One theory (The Matrix spawned a lot of philosophy talk, and even books) was that, unbeknownst to the machines themselves, they couldn’t simply kill off the humans—for ethical reasons. I mean, there are obviously more efficient ways to generate energy, but the robots couldn’t kill off their creators—so they came up with this elaborate scheme of harvesting energy from their bodies, and never thinking much about how they were actually losing energy in the process.
Maybe the humans were simply WRONG about what the purpose of the matrix is. Maybe the humans that made it out of the matrix were so debilitated and limited and so had crafted an elaborate but flawed mythology around their relationship to the machines and the matrix.
For anyone who thinks THAT is unrealistic, I offer greek, norse, and roman ,mythology, a burning bush talking to a people who have passed the story down in an unbroken oral chain for thousands of years, the trinity (not the woman in the matrix) and MWI.
Perhaps MWI v. Copenhagen (or other choices) is testable and has already been tested and has won, in which case I am at best ignorant and at worst the quantum equivalent of a creationist. In which case your wearing garlic around your neck to try to ward me off is totally sensible.
Or perhaps MWI v Copenhagen is testable but has not been tested yet. In which case we don’t yet know which of us is supporting the geocentric universe and which is on the side of heliocentrism, and won’t know until the tests are done. In which case casting out the non-believers is almost certainly a gigantic step into the sewer for a rationality site.
Or perhaps MWI v Copenhagen isn’t even testable. In which case you might as well just register as a religion so you can get all the tax benefits anyway, since claims to rationality will be totally subverted by requiring uniformity on a “belief” which can, even in principle, never be anything but signalling.
It doesn’t seem to me that there is a possible state in which your rejection of non-MWI is even vaguely related to any kind of rationality.
Either pro-social instincts, a sense of what is appropriate or common courtesy. There just isn’t any call to throw out completely off-topic insults like that.
And no I’m not going to be baited into any Quantum Mechanics debate here. That conversation doesn’t belong on this page and this is undesirable, anti-social and mind-killing behavior completely independently of whether you happen to be correct.
Appending one’s opponents to a list of religious people completely outside of any relevant context just isn’t acceptable behavior.
If I’m understanding you correctly, your argument here is fully generalizable into the assertion that it’s illegitimate to differentially support any proposition that has not been tested, or worse yet is not testable, and that systematically choosing to interact with people who have one belief vs. another on any such untestable question will totally subvert my rationality.
Have I over-interpreted here? Is there some additional implicit constraint to your criticism that I just missed somehow?
Because if I’m understanding you correctly, well… let’s just say I disagree and leave it at that.
Suppose I had casually dismissed a belief that the sun would rise tomorrow because induction was unprovable. Or I had gone after the rule of the excluded middle. THEN it might make sense to wonder if I was making some largish mistake in over interpreting the non-deducibility of some things which we nevertheless treat as true.
But MWI is vastly different from these other unprovable beliefs.
Induction and simple logic have been overwhelmingly useful in making true statements about the future, the essence of man’s power. I can design and build a machine based on inducing that the laws of engineering (or physics if you prefer) I have developed previously will apply to this new configuration, and I will be wrong sometimes but I will be right sometimes and the machine will work, and will move me across 1000s of miles in a few hours or will allow me to discuss rationality with people whose physical locations are scattered widely.
To the best of my knowledge, MWI is not actually “used” for anything that Copenhagen cannot currently also be used for. And the best of my knowledge is pretty good. But further, I have ASKED if I am missing something numerous times. And further, if y’all were championing Copenhagen as though the alternatives (even the not-yet known ones) were dismissable, I’d be making fun of that.
And wedrifid didn’t choose not to interact with me, rather he chose to interact with me by labeling my post as “puerile” and “political.”
Parenthetically he is right that my post had an element of immaturity. I was mainly making a point that had no relationship to MWI and for fun I threw a casual rebuke at MWI in to it. When dealing with a clubby lot who wear MWI the way Mormons wear magic underwear, this is a stupid thing to do. I could have made the point I wanted to make and not had you and wedrifid get your metaphorical panties in a bunch.
But you see, I have certain other beliefs which get in the way of my respecting the sacred cows of a group purporting, among other purposes, a general interest and respect for methods of avoiding error. I believe respect for sacred cows is consistently more productive of error than protective from it. I believe that minority opinions from well informed and thoughtful people are valuable in protecting from error, and may even be invaluable.
And by the way, I don’t think a belief in sacred cows “totally subverts rationality.” Even when it is literally a belief in sacred cows. There’s plenty of wonderful Hindu engineers and physicists out there building great stuff and finding great truths. When they tell me about quarks, the sacred cows are irrelevant. When they tell me how to avoid human error and human biases, the sacred cows come in to play.
So I suppose, ultimately, the questions are: Is MWI more like a sacred cow, more like Mormon magic underwear, or more like induction? How many of the purposes of lesswrong do we thwart if MWI is not accepted as a given? Is “cult of personality” a valid purpose of lesswrong? Is “cult of personality” something to avoid for lesswrong? Do the constant sniping of highly trained and educated, but “puerile” skeptics at our weakest beliefs serve us or thwart us? Does “catastrophizing” the claims of these skeptics in order to promote the dismissal of these skeptics serve or hinder the purpose of being less wrong?
Because if I’m understanding you correctly, well… let’s just say I disagree and leave it at that.
In summary, I don’t believe you were understanding me correctly. I think it is perfectly possible to make a bad choice about MWI (whichever direction that might mean) and still be a net plus by a wide margin to rationality. What do you think?
In summary, I don’t believe you were understanding me correctly.
OK, cool. Thanks for answering my question.
To answer your questions...
Is MWI more like a sacred cow, more like Mormon magic underwear, or more like induction?
Beats me. I don’t see how its especially like any of those things, though I can see how analogies to all of them might be sound, depending on how it’s being used and by whom.
How many of the purposes of lesswrong do we thwart if MWI is not accepted as a given?
Twelve.
Is “cult of personality” a valid purpose of lesswrong?
It’s not one I approve of, no.
Is “cult of personality” something to avoid for lesswrong?
I prefer to avoid it, yes.
Do the constant sniping of highly trained and educated, but “puerile” skeptics at our weakest beliefs serve us or thwart us?
I don’t quite understand this question, and I’m not sure who “us” refers to, but in general competent expressions of skepticism are often valuable to a community, including this one, and sniping rarely is.
Does “catastrophizing” the claims of these skeptics in order to promote the dismissal of these skeptics serve or hinder the purpose of being less wrong?
Probably not, though it no doubt depends on specifics.
I think it is perfectly possible to make a bad choice about MWI (whichever direction that might mean) and still be a net plus by a wide margin to rationality. What do you think?
Your replies here have been excellent and I would love to see similar comments in a thread about QM or physics. In this case, however, you are rewarding “sniping” behavior by giving the sniper a soapbox from which to shout about his context-irrelevant pet issue. That isn’t a desirable result for me.
Yeah, that’s fair. It’s always a bit of a judgment call when to shape behavior vs when to extinguish it, but I suspect that were I not involved in the thread myself I would agree unreservedly that the thread was counterproductive. Point taken; tapping out.
One theory (The Matrix spawned a lot of philosophy talk, and even books) was that, unbeknownst to the machines themselves, they couldn’t simply kill off the humans—for ethical reasons. I mean, there are obviously more efficient ways to generate energy, but the robots couldn’t kill off their creators—so they came up with this elaborate scheme of harvesting energy from their bodies, and never thinking much about how they were actually losing energy in the process.
It is way too easy to fix the plot holes.
Maybe the humans were simply WRONG about what the purpose of the matrix is. Maybe the humans that made it out of the matrix were so debilitated and limited and so had crafted an elaborate but flawed mythology around their relationship to the machines and the matrix.
For anyone who thinks THAT is unrealistic, I offer greek, norse, and roman ,mythology, a burning bush talking to a people who have passed the story down in an unbroken oral chain for thousands of years, the trinity (not the woman in the matrix) and MWI.
Did you really have to go and undermine your point by trying to sneak in your irrelevant controversial (local) political agenda? Puerile.
In a 3^^3 other worlds, I didn’t.
Those 7,625,597,484,987 alternate mwengler’s are potentially valuable contributors.
Perhaps MWI v. Copenhagen (or other choices) is testable and has already been tested and has won, in which case I am at best ignorant and at worst the quantum equivalent of a creationist. In which case your wearing garlic around your neck to try to ward me off is totally sensible.
Or perhaps MWI v Copenhagen is testable but has not been tested yet. In which case we don’t yet know which of us is supporting the geocentric universe and which is on the side of heliocentrism, and won’t know until the tests are done. In which case casting out the non-believers is almost certainly a gigantic step into the sewer for a rationality site.
Or perhaps MWI v Copenhagen isn’t even testable. In which case you might as well just register as a religion so you can get all the tax benefits anyway, since claims to rationality will be totally subverted by requiring uniformity on a “belief” which can, even in principle, never be anything but signalling.
It doesn’t seem to me that there is a possible state in which your rejection of non-MWI is even vaguely related to any kind of rationality.
What am I missing here?
Either pro-social instincts, a sense of what is appropriate or common courtesy. There just isn’t any call to throw out completely off-topic insults like that.
And no I’m not going to be baited into any Quantum Mechanics debate here. That conversation doesn’t belong on this page and this is undesirable, anti-social and mind-killing behavior completely independently of whether you happen to be correct.
Appending one’s opponents to a list of religious people completely outside of any relevant context just isn’t acceptable behavior.
If I’m understanding you correctly, your argument here is fully generalizable into the assertion that it’s illegitimate to differentially support any proposition that has not been tested, or worse yet is not testable, and that systematically choosing to interact with people who have one belief vs. another on any such untestable question will totally subvert my rationality.
Have I over-interpreted here? Is there some additional implicit constraint to your criticism that I just missed somehow?
Because if I’m understanding you correctly, well… let’s just say I disagree and leave it at that.
Suppose I had casually dismissed a belief that the sun would rise tomorrow because induction was unprovable. Or I had gone after the rule of the excluded middle. THEN it might make sense to wonder if I was making some largish mistake in over interpreting the non-deducibility of some things which we nevertheless treat as true.
But MWI is vastly different from these other unprovable beliefs.
Induction and simple logic have been overwhelmingly useful in making true statements about the future, the essence of man’s power. I can design and build a machine based on inducing that the laws of engineering (or physics if you prefer) I have developed previously will apply to this new configuration, and I will be wrong sometimes but I will be right sometimes and the machine will work, and will move me across 1000s of miles in a few hours or will allow me to discuss rationality with people whose physical locations are scattered widely.
To the best of my knowledge, MWI is not actually “used” for anything that Copenhagen cannot currently also be used for. And the best of my knowledge is pretty good. But further, I have ASKED if I am missing something numerous times. And further, if y’all were championing Copenhagen as though the alternatives (even the not-yet known ones) were dismissable, I’d be making fun of that.
And wedrifid didn’t choose not to interact with me, rather he chose to interact with me by labeling my post as “puerile” and “political.”
Parenthetically he is right that my post had an element of immaturity. I was mainly making a point that had no relationship to MWI and for fun I threw a casual rebuke at MWI in to it. When dealing with a clubby lot who wear MWI the way Mormons wear magic underwear, this is a stupid thing to do. I could have made the point I wanted to make and not had you and wedrifid get your metaphorical panties in a bunch.
But you see, I have certain other beliefs which get in the way of my respecting the sacred cows of a group purporting, among other purposes, a general interest and respect for methods of avoiding error. I believe respect for sacred cows is consistently more productive of error than protective from it. I believe that minority opinions from well informed and thoughtful people are valuable in protecting from error, and may even be invaluable.
And by the way, I don’t think a belief in sacred cows “totally subverts rationality.” Even when it is literally a belief in sacred cows. There’s plenty of wonderful Hindu engineers and physicists out there building great stuff and finding great truths. When they tell me about quarks, the sacred cows are irrelevant. When they tell me how to avoid human error and human biases, the sacred cows come in to play.
So I suppose, ultimately, the questions are: Is MWI more like a sacred cow, more like Mormon magic underwear, or more like induction? How many of the purposes of lesswrong do we thwart if MWI is not accepted as a given? Is “cult of personality” a valid purpose of lesswrong? Is “cult of personality” something to avoid for lesswrong? Do the constant sniping of highly trained and educated, but “puerile” skeptics at our weakest beliefs serve us or thwart us? Does “catastrophizing” the claims of these skeptics in order to promote the dismissal of these skeptics serve or hinder the purpose of being less wrong?
In summary, I don’t believe you were understanding me correctly. I think it is perfectly possible to make a bad choice about MWI (whichever direction that might mean) and still be a net plus by a wide margin to rationality. What do you think?
OK, cool. Thanks for answering my question.
To answer your questions...
Beats me. I don’t see how its especially like any of those things, though I can see how analogies to all of them might be sound, depending on how it’s being used and by whom.
Twelve.
It’s not one I approve of, no.
I prefer to avoid it, yes.
I don’t quite understand this question, and I’m not sure who “us” refers to, but in general competent expressions of skepticism are often valuable to a community, including this one, and sniping rarely is.
Probably not, though it no doubt depends on specifics.
Sure, that sounds true.
Your replies here have been excellent and I would love to see similar comments in a thread about QM or physics. In this case, however, you are rewarding “sniping” behavior by giving the sniper a soapbox from which to shout about his context-irrelevant pet issue. That isn’t a desirable result for me.
Yeah, that’s fair. It’s always a bit of a judgment call when to shape behavior vs when to extinguish it, but I suspect that were I not involved in the thread myself I would agree unreservedly that the thread was counterproductive. Point taken; tapping out.