I was amazed by how little is enough to conquer the world. Issac Asimov in one of his Foundations cycle invented a character named Mule. His only great ability was to induce whatever emotions he wished in other people. That way he conquered many stellar systems.
Of course, it would work in Ancient Rome as in a today civilization. We have no technology yet to induce a mass hysteria near to what Hitler delivered bare hands. But some trans-cranial influence by some ultra-tech equipment would suffice to take over even the today’s world. How hard that could be? A piece of cake for a very advanced AI.
Rome has already fallen, our present world would also, at least under some Mule type agent.
His only great ability was to induce whatever emotions he wished in other people.
Only? That’s absolutely huge. Overwriting the decision making in other agents is about the most fundamental and far reaching power you can have over them. Given how much power emotions have in decision making controlling those is a big deal. Obviously it needs to go along with some solid strategic thinking. Even if that strategic thinking just happens to be finding someone else with better strategic thinking and making them your emotional thrall first off. In terms of superpowers that isn’t quite up there with the big ones like time travel but it is way, way above most mundane combat oriented powers.
No doubt it’s absolutely huge, but it is the only power he had.
To say it differently. Instead of armies and colonies and such, with this ability he was able to get everything else. Including generals and their armies.
OTOH, what Hitler had? Nothing except the hypnotic power over the individuals and over the masses. What a democratic leader has? He or she can induce the right emotions in other people. This, inducing emotions in others, is the fundamental tool for power gathering. Mule was only very, very strong.
As they say, you must win their hearths. Emotions, all the specter of them.
No doubt it’s absolutely huge, but it is the only power he had.
Yes, I just don’t see why this is particularly impressive. To me it sounds like saying “He won the fight but he was only five times the size of the other guy.” Hardly surprising and the emphasis is jarring!
Let say it is the key power. Having others to feel the way you want them to feel.
Everything else follows and every politician knows that.
So, if you want to go to Rome and be the Emperor, you must ensure they will desire to see yourself on that place. Either by inducing love or fear or something else in them. You can go a normal way which maybe takes decades—or just walk in and trigger a deep love toward you in every Roman. That would be the Mule’s way. Currently unavailable, but what’s another 100 (?) years in the context of already more than 2000?
Even then, it’s a more subtle problem than it appears to be.
Everyone loves you, or worse, everyone fears you. Suppose you have a bad idea like the Great Leap Forward. Who’s going to tell you? Fear guarantees that they won’t. If they don’t love Rome as well as you, they might not tell you because they don’t want you to feel sad.
If they do love Rome as well as you, there’s a risk they might decide you’re bad for Rome.
Not that I mind much (since I collect the both sides of karma, the positive and the negative and they are almost equally valuable to me) - I still wonder why −8 for the above post at this moment?
Do you believe, that the Mule’s powers are inherently magical, and not obtainable by some advanced tech? You think it’s too far fetched?
The original question could be paraphrased as “What could someone who knew all the state of the art of 2012 do in the era of ancient Rome?”
The answer to that question is not something that no one in 2012 is able to do. Also, as wedrifid said, it isn’t that interesting to notice that someone who can modify the utility functions of others at relatively low cost is able to defeat a major empire.
Do you believe, that the Mule’s powers are inherently magical, and not obtainable by some advanced tech? You think it’s too far fetched?
Mule’s powers are inherently magical, for all intents and purposes. It is just one more variant of the telepathic abilities
that abound in Asimov’s universe. Fortunately as far as I know Asmiov never pretended that they were scientifically based—no midichlorians in that world!
Mule’s powers are inherently magical, for all intents and purposes.
Not necessarily so. I would not be surprised if some “trans-cranial magnetic emotions modulation” is possible. Even a complete control of anybody near or not so near.
Nothing mystical at all, just an elaborate EM influencing which aligns your emotions with mines.
Not necessarily so. I would not be surprised if some “trans-cranial magnetic emotions modulation” is possible. Even a complete control of anybody near or not so near.
If I were reading a book that didn’t include multiple other sources of clearly magical mind control then I would be inclined to agree with you. But looking at the universe this particular instance comes from we see multiple other forms of clearly ‘magical’ (counter to physics as we know it, introduced for the purpose ) forms of mind control. Even FTL instantanious mind control from a distance powered by a planet-wide hivemind.
Nothing mystical at all, just an elaborate EM influencing which aligns your emotions with mine.
This was not just some guy with an advanced technological device that controls people via EM. It’s a dude that can control folks with his brain. The advanced tech is closer to being physically possible in the real world but this is a fantasy universe where characters really do evolve and then train telepathy powers. In one of the stories some folks actually did invent technology that could engage in the telepathy magic too. They even had a three way mind control standoff between a coven of Jedi types, a planetary hivemind representative and the guys who used the machine to do it for them.
I have no idea where this throwing away the baby with the bathwater stuff is coming into it. From what I saw it was debating whether the particular bathwater in question was magic or technological. No particular need to throw it away.
I hadn’t read your comment prior to now. I would downvote it though, if it weren’t already so low. This is not mentioned by anyone else, so I don’t suspect it’s why, but not only are you generalizing from one example, it’s a fictional example.
Edit: I’m upvoting your comment now. I don’t think it’s a great comment, but it doesn’t deserve that much. I think it should be at −2.
I don’t think that the karma system is about how much low or high a comment deserves to be. It is about whether you like it or dislike it. So you upvote it or you downvote it, regardless how high or low it already is. Of course, you can be neutral as well and then you don’t vote. Again, regardless where it currently is.
But it seems that many people are just policing around, judging is there already enough up or down votes for a post and mending the situation.
This is wrongly understood karma system. Downvoting you.
You may well be right about what the LW karma system is about.
My $0.02 on a related subject follow, though.
A reputation system provides me with value insofar as it gives me feedback about how valuable various pieces of content are judged by people whose opinions I value.
LW-karma’s biggest weakness in this area (which it shares with every other reputation system I’ve ever seen used anywhere) is that it doesn’t distinguish between the judgments of people whose opinions I value, those whose opinions I anti-value, and those whose opinions don’t matter to me at all.
Ignoring that for the moment (in effect, pretending I value everyone’s opinion equally), a system modeled on “ignore the current value, upvote or downvote based on whether I like it or not” means that when comparing comment A with a score of N to comment B with a score of N/2, all that tells me is that twice as many people who read the comment net-liked A than B. This might be because twice as many people read A, and the comments were approximately equally likable. It might be because 20 times as many people read A and A was far less likable. It might be because 20 times as many people read B and A was far more likable.
In other words, a karma system modeled that way means I can’t really tell based on the karma scores of a comment to what degree people found the comment likable. Since that’s exactly what I want to know, a karma system modeled that way is relatively useless to me, unless I can assume that roughly the same number of people read A and B. On LW, I don’t consider that assumption warranted, so to the extent that you are correctly describing the LW karma system, that system is relatively useless to me.
By contrast, a karma system modeled on “if I like it more than its current rating, upvote it, if I like it less than its current rating, downvote it,” doesn’t have that defect. It would, of course, have the defect that late voters count more than early voters for most comments, which creates incentives for vote-withholding and generally makes it hard to extract the information I want from vote totals. I am to a large extent prepared to ignore that failing, as it strikes me as falling into the wireheading category, and trying to stop a system that’s able and inclined to wirehead from choosing to do so is like trying to push back the tides.
So on balance, I think that RobertLumley’s model is more useful than yours.
Again, I’m not arguing that he’s right about which model is actually in use on LW. I suspect that in practice it’s neither; the actual system is far messier and more embarrassing to articulate, and in practice karma scores don’t provide much useful information except in very extreme cases.
Mostly, karma scores are a mechanism for silencing people whose contributions are sufficiently widely disliked so they stop pestering everyone else. Which is fine, and I don’t object to that, but let’s not make more of it than it is.
I can mostly agree with what you saying here. What I dislike a bit, is playing two different games simultaneously. One is the debating, what a like a lot, the other is karma shooting what I still find funny but a little annoying in the midst of the first.
For the first is important and the second does
silencing people whose contributions are sufficiently widely disliked so they stop pestering everyone else
But do I really want to read only what I already know or agree with?
But do I really want to read only what I already know or agree with?
Beats me. Why do you ask?
It kind of sounds like you’re trying to equate “people whose contributions are sufficiently widely disliked” with “people who only write stuff I already know or agree with”… in which case I would ask you to defend that equation, since it seems pretty unjustified to me.
you’re trying to equate “people whose contributions are sufficiently widely disliked” with “people who only write stuff I already know or agree with”
I suspect somebody of this crowd might write something very interesting to me, had he not been such a karma whore. I would gladly pay that with some more digesting of empty and silly posts, which are inevitably when there is no karma system.
I expect that the more empty and silly posts there are, the less likely the members of “this crowd” who have something interesting to say will be to continue posting here.
For what it’s worth, I have changed the way I operate significantly since I joined LW. If you read the link, I originally operated by one, but now almost exclusively aim for two, primarily for the reasons TheOtherDave points out—karma is largely meaningless if you operate by one, because it doesn’t tell you proportion of readers who voted.
I was amazed by how little is enough to conquer the world. Issac Asimov in one of his Foundations cycle invented a character named Mule. His only great ability was to induce whatever emotions he wished in other people. That way he conquered many stellar systems.
Of course, it would work in Ancient Rome as in a today civilization. We have no technology yet to induce a mass hysteria near to what Hitler delivered bare hands. But some trans-cranial influence by some ultra-tech equipment would suffice to take over even the today’s world. How hard that could be? A piece of cake for a very advanced AI.
Rome has already fallen, our present world would also, at least under some Mule type agent.
Only? That’s absolutely huge. Overwriting the decision making in other agents is about the most fundamental and far reaching power you can have over them. Given how much power emotions have in decision making controlling those is a big deal. Obviously it needs to go along with some solid strategic thinking. Even if that strategic thinking just happens to be finding someone else with better strategic thinking and making them your emotional thrall first off. In terms of superpowers that isn’t quite up there with the big ones like time travel but it is way, way above most mundane combat oriented powers.
No doubt it’s absolutely huge, but it is the only power he had.
To say it differently. Instead of armies and colonies and such, with this ability he was able to get everything else. Including generals and their armies.
OTOH, what Hitler had? Nothing except the hypnotic power over the individuals and over the masses. What a democratic leader has? He or she can induce the right emotions in other people. This, inducing emotions in others, is the fundamental tool for power gathering. Mule was only very, very strong.
As they say, you must win their hearths. Emotions, all the specter of them.
Yes, I just don’t see why this is particularly impressive. To me it sounds like saying “He won the fight but he was only five times the size of the other guy.” Hardly surprising and the emphasis is jarring!
Let say it is the key power. Having others to feel the way you want them to feel.
Everything else follows and every politician knows that.
So, if you want to go to Rome and be the Emperor, you must ensure they will desire to see yourself on that place. Either by inducing love or fear or something else in them. You can go a normal way which maybe takes decades—or just walk in and trigger a deep love toward you in every Roman. That would be the Mule’s way. Currently unavailable, but what’s another 100 (?) years in the context of already more than 2000?
Even then, it’s a more subtle problem than it appears to be.
Everyone loves you, or worse, everyone fears you. Suppose you have a bad idea like the Great Leap Forward. Who’s going to tell you? Fear guarantees that they won’t. If they don’t love Rome as well as you, they might not tell you because they don’t want you to feel sad.
If they do love Rome as well as you, there’s a risk they might decide you’re bad for Rome.
You are already the Emperor, game’s over.
But you can reign happily forever, by cleverly manage their emotions, to avoid “bad news filtering” and such.
Mass hysteria? That’s easy enough. Mass fanatic devotion not so much.
Not that I mind much (since I collect the both sides of karma, the positive and the negative and they are almost equally valuable to me) - I still wonder why −8 for the above post at this moment?
Do you believe, that the Mule’s powers are inherently magical, and not obtainable by some advanced tech? You think it’s too far fetched?
Then again, never mind!
The original question could be paraphrased as “What could someone who knew all the state of the art of 2012 do in the era of ancient Rome?”
The answer to that question is not something that no one in 2012 is able to do. Also, as wedrifid said, it isn’t that interesting to notice that someone who can modify the utility functions of others at relatively low cost is able to defeat a major empire.
Since when you reckon, it is forbidden to go a little out of the initial post settings?
If not forbidden, then a cause for a downvote?
It’s changing the topic of conversation without saying so. Many people take that to be quite rude.
I’m equally mystified by the downvoting. I upvoted your comment, FWIW.
(Likewise, despite not exactly agreeing with it.)
Mule’s powers are inherently magical, for all intents and purposes. It is just one more variant of the telepathic abilities that abound in Asimov’s universe. Fortunately as far as I know Asmiov never pretended that they were scientifically based—no midichlorians in that world!
Not necessarily so. I would not be surprised if some “trans-cranial magnetic emotions modulation” is possible. Even a complete control of anybody near or not so near.
Nothing mystical at all, just an elaborate EM influencing which aligns your emotions with mines.
If I were reading a book that didn’t include multiple other sources of clearly magical mind control then I would be inclined to agree with you. But looking at the universe this particular instance comes from we see multiple other forms of clearly ‘magical’ (counter to physics as we know it, introduced for the purpose ) forms of mind control. Even FTL instantanious mind control from a distance powered by a planet-wide hivemind.
This was not just some guy with an advanced technological device that controls people via EM. It’s a dude that can control folks with his brain. The advanced tech is closer to being physically possible in the real world but this is a fantasy universe where characters really do evolve and then train telepathy powers. In one of the stories some folks actually did invent technology that could engage in the telepathy magic too. They even had a three way mind control standoff between a coven of Jedi types, a planetary hivemind representative and the guys who used the machine to do it for them.
They had also faster than light transportation, scientifically impossible and Asimov knew it.
But when you throw the water away, the baby which remains, is pretty interesting. And I call this baby “some way to control other people emotions”.
And the baby is huge.
I have no idea where this throwing away the baby with the bathwater stuff is coming into it. From what I saw it was debating whether the particular bathwater in question was magic or technological. No particular need to throw it away.
I said the water. The baby remains.
I hadn’t read your comment prior to now. I would downvote it though, if it weren’t already so low. This is not mentioned by anyone else, so I don’t suspect it’s why, but not only are you generalizing from one example, it’s a fictional example.
Edit: I’m upvoting your comment now. I don’t think it’s a great comment, but it doesn’t deserve that much. I think it should be at −2.
I don’t think that the karma system is about how much low or high a comment deserves to be. It is about whether you like it or dislike it. So you upvote it or you downvote it, regardless how high or low it already is. Of course, you can be neutral as well and then you don’t vote. Again, regardless where it currently is.
But it seems that many people are just policing around, judging is there already enough up or down votes for a post and mending the situation.
This is wrongly understood karma system. Downvoting you.
You may well be right about what the LW karma system is about.
My $0.02 on a related subject follow, though.
A reputation system provides me with value insofar as it gives me feedback about how valuable various pieces of content are judged by people whose opinions I value.
LW-karma’s biggest weakness in this area (which it shares with every other reputation system I’ve ever seen used anywhere) is that it doesn’t distinguish between the judgments of people whose opinions I value, those whose opinions I anti-value, and those whose opinions don’t matter to me at all.
Ignoring that for the moment (in effect, pretending I value everyone’s opinion equally), a system modeled on “ignore the current value, upvote or downvote based on whether I like it or not” means that when comparing comment A with a score of N to comment B with a score of N/2, all that tells me is that twice as many people who read the comment net-liked A than B. This might be because twice as many people read A, and the comments were approximately equally likable. It might be because 20 times as many people read A and A was far less likable. It might be because 20 times as many people read B and A was far more likable.
In other words, a karma system modeled that way means I can’t really tell based on the karma scores of a comment to what degree people found the comment likable. Since that’s exactly what I want to know, a karma system modeled that way is relatively useless to me, unless I can assume that roughly the same number of people read A and B. On LW, I don’t consider that assumption warranted, so to the extent that you are correctly describing the LW karma system, that system is relatively useless to me.
By contrast, a karma system modeled on “if I like it more than its current rating, upvote it, if I like it less than its current rating, downvote it,” doesn’t have that defect. It would, of course, have the defect that late voters count more than early voters for most comments, which creates incentives for vote-withholding and generally makes it hard to extract the information I want from vote totals. I am to a large extent prepared to ignore that failing, as it strikes me as falling into the wireheading category, and trying to stop a system that’s able and inclined to wirehead from choosing to do so is like trying to push back the tides.
So on balance, I think that RobertLumley’s model is more useful than yours.
Again, I’m not arguing that he’s right about which model is actually in use on LW. I suspect that in practice it’s neither; the actual system is far messier and more embarrassing to articulate, and in practice karma scores don’t provide much useful information except in very extreme cases.
Mostly, karma scores are a mechanism for silencing people whose contributions are sufficiently widely disliked so they stop pestering everyone else. Which is fine, and I don’t object to that, but let’s not make more of it than it is.
I can mostly agree with what you saying here. What I dislike a bit, is playing two different games simultaneously. One is the debating, what a like a lot, the other is karma shooting what I still find funny but a little annoying in the midst of the first.
For the first is important and the second does
But do I really want to read only what I already know or agree with?
Beats me. Why do you ask?
It kind of sounds like you’re trying to equate “people whose contributions are sufficiently widely disliked” with “people who only write stuff I already know or agree with”… in which case I would ask you to defend that equation, since it seems pretty unjustified to me.
Never mind, it was a rhetorical question.
I suspect somebody of this crowd might write something very interesting to me, had he not been such a karma whore. I would gladly pay that with some more digesting of empty and silly posts, which are inevitably when there is no karma system.
I expect that the more empty and silly posts there are, the less likely the members of “this crowd” who have something interesting to say will be to continue posting here.
Related
For what it’s worth, I have changed the way I operate significantly since I joined LW. If you read the link, I originally operated by one, but now almost exclusively aim for two, primarily for the reasons TheOtherDave points out—karma is largely meaningless if you operate by one, because it doesn’t tell you proportion of readers who voted.