Hopefully_Anonymous

Karma: 180

Hopefully_Anonymous 19 Jul 2008 11:46 UTC
13 points
on: Existential Angst Factory
This may be the rare case where I’m more of a materialist reductionist than you, Eliezer. I think unhappiness is just brain structure/chemistry. I’d go further than Ferris and say excitement is too. The flip side of this is that you may be giving a lot of people bad advice and unrealistic expectations in this post. For a lot of people their unhappiness is a complicated unsolved challenge of bioengineering. With better technology, perhaps we’ll be able to solve it. Until then, they may spend a period of time being unhappy, not due to the fuzzy advice you give in the last paragraph. And not due to anything about “morality”.

Hopefully_Anonymous 21 May 2008 3:39 UTC
11 points
0
on: Einstein’s Speed
Great post. In the running for your best ever. “To put a random number on it, I doubt that anything more than one-in-a-million g-factor is required to be a potential world-class genius, implying at least six thousand potential Einsteins running around today.” Let’s hope it’s not one-in-a-hundred-billion. Because then we may never see another potential Einstein.

For the life of me, I don’t understand why no one else in the intelligent, persistent-maximizing space wants to start assembly line cloning/breeding our smartest existential risk minimizers besides me (and possibly one other person, I don’t know if they’re public about it). If this happened in the next few years, a lot of us could benefit from the potential accelerated breakthroughs starting 25-35 years from now. I think smart, open-minded folks (Eliezer, Robin, Aubrey) need to justify to us why they’re not pounding the podium on this one NOW, at least anonymously.

Hopefully_Anonymous 22 May 2008 20:36 UTC
10 points
on: That Alien Message
1. All a self-improving AI needs is good enough YGBM (you gotta believe me) technology. Eliezer gets this, some of the commenters in this thread don’t. The key isn’t the ability to solve protein-folding, the key is the ability to manipulate a threshhold amount of us to its ends.
2. We may already functionally be there. You and Chiquita Brands International in a death match. My money is CBI killing you before you kill it. Companies and markets already manipulate our behavior, using reward incentives like the ones in Eliezer’s parable for us to engage in behavior that maximizes their persistence at the expense of ours. Whether they’re “intelligent”, “conscious”, or not isn’t as relevant to me as the fact that they may have a permanent persistence maximizing advantage over us. My money is probably on corporations and markets substrate jumping and leaving us behind as more likely than us substrate jumping and leaving our cellular and bacteriological medium behind.

Hopefully_Anonymous 15 Jul 2008 22:51 UTC
9 points
on: Lawrence Watt-Evans’s Fiction
Since I was a kid, disappointed that Agatha Christie mysteries were written so as not to be predictable in advance, I wanted to read a mystery series where at the end of each chapter, there’s always enough clues to predict who the murderer is. But it’s very, very hard after the 1st chapter, a little bit easier after the 2nd chapter, etc. That’s good mystery writing, in my opinion. Not creating a solution in the last few paragraphs that’s impossible to predict in advance, because its not grounded in any of the prior clues.

Hopefully_Anonymous 14 May 2008 19:30 UTC
9 points
on: Science Doesn’t Trust Your Rationality
Where are the witty critical posters? I’m surprised to be the first to observe that this post (favorably comparing Science with Libertarianism) reads kind of like a self-parody of the OvercomingBias blog. Is one libertarian if one holds up each claim of libertarianism and says “Well, that’s an empirical question. Let’s look at the data”. Because that’s the scientific, empirical approach, it seems to me. I think libertarianism starts to look sill when viewed in that light. To be fair, so do the claims of any political party that size or larger, of which I’m aware.

Hopefully_Anonymous 23 Sep 2007 20:21 UTC
9 points
on: The Lens That Sees Its Flaws
Eliezer,

Here’s a good example in your reply to Stuart: “but only in humans does the lens see itself and see its flaws”. Here I think, as in my previous critical post, that you’re “stat[ing] overcertainty about the existence and mechanics of various phenomena”.

One might say that writing these statements in a more provisional and tentative fashion, such as “As far as we can tell, some humans are the only things capable of analyzing flaws in their ability to to observe the universe, and pointing out this exceptionalist element about some humans is of use because of X” makes communication too cumbersome, and there’s no need to to say because such nuances are implied.

But I disagree. I think the overcertain style of writing you and some other commenters fall into is less helpful for discussing this stuff than a greater level of nuance, and framing ideas and knowledge more provisionally.

In short, I’m requesting greater transparency about our bounded rationality in your posts.

Hopefully_Anonymous 25 Apr 2008 8:19 UTC
8 points
on: Where Physics Meets Experience
Great writing. It’s not hard to see where you took a lot of the debates about your writings and lifted them up into something greater -dare I say, art?

The great thing about novels and plays (this could be either) is it allows the writer to capture and express multiple points of view, without themselves committing to any of them.

I think this post is superior to your past ones in that it reflects a deeper understanding of various viewpoints on this topic, and expresses the best versions of them, rather than caricature views different than a particular one you promote in the post.

So I think you’re moving from passion plays towards Shakespeare.

Like I said, great writing!

Hopefully_Anonymous 27 Aug 2007 0:21 UTC
7 points
on: The Futility of Emergence
What are phenomena that aren’t “emergent”? I guess Eliezer is right when he says “a single quark”. I think Eliezer makes a good case that the word is overused, and doesn’t enlighten the discourse.

It might be more useful to describe things in reverse ” X are the components of phenomenon Y”. Such as “Neurons firing are the known components of intelligence”. Because when we observe something, it can be useful to ask “what are its components”?

It contrast, everything observed IS the component of some bigger system, but it can be also useful to ask, what is the next biggest ordered system it is a part of, etc. That’s where “emergent phenomena” might legitmately come in. Because an ant colony might be the next biggest ordered system that an individual ant is a part of, and that does seem like useful information.

Hopefully_Anonymous 4 Oct 2008 22:59 UTC
6 points
on: Beyond the Reach of God
There’s a corallary mystery category which most of you fall into: why are so few smart people fighting, even anonymously, against policy grounded in repugnancy bias that’ll likely reduce their persistence odds? Where’s the fight against a global ban on reproductive human cloning? Where’s the fight to increase legal organ markets? Where’s the defense of China’s (and other illiberal nations)rights to use prisoners (including political prisoners) for medical experimentation? Until you square aware your own repugnancy bias based inaction, criticisms of that of the rest of population on topics like cryonics reads as incoherent to me as debating angels dancing on the heads of pins. My blog shouldn’t be so anomolous in seeking to overcome repugnancy bias to maximize persistence odds. Where are the other anonymous advocates? Our reality is the Titanic -who want to go down with the ship for the sake of a genetic aesthetic -because your repugnancy bias memes are likely to only persist in the form of future generations if you choose to value it over your personal persistence odds.

Hopefully_Anonymous 2 Jul 2008 9:24 UTC
6 points
on: I’d take it
If I had $10 trillion dollars it would go in this order:

(1) As close to secret service level security as I could buy for myself. It seems that functionally, presidents post Reagan are no longer killable, or even shootable. Professional security seems to have gotten that good at the highest end. (2) The same equivalent in medical care. Might have to go better than presidential level. Some combo of presidential level plus the ER room of Mass Gen, with close, ²⁴⁄₇ surveillance. (3) Map my genome. Like a MadTV skit on Oprah once posited, have an institute devoted to finding cures for all that’s likely to kill me. Do this as nontransparently as possible. (4) The best PR people, the best lawyers, the best investment managers. (5) Minimum necessary charity not to be a pariah. (6) The best cryonics care and estate planning for post-revival. (7) If it’s impossible to hide being so much richer than everyone else, give as much of it away as I need to to still be one of the richest people in the world, but not so rich that I’m the number one target or impossible to socialize with some normalcy with other people. Of course, give it away to causes that will best maximize my persistence odds. If it isn’t necessary to give it away, keep it to spend as much as I can for some benefit in maximizing my persistence odds, and save and invest the rest.

Hopefully_Anonymous 2 Sep 2007 18:04 UTC
6 points
on: Stranger Than History
Since this is overcomingbias, it might be useful that when presenting our narratives of past vs. present, it might be useful to watch out for narratives invoking an inevitability of progress.

All of Eliezer’s 3 points from the past seem to touch on that: (1) new scientific knowledge, (2) improved technology, and (3) more social acceptance and opportunities for power minorities.

Hopefully_Anonymous 1 Sep 2007 11:41 UTC
6 points
on: Failing to Learn from History
Eliezer, you offer a lot of value and shouldn’t post less (in other words, I disagree with anon). Personally I wish you’d communicate a little more directly though. This is probably one of your most egregious, melodramatically obtuse posts.

Hopefully_Anonymous 4 Aug 2008 9:11 UTC
5 points
on: No Logical Positivist I
I haven’t gotten through your whole post yet, but the “postmodernist literature professor” jogged my memory about a trend I’ve noticed in your post. Postmodernists, and perhaps in particular postmodernist literature professors seem to be a recurring foil. What’s going on there? Is a way to break out of that analytically? I sense that as a deeper writer and thinker you’ll go beyond cartoonish representations of foils, if nothing more to reflect a deeper understanding of things like postmodernist literature professors as natural phenomena. It seems to me to be more a barrier to knowledge and understanding than an accurate summation of something in our reality (postmodernist literature professors).

Hopefully_Anonymous 22 Jul 2008 11:01 UTC
5 points
on: Fake Norms, or “Truth” vs. Truth
I don’t think promoting truth (or “truth”) will serve an aim of a better understanding of the world as much as promoting transparency. There seems to me to be something more naturally subversive to anti-rationality about promoting transparency than promoting “truth”.

Hopefully_Anonymous 16 May 2008 7:01 UTC
5 points
0
on: Science Isn’t Strict Enough
getting colder, in my opinion. I think you were more on track back when you posited that the scientific method, etc. were subsumed by Bayes, than this current contrasting of “the ideals of science” and bayesian reasoning/probability.

Hopefully_Anonymous 23 Apr 2008 22:31 UTC
5 points
on: Three Dialogues on Identity
One thing I’m looking forward to is the first lawsuit by a cryonics patient alleging that they no longer have a subjective conscious experience, despite being able to pass a turing test. Sort of in the tradition of recent wrongful birth lawsuits. They could submit evidence that their brain scans correspond to someone who is sleep-talking rather than someone who is conscious-awake or conscious-dreaming-a-dream-that-they’ll-remember, that sort of thing.

Hopefully_Anonymous 11 Mar 2008 14:57 UTC
5 points
on: The Second Law of Thermodynamics, and Engines of Cognition
Ridiculously good post, ridiculously good comments, in my opinion.

Hopefully_Anonymous 17 Feb 2009 13:16 UTC
4 points
on: Cynical About Cynicism
Although I think you’re overstating and misapplying your case, Eliezer (like Robin implies, a “cynical” critique of both cynicism and idealism seems to me to yield more fruit than an idealist critique of both), I agree with Richard that cynicism is a poorer epistemological framework than skepticism.

I think it’s also worth noting that it’s a common play for status to admonish people not to be so cynical, I think because (1) the crowd seems to award higher status to people who perform optimism as a general rule, and (2) there’s an element of power alignment, and (if one is powerful) power maintenance to convincing less powerful people not to be cynical about the reasons for power variance in a social group.

Hopefully_Anonymous 14 Dec 2008 9:26 UTC
4 points
on: BHTV: de Grey and Yudkowsky
Very good job, Eliezer. I recommend you do a BHTV tour of all the big blogging names in cryonics, life extension, and existential risk minimization. Kurzweil, Bostrom, and Hanson too, of course. They’re probably asking you to do this already.

Hopefully_Anonymous 3 Sep 2008 3:08 UTC
4 points
on: Rationality Quotes 13
I’m not saying the irony is intentional (although I would claim it if I was Eliezer) but note who the soldier quote is from, and also note the content of the quote it succeeds.