All of Corey_Newsome's Comments + Replies

We should set up a program that blasts 'One Winged Angel' through the speakers of every online computer in the house, every morning.

The third horn of the anthropic trilemma is to deny that there is any meaningful sense whatsoever in which you can anticipate being yourself in five seconds, rather than Britney Spears; to deny that selfishness is coherently possible; to assert that you can hurl yourself off a cliff without fear, because whoever hits the ground will be another person not particularly connected to you by any such ridiculous thing as a "thread of subjective experience".

http://lesswrong.com/lw/19d/the_anthropic_trilemma/

A question of rationality. Eliezer, I have... (read more)

3PhilGoetz
From EY's post: Suppose I build a (conscious) brain in hardware using today's technology. It uses a very low current density, to avoid electromigration. Suppose I build two of them, and we agree that both of them experience consciousness. Then I learn a technique for treating the wafers to minimize electromigration. I create a new copy of the brain, the same as the first copy, only using twice the current, and hence being implemented by a flow of twice as many electrons. As far as the circuits and the electrons travelling them are concerned, running it is very much like running the original 2 brains physically right next to each other in space. So, does the new high-current brain have twice as much conscious experience?
0MBlume
http://lesswrong.com/lw/sa/the_gift_we_give_to_tomorrow/

won't get on the airplane until after it arrives at the demonstration.

"destination"?

0Eliezer Yudkowsky
fixed

Epistemic Hygiene was a term coined by Steve Rayhawk and Anna Salamon. No credit for me. :)

0steven0461
No, it's way older.

...because the first thing warlords do when they take over Scottsdale, Arizona, is invest great amounts of money in technology to revive old people, then use their highly advanced mind-controlling powers to turn them into mentally aware but vicariously controlled slaves, or otherwise coerce their few dozens of old computer scientists and physicists to kick babies and spit on puppies. Because warlords and UnFriendly AIs are evil for the sake of being evil. Makes perfect sense.

(Your parenthetical point is an argument for donating to FAI research, not an argument against getting froze.)

Hm, interesting point. I'm not sure I have this trait, because instead of thinking "duhhh" when I hear a well-reasoned and compelling argument, I like to make a few sanity checks and run it past my skepticism meter before allowing the clicking mechanism to engage. I wonder if that's ever produced results; at any rate, I feel like it's my duty to keep good epistemic hygiene, though my skeptical reasoning might be superficial. For this reason it normally takes a few seconds before I allow things to click, which slows conversation a tad. Perhaps I s... (read more)

1isacki
That's very interesting to read - I have the same trait and surely it must be fairly widespread and not particular to us. Essentially a trait to subject highly favoured, especially very trivial hypotheses to burdensome checking, for the sake of intellectual integrity or 'epistemic hygiene' which you intriguingly coin. Maybe this trait is called OCD. For example, in the post above: it is referenced that the woman suggests magic exists because science does not know everything, it is replied that lack of knowledge does not imply non-existence, and the woman is said to have 'clicked' by concluding that magic is inconsistent. While this final conclusion sounds very reasonable, for completeness I still felt the need to question: "inconsistent with what?" First let's lay out the reasonable premise: 1. I think the unspoken implied principle here here is that magic is defined to be what is unknown. So we can test the consistency of this principle. If one person does not know something, and the other person does, then regarding this something, magic would have to exist for one but not exist for the other, respectively. Therefore there is a logical inconsistency in this principle (unless we accept solipsism, but then we would have difficulty talking about real 'other people', would we?) However, I do suppose that if only one person existed, there would be no other person to create a logical inconsistency and in a strict sense magic would be consistent. It would merely constantly change based on your epistemological state, and you would probably need Occam's Razor to dispense with it.

No, but unfortunately I can't find out where it came from. Perhaps P. Z. Myers's collection of infidel quotes (Edit: see PeerInfinity's comment) but I can't access it right now due to Linux problems. (Incidentally, he'll be in the Bay area for a week in a few days. Info here.)

At any rate, that's a good page to read when you're feeling particularly anti-theist and want ammo.

2PeerInfinity
The "infidel quotes" link is broken. Or at least it failed to load when I clicked it. Is this the page you meant to link to: http://www.pharyngula.org/quotes.html

"Corey, I'm going to pray for you." "OK, then I'll think for both of us." Or, "Ok, then I'm going to prey on you."

"I'll pray for you."

"I'll think for you."

Is that original? GF and I both think it's awesome.

Speaking of appearances, Eliezer makes me feel self-conscious about how un-white my teeth are.

I wonder what effects being imaginary has on how you deal with the simulation hypothesis.

If you do happen upon that link, please reply to this comment so I can check out the study.

3Morendil
Here is a news story: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2051-rejection-massively-reduces-iq.html - I haven't tracked down the actual papers. "Recently published" turns out to be false memory, but I'm sure I saw the story pop up somewhere recently.

It seems you disagree with this 'niceness' thing; perhaps you should write up counterpoints to the post? (Or you already have and I missed it.)

I'm going to repeat my request (for the last time) that the most recent Open Thread have a link in the bar up top, between 'Top' and 'Comments', so that people can reach it a tad easier. (Possible downside: people could amble onto the site and more easily post time-wasting nonsense.)

0wedrifid
If I recall correctly this request is already on the implementation queue.