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CaveJohnson comments on I've had it with those dark rumours about our culture rigorously suppressing opinions - Less Wrong Discussion

26 Post author: Multiheaded 25 January 2012 05:43PM

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Comment author: CaveJohnson 28 January 2012 10:57:57PM *  9 points [-]

You do realize we are talking about retention of children raised in a culture right? Orgasmium cults and brainwashing indoctrinators would tend to out compete most others by such measures. A cult worshipping a baslisk that hacks your brain into absolute loyalty would also win out.

Optimizing for allure will not optimize for welfare. At least not under these mechanisms of "choice". It also means our value sets can be out competed by really convincing paperclippers.

From the perspective of many traditional cultures Westerners may as well be Supper Happy people.

Comment author: Strange7 06 February 2012 04:44:27AM 4 points [-]

The problem with 'orgasmium cults' is, they have a hard time producing anything valuable enough to outsiders to be able to maintain economic power proportionate to their nominal population. Eventually it's just a heap of functionally insensate larvae starving themselves into irrelevance.

Comment author: Alicorn 28 January 2012 10:59:52PM 3 points [-]

I thought we'd drifted away from that particular spin on the scenario as of erratio's comment.

Comment author: CaveJohnson 28 January 2012 11:12:10PM *  4 points [-]

The above holds for either. Erratio's formulation was:

It sounds very much like you're saying that no one would choose to be part of a minority culture if they weren't forced into it by non-acceptance.

I think it would be trivial by a superinteligence to design a culture that no one would choose any other culture over, yet wouldn't be a very pleasant place to live. And if superinteligence can do this, why could something like this arise due to memetic evolution? Religious and ideological memeplexes are already examples of weaker but dangerous beasts of this kind.

Comment author: Alicorn 28 January 2012 11:14:15PM 1 point [-]

You keep editing your comments after you post them and then my replies look really poorly targeted.

Comment author: CaveJohnson 28 January 2012 11:21:19PM *  3 points [-]

I don't ever modify them after reading someone else's statements. It is just that I often post and then reread my comment and find a point is in need of clarification and immediately hit edit and start fixing it. Most of the time no one notices since responses come 5 or 15 or 200 minutes later.

But if you'd like to keep this more real-timeish, I have no problem from with waiting longer before hitting "comment" and then leaving them unchanged. Sorry for any inconvenience. In any case weren't the above two comments last modified before you posted yours?

Comment author: Alicorn 28 January 2012 11:27:51PM 1 point [-]

Before I posted mine, maybe - I didn't check - but I was on a static page referring to an unedited parent when I wrote my replies.

Comment author: CaveJohnson 28 January 2012 11:28:59PM *  3 points [-]

Ok from now on I won't modify comments after posting for this debate.

Edit: Starting after this one!

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 14 February 2012 08:48:05PM 2 points [-]

Or you can just include edits as "Edited to add: X" Then it's perfectly clear, and you can edit freely. You just can't prove that's all you did.