All of EternalArchon's Comments + Replies

These seem like low probability concerns

  • Beck is on the air hours a day, and he has put out about 20 books, with no end in sight. He was a wild-morning radio disc jokey and still uses that bombastic style, and never scrips out what he is going to say. His opponents just cut out tiny samples- the least politically correct stuff, to slam him with. Its very unlikely that Blue team commentators would ever get around to something this serious, when there are far more juicy bits.

  • This section mentions Kurzweil enough times (over 10 times), with other names,

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This evidence is sufficient for me to update to your level of concern.

You're pretty close to an optimized cryonics sales-pitch for Objectivists.

"Do that and you'll wind up with the universe tiled with paperclips" cracks me up. Even hearing it out of context, its overly familiar, but to a bystander its completely nonsensical. What makes it even better, there is no jargon or uncommon vocabulary that would make someone assume they misheard you, an outsider overhearing this would be forced into a state of complete bafflement. Kind of reminds me that old Lewis Black stand-up about overhearing a girl say "If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college."

2Yoav Ravid
The Lewis Black standup bit

Maybe its all the talk about Unfriendly AI here, but Ellison's story was also my first thought to the question- What if its a bad future?

he was treated the same way most lower class drug users are. They receive no punishment and eventually grow up and do fine in life.

1) I think the op knows that, and maybe what he's saying is more like: isn't that people don't care about drug use, they like their tribal leaders to be "effective" rule breakers. An Obama who never did drugs might be less popular and less cool.

2) I assume you're saying that 'treated the same way' means not caught. Most poor and rich escape being caught, but that is very different than equal treatment once caught.

0Eneasz
1 - yes exactly. Thank you. 2 - also in agreement. In the video Penn mentions a couple times that if Obama had been caught he'd be screwed, which is absolutely laughable. He would have been let off with a wink and a nod, due to his elite status. But I didn't want to side-track the post.

I can feel this post triggering a little BlueVsGreen thinking habits. Instead I'm going to attempt to stay Bruce Banner, and simply ask for clarification, but if my comments appear frustrated/insulting- please forgive me.

Can someone, OP or otherwise, explain to me, directly, the connection being made between Penn's rant and rationalists loving hedonism? Even if I accept each assertion, the materials don't construct a train-track capable of being traveled for my brain:

  • What does Penn's rant have to do with the nature of the goals we choose and should cho
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2BlazeOrangeDeer
Yes to the "loose interior monologue" bit. The video sparked a question about what society considers to be "winning" and how the meme of winning rationalists relates to that. And in the future you may want to include your inklings right after you mention your suspicions of blue/green thinking, I almost downvoted you because I thought you were just another complainer. Upvoted because I found your first inkling interesting and not obviously wrong.
5Zaine
The high-status elites Eneasz refers to are rewarded by society with praise, respect, worship, etc. for playing the game in near mode, focusing mainly on maintaining their high status-profiles with little ulterior motives (at least, little that have a high probability of creating net world-wide utility). Such would be the same feedback loop for near-mode winning rationalist hedons. That's how I understood the transition, anyhow. I agree the danger is certainly worth considering, and think we should remember Machiavelli's position on the role of princes: The Prince's duty is to attain power and maintain it, by whatever means necessary to ensure the benefit of his people. *Paraphrased Id est, the ends justify the means, but only so long as the ends benefit the people; purely status oriented games only benefit those who play them.

This is a great post full of low investment methods with potentially high payoffs.

Yet, I find the structure of this post to be personally hilarious! My favorite technique/provocation is not listed: randomly matching successful systems(or their principles) into new pairs. While effective, this notion is commonly rejected- that a new combination of old ideas/principles is not new, unworthy of respect, and furthermore can be considered criminal behavior(a violation of intellectual ownership). I find the absence here understandable and even defensible- bu... (read more)

1Fhyve
Can you give an example?

Seems like a lot words to express:

  • Akrasia is an adaptive response to conserve energy while in an exploiting hierarchy.
0Jayson_Virissimo
How long would that summary be after tabooing exploiting hierarchy?
2TheOtherDave
Lord knows this is usually why I don't get much work done at work.

Mental Health

  • Just my opinion, but I think for those with anxiety, depression, or habitual negative thinking, measuring aspects of life can be very detrimental. The siren call of self-help pulls on those who feel inadequacy, this is similar, "if I track 'things' I can find what's wrong with me and fix it." But turning a spotlight on one's life without treatment(like CBT), will just provide evidence to feed a bias.

Motivation

  • I'm more likely to do a project I'm tracking in detail. I find I vastly overestimate my ability to remember tas
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Oh, okay, well I've only read Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. Damn it and here I thought I was being moderately insightful pointing out that theme, but he went and made it the whole plot of a prequel.

Oh well, I still thinks its a rather silly selection for a pre-teen girl.

How about an anti-birth control story where the third child (In a world where like, you know, only 2 children are normally allowed) becomes trapped naked in a bathroom with a mean bully, so he brutally murders him to escape... then goes on to commit widespread genocide. Young girls love that stuff.

Oh wait, Ender's Game is already on your list. Oops.

Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge, which won a Hugo Award, is by far the clearest example and best suggestion I can think of, but I'm not seeing it on the Amazon Kindle market. Shucks, what I get for trying to be witty.

1Incorrect
Regardless of the quality of Ender's Game, that is incredibly misleading.