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So my instinct is to write this guy off as a nut because it's super sketchy to try to run for president for a party that (to my very cursory knowledge) he made up to increase his book sales. Does anyone else find some value in paying attention to him or taking time to read his stuff? I'm wondering if this is a correct judgement on my part or an instinctual misfire.
I recently registered to vote and did not see his party listed as an option, even though I have never heard of the "Americans Elect Party" and it is an option. I mostly pay attention when other people mention him. Also, I kind of wish the Transhumanist Party would issue some statements about ballot issues besides "vote for Istvan".
In response to
Gasoline Gal looks under the hood (post 1 of 3)
Speculating wildly about your real subject: Either uploading (why should you care if you can't have the real galaxy or the real gasoline engine, if you can't tell the difference) or something to do with p-zombies or qualia or whatnot (she cares about the internal properties even if everything is the same when she drives it). Leaning towards the former because "Fuller Chen" sounds like a nanotech reference (although I am aware fullerene is not nanobots).
Also, I don't see how Galaxy wanting a gasoline engine just because she likes gasoline engines is more irrational than me wanting to have human life continue to exist just because I like the continued existence of humanity.
Specifically, I planned on imagining what my response would be if I found a message supposedly "from myself" that was transmitted using one of these methods. How likely would I be to truly integrate into my identity this event of which I have no memory?
I would probably believe something signed with my own PGP key enough to thoroughly investigate it. If I found something packaged with a blood sample I probably would not be willing to pay to check the sample, because I'm a minor and the costs of testing a DNA sample are something like a year of income for me. Since I wouldn't verify the sample I would probably take the message about as seriously as I'd take anything else in my own handwriting with my signature, which is to say I'd put in several hours of effort but not much more unless I found confirming evidence. If I found a video of myself saying things, accompanied by a PGP sig and a PGP-signed transcript, which did not include any subtle signals of coercion that I could have potentially sent, I'd be very confident.
In response to
Self-verification
Naively, I'd say to write it as short text and sign it with my public key, but that was under the assumption that my recent memories were being wiped.
If all my memories are being wiped there isn't really a "me" to send the message to in any reasonable sense. Even if it's just all my episodic memories I would see amnesiac!ilzolende as a member of my in-group but not as me.
I suppose I could try to package the message with a blood sample (with a lock on a timer), any sample coercively obtained would have much higher cortisol levels (edit: or show signs of sedatives or something).
Of course now if I want to rubber hose you, I'll be sure to ask about your second account, too! Jokes aside, I think that's a good tool to keep in the belt.
I've always struggled with the idea of how to promote the practice without lessening its effectiveness since the more people that know about it, the more likely a rubber hoser is to ask about both.
Hah, the decoy account is trivially easy to determine to be not-mine, the idea is less "permanently trick someone into thinking it's my main account" and more "distract someone while I log into it so that it can send an automated email, then keep them from powering down my computer for 30 seconds while the program sends the email, because I can't get it to do that in the background just via Automator".
Also, in that sort of scenario there really isn't that much I have to hide. There are some computer of my computer usage that I would strongly prefer not to disclose, but at that point I wouldn't be concerned about "linking ilzolende to my real identity" or "what if my friends/parents/future employers know about my actions" or "what if something I did was actually intellectual property theft" or "what if I had to change all my passwords that would be really annoying".
If there was something I really didn't want to disclose I would probably do it from other people's computers using Tor Browser or a TAILS DVD with URLs I memorized. There isn't something I value my privacy for that much, so I don't do that. (Although I'm considering getting a TAILS USB for using with the school computers mostly to make the "the fact that this browser didn't tell me that Website X was not a reason I chose the browser, I use it for privacy, the fact that it apparently circumvents the filter is just a side effect, what am I supposed to do, check if the website is blocked from a different computer before I visit it?" claim.)
Honestly, a lot of my motives here are more "normalize security/privacy" and "make sure that if something goes wrong I can say that I took a ton of preventative measures" than "losing control of my data would be a complete disaster". If I were truly concerned about privacy, I wouldn't have participated in a study involving MRI scans and DNA analysis from a blood draw and whatnot for ~%100. I mostly don't like the state of affairs where people have more information about me than I do.
Potential password attack methods include:
You're forgetting about rubberhose cryptanalysis.
Also your starting point should be the threat model which you skipped.
I have a superficial measure against this, which is having two user accounts, one of which is superficially similar to mine. If it is easy to send two images which unlock with different passwords then that could be an anti-rubberhose cryptanalysis measure?
In response to
Who are your favourite rationalist bloggers?
Also, Kevin Simler's Melting Asphalt is great and has lots of insightful essays about things. Warning: Still doesn't have archives, you're going to need to go through the meta posts to read old things.
In response to
Who are your favourite rationalist bloggers?
I like Eneasz Brodski's Death is Bad. Not as moralizing as the title sounds, has lots of fun book reviews.
In response to
A pair of free information security tools I wrote
This is not a program I wrote but while we're posting things I have a guide to setting up Automator on a mac to send out an email on login on my blog.
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Is utilitarianism foundational to LessWrong? Asking because for a while I've been toying with the idea of writing a few posts with morality as a theme, from the standpoint of, broadly, virtue ethics -- with some pragmatic and descriptive ethics thrown in. (The themes are quite generous and interlocking, and to be honest I don't know where to start or whether I'll finish it.) This perspective treats stable character traits, with their associated emotions, drives, and motives as the most reasonably likely determiner of moral behaviour, and means to encourage people to "build character" so as to become more moral beings or improve their behaviour. It doesn't concern itself with quantitative approaches to welfare. Frankly, I find it hard to take seriously the numerical applications of utilitarianism, and my brain just shuts down upon some ethical problems usually enjoyed around here (torture vs. dust specks, repugnant conclusion, contrived deals with strange gods and so on).
I know that Eliezer's virtues-of-rationality post is widely appreciated by many people around here, but it's a declaration of (commitment to) values more than anything. It never seemed to be the dominant paradigm. I guess I just want to know whether a virtue-ethical approach would be well-received here, and the extent to which a utilitarian and a virtue ethicist can usefully discuss morality without jumping a meta level into theories of normative ethics.
I endorse discussion of virtue ethics on LW mostly because I haven't seen many arguments for why I should use it or discussions of how using it works. I've seen a lot of pro-utilitarianism and "how to do things with utilitarianism" pieces and a lot of discussion of deontology in the form of credible precommitments and also as heuristics and rule utilitarianism, but I haven't really seen a virtue ethics piece that remotely approaches Yvain's Consequentialism FAQ in terms of readability and usability.