All of unparadoxed's Comments + Replies

I do not know what are your definitions of "intelligent" and "stupid", but I have found the following quote to be insightful and generally true so far :

The difference between stupid and intelligent people - and this is true whether or not they are well-educated - is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. - Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

If we take this to be our definitions, then the question is whether a person that cannot handle subtlety (sees things in black and white) be able to do so.

I feel that this is mostly dependent on the plasticity of min... (read more)

I think that there is a good idea here. My first thought is that debt requires an authority to enforce on collection of debts. For communities where accounts can be pseudonymous, there is little at stake and therefore little that can be staked. 

Another thought is to make a comparison with free markets. Is it a duty or privilege to buy or sell something? I think this is highly context dependent.

Out of curiosity, is the motivation of this post to try to collate/figure out the truth/rationality of what actually happened? Or rather just a convenient place that is less susceptible to (alleged) censorship compared to other sites?

Thanks for your reply! What is "Mallet" in this context?

Steganography of the seeming void. 

Suppose I want to send a secret message.

Encrypted messages arouse suspicion because they look like noise, and sending noise is suspicious.

Steganography allows for sending messages hidden inside other messages. So now I am not sending noise, but an innocuous message. Which could still arouse suspicion, but less so.

So sending encrypted messages is suspicious not just because it is noise, but noise in the contrast of the previous lack of noise (the void).

So one way would be to establish a continuous channel of backgroun... (read more)

I really like your posts about Simulacra levels, and I feel that they are a great lens to view human behavior through. I jotted down my interpretation of them here a while back, happy to hear any thoughts/feedback if you have any.

I meant to convey (reassure?) that others acting as if you do not exist is more likely due to their lack of imagination that it is likely due to your lack of presence. 

In that sense, I was intending to say that your suffering is not your fault. 

However, I also admit the implication that "because it is not your fault, you should not be suffering, therefore the suffering is your fault", which was not my intention, as I recognize that we cannot control what makes us suffer. 

Why let the lack of imagination of others impinge upon your happiness?

Does this mean that Sazen(s?) can be used as Shibboleths? 

"I know that they are a bad influence on me, but I still want to be with them."

Is there a difference of this from "The horror of what must, yet cannot, be false"?

I owe the past my forgiveness, and the future my learning.

I wanted to substantiate and boost this comment with some data from the Princeton's admissions office article on its aid program :

• Admission is need-blind for all applicants, including international students.
• Princeton financial aid is awarded solely based on need; there are no merit scholarships. (If you are good enough to get in, they will ensure that you will be able to afford it)
• The full need of every admitted student is met through grants.

The link also has a breakdown of how much aid is provided depending on the student's gross family income. 

In te... (read more)

Anonymity reduces iterative prisoner's dilemma (staked on reputation) to one-shot versions.

The externalities are offloaded onto the platform providing said anonymity.

If I am randomly put into a 2d grid of rooms, assuming that "random" means that I have an equal probability of ending up in any room, then shouldn't I be equally likely to end up in the border rooms as in the middle rooms?

Good point! If one wants to privately discuss a taboo truth, should one equally emphasize both the "taboo" as well as the "truth" of the matter? On first thought, ethically I would say yes.

Yes, "taking the risk" was what I had more in mind, but essentially so.

Thinking about it, it seems that if a person desires to point out a taboo truth without being exposed to the potential social/political repercussions, a safer way to do so would be to privately point out the taboo truth to another person who is unaware of said social/political repercussions, and encourage them to point it out instead.

Well-put! Your comment was valuable because I tend to think / read about problems in a particular field that were able to be solved in a unique / unorthodox fashion due to skills acquired in another field (discovering new solutions), but your point about discovering new problems that only can be realized by having expertise in multiple fields is something to think about as well.

I can follow the idea that "combining six skills at random makes you so specialized that literally nobody in the world is competing with you", and that this would translate to "something extraordinary" (for some definition of extraordinary). However, I don't think that it necessarily follows that "You can make a lot of money" just by doing this.

It seems to me that by hyper-specializing, you are moving your skill-set to an area where the effective supply of the combination of such skills is low. However, from an economic perspective, if we want to "make a l... (read more)

I see. I feel that the value of a cryptocurrency tends to be within/relative to the contexts of other cryptocurrencies (e.g. ETH is BTC but with smart contracts!), and definitely within the space of cryptocurrency in general we can see particular cryptocurrencies offering undeniable value such as DeFi tokens or interoperability projects.

However, what would really be useful is the valuation of a cryptocurrency relative to fields outside of it. I do know that there are many projects that try to bridge that, but unfortunately the cryptocurrency space tends to be in its own bubble and usually seems to produce goods of debatable or unrealized value (e.g. IoT / Supply-Chain tracking / provenance-tracking a-la NFTs).

I think that it would be hard to come up with a universal value for anything, given the variance in circumstances we are all subject to. The question "Is it worth it?" is a personal one to each individual, and in fact can be deeply personal and private in some circumstances, depending on the worth/value of the object being evaluated. Thus, the question of modelling value would lead down the path of modelling people and their preferences/desires.

With regards to the value of cryptocurrency, I view the primarily value of it to me as a hedge. I trade centraliz... (read more)

Just discovered and read about Conflict vs Mistake Theory, in my own mind my summary would be : Mistake Theory is about the "mind", Conflict Theory is about the "heart". 

I was also tickled by the meta-level problem.

I know very little of and have no stake/opinion in the conflict - I'm just curious about what kind of complexities you encountered on-the-ground that you did not anticipate beforehand, which might have led to you revising your ideas and conceptions. Thank you for your time and words.

We can have objects of a given type in a set, and we can have an order defined on those objects in that set.

Some people seem to hold values that positively value increasing the types of object in that set, while negatively valuing an order / large distances between those objects.

Others seem to negative value the increase of object types, favoring a smaller number of types while holding that an ordering between objects in a  set cannot be avoided.

Is being able to copy a system necessary for that system to be deterministic? 

Maybe unrelated, but I am thinking of infinite series as an example. Imagine a "system" that comprises of the sum of inverse powers of 2. This "system" has infinite terms, and is "deterministic" in that the value of of each term of the series is well-defined and that the infinite sum is equal to 1. It would be impossible to "copy" this system as it involves enumerating an infinite number of terms, but the behavior of this system could be argued to be "deterministic".

I can see scenarios where both participants in a trade would benefit from interacting via Cheerful Prices. I'm trying to think if it's a concept that still works even if one party does not fully buy into it. If I don't feel comfortable thinking about a Cheerful Price to give you, would I be spending some social / friendship capital that I have with you?

Hmm, maybe it would be easier if we focused on one kind/example of craziness. Is there a particular one you have in mind?

Yes, Markets are Efficient, but only when they conform to my biases. If not, they are clearly fraudulent and incorrectly valued.

Yeah, that makes sense. The way I came to think of it is that person A commits a crime, then faints and is unconscious after that. Afterwards, a separate nefarious cloner then clones person A in a black box, so one person A goes in, two persons A come out from the cloning black box.  Person(s!) A awake, and having a strong conscience of their crime, turn themselves in. Since they have exactly the same memories and conscience, they are indistinguishable from the point of view of being the person who committed the crime, both internally and externally.

T... (read more)

It seems to me that you are thinking about some "stronger" form of cloning. The framework that I was thinking in was that the "clone" was a similar-but-distinct entity, something like a Twin materialized out of thin air instantaneously. But it seems that you are thinking of a stronger form where we should treat the two entities as exactly the same.

I have difficulties conceptualizing this since in my mind a clone still occupies a distinct time, space and consciousness as the original, and so is treated distinctly in my eyes. (In terms of being judged for the morality of actions that the original committed).

I will try to think of a situation / framework where this "stronger" form of cloning makes sense to me.

If you have some feedback loop based on those metrics, then the wiser amongst them might (will?) eventually figure that 1) you were not honest with your metrics and 2) they are being evaluated against some metric that is not defined to them. Now we are in Simulacrum Level 3, which in a way is the same level that would be reached with Goodhart's Law.

I want to join/create a society of people who do not judge others at all, but how will they decide who to let in?

On first thought, it does not seem to me that (im)morality is something that is commonly ascribed to atoms. Just as bits do not actually have a color, so it seems to me that atoms do not have morality. But I'm not a moral philosopher, so that's just my feeling.

On second thought, consider a thought experiment where we judge the clone. Was the clone a direct / proximate cause of the immorality? It would seem not, as the original was. Did the clone have the intention to cause the immorality? It would seem not, the original did. So I don't think I would hold t... (read more)

More thoughts on Simulacrum.

Assume that the setting is such that Agents can make statements about Reality.

Level 0 : Reality

Level 1 : Agents are concerned about Reality and making statements about Reality that are True / Honest. Agents in Level 1 seek to understand and exploit Level 0 - Reality. All Agents in level 1 trust each other. As Level-0 Reality asserts its constraints and agents face scarcity, some thus shift to... 

Level 2 : Agents are concerned about perceptions (theirs and others) of Reality, and making statements about Reality that induce p... (read more)

Hashing out my incomplete understanding of Simulacra.  :

Level 0 - Reality, let's call this R.

Level 1 - Agents map/point out reality to each other. For simplicity let's say there are two agents, A1 and A2. A1->R , A2->R. A1 and A2 can attempt to come to consensus on reality. Value is assigned to Truth, Power is over Reality.

Level 2 - Recursion. Agents can point out agents pointing out reality to each other, thereby potentially distorting reality. Agents realize they can "point pointing", and influence each other thus. Let R' be a incorrect realit... (read more)

To learn, we must be exposed to sources of knowledge. Sources of knowledge can take the form of the environment, ourselves or other people. 

We rely on other people as sources of knowledge and learning because the people are amazing at learning and can synthesize what they have learnt into forms that make it easier for others to learn the same thing. 

However, it is important to know what we don't know. Given a source of knowledge, think about the set/space of knowledge that would be impossible / unlikely to learn from that source, even though said... (read more)

I'm going to ruminate on one aspect that you mentioned in your post - praying.

The rational person would claim that praying has no measurable effect on outcomes when controlled for the placebo effect, and so there is no causality there. So why bother?

The spiritual person would reply that one cannot know for sure that that isn't the case, and in any case praying (hopefully) takes up a relatively small amount of resources anyway, so why not? (a-la Pascal's wager)

I feel that it is reasonable for a person to attempt to reach out to any possible means of trying ... (read more)

Shortform on "Hedonic Collapse"

Assumptions :

1. One is subject to hedonic adaptation.
2. In the absence of external hedonic input, "entropy" renders one's hedonic stablepoint to be negative.

Desires :

1. It is desired that one's response to events are temporally invariant. (All else being equal, my reaction to an event should not depend on whether I experience it today or tomorrow)
2. It is desired to be able to forecast the (probability and impact of the) occurrence of future events as well as possible.

Given the above desires and assumptions, an all-knowing, time-in... (read more)

Also consider whether you have to right to be forgotten - Depending on the medium through which you spend a weirdness point, what might seem like a fair if not uncommon point of pride and character could in the future come back to bite you. 

Your description of "cowering lonely behind a cardboard cutout of the most forgettable person while proffering optimized propaganda through carefully selected slots" seems like behavior that would be characteristic of somebody whose every word and action is captured and potentially retrievable for an indefinite amount of time.