Yeah, what I wrote is so about cold fusion, but I’m totally new to LW, am a bit in awe at the level of discourse here, and don’t want to import a dispute from there to here. I’m happy to have found LW because of Gerard’s comments on RatWiki.
Abd
I’m Abd ul-Rahman Lomax, introducing myself. I have six grandchildren, from five biological children, and I have two adopted girls, age 11 from China, and age 9 from Ethiopia.
Born in 1944, Abd ul-Rahman is not my birth name, I accepted Islam in 1970. Not being willing to accept pale substitutes, I learned to read the Qur’an in Arabic by reading the Qur’an in Arabic.
Back to my teenage years, I was at Cal Tech for a couple of years, being in Richard P. Feynman’s two years of undergraduate physics classes, the ones made into the textbook. I had Linus Pauling for freshman chemistry, as well. Both of them helped create how I think.
I left Cal Tech to pursue a realm other than “science,” but was always interested in direct experience rather than becoming stuffed with tradition, though I later came to respect tradition (and memorization) far more than at the outset. I became a leader of a “spiritual community,” and a successor to a well-known teacher, Samuel L. Lewis, but was led to pursue many other interests.
I delivered babies (starting with my own) and founded a school of midwifery that trained midwives for licensing in Arizona.
Self-taught, I started an electronics design consulting business, still going with a designer in Brazil.
I became known as one of the many independent inventors of delegable proxy as a method of creating hierarchical communication structure from the bottom up. Social structure, and particularly how to facilitate collective intelligence, has been a long-term interest.
I was a Muslim chaplain at San Quentin State Prison, serving an almost entirely Black community. In case you haven’t guessed, I’m not black. I loved it. People are people.
So much I’m not saying yet.… I became interested in wikis early on, but didn’t get to Wikipedia until 2005, becoming seriously active in 2007. Eventually, I came across an abusive blacklisting of a web site, a well-known archive of scientific papers on cold fusion. I’d been very aware of the 1989 announcement and some of the ensuing flap, but had assumed, like most people with enough knowledge to know what it was about, that the work had not been replicated.
When I looked, I became interested enough to buy a number of major works in the area (including almost all of the skeptical literature).
Among those who have become familiar, cold fusion (a bit of a misnomer; at the least it was prematurely named), is an ultimately clear example of how pseudoskepticism came to dominate a whole field, for over fifteen years. The situation flipped in the peer-reviewed journals beginning about eight years ago, but that’s not widely recognized, it is merely obvious if one looks at what has been published in that period of time..
Showing this is way beyond the scope of this introduction, but I assume it will come up. I’m just asserting what I reasonably conclude, having become familiar with the evidence, (and I’m working with the scientists in the field now, in many ways).
As to rational skepticism, I was known to Martin Gardner, who quoted a study of mine on the so-called Miracle of the Nineteen in the Qur’an, the work of Rashad Khalifa, whom I knew personally.
I naively thought, for a couple of days, that a rational-skeptic approach to cold fusion might be welcome on RationalWiki. Definitely not. Again, that’s another story. However, I’m not banned there and have sysop privileges (like most users).
On RationalWiki, however, I came across the work of Yudkowsky, and this blog. Wow! In some of the circles in which I’ve moved, I’ve been a voice crying in the wilderness, with only a few echoes here and there. Here, I’m reluctant to say anything, so commonly cogent is comment in this community. I know I’m likely to stick my foot in my mouth.
However, that’s never stopped me, and learning to recognize the taste of my foot, with the help of my friends, is one way in which I’ve kept my growth alive. The fastest way to learn is generally to make mistakes.
I’m also likely to comment, eventually, on the practical ontology and present reality of Landmark Education, with which I’ve become quite familiar, as well as on the myths and facts which widely circulate about Landmark. To start, they do let you go to the bathroom.
Meanwhile, I’ve caught up with HPMOR, and am starting to read the sequences. Great stuff, folks.
Okay, it was requested that someone with more Landmark experience comment.
My history: I read most of the criticism of Landmark on the web before becoming involved. The “seminar” that Nisan attended appears to have been an Introduction or Special Evening. Introductions are a free Landmark program run by “Introduction Leaders,” whereas a Special Evening may be run by a Forum Leader. Introductions are done in many venues, including homes, whereas a Special Evening will normally be done at a Landmark Center.
In the best Intros and Special Evenings, a Forum Leader will actually demonstrate the technology. It’s not merely a lecture about Landmark, it’s a demonstration.
I just completed the Introduction Leader Program, a seven-month training. The purpose of an Introduction isn’t exactly what Nisan stated. It is that the guest come away with something of value, and, in addition, that the guest was provided an opportunity to register into the Landmark Forum, having experienced enough to be able to make an informed choice . In the standard Introduction—which is based on a specific format, a script—there is a process run called the Possibility exercise. Being in the program, I was at Intro after Intro, and normally I did the exercise myself. The more I did that exercise, the more value I got from it. For example, my relationship with my small children was radically transformed, and they know it and they can tell me exactly how I changed. The shift was very simple, but it wasn’t going to happen anyway.
Landmark is indeed an ESOP, owned by Staff. Almost all the work of Landmark, however, is done by “people in the Assisting Program,” which is one of about fifty Landmark Programs providing training. The prerequisite for all Landmark programs is graduation from the Landmark Forum, which one accomplishes by not running away from it (some do), or, if one runs away, one has come back. Basically, be there or be square.
Introduction Leaders, Seminar Leaders, SELP Leaders, are not paid. Nobody gets a commission if someone signs up. The “payoff” is in the satisfaction of seeing a life transformed, and “transformation” isn’t centrally defined. But it’s palpable.
The work is not hard, but it can be challenging, because the foundations of knowledge and the genesis of identity are addressed. Some people don’t want those questioned. That’s okay, Landmark isn’t proposing a new standard by which people are to be judged, but, at the same time, what limits us is generally our identity, who we think we are. I should say, “what limited me.”
The paid staff consists of Forum Leaders, a handful of staffers at Landmark Centers, and at the corporate office in San Francisco. However, most Landmark Programs are run by Program Leaders, who are all volunteers. Only the two initial programs in the core Curriculum for Living are given by Forum Leaders. Forum Leaders are highly trained, and are faced with a task that used to be considered impossible: enduring transformation in three days.
I was at a Special Evening in Boston the other day, and a woman was brought to my registration table by a friend. “You have to talk with Abd,” he’d told her. Damn! I was there to try to finish up my “measures” to be “candidated” as an Introduction Leader, and this woman hadn’t decided she wanted to register, and that can be a lengthy conversation, taking up my table!
I recognized this, though, immediately as being caught in the “small game,” forgetting about the “big game,” which is about “reliably delivering that which makes a real difference for people in what they are actually facing and what they really care about … etc.” So I dropped my attitude immediately and listened to her. (And there went my numbers!)
She was a psychotherapist and she was saying that she was skeptical. She just couldn’t understand how the Forum could do in three days what years of therapy often failed to accomplish. I told her what I knew to say, pointing to what was becoming clear about her, and mentioned a Seminar Leader who was Assistant Director of Outpatient Psychiatry at a major local hospital. He walked up and joined the conversation, and he told her exactly the same as what I’d said. To boil it down, there was no way for her to answer that question, practically, without seeing it herself. What she could do was to look around, see all the people there telling their experiences, assess their credibility, etc., but no way to know, especially, how it worked.
I even told her that, though I have lots of ideas about how it works, I could write a book about how it works, I didn’t actually know how it works. Just that it works.
She registered. She had not brought any form of payment with her, so she signed a promise to pay—I had to get special permission from the Center Manager to accept that. Legally, Landmark could insist on payment, but, practically speaking, they won’t. I don’t know yet if she actually mailed in the check as she promised.
But I do know that if she does pay and attend, she is highly unlikely to ever regret it. I do read the stories of those who were not satisfied, on the web, but I’ve made many calls to lists of graduates, and dissatisfaction is rare. About 100,.000 people take the Forum each year, Landmark claims that 94% later say that the Forum resulted in a powerful and lasting transformation, so, do the math. I think they may have underestimated it.
However, a lot of people are there at the Forum, from the outset, to prove that it doesn’t work. (I heard a Forum Leader estimate “more than half.”) Some of those wake up, some don’t.
Lots of people don’t like what they call the “sales pressure,” but the reality of that is complex. (I’ve heard comments like, “Best thing I ever did, but I didn’t like the pressure to tell my friends and family.”)
I detested “pressure,” myself.… and then I dove into the most intense training in Landmark, the very center of what might be considered “pressure.” The Introduction Leader Program.
(By the way, I had a “personal policy” not to sign up immediately for anything. I pulled it out at my first Introduction. The effect? Well, that policy might make sense as a way of “avoiding domination,” but it also delayed my moving on to the rest of my life for about four months, until I finally got around to it. Once I knew that this work was likely to produce the promised results, further delay was stupid. But, hey, that was my identity! Can’t give that up!) To be sure, I wasn’t so impressed at that first introduction, but, by this time, I had lots of other evidence.)
“Pressure” is actually one half of a spectrum; the other half could be called “disinterest,” “not caring,” or “not taking a stand for people.” When a conversation is perceived as “pressure,” it indicates that something was missing, it was an unskillful conversation. And these conversations, in general, in Landmark, are commonly undertaken by people who are not perfect, they are developing skills, they are being trained. (And the Introduction Leader body is training for becoming Seminar Leaders or Forum Leaders.)
There are many issues brought up in this thread, but I’ll leave this here.
Just to complete my description of my participation in Landmark, I’m actually pretty new. I know people who have been doing this work since the early est days, i.e., the 1970s. However, I just took the Landmark Forum in March, 2011. I then took the Forum in Action Seminar (a free seminar is included in the Forum tuition; but because I chose to do my seminar in Boston—that psychiatrist was leading it—my “free seminar” cost me about $500 for transportation. Ouch!
I’d signed up for the Advanced Course at the closing of the Forum, taking advantage of the incentive provided. I put it off as long as I could, because it was expensive. See, I’d never paid for training of any kind (I was on a full scholarship to Cal Tech, for example, and I was a teacher in about everything else....) But the money showed up and I moved up the dates, then I registered in the Self Expression and Leadership Program which completes the Curriculum for Living. From there on, for the most part, I wasn’t paying for anything. I was a coach in the next SELP session, and the next step for me was the Introduction Leader Program.
The reputation of the ILP is that is the most difficult, the most challenging, and the most rewarding of all the Landmark Programs. It was. I’m not going to be an Introduction Leader, which is of little concern to me, because I can “play the big game” without that badge. We were told that we would be unrecognizable after the program, and it was so. People who had known me a long time literally did not recognize me. Where it really counts, though, with my children, well, my daughters now tell me every day how “awesome” I am. Maybe that’s because I tell them the same.
This isn’t what I was like before. I didn’t even talk to them every day. (I’m divorced from their adoptive mother, live up the street, but wasn’t talking to them on days when I wasn’t seeing them. Out of a Possibility Exercise in a Home Introduction, looking at a situation where I wasn’t doing something I’d said I’d do with my 11-year-old, I came up with a “Missing” of “reliable relatedness” and realized that I could call them every day, and started it up. Their mom wasn’t completely thrilled at first, but she let go, and the results have been spectacular. So simple, just showing up for them steadily. Yet so powerful, at their age.
The information is largely obsolete, and may never have been accurate. As to the “mom’s friend,” the suggestion that a program involving about 180,000 people each year is to be judged by a snapshot of an individual is … interesting. Anyone can take the Forum—they no longer exclude people based on psychological diagnoses, though they recommend that certain people not take the Forum—and I’ve seen some rather damaged people even go on. The question would be if those people benefited or not, and what I’ve seen is progress, sometimes startling progress. But you can also find on the internet a story of a Landmark Communications Course Leader who murdered his wife. Appears to be true. And so?
The Forum is for real people, not saints. Forum Leaders aren’t saints, they make mistakes, they are simply highly trained in presenting the “distinctions.” That involves consciousness far beyond the ordinary, I can see and say that much, but it’s still only training and practice.
The Forum and Advanced Course are about the same: 9 AM to 10 PM. There are two half-hour breaks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and there is an evening meal break of an hour and a half.
Calling it “lectures” is quite misleading. I have very low tolerance for lectures. Landmark has honed the Forum script for decades, they know what works and what doesn’t. There are periods where the Forum leader reads—or “recreates” the material, but these are relatively short. There will then be conversations with individuals, which are, by nature, somewhat unpredictable, showing or demonstrating the material or whatever comes up. The Forum leader will ask for volunteers from the audience to go to the microphones. Nobody is required to do this.
And then, as a third modality, there will be “paired sharing.” The seats have been arranged to make this generally work out easily. People will talk to the person next to them about what’s coming up for them about the issue just covered. That’s the only place where there is any expectation that individuals speak. Don’t want to share with strangers, sit with someone you feel okay about sharing with. And you can still decline.
The only time I felt that it was all going on for too long, it was really difficult for me, was in the Advanced Course when I’d become aware of my long-standing “act,” what had disempowered me for so many years in so many contexts. Until it became clear to me, I became convinced that this whole thing was indeed a cult, I was odd man out, nobody would understand me, it was all group-think. That went on for about an hour, and it was excruciating. And then it became totally obvious to me what had happened, and I was free. My “act” was precisely this: I was a loner, standing for the Truth, which only I could see. Nobody was going to hear me, they were going to reject me. And, of course, with this expectation firmly ensconced and believed, that’s exactly what happened, often.
In fact, once I saw what I’d been doing, I also could see what I could do to move beyond this. It was actually obvious, so, right there, began the rest of my life. My act still comes up, the grooves are deep, but it can now be quickly recognized. My act was based on certain experiences in grade school, it was the reaction of a very bright eleven-year old, to a social situation that was not favorable to his connection with people. He was indeed isolated. Then.
Now, he actually knows how to speak for a large group, instead of to it.
it is encouraged that people take care of personal needs before the course and during the breaks, but nobody who walks to the door is denied exit. It’s possible that in est they might have been asked what they were doing, or that they might have been reminded of their commitment to staying in the room for each session, but they never would have been prevented from leaving.
Nowadays, though—and I’ve worked the door in the Advanced Course—nobody is questioned. If someone approaches the door, we open it, carefully, so that minimum noise is made. We don’t talk to them, unless they talk to us (in which case we would probably walk outside the room with them.) We smile at them when they leave and when they come back in.
The course is experiential. It’s true that people will “think about it,” but that actually can inhibit the work. This is not “informational learning,” and there is no dogma or information being transmitted. Rather, people are encouraged to simply listen, to be aware, of the leader and of each other and, as well, of their own internal conversation, to identify it as what it is, generally, a pile of conditioned responses that can isolate us from what is actually happening. It’s coming from the past, not so much the present.
What is being transmitted is not “clear thinking”—which is almost, by definition, an obscuration, if it involves “judgment,” decisions about true./false—but “clear perception.” Clear thinking needs clear perception as a basis, or garbage in, garbage out.
It’s an ancient technique. Used to transmit dogma, it could be highly offensive. I haven’t seen it being used that way in Landmark, and I’ve had a lot of opportunity to observe. What I’ve seen are people being freed of their limitations, and they know it, it’s visible in their faces, and they can communicate it to people who have had the experience.
It can be hard for a beginner, though, to explain this to others. “Well, it was fantastic, man, it just …it was amazing … you have to be there!” With an excited smile and wide eyes.
It is no wonder people think it’s a cult, it sure can look like one. People just don’t have a right to be so happy!
A major difference, though, Landmark is quite effective at connecting people with their families, people reconcile with estranged parents and children, one hears stories at every closing session. There are no “suppressive persons,” and people who blame others for trouble in their lives are confronted with a choice: continue the “racket,” with its very limited payoffs, or let it go and move into a new realm of unlimited possibilities. “Rackets” are not “bad and wrong,” they simply are limited and disempowering interpretations of life.
Landmark takes people to “nothing,” and then they create their future. Landmark doesn’t tell people what to fill that space with. It’s silent on God/not-God. However, I’m a Muslim, and I rode to Boston (four hours per classroom) and did a lot of work in the Introduction Leader Program with a United Church of Christ minister. If we talked theology, well, we were pretty distant. But when we talked about Reality—which is my definition of “God,”—we literally saw eye-to-eye. I suspect that this work is what was actually being taught, so long ago, using differing metaphors and ways of expression.
So it can’t be unique. However, it’s rare, as far as I can tell. Closest thing I’ve seen to it is 12-step programs.
The ontology involved in the Landmark “conversation,” though, is remarkably similar to what I’ve seen from Yudkowsky, and Yudkowsky uses certain language, in certain places, that would indicate to me familiarity with the Landmark work. If I really cared, I might pull out some linguistic analysis tools, do a little Bayesian work on this. But I don’t care. Yudkowsky is quite clear, and that’s fantastic.
Such as? “Reality?” I do that for a reason. Essentially, I’m personalizing Reality, as a single, unique entity. Nothing like it. I used to capitalize nothing, now I capitalize Nothing.
I’m distinguishing a special usage from a “normal” one. It’s a cue.
As, “The Forum Leader asks the group, ’What did you get for your $500?” The group replies, unprompted, “Nothing.” And they are laughing. Of course, maybe I just capitalized it there just because it’s the beginning of the sentence.
With Forum Leader, “Leader” is capitalized because it is, in fact, a formal title.
“Normal” communication is not as fun as abnormal. I’m trying to figure out, though, what this “thing” is that capitalizes. I thought I did that. I don’t think that my post capitalized itself. In fact, I’m glad it didn’t.
Thanks. I’m not running courses. I was in a training to lead Introductions, which are just that, a brief Introduction. A typical Intro might have a handful of guests. There is a survey form handed out, but it’s not any kind of test.
The Forum might benefit from such a survey, but it’s not generally done. If I worked like crazy, I could be a Forum Leader in a few years, but I’m not going there. Other people can and will do it, and they will do it well.
Landmark is in a process of revisioning itself, and measures of performance as suggested could be useful. However, Landmark isn’t about teaching rational skills, as such; rather, it’s about opening a clearing which can enable the recognition of “identity” and the realm of “self” that must underlie deep rationality.
An old story: the Sufi had been out talking with barbarians, fierce tribesmen, and brought them into the mosque. However, they were wearing boots, and the imam pulled the Sufi aside and asked him to get his friends to remove their boots.
The Sufi said, “I got them into the mosque, you get them to take their boots off.”
Landmark doesn’t “teach” the tools of rational process, it opens the door to the space of clarity, in which transformation becomes possible.
You get their boots off.
Can you give a specific example of capitalization that shows what you are saying, chaosmosis?
The only word that I capitalized that would be outside of common usage would be “Reality.” And that’s my own personal decision and expression. it has nothing to do with Landmark. Capitalization is used to indicate a specific entity as distinct from a generic kind of entity. What “belief” is involved?
Yes, I have respect for Reality. I am not skeptical of Reality, only of my own “reality.”
Reality is not a “thing.”
I love this inquiry.
Numbers do not appear in reality, other than “mental reality.” 2+2=4 does not appear outside of the mind. Here is why:
To know that I have two objects, I must apply a process to my perception of reality. I must recognize the objects as distinct, I must categorize them as “the same” in some way. And then I apply another process, “counting.” That is applied to my collected identifications, not to reality itself, which can just as easily be seen as unitary, or sliced up in a practically infinite number of ways.
Number, then, is a product of brain activity, and the observed properties of numbers are properties of brain process. Some examples.
I put two apples in a bowl. I put two more apples in the bowl. How many apples are now in the bowl?
We may easily say “four,” because most of the time this prediction holds. However, it’s a mixing bowl, used as a blender, and what I have now is a bowl of applesauce. How many apples are in the bowl? I can’t count them! I put four apples in, and none come out! Or some smaller number than four. Or a greater number (If I add some earth, air, fire, and water, and wait a little while....)
Apples are complex objects. How about it’s two deuterium molecules? (Two deuterons each, with two electrons, electronically bound.) How about the bowl is very small, confining the molecules, reducing their freedom of movement, and their relative momentum is, transiently, close to zero?
How many deuterons? Initially, four, but … it’s been calculated that after a couple of femtoseconds, there are none, there is one excited atom of Beryllium-8, which promptly decays into two helium nuclei and a lot of energy. In theory. It’s only been calculated, it’s not been proven, it merely is a possible explanation for certain observed phenomena. Heh!
The point here: the identity of an object, the definition of “one,” is arbitrary, a tool, a device for organizing our experience of reality. What if it’s two red apples and two green apples? They don’t taste the same and they don’t look the same, at least not entirely the same. What we are counting is the identified object, “apple.” Not what exists in reality. Reality exists, not “apples,” except in our experience, largely as a product of language.
The properties of numbers, so universally recognized, follow from the tools we evolved for predicting behavior, they are certainly not absolutes in themselves.
Hah! “Certainly.” That, with “believe” is a word that sets off alarms.
The fact that one apple added to one apple invariably gives two apples....
It’s almost a tautology. What we have is an iterated identification. There are two objects that are named “apple,” they are identical in identification, but separate and distinct. This appears in time. I’m counting my identifications. The universality of 1+1 = 2 is a product of a single brain design. For an elephant, the same “problem” might be “food plus food equals food.”
Great piece, Shannon. Brings to mind a couple of things.
What you call “agency” is, in Landmartian, “being cause in the matter,” being “at cause,” “taking a stand,” and acting “consistently with that stand.”
This is distinguished from being caught in a “racket,” defined as a persistent complaint combined with a fixed way of being. Someone caught in a racket does not take responsibility for things as they are, but rather sets up stories that express being a victim of circumstances or others. The generic alternative is to accept responsibility, as a stand, not as a “truth.”
That’s been oft-misunderstood. I am responsible for, say, the WTC attack, as a stand, not as a fact. If I’m responsible, it means that I can look at my life as missing something that might make a difference, as full of possibilities.
In any case, most people, most of the time, are not at cause, we are simply reacting.
Then, if we actually take responsibility, beyond merely saying a few words, we act in accordance with that, which includes making mistakes, picking ourselves up and acting again, varying behavior as necessary to find a path to fulfillment.
A conversation I’ve had is “How many people does it take to transform society?”
The answer I’ve generally come up with is two. It’s amazingly difficult to find two. Maybe that’s just my racket, but your story shows how two can sometimes find more, if more are required to realize a stand. Two is where it starts. At least one of the two must be willing to be at cause, and able to stand there.
Yes. I made that up, but Landmartians immediately recognize it.
Mmmm. This is all projected onto elephants, but maybe something like what you say. I was just pointing to a possible alternate processing mode. An elephant might well recognize quantity, but probably not through counting, which requires language. Quantity might be recognized directly, by visual comparison, for example. Bigger pile/smaller pile. More attraction vs. less attraction, therefore movement toward bigger pile. Or smell.
Yudkowsky was a bit naive here, after all, this page is five years old. He ascribed the passage, Deuteronomy 13.7-11 to “God.” Why would we say that “God said that”?
Well, a quite incautious, naive, religious belief. It is a Christian trope that the Bible is the “:word of God.” But this was part of the Torah, and it’s a part where Moses is telling his people the Law. I’m not a theologian or an expert on scriptural exegesis, but, on the face, Moses, explicitly, in this story of what he said, says “I command you.”′
As a Muslim, I’ve no obligation to accept the literal buffeted text we call the Bible as, in itself, the Word of God, perfectly preserved. But suppose I accept that it is true. That would mean, only, that Moses said this. It would not mean that God said it. Again, following the story, Moses was obeying God, but doesn’t say,. “God said....”
This is a command of a tribal leader in tribal times, regarding the preservation of tribal identity, which is life-and-death under those conditions. It’s crazy to take this tribal command as a universal truth, applicable to all times and conditions. Sure, some do that. We already know that some people are crazy.
Yes, I could go further. But for now I’m merely suggesting that before drawing major conclusions from what is in any text, that we read the text itself, what it says about itself, and what we know about the context. What others say about the text exists on another level, which may have little or nothing to do with the text itself.
“Some people” (i.e., me) would say that God tells you to do what you know is right. (In Arabic, ma’ruwf, “good,” the root is ’arifa, implying knowledge.) So, on the authority of God, do so, even if someone tries to tell you God wants you to do something else. Today you don’t need to kill him, but he might be trying to kill you, i.e., to destroy your freedom.
If God tells you, directly, to do something else, try getting the right medication, you’ve got some killer voice in there. God doesn’t do that.
If your name is Abraham, my condolences.
I hope people don’t mind my tossing in the perspective of a Muslim rationalist here. Not all Muslims think this way; in fact, the particular school is the Mu’tazila, though the errors and maybe some innovations are mine.
They don’t. However, what you said posed a created contradiction. There is more than that, to be sure. Rixie is saying one piece of this: implying that there will be no contradiction, because your “sense of morality” comes from God. I think that’s a bit naive, but not totally off. That is, I can think all kinds of crazy stuff. That’s not the same as knowledge.
The “other gods” implies a context where there is one, yours. What is that? Is this your identity or is it something deeper? If Rixie is right, “chasing” some other source of meaning could be fatal. What could that mean?
Chaosmosis, you objected elsewhere to my capitalizing Reality, I think. Reality is my substitute-name for God. So if I am chasing another “god” besides Reality, I’m literally going crazy.
Surely that would depend on the passage and how he uses it. However, wasn’t arguing with Yudkowsky here, just pointing out that the little late discussion here was spinning off on that particular piece of unexamined exposition. I reread the piece, and I do come to something that may be interesting.
Yudkowsky is ascribing an “ur-mistake” to that passage, but he generalizes it, into a rigid adherence to a dogma or tightly-defined mission or, most importantly, group identity. That qualifies as an ur-mistake to me, at least for our time. It disables us from seeing the world-as-it-is, and that is now precisely our mission, our task as humans.
It leads us into the “affective death spiral,” and in some of the examples that came up, it’s literally a death spiral.
If so many people were not so harmed by it, it would be funny, the similarity between the fanatics in the world of Islam and the fanatics in the world of, say, fundamentalist Christianity. They are, from my point of view, on the same side, the side of hatred. In religious language, the side of Satan, whose goal is precisely that we fight each other, in order to demonstrate what pieces of dirt we are. (That’s almost a literal translation from the Qur’an.)
I’m doing something right.
I’m doing something wrong.
I write too much.
I don’t explain well enough.
It’s Thursday.
I have a strange name.
I’m Muslim.
I’m sensible.
I’m not.
It means nothing, which also means nothing.
Something else.
Thanks, chaosmosis, that was a nice thing to say. ….
Okay, I don’ t have to speculate or argue. I’m an alien, and I don’t consider it a “fact,” unless fact is defined to include the consequences of language. I.e, as an alien, I can see your process, and, within your process, I see that “1 + 1 = 2″ is generally useful to your survival. That I’ll accept as a fact. However, if you believe that 1 + 1 = 2 is a “fact,” such that 1 + 1 <> 2 is necessarily “false,” I think you might be unnecessarily limited, harming long-term survival.
It’s also useful to my survival, normally. Sometimes not. Sometimes 1 + 1 = 1, or 1 + 1 = 0, work better. I’m not kidding.
The AI worth thinking about is one which is greater than human, so that a human can recognize the limitation of fixed arithmetic indicates to me that a super-human AI would be able to do that or more.
Yeah, thanks, Alicorn. I’ve been “conferencing”—as we used to call it in the 80s—for a long time, and I know the problem. I actually love the up/down voting system here. I gives me some fairly fast feedback as to how I’m occurring to others. I’m primarily here to learn, and learning to communicate effectively in a new context has always brought rewards to me.
Ah, one more thing I’ll risk adding here. This is a Yudkowsky thread and discussing my posting may be seriously off-topic. I need to pay more attention to context.
RatWiki operates as a mobocracy. Anyone who challenges the mob’s assumptions about “science,” which, for them, means “whatever we, the rational people, believe,” is non grata. Yes, cargo cult science. In the example I most know about, the assumptions aren’t “peer reviewed,” the SPOV firmly enforced on RatWiki hasn’t shown up under peer review for almost a decade, while the contrary has been—in the journals—mainstreamed. But they don’t know that, and won’t read sources and arguments based on sources. Tl;dr. And if one is brief, it’s still, “Crank, go away, shut up.”*
My conclusions from about eight months of activity there. My main interest is wiki structure, or I wouldn’t have bothered.