A for effort, but please satisfy my curiousity: what ARE the actual changes planned?
Gunslinger
No, I don’t want 5 different buttons on every article encouraging me to share this. Why the need to shove facetwittergram everywhere?
Open thread, January 29 - ∞
I’ve deleted my previous post here but I’d like to point out the relationship elephant in the room.
It’s seemingly a never-ending topic and looking at it from aside, it reminds me of an Escher painting—some sort of strange loop where people continuously argue about what’s effective in a relationship with only one gender involved.
This post just doesn’t really reflect real life. Well, not for all sides involved.
If anyone got to the pq-system part of GEB, can we get some various interpretations here? Because what I think the burning branches are, apart from crude violations of the laws of physics, are basically defeatism on the boy’s part.
You might not like reading it but I ran a search and it seems like to only have been posted here and despite being a badly written story that doesn’t really reflect reality I think that you have one thing going and that is story-writing and you should work on that and not dump it. Now for the part you won’t like: I think you should start taking responsibility for yourself and your actions. I don’t mean it in those stupid “you said bad things about women, go stand in the corner and think about elementary school” unhelpful rhetorical you’re probably used to hear but because you’re old enough to be able to do it. So let’s try something better than putting you in a corner:
Can you think of an instance where you might be wrong? Can you think of something that, if it were to change a little, would affect your views drastically? Is there anything you think your view is missing?
Confession thread. I’ve been in love with LessWrong for about 5 years (my first post was this, found on 4chan. Maybe it isn’t exceptional but it always had a place in my heart. In fact, it gave me the courage to get my first job when I was scared of being outside) and I’ve never admitted it. Now that it’s about to go boom I can finally confess that, even though I’ve been a horrible student. Take that, LW2, you’ll never be as awesome.
NEWSFLASH: HPMOR chapter 123 released: Something to protect: Less Wrong.
I might become a little bit more unpopular because of this, but I really want to say I find this to be rather abstract, and in fact something that I can’t really apply to real life. That’s the main problem with your ideas; you changed the universe and the laws in which things operate, and you removed the element of time. That’s so fundamentally different from where I am that I would agree with everything you say, but coming back to my own mortal self the only thing I can think is “Nope”.
But I’m not going to be be a complete and utter fucktard because you’re really putting some effort into your posts and they’re more interesting than Gleb’s markov-chain-esque links, so I’ll be a little more constructive.
What does this actually mean for the real world?
I’m quite confused by your fixation on “complete rational agent”. The highest “value” is abstract. Let’s give grades to decisions.
BAD DECISION (1) ----------------------------------- (100) GOOD DECISION
We can say that 100 is the “complete rational agent”. But that doesn’t mean the agent at 95 didn’t make a spectacular decision. How much of a difference is between 100 to 95? I can’t tell because we’re at a high abstraction level.
That’s where you go lower level and put on your giant glasses and see 1s and 0s for a good fifteen minutes. OK that was an exaggeration but still, we must expand on what makes it a good decision, and check out the building blocks which made the decision good.
There’s also some sort of paradox here that I’m probably missing a crucial part of it, but if “perfect theoretical rationality” cannot be achieved, does that mean that the closest value to it is the new perfect theoretical rationality? But it can’t be achieved; so it must be a smaller value, which also cannot be achieved, and so on. Then again, after a few of those we clearly are somewhat distant from “perfect theoretical rationality.”
Is missing out on utility bad?
Wouldn’t the rational agent postpone saying his desired utility rather than hope for a good enough number? If it’s finite as you say, it can be measured, and we can say (suffering + 1). If it’s infinite, well.. we’ve been there before, and you’ve stated it again in your example.
But this is an unwinnable scenario, so a perfectly rational agent will just pick a number arbitrarily? Sure you don’t get the most utility, but why does this matter?
Again, infinity, different laws of universe, sudden teleportation to an instance of failure.. Neal Stephenson would love this stuff.
What other consequences are there?
#f: maximum recursion depth reached
I don’t think that Heartiste (or others in the PUA clique) are focusing on the right things for long-term happiness and shared self-reflective growth with a partner.
The thing I noticed with Heartiste is that he’s anti-marriage because it’s a two-way street and in his opinion a significant majority of women won’t make good wives. In his view there’s some sort of paradox where women want to attract commitment but don’t put significant effort to make the commitment worthwhile to the man.
I can’t say if he’s right or not but I can’t disagree with some of the things he lists.
When exactly did that happen? I haven’t been here when the site was “highly active” (which I assume when EY was making the sequences posts) but do we have any statistics about it? I could build a small scraper and make a graph for dates and stuff, but somebody with access to the database could do it much better.
I don’t remember ever seeing statistics on that.
What are your thoughts about virtual courses? I can see something like PDFs being freely available to download and an IRC channel for communication between students/teachers.
Makes it harder to go to a bar and grab some beers but it saves you the whole financial trouble and various other troubles.
This does not deserve to be on LW.
Getting direct work done. Open-sourcing things is powerful, but it remains true that money is the unit of caring. When people really want something done, they have an institution with an office and employees that get the thing done.
What?
The Linux kernel is a prime example, along with plenty of other, impressive FOSS programs can’t be summed up by “powerful”. The general consensus with programmers was that “office and employyes” is less than adequate and often insult-worthy.
I don’t see the point of getting married at all, especially when you’re royally screwed once you’re divorced.
Excellent job. You got bonus points for writing it in Lisp. I assume you’ve read SICP?
Can you vouch for the book? I’ve always wanted to try gardening but had no idea where to start.
Gives me the Wellkept Gardens Die by Pacifism feel.
How isomorphic is society and online communities? Can the Wellkept Gardens argument be applied that liberally?
Cost-benefit analysis
I think Patri’s whole post was pretty much this.
Conflicting with law
If you feel free speech is threatened, then you have bigger problems to worry about.
Inconvenience of disagreement
Only weak-willed people are afraid of disagreement. In a self-respecting community, you can say “you’re wrong, here’s 11 reasons why: [1] [2] [3]”.
Dark knowledge
Unless you’re running the simulation, I doubt you’d be the only one to know that. I’d actually advise you to tell about it so it will be properly dealt with.
Signaling: Seriously, would you discuss your affiliation to LW in a job interview?!
Terrible example, it has no relevance to a job interview.
Or tell your friends that you are afraid we live in a simulation? (If you don’t see my point, your rationality is totally off base, see the next point).
That’s what friends are for.
LW user “Timtyler” commented before: “I also found myself wondering why people remained puzzled about the high observed levels of disagreement. It seems obvious to me that people are poor approximations of truth-seeking agents—and instead promote their own interests. If you understand that, then the existence of many real-world disagreements is explained: people disagree in order to manipulate the opinions and actions of others for their own benefit.”
Zero-sum.
WEIRD-M-LW: It is a known problem that articles on LW are going to be written by authors that are in the overwhelming majority western,[1] educated,[2] industrialized,[3] rich,[4] democratic,[5] and male.[6]
So? (what of being western is of importance?)
No fools in my garden. (Well-kept gardens die by pacifism)
Sorry folks, internet only. No “The LessWrong Times” available. (By no fault of our own)
By third-world comparisons, yes. Otherwise, I doubt it. Provide an example. (Or pledge 50% of your richness to GiveWell)
I’ve never seen a discussion about this, so no comment. (Mind linking to one?)
Men are far more interested in stuff like this. This is no category and in fact I doubt women won’t be included should they want to. (If women are ‘turned off’ by the discussion here, and therefore choose not to participate, then they both don’t have to, and the inverse would be true for me and probably a significant amount of men too)
The LW surveys show distinctly that there are most likely many further attributes in which the population on LW differs from the rest of the world.
Well, that’s pretty much a given. That’s not a bad thing, and if it’s a good thing is debateable.
LW user “Jpet” argued in a comment very nicely: “But assuming that the other party is in fact totally rational is just silly. We know we’re talking to other flawed human beings, and either or both of us might just be totally off base, even if we’re hanging around on a rationality discussion board.”
In case the user is inactive: I have no idea what he meant. Not everyone is rational or being 100% effective or whatever. The last sentence feels like a LW-complete sanity test, and a very scary one by it’s implications of the userbase being completely off-base with reality.
LW could certainly use more diversity.
I’m sure people would oppose more people like me. Leaving me aside, “diversity” seems like an ideal that I’m not sure what it actually implies. Let’s add women, and people of colour, and some monkeys and jackdaws. That’s just my silly recommendations though. What do you imply by “diversity” that LW is lacking, and why is it important to be included?
Personal anecdote: I was dumbfounded by the current discussion around LW T-shirts sporting slogans such as “Growing Mentally Stronger” which seemed to me intuitively highly counterproductive.
Me too. I think they’re silly.
(Crocker’s warning)
You mean trigger warning.
Genes, minds, hormones & personal history: (Even) rational agents are highly influenced by those factors.
Correct, but you still need to infinitely recurse.
Priorities
Agreed. I’d put other stuff on the list, but it would derail this post well past oblivion.
Other beliefs/goals
Then what is the point of the previously mentioned diversity? To me it looks like a contradiction and admittance that it’s not a very utility-generating ideal.
Vanity: Considering the amount of self-help threads, nerdiness, and alike on LW, it may be suspected that some refrain from posting due to self-respect.
Yeah, the high school jock cliche won’t like it. Can’t disagree with you about the cheerleaders, though.
E.g. I do not want to signal myself that I belong to this tribe.
You’ve already made a point I agreed with on rationality T-shirts being silly, there’s no reason to implement a mildly different form of it that accomplishes the same thing.
This may sound outlandish but then again, have a look at the Facebook groups of LW and other rationalists where people ask frequently how they can be more interesting, or how “they can train how to pause for two seconds before they speak to increase their charisma.” Again, if this sounds perfectly fine to you, that may be bad news.
No, it’s only bad news to you. People who recognize weak aspects of them and try to self-improve should be applauded. You are, as far as I am concerned, dragging humanity down. Now tell me where you keep those un-traceable rifles. (The examples are admittedly silly but they’re mere examples)
(A note of importance to me is what they consider ‘interesting’, and why. Are they trying to appeal to a different group?)
Barriers to entry
Agreed, but on the other hand, those talking about that are probably fify books or so ahead of you. I don’t participate in the AI department and don’t plan to. On the other hand, there’s plenty of topics where LW could theoretically help, but they appear less commonly and there’s less people who can help with them.
There’s also the issue of specialization: the more specialized a topic, the more you need to know about it. Highly specialized topics shouldn’t be confused with a high entry barrier.
Nothing new under the sun
Too many places suffer from this to one degree or another, but unless the community bands together (LW wiki?) and makes those ‘already posted’ stuff easy to access so it won’t be reposted.
Maybe a bunch of AI researchers can make something that goes through text and tells the user “this might have been already posted”. And hopefully it won’t destroy the world while it’s at it, too.
Error
Once again, infinite recursion.
Protection of the group: Opinions though being important may not be discussed to protect the group or its image to outsiders.
Such as? You don’t need to publicy discuss EVERYTHING, either.
See “is LW a *” and *’ *.”
Unless a community has no merit, you can take the good stuff with you and leave the rest.
I heard that’s bad for you and you shouldn’t mention it. That correlates with the first one, amusingly enough.
This argument can also be brought forward much more subtle: an agent may, for example, hold the opinion that rationality concepts are information hazards by nature if they reduce the happiness of the otherwise blissfully unaware.
Live your life as you see fit.
However, said agent must first research happiness thoroughly before making such a statement. There’s also individual reactions, but that’s getting too precise for my calculations.
Topicality
That happens to everything, eventually. Overlaps with my aforementioned specialization.
This is a community-only thing, though. People can develop and have different experiences and the next best thing to do is what we can take from LW and how we can apply it in our life.
Russell’s antinomy: Is the contribution that states its futility ever expressed? Random example article title: “Writing articles on LW is useless because only nerds will read them.”
Best thing I can say is: maybe people like it? Maybe they want to write something. Why not let them? So what if only nerds read it.
There’s an insulting, “what-if” that assumes it’s not only correct but also unquestionable and any deviation from it should be punished with a smack on your head in that title.
+Redundancy:
If we’ve become redundant on the topic of rationality, then it’s time to stop milking the cow and start using it in our life. This is the real rationality test; the real freakin’ deal.
Everything below that list is excellent and I don’t regret taking a reading break for this just because of that.
Established a useful new habit
I wrote a small shell script that takes input and appends it to a text file that logs stuff I did.
I’m writing quite a bit of them lately. None of them are particularly interesting or unique although they do illustrate how great GNU/Linux is. It makes me regret my Windows days. (Anyone interested can read The Linux Command Line.)
I’m also becoming a fan of dwm although I might switch to 2wm soon.
Optimized some part of a common routine or cached behavior
I’ve started to try some pareto optimisation in my life.
Old site love thread.
Just curious how many people like, and possibly even prefer, the old site.
I’d also like to know if anyone else has terrible experience with site redesigns. They always, for some reason, end up terrible. Likelyhood of bias: 60%.