olalonde

Karma: 119

olalonde 20 Mar 2026 5:23 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Mitchell_Porter’s comment on: olalonde’s Shortform
Oh, interesting. I suppose they would be quite supportive of our p-zombie association.

olalonde 19 Mar 2026 22:40 UTC
3 points
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on: olalonde’s Shortform
Starting an Association for Philosophical Zombies (APZ)
As a philosophical zombie, it sometimes feels as if I am alone in the world. Very few p-zombies dare to come out publicly; in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of another one besides myself. I am considering creating an association to help us network with each other, raise public awareness, and defend our rights.
The only membership requirement would be to self-identify as a p-zombie (since verification is literally impossible, anyway).
My friend has long suspected that some LessWrong members might be closeted p-zombies and has encouraged me to post here to gauge interest. Thoughts?

olalonde 15 Sep 2013 10:43 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: aphyer’s comment on: Prisoner’s dilemma tournament results
Perfect simulation is not only really hard, it has been proven to be impossible. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem

olalonde 6 Sep 2012 10:26 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: Rationality Quotes September 2012
Related:

The really important thing is not to live, but to live well. - Socrates

olalonde 14 Aug 2012 18:11 UTC
6 points
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in reply to: RolfAndreassen’s comment on: AI timeline predictions: are we getting better?
Perhaps their contribution is in influencing the non experts? It is very likely that the non experts base their estimates on whatever predictions respected experts have made.

olalonde 28 Jul 2012 6:54 UTC
18 points
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on: Is Politics the Mindkiller? An Inconclusive Test
I believe government should be much more localized and I like the idea of charter cities. Competition among governments is good for citizens just as competition among businesses is good for consumers. Of course, for competition to really work out, immigration should not be regulated.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_city

olalonde 28 Jul 2012 6:20 UTC
10 points
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in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: Rationality Quotes July 2012
For some reason, this thread reminds me of this Simpsons quote:

“The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It’s all lies. But they’re entertaining lies, and in the end, isn’t that the real truth?”

olalonde 28 Jul 2012 6:13 UTC
4 points
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on: That Alien Message

Oh, and every time someone in this world tries to build a really powerful AI, the computing hardware spontaneously melts.

Would have been a good punch if the humans ended up melting away the aliens’ computer simulating our universe.

olalonde 9 Jul 2012 15:25 UTC
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in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: An Intuitive Explanation of Solomonoff Induction
To expand on what parent said, pretty much all modern computer languages are equivalent to Turing machines (Turing complete). This includes Javascript, Java, Ruby, PHP, C, etc. If I understand Solomonoff induction properly, testing all possible hypothesis implies generating all possible programs in say Javascript and testing them to see which program’s output match our observations. If multiple programs match the output, we should chose the smallest one.

olalonde 6 Jul 2012 3:52 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Irrationality Game II

efficiently convert ambient energy

Just a nitpick but if I recall correctly, cellular respiration (aerobic metabolism) is much more efficient than any of our modern ways to produce energy.

olalonde 5 Jul 2012 11:38 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: TimS’s comment on: Irrationality Game II
I think 1 is the most likely scenario (although I don’t think FOOM is a very likely scenario). Some more mind blowing hard problems are available here for those who are still skeptical: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcomputational_problem

olalonde 4 Jul 2012 21:54 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Kindly’s comment on: Irrationality Game II
I don’t think that’s so obviously true. Here are some possible arguments against that theory:

1) There is a theoretical upper limit at which information can travel (speed of light). A very large “brain” will eventually be limited by that speed.

2) Some computational problems are so hard that even an extremely powerful “brain” would take very long to solve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_complexity_theory#Intractability).

3) There are physical limits to computation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremermann%27s_limit). Bremermann’s Limit is the maximum computational speed of a self-contained system in the material universe. According to this limit, a computer the size of the Earth would take 10^72 years to crack a 512 bit key. In other words, even an AI the size of the Earth would not manage to break modern human encryption by brute-force.

More theoretical limits here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_to_computation

olalonde 4 May 2012 0:48 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Rationality Quotes May 2012
Forgive my stupidity, but I’m not sure I get this one. Should I read it as “[...] it’s probably for the same reasons you haven’t done it yourself.”?

olalonde 3 May 2012 20:37 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: chaosmosis’s comment on: Rationality Quotes May 2012
I’m the one who said that. Just to make it clear, I do agree with your first comment: taken literally, the quote doesn’t make sense. Do you get it better if I say: “It is easy to achieve your goals if you have no goals”? I concede absurd was possibly a bit too strong here.

olalonde 2 May 2012 2:19 UTC
9 points
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in reply to: Dorikka’s comment on: Rationality Quotes May 2012
I think you’re over analyzing here, the quote is meant to be absurd.

olalonde 28 Apr 2012 10:42 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: Intelligence as a bad

You can’t simply assert that. It’s an empirical question. How have you tried to measure the downsides?

It seems so obvious to me that I didn’t bother… Here’s some empirical data: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html . Anyways, if you really want to dispute the fact that we have progressed over the past few centuries, I believe the burden of proof rests on you.

olalonde 27 Apr 2012 17:09 UTC
0 points
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on: Applause Lights

can convey new information to a bounded rationalist

Why limit it to bounded rationalists?

olalonde 25 Apr 2012 21:50 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: Intelligence as a bad
I also strongly doubt the claim that human intelligence has stopped increasing. I was just offering an alternative hypothesis in case that proposition were true. Also, OP was arguing that intelligence stopped increasing at an evolutionary level which the Flynn effect doesn’t seem to contradict (after a quick skim of the Wikipedia page).

olalonde 25 Apr 2012 21:02 UTC
4 points
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on: Intelligence as a bad

However, humans and human societies are currently near some evolutionary equilibrium.

I think there’s plenty of evidence that human societies are not near some evolutionary equilibrium. Can you name a human society that has lasted longer than a few hundred years? A few thousand years?

On the biological side, is there any evidence that we have reached an equilibrium? (I’m asking genuinely)

It’s very possible that individual intelligence has not evolved past its current levels because it is at an equilibrium, beyond which higher individual intelligence results in lower social utility.

The consensus among biologists seems to be that social utility has zero to very little impact on evolution. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection

In fact, if you believe SIAI’s narrative about the danger of artificial intelligence and the difficulty of friendly AI, I think you would have to conclude that higher individual intelligence results in lower expected social utility, for human measures of utility.

Higher levels of human intelligence result in a lower expected social utility for some other species (we are better at hunting them). It does not result in lower expected social utility for humans as we are generally good to other humans. Higher levels of individual intelligence have brought us the great achievements of human kind with very few downsides. The concern with AGI is that it might treat humans as humans treat some other species.

If anything, the reason we don’t see a rapid rise of intelligence among human beings is that it does not provide much evolutionary benefit. In modern societies, people don’t die for being dumb (usually) and sexual selection doesn’t have much impact since most people only have child with a single partner.

olalonde 25 Apr 2012 20:44 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: JoshuaZ’s comment on: Intelligence as a bad
Saying that the study was flawed was indeed a bit strong. What I really meant is that OP’s conclusion was wrong (individual intelligence = bad for society).