Perhaps I am just contrarian in nature, but I took issue with several parts of her reasoning.
“What you’re saying is tantamount to saying that you want to fuck me. So why shouldn’t I react with revulsion precisely as though you’d said the latter?”
The real question is why should she react with revulsion if he said he wanted to fuck her? The revulsion is a response to the tone of the message, not to the implications one can draw from it. After all, she can conclude with >75% certainty that any male wants to fuck her. Why doesn’t she show revulsion simply upon discovering that someone is male? Or even upon finding out that the world population is larger than previously thought, because that implies that there are more men who want to fuck her? Clearly she is smart enough to have resolved this paradox on her own, and posing it to him in this situation is simply being verbally aggressive.
“For my face is merely a reflection of my intellect. I can no more leave fingernails unchewed when I contemplate the nature of rationality than grin convincingly when miserable.”
She seems to be claiming that her confrontational behavior and unsocial values are inseparable from rationality. Perhaps this is only so clearly false to me because I frequent lesswrong.
“If it was electromagnetism, then even the slightest instability would cause the middle sections to fly out and plummet to the ground… By the end of class, it wasn’t only sapphire donut-holes that had broken loose in my mind and fallen into a new equilibrium. I never was bat-mitzvahed.”
This seems to show an incredible lack of creativity (or dare I say it, intelligence), that she would be unable to come up with a plausible way in which an engineer (never mind a supernatural deity) could fix a piece of rock to appear to be floating in the hole in a secure way. It’s also incredible that she would not catch onto the whole paradox of omnipotence long before this, a paradox with a lot more substance.
“he eventual outcome would most likely be a compromise, dependent, for instance, on whether the computations needed to conceal one’s rationality are inherently harder than those needed to detect such concealment.”
Whoah, whoah, since when did cheating and catching it become a race of computation? Maybe an arms race of finding and concealing evidence, but when does computational complexity enter the picture? Second of all, the whole section about the Darwinian arms race makes the (extremely common) mistake of conflating evolutionary “goals” and individual desires. There is a difference between an action being evolutionarily advantageous, and an individual wanting to do it. Never mind the whole confusion about the nature of an individual human’s goals (see http://lesswrong.com/lw/6ha/the_blueminimizing_robot/).
One side point is that the way she presents it (“Emotions are the mechanisms by which reason, when it pays to do so, cripples itself”) is essentially presenting the situation as Newcomb’s Paradox, and claiming that emotions are the solution, since her idea of “rationality” can’t solve it on its own.
“By contrast, Type-1 thinking is concerned with the truth about which beliefs are most advantageous to hold.”
But wait… the example given is not about which beliefs are most advantageous to hold… it’s about which beliefs it’s most advantageous to act like you hold. In fact, if you examine all of the further Type-X levels, you realize that they all collapse down to the same level. Suppose there is a button in front of you that you can press (or not press). How could it be beneficial to believe that you should push the button, but not beneficial to push the button? Barring of course, supercomputer Omegas which can read your mind. You’re not a computer. You can’t get a core dump of your mind which will show a clearly structured hierarchy of thoughts. There’s no distinction to the outside world between your different levels of recursive thoughts.
I suppose this bothered me a lot more before I realized this was a piece of fiction and that the writer was a paranoid schizophrenic (the former applying to most else of what I am saying).
“Ah, yet is not dancing merely a vertical expression of a horizontal desire?”
No, certainly not merely. Too bad Elliot lacked the opportunity (and probably the quickness of tongue) to respond.
“But perplexities abound: can I reason that the number of humans who will live after me is probably not much greater than the number who have lived before, and that therefore, taking population growth into account, humanity faces imminent extinction?...”
Because I am overly negative in this post, I thought I’d point out the above section, which I found especially interesting.
But the whole “Flowers for Algernon” ending seemed a bit extreme...and out of place.
I’ve promised to shut up in the comments to the other post, but since that story’s been brought up here, too …
The real question is why should she react with revulsion if he said he wanted to fuck her? The revulsion is a response to the tone of the message, not to the implications one can draw from it.
Is it, though? Is there any possible tone that would make it acceptable?
After all, she can conclude with >75% certainty that any male wants to fuck her. Why doesn’t she show revulsion simply upon discovering that someone is male? Or even upon finding out that the world population is larger than previously thought, because that implies that there are more men who want to fuck her?
So the message is redundant. Therefore, the appropriate way to express it is to say nothing at all. Anything else, regardless of its tone, forces her to pay needless attention to an obvious fact and is therefore an aggression. Especially if the speaker is not so attractive that considering potential partners of his attractiveness level is actually worth her time. Especially if he’s not just insufficiently attractive, but net repulsive, i.e., she’d rather not have sex ever again than have it with him. Of course, a nerdier and less sporty male classmate would be even more repulsive.
Clearly she is smart enough to have resolved this paradox on her own, and posing it to him in this situation is simply being verbally aggressive.
Or a way to test him, and he obviously failed.
No, certainly not merely.
I wonder what counts as not merely.
But the whole “Flowers for Algernon” ending seemed a bit extreme...and out of place.
I didn’t even realize it was supposed to be a horror story. She basically did what should have been expected from biology: she chose a high-quality mate who can afford to profess irrational nonsense on the handicap principle, and will most likely breed with him and be happy. It’s only sad to those who would like her to be prevented from doing what she wants, for whatever selfish reasons.
she can conclude with >75% certainty that any male wants to fuck her.
… she can? Really? That seems pretty damn high for something as variable as taste in partners.
EDIT: wait, that’s a reference to how many guys on a university campus will accept offers of one night stands, right? It’s still too high, or too general.
It’s also irrelevant to the point I was making. You can point to different studies giving different percentages, but however you slice it a significant portion of the men she interacts with would have sex with her if she offered. So maybe 75% is only true for a certain demographic, but replace it with 10% for another demographic and it doesn’t make a difference.
Perhaps I am just contrarian in nature, but I took issue with several parts of her reasoning.
The real question is why should she react with revulsion if he said he wanted to fuck her? The revulsion is a response to the tone of the message, not to the implications one can draw from it. After all, she can conclude with >75% certainty that any male wants to fuck her. Why doesn’t she show revulsion simply upon discovering that someone is male? Or even upon finding out that the world population is larger than previously thought, because that implies that there are more men who want to fuck her? Clearly she is smart enough to have resolved this paradox on her own, and posing it to him in this situation is simply being verbally aggressive.
She seems to be claiming that her confrontational behavior and unsocial values are inseparable from rationality. Perhaps this is only so clearly false to me because I frequent lesswrong.
This seems to show an incredible lack of creativity (or dare I say it, intelligence), that she would be unable to come up with a plausible way in which an engineer (never mind a supernatural deity) could fix a piece of rock to appear to be floating in the hole in a secure way. It’s also incredible that she would not catch onto the whole paradox of omnipotence long before this, a paradox with a lot more substance.
“he eventual outcome would most likely be a compromise, dependent, for instance, on whether the computations needed to conceal one’s rationality are inherently harder than those needed to detect such concealment.”
Whoah, whoah, since when did cheating and catching it become a race of computation? Maybe an arms race of finding and concealing evidence, but when does computational complexity enter the picture? Second of all, the whole section about the Darwinian arms race makes the (extremely common) mistake of conflating evolutionary “goals” and individual desires. There is a difference between an action being evolutionarily advantageous, and an individual wanting to do it. Never mind the whole confusion about the nature of an individual human’s goals (see http://lesswrong.com/lw/6ha/the_blueminimizing_robot/).
One side point is that the way she presents it (“Emotions are the mechanisms by which reason, when it pays to do so, cripples itself”) is essentially presenting the situation as Newcomb’s Paradox, and claiming that emotions are the solution, since her idea of “rationality” can’t solve it on its own.
But wait… the example given is not about which beliefs are most advantageous to hold… it’s about which beliefs it’s most advantageous to act like you hold. In fact, if you examine all of the further Type-X levels, you realize that they all collapse down to the same level. Suppose there is a button in front of you that you can press (or not press). How could it be beneficial to believe that you should push the button, but not beneficial to push the button? Barring of course, supercomputer Omegas which can read your mind. You’re not a computer. You can’t get a core dump of your mind which will show a clearly structured hierarchy of thoughts. There’s no distinction to the outside world between your different levels of recursive thoughts.
I suppose this bothered me a lot more before I realized this was a piece of fiction and that the writer was a paranoid schizophrenic (the former applying to most else of what I am saying).
No, certainly not merely. Too bad Elliot lacked the opportunity (and probably the quickness of tongue) to respond.
Because I am overly negative in this post, I thought I’d point out the above section, which I found especially interesting.
But the whole “Flowers for Algernon” ending seemed a bit extreme...and out of place.
I’ve promised to shut up in the comments to the other post, but since that story’s been brought up here, too …
Is it, though? Is there any possible tone that would make it acceptable?
So the message is redundant. Therefore, the appropriate way to express it is to say nothing at all. Anything else, regardless of its tone, forces her to pay needless attention to an obvious fact and is therefore an aggression. Especially if the speaker is not so attractive that considering potential partners of his attractiveness level is actually worth her time. Especially if he’s not just insufficiently attractive, but net repulsive, i.e., she’d rather not have sex ever again than have it with him. Of course, a nerdier and less sporty male classmate would be even more repulsive.
Or a way to test him, and he obviously failed.
I wonder what counts as not merely.
I didn’t even realize it was supposed to be a horror story. She basically did what should have been expected from biology: she chose a high-quality mate who can afford to profess irrational nonsense on the handicap principle, and will most likely breed with him and be happy. It’s only sad to those who would like her to be prevented from doing what she wants, for whatever selfish reasons.
… she can? Really? That seems pretty damn high for something as variable as taste in partners.
EDIT: wait, that’s a reference to how many guys on a university campus will accept offers of one night stands, right? It’s still too high, or too general.
It’s also irrelevant to the point I was making. You can point to different studies giving different percentages, but however you slice it a significant portion of the men she interacts with would have sex with her if she offered. So maybe 75% is only true for a certain demographic, but replace it with 10% for another demographic and it doesn’t make a difference.
Oh, it certainly doesn’t affect your point. I agree with your point completely. I was just nitpicking the numbers.
It does affect your point.