IlyaShpitser comments on Moloch: optimisation, "and" vs "or", information, and sacrificial ems - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 06 August 2014 03:57PM

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Comment author: IlyaShpitser 06 August 2014 08:00:51PM *  5 points [-]

Why is Elua still here?

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 07 August 2014 10:12:39AM 6 points [-]

Past Eluas have died (see the examples of traditional warrior ethos, of letting children bring themselves up, of personal interactions in all exchanges, and a whole bunch of things that make sense in tribal environments but not in ours).

Comment author: ChristianKl 07 August 2014 11:08:08AM 5 points [-]

Between Omega, Moloch, Elua and the Basilisk we have quite a proliferation of gods on LW.

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 07 August 2014 06:03:26PM 11 points [-]

That's what happens when you try to quit religion cold turkey.

Comment author: James_Miller 08 August 2014 01:46:37AM 5 points [-]

One interpretation of Greek Mythology is that the Greeks didn't really believe in their gods, but the gods represented different aspects of human nature. We are sort of doing the same here and so following in the classical tradition.

Comment author: Vulture 08 August 2014 02:35:31AM *  3 points [-]

I agree that this is a possible interpretation, but (just to be clear) it isn't a very sensible one, is it? Being one of those "People we would naturally expect to be very different from us in some respect are actually very similar, only they behave exactly as if they differed, for a complicated reason" things

Comment author: SilentCal 11 August 2014 08:46:21PM 2 points [-]

I don't know about Greek Mythology, but this is totally a real thing regarding Hinduism (though not necessarily the predominant view). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism_in_Hinduism

Comment author: [deleted] 08 August 2014 10:03:47AM 2 points [-]

(I suspect certain Greeks believed in them literally and other Greeks believed in them as metaphors but they never realized they disagreed for reasons akin to these.)

Comment author: Azathoth123 09 August 2014 04:03:19AM 7 points [-]

They did in fact have open disagreements. Most famously, Socrates was executed over one.

Comment author: ChristianKl 08 August 2014 09:38:59AM 1 point [-]

That depends probably a lot of what you mean with "really believe". They probably didn't believe in the same sense of "believe" that 21st century Christians in their Gods.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 08 August 2014 06:24:59PM 2 points [-]

Not all 21st-century Christians "believe" in the same sense, either. If a future anthropologist or classicist were to reconstruct the "beliefs" of modern Christianity from the kind of patchwork sources that we have for ancient Greek myth, they might have a pretty hard time.

Comment author: advancedatheist 08 August 2014 07:29:52PM 2 points [-]

I wonder what people living 10,000 years from now (assuming that "people" would even exist then, however defined) would think of christianity. In that time, one of the world's dominant religions might have started 8,000 from now/2,000 years "before" their time, and only a few antiquarians would even know of the existence of the christian religion. They would have to reconstruct it from fragmentary evidence comparable to efforts to reconstruct, say, the ancient Sumerian religion.

Comment author: Lumifer 07 August 2014 02:52:52PM 5 points [-]

Don't forget Eris :-D

Comment author: ChristianKl 07 August 2014 03:40:44PM 3 points [-]

I did forget. Could you link to a source?

Comment author: [deleted] 09 August 2014 08:37:46AM 1 point [-]

Seconded. The presence of this user makes googling for Eris site:lesswrong.com useless.

Comment author: dspeyer 26 December 2014 11:39:37PM 0 points [-]

Here is a source. I can't promise it's the one u/Lumifer meant.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 24 August 2014 04:45:00AM 2 points [-]

I haven't seen much explicit discussion of Murphy, but all the talk about AIs going wrong are tributes to his influence.

Comment author: MakoYass 21 December 2014 03:44:16AM 0 points [-]

Add The Matrix Lords to the list. If you take acausal cooperation seriously, your relationship with them is a complex one.

Comment author: Vulture 06 August 2014 09:57:18PM 8 points [-]

Moloch is slow. And humanity is young. And Civilization is even younger.

Comment author: James_Miller 06 August 2014 10:36:10PM *  6 points [-]

Human productivity relies on Elua, so Moloch won't destroy her until after we have fully automated our economy. But after that don't expect Moloch to act slowly.

Comment author: SilentCal 06 August 2014 10:39:18PM 3 points [-]

More poetically, Elua gains his power by serving Moloch.

Comment author: Vulture 07 August 2014 04:07:42AM 2 points [-]

(scratch that, reverse it...)