dlrlw
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dlrlw has not written any posts yet.
I think that should be 'pretext for war', not 'pretense for war'.
Alas, even those who are governed by reason take the chance that someday a sunken fact will rip the bottom out of their boat.
The odds are only somewhat less for this happening to those governed by reason.
What is "FOOM"? Is it an acronym? What does it stand for?
Wordnik says "The sound of a muffled explosion." But that doesn't sound right. If AI goes FOOM, the explosion presumably won't be 'muffled'. :-)
This essay is wonderful. It is the first coherent and plausible defense of polytheism I've ever read. It is a much more intellectually satisfying version of creationism than monotheism.
And all just as an aside too, off the cuff. Kudos Mr. Yudkowsky. It really is a pleasure to read your work.
Seems to me you're asking the wrong question. I say, don't ask if there is a omnipotent God, that is making an unwarranted narrowing assumption. Why should it be either/or? Lots and lots of room in between the 'omnipotent God' theory and the 'no god at all' theory for 'medium potent god(s) theories.
And 'medium potent god' theories are not only inherently more likely than either of the extremes, they seem a lot more fruitful and interesting to think about, in terms of possible consequences.
I say, ask if there are beings of ANY kind that are more intelligent/knowledgeable/scientifically or morally... (read more)
This whole speech makes me mad. The same people who urge us to not have kids, because of overpopulation, are urging us to spend all of our disposable income in supporting 'poor people', because they are in misery. And why are they in misery? Because they had more kids than they could afford to take care of. And their parents did. And their parents before them.
You on the other hand, are descended from a long line of prudent people. Who though about the consequences of their actions and decided that the short term pleasure wasn't worth the long... (read 1010 more words →)
The problem here is that you don't KNOW that the probability is 90%. What if it's 80%? or 60%? or 12%? In real life you will only run the experiment once. The probabilities are just a GUESS. The person who is making the guess has no idea what the real probabilities are. And as Mr. Yudkowsky has pointed out elsewhere, people consistently tend to underestimate the difficulty of a task. They can't even estimate with any accuracy how long it will take them to finish their homework. If you aren't in the business of saving... (read 523 more words →)
Well, it's perfectly obvious that as soon as convenient and cheap birth control becomes widely available, then many people will not have children. This reduces the birthrate. HOWEVER, the people that do have children will have been, on average, self-selected. And one thing you can be sure of, they will be over-represented in the psychological category of "People who really like kids"
That being the case, one has to assume that all our descendents, ultimately, will be extremely philoprogenic. Because all the people that deliberately don't have kids, because kids are 'more trouble than they are fun', will have eliminated themselves from... (read more)
I've got to disagree with this one. Let's take a concrete example, say pity. The ability to feel pity is a complex adaptation, and so all persons feel pity. However HOW MUCH any one person feels pity for others is a highly variable quantity. It varies dramatically from person to person, and from situation to situation; moreover, some people, (eg psycopaths) don't feel any pity at all: their pity mechanism is broken, defective. Therefore the only conclusion you can draw from the alleged "Psychological unity of humankind" is that they will feel some unknown amount of pity in a certain situation, unless of course, they... (read more)
no, no, no, you should be comparing the number of people who want to have great sex with a hot babe with the number of people who want to gain higher status. The answer for most everyone would be yes!! both! Because both were selected for by increased inclusive fitness.