Quick question: I assume the P(God) question excludes simulators, basement universes created in particle accelerators ect? I know it says supernatural, but since a parent universe would not necessarly obey the same laws of physics as the daughter universe, this could be counted as supernatural.
skeptical_lurker
Three rationalists walk into a bar.
The first one walks up to the bar, and orders a beer.
The second one orders a cider.
The third one says “Obviously you’ve never heard of Aumann’s agreement theorem.”
An exponentially large number of Boltzmann Brains experience the illusion of walking into bars, and order a combination of every drink imaginable.
An attractive woman goes into a bar, and enters into a drinking contest with Nick Bostrom. After repeatedly passing out she wakes up the next day with a hangover and a winning lottery ticket.
Three neoreactionaries walk into a bar
“Oh, how I hate these modern sluts” says the first one, watching some girls in miniskirts on the dancefloor “We should return to the 1950s when people acted respectably”
“Pfft, you call yourself reactionary?” replies the second “I idolise 11th century Austria, where people acted respectably and there were no ethnic minorites”
“Ahh, but I am even more reactionary then either of you” boasts the third “I long for classical Greece and Rome, the birthplace of western civilisation, where bisexuality was normal and people used to feast until they vomited!”
Passed in the first 30 seconds and then spent 60 hours worried that it can’t be that easy.
… the lateral thinker who finds a new route forward, the hedonist who bungee jumps off the edge, and the engineer who builds a bridge.
(Of course, there might not be another route to find, the bungee jumping could get you killed, and a bridge might not be cost-effective, but I’d like to at least consider a third way out of a dilemma)
Obstacle #2 to my writing more fiction is that my writing so far has had negative, as well as positive, consequences for public relations. My writing tends to be controversial and stomp all over certain sorts of minefields. Worse, there is some quality of it that seems to attract a certain sort of Sneer mindset – not just social-media sneertrolls, but the seething pools of corruption that are mainstream journalists.
This is something that has made me feel rather conflicted about HPMOR—on the one hand, I’ve really enjoyed reading it, but on the other I fear it makes a whole range of important beliefs look ridiculous by association.
But most of the damage that can been done, already has been done. The ways to minimise the damage are fairly straightforwards:
(1) Make it obvious that HPMOR is not a day job, so that people can’t say “MIRI gave EY time off work to work on HPMOR! People donate large amounts of money to MIRI to produce fanfiction!”
(2) Stay out of politics. There are mines that don’t actually need to be stomped on. This means removing small sections of writing which do not advance the plot, but make a political point, such as in three worlds collide rape is legal (I struggle to imagine how this could work), or the section of HPMOR where it is explained that not believing in open borders (which the average person does not believe in) makes you as bad as Voldemort and that if you don’t want someone in your country that means you think that they are not even worth spitting on.
Does he realise that there are non-racist reasons for wanting closed borders?
EY wrote ‘politics is the mindkiller’, which makes it even stranger when he mindkills his readers.
This came out more critical then I would prefer. But I just don’t like to see pointless landmine-stamping in otherwise pretty awesome fiction.
If you’re using the argument that utilitarianism supported gay rights before it was cool to do so, then I feel the need to point out that I skimmed that article, and Bentham says that out of necrophilia, bestiality, homosexuality and masturbation, masturbation is the most damaging to health.
The impropriety then may consist either in making use of an object
Of the proper species but at an improper time: for instance, after death.
Of an object of the proper species and sex, and at a proper time, but in an improper part.
Of an object of the proper species but the wrong sex. This is distinguished from the rest by the name of paederasty.
Of a wrong species.
In procuring this sensation by one’s self without the help of any other sensitive object.
...
Of all irregularities of the venereal appetite, that which is the most incontestably pernicious is one which no legislator seems ever to have made an attempt to punish. I mean the sort of impurity which a person of either sex may be guilty of by themselves. This is often of the most serious consequence to the health and lasting happiness of those who are led to practise it.
You can’t just cherry pick his support for gay rights to argue that he supported modern sexual norms 200 years early.
Ok, anyone reading the comments knows what this is a allegory for. Before reading on, remember your current stance on this issue.
I’m now going to interpret this as being about education in general.
Green Martians == uneducated
Blue Martians == educated
humans == society, and especially taxpayers
nice tickling == the social benefits of having highly educated professionals
painful tickling == the financial costs of maintaining an education system
Suddenly the anti-creep feminists are libertarians, arguing that tax is theft, even if used to educate children. Others argue against this, saying that everyone has a right to an education, which is a social good that trumps individual property rights.
Some think you should be able to pay for private tickling. Others say this is elitist.
Is it unethical for a Green Martian to attempt to metamorphose? Does this depend on whether they believe themselves to be fast or slow learners?
Clearly, some Green Martians must attempt to metamorphose in order to maintain a technologically advanced society. The current social norm is that all Green Martians, no matter how stupid, must attempt to metamorphose at least to the age of 16. Indeed, in many places the slower-learning Greens are given extra tickling time, more than the fast learners.
Some people believe that some Martians are inherently better at tickling, and that those who struggle to metamorphose are in some way inferior. Some even say that for the slowest-learning Martians it is immoral to try and better themselves by being educated, rather then accepting their lowly place in society.
These people are often accused of being ableist, classist and elitist.
Some people even believe that the slowest-learning Martians should not reproduce, saving the next generation the pain of their stinging tentacles.
These people are generally regarded as crypto-Nazis.
So, now that everyone is thoroughly mindkilled due to the mention of both PUA and Nazis, did your stance change? If so, does this reveal underlying biases, or is it more a matter that allegories are inherently imperfect representations of the actual issue being discussed?
IANANR,IFIDSIWAPLATMDTTTOMC (I am not a neoreactionary, in fact I don’t strongly identify with any political labels at the moment due to the threat of motivated cognition)
But,
I think I have grasped the link between LW and NRx. Its a mixture of having something to protect and extrapolating trends. Whereas singulatarians looks at exponential trends in computing, extrapolate and see a future where some form of superintelligence will surely come to dominate, worrying that human values could be destroyed, the NRx look at the trends of memes and genes, extrapolate the exponential growth, and see a future where their ingroup and values are massively outnumbered, which can be a death sentence in democracy.
If your terminal values are running against the tide of change, then progressivism is an existential risk. Imagine you believe in God if you do not, and then imagine Christianity going the same way as Norse paganism. Imagine everything you believe gives meaning to life being discarded to the dustbin of history. Or imagine that the positive correlation between religion and fertility reverses the secularisation of society in the long run, and we end up in a totalitarian theocracy. If somehow neither of these futures scares you, keep going until you imagine a future that does.
To put it another way, most people think “this group I disagree with is only 2% of the population. They’re not a threat.” NRx thinks “This group is only 2% and doubling every x years. Assuming the trend stays constant, how long do I have until they have a democratic majority?”.
That sounded more positive of NRx than I intended. Conversely, while exit is not threatening, NRx taking over society is of course a big threat to anyone with progressive values.
Among the ways NRx differs, I think strategic prioritisation is one of the big points. Even if you believe that homosexuality is a big threat to civilisation (which I emphatically don’t) well, there are a lot of homophobes. What is going to be the marginal benefit of one more homophobe? By comparison, one more cryonisist or one more FAI researcher has very large marginal benefit due to the small size of these groups. I find it really strange that Anissimov used to talk about the threat of nanotech/AI/bioterrorism and now talks about the threat of gays and transsexuals. [Edit: I retract this last snetence—apparently I have been misinformed about Anissimov]
OKC is a dating website, and some people are only looking for casual sex, so it does not surprise me that looks are more important than text, nor is this a bad thing. After all, whatever you write is going to attract some people and repel others, which largely cancels out, while beauty is more objective and will attract/repel everyone to a highly correlated degree. If you compared individual ratings rather than collapsing across all visitors (which seems to be what they did) than words would have a far greater effect.
Also, people looking for sex will (I imagine) rate many profiles and play a numbers game, whereas those looking for love spend far more time on individual messages. In the time it takes to asses one persons personality you can judge dozens of peoples looks. This means that there is a sampling bias in ratings, weighted towards people who judge based on looks.
“Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning”—computer learns 49 different games
Harry gives some of his life (what does this even mean? Vitalism?) and magic to resurrect Hermione. Suppose he’s given x% of his magic. Does this mean that Hermione has x% of Harry’s magic, now and forever? For that matter, are the sums of their lifespans equal to Harry’s previous natural lifespan? Or does it work like a spark, a small amount allowing Hermione to bootstrap back to full health?
If the second option is right, then patronus 2.0 + philosophers stone allows almost self-replicating wizards and witches. The only bottleneck is the stone takes “minutes” to work which still seems to imply that you could easily produce hundreds of wizard clones per day, against a wizard population of about 15000 in muggle Britain. Clone someone powerful, and world domination should be easy.
There are sometimes controversial discussions here, and I wonder how these conversations play out at meetups. Do you ever get an anarchist, a communist and a neoreactionary turning up to the same meeting? If so, does it cause problems? Or, indeed, do discussions about dust specks/torture or other controversial but apolitical topics ever get heated?
LW seems far more cool-headed than the rest of the world, and I am wondering to what extent it might be partially due to being online.
Personally, I have only gone to a few meetups, but I think I have managed to offend people :(
Any guesses on what his next handle will be? I’m thinking CthuluWillEatYourBabies.
If you went to a party (meaning a social event) and started loudly proclaiming that anyone who does not vote for your favourite political party is a selfish git, people would tell you you were being rude, and you might be asked to leave (unless everyone there shares your views).
But on facebook, this sort of behaviour is perfectly acceptable. And once you get used to this online, it carries over into offline life. Faced with this onslaught, people with descenting views either shut up about it or change their views to match the majority.
I dunno if I use anecdotal evidence too much, but from my experience, five years ago it was possible for people to have different political views, to have a civilised conversation about policies, to agree to disagree. Now virtually everyone I know has the same political views and no-one discusses policies (you can’t fit policies into a tweet, its too complex).
More generally I get the impression that even physical violence in the pursuit of political aims seems to be argued as justified more frequently, from rioting to throwing stones at politicians to angry jokes about arson against people who support the wrong party.
Tomorrow its the general election here in the UK. Five years ago I would have had several conversations about who to vote for, with no hard feelings on either side. This time, I’m not telling anyone I know in real life who I’m voting for, and all I can think is that all this anger isn’t worth it, that posting a picture captioned “We have people who need jobs, we have jobs that need to be done, why don’t we just print the money needed? Share if you agree!” is not a sensible way to determine macroeconomic policy, and that we would all be better off if people got into office through examinations or futarchy.
Raise shields on general principles! There could be Aurors with invisibility cloaks or disillusioned nearby, enemies could suddenly appear by phoenix or some other method, there could be muggleborns with sniper rifles hidden a km away, someone could have travelled back in time to plant a bomb, one of the Death Eaters could be a traitor...
Mad-eye Moody would be disappointed.
EVER VIGILANT!
What credence do you give to the proposition that every sperm is sacred?
Unless your credence is a lot less than one in a billion (which is dubious given overconfidence bias) then this dominates all other concerns
From what I heard I thought you were calling for people not to associate with any gays/transsexuals, or with people who themselves associate with gays/transexuals. I thought you thought that the threat posed was one of demographic decline.
I apologise if I have misrepresented your position, but that was how I interpreted the situation from what second-hand sources said. Incidentally, in what respect is Justine Tunney insane?
I’m mildly surprised no-one has speculated on what Harry will do next. He won’t accept that Hermione is dead, and I’m guessing that it will occur to him that transfiguring her into a steel ball and then freezing it (I’m pretty sure there’s a spell for that) provides a quick and easy form of cryonics, which as an added bonus bypasses the problem of ice crystal formation.
How to resurrect her is the tricky bit.
EY’s central argument for level B incompetence was that Trump is creating ambiguity around which countries the US will defend against Russia, which could lead to war. Now, I agree that it would be wrong for a sitting president to create that ambiguity, but a presidential candidate has to ask those questions, otherwise the foreign policy can never change. As long as Trump arrives at a concrete policy over which countries the US will defend when he becomes president, I don’t see that there is a problem.
I also don’t see that the status quo is keeping the world all that safe, with a proxy war between the US and Russia in Syria.
Most substantial variations from the equilibrium are disasters, and if you put a high-variance candidate, someone whose main point is to subvert the status quo, in charge, then with overwhelming probability you’re headed off to a cliff.
This is exactly the same as the argument for radical conservatism that the neoreactionaries make. Can you really believe that when the right challenges the status quo, priors are that they almost certainly wrong, but when progressives challenge the status quo they are almost certainly correct? This is extremely motivated reasoning and totally inconsistent.
And EY is all about finding the ‘correct contrarians’ and subverting the status quo on every other issue.
Done!
I left the HBD (human bio-diversity) question blank, due to having misplaced my barge-pole.