Dallas

• DallasNov 25, 2012, 11:29 PM

  −10 points

  in reply to: JoshuaZ’s comment on: LW Women- Min­i­miz­ing the In­fer­en­tial Distance

  He could instead mean something closer to “AI risk seems to be an important contribution for charitable dollars, but the SIAI’s lack of careful control and moderation of their own fora even given its potential PR risk makes me question whether they are competent enough or organized enough to substantially help deal with AI risk.”

  That is indeed my concern. If CFAR can’t avoid a Jerry Sandusky/​Joe Paterno type scenario (which I am reasonably probable it is capable of, given one of its founders wrote HPMOR), then it is literally a horrendous joke and I should be allocating my contributions to somewhere more productive.

• DallasNov 25, 2012, 10:40 PM

  −7 points

  in reply to: Salemicus’s comment on: LW Women- Min­i­miz­ing the In­fer­en­tial Distance

  The link JoachimSchipper refers to shows gwern being pretty clearly evil.

  [Tue Nov 6 2012]

  ivan: Someone just told me… “well… having their food labeled as GMO makes them uncomfortable like having sex with a trans person”

  >.< [18:10]

  whaaat?

  That seems pretty plausible.

  Not particularly backed intuitive dislike.

  I mean, conditional on uncomfortability of both.

  Algo: makes sense. both are unnatural and deceptive

  gwern: Both are? [18:13]

  Algo: yeah, one is a monstrous abortion pretending to be its opposite and deluding the eye thanks to the latest scientific techniques, and the other is a weird fruit

  gwern, “deceptive” is a pretty terrible word to use for trans people.

  gwern, what a disgusting thing to say. [18:14]

  startling: more or less disgusting than a GMO fruit rotting for a week?

  inquiring minds need to know!

  And it wasn’t even an isolated incident:

  also all of my anger toward drethelin is completely gone [20:54]

  gwern, so it is like do notation!

  as well as toward everyone else

  Grognor: what, because you got a free book?

  no.

  you had your ’nads surgically removed?

  yes, that’s exactly what happened. [20:55]

  electroshock therapy? * nshepperd (~asdfg@70.218.233.220.static.exetel.com.au) has quit: Ping timeout: 276 seconds [20:56]

  startling: maybe he started estrogen supplementation

  gwern, okay?

  startling: we won’t judge him for it. well, maybe you won’t, I find trannies really creepy

  There wasn’t even the possibility that it was some bizarre form of “off-color humor”. Gwern admitted it himself:

  I realize that, which is why I avoid anything to do with transexuals on LW: I won’t defend my feelings since I know perfectly well that objectively there is no reason to dislike such people, but my feelings exist anyway and mean that anything I might write on the topic is fruit of a poisoned tree.

  IRC, on the other hand, is ephemeral and officially not publicly logged so I don’t put as much of a filter on my stream of consciousness.

• DallasNov 25, 2012, 10:08 PM

  −29 points

  in reply to: JoachimSchipper’s comment on: LW Women- Min­i­miz­ing the In­fer­en­tial Distance

  How is gwern still allowed on this site without making a significant apology and reparations? It is making me seriously reconsider any funding that I would give to CFAR or SIAI.

• DallasNov 6, 2012, 10:20 PM

  −3 points

  in reply to: TraderJoe’s comment on: 2012 Less Wrong Cen­sus/​Survey

  Boltzmann brain scenarios will occur regardless of any given doomsday.

• DallasNov 4, 2012, 1:32 PM

  25 points

  on: 2012 Less Wrong Cen­sus/​Survey

  Am I the only person who answered “100” on the cryonics question because “revived at some point in the future” was indefinite enough that a Boltzmann brain-like scenario inevitably occurring eventually seemed reasonable?

  Also, I did all the extra credit questions. At twos in the morning.

• DallasOct 31, 2012, 2:27 AM

  3 points

  on: Check­ing Kurzweil’s track record

  I will examine 30 questions. dallasjhaugh at gmail dot com

• DallasOct 19, 2012, 4:18 PM

  2 points

  on: [LINK] AI-box­ing Is News, Somehow

  I somehow really thought this article was going to be about upscaled Rock ‘Em Sock ’Em Robots. I’m not sure if this is better or worse.

• DallasSep 30, 2012, 1:24 PM

  3 points

  in reply to: Epiphany’s comment on: Fe­male Test Sub­ject—Con­vince Me To Get Cryo

  What cartoon was this?

• DallasSep 21, 2012, 4:43 PM

  −6 points

  on: Life-chang­ing de­ci­sions per­tain­ing to ed­u­ca­tion. Help.

  Go with Biology.

  Where do you currently live?

• DallasSep 8, 2012, 1:29 AM

  −1 points

  in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: Jews and Nazis: a ver­sion of dust specks vs torture

  In a void where there are just these particular Nazis and Jews, sure, but in most contexts, you’ll have a variety of intelligences with varying utility functions, and those with pro-arbitrary-genocide values are dangerous to have around.

  Of course, there is the simple alternative of putting the Nazis in an enclosed environment where they believe that Jews don’t exist. Hypotheticals have to be really strongly defined in order to avoid lateral thinking solutions.

• DallasSep 7, 2012, 9:07 PM

  3 points

  on: Jews and Nazis: a ver­sion of dust specks vs torture

  If the Nazis have some built-in value that determines that they hate something utterly arbitrary, then why don’t we exterminate them?

• DallasAug 17, 2012, 5:28 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Viliam_Bur’s comment on: Open Thread, Au­gust 16-31, 2012

  This might actually be true. If you consider the categories of white people who would be most likely to have black people in their social network, what comes up is a list of categories correlated with racism (e.g. poverty, religiosity).

• DallasAug 16, 2012, 4:04 AM

  −6 points

  on: Open Thread, Au­gust 16-31, 2012

  Somebody is raising money for buying Wardenclyffe Tower and turning it into a museum. Is this worth the dead kids or should we try and intervene?

• DallasAug 16, 2012, 4:00 AM

  7 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open Thread, Au­gust 16-31, 2012

  I think there is a vague consensus that, all other things equal, eating less will make you lose weight and eating more will make you gain weight? I might have seen someone post a counterexample at least once, but I might simply be misremembering.

• DallasAug 3, 2012, 8:12 PM

  6 points

  in reply to: thomblake’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes Au­gust 2012

  Yudkowsky’s been downvoted before; the most notable time in recent memory was probably removing the link to the NY Observer article.

• DallasJul 28, 2012, 10:57 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: Kawoomba’s comment on: Is Poli­tics the Mind­kil­ler? An In­con­clu­sive Test

  Our local surroundings could be made into a dense volume of self-replicating computronium hosting as many bare-minimum sapients as possible, but only a few people here would argue that it’s morally imperative to carry that out to full term.

  Another difference is that the mature sapient has typically specified, or would specify, that it should be reinstated in advance, and works within the framework of society. If the baby survives any sort of abuse it undergoes until it is sapient, then it might be entitled to some damages, but until then, it lacks self-ownership and is susceptible to destruction by its possessors.

• DallasJul 27, 2012, 6:00 PM

  5 points

  in reply to: OrphanWilde’s comment on: Is Poli­tics the Mind­kil­ler? An In­con­clu­sive Test

  Infants and fetuses are not sapient. Arbitrarily privileging biological life regardless of its mental capability would set a horrible precedent. Note that there isn’t that coherent of a line between more intelligent mammals and human babies.

• DallasJul 20, 2012, 1:16 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: MileyCyrus’s comment on: In Defense of Tone Arguments

  What counts as a “conversion”? I was baptized Catholic, but my family was otherwise extremely lapsed. I don’t think I really believed in anything that strongly before briefly dabbling in various esoteric practices. JREF and Gödel, Escher, Bach convinced me otherwise.

• DallasJul 17, 2012, 1:43 AM

  0 points

  on: Ex­ploit­ing the Typ­i­cal Mind Fal­lacy for more ac­cu­rate ques­tion­ing?

  It might get a bit suspicious if you are entirely asking people about what other people think. You’d have to mix it with more conventional “dummy” questions.

  Assuming, of course, that this hypothesis is true. The great thing is that it’s easily testable.

• DallasJul 5, 2012, 3:38 AM

  15 points

  in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Ir­ra­tional­ity Game II

  1. The art form must be linear and intend to proceed without interaction from the user.

  2. The length of the three “notes” must be in 8:8:15 ratio (in that order).

  3. The main distinguishing factor between “notes”, must be in 2:3:4 ratio (in that order).

  4. The motif must be the overwhelmingly dominant “voice” when it occurs.