Valentine

The In­tel­li­gent So­cial Web

Notic­ing the Taste of Lotus

Gears in understanding

Is be­ing sexy for your homies?

Slack mat­ters more than any outcome

We’re already in AI takeoff

Creat­ing a truly formidable Art

The art of griev­ing well

In praise of fake frameworks

Of Two Minds

Sapi­ent Algorithms

• Valentine 9 Apr 2022 18:17 UTC

  69 points

  in reply to: Steven Byrnes’s comment on: What an ac­tu­ally pes­simistic con­tain­ment strat­egy looks like

  The history of cryonics’ PR failure has something to teach here.

  Dozens of deeply passionate and brilliant people all trying to make a case for something that in fact makes a lot of sense…

  …resulted in it being seen as even more fringe and weird.

  Which in turn resulted in those same pro-cryonics folk blaming “deathism” or “stupidity” or whatever.

  Which reveals that they (the pro-cryonics folk) had not yet cleaned up their motivations. Being right and having a great but hopeless cause mattered more than achieving their stated goals.

  I say this having been on the inside of this one for a while. I grew up in this climate.

  I also say this with no sense of blame or condemnation. I’m just pointing out an error mode.

  I think you’re gesturing at a related one here.

  This is why I put inner work as a co-requisite (and usually a prerequisite) for doing worthwhile activism. Passion is an anti-helpful replacement for inner insight.

Kenshō

[Question] Where can one learn deep in­tu­itions about in­for­ma­tion the­ory?

Mythic Mode

Here’s the exit.

Proper pos­ture for men­tal arts

Sig­nal­ing isn’t about sig­nal­ing, it’s about Goodhart

• Valentine 27 May 2017 21:12 UTC

  55 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Dragon Army: The­ory & Char­ter (30min read)

  PSA:

  Do not feed trolls.

  In ages past, vitriol like this would be downvoted into oblivion. This was out of recognition that norms of good discourse are more important than the content of arguments. Failure to abide by this spreads rot and makes good communal epistemic hygiene even more difficult.

  I notice downvoting is disabled now. Which, sadly, means that people will be tempted to engage with this. Which reinforces a norm of having one’s dissent noticed by acting like an unapologetic asshole. Which burns the future of this garden.

  So as a close second, I advise just thoroughly ignoring 18239018038528017428 unless and until they step up to meet more noble conversational norms. If there are good points to be made here, they should be converted into the truth-seeking style Less Wrong aspires to so that we can all engage with them in a more hygienic way.

  I appreciate Duncan’s attempts to do that conversion and speak to the converted form of the argument.

  But unless and until I see enough evidence to convince me otherwise, I assume 18239018038528017428′s intentions are not truth-seeking. I assume they are inflammatory and will not change via civil discourse.

  Ergo, request to all:

  Do not feed trolls.

  PS: I will follow my own advice here and have no intention of replying to 18239018038528017428 unless and until they transpose their discourse into the key of decency. I expect them to reply to me here, probably with more vitriol and some kind of personal attack and/​or attempt to discredit me personally. My ignoring them should be taken as my following my own policy. Note that if 18239018038528017428 does reply with vitriol, it will probably be in some way fashioned as an attempt to make my very refusal to engage look like confirmation of their narrative. Please filter your reading of any replies to my message here accordingly.

• Valentine 30 Apr 2022 14:15 UTC

  54 points

  on: Sal­vage Epistemology

  Well, there’s also the fact that “true”^[1] ontological updates can look like woo prior to the update. Since you can’t reliably tell ahead of time whether your ontology is too sparse for what you’re trying to understand, truth-seeking requires you find some way of dealing with frames that are “obviously wrong” without just rejecting them. That’s not simply a matter of salvaging truth from such frames.

  Separate from that:

  I think salvage epistemology is infohazardous to a subset of people, and we should use it less, disclaim it more, and be careful to notice when it’s leading people in over their heads.

  I for one am totally against this kind of policy. People taking responsibility for one another’s epistemic states is saviorist fuckery that makes it hard to talk or think. It wraps people’s anxiety around what everyone else is doing and how to convince or compel them to follow rules that keep one from feeling ill at ease.

  I like the raising of awareness here. That this is a dynamic that seems worth noticing. I like being more aware of the impact I have on the world around me.

  I don’t buy the disrespectful frame though. Like people who “aren’t hyper-analytical programmers” are on par with children who need to be epistemically protected, and as though LWers are enlightened sages who just know better what these poor stupid people should or shouldn’t believe.

  Like, maybe beliefs aren’t for true things for everyone, and that’s actually correct for their lives. That view isn’t the LW practice, sure. But I don’t think humanity’s CEV would have everyone being LW-style rationalists.

  1. ^

     Scare quotes go around “true” here because it’s not obvious what that means when talking about ontological updates. You’d have to have some larger meta-ontology you’re using to evaluate the update. I’m not going to try to rigorously fix this here. I’m guessing the intuition I’m gesturing toward is clear enough.