Thanks, I loathe 'tl;dr'.
My favorite large CGoL object is the MetaPixel. It is a life object implementing a life unit cell, which actually looks like a life unit cell when zoomed out. A copy of it and some meta-simulations come with Golly.
I wish there was no illness, I don't care if an old doctor starves.
Loā Hô, a Taiwanese physician and poet.
What I really like about this quote is that I'm fairly sure the 'old doctor' is himself.
I care. If illness is abolished and a doctor of any age is starving, they can stay at my place and I'll feed them. Alternately, we could raise taxes slightly to finance government-mandated programs for training and reconversion of young doctors and early retirement for old doctors.
In other words: beware of though-mindedly accepting bad consequences of overall good policies. Look for a superior alternative first.
C is the only answer where the line segment is touching the same spots indicated on the both objects. Point A is on the point of the star, point B is near the little box on the rectangle thing.
The rectangle thing is flipped vertically though (as if in 3D), rather than being rotated in the plane of the 2D drawing.
I don't look at Chinese politics and immediately think rational. I don't see or expect much rationality from Chinese leaders with respect to Taiwan for instance. But why are so many of China's top leaders educated as engineers? I don't know what process they go through to gain political power in China, but it sure seems to lead to different demographics than for US politicians.
One piece of Chinese policy that seems pretty smart/rational is their long term infrastructure projects. Even if keeping the Chinese Communist Party in power is their first priority...
I enjoyed the story, thanks.
And again, your statement is well reasoned and well justified. I don't disagree with anything you've written in particular. My point was weak, I don't hold it strongly, and I largely only wrote something in order to write something. To form a habit of participation.
Your statements are a perfect example of the epistemic hygiene I wish to cultivate. But the perfect can be the enemy of the good.
You were right, I am reasoning that because they are further from the truth on contemporary issues (in facts, but especially in truth-gathering methods) they are furth...
I've wondered how I found Overcoming Bias. I've determined the approximate date I found it from a facebook post I made, but I don't remember how I found it. It could have been from Bad Science.
I put the randomized-trials-for-policy thing on facebook earlier today. I love that idea. It is one of those obvious-to-me ideas that I once I had it, I couldn't believe that we weren't doing it routinely. As if people weren't thinking or something. You want to know whether something works? Try it and find out.
I had a similar feeling when I found out about homosexuality in ancient greece. When I was a kid: Many cultures are weird about homosexuality? Oh, it must be a new thing. What? It has been a well-known, standard minority fraction of human sexuality for thousands of years?
Other points that tickle my mind:
The uniqueness of a calculation matters. Running the same program twice doesn't give you a new result.
Does cause and effect (and representation of state) really matter that much? (Dust theory). My answer: still confused.
As a whole, a pattern of behavior of matter/energy can be called a calculation when State 1 causes State 2. When this happens, we can at least point to the calculation. With dust, states do not cause other states, and states can have different representations.
Right now (for at least the next minute) ...
What you've said makes sense to me, that the flipbooks do not constitute a calculation. However, it feels like there is a fuzzy boundary somewhere nearby, similar to the fuzzy boundary of what constitutes life. Maybe there is a information theory explanation which relates the two.
If the flipbooks contain enough information to continue the calculation then they are the same as a backup. Ok, so a flipbook is a series of closely spaced backups. What constitutes a calculation? I've read about these things, but I've never tried to work it out for myself before...
I'm reminded of a story in Orion's Arm where a super intelligence is simulated with pencil and paper. This depiction isn't a flipbook of course. In the story, a bunch of volunteer baseline human carried out the algorithm of a super intelligence doing the arithmetic by hand on pieces of paper. They did it as a hobby.
After searching for a while, I found the story.
I'd say the torture happened once. Even if you make more flipbooks and it changes the measure of the subjective experience, there is only one unique experience. The experience doesn't know if it happened before.
Once the system is closed, I'd think it is morally same for the experience to be simulated once or many times.
You're no more torturing them again than you are killing them again and again when the flipbook finishes its calculation.
I praise you for your right action. Not only does your action have recursive beauty, but it also, like a socio-volitional whirlpool, a decision-theoretic attractor, guides me by example.
Edit: Ah, so that's what you meant by duplicate.
A rational, appropriately meta, abstract deconstruction of the probable biases, trustworthiness, and relevance of the top post. Pure and clean and correct.
But the opposing sides of the argument aren't equal. The weight of bias isn't symmetrical. One side is much more wrong than the other. The obvious next criticism is 'reversed stupidity isn't intelligence'. Of course we'd like all sides to be less wrong! But the propaganda isn't symmetrical. The would-be theocrats have to distort more to make their case, because the truth isn't on their side.
There probably is value in the book. I doubt it is perfectly clean or fair. But I doubt it is worthless.
Yes, consciously being friendly is a feature not a bug. There are different types of communities. Read and writing here is high self-selvective and only appeals to certain types of people. There are many other types of people who are compatible with a rational worldview, who are not compatible with Less Wrong. Maybe they need more (literal) hand holding.
I think a big fraction of 'normal people' are compatible with a rational, or 'not obviously insane' culture. But that hypothetical mainstreamed rational culture (not existing now) is not Less Wrong culture....
Said much better and more technically by Kutta above, your writing elsewhere:
driven by positive affect, social reinforcement, fuzzy feelings, motivated cognition, and characterized by a profound lack of truth-seeking.
For positive reinforcement: I've found your writing on less wrong good enough to be here so far. Reinforced bits: organization, use of emphasis, footnotes, engaging style, neutral tone, not taking incompatibility personally, a focus on sharing compatible, mutually useful knowledge.
I hope we don't have different views on how to weigh experience. This should be weighed as evidence exactly the same way everything else is: by the odds ratio of it occurring when the hypothesis is true over when it isn't.
This is very important.
The organizational problems you have written about here are concrete and easily supported. When I read your organizational writing and I come to a place where I need to evaluate if what you're saying is true, the problem is transformed into a question of whether I believe that churches and missionary groups are successful at these things. So far you've been distilling and translating institutional knowledge.
I haven't seen you write about harder issues here. Issues that require weighing competing mental processes, avoiding self-deception, tracing several l...
Me too. I've even done it before:
I have a facebook friend who writes thoughtfully, seems reasonably clever and cares about deep questions. He is a speaking-in-tongues, deeply religious, Prosperity, Charismatic, Word of Faith, Christian. A few of his interests and landmark-experiences match my own.
I was excited to talk to him because I thought he would be able to teach me something about religious people that 'normal people' couldn't.
I also thought the skeleton of his personality was similar enough to mine that he might have made an 'interesting mistake'. D...
And psychology courses would include stuff on perception and how it can be tricked, such as optical illusions.
That's true, and if he answered 'yes', or 'no' we wouldn't know much. But he seems pretty thorough - I'm hoping he'll describe his definition of what 'supernatural' means.
I could have just asked, 'how would you define supernatural', but I felt like seeing how he would respond to the first version. The information I wanted is how he frames the question. :-)
I like to learn more about missionary success rates. That sounds really low.
What happened in South Korea?
Yes on this question. Here is his conversion story which someone else posted in a different reply.
In the story Initiation Ceremony, a character is asked if he 'wants to know'.
In that context, do you want to know? Does knowing motivate you? Are you interested in the 'truth' about the nature of the universe and how it works?
Do you care about reality as opposed to socially constructed 'realities'
I've just started reading your blog which someone linked to.
Have you attended a meet up in Berkeley (and are you that guy that said he wrote programs to analyze his own genetic SNPs?)
thanks.
I'm going to start having kids in a few years. I have my eye of some of the sequenences - such as Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions. I need to find a way to distill this stuff down, so I can teach it to my children.
You said what I'm thinking, only in complete paragraphs. Seriously. I was thinking:
If Calcsam is willing to spend the time, I'd rather he respond in a detailed "answers" discussion post rather than responding ad-hoc in this thread.
There is lots of meta in this thread. I wish for an answers post with the questions he's responding to numbered and quoted. Then we could respond to the response with less clutter.
I tried to use the broken link when I read the article today. Thanks.
We can use his definition.
The beginnings of older religions are lost in myth and so are somewhat protected from scrutiny.
Newer religions like LDS and perhaps Scientology have much more detailed historical information available. For these newer organizations, there are verifiable primary sources for many historical details. The public record (internet accessible) tells a different story than church doctrine on some of these details.
The question: Have you done a due diligence study of the roots and founding of your faith?
Do you believe in supernatural things?
Yes. But the reason why we should listen to him is self-evident. He has written things that are valuable. If he maintains his interest in the community here, and the quality is good, he could be a value-multiplier. A catalyst. His writing here is the intersecting part of a Venn diagram, his interests overlapping with Less Wrong.
His allusions to his missionary work are provoking an immune response from many here, including me (not that I write much). I think this is why (from a quote thread):
What frightens us most in a madman is his sane conversation. --Anatole France
I am especially interested in this question.
This is an excellent plan. Excellent writing, organization, thought. This is a rally-point for implementation.
It makes me uneasy when I see competent missionaries. I don't know if I have the energy to compete against them.
I liked your choice of the complicated freeway image.
Yeah, this.
I think that when you choose the part to quote for the trailer, you should make sure to leave the viewer wanting more. The viewer should be thinking "what's next?" and then go looking for it.
..."Bag of element 79," Harry said, and withdrew his hand, empty, from the mokeskin pouch.
Most people would have at least waited to get their wands first.
"Bag of okane," said Harry. The heavy bag of gold popped up into his hand.
Harry withdrew the bag, then plunged it again into the mokeskin pouch. He took out his hand, put it bac
Here is a really good encapsulated chunk near the beginning of chapter 6:
It has the setup for Harry's background, the basis for what makes this version of Harry different (science), a dramatic challenge, and finally promises of epicness and wry humor.
...The Muggle world had a population of six billion and counting. If you were one in a million, there were twelve of you in New York and a thousand more in China. It was inevitable that the Muggle world would produce some eleven-year-olds who could do calculus - Harry knew he wasn't the only one. He'd met other
From the very end of Chapter 4:
..."That's the spirit! And does a 'mokeskin pouch' do what I think it does?"
"It can't do as much as a trunk," McGonagall said reluctantly, "but a mokeskin pouch with a Retrieval Charm and Undetectable Extension Charm can hold a number of items until they are called forth by the one who emplaced them."
"Yes, I definitely need one of those too. It's like the super beltpack of ultimate awesomeness! Batman's utility belt of holding! Never mind a swiss army knife, you could just carry a whole tool
The bit in Chapter 4 about taking advantage of the wizarding world's financial system was pretty fun too.
My favorite bits are when we learn about the physics of magic. Hints of how their universe must actually work
Absolutely.
Only minor drama of course, but it definitely was not a cohesive group. Sometimes I heard the terms "blue badges" or "green badges" used pejoratively to refer to the different groups generically.
I like seeing these numbers. Transparency + people organizing the information is great. Seeing this presented here (on Less Wrong) where I am likely to see it makes me more likely to donate. Thanks!
I assume you're using software to collect references as you research / write? And then you have the software disgorge your collection of references at the end? What software are you using?