Here are some other links that are relevant to this post:

Andrew Hay's dependency graphs of Eliezer's LW posts

A Java applet for browsing through these dependency graphs Warning: This will take a long time to load, and may crash your browser

A Java applet for browsing through the concepts in the LW wiki Warning: This will take a long time to load, and may crash your browser

All of these graphs are out of date now.

There are two functions that are their own second derivative, and four which are their own fourth derivative.

More precisely there is a 2-dimensional parameter space of functions that are their own second derivative, i.e., any function of the form Ae^x+Be^-x for any constants A and B.

There was this eerie confusion as I first thought that those functions were just a possible solution, and then realized that they described the only solutions.

Of course, you mean they are the only solutions that satisfy certain initial conditions.

Hello, My name is Dave Coleman. I was raised Atheist Jewish, and have identified as a rationalist my whole life. Browsing through the sequences, I realized I had failed to recognize some deeply ingrained biases.

I value making myself and others happy. Which others, and how happy, is something I've always struggled with. I used to have a framework with Jewish ethics, but I'm realizing that those are only clear in comparison to Christian ethics. Much of what I learned and considered was about how to make the Torah and Talmud relevant to modern, atheistic life.

I'm realizing the strong bias we had against saying "maybe it's not relevant, since it was written by immature goatherders 3500 years ago who had no knowledge of science or empathy for those outside their tribe." Admitting that wouldn't sound wise, so we twist and turn with answers, cluttering what could be a solid system of ethics.

For a while I've considered myself a reconstructionist Jew, with the underlying ethos of "do all Jewish traditions by default, but don't do anything that has a good reason not to be done." I've realized that not polluting my mind with incorrect and biased thought patterns is a good reason to avoid many things.

Another recent change has been an understanding of Judaism in terms of evolutionary fallacies. There is a strong sense in Judaism of being a Chosen People, and of a universal intention that Jews survive as Jews. Assimilation may be the biggest struggle for Jews, bigger even than persecution.

I realized that this is the same fallacy that sees intent in a species's characteristics. I had been labeling aspects of Judaism that lead to survival as being virtuous themselves - all of the dietary rituals to keep separate from goyim, the fear and guilt of assimilation. Even the love of learning and the drive to succeed has undertones of "thrive, for that is how you will survive the next pogrom." Preservation of the culture is virtuous, therefore anything that keeps the culture alive is virtuous.

I remember my first Differential Equations class, when we learned that the function that is its own derivative is f(x)=e^x, and the function that is its own second derivative is f(x)=sin(x). There was this eerie confusion as I first thought that those functions were just a possible solution, and then realized that they described the only solutions. I found it very disturbing that I couldn't describe whether the sine looked as it does by virtue of being its own second derivative, or whether it was its own second derivative by virtue of looking as it does. I still feel slightly uneasy that I can't assign a causal relationship in one direction or the other.

That's how I view Judaism now. The characteristics of all species and memes are a solution to the equation of survival. There is no intent or deeper meaning than that, and I think I've finally let that go.

Oh, and I got here from Reddit, where someone posted a link to the Paperclip Maximizer.

TrailMeme is awesome, thanks for posting this!

If TrailMeme had a tool to import/export to/from a file, then I might have volunteered to create a script to generate trails for the LW sequences.

Creating these trails manually would be tedious, but probably worthwhile.

But I'm not volunteering to do this myself, at least not any time soon, sorry.

Somewhat relevant is the Gervais Principle. This Principle is based on the idea that a corporate pyramid is topped by "sociopaths," has "losers" as a foundation, and a culture of ladder-climbing "clueless" between the two:

Sociopaths, in their own best interests, knowingly promote over-performing losers into middle-management, groom under-performing losers into sociopaths, and leave the average bare-minimum-effort losers to fend for themselves.

It's not a very rigorously investigate principle, though it matches well with my professional experiences.

The problem with rewiring someone against their will has to do with the second issue I mentioned, not the first one - changing their preferences and their utility function. If you're creating something from scratch, I don't see how that can be an issue without arbitrarily privileging some set of values as 'correct' - if you're creating something from scratch, there are no pre-existing values for the new values to be in conflict with. (The first issue doesn't seem to raise the same problems: I think I would consider it okay, or at least 'questionable' rather than 'clearly bad', to re-wire someone to enjoy doing things that they would be doing anyway to achieve their own goals, if you were sufficiently sure that you actually understood their goals; however, I don't think that humans can be sufficiently sure of other humans' goals for that.)

It's not clear to me how you're mapping this problem to the trolley problem. This is probably because I have some personal stuff going on and am not in very good cognitive shape, but regardless of the cause, if you want to talk about it in those terms I'd appreciate a clearer explanation.

I'm not sure if doing chores in and of itself can be viewed as on a continuum with being tortured, for the purposes of this exercise. Being forced to do chores is considered bad for two reasons (as far as I know): Most people find doing chores to be intrinsically not enjoyable, and most people have other goals that they'd prefer to spend their time pursuing. Being tortured matches at least the first part of that description, and usually matches the second part as well. But for house elves, doing chores is not intrinsically not enjoyable, and it appears that they generally don't have other significant goals to pursue - and this is their native state; if you create a house elf from nothing, rather than modifying another creature to be house-elf-like, there's no 'rewiring' involved at all. (And the OP made a point of specifying that that's the case, since it is obviously problematic to rewire a creature in a way that's opposed to its values.)

It may be useful to also consider the case of masochistic people, for whom things like being whipped are enjoyable: Given that some people seem to just naturally be that way - it's not caused by trauma or anything, in most cases, unless I've really missed something in my research - is it somehow problematic that they exist?

But if the creatures enjoy their situation and manage to self replicate or are immortal isn't the use of their labour more like a form of parasitism on the species?

One could argue parasitism is wrong but the act of creating them vunreable for parasitism seems neutral as long as they are capable of survival despite it.