CharlesR comments on Muehlhauser-Wang Dialogue - Less Wrong

24 Post author: lukeprog 22 April 2012 10:40PM

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Comment author: CharlesR 23 April 2012 07:32:13AM *  -1 points [-]

The cryonics approach advocated by Eliezer Yudkowsky has several serious conceptual and theoretical problems, and is not accepted by most people. People have ignored it, not because it is indisputable, but because people have not bothered to criticize it.

Edit: Yeah, this was meant as a quote.

The question is whether "AGI researchers" are experts on "AI safety". If the answer is "yes", we should update in their direction simply because they are experts. But if the situation is like mine, then Pei Wang is committing argumentum ad populum. Not only should we not pay attention, we should point this out to him.

Comment author: loup-vaillant 23 April 2012 09:37:05AM 4 points [-]

(You may want to put "cryonics" between square brackets, I nearly missed this deviation from the original quote.)

Comment author: wedrifid 23 April 2012 11:47:38AM *  1 point [-]

The grandparent is a quote? That probably should be indicated somehow. I was about to reply as if it was simply his words.

Comment author: loup-vaillant 23 April 2012 12:45:08PM *  2 points [-]

Point (4) of the first reply from Pei Wang. I didn't noticed, but there are other deviations from the original phrasing, to eliminate direct references to the AGI community. It merely refers to "people" instead, making it a bit of a straw man. Charles' point may still stand however, if most of the medical profession thinks cryonics doesn't work (meaning, it is a false hope).

To make a quote, put a ">" at the beginning of the first line of the paragraph, like you would in an e-mail:

> Lorem Ipsum Blah
Blah

Lorem Ipsum Blah Blah

Comment author: wedrifid 23 April 2012 01:38:10PM 0 points [-]

To make a quote, put a ">" at the beginning of the first line of the paragraph, like you would in an e-mail:

Oh, it's that simple? How do you find this sort of thing out?

Comment author: loup-vaillant 23 April 2012 02:20:15PM *  8 points [-]

LessWrong is based on Reddit code, which uses Markdown syntax. It's based on email conventions. Clik on the "Show Help button" at the bottom-right of your editing window when you write a comment, it's a good quick reference.

Comment author: wedrifid 23 April 2012 02:39:38PM 1 point [-]

LessWrong is based on Reddit code, which uses Markdown syntax. It's based on email conventions. Clik on the "Show Help button" at the bottom-right of your editing window when you write a comment, it's a good quick reference.

Your introduction style is flawless. I was expecting either a daringfireball link or a mention of the 'Help' link but you have included both as well as a given the history and explained the intuitive basis.

I hope you'll pardon me for playing along a little there. It was a novel experience to be the one receiving the quoting instructions rather than the one typing them out. I liked the feeling of anonymity it gave me and wanted to see if that anonymity could be extended as far as acting out the role of a newcomer seeking further instructions.

Pleased to meet you loup-vaillant and thank you for making my counterfactual newcomer self feel welcome!

Comment author: loup-vaillant 23 April 2012 03:26:56PM 1 point [-]

You got me. Overall, I preffer to judge posts by their content, so I'm glad to learn of your trick.

For the record, even I expected to stop at the Daring Fireball link. I also wrote a bunch of examples, but only then noticed/remembered the "Show help" button. I also erased a sentence about how to show markdown code in markdown (it's rarely useful here, there was the Daring Fireball link, and my real reason for writing it was to show off).

I tend to heavily edit my writings. My most useful heuristic so far is "shorter is better". This very comment benefited from it (let's stop the recursion right there).

Comment author: wedrifid 24 April 2012 12:41:10AM 0 points [-]

You got me. Overall, I preffer to judge posts by their content, so I'm glad to learn of your trick.

It seemed gentler than responding with a direct challenge to the inference behind the presumption.