Blueberry

Karma: 2,555

Blueberry 19 Feb 2010 6:30 UTC
29 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Things You Can’t Countersignal
Why Can’t Anyone Tell I’m Wearing This Business Suit Ironically?

Blueberry 13 Jul 2010 20:42 UTC
25 points
on: Some Thoughts Are Too Dangerous For Brains to Think
If knowing the truth makes me a bigot, then I want to be a bigot. If my values are based on not knowing certain facts, or getting certain facts incorrect, then I want my values to change.

It may help to taboo “bigot” for a minute. You seem to be lumping a number of things under a label and calling them bad.

There’s the question of how we treat people who are less intelligent (regardless of group membership). I’m fine with discriminating in some ways based on intelligence of the individual, and if it does turn out that Group X is statistically less intelligent, then maybe Group X should be underrepresented in important positions. This has consequences for policy decisions. Of course, there may be a way of increasing the intelligence of Group X:

Based on all the evidence I have, I’ve made a conscious decision to avoid seeking out information on sex differences in intelligence and other, similar kinds of research.

How are you going to help a disadvantaged group if you’re blinding yourself to the details of how they’re disadvantaged?

Blueberry 15 May 2010 18:08 UTC
25 points
in reply to: NancyLebovitz’s comment on: The Social Coprocessor Model
I think that the emphasis on status here is misplaced. Here’s an analogy:

Imagine that you, dear reader, are very smart, and when you get into conversations about intellectual topics, people almost always say “Wow, you’re smart,” based on superficial indicators, and seem impressed. Now imagine that you meet someone who reacts differently: they take it for granted that you’re smart, and actually try to engage with you intellectually, rather than being awed and amazed by your intellect.

Can you see that your reaction might be very different? You might be more likely to like and be interested in talking to this person, intrigued that they weren’t so easily won over, and possibly a little motivated to prove your intelligence to them.

That’s what’s going on in the example with attractive girls, except with looks and sexuality rather than intelligence. It’s less of a “Oh wow you have high status” reaction on the girl’s part, and more of “Hey, finally someone who isn’t a pushover just cause I’m hot. He might actually be fun to talk to.” This is communicated all the time with little things like body language, the way you turn to look at someone, the way you stand, and how you speak. It usually isn’t as direct as “Will you buy me a drink?”

Blueberry 12 Nov 2009 19:48 UTC
25 points
on: Less Wrong Q&A with Eliezer Yudkowsky: Ask Your Questions
I know at one point you believed in staying celibate, and currently your main page mentions you are in a relationship. What is your current take on relationships, romance, and sex, how did your views develop, and how important are those things to you? (I’d love to know as much personal detail as you are comfortable sharing.)
What links here?
- Less Wrong Q&A with Eliezer Yudkowsky: Video Answers by MichaelGR (7 Jan 2010 4:40 UTC; 48 points)

Blueberry 29 Jul 2010 10:36 UTC
24 points
in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2
And I’d like the post of Roko’s that got banned restored. If I were Roko I would be very angry about having my post deleted because of an infinitesimal far-fetched chance of an AI going wrong. I’m angry about it now and I didn’t even write it. That’s what was “harmful for the blog, disrupts the record and makes the comments by other people on those posts unavailable.” That’s what should be against the blog ethics.

I don’t blame him for removing all of his contributions after his post was treated like that.

Blueberry 9 Feb 2011 8:50 UTC
21 points
in reply to: JoshuaZ’s comment on: Procedural Knowledge Gaps
This is actually implementation dependent. Though the most common implementation of a thermostat is just an on-off switch for the heater, it is possible to have a heater with multiple settings and a thermostat that selects higher heat settings for greater temperature differentials.

Also, turning the thermostat up extra-high means that you don’t have to go back and make the temperature higher if your initial selection wasn’t warm enough.

Blueberry 5 Aug 2010 10:46 UTC
19 points
in reply to: XiXiDu’s comment on: Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2
This is why deleting the comments was the bigger risk: doing so makes people think (incorrectly) that EY and this movement are the bigger risk, instead of unfriendly AI.

Blueberry 8 Feb 2011 7:34 UTC
18 points
in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: Procedural Knowledge Gaps

how do I tell the difference between flirting and friendliness?

Flirting is tinged with sexuality, either explicit or subtle. Maybe a touch on your arm, a wink, or innuendo. A lot of it is context-dependent, as well: for instance, the exact same words and behavior can be flirting when a guy says it to a girl, but not when a guy says it to a guy (the social default is that everyone is straight; this is different in a gay bar, for instance).

Also, how do you go from talking to someone at the beginning/end of class (or other activity) to actually being the kind of friends who see each other elsewhere and do activities together?

You have to actually be active and ask the person for their phone number, invite them to get coffee, go bowling, whatever. It doesn’t always work out—you may not meet up with 90% of them—but the other 10% will become your friends.

Blueberry 28 Mar 2012 11:00 UTC
17 points
on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 13, chapter 81
I love Chapter 81, but it would have been way better if Draco was the one accused of murder, so Harry could marry Draco.

Blueberry 26 Jun 2010 18:48 UTC
17 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Unknown knowns: Why did you choose to be monogamous?

“Cute people want monogamy because they can get it.” Good point. Girls that are equal to me in overall attractiveness are likely to stick to their guns.

I would guess that poly relationships where one partner prefers monogamy, but is “settling” for polyamory to be with a particular person, are not likely to work well (and vice versa). But this ignores that some people, even “cute” people, may actually prefer polyamory, even if they can get monogamy.

Blueberry 26 Jun 2010 18:43 UTC
17 points
in reply to: Paul Crowley’s comment on: Unknown knowns: Why did you choose to be monogamous?

If you’re always wondering if you could do better, you’ll put yourself on a hedonic treadmill that will never make you happy. Sometimes you have to say “this is the person, or these are the people, I love; I’m no longer looking for more”.

I’m not understanding this. Suppose that you have numerous friends that you care about: would you have to say “these are my friends; I’m not looking for more”? Would you then not be open to making more friends or meeting more people?

While I can understand the problem of never thinking what you have is good enough, I don’t see how being committed to improving your relationships and continuing to find more compatible partners causes this problem.

Blueberry 2 Apr 2012 7:44 UTC
16 points
in reply to: Ezekiel’s comment on: Rationality Quotes April 2012
It also fails in the case where the strangest thing that’s true is an infinite number of monkeys dressed as Hitler. Then adding one doesn’t change it.

More to the point, the comparison is more about typical fiction, rather than ad hoc fictional scenarios. There are very few fictional works with monkeys dressed as Hitler.

Blueberry 3 Feb 2011 11:37 UTC
16 points
in reply to: AlephNeil’s comment on: You Only Live Twice

As you imagine the human/posthuman population in the forthcoming centuries, why should it make the slightest difference whether any of those individuals [are] you?

Because I don’t want to die.

Blueberry 30 Jul 2010 7:29 UTC
15 points
in reply to: SilasBarta’s comment on: Eliezer Yudkowsky Facts
No, the PUA flamewar occurred in both worlds: this world just diverged from the real one a few days ago, after Roko made his post.

Blueberry 28 Jun 2010 8:04 UTC
15 points
in reply to: WrongBot’s comment on: Unknown knowns: Why did you choose to be monogamous?
Redistributing sex would require institutional rape on a massive scale.

This is just a failure of imagination! There are all sorts of ways a government could redistribute sex, should it so choose:
- Economic incentives: pay or give tax breaks to people who have sex with the sex-poor. (If you’re worried about economic coercion, you can limit the payment to those above the poverty level, or create more welfare programs so no one has to depend on sex to meet a certain living condition.) Penalize or charge extra for the sex-rich.
- Social and moral incentives: create a publicity campaign through advertisements and mass media to try to change people’s views on sex and attraction.
- Leveling out attraction levels: teaching social and flirting skills to the sex-poor and providing them with plastic surgery, personal trainers, or other cosmetic resources. Alternatively, lower everyone to the same level, as in the Kurt Vonnegut story Harrison Bergeron.
- Changing men and women’s sex drives and sexual selectivity with neurosurgery, hormonal treatment, or childhood conditioning.

Blueberry 26 May 2010 14:30 UTC
15 points
in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: On Enjoying Disagreeable Company
I’m curious now about this community’s perceptions of a person A’s requests for a person B not to reply to A’s comments. (Note: I’m using letters A and B because this isn’t about the particular situation or the individuals in question, and I don’t want the individuals’ identities to distract from the issue here.)

I posted a comment stating that it wasn’t reasonable to ask someone not to reply, which got downvoted. I’m assuming this got downvoted because people disagree.

One person replied stating that A’s original request was not to avoid replying to any of A’s comments, but to stop making comments that specifically single A out. However, this was not B’s interpretation of the request. B seems to think, possibly incorrectly, that A asked B not to reply to any of A’s comments on LW.

For people who think this is a reasonable request, here’s a hypothetical: suppose C and D are enrolled in a philosophy class together. C and D have an unpleasant interaction, and C requests that D not raise her hand in class and participate in class discussion after C has made a comment. Do people agree that this would be an unreasonable request, unlike, say, “please don’t call or email me”? If so, why is a request to not reply to someone’s LW comments substantially different?

Blueberry 22 Jan 2011 2:49 UTC
14 points
in reply to: orthonormal’s comment on: The Irrationality Game
Here’s another case:

“Let me get this straight. We had sex. I wind up in the hospital and I can’t remember anything?” Alice said. There was a slight pause. “You owe me a 30-carat diamond!” Alice quipped, laughing. Within minutes, she repeated the same questions in order, delivering the punch line in the exact tone and inflection. It was always a 30-carat diamond. “It was like a script or a tape,” Scott said. “On the one hand, it was very funny. We were hysterical. It was scary as all hell.” While doctors tried to determine what ailed Alice, Scott and other grim-faced relatives and friends gathered at the hospital. Surrounded by anxious loved ones, Alice blithely cracked jokes (the same ones) for hours.

Blueberry 27 Jul 2010 19:03 UTC
14 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Alien parasite technical guy

Consciousness is a failure mode. He was trusted with root access, and he’s spent the last hundred thousand years or so abusing it.

What? No, the whole point of this post, the whole problem, is that consciousness does not have root access.

Blueberry 12 Jul 2010 20:59 UTC
14 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread
You should totally write one!

Blueberry 27 Jan 2010 22:40 UTC
14 points
in reply to: byrnema’s comment on: Bizarre Illusions
I’d have to pretty strongly disagree. To me, the “essence” of primes is that you can factor any number into primes in a unique way. That’s the most natural definition. They’re the multiplicative building blocks of the natural numbers; everything can be reduced to them. If 1 were prime, you could no longer factor uniquely.