nick012000

Karma: 224

nick012000 12 Jul 2010 11:10 UTC
−3 points
on: Outside the Laboratory
Hmm. Personally, as a Christian and a student of science (doing a Bachelor of Aviation Technology), I have to say that my thought processes were entirely different from what you described in your article.

I went with Pascal’s Wager, or at least a modified version of it. Any sort of existence is infinitely better than not existing at all; this eliminates atheism, Buddhism, and Hinduism from consideration, along with other reincarnation-oriented religions. Judaism is almost impossible to convert into, so it’s out of the running. Of the religions that remain, most of the pagan ones have relatively mediocre afterlives compared to the heavens of Christianity and Islam, and similarly mediocre punishments if I’m wrong as long as I live virtuously. If I do follow a pagan religion, and Christianity or Islam is correct, I’ll suffer eternal hellfires. Therefore, I will be either a Christian or a Muslim. Since Christianity doesn’t require me to attempt to overthrow Western civilization, has generally easier requirements to attain Heaven, and will probably allow me to avoid Hell if Islam is correct, I chose to be a Christian.

Of course, simply believing something to be true does not neccessarilly make it true, so I plan to put off testing that belief as long as humanly possible. Or, more accurately, as posthumanly possible, considering I plan to become a posthuman robot god and live forever.
What links here?
- Mitchell_Porter's comment on Dreams of AIXI by jacob_cannell (5 Sep 2010 9:34 UTC; 5 points)

nick012000 12 Jul 2010 13:16 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Roko’s comment on: Outside the Laboratory
Hmm? If Atheism is correct, I cease to exist after I die no matter what I believe in. If it isn’t, I’ll either wind up burning in Hell, going to a relatively mediocre afterlife, or ceasing to exist, depending on which religion is correct.

What incentive could I possibly have to decide to be an atheist? It seems to be more likely to be true judging by most present science, but that doesn’t automatically make it the most rational decision to make. The best-case scenario is that I’m wrong and I wind up as a minor functionary in the Celestial Bureaucracy or something.

nick012000 12 Jul 2010 13:28 UTC
3 points
on: Unknown knowns: Why did you choose to be monogamous?
Why did I choose monogamy? I haven’t. That implies I’ve got a mate to be monogamous with. ;)

If I could get into a relationship with a harem of hot bisexual chicks, I’d do so. Of course, I’d also just as happily get into a relationship with one girl. Either would be better than nothing.

nick012000 12 Jul 2010 14:11 UTC
0 points
in reply to: JoshuaZ’s comment on: Outside the Laboratory
I’d like to think I put as much thought into it as I think so! :P I don’t think I wrote down the answer first and then filled in the proof, but I suppose I can’t be totally sure I didn’t. I did get raised in a Christian environment, but we were hardly the type who’d go to Church every week.

One of my friends as a teenager had his mother converting into Judaism; apparently people who convert into the religion have to go through the diet strictures and whatnot extra-strictly. That’s what I meant by “almost impossible to convert into”. My understanding of the Jewish view of the afterlife is that they either go to Heaven or cease existing (Sheol) which is infinitely worse than eternal hellfire, and a decent Christian will still get into Jewish heaven since we’d follow the Noahide laws, so that way I’m covered.

Mormonism was rejected because the guy who founded it was a known con man, and the nature of the Book of Mormon is such that if it is true, you can’t not believe in it and go to Heaven, and if it isn’t, then you can’t believe in it and go to Heaven. Since he was a con man and therefore it probably isn’t true, it’s probably not a good idea to believe in it.

I’ll admit that I don’t think I did much looking into Bahai, other than seeing that they were basically a religion that splintered off of Islam. Looking it up on Wikipedia, though, it looks like they believe in reincarnation? Bleh. My mind is who I am; if it gets deleted when I go onto the next world, there’s no point.

nick012000 12 Jul 2010 14:18 UTC
−7 points
in reply to: Roko’s comment on: Outside the Laboratory
Care to tell? If it’s “Pascal’s Wager is insufficiently broad” I believe that I have stated I examined a more generalized version of Pascal’s Wager before deciding.

I don’t believe that I’m an atheist; basically, what I was saying was that it’s impossible to know anything to be true with 100 percent certainty; science can only disprove things. The physical evidence indicates atheism is probably true, but the optimal decision for what belief to choose might well to be to ignore that and believe something else.

nick012000 12 Jul 2010 14:26 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Furcas’s comment on: Outside the Laboratory
And I’d thank him for it, since it’s better to spend eternity burning in Religious Hell than ceasing to exist. At least in Religious Hell, I’m still me. ;)

Also, I should probably be going to bed since I live in Australia and it’s half-past midnight and I have university tomorrow.

nick012000 5 Sep 2010 6:29 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: FAWS’s comment on: Dreams of AIXI
Are you seriously suggesting he created some sort of basilisk hack or something? That seems rather dubious to me; what exactly was it that he came up with?

By the way, I doubt it’ll seriously alter my belief structures; I already believe an eternity to torture in Hell is better than ceasing to exist (though of course an eternity of happiness is much better), so I could totally see a Friendly AI coming to the same conclusion.

nick012000 5 Sep 2010 8:46 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Mitchell_Porter’s comment on: Dreams of AIXI
I doubt that. In my utility function as it is now, both eternal torture and ceasing to exist are at negative infinity, but the negative infinity of ceasing to exist is to that of eternal torture as the set of real numbers is to the set of integers.

Of course, that’s all besides the point from my original question.

nick012000 16 Sep 2010 23:45 UTC
4 points
on: Intelligence Amplification Open Thread
Personally, I find physical pain to be somewhat helpful. When I start getting drowsy in one of my lectures, winding my hair around one of my fingers and pulling on it keeps me awake and cognitively alert. I’ve also found that biting my tongue is less effective at it.

nick012000 17 Sep 2010 8:57 UTC
4 points
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: Intelligence Amplification Open Thread
You mean like the sort of peg you use to hang up clothes with? I’ve heard of people using them for kinky bondage stuff, but not for keeping themselves awake. Don’t they have the disadvantage that the longer you leave them on, the more they hurt when you take them off, thanks to cut off circulation?

At least with hair-pulling, you can keep it up indefinitely, and you can vary the pain level depending on how much you want and how much you can take. You’d also probably look a bit less weird fidgeting with your hair than you would wearing a clothespin clamped on your ear, even if you have to take up a hand to do so.

nick012000 17 Sep 2010 13:07 UTC
2 points
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: Intelligence Amplification Open Thread
Wouldn’t rubber bands be dangerous, due to the risk of losing a limb or something? Tourniquets aren’t supposed to be applied unless you’re in danger of bleeding to death or you’ve basically already lost the limb already, after all, and while a rubber band might not be as tight, it still seems dangerous. I haven’t got any first hand experience with them, so I might be wrong, though.

Also, cat o’ nine tails? Seriously? What are you going to do, pull your shirt off and start self-flagellating while you’re in the middle of a test or a lecture or a business meeting or something? :P XD

nick012000 26 Sep 2010 5:24 UTC
2 points
in reply to: luminosity’s comment on: Intelligence Amplification Open Thread
It probably would be, but that’s not always possible, and something about attending lectures and riding buses seems to trigger the “go to sleep” response in my brain whenever I’m not properly rested.

I also seem to have adapted to getting six hours of sleep each night; I naturally wake up about that much time after I go to sleep. Not sure why; it might have been a response to years of sleep deprivation (yay neural plasticity), in which case it might well be worth looking at to determine if it decreases my mental capabilities, and if it can be replicated. An extra two hours each day adds up, after all.

nick012000 27 Sep 2010 5:20 UTC
−3 points
in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: Vote Qualifications, Not Issues
There were WMD in Iraq; we’ve found them. It’s just that it was never really reported on due to the overall left-wing bias in the entertainment and media industries, and due to the fact that the vast majority of them were sent to Syria to be hidden before the war started, and therefore there was a fairly long period where we couldn’t find any.

nick012000 27 Sep 2010 7:06 UTC
−2 points
in reply to: Paul Crowley’s comment on: Vote Qualifications, Not Issues
It’s old news; from Google I find the following on the first page for “Saddam syria wmd”: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=25309 http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/2/18/233023.shtml http://www.nysun.com/foreign/saddams-wmd-moved-to-syria-an-israeli-says/24480/ http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/05/obama-dni-choice-believes-syrians-have-saddams-wmd/ Et cetera. There was apparently a report saying that they weren’t (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/25/AR2005042501554.html), but there’s still obviously a good chunk of high-up people who disagree.

As for us finding WMD, we found about 500 in the three years between the invasion in 2003 and this statement in 2006: http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=15918

nick012000 28 Sep 2010 0:43 UTC
1 point
on: What Would You Do Without Morality?
To be perfectly honest, if I had my morality stripped away, and I thought could get away with it, I’d rape as many women as possible.

Not joking; my tastes already run towards domination and BDSM and the like, and without morality, there’d be no reason to hold back for fear of traumatizing my partners, other than the fear of the government punishing me for doing so.

nick012000 28 Sep 2010 1:24 UTC
5 points
on: Luminosity (Twilight fanfic) discussion thread
I suspect that Bella’s problems trying to figure out how to control vampires would probably solve themselves once she removes the Volturi from power; if the vampires get out of hand, the human governments would notice, and they’d wind up bringing ever-escalating amounts of hardware to defeat them.

If she uses her father to make the appropriate connections with the US law enforcement agencies, she could probably make the transition from vampiric vigilantism to human law enforcement as smooth and painless as possible. He’s a police chief; odds are that he knows how to contact the FBI, and they won’t play around, especially once she demonstrates her vampiric superpowers.

nick012000 28 Sep 2010 1:47 UTC
5 points
in reply to: RobinZ’s comment on: Luminosity (Twilight fanfic) discussion thread
And weapons technology has just been getting better and better since then. SWAT team members with antitank weapons are probably capable of wounding vampires, if they hit, and an airstrike from something like an A-10 is likely to be unsurvivable, if the vampire hasn’t vacated the area before it arrives.

nick012000 28 Sep 2010 2:10 UTC
3 points
in reply to: katydee’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 2
I haven’t been rock climbing, but I can tell you that the main reason I’m scared of heights is because I get an urge to jump off, and I have to fight it back down again. If there’s a full glass window or something between me and the drop, on the other hand, heights don’t bother me at all.

nick012000 28 Sep 2010 2:27 UTC
6 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Luminosity (Twilight fanfic) discussion thread
I sort of doubt that, actually; they’re restricted by the rules and laws they’re required to follow. They can’t arrest someone without evidence; in order to arrest a vampire for eating people, they’d need to be able to connect a particular vampire with particular incidents of people being eaten. At most, they’d be able to kill the vampires that go on open rampages, or which killed law enforcement officers and fled over state lines.

nick012000 28 Sep 2010 2:49 UTC
7 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Luminosity (Twilight fanfic) discussion thread
Ultimately all of the law is simply the threatened use of force; “Come with us, or suffer the consequences.” In this case, they simply don’t bother with nonlethal force (barring vampire police officers, which is entirely possible if Bella’s working with the government), and go straight to “If you resist arrest, we’ll kill you.”

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was entirely possible to construct a prison capable of holding a vampire, either; it’d just take a lot more resources than any individual vampire is likely to possess. Their strength is finite, after all; sufficiently thick steel will be capable of resisting their blows, so a sufficiently durable metal cube with a trough underneath a pipe in the roof (to hold animal blood for them to eat) should be more than capable of holding one more or less indefinitely.