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All of Autodidact420's Comments + Replies

Engineering Religion
Autodidact420
-10

Disclosure: I haven't read the full string of comments

I'm pretty sure you're a bit off on the Islamic side of things though.

a valid source of laws and doesn't think that God has given human kings the right to make laws the way Christianity thinks with the devine right of kings.

Kings' claim to rule seems to be fairly similar to that of an Islamic caliph, who are supposed to be prophets selected by God himself, and are able to create laws/etc. as he would want basically.

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4ChristianKl
No. The core idea of Islam is that a caliph is not a person who can create laws and if he tries to do so his followers have an obligation to fight him over it. God gave humanity the sharia and the caliph can't simply deviate from it because he thinks that it would be better if man and woman have the same right as far as inheritance goes. The caliph can make rulings that interpret the koran (fatwa's) but he can't make laws. Worldly issues such as alimony rules and inheritance rules are hardlocked in the sharia. In our cities with sizable Muslim populations you have Muslims running parallel legal system. In Berlin we have problems that arise from German law considering alimony to be a regular payment while sharia law considers it to be made in a large one time payment. That conflict of alimony payments is something that leftish Muslims in Berlin worry about because their religion dictates them to live differently than German law. Christianity doesn't work that way. If you take the Western idea of what religion happens to be, that not the cluster filled by Islam. Islam adds the sharia with doesn't have an equivalent. While not every Muslim believes in cutting of hands, the civil rules for alimony and inheritance are a core part of Islam as practiced by liberal Western Muslims. Apart from the issue of lawmaking the caliph is the religious leader of his nation while a king isn't.
Maximizing Donations to Effective Charities
Autodidact420
00

I'm in the middle of writing an essay due tomorrow morning so pardon the slightly off topic and short reply (I'll get back to you on the other matters later) but I am particularly curious about one topic that comes up here a lot, as far as I can tell, on discussions of existential risk. The topic is the AI and its relations to existential risk. By the sounds of it I may hold an extremely unpopular opinion, while I acknowledge that the AI could pose an existential risk, my personal ideas (which I don't have the time to discuss here or the points required to... (read more)

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0Gleb_Tsipursky
I wouldn't say your opinion is at odds with many here. Many hold unfriendly AI to be the biggest existential risk, and friendly AI to be the best bet at mitigating existential risk. I think so as well. My personal opinion, based on my knowledge of the situation, is that real AI is at least 50 years off, and more likely on the scale of a century or more. We are facing much bigger short and medium-term existential risks, such as nuclear war, environmental disaster, etc. Helping people become more rational, which is the point of Intentional Insights, mitigates short, medium, and long-term existential risks alike :-)
Mark Zuckerberg plans to give away 99% of his facebook wealth over his lifetime
Autodidact420
00

I've heard other criticisms that he is just going to give it to a charity fund in a similar manner to other billionaires who place their children at control of the charity and then use it as a way to pass on wealth to their kids without any taxation. Not entirely sure of the credibility of the claim that Mark is doing it, but I do know that this scheme has been tried and worked for others before.

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Maximizing Donations to Effective Charities
Autodidact420
20

I agree to some extent, depending on how efficient advertising for a specific charity through a meta-charity is. I see what you're saying now after re-reading it, to be honest I had only very briefly skimmed it last night/morning. Curious, do have any stats on how effective Intentional Insights is at gathering more money for these other charities than is given to them directly?

Also, how does In In decide whether something is mitigating existential risk? I'm not overly familiar with the topic but donations to "Against Malaria Foundation" and others mentioned don't sound like the specific sort of charity I'm mostly interested in.

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3Gleb_Tsipursky
Yup, both good questions. For the answer to the first - about effectiveness - see the two paragraphs from the paragraph starting with "For some." It's pretty hard to measure exact impact of marketing dollars, so the best equivalent is the combination of how widely read an article is, with specific evidence of its impact on an individual, a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Thus, we can see that this article was widely shared, over 1K times, which means it was likely read by over 100K people. Moreover, the article is clearly impactful, as we can see from the specific comment of the person who was impacted, and his sway with others in his role as group leader. We can't see the large numbers of people who were impacted but chose not to respond, of course. For the answer to the second, donations to AMF don't do that much to mitigate existential risk. However, getting people turned to Effective Altruism does, since then they become familiar with the topic of existential risk, which occupies a lot of attention, including MIRI among effective altruists. The problem with selling existential risk to the broad audience is that honestly, they generally don't buy it. It's hard for them to connect emotionally to AI and other existential risk issues. Much easier to connect emotionally to GiveWell, etc. However, once they get into Effective Altruism, they learn about existential risk, and are more oriented toward donating to MIRI, etc. This is the benefit of being strategic and long-term oriented - rational - about donating to InIn. Getting more people engaged with these issues will result in more good than one's own direct donations to MIRI, I think. But obviously, that's my perspective, otherwise I wouldn't have started InIn and would have just donated directly to MIRI and other causes that I held important. It's up to you to evaluate the evidence. One path that many donors who give to InIn choose to do is to spread your donations, giving some to InIn a
Maximizing Donations to Effective Charities
Autodidact420
20

I don't have a lot of time so this comment will be rather short and largely insufficient at fully addressing your post. That said, I tend to side with the idea presented in this article: http://www.nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste.html

Essentially, I fail to see how anything other than advancing technology at the present could be the most effective route. How would you defend your claims of effective charity against the idea that advancing technology and minimizing existential risks instead of giving to those currently in need are ultimately the most effe... (read more)

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1Gleb_Tsipursky
This depends on what your ideas are regarding effective charities. For example, you can consider MIRI getting money to be the optimal outcome. In that case, is it better for you to give to MIRI directly, or for you to give to a meta-charity that persuades others to give to MIRI? My point in the article is that meta-charities are a better return on investment for rational donors than direct-action charities, such as MIRI, which directly does the research itself. On the other hand, one aspect of the work of Intentional Insights is to encourage people to give money to MIRI and other organizations mitigating existential risk.
Engineering Religion
Autodidact420
00

I feel like intelligence is similar to logic or grammar and faces the dunning kurger effects full force essentially. As they state in the abstract of their work: Their lack of skill deprives them not only of the ability to produce correct responses, but also of the expertise necessary to surmise that they are not producing them.

If you're able to "fake" being intelligent, you require the ability to produce the "intelligent" response, and the ability to recognize when you're not being intelligent. So if you don't have it, you can't reall... (read more)

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0Lumifer
Drats, foiled again! :-)
Engineering Religion
Autodidact420
10

I'm new here and not sure exactly what you expect when someone links, but it seems like you guys are generally intelligent so:

http://www.enotes.com/research-starters/sociological-theories-religion-structural

It sounds like what you're asking (with regards to the function of religion) is something that has been covered a great deal by the structural-functionalist sociological approach. If you're willing to read up on it there's a lot of information out there on the topic. Hope that helps! If you'd prefer I answer your question on here more directly feel fre... (read more)

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0Lumifer
Nah, we just fake it :-P
Smarter humans, not artificial intellegence
Autodidact420
20

IQ testing is controversial in some ways but supported in others.

In support of IQ, some forms of IQ tests ('g' loaded tests) tend to reproduce similar scores for the same individual. Further, this score is linked to various life outcomes - higher numbers of patents created, higher academic success rates, higher income, less time in jail, etc. As well as all of this, IQ has been found to be hereditary through twin studies. Lots of literature on this suggest that whatever IQ measures, even if it's not intelligence, it's useful to have in western societies.

B... (read more)

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