Open thread, Jan. 16 - Jan. 22, 2016

Yes, I totally agree. In the last few weeks, I have seen some totally legit targets for being on -10 and not visible unless you you click on them, such as the 'click' posts, repetitive spam about that other website, probably the weird guy who just got banned from the open thread too.

However, I have also seen people advocate using mass downvoting on an OK-but-not-great article on cults that they just disagree with, and now someone wants to downvote to oblivion a joke in the open thread. Why? Is humor banned?

There is a legitimate middle ground between toxicity and brilliance.

I am not keen on a dystopian thought police. We have at the moment a lot more care given to children than to adults. For example children's hospitals VS adult's hospitals.

The idea is not drawn out to further conclusions as you have done, but I had to ask why we do the thing where we care about children's hospitals more than adult's hospitals, and generally decided that I don't like the way it is.

I believe common behaviour to like children more comes out of some measure of, "they are cute" and is similar to why we like baby animals more than fully grown ones. Simply because they have a babyness to them. If that is the case then it's a relatively unfounded belief and a bias that I would rather not carry.

Adults are (probably) productive members of society, we can place moralistic worth on that life as it stands in the relative concrete present, not the potential that you might be measuring when a child grows up. Anyone could wake up tomorrow and try to change the world, or wake up tomorrow and try to lie around on the beach. What causes people to change suddenly? Not part of this puzzle. I am confident that the snapshot gives a reasonably informative view of someone's worth. They are working hard in EA? That's their moral worth they present when they reveal with their actions what they care about.

What about old people? I don't know... Have not thought that far ahead. Was dealing with the cute-baby bias first. I suppose they are losing worth to society as they get less productive. And at the same time they have proven themselves worthy of being held/protected/cared for (or maybe they didn't).

They are counterintuitive. A lot is counterintuitive in higher dimensions. Especially something, I may write about in the future.

This 1206 business is even Googleable. Which I have learned only after I have calculated the actual number 1206.

https://sbseminar.wordpress.com/2007/07/21/spheres-in-higher-dimensions/

If it filters out Nash's argument, Ideal Money, then it makes no sense and is completely irrational for it.

Well, since it's an automated process, it filters anything, be it spam, Nash' argument or the words of Omega itself. As I said, it's a compromise. The best we could come up, so far. If you have a better solution, spell it out.

Are you also unwilling to discuss the content, and simply are stuck on my posting methods, writing, and character?

No, mine was just a suggestion for a way that would allow you to lubricate the social friction I think you're experiencing here. On the other side, I am reading your posts carefully and reply when done thinking about.

Yes I think its not reasonable, because it acted counter-productive to the intended use that you are suggesting it was implemented for.

Having actually lived under a regime that purported to "change human behaviour to be more in line with reality", my prior for such an attempt being made in good faith to begin with is accordingly low.

Attempts to change society invariably result in selection pressure for effectiveness outmatching those for honesty and benevolence. In a couple of generations, the only people left in charge are the kind of people you definitely wouldn't want in charge, unless you're the kind of person nobody wants in charge in the first place.

I'm thinking about locating specific centers of our brains and reducing certain activities which undoubtedly make us less aligned with reality and increase the activations of others.

This is the kind of thinking that, given a few years of unchecked power and primate group competition, leads to mass programs of rearranging people's brain centres with 15th century technology.

Why don't you spend some time instead thinking about how your forced rationality programme is going to avoid the pitfall all others so far fell into, megalomania and genocide? And why are you so sure your beliefs are the final and correct ones to force on everyone through brain manipulation? If we had the technology to enforce beliefs a few centuries ago, would you consider it a moral good to freeze the progress of human thought at that point? Because that's essentially what you're proposing from the point of view of all potential futures where you fail.

It's important to recognize empirically how your emotions work in contrary to a Bayesian epistemology, how using its mechanisms paradoxically lead to something which is more aligned with reality. It's not done with Bayesian epistemology, it is done with emotions, that do not speak in our language and it's possibly hard-wired to be that way. So we become aware of it and mix in the inductive reasoning.

Science does not actually know how emotions work to the degree of accuracy you are implying. Your statement that using emotional commitment rather than Bayesian epistemology leads to better alignment with reality is a hypothesis that you believe, not a fact that has been proven. If you become a very successful person by following the prescription you advocate, that would be evidence in favor of your hypothesis, but even that would not be very strong evidence by itself.

"true in some narrow technical sense" yet "false in probably more relevant senses" this is called cognitive dissonance, empirically it can even be this way by some basic reasoning, both emotionally and factually, which is what I am talking about, and which needs to be investigated. You're proving my point :)

I am not sure what you're saying here. "Cognitive dissonance" is not the same thing as observing that a phenomenon can be framed in two different mutually contradictory ways. I do not have an experience of dissonance when I say, "From one point of view we're inseparable from the universe, from a different point of view we can be considered independent agents." These are merely different interpretative paradigms and neither are right or wrong.

Yes. Unsure if his writings cover what I am talking about since evident by what you've said so far. Not that I blame you, I just want us to meta observe ourselves so we can be more aligned.

I am trying to say nicely that Eliezer's writings comprehensively invalidate what you're saying. The reason you're getting pushback from Less Wrong is that we collectively see the mistakes that you're making because we have a shared bag of epistemic tools that are superior to yours, not because you have access to powerful knowledge and insights that we don't have. You would really benefit in a lot of ways from reading the essays I linked before you continue proselytizing on Less Wrong. We would love to have you as a member of the community, but in order to really join the community you will need to be willing to criticize yourself and your own ideas with detachment and rigor.

I'm unsure what considers as danger sign in human thinking if you change perspective, the likelihood that something is worse than what we have is low. You only need a limited emotional connection to science and rationality to realize this and how bad thinking spreads epidemically now, but from someone like us, it's more likely to be good thinking? The likelihood to investigate this is very high to be positive expected value because inherently you, I and more possess the qualities which are not aligned with reality. I want to reassure you of something, however.

I'm not arguing that changing perspective from default modes of human cognition is bad. I'm arguing that your particular brand of improved thinking is not particularly compelling, and is very far from being proven superior to what I'm already doing as a committed rationalist.

Alignment with reality is the most probable to give equilibrium as it's aligned with the utility function. When in a death spiral and not aligned (yet think is aligned) then aligning with reality might seem as not aligning ("very much false in probably more relevant senses") but the opposite and that it would be against utility function and lead to experience opposite to before. That's the case, but if you are honest with your emotions, the experience which is baseline has a hard time to see beyond itself. That's why understanding that experience is a tool, not a goal, although it gives to what would be considered a "satisfaction of that goal", it is only by accepting facts that it happens, and it can't happen in the death spiral.

I would actually suggest that you stop using the phrase "aligning with reality" because it does not seem to convey the meaning you want it to convey. I think you should replace every instance of that phrase with the concrete substance of what you actually mean. You may find that it means essentially nothing and it just a verbal/cognitive placeholder that you're using to prop up unclear thinking. For example, in the above paragraph, "Alignment with reality is the most probable to give equilibrium as it's aligned with the utility function" could be rewritten as "Performing the actions most likely to yield highest utility is most probable to be aligned with the utility function", which is a tautology, not an insight.

I was being cheeky, yes, but also serious. What do you call a perfect rationalist? A sociopath[1]. A fair amount of rationality training is basically reprogramming oneself to be mechanical in one's response to evidence and follow scripts for better decision making. And what kind of world would we live in if every single person was perfectly sociopathic in their behaviour? For this reason in part, I think the idea of making the entire world perfectly rationalist is a potentially dangerous proposition and one should at least consider how far along that trajectory we would want to take it.

But the response I gave to ingive was 5 words because for all the other reasons you gave I did not feel it would be a productive use of my time to engage further with him.

[1] ETA: Before I get nitpicked to death, I mean the symptoms often associated with high-functioning sociopathy, not the clinical definition which I'm aware is actually different from what most people associate with the term.

You have been strongly associated with a certain movement, and people might not want to engage you in conversation even on different topics,

You forgot to say that you think that. But for username 2's point, you had to reiterate that you think.

because they are afraid your true intention is to lead the conversation back to ideas that they didn't want to talk with you about in the first place.

That's unfortunate if it is the case if ideas which are outside their echo chamber create such fear, then what I say might be of use in the first place, if we all come together and figure things out :)

I think username2 was making a non-serious cheeky comment which went over your head and you responded with a wall of text touching on several ideas. People sometimes just want small exchanges and they have no confidence in you to keep exchanges short.

It was but it speaks of his underlying ideas and character to even be in the position to do that. I don't mind it, I enjoy typing walls of texts. What would you want me to respond, if at all?

Agreeing with the sentiment that people probably aren't engaging with this question because it's too tiresome to summarize all the information that is available, and what is available is probably incomplete as well. By asking such a broad question rather than a narrower, specific, or applied question, you won't get many responses.

Yeah, I think so too, but I do think there is a technological barrier in how this forum was setup for the type of problem-solving I am advising for. If we truly want to be Less Wrong, it's fine with how it is now, but there can definitely be improvements in an effort for the entire species rather than a small subset of it, 2k people.

You're welcome to explain why this isn't the case. I'm thinking mostly about neuroscience and evolutionary biology. It tells us everything.