At this point I must conclude either that you have no grasp whatsoever of the math involved here or that you’re completely insane. Assuming your claim is correct (which I sincerely doubt), you just killed ~6,790 people (on average) because someone deleted a blog post. If you believe that this is a commensurate and appropriate response, I’m not sure what to say to you.
Honestly, if you believe that attempting to increase the chance that mankind is destroyed is a good response to anything and are willing to brag about it in public, I think something is very clearly wrong.
Do you really think you’re completely out of options and you need to start acting in a way that increases existential risk with the purpose of reducing it, by attempting to blackmail a person who will verylikely not respond to blackmail?
Specifically, the argument against excessive punishment is this:
When dealing with humans, promising excessive punishment will not automatically move you to the “people do what you want” equilibrium. You need to prove you’re serious. People will make mistakes. You will make mistakes.
This all requires punishing people.
This doesn’t require murdering 6,790 people.
It seems like the sanest response would be to find some way of preventing waitingforgodel from viewing this site.
It seems like the sanest response would be to find some way of preventing waitingforgodel from viewing this site.
No, because then you have to think of what a troll would do, i.e. whatever would upset people for great lulz. The correct answer is to ignore future silly persons, and hence the present silly person.
(Note that this does not require waitingforgodel to be trolling—I see no reason not to assume complete sincerity. This is about the example set by the reaction/response.)
At the risk of sounding silly, I have a really minor question.
The 6790 people figure comes from multiplying the world’s population by .0001, right?
I feel like causing an existential catastrophe to occur is worse than that, not only does everyone alive die, but every human who could have lived in this part of the universe in the future is kept out of existence. Thus, intentionally trying to cause existential risk is much more serious.
Is there some particular reason that everyone is only multiplying by the world’s population that I’m missing?
No, you’re right — talking about currently-living people is more just the very conservative lower bound, since we don’t have a good way of calculating how many people could exist in the future if existential risks are averted.
If existential risks are averted, you shouldn’t count people, you should count goodness (that won’t necessarily take the form of people or be commensurately influenced by different people). So the number of people (ems) we can fill the future with is also a conservative lower bound for that goodness, which knowably underestimates it.
Yes, I wanted to make the most conservative estimation possible. The actual figure is probably far far higher, but since even the most conservative estimation involves killing thousands of people, it’s bad enough as it is!
At this point I must conclude either that you have no grasp whatsoever
of the math involved here or that you’re completely insane.
The good news is, this mentioned insanity that some LW posters have sunk to makes me think of this very entertaining Cthulhu fan video, which I will now share for the entertainment of all:
At this point I must conclude either that you have no grasp whatsoever of the math involved here or that you’re completely insane. Assuming your claim is correct (which I sincerely doubt), you just killed ~6,790 people (on average) because someone deleted a blog post. If you believe that this is a commensurate and appropriate response, I’m not sure what to say to you.
Honestly, if you believe that attempting to increase the chance that mankind is destroyed is a good response to anything and are willing to brag about it in public, I think something is very clearly wrong.
Maybe they are of the belief that censorship on LessWrong is severely detrimental to the singularity. Then such a response might be justified.
In that case they should present their evidence and/or a strong argument for this, not attempt to blackmail moderators.
I actually explicitly said what oscar said in the discussion of the precommitment.
I also posted my reasoning for it.
Those are both from the “precommitted” link in my article.
Not quite sure how to respond..
Do you really think you’re completely out of options and you need to start acting in a way that increases existential risk with the purpose of reducing it, by attempting to blackmail a person who will very likely not respond to blackmail?
Yes. If I didn’t none of this would make any sense...
Specifically, the argument against excessive punishment is this:
When dealing with humans, promising excessive punishment will not automatically move you to the “people do what you want” equilibrium. You need to prove you’re serious. People will make mistakes. You will make mistakes.
This all requires punishing people.
This doesn’t require murdering 6,790 people.
It seems like the sanest response would be to find some way of preventing waitingforgodel from viewing this site.
No, because then you have to think of what a troll would do, i.e. whatever would upset people for great lulz. The correct answer is to ignore future silly persons, and hence the present silly person.
(Note that this does not require waitingforgodel to be trolling—I see no reason not to assume complete sincerity. This is about the example set by the reaction/response.)
At the risk of sounding silly, I have a really minor question.
The 6790 people figure comes from multiplying the world’s population by .0001, right? I feel like causing an existential catastrophe to occur is worse than that, not only does everyone alive die, but every human who could have lived in this part of the universe in the future is kept out of existence. Thus, intentionally trying to cause existential risk is much more serious.
Is there some particular reason that everyone is only multiplying by the world’s population that I’m missing?
No, you’re right — talking about currently-living people is more just the very conservative lower bound, since we don’t have a good way of calculating how many people could exist in the future if existential risks are averted.
If existential risks are averted, you shouldn’t count people, you should count goodness (that won’t necessarily take the form of people or be commensurately influenced by different people). So the number of people (ems) we can fill the future with is also a conservative lower bound for that goodness, which knowably underestimates it.
Okay, thanks. Just making sure that I wasn’t completely messing up expected utility calculations.
Not that murdering only 6790 people is okay or anything...
Yes, I wanted to make the most conservative estimation possible. The actual figure is probably far far higher, but since even the most conservative estimation involves killing thousands of people, it’s bad enough as it is!
The good news is, this mentioned insanity that some LW posters have sunk to makes me think of this very entertaining Cthulhu fan video, which I will now share for the entertainment of all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxScTbIUvoA