Aiyen

Karma: 812

Aiyen 7 Jan 2014 21:44 UTC
1 point
on: The True Prisoner’s Dilemma
Long time lurker, first post.

Isn’t the rational choice on a True Prisoner’s Dilemma to defect if possible, and to seek a method to bind the opponent to cooperate even if that binding forces one to cooperate as well? An analogous situation is law enforcement-one may well desire to unilaterally break the law, yet favor the existance of police that force all parties concerned to obey it. Of course police that will never interfere with one’s own behavior would be even better, but this is usually impractical. Timeless Decision Theory adds that one should cooperate against a sufficiently simiilar agent, as such similar agents will presumably make the same decision, and (C,C) is obviously preferable to (D,D), but against a dissimilar opponent, I would think this would be the optimal strategy.

If you can’t bind the paperclip maximizer, defect. If you can, do so, and still defect if possible. If the binding affects you as well, you are now forced to cooperate. And of course, if the clipper is also using TDT, cooperate.

Aiyen 5 Oct 2014 21:02 UTC
2 points
on: Rationality Quotes October 2014
“If we take everything into account — not only what the ancients knew, but all of what we know today that they didn’t know — then I think that we must frankly admit that we do not know. But, in admitting this, we have probably found the open channel.”

Richard Feynman, “The Value of Science,” public address at the National Academy of Sciences (Autumn 1955); published in What Do You Care What Other People Think (1988); republished in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman (1999) edited by Jeffrey Robbins.

Aiyen 6 Oct 2014 20:40 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: Rationality Quotes October 2014
It sits well with FAI, but poorly with assuming that FAI will instantly or automatically make everything perfect. The warning is against assuming a particular theory must be true, or a particular action must be optimal. Presumeably good advice for the AI as well, at least as it is “growing up” (recursively self-improving).

Aiyen 6 Oct 2014 21:27 UTC
8 points
on: Open thread, Oct. 6 - Oct. 12, 2014
I’m trying to post an article on discussion about a personally important topic, but it’s not going through. Any thoughts? It won’t even save the material in drafts. I haven’t posted much before, but this is a question that I think Less Wrong could be a great help on. It says I have enough karma, so that shouldn’t be the problem.

Aiyen 8 Oct 2014 22:26 UTC
11 points
in reply to: Toggle’s comment on: Questions on Theism
The main prediction that comes to mind is that if Christianity is true, one would expect substantially more miracle claims by Christians (legitimate claims plus false ones) than by any other religion (false claims only). If it is false, one would expect similar miracle claims by most religions that believe in them. Does anyone have data on this one way or the other?

Aiyen 8 Oct 2014 22:30 UTC
1 point
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Questions on Theism
A fair point; I’m considering the God of the Bible because the miracles I’ve heard of are specifically Christian, and therefore either they’re valid (and therefore Christianity is true) or they’re invalid (in which case even a false religion can produce a sizeable base of miracle claims, which would raise my probability for atheism to nearly 100%).

Aiyen 9 Oct 2014 1:53 UTC
2 points
in reply to: hydkyll’s comment on: Questions on Theism
Well played. But there’s a huge difference in how you should update given a phenomonon we don’t yet understand that seems to have no religious connotation and given one that only occurs in conjunction with prayer. If the leaders in lighting occured ten times more frequently any time someone invoked Thor, I’d call it evidence for Asgard. If there’s no religious correlation, I’d call it evidence that we need better meterology.

Aiyen 9 Oct 2014 17:57 UTC
4 points
in reply to: advancedatheist’s comment on: Questions on Theism
Who said anything about solving problems? I’m not worried about “the meaning of life” or needing God in order to have a purpose-my purpose is maximizing my utility function (roughly having fun and helping people). I’m asking because it looks like there’s a non-trivial chance of God in fact existing; I don’t see how the convenience or inconvenience of a God would change the probabilities.

Aiyen 9 Oct 2014 18:02 UTC
0 points
in reply to: BenSix’s comment on: Questions on Theism
I find it hard to believe that God would demonstrate His existence solely through selective and ambiguous appearances.

How else could He do so? The only way we could ever come to know about God would be something in the world that looked like one would expect given God, and not like one would expect given atheism, i.e. a miracle. Now, one could ask why He doesn’t do blatantly obvious miracles all the time to remove any ambiguity, but if He’s to demonstrate His existence, presumably miracles are going to be involved.

Aiyen 9 Oct 2014 18:07 UTC
8 points
in reply to: polymathwannabe’s comment on: Questions on Theism
“Putting my plans in God’s hands” actually has some background to it. When I graduated from high school, we prayed that it would be obvious where I should go to college. I got into Harvard, and no where else particularly prestigious; we took that as I sign that I was supposed to go there. I was absolutely miserable there, but stayed because I thought God would be furious if I left. I finally left anyway on the brink of suicide. Since “making my own plans”, I have gotten over the depression almost completely, but I still feel sometimes like I ought to be back there. You can see why I’m a bit nervous about letting God run my life!

Aiyen 12 Oct 2014 0:21 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Brillyant’s comment on: Questions on Theism
This. A thousand times this. Wish I had more than one upvote-you’ve summed up what’s going on in my head more or less perfectly.

Aiyen 12 Oct 2014 0:55 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Toggle’s comment on: Questions on Theism
...but never people claiming that God cured their amputation.

Just did a google search on this; pulled up some Christians trying to explain why (didn’t find anything convincing), some atheists claiming that this is a knockdown argument against God (to be fair, if true it seems pretty decisive) and a case of a Christian reporting that he saw an amputated ear regrown (they said it wasn’t a a full ear that came back, but a small thing that looked somewhat like an ear, and hearing was restored).

Are you going to claim that they were lying/deceived? On the one hand, it would certainly explain why a full ear didn’t come back. On the other hand, they claimed to have seen the patient’s skin break, blood come out, and an “small, ear-like thing” grow out of the gap. I cannot imagine someone decieving themselves about that!

Aiyen 15 Oct 2014 18:55 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Unknowns’s comment on: Questions on Theism
As C.S. Lewis would say-are they lying, are they mad, or are they telling the truth? People do lie sometimes, and perhaps my difficulty in letting go of Christianity despite a mountain of evidence against it is that my prior on people making up stories is too low. It would take an awful lot of psychosis to make someone believe that a leg had regrown, but again, people do go insane. But is there a way to get a sense of how likely/unlikely this is? With Pascal’s Wager on the table, it’s not enough to say there’s ~40% chance Christianity is true, that’s less than half, it’s probably wrong. Rejecting it without constant fear would take near certainty that accounts like this one are fraudulant or deceived.

Aiyen 15 Oct 2014 18:59 UTC
1 point
in reply to: MrMind’s comment on: Questions on Theism
As we already know, because of the tendency of the human mind to be deceived, this term is pretty close to unity...

This is the crux of the matter. If this is true, I can safely let go of my faith. But how certain are we of this? What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?

Aiyen 15 Oct 2014 19:01 UTC
1 point
in reply to: hyporational’s comment on: Questions on Theism
No, I don’t have any beliefs that would claim that psychosis doesn’t exist, don’t worry. I can’t think of any hypothesis that would claim this without being far more complicated than the conventional “mental illness is a thing” view, and thus being eliminated by Occam’s Razor.

Aiyen 15 Oct 2014 19:09 UTC
2 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Questions on Theism
Isn’t Lewis’ argument in that case actually standard probability theory? If you hold a prior of 0 for an event, no finite amount of evidence will change your mind. Miracles aren’t a special class-everything is judged by both priors and evidence. Lewis wasn’t arguing for a separate magisterium or some other case of special pleading, he was saying that there exists enough evidence to convince us miracles have occured unless our prior is 0 or extremely low. The rest of Miracles was devoted to arguing that our prior shouldn’t be especially low.

Aiyen 15 Oct 2014 19:19 UTC
0 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Questions on Theism
Thanks for the detailed response!
1. There are miracle stories in many religious traditions, proving that false claims show up in purported scriptures all the time. I haven’t heard about a lot of modern accounts of non-Christian miracles though; if you have, could you send me the links? That could be substantial evidence.
2. Good point. Do you have any details about the “evaporation”? What actually happened in some of these cases, and how they got mistaken for miracles?
3. Hmm, I’m going to research Peter Popoff now...
4. Chinese Whispers I can believe, but many of the miracle accounts I’ve heard were written by the eyewitnesses. Maybe my priors for human honesty and reliability are too high?

Aiyen 15 Oct 2014 19:26 UTC
1 point
in reply to: MaximumLiberty’s comment on: Questions on Theism
Have I ever personally experienced a miracle?

I’ve seen people pray in tongues, felt an overwhelming sense of God’s presence, had it reported that my face was glowing during prayer once (I held up a hand to see if I could see any reflected light; no dramatic effect, wasn’t sure if I saw the light or the power of suggestion), that sort of thing.

I haven’t seen anything super dramatic, but enough to be convinced that either God is real, or human beings are frighteningly good at self-deception.

Aiyen 15 Oct 2014 19:31 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Azathoth123’s comment on: Questions on Theism
It’s something of a cop out to say “Common Sense”, but I don’t feel bad about raising a red flag on things like mandatory circumcision (not Christian, but Jewish, and Christianity claims the same God), genocide on wicked peoples to include infants and livestock (I can buy a culture becoming so corrupt that everyone indoctrinated into it would need to die, but why hurt the babies?), a lot of Mosaic law on sexuality, that kind of thing. I can’t rule out that it all makes sense given enough wisdom (which God would presumeably have), but it’s got to count as a source of questions.

Aiyen 15 Oct 2014 19:39 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Desrtopa’s comment on: Questions on Theism
Interesting. Mormons getting answered prayers wouldn’t be too surprising-they aren’t conventional Christians, but they’re trying to pray to the same God-maybe it works? Getting higher rates of answers is unexpected though.