All of duckduckMOO's Comments + Replies

It's obvious that morality is purely a matter of aesthetics

if nothing else, it's also a matter of what things an imperfect liar must believe in in order to not give off accurate hints that they're a bad person to have around, or more directly provoke retribution.

So perceiving the kind of things which would mark you as someone to be shunned or killed, as having their own special ontological category is very practical.

Even the idea that such things damn you is fairly accurate if you extract the baggage. You murder one lousy person and your option to liv... (read more)

edit: the tone of this post is angry, so you know. The anger is directed primarily at the paragraph I quote, which I consider utterly outrageous. It definitely spills over onto you also but I have nothing against you other than what spills over from this paragraph. I found your post had interesting insights in it otherwise. Anyway this post is pretty much an outraged rant so be warned.

Actually, here are the cliff notes because there were some objective things I identified.

teaching is a public performance role. dealing with customers complaints is literally... (read more)

Why not? Purely In terms of the social game, isn't "being smart and analytical" just one style of play?

Disadvantages: less natural concern for offense or feelings

Advantages: more concern and ability for logical politeness, finding the truth, and focusing on ideas (not taking offense).

That's^ if you want to really enter the game and play it the standard way.

You can also just be yourself, which gets you points and naturally crafts a reputation/expectations, and be idea-focused, which naturally does the same.

from an above comment, which has also bee... (read more)

PvP is fun even if you aren't good at it, otherwise it is literally just a status game. This is a lot of obfuscating dressing on the idea that human status games is where it's really at. Never mind how they're negative sum, promote perverse incentives, how people coordinate and warp perception to be unfair to people as much as the target's low status will allow, and otherwise 90% shitty in the particular, -pvp is fun, and not really like social status games, so apparently we all have to be bitches in the future.

How is it not obvious that rape is something on which people are INSUFFICIENTLY CLEAR about its badness. I mean you've personally written about not adopting evolution's alien values, do you think humans are going to get that wrong when the time comes, or do you not see how "legalised rape" is just hopping on board the hooray for monkey brains and negative sum subgoal stomp train? Then having the superhappies, seemingly in most other respects humanities superiors, contrasted to abhorrent aliens, also converging on drastically increased sexuality a... (read more)

i'm only going to consider the first one. The obvious thing to do is to pick the bees and hope for the bees, and it's an incredibly clear illustration of a situation where you might interpet the necessary unpleasant consequences of a good decision, as negative feedback about that decision, in the form of regretting the possibility of hornets. It pinpoints that feeling and it should help to push it away any other time you might be in abject pain or experiencing other lesser discomfort, e.g. after you, say, go to the gym for the first time. it really pinpoin... (read more)

The downvotes and no reply are a pretty good example of what's wrong with less wrong. Someone who is genuinely confused should not be shooed away then insulted when they ask again.

First of all remember to do and be what's best. If this doubt is engendering good attitudes in you, why not keep it? The rest of this is premised on it not helping or being unhelpful.

External reality is much more likely than being part of a simulation which adjusts itself to your beliefs because a simulation which adjusts itself to your beliefs is way, way more complicated. It re... (read more)

I think the "...and that's terrible" is pretty clearly implied. What exactly is wrong with the quote? It looks like you're dissecting a straightforward appeal to people's (stated or real) anti-unfairness values, as if it's a given that it's dishonest. I don't get it.

"some people perceive downvotes as rewards"

Is this just a dig at people vehemently defending downvoted posts or are you serious in calling this a hypothesis?

Rolling 10 dice instead of one makes the game less random. Rolling dice often instead of rarely makes the game more random. This game rolls dice for every attack and not that many. The dude said people complained about lots of dice rolling, not rolling lots of dice. Yeah, obviously if you roll 10 dice its less random than rolling one but what are the chances card game enthusiasts: people "geeky" enough to play star wars TCG don't understand that basic part of probability? It's far more likely that people were annoyed at lots of dice rolling, not ... (read more)

Why shouldn't they be? The idea that if you don't rate yourself highly no one should is just an excuse for shitty instincts.

Obviously it's a useful piece of nonsense to tell yourself. People are more likely to come to your side if you are confident. But the explicit reasoning is reprehensible. (not that any explicit reasoning probably went in, it's such a common idea that it is repeated without thought. It's almost a universal applause light.)

This is more of an irrationality quote. A bit of of paper thin justification for a shitty but common sentiment which it's useful to adopt rather than notice.

Unless you're rolling an impractical number of dice for every attack having your attacks do random damage (and not 22-24 like in MMORPGs but 1X-6X) is incredibly random. Even if you are rolling a ridiculous number of dice the game can still be decided by one roll leaving a creature on the board or killing it by one or two points of damage.

What maths says that rolling dice doesn't make the game more random? Maybe he means the game is overall less random, but I don't see any argument for that, or reference to evidence of that claim.

If the reason for the game... (read more)

The obvious guess is that theists are more comfortable imagining their decisions to be, at least in principle, completely predictable and not "fight the hypothetical". Perhaps atheists are more likely to think they can trick omega because they are not familiar and comfortable with the idea of a magic mind reader so they don't tend to properly integrate the stipulation that omega is always right.

Hell is an abrahamic (Islamic/christian only I think) thing. To the extent that we should automatically discount inferences about a God's personality based on christianity/Islam we should also discount the possibility of hell.

Is the spacing less annoying now? It wasn't at random: it had 4 gaps between topics, 2 between points and one in a few minor places were I just wanted to break it up. The selection of that scheme was pretty much random though. I just spaced it like I would read it out loud. Which was kind of stupid. I can't expect people to read it in my voice. Anyway is this any better?

Got rid of the "and I think quite good." I just meant I liked it enough to want to share it in a discussion post. I assume that's not the interpretation that was annoying people. How did people read it that made it a crackpot signal?

"What is the point of earning any credibility and rationality if one never says or believes anything that would be accepted and believed without the need of any credibility or rationality?"

So what you're saying is I shouldn't trust anything you say?

I'm at 62% (+81 total.) I imagine the people with the highest % scores stick to mostly saying stuff that is obviously useful or interesting, though if they get recognisability they might be able to get away with more. It'll be interesting to go back and see what gets what % in my past comments.

edit: Is there an easy way to find my older posts? I can only go back a few pages if I click my name on the right.

Whether or not its a good idea to announce one's rationale for upvoting has nothing to do with whether authors should show or tell. Phrases don't apply equally to all situations the words could fit in. There are reasons why people recommend that to writers and they aren't at all the same reasons people recommend that people up/downvote silently, as they are almost completely dissimilar situations.

It seems to me that the problem with the post you are replying to is that it dismisses a post as mostly garbage rather than its defiance of good writing practice.... (read more)

This is really good IMO. I think it would be a little better instead of vengeance as a terminal value it claimed a hardwired precommitment to vengeance against its destructors. Vengeance on that scale is only compatible with friendliness as a special case.

edit: also how would it recognise that it was about to be destroyed. Wouldn't it lose power faster than it could transmit that it was losing power? And even if not it would have a miniscule amount of time.

That you were able to shake someone up so well surprises me but doesn't say much about what would actually happen.

Doing research on the boxer is not something a boxed AI would be able to do. The AI is superintelligent, not omniscient: It would only have information its captors believe is a good idea for it to have. (except maybe some designs would have to have access to their own source code? I don't know)

Also what is a "the human psyche?" There are humans, with psyches. Why would they all share vulnerabilities? Or all have any? Especially ones e... (read more)

I put never, but "not anymore" would be more accurate

The writer says "If you insist on telling me anyway, I will nod, say that your argument makes complete sense..." despite knowing perfectly well they can't tell if the argument makes sense or not.

If, even knowing specifically in this case that you can't tell if an argument is correct or not, you feel the need to announce that "your argument makes complete sense" your problem is that you believe things without understanding them. Fixing that bad habit might remove the need to not take arguments seriously.

"is valuable to you for discussing weird topics"

"reddit"

pick one.

"That's not the way it feels" "it feels right"

This is a horrible justification for anything. Doing something bad doesn't automatically make someone feel bad. It's an especially bad test of status-seeking's moral status because (normal) people rarely feel bad about doing something they perceive as normal even if it's bad. In any case it's not true that it always feels right, There are constitutional differences from person to person that change how normal everyday status seeking feels: not everyone seeks status for the warm fuzzies, some... (read more)

First off I think that at less wrong you could get better results by including an option on some question that says something to the effect of: those options are such a poor match if I picked one it would make the results worse/add more noise than signal/you would actually lose information if you interpreted it at face value.

With what race do you most identify? Why is this question about racial identification rather than ontological membership? If I'm white but I totally think black people are awesome the instructions tell me to put black which you probabl... (read more)

It looks to me like Eridu sincerely holds positions that you would be expected to find particularly objectionable or even have trouble believing someone could hold in part due to a huge inferential distance between what the world must look like (including perceptual valences) to the two of you. He's not presenting new ideas. Some People have been taking seriously those ideas for a long time. Is anyone who is a sincere radical feminist that bring their normal (imprecise and [even more]politicky) ways of speaking to less wrong going to be labelled a troll? I... (read more)

If you wake up not too severely damaged and in a decent environment (possibly with all kinds of wonderful improvements) where your life wil be better than non existence you will have a lot more time for living. If not you can always kill yourself.

If you get yourself frozen only for revival upon major life extension breakthroughs as well as unfreezing damage repair etc the important possibilities for the revival are probability of happy revival vs probability of unhappy revival where you can't kill yourself.

I'm not aware of there ever having been any actua... (read more)

I meant from Eridu's perspective. I was correcting what I saw as an internal flaw in Eridu's claims not making a statement of my own values. (I assume this is how I was interpreted because of the downvotes, not because of your reply.Or are people actually objecting to the correction?)

How does some behaviour being more typical of men than women constitute gender? You have to (not sure if next word is right word) essentialise the average difference in behaviour before it becomes gender or it's just an average. And how is that not bad? The reason that, in the... (read more)

"Is not the natural condition" is not a counterargument of any sort to eridu's claim:

*(I got this from Eridu's profile. it is the right post: I clicked permalink and it bought me here)

Eridu: "I don't think that hormones play a significant role, and I don't think that they can override socialization.

For example, how much traditionally gendered behavior do feral children display? That's biological gender, right there. They have the same hormones any of the rest of us do, minus all the socialization."

"The feral condition is not the n... (read more)

This is still 100% naturalistic fallacy. Or appeal to nature if you don't feel that it is a fallacy in this case.

i typed it out as a response to that post and copy pasted it to this post (adding the /fundamental) because it is higher up. So kinda.

It's too specific/complicated to be low level/fundamental. Actually all of them are too specific/complicated to be low level. They're just so widely and thoroughly internalised (to the point where not being that way will likely be bad for you just because other people will dislike you for it) very few people realise they are changable, or are motivated to change them. There's little reason to change them for most people. Not having a desire for revenge or redress grievances is a quick way to become a target/victim, status seeking gets you status if you do ... (read more)

... did you even read the post you are replying to? :/

"Allowing people to define their own subjective states ("this is how I feel") seems to me to in fact be the opposite of infantilizing."

This has nothing to do with whether defining "creepiness" by how people feel is infantilising. Defining any behaviour that affects someones feelings a certain way is not even close to "allowing people to define their own subjective states."

As it stands it's so barely related I have to assume as well as not reading the post you are replying to you are also misusing define.

Fighting standards, especially shitty ones does not make you an arrogant prick. Are those your words or are you just repeating someone else's bullshit way of labelling anyone who resists their standard? You can play along without selling your soul you know. You can even take all pride in the careful preperation, the niceness of the diligence and the cleanliness and discipline, the oppurtunity to meditate etc etc whatever people like about cleaning uniforms, without hating people (like yourself very slightly previously) who think its silly. Why swallow the negative with the positive?>

his point is that it shouldn't matter not that it doesn't matter. Did you until that moment think other people didn't do that sort of thing because you hadn't noticed yourself doing it?

Not that you thought that sort of thing is unfair or silly? In which case it kind of sounds like you suddenly upped your estimate of the rewards of conforming to the shitty standard (due to what could be an unusually high tendency to respect people based on their clothing) and decided to call your abandoning the principle "not pretending that stuff doesn't matter."... (read more)

Im pretty sure this was my orifinal/default style of arguing.

I mostly only argue to win for sport or for winning memetic battles.

can't you just not read the replies to downvoted comments? How is it hurting anybody when someone replies to a comment with a score at or below -3? I don't see a reason to disincentivise it.

isn't claimed actual equivalence the problem with P-zombies. Someone being observationally equivalent but different is merely extremely unlikely (maybe she has an identical twin, maybe aliens etc.) P-zombies are supposed to be indistingishable in principle, which is impossible/requires souls that aren't subject to testing for distinguishability.

"Coltheart et al pretend that the prior is 1/100, but this implies that there is a base rate of your spouse being an imposter one out of every hundred times you see her (or perhaps one out of every hundred people has a fake spouse) either of which is preposterous."

What if their prior on not feeling anything upon seeing their wife is 0? What if most of the reason for reasonable people's prior on this being much lower it is low status, instrumentally bad, etc, but their rational sincere thinking about it prior is close to 50/50? I notice you call... (read more)

"Namely, the answer is that, contrary to Haidt's model of contemporary ideologies, there are in fact no such people."

This seems to be obviously untrue. Unless "no such people" has finally become a synonym for "very few such people percentagewise" Even if you replace "morality" with "instinct" this is almost certainly untrue. Sincere utilitarians, labelled as such or not, do in fact exist. There are also people who naturally lack some or all such instincts altogether.

"As for the claim that "you n... (read more)

"Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it."

It can't be a good counterargument if there's a good obvious counterargument to it. obvious but not good is fine, good but not obvious might be/is sorta fine but not both. You could well have meant either, as a forward slash tends to mean or, but... (read more)

It's not retribution if its not the person who stole your bike.

People who are experiencing scepticism should have bananas smushed in their faces, is what you're saying? And apparently that's worth 12 upvotes.

Apart from the hilarious joke, this quote makes the point that "will kill you" is not actually the same as impossible to eat, which more generally generally points out that impossible is often used in place of "really bad idea."

I read edible as a synonym for eatable. Poisonous mushrooms: edible. rocks, not edible. That's how that word is attatched in my head. I assume you read it as non-poisonous/fit to eat so it feels like a crass and overt redefinition. If the guy who wrote that reads that word the same way I assume you do it's a really cheap joke. If he doesn't the quote makes a lot of sense.

Nihilist means moral anti-realist here I assume. This was how i always used the term originally.

Unless you give the kids a pass for being kids.

edit: which I think is inconsistent. There's no schelling point, but it seems to be the normal attitude.

"Some children are more athletic than others, and some children are more intelligent than others. Starting among conservatives, but now spreading to some liberals, is a rejection of this premise via blaming teachers. "

That some people will be naturally better than others does not mean there are no low hanging fruit that could make people on average much more athletic and/or more intelligent. He doesn't explicitly claim otherwise but just to spell it out: that humans are not identical does not mean they are reaching anywhere near their potential. ... (read more)