Pointing to cryonics anytime someone says you believe in something that is the realm of speculative fiction and well beyond current science is a really, really, bad strategy for having true beliefs. Consider the generality of your response.
And lots of anecdotal evidence does exist,
Show me three.
skill at basilisks
How is this even a thing? That you have experience with?
the AI box experiments
Your best point. But nearly enough to bring p up to 0.02.
Point, it’s not a strategy for arriving at truths, it’s a snappy comeback at a failure mode I’m getting really tired of. The fact that something is in the realm of speculative fiction is not a valid argument in a world full of cyborgs, tablet computers, self driving cars, and casualty-defying decision theories. And yes, basilisks.
Show me three.
Um, we’re talking basilisks here. SHOWING you’d be a bad idea. However, to NAME a few, there’s the famous Roko incident, several MLP gorefics had basilisk like effects on some readers, and then there’s techniques like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNBBl6goECQ .
Yes, skill at basilisks is a thing, that I have some experience with.
Point, it’s not a strategy for arriving at truths, it’s a snappy comeback at a failure mode I’m getting really tired of. The fact that something is in the realm of speculative fiction is not a valid argument in a world full of cyborgs, tablet computers, self driving cars, and casualty-defying decision theories. And yes, basilisks.
The argument isn’t that because something is found in speculative fiction it can’t be real; it’s that this thing you’re talking about isn’t found outside of speculative fiction—i.e. it’s not real. Science can’t do that yet. If you’re familiar with the state of a science you have a good sense of what is and isn’t possible yet. “A basilisk kill agent that allows him to with a few clicks untraceably assassinate any person he can get to read a short email or equivalent, with comparable efficiency to what is shown in Deathnote” is very likely one of those things. I mention “speculative fiction” because a lot of people have a tendency to privilege hypotheses they find in such fiction.
Hypnotism is not the same as what you’re talking about. The Roko ‘basilisk’ is joke compared to what you’re describing. None of these are anecdotal evidence for the power you are describing.
Oh, illusion of transparency. Yea, that’s at least a real argument.
There are plenty of things that individual geniuses can do that the institutions you seem to be referring to as “science” can’t yet mass produce, especially in the reference class of things like works of fiction or political species which many basilisks belong to. “Science” also believes rational agents defect on the prisoners dilemma.
Also, while proposing something like deliberate successful government suppression would be clearly falling into the conspiracy theory failure mode, it none the less does seem like an extremely dangerous weapon, that sounds absurd when described, works through badly understood psychology only present in humans, and appropriately likely to be discovered by empathic extreme high elite of intellectuals, would be less likely to become public knowledge as quickly as most things.
And I kept to small scale not-very-dangerous pseudo basilisks on purpose, just in case someone decides to look them up. They are more relevant then you think thou.
And I kept to small scale not-very-dangerous pseudo basilisks on purpose, just in case someone decides to look them up. They are more relevant then you think thou.
I don’t believe you. Look, obviously if you have secret knowledge of the existence of fatal basilisks that you’re unwilling to share that’s a good reason to have a higher credence than me. But I asked you for evidence (not even good evidence, just anecdotal evidence) and you gave me hypnotism and the silly Roko thing. Hinting that you have some deep understanding of basilisks that I don’t is explained far better by the hypothesis that you’re trying to cover for the fact that you made an embarrassingly ridiculous claim than by your actually having such an understanding. It’s okay, it was the irrationality game. You can admit you were privileging the hypothesis.
“Science” also believes rational agents defect on the prisoners dilemma.
Again, pointing to a failure of science as a justification for ignoring it when evaluating the probability of a hypothesis is a really bad thing to do. You actually have to learn things about the world in order to manipulate the world. The most talented writers in the world are capable of producing profound and significant—but nearly always temporary—emotional reactions in the small set of people that connect with them. Equating that with
A basilisk kill agent that allows him to with a few clicks untraceably assassinate any person he can get to read a short email or equivalent, with comparable efficiency to what is shown in Deathnote
is bizarre.
Also, while proposing something like deliberate successful government suppression would be clearly falling into the conspiracy theory failure mode, it none the less does seem like an extremely dangerous weapon, that sounds absurd when described, works through badly understood psychology only present in humans, and appropriately likely to be discovered by empathic extreme high elite of intellectuals, would be less likely to become public knowledge as quickly as most things.
A government possessing a basilisk and keeping it a secret is several orders of magnitude more likely than what you proposed. Governments have the funds and the will to both test and create weapons that kill. Also, “empathic” doesn’t seem like a word that describes Eliezer well.
Anyway, I don’t really think this conversation is doing anyone any good since debating absurd possibilities has the tendency to make them seem even more likely overtime as you’ll keep running your sense-making system and come up with new and better justifications for this claim until you actually begin to think “wait, two percent seems kind of low!”.
Yea, that this thread is getting WAY to adversarial for my taste, dangerously so. At least we can agree on that.
Anyway, you did admit that sometimes, rarely, a really good writer can have permanent profound emotional reactions, and I suspect most of the disagreement here actually resides in the lethality of emotional reactions, and my taste for wording things to sound dramatic as long as they are still true.
Well, I should point out that if you sincerely believe your knowledge could kill someone if it got out, you likely won’t test this belief directly. You may miss all sorts of lesser opportunities for updating. We don’t have to think you’re Stupid or you Fail As A Rationalist in order to think you got this one wrong.
It’s sort of the same situation as posting any other kind of information on how to construct weapons that may or may not work on public forums. It’s not all that likely to actually give someone access to a weapon that deadly, but it’s bad form just for the possibility, and because they may still hurt themselves or others in the failed attempt.
I were also trying to scare people away from the whole thing, but after further consideration it probably wasn’t very effective anyway.
Yet another fictional story that features a rather impressive “emotional basilisk” of sorts; enough to both drive people in-universe insane or suicidal, AND make the reader (especially one prone to agonizing over morality, obsessive thoughts, etc) feel potentially bad distress. I know I did feel sickened and generally wrong for a few hours, and I’ve heard of people who took it worse.
SCP-231. I’m not linking directly to it, please consider carefully if you want to read it. Curiosity over something intellectually stimulating but dangerous is one thing, but this one is just emotional torment for torment’s sake. If you’ve read SCP before (I mostly dislike their stuff), you might be guessing which one I’m talking about—so no need to re-read it, dude.
Really? That’s had basilisk-like effects? I guess these things are subjective … torturing one girl to save humanity is treated like this vast and terrible thing, with the main risk being that one day they wont be able to bring themselves to continue—but in other stories they regularly kill tons of people in horrible ways just to find out how something works. Honestly, I’m not sure why it’s so popular, there are a bunch of SCPs that could solve it (although there could be some brilliant reason why they can’t, we’ll never know due to redaction.) But it’s too popular to ever be decommissioned … it makes the Foundation come across as lazy, not even trying to help the girl, too busy stewing in self-pity at the horrors they have to commit to actually stop committing them.
Wait, I’m still thinking about it after all this time? Hmm, perhaps there’s something to this basilisk thing...
SCP-231. I’m not linking directly to it, please consider carefully if you want to read it. Curiosity over something intellectually stimulating but dangerous is one thing, but this one is just emotional torment for torment’s sake. If you’ve read SCP before (I mostly dislike their stuff), you might be guessing which one I’m talking about—so no need to re-read it, dude.
Straw Utilitarian exclaims: “Ha easy! Our world has many tortured children, adding one more is a trival cost to pay for continued human existence.” But yes imagining me being put in a position to decide on something like that caused me quite a bit of emotional distress. Trying to work out what I should do according to my ethical system (spaghetti code virtue ethics), honourable suicide and resignation seems a potentially viable option since my consequentialism infected brain cells yell at me for trying hair brained schemes to help the girl.
The members of SCP-1845 are physiologically indistinct from normal animals of their species. However, the animals have been demonstrated to possess near-human intelligence, the ability to construct simple tools from objects in their habitat and introduced by the Foundation, and a system of government modeled on medieval European feudalism.
...
CP-1845-1 is the “leader” of the colony and the only member of the group observed to be able to use the installed keyboard. SCP-1845-1 considers itself to be of royal heritage and identifies itself using the title “His Royal Highness, Eugenio the Second, by the Grace of God, King of the Forest, Lord of the Plains, Duke of the Grand Fir and the Undergrowth, Count of the Swamp, Margrave of ██ ███████, Warden of All the Streams and Rivers, and Lord Protector of the Cities of Man, Defender of the Faith.” SCP-1845-1 identifies itself and its followers as Roman Catholics and appears to be extremely pious in its devotions—it has been observed on video praying over its meals and observing holidays and saintly feast days, and has been observed to order punishments against other members of the colony for perceived lack of piety.
...
SCP-1845-1 has asserted that it was not responsible for the “war” that led to its discovery and capture, and that it was retaliating against an uprising on the part of one of its “subjects”, a Columbian black-tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) it identified as “Duke Baxter of the West Bay.” SCP-1845-1 spoke vitriolically of said deer, describing it as “a most uncouth usurper, rogue, and Protestant” who it claimed had, “having accused them falsely of witchcraft, assassinated our Queen Consort, the Prince of █████ █████, and our other royal issue”, and of turning a large portion of the nobility and peasantry against it. It insists that the deer is still at large and marshalling its forces against its nation, and that once it is released from captivity it will defeat it. No deer matching the description given by SCP-1845-1 is among the members of SCP-1845 or was found among those killed during the raid.
Ah the entry is tragically incomplete!
The Catholic faith of the animals was not surprising since contact with SPC-3471 by agent ███ █████ and other LessWrong Computational Theology division cell members have received proof of Catholicism’s consistency under CEV as well as indications it represented a natural Schelling point of mammalian morality. First pausing to praise the sovereigns taste in books, the existence of Protestantism has lead Dr. █████ █████ to speculate SPC-4271 (“w-force”) has become active in species besides Homo Sapiens violating the 2008 Trilateral Blogosphere Accords. He advises full military support to Eugenio the Second in stamping out rebellion and termination of all animals currently under the rule under Duke Baxter of the West Bay.
“Kill them all. For SPC-3471 knows them that are His.”
Adding:
“Nuke the site from orbit, its the only way to be sure.”
Yep, suicide is probably what I’d do as well, personally, but the story itself is incoherent (as noted in the page discussion) and even without resorting to other SCPs there seem to be many, many alternatives to consider (at the very least they could have made the torture fully automated!). As I’ve said, it’s constructed purely as horror/porn and not as an ethical dilemma.
BTW simply saying that “Catholicism” is consistent under something or other is quite meaningless, as “C.” doesn’t make for a very coherent system as seen through Papal policy and decisions of any period. Will would’ve had to point to a specific eminent theologian, like Aquinas, and then carefully choose where and how to expand—for now, Will isn’t doing much with his “Catholicism” strictly speaking, just writing emotionally tinged bits of cosmogony and game theory.
Yep, suicide is probably what I’d do as well, personally, but the story itself is incoherent (as noted in the page discussion) and even without resorting to other SCPs there seem to be many, many alternatives to consider (at the very least they could have made the torture fully automated!). As I’ve said, it’s constructed purely as horror/porn and not as an ethical dilemma.
I mentally iron man such details when presented with such scenarios. Often its the only way for me to keep suspension of disbelief and continue to enjoy fiction. To give a trivial fix to your nitpick, the ritual requires not only the suffering of the victim to be undiminished but also the sexual pleasure of the torturer and/or rapist to be present, automating it is therefore not viable.
BTW simply saying that “Catholicism” is consistent under something or other is quite meaningless, as “C.” doesn’t make for a very coherent system as seen through Papal policy and decisions of any period. Will would’ve had to point to a specific eminent theologian, like Aquinas, and then carefully choose where and how to expand—for now, Will isn’t doing much with his “Catholicism” strictly speaking, just writing emotionally tinged bits of cosmogony and game theory.
Do not overanalyse the technobabble it ruins suspension of disbelief. And what is a SPC without technobabble? Can I perhaps then interest you in a web based Marxist state?
Also who is this Will? I deny all knowledge of him!
Trying to work out what I should do according to my ethical system (spaghetti code virtue ethics), honourable suicide and resignation seems a potentially viable option
An agent placed in similar circumstances before did just that.
I have a solid basilisk-handling procedure. (Details available on demand.) You or anyone is welcome to send me any basilisk in the next 24 hours, or at any point in the future with 12 hours warning. I’ll publish how many different basilisks I’ve received, how basilisky I found them, and nothing else.
Evidence: I wasn’t particularly shaken by Roko’s basilisk. I found Cupcakes a pretty funny read (thanks for the rec!). I have lots of experience blocking out obsessive/intrusive thoughts. I just watched 2girls1cup while eating. I’m good at keeping non-basilisk secrets.
No, I’m all basilisk-less and forlorn. :( I stumbled on a (probably very personal) weak basilisk on my own. Do people just not trust me or don’t they have any basilisks handy?
Death and other alterations easier to model as disorders than as thought processes. Persistent intrusive thoughts, that lead to unpleasant effects—fear, obsession, major life changes around the basilisk’s topic (e.g. quitting a promising math career to study theodicy). I’m on the fence on whether flashbacks of disgust or embarrassment count. Non-persistent but extreme such thoughts whose effects persist (e.g. developing a phobia or stress-induced conditions).
The stimulus has to be relatively short (a solid day of indoctrination is way too much), and to be some form of human communication—words, images and videos all count, and nothing where the medium rather than the meaning is damaging (e.g. loud noises, bright lights) does.
Not that I know of, and it’s much less interesting then it sounds. Just nausea and permanent inability to enough the show in a small percent of readers of Cupcakes and the like.
Pointing to cryonics anytime someone says you believe in something that is the realm of speculative fiction and well beyond current science is a really, really, bad strategy for having true beliefs. Consider the generality of your response.
Show me three.
How is this even a thing? That you have experience with?
Your best point. But nearly enough to bring p up to 0.02.
Point, it’s not a strategy for arriving at truths, it’s a snappy comeback at a failure mode I’m getting really tired of. The fact that something is in the realm of speculative fiction is not a valid argument in a world full of cyborgs, tablet computers, self driving cars, and casualty-defying decision theories. And yes, basilisks.
Um, we’re talking basilisks here. SHOWING you’d be a bad idea. However, to NAME a few, there’s the famous Roko incident, several MLP gorefics had basilisk like effects on some readers, and then there’s techniques like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNBBl6goECQ .
Yes, skill at basilisks is a thing, that I have some experience with.
finaly, not in response to anything in particular but sort of related: http://cognitiveengineer.blogspot.se/2011/11/holy-shit.html
The argument isn’t that because something is found in speculative fiction it can’t be real; it’s that this thing you’re talking about isn’t found outside of speculative fiction—i.e. it’s not real. Science can’t do that yet. If you’re familiar with the state of a science you have a good sense of what is and isn’t possible yet. “A basilisk kill agent that allows him to with a few clicks untraceably assassinate any person he can get to read a short email or equivalent, with comparable efficiency to what is shown in Deathnote” is very likely one of those things. I mention “speculative fiction” because a lot of people have a tendency to privilege hypotheses they find in such fiction.
Hypnotism is not the same as what you’re talking about. The Roko ‘basilisk’ is joke compared to what you’re describing. None of these are anecdotal evidence for the power you are describing.
Oh, illusion of transparency. Yea, that’s at least a real argument.
There are plenty of things that individual geniuses can do that the institutions you seem to be referring to as “science” can’t yet mass produce, especially in the reference class of things like works of fiction or political species which many basilisks belong to. “Science” also believes rational agents defect on the prisoners dilemma.
Also, while proposing something like deliberate successful government suppression would be clearly falling into the conspiracy theory failure mode, it none the less does seem like an extremely dangerous weapon, that sounds absurd when described, works through badly understood psychology only present in humans, and appropriately likely to be discovered by empathic extreme high elite of intellectuals, would be less likely to become public knowledge as quickly as most things.
And I kept to small scale not-very-dangerous pseudo basilisks on purpose, just in case someone decides to look them up. They are more relevant then you think thou.
I don’t believe you. Look, obviously if you have secret knowledge of the existence of fatal basilisks that you’re unwilling to share that’s a good reason to have a higher credence than me. But I asked you for evidence (not even good evidence, just anecdotal evidence) and you gave me hypnotism and the silly Roko thing. Hinting that you have some deep understanding of basilisks that I don’t is explained far better by the hypothesis that you’re trying to cover for the fact that you made an embarrassingly ridiculous claim than by your actually having such an understanding. It’s okay, it was the irrationality game. You can admit you were privileging the hypothesis.
Again, pointing to a failure of science as a justification for ignoring it when evaluating the probability of a hypothesis is a really bad thing to do. You actually have to learn things about the world in order to manipulate the world. The most talented writers in the world are capable of producing profound and significant—but nearly always temporary—emotional reactions in the small set of people that connect with them. Equating that with
is bizarre.
A government possessing a basilisk and keeping it a secret is several orders of magnitude more likely than what you proposed. Governments have the funds and the will to both test and create weapons that kill. Also, “empathic” doesn’t seem like a word that describes Eliezer well.
Anyway, I don’t really think this conversation is doing anyone any good since debating absurd possibilities has the tendency to make them seem even more likely overtime as you’ll keep running your sense-making system and come up with new and better justifications for this claim until you actually begin to think “wait, two percent seems kind of low!”.
Yea, that this thread is getting WAY to adversarial for my taste, dangerously so. At least we can agree on that.
Anyway, you did admit that sometimes, rarely, a really good writer can have permanent profound emotional reactions, and I suspect most of the disagreement here actually resides in the lethality of emotional reactions, and my taste for wording things to sound dramatic as long as they are still true.
Well, I should point out that if you sincerely believe your knowledge could kill someone if it got out, you likely won’t test this belief directly. You may miss all sorts of lesser opportunities for updating. We don’t have to think you’re Stupid or you Fail As A Rationalist in order to think you got this one wrong.
It’s sort of the same situation as posting any other kind of information on how to construct weapons that may or may not work on public forums. It’s not all that likely to actually give someone access to a weapon that deadly, but it’s bad form just for the possibility, and because they may still hurt themselves or others in the failed attempt.
I were also trying to scare people away from the whole thing, but after further consideration it probably wasn’t very effective anyway.
Yet another fictional story that features a rather impressive “emotional basilisk” of sorts; enough to both drive people in-universe insane or suicidal, AND make the reader (especially one prone to agonizing over morality, obsessive thoughts, etc) feel potentially bad distress. I know I did feel sickened and generally wrong for a few hours, and I’ve heard of people who took it worse.
SCP-231. I’m not linking directly to it, please consider carefully if you want to read it. Curiosity over something intellectually stimulating but dangerous is one thing, but this one is just emotional torment for torment’s sake. If you’ve read SCP before (I mostly dislike their stuff), you might be guessing which one I’m talking about—so no need to re-read it, dude.
Really? That’s had basilisk-like effects? I guess these things are subjective … torturing one girl to save humanity is treated like this vast and terrible thing, with the main risk being that one day they wont be able to bring themselves to continue—but in other stories they regularly kill tons of people in horrible ways just to find out how something works. Honestly, I’m not sure why it’s so popular, there are a bunch of SCPs that could solve it (although there could be some brilliant reason why they can’t, we’ll never know due to redaction.) But it’s too popular to ever be decommissioned … it makes the Foundation come across as lazy, not even trying to help the girl, too busy stewing in self-pity at the horrors they have to commit to actually stop committing them.
Wait, I’m still thinking about it after all this time? Hmm, perhaps there’s something to this basilisk thing...
Straw Utilitarian exclaims: “Ha easy! Our world has many tortured children, adding one more is a trival cost to pay for continued human existence.” But yes imagining me being put in a position to decide on something like that caused me quite a bit of emotional distress. Trying to work out what I should do according to my ethical system (spaghetti code virtue ethics), honourable suicide and resignation seems a potentially viable option since my consequentialism infected brain cells yell at me for trying hair brained schemes to help the girl.
On a lighter note my favourite SCP.
Ah the entry is tragically incomplete!
The Catholic faith of the animals was not surprising since contact with SPC-3471 by agent ███ █████ and other LessWrong Computational Theology division cell members have received proof of Catholicism’s consistency under CEV as well as indications it represented a natural Schelling point of mammalian morality. First pausing to praise the sovereigns taste in books, the existence of Protestantism has lead Dr. █████ █████ to speculate SPC-4271 (“w-force”) has become active in species besides Homo Sapiens violating the 2008 Trilateral Blogosphere Accords. He advises full military support to Eugenio the Second in stamping out rebellion and termination of all animals currently under the rule under Duke Baxter of the West Bay.
Adding:
Yep, suicide is probably what I’d do as well, personally, but the story itself is incoherent (as noted in the page discussion) and even without resorting to other SCPs there seem to be many, many alternatives to consider (at the very least they could have made the torture fully automated!). As I’ve said, it’s constructed purely as horror/porn and not as an ethical dilemma.
BTW simply saying that “Catholicism” is consistent under something or other is quite meaningless, as “C.” doesn’t make for a very coherent system as seen through Papal policy and decisions of any period. Will would’ve had to point to a specific eminent theologian, like Aquinas, and then carefully choose where and how to expand—for now, Will isn’t doing much with his “Catholicism” strictly speaking, just writing emotionally tinged bits of cosmogony and game theory.
I mentally iron man such details when presented with such scenarios. Often its the only way for me to keep suspension of disbelief and continue to enjoy fiction. To give a trivial fix to your nitpick, the ritual requires not only the suffering of the victim to be undiminished but also the sexual pleasure of the torturer and/or rapist to be present, automating it is therefore not viable.
Do not overanalyse the technobabble it ruins suspension of disbelief. And what is a SPC without technobabble? Can I perhaps then interest you in a web based Marxist state?
Also who is this Will? I deny all knowledge of him!
An agent placed in similar circumstances before did just that.
I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with fairytales about talking ponies!
I love you so much right now. :D
I have a solid basilisk-handling procedure. (Details available on demand.) You or anyone is welcome to send me any basilisk in the next 24 hours, or at any point in the future with 12 hours warning. I’ll publish how many different basilisks I’ve received, how basilisky I found them, and nothing else.
Evidence: I wasn’t particularly shaken by Roko’s basilisk. I found Cupcakes a pretty funny read (thanks for the rec!). I have lots of experience blocking out obsessive/intrusive thoughts. I just watched 2girls1cup while eating. I’m good at keeping non-basilisk secrets.
Has anyone sent you any basilisk so far?
No, I’m all basilisk-less and forlorn. :( I stumbled on a (probably very personal) weak basilisk on my own. Do people just not trust me or don’t they have any basilisks handy?
How do you define basilisk? What effect is it supposed to have on you?
Death and other alterations easier to model as disorders than as thought processes. Persistent intrusive thoughts, that lead to unpleasant effects—fear, obsession, major life changes around the basilisk’s topic (e.g. quitting a promising math career to study theodicy). I’m on the fence on whether flashbacks of disgust or embarrassment count. Non-persistent but extreme such thoughts whose effects persist (e.g. developing a phobia or stress-induced conditions).
The stimulus has to be relatively short (a solid day of indoctrination is way too much), and to be some form of human communication—words, images and videos all count, and nothing where the medium rather than the meaning is damaging (e.g. loud noises, bright lights) does.
The latter. Or, if the former, they don’t trust you not to just laugh at what they provide and dismiss it.
I am amused and curious. :P Did the basilisk-sharing list ever get off the ground?
Not that I know of, and it’s much less interesting then it sounds. Just nausea and permanent inability to enough the show in a small percent of readers of Cupcakes and the like.
Also, always related to any basilisk discussion:
The Funniest Joke In The World