Posts

Sorted by New

Wiki Contributions

Comments

May is missing from Birth Month.

I would also like to know for next year. I have four older siblings on my father's side, and two on my mother's, and only spent any home time with one (from my mother's side). So, I answered 6 for older, but depending on whether this was a socialization or uterine environment question, the best answer might have been either 1 or 2 for older.

Especially if the builders are concerned about unintended consequences, the final goal might be relatively narrow and easily achieved, yet result in the wiping out of the builder species.

Most goals include "I will not tolerate any challenges to my power" as a subgoal. Tolerating challenges to power to execute goals reduces the likelihood of acheiving them.

I have seen people querulously quibbling, "ah, but suppose I find everything a user posts bad and I downvote each of them, is that a bannable offense and if not how are you going to tell, eh?" But I have not yet see anyone saying, Eugine was right to downvote everything that these people posted, regardless of what it was, and everyone else should do the same until they are driven away.

Ah, but it's not clear that those are different activities, or if they are, whether there's any way in the database or logs to tell the difference. So, when people "quibble" about the first, they're implying (I think) that they believe that in the future someone might be right to downvote everything someone posts, because that person always posts terrible posts.

Part of the reason this is coming up is a lack or perceived lack of transparency as to exactly what patterns "convicted" Eugine_Nier.

In fact, people experience this all the time whenever we dream about being someone else, and wake up confused about who we are for a few seconds or whatever. It's definitely important to me that the thread of consciousness of who I am survives, separately from my memories and preferences, since I've experienced being me without those, like everyone else, in dreams.

Russia is a poor counter-argument, given that the ruler of Russia was called Caesar.

It's more that my definition of identity just is something like an internally-forward-flowing, indistinguishable-from-the-inside sequence of observer slices and the definition that other people are pushing just...isn't.

Hm. Does "internally-forward-flowing" mean that stateA is a (primary? major? efficient? not sure if there's a technical term, here) cause of stateB, or does it mean only that internally, stateB remembers "being" stateA?

If the former, then I think you and I actually agree.

Moby Dick is not a single physical manuscript somewhere.

"Moby Dick" can refer either to a specific object, or to a set. Your argument is that people are like a set, and Error's argument is that they are like an object (or a process, possibly; that's my own view). Conflating sets and objects assumes the conclusion.

People in the rationality community tend to believe that there's a lot of low-hanging fruit to be had in thinking rationally, and that the average person and the average society is missing out on this. This is difficult to reconcile with arguments for tradition and being cautious about rapid change, which is the heart of (old school) conservatism.

Load More