Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on When None Dare Urge Restraint - Less Wrong

41 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 December 2007 11:09PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (118)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 December 2007 07:10:00PM 1 point [-]

Burger flipper, as nearly as I can recall, those were literally my first three conscious reactions with no intervening thoughts. Could be retrospective distortion, but I think I summarized those three thoughts shortly after 9/11 (same day?) so it's not quite a first attempt to recall after years. As you say, though, retrospective distortion is subtle. I'd rate the probability higher than 0.02 though. (Doesn't alter the logic of the post either way, except to point up that the overreaction was foreseeable in advance, not just in hindsight.)

Steven and Cerebus, the point here was a very short distance from ones I'd already made in "Uncritical Supercriticality" and "Affective Death Spirals". At some point you have to apply the ideas... still, I confess I wasn't visualizing this result. Wasn't visualizing the #1 on Reddit either, but it raises interesting questions about whether rationality should be occasionally relevant in order to survive as a conversation.