Yes, for a copy close enough that he will do everything that I will do and nothing that I won’t. In simple resource-gain scenarios like the OP’s, I’m selfish relative to my value system, not relative to my locus of consciousness.
Leonhart
Karma: 1,287
Delicious reinforcement! Thank you, friend.
Ah, I see. We may not disagree, then. My angle was simply that “continuing to agree on all decisions” might be quite robust versus environmental noise, assuming the decision is felt to be impacted by my values (i.e. not chocolate versus vanilla, which I might settle with a coinflip anyway!)
In the OP’s scenario, yes, I cooperate without bothering to reflect. It’s clearly, obviously, the thing to do, says my brain.
I don’t understand the relevance of the TPD. How can I possibly be in a True Prisoner’s Dilemma against myself, when I can’t even be in a TPD against a randomly chosen human?
Do you really think your own nature that fragile?
(Please don’t read that line in a judgemental tone. I’m simply curious.)
I would automatically cooperate with a me-fork for quite a while if the only “divergence” that took place was on the order of raising a different hand, or seeing the same room from a different angle. It doesn’t seem like value divergence would come of that.
I’d probably start getting suspicious in the event that “he” read an emotionally compelling novel or work of moral philosophy I hadn’t read.
Assuming we substitute something I actually want to do for hang-gliding...
(“Not the most fun way to lose 1⁄116,000th of my measure, thanks!” say both copies, in stereo)
...and that I don’t specifically want to avoid non-shared experiences, which I probably do...
(“Why would we want to diverge faster, anyway?” say the copies, raising simultaneous eyebrows at Manfred)
...that’s what coinflips are for!
(I take your point about non-transferability, but I claim that B-me would press the button even if it was impossible to share the profits.)
I am confident that, in this experiment, my B-copy would push the button, my A-copy would walk away with 60 candies, and shortly thereafter, if allowed to confer, they would both have 30. And that this would happen with almost no angst.
I’m puzzled as to you why you think this is difficult. Are people being primed by fiction where they invariably struggle against their clones to create drama?
You’re thinking of this one, and he cited Carrier, and we have this argument after every survey. At this point it’s a Tradition, and putting “ARGH LOOK JUST USE CARRIER’S DEFINITION” on the survey itself would just spoil it :)
Ah, yes. I read that page and scrunchyfaced, back when Scott posted the map. (Although I seem to remember reading other things on the same blog that were better thought out, so maybe the author was having an off day.)
I hope that something more rigorous and interesting comes along. The defensible heart of the position, it seems to me, could be something along the lines of “Yes, we must be ready to relinquish our beliefs with the slightest breath of the winds of evidence. But exactly so long as we do believe A, let’s really believe it. Let’s not deny ourselves the legitimate Fun that can reside in savouring a belief, including any combination of robes and chanting that seems appropriate.”
Upvoted for informing me that “straight and narrow” was a malformation. Also, yes.
I want to be friends with the write-in worshiper of CelestAI mentioned :) PM if you like!
Data point: I picked this option, because of a grab-bag of vaguely related positions in my head that make me feel dissatisfied with the flat “atheist” option, including:
I enjoy and endorse rituals such as the Solstice celebration, as opposed to the set here who are triggered by them (ETA: not in any way claiming they are wrong to be so triggered, or don’t have reasons)
I find the Virtues, and other parts of the Sequences with similar styling, to be deeply moving and uplifting, and consider this element of our house style to be a strength rather than a liability
We worry too damn much about the c-word, in a pointless attempt to appease the humourless, and we’ve compromised too much of our aesthetic identity doing it
Scott’s Moloch isn’t actually the Devil, but maybe acting as if is a good strategy for recruiting all parts of our minds to the fight. Ditto for Elua
After some experimentation, I think I understand better what the mindstate associated with “worshiping” actually feels like (really damn good) and suspect that the emotional benefits are totally available even if you know the targeted god doesn’t exist
(I actually wish it was reversed to “religious but not spiritual”, because “spiritual” feels more like the “supernatural/irreducibly mental” word, whereas “religious” feels more of a piece with perfectly sensible things like not breaking my word even to save humanity. But that’s just me.)
I have no idea whether this is remotely related to postrationalism; if anyone actually knows what postrationalism is, please write a FAQ. I do miss Newsome though; he wrote my favourite ever LW sentence.
I checked regs, seems we’re all good: http://www.food.gov.uk/business-industry/imports/want_to_import/personalimports
“Providing the food parcel you wish to send is to a private, named individual and contains no meat and meat products, dairy products or any particular restricted products (for example Kava kava, which is not permitted either as a personal import or a commercial import) you may send a reasonable amount for personal consumption.”
I’d love to try them, but am in the UK. Happy to cover the additional postage cost!
It’s pony time, I’m afraid.
My Little Economy: Economics is Science and its sequelae.
“It’s the NGDP Targeting Festival in Ponyville,” Twilight said. “I’ll have a miserable time trying to explain monetary theory to a bunch of hicks and then come home. What’s the worst that could happen?”′
Really good—perhaps the best compromise between the needs of characterisation, parable, and comedy I’ve ever seen. Seems like it should be accessible to people who haven’t seen MLP.
ETA: The author seems to have randomly deleted all hir blog posts, made the stories inaccessible, and then returned them to semi-accessibility (possibly due to pleading in comments). This seems a funny response to people liking one’s work, but eh, humans. The important thing is that I’ve downloaded them all as ePUBs. PM me for them if the source vanishes again. (I’m a bit upset about the demise of the blog posts, mainly because they referred approvingly to Scott Alexander as a “friendship blogger”, which is just the best description of him, ever)
The Best of All Possible Worlds
Assuming he survived the next five seconds, Voltaire congratulated himself on finding the one topic liable to drive Princess Celestia into a homicidal rage, a very useful lever to have against your monarch and employer.
Epic Voltaire/Celestia friendshipping set against the backdrop of a Griffin reenactment of the French Wars of Religion. Extremely long, but worth it.
It was six against an army, and even I knew the odds favored the half-dozen.
Cheese Sandwich conquers Equestria. Short and amusing.
I believe it doesn’t work like this; you need the circulatory system in order to perfuse the head, and in doing so the other organs are compromised. This could probably be avoided, but not without more surgical expertise/equipment than today’s perfusion teams have, I think.
Smiles, laughter, hugging, the humming or whistling of melodies in a major key, skipping, high-fiving and/or brofisting, loud utterance of “Huzzah” or “Best thing EVER!!!”, airborne nanoparticles of cake, streamers, balloons, accordion music? On the assumption that the AI was not explicitly asked to produce these things, of course.
I think the intuitive surface reading of that post (supernatural objects are black boxes; they have state, but are denied to have internal structure that implements the state) at least makes it clear that simulators are not “supernatural” under this definition. Which is the actual query people were blocking on. But evidently many people read the post differently.
Man, I’m late this year. Taken. To save my index finger, just upvoted everyone who took it in November :)
Next time, the “supernatural” question really needs to just link to the Sequence post defining the word.
The first option reads “Moral statements don’t express propositions and can neither be true nor false.” I’m curious what else you wanted. The second clause without the first?
Not speaking for above poster: because that’s not actually trivial—you need a real fake phone number to receive validation on, etc. Also, putting fake data into a computer system feels disvirtuous enough to put me off doing it further.