All of Scottbert's Comments + Replies

What's wrong with it? Too vulgar? Too vague?

Struck me as an example of failing to update after testing beliefs -- the criminal martial artist believed he was so strong, but he still was defeated -- and yet now he assumes he is unbeatable.

Or perhaps a sort of villainous mirror of heroic responsibility -- All the excuses in the world don't matter if you failed to actually get away with your villainous plan.

(In a supervillain prison, new inmate Sonic (not that one) has just announced he'll kill the others for fun.)

Martial artist inmate: "You seem pretty !@#$ing confident. If you wanna rise up in rank in this prison full of monsters, you'll have to beat me first."

Martial artist inmate: "Let me tell you this in advance. I'm a kenpo practitioner. I'm probably the first and last guy to ever rob a bank unarmed."

Sonic: "Doesn't mean $#!@ if you got caught though."

--One-Punch man Vol 4 extra

How did Harry move the wires through the air with partial transfiguration alone? He doesn't have bugs to carry it like Skitter does. How does he prevent air currents from messing it up?

I imagined what rational me would do a couple of hours ago, and he'd have gotten a head start on next week's workload until he was tired and then started tomorrow off on much better footing (I'm not talking about being a workaholic -- I'm lazy and have kind of fallen behind -- I could stand to work a bit more)

Instead, I read about why the great filter probably doesn't lie between the evolution of a nervous system and dolphin-level intelligence, learned about 'biological dark matter', dismissed it as viruses, undismissed it, learned that it was probably jus... (read more)

How late will the meetup run until?

Coffee doesn't seem to really help me aside from keeping me from falling asleep for a short time (~40-60 minutes maybe). I used it most heavily (2-4 small or medium cups a week) when I was suffering from undiagnosed sleep apnea, but even now I occasionally have some when I feel I must be extra sure not to get sleepy, and it doesn't really seem to help me focus and wears off quickly. Does coffee not work on certain people or is there some factor I'm not aware of?

Gaming the system is, at least, in the spirit of munchkinry!

Does the Boston group ever meet on a day other than Sunday?

Faith is holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.

-- C.S. Lewis

Sleep apnea seems like something regular doctors should be able to figure out, and I know gout has at least been known for a long time. Are these meant to be examples of what the reports look like more than examples of how Metamed can find obscure treatments? $5000 seems a bit much for someone to be told 'get checked for sleep apnea and lose weight'.

I asked a religious relative something along these lines.

Her response was that God would never ask people to do bad things, and if it seemed that He was that would just be someone else deceiving her.

I explained the atheist view on this sort of thing and then the conversation shifted directions before I thought to point out the example of God asking someone to sacrifice their child in the bible.

Girl 1: Because distance is infinitely divisible, if you assign number pairs to each letter of the alphabet, you can specify any string of letters just by pointing to a very specific place on this centimeter and getting its decimal output. In fact, that sentence I just said is at a particular point on the centimeter, as was this one, and whatever you or I say in the future. The centimeter has read every book there will ever be and knows every scientific fact that can be. It knows the future of our friendship. It knows how we'll die. It knows how the unive

I suppose I would say that reality would look as if things happened with no observable pattern related to the things that happen before them, but looking at things requires a long causal chain between photons being emitted and signals in my brain. Supposing I happened to somehow flash into existence for an instant in a noncausal world, or that causality suddenly failed, I would not expect to be able to experience anything past that point since my experiences depend on so many causal processes.

Well, my first thought was that it doesn't rule epiphenomenal consciousness out. It's strange that people would still talk about consciousness without it, but you can posit that people are just programmed to talk about consciousness for some reason (it's at least conceivable).

Then I looked at the next guy's answer (asparisi) and thought he had a point: Does our theory of causal links allow for causes to have probabilistic effects? (It's different to say that 'human brains sometimes cause consciousness than to say 'human brains can cause ANYTHING, like a bl... (read more)

Okay, hypothetical mystic dude.

You said: "IF you draw a card... [then] he can tell you the name of your card". Sounds causal to me! Otherwise he could tell me the name of my card whether I draw it or not!

Also, you commune with the universe TO realize that your partner loves you. If you don't believe the results of your divination are caused by your partner's love why are you doing it?

In short, you may believe you believe that these are 'non-causal processes', but on the level that determines your behavior, you believe they are causal processes. I... (read more)

I think the idea is that the hypothetical teacher is making students memorize passwords instead of teaching the meaning of the concept.

I share this interpretation, but I always figured in Eliezer's examples the hypothetical professor was so obsessed with passwords or sounding knowledgeable that they didn't bother to teach the meaning of 'post-utopian', and might even have forgotten it. Or they were teaching to the test, but if this is a college class there is no standard test, so they're following some kind of doubly-lost purpose.

Or it could be that the professor is passing down passwords they were taught as a student themselves. A word must have had some meaning when it was created, but ... (read more)

This was during sleep paralysis, not during dreaming. Perhaps the prior-evaluating inhibition is absent during sleep-paralysis but not dreaming?

They are obviously related states, but from personal experience I have had a much easier time realizing what's going on when sleep-paralyzed (including recognizing that the voices and people I hear in the room with me almost certainly aren't actually there because they weren't every other time this happened)

reinventing the wheel is exactly what allows us to travel 80mph without even feeling it. the original wheel fell apart at about 5mph after 100 yards. now they're rubber, self-healing, last 4000 times longer. whoever intended the phrase "you're reinventing the wheel" to be an insult was an idiot.

--rickest on IRC

Did a post ever get made of this?

It is a really cool story, but I too disbelieve it although I'll admit it's possible -- it needs more details. Any LARP I've been to, I'd think the padded-stick swords and calls of "2 [damage]" and the 'monsters' consisting of people in masks would be a giveaway that something's up, even if there was a big stigma against breaking character and the RPers all thought the wedding guests were in on it.

Also if I didn't know about LARPs and somehow became convinced I was in a magical land I'd want to see some magic, and... (read more)

Ditto for me -- The difference between the two chords is crystal clear, but in the cadence I can barely hear it.

I'm not a professional, but I sang in school chorus for 6 years, was one of the more skilled singers there, I've studied a little musical theory, and I apparently have a lot of natural talent. And the first time I heard the version played in cadence I didn't notice the difference at all. Freaky. I know how that post-doc felt when she couldn't hear the difference in the chords.

Did anything come of this? I for one would love to play an RPG with a group of rationalists and make cool new friends in the LW community, although I've never been able to keep interest in play-by-post games -- I prefer real-time chat using a MU* or Maptools.

D'oh, you're right, so the "coherent" extrapolated volition is a concept applied to all of humanity, not just one person (that would just be an extrapolated volition?). That's what I get for reading the CEV post days ago and then reading this one after forgetting part of it.

So, morality as Eliezer is trying to explain it, is to do your best to understand and work for the CEV?

The one missing piece here seems to be how each individual human's morality blob corresponds to any other's morality blob. I suppose we could argue that the CEV of all humans would be the same (certainly my own CEV would want happiness etc for people I will never meet or have knowledge of), but you didn't actually say that and if you meant it you should say it. Is this covered in an interpersonal morality post elsewhere?

I spent much time searching for the morality outside myself once I lost faith, although I assumed it would hold true to most of my assumpt... (read more)

So it's a year-old comment that finally gets me to say something here.

This is how I felt too -- I was raised Christian -- specifically Quaker, a branch of Christianity with a nonviolent bent and the belief that God could speak to anyone at anytime, not just to prophets.

Eventually I somehow formed the impression that God, if He were as kind and all-loving as I was told, would surely judge nonbelievers and believers in other faiths based on their actions. I don't know how heretical this would be -- it may have helped that our Quaker meeting was and is a rath... (read more)