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Look for people who need your kindness. Things will open up for you.
In response to
Wondering what to do with my ability for empathy and understanding people. Have some experience and perhaps opportunity to work with this professionally - advice?
I myself held this position until I, quite recently as a matter of fact, read some fiction which tipped off an existential crisis, putting me on the verge of a panic attack. Since then, I am more wary of dangerous ideas.
Ignorance might be bliss, but wisdom is gathered by those who survive their youth.
I have had many attacks. I survived them all.
In response to
Shoulds can be changed to Cans
This mucking around with surface connotation has a feel-good quality that I find drastically unappealing and to be avoided like cancer.
Most if not all of the great X are notable for being extremely intelligent. For any X to arrive at the very top you probably also need to be smart.
Rappers are much more cerebral than football players, as a class, as a profession, as an endeavor. There's no rationalizing around this.
The thing that "average" people need isn't so much a textbook as a recognition that maybe intelligent people are better role models than the latest football star or rapper.
If you don't have the status the advice that you are giving won't be heard.
Rappers are probably a bad example. Most if not all of the great rappers are notable for being extremely intelligent, especially in the sense that IQ measures.
In response to
Tell Culture
I'm, 'gratified' I guess, to see other comments here about autism. As I read through the post, I immediately began having the impression that "rationalist community" was being used like a euphemism for "community with high rate of autism". I know it isn't, literally, but there are aspects of rationalism and this type of explicit communication that I have always thought of as 'gifts' that people on the autism spectrum bring to humanity.
In response to
I attempted the AI Box Experiment again! (And won - Twice!)
At the risk of sounding naive, I'll come right out and say it. It completely baffles me that so many people speak of this game as having an emotional toll. How is it possible for words, in a chat window, in the context of a fictional role-play, to have this kind of effect on people? What in god's name are you people saying to each other in there? I consider myself to be emotionally normal, a fairly empathetic person, etc. I can imagine experiencing disgust at, say, very graphic textual descriptions. There was that one post a few years back that scared some people - I wasn't viscerally worried by it, but I did understand how some people could be. That's literally the full extent of strings of text that I can remotely imagine causing distress (barring, say, real world emails about real-world tragedies). How is it possible that some of you are able to be so shocking / shocked in private chat sessions? Do you just have more vivid imaginations than I do?
I don't think describing the experience itself is very helpful to answering the question.. The comment seems as close to an answer of "yes, it's likely you would find the results of a trip irreducibly spiritual or some other nonsense" as someone would actually give, but because of the vagueness that seems to be intrinsic to descriptions of the experience of a trip, I'm not even sure if you're espousing such things or not.
In my experience, it is possible to bring parts of the experience back and subject it to analytical and critical thinking, but it is very challenging. The trip does tend to defy comprehension by the normal mode of consciousness, which is why descriptions have the quality you call "vagueness". In short, distilling more than "irreducibly spiritual nonsense" from the trip takes work, not unlike the work of organizing thoughts into a term paper. It can be done, and the more analytical your habits of thought to begin with, the more success I think you could expect.
In response to
Yet more "stupid" questions
Is LSD like a thing?
Most of my views on drugs and substances are formed, unfortunately, due to history and invalid perceptions of their users and those who appear to support their legality most visibly. I was surprised to find the truth about acid at least a little further to the side of "safe and useful" than my longtime estimation. This opens up a possibility for an attempt at recreational and introspectively therapeutic use, if only as an experiment.
My greatest concern would be that I would find the results of a trip irreducibly spiritual, or some other nonsense. That I would end up sacrificing a lot of epistemic rationality for some of the instrumental variety, or perhaps a loss of both in favor of living off of some big, new, and imaginary life changing experience.
In short, I'm comfortable with recent life changes and recent introspection, and I wonder whether I should expect a trip to reinforce and categorize those positive experiences, or else replace them with something farce.
Also I should ask about any other health dangers, or even other non-obvious benefits.
I won't be able to do it justice in words, but I like to try.
If you value your current makeup as a "rationalist" - LSD will not necessarily help with that. Whatever your current worldview, it is not "the truth", it is constructed, and it will not be the same after you come down.
You can't expect a trip to do anything in particular, except maybe blow your mind. A trip is like finding out you were adopted. It's discovering a secret hidden in plain sight. It's waking up to realize you've never been awake before - you were only dreaming you were awake. It's finding out that everything familiar, everything you took for granted, was something else all along, and you had no idea.
No matter how much you've invested in the identity of "rationalist", no matter how much science you've read... Even if you know how many stars there are in the visible universe, and how many atoms. Even if you've cultivated a sense for numbers like that, real reality is so much bigger than whatever your perception of it is. I don't know how acid works, but it seems to open you in a way that lets more of everything in. More light. More information. Reality is not what you think it is. Reality is reality. Acid may not be able to show you reality, but it can viscerally drive home that difference. It can show you that you've been living in your mind all your life, and mistaking it for reality.
It will also change your sense of self. You may find that your self-concept is like a mirage. You may experience ego-loss, which is like becoming nobody and nothing in particular, only immediate sensory awareness and thought, unconnected to what you think of as you, the person.
I don't know about health dangers. I never experienced any. Tripping does permanently change the way you view the world. It's a special case of seeing something you can't un-see. Whether it's a "benefit" ... depends a lot on what you want.
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No, but we do judge dogs by how intelligent they are. And there are certain dogs that are more intelligent than others. Intelligence != human intelligence. Furthermore, most software only interacts with other software/hardware/firmware. To the extent that it interacts with meatspace that interaction is mediated by a person. AI would be software that interacts efficiently with meatspace directly without human intervention.
If AI is software is AI, then human intelligence is DNA is human intelligence. An obvious non-sequitur.
Take google maps. On one end, it interacts through road sensors. On the other end, it serves us by telling about traffic.