Yet it seems odd, to say the least, to discount the well-being of people as their velocity increases.
Is it some kind of non-sequitur? How is it related to positive discounting?
if you decline to condemn them to death, how are they different from other “residents” in the distant future?
Probably because some are more real and others are less so.
if you decline to condemn them to death, how are they different from other “residents” in the distant future?
Probably because some are more real and others are less so.
Can you explain in more detail what you mean by this?
A ridiculous munchkin idea which has long been floating around this community is increasingly looking less ridiculous: transcranial direct current stimulation is shown to improve mental arithmetic and rote learning of things like times tables with differences significant even 6 months after training. Original paper.
Has it been demonstrated to be safe over a long period of time?
How can somebody (without access to a lab) practically implement that technique?
You have a spaceship. You believe that it will cease to exist if it passes the cosmological horizon. What empirical test are you failing?
I suppose I would not be failing an empirical test, but I would be going against the well established law of conservation of mass and energy, and we can conclude I am wrong with >99% certainty.
To prevent us from getting too hooked on the analogy and back to my original question, if there is a theory (Bohm) that cannot pass or fail an experimental test but does go against a well established principle (locality), why should we give it a second glance? (Again, not a rhetorical question.)
I believe the traditional example is a spacecraft passing over the cosmological horizon. We cannot observe this spacecraft, so the belief "things passing over the cosmological horizon cease to exist" cannot be experimentally proved or disproved. And yet, if there are large numbers of people on such a craft, their continued survival might mater a great deal to us. If we believe they will die, we will choose not to send them - which might impose heavy costs due to i.e. overpopulation.
The analogy to many-worlds seems obvious - if true, it would mean the existence of people we cannot experimentally verify. This could have implications for, say, the value of creating new minds, because they'll already exist somewhere else.
The analogy is hand-waving. If the spacecraft has gone over the cosmological horizon, how did you ever conclude that it exists in the first place? Such a conclusion would only be possible if you observed the spacecraft before it crossed over. In other words, it passed an experimental test.
You might value something you can't always see.
That didn't really answer the question. Can you give a context-specific answer?
I'm not saying the Bohm interpretation is wrong
Interpretations can't be wrong, otherwise they would not be interpretations. They also can't be right, for the same reason. Here I define"wrong" in the natural sciences sense, "failed an experimental test". And that's the only definition that matters when talking about QM (which is a natural science), as opposed to morality and stuff.
If interpretations cannot pass or fail an experimental test, what purpose do they serve?
(Not a rhetorical question; genuinely curious.)
In general I agree, and of course Copenhagen is nonsense, but I think you privilege the hypothesis of Many-Worlds over Bohm. You see, Bohm has an explanation for the Born probabilities---they are a stable equilibrium state called, appropriately, "quantum equilibrium". So there are not even any open questions.
And yes, Bohm is non-local, which you could say is a problem... or you could say it explains why quantum mechanics is different from classical mechanics. (Obviously no quantum theory is going to satisfy all our classical intuitions, or it wouldn't be a quantum theory at all!)
It doesn't fit with general relativity, you say? Yes, because none of them do. Quantum gravity doesn't... work, not with our current formalisms. This is the central problem of modern physics (that and dark energy, which most physicists think is related somehow).
And yes, Bohm is non-local, which you could say is a problem... or you could say it explains why quantum mechanics is different from classical mechanics.
I̶'̶m̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶s̶a̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶B̶o̶h̶m̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶p̶r̶e̶t̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶w̶r̶o̶n̶g̶ ̶(̶b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶I̶'̶m̶ ̶t̶o̶o̶ ̶i̶n̶e̶x̶p̶e̶r̶i̶e̶n̶c̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶e̶l̶d̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶a̶y̶)̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ I do not see how the above statement can be used to privilege Bohm over any other theory. If anything, shouldn't its non-locality lower our priors on its correctness?
He was saying that you should keep trying after most people would give up, not that you should expect everything to magically go your way.
Those two concepts have some overlap. Why should we use our energy trying to accomplish something that many have failed? Do we have good reason to discard the validity of their efforts? Are there good reasons to think our particular abilities are better suited to the task? Are we going to make some incremental progress that others can build on?
I would somewhat agree with this if the phrase "making mistakes" was removed. People generally have poor reasoning skills and make non-optimal choices >99% of the time. (Yes, I am including myself and you, the reader, in this generalization.)
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This comment will be heavy with jargon, to convey complex ideas with the minimum required words. That is what jargon is for, after all. The post's long enough even with this shortening.
Less Wrong inspires a feeling of wonder.
To see humans working seriously to advance the robot rebellion is inspiring. To become better, overcome the programming laid in by Azathoth and actually improve our future.
The audacity to challenge death itself, to reach for the stars, is breathtaking. The piercing insight in many of the works here is startling. And the gift of being able to find joy in the merely real again is priceless. It doesn't hurt that it's spearheaded by an extremely intelligent and honest person who's powers of written communication are among the greatest of his generation.
And that sense of awe and wonder makes people flinch. Especially people who have been trained to be wary of that sort of shit. Who've seen the glassed-over eyes of their fundamentalist families and the dazed ramblings of hippies named Storm. As much as HJPEV has tried to train himself to never flinch away from the truth, to never let his brain lie to him, MANY of us have been trained just as strongly to always flinch away from awe and wonder produced by charismatic people. In fact, if we had a "don't let your brain lie to you" instinct as strong as our "don't let awe and wonder seduce you into idiocy" instinct we'd be half way to being good rationalists already.
And honestly, that instinct is a good one. It saves us from insanity 98% of the time. But it'll occasionally result in a woo/cult-warning where one could genuinely and legitimately feel wonder and awe. I don't blame people for trusting their instincts and avoiding the site. And it'll mean we forever get people saying "I dunno what it is, but that Less Wrong site feels kinda cultish to me."
We're open, we're transparent, we are a positive force in the lives of our members. We've got nothing to fear, and that's why occasional accusations of cultishness will never stick. We've just got to learn to live with the vibe and realize that those who stick around long enough to look deeper will bear out that we're not.
It's nice to still have that awe and wonder somewhere. I wouldn't ever want to give that up just so a larger percentage of the skeptic community accepts us. That feeling is integral to this site, giving it up would kill LW for me.
I think this post can be modified, without much effort, to defend any pseudo-cult, or even a cheesy movie.