Wow! A 20 page essay on “why I’m breaking up with you”? That’s just… brutal!
And obviously the title should have been:
“In Which I Explain How Natural Selection Has Built Me To Be Attracted To Certain Features That You Lack”
:D
Wow! A 20 page essay on “why I’m breaking up with you”? That’s just… brutal!
And obviously the title should have been:
“In Which I Explain How Natural Selection Has Built Me To Be Attracted To Certain Features That You Lack”
:D
In response to your final questions:
Liberals (myself included) tend to very much like the idea of using regulation to transfer some wealth from the strongest players to the weakest in society. We like to try to set up the rules of the game so that nobody would be economically very poor, and so that things in general were fair and equitable.
In the case of sex and relationships, the argument could also be made for regulation that would transfer “sexual wealth” and “relationship wealth” from the strongest players to those who are not so well off. In fact, it seems to me that very many traditional conservative societies have tried to do just that, by strongly promoting e.g. such values that one should have only one sexual partner (along with marriage) during one’s life. Rock stars and other sorts of alpha males who take many hot girls for themselves would be strongly disapproved of by typical traditional conservative societies. The underlying reason may be that traditional monogamy produces a sexually more equal society, and that this has been one contributing factor why societies with such values have been so successful throughout much of human history.
Most liberals, however, would be unwilling to engage in a rational discussion and cost-benefit analysis of whether conservative sexual morals (or some modified version thereof) would in fact create a more equal and strong society. Liberals are ok with the strongest players amassing as much sexual wealth as they can, at the expense of the weaker competitors, which strongly contrasts with their ideas about regulating economic activity and limitless acquisition of monetary wealth.
As someone who had read Eliezer’s OkCupid profile sometime not very recently, I was actually gonna reply to this with something like “well, scientism goes maybe a bit too far, but he does actually have a point”
...but then I just went and reread the OkCupid profile, and no, actually it’s wonderfully funny and I have no worries similar to scientism’s, unlike earlier when the profile didn’t explicitly mention sadism.
Obviously Eliezer is a very unusual and “weird” person, but the openness about it that we observe here is a winning move, unlike the case where one might sense that he might be hiding something. Dishonesty and secrecy is what the evil phyg leaders would go for, whereas Eliezer’s openness invites scrutiny and allows him to emerge from it without the scrutinizers having found incriminating evidence.
Also, where are you seeing evangelical polyamory? I’m very much not polyamorous myself, and haven’t ever felt that anyone around here would be pushing polyamory to me.
Well, in the category of “criticisms of SIAI and/or Eliezer”, this text is certainly among the better ones. I could see this included on a “required reading list” of new SIAI employees or something.
But since we’re talking about a Very Important Issue, i.e. existential risks, the text might have benefited from some closing warnings, that whatever people’s perceptions of SIAI, it’s Very Important that they don’t neglect being very seriously interested in existential risks because of issues that they might perceive a particular organization working on the topic to have (and that it might also actually have, but that’s not my focus in this comment).
I.e. if people think SIAI sucks and shouldn’t be supported, they should anyway be very interested in supporting the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, for example. Otherwise they’re demonstrating very high levels of irrationality, and with regard to SIAI, are probably just looking for plausible-sounding excuses to latch onto for why they shouldn’t pitch in.
Not to say that the criticism you presented mightn’t be very valid (or not; I’m not really commenting on that here), but it would be very important for people to first take care that they’re contributing to the reduction of existential risks in some way, and then consider to what extent exactly a particular organization such as SIAI might be doing a sub-optimal job (since they can choose a more clear-cut case of an excellent organization for their initial contribution, i.e. Bostrom’s FHI as mentioned above).
Speaking of Culture-style ship names (ref. Anonymous Coward above), this story btw inspires good new ones:
“Untranslatable 2” “Big Angelic Power” “We Wish To Subscribe To Your Newsletter” “Big Fucking Edward”
Damn, my plan is backfiring. I will be remembered as an arrogant schmuck who was slightly funny in an unintended way.
Serves me right.
Actually, I feel that I have sufficient experience of being reported on (including in an unpleasant way), and it is precisely that which (along with my independent knowledge of many of the people getting reported on here) gave me the confidence to suspect that I would have managed to separate from the distortions an amount of information that described reality.
That said, there is a bit of fail with regard to whether I managed to communicate what precisely impacted me. Much of it is subtle, necessarily, since it had to be picked up through the distortion field, and I do allow for the possibility that I misread, but I continue to think that I’m much better at correcting for the distortion field than most people.
One thing I didn’t realize, however, is that you folks apparently didn’t think the gal might be a reporter. That’s of course a fail in itself, but certainly a lesser fail than behaving similarly in the presence of a person one does manage to suspect to be a reporter.
Having a well-meaning site for teaching poker that doesn’t link to Two Plus Two forums looks rather silly.
It’s such a premier resource on the topic. High quality guides on most topics, and helpful people giving high-quality answers to anything a newbie might want to ask.
That link is all an intelligent person needs to become a winning poker player. (Assuming that one utilizes said resource, of course.)
There are downsides to being popular. A significant one is creating fans that don’t actually understand what you’re saying very well, and then go around giving a bad impression of you.
Having a moderate amount of smart fans would be way better than having lots of silly fans. I’m a bit fearful of what kind of crowd a large number of easy-to-digest videos would attract...
Perhaps a webpage should be written that attempts to persuade smart egotists that if they want to accumulate wealth for the long-term future, it would be rational to choose “good guy points” as that wealth, instead of e.g. money.
Since if our civilization doesn’t self-destruct, we will end up spending billions of years in a Happy World where there are no more “good guy points” available to accumulate. It will be the ultimate scarce resource, in a world where very few things are scarce. Accumulating money instead of “good guy points” seems stupid to me, if one is thinking for the long-term.
I’ll also note here, that during billions of years of Happy Life, historians will certainly study every last detail of the very limited amount of pre-utopia history that the world experienced. We’ll probably see fine-tuned High Score tables of how many “good guy points” each surviving individual has collected. (This study of history will be made substantially easier once we have the technology to extract the memories of every willing person into the public domain.)
retired urologist,
Did your question stem from the misunderstanding that the dialogue between Mark Hamill and George Lucas was a real-life dialogue, instead of a fictional dialogue written by Eliezer?
Since the dialogue was fictional, this is not an instance of Eliezer choosing George Lucas as someone having wisdom worth repeating.
Yes, I have to say that the unprofessional vibe given off feels absolutely horrible to me. I’m surprised that the designers of the site appear to be the same as previously, since the previous style and vibe felt very good to me, and this feels so much like the opposite.
The current crop of clip-art would really need to go, I’d say. Nothing looks as hasty and unprofessional as stereotypical clip-art. You especially shouldn’t with your clip-art choices communicate that you’re a very formal, ordinary and uncreative men-in-suits organisation, since you’re really not (and if you were, who would think you competent or even sincere in undertaking such an unusual mission? Stereotypical and ordinary men-in-suits are the antithesis of creativity, exceptionality and thinking-something-that-isn’t-a-politically-correct-cliche).
The current site design could perhaps be made to rock if all the clip-art was changed out to a new theme that was creative and original (and you) and wouldn’t really look like clip-art. Some associated changes to color scheme and fonts might be required, but perhaps not a complete redesign.
Since moving back to the Bay Area I’ve been out with four other people too, one of whom he’s also seeing; I’ve been in my primary’s presence while he kissed one girl, and when he asked another for her phone number; I’ve gossiped with a secondary about other persons of romantic interest and accepted his offer to hint to a guy I like that this is the case; I hit on someone at a party right in front of my primary. I haven’t suffered a hiccup of drama or a twinge of jealousy to speak of and all evidence (including verbal confirmation) indicates that I’ve been managing my primary’s feelings satisfactorily too. Does this sort of thing appeal to you?
No.
But I do expect that if humans become immortal superbeings, then given enough time, most people currently in fairytale monogamous relationships will switch to poly. (Though when people are immortal superbeings, I also expect it to become common that they’ll spend a very long time if necessary searching for an instance of fairytale monogamy to be their first relationship.)
I guess my philosophy is that fairytale monogamy is optimal for the young (say under 200 years or so), while poly and other non-traditional arrangements are the choice of the adult.
Damn, it appears I haven’t read the off-topic thread where Magic players were sought after.
So let me state here that Magic was my number one passion between ages 14-20 or so. I sold my collection (including the Power Nine and other goodies) in order to donate to SIAI, though.
(Haven’t regretted it, even though Magic is such a hugely fun game.)
Yeah, I just thought I’d improve on your riff a bit, and add the part that pokes fun at me :)
Yeah, Two Plus Two is a good source of advice on everything poker-related. People can also email me if they wish, I make my money by playing poker.
And when choosing a rakeback site (you do need one), feel free to support a fellow LWer and SIAI-supporter by choosing mine :)
(It’s actually kind-of half-finished; I haven’t really started to promote it, and haven’t polished the content. But it does work.)
EDIT: One of the ways in which that site of mine is “unfinished”, is that it has a marketing attitude to a degree. I built it based on a template that has that attitude, and haven’t yet decided whether I’ll go along with that attitude or modify it to be fully trustworthy in the sense that marketing language isn’t.
So to a degree, take what you can currently read there with a grain of salt. (You can email me for fully honest answers without a marketing attitude, and as mentioned, Two Plus Two forums are good.)
Heh, that is a topic that is very relevant to an article I was intending to post to Less Wrong today.
I’ve written it, but then noticed I have 17⁄20 of the required karma points.
Any three people wanna upvote this comment of mine so I can post my article?
Though it’s possible the reporter has twisted your words more than I manage to suspect, I’ll say:
Wow, some of the people involved really suck at thinking (or caring to think) about how they make the scene look. I think I’m able to pretty well correct for the discrepancy between what’s reported and what’s the reality behind it, but even after the correction, this window into what the scene has become has further lowered my interest in flying over there to the States to hang out with you, since it seems I might end up banging my head against the wall in frustration for all the silliness that’s required for this sort of reporting to get it’s source material.
(Though I do also think that it’s inevitable that once the scene has grown to be large and successful enough, typical members will be sufficiently ordinary human beings that I’d find their company very frustrating. Sorry, I’m a dick that way, and in a sense my negative reaction is only a sign of success, though I didn’t expect quite this level of success to be reached yet.)
(By the previous I however do not mean to imply that things would have been saner 10 years ago (I certainly had significant shortcomings of my own), but back when nobody had figured much anything out yet or written Sequences about stuff, the expected level of insanity would have been partly higher for such reasons.)
It’s not necessarily in Eliezer’s interest to make the job ad as useful to those who don’t know him as those who do.
If only Eliezer’s friends apply, great, that means someone more likely to also be a supporter/funder of SIAI ends up getting this well-paying job.
(I for one have never met Eliezer in person, but I’ve observed him and his associates over the net for about 10 years now, which allows me to read quite a lot between the lines of this job ad.)
I’ll also explicitly note that I don’t consider it to be unfair of EY that only some readers get the full benefit of this job ad. It’s a free extra service, throwing this info out here; he’s under no obligation to spend more time making the use of this information easier.
That position is “antisingularity” only in the Kurzweilian sense of the word. I wouldn’t be surprised if e.g. essentially everyone at the Singularity Institute were “antisingularity” in this sense.