Multiheaded

Karma: 3,075

Multiheaded 15 Jun 2012 9:04 UTC
85 points
on: Eliezer Yudkowsky Facts

Rabbi Eliezer was in an argument with five fellow rabbis over the proper way to perform a certain ritual. The other five Rabbis were all in agreement with each other, but Rabbi Eliezer vehemently disagreed. Finally, Rabbi Nathan pointed out “Eliezer, the vote is five to one! Give it up already!” Eliezer got fed up and said “If I am right, may God himself tell you so!” Thunder crashed, the heavens opened up, and the voice of God boomed down. “YES,” said God, “RABBI ELIEZER IS RIGHT. RABBI ELIEZER IS PRETTY MUCH ALWAYS RIGHT.” Rabbi Nathan turned and conferred with the other rabbis for a moment, then turned back to Rabbi Eliezer. “All right, Eliezer,” he said, “the vote stands at five to TWO.”

True Talmudic story, from TVTropes. Scarily prescient? Also: related musings from Muflax’ blog.

Multiheaded 27 Jun 2013 21:45 UTC
44 points
in reply to: shminux’s comment on: Public Service Announcement Collection
The horrible thing about major depressive disorder is that one cannot, in fact alieve that “it gets better” during a bad phase. Depressed people all over the world hate those empty platitudes, are sick and tired of them. Just read any damn forum on depression, seriously!

“Get over it”, “hang in there”, etc, etc. It comes across as so predictable, so superficial and callous. We’ve heard this shit a million times; it’s just hard for us to draw a connection between some statistical prospect of improvement and the very private grey hell that we are in. I know this from experience. Downvoted. (And yes, it did “get better” for me, but I’m still angry at getting such vapid non-advice.)

Related: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html (the by-now-famous excellent explanation by Allie Brosh)

Multiheaded 16 Jan 2013 19:48 UTC
42 points
on: [Link] Noam Chomsky Killed Aaron Schwartz

weak institutions (Exxon, Pentagon) instead of strong ones (State, academica incl. MIT)

I guess it’s a huge relief for Bradley Manning (whom M.M. has carefully avoided mentioning along with Assange and Greenwald, although all three tend to get media exposure in connection) that he tried to “bully” a weak, indecisive Pentagon, whose hands are tied by its mortal enemies in the civillian bureaucracy—and thus the military can’t stand up to the treasonous filth and has to treat him with kid gloves on.

And of course, the dirty, brainwashed, cowardly commies who hung out at the Occupy “protests” are the Obama regime’s wet dream, spewing abuse against the already powerless big business and financial institutions—a perfect opportunity for it to further rob the deserving and appearse the plebs! Which is why the regime is intimidating its police into accommodating the lawless rioting scum—and the cops slavishly obey. The forces of law and order wouldn’t dare lay a finger on those good-for-nothing hippies, not with the propaganda media watching!

Oh wait, this isn’t relevant! Moldbug’s above such inconvenient commie-sympathizing “facts”, he’s using Schwartz’ death as an occasion to preach the hallowed and unchanging party line. He’s for Truth and Clarity, unlike all the delusional left-wing fanatics!

Normally, posting all this tripe on LW would be merely adding noise, but it also happens to be exploitative of a community figure’s recent and shocking death. Moldbug fails. You fail.

Unlike him, you seem to be capable of critical self-evaluation. Seems like you should employ some right now, and learn from it.

Multiheaded 26 Jan 2012 5:16 UTC
39 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: I’ve had it with those dark rumours about our culture rigorously suppressing opinions

most of the deaths in the holocaust were caused by the allies bombing railroads that supplied food to the camps

And the shortage of food in Germany, and everything else that provided a disincentive to feed the people that the party line proclaimed to be innnately hostile and seditious.

When you’re literally last on the priority list (well, maybe above Soviet POVs in 1941), every economic difficulty will “cause” you to starve while you could’ve easily endured it in a society that had a more balanced if utterly cynical opinion of you.

(I find the other things you mentioned to be broadly correct, but not without caveats; moreover, if one goes about it naively without minding such caveats, one would likely do much greater harm to most involved than the current self-deception does.)

Multiheaded 23 Apr 2012 7:59 UTC
35 points
in reply to: shminux’s comment on: Muehlhauser-Wang Dialogue

What makes me trust Pei Wang more than Luke is the common-sense statements like “to make AGI safe, to control their experience will probably be the main approach (which is what “education” is all about), but even that cannot guarantee safety.”...

This sort of “common sense” can be highly misleading! For example, here Wang is drawing parallels between a nascent AI and a human child to argue about nature vs nurture. But if we compare a human and a different social animal, we’ll see that most of the differences in their behavior are innate and the gap can’t be covered by any amount of “education”: e.g. humans can’t really become as altruistic and self-sacrificing as worker ants because they’ll still retain some self-preservation instinct, no matter how you brainwash them.

What makes Wang think that this sort of fixed attitude—which can be made more hard-wired than the instincts of biological organisms—cannot manifest itself in an AGI?

(I’m certain that a serious AI thinker, or just someone with good logic and clear thinking, could find a lot more holes in such “common sense” talk.)

Multiheaded 20 Apr 2012 5:09 UTC
33 points
in reply to: rlpowell’s comment on: What deserves cryocide?
Goddamn! “Dying of thirst to avoid laws on suicide that’ll screw with your body” is something our grandchildren might well think to be made up if someone told them; who’d believe our society could really be that insane?

Multiheaded 16 Nov 2012 18:56 UTC
31 points
on: Why is Mencius Moldbug so popular on Less Wrong? [Answer: He’s not.]
He used to be a frequent commenter on Overcoming Bias before Hanson and Yudkowsky split blogs, and he clearly dazzled readers with his refined brand of contrarianism. I wasn’t around to watch, but his comments are occasionally seen under 2007-2008 posts, and later on too. His handle there is/was simply Mencius, search for it.

(Might this belong in Open Thread?)

Multiheaded 6 May 2013 20:38 UTC
30 points
in reply to: knb’s comment on: Using Evolution for Marriage or Sex
Okay, so then I guess that was a different kind of ableism from you. Instead of using the word “Autism” as a mere insult along the lines of “nerd”/”neckbeard”/whatever, as seen in the less civil places of the internet, you basically first made a neutral assertion (LW membership correlated with autism spectrum).

But then you sneaked in the implicit assertion that 1) autistic people should be discouraged from discussing sexual and romantic relationships because of their extraordinary ineptitude, etc at such things—and that 2) they’re silly and deluded if they even aspire to collectively learning about such—and, importantly, that 3) “normal” people know better than those weirdoes what’s best for them.

Now replace autistic people with some widely accepted subject of minorities’ rights/”social justice” movements (like blacks in postwar America), and you’ll see how the framework of marginalization is very similar even though its coordinates and scale are different. “Ain’t got nothing against them negroes, we take good care of ’em, they just need to mind their manners, don’t get all uppity and don’t listen to them Commie troublemakers.”

(Plus the negative/perjorative connotations of “den”, often used as an off-handed reminder of an outgroup’s inferiority and otherness. Nobody really says “Den of cool people”, or “den of original thought”, do they?)

P.S. We need a Tumblr-Social-Justice bot in here. Because the thing is, for all the limitations of “social justice” liberal-activist theory, many LWers don’t actually care to understand its epistemic/rationality core, and then get offended when a liberal activist points out how PROBLEMATIC some casual language can be without any malign intent.

When someone calls out tech/econ/”rationality” geeks on some problematic language/framing, applying some basic “social justice” ideas about privilege, othering, etc (maybe not always explaining the reasoning in sufficient detail) - well, immediately a cry about evil totalitarian progressive feminism police goes up… and to me it oddly resembles a dogmatic anti-market Marxist going off the rails when confronted with some equally basic Austrian School criticism like economic calculation, the knowledge problem, and such—for example, here. “NUH UH, talking about privilege and oppression is a silly fad for silly airheads on Tumblr” leaves one epistemically as crippled as “NUH UH, von Mises was a right-wing douchebag beloved of right-wing douchebags.” In place of “capitalist lie machine” LW might use epithets like “moral signaling spiral”, but the basic pattern of pre-emptively mocking Those Insufferable Cranks before they could mess up our tidy little epistemology is there.

P.P.S. Wow, I accidentally up a meta level.

Multiheaded 3 Jul 2011 10:09 UTC
30 points
on: An Outside View on Less Wrong’s Advice
The bit about drugs is just stupefying. Did you really, really, mean what came out?

“Lots and lots of people on Less Wrong love drugs that are outlawed in the U.S., use them all the time for the explicit purpose of intelligence stimulation, and refuse to hear anything about their harmful effects, because Less Wrongers are extremely quick to explain away evidence they don’t want to believe in—especially when it’s supported by “uncool” people and groups—and probably can’t even contemplate any long-term effects due to their geekishness and hidden immaturity. Here’s a wise, fatherly-sounding warning to them, full of ol’ good common sense that those naive kids haven’t learned to trust yet.”

I’m not voting this down because I’m just feeling a flat what.

Multiheaded 2 Jan 2013 4:21 UTC
29 points
in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: Rationality Quotes January 2013
This article greatly annoyed me because of how it tells people to do the correct practical things (Develop skills! Be persistent and grind! Help people!) yet gives atrocious and shallow reasons for it—and then Wong says how if people criticize him they haven’t heard the message. No, David, you can give people correct directions and still be a huge jerk promoting an awful worldview!

He basically shows NO understanding of what makes one attractive to people (especially romantically) and what gives you a feeling of self-worth and self-respect. What you “are” does in fact matter—both to yourself and to others! - outside of your actions; they just reveal and signal your qualities. If you don’t do anything good, it’s a sign of something being broken about you, but just mechanically bartering some product of your labour for friendship, affection and status cannot work—if your life is in a rut, it’s because of some deeper issues and you’ve got to resolve those first and foremost.

This masochistic imperative to “Work harder and quit whining” might sound all serious and mature, but does not in fact has the power to make you a “better person”; rather, you’ll know you’ve changed for the better when you can achieve more stuff and don’t feel miserable.

I wanted to write a short comment illustrating how this article might be the mirror opposite of some unfortunate ideas in the “Seduction community”—it’s “forget all else and GIVE to people, to obtain affection and self-worth” versus “forget all else and TAKE from people, to obtain affection and self-worth”—and how, for a self-actualized person, needs, one’s own and others’, should dictate the taking and giving, not some primitive framework of barter or conquest—but I predictably got too lazy to extend it :)

Multiheaded 19 Nov 2012 13:30 UTC
28 points
on: Why is Mencius Moldbug so popular on Less Wrong? [Answer: He’s not.]
To everyone:

Please accept my sincere and heartfelt apologies for my recent trolling, ideological aggression and disruptive behavior in here. I realize that I’ve been looking like a hopeless crank to many readers. I stand by my general ideas and value judgments (all or nearly all of them), but I am sorry for wording them in ways that violate LW standards and harm our discourse. I will not retract the offending comments, and have no objection to them being downvoted even further.

For at least a while, I shall refrain from public discussion of those matters. I realize that me trying to take a cold, clinical and unshrinking look at Universalism while simultaneously feeling deep moral + religious devotion to it has caused me severe cognitive dissonance, strained my critical facilities and made me lose awareness of social norms. I have since been recuperating psychologically. I hope that this incident will not leave a permanent stain on my image in the community.
What links here?
- Multiheaded's comment on Politics Discussion Thread January 2013 by OrphanWilde (2 Jan 2013 17:03 UTC; 11 points)

Multiheaded 6 Apr 2012 20:20 UTC
28 points
on: Rationality Quotes April 2012

[Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all “progressive” thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flag and loyalty-parades.

However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarized version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a grudging way, have said to people “I offer you a good time,” Hitler has said to them “I offer you struggle, danger and death,” and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.

(George Orwell’s review of Mein Kampf)

(well, we have videogames now, yet… we gotta make them better! more vicseral!)
What links here?
- Multiheaded's comment on Rationality Quotes April 2012 by Oscar_Cunningham (11 Apr 2012 12:47 UTC; 1 point)

Multiheaded 2 Jan 2013 17:43 UTC
27 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Politics Discussion Thread January 2013
You are completely correct. This was indeed indefensible and inexcusable of me, and pretty much a direct spit upon your goodwill. I was frustrated by my inability to “get even” with an opposing group that has long trumpeted its honesty and accused my views of hypocrisy. I let this primitive emotion get the better of me.

Such little things are what shits up the whole discourse. I understand and agree. I’m sorry.

Multiheaded 29 Apr 2013 12:33 UTC
25 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: LW Women Entries- Creepiness

Who is in the clown suit, then?

Serious Marxian and feminist theory, in any sphere. Not that someone’s been seriously trying to post about those on LW and met with hostility, oh no—LW in general just can’t bridge the inferential distance to those schools of thought, so what we’re getting here is a strawman in a clown suit. We aren’t so much failing to extract value from those traditions, we aren’t even trying—because it’s much easier and more fun to mock it all as self-absorbed non-truth-tracking ivory-tower nonsense.

I’ve been reading lots of good stuff on both fronts lately, and attempting to mark what’s appropriate and good for LW (analysis of systemic behavior, self-perpetuating structures of power, etc), so that I can at least provide some good links eventually. Translating any serious insights into LW-speak by myself is a bit of a daunting task; again, a lot of Marxist/feminist context as seriously studied by those schools of thought is nothing like the strawman version that many people have likely absorbed through pop culture.

But at least I can say that, while the inferential gap between the transhumanist/geek discourse of LW and the discourse of left-wing academia that tech geeks love to deride is great, there is a lot to be gained on the other side. We are ignoring some vast intellectual currents here.

Multiheaded 10 Jan 2013 22:14 UTC
23 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open Thread, January 1-15, 2013
From watching you for a while, I think you’re driven to off-handedly forecast doom and gloom because it suits your identity as someone strongly dissatisfied with their current world, signaling contrarianism and wallowing in dignified pessimism. And of course elitism and despair look cooler to you, and form a coherent narrative.

And I’m not going to judge this as something negative, or implore you to fix some “problem” with your personal feelings, I just suggest that you keep a skeptical perspective on your self-narrative somewhere in the back of your mind. As you surely already do.

Multiheaded 4 Dec 2012 0:48 UTC
22 points
in reply to: daenerys’s comment on: Factions, inequality, and social justice

Perhaps instead of being “(sane) feminist” or “(sane) MRA”, the sane gender-issues people should all just call themselves “Gender Egalitarians”.

Unfortunately, this label already seems to be undergoing the same connotation creep that quickly happened to “Race realism” and is about to happen to “Human Biodiversity”. Both of those are—justly or not—suspected to be cover labels that racists adopted when the old “Scientific Racism” became disreputable, so now many people with “mainstream” views on racial differences equate the three.

From what I’ve read of MRA discussions, some of them are definitely trying to trade the label for “Gender Egalitarianism”, which they position as neutral or hostile to all kinds of feminism—so, as dumb and ridiculous as this might be, the words “gender egalitarian” might acquire a connotation of “feminist-hater”, or simply “misogynist”.

(Great post btw!)

Multiheaded 29 May 2012 12:54 UTC
22 points
on: [LINK] Wireheading in SMBC
Yep, this guy’s definitely making fun of Hanson specifically.

Multiheaded 11 Dec 2011 17:59 UTC
22 points
on: How is your mind different from everyone else’s?
(Sorry if my English comes across as odd or bland; I’m tired and my feel for the language might be off.)

Here’s a bit of a confession, because I feel like it.

I was diagnosed with encephalopathy of some kind when I was 19. Can’t recall the specifics right now, but the gist of it is, I was born with brain damage. Due to that I’ve been suffering from a severe attention deficit, frequent emotional turbulence or periods of apathy, and rather unpleasant failures of willpower throughout my life, growing particularly troublesome around the last year of high school. I used to be rather disfunctional socially and emotionally, and found myself growing very nihilistic, neglectful and careless of myself and others.

I used to had a few good, true friends at school—despite being very introverted and getting tired of any company easily—but they all drifted away after graduation. Entering a state university and coping with most classes was trivially easy for me (my IQ is 135, and I simply enjoy reading up on a broad range of humanities on my own), but I flunked after my first year for three times in a row (due to hardly attending at all after the first month, neglecting to study for finals and failing to hand in papers). Didn’t make any permanent acquaintances at uni, in part because of my prosopagnosia, in part because of my becoming rather callous to people.

As a child I had a great deal of empathy, but it hurt me, so my shell grew way too tough and I eventually started taking comfort in not caring for anyone; I frequently dreamed of my family/parents dying and me inheriting their small fortune, I lied to my parents habitually and took a sadistic kick of them being hurt by it, I hated the very thought of anyone being dependent of me and looking to me for aid, etc.

Then, in one winter week, things changed. I watched the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion and my shell was utterly shattered. It was a moment of utter catharsis for me. My fears, shames and anxieties were all laid bare in Shinji, and in following his story I learned of a way to remake myself. During a month of internal strife, I reconsidered my core values and found a new sense of ethics. My social anxiety is also gone; whereas previously I was hesitant to initiate any social contact, now I’m unafraid to try, occasionally fail and lose status, yet learn and suffer virtually no embarrassment. I’m often seen as eccentric, to put it generously, but it’s still a hell of a lot better than what I used to resign myself to.

That was about 3 years ago, and in that time I have reforged the bonds with my immediate family (some considerable issues remain, like fits of hysteria or times when I lie pathologically, but it’s nothing like the giant cold-hearted deception on my part that it used to be). I also realized my bisexuality and got into a relationship with an awesome guy who’s greatly creative and truly sympathetic of me. (it’s long-distance sadly, we only met a couple of times so far, but the total contact and connection between us was the best thing that ever happened in my life). All that helped me get my life moving; I’m finally making an honest effort to get an education in a field I enjoy (social work). I still have a lot of issues, and I’m going to need more professional help with my condition, perhaps more medication too, but what I’m certain of is that NGE was a helping hand when I needed it most and expected it least. No wonder I became a rather obsessive fanboy :)

I was intending to write a bit more, but I’m falling asleep. Damn, this ramble is unlikely to earn me much karma, and I’m being way too forthcoming about myself. Eh, I wanted to confess about all that to people that are high-status in my eyes, so here you go.
What links here?
- Multiheaded's comment on Open Thread, June 16-30, 2012 by OpenThreadGuy (21 Jun 2012 22:43 UTC; 0 points)

Multiheaded 2 Jul 2011 11:07 UTC
22 points
on: Three Worlds Collide (0/8)
I’ve read this about half a year ago, enjoyed it, completely more or less agreed with Eliezer’s point and filed it away.

Then, this morning, I literally woke up screaming. This is not an exaggeration, I must’ve dreamt of something that reminded me of 3WC, and my first waking thought was: “It’s WRONG to be right!”. I do believe that the human condition and human individuality are easily worth practically any number of lives (although holding ourselves hostage and threatening to voluntarily increase the amount of suffering customary for human culture unless the Superhappies give all people a choice in the matter might have worked as a third option—but wriggling out of the author’s intent is pointless). I don’t have a single problem with this logic.

What I have a problem with is myself. I was born with some brain damage (diagnosed only at 19, unfortunately for my teenage years) that, among other socially inconvenient things, strongly inhibits my instinctive empathy; I might value and respect individual people, but can feel very little compassion for them on a personal level, and I wouldn’t hesitate in murdering someone if I believed it was right and necessary. In short, I exhibit traits of an actual sociopath. So I could see myself jumping at the decision, carrying it out and suffering from zero irrational guilt.

That caused a rebellion of sorts inside me. Suddenly I contemplated writing something really, really stupid, sending Eliezer a death threat, hated the thought of becoming transhuman or ever having to deal with a real Hard Choice, devoting the rest of my life to opposing, attacking, slandering and scaremongering against everything that Less Wrong and SIAI stand for. After about two hours it burned out, and now I feel more or less in control. I’m quite puzzled as to what the bloody hell that was. “Fear of having to grow up again” probably comes close.

I can’t name a good reason for posting all this, except for suggesting that strong moral biases could shift into self-defense mode during a Hard Choice scenario, the very moment one would make an honest effort to examine and prioritize his values. Your beliefs could just shut everything down along with themselves to avoid being changed.

(as an aside, with all the shout-outs, it’d be cool if it chapter 8 was called “One More Final”, as it has quite a few parallels with The End of Evangelion and its final scene),
What links here?
- An ethical debate that’s turning very sour by Multiheaded (1 Jan 2012 19:36 UTC; -3 points)

Multiheaded 30 Nov 2012 19:44 UTC
21 points
in reply to: ewbrownv’s comment on: LW Women- Minimizing the Inferential Distance

Everyone has been treated badly by members of a different group at some point in their life, and responsible adults are expected to get over it and get on with things.

This may be the way now, but it doesn’t have to be the way always. Max Hastings, my favourite WW2 historian, says in his All Hell Let Loose:

One of the most important truths about the war, as indeed about all human affairs, is that people can interpret what happens to them only in the context of their own circumstances. The fact that, objectively and statistically, the sufferings of some individuals were less terrible than those of others elsewhere in the world was meaningless to those concerned. It would have seemed monstrous to a British or American soldier facing a mortar barrage, with his comrades dying around him, to be told that Russian casualties were many times greater. It would have been insulting to invite a hungry Frenchman, or even an English housewife weary of the monotony of rations, to consider that in besieged Leningrad starving people were eating each other, while in West Bengal they were selling their daughters. Few people who endured the Luftwaffe’s 1940–41 blitz on London would have been comforted by knowledge that the German and Japanese peoples would later face losses from Allied bombing many times greater, together with unparalleled devastation. It is the duty and privilege of historians to deploy relativism in a fashion that cannot be expected of contemporary participants.

In other words, a boy being bullied at school or a girl shrinking in disgust and fear from a drunken man’s cat-call do experience suffering and negative emotion on their own scale of awfulness—and the fact that millions of people in the 3rd world have it much worse “objectively” doesn’t take away from the trauma of a “minor” incident in a happier life.

Of course, the objectively worse suffering in the 3rd world should be dealt with as a higher priority. But this doesn’t mean that, given a choice of spending a bit of resources and attention on relief from such “minor” evils (at a low enough alternative cost), we should tell their victims: “Stop whining, we don’t care.”

If we stop aspiring to treat every individual according to our ideals—as sacred, an end in themselves—then there’s no Schelling point to stop at; we might as well come to some absurd hedonic utilitarianism, painting smiles on souls, or overwriting people’s brains with a simple utility function, or such! Did you, perchance, choose specks on torture vs. specks? If you did, please think and reflect hard before discounting “minor” oppression.