If a theist is a good person, that theist already is a good person, whether God is real or not.

The relevant question is whether the good person would remain good after they discover God is not real. My hunch is that most people who are good would stay that way.

But I like this point:

Whatever the truth is, the hypothetical frightened father - and the very real frightened theists, such as yourself - already are living under whatever conditions actually hold.

And I will take it with me.

Not so much ideas as things that I think would be helpful but will be buried in obscurity at the level I am.

That being said, this is helped more by learning the basics through reading the sequences than playing status games. My thoughts on status should be taken with the clarification that I am primarily seeking to learn and am thinking about status because I find it interesting.

If I can take my comments and change my behavior so as to be looking forward and increase my status without hampering my ability to learn... why shouldn't I? When I look at the various status levels here at LessWrong I notice the highest level I can see, which is the one I mentioned in my previous comment.

These comments are meant to be taken as observations for people who are curious or interested. I am not nearly as concerned with status as these comments may imply. I just know status is there and wonder about it in the same way I wonder about most things.

Experience can provide an excellent dummy check to make sure there isn't an obvious counter-argument or flaw in something that you are unable to see because you haven't seen it yet. There is much to be said from simply going out there and trying the theory; the results of trying are experience. When you can translate your experience into Bayesian terms you have succeeded.

I have no problem with deferring to someone who has more experience than I do as long as I trust their methodology. Once that trust is gone I start doubting the truth of their experience. I don't think their experience says what they think it says; they haven't translated it correctly.

Sometimes in an argument, an older opponent might claim that perhaps as I grow older, my opinions will change, or that I'll come around on the topic. Implicit in this claim is the assumption that age or quantity of experience is a proxy for legitimate authority. In and of itself, such "life experience" is necessary for an informed rational worldview, but it is not sufficient.

If there is a high rate of conversation as people grow older than it makes sense to predict that you will come around eventually. People here tell me the same thing about my religious beliefs. The consensus is that as I grow older in the Way of Bayes I will eventually identify as atheist. I don't think this implies the proxy that you mention. Quantity of experience isn't legitimate authority but if I (a) predict you will change and (b) predict that I am unable to exact the change but rather (c) the change will happen on your own accord sometime in the future than I have no reason to talk to you. Telling you my prediction is halting the conversation, but the real conversation halter is whatever is causing you not to switch now.

But really, in the end, I do agree with you. I ran out of time and had to cut this comment short. Sorry.

There is a slight difference between being a top contributor and being famous as I am mentioning it here.

My current karma experiment is deliberately not posting comments I think are worth less than 2 karma unless I have a compelling reason to do so (such as asking for help or information). My goal is to increase the quality of my comments to the point that someone could think, "What has MrHen posted recently?" and the answer is more impressive than a series of one-liners and nitpicky comments.

Ideally, this will increase the weight of my words to the point that when I speak, people will listen. It is a pure, straightforward status grab, but one that doesn't involve gobbling up karma. The pinnacle of the status tree at LessWrong is to have someone think, "I, the reader, am wrong" instead of, "they, the writer, are wrong."

I am compiling a mental list for LW status games, rewards, and penalties that is similar to the karma list above. I am not much for status games but the gaming here seems to be harder to avoid than in real life. ("Avoid" is the wrong term but conveys the right intent. Status games are hard to "avoid.")

My biggest regret with the above karma list is that I have no good way to verify or catalogue my comments and their karma. LW just doesn't have any tools to make such a thing easy. I worry that the status list will be even further removed from reality -- possibly to the point of being unable to predict anything at all.

In any case, I like to think that I am getting better in regards to comment quality and topical knowledge. My karma rating keeps going up, so that's a good sign.

EDIT: Replaced "I think will be rated lower than 2 karma" with "I think are worth less than 2 karma."

Yeah, I was way off. I didn't think people would be that interested in karma theory. I think the big oops was the first bullet point.

The atoms of a screwdriver don't have tiny little XML tags inside describing their "objective" purpose. The designer had something in mind, yes, but that's not the same as what happens in the real world. If you forgot that the designer is a separate entity from the designed thing, you might think, "The purpose of the screwdriver is to drive screws" - as though this were an explicit property of the screwdriver itself, rather than a property of the designer's state of mind. You might be surprised that the screwdriver didn't reconfigure itself to the flat-head screw, since, after all, the screwdriver's purpose is to turn screws.

After someone points this out, the incorrect response is to start adding clauses:

The screwdriver's purpose is to turn Phillips-head screws.

Or:

The screwdriver's purpose is to turn screws designed to be turned by the screwdriver.

People are more likely to do this to something other than screwdrivers, obviously.

"The purpose of love is..."
"Eyebrows are there so that..."

It is easy to misinterpret the point of this post as claiming that the purpose assigned to an object is wrong or inadequate or hopelessly complex. That isn't what is being said.

What is the point of this post? I seem to have missed it entirely. Can anyone help me out?

The mirror challenge for decision theory is seeing which option a choice criterion really endorses. If your stated moral principles call for you to provide laptops to everyone, does that really endorse buying a $1 million gem-studded laptop for yourself, or spending the same money on shipping 5000 OLPCs?

Is the point that predicting the end result of particular criterion is difficult because bias gets in the way? And, because it is difficult, start small with stuff like gene fitness and work up to bigger problems like social ethics?

Where is the pure moral reasoner [...] whose trustworthy output we can contrast to human rationalizations of the same utility function? [...] Why, it's our old friend the alien god, of course! Natural selection is guaranteed free of all mercy, all love, all compassion, all aesthetic sensibilities, all political factionalism, all ideological allegiances, all academic ambitions, all libertarianism, all socialism, all Blue and all Green.

Or... is the point that natural selection is a great way to expose the biases at work in our ethics choice criterion?

I am not tracking on something here. This is a summary of the points in the post as I see them:

• We are unable to accurately study how closely the results of our actions match our own predictions of those results.

• The equivalent problem in decision theory is that we are unable to take a set of known choice criteria and predict which choice will be made given a particular environment. In other words, we think we know what we would/should do in event X but we are wrong.

• We possess the ability to predict any particular action from all possible choice criteria.

• Is it possible to prove that a particular action does or does not follow from certain choice criteria, thereby avoiding our tendency to predict anything from everything?

• We need a bias free system to study that allows us to measure our predictions without interfering with the result of the system.

• Natural selection presents a system whose only "goal" is inclusive genetic fitness. There is no bias.

• Examples show that our predictions of natural selection reveal biases in ourselves. Therefore, our predictions were biased.

• To remove our bias with regards to human ethics, we should use natural selection as a calibration tool.

I feel like the last point skipped over a few points. As best as I can tell, these belong just before the last point:

• When our predictions of the bias-proof system are accurate, they will be predictions without bias.

• Using the non-biased predictors we found to study the bias-proof system, we can study other systems with less bias.

Using this outline, it seems like the takeaway is, "Don't study ethics until after you studied natural selection because there is too much bias involved in studying ethics."

Can someone tell me if I am correct? A simple yes or no is cool if you don't feel like typing up a whole lot. Even, "No, not even close," will give me more information than I have right now.

As a counterpoint, my highest rated comments are huge walls of text. This could be because (a) I don't make a lot of jokes or (b) I make crappy jokes or (c) people like my walls of text more than the typical wall of text or (d) something else.

I keep an eye on my karma and have noticed these things that I believe are related to your post:

• Talking about the karma system has fallen out of favor. I think people are getting tired of it.

• Asking why something was downvoted usually brings more upvotes unless you really, really deserved the downvotes. This latter case will probably be swarmed with downvotes.

• Some (many?) people vote with an end score in mind. These meta-voters have more affect on threshold comments that fluctuate between -2 and 2.

• Long conversations will generally pull between -1 and +2 per post. Most of my karma comes from lengthy discussions in the comments. Even if the top level post was only rated +2 I will net almost 100 karma points from the post and comments. (Note: I haven't actually added this up. It may be closer to 75 karma.)

• Quick responses pointing out third alternatives or simple problems get upvoted and usually roam between +2 and +14. If you want to get your karma higher, this is the easiest way. Comment immediately after a post is submitted and point out the most obvious flaw respectfully and concisely. Don't try to make a point, just note an error. If you get in before the rest of us, you will probably get +4 or higher.

• Long responses pointing out serious problems get upvoted but have a lower chance of pulling large amounts of karma than quick responses. However, after the first wave of quick responses, only the longer comments are true candidates for higher karma. I suspect that a long response to a quick comment has a good chance to do well, but haven't really watched those comments yet.

• Jokes are upvoted when they are either extremely funny or solidly funny and on topic. Randomness is upvoted if it is an inside joke, otherwise stays around +0. Sarcasm is appreciated but has the problem of being mistaken for nonsarcasm.

• Extending the point or conversation of a top-level post gets upvoted. Most of mine get between +2 and +4. Examples would be almost every comment I have made while reading the sequences.

• Aggressiveness is generally poorly received on technical topics. Aggressiveness is easier to get away with when dealing with fuzzy topics. I attribute this mostly to margin of error. Technical topics are harder to be bulletproof. I am still having a hard time predicting which non-technical top level posts are voted up. I suspect this is because I don't know what is already been discussed or that the issue is a technical topic that I have misidentified.

• Self-depreciation is a huge karma pull. Both my highest rated post and comment were essentially me slamming myself over and over. Each were voted higher than +20.

• Bullet point lists of extensions, ideas, questions, and so on seem to do about as well or better than long paragraphs of text. The walls of text may be harder to skim for goodies or the bullet point list better organized?

• Non-aggressive requests for clarification or information are not generally downvoted. Mine seem to roam between 0 and +2 karma. If the question and response delve into a lengthy but friendly conversation, I seem to get between 0 and +2 karma for each of my comments. If a solid agreement or conclusion is reached, the capping comment gets about double whatever the individual comments were getting.

• Posting nearby "famous" people amps up the karma action. Replying to EY, Alicorn, Vladimir_Nesov, pjeby, et al will increase the amount of people that read your comments. The reasons for this are varied. The four I used here are just names that popped into my head. Also, some people seem to vote up conversations they are in while others do not. A few downvote anyone disagreeing with them. The people that matter generally fit these criteria: (a) top contributer (b) easily recognizable name (c) frequent poster/commenter (d) abnormal amount of recent activity (e) holds atypical beliefs for the community (f) a troll.

• Better grammar, spelling, and language increases the likelihood that your comment will move upward faster.

• Comments quickly upvoted higher than typical seem to either (a) go through the roof or (b) get meta-voted back to between +1 and +3.

• Telling people to vote in a particular way tends to produce easy to predict results but not in a manner that is easy to describe.

And oh wow did that get long. Do note that this is all being typed from the top of my head using myself and the comments I read as an example. Naturally, the above does not dictate how people vote.

EDIT: I guess for fun, I predict that this comment gets ROT13orgjrra cbfvgvir gjb naq cyhf fvk xneznROT13.

EDIT 2: I would normally downvote a post such as this but elsewhere in the comments you seemed to have received the message and was wondering about deleting it. So I just left it as it is. Also relevant: I generally do not upvote jokes unless they are truly amazing.

Darwinian Evolution is irrelevant to the whole discussion.

I think I understand the point you are trying to make with this. The questions I have in response are these:

• When does Darwiniain Evolution become relevant for the discussion of life as we know it?
• Where does your theory of supernatural creation stop and natural cause and effect take over?
• If I were able to study, examine, and see the original supernatural creation of life, would I be able to explain it naturally? In other words, did the supernatural creator use already existing natural components and processes? Or did it create new components and processes? Or... ?
• If I were able to replicate the supernatural phenomena of creation using natural components could would this be evidence for or against your theory of supernatural creation?

You talk about DNA, replication, bacterium and other complicated terms. I don't know anything about these terms so I am not able to debate you on the particulars. The questions above are not a challenge. They are intended to clarify what you meant in terms I can understand.

Rearranging the cards in a deck has no statistical consequence. Cheating on your spouse significantly alters the odds of certain things happening.

If you add the restriction that there are no consequences, there wouldn't really be much point in doing it because its not like you get sex as a result. That would be a consequence.

The idea that something immoral shouldn't be immoral if no one catches you and nothing bad happens as a result is an open problem as far as I know. Most people don't like such an idea but I hear the debate surface from time to time. (Usually by people trying to convince themselves that whatever they just did wasn't wrong.)

In addition, cutting a deck of cards does have an obvious effect. There is no statistical consequence but obviously you are not going to get the card you were originally going to be dealt.