Can you post references to new mathematical (or philosophical) proofs that you have solved so we can check the assertion that such altered states are beneficial? Have the results been peer reviewed or published (not that them not being peer-reviewed or published makes them any less valid but this gives a baseline of that others have checked your work)?
Also, what was your reasoning for doubting that you exist? How was Descartes proof insufficient?
“how do we minimize suffering in the Middle East?” may be an easier question than “who’s to blame?”
The quickest way to minimize suffering is to nuke the Middle East into a sea of glass with the nukes spaced such that every person is vaporized instantly without feeling a thing. As they feel nothing from their instant vaporization, they are no longer suffering and no longer are capable of suffering or causing suffering.
Somehow I don’t see this as a viable solution.
Far more people become Mormons because they were raised by Mormon parents than because they had a long talk with two guys in white shirts.”
You seriously should have chosen a different sect, this is false for Latter-Day Saints. 70% of Latter-Day Saints are converts to the Church so not raised by LDS parents. For the most recent year there were 120,528 children born to parents that are LDS and 272,814 convert baptisms.
always a next opportunity
Only if you are immortal.
The evidence is that giving money in the form of aid to countries is almost useless in helping the average person in that country become better off. However, getting rid of trade restrictions and showing the people in a country what things they can produce has been very effective in lifting people and countries out of poverty. This means that buying fancy chocolate for instance will likely have a greater effect on helping poor people in Africa than donating an equal amount of money in aid.
To continue this example people in Africa are unable to vote in US (or Europe) the two places that have high tariffs that if reduced would greatly change the welfare of most of the developing world. In the US HFCS is used instead of sugar due to high sugar tariffs, ethanol is made from corn instead of importing it from Brazil, and tropical fruits are restricted to favored trading partners. This is highly beneficial if one grows sugar in Florida and moderately beneficial if one grows corn but poverty inducing if one lives in a country where the main export is Sugar.
Therefore if we really did care about the welfare of people in the rest of the world then we should be donating to a PAC that has the purpose of repealing such tariffs as this would be the most cost effective way of reducing world wide poverty. Instead we donate shoes and clothes that drive the local textile industries out of business, we donate money for food that creates artificial famines as local farmers have no reason to plant crops, and we condition a lot of donations on things such as “green” technology that is more expensive and less useful for development then the alternative (as well as non-producible in Africa meaning most of the money gets sent back to the western countries that are “helping”). Then we wonder why one of the prevailing views in Africa is that the west wants Africa to remain poor.
Red is a color” and cuts themselves off and says “Red is what that stop sign and that fire engine have in common
They are both physical objects, usually containing some metal and of roughly the same height, that have the ability to stop traffic, thus are found on a road, and have the colors of silver and white and (presumably by the specification of “that”) also red in common?
(by which the indignant demand that others agree with their indignation), which is unfortunately how I tended to write back when I was writing the original Less Wrong sequences
(sarcasm) Really? I hadn’t noticed in the slightest… (/sarcasm)
What would be an exercise which develops that habit?
Talking with people that do not agree with you as though they were people. That is taking what they say seriously and trying to understand why they are saying what they say. Asking questions helps. Also, assume that they have reasons that seem rational to them for what they say or do, even if you disagree.
This also helps in actually reasoning with people. To show that something is irrational, it is needed to show that it is irrational within the system that they are using, not your own. Bashing someone over the head with ones reasonings in ones own system doesn’t (usually) work (unless one believes there is an absolute correct reasoning system that is universally verifiable, understandable, and acceptable to everyone (and the other person thinks likewise, or one happens to actually be right about that assumption)). Often times, such reasonings when translated to what the other person’s system is become utter nonsense. This is why materialists have such a hard time dealing with much of religion and platonic thought, and vice versa.
Taking as an assumption that the thing one is trying to show is irrational (or doesn’t exist) is actually irrational (or actually doesn’t exist) is perhaps the worst thing to do when constructing an argument meant to convince people that believe otherwise. For example see, The Amazing Virgin Birth and try and think of it from a Catholics perspective.
Problem with this is that if the experimental treatments never get tried then even if cryonics works they will still be terminally ill when defrosted. They should probably also make sure that there is some prize around for curing their specific illness with the hope that it will be easily solvable in the future, assuming the illness is relatively rare.
There is a category of religiously inspired posts that creep me out and set of cult alarms. It contains that post about staring from Scientology and that Transcendental meditation stuff that while I found it interesting and perhaps useful doesn’t seem to belong on LW and now recently these Mormon posts abut growing organizations. shudder
I actually agree with this statement.
Calcsam’s answer is pretty much straight out of Preach My Gospel which is the missionary manual. I should clarify that it is from the section on how to be a better missionary and person rather then the section on what to present to investigators.
Actually, a lot of the posts he has made are boiling down that book into Less Wrongian terms. Which reading further down seems to be the point and why he was given the ability to post in the first place.
anticipations relating to the “supernatural” aspects of mormonisim
The restoration of the Ten Tribes from the land of the north and that Zion the New Jerusalem will be built pretty much where Kansas City MO currently stands. Also, the building of a temple on the temple mount in Jerusalem, Christ coming again. These are the scriptural ones, there might be more, unfortunately no specific time frame is given for any of that so while they are the most sure predictions unless one is living through one of those coming true they are relatively useless in evaluating claims of religions.
Here are some that are more specific and the first two do have more of a time table with which to evaluate, however they are not scripture:
In October 1916′s General Conference one of the Apostles said that someone there present would see the restoration of the Ten Tribes and would read the records they had. The first part could be interpreted in a variety of ways that don’t mean much at all if one is not a member of the church. The reading of the records could by itself just mean somebody present (possibly as a baby) was/will be given the special opportunity to read said records. However taken together and combined with the Biblical scriptures on the subject, and noting that said statement is still contained in official church teaching manuals, then said occurrence should occur with in the next 20 or so years (assuming there was some fairly new baby present at the meeting) or sooner (assuming some young adult or child that could understand was what was meant). There the potential problem that said Apostle was speaking from his limited understanding and did not actually receive any revelation on the subject, however given that the statement still appears in Church manuals for university students this leads me to believe that it is thought of as a revelation.
Lets see, there have been 4 presidents of the Church that have said that the New Deal programs and the continued expansion of government will lead the United States in to economic circumstances that will make the Great Depression pale in significance if not stopped and reverted. I am under the assumption that they have not been stopped or reverted as of yet.
There was some talks by general authorities about another civil war in the United States at some future point in time, this from around the time of the Civil War. I am not sure if this was coming from the section of the D&C that talks about the civil war and other wars and so was their interpretation of things (which is often and can always be wrong) or if actual prophecy was involved. No time table was given for this.
No one pointed this out but Muslims consider Christians to be people of the Book and allow them to go to heaven assuming they are good Christians.
Further, Hindu and Buddhists believe in reincarnation and believe that if one is a good Christian one will become reincarnated possibly as a Hindu or Buddhist next time around so it is safe to ignore them in calculating Pascals wager. Also, the Hindu’s have a claim that Christians, Islam, and Judaism all worship the Hindu Brahmam.
Catholics also since Vatican II believe that it is possible for everyone that is not Catholic to go to heaven and in particular accept most other Christian baptisms as being valid.
If one were to look at pascals wager from a strict perspective of what each religion believes about other religions going to Hell or Heaven then one would be left with only a relatively few possible choices such that believing in one of them will send you to hell from the others perspective. If one further considers as evidence the number of believers (or other religions) that allow one the possibility to reach heaven then the groups with the most evidence would be some ultra-conservative evangelical group that thinks that all Catholics and mainstream Protestants are going to Hell but are part of a greater communion that is recognized by the Catholic Church, so like the Westboro Baptist if that group were actually Baptist.
Pascal’s Wager seems like a poor way to choose a religion if one is more concerned with what is actually true. It is also a poor way to choose a religion if one actually believes that God hears and answers prayers. I am highly biased on this point though and claim additional information.
“But it is not a significant question, and learning its answer does not advance human knowledge in a significant way.”
Unless you work at a large grocery chain or for the company that makes Fig Newtons.
Also one could probably create an semiautomatic spammer as well that had the purpose of defeating the karma requirements without much difficulty.
Basically create a core of accounts that is the size of the minimal number of Karma needed to make a top level post. Then one of those accounts needs to get one Karma, which hopefully can’t be automated. Then one has to create some banal discussion that includes one post from each of the core accounts which then gets upvoted in a cycle.
Then start creating spam accounts, have it post randomly something like “I agree” on something and have the core accounts upvote that one post so the spam account can post the spam on the top page. Rinse and repeat.
It would be important to avoid detection to have a scripted discussion between the core accounts and to not have the spam accounts post on that discussion except according to the random algorithm that is being used.
There are probably ways to make this simpler to create and there may be easy ways to defeat such a program. This is just an idea.
Trollish arguments are fun.
As something of a troll, depending on what is meant by that at least, it is often quite interesting to debate with people that do not hold your point of view and are capable of making decent arguments. Too often one runs into arguments where both sides don’t know what they are talking about in the slightest, which is terribly frustrating.
As for the Karma, I have had for a while enough karma to make a top level post, getting it isn’t particularly hard. I would have much higher karma if I didn’t occasionally post controversial comments.
If I were determined to actually troll I would create a group of accounts and post thoughtful comments for a day or so to build up some karma from outside sources. Then I would up vote one account using the dozen or so other accounts I had to give it plenty of Karma with which to make top level posts even with a decent amount of down votes. To slow the drop off I could continue up-voting that account with the other ones, however this wouldn’t be worth while. Better would be to craft on the other accounts a series of posts attacking the top level troll post so that these other accounts get upvoted by tearing into the troll. This could create serial accounts to dominate the recent posts threads over a decently long period of time. I am sure there are ways in which this process could be optimized from the trolls point of view.
I have no intention of ever posting a top level post that is highly controversial. I am not that kind of troll.
Are the inhabitants of Kiryas Joel unhappy?
The best way to know that is to ask them if they are happy/unhappy. The next best way is to look at proxy measures of happiness or unhappiness.
Money is an extremely poor proxy measure of happiness. In fact the amount of money that one has is almost completely unimportant to ones happiness (with some obvious exceptions). Ones beliefs about the direction ones money is heading is however fairly important for most peoples happiness, if one is or one thinks that one will be gaining more then one is happier, but once one has that extra money then one is just about as happy as one was before one knew that one might get that money.
The divorce rate and the suicide rate are the two best proxies that I am aware of for unhappiness. Knowing that when compared to the rest of the nation should roughly tell us if they are happier or unhappier then anyone else.
Not that I am willing to sign up for cryonics but I don’t see this as a problem.
Presumably some monkeys will be placed on ice at some point in the testing of defrosting and you will not be defrosted until they are sure that the defrosting side does not cause brain damage. Also presumably there should be some way of determining if brain damage has occurred before defrosting happens and hopefully no one is defrosted that has brain damage until a way to fix the brain damage has been discovered.
I suppose that if the brain damage could be fixed you might lose some important information which does leave the question if you are still you. However if you believe that you are still yourself with the addition of new information, such as is received each day just by living, then you should likewise believe that you will still be yourself if information is lost. Also one of the assumptions of Cryogenics is that the human lifespan will have been greatly expanded so if you have major amnesia from the freezing you can look at it as trading your current life up to the point of freezing for one that is many multiple in length.
This is assuming that cryogenics works as intended, of which point I am not convinced of.
In economics it is known as specialization and there are gains associated with specialization and trade. In a marriage generally each party specializes which tasks they perform to bring about an overall net gain in the work done with in the marriage. So my comparative advantage may be in doing the dishes and the laundry while the other party to the marriage may be in cooking dinner and vacuuming. Soon I no longer know where all the spices are but the other party no longer knows where all the dinner dishes go, not that we can’t find out but it is cheaper to just ask the other person when we need that knowledge then to maintain constantly the current knowledge on what the other has specialized in.
So rewriting the question to “does specialization bring about benefits?” should make it obvious that the answer is a resounding yes. To give two examples, in the wealth of nations there is the example of a pin factory, not going to quote exact but give the basic argument: a skilled blacksmith making the pin by himself may be able to make say 100 pins a day. Three laborers working in a manual pin factory however can make 100 pins an hour while as they are relatively unskilled blacksmiths may not be able to make a whole pin in a day by themselves. Second example: there isn’t any one person in the entire world that knows how to make a pencil from the basic materials, that is no one person that knows which trees to cut, how to mill the tree, which rocks to mine, how to mine them, how to smelt them, how to shape the graphite, how to combine everything (not even including how to make and operate all the machines needed for each step). This should give you a decent understanding of how specialization is extremely beneficial to everyone involved.
As the true knowledge of science is kept for the conspiracies then only those that have tried and failed in the conspiracies are able to work on or build technologies as those that have succeeded are busy finding new things and making new technology. To those that have only learned the publicly available knowledge this technology is like magic or religion and as they have never been curious about the conspiracies enough to try to understand the technology it remains that way. The technology provides for their every need and want and while the common people do much of the work that makes the system work they have no clue as to what it is they do or why. For them the founders of businesses, the scientists, and the whatever else the top conspirators are called are as gods that if obeyed provide for every desire and if spurned bring ruin.
Those that failed to reach that elevated status are then as priests; that is the managers and the technicians. As they, the failed, themselves do not understand fully everything that they do they allow for much ritual and elaborate rules to evolve around the technology such that if one is not a member of the conspiracies then not following the ritual can get one banned or forced into gladiator service.
Those in the conspiracies can wear whatever they wish and do whatever they wish with the technology available to them, they are denied access to anything that they have not yet discovered.
Economic: The economic conspiracy has unlocked the secret of predicting the markets with a high degree of accuracy such that only by trading with inside information can one make money by trading on the market. Likewise due to the social rules only those in the conspiracy (or only through the conspiracy) are businesses formed. This leads to moderately inefficient markets such that nearly any common person (or manager for that matter) could tell one of some business they would like to see formed but as they do not see themselves as able to form a business and it is not socially acceptable to do so they wait for some one in the conspiracy to step in and create the desired business. The AI and conspiracy attempt to stay on top of this and are aware of this inefficiency but have not been able to fix it (leaving the top level of that conspiracy empty).
The conspiracies are extremely wealthy as each has access to vast amounts of inside information and each creates unique highly beneficial products and services.
Government The vast wealth and market control of the economic conspiracies has made normal government obsolete. Elections are held in which the winner is known before hand and is powerless to do anything. Luckily due to the vast improvements of the conspiracies no one expects them to do anything so it works out okay.
The legal code slowly morphs into a neofuedalistic system where those that are in the conspiracy are immune against all accusations involving an uninitiated and presumed innocent even among the failed.
However, instead of trial judge or jury a probabilistic model is created with priors that weighs only the empirical evidence to determine who is guilty of what. Once guilt is determined the model simulates the crime to determine lost utility and an equivalent transfer of utility is assigned as punishment. As public gladiator fights provide high positive utility to the spectators and high negative utility to the criminals the most common form of punishment is gladiator fighting for a predetermined number of fights with pain modifiers to ensure a fair punishment. Cryonics and body regrowth ensure one endures the correct number of fights and allows the fights to be to the death.
Cognitive Augmentation to a high intelligence level is done automatically before birth. Basic minimal implants are given while still children but most are reserved until it is known what if any conspiracy will be sought after.
Once it becomes clear that no knowledge is sought after the option is available to turn ones body over to an AI and have the brain disconnected from the rest of the body so that the AI may use the body as an inexpensive cog in farming or manufacturing. The brain is then given infinite pleasure through simulated experiences.
If that is not desired then one must work for ones living and entertainment as a common person. Additional augmentation is given according to the task assigned to you. Family, religious, and sexual activities are only monitored enough to ensure replacement due to accident or suicide. If unlimited children are desired then one is required to join extra planetary colonization efforts.
The conspiracies limit augmentation according to what could provide evidence of information or theories that are being withheld until they are discovered by the initiates.
That is my attempt.
The idea is that they are sharing their information and findings so that while they are less efficient then working constantly on the problem they are able to point out possible solutions to each other that one person working by himself would be less likely to notice except through a longer process. As there would be between 4-5 people working on the project at any one time during the month I assume they would be working in a group and would stagger the times such that a nearly continuous effort is produced. Also, as much of the problem involves thinking about things, by not focusing on the issue constantly they may be more likely to come up with a solution then if they are focusing on it constantly.
This is a hypothetical, I have no idea how many people at Google are interested in AI or how much time they spend on it. I would imagine that there most likely are quite a few people at Google working on AGI as it relates directly to Google’s core business and that they work on it significantly more than one hour a month each.
(edit the comment with intelligence and Eli was a pun.)
He also gave up sleeping with various mistresses, however, given current culture, I doubt you think that is evil.
Arguing morality with someone who is holding a gun to your head doesn’t sound like a very smart thing to do. The most I have done while being held up was provide the assailant a set of scriptures with a number to call if he wanted to discuss morality while not holding a gun. If they are holding a gun or otherwise threatening current violence to you then that is usually not the time to be discussing morality as they are most likely not acting rationally.
Discussing morality with someone that is suicidal can sometimes help. Still, one should call for professional assistance if it is available.
A lot of body language, fashion, salesmanship, seduction, networking, influence, and persuasion are dependent entirely on heuristics and intuition.
In the real world those that have less access to these traits (being people of the autistic spectrum, for example) tend to have a much harder time learning how to accomplish any of the named tasks. They also, for most of those tasks, have a much harder time seeing why one would wish to accomplish those tasks.
Extrapolating to a being that has absolutely no such intuition or heuristics then one is left with the question of what it is that they wish to actually do? Perhaps some of the severely autistic really are like this and never learn language as it never occurs to them that language could be useful and so have no desire to learn language.
With no built in programing to determine what is to be desired and what is not to be desired and no built in programing as to how the world works or does not work then how is one to determine what should be desirable or how to accomplish what is desired? As far as I can determine an agent without human hardware or software may be left spending its time attempting to figure out how anything works and figuring out what, if anything, it wants to do.
It may not even attempt to figure out anything at all if Curiosity is not rational but a built in heuristic. Perhaps someone has managed to build a rational AI but has neglected to give it built in desires and/or built in Curiosity and it did nothing so was assumed to not have worked.
Isn’t even the desire to survive a heuristic?