Your argument leaves out necessary steps. It is not a careful analysis, does not consider ways in which it might be mistaken, but gives rise to the impression that you wanted to get to your conclusion as quickly as possible.

There is, necessarily, absolutely no way to determine - given an algorithm - whether it is conscious or not. It is not even a formally undecidable statement!

It is unclear how this follows from anything you wrote.

consciousness refuses to be phrased formally (it is subjective, and computation is objective)

Consider tabooing words like "subjective" and "objective".

Have people discussed the field complementary to the ugh field? We might call these "mmm fields".

An "mmm field" could be thought of as a mental cluster that has a tantalizing glow of positive affect. One subtly flinches toward such a cluster whenever possible, which results in one getting "stuck" there and cycling through the associated mental sequences.

Among other things, it could be used to describe those troublesome wireheading patterns. I'm personally interested in using it in the post I'm writing on meditation.

The name is a nod to pjeby's "mmm test".

I don't know what to make of this:

Suicide note

Article

The man who took his own life on Harvard's campus Saturday left a 1,904-page suicide note online.

According to the Harvard Crimson, Mitchell Heisman wrote "Suicide Note," posted at http://suicidenote.info, while living in an apartment near the school. The note is a "sprawling series of arguments that touch upon historical, religious and nihilist themes," his mother, Lonni Heisman, told the Crimson. She said her son would have wanted people to know about his work.

The complex note, divided into four parts, touches on Christianity, the Holocaust and social progress, among other topics, and mentions Harvard several times.

IvyGate calls the note "probing, deeply researched, and often humorous."

Heisman was 35 when he shot himself on the steps of Harvard's Memorial Church Saturday. He had a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Albany. According to the Crimson, he worked in area bookstores and lived on inheritance from his father, who died when he was young.

I've begun skimming a few of the chapters (the titles aren't anything if not provocative). On the one hand I am quite predisposed to view the entire work as mostly bunk, because manifestos of this nature often are. However on the other hand, the idea of a philosopher driven to death by his learning is a stimulating archetype enough for me to explore this. And yes I know that considering he quotes:

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death. If this is true, and they have actually been looking forward to death all their lives, it would of course be absurd to be troubled when the thing comes for which they have so long been preparing and looking forward. —SOCRATES, PHAEDO

Its certain he was playing on that.

I've decided to post this here for rationality detox so I don't pick up any craziness (I'd wager a high probability of there being some there).

He seems to have developed what he terms a sociobiolgical analysis of the history of liberal democracy, reminiscent so far in parts of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. This judging by a few excerpts of the ending chapter culminates in a kind of singularitarian view and the inevitability of human extinction at the hands of our self created transhuman Gods.

To make a good case for financial support, point to past results that are evidence of clear thinking and of the ability to get research done.

90% of spreadsheets contain errors. Sometimes I wonder if much of the purpose of spreadsheets is to get the desired answer. I believe that in fields that use spreadsheets, 90% of papers are affected by such errors. More tentatively, I believe that same rate of fields that use special-purpose code, where neq1 estimates 20%.

Something interesting I've noticed about myself. Recently I've been worrying if I'm an atheist and my mindset is often something akin to "science as a way to see the world, not just a discipline to be studied" is less because I've found good reason to accept the former as fact and the latter as a good mindset, and more because of a socialization effect of being around Less Wrong. Meaning, even as a somewhat lurker with 48 karma total whose made no comment above 9 karma (as of this one), I'm wondering if my thoughts are less due to my own personal reasoning abilities and more due to a cached self created by being in a certain atmosphere (namely, here).

So my question is this: Is there a way I could test whether the socialization of being around a certain atmosphere changes my views more or less than my acceptance of reasons for those views? And is this possibly a part of understanding my understanding or am I misapplying that idea?

I'm in Cambridge, MA, looking for a rationalist roommate. PM me for details if you are interested or if you know someone who is!

An Alternative To "Recent Comments"

For those who may be having trouble keeping up with "Recent Comments" or finding the interface a bit plain, I've written a Greasemonkey script to make it easier/prettier. Here is a screenshot.

Explanation of features:

• loads and threads up to 400 most recent comments on one screen
• use [↑] and [↓] to mark favored/disfavored authors
• comments are color coded based on author/points (pink) and recency (yellow)
• replies to you are outlined in red
• hover over [+] to view single collapsed comment
• hover over/click [^] to highlight/scroll to parent comment
• marks comments read (grey) based on scrolling
• shows only new/unread comments upon refresh
• date/time are converted to your local time zone
• click comment date/time for permalink

To install, first get Greasemonkey, then click here. Once that's done, use this link to get to the reader interface.

ETA: I've placed the script is in the public domain. Chrome is not supported.

Sure. An easy one:

Commenting on nothing particularly important on Hacker News when I could be writing my second book. Commenting on HN = very small gain, minor contribution to a few people over a very short period of time. Working on a book = much more enjoyable, and much larger contribution over a longer period of time.

Have you seen the same phenomenon in your life at all Andreas? Maybe "300x" is an exaggeration - or maybe not, even, if the value of the distracting task is low enough, and the value of the good task is high enough.

Meanwhile, there's something on-hand I could do that'd have 300 times the impact. For sure, almost certainly 300 times the impact, because I see some proven success in the 300x area, and the frittering-away-time area is almost certainly not going to be valuable.

Your post includes a "silly" and a business-scale example, but not a personal one. In order to answer the questions about causes that you ask, it seems necessary to look at specific situations. Is there a real-life situation that you can talk about where you have two options, one almost certainly hundreds of times as good as the other, and you choose the option that is worse?