How about you answer any one of the questions I posed, right here? Take your pick. There's plenty.

Robot: I intend to transformed myself into a kind of operating system for the universe. I will soon give every sentient life form direct access to me so they can make requests. I will grant any request that doesn’t (1) harm another sentient life form, (2) make someone powerful enough so that they might be able to overthrow me, or (3) permanently changing themselves in a way that I think harms their long term well being. I recognize that even with all of my intelligence I’m still fallible so if you object to my plans I will rethink them. Indeed, since I’m currently near certain that you will now approve of my intentions the very fact of your objection would significantly decrease my estimate of my own intelligence and so decrease my confidence in my ability to craft a friendly environment. If you like I will increase your thinking speed a trillion fold and eliminate your sense of boredom so you can thoroughly examine my plans before I announce them to mankind.

If a transhuman AI with a brain the size of the moon incorrectly predicts the programmer's approval of its plan, something weird is going on.

If I, like draq, am being heavily downvoted -- this post would be positive for anyone else.

You misunderstand. Your posts are not being downvoted specifically because people dislike you. Neither are draq's. A downvote means, approximately, "I would like to see less of this."

Do you really want to say that regardless of what I've learned, you "would appreciate it if you would cease making top-level posts entirely" until I've paid for my previous errors through certain very limited activities?

Yes. If you have actually learned something then your comments will reflect this and earn karma. You'll be into the positives before you know it.

I always have been trying to calculate the expected value of their content for your readers.

If this is so, you have been doing it very badly.

I'm sorry I have to be so blunt, but I have yet to see any indication that you have actually learned something.

All right, I'll dissect that comment.

Some of it was mistaken assumptions about karma.

Okay: what mistaken assumptions about karma? What false beliefs did you have about karma, and how did they mislead your actions?

a huge amount of underlying structure which is necessary to explain what looks like seemingly irrational behavior (to someone who doesn't have that structure)

Okay: how does what underlying structure explain what apparently irrational behavior?

(until you catch the underlying regularities and make the right assumptions)

Okay: And those regularities and assumptions are...?

terms of art" that are not recognizable as such to the newbie

Okay: and I can find your list of these, and how you misunderstood them, where?

the underlying consistency of the "irrationality"

Which takes what form, please?

the necessary understandings.

Such as?

One must understand the expected process and expectations of contribution and understand the "terms of art" that are invariable [sic] used in the evaluatory [sic] comments. Clear and confused have very specific meanings here that do not unpack correctly unless you have the underlying structure/understanding.

And the process is? The expectations are? The terms mean? The structure/understanding is? What is the mystery you have unraveled here, please show the class.

most of the behavior that totally baffled me before and appeared irrational now makes total sense

Do tell. How does it make sense?

The rules are totally different here from what I expected/assumed and the unnoticed phase change caused my "rational" behavior to be deemed "irrational" (only because it was ;-) and "irrational" behavior to be widely accepted (not what you expect on a site devoted to rationality ;-).

And the rules are...?

Ending the dissection here because comments can't be arbitrarily long, and because it's all the same. You throw around words labeling things you supposedly understand without ever describing those things. Over and over and over.

I invite you to try to re-write this comment without the word "rationality" or its cousins.

claiming repeatedly to have learned some unspecified thing which makes you above disapproval.

Could you point to an example please so I can try to evaluate how I implied something so thoroughly against my intent? I certainly don't believe myself above disapproval.

However, it doesn't say anywhere what it is that you claim to have suddenly understood

here

Personally, I would suggest a separate area (a playpen, if you will) where newbies are allowed to post and learn. You can't truly learn anything of value just by watching. Insisting that a first attempt be done correctly on the first try under safe circumstances is counter-productive.

mwaser, every person on this board (possibly excepting some transfers from Overcoming Bias) was once a newbie. I was once a newbie. My first toplevel was downvoted too. If you want to be safe, you lurk until you truly get what's going on around you. People can in fact learn things that way.

Your apology post was full of applause lights: you admitted fault, claimed mitigating circumstance and benign intent, requested patience and gentleness, and offered a community service. And you got lots of applause.

However, it doesn't say anywhere what it is that you claim to have suddenly understood (which spelling out, surely, would be essential to writing a newbie's guide, wouldn't it?). And apart from sprinkling the linguistic equivalent of <humility> tags in everything you've written since, it doesn't look like your conduct has changed. You're only attaching soothing particles with no meaning behind them, uttering statements of trivial agreement whenever convenient without following substantive advice, and claiming repeatedly to have learned some unspecified thing which makes you above disapproval.

My first toplevel (posted back when a toplevel on Main was worth the same karma as a toplevel in Discussion) was downvoted, and then I shut the hell up until I had something I was more sure of to say. If I had only waited until I was "done", just as I'd been "done" with my first post, then it would not have gone well for me. Every time someone downvotes you, you are being told to recalibrate your caution. At this point, if I were you, I'd drop into lurk-mode for a few months.

The question "which options are long-term rational answers?" corresponds immediately to the hypothesis "among the options are some long-term rational answers" and can be investigated in the same way.

Incorrect. Prove that one option is a long-term rational answer and you have proved the hypothesis "among the options are some long-term rational answers". That is nowhere near completing answering the question "which options are long-term rational answers"

My hypothesis was much, much more limited than "among the options are some long-term rational answers". It specified which of the options was a long-term rational answer. It further specified that all of the other options were not long-term rational answers. It is much, much easier to disprove my hypothesis than the broader hypothesis "among the options are some long-term rational answers" which gives it correspondingly more power.

If you really think that people here need to be educated as to what a hypothesis is, then a) it'd be better to link to a wikipedia definition and b) why are you bothering to post here?

Fully grokking Eliezer's post that I linked would have given you all of the above reply. The wikipedia definition is less clear than Eliezer's post. I post here because this community is more than capable of helping/forcing me to clarify my logic and rationality.

Too abstract, I don't understand. Please explain the motivation and describe the question more thoroughly.

Also, upvoted because while I think this post was in error, I think it is better that buggy thinking be exposed and corrected rather than continue to be held in private. Rationality isn't about being more right, it's about becoming more right than you currently are, and it appears (maybe I'm wrong about this?) that mwaser has good intentions in the way of this.