All of mathenjoyer's Comments + Replies

This is how real-life humans talk.

Fair.

Something something blackmailer is subjunctively dependent with the teacup! (This is a joke.)

No, they can't. See: "akrasia" on the path to protecting their hypothetical predicted future selves 30 years from now.

The teacup takes the W here too. It's indifferent to blackmail! [chad picture]

I don't disagree with any of this.

And yet, some people seem to be generalizedly "better at things" than others. And I am more afraid of a broken human person (he might shoot me) than a broken teacup.

It is certainly possible that "intelligence" is a purely intrinsic property of my own mind, a way to measure "how much do I need to use the intentional stance to model another being, rather than model-based reductionism?" But this is still a fact about reality, since my mind exists in reality. And in that case "AI alignment" would still need to be a necessary f... (read more)

"A map that reflects the territory. Territory. Not people. Not geography. Not land. Territory. Land and its people that have been conquered."

The underlying epistemology and decision theory of the sequences is AIXI. To AIXI the entire universe is just waiting to be conquered and tiled with value because AIXI is sufficiently far-sighted to be able to perfectly model "people, geography, and land" and thus map them nondestructively.

The fact that mapping destroys things is a fact about the scope of the mapper's mind, and the individual mapping process, not abou... (read more)

Human reasoning is not Bayesian because Bayesianism requires perfectly accurate introspective belief about one's own beliefs.

Human reasoning is not Frequentist because Frequentism requires access to the frequency of an event, which is not accessible because humans cannot remember the past with accuracy.

To be "frequentist" or "bayesian" is merely a philosophical posture about the correct way to update beliefs in response to sense-data. But this is an open problem: the current best solution AFAIK is Logical Induction. 

This is one of the most morally powerful things you have ever written. Thanks.

This is actually completely fair. So is the other comment.

Thank you for echoing common sense!

Specific claim: the only nontrivial obstacle in front of us is not being evil

This is false. Object-level stuff is actually very hard.

Specific claim: nearly everyone in the aristocracy is agentically evil. (EDIT: THIS WAS NOT SAID. WE BASICALLY AGREE ON THIS SUBJECT.)

This is a wrong abstraction. Frame of Puppets seems naively correct to me, and has become increasingly reified by personal experience of more distant-to-my-group groups of people, to use a certain person's language. Ideas and institutions have the agency; they wear people like skin.

Specific claim: this is how to take over New York.

Didn't work.

This is fair, actually.

You absolutely have a reason to believe the article is worth reading.

If you live coordinated with an institution, spending 5 minutes of actually trying (every few months) to see if that institution is corrupt is a worthy use of time.

This is actually very fair. I think he does kind of insert information into people.

I never really felt like a question-generating machine, more like a pupil at the foot of a teacher who is trying to integrate the teacher's information.

I think the passive, reactive approach you mention is actually a really good idea of how to be more evidential in personal interaction without being explicitly manipulative.

Thanks!

I think you are entirely wrong.

However, I gave you a double-upvote because you did nothing normatively wrong. The fact that you are being mass-downvoted just because you linked to that article and because you seem to be associated with Ziz (because of the gibberish name and specific conception of decision theory) is extremely disturbing.

Can we have LessWrong not be Reddit? Let's not be Reddit. Too late, we're already Reddit. Fuck.

You are right that, unless people can honor precommitments perfectly and castration is irreversible even with transhuman technol... (read more)

This is a very good criticism! I think you are right about people not being able to "just."

My original point with those strategies was to illustrate an instance of motivated stopping about people in the community who have negative psychological effects, or criticize popular institutions. Perhaps it is the case that people genuinely tried to make a strategy but automatically rejected my toy strategies as false. I do not think it is, based on "vibe" and on the arguments that people are making, such as "argument from cult."

I think you are actually completely ... (read more)

EDIT: Ben is correct to say we should taboo "crazy."

This is a very uncharitable interpretation (entirely wrong). The highly scrupulous people here can undergo genuine psychological collapse if they learn their actions aren't as positive utility as they thought. (entirely wrong)

I also don't think people interpret Vassar's words as a strategy and implement incoherence. Personally, I interpreted Vassar's words as factual claims then tried to implement a strategy on them. When I was surprised by reality a bunch, I updated away. I think the other people just no... (read more)

On the third paragraph:

I rarely have problems with hyperfixation. When I do, I just come back to the problem later, or prime myself with a random stimulus. (See Steelmanning Divination.)

Peacefulness is enjoyable and terminally desirable, but in many contexts predators want to induce peacefulness to create vulnerability. Example: buying someone a drink with ill intent. (See "Safety in numbers" by Benjamin Ross Hoffman. I actually like relaxation, but agree with him that feeling relaxed in unsafe environments is a terrible idea. Reality is mostly an unsafe e... (read more)

I am not sure how much 'not destabilize people' is an option that is available to Vassar.

My model of Vassar is as a person who is constantly making associations, and using them to point at the moon. However, pointing at the moon can convince people of nonexistent satellites and thus drive people crazy. This is why we have debates instead of koan contests.

Pointing at the moon is useful when there is inferential distance; we use it all the time when talking with people without rationality training. Eliezer used it, and a lot of "you are expected to behave be... (read more)

Thing 0:

Scott.

Before I actually make my point I want to wax poetic about reading SlateStarCodex.

In some post whose name I can't remember, you mentioned how you discovered the idea of rationality. As a child, you would read a book with a position, be utterly convinced, then read a book with the opposite position and be utterly convinced again, thinking that the other position was absurd garbage. This cycle repeated until you realized, "Huh, I need to only be convinced by true things."

This is extremely relatable to my lived experience. I am a stereotypical "... (read more)