The level of PR you aim for puts an upper limit to how much "radical" honesty you can have.
If you aim for perfect PR, you can have 0 honesty.
If you aim for perfect honesty, you can have no PR. lesswrong doesn't go that far, by a long shot - even without a PR team present.
Most organization do not aim for honesty at all.
The question is where do we draw the line.
Which brings us to "Disliking racism isn't some weird idiosyncratic thing that only Gerard has."
From what I understand, Gerard left because he doesn't like discussions ab...
"It's sad that our Earth couldn't be one of the more dignified planets that makes a real effort, correctly pinpointing the actual real difficult problems and then allocating thousands of the sort of brilliant kids that our Earth steers into wasting their lives on theoretical physics. But better MIRI's effort than nothing."
To be fair, a lot of philosophers and ethicist have been trying to discover what does "good" mean and how humans should go about aligning with it.
Furthermore, a lot of effort has gone into trying to align goals and incentives ...
For any statement one can make, there will be people "alienated" (=offended?) by it.
David Gerard was alienated by a race/IQ discussion and you think that should've been avoided.
But someone was surely equally alienated by discussions of religion, evolution, economics, education and our ability to usefully define words.
Do we value David Gerard so far above any given creationist, that we should hire a PR department to cater to him and people like him specifically?
There is an ongoing effort to avoid overtly political t...
"Dear God" by XTC is my favourite atheist hymn. On the other hand, "Transcendence" with Johnny Depp made me feel empathy for christians watching bible flicks - I so wanted to like the damn thing.
As to OPs main point, "politics is the art killer" has recently entered the discourse of almost every fandom (if the franchise is still ongoing). Congratulations on pointing out yet another problem years before it became so exacerbated, that people can no longer ignore it.
I've heard Peterson accuse feminists of disregarding what is true in the name of ideology on many occasions.
Sam Harris initially spent an hour arguing against Peterson's redefinition of "truth" to include a "moral dimension". They've clashed about it since, with no effect. Afaik, "the bible is true because it is useful" is central component of Peterson's worldview.
To be fair, I believe Peterson has managed to honestly delude himself on this point and is not outright lying about his beliefs.
Nevertheless, when prompted to think of a "General Defense of Fail", attempting to redefine the word "truth" in order to protect one's ideology came to mind very quickly.
Creating an AI that does linguistic analysis of a given dataset better than me is easier than creating an AI that is a better linguist than me because it actually requires additional tasks such as writing academic papers.
If AI is not better than you at task "write an academic paper", it is not at the level, specified in the question.
If a task requires output for both the end result and the analysis used to reach it, both shall be outputted. At least that is how I understand "better at every task".
Thank you for the link.
Right, none of our models are philosophically grounded. But, does that make them all equal? That's what the post sounds like to me:
Well maybe: deny the concept of objective truth, of which there can only be one, and affirm subjectivism and pluralism.
To me, this seems like the ultimate Fallacy of Gray.
Then again, I am not well read at philosophy, so my comments might be isomorphic to "Yay pragmatism! Go objectivity!", while those may or may not be compatible.
The IoT (internet of things) comes to mind. Why not experience WiFi connectivity issues while trying to use the washing machine?
Everything trying to become a subscription service is another example (possibly related to IoT). My favourite is a motorcycle lifesaving airbag vest, which won't activate during a motorcycle crash, if the user misses a monthly payment. The company is called Klim, and in fairness, the user can check whether the airbag is ready for use, before getting on their bike.
Extractable internal data is only needed during troubleshooting. During normal operation, only the task result is needed.
As for the time/process-flow management, I already consider it a separate task - and probably the one that would benefit the most drastically by being automated, at least in my case.
Yes, there probably is an in-universe explanation for why organic pilots are necessary. I think droids were shown to be worse fighters than clones (too slow/stupid ?) in the Prequels.
However, the implied prediction that FTL travel will be discovered before AI pilots superior to humans still seems unlikely.
I don't see how acknowledging that different models work in different contexts necessitates giving up the search for objective truth.
Let's say that in order to reduce complexity, we separate Physics into two fields - Relativistic Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics - whose models currently don't mesh together. I think we can achieve that without appealing to subjectivity, or abandoning the search of an unifying model. Acknowledging the limitations of our current models seems enough.
After the training begins, something like 80% of the recruits drop out during Hell Week. Seals are selected for their motivation, which is not available to everyone headed for a warzone.
On the other hand, if you'd really like an existential treat to get you going, you may consider looking into the problem of goal alignment in AGI, or aging.
The cure for bystander apathy is getting one person to lead by example. Since in this case there are several prominent such examples, a Tragedy of the Commons scenario seems more likely to me.
You are right, it's not possible to tell if this happens implicitly or explicitly (in which case there is nothing to be done anyway).
Edit: I realise the post I comment on might've been written before the Sequence on Changing Your Mind I so proudly point to.
...I was recently talking to Ozy about a group who believe that society billing thin people is fatphobic, and that everyone needs to admit obese people can be just as attractive and date more of them, and that anyone who preferentially dates thinner people is Problematic. They also want people to stop talking about nutrition and exercise publicly. I sympathize with these people, especially having recently read a study showing that obes
Ideally, I agree with the premise as a long term strategy, opposed to the short term tactics used at a campaign. But I am not convinced any of the active actors and policymakers would want the rise of the waterline. Why change the system, which elected you? What politician wants electorate, that would actually hold them accountable? What suicidal newspaper would want the question of gun violence answered?
It is possible the educational system is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, and raising the sanity waterline will have to be achieved on people's ow...
A sane person, calling himself a feminist - not something one sees often represented in the media. Then again this is true of sane people in general - a fact I tend to forget. I wish you luck in defending the movement from the believe-all-women crowd. From the outside, it looks like they've already won.
Leaving feminism aside, there is one area, where liberalism doesn't seem to win - namely income inequality.
And sure, as long as the majority is not squeezed into poverty, this may not be a problem. But since this is the first generation of US citizens to see their average lifespan get shorter, I am not so certain we are headed for liberal utopia after all.
Fallacies leading to inability to take action in accordance with their values is one explanation for people's apathy.
Another is that they simply prefer their own short term comfort more than most other values they would care to espouse. I know this to be the case for at least one person, and I am pretty sure there are more.
I am somehow convinced that a perceived loon like Elon Musk opening 20 positions for AI safety researchers, $10 million yearly salary, will have much better luck recruiting, than an elite university offering $100 000 (or the potential ca...
"and that one reason we’re not smarter may be that it’s too hard to squeeze a bigger brain through the birth canal" - should be pretty much obliterated by modern Caesarian, but do we see burst of intelligence in last decades?
Reliable contraceptives, combined with unprecedented safety, mean that intelligence is not the evolutionary advantage it once was. People unable or unwilling to use condoms are selected for. Idiocracy is upon us.
Another possibility is that modern Caesarian has not been widespread enough, for long enough, for its effect on intelligen...
It is only their culture that's under "siege" and it's a different kind of siege involving no laws or planned attempts to erase their cultural ways...
A redneck has seen gay marriage legalised in his lifetime, while homosexuality is still illegal in 71 countries. Islam seems to get a lot more leniency on this topic, compared to Christianity.
Rural British and American Rednecks aren't certainly seeing their resources appropriated by the powers behind the immigrants.
If I remember my history correctly, the Industrial Revolution didn't go so smoothly for ...
Inflation isn't calculated correctly and the market isn't free.
It's what you'd expect to see in an oligarchy - politicians promising less regulation for new businesses or universal healthcare both won't deliver. Unlike OP, who delivers consistently.
On the inflation point, googling CPI: "The Controversy Originally, the CPI was determined by comparing the price of a fixed basket of goods and services spanning two different periods. In this case, the CPI was a cost of goods index (COGI). However, over time, the U.S. Congress embraced the view that the CPI sho...
I once listened to a fellow, arguing that "truth" should have a moral component in its definition, so that only statements beneficial to humanity could be considered "true". On the other hand, dangerous knowledge of civilization ending viruses was harmful, and could only be considered "technically correct", but never "true". He was carving reality so haphazardly, as to only be able to call "true" The Bible and "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoevsky. Although, how he imagines to have achieved this before humanity has ended, escapes me.
I haven't listened to hi...
Great post!
However, I have the following problem with the scenario - I have hard time trusting a doctor, who prescribes a diet pill and consultation with a surgeon, but omits healthy diet and exercise. (Genetic predisposition does not trump the laws of thermodynamics!)
In general, I don't know of any existing medicine that can effectively replace willpower when treating addiction - which is why treatment is so difficult in the first place.
Psychology tells us that, on the individual level, encouragement works better than blame. Although both have far less impact than one would hope.
For every mental strength we confidently point to, there will be an excellent physical strength we could also point to as a proximate cause, and vice versa.
I agree with you. I just find the particulars oddly inspiring - even if we are not the fastest land hunters, we are genetically the most persistent. This is a lesson from biology that bears thinking about.
Also, we could point to our physical strengths, but people usually don't. We collectively have this body image of ourselves as being "squishy", big brains compensating for weak, frail bodies. I like disabusing that notion.
I see your point. But if water didn’t always boil at the same temperature, why would we bother inventing thermometers?
We have more need to measure the unpredictable than the predictable.
If there was nothing with constant temperature, thermometers would work very differently. My first instinct was to say they wouldn't work at all. But then I remembered the entire field of economics, so your point stands.
Not every one sees things that way. The more hardline claims require the physical map to exclude others.
Good luck with that. I couldn't calculat
...Thank you for this discussion.
I was wrong about grammar and the views of Chalmers, which is worse. Since I couldn't be bothered to read him myself, I shouldn't have parroted the interpretations of someone else.
I now have better understanding of your position, which is, in fact, falsifiable.
We do agree on the importance of the question of consciousness. And even if we expect the solution to have different shape, we both expect it to be embedded in physics (old or new).
I hope I've somewhat clarified my own views. But if not, I don't expect to do better in future comments, so I will bow out.
Again, thank you for the discussion.
But note that Linux is a noun and "conscious" is an adjective—another type error—so your analogy doesn't communicate clearly.
Linux is also an adjective - linux game/shell/word processor.
Still, let me rephrase then - I don't need a wet cpu to simulate water. Why would I need a conscious cpu to simulate consciousness?
AFAIK, you are correct that we have no falsifiable predictions as of yet.
Do you expect this to change? Chalmers doesn't. In fact, expecting to have falsifiable predictions is itself a falsifiable prediction. So you should drop the "yet".
...How do you know that water always boils at the same temperature?
I remember reading it somewhere...
I see your point. But if water didn't always boil at the same temperature, why would we bother inventing thermometers?
The moral of the story is not so much that science always works, it's that it works in a way that's more coherentist than foundationalist.
Right. And since science does work, coherentism gets a big boost in probability, right until the sun stop rising every day.
...And the downside of coherentism is that you can have more than one equally c
Edit: Now I see Sister_Y addressed my point in the very next paragraph, so this entire comment is a reading comprehension fail more than anything.
Necroing:
poke - my friend likes to explain this to his undergrads by asking them how they would verify that a thermometer is accurate (check it against another thermometer, but how do you know that one is accurate . . . etc.) until they figure out that thermometers are only "accurate" according to custom or consensus. Then he asks them how they know their eyes work. And their memories.
Some of them cry.
Go t
...A good "atheistic hymn" is simply a song about anything worth singing about that doesn't happen to be religious.
No, that's a good non-religious song. Without religion there would be no atheism, only the much broader scepticism. Atheism is a response to religion - to be considered "atheistic", a song could not avoid the topic. (Alternatively, we'd have to consider "Fear of the dark" a great aspiderman song).
The best atheistic song I've heard is "Dear God" by XTC - the last prayer of many a new at...
Because I believe things are what they are. Therefore if I introspect and see choice, then it really truly is choice. The other article might explain it, but an explanation can not change what a thing is, it can only say why it is.
An example of mind projection fallacy so pure, even I could recognise it. Ian believes "he believes things are what they are". If Ian actually believed things are what they are, he would possess unobtainable level of rationality and we would do well to use him as an oracle. In reality, Ian believes things are what they seem to be (to him), which is understandable, but far less impressive.
I think of consciousness as a process (software) run on our brains (wetware), with the theoretical potential to be run on other hardware. I thought you understood my position. Asking me to pinpoint the hardware component which would contain suffering, tells me you don't.
To me, saying the cpu (or the gpu) is conscious sounds like saying the cpu is linux - this is a type error. A pc can be running linux. A pc cannot actually be linux, even if "running" is often omitted.
But if one doesn't know "running" is omitted, one could ask where does the linux-ness come
...
"The mystery is why the community doesn't implement obvious solutions. Hiring PR people is an obvious solution. There's a posting somewhere in which Anna Salamon argues that there is some sort of moral hazard involved in professional PR, but never explains why, and everyone agrees with her anyway."
""You", plural, the collective, can speak as freely as you like ...in private."
Suppose a large part of the community wants to speak as freely as it likes in public, and the mystery is solved.
We even managed to touch upon the moral hazard involved in professional PR - insofar as it is a filter between what you believe and what you say publicly.