All of shware's Comments + Replies

shware70

I feel this should not be in featured posts, as amusing as it was at the time

shware90

For example, someone who was completely colorblind from birth could never understand what it felt like to see the color green, no matter how much neuroscience that person knew, i.e., you could never convey the sensation of "green" through a layout of a connectome or listing wavelengths of light.

The 'colorblind-synesthete'?

shware50

I didn't have a problem with 1 or 2 but 3 and 4 were the big problems. Though I didn't downvote because it was already well negative at that point. Saying AI is software is an assertion but its not meaningful. Are you saying software that prints 'hello world' is intelligent? From some of your previous comments I gather you are interested in how software, the user, the designer and other software interact in some way but there was none of that in the post. Its as if Eliezer had said 'rationality IS winning IS rationality' as the entirety of the sequences.

shware300

"Again and again, I’ve undergone the humbling experience of first lamenting how badly something sucks, then only much later having the crucial insight that its not sucking wouldn’t have been a Nash equilibrium." --Scott Aaronson

1Metus
Damn, that is a lession I forgot. Does anyone else experience this? Reading an article, agreeing with it being an interesting insight, forgetting it and then rediscovering it in a different context?
shware370

A Christian proverb says: “The Church is not a country club for saints, but a hospital for sinners”. Likewise, the rationalist community is not an ivory tower for people with no biases or strong emotional reactions, it’s a dojo for people learning to resist them.

SlateStarCodex

shware610

I find it takes a great deal of luminosity in order to be honest with someone. If I am in a bad mood, I might feel that its my honest opinion that they are annoying when in fact what is going on in my brain has nothing to do with their actions. I might have been able to like the play in other circumstances, but was having a bad day so flaws I might have been otherwise able to overlook were magnified in my mind. etc.

This is my main fear with radical honesty, since it seems to promote thinking that negative thoughts are true just because they are negative.... (read more)

pjeby160

This is my main fear with radical honesty, since it seems to promote thinking that negative thoughts are true just because they are negative. The reasoning going 'I would not say this if I were being polite, but I am thinking it, therefore it is true' without realizing that your brain can make your thoughts be more negative from the truth just as easily as it can make them more positive than the truth.

My own (very limited) observation of trying to be radically honest has been that until I first say (or at least admit to myself) the reaction of annoyance... (read more)

3ChristianKl
In that case a real honest answer might be: "I felt uncomfortable during that activity but I don't know whether it's because of the activity or because it's I generally focus to much on the negative." That gives the person you are dealing with a lot of useful information to interact with you. Sharing something deeper about yourself builds trust. If the person is well intentioned they can use the information in a way that makes the interaction for both of you better. The goal of honest communication is to give the other person useful information. Transmitting more useful information is being more honest. If you just say your loathe the activity or you say you liked it, you might be holding something back. If you have a trustworthy friendship than knowing about your emotional state is useful information for your friend. Your friend might be good at reading body language and be able to tell the difference between your fake smile and a real smile but it makes it so much harder for a friend to help you when you aren't open about what you are feeling. To me not being open about your emotions on a deep level when you are with friends or loved ones feels like defecting in a prisoner dilemma. You might get some immediate benefit but overall it's not the path of the game tree that's optimal. To the extend that there are people who can't deal with me being open about what I feel I don't want them as friends or loved ones.

If I am honest without accuracy... if I am proud to report my results of my reasoning as they are, but my actual reasoning is sloppy... then I shouldn't congratulate myself for giving precise info, because the info was not precise; I simply removed one source of imprecision, but ignored another.

Saying "you are annoying" feels like an extremely honest thing, and I may be motivated to stop there.

However, saying "sorry, I'm in a bad mood today; I think it's likely that on a different day I would appreciate what you are trying to do, but today i... (read more)

Alicorn130

This made me think; I may have some luminosity privilege that needs checking...

shware20

he puts 2.72 on the table, and you put 13.28 on the table.

I'm confused...if the prediction does not come true (which you estimated as being 33 percent likely) you only gain $2.72? and if the most probable outcome does come true you lose 13.28?

2Scott Garrabrant
Yep, I put the numbers in backwards (because of the sign mistake I made originally.) I fixed it now. Thanks for the correction.
shware80

An always open mind never closes on anything. There is a time to confess your ignorance and a time to relinquish your ignorance and all that...

shware30

Well, yes, obviously the classical paperclipper doesn't have any qualia, but I was replying to a comment wherein it was argued that any agent on discovering the pain-of-torture qualia in another agent would revise its own utility function in order to prevent torture from happening. It seems to me that this argument proves too much in that if it were true then if I discovered an agent with paperclips-are-wonderful qualia and I "fully understood" those experiences I would likewise be compelled to create paperclips.

0hairyfigment
Someone might object to the assumption that "paperclips-are-wonderful qualia" can exist. Though I think we could give persuasive analogies from human experience (OCD, anyone?) so I'm upvoting this anyway.
shware10

By signing up for cryonics you help make cryonics more normal and less expensive, encouraging others to save their own lives. I believe there was a post where someone said they signed up for cryonics so that they wouldn't have to answer the "why aren't you signed up then?" crowd when trying to convince other people to do so.

2TimS
I'm sure that many folks who have signed up for cryonics are happy that their behavior normalizes it for others. But I'm doubtful that any significant number would have made a different decision if normalizing cryonics was not an effect of their actions.
shware180

Anyone who is isn't profoundly disturbed by torture, for instance, or by agony so bad one would end the world to stop the horror, simply hasn't understood it.

Similarly, anyone who doesn't want to maximize paperclips simply hasn't understood the ineffable appeal of paperclipping.

-2whowhowho
I don't see the analogy. Paperclipping doesn't have to be an ineffable value for a paperclipper, and paperclippers don't have to be motivated by anything qualia-like.
shware150

Taking this post in the way it was intended i.e. 'are there any reasons why such a policy would make people more likely to attribute violent intent to LW' I can think of one:

The fact that this policy is seen as necessary could imply that LW has a particular problem with members advocating violence. Basically, I could envision the one as saying: 'LW members advocate violence so often that they had to institute a specific policy just to avoid looking bad to the outside world'

And, of course, statements like 'if a proposed conspiratorial crime were in fact good you shouldn't talk about it on the internet' make for good out-of-context excerpts.

1ChristianKl
I don't think that's probable. There are many online forum that have forum rules that prevent those discussions.
3fubarobfusco
See also xkcd.