I noticed that the post and the comments were a little bit vague on what exactly does or doesn’t belong in my ‘culture’. Would arguing that nudity is good translate into something obvious and true (like for most Europeans, as I understand it), or would it turn into something absurd and possibly evil (like how I think most Americans see it)? In other words, whenever the examples talk about zeitgeists, am I to translate that into generalizing from the example of me?
Arguing for evolution is super-obvious to me, but a large fraction of Alaskans aren’t too keen on the idea. So if I told the chronophone about natural selection while I’m in Alaska, would it tell Archimedes that humans are featherless chickens… but if I said it in the midst of a Biology symposium, it would tell him that humans are mortal?
My guess is that you can’t change your affiliations so easily, because it avoids the point of the hypothetical. But I would be interested to see what comes out if I tell him about all the things that I think other cultures do better than my own.
And so in that case, I’ve been wondering how the Chronophone would handle the fact that my culture has orders of magnitude more information available to it than Archimedes’ did. It seems the simplest thing to do would be to drop packets, but that would complicate all the individual transmissions sent by all the people prior to this question. Avoiding that issue, I think there’s a difference between the ancient culture and my own that the Chronophone couldn’t easily handle: back then, the sum of human knowledge was probably knowable to a brilliant mind like his. So if I used a computer to send back all of wikipedia, it would have to lose so much detail that Archimedes would be able to understand all of it in his own lifetime, whereas I couldn’t even read the new content added to wikipedia each month.
I’m not trying to say that I’d read wikipedia to him, or that I think a data dump would be a good way to try and get the right insights into his mind to get his culture going down the path that my culture would most approve. What I’m trying to say is that since he was a big fish in a tiny pond, and I’m an exceedingly below-average fish in a freaking colossal sea (which in the spirit of maximal inconvenience, I will take to be a community of Feynmans), and the Chronophone scales down the bits of my sea that I’m trying to import to his pond, there is a tiny chance that anything I say will be 1) true, 2) surprising, and 3) able to sway him in the direction I want.
Boiling down the requirements of 1 and 2, this Chronophone doesn’t seem to map true statements to true statements. It maps the obviousness of statements. So things that are both true, and obvious to my maximally inconvenient community, won’t map to true insights to Archimedes’ world. As I understand the question posed by Eliezer about bringing science to them, my task is tantamount to teaching Feynman that he is wrong about science: that there is a better way to come to know the world. Unless Feynman knew less about Bayes Theorem than me (which would be an accident of history more than anything), this could not be both true and obvious.
I’ve seen more boobs on German television during the daytime than I’ve ever seen on television in America. If you count beaches next to cities, then I have seen quite a few casually nude people walking around, actually. Walking around in inner cities isn’t the only metric to go by.
Obviously there are good reasons to wear clothes, and you are right that I should have chosen a word that isn’t stupidity reversed. Perhaps I should have said” nudity isn’t superawfulsinsinsin that harms children and topples empires”.
If I weren’t looking for an example where my beliefs are at odds with the people around me, and that I thought were done better elsewhere, homosexuality in the Arabic world would be a great example. But more apropros to my main point would be comparing America’s stance on homosexuality with, say, Spain’s.
I noticed that the post and the comments were a little bit vague on what exactly does or doesn’t belong in my ‘culture’. Would arguing that nudity is good translate into something obvious and true (like for most Europeans, as I understand it), or would it turn into something absurd and possibly evil (like how I think most Americans see it)? In other words, whenever the examples talk about zeitgeists, am I to translate that into generalizing from the example of me?
Arguing for evolution is super-obvious to me, but a large fraction of Alaskans aren’t too keen on the idea. So if I told the chronophone about natural selection while I’m in Alaska, would it tell Archimedes that humans are featherless chickens… but if I said it in the midst of a Biology symposium, it would tell him that humans are mortal?
My guess is that you can’t change your affiliations so easily, because it avoids the point of the hypothetical. But I would be interested to see what comes out if I tell him about all the things that I think other cultures do better than my own.
I’d say whatever culture’s beliefs you most identify with, i.e., assume things are maximally inconvinient.
And so in that case, I’ve been wondering how the Chronophone would handle the fact that my culture has orders of magnitude more information available to it than Archimedes’ did. It seems the simplest thing to do would be to drop packets, but that would complicate all the individual transmissions sent by all the people prior to this question. Avoiding that issue, I think there’s a difference between the ancient culture and my own that the Chronophone couldn’t easily handle: back then, the sum of human knowledge was probably knowable to a brilliant mind like his. So if I used a computer to send back all of wikipedia, it would have to lose so much detail that Archimedes would be able to understand all of it in his own lifetime, whereas I couldn’t even read the new content added to wikipedia each month.
I’m not trying to say that I’d read wikipedia to him, or that I think a data dump would be a good way to try and get the right insights into his mind to get his culture going down the path that my culture would most approve. What I’m trying to say is that since he was a big fish in a tiny pond, and I’m an exceedingly below-average fish in a freaking colossal sea (which in the spirit of maximal inconvenience, I will take to be a community of Feynmans), and the Chronophone scales down the bits of my sea that I’m trying to import to his pond, there is a tiny chance that anything I say will be 1) true, 2) surprising, and 3) able to sway him in the direction I want.
Boiling down the requirements of 1 and 2, this Chronophone doesn’t seem to map true statements to true statements. It maps the obviousness of statements. So things that are both true, and obvious to my maximally inconvenient community, won’t map to true insights to Archimedes’ world. As I understand the question posed by Eliezer about bringing science to them, my task is tantamount to teaching Feynman that he is wrong about science: that there is a better way to come to know the world. Unless Feynman knew less about Bayes Theorem than me (which would be an accident of history more than anything), this could not be both true and obvious.
Seriously? How many people have you seen walking around casually nude in an average European city? What does it even mean to say “nudity is good”?
A better example would be homosexuality as seen in Iran (they hang you for it) vs as seen in most of the Western world (it’s okay)
I’ve seen more boobs on German television during the daytime than I’ve ever seen on television in America. If you count beaches next to cities, then I have seen quite a few casually nude people walking around, actually. Walking around in inner cities isn’t the only metric to go by.
Obviously there are good reasons to wear clothes, and you are right that I should have chosen a word that isn’t stupidity reversed. Perhaps I should have said” nudity isn’t superawfulsinsinsin that harms children and topples empires”.
If I weren’t looking for an example where my beliefs are at odds with the people around me, and that I thought were done better elsewhere, homosexuality in the Arabic world would be a great example. But more apropros to my main point would be comparing America’s stance on homosexuality with, say, Spain’s.