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Once you've assigned a super-exponentially small probability to an event, no amount of evidence in the visible universe can make you change your mind.
I don't see why this is necessarily a problem.
The claim that the mugger will torture 3^^^3 people, unless you give them $100, is so implausible that there should be no possible evidence that will convince you of it.
Any possible evidence is more plausibly explained by possibilities such as you being in a computer game, and the mugger being a player who's just being a dick because they find it funny.
Yes, but a d2 has the values 1, and 2, not heads and tails.
He's rolling a die. As such, both "possibilities" are overwhelmingly improbable, as I have never seen a die labeled with heads and tails, and I spend a lot of time around dice.
There are arguments that valuing net-happiness IN OUR CURRENT WORLD means you'd want to increase the human population.
However, in an arbitrary world, where wealth-production correlates with human population, there's no reason to assume that net-happiness would also correlate with wealth-production.
IOW: his conclusion (it's not a shame) has a truth value that depends on value system, but his reasoning is true only if you have one, very specific, value system (you value near-future-wealth-production as your terminal value)
This is true IFF you value wealth above all other measures.
If you value net-happiness for example, it's not true.
The Oxford Dictionary definition you supply is the one I generally see in use:
a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
Thanks for the information, I might ask my GP about that possibility, and whether there are any options for finding out whether I'm having low-blood-pressure issues.
I suffer from a form of depression, which comes along with a symptom I call "brain-ache": it essentially consists of a sharp pain that feels as though it's internal to my brain (unlike headaches, which I also commonly get, which are focused in my skull).
Brain-ache is worsened by deliberate conscious thinking, and trying to focus on things, and it is generally accompanied by a "mental fog" which makes it hard for me to see my own thoughts, and therefore hard to think about anything complex.
I have a few other pecularities [photic sneeze reflex, I used to cough instead of crying (that was a conditioned reflex due to abuse) and occasional verbal tics] but most are relatively minor.
Oh, yes, I can have full conversations in my sleep, that I don't remember in the morning. This includes answering the phone. This is a recent symptom, probably due to my current medication.
One possible explanation is simply awareness.
If you naturally develop a technique, you may not be consciously aware of it at all. But take some training, and all of a sudden your conscious brain is butting in going "this is the way to do it".
And, well, your CPU is going to be less efficient than a well-optimised RPU (Reading Processing Unit)
Why would this apply to romantic forays but not other types of social overture?
The fact that chatting to random people merely means you're willing to let anyone be one of your acquaintances
In general, being someone's acquaintance cannot be considered an exclusive group to begin with, so there was no exclusivity to be lost.
It seems like it(becoming known as a person who tries to chat up random people) would happen no matter what you actually talked about.
If you only rarely* make a sexual or romantic pass it is unlikely that people would view you in such a way. Especially if you approach people who are not of your preferred gender, etc..
*[when you find someone who is actually particularly attractive to you, after you've gotten to know them a bit]
I live in Manchester, England.
There are 2.6 million people in this city. I didn't need to actively avoid becoming known, it would have been extremely difficult to become known.
Also: had I gained a reputation for talking to random strangers, why would that have been a bad thing? The person I approach knows I approach random strangers; they are one.
Being known as a person who tries to chat up random people may be a problem*. Being known as a person who tries to chat to random people isn't. In fact, if anything, I've earned status for it.@
*You're seen as having low standards, and therefore the fact you're interested in someone no longer puts them in an exclusive group. Oh, and you may end up viewed as a slut.
@I have friends with low social skills, who find it too scary to approach people they don't know. The fact I do so gives me a certain amount of esteem in their eyes.
Envy is an attitude/emotion.
Whether or not someone feels envy is a fact.
Pain is a feeling.
Whether or not someone feels pain is a fact.
Ummm, Eliezer Yudkowsky's post, on which this discussion is based, is about "What can't we say?" ie. why can't we say there are racial differences in IQ.
So this thread doesn't seem to be evidence against Nisan's statement.
What makes you so sure anyone's playing for power in my scenario?
Bob is attempting to solve a problem that's causing both Alice and Bob suffering.
Alice may be playing for power, or she may not want to burden Bob with her personal problems, and may be honestly unaware that she's causing Bob to suffer.
As a side note: in several of these scenarios I saw, Alice was male. In several, Bob was female.
Given as everyone seems to want to pile unjustified extra assumptions onto the scenario, here are several actual scenarios that I know have occured that took this form:
Alice is angry/upset because of something Bob did. Bob is unaware of what he did, but has picked up on Alice's anger and wants to help her. a. Alice is trying to convince herself that it doesn't matter. -----b. Alice thinks Bob knowing what caused her anger will cause further problems.
Alice wasn't actually angry/upset at all. Bob believed she was, but was incorrect. His repeated questioning has resulted in her getting angry; making him more confident that there is a problem.
Alice is emotionally abusing Bob, manipulating him so that he will grovel for an explanation, such that when she tells him what she wants him to do, he'll be forced to do it.
Alice is angry at Bob for something he did. Bob is aware what this is, but wants to pretend he isn't in order to be able to make Alice feel as though she's over-reacting
Alice is angry/upset for reasons that have nothing to do with Bob. Bob is concerned for Alice's wellbeing, but Alice doesn't want to share.
Alice is angry. Bob knows this, but Alice is actually, honestly, unaware of this fact.
I've seen this scenario occur several times where Bob HASN'T done anything wrong. Alice is annoyed for some reason, and is passive aggressively taking it out on Bob, and Bob wants to solve the problem that's causing them both to suffer.
The assumption that it's Bobs fault is entirely unjustified from the scenario presented.
The problem is the repeatability. Social skills, by their very nature, require interaction with people. And people are unpredictable; at least, until you have good enough social skills :p.
The closest I can come to an exercise regime suggestion* is to go into bars, coffee shops, or other gathering places; and look around for a person (or people) who seems bored, lonely, or otherwise in need of company.
Go up to said person(s) and greet them in a manner you deem appropriate. If it works; you just correctly judged someone's state, you approached them in an acceptable manner, and you now get to converse with them (giving you practise on other social skills). If not; consider why not? Did you misread their state? Did you approach them in an unacceptable manner? What should you try differently next time?
*(and something I actually did, that seemed to help me personally: in fact I met my girlfriend due to this practise)
Why shouldn't it be highly voted? When you're talking to a random outsider, and want to demonstrate the usefulness of bayesian techniques, using the example of clippy is a funny, and interesting, way to make your point.
As such, this is a valuable contribution for anyone who might, at some point, want to convert someone to bayesian techniques.
Given that it takes very little time to read, this means that it's value:time ratio is very good. As it is a discussion post, rather than a main post, this is sufficient justification to upvote it.*
*(with a main post I'd also expect a significant amount of content)
Can't you also have a 60 minute study, with no safety buffer, by using the "personal max" option on a flat road?
Certainly seems like that'd work to me.
whether or not you can be racist/sexist/whatever without intentionally being a bigot.
I'd be intrigued to see an example of an argument for the statement:
"You can't be racist/sexist/whatever without intentionally being a bigot"
because I have never seen that sentiment expressed in my life. And I find it hard to see many people agreeing with it. Reasoning that it is false is far too simple.*
*(imagine a world where the general belief is that green people are brutish and ignorant, and should be killed on sight. Now imagine a farmer who has been told this, and believes it, and has never seen any evidence to the contrary. Has he ever made a decision of the form "Should I be bigoted? Yes I should"?)
That should help, but I'm not certain how much. The problem is that whatever the reason for the rule originally, it's now ingrained as a moral absolute in some people's minds.
I'll agree with Nornagest on the insult to injury part, but there's also a second part:
If you talk about someone's failings after they die, but not before, then you seem to have been waiting until they were no longer available to defend themselves.
IOW: it seems cowardly, and dishonest. Because if they were still around, they might be able to dismiss your allegations.
Yes. The relevant experiment would be a study of how gases expand when heated, leading to the ideal gas law, which has a special case at absolute 0.
The special case distinguishes between cold being a real entity (and heat being neg-cold) and heat being a real entity (and cold being neg-heat); because it proves that heat has a minimum, and cold a maximum, rather than the other way around.
By a "meetup" I mean a regular, or semi-regular, event whereby a group of people with common interests meet in order to discuss things, including [but not limited to] the common interest.
These meetups come in many forms; some occur in pubs, some in meeting halls, some in coffee shops. Some feature speeches, which tend to be on the issue of the common interest, but most do not.
By attending a meetup two events running, or three events out of six, you'll tend to get to know many of the regulars, and become part of their social network.
One type of meetup that would obviously be relevant to your interests is a lesswrong one, but meetups of skeptic societies, societies associated with your particular sexual kinks/relationship preferences (poly meets, munches, rope meets, furmeets etc.), humanist meetups, etc. would all likely be useful to you.
Getting to the moon (ie. getting your life moving) is quite clearly one of your terminal goals.
Whether or not you've enshrined the car (ie. a general solution) as a newer terminal goal, I can't tell you.
A hint however: The car may not take the form you expect. It may be a taxi, or a bus, where you don't own it but rather ride in it. (ie. the best general solution for you might actually be "go on the internet and look for a specific solution")
I'd say that your statement:
It rules out doing anything that involves regularly scheduled activities
Is inaccurate. It rules out regularly scheduled activities where you have to attend every single one.
The majority of meetups are perfectly happy with someone who attends 1/2 or 1/3 of the meetings; which non-24 shouldn't prevent.
Meetups also have a more structured feel than the social gatherings you mention, and tend to be more useful for networking.
A deeper problem is your location. I'm assuming given your sunlight issue that you can't really drive very far on sunny days?
Concentrating on just the final paragraph first, because it provokes the most interesting answer IMO.
Imagine a heinous murder in which the killer did it “just for the fun of it”. Yet upon psychiatric and medical examination he is found to have a tumor the size of a golf ball in the medial prefrontal cortex of his brain (this area is responsible for emotional control and behavioral impulse). It would be fairly easy to surmise that he was not in any real sense responsible for his actions in carrying out the murder.
Really, why?
He was not in his right mind.
Not quite. He was his mind; where he refers to the man with a tumor. He was not in tumor-free-man's right mind. So we punish man-with-tumor, not man-without-tumor, as they are clearly very different people.
We would not prescribe the same punishment for him as we would a perfectly healthy individual.
Depends which state you live in. By removing the tumor, we are essentially killing man-with-tumor. Replacing him with man-without-tumor, a completely different person. If you live somewhere with the death penalty, that is in fact the punishment you would give a healthy individual.
Would it be moral to deny this man surgery as a ”punishment” for his crime?
In what way would that be a punishment for man-with-tumor, the entity that commited the crime? Man-without-tumor would be punished by that, due to continued non-existance, but man-with-tumor would not.
Then first, change your situation to NOT completely isolated.
If you're in a town or city that's easy, just go to a meetup of a society of some sort that sounds vaguely interesting. If you can't find such a society, wonder from pub to coffee shop to restaurant, looking for any relevant posters.
Or just go online and look up a meetup website.
Looking for a general solution is all well and good, but you have a very specific problem. And so, rather than spending years working on a general solution while in the wrong environment, perhaps you'd be better off using the specific solution, and working on a general one later?
Here are two ways to find more opportunities. 1) is to get out and DO!, which exposes you to more opportunities.
2) is to get better at spotting them when they're around.
The only way I can think of to achieve 2, personally, is practise. How do you practise? Well, you do 1), and expose yourself to as many opportunities as possible, and see how many you notice in time, and when you notice one too late you think about how you could have noticed it quicker.
"Just go out and DO it!" is then the wrong advice.
However "Just go out and DO!" remains good advice.
Next time you see a poster for a meetup; just go to it. Even if it doesn't sound like it'll help, just go to it.
Next time you see a request for volunteers, which you can afford the time to fulfil, just volunteer. Even if it's not something you care much about.
While you're out doing those things you'll come across people, and random events, etc. that may give you new paths to your goals.
Don't worry about achieving your goals, just do things. To use your video-game analogy: you've been looking around for things that look like they'll be useful for you. But you haven't been pressing random buttons, you haven't clicked "use" on the poster in the corner: because why would that help? But of course, sometimes there's a safe behind the poster. Or sometimes, pressing shift and K simultaneously activates the item use menu, etc.
This counterstory doesn't function.
A child's development is not consciously controlled; and they are protected by adults; so believing incorrect things temporarily doesn't harm their development at all.
If you wish to produce a counterstory, make it an actual plausible one. Even if it were the case that children tended to be more skeptical of claims, your story would REMAIN obviously false; whereas Constant's story would remain an important factor, and would raise the question of why we don't see what would be expected given the relevant facts.
Also, if one is positing that there's a civilization advanced enough to spend time making sims, one can reasonably argue that they will be capable enough such that any of them could program the sim themselves, in a way similar to how anyone can program a Basic program to say "Hello World!" in our world.
Our civilisation is advanced enough to spend time making computer games. This doesn't mean the average person can make a computer game.
Anologously, in the hypothetical highly advanced civilisation, it could be that it's considered basic to program a halo-equivalent, but only very few would be able to program a worldsim.
It annoys me that publishing such a deliberately dishonest story will almost certainly not be punished in any way.
The question is not whether or not christianity is true, it's whether or not you set out to create an argument that christianity should be followed.
So, did you stumble across this argument as a realisation while thinking on other things?
Or did you deliberately set out to create such an argument?
It looks like a deliberately constructed argument to me.
The fact that we do not see continual interference, and obvious evidence of a deity, is very strong evidence against the ego-trip theory of godly existence.
The fact the bible mentions multiple gods, repeatedly, throughout the old testament, is very strong evidence that it is not a book written by an ego-tripping deity.
Moreover, if the universe is being run as an ego-trip heaven is likely to be, as described in some christian sects, praising 'god' for all eternity. Which is worse than most depictions of hell; making the whole pascal's wager thing null and void.
I wouldn't take it. I desire to help others, and it gives me pleasure to do so, it makes me suffer to harm others, and I desire not to do so.
Being perpetually in a state of extreme pleasure would make this pleasure/suffering irrelevant, and might lead me to behave less in line with my desires.
So, being perpetually in a state of extreme pleasure seems like a bad idea to me.
Good point. It can result in a kill-or-cure situation, either they take it as "I can solve this" and gain confidence, or that they can't, and lose even more.
You don't need to reject CCC without reductionism to defeat his argument. His argument is "If CCC is true, reductionism is false"
That's not a reason to reject reductionism, unless you have better reason to hold to CCC than to reductionism.
The solution here is a stopgap that just diminishes the urgency of technology to grow organ replacements, and even if short-term consequentially it leaves more people alive, it in fact worsens out long-term life expectancy by not addressing the problem (which is that people's organs get damaged or wear out).
[parody mode]
Penicillin is a stopgap that just diminishes the urgency of technology to move people onto a non-organic substrate, and even if short-term consequentially it leaves more people alive, it in fact worsens out long-term life expectancy by not addressing the problem (which is that people live in an organic substrate vulnerable to outside influence)
[/parody mode]
Have you ever heard the saying "the perfect is the enemy of the good"? By insisting that only perfect solutions are worthwhile, you are arguing against any measure that doesn't make humans immortal.
Welcome to lesswrong.
I wouldn't consider anything you've said here stupid, in fact I would agree with it.
I, personally, see it as a failure of imagination on the part of Dawkin's, that he considers the issue he personally finds most important to be that which alien intelligences will find most important, but you are right to point out what his likely reasoning is.
In short, I find this trope to be a fallacy. I'd expect an advanced civilisation to have a greater, not lesser, understanding of how intelligence works, its limitations, and failure modes in general.
But what reason do we have to expect them to pick evolution, as opposed to the concept of money, or of extensive governments (governments governing more than 10,000 people at once), or of written language, or of the internet, or of radio communication, or of fillangerisation, as their obvious sign of advancement?
Just because humans picked up on evolution far later than we should have, doesn't mean that evolution is what they'll expect to be the late discovery. They might equally expect that the internet wouldn't be invented until the equivalent tech level of 2150. Or they might consider moveable type to be the symbol of a masterful race.
Just because they'll likely be able to understand why we were late to it, doesn't mean it would occur to them before looking at us. It's easy to explain why we came to it when we did, once you know that that's what happened, but if you were from a society that realised evolution [not necessarily common descent] existed as they were domesticating animals; would you really think of understanding evolution as a sign of advancement?
EDIT: IOW: I've upvoted your disagreement with the "advanced people can't understand the simpler ways" trope; but I stand by my original point: they wouldn't EXPECT evolution to be undiscovered.
Sometimes I suspect that wouldn't even occur to them as a question. That evolution might turn out to be one of those things that it's just assumed any race that had mastered agriculture MUST understand.
Because, well, how could a race use selective breeding, and NOT realise that evolution by natural selection occurs?
If someone is known, by their friends and family, to be relatively aware when it comes to such issues; and warns said friends and family of this danger, they will not need to give a comprehensible argument.
Their statement is, in itself, evidence to those who trust them.
To illustrate, I'll go through some likely results of telling someone each of these things Vs. not telling them.
"You are morbidly obese."
They are now aware that their weight is a major reason for lack of success. This is an extra incentive to lose weight. In addition, it's possible they weren't even conscious of how overweight they were previously. So, they gain health benefits.
"You are so tiny I feel like I'm crushing you."
They now know to be on the look out for either smaller partners, or partners who show signs of a crushing fetish, as opposed to continuing to ask large people who will turn them down.
"You act like I'm your last hope of ever meeting a girl."
You may need to give more explanation on this one; because it's likely that there's some specific part of their behaviour that's a problem. However, at least they are now aware that they are giving off vibes of desperation, and can try and change that (giving them more self-confidence, because they now know that the problem isn't something innate)
"Your religion forbids premarital sex and that won't work for me."
They get to feel morally superior to you.
"Your conversation is just really boring."
Provided you are willing to explain why you find their conversation boring, this is helpful. Seriously, I'm friends with a lot of aspergics*, and every time I explain to one of them "you're being boring, the problem is that you are doing X" they have henceforth put effort into avoiding doing X, which has increased their success in socialising.
*(I suspect this is because I'm a borderline case myself, and therefore often end up acting as a "translator" between them and NTs)
not telling them
They don't know why they were rejected; and likely find themselves wondering whether they'll ever be able to be successful, making them feel increasingly desperate and despondent about their chances with each rejection.
While the first few rejecters may successfully prevent this by using "it's not you it's me" type lines, it will soon become clear to the rejectee that these are, in fact, often lies.
If they're asking, they deserve to be told.
If they don't want to know, they shouldn't ask. Lying to someone "for their own good" is, to me, one of the most disgusting concepts in existence.
I've been lied to "for my own good" several times. And every single time, all it really did was allow the person lying to me to feel good about themselves, while simultaneously screwing me over.
The relevant thing to a TDT person is "how likely is it that there's someone simulating my mind sufficiently accurately?"
"how trustworthy are doctors?" is a question that results in a simulation of a doctors mind. It seems, to me, that many people simulating that doctors mind will be capable of simulating it sufficiently accurately; even if they don't understand (on a conscious level) all the necessary jargon to explain what they are doing.
I was aware of, and practising, timeless decision theory before ever stumbling across Lesswrong, and, while I know this may just be the "typical mind fallacy" I would be surprised if only 0.1% of people had similar thoughts.
Sure, I didn't call it TDT, because that is a piece of jargon only present in this community, but the basic principle is certainly not unique, or unknown, and I would expect that even many who don't undestand it would use it subconsciously.
That that, specific, doctor runs TDT perhaps; but it is implausible to the point of irrelevance that no-one would ever suspect that any doctor anywhere runs on a TDT-esque thought process.
And people suspecting that any doctor might run such processes is sufficient harm.
That means CON+TDT doesn't prohibit a decision to carve up a vagrant for organs conditional on some unique feature of the situation.
Provided that the unique feature is relevant, no it does not. For example, if the vagrant's parts were capable of saving 1,000 lives (a very unlikely situation, and not one anyone needs to worry of finding themself in) that would be a relevant unique feature.
However merely noticing that the vagrant is wearing a red baseball cap, made in 1953, and has $1.94 in their left pants pocket; while unique, is irrelevant. And as such it is easily modelled by using the protocol "insert random, irrelevant, unique aspect".