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Comment by jeronimo196 on MIRI announces new "Death With Dignity" strategy · 2023-04-18T17:24:53.558Z · LW · GW

"The mystery is why the community doesn't implement obvious solutions. Hiring PR people is an obvious solution. There's a posting somewhere in which Anna Salamon argues that there is some sort of moral hazard involved in professional PR, but never explains why, and everyone agrees with her anyway."

 

""You", plural, the collective, can speak as freely as you like ...in private."

 

Suppose a large part of the community wants to speak as freely as it likes in public, and the mystery is solved.

We even managed to touch upon the moral hazard involved in professional PR - insofar as it is a filter between what you believe and what you say publicly.

Comment by jeronimo196 on MIRI announces new "Death With Dignity" strategy · 2023-04-18T02:38:29.497Z · LW · GW

Semantics. 

Good PR requires you to put a filter between what you think is true and what you say.

Comment by jeronimo196 on MIRI announces new "Death With Dignity" strategy · 2023-04-17T12:01:30.344Z · LW · GW

The level of PR you aim for puts an upper limit to how much "radical" honesty you can have.

If you aim for perfect PR, you can have 0 honesty.

If you aim for perfect honesty, you can have no PR. lesswrong doesn't go that far, by a long shot - even without a PR team present.

 

Most organization do not aim for honesty at all.

 

The question is where do we draw the line.

 

Which brings us to "Disliking racism isn't some weird idiosyncratic thing that only Gerard has." 

 

From what I understand, Gerard left because he doesn't like discussions about race/IQ. 

Which is not the same thing as racism.

 

I, personally, don't want lesswrong to cater to people who can not tolerate a discussion.

Comment by jeronimo196 on MIRI announces new "Death With Dignity" strategy · 2023-04-14T13:23:45.702Z · LW · GW

"It's sad that our Earth couldn't be one of the more dignified planets that makes a real effort, correctly pinpointing the actual real difficult problems and then allocating thousands of the sort of brilliant kids that our Earth steers into wasting their lives on theoretical physics.  But better MIRI's effort than nothing."

 

To be fair, a lot of philosophers and ethicist have been trying to discover what does "good" mean and how humans should go about aligning with it.

Furthermore, a lot of effort has gone into trying to align goals and incentives on all levels - from the planetary to the personal scale.

People have actually tried to create bonus systems that cannot be gamed. 

 

Maybe all of this does not rise to the standard of actually achieving the desired result - but then again, neither has MIRI, so far.

 

So, for anyone depressed at how little dignity we get to die with, the good news is that people have been working (at least tangentially) on the alignment problem for a long time.

 

The bad news is, of course, that people have been working on the alignment problem for a long time.

Comment by jeronimo196 on MIRI announces new "Death With Dignity" strategy · 2023-04-14T09:12:07.670Z · LW · GW

For any statement one can make, there will be people "alienated" (=offended?) by it. 

 

David Gerard was alienated by a race/IQ discussion and you think that should've been avoided. 

But someone was surely equally alienated by discussions of religion, evolution, economics, education and our ability to usefully define words. 

 

Do we value David Gerard so far above any given creationist, that we should hire a PR department to cater to him and people like him specifically? 

 

There is an ongoing effort to avoid overtly political topics (Politics is the mind-killer!) - but this effort is doomed beyond a certain threshold, since everything is political to some extent. Or to some people.

 

To me, a concerted PR effort on part of all prominent representatives to never say anything "nasty" would be alienating. I don't think a community even somewhat dedicated to "radical" honesty could abide a PR department - or vice versa.

 

 

 

 

TL;DR - LessWrong has no PR department, LessWrong needs no PR department!

Comment by jeronimo196 on Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom · 2021-12-21T08:35:16.275Z · LW · GW

Tolstoy sounds ignorant of game theory - probably because he was dead when it was formulated.

Long story short, non-cooperating organisms regularly got throttled by cooperating ones, which is how we evolved to be cooperating.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Spooky Action at a Distance: The No-Communication Theorem · 2021-11-19T10:24:36.218Z · LW · GW

14 years too late, but I can never pass on an opportunity to recommend "Essence of Calculus" by 3blue1brown on youtube.

It is a series of short clips, explaining Calculus concepts and core ideas without too much formalism and with plenty of geometric examples.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Politics and Awful Art · 2021-10-04T07:27:23.380Z · LW · GW

"Dear God" by XTC is my favourite atheist hymn. On the other hand, "Transcendence" with Johnny Depp made me feel empathy for christians watching bible flicks - I so wanted to like the damn thing.

As to OPs main point, "politics is the art killer" has recently entered the discourse of almost every fandom (if the franchise is still ongoing). Congratulations on pointing out yet another problem years before it became so exacerbated, that people can no longer ignore it.

Comment by jeronimo196 on The Majority Is Always Wrong · 2021-09-28T16:02:19.735Z · LW · GW

Reverse stupidity is not wisdom. Here we have reversed ad populus (aka The Hipster's Fallacy). Pepsi and Macs are not strictly superior to their more popular counterparts by dent of existing. Rather, their existence is explained by comparative advantage in some cases for some users.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Dark Side Epistemology · 2021-09-28T07:51:42.493Z · LW · GW

I've heard Peterson accuse feminists of disregarding what is true in the name of ideology on many occasions.

Sam Harris initially spent an hour arguing against Peterson's redefinition of "truth" to include a "moral dimension". They've clashed about it since, with no effect. Afaik, "the bible is true because it is useful" is central component of Peterson's worldview.

To be fair, I believe Peterson has managed to honestly delude himself on this point and is not outright lying about his beliefs.

Nevertheless, when prompted to think of a "General Defense of Fail", attempting to redefine the word "truth" in order to protect one's ideology came to mind very quickly.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Congratulations to Paris Hilton · 2021-09-22T08:35:20.676Z · LW · GW

If we accept MWI, cryonics is a backdoor to Quantum Immortality, one which waiting and hoping may not offer.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Two More Things to Unlearn from School · 2021-09-11T19:07:35.376Z · LW · GW

Parents getting to their 9 to 5 jobs on time is more important.

Comment by jeronimo196 on SSC Journal Club: AI Timelines · 2021-09-11T13:24:15.405Z · LW · GW

Going any further would require to taboo "task".

I agree your reading explains the differences in responses given in the survey.

Comment by jeronimo196 on SSC Journal Club: AI Timelines · 2021-09-03T13:55:50.891Z · LW · GW

Creating an AI that does linguistic analysis of a given dataset better than me is easier than creating an AI that is a better linguist than me because it actually requires additional tasks such as writing academic papers.

If AI is not better than you at task "write an academic paper", it is not at the level, specified in the question.

If a task requires output for both the end result and the analysis used to reach it, both shall be outputted. At least that is how I understand "better at every task".

Comment by jeronimo196 on [deleted post] 2021-09-03T13:31:59.849Z

Thank you for the link.

Right, none of our models are philosophically grounded. But, does that make them all equal? That's what the post sounds like to me:

Well maybe: deny the concept of objective truth, of which there can only be one, and affirm subjectivism and pluralism.

To me, this seems like the ultimate Fallacy of Gray.

Then again, I am not well read at philosophy, so my comments might be isomorphic to "Yay pragmatism! Go objectivity!", while those may or may not be compatible.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Rationality Quotes: February 2011 · 2021-08-29T00:40:09.243Z · LW · GW

The IoT (internet of things) comes to mind. Why not experience WiFi connectivity issues while trying to use the washing machine?

Everything trying to become a subscription service is another example (possibly related to IoT). My favourite is a motorcycle lifesaving airbag vest, which won't activate during a motorcycle crash, if the user misses a monthly payment. The company is called Klim, and in fairness, the user can check whether the airbag is ready for use, before getting on their bike.

Comment by jeronimo196 on SSC Journal Club: AI Timelines · 2021-08-28T22:22:29.578Z · LW · GW

Extractable internal data is only needed during troubleshooting. During normal operation, only the task result is needed.

As for the time/process-flow management, I already consider it a separate task - and probably the one that would benefit the most drastically by being automated, at least in my case.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Book Review: Age of Em · 2021-08-28T22:04:19.690Z · LW · GW

Yes, there probably is an in-universe explanation for why organic pilots are necessary. I think droids were shown to be worse fighters than clones (too slow/stupid ?) in the Prequels.

However, the implied prediction that FTL travel will be discovered before AI pilots superior to humans still seems unlikely.

Comment by jeronimo196 on [deleted post] 2021-08-28T21:19:52.108Z

I don't see how acknowledging that different models work in different contexts necessitates giving up the search for objective truth.

Let's say that in order to reduce complexity, we separate Physics into two fields - Relativistic Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics - whose models currently don't mesh together. I think we can achieve that without appealing to subjectivity, or abandoning the search of an unifying model. Acknowledging the limitations of our current models seems enough.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Training Better Rationalists? · 2021-08-20T00:12:23.932Z · LW · GW

After the training begins, something like 80% of the recruits drop out during Hell Week. Seals are selected for their motivation, which is not available to everyone headed for a warzone.

On the other hand, if you'd really like an existential treat to get you going, you may consider looking into the problem of goal alignment in AGI, or aging.

Comment by jeronimo196 on God and Moses have a chat · 2021-08-19T19:35:29.930Z · LW · GW

I'd ask for everyone to be given Wolverine's healing factor. This would be really helpful and enough to start taking the scenario seriously.

As a side note, Teenage Matrix Overlords are indistinguishable from god from where I am standing.

Comment by jeronimo196 on SSC Journal Club: AI Timelines · 2021-08-19T19:08:16.284Z · LW · GW

The cure for bystander apathy is getting one person to lead by example. Since in this case there are several prominent such examples, a Tragedy of the Commons scenario seems more likely to me.

You are right, it's not possible to tell if this happens implicitly or explicitly (in which case there is nothing to be done anyway).

Comment by jeronimo196 on Answer to Job · 2021-08-19T13:22:07.256Z · LW · GW

I'll be damned - after all these years, a solution to the problem of evil.

I notice I am far less moved than I expected to be. Then again, I didn't expect this to happen at all.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Nobody Is Perfect, Everything Is Commensurable · 2021-08-19T12:57:18.079Z · LW · GW

I don't know that. I was taught about the asteroid years ago and haven't had a reason to doubt it. The last time I came across the subject, was a video by kurzgesagt, explaining that the asteroid wrecked stuff up for years to come, causing earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, among other things.

Comment by jeronimo196 on The Parable Of The Talents · 2021-08-19T12:19:09.642Z · LW · GW

3blue1brown has an excellent youtube series "Essence of Calculus" - which presents the main intuitions geometrically, in a way that finally helped me remember the formulas for longer than a week. Each video is 15 minutes long and I haven't seen a better introduction on the subject.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism · 2021-08-18T23:17:46.142Z · LW · GW

Edit: I realise the post I comment on might've been written before the Sequence on Changing Your Mind I so proudly point to.

I was recently talking to Ozy about a group who believe that society billing thin people is fatphobic, and that everyone needs to admit obese people can be just as attractive and date more of them, and that anyone who preferentially dates thinner people is Problematic. They also want people to stop talking about nutrition and exercise publicly. I sympathize with these people, especially having recently read a study showing that obese people are much happier when surrounded by other obese, rather than skinny people. But realistically, their movement will fail, and even philosophically, I’m not sure how to determine if they have the right to demand what they are demanding or what that question means.

No, they do not have the right to demand what they are demanding. Philosophically, they are demanding the end of free speech and the stigmatization of people's sexual preferences. Imagine what you'd say to a Catholic, demanding we ban religious debates and declare that homosexuals are sinners, and go with that.

Oh, but the Catholics have feelings, too, and all those benefits of a religious community. I seem to remember a whole sequence on Changing Your Mind, the litanies of Gendlin and Tarski, etc. The truth is considered important, because it is useful to know, but also as an end in itself. Are we really ok with hiding it, lest some members of a particular group get offended? Do we think so little of them, that they couldn't bear it? And if so, are we ok to never hear a debate on the topic, for the benefit of the emotionally fragile? I, personally, am not.

And since happiness is often a question of comparison with your peers - which is why social media is bad for you - I am not surprised fat people are happier without skinny people around. (Possible hindsight bias on my part? I am pretty sure I could've predicted that one.) This is also a potential explanation of the living standard/happiness discrepancies in developing countries - at first everyone is similarly poor, then some people are doing better and there is always someone more successful to compare yourself to.

In any case, maybe subjective feelings like happiness and self-esteem are not solely what we should optimize for. Maybe we should include things like life expectancy and quality, just in case feelings lead us astray. Then raising the standard of living starts to make sense, even if the happiness index lags behind considerably.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Guided By The Beauty Of Our Weapons · 2021-08-18T20:43:14.733Z · LW · GW

Ideally, I agree with the premise as a long term strategy, opposed to the short term tactics used at a campaign. But I am not convinced any of the active actors and policymakers would want the rise of the waterline. Why change the system, which elected you? What politician wants electorate, that would actually hold them accountable? What suicidal newspaper would want the question of gun violence answered?

It is possible the educational system is doing exactly what it is supposed to do, and raising the sanity waterline will have to be achieved on people's own time.

Right now antifascists outnumber fascists and so could probably beat them in a fight, but antifascists didn’t come to outnumber fascists by winning some kind of primordial fistfight between the two sides. They came to outnumber fascists because people rejected fascism on the merits.

Um, there was this thing called World War 2, after which Eugenics lost a lot of its previous popularity as a Harvard discipline. And now it is difficult to keep your job in academia, if you show too much interest in intelligence variances between groups, let alone if you wonder how much of it is caused by genetics. And since a second Great War was not entirely unexpected after the Treaty of Versailles, it might be that Nazism lost because of its association with Germany, rather than the other way around.

(I am not saying the Nazis were scientifically correct, by the way. I am just wondering how often would communism be mentioned in campus, if the Cold War had become Warm, before being won.)

Also, the good guys always win - that's how they get to be the good guys (at least for the next 100 years or so). Luckily, better weapons and economy usually ensure that the good guys also happen to have the better scientists and vice versa. That's how progress is made.

Comment by jeronimo196 on In Favor of Niceness, Community, and Civilization · 2021-08-18T18:54:09.630Z · LW · GW

A sane person, calling himself a feminist - not something one sees often represented in the media. Then again this is true of sane people in general - a fact I tend to forget. I wish you luck in defending the movement from the believe-all-women crowd. From the outside, it looks like they've already won.

Leaving feminism aside, there is one area, where liberalism doesn't seem to win - namely income inequality.

And sure, as long as the majority is not squeezed into poverty, this may not be a problem. But since this is the first generation of US citizens to see their average lifespan get shorter, I am not so certain we are headed for liberal utopia after all.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Book Review: Age of Em · 2021-08-18T14:08:31.938Z · LW · GW

Limited field of view and slow decision making, reliant on multiple complex systems for life support.

If a droid or a computer could fly an X-wing, it should.

Comment by jeronimo196 on How The West Was Won · 2021-08-18T11:52:18.870Z · LW · GW

I never said it was just Islam. But you are right - it is not Christians, but rather white people, that are held to a higher standard in this regard (at least by USA liberals).

Comment by jeronimo196 on SSC Journal Club: AI Timelines · 2021-08-15T10:14:00.181Z · LW · GW

Fallacies leading to inability to take action in accordance with their values is one explanation for people's apathy.

Another is that they simply prefer their own short term comfort more than most other values they would care to espouse. I know this to be the case for at least one person, and I am pretty sure there are more.

I am somehow convinced that a perceived loon like Elon Musk opening 20 positions for AI safety researchers, $10 million yearly salary, will have much better luck recruiting, than an elite university offering $100 000 (or the potential candidate's current salary, whatever). In the first case, 5% existential risk for humanity will finally become intolerable. In the second - not so much.

Edit: people leaving Neuralink citing "premature push for human experiments" are evidence against my previous paragraph.

Comment by jeronimo196 on SSC Journal Club: AI Timelines · 2021-08-15T09:38:27.443Z · LW · GW

If my job consists of 20 different tasks, and for each of them there is a separate narrow AI able to outperform me in them, combining them to automate me should not be that difficult.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Should AI Be Open? · 2021-08-15T08:51:29.771Z · LW · GW

"and that one reason we’re not smarter may be that it’s too hard to squeeze a bigger brain through the birth canal" - should be pretty much obliterated by modern Caesarian, but do we see burst of intelligence in last decades?

Reliable contraceptives, combined with unprecedented safety, mean that intelligence is not the evolutionary advantage it once was. People unable or unwilling to use condoms are selected for. Idiocracy is upon us.

Another possibility is that modern Caesarian has not been widespread enough, for long enough, for its effect on intelligence to be noticeable just yet.

Edit: On a related note, I thought of an amusing just so story. I wonder how much of the increase in allergies in the 1st world countries is due to latex allergy being an evolutionary advantage (as opposed to environmental reasons and the access to corticosteroids making a paranoid immune system advantageous in its own right). Probably not much, but amusing to think about.

Comment by jeronimo196 on How The West Was Won · 2021-08-15T05:54:57.800Z · LW · GW

It is only their culture that's under "siege" and it's a different kind of siege involving no laws or planned attempts to erase their cultural ways...

A redneck has seen gay marriage legalised in his lifetime, while homosexuality is still illegal in 71 countries. Islam seems to get a lot more leniency on this topic, compared to Christianity.

Rural British and American Rednecks aren't certainly seeing their resources appropriated by the powers behind the immigrants.

If I remember my history correctly, the Industrial Revolution didn't go so smoothly for the Rural Brits either.

And from a certain point of view (Marx, mainly) a redneck is exploited by the same people pillaging the resources of Burkina Faso (and everywhere else).

Whatever one's opinion on capitalism, seeing the claim that small countries are exploited for resources, while rednecks are not, is bizarre to me.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Highlights From The Comments On Cost Disease · 2021-08-02T16:03:04.608Z · LW · GW

After reading these, I am updating from "greedy capitalists + corrupt officials" to "greedy capitalists + corrupt officials + litigation costs". I expect the administrative bloat is more or less the same in US and Europe, while litigation and official, legal lobbying is not.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Considerations On Cost Disease · 2021-08-02T15:07:47.181Z · LW · GW

Inflation isn't calculated correctly and the market isn't free.

It's what you'd expect to see in an oligarchy - politicians promising less regulation for new businesses or universal healthcare both won't deliver. Unlike OP, who delivers consistently.

On the inflation point, googling CPI: "The Controversy Originally, the CPI was determined by comparing the price of a fixed basket of goods and services spanning two different periods. In this case, the CPI was a cost of goods index (COGI). However, over time, the U.S. Congress embraced the view that the CPI should reflect changes in the cost to maintain a constant standard of living. Consequently, the CPI has evolved into a cost of living index (COLI).

Over the years, the methodology used to calculate the CPI has undergone numerous revisions. According to the BLS, the changes removed biases that caused the CPI to overstate the inflation rate. The new methodology takes into account changes in the quality of goods and substitution. Substitution, the change in purchases by consumers in response to price changes, changes the relative weighting of the goods in the basket. The overall result tends to be a lower CPI. However, critics view the methodological changes and the switch from a COGI to a COLI as a purposeful manipulation that allows the U.S. government to report a lower CPI." (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/consumerpriceindex.asp)

Comment by jeronimo196 on The Categories Were Made For Man, Not Man For The Categories · 2021-07-29T00:36:44.735Z · LW · GW

I once listened to a fellow, arguing that "truth" should have a moral component in its definition, so that only statements beneficial to humanity could be considered "true". On the other hand, dangerous knowledge of civilization ending viruses was harmful, and could only be considered "technically correct", but never "true". He was carving reality so haphazardly, as to only be able to call "true" The Bible and "Crime and Punishment" by Dostoevsky. Although, how he imagines to have achieved this before humanity has ended, escapes me.

I haven't listened to him since.

Meanwhile, my own definition of what a woman is, is hopelessly outdated. Others in my position have tried to argue semantics. I will not repeat their mistake. I will instead make the testable predictions that the instances of penetrative rape in female prisons will increase slightly, that female sports are about to experience unprecedented improvement and new records across the board, and that some people will discover how much harder it is to reverse hormonal therapy and surgery, compared to removing a hair dryer from a car.

Why argue semantics, if we can compare anticipation of future experiences?

Comment by jeronimo196 on Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease · 2021-07-28T22:53:01.758Z · LW · GW

Great post!

However, I have the following problem with the scenario - I have hard time trusting a doctor, who prescribes a diet pill and consultation with a surgeon, but omits healthy diet and exercise. (Genetic predisposition does not trump the laws of thermodynamics!)

In general, I don't know of any existing medicine that can effectively replace willpower when treating addiction - which is why treatment is so difficult in the first place.

Psychology tells us that, on the individual level, encouragement works better than blame. Although both have far less impact than one would hope.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Beware Isolated Demands For Rigor · 2021-07-28T18:44:18.942Z · LW · GW

I think the official title is "motivated scepticism".

Comment by jeronimo196 on The Failures of Eld Science · 2020-07-25T13:54:17.691Z · LW · GW

There is more to productivity than not engaging in pleasurable hobbies. I am willing to extend EY the benefit of the doubt and believe he has done some cost/benefit analysis regarding his time management.

In any case, the point is mute - he is not publishing fiction anymore.

Comment by jeronimo196 on The Failures of Eld Science · 2020-07-15T15:01:24.921Z · LW · GW

If it is any consolation, I remember reading a post or an Author's Note from EY, saying he won't be publishing any new fiction for fear of reputational losses.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Comment by jeronimo196 on The Power of Intelligence · 2020-07-10T03:12:38.647Z · LW · GW

For every mental strength we confidently point to, there will be an excellent physical strength we could also point to as a proximate cause, and vice versa.

I agree with you. I just find the particulars oddly inspiring - even if we are not the fastest land hunters, we are genetically the most persistent. This is a lesson from biology that bears thinking about.

Also, we could point to our physical strengths, but people usually don't. We collectively have this body image of ourselves as being "squishy", big brains compensating for weak, frail bodies. I like disabusing that notion.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Reductive Reference · 2020-06-29T08:30:26.983Z · LW · GW

I see your point. But if water didn’t always boil at the same temperature, why would we bother inventing thermometers?

We have more need to measure the unpredictable than the predictable.

If there was nothing with constant temperature, thermometers would work very differently. My first instinct was to say they wouldn't work at all. But then I remembered the entire field of economics, so your point stands.

Not every one sees things that way. The more hardline claims require the physical map to exclude others.

Good luck with that. I couldn't calculate the behaviour of the quarks in a single hydrogen atom if my life depended on it.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Dark Side Epistemology · 2020-06-29T07:38:18.219Z · LW · GW

Thank you for this discussion.

I was wrong about grammar and the views of Chalmers, which is worse. Since I couldn't be bothered to read him myself, I shouldn't have parroted the interpretations of someone else.

I now have better understanding of your position, which is, in fact, falsifiable.

We do agree on the importance of the question of consciousness. And even if we expect the solution to have different shape, we both expect it to be embedded in physics (old or new).

I hope I've somewhat clarified my own views. But if not, I don't expect to do better in future comments, so I will bow out.

Again, thank you for the discussion.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Dark Side Epistemology · 2020-06-25T22:29:35.635Z · LW · GW

But note that Linux is a noun and "conscious" is an adjective—another type error—so your analogy doesn't communicate clearly.

Linux is also an adjective - linux game/shell/word processor.

Still, let me rephrase then - I don't need a wet cpu to simulate water. Why would I need a conscious cpu to simulate consciousness?

AFAIK, you are correct that we have no falsifiable predictions as of yet.

Do you expect this to change? Chalmers doesn't. In fact, expecting to have falsifiable predictions is itself a falsifiable prediction. So you should drop the "yet". Only then can you see your position for the null hypothesis it is.

The most obvious problem—that there is no "objective" subjective experience, qualia, or clear boundaries on consciousness in principle (you could invent a definition that identifies a "boundary" or "experience", but surely someone else could invent another definition with different boundaries in edge cases)—tends not to be perceived as a problem by illusionists, which is mysterious to me.

There is not a single concept, that could not be redefined. If this is a problem, it is not unique to consciousness.

"A process currently running on human brains" -although far from being a complete definition, already gives us some boundaries.

I think you're saying the suffering has no specific location (in my hypothetical scenario), but that it still exists, and that this makes sense and you're fine with it; I'm saying I don't get it.

Suffering is a state of mind. The physical location is the brain.

By stimulating different parts of the brain, we can cause suffering (and even happiness).

Another way to think about it is this - where does visual recognition happen? How about arithmetic? Both required a biological brain for a long, long time.

And for the hipothetical scenario - let's say I am playing CS and I throw a grenade - where does it explode?

But perhaps illusionism's consequences are a problem? In particular, in a future world filled with AGIs, I don't see how morality can be defined in a satisfactory way without an objective way to identify suffering. How could you ever tell if an AGI is suffering "more" than a human, or than another AGI with different code? (I'm not asking for an answer, just asserting that a problem exists.)

That's only the central problem of all of ethics, is it not? Objective morality? How could you tell if a human is suffering more than another human?

I don't see how qualia helps you with that one. It would be pretty bold to exclude AGIs from your moral considerations, before excluding trees (and qualia has not helped you exclude trees!).

Edit: I now realize your position has little to do with Chalmers. Since you are postulating a qualia particle, which has casual effects, you are a substance dualist. But why rob your position of its falsifiable prediction? Namely - before the question of consciousness is solved, the qualia particle will be found.

Or am I misrepresenting you again?

Comment by jeronimo196 on Reductive Reference · 2020-06-25T12:42:46.817Z · LW · GW

How do you know that water always boils at the same temperature?

I remember reading it somewhere...

I see your point. But if water didn't always boil at the same temperature, why would we bother inventing thermometers?

The moral of the story is not so much that science always works, it's that it works in a way that's more coherentist than foundationalist.

Right. And since science does work, coherentism gets a big boost in probability, right until the sun stop rising every day.

And the downside of coherentism is that you can have more than one equally coherent wordlviews...

But would they work equally well? We value science primarily for giving us results, not for being coherent.

If both views are equally coherent and give us equal result (or the results are unclear as of yet), choosing one would be privileging the hipotesis.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Reductive Reference · 2020-06-25T09:02:13.098Z · LW · GW

Edit: Now I see Sister_Y addressed my point in the very next paragraph, so this entire comment is a reading comprehension fail more than anything.

Necroing:

poke - my friend likes to explain this to his undergrads by asking them how they would verify that a thermometer is accurate (check it against another thermometer, but how do you know that one is accurate . . . etc.) until they figure out that thermometers are only "accurate" according to custom or consensus. Then he asks them how they know their eyes work. And their memories.

Some of them cry.

Go to the beach, light a fire, boil some water. Put the thermometer in the boiled water - does it show 100 degrees Celsius? Still at sea level, put a cup of water in a fridge untill it starts freezing. Put the thermometer in the cup - does it show 0 degrees Celsius?

If yes to both, you have a working thermometer. This way, you don't rely on the consensus of other thermometers. As for the custom of calling a working thermometer accurate - that's what it is for.

Eyes and memory can be similarly tested.

Of course, accepting the results of such tests requires acceptance of induction from the past. Maybe the realization you've faced "Last Thursdayism" for the first time at undergraduate level is something to cry about, but no one actually does.

Lest I sound too smug, rest assured I am not convinced I would've done better before finding Less Wrong.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Is Humanism A Religion-Substitute? · 2020-06-19T09:09:17.998Z · LW · GW
A good "atheistic hymn" is simply a song about anything worth singing about that doesn't happen to be religious.

No, that's a good non-religious song. Without religion there would be no atheism, only the much broader scepticism. Atheism is a response to religion - to be considered "atheistic", a song could not avoid the topic. (Alternatively, we'd have to consider "Fear of the dark" a great aspiderman song).

The best atheistic song I've heard is "Dear God" by XTC - the last prayer of many a new atheist, who've lost faith, but not yet the habit of praying:


Dear God, hope you get the letter and
I pray you can make it better down here
I don't mean a big reduction in the price of beer
But all the people that you made in your image
See them starving on their feet
'Cause they don't get enough to eat from God
I can't believe in you

Dear God, sorry to disturb you but
I feel that I should be heard loud and clear
We all need a big reduction in amount of tears
And all the people that you made in your image
See them fighting in the street
'Cause they can't make opinions meet about God
I can't believe in you

Did you make disease and the diamond blue?
Did you make mankind after we made you?
And the Devil too!

Dear God don't know if you noticed but
Your name is on a lot of quotes in this book
And us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look
And all the people that you made in your image
Still believing that junk is true
Well I know it ain't, and so do you
I can't believe in
I don't believe

I won't believe in heaven or hell
No saints, no sinners, no devil as well
No pearly gates, no thorny crown
You're always letting us humans down
The wars you bring, the babes you drown
Those lost at sea and never found
And it's the same the whole world 'round
The hurt I see helps to compound
The Father, Son and Holy Ghost
Is just somebody's unholy hoax
And if you're up there you'll perceive
That my heart's here upon my sleeve
If there's one thing I don't believe in

It's you



And yes, there is a very clear god-shaped void, the disappointment of a promise unfulfilled.

There is also an "epic vocals" cover by Lawless (feat. Sydney Wayser) that is more hymn-like - prettier, but less angry. Both are worth listening to.


[Edited: fromatting]

Comment by jeronimo196 on Explaining vs. Explaining Away · 2020-06-17T12:00:29.198Z · LW · GW

Because I believe things are what they are. Therefore if I introspect and see choice, then it really truly is choice. The other article might explain it, but an explanation can not change what a thing is, it can only say why it is.

An example of mind projection fallacy so pure, even I could recognise it. Ian believes "he believes things are what they are". If Ian actually believed things are what they are, he would possess unobtainable level of rationality and we would do well to use him as an oracle. In reality, Ian believes things are what they seem to be (to him), which is understandable, but far less impressive.

Comment by jeronimo196 on Dark Side Epistemology · 2020-06-16T16:09:43.534Z · LW · GW

I think of consciousness as a process (software) run on our brains (wetware), with the theoretical potential to be run on other hardware. I thought you understood my position. Asking me to pinpoint the hardware component which would contain suffering, tells me you don't.

To me, saying the cpu (or the gpu) is conscious sounds like saying the cpu is linux - this is a type error. A pc can be running linux. A pc cannot actually be linux, even if "running" is often omitted.

But if one doesn't know "running" is omitted, one could ask where does the linux-ness come from, if neither the cpu nor the ram are themselves linux.

If a particle (or indivisible entity) does something computationally impossible (or even just highly intelligent), I call it magic.

But it does know to interact with mammals and not with trees and diamonds? ... Argh! You know what, screw it. This is like arguing how many angels can sit on top of a needle. Occam's razor says not to.

Does it pay rent in anticipation?

It pays rent in sensation.

Without falsifiable predictions, we have no way to difirentiate a true ad-hoc explanation from a false one. Also, a model with no predictive powers is useless. Its only "benefit" would be to provide piece of mind as a curiosity stopper. (See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a7n8GdKiAZRX86T5A/making-beliefs-pay-rent-in-anticipated-experiences.)

I have a first-person subjective experience and I am unable to believe that it is only an abstraction.

I honestly don't see the disconnect. I don't think the existence of a conscious AGI would invalidate my subjective experiences in the slightest. The explanation is always mundane ("only an abstraction" ?), that doesn't detract from the beauty of the phenomenon. (See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/x4dG4GhpZH2hgz59x/joy-in-the-merely-real).

(Otherwise I probably would have turned atheist much sooner.)

I believe you are right. Many people cite subjective personal experiences as their reason for being religious. This does make me doubt our ability to draw correct conclusions based on such.