Neotenic

Karma: 163

Neotenic 11 Mar 2014 11:57 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: On not getting a job as an option
Well, that at least part of the way into freedom.

Neotenic 11 Mar 2014 11:28 UTC
0 points
in reply to: dhoe’s comment on: On not getting a job as an option
That depends on your stance on many things: First of all having children or not. Second of all population ethics. Third of all if you think it is worth it to have a child whose life is better than neutral, or even than average, but not better than your own. Existentialism and First Mover Advantage are also related concepts.

I feel your pain though, and my life would have been much worse if my Father had not been an instrumental Flower for part of his life.

But if you consider your life worth living, there are several philosophical paths that do not consider your parent’s actions to be unworthy of moral appreciation. Check Toby Ord on population ethics for deeper insight.

Neotenic 25 Jan 2014 2:27 UTC
0 points
in reply to: DanielLC’s comment on: How Not to Make Money
Yeah.

Neotenic 9 Jul 2013 4:46 UTC
0 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Strategic Bestseller: Taking the Blog Path (4HS002)
Yes, but I don’t think it happened for good reasons. Maybe it was just the feeling of something floating from the unknown unknowns category to the mildly known unknown. Maybe it was the feeling that only if you have the courage to try impossible things you can succeed in this kicking in.
But I take it that it was just an emotion that didn’t correctly implement decision theoretic cascades of neurotransmitters according to what would have been desirable in a homo economicus perspective. So do many of our less rational emotions. In other words, it is not a feeling I feel responsible for justifying, I just took it at face value.

Neotenic 31 May 2013 4:56 UTC
13 points
on: Curriculum suggestions for someone looking to teach themselves contemporary philosophy
You may want to change the title to “Analytic Philosophy” or “Contemporary Philosophy” since Modern Philosophy usually refers to something far removed from anything related to “Good and Real” by Drescher.

Neotenic 15 Apr 2013 5:48 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: On moving posts from Main to Discussion
I know my question sounded like “I doubt you read all posts”, and I do, but regardless of that irrelevance, the important meaning should be: “Someone over 18 whose IQ looms large reads all posts?”

Isn’t it a terrible use of your time?

Neotenic 10 Apr 2013 0:13 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: On moving posts from Main to Discussion
you read all posts?

Neotenic 9 Apr 2013 22:30 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: On moving posts from Main to Discussion
What about the reverse? Moving from discussion to Main once the author notices that not only his introspective evidence says the text is good, but also others?

Neotenic 3 Apr 2013 10:40 UTC
4 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: A Rational Altruist Punch in The Stomach

I have some trouble conceiving of what would beat a consistent argument a googol fold.
Now I don’t anymore.

I stand corrected.

Thank you Gwern.

Neotenic 2 Apr 2013 19:44 UTC
12 points
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: The Unintuitive Power Laws of Giving
I think he meant unintuitive in the sense of “not accessible by human intuition, type 1, fast thinking” not “hard to grasp upon reflection by my intended audience”

Neotenic 2 Apr 2013 13:27 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Elithrion’s comment on: A Rational Altruist Punch in The Stomach
That is unreasonable because we have more access to means of helping the poor today. If you expect the trend to go on into the future, than 2 million tomorrow is always better than a thousand today, which approximates maximal 3 lives on AMF of SCI

Neotenic 20 Mar 2013 14:25 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: Caring about possible people in far Worlds
That is the first time I see you saying something that doesn’t strike me as reasonable, and I’ve been a lurker for a long time.

Which indicates that I didn’t understand you.

Could you please clarify what do you mean by “is” when you say “how the multiverse is”?

For me it seems that we (humans) can talk about this multiverse thing. We can say stuff about other universes, like “they are epiphenomenal” or “they matter”. It is hard for me to just say “they are” or “they exist” and truly think that I know what I mean by that. It feels like I’m saying “they emerge” or “they magic”.

Neotenic 18 Mar 2013 20:54 UTC
0 points
in reply to: A1987dM’s comment on: Caring about possible people in far Worlds
You should say you are following David Lewis I suppose.

Neotenic 18 Mar 2013 18:46 UTC
4 points
in reply to: shminux’s comment on: Caring about possible people in far Worlds
The latter, which I was clarifying in an edit to the original post as you asked.

I still think it is productive to instrumentally talk of Many Worlds, to see which concepts break.

Neotenic 18 Mar 2013 18:26 UTC
4 points
in reply to: shminux’s comment on: Caring about possible people in far Worlds
Fair enough. So basically if my post was trying to immunize readers, you’d be immune already.

I agree that people should refrain from using the word ‘existence’. If they are many worlds supporters, I think they still need some work done, that the concept of existence was attempting to do, but I claimed here fails to.

If, like you, they are not many-world supporters, then ‘existence’ only means causally connected to me. And the word can be avoided without paying any price by saying its equivalent.

Neotenic 18 Mar 2013 18:17 UTC
−4 points
in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: Caring about possible people in far Worlds
Indeed we could get more information if we knew that ratio. The assumption here though is that World three is a future stage of worlds 1 and 2, but these two bear no relationship in that way. The three are intervals/stages of a different histories.

So actually that ratio is not defined.

The trouble I’m trying to point out is that if the FSM created the Tegmark4 multiverse, he’d still have to do more work to relate all these world stages that are disconnected by ascribing each pair a reality-fluid ratio. He would not need to do further work to get kilograms or daltons.

The function that connects two words W1 and W2 to a percentage has to be added. The same problem arises for personal identity as naively conceived. There are functions that will tell you, about any two agent intervals their: 1)Level of psychological/functional similarity 2)Will respond 1 if they are causally connected, and 0 otherwise and 3)If you are a phenomenalist—level of phenomenal consciousness interrelatedness.
There is no further fact about personal identity, that is all we mean by Personal Identity. If another function was required determining 1 or 0 for each pair of agents and with the name “Personal Identity” it would be very suspicious.

Neotenic 18 Mar 2013 17:57 UTC
2 points
in reply to: shminux’s comment on: Caring about possible people in far Worlds
Thank you. That is the exact kind of nausea I was expecting to cause. The post works.

Still, it seems that you remain secure about the concepts that I’m doubting play a role under some considerations do play a role.

If you are secure about the role that “existence” plays in moral discussion, please clarify it. One way of doing that is by describing a function where on one axis you have different theories about many-worlds as the ones I described in my previous post, and in the other axis you have what exists given our epistemic evidence if that theory turns out to be correct.

Neotenic 17 Mar 2013 18:05 UTC
5 points
on: Imposing conditions that would have been evidence about optimal behaviour in the EEA
Once I decided to undereat while travelling. The result was that for the first month I was in hypomania almost, very excited about things and places. I also slept much less and kept away from easy pleasures. At some point, at the end of the month, this hyper-functional system broke down, and I realized that though I thought I was dancing, in a club, I was actually not taking my feet of the ground. I suspected I might be tired, and went to bed. 17 hours later I woke up. I interpreted that as “I put myself in emergency mode and became more interested and productive, still this nitro didn’t get me the nourishment I needed after a month, so the body gave up and sent a message to the mind (or the medial prefrontal cortex) saying—That was all you had. Give up now, hope for a better crop tomorrow.”

Neotenic 17 Mar 2013 17:45 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Eugine_Nier’s comment on: Imposing conditions that would have been evidence about optimal behaviour in the EEA
The curve will be particularly complex. When there’s no one. No curve. Very few, then it’s worth to collaborate even when they backstab you. Specially if the environment is super-dangerous. You want to create a story according to which they didn’t betray you at all. Anything, as long as the mutual knowledge is still on the friends side. Bigger numbers: Something close to Dunbar number would probably be where you most need to signal trustworthiness, and from then on, the more there are, the lowest is the cost of free-riding.

Neotenic 17 Mar 2013 15:00 UTC
5 points
in reply to: torekp’s comment on: Pluralistic Existence in Many Many-Worlds
It is less crazy than it sounds the more you study philosophy of physics I suppose. It basically depends on accepting or not that matter could be just relational properties, with nothing intrinsic.