gaining one’s happiness through the happiness of others You even find that idea in Stirner. Though it doesn’t exclude the possibility of happiness through the misfortune of others as well.
TGGP4
Karma: 457
Googling Parfit and hitchhiker returns some fans of both Derek and Guide to the Galaxy, and a few academic papers behind a paywall. Is there a summary of his example online somewhere?
Eliezer, I think you rather uncritically accept the standard narratives on the American war of independence and WW2 (among other things). There are plenty of cliche applause-lights (or the reverse) being thrown about.
I’ll be the first to say I’ve never been “rebuilt”, but I enjoyed GEB. I have next to nothing to protect and don’t even fear death so much as dying.
the threat of insanity, which we know to be sort of an occupational hazard among AI researchers What? That sounds like sci-fi/horror writing, I’ve never heard of it happening in real life.
There was, once upon a time, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal calling Ford a “traitor to his class” because he offered more than the prevailing wages of the time. Sounds made up to me. A lot of stupid people think he did it so his workers could afford his cars. That’s asinine. The marginal amount of money they’d send back to him directly would be negligible. The real reason was that he had a high turnover rate and it was costing him too much to keep training new employees. His retained more people after he raised wages.
Not all who wear robes are either Jedi or fakes What do you mean by “wear robes”? Could we move away from references to fictional stories?
Was Washington seriously offered the crown? Also, he’s not as memorable a fiery revolutionary as Patrick Henry or Samuel Adams. Maybe one of them would have accepted it (I know, fundamental attribution error, yeah yeah yeah).
? I guess sci-fi isn’t really my bag. I was never that into the Jeffreysai sequence but I think this was the least worth reading. And I guess I’m now guilty of writing an insubstantial derisive comment in response to (subjectively speaking) insubstantial post, which I just complained about at my own blog.
I know of no law of logic demanding that every event have a cause Doesn’t your Occamian or Laplacian assumption have something to do with that? It ain’t logic though, I suppose.
Also, anti-reductionist, that’s the first comment you’ve made I felt was worth reading. You may take it as an insult but I felt compelled to give you kudos.
If a belief is true you will be better off believing it, and if it is false you will be better off rejecting it. I think evolution facilitated self-delusion precisely because that is not the case.
I was a Fred Phelps style ultra-Calvinist and my transition involved scarcely any effort.
Without Hitler it’s likely Ludendorf would have been in charge and things would have been even worse. So perhaps we should be grateful for Hitler!
I gather there are some Orthodox Jews involved in Holocaust denial and were in Iran for that, but this post gets me to thinking that there should be more of them if they really believe in a benevolent and omnipotent God that won’t allow sufficiently horrible things to happen.
How widespread is white nationalism in America? I would think it’s one of the least popular things around, although perhaps I’m taking the Onion too seriously.
Against Cyan I refer to James Watson and some nifty graphs.
if you aren’t a p-zombie I just happen to be a p-zombie.
Did you read Eliezer’s Generalized Anti-Zombie Principle?
Rather, what I oppose is reductionism, the dogmatic belief that the Standard Model can explain everything. (Never mind that it can’t even explain all of known physics...) Most (all?) self-described reductionists believe the Standard Model is incomplete and needs something more to reconcile relativity with quantum mechanics. They just think the complete Unified Theory of Everything will have reductionist explanations for everything.
“Surely, then, superintelligence would necessarily imply supermorality” Thought the cow, as a bolt plunged into its brain.
How might we and the paperclip-maximizer credibly bind ourselves to cooperation? Seems like it would be difficult dealing with such an alien mind.
I question the bit about the soldier. For example, which wars actually did anything to preserve our freedoms rather than fiddle with other countries?
Well, maybe we should slash some tires sometimes. BBB left the possibility open.
Since there is no chance of an atheist being elected to office There have been plenty in other countries. In our own there’s Pete Stark.