This post was inspired by taw urging us to mathematize Newcomb's problem and Eliezer telling me to post stuff I like instead of complaining.

To make Newcomb's problem more concrete we need a workable model of Omega. Let me count the ways:

1) Omega reads your decision from the future using a time loop. In this case the contents of the boxes are directly causally determined by your actions via the loop, and it's logical to one-box.

2) Omega simulates your decision algorithm. In this case the decision algorithm has indexical uncertainty on whether it's being run inside Omega or in the real world, and it's logical to one-box thus making Omega give the "real you" the million.

3) Omega "scans your brain and predicts your decision" without simulating you: calculates the FFT of your brainwaves or whatever. In this case you can intend to build an identical scanner, use it on yourself to determine what Omega predicted, and then do what you please. Hilarity ensues.

(NB: if Omega prohibits agents from using mechanical aids for self-introspection, this is in effect a restriction on how rational you're allowed to be. If so, all bets are off - this wasn't the deal.)

(Another NB: this case is distinct from 2 because it requires Omega, and thus your own scanner too, to terminate without simulating everything. A simulator Omega would go into infinite recursion if treated like this.)

4) Same as 3, but the universe only has room for one Omega, e.g. the God Almighty. Then ipso facto it cannot ever be modelled mathematically, and let's talk no more.

I guess this one is settled, folks. Any questions?

Related to: Comments on Degrees of Radical Honesty, OB: Belief in Belief, Cached Thoughts.

"Nothing worse could happen to these labours than that anyone should make the unexpected discovery that there neither is, nor can be, any a priori knowledge at all.... This would be the same thing as if one sought to prove by reason that there is no reason" (Critique of Practical Reason, Introduction).

You don't need Kant to demonstrate the value of honesty. In fact, summoning his revenant can be a dangerous thing to do. You end up in the somewhat undesirable situation of having almost the right conclusion, but having it for the wrong reasons. Reasons you weren't even aware of, because they were all collapsed into the belief, "I believe in person X".

One of the annoying things about philosophy is that the dead simply don't die. Once a philosopher or philosophical doctrine gains some celebrity in the community, it's very difficult to convince anyone afterward that said philosopher or doctrine was flawed. In other words, the philosophical community tends to have problems with relinquishment. Therefore, there are still many philosophers that spend their careers studying, for example, Plato, apparently not with the intent to determine what parts of what Plato wrote are correct or still applicable, but rather with the intent to defend Plato from criticism. To prove Plato was right.

Since the community doesn't value relinquishment, the cost of writing a flawed criticism is very low. Therefore, journals are glutted with so-called "negative results": "Kant was wrong", "Hegel was wrong", etc. No one seriously believes otherwise, but writing positive philosophical results is hard, and not writing at all isn't a viable career option for a professional philosopher.

To its credit, MBlume refrains from bringing up Kant in his article on radical honesty, where he cites other, more feasible variants of radical honesty. However, in the comments, Kant rears his ugly head.

Most healthy intellectual blogs/forums participate in conversations among larger communities of blogs and forums.  Rather than just "preaching to a choir" of readers, such blogs often quote and respond to posts on other blogs.  Such responses sometimes support, and sometimes criticize, but either way can contribute to a healthy conversation.

If folks at Less Wrong saw themselves as a part of a larger community of rationalists, they would realize that most rationalist authors and readers are not at Less Wrong.  To participate in a healthy conversation among the wider community of rationalists, they would often respond to posts at other sites, and expect other sites to respond often to them.  In contrast, an insular group defined by something other than its rationality would be internally focused, rarely participating in such larger conversations.

Today at Overcoming Bias I respond to a post by Eliezer here at Less Wrong. Though I post occasionally here at Less Wrong, I will continue to post primarily at Overcoming Bias.  I consider myself part of a larger rationalist community, and will continue to riff off relevant posts here and elsewhere.  I hope you will continue to see me as a part of your relevant world. 

I worry a little that Less Wrong karma score incentives may encourage an inward focus, since karma is so far only scored for internal site activity.

Previously in series:  Can Humanism Match Religion's Output?
Followup to:  Is Humanism a Religion-Substitute?

I am generally suspicious of envying crazy groups or trying to blindly copycat the rhythm of religion—what I called "hymns to the nonexistence of God", replying, "A good 'atheistic hymn' is simply a song about anything worth singing about that doesn't happen to be religious."

But religion does fill certain holes in people's minds, some of which are even worth filling.  If you eliminate religion, you have to be aware of what gaps are left behind.

If you suddenly deleted religion from the world, the largest gap left would not be anything of ideals or morals; it would be the church, the community.  Among those who now stay religious without quite really believing in God—how many are just sticking to it from wanting to stay with their neighbors at the church, and their family and friends?  How many would convert to atheism, if all those others deconverted, and that were the price of staying in the community and keeping its respect?  I would guess... probably quite a lot.

In truth... this is probably something I don't understand all that well, myself.  "Brownies and babysitting" were the first two things that came to mind.  Do churches lend helping hands in emergencies?  Or just a shoulder to cry on?  How strong is a church community?  It probably depends on the church, and in any case, that's not the correct question.  One should start by considering what a hunter-gatherer band gives its people, and ask what's missing in modern life—if a modern First World church fills only some of that, then by all means let us try to do better.

So without copycatting religion—without assuming that we must gather every Sunday morning in a building with stained-glass windows while the children dress up in formal clothes and listen to someone sing—let's consider how to fill the emotional gap, after religion stops being an option.

Related to: Zombies? Zombies!, Zombie Responses, Zombies: The Movie, The Apologist and the Revolutionary

All disabling accidents are tragic, but some are especially bitter. The high school sports star paralyzed in a car crash. The beautiful actress horribly disfigured in a fire. The pious preacher who loses his soul during a highway robbery.

As far as I know, this last one only happened once, but once was enough. Simon Browne was an early eighteenth century pastor of a large Dissident church. The community loved him for his deep faith and his remarkable intelligence, and his career seemed assured.

One fateful night in 1723, he was travelling from his birthplace in Somerset to his congregation in London when a highway robber accosted the coach carrying him and his friend. With quick reflexes and the element of surprise, Browne and his friend were able to disarm the startled highway robber and throw him to the ground. Browne tried to pin him down while the friend went for help, but in the heat of the moment he used excessive force and choked the man to death. This horrified the poor preacher, who was normally the sort never to hurt a fly.

Whether it was the shock, the guilt, or some unnoticed injury taken in the fight, something strange began to happen to Simon Browne. In his own words, he gradually became:

...perfectly empty of all thought, reflection, conscience, and consideration, entirely destitute of the knowledge of God and Christ, unable to look backward or forward, or inward or outward, having no conviction of sin or duty, no capacity of reviewing his conduct, and, in a word, without any principles of religion or even of reason, and without the common sentiments or affections of human nature, insensible even to the good things of life, incapable of tasting any present enjoyments, or expecting future ones...all body, without so much as the remembrance of the ruins of that mind I was once a tenant in...and the thinking being that was in me is, by a consumption continual, now wholly perished and come to nothing.

Simon Browne had become a p-zombie.

At Tom Talbot's suggestion, I have created a Less Wrong Facebook group, in hopes that being able to see one another's faces will improve group bonding.

Related to: The Power of Positivist Thinking, On Seeking a Shortening of the Way, Crowley on Religious Experience

Annoyance wants us to stop talking about fancy techniques and get back to basics. I disagree with the philosophy behind his statement, but the principle is sound. In many areas of life - I'm thinking mostly of sports, but not for lack of alternatives - mastery of the basics beats poorly-grounded fancy techniques every time.

One basic of rationality is paying close attention to an argument. Dissecting it to avoid rhetorical tricks, hidden fallacies, and other Dark Arts.  I've been working on this for years, and I still fall short on a regular basis.

Medical educators have started emphasizing case studies in their curricula. Instead of studying arcane principles of disease, student doctors cooperate to analyze a particular patient in detail, ennumerate the principles needed to diagnose her illness, and pay special attention to any errors the patients' doctors made during the treatment. The cases may be rare tropical infections, but they're more often the same everyday diseases common in the general population, forcing the student doctors to always keep the basics in mind. We could do with a tradition of case studies in rationality, though we'd need safeguards to prevent degeneration into political discussion.

Case studies in medicine are most interesting when all the student doctors disagree with each other. To that end, I've chosen as the first case a statement that received sixteen upvotes on Less Wrong, maybe the highest I've ever seen for a comment. I don't mean to insult or embarass everyone who liked it. I liked it too. My cursor was already hovering above the "Vote Up" button by the time I starting having second thoughts. But it deserves dissection, and its popularity gives me a ready response when someone says this material is too basic for 'master rationalists' like ourselves:

In his youth, Steve Jobs went to India to be enlightened. After seeing that the nation claiming to be the source of this great spiritual knowledge was full of hunger, ignorance, squalor, poverty, prejudice, and disease, he came back and said that the East should look to the West for enlightenment.

This anecdote is short, witty, flattering, and utterly opaque to reason. It bears all the hallmarks of the Dark Arts.

Followup to:  Why 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.

Related to: Priming and Contamination

Psychologists define "priming" as the ability of a stimulus to activate the brain in such a way as to affect responses to later stimuli. If that doesn't sound sufficiently ominous, feel free to re-word it as "any random thing that happens to you can hijack your judgment and personality for the next few minutes."

For example, let's say you walk into a room and notice a briefcase in the corner. Your brain is now the proud owner of the activated concept "briefcase". It is "primed" to think about briefcases, and by extension about offices, business, competition, and ambition. For the next few minutes, you will shift ever so slightly towards perceiving all social interactions as competitive, and towards behaving competitively yourself. These slight shifts will be large enough to be measured by, for example, how much money you offer during the Ultimatum Game. If that sounds too much like some sort of weird New Age sympathetic magic to believe, all I can say is Kay, Wheeler, Bargh, and Ross, 2004.¹

We've been discussing the costs and benefits of Santa Claus recently. Well, here's one benefit: show Dutch children an image of St. Nicholas' hat, and they'll be more likely to share candy with others. Why? The researchers hypothesize that the hat activates the concept of St. Nicholas, and St. Nicholas activates an idealized concept of sharing and giving. The child is now primed to view sharing positively. Of course, the same effect can be used for evil. In the same study, kids shown the Toys 'R' Us logo refused to share their precious candy with anyone.

But this effect is limited to a few psych laboratories, right? It hasn't done anything like, you know, determine the outcome of a bunch of major elections?

Max Muller was one of the greatest religious scholars of the 19th century. Born in Germany, he became fascinated with Eastern religion, and moved to England to be closer to the center of Indian scholarship in Europe. There he mastered English and Sanskrit alike to come out with the first English translation of the Rig Veda, the holiest book of Hinduism.

One of Muller's most controversial projects was his attempt to interpret all pagan mythologies as linked to one another, deriving from a common ur-mythology and ultimately from the celestial cycle. His tools were exhaustive knowledge of the myths of all European cultures combined with a belief in the interpretive power of linguistics.

What the significance of Orpheus' descent into the underworld to reclaim his wife's soul? The sun sets beneath the Earth each evening, and returns with renewed brightness. Why does Apollo love Daphne? Daphne is cognate with Sanskrit Dahana, the maiden of the dawn. The death of Hercules? It occurs after he's completed twelve labors (cf. twelve signs of zodiac) when he's travelling west (like the sun), he is killed by Deianeira (compare Sanskrit dasya-nari, a demon of darkness) and his body is cremated (fire = the sun).  His followers extended the method to Jesus - who was clearly based on a lunar deity, since he spent three days dead and then returned to life, just as the new moon goes dark for three days and then reappears.

Muller's work was massively influential during his time, and many 19th century mythographers tried to critique his paradigm and poke holes in it. Some accused him of trying to destroy the mystery of religion, and others accused him of shoddy scholarship.

R.F. Littledale, an Anglican apologist, took a completely different route. He claimed that there was, in fact, no such person as Professor Max Muller, holder of the Taylorian Chair in Modern European Languages. All these stories about "Max Muller" were nothing but a thinly disguised solar myth.