All of h-H's Comments + Replies

Gender relations = politics.

Not speaking of Lent specifically, but abstinence can restore enjoyment as much as teach impulse control. Take chocolate for example; overindulge and it'll lose it's appeal, so then take a month/40 days/etc break from it and you'll be able to eat it again. Or -more anecdotal- in Ramadan Muslims are supposed to abstain from food & sex during the day, this leads to a lot of 'feasting' once night falls as well as a marked increase in sex.

You don't have to do Lent or whatever, but such rituals are/can be quite useful.

The idea that Christianity was born under a foreign military occupation and had to compromise with it & Islam didn't and went on to make it's own empire is correct.

But the author's assertion that Islam can be nothing but theocratic -"it lacks separation of church and state"- is far from accurate. In the first place, the first Muslim civil war was fought over the question of whether government was secular (Sunni's) or theocratic (Shi'a) and was resolved in favor of the secular side. The fact that the overwhelming majority of Muslims past and ... (read more)

hey gwern, I like your writings & have developed a taste for stuff like this, any more recommendations?

"You can't reject absolutes without un-restraining certain particulars -that should remain just that- to replace it" is this a fair description of your position here Wei?

"old dead guys" is mind kill, and it sounds immature/impolite.

On the post itself, it'd be awesome if SIAI starts this in-house, something along the lines of semester long CFAR boot camp.

Thanks for the clear reply, and I agree with your points.

IMO the fact that Politics is a moderately functional substitute for direct bloodshed means that the 'rational' in any 'rational alternative' has little to do the masses becoming more rational, as opposed to careful grooming by an informed clique capable of long term planning.

That doesn't necessarily imply a shadowy cabal of super secret rationalists deftly maneuvering the public for it's own good. Rather, something as simple as spreading basic rationality skills is sufficient if we emphasize 'long t... (read more)

Wedrifid, I was disappointed that Eliezer so succinctly identified the problem then mostly left it hanging.

Now, your comment fundamentally missed the point I was making, furthermore you seem to be acting out a common politician's caricature, I don't see you making an actual argument here & tbh I'm slightly surprised as you usually do much better than that.

Either way. in the interest of preserving the sanity waterline I'll stop here.

I was encouraging the reader not to identify with either raiders or victims.

I have a habit of editing a comment for a bit after replying, actually I didn't see your response until after editing, I don't see how this changes your response in this instance though?

I added that caveat since the former group might have members who originally suffered more from procrastination as per the model, but eventually learned to deal with it, this might skew results if not taken into account.

I'm happy you asked, I did need to make my argument more specific.

Upvoted for good reasons for upvoting :)

For data, we could run a LW poll as a start and see. And out of curiosity, why would you be surprised?

Yes & I'd modify that slightly to "the former group needs to more actively combat procrastination".

Yes, and this is why I asked in the first place. To be more exact, I'm confused as to why Eliezer does not post a step-by-step detailing how he reached the particular confidence he currently holds as opposed to say, expecting it to be quite obvious.

I believe people like Holden especially would appreciate this; he gives an over 90% confidence to an unfavorable outcome, but doesn't explicitly state the concrete steps he took to reach such a confidence.

Maybe Holden had a gut feeling and threw a number, if so, isn't it more beneficial for Eliezer to detail how he personally reached the confidence level he has for a FAI scenario occurring than to bash Holden for being unclear?

hmm, I have to ask, are you deliberately vague about this to sort for those who can grok your style of argument, in the belief that the sequences are enough for them to reach the same confidence you have about a FAI scenario?

The Akrasia you refer to is actually a feature, not a bug. Just picture the opposite: Intelligent people rushing to conclusions and caring more about getting stuff done instead of forsaking the urge to go with first answers and actually think.

My point is, we decry procrastination so much but the fact is it is good that we procrastinate, if we didn't have this tendency we would be doers not thinkers. Not that I'm disparaging either, but you can't rush math, or more generally deep, insightful thought, that way lies politics and insanity.

In an nutshell, pe... (read more)

I like this, source please?

upvoted for empathy remark, but I don't know JoshuaZ, a "slow painful, agonizing death" for a mistake sounds too vengeful to me..

but isn't being presented with a to-do list or alternatively feeling hungry then finding food different than 'forming goals'?

to be more precise, maybe the 'survival instinct' that leads them to seek food is not located in their emotional centers so some goals might survive regardless. but yes, the assumption is untested AFAIK.

very smart people have issues with CEV, example: http://lesswrong.com/lw/2b7/hacking_the_cev_for_fun_and_profit/

and as far as I remember CEV was sort of abandoned a while ago by the community.

and yes, you value humans, others in the not so distant future might not given the possibility of body/brain modification. anyway, the gist of my argument is that CEV doesn't seem to work if there is not going to be much coherence of all of humanity's extrapolated volition's-a point that's already been made clear in previous threads by many people-what I'm trying to a... (read more)

without a body the brain won't 'work', the brain is very much linked to the rest of the body, the fiction that we only need the head to 'reanimate' a person back to normal is just that, fiction.

wei Dai:"rebuilding/simulating the body to the level of detail needed to support cognition" yes,but how complex is the nervous system? which wire connects to which, or is that not important? seems to me that you're oversimplifying..

I have to ask, how much do you know of 'Quranic studies'? as far as I know, the new testament and quran are structured quite differently, hence research-which I'm not aware of-would be different as well?

I think tighter definitions are needed here, some theistic traditions consider all existence to be 'god' etc.

I'm curious, have you used Wikipedia for non-scientific/technical stuff? it can be quite a biased source there..

it's good ..

you seem to be saying-implying?- that continuity of identity should be very important for minds greater than ours, see http://www.goertzel.org/new_essays/IllusionOfImmortality.htm

I 'knew' the idea presented in the link for a couple of years, but it simply clicked when I read the article, probably the writing style plus time did it for me.

regardless of dis/agreement, guy has a really cool voice http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS6DKeGvBW8&feature=related

I've sometimes read romance novels, more a function of my reading appetite at the time, plus no books remained in the house except those, I've also read a couple of -video-game stories, including some vampire ones to be relevant for your example, I agree that they have mildly interesting twists, enough for guilt pleasure level.

I can't put a name to it, but it doesn't require such a leap to see the relation between reading things like tvtropes and then to an extent Twilight? on that note, what do you read for fiction generally?

sounds like a good idea (though I'm not giving up on the Dark Arts class/sequence yet ..), given that OP does "encourage you to post your skills here anyway" I think bringing this up in the open thread or as a general call to candidates should be worthwhile, this can effectively and depending on the instructions make short work of most barriers to publishing an LW top level post, given relevant and interesting topics of course.

we have been experiencing a slump of late, I think this potentially helps in overcoming the slow stagnation that happens in all forums after the early 'glory days' are over.

ok, so I'm considering that a discussion post at least should be made, any thoughts?

it could potentially be part of the sequences, although Eliezer and others do cover the Dark Arts I don't recall a dedicated thread. I found some good examples from a quick googling, like Yvain's Defense Against The Dark Arts: Case Study #1 or The Power of Positivist Thinking

what makes an irrational argument convincing is human biases, but what I think lacks is more focused treatment of things like good writing or effective signaling, I haven't read all of LW though so it... (read more)

I believe it does need modifying the utility function given technological constrains, consider for example if the simulated person's physical body was threatened and they were not be able to respond appropriately, This is one of the main reason I included suicide next to lobotomy, I wasn't really clear on that, but you make a much more interesting point.

now that I think about it-for a few minutes-I generally agree with you, attaching sensory and motor nerves for a simulated universe is in fact a form of wire heading. I wonder if my definition of full wire... (read more)

precisely the reasons why we want better dark art skills just for the sake of countering them at least? I'm half tempted to start a thread on this, but I can't write as clearly as most here.

yeah, punishing agents for doing 'bad things' as a deterrence against other agents acting similarly is quite rational.

rationality might have at some point evolved from the dark arts themselves, i.e. human propensity to make up reasons as they go might have lead to their being better minds at making up reasons and arguments-I read that in an article somewhere but can't remember where exactly.

The dark arts get too much mud slung at them and IMO warrant further study,careful dissection by wise men wearing all the necessary charms and offering appropriate sacrifices should be sufficient ..:)

ok, I was careless, I apologize, still the argument remains unanswered satisfactorily..

my-and others'-main argument against meditation as a rationality increasing tool is that the less than perfect brains we have are not sufficient at dealing with biases and so forth. I can see that you've pretty much said the same or close to it in your reply above, so that's that.

P.S disjointed sentences?

this is tangential to the thread; but Nietzsche's writings frequently seem to be quite religious actually, take his Übermensch theme for e.g., which makes the absolute/divine/god/etc become part of man, a theme prevalent in Christianity as well.

but one can go back to being nihilistic if one chooses to, I think this does not strongly seem to be the case for wire heading.

true- I usually go with cleaning my Bookmarks instead of physical books though-it helps a lot since not doing stuff or lacking enthusiasm for what I do are my main reasons for slipping into a nihilist mood.

Good going :)

hmm, another positive reference to Buddhism.. I'm personally biased against in all of it's versions, more than I am of say christianity etc-IMO it does not deserve all the praise/advertisement it's been getting on LW of late, and my bias aganst it is confirmed by the ease with which it has suddenly creeped up LW.

as a rationalist-not technophile/libertarian etc but as one who seeks to be more rational, do you seriously believe in what Buddhism preaches? all of it?

if you're going to cherry pick then why call it Buddhism and praise it so? I fail to see this... (read more)

a reaction to cuteness more than anything else?

to put it mildly I don't believe anyone can address that objection satisfactorily, as wedrifid put it eloquently, the math is part of the map, not territory.

if the math of QM does describe reality to some degree or other -- then that's >enough for the quantum tests of particle identity to work exactly.

agreed, that was partially my point a couple of posts ago. for practical reasons it's good enough that the math works to a degree.

good point about the map/territory distinction, that was what I intended to say but couldn't put into so few words, thanks :)

and no, it seems that not even Frog can escape this, I'm not sure about it's significance here though?

I noticed, but there was a clear difference that I felt was necessary to point out regardless.

yes, I had that specific post in mind when I presented the atom example. you're correct here though, I should have said particles,I shouldn't write so late after midnight I guess..

now I admit that my understanding of quantum mechanics is not that much above a lay persons', so maybe I just need to apply myslef more and It'll click, but let's consider my arguement first:- here's what EY said in reply to a post in that thread-emphasis mine: "There can be properties of the particles we don't know about yet, but our existing experiments already show thos... (read more)

numbers are quite useful, so we don't/shouldn't do away with them, but the math is never a complete substitute for the observable universe.

writing down '20 sheep' doesn't physically equal 20 sheep, rather it's a method we use for simplicity. as it stands, no two sheep are alike to every last detail as far as anyone can tell, yet we still have a category called 'sheep'. this is so given the observed recurrence of 'sheep' like entities, similar enough for us to categorize them for practicality's sake, but that doesn't mean they're physically all alike to ... (read more)

thanks, that's actually what I wanted to know.

a belated reply:

now, as a generality your first statement is correct, but after searching for some years I've concluded the easiest method is in fact mild support for a partisan anti war website, reason being; on average wars are more destructive than no-wars, and definitely inductive of irrationality.

a note about the particular partisan site, it's not a single source by any means-I believe this is the cause of contention?- it's actually an aggregation of 'anti war' news from multiple sources including mainstream channels and others. as such the 'single so... (read more)

true, but there are no 'negative sheep', only numbers arbitrarily representing them.

agreed, it's not like scientific analysis requires the laws of physics to have no quantum randomness source etc, rather it is satisfied with finding the logical necessities between what is used to describe the observable universe.