All of mat33's Comments + Replies

"accidentally quoting your own work back to you as corroborating authority without even being aware that it is you"

It isn't the Bible, or something... as yet. I didn't think it may be taken this way.

6wedrifid
It is a work - the same way that a famous piece of literature or the finger painting of a child is a work. Scripture doesn't come into it.

"I would totally have worn a clown suit to school. My serious conversations were with books, not with other children."

The same goes for me. But then, our teachers told us not to be afraid to ask "silly" questions and express weird ideas. If you aren't the best and you aren't nearly the worst student, a lot of others would be thinking along same lines at the moment. Our teachers pointed that our... and it helped, actually. Well, it wasn't your average school.

"But if you think you would totally wear that clown suit, then don't be... (read more)

Well, no modern dictator I know off understimates mass-media.

And basic rights and freedoms, where they do work at all, do tend to work against excluding your opponents as information source of the majority.

"Yet the most fearsome aspect of contamination is that it serves as yet another of the thousand faces of confirmation bias."

A horrible thing, if you look at it, as on the part of the cognition process of an [individual] ant. (Not that there is a lot of cognition expected to go on in the head of a single ant). And some usufull insights in the cognitive process of the anthill, as the whole - if you but try to look at it from another angle.

Our subcultures - actually do some cognition. They make something done. They do come up with some workable... (read more)

"why, that problem is so incredibly difficult that an actual majority resolve the whole issue within 15 seconds.", "We Change Our Minds Less Often Than We Think" and "Cached Thoughts"...

Right. We don't do a lot of "our" thinking ourselves. We aren't individually sentient, not really. We don't notice it, but the actual thinking is going on in our subcultures. The sad and funny thing is, we don't even try to understand the cognition of our subcultures, when we research cognition.

1papetoast
We do less thinking that we imagine, but we still think. However, I still argee (to a lesser extent) that (sub)cultures fixed many thoughts of many people. I find 2 possible meaning of "we" here, but the sentence is false in both senses: 1. "We" = all of humanity: The "cognition of subcultures" sounds like half Anthropology and half Psychology, and I imagine it has been researched.  2. "We" = individuals, rationalists: If your goal is to think by yourself, it is minimally useful to understand how culture "think" for you. Knowing how to not let culture think for you is enough.
4stcredzero
I think I'm sentient. If you're not sentient, I would surmise that you believe you're lucky enough to be in a competent subculture -- one self-aware enough to bring this realization to you. Could one devise a series of experiments to show that individuals aren't sentient, but "subcultures" are?

Right.

But the problem was to keep going on, breathing and even sort of thinking in the presence of death in this world.

Thousands generations of our ancestors had to adopt to death in some way, without any chance to strike back at it at all.

It isn't your usual "hostage situation" as they go...

In the 20-th century, Richard Feinmann did point out that there may be some problem with how we patch our phisics by cutting out the neigbourhoods. Nowdays we are pathing the General Relativity with the dark matter (it wasn't predicted, really) and even dark matter. It looks like we'll have to patch some "too fast neitrino in the matter" fenomenon.

I am not claiming this "patching" business something intristically right and beautifull. Never. We'll have to propose some new theories. But... before we'll have some better theory, to pa... (read more)

1tlhonmey
Yeah, "dark matter" really bothers me.  Which seems more likely?   That there are massive quantities of invisible matter in the universe that only interacts via gravitation?  And happens to be spread around in about the same density distribution as all the regular matter? Or that our estimate for the value of the universal gravitational constant is either off a little bit or not quite as constant as we think? The former sounds a little too much like an invisible dragon to me.  Which doesn't make it impossible, but exotic, nigh-undetectable forms of matter just doesn't seem as plausible as observation error to me.

You are right. Most certainly so.

Nevertheless, it feels just fine to know, that democracy would most probably put something ratlike from the KGB ranks and dungeons into high security cell, and not in the White House.

1jeronimo196
Necroing, since this is such a stunning display of the Halo effect in action - as if there have never been a single handsome KGB agent, or all "rat-like" people belong in a a cell. I realize this was an insult hurled at Putin, but it's extremely poorly worded and with some unpleasant implications. Would a good looking KGB agent be preferable? Is Putin that physically repulsive, or is matt33 misjudging his appearance due to the horn effect?
1pnrjulius
But what if it means we exclude, say, Stephen Hawking from candidacy due to his paralysis and resulting unattractive appearance, despite the fact that he is one of the most brilliant men alive?

"Sophistication effect. Politically knowledgeable subjects, because they possess greater ammunition with which to counter-argue incongruent facts and arguments, will be more prone to the above biases."

Well, what about that always taking on the strongest opponent and the strongest arguments business? ;)

Actually, when I see a fellow with third degree in Philosophy, I leave him for someone, who'll have a similiar degree. It isn't that Sorbonne initiates are hopeless, it's arguments with 'em, that really are (hopeless).

"If we know authority we are still interested in hearing the arguments; but if we know the arguments fully, we have very little left to learn from authority."

Really? We don't deny any ideas/possibilities without 5 minutes of thinking, at least (on the authority of Harry Potter :)). Right. But I'll need a lot more time (days at least) to understand an advanced research of any able professional. And I am ready to fail understanding any work of true genius before it's included in the textbooks for, well, students.

"I think in the case of atheism the source is unique: every (modern) atheist knows his or her atheism is a product of scientific understanding..."

We are already "stronger" by far, than most of the "pagan" gods. This century, we may well create our own worlds ("virtual", yea - but theology doesn't hold our own world as the "real" for its creator...s). It's all comes down to terminology.

"It's hard to see on an emotional level why a genie might be a good thing to have, if you haven't acknowledged any wishes that need granting."

Why not? Personal wishes are the simplest ones. Minimal needs fulfilment plus really high class of security may be the first thing. It leaves a lot of time to have your wishes to come to you naturally. May be effortlessly, even. The wishes of your friends come with all the limitations to yours (and then - their) security. Now, we got some kind of working recursion.

"I suppose there could be some se... (read more)

Hm...

Is there some misterious, but great difference between getting -1000000$ and -100000000 in USA?

If there isn't such a thing, the wrong choices may have been made, but not by the Casey Serin. In fact, if we are speaking jury (12 honest tax payers), it may be rather smart idea to spend few millions USD on their, honest tax payers of his state, favorite charities at this point. To spend a few thousands on lawers and psichologists too.

PS. The politicians do spend a lot of money their countries don't actually own to delay the current Recession and make the next Great Depression out of it. And I do believe, they have rather good chances to succed at getting this Depression and getting away with it too.

"But there is no reason for complex actions with many consequences to exhibit this onesidedness property. Why do people seem to want their policy debates to be one-sided?"

We do like to vote, you know. We do like to see other people vote. We do expect to see some kind of propagand, some kind of pitch to cast our votes in some certain way. We tend to feel fooled, than we don't see that, what we do expect to see in the right place. No, it isn't reserved exclusively for the politic issues.

"I don't think that when someone makes a stupid choi... (read more)

"...the death penalty that you get for just being alive for longer than a century or so."

The "ethics of gods" most probably is the ethics of evolution. "Good" (in this particular sence) Universe have to be "bad" enough to allow the evolution of live, mind and [probabbly] technology. The shaw is natural selection - and the shaw must go on. Even as it includes aforementioned death penalty...

1[anonymous]
If you killed all other people apart from me (including yourself) I would still be a sentient being. Sentient and rather sad.
2Richard_Kennaway
Speak for yourself.
0Biophile
Evolution favors the attitudes that make us most likely to produce viable offspring. If this is one's own main goal, then I suppose logical fallacies should be accepted if they have a clear evolutionary basis and still seem likely to contribute to that goal. However, whether or not it's efficient to place reproduction as one's top priority depends on various circumstances, including emotions. From what I've read by Eliezer Yudkowsky, it seems like being accurate in his ideas is more important to him. In that situation, just because a belief helps us survive long enough to reproduce does not mean that it is "useful," and "criticizing evolution" isn't really what he's doing. Evolution /isn't/ a designer, and it /isn't/ always completely efficient (not that any designer is), but even if it is completely efficient in this case, the efficiency is towards a goal he does not share, so it isn't necessarily relevant to him.

Welcome to Less Wrong!

Your comment suggests you might have interesting ideas to share but unfortunately it isn't clear enough. There are quite a few spelling errors and instances of confusing syntax. Your use of parentheses and scare quotes also muddles your meaning.

Politics, social intercourse, public relationships were the major factors in our mind's evolution. Look up "HarryPotterandtheMethodsofRationality".

If you intended to direct this comment at the author of the post, then I'm pretty sure he's already heard of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. He wrote them :-)

2lessdazed
"Harry*Potter*and*the*Methods*of*Rationality"-->"HarryPotterandtheMethodsofRationality" "Harry\*Potter\*and\*the\*Methods\*of\*Rationality"-->"Harry*Potter*and*the*Methods*of*Rationality"