RichardHughes

• RichardHughesSep 27, 2012, 9:57 PM

  3 points

  in reply to: Jayson_Virissimo’s comment on: [Poll] Less Wrong and Main­stream Philos­o­phy: How Differ­ent are We?

  I voted ‘other’ and downvoted the question. Lordy, what the heck are you doin’ bringing this in here? D:

• RichardHughesSep 27, 2012, 9:56 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: pragmatist’s comment on: [Poll] Less Wrong and Main­stream Philos­o­phy: How Differ­ent are We?

  I felt this was a confused question for the reasons you’ve defined and so I’ve voted other.

• RichardHughesSep 27, 2012, 9:54 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: Wei Dai’s comment on: [Poll] Less Wrong and Main­stream Philos­o­phy: How Differ­ent are We?

  I voted ‘other’ to the original question. I would vote ‘accept platonism’ to this question.

• RichardHughesSep 27, 2012, 9:52 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: Jayson_Virissimo’s comment on: [Poll] Less Wrong and Main­stream Philos­o­phy: How Differ­ent are We?

  Presuming I value the lives of all the people involved equally, I turn on to the side track. If I have a strong reason not to let the person on the side track die—they’re a relative, I know them well, they owe me money, I’m in love with them, whatever—I let it go straight.

  This is a really easy problem if you accept that you’re only a marginally good person at best.

• RichardHughesSep 27, 2012, 9:45 PM

  −2 points

  in reply to: Jayson_Virissimo’s comment on: [Poll] Less Wrong and Main­stream Philos­o­phy: How Differ­ent are We?

  I’m not sure how anyone could argue that aesthetic value is objective when humans regularly disagree about the aesthetic value of things. It’s a pretty stern counterexample.

• RichardHughesSep 20, 2012, 7:13 PM

  3 points

  in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: New study on choice blind­ness in moral positions

  Can you provide more info about the event?

• RichardHughesSep 20, 2012, 2:48 PM

  6 points

  on: New study on choice blind­ness in moral positions

  It strikes me that performing this experiment on people, then revealing what has occurred, may be a potentially useful method of enlightening people to the flaws of their cognition. How might we design a ‘kit’ to reproduce this sleight of hand in the field, so as to confront people with it usefully?

• RichardHughesSep 19, 2012, 7:51 PM

  7 points

  on: The util­ity-max­i­miz­ing com­plex­ity of con­scious beings

  I don’t see a point or thesis in your statement for me to react to beyond the situation itself. What are you getting at? What argument are you seeking to make?

• RichardHughesJul 31, 2012, 8:21 PM

  1 point

  on: Meetup : Cam­bridge (MA) Meetup

  I’m planning to be there. I’m going to try to bring my shy boyfriend, but I dunno how that’ll go.

• RichardHughesJun 25, 2012, 7:04 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Dorikka’s comment on: Suggest al­ter­nate names for the “Sin­gu­lar­ity In­sti­tute”

  I have no ability to do any actual random selection, but you raise a good point—some focus group testing on laymen would be a good precaution to take before settling on a name.

• RichardHughesJun 19, 2012, 9:54 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: How con­fi­dent is your athe­ism?

  I was literally just about to post a thread asking about the fixation on putting numerical values on our confidences all the time, then I saw this. So, thanks for that. Wrapped that little dilemma right up.

• RichardHughesJun 19, 2012, 8:45 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: Dorikka’s comment on: Suggest al­ter­nate names for the “Sin­gu­lar­ity In­sti­tute”

  Agreed that people are very likely to misunderstand it—however, even the obvious, naive reading still creates a useful approximation of what it is you guys actually do. I would consider that misreading to be a feature, not a flaw, because the layman’s reading produces a useful layman’s understanding.