All of sufferer's Comments + Replies

Sorry I wasn't implying very strong confidence. I would give a probability of, say, 65% that my reason is the principal cause of the feelings of Cousin_it

Sure. That's why I said: "I welcome alternative theories" (including theories about there being multiple different reasons which may apply to different extents to different people). Do you have one?

0CuSithBell
Missed the point. Do you understand that you shouldn't have been confident you knew why cousin_it felt a particular way? Beyond that, personally I'm not all that interested in theorizing about the reasons, but if you really want to know you could just ask.

I have personally felt the same feelings and I think I have pinned down the reason. I welcome alternative theories, in the spirit of rational debate rather than polite silence.

0CuSithBell
That you may have discovered the reason that you felt this way does not mean that you have discovered the reason another specific person felt a similar way. In fact, they may not even be unaware of the causes of their feelings.
sufferer-10

It's because talking about the singularity and end-of-world in near mode for a large amount of time makes you alieve that it's going to happen. In the same way that it actually happening would make you alieve it, but talking about it once and believing it then never thinking about it explicitly again wouldn't.

0CuSithBell
Probably not wise to categorically tell someone the reasons behind their feelings when you're underinformed, and probably not kind to ruminate on the subject when you can expect it to be unpleasant.

It all depends on how small that small chance is. Pascal mugging is typically done with probabilities that are exponentially small, e.g. 10^-10 or so.

But what about if Holden is going to not recommend SIAI for donations when there's a 1% or 0.1% chance of it making that big difference.

I suspect that Holden would also consider Robin Hanson a competent critic. This is because Robin is smart, knowledgeable and prestigiously accredited.

But your comment has alerted me to the fact that even if Hanson comes out as a flat-earther tomorrow the supporting posts are still weak.

The issue of the two most credible critics of SIAI disagreeing with each other is logically independent of the issue of Holden's wobbly argument against the utilitarian argument for SIAI. Many thanks.

But if there's even a chance …

Holden cites two posts (Why We Can’t Take Expected Value Estimates Literally and Maximizing Cost-effectiveness via Critical Inquiry). They are supposed to support the argument that small or very small changes to the probability of an existential risk event occurring are not worth caring about or donating money towards.

I think that these posts both have serious problems (see the comments, esp Carl Shulman's). In particular Why We Can’t Take Expected Value Estimates Literally was heavily criticised by Robin Hanson in On Fudge Fa... (read more)

0jsteinhardt
I'm not sure what you mean by As Holden and Eliezer both explicitly state, SIAI itself rejects the "but there's still a chance" argument.
8TheOtherDave
So, I stipulate that Robin, whom Eliezer considers the only other major "intelligent/competent" critic of SI, disagrees with this aspect of Holden's position. I also stipulate that this aspect is the keystone of Holden's argument, and without it all the rest of it is irrelevant. (I'm not sure either of those statements is actually true, but they're beside my point here.) I do not understand why these stipulated facts should be a significant cause for concern for Holden, who may not consider Eliezer's endorsement of what is and isn't legitimate criticism of SI particularly significant evidence of anything important. Can you expand on your reasoning here?

As Moldbug has convincingly argued on his blog, intellectual fashion among the ruling class follows intellectual fashion on Harvard by an offset of about one generation. A generation after that the judicial and journalist class exiles any opposition to such thought from public discourse

then

creationism is still around

Contradiction much?

because creationism is not a serious threat to The Cathedral

If the "judicial and journalist class" only attacks popular irrational ideas which are "a serious threat to The Cathedral", then wh... (read more)

9[anonymous]
At the very least crazy ill-thought through knee jerk anticapitalism and anti-nuclear-power irrationality often are "the output of academia". I mean you can take classes in them and everything. ;) Sure one can cherry pick and say that only this and that part of academia is or isn't trustworthy and deserves or dosen't our promotion of its output, but hey that was my position remember? Antivaxers irrationality is just garden variety health related craziness which is regrettable since it costs lives but springs up constantly in new forms. Its cost is actually currently pretty low compared to others. Global warming or at least talking vaguely about "global warming denial" is considered somewhat mind-killing on LW. Also much as with MM I suggest you do a search and read up and participate in previous debates. My personal position is that it is happening yet spending additional marginal effort on solving it or getting people to solve it has negative net utility. Suggest you read up on optimal philanthropy and efficient charity to get a better feeling of what I mean by this. Theism, meh, I used to think this was an especially dangerous kind of crazy, yet now I think it is mostly relatively harmless compared to other craziness at least in the context of Western cultures. When happy new atheists first stumble upon LW I sometimes find myself in the awkward position of smiling nervously and then trying to explain that we now have to deal with real problems of irrationality. Like society rationalizing death and ageing as something good or ignoring existential risk.
8[anonymous]
No. I dislike repeating myself: But the following part of your response amused me and further more provoked some thought on the topic of conspiracy theories so have a warm fuzzy. I am not quite sure what you mean with that phrase. Can you please clarify? I'm going to be generous and assume that this last meaning wasn't the primary intended one since you have since edited the line out of your reply. Tying the content of the linked post back to our topic, I will admit Moldbug shows off his smarts and knowledge with silly, interesting and probably wrong ideas when he talks about his proposals for a neocameralist state. He can be a bit crankish talking about it, but hey show me a man who made a new ideology and wasn't a bit crankish about it! But no I think when he talks recent history, politics and sociology he is a most excellent map maker and not a "conspiracy nut" (though the pattern match is an understandable one to make in ignorance). First there is a reason I talked about a "power machine" and not a sinister cabal. If you have a trusted authority to which people outsource their thinking from where they upload their favoured memeplexes, then allowing even for some very limited memetic evolution you will see the thing (all else being equal) try and settle. Those structures that aren't by happen-stance built so that the memeplexes they emit increase trust of the source will tend to be out-competed by those who do. Don't we have a working demonstration of this in organized religion? Notice how this does not require a centuries spanning conspiracy of Christian authorities consistently and consciously working to enhance their own status and nothing else while lying to the masses, nope I'm pretty sure most of them honestly believed in their stated map of reality. Yet the Church did end up working as such a belief pump and it even told us it was a belief pump that could be derived as true and necessary from pure reason. Funny how that worked out. Also recall the mas
0[anonymous]
No. Note that I hare repeating myself: But the following part of your response amused me so also feel free to consider yourself forgiven. Conspiracy theories are generally used to explain events or trends as the results of plots orchestrated by covert groups or organizations, sometimes people use the term to talk about theories that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public. Ah poor me alas I seem to have been taken in by crank who ignores the difficulty of coordination, seeks esoteric explanations when plain ones will do and shows off his smarts by spinning tales. I will admit Moldbug shows of his smarts with silly and probably wrong ideas when he talks about his hypothetical neocameralist state, he can be a bit crankish talking about it, but hey show me a man who made a new ideology that wasn't crankish about it! But no I think when he talks recent history and sociology he is a most excellent map maker. I have a sneaking feeling that you simply aren't familiar with Moldbugs thinking or extensive LessWrong discussion of it or even Robin Hanson's criticism of it. I fail to see how this applies since Moldbug's description of political reality needs no wicked men crackling behind the curtain, indeed he elegantly shows a plausible means of how it arises

But as I said in my comment, there are numerous issues (creationism, moon landing hoax, antivax, global warming denial, and I should add theism) where a large amount of public opinion is highly divergent from the opinions of the vast majority of academics. So clearly the elite universities are not actually that good at proselytizing their output.

Perhaps it has been downvoted because people see elite universities with large endowments and lots of alumni in congress? But still, that money cannot be spent on proselytizing. And how exactly is a politician who ... (read more)

It seems unfortunate that this got downvoted so much. I got a lot out of it.

Perhaps it should just be clearly labelled as "Frank Adamek makes sense of axiology, human psychology and instrumental rationality: a personal journey"

I think labelled as such, people would not feel the need to downvote it. If you don't want to read a personal story, then don't come here!

Are the elite universities so marginalized and powerless that they need help from a blog run by amateurs to spread the word about their output?

Vladimir_M, what makes you think that elite universities have the desire and money/power to proselytize their "output"? I mean, you surely know about the trouble they are having trying to win the propaganda fight against creationism, and against global warming denial. And then there's anti-vaccination and the moon landing conspiracy.

In fact the statement that I quoted seems to so obviously deserve the... (read more)

[anonymous]130

Vladimir_M, what makes you think that elite universities have the desire and money/power to proselytize their "output"?

Mencius Moldbug has convincingly argued on his blog, that intellectual fashion among the ruling class follows intellectual fashion on Harvard by an offset of about one generation. A generation after that the judicial and journalist class exiles any opposition to such thought from public discourse and most educated people move significantly towards it. A generation after that through public schools and the by now decades long e... (read more)

0Barry_Cotter
I reversed a downvote to this because other people should also suffer by seeing a question this stupid. Fifteen members of the 111th Congress earned bachelor's degrees from Harvard, 11 current congressmen called Stanford home during their undergraduate days, ten members of Congress got their bachelors from Yale. This includes neither MBAs nor JDs Source here