Raelifin
Be aware that having tried and failed at something does not mean it does not work. That’s generalizing from a single example. Remember: “The apprentice laments ‘My art has failed me’, while the master says ‘I have failed my art’”. This is not to say you’re necessarily wrong, just that we need to take a data-based approach, rather than rely on anecdotes.
Hello northern Ohio! My name is Max, and I recently moved up here from Columbus. I’ve attended a few LW meetups before, and would enjoy getting a regular thing happening in Cleveland. ^_^
voting is rational if you...
This is a minor objection, but voting can’t be rational and it can’t be irrational. Voting isn’t a system of thinking. You may want to rephrase your argument as “voting is optimal if you...”
And as a followup, even if you’re correct about the probabilities (which I’m not sure you are), it’s not intrinsically optimal to vote, even if you care about the outcome. One must always weigh the opportunity cost of an action, and the opportunity cost depends on the person.
If a superintelligent AI is being built and an equal amount of Yudkowsky’s time will decrease the extinction probability by the same amount as voting would increase candidate X’s election probability, then it’s clearly not optimal for Yudkowsky to vote, because the neg-utility of extinction far outweighs the neg-utility of an unfortunate election.
(Primary author, here.)
This is a good point, and obviously there’s a lot of tension between phyggish meme-sharing/codewords and a desire to be more inclusive and not so scary. An earlier draft actually made it an explicit point to talk about the perception of phyg, as I think it’s one of the biggest PR issues we have.
The pamphlet was written to try and help people not feel so overwhelmed by coming into a space so loaded down with jargon, but you’re right that it perpetuates the problem. I encourage people to copy and edit this, perhaps tailoring it to the level of jargon and the specific goals of your group.
Meetup : Less Wrong: Cleveland
This meetup was canceled due to people being sick and busy.
The Cleveland meetup was canceled due to people being busy and sick.
Meetup : Cleveland Ohio Meetup
Survey completed! Making a note here: Huge success!
Ideological Turing Test Domains
These are great suggestions! (As are others, suggested in other comments.) Thank you!
When I gave my presentation last night I made sure that people knew that it was called the ITT by others and that was what to search for (I also pointed them to UnEY). I’m still on the fence about pushing the name (ITT is really hard to say) but I’ll keep your reservations in mind.
I’ll keep you informed of the details moving forward. :-)
Vegetarianism Ideological Turing Test!
Yikes. If all responses are this good, I’m sure the judges will have a rough time! Thanks so much for your words. At some point you’ll need to PM me with a description of your actual beliefs so I can give feedback to the judges and see how you do.
I really like this entry. Don’t forget to PM me your actual opinion so I can give feedback to the judges and see how you do. ^_^
They already did. I encourage you to make your prediction, however (the full judging round will start on Monday or Tuesday depending on my schedule).
Vegetarian/Omnivore Ideological Turing Test Judging Round!
Yes. I’ll be providing the answer key in the stats post.
I pretty much agree with you. I think it’ll be interesting to get the data out of this and see how competent the judges are compared to Leah’s Christianity tests. A few people in my local group thought this would be a good topic.
The elevator pitch that got me most excited about rationality is from Raising the Sanity Waterline. It only deals with epistemic rationality, which is an issue, and it, admittedly, is best fit towards people who belong to a sanity-focused minority, like atheism or something political. It was phrased with regard to religion originally, so I’ll keep it this way here, but it can easily be tailored.
“What is rationality?”
“Why is rationality important? Shouldn’t we focus on religion first?”