Taking advice because it's consistent and sounds reasonable, rather than because it's worked in practice.

Gatekeeper looking for AI. (Won two games before.) I'll pay zero or low stakes if I lose, and want the AI to offer as least as much as I do.

I don't believe any human can convince me. I believe there exist possible defense strategies that protect against arbitrary inputs and are easily learnt with training, but I'm not confident I'm there yet so it's quite possible a transhuman intelligence would find the remaining cracks.

I would like to play an AI.

Just won my second game as Gatekeeper. Hungry for more. AIs, feel free to contact me.

I've read the logs of the SoundLogic vs Tuxedage AI-box experiment, and confirm that they follow the rules.

Accountability check!

Did you do it? How'd it go?

From Jacques Vallee, Messengers of Deception...

'Then he posed a question that, obvious as it seems, had not really occurred to me: “What makes you think that UFOs are a scientific problem?”

I replied with something to the effect that a problem was only scientific in the way it was approached, but he would have none of that, and he began lecturing me. First, he said, science had certain rules. For example, it has to assume that the phenomena it is observing is natural in origin rather than artificial and possibly biased. Now the UFO phenomenon could be controlled by alien beings. “If it is,” added the Major, “then the study of it doesn’t belong to science. It belongs to Intelligence.” Meaning counterespionage. And that, he pointed out, was his domain. *

“Now, in the field of counterespionage, the rules are completely different.” He drew a simple diagram in my notebook. “You are a scientist. In science there is no concept of the ‘price’ of information. Suppose I gave you 95 per cent of the data concerning a phenomenon. You’re happy because you know 95 per cent of the phenomenon. Not so in intelligence. If I get 95 per cent of the data, I know that this is the ‘cheap’ part of the information. I still need the other 5 percent, but I will have to pay a much higher price to get it. You see, Hitler had 95 per cent of the information about the landing in Normandy. But he had the wrong 95 percent!”

“Are you saying that the UFO data we us to compile statistics and to find patterns with computers are useless?” I asked. “Might we be spinning our magnetic tapes endlessly discovering spurious laws?”

“It all depends on how the team on the other side thinks. If they know what they’re doing, there will be so many cutouts between you and them that you won’t have the slightest chance of tracing your way to the truth. Not by following up sightings and throwing them into a computer. They will keep feeding you the information they want you to process. What is the only source of data about the UFO phenomenon? It is the UFOs themselves!”

Some things were beginning to make a lot of sense. “If you’re right, what can I do? It seems that research on the phenomenon is hopeless, then. I might as well dump my computer into a river.”

“Not necessarily, but you should try a different approach. First you should work entirely outside of the organized UFO groups; they are infiltrated by the same official agencies they are trying to influence, and they propagate any rumour anyone wants to have circulated. In Intelligence circles, people like that are historical necessities. We call them ‘useful idiots’. When you’ve worked long enough for Uncle Sam, you know he is involved in a lot of strange things. The data these groups get is biased at the source, but they play a useful role.

“Second, you should look for the irrational, the bizarre, the elements that do not fit...Have you ever felt that you were getting close to something that didn’t seem to fit any rational pattern yet gave you a strong impression that it was significant?”'

I never understood that... I remember when I was in elementary school there was a sign in the library that said something like "Don't dog-ear your books... you wouldn't like it if someone folded your ear over, so don't do it to your book." What?

People are weird. I don't like music either. I mean, what's the point? For that matter, why do people like sex? Why do they LIKE to eat food, or get hungry for that matter, all things I have never experienced myself? More things that make absolutely no sense to me. I mean, obviously those serve a biological purpose, but I mean something deeper than a utilitarian reason. ALTHOUGH I do associate certain songs with things I like in a pavlovian sort of way, and so there actually is some music I like in a sense, but not for its own accord. For instance, certain video game music, just because I liked the video games that I was playing while I was hearing the music. But I would never, ever, ever derive any enjoyment from just listening to the music, I'd have to be playing the game. Though I may hum those songs while I'm running if it's a game with lots of running, like canabalt or doom. I don't know how many hundreds of miles I have run endlessly humming the canabalt song. Unfortunately humming it doesn't seem to give me the power to run 100+ mph :(.

Vanvier, do human infants and toddlers deserve moral consideration primarily on account of their potential to become rational adult humans? Or are they valuable in themselves? Young human children with genetic disorders are given love, care and respect - even if the nature of their illness means they will never live to see their third birthday. We don't hold their lack of "potential" against them. Likewise, pigs are never going to acquire generative syntax or do calculus. But their lack of cognitive sophistication doesn't make them any less sentient.