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For the same reason EY supports the censoring of posts on topics he has decided are dangerous for the world to see. He generalizes that if he is willing to hide facts that work against his interests, that others similarly situated to him, but with different interests will also be willing to work surreptitiously.
I'm relatively new to the site and I wasn't aware of any censorship.I suppose I can imagine that it might be useful and even necessary to censor things, but I have an intuitive aversion to the whole business. Plus I'm not sure how practical it is, since after you posted that I googled lesswrong censorship and found out what was being censored. I have to say, if they're willing to censor stuff that causes nightmares then they ought to censor talk of conspiracies, as I can personally attest that that has caused supreme discomfort. They are a very harmful meme and positing a conspiracy can warp your sense of reality. I have bipolar, and I was taking a medicine that increases the level of dopamine in my brain to help with some of the symptoms of depression. Dopamine (I recently rediscovered) increased your brain's tendency to see patterns, and I had to stop talking a very helpful medication after reading this site. Maybe it would have happened anyway, but the world of conspiracy theories is very dark and my journey there was triggered by his writings. I guess most of the content on this site is disorienting though, but perhaps some clarification about what he thinks the benefits of conspiracies are and their extent should be would help.
Also, the content on this site is pretty hard hitting in a lot of ways, I find it inconsistent to censor things to protect sensitive people who think about AI but not people who are sensitive to all the other things that are discussed here. I think it's emblematic of a broader problem with the community, which is that there's a strong ingroup outgroup barrier, which is a problem when you're trying to subsist on philanthropy and the ingroup is fairly tiny.
In response to
Open thread, 30 June 2014- 6 July 2014
Why do you think EY uses conspiracy in his fictional writing? He seems to use them in positive or at least not clearly negative light, which is not how I think of conspiracies at all. I notice that I am confused, so I'm trying to gather some other opinions.
I'm taking this course, I bought the recommended textbook as well.
In response to
Some alternatives to “Friendly AI”
With all these options, single choice voting is pretty clearly sub-optimal, Approval or Range Voting would be better.
May I know how Beeminder has helped in your weight loss?
I've had some success in the past, but I haven't been able to keep with my program long enough to achieve the results I want and I lost motivation. I don't really have a great deal of disposable income right now, so if I derailed a lot I probably would stop using it. I really like the graphs, and by themselves they are a good motivator, so the thought of losing them is a further motivator. Basically I've had a better diet I've been meaning to stick to and an exercise routine that I sometimes did, but this kept me on track and focused on results.
I think Catholic Church works like this. The middle level is bishop -- positions higher than this are (at least were at some point of history) more or less democratically voted, functions lower than this are like in the military, they have to obey completely.
That's a good point, I knew they elected the pope but I wasn't sure about the middle positions, I was thinking more about the size of the groups being an important factor when I compared the other system to the military.. And the Catholic Church is another example of an effective real world analog to a system I was thinking about hypothetically.
what was asked for was a system of selecting public officials
There are a lot of political system where the power flows from the top down. Monarchies, dictatorships, etc.
Your example would be, I guess, a junta?
What I had in mind was more a hybrid between feudalism and the democratic process originally described. Democratic, bottom up above a certain level, top down below a certain level. But the idea was promoting a single person from a small group to a small group of similarly promoted people and so on ad infinitum, concentrating power by either process. I'm thinking of a system that could be implemented in practice.
But if you can't see how it's similar at all then you aren't being very charitable and aren't trying very hard.
I am not very charitable and I don't see any reasons to try very hard. Any metaphor can be made to work with sufficient pushing, stretching, and averting eyes, but the question is why. Do you feel that putting up the US military as an example of a certain kind of voting systems provides some insight, some perspective otherwise unavailable? Do tell.
Well, the reasons to try hard are to be kind to others and to learn something yourself. Again, I never said it was an example of a voting system, what was asked for was a system of selecting public officials, and militaries are often public officials and it is not uncommon for them to change domains. The value is in taking a hypothetical system whose merits and weaknesses are difficult to evaluate, and comparing it to its closest analog in reality, which was my goal. I had come up with a system quite similar to the original query's idea, and the thought that it might be more effective in a top down fashion occurred to me, so it was even less different from the military than his idea, and both ideas fit the criteria of
methods for selecting important public officials from large populations that are arguably much better than the current standards as practiced in various modern democracies
but I think popular opinion is with the military.
Jesus is considerably more popular than the military. So?
the military is similar in many ways to option two, sans the election part
"Sans the election part", LOL. But I don't see how it's similar at all. Option two is a bottom-up approach where authority flows up. The military is a standard top-down command hierarchy where authority flows down. The privates don't get a say in who their sergeant will be and lieutenants do not recommend majors for promotion.
Yes, Jesus is popular than the military, and more highly regarded in US politics by a majority of people. The opinions of the majority being of significant importance in a democratic political system. And certainly, there are differences. The direction of authority, which is what elections provide, is one. And there are others I'm sure I'm not mentioning, but those related to elections and authority are the biggest. But if you can't see how it's similar at all then you aren't being very charitable and aren't trying very hard. Both systems are hierarchical, both involve the promotion of a small number from a small group to another small group which then promotes a small number and so on until there is a small number of people or a single person at the top.
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I think it stems from the Brennan's World weirdtopia, and the idea that making knowledge freely available makes it feel worthless, while making it restricted to members of a secretive group makes it feel as valuable and powerful as it actually is.
If something is valuable and powerful, and (big if) it's not harmful, plus it's extremely cheap to reproduce I see no reason not to distribute it freely. My confusion was that Brennan's world seems set in the future, and I got the sense that EY may have been in favor of it in some ways (perhaps that's mistaken). Since it seemed to be set in the future of our world, I got the sense that the Singularity had already happened. Maybe I just need to get to the fun sequence, but that particular future really made me uneasy,