The third horn of the anthropic trilemma is to deny that there is any meaningful sense whatsoever in which you can anticipate being yourself in five seconds, rather than Britney Spears; to deny that selfishness is coherently possible; to assert that you can hurl yourself off a cliff without fear, because whoever hits the ground will be another person not particularly connected to you by any such ridiculous thing as a "thread of subjective experience".
http://lesswrong.com/lw/19d/the_anthropic_trilemma/
A question of rationality. Eliezer, I have talked to a few Less Wrongers about what horn they take on the anthropic trilemma; sometimes letting them know beforehand what my position was, sometimes giving no hint as to my predispositions. To a greater or lesser degree, the following people have all endorsed taking the third horn of the trilemma (and also see the part that goes from 'to deny selfishness as coherently possible' to the end of the bullet point as a non sequitur): Steve Rayhawk, Zack M. Davis, Marcello Herreshoff, and Justin Shovelain. I believe I've forgotten a few more, but I know that none endorsed any horn but the third. I don't want to argue for taking the third horn, but I do want to ask: to what extent does knowing that these people take the third horn cause you to update your expected probability of taking the third horn if you come to understand the matter more thoroughly? A few concepts that come to my mind are 'group think', majoritarianism, and conservation of expected evidence. I'm not sure there is a 'politically correct' answer to this question. I also suspect (perhaps wrongly) that you also favor the third horn but would rather withhold judgment until you understand the issue better; in which case, your expected probability would probably not change much.
[Added metaness: I would like to make it very especially clear that I am asking a question, not putting forth an argument.]
Source?
won't get on the airplane until after it arrives at the demonstration.
"destination"?
...because the first thing warlords do when they take over Scottsdale, Arizona, is invest great amounts of money in technology to revive old people, then use their highly advanced mind-controlling powers to turn them into mentally aware but vicariously controlled slaves, or otherwise coerce their few dozens of old computer scientists and physicists to kick babies and spit on puppies. Because warlords and UnFriendly AIs are evil for the sake of being evil. Makes perfect sense.
(Your parenthetical point is an argument for donating to FAI research, not an argument against getting froze.)
Hm, interesting point. I'm not sure I have this trait, because instead of thinking "duhhh" when I hear a well-reasoned and compelling argument, I like to make a few sanity checks and run it past my skepticism meter before allowing the clicking mechanism to engage. I wonder if that's ever produced results; at any rate, I feel like it's my duty to keep good epistemic hygiene, though my skeptical reasoning might be superficial. For this reason it normally takes a few seconds before I allow things to click, which slows conversation a tad. Perhaps I should tentatively accept the premises of hypotheses first and then be skeptical later, when I have time and resources?
Also, I wonder to what extent the desire to be skeptical is more related to the desire not to appear gullible than to a desire to find truth.
No, but unfortunately I can't find out where it came from. Perhaps P. Z. Myers's collection of infidel quotes (Edit: see PeerInfinity's comment) but I can't access it right now due to Linux problems. (Incidentally, he'll be in the Bay area for a week in a few days. Info here.)
At any rate, that's a good page to read when you're feeling particularly anti-theist and want ammo.
"Corey, I'm going to pray for you." "OK, then I'll think for both of us." Or, "Ok, then I'm going to prey on you."
Speaking of appearances, Eliezer makes me feel self-conscious about how un-white my teeth are.
We should set up a program that blasts 'One Winged Angel' through the speakers of every online computer in the house, every morning.