Given what I’ve heard about CI’s quality control, I don’t blame her for trying to raise enough money for Alcor.
saturn
Karma: 1,692
“Equivalent watts” is not a well-defined unit and the figures given by manufacturers are often exaggerated. Real incandescent bulbs vary in light output per watt. It’s easier to use lumens, which are additive. However, human brightness perception is logarithmic, so 4 times the lumens will appear less than 4 times as bright.
doesn’t the idea of a persistent ranking system, and the concern with it imply a belief in intelligence as a static factor? Less Wrong is a diverse community, but I was by and large under the impression that it was biased towards a growth mindset.
I’d just like to point out that a growth mindset is fully compatible with fixed intelligence. Fixed intelligence doesn’t mean that growth is impossible, only that some people can grow faster than others.
I have heard nothing but good about it in the past
If you’d like a countervailing anecdote, I was amused by the parody but I can’t stand the actual show.
Assuming my math is right, if your stone carving were accurate to 1 micron, in order to encode a 140 character ‘tweet’ using this method, you would need a stone tablet 10^163 times larger than the observable universe. (!)
Several free stock market simulators already exist.
And describing him as a “former researcher at SIAI” is quite disingenuous of you, by the way; he never received any salary from us and is a long-time opponent of these ideas. At one point Tyler Emerson thought it would be a good idea to fund a project of his, but that’s it.
If that’s the case, it seems like giving him the title Director of Research could cause a lot of confusion. I certainly find it confusing. Maybe that was a different Ben Goertzel?
In the alternative where it’s a bad idea, talking about it has net negative expected utility.
What about the possibility that someone who thought it was a good idea would change their mind after talking about it?
Are you saying that abuse victims have an obligation to coach their abusers in how not to be abusive?
I wish I could trust other’s information.
You might think about the reasons people have for saying the things they say. Why do people make false statements? The most common reasons probably fall under intentional deception (“lying”), indifference toward telling the truth (“bullshitting”), having been deceived by another, motivated cognition, confabulation, or mistake. As you’ve noticed, scientists and educators can face situations where complete integrity and honesty comes into conflict with their own career objectives, but there’s no apparent incentive for anyone to distort the truth about the name of the Center for Applied Rationality. There’s also no apparent motivation for Alicorn to bullshit or confabulate; if she isn’t quite sure she remembers the name, she doesn’t have anything to lose by simply moving on without commenting, nor does she have much to gain by getting away with posting the wrong name. That leaves the possibility that she has the wrong name by an unintended mistake. But different people’s chances of making a mistake are not necessarily equal. By being more directly involved with the organization, Alicorn has had many more opportunities to be corrected about the name than you have. That makes it much more likely that you are the one making the mistake, as turned out to be the case.
Perhaps there is a way to be more pleasant while still questioning everything. If you can think of something, I will consider it.
You could phrase your questions as questions rather than statements. You could also take extra care to confirm your facts before you preface a statement with “no, actually”.
I’d guess the GP was asking about conscientiousness as in the Big Five model, which is more about work ethic and motivation and not so much about morality. Anyone highly motivated and organized would be considered “conscientious” under this model, even if they were a criminal.
You forgot that space itself is expanding. In theory, it’s possible for Alice and Bob to travel far enough apart that the space between them expands faster than light, meaning the distance between them continues to increase even if they travel toward each other at the speed of light.
driving slowly
When there’s snow or ice on the roads, there’s really no speed slow enough that you can count on never losing traction. After the first heavy snow, you might want to practice in a low-traffic area until you get the hang of recovering from a slide. Also practice driving as if there’s a full glass of water on your dashboard that you don’t want to spill.
Do I need snow shoes? Spikes?
Nobody uses those for day-to-day walking, but you might want a pair of insulated boots depending on how much time you plan to spend outside. These are pretty convenient if you want to walk on ice.
Can I expect to safely walk on the sidewalk in the winter without slipping and hurting my everything?
As long as you’re careful.
Do I need more/better coats than what I have now? (A duster and leather jacket, both fairly thick.)
Maybe. Again, it depends on how much you’ll be outside. You’ll probably want gloves.
Will I need to get a sun lamp/UV lights for the middle of the winter when the sun is up for a shorter time?
I guess, if you want to give yourself an artificial tan at home. Or are you talking about light therapy for depression? Those aren’t designed to emit UV.
One final point about this response is worth nothing.
Is this a typo?
EMP destroys equipment by inducing high voltage and current in unshielded conductors, which act as antennas. The amount of energy picked up is related to the length of the conductor, with shorter conductors picking up less energy. Anything small enough to be described as “nanotechnology” would probably be unaffected, as long as it’s not connected to unshielded external wiring. (An unmodified human touching a conductor would also experience an electric shock during an EMP.)
What motivates you to link personal identity to your specific particles? Any two atoms of the same type are perfectly indistinguishable.
Questions to consider: Would you feel the same way about using a Star Trek transporter? What if you replaced neurons with computer chips one at a time over a long period instead of the entire brain at once? Is everyone in a constant state of “death” as the proteins that make up their brain degrade and get replaced?
I’m trying to say that I think you might already be a pretty extreme outlier in your opinion of cryonics, based on a few clues I noticed in your comment, so your reactions may not generalize much. The median reaction to cryonics seems to be disgust and anger, rather than just not being convinced. I’m sort of on the fence about it myself, although I will try to refute bad cryonics-related arguments when I see them, so on object-level grounds I can’t really say whether convincing you or learning how to convince people in general is a good idea or not.
Yeah, that’s true. But still, if “they don’t think my soul is worth saving” is more salient to you than, for instance, “I’m glad I won’t have to deal with their proselytizing,” it suggests that you take the idea of souls and hell at least a little bit seriously.
To give a more straightforward example, imagine a police officer asking someone someone whether they have any contraband. The person replies, “no, officer, I don’t have any weed in my pocket.” How would that affect your belief about what’s in their pocket?
Randomization still eliminates some confounding factors even without blinding. For example, you might be more likely to decide to turn on your bright lights when you’re already feeling alert.