danlowlite

Karma: 88

danlowlite 11 Jul 2011 21:36 UTC
1 point
on: Does Your Morality Care What You Think?
Just a typo alert:

“But if my taste in pizza changes, that changes the consequneces of eating, which changes the moral justification, and so the moral judgment changes as well.”

consequneces-->consequences

danlowlite 23 Jun 2011 13:46 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Ender’s comment on: Lonely Dissent
OK. I’ll follow up. They might want to, but what events would that trigger? The benefits might be clear, but for what costs?

Firstly, you would add another person to the population pool. That addition, in and of itself, is probably a negligible effect. Humans do this with some regularity. It is unlikely that the addition of one specific historical figure would push us over some theoretical tipping point.

What would be a greater cost would be one of rights: does the resurrected “owe” anything for being plucked from history, financially or metaphorically? What psychological toll might be exacted on an 200′s era Roman slave when he shows up in Chicago in 2023? Assuming he could even grasp what had happened and learn a modern language, how is he to provide for himself? If he cannot, who? The historian, perhaps. What a decidedly high-risk research proposal: what if your resurrection is a boring fool?

Sure, I think it’d be neat to interview Hannibal or Twain or any number of folks from the past, I just think it might be a bad idea.

Probably reading into the idea a bit much at this point...

danlowlite 7 Mar 2011 14:59 UTC
13 points
in reply to: MBlume’s comment on: Rationality Quotes: March 2011
It would be a miracle.

danlowlite 4 Mar 2011 15:06 UTC
17 points
in reply to: Psy-Kosh’s comment on: Rationality Quotes: March 2011
Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do.

Inigo Montoya: What’s that?

Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.

danlowlite 24 Feb 2011 17:17 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Jafraldo_Menendez’s comment on: Evaluability (And Cheap Holiday Shopping)
Depending on the mass of the former, it might have been a better deal in material costs.

danlowlite 15 Feb 2011 15:04 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Gray_Area’s comment on: The Hidden Complexity of Wishes
Material sciences can give us an estimate on the shattering of a given material given certain criteria.

Just because you do not know specific things about it doesn’t make it a black box. Of course, that doesn’t make the problems with complex systems disappear, it just exposes our ignorance. Which is not a new point here.

danlowlite 31 Jan 2011 14:27 UTC
3 points
in reply to: bigjeff5’s comment on: Say Not “Complexity”
It could be built in. I agree. But the child is curious about it’s texture and taste than how the pieces fit together. I had to show my child a puzzle and solve it in front of her to get her to understand it.

Then she took off with it. YMMV.

Good point, though.

danlowlite 28 Jan 2011 16:58 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Caledonian2’s comment on: Fake Morality
If your neighbor uses the bathroom more often, they use more water (not only by flushing, which may be considered inevitable), but by washing their hands perhaps more than necessary (going to the bathroom twice instead of once) and using anti-bacterial soap, which could lead to stronger, resistant bacteria. Of course, the use of said soap might result a long-term difficulty and the results would not be immediately apparent. So not only must an act have consequences, but those consequences must be reasonably immediate and apparent (and, as stated in Eliezer’s main post, necessarily negative). A current human morality system could not track the actions and the consequences.

An omniscient god (or being) would be able to measure the harm. Further it would be able to track the consequences of ones actions. My use of anti-bacterial soap could cause a MRSA infection in someone else and kill them.

I do not think anyone (except aforementioned omniscient being) would be able to say I caused that infection on purpose. And yet, that person is still dead. A key here is intention. But unfortunately, we can harm and even kill others without intending to and yet we are held responsible. I would rarely think, say, a drunk driver would intend to get into an accident, but we punish them anyway because they intentionally increased the risk we all experience on the road.

But that risk (one that includes drunk drivers) is something we all assume, anyway. So wouldn’t an accident victim also be culpable. That seems distasteful.

So, an immoral action must have a negative consequence that is reasonably immediate and apparent and must have been done intentionally, or at least without an undue amount of risk outside normally applicable ranges.

But that’s probably not right. Does it exclude god? No, because that belief isn’t necessary. It doesn’t exclude unicorns, either.

I guess the gist of what I’m saying is that you need to be careful with your soap.

danlowlite 17 Dec 2010 22:08 UTC
0 points
on: Configurations and Amplitude
This is very cool. I know that’s just in my head, but now I just want a half-silvered mirror to test this with my kids.

danlowlite 9 Dec 2010 22:38 UTC
1 point
in reply to: pseudonymous’s comment on: Feeling Rational
“It is not thought wise to have anyone ‘emotional’ in any position of importance.”

By whom? People who would like to “be able to have a beer” with a President?

I think Vassar is a little more accurate here, but that people only apply the lack of emotion within a narrow field that relates to their specialty at work. It would not be beyond the pale to see someone cheering enthusiastically for a sports team, for example.

danlowlite 8 Dec 2010 14:28 UTC
0 points
in reply to: DanielLC’s comment on: Epistemic Luck
But that means that people cannot change their mind and realize when they are wrong.

danlowlite 2 Dec 2010 22:39 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Caledonian2’s comment on: Perpetual Motion Beliefs
I suspect the people who suspect a real problem with the lottery have never played it.

I don’t play regularly, or at all anymore. I can actually count on one hand the number of times I have, but in all those occasions the primary joy from that was not the possibility that I might become more wealthy. It was because it was fun to engage with my peers in a group discussion of “What If.”

From what I have witnessed, this seemed to be a popular activity: the discussion of fantasy. This didn’t mean that anyone had any illusions about the possibility of winning. I can do that math.

Simply viewing it as a probability game ignores a motivation: it’s fun to dream. And it’s fun to do so together. “What would you get?” “Who would you give money to?” “Would you quit right away or give two-weeks’ notice?” and so on.

Of course, because I only bought lottery tickets with people who bought lottery tickets with me means that my sample is biased towards those who bought them with me. And that I bought lottery tickets.

Edit: Just a note that the “What If” game need not be a social activity. Obviously.

danlowlite 30 Nov 2010 14:49 UTC
0 points
in reply to: theotetia’s comment on: Don’t Believe You’ll Self-Deceive
Truth has a beauty all its own.

Not that false things can’t have beauty, but we usually call those things art.

danlowlite 29 Oct 2010 14:18 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Colin_Reid’s comment on: On Expressing Your Concerns
I’ve been in a meeting where this was done and an openly designated “contrarian” was appointed. The specific instance where this was performed was a “diversity” training, so YMMV.

He didn’t do anything. He was too new and high in the organization to be effective. His position, when he did speak up, made it unlikely that someone would contradict his contradictions. While eventually he became effective at his job (replacing a much-loved person, no easy task), it was still simply not like him to do this; we all saw it and he didn’t work out in this contrarian role.

See also: Good Cop/Bad Cop.

danlowlite 29 Oct 2010 13:58 UTC
2 points
in reply to: anonymous_poster’s comment on: Hold Off On Proposing Solutions
Yes, but while those two topics may be interesting to me, other “easy” problems (home and car maintenance, farming) are not so much even though I recognize their importance. I’m not going to learn how to do everything basic before I am going to learn something complicated. Am I?

Is an AI?

And these problems aren’t even easy, really. Like the person who knows how to make an AI, one imagines they “know” how to play guitar. There’s a competence level and there is a deeper mastery/creation level. I know three chords; I am not .

Unless that was your point.

danlowlite 28 Oct 2010 14:07 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Louis_Choquel’s comment on: The Logical Fallacy of Generalization from Fictional Evidence

What about marrying one? or having children with it (or should I type “her”)?

Depends. What does the robot identify as?

danlowlite 27 Oct 2010 14:30 UTC
4 points
in reply to: savagehenry’s comment on: Priming and Contamination
Same here. I had to look at the HTML source for the color code: #ff3300. But I figured that it wasn’t green before I looked, because I guess I had been primed to expect it not to be the case. At least I think I did.

danlowlite 26 Oct 2010 14:01 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Cyan2’s comment on: Lonely Dissent
I would imagine (and, I see poke below has mentioned this off-hand) that people are...not that interesting.

Oh, I am sure you are. Like, personally. But, really, would you want to resurrect a random 1850s person? Aside from kitsch or perhaps historical interests (if they were an interesting or influential personality), there are certainly better ways to spend your time.

It’s not going to be like Encino Man, I am pretty sure.

Edit: I don’t think I agree...but I’m not sure yet.

danlowlite 25 Oct 2010 21:46 UTC
13 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Guardians of the Gene Pool
Were/Are you joking? Seriously. I don’t understand how one can own a word. Did I miss something?

I’m not disagreeing that it might involve activism (though I would define activism quite broadly), but how can one “own” a word?

danlowlite 8 Oct 2010 20:49 UTC
0 points
in reply to: PK’s comment on: Reductive Reference
“Anyways, I still hold that you can only define reductionism up to point after which you are just wasting time.”

I agree that we might be wasting time. But what do you mean “up to a point”?

The flaw isn’t in the idea, but rather in the way we express it. It appears like we’re looking for the right analogy. I don’t know if that’s going to work. But I guess I could try anyway.

I think it might be more like a computer. We don’t function at a “machine code” or even an “assembly language” level; rather, it’s more like we’re a scripting language on the operating system.

Of course, that’s imperfect, too.