Oh, the irony.
It doesn’t matter that Eliezer defined the word “wrong” in a different way than you. You still understand what he means, there’s no point to redefining “wrong” in this case.
Rixie
Karma: 35
How about everyone here who is at High School age message me, and that will be our group. I feel like we would be able to work better with people who were closer in age.
Of course, once you get older it doesn’t matter as much, I think, but when your education is still in progress, we might have to do more background research.
P.S. I’m 14, and I would say that I’m turning 15 in 2 months but that sounds even more childish than just leaving it at “I’m 14”. In any case, I think I’m capable enough of compiling a list, and what comes after will come after.
Yeah, I agree.
I think that we should make a list of everyone who wants to join, split them into groups of not more than 10 based on age, and every mini-group will decide what they want to learn and go at a pace that matches their background and ability.
I was wondering about the ages of all the people who want to start this club.
Not that age really matters, I just wanted to know what kinds of people we have here.
How about we give our ages in a 10 year range?
No, it’s just that FluffyC used slashes to indicate that the word in the middle was to be italisized, so she probably hadn’t read the help section, and I thought that reading the help section would, well, help FluffyC.
Thank you! Your post helped me finally to understand what it was that I found so dissatisfying with the way I’m being taught chemistry. I’m not sure right now what I can do to remedy this, but thank you for helping me come to the realization.
Press the Show help button to figure out how to italisize and bold and all that.
I don’t think that the fact that everyone having a different checklist is the point. In this perfect, hypothetical world, everyone has the same checklist.
I think that the point is that the checklist is meaningless, like having a literary genre called y-ism and having “The letter ‘y’ constitutes 1/26th of the text” on the checklist.
Even if we can identify y-ism with our senses, the distinction is doesn’t “mean” anything. It has zero application outside of the world of y-ism. It floats.
I’m sorry for posting such a pointless comment, but how do we change how the comments are sorted? I can see a Sort By: Old thing above the comments, but nothing happens when I click on it. Is there somewhere I can change settings, or something?
Thank you.
And here. Maybe we could start with probability theory, seeing as how that seems to be really central to this site.
It matters why “B sounds more plausible to your mind.” If it’s because you remembered a new fact, or if you reworked the problem and came out with B, change the answer (after checking that your work was correct and everything.) The many multiple choice tests are written so that there is one right answer, one wrong answer, and two plausible-sounding answers, so you shouldn’t change an answer just because B is starting to sound plausible.
“No, no!” says the philosopher. “In the thought experiment, they aren’t randomly generating lots of GLUTs, and then using a conscious algorithm to pick out one GLUT that seems humanlike! I am specifying that, in this thought experiment, they reach into the inconceivably vast GLUT bin, and by pure chance pull out a GLUT that is identical to a human brain’s inputs and outputs! There! I’ve got you cornered now! You can’t play Follow-The-Improbability any further!”
In my (limited) understanding of the way the universe began, it was all pretty random.
Evolution seems to have been pretty random, too.
So how did we end up being concious?
And I was also wondering, does “randomness” exist? Or was the history of the universe set from the moment of the big bang?
(Please, I’m not trying to be clever, I just want to know the answer!)
Could someone please tell me why that comment was voted down?
I’m not trying to be sarcastic or anything, I just want to know.
Could someone please explain to me why this is downvoted?
I’m not trying to be sarcastic or anything, and the comment above was sincere.
I just want to know what I said wrong.
Thank you.
Why do humans think that they have free will?
What kind of situation would favour humans who thought that they had free will over humans who didn’t?
Will to survive?
No, that’s not the right question, I’m off track.
I’m drawing a complete blank.
What is there in my head that makes it so that I think I have free will?
I keep thinking in circles. I’m trying to differentiate the answer of this question from the answer of the question “Why do I think I have free will?”, but every time I get close there is litterally a giant blank, I don’t think I know enough about how human brains work in the first place in order to answer this question.Oh, no, here we go:
Why do I think that I don’t know enough about how my mind works to answer this question? I live in it, after all.
Well, I can’t answer the question, that seems like ample proof to me, although it might not be.
I think that I could work out everything I needed to know given enough time, but why start from scratch when other great minds have done the work for you?Can anyone direct me to some ressources I can use to better understand the internal algorithms of the human mind please?
Your chess playing software must make the decision that is most likely to win the game, wheras humans don’t have anything to stop us making the bad decision.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t take joy in what is not merely real, nor that we should be delighted everytime we see the bus stopping at the bus stop.
There are four types of things in the world:
Things that are real and uninteresting.
Things that are real and interesting.
Things that are unreal and uninteresting.
Things that are unreal and interesting.
I assume that no one would invent something unreal and uninteresting, so that leaves us with three categories.
In this article, Eliezer argues that the category real and interesting exists.
He doesn’t say that the two remaining categories don’t exist.
So feel free to enjoy your unreal, interesting sci-fi, and to disregard the real, uninteresting bus stops.
(Not that I’m implying that bus stops and other mundane things can’t be interesting as well, but no one is interested in everything.)I find that thinking this way gives us a better perspective on a lot of things, like when people say, “People only want what’s bad for them.”
(Um, I can’t figure out how to do bulleted lists. I’ve copied the little asterisk thing directly from the help page, but I still can’t get it to work. Could someone tell me what I’ve done wrong?)
Why do I think I have free will?
I think I have free will because I tell my hand to type and it types.
And why do I think that that was my own free will and not somebody or something else’s?
Wait, what do I even mean when I say “free will”?
I mean that I could do whatever I wanted to.
And what controls what I “want” to do? Is it me or something/one else?Why do I think that I control my own thoughts?
My thoughts seem instantaneous, maybe I don’t control my own thoughts.
I can say things without thinking about it beforehand, sometimes I agonize over a decision (It’s a Saturday, should I get out of bed right now or later?) and I choose one decision without coming to a conclusion and without knowing why I chose it.
Maybe, subconsiously, I was hungry, or obeying a habit.
If I was hungry, or if some other instinct was propelling me, then I don’t really have free will when it comes to simple things like this, although “I” can override my instincts, so it’s my instincts serving me, as a mental shortcut, and I am not a slave to it, so I do have free will.
If it was a habit, it was I who created my habits by repetition, so I have free will. I can also override my habits. Who’s to say that my overrides aren’t controled by something/one?
I feel like I have free will, but maybe that’s how whatever controls me “wants” me to feel.
Maybe I’m just a zombie, writing paragraphs on free will because the laws of nature are making me do it.
In that case, how am I supposed to assume that I am, in fact, correct about me having free will?
So I don’t have free will at all? Is that the answer that other people have gotten to? Are there gaping holes (or even tiny holes) in my logic, and are there angles that I havn’t considered yet?I still feel like I have free will. Maybe I should have written that like, ‘I still feel like I have “free will”.’
This may be like the time the math teacher told me to prove that two lines were parallel and I couldn’t because I didn’t know about Thales’ theorem.
Could someone please help me figure this out? I don’t see a way to continue from, “Either I have free will, or who/whatever is controling me is making me think that I have free will.” I’m not sure how those two universes would be different.
Edit: In a universe where someone is controling me, I’m guessing “he” would have a plot in mind. The universe doesn’t appear to have a plot, but maybe I’m just too small to see it, or- wait, who says the universe doesn’t appear to have a plot? I don’t think I know enough to answer this question. Help?
It’s still possible to have a little bit of respect for people who are obviously wrong.
I read this book once about how when we’re looking at other people who we know are wrong we have to see their ignorence and try to solve it instead of making them into the enemy. We have to see the disease behind the person.
It’s not just that there’s overwhelming support for their side, it’s that there is only support for their side, and this happens on both sides.