So it’s a great idea as long as only causes you agree with get to use the superweapon?
Pavitra
Note that the actual children’s program includes plague and famine, more famine, slavery, mind control, plague again, more mind control, recreational infanticide, and slavery again.
Can you guarantee that a TSPO wouldn’t see epiphenomenal consciousness?
I vaguely object to the common practice of soliciting responses, and implying that the results will/may be meaningful, without simultaneously precommitting to a particular mapping of raw results to inferred meaning. (The precommitment can be done while keeping the mapping secret, by using a hash algorithm.)
Recall that the goal isn’t to undershoot reality every time, but to do so half the time.
Unfortunately, if there is disagreement merely about how much prior uncertainty is appropriate, then this is sufficient to render the outcome controversial.
My general impression is that Bayes is useful in diagnosis, where there’s a relatively uncontroversially already-known base rate, and frequentism is useful in research, where the priors are highly subject to disagreement.
1000 - (random 6-digit integer)*(10^-(the XKCD number))
Zork is a classic computer game (or game series, or game franchise; usage varies with context) from c.1980.
Insufficient: the colony ship leaves no evidence.
I suspect that the answer to the alien-ball case may be empirical rather than philosophical.
Suppose that there existed quantum configurations in which the alien threw in a red ball, and there existed quantum configurations in which the alien threw in a blue ball, and both of those have approximately equal causal influence on the configuration-cluster in which we are having (approximately) this conversation. In this case, we would happen to be living in a particular type of world such that there was no fact of the matter as to which color ball it was (except that e.g. it mostly wasn’t green).
My first reaction is that this would increase the expected cost of revival, for the same reason that it’s harder to get plane tickets if you’re in a group that wants to sit near each other.
That is a valid line of reasoning that arrives at the same conclusion, but it’s not the reasoning put forth in the fic.
I started reading this fic, and… we need to talk.
In chapter 2, the protagonist tries to think through the practical implications of being female. The result is one of the worst examples I’ve seen of male nerd cluelessness about women, to the point that I would have sooner expected to see it as a satire than as a real example.
Lest anyone who hasn’t read the fic think I’m exaggerating, the offending paragraph runs as follows:
I waved [my tail] back and forth again, and as it brushed against my hind end… I might as well face up to another aspect of my change. I was about as female as it was possible to be—the rather large, fleshy protuberence hanging between my hindlegs being about as un-male an organ as existed. I could get raped. I could get pregnant. I could die of pregnancy-related complications. Not to mention I could still catch rather embarrassing STDs. So if I really did want to keep on working on my plan to live forever, with minimal risk… I was going to have to stay chaste. (Or was that celibate? I always got the two mixed up.) And to make sure that I avoided impaired judgment and reduced inhibitations which might lead me to break that—I’d have to stick to being a teetotaler, with no alcohol, drugs, or other intoxicants.
To summarize, the protagonist literally reasons “I am female; therefore I must avoid sex at all costs.” If you don’t know why that’s a problem, then I’m out of giveashit to explain it at the moment, but you can start by searching “sex-positive feminism”. This male-yes female-no view of courtship is Wrong and Bad, and you should feel bad.
For strength, you use Dugbogs that were crushed by a strong Re’em.
For heat, you use bronze that was forged in a hot forge.
For immortality, you use a corpse that was burned by an immortal phoenix.
There’s not (last I checked) a community consensus on the issue, and I’d rather isolate the meta-discussion to its own thread, rather than splattered all over anywhere Alicorn posts a comment.
An ignore feature would indeed be a significant improvement. I’m not convinced that it’s strictly necessary or sufficient, but I do think that it would be better to do than not.
The votable texts on Fimfiction are generally much longer, so one is less likely to pay attention to a thing unless one already expects it to be worth reading.
Perhaps I’m overestimating human nature, but Lars reads to me like an outgroup stereotype.
I doubt that a rogue moderator would receive express advance approval of abusive actions. If Eliezer says that Alicorn may ban certain comments, then it is not abusive for Alicorn to ban those comments.
The original question was:
That is: assuming it is possible to reduce bad uses at the cost of also reducing good uses, should one do so?
Your reply seems to assume that the bad uses can’t be reduced, which contradicts the pre-established assumptions. If you want to change the assumptions of a discussion, please include a note that you are doing so and ideally a short explanation of why you think the previous assumptions should be rejected in favor of the new ones.