This video by CGPGrey is somewhat related to the idea of memetic tribes and the conflicts that arise between them.
ImmortalRationalist
I remember a while ago Eliezer wrote this article, titled Bayesians vs. Barbarians. In it, he describes how in a conflict between rationalists and barbarians, or to your analogy Athenians and Spartans, the barbarians/Spartans will likely win. In the world today, low IQ individuals are reproducing at far higher rates than high IQ individuals, so are “winning” in an evolutionary sense. Having universalist, open, trusting values is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but should not be done to such an extent that this altruism becomes pathological, and leads to the protracted suicide of the rationalist community.
Does it make more sense to sign up for cryonics at Alcor or the Cryonics Institute?
For those in this thread signed up for cryonics, are you signed up with Alcor or the Cryonics Institute? And why did you choose that organization and not the other?
What do you think of Avshalom Elitzur’s arguments for why he reluctantly thinks interactionist dualism is the correct metaphysical theory of consciousness?
Ted Kaczynski wrote about something similar to this in Industrial Society And Its Future.
We distinguish between two kinds of technology, which we will call small-scale technology and organization-dependent technology. Small-scale technology is technology that can be used by small-scale communities without outside assistance. Organization-dependent technology is technology that depends on large-scale social organization. We are aware of no significant cases of regression in small-scale technology. But organization-dependent technology DOES regress when the social organization on which it depends breaks down. Example: When the Roman Empire fell apart the Romans’ small-scale technology survived because any clever village craftsman could build, for instance, a water wheel, any skilled smith could make steel by Roman methods, and so forth. But the Romans’ organization-dependent technology DID regress. Their aqueducts fell into disrepair and were never rebuilt. Their techniques of road construction were lost. The Roman system of urban sanitation was forgotten, so that not until rather recent times did the sanitation of European cities equal that of Ancient Rome.
I agree with the conclusion that the Great Filter is more likely behind us than ahead of us. Some explanations of the Fermi Paradox, such as AI disasters or advanced civilizations retreating into virtual worlds, do not seem to fully explain the Fermi Paradox. For AI disasters, for instance, even if an artificial superintelligence destroyed the species that created it, the artificial superintelligence would likely colonize the universe itself. If some civilizations become sufficiently advanced but choose not to colonize for whatever reason, there would likely be at least some civilizations that would.
I’m surprised that there aren’t any active YouTube channels with LessWrong-esque content, or at least none that I am aware of.
This LessWrong Survey had the lowest turnout since Scott’s original survey in 2009
What is the average amount of turnout per survey, and what has the turnout been year by year?
If you are young, healthy, and have a long life expectancy, why should you choose CI? In the event that you die young, would it not be better to go with the one that will give you the best chance of revival?
Channels that make videos on similar topics covered in the Sequences.
Avoiding cryonics because of possible worse than death outcomes sounds like a textbook case of loss aversion.
This, and find better ways to optimize power efficiency.
This is a bit unrelated to the original post, but Ted Kaczynski has an interesting hypothesis on the Great Filter, mentioned in Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How.
But once self-propagating systems have attained global scale, two crucial differences emerge. The first difference is in the number of individuals from among which the “fittest” are selected. Self-prop systems sufficiently big and powerful to be plausible contenders for global dominance will probably number in the dozens, or possibly in the hundreds; they certainly will not number in the millions. With so few individuals from among which to select the “fittest,” it seems safe to say that the process of natural selection will be inefficient in promoting the fitness for survival of the dominant global self-prop systems. It should also be noted that among biological organisms, species that consist of a relatively small number of large individuals are more vulnerable to extinction than species that consist of a large number of small individuals. Though the analogy between biological organisms and self-propagating systems of human beings is far from perfect, still the prospect for viability of a world-system based on the dominance of a few global self-prop systems does not look encouraging.
The second difference is that in the absence of rapid, worldwide transportation and communication, the breakdown or the destructive action of a small-scale self-prop system has only local repercussions. Outside the limited zone where such a self-prop system has been active there will be other self-prop systems among which the process of evolution through natural selection will continue. But where rapid, worldwide transportation and communication have led to the emergence of global self-prop systems, the breakdown or the destructive action of any one such system can shake the whole world-system. Consequently, in the process of trial and error that is evolution through natural selection, it is highly probable that after only a relatively small number of “trials” resulting in “errors,” the world-system will break down or will be so severely disrupted that none of the world’s larger or more complex self-prop systems will be able to survive. Thus, for such self-prop systems, the trial-and-error process comes to an end; evolution through natural selection cannot continue long enough to create global self-prop systems possessing the subtle and sophisticated mechanisms that prevent destructive internal competition within complex biological organisms.
Meanwhile, fierce competition among global self-prop systems will have led to such drastic and rapid alterations in the Earth’s climate, the composition of its atmosphere, the chemistry of its oceans, and so forth, that the effect on the biosphere will be devastating. In Part IV of the present chapter we will carry this line of inquiry further: We will argue that if the development of the technological world-system is allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion, then in all probability the Earth will be left a dead planet-a planet on which nothing will remain alive except, maybe, some of the simplest organisms-certain bacteria, algae, etc.-that are capable of surviving under extreme conditions.
The theory we’ve outlined here provides a plausible explanation for the so-called Fermi Paradox. It is believed that there should be numerous planets on which technologically advanced civilizations have evolved, and which are not so remote from us that we could not by this time have detected their radio transmissions. The Fermi Paradox consists in the fact that our astronomers have never yet been able to detect any radio signals that seem to have originated from an intelligent extraterrestrial source.
According to Ray Kurzweil, one common explanation of the Fermi Paradox is “that a civilization may obliterate itself once it reaches radio capability.” Kurzweil continues: “This explanation might be acceptable if we were talking about only a few such civilizations, but [if such civilizations have been numerous], it is not credible to believe that every one of them destroyed itself” Kurzweil would be right if the self-destruction of a civilization were merely a matter of chance. But there is nothing implausible about the foregoing explanation of the Fermi Paradox if there is a process common to all technologically advanced civilizations that consistently leads them to self-destruction. Here we’ve been arguing that there is such a process.
One perspective on pain is that it is ultimately caused by less than ideal Darwinian design of the brain. Essentially, we experience pain and other forms of suffering for the same reason that we have backwards retinas. Other proposed systems, such as David Pearce’s gradients of bliss, would accomplish the same things as pain without any suffering involved.
Should the mind projection fallacy actually be considered a fallacy? It seems like being unable to imagine a scenario where something is possible is in fact Bayesian evidence that it is impossible, but only weak Bayesian evidence. Being unable to imagine a scenario where 2+2=5, for instance, could be considered evidence that 2+2 ever equaling 5 is impossible.
Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote this article about the two things that rationalists need faith to believe in: That the statement “Induction works” has a sufficiently large prior probability, and that some single large ordinal that is well-ordered exists. Are there any ways to justify belief in either of these two things yet that do not require faith?
Eliezer wrote this article a few years ago, about the 2 things that rationalists need faith to believe. Has any progress been made in finding justifications for either of these things that do not require faith?
What is the general consensus on LessWrong regarding Race Realism?
Why is it that philosophical zombies are unlikely to exist? In Eliezer’s article Zombies! Zombies?, it seemed to mostly be an argument against epiphenomenalism. In other words, if a philosophical zombie existed, there would likely be evidence that it was a philosophical zombie, such as it not talking about qualia. However, there are individuals who outright deny the existence of qualia, such as Daniel Dennett. Is it not impossible that individuals like Dennett are themselves philosophical zombies?
Also, what are LessWrong’s views on the idea of a continuous consciousness? CGPGrey brought up this issue in The Trouble with Transporters. Does a continuous self exist at all, or is our perception of being a continuous conscious entity existing throughout time just an illusion?