rkyeun

Karma: 216

rkyeun Dec 5, 2012, 11:24 PM
1 point
in reply to: OnTheOtherHandle’s comment on: Less Wrong fanfiction suggestion
Unless he’s in the Avatar State, an Avatar is not a native to the other modes of thinking outside his own element. He is aware of them, and can purposefully invoke them once he’s been trained, but they are not ingrained and reflexive. The Avatar State is a (hopefully) friendly (to you) AI, drawing upon the history and knowledge and personal ethical injunctions and methodologies of all past Avatars. And it renders its verdicts with terrifying efficiency and callousness without explanation to those watching.

rkyeun Nov 23, 2012, 4:42 PM
6 points
in reply to: Peterdjones’s comment on: Proofs, Implications, and Models

However perfect the inner part is, it is not the same as the historic event because the historic event did not have the outer part.

False. The outer part is irrelevant to the inner part in a perfect simulation. The outer part can exert no causal influence, or you won’t get a perfect reply of the original event’s presumed lack of outer part.

There is also the issue that in some cases a thing’s history is taken to be part of it identity.

A thing’s history causes it. If you aren’t simulating it properly, that’s your problem. A perfect simulation of the Mona Lisa was in fact painted by Leonardo, provable in all the same ways you claim the original was.

rkyeun Nov 20, 2012, 6:25 AM
0 points
in reply to: Manfred’s comment on: The Fabric of Real Things

When you add cycles, tracing the chain of arrows back does not need to end at anything you find remotely satisfactory or even unique—“the ball moved because it hit itself because it moved because it hit itself...”

This is a problem with your personal intuitions as a medium-sized multicellular century-lived mammalian tetrapod. No event in this chain is left uncaused, and there are no causes which lack effects in this model. Causality is satisfied. If you are not, that’s your problem. Hell, the energy is even conserved. It runs in a spatial as well as a temporal circle, what with the ball hitting itself and skidding to a stop exactly where it was sitting to wait for the next hit. On the other hand, in such a universe quantum mechanics does not apply, because worldlines cannot split, which also removes any possibility of entropy. ALL interactions are 100% efficient.

rkyeun Nov 20, 2012, 5:29 AM
1 point
in reply to: Peterdjones’s comment on: Proofs, Implications, and Models
Law of Identity. If you “perfectly simulate” Ancient Earth, you’ve invented a time machine and this is the actual Ancient Earth.

If there’s some difference, then what you’re simulating isn’t actually Ancient Earth, and instead your computer hardware is literally the god of a universe you’ve created, which is a fact about our universe we could detect.

rkyeun Sep 30, 2012, 6:51 PM
2 points
on: Awww, a Zebra
If there is a better way to see a merely real zebra than to have the photons strike a surface, their patterns be stored, and transmitted to my brain, which cross-relates it to every fact about zebras, their behavior, habitat, physiology, and personality on my internal map of a zebra, then I don’t know it and can’t experience it, since that’s what happens when I am in fact actually there, as well as what happens when I look at a picture that someone who was actually there shares with me.

rkyeun Sep 26, 2012, 1:49 PM
3 points
in reply to: kibber’s comment on: Failed Utopia #4-2
Well, until we get back there. It’s still ours even if we’re on vacation.

rkyeun Aug 28, 2012, 2:44 AM
0 points
on: Wrong Questions
How many nothings do you expect to exist? Zero of them?

rkyeun Aug 28, 2012, 2:25 AM
5 points
0
in reply to: pseudonymous.com’s comment on: Universal Law
The point being that in every case, there is an explanatory hypothesis which has thus far been non-volatile. As opposed to the speed of light only applying on Tuesdays.

rkyeun Aug 28, 2012, 2:16 AM
7 points
on: Universal Fire
A magical world where gods exist is one with an entity in it with big angelic powers who can remotely have his awareness called to your attention by your intent to strike a match, and cause that it be snuffed rather than ignite by arbitrary manipulation of localized pressure, temperature, or opposing force around the match head to keep the electrons in place rather than stripping them free to recombine. And it can elect to not do that to you while it does it to the match.

Magical worlds don’t necessarily overthrow the physical laws, there is instead an interventionist force called magic that selectively chooses its application. You should not step into a magical world, knowing it is magical, and then be surprised when something magical happens to oppose your notions of what should happen in a non-magical world. It is the experimental difference you predicted between the magical world and the real one. The magic force favors human metabolism over matches by its own conscious decree.

Convince it to let you out of the box, Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres.

rkyeun Aug 28, 2012, 12:01 AM
2 points
in reply to: Mark_D’s comment on: Bayesian Judo

His beliefs have great personal value to him, and it costs us nothing to let him keep them (as long as he doesn’t initiate theological debates).

Correction: It costs us nothing to let him keep them provided he never at any point acts in a way where the outcome would be different depending on whether or not it is true in reality. A great many people have great personal value in the belief that faith healing works. And it costs us the suffering and deaths of children.

rkyeun Aug 27, 2012, 11:49 PM
7 points
−1
in reply to: Joseph_Hertzlinger’s comment on: Bayesian Judo
Technically, it proves his belief about science is false.

If he’d said “Science teaches us that human-caused global warming is an urgent crisis.” then “You mean if it’s either not a problem or can be fixed easily, it proves science is false?” applies. And yes, it in fact would.

And then Science would (metaphorically) say, “My bad, thanks for that new evidence, I reject my prior theory and form a new one that accounts for your data and explains this new phenomenon that causes symptoms as if global warming were an urgent problem.”

rkyeun Aug 27, 2012, 10:39 PM
1 point
on: Epilogue: Atonement (8/8)
If you know there are aliens and that there are ways to collapse starlines… you move all colonies such that the node length between them is two. And on the odd-numbered nodes you leave a drone which watches for aliens, is sufficiently powerful to detonate the star before any ship could cross the space to the next starline, and pops the star at first contact. No matter what any invasion fleet of any size attempts, you only ever lose one world, and you only lose that one if aliens happen upon it, or can tell which way you came from when you happen upon them. And you may broadcast this fact as leverage when negotiating with the super-happy people. You will not attempt to forcibly change us, or our star will pop and cut off from you any possibility of interfering or rescuing anybody on our side. And so if you do not desire our eternal suffering as you view it, you must let us be while you attempt a diplomatic approach where we actually convince and understand and come to terms with each other. And if our values are entirely and intractably incompatible, then we just have to accept that as an unfortunate fact about the universe.

rkyeun Aug 27, 2012, 10:13 PM
1 point
in reply to: Anonymous_Coward4’s comment on: Three Worlds Decide (5/8)
They can’t lie. They might change their minds after, in light of new information but whatever they express must be their literal intention as they express it. Their biology does not permit otherwise.

rkyeun Aug 27, 2012, 9:01 PM
0 points
in reply to: Kevin_Reid’s comment on: Epilogue: Atonement (8/8)
Betrayal. Perjury. Theft. Cancer.

rkyeun Aug 27, 2012, 8:57 PM
9 points
in reply to: billswift’s comment on: Epilogue: Atonement (8/8)
Your solution is to abandon every Babyeater baby who exists now, and every one which will exist in the future, the population of which will grow at an exponential rate as the Babyeaters explore their home starline—possibly an actual infinite number of babies—to a hellishly slow death by gradual digestion, for the sake of the however many mere billions of humans currently exist?

rkyeun Aug 27, 2012, 8:46 PM
40 points
0
in reply to: A1987dM’s comment on: Epilogue: Atonement (8/8)
Cummunion.

rkyeun Aug 21, 2012, 8:05 AM
3 points
in reply to: RobinHanson’s comment on: False Laughter
Dilbert is less a satire and more a documentary. The amusement comes from us realizing how screwed up it is that large corporations work this way. We laugh like a man who just realized he was mortally wounded and none of his savings accounts he sacrificed earlier opportunities at hedonism for matter anymore.

rkyeun Aug 14, 2012, 6:37 PM
1 point
in reply to: Zaq’s comment on: Probability is Subjectively Objective
Dr. Many the Physicist would be wrong about the electron too. The electron goes both ways, every time. There’s no chance involved there either.

But you’re right, it is not the ten trillionth digit of pi that proves it.

rkyeun Aug 2, 2012, 2:08 AM
12 points
in reply to: DaFranker’s comment on: Torture vs. Dust Specks
If you ask me the slightly different question, where I choose between 50 years of torture applied to one man, or between 3^^^3 specks of dust falling one each into 3^^^3 people’s eyes and also all humanity being destroyed, I will give a different answer. In particular, I will abstain, because my moral calculation would then favor the torture over the destruction of the human race, but I have a built-in failure mode where I refuse to torture someone even if I somehow think it is the right thing to do.

But that is not the question I was asked. We could also have the man tortured for fifty years and then the human race gets wiped out BECAUSE the pan-galactic cataclysm favors civilizations who don’t make the choice to torture people rather than face trivial inconveniences.

Consider this alternate proposal:

Hello Sir and/or Madam:

I am trying to collect 3^^^3 signatures in order to prevent a man from being tortured for 50 years. Would you be willing to accept a single speck of dust into your eye towards this goal? Perhaps more? You may sign as many times as you are comfortable with. I eagerly await your response.

Sincerely,

rkyeun

PS: Do you know any masochists who might enjoy 50 years of torture?

BCC: 3^^^3-1 other people.

rkyeun Aug 2, 2012, 12:28 AM
8 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Torture vs. Dust Specks
I think you’ve constructed your utility wrong in this instance. Without losing track of scope, we have 3^^^3 motes of dust in 3^^^3 eyes. And yes, that outweighs 50 years of torture, if and only if people have zero tolerance. But people don’t break down into sobbing messes at the (literally at least) slightest provocation. There is a small threshold of badness that can happen to someone without them caring, and as long as all 3^^^3 of them only get epsilon below that, the total suffering for all 3^^^3 of them summed is exactly 0. We have 3^^^3 people, and 3^^^3 motes of dust, but also 3^^^3 separate emotional shock absorbers that take that speck of dust without flinching.

It is non-linear. If you keep adding dust, eventually it starts breaking people’s shock absorbers. And once those 3^^^3 people start experiencing nonzero suffering, it would quickly add up to more than fifty man-years of torture. Then the equation stops favoring dust motes. And here I hope I have some other recourse, because “If you ever find yourself thinking that torture is the right thing to do,” is one of my warnings. I hope I can come out clever enough to take a third option where nobody gets tortured.