bgaesop

Karma: 259

bgaesop 14 Dec 2022 22:14 UTC
4 points
4
in reply to: bgaesop’s comment on: The True Spirit of Solstice?
“How important is it for singalongs to sound polished, vs for them to feel like an organic part of the community? Is it appropriate to pay professional musicians?”

> Organic part of the community: incredibly important. Polished: of negative value. Paying professionals: I would prefer not.
This is the part I care the most about. If I wanted to hear professional musicians I would go to a concert. At this community holiday, I want to hear, and participate in, communal singing. I don’t want to feel self conscious about not being a very good singer. I want me and everyone else to get swept up in the moment and the song. I can recall two different Solstices I went to, one in NYC had some technical issues and wasn’t super duper polished and which everyone sang together in, and one in the Bay was much more polished and fancy and professional and had well trained musicians singing while mic’d up. I left the former with a powerful sense of community and a sense of having undergone an important emotional journey. I left the latter with a sense of embarrassment at myself for having attempted to participate in the music, like if I had caught myself singing along at the opera, and frustration at not having gotten the emotional catharsis I wanted. I found myself thinking “maybe Solstice isn’t for me anymore”.

I genuinely can’t remember if I’ve been to a Secular Solstice since then, but I have sung Brighter Than Today to myself and been overcome with emotion and cried.

bgaesop 14 Dec 2022 22:05 UTC
1 point
0
on: The True Spirit of Solstice?
Here are my thoughts on your opening questions:

* “Is Solstice primarily a rationality holiday? An EA holiday? The broader secular community?”

Empirically and normatively, rationalist.
- “How essential is the journey from light, into darkness, into light?”
  
  Pretty darn important. As you ask at the end, I could see an occasional or one time “journey from light, into darkness, and that’s it” story. It would make for a good “final episode” before the world ends. I’m reminded of the final episode of the sitcom Dinosaurs, where due to out of control technological change, an ice age ensues, and the main characters huddle together for warmth as they slowly freeze to death.
- “Is it okay to have a Solstice where we don’t sing Brighter Than Today?”
  
  No. Except maybe in the “from light to darkness” one, where we could sing a version with altered lyrics.
- “How important are singalongs vs speeches?”
  
  Singalongs are incredibly important. Speeches I could do without.
- “How important is it for singalongs to sound polished, vs for them to feel like an organic part of the community? Is it appropriate to pay professional musicians?”
  
  Organic part of the community: incredibly important. Polished: of negative value. Paying professionals: I would prefer not.
- “How important is transhumanism or x-risk?”
  
  X-risk: pretty important. Transhumanism: I think the importance of this varies with how much people think it’s a genuine light of a new day that could save us from x-risk.
- “Is it good or bad to change lyrics over time?”
  
  Gut instinct says bad but I could see arguments for it being good in certain instances. But I’m the kind of guy who still gets annoyed at Church Latin’s pronunciation of “v” and “c” etc in Adeste Fideles.
- “How important is it to celebrate Solstice on literal astronomical Solstice? If you don’t, why are we calling it Solstice? Is it important for the name to be clear?”
  
  Ideally it would always be on the literal Solstice but scheduling is important too. People ought to be able to actually attend.
- “Is it okay to have one solstice someday with a ‘bad ending’, where instead of climbing back out of the darkness hopefully, we just… sit with it, and accept that maybe it might be what the future holds?”
  
  Yes. See above

bgaesop 14 Dec 2022 15:51 UTC
5 points
2
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: The True Spirit of Solstice?
As someone who has very meager singing ability, I stumble over the transition from “today” to “although”

bgaesop 3 Jan 2020 1:02 UTC
20 points
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Free Speech and Triskaidekaphobic Calculators: A Reply to Hubinger on the Relevance of Public Online Discussion to Existential Risk

real life, I’d say: “Ok guys, let’s sit in this room, everyone turn off their recording devices, and let’s talk, with the agreement that what happens in this room stays in this room.”

The one time I did this with rationalists, the person (Adam Widmer) who organized the event and explicitly set forth the rule you just described, then went on to remember what people had said and bring it up publicly later in order to shake them into changing their behavior to fit his (if you’ll excuse me speaking ill of the dead) spoiled little rich boy desires.

So my advice, based on my experience, and which my life would have been noticably better had someone told me before, is: DON’T do this, and if anyone suggests doing this, stop trusting them and run away

Which is not to say that you are untrustworthy and trying to manipulate people into revealing sensitive information so you can use it to manipulate them; in order for me to confidently reach that conclusion, you’d have to actually attempt to organize such an event, not just casually suggest one on the internet
What links here?
- Czynski's comment on Circling by Unreal (5 Aug 2020 2:51 UTC; 1 point)

bgaesop 25 Oct 2019 21:36 UTC
14 points
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: bgaesop’s Shortform
The in-person community seems much less skeptical of these things than the online community. Which isn’t to say there are no skeptics, but (especially among the higher status members) it’s kind of distressing to see how little skepticism there is about outright silly claims and models. At last year’s CFAR reunion, for instance, there was a talk uncritically presenting chakras as a real thing, and when someone in the audience proposed doing an experiment to verify if they are real or it’s a placebo effect, the presenter said (paraphrasing) “Hmm, no, let’s not do that. It makes me uncomfortable. I can’t tell why, but I don’t want to do it, so let’s not” and then they didn’t.

This is extremely concerning to me, and I think it should be to everyone else who cares about the epistemological standards of this community

bgaesop 24 Oct 2019 3:46 UTC
9 points
on: bgaesop’s Shortform
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/21/the-pnse-paper/
So, shouldn’t all the rats who’ve been so into meditation etc for the past decade or so be kinda panicking at the apparent fact that enlightenment is just dunning-krugering yourself into not being able to notice your own incompetence?

bgaesop 24 Apr 2019 22:01 UTC
3 points
in reply to: bgaesop’s comment on: Moral Weight Doesn’t Accrue Linearly
My position is “chickens have non-zero moral value, and moral value is not linearly additive.” That is, any additional chicken suffering is bad, any additional chicken having a pleasant life is good, and the total moral value of all chickens as the number of chickens approaches infinity is something like 1/3rd of a human

bgaesop 24 Apr 2019 22:00 UTC
9 points
on: Moral Weight Doesn’t Accrue Linearly
For anyone who does think that both 1) chickens have non-zero moral value, and 2) moral value is linearly additive, are you willing to bite the bullet that there exist a number of chickens such that it would be better to cause that many chickens to continue to exist at the expense of wiping out all other sentient life forever? This seems so obviously false and also so obviously the first thing to think of when considering 1 and 2 that I am confused there exist folks who accept 1 and 2

bgaesop 24 Apr 2019 21:57 UTC
1 point
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Moral Weight Doesn’t Accrue Linearly
Replace “you” with “the hypothetical you who is attempting to convince hypothetical me they exist”, then

bgaesop 24 Apr 2019 0:00 UTC
1 point
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Moral Weight Doesn’t Accrue Linearly
>What is the mugging here?
I’m not sure what the other-galaxy-elephants mugging is, but my anti-Pascal’s-mugging defenses are set to defend me against muggings I do not entirely understand. In real life, I think that the mugging is “and therefore it is immoral of you to eat chickens.”
>Why are they “my elephants”?
You’re the one who made them up and/or is claiming they exist.

bgaesop 23 Apr 2019 23:09 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Lukas Finnveden’s comment on: Moral Weight Doesn’t Accrue Linearly
When people consider it worse for a species to go from 1000 to 0 members, I think it’s mostly due to aesthetic value (people value the existence of a species, independent of the individuals), and because of option value
Yes, these are among the reasons why moral value is not linearly additive. I agree.
People would probably also find it tragic for plants to go extinct (and do find languages going extinct tragic), despite these having no neurons at all.
Indeed, things other than neurons have value.
I personally reject this for animals, though, for the same reasons that I reject it for humans.
Really? You consider it to be equivalently bad for there to be a plague that kills 100,000 humans in a world with a population of 100,000 than in a world with a population of 7,000,000,000?

bgaesop 23 Apr 2019 23:06 UTC
1 point
in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Moral Weight Doesn’t Accrue Linearly
My reply to all of those is “I do not believe you. This sounds like an attempt at something akin to Pascal’s Mugging. I do not take your imaginary elephants into consideration for the same reason I do not apply moral weight to large numbers of fictional elephants in a novel.”

bgaesop 22 Nov 2013 9:31 UTC
27 points
on: 2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Several of these questions are poorly phrased. For instance, the supernatural and god questions, as phrased, imply that the god chance should be less than the chance of supernatural anything existing. However, I think (and would like to be able to express) that there is a very small (0), chance of ghosts or wizards, but only a small (1) chance of there being some sort of intelligent being which created the universe-for instance, the simulation hypothesis, which I would consider a subset of the god hypothesis.

bgaesop 9 Jan 2013 15:57 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Louie’s comment on: Course recommendations for Friendliness researchers
Interesting list. Minor typo: “This is where you get to study computing at it’s most theoretical,” the “it’s” should read “its”.

bgaesop 10 Nov 2012 0:36 UTC
0 points
on: Meetup : Melbourne social meetup
I have started a boardgame company whose first game is up on kickstarter at the moment. I’m going to bring the no-art, largely hand written copy that was made for playtesting.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sixpencegames/the-6p-card-game-of-victorian-combat

bgaesop 22 Aug 2011 8:16 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Will_Newsome’s comment on: Why We Can’t Take Expected Value Estimates Literally (Even When They’re Unbiased)

Working with an unnamed group of x-risk-cognizant people that LW hasn’t heard of, in a way unrelated to their setting up a non-profit.

Could you tell us about them?

bgaesop 22 Aug 2011 7:32 UTC
3 points
in reply to: kaz’s comment on: The “Intuitions” Behind “Utilitarianism”

if the disutility of an air molecule slamming into your eye were 1 over Graham’s number, enough air pressure to kill you would have negligible disutility.

Yes, this seems like a good argument that we can’t add up disutility for things like “being bumped into by particle type X” linearly. In fact, it seems like having 1, or even (whatever large number I breathe in a day) molecules of air bumping into me is a good thing, and so we can’t just talk about things like “the disutility of being bumped into by kinds of particles”.

If your utility function ceases to correspond to utility at extreme values, isn’t it more of an approximation of utility than actual utility?

Yeah, of course. Why, do you know of some way to accurately access someone’s actually-existing Utility Function in a way that doesn’t just produce an approximation of an idealization of how ape brains work? Because me, I’m sitting over here using an ape brain to model itself, and this particular ape doesn’t even really expect to leave this planet or encounter or affect more than a few billion people, much less 3^^^3. So it’s totally fine using something accurate to a few significant figures, trying to minimize errors that would have noticeable effects on these scales.

Sure, you don’t need a model that works at the extremes—but when a model does hold for extreme values, that’s generally a good sign for the accuracy of the model.

Yes, I agree. Given that your model is failing at these extreme values and telling you to torture people instead of blink, I think that’s a bad sign for your model.

doesn’t that assign higher impact to five seconds of pain for a twenty-year old who will die at 40 than to a twenty-year old who will die at 120? Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely, I definitely agree with that.

bgaesop 9 Aug 2011 22:25 UTC
1 point
in reply to: shokwave’s comment on: The 5-Second Level
That’s true. But that’s a reason to not investigate and not read this thread and not think about the subject at all, not a reason to reply in this thread that the idea is unlikely, much less to declare it unlikely.

If your reaction to reading about the truther idea is “the value of knowing the facts about this issue, whatever they are, is rather low, and it would be time consuming to learn them, so I don’t care” that is A-OK. If your reaction is “the value of knowing the facts about this issue, whatever they are, is rather low, and it would be time consuming to learn them, therefore I am not going to update whatsoever on this issue and will ignore the evidence I know is available and yet still have a strong, high-confidence belief on it” then that seems kind of silly to me.

Does that make sense? Do you agree, or not? This is not an issue I feel very strongly about, but value of information is something I’ve been thinking about more recently and so I think that hearing others’ opinions on it would be useful. At the very least, worth the time to read them :) Amusing link, by the way.

bgaesop 28 Jul 2011 17:30 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: WrongBot’s comment on: The 5-Second Level

The explosives theory involves a conspiracy

So does the traditional explanation.

The explosives theory can be and is used to score political points

So is the traditional explanation. War in Iraq, anyone?

Explosive-theory advocates seem to prefer videos to text, which raises the time cost I have to pay to investigate it

This is a very silly reason to reject an idea.

bgaesop 26 Jul 2011 8:00 UTC
7 points
in reply to: taw’s comment on: Optimal Philanthropy for Human Beings

I didn’t downvote you,

Thanks! I upvoted you.

but what you’re saying is essentially “if you accept our tribe is the most awesome and smartest, then it makes sense to donate to our tribal charity”. Which is something every single group would say, in slight variation.

Well yeah; that’s why you should examine the evidence and not just do what everyone else does. So let’s look at the beliefs of all the Singularitarians on LW as evidence. What would we expect to see if LW is just an arbitrary tribe that picked a random cause to glom around? I suspect we would see that not many people in the world, and particularly not high-status people and organizations, would pay attention to the Singularity. I predict that everyone on LW would donate money to SIAI and shun people who don’t donate or belittle SIAI.

Now what would we see if LW is in fact a group of high-quality rationalists and the world, in general, is too blinded by various biases to think rationally about low-probability, high-impact events? Well, most people, including high-status people (but perhaps not some academics) wouldn’t talk about it. People on LW would donate money to SIAI because they did the calculation and decided it was the highest expected value. And they would probably shun the people who disagree, because they’re still humans.

Those two situations look awfully similar to me. My point is, I certainly don’t think that you can use LW’s enthusiasm about SIAI compared to the general public as a strike against LW or SIAI.

Here’s results chart for various asteroid tracking efforts. Catalina Sky Survey seems to be doing most of the work these days, and you can probably donate to University of Arizona and have that money go to CSS somehow. I’m not really following this too closely, I’m mostly glad that some people are doing something here.

I’m not finding anything there indicating that they’re hurting for funding, but perhaps I’m missing it.