If anything’s worth the application of military force to acheive, it’s a positive singularity. Of course, there probably isn’t anything you could do with a militia to help implement a positive singularity...
RowanE
Probably better in most scenarios to get the government involved.
And in the few scenarios where it isn’t, you’d probably end up actually opposing the government of the country the project’s based in, so a militia would have to be pretty darned tough to get the job done. I’d expect the resources to prepare for that eventuality would be better spent elsewhere. And as paramilitary solutions go, a few letter bombs or whatever would probably be more effective than marching in with a load of militia dudes.
The token identity seems to me to be the part of identity that matters to me—it seems to be what this specific consciousness is, if that makes any sense.
Now, that would be really fascinating. I would definitely want to see someone act on that urge.
I didn’t even read the post before I started mentally filling in all of the blanks with “my penis” or just “penis” as appropriate.
I want to add some kind of context to that, to avoid seeming like I’m just puerile, but nothing really comes to mind besides the general “what is wrong with me?” kind of thing that’s just signalling and not really helpful for anything.
I read any War Nerd article that comes out, and occasionally read other articles on the site, and my reaction has been similar. The political stuff they say seems, well, “reasonable, if embellishing”, and I’d been worrying about the possibility that it was just true.
I should probably follow suit on this, and avoid any non-War-Nerd articles on eXile to avoid being mind-killed, although a part of me worries that I’m simply following group mentality on the Lesswrong cult.
Did Orwell and Huxley actually believe in the dystopias they were writing as predictions of the future? I find this hard to believe so I’d at least like some sources for that.
I take option one in both instances, feeling less sure of it in the first case because obviously I’m going to start regretting it from about ten seconds in, and keep regretting it for the next thousand years.
But then, I’ll blink, and it’ll be exactly as if the torture or bliss never happened, and in that case neither effect me and I’ve gained a billion or a hornet’s nest, the billion is obviously preferable.
I think most of the dystopia options were actually just negative looks at what things are really like, except for the technological and the cognitive ones. And even in the cognitive one, there’s mention of “or the darned government banned everything again, and people are still getting Alzheimers due to lack of stem-cell research” which sounds like real life to me.
I would choose the paperclipper, but not because I value its intelligence—paperclips are a human invention, and so the paperclipping AI represents a sort of memorial to humanity. A sign that humans once existed, that might last until the heat death of the universe.
My preference for this may perhaps be caused by a confusion, since this is effectively an aesthetic choice for a universe I will not be able to observe, but if other intelligences of a sort that I actually value will not be present either way, this problem doesn’t matter as long as it gives me reason enough to prefer one over the other.
I think the point where I start to not prefer the paperclipper is somewhere between the trilobites and the australopithecines, closer to the australopithecine end of that.
I upvoted as soon as I saw “critical minimum threshold of upvotes and comments necessary to keep me motivated”. This is probably a bad attitude for me to have, but the overall post I think still deserves an upvote anyway, I look forward to seeing what happens next.
That doesn’t sound like they identify as Democrats as a specific political -ism at all.
If they’re registered to vote democrat mainly because of their position on gay marriage, and I’m guessing also a negative opinion of the Republican party, and describe themselves as Democrats if asked about their political views because it’s a convenient answer, that’s not really the same thing.
I don’t think it’s a no true scotsman thing, although as I was writing the comment I did worry that I was veering into that territory.
How one defines a Democrat varies, and only some ways of defining it make sense with the sort of Democrats you describe, and I don’t think the overlap of “Democrats” and “people who identify with a specific political -ism” contains those. This will vary a bit depending on how one is interpreting “identify with a specific political -ism”. I think this is where the disagreement lies.
How do I know that what I mean to say is true, or how do I know what it is that I really mean?
I think the sticking point is the word “like”. This implies they want to be different from Tim Ferris. In the “not that far above you” interpretation, that could just mean they’re making excuses, but it’s not an interpretation that jumps as easily to mind.
If you don’t actually address the issue of whether Tim Ferriss is generalising from one example, all you’re doing there is applying a fully general counterargument. Really, you should at least attempt to address such a concern, and only then ask “is that your true rejection?”
Also, you could probably have formatted the post better, because it’s not completely apparent, especially to someone who skims through (which people will, because that comment was huge) that the whole thing following the link is a quote from a Cracked article (is it? I’m still not completely sure...) and what’s appropriate in a cracked article that has “harsh truths” in the title isn’t as appropriate in Less Wrong discussion, and it seems like you’re being unnecessarily rude and aggressive as well as not exactly on-topic.
Oh no, I agree that the post means what you think it means. I was guessing at why people interpreted it that way. I should have added that it’s not an interpretation that jumps as easily to mind when the first sentence alone is read out of context.
I was hopeful that there would actually be 240 questions, presumably as a linked quiz/survey or something.
For the questions that are already there; 1.1: 100% self-expression 1.2: 100% health
2:1: I’m not sure, and not for unselfish reasons. I know pleasure being desirable is basically the most fundamental thing about utility functions but the idea of eliminating hedonic adaptation so as to live a life of constant happiness significantly greater than just baseline contentment actually scared me when Eliezer discussed it at one point in the sequences. Because of this fear, I wouldn’t answer 100%. Any inbetween seems unsatisfactory—if I was at the 90%-as-good-as-the-best-possible-feast/orgy/LAN party, I would have to wonder about the actual best possible, and want more. Thus, I would choose 100% justice, ignoring the wizard completely. 2.2: 100% pleasure.
I don’t think the questions perfectly encapsulate a trade-off between one value and another, and I think the hypotheticals might either need to be refined, or a much larger sampling of hypotheticals that make these trade-offs happen.
Also, I don’t think everyone’s values perfectly match the sixteen you give. To me, the list seems more like a collection of applause lights than an actual list of intrinsic values, and I expect a real list of things intrinsically valued by a specific human’s utility function would be much messier, with some values being very broad things that encompass/cause several of the equivalent values in the list, and some being ridiculously specific additions or exceptions. And I would expect every human’s to be different, except when abstracted to the point of maybe-uselessness.
The idea of being 99% confident of the correct phone number for a distant acquaintance, without actually checking on Facebook or something to confirm, boggles my mind.
I think I first came to this site via a link on another forum to the “Three Worlds Collide” story… or the “That Alien Message” one. And then I read more articles. I find rationality, cryonics and the singularity to be very interesting, and most of the articles I’ve seen so far are about those topics.
I’m in the UK, and I’ll be in sixth form in september, will do maths, electronics, chemistry and physics.
I don’t yet feel I can identify as a rationalist, but I don’t think I’ll be able to assess this until I catch myself thinking irrationally in response to something, either before or after the fact. I’m not sure how I can even define “me as a rationalist”...