Taken, in full
Eneasz
Karma: 3,096
informing SIAI that you will fund them if and only if they require their staff to exhibit a high degree of vigilance about the possibility of poisoning the existential risk meme by making claims that people find uncredible
I believe you are completely ignoring the status-demolishing effects of hypocrisy and insincerity.
When I first started watching Blogging Heads discussions featuring Eliezer I would often have moments where I held my breath thinking “Oh god, he can’t address that directly without sounding nuts, here comes the abhorrent back-peddling and waffling”. Instead he met it head on with complete honesty and did so in a way I’ve never seen other people able to pull off—without sounding nuts at all. In fact, sounding very reasonable. I’ve since updated enough that I no longer wince and hold my breath, I smile and await the triumph.
If, as most people (and nearly all politicians) do, he would have waffled and presented an argument that he doesn’t honestly hold, but that is more publicly acceptable, I’d feel disappointed and a bit sickened and I’d tune out the rest of what he has to say.
Hypocrisy is transparent. People (including neurotypical people) very easily see when others are making claims they don’t personally believe, and they universally despise such actions. Politicians and lawyers are among the most hated groups in modern societies, in large part because of this hypocrisy. They are only tolerated because they are seen as a necessary evil.
Right now, People Working To Reduce Existential Risk are not seen as necessary. So it’s highly unlikely that hypocrisy among them would be tolerated. They would repel anyone currently inclined to help, and their hypocrisy wouldn’t draw in any new support. The answer isn’t to try to deceive others about your true beliefs, it is to help make those beliefs more credible among the incredulous.
I feel that anyone advocating for public hypocrisy among the SIAI staff is working to disintegrate the organization (even if unintentionally).
Am I losing my mind, or was there a change made to Chap 16? I recall this section:
″ No, there is exactly one monster which can threaten you once you are fully grown. The single most dangerous monster in all the world, so dangerous that nothing else comes close. The adult wizard. That is the only thing that will still be able to threaten you.”
However now it reads:
″ No, there is exactly one monster which can threaten you once you are fully grown. The single most dangerous monster in all the world, so dangerous that nothing else comes close. The Dark Wizard. That is the only thing that will still be able to threaten you.”
If it was changed… why the change? The original was better, and (perhaps more to the point) more in keeping with Quirrell’s character. He wouldn’t distinguish between adult and Dark wizards when it comes to threat-to-his-students assessment.
Hitchens is a well known author, journalist and militant atheist.
I don’t think “militant” is the right word here. Militant christians shoot abortion doctors. Militant muslims employ suicide bombers. Militant leftists take hostages and hide in jungles, and militant authoritarians form lynch mobs.
Militant atheists, by comparison, write books and engage in debates & mockery (if Hitchens is any example).
Using this term to refer to unapologetic atheists is a tactic used by fundies who want to make the public fear and hate atheists as much as they fear and hate extremists who actually use deadly violence. I don’t think we’re well-served in adopting it.
Gerald Grice. He was the first person Rorschach killed, and triggered his change. He killed Blair Roche, 6 year old girl, and fed her to his dogs. Both are named dropped by Moody as he discusses the Killing Curse.
I’m seconding the request for next year to include a Monogamish option. I’m in a basically monogamous relationship, but we both sometimes sleep with friends.
(also I took the survey)
Penn Jillette comments at length and with great anger that Obama nonchalantly talked about drug use in college and yet continues to enforce federal drug laws. Penn rants that Obama wouldn’t be nearly so nonchalant about it if he was treated like those of the lower classes who would have served jail time for the same actions and been left with a permanent record that would make them nearly unemployable and certainly never able to go into politics.
I’ve written a short fiction piece that has been accepted for publication. My first ever professional publication will appear in February’s issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine.
The new version was like a shock-glove-plated punch to the gut right at “I thought it was to my death I went”. Wouldn’t trade anything for that feeling. :)
Greater emotional impact in much fewer words. It actually feels awful, rather than sounding like a drawn-out rationalization. New version wins on both counts IMHO.
Somewhere in the old threads I think, but I’m in a rush and can’t look it up right now. Quick points:
Quirrell organized the whole Dementor visit from the beginning
Quirrell waited until Hermione was running up to the Dementor and would’ve seen it herself anyway to “suddenly notice” Harry’s wand next to the Dementor’s cage
Quirrell suggested the Headmaster leave early, before it was Harry’s turn
Quirrell instructed Harry’s friends to “give him space” even though he probably knew that it was better for Harry to be surrounded by his friends as Dumbledore said
Quirrell undermines Harry’s confidence just before he goes in front of the Dementor (If you can’t do it, I at least will understand)
All plausibly deniable, and exactly Quirrell’s style.
In retrospect, there’s many things I wish I’d done differently. Apparently it was not clear to everyone that the topic was the desirability of immortality, rather than technical feasibility. I also should have instituted time limits for everyone, and acted as more of a moderator to keep things on-topic (there were several ventures off topic). That would require me removing myself from the majority of the conversation, but that’s entirely something I could and should do. I’ll know better for next time I do this sort of thing. Experience—it helps. :)
If there was a scientific field (Evolutionary Sociology) that declared rationalism is harmful for humanity and the pursuit of rationality should be shunned or persecuted, I suspect that the vast majority of us would not accept these claims at face value and would look to see if their research was flawed, or their conclusions didn’t follow. And if we found such evidence, we’d probably shout it from the rooftops.
(PZ links below, as I read him daily)
Evo-Psych is, not infrequently, used as a weapon against women.
The case made for these claims is often very bad.
Every hunting man had a gatherer mother; every gathering woman had a hunting father.
This is the problem for the evolutionary psychology of sex differences: for each trait that you want to claim is a product of selection for a behavior that is different between sexes, you have to postulate a Plus that restricts its expression to a single sex.
So, sure, tell me that humans evolved cognitive mechanisms to aid in navigating by landmarks for better fruit and tuber searching, and I might well believe it to be reasonable; now tell me why you think it would only operate in women, and how it would be actively suppressed by genetic mechanisms in men. Then you can tell me why navigating by distance and direction is actively shut off in women. You’re the ones who like purely adaptive explanations: why would there be an advantage to individuals having each only half the suite of potential genetic navigation tools switched on?
If Evo-Psych is used by sexists the same way that Eugenics was used by totalitarians, it will suffer the same stigma and be abandoned for decades the same way. Seeing as this is a self-defense move by a traditionally oppressed group, I don’t blame them. Unless the crap is weeded out quickly the whole field will be disgraced. The victims are currently only pointing out all the crap, they didn’t allow it to get in there in the first place. The gatekeepers need to stop sleeping on the job, rather than trying to defend their prior shoddy performance.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Quirrell. It’s made me blind to a lot of his flaws, so I’ve tried to actively focus on his evil actions and how much I would hate someone doing that to me. But this latest chapter made me love him all over again. Even though I realize it probably contains huge amounts of misrepresentation if not outright lies.
I’m worried I may be turning Bad.
OTOH, this may just be superb writing, to make the villain so completely relate-able. Either way, every time a chapter goes Quirrell-heavy I swoon. Glad we got one in the current arc so I don’t have to wait longer.
Can we taboo “Suffer”? Because at this point I’m not even sure what that means. Is it “a biological signal that identifies damage”? That seems too simple, because most sophisticated machines can detect damage and signal it, and we don’t particularly worry ourselves about that.
Catch-22 re God & pain:
Oh, He was really being charitable to us when He gave us pain! Why couldn’t He have used a doorbell instead to notify us, or one of his celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person’s forehead. Any jukebox manufacturer worth his salt could have done that.
Listening to RadioLab they described a wasp who’s midsection had been accidentally crushed. As it was dying it began to eat it’s own viscera. Likely because it detected a rich food source and began executing the standard action when in the presence of a rich food source. It was at this point that I finally intuitively understood that insects are simply biological replicating machines. I cannot think of them as feeling anything akin to suffering any more, merely damage-avoidance subroutines.
It seems we’re concerned about the capacity of a mind to experience something it wants to avoid. Doesn’t that imply that the complexity of the mind is a factor?
In Ch. 7, the Harry-and-Draco conversation needs to be toned down even further because multiple parents have announced their intention to have their children read this fanfic – and I know that revision is going to be controversial, but Draco’s current conversation is also a little out-of-character by the standards of the Draco in later chapters.
I am very saddened by this. Chapter 7 was what really hooked me into the story. Half of it was Harry’s incredible “This is why science ROCKS” speech, which is still one of my most favorite monologues ever. And half of it is the pure emotional shock of hearing an 11-year-old boy casually say he plans to rape a 10-year-old girl. It had an immediate physical effect on me, and the after-effects lingered for the rest of the day. The fact that it came so out of the blue in such an unexpected setting… it was damned effective. I will be very sad to see it go.
This raises a question for me—I know of at least one 11 year old reading this story. Sometimes kids read things above their grade level, and are exposed to concepts earlier than usual (I suspect that happened to almost everyone on LW). So… is HPMoR intended primarily for adult audiences, or for children? Considering the level of the writing, the many concepts that are probably too complex for most children, and the entirety of the Azkaban arc… isn’t it fair to say that this is a work aimed at adults? And if so, should it really be diluted because some children will also get their hands on it? Can you imagine if your favorite dark/disturbing anime was trimmed to fit a PG rating because kids would end up seeing it?
I guess I’m far too literal-minded. The whole time I simply assumed the giants were a normal God parable. I was rather non-plussed about the whole quote until I saw “A meditation on childhood” and then my head exploded. I don’t even remember being a kid anymore.
Get a credit card with no annual fee (preferably one with 1% cash back). Pay absolutely everything with card (only rent/mortgage, loan payments, and utilities should be paid in a different way, and that’s only because they don’t accept credit card). Pay it off in full once every month (the same date every month, and only once a month) before the due date so you never give the credit card company anything more than the actual cost of what you bought.
This makes it incredibly easy to track your finances. Rent/mortgage and loan payments are fixed. If you make a steady monthly wage you know exactly how much money you are getting every month and exactly how much you have left for all non-loan expenditures. That number should be at least $100 more than you pay to the credit card to pay off your past month of living every month.
When you bank more than usual in a month you feel awesome. When you have to pay more than you made in a month you realize immediately and can take quick steps to curtail it.
This also gives you real-world data as to what living costs, helping you to avoid the planning fallacy.
An excerpt from Wise Man’s Fear, by Patrick Rothfuss. Boxing is not safe.
The innkeeper looked up. “I have to admit I don’t see the trouble,” he said apologetically. “I’ve seen monsters, Bast. The Cthaeh falls short of that.”
“That was the wrong word for me to use, Reshi,” Bast admitted. “But I can’t think of a better one. If there was a word that meant poisonous and hateful and contagious, I’d use that.”
Bast drew a deep breath and leaned forward in his chair. “Reshi, the Cthaeh can see the future. Not in some vague, oracular way. It sees all the future. Clearly. Perfectly. Everything that can possibly come to pass, branching out endlessly from the current moment.”
Kvothe raised an eyebrow. “It can, can it?”
“It can,” Bast said gravely. “And it is purely, perfectly malicious. This isn’t a problem for the most part, as it can’t leave the tree. But when someone comes to visit...”
Kvothe’s eyes went distant as he nodded to himself. “If it knows the future perfectly,” he said slowly, “then it must know exactly how a person will react to anything it says.”
Bast nodded. “And it is vicious, Reshi.”
Kvothe continued in a musing tone. “That means anyone influenced by the Cthaeh would be like an arrow shot into the future.”
“An arrow only hits on person, Reshi.” Bast’s dark eyes were hollow and hopeless. “Anyone influenced by the Cthaeh is like a plague ship sailing for a harbor.” Bast pointed at the half-filled sheet Chronicler held in his lap. “If the Sithe knew that existed, they would spare no effort to destroy it. They would kill us for having heard what the Cthaeh said.”
“Because anything carrying the Cthaeh’s influence away from the tree...” Kvothe said, looking down at his hands. He sat silently for a long moment, nodding thoughtfully. “So a young man seeking his fortune goes to the Cthaeh and takes away a flower. The daughter of the king is deathly ill, and he takes the flower to heal her. They fall in love despite the fact that she’s betrothed to the neighboring prince...”
Bast stared at Kvothe, watching blankly as he spoke.
“They attempt a daring moonlight escape,” Kvothe continued. “But he falls from the rooftops and they’re caught. The princess is married against her will and stabs the neighboring prince on their wedding night. The prince dies. Civil war. Fields burned and salted. Famine. Plague...”
“That’s the story of the Fastingsway War,” Bast said faintly.
At the same time the degree of confidence that many posters have about their beliefs in the significance of Less Wrong and SIAI is unsettling to me. A number of posters write as though they’re sure that what Less Wrong and SIAI are doing are the most important things that any human could be doing. It seems very likely to me that what Less Wrong and SIAI are doing is not as nearly important (relative to other things) as such posters believe
I feel like an elephant in the room is the question of whether the reason that those of you who believe that Less Wrong and SIAI doing things of the highest level of importance is because you’re a part of these groups (*).
You know what… I’m going to come right out and say it.
A lot of people need their clergy. And after a decade of denial, I’m finally willing to admit it—I am one of those people.
The vast majority of people do not give their 10% tithe to their church because some rule in some “holy” book demands it. They don’t do it because they want a reward in heaven, or to avoid hell, or because their utility function assigns all such donated dollars 1.34 points of utility up to 10% of gross income.
They do it because they want their priests to kick more ass than the OTHER group’s priests. OUR priests have more money, more power, and more intellect and YOUR sorry-ass excuse for a holy-man. “My priest bad, cures cancer and mends bones; your priest weak, tell your priest to go home!”
So when I give money to the SIAI (or FHI or similar causes) I don’t do it because I necessarily think it’s the best/most important possible use of my fungible resources. I do it because I believe Eliezer & Co are the most like-me actors out there who can influence the future. I do it because of all the people out there with the ability to alter the flow of future events, their utility function is the closest to my own, and I don’t have the time/energy/talent to pursue my own interests directly. I want the future to look more like me, but I also want enough excess time/money to get hammered on the weekends while holding down an easy accounting job.
In short—I want to be able to just give a portion of my income to people I trust to be enough like me that they will further my goals simply by pursuing their own interests. Which is to say: I want to support my priests.
And my priests are Eliezer Yudkowsky and the SIAI fellows. I don’t believe they leach off of me, I feel they earn every bit of respect and funding they get. But that’s besides the point. The point is that even if the funds I gave were spent sub-optimally, I would STILL give them this money, simply because I want other people to see that MY priests are better taken care of than THEIR priests.
The vatican isn’t made out of gold because the pope is greedy, it’s made out of gold because the peasants demand that it be so. And frankly, I demand that the vatican be put to fucking shame when it compares itself us.
Standard Disclaimer, but really… some enthusiasm is needed to fight Azathoth.
$200, and finally signed up for monthly donations as well.