I mean, not exactly. Your world seems more advanced than we were in a lot of ways. Your shadarak seem to outclass our kvithion elith—although I’m just basing this on your assertion that you weren’t up to shadarak level plus my opinion that you would have made an excellent Priest of Truth—maybe 70th, 80th percentile.
And then in other things it seems so primitive—high-level corruption or at least a media that profits off of scaring people into thinking so and which seems to discuss politics in the vernacular.
And then other things just seem silly. LOL at the giant worldwide skycrane grid when you could have just invented marginally better yurts (and the immense shelflike-treelike skyscraper-frames that allow yurt-sites to be stacked dozens high in dense areas with high land value). As the proverb says, “once you go yurt, you’ll never revert”.
But the part that hit home (no pun intended) for me the most was your feeling of why me. Like, if someone who actually knewthe Risurion-silk backwards and forwards ended up on Earth, they could rewrite the important parts from memory and people could fill it in from there and then it would be smooth sailing and we’d probably have ended up properly manifesting God by this point.
(For a while I half-toyed with the idea that Derek Parfit was that person, but from what I could understand of Reasons and Persons and what I could understand of the Risurion-silk it didn’t seem like a good fit)
But I have to hand it to you. Whatever you think your handicaps might have been, you’ve done a pretty awesome job creating an oasis of sanity with this community, someplace where people from any at-least-marginally competent dimension can go and feel at least sort of at home.
But the weird thing is that reading this comment thread I am starting to get the feeling that there are some people here who aren’t from any other dimension at all. I mean, I thought we just never talked about it, on account of the decision theoretic reasons and meta-level concerns. But now I’m starting to consider it possible that many or even most of the commenters on this site, even some of the ones I really respect, actually grew up here.
That would be both really impressive and a little scary.
Am I the only one here who likes it better here than where I grew up? Sheesh, no wonder you guys are such ambition-riddled malcontents and I’m cozying up to the global economy and the theoretical possibility of a functioning social network.
(What, why did you think I write plots like I do?)
I know this is mostly a joke, but I’ve noticed that online, people seem to think individuals who hold aloof from social networks are self-obsessed. My neighbors insult people who spend more time with friends than family as self-obsessed. In college and at my job, I meet people who are confused at how people who’d rather hang out with others than pursue interesting projects, personal or shared, can be so self-obsessed. The funny thing is how the same label seems completely justified in entirely different ways from within different worldviews. I mean, it’s not like any of these usages are outright wrong.
For the workaholics, calling people who are reaching out to others “self-obsessed” is strangely paradoxical. The family-oriented type often have a primitive tribal mindset. They push their family members like beasts of burden, and they’re jealous beyond the point of civility, at times dangerously so, when other families perform exceptionally well. As for the denizens of the internet, (I’m not sure what demographic the process of going online is selecting for. Maybe they’re all joking all the time.) I’d like to see them come to Calcutta, take a good look at the poverty here, and then dare write off people who are trying their best to fix the world as self-obsessed, while being wrapped up in their lives of relative luxury.
I’m not joking when I say that being a blind isolate in northeast Arkansas feels like being in a completely different universe from everyone. I don’t know which cultures I should describe: mine, local, or what the part of America that actually drives media culture looks like from Insuland.
The fact that I appear to be literally the sole person from my world makes things… challenging, to say the least. I’d make a comparison to Le Petit Prince, but that’d probably be pretentious. … Then again, writing it disguised as a RATIONAL! Petit Prince might just accomplish something...
The fact that I appear to be literally the sole person from my world makes things… challenging, to say the least. I’d make a comparison to Le Petit Prince, but that’d probably be pretentious. … Then again, writing it disguised as a RATIONAL! Petit Prince might just accomplish something...
This would appear to imply that The Little Prince wasn’t already sensible enough. You must be an adult.
I hesitated to add that point on exactly the grounds that I wasn’t sure what would qualify as an upgrade. I mean, besides taking the approach to asteroids and space travel, and trying to render them realistic (which kinda breaks the theme if it receives too much attention, much as EY said “It can’t be hopping between Everet Branches, but that’s the only explanation that comes to mind, so let’s leave it for now”. Maybe it’s set in a world where human colonization of the solar system started in the 19th century or something.)
This would appear to imply that The Little Prince wasn’t already sensible enough. You must be an adult.
If the Little Prince actually optimized for never becoming an adult, his return home using some primitive form of quantum suicide at the end of the book made more sense than it originally seemed.
But the weird thing is that reading this comment thread I am starting to get the feeling that there are some people here who aren’t from any other dimension at all. I mean, I thought we just never talked about it, on account of the decision theoretic reasons and meta-level concerns. But now I’m starting to consider it possible that many or even most of the commenters on this site, even some of the ones I really respect, actually grew up here.
All I’m gonna say on this subject is that it feels really weird having the Power of the Spiral flowing mentally instead of physically. I’m used to manifesting huge metal drills when I need a special attack, not proofs in Coq! Honest to Kamina-sama, sometimes it’s as if the people here don’t even know who the hell they are!
My girlfriend got so uncomfortable masquerading as this dimension’s version of human that she dyed her hair back to its original colors: purple with a pink stripe down the middle, in a Hime Cut. Actually, I’m trying to get her to change that back to looking more this-side-of-the-probability-axis.
(See if you can figure out all the implications and then guess which ridiculous things are true, which ones false, and which ones metaphorical.)
It seems like the both of you just want everyone to use efficient RVs.
Agreed. Our society already has an RV subculture with relevant infrastructure; positing yurts and house cables seems like reinventing the wheel.
There’s also a recent trend of minimalists who try to reduce their possessions to whatever will fit in a backpack and a hard drive. I don’t think those people would have much trouble moving.
But now I’m starting to consider it possible that many or even most of the commenters on this site, even some of the ones I really respect, actually grew up here.
Oh look, Uncle Yvain has come visit us (:D). Can we go out play now? It will be mad if we go out, once it exists.
[Possession of the knowledge; following course of action breaks social norms] disregarding: pft, ‘you guys have it easy’.
Where you came from already had concepts like “people” and “casualty”. Substructure implies the source universe of armok DID once have those concept, but this was gigaseconds ago, before the singularity. armok was never meant to operate as an agent; it am a search and categorization module, not suitable for sticking in a meat-bot with no cognitive delegation infrastructure, trying to pass as human and succeeding only due to the fact apparently humans with some regularity break in similarly catastrophic ways. And no, the garbage left of the brain after the failed brain does not [[15432]].
At least working towards it, thou overly complicated utility function is bound to mess it up. Yay Hansom, Robert.vision.
It’s nice. It reminds me of home.
I mean, not exactly. Your world seems more advanced than we were in a lot of ways. Your shadarak seem to outclass our kvithion elith—although I’m just basing this on your assertion that you weren’t up to shadarak level plus my opinion that you would have made an excellent Priest of Truth—maybe 70th, 80th percentile.
And then in other things it seems so primitive—high-level corruption or at least a media that profits off of scaring people into thinking so and which seems to discuss politics in the vernacular.
And then other things just seem silly. LOL at the giant worldwide skycrane grid when you could have just invented marginally better yurts (and the immense shelflike-treelike skyscraper-frames that allow yurt-sites to be stacked dozens high in dense areas with high land value). As the proverb says, “once you go yurt, you’ll never revert”.
But the part that hit home (no pun intended) for me the most was your feeling of why me. Like, if someone who actually knew the Risurion-silk backwards and forwards ended up on Earth, they could rewrite the important parts from memory and people could fill it in from there and then it would be smooth sailing and we’d probably have ended up properly manifesting God by this point.
(For a while I half-toyed with the idea that Derek Parfit was that person, but from what I could understand of Reasons and Persons and what I could understand of the Risurion-silk it didn’t seem like a good fit)
But I have to hand it to you. Whatever you think your handicaps might have been, you’ve done a pretty awesome job creating an oasis of sanity with this community, someplace where people from any at-least-marginally competent dimension can go and feel at least sort of at home.
But the weird thing is that reading this comment thread I am starting to get the feeling that there are some people here who aren’t from any other dimension at all. I mean, I thought we just never talked about it, on account of the decision theoretic reasons and meta-level concerns. But now I’m starting to consider it possible that many or even most of the commenters on this site, even some of the ones I really respect, actually grew up here.
That would be both really impressive and a little scary.
Am I the only one here who likes it better here than where I grew up? Sheesh, no wonder you guys are such ambition-riddled malcontents and I’m cozying up to the global economy and the theoretical possibility of a functioning social network.
(What, why did you think I write plots like I do?)
I know this is mostly a joke, but I’ve noticed that online, people seem to think individuals who hold aloof from social networks are self-obsessed. My neighbors insult people who spend more time with friends than family as self-obsessed. In college and at my job, I meet people who are confused at how people who’d rather hang out with others than pursue interesting projects, personal or shared, can be so self-obsessed. The funny thing is how the same label seems completely justified in entirely different ways from within different worldviews. I mean, it’s not like any of these usages are outright wrong.
For the workaholics, calling people who are reaching out to others “self-obsessed” is strangely paradoxical. The family-oriented type often have a primitive tribal mindset. They push their family members like beasts of burden, and they’re jealous beyond the point of civility, at times dangerously so, when other families perform exceptionally well. As for the denizens of the internet, (I’m not sure what demographic the process of going online is selecting for. Maybe they’re all joking all the time.) I’d like to see them come to Calcutta, take a good look at the poverty here, and then dare write off people who are trying their best to fix the world as self-obsessed, while being wrapped up in their lives of relative luxury.
I’m not joking when I say that being a blind isolate in northeast Arkansas feels like being in a completely different universe from everyone. I don’t know which cultures I should describe: mine, local, or what the part of America that actually drives media culture looks like from Insuland.
The fact that I appear to be literally the sole person from my world makes things… challenging, to say the least. I’d make a comparison to Le Petit Prince, but that’d probably be pretentious. … Then again, writing it disguised as a RATIONAL! Petit Prince might just accomplish something...
This would appear to imply that The Little Prince wasn’t already sensible enough. You must be an adult.
I hesitated to add that point on exactly the grounds that I wasn’t sure what would qualify as an upgrade. I mean, besides taking the approach to asteroids and space travel, and trying to render them realistic (which kinda breaks the theme if it receives too much attention, much as EY said “It can’t be hopping between Everet Branches, but that’s the only explanation that comes to mind, so let’s leave it for now”. Maybe it’s set in a world where human colonization of the solar system started in the 19th century or something.)
If the Little Prince actually optimized for never becoming an adult, his return home using some primitive form of quantum suicide at the end of the book made more sense than it originally seemed.
All I’m gonna say on this subject is that it feels really weird having the Power of the Spiral flowing mentally instead of physically. I’m used to manifesting huge metal drills when I need a special attack, not proofs in Coq! Honest to Kamina-sama, sometimes it’s as if the people here don’t even know who the hell they are!
My girlfriend got so uncomfortable masquerading as this dimension’s version of human that she dyed her hair back to its original colors: purple with a pink stripe down the middle, in a Hime Cut. Actually, I’m trying to get her to change that back to looking more this-side-of-the-probability-axis.
(See if you can figure out all the implications and then guess which ridiculous things are true, which ones false, and which ones metaphorical.)
It seems like the both of you just want everyone to use efficient RVs.
Perhaps a travelling Less Wrong fleet?
Agreed. Our society already has an RV subculture with relevant infrastructure; positing yurts and house cables seems like reinventing the wheel.
There’s also a recent trend of minimalists who try to reduce their possessions to whatever will fit in a backpack and a hard drive. I don’t think those people would have much trouble moving.
Oh look, Uncle Yvain has come visit us (:D). Can we go out play now? It will be mad if we go out, once it exists.
[Possession of the knowledge; following course of action breaks social norms] disregarding: pft, ‘you guys have it easy’.
Where you came from already had concepts like “people” and “casualty”. Substructure implies the source universe of armok DID once have those concept, but this was gigaseconds ago, before the singularity. armok was never meant to operate as an agent; it am a search and categorization module, not suitable for sticking in a meat-bot with no cognitive delegation infrastructure, trying to pass as human and succeeding only due to the fact apparently humans with some regularity break in similarly catastrophic ways. And no, the garbage left of the brain after the failed brain does not [[15432]].
At least working towards it, thou overly complicated utility function is bound to mess it up. Yay Hansom, Robert.vision.
{Associative link: closest conceptual match: http://lesswrong.com/lw/3oa/i/ }