All of nolrai's Comments + Replies

Natural languages are full of ambiguity, and yes that use sounds wrong cause your talking about a particular person.

And if you really wanted to say that it was Chris's money, how about "Chris lost Chris's money." It sounds awkward to me cause my English only allows use of they in the singular if it is an abstract person, not a particular real person.

I mean its not like "Chris lost his money" is unambiguous, it is not at all clear to me weather the he refers to Chris, or someone else. That would probably be clear in discourse because of context.

5Wei Dai
Do you agree that using 'they' as a singular referring pronoun is not yet a part of natural English (i.e., a majority of English speakers do not naturally use it that way, nor expect it to be used that way), but that usage is being proposed by some as a useful reform, while others oppose it? My point is that making this change involves a large cost, including a period of confusion as some people start using 'they' as a singular referring pronoun while others are not expecting it to be used that way. And we can foresee that it will increase the amount of ambiguity in English even after this period of confusion is over. Is 'he or she' really so bad that this costly reform is worthwhile?
0thomblake
In proper English, that would not be ambiguous; pronouns always refer to their antecedents, and no other applicable noun can come between the pronoun and the antecedent. This causes a problem with "they" in this case; "Chris and Pat went to their car" becomes unambiguously "Chris and Pat went to Pat's car" if "they" can refer to "Pat", leaving us with no pronoun for "Chris and Pat".

Cowerdly does not simply mean bad. Saying that sacraficing your life to achive a goal is cowardly is nonsense.

They suppressed there fears, that's what bravery means. You can be brave doing horrible things. Mao was brave, Hitler was (at times) brave. You are falling into the halo issue, saying that if an act was bad it must be bad in all ways.

-9thomblake

I really wonder how this sort of result applies to cultures that don't expect everyone to have high self-esteem. Such as say japan.

Well visual programing of visual things, is good. but thats just WYSIWYG.

Properly no they are not part of math, they are part of Computer Science, i.e. a description of how computations actually happen in the real world.

That is the missing piece that determines what axioms to use.

See I think you miss understanding his response. I mean that is the only way I can interpret it to make sense.

Your insistence that it is not the right interpretation is very odd. I get that you don't want to trigger peoples cooperation instincts, but thats the only framework in which talking about other beings makes sense.

The morality you are talking about is the human-now-extended morality, (well closer to the less-wrong-now-extended morality) in that it is the morality that results from extending from the values humans currently have. Now you seem to ha... (read more)

I think I have a co-operation instinct that is pushing me towards the supper happy future.

It feels better, but is probably not what I would do In real life. or I am more different then others then I give credit for.

either I would become incapable of any action or choice, or I wouldn't change at all, or I would give up the abstract goals and gradually reclaim the concrete ones.

You know I cant help but read this a victory for humanity. Not a full victory, but i think the probability of some sort of interstellar civilization that isn't a dystopia is is higher afterwords then before, if nothing else we are more aware of the dangers of AI, and anything that does that and leaves a non-dystopian civilization capable of makeing useful AI is mostlikely a good thing by my utility function.

One thing that does bug me is I do not value happiness as much as most people do. Maybe I'm just not as empathetic as most people? I mean I acutely hop... (read more)