All of infotropism's Comments + Replies

Hi, could anyone help me obtain

"Limits of Scientific Inquiry" by G. Holton, R. S. Morison ( 1978 )

and

"What is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable." Brockman, John (2007)

Thanks in advance

So yes, you'd likely lose the fun of normal dreaming - experiencing weird stuff, letting the insane flow of your dreams carry you like a leaf on a mad wind and not even feeling confused by it, but rather feeling like it was plain normal and totally making sense, having lots of warm fuzzy feelings and partway formed thoughts about your experiences in that dream.

Yet you might on the other hand gain the fun of being able to, for instance, capitalize on your dreaming time to learn and do some thinking. Not to mention the pleasure and sense of security derived from knowing your rational mind can work even under (some) adverse conditions.

From the popularity of the "Strangest thing an AI could tell you" post, and anosognosia tidbits in general, this topic seems to fascinate many people here. I for one would find it freakishly interesting to discover that I had such an impairment. In other words, I'd have motivation to at least genuinely investigate the idea, and even accept it.

How I'd come to accept it, would probably involve a method other than just "knowing it intuitively", like how I intuitively know the face of a relative to be that of a relative, or how I know with ... (read more)

This, applies more generally than to anosognosia alone, and was very illuminating, thank you !

So, provided that as we grow, some parts of our brain, mind, change, then this upsets the balance of our mind as a whole.

Let's say someone relied on his intuition for years, and consistently observed it correlated well with reality. That person would have had a very good reason to more and more rely on that intuition, and uses its output unquestioningly, automatically to fuel other parts of his mind.

In such a person's mind, one of the central gears would be that... (read more)

There's no such thing as an absolute denial macro. And I sure hope this to trigger yours.

What ?

Yes I would. Why the acute interest ?

Is it because by admitting to being able to believe that, one would admit to having no strong enough internal experience of morality ?

Experience of morality, that is, in a way that would make him say "no that's so totally wrong, and I know because I have experienced both genuine guilt and shame, AND also the embarrassment of being caught falsely signaling, AND I know how they are different things". I have a tendancy to always dig deep enough to find how it was selfish for me to do or feel something in particu... (read more)

Now we have a lot higher GDP

Yes indeed. Do you expect that to remain true after a nuclear war too ? More basically, I suppose I could resume my idea as follows : you can poke a hole in a country's infrastructure or economy, and the hole will heal with time because the rest is still healthy enough to help with that - just as a hole poked into a life form can heal, provided that the hole isn't big enough to kill the thing, or send it into a downward spiral of degeneration.

But yes, society isn't quite an organism in the same sense. There you probably could... (read more)

Agranarian is the new vegetarian.

Well, kidding aside, your argument, taken from Pearl, seems elegant. I'll however have to read the book before I feel entitled to having an opinion on that one, as I haven't grokked the idea, merely a faint impression of it and how it sounds healthy.

So at this point, I only have some of my own ideas and intuitions about the problem, and haven't searched for the answers yet.

Some considerations though :

Our idea of causality is based upon a human intuition. Could it be that it is just as wrong as vitalism, time, little billiard balls bumping around, or the ye... (read more)

What should be realized here, however, is that Hiroshima could become a relatively ok place because it could receive a huge amount of help for being part of the country with such a high GDP.

Hiroshima didn't magically get better. A large scale nuclear war would destroy our economy, and thus our capability to respond and patch the damage that way. For that matter, I'm not even sure our undisturbed response systems could be able to deal with more than a few nuked cities. Also please consider that Hiroshima was nuked by a 18 kt bomb, which is nothing like th... (read more)

1 ) That human beings are all individual instances of the exact same mind. You're really the same person as any random other one, and vice versa. And of course that single mind had to be someone blind enough not to chance upon that fact ever, regardless of how numerous he was.

2 ) That there are only 16 real people, of which you are, and that this is all but a VR game. Subsequently results in all the players simultaneously being still unable to be conscious of that fact, AND asking that you and the AI be removed from the game. (Inspiration : misunderstandin... (read more)

Funnily enough, you realize this is quite similar to what you'd need to make Chalmers right, and p-zombies possible, right ?

Under those assumptions your estimates are sound, really. However, should we only count the direct deaths incurred as a consequence of a direct nuclear strike ? Or should we also take into account the nuclear fallout, radiations, nuclear winter, ecosystems crashing down, massive economy and infrastructure disruption, etc. ? How much more worse does it get if we take such considerations into account ?

Aside from those considerations, I really agree with your idea of getting our priorities right, based on numbers. That's exactly the reason why I'd advocate antiagathic research above a lot of other things, which actually kill and make less people suffer than aging itself does, but not everyone seems to agree to that.

I see your point, sometimes we may have already written the bottom line, and all that comes afterward is trying to justify it.

However, if an existential risk is conceivable, how much would you be ready to pay, or do, to investigate it ? Your answer could plausibly range from nothing, to everything you have. There ought to be a healthy middle there.

I could certainly understand how someone would arrive at saying that the problem isn't worth investigating further, because that person has a definite explanation of why other people care about that particular qu... (read more)

A fair point. So what you're telling me is that we should desire a future civilization that is descended from our own, probably one that will have some common points with current humanity, like, some of our values, desires (or values, desires who'd have grown from our own) etc. ?

How many deaths, directly or indirectly derived from the pope's prohibition, would be enough for his influence to be considered negative in this case ?

Technological progress seems to be necessary, but not sufficient to ensure our civilization's long term survival.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem quite adamant on arguing against the idea that our current civilization is in danger of extinction, when so many other people argue the other way around. This seems like it has the potential to degenerate into a fruitless debate, or even a flame war.

Yet you probably have some good points to make; why not think it over, and make a post about it, if your opinion is so different, and substantiated by facts and good reasoning, as I am sure it must be ?

I sometime wonder why people think this outcome is bad.

Mind if I ask, but, as opposed to considering it good ?

hypothetical "disasters", civilisation doesn't end - it is just that it is no longer led by humans

You'd think that's actually pretty much what most of us humans care about.

Whether those catastrophes could destroy present humanity wasn't the point, which was whether or not near misses in potential extinction events have ever occurred during our past.

Consider it that way : under your assumptions of our world being more robust nowadays, what would count as a near miss today, would certainly have wiped the frailer humanity out back then; conversely what counted as a near miss back then, would not be nearly that bad nowadays. This basically means, by constraining the definition of a "near miss" in that way, that it is... (read more)

Though that doesn't immediately make it non fictional evidence, dysgenic pressure (as well as the flynn effect and the possibility of genetic engineering as possible counters) is also being briefly mentioned in Nick Bostrom's fundamental paper Existential Risks - 5.3.

Well, there possibly was the Toba supereruption, which would fit being a near miss.

Arguably, we were very close too during the cold war, and several times over - not total extinction, but a nuclear war would've left us very crippled.

Minor quibble, interesting info :

"like expecting the orbits of the planets to be in the same proportion as the first 9 prime numbers or something. That which is produced by a complex, messy, random process is unlikely to have some low complexity description"

The particular example of the planet's orbit is actually one where such a simple rule exists : see the law of Titius Bode

In maybe 15 years of time, Wednesday comes to this place, or what this place has become by then. She is still a Mormon, and is welcomed. She is interested in participating, because she is open minded enough, educated, and the community is tolerant and helpful. So she gets to learn about rationality, and is taken into the process of becoming a rationalist herself, and a productive, healthy member of the rationalist community.

My question : and after a few months or years of that, does she still remain a Mormon, or a believer in the supernatural ?

If yes, how ... (read more)

I agree with Vladimir too, you can't always pinpoint people like that.

I'd say I'm uncommitted too. By that I mean to encompass the general idea that I agree with a lot of the ideas that come from, for instance, libertarianism, and at the same time, with a lot of the ideas behind communism. As I never heard of a good synthesis between the two, so I stand uncommitted.

Self fulfilling prophecies are only epistemically wrong when you fail to act upon them. Failing, maybe out of cynicism, sophistication or simply being too clever, rationalizing them away; the result will be the same.

There's a potential barrier there. You can tunnel through it, or not. Tunneling can sound magical and counterintuitive. It's not. There are definite reasons why it can work.

Sometimes, however, you don't know those reasons, but can observe it appears to work for other people anyway. Then you may want to find a way to bootstrap the process, lik... (read more)

Do you also, simply, desire to live ?

Or do you mean to say that if your life didn't possess those useful qualities, then it would be better, for you, to forfeit cryonics, and have your organs donated, for instance ?

And I'm actually asking that question to other people here as well, who have altruistic arguments against cryonics. Is there an utility, a value your life has to have, like if you can contribute to something useful, in order to be cryopreserved ? For then that would be for the greatest good for the greatest number of people ?

A value below whic... (read more)

where rationality is easily assessed it is already well understood; it is in extending the art to hard-to-assess areas that the material here is most valuable.

My question is : as well understood as it is, how much of it do any single individual here, know, understand, and is able to use on a recurring basis ?

We'll want to develop more than what exists, but we'll build that upon - once we have it - a firm basis. So I wonder, how much knowledge and practice of those well understood parts of rationality, does it require of the would-be builders of the next tier ? Otherwise, we stand the risk, of being so eager as to hurriedly build sky high ivory towers on sand, with untrained hands.

This article is definitely relevant - I hadn't seen anyone dare being honest about how most of philosopher's thoughts, of old, are not to be blindly revered, and are indeed highly flawed. They aren't right, they aren't even wrong. Thanks for the link.

Don't you find it more aesthetically appealing that way ? Also, I'm French :-)

Be that as it may be, what is a captial ? I understand the need for proper grammar and orthography in our dear garden, but there's something intriguing going on there :-)

So a lack of captials deserves a downvote ?

I get error 403 trying to access it. But I suppose you meant this : remember santa

I don't place any confidence in my intuition as a general, indiscriminately good-for-everything case. I try to only have confidence on a case by case basis. I try to pay attention to all potential bias that could screw my opinion, like anchoring. And try to not pay attention to who wrote what I'm voting upon. Then I have to have a counterargument. Even if I don't elaborate it, even if I don't lay it down, I have to know that if I had the time or motivation, I could rather reply, and say what was wrong or right in that post.

My decisions and arguments, could... (read more)

If I were in your shoes, I'd be fairly scared of posting about this again if I'd expect to be shot down. But please don't be afraid. I think such a post would really be interesting.

If it is shot down, that's a fact about the ideas, or maybe how they were laid down, not about you, after all. In that case, it's up to the people who disagree, to explain how they think you're wrong, or why they disagree.

If you hold the ideas you're exposing, as dear, or part of your identity, it may even hurt a bit more than simply being rebuked, but even then, really, I think it'll only help the community, and you, to move forward, to add them on the mat, and see where it leads.

That was my first idea. But I am not the only player here. I know I overcompensate for my uncertainty, and so I tend to never downvote anything. Other people may not have the same attitude, for down, and upvoting. Who are they ? Is their opinion more educated than mine ? If we all are too scrupulous to vote when our opinion is in fact precious, then our occasional vote may end up drowned in a sea of poorly decided, hastily cast ones.

Besides, I am still only going to downvote if I can think of a good reason to do so. For sometimes, I have a good reason to downvote, but no still no good reasons, or even no time, to reply to all ideas I think need a fix, or those which are simply irrelevant to the current debate.

Obeying. Even though I had some strong reasons to upvote. Edit : you're running for a record there - the most downvoted comment on LW :-)

Don't overcompensate ? Reversed neutrality isn't intelligent censorship, and downvoting people more than usual, just to obey the idea that now you should downvote, won't work well I think. Take a step back, and some time to see the issue from an outside view.

And the interesting question is : given decentralized censorship, or even no censorship at all, what sort of community can emerge from that ?

My impression is that 4chan is resilient from becoming a failed community, because they have no particular goal, except maybe every one doing what pleases themselves on a personal basis, given it doesn't bother everyone else.

Any single individual will, pretty naturally and unwittingly, act as a moderator, out of personal interest. 4chan is like a chemical reaction that has displaced itself towards equilibrium. It w... (read more)

The karma system isn't enough for the purpose of learning; I fully agree to that. And to the point of this article, I usually don't downvote people, rather I try to correct them if I see something wrong. That, if anything, seems more appropriate to me. If I see an issue somewhere, it isn't enough to point it, I must be able to explain why it is an issue, and should propose a way to solve it.

But Eliezer has me swayed on that one. Now I'll downvote, even though I am, indeed, very uncertain of my own ability to correctly judge whether a post deserves to be do... (read more)

Not the mathematical proof.

But the idea that if you don't yet have data bound to observation, then you decide the probability of a prior by looking at its complexity.

Complexity, defined as looking up the smallest compressed bitstring program for each possible turing machines (and that is the reason why it's intractable unless you have infinite computational ressources yes ?), that can be said to generate this prior as the output of being run on that machine.

The longest the bitstring, the less likely the prior (and this has to do with the idea you can make ... (read more)

So maybe, to rephrase the idea then, we want to strive, to achieve something as close as we can to perfection; optimality ?

If we do, we may then start laying the bases, as well as collecting practical advices, general methods, on how to do that. Though not a step by step absolute guide to perfection, rather, the first draft of one idea that would be helpful in aiming towards optimality.

edit : also, that's a st Exupery quote, that illustrates the idea, I wouldn't mean it that literally, not as more than a general guideline.

I have an idea I need to build up about simplicity, how to build your mind and beliefs up incrementally, layer by layer, how perfection is achieved not when there's nothing left to add, but nothing left to remove, how simple minded people are sometimes being the ones to declare simple, true ideas others lost sight of, people who're too clever and sophisticate, whose knowledge is like a card house, or a bag of knots, genius, learning, growing up, creativity correlated with age, zen. But I really need to do a lot more searching about that before I can put something together.

Edit : and if I post that here, that's because if someone else wants to dig that idea, and work on it with me, that'd be with pleasure.

"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."

God (presumably), Revelation 3:16

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."

Charles Babbage

And a few interesting reversed proverbs and quotes that ring truer than the original ones there (for those who can read French).

Like :

In doubt, abstain !

In doubt, search further !

There will always be a large difference between those who'd ask themselves "why won't things work as they are meant to" and those asking themselves "how could I get them to work". For the moment being, the human world belongs to those who would ask "why". But the future belongs, necessarily, to those who'd ask themselves "how".

Bernard Werber

Philosophy easily triumphs over past and future evils. But present ones, prevail over it.

Maxim 22 François de La Rochefoucauld

Among the only differences I could think of, is that noticing the difference between black and white has almost only negative connotation today, while noticing it between males and females is a more mixed bag. What if it was possible to attach positive affect reactions in excess to negatives ones, to that color difference ? Would it still be good to abolish people's noticing ? Though, color of skin isn't a category in the same sense sex is; it doesn't correlate with so much potential difference.

This also leads to the other reason why you'd think it's impor... (read more)