Chris Langan

Uh-oh.

The idea of reflexive self-processing is that in the double slit experiment for example, which path the photon takes is calculated by taking into account the entire state of the universe when it solves the wave function.

That's effectively an appeal to non-local hidden variables, which isn't ruled out by current experiments, isn't very popular, and isn't very new.

1. don't we already know that the entire state of the universe is used to calculate the behavior of particles? for example, doesn't every body produce a gravitational field which acts, with some magntitude of force, at any distance, such that in order to calculate the trajectory of a particle to the nth decimal place, you would need to know about every other body in the universe?

No, relativity is local, which is one of the the reasons NLHVs are unpopular. Note that having forces with infinite range doesnt imply nonlocality.

This theory in the paper might be true, or it might be not true, but in either case it's not a physics article, it seems to be more like a philosophy article.

don't we already know that the entire state of the universe is used to calculate the behavior of particles? for example, doesn't every body produce a gravitational field which acts, with some magntitude of force, at any distance, such that in order to calculate the trajectory of a particle to the nth decimal place, you would need to know about every other body in the universe?

The second version is much worse than the first. If you need to know the universe out a certain distance to calculate to the Nth place and a further distance to calculate to N+1-st place, that's not too bad. But if you need everything to calculate anything, that's terrible. I believe that the my version is true for GR (and some versions of quantum gravity), but the bad version is true for all other theories. People get around it by assumptions like constant density far away.

But the real way that they get away from it is by not thinking in terms of action at a distance from all the masses far away, but rather thinking in terms of gravitational potential field that exists and can be measured locally, but summarizes all information about far away objects.

Chris Langan

Uh-oh.

The idea of reflexive self-processing is that in the double slit experiment for example, which path the photon takes is calculated by taking into account the entire state of the universe when it solves the wave function.

That's effectively an appeal to non-local hidden variables, which isn't ruled out by current experiments, isn't very popular, and isn't very new.

1. don't we already know that the entire state of the universe is used to calculate the behavior of particles? for example, doesn't every body produce a gravitational field which acts, with some magntitude of force, at any distance, such that in order to calculate the trajectory of a particle to the nth decimal place, you would need to know about every other body in the universe?

No, relativity is local, which is one of the the reasons NLHVs are unpopular. Note that having forces with infinite range doesnt imply nonlocality.

Did organized Objectivist activism, at least in some of its nuttier phases, offer to turn its adherents who get it right into a kind of superhuman entity? I guess you could call such enhanced people "Operating Objectivists," analogous to the enhanced state promised by another cult.

Interestingly enough Rand seems to make a disclaimer about that in her novel Atlas Shrugged. The philosophy professor character Hugh Akston says of his star students, Ragnar Danneskjold, John Galt and Francisco d'Anconia:

"Don't be astonished, Miss Taggart," said Dr. Akston, smiling, "and don't make the mistake of thinking that these three pupils of mine are some sort of superhuman creatures. They're something much greater and more astounding than that: they're normal men—a thing the world has never seen—and their feat is that they managed to survive as such. It does take an exceptional mind and a still more exceptional integrity to remain untouched by the brain-destroying influences of the world's doctrines, the accumulated evil of centuries—to remain human, since the human is the rational."

But then look at what Rand shows these allegedly "normal men" can do as Operating Objectivists:

Hank Rearden, a kind of self-trained Operating Objectivist who never studied under Akston, can design a new kind of railroad bridge in his mind which exploits the characteristics of his new alloy, even though he has never built a bridge before.

Francisco d'Anconia can deceive the whole world as he depletes his inherited fortune while making everyone believe that he spends his days as a playboy pickup artist, when he in fact he has lived without sex since his youthful sexual relationship with Dagny.

John Galt can build a motor which violates the conservation of energy and the laws of thermodynamics. Oh, and he can also confidently master Dagny's unexpected intrusion into Galt's Gulch despite his secret crush her, his implied adult virginity and his lack of an adult man's skill set for handling women. (You need life experience for that, not education in philosophy.) On top of that, he can survive torture without suffering from post-traumatic stress symptoms.

So despite Rand's disclaimer, if you view Atlas Shrugged as "advertising" for the abilities Rand's philosophy promises as it unlocks your potentials as a "normal man," then the Objectivist organizations which work with this idea implicitly do seem to offer to turn you into a "superhuman creature."

You need to be thoroughly convinced that what you want to do is the right thing to want. Then you just treat your other impulses like an irrational addiction that you must overcome.

If you get your mind right you should be able to go cold turkey.

The site is broken - english keeps redirecting to german.

I am curious if there are any wannabe seed AI researchers out there

fish antibiotics

gasoline

I don't see much FAI-use for mapping human values because I expect to need to solve the value-loading problem via indirect normativity rather than direct specification (see Bostrom 2014).

Also, there is quite a lot of effort going into this already: World Values Survey, moral foundations theory, etc.