If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
Related to: List of public drafts on LessWrong
I want to talk about democracy.
I do so here because I don't think this is mind-killing. And I sure feel some rational debate about it would be educational, for me mostly, since there are so many great minds here and... I will come clean, I think democracy isn't that great, considering this how is it possible that I am but ignorant? Or possibly evil. But before I can explain why I think as I do, I need to see why people think it is great. Who knows, maybe I've missed something vital? Or maybe people don't like democracy already but they believe that they do. Or maybe I'm wrong about how popular such doubts are on this site, beyond a small but assuredly not tiny minority.
Now obviously there are doubts and doubts. Saying that democracy as it is in the West has problems, but only because it isn't true democracy, isn't what I mean by "doubting democracy" at all. To give an analogy I see this as like doubting communism by saying that what we are doing clearly isn't true communism, this is why the 5 year plan has failed comrades! Those darn counter-revolutionary forces sabotaging us! Those darn undemocratic influences subverting our...
Does anyone here understand the exact relationship between near/far and system I/II? LessWrongers often seem to talk as if near is system I and far is system II, but Hanson says near is about logic and far is about intuition.
I just finished a (poorly designed) ~3 month experiment with the Paleo Diet. I'm not sure what to do next. Does anyone have any requests for an n=1 trial of something having to do with bodily health/cognitive performance? Please, nothing that has a significant probability of doing massive harm to my mind/body.
Seen here:
...Harvard psychologist and APS Fellow and Charter Member Ellen Langer observed similar rule-based behavior in a typical office setting. She had researchers ask if they could cut in line to use a copy machine. When they simply said, “Excuse me, may I use the copy machine?”, only 60 percent of the subjects complied. When the researchers gave a reason — “Excuse me, may I use the copy machine because I’m in a rush?” — 94 percent said yes. Langer tested this one more time with the phrase, “Excuse me, may I use the copy machine because I need to make s
Why aren't these open threads automatically generated, then archived into a list (also automatically)? The same could be said for the monthly quote threads and the Welcome to Less Wrong threads and the HPMoR threads. I don't understand.
I read Ender's Game for the first time last month [yes, it's fantastic, and yes, I'm an idiot for not reading it sooner]. I wasn't aware of the book's plot until then, so I had gone through 83 chapters of HPMOR without realising it paid homage to Ender's Game [let alone the extent to which it did so]. Are there references to other books [or films or other forms of media, I guess] which I might have missed?
A new cool post on the West Hunters blog.
...We are now at the point where we can realistically expect to see interventions that significantly increase human intelligence.
...
I should probably address one concern before I go further. Some people might worry that since natural selection optimizes traits, increasing human intelligence would naturally upset some balance, mess up some precise tradeoff, and so such attempts are foredoomed. Forgeddaboutit. The tradeoffs are optimized, all right, but for past environments, not the present. We have a lot
Kim Øyhus's website is pretty impressive and has some decent LW-resembling pages such as his absence of evidence is evidence of absence proof and his independent proof of many-worlds.
He even quotes Eliezer at the bottom of his homepage.
He also criticizes Barbour's The End of Time, but as I am not a physicist, nor have I read Barbour's book, I have no idea whether his criticisms are justified.
I have been extremely confused about why anthropics is treated the way it is, I am asking for clarification. I will first explain my current position:
There is no such thing as an "observer." The problem with anthropic reasoning is the same as the problem with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, namely, it invokes non-real magical properties of human minds which I thought we had safely dissolved at this point.
Take your pick of the various anthropic assumptions. Each of them treats the "observer" as some kind of ontolog...
I just realised that 'banzai' translates to 'ten thousand years' and used to mean 'may live ten thousand years'. Could be repurposed as a transhumanist catchphrase.
Etiquette question: Should/how should one respond to 'old' comments or comment on 'old' posts, and what is a reasonable baseline for old as opposed to current?
I've been wanting to experience actually working with bayes nets and similar models for a while now; but too confused about where to get started and not quite motivated enough to find out. The Stanford Probabilistic Graphical Model course has held my hand through installing Octave and SAMIAM, and I'm getting more comfortable with the quantitative side of bayes. It's still in its first week, so I'd highly recommend jumping in to anyone in a similar position.
Could someone define "acausal trade" for me? I have read Drescher and LW pages on the topic.
As I understand it: We have agents A and B, possibly space/time separated so that no interaction is possible. A and B each can do something the other wants, and value that thing less than the other does -- This is the usual condition for trade.
However, A and B cannot count on the usual enforcement mechanisms to ensure cooperation, e.g. an expectation of future interactions or an outside enforcer.
A and B will cooperate because each knows that the other c...
Rationality, knowledge and technology before science. Interesting take on scholarship and the history of science. A talk on the "Darwinian method" by Michael Vassar from the 2010 Singularity Summit.
I'm thinking about writing a post about "The evolution of social contracts" (looking at social contracts in the animal kingdom basically, might bring up some of Dennett's work on the evolution of morality) and/or a post about "Why pain do not imply suffering" (Some insight that neuroscience and pharmacology have provided that cast some light on the sensation of physical "pain"). But I would like to have someone look through the post(s) before I posting it, since English is not my fist languish and I happen to be a dyslectic. I would be very thankful if someone would care to do so.
This (a pop-sci story about a study on creativity relating to inebriation and sleep deprivation) looked interesting, but didn't really seem to fit in with LessWrong's core interests, and the main study it references (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13546783.2011.625663) is behind a paywall.
I'm sort of interested depending on how much time/commitment is needed, and how much it'll spam my inbox.