"So according to you, the laws of the universe are random. I think this hardly plausible."
I don't see why it is not plausible. It's not like the Universe has any reason to choose the laws that it did and not others. Why have a procedure, algorithmic or not, if there are no goals?
"Aesthetics is pretty reliable among humans, but what about in minds-in-general"
I don't think that's relevant. A fugue's job description doesn't include entertaining killer robots from outer space, it's supposed to entertain humans.
In general, I think any artwork should be judged (not enjoyed, but judged) based on whether the author succeeded or failed at what [s]he, personally set out to do, and whether it was a hard thing to do - whether it is creating music that is different from all other music in every way imaginable while remaining musical,...
My initial guess was "keep learning, there's always more to learn."
There's also the possibility that you're being inconvenient to them. Say, vegetarians can't go to a true meat lover's party, people who get up early might need ME to get up eartly for whatever reason, and if your business fails and I live with you, that's obviously my problem.
"Let's get a bigger house, further away from work, so it has an extra bedroom in case Grandma comes over"
Not saying this is a bad example, but it COULD be the case that grandma never being able to come over is totally unacceptable. Which is also a pitfall - something can seem trivial until it goes away.
So, having thought about it today, I realized that I did overreact. Some of the justifications offered made sense. But I still find McGonnagal's reactions odd. Yes, a kid genius has special needs. But that doesn't mean he should be able to treat others like imbecils. It might've been just shock, but at some point it should have occured to her: I'm letting a prepubescent kid run circles around me. Even if he keeps being right, he's gonna get himself in trouble running his mouth all the time.
I know that she's supposed to be special, that most adults Harry kn...
I honestly have no idea how that has anything to do with what I'm saying.
And I read all the books, and watched the first six movies. I know what the prohesy is.
I honestly have no idea how that has anything to do with what I'm saying.
And I read all the books, and watched the first six movies. I know what the prohesy is.
You honestly can't see how knowing someone is the chosen one destined to save the world from the evil one and who quite possibly already stopped a war impacts on the likely behaviour of a character? Implied via that same knowledge is that Harry has the favour of McGonagall's immediate superior.
It should be overwhelmingly obvious to you how this information is relevant to what you are saying. Any judgement made without considering this context is absurdly ill-informed.
Okay. Professor McGonagall knows that Harry Potter is the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord, that he is marked as the Dark Lord's equal, and that he will have power the Dark Lord knows not. (She has, in fact, heard that Prophecy spoken in the terrible hollow echoing voice of Sybill Trelawney.)
Harry isn't acting like a normal eleven-year-old, or any kind of eleven-year-old, and Professor McGonagall has noticed that as well, in as many words.
That's all. If you think, under those circumstances, that the boy ought to be given the back of your han...
The infodumps are not what I'm talking about. I wouldn't believe it's Eliezer's writing if people weren't smugly going on about eigenvectors. My concern is that Harry is a complete asshole. And the unrealistic adults.
Aside from Harry's parents, there was only one "unrealistic" adult so far (by Ch6), McGonagall, who assumed Harry might have been abused. Her tolerance is reasonable.
It's irrelevant, though. Harry is behaving strangely, and you assume it's bad writing. I guess, since you have read some fanfiction ("OOC is irritating to me"), you aquired a useful heuristic for filtering out bad fanfic; it's just that it is bound to give some false positives.
"What is the point saying "yes" or "no"?"
Um, none for you, I suppose. But it might mean some utilons for me. Anyway, a hint about which way the story might be heading would be good. (Comeuppance? Minister Potter? Furry slash?)
No, he is a Black Hole Sue, because, as I said, the abuse and condescension he gave to McGonnagal did not result in any consequences. She's his goddamn TEACHER. Teachers don't expect to be treated like idiots.
And WHERE is his brain backfiring? And I know he's wrong. That's the point. But so far, he's winning anyway.
We can still try to go for 1337.
I'm just wondering if you're aware of this post: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lt/the_robbers_cave_experiment/
At first, I thought it's what you're talking about, but realized that the details are different (and kinda cool in a scary way).
I like it too, but think that just a bit more contrast would be good. Not a lot, but a little. As it is, it feels bland.
"that it is dangerous to communication to use the term 'free will' in any sense other than freedom from causality"
Why is that? There are many things that can keep your will from being done. Eliminating them makes your will more free. Furthermore, freedom from causality is pretty much THE most dangerous definition for free will, because it makes absolutely, positively no sense. Freedom from causality is RANDOMNESS.
"Therefore free will vs determinism is not a productive argument."
We don't have this argument here. We believe that free will requires determinism. You aren't free if you have no idea what the hell is about to happen.
"Free will is nonsense"
It's not nonsense.
http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Free_will http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Free_will_(solution)
Just this quote. But I found a complete translation:
What's the other story?
I will repost a quote that I posted many moons ago on OB, if you don't mind. I don't THINK this breaks the rules too badly, since that post didn't get its fair share of karma. Here's the first time: http://lesswrong.com/lw/uj/rationality_quotes_18/nrt
"He knew well that fate and chance never come to the aid of those who replace action with pleas and laments. He who walks conquers the road. Let his legs grow tired and weak on the way - he must crawl on his hands and knees, and then surely, he will see in the night a distant light of hot campfires, and u...
Better yet, don't go gaga. And use anchoring to your advantage - before haggling, talk about something you got for free.
Well, if the donations they have to match go beyond what they'd donate anyway, they would donate more than they otherwise would. Plus, the goal is to get YOU to donate more than you otherwise would.
What's up with the word "foom", and why is it always in all caps? Can we come up with another name for this that doesn't sound like a sci-fi nerd in need of Ritalin?
And if they're modified? It's a superintelligent AI. You can't take it down with a shotgun, even if it's built into your arm.
Sure, but it's their funeral.
Another AI might succeed, but not humans. I think there would be at least a few weeks before another one appears, and that might be enough time to ask it how to make a true FAI.
Well, then they'll have themselves to blame when the AI converts their remains into nanomachines.
Not sure what you're saying.
I did mention explosions. And gravity? I don't see what it could do with gravity. Although I see that it could do something with vibration.
It's allowed to produce waste heat. I see no reason to let it make anything else. I know it can't actially cut itself off from the universe, but it shouldn't enjoy this fact.
Why? This is the whole point - to prevent it from interacting with anything not intentionally given to it.
A problem I see with such a sequestered AI is... that it doesn't stop other people from building free AIs. You have to be FIRST.
Sorry, I deleted the post without realizing you replied to it. I realized it had problems and decided to give it more thought for now.
I wouldn't say it's necessarily mental. But if it's a huge lump of properties that can't be explained by the rules that govern everything else, it would be supernatural. Or it could even be simple, but still have an exception to an otherwise universal rule. For example, in a Tegmark universe governed by the factorial function, finding a 10 could be considered miraculous. In our universe, it could be an object that doesn't cast a shadow, doesn't glow on the underside, and is not transparent.
Also, rstarkov, see my reply in the thread linked above.
These mathy definitions are, of course, for times when "supernatural" isn't just a stand-in for "stop thinking about it!"
Did I miss something? Why do meetups have summaries agin?
Well, I dunno about that...
Actually, I said it wasn't atheist AT ALL. About as atheist as Don Quixote was a knight. Even the atheism was a manifestation of the personality cult of Karl Marx.
There was also the issue of communism, which is nothing if not a cult.
Well, I think it's pretty nice.
Well, I would NOT press the button. The average copy gets 500 years of being a creationist, plus half of an immortality. My values prefer "short but good".
The problem with some creationists (the ones who get the basics), as I understand it, is not that they don't think evolution is happening, but that they don't think it's fast enough to transform proto-bacterial zero-cellular balls of chemicals into people in a mere three billion years. Although, personally, I think it's a really long time.
Somebody wants to suppress advertising, too, though.
What about the schadenfreude fom pissing off Hitler?
Of course, he might become even more psycho from it.
You guys do what works for you, and I'll do what works for me. Maybe I just don't have the patience. Or maybe you don't have something required to understand lossily compressed info. Or both. I just know that books take all day long and help as much as short online tutorials. And the tutorials are often free.
No, I know all those words, but you're using them way too much. A lot of them are very apt labels, but they just don't look right outside of TV Tropes. Just like outdated slang.
TV Tropes will ruin your vocabulary.
They get ME bored. Every book is six hundred to a thousand pages, and when you're done with it, you've got a hundred pages worth of knowledge. I think it's better to memorize some passwords, then separately look up specific ideas that didn't make sense.
In college, I found most of the time that the professor's lecture notes contain almost everything of value that both the textbook and the lecture contains, but they contain ten times less text. This led me to believe that textbooks are a terribly inefficient way to convey facts, by comparison to the format of lecture notes. Books are words, words, words, flowery metaphors, digressions, etc. Hell, I don't know what they spend all those words on. But I know that, potentially, lecture notes are one fact after another.
I find all those extra words surrounding the bare facts in textbooks to be highly useful. That's what helps me not just memorize the teacher's password but really understand the material at a gut level.
God = 3.
See, the difference is not that meat isn't "to my taste". I like the taste. The problem is that it's EVIL.
I have ADD, and I think that I'm somewhere between the two extremes. Although not working is always more fun than working, I find that I can get in the flow on occasion, and crank out a lot. But even my strongest flows are punctuated by many distractions.
Well, the Santa deception wasn't used on me. The false belief I held was that nobody actually takes Santa seriously. And also that I was bought in a store, which made me wonder where the store got me. Although I didn't take that one too seriously either, finding out the truth was still pretty disturbing. You mean he... she... they... EWWW! (Yeah, I got better.)
(Meme) Penis goes where?
I'd like to propose a way for measuring a system's freedom: it is the size of the set of closed-ended goals which it can satisfy from its current state. How's that?
I also think that this is all you really need to not be confused about free will. It's the freedom to do what you will.