Post away, if I have something to add then I’ll jump in. But warily.
I am not sure if I understand the issue and if it is as serious as some people obviously perceive it to be. Because if I indeed understand it, then it isn’t as dangerous to talk about it in public as it is portrayed to be. But that would mean that there is something wrong with otherwise smart people, which is unlikely? So should I conclude that it is more likely that I simply do not understand it?
What irritates me is that people like Nesov are saying that “we don’t formally understand even the usual game theory, let alone acausal trade”. Yet they care aggressively to censor the topic. I’ve been told before that it is due to people getting nightmares from it. If that is the reason then I do not think censorship is justified at all.
How about the possibility that you do not understand it and that they are not silly? Do you think it could be serious enough to have nightmares about it and to censor it as far as possible, but that you simply don’t get it? How likely is that possibility?
Why would you even ask me that? Clearly I have considered the possibility (given that I am not a three year old) and equally clearly me answering you would not make much sense. :)
But the questioning of trusting people’s nightmares is an interesting one. I tend to be of the mind that if someone has that much of an anxiety problem prompted by a simple abstract thought then it is best to see that they receive the appropriate medication and therapy. After that has been taken care of I may consider their advice.
Why would you even ask me that? Clearly I have considered the possibility...
I wasn’t quite sure. I don’t know how to conclude that they are silly and you are not. I’m not just talking about Nesov but also Yudkowsky. You concluded that they are all wrong about their risk estimations and act silly. Yudkowsky explicitly stated that he does know more. But you conclude that they don’t know more, that they are silly.
I tend to be of the mind that if someone has that much of an anxiety problem prompted by a simple abstract thought then it is best to see that they receive the appropriate medication and therapy after that consider their advice.
Yes, I commented before saying that it is not the right move to truncate your child’s bed so that monsters won’t fit under it but rather explain that it is very unlikely for monsters to hide under the bed.
I wasn’t quite sure. I don’t know how to conclude that they are silly and you are not.
You can’t. Given the information you have available it would be a mistake for you to make such a conclusion. Particularly given that I have not even presented arguments or reasoning on the core of the subject, what, with the censorship and all. :)
Yudkowsky explicitly stated that he does know more.
Indeed. Which means that not taking his word for it constitutes disrespect.
Yes, I commented before saying that it is not the right move to truncate your child’s bed so that monsters won’t fit under it but rather explain that it is very unlikely for monsters to hide under the bed.
Once the child grows up a bit you can go on to explain to them that even though there are monsters out in the world being hysterical doesn’t help either in detecting monsters or fighting them. :)
As I noted, it’s a trolley problem: you have the bad alternative of doing nothing, and then there’s the alternative of doing something that may be better and may be worse. This case observably came out worse, and that should have been trivially predictable by anyone who’d been on the net a few years.
So the thinking involved in the decision, and the ongoing attempts at suppression, admits of investigation.
But yes, it could all be a plot to get as many people as possible thinking really hard about the “forbidden” idea, with this being such an important goal as to be worth throwing LW’s intellectual integrity in front of the trolley for.
What irritates me is that people like Nesov are saying that “we don’t formally understand even the usual game theory, let alone acausal trade”. Yet they care aggressively to censor the topic.
Caring “to censor the topic” doesn’t make sense, it’s already censored, and already in the open, and I’m not making any actions regarding the censorship. You’d need to be more accurate in what exactly you believe, instead of reasoning in terms of vague affect.
Regarding lack of formal understanding, see this comment: the decision to not discuss the topic, if at all possible, follows from a very weak belief, not from certainty. Lack of formal understanding expresses lack of certainty, but not lack of very weak beliefs.
If an organisation, that is working on a binding procedure for a all-powerful dictator to implement it on the scale of the observable universe, tried to censor information, that could directly affect me for the rest of time in the worst possible manner, I got a very weak belief that their causal control is much more dangerous than the acausal control between me and their future dictator.
Caring “to censor the topic” doesn’t make sense...
So you don’t care if I post it everywhere and send it to everyone I can?
I am not sure if I understand the issue and if it is as serious as some people obviously perceive it to be. Because if I indeed understand it, then it isn’t as dangerous to talk about it in public as it is portrayed to be. But that would mean that there is something wrong with otherwise smart people, which is unlikely? So should I conclude that it is more likely that I simply do not understand it?
What irritates me is that people like Nesov are saying that “we don’t formally understand even the usual game theory, let alone acausal trade”. Yet they care aggressively to censor the topic. I’ve been told before that it is due to people getting nightmares from it. If that is the reason then I do not think censorship is justified at all.
I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that you do not fully understand it and they are still being silly. ;)
How about the possibility that you do not understand it and that they are not silly? Do you think it could be serious enough to have nightmares about it and to censor it as far as possible, but that you simply don’t get it? How likely is that possibility?
Why would you even ask me that? Clearly I have considered the possibility (given that I am not a three year old) and equally clearly me answering you would not make much sense. :)
But the questioning of trusting people’s nightmares is an interesting one. I tend to be of the mind that if someone has that much of an anxiety problem prompted by a simple abstract thought then it is best to see that they receive the appropriate medication and therapy. After that has been taken care of I may consider their advice.
I wasn’t quite sure. I don’t know how to conclude that they are silly and you are not. I’m not just talking about Nesov but also Yudkowsky. You concluded that they are all wrong about their risk estimations and act silly. Yudkowsky explicitly stated that he does know more. But you conclude that they don’t know more, that they are silly.
Yes, I commented before saying that it is not the right move to truncate your child’s bed so that monsters won’t fit under it but rather explain that it is very unlikely for monsters to hide under the bed.
You can’t. Given the information you have available it would be a mistake for you to make such a conclusion. Particularly given that I have not even presented arguments or reasoning on the core of the subject, what, with the censorship and all. :)
Indeed. Which means that not taking his word for it constitutes disrespect.
Once the child grows up a bit you can go on to explain to them that even though there are monsters out in the world being hysterical doesn’t help either in detecting monsters or fighting them. :)
As I noted, it’s a trolley problem: you have the bad alternative of doing nothing, and then there’s the alternative of doing something that may be better and may be worse. This case observably came out worse, and that should have been trivially predictable by anyone who’d been on the net a few years.
So the thinking involved in the decision, and the ongoing attempts at suppression, admits of investigation.
But yes, it could all be a plot to get as many people as possible thinking really hard about the “forbidden” idea, with this being such an important goal as to be worth throwing LW’s intellectual integrity in front of the trolley for.
Caring “to censor the topic” doesn’t make sense, it’s already censored, and already in the open, and I’m not making any actions regarding the censorship. You’d need to be more accurate in what exactly you believe, instead of reasoning in terms of vague affect.
Regarding lack of formal understanding, see this comment: the decision to not discuss the topic, if at all possible, follows from a very weak belief, not from certainty. Lack of formal understanding expresses lack of certainty, but not lack of very weak beliefs.
If an organisation, that is working on a binding procedure for a all-powerful dictator to implement it on the scale of the observable universe, tried to censor information, that could directly affect me for the rest of time in the worst possible manner, I got a very weak belief that their causal control is much more dangerous than the acausal control between me and their future dictator.
So you don’t care if I post it everywhere and send it to everyone I can?