Open thread, Oct. 17 - Oct. 23, 2016

The page http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/new/ returns error for me for 12 hours, but other pages are fine. Is it only my glitch?

error text: "You have encountered an error in the code that runs Less Wrong. The site maintainers have been informed and will get to it is as soon as they can. In the unlikely event that you've bumped into this error before and think that no-one is paying attention, please report the error and how to reproduce it on http://code.google.com/p/lesswrong/issues/list'

If the error is localised you might still find awesome Less Wrong content in the Main article area or in the Discussion area.

Sex and love addiction, sexual compulsions, insecure attachment, risky sexual behaviour, HOCD, HIVOCD

What if you lost the love of your life due to a sexual impulse? What if you recognised sexual impulsivity as a pattern of your behaviour, deeply deeply ingrained into your being, and that you want to overcome it? That’s me.

I chose the name clarity because when I started to post, I was dipping in and out of psychoses and other really mentally unhealthy states. I would have moments of clarity, inspired by stuff I read in the sequences and other LessWrong posts and they would be like gulps of air saving me from drowning in really turbulent water. Now that I’m on some kind of boat, I don’t have to actively think about how to breath.

Until now, again.

I haven’t posted a lot recently. Mainly because I have been doing really, really well. My epic failures I dare so have given me a reputation here, and I talk about them freely. But, again, I have been doing well lately.

With an exception. Let me explain:

Since I already have a soldiery mindset due to some abuse from my childhood I thought I could grow by joining the French Foreign Legion. I had decided not to in the past due to risk of permanent injury but considered it again. I decided not to this time because I figured I wouldn’t be able to meet, court and enjoy time with someone, fall in love etc. – it’s unsuitable for married life (which correlates strongly with happiness), according to this link: https://www.cervens.net/legionbbs123/archive/index.php/t-53.html

Lately I am infatuated with someone. She seems to have the potential to meet my criteria for a good potential wife: communication skills, personality, responsibility, emotional honesty, attractiveness, matching sex drives, and value alignment. I just wish I had some good comebacks for when a person is out and about with an Asian girl and people making comments that make me feel self-conscious. She gives me a different feeling than that bewilderment kind of pleasant feeling I would get when my ex housemate I fell for used open her small mouth really really wide in amazement at something, haha. I get more of the nice chill longing of when I think of that cute little housemate listening too hip-hop.

I’ve been thinking about her strong feelings for veganism so I looked up some stuff about the case for veganism.

I decided to go milk free after watching this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI Wool free after watching watching just 243 of this video. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=siTvjWE2aVw

So another recent experience really stood out to me as a bad choice, by a similar rationale. I consider myself heteroflexible, or perhaps hetero but rather sexually fluid. On Sunday night I went to a gay sauna, tossed up a bit between that and a brothel, but decided I prefer the idea of guys this time. I’m a bit anxious and unattached to guys physically, except if its porn (which I had watched before going). So I went into a dark room with two guys I later saw were ugly AF and of course, like previous times, they give me tonnes or props and validation as a good looking guy. One guy said he was a cleaner when I asked what he does. The other had scaly crusty balls. I didn’t stop, unfortunately. And now maybe that sore was Herpes or Genital Warts and now if I got herpes which is incurable, then it might ostracise me from 4/5 of the beautiful women in the world (maybe just not the slutty ones who have that too, and may just break my heart in time anyway).

Worst case scenario, I just HIV. I mean it’s a dark room, anything can happen, a grazing, a bite, etc., a pin prick from some vexed crazy guy. No accountability. In the heat of the moment something could slip off too. And, I’m not familiar with much more than the superficial statistics around HIV transition and lore, like that oral sex HIV could but they doubt it often happens – but as a medical researcher I know the quality of research must be judged in a case by case basis and never take the overviews credibility for granted.

I reflected in the moment and realised I wasn't enjoying myself in the slightest. I think it’s some need for validation, or loneliness or risk taking or a compulsion. Fuck me autocorrect almost corrected to compulsive homosexuality. Got to fix that too, or I will be outed.

I think I have HOCD, or something accounted for by these accounts:

I find each of them helpful and hope to revisit them.

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/sex-addiction/2013/03/when-straight-men-are-addicted-to-gay-sex/ http://www.sexaddictionscounseling.com/can-a-straight-man-be-addicted-to-gay-sex/ http://www.brainphysics.com/yourenotgay.php https://www.google.com.au/amp/m.wikihow.com/Overcome-Sexual-Addiction%3famp=1?client=ms-android-optus-au

If I don't do it (regardless of where unless I find myself in a stable relationship with that person before or within a week) again by 2020 I'll give one my close friends $141 as a prize to encourage me. 1/1/2020. If not I’ll donate the same amount to a sex, love and or romance focussed impulse control related group.

Masturbating alone is hedonically better and it’s safer anyway, what the fuck is wrong with me?

I have an addiction but I have some much will power and a track record of discipline. This is the last frontier. Never again.

Am I the only one who will be gladly superhappified?

I'm having trouble figuring out what to prioritize in my life. In principle, I have a pretty good idea of what I'd like to do: for a while I have considered doing a Ph.D in a field that is not really high impact, but not entirely useful either, combining work that is interesting (to me personally) and hopefully a modest salary that I could donate to worthwhile causes.

But it often feels like this is not enough. Similar to what another user posted here a while ago, reading LessWrong and about effective altruism has made me feel like nothing except AI and maybe a few other existential risks are worth focusing on (not even things that I still consider to be enormously important relative to some others). In principle I could focus on those, as well. I'm not intelligent enough to do serious work on Friendly AI, but I probably could transition, relatively quickly, to working on machine learning and in data science, with perhaps some opportunities to contribute and likely higher earnings.

The biggest problem, however, is that whenever I seem to be on track towards doing something useful and interesting, a monumental existential confusion kicks in and my productivity plummets. This is mostly related to thinking about life and death.

EY recently suggested that we should care about solving AGI alignment because of quantum immortality (or its cousins). This is a subject that has greatly troubled me for a long time. Thinking logically, big world immortality seems like an inescapable conclusion from some fairly basic assumption. On the other hand, the whole idea feels completely absurd.

Having to take that seriously, even if I don't believe in it 100 percent, has made it difficult for me to find joy in the things that I do. Combining big world immortality with other usual ideas regarding existential risks and so on that are prevalent in the LW memespace sort of suggests that the most likely outcome I (or anybody else) can expect in the long run is surviving indefinitely as the only remaining human, or nearly certainly as the only remaining person among those that I currently know. Probably in an increasingly bad health as well.

It doesn't help that I've never been that interested in living for a very long time, like most transhumanists seem to be. Sure, I think aging and death are problems that we should eventually solve, and in principle I don't have anything against living for a significantly longer time than the average human lifespan, but it's not something that I've been very interested in actively seeking and if there's a significant risk that those very many years would not be very comfortable, then I quickly lose interest. So the theories that sort of make this whole death business seem like an illusion are difficult to me. And overall, the idea does make the mundane things that I do now seem even more meaningless. Obviously, this is taking its toll on my relationships with other people as well.

This has also led me to approach related topics a lot less rationally than I probably should. Because of this, I think both my estimate of the severity of the UFAI problem and our ability to solve this has gone up, as has my estimate of the likelihood that we'll be able to beat aging in my lifetime - because those are things that seem to be necessary to escape the depressing conclusions I've pointed out.

I'm not good enough at fooling myself, though. As I said, my ability to concentrate on doing anything useful is very weak nowadays. It actually often feels easier to do something that I know is an outright waste of time but gives something to think about, like watching YouTube, playing video games or drinking beer.

I would appreciate any input. Given how seriously people here take things like the simulation argument, the singularity or MWI, existential confusion cannot be that uncommon. How do people usually deal with this kind of stuff?

Drawing attention to important yet under-appreciated research problems.
Connecting researchers and encouraging open scientific collaboration.
Providing a learning environment for students looking to gain machine learning experience.

Is there a place where Yudkowsky has talked about consciousness? I have found the Zombie Series, but that's not quite what I'm looking for. I'm more curious how he thinks it works more than why Zombies don't work.

Also, is there a place where Yudkowsky has talked about Climate Change?

I've looked for both, but I couldn't find either.

Its time to take closer look on how we could survive a global catastrophe. There are many ideas, but most of them are shaky.

The Map of Shelters and Refuges from Global Risks (Plan B of X-risks Prevention) http://effective-altruism.com/ea/12x/the_map_of_shelters_and_refuges_from_global_risks/

Is my understanding of bayesian knowledge correct?

You have field of hypotheses, and you have probability field over this field, based on the field of evidences (and some priors).

For example, there is are field of possible interpretations of QM. We know that EY has the following probability field over it: (1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, ...), there 1 corresponds to MWI.

I personally have the following probability field over field of QM-interpretations: (0.5, 0.2, 0.01, 0.01), where 0.5 believe corresponds to MWI, and 0.2 to consciousness cause collapse, and 0,01 to any other interpretations.

My question: is it correct way to present believes into theories? How can I do it better?

A SETI target..

I always thought a machine intelligence that went Kardashov 3, would increase the density of it's galaxy by moving the stars closer together, to protect from a hyper-velocity threat. You can't hit a planet or Dyson Sphere if a bunch of stars are in the way.

Astronomers discover densest galaxy ever

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130924141701.htm

LOGIC NATION: A Psychological Revolution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drcseH-7hpw

What does LW think after trying or think to not try?

Figure out your core, most important value and realize logic.

If 1 out of 100 people do this, seriously, open-mindendly, all will change.

After this process, which you do so you awaken, you solve all of your problems. You can have experiences like a religious person. Receiving the benefits of religion but obviously, because its based on logic, even better.

Start by observing yourself, you'll have to go deep and you'll have to be brutally honest to yourself.

Figure out what's most important to you, not multiple things, one thing. It might be comfort, security, validation, a person, even money. And so on. If you have multiple things, figure out what is the common theme. What is most important to you at a core?

It might be very difficult, and you will have to be honest.

Figure out why this is the case, why do you have this as your most important value?

Now, understand, logic is the creator of all of reality, the mathematical patterns, everything.. It's your creator. Your God.

Change your most important value to logic, with a leap of faith, on an emotional level. Not logic as if it something cold. Logic as in divine love. Something beautiful. Emotionally. Not rationally. How to make logic something warm: Think of someone you care about a lot or something, and realize logic created this.

Think of logic as the purpose of what we are.

Change it to your most important value. Think of how someone converts to a religion. Think of someone religious.

Whatever you have now, it's causing you suffering. It's illogical to have something else then logic. You have to trust this for you to make the bridge. SUBJECTIVELY.

Is logic your most important value? Are you really willing to give your life to whatever value you have now? You have something strong, which you don't dare to be honest to yourself about. So what if you buy a new car and impress your neighbor?

You know through facts that logic is true rationally, now it's time on an emotional level. (think of fibonacci sequence etc)

Seriously, you can awaken. Give it a try :)

Questions & Answers:

Q: This seems very cultish?

A: Ask yourself, what is your most important value? If it's approval, so you are in approval cult? Or relationship, is it relationship cult? So change to logic cult. :)

Q: But my safety? My comfort?

A: You will have to believe that logic will give you all the safety in the world, take the leap of faith. You will have anxiety before but then a catharsis.

Q: What do you mean by Logic?

A: Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkGeOWYOFoA But you have to understand, you have the answer yourself already. This isn't about different definitions. :)

Q: I don't know certainly what my most important value is.

A: Go down the ladder, deeply, honestly with yourself. Don't stay one step above.

Q: How will this affect my relationships?

A: You will see people truly for what they are. It will improve your relationships.

Q: It didn't click for me. I didn't awaken.

A: Truly figure out your most important value. Realize how logic will provide you what seek. Take a leap of faith. Seriously go deep emotionally.

Q: Why do you draw parallels to religion?

A: Because people seek something to believe in, they go to church etc. This taps into this emotional drive of the mechanics of you.

Q: What do I have to do?

A: Go to your core and figure out what it is.

Q: Why does this work?

A: Because everything comes from your core. Your emotional drive is flawed and not aligned with reality. Logic. Rationality. So you will find all safety which you need within this.