“Is a even better joke than the previous joke when preceded by its quotation” is actually much funnier when followed by something completely different.
Dallas
Karma: 244
For the interests of identity obfuscation, I have rolled a random number between 1 and 100, and have waited for some time afterwards.
On a 1-49: I have taken the survey, and this post was made after a uniformly random period of up to 24 hours.
On a 50-98: I will take the survey after a uniformly random period of up to 72 hours.
On a 99-100: I have not actually taken the survey. Sorry about that, but this really has to be a possible outcome.
Protips:
Given both demographics and recent discourse, you are going to want vegetarian and vegan options for food.
HPMOR has a large hatedom, for various reasons. Key vectors for trolls are photos, videos, and flyers. Be more conscious than usual about personal boundaries and privacy.
Public events are going to bring together people with varying viewpoints; be emotionally prepared for having your bubble popped by culture shock.
Betting pools on the number of clueless attendees who showed up for the Potter and forgot about the Rationality are generally frowned upon by the general public. (That means you, Hanson!)
Don’t be gross, in either appearance or manners.
Don’t hand out pamphlets to the general public; it looks, you know...
Am I the only person who answered “100” on the cryonics question because “revived at some point in the future” was indefinite enough that a Boltzmann brain-like scenario inevitably occurring eventually seemed reasonable?
Also, I did all the extra credit questions. At twos in the morning.
It often seems that the very concept of making rational decisions relating to relationships is opposed by a gigantic cluster of memes designed to sacralize the concept of love as an arbitrary and unquestionable whim of narrative fiat.
For example, among rationalists, it’s probably trivial to say that any given partner is very unlikely to be the best possible. That’s really simple statistical inference. But to say that in other contexts signals that you are at best, a misanthrope, and at worst, Pure Evil.
How do we win against what seem to be cultural universals, assuming that we are constrained by currently available methods? I suppose with the above example, limiting ourselves to endogamy is probably the most feasible conclusion, which gives us the major downside of a small and widely dispersed pool of candidates, which trickles down into pure mediocrity to those in suburban and rural environments.
The art form must be linear and intend to proceed without interaction from the user.
The length of the three “notes” must be in 8:8:15 ratio (in that order).
The main distinguishing factor between “notes”, must be in 2:3:4 ratio (in that order).
The motif must be the overwhelmingly dominant “voice” when it occurs.
You do realize that South Park episode was the one where David Blaine had actual magical powers and was only defeated by a literal dei ex machina on the part of the Super Best Friends, a pan-religious tag team of Jesus, Joseph Smith, the Buddha, Krishna, Laozi, Moses and Muhammad, who all also had an array of supernatural abilities?
It kind of completely derailed the metaphor for me.
I’ve had to deal with the stress you are contributing to putting on the broader perception of transhumanism for the weekend, and that is on top of preexisting mental problems. (Whether MIRI/LW is actually representative to this is entirely orthogonal to the point; public perception has and is shifting towards viewing the broader context of futurism as run by neoreactionaries and beige-os with parareligious delusions.)
Of course, that’s no reason to stop anything. People are going to be stressed by things independent of their content.
But you are expecting an entity which you have devoted most of blog to criticizing to be caring enough about your psychological state that they take time out to write header statements for each of your posts?
If you want to stop accusations of lying and bad faith, stop spreading the “LW believes in Roko’s Basilisk” meme, and do something less directly reputation-warfare escalatory, and more productive—like hunting down Nazis and creating alternatives to the current decision-theoretic paradigm. (I don’t think anybody’s going to get that upset over abstract discussions of Newcomb’s Problem. At least, I hope.)
If you posted something not obnoxious, I’m inclined to believe the community would, in fact, upvote it.
The actual participants in the study were responding to fictional dilemmas as well; why should we assume that LW readers would “actually not do it” and the participants would?
An alien civilization within the boundaries of the current observable universe has, or will have within the next 10 billion years, created a work of art which includes something directly analogous to the structure of the “dawn motif” from the beginning of Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. (~90%)
I am impressed that a political dialogue occurred without the throwing of epithets about the motives of the parties involved. I think I might have even… actually learned something. This feels very weird. :)
Persons A are much easier to present to the general public as generating negative utility, and thus compromise the perceived value of a wrong worldview. This makes our job a lot easier when we expose what they are doing.
Also, they are probably far less dangerous when dealing with existential risks. Let’s take something that seems common (in the US, at least), say, subscribing to a premillennial eschatology. If we put one of the two in charge of a superpower:
Person B might be willing to start or escalate to a global nuclear war, because they are on the “Right Side”, and Jesus will come down from the heavens to explicitly make sure they win.
Person A will probably not.
Both are bad, but I’d clearly prefer more of Person A and less of Person B.
When guessing the teacher’s password, always go with the optimal fit for syntax?
My (admittedly unverified) guess, would be something like:
Salvator non salvatorem tenet. Propugnator non Dominum tenet, nec matrem patremneque, solum nil superum.
I think there is a vague consensus that, all other things equal, eating less will make you lose weight and eating more will make you gain weight? I might have seen someone post a counterexample at least once, but I might simply be misremembering.
Let’s go maximum ouroboros, shall we?
On a less depressingly metapolitical note, I’ll at least indulge you with one of my slightly controversial opinions:
Potential prosecution of LGBT people is a valid casus belli and/or excuse for depriving a state of self-determination.
See a professional about mental health: Tried this, absolutely useless.
Please elaborate on your experiences with this. This certainly sounds like an ugh field.
Yudkowsky’s been downvoted before; the most notable time in recent memory was probably removing the link to the NY Observer article.
I completed the survey. (Did not do the digit ratio questions due to lack of available precise tools.)