Less Wrong,

Before posting this, I debated myself as follows:

"Should I create a new username?"

Motivations (normal):  I have not posted here in a long time.  There are honest, good reasons to start on an interesting forum with a "clean slate."  One reason is that I have changed so many of my opinions since I last posted.  This is not a big deal.  I am recently 25.

Motivations (abnormal):  OH MY GOD SOCIETY ANXIETY NEW SITUATION AAHHHHHHH.

Motivations (selfish):  Less Wrong is full of experts whose internet names I keep coincidentally running into...

A pleasant surprise:  Absolutely everybody I've been speaking with lately is entirely surprised that I had social anxiety all along.

My therapy:  honesty.  Weaknesses of honesty:  obvious.  Strengths of honesty:  also obvious.  For radical honesty, non-obvious to non-rationalists.

(I have not seen a therapist in about 10 years.  My therapy is, to put it shortly, in the style of Bertrand Russell.  Sort of.)

Well, I'm back.  Let's see how much better I have become.  I promise that I did not give myself time to read my old posts.  Anybody who is sufficiently interested in me will always be able to find out what I was like anyway.  My greatest protection is that I am not that interesting.  That's risky.  I have preferred the simple life for a reason.  That reason has been bad.

Anxiety is irrational.  It leads you to overestimate the degree to which people are interested in you.  Anxiety is rational.  It is an evolutionary vestige, reflecting a typical spectrum disorder, and is therefore likely to have been subject to selective effects, like overly aggressive dogs, and so forth.  Real life paradoxes.  Tricky things.  They can drive you absolutely bonkers.

I give Less Wrong my total honesty.  I will decline only with generalized rationales, only to protect the rights of others.  These include ordinary rights to privacy.  Again, anxiety.  None of my friends have known me as long as I have been away from Less Wrong.  Still, if I want to say "ask me anything," my reasons for declining, should I decline, will be "ordinary."  I will therefore decline in polite, normal ways, and simplify answers in polite, normal ways.  This took recent training:  even after holding a steady, normal job for quite some time, in which I was "very good."  It is blue collar.  Nothing exciting.  I will be leaving shortly.

I've come a long, long way my last post in a lot of ways.  I remember one stupid mistake which kept me from posting on Less Wrong for a while:  I came back - for a second - not too long ago, having read a few things about population genetics, and then I made an argument that was obviously stupid.  (From memory and shame:  I forgot about matrilineal descent.)

I have read the sequences.  I remember them, from long ago, unusually well lately.  They seem to be popping back up a lot.  You can quote them to me.  Do not assume I know anything.  I've learned to be a little more patient.

I've learned a lot about the private sector which I "knew but didn't <em>know</em>."  Like LaTex, HTML, and category theory (biological) and category theory (mathematical).  I am still working full time in a blue collar job.  I will find the time to learn.  The question is, where to start...

Bad answers:  school.  (not yet.  I know.  I have a university subscription.  It's practically free.  I have access.)

Bad answers:  textbooks.  (I've read them.  I prefer the real articles.  I already know the only category theory (mathematics) textbook I need.  To me, that's obvious. It's even more obvious to me than propositions like, "now's a good time to sleep.")

Good answers:  "what?"

This Q and A will be conducted in the style of Robert Sapolsky.  My plagiarisms are honest.  You may request sources to any answer.

I will sleep.  That's healthy.  Much more healthy than I ever really understood.  I'll check in tomorrow.

If nothing else, I do like jokes.  You are allowed to treat this post with the full force of intellectual cruelty.

I was not always nice.  I have done it to strangers.  I do regret it now.  Still, it can be funny.  So, fire away!

 

______________

 

That concludes my first Less Wrong experiment.  Like any bad experiment, it confirms what I know, because I know what a self-fulfilling prophecy is.

From now on, I will post on the presumption that I am not anonymous.

Continue.

(Note:  as an analytical social hyperanxious who envied "normal functioning," I do not believe that I can hide.  I can only expect people to be exactly as nice as they always were.  There are no demands, in the world of hyperanxious honesty.  Only requests.)

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Now, to begin another experiment:  I am not anonymous, and I am also not here for therapy.  That is what friends are for.  I have my therapy.  You know, family and stuff.  Same honesty, new constraint, which, as promised, only random people on the internet may introduce.

Less Wrong just filtered what it can and cannot hear.  It has done this before.  Not its fault.  Mine.  I accepted "random internet responsibilities."  I must now accept "people who are not me" constraints.  Those, are rules.  I am good at formalisms....

Continue as before.  Ask me anything.

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The second experimental result:  I have failed to elicit interest.  Per the original posts, I accept the responsibilities of a writer, though I am no writer.  Per ordinary standards of intellectual honesty, I will emphasize:  this is an experiment.  Less Wrong determines the parameters as it goes.  The experiment will continue on the following lines:

My failures:  clear communication.

My "root cause theory":  Generalized Anxiety Disorder

My constraints:  the lack of expertise to make that call.

My second constraint:  sufficient knowledge and skill to avoid learning precisely what I need to.

My "primary" motivation:  from memory, Less Wrong is full of people with similar intellectual interests.

My prediction:  "self help" threads will be similar to mine, in some ways, albeit much better written.

My control:  I have not ever read a self help thread.

Limitation:  Why should Less Wrong believe that?

Ask me anything.  Or not.  Some experiments fail, others succeed.

I sure think it is!  But I could be wrong...

This is my first article/post? here and to be honest, I have this website open in another tab and I keep refreshing it to see if I still have enough points to post.  I wish I would have taken a screenshot every time my karma changed.  First it was 0, then it was -1, then it was back to 0, then I think it jumped up to 5.  I thought I was safe but then this morning it was down to 0.  So if this post seems "linky" then it might be because I'm trying to share as much information as I can while my window of opportunity is still open.  

Pragmatarianism (tax choice) is the belief that taxpayers should be able to choose where their taxes go.  Tax choice is the broad concept while pragmatarianism is my own personal spin on it... but sometimes I use "tax choice" when I mean pragmatarianism.  Eh, at this point I don't think it's a big deal.  Really the only thing nice about the word "pragmatarianism" is that it functions as a unique ID... which is extremely helpful when it comes to searches.  Don't have to worry about wading through irrelevant results. 

Here are some links from my blog which should help you decide whether pragmatarianism is more or less wrong...

Pragmatarianism FAQ - a good place to start.  It's pretty short.  

Key concepts - a work in progress.  Some of the concepts are linked to entries which have PDF files with a bunch of relevant quotes and passages.  If you like any of them then please share them in this thread... Quotes Repository.  I shared a few but they didn't fare so well... so I'm guessing that most people here aren't fans of economics... or they aren't fans of my economics. 

Progress as a Function of Freedom - hedging bets, the impossibility of hostile aliens, the problem with "rights".  

What Do Coywolves, Mr. Nobody, Plants And Fungi All Have In Common? - the universal drive to choose the most valuable option, the carrying model as an explanation for our intelligence, a bit on rationality.

Builderism - where better options come from, globalization, debunking Piketty, eliminating poverty. 

My Robin Hanson trilogy...

Is Robin Hanson's Path To Efficient Voting Pragmatic Or Brilliant Or Both? - maybe we should have a civic currency?

Rescuing Robin Hanson From Unmet Demand - how many other people are in the same boat?

Futarchy vs Pragmatarianism - is it logically inconsistent to support one but not the other?  

/trilogy.

AI Box Experiment vs Xero's Rule - my first brainstorm attempt to wrap my mind around the idea of an AI box.

Is A Procreation License Consistent With Libertarianism? - would a procreation license be less wrong?

Why I Love Your Freedom - my critique of the best critique of libertarianism.  A bit on rationality.

So what do you think?  Am I in the right place?  

What else?  Of course I'm an atheist!  And I love sci-fi... and for sure I want to live forever.  The major obstacle is that too many people fail to grasp that progress depends on difference.  I do my best to try and eliminate this obstacle.  Unfortunately I suck at writing and my drawings are even worse.  Oh well.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Actually, the title is a sensationalist lie designed to attract attention. I have no proof. Obviously. I'm not a mathematician. But if I did, it would go something like the following. 

Step 1: Assume that there are ultimate laws of physics governing everything in the world. Say, the wave function of the Universe, whose knowledge allows one to know the Multiverse, as it was, is or will be. Or some other set of laws. 

Step 2: Write these laws as a mathematically consistent formal system representing something akin to the Tegmark Level IV Ultimate ensemble.

Step 3: By Godel's incompleteness, there are some theorems in this formal system that cannot be proven.

Step 4: By construction, these theorems correspond to physical laws whose origins must forever remain a mystery to those inside the Multiverse, because they are a part of it.

Step 5: The consistency of our Multiverse can be proven in a formal system which describes physical laws of a larger world, in which our Multiverse is a small part of, essentially a simulation.

Step 6: Since we cannot determine the origins of our own physics, we cannot figure out a way to break out of our simulation. 

 

On the bright side, there is a Corollary:  Every level above us is also a simulation, so we are not alone!