= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
sixes_and_sevens comments on A hypothetical candidate walks into a hypothetical job interview... - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (65)
I'm more curious about the following hypothetical candidate/interview:
In casual conversation the candidate reveals he's a member of an online forum, the subject matter of which regularly revolves around elaborate torture scenarios, freezing the heads of the recently deceased, making decisions on behalf of our counterparts in parallel worlds and the pressing concern that thinking machines may either harvest our atoms for their strange alien purposes or trap us in a virtual Hell for the rest of eternity. He also emphasises the point of this forum is about having as accurate an understanding of reality as possible.
I think anti-discrimination law has a different idea of what constitutes "religion" than we do.
If you use loaded terms and concentrate weirdness without explaining any of it, you're going to get something that looks bad. But doing that is dishonest. Why would the same person both mention that they're a member of a community and lie in a way that makes it look bad?
Even if I worded a description of LW quite carefully, I'd eventually get to something which would be intractable to some everyday dude off the street. My guess is that those intractable topics would include cryonics, MWI QM and existential risk posed by AI.
When they walk away from that conversation, the intractable parts are what they'll remember, and how they'll characterise it. I don't have to lie or misrepresent in any way, shape or form. I just have to be not careful enough.
Agreed, I tried to explain Less Wrong to my father and now he thinks we're some doomsday cult concerned that AI's will wipe out humanity and rearrange our atoms in smiley faces. He concluded that everyone here has "way to much imagination" and now he won't listen to anything that comes from this blog.
I tend to explain it as "a blog about rationality started by transhumanists. Has weird and stupid bits, but is mostly good really. The comment moderation system actually works. Addictive." That is: upfront about the weirdness, then in with the good stuff. I suppose it helps that these are people who can expand the word "transhumanists".