One serious issue we had was that he gave me an STI. He had rationalised that he had a very limited risk of having an STI so despite my repeated requests and despite being informed that a previous partner had been infected, did not get tested.
I thought accepted theory was that rationalists, are less credulous but better at taking ideas seriously, but what do I know, really? Maybe he needs to read more random blog posts about quantum physics and AI to aspire for LW level of rationality.
Yes.
I don’t know if it is going to succeed or not (my precognition skills are rusty today), but I am using my current beliefs and evidence (sometimes lack of thereof) to speculate that it seems unlikely to work, in the same way cryonics proponents speculate that it is likely (well, likely enough to justify the cost) that their minds are going to survive till they are revived in the future.
I don’t know what is conditional to accurate preservation of the mind, but I am sure that if someone came up with definite answer, it would be a great leap forward for the whole community.
Some people seem to put their faith in structure for an answer, but how to test this claim in a meaningful way?
Yes, it is indeed a common pattern.
People are likely to get agitated about the stuff they are actually working with, especially if it is somehow entangled with their state of knowledge, personal interests and employment. Belief that we are the ones to save the world, really helps to find motivation for continuing their pursuits (and helps fund-raising efforts, I would reckon). It is also a good excuse to push your values on others (Communism will save the world from our greed).
On the other hand, I don’t think it is a bad thing. That way, we have many little small groups, each working on their small subset of problem space when also trying to save the world from the disaster, which they perceive to be the greatest danger. As long as response is proportional to actual risk, of course.
But I still agree with you that it is only prudent to treat any such claims with caution, so that we don’t fall into a trap of using data taken from a small group of people working at Asteroid Defense Foundation as our only and true estimates of likelihood and effect of an asteroid impact, without verifying their claims using an unbiased source. It is certainly good to have someone looking at the sky from time to time, just in case their claims prove true, though.
Here is a parable illustrating relevant difficulty of both problems:
*Imagine you are presented with a modern manuscript in latin and asked to retype it on a computer and translate everything into English.
This is how uploading more or less looks like for me, data is there but it still needs to be understood, and copied. Ah, you also need a computer. Now consider the same has to be done with ancient manuscript, that has been preserved in a wooden box stored in ice cave and guarded by a couple of hopeful monks:
Imagine the manuscript has been preserved using correct means and all letters are still there.
Uploading is easy. There is no data loss, so it is equivalent to uploading modern manuscript. This means that monks were smart enough to choose optimal storage procedure (or got there by accident) - very unlikely.
Imagine the manuscript has been preserved using decent means and some letters are still there.
Now, we have to do a bit of guesswork… is the manuscript we translate the same thing original author had in mind? EY called it doing intelligent cryptography on a partially preserved brain, as far as I am aware. Monks knew just enough not to screw up the process, but their knowledge of manuscript-preservation-techniques was not perfect.
Imagine the manuscript has been preserved using decent means all traces have vanished without trace.
Now we are royally screwed, or we can wait a couple of thousands of millions years so that oracle computer can deduce state of manuscript by reversing entropy. This means monks know very little about manuscript-preservation.
Imagine there is no manuscript. There is a nice wooden box preserved with astonishing details, but manuscript have crumbled when monks put it inside.
Well, the monks who wanted to preserve manuscript didn’t know that preserving the box does not help to preserve the manuscript, but they tried, right? This means monks don’t understand connection between manuscript and box preservation techniques.
Imagine there is no manuscript. The box has been damaged as well.
This is what happens when manuscript-preservation business is run by people with little knowledge about what should be done to store belongings for thousands of years without significant damage.
In other words, uploading is something that can be figured out correctly in far, far future while the problem of what is proper cryo-storage has to be solved correctly right now as incorrect procedure may lead to irreversible loss of information for people who want to be preserved now. I don’t assign high prior probability to the fact that we know enough about the brain to preserve minds correctly, and therefore cryonics in the current shape or form is unlikely to succeed.
To summarize, belief in things that are not actually true, may have beneficial impact on your day to day life?
You don’t really need require any level of rationality skills to arrive at that conclusion, but the writeup is quite interesting.
Just don’t fall in the trap of thinking I am going to swallow this placebo and feel better, because I know that even though placebo does not work… crap. Let’s start from the beginning....
Uh… I agree with you that it really just depends on the marketing, and thought of people willingly mounting thought-taboo chips seems quite possible in the your given context. The connotations of “Though Crime” moved my away from thinking what are possible uses of such techniques towards why the hell should I allow other people to mess with my brain?
I cannot even think about the variety of interesting ways in which though-blocking technology can be applied.
Is just me, or is it somewhat to the contrary to normal approach taken by some utilitarians, I mean, here we are tweaking the models, while elsewhere some apparent utilitarians seem to be approaching it from the other case:
My intuition does not match current model, so I am making incorrect choice and need to change intuition and become more moral, and act according to preferred values.
Tweaking the model seems like several magnitudes harder, but as I guess, also several magnitudes more rewarding. I mean, I would love to see a self-consistent moral framework that maps to my personal values, but I assume it is not a goal that is easy to achieve, unless we include egoism, I guess.
Devil as always, seems to lie in the details, but as I see it some people may see it as a feature:
Assuming I am a forward looking agent who aims to maximize long term, not short term utility.
What is the utility of a person that is being currently preserved in suspended animation with hope of future revival? Am I being penalized as much as for a person who was, say, cremated?
Are we justified to make all current humans unhappy (without sacrificing their lives of course), so that means of reviving dead people are created faster, so that we can stop being penalized for their ended lifespans?
Wouldn’t it be only prudent to stop creation of new humans, until we can ensure their lifespans would reach end of the universe, to avoid taking negative points?
I guess it is kind of a slippery slope, indeed. There are probably ways in which it could work only as intended (hardwired chip or whatever), but allowing other people to block your thoughts is only a couple of steps from turning you into their puppet.
As for simulation as though crime, I am not sure. If they need to peek inside your brain to check if you are not running illegally constructed internal simulations, the government can just simulate a copy of you (with a warrant, I guess), either torture or explicitly read it’s mind (either way terrible) to find out what is going on and then erase it (I mean murder, but government does it so it is kind of better, except not really.).
Your approval of such measures, probably depends on the relative values that you assign to freedom and privacy.
The way I can see it in sci-fi terms:
If human mind is the first copy of a brain that has been uploaded to an computer, than it deserves the same rights as any human. There is a rule against running more than one instance of the same person at the same time.
Human mind created on my own computer from first principles, so to speak of, does not have any rights, but there is also a law in place to prevent such agents from being created, as human minds are dangerous toys.
Plans to enforce thought-taboo devices are likely to fail, as no self-respecting human being would allow such an crude ingerence of third parties into their own thought process. I mean, it starts with NO THINKING ABOUT NANOTECHNOLOGY and in time changes to NO THINKING ABOUT RESISTANCE .
EDIT:
Also, assuming that there is really a need to extract some information from an individual, I would reluctantly grant government right to create temporary copy of an individual to be interrogated, interrogate (i.e. torture) the copy and then delete it shortly afterwards. It is squicky, but in my head superior to leaving the original target with memories of interrogation.
Let’s make distinction between “I have a prejudice against” and “I know something about you”
Assuming I know that IQ is valid and true objective measure, I can use it to judge your cognitive skills, and your opinion about the result does not matter to anyone, just as much as your own opinion about BMI.
Assuming that I am not sure if IQ is valid, then I would rather refrain from reaching any conclusions or acting as if it actually mattered (because I am afraid of consequences), thus making it useless for me in my practical day to day life.
IQ can be used to give scientific justification to our internalized biases.
I don’t want to limit your rights, because you are X. I want to limit your rights because I belong to Y, and as Y does better than X on IQ tests, it is only prudent that we know better what is good for you. I am also not interested in listening to counter-arguments coming from people whose IQ is below 99.
Also, in extreme cases, it can be used to push further policies such as eugenics (the bad kind that everyone has in mind when they hear the word “eugenics”):
Ah… I forgot to say that X shouldn’t have the right to have children. No offense meant, but we want to avoid dims out breeding brights. Also, keep your stupid daughter away from my son, as I really don’t want my own children to pollute genetic purity of our kind.
Yes, I do stand corrected.
Most of the explanations found on cryonics site, do indeed seem to base their arguments around the hopeful explanation that given nanotechnology and science of the future every problem connected to as you say rebooting would become essentially trivial.
This is good argument capable of convincing me into pro-cryonics position, if and only if someone can follow this claim by an evidence pointing to high probability estimate that preservation and restoration will become possible during a resonable time period.
If it so happens, that cryopreservation fails to prevent information-theoretic death then value of your cryo-magazines filled with with corpses will amount to exactly 0$ (unless you also preserve the organs for transplants).
I suspect our world views might differ for a bit, as I don’t wish that my values where any different than they are. Why should I?
If Azathoth decided to instill the value that having children is somehow desirable deep into my mind, than I am very happy that as a first world parent I have all the resources I need to turn it into a pleasant endeavor with a very high expected value (happy new human who hopefully likes me and hopefully shares my values, but I don’t have much confidence in a second bet).
In this case, I concur that your argument may be true if you include animals in your utility calculations.
While I do have reservations against causing suffering in humans, I don’t explicitly include animals in my utility calculations, and while I don’t support causing suffering for the sake of suffering, I don’t have any ethical qualms against products made with animal fur, animal testing or factory farming, so that in regards to pigs, cows and chickens, I am an utility monster.
Ah, must have misread your representation, but English is not my first language, so sorry about that.
I guess if I was particularly well organized ruthlessly effective utilitarian ass some people here, I could now note down in my notebook, that he is happier then I previously thought and it is moral to kill him if, and only if the couple gives birth to 3, not 2 happy children.
Self Help, CBT and quantified self Android applications
A lot of people on LW seem to hold The Feeling Good Handbook, of Dr. Burns in high regard when it comes to effective self-help. I am through the process of browsing a PDF copy, and it indeed seems like a good resource, as it is not only written in an engaging way, but also packed with various exercises, such as writing your day plan and reviewing it later while assigning Pleasure and Purpose scores to various tasks.
The problem I have with this, and any other self-help-exercise style of books is that I am simply too lazy to regularly print, draft or fill written exercise sheets. On the other hand—I have noticed that when prompted to do so by phone notification, I can usually be trusted to regularly fill in the forms of QS apps I have installed on my mobile or do exercises such as duolingo language tests.
Since the topics of CBT, depression and such seem to be quite widely discussed, I have two rather general questions I would like to ask to the community:
1) Do you know about any battle-tested mobile applications that implement CBT exercises as mentioned in the book of Dr. Burns? If so please do name them, as I would love to install one as well.
2) Do you think that creating a new mobile application to collect all Feel-Good-Hanbook exercises in one place, and remind user to do them regularly (i.e. once daily/weekly in most cases) is a good idea? Would you use such an application for yourself? I am a MSc Comp Sci student looking for some fun and useful projects to polish my android skills a bit, and I would love to work on something that might be useful to a wider community. [pollid:852]