Vichy

Karma: 85

Vichy Jun 23, 2009, 8:41 PM
−2 points
in reply to: Roko’s comment on: The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth About Morality and What To Do About It
Sorry for the delay, I just checked this: I think actual morality tends to systematically bias behaviour and ideas about ‘social’ life which are contrary to fact and create all sorts of personal and interpersonal problems. I also think it gives far too strong a ‘presumption’ towards the benevolence of do-gooders, the sanity of ‘sticking to your guns, come what may’ and the wisdom of the popular.

There is a more general problem with cognitive dissonance and idea-consistency, due to the literal nonsensicality of most moral claims and sentiments. I also see that the alleged ‘gains’ from morality are frequently self-inflated, if not false to begin with; while the alternative—intellectual consistency and a recognition of purposeful action as aimed at subjective satisfaction—is vastly underrated, even by people of a ‘libertarian’ bent.

Vichy Jun 23, 2009, 8:32 PM
−5 points
on: The Domain of Your Utility Function
“Von Neumann-Morgenstern axioms” Isn’t it interesting that...Morgenstern was influenced by the second and third generation ‘Austrian’ economists (including Mises directly) and then he gets associated with AI due to his work with Von Neumann; which is frequently correlated itself with laissez-faire, libertarian and techno-commercialism?

To actually address the post, I do agree that utility functions are ordinal but not cardinal. I’m not sure even AI could have a cardinal utility function, since to be a meaningful ‘value’ it most motivate action; its theoretical mathematical relationship to other utility-gains and losses is irrelevant to this actual action. Likewise, a ‘mathematical’ or cardinal utility function can just as easily be described as a psychological or functional ‘system’ utilized, which itself would seem irrelevant to the ranking of values actually involved in purposeful action.

Vichy Jun 13, 2009, 11:48 PM
0 points
on: The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth About Morality and What To Do About It
As a moral nihilist and/or egoist I tend to agree with the general sentiment of this article, though I would not take the tack of saying morality needs to be reformed—it’s so nonsensical and grinding it may be as possible (and more beneficial) to simply stop pretending magical rules and standards need apply.

Vichy Jun 4, 2009, 5:12 PM
2 points
on: Post Your Utility Function
“Utility functions are really bad match for human preferences, and one of the major premises we accept is wrong.” Given the sheer messiness and mechanical influence involved in human brains, it’s not even clear we have real ‘values’ which could be examined on a utility function, rather than simple dominant-interestedness that happens for largely unconscious and semi-arbitrary reasons.

Vichy Jun 3, 2009, 8:03 PM
1 point
in reply to: pjeby’s comment on: Do Fandoms Need Awfulness?
“A basketball player finding the shortest path through the opposition to the net will probably epic fail if s/he does not follow his/her feelings, or tries to think. ” Well, yes, I wouldn’t want to rule out the efficacy of unconscious calculations; trying to use vectors to calculate how to catch a frisbee is likely to be unsucessful. Conscious rationcination is resource intensive and slow.

Where is is bad advice is when people use these processes as a substitute for rationcination; forming of abstract theories on the basis of emotional pleasantness is unlikely to render accurate beliefs. Of course, accuracy isn’t everything.

Vichy Jun 1, 2009, 10:37 PM
0 points
on: The Pascal’s Wager Fallacy Fallacy
“If it is possible for an agent—or, say, the human species—to have an infinite future, and you cut yourself off from that infinite future and end up stuck in a future that is merely very large, this one mistake outweighs all the finite mistakes you made over the course of your existence.” Doesn’t this arbitrarily favor future events? But future-self isn’t current-self, it’s literally a different person. Distinguishing between desirable outcomes is tautological, your values precede evaluation.

Vichy Jun 1, 2009, 9:01 PM
0 points
on: Least Signaling Activities?
Wouldn’t it be easier if we just admitted to ourselves that much of what we do is to get attention, when we were actually doing them? Of course I want attention from people, I wouldn’t talk to them otherwise.

It’s also easier to avoid rationalization if you don’t even attempt to provide normative justification (I believe normative justification is essentially circular reasoning).

Vichy Jun 1, 2009, 8:51 PM
2 points
on: Dissenting Views
I would say the direction I most dissent from Less Wrong is that I don’t think ‘rationality’ is inherently anything worth having. It’s not that I doubt its relevance for developing more accurate information, nor its potential efficacy in solving various problems, but if I have a rationalistic bent that is mainly because I’m just that sort of person—being irrational isn’t ‘bad’, it’s just—irrational.

I would say the sort of terms and arguments I most reject are those with normative-moral content, since (depending on your definition) I either do not believe in, or reject the relevance of, ethical propositions. Which in itself is the reason I reject ‘rationality’ as some high standard. I’m also basically disinterested in anything that happens after my death, and I doubt the efficacy of personal influence enough to view any attempts to reform other people (much less the planet) as a waste of time. In fact, I don’t think I even have any particular attachment to ‘humans-as-a-species’. If they can’t adapt to reality, good riddance.

Vichy Jun 1, 2009, 8:14 PM
2 points
0
in reply to: AndySimpson’s comment on: Do Fandoms Need Awfulness?
“Things like Star Trek and Tolkien are incredibly powerful for very small subsets of the population because their creators make risky aesthetic and narrative choices.” I would say there is some truth to this, for example I don’t mind diplomacy scenes that take up 2/3rds of the episode since I’m an exposition sort-of person to begin with, but a lot of people really hate that.

Vichy Jun 1, 2009, 8:00 PM
1 point
in reply to: billswift’s comment on: Do Fandoms Need Awfulness?
I feel that most good fiction is internally consistent since that’s sort of definitionally necessary of actually having a plot. But many people seem to read things that satisfy their emotional biases; rather than to follow a coherent narrative.

Vichy Jun 1, 2009, 7:53 PM
3 points
in reply to: MrHen’s comment on: Do Fandoms Need Awfulness?
“What are the prejudices in Star Wars or Star Trek?” Star Trek is uber yuppy social democrat space, and Star Wars has an extremely predictable plot with unbelievable magic elements and exactly the sort of bad advice people love (follow your feelings, stop trying to think; our Enemies are Pure Evil).

Vichy Jun 1, 2009, 7:50 PM
0 points
on: Do Fandoms Need Awfulness?
“And so the fan groups of Tolkien, Star Trek, Spider-man, Japanese kiddie-cartoons etc. develop an almost cult-like character.” I like some of all of these examples, and I agree there are horrible, asinine elements to all of them. They all have ludicrous philosophical positions, arbitrary physics, inane plots and villains with motivations that manage to be incoherent and predictable at the same time. Although I’ve seen every episode of every series of Star Trek before Enterprise, I have to say I spend most of my time watching it making fun of the gaffs and absurdities. I don’t know that I’m typical, but Star Trek wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t so plainly atrocious. The absurdity is, for many people, an appealing aspect of it.

Jack Vance is one of the few ‘science’ fiction authors I can find no significant flaws with (other than that the term ‘science’ is rather misapplied to his genre), and although he has many dedicated fans you are right that there are no Demon Princes Conventions where everyone dresses up with giant earlobes and exchanges mining company stock.

I think it’s also probably true that widely popular fiction is so bad at least partially because people have demands on fiction that is only tangentially related (if at all) to plot coherence, believability and skilled writing. Some of Stephan King’s most popular books are ones that he considers to be poorly written.