This post is for sacrificing my credibility!

Thanks for the info. I opened this post for the same reason as you, and now that I've read this I'm going to close it.

I'm so stupid: I read your comment, I saw the comment karma, I saw the article karma, but I read the discussion anyway. Now I will never get those 20 minutes of my life back, and if I happen to die exactly 20 minutes before Omega invents immortality, it is all my own stupid fault.

For people like me, this is what this whole article is about: Will Newsome trying to be interesting, without ever offering anything of substance. If you read the comments trying to find more information, there isn't any!

UNLIKELY. WHY WOULDN'T YOU JUST BEAM THOUGHTS INTO MY HEAD LIKE YOU NORMALLY DO.

How about you stop trolling the world first? (But then again, you've created it, so you get to troll it however you want.)

I don't know about "no credibility", Will knew some.

You say crazy (and wrong) shit a lot and have no credibility.

Wait, I thought in my case those were, like, really tied into each other, barely two different things. Also I have tons of credibility with the people who matter. ...Which is in some respects a problem, you see.

Try explaining your reasoning and we might see.

It's more fun this way. Don't you want to live by your own strength sometimes?

he whole "I have mysterious reasons why this crazy idea is true" thing is just annoying.

Well, duh.

He has also been a visiting fellow at the SI, which means obvious crackpottery should have been filtered.

To defend the repute of the visiting fellows program, please note that his crackpot score has skyrocketed since that time and he would almost certainly not have been accepted had he applied then as he is today.

I get the impression that he's often more concerned with signaling interestingness, intelligence, and contrarianism than figuring out what's true.

Note: I also get that impression from Michael Vassar. But I have lots of respect for the current Singularity Institute director.

Will is pretty weird and I don't believe the way he thinks is, ya' know, normative. But I still find his writing to be extremely valuable relative to most Less Wrong commenters because for the most part Less Wrong commenters come in three different flavors: vanilla (what I would say if I weren't as smart or 3-4 years less educated), chocolate (what I would say now) and strawberry (what I would say if I were smarter or 3-4 years more educated). Will is lobster ice cream with rainbow jimmies. I will never think like him and I wouldn't want to. But I'm glad there is someone extending hypotheses as far as they will go and never looking back. I find novel explorations of hypothesis space to be both useful and interesting. He is pursuing a train of thought I don't have a lot of time for and no reason to prioritize. But I'm still looking forward to finding out where it ends up.

Will is like a musician on a hallucinogen. You wouldn't want to have his brain and you probably don't trust his judgment. But before he burns out at 27 he's gonna produce some really interesting ideas, some of which will simply be absurd but a few of which might have real staying power and influence a generation.

What is your position on Will Newsome?

I frequently find Will's contributions obscurantist.

In general, I find obscurantism at best tedious, and more often actively upsetting, so I mostly ignore it when I encounter it. Occasionally I engage with it, in a spirit of personal social training.

That said, I accept that one reader's obscurantism is another reader's appropriate level of indirection. If it's valuable to other people, great... the cost to me is low.

At this point the complaining about it by various frustrated people has cost me more than the behavior itself, by about an order of magnitude.

I didn't meet Will until April 2011, but most people who have been around longer seem to share Carl's opinion. For myself, I also find many of Will's contributions obscurantist, and I agree with John Maxwell that they seem to want to signal interestingness, intelligence, and and contrarianism. Finally: Will offered good, substantive feedback on two of my papers.

My sensation about Will Newsome is that of a celebrity I haven't heard of. Most of the comments that I notice authored by Will Newsome appear to be about Will Newsome, but I don't understand their content beyond that. They seem to attract a lot of attention.

There is this strange current of, well insight and reasonableness in his comment history and ideas.

I would be interested in reading some of these ideas, if you could point some out.

In addition to already mentioned obscurantist tendencies, he awards himself intellectual credit for "going meta," even when this does not lead to actually smarter behavior or better results.

He has also been a visiting fellow at the SI, which means obvious crackpottery should have been filtered.

What did he actually do, though?

Writes the most consistently fun posts out of anybody here.

Maybe it's a deliberate puzzle set up as an intelligence test for recruiting purposes.

I'm sad that Will doesn't seem to care about being correct, because I can imagine how much he could contribute if he cared.

I think that Will (his Will-like stuff, not the "respectable" comments) is 60% worth taking seriously. But hell, I take Philip K. Dick 85% seriously, so what do I know. (That is, I'm not a sane person myself, never claimed to be, so you'd be wise to discount the crazy shit I might say on these topics even if you find it interesting.)

This is mainly what I want to know. From the comments on this post, it looks like W_N claims to have (read: geniunely has, geniunely thinks he has, or trolls as though he has) come across something he can't tell people about - a basilisk, some conspiracy-theory-type information, something. Being a relative newcomer unwilling to go through large numbers of his previous posts, I'd like to know if anyone who's seen him longer has any more information.

Also, this whole thing is absolutely hilarious to read.

What's the big scary secret?

I mean, I get why Newsome would want to obscure this: a lot of people get off on being seen as "mysterious" or whatever. But there does seem to be a number of people here who understand what is going on, but are refusing to offer their explanations, in spite of the fact that a lot of people are confused here.

Maybe they take the basilisk threat seriously? That would be crazy/sad if true.

Edit: Also, there are now a number of people openly asking for explanations, but all we are getting is speculation from people who also don't know what is going on. I'm starting to get annoyed with this.

What's the big scary secret?

There is no big scary secret. The only danger to worry about is that this community of schizo scifi nerds is going to have some perceptible and negative influence by spreading and popularizing their bullshit. Which will mainly be a problem for the computer science community, especially AI research, since those people are naturally susceptible to such infections.

But I am not too worried about that either. If all people who buy all this bullshit stop working on AI then maybe that will renovate the field and actually allow some real progress to take place by giving new ideas a chance and by introducing new perspectives which are less deluded by science fictional ideas. In a sense lesswrong/SIAI might function as a crackpot attractor, stripping out all negative elements so that actual progress can take place.

It may be relevant that Will has talked elsewhere about certain important physical phenomena being evasive, in the sense that their likelihood of occurring is significantly inversely proportional to whether someone is trying to prove or demonstrate them.

When I value my interactions with an evasive phenomenon (the beliefs of shy people, the social rules of Guess cultures, etc.), one consequence is often that I can't actually talk about my real reasons for things; everything has to be indirect and roundabout and sometimes actively deceptive.

I am generally happier when I don't value my interactions with evasive phenomena, but that's not always an option.

I need a hug.

Edit: Thanks for all the hugs!

Not really. If one was offered I'd accept it.

But seriously. What is their other option? Not downvote me? And many of the comments on this post are constructive.

Also, clearly I'm beyond "feeding" at this point—trolling, and getting fed, clearly aren't the aim of this post. But maybe you want to discourage future trolls who might do something similar to what I've done.

Stop trolling.

Some of your remarks like this look almost like you are engaging in intellectual exhibitionism. This one fits into that and is a potential source of irritation.

Good!

people should pay attention to my idea and thoughts exactly how much they are credible or not.

People can't do this.

people make their most informed decisions

People can't do this. (That is, not in the sense you seem to be implying.)

(And with the people that can do this, it doesn't even matter what you try to do with your credibility. They'll find you.)

Does LW automatically hide posts below a certain threshold? It really should. I'd feel a lot less guilty that way. And trust me, I do feel guilty. Sacrifices must be made.

Presumably you're the Burfoot who wrote or is writing a book on compression as fundamental to epistemology?

Insightful. Will has endorsed "up the variance!" in as many words, but I hadn't made the connection that explicitly maximizing variance like could be a strategy.

Because we have to down vote him.

I'm going with this commenter being Will. What do I win?

Entirely? I wouldn't think that was the case, I guess. Do you mean in the sense that the goodness of jumping off a cliff depends entirely on your goals? (The analogy is carefully chosen—many people regard suicide and social suicide similarly.)

This poll is BROKEN! Abandon it and do it properly!

The Karma sink comment is brilliant (and harmless fun) but the extra comments on the "Yes" and "No" answers don't just bias perception they outright make the poll unanswerable in the current form.

No. He's entertaining even when at his trolliest.

I would vote for a plain "No." but he is most decidedly not entertaining even when at his trolliest. He is boring, repetitive and banal when at his trolliest. It shouldn't be assumed that people who oppose mod influence believe Will's trolliest crap is entertaining - or vice versa.

No. He's entertaining even when at his trolliest.

Yes. Please quiet the madness.

Because Will had explicitly threatened to use sockpuppets for various purposes, he could have used them to manipulate the poll, too. Therefore I vote by means of this comment. The vote: ban him. Reasons:

1. I find nothing entertaining in trolling or intentional obscurity, it's pure noise.
2. WN's behaviour threatens the credibility of others who engage him. (There isn't much left of his own.) And he's good at attracting attention.
3. Not banning him would help to establish a norm that trolling and other uncooperative conduct is accepted here.
4. First and foremost, I want LW be a haven of sanity in the stormy waters of the internet. Please don't let seemingly sophisticated nonsense enter with a pretext of entertainment. I am afraid he could attract similarly crazy people; one Newsome is manageable, but ten of them would seriously damage the site.

By the way, this is the first time I endorse banning someone from an internet discussion forum.

It depends what mod intervention consists of. If you mean banning him, I do not think that is called for at this time. If you mean telling him to stop his antics and warning him that he's headed towards a ban if he continues, that sounds like a good idea. Posts (and comments) that are intentionally obscure, made merely for one's own entertainment, or otherwise trollish are not welcome here, and since the community's downvotes and critical comments haven't gotten through to him it would be good to have a mod convey that message.

CLARIFICATION: I do not have ACCOUNT DELETION powers. As far as I know, those powers don't exist. I have comment/post banning powers and post editing powers. If I started moderating Will, I would be banning excess downvoted comments, not shooing him away wholesale.

I'm in favor of mod intervention lest anyone else waste as much time as I have scratching their head trying to figure out what this thread is about.

I can't decide on a poll option, so here's my opinion: I don't want to see a lot more of Will_Newsome's trolling; I think it damages the site. But just banning him feels like leaving a fascinating mystery unresolved. I want to understand Will's motives, and his insights about simulation, and whatever scary idea he came up with. If there's some way to talk this out in good faith, let's try to do that first. But banning is preferable to endless obfuscated confusion.

Making moderation decisions based on a poll is a horrible idea.

Maybe. But moderation isn't a democracy.

What would a mod do? I can create endless sockpuppets from endless proxies. That's not a solution, I'll just see it as an uncalled-for attack and heighten my antagonism, escalating any conflicts. Don't be rash.

In fact, I commit to causing a lot of headaches for LessWrong and you if you try to delete my account without a month's warning. (Causing headaches for you will be limited to the channel of LessWrong—I'm not threatening you with outside-LessWrong influences in any way. I swear to that.) The actions I will undertake will not be illegal in any way, I'll make sure of that, so don't plan on taking legal action.

I'm perfectly okay with you deleting this post, though, but I'd prefer you didn't.

And remember, I explicitly noted that you won't see posts like this one again.

Also remember, the majority of my Discussion posts are upvoted, very few are downvoted. Look at my profile to check this fact.

Karma sink. WILL NEWSOME IS THE SIMULATOR-GOD!

Will Newsome, we are both schizotypal. We might have a thing or two to discuss.

Well, the first hit for 'will newsome' in a Google site search for me is... http://lesswrong.com/lw/ct8/this_post_is_for_sacrificing_my_credibility/ This post.

I don't see how you could read this post or its comments without concluding that LWers are pretty ambivalent about him, even excluding the most recent comments on this post.

I was mightily impressed by the last post on his last blog, which he now disavows and outright despises. But I thought he had some really interesting ways of looking at the personhood problem.

Credibility moves, like status moves, cannot be self-recognising and still effective. I believe this, you don't, there's our disagreement.

I'm not sure I agree with this either. You can't make a self-recognising move to gain credibility that is effective? Since it should be impossible to (predictably) make a sequence of difficult claims to a greater degree of impressive reliability than previous credibility judgements would allow. This demonstrates that you have at least the capability to give trustworthy utterances. This gives you more credibility when there is a reason to expect you to be attempting to make good claims.

Credibility moves can easily be self-recognizing and still effective. I say that you shouldn't believe me and I will say a lot of meaningless things - it raises the probability that my claims are just playacting.

(You probably know this, but you didn't finish this comment.)

Why is this downvoted? Am I the only one who found this pretty funny?

Farting is an imperfection, and all imperfections are sins against God, Who is perfect. If the fart was intentionally done to be obnoxious then God will know that. If He thinks it's funny then it's good and outweighs the inherent imperfection of farting. Otherwise it's still rude.

To clarify, since there seems to be a misunderstanding, my comment was not specifically directed at you, nor was I a downvoter of this comment.

Please give a one sentence description of your terminal values

Ad maiorem Dei gloriam inque hominum salutem.

Discuss.

Is any of it transmissible? If not, is the reason why it isn't transmissible transmissible? Do your reasons carry over to other people's situations?