Loleliezers

5 dclayh 01 April 2010 04:04AM

Previously: Eliezer Yudkowsky facts, and Kevin's prediction.

 

A bit of silliness for the day.  Below the fold to spare those with delicate sensibilities. 

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Eliezer Yudkowsky Facts

124 steven0461 22 March 2009 08:17PM
  • Eliezer Yudkowsky was once attacked by a Moebius strip. He beat it to death with the other side, non-violently.
  • Inside Eliezer Yudkowsky's pineal gland is not an immortal soul, but another brain.
  • Eliezer Yudkowsky's favorite food is printouts of Rice's theorem.
  • Eliezer Yudkowsky's favorite fighting technique is a roundhouse dustspeck to the face.
  • Eliezer Yudkowsky once brought peace to the Middle East from inside a freight container, through a straw.
  • Eliezer Yudkowsky once held up a sheet of paper and said, "A blank map does not correspond to a blank territory". It was thus that the universe was created.
  • If you dial Chaitin's Omega, you get Eliezer Yudkowsky on the phone.
  • Unless otherwise specified, Eliezer Yudkowsky knows everything that he isn't telling you.
  • Somewhere deep in the microtubules inside an out-of-the-way neuron somewhere in the basal ganglia of Eliezer Yudkowsky's brain, there is a little XML tag that says awesome.
  • Eliezer Yudkowsky is the Muhammad Ali of one-boxing.
  • Eliezer Yudkowsky is a 1400 year old avatar of the Aztec god Aixitl.
  • The game of "Go" was abbreviated from "Go Home, For You Cannot Defeat Eliezer Yudkowsky".
  • When Eliezer Yudkowsky gets bored, he pinches his mouth shut at the 1/3 and 2/3 points and pretends to be a General Systems Vehicle holding a conversation among itselves. On several occasions he has managed to fool bystanders.
  • Eliezer Yudkowsky has a swiss army knife that has folded into it a corkscrew, a pair of scissors, an instance of AIXI which Eliezer once beat at tic tac toe, an identical swiss army knife, and Douglas Hofstadter.
  • If I am ignorant about a phenomenon, that is not a fact about the phenomenon; it just means I am not Eliezer Yudkowsky.
  • Eliezer Yudkowsky has no need for induction or deduction. He has perfected the undiluted master art of duction.
  • There was no ice age. Eliezer Yudkowsky just persuaded the planet to sign up for cryonics.
  • There is no spacetime symmetry. Eliezer Yudkowsky just sometimes holds the territory upside down, and he doesn't care.
  • Eliezer Yudkowsky has no need for doctors. He has implemented a Universal Curing Machine in a system made out of five marbles, three pieces of plastic, and some of MacGyver's fingernail clippings.
  • Before Bruce Schneier goes to sleep, he scans his computer for uploaded copies of Eliezer Yudkowsky.

If you know more Eliezer Yudkowsky facts, post them in the comments.

You're Calling *Who* A Cult Leader?

45 Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 March 2009 06:57AM

Followup toWhy Our Kind Can't Cooperate, Cultish Countercultishness

I used to be a lot more worried that I was a cult leader before I started reading Hacker News.  (WARNING:  Do not click that link if you do not want another addictive Internet habit.)

From time to time, on a mailing list or IRC channel or blog which I ran, someone would start talking about "cults" and "echo chambers" and "coteries".  And it was a scary accusation, because no matter what kind of epistemic hygeine I try to practice myself, I can't look into other people's minds.  I don't know if my long-time readers are agreeing with me because I'm making sense, or because I've developed creepy mind-control powers.  My readers are drawn from the nonconformist crowd—the atheist/libertarian/technophile/sf-reader/Silicon-Valley/early-adopter cluster—and so they certainly wouldn't admit to worshipping me even if they were.

And then I ran into Hacker News, where accusations in exactly the same tone were aimed at the site owner, Paul Graham.

Hold on.  Paul Graham gets the same flak I do?

  • Paul Graham has written a word or two about rationality... in a much more matter-of-fact style.
  • Paul Graham does not ask his readers for donations.  He is independently wealthy.
  • Paul Graham is not dabbling in mad-science-grade AI.  He runs Y Combinator, a seed-stage venture fund.
  • Paul Graham is not trying to save the world.  He's trying to help a new generation of entrepreneurs.

I've never heard of Paul Graham saying or doing a single thing that smacks of cultishness.  Not one.

He just wrote some great essays (that appeal especially to the nonconformist crowd), and started an online forum where some people who liked those essays hang out (among others who just wandered into that corner of the Internet).

So when I read someone:

  1. Comparing the long hours worked by Y Combinator startup founders to the sleep-deprivation tactic used in cults;
  2. Claiming that founders were asked to move to the Bay Area startup hub as a cult tactic of separation from friends and family;

...well, that outright broke my suspension of disbelief.

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Guardians of Ayn Rand

57 Eliezer_Yudkowsky 18 December 2007 06:24AM

Followup toEvery Cause Wants To Be A Cult, Guardians of the Truth

"For skeptics, the idea that reason can lead to a cult is absurd.  The characteristics of a cult are 180 degrees out of phase with reason.  But as I will demonstrate, not only can it happen, it has happened, and to a group that would have to be considered the unlikeliest cult in history.  It is a lesson in what happens when the truth becomes more important than the search for truth..."
                 —Michael Shermer, "The Unlikeliest Cult in History"

I think Michael Shermer is over-explaining Objectivism.  I'll get around to amplifying on that.

Ayn Rand's novels glorify technology, capitalism, individual defiance of the System, limited government, private property, selfishness. Her ultimate fictional hero, John Galt, was <SPOILER>a scientist who invented a new form of cheap renewable energy; but then refuses to give it to the world since the profits will only be stolen to prop up corrupt governments.</SPOILER>

And then—somehow—it all turned into a moral and philosophical "closed system" with Ayn Rand at the center.  The term "closed system" is not my own accusation; it's the term the Ayn Rand Institute uses to describe Objectivism.  Objectivism is defined by the works of Ayn Rand.  Now that Rand is dead, Objectivism is closed.  If you disagree with Rand's works in any respect, you cannot be an Objectivist.

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