avalot

Have you tried expanding out of Anglo-Saxon culture? Here in France, flirting is a more common and comfortable mode of interaction, a form of adult politeness, without the underlying cultural codes that make it awkward in the US. 

Painting with a coarse brush: Americans value childhood over adulthood, equate sex with violence, and polarize gender roles. The French value adulthood, see sex as a refined pleasure, and tolerate emotion in men. 

A lot of this might be very cultural. 

Sources: 

1. Clotaire Raspail, “Culture Codes”
2. Personal experience: 23 years in the US, 23 years in France. 

Many parts of this argument seem predicated on the assumption that intelligence, at any level, is “greedy”: seeking more and more resources. Yet most human philosophies and traditions of wisdom embrace balance, sobriety, and detachment from want. 

What is the evidence to suggest that intelligent life can’t ever be expected to think itself out of constantly needing more stuff? What’s the evidence to suggest that intelligence has to be synonymous with western-style extractive, exploitative, and (pardon the loaded term) colonialist thinking? 

This mig... (read more)

Very tricky question. I won't answer it in two ways:

1. As I indicated, in terms of navigation/organization scheme, LW is completely untraditional. It still feels to me like a dark museum of wonder, of unfathomable depth. I get to something new, and mind-blowing, every time I surf around. So it's a delightful labyrinth, that unfolds like a series of connected thoughts anyway you work it. It's an advanced navigation toolset, usable only by people who are able to conceptualize vast abstract constructs... which is the target audience... or is it?

2. I've been in

Thanks for the irony!

Lesswrong is certainly designed for the advanced user. Most everything on the site is non-standard, which seriously impedes usability for the new user. Considering the topic and intended audience, I'd say it's a feature, not a bug.

Nonetheless, the site definitely smacks of unix-geekery. It could be humanized somewhat, and that probably wouldn't hurt.

Anti-vaccination activists base their beliefs not on the scientific evidence, but on the credibility of the source. Not having enough scientific education to be able to tell the difference, they have to go to plan B: Trust.

The medical and scientific communities in the USA are not as well-trusted as they should be, for a variety of reasons. One is that the culture is generally suspicious of intelligence and education, equating them with depravity and elitism. Another is that some doctors and scientists in the US ignore their responsibility to preserve the p... (read more)

Interesting too is the concept of amorphous, distributed and time-lagged consciousness.

Our own consciousness arises from an asynchronous computing substrate, and you can't help but wonder what weird schizophrenia would inhabit a "single" brain that stretches and spreads for miles. What would that be like? Ideas that spread like wildfire, and moods that swing literally with the tides?

By "strangers and superficial acquaintances", I didn't mean bosses or co-workers. In business, knowing the ground is important, but as a foreigner, you get more free passes for mistakes, you're not considered a fool for asking advice on basic behavior, and you can actually transgress on some (not all, not most) cultural norms and taboos with impunity, or even with cachet.

I was not talking specifically about Americans. Americans indeed tend to find out that they have a lot to answer for when traveling abroad. I believe this is also often compounde... (read more)

Thank you! You have no idea just how helpful this comment is to me right now. Your answer to all-consuming nihilism is exactly what i needed!

I think there is a widespread emotional aversion to moving abroad, which means there must be great money to be made on arbitrage.

I think a lot of the aversion is fear of inferiority and/or ostracism. These are counter-intuitively misplaced.

The theory is this: You're worried that the people over there have their own way of doing things, they know the lay of the land, and they're competing hard at a game they've been playing together since they were born. Whereas you barely speak the language, don't know the social conventions, and have no connections. What... (read more)

Yes, and I think this is the one big crucial exception... That is the one bit of knowledge that is truly evil. The one datum that is unbearable torture on the mind.

In that sense, one could define an adult mind as a normal (child) mind poisoned by the knowledge-of-death toxin. The older the mind, the more extensive the damage.

Most of us might see it more as a catalyst than a poison, but I think that's insanity justifying itself. We're all walking around in a state of deep existential panic, and that makes us weaker than children.

• The sound of one hand clapping is "Eliezer Yudkowsky, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Eliezer Yudkowsky..."
• Eliezer Yudkowsky displays search results before you type.
• Eliezer Yudkowsky's name can't be abbreviated. It must take up most of your tweet.
• Eliezer Yudkowsky doesn't actually exist. All his posts were written by an American man with the same name.
• If Eliezer Yudkowsky falls in the forest, and nobody's there to hear him, he still makes a sound.
• Eliezer Yudkowsky doesn't believe in the divine, because he's never had the experience of discovering Elieze

"Self" is an illusion created by the verbal mind. The Buddhists are right about non-duality. The ego at the center of language alienates us to direct perception of gestalt, and by extension, from reality. (95%)

More bothersome: The illusion of "Self" might be an obstacle to superior intelligence. Enhanced intelligences may only work (or only work well) within a high-bandwidth network more akin to a Vulcan mind meld than to a salon conversation, one in which individuality is completely lost. (80%)

NOTE: This comment is a re-post. I initially posted it in the "Comments on Irrationality Game" thread because I'm a moron. Sorry about that.

Surprised that nobody has posted this yet...

"Self" is an illusion created by the verbal mind. The Buddhists are right about non-duality. The ego at the center of language alienates us to direct perception of gestalt, and by extension, from reality. (95%)

More bothersome: The illusion of "Self" might be an obstacle to superior intelligence. Enhanced intelligences may only work (or only work well) within a high-bandwidth network more akin to a Vulcan mind meld than to a salon conversation, one in which individuality is completely lost. (80%)

I don't have a very advanced grounding in math, and I've been skipping over the technical aspects of the probability discussions on this blog. I've been reading lesswrong by mentally substituting "smart" for "Bayesian", "changing one's mind" for "updating", and having to vaguely trust and believe instead of rationally understanding.

Now I absolutely get it. I've got the key to the sequences. Thank you very very much!

Maybe it's a point against investing directly into cryonics as it exists today, and working more through the indirect approach that is most likely to lead to good cryonics sooner. I'm much much more interested in being preserved before I'm brain-dead.

I'm looking for specifics on human hibernation. Lots of sci-fi out there, but more and more hard science as well, especially in recent years. There's the genetic approach, and the hydrogen sulfide approach.

March 2010: Mark Roth at TED

...by the way, the comments threads on the TED website could use a few more... (read more)

Getting back down to earth, there has been renewed interest in medical circles in the potential of induced hibernation, for short-term suspended animation. The nice trustworthy doctors in lab coats, the ones who get interviews on TV, are all reassuringly behind this, so this will be smoothly brought into the mainstream, and Joe the Plumber can't wait to get "frozed-up" at the hospital so he can tell all his buddies about it.

Once induced hibernation becomes mainstream, cryonics can simply (and misleadingly, but successfully) be explained as "... (read more)

You are right: This needs to be a fully decentralized system, with no center, and processing happening at the nodes. I was conceiving of "regional" aggregates mostly as a guess as to what may relieve network congestion if every node calls out to thousands of others.

Thank you for setting me right: My thinking has been so influenced by over a decade of web app dev that I'm still working on integrating the full principles of decentralized systems.

As for boiling oceans... I wish you were wrong, but you probably are right. Some of these architectures ... (read more)

You're right: A system like that could be genetically evolved for optimization.

On the other hand, I was hoping to create an open optimization algorithm, governable by the community at large... based on their influence scores in the field of "online influence governance." So the community would have to notice abuse and gaming of the system, and modify policy (as expressed in the algorithm, in the network rules, in laws and regulations and in social mores) to respond to it. Kind of like democracy: Make a good set of rules for collaborative rule-mak... (read more)

Alexandros,

Not surprised that we're thinking along the same lines, if we both read this blog! ;)

I love your questions. Let's do this:

Keynesian Beauty Contest: I don't have a silver bullet for it, but a lot of mitigation tactics. First of all, I envision offering a cascading set of progressively more fine-grained rating attributes, so that, while you can still upvote or downvote, or rate something with starts, you can also rate it on truthfulness, entertainment value, fairness, rationality (and countless other attributes)... More nuanced ratings would proba... (read more)