dclayh

Karma: 1,678

dclayh 2 Feb 2010 19:01 UTC
48 points
in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: The AI in a box boxes you

It makes me uncomfortable to think that the fate of the Earth should depend on this kind of brain race.

We cannot allow a brain-in-a-vat gap!

dclayh 21 Jul 2009 6:10 UTC
48 points
on: Shut Up And Guess
This reminds me of an infamous chemistry exam that no longer existed at my college by the time I got there but had passed into the student lore. For each question, you would first mark your answer (multiple choice, 4 or 5 choices), and then mark a confidence option. These were “high confidence” (5 points if right, −3 if wrong), “low confidence” (3 points if right, 0 if wrong), and “I don’t know, give me a point” (1 point regardless of what answer is marked).

This exam was not popular with the students.

dclayh 23 Apr 2009 4:42 UTC
45 points
in reply to: MichaelGR’s comment on: Go Forth and Create the Art!
In particular, it sounds like the wise-old-mentor-tells-protege-he-won’t-always-be-around speech from (nearly) every fantasy novel/movie ever. “Master Eliezer, you can’t die!” “Strong am I with the Way; but not that strong. Fortunately cryonics will let me come back as a glowing blue ghost.”

Silver Chairs, Paternalism, and Akrasia

dclayh9 Apr 2009 21:24 UTC

34 points

40 comments3 min readLW link

dclayh 6 Aug 2009 8:09 UTC
33 points
on: Why Real Men Wear Pink
I agree with everything except your first paragraph. I’ve never had trouble finding perfectly normal clothing that allows me to sidestep fashion and merely look good. Neither have I noticed any particular social opprobrium for doing so, though I’m hardly at a maximal status (and my social circle is likely atypical), so who knows.

My impression is that it’s always been possible (for men at least) to take the low-risk option and dress “conservatively”.

dclayh 11 Jun 2009 20:10 UTC
32 points
0
on: The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth About Morality and What To Do About It
Minor point: I find Julie-and-Mark-like examples silly because they ask for a moral intuition about a case where the outcome is predefined. Our moral intuition makes arguments of the form “behavior X usually leads to a bad outcome, therefore X is wrong”. So if the outcome is already specified, the intuition has nothing to say; nor would we expect it to, since the whole point of morality is to help you make decisions between live possibilities, so why should it have anything to say about a situation that has already happened/cannot be altered?

Or to put it another way, I’m surprised no one said something to the effect of “Julie and Mark shouldn’t have had sex because at the time they did they had no way of knowing that it would turn out well, and in fact every reason to believe it would turn out very badly, based on the experiences of other incestuous siblings.”

dclayh 17 Mar 2010 2:02 UTC
27 points
on: You Are Likely To Be Eaten By A Grue
From the introductory post:

I have some reason to believe that I am substantially more luminous than average, because I can ask people what seem to me to be perfectly easy questions about what they’re thinking and find them unable to answer.

Based on this idea, could you write some kind of luminosity diagnostic? It seems like people would be more likely to want to change if they knew what they’re missing (I know I would).

dclayh 30 Nov 2009 0:44 UTC
26 points
in reply to: MichaelGR’s comment on: Rationality Quotes November 2009
It’s not really surprising, though, is it? Brilliant people want to have other brilliant people as their colleagues.

(In fact, one mathematician of my acquaintance said that he once dabbled in circuit design, but when his first paper in the field was received as a major achievement, he left it immediately, concluding that if he could make such a large contribution so easily, the field must be unworthy of him.)

dclayh 28 May 2009 7:06 UTC
25 points
on: Do Fandoms Need Awfulness?
I find the Animal Farm example funny because it’s always seemed to me to be a monumentally dumb and unnecessary work.

More on-topic, I can’t speak for others but I really don’t think I’m a rabid Tolkien fan because of some cultlike cognitive dissonance over his glaring flaws. I freely acknowledge that his writing is not great literature in any meaningful sense of that phrase. (But this does sound like a really good explanation for Objectivists (okay, and Wagner and Joyce too), so who knows.)

Actually, on reconsideration I think that what Bond calls “monumental badness” is closely related to “lack of accessibility”. Joyce/Wagner/Tolkien/various cult movies and TV shows all have the quality of rewarding intense study and background knowledge, and frequently are off-putting to the casual reader/viewer because they assume that knowledge. This can be as simple as having watched all the previous episodes in a series, or as challenging as knowing the slang of 1904 Dublin. Therefore these works generate the feeling of belonging to an exclusive in-group of initiates (with internal hierarchies and everything), and feeling superior to outsiders who “just don’t get it” (a.k.a. hipsterism). Whereas a work that is well-crafted, and thus makes everything clear on the first reading, will not generate this fanaticism.
What links here?
- dclayh's comment on That other kind of status by Scott Alexander (29 Dec 2009 5:34 UTC; 2 points)

dclayh 7 Sep 2010 18:43 UTC
24 points
in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 3
I believe D. is imitating the style of Terry Pratchett, who uses small-caps for his “Death” character. The full-size caps are a bit annoying, I agree.

dclayh 19 Feb 2010 1:47 UTC
23 points
on: Things You Can’t Countersignal

Your countersignals are more opaque than you think they are.

Personal example: I like to insult my friends (facetiously, of course), and they’re aware of that. But when I’m with people who know my proclivities less well (or not at all), my instinctive reaction is to make the insults more severe, so it’s more clear than usual that I’m kidding (i.e., lowering the politeness bar so the audience’s prior is more likely to fall in the medium-to-high category). It almost goes without saying that this has backfired more than once.

dclayh 19 Jan 2010 22:58 UTC
22 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Normal Cryonics
Presumably some would reserve the word “hero” for those who actually succeed in changing life as we know it (for the better), and thus would be confused by your usage.

dclayh 25 Jan 2011 5:54 UTC
21 points
on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 7
Ch. 68:

Hermione wears makeup? On a regular basis?! Has this been mentioned before, in MoR or canon? Seems somewhat-to-very out of character to me.

ETA: Eliezer has now removed the reference.

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2

dclayh1 Aug 2010 22:58 UTC

20 points

703 comments1 min readLW link

dclayh 1 Feb 2010 22:50 UTC
20 points
on: Rationality Quotes: February 2010

That is not dead which can eternal lie,/ And with strange aeons even Death may die.

—H.P. Lovecraft, clearly talking about cryonic preservation
What links here?

dclayh 23 Jul 2009 5:48 UTC
19 points
on: The Price of Integrity
I have a number of responses to this post; I’ll outline of few of them:

Quite simply, it’s the point of all terrorism (and all war, for that matter): they’re framing the conversation, creating a perception which becomes reality, winning the war before entering the battlefield. It’s theatre. The point is to demoralize;

This, I think, is obvious to most LW readers (it is the only way to win against an enemy with millions of times your firepower, after all). And I do wish the US would realize that a bit more and fight back by e.g. building more large, exposed skyscrapers and not cowering behind ineffective, psychological security measures.

to expose the West as hypocritical and cowardly

On the other hand, part of being a non-savage (to use your word) is realizing when notions of honor or integrity become silly. It’s up to us to define what hypocrisy and cowardice mean, after all, and not allow our opponents to do it for us.

We train our minds, not to save ourselves, but to save the world.

This is what it comes down to. What makes you think that throwing yourself on the sword for your integrity will benefit the world more than a lifetime’s worth of dedicated effort? That’s some narcissism right there, I think. I mean yes, if (you’re pretty sure that) you can stop nuclear armageddon or save a busful of children then go right ahead and die. But something like

So what should an Atheist—more than just a nihilist—do when the terrorist has a gun to his head? This one would tell them to pull the trigger.

Really? You’re confident the vague psychological impact of your resistance (should the story ever even come out) is worth more than you could accomplish with the rest of your life?

A single choice, a rationalization born out of cowardice, can undermine all that we are, and all that we stand for

Statements like this just smack of religion: “A single sin, a single moment of weakness can damn you to hell for eternity.” We’re human, we suffer from akrasia, we have multiple conflicting desires. Perhaps this site is working towards eliminating those things (though I hope not), but this absolutism still seems unnecessary.

I also refer you to my comment on Eliezer’s post Prices or Bindings (and Eliezer’s reply to it).

dclayh 3 Aug 2010 18:04 UTC
18 points
on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2
Just occurred to me: if magic ability is genetic, it should in theory be possible to use gene therapy/retroviruses/etc. (and perhaps some magic) to make all the Muggles into wizards! (Or at least all the ones yet to be conceived or something.) I can just imagine Harry creating a Plague of Magic.

dclayh 23 Oct 2009 18:51 UTC
16 points
in reply to: botogol’s comment on: The continued misuse of the Prisoner’s Dilemma
Pretending to not understand the game and acting embarrassed in order to defect without social consequences seems like a pretty good strategy to me.

dclayh 10 Sep 2010 22:57 UTC
15 points
0
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Memetic Hazards in Videogames
Indeed, some of us spend 9 more years in school to postpone this decision. (In case you were wondering, it doesn’t help.)

dclayh 24 Jun 2009 3:47 UTC
15 points
on: The Domain of Your Utility Function
A mild defense of PDU:

If one says, “I would willingly die to save the lives of others,” the other replies, “that is only because you anticipate great satisfaction in the moments before death—enough satisfaction to outweigh the rest of your life put together.”

The other could also reply: “You say now that you would die because it gives you pleasure now to think of yourself as the sort of person who would die to save others. Moreover, if you do someday actually sacrifice yourself for others, it would be because the disutility of shattering your self-perception would seem to outweigh (in that moment) the disutility of dying.”

(And now we have come back yet again to Newcomb, it seems.)

dclayh

Silver Chairs, Pa­ter­nal­ism, and Akrasia

Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, part 2

Silver Chairs, Paternalism, and Akrasia

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2