect. I wasn't upset about that; I had been wrong, I stopped being wrong. Is that enough?

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[-]Dmytry70

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).

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[-]MileyCyrus70

If you like it than you should have put an upvote on it.

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5Will_Newsome
Now I have. And on that comment too. All the single comments.
[-]gwern70

The general impression of the Book of Job seems to be to lower people's opinion of God rather than raise their opinion of trolling.

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7MileyCyrus
And it was an atheist philosopher who first called trolling a art.
[-]orthonormal70

I hope you're not seeing the options as "keep up with all the threads of this conversation simultaneously" or "quit LW". It's perfectly OK to leave things hanging and lurk for a while. (If you're feeling especially polite, you can even say that you're tapping out of the conversation for now.)

(Hmm, I might add that advice to the Welcome post...)

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3AspiringKnitter
Okay. I'm tapping out of everything indefinitely. Thank you.
[-]TwistingFingers70

Please don't consider this patronizing but... the writing style of this comment is really cute.

I think you broke whatever part of my brain evaluates people's signalling. It just gave up and decided your writing is really cute. I really have no idea what impression to form of you; the experience was so unusual that I felt I had to comment.

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[-]Will_Newsome140

Thanks to your priming now I can't see "AspiringKnitter" without mentally replacing it with "AspiringKittens" and a mental image of a Less Wrong meetup of kittens who sincerely want to have better epistemic practices. Way to make the world a better place.

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2Nisan
That's what the SF Less Wrong meetups are missing: Kittens.
3CronoDAS
Just make sure you don't have anyone with bad allergies...
[-]Incorrect70

This is the internet. Nothing anyone says on the internet is ever going away, even if some of us really wish it could. /nitpick

You would be surprised... If it weren't for the internet archive much information would have already been lost. Some modern websites are starting to use web design techniques (ajax-loaded content) that break such archive services.

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[-]Vaniver70

that post wasn't using dark arts to persuade anything

Son, I am disappoint.

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[-][anonymous]70

Uh...uhm...hello?

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2Normal_Anomaly
Hi!
[-]Bugmaster70

"I see that you're trying to extrapolate human volition. Would you like some help ?" converts the Earth into computronium

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2David_Gerard
Soreff was probably alluding to User:Clippy, someone role-playing a non-FOOMed paperclip maximiser. Though yours is good too :-)
2soreff
Yes, I was indeed alluding to User:Clippy. Actually, I should have tweaked the reference, since it it the possibility of a paperclip maximiser that has FOOMed that really represents the threat.
[-]Gust70

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 i... (read more)

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5AspiringKnitter
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?
3wedrifid
For a certain value of niceness, yes.
2NancyLebovitz
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.
2A1987dM
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.
2dlthomas
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."
4dlthomas
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.
[-]TimS70

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,... (read more)

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[-]kilobug70

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 th... (read more)

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[-]DanPeverley70

Salutations, LessWrong!

I am Daniel Peverley, I lurked for a few months and joined not too long ago. I was first introduced to this site via HPatMOR, my first and so far only foray into the world of fan-fiction. I've been raised as a mormon, and I've been a vague unbeliever for a few years, but the information on this site really solidified the doubts and problems I had with my religion. Just knowing how to properly label common logical fallacies has been vastly helpful in my life, and a few of the posts on social dynamics have likewise been of great uti... (read more)

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[-]HopeFox70

Hi, I've been lurking on Less Wrong for a few months now, making a few comments here and there, but never got around to introducing myself. Since I'm planning out an actual post at the moment, I figured I should tell people where I'm coming from.

I'm a male 30-year-old optical engineer in Sydney, Australia. I grew up in a very scientific family and have pretty much always assumed I had a scientific career ahead of me, and after a couple of false starts, it's happened and I couldn't ask for a better job.

Like many people, I came to Less Wrong from TVTropes vi... (read more)

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[-]MrMind70

Hello everybody, I'm Stefano from Italy. I'm 30, and my story about becoming a rationalist is quite tortuous... as a kid I was raised as a christian, but not strictly so: my only obligation was to attend mass every sunday morning. At the same time since young age I was fond of esoteric and scientific literature... With hindsight, I was a strange kid: by the age of 13 I already knew quite a lot about such things as the Order of the Golden Dawn or General Relativity... My fascination with computer and artificial intelligence begun approximately at the same a... (read more)

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[-]MinibearRex70

I started posting a while ago (and was lurking for a while beforehand), and only today found this post.

My parents were both science teachers, and I got an education in traditional rationality basically since birth (I didn't even know it had such a name as "traditional rationality", I assumed it was just how you were supposed to think). I've always used that experimental mindset in order to understand people and the rest of the universe. I'm an undergrad in the Plan II honors program at the University of Texas at Austin, majoring in Chemistry Pre... (read more)

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[-]jefftk70

Jeff Kaufman. Working as a programmer doing computational linguistics in the boston area. Found "less wrong" twice: first through the intuitive explanation of bayes' theorem and then again recently through "hp and the methods of rationality". I value people's happiness, valuing that of those close to me more than that of strangers, but I value strangers' welfare enough that I think I have an obligation to earn as much as I can and live on as little as I can so I can give more to charity.

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[-]SoulAllnighter70

G'day LW Im an Aussie currently studying at the Australian National University in Canberra. My name is Sam and i should point out that the 'G'day' is just for fun, most Australians never use that phase and it kinda makes me cringe.

At at this very moment i'm trying to finish my thesis on the foundations of inductive reasoning, which i guess is pretty relevant to this community. A big part of my thesis is to translate a lot of very technical mathematics regarding Bayesianism and Sollomonoff induction into philosophical and intuitive explanations, so this wh... (read more)

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[-]aurasprw70

Hey Lesswrong! I'm just going to ramble for a second..

I like art, social sciences, philosophy, gaming, rationality and everything that falls in between. Examples include Go, Evolutionary Psychology, Mafia (aka Werewolves), Improvisation, Drugs and Debate.

See you if I see you!

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[-][anonymous]70

Heikki, 30, Finnish student of computer engineering. Found Less Wrong by via the IRC-channel of the Finnish Transhumanist Association, which was found by random surfing ("Oh, there's a name for what I am?")

As for becoming a rationalist, I'd say the recipe was no friends and a good encyclopedia... Interest in ideas, unhindered by the baggage of standard social activities. One of the most influential single things was probably finding evolution quite early on. I remember (might be a false memory) having thought it would sure make sense if a horse'... (read more)

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[-]Leafy70

Hi everyone.

My name is Alan Godfrey.

I am fascinated by rational debate and logical arguments, and I appear to have struck gold in finding this site! I am the first to admit my own failings in these areas but am always willing to learn and grow.

I'm a graduate of mathematics from Trinity Hall, Cambridge University and probability and statistics have always been my areas of expertise - although I find numbers so much more pleasant to play with than theorems and proofs so bear with me!

I'm also a passive member of Mensa. While most of it does not interest me th... (read more)

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[-]arthurlewis70
  • Handle: arthurlewis
  • Location: New York, NY
  • Age: 28
  • Education: BA in Music.
  • Occupation: Musician / Teacher / Mac Support Guy
  • Blog/Music: http://arthurthefourth.com

My career as a rationalist began when I started doing tech support, and realized the divide between successful troubleshooting and what most customers tried to do. I think the key to "winning" is to challenge your assumptions about how to win, and what winning is. I think that makes me an instrumental rationalist, but I'm not quite sure I understand the term. I'm here because OB and ... (read more)

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[-]Paul Crowley70

This community is too young to have veterans. Since this is the first such post, I think we should all be encouraged to introduce ourselves.

Thanks for doing this!

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[-]kajro60

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.

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5Kevin
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.
3John_Maxwell
Hi there! This might help: http://www.psych.cornell.edu/sec/pubPeople/tdg1/Gilo.Medvec.Sav.pdf
4kajro
Is this some kind of LW hazing, linking to academic papers in an introduction thread? (I joke, this looks super interesting).
[-]Risto_Saarelma60

We were talking about applying the metaphysics system to making an AI earlier in IRC, and the symbol grounding problem came up there as a basic difficulty in binding formal reasoning systems to real-time actions. It doesn't look like this was mentioned here before.

I'm assuming I'd want to actually build an AI that needs to deal with symbol grounding, that is, it needs to usefully match some manner of declarative knowledge it represents in its internal state to the perceptions it receives from the outside world and to the actions it performs on it. Given th... (read more)

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2Tuukka_Virtaperko
You probably have a much more grassroot-level understanding of the symbol grounding problem. I have only solved the symbol grounding problem to the extent that I have formal understanding of its nature. In any case, I am probably approaching AI from a point of view that is far from the symbol grounding problem. My theory does not need to be seen as an useful solution to that problem. But when an useful solution is created, I postulate it can be placed within RP. Such a solution would have to be an algorithm for creating S-type or O-type sets of members of R. More generally, I would find RP to be useful as an extremely general framework of how AI or parts of AI can be constructed in relation to each other, ecspecially with regards to understanding lanugage and the notion of consciousness. This doesn't necessarily have anything to do with some more atomistic AI projects, such as trying to make a robot vacuum cleaner find its way back to the charging dock. At some point, philosophical questions and AI will collide. Suppose the following thought experiment: We have managed to create such a sophisticated brain scanner, that it can tell whether a person is thinking of a cat or not. Someone is put into the machine, and the machine outputs that the person is not thinking of a cat. The person objects and says that he is thinking of a cat. What will the observing AI make of that inconsistency? What part of the observation is broken and results in nonconformity of the whole? * 1) The brain scanner is broken * 2) The person is broken In order to solve this problem, the AI may have to be able to conceptualize the fact that the brain scanner is a deterministic machine which simply accepts X as input and outputs Y. The scanner does not understand the information it is processing, and the act of processing information does not alter its structure. But the person is different. RP should help with such problems because it is intended as an elegant, compact and flexible way o
4Risto_Saarelma
I don't really understand this part. "The scanner does not understand the information but the person does" sounds like some variant of Searle's Chinese Room argument when presented without further qualifiers. People in AI tend to regard Searle as a confused distraction. The intelligent agent model still deals with deterministic machines that take input and produce output, but it incorporates the possibility of changing the agent's internal state by presenting the output function as just taking the entire input history X* as an input to the function that produces the latest output Y, so that a different history of inputs can lead to a different output on the latest input, just like it can with humans and more sophisticated machines. I suppose the idea here is that there is some difference whether there is a human being sitting in the scanner, or, say, a toy robot with a state of two bits where one is I am thinking about cats and the other is I am broken and will lie about thinking about cats. With the robot, we could just check the "broken" bit as well from the scan when the robot is disagreeing with the scanner, and if it is set, conclude that the robot is broken. I'm not seeing how humans must be fundamentally different. The scanner can already do the extremely difficult task of mapping a raw brain state to the act of thinking about a cat, it should also be able to tell from the brain state whether the person has something going on in their brain that will make them deny thinking about a cat. Things being deterministic and predictable from knowing their initial state doesn't mean they can't have complex behavior reacting to a long history of sensory inputs accompanied by a large amount of internal processing that might correspond quite well to what we think of as reflection or understanding. Sorry I keep skipping over your formalism stuff, but I'm still not really grasping the underlying assumptions behind this approach. (The underlying approach in the compute
2Tuukka_Virtaperko
I've read some of this Universal Induction article. It seems to operate from flawed premises. Suppose the brain uses algorithms. An uncontroversial supposition. From a computational point of view, the former citation is like saying: "In order for a computer to not run a program, such as Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, the computer must be executing some command to the effect of "DoNotExecuteProgram('IndianaJonesAndTheFateOfAtlantis')". That's not how computers operate. They just don't run the program. They don't need a special process for not running the program. Instead, not running the program is "implicitly contained" in the state of affairs that the computer is not running it. But this notion of implicit containment makes no sense for the computer. There are infinitely many programs the computer is not running at a given moment, so it can't process the state of affairs that it is not running any of them. Likewise, the use of an implicit bias towards simplicity cannot be meaningfully conceptualized by humans. In order to know how this bias simplifies everything, one would have to know, what information regarding "everything" is omitted by the bias. But if we knew that, the bias would not exist in the sense the author intends it to exist. Furthermore: The author says that there are variations of the no free lunch theorem for particular contexts. But he goes on to generalize that the notion of no free lunch theorem means something independent of context. What could that possibly be? Also, such notions as "arbitrary complexity" or "randomness" seem intuitively meaningful, but what is their context? The problem is, if there is no context, the solution cannot be proven to address the problem of induction. But if there is a context, it addresses the problem of induction only within that context. Then philosophers will say that the context was arbitrary, and formulate the problem again in another context where previous results will not apply. In a way, th
2Tuukka_Virtaperko
At first, I didn't quite understand this. But I'm reading Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages and Computation. Are you using the * in the same sense here as it is used in the following UNIX-style regular expression? * '[A-Z][a-z]*' This expression is intended to refer to all word that begin with a capital letter and do not contain any surprising characters such as ö or -. Examples: "Jennifer", "Washington", "Terminator". The * means [a-z] may have an arbitrary amount of iterations.
2Tuukka_Virtaperko
I don't find the Chinese room argument related to our work - besides, it seems to possibly vaguely try to state that what we are doing can't be done. What I meant is that AI should be able to: * Observe behavior * Categorize entities into deterministic machines which cannot take a metatheoretic approach to their data processing habits and alter them. * Categorize entities into agencies who process information recursively and can consciously alter their own data processing or explain it to others. * Use this categorization ability to differentiate entities whose behavior can be corrected or explained by means of social interaction. * Use the differentiation ability to develop the "common sense" view that, given permission by the owner of the scanner and if deemed interesting, the robot could not ask for the consent of the brain scanner to take it apart and fix it. * Understand that even if the robot were capable of performing incredibly precise neurosurgery, the person will understand the notion, that the robot wishes to use surgery to alter his thoughts to correspond with the result of the brain scanner, and could consent to this or deny consent. * Possibly try to have a conversation with the person in order to find out, why they said that they were not thinking of a cat. Failure to understand this could make the robot naively both take machines apart and cut peoples brains in order to experimentally verify, which approach produces better results. Of course there are also other things to consider when the robot tries to figure out what to do. I don't consider robots and humans fundamentally different. If the AI were complex enough to understand the aforementioned things, it also would understand the notion that someone wants to take it apart and reprogam it, and could consent or object. The latter has, to my knowledge, never been done. Arguably, the latter task requires different ability which the scanner may not have. The former requires acquiring a bitm
5Risto_Saarelma
About the classification thing: Agree that it's very important that a general AI be able to classify entities into "dumb machines" and things complex enough to be self-aware, warrant an intentional stance and require ethical consideration. Even putting aside the ethical concerns, being able to recognize complex agents with intentions and model their intentions instead of their most likely massively complex physical machinery is probably vital to any sort of meaningful ability to act in a social domain with many other complex agents (cf. Dennett's intentional stance) I understood the existing image reconstruction experiments measure the activation on the visual cortex when the subject is actually viewing an image, which does indeed get you a straightforward mapping to a bitmap. This isn't the same as thinking about a cat, a person could be thinking about a cat while not looking at one, and they could have a cat in their visual field while daydreaming or suffering from hysterical blindness, so that they weren't thinking about a cat despite having a cat image correctly show up in their visual cortex scan. I don't actually know what the neural correlate of thinking about a cat, as opposed to having one's visual cortex activated by looking at one, would be like, but I was assuming interpreting it would require much more sophisticated understanding of the brain, basically at the level of difficult of telling whether a brain scan correlates with thinking about freedom, a theory of gravity or reciprocality. Basically something that's entirely beyond current neuroscience and more indicative of some sort of Laplace's demon like thought experiment where you can actually observe and understand the whole mechanical ensemble of the brain. Quines are maps that contain themselves. A quining system could reflect on its entire static structure, though it would have to run some sort of emulation slower than its physical substrate to predict its future states. Hofstadter's GEB links
2Tuukka_Virtaperko
There are many ways to answer that question. I have a flowchart and formulae. The opposite of that would be something to the effect of having the source code. I'm not sure why you expect me to have that. Was it something I said? I thought I've given you links to my actual work, but I can't find them. Did I forget? Hmm... * The Metaphysical Origin of RP * Set Theoretic Explanation of the Main Recursion Loop If you dislike metaphysics, only the latter is for you. I can't paste the content, because the formatting on this website apparently does not permit html formulae. Wait a second, it does permit formulae, but only LaTeX. I know LaTeX, but the formulae aren't in that format right now. I should maybe convert them. You won't understand the flowchart if you don't want to discuss metaphysics. I don't think I can prove that something, of which you don't know what it is, could be useful to you. You would have to know what it is and judge for yourself. If you don't want to know, it's ok. I am currently not sure why you would want to discuss this thing at all, given that you do not seem quite interested of the formalisms, but you do not seem interested of metaphysics either. You seem to expect me to explain this stuff to you in terms of something that is familiar to you, yet you don't seem very interested to have a discussion where I would actually do that. If you don't know why you are having this discussion, maybe you would like to do something else? There are quite probably others in LessWrong who would be interested of this, because there has been prior discussion of CTMU. People interested in fringe theories, unfortunately, are not always the brightest of the lot, and I respect your abilities to casually namedrop a bunch of things I will probably spend days thinking about. But I don't know why you wrote so much about billions of years, babies, human cultural evolution, 100 megabytes and such. I am troubled by the thought that you might think I'm some loony hip
2Risto_Saarelma
I'm mostly writing this stuff trying to explain what my mindset, which I guess to be somewhat coincident with the general LW one, is like, and where it seems to run into problems with trying to understand these theories. My question about the assumptions is basically poking at something like "what's the informal explanation of why this is a good way to approach figuring out reality", which isn't really an easy thing to answer. I'm mostly writing about my own viewpoint instead of addressing the metaphysical theory, since it's easy to write about stuff I already understand, and a lot harder to to try to understand something coming from a different tradition and make meaningful comments about it. Sorry if this feels like dismissing your stuff. The reason I went on about the complexity of the DNA and the brain is that this is stuff that wasn't really known before the mid-20th century. Most of modern philosophy was being done when people had some idea that the process of life is essentially mechanical and not magical, but no real idea on just how complex the mechanism is. People could still get away with assuming that intelligent thought is not that formally complex around the time of Russell and Wittgenstein, until it started dawning just what a massive hairball of a mess human intelligence working in the real world is after the 1950s. Still, most philosophy seems to be following the same mode of investigation as Wittgenstein or Kant did, despite the sudden unfortunate appearance of a bookshelf full of volumes written by insane aliens between the realm of human thought and basic logic discovered by molecular biologists and cognitive scientists. I'm not expecting people to rewrite the 100 000 pages of complexity into human mathematics, but I'm always aware that it needs to be dealt with somehow. For one thing, it's a reason to pay more attention to empiricism than philosophy has traditionally done. As in, actually do empirical stuff, not just go "ah, yes, empiricism is
2Tuukka_Virtaperko
You don't have to apologize, because you have been useful already. I don't require you to go out of your way to analyze this stuff, but of course it would also be nice if we could understand each other. That's a good point. The philosophical tradition of discussion I belong to was started in 1974 as a radical deviation from contemporary philosophy, which makes it pretty fresh. My personal opinion is that within decades of centuries, the largely obsolete mode of investigation you referred to will be mostly replaced by something that resembles what I and a few others are currently doing. This is because the old mode of investigation does not produce results. Despite intense scrutiny for 300 years, it has not provided an answer to such a simple philosophical problem as the problem of induction. Instead, it has corrupted the very writing style of philosophers. When one is reading philosophical publications by authors with academic prestige, every other sentence seems somehow defensive, and the writer seems to be squirming in the inconvenience caused by his intuitive understanding that what he's doing is barren but he doesn't know of a better option. It's very hard for a distinguished academic to go into the freaky realm and find out whether someone made sense but had a very different approach than the academic approach. Aloof but industrious young people, with lots of ability but little prestige, are more suitable for that. Nowadays the relatively simple philosophical problem of induction (proof of the Poincare conjecture is relatiely extremely complex) has been portrayed as such a difficult problem, that if someone devises a theoretic framework which facilitates a relatively simple solution to the problem, academic people are very inclined to state that they don't understand the solution. I believe this is because they insist the solution should be something produced by several authors working together for a century. Something that will make theoretical philosophy ag
2Risto_Saarelma
I'll address the rest in a bit, but about the notation: T -> U is a function from set T to set U. P* means a list of elements in set P, where the difference from set is that elements in a list are in a specific order. The notation as a whole was a somewhat fudged version of intelligent agent formalism. The idea is to set up a skeleton for modeling any sort of intelligent entity, based on the idea that the entity only learns things from its surroundings though a series of perceptions, which might for example be a series of matrices corresponding to the images a robot's eye camera sees, and can only affect its surroundings by choosing an action it is capable of, such as moving a robotic arm or displaying text to a terminal. The agent model is pretty all-encompassing, but also not that useful except as the very first starting point, since all of the difficulty is in the exact details of the function that turns the most likely massive amount of data in the perception history into a well-chosen action that efficiently furthers the goals of the AI. Modeling AIs as the function from a history of perceptions to an action is also related to thought experiments like Ned Block's Blockhead, where a trivial AI that passes the Turing test with flying colors is constructed by merely enumerating every possible partial conversation up to a certain length, and writing up the response a human would make at that point of that conversation. Scott Aaronson's Why philosophers should care about computational complexity proposes to augment the usual high-level mathematical frameworks with some limits to the complexity of the black box functions, to make the framework reject cases like Blockhead, which seem to be very different from what we'd like to have when we're looking for a computable function that implements an AI.
[-]Risto_Saarelma60

There might not be many people here to who are sufficiently up to speed on philosophical metaphysics to have any idea what a Wheeler-style reality theory, for example, is. My stereotypical notion is that the people at LW have been pretty much ignoring philosophy that isn't grounded in mathematics, physics or cognitive science from Kant onwards, and won't bother with stuff that doesn't seem readable from this viewpoint. The tricky thing that would help would be to somehow translate the philosopher-speak into lesswronger-speak. Unfortunately this'd require some fluency in both.

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2Tuukka_Virtaperko
It's not like your average "competent metaphysicist" would understand Langan either. He wouldn't possibly even understand Wheeler. Langan's undoing is to have the goals of a metaphysicist and the methods of a computer scientist. He is trying to construct a metaphysical theory which structurally resebles a programming language with dynamic type checking, as opposed to static typing. Now, metaphysicists do not tend to construct such theories, and computer scientists do not tend to be very familiar with metaphysics. Metaphysical theories tend to be deterministic instead of recursive, and have a finite preset amount of states that an object can have. I find the CTMU paper a bit sketchy and missing important content besides having the mistake. If you're interested in the mathematical structure of a recursive metaphysical theory, here's one: http://www.moq.fi/?p=242 Formal RP doesn't require metaphysical background knowledge. The point is that because the theory includes a cycle of emergence, represented by the power set function, any state of the cycle can be defined in relation to other states and prior cycles, and the amount of possible states is infinite. The power set function will generate a staggering amount of information in just a few cycles, though. Set R is supposed to contain sensory input and thus solve the symbol grounding problem.
[-]cousin_it60

Hmm, that doesn't sound right. I don't want to make celibate people uncomfortable, I just want to have more casual sex myself. Also I have a weaker altruistic wish that people who aren't "getting any" could "get some" without having to tweak their looks (the beauty industry) or their personality (the pickup scene). There could be many ways to make lots of unhappy people happier about sex and romance without tweaking your libido. Tweaking libido sounds a little pointless to me anyway, because PUA dogma (which I mostly agree with) predicts that people will just spend the surplus libido on attractive partners and leave unattractive ones in the dust, like they do today.

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[-]Nornagest60

It's not exactly rigorous, but you could try leaving bagels at Christian and Wiccan gatherings of approximately the same size and see how many dollars you get back.

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3AspiringKnitter
That's an idea, but you'd need to know how they started out. If generally nice people joined one religion and stayed the same, and generally horrible people joined the other and became better people, they might look the same on the bagel test.
4Nornagest
True. You could control for that by seeing if established communities are more or less prone to stealing bagels than younger ones, but that would take a lot more data points.
[-]wedrifid60

So... voicing disagreement boldly is trolling, voicing it nervously is trolling and trying to prevent being called out. Signalling distance from the group is trolling and accusations of hive mind, signalling group membership is trolling and going "Seriously, I'm one of you guys". Joking about the image a group idea's have, in the same way the group itself does, is straw-manning and caricature, seriously worrying about those ideas is damsel-in-distress crap.

Deliberate, active straw manning sarcasm for the purpose of giving insult and conveying ... (read more)

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3Alicorn
The cereal thing is comically mild. The impulse to wish bad things on others is a pretty strong one and I think it's moderated by having an outlet to acknowledge that it's silly in this or maybe some other way - I'd rather people publicly wish me to run out of milk than privately wish me dead.
9wedrifid
Calling nyan a jerk in that context wasn't ok with me and nor was any joke about wanting harm to come upon him. It was unjustified and inappropriate. I don't much care what MixedNuts wants to happen to nyan. The quoted combination of words constitutes a status transaction of a kind I would see discouraged. Particularly given that we don't allow reciprocal personal banter of the kind this sort insult demands. If, for example, nyan responded with a pun on a keyword and a reference to Mixed's sister we wouldn't allow it. When insults cannot be returned in kind the buck stops with the first personal insult. That is, Mixed's.
6TheOtherDave
This is admirably compelling.
2daenerys
Upvoted. I am happy that someone other than me gets upset when they see these "jokes" on here. (I also downvoted the "jerk" comment)
3MixedNuts
I wished nyan_sandwich to stub eir toe, but immediately regretted it as too harsh.
[-]wedrifid60

It's not often that I laugh out loud and downvote the same comment! ;)

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[-]hairyfigment60

my default state matches the negative symptoms of schizophrenia..."happiness" as such is not an emotion I experience very much at all

Have you sought professional help in the past? If not, do nothing else until you take some concrete step in that direction. This is an order from your decision theory.

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3Will_Newsome
Yes, including from the nice but not particularly insightful folk at UCSF, but negative symptoms generally don't go away, ever. My brain is pretty messed up. Jhana meditation is wonderful and helps when I can get myself to do it. Technically if I did 60mg of Adderall and stayed up for about 30 to 45 hours then crashed, then repeated the process forever, I think that would overall increase my quality of life, but I'm not particularly confident of that, especially as the outside view says that's a horrible idea. In my experience it ups the variance which is generally a good thing. Theoretically I could take a bunch of nitrous oxide near the end of the day so as to stay up for only about 24 hours as opposed to 35 before crashing; I'm not sure if I should be thinking "well hell, my dopaminergic system is totally screwed anyway" or "I should preserve what precious little automatic dopaminergic regulation I have left". In general nobody knows nothin' 'bout nothin', so my stopgap solution is moar meditation and moar meta.
3NancyLebovitz
Have you tried doing a detailed analysis of what would make it easier for you to meditate, and then experimenting to find whether you've found anything which would actually make it easier? Is keeping your cushion closer to where you usually are a possibility?
2Will_Newsome
Not particularly detailed. It's hard to do better than convincing my girlfriend to bug me about it a few times a day, which she's getting better at. I think it's a gradual process and I'm making progress. I'm sure Eliezer's problems are quite similar, I suppose I could ask him what self-manipulation tactics he uses besides watching Courage Wolf YouTube videos.
[-]TheOtherDave60

Well, here's me doing my part: I don't declare Crocker's rules, and am unlikely to ever do so. Others can if they wish.

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2dlthomas
As I've mentioned before, I am not operating by Crocker's rules. I try to be responsible for my emotional state, but realize that I'm not perfect at this, so tell me the truth but there's no need to be a dick about it. I am not unlikely, in the future, to declare Crocker's rules with respect to some specific individuals and domains, but globally is unlikely in the foreseeable future.
[-]thomblake60

Was I downvoted for meta-humor or carrying the joke too far?

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[-]AspiringKnitter60

I admit to being surprised that this is a Christian writing.

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[-]AspiringKnitter60

Yes, where names need to be changed. [God] will be sufficient to confuse me as to whether it's "the LORD" or "Allah" in the original source material. There might be a problem with substance in very different holy books where I might be able to guess the religion just by what they're saying (like if they talk about reincarnation or castes, I'll know they're Hindu or Buddhist). I hope anyone finding quotes will avoid those, of course.

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[-]TheOtherDave60

Consider three people: Sam, Ethel, and Doug.

I've known Sam since we were kids together, we enjoy each others' company and act in one another's interests. I've known Doug since we were kids together, we can't stand one another and act against one another's interests. I've never met Ethel in my life and know nothing about her; she lives on the other side of the planet and has never heard of me.

It seems fair to say that Sam is my friend, and Doug is my enemy. But what about Ethel?

If I believe "anyone who isn't my enemy is my friend," then I can eval... (read more)

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[-]APMason60

Suppose the multiple words interpretation is true. Now I flip a fair quantum coin, and kill you if it comes up heads. Then in 50% of the worlds you still live, so by your reasoning, nobody has died. All that changes is the amplitude of your existence.

Well, maybe. But there is a whole universe full of people who will never speak to you again and are left to grieve over your body.

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[-]lavalamp60

... 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.

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[-][anonymous]60

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?)

I... (read more)

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[-]XangLiu200

"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.

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7[anonymous]
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.
[-]XangLiu190

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.

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[-]TheOtherDave180

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.

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9[anonymous]
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.
7Vaniver
Unless, of course, it's in an intro thread by a newcomer. ;)
4Bongo
I wonder how this comment got 7 upvotes in 9 minutes. EDIT: Probably the same way this comment got 7 upvotes in 6 minutes.
[-]LWMormon270

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

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[-]AspiringKnitter110

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.)

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[-]Icehawk78120

I'm curious which modifications EY has proposed (specifically) that you don't want made, unless it's just generically the suggestion that people could be improved in any ways whatsoever and your preference is to not have any modifications made to yourself (in a "be true to yourself" manner, perhaps?) that you didn't "choose".

If you could be convinced that a given change to "who you are" would necessarily be an improvement (by your own standards, not externally imposed standards, since you sound very averse to such restrictions) such as "being able to think faster" or "having taste preferences for foods which are most healthy for you" (to use very primitive off-the-cuff examples), and then given the means to effect these changes on yourself, would you choose to do so, or would you be averse simply on the grounds of "then I wouldn't be 'me' anymore" or something similar?

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3AspiringKnitter
Being able to think faster is something I try for already, with the means available to me. (Nutrition, sleep, mental exercise, I've even recently started trying to get physical exercise.) I actually already prefer healthy food (it was a really SIMPLE hack: cut out junk food, or phase it out gradually if you can't take the plunge all at once, and wait until your taste buds (probably actually some brain center) start reacting like they would have in the ancestral environment, which is actually by craving healthy food), so the only further modification to be done is to my environment (availability of the right kinds of stuff). So obviously, those in particular I do want. However, I also believe that here lies the road to ableism. EY has already espoused a significant amount. For instance, his post about how unfair IQ is misses out on the great contributions made to the world by people with very low IQs. There's someone with an IQ of, I think she said, 86 or so, who is wiser than I am (let's just say I probably rival EY for IQ score). IQ is valid only for a small part of the population and full-scale IQ is almost worthless except for letting some people feel superior to others. I've spent a lot of time thinking about and exposed to people's writings about disability and how there are abled people who seek to cure people who weren't actually suffering and appreciated their uniqueness. Understanding and respect for the diversity of skills in the world is more important than making everyone exactly like anyone else. The above said, that doesn't mean I'm opposed in principle to eliminating problems with disability (nor is almost anyone who speaks out against forced "cure"). Just to think of examples, I'm glad I'm better at interacting with people than I used to be and wish to be better at math (but NOT at the expense of my other abilities). Others, with other disabilities, have espoused wishes for other things (two people that I can think of want an end to their chronic p
[-]MixedNuts250

By the middle of the second paragraph I was thinking "Whoa, is everyone an Amanda Baggs fan around here?". Hole in one! I win so many Bayes-points, go me.

I and a bunch of LWers I've talked to about it basically already agree with you on ableism, and a large fraction seems to apply usual liberal instincts to the issue (so, no forced cures for people who can point to "No thanks" on a picture board). There are extremely interesting and pretty fireworks that go off when you look at the social model disability from a transhumanist perspective and I want to round up Alicorn and Anne Corwin and you and a bunch of other people to look at them closely. It doesn't look like curing everyone (you don't want a perfectly optimized life, you want a world with variety, you want change over time), and it doesn't look like current (dis)abilities (what does "blind" mean if most people can see radio waves?), and it doesn't look like current models of disability (if everyone is super different and the world is set up for that and everything is cheap there's no such thing as accommodations), and it doesn't look like the current structures around disability (if society and p... (read more)

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4NancyLebovitz
How do you identify what knowing better would mean, when you don't know better yet?
9MixedNuts
The same way we do, but faster? Like, if you start out thinking that scandalous-and-gross-sex-practice is bad, you can consider arguments like "disgust is easily culturally trained so it's a poor measure of morality", and talk to people so you form an idea of what it's like to want and do it as a subjective experience (what positive emotions are involved, for example), and do research so you can answer queries like "If we had a brain scanner that could detect brainwashing manipulation, what would it say about people who want that?". So the superintelligence builds a model of you and feeds it lots of arguments and memory tape from others and other kinds of information. And then we run into trouble because maybe you end up wanting different things depending on the order it feeds you it, or it tells you to many facts about Deep Ones and it breaks your brain.
[-]Kaj_Sotala240

Welcome!

IQ is valid only for a small part of the population and full-scale IQ is almost worthless

This directly contradicts the mainstream research on IQ: see for instance this or this. If you have cites to the contrary, I'd be curious to read them.

That said, glad to see someone else who's found In My Language - I ran across it many years ago and thought it beautiful and touching.

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[-]AspiringKnitter100

Yes, you're right. That was a blatant example of availability bias-- the tiny subset of the population for which IQ is not valid makes up a disproportionately large part of my circle. And I consider full-scale IQ worthless for people with large IQ gaps, such as people with learning disabilities, and I don't think it conveys any new information over and above subtest scores in other people. Thank you for reminding me again how very odd I and my friends are.

But I also refer here to understanding, for instance, morality or ways to hack life, and having learned one of the most valuable lessons I ever learned from someone I'm pretty sure is retarded (not Amanda Baggs; it's a young man I know), I know for a fact that some important things aren't always proportional to IQ. In fact, specifically, I want to say I learned to be better by emulating him, and not just from the interaction, lest you assume it's something I figured out that he didn't already know.

I don't have any studies to cite; just personal experience with some very abnormal people. (Including myself, I want to point out. I think I'm one of those people for whom IQ subtests are useful-- in specific, limited ways-- but for whom full-scale IQ means nothing because of the great variance between subtest scores.)

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6juliawise
Her points on disability may still be valid, but it looks like the whole Amanda Baggs autism thing was a media stunt. At age 14, she was a fluent speaker with an active social life.
[-]TheOtherDave160

But in a cooperative endeavor like that, who's going to listen to me explaining I don't want to change in the way that would most benefit them?

Those of us who endorse respecting individual choices when we can afford to, because we prefer that our individual choices be respected when we can afford it.

I am not in principle opposed to people having all the strengths and none of the weaknesses of multiple types [..] I don't think that in practice it will work for most people

If you think it will work for some people, but not most, are you in principle opposed to giving whatever-it-is-that-distinguishes-the-people-it-works-for for to anyone who wants it?

More broadly: I mostly consider all of this "what would EY do" stuff a distraction; the question that interests me is what I ought to want done and why I ought to want it done, not who or what does it. If large-scale celibacy is a good idea, I want to understand why it's a good idea. Being told that some authority figure (any authority figure) advocated it doesn't achieve that. Similarly, if it's a bad idea, I want to understand why it's a bad idea.

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6AspiringKnitter
Whatever-it-is-that-distinguishes-the-people-it-works-for seems to be inherent in the skills in question (that is, the configuration that brings about a certain ability also necessarily brings about a weakness in another area), so I don't think that's possible. If it were, I can only imagine it taking the form of people being able to shift configuration very rapidly into whatever works best for the situation, and in some cases, I find that very implausible. If I'm wrong, sure, why not? If it's possible, it's only the logical extension of teaching people to use their strengths and shore up their weaknesses. This being an inherent impossibility (or so I think; I could be wrong), it doesn't so much matter whether I'm opposed to it or not, but yeah, it's fine with me. You make a good point, but I expect that assuming that someone makes AI and uses it to rule the world with the power to modify people, it will be Eliezer Yudkowsky, so whether he would abuse that power is more important than whether my next-door neighbors would if they could or even what I would do, and so what EY wants is at least worth considering, because the failure mode if he does something bad is way too catastrophic.
3TheOtherDave
What makes you think that? For example, do you think he's the only person working on building AI powerful enough to change the world? Or that, of the people working on it, he's the only one competent enough to succeed? Or that, of the people who can succeed, he's the only one who would "use" the resulting AI to rule the world and modify people? Or something else?
8AspiringKnitter
He's the only person I know of who wants to build an AI that will take over the world and do what he wants. He's also smart enough to have a chance, which is disturbing.
[-]dlthomas180

Have you read his paper on CEV? To the best of my knowledge, that's the clearest place he's laid out what he wants an AGI to do, and I wouldn't really label it "take over the world and do what [Eliezer Yudkowsky] wants" except for broad use of those terms to the point of dropping their typical connotations.

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9FlatulentBayes
Don't worry. We are in good hands. Eliezer understands the dillemas involved and will ensure that we can avoid non-friendly AI. The SI are dedicated to Friendly AI and the completion of their goal.
6Bugmaster
I can virtually guarantee you that he's not the only one who wants to build such an AI. Google, IBM, and the heads of major three-letter government agencies all come to mind as the kind of players who would want to implement their own pet genie, and are actively working toward that goal. That said, it's possible that EY is the only one who has a chance of success... I personally wouldn't give him, or any other human, that much credit, but I do acknowledge the possibility.
6AspiringKnitter
Thank you. I've just updated on that. I now consider it even more likely that the world will be destroyed within my lifetime.
6Bugmaster
For what it's worth, I disagree with many (if not most) LessWrongers (LessWrongites ? LessWrongoids ?) on the subject of the Singularity. I am far from convinced that the Singularity is even possible in principle, and I am fairly certain that, even if it were possible, it would not occur within my lifetime, or my (hypothetical) children's lifetimes. EDIT: added a crucial "not" in the last sentence. Oops.
2Prismattic
I also think the singularity is much less likely than most Lesswrongers. Which is quite comforting, because my estimated probability for the singularity is still higher than my estimated probability that the problem of friendly AI is tractable. Just chiming in here because I think the question about the singularity on the LW survey was not well-designed to capture the opinion of those who don't think it likely to happen at all, so the median LW perception of the singularity may not be what it appears.
2JoshuaZ
Yeah... spending time on Less Wrong helps one in general appreciate how much existential risk there is, especially from technologies, and how little attention is paid to it. Thinking about the Great Filter will just make everything seem even worse.
6[anonymous]
Yeah, this is Eliezer inferring too much from the most-accessible information about sex drive from members of his tribe, so to speak -- it's not so very long ago in the West that female sex drive was perceived as insatiable and vast, with women being nearly impossible for any one man to please in bed; there are still plenty of cultures where that's the case. But he's heard an awful lot of stories couched in evolutionary language about why a cultural norm in his society that is broadcast all over the place in media and entertainment reflects the evolutionary history of humanity. He's confused about human nature. If Eliezer builds a properly-rational AI by his own definitions to resolve the difficulty, and it met all his other stated criteria for FAI, it would tell him he'd gotten confused.
5Kaj_Sotala
Well, there do seem to be several studies, including at least one cross-cultural study, that support the "the average female sex drive is lower" theory.
3[anonymous]
These studies also rely on self-reported sexual feelings and behavior, as reported by the subset of the population willing to volunteer for such a study and answer questions such as "How often do you masturbate?", and right away you've got interference from "signalling what you think sounds right", "signalling what you're willing to admit," "signalling what makes you look impressive", and "signalling what makes you seem good and not deviant by the standards of your culture." It is notoriously difficult to generalize such studies -- they best serve as descriptive accounts, not causal ones. Many of the relevant factors are also difficult to pin down; testosterone clearly has an affect, but it's a physiological correlate that doesn't suffice to explain the patterns seen (which again, are themselves to be taken with a grain of salt, and not signalling anything causal). . The jump to a speculative account of evolutionary sexual strategies is even less warranted. For a good breakdown, see here: http://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/students/sexmotiv.htm
[-]Kaj_Sotala100

These are valid points, but you said that there still exist several cultures where women are considered to be more sexual than men. Shouldn't they then show up in the international studies? Or are these cultures so rare as to not be included in the studies?

Also, it occurs to me that whether or not the differences are biological is somewhat of a red herring. If they are mainly cultural, then it means that it will be easier for an FAI to modify them, but that doesn't affect the primary question of whether they should be modified. Surely that question is entirely independent of the question of their precise causal origin?

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2[anonymous]
An addendum: There's also the "Ecological fallacy" to consider -- where a dataset suggests that on the mean, a population A has property P and population B has P+5, but randomly selecting members of each population will give very different results due to differences in distribution.
2[anonymous]
Actually it's entirely possible to miss a lot of detail while ostensibly sampling broadly. If you sample citizens in Bogota, Mumbai, Taibei, Kuala Lumpur, Ashgabat, Cleveland, Tijuana, Reykjavik, London, and Warsaw, that's pretty darn international and thus a good cross-cultural representation of humanity, right? Surely any signals that emerge from that dataset are probably at least suggestive of innate human tendency? Well, actually, no. Those are all major cities deeply influenced and shaped by the same patterns of mercantile-industrialist economics that came out of parts of Eurasia and spread over the globe during the colonial era and continue to do so -- and that influence has worked its way into an awful lot of everyday life for most of the people in the world. It would be like assuming that using wheels is a human cultural universal, because of their prevalence. An even better analogy here would be if you one day take a bit of plant tissue and looking under a microcoscope, spot the mitochondria. Then you find the same thing in animal tissue. When you see it in fungi, too, you start to wonder. You go sampling and sampling all the visible organisms you can find and even ones from far away, and they all share this trait. It's only Archeans and Bacteria that seem not to. Well, in point of fact there are more types of those than of anything else, significantly more varied and divergent than the other organisms you were looking at put together. It's not a basal condition for living things, it's just a trait that's nearly universal in the ones you're most likely to notice or think about. (The break in the analogy being that mitochondria are a matter of ancestry and subsequent divergence, while many of the human cultural similarities you'd observe in my above example are a matter of alternatives being winnowed and pushed to the margins, and existing similarities amplified by the effects of a coopting culture-plex that's come to dominate the picture). It totally is,
3Prismattic
As I mentioned the last time this topic came up, there is evidence that giving supplementary testosterone to humans of either sex tends to raise libido, as many FTM trans people will attest, for example. While there is a lot of individual variation, expecting that on average men will have greater sex drive than women is not based purely on theory. The pre-Victorian Western perception of female sexuality was largely defined by a bunch of misogynistic Cistercian monks, who, we can be reasonably confident, were not basing their conclusions on a lot of actual experience with women, given that they were cloistered celibates.
2[anonymous]
I don't dispute the effects of testosterone; I just don't think that sex drive is reducible to that, and I tend to be suspicious when evolutionary psychology is proposed for what may just as readily be explained as culture-bound conditions. It's not just the frequency of the desire to copulate that matters, after all -- data on relative "endurance" and ability to go for another round, certain patterns of rates and types of promiscuity, and other things could as readily be construed to provide a very different model of human sexual evolution, and at the end of the day it's a lot easier to come up with plausible-sounding models that accord pretty well with one's biases than be certain we've explored the actual space of evolutionary problems and solutions that led to present-day humanity. I tend to think that evolutionary psychological explanations need to meet the threshold test that they can explain a pattern of behavior better than cultural variance can; biases and behaviors being construed as human nature ought to be based on clearly-defined traits that give reliable signals, and are demonstrable across very different branches of the human cultural tree.
6Emile
Look at it this way - would you agree to trade getting a slightly higher sex drive, in exchange for living in a world where rape, divorce, and unwanted long-term celibacy ("forever alone") are each an order of magnitude rarer than they are in our world? (That is assuming that such a change in sex drive would have those results, which is far from certain.)
8Alicorn
This is an unfair question. If we do the Singularity right, nobody has to accept unwanted brain modifications in order to solve general societal problems. Either we can make the brain modifications appealing via non-invasive education or other gentle means, or we can skip them for people who opt out/don't opt in. Not futzing with people's minds against their wills is a pretty big deal! I would be with Aspiring Knitter in opposing a population-wide forcible nudge to sex drive even if I bought the exceptionally dubious proposition that such a drastic measure would be called for to fix the problems you list.
3Emile
I didn't mean to imply forcing unwanted modifications on everybody "for their own good" - I was talking about under what conditions we might accept things we don't like (I don't think this is a very plausible singularity scenario, except as a general "how weird things could get"). I don't like limitations on my ability to let my sheep graze, but I may accept them if everyone does so and it reduces overgrazing. I may not like limits on my ability to own guns, but I may accept them if it means living in a safer society. I may not like modifications to my sex drive, but I may be willing to agree in exchange for living in a better society. In principle, we could find ways of making everybody better off. Of course, the details of how such an agreement is reached matter a lot - markets, democracy, competition between countries, a machine-God enforcing it's will.
3[anonymous]
.
4Bugmaster
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.
2AspiringKnitter
Explained one example below.
3Cthulhoo
I would be very interested in reading your opinion on this subject. There is sometimes a confirmation effect/death spiral inside the LW community, and it would be nice to be exposed to a completely different point of view. I may then modify my beliefs fully, in part or not at all as a consequence, but it's valuable information for me.
[-]kateblu60

Hello. I found this place as a result of reading Yudkowski's intuitive explanation of Bayes Theorem. I think we are like a very large group of blind people each trying to describe the elephant on the basis of the small part we touch. However, if I can aggregate the tactile observations of a large number of us blind people, I might end up with a pretty good idea of what that elephant looks like. That's my goal - to build a coherent and consistent mental picture of that elephant.

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2Desrtopa
I honestly have some pretty bad associations for that metaphor. The parable makes sense, but I find that it's almost invariably (indeed, even in its original incarnations) presented with the implication "if we could pool our knowledge and experiences, we would come away with an understanding that resembles what I already believe."
[-]zntneo60

Hello my name is Zachary Aletheia (when my wife and i got married we decided to choose a last name based on something that had meaning to use aletheia means truth in greek and we both have a passion for finding out the truth). Looking back on my journey to being a rationalist i think it was a 2 step process (though given how i've repeatedly thought about it i probably have changed the details in my memory quite a bit). I think the first step was during a anthropology class i watched this film about "magic" (i was a neo-pagan at the time who beli... (read more)

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[-]artsyhonker60

I came across a post on efficiency of charity, and joined in order to be able to add my comments. I'm not sure I would identify myself as a rationalist at all, though I share some of what I understand to be rationalist values.

I am a musician and a teacher. I'm also a theist, though I hope to be relatively untroublesome about this and I have no wish to proselytize. Rather, I'm interested in exploring rational ways of discussing or thinking about moral and ethical issues that have more traditionally been addressed within a religious framework.

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[-]Emile60

As for grammar, I'd say that LW is middling to below average

YouTube, from it's size, probably has comments closer to "average".

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[-]wedrifid60

The expected knowledge at LW...is probably middling to above average for me. More relevantly, much more knowledge of science, and in particular the sciences that contribute to rationality (or, more realistically, the ones touched on in the sequences), which tend to be fairly 'hard'. I've found a much higher knowledge of, e.g. history, classical philosophy, politics/political science, and other 'softer' disciplines is expected elsewhere.

I presume you are averaging over a high-sophistication sample of the internet, not the internet at large.

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[-]Deltamatic60

Hello all. I want to sign up for cryonics, but am not sure how. Is there a guide? What are the differences in the process for minors? [I pressed enter in the comment box but there aren't any breaks in the comment itself; how do you make breaks between lines in comments?] I'm a sixteen-year-old male from Louisiana in the US. I was raised Christian and converted to atheism a few months ago. I found Less Wrong from Eliezer's site--I don't remember how I found that--and have been lurking and reading sequences since.

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2[anonymous]
Contact Rudi Hoffman. Today. Cryonics is expensive on a sixteen-year-old's budget. Rudi can get you set up with something close to your price range. You can expect it to be the cost of life insurance, plus maybe $200 a year, with the Cryonics Institute. If you're in good health, my vague expectation is that your life insurance will be on the order of $60/month. This is judging by my experiences and assuming that these things scale linearly and that CI hasn't significantly changed their rates.
[-][anonymous]60

Hi Less Wrong,

I'm a computer scientist currently living in Seattle. I used to work for Google, but I've since left to work on a game-creation-software startup. I came to Less Wrong to see Eliezer's posts about Friendly AI and stayed because a lot of interesting philosophical discussion happens here. It's refreshing to see people engaging earnestly with important issues, and the community is supportive rather than combative; nice work!

I'm interested in thinking clearly about my values and helping other people think about theirs. I was surprised to see that ... (read more)

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[-]Mitchell_Porter60

What is the outcome that you want to socially engineer into existence? What is it that you want the world to realize?

Global Positive Singularity. As opposed to annihilation, or the many other likely scenarios.

You remind me of myself maybe 15 years ago. Excited about the idea of escaping the human condition through advanced technology, but with the idea of avoiding bad (often apocalyptically bad) outcomes also in the mix; wanting the whole world to get excited about this prospect; writing essays and SF short short stories about digital civilizations ... (read more)

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[-]NancyLebovitz60

I don't think the view that there are genetic racial differences in IQ is popular here, if that's what you're referring to. It's come up a few times and the consensus seems to be that the evidence points to cultural and environmental explanations for the racial IQ gap. When you said "human biodiversity", I thought you were referring to psychological differences among humans and the idea that we don't all think the same way.

My impression was that it is popular here, but I may be overgeneralizing from a few examples or other contexts.

The fact th... (read more)

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[-]WrongBot60

1: The universe seems slanted towards Entropy. This suggests a 'start'. Which suggests something to start the universe. This of course has a great many logical fallacies inherent in it, but it's one element.

If this point is logically fallacious, why is it the foundation of your belief? Eliezer has addressed the topic, but that post focuses more on whether one should jump to the idea of God from the idea of a First Cause, which you do seem to have thought about. But why assume a First Cause at all?

On a slightly different tack, if Thor came down (Or is it... (read more)

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[-]daedalus2u60

Hi, my name is Dave Whitlock, I have been a rationalist my whole life. I have Asperger's, so rationalism comes very easily to me, too easily ;) I have a blog

http://daedalus2u.blogspot.com/

Which is mostly about nitric oxide physiology, but that includes a lot of stuff. Lately I have been working a lot on neurodevelopment and especially on autism spectrum disorders.

I comment a fair amount in the blogosphere, Science Based Medicine, neurologica, skepchick, Left brain-right brain and sometimes Science blogs; pretty much only under the daedalus2u pseudony... (read more)

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[-]mattnewport60

I think gains from trade is one of the most uplifting (true) concepts in all of the social sciences. It is a tragedy that it is not more widely appreciated. Most people see trade as zero sum.

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[-]sclamons60

Hello from the lurking shadows!

Some stats:

  • Name: Samuel Clamons
  • Birth Year: 1990
  • Location: College of William and Mary or northern VA, depending on the time of year
  • Academic interests: Biology, mathematics, computer science *Personal interests: Science fiction, philosophy, understanding quantum mechanics, writing.

I've pretty much always been at least an aspiring rationalist, and I convinced myself of atheism at a pretty early age. My journey to LW started with my discovery of Aubrey de Gray in middle school and my discovery of the transhumanism movemen... (read more)

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[-]utilitymonster60

I'm a philosophy PhD student. I studied math and philosophy as an undergrad. I work on ethics and a smattering of Bayesian topics. I care about maximizing the sum of desirable experiences that happen in the future. In less noble moments, I care more immediately about advancing my career as a philosopher and my personal life.

I ran into OB a couple years ago when Robin Hanson came and gave a talk on disagreement at a seminar I was attending. I started reading OB, and then I drifted to LW territory a few months ago.

At first, much of the discussion here s... (read more)

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[-]mattnewport60

Being very intelligent does not imply not being very wrong.

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[-]ThomasRyan60

Hello.

Call me Thomas. I am 22. The strongest force directing my life can be called an extreme phobia of disorder. I came across overcoming bias and Eliezer Yudkowsky's writings, around the same time, in high school, shortly after reading GEB and The Singularity Is Near.

The experience was not a revelation but a relief. I am completely sane! Being here is solace. The information here is mostly systematized, which has greatly helped to organize my thoughts on rationality and has saved me a great amount of time.

I am good at tricking people into thinking I am s... (read more)

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[-]HughRistik60
  • Handle: HughRistik (if you don't get the joke immediately, then say "heuristic" out loud)
  • Age: 23
  • Education: BA Psychology, thinking of grad school
  • Occupation: Web programmer
  • Hobbies: Art, clubbing, fashion, dancing, computer games, too many others to mention
  • Research interests: Mate preferences, sex differences, sex differences in mate preferences, biological and social factors in homosexuality, and the psychology of introversion, social anxiety, high sensitivity, and behavioral inhibition

I came to Less Wrong via Overcoming Bias. I heard a ta... (read more)

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[-]pjeby60

I've notice time and time again that, if you ask a teacher a lot of questions, most people will assume you're incompetent.

Interesting -- my experience was that they (the class, but sometimes also the teacher) found me annoying, instead.

During my (brief) venture in college, taking a beginning calculus class, I tended to run way behind the teacher, trying to figure out why he'd done some particular step, and would finally give in and ask about it.

Invariably, he would glance at that step, and go, "Oh, you're right. That's wrong, I should have done...... (read more)

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[-]PhilGoetz60

This is the first group I've been in where Vladimir is the most common name.

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[-]ektimo60
  • Name: Edwin Evans
  • Location: Silicon Valley, CA
  • Age: 35

I read the "Meaning of Life FAQ" by a previous version of Eliezer in 1999 when I was trying to write something similar, from a Pascal’s Wager angle (even a tiny possibility of objective value is what should determine your actions). I've been a financial supporter of the Organization That Can't Be Named and a huge fan of Eliezer's writings since that same time. After reading "Crisis of Faith" along with "Could Anything Be Right?" I finally gave up on objective value; the... (read more)

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[-]Paul Crowley60

OK, let's get this started. There seems to be no way of doing this that doesn't sound like a personal ad.

As well as programming for a living, I'm a semi-professional cryptographer and cryptanalyst; read more on my work there. Another interest important to me is sexual politics; I am bi, poly and kinky, and have been known to organise events related to these themes (BiCon, Polyday, and a fetish nightclub). I get the im... (read more)

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5Alicorn
What would it look like to apply rationalist techniques to sexual politics? The best guess I have is "interesting", but I don't know in what way.
3HughRistik
Yes, it would be interesting. It would involve massively changing the current gender political programs on all sides, which are all ideologies with terrible epistemic hygiene. I'll try to talk about this more when I can.
[-]research_prime_space50

Hi! I'm 18 years old, female, and a college student (don't want to release personal information beyond that!). I'm majoring in math, and I hopefully want to use those skills for AI research :D

I found you guys from EA, and I started reading the sequences last week, but I really do have a burning question I want to post to the Discussion board so I made an account.

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2cousin_it
Welcome! You can ask your question in the open thread as well.
[-][anonymous]50

Hi, I am Olga, female, 40, programmer, mother of two. Got here from HPMoR. Can not as yet define myself as a rationalist, but I am working on it. Some rationality questions, used in real life conversations, have helped me to tackle some personal and even family issues. It felt great. In my "grown-up" role I am deeply concerned to bring up my kids with their thoughts process as undamaged as I possibly can and maybe even to balance some system-taught stupidity. I am at the start of my reading list on the matter, including LW sequences.

[This comment is no longer endorsed by its author]Reply
[-]GloriaSidorum50

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 ... (read more)

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[-]DanielH50

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 knowle... (read more)

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[-][anonymous]50

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?

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[-]Nornagest50

I don't really trust self-evaluation for questions like this, unfortunately -- it's too likely to be confounded by people's moral self-image, which is exactly the sort of thing I'd expect to be affected by a religious conversion. Bagels would still work, though.

Actually, if I was designing a study like this I think I'd sign a bunch of people up ostensibly for longitudial evaluation on a completely different topic -- and leave a basket of bagels in the waiting room.

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3AspiringKnitter
What about a study ostensibly of the health of people who convert to new religions? Bagels in the waiting room, new converts, random not-too-unpleasant medical tests for no real reason? Repeat yearly? The moral questionnaire would be interesting because people's own conscious ethics might reflect something cool and if you're gonna test it anyway... but on the other hand, yeah. I don't trust them to evaluate how moral they are, either. But if people signal what they believe is right, then that means you do know what they think is good. You could use that to see a shift from no morals at all to believing morals are right and good to have. And just out of curiosity, I'd like to see if they shifted from deontologist to consequentialist ethics, or vice versa.
2DSimon
Hm, you'd probably want the bagels to be off in a small side room so that the patients can feel alone while considering whether or not to steal one.
[-]DSimon50

My experience with LW's attitude has been similar, though owing to a different reason. Religion generally seems to be treated here as the result of cognitive bias, same as any number of other poorly setup beliefs.

Though LW does tend to use the word "insane" in a way that includes any kind of irrational cognition, I so far have interpreted that to mostly be slang, not meant to literally imply that all irrational cognition is mental illness (although the symptoms of many mental illnesses can be seen as a subset of irrational cognition).

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2wedrifid
Not having certain irrational biases can be said to be a subset of mental illness.
[-]MixedNuts50

Only Jehovah. He says that he's going to send his worshipers to heaven and Astarte's to hell. Astarte says neither Jehovah nor she will send anyone anywhere. Either one could be a liar, or they could be in a duel and each describing what happens if xe wins.

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[-]katydee50

Has anyone here described religious beliefs as being characteristically caused by mental illness? I'd be concerned if they had, since such a statement would be (a) incorrect and (b) stigmatizing.

In this post, Eliezer characterized John C. Wright's conversion to Catholicism as the result of a temporal lobe epileptic fit and said that at least some (not sure if he meant all) religious experiences were "brain malfunctions."

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[-]KPier50

You not being Will_Newsome. (I can't imagine how bizarre it must be to be watching this conversation from your perspective.)

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2AspiringKnitter
Wait, but what changed that caused Mitchell_Porter to realize that?
[-]Mitchell_Porter130

I didn't exactly realize it, but I reduced the probability. My goal was never to make a bet, my goal was to sockblock Will. But in the end I found his protestations somewhat convincing; he actually sounded for a moment like someone earnestly defending himself, rather than like a joker. And I wasn't in the mood to re-run my comparison between the Gospel of Will and the Knitter's Apocryphon. So I tried to retire the bet in a fair way, since having an ostentatious unsubstantiated accusation of sockpuppetry in the air is almost as corrosive to community trust as it is to be beset by the real thing. (ETA: I posted this before I saw Kevin's comment, by the way!)

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3Will_Newsome
"Next time just don't be a dick and you won't lose a hundred bucks," says the unreflective part of my brain whose connotations I don't necessarily endorse but who I think does have a legitimate point.
7dlthomas
No idea. Don't have to show your cards if you fold...
6Kevin
I think he just gave up and didn't want to be the guy sowing seeds of discontent with no evidence. That kind of thing is bad for communities.
[-]ArisKatsaris50

Oh, so by "Will" you mean "any account controlled by Will" not "the account called Will_Newsome". I think everyone else interpreted it as the latter.

Nick, it was pretty obvious to me that lessdazed and CuSithBell meant the person Will, not "any account controlled by Will" or "the account called Will_Newsome" -- it doesn't matter if the person would be using an account in order to lie, or an email in order to lie, or Morse code in order to lie, just that they would be lying.

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[-]TheOtherDave50

If WillNewsome claimed to be both of them and AspiringKnitter did not, then we would know he was lying.

Um? Supposing I'd created both accounts, I could certainly claim as Will that both accounts were me, and claim as AK that they weren't, and in that case Will would be telling the truth.

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4Will_Newsome
Me too. ETA: And I really mean no offense, but I'm sort of surprised that folk don't immediately see things like this... is it a skill maybe?
[-]wedrifid50

Yes, it may be legal to check people's IP addresses, but that doesn't mean it's morally okay to do so without asking

No, but it still is morally ok. In fact it is usually the use of multiple accounts that is frowned upon, morally questionable or an outright breach of ToS - not the identification thereof.

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5Emile
I don't think sock puppets are always frowned down upon - if Clippy and QuirinusQuirrel were sock puppets of regular users (I think Quirrell is, but not Clippy), they are "good faith" ones (as long as they don't double downvote etc.), and I expect "outing" them would be frowned upon. If AK is a sock puppet, then yeah, it's something morally questionable the admins should deal with. But I wouldn't extend that to all sock puppets.
4katydee
Quirrell overtly claims to be a sock puppet or something like one (it's kind of complicated), whereas Clippy has been consistent in its claim to be the online avatar of a paperclip-maximizing AI. That said, I think most people here believe (like good Bayesians) that Clippy is more likely to be a sockpuppet of an existing user.
3TheOtherDave
Huh. Can you clarify what is morally questionable about another user posting pseudonymously under the AK account? For example, suppose hypothetically that I was the user who'd created, and was posting as, AK, and suppose I don't consider myself to have violated any moral constraints in so doing. What am I missing?
6Emile
Having multiple sock puppets can be a dishonest way to give the impression that certain views are held by more members than in reality. This isn't really a problem for novelty sockpuppets (Clippy and Quirrel), since those clearly indicate their status. What's also iffy in this case is the possibility of AK lying about who she claims to be, and wasting everybody's time (which is likely to go hand-in-hand with AK being a sockpuppet of someone else). If you are posting as AK and are actually female and Christian but would rather that fact not be known about your more famous "TheOtherDave" identity, then I don't have any objection (as long as you don't double vote, or show up twice in the same thread to support the same position, etc.).
2TheOtherDave
OK, thanks for clarifying. I can see where double-voting is a problem, both for official votes (e.g., karma-counts) and unofficial ones (e.g., discussions on controversial issues). I can also see where people lying about their actual demographics, experiences, etc. can be problematic, though of course that's not limited to sockpuppetry. That is, I might actually be female and Christian, or seventeen and Muslim, or Canadian and Theosophist, or what-have-you, and still only have one account.
3wedrifid
Clippy is too. Weren't you just telling me that it is morally wrong for the admins to even look at the IP addresses? When it comes to well behaved sockpuppetts "Don't ask, don't tell" seems to work.
[-]AspiringKnitter50

And get accused of being this person's sister impersonating his sockpuppet?

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[-]hairyfigment50

Good for you. ^_^

You had a Bad feeling about two Christian quotes that mentioned Hell or demons/hellfire. You also got a Good feeling about a quote from Nietzsche that didn't mention Hell. I don't know the context of your reactions to the Tarot and Wicca, but obviously people have linked those both to Hell. (See also Horned God, "Devil" trump.) So I wanted to get your reaction to a passage with no mention of Hell from an indeterminate religion, in case that sufficed to make it seem Good.

The author designed a famous Tarot deck, and inspired a big chunk (at minimum) of Wicca.

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2AspiringKnitter
I hadn't considered that hypothesis. I'd upvote for the novel theory, but now that you've told me you'll never be able to trust further reactions that could confirm or deny it, which seems like it's worth a downvote, so not voting your post up or down. That said, I think this fails to explain having a Bad reaction to this page and the entire site it's on, despite thinking before reading it that Wicca was foofy nonsense and completely not expecting to find evil of that magnitude (a really, really strong feeling-- none of the quotes you guys have asked me about have been even a quarter that bad). It wasn't slow, either; unlike most other things, it was almost immediately obvious. (The fact that this has applied to everything else I've ever read about Wicca since-- at least, everything written by Wiccans about their own religion-- could have to do with expectation, so I can see where you wouldn't regard subsequent reactions as evidence... but the first one, at least, caught me totally off-guard.) I know who Crowley is. (It was his tarot deck that someone gave me as a gift-- and I was almost happy about it, because I'd actually been intending to research tarot because it seemed cool and I meant to use the information for a story I was writing. But then I felt like, you know, Bad, so I didn't end up using it.) That's why I was surprised not to have a bad feeling about his writings.
[-]Bugmaster50

Unless by "godly" you mean "fanatical extremists who approve of terrorism and/or fail to understand why theocracies only work in theory and not in practice".

Understood. When most Christian say things like, "I wish our elected official were more godly", they usually mean, "I really wish we lived in a Christian theocracy", but I see now that you're not one of these people. In this case, would you vote for an atheist and thus against a Christian, if you thought that the atheist candidate's policies were more benefici... (read more)

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2AspiringKnitter
Possibly. Depends on how much better, how I expected both candidates' policies to change and how electable I considered them both. I wouldn't. But I would test accompanying claims. For this particular example, I can't rule out the possibility of ending up getting sent to hell for this until I die. However, having heard what supporters of those policies say, I know that most Muslims who support this sort of idea of modest clothing claim that it causes women to be more respected, causes men exposed only to this kind of woman to be less lustful and some even claim it lowers the prevalence of rape. As I receive an optimal level of respect at the moment, I find the first claim implausible. Men in countries where it happens are more sexually frustrated and more likely to end up blowing themselves up. Countries imposing these sorts of standards harm women even more than they harm men. So that's implausible. And rape occurs less in cultures with more unsexualized nudity, which would indicate only a modest protective effect or none at all, or could even indicate that more covering up causes more rape. It's not 100% out of the question that the universe has an evil god who orders people to do stupid things for his own amusement. I say you're wrong about atheism, but you don't consider that strong evidence in favor of Christianity. Ah. I see. Sounds plausible... ish... sort of.
3Bugmaster
That's perfectly reasonable, but see my comments below. Ok, so you've listed a bunch of empirically verifiable criteria, and evaluated them. This approach makes sense to me... but... it sounds to me like you're making your political ("atheist politician vs. Christian politician") and moral ("should I wear a burqa") choices based primarily (or perhaps even entirely) on secular reasoning. You would support the politician who will implement the best policies (and who stands a chance of being elected at all), regardless of his religion; and you would oppose social polices that demonstrably make people unhappy -- in this life, not the next. So, where does "godliness" come in ? I agree, but then, I don't have faith to inform me of any competing gods' existence. I imagine that if I had faith in a non-evil Christian god, who is also the only god, I'd peg the probability of the evil god's existence at exactly 0%. But it's possible that I'm misunderstanding what faith feels like "from the inside". Uh oh. :-)
[-]APMason50

God has been known to speak to people through dreams, visions and gut feelings.

But schizophrenics have been known to experience those things too. How do you tell the difference - even if you're the one it's happening to?

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3AspiringKnitter
I had to confront that one. Upvoted for being an objection a reasonable person should make. 1. Be familiar with how mental illnesses and other disorders that can affect thinking actually present. (Not just the DSM. Read what people with those conditions say about them.) 2. Be familiar with what messages from God are supposed to be like. (From Old Testament examples or Paul's heuristic. I suppose it's also reasonable to ascertain whether or not they fit the pattern for some other religion.) 3. Essentially, look at what your experiences best fit. That can be hard. But if your "visions" are highly disturbing and you become paranoid about your neighbors trying to kill you, it's more likely schizophrenia than divine inspiration. This applies to other things as well. 4. Does it actually make sense? Is it a message saying something, and then another one of the same sort, proclaiming the opposite, so that to believe one requires disbelieving the other? 5. Is there anything you can do to increase the probability that you're mentally healthy? Is your thyroid okay? How are your adrenals? Either could get sick in a way that mimics a mood disorder. Can you also consider whether your lifestyle's not conducive to mental health? Sleep problems? Poor nutrition? 6. Run it by other people who know you well and would be people you would trust to know if you were mentally ill. No certainties. Just ways to be a little more sure. And that leads into the next one. 1. Pick the most likely interpretation and go with it and see if your quality of life improves. See if you're becoming a better person.
4juliawise
"The angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt." I work in a psych hospital, and the delusional patients there uniformly believe that their delusions make sense. This is the most likely to work. The delusional people I know are aware that other people disagree with their delusions. Relatedly, there is great disagreement on the topic of religion.
4Bugmaster
I have to admit that I'm not familiar with Paul's heuristic -- what is it ? As for the Old Testament, God gives out some pretty frightening messages in there, from "sacrifice your son to me" to "wipe out every man, woman, and child who lives in this general area". I am reasonably sure you wouldn't listen to a message like that, but why wouldn't you ? I have heard this sentiment from other theists, but I still understand it rather poorly, I'm ashamed to admit... maybe it's because I've never been religious, and thus I'm missing some context. So, what do you mean by "a better person"; how do you judge what is "better" ? In addition, let's imagine that you discovered that believing in, say, Buddhism made you an even better person. Would you listen to messages that appear to be Buddhist, and discard those that appear to be Christian but contradict Buddhism -- even though you're pretty sure that Christianity is right and Buddhism is wrong ?
6AspiringKnitter
I think I might be too tired to give this the response it deserves. If this post isn't a good enough answer, ask me again in the morning. That you can tell whether a spirit is good or evil by whether or not it says Jesus is Lord. Well, right here I mean that if you've narrowed it down to either schizophrenia or Christianity is true and God is speaking to you, if it's the former, untreated, you expect to feel more miserable. If it's the latter, by embracing God, you expect it'll make your quality of life improve. "Better person" here means "person who maximizes average utility better".
4Bugmaster
Oh, I see, and the idea here is that the evil spirit would not be able to actually say "Jesus is Lord" without self-destructing, right ? Thanks, I get it now; but wouldn't this heuristic merely help you to determine whether the message is coming from a good spirit or an evil one, not whether the message is coming from a spirit or from inside your own head ? I haven't studied schizophrenia in any detail, but wouldn't a person suffering from it also have a skewed subjective perception of what "being miserable" is ? Some atheists claim that their life was greatly improved after their deconversion from Christianity, and some former Christians report the same thing after converting to Islam. Does this mean that the Christian God didn't really talk to them while they were religious, after all -- or am I overanalyzing your last bullet point ? Understood, though I was confused for a moment there. When other people say "better person", they usually mean something like "a person who is more helpful and kinder to others", not merely "a happier person", though obviously those categories do overlap.
8AspiringKnitter
I just lost my comment by hitting the wrong button. Not being too tired today, though, here's what I think in new words: Yes. That's why we have to look into all sorts of possibilities. Speaking here only as a layperson who's done a lot of research, I can't think of any indication of that. Rather, they tend to be pretty miserable if their psychosis is out of control (with occasional exceptions). One person's biography that I read recounts having it mistaken for depression at first, and believing that herself since it fit. That said, conventional approaches to treating schizophrenia don't help much/any with half of it, the half that most impairs quality of life. (Not that psychosis doesn't, but as a quick explanation, they also suffer from the "negative symptoms" which include stuff like apathy, poor grooming and stuff. The "positive symptoms" are stuff like hearing voices and being delusional. In the rare* cases where medication works, it only treats positive symptoms and usually exacerbates negative symptoms. (Just run down a list of side-effects and a list of negative symptoms. It helps if you know jargon.) Hence, poor quality of life.) So it's also possible that receiving treatment for a mental illness you actually have would fail to increase quality of life. Add in abuses by the system and it could even decrease it, so this is definitely a problem. Aris understood correctly. *About a third of schizophrenics are helped by medication. Not rare, certainly, but that's less than half. Guidelines for treating schizophrenia are irrational. I will elaborate if asked, with the caveat that it's irrelevant and I'm not a doctor.
5AspiringKnitter
And I left stuff out here that was in the first. Short version: unsurprising because of things like this. People can identify as Christian while being confused about what that means. Surprising. My model takes a hit here. Do you have links to firsthand accounts of this?
6TheOtherDave
I'm surprised by your surprise. I generally expect that people who make an effort to be X will subsequently report that being X improves their life, whether we're talking about "convert to Christianity" or "convert to Islam" or "deconvert from Christianity" or "deconvert from Islam."
2Bugmaster
Could you elaborate on this point a bit ? As far as I understand, at least some of the positive symptoms may pose significant existential risks to the patient (and possibly those around him, depending on severity). For example, a person may see a car coming straight at him, and desperately try to dodge it, when in reality there's no car. Or a person may fail to notice a car that actually exists. Or, in extreme cases, the person may believe that his neighbour is trying to kill him, take preemptive action, and murder an innocent. If I had symptoms like that, I personally would rather live with the negatives for the rest of my life, rather than living with the vastly increased risk that I might accidentally kill myself or harm others -- even knowing that I might feel subjectively happier until that happens. Ok, that makes sense: by "becoming a better person", you don't just mean "a happier person", but also "a person who's more helpful and nicer to others"; and you choose to believe things that make you such a person. I have to admit, this mode of thought is rather alien to me, and thus I have a tough time understanding it. To me, this sounds perilously close to wishful thinking. To use an exaggerated example, I would definitely feel happier if I knew that I had a million dollars in the bank. Having a million dollars would also empower me to be a better person, since I could donate at least some of it to charity, or invest it in a school, etc. However, I am not going to go ahead and believe that I have a million dollars, because... well... I don't. In addition, there's a question of what one sees as being "better". As we'd talked about earlier, at least some theists do honestly believe that persecuting gay people and forcing women to wear burqas is a good thing to do (and a moral imperative). Thus, they will (presumably) interpret any gut feelings that prompt them to enforce the burqa ordinances even harder as being good and therefore godly and true. You (and I), ho
6AspiringKnitter
Yeah. You could feel unhappy a lot more if you take the pills usually prescribed to schizophrenics because side-effects of those pills include mental fog and weight gain. You could also be a less helpful person to others because you would be less able to do thinks if you're on a high enough dose to "zombify" you. Also, Erving Goffman's work shows that situations where people are in an institution, as he defines the term, cause people to become stupider and less capable. (Kudos to the mental health system for trying to get people out of those places faster-- most people who go in get out after a little while now, as opposed to the months it usually took when he was studying. However, the problems aren't eliminated and his research is still applicable.) Hence, it could make you a worse and unhappier person to undergo treatment. NO. That takes a BIG NO. Severity of mental illness is NOT correlated with violence. It's correlated with self-harm, but not hurting other people. Mental illness is correlated (no surprise here) with being abused and with substance abuse. Both of those are correlated with violence, leading to higher rates of violence among the mentally ill. Even when not corrected for, the rate isn't that high and the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators of it. But when those effects ARE corrected for, mental illness does not, by itself, cause violence. At all. End of story. Axe-crazy villains in the movies are unrealistic and offensive portrayals of mental illness. /rant This mode of thought is alien to me too, since I wasn't advocating it. I'm confused about how you could come to that conclusion. I have been unclear, it seems. (Seriously, what?) Okay, so I mean, if you think you only want to fulfill your own selfish desires, and then become a Christian, and even though you don't want to, decide it's right to be nice to other people and spend time praying, and then after a while learn that it makes you really happ
[-]lavalamp100

... I thought a workable definition of "Christian" was "person who believes in the divinity of Jesus Christ and tries to follow his teachings", in which case we have a pretty objective test. Jesus taught us to love our neighbors and be merciful. He repeatedly behaved politely toward women of poor morals, converting them with love and specifically avoiding condemnation. Hence, people who are hateful or condemn others are not following his teachings. If that was a mistake, that's different, just like a rationalist could be overconfident-- but to systematically do it and espouse the idea that you should be hateful clearly goes against what Jesus taught as recorded in the Bible.

I seem to be collecting downvotes, so I'll shut up about this shortly. But to me, anyway, this still sounds like No True Scotsman. I suspect that nearly all Christians will agree with your definition (excepting Mormons and JW's, but I assume you added "divinity" in there to intentionally exclude them). However, I seriously doubt many of them will agree with your adjudication. Fundamentalists sincerely believe that the things they do are loving and following the teachings of Jesus. They think you are the one putting the emphasis on the wrong passages. I personally happen to think you probably are much more correct than they are; but the point is neither one of us gets to do the adjudication.

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4AspiringKnitter
I think this is missing the point: they believe that, but they're wrong. The fact that they're wrong is what causes them distress. If you'd like, we can taboo the word "Christian" (or just end the conversation, as you suggest).
8[anonymous]
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8AspiringKnitter
I have never before had someone disagree with me on the grounds that I'm both morally superior to other people and a genius.
7[anonymous]
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8AspiringKnitter
I wouldn't go disagreeing with him; I'd try performing a double-blind test of his athletic ability while wearing different pairs of socks. It just seems like the sort of thing that's so simple to design and test that I don't know if I could resist. I'd need three people and a stopwatch...
8wedrifid
Don't forget the spare pairs of socks!
6AspiringKnitter
Yes, thanks for reminding me. I'd also need pencil and paper.
6TheOtherDave
And a nontrivial amount of time and attention. I suspect that after the third or fifth such athlete, you'd develop the ability to resist, and simply have your opinion about his or her belief about socks, which you might or might not share depending on the circumstances.
6[anonymous]
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9AspiringKnitter
Uh-oh, that's a bad sign. If someone on LessWrong thinks something like that, I'd better give it credence. But now I'm confused because I can't think what has given you that idea. Ergo, there appears to be evidence that I've not only made a mistake in thinking, but made one unknowingly, and failed to realize afterward or even see that something was wrong. So, this gives me two questions and I feel like an idiot for asking them, and if this site had heretofore been behaving like other internet sites this would be the point where the name-calling would start, but you guys seem more willing than average to help people straighten things out when they're confused, so I'm actually going to bother asking: 1. What do you mean by "basic premise" and "can't question" in this context? Do you mean that I can't consider his nonexistence as a counterfactual? Or is there a logical impossibility in my conception of God that I've failed to notice? 2. Can I have specific quotes, or at least a general description, of when I've been evasive? Since I'm unaware of it, it's probably a really bad thinking mistake, not actual evasiveness-- that or I have a very inaccurate self-concept. Actually, no possibility seems good here (in the sense that I should revise my estimate of my own intelligence and/or honesty and/or self-awareness down in almost every case), except that something I said yesterday while in need of more sleep came out really wrong. Or that someone else made a mistake, but given that I've gotten several downvotes (over seventeen, I think) in the last couple of hours, that's either the work of someone determined to downvote everything I say or evidence that multiple people think I'm being stupid. (You know, I do want to point out that the comment about testing his lucky socks was mostly a joke. I do assign a really low prior probability to the existence of lucky socks anywhere, in case someone voted me down for being an idiot instead of for missing the point and derailin
5[anonymous]
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5AspiringKnitter
Not how I would have put that, but mostly ADBOC this. (I wouldn't have called him a man, nor would I have singled out the sky as a place to put him. But yes, I do believe in a god who created everything and loves all, and ADBOC the bit about the 12-year-old-- would you like to get into the Problem of Evil or just agree to disagree on the implied point even though that's a Bayesian abomination? And agree with the last sentence.) I'd ask you what would look different if I did, but I think you've answered this below. You think I'm one of those people. Let me begin by saying that God's existence is an empirical fact which one could either prove or disprove. I worry about telling people why I converted because I fear ridicule or accusations of lying. However, I'll tell you this much: I suddenly became capable of feeling two new sensations, neither of which I'd felt before and neither of which, so far as I know, has words in English to describe it. Sensation A felt like there was something on my skin, like dirt or mud, and something squeezing my heart, and was sometimes accompanied by a strange scent and almost always by feelings of distress. Sensation B never co-occurred with Sensation A. I could be feeling one, the other or neither, and could feel them to varying degrees. Sensation B felt relaxing, but also very happy and content and jubilant in a way and to a degree I'd never quite been before, and a little like there was a spring of water inside me, and like the water was gold-colored, and like this was all I really wanted forever, and a bit like love. After becoming able to feel these sensations, I felt them in certain situations and not in others. If one assumed that Sensation A was Bad and Sensation B was Good, then they were consistent with Christianity being true. Sometimes they didn't surprise me. Sometimes they did-- I could get the feeling that something was Bad even if I hadn't thought so (had even been interested in doing it) and then later learn that Chr
[-]Kaj_Sotala170

If one assumed that Sensation A was Bad and Sensation B was Good, then they were consistent with Christianity being true. Sometimes they didn't surprise me. Sometimes they did-- I could get the feeling that something was Bad even if I hadn't thought so (had even been interested in doing it) and then later learn that Christian doctrine considered it Bad as well.

This would be considerably more convincing if Christianity were a unified movement.

Suppose there existed only three religions in the world, all of which had a unified dogma and only one interpretation of it. Each of them had a long list of pretty specific doctrinal points, like one religion considering Tarot cards bad and another thinking that they were fine. If your Good and Bad sensations happened to precisely correspond to the recommendations of one particular religion, even in the cases where you didn't actually know what the recommendations were beforehand, then that would be some evidence for the religion being true.

However, in practice there are a lot of religions, and a lot of different Christian sects and interpretations. You've said that you've chosen certain interpretations instead of others because that's the i... (read more)

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[-]DSimon120

I don't think the conclusion that the morality described by sensations A/B is a property of the universe at large has been justified. You mention that the sensations predict in advance what Christian doctrine describes as moral or immoral before you know directly what that doctrine says, but that strikes me as being an investigation method that is not useful, for two reasons:

  1. Christian culture is is very heavily permeated throughout most English-speaking cultures. A person who grows up in such a culture will have a high likelihood of correctly guessing Christianity's opinion on any given moral question, even if they haven't personally read the relevant text.

  2. More generally, introspection is a very problematic way of gathering data. Many many biases, both obvious and subtle, come into play, and make your job way more difficult. For example: Did you take notes on each instance of feeling A or B when it occurred, and use those notes (and only those notes) later when validating them against Christian doctrine? If not, you are much more likely to remember hits than misses, or even to after-the-fact readjust misses into hits; human memory is notorious for such things.

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[-]TimS120

A universe without God has no innate morality. The only thing that could make morality would be human preference, which changes an awful lot.

In a world entirely without morality, we are constantly facing situations where trusting another person would be mutually beneficial, but trusting when the other person betrays is much worse than mutual betrayal. Decision theory has a name for this type of problem: Prisoner's Dilemma. The rational strategy is to defect, which makes a pretty terrible world.

But when playing an indefinite number of games, it turns out that cooperating, then punishing defection is a strong strategy in an environment of many distinct strategies. That looks a lot like "turn the other cheek" combined with a little bit of "eye for an eye." Doesn't the real world behavior consistent with that strategy vaguely resemble morality?

In short, decision theory suggests that material considerations can justify a substantial amount of "moral" behavior.

Regarding your sensations A and B, from the outside perspective it seems like you've been awfully lucky that your sense of right and wrong match your religious commitments. If you believed We... (read more)

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6dlthomas
I would say tit-for-tat looks very much like "eye for an eye" but very little like "turn the other cheek", which seems much more like a cooperatebot.
3AspiringKnitter
...I became a Christian and determined my religious beliefs based on sensations A and B. Why would I believe in unsupported doctrine that went against what I could determine of the world? I just can't see myself doing that. My sense of right and wrong match my religious commitments because I chose my religious commitments so they would fit with my sense of right and wrong. Because my built-in morality oracle likes the Christian Bible. It's sufficient to explain some, but not all, morality. Take tarot cards, for example. What was there in the ancestral environment to make those harmful? That just doesn't make any sense with your theory of morality-as-iterated-Prisoner's-Dilemma.
4TimS
If you picked a sect based on your moral beliefs, then that is evidence that your Christianity is moral. It is not evidence that morality is your Christianity (i.e. "A implies B" is not equivalent "B implies A"). And if playing with tarot cards could open a doorway for demons to enter the world (or whatever wrong they cause), it seems perfectly rational to morally condemn tarot cards. I don't morally condemn tarot cards because I think they have the same mystical powers as regular playing cards (i.e. none). Also, I'm not intending to invoke "ancestral environment" when I invoke decision theory.
2AspiringKnitter
But that's already conditional on a universe that looks different from what most atheists would say exists. If you see proof that tarot cards-- or anything else-- summon demons, your model of reality takes a hit. I don't understand. Can you clarify?
5TimS
If tarot cards have mystical powers, I absolutely need to adjust my beliefs about the supernatural. But you seemed to assert that decision theory can't say that tarot are immoral in the universes where they are actually dangerous. Alice has a moral belief that divorce is immoral. This moral belief is supported by objective evidence. She is given a choice to live in Distopia, where divorce is permissible by law, and Utopia, where divorce is legally impossible. For the most part, Distopia and Utopia are very similar places to live. Predictably, Alice chooses to live in Utopia. The consistency between Alice's (objectively true) morality and Utopian law is evidence that Utopia is moral. It is not evidence that Utopia is the cause of Alice's morality (i.e. is not evidence that morality is Utopian - the grammatical ordering of phrases does not help making my point).
[-][anonymous]110

sensation A and sensation B

You were not entirely clear, but you seem to be taking these as signals of things being Bad or Good in the morality sense, right? Ok so it feels like there is an objective morality. Let's come up with hypotheses:

You have a morality that is the thousand shards of desire left over by an alien god. Things that were a good idea (for game theory, etc reasons) to avoid in the ancestral environment tend to feel good so that you would do them. Things that feel bad are things you would have wanted to avoid. As we know, an objective morality is what a personal morality feels like from the inside. That is, you are feeling the totally natural feelings of morality that we all feel. Why you attached special affect to the bible, I suppose that's the affect hueristic: you feel like the bible is true and it is the center of your belief or something, and that goodness gets confused with a moral goodness. This is all hindsight, but it seems pretty sound.

Or it could be Jesus-is-Son-of-a-Benevolent-Love-Agent-That-Created-the-Universe. I guess God is sending you signals to say what sort of things he likes/doesn't like? Is that the proposed mechanism for morality? I don't k... (read more)

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[-]cousin_it100

The complex loving god hypothesis is incredibly complicated. Minds are so complex we can't even build one yet.

There are two problems with this argument. First, each individual god might be very improbable, but that could be counterbalanced by the astronomical number of possible gods (e.g. consider all possible tweaks to the holy book), so you can argue apriori against specific flavors of theism but not against theism in general. Second, if Eliezer is right and AI can develop from a simple seed someone can code up in their garage, that means powerful minds don't need high K-complexity. A powerful mind (or a program that blossoms into one) could even be simpler than physics as we currently know it, which is already quite complex and seems to have even more complexity waiting in store.

IMO a correct argument against theism should focus on the "loving" part rather than the "mind" part, and focus on evidence rather than complexity priors. The observed moral neutrality of physics is more probable if there's no moral deity. Given what we know about evolution etc., it's hard to name any true fact that makes a moral deity more likely.

I'm not sure that everything in my comment is correct. But I guess LW could benefit from developing an updated argument against (or for) theism?

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3Will_Newsome
Your argument about K-complexity is a decent shorthand but causes people to think that this "simplicity" thing is baked into the universe (universal prior) as if we had direct access to the universe (universal prior, reference machine language) and isn't just another way of saying it's more probable after having updated on a ton of evidence. As you said it should be about evidence not priors. No one's ever seen a prior, at best a brain's frequentist judgment about what "priors" are good to use when.
4AspiringKnitter
A really intelligent response, so I upvoted you, even though, as I said, it surprised me by telling me that, just as one example, tarot cards are Bad when I had not even considered the possibility, so I doubt this came from inside me.
[-][anonymous]100

Well you are obviously not able to predict the output of your own brain, that's the whole point of the brain. If morality is in the brain and still too complex to understand, you would expect to encounter moral feelings that you had not anticipated.

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9Bugmaster
Just to echo the others that brought this up, I applaud your courage; few people have the guts to jump into the lions' den, as it were. That said, I'm going to play the part of the lion (*) on this topic. How do you know that these sensations come from a supernatural entity, and not from your own brain ? I know that if I started experiencing odd physical sensations, no matter how pleasant, this would be my first hypothesis (especially since, in my personal case, the risk of stroke is higher than average). In fact, if I experienced anything that radically contradicted my understanding of the world, I'd probably consider the following explanations, in order of decreasing likelihood: * I am experiencing some well-known cognitive bias. * My brain is functioning abnormally and thus I am experiencing hallucinations. * Someone is playing a prank on me. * Shadowy human agencies are testing a new chemical/biological/emissive device on me. * A powerful (yet entirely material) alien is inducing these sensations, for some reason. * A trickster spirit (such as a Kami, or the Coyote, etc.) is doing the same by supernatural means. * A localized god is to blame (Athena, Kali, the Earth Mother, etc.) * An omniscient, omnipotent, and generally all-everything entity is responsible. This list is not exhaustive, obviously, it's just some stuff I came up with off the top of my head. Each next bullet point is less probable than the one before it, and thus I'd have to reject pretty much every other explanation before arriving at "the Christian God exists". (*) Or a bobcat, at least.
8juliawise
AspiringKnitter, what do you think about people who have sensory experiences that indicate that some other religion or text is correct?
8Prismattic
God does not solve this problem.
7[anonymous]
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6TheOtherDave
I can understand your hesitation about telling that story. Thanks for sharing it. Some questions, if you feel like answering them: * Can you give me some examples of things you hadn't known Christian doctrine considered Bad before you sensed them as A? * If you were advising someone who lacks the ability to sense Good and Bad directly on how to have accurate beliefs about what's Good and Bad, what advice would you give? (It seems to follow from what you've said elsewhere that simply telling them to believe Christianity isn't sufficient, since lots of people sincerely believe they are following the directive to "believe Christianity" and yet end up believing Bad things. It seems something similar applies to "believe the New Testament". Or does it?) * If you woke up tomorrow and you experienced sensation A in situations that were consistent with Christianity being true, and experienced sensation B in situations that were consistent with Islam being true, what would you conclude about the world based on those experiences? ** EDIT: My original comment got A and B reversed. Fixed.
5lavalamp
Upvoted for courage.
5[anonymous]
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5Kaj_Sotala
I think that should probably be AspiringKnitter's call. (I don't think you're pushing too hard, given the general norms of this community, but I'm not sure of what our norms concerning religious discussions are.)
3AspiringKnitter
If you want it to be my call, then I say go ahead.
2[anonymous]
Do you currently get a "Bad" signal on other holy books?
2TimS
Do you get it when you don't know it's another holy book?
[-]AspiringKnitter200

Let's try that! I got a Bad signal on the Koran and a website explaining the precepts of Wicca, but I knew what both of those were. I would be up for trying a test where you give me quotes from the Christian Bible (warning: I might recognize them; if so, I'll tell you, but for what it's worth I've only read part of Ezekiel, but might recognize the story anyway... I've read a lot of the Bible, actually), other holy books and neutral sources like novels (though I might have read those, too; I'll tell you if I recognize them), without telling me where they're from. If it's too difficult to find Biblical quotes, other Christian writings might serve, as could similar writings from other religions. I should declare up front that I know next to nothing about Hinduism but once got a weak Good reading from what someone said about it. Also, I would prefer longer quotes; the feelings build up from unnoticeable, rather than hitting full-force instantly. If they could be at least as long as a chapter of the Bible, that would be good.

That is, if you're actually proposing that we test this. If you didn't really want to, sorry. It just seems cool.

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[-]TheOtherDave110

Upvoted for the willingness to test, and in general for being a good sport.

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3lavalamp
Try this one: The preparatory prayer is made according to custom. The first prelude will be a certain historical consideration of ___ on the one part, and __ on the other, each of whom is calling all men to him, to be gathered together under his standard. The second is, for the construction of the place, that there be represented to us a most extensive plain around Jerusalem, in which ___ stands as the Chief-General of all good people. Again, another plain in the country of Babylon, where ___ presents himself as the captain of the wicked and [God's] enemies. The third, for asking grace, will be this, that we ask to explore and see through the deceits- of the evil captain, invoking at the same time the Divine help in order to avoid them ; and to know, and by grace be able to imitate, the sincere ways of the true and most excellent General, ___ . The first point is, to imagine before my eyes, in the Babylonian plain, the captain of the wicked, sitting in a chair of fire and smoke, horrible in figure, and terrible in countenance. The second, to consider how, having as sembled a countless number of demons, he disperses them through the whole world in order to do mischief; no cities or places, no kinds of persons, being left free. The third, to consider what kind of address he makes to his servants, whom he stirs up to seize, and secure in snares and chains, and so draw men (as commonly happens) to the desire of riches, whence afterwards they may the more easily be forced down into the ambition of worldly honour, and thence into the abyss of pride. Thus, then, there are three chief degrees of temptation, founded in riches, honours, and pride; from which three to all other kinds of vices the downward course is headlong.
2lavalamp
What do you think of this; it's a little less obscure: Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if [God] should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock. Were it not that so is the sovereign pleasure of [God], the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a burden to it; the creation groans with you; the creature is made subject to the bondage of your corruption, not willingly; the sun don't willingly shine upon you to give you light to serve sin and [the evil one]; the earth don't willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts; nor is it willingly a stage for your wickedness to be acted upon; the air don't willingly serve you for breath to maintain the flame of life in your vitals, while you spend your life in the service of [God]'s enemies. [God]'s creatures are good, and were made for men to serve [God] with, and don't willingly subserve to any other purpose, and groan when they are abused to purposes so directly contrary to their nature and end. And the world would spew you out, were it not for the sovereign hand of him who hath subjected it in hope. There are the black clouds of [God]'s wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm, and big with thunder; and were it not for the restraining hand of [God] it would immediately burst forth upon you. The sovereign pleasure of [God] for the present stays his rough wind; otherwise it would come with fury, and your destruction would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like the chaff of the summer threshing floor.
2TimS
One more, then I'll stop. ---------------------------------------- Man is a rope tied between beast and [superior man] - a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal: what is lovable in man is that he is an overture and a going under. I love those that know not how to live except by going under, for they are those who cross over. I love the great despisers, because they are the great reverers, and arrows of longing for the other shore. I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going under and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth may some day become the [superior man’s]. I love him who lives to know, and wants to know so that the [superior man] may live some day. Thus he wants to go under. I love him who works and invents to build a house for the [superior man] and to prepare earth, animal, and plant for him: for thus he wants to go under. I love him who loves his virtue: for virtue is the will to go under, and an arrow of longing. I love him who does not hold back one drop of spirit for himself, but wants to be entirely the spirit of his virtue: thus he strides over the bridge as spirit. I love him who makes his virtue his addiction and catastrophe: for his virtue’s sake he wants to live on and to live no longer. I love him who does not want to have too many virtues. One virtue is more virtue than two, because it is more of a noose on which his catastrophe may hang. I love him whose soul squanders itself, who wants no thanks and returns none: for he always gives away, and does not want to preserve himself. I love him who is abashed when the dice fall to make his fortune, and who asks: "Am I a crooked gambler?” For he wants to perish. I love him who casts golden words before his deed, and always does more than he promises: for he wants to go under. I lov
2Kaj_Sotala
I know very little about Nietzsche, but I recognized this instantly because the first three lines were quoted in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. :-)
2AspiringKnitter
I get a moderate Good reading (?!) and I'm confused to get it because the morality the person is espousing seems wrong. I'm guessing this comes from someone's writings about their religion, possibly an Eastern religion?
2TimS
Because I'm curious ---------------------------------------- Fairly read as a whole and in the context of the trial, the instructions required the jury to find that Chiarella obtained his trading advantage by misappropriating the property of his employer's customers. The jury was charged that, Record 677 (emphasis added). The language parallels that in the indictment, and the jury had that indictment during its deliberations; it charged that Chiarella had traded "without disclosing the material non-public information he had obtained in connection with his employment." It is underscored by the clarity which the prosecutor exhibited in his opening statement to the jury. No juror could possibly have failed to understand what the case was about after the prosecutor said: "In sum, what the indictment charges is that Chiarella misused material nonpublic information for personal gain and that he took unfair advantage of his position of trust with the full knowledge that it was wrong to do so. That is what the case is about. It is that simple." Id. at 46. Moreover, experienced defense counsel took no exception and uttered no complaint that the instructions were inadequate in this regard. [Therefore, the conviction is due to be affirmed].
3lavalamp
I'm not convinced that this is an accurate perception of AspiringKnitter's comments here so far. E.g., I don't think she's yet claimed both omnipotence and omnibenevolence as attributes of god, so you may be criticizing views she doesn't hold. If there's a comment I missed, then ignore me. :) But at a minimum, I think you misunderstood what she was asking by, "Do you mean that I can't consider his nonexistence as a counterfactual?" She was asking, by my reading, if you thought she had displayed an actual incapability of thinking that thought.
3[anonymous]
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2thomblake
If you're granted "fictional", then no. But if you don't believe in unicorns, you'd better mean "magical horse with a horn" and not "narwhal" or "rhinoceros".
3TimS
For what it's worth, the downvotes appear to be correlated with anyone discussing theology. Not directed at you in particular. At least, that's my impression.
2Will_Newsome
You do realize it might very well mean death to your Bayes score to say or think things like that around an omnipotent being who has a sense of humor, right? This is the sort of Dude Who wrestles with a mortal then names a nation to honor the match just to taunt future wannabe-Platonist Jews about how totally crazy their God is. He is perfectly capable of engineering some lucky socks just so He can make fun of you about it later. He's that type of Guy. And you do realize that the generalization of Bayes score to decision theoretic contexts with objective morality is actually a direct measure of sinfulness? And that the only reason you're getting off the hook is that Jesus allegedly managed to have a generalized Bayes score of zero despite being unable to tell a live fig tree from a dead one at a moderate distance and getting all pissed off about it for no immediately discernible reason? Just sayin', count your blessings.
3AspiringKnitter
Yes, of course. Why he'd do that, instead of all the other things he could be doing, like creating a lucky hat or sending a prophet to explain the difference between "please don't be an idiot and quibble over whether it might hurt my feelings if you tell me the truth" and "please be as insulting as possible in your dealings with me". No, largely because I have no idea what that would even mean. However, if you mean that using good epistemic hygiene is a sin because there's objective morality, or if you think the objective morality only applies in certain situations which require special epistemology to handle, you're wrong.
2Bugmaster
Welcome to Less Wrong ! Heh heh.
2lavalamp
...and they can say exactly the same thing about you. It's exactly that symmetry that defines No True Scotsman. You think you are reading and applying the text correctly, they think they are. It doesn't help to insist that you're really right and they're really wrong, because they can do the same thing.
5thomblake
No, No True Scotsman is characterized by moveable goalposts. If you actually do have a definition of True Scotsman that you can point to and won't change, then you're not going to fall under this fallacy.
4AspiringKnitter
Okay, I'm confused here. Do you believe there are potentially correct and incorrect answers to the question "what does the Bible say that Jesus taught while alive?"
7lavalamp
IMO, most Christians unconsciously concentrate on the passages that match their preconceptions, and ignore or explain away the rest. This behavior is ridiculously easy to notice in others, and equally difficult to notice in oneself. For example, I expect you to ignore or explain away Matthew 10:34: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." I expect you find Mark 11:12-14 rather bewildering: "On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.”" I still think Luke 14:26 has a moderately good explanation behind it, but there's also a good chance that this is a verse I'm still explaining away, even though I'm not a Christian any more and don't need to: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." The bible was authored by different individuals over the course of time. That's pretty well established. Those individuals had different motives and goals. IMO, this causes there to actually be competing strains of thought in the bible. People pick out the strains of thought that speak to their preconceived notions. For one last example, I expect you'll explain James in light of Ephesians, arguing that grace is the main theme. But I think it's equally valid for someone to explain Ephesians in light of James, arguing that changed behavior is the main theme. These are both valid approaches, in my mind, because contrary to the expectations of Christians (who believe that deep down, James and Ephesians must be saying the same thing), James and Ephesians are actually opposing view points. Finally, I'll answer your question: probably not. No
4CronoDAS
The way I see it, there appear to be enough contradictions and ambiguities in the Bible and associated fan work that it's possible to use it to justify almost anything. (Including slavery.) So it's hard to tell a priori what's un-Christian and what isn't.
[-]Mass_Driver140

Against a Biblical literalist, this would probably be a pretty good attack -- if you think a plausible implication of a single verse in the Bible, taken out of context, is an absolute moral justification for a proposed action, then, yes, you can justify pretty much any behavior.

However, this does not seem to be the thrust of AspiringKnitter's point, nor, even if it were, should we be content to argue against such a rhetorically weak position.

Rather, I think AspiringKnitter is arguing that certain emotions, attitudes, dispositions, etc. are repeated often enough and forcefully enough in the Bible so as to carve out an identifiable cluster in thing-space. A kind, gentle, equalitarian pacifist is (among other things) acting more consistently with the teachings of the literary character of Jesus than a judgmental, aggressive, elitist warrior. Assessing whether someone is acting consistently with the literary character of Jesus's teachings is an inherently subjective enterprise, but that doesn't mean that all opinions on the subject are equally valid -- there is some content there.

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8CronoDAS
You have a good point there. Then again, there are plenty of times that Jesus says things to the effect of "Repent sinners, because the end is coming, and God and I are gonna kick your ass if you don't!" -- Sam Harris
4wedrifid
Sacrifice other people's wives to the devil. That's almost certainly out. Yes, that's a significant moral absurdity to us but no a big deal to the cultures who created the religion or to the texts themselves. (Fairly ambivalent - mostly just supports following whatever is the status quo on the subject.) No, it's really not. There is plenty of grey but there are a whole lot of clear cut rules too. Murdering. Stealing. Grabbing guys by the testicles when they are fighting. All sorts of things.
2AspiringKnitter
Your comment seems to be about a general trend and doesn't rest on slavery itself, correct? Because if not, I just want to point out that the Bible never says "slavery is good". It regulates it, ensuring minimal rights for slaves, and assumes it will happen, which is kind of like the rationale behind legalizing drugs. Slaves are commanded in the New Testament to obey their masters, which those telling them to do so explain as being so that the faith doesn't get a bad reputation. The only time anyone's told to practice slavery is as punishment for a crime, which is surely no worse than incarceration. At least you're getting some extra work done. I assume this doesn't change your mind because you have other examples in mind?
3Bugmaster
One thing that struck me about the Bible when I first read it was that Jesus never flat-out said, "look guys, owning people is wrong, don't do it". Instead, he (as you pointed out) treats slavery as a basic fact of life, sort of like breathing or language or agriculture. There are a lot of parables in the New Testament which use slavery as a plot device, or as an analogy to illustrate a point, but none that imagine a world without it. Contrast this to the modern world we live in. To most of us, slavery is almost unthinkable, and we condemn it whenever we see it. As imperfect as we are, we've come a long way in the past 2000 years -- all of us, even Christians. That's something to be proud of, IMO.
2wedrifid
I would confirm this with a particular emphasis on schizophrenia. Actually not quite - as I understand it there is a negative correlation.
2dlthomas
Is this a "Catholics aren't Christian" thing, or just drawing attention to the point that not all Christians are Catholic?
[-]Oligopsony50

I'd care if my wife was kidnapped and some simulacrum was given back in her stead but I doubt I would be able to tell if it was such an accurate copy and though if I knew the fake-wife was fake I'd probably be creeped out but if I didn't know I'd just be so glad to have my "wife" back.

My primary concern in a situation like this is that she'd be kidnapped and presumably extremely not happy about that.

If my partner were vaporized in her sleep and then replaced with a perfect simulacrum, well, that's just teleporting (with less savings on airfare... (read more)

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5TheOtherDave
I expect we'd adapt pretty quickly to the idea that there exists a new possible degree of relationship between people, namely the relationship between two people who used to be the same person. The closest analogy I can think of is if I lived in a culture where families only had one child each, and was suddenly introduced to brothers. It would be strange to find two people who shared parents, a childhood environment, and so forth -- attributes I was accustomed to treating as uniquely associated with a person, but it turned out I was wrong to do so. It would be disconcerting, but I expect I'd get used to it.
[-]Bugmaster50

Isn't a computer a machine, generally made of circuits, that runs programs somebody put on it in a constructed non-context-dependent language?

I personally believe that humans are likewise machines, generally made of meat, that run "programs". I put the word "programs" in scare-quotes because our programs are very different in structure from computer programs, though the basic concept is the same.

What we have in common with computers, though, is that our programs are self-modifying. We can learn, and thus change our own code. Thus, I... (read more)

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[-]APMason50

Well, I don't suppose anyone feels the need to draw a bright-line distinction between FAI and uFAI - the AI is more friendly the more its utility function coincides with your own. But in practice it doesn't seem like any AI is going to fall into the gap between "definitely unfriendly" and "completely friendly" - to create such a thing would be a more fiddly and difficult engineering problem than just creating FAI. If the AI doesn't care about humans in the way that we want them to, it almost certainly takes us apart and uses the resourc... (read more)

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[-][anonymous]50

But rationality is about winning.

Winning =/= Winning arguments.

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[-]Kaj_Sotala50

At least, others here seem to be non-monogamous.

Well, some are. From the last survey:

625 people (57.3%) described themselves as monogamous, 145 (13.3%) as polyamorous, and 298 (27.3%) didn't really know. These numbers were similar between men and women.

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[-]AspiringKnitter50

Yes. That applies to the Jews but not to everyone else. You're allowed to ignore Leviticus and Exodus if you're not Jewish. EY probably knows this, since it's actually Jewish theology (note that others have looked at the same facts and come to the conclusion that the rules don't apply to anyone anymore and stopped applying when Jesus died, so take into account that someone (I don't think it's me) has done something wrong here, as per Aumann's agreement theorem).

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5APMason
Well, I suppose what I should do is comb the Bible for some absurd commandment that does apply to non-Jews, but frankly I'm impressed by the loophole-exploiting nature of your reply, and am inclined to concede the point (also, y'know - researching the Bible... bleh). EDIT: And by concede the point, I of course mean concede that you're not locally inconsistent around this point, not that what you said about monogamy is true.
4AspiringKnitter
If you want Bible verses to use to dis Christianity, I suggest 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 and Luke 22:19, 20.
6Morendil
I'd be interested in your ideas of what books you'd recommend a non-Christian read. The last time I entered into an earnest discussion of spirituality with a theist friend of mine, what I wanted to bend my brain around was how he could claim to derive his faith from studying the Bible, when (from the few passages I've read myself) it's a text that absolutely does not stand literal interpretation. (For instance, I wanted to know how he reconciled an interest in science, in particular the science of evolution, with a Bible that literally argues for a "young Earth" incompatible with the known duration implied by the fossil and geological records.) Basically I wanted to know precisely what his belief system consisted of, which was very hard given the many different conceptions of Christianity I bump into. I've read "Mere Christianity" on his advice, but I found it far from sufficient - at once way too specific on some points (e.g. a husband should be in charge in a household), and way too slippery on the fundamentals (e.g. what is prayer really about).
2Ezekiel
Upvoted for being the only non-Jew I've ever met to know that.
3wedrifid
Really? Nearly everyone I grew up with was told that and I assume I wasn't the only one to remember. I infer that either you don't know many Christians, the subject hasn't come up while you were talking to said Christians or Christian culture in your area is far more ignorant of their religious theory and tradition than they are here.
[-]Alicorn50

You don't have to be a fan of Twilight. A lot of people who like my fic hate canon Twilight.

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[-]MixedNuts50

Yes, the consensus seems to be that running two copies of yourself in parallel doesn't give you more measure or moral weight. But if the copies receive diferent inputs, they'll eventually (frantic handwaving) diverge into two different people who both matter. (Maybe when we can't retrieve Copy-A's current state from Copy-B's current state and the respective inputs, because information about the initial state has been destroyed?)

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[-]wedrifid50

I'm a rationalist by birth

You are? What species? (It couldn't be human!)

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[-]peuddO50

Hrm. Now someone's downvoted your question, it seems. It's all a great, sinister conspiracy.

Well, regardless... peuddO is a username I occasionally utilize on internet forums. It's "upside down" in Norwegian, written upside down in Norwegian (I'm so very clever). Even so, I know that I personally prefer to know the names people go by out-of-internet. It's a strange quirk, perhaps, but it makes me feel obligated to provide my real first name when introducing myself.

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[-]peuddO50

I like to call myself Sindre online. I'm just barely 18, and I go to school in Norway - which doesn't have a school system entirely similar to any other that I'm familiar with, so I'll refrain from trying to describe what sort of education I'm getting - other than to say that I'm not very impressed with how the public school system is laid out here in Norway.

I found Less Wrong through a comment on this blog, where it was mentioned as a place populated by reasonably intelligent people. Since I thought that was an intriguing endorsement, I decided to give i... (read more)

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[-]Vaniver50

Hello!

I take Paul Graham's advice to keep my identity small, and so describing myself is... odd. I'm not sure I consider rationalism important enough to make it into my identity.

The most important things, I think, are that I'm an individualist and an empiricist. I considered "pragmatist" for the second example, and perhaps that would be more appropriate.

Perhaps vying for third place is that I'm an optimizer. I like thinking about things, I like understanding systems, I like replacing parts with better parts. I think that's what I enjoy about LW; there's quite a bit of interest in optimization around here. Now, how to make that function better... :P

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[-]Alexei50

Hello everyone!

I've been quietly lurking on this website for a while now, reading articles as fast as I can with much enthusiasm. I've read most of Eliezer's genius posts and started to read through others' posts now. I've came to this website when I learned about AI-in-a-box scenario. I am a 23 year old male. I have a B.S. in computer science. I like to design and program video games. My goal in life is to become financially independent and make games that help people improve themselves. I find the subject of rationality to be very interesting and helpful... (read more)

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[-]mattnewport50

Studies also show that prayer does have a powerful healing effect - but only if the subject knows that they are being prayed for.

Citations please. The only well controlled study00649-6/abstract) I know of found the opposite - subjects who knew they were being prayed for suffered more complications than those who did not.

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[-]realitygrill50

Hi. My name's Derrick.

I've been reading LW and HN for a while now but have only just started to learn to participate. I'm 23, ostensibly hold a bachelor's in economics, and interested in way too much - a dilettante of sorts. Unfortunately I have the talent of being able to sound like I know stuff just by quickly reading around a subject.

Pretty much have always been a Traditional Rationalist; kind of treated the site discussions as random (if extremely high impact) insights. Getting interested in Bayesian modeling sort of sent me on a path here. Lots of Eli... (read more)

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[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky50

Considering the extraordinary rarity of good explainers in this entire civilization, I'm saddened to say that talent may have something to do with it, not just practice.

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[-]JGWeissman50

This is the Welcome Thread, for people to introduce themselves. People should have more leeway to talk about personal interests that would elsewhere be considered off topic.

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[-]FeministX50

Hi,

I am FeministX of FeministX.blogspot.com. I found this blog after Eliezer commented on my site. While my online name is FeministX, I am not a traditional feminist, and many of my intellectual interests lie outside of feminism.

Lately I am interestedin learning more about the genetic and biological basis for individual and group behavior. I am also interested in cryonics and transhumanism. I guess this makes me H+BD.

I am a rationalist by temperament and ideology. Why am I a rationalist? To ask is to answer the question. A person who wishes to accuratel... (read more)

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[-]Alex Flint50

Hi,

I'm Alex and I'm studying computer vision at Oxford. Essentially we're trying to build AI that understands the visual world. We use lots of machine learning, probabilistic inference, and even a bit of signal processing. I arrived here through the Future of Humanity Institute website, which I found after listening to Nick Bostrom's TED talk. I've been lurking for a few weeks now but I thought I should finally introduce myself.

I find the rationalist discussion on LW interesting both on a personal interest level, and in relation to my work. I would like to... (read more)

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[-]MBlume50

My fear of the bullet would cause me to want to avoid it, which would mean I must ensure that I do not flinch. The decision to flinch or not to flinch is in the hands of low-level circuitry in my brain, and the current inputs to that circuitry will tend to produce a flinch. So I would be well advised to change those inputs if I can, by visualizing myself on a beach, curled up in bed, sitting at my computer writing comments on Less Wrong, or some other calming, comforting environment. If this is a form of self-deception, it is one I am comfortable with. It is of the same kind that I practiced as a member of the bardic conspiracy, and I don't think that hurt my epistemic rationality any.

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[-]XFrequentist50
  • Name: Alex D
  • Age: 26
  • Education: MSc Epidemiology/Biostatistics
  • Occupation: Epidemiologist
  • Location: Canada
  • Hobbies: Reading, travel, learning, sport.

I found OB/LW through Eliezer's Bayes tutorial, and was immediately taken in. It's the perfect mix of several themes that are always running through my head (rationality, atheism, Bayes, etc.) and a great primer on lots of other interesting stuff (QM, AI, ev. psych., etc). The emphasis on improving decision making and clear thinking plus the steady influx of interesting new areas to investigate makes for an... (read more)

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[-]Vladimir_Nesov50
  • Vladimir Nesov
  • Age: 24
  • Location: Moscow
  • MS in Computer Science, minor in applied math and physics, currently a grad student in CS (compiler technologies, static analysis of programs).

Having never been interested in AI before, I became obsessed with it about 2 years ago, after getting impressed with its potential. Got a mild case of AI-induced raving insanity, have been recuperating for a last year or so, treating it with regular dosage of rationality and solid math. The obsession doesn't seem to pass though, which I deem a good thing.

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[-][anonymous]50

deleted

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4rhollerith
Most mystics reject science and rationality (and I think I have a pretty good causal model of why that is) but there have been scientific rational mystics, e.g., physicist David Bohm. I know of no reason why a person who starts out committed to science and rationality should lose that commitment through mystical training and mystical experience if he has competent advice. My main interest in mystical experience is that it is a hole in the human motivational system -- one of the few ways for a person to become independent from what Eliezer calls the thousand shards of desire. Most of the people in this community (notably Eliezer) assign intrinsic value to the thousand shards of desire, but I am indifferent to them except for their instrumental value. (In my experience the main instrumental value of keeping a connection to them is that it makes one more effective at interpersonal communication.) Transcending the thousand shards of desire while we are still flesh-and-blood humans strikes me as potentially saner and better than "implementing them in silicon" and relying on cycles within cycles to make everything come out all right. And the public discourse on subjects like cryonics would IMHO be much crisper if more of the participants would overcome certain natural human biases about personal identity and the continuation of "the self". I am not a mystic or aspiring mystic (I became indifferent to the thousand shards of my own desire a different way) but have a personal relationship of long standing with a man who underwent the full mystical experience: ecstacy 1,000,000 times greater than any other thing he ever experienced, uncommonly good control over his emotional responses, interpersonal ability to attract trusting followers without even trying. And yes, I am sure that he is not lying to me: I had a business relationship with him for about 7 years before he even mentioned (causally, tangentially) his mystical experience, and he is among the most honest people I
3Vladimir_Nesov
Not so. You don't assign value to your drives because they were inbuilt in you by evolution, you don't value your qualities just because they come as a package deal, just because you are human [*]. Instead, you look at what you value, as a person. And of the things you value, you find that most of them are evolution's doing, but you don't accept all of them, and you look at some of them in a different way from what evolution intended. [*] Related, but overloaded with other info: No License To Be Human.
[-]TimS40

Strictly speaking, no proposition is proven false (i.e. probability zero). A proposition simply becomes much less likely than competing, inconsistent explanations. To speak that strictly, falsifiability requires the ability to say in advance what observations would be inconsistent (or less consistent) with the theory.

Your belief that the coin is bent does pay rent - you would be more surprised by 100 straight tails than if you thought the coin was fair. But both P=.6 and P=.5 are not particularly consistent with the new observations.

Map & Territory is ... (read more)

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[-]mapnoterritory40

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.

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[-]Ben_Welchner40

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)

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[-]ata40

Or you've been neglecting to treat your Spontaneous Duplication.

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[-][anonymous]40

Delicious controversy. Yum. I might have a lulz-relapse and become a troll.

So... voicing disagreement boldly is trolling, voicing it nervously is trolling and trying to prevent being called out. Signalling distance from the group is trolling and accusations of hive mind, signalling group membership is trolling and going "Seriously, I'm one of you guys". Joking about the image a group idea's have, in the same way the group itself does, is straw-manning and caricature, seriously worrying about those ideas is damsel-in-distress crap.

Burn the wit... (read more)

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[-]AspiringKnitter40

Nah, false beliefs are worthless. That which is true is already so; owning up to it doesn't make it worse. If I turned out to actually be wrong-- well, I have experience being wrong about religion. I'd probably react just like I did before.

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[-]thomblake40

I don't know, but this kind of serious discussion requires skills I just don't have.

But remember, fixing this sort of problem is ostensibly what we're here for.

If we fail at that for reasons you can articulate, I at least would like to know.

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2AspiringKnitter
Education is ostensibly what high school teachers are there for, but if a student shows up who can't read, they don't blame themselves because they're not there to teach basic skills like that.
5[anonymous]
.
[-]wedrifid40

Um do you know any easy way to provide a lot of evidence that I have only one sockpuppet?

Ask a moderator (or whatever it takes to have access to IP logs) to check to see if there are multiple suspicious accounts from your most common IP. That's even better than asking you to raise your right hand if you are not lying. It at least shows that you have enough respect for the community to at least try to hide it when you are defecting! :P

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[-]wedrifid40

I think you severely underestimate the value of trolling.

And I suspect you incorrectly classify some of your contributions, placing them into a different subcategory within "willful defiance of the community preference" than where they belong. Unfortunately this means that the subset of your thoughts that are creative, deep and informed rather than just incoherent and flawed tend to be wasted.

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[-]shokwave40

Trust me

Nope.

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[-]Bongo40

I ... was shocked at how downright anti-informative the field is

Explain?

shocked at how incredibly useless statistics is

Explain?

The opposite happened with the parapsychology literature

Elaborate?

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[-]thomblake40

Local coherence is the hobgoblin of miniscule minds; global coherence is next to godliness.

Well, you're half right.

Not telling which half.

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3Will_Newsome
You're right.
[-]soreff40

Best wishes. Was your previous explanation earlier in your interchange with Bugmaster? If so, I agree that Bugmaster would have read your explanation, and that pointing to it wouldn't help (I sympathize). If, however, your previous explanation was in response to another lesswrongian, it is possible that Bugmaster missed it, in which case a pointer might help. I've been following your comments, but I'm sure I've missed some of them.

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3dlthomas
Or, perhaps, a link and a clarification.
[-]soreff40

I really want to throw up my hands here and say "but I've explained this MULTIPLE TIMES, you are BEING AN IDIOT" but I remember the illusion of transparency.

One option would be to reply with a pointer to your previous comment. I see you've used the link syntax within a comment - this web site supports permalinks to comments as well. At least you wouldn't be forced to repeat yourself.

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[-]Bugmaster40

Is either of those well-known? What about the pattern with which they're felt? Sound like anything you know? Me neither.

In addition to dlthomas's suggestion of the affect heuristic, I'd suggest something like the ideomotor effect amplified by confirmation bias.

However, there's a reason I put "cognitive bias" as the first item on my list: I believe that it is overwhelmingly more likely than any alternatives. Thus, it would take a significant amount of evidence to convince me that I'm not laboring under such a bias, even if the bias does not yet... (read more)

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[-]Mitchell_Porter40

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

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[-]NancyLebovitz100

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.

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[-]katydee100

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

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5katydee
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?
9wedrifid
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.)
[-]Will_Newsome110

(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.

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[-]thomblake120

sicker than Hitler's kill/death ratio

Do we count assists now?

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3TheOtherDave
And if so, who gets the credit for deaths by old age?
2katydee
Post edited to reflect this, apologies for misrepresenting you.
[-]gwern100

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?).

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9wedrifid
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.
5Maelin
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
7Mitchell_Porter
I said 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.
[-]Mitchell_Porter160

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.

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9wedrifid
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.
3Solvent
And thus concludes the funniest thread on LessWrong in a very long time. Thanks, folks.
4Steve_Rayhawk
I'll stake $500 if eligible. When would the answer need to be known by?
3ITakeBets
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.
7NancyLebovitz
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.
2J_Taylor
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.
5AspiringKnitter
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.
6Mitchell_Porter
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...
5AspiringKnitter
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.
6Mitchell_Porter
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.
4AspiringKnitter
There is no such evidence. What do you have in mind that would prove that?
[-]Mitchell_Porter130

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.

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[-]Kaj_Sotala310

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.)

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[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky220

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.

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2Will_Newsome
By the time reflective and wannabe-moral people are done tying themselves up in knots, what they usually communicate is nothing; or, if they do communicate, you can hardly tell them apart from the people who truly can't.
[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky200

Point of curiosity: if you took the point above and rewrote it the way you think AspiringKnitter would say it, how would you say it?

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[-]Will_Newsome100

(ETA: Something like this:)

What I'm saying is that most people who write a Less Wrong comment aren't totally stressing out about all the tradeoffs that inevitably have to be made in order to say anything at all. There's a famous quote whose gist is 'I apologize that this letter is so long, but I didn't have very much time to write it'. The audience has some large and unknown set of constraints on what they're willing to glance at, read, take seriously, and so on, and the writer has to put a lot of work into meeting those constraints as effectively as possible. Some tradeoffs are easy to make: yes, a long paragraph is a self-contained stucture, but that's less important than readibility. Others are a little harder: do I give a drawn-out concrete example of my point, or would that egregiously inflate the length of my comment?

There are also the author's internal constraints re what they feel they need to say, what they're willing to say, what they're willing to say without thinking carefully about whether or not it's a good idea to say, how much effort they can put into rewriting sentences or linking to relevant papers while their heart's pumping as if the house is burning down, vague... (read more)

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5TheOtherDave
And yet, your g-grandparent comment, about which EY was asking, was brief... which suggests that the process you describe here isn't always dominant. Although when asked a question about it, instead of either choosing or refusing to answer the question, you chose to back all the way up and articulate the constraints that underlie the comment.
4AspiringKnitter
You know, in some ways, that does sound like me, and in some ways it really still doesn't. Let me first of all congratulate you on being able to alter your style so much. I envy that skill. Your use of "totally" is not the same as my use of "totally"; I think it sounds stupid (personal preference), so if I said it, I would be likely to backspace and write something else. Other than that, I might say something similar. I would have said " that goes something like" instead of "whose gist is", but that's the sort of concept I might well have communicated in roughly the manner I would have communicated it. An interesting point, and MUCH easier to understand than your original comment in your own style. This conveys the information more clearly. This has become a run-on sentence. It started like something I would say, but by the end, the sentence is too run-on to be my style. I also don't use the word "neuroticism". It's funny, but I just don't. I also try to avoid the word "nostrils" for no good reason. In fact, I'm disturbed by having said it as an example of another word I don't use. However, this is a LOT closer to my style than your normal writing is. I'm impressed. You're also much more coherent and interesting this way. I would probably say "exceptionally" or something else other than "abnormally". I don't avoid it like "nostrils" or just fail to think of it like "neuroticism", but I don't really use that word much. Sometimes I do, but not very often. Huh, that's an interesting thought. Certainly something I've considered. Sometimes in writing or speech, but also in other areas of my life. I might have said this, except that I wouldn't have said the first part because I don't consider that obvious (or even necessarily true), and I would probably have said "horrific" rather than "horrifying". I might even have said "bad" rather than either. I would probably have said that "many authors become self-defeating" instead of phrasing it this way. Two words I'v
3NancyLebovitz
Have you looked into and/or attempted methods of lowering your anxiety?
[-][anonymous]150

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

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4A1987dM
“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).
2dlthomas
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.
4[anonymous]
You're clearly out of touch with the populace. :) I'm only willing to risk 10% of my probability mass on your prediction.
3Eliezer Yudkowsky
That's really odd. If there were some way to settle the bet I'd take it.
[-]steven0461120

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.)

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2TheOtherDave
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?
9Mitchell_Porter
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.
3Shmi
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.
2[anonymous]
.
3shokwave
I'll bet US$10 you have significant outside information.
5AspiringKnitter
He doesn't.
5shokwave
See, I'd like to believe you, but a thousand dollars is a lot of money.
6AspiringKnitter
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.)
5shokwave
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.
[-]AspiringKnitter100

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.

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7shokwave
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.
5Alicorn
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.
5TheOtherDave
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.
4Will_Newsome
As far as we know.
[-]lessdazed40

Allow me to invent (or put under the microscope a slight, existing) distinction.

"Poorly stated" - not explicit, without fixed meaning. The words written may mean any of several things.

"Poorly worded" - worded so as to mean one thing which is wrong, perhaps even obviously wrong, in which case the writer may intend for people to assume he didn't mean the obviously wrong thing, but instead meant the less literal, plausibly correct thing.

I have several times criticized the use of the words "immortal" and "immortality" by... (read more)

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2AspiringKnitter
Yeah, good point. That makes sense.
[-]AspiringKnitter40

That said, here's a random compilation of Chrtistianity-to-Islam conversion testimonials. You can also check out the daily "Why am I an Atheist" feature on Pharyngula, but be advised that this site is quite a bit more angry than Less Wrong, so the posts may not be representative.

Thank you.

Well, I brought that up because I know of at least one mental illness-related violent incident in my own extended family.

I'm sorry.

I think they key disagreement we're having is along the following lines: is it better to believe in something that's true,

... (read more)
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3Bugmaster
This statement appears to contradict your earlier statements that a). It's better to live with the perception-altering symptoms of schizophrenia, than to replace those symptoms with depression and other side-effects, and b). You determine the nature of every "gut feeling" (i.e., whether it is divine or internal) by using multiple criteria, one of which is, "would I be better off as a person if this feeling was, in fact, divine". I hope not, I think people are engaging in more than enough EY-worship as it is, but that's beside the point... Since we know today that EY actually existed, and what he talked about, then yes. However, this won't be terribly relevant in the distant future, for several reasons: * Even though everyone would have an answer to this question, it is far from guaranteed that more than zero answers would be correct, because it's entirely possible that no Yudkowskian sect would have the right answer. * Our descendants likely won't have access to EY's original texts, but to Swahili translations from garbled Chinese transcriptions, or something; it's possible that the translations would reflect the translators' preferences more than EY's original intent. In this case, EY's original teachings would be rendered effectively inaccessible, and thus the question would become unanswerable. * Unlike us here in the past, our future descendants won't have any direct evidence of EY's existence. They may have so little evidence, in fact, that they may be entirely justified in concluding that EY was a fictional character, like James Bond or Harry Potter. I'm not sure if fictional characters can have "teachings" or not. This question is not analogous, because, unlike the characters on the OT and NT, EY does not make a habit of frequently using prisons as the basis for his parables, nor does EY claim to be any kind of a moral authority. That said, if EY did say these things, and if prisons were found to be extremely immoral in the future -- then our descendan
[-]dlthomas40

But that's also true with eye for an eye - one defection merits one defection; it's not "two eyes for an eye".

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[-]Kaj_Sotala40

If I had a smartphone, I could call down Angry Birds on people. Well, on pigs at least.

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[-]wedrifid40

What? The religious lawyers made up a story to overtly usurp God!

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[-]AspiringKnitter40

I think it indicates that Christians have done stupid things and one must be discerning about traditions rather than blindly accepting everything taught in church as 100% true, and certainly not everything commonly believed by laypersons!

It's not surprising (unless this is hindsight bias-- it might actually BE surprising, considering how unwilling Christians should have been to make compromises like that, but a lot of time passed between Jesus's death and Christianity taking over Europe, didn't it?) that humans would be humans. I can see where I might have... (read more)

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3TheOtherDave
That's interesting. So, suppose I find a church I choose (for whatever reason) to associate with. We seem to agree that I shouldn't believe everything taught in that church, and I shouldn't believe everything believed by members of that church... I should compare those teachings and beliefs to my own expectations about and experiences of the world to decide what I believe and what I don't, just as you have used your own expectations about and experiences of human nature to decide whether to believe various claims about when Jesus was born, what properties Mary had, etc. Yes? Or have I misunderstood you?
[-]APMason40

I find "if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck" to be a really good way of identifying ducks.

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[-]APMason40

Well, that's an easy question: if you've worked sixteen hour days for the last forty years and you're just six months away from curing cancer completely and you know you're going to get the Nobel and be fabulously wealthy etc. etc. and an alien shows up and offers you a cure for cancer on a plate, you take it, because a lot of people will die in six months. This isn't even different to how the world currently is - if I invented a cure for cancer it would be detrimental to all those others who were trying to (and who only cared about getting there first) - ... (read more)

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[-]TheOtherDave40

I endorse dthomas' answer in the grandparent; we were talking about uploads.

I have no idea what to do with word "provably" here. It's not clear to me that I'm provably me right now, or that I'll be provably me when I wake up tomorrow morning. I don't know how I would go about proving that I was me, as opposed to being someone else who used my body and acted just like me. I'm not sure the question even makes any sense.

To say that other people's judgments on the matter define the issue is clearly insufficient. If you put X in a dark cave with no o... (read more)

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[-][anonymous]40

I'm afraid you may be a bit confused on this. What are the odds that out of all ethnicities on the planet, only Ashkenazi Jews where the ones to develop a different IQ than the surrounding peoples? And only in the past thousand years or so. What about all those groups that have been isolated or differentiated in very different natural and even social environments for tens of thousands of years?

Unless you are using "the racial gap" to refer to the specific measured IQ differences between people of African, European and East Asian descent, which m... (read more)

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[-]MixedNuts40

It's even more complicated than that. If I see a few strangers in immediate, unambiguous danger, I'm pretty sure I will die to save them. But I will not spend all that much on donating to a charity that will save these same people, twenty years later and two thousand miles away. (...what was that about altruistic ideals being Far?)

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[-]MarkusRamikin40

Then we're this aberrant group who stubbornly insists on misapplying it. I can live with that.

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[-]AspiringKnitter40

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.

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[-][anonymous]40

Hey, everyone!

I'm currently an (actual) college student and (aspiring) omniscient. I'm also a transhumanist, which is possibly how I got here in the first place.

I've been lurking on and off since the days of Overcoming Bias, and I've finally decided to (try to) actually become involved with the community. As you can probably guess from my period of inactivity I have a tendency to read much more than I write, so this may prove more difficult than it sounds.

I've been very interested in "how things work," both outside and inside my head, for as long... (read more)

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[-]TheatreAddict40

Edit: I've read most of the sequence, Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions.

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[-]cousin_it40

‎"You don't become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process."

-- Randall Munroe

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[-]Oscar_Cunningham40

In the spirit of your (excellent) new post, I'll attack all the weak points of your argument at once:

  • You define "soul" as:

    the presence of something, let's call it a soul, that makes people worthwhile

This definition doesn't give souls any of their normal properties, like being the seat of subjective experience, or allowing free will, or surviving bodily death. That's fine, but we need to be on the look-out in case these meanings sneak in as connotations later on. (In particular, the "Zombies" sequence doesn't talk about moral wort... (read more)

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[-]David Althaus40

Oh,sorry, I see... Well, overcoming this worldview consisted mainly of reading some sequences of Eliezer:-) And remember that I wasn't a New-Age crackpot. I had only very mild mystic experiences, but these alone lead me to question the nature of consiousness, the universe etc.. So for me it was not really difficult, but I imagine that really radical experiences make you "immune" to a naturalistic, atheistic explanation.
I think Yvain made a similar experience with hashish (This post also convinced me that mystic experiences are only strange realig... (read more)

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[-]free_rip40

Does anyone know a good resource to go with Eliezer's comic guide on Lob's Theorem? It's confusing me a... well, a lot.

Or, if it's the simplest resource on it out there, are there any prerequisites for learning it/ skills/ knowledge that would help?

I'm trying to build up a basis of skills so I can participate better here, but I've got a long way to go. Most of my skills in science, maths and logic are pretty basic.

Thanks in advance.

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[-]Dreaded_Anomaly40

I'm a 22-year-old undergraduate senior, majoring in physics, planning to graduate in May and go to graduate school for experimental high energy physics. I also have studied applied math, computer science, psychology, and politics. I like science fiction and fantasy novels, good i.e. well-written TV, comic books, and the occasional video game. I've been an atheist and science enthusiast since the age of 10, and I've pursued rational philosophy since high school.

I got here via HPMoR, lurked since around the time Chapter 10 was posted, and found that a lot of... (read more)

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[-]userxp40

Hello, I've been lurking LessWrong for some time, and I have finally decided to make an account to add my comments. I also expect to post an article every now and then.

I am Spanish, which seems rare because it's hard to find non-English people here. I'm studying Computer Science and maybe in the future I'll get a master's degree in AI. I'm interested in computers, the brain, AI, rationality, futurism, transhumanism, etc. Oh, and I love Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

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[-]hmickali40

I am college student who found this website through a friend and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

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[-]pjeby40

Yeah, I know what it looks like: meta-physical rubbish.

It is. I got as far as this paragraph of the introduction to his paper before I found a critical flaw:

Of particular interest to natural scientists is the fact that the laws of nature are a language. To some extent, nature is regular; the basic patterns or general aspects of structure in terms of which it is apprehended, whether or not they have been categorically identified, are its “laws”. The existence of these laws is given by the stability of perception.

At this point, he's already begging... (read more)

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[-]jferguson40

I'm currently an electrical engineering student. I suppose the main thing that drew me here is that I hold uncommon political views (market libertarian/minarchist, generally sympathetic to non-coercive but non-market collective action); I think that view is "correct" for now, but I'm sure that a lot of my reasons for holding those beliefs are faulty, or there'd probably be at least a few more people who agree with me. I want to determine exactly what's happening (and why) when politics and political philosophy come up in a conversation/internal m... (read more)

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[-]shokwave40

Hi! 21 year old university dropout located in Melbourne, Australia. Coming from a background of mostly philosophy, linguistics, and science fiction but now recognising that my dislike for maths and hard science comes from a social dynamic at my high school: humanities students were a separate clique from the maths/sci students and both looked down on each other, and I bought into it to gain status with my group. So that's one major thing that LW has done for me in the few months I've been reading it: helped me recognise and eventually remove a rationalisat... (read more)

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[-]jacob_cannell40

Greetings All.

I've been a Singularitan since my college years more than a decade ago. I still clearly remember the force with which that worldview and its attendant realizations colonized my mind.

At that time I was strongly enamored with a vision of computer graphics advancing to the point of pervasive, Matrix-like virtual reality and that medium becoming the creche from which superhuman artificial intelligence would arise. (the Matrix of Gibson's Neuromancer, as this was before the film of the same name). Actually, I still have that vision, and altho... (read more)

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[-]edgar40

Hello I am a professional composer/composition teacher and adjunct instructor teaching music aesthetics to motion graphic artists at the Fashion Institute of Technology and in the graduate computer arts department at the School of Visual Arts. I have a masters from the Juilliard School in composition and have been recorded on Newport Classics with Kurt Vonnegut and Michael Brecker.

I live and work in New York City. I spend my life composing and explaining music to students who are not musicians, connecting the language of music to the principles of the visual medium. Saying the accurate thing getting others to question me letting them find their way and admitting often that I am wrong is a life long journey.

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[-]steven046140

It seems clear to me that much of the time when people mistakenly get offended, they're mistaken about what sort of claim they should get offended about, not just mistaken about what claim was made.

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[-]Risto_Saarelma40

I don't think the view that there are genetic racial differences in IQ is popular here, if that's what you're referring to. It's come up a few times and the consensus seems to be that the evidence points to cultural and environmental explanations for the racial IQ gap. When you said "human biodiversity", I thought you were referring to psychological differences among humans and the idea that we don't all think the same way.

The psychological diversity article you link to is about Gregory Cochran's and Henry Harpending's book, which is all about... (read more)

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[-]71549774153240

Participant here from the beginning and from OB before that, posting under a throwaway account. And this will probably be my only comment on the race-IQ issue here.

I don't think the view that there are genetic racial differences in IQ is popular here, if that's what you're referring to. It's come up a few times and the consensus seems to be that the evidence points to cultural and environmental explanations for the racial IQ gap [emphasis mine].

The vast majority of writers here have not given their opinion on the topic. Many people here write under t... (read more)

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4Unknowns
Downvoted for not even giving your opinion on the issue even with your throwaway account. Some have pointed out that cultural and environmental explanations can account for significant IQ differences. This is true. It doesn't follow that there aren't racial difference based on genetics as well. In fact, the idea that there might NOT be is quite absurd. Of course there are. The only question is how large they are.
6Oligopsony
"It doesn't follow that there aren't racial difference based on genetics as well. In fact, the idea that there might NOT be is quite absurd. Of course there are. The only question is how large they are." And what direction they're in. If social factors are sufficient to explain (e.g.) the black-white IQ gap, and the argument for their being some innate differences is "well, it's exceedingly unlikely that they're precisely the same," we don't have reason to rate "whites are natively more intelligent than blacks" as more likely than "blacks are natively more intelligent than whites." (If we know that Smith is wealthier than Jones, and that Smith found a load of Spanish dubloons by chance last year, we can't make useful conclusions about whose job was more renumerative before Smith found her pirate booty.) Of course, native racial differences might also be such that there are environmental conditions under which blacks are smarter than whites and others in which the reverse applies, or whatever. In any event I don't think we need to hypothesize the existence of such entities (substantial racial differences) to explain reality, so the razor applies.
6Unknowns
Even if cultural factors are sufficient, in themselves, to explain the black-white IQ difference, it remains more probable that whites tend to have a higher IQ by reason of genetic factors, and East Asians even more so. This should be obvious: a person's total IQ is going to be the sum of the effects of cultural factors plus genetic factors. But "the sum is higher for whites" is more likely given the hypothesis "whites have more of an IQ contribution from genetic factors" than given the hypothesis "blacks have more of an IQ contribution from genetic factors". Therefore, if our priors for the two were equal, which presumably they are, then after updating on the evidence, it is more likely that whites have more of a contribution to IQ from genetic factors.
5715497741532
The reason I did not even give my opinion on the race-IQ issue is that IMHO the expected damage to the quality of the conversation here exceeds the expected benefit. It is possible for a writer to share the evidence that brought them to their current position on the issue without stating their position, but I do not want to do that because it is a lot of work and because there are probably already perfectly satisfactory books on the subject. By the way, the kind of person who will discriminate against me because of my opinion on this issue will almost certainly correctly infer which side I am on from my first comment without really having to think about it.
3gensym
What makes you think "the unpopular-with-SIAI side" exists? Or that it is what you think it is?
[-]orthonormal40

I want to know what's true. Even if Christianity wasn't true, I've already found a great deal of Truth in its teachings for how to live life. The Bible, I feel, encourages a rational mindset, as much as many might think otherwise - to not use one's intellect to examine one's religion would be to reject many of Jesus' teachings.

Having been religious (in particular, a very traditionalist Catholic, more so than my parents by far)† for a good chunk of my life before averting to atheism a few years ago (as an adult), I would have agreed with you, but a bit u... (read more)

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[-]Vladimir_Nesov40

Apologies, I'm not as interesting as that. I changed a lot of beliefs about the belief system, but I was nonetheless still raised Christian.

See also: Epistemic luck.

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[-]WrongBot40

I believe the bible was divinely inspired

Why? This seems to be the foundation for all your justifications here, and it's an incredibly strong claim. What evidence supports it? Is there any (weaker, presumably) evidence that contradicts it? I'd suggest you take a look at the article on Privileging the Hypothesis, which is a pretty easy failure mode to fall into when the hypothesis in question was developed by someone else.

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[-]Apprentice40

This was an attempt at humor. Usually when people start sentences with "Whatever religion we adhere to..." they are going to utter a platitude ending with "...we all believe in love/life/goodness". The intended joke was to come about through a subversion of the audience's expectation. It was also meant to poke fun at all the torture discussions here lately, though perhaps that's already been done to death.

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[-]Vladimir_Nesov40

If you are determined to read the sequences, you'll see. At least read the posts linked from the wiki pages.

I'm not sure of the technical definition of AGI, but essentially I mean a machine that can reason. I don't plan to give it outputs until I know what it does.

Well, you'll have the same chance of successfully discovering that AI does what you want as a sequence of coin tosses spontaneously spelling out the text of "War and Peace". Even if you have a perfect test, you still need for the tested object to have a chance of satisfying the test... (read more)

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[-]JGWeissman40

I'm not sure of the technical definition of AGI, but essentially I mean a machine that can reason. I don't plan to give it outputs until I know what it does.

I am not sure what you mean by "give it outputs", but you may be interested in this investigation of attempting to contain an AGI.

I don't mean that life is the terminal value that all human's actions reduce to. I mean it in exactly the way I said above; for me to achieve any other value requires that I am alive. I also don't mean that every value I have reduces to my desire to live, just

... (read more)
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[-]red7540

Hello. I'm 35, Russian, work as very applied programmer. I end up here by side effect of following path RNN -> RBM -> DBN -> G. E. Hinton -> S. Legg's blog.

I was almost confident about my biases, when "Generalizing From One Example" take me by surprise (some time ago I noticed that I cannot visualize abstract colored cube without thinking color's name, so I generalized. Now I generalized this case of generalization, and had a strange feeling). I'd attention switch and desided to explore.

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[-]dyokomizo40

Hi, I'm Daniel. I've read OB for a long time and followed on LW right in the beginning, but work /time issues in the last year made my RSS reading queue really long (I had all LW posts in the queue). I'm a Brazilian programmer, long time rationalist and atheist.

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[-]clarissethorn40

I looked around for an FAQ link and didn't see one, and I've gone through all my preferences and haven't found anything relevant. Is there any way to arrange for followup comments (I suppose, the contents of my account inbox) to be emailed to me?

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5Eliezer Yudkowsky
Not that I know of, I'm afraid. There are lots of requested features that we would implement if we had the programmatic resources, but alas, we don't. One just has to check if the envelope is red once in a while.
[-]markrkrebs40

Hi! Vectored here by Robin who's thankfully trolling for new chumps and recommending initial items to read. I note the Wiki would be an awesome place for some help, and may attempt to put up a page there: NoobDiscoveringLessWrongLeavesBreadcrumbs, or something like that.

My immediate interest is argument: how can we disagree? 1+1=2. Can't that be extrapolated to many things. I have been so happy to see a non-cocky (if prideful) attitude in the first several posts that I have great hopes for what I may learn here. We have to remember ignorance is an imp... (read more)

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[-]gregconen40

But my dilemma is that Chris Langan is the smartest known living man, which makes it really hard for me to shrug the CTMU off as nonsense.

You can't rely too much on intelligence tests, especially in the super-high range. The tester himself admitted that Langan fell outside the design range of the test, so the listed score was an extrapolation. Further, IQ measurements, especially at the extremes and especially on only a single test (and as far as I could tell from the wikipedia article, he was only tested once) measure test-taking ability as much as g... (read more)

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[-]Paul Crowley40

Google suggests you mean this CTMU.

Looks like rubbish to me, I'm afraid. If what's on this site interests you, I think you'll get a lot more out of the Sequences, including the tools to see why the ideas in the site above aren't really worth pursuing.

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[-]thomblake40

N.B. - LSD doesn't do something well characterized by "fry your brain" (most of the time). And if you meant acid in the chemical sense, that was very bad advice.

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[-]oliverbeatson40

Hello! I'm Oliver, as my username should make evident. I'm 17 years old, and this site was recommended to me by a friend, whose LW username I observe is 'Larks'. I drift over to Overcoming Bias occasionally, and have RSS feeds to Richard Dawkins' site and (the regrettably sensationalist) NewScientist magazine. As far as I can see past my biases, I aspire to advance my understanding of the kinds of things I've seen discussed here, science, mathematics, rationality and a large chunk of stuff that at the moment rather confuses me.

I started education with a pr... (read more)

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[-]Larks40
Handle: Larks (also commonly Larklight, OxfordLark, Artrix)
Name: Ben
Sex: Male
Location: Eastbourne, UK 
Age: at 17 I suspect I may be the baby of the group?
Education: results permitting (to which I assign a probability in excess of 0.99) I'll be reading Mathematics and Philosophy at Oxford
Occupation: As yet, none. Currently applying for night-shift work at a local supermarket

I came to LW through OB, which I found as a result of Bryan Caplan's writing on Econlog (or should it be at Econlog?). I fit much of the standard pattern: atheist, materialist, ec... (read more)

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3Alicorn
I suspect you mean "cognitive dissonance". Perhaps you meant "cognitive dissidents", though, which is closer in spelling and would be a charming notion. Edit: I looked it up and apparently, unbeknownst to me, "dissidence" is a word. But I still suspect that "dissonance" was meant and that "dissidents" would have been charming.
4conchis
Dissidence (i.e. dissent/the state of being a dissident) actually seems to fit the context better than dissonance. I thought it was a nice turn of phrase.
[-]Whisper40

Greetings. To this community, I will only be known as "Whisper". I'm a believer in science and rationality, but also a polythiest and a firm believer that there are some things that science cannot explain. I was given the site's address by one Alicorn, who I've been trying to practice Far-Seeing with...with much failure.

I'm 21 years old right now, living in NY, and am trying to write my novels. As for who I am, well, I believe you'll all just have to judge me for yourself by my actions (posts) rather than any self-description. Thankee to any of you who bothered to read.

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3thomblake
I think this is a common enough epistemic position to be in, though some of us might define our terms a bit differently. For any decent definitions of 'explain' and 'science', though, whatever "science can't explain" is not going to be explained by anything else any better.
[-]AnnaSalamon40

(This is in response to a comment of brynema’s elsewhere; if we want LW discussions to thrive even in cases where the discussions require non-trivial prerequisites, my guess is that we should get in the habit of taking “already discussed exhaustively” questions to the welcome thread. Or if not here, to some beginner-friendly area for discussing or debating background material.)

brynema wrote:

So the idea is that a unique, complex thing may not necessarily have an appreciation for another unique complexity? Unless appreciating unique complexity has a mat

... (read more)
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[-]Cyan40
  • Handle: Cyan
  • Age: 31
  • Species: Pan sapiens (male)
  • Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
  • Education: B.Sc. biochemistry, B.A.Sc. chemical engineering, within pages of finishing my Ph.D. thesis in biomedical engineering

  • Occupation: statistical programmer (would be a postdoc if I were actually post the doc) at the Ottawa Institute of Systems Biology

    I'm principally interested in Bayesian probability theory (as applied in academic contexts as opposed to rationalist ones). I don't currently attempt to apply rationalist principles in my own life, but I find the discussion interesting.

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[-][anonymous]40
  • Handle: MorganHouse
  • Age: 25
  • Education: Baccalaureate in natural sciences
  • Occupation: Freelance programmer
  • Location: West Europe
  • Hobbies: Programming, learning, traveling, dancing

I discovered Less Wrong from a post on Overcoming Bias. I discovered Overcoming Bias from a comment on Slashdot.

I have been promoting rationality for as long as I can remember, although I have improved much in the past few years and even more after discovering this forum. About the same time as "citation needed" exploded on Wikipedia, I started applying this standard... (read more)

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[-]Nanani40

Not "A" win, but winning in general, Winning at Life if you will.

To me, this means :

  • Staying true to myself, becoming only what I decide I want to be (which is in turn based on achieving sub-goals)

  • Achieving my lesser and short-term goals.

  • Being able to constantly improve myself

  • Not Dying (I'm only not signed up for cryo because I live in Japan and have trouble with the creation of a suitable policy. Ideally, I'd like to go transhuman.)

Explicit failure scenarios involve becoming a future self that stays still instead of moving forward. If... (read more)

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[-]JGWeissman40
  • Handle: JGWeissman
  • Name: Jonathan Weissman
  • Location: Orange County, California
  • Age: 27
  • Education: Majored in Math and Physics, minored in Computer Science
  • Occupation: Programmer
  • Hobby: Sailboat racing

I found OB through StumbleUpon.

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[-]PhilGoetz40
  • Location: Washington DC, USA
  • Education: BS math (writing minor), PhD comp sci/artificial intelligence (cog sci/linguistics minors), MS bioinformatics
  • Jobs held (chronological): robot programmer in a failed startup, cryptologist, AI TA, lecturer, virtual robot programmer in a failed startup, distributed simulation project manager, AI research project manager, computer network security research, patent examiner, founder of failed AIish startup, computational linguist, bioinformatics engineer
  • Blog

I was a serious fundamentalist evangelical until about age 2... (read more)

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[-]outlawpoet40
  • Handle: outlawpoet
  • Name: Justin Corwin
  • Location: Playa del Rey California
  • Age: 27
  • Gender: Male
  • Education: autodidact
  • Job: researcher/developer for Adaptive AI, internal title: AI Psychologist
  • aggregator for web stuff

Working in AI, cognitive science and decision theory are of professional interest to me. This community is interesting to me mostly out of bafflement. It's not clear to me exactly what the Point of it is.

I can understand the desire for a place to talk about such things, and a gathering point for folks with similar opinions about them, but ... (read more)

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4Paul Crowley
I suspect we're going to hear more about the goal in May. We're not allowed to talk about it, but it might just have to do with exi*****ial r*sk...
[-]mattnewport40
  • Handle: mattnewport
  • Name: Matt Newport
  • Location: Vancouver, Canada
  • Age: 30
  • Occupation: Programmer (3D graphics for games)
  • Education: BA, Natural Sciences (experimental psychology by way of maths, physics, history and philosophy of science and computer science)

I'm here by way of Overcoming Bias which attracted me with its mix of topics I'm interested in (psychology, economics, AI, atheism, rationality). With a lapsed catholic mother and agnostic father I had a half-heartedly religious upbringing but have been an atheist for as long as I can remember thin... (read more)

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[-]lavalamp40

Hi, I've been lurking for a few weeks and am likely to stay in lurker mode indefinitely. But I thought I should comment on the welcome thread.

I would prefer to stay anonymous at the moment, but I'm male, 20's, BS in computer programming & work as a software engineer.

As an outsider, some feedback for you all:

Interesting topics -- keep me reading Jargon -- a little is fine, but the more there is, the harder it is to follow. The fact that people make go (my favorite game) references is a nice plus.

I would classify myself as a theist at the moment. As such... (read more)

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4Paul Crowley
Thanks for commenting, if this thread gives cause to you and more like you to stick their heads above the parapet and say hello it will have been a good thing. People here have mixed feelings about the desirability of proselytization, since the ideas that are most vigorously proselytized are so often the worst. I think that we will want to do so, but we will want to work out a way of doing it that at least gives some sort of advantage to better ideas over worse but more appealing ones. I think we'll definitely want to hear from people like you who probably have more real experience in this field than many of us put together. And since you're a theist, I'm afraid you'll be one of the people we're proelytizing to, so if you can teach us how to do it without pissing people off that would help too :-)
3ChrisHibbert
If you post about things that are interesting to you, we'll talk about them more. If you act like you have something valuable to say, we'll read it and respond. We would all be likely to learn something in the process.
[-]jimrandomh40
  • Handle: jimrandomh
  • Location: Bedford, MA
  • Age: 22
  • Education: Master's in CS
  • Occupation: Programmer

I read Less Wrong for the insight of the authors, which on other blogs would be buried in drivel. Unlike most blogs, Less Wrong has both norms against sloppy thinking and a population of users who know enough to enforce it. Many other blogs have posts that are three-fourths repetition of news stories that I've already seen, and comments that are three-fourths canned responses and confabulation.

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[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky40

Perhaps take out the "describe what it is that you protect" part. That's jargon / non-obvious new concept.

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5AnnaSalamon
Oh, I thought it was nice, because it linked newcomers to one of my favorite posts as one of the orienting-aspects of the site (if people come here new). Maybe if linking text was made transparent, e.g. "describe what it is you value and work to achieve"? I also like the idea of implicitly introducing LW as a community of people who care about things, and who learn rationality for a reason.
[-][anonymous]40
  • Handle: jamesnvc
  • Location: Toronto, ON
  • Age: 19
  • Education: Currently 2nd year engineering science
  • Occupation: Student/Programmer
  • Blog: http://jamesnvc.blogspot.com

As long as I can remember, I've been an atheist with a strong rationalist bent, inspired by my grandfather, a molecular biologist who wanted at least one grandchild to be a scientist. I discoverd Overcoming Bias a year or so ago and became completely enthralled by it: I felt like I had discovered someone who really knew what was going on and what they were talking about.

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[-]MBlume40

A couple of possible additions to the page which I'm still a bit unsure of:

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

... (read more)
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[-]Jack40
  • Handle: Jack
  • Location: Washington D.C.
  • Age: 21
  • Education: Feeling pretty self-conscious about being the only person to post so far without a B.A. I'll finish it next year, major is philosophy with a minor in cognitive science and potentially another minor/major in government. After that its more school of some kind.

I wonder if those of us on the younger end of things will be dismissed more after posting our age and education. I admit to be a little worried, but I'm pretty sure everyone here is better than that. Anyway, I was a late joiner to OB (I think... (read more)

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5thomblake
Don't worry - the top contributor and minor demigod 'round these parts doesn't have a degree, either. ETA: Since Lojban doesn't think it's clear, I'm somewhat snarkily referring to Eliezer Yudkowsky.
[-]zaph40

Handle: zaph Location: Baltimore, MD Age: 35 Education: BA in Psychology, MS in Telecommunications Occupation: System Performance Engineer

I'm mostly here to learn more about applied rationality, which I hope to use on the job. I'm not looking to teach anybody anything, but I'd love to learn more about tools people use (I'm mostly interested in software) to make better decisions.

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[-]Richard_Kennaway40
  • Handle: You can see it just above. (Edit: I didn't realise that one can read LW with handles hidden, so: RichardKennaway.)
  • Name: Like the handle.
  • Gender: What the name suggests.
  • Location: Norwich, U.K (a town about two hours from London and 1.5 from Cambridge).
  • Age: Over 30 :-)
  • Education: B.Sc., D.Phil. in mathematics.
  • Occupation: Academic research. Formerly in theoretical computer science; since 10 to 12 years ago, applied mathematics and programming. (I got disillusioned with sterile crossword puzzle solving.)

Like, I suspect, most of the current reade... (read more)

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3[anonymous]
This is pretty funny if you happen to have the anti-kibitzer (which hides handles) turned on. :D
[-]Alicorn40

Not sure yet. I have a fledgeling ethics of rights kicking around in the back of my head that I might do something with. Alternately, I could start making noise about my wacky opinions on personal identity and be a metaphysicist. I also like epistemology, and I find philosophy of religion entertaining (although I wouldn't want to devote much of my time to it). I'm pretty sure I don't want to do philosophy of math, hardcore logic, or aesthetics.

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[-]MrHen40
  • Handle: MrHen
  • Name: Adam Babcock
  • Location: Tyler, TX
  • Age: 24
  • Education: BS in Computer Science, minors in Math and Philosophy
  • Occupation: Software engineer/programmer/whatever the current term is now

I found LW via OB via a Google search on AI topics. The first few OB posts I read were about Newcomb's paradox and those encouraged me to stick it on my blogroll.

Personal interests in rationality stem from a desire to eliminate "mental waste". I hold pragmatic principles to be of higher value than Truth for Truth's sake. As it turns out, this means something similar to systemized winning.

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[-]Jonathan Doolin30

Hi. This is my first time to this website, and my third comment today. I've been listening to the show "Bayesian Conspiracy" and made some posts to the subreddit. So I guess I'm not a good lurker.

I was intrigued by Arandur's article entitled "The Goal of the Bayesian Conspiracy" which was essentially,

(1) eliminate most pain and suffering and inequity.

(2) develop technologies for eternal life.

The ordering here, that Arandur suggested, I thought, was quite wise. I recently saw the series "Dollhouse" and I fel... (read more)

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[-]Taily30

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. ... (read more)

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[-]TGM30

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... (read more)

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[-]Oligopsony30

The morality embodied by his superior man is neither, or a synthesis of the two, and while he says a good deal about what it's not I don't have a clear picture of many positive traits attached to it.

That's because the superman, by definition, invents his own morality. If you read a book telling you the positive content of morality and implement it because the eminent philosopher says so, you ain't superman.

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[-]TheOtherDave30

Within the fictional universe of the Old and New Testaments, it seems clear that God has certain preferences about the state of the world, and that for some unspecified reason God does not directly impose those preferences on the world. Instead, God created humans and gave them certain instructions which presumably reflect or are otherwise associated with God's preferences, then let them go do what they would do, even when their doing so destroys things God values. And then every once in a while, God interferes with their doing those things, for reasons th... (read more)

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[-]TheOtherDave30

Well, wait up. Now you're comparing two conditions with two variables, rather than one.

That is, not only is grandpa spontaneous in case A and button-initiated in case B, but also grandpa is a convincing corporeal fascimile of your grandpa in case A and not any of those things in case B. I totally get how a convincing fascimile of grandpa would "count" where an unconvincing image wouldn't (and, by analogy, how a convincing mystical experience would count where an unconvincing one wouldn't) but that wasn't the claim you started out making.

Suppose ... (read more)

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[-]Anubhav30

Apparently we're speaking across a large inferential distance. I don't know about Tarskian sentences, so I can't comment on those, but I can clarify the 'anticipation controller' idea.

Basically, you're defining 'anticipation' more narrowly than what Eliezer meant by the term.

If you tell me that an egg is rough, I will anticipate that, if I rub my fingers over it, my skin will feel the sensations I associate with rough surfaces.

If you tell me that an egg is red, I will anticipate that when I look at it, the cells in my retina that are sensitive to long-wave... (read more)

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2[anonymous]
Thanks for clarifying the point about anticipations, that was very helpful and I'll have to give it more thought. I read Eliezer's article again, and while I don't think his intention was to give an account of the identity of facts, he does mention that if we're arguing over facts with identical anticipations, we may be arguing over a merely semantic point. That's very possibly what's going on here, but let me try to defend the idea that these are distinct facts one last time. If I cannot persuade you at all, I'll reconsider the worth of my argument. In my comment to Alejandro1, I mentioned three sets of facts. I'll pare down that point here to its simplest form: the relationship between 'X is taller than Y' and 'Y is shorter than X' is different than the relationship between 'X carries Y' and 'Y is carried by X'. This difference is in the priority of the former and the latter fact in each set. In the case of taller and shorter, there is no priority of one fact over the other. They really are just different ways of saying the same thing. In the case of carrying and being carried, there is a priority. Y's being carried is explained by X's carrying. Y is being carried, but because X is carrying it. It is not true that X is carrying because Y is being carried. In other words, X is related to Y as agent to patient (I don't mean agency in an intentional sense, this would apply to fire and what it burns). If we try to treat 'X carries Y' and 'Y is carried by X' as involving no explanatory priority (if we try to treat them as the same fact), the loose the explanatory priority, in this case, of agent over patient. An example of this kind of explanatory priority (in the other direction) might be this set: 'A falling tree kills a deer' and 'a deer is killed by a falling tree'. Here, I think the explanatory priority is with the patient. It is only because a deer is such as to be killed that a tree could be a killer. We have to explain the tree's killing by reference to the
[-]AspiringKnitter30

The issue is that there is not a reliable "see-an-image-of-Grandpa button" in existence for mystical experiences. In other words, I'm unaware of any techniques that reliably induce mystical experiences.

Now you're aware of one.

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[-]soreff30

Only as a hypothetical possibility. (From such evidence as I've seen I don't think either really exists. And I have seen a fair number of Wiccan ceremonies - which seem like reasonably decent theater, but that's all.) One could construe some biblical passages as predicting some sort of duel - and if one believed those passages, and that interpretation, then the question of whether one side was overstating its chances would be relevant.

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[-]Bugmaster30

Wouldn't this imply that witchcraft is effective, though ? Yes.

Ok, but in that case, isn't witchcraft at least partially "correct" ? Otherwise, how can they cast all those spells and make them actually work (assuming, that is, that their spells actually do work) ?

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[-]Bugmaster30

And sinful because witchcraft is forbidden.

Wouldn't this imply that witchcraft is effective, though ? Otherwise it wouldn't be forbidden; after all, God never said (AFAIK), "you shouldn't pretend to cast spells even though they don't really work", nor did he forbid a bunch of other stuff that is merely silly and a waste of time. But if witchcraft is effective, it would imply that it's more or less "correct", which is why I was originally confused about what you meant.

FWIW, I feel compelled to point out that some Wiccans believe in mu... (read more)

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[-]orthonormal30

(Replying rather than editing, to make sure that my comment displays as un-edited.)

I should also stipulate that I am not, nor have I ever been, Will Newsome.

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3TheOtherDave
It's not impossible that I was once Will Newsome, I suppose, nor even that I currently am. But if so, I'm unaware of the fact.
[-]wedrifid30

If I told you that God likes to troll people would that raise your opinion of trolls or lower your opinion of GOD

Which God? If it is Yahweh then that guy's kind of a dick and I don't value his opinion much at all. But he isn't enough of a dick that I can reverse stupidity to arrive at anything useful either.

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[-]Will_Newsome30

Okay, thanks. I didn't mean to imply 'twas your own "specialness" as such; apologies for being unclear. ETA: Also I'm sorry for anything else? I get the impression I did/said something wrong. So yeah, sorry.

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[-]wedrifid30

Aw, wedrifid, that's mean.

Is it? I didn't think it was something that you would be offended by. Since the mass voting was up but then back down to where it started it isn't a misdemeanor so much as it is peculiar and confusing. The only possibility that sprung to mind was that it could be an extension of of your empirical experimentation. You (said that you) actually made a bunch of the comments specifically so that they would get downvotes so that you could see how that influenced the voting behavior of others. Tinkering with said votes to satisfy a further indecipherable curiosity doesn't seem like all that much of a stretch.

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[-]J_Taylor30

Greetings, Will_Newsome.

This particular post of yours was, last night, at 4 upvotes. Do you have any hypothesis as to why that was the case? I am rather curious as to how that happened.

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4wedrifid
An instance of the more general phenomenon. If I recall the grandparent in particular was at about -3 then overnight (wedrifid time) went up to +5 and now seems to be back at -4. Will's other comments from the time period all experienced a fluctuation of about the same degree. I infer that the fickle bulk upvotes and downvotes are from the same accounts and with somewhat less confidence that they are from the same user. Or, you know, memories.
3thomblake
It's possible that the aesthetic only appeals to voters in certain parts of the globe.
3wedrifid
Are you saying there is a whole country which supports internet trolls? Forget WMDs, the next war needs to be on the real threat to (the convenience of) civilization!
2Will_Newsome
Wedrifid said that too. I don't have a model that predicts that. I think that most of the time my comments get upvoted to somewhere between 1 and 5 and then drop off as people who aren't Less Wrong regulars read through; that the reverse would happen for a few hours at least is odd. It's possible that the not-particularly-intelligent people who normally downvote my posts when they're insightful also tend to upvote my posts when they're "worthless". ETA: thomblake's hypothesis about regional differences in aesthetics seems more plausible than mine.
[-]hairyfigment30

trying to convert them, which I am, but only half-heartedly.

You are not doing this in any way, shape, or form, unless I missed some post-length or sequence-length argument of yours. (And I don't mean a "hint" as to what you might believe.) If you have something to say on the topic, you clearly can't or won't say it in a comment.

I have to tentatively classify your "trying" as broken signaling (though I notice some confusion on my part). If you were telling the truth about your usual mental state, and not deliberately misleading the re... (read more)

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7Will_Newsome
Sorry, wait, maybe there's some confusion? Did you interpret me saying "convert" as meaning "convert them to Christianity"? 'Cuz what I meant was convert people to the side of reason more generally, e.g. by occasionally posting totally-non-trolling comments about decision theory and stuff. I'm not a Christian. Or am I misinterpreting you? I'm not at all trying to signal that I need help, if I seem to be signaling that then it's an accidental byproduct of some other agenda which is SIGNIFICANTLY MORE MANLYYYY than crying for help.
4wedrifid
Love the attitude. And for what it's worth I didn't infer any signalling of need for help.
2hairyfigment
Quick response: I saw that you don't classify your views as Christianity. I do think you classify them as some form of theism, but I took the word "convert" to mean 'persuade people of whatever the frak you want to say.'
[-]TheOtherDave30

I agree that there is physical continuity from moment to moment in typical human existence, and that there is similar continuity with a slow transition to a nonhuman form. I agree that there is no such continuity with an instantaneous copy-and-destroy operation.

I understand that you consider that difference uniquely important, such that I continue living in the first case, and I don't continue living in the second case.

I infer that you believe in some uniquely important attribute to my self that is preserved by the first process, and not preserved by the ... (read more)

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[-]Bongo30

confirmation bias ... doesn't actually exist.

Explain?

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[-]NancyLebovitz30

It's conceivable that English could drift enough that EY's meaning would be unclear even if the texts remain.

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[-]thomblake30

In short, Crocker's Rule does not mean "I don't mind if you are intentionally rude to me." It means "I am aware that your assertions might be unintentionally rude, and I will be guided by your intention to inform rather than interpreting you as intentionally rude.

Right, I wasn't saying anything that contradicted that. Rather, some of us have additional cognitive burden in general trying to figure out if something is supposed to be rude, and I always understood part of the point of Crocker's Rules to be removing that burden so we can communicate more efficiently. Especially since many such people are often worth listening to.

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[-]TheOtherDave30

IME, more willpower works really poorly as a solution to pretty much anything, for much the same reason that flying works really poorly as a way of getting to my roof. I mean, I suspect that if I could fly, getting to my roof would be very easy, but I can't fly.

I also find that regular physical exercise and adequate sleep do more to manage my anxiety in the long term (that is, on a scale of months) than anything else I've tried.

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[-]NancyLebovitz30

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.

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3Emile
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).
5NancyLebovitz
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.
[-]A1987dM30

ISTM that the two statements are equivalent denotationally (they both mean “each person is either my friend or my enemy”) but not connotationally (the first suggests that most people are my friends, the latter suggests that most people are my enemies).

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[-]lessdazed30

If someone believed that no human and/or AI will ever be able to last longer than 1,000 years - perhaps any mind goes mad at that age, or explodes due to a law of the universe dealing with mental entities, or whatever - that person would be lambasted for using "immortal" to mean beings "as immortal as it is possible to be in my opinion."

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[-][anonymous]30

.

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[-]NancyLebovitz30

Comment score below threshold, 306 replies. (Now 307). Is this a record?

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2JoachimSchipper
It does suggest that the "newest comment" section is sufficient to sustain a discussion.
[-]lavalamp30

That moderately surprises me. It's from "Sinners in the hands of an angry god" by Johnathan Edwards.

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[-][anonymous]30

Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, that does make sense. Decision theory WOULD assert it, but to believe they're immoral requires belief in some amount of supernatural something, right? Hence it makes no sense under what my prior assumptions were (namely, that there was nothing supernatural).

Accepting the existence of the demon portal should not impact your disbelief in a supernatural morality.

Anyways, the demons don't even have to be supernatural. First hypothesis would be hallucination, second would be aliens.

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[-][anonymous]30

.

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[-]CronoDAS30

Yeah, that's a problem with many formulations of utilitarianism.

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2A1987dM
Surely someone must have proposed some solution(s)?
[-]TimS30

Why is it recursively self-improving if it isn't doing anything? If my end goal was not to do anything, I certainly don't need to modify myself in order to achieve that better than I could achieve it now.

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[-]dlthomas30

It matters for two things:

1) If we are trying to upload (the context here, if you follow the thread up a bit), then we want the emulations to be alive in whatever senses it is important to us that we are presently alive.

2) If we are building a really powerful optimization process, we want it not to be alive in whatever senses make alive things morally relevant, or we have to consider its desires as well.

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[-]TheOtherDave30

That's a perfectly workable model of a computer for our purposes, though if we were really going to get into this we'd have to further explore what a circuit is.

Personally, I've pretty much given up on the word "sentient"... in my experience it connotes far more than it denotes, such that discussions that involve it end up quickly reaching the point where nobody quite knows what they're talking about, or what talking about it entails. I have the same problem with "qualia" and "soul." (Then again, I talk comfortably about some... (read more)

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[-]Emile30

But never mind. We have different terminal values here. You-- I assume-- seek a lot of partners for everyone, right?

Nope! I don't have any certainty about what is best for society / mankind in the long run, but personally, I'm fine with monogamy, I'm married, have a kid, and don't think "more casual sex" is necessarily a good thing.

I can, however, agree with Eliezer when he says it might be better if human sex drives were better adjusted - not because I value seeing more people screwing around like monkeys, but because it seems that the way th... (read more)

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[-]wedrifid30

I think cryonics, in its current form, is a terrible idea

What do you think of cremation in its current form?

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3Insert_Idionym_Here
I think cryonics is a terrible idea, not because I don't want to preserve my brain until the tech required to recreate it digitally or physically is present, but because I don't think cryonics will do the job well. Cremation does the job very, very badly, like trying to preserve data on a hard drive by melting it down with thermite.
8wedrifid
This obviously invites the conclusion that cryonics is a terrible idea in the same sense that democracy is the worst form of government.
3Insert_Idionym_Here
Are you saying that cryonics is not perfect, but it is the best alternative?
[-]thomblake30

kilobug, Y U No quote using > ?!

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2kilobug
Hrm... didn't pay attention, sorry, I should indeed. Thanks for reminding me.
[-]Benevolence30

Greeting Less Wrong!

My name is Dimitri Karcheglo. I'm 21, I live in Vancouver, Canada. I was born in Ukraine and immigrated to Vancouver with my family in 1998.

I found my way here via a recommendation from a friend i have in The Zeitgeist Movement. He recommended Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality to me, as well as the Less Wrong wiki/sequences. I've red HPMOR at least 10 times over now (I have a thing with re-reading. I don't get bored by it.) I've also read some of the material on the site (though not a lot yet. Just "map and territory"... (read more)

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[-]saph30

Hi,

  • Handle: saph
  • Location: Germany (hope my English is not too bad for LW...)
  • Birth: 1983
  • Occupation: mathematician

I was thinking quite a lot for myself about topics like

  • understanding and mind models
  • quantitative arguments
  • scientific method and experiments
  • etc...

and after discovering LW some days ago I have tried to compare my "results" to the posts here. It was interesting to see that many ideas I had so far were also "discovered" by other people but I was also a little bit proud that I have got so far on my own. Probably this... (read more)

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[-]gjayb30

Hi! My name is Jay, I'm 20ish, and I study mathematics and physics. I found this through HPMOR which came to me as a recommendation from another physicist.

I'm interested in learning logic, winning arguments, and being better able to understand philosophical debates. I'll be starting by going through the major sequences, as that seems generally recommended.

I have a blog, A Model of Reality , whose name seems particularly amusing now. It is so called because my main interest in scientific research is to improve the models for predicting reality (eg how corn ... (read more)

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[-]nhamann120

I'm interested in ... winning arguments ...

Ack, that won't do. It is generally detrimental to be overly concerned with winning arguments. Aside from that, though, welcome to LW!

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[-]Vladimir_Nesov30

You don't need an additional ontological entity to reflect a judgment (and judgments can differ between different people or agents). You don't need special angry atoms to form an angry person, that property can be either in the pattern of how the atoms are arranged, or in the way you perceive their arrangement. See these posts:

... (read more)
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[-]jimrandomh30

I don't think a computer program can have any moral value, therefore, without the presence of a soul, people also have no moral value.

It's hard to build intuitions about the moral value of intelligent programs right now, because there aren't any around to talk to. But consider a hypothetical that's as close to human as possible: uploads. Suppose someone you knew decided to undergo a procedure where his brain would be scanned and destroyed, and then a program based on that scan was installed on a humanoid robot body, so that it would act and think like h... (read more)

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[-]Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) 30

Wow, impressing that nevertheless you've managed to become a rationalist! Now I would like to hear how you achieved this feat :-)

Mainly by having read so much pop science and sci-fi as a kid that by the time the mystical-experience things happened in a religious context (at around 14, when I started singing in the choir and actually being exposed to religious memes) I was already a fairly firm atheist in a family of atheists. Before that, although I remember having vaguely spiritual experiences as a younger kid, they were mostly associated with stuff li... (read more)

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[-]David Althaus30

Hm, I don't know. Merely writing about the trip can never be as profound as the experience itself. Read e.g. descriptions of experiences with meditation. They often sound just silly. Furthermore there are enough trip-reports in the internet about experiences with psychedelic drugs, from people who can better write than I can, and who have more knowledge than I have. If you are really interested in mystic or psychedelic experiences, you can go to Erowid , which is one of the best sites on the internet if you are interested in this stuff...

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[-]wedrifid30

Slight exaggeration, of course. I know that by 14 my ideas were very mature, of the type "humans invented gods to explain the mysteries of the world" or "A conscious mind will likely find the thought of nonexistence abhorrent, thus the idea of eternal life".

That's fairly impressive... for a human! ;)

But I might be wrong about what this forum is about!

Nope, you've got it spot on. Welcome! :)

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[-][anonymous]30

Impressive. I've been here for over a year and I still haven't finished all of them.

Thanks! My friends thought I was crazy (well, they probably already did and still do), but once I firmly decided to get through the Sequences, I really almost didn't do anything else while I wasn't either in class, taking an exam, or taking care of biological needs like food (having a body is such a liability!).

I'm curious — if someone invented a pill that exactly simulated the feeling of helping people, would you switch to taking that pill instead of actually helping

... (read more)
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[-]Laoch30

Hello,

I'm a software engineer working in Ireland, desperately trying to find something else to do in the area of science preferably. I've been a transhumanist for a while now and an atheist a lot longer so I'm finding less wrong very interesting as it appeals to my rational and empirical leanings.

I've been reading the sequences, they're fun to say the least. I'm learning a lot and I have a lot to learn, I'm looking forward to it!

For what its worth I'm a male and 27 years gathering experience from the west of Ireland.

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[-]Alicorn30

Alicorn: I like e for the subject case, en for the object, and es for possessive, but I don't use them in meatspace or other forums as much as in my thoughts because it confuses people. I'll probably use them here. What do you think?

I'll use those pronouns for you if you prefer them. When I'm picking gender-neutral pronouns on my own I usually use some combination of Spivak and singular "they".

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[-]hairyfigment30

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. I'm a currently unemployed library school graduate with a fondness for rationality. I believe as a child I read most of Korzybski's Bible of general-semantics, which I now think breaks its own rules about probability but still tends to have value for the people most likely to believe in it.

I didn't plan to mention it before seeing this, but I practice an atheistic form of Crowley's mystical path. I hope to learn how to produce certain experiences in myself (for whoever I saw arguing about a priori certainty,... (read more)

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[-]jacob_cannell30

Its certainly a possibility, ranging from the terrifying if its created as something like a central intelligence agent, to the beneficial if its created as a more transparent public achievement, like landing on the moon.

The potential for arms race seems to contribute to possibility of doom.

The government seems on par with the private sector in terms of likelihood, but I dont have a strong notion of that. At this point it is already some sort of blip on their radar, even if small.

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[-]Unknowns30

Whites and blacks both have a cultural contribution to IQ. So to make your example work, we have to say that Smith and Jones both found treasure, but in unequal amounts. Let's say that our estimate is that Smith found treasure approximately worth $50,000, and Jones found treasure approximately worth $10,000. If the difference in their wealth is exactly $50,000, then most likely Smith was richer in the first place, by approximately $10,000.

In order to say that Jones was most likely richer, the difference in their wealth would have to be under $40,000, or th... (read more)

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[-]WrongBot30

Sounds like you've given this some serious thought and avoided all kinds of failure modes. While I disagree with you and think that there's probably an interesting discussion here, I agree that this probably isn't the place to get into it. Welcome to Less Wrong, and I hope you stick around.

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[-]khafra30

It might not work in another month or two, but the idea of "contrived infinite-torture scenarios" has high salience for LW readers right now. I got the joke immediately.

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[-]Skepxian30

Thank you very much!

A small element of my own personal quirks (which, alas, I keep screwing up) is to avoid using the words 'argue' and 'debate'. Arguing is like trying to 'already be right', and Debate is a test of social ability, not the rightness of your side. I like to discuss - some of the greatest feelings is when I suddenly get that sensation of "OH! I've been wrong, but that makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE!" And some of the scariest feelings are "What? You're changing your mind to agree with me? But what if I'm wrong and I just argued ... (read more)

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7Apprentice
Christian or atheist - in the end we all believe in infinite torture forever. Welcome!
3ata
Good attitude. I'm much the same, both in enjoying learning new things even when it means relinquishing a previously held belief, and in feeling slightly guilty when I cause someone to change their mind. :) LW has actually helped me get over the latter, because now that I understand rationality much better, I'm accordingly more confident that I'm doing things correctly in debates. I'm glad you mentioned your Christianity and your specific belief that it is rationally justified — I'll be curious to see how it holds up after you've read the sequences Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions, How to Actually Change Your Mind, and Reductionism. (I hope you'll be considering that issue with that same curious, unattached mindset — if Christianity were false, would you really, honestly, sincerely want to know?) If I may ask, what specific beliefs do you consider part of your Christianity? The Holy Trinity? The miracles described in the NT? Jesus's life as described by the Gospels? The moral teachings in the OT? Creationism? Biblical literalism? Prayer as a powerful force? Heaven and Hell? Angels, demons, and the Devil as actual beings? Salvation through faith or works? The prophecies of the Revelation?
7EStokes
Not in response to anyone, but to this thread/topic. Is this really something that should be on LessWrong? LessWrong is more about debate on new territory and rationality and such, not going to well-tread territory. There are many other places on the internet for debate on religion, but there's only one LW. Perhaps /r/atheism, (maybe being careful to say that you're honestly looking to challenge your beliefs and not test your faith.) Unless there are new points that haven't been heard before, or people are genuinely interested in this specific debate. Just not sure this is the right place, and want to hear other people's opinions on this.
[-]cousin_it30

Well, if you make it impossible for you to play down, then that's a perfectly valid exercise of your control over your own life, isn't it?

Then you make it a tautology that "freedom is good", because any restriction on freedom that leads to an increase of good will be rebranded as a "valid exercise of control". Maybe I should give an example of the reverse case, where adding freedom makes everyone worse off. See Braess's paradox: adding a new free road to the road network, while keeping the number of drivers constant, can make every d... (read more)

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[-]cousin_it30

More freedom is always good from an individual rationality perspective, but game theory has lots of situations where giving more behavior options to one agent causes harm to everyone, or where imposing a restriction makes everyone better off. For example, if we're playing the Centipede game and I somehow make it impossible for myself to play "down" for the first 50 turns - unilaterally, without requiring any matching commitment on your part - then we both win much more than we otherwise would.

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[-]Blueberry30

Wow, I'm surprised to hear that two people referred to Consciousness Explained as obsolete. If there's a better book on consciousness out there, I'd love to hear about it.

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[-]arundelo30

Hi! I've been on Less Wrong since the beginning. I'm finally getting around to posting in this thread. I found Less Wrong via Overcoming Bias, which I (presumably) found by wandering around the libertarian blogosphere.

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[-]Eliezer Yudkowsky30

I should note that the ability to explain things isn't the same attribute as intelligence. I am lucky enough to have it. Other legitimately intelligent people do not.

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[-]Kevin30

Hi. My name's Kevin. I'm 23. I graduated with a degree in industrial engineering from the University of Pittsburgh last month. I have a small ecommerce site selling a few different kinds of herbal medicine, mainly kratom, and I buy and sell sport and concert tickets. Previously I started a genetic testing startup and I am gearing up for my next startup.

I post on Hacker News a lot as rms. kfischer &$ gmail *^ com for email and IM, kevin143 on Twitter, kfischer on Facebook.

I signed up for Less Wrong when it was first started but have just recently reache... (read more)

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4Paul Crowley
I'm sure you're not surprised by this question :-) but if you're a rationalist, how come you sell herbal medicines?
4Kevin
Herbal medicine is a polite euphemism for legal drugs. The bulk of our business comes from one particular leaf that does have legitimate medical use and is way, way more effective than a reasonable prior says it should be. We were actually planning on commercializing the active ingredient (called 7H), based on this gap we found in the big pharma drug discovery process, and it would have been a billion dollar business. However, it would have required us to raise money for research, so we could iterate through all of the possible derivatives of the molecule and it's nearly impossible to raise money for research without having a PhD in the relevant area. We tried but kept hitting catch 22's. At the most recent Startup School, I met someone who introduced me to a young CEO funded by top VCs who assured me that this idea fit the VC model perfectly, that he was pretty confident we could raise a million dollars for research and a patent, and that for something with potential like this, it did not matter at all that our team was incomplete, the VCs would find us people. I told him to give me a day to revise our one pager. I did a quick patent search and found that the Japanese discoverers of 7H had just filed a patent on all possible derivatives of 7H -- and they found some really awesome derivatives. They discovered 7H in 2001 and filed for the patent of the derivative molecules in 2009. For various reasons, we believed that their funding was not for all derivatives of 7H and that they were chasing an impossible pharmaceutical dream, but in retrospect we believe they were selectively publishing papers of their discoveries to throw others off of their tracks, why else would they have published the discovery of a medically useless derivative? We came so close, but it always seemed a little too good to be true. There's always the next thing. For now, selling the leaf itself pays the rent. PM or email for more details about the herb/molecule in question; I think it's proba
[-]ideclarecrockerrules30

Male, 26; Belgrade, Serbia. Graduate student of software engineering. Been lurking here for a few months, reading sequences and new stuff through RSS. Found the site through reddit, likely.

Self-diagnosed (just now) with impostor syndrome. Learned a lot from reading this site. Now registered an account to facilitate learning (by interaction), and out of desire to contribute back to the community (not likely to happen by insightful posts, so I'll check out the source code).

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[-]Sly30
  • Anthony
  • Age 21
  • Computer Science Student
  • Seattle/Redmond area

I have been lurking LW and OB since summer and finally became motivated/bored enough to post. I do not remember exactly how I came to find this site, but it was probably from following a link on some atheist blog or forum.

I became interested in rationality after taking some philosophy classes my freshman year and discovering that I had been wrong about religion. Everything followed from that.

Interests that you probably do not care about: Gaming and game design in particular. I have thus far made a flash game and an iPhone game, both of which are far too difficult for most people.

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[-]RobinZ30

Much of it is explained by the text that appears when you click the "Help" link below the comment. (Look below the text window at the right.) But to do those three things specifically:

  1. Bulletted lists: Put an asterisk (*) at the beginning of each line corresponding to an item on the list. Edit: You may need to put a space after the asterisk.
  2. Hyperlinks: Put the text you want visible in square brackets, then immediately after (no space) the URL in parentheses. Thus: [Three Worlds Collide](http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/) becom
... (read more)
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[-]Matt_Duing30

Name: Matt Duing Age: 24 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Education: undergraduate

I've been an overcoming bias reader since the beginning, which I learned of from Michael Anissimov's blog. My long term goal is to do what I can to help mitigate existential risks and my short term goals include using rationality to become a more accurate map drawer and a more effective altruist.

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[-]pdf23ds30

Eh. Might as well.

Chris Capel (soon to be) Mount Pleasant, TX (hi MrHen!) Programmer

I've been following Eliezer since the days of CFAI, and was an early donor to SIAI. I struggle with depression, and thus am much less consistently insightful than I wish I'd be. I'm only 24 and I already feel like I've wasted my life, fallen permanently behind a bunch of the rest of you guys, which kind of screws up my high ambitions. Oh well.

I'd like to see a link explaining the mechanics of the karma system (like how karma relates to posting, for instance) in this post.

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[-]ajayjetti30

Hi

I am Ajay from India. I am 23. I was a highly rebellious person(still am i think), flunked out college, but completed it to become a programmer. But as soon as i finished college, i had severe depression because of a woman. I than thought of doing Masters degree in US, and applied, but then dropped the idea.Then i recaptured a long gone passion to make music, so i started drumming. I got accepted to berklee college of music, but then i lost interest to make a career out of it, i have some reasons for it. Then i started reading a lot(parallel to some pr... (read more)

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[-]MBlume30

I do not identify myself as a rationalist for I only recently understood how emotional a person I really am and id like to enjoy it before trying to get it under control again.

Note that rationality does not necessarily oppose emotion.

Becoming more rational - arriving at better estimates of how-the-world-is - can diminish feelings or intensify them. Sometimes we run away from strong feelings by denying the facts, by flinching away from the view of the world that gave rise to the powerful emotion. If so, then as you study the skills of rationality and

... (read more)
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[-]Nick_Tarleton30
  • Name: Nick Tarleton (!)
  • Age: 18
  • Location: Pittsburgh, PA / Cary, NC
  • Education: freshman, Carnegie Mellon University, undecided field

I discovered OB in early 2007, after my interest in transhumanism led me to Eliezer Yudkowsky's other works. I care about preventing the future from being lost, and think that Eliezer is right about how to do this. I also care plenty about being less wrong for its own sake.

I don't feel like I have much to share in this thread; my beliefs and values are probably pretty typical for Singularitarian Bayesian-wannabes (atheist, ... (read more)

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[-]MichaelBone30
  • Handle: MichaelBone
  • Name: Michael Bone
  • Location: Toronto, ON
  • Age: 25
  • Education: Bachelor of Design, currently studying cognitive science and AI.

I find minds to be the most beautiful objects in the known universe; at once, natural and artifact, localized and distributed, intuitively clear and epistemically ephemeral the mind continually beguiles, delights and terrifies me. Of particular personal interest is a mind's propensity and capability for creativity and, separately, wisdom.

Like the majority of artists, I dream of creating beautiful and profound r... (read more)

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[-]orthonormal30
  • Handle: orthonormal
  • Name: Patrick
  • Location: Berkeley, CA
  • Age: 25
  • Occupation: Math PhD Student
  • Interest in rationality: Purely epistemic, negligibly instrumental.
  • Atheist (see origin story), tentative one-boxer, MWI evangelist, cryocrastinator.

I'm driven towards rationality by three psychological factors— first, that I love to argue on philosophical and related matters, secondly that I'm curious about most fields of intellectual endeavor, and thirdly that it pains me to realize I'm being less than fully honest with myself.

Ye gods, that sounds like a pers... (read more)

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[-]Pierre-Andre30
  • Handle: Pierre-Andre
  • Name: Pierre-André Noël
  • Age: 26
  • Gender: Male.
  • Location: Québec City, Québec, Canada
  • Education: B.Sc. Physics, M.Sc. Physics and currently midway through Ph.D. Physics.
  • Research interests: Dynamics, networks, dynamics over networks, statistical mechanics.
  • Newcomb: Commited to one-box if facing a decent Omega.
  • Prisoner: Cooperate if I judges that the other will.

I discovered OB some months ago (don't remember how) and reads both OB and LW. For now, I am mostly a lurker.

I have been raised as a Catholic Christian and became atheist midwa... (read more)

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[-]Nanani30

  • Handle: Nanani

  • Location: Japan

  • Age: 25

  • Gender: Female (not that it matters)

  • Education: BSc Astrophysics

  • Occupation: Interpretation/Translation (Mostly English and Japanese, in both directions)

  • Goal : To Win.

I found this site through Overcoming Bias, and had already been lurking at the latter for years beforehand. When I first came across Overcoming Bias, it was for too difficult for me. I have since become stronger, enough to read most of its archives and become even stronger. I intend to keep this positive cycle active.

I must say that I hardly f... (read more)

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[-]Alicorn30

I think I have to at least graduate before anyone besides me is allowed to write a thesis on my wacky opinions on personal identity ;)

In a nutshell, I think persons just are continuous self-aware experiences, and that it's possible for two objects to be numerically distinct and personally identical. For instance (assuming I'm not a brain in a vat myself) I could be personally identical to a brain in a vat while being numerically distinct. The upshot of being personally identical to someone is that you are indifferent between "yourself" and the ... (read more)

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3loqi
I've found this position to be highly intuitive since it first occurred/was presented to me (don't recall which, probably the latter from Egan). One seemingly under-appreciated (disclaimer: haven't studied much philosophy) corollary of it is that if you value higher quantities of "personality-substance", you should seek (possibly random) divergence as soon as you recognize too much of yourself in others.
[-]swestrup30

I never knew I had an inbox. Thanks for telling us about that, but I wonder if we might not want to redesign the home page to make some things like that a bit more obvious.

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[-]zaph30

We are all looking to be "less wrong", so I can't imagine why anyone would be barred.

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[-]DragonGod20

I’m a 19-year-old Nigerian male. I am strictly heterosexual and an atheist. I am a strong narcissist, and I may have Narcissist Personality Disorder (though I am cognizant of this vulnerability and do work against it which would lower the probability of me suffering from NPD). I am ambitious, and my goal in life is to plant my flag on the sand of time; engrave my emblem in history; immortalise myself in the memory of humanity. I desire to be the greatest man of the 21st century. I am a transhumanist, and intend to live indefinitely, but failing that being ... (read more)

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2entirelyuseless
A good preliminary estimate of the probability of this happening would be one in ten billion, given the number of people who will live during the 21st century.
[-]Lauryn20

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... (read more)

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[-]aspera20

Thanks Tim.

In the post I'm referring to, EY evaluates a belief in the laws of kinematics based on predicting how long a bowling ball will take to hit the ground when tossed off a building, and then presumably testing it. In this case, our belief clearly "pays rent" in anticipated experience. But what if we know that we can't measure the fall time accurately? What if we can only measure it to within an uncertainty of 80% or so? Then our belief isn't strictly falsifiable, but we can gather some evidence for or against it. In that case, would we say... (read more)

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2TimS
I think you are conflating the issue of falsifiability with the issue of instrument accuracy. Falsifiability is just one of several conditions for labeling a theory as scientific. Specifically, the requirement is that a theory must detail in advance what phenomena won't happen. The theory of gravity says that we won't see a ball "fall" up or spontaneously enter orbit. When more specific predictions are made, instrument errors (and other issues like air friction) become an issue, but that not the core concern of falsifiability. For example, Karl Popper was concerned about the mutability of Freudian psychoanalysis, which seemed capable of explaining both an occurrence and its negative without difficulty. But contrast, the theory of gravity standing alone admits that it cannot explain when an object falls to Earth at a different rate than 9.88 m/s^2. Science as a whole has explanations, but gravity doesn't. Committing to falsifiability helps prevent failure modes like belief in belief.
[-]aspera20

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 conta... (read more)

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[-][anonymous]20

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

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[-]Tuukka_Virtaperko20

Okay. In this case, the article does seem to begin to make sense. Its connection to the problem of induction is perhaps rather thin. The idea of using low Kolmogorov complexity as justification for an inductive argument cannot be deduced as a theorem of something that's "surely true", whatever that might mean. And if it were taken as an axiom, philosophers would say: "That's not an axiom. That's the conclusion of an inductive argument you made! You are begging the question!"

However, it seems like advancements in computation theory have ... (read more)

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[-]wedrifid20

I'm referring to his being an admitted troll.

To be fair Will is more the big and rocky kind of troll. You can even see variability that can only be explained by drastic temperature changes!

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[-]pedanterrific20

Do you normally refer to yourselves as 'we'? I never noticed that before. (Witty, though.)

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[-]Anubhav20

Does phrasing the state of affairs as (2) instead of (1) have any effect on your anticipations?

If not, they're the same fact.

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[-]wedrifid20

How so? I can only think of Straw Vulcan examples.

A subset of those diagnosed or diagnosable with high functioning autism and a subset of the features that constitute that label fit this category. Being rational is not normal.

(Or, by "can be said", do you mean to imply that you disagree with the statement?)

I don't affiliate myself with the DSM, nor does it always representative of an optimal way of carving reality. In this case I didn't want to specify one way or the other.

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[-]MixedNuts20

Things like more accurate self-evaluations by depressed people.

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[-]Bugmaster20

Ah, right, so you believe that the entities that Wiccans worship do in some way exist, but that they are actually demons, not benign gods.

I should probably point out at this point that Wiccans (well, at least those whom I'd met), consider this point of view utterly misguided and incredibly offensive. No one likes to be called a "demon-worshiper", especially when one is generally a nice person whose main tenet in life is a version of "do no harm". You probably meant no disrespect, but flat-out calling a whole group of people "demon-worshipers" tends to inflame passions rather quickly, and not in a good way.

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[-]AspiringKnitter250

I should probably point out at this point that Wiccans (well, at least those whom I'd met), consider this point of view utterly misguided and incredibly offensive.

That's a bizarre thing to say. Is their offense evidence that I'm wrong? I don't think so; I'd expect it whether or not they worship demons. Or should I believe something falsely because the truth is offensive? That would go against my values-- and, dare I say it, the suggestion is offensive. ;) Or do you want me to lie so I'll sound less offensive? That risks harm to me (it's forbidden by the New Testament) and to them (if no one ever tells them the truth, they can't learn), as well as not being any fun.

No one likes to be called a "demon-worshiper",

What is true is already so, Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away.

especially when one is generally a nice person whose main tenet in life is a version of "do no harm".

Nice people like that deserve truth, not lies, especially when eternity is at stake.

flat-out calling a whole group of people "demon-worshipers" tends to inflame passions rather quickly,

So does calling people Cthulhu-wo... (read more)

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[-]Scott Alexander260

I like your post (and totally agree with the first paragraph), but have some concerns that are a little different from Bugmaster's.

What's the exact difference between a god and a demon? Suppose Wicca is run by a supernatural being (let's call her Astarte) who asks her followers to follow commendable moral rules, grants their petitions when expressed in the ritualistic form of spells, and insists she will reward the righteous and punishes the wicked. You worship a different supernatural being who also asks His followers to follow commendable moral rules, grants their petitions when expressed in the ritualistic form of prayer, and insists He will reward the righteous and punish the wicked. If both Jehovah and Astarte exist and act similarly, why name one "a god" and the other "a demon"? Really, the only asymmetry seems to be that Jehovah tries to inflict eternal torture on people who prefer Astarte, where Astarte has made no such threats among people who prefer Jehovah, which is honestly advantage Astarte. So why not just say "Of all the supernatural beings out there, some people prefer this one and other people prefer that one"?

I mean, one obvious answe... (read more)

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3AspiringKnitter
Since you use the names Jehovah and Astarte, I'll follow suit, though they're not the names I prefer. The difference would be that if worship of Jehovah gets you eternal life in heaven, and worship of Astarte gets you eternal torture and damnation, then you should worship Jehovah and not Astarte. Also, if Astarte knows this, but pretends otherwise, then Astarte's a liar. Not quite. I only believe in "multiple factions of supernatural beings" (actually only two) because it's implied by Christianity being true. It's not a prior belief. If Christianity is false, one or two or fifteen or zero omnipotent or slightly-powerful or once-human or monstrous gods could exist, but if Christianity is false I'd default to atheism, since if my evidence for Christianity proved false (say, I hallucinated it all because of some undiagnosed mental illness that doesn't resemble any currently-known mental illness and only causes that one symptom) without my gaining additional evidence for some other religion or non-atheist cosmology, I'd have no evidence for anything spiritual. Or do I misunderstand? I'm confused. Being, singular, first of all. 1. I already know myself, what kind of a person I am. I know how rational I am. I know how non-crazy I am. I know exactly the extent to which I've considered illness affecting my thoughts as a possible explanation. 2. I know I'm not lying. 3. The first person became an apostate, something I've never done, and is still confused years later. The second person records only the initial conversion, while I know how it's played out in my own life for several years. 4. The second person is irrationally turned off by even the mere appearance of Catholicism and Christianity in general because of terrible experiences with Catholics. 5. I discount all miracle stories from people I don't know, including Christian and Jewish miracle stories, which could at least plausibly be true. I discount them ALL when I don't know the person. In fact, that mea
[-]Scott Alexander220

Sorry - I used "Astarte" and the female pronoun because the Wiccans claim to worship a Goddess, and Astarte was the first female demon I could think of. If we're going to go gender-neutral, I recommend "eir", just because I think it's the most common gender neutral pronoun on this site and there are advantages to standardizing this sort of thing.

The difference would be that if worship of Jehovah gets you eternal life in heaven, and worship of Astarte gets you eternal torture and damnation, then you should worship Jehovah and not Astarte.

Well, okay, but this seems to be an argument from force, sort of "Jehovah is a god and Astarte a demon because if I say anything else, Jehovah will torture me". It seems to have the same form as "Stalin is not a tyrant, because if I call Stalin a tyrant, he will kill me, and I don't want that!"

Not quite. I only believe in "multiple factions of supernatural beings" (actually only two) because it's implied by Christianity being true.

It sounds like you're saying the causal history of your belief should affect the probability of it being true.

Suppose before you had any mystical experience, you h... (read more)

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[-]Multiheaded110

Speaking of mystical experiences, my religion tutor at the university (an amazing woman, Christian but pretty rational and liberal) had one, as she told us, in transport one day, and that's when she converted, despite growing up at an atheistic middle-class Soviet family.

Oh, and the closest thing I ever had to one was when I tried sensory deprivation + dissociatives (getting high on cough syrup, then submersing myself in a warm bath with lights out and ears plugged; had a timer set to 40 minutes and a thin ray of light falling where I could see it by turning my head as precaution against, y'know, losing myself). That experiment was both euphoric and interesting, but I wouldn't really want to repeat it. I experienced blissful ego death and a feeling of the universe spinning round and round in cycles, around where I would be, but where now was nothing. It's hard to describe.

And then, well, I saw the tiny, shining shape of Rei Ayanami. She was standing in her white plugsuit amidst the blasted ruins on a dead alien world, and I got the feeling that she was there to restore it to life. She didn't look at me, but I knew she knew I saw her. Then it was over.

Fret not, I didn't really make any more bullshit out of that, but it's certainly an awesome moment to remember.

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2AspiringKnitter
Unless I know them already. Once I already know people for honest, normal, sane people ("normal" isn't actually required and I object to the typicalist language), their miracle stories have the same weight as my own. Also, miracles of more empirically-verifiable sorts are believable when vetted by snopes.com. Xe is poetic and awesome. I'm hoping it'll become standard English. To that end, I use it often. I read your first link and I'm very surprised because I didn't expect something like that. It would be interesting to talk to that person about this. Is that surprising? First of all, I know that I already converted to Christianity, rather than just having assumed it always, so I'm already more likely to be open to new facts. And second, I thought it was common knowledge around these parts that most people are really, really bad at finding the truth. How many people know Bayes? How many know what confirmation bias is? Anchoring? The Litany of Tarski? Don't people on this site rail against how low the sanity waterline is? I mean, you don't disagree that I'm more rational than most Christians and Muslims, right? Do they do this by using tricks like Multiheaded described? Or by using mystical plants or meditation? (I know there are Christians who think repeating a certain prayer as a mantra and meditating on it for a long time is supposed to work... and isn't there, or wasn't there, some Islamic sect where people try to find God by spinning around?) If so, that really doesn't count. Is there another study where that question was asked? Because if you're asserting that mystical experiences can be artificially induced by such means in most if not all people, then we're in agreement. I was thinking more along the lines of "going to hell is a natural consequence of worshiping Astarte", analogous to "if I listen to my peers and smoke pot, I won't be able to sing, whereas if I listen to my mother and drink lots of water, I will; therefore, my mother is right and listeni
[-]Scott Alexander120

Is that surprising? ... Don't people on this site rail against how low the sanity waterline is? I mean, you don't disagree that I'm more rational than most Christians and Muslims, right?

No, I suppose it's not surprising. I guess I misread the connotations of your claim. Although I am still not certain I agree: I know some very rational and intelligent Christians, and some very rational and intelligent atheists (I don't really know many Muslims, so I can't say anything about them). At some point I guess this statement is true by definition, since we can define open-minded as "open-minded enough to convert religion if you have good enough evidence to do so." But I can't remember where we were going with this one so I'll shut up about it.

Do they do this by using tricks like Multiheaded described? Or by using mystical plants or meditation? (I know there are Christians who think repeating a certain prayer as a mantra and meditating on it for a long time is supposed to work... and isn't there, or wasn't there, some Islamic sect where people try to find God by spinning around?) If so, that really doesn't count. Is there another study where that question was asked? Because i

... (read more)
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[-]Prismattic110

I was thinking more along the lines of "going to hell is a natural consequence of worshiping Astarte", analogous to "if I listen to my peers and smoke pot, I won't be able to sing, whereas if I listen to my mother and drink lots of water, I will; therefore, my mother is right and listening to my peers is bad". I hadn't even considered it from that point of view before.

To return to something I pointed out far, far back in this thread, this is not analagous. Your mother does not cause you to lose your voice for doing the things she advises you not to do. On the other hand, you presumably believe that god created hell, or at a minimum, he tolerates its existence (unless you don't think God is omnipotent).

(As an aside, another point against the homogeneity you mistakenly assumed you would find on Lesswrong when you first showed up is that not everyone here is a complete moral anti-realist. For me, that one cannot hold the following three premises without contradiction is sufficient to discount any deeper argument for Christianity:

  1. Inflicting suffering is immoral, and inflicting it on an infinite number of people or for an inifinite duration is infinitely immoral
  2. The Christian God is benevolent.
  3. The Christian God allows the existence of Hell.

Resorting to, "Well, I don't actually know what hell is" is blatant rationalization.)

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2Nornagest
You don't actually need to be a moral realist to make that argument; you just need to notice the tension between the set of behavior implied by the Christian God's traditional attributes and the set of behavior Christian tradition claims for him directly. That in itself implies either a contradiction or some very sketchy use of language (i.e. saying that divine justice allows for infinitely disproportionate retribution). I think it's a weakish argument against anything less than a strictly literalist interpretation of the traditions concerning Hell, though. There are versions of the redemption narrative central to Christianity that don't necessarily involve torturing people for eternity: the simplest one that I know of says that those who die absent a state of grace simply cease to exist ("everlasting life" is used interchangeably with "heaven" in the Bible), although there are interpretations less problematic than that as well.
3Multiheaded
The (modern) Orthodox opinion that my tutor relayed to us is that Hell isn't a place at all, but a condition of the soul where it refuses to perceive/accept God's grace at all and therefore shuts itself out from everything true and meaningful that can be, just wallowing in despair; it exists in literally no-where, as all creation is God's, and the refusal of God is the very essence of this state. She dismissed all suggestions of sinners' "torture" in hell - especially by demonic entities - as folk religion. (Wait, what's that, looks like either I misquoted her a little or she didn't quite give the official opinion...) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_in_Christian_beliefs#Eastern_Orthodox_concepts_of_hell I has a confused.
2Nornagest
I've heard that one too, but I'm not sure how functionally different from pitchforks and brimstone I'd consider it to be, especially in light of the idea of a Last Judgment common to Christianity and Islam.
2Multiheaded
Oh, there's a difference alright, one that could be cynically interpreted as an attempt to dodge the issue of cruel and disproportionate punishment by theologians. The version above suggests that God doesn't ever actively punish anyone at all, He simply refuses to force His way to someone who rejects him, even if they suffer as a result. That's sometimes assumed to be due to God's respect for free will.
8Nornagest
Yeah. Thing is, we're dealing with an entity who created the system and has unbounded power within it. Respect for free will is a pretty good excuse, but given that it's conceivable for a soul to be created that wouldn't respond with permanent and unspeakable despair to separation from the Christian God (or to the presence of a God whom the soul has rejected, in the other scenario), making souls that way looks, at best, rather irresponsible. If I remember right the standard response to that is to say that human souls were created to be part of a system with God at its center, but that just raises further questions.
6[anonymous]
What, so god judges that eternal torture is somehow preferable to violating someones free will by inviting them to eutopia? I am so tired of theists making their god so unable to be falsified that he becomes useless. Let's assume for a moment that some form of god actually exists. I don't care how much he loves us in his own twisted little way, I can think of 100 ways to improve the world and he isn't doing any of them. It seems to me that we ought to be able to do better than what god has done, and in fact we have. The standard response to theists postulating a god should be "so what?".
5Estarlio
Actually, I do. You use the language that rationalists use. However, you don't seem to have considered very many alternate hypothesis. And you don't seem to have performed any of the obvious tests to make sure you're actually getting information out of your evidence. For instance, you could have just cut up a bunch of similarly formatted stories from different sources, (or even better, have had a third party do it for you, so you don't see it,) stuck them in a box and pulled them out at random - sorting them into Bible and non-Bible piles according to your feelings. If you were getting the sort of information out that would go some way towards justifying your beliefs, you should easily beat random people of equal familiarity with the Bible. Rationality is a tool, and if someone doesn't use it, then it doesn't matter how good a tool they have; they're not a rationalist any more than someone who owns a gun is a soldier. Rationalists have to actually go out and gather/analyse the data. (Edit to change you to someone for clarity's sake.)
5TheOtherDave
If you can say more about why deliberately induced mystical experiences don't count, but other kinds do, I'd be interested.
2AspiringKnitter
For the same reason that if I had a see-an-image-of-Grandpa button, and pushed it, I wouldn't count the fact that I saw him as evidence that he's somehow still alive, but if I saw him right now spontaneously, I would.
2occlude
Imagine that you have a switch in your home which responds to your touch by turning on a lamp (this probably won't take much imagination). One day this lamp, which was off, suddenly and for no apparent reason turns on. Would you assign supernatural or mundane causes to this event? Now this isn't absolute proof that the switch wasn't turned on by something otherworldly; perhaps it responds to both mundane and supernatural causes. But, well, if I may be blunt, Occam's Razor. If your best explanations are "the Hand of Zeus" and "Mittens, my cat," then ...
4fortyeridania
Yes: Dervishes.
4soreff
yes
6TheOtherDave
Hidden cameras help. So do setups like "leave a dollar, take a bagel" left in the office kitchen.
4soreff
Or perhaps neither Jehovah nor Astarte knows now who will dominate in the end, and any promises either makes to any followers are, ahem, over-confident? :-) There was a line I read somewhere about how all generals tell their troops that their side will be victorious...
2Alejandro1
Obviously I can't speak for AK, but maybe she believes that she has been epistemically lucky. Compare the religious case: "I had this experience which gave me evidence for divinity X, so I am going to believe in X. Others have had analogous experiences for divinities Y and Z, but according to the X religion I adopted those are demonic, so Y and Z believers are wrong. I was lucky though, since if I had had a Y experience I would have become a Y believer". with philosophical cases like the ones Alicorn discusses there: "I accept philosophical position X because of compelling arguments I have been exposed to. Others have been exposed to seemingly compelling arguments for positions Y and Z, but according to X these arguments are flawed, so Y and Z believers are wrong. I was lucky though, since if I had gone to a university with Y teachers I would have become a Y believer". It may be that the philosopher is also being irrational here and that she could strive more to trascend her education and assess X vs Y impartially, but in the end it is impossible to escape this kind of irrationality at all levels at once and assess beliefs from a perfect vaccuum. We all find some things compelling and not others because of the kind of people we are and the kind of lives we have lived, and the best we can get is reflective equilibrium. Recursive justification hitting bottom and all that. The question is whether AK is already in reflective equilibrium or if she can still profit from some meta-examination and reassess this part of her belief system. (I believe that some religious believers have reflected enough about their beliefs and the counterarguments to them that they are in this kind of equilibrium and there is no further argument from an atheist that can rationally move them - though these are a minority and not representative of typical religious folks.)
2Scott Alexander
See my response here - if Alicorn is saying she knows the other side has arguments exactly as convincing as those which led her to her side, but she is still justified to continue believing her side more likely than the other, I disagree with her.
5occlude
You're doing it wrong. The power of the Litany comes from evidence. Every time you applying the Litany of Gendlin to an unsubstantiated assertion, a fairie drops dead.
3AspiringKnitter
I think this is a joke, ish, right? Because it's quite witty. /tangent I mentioned some evidence elsewhere in the thread.
6occlude
"Ish," yes. I have to admit I've had a hard time navigating this enormous thread, and haven't read all of it, including the evidence of demonic influence you're referring to. However, I predict in advance that 1) this evidence is based on words that a man wrote in an ancient book, and that 2) I will find this evidence dubious. Two equally unlikely propositions should require equally strong evidence to be believed. Neither dragons nor demons exist, yet you assert that demons are real. Where, then, is the chain of entangled events leading from the state of the universe to the state of your mind? Honest truth-seeking is about dispassionately scrutinizing that chain, as an outsider would, and allowing others to scrutinize, evaluate, and verify it. I was a Mormon missionary at 19. I used to give people copies of the Book of Mormon, testify of my conviction that it was true, and invite them to read it and pray about it. A few did (Most people in Iowa and Illinois aren't particularly vulnerable to Mormonism). A few of those people eventually (usually after meeting with us several times) came to feel as I did, that the book was true. I told those people that the feeling they felt was the Holy Spirit, manifesting the truth to them. And if that book is true, I told them, then Joseph Smith must have been a true prophet. And as a true prophet, the church that he established must be the Only True Church, according to Joseph's revelations and teachings. I would then invite them to be baptized (which was the most important metric in the mission), and to become a member of the LDS church. One of the church's teachings is that a person can become as God after death (omniscience and omnipotence included). Did the chain of reasoning leading from "I have a feeling that this book is true" justify the belief that "I can become like God"? You are intelligent and capable of making good rhetorical arguments (from what I have read of your posts in the last week or two). I see you wielding
3AspiringKnitter
Upvoted for being a completely reasonable comment given that you haven't read through the entirety of a thread that's gotten totally monstrous. Only partly right. Of course you will. If I told you that God himself appeared to me personally and told me everything in the Bible was true, you'd find that dubious, too. Perhaps even more dubious. Already partly in other posts on this thread (actually largely in other posts on this thread), buried somewhere, among something. You'll forgive me for not wanting to retype multiple pages, I hope.
4TheOtherDave
Certainly. I'm now curious though: if I told you that God appeared to me personally and told me everything in the Bible was true (either for some specific meaning of "the Bible," which is of course an ambiguous phrase, or leaving it not further specified), roughly how much confidence would you have that I was telling you the truth?
2AspiringKnitter
It would depend on how you said it-- as a joke, or as an explanation for why you suddenly believed in God and had decided to convert to Christianity, or as a puzzling experience that you were trying to figure out, or something else-- and whether it was April 1 or not, and what you meant by "the Bible" (whether you specified it or not), and how you described God and the vision and your plans for the future. But I'd take it with a grain of salt. I'd probably investigate further and continue correspondence with you for some time, both to help you as well as I could and to ascertain with more certainty the source of your belief that God came to you (whether he really did or it was a drug-induced hallucination or something). It would not be something I'd bet on either way, at least not just from hearing it said.
2Bugmaster
No, but generally, applying a derogatory epithet to an entire group of people is seen as rude, unless you back it up with evidence, which in this case you did not do. You just stated it. In his afterword, EY seems to be saying that the benign actions of his friends and family are inconsistent with the malicious actions of YHVH, as he is depicted in Exodus. This is different from flat-out stating, "all theists are evil" and leaving it at that. EY is offering evidence for his position, and he is also giving credit to theists for being good people despite their religion (as he sees it). I can't speak for "you guys", only for myself; and I personally don't think that your beliefs are particularly offensive, just the manner in which you're stating them. It's kind of like the difference between saying, "Christianity is wrong because Jesus is a fairytale and all Christians are idiots for believing it", versus, "I believe that Christians are mistaken because of reasons X, Y and Z". Well, personally, I believe its wrong because no gods or demons of any kind exist. Wiccans, on the other hand, would probably tell you that you're wrong because Wicca had made them better people, who are more loving, selfless, and considerate of others, which is inconsistent with the expected result of worshiping evil demons. I can't speak for all Wiccans, obviously; this is just what I'd personally heard some Wiccans say.
[-]wedrifid110

I should probably point out at this point that Wiccans (well, at least those whom I'd met), consider this point of view utterly misguided and incredibly offensive.

I object to the use of social politics to overwhelm assertions of fact. Christians and Wiccan's obviously find each other offensive rather frequently. Both groups (particularly the former) probably also find me offensive. In all cases I say that is their problem.

Now if the Christians were burning the witches I might consider it appropriate to intervene forcefully...

Incidentally I wouldn't have objected if you responded to "They consort with demons" with "What a load of bullshit. Get a clue!"

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3MixedNuts
Off-topic nitpick: I like to be called a demon-worshiper.
5TheOtherDave
You're a demon-worshipper!
[-]Vladimir_Nesov20

When I put your first paragraph in that confabulator, it says "Vladimir Nabokov". If I remove the words "Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita and other books)" from the paragraph, it says "H.P. Lovecraft". It doesn't seem to cut possible texts into clusters well enough.

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2wedrifid
I just got H.P. Lovecraft, Dan Brown, and Edgar Allan Poe for three different comments. I am somewhat curious as to whether this page clusters better than random assignment. ETA: @#%#! I just got Dan Brown again, this time for the last post I wrote. This site is insulting me!
[-]A1987dM20

Besides, the way things are going, it's not out of the question that future versions of the Internet would all be written in Chinese...

I don't think so. The popularity of the English language has gained momentum such that even if its original causes (the economic status of the US) ceased, it would go on for quite a while. Chinese hasn't. See http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm (It was written a decade and a half ago, but I don't think the situation is significantly qualitatively different for English and Chinese in ways which couldn... (read more)

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[-]TheOtherDave20

I think you have causality reversed here. It's the redundancy of our languages that's the "feature" -- or, more precisely, the workaround for the previously existing hardware limitation. If our perceptual systems did less "filling in of blanks," it seems likely that our languages would be less redundant -- at least in certain ways.

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[-]TheOtherDave20

Oh! I completely missed that that was what you were doing... sorry. Thanks for clarifying.

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[-]Will_Newsome20

(Maybe everyone knows this but I've pretty much denied that me and AK are the same person. Just saying so people don't get confused.)

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[-]dlthomas20

FWIW, apparently (per Wikipedia) the word "charism" "denotes any good gift that flows from God's love to man."

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[-]Will_Newsome20

What's the hypothesis, that the Bible was subtly optimized to bring about Rick Astley and Rickrolling 1,500 or so years later? That... that does seem like His style... I mean obviously the Bible would be optimized to do all kinds of things, but that might be one of the subgoals, you never know.

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[-]dlthomas20

Searching and skimming, the first link does not seem to actually say that confirmation bias does not exist. It says that it does not appear to be the cause of "overconfidence bias" - it seems to take no position on whether it exists otherwise.

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[-]Will_Newsome20

It's mentioned a few times in this thread re AspiringKnitter's evidence for Christianity. I'm too lazy to link to them, especially as it'd be so easy to get the answer to your question with control+f "confirmation" that I'm not sure I interpreted it correctly?

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[-]Jack20

Hint: It definitely does not say that naturalistic mechanistic universes are a priori more probable!

Hard to know whether to agree or disagree without knowing "more probable than what?"

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2Will_Newsome
Sorry. More probable than supernaturalistic universes of the sort that the majority of humans finds more likely (where e.g. psi phenomena exist).
[-]Shmi20

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

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[-]wedrifid20

Why didn't you suggest asking Will_Newsome?

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

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2lessdazed
I missed where he explicitly made a claim about it one way or the other. --A Wizard of Earthsea Ursula K. LeGuin http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouDidntAsk
2dlthomas
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.
[-]TheOtherDave20

I asked about my presentation style because that's what I wrote about in the first place, and I couldn't tell whether your response to my comment was actually a response to what I wrote, or some more general response to some more general thing that you decided to treat my comment as a standin for.

I infer from your clarification that i was the latter. I appreciate the clarification.

Your suggested revision of what I said would include several falsehoods, were I to have said it.

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[-]shokwave20

The problem I have is that you claim to be "not optimising for karma", but you appear to be "optimising for negative karma". For example, the parent comment. There are two parts to it; acknowledgement of my comment, and a style that garners downvotes. The second part - why? It doesn't fit into any other goal structure I can think of; it really only makes sense if you're explicitly trying to get downvoted.

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3Will_Newsome
One of my optimization criteria is discreditable-ness which I guess is sort of like optimizing for downvotes insofar as my audience really cares about credibility. When it comes to motivational dynamics there tends to be a lot of crossing between meta-levels and it's hard to tell what models are actually very good predictors. You can approximately model the comment you replied to by saying I was optimizing for downvotes, but that model wouldn't remain accurate if e.g. suddenly Less Wrong suddenly started accepting 4chan-speak. That's obviously unlikely but the point is that a surface-level model like that doesn't much help you understand why I say what I say. Not that you should want to understand that.
[-]Mitchell_Porter20

Are you AspiringKnitter, or the author of AspiringKnitter?

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[-]Will_Newsome120

Not as far as I know, but you seemed pretty confident in that hypothesis so maybe you know something I don't.

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[-]AspiringKnitter20

No, I'm not. Should I be? Do you have a link to offer?

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3Will_Newsome
This post combined with all the comments is perhaps the best place to start, or this post might be an easier introduction to the sorts of problems that Bayes has trouble with. This is the LW wiki hub for decision theory. That said it would take me awhile to explain why I think it'd particularly interest you and how it's related to things like lucky socks, especially as a lot of the most interesting ideas are still highly speculative. I'd like to write such an explanation at some point but can't at the moment.
[-]NancyLebovitz20

What do you have in mind when you say "godly people"?

The qualifications I want for judges are honest, intelligent, benevolent, commonsensical, and conscientious. (Knowing the law is implied by the other qualities since an intelligent, benevolent, conscientious person wouldn't take a job as a judge without knowing the law.)

Godly isn't on the list because I wouldn't trust judges who were chosen for godliness to be fair to non-godly people.

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3wedrifid
To be fair, many people who consider "godliness" to be a virtue include "benevolent and conscientious" in the definition.
[-]NancyLebovitz20

Sorry for the misunderstanding about where you meditate-- I'm all too familiar with distraction and habit interfering with valuable self-maintenance.

As for heathens, you're from a background which is very different from mine. My upbringing was Jewish, but not religiously intense. My family lived in a majority Christian neighborhood.

I suppose it would have been possible to avoid non-Jews, but the social cost would have been very high, and in any case, it was just never considered as an option. To the best of my knowledge, I wasn't around anyone who saw reli... (read more)

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[-]MarkusRamikin20

So why are you hanging out with them?

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[-]NancyLebovitz20

I gather that meditating at home is either too hard or doesn't work as well?

I'm currently writing a Less Wrong comment which is probably a sin, 'cuz there's lots of heathens 'round these parts among other reasons

?

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[-]NancyLebovitz20

Have you tried yoga or tai chi as meditation practices? They may be physically complex/challenging enough to distract you (some of the time) from verbally-driven distraction.

I suspect that "not sinning" isn't simple. How would you define sinning?

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[-]DSimon20

If it likes sitting in a corner and thinking to itself, and doesn't care about anything else, it is very likely to turn everything around it (including us) into computronium so that it can think to itself better.

If you put a threshold on it to prevent it from doing stuff like that, that's a little better, but not much. If it has a utility function that says "Think to yourself about stuff, but do not mess up the lives of humans in doing so", then what you have now is an AI that is motivated to find loopholes in (the implementation of) that second ... (read more)

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[-]TheOtherDave20

Well, for my own part I would consider a system of involuntary forced labor as good an example of slavery as I can think of... to be told "yes, you have to work at what I tell you to work at, and you have no choice in the matter, but at least I don't own you" would be bewildering.

That said, I don't care about the semantics very much. But if the deciding factor in your opposition to legalizing and regulating slavery is that slavery harms someone against their will, then it seems strange to me that who owns whom is relevant here. Is ownership in and of itself a form of harm?

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8lavalamp
Tabooing "slavery": "You committed crimes and society has deemed that you will perform task X for Y years as a repayment" seems significantly different (to me) from "You were kidnapped from country Z, sold to plantation owner W and must perform task X for the rest of your life". I can see arguments for and against the former, but the latter is just plain evil.
2Prismattic
This actually understates the degree of difference. Chattel slavery isn't simply about involuntary labor. It also involves, for example, lacking the autonomy to marry without the consent of one's master, the arbitrary separation of families and the selling of slaves' children, etc.
2TheOtherDave
Sure, I agree. But unless the latter is what's being referred to Biblically, we do seem to have shifted the topic of conversation somewhere along the line.
2lavalamp
It's been awhile since I read it last, but IIRC, the laws regarding slavery in the OT cover individuals captured in a war as well as those sold into slavery to pay a debt.
2TheOtherDave
That's consistent with my recollection as well.
[-]AspiringKnitter20

I'm surprised. I'd heard Nietzsche was not a nice person, but had also heard good things about him... huh. I'll have to read his work, now. I wonder if the library has some.

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[-]TheOtherDave20

OK. So, consider a proposal to force prisoners to perform involuntary labor, in such a way that society gains more utilons from that labor than the individuals lose from being forced to perform it.

Would you support that proposal?
Would you label that proposal "slavery"?
If not (to either or both), why not?

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[-]Craig_Heldreth20

This might interest you.

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[-]TheOtherDave20

Do you support legalizing and regulating the imprisonment of people against their will?

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[-]soreff20

What do you see as the limiting factors?

  • The technical ability of current best-case cryonics practice to preserve brain structure?

  • The ability of average-case cryonics to do the same?

  • The risk of organizational failure?

  • The risk of larger scale societal failure?

  • Insufficient technical progress?

  • Runaway unfriendly AI?

  • Something else?
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[-]juliawise20

Got it, thanks.

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[-]AspiringKnitter20

I'm saying people can believe that they are Christians, go to church, pray, believe in the existence of God and still be wrong about fundamental points of doctrine like "I require mercy, not sacrifice" or the two most important commands, leading to people who think being Christian means they should hate certain people. There are also people who conflate tradition and divine command, leading to groups that believe being Christian means following specific rules which are impractical in modern culture and not beneficial. I expect anyone like that to... (read more)

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2lavalamp
My brain is interpreting that as "well, TRUE Christians wouldn't be happier/better if they deconverted." How is this not "No True Scotsman"? Would you say you are some variety of Calvinist? I'm guessing not, since you don't sound quite emphatic enough on this point. (For the Calvinist, it's point of doctrine that no one can cease being a Christian-- they must not have been elect in the first place. I expect you already know this, I'm saying it for the benefit of any following the conversation who are lucky enough to not have heard of Calvinism. Also, lots of fundamentalist leaning groups (e.g., Baptists) have a "once saved always saved" doctrine.) I hope I'm not coming off confrontational; I had someone IRL tell me I must never have been a real christian not too long ago, and I found it very annoying-- so I may be being a bit overly sensitive.
[-]juliawise20

I'm a married, monogamous person who would love to be able to adjust my sex drive to match my spouse's (and I think we would both choose to adjust up).

The Twilight books do an interesting riff of the themes of eternal life, monogamy, and extremely high sex drives.

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[-]dlthomas20

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.

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[-][anonymous]20

In Identity Isn't In Specific Atoms, Eliezer argued that even from what you called the "physical science perspective," the two electrons are ontologically the same entity. What do you make of his argument?

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[-]thomblake20

I really don't believe we have NOT(FAI) = UFAI.

I believe it's the other way around i.e. NOT(UFAI) = FAI.

Are you using some nonstandard logic where these statements are distinct?

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3TheOtherDave
In the real world if I believe that "anyone who isn't my enemy is my friend" and you believe that "anyone who isn't my friend is my enemy", we believe different things. (And we're both wrong: the truth is some people are neither my friends nor my enemies.) I assume that's what xxd is getting at here. I think it would be more precise for xxd to say "I don't believe that NOT(FAI) is a bad thing that we should be working to avoid. I believe that NOT(UFAI) is a good thing that we should be working to achieve." In this xxd does in fact disagree with the articulated LW consensus, which is that the design space of human-created AI is so dangerous that if an AI isn't provably an FAI, we ought not even turn it on... that any AI that isn't Friendly constitutes an existential risk. Xxd may well be wrong, but xxd is not saying something incoherent here.
[-]Bugmaster20

God has been known to speak to people through dreams, visions and gut feelings.

In addition to your discussion with APMason:

When you have a gut feeling, how do you know whether this is (most likely) a regular gut feeling, or whether this is (most likely) God speaking to you ? Gut feelings are different from visions (and possibly dreams), since even perfectly sane and healthy people have them all the time.

*There's a joke I can't find about some Talmudic scholars who are arguing. They ask God, a voice booms out from the heavens which one is right, and th

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[-]xxd20

I'm talking exactly about a process that is so flawless you can't tell the difference. Where my concern comes from is that if you don't destroy the original you now have two copies. One is the original (although you can't tell the difference between the copy and the original) and the other is the copy.

Now where I'm uncomfortable is this: If we then kill the original by letting Freddie Krueger or Jason do his evil thing then though the copy is still alive AND is/was indistinguishable from the original then the alternative hypothesis which I oppose states th... (read more)

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[-]Nornagest20

Yes, but how do you conclude that a risk exists? Two philosophical positions don't mean fifty-fifty chances that one is correct; intuition is literally the only evidence for one of the alternatives here to the best of my knowledge, and we already know that human intuitions can go badly off the rails when confronted with problems related to anthropomorphism.

Granted, we can't yet trace down human thoughts and motivations to the neuron level, but we'll certainly be able to by the time we're able to destructively scan people into simulations; if there's any... (read more)

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[-]Nornagest20

Identical twins, even at birth, are different people: they're genetically identical and shared a very close prenatal environment, but the actual fork happened sometime during the zygote stage of development, when neither twin had a nervous system let alone a mind-state. But I'm not sure why you're bringing this up in the first place: legalities don't help us settle philosophical questions. At best they point to a formalization of the folk solution.

As best I can tell, you're trying to suggest that individual personhood is bound to a particular physical i... (read more)

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[-]TheOtherDave20

There are a few interesting possibilities here:

1) The AI and I agree on what constitutes a person. In that case, the AI doesn't destroy anything I consider a person.

2) The AI considers X a person, and I don't. In that case, I'm OK with deleting X, but the AI isn't.

3) I consider X a person, and the AI doesn't. In that case, the AI is OK with deleting X, but I'm not.

You're concerned about scenario #3, but not scenario #2. Yes?

But in scenario #2, if the AI had control, a person's existence would be preserved, which is the goal you seem to want to achieve.

Th... (read more)

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3xxd
Ha Ha. You're right. Thanks for reflecting that back to me. Yes if you break apart my argument I'm saying exactly that though I hadn't broken it down to that extent before. The last part I disagree with which is that I assume that I'm always better at detecting people than the AI is. Clearly I'm not but in my own personal case I don't trust it if it disagrees with me because of simple risk management. If it's wrong and it kills me then resurrects a copy then I have experienced total loss. If it's right then I'm still alive. But I don't know the answer. And thus I would have to say that it would be necessary to only allow scenario #1 if I were designing the AI because though I could be wrong I'd prefer not to take the risk of personal destruction. That said if someone chose to destructively scan themselves to upload that would be their personal choice.
[-]TheOtherDave20

I'm under the impression that you've just endorsed a legal system which safeguards against the consequences of appointing judges who don't agree with Christianity's model of right and wrong, but which doesn't safeguard against the consequences appointing judges who don't agree with other religions' models of right and wrong.

Am I mistaken?

If you are endorsing that, then yes, I think you've endorsed a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment as generally interpreted.

Regardless, I absolutely do endorse testing the claims of various religions (and non-religions), and only acting on the basis of a claim insofar as we have demonstrable evidence for that claim.

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2AspiringKnitter
It might be because it's late, but I'm confused about your first paragraph. Can you clarify?
[-]TimS20

But Muslims say the exact same thing, only in reverse; and so does every other major religion,

Yes, but they're wrong.

and no person has the right to impose their faith onto others. This system of government protects everyone, Christians included.

When it works, it really works. You'll find no disagreement from anyone with a modicum of sense.

These two quotes are an interesting contrast to me. I think the Enlightenment concept of tolerance is an essential principle of just government. But you believe that there is a right answer on the religi... (read more)

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[-]Bugmaster20

No I'd not particularly care if it was my car that was returned to me because it gives me utility and it's just a thing.

Right, but presumably, you would be unhappy if your Ferrari got stolen and you got a Yaris back. In fact, you might be unhappy even if your Yaris got stolen and you got a Ferrari back -- wouldn't you be ?

I'd care if my wife was kidnapped and some simulacrum was given back in her stead but I doubt I would be able to tell if it was such an accurate copy and though if I knew the fake-wife was fake I'd probably be creeped out but if I di

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[-]dlthomas20

simply NOT(unfriendly)

Off. Do I win?

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2xxd
You're determined to make me say LOL so you can downvote me right? EDIT: Yes you win. OFF.
[-]dlthomas20

if it acts exactly like a human would act in its place

... over some sufficiently broad set of places.

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[-]Bugmaster20

Our justice system should put in safeguards against what happens if we accidentally appoint ungodly people.

Currently, we still have some safeguards in place that ensure that we don't accidentally appoint godly people. Our First Amendment, for example, is one of such safeguards, and I believe it to be a very good thing.

The problem with using religion as a basis for public policy is that there's no way to know (or even estimate), objectively, which religion is right. For example, would you be comfortable if our country officially adopted Sharia law, put M... (read more)

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[-]xxd20

That is a very good response and my answer to you is:

  1. I don't know AND
  2. To me it doesn't matter as I'm not for any kind of destructive scanning upload ever though I may consider slow augmentation as parts wear out.

But I'm not saying you're wrong. I just don't know and I don't think it's knowable.

That said, would I consent to being non-destructively scanned in order to be able to converse with a fast-running simulation of myself (regardless of whether it's sentient or not)? Definitely.

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[-]TimS20

This seems mostly like a terminological dispute. But I think AI that doesn't care about humanity (i.e the various AI in Accelerando) are best labeled unfriendly even though they are not trying to end humanity or kill any particular human.

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[-]APMason20

I can't imagine a situation in which the AGI is sort-of kind to us - not killing good people, letting us keep this solar system - but which also does some unfriendly things, like killing bad people or taking over the rest of the galaxy (both pretty terrible things in themselves, even if they're not complete failures), unless that's what the AI's creator wanted - i.e. the creator solved FAI but managed to, without upsetting the whole thing, include in the AI's utility function terms for killing bad people and caring about something completely alien outside ... (read more)

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[-]lavalamp20

... a theocracy ruled by Jesus, which some Christians (I'm literally so tired right now I can't remember if this is true or just something some believe, or where it comes from) believe will happen for a thousand years between the tribulation and the end of the world.

You are correct, some Christians believe that.

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[-]APMason20

Okay. It might not be that you were unclear - it could just have been me.

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[-]TheOtherDave20

There are different Jewish doctrinal positions on whether shabbos goyim -- that is, non-Jews hired to perform tasks on Saturdays that Jews are not permitted to perform -- are permissible.

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3dlthomas
And paying them on Saturday is always bad.
[-]wedrifid20

Not really, just playing along with MixedNuts talking about ridiculous Judeo-Christian rules. Vote up people for whatever you want.

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[-]beoShaffer20

I kew it too,. I thought it was common knowledge among those with any non-trival knowledge of non-folk Christian theology. Which admittedly isn't a huge subset of the population, but isn't that small in the west.

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[-]wedrifid20

Just referring to the quote:

"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried." -- Winston Churchill

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[-]MixedNuts20

Hey, why did you retract this? That would have netted upvotes!

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3Laoch
Didn't realise what retracted did.
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