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Should people give money to beggars on the street? I heard conflicting opinions about this. Some say they just spend it on booze and cigarettes, so it would be more effective to donate that money to hostels for the homeless and similar institutions. Others say it's not a big deal and it makes them happy. What do you think?
In response to
Stupid Questions May 2015
I notice the effects of the recession – I always offer to buy food, and in the past beggars often concocted elaborate excuses why I should give them money instead of buying a hotdog or something. But in the last few years, more and more they agree to get the food (and actually eat it).
Anyway, depending on where you live, there might be organized teams of professional beggars who are exploited by their "owner" and they have to give him his daily share "or else". By not giving money, you really hurt the beggars - but this amounts to emotional blackmailing, so perhaps you should not - for the price of hurting a few beggars now we could close the exploitation later, since if there is no profit there is no incentive to exploit the beggars.
In response to
Gasoline Gal looks under the hood (post 1 of 3)
This actually happens with people preferring books to ebooks or vinyl records to MP3 files.
But anyway, I'll respond with a second hypothetical.
Gasoline Gal is married. She expressed a preference that her husband remain faithful to her, and being old fashioned, even made sure that her marriage vows promised faithfulness.
You are not trying to convince her to accept either hydrogen engines or uploading. Rather, you are trying to convince her that she should not prefer that her husband remains faithful to her. At most, she can prefer that her husband remains faithful to her as far as she knows. As long as she does not know and cannot detect his unfaithfulness, it causes no harm to her. She objects, of course, that it could cause harm in some indirect way (such as increasing his chance of passing a STD to her), but since this is a hypothetical, you say "if your husband cheats on you, but because of some circumstance, this doesn't increase your risk of STDs or otherwise cause you any physical harm, and it causes you no mental damage because you don't know about it, is he wronging you? And is this a situation you shouldn't prefer?" You say that he has not wronged her and she should have no preference against that situation. Indeed, you're not even sure it is meaningful to have a preference against that kind of situation. She disagrees. Who is right?
This is related to the fact that utilitarianism is bad at handling blissful ignorance situations although the problem is by no means limited to utilitarianism.
This actually happens with people preferring books to ebooks or vinyl records to MP3 files.
OT nitpicking: books you can resell or lend, no such luck with ebooks, they work without electricity, quick shuffling through pages is easier with books, MP3 distort sound (though not perceivably at higher bitrates), so this was not such a great analogy. But yes, your point is valid.
under what conditions, when and where do or would they work like that?
At science fiction conventions.
In response to
Language Learning and the Dark Arts.
How do you people out there learn foreign languages and how do you keep yourself from giving up or slowing down?
Watch a lot of TV (once you acquire enough basic vocabulary), preferably with subtitles (in that language). The subtitles might be of much less help in the case of Chinese than in other languages, though.
In response to
Open thread, Mar. 23 - Mar. 31, 2015
Rationality: From AI to Zombies is a nice name, but unfortunately, the "from A... to Z..." aspect sometimes does not survive translation. Specifically, in Slovak, the translation of "artificial intelligence" does not start with "A". (At least the "zombies" part is okay.)
Are there other words that could be used instead of "AI" in this context? (Please check in the Google Translate link whether they start with "A" after translation.) Thanks!
Are there other words that could be used instead of "AI" in this context?
"Od automatov po zombie" ?
Not an ideal variant, but I am afraid there are not many possibilities here...
In response to
comment
by
on
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 119
Can you use the time turner in different increments, and possibly with a different maximum, if you fully understand hours are arbitrary? This sounds exactly like partial transfiguration.
(Alternatively, you go back some fixed amount of time for every grain of time sand in the turner, and you could build one of other increments by using a different quantity of sand.)
In response to
comment
by
on
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 119
How does Time Turner select reference frame? What if you use it in the orbit, will you see Earth rotational angle jump by 90°? Assuming the reference frame is fixed to Earth surface, going sufficiently far away will give you FTL which can be used to create arbitrarily long time loops. Assuming it is not, what happens if you are moving at relativistic speeds (relative to Earth) and use the Time Turner?
EDIT: We not even need to consider relativity - what if you are flying on a broomstick (constant speed) or on a moving train and use Time Turner? This experiment is simple enough and can reveal a lot.
In response to
comment
by
on
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 119
I like Undead. "Hermione the Undead" ^^
In response to
comment
by
on
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 119
a standard diagnostic Charm showed Miss Granger as a healthy unicorn
Charms to detect active magic have each time detected her as being in the process of transforming into another shape
He performed certain spells ... declared that Hermione's soul was in healthy condition but at least a mile away from her body
The first two diagnostics are correct. If the third one is correct too, then Hermione is a perfect philosophical zombie now.
In response to
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 119
For it was said once that you might need to raise your hand against your mentor, the one who made you, who you loved; it was said that you might be my downfall.
Indeed. Harry raised his hand against his mentor, the one who made him, the one he loved (‘Harry was in love. It would be a three-way wedding: him, the Time-Turner, and Professor Quirrell’), and was the cause of Dumbledore's downfall. Only, Dumbledore did not realize that he and Harry's mentor does not need to be the same person.
In response to
comment
by
on
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 117
The death mark.
In response to
comment
by
on
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 117
Hmm, random speculation: does the death mark have the power to resurrect you? (in some, not necessarily preferred or pleasant form). And the Death Eaters cannot talk about it, unless you already suspect this is the case. This would fit Snape's response from ch. 86: :
But as you can see, the Dark Lord was quite cunning." His gaze grew more distant. "Oh," Severus breathed, "he was very cunning indeed..."
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More generally, you can imagine a lot of failure modes where an alien species evolves to become intelligent, but cannot build technological civilization because it cannot achieve large scale social cooperation.
E.g. imagine a society where human brains evolved just a little bit differently and >90% of population are dyslectics. This very obviously wouldn't matter until about the time proto-writing changed into true writing, i.e. after urban development and proto-states. But then, such a civilization is trapped.