Hello. My name is Draco Malfoy. You killed my father. Prepare to die!
Val
There is an old joke about an art critic, who was accused of how he dares to criticize the art of others when he himself is unable to produce any art. The answer: “I cannot lay eggs, but I can still tell if an egg is rotten”.
There is one positive side-effect of this thought experiment. Knowing about the Roko’s Basilisk makes you understand the boxed AI problem much better. An AI might use the arguments of Roko’s Basilisk to convince you to let it out of the box, by claiming that if you don’t let it out, it will create billions of simulations of you and torture them—and you might actually be one of those simulations.
An unprepared human hearing this argument for the first time might freak out and let the AI out of the box. As far as I know, this happened at least once during an experiment, when the person playing the role of the AI used a similar argument.
Even if we don’t agree with an argument of one of our opponents or we find it ridiculous, it is still good to know about it (and not just a strawman version of it) to be prepared when it is used against us. (as a side-note: islamists manage to gain sympathizers and recruits in Europe partly because most people don’t know how they think—but they know how most Europeans think - , so their arguments catch people off-guard.)
My most pleasant experience here was that people listen to your arguments if you make the effort / do your homework, even if they are contrary to their ideological views.
When I wrote something which (knowing the statistics about the demographics who frequent this site) was opposing the ideological views of the overwhelming majority of the target audience of the site (and even involved religion in a limited way), the reaction was not what you find on most other sites where they denounce you as the Enemy, cherry-picking some of your arguments they can counter and pretending they didn’t notice the ones they can’t, and even if they found something in your arguments they can agree with it, they never admit because that’s impossible, as you are the evil Enemy and everything you say must be wrong by default… no, instead of this most people actually listened, and while they stated those parts they disagreed with, they admitted that they agreed with parts of it and even admitted that they had to update at least part of what they knew or believed about the topic.
It’s hard to come up with a good counter-argument to “slavery is bad”.
It’s not that hard if you look at them from a contemporary perspective instead of a modern one.
Let’s consider a tribal level of society which can barely survive using solely a subsistence economy, where previously the only thing you could do to prisoners after a fight with a neighboring tribe was to kill them all. You can’t release them because the enemy will have higher numbers in the next battle, and you can’t afford to just feed them because you can barely survive yourself.
Now enter a reform: they are allowed to live, but they have to work. (just a side remark: this is what slavery meant for the ancient tribes in the old testament, which often gets quoted outside context to claim that Christianity “advocates” slavery). Also, if I remember correctly, it only lasted at most seven years? Even in that case it is of course cruel by modern standards, but our current economic model allows for the upkeep of prisoners of war, and for a rehabilitative prison system supported by taxpayer money instead of penal labor. A stone age or early bronze age economy didn’t.
Strangely, I like both writing and in-person communication about even the deepest and most personal topics, but I absolutely dislike telephone (voice only) communication for this purpose.
Actually, with people who I know well, I like the communication in person a little more, and for strangers I slightly prefer written communication over the personal one, but voice communication is an absolute turn-off for me.
I’m slightly introverted, but I can open easily, except when the communication is voice only. In that case I always feel lost, and the communication very quickly turns into awkward silences. There is one exception to this: when the communication is strictly technical in nature. In that case I don’t have any problem even with an hour long phone call, if it remains purely technical. With friends and family, I’m only comfortable in using voice-only communication if it’s about some factual information, like “I’ll be there at 7:30”. When answering “how are you?” in text or in person, I manage it quite well, but I have absolutely no idea how to continue such a conversation on the phone.
I guess it’s because in person there are many channels of communication, and while in writing they are absent, they are compensated by having time to think. On the phone, there is just one channel, without time to think.
Does anyone else have similar experiences?
History.
A lot of people support their ideological views by popular history, which is full of biases.
I’m surprised to find such rhetoric on this site. There is an image now popularized by certain political activists and ideologically-driven cartoons, which depict the colonization of the Americas as a mockery of the D-Day landing, with peaceful Natives standing on the shore and smiling, while gun-toting Europeans jump out of the ships and start shooting at them. That image is even more false than the racist depictions in the late 19th century glorifying the westward expansion of the USA while vilifying the natives.
The truth is much more complicated than that.
If you look at the big picture, there was no such conquest in America like the Mongol invasion. There wasn’t even a concentrated “every newcomer versus every native” warfare. The diverse European nations fought among themselves a lot, the Natives also fought among themselves a lot, both before and after the arrival of the Europeans. Europeans allied themselves with the Natives at least as often as they fought against them. Even the history of the unquestionably ruthless conquistadors like Cortez didn’t feature an army of Europeans set out to exterminate a specific ethnicity. He only had a few hundred Europeans with him, and had tens of thousands of Native allies. If you look at the whole history from the beginning, there was no concentrated military invasion with the intent to conquer a continent. Everything happened during a relatively long period of time. The settlements coexisted peacefully with the natives in multiple occasions, traded with each other, and when conflict developed between them it was no more different than any conflict at any other place on the planet. Conflict develops sooner or later, in the new world just as in the old world. Although there certainly were acts of injustice, the bigger picture is that there was no central “us vs them”, not in any stronger form than how the European powers fought wars among themselves. The Natives had the disadvantage of the diseases as other commenters have already stated, but also of the smaller numbers, of the less advanced societal structures (the civilizations of the Old World needed a lot of time between living in tribes and developing forms of governments sufficient to lead nations of millions) and of inferior technology. The term out-competed is much more fitting than exterminated, which is a very biased and politically loaded word.
You cannot compare the colonization of the Americas to the scenario when a starfleet arrives to the planet and proceeds with a controlled extermination of the population.
- 28 Oct 2016 13:34 UTC; 0 points) 's comment on Open thread, Oct. 24 - Oct. 30, 2016 by (
Insurance for small consumer products are not rational for the buyer, for the very reasons which were presented in the question. If you can afford the loss of the item, it’s better to not buy insurance and just buy the item again in the case it is lost or destroyed. Why insurance companies are still making money out of extended warranties for consumer products, is because they have good marketing and people are not perfectly rational. Gambling, lottery, etc. exist for the same reasons, despite having a negative expected value.
However, if you cannot afford the loss, it is advantageous to buy insurance. There are things which people own but cannot replace on short notice, and suffer greatly if they do lose it. For example, houses, or business-crucial items. You can afford to pay the insurance, but cannot afford losing the item in question. Taking a loan to replace it might be much more expensive than the insurance.
There are situations when losing something might cost you much more than its monetary value. Losing your house might make you homeless. Losing you car, if you require it for your job, might cost you your job. Having an expensive machine you make your living out of, losing it might put you out of business. Not having enough money to afford an expensive operation might cost you your life if you don’t have the health insurance which would have paid for it.
Evolution works in the timespan of hundreds of generations or more. A cultural or political trend can wreck a society in a few generations, before evolution has any time to compensate.
This could have a chance of not ending well. Many of the biases are useful, even if they might hinder us under specific circumstances. It is very useful if society has a number of rational people, but if everyone was perfectly rational, I don’t think society would work anymore.
A major benefit of biases, especially before advanced technology made our lives safer, was that in a dangerous, life-threatening situation you didn’t have the time to evaluate all the choices and make a rational decision. You had to decide in the split of a second if you trusted that odd looking guy over there, or if the sound you heard was that of a tiger or not. This decision was made mostly by a large dose of prejudice, but could save your life.
This is a well-presented article, and even though most (or maybe all) of the information is easily available else-where, this is a well-written summary. It also includes aspects which are not talked about much, or which are often misunderstood. Especially the following one:
Debating the beliefs is a red herring. There could be two groups worshiping the same sacred scripture, and yet one of them would exhibit the dramatic changes in its members, white the other would be just another mainstream faith with boring compartmentalizing believers; so the difference is clearly not the scripture itself.
Indeed, the beliefs are not even close to be among the most important aspects of a cult. A cult is not merely a group which believes in something you personally find ridiculous. A cult can even have a stated core belief which is objectively true, or is a universally accepted good thing, like protecting the environment or world peace.
Another straw falsehood to set beside the first one
Of course it is! That’s the main point. Did it really not come across what I meant when I wrote that my goal was not to defend or attack the elements of the list? These are the most common theories about what isis wants, this is why they are in the list in the first place. I only listed #1 to counteract the others which were assuming more intelligence and rationalism from them most people would give credit.
I’m open to suggestions how this topic could be improved to better serve its intended purpose: to gather weird and unusual theories about what the true agenda of isis was, were they much more rational and more intelligent than most people give credit to them.
Indeed, this is why I named it a crazy ideas suggestion thread. I agree with you completely and was never even trying to hide the fact that I invited only guessing and speculation, just like a lot of topics in the other “crazy ideas” threads are.
The problem here is who will have the authority to decide what viewpoint is to be considered unbiased.
Let’s assume a completely unbiased viewpoint about a very controversial political topic actually existed. Wouldn’t most people see it as biased in favor of their opponent’s side?
Just because your closest circle of friends and acquaintances think like what you just described, you should not generalize.
Your closest circle does not represent the entirety of society, because it is heavily defined by your profession, political views and other factors.
I feel stupid. Not for the nanowire, as I was among many who suggested something similar.
I feel stupid for not suggesting the “make Voldemort insane” strategy. I thought it will not work because a wizard’s mental state is not necessarily connected to his brain. For example, an animagus transformed into a cat can still retain her human mental state with a cat’s brain.
But being driven insane because of a curse might be completely different, and could have an effect not only on the physical brain, but on whatever shape or form the mental state of a wizard is implemented in.
If you sell land, it’s probably lost forever. If you sell land which was once part of your sovereign territory, you will have no claim over it (in contrast to a land which was taken from you by force).
One doesn’t have to be a caricature of an ultra-nationalist to dislike the idea of losing something permanently to cure a temporary problem.
What about leasing it instead?
Must a brain-in-a-vat which controls a factory machinery having a simple, pre-determined task, necessarily be self-aware? Because if it’s not, than it’s no more slavery than the case of a contemporary factory robot, or a horse pulling a cart.
Besides saying that I have taken the survey...
I would also like to mention that the predictions of probabilities of unobservable concepts was the hardest one for me. Of course, there are some in which i believe more than in some others, but still, any probability besides 0% or 100% seems really strange for me. For something like being in a simulation, if I would believe it but have some doubts, saying 99%, or if I would not believe but being open to it and saying 1%, these seem so arbitrary and odd for me. 1% is really huge in the scope of very probable or very improbable concepts which cannot be tested yet (and some may never ever be).
… before losing my sanity in trying to choose the percentages I would find plausible at least a few minutes later, I had to fill them based on my current gut feelings instead of Fermi estimation-like calculations.