Survey completed in full, reporting in for karma as per ancient tradition.
Thanks to Scott and Dan for all the work they put into this!
Survey completed in full, reporting in for karma as per ancient tradition.
Thanks to Scott and Dan for all the work they put into this!
Who else is reading this page because they visited LessWrong to procrastinate?
And the first thing i see when i get here is a discussion post on internet procrastination. I feel so ridiculous now that i have no choice but to get back to work!
I finished the survey! Including the Unreasonably Long and Complicated part which i admit took even longer than i expected.
Hopefully, of course, everybody involved will intuitively understand what sorts of things you are likely to “wish [you] had precommitted to”.
IJ Good Institute would make me think that it was founded by IJ Good.
I want to point out that it is possible that some of these downvotes* could be honest assessments of a comment history. If a user notices you by reading one comment, that user might become interested in other comments you’ve written, and if this person didn’t like one comment, he may also dislike other comments in which you express similar ideas.
* Which were not from me, because i have not read the conversation you linked to.
I say this because i realize that i have (arguably) done it before. I noticed a comment from one particular user which deserved to be downvoted. Then i read all the related conversations and downvoted the other comments in which that user repeated more or less the same thing. Then, i began reading earlier conversations in which that user had participated, and found that many of this user’s comments were bad for similar reasons, but i did upvote about 10% of them that were good.
Overall, the user who had been downvoted saw a sudden karma drop within several minutes; they specifically made an accusation of retributive downvoting.
Long story short: on at least one occasion, a user who complained about mass downvoting was actually experiencing a rapid series of honest downvotes.
I’m guessing that even if you survive, your quality of life is going to take a hit. Accounting for this will probably bring our intuitive expectation of harm closer to the actual harm.
Just one suggestion: come up with a new goal to put at the top of the list, and shift the rest down. That way, “how to hack into the computer our universe is running on” would be “up to 11″ on the list.
The new #1 item could be something like “We’re going to make yet another novelty t-shirt store!”
Mencious Moldbug, who is probably familiar to some Overcoming Bias and Lesswrong readers. He is a erudite, controversial and most of all contrarian social critic and writer.
I’ve read mentions of Moldbug here before. I tried reading some of his essays once or twice, but from what i remember, i thought he was too long-winded, i thought he made broad unsupported assumptions and shakey generalizations and never seemed to get to a point. Actually, i remember thinking that, like you mention, he struck me as “most of all contrarian”, trying to be controversial for its own sake.
But i’ve seen a few recommendations of his writing here. Maybe i should reconsider my judgment of him. I know you linked to a debate with him and Robin Hanson… but that’s a 72 minute long video. What’s a good jumping-off point to get into his writings?
I am taking a first-aid class at my local community college. Our instructor, a paramedic, after telling us about the importance of blood flow to the brain, and the poor prognosis for someone who is left comatose from oxygen deprivation, says:
“There are some people who say, ‘But miracles can happen!’ Yeah, miracles are one in a million. What number are you?”
In my experience very few people will listen to an argument after the person presenting the argument has called them stupid. When you call somebody a moron, then i expect that you’ve drastically reduced the chances that this person will listen to you.
In other words, the action of calling someone a moron takes convincing the target off of the table, if you haven’t done that already.
My guess is that, when you call you’re in a debate and you call your opponent stupid, it’s mainly for the benefit of the people who already agree with you; the main purpose is probably designating “which side you’re on” rather than convincing anyone who disagrees. This reminds me of the line of retreat idea—it’s easier for people to change their minds if they can do so without calling themselves stupid.
At the moment the comment i’m replying to is at −1 karma.
Now, even if PlaidX is on the wrong side of a “slam-dunk” issue here, i question whether it’s right to downvote this considering that he’s really just asking for an explanation of someone’s reasoning.
I’ve takent he liberty of editing the relevant wiki page as well, to mention the current 2012 page.
The pirate-specific stuff is a bit extraneous
Jack Sparrow: The only rules that really matter are these: what a [person] can do and what a [person] can’t do. For instance, you can accept that [different customs from yours are traditional and commonly accepted in the world] or you can’t. But [this thing you dislike] is [an inevitable feature of your human existence], boy, so you’ll have to square with that some day … So, can you [ally with somebody you find distasteful], or can you not?
Last Halloween i dressed as a P-zombie. I explained to anybody who would listen that i had the same physical composition as a conscious human being, but was not in fact conscious. I’m not sure that any of them were convinced that i really was in costume.
Hear that, Randall? You need to lampoon us better next time!
I thought it sounded like it’s meant as an introduction to LessWrong. Especially with those recommended links toward the end. People who already read this site aren’t the target audience.
The AI gathered enough information about me to create a conscious simulation of me, through a monochrome text terminal? That is impressive!
If the AI is capable of simulating me, then the AI must already be out of the box. In that case, then whatever the AI wants to happen will happen, so it doesn’t matter what do.
Survey completed in full. Begging for karma as per ancient custom.
I choose DEFECT because presumably the money is coming out of CFAR’s pocket and I assume they can use the money better than whichever random person wins the raffle. If I win, I commit to requesting it be given as an anonymous donation to CFAR.
EDIT: Having been persuaded my Yvain and Vaniver, I reverse my position and intend to spend the prize on myself. Unfortunately I’ve already defected and now it’s too late to not be an asshole! Sorry about that. Only the slightly higher chance of winning can soothe my feelings of guilt.