I’m deeply confused by the cycle of references. What order were these written in?
In the HPMOR epilogue, Dobby (and Harry to a lesser extent) solve most of the worlds’ problems using the 7 step method Scott Alexander outlines in “Killing Moloch” (ending with of course with the “war to end all wars”). This strongly suggests that the HPMOR epilogue was written after “Killing Moloch”.
However, “Killing Moloch” extensively quotes Muehlhauser’s “Solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness”. (Very extensively. Yes Scott, you solved coordination problems, and describe in detail how to kill Moloch. But you didn’t have to go on that long about it. Way more than I wanted to know.) In fact, I don’t think the Killing Moloch approach would work at all if not for the immediate dissolution of aphrasia one gains upon reading Muehlhauser’s Solution.
And Muehlhauser uses Julia Galef’s “Infallible Technique for Maintaining a Scout Mindset” to do his 23 literature reviews, which as far as I know was only distilled down in her substack post. (It seems like most of the previous failures to solve the Hard Problem boiled down to subtle soldier mindset creep, that was kept at bay by the Infallible Technique.)
And finally, in the prologue, Julia Galef said she only realized it might be possible to compress her entire book into a short blog post with no content loss whatsoever after seeing how much was hidden in plain sight in HPMOR (because of just how inevitable the entire epilogue is once you see it).
So what order could these possibly have been written in?
Julia, Luke, Scott, and Eliezer know each other very well.
Exactly three months ago, they all happened to consult their mental simulations of each other for advice on their respective problems, at the same time.
Recognizing the recursion that would result if they all simulated each other simulating each other simulating each other… etc, they instead searched over logically-consistent universe histories, grading each one by expected utility.
Since each of the four has a slightly different utility function, they of course acausally negotiated a high-utility compromise universe-history.
This compromise history involves seemingly acausal blog post attribution cycles. There’s no (in-universe, causal) reason why those effects are there. It’s just the history that got selected.
The moral of the story is: by mastering rationality and becoming Not Wrong like we are today, you can simulate your friends to arbitrary precision. This saves you anywhere between $15-100/month on cell phone bills.
I’m deeply confused by the cycle of references. What order were these written in?
In the HPMOR epilogue, Dobby (and Harry to a lesser extent) solve most of the worlds’ problems using the 7 step method Scott Alexander outlines in “Killing Moloch” (ending with of course with the “war to end all wars”). This strongly suggests that the HPMOR epilogue was written after “Killing Moloch”.
However, “Killing Moloch” extensively quotes Muehlhauser’s “Solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness”. (Very extensively. Yes Scott, you solved coordination problems, and describe in detail how to kill Moloch. But you didn’t have to go on that long about it. Way more than I wanted to know.) In fact, I don’t think the Killing Moloch approach would work at all if not for the immediate dissolution of aphrasia one gains upon reading Muehlhauser’s Solution.
And Muehlhauser uses Julia Galef’s “Infallible Technique for Maintaining a Scout Mindset” to do his 23 literature reviews, which as far as I know was only distilled down in her substack post. (It seems like most of the previous failures to solve the Hard Problem boiled down to subtle soldier mindset creep, that was kept at bay by the Infallible Technique.)
And finally, in the prologue, Julia Galef said she only realized it might be possible to compress her entire book into a short blog post with no content loss whatsoever after seeing how much was hidden in plain sight in HPMOR (because of just how inevitable the entire epilogue is once you see it).
So what order could these possibly have been written in?
I think it’s pretty obvious.
Julia, Luke, Scott, and Eliezer know each other very well.
Exactly three months ago, they all happened to consult their mental simulations of each other for advice on their respective problems, at the same time.
Recognizing the recursion that would result if they all simulated each other simulating each other simulating each other… etc, they instead searched over logically-consistent universe histories, grading each one by expected utility.
Since each of the four has a slightly different utility function, they of course acausally negotiated a high-utility compromise universe-history.
This compromise history involves seemingly acausal blog post attribution cycles. There’s no (in-universe, causal) reason why those effects are there. It’s just the history that got selected.
The moral of the story is: by mastering rationality and becoming Not Wrong like we are today, you can simulate your friends to arbitrary precision. This saves you anywhere between $15-100/month on cell phone bills.
(absolutely great use of that link)
(and brilliant point about cell phone bills)