jtk3

• jtk3Apr 18, 2011, 4:57 AM

  3 points

  in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: Offense ver­sus harm minimization

  With the exception of evicting the pisser from your garden I’d say none of these actions justifies a violent response. As a believer in the value of free speech I defend them all even if I would not choose to participate in them.

• jtk3Apr 18, 2011, 4:29 AM

  23 points

  on: Offense ver­sus harm minimization

  “Say a random Christian kicked a Muslim in the face, and a few other Muslims got really angry, blew the whole thing out of proportion, and killed him and his entire family. This would be an inappropriately strong response, and certainly you could be upset about it, but the proper response wouldn’t be to go kicking random Muslims in the face. ”

  Several times you seem to equate speech or illustration with a punch in the face. They don’t seem interchangeable to me. The American founding fathers made a strong case for protecting speech, they argued that people should be able to say what they would without fear of violence in return. I’m pretty sure they never contemplated that face punching should be protected. I see the a bright line between the two behaviors.

  Some of the people passing around pictures of Mohammed surely mean to insult. Others are demanding that a bright line between speech and physical harm be observed by all. They are appealing to more reasonable muslims to “police their area” and part of the plan is draw out the muslims who need policing.

  I’m not defending that as an optimal plan but I sure think the bright line is a swell idea.

• jtk3Apr 18, 2011, 1:57 AM

  5 points

  in reply to: Aharon’s comment on: The Santa de­cep­tion: how did it af­fect you?

  “Sorry kid, what can I tell ya? More people wanted war for Christmas. Ho, Ho, Ho!”

• jtk3Apr 18, 2011, 1:54 AM

  1 point

  on: The Santa de­cep­tion: how did it af­fect you?

  The oldest of six children, I felt good about being initiated into my first adult secret society. Had I been one of the younger children I might have resented older siblings who’d held out on me.

  I was also a little saddened that the world might be a little less magical than I’d assumed.

  On the whole I was cool with it.

• jtk3Apr 18, 2011, 1:31 AM

  4 points

  in reply to: Davorak’s comment on: Offense ver­sus harm minimization

  That’s consistent with the point I was making, but let me dial back a bit.

  I don’t want to commit the Typical Mind Fallacy by generalizing too much from one example. In recent years I’ve realized more and more that my mind works in a fashion that is not typical of most people I’ve met. Some things which are very easy for me seem very difficult for others, and some things difficult for me seem easy for them.

  Options available to one are not necessarily available to others.

  It’s fine to offer my experience but I’d do better to be more conservative about speculation on the options available to other particular individuals. Yvain is obviously a top poster here who I assume has done a lot of introspection and thought a lot about self modification so it was cheeky of me to assume I might know more about how he can self-modify than he does—in one of my first posts.

  Oops.

• jtk3Apr 17, 2011, 1:20 AM

  3 points

  in reply to: Eugine_Nier’s comment on: Offense ver­sus harm minimization

  Yes, I think it’s a crucial distinction that the brits in question would almost all choose to have the electrodes removed immediately. And shortly they would take considerably less offense at pictures of salmon.

  Far fewer of the offended muslims (it’s not the case that all muslims are equally offended) would immediately choose to rewire their brains or rewrite their software to avoid the psychic pain. This is because their current configuration was chosen, to a far greater extent than the brit’s was.

• jtk3Apr 17, 2011, 12:59 AM

  8 points

  in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: Offense ver­sus harm minimization

  “I have no reason to think I can model Klansmen well, but when I try, I imagine their feelings around an interracial couple as being a lot like my feeling around gay people having PDAs.”

  Yes, except the feelings of the Klansman are far stronger—more similar in intensity to the feelings of many muslims toward depictions of Mohammed.

  “f I could self-modify to remove this feeling I’d do so in a second, but given that I can’t self-modify …”

  From my own experience I suspect you could self-modify but have insufficient incentive to do so. (That’s not intended as a criticism.) I once had a very strong revulsion to gay PDAs, now I have a very mild aversion to it, perhaps similar to what you describe:

  “I admit that seeing public displays of affection between gays gives me a negative visceral reaction more than the same displays among straights do”.

  Since you are apparently behaving decently toward gays and not massively uncomfortable in most situations with them there’s not much reason to change. No doubt you have bigger fish to fry.

  I feel similar to that but I’m confident that my mild aversion would decrease if I became close friends with a gay couple and spent a lot of time with them. My aversion would easily be swamped by more important values.

• jtk3Apr 16, 2011, 10:38 PM

  8 points

  on: Offense ver­sus harm minimization

  “You could argue Brits did not choose to have their abnormal sensitivity to salmon while Muslims might be considered to be choosing their sensitivity to Mohammed. But this requires a libertarian free will. ”

  Absent free will I don’t understand why you’d be more critical the supposed offending parties than the offended ones.

  “And if tomorrow I tried to “choose” to become angry every time someone showed me a picture of a salmon, I couldn’t do it—I could pretend to be angry, but I couldn’t make myself feel genuine rage.”

  Some people born and raised in America who freely take up Islam in adulthood and proceed to take offense at such things as pictures of Mohammed which they previously would not have taken offense at. One may not directly choose to take such offense but it’s a consequence of choices and one may choose otherwise.

  Out of a billion muslims I’d bet there are many who are not deeply offended when outsiders print such pictures. The choice to take less offense is there.

  Growing up I had a strong and deeply ingrained aversion to homosexuality. I could feel physically ill at the description or depiction of men kissing, for instance. The aversion was so strong that I identified it as an instinctive part of my nature. Over time however I chose to discount the aversion. I was able to do so. Presumably you would not have thought gays should have refrained from acts which offended me.

  I’m confident muslims are also capable of discounting irrational beliefs. If one didn’t think people could do this then what would be the point of lesswrong?

• jtk3Apr 16, 2011, 9:39 PM

  0 points

  on: “Is there a God” for noobs

  “Now imagine I believe the Earth is flat, and you believe the earth is (roughly) spherical. Those two beliefs are mutually contradictory. Clearly, one of us is mistaken.”

  Nitpick: . The given beliefs are contradictory but not exhaustive. At least one of the disputants is mistaken, but both could be wrong. The earth could have another shape.

  I think theist and atheist can reasonably be defined to be contradictory and exhaustive. Agnostics do not affirm an alternate opinion about whether God exists, they’re simply undecided.

• jtk3Apr 16, 2011, 9:02 PM

  10 points

  on: Ara­tional quotes

  “It is, of course, totally unclear whether Moravec, Kurzweil, and their supporters are correct. Will robots become massively intelligent? Will human beings become highly intelligent cyborgs or upload our minds fully into machines and thereby live forever? Whether they are correct is probably less important than the fact that the faithful who believe they are has a growing membership. ”—Robert M. Geraci

  I am not surprised see someone assigning low probability to a technological singularity. But low importance?

  This is not an anti-rational prescription like the Glenn Beck quote I offered, but I found it a striking example of irrational bias.

• jtk3Apr 15, 2011, 4:00 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Eight ques­tions for computationalists

  When I run an old 8 bit game on a Commodore-64 emulator it seems to me that the emulation functionally reproduces a Commodore-64. The experience of playing the game can clearly be faithfully reproduced.

  Hasn’t something been reproduced if one cannot tell the difference between the operation of the original system and that of the simulation?

• jtk3Apr 14, 2011, 8:22 PM

  6 points

  on: Ara­tional quotes

  | heard this prescription live on the air several months ago:

  “Refuse to believe in coincidence and you will see miracles.”—Glenn Beck

  I heard that and thought: Yup, I can sure see why it would then look like miracles all the way down.

  I do not cite this to signal disapproval of Beck; on the whole I think well of him. I just thought it was a clear example.