infotropism

Karma: 431

infotropism 6 Jan 2009 23:20 UTC
1 point
on: Emotional Involvement
Some argue that death gives meaning to life, and that life without death would be duller...

Well, I’ve often thought of how my life would be easier if I could think of it with the same feelings I’d regard a video game with. Being too involved, can make things stressful, unpleasant, and prevent action, while being relaxed and knowing that the consequences of my actions won’t mean the difference between life and death, would that add meaning to my life ? What amount of challenge and responsibility do we need ?

infotropism 9 Jan 2009 1:33 UTC
1 point
on: Serious Stories
There’s something I wanted to say about the dusk speck in a Knuth notation number of eyes versus torture for one person; something as light as a speck of dust wouldn’t even register, it’s noise level, in practice doesn’t affect someone one way or the other. A bit in the same idea that you need a signal to reach a certain strength to make a neuron fire. So to make it work, you’d need something that at least makes a difference, even the smallest of differences, in terms of pain.

Now with that being said, different people have different sensibilities. This may even be more the case in the future indeed. But in the end, after writing this, can you still argue that it is preferable to torture someone for 50 years, rather than have an unimaginably high number of people people bearing some minimal pain ?

infotropism 4 Feb 2009 12:00 UTC
7 points
on: Normal Ending: Last Tears (6/8)
How long will the superhappy-human-babyeater conglomerate last ? How many other species will they meet in the universe ? How arbitrary can and will be the aesthetics, morality, utilities of those new species ? If they are arbitrary enough, and enough of them are met, what will the resulting following compromises look like ?

Depending on how many goals, values, etc. are more or less universal—and some would perhaps be, since after most if not all those species will have come into being through evolution in the same universe—then those are the only thing that’ll remain, the only values and particularities. As the rest is arbitrary, the average will probably cancel any subtlety out.

The longer you go, the more monomaniacal and bland the resulting compromise will become. In the end, you’ll have something like orgasmium, for maybe a handful of values that were shared between a majority of those species. The rest, noise. Would that be ok ?

infotropism 5 Feb 2009 1:34 UTC
2 points
on: Normal Ending: Last Tears (6/8)
“But I’m having trouble figuring out the superhappys. I can think of a story with rational and emotional protagonists, a plot device relating to a ‘charged particle’, and the story is centered around a solar explosion (or risk of one). That story happens to involve 3 alien genders (rational, emotional, parental) who merge together to produce offspring.”

Wouldn’t that be the player of games from banks ? Would kinda make sense no ?

infotropism 13 Feb 2009 14:52 UTC
0 points
on: The Evolutionary-Cognitive Boundary
“parental grief correlates strongly to the expected reproductive potential of a child of that age in a hunter-gatherer society”

Would parental attention and love too ?

infotropism 19 Feb 2009 0:38 UTC
1 point
on: Against Maturity
So if I want to help with issues I believe are important and neglected such as people dying of old age, and if I think that the way you are advocating, superintelligence, makes sense and is the best possible way I’ve seen so far, I shouldn’t try to signal rationality by prattling here, in order to attract attention, but rather, what ? (Especially if I’m not good at math)(the temptation remains great anyway). At any rate, an excellent post, I matured a bit by reading it.

infotropism 27 Feb 2009 21:40 UTC
13 points
on: The Most Important Thing You Learned
Engines of cognition was the final thing I needed to assimilate the idea that nothing’s for free and that intelligence does not magically allow to do anything, has a cost, limitations, and obey the second law of thermodynamics. Or rather, that they both obey the same underlying principle.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/02/second-law.html

infotropism 5 Mar 2009 8:06 UTC
6 points
on: No, Really, I’ve Deceived Myself
Rationality is about winning. Sometimes it’s a great psychological relief to be able to use belief as a shield or help. I have never had any qualms about using it to counter other irrational beliefs, fears, anguishes. Like for instance, when I was a child, the fear of darkness or monsters below my bed or whatnot.

Telling myself “ok, this isn’t real and you know it, so no fear should be necessary” doesn’t have quite the same effect as “God will help me chase them away / protect me”.

Those are two different ideas, even though we use “belief” for both. I believe in God, gods, fairies, anything and whatever, whenever I find it convenient, just the same way I’ll use nootropics when I’ll find those convenient, both to the purpose of enhancing my mood or cognition. That is believing, as in, making up a comfortable, warm, fuzzy story, that recovers myself my serenity. Not believe as in “what can help me understand or manipulate the real, physical world, what is real and what will have a causal effect on that external world”.

The only wrong consequence I can foresee for such a behavior is to go too far, to really start believing in such things, and hence loose some of your potential for rational reasoning as you’ll then have to defend a lie and forgo truth sometimes, or also, feeling the need to elaborate further and further upon the stories, whether you believe them or not, wasting your time upon fantasizing.

Please note here how such stories which were at first understood to be fiction became serious stuff. Science fiction that becomes religion, as in scientism (to end up believing in your own story), or how some people will go to ludicrous lengths to demonstrate how star wars is still physically “not impossible” (to waste your time embellishing your fantasy and rationalizing it).

infotropism 8 Mar 2009 0:00 UTC
5 points
on: Simultaneously Right and Wrong
Looks like it’s related to learned helplessness to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

infotropism 13 Mar 2009 2:28 UTC
8 points
on: A Sense That More Is Possible
On a side note, we have religious schools where a religion, such as Christianism, is part of the cursus. This indoctrinates young minds very early in their life, and leaves them scared, biased in most cases for the rest of their existence.

If we had, on the other hand, schools where even just basics of rationality and related topics, such as game theory, economics, scientific method, probabilities, biases, etc. were taught, what a difference it would make.

The sooner you kickstart rationality in a person, the longer they have to learn and practice it, obviously. But if those teachings are part of their formative experiences, from childhood to early adulthood, where their personalities, dreams and goals are being put together, how differently would they organize their lives …

infotropism 14 Mar 2009 19:26 UTC
8 points
on: Closet survey #1
There’s a lot of nonsense I daydream about, like how it seems like my life is actually repeating itself again and again as if I was stuck in a time loop and was the only person to faintly remember bits of those preceding iterations. I like to play pretend with such ideas, though I don’t believe in them in the rational sense, more in the “I don’t believe in ghosts but I’m still crept out at night”

The closest I come to believing something rationally, which is still not rational in the purest, Occam sense, is that we may be living in a simulation that is running in a reality that is ontologically different from ours. After all, if we were running in a simulation, why should it be run by our descendants, or even in an universe like the one that was simulated ? To assume so is to fall for an observation selection bias I think. Why not from a place where “place”, “running” and “simulation” do not necessarily take the same meaning as they do here.

Like, you know, it is common to muse about universes with different physical rules and constants, I’m just taking this a step further; a reality whose rules of “mathematics” would encompass and supersede ours, that is, there would be mathematical, or ontological principles, that would exist up there, but not here. We would be prisoners in an ontologically impoverished reality, without even the tools to understand the higher realm, let alone break out of ours.

In such a reality, the equivalent of mathematics would not obey Gödel’s theorems, they would be consistent and all statements would be true and provable; that would need and imply at least one supplemental axiom there, the one that would at least not exist here, that would permit it, and open a whole new branch of mathematical truths and possibilities.

Like, if we all have a God-shaped hole in our soul, then mathematics has a Gödel-shaped hole in its own, and I wanted to imagine what it’d be like to have it filled.

I don’t really see how we could ever prove or disprove that though. Maybe some variation of that idea, might be falsifiable. If not, then it’s an irrational belief too.

infotropism 14 Mar 2009 19:43 UTC
9 points
in reply to: Marshall’s comment on: Closet survey #1
I think there’s a strong impulse in many people here to idolize Eliezer, I know for myself that he’s one of the only persons, if not the only one, who manages to really awe me. The questions would be, does that go against the objective of building a rationalist community, do we want that community to begin with, and if the answer to those is yes, twice, then, what can we do, as aspiring rational gentlemen, to do better than so many failed communities that fell for X or Y such as cultish-ness or whatnot ?

I think we have our chance, and, like, a sense that more is indeed possible, regardless of what Eliezer or anyone else said.

Ditto for the karmasystem, it has much potential to degenerate into a vain collection of E-status.

I’m 25 too btw.

infotropism 14 Mar 2009 22:31 UTC
5 points
in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: Closet survey #1
I comment. People read. They vote up, I win, it must be looking like I’m rational (which is a good thing in a rationalist community). My status gets better. I like status, don’t you ?

At karma 20, I win even further, as I can post my own articles. Why shouldn’t I post as many comments as possible, to get there as soon as possible ? Like, in replying to my own comment, rather than editing it ? Or posting something pretty obvious wherever I can, even though it won’t significantly add anything ?

I am voted up or down, you see this, your own vote will be influenced (anchored).

I am amongst the first people to comment, others have more time to vote me up or down, amplifying the initial effect of the combined quality of my post and the biases of those judging it.

I comment later, quite a few people won’t bother sifting through 90 comments most of which they have been reading already, my post won’t be noticed.

That’s what I can think of on top of my head, pretty sure there’s more.

infotropism 15 Mar 2009 0:23 UTC
14 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Closet survey #1
Maybe no interest in anything in particular, but what of the sexual gratification itself ? Children do masturbate, it’s a known fact. Though maybe it’s not universal. But the brain-specific hardware seems to be in place already at any rate.

http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/pa/pa_bmasturb_hhg.htm

infotropism 15 Mar 2009 21:52 UTC
4 points
on: 3 Levels of Rationality Verification
Give them a motivation that is higher than the drive to game the test. I’m an immortalist. I don’t want to die. I could deceive myself and others in many ways about my skills, purposes, beliefs, but in the end I can’t do that at the expense of my chances of not dying. Finding a similarly important purpose, something that might even be gamed, but for which gaming means you loose. Some real life test.

Maybe, measuring someone’s capability to win. I have often wondered if being rational correlates with being succesful in society. I can’t be sure, though it seems to be it should, if it doesn’t then I suppose it either means there’s a problem with a rationality that would leave you worse off, or more likely, that you aren’t being rational enough, or do not have enough mental ressources to use that rationality to make a difference. Bounded rationality, always an issue.

Capability to win could be measured in many ways, economical success for instance, or any other existing societal position of power or prestige. Of course any single of those may be gamed, but it’s ok to cheat, if cheating brings you closer to what you want, then it is rational to game. However, the goal that you hold, and for which you are vying, may not be very interesting. Empty fame, etc.

It would be best to have a personal goal set, and known, and measure how a person fares as to that goal; a goal difficult enough to require the proper use rationality to win in society, that would require to apply rationality to a very large and diverse bunch of situations, a goal that you’d want to preserve.

Can’t help much to determine what that would be, I have my own thing to protect, as I said, not sure what it might be for other people. It doesn’t work all the time either. Sometimes short time goals are vying for dominance over my actions, and I’ll give in to them, even if it means getting farther from my own personal long term goal. That’s a lack of willpower, not a lack of rationality at work there I think.

infotropism 15 Mar 2009 22:06 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Roko’s comment on: 3 Levels of Rationality Verification
Just to mention in passing, when I read your particular example, my immediate thought was “right, I’d fail right away”. Someone who sucks at math would probably find it very difficult to derive those solutions. Yet, I don’t think that means they couldn’t be rational. You’d have to take into account their personal skills and affinity in the scientific domain you’re testing, and adjust for that.

infotropism 15 Mar 2009 22:14 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Marshall’s comment on: 3 Levels of Rationality Verification
I don’t know if any of those particular suggestions would work, but the general idea is interesting, no one else suggested testing a negative correlate of rationality I think.

infotropism 15 Mar 2009 22:55 UTC
3 points
on: Soulless morality
On part of your article, and maybe not to its point, yet—Nope, I believe in the value of human life as an absolute and a minimal starting point, independently of its economical or hedonistic or whatnot value, above which you may be free to add further value for reason X or Y, because I’m scared as hell that if I’m not efficient enough, my value on the market (or any other way of assessing my value) will drop, possibly low enough to do me in finally.

Not for any other reason than to assure the safety of my own human person. Being human is being fragile, and we live a precarious life. We need to be protected, and to have some sort of value in and by ourselves. I also extend that idea to others because at this point it doesn’t cost me anything significant to do so, and because if I don’t, then there’s less incentive for others humans to extend it towards me. Also, genuine intellectual honesty and fairness, I don’t see why the absolute value of another human life should be any less than mine.

This doesn’t mean that on a personal, relative level, I don’t value mine more anyway. I expect the other guy to value his as well, though, so once again I both expect to have to cooperate, and also, to empathize with someone who’s like me, because I simply can’t help it once I realize how it feels to be in the other’s shoes.

infotropism 17 Mar 2009 17:25 UTC
1 point
on: On Juvenile Fiction
“Les fourmis” of Bernard Werber was my first book, and one that got me thinking. Lots of philosophical ideas exposed in it, though just as well as a lot of mysticism.

But nevertheless, that was the first time someone got me to think about such things as the simulation argument, by making his characters observe a simulated universe, and then wonder if they themselves were simulated, or even the characters of a story … which they were. I mean, I’d usually not really think about such an idea, I’d just dismiss it offhand without even a second thought or noticing that I had. This hooked me.

A corpus of our community’s knowledge

infotropism18 Mar 2009 20:18 UTC

8 points

14 comments1 min readLW link

infotropism

A cor­pus of our com­mu­nity’s knowledge

A corpus of our community’s knowledge