How To Lose 100 Karma In 6 Hours -- What Just Happened

Maybe they are of the belief that censorship on LessWrong is severely detrimental to the singularity. Then such a response might be justified.

Specifically, the argument against excessive punishment is this:

When dealing with humans, promising excessive punishment will not automatically move you to the "people do what you want" equilibrium. You need to prove you're serious. People will make mistakes. You will make mistakes.

This all requires punishing people.

This doesn't require murdering 6,790 people.

It seems like the sanest response would be to find some way of preventing waitingforgodel from viewing this site.

At the risk of sounding silly, I have a really minor question.

The 6790 people figure comes from multiplying the world's population by .0001, right? I feel like causing an existential catastrophe to occur is worse than that, not only does everyone alive die, but every human who could have lived in this part of the universe in the future is kept out of existence. Thus, intentionally trying to cause existential risk is much more serious.

Is there some particular reason that everyone is only multiplying by the world's population that I'm missing?

At this point I must conclude either that you have no grasp whatsoever of the math involved here or that you're completely insane.

The good news is, this mentioned insanity that some LW posters have sunk to makes me think of this very entertaining Cthulhu fan video, which I will now share for the entertainment of all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxScTbIUvoA

I mean, seriously. I never want to know what it was and I significantly resent the OP for continuing to stir the shit and (no matter how marginally) increasing the likelihood of the information being reposted and me accidentally seeing it.

I award you +1 sanity point.

(I note that the Langford Basilisk in question is the only information that I know and wish I did not know. People acquainted with me and my attitude towards secrecy and not-knowing-things in general may make all appropriate inferences about how unpleasant I must find it to know the information, to state that I would prefer not to.)

Not really :-) If you keep awareness of the cult attractor and can think of how thinking these things about an idea might trip you up, that's not a flawless defence but will help your defences against the dark arts.

What inspired you to the phrase "invincible mind fortresses"? I like it. Everyone thinks they live in one, that they're far too intelligent/knowledgeable/rational/Bayesian/aware of their biases/expert on cults/etc to fall into cultishness. They are of course wrong, but try telling them that. (It's like being smart enough to be quite aware of at least some of your own blithering stupidities.)

(I read the forbidden idea. It appears I'm dumb and ignorant enough to have thought it was just really silly, and this reaction appears common. This is why some people find the entire incident ridiculous. I admit my opinion could be wrong, and I don't actually find it interesting enough to have remembered the details.)

It would be interesting to know how many people are playing along to keep the peace, while actually laughing at the whole thing because of course no mere argument could possibly hurt them in their invincible mind fortresses

In general, I treat attempts to focus my attention on any particular highly-unlikely-but-really-bad scenario as an invitation to inappropriately privilege the hypothesis, probably a motivated one, and I discount accordingly. So on balance, yeah, you can count me as "playing along" the way you mean it here.

I don't think my mind-fortress is invincible, and I am perfectly capable of being hurt by stuff on the Internet. I'm also perfectly capable of being hurt by a moving car, and yet I drive to work every morning.

And yes, if the dangerousness of the Dangerous Idea seems more relevant to you in this case than the politics of the community, I think you're miscalibrated. The odds of a power struggle in a community in which you have transient membership affecting your life negatively are very small, but I'd be astonished if they were anything short of astronomically higher than the odds of the Dangerous Idea itself affecting your life at all.

I also regret contact with the basilisk, but would not say it's the only information I wish I didn't know, nor am I entirely sure it was a good idea to censor it.

When it was originally posted I did not take it seriously, it only triggered "severe mental trauma" as others are saying, when I later read someone referring to it being censored, and some curiosity regarding it, and I updated on the fact that it was being taken that seriously by others here.

I do not think the idea holds water, and I feel I owe much of my severe mental trauma to an ongoing anxiety and depression stemming from a host of ordinary factors, isolation chief among them. I would STRONGLY advise everyone in this community to take their mental health more seriously, not so much in terms of basilisks as in terms of being human beings.

This community is, as it stands, ill-equipped to charge forth valiantly into the unknown. It is neurotic at best.

I would also like to apologize for whatever extent I was a player in the early formation of the cauldron of ideas which spawned the basilisk and I'm sure will spawn other basilisks in due time. I participated with a fairly callous abandon in the SL4 threads which prefigure these ideas.

Even at the time it was apparent to anyone paying attention that the general gist of these things was walking a worrisome path, and I basically thought "well, I can see my way clear through these brambles, if other people can't, that's their problem."

We have responsibilities, to ourselves as much as to each other, beyond simply being logical. I have lately been reexamining much of my life, and have taken to practicing meditation. I find it to be a significant aid in combating general anxiety.

Also helpful: clonazepam.

I saw the original post. I had trouble taking the problem that seriously in the general case. In particular, there seemed to be two obvious problems that arose from the post in question. One was a direct decision theoretic basilisk, the other was a closely associated problem that was empirically causing basilisk-like results to some people who knew about the problem in question. I consider the first problem (the obvious decision-theoretic basilisk) to be extremely unlikely. But since then I've talked to at least one person (not Eliezer) who knows a lot more about the idea who has asserted that there are more subtle aspects of the basilisk which could make it or related basilisks more likely. I don't know if that person has better understanding of decision theory than I do, but he's certainly thought about these issues a lot more than I do so it did move my estimate that there was a real threat here upwards. But even given that, I still consider the problems to be unlikely. I'm much more concerned about the pseudo-basilisk which empirically has struck some people. The pseudo-basilisk itself might justify the censorship. Overall, I'm unconvinced.

I agree.

Like Alicorn, this is the only thing I know that I wish I did not know.

On the plus side, it made me realise my utility function is not monotonic in knowledge.

I have read the idea. I am unscathed. It is not difficult to find, if you look.

There is some chance my mind fortress is better defended than other people's- I am known to be level-headed in situations with and without the presence of imminent physical harm- but I don't think that applies to this particular circumstance. It felt to me like something you would have to convince yourself to care about- and so for some people that may be easier than it is for others (or automatic).

I too regret knowing the idea.

It would be interesting to know how many people are playing along to keep the peace, while actually laughing at the whole thing because of course no mere argument could possibly hurt them in their invincible mind fortresses

I'm certain that the forbidden topic couldn't possibly hurt me (probability of that is zilch). Still, I agree that from what we know, considering it should be discouraged, based on an expected utility argument (it either changes nothing or hurts tremendously with tiny probability, but can't correspondingly help tremendously because human value is a narrow target). Don't confuse these two arguments.

(I think this is my best summary of the shape of the argument so far.)

I feel the same as you, even though I know what the banned topic was. I haven't thought about it too deeply, because, well, duh.

I sought out the dangerous idea right after I heard about the commotion, and I was disappointed. I discussed the idea, and thought about it hard, I'm still a bit unsure if I figured out why people think of the idea as dangerous, but to me it seems to be just plain silly.

I don't regret knowing it. I figured right from the start that the probability of it actually being dangerous was low enough that I don't need to care about it, and seems that my initial guess was right on the spot. And I really do dislike not knowing about things that everybody says are really dangerous and can cause me and my loved ones much agony for reasons no one is allowed to tell

I've never seen the basilisk (and I have just about resisted the very powerful urge to seek it out), but if one of us came up with a dangerous idea, is it not likely that an AI would do the same. Taking into account the vastly greater possibility of an AI to cause harm if 'infected', might we not gain more from looking at the problem now in case we can find a resolution (perhaps a better decision theory) and use that to avert a genuinely catastrophic outcome. Even if our hopes of solving the problem are not high, the probabilities and utilities may still advise it.

Of course, since I haven't seen it, I might be totally misunderstanding the situation, or maybe there is an excellent reason why the above is wrong that I can't understand without exposing myself to the basilisk. Even if this isn't the case, it might still be best for a few people who have already seen it to work on the problem, rather than informing someone like me who probably wouldn't be much help anyway.

If it's not too much trouble, could you at least sate my burning curiosity by telling me which of the three options above, if any, is correct.

If you're still curious, after all these years, and if another data point is still helpful-

I know the information in question, and I anticipate a non-negligible probability of being tortured horribly for knowing it (though presumably an FAI would figure out a way to make everyone think this happened rather than actually doing it), but oddly I am not sure whether I regret knowing it.

Aw, look, it's someone sane.

WHAT?! We need a much better supervillain. Ideally a sympathetic well-intentioned one so we can have some black and grey morality flying back and forth. Someone like.... Yvain.

Dammit. Someone beat me to the punch on taking up the 'Clippy' role and it looks like someone beat me to it on roleplaying the supervillian too. I have to work on my reaction time if I'm going to get in on any of the fun stuff!

This is an unprofitable way to think about the problem. If it becomes a Moral Imperative not to come to any sort of resolution, well then, we'll never see any sort of resolution.

Mildly interesting fact: I would have used capital letters in when I said "This doesn't require murdering 6,790 people," if not for this comment.

Is this type of praise, overall, effective in keeping the tone civil? Is it more effective than other methods?

I invite anyone who still sides with WaitingForGodel at this point to leave and find a site more suited to their intellects. I am sure it will only frustrate them and us to have them stick around.

And 5. Ridiculousness. "He threatened what? ... And they took it seriously?"

(Posted as an example of a way this is notably different to the typical example. Note that this is also my reaction, but I might well be wrong.)

My bet would be that he believes that it is proportional. From where I'm standing, this looks like assigning too much impact to LW and to censorship of posts. Note that 2 and 4 are particularly good arguments why something of this nature was dumb regardless of importance.

Re #1: EY claimed his censorship caused something like 0.0001% risk reduction at the time, hence the amount chosen -- it is there to balance his motivation out.

Re #2: Letting Christians/Republicans know that they should be interested in passing a law is not the same as hostage taking or harming someone's family. I agree that narrow targeting is preferable.

Re #3 and #4: I have a right to tell Christians/Republicans about a law they're likely to feel should be passed -- it's a right granted to me by the country I live in. I can tell them about that law for whatever reason I want. That's also a right granted to me by the country I live in. By definition this is legitimate authority, because a legitimate authority granted me these rights.

Yes, hopefully for EY as well

the fellow who claimed that he had ancient Egyptian nanotechnology that had been stolen by the rapper Jay-Z

what

Can you link me to this? Please? S/N ratio be damned, I need to read it.

Yes: talk some sense into Eliezer.

Upvoted - this is an eminently sensible suggestion on how to deal with comments that some people would rather not view because they find the topic upsetting.

waitingforgodel: see, there usually are at least somewhat reasonable ways to deal with this sort of conflict. If you'd reacted to "I can't think of a reasonable way yet" with "I'll keep thinking about it" instead of "I'm going to go off and do something completely loony like pretending to destroy the world" you might have been the one to make this suggestion, or something even better, and you wouldn't be shooting for a record number of (deserved) downvotes.

Would the comment have been deleted if the author had ROT13'd it?

Yes.

This will cause it to end up in the RSS readers twice, thus being twice as annoying as before.

If one loan individual told me that if I didn't wear my seatbelt, he'd bust my kneecaps, then that would be blackmail.

I think this is closer to if one lone individual said that every time he saw you not wear a seatbelt (which for some reason a law couldn't get passed for), he'd nudge gun control legislation closer to being enacted (assuming he knew you'd hate gun control legislation)

I know a thing or two (expert on Scientology, knowledgeable about lesser nasty memetic infections). In my opinion as someone who knows a thing or two about the subject, LW really isn't in danger or the source of danger. It has plenty of weird bits, which set off people's "this person appears to be suffering a damaging memetic infection" alarms ("has Bob joined a cult?"), but it's really not off on crack.

SIAI, I can't comment on. I'd hope enough people there (preferably every single one) are expressly mindful of Every Cause Wants To Be A Cult and of the dangers of small closed groups with confidential knowledge and the aim to achieve something big pulling members toward the cult attractor.

I was chatting with ciphergoth about this last night, while he worked at chipping away my disinterest in signing up for cryonics. I'm actually excessively cautious about new ideas and extremely conservative about changing my mind. I think I've turned myself into Mad Eye Moody when it comes to infectious memes. (At least in paranoia; I'm not bragging about my defences.) On the other hand, this doesn't feel like it's actually hampered my life. On the other other hand, I would not of course know.

Also note that it wasn't when I submitted to the main site...

In this case my estimate is a 5% chance that EY wants to spread the censored material, and used censoring for publicity. Therefore spreading the censored material is questionable as a tactic.

Be careful to keep your eye on the ball. This isn't some zero-sum contest of wills, where if EY gets what he wants that's bad. The ball is human welfare, or should be.

I was only as serious as you were :P

Next thing you're going to tell me that an FAI shouldn't push fat people in front of trolleys.

Note: A sufficiently powerful FAI shouldn't need to, but that is different from saying it wouldn't.

Thanks! I had been wishing for a PM system... and here we had one all along.

I know, it took me months to realize that the 'someone replied to me' envelope was actually a re-purposed indicator for a feature I had no idea existed.

It's interesting, but I don't see any similarly high-effectiveness ways to influence Peter Thiel... Republicans already want to do high x-risk things, Thiel doesn't already want to decrease funding.

If I observe that I did read the thread to which you refer, and I still think your current course of action is stupid and crazy (and that's coming from someone who agrees with you about the censorship in question being wrong!) will that change your opinion even slightly?

I did read the original precommitment discussions. I thought your original threat was non-serious, and presented as an interesting thought experiment. I was with you on the subject of anti-censorship. When I discovered that your precommitment was serious, you lost the moral high-ground in my eyes, and entered territory where I will not follow.

You throw some scary ideas around. Try this one on for size. This post of yours has caused me to revise my probability of the proposition "the best solution to some irrational precommitments is murder" from Pascal's-wager levels (indescribably improbable) to 0.01%.

There are some people who agree with you (the best way to block legislation is to kill the people who come up with it).

I'd say that since I've only been talking about doing things well within my legal rights (using the legal system), that talking about murdering me is a bit "cultish"...