I wonder if they’re actually using a utility function as in [probability * utility] or just going with [aim for safe car > unsafe car] unilaterally regardless of the likelihood of crashing into either. E.g., treating a 1% chance of crashing into the safe car and a 80% chance of crashing into the unsafe car as equal to 99% chance of crashing into the safe car and a .05% chance of crashing into the unsafe car; choosing in both cases to crash into the safe car.
JQuinton
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I would think that believing Jesus didn’t exist would be just as absurd as thinking that all or almost all of the events in the Gospels literally happened. Yet the latter make up a significant number of practicing Biblical scholars. And for the majority of Biblical scholars who don’t think the Gospels are almost literally true, still have a form of Jesus-worship going on as they are practicing Christians. It would be hard to think that Jesus both came back from the dead and also didn’t exist; meaning that it would be very hard to remain a Christian while also claiming that Jesus didn’t exist, and most Biblical scholars were Christians before they were scholars.
The field both is biased in a non-academic way against one extreme position while giving cover and legitimacy to the opposite extreme position.
Yes, either X happens or X doesn’t happen. P(X) + P(~X) = 1, so therefore P(X | A) + P(~X | A) = 1. Both formulations are stating the probability of X. But one is adjusting for the probability of X given A; so either X given A happens or X given A doesn’t happen (which is P(~X | A) not P(X | ~A)).
And finally, since we have no data, what can we say about the likelihood of our consciousness returning/remaining after we die? I would say the chances are 50⁄50. For something you have no data on, any outcome is equally likely
I don’t think that’s true. It’s not that we have no data; we still have prior probability. And with that, all of our background knowledge that goes into that prior which function as data. Theories aren’t argued in isolation!
Think about how many things need to be true in order for consciousness to “return” after we die, and if any of those things are false then the entire model fails (this is why Occam’s Razor is a useful heuristic) Where does it go after we die? How does it get there? What contains it? What is the energy source for this non-bodied consciousness? How does this fit in with our current understanding of physics like laws of thermodynamics (most people who posit non-bodied consciousness unwittingly propose that consciousness is a perpetual motion machine)? Is it even accurate to call it “consciousness” if it cannot receive any sensory input? In other words, we need ears to hear, eyes to see, etc. but this consciousness would be without the brain structure necessary to process vibrations in the air into what we know as “sound”. Is this model of consciousness specific to humans or to any of the higher primates (or even other intelligent species like dolphins or elephants), and why?
On the other hand, we don’t need to suggest other laws of physics / theory of evolution for our current model of consciousness, and it has a satisfactory answer for all of the questions I asked above. So Occam’s Razor is the mode of thought until we actually get more evidence in the non-bodied consciousness direction.
I did a lot of research into this for my youtube channel
Where is your YouTube channel? I’d be interested in looking at the charisma stuff you’ve posted.
If you ask her a direct question, I would take into account that this would more than likely engage her press secretary and might not get the logical answer you are looking for.
If it were me, I would just assume she was lightheartedly teasing. If that’s the case, the course of action would be to tease back, but also in a lighthearted way. Either that, or reply with an extremely exaggerated form of self-deprecation; agree with her teasing but in a way that exaggerates the original intent. Even if that’s not the case, and she’s being vindictive, I think responding as though she were teasing would be ideal anyway.
Examples:
“I tripped and almost fell on you. Oh but you would be happy if I accidentally fell on you, right?” (tease back): “Clumsy people don’t really do it for me” (exaggerate): “That’s because I have never had a woman touch me before in my life”
“Oh no, you’re going to need a triple X size.” (tease back): “I think you just like saying ‘triple X’. Get your mind out of the gutter, thanks” (exaggerate): “I’m going to cry myself to sleep over my size tonight ”
If she laughs and/or plays along with these responses, she’s probably just teasing. If she gets even more cruel in her response, then she’s probably being intentionally vindictive.
You can probably ask them a variant of the Monday/Tuesday game, but for different religious traditions.
I would like to go to a meetup, but I’m usually out of town on the weekends. One of these days, I’ll make it out :)
I usually go to the dances in Baltimore on either Monday or Friday night, and head to DC to dance blues on Wednesday or Thursday. Every now and then I’ve gone to the swing dance in DC on Tuesday nights (I think that’s the one on U. St. called Jam Cellar). There’s actually a really big swing dance event this weekend in DC so I’ll be around for that.
Probably not. I used up a lot of my vacation time due to all of the snow earlier this year and I’m going to Brazil next week. I’m attempting to save up some vacation days in time for an exchange in Germany in the fall.
I’m part of the swing and blues dance scene in the Baltimore/DC area. There are a lot of nerdy/intellectual types in this scene so there’s really no shortage of finding intelligent people to talk to. And the people I know who fit that type isn’t limited to Baltimore/DC; I travel around a lot for dancing (Las Vegas, Montreal, London, etc.) and a lot of the same type of people are in the scene internationally.
I’ve been doing this for about 10 years so I’m also somewhat well connected. There’s almost always some dance party to go to on the weekend in some city that I can drive to.
I have an internal hash algorithm that I use for all of my passwords, and have a set number of base words that I rotate. So an example of what I do would be if one had a list of 10 words that you use for all of your passwords and then use the rot13 hash on them as the actual password input. I basically have endless variations of the same 10 words as long as I change the hash algorithm.
Veteran benefits
I was medically discharged from the military. The Veteran benefits that are paid for by taxes paid for my schooling (since I couldn’t stay in the military I had to get a different education to make a living), and also provide me with a disability check every month. So those taxes probably count as some sort of altruism.
I checked my Gmail login locations after I heard about Heartbleed and saw one location that was obviously not anywhere I had been in the last month. So based on that information I assumed that Gmail was compromised and changed my password.
I would suggest rewriting this post. But in the revision make sure you’re clear about your terms, especially the terms that are integral to your thesis. What do you mean by “free will”? What do you mean by “rationalist”?
I would further argue that there is very little overlap between the average atheist and a LW-styled rationalist. Indeed, there’s a lot of tribalism in “mainstream” atheism and there don’t seem to be many mainstream atheist-related memes that try to counteract our natural human tendency for in-group bias, unlike here. I don’t really know the causes of most people becoming atheists, and I don’t want to psychoanalyze from my chair, but I doubt many of them came to atheism through LW-style rationalism (there are a lot of factors that are correlated with lack of religiosity, and they’re all social… not rational per se).
Furthermore, I was already an atheist before I started reading LW, and reading LW actually made me more tolerant towards religious beliefs. So that’s at least an anecdote that argues against what you’re worried about in your post (assuming that LW-style rationalism becomes integral to mainstream atheism).
Sexual lust would be a desire that not felt in the heart but elsewhere
You’re taking this English idiom too literally. It reminds me of when I mentioned “killing two birds with one stone” to my Italian born girlfriend and she was horrified. I had to explain to her that one is not literally killing two birds with one stone; your continued literalism of this particular turn of phrase would be like her continuing to insist that I’m using a metaphor in my own native language wrong since I’m not using stones nor are any birds around.
Listening to your heart just means listening to your innermost desires. It has nothing to do with empathy. Meaning that psychopaths listen to their heart just as much as anyone else. I’ve never heard anyone use the idiom “listen to your heart” to mean to practice empathy.
Instead of naming only one piece of evidence that LW has a belief in natural rights, it would have been more, well, Bayesian to list multiple lines of evidence that LW has a belief in natural rights and then built up your argument from those multiple bits of evidence.
It was probably very unsafe to premise your entire argument on just the non-binding deletion policies.
No, but we do judge dogs by how intelligent they are. And there are certain dogs that are more intelligent than others. Intelligence != human intelligence. Furthermore, most software only interacts with other software/hardware/firmware. To the extent that it interacts with meatspace that interaction is mediated by a person. AI would be software that interacts efficiently with meatspace directly without human intervention.
If AI is software is AI, then human intelligence is DNA is human intelligence. An obvious non-sequitur.