In response to RIP Doug Engelbart
Comment author: Discredited 04 July 2013 03:16:06AM *  8 points [-]

Every time I hear "Rest in Peace" my mind corrects with "...except not resting or at peace". Does anyone have a secular, naturalistic world view analogue? Like "whom we should remember with honor", but catchy.

Comment author: shminux 02 July 2013 08:09:26AM 6 points [-]

Who are the (remaining) PCs in the story? Harry, Dumbledore, Quirrell, Moody... Anyone else?

Comment author: Discredited 02 July 2013 12:22:51PM *  14 points [-]

Draco and Lucius, Snape, Bellatrix, Amelia Bones. Maybe the Weasley parents or Nicholas Flamel. I haven't given up on Minerva. Grindelwald is still alive and undemented.

Comment author: loserthree 30 June 2013 08:25:32AM 2 points [-]

Thanks.

My infatuation with Quirrell might have faded a bit due to inactivity, but that thread has mortally wounded it. This Hanson guy is so deeply unmarketable that he made me stop liking a fictional character that might have been based on him.

The part where he marginalizes the suffering of rape victims and that fact that this site still associates with him solidifies the "Less Wrong is not a place I can bring people" feeling I've kind of struggled with for a couple years now.

That's two cringe-inducing passages of text in one day. Honestly, I liked the one where Hermione died better.

Comment author: Discredited 30 June 2013 11:23:11AM *  17 points [-]

Robin often displays unusual confusions. I think that stems from a reliance on his explicit memory over implicit memory. If he doesn't have a theory to account for why society fails to distinguish songs by whether their lyrics are fictional, as we do with literature, then he considers that a puzzle to solve, even if he's never wanted society to draw that category to aid him in selecting songs.

So when Robin asks, "Why do we appear to value X more than Y", he's not making any claim about how he feels about X and Y. He disregards his feelings and intuitions, because they would mask opportunities to improve his explicit, formal, verbal, theoretical understanding.

This distinction between questions as a tool to point out when the audience is wrong and as a tool of apolitical inquiry closely mirrors the difference between questions as requests for favors and questions as inquiries. It's also similar to questions as argumentative challenges vs questions as inquiries.

Comment author: peter_hurford 20 June 2013 03:13:45AM 7 points [-]

I'm not a negative enough of a utilitarian to agree to this. Any sort of sterilization I'd do would be in the first world, where I think lives are almost certainly net positive.

And even if, somehow, getting people to stop existing was the thing to do, I imagine there are more efficient methods.

Comment author: Discredited 23 June 2013 04:54:56AM 0 points [-]

Getting people to stop existing might not be the right thing to do, but there are many people who should not be created. All else equal, I feel people whose children would be at a high risk for horrible diseases like depression should avoid procreating until the state of genetic engineering or embryo selection is much advanced (in both reliability and generality of factors identified).

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 07 June 2013 09:34:03PM 20 points [-]

An interesting question is to what extent a similar phenomenon is present in human relationships.

Comment author: Discredited 17 June 2013 04:13:51AM *  3 points [-]

Well, not at all for the literal complexity of agents, because we don't estimate the complexity of our peers. Aristotle thought the heart was the seat of intelligence, Shannon thought AGI could be built in a year, everyone and their mother anthropomorphizes inanimate objects like smoke alarms and printers.

I suspect perceived character traits that engender distrust, the Dark Triad traits, make the trait-possessor seem complex not because their brain must be described in more bits absolutely, but conditionally given the brain of the character judge. That is, we require a larger encoding diff to predict the behavior of people who display unfamiliar desires and intents, or to predict them with comparable accuracy as one does for one's warm, honest, emotionally stable peer group. For example, someone who appears paranoid is displaying extreme caution in situations the character judge finds forthright and nonthreatening, an extra piece of situational context to the other person's decision making.

This is a poor explanation overall because we're much less likely to distrust atypically nice humane people than Machiavellian, sub-psychopath people, even if they're both less conditionally compressible. It takes a lot of niceness (Stepford Wives) before the uncanny-differential-encoding-valley reaction trips.

Edit: This might have been uncharitable. People who are more prone to lying may be more absolutely complex, because lying skillfully requires keeping track of ones lies and building further lies to support them, while honest beliefs can simply be verified against reality. People who decide by a few fixed, stable criteria (e.g. always voting for the nominated candidate of their political party) might be called trustworthy in the sense of being reliable (if not reliably pro-social). Fulfilling promises and following contracts also make one more trustworthy, in both the weak sense of predictability and the stronger sense of moral behavior. Yudkowsky makes the argument that moral progress tends to produce simplified values.

Comment author: shminux 12 June 2013 05:02:05PM 0 points [-]

Does he define "conscious"?

Comment author: Discredited 13 June 2013 06:07:47PM *  3 points [-]

No. Elsewhere he has said "I believe that consciousness is the way information feels when being processed", but in this talk he seems to make a little bit of a retreat. He describes a positive singularity with p-zombie AI/robots that have perception and appear conscious, but aren't "aware" of the world around them. He makes no clarification of how perception differs from awareness and doesn't mention introspection at all.

Comment author: sixes_and_sevens 30 May 2013 08:24:09PM 1 point [-]

I think this is analogous to socially-acceptable conspicuous consumption. If you want to demonstrate / obtain desirable characteristics without appearing narcissistic and shallow, develop a virtuous-looking hobby that fosters those characteristics.

Comment author: Discredited 31 May 2013 03:06:26PM 0 points [-]

What? Rock climbing demonstrates depth? Circus skills are virtuous?

Which hobbies are especially shallow and narcissistic? Arts, crafts, gardening, cooking? Team sport, extreme sport, cycling, karate, yoga? Romance novels, short films, video games? Genealogy, collecting, puzzle solving? Card games, brewing, stage magic, lock picking? Sailing, camping, fishing, geocaching, trainspotting?

You are right that a cluster exists, and not everyone will be a con-langing, rocket building, capoeira fighter, but the attributes you're naming don't select for that group (or any group really).

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