Aleksei_Riikonen

Karma: 561

Aleksei_Riikonen Jan 20, 2012, 10:17 AM
3 points
in reply to: MC_Escherichia’s comment on: POSITION: Design and Write Rationality Curriculum
No, not unusual. I had the same reaction, and assumed it’s probably partly a deliberate joke to have such a placeholder name (or alternatively it’s actually so that the Scientology connotation didn’t occur to folks at SIAI).

I btw commented on this a couple of days ago in a comment to the SIAI blog, and note now that comments there seem to take a rather long time to be moderated for spam, as apparently no comments have appeared for many months. (Ok, sorry for the joke. More likely you’ve forgotten about the blog comments or something, than it really being about the spam moderation that commenters are told might take some time when they leave a comment.)

Aleksei_Riikonen Jan 19, 2012, 12:51 PM
5 points
on: The Singularity Institute’s Arrogance Problem
So, I have a few questions:
1. What are the most egregious examples of SI’s arrogance?
Since you explicitly ask a question phrased thus, I feel obligated to mention that last April I witnessed a certain email incident that I thought was somewhat extremely bad in some ways.

I do believe that lessons have been learned since then, though. Probably there’s no need to bring the matter up again, and I only mention it since according to my ethics it’s the required thing to do when asked such an explicit question as above.

(Some readers may wonder why I’m not providing details here. That’s because after some thought, I for my part decided against making the incident public, since I expect it might subsequently get misrepresented to look worse than what’s fair. (There might be value in showing records of the incident to new SIAI employees as an example of how not to do things, though.))

Aleksei_Riikonen Jan 17, 2012, 4:28 PM
8 points
on: Leveling Up in Rationality: A Personal Journey
Hmm, I for one don’t share the negative reactions that several other commenters seem to feel now. I felt very glad upon reading this “leveling up” post.

I was especially thinking that this is a very cool first LW article for people to bump into (and therefore shared this on some social networks). In this vein, I very much like the criticized-by-some feature that every other word is a link to a previous article. It’s useful for those new people who might be inspired to check this stuff out in more detail.

Aleksei_Riikonen Dec 20, 2011, 3:55 PM
11 points
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Ritual Report: NYC Less Wrong Solstice Celebration
Yeah, I just thought I’d improve on your riff a bit, and add the part that pokes fun at me :)

Aleksei_Riikonen Dec 20, 2011, 3:43 PM
15 points
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Ritual Report: NYC Less Wrong Solstice Celebration
Damn, my plan is backfiring. I will be remembered as an arrogant schmuck who was slightly funny in an unintended way.

Serves me right.

Aleksei_Riikonen Dec 20, 2011, 3:30 PM
7 points
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Ritual Report: NYC Less Wrong Solstice Celebration
Yeah, I had similar thoughts actually. But I did end up thinking that this was good enough to link in a somewhat off-handed manner.

Though of course, mostly I just wanted to get myself on the public record, calling this a great success in the making at such a somewhat early stage, so that I look good when future generations look back a few thousand years from now :D

Aleksei_Riikonen Dec 20, 2011, 2:43 PM
3 points
in reply to: Aleksei_Riikonen’s comment on: Ritual Report: NYC Less Wrong Solstice Celebration
Also, I felt the need to post a link to this post on some social networks and describe it thus:

“And so it begins. The NYC folks have taken a significant step in bringing the LW community to a whole new level of real-world Awesomeness and Win. Expect great things to grow out of such developments.”

Aleksei_Riikonen Dec 20, 2011, 1:24 PM
1 point
in reply to: Nisan’s comment on: Ritual Report: NYC Less Wrong Solstice Celebration
Me too. Awesome. Thanks.

Aleksei_Riikonen Nov 18, 2011, 11:18 PM
6 points
in reply to: pjeby’s comment on: The curse of identity

Typical mind fallacy, perhaps?

Generalizing from one example, rather. Mostly I was going by what I’ve heard from an acquaintance that worked as a stripper.

Aleksei_Riikonen Nov 18, 2011, 10:36 PM
4 points
in reply to: dlthomas’s comment on: The curse of identity
Who considers strippers to be high status?

(Certainly not the actual audience. They just see meat to eat with their eyes, not a person. Even prostitutes are probably respected a lot more on average than strippers, since it’s more common that people at least talk to prostitutes, and become more aware that there’s a person there.)

Aleksei_Riikonen Nov 17, 2011, 11:29 AM
6 points
on: The curse of identity

so you decide to only do the least prestigeful work available, in order to prove that you are the kind of person who doesn’t care about the prestige of the task!

Another variant is to minimize how much you directly inform your comrades of the work you’re doing. You tend to get more prestige when people find out about your work through accidental-seeming ways instead of through you telling them. Also, you have aces up your sleeve with which you can play the martyr (“Well, I have been doing such and such and you didn’t even know about it!”).

Aleksei_Riikonen Nov 10, 2011, 2:55 AM
0 points
in reply to: lukeprog’s comment on: Q&A with new Executive Director of Singularity Institute
I’m glad to hear I’m not the only fan of Eliezer who isn’t reading HPMOR.

In general, like you I also don’t tend to get any fiction read (unlike earlier). For years, I haven’t progressed on several books I’ve got started that I enjoy reading and consider very smart also in a semi-useful way. It’s rather weird really, since simultaneously I do with great enthusiasm watch some fictional movies and tv series, even repeatedly. (And I do read a considerable amount of non-fiction.)

And I follow the news. A lot. The number one fun thing for me, it seems.

Aleksei_Riikonen Oct 5, 2011, 4:50 PM
−1 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Pascal’s wager re-examined
Everyone voting down shminux, please also note that they did say:

You clearly want Christianity to have a chance in hell

it is pointless to argue about it with you, since you have already written your bottom line and will not budge

I’ll downvote for those. While I don’t claim Goetz’ treatment of the topic to have been perfect, I don’t see evidence of it necessarily having been motivated by anything else than an honest curious interest in the topic. Claims that he clearly wants Christianity to have a chance or that he wouldn’t be able to change his mind on the topic seem to me to be just as uncalled for as claims that he would be a Christian.

Aleksei_Riikonen Oct 4, 2011, 2:11 AM
29 points
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: Rationality Lessons Learned from Irrational Adventures in Romance

Wow! A 20 page essay on “why I’m breaking up with you”? That’s just… brutal!

And obviously the title should have been:

“In Which I Explain How Natural Selection Has Built Me To Be Attracted To Certain Features That You Lack”

:D

Aleksei_Riikonen Oct 4, 2011, 1:57 AM
1 point
on: Rationality Lessons Learned from Irrational Adventures in Romance

So I broke up with Alice over a long conversation that included an hour-long primer on evolutionary psychology in which I explained how natural selection had built me to be attracted to certain features that she lacked.

LOL

(Just couldn’t resist posting my reaction, even though there’s already an essentially identical comment.)

It seems that this was made a lot more amusing by you apparently having great social skills these days.

(And makes me all the more glad I’ve never broken up with anyone, even though this requirement made it kinda hard to get into a relationship in the first place.)

Aleksei_Riikonen Aug 27, 2011, 9:07 AM
12 points
on: Polyhacking

Since moving back to the Bay Area I’ve been out with four other people too, one of whom he’s also seeing; I’ve been in my primary’s presence while he kissed one girl, and when he asked another for her phone number; I’ve gossiped with a secondary about other persons of romantic interest and accepted his offer to hint to a guy I like that this is the case; I hit on someone at a party right in front of my primary. I haven’t suffered a hiccup of drama or a twinge of jealousy to speak of and all evidence (including verbal confirmation) indicates that I’ve been managing my primary’s feelings satisfactorily too. Does this sort of thing appeal to you?

No.

But I do expect that if humans become immortal superbeings, then given enough time, most people currently in fairytale monogamous relationships will switch to poly. (Though when people are immortal superbeings, I also expect it to become common that they’ll spend a very long time if necessary searching for an instance of fairytale monogamy to be their first relationship.)

I guess my philosophy is that fairytale monogamy is optimal for the young (say under 200 years or so), while poly and other non-traditional arrangements are the choice of the adult.

Aleksei_Riikonen Aug 26, 2011, 9:27 AM
0 points
in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: Please do not downvote every comment or post someone has ever made as a retaliation tactic.
I think you’re probably right if we count more stuff as “high-quality thinking” than I was meaning to do. But if we’re rather strict about what counts as high-quality, I think I’m right.

(Also I’ll emphasize that I wasn’t talking about insecurity in general, but being insecure to such an extent that one refrains from posting high-quality stuff to an anonymity-enabling website because of a fear of getting downvoted.)

Aleksei_Riikonen Aug 24, 2011, 9:17 AM
1 point
in reply to: XiXiDu’s comment on: Please do not downvote every comment or post someone has ever made as a retaliation tactic.

Another problem is that a reputation system might drive away people with valuable insights about certain agreed upon topics.

Relax, I doubt anyone with the ability to produce high-quality thinking is so insecure that (s)he’d be scared of getting a few downvotes on a website. (Myself, I once got an article submission voted to oblivion, but it just felt good in a feeling-of-superiority kind of way since I thought the LW community was the party being more wrong there—though I think that to have found myself to be more wrong than I think I was would have felt good too.)

In general, I find it weird how some people manage to take the karma system so seriously. I thought it was acknowledged all along by the community that it’s a very crude thing with only very limited usefulness (though still worth having).

Aleksei_Riikonen Jul 3, 2011, 6:50 AM
2 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: People neglect small probability events
I enjoyed reading this comment rather a lot, since it allowed me to find myself in the not-too-common circumstance of noticing that I disagree with Eliezer to a significant (for me) degree.

Insofar as I’m able to put a number on my estimation of existential risks from AI, I also think that they’re not under 5%. But I’m not really in the habit of getting into debates on this matter with anyone. The case that I make for myself (or others) for supporting SIAI is rather of the following kind:
1. If there are any noticeable existential risks, it’s extremely important to spend resources on addressing them.
2. When looking at the various existential risks, most are somewhat simple to understand (at least after one has expended some effort on it), and are either already receiving a somewhat satisfactory amount of attention, or are likely to receive such attention before too long. (This doesn’t necessarily mean that they would be of a small probability, but rather that what can be done already seems like it’s mostly gonna get done.)
3. AI risks stand out as a special case, that seems really difficult to understand. There’s an exceptionally high degree of uncertainty in estimates I’m able to make of their probability; in fact I find it very difficult to make any satisfactorily rigorous estimations at all. Such lack of understanding is a potentially very dangerous thing. I want to support more research into this.
The key point in my attitude that I would emphasize, is the interest in existential risks in general. I wouldn’t try to seriously talk about AI risks to anyone who couldn’t first be stimulated to find within themselves such a more general serious interest. And then, if people have that general interest, they’re interested in going over the various existential risks there are, and it seems to me that sufficiently smart ones realize that the AI risks are a more difficult topic than others (at least after reading e.g. SIAI stuff; things might seem deceptively simple before one has a minimum threshold level of understanding).

So, my disagreement is that I indeed would to a degree avoid debates over probability. After a general interest in existential risks being present, I would instead of probabilities argue about the difficulty of the AI topic, and how such a lack of understanding is a very dangerous thing.

(I’m not really expressing a view on whether my approach is better or worse, though. Haven’t reflected on the matter sufficiently to form a real opinion on that, though for the time being I do continue to cling to my view instead of what Eliezer advocated.)

Aleksei_Riikonen May 19, 2011, 8:08 AM
2 points
in reply to: Duke’s comment on: Suffering as attention-allocational conflict

Also, how similar is the present Patri-hysteria in Finland to the Beatles-hysteria in the 60′s?

One difference is that I’m aware that the former happened, but not that the latter would have.

(edit: by “former” and “latter” I mean the chronological order of events, not the order in which they were mentioned in the quoted comment :)