DevilMaster

Karma: −12

DevilMaster 31 Oct 2013 15:47 UTC
5 points
in reply to: niceguyanon’s comment on: Does the universe contain a friendly artificial superintelligence?
Finally! Someone who explains (as opposed to simply downvoting) the weak points in my reasoning!

You’re right, the light horizon is something I had completely forgotten to take into consideration. Just as I read your comment, I was about to object that a FASI would be able to cheat and create wormholes or Tipler cylinders to violate causality and let us know it exists anyway… then I remembered that, even if it was capable to create them, they would not allow it to reach any point in time before their creation, so it would still be incapable to escape the boundaries of its own light horizon to reach ours.

Well, point taken.

DevilMaster 15 Oct 2013 18:12 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Use the Try Harder, Luke
“So trying to explain the Force with little mindochondria is futile”

Like trying to explain magic with the presence of a particular gene? :-D (BTW, yes, I know that that gene is not the cause of magic in HPMOR, but similarly midichlorians are not the cause of the Force in Star Wars).

And as an extension:

“In the world where midichlorians are needed to explain the Force, the Force simply doesn’t exist in the first place.”

A parallel statement about HPMOR can be constructed from that: “In the world where a gene is needed to explain magic, magic simply doesn’t exist in the first place.” which can be subsequently paraphrased as: “in a world where magic exists, a particular gene is not needed to explain it.”. Magic exists in the HPMOR universe. If the gene marker is not needed for it, am I correct in assuming that Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres will discover this at a certain point during the course of the story? Am I also correct in assuming that Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres will reach the further conclusion that, since his universe contains magic, he is living in a work of fiction?

DevilMaster 20 Dec 2012 18:00 UTC
0 points
on: [SEQ RERUN] Torture vs. Dust Specks
I just noticed this argument, I hope I’m not too late in expressing my view.

Premise: I want to live in the universe with the least amount of pain.

And now for some calculations. For the sake of quantification, let’s assume that that the single tortured person will receive 1 whiplash per second, continuously, for 50 years. Let’s also assume that the pain of 1 whiplash is equivalent to 1 “pain unit”. Thus, if I chose to torture that person, I would add 3600 “pain units” per hour to the total amount of pain in the universe. In 1 day, the amount of pain in the universe would increase of 360024 = 110400 pain units. In 1 year, approximately 110400365+36006 = 40317600 pain units. In 50 years, approximately 4031760050 = 2015880000 pain units. And now, let’s examine the specks. They were described as “barely enough to make you notice before you blink and wipe away the dust speck”. In other words, while they can be felt, the sensation is insufficient to trigger the nociceptors. This means that each speck increases the level of pain in the universe of 0 pain units. So, if 3^^^3 people received each a dust speck in one of their eyes, the amount of pain in the universe would increase of exactly 0*3^^^3 = 0 pain units! This is why I would definitely choose SPECKS.

DevilMaster 25 Mar 2011 13:54 UTC
1 point
on: The Hidden Complexity of Wishes
“I wish that wishes would be granted as the wisher would interpret them”.

DevilMaster 24 Feb 2011 18:50 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Spurlock’s comment on: Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence
If we’re not more likely to see them given that they’re real than we are given that they’re not real, then our inability to see them is not evidence in either direction. The test is a bad one because it fails to distinguish one possibility from the other

Thank you. That’s what I did not understand.

DevilMaster 24 Feb 2011 13:07 UTC
−1 points
on: Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence
If absence of proof is not proof of absence, but absence of evidence is evidence of absence, what makes proof different from evidence?

Example: we currently have no evidence supporting the existence of planets orbiting stars in other galaxies, because our telescopes are not powerful enough to observe them. Should we take this as evidence that no galaxy except ours has planets around its stars?

Another example: before the invention of the microscope, there was no evidence supporting the existence of bacteria because there were no means to observe them. Should’ve this fact alone been interpreted as evidence of absence of bacteria (even though bacteria did exist before microscopes were invented)?