eli_sennesh comments on The path of the rationalist - Less Wrong

20 Post author: So8res 12 April 2015 01:44AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 14 April 2015 08:47:55PM 0 points [-]

Furthermore "Shut up and do the impossible" from the sequences is about "trying to will reality into being a certain way".

No, it's about actually finding the way to force reality into some state others considered so implausible that they hastily labeled it impossible. Saying, "If the probability isn't 0%, then to me it's as good as 100%!" isn't saying you can defy probability, but merely that you have a lot of information and compute-power. Or it might even just be expressing a lot of emotional confidence for someone else's sake.

(Or that you can solve your problems with giant robots, which is always the awesomer option.)

Comment author: ChristianKl 14 April 2015 09:22:39PM 0 points [-]

The sentence "trying to will reality into being a certain way". doesn't say anything about p=0 or defying probability.

Comment author: dxu 14 April 2015 10:31:08PM *  1 point [-]

This is what is known as "neglecting context". Right after the sentence you originally quoted from the article, we see this:

They must recognize "faith" as an attempt to disconnect their beliefs from the voice of the evidence; they must vow to protect the ephemeral correspondence between the real world and their map of it.

I'm not quite sure why you're having difficulty understanding this. "Willing reality into a being a certain way", in this context, does not mean desiring to change the world, but rather shifting one's probability estimates toward one's desired conclusion. For example, I have a strong preference that UFAI not be created. However, it would be a mistake for me to then assign a 0.00001% probability to the creation of UFAI purely because I don't want it to be created; the true probability is going to be higher than that. I might work harder to stop the creation of UFAI, which is what you mean by "willing reality", but that is clearly not the meaning the article is using.