Gedusa

Karma: 329

Gedusa 15 May 2011 18:42 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Rain’s comment on: People who want to save the world
Your right action is most excellent!

Gedusa 15 May 2011 19:22 UTC
16 points
on: Welcome to Less Wrong! (2010-2011)
Hi Less Wrong!

Decided to register after seeing this comment and wanting to post give a free $10 to a cause I value highly.

I got pulled into less wrong by being interested in transhumanist stuff for a few years, finally decided to read here after realizing that this was the best place to discuss this sort of stuff and actually end up being right as opposed to just making wild predictions with absolutely no merit. I’m an 18 year old male living in the UK. I don’t have a background in maths or computer sci as a lot of people here do (though I’m thinking of learning them). I’m just finishing up at school and then going on to do a philosophy degree (hopefully—though I’m scared of it making me believe crap things)

I’ve found the most useful LW stuff to be along the lines of instrumental rationality (the more recent stuff). Lukeprog’s sequence on winning at life is great! My favorite LW-related posts have been:
- The Cynic’s Conundrum: Because I used to think idealistically about my own thought processes and cynically about other people’s. In essence I fell into comfortable cynicism.
- Tsuyoku Naritai! (I Want To Become Stronger): Because this was just really galvanizing and made me want to do better, much more than any self-help stuff ever did!
- A Suite of Pragmatic Considerations in Favor of Niceness: Fantastic as I tended (and still tend to) be mean for no real reason and this post put a lot of motivation towards stopping. I’ve actually started to have niceness as a terminal value now, which is a tad odd.
So anyway, I’m happy to have registered and I hope to get stronger and have fun here!

Gedusa 16 May 2011 17:34 UTC
0 points
on: [LINK] Two articles on Bitcoin
Weirdly, though I think that bitcoins will succeed (and accordingly have some) I don’t think Calacanis’ article is well-founded. To focus just on the points I feel I can judge with some merit:

Bitcoin is unstoppable without end-user prosecution.

I don’t think this is true. Shutting down of all legitimate currency exchanges would tend to increase the barrier to investment by legitimate investors and be likely to decrease interest in Bitcoins. Anecdote: I would get less interested in bitcoins if this happened. Also, a focused government campaign against it might succeed in branding it as evil in public eyes, again reducing interest. I do recognize that these factors wouldn’t destroy bitcoin, but they would reduce the chances of it “changing the world”.

Bitcoins will change the world unless governments ban them with harsh penalties.

Again, I’m not so sure of this. Can anyone give me any legitimate reasons to anticipate this? So far I’ve just people on the bitcoin forums saying that the dollar/euro will collapse and bitcoin will attain worldwide dominance.

Basically, I predict they’ll find a decent niche, won’t replace any currency system in any major country and won’t increase in value to insane levels.

Gedusa 16 May 2011 20:59 UTC
0 points
in reply to: mutterc’s comment on: [LINK] Two articles on Bitcoin

And if you do assume “fiat money is doomed, doomed!” then why wouldn’t something like bitcoin become the world’s reserve currency?

Okay, I’m willing to grant that if the dollar/fiat money in general is doomed then something along the lines of bitcoin would probably take over. But I don’t assume this. I guess it is rational to put lots of money into bitcoin if you do take this premise though.

I agree that the dollar becoming effectively worthless would be pretty bad to put it mildly!

Gedusa 19 Jun 2011 14:07 UTC
1 point
on: Much-Better-Life Simulator™ - Sales Conversation
The obvious extra question is:

“If you think it’s so great, how come you’re not using it?” Unless the sales girl’s enjoyable life includes selling the machine she’s in to disinterested customers.

Gedusa 20 Jun 2011 10:50 UTC
2 points
on: General Bitcoin discussion thread (June 2011)
Would anyone care to comment on the recent Mt Gox hack n’ crash?

Personally, I’m thinking that this very bad. The currency won’t look as good the mainstream, and I’m anticipating panic sells as soon as the exchanges get up and running again. I’m agnostic as to whether Bitcoin will die or not though...

Gedusa 15 Sep 2011 20:07 UTC
0 points
on: Case study: Folding@home
I take it that you partially changed “my mistakes” to include nicotine. I enjoyed your article on it—but how are you using it?

Are you rotating with other stimulants on a regular basis, using when you like, using to promote habit formation etc.

Gedusa 16 Oct 2011 12:55 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: [link] SMBC on utilitarianism and vegatarianism.
Here maybe?

Gedusa 16 Oct 2011 16:39 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Normal_Anomaly’s comment on: [link] SMBC on utilitarianism and vegatarianism.
The obvious solution is to stop eating all those kinds of animal/animal products. That would satisfy CO2 concerns and killing concerns.

Of course, it might not satisfy things like fun of eating meat, ease of eating meat, health etc.

Gedusa 1 Nov 2011 0:57 UTC
16 points
on: 2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey
This is great! I hope there’s a big response.

It seems likely you’re going to get skewed answers for the IQ question. Mostly it’s the really intelligent and the below average who get (professional) IQ tests—average people seem less likely to get them.

I predict high average IQ, but low response rate on the IQ question, which will give bad results. Can you tell us how many people respond to that question this time? (no. of responses isn’t registered on the previous survey)

Gedusa 1 Nov 2011 2:00 UTC
0 points
in reply to: torekp’s comment on: 2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey
I didn’t think of that—given that a huge chuck here have probably taken such tests, if Yvain allowed such an estimation, it would be very helpful.

excluded-middle bias

Yes! That’s what I was thinking of :)

FHI Essay Competition

Gedusa4 Nov 2011 13:28 UTC

11 points

2 comments1 min readLW link

Gedusa 4 Nov 2011 15:30 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Paul Crowley’s comment on: FHI Essay Competition
I’m guessing they mean a university affiliated person doing a formal philosophy degree of some kind.

Gedusa 7 Nov 2011 15:20 UTC
8 points
on: Q&A with new Executive Director of Singularity Institute
What initiatives is the Singularity Institute taking or planning to take to increase it’s funding to whatever the optimal level of funding is?

Gedusa 14 Nov 2011 12:30 UTC
2 points
on: Why an Intelligence Explosion might be a Low-Priority Global Risk

Due to the absence of any signs of intelligence out there, especially paper-clippers burning the cosmic commons, we might conclude that unfriendly AI could not be the most dangerous existential risk that we should worry about.

I view this as one of the single best arguments against risks from paperclippers. I’m a little concerned that it hasn’t been dealt with properly by SIAI folks—aside from a few comments by Carl Shulman on Katja’s blog.

I suspect the answer may be something to do with anthropics—but I’m not really certain of exactly what it is.

Gedusa 15 Nov 2011 16:04 UTC
26 points
0
on: Existential Risk
Whilst I really, really like the last picture—it seems a little odd to include it in the article.

Isn’t this meant to seem like a hard-nosed introduction to non-transhumanist/sci-fi people? And doesn’t the picture sort of act against that—by being slightly sci-fi and weird?

Gedusa 15 Nov 2011 21:49 UTC
5 points
in reply to: katydee’s comment on: Existential Risk
I thought this article was for SL0 people—that would give it the widest audience possible, which I thought was the point?

If it’s aimed at the SL0′s, then we’d be wanting to go for an SL1 image.

Gedusa 16 Nov 2011 0:11 UTC
3 points
in reply to: katydee’s comment on: Existential Risk
Point taken. This post seems unlikely to reach those people. Is it possible to communicate the importance of x-risks in such a short space to SL0′s—maybe without mentioning exotic technologies? And would they change their charitable behavior?

I suspect the first answer is yes and the second is no (not without lots of other bits of explanation).

Gedusa 16 Nov 2011 11:09 UTC
6 points
in reply to: lukeprog’s comment on: New Q&A by Nick Bostrom
I was the one who asked that question!

I was slightly disappointed by his answer—surely there can only be one optimal charity to give to? The only donation strategy he recommended was giving to whichever one was about to go under.

I guess what I’m really thinking is that it’s pretty unlikely that the two charities are equally optimal.

Gedusa 24 Nov 2011 22:59 UTC
0 points
on: Will the ems save us from the robots?
Maybe some kinds of ems could tell us how likely Oracle/AI-in-a-box scenarios were to be successful? We could see if ems of very intelligent people run at very high speeds could convince a dedicated gatekeeper to let them out of the box. It would at least give us some mild evidence for or against AIs-in-boxes being feasible.

And maybe we could use certain ems as gatekeepers—the AI wouldn’t have a speed advantage anymore, and we could try to make alterations to the em to make it less likely to let the AI out.

Minor bad incidents involving ems might make people more cautious about full-blown AGI (unlikely, but I might as well mention it).

Gedusa

FHI Es­say Competition

FHI Essay Competition