Open thread, Sep. 21 - Sep. 27, 2015

This week on the slack: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mpq/lesswrong_real_time_chat/

• AI - pet peeves of dealing with people who don't understand AI
• Effective altruism - what do people think about charities spending money to fundraise. I think that if someone knew that $100 out of the $120 they donated was spent on getting the last $20 out of them, before the rest of the overhead, I think they’d quite rightly feel that that wasn’t quite what they had signed up for.
• finance - investing in local or distant markets
• goals of lesswrong - setting community standards, routines or rituals.
• human relationships - poly strategies, innovation vs conformity, long distance relationships
• lingustics - optimising information transfer is about making it easy to record information and easy to absorb information from a recorded source. Have we done that yet? Can we make technology do that easier for us?
• objectivish - don't know how it got there but, "when instincts go wrong; like when birds fly into windows"
• open - philosphical boogeyman, http://www.rationalitycardinality.com/, debating IRL: the topic of is it ethical to profit off war?, meta:slack, paying out philosophy...
• Parenting - dealing with tantrums, strategies about managing kids; treating the problem like an adult one (if an adult stood in a hallway and refused to move; eventually the police would be called to remove them)
• philosophy - moral realism, preference utilitarianism, animals as a fraction of the value of a human, Pascal's mugging...
• political talk - update: Australia has a new leader. we talked about history of Australian leadership and stuff.
• programming - people asked for guides on programming and ideas for which lanugages to use,
• real life - dealing with a death in the family. dealing with the pain of a wisdom tooth operation, discussion of work time from the poll in @adamzerner's post in the last OT.
• resources and links - its a link-dump home for useful posts. i.e. that rationalitycardinality link, a book on NLP, guides to things, some waitbutwhy links...
• rss feed - we have an RSS feed of any post on LW or SSC that notifies of posts if you are in the channel.
• Science - musk and his silly publicity about blowing up mars. (hit it with a nuke to create an atmosphere or something)
• startups - new tech startups, earlier: startup ideas
• travelling - low cost travelling.
• welcome - everyone answers the questions: "Would you like to introduce yourself? Where are you from? What do you do with your time? What are you working on?"

Feel free to join us. Active meetup time: A time to try to get lots of people online to talk about things is going to be chosen soon, probably a 12 hour window or so. (coming sooon)

Edit: we have over 100 people who have signed up. Not nearly that many people are active, but each day something interesting happens...

I recently laid myself out on train tracks but chickened out on getting struck by a train out of concern that train might be designed to mangle trespasses without killing them. My new antidepressants don't seem to be doing particularly anything, I don't enjoy basically anything and I feel hollow constantly. I just want to feel. And the thought that motivates most things I do creeps up and says: 'why don't you try something new? maybe it will change things?'. And I blindly follow that thought into a new dilemma. Later that night (incidentally, bi awareness day) I signed up to Grindr and accepted the first invitation for sex I was offered. I received anal sex, my first time, and was potentially infected by HIV when my partner surreptitiously removed his condom. Now I'm taking post-exposure prophylaxis. A few days in it's hit me. I feel like the fog of my life, of trivial non-consequence, whim, impulse and irrationality is falling away. I can't ignore the call to rationality, nor can I passively aggressively skirt around legitimate self-improvement by lounging around a site like this without using it for its intended purpose.

I stopped taking drugs when someone I respected told me "I need to sort my life out" or something to that effect. I'm starting to realise that, although nobody here has said that broadly, specific troubleshooting over my posting history have pointed towards that verdict.

I am going to leave this place. I don't intend to delete this account. I hope I can look back upon it with maturity in the future. Clarity is dead. If I create a new account in the future I expect my posting to have radically improved grammar, subject-matter, frequency, civility and formatting.

My time with this account has helped me learn starkly unclear I was in the beginning. Ironically, as my name indicates, I thought this was my strength. I had a previous account before this where I posted non-stop for around 6 or 7 hours in one evening, mostly direct quotes from Wikipedia. It was terrible. I thought I was making a valuable contribution, haha. Before that, I had an account and couldn't even figure out how to post. It was an useful barrier to maintain the quality of the site. As is this action, voluntary self-censorship, I hope: I'm exiling myself from this place till at least the end of the year, and another. 31 December 2016. I don't what my new account name will be, or how long if ever I'll take to fess up and take responsibility for my contributions via this account. But if I do return, it will be because I want to make a positive contribution to the community, and not to use it for perceived personal gain irrespective of impact on the community.

Perhaps I'll see you in 2016, LWers, perhaps I won't. Thank you for all you've done for me, and personal messages of support I've received over time and any ways in which I might have been a negative influence on the community.

Proof of HIV PREP - 'pics or it didn't happen' - 'm3100' was written on the white tablet '4331 gilead' was written on the blue tablet.

Goodbye, whether it be forever or till next time, Clarity

Edit: exile for an arbitrary time frame is stupid. I'm back.

What Does the Future Hold for Kim Suozzi's Cryogenically Frozen Brain?

http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/what-does-future-hold-kim-suozzis-cryogenically-frozen-brain

Where can one find information on the underlying causes of phenomena? I have noticed that most educational resources discuss superficial occurrences and trends but not their underlying causes. For example, this Wikipedia article discusses the happenings in the Somali Civil War but hardly discusses the underlying motivations of each side and why the war turned out how it did. Of course, such discussions are often opinionated and have no clear-cut answers, perhaps making Wikipedia a sub-optimal place for them.

I know LW might not be the best place to ask this, but my intuition suggests that LWers may care more about this deeper-level understanding, so may be able to suggest resources.

Possibly the most enthusiastic / impressive endorsement I've ever seen for a rationality-type book:

Every country should scrap a year or two of math education and require all citizens to read this book instead.

Jonathan Haidt praising Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking by Richard Nisbett

Anybody read the book? Do you agree with Haidt?

Very interesting paper: Eric Schwitzgebel, 1% Skepticism. What's the probability that some form of radical skepticism is correct? And can that have any practical ramifications?

Some interesting information about omega-3 in the diet: it seems that the Inuit (whose traditional diet includes huge amounts of omega-3) have genetic adaptations in their fatty acid metabolism.

[Link] Scott Adams' The Persuasion Reading List

Scott Adams' apparently has a his own version of the sequences and even has structured it into steps that bridge the inferential gap to the points he wants to get across. I notice that there is some self-promotion but overall it seems like a sensible list. What do you think?

What literature is available on who will be given moral consideration in a superintelligence's coherent extrapolated volition (CEV), and how much weight each agent will be given?

Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence mentions that it is an open problem as to whether AIs, non-human animals, currently deceased people, etc should be given moral consideration, and whether the values of those who aid in creating the superintelligence should be given more weight than that of others. However, Bostrom does not actually answer these questions, other than slightly advocating everyone being given equal weight in the CEV. The abstracts of other papers on CEV don't mention this topic, so I am doubtful on the usefulness of reading their entireties.

How Soylent and Oculus Could Fix The Prison System

here’s one way we could rebuild the prison system:

Step 1: Soylent

Step 2: Oculus Rift

Step 3: Health and hygiene

Step 4: A simulation that rewards good behavior

Step 5: Administration

Excerpt:

Prisoners have cellmates and gym time and free time in the prison yard because solitary confinement makes you go nuts. You need human contact if you don’t want to pop out of prison a crazy person. The problem is these places are where all the violence happens.

However, you could take the fear factor out of prisons by simply making all socialization happen through virtual reality. Bonus, you could deliver rich education through VR as well.

Virtual reality headsets are so good now (and getting better) that they can make your brain feel like you’re actually somewhere else. I get the same feeling in the pit of my stomach when I’m standing on a cliff in virtual reality as I do when I’m experiencing heights IRL.

By equipping every inmate with an Oculus Rift headset in his or her own cell, you could isolate prisoners from violence without isolating them from people. Put all the prisoners inside Second Life, Prison Edition, give them all a headset, and let them build virtual characters. You could design an awesome system for rehabilitation, give access to e-learning tools, Kindle books, Minecraft and other digital tools for creativity (prison is boring), psychologist sessions (the psychologist could log in remotely from anywhere in the world), and even handle all correspondence and prison visits from relatives and friends electronically.

What this eliminates: prison yards, prison libraries, packages and letters secretly containing drugs or shanks.

All y'all should like this.

I'm curious which of the two major political parties in the US (and left wing vs. right wing parties more generally) people think is most likely to reduce existential risk. My current view is that the Democrats (and parties of the left) are since they're more likely to favor policies which reduce the threat of climate change (a tail end existential risk and a potential destabilizing force) and are more likely to favor nuclear non-proliferation. However, I know my own opinions might be biased by the fact that I agree with left wing parties on most other less important issues. Which party do you think would do the most to reduce existential risk and how substantial do you think the difference is?

Brave New World, Chapter 17:

ART, SCIENCE–you seem to have paid a fairly high price for your happiness," said the Savage, when they were alone. "Anything else?"

"Well, religion, of course," replied the Controller. "There used to be something called God–before the Nine Years' War. But I was forgetting; you know all about God, I suppose."

"Well …" The Savage hesitated. He would have liked to say something about solitude, about night, about the mesa lying pale under the moon, about the precipice, the plunge into shadowy darkness, about death. He would have liked to speak; but there were no words. Not even in Shakespeare.

The Controller, meanwhile, had crossed to the other side of the room and was unlocking a large safe set into the wall between the bookshelves. The heavy door swung open. Rummaging in the darkness within, "It's a subject," he said, "that has always had a great interest for me." He pulled out a thick black volume. "You've never read this, for example."

The Savage took it. "The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments," he read aloud from the title-page. "Nor this." It was a small book and had lost its cover.

"The Imitation of Christ."

"Nor this." He handed out another volume.

"The Varieties of Religious Experience. By William James."

"And I've got plenty more," Mustapha Mond continued, resuming his seat. "A whole collection of pornographic old books. God in the safe and Ford on the shelves." He pointed with a laugh to his avowed library–to the shelves of books, the rack full of reading-machine bobbins and sound-track rolls.

"But if you know about God, why don't you tell them?" asked the Savage indignantly. "Why don't you give them these books about God?"

"For the same reason as we don't give them Othello: they're old; they're about God hundreds of years ago. Not about God now."

"But God doesn't change."

"Men do, though."

"What difference does that make?"

"All the difference in the world," said Mustapha Mond. He got up again and walked to the safe. "There was a man called Cardinal Newman," he said. "A cardinal," he exclaimed parenthetically, "was a kind of Arch-Community-Songster."

"'I Pandulph, of fair Milan, cardinal.' I've read about them in Shakespeare."

"Of course you have. Well, as I was saying, there was a man called Cardinal Newman. Ah, here's the book." He pulled it out. "And while I'm about it I'll take this one too. It's by a man called Maine de Biran. He was a philosopher, if you know what that was."

"A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven and earth," said the Savage promptly.

"Quite so. I'll read you one of the things he did dream of in a moment. Meanwhile, listen to what this old Arch-Community-Songster said." He opened the book at the place marked by a slip of paper and began to read. "'We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters. We are God's property. Is it not our happiness thus to view the matter? Is it any happiness or any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may be thought so by the young and prosperous. These may think it a great thing to have everything, as they suppose, their own way–to depend on no one–to have to think of nothing out of sight, to be without the irksomeness of continual acknowledgment, continual prayer, continual reference of what they do to the will of another. But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man–that it is an unnatural state–will do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end …'" Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. "Take this, for example," he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: "'A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false–a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.'" Mustapha Mond shut the book and leaned back in his chair. "One of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didn't dream about was this" (he waved his hand), "us, the modern world. 'You can only be independent of God while you've got youth and prosperity; independence won't take you safely to the end.' Well, we've now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. 'The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.' But there aren't any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?"

"Then you think there is no God?"

"No, I think there quite probably is one."

"Then why? …"

Mustapha Mond checked him. "But he manifests himself in different ways to different men. In premodern times he manifested himself as the being that's described in these books. Now …"

"How does he manifest himself now?" asked the Savage.

"Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren't there at all."

I have a casual interest in religious conversion as an empirical psychological phenomenon. The philosopher William James makes the case for studying religious experience empirically in one of his books published over a century ago - The Varieties of Religious Experience - so the idea has circulated for quite a while.

I think we might have an example of an internet figure undergoing an Augustinian sort of spiritual crisis documented online, namely the pickup artist Roosh Valizadeh. Roosh has posted and said lately that he doesn't enjoy his sexual conquests as much as he used to. Just the other day he posted "Junk Food Sex," where he recounts his reaction to one his Polish pickups:

http://www.rooshv.com/junk-food-sex

Early in the summer I met a Polish girl on a weekend night. I convinced her to have a drink with me in a different bar and then two hours later I invited her back to my place. We had sex all night long. I had four orgasms with her, and each one felt immensely pleasurable, but the following day I had a weird feeling, almost as if I did something wrong. I ignored this feeling and contacted her again one week later. She returned to my apartment, and during the sex act I felt powerful bodily satisfaction. While I was laying my strokes inside her, I savored the fact that I could sleep with a girl 13 years younger than myself, but after my orgasm completed, and our bodies remained still, the same negative feeling came forth within me.

Now, this sounds familiar if you have read autobiographical accounts of religious conversions, like the ones quoted in James's study. And especially if you have read Augustine's Confessions, where Augustine after having several sexual relationships in his youth, famously prays, "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet," because he feels the conflict between his waning sexual desires and his growing "spiritual" yearnings in his middle age.

If Roosh does "go Augustine" on us after his youth of debauchery, I will find that fascinating to observe.

Oh, I forgot to add to the post below another source of my science-fictional view of sexual relationships: Robert Ettinger's nonfiction book Man Into Superman, which I read at the impressionable age of 14 in 1974. Scroll down to page 68, "Transsex and Supersex":

http://www.cryonics.org/images/uploads/misc/ManIntoSuperman.pdf

Richard Spencer interviews Roger Devlin, author of Sexual Utopia in Power:

http://www.radixjournal.com/podcast/2015/9/23/the-rakes-progress

To me sexual relationships have always had this weirdly science-fictional aspect about them. During my teenage years in the 1970's, I read science fiction novels which depicted sexual situations - notably Brave New World and Stranger in a Strange Land, along with novels like Asimov's The Gods Themselves and Clarke's Imperial Earth. I also saw the science fiction film Logan’s Run when it came out in theaters, with its depiction of a sexual utopia, including a hooking up technology which combines features of Tinder and Star Trek-like transporters.

Like it does for most teenage boys, to me sex sounded like an incredibly cool thing to try to experience as soon as possible, especially given how the novels I read and how at least one movie I saw portrayed it in "futuristic" settings. But because I had no access to sexual opportunities at the time, I had to postpone sex to some indefinite date in the future. Sex for me eventually turned into a vague science-fictional aspiration like, oh, visiting Mars or something.

Science fiction writers tend to know their readership – mainly nerdy boys like me who don’t attract girls – so I wonder if some of them portray sex as an implicitly futuristic experience on purpose. I ran across an example a couple years ago in A. Bertram Chandler’s novel, The Road to the Rim, originally published in 1967. I could have read this novel as a teen, I suppose, but it escaped my notice at the time. Chandler in this work introduces a recurring character named John Grimes, an interstellar explorer whom I have seen described as “Horatio Hornblower in space.” Baen has recently republished all of Chandler’s Grimes novels in several omnibus editions.

Anyway, the first novel shows Grimes as a young recruit into the Federation Survey Service going on his first interstellar voyage. The plot involves another officer on the starship named Jane Pentecost. The following happens between these two characters:

Suddenly she bent down to kiss him. It was intended to be no more than a light brushing of the lips, but Grimes was suddenly aware, with his entire body, of the closeness of her, of the warmth and the scent of her, and almost without volition his arms went around her, drawing her closer still to him. She tried to break away, but it was only a halfhearted effort. . .

Somehow the buttons of her uniform shirt had come undone, and her nipples were taut against Grimes’ bare chest. Somehow her shorts had been peeled away from her hips – unzippered by whom? and how? – and somehow Grimes’ own garments were no longer the last barrier between them.

He was familiar enough with female nudity; he was one of the great majority who frequented the naked beaches in preference to those upon which bathing costumes were compulsory. He knew what a naked woman looked like – but this was different. It was not the first time that he had kissed a woman – but it was the first time that he had kissed, and been kissed by, an unclothed one. It was the first time that he had been alone with one.

What was happening he had read about often enough – and, like most young men, he had seen his share of pornographic films. But this was different. This was happening to him.

And for the first time.

Keep in mind that Chandler published this in 1967. I find it interesting that Chandler postulated in his imaginary future that porn would become plentiful and socially acceptable – a shrewd prophecy on his part, given the emergence and pervasiveness of internet porn in the early 21st Century. This passage shows a kind of male adolescent fantasy-fulfillment, and I think Chandler wrote it that way deliberately to appeal to the young nerds he knew would read this novel.

If I had read this story back as a teenager, it would have fit into the pattern of the other science fiction I read in those years about sex as a “futuristic” experience, and not as a real, ordinary possibility in the here-and-now, grounded in biological reality. I might have thought that if I couldn’t have my “first time” with my unrequited high school crush Shelley Conrad in the back seat of my parents’ Ford Maverick, I would have to wait until I became a space colonist in my 20’s, or later, where I would meet some Jane Pentecost-like woman on a space ship or orbital colony who would obligingly initiate me into an adult sex life.

Forty years later, my Jane Pentecost and I still haven’t crossed paths that I know of.