What's stopping them?
What's stopping them is that by not playing by conventional rules, they will not get official kudos in the field. People like Bostrom, etc. who do play by the rules will. One might not care about official kudos per se, but one should -- people with official kudos are the ones with actual sway on policy, etc. Important people read Bostrom's book, no one important reads EY's stuff.
I think this is the vital thing: not 'does academia work perfectly', but 'can you work more effectively THROUGH academia'. Don't know for sure the answer is yes, but it definitely seems like one key way to influence policy. Decision makers in politics and elsewhere aren't going to spend all their time looking at each field in detail, they'll trust whatever systems exist in each field to produce people who seem qualified to give a qualified opinion.
[Beginning academics] have to publish cutting edge research for a long time before they are allowed to synthesize or popularize.
Indeed, and I think a case can be made that this is exactly backwards (if we must have such "rules" at all).
Isn't there an argument that having a million voices synthesising and popularising and ten doing detailed research is much less productive than the opposite? Feels a bit like Aristophanes:
"Ah! the Generals! they are numerous, but not good for much"
Everyone going around discussing their overarching synthesis of everything sounds like it would produce a lot of talk and little research
How do you present insecurity so it ends up being read as arrogance?
They often look the same.
You make a bit of effort to make conversation with someone you don't know: they give the minimum responses, move away when they can do so, and don't reciprocate initiation.
This could be shyness or arrogance. Very tough to tell the difference. Plus the two can actually be connected: if you see yourself as very different from others, the natural instinct is a mixture of insecurity ('I don't fit!') with arrogance ('I see things these guys don't'). I think the main way not to end up with a mix of both is just if one is very strong: if you're too insecure to be arrogant or too arrogant to be insecure.
Quick thoughts:
In Yvain's post (linked here by gjm), Yvain says:
Although people pretending to be offended for personal gain is a real problem, it is less common in reality than it is in people's imaginations. If a person appears to suffer from an action of yours which you find completely innocuous, you should consider the possibility that eir mind is different from yours before rejecting eir suffering as feigned.
Uhm, it depends. My guess is that such people are rare as a fraction of population, but if they are skilled at exploiting other people's empathy, they can lie about their internal "pain" pretty often. So while the probability of "person X randomly chosen from population would do this" is very small, the probability of "a person who replied online on your post, acting offended and citing political arguments and calling in their numerous supporters, would do this" could actually be pretty high. (Prior probability, posterior probability, selection bias.) So I would probably use the way I have received a complaint as an evidence.
Situation A: I play a music I enjoy, and my neighbor says: "Excuse me, my ears hurt, could you please turn down the volume?" I would turn down the volume, and if it is too quite for me to enjoy, they I would simply turn the music off, or consider using headphones.
Situation B: There is an active political or religious movement X with typical modus operandi of finding something they complain about. My neighbor is a very active member of X. This month, their topic is "make your neighbors turn down the music, because our great prophet said music is sinful". I play a music I enjoy, and my neighbor says: "Excuse me, my ears hurt from your sinful music, you should be ashamed of yourself, and you will burn in hell. Could you turn down the volume?" I would ignore them, or offer a trade (something like "I am doing you a big favor here, and I expect some favor in return in the future"), depending on my mood and my estimate of their probability of returning the favor (the more righteous they are, the less likely).
I basically agree with you, but I think situation B to quite that extent is rare. And of course identifying similarity to that is pretty open to bias if you just don't like that movement.
Concrete example - I used to use the Hebrew name of God in theological conversations, as this was normal at my college. I noticed a Jewish classmate of mine was wincing. I discussed it with him, he found it uncomfortable, I stopped doing it. Didn't cost me anything, happy to do it.
Also, I think some of this is bleeding over from 'I am not willing to inconvenience myself' to actively enjoying making a point (possibly in some vague sense that it will help them reform, though not sure if that's evidenced). I can get that instinct, and the habit of "punishing" people who push things can make sense in game theory terms. But I think the idea of not feeling duty-bound is different to getting to the position where some commenters might turn UP the music.
The answer can simply be expressed as "don't feed the utility monster". Someone who claims that noise which brings a little utility to you causes an unusually great loss in utility to them, so their gain in utility from you not making the noise is greater than your gain from making the noise, is a step towards being a utility monster.
People demanding you do things because of social justice is the classic real-life case of feeding utility monsters.
You seem to be equivocating between 'a step towards being a utility monster' and 'being a utility monster'. Someone asking you to turn your music down is surely more likely to just be them actually having an issue with noise. There are literally hundreds of things I do without even feeling that strongly about them. So it seems eminently sensible to me that people tell me if they do matter a lot to them. If everyone in society gets to do that, even with a few free-riders, everyone ends up better off.
Obviously one way to organise the universally better off thing is to turn every interaction of this kind into a contractual agreement. But this is not how we deal with interactions between neighbours, generally. So you just act flexibly for others when asked unless you've got a fairly strong reason not to (including them constantly making unreasonable demands).
Yet the neighbor is still complaining and wants her to turn it down, claiming that she (the neighbor) is unusually sensitive to noise due to some kind of ear or mental condition.
Delicate Daisy should buy ear plugs.
Alice is playing by the rules.
Daisy has a problem, which you correctly point out, won't particularly be solved by Alice stifling herself.
But Daisy doesn't execute any agency to solve her own problems, she doesn't request a favor from Alice, she instead complains. She feels entitled to complain to someone playing by the rules.
One can wonder if Daisy in fact enjoys her problem, and gets real satisfaction out of using it as a club to get others to bend to her will. Because while the degree varies, people do enjoy dominating others.
This reads like quite a lot of bile towards a hypothetical person who doesn't like loud music.
You don't know what the neighbour's tried, you're putting a lot of weight on the word 'complained', which can cover a range of different approaches, and you're speculating about her nefarious motivations.
In my experience with neighbours, co-workers, generally other people, it's best to assume that people aren't being dicks unless you have positive reasons to think they are. And to lean towards accommodation.
Interesting question. Not sure I agree with the premise, in that certainly where I live, I don't think there is a clear objective line of acceptable noise dictated by 'social norms'. I'd say that the social expectation should and does include reference to others' preferences and your own situation.
So if someone has a reason to dislike noise, you make more effort to avoid noise. But on the other hand, you're more tolerant of noise if, e.g. someone's just had a baby, than if they just like playing TV at maximum volume. Bit of give and take and all that.
Basically, I don't think there's really a hard division between 'objective requirement' and 'completely free favour you might choose to do' (unless the objective requirement is REALLY low, like at the legal level. But at that point doing what's 'required' would be seen almost universally as asshattery).
Social interaction is more complicated and blurry like that
Haven't seen this solution elsewhere: I think it's actually strong on its own terms, but doubt it's what Eliezer wants (I'm 90% sure it's about AI boxing, exploiting the reliability granted by Unbreakable Vows and parsetongue)
However, this being said, I think Harry could avoid imminent death by pointing out that if a prophecy says he'll destroy the world, then he presumably can't do that dead. Given that we have strong reasons to think prophecies can't be avoided, this doesn't mean killing him is safe, but the opposite - what Voldemort should do is make him immortal. Then the point at which he destroys the world can be delayed indefinitely. Most likely to a point when Voldemort gets bored and wants to die, after the heat death of the universe.
This isn't a great solution for Harry, because the best way to keep him alive would be paralysed/imprisoned in some fairly extreme way. But it should hit the criteria. The one really big point against it is that all this info is very available to Voldemort, so not sure why he hasn't come up with it himself.
And then one year Baba Yaga agreed to teach Battle Magic at Hogwarts, under an old and respected truce." Professor Quirrell looked... angry, a look such as Harry had rarely seen on him. "But she was not trusted, and so there was invoked a curse.
And although Perenelle was new-come into the beauty of her youth, her heart was already blacker than Baba Yaga's own -"
Ah, yes, Perenelle, the beautiful and covetous. Perenelle seduced the Dark Lady over the months, with gentle touches and flirtations and the shy pretense of innocence. The Dark Lady's heart was captured, and they became lovers. And then one night Perenelle whispered how she had heard of Baba Yaga's shape-changing power and how this thought had enflamed her desires; thus Perenelle swayed Baba Yaga to come to her with the Stone in hand, to assume many guises in a single night, for their pleasures. Among other forms Perenelle bid Baba Yaga take the form of a man; and they lay together in the fashion of a man and a woman.
Does anyone else think this reads like Quirrel has an awful lot of emotional connection to and personal memories about this story, almost as if it were Baba Yaga speaking about herself in the 3rd person? Could Riddle or Quirrel have come across a Baba Yaga horcrux? The resurrection stone, perhaps? Earlier than that? Why would Perenelle share these secrets? How would anyone know these details if Baba Yaga was dead and Perenelle had not shared them? No one else would have been present for those private moments.
And what are the odds that a Dark Lady like Baba Yaga did not have a horcrux?
In Ch. 70 Quirrel makes a point during the S.P.H.E.W. confrontation with the headmaster that Dark Ladies are also underrepresented, and that few could name one except Baba Yaga. Self-reference?
She would probably need to be faking the map labelling her (and Harry?) as Tom Riddle, but a sorceress as powerful as Baba Yaga combined with the secrets of Salazar, who created the Hogwarts security system in the first place, could probably accomplish that.
Notice what Quirrel does and doesn't say in parseltongue:
"None of it iss known to me to be falsse," said Professor Quirrell. "Telling a tale implies filling in certain gaps; I was not present to observe when Perenelle seduced Baba Yaga. The bassicss sshould be mosstly correct, I think."
I love this idea in general: but don't see how he could have faked the map, given:
"Did you tamper with thiss map to achieve thiss ressult, or did it appear before you by ssurprisse?"
"Wass ssurprisse," replied Professor Quirrell, with an overtone of hissing laughter. "No trickss."
View more: Next
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
You are a walking biological weapon, try to sterilize yourself and your clothes as much as possible first, and quarantine yourself until any novel (to the 13th century) viruses are gone. Try to avoid getting smallpox and any other prevalent ancient disease you're not immune to.
Have you tried flying into a third world nation today and dragging them out of backwardness and poverty? What would make it easier in the 13th century?
If you can get past those hurdles the obvious benefits are mathematics (Arabic numerals, algebra, calculus) and standardized measures (bonus points if you can reconstruct the metric system fairly accurately), optics, physics, chemistry, metallurgy, electricity, and biology. For physics specifically the ability to do statics for construction and ballistics for cannons and thermodynamics for engines and other machines (and lubrication and hydraulics are important too). High carbon steel for machine tools, the assembly line and interchangeable parts. Steel reinforced concrete would be nice, but not a necessity. Rubber. High quality glass for optics; necessary for microscopes for biology to progress past "We don't believe tiny organisms make us sick". The scientific method (probably goes without saying) to keep things moving instead of turning back into alchemy and bloodletting.
Electricity and magnetism eventually; batteries won't cut it for industrial scale use of electricity (electrolysis, lighting for longer working hours, arc furnaces for better smelting) so building workable generators that can be connected to steam engines is vital.
Other people have mentioned medicine, which is pretty important from an ethical perspective, but difficult to reverse centuries of bad practice. Basic antibiotics and sterilization is probably the best you'd be able to do, but without the pharmaceutical industry there's a lot of stuff you can't do. If you know how to make ether, at least get anesthesia started.
"Have you tried flying into a third world nation today and dragging them out of backwardness and poverty? What would make it easier in the 13th century?"
I think this is an interesting angle. How comparable are 'backward' nations today with historical nations? Obvious differences in terms of technology existing in modern third world even if the infrastructure/skills to create and maintain it don't. In that way, I suppose they're more comparable to places in the very early middle ages, when people used Roman buildings etc. that they coudn't create themselves. But I also wonder how 13th century government compares to modern governments that we'd consider 'failed states'.