It is plausible (though not necessarily true) that refusing to be blackmailed acausally prevents the AI from becoming a torture AI, but it cannot prevent the AI from existing at all. How could it?

In this case "be blackmailed" means "contribute to creating the damn AI". That's the entire point. If enough people do contribute to creating it then those that did not contribute get punished. The (hypothetical) AI is acausally creating itself by punishing those that don't contribute to creating it. If nobody does then nobody gets punished.

I'll be sure to ask you the next time I need to write an imaginary comment.

I wasn't the pedant. I was the tangential-pedantry analyzer. Ask Lumifer.

It's not like anyone didn't know what I meant. What do you think of the actual content? How much do you trust faul_sname's claim that they wouldn't trust their own senses on a time-travel-like improbability?

Your comment was fine. It would be true of most people, I'm not sure if Faul is one of the exceptions.

Realistically speaking?

Unfortunately this still suffers from the whole "Time Traveller visits you" part of the claim - our language doesn't handle it well. It's a realistic claim about counterfactual response of a real brain to unrealistic stimulus.

This seems weird to me.

It seemed weird enough to me that it stuck in my memory more clearly than any of his anti-MIRI comments.

XiXiDu does not strike me as someone who is of average or below-average intelligence--quite the opposite, in fact.

I concur.

Is there some advantage to be gained from saying that kind of thing that I'm just not seeing here?

My best guess is an ethical compulsion towards sincere expression of reality as he perceives it. For what it is worth that sincerity did influence my evaluation of his behaviour and personality. XiXiDu doesn't seem like a troll, even when he does things that trolls also would do. My impression is that I would like him if I knew him in person.

I don't think it's literally factually :-D

I think you're right. It's closer to, say... "serious counterfactually speaking".

False humility? Countersignalling? Depression? I don't want to make an internet diagnosis or mind reading, but from my view these options seem more likely than the hypothesis of low intelligence.

From the context I ruled out countersignalling and for what it is worth my impression was that the humility was real, not false. Given that I err on the side of cynical regarding hypocrisy and had found some of XiXiDu's comments disruptive I give my positive evaluation of Xi's sincerity some weight.

I agree that the hypothesis of low intelligence is implausible despite the testimony. Addition possible factors I considered:

• Specific weakness in intelligence (eg. ADHD, dyslexia or something less common) that produced low self esteem in intelligence despite overall respectable g.
• Perfectionistic or obsessive tendencies which would lead to harsh self judgements relative to an unrealistic ideal. (Potentially similar to the kind of tendencies which would cause the idealism failure mode described in the opening post.)
• Not realising just how stupid 'average' is. (This is a common error. This wasn't the first time I've called 'bullshit' on claims to be below average IQ. Associating with highly educated nerds really biases the sample.)

(Unless the context was something like "intelligence lower than extremely high"; i.e. something like "I have IQ 130, but compared with people with IQ 160 I feel stupid".)

That would have been more accurate, but no, the context ruled that out.

I'm curious whether XiXiDu's confidence/objective self evaluation has changed over the intervening years. I hope it has.

I gave two TEDx talks in two weeks (also a true statement: I gave two TEDx talks in 35 years), one cosmic colonisation, one on xrisks and AI.

I'm impressed. (And will look them up when I get a chance.)

For what it's worth, I don't think anybody understands acausal trade.

It does get a tad tricky when combined with things like logical uncertainty and potentially multiple universes.

Precommitment isn't meaningless here just because we're talking about acausal trade.

Except in special cases which do not apply here, yes it is meaningless. I don't think you understand acausal trade. (Not your fault. The posts containing the requisite information were suppressed.)

What I described above doesn't require the AI to make its precommitment before you commit; rather, it requires the AI to make its precommitment before knowing what your commitment was.

The time of this kind decision is irrelevant.

The key is that the AI precommits to building it whether we refuse or not.

The 'it' bogus is referring to is the torture-AI itself. You cannot precommit to things until you exist, no matter your acausal reasoning powers.