michaelhoney

Karma: 9

michaelhoney 7 May 2009 3:54 UTC
0 points
on: Return of the Survey
Survey completed. I’ve just checked the answer to the calibration question, and I’m glad I gave myself a low confidence score...

michaelhoney 16 Apr 2009 23:47 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!
I think you’re on the right track. There’ll be a lot of personal-identity assumptions re-evaluated over the next generation as we see more interpenetration of personal parts as we start to offload cognitive capacity to shared resources on the internet.

Semi-related: I did my philosophy masters sub-thesis [15 years ago, not all opinions expressed therein are ones I would necessarily agree with now] on personal identity and the many-world interpretation of quantum physics. Summary: personal identity is spread/shared along all indistinguishable multiversal branches: indeterminacy is a feature of not knowing which branch you’re on. Personal identity across possible worlds may be non-commutative: A=B, B=C, but A≠C.

michaelhoney 3 Apr 2009 3:26 UTC
0 points
on: Where are we?
Canberra, Australia.

michaelhoney 31 Mar 2009 22:41 UTC
9 points
on: Money: The Unit of Caring
I was at a music festival a few years ago and spoke with a grassroots activist about this very issue. I told him I thought it was more effective for me to give his cause money than time, and he enthusiastically agreed: the leverage that we get from supporting the cause, together, with my money and their activist smarts, is far greater than the dilettante effort that I could myself muster.

Since then donated a few $K to the cause via monthly deduction, and they’ve had several major wins in that period.

People who want to give time when they could better spend the money aren’t really (or only) trying help the cause: they’re trying to buy themselves absolution.