Meetup : Two-monthly London Meetup

Ok, notes on what we discussed at this meetup (finally):

What is the General Anti-zombie principle?

Can we create a GLUT

• disagreement over what is a LUT in this situation -> at first think it's a state-machine, then realise that the look-up can involve the full brain-state including memories that leads a brain to respond in the given way.

IQ genetic link

• are twin studies reliable science: Yes.

• if there IS a genetic basis for education, then what does this mean? Should there be different education?

• Are there beneficial genes for IQ?

  • eg bigger short-term memory

  • faster lookup/response time

  • better-connected visual cortex?

Discussion of LW sequences

• read just the posts or posts+comments? (latter is much slower but you also sample the conversations around the posts and get more insight)

• read as sequences or sequentially? (sometimes hard to actually read as sequences - forever opening a post to find five pre-reqs... which have pre-reqs... which have pre-reqs).

Quantum mechanics...

• has many-worlds been proven?

• Not yet, but that's ok... it doesn't currently affect physics work.

Web technologies -> Ruby-on-rails, PHP

• Google+ -> any benefits?

• can social networking become a Standard instead of being owned by various sites (twitter/facebook etc) - facebook is crushingly evil -> answer: don't think so, social networking is not as tractable to becoming just a protocol (in the way email is).

Anyone read Kurzweil? Seems a bit like Warwick - ie a bit of a crank.

• victims of a happy death spiral...

• are LW meetups prone to cultishness?

• we are inoculated against it, so have a stronger chance of resisting.

• we have lots of contrarians (no we don't!) :)

Chalmers gave a talk at the singularity summit that was good

• anybody here go to the singularity summit?

• no

• humanity+ was local - and disappointing

Talking about the singularity

• most people don't take it seriously. Most people too busy with their own lives

• still fits the cached thought of "sounds weird"

• better to explain it using increasing intelligence -> people also take AI more seriously

Dennet (what did he do?)

• philosophy of consciousness -> clear thinking

• brought several useful thought experiments to the field

• explained "narrative consciousness" rather than "the cartesian theatre" -> ie that experiences are de-centralised over the brain instead of requiring the bits to be brought together in a single place

• wrote "Darwin's dangerous idea"

Chalmers -> pro-zombie

What do you say to somebody that says "I don't believe in Occam's Razor"?

• slap "yes you do!"

• you wouldn't be able to get out of bed without Occam's Razor. You're already discounting lots of really stupid ideas about your life without even thinking about it

• just a heuristic... but a good one.

But: slap is a good start... or just don't bother. Same for people who believe in homeopathy.

Even nobel laureates think that's true

• yes, some nobel laureates are crazy

• caught up in their own hype

• why does this happen to some and not others?

• in some fields it's common to have a nobel, so not as big a status-bump?

• they might have been prone to it anyway and just dealing with it badly

Worries about turning up to an LW meetup (their first)

• "I'm so stupid" reaction

• "should I talk? I'll just show how stupid I am"

Discussion of mini-camp

• goal-setting -> the difference between terminal and instrumental goals

Again: is LW going to become a cult?

• what is the problem with becoming a cult?
  • answer: everyone signalling that they're doing well and not actually doing self-improvement.

LW-California - seem to do a hell of a lot

• support each other

• work hard

LW London had more visitors but doesn't do as much

• what does LW Cal do that we don't?

• eg commitment mechanism

  • everyone pays $200 into paypal acct unless they did their goal
  • they have email checks on commitments made

• just a bunch of supportive friends all interested in doing it

Deep discussion of how we know Many Worlds is true

Did organised religion drive civilisation (eg agriculture)

• weaponised religion

• is it just a ruleset that helps kickstart a civilisation?

• after this, the politicking takes over
  • leading to a heirarchical system (eg Judeo-christianic religion_Messiah/Pope or Rome with the emperors

Cryonics and why we're not signed up

Becomes: why I'm still not signed up

• discussion about whether it's better to spend the money on yourself or on other people. When there 's a low probability of it helping you and potentially high benefit to the others (eg if I die and leave behind young children, their inheritance is being spent on only a potential of me living instead of my children being fed and clothed and housed.).

• discussion tries to veer into "but would you jump off a cliff for any amount of money for your kids" or comparison of genetic-likeness-to-kids with probability of you living... but both cast away as answering the wrong question. If my kids aren't even related to me genetically I'll still love them enough to want them to be looked after when I'm gone. and jumping off a cliff vs putting money into a potentially-nonviable eternal-life solution is just a trolley problem in a different guise.

  • there's still an unanswered question there.

hmmm.. "bimonthly" is ambiguous - can mean both "every two months" and "twice a month". What can we use as an alternative?