There is a pattern that it seems to me rationalist-type people are prone to: 1. Internalize a belief X widely endorsed by society, which has many implications for actions. 2. Notice that people don't actually do the actions that are implied by X. 3. Do actions implied by X really...
Yudkowskian self help thought is weird such as the "firewall" (between beliefs and what would be good to believe)
But I think my mind doesn't work with the firewall, for example if I slightly delulu myself that my efforts will work out I have energy and such, and idk how to get these benefits with the firewall.
I recall it was a big problem for me for a few weeks when I was reading hpmor
propaganda (in its literal meaning, "public communication aimed at influencing an audience and furthering an agenda")
Wiktionary at the link marks that usage as dated, I wouldn't call it "its literal meaning". I believe the closest current single word would be "advocacy".
I see how it makes sense but it was super freaking hard for me to understand why "Cassandra/Mule". These words mean so many things I guess
Real-world disagreements tend to persist; they're predictable—in flagrant contradiction of how the beliefs of Bayesian reasoners would follow a random walk. From this we can infer that typical human disagreements aren't "honest", in the sense that at least one of the participants is behaving as if they have some other goal than getting to the truth.
Technically, it's sufficient if one of the participants incorrectly believes this about the other. If I incorrectly believe you're a bus arrival time scammer, we won't converge despite both being honest.
wait, neuron stuff is discrete?
I have a basic understanding of QC. So in my understanding ok sometimes two branches can cancel each other out, or go back to the same state. Still, I would think there is enough "butterfly effect" type stuff that many worlds get split up to never meet again. And for each of those there's a really small complex number.
I don't think this can be exactly right. I have googled some largest numbers in the universe (space and time) and they were < 10^100. Then I turned to computing 1/the magnitude of the amplitude of our branch. At that point I have some probability distribution of what that number is, and it can be surprising (aka seem fake) if it's exponentially more than the previous numbers.
It seems quite clear to me that is a valid form of reasoning that has ever worked correctly. It may turn out to be wrong in this case, but my vibe tell is that something is up with the amplitude.
Some form of this reasoning could work for the cat in your example, e.g. comparing the width of a hair to the size of the house he'd get the order of the order of magnitude of earth (math not checked).
This might work better or worse depending on the version of Occam's razor, which I have uncertainty over.
Many Worlds seems fake because doesn't that imply the universe is tracking a complex number with magnitude in the order of 10^-10^100 for the branch that we live in? Since the worlds have to split up all the time.
all the other quantities (number of atoms in the universe, planck times since the big bang) are only a singly stacked exponential like 10^100
Also whats the precision of these amplitude numbers.
Wasn't translator supposed to be a normal stable job? Allegedly they were hit hard by google translate even pre-llm
There is a pattern that it seems to me rationalist-type people are prone to:
Examples:
Interpretations-of-media realism is the claim that there exists at least one interpretative of media statement that is objectively true.
less wrong should add a "confirms my biases" reaction. like to put under stuff that idk if it's especially objectively true or good but I love hearing that shit
Common rationalist take is that people used to really believe their religions (and now it's fake).
Somehow I can't not doubt that 1st century people unironically believed the Bethlehem census story. They would be familiar with state logistics of the time!
They must've been like yeah we made it up for Messiah lore lmao
has anyone looked into the "philosophers believe in moral realism" problem? (in the sense of, morality is not physically contained in animal bodies and human-created artifacts)
I saw a debate on youtube with Michael Huemer guy but it was with another academic philosopher. Was there ever an exchange recorded between a moral realist philosopher and a rationalist-lesswrongist?
Good epistemic calibration of a prediction source is not impressive.
I see people being impressed by calibration charts, for example https://x.com/ESYudkowsky/status/1924529456699641982 , or stronger: https://x.com/NathanpmYoung/status/1725563206561607847
But it's trivial to have a straight-line calibration graph, if it's not straight just fix it for each probability by repeatedly predicting a one-sided coin's outcome as that probability.
If you're a prediction market platform where the probability has to be decided by dumb monkeys, just make sure that the vast majority of questions are of the form "will my p-weighted coin land heads".
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If a calibration graph isn't straight, that implies epistemic free lunch - if things that you predict at 20% actually happen 30% of the time, just shift those predictions. This is probably the reason why actual prediction markets are calibrated, since incalibration leads to an easy trading strategy. But the presence of calibration is not a very interesting property.
An argument against computationally bounded Solomonoff induction is that it wouldn't get quantum physics, because it's exponentially hard to compute. But quantum computation isn't less natural than classical, so we might as well base it on a bounded quantum computer, which gets around the objection.
That's often false, people also express anger and hatred to:
There are in fact norms agains some (genuine or not) expressions of anger. The question of applying norms is another nontrivial question. Which is why Goofusia's take is plausible (what she is exploiting if you will).