h-H

• h-HMay 1, 2011, 4:09 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: AdeleneDawner’s comment on: Med­i­ta­tion, in­sight, and ra­tio­nal­ity. (Part 1 of 3)

  but isn’t being presented with a to-do list or alternatively feeling hungry then finding food different than ‘forming goals’?

  to be more precise, maybe the ‘survival instinct’ that leads them to seek food is not located in their emotional centers so some goals might survive regardless. but yes, the assumption is untested AFAIK.

• h-HApr 16, 2011, 6:45 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Normal_Anomaly’s comment on: wire­less-head­ing, value drift and so on

  very smart people have issues with CEV, example: http://​​lesswrong.com/​​lw/​​2b7/​​hacking_the_cev_for_fun_and_profit/​​

  and as far as I remember CEV was sort of abandoned a while ago by the community.

  and yes, you value humans, others in the not so distant future might not given the possibility of body/​brain modification. anyway, the gist of my argument is that CEV doesn’t seem to work if there is not going to be much coherence of all of humanity’s extrapolated volition’s-a point that’s already been made clear in previous threads by many people-what I’m trying to add to that is to point out the overwhelming possibility of there being ‘alien minds’ among us before a FAI could be built.

  I also raised the question that If body modification is widely available, is it ok to prevent people from acquiring an ‘alien’ set of morals, one that would later on be a possible hindrance to CEV-like proposals? how can we tell if its alien or not in the first place?

wire­less-head­ing, value drift and so on

• h-HMar 12, 2011, 1:50 PM

  −1 points

  on: Cry­on­ics and the im­por­tance of body to cognition

  without a body the brain won’t ‘work’, the brain is very much linked to the rest of the body, the fiction that we only need the head to ‘reanimate’ a person back to normal is just that, fiction.

  wei Dai:”rebuilding/​simulating the body to the level of detail needed to support cognition” yes,but how complex is the nervous system? which wire connects to which, or is that not important? seems to me that you’re oversimplifying..

• h-HFeb 16, 2011, 6:25 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: lukeprog’s comment on: Some Heuris­tics for Eval­u­at­ing the Sound­ness of the Aca­demic Main­stream in Un­fa­mil­iar Fields

  I have to ask, how much do you know of ‘Quranic studies’? as far as I know, the new testament and quran are structured quite differently, hence research-which I’m not aware of-would be different as well?

• h-HJan 9, 2011, 12:46 AM

  3 points

  in reply to: billswift’s comment on: The Ne­glected Virtue of Scholarship

  I think tighter definitions are needed here, some theistic traditions consider all existence to be ‘god’ etc.

• h-HNov 25, 2010, 11:15 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: Yes, a blog.

  I’m curious, have you used Wikipedia for non-scientific/​technical stuff? it can be quite a biased source there..

• h-HNov 5, 2010, 6:49 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: In­tel­li­gence vs. Wisdom

  it’s good ..

  you seem to be saying-implying?- that continuity of identity should be very important for minds greater than ours, see http://​​www.goertzel.org/​​new_essays/​​IllusionOfImmortality.htm

  I ‘knew’ the idea presented in the link for a couple of years, but it simply clicked when I read the article, probably the writing style plus time did it for me.

• h-HOct 30, 2010, 5:10 PM

  1 point

  on: Ben Go­ertzel: The Sin­gu­lar­ity In­sti­tute’s Scary Idea (and Why I Don’t Buy It)

  regardless of dis/​agreement, guy has a really cool voice http://​​www.youtube.com/​​watch?v=wS6DKeGvBW8&feature=related

• h-HOct 29, 2010, 3:41 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: Lu­minos­ity (Twilight fan­fic) Part 2 Dis­cus­sion Thread

  I’ve sometimes read romance novels, more a function of my reading appetite at the time, plus no books remained in the house except those, I’ve also read a couple of -video-game stories, including some vampire ones to be relevant for your example, I agree that they have mildly interesting twists, enough for guilt pleasure level.

  I can’t put a name to it, but it doesn’t require such a leap to see the relation between reading things like tvtropes and then to an extent Twilight? on that note, what do you read for fiction generally?

• h-HOct 29, 2010, 3:11 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: Call for Vol­un­teers: Ra­tion­al­ists with Non-Tra­di­tional Skills

  sounds like a good idea (though I’m not giving up on the Dark Arts class/​sequence yet ..), given that OP does “encourage you to post your skills here anyway” I think bringing this up in the open thread or as a general call to candidates should be worthwhile, this can effectively and depending on the instructions make short work of most barriers to publishing an LW top level post, given relevant and interesting topics of course.

  we have been experiencing a slump of late, I think this potentially helps in overcoming the slow stagnation that happens in all forums after the early ‘glory days’ are over.

• h-HOct 29, 2010, 1:51 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: Call for Vol­un­teers: Ra­tion­al­ists with Non-Tra­di­tional Skills

  ok, so I’m considering that a discussion post at least should be made, any thoughts?

  it could potentially be part of the sequences, although Eliezer and others do cover the Dark Arts I don’t recall a dedicated thread. I found some good examples from a quick googling, like Yvain’s Defense Against The Dark Arts: Case Study #1 or The Power of Positivist Thinking

  what makes an irrational argument convincing is human biases, but what I think lacks is more focused treatment of things like good writing or effective signaling, I haven’t read all of LW though so it might just be a simple task of collecting articles, but I don’t feel that’s the case, or is it?

• h-HOct 29, 2010, 1:30 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: Com­plete Wire Head­ing as Suicide and other things

  I believe it does need modifying the utility function given technological constrains, consider for example if the simulated person’s physical body was threatened and they were not be able to respond appropriately, This is one of the main reason I included suicide next to lobotomy, I wasn’t really clear on that, but you make a much more interesting point.

  now that I think about it-for a few minutes-I generally agree with you, attaching sensory and motor nerves for a simulated universe is in fact a form of wire heading. I wonder if my definition of full wireheading needs to be changed though? I don’t specify any time constraints because the utility function can in fact change ‘for the better’ under correct circumstance, not to mention the general case of human terminal values having natural or provoked drift as Rain eloquently put it.

  actually, I’m interested in why you include jacking into a a simulation as wireheading for reasons other than not interacting with the real world? does it apply if we include a defense mechanism yet the person remains engrossed in the simulation?

• h-HOct 29, 2010, 1:11 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: MartinB’s comment on: Call for Vol­un­teers: Ra­tion­al­ists with Non-Tra­di­tional Skills

  precisely the reasons why we want better dark art skills just for the sake of countering them at least? I’m half tempted to start a thread on this, but I can’t write as clearly as most here.

• h-HOct 29, 2010, 12:18 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: Eugine_Nier’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, part 4

  yeah, punishing agents for doing ‘bad things’ as a deterrence against other agents acting similarly is quite rational.

• h-HOct 29, 2010, 12:10 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: MartinB’s comment on: Call for Vol­un­teers: Ra­tion­al­ists with Non-Tra­di­tional Skills

  rationality might have at some point evolved from the dark arts themselves, i.e. human propensity to make up reasons as they go might have lead to their being better minds at making up reasons and arguments-I read that in an article somewhere but can’t remember where exactly.

  The dark arts get too much mud slung at them and IMO warrant further study,careful dissection by wise men wearing all the necessary charms and offering appropriate sacrifices should be sufficient ..:)

Com­plete Wire Head­ing as Suicide and other things

• h-HOct 28, 2010, 11:20 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Will_Newsome’s comment on: Slava!

  ok, I was careless, I apologize, still the argument remains unanswered satisfactorily..

  my-and others’-main argument against meditation as a rationality increasing tool is that the less than perfect brains we have are not sufficient at dealing with biases and so forth. I can see that you’ve pretty much said the same or close to it in your reply above, so that’s that.

  P.S disjointed sentences?

• h-HOct 16, 2010, 2:03 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: orthonormal’s comment on: Strate­gies for deal­ing with emo­tional nihilism

  this is tangential to the thread; but Nietzsche’s writings frequently seem to be quite religious actually, take his Übermensch theme for e.g., which makes the absolute/​divine/​god/​etc become part of man, a theme prevalent in Christianity as well.

• h-HOct 16, 2010, 1:19 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: Rain’s comment on: Strate­gies for deal­ing with emo­tional nihilism

  but one can go back to being nihilistic if one chooses to, I think this does not strongly seem to be the case for wire heading.