Hi! I am socially retarded... There are many things the standard human was born with the capacity to grasp that I never can. The word "autism" appears to me to be being thrown around a lot lately, mostly as a meaningless word used to convey that one thinks another is simply not normal but when I first noticed how heavily users on the internet threw around the word two years ago I identified as such for a bit to make conversation more expedient. I am able to comprehend metaphors and similes and such for some reason, but things such as having the capacity to roleplay or being able to perceive what I should do in any given scenario to maximize the happiness of the human before me is incomprehensible to me. I like to think I am a purely logical thinker and was born to be such but I'd rather not start talking about that right now...

My education is pretty poor. Eighth grade. I have read next to no books, and the internet was what taught me to speak English as I do today. My English was very basic prior, even though it is my only language. I looked up in the dictionary every word I encountered that I couldn't define for two years, until I decided that refining my expression in the English language for the human's sake was a waste of time and stopped caring.

I feel like I can't express more about myself without delving right into my philosophy, the likes of which I used to contest with every mind I came across indiscriminately only to have them still disagree with me 99% of the time despite my cornering them in argument, and I don't really want to because I've had such bad experiences with convincing others to think like me. The downvote system on this website is kind of intimidating as well... my first post on this website got downvoted once almost immediately and I'm not sure if I can tell by whom. I hate systems that enable passive-aggression like that. Even conversing in real life is awful because others can use petty tricks to try to emotionally manipulate you instead of actually just explaining why you should think like them via argument. It's just masturbation for them, and they have no interest in convincing you to think like them. I suppose that is one thing I feel I can safely say about my philosophy... I don't see my opinions as just opinions, I see them as an objective rationalization of this universe the likes of which one cannot disagree with without simply being wrong. I want to rationalize everything too, you know. I used to be indoctrinated to the point where I thought simply asking questions was evil. All I'd ever wanted to do was rationalize to all my understanding of the universe to objectively minimize their pain and maximize their pleasure for the sake of forcing the world to tend to its most rational end as i perceive it but whatever... I'm still being impertinent with whatever I'm writing here since I don't think just up and writing out my opinions would be a good idea.

I have very few interests. I really only care about defining right and wrong, and giving my philosophy to others, which I haven't done for a very long time. One day I hope to start expressing my opinions on what is right and wrong in a formal manner just to have done so in my lifetime. I apologize for the entirely vague post... I still haven't really any idea how this site works but if I ever debate users here or something I won't hesitate to express my opinions in their entirety.

Many leading AGI thinkers have their own pet idea about what AGI should do. Few to none endorse Tool AI. If it was obvious all the leading AGI thinkers would endorse it.

Both Andrew Ng and Jeff Hawkins think that tool AI is the most likely approach.

The question then becomes: is it worthwhile to hedge against other outcomes?

Yes, but it's very different to say "you should hedge against the case where you get a medical disability and the Singularity doesn't happen" and "you should do what would have put you in the best position today." My parents, both looking at retirement shortly, maxed out their retirement accounts and got significant benefit from doing so; I have a similar disposition and financial situation but 2015 looks very different from 1985. It is not enough for me that I won't be taxed on the money after 2048 once I start to draw it down; the cost in flexibility from not being able to invest it in a Bitcoin-like opportunity is really high.

So it seems to me that any subsidy that beats the penalty (in the US, I believe you pay the tax you would have paid plus 10%) is worthwhile because it's still free money (even if you pay the penalty), but beyond that it may be better to buy disability insurance (or something similar) than do pure retirement saving.

Two related articles: Saving for the long term, Why is it rational to invest in retirement? I don't get it.

This type of man who is devoted to the study of wisdom is always most unlucky in everything, and particularly when it comes to procreating children; I imagine this is because Nature wants to ensure that the evils of wisdom shall not spread further throughout mankind.

Erasmus, The Praise of Folly

Neat! I didn't know that was a thing. Society consistently surprises me by being cooler and bigger than I expect.

Edit: I'm trying to find out what 'SCA' stands for and the first google result was "Sudden Cardiac Arrest." Google knows me way too freaking well.

"Don’t let anybody discourage you or tell you that intelligence doesn’t pay or that success in life has to be achieved through dishonesty or through sheer blind luck. That is not true. Real success is never accidental and real happiness cannot be found except by the honest use of your intelligence."

Ayn Rand

All the logical work (if not all the rhetorical work) in “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” is being done by the decision about what aspects of liberty are essential, and how much safety is at stake. The slogan might work as a reminder not to make foolish tradeoffs, but the real difficulty is in deciding which tradeoffs are wise and which are foolish. Once we figure that out, we don’t need the slogan to remind us; before we figure it out, the slogan doesn’t really help us.

--Eugene Volokh, "Liberty, safety, and Benjamin Franklin"

A good example of the risk of reading too much into slogans that are basically just applause lights. Also reminds me of "The Choice between Good and Bad is not a matter of saying 'Good!' It is about deciding which is which."

"soon" can vary quite a bit, depending on what is false. Following the link, I'm skeptical of "From the study of that single pebble you could see the laws of physics and all they imply." Specifically, I'm skeptical that one can deduce the parts of the laws of physics that matter under extreme conditions (general relativity, physics at Plank-scale energies) by examining the behavior of matter under benchtop conditions, at achievable levels of accuracy. The motivation for building instruments like the LHC in the first place is that they allow probing parts of physical laws which would otherwise produce exceeding small effects or exceedingly rare phenomena.

If you read the comment thread on the source, you see that it isn't actually philosophy boo, empiricism yeah, but rather an internecine conflict within academic political science.

Presenter: [Snipping 75 minutes of reading without eye contact.] "...so as you can see, I have reconceptualized and reconsidered and -icized and -atized until this problem I talk about is clearly both like and unlike what Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Plato, and Arendt implied by choosing one word instead of a universe of other words in these few sentences no one else has really talked much about."

Theory Search Committee Member: "Well, certainly, but since we have clear answers about this philosophical problem deriving from Augustine's flirtation with manichaeism [snipping 15 minutes of bibliographic citations] ... what could we turn to in order to understand why what you have presented improves our understanding of the problem at hand?"

Audience Member In the Back: "Data."*

*This totally happened.

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