Algernoq

• AlgernoqJul 19, 2016, 4:51 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: turchin’s comment on: The map of cog­ni­tive bi­ases, er­rors and ob­sta­cles af­fect­ing judg­ment and man­age­ment of global catas­trophic risks

  I hope you continue to find happiness.

• AlgernoqJul 19, 2016, 4:48 AM

  −2 points

  in reply to: hg00’s comment on: The map of cog­ni­tive bi­ases, er­rors and ob­sta­cles af­fect­ing judg­ment and man­age­ment of global catas­trophic risks

  Do you have actual evidence that [Elon Musk was pushed out of PayPal by a secret cabal of global financiers who wanted to ensure global financial markets stayed opaque] or is it just a hunch?

  Just a hunch. But, “to understand a complex plot look at the outcome and see who benefits.”

  Cuckoldry seems relatively rare in non-self-selected populations.

  Over 1% risk for unsuspecting men is enough that I’ll paternity-test all of my children prior to claiming legal fatherhood.

  For an emotionally stable woman, a committed relationship with a respected brave is far better than a fling with the chief.

  The woman ideal is getting support/​resources from the brave (good resources) while cheating with the chief (better genes). It’s why human women evolved to hide their fertility and can have sex during their entire cycle, not just when they’re fertile. The woman would have sex with the good-genes guy during her fertile window, and have sex with the good-resources guy the rest of the time.

  Cavallo is also notable for being an inventor of the rigid flight helmet. His 1943 design was used by the federal government as prior art in a patent infringement lawsuit defense and subsequently donated to the Smithsonian. [look at that, he was a scientist]

  Test pilots are not scientists...most of test pilot work is routine precision flying, and it’s the engineers, not the pilots, who typically design the test program.

  Nietzche said “Science acts only as a means of self-anesthetization for sufferers (scientists) who do not want to admit that they are such.”

  I don’t think there’s been some kind of sudden evolutionary pressure for erectile dysfunction in young men, and I don’t think it’s a feminist conspiracy (both perpetual Red Pill bogeymen—analogous to “cishet white males” on the SJW side of things).

  The Red Pill also speculates about TV, porn, and carbs as causes of male weakness.

  To a first approximation, I think emotionally stable women (the sort who make good long term partners) are attracted to the product of how good a man is and how powerful he is.

  goodness = willingness to self-sacrifice for others’ benefit.

  The truth is ugly. Burn it down.

  Burn it all down.

  I am free.

• AlgernoqJul 19, 2016, 4:28 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: hg00’s comment on: The map of cog­ni­tive bi­ases, er­rors and ob­sta­cles af­fect­ing judg­ment and man­age­ment of global catas­trophic risks

  So it was OK for them to lie to me?

  I did not say that.

  To fix this mistake, internalize the fact that the rules don’t apply to you. The rules apply to people who follow the rules.

  Sounds like you’re saying lying is OK.

  If you ask for a favor that you know he can easily do and he says “no” this does not imply that the person is mean. Instead? It implies that he has no reason to grant the favor.

  That’s selfishness...maximizing one’s own utility at the expense of total utility. Apparently this is OK.

  Roosh (Red Pill thought leader) has written multiple times about how girls he’s slept with have cried when they found his blog. This is also a data point that works against Red Pill ideology.

  Red Pill ideology says women want a “naturally” successful guy, and seeing how the sausage is made is disgusting to them (male struggles, male suffering, time at the gym, time reading weird forums, steroids, shoe lifts, etc.). Roosh’s blog reveals that he is a fake, low-status, STD-spreading manipulator, which is disgusting to most women. His persona, however, is not unappealing.

  The Red Pill explained some painful mistakes I had made, more clearly than any other source. Examples:

  “Beta orbiting”: why demonstrating good character, high value and virtuous restraint through being friends with an attractive woman is disgusting to them, why I spent years in sexless relationships, and why many women I was attracted to dated liars who pushed for sex quickly instead of me.

  “Hypergamy”: why all of my exes lined up other sexual prospects while in a relationship with me, and dumped me as soon as it was in their best interest. Also why my aunts with fat or poor husbands got divorced, while my uncles with fat or poor wives stayed married.

  “Tingles Uber Alles”: why tall, muscular and slightly scary men get a lot of sex, and why my outgoing middle-class Asian friend who’s 5′3″ is a virgin at age 30.

  “Alpha Fucks; Beta Bucks”: why many women enjoy casual sex, and lie about it without hesitation or remorse, including one of my exes.

  Look it up. Or don’t. Actually, it’s better for me if you stay naive.

  It sounds like this issue is important to you—this is your opportunity to be a hero. I would much rather see you seek revenge in order to get this off your mind and then join aturchin on the good guy team (a relatively high-trust group, by the way, with few bad actors) than stew in effective egoism.

  Thank you for permission to turn evil. I make my own rules from now on. My revenge will be legal, general (not targeting any specific group, people or company), and anonymous.

  For the sake of argument, if my sexual fetish was nuking densely populated cities and fucking in the heat of the fireball while listening to the screams of the dying, can you say with certainty that this is morally wrong?

• AlgernoqJul 19, 2016, 3:59 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Good_Burning_Plastic’s comment on: The map of cog­ni­tive bi­ases, er­rors and ob­sta­cles af­fect­ing judg­ment and man­age­ment of global catas­trophic risks

  I’m sexually attracted to overachievement. Your question is paradoxical.

• AlgernoqJul 17, 2016, 8:16 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: The map of cog­ni­tive bi­ases, er­rors and ob­sta­cles af­fect­ing judg­ment and man­age­ment of global catas­trophic risks

  No...Voldemort isn’t altruistic, and considers the “global community” too disorganized to be an ally worth seeking favor with.

• AlgernoqJul 17, 2016, 8:13 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: The map of cog­ni­tive bi­ases, er­rors and ob­sta­cles af­fect­ing judg­ment and man­age­ment of global catas­trophic risks

  A nice proletarian girl isn’t supposed to sleep with a bourgeoise man, that makes her worse than a slut—that makes her a traitor.

  If she can get a bourgeoise man to marry her, good for her. But chances are she won’t, and she will never tell the proletarian man she ends up marrying about her past with the bourgeoisie man. This causes the proletarian man to suffer increased health risks.

  I’m somewhat surprised to find this attitude on the ’net in 2016.

  This is liberal shaming language.

• AlgernoqJul 17, 2016, 7:33 AM

  −2 points

  in reply to: hg00’s comment on: The map of cog­ni­tive bi­ases, er­rors and ob­sta­cles af­fect­ing judg­ment and man­age­ment of global catas­trophic risks

  A lot of great topics here.

  Elon Musk has risked his entire fortune for you.

  I am a huge fan of Elon Musk.

  I suspect a big reason Mr. Musk tries to make the greatest possible positive difference for humanity is to reduce his risk of being murdered by established players. He’s pissed off a lot of powerful people, but provided benefits to many more.

  He was forced out of controlling PayPal...and his vision for PayPal was to make it a “full-service financial institution”. He wanted to “convert the financial system from a series of heterogeneous insecure databases to one database.” This is threatening to the global elite in a way that going to Mars is not. Thus, he was forced out.

  While he risked his personal fortune on SpaceX in 2013 when it looked like they would run out of money, he also had plans to sell a large interest in Tesla to Google in order to acquire funding for additional SpaceX launches. The story he tells about betting all of his assets with no recourse is true but under-emphasizes his backup plans for additional launches.

  Paul has written 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 essays that touch on the topic of why cooperators tend to get rich in Silicon Valley rather than defectors.

  I am a huge fan of Paul Graham as well.

  However, his advice can mislead young technical people into thinking that a startup is going to make them rich. He says, “If you wanted to get rich, how would you do it? I think your best bet would be to start or join a startup....you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years”. But in reality most startups fail and waste 5 years of the founders’ time in the process. Plus, for every founder, there are dozens of joiners/​employees who work for below-market-rate salary plus a small percentage (often 0.1%) of the new company. Thus, his advice to “start or join a startup” is dangerously misleading because his target audience is young technical people without the political or sales skills to actually succeed.

  Arguing for the opposition is Michael Church. I was intrigued by The 3-Ladder System of Social Class in the US (summary: college-educated technologists learned how to make wealth, not how to own it) and his VC-istan series (summary: Silicon Valley got colonized by MBA financiers who extracted all the goodwill). He alleges he deleted his blog archive and left the Valley because of threats from financiers affiliated with Paul Graham.

  The Forbes 400 does not and cannot track privately-held wealth. Thus, the Forbes 400 only includes rich people who wanted to appear there.

  Sean Parker on his giving philosophy...

  That’s a marketing piece. Rich people often hide their wealth, but if they can’t they market themselves as hyper-successful good people, not as the driven perfectionist tyrants they often are. As the MacLeod Hierarchy explains, rank-and-file workers work best if they think they’re climbing a career ladder. Rich people climbed a different ladder, then hid it.

  There’s a tradition of robber barons giving away vast wealth to manage their public image.

  highly intelligent people tend to be interested in things other than sex,

  I agree with this.

  But it’s hard to tease out exactly why.

  The truth is not just politically incorrect; the truth is disgusting and offensive.

  The Red Pill says is clearly: women want good genes and good resources. This means that men with good genes have the opportunity for lots of sex, and men with good resources get strung along in sexless relationships, and men with neither good genes (looks) nor good resources (money/​power) get nothing except shame. Women want the best they can get, so the top 10% of men have sex with the top 80% of women. Below-average men get nothing. Traditional marriage is illegal (“until death do us part” is legally unenforceable). Many women try to copy the behavior of the most attractive men—promiscuous casual sex that they lie about—and then settle down with someone much less attractive than their casual sex partners once they reach their late 20s. And for men: most men are weak, emotionally-manipulated, directionless sheep.

  This explains why rock band front-men, criminals, and selfish finance bros enjoy lots of sex despite their toxic behavior: they have looks plus power.

  If you want more sexual partners, a good first step is to start working out

  Yup. Will do. To be clear, the advice is to develop a ripped body that generates tingly feelings in women’s vaginas, not to “be a good person” or “make a positive difference” or even “have a job”. We deserve the coming global Apocalypse.

  you’ll likely feel less insecure about who your girlfriends have slept with.

  So it was OK for them to lie to me? Fuck you. If that’s how it works, I’m gonna go date 5 young women at the same time by telling them lies, then blame them for being insecure when the truth comes out.

  Do not mistake my righteous anger for “insecurity”. That’s what old women do when they’re trying to shame a man into marrying them.

  you can work on cool stuff like decreasing existential risk.

  I don’t see how this would benefit me. “Cool” is a fossilized instinct for what is powerful. I’d rather go get what will really make me powerful: a shitload of money, and skill at building alliances I control.

  Research also seems to indicate that having lots of sexual partners is associated with decreased happiness.

  For women, definitely. For men, the data is inconclusive.

  Those dominant “defector” types are often rejected by women for longer-term relationships

  Did you start acting like a non-dominant non-defector type, and get dumped soon after? Or did you become less attractive/​successful/​high-status over time? The struggle is real.

  Psychological research, insofar as it relates to this topic, is more mixed.

  The Art of Manliness is clickbait for unsuccessful beta males. A psychological survey is a hilariously inaccurate methodology for gaining insight into a biological response.

  If there’s a particular sort of defection you are concerned about, you can work to change society in order to disincentivize it.

  I don’t have the power to make a difference.

  For example, I want to make it illegal to lie about one’s relationship status and sexual history. But, I can’t at my current power level. More specifically: I have met 3 different employees of a certain investment bank, who all were more sexually successful than me despite routinely lying to women to get sex. One tried to seduce my girlfriend at the time despite having one “girlfriend” and several “casual sex partners” who were unaware of each other, and who he implied possible long-term relationship potential with. Another tried to set me up with a woman he was tired of seeing (she wanted a relationship; he just wanted sex) without disclosing that he had had sex with them. A 3rd talked to me about startup projects while badly hiding the micro-expressions for “smugness/​contempt” and “duping delight” and then predictably failed to follow up. I’m pretty sure at least 2 of these guys are into spreading genital herpes. But, I looked up the slander laws and it’s illegal for me to publicly shame these selfish men or their firm without recorded evidence (there’s a presumption of innocence), and it’s illegal for me to collect that evidence (two-party consent required for recording, and they avoid using email for their games). Thus, they win, and I lose, and their sex partners lose, and the people they do business with lose (their attitude carries over to their business dealings...it’s all about wealth extraction.).) Check out Wall Street Playboys for a description of the “finance bro attitude” including advice about being attractive enough for someone in a relationship to want to cheat with. I’ve thought about creating some sort of morality Leviathan app, to track people’s “trust graphs” over time to provide a permanent record of who burned who, but this has the potential to go badly wrong.

  Thus, I figured the best thing to do was to pull a Voldemort and go all-in on selfishness. Investing in other people and in relationships is a bad deal because the relationships inevitably end. Successful people only invest in relationships that they control. God is OK with animals violently killing each other all the time, with zero regard for suffering or fair play, and who am I to question God? The 48 Laws of Power (by Robert Greene) has some fascinating ideas about how to find common grounds to shit in.

  This probably isn’t the best example, but I’ve always wondered why we don’t punish rapists (and maybe other criminals) with castration.

  False convictions. “Cruel and unusual” punishments are illegal because they make people angry in a way just locking up the wrong person doesn’t. Can you imagine the rage of the Black Lives Matter movement if the US Government was routinely castrating rapists? Or, more accurately, rich people are against physical punishments because they can’t be undone (whereas a long prison sentence + enough expensive lawyers = freedom).

  what we want to happen

  Taking a step back here...I shouldn’t be this angry for this long with this little forward progress.

  Better to choose a specific dream and make it happen.

  Undisciplined flailing with no single clear goal has kept me middle-class for a decade.

• AlgernoqJul 17, 2016, 1:17 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: gjm’s comment on: The map of cog­ni­tive bi­ases, er­rors and ob­sta­cles af­fect­ing judg­ment and man­age­ment of global catas­trophic risks

  True. Voldemort would have spent less time sulking than I have.

• AlgernoqJul 16, 2016, 10:25 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: gjm’s comment on: The map of cog­ni­tive bi­ases, er­rors and ob­sta­cles af­fect­ing judg­ment and man­age­ment of global catas­trophic risks

  OP wants me to help stop global catastrophic risks.

  It’s illegal to hurt the people who created the global catastrophic risks, so count me out. I don’t work for free. I’d rather enjoy a nice life.

  “Why, no,” said Professor Quirrell. “I stopped trying to be a hero, and went off to do something else I found more pleasant.”

  “What? ” said Hermione without thinking at all. “That’s horrible! ”

• AlgernoqJul 16, 2016, 10:21 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: The map of cog­ni­tive bi­ases, er­rors and ob­sta­cles af­fect­ing judg­ment and man­age­ment of global catas­trophic risks

  I don’t ask but it comes up. Certain occupations have corresponding values, that align with “cooperate” or “defect” strategies. For example, scientists “cooperate”, while criminals and finance guys “defect” whenever they think it’ll be profitable.

  I notice you are using shaming language. I realize my beliefs are unusual but I am not clear what your question means.

• AlgernoqJul 16, 2016, 8:15 PM

  0 points

  on: The map of cog­ni­tive bi­ases, er­rors and ob­sta­cles af­fect­ing judg­ment and man­age­ment of global catas­trophic risks

  Assuming this is all true...it’s not at all clear that cooperation is my best move.

  I refuse to sacrifice my life to protect billionaires who would not do the same for me. I won’t labor under pointlessly annoying conditions to protect an ownership class that despises the technological progress and growth that I worked to create.

  Not to put too fine a point on it, but...scientists get less sex than criminals.

  In my personal experience...all of my ex-girlfriends had sex with someone who doesn’t share my values—a criminal, a future lawyer/​financier, or an actual Owner with inherited wealth—before meeting me, and lied to me about it. I experienced mental anguish and other negative consequences as a result of this bad system.

  It’s not illegal to always defect in prisoner’s dilemmas. It’s illegal to punish people who always defect in prisoner’s dilemmas.

  Fuck this; I’m out.

• AlgernoqMar 17, 2016, 6:17 AM

  0 points

  on: Open thread, Mar. 14 - Mar. 20, 2016

  Modest proposal for Friendly AI research:

  Create a moral framework that incentivizes assholes to cooperate.

  Specifically, create a set of laws for a “community”, with the laws applying only to members, that would attract finance guys, successful “unicorn” startup owners, politicians, drug dealers at the “regional manager” level, and other assholes.

  Win condition: a “trust app” that everyone uses, that tells users how trustworthy every single person they meet is.

  Lose condition: startup fund assholes end up with majority ownership of the first smarter-than-human-level general AI, and no one’s given smart people an incentive not to hurt dumb people.

  If you can’t incentivize smart selfish people to “cooperate” instead of “defect”, then why do you think you can incentivize an AI to be friendly? What’s to stop a troll from deleting the “Friendly” part the second the AI source code hits the Internet? Keep in mind that the 4chan community has a similar ethos to LW: namely “anything that can be destroyed by a basement dweller should be”.

• AlgernoqMar 12, 2016, 9:45 AM

  4 points

  in reply to: CronoDAS’s comment on: After Go, what games should be next for Deep­Mind?

  Oh no! The AI would make us hate each other before betraying us.

• AlgernoqFeb 21, 2016, 12:48 AM

  3 points

  in reply to: Manfred’s comment on: [spoilers] EY’s “A Girl Cor­rupted...?!” new story is an alle­gor­i­cal study of quan­tum im­mor­tal­ity?

  Makes sense.

  It all breaks down if my consciousness is divisible. If I can lose a little conscious awareness at a time until nothing is left, then Quantum Immortality doesn’t seem to work...I would expect to find myself in a world where my conscious awareness (whatever that is) is increasing.

  I wish I could quantify how consciously aware I am.

• AlgernoqFeb 20, 2016, 3:23 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: Manfred’s comment on: [spoilers] EY’s “A Girl Cor­rupted...?!” new story is an alle­gor­i­cal study of quan­tum im­mor­tal­ity?

  Can you say a little more about what specific past observations are not matched by a sophisticated version of Quantum Immortality?

[spoilers] EY’s “A Girl Cor­rupted...?!” new story is an alle­gor­i­cal study of quan­tum im­mor­tal­ity?

• AlgernoqDec 13, 2015, 11:56 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: qmotus’s comment on: time­less quan­tum immortality

  The 20th-century physicists speculated a lot about it. Schrodinger’s Cat, the Wigner’s Friend problem, etc. But in the absence of a test for consciousness they mostly went on to other things.

• AlgernoqDec 13, 2015, 11:55 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: MrMind’s comment on: time­less quan­tum immortality

  That summarizes the “what” of the idea. The “why” part is that classical physics violations are improbable so timelines with lots of classical physics violations would be improbable.

• AlgernoqDec 13, 2015, 11:51 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: gjm’s comment on: time­less quan­tum immortality

  In terms of conscious experience, dreamless sleep and death feel similar, as far as I know.

• AlgernoqDec 13, 2015, 11:48 AM

  2 points

  on: Es­ti­mate the Cost of Immortality

  My naive linear model is that ~$400 billion research funding currently spent per year buys about 1 year increased lifespan per decade, so it would take about $4 trillion per year spent on research to stop aging, or a one-time investment of $80 trillion. For 99% confidence I’ll add a safety factor of 4, yielding a one-time payment of $320 trillion, or $16 trillion per year. In other words, this back-of-the-envelope guess suggests the entire economic output of the United States would be just sufficient to discover and maintain an aging cure.