In fact, Claude 3 Opus is still available.
Is Judaism not also based around disputation of texts?
I pretty much agree with this. I just posted this as a way of illustrating how simulacrum stages could be generalized to be more than just about signalling and language. In a way, even stocks are stage 4 since they cash out in currency, so that stuff can be one stage in one way but another stage in another way.
Simulacrum stages as various kinds of assets:
- Stage 1: Most assets. Apples are valued for their taste and nutrition. Stocks of apple-farming companies are claims to profit which comes from providing apples, which are valued. Shares in prediction markets eventually cash out.
- Stage 2: Assets held because the holder thinks others will, perhaps erroneously, think it has increased in stage 1 value. Includes Ponzi schemes and Enron stocks/options.
- Stage 3: Manifold Market stocks and some memecoins, which are associated with a thing, person, or concept, which is used as a Schelling point to determine their value. One only expects their value to correlate with the associated concept because everyone else thinks it'll correlate and buy and sell accordingly.
- Stage 4: Cryptocurrency and assets of pure speculation, where the price rises only because everyone expects it will rise and buys accordingly, mutatis mutandis for lowering. Also includes fiat currency, which is valuable because everyone agrees to use it as a medium of exchange.
I made a Manifold market for how many pre-orders there will be!
I'm generally confused by the notion that Buddhism entails suppressing one's emotions. Stoicism maybe, but Buddhism?
Buddhism is about what to do if one has no option but to feel one's emotions.
How is that mutually exclusive with (1)?
Am I correct in assuming you don't think one should give the money in the counterfactual mugging?
I think the prior for aliens having visited Earth should be lower, since it a priori it seems unlikely to me that aliens would interact with Earth but not to an extent which makes it clear to us that they have. My intuition is that its probably rare to get to other planets with sapient life before building a superintelligence (which would almost certainly be obvious to us if it did arrive) and even if you do manage to go to other planets with sapient life, I don't think aliens would not try to contract us if they're anything like humans.