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Can all questions be re-written as statements where you have to fill-in-the-blank?

If so, they may have helped people historically *cooperate* in constructing explanations with *discussion*, because they communicate knowledge, but also communicate that although what was said is incomplete as an explanation, the person who said it is done talking and someone else trying to complete the explanation won't be punished for interrupting.

Criticism Scheduling and Privacy

Evan O'Leary6y10

Great article. This covers more of morality than most lesswrongers will notice, I guess. If:

Criticism = an explanation of a problem with an idea

Idea = a recipe (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.0681.pdf) that programs a vehicle to execute it

Problem = a conflict between two ideas

Explanation (of a problem with an idea) = a virtual reality environment in which the idea dies when executed by the environment (i.e. executed recursively by a vehicle that bottoms out in the environment.)

, then this idea that it's wrong to criticise people unless they ask for it can... (read more)

1Evan O'Leary3y

Actually I have a correction of the below: >this idea that it's wrong to criticise people unless they ask for it can explain: * why it's wrong to kill an animal - e.g. by putting an animal in a slaughtering machine, which is basically a virtual reality environment that contains an explanation of problems with the animal's survival strategies. * why it's wrong to hurt people by physically injuring them - if someone executes a program with their body (e.g. executing a decision to punch someone with their arm), then their body is a virtual reality environment that someone near it is in. It contains the explanation of problems with the ideas for survival that the person near it has. Ideas (programs/recipes) that the body executes conflict with the ideas the person near it who gets injured has. My correction is that the environments that cause killing and violence are not virtual reality environments, so they are not explanations and therefore not criticism, if my definition of explanations as kinds of virtual reality environments is used (one could alternatively call those VR environments "models of the world" and only call specific kinds of natural language expressions explanations). Virtual reality environments are usually simplifications of non-virtual environments. Virtual reality environments (i.e. simulations of environments) have different hardware than the environments they simulate.

Searching for Bayes-Structure

Evan O'Leary6y40

Non-probabilistic formulations of the laws of thermodynamics now exist: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1608.02625.pdf

They are better than other formulations: e.g. they are scale independent and can explain the time asymmetry of the 2nd law.

LESSWRONG
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