gscshoyru

Can you rewrite the last section in terms of "A" and "B" or something where appropriate, instead of "me" and "you", to make it less confusing? I almost get what you're trying to say, mostly, but I think it would clear up some confusion if the AIs talked about themselves in the third person and were clearly differentiated from me (i.e. the person writing this comment) and you (i.e. the person who wrote the post).

Thanks!

Ah, ok, I misunderstood you then. Sorry, and thanks for clearing that up.

I don't agree that religious organizations having something to say to rationalists about rationality is a bad thing -- they've been around much, much longer than rationalists have, and have had way more time to come up with good ideas. And the reason why they needed suggest it instead of working it out on their own is probably because of the very thing I was trying to warn against -- in general, we as a community tend to look at religious organizations as bad, and so tend to color ev... (read more)

There is a category of religiously inspired posts that creep me out and set of cult alarms. It contains that post about staring from Scientology and that Transcendental meditation stuff that while I found it interesting and perhaps useful doesn't seem to belong on LW and now recently these Mormon posts abut growing organizations. shudder

What I'm about to say has been said before, but it bears repeating. What exactly about all this stuff is setting off cult alarms for you? I had a similar problem with those posts as well, until I actually went and questi... (read more)

Sweet. A free (for me) way to donate money. Thank you very much for providing this opportunity (i.e. I praise you for your right action.)

You know what... I was missing the "look for a third option" bit. There are more options than the two obvious ones -- doing this, and not doing this.

I've been having trouble making myself do the rationalisty projects that I came up with for myself, and this article suggested a way to use group pressures to make me do these things. Since I really wanted a way to make myself do these projects, the article seemed like a really, really good idea. But instead of making the whole community do this, I can actually just ask some fellow rationalists at m... (read more)

I think we should be a little careful of using the word "cult" as a mental stop sign, since that does seem to be what's happening here. We need to be a bit more careful about labeling something with all the bad connotations of a cult just because it has some of the properties of a cult -- especially if it only seems to have the good properties. But... that doesn't mean that this good cult property won't lead to the bad cult property or properties that we don't want. You should just be more explicit as to what and how, because I'm wavering back an... (read more)

Could you deconstruct this for me? I kind of understand where you're coming from, but I'd like to see your exact reasoning.

This is doable... Let d be the length of the diameter of some circle, and c be the circumference of the same circle. Then if you have an integer number (m) of sticks of length d in a straight line, and an integer number (n) of sticks of length c in a different straight line, then the two lines will be of different lengths, no matter how you choose your circle, or how you choose the two integers m and n.

In general, if the axioms that prove a theorem are demonstrable in a concrete and substantive way, then any theorems proved by them should be similarly dem... (read more)

Maybe I've missed something in your original article or your comments, but I don't understand why you think a person in a perfect physics simulation of the universe would feel differently enough about the qualia he or she experiences to notice a difference. Qualia are probably a physical phenomenon, yes -- but if that physical phenomenon is simulated in exact detail, how can a simulated person tell the difference? Feelings about qualia are themselves qualia, and those qualia are also simulated by the physics simulator. Imagine for a moment, that some super... (read more)

Edit: scratch that. I was influenced by the first answer I saw on the page... my answer should not count. Leaving it for posterity, below -- I'd make it strikethrough if I knew how.

I suppose the correct value is probably 50 million.

Ditto to me too.

The way I learned to swim was pretty interesting, I remember the moment pretty clearly because of the absolute shock of fear at the time -- but it was a rather interesting method. I don't remember if the teacher tried to teach me in the same failed way you're talking about here to being with -- but whether she did, or didn't, I couldn't swim. I was pretty young at the time, so the surrounding memories are a little hazy -- though the moment itself is quite clear.

So since I couldn't swim, and couldn't figure out how from explanations, the teacher had me pus... (read more)

Hi, my handle is gscshoyru (gsc for short), and I'm new here. I found this site through the AIBox experiment, oddly enough -- and I think I got there from TVTropes, though I don't remember. After reading the fiction, (and being vaguely confused that I had read the NPC story before, but nothing else of his, since I'm a fantasy/sci-fi junkie and I usually track down authors I like), I started reading up on all of Eliezer's writings on rationality. And found it made a lot of sense. So, I am now a budding rationalist, and have decided to join this site because... (read more)