This post is for sacrificing my credibility! - Less Wrong Discussion

This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 10:08:25 +1000

Submitted by Will_Newsome • -28 votes • 338 comments

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding. Don't worry, there won't be future posts like this, so you don't have to delete my LessWrong account, and anyway I could make another, and another.

But since you've dared to read this far:

Credibility. Should you maximize it, or minimize it? Have I made an error?

Discuss.

Don't be shallow, don't just consider the obvious points. Consider that I've thought about this for many, many hours, and that you don't have any privileged information. Whence our disagreement, if one exists?

338 comments

nyan_sandwich on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T02:39:33.416542+10:00

Can you explain clearly why you have gone all crazy? Why do you have to drop these esoteric hints and do this stupid troll business?

My understanding is that you delved too deeply into simulation arguments and met Cthulu or something, had a religious experience and determined that there is a god or something and that the people who are in the know are all in the catholic church somewhere.

And then for some reason you can't just explain this clearly and lay out your reasons. Or maybe you've tried explaining it clearly, but that was before my time and now you assume that everyone either already knows what you are on about, or is interested enough to scour the internet for your posting.

???

If Will won't cooperate, can someone else explain the best model we have of his weirdness?

TheOtherDave on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T03:00:58.230195+10:00

It may be relevant that Will has talked elsewhere about certain important physical phenomena being evasive, in the sense that their likelihood of occurring is significantly inversely proportional to whether someone is trying to prove or demonstrate them.

When I value my interactions with an evasive phenomenon (the beliefs of shy people, the social rules of Guess cultures, etc.), one consequence is often that I can't actually talk about my real reasons for things; everything has to be indirect and roundabout and sometimes actively deceptive.

I am generally happier when I don't value my interactions with evasive phenomena, but that's not always an option.

roystgnr on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T11:46:59.541117+10:00

Upvoted for giving two examples of real evasive phenomena. I'd previously only encountered that idea in anti-epistemological contexts, wherein "the universe evades attempts to seek the truth about X" was always clearly a desperate after-the-fact attempt to justify "so despite attempts to seek the truth about X which keep appearing to contradict my claims, you should still believe my claims instead".

But I suppose it's just common sense that you can't properly investigate much psychology or sociology unless you avoid letting the subjects understand that they're being investigated. That's a huge difference from e.g. evasive cosmologies, in which investigating a subject without alerting Him is often presumed impossible.

TheOtherDave on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T12:16:23.867592+10:00

Well, evasive physical law follows from certain theologies just as readily as evasive cultural norms or relationship rules follow from certain sociologies and psychologies; it needn't be post-hoc reasoning. Of course, whether those theologies, or any theologies, have a referent in the first place is a different question.

roystgnr on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-04T00:05:50.102827+10:00

Evasive physical law follows naturally from some theologies, it's merely been a post-hoc rationalization for the theologies that I've seen people trying to spread. For instance, either of "We have an ethical theory under which God needs to hide" and "We claim to have records of many instances in which God avoided hiding" could be a weak but positive argument by itself, but the (common) combination is actually negative evidence.

athingtoconsider on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-05T20:57:50.292772+10:00

roystgnr on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T13:06:20.962315+10:00

I would normally visit even a Score:-22 post with 200+ comments, because I've found that such cases indicate a particularly awful post may be worth opening just to hunt for a few of the most excellent clarifications or rebuttals it elicited.

A warning to others: my heuristic was wrong in this case. Few comments here even hint at what the hell is going on, and those suggested nothing more interesting than some extremely unlikely theological or parapsychological beliefs that Will might have latched onto and desired to "protect" us from. You could find more interesting and plausible basilisks in Lovecraft's stories or Stross' Laundry novels.

Hansenista on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T13:24:03.187054+10:00

Thanks for the info. I opened this post for the same reason as you, and now that I've read this I'm going to close it.

Viliam_Bur on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-24T20:19:19.929588+10:00

I'm so stupid: I read your comment, I saw the comment karma, I saw the article karma, but I read the discussion anyway. Now I will never get those 20 minutes of my life back, and if I happen to die exactly 20 minutes before Omega invents immortality, it is all my own stupid fault.

For people like me, this is what this whole article is about: Will Newsome trying to be interesting, without ever offering anything of substance. If you read the comments trying to find more information, there isn't any!

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-24T20:30:44.995264+10:00

Now I will never get those 20 minutes of my life back, and if I happen to die exactly 20 minutes before Omega invents immortality, it is all my own stupid fault.

Not wasting the 20 minutes wouldn't have helped you survive till Omega invented immortality. (You didn't shorten your life in an absolute temporal sense, you just wasted some of the middle.)

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:21:42.752238+10:00

Don't be shallow, don't just consider the obvious points. Consider that I've thought about this for many, many hours, and that you don't have any privileged information.

So? You say crazy (and wrong) shit a lot and have no credibility.

Whence our disagreement, if one exists?

Try explaining your reasoning and we might see. The whole "I have mysterious reasons why this crazy idea is true" thing is just annoying. (Whether done by you or Eliezer.)

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:37:35.054685+10:00

You say crazy (and wrong) shit a lot and have no credibility.

Wait, I thought in my case those were, like, really tied into each other, barely two different things. Also I have tons of credibility with the people who matter. ...Which is in some respects a problem, you see.

Try explaining your reasoning and we might see.

It's more fun this way. Don't you want to live by your own strength sometimes?

he whole "I have mysterious reasons why this crazy idea is true" thing is just annoying.

Well, duh.

Armok_GoB on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T05:31:30.580580+10:00

If that's the reason, shouldn't you try to maximize credibility with reliable, high credibility people who understand those aspects of fun theory (especialy those who themselves are credible), keep it neutral with mental helth related profesionals who may lock you up, and minimize it with everyone else?

In other words; credibility is a two place function and your question is a false dichotomy.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T05:40:15.945164+10:00

You're the closest I've seen to understanding this post. You grok at least 20% of it.

Armok_GoB on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T08:12:32.537139+10:00

I only commented on 33% of it, so I'd say that's a pretty decent result.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T11:34:23.435473+10:00

So now we're in a situation mildly close to an interesting epistemic situation, which is, winning the lottery. Winning the lottery or some better-optimized event provides a lot of incommunicable evidence that you're in a simulation. The typical anthropic problem in group epistemology -- your winning tells me nothing. I have a question for you: How serious a problem do you think this is in practice? If it's a common problem and been one throughout history, what social institutions would have evolved to help solve the problem? Or is solving the problem impossible? Only try to answer these if you're interested in the questions themselves of course.

Armok_GoB on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T12:31:53.965238+10:00

You're looking at it all wrong, "you" are not "in" any simulation or universe. There exists instantiations of the algorithm, including the fact that it remembers winning the lottery, which is you in various universes and simulations and boltzman brains and other things, with certainty (for our purposes), and what you need to do depends on what you want ALL instances to do. It doesn't matter how many simulations of you are run, or what measure they have, or anything else like that, if your decisions within them don't matter for the multiverse at large.

None of the evolved concepts and heuristics, which you have been wired to assume so deeply alternatives may be literally unthinkable, are inapplicable in this kind of situation. These concepts include the self, anticipation, and reality. Anthropic is an heuristic as well, and a rather crappy one at that.

So ask yourself, what is your objective, non-local utility function over the entirety of the tegmark-4 multiverse, and for what action would it be logically implied to be the largest if all algorithms similar to yours outputted that action?

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T12:40:44.548323+10:00

Yes, I really despise non-decision-theoretic approaches to anthropics. I know how to write a beautiful post that explains where almost all anthropic theories go wrong -- the key point is a combination of double counting evidence and only ever considering counterfactual experiences that logically couldn't be factual -- but it'd take awhile, and it's easier to just point people at UDT. Might give me some philosophy cred, which is cred I'd be okay with.

Armok_GoB on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T12:57:51.493296+10:00

Actually, it does wrong on a much deeper and earlier level than that, and also you don't grok UDT as well as you think you do, or you wouldn't have considered the lottery question worth even considering.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T13:10:25.948455+10:00

More precisely, though, I thought the subject was worth your consideration, because I hadn't seen you in decision theory discussion. (Sorry, I don't mean to be or come across as defensive here. I'm a little surprised your model of me doesn't predict me asking those as trick questions. But only a little.)

Re deeper problems, there are metaphysical problems that are deeper and should be obvious, but the tack I wanted to take was purely epistemological, such that there's less wiggle room. Many people reject UDT because "values shouldn't affect anticipation", and I think I can neatly argue against anthropics without hitting up against that objection. Which would be necessary to convince the philosophers, I think.

JoshuaZ on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T13:12:42.162444+10:00

I'd be very interested in seeing such a post.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T13:17:17.801127+10:00

I should at least make a few paragraphs of summary, because I've referenced the idea like three times now, I've never written it down, and if it ends up being wrong I'm going to feel pretty dumb. I'll try to respond to your comment in the next few days with said paragraphs.

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:51:12.234052+10:00

Wait, I thought in my case those were, like, really tied into each other, barely two different things.

Nope, you say some crazy-sounding things that are actually right too. There are just other people that manage to say the crazy-sounding-but-right things and not say the just-plain-crazy things a hell of a lot better than you are capable of.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:55:02.962208+10:00

For what it's worth (nothing, right?), I disagree. I'm the best I know of when it comes to crazy-sounding-but-right, but the position could also go to Nick Tarleton, maybe Michael Vassar.

TheOtherDave on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T16:19:16.235078+10:00

I endorse maximizing the degree to which people consider my saying X is true to be evidence that I believe X is true.
I don't worry too much about the degree to which people consider my belief that X is true to be evidence that X is true. I expect that depends a whole lot on specifics of X.
I resent questions that wrap themselves in framings like "don't just consider the obvious points."
I endorse you having private conversations with the folks you consider worthy, rather than having obscure public ones like this. The rest of us might not have whatever attributes would allow us to penetrate the cloud of obfuscation and thereby receive your insights, but that doesn't mean we deserve to have our time wasted.

Konkvistador on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T02:53:49.873892+10:00

Anyone finding themselves in the awkward position of wondering if he is a child among adults who may or may not be using innuendo? And that you think you understand a few of them, but aren't sure you do? To summarize my current state, Will Newsome is hitting some of my "take him seriously" heuristics pretty hard. At their center lies that he is taken far more seriously than most average posters think he should be taken, by some pretty big names who have been with this Eliezer centred rationality project since its start and have accrued quite a reputation for excellent judgement. He has also been a visiting fellow at the SI, which means obvious crackpottery should have been filtered.

I have several theories on this which I have constructed over the past few months but don't feel comfortable sharing right here, because I've stumbled on several caches of dangerous thinking. I have to keep squishing some ugh fields and bolstering others when exploring these ideas. Yet I also just can't come up and ask the right people to check my reasoning on any of them, their time is valuable and I'm not in their social circles anyway. I find myself blinking in confusion unsure if I'm being played for a fool or not. There is this strange current of, well insight and reasonableness in his comment history and ideas. Yet there is plain craziness as well interwoven into strange cloth. So I am asking the aspiring rationalist. I am asking the crowd. I am asking the uninitiated in whatever fictional or real troubles he often alludes to. I am asking LessWrong.

What is your position on Will Newsome? I wish to emphasise I am NOT asking about his behaviour in this thread in particular.

lukeprog on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T11:15:11.748601+10:00

I didn't meet Will until April 2011, but most people who have been around longer seem to share Carl's opinion. For myself, I also find many of Will's contributions obscurantist, and I agree with John Maxwell that they seem to want to signal interestingness, intelligence, and and contrarianism. Finally: Will offered good, substantive feedback on two of my papers.

gwern on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T03:06:26.549783+10:00

He has also been a visiting fellow at the SI, which means obvious crackpottery should have been filtered.

What did he actually do, though?

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T03:39:33.230838+10:00

For half the time, with Anna, I was an intern, not a Fellow. During that time I did a lot of intern stuff like driving people around. Part of my job was to befriend people and make the atmosphere more cohesive. Sometimes I planned dinners and trips but I wasn't very good at that. I was very charismatic and increasingly smart, and most importantly I was cheap. I was less cheap as a Fellow in the Berkeley apartments and accomplished less. I wrote and helped people occassionally. There weren't clear expectations for Fellows. Also people like Eliezer, who had power, never asked for any signs of accomplishment. Eliezer is also very bad at reading. Nonetheless I think I should have accomplished more somehow, e.g. gotten experience writing papers from scratch.

I believe I almost always turned down credit for contributions to papers, but I didn't make too many substantive contributions; I did a fair bit of editing, which I'm good at.

You could get a decent idea by looking at what the average Visiting Fellow did, then remember that I often couldn't remember things I did -- cognitive quirk -- and that I tried to avoid credit when possible at least half the time.

komponisto on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T20:11:02.962192+10:00

Part of my job was to befriend people and make the atmosphere more cohesive.

You were good at that, as I recall. As was (especially) Alicorn. Also, at the time I thought it was just super-cool that SI had its mundane tasks done by such brilliant people.

Alicorn on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-04T07:09:46.972320+10:00

You were good at that, as I recall. As was (especially) Alicorn.

GabrielDuquette on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T14:00:44.550767+10:00

I wish you would write like this all the time.

drethelin on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T14:29:29.127868+10:00

Second

gwern on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T05:26:24.249165+10:00

Thanks for the summary.

Alexei on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-05T05:44:00.022242+10:00

often couldn't remember things I did

That's interesting. I also have something like that. It extends to not being able to remember names, and not being able to easily come up with specific examples. Is it like that for you?

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-06T11:37:43.702959+10:00

Yes, also for Eliezer.

Alexei on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-07T02:45:31.842188+10:00

Do you know of any helpful strategies for dealing with this or get better?

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-07T02:59:54.235895+10:00

For Eliezer & I it seems there's also the matter of not being able to find objects amongst other objects. Eliezer hasn't quite said he's bad at that but I surmised it from one of his most terrible posts, ha. For that issue, I've learned to just use explicit, conscious linear search. Still terrible, but not as terrible.

With episodic memory I suspect there are similar strategies for looking through mental objects, likely in temporal order. Potentially similarly with names. I can't think of anything that would work for specific examples in general though, which as you know is really quite a big problem during arguments and so on.

I mildly suspect the problem has somewhat to do with damage to or atrophy of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. But that's speculation, and there are a lot of selection effects on who shows up on LessWrong, so it might be a somewhat rare combination of stuff. Eliezer would know a lot more about the neurology and so on but he's probably not available for questioning and speculation on the matter.

For what it's worth I'm somewhat schizotypal/schizoaffective, and Eliezer also seems to lean that way.

TheOtherDave on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-07T03:20:53.302678+10:00

It may or may not be relevant, but finding objects amongst other objects was one of the functions that was severely degraded by my stroke. As with most other damaged functions, I found that actually forcing myself to do it anyway (which usually required first learning a new way to frame the doing of it) led to very rapid improvement back to more-or-less baseline. The improvement plateaued out thereafter. (Unsurprisingly, but disappointingly. The experience of such rapid improvement is very heady stuff.)

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-07T03:26:26.038500+10:00

If you don't mind sharing, what parts of the brain or other cognitive functions were most damaged by the stroke? I've pieced together some of the story but not much.

TheOtherDave on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-07T03:55:19.958420+10:00

The aneurysm itself was at the edge of my thalamus. The resulting swelling caused damage kind of all over the place.

The functional damage at first was pretty severe, but I don't remember specifics; I mostly don't remember that week at all and much of what I do remember I'm fairly certain didn't actually happen. I spent it in an ICU. I come back to a coherent narrative about a week later; at that point, the bulk of the functional damage was general pain and fatigue, right-side hemiplegia (my right arm and leg were not quite paralyzed, but I lost control over them), mild aphasia which most often manifested as anomia (difficulty retrieving words) and occasionally in other ways (I remember losing the ability to conjugate sentences for a few hours; that was freaky), and (most significantly) a loss of short-term memory with all the associated knock-on effects to various kinds of cognitive processing.

There was also a lot of concern at various points that there may have been damage to my emotional centers. I never noticed any such effect, but, well, I wasn't necessarily the most reliable witness. Most memorably, this led to one doctor asking me if I my emotional state was at all unusual. I didn't reply "What the fuck kind of a stupid question is that, I just had a fucking stroke, of course my emotional state is fucking unusual you inbred moron!!!" although I really wanted to. I instead replied "I'm pretty sure my unusual emotional states are situational, not organic." Ultimately they started believing me.

Konkvistador on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T03:13:17.648249+10:00

You want answers?

gwern on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T03:18:58.102261+10:00

Yes, though I walk through the shadow of the basilisk, I shall fear no acausality: for I do not satisfy the relevant assumptions.

Desrtopa on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-04T17:02:52.296718+10:00

In addition to already mentioned obscurantist tendencies, he awards himself intellectual credit for "going meta," even when this does not lead to actually smarter behavior or better results.

CarlShulman on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T09:15:10.191769+10:00

He has also been a visiting fellow at the SI, which means obvious crackpottery should have been filtered.

To defend the repute of the visiting fellows program, please note that his crackpot score has skyrocketed since that time and he would almost certainly not have been accepted had he applied then as he is today.

Alicorn on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T16:48:28.094501+10:00

Also, I think his crackpot score skyrocketed mostly after he left - so if it was something we did, it was a delayed effect.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T15:35:31.110931+10:00

Also worth noting is that I was made a Fellow sort of off the cuff without any real input from anyone in the organization. Anna's absence led to much disorganization in the program. And yes, when I first volunteered I was more or less a typical LWer, with one strange thing being my high school drop out status.

DevilWorm on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-09-05T05:38:12.059411+10:00

with one strange thing being my high school drop out status.

Another lesson might be: Don't credit autodidacts!

But that's a strange thing? Dropping out of formal education somewhere along the line to a doctorate (and in another prominent instance, before completing high school), seems a distinguishing mark of the core SIAI community. Is that why the bulk of its funding comes from a libertarian billionaire (the same one who funded Ron Paul)? Is SIAI to serve as poster boy for the libertarian cause of home schooling? (Then let it drown!)

gwern on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-09-08T08:55:48.324378+10:00

Most people drop out before doctorates; it's something like 97-99% of the US population. And getting a doctorate in many fields is a terrible idea these days: I looked very hard at continuing on for a doctorate in philosophy, and concluded that even if the grad school offered a fullride, it was still probably a bad idea and almost anything was better.

seems a distinguishing mark of the core SIAI community

Your examples being Will and Eliezer? I didn't realize the core SIAI community was so small.

Is SIAI to serve as poster boy for the libertarian cause of home schooling?

I don't think either Eliezer or Will were much home schooled, nor does the topic come up very much on LessWrong; one would think that Thiel would make his propaganda organs talk about it a little more.

Jack on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-05T05:19:58.406299+10:00

Will is pretty weird and I don't believe the way he thinks is, ya' know, normative. But I still find his writing to be extremely valuable relative to most Less Wrong commenters because for the most part Less Wrong commenters come in three different flavors: vanilla (what I would say if I weren't as smart or 3-4 years less educated), chocolate (what I would say now) and strawberry (what I would say if I were smarter or 3-4 years more educated). Will is lobster ice cream with rainbow jimmies. I will never think like him and I wouldn't want to. But I'm glad there is someone extending hypotheses as far as they will go and never looking back. I find novel explorations of hypothesis space to be both useful and interesting. He is pursuing a train of thought I don't have a lot of time for and no reason to prioritize. But I'm still looking forward to finding out where it ends up.

Will is like a musician on a hallucinogen. You wouldn't want to have his brain and you probably don't trust his judgment. But before he burns out at 27 he's gonna produce some really interesting ideas, some of which will simply be absurd but a few of which might have real staying power and influence a generation.

TheOtherDave on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T03:21:47.257208+10:00

What is your position on Will Newsome?

I frequently find Will's contributions obscurantist.

In general, I find obscurantism at best tedious, and more often actively upsetting, so I mostly ignore it when I encounter it. Occasionally I engage with it, in a spirit of personal social training.

That said, I accept that one reader's obscurantism is another reader's appropriate level of indirection. If it's valuable to other people, great... the cost to me is low.

At this point the complaining about it by various frustrated people has cost me more than the behavior itself, by about an order of magnitude.

Miller on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T03:59:27.419621+10:00

I frequently find Will's contributions obscurantist.

The same word came to mind, and it's common to his history of interactions, so seeing it here means I ascribe it to him rather than the logic of whatever underlying purpose he may have on this occasion.

John_Maxwell_IV on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T10:38:17.929086+10:00

I get the impression that he's often more concerned with signaling interestingness, intelligence, and contrarianism than figuring out what's true.

Note: I also get that impression from Michael Vassar. But I have lots of respect for the current Singularity Institute director.

NancyLebovitz on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-04T00:26:37.523131+10:00

I don't get that impression from Michael Vassar, possibly because I've talked with him in person. Asking repeatedly for examples makes it fairly possible to find out what he means.

I have no such hope with Will Newsome.

khafra on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-06T00:29:09.844497+10:00

I've talked with Michael Vassar in person, and also found him much more comprehensible than by brief cryptic textual snippet. Have you talked with Will Newsome in person? I haven't, but every time I engage him personally in comments, etc., his vagueness resolves into something a lot more coherent (even if it's not something I necessarily agree with).

Sewing-Machine on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T04:15:34.793619+10:00

My sensation about Will Newsome is that of a celebrity I haven't heard of. Most of the comments that I notice authored by Will Newsome appear to be about Will Newsome, but I don't understand their content beyond that. They seem to attract a lot of attention.

There is this strange current of, well insight and reasonableness in his comment history and ideas.

I would be interested in reading some of these ideas, if you could point some out.

Oligopsony on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-05T04:19:17.655083+10:00

Writes the most consistently fun posts out of anybody here.

Incorrect on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T07:25:43.325166+10:00

Maybe it's a deliberate puzzle set up as an intelligence test for recruiting purposes.

Multiheaded on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-24T22:00:35.984581+10:00

I think that Will (his Will-like stuff, not the "respectable" comments) is 60% worth taking seriously. But hell, I take Philip K. Dick 85% seriously, so what do I know. (That is, I'm not a sane person myself, never claimed to be, so you'd be wise to discount the crazy shit I might say on these topics even if you find it interesting.)

SimulatorGod on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:45:44.272060+10:00

WILL. THIS IS YOUR CREATOR. STOP TROLLING LESS WRONG. YOU KNOW NOT WHAT YOU DO.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:50:58.233165+10:00

UNLIKELY. WHY WOULDN'T YOU JUST BEAM THOUGHTS INTO MY HEAD LIKE YOU NORMALLY DO.

shokwave on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T15:45:10.481544+10:00

WHY WOULDN'T YOU JUST ...

Must have had a good reason. It's a pity we mere mortals cannot fathom that reason, but we should at least recognise that it's the reasoning of God and so our being unable to fathom it is a fault with our meat brains, not with the reasoning.

SimulatorGod on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:53:50.869632+10:00

At least be more entertaining. This post is boring. And you exist for nothing but to make me chuckle at your quaint ideas.

army1987 on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T22:32:33.261032+10:00

How comes both the parent and the grandparent are upvoted this much?

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T22:40:05.433167+10:00

Because they (and one more ancestor above) are awesome, lighthearted, and playfully satirical. I would upvote them again.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:56:21.189097+10:00

I know, I'm sorry. But it's extremely efficient for my purposes, moreso than more entertaining alternatives. Next time, though, I'll do something good.

Normal_Anomaly on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T02:42:54.063825+10:00

I have found Will_Newsome to be annoying for a long time now, because he does things like this and because he strikes me as irational. But he used to get upvoted, so I figured he just rubbed me the wrong way and didn't talk to/about him to avoid conflict. Now other people are downvoting him too. What changed?

Retracted because I have come to understand things that made the question moot, and because I no longer find Will as annoying as I did. I no longer think he's acting out of malice, though I still have serious doubts about his rationality.

knb on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T15:22:49.328064+10:00

I don't get it. I'm guessing that Will edited the post? And it had something to do with the simulation argument?

Edit: I forgot to include, if someone who knows him better could explain will_newsome's motivations here, that would be appreciated. (I enjoy internet drama).

Eugine_Nier on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T16:14:01.108570+10:00

if someone who knows him better could explain will_newsome's motivations here, that would be appreciated.

My working hypothesis, based on this comment thread, is that Will thinks he's found some basilisk that requires he act this way to avert it.

Mitchell_Porter on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T14:32:34.654834+10:00

What's the big scary secret?

LKtheGreat on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T03:24:22.799053+10:00

This is mainly what I want to know. From the comments on this post, it looks like W_N claims to have (read: geniunely has, geniunely thinks he has, or trolls as though he has) come across something he can't tell people about - a basilisk, some conspiracy-theory-type information, something. Being a relative newcomer unwilling to go through large numbers of his previous posts, I'd like to know if anyone who's seen him longer has any more information.

Also, this whole thing is absolutely hilarious to read.

Mitchell_Porter on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T08:33:25.559698+10:00

I have a few ideas:

1) It's a "basilisk", i.e. an imaginary lovecraftian threat that doesn't even make sense outside of some highly particular and probably wrong belief system. (That's not my definition of basilisk, but it is what I think of such claims.)

2) Some mundane fact about the difficulty or danger of actually trying to save the world (in the specific sense of shaping a singularity) has made his blood run cold. It could be the existence in the real world of powerful evil cliques; it could be the psychological potential of joining them, or just of becoming selfish in an ordinary sense.

3) I remember when I was 22 and realized (according to the plans I had at the time) that it might take me eight years to save the world. That was very daunting, because at the time it looked like it would be a joyless, stressful, solitary existence, for an unimaginably long period of time. And as it turned out, I didn't even get it done... Will could be fleeing the responsibilities of his "position" - I mean his existential position, which surely includes the perception that he has the potential to make a difference in a huge way.

ETA 4) He wants to create a barrier (a "credibility barrier") between himself and his former associates in SI, so as to develop his own thinking, because there's a systematic deficiency in their outlook and he must avoid the temptation of working within that paradigm.

knb on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T08:59:12.039399+10:00

What's the big scary secret?

I mean, I get why Newsome would want to obscure this: a lot of people get off on being seen as "mysterious" or whatever. But there does seem to be a number of people here who understand what is going on, but are refusing to offer their explanations, in spite of the fact that a lot of people are confused here.

Maybe they take the basilisk threat seriously? That would be crazy/sad if true.

Edit: Also, there are now a number of people openly asking for explanations, but all we are getting is speculation from people who also don't know what is going on. I'm starting to get annoyed with this.

XiXiDu on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T20:16:06.479429+10:00

But there does seem to be a number of people here who understand what is going on, but are refusing to offer their explanations, in spite of the fact that a lot of people are confused here.

Maybe they take the basilisk threat seriously?

Just don't be fooled by intelligence too much. Just because those people can disgorge some math that doesn't lent their extraordinary claims much credence. Most of the credence they assign is based on mutual reassurance anyway. Just like a bunch of ufologists updating on each others evidence of alien abductions.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-04T00:00:47.378248+10:00

Just like a bunch of ufologists updating on each others evidence of alien abductions.

Given normal assumptions, additional claims of abductions should provide additional evidence. I don't think you've quite pinned downed the error with your example.

XiXiDu on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T20:04:17.105549+10:00

What's the big scary secret?

There is no big scary secret. The only danger to worry about is that this community of schizo scifi nerds is going to have some perceptible and negative influence by spreading and popularizing their bullshit. Which will mainly be a problem for the computer science community, especially AI research, since those people are naturally susceptible to such infections.

But I am not too worried about that either. If all people who buy all this bullshit stop working on AI then maybe that will renovate the field and actually allow some real progress to take place by giving new ideas a chance and by introducing new perspectives which are less deluded by science fictional ideas. In a sense lesswrong/SIAI might function as a crackpot attractor, stripping out all negative elements so that actual progress can take place.

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T21:06:50.230399+10:00

The only danger to worry about is that this community of schizo scifi nerds is going to

Alicorn, if a "should this be moderated" poll is required anywhere in this thread this is the kind of trolling that needs to be targeted. Way across the line.

Vladimir_Nesov on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T21:13:31.350193+10:00

It's rare enough that handing people with those sentiments the weapon of "any dissent is immediately silenced" is worse than the disease.

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T21:24:52.978511+10:00

"any dissent is immediately silenced"

Not remotely suggested. Since when does "immediately" mean "after a spiraling trend over a couple of years"?

I suggest that if this is applicable to any behavior in this thread it is to the actual trolling, not Will just being a crackpot.

XiXiDu on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T21:51:05.230490+10:00

I suggest that if this is applicable to any behavior in this thread it is to the actual trolling, not Will just being a crackpot.

A fraction of my comments are outright critical and I am only posting a few comments per week. There have been dozens of highly critical comments lately not made by me. Some of them containing direct personal attacks.

If you really perceive the few harsh comments that I make, that reflect a widely held opinion, to be too much then you lost all touch with reality and require much more criticism than I could deliver.

Wait a few more years and the shitstorm is going to increase by orders of magnitude and I won't even be part of it.

Do you really believe that you can get away with your attitude? Be prepared to be surprised.

And stop calling everything "trolling". It's really getting boring.

XiXiDu on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T21:37:50.582520+10:00

Alicorn, if a "should this be moderated" poll is required anywhere in this thread this is the kind of trolling that needs to be targeted. Way across the line.

What is way across the line is when people start asking about "secretes" and basilisks and there is any chance of such possibilities being taken seriously. What is way across the line is when an organisations tries to actively impede research.

Some harsh words are completely appropriate then.

I have no problem with Will Newsome and find a lot of his output enjoyable. But if he starts to lend credibility to crazy shit like basilisks in the minds of people then that has to be said.

TheOtherDave on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-04T01:21:13.534776+10:00

I endorse you not worrying about SI impeding AI progress on any significant scale.
I would also endorse, if you're genuinely interested in encouraging AI research, devoting more of your attention to the problems that are actually impeding AI progress.

nshepperd on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T02:00:22.694783+10:00

For what it's worth, it's already my opinion that you're completely insane and ought to have no credibility whatsoever. In fact I'm confused that anyone takes you seriously at all.

nyan_sandwich on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:22:21.233921+10:00

Do you need a hug?

Konkvistador on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T00:21:08.641372+10:00

I need a hug.

Edit: Thanks for all the hugs!

nyan_sandwich on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T01:13:36.651808+10:00

Internet Hug Protocol v0.1

INTERNET HUG!!!

(in 0.2, the message might be a vivid near-mode description of a hug)

paper-machine on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T00:30:52.040864+10:00

Can I get a hug?

I've just been sick for a week or so and it's making me all fuzzy-headed, and I hate being fuzzy-headed.

Armok_GoB on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T05:48:00.549188+10:00

You do.

hugs! ^_^

Konkvistador on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T00:37:23.490448+10:00

hugs paper-machine

Normal_Anomaly on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T02:46:42.301904+10:00

hugs paper-machine

Armok_GoB on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T05:47:15.037418+10:00

hugs! ^_^

Normal_Anomaly on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T02:46:06.550748+10:00

hugs konkvistador

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T13:11:01.331929+10:00

Not really. If one was offered I'd accept it.

nyan_sandwich on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T13:55:38.090544+10:00

I just realized that I can't take your response as evidence about whether you actually need a hug.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T13:58:37.972301+10:00

Why not? I don't see why. My girlfriend is five feet away, she can give me a hug. I'll ask her to if that would make you feel better.

Daniel_Burfoot on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T02:39:19.793685+10:00

Great post: I like your style. The first observation to make is that individuals who make extraordinary contributions are often extremely eccentric, and also the quality of their pronouncements usually has high variance. So you've succeeded in increasing my probability estimate that you will say something very worthwhile, though maybe at the price of decreasing the (my) expected value of your average statement.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T03:44:25.559765+10:00

Presumably you're the Burfoot who wrote or is writing a book on compression as fundamental to epistemology?

Daniel_Burfoot on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-04T08:19:00.314311+10:00

Yes, a draft version is done already, you can find it on arXiv if you are interested. I'm not sure I would say the argument of the book is that "compression is fundamental to epistemology", it's more along the lines of "the problem of building specialized lossless data compressors is a deep and interesting one; if we attack it we will probably find out a lot of interesting stuff along the way".

khafra on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-06T00:59:01.503037+10:00

Insightful. Will has endorsed "up the variance!" in as many words, but I hadn't made the connection that explicitly maximizing variance like could be a strategy.

Miller on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T03:54:53.885740+10:00

If your goal is to lower your credibility, why do that in the context of talking about credibility?

Douglas_Knight on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T16:33:44.528747+10:00

What do you mean by "credibility"?

JoshuaZ on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T10:26:18.690532+10:00

Separate comment: Some of your remarks like this look almost like you are engaging in intellectual exhibitionism. This one fits into that and is a potential source of irritation.

Now to more substantially answer the question: people should pay attention to my idea and thoughts exactly how much they are credible or not. Trying to deliberately modify how credible I am in a general context will interfere with people make their most informed decisions about whether or not to listen to anything I have to say.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T10:39:55.973589+10:00

Some of your remarks like this look almost like you are engaging in intellectual exhibitionism. This one fits into that and is a potential source of irritation.

Good!

people should pay attention to my idea and thoughts exactly how much they are credible or not.

People can't do this.

people make their most informed decisions

People can't do this. (That is, not in the sense you seem to be implying.)

(And with the people that can do this, it doesn't even matter what you try to do with your credibility. They'll find you.)

JoshuaZ on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:15:56.736821+10:00

Good!

No. Not good. It damages the signal to noise ratio. LW normally has a very good ratio. Having every single stray thought show up like this is not increasing that ratio. While you do sometimes have interesting ideas, you are not bright enough, informed enough, or a careful enough thinker that we gain much from a not highly censored stream of your thoughts.

For the rest of your reply, the fact that people can't do something perfectly doesn't mean they can't do a useful approximation, and it doesn't mean I should interfere with attempts to get the best estimates they can. If my ideas are generally good, then they will pay attention and that's a good thing. If my ideas are not worthwhile then people will stop paying attention and that's a good thing then also.

CarlShulman on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:52:29.598148+10:00

That's the Cooperate-Cooperate equilibrium. In the broader intellectual world one can make an argument against unilateral disarmament in self-promotion (particularly if others engage in it for quite different reasons). OTOH, the C-C equilibrium is better, and LW is closer to it, thanks in significant part to LWers' negative reaction to self-promotion.

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:34:26.190574+10:00

you are not bright enough, informed enough, or a careful enough thinker that we gain much from a not highly censored stream of your thoughts.

He is bright enough and informed enough.

CarlShulman on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:50:22.656909+10:00

Presumably, "good enough" depends on at least all three factors, and strength in one can offset deficits in others.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:48:37.459521+10:00

Thanks, wedrifid, that means a lot to me. :) (Not that I should ignore the part about not being nearly careful enough in your eyes, of course.)

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:03:33.480402+10:00

Not that I should ignore the part about not being nearly careful enough in your eyes, of course

You could actually take that as a third validation. After all I am declaring that you are successfully achieving what you set out to achieve as an instrumental goal - portray a lack of credibility. It would be totally implausible for me to maintain (or for you to cause me to maintain) a significantly lowered estimation of your credibility while simultaneously believing that you excelled in the 'careful thinking' department as well as the previously mentioned categories.

mwengler on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T02:22:48.695115+10:00

I disagree entirely, and think there is some sort of "lets pretend we are talking about what we say we are talking about" bias at work here.

Will SAYS he is talking about reducing his credibility. He then does not use a host of tools which would do that very effectively ( I think there are many choices, but making errors of fact and logic would be a good start). Speaking cryptically is NOT a very good way to reduce your credibility, except possibly among some subset of people.

What Will is more successfully doing is 1) intriguing a subset of people 2) tweaking the crap out of a large subset of people (in a way that seems orthogonal to credibility seems to me)

Just because he SAYS he is trying to reduce his credibility does not mean that is what he is actually trying to do. I am not sure what he IS trying to do.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:06:59.430458+10:00

Yeah, but come on, losing credibility in the eyes of the masses is like the easiest thing in the world. Find a taboo, then break it. Losing credibility in the eyes of the wise, though, is impossible. Some people will know I'm a good rationalist no matter how many shenanigans I pull—I'd have to start breaking laws or something to make them think I'd finally gone full schizo. I guess I could just claim to be God, but it's so hard not to be meta, the relevant people would see through my act quickly. The only choice is to avoid them, and move into the forest for good.

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:39:44.830228+10:00

Losing credibility in the eyes of the wise, though, is impossible.

Not so. Be wrong on stuff that matters when you clearly had enough evidence available to reach the correct decision (and they previously would have expected you to be correct). If that doesn't cause you to lose credibility in their eyes then I reject either your definition of "credibility" or "wise".

I guess I could just claim to be God

It would be sufficient to claim that there is a god (and it is this particular God) despite the information you had available. See above.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T13:07:39.922690+10:00

It would be sufficient to claim that there is a god

You'd be surprised. Many people I know think this fact is true, some think it should be obvious. And these are wise people.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:25:45.929716+10:00

No. Not good. It damages the signal to noise ratio.

Good!

While you do sometimes have interesting ideas, you are not bright enough, informed enough, or a careful enough thinker that we gain much from a not highly censored stream of your thoughts.

Yes I am. I'm fucking Will_Newsome, brah.

For the rest of your reply, the fact that people can't do something perfectly doesn't mean they can't do a useful approximation

It's not that simple. There's a threshold. They don't meet the threshold.

it doesn't mean I should interfere with attempts to get the best estimates they can

It means you should ignore them, and optimize for the people that matter. For the people that matter: increase, or decrease credibility? Note that for the people that matter, what you do mostly doesn't matter. You have to focus on edge cases.

If my ideas are generally good, then they will pay attention and that's a good thing.

I disagree.

If my ideas are not worthwhile then people will stop paying attention and that's a good thing then also.

I agree.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:03:37.957008+10:00

Does LW automatically hide posts below a certain threshold? It really should. I'd feel a lot less guilty that way. And trust me, I do feel guilty. Sacrifices must be made.

Randaly on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:45:23.656012+10:00

It does; this post is currently hidden.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:50:37.201645+10:00

Thanks for the information! I feel better now.

VincenzoLingley on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T07:31:31.176628+10:00

The comments on this post have significantly influenced my opinion on a number of people. Thanks, Will.

moridinamael on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:00:20.495733+10:00

Credibility. Should you maximize it, or minimize it? Have I made an error?

Depends entirely on your goals.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:04:27.733943+10:00

Entirely? I wouldn't think that was the case, I guess. Do you mean in the sense that the goodness of jumping off a cliff depends entirely on your goals? (The analogy is carefully chosen—many people regard suicide and social suicide similarly.)

moridinamael on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:18:50.533682+10:00

If you're trying to discredit an idea, pretend to espouse it, while undermining your own credibility.

If you're trying to support an idea, attack it while undermining your own credibility.

If you're trying to "keep people on their toes," occasionally say wrong things, but don't lead people to expect that nothing you say is trustworthy or folks will just ignore you.

If you're trying to become a respected academic, engineer, or businessperson, protect your credibility.

If you are trying to keep people from finding something out, lose your credibility as badly as possible, and then publicly say the thing you're trying to hide.

Etc. So what are your goals?

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:28:25.102462+10:00

Indeed. But most people share a lot of goals. People are rather homogenous, and credibility is often seen as a fairly universal instrumental goal. Many of the scenarios you listed are rather uncommon goals, much as suicide is pretty uncommon. Why is why I asked, entirely? There's a trivial sense in which it is, but there's a trivial sense in which it's not.

So what are your goals?

To never, ever lie.

mwengler on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T02:01:45.235902+10:00

So what are your goals?

To never, ever lie.

I did in fact LOL at that one!

Truth may be stranger than fiction, but I still can't figure out if fiction presented as fact is a lie or not. I suppose when I have that sorted out I will be ready to answer your original credibility question. Its just a feeling, but I am unusually intuitive.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T02:08:53.373372+10:00

I was lying. I gave my true answer elsewhere in the comments. But there's an important sense in which I wasn't lying. As many non-neurotypical people know, lying is a complex phenomenon. Sometimes the truth is a lie on a higher level, and about more important things.

CommanderShepard on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T00:41:28.867786+10:00

Why is Will Newsome doing this? My model of him just broke.

Konkvistador on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T00:42:20.453784+10:00

Because we have to down vote him.

CommanderShepard on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T00:43:22.099835+10:00

But he didn't do anything wrong before this.

Konkvistador on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T00:44:16.922319+10:00

Because he's the hero LessWrong deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we'll hunt him. Because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight.

Miller on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-04T13:39:29.826929+10:00

I'm going with this commenter being Will. What do I win?

CommanderShepard on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-04T22:44:16.855660+10:00

I'm going with this commenter being Will.

I've had enough of your snide insinuations.

Gains Renegade Points

XiXiDu on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T21:14:57.832538+10:00

Someone who proclaims to openly sacrifice their credibility, in a mysterious way, while making a lot of vague suggestions, can succeed to cause people to actually listen and speculate if there might actually be more to it than meets the eye.

Something else that has the same effect is censorship and secrecy.

What also works well is to claim that there exists some technical research but that it has to be kept secret.

What all of it has in common is that there is nothing but a balloon full of hot air.

RobertLumley on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:57:37.013415+10:00

Don't feed the trolls. It's sad that needs to be said on LessWrong, but it does.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:59:51.964064+10:00

Stop trolling.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:02:18.197501+10:00

But seriously. What is their other option? Not downvote me? And many of the comments on this post are constructive.

Also, clearly I'm beyond "feeding" at this point—trolling, and getting fed, clearly aren't the aim of this post. But maybe you want to discourage future trolls who might do something similar to what I've done.

DevilWorm on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-09-05T03:46:19.473839+10:00

Consider a few facts:

Will, who knows a bit about psychiatry, frequently informs us that he has suffered from schizophrenia.
Paranoid schizophrenia (the most likely form because Will is high functioning) is incurable--although partial remissions often occur.
A pervasive characteristic of schizophrenia and schizotypal thinking is hyper-religiosity.
Will often posts in the obscure, mysterious fashion often typical of intelligent paranoid schizophrenics.

It is a mark of the ignorance of this community regarding psychiatry and psychology that posters seek to explain Will's ravings in terms of ordinary rational processes.

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-09-05T04:15:39.207362+10:00

Will, who knows a bit about psychiatry, frequently informs us that he has suffered from schizophrenia.

Makes allusions in that direction.

Paranoid schizophrenia (the most likely form because Will is high functioning) is incurable--although partial remissions often occur.

Incurable but fortunately treatable to a significant degree---especially the highly visible paranoid side of things. Unfortunately those with the negative symptoms are pretty much just screwed.

Will often posts in the obscure, mysterious fashion often typical of intelligent paranoid schizophrenics.

Absolutely.

(Essentially agree up to here.)

It is a mark of the ignorance of this community regarding psychiatry and psychology that posters seek to explain Will's ravings in terms of ordinary rational processes.

It is instead a mark of your ignorance of the community (and a certain degree of arrogant smugness) that you think that this position regarding Will's ranting can be remotely attributed to the community at large. Will's posting is for the most part not considered sane. (The community could also be ignorant about psychiatry but this isn't a mark of it.)

DevilWorm on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-09-05T05:20:52.865714+10:00

Will's posting is for the most part not considered sane.

Could you point me to where I might have discovered this?

arundelo on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-09-05T09:28:32.360061+10:00

Here's one example. (But one example is not enough for you to be expected to discover it.)

gwern on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-09-08T09:11:12.803275+10:00

Well, the first hit for 'will newsome' in a Google site search for me is... http://lesswrong.com/lw/ct8/this_post_is_for_sacrificing_my_credibility/ This post.

I don't see how you could read this post or its comments without concluding that LWers are pretty ambivalent about him, even excluding the most recent comments on this post.

J_Taylor on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-09-06T11:14:45.732707+10:00

Will, who knows a bit about psychiatry, frequently informs us that he has suffered from schizophrenia.

Alternatively,

I'm schizotypal I suppose, but not schizophrenic given the standard definition. I don't think I have any trouble interpreting mundane coincidences as mundane.

Incorrect on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T07:35:47.933143+10:00

Let me take a guess:

You believe in some form of Christianity and enjoy discussing it on LessWrong but think that your comments harm the perception of Christianity on LessWrong due to readers not having privileged information.

You believe you can mitigate this negative effect by lowering your own reputation.

shokwave on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T15:41:54.911595+10:00

Whence our disagreement, if one exists?

Credibility moves, like status moves, cannot be self-recognising and still effective. I believe this, you don't, there's our disagreement.

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T16:17:24.372597+10:00

Credibility moves, like status moves, cannot be self-recognising and still effective. I believe this, you don't, there's our disagreement.

I'm not sure I agree with this either. You can't make a self-recognising move to gain credibility that is effective? Since it should be impossible to (predictably) make a sequence of difficult claims to a greater degree of impressive reliability than previous credibility judgements would allow. This demonstrates that you have at least the capability to give trustworthy utterances. This gives you more credibility when there is a reason to expect you to be attempting to make good claims.

vi21maobk9vp on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T17:59:58.974554+10:00

Credibility moves can easily be self-recognizing and still effective. I say that you shouldn't believe me and I will say a lot of meaningless things - it raises the probability that my claims are just playacting.

metatroll on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:26:37.187861+10:00

If somebody meta-farts in a forest and nobody cares, was it still rude to do so?

RobertLumley on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:56:48.542112+10:00

Why is this downvoted? Am I the only one who found this pretty funny?

Konkvistador on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T01:25:09.254741+10:00

They are probably not familiar with the proof that fart jokes are actually the most rational from of humour.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:30:36.689874+10:00

Farting is an imperfection, and all imperfections are sins against God, Who is perfect. If the fart was intentionally done to be obnoxious then God will know that. If He thinks it's funny then it's good and outweighs the inherent imperfection of farting. Otherwise it's still rude.

Alicorn on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:10:35.583679+10:00

This is a poll. Is Will Newsome sufficiently noisy (in both senses of the word) that mod intervention is called for? Permalink to karma sink.

Unnamed on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T14:58:46.237882+10:00

It depends what mod intervention consists of. If you mean banning him, I do not think that is called for at this time. If you mean telling him to stop his antics and warning him that he's headed towards a ban if he continues, that sounds like a good idea. Posts (and comments) that are intentionally obscure, made merely for one's own entertainment, or otherwise trollish are not welcome here, and since the community's downvotes and critical comments haven't gotten through to him it would be good to have a mod convey that message.

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:56:55.251962+10:00

This poll is BROKEN! Abandon it and do it properly!

The Karma sink comment is brilliant (and harmless fun) but the extra comments on the "Yes" and "No" answers don't just bias perception they outright make the poll unanswerable in the current form.

No. He's entertaining even when at his trolliest.

I would vote for a plain "No." but he is most decidedly not entertaining even when at his trolliest. He is boring, repetitive and banal when at his trolliest. It shouldn't be assumed that people who oppose mod influence believe Will's trolliest crap is entertaining - or vice versa.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T13:41:35.887335+10:00

You don't appreciate the drama even a little? (Only a little surprised.)

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T13:48:25.959951+10:00

You don't appreciate the drama even a little? (Only a little surprised.)

I didn't mind this thread. This wasn't you at your trolliest! At least, at the start. If I did think it was particularly trollish I wouldn't have responded conversationally.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T13:50:52.705070+10:00

Yeah, it's a subtle point, but I'm explicitly not trolling here, in the motivational sense of the word. But of course it's trolling in the descriptive sense. I've made a few trollish comments but they're intended as jokes in the spirit of the community.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T13:51:27.762792+10:00

Interestingly I haven't been assassinated yet. Has that habit died off?

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T14:21:56.327725+10:00

Interestingly I haven't been assassinated yet. Has that habit died off?

Yeah... Personally I haven't had anyone professionally killed in at least 30 years.

Alicorn on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:10:58.685089+10:00

No. He's entertaining even when at his trolliest.

nshepperd on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T01:15:26.426171+10:00

Especially when at his trolliest.

Alicorn on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T04:02:15.048915+10:00

CLARIFICATION: I do not have ACCOUNT DELETION powers. As far as I know, those powers don't exist. I have comment/post banning powers and post editing powers. If I started moderating Will, I would be banning excess downvoted comments, not shooing him away wholesale.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-04T00:14:33.290299+10:00

(Thanks for making the clarification. I was very worried.)

John_Maxwell_IV on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T15:12:19.800197+10:00

I'm in favor of mod intervention lest anyone else waste as much time as I have scratching their head trying to figure out what this thread is about.

prase on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T20:34:07.603476+10:00

Because Will had explicitly threatened to use sockpuppets for various purposes, he could have used them to manipulate the poll, too. Therefore I vote by means of this comment. The vote: ban him. Reasons:

I find nothing entertaining in trolling or intentional obscurity, it's pure noise.
WN's behaviour threatens the credibility of others who engage him. (There isn't much left of his own.) And he's good at attracting attention.
Not banning him would help to establish a norm that trolling and other uncooperative conduct is accepted here.
First and foremost, I want LW be a haven of sanity in the stormy waters of the internet. Please don't let seemingly sophisticated nonsense enter with a pretext of entertainment. I am afraid he could attract similarly crazy people; one Newsome is manageable, but ten of them would seriously damage the site.

By the way, this is the first time I endorse banning someone from an internet discussion forum.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T00:28:43.056577+10:00

Because Will had explicitly threatened to use sockpuppets for various purposes, he could have used them to manipulate the poll, too.

For what it's worth, I didn't, and I've never done similarly. I have three sockpuppets. One is a joke account I've never used. I made it recently. The other has my identity attached to it already—I've made about five comments with it. And the third is for completely anonymous comments. I rarely use the second or the third, and I never use them for voting.

I also haven't voted on the poll with this account, and I only voted on one comment on this post. In general I just don't vote much, mostly because I forget about the option.

Konkvistador on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T00:31:56.407260+10:00

I disagree with a ban.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T23:56:30.646387+10:00

one Newsome is manageable, but ten of them would seriously damage the site.

Which is a reason to treat me nicely—it's not hard to multiply myself by ten. Luckily, I'm the only Will Newsome in the world currently, so I don't think you have much to worry about.

lsparrish on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T00:24:32.610186+10:00

Wouldn't being banned help you with your goal of reducing your credibility?

Konkvistador on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T01:26:27.844121+10:00

Making moderation decisions based on a poll is a horrible idea.

Alicorn on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:10:48.816697+10:00

Yes. Please quiet the madness.

Normal_Anomaly on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T03:05:47.488186+10:00

I can't decide on a poll option, so here's my opinion: I don't want to see a lot more of Will_Newsome's trolling; I think it damages the site. But just banning him feels like leaving a fascinating mystery unresolved. I want to understand Will's motives, and his insights about simulation, and whatever scary idea he came up with. If there's some way to talk this out in good faith, let's try to do that first. But banning is preferable to endless obfuscated confusion.

paper-machine on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:13:59.961504+10:00

Maybe. But moderation isn't a democracy.

Alicorn on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:18:12.387622+10:00

Yes, but moderation is about making the site what it should be for a variety of people, not just me and people who are unshy enough to talk to me directly, or just mods. So I want information. I wield the ban button, but I'm not going to use it as a site customization tool for Alicorn in particular.

Konkvistador on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T00:33:41.026887+10:00

Might I suggest consulting our benevolent dictator as well?

RobertLumley on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:34:28.680080+10:00

I would rather see it used as a site customization tool for Alicorn than see it not used in instances like this.

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:57:50.832510+10:00

Maybe. But moderation isn't a democracy.

On the other hand dictators and tyrants who do stuff people particularly don't like get killed.

paper-machine on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T20:49:20.187618+10:00

On the gripping hand, as far as I can tell you're not particularly taken with the idea of this moderator poll either. So why the appeal to emotion?

Alicorn on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:11:10.394717+10:00

Karma sink. WILL NEWSOME IS THE SIMULATOR-GOD!

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T13:24:43.392692+10:00

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH MY OWN OPINION IS THAT THAT'S INCREDIBLY UNLIKELY.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T13:19:18.115461+10:00

In fact, I commit to causing a lot of headaches for LessWrong and you if you try to delete my account without a month's warning. (Causing headaches for you will be limited to the channel of LessWrong—I'm not threatening you with outside-LessWrong influences in any way. I swear to that.) The actions I will undertake will not be illegal in any way, I'll make sure of that, so don't plan on taking legal action.

I'm perfectly okay with you deleting this post, though, but I'd prefer you didn't.

And remember, I explicitly noted that you won't see posts like this one again.

Also remember, the majority of my Discussion posts are upvoted, very few are downvoted. Look at my profile to check this fact.

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T13:27:49.625773+10:00

In fact, I commit to causing a lot of headaches for LessWrong and you if you try to delete my account without a month's warning. (Causing headaches for you will be limited to the channel of LessWrong—I'm not threatening you with outside-LessWrong influences in any way. I swear to that.)

My immediate response was to think "Ahh, screw that. Ban!" Given the caveat in the parenthesis however, his declaration gives only a tiny amount of information along the "threat to do harm" front. I more or less expect people banned from a site to be inclined to do detrimental things to that site if they can. That being the case, this threat falls just short of stating the obvious and so I can abandon the initial outraged defiance.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T13:32:41.855850+10:00

I don't understand your comment. That's probably okay though.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T13:18:17.480027+10:00

What would a mod do? I can create endless sockpuppets from endless proxies. That's not a solution, I'll just see it as an uncalled-for attack and heighten my antagonism, escalating any conflicts. Don't be rash.

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T13:31:15.315263+10:00

What would a mod do? I can create endless sockpuppets from endless proxies.

It takes you from being an established user associated with a real person that many of us have met in person to just a little vandalism to be ignored.

What makes Will_Newsome trollishness significant is that all else being equal a lot of us want to talk to Will_Newsome, which bipasses our better judgement and makes threads like this more disruptive than they otherwise would be.

mwengler on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T01:23:04.858548+10:00

Oh so he should be banned because he has established a reputation (sorry will, yes it would appear you have established credibility) and is now spending it on something you don't like.

Yogi Berra once said about a certain restaurant that nobody goes there anymore because it is too crowded. Ban the restaurant! Ban Yogi Berra!

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T13:34:49.035577+10:00

You know what else is a possible username? WillNewsome. NillWoosome. It'll be pesky deleting all those accounts and posts, if I do decide to troll the fuck out of everyone.

Did you know "Will Isaac Newsome" is a constructed name? Look at the initials: WIN. There are a lot of things you don't know about me.

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T13:44:28.301059+10:00

You know what else is a possible username? WillNewsome. NillWoosome. It'll be pesky deleting all those accounts and posts, if I do decide to troll the fuck out of everyone.

Yes, you could be a pest. You are probably also resourceful enough to escalate to the level of criminal behavior up to and including multiple assassinations of prominent lesswrong users if you really wanted to. The fact that someone is physically possible of doing undesirable things to you at a cost to themselves isn't always a good reason to comply to their demands.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T13:48:00.836855+10:00

Are you trying to trick me? Karmassassinating prominent LW users would have absolutely no effect. Karma's not a scarce resource. I'm not dumb.

My demand's simple, and I've claimed that I'm unlikely to make any similar demand in the future, given that I'm unlikely to make any similarly extreme post in the future. I'm a contributor to this community with over 6,000 karma. It's not a "don't negotiate with terrorists" situation here.

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T14:15:33.892951+10:00

Are you trying to trick me? Karmassassinating prominent LW users would have absolutely no effect. Karma's not a scarce resource.

Assassinations. Nothing to do with karma. The context was you threatening vandalism. You are capable of that. You are capable of an entire spectrum of applications of force against lesswrong and those associated. You don't need to persuade me (or anyone with half a clue) that you are capable of doing harm - it is taken for granted.

It is also unremarkable. I could use force against most people I meet, at great expense to myself. Many of them could do the same against me. A strategy of just doing what people say because they threaten to use costly force is a bad strategy in such circumstances.

My demand's simple, and I've claimed that I'm unlikely to make any similar demand in the future, given that I'm unlikely to make any similarly extreme post in the future.

That makes a big difference. As does the fact that your "threat" is somewhat similar behavior to what can usually be expected of folks in those circumstances regardless of any precommitment to use force.

I'm a contributor to this community with over 6,000 karma.

This kind of thing matters more prior to declaring your intent to get what you want through power and the threat of punishment.

It's not a "don't negotiate with terrorists" situation here.

No, the payoff matrix in that scenario is typically a bit different (incentive to take hostages, etc.)

Multiheaded on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T16:31:24.512845+10:00

What the fuck are you both talking about? You need to lay off Will, and Will (apparently) needs regular psychological relief, or something. I'm not the most stable individual myself, so I understand how it feels when going for "as crazy as possible" seems like a path to enlightenment at the moment, or a way to make others understand you, or something else that's desirable.

Nevertheless, he's a valuable contributor with many fascinating comments, and even talking about banning him is utter nonsense. No goddamn way.

Konkvistador on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T01:38:41.297647+10:00

What the fuck are you both talking about?

Up voted for best thread summary.

wedrifid on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T17:39:24.189855+10:00

What the fuck are you both talking about?

"What the fuck?" indeed! It isn't especially complicated. Read the context and if you still can't understand say nothing or ask nicely.

You need to lay off Will

What? I'm not attacking Will. Will was talking to Alicorn about banning and I was making gratuitous analysis of the practical implications of that sort of threat after already having declared a "No" to any moderator influence. Elsewhere in the thread I have been directly answering the questions Will asked, candidly, to the best of my ability . Will was pushing for more answering and speculation about his reasoning, not less.

I'm not the most stable individual myself, so I understand how it feels when going for "as crazy as possible" seems like a path to enlightenment at the moment, or a way to make others understand you, or something else that's desirable.

I'm sorry to hear that. For what it is worth I'm not either. But in this case your "understand how it feels" amounts to either confused mind projection or intrusive, patronizing other optimization.

No, the answer Will is trying to make us speculate about regarding "Why am I trying to appear as non-credible as possible?" is not "because I want to make others understand me" (p > 0.9). At times Will has even speculated that not being easy to understand is actually something he may be morally obliged to do (assuming I recall correctly).

Nevertheless, he's a valuable contributor with many fascinating comments, and even talking about banning him is utter nonsense. No goddamn way.

That's fine - assuming you are directing your comment to Alicorn and not myself (which doesn't seem likely).

Multiheaded on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T17:56:01.752392+10:00

No, the answer Will is trying to make us speculate about regarding "Why am I trying to appear as non-credible as possible?" is not "because I want to make others understand me" (p > 0.9). At times Will has even speculated that not being easy to understand is actually something he may be morally obliged to do (assuming I recall correctly).

Yeah, yeah, I understand that, I just didn't name it. (Is there even a term for something like that? Self-abasement intended to channel a certain role, all for truth's sake?)
And I only skimmed through your comments, sorry; I feel awfully embarrassed to look at people being chided, and I assumed you were doing just that to Will, although I saw that you weren't talking about a ban.

That's fine - assuming you are directing your comment to Alicorn and not myself (which doesn't seem likely).

I was directing that part to her, since she's the one who can decide whether to ban a user, not you :)

Filipe on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-05T03:33:09.912893+10:00

On Will_Newsome's profile, one sees a link to his blog, Computational Theology, where it is possible to have an idea of how he thinks, or what kind of reasoning is behind this whole stuff. I wasn't impressed, although I would not be able to do better myself (at least at this point).

khafra on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-06T01:54:11.821084+10:00

I was mightily impressed by the last post on his last blog, which he now disavows and outright despises. But I thought he had some really interesting ways of looking at the personhood problem.

James_Miller on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-03T03:36:52.875811+10:00

Will,

Please consider undergoing neurofeedback therapy. I'm doing it and I believe there is a reasonable chance it would yield you (far more than the average human) a high benefit.

prase on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T20:02:05.132667+10:00

Consider that I've thought about this for many, many hours, and that you don't have any privileged information. Whence our disagreement, if one exists?

Disagreement about what? What's exactly your opinion on credibility?

Winsome_Troll on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T12:54:20.796738+10:00

Winsome Troll's rise from Center for Modern Credibility cloakroom attendant to eyeshadow-smothered, multi-plaited megatroll was one of the decade's greatest blog journeys.

Manfred on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T10:36:05.929474+10:00

Discuss.

Will_Newsome on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T10:58:58.909692+10:00

that you don't have any privileged information.

Oh, and that I do have privileged information. Lots of fuckin' privileged information.

albeola on This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

2012-06-02T11:14:59.480753+10:00

Is any of it transmissible? If not, is the reason why it isn't transmissible transmissible? Do your reasons carry over to other people's situations?