I admit this post has a North American bias to it, although I think that generally speaking, irrationality pervades all modern democracies, although with to a different extent.
Thanks for reminding me that I didn’t just screw up and forever ruin my reputation at LW.
Can you clarify normal posts? I believe I have already made them.
I am aware the links and formatting are badly screwed up. That is my fault, I’m attempting to fix it. I assumed that since LessWrong’s source code was based upon Reddit’s source code, formatting would be similar. This is not the case. I also realize that my poor Karma track record may not signal a remarkably high sanity waterline, and if you’d prefer, I could submit all 11 posts at once.
I admit there is some rhetoric used, with little useful information. I beg your patience, for this is the first post in 11 that I have already planned out , I just need to write them out. If you could be a little more specific, and tell me which sections are too “flowery”, and should be deleted, I’ll happily do so.
I am aware of the rule regarding no politics. Rest assured that I will not be talking directly about politics (I have already specified so in my post, did you read it?) , but rather about methods that we may use to discuss politics with greater sanity. I will not be violating any norm that I’m aware of. I’ve already proposed this thread in http://lesswrong.com/lw/cs8/open_thread_june_115_2012/6pv2
Can you give me examples of good indications of unusual sanity?
A disproportionate number of people involved with AI risk mitigation and the Singularity Institute have graduated from “Elite Universities” such as Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, and so on and so fourth. How important are Elite Universities, besides from signalling status and intelligence? How important is signalling status by going to an elite University? Are they worth the investment?
I too, enjoy Open Threads, and I feel that they should occur with higher frequency, around every week or so.
I’m thinking of writing a series of essays regarding applied rationality in terms of politics and utilitarianism, and the ways we can apply instrumental rationality to better help fight the mind-killingness of political arguments, but I’d like to make sure that lesswrong is open to this kind of thing. Is there any interest in this kind of thing? Is this against the no-politics rule?
I concur. It surprises me every one in a while at the number of people who cannot cook. Given that we require nourishment 3 times a day, daily, for the rest of our lives (assuming that we die), it seems obvious that cooking has an extremely high return on investment as compared to many other skills that people suggest we pick up, such as learning an instrument or learning a sport.
Then I suppose we should test that theory out. I’ve already repeatedly sent the SIAI messages asking if I may volunteer, unfortunately, with no reply.
Give me a task and I’ll see if I’m really committed enough to spend hours fixing punctuation.
Does anyone know how well-accepted this timeless physics is within the scientific community?
I think it’s an interesting testament to the human condition that mind-numbing and life-ruining akrasia is easily solvable through a simple neurochemical change in the brain.
I would like to interject for a moment and say that I would be very willing to volunteer a substantial portion of my time, given that I’m specifically taught what I should do, and given sufficient time to learn.
Although this is a purely anecdotal thought, I believe that there is a significant number of people, including myself, who would like to see the Singularity happen, and would be willing to volunteer vast amounts of time in order to increase the probability of a friendly intelligence explosion happen. You might be underestimating the number of people willing to volunteer for free.
The dark arts are in action here. Beware, lest you may Generalize from fiction..
I agree. How can we make this happen? Can someone who admins LW give us a reply?
Surer*
Science cannot be absolutely omniscient. However, it should attempt to be as consistent as possible until the point where it sacrifices consistency for truth. At least, that’s my take on it.
I agree. I think that the reason why it seems as though people who think that the sequences are awesome don’t exist is partially because of selection bias—those that disagree with the sequences are most likely to comment about disagreeing, thus lending disproportionate weight on people who disagree with certain parts of the sequences.
I found the sequences to be a life changing piece of literature, and I usually consider myself fairly well read, especially in regards to the general population. The sequences changed my worldview, and forced me to reevaluate my entire inner philosophy. Suffice to say, had I not stumbled upon the sequences, my life would have taken an entirely different path.
I think that for every person who dismisses the sequences as “unimportant” or “arrogant”, there are many more lurkers out there who have found the sequences to be amazing in helping improve their instrumental rationality, and vastly improve the quality of their lives.
That said, I agree with almost all the points regarding the sequences except what you mentioned regarding Science vs Bayes.
I think mainstream science is too slow and we mere mortals can do better with Bayes.
I disagree with this aspect because I think scientists can not and should not be trusted with Bayesian Inference—mostly because firstly, science should be sure of it’s conclusions, rather than assigning probability estimates to different interpretations. The potential for human judgement to be wrong coupled with the fact that often, wrongness has large consequences in the field of science warrants me to believe that the risk is not worth the possible speed of progress that we would gain.
Other than that, I wholeheartedly agree with almost all of the points in the Sequences, and I’d like to say that “I stand by the sequences”, too.
I’m surprised HPMOR has not been mentioned yet. It’s an astoundingly brilliant piece of fanfiction, and includes most of the themes on Lesswrong, including the philosophies of Rationality and science.
Hey Raiden.
If you need someone to talk to on a less superficial level, about anything you feel like, or just want to make an extra friend, feel free to leave me a message, or skype me at “Tuxedage”..
Suppose you have a moral view that counts future people as being worth as much as present people. You might say that fundamentally it doesn’t matter whether someone exists at the current time or at some future time, just as many people think that from a fundamental moral point of view, it doesn’t matter where somebody is spatially—somebody isn’t automatically worth less because you move them to the moon or to Africa or something. A human life is a human life. If you have that moral point of view that future generations matter in proportion to their population numbers, then you get this very stark implication that existential risk mitigation has a much higher utility than pretty much anything else that you could do. There are so many people that could come into existence in the future if humanity survives this critical period of time—we might live for billions of years, our descendants might colonize billions of solar systems, and there could be billions and billions times more people than exist currently. Therefore, even a very small reduction in the probability of realizing this enormous good will tend to outweigh even immense benefits like eliminating poverty or curing malaria, which would be tremendous under ordinary standards.
-- Nick Bostrom
There is a saying in heuristics and biases that people do not evaluate events, but descriptions of events—what is called non-extensional reasoning. The extension of humanity’s extinction includes the death of yourself, of your friends, of your family, of your loved ones, of your city, of your country, of your political fellows. Yet people who would take great offense at a proposal to wipe the country of Britain from the map, to kill every member of the Democratic Party in the U.S., to turn the city of Paris to glass—who would feel still greater horror on hearing the doctor say that their child had cancer—these people will discuss the extinction of humanity with perfect calm. “Extinction of humanity”, as words on paper, appears in fictional novels, or is discussed in philosophy books—it belongs to a different context than the Spanish flu. We evaluate descriptions of events, not extensions of events. The cliché phrase end of the world invokes the magisterium of myth and dream, of prophecy and apocalypse, of novels and movies. The challenge of existential risks to rationality is that, the catastrophes being so huge, people snap into a different mode of thinking. Human deaths are suddenly no longer bad, and detailed predictions suddenly no longer require any expertise, and whether the story is told with a happy ending or a sad ending is a matter of personal taste in stories.
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No more than Albert Szent-Györgyi could multiply the suffering of one human by a hundred million can I truly understand the value of clear thinking about global risks. Scope neglect is the hazard of being a biological human, running on an analog brain; the brain cannot multiply by six billion. And the stakes of existential risk extend beyond even the six billion humans alive today, to all the stars in all the galaxies that humanity and humanity’s descendants may some day touch. All that vast potential hinges on our survival here, now, in the days when the realm of humankind is a single planet orbiting a single star. I can’t feel our future. All I can do is try to defend it.”
-- Eliezer Yudkowsky, Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgment of global risks
I hope I am allowed to quote EY. I personally thought this was a very well written and beautiful quote.
Thank you.