All of chaosmosis's Comments + Replies

I like the vibes.

But worse, the path is not merely narrow, but winding, with frequent dead ends requiring frequent backtracking. If ever you think you're closer to the truth - discard that hubris, for it may inhibit you from leaving a dead end, and there your search for truth will end. That is the path of the crank.

I don't like this part. First, thinking that you're closER to the truth is not really a problem, it's thinking you've arrived at the truth that arguably is. Second, I think sometimes human beings can indeed find the truth. Underconfidence ... (read more)

http://lesswrong.com/lw/fr2/lesswrong_podcasts/83ky

I think that even very small amounts of x-risk increases are significant. I also think that lone LWers have the most impact when they're dealing with things like community attitudes.

I think neither of those things. This isn't about stupidity or intelligence. This is about how people will behave within a conversation. More intelligence granted to a debator set on winning an argument and securing status does not make them better at accepting and learning from information in the context. It makes them better at defending themselves from needing to. It makes them better and creating straw men and clever but irrelevant counter-arguments.

I agree that tone can provide useful information. The difference between our positions is perhaps mor... (read more)

Giving one future self u=10 and another u=0 is equally as good as giving one u=5 and another u=5.

So, to give a concrete example, you have $10 dollars. You can choose between gaining 5 utilons today and five tomorrow by spending half of the money today and half of the money tomorrow, or between spending all of it today and gaining 10 utilons today and 0 tomorrow. These outcomes both give you equal numbers of utilons, so they're equal.

Phil says that the moral reason they're both equal is because they both have the same amount of average utility distribute... (read more)

I said that length was useful insofar as it added to communication. Was I particularly inefficient? I don't think so. As is, it's somewhat ironic, but I think only superficially so because there isn't any real clash between what I claim as ideal and what I engage in (because, again, I think I was efficient). And there's not stupidly there at all, or at least none that I see. You'll need to go into more detail here.

I understand what you're getting at, but what specifically is important about this change? I see the added resource intensity as one thing but that's all I can think of whereas I'm reading your comment as hinting at some more fundamental change that's taking place.

(A few seconds later, my thoughts.)

One change might be that the goals have shifted. It becomes about status and not about solving problems. Maybe that is what you had in mind? Or something else?

The below words are yours:

At a more mild level, where the disrespectful tone is below the threshold of outright swearing and abuse, tone gives reliable indications of how the person is likely to respond to continued conversation. It's a good indication of whether they will respond in good faith or need to be treated as a hostile rhetorician that is not vulnerable to persuasion (or learning).

You said that moderate differences in tone were good indicators of whether or not someone was rational enough to be capable to learn. You were vague about what spec... (read more)

Quick Question, a few weeks later: would you be willing to take a guess as to what problems might have caused my comment to be downvoted? I'm stumped.

Again, I'm not defending belligerent tone, I'm attacking overly apologetic tones. You tried that strawman once already. Stop falsely accusing me of doing the exact things that you actually are doing.

Be specific. What on earth am I doing that's so disingenuous? You both claim that I'm utilizing advanced level Dark Arts here, and I'm totally clueless on how that might be so. Your vagueness makes me think that maybe you are just blaming me for your own instinctive irrational responses to neutral differences in tones, instead of actually analyzing the (suppose... (read more)

It could be either, so he's not justified in assuming that it's the average one in order to support his conclusion. He's extrapolating beyond the scope of their actual equivalence, that's the reason his argument is bringing anything new to the table at all.

He's using their mathematical overlap in certain cases as prove that in cases where they don't overlap the average should be used as superior to the total. That makes no sense at all, when thought of in this way. That is what I think the hole in his argument is.

Sometimes these are bad, usually not. It's difficult for me to outline exactly what kind of disclaimers are bad because I think they're bad whenever they do more to prevent the earnest engagement of ideas than to help it, and determining which category specific cases fall in depends a lot on contextual things that I'm having a difficult time describing.

I know it when I see it, basically. It's easier for me to ask you to make recourse to your own experiences than it is for me to describe these kind of situations all by myself. Personally, lots of the time ... (read more)

"something deep within us expects, even demands moral order—in a world that shouts from the rooftops that no such order exists."

This conclusion is accurate unless he used a specifically Christian definition of "moral order".

It would depend on what exactly what we reprogrammed within you, I expect.

For example, Kant's categorical imperative is very close to a decision-theory or game theory approach if one thinks about it as asking "what would happen if everyone made the choice that I do?"

This is like the opposite of game theory. Assuming that everyone takes the same action as you instead of assuming that everyone does what is in their own best interest.

I hate that sub. I was subbed for like a week before I realized that it was always awful like that.

I didn't have any specific format in mind, but you'd be right otherwise.

I agree but also still think that tone is very overemphasized. We should encourage less reaction to tone instead of taking it as inevitable and a reasonable complaint in response to a comment, which is what I think that we currently do.

Teach the best case that there is for each of several popular opinions. Give the students assignments about the interactions of these different opinions, and let/require the students the students to debate which ones are best, but don't give a one-sided approach.

The Best Way Anyone Have Found So Far By A Fair Margin.

This also seems problematic, for the same reasons.

Your post didn't come across as abrasive, Luke's did. Sorry for my bad communication.

My impression is that Nietzsche tries to make his philosophical writings an example of his philosophical thought in practice. He likes levity and jokes, so he incorporates them in his work a lot. Nietzsche sort of shifts frames a lot and sometimes disorients you before you get to the meaning of his work. But, there are lots of serious messages within his sarcastic one liners, and also his work comprises a lot more than just sarcastic one liners.

I feel like some sort of comparison to Hofstadter might be apt but I haven't read enough Hofstadter to do that co... (read more)

I'm trying to think what I would do. I don't know how I'd go about creating the groundwork for the conversation or selecting the person with whom I would converse. But here's an outline of how I think the conversation might go.

Me: What do you believe about epistemology?

Them: I believe X.

Me: I believe that empiricism works, even if I don't know why it works. I believe that if something is useful that's sufficient to justify believing in it, at least up to the point where it stops being useful. This is because I think changing one's epistemology only makes s... (read more)

First, make sure that they're actually approachable at all.

Second, don't approach them in a combative fashion, like this post does. You need to approach them by understanding their specific view of morality and epistemology and their view of how philosophy relates to that, and how it should relate to it, or even if they think it does or should at all. Approach them from a perspective that is explicitly open to change. Ask lots of questions, then ask follow up questions. These questions shouldn't be combative, although they should probably expose assumption... (read more)

Hume and Nietzsche are both excellent exceptions to your general rule.

Also, #4 seems completely fine to me.

1 Length is only good insofar as it adds to meaning. Most length on LessWrong doesn't do that. For example, I can summarize your first point as:

Long comments make arguments clearer and make communication faster. Good communication is good, within certain limits, and I think most comments fall within those limits.

I don't think any important information is lost there. I disagree with your assessment of communication practices on LessWrong.

2 I don't think we should react to differences in tone the way that we do. The fact that our community has different ... (read more)

Though his comment might also be a sinister meta-signaling-signaling trolling :P

http://i.imgur.com/w6mIF.jpg

People make verbose and lengthy comments instead of short and simple ones. People always speak in a certain type of tone, signalling that they are smart but also that they are Reasonable and they are listening to the points of their opponents. People lace their comments with subtle disclaimers and possible lines of retreat. People take care to use an apologetic tone.

I think some of this is a somewhat rational reaction to the amount of nitpicking that happens on this site, which is something that I'm also opposed to. But some of this exists on its own and i... (read more)

In my experience, the people on this site don't perceive signalling as wrong or useless, even when it's superficial. I do not understand why that's so because I perceive most of signalling as a waste of resources and think that cultivating a community which tried to minimize unnecessary signalling would be good.

Making the Babyeaters/SuperHappy posts into an audio story might draw new people to the site.

If you're not interested in discussing the ethics of time travel, why did you respond to my comment which said

I don't understand why it's morally wrong to kill people if they're all simultaneously replaced with marginally different versions of themselves. Sure, they've ceased to exist. But without time traveling, you make it so that none of the marginally different versions exist. It seems like some kind of act omission distinction is creeping into your thought processes about time travel.

with

Because our morality is based on our experiential process.

I'm protecting someone over not-someone.

This ignores that insofar as going back in time kills currently existing people it also revives previously existing ones. You're ignoring the lives created by time travel.

Experientially, we view "me in 10 seconds" as the same as "me now." Because of this, the traditional arguments hold, at least to the extent that we believe that our impression of continuous living is not just a neat trick of our mind unconnected to reality. And if we don't believe this, we fail the rationality test in many m

practically compute

Your argument is that it is hard and impractical, not that it is impossible, and I think that only the latter type is a reasonable constraint on moral considerations, although even then I have some qualms about whether or not nihilism would be more justified, as opposed to arbitrary moral limits. I also don't understand how anthropic arguments might come into play.

Your argument makes no sense.

"Time travel is too improbable to worry about preserving yous affected by it. Given that, it makes sense to want to protect the existence of the unmodified future self over the modified one."

Those two sentences do not connect. They actually contradict.

Also, you're doing moral epistemology backwards, in my view. You're basically saying, "it would be really convenient if the content of morality was such that we could easily compute it using limited cognitive resources". That's an argumentum ad consequentum which is a logical fallacy.

In fairness there are potential issues here with signalling and culture. Although people might profess to believe X, in reality X just might be a more common type of cached knowledge, or X might be something that they say because they think it is socially useful, or as a permutation of those two they might have conditioned themselves to believe in X. Or, perhaps they interpret the meaning of "X" differently than others do, but they really mean the same thing underneath.

I think there should be a distinction between types of intuitions, or at least... (read more)

"I think we need to arbitrarily limit something. Given that, this specific limit is not arbitrary."

How is that not equivalent to your argument?

Additionally, please explain more. I don't understand what you mean by saying that we "split ourselves too thinly". What is this splitting and why does it invalidate moral systems that do it? Also, overall, isn't your argument just a reason that considering alternatives to the status quo isn't moral?

1. These experiences aren't undone. They are stopped. There is a difference. Something happy that happens, and then is over, still counts as a happy thing.

2. You destroy valuable lives. You also create valuable lives. If creating things has as much value as maintaining them does, then the act of creative destruction is morally neutral. Since the only reasons that I can think of why maintaining lives might matter are also reasons that the existence of life is a good thing, I think that maintenance and creation are morally equal.

Why do you think that death is bad? Perhaps that would clarify this conversation. I personally can't think of a reason that death is bad except that it precludes having good experiences in life. Nonexistence does the exact same thing. So I think that they're rationally morally identical.

Of course, if you're using a naturalist based intuitionist approach to morality, then you can recognize that it's illogical that you value existing persons more than potential ones and yet still accept that those existing people really do have greater moral weight, simply because of the way you're built. This is roughly what I believe, and why I don't push very hard for large population increases.

Why protect one type of "you" over another type? Your response gives a reason that future people are valuable, but not that those future people are more valuable than other future people.

Sure. Again, this isn't relevant and isn't providing information that's new to me. People like Schopenhauer and Benatar might exist, but surely my overall point still stands. The focus on nitpicking is excessive and frustrating. I don't want to have to invest much time and effort into my comments on this site so that I can avoid allowing people to get distracted by side issues; I want to get my points across as efficiently as possible and without interruption.

We are talking about time travel and so this doesn't apply. Your comment is nitpicky for no good reason. I obviously recognize that consequentialists believe that more lives are better; I don't know why you felt an urge to tell me that. Your wording is also unnecessarily pedantic and inefficient.

I don't understand why it's morally wrong to kill people if they're all simultaneously replaced with marginally different versions of themselves. Sure, they've ceased to exist. But without time traveling, you make it so that none of the marginally different versions exist. It seems like some kind of act omission distinction is creeping into your thought processes about time travel.

It doesn't lead to any new insights. I can't generate any thoughts by pretending that it's now the future and that I'm looking back into the past. I don't know whether or not other people do somehow generate new thoughts this way. It sounds plausible while also sounding ridiculous, so I'm unsure whether or not it's legitimate.

Does anyone find this useful, personally? I've heard it as advice before, but it never helps me.