= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
If you specify a reasonable enumeration of utility functions (such as shortest first) - and cross off the superintelligences that don't do anything very dramatic as being not very "super" - this seems pretty reasonable.
The most important part in that comment:
Piano teacher
Followed closely by:
you could benefit from practising playing to a metronome.
Definitely not:
the kind of support group where everyone tries to find fault with everyone else
I was thinking of a group more like "you said your piano teacher suggested practising with a metronome - have you actually done so this week?"
"you've said a priority is learning the piano, yet you aren't keeping track of your practise or recording yourself or making any way to check your progress and get feedback. Have you noticed that is inconsistent with your stated desire?"
"Do you realise how much you are talking about your commute to work compared to it's real impact on your life?"
not
"you really suck at the piano"
"and have you noticed how stupid you are?"
"and how you talk forever about boring things?"
I tend to find focussing on developing strengths to better than focussing on weaknesses. Mind you there is a place for constructive criticism. But there are relatively few sources from whom such criticism is valuable.
I tend to find focussing on developing strengths to better than focussing on weaknesses.
I don't follow. If you never focus on things you can't do well, you'll never do anything different or build any new abilities.
Piano teacher: You're not keeping time very well, you could benefit from practising playing to a metronome.
wedrifid: I prefer to focus on developing strengths, and I'm really good at playing loudly so I'll just do that, thanks.
?
Or a mirror.
Makes me wonder if a good way to deal with rationality or akrasia or self-improvement would be the kind of support group where everyone tries to find fault with everyone else. It's so easy to see flaws in others compared to flaws in ourselves, why not use that to our advantage?
Finding the right people to do this who could both handle it and keep it from turning into an insult trading group might be difficult.
In response to
The Orange Head Joke
Suggested edits for an audience made of stereotypical LessWrongniks:
Mention, in passing that "There are three kinds of genies: Genies to whom you can safely say "I wish for you to do what I should wish for"; genies for which no wish is safe; and genies that aren't very powerful or intelligent.". Then argue which kind of genie this was.
End with "-- and, this is the bit where I kinda failed to overcome akrasia -- I asked for an orange for a head."
Suggested edits for an audience made of stereotypical LessWrongniks:
It's business as usual for a bartender, and one day as he is cleaning his bar an unusual customer walks in dressed in an expensive suit, a beautiful supermodel hanging off each arm and with a limo parked outside. Furthermore, the man has an orange for a head.
The bartender assigns high probability that the man is dressed in a costume of some sort, pretty low probability that he is hallucinating given that nothing else appears odd, low to medium probability that the talking orange-lookalike is a robot creation with a radio link to a real person elsewhere, and negligible probability that his whole understanding of the universe is wrong to the level that genies, magic and talking conscious fruit with biological connections to a human nervous system exists.
He greets the man and serves him a drink.
Alternate middle: "For my first wish I asked for an unlimited fortune. The genie became very quiet and after a minute or two, coins started appearing beside it. Then more and more, I saw the ground, the grass, rocks, all start morphing into coins more and more of them. I pocketed some and ran.
He looks around. "I hope it's not still going", he said with nervous laughter.
In response to
What do superintelligences really want? [Link]
In fact, if our superintelligent program has no hard-coded survival mechanism, it is more likely to switch itself off than to destroy the human race willfully.
This guys seems to miss the point. Most possible superintelligences would destroy the human race incidentally.
Is it established that most would?
Just because it's smart doesn't mean it has to want the same things we do, including novelty. http://www.personalityresearch.org/evolutionary/sphexishness.html
Would you be happy to classify that wasp as having "superhuman intelligence"?
Then why accept that a machine which behaves like that wasp is superhumanly intelligent?
In response to
The Orange Head Joke
See also this bit relating to Christmas Cracker bad jokes:
He [Professor Richard Wiseman] thinks the key to the success of modern cracker jokes is precisely because they're not funny. 'If the joke is good and you tell it and it doesn't get a laugh, it's your problem. If the joke's bad and it doesn't get a laugh, then it's the joke's problem. My theory is that it's a way of not embarrassing people at Christmas.' So they're not jokes at all? 'In a sense, they're just a way of binding people together. Given the diversity around your average dinner table, it would be extraordinarily difficult to come up with a joke that everyone found funny. The kids won't get it, or someone will find it offensive. Even if you did, the delivery would be difficult. Women don't tell jokes to one another, so they're not used to doing it. Blokes do, but it's done in a particular context, not around the family table, and it's quite stressful to try and deliver a funny joke, so it would be a disaster.'
In response to
The Orange Head Joke
Summary: "A man has an orange for a head. How? Magic."
Is it still funny?
Assuming a person can actually have an orange for a head and that genies exist then this is just a straightforward story explaining how he became wealthy, desirable and fruitheaded. Like asking someone in a suit how come he's wearing a suit and he answers "because I bought one and put it on".
Assuming a person can't actually have an orange for a head, it's just a timewasting surreal story which doesn't go anywhere.
The humour is in the non-answer where an answer is expected, but I don't find a non-answer funny. I do see it as a joke-shaped pattern and start to involuntarily smile at it, but I'm mentally annoyed by it not enhappied by it.
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"Please don't hold anything back, and give me the facts" – Wen Jiabao, Chinese Premier (when meeting disgruntled people at the central complaints offices).