Meetup : Two-monthly London Meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : Two-monthly London Meetup
After two months of having the smaller fortnightly meetups, the time has come to have another two-monthly London meetup! It will be on Sunday July 3 at 14:00, at the usual location: Shakespeares Head on Kingsway near Holborn Tube station. (Note that there’s more than one pub in London with that name, so make sure you get the right one.) As always, we’ll have a big picture of a paperclip on the table so you can find us. Hope to see lots of you there!
Ok, notes on what we discussed at this meetup (finally):
What is the General Anti-zombie principle?
Can we create a GLUT
disagreement over what is a LUT in this situation → at first think it’s a state-machine, then realise that the look-up can involve the full brain-state including memories that leads a brain to respond in the given way.
IQ genetic link
are twin studies reliable science: Yes.
if there IS a genetic basis for education, then what does this mean? Should there be different education?
Are there beneficial genes for IQ?
eg bigger short-term memory
faster lookup/response time
better-connected visual cortex?
Discussion of LW sequences
read just the posts or posts+comments? (latter is much slower but you also sample the conversations around the posts and get more insight)
read as sequences or sequentially? (sometimes hard to actually read as sequences—forever opening a post to find five pre-reqs… which have pre-reqs… which have pre-reqs).
Quantum mechanics...
has many-worlds been proven?
Not yet, but that’s ok… it doesn’t currently affect physics work.
Web technologies → Ruby-on-rails, PHP
Google+ → any benefits?
can social networking become a Standard instead of being owned by various sites (twitter/facebook etc) - facebook is crushingly evil → answer: don’t think so, social networking is not as tractable to becoming just a protocol (in the way email is).
Anyone read Kurzweil? Seems a bit like Warwick—ie a bit of a crank.
victims of a happy death spiral...
are LW meetups prone to cultishness?
we are inoculated against it, so have a stronger chance of resisting.
we have lots of contrarians (no we don’t!) :)
Chalmers gave a talk at the singularity summit that was good
anybody here go to the singularity summit?
no
humanity+ was local—and disappointing
Talking about the singularity
most people don’t take it seriously. Most people too busy with their own lives
still fits the cached thought of “sounds weird”
better to explain it using increasing intelligence → people also take AI more seriously
Dennet (what did he do?)
philosophy of consciousness → clear thinking
brought several useful thought experiments to the field
explained “narrative consciousness” rather than “the cartesian theatre” → ie that experiences are de-centralised over the brain instead of requiring the bits to be brought together in a single place
wrote “Darwin’s dangerous idea”
Chalmers → pro-zombie
What do you say to somebody that says “I don’t believe in Occam’s Razor”?
slap “yes you do!”
you wouldn’t be able to get out of bed without Occam’s Razor. You’re already discounting lots of really stupid ideas about your life without even thinking about it
just a heuristic… but a good one.
But: slap is a good start… or just don’t bother. Same for people who believe in homeopathy.
Even nobel laureates think that’s true
yes, some nobel laureates are crazy
caught up in their own hype
why does this happen to some and not others?
in some fields it’s common to have a nobel, so not as big a status-bump?
they might have been prone to it anyway and just dealing with it badly
Worries about turning up to an LW meetup (their first)
“I’m so stupid” reaction
“should I talk? I’ll just show how stupid I am”
Discussion of mini-camp
goal-setting → the difference between terminal and instrumental goals
Again: is LW going to become a cult?
what is the problem with becoming a cult?
answer: everyone signalling that they’re doing well and not actually doing self-improvement.
LW-California—seem to do a hell of a lot
support each other
work hard
LW London had more visitors but doesn’t do as much
what does LW Cal do that we don’t?
eg commitment mechanism
everyone pays $200 into paypal acct unless they did their goal
they have email checks on commitments made
just a bunch of supportive friends all interested in doing it
Deep discussion of how we know Many Worlds is true
Did organised religion drive civilisation (eg agriculture)
weaponised religion
is it just a ruleset that helps kickstart a civilisation?
after this, the politicking takes over
leading to a heirarchical system (eg Judeo-christianic religion_Messiah/Pope or Rome with the emperors
Cryonics and why we’re not signed up
Becomes: why I’m still not signed up
discussion about whether it’s better to spend the money on yourself or on other people. When there ’s a low probability of it helping you and potentially high benefit to the others (eg if I die and leave behind young children, their inheritance is being spent on only a potential of me living instead of my children being fed and clothed and housed.).
discussion tries to veer into “but would you jump off a cliff for any amount of money for your kids” or comparison of genetic-likeness-to-kids with probability of you living… but both cast away as answering the wrong question. If my kids aren’t even related to me genetically I’ll still love them enough to want them to be looked after when I’m gone. and jumping off a cliff vs putting money into a potentially-nonviable eternal-life solution is just a trolley problem in a different guise.
there’s still an unanswered question there.
hmmm.. “bimonthly” is ambiguous—can mean both “every two months” and “twice a month”. What can we use as an alternative?
“Two-monthly” for the former, “twice-monthly” for the latter. (English instead of Latin!)
Fixed.. I think.