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Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Genetic "Nature" is cultural too · 2016-03-19T01:04:52.092Z · LW · GW

This can be tested by estimating how much IQ screens off race/gender as a success predictor, assuming that IQ tests are not prejudiced and things like the stereotype threat don't exist or are negligible.

And assuming IQ captures everything relevant about the difference.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol · 2016-03-19T00:52:48.541Z · LW · GW

In which case the AI splits the transaction into 2 transactions, each just below a gazillion.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Genetic "Nature" is cultural too · 2016-03-18T22:58:40.786Z · LW · GW

But I am confused about what this means in practice, due to arguments like "contacts are very important for business success, rich people get much more contacts than poor people, yet business success is strongly correlated with genetic parent wealth" and such.

Keep in mind that people's genes tend to correlate with their parents' genes. So even if success in wealth is determined by genetics, we would still expect wealth to correlate with your parents' wealth.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Genetic "Nature" is cultural too · 2016-03-18T22:44:45.220Z · LW · GW

I know, but the way it does so is bizarre (IQ seems to have a much stronger effect between countries than between individuals).

Why is this bizarre? It simply means that high IQ individuals don't capture all the value they create.

Edit: another possibility is that smart people tend to move to places that were doing well. I believe there was a thread in the comments to SSC a while back where it was discovered that the average IQ of American States correlated with a rather naively constructed measure of "favorable geography", e.g., points for being on the coast and for having navigable rivers.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-18T01:09:48.818Z · LW · GW

but Nazism and Soviet communism were very different things.

In what way?

Nope. E.g., if some new political movement comes out for Jew-killing, totalitarian control, military expansionism, moral traditionalism, and fostering the Master Race, I'll be very happy saying that yup, they're basically Nazis even if they don't use that term.

Ok, if a movement endorses their entire platform, it's safe to call them Nazis. Except that isn't the case for Golden Dawn, which was the movement under discussion.

Another would be that teaching from a particular perspective is (possibly bad but) not the same thing as brainwashing.

And the difference is?

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-17T00:02:40.838Z · LW · GW

Except then you'd have to use some other criterion to determine the "obvious" cases.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Rationality Quotes Thread March 2016 · 2016-03-16T21:02:18.983Z · LW · GW

Think of it as an exercise in looking at the incentives people in various situations have. You may want to start by examening the sentence:

At least the corporations have to deliver to their customers on some level, or they go out of business.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-16T20:56:21.071Z · LW · GW

I meant not "everyone agrees with this" but "many people with a wide variety of political positions agree with this". And I didn't intend to imply that everyone [sic] in their programme other than "kill the Jews" is in that category.

What do you mean by a "wide variety of political positions"? Your definition of "Nazi" currently amounts to "supports the parts of the Nazi platform only Nazis support". Now obviously stated this way, it is clearly a circular, hense useless, definition. So we are left with how you use it in practice, which brings us back to "supports the parts of the definition gjm doesn't approve of".

"The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program" could, in isolation, mean anything from "we're going to build a lot of new schools and fund a lot of new teachers" to "we're going to close down the education system entirely" via "we're going to turn the schools into brainwashing units"

I don't see the difference between your first and last interpretation. After all if "we" build new school and fund a lot of teachers, "we" are presumably going to have them teach cources on history, social sciences, etc. and do it from our precpective. One could get around this problem by not having education be centralised, but that's not what either the Nazis or Bernie were proposing.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-16T07:31:30.953Z · LW · GW

Well, that's why the things that tend to get described as specifically Nazi

Where by "specifically Nazi" you mean "the parts that gjm doesn't approve off".

that have pretty wide support from all quarters.

Speak for yourself. I very much don't approve of point 20 from their program. "The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program" is a nice-ish sounding way of saying, "we will ram whatever propaganda we want down all kids' thoughts and force you to pay for it".

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Rationality Quotes Thread March 2016 · 2016-03-16T01:35:13.235Z · LW · GW

The corporate world is predatory, and the mercenary class of executives are certainly in it for no one but themselves, but for sheer thievery, I think only the financial industry can even begin to compete with the non-profit world. At least the corporations have to deliver to their customers on some level, or they go out of business.

Not so the non-profit charities and foundations, which often seem to exist primarily to provide those who run them a very good living.

Vox Day

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-13T23:57:15.318Z · LW · GW

Scholars and media have described it as neo-Nazi[4][13][14] and fascist,[5][15][16]

Well, everyone to the right of Stalin has been described as neo-Nazi by scholars.

though the group rejects these labels.[17]

I guess there goes your "explicitly endorse Nazism" claim.

I know that 'Nazi' may be overused, but you surely must see that in this specific instance, that is what the Golden Dawn are.

Weren't people saying the same thing about the National Front ~20 years ago?

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-13T18:33:44.766Z · LW · GW

LOL. Seriously, do you have any more evidence beyond "their symbol sotra looks like a swastika". How about you try looking for the factions in Greece using Nazi-style tactics, like say arresting their opponents on vague trumped up charges. Hint: it's not Golden Dawn.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Cross-Cultural maps and Asch's Conformity Experiment · 2016-03-13T04:13:09.613Z · LW · GW

What you describe is the winding-down days of communism, during it's hayday the arrests and torture didn't happen in the middle of the night, but in broad daylight, to cheering crowds. This phenomenon, not limited to communist states, works as follows:

The official line is not that everybody is happy and everything is perfect, but that everything would be perfect if it wasn't for the rightists/heretics/sexists/racists/etc. (depending on the society). The insidious thing about this is that anybody who has a different opinion and debates it can be charged with rightism, and is in fact guilty by definition. Heck anyone arrested, even if he wasn't originally a rightist has almost no way to defend himself without making the charge true. The only chance he has is demonstrating his loyalty by being as fanatical as possible at the next rally.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on After Go, what games should be next for DeepMind? · 2016-03-12T05:52:49.863Z · LW · GW

The Civ 5 AI does cheat insofar as it doesn't have to deal with the fog of war, IIRC.

Not just that, especially on higher difficulty levels.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-12T01:34:37.847Z · LW · GW

Of course, society normally finds it easy to recognize and ostracize such blatantly dishonest Nazism.

What do you mean by "normally" and can you find any examples of society that actually operated like you describe? Keep in mind the word "Nazi" was already being applied to anything and everything the speaker disliked as early as 1942.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-12T01:32:37.854Z · LW · GW

(the theory is that on a subconcious level they think 'if I'm a Nazi, maybe Nazism isn't so bad).

Or the more straightforward, if anyone proposing sensible immigration policy gets called a Nazi, eventually people conclude that "Nazi" means someone in favor of sensible immigration policy.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on After Go, what games should be next for DeepMind? · 2016-03-12T00:42:48.075Z · LW · GW

That's why I said "AI that could give the human a challenge" not "AI that would demolish a human". Better yet, have the game difficulty setting actually control the intelligence of the AI, rather than how much the AI cheats.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on After Go, what games should be next for DeepMind? · 2016-03-11T07:44:16.386Z · LW · GW

I don't expect to see highly sophisticated AI in games (at least adversarial, battle-it-out games) because there is no point. Games have to be fun which means that the goal of the AI is to gracefully lose to the human player after making him exert some effort.

I'm not sure about that. A common complaint about these kinds of games is that the AI's blatantly cheat, especially on higher difficulty levels. I could very well see a market for an AI that could give the human a challenge without cheating.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol · 2016-03-11T07:35:15.388Z · LW · GW

Can't the perception/probability estimate module just be treated as an interchangeable black box, regardless of whether it is a DNN, or MCTS Solomov induction approximation, or Bayes nets or anything else?

Not necessarily. If the goal component what's to respect human preferences, it will be vital that the perception component isn't going to correctly identify what constitutes a "human".

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-11T07:31:41.041Z · LW · GW

Just look at their flag

Seriously? You're only argument is that their flag looks like a Swastika if you squint just right?

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Is Spirituality Irrational? · 2016-03-11T03:08:17.665Z · LW · GW

Pretty much everyone is under the impression that he or she is conscious, and yet we can't really empirically test for consciousness.

If contentiousness doesn't exist how can we empirically test for anything? Empiricism is based on using past observations to predict future observations, it becomes meaningless if there's nothing there to do the observing.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-11T03:01:15.736Z · LW · GW

would support religion but not Christianity because that inevitably leads to progressivism

Depending on which neoreactionary. The neoreactionaries I'm familiar with, admittedly a tiny subset, are pro-traditional, i.e., non-progressive Christianity.

I also don't know an example of a real country without elections where I would be tempted to move.

How many real countries do you know without elections, period? I here the UAE is rather nice.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Rationality Quotes Thread March 2016 · 2016-03-11T02:51:00.681Z · LW · GW

To avoid sucker problems, substitute the abstract "government" with "bureaucrats/politicians" & "science" with "scientists/journal editors".

Nassim Taleb

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Rationality Quotes Thread March 2016 · 2016-03-11T02:49:08.928Z · LW · GW

Strict rules can be harsh. So can the whim and bias that tend to creep in when one relaxes the rules.

Nick Szabo

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Rationality Quotes Thread March 2016 · 2016-03-11T02:48:27.330Z · LW · GW

Those who have never tried electronic communication may not be aware of what a "social skill" really is. One social skill that must be learned, is that other people have points of view that are not only different, but threatening, to your own. In turn, your opinions may be threatening to others. There is nothing wrong with this. Your beliefs need not be hidden behind a facade, as happens with face-to-face conversation. Not everybody in the world is a bosom buddy, but you can still have a meaningful conversation with them. The person who cannot do this lacks in social skills.

Nick Szabo

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Would you notice if science died? · 2016-03-11T02:45:53.329Z · LW · GW

Possibly, I suppose that depends on how one would classify the "butterfly-collecting" aspect of science.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Cross-Cultural maps and Asch's Conformity Experiment · 2016-03-10T03:11:46.052Z · LW · GW

Do people who are genuine dissenters predict that more people will dissent than people who genuinely conform?

Genuine dissenters generally predict that most people will conform, largely because it's a lot easier to notice people conforming when you disagree with the thing they're conforming to.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Would you notice if science died? · 2016-03-10T02:01:23.112Z · LW · GW

The relevant distinction:

science is about accumulating (edit: and systematizing) knowledge;

engineering is about building things, possibly but not necessarily using the knowledge accumulated by science.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-06T08:19:06.014Z · LW · GW

It was I, not you, who made the more-heat-than-light metaphor in this case, and you don't get to tell me what I meant by it.

Yes, I have a habit of assuming the most sensible interpretation of what my interlocutor says, it appears to be a bad habit with some people.

I meant "rudeness and crossness and people getting upset at one another".

Ok, plugging that definition into your argument, and removing the metaphor, your argument appears to come down to "arguing 'NRx-type' positions gets makes my side upset therefore the 'NRx' side should stop doing it".

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-05T19:17:18.335Z · LW · GW

The best approach would be to taboo "neoreaction"

Um, you were the one who first brought up that term in this discussion. In fact, the only reason we're having this meta-debate is because a bunch of people didn't want to have an object-level discussion about Donald Trump.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-04T21:35:27.269Z · LW · GW

Consider the following parallel. I am making plans concerning the next 10 years of my life -- whether to take a new job, move house, get married or divorced, etc. It is highly relevant to my deliberations whether some time in the next few years a vengeful god is going to step in and put an end to the world as we know it.

This is an example of these beliefs lying outside the range they find credible, which I addressed in the next point.

Yup. But one wouldn't necessarily expect them to do it. (If I'm talking about the likely state of the world economy 5 years from now and some guy bursts in to tell me excitedly about how Cthulhu will have risen from the depths by then and started eating everyone, I am not going to waste my time telling him exactly why I don't think Cthulhu is real and why I wouldn't expect him to start eating people so soon even if he were.)

The difference is that the NRx's (or at least the HBD-people) can present arguments for their beliefs, like the fact that things like race and gender, do in fact correlate with IQ, SAT scores, success in various professions, etc.

Heat arises from friction. It takes two to generate the friction. I'm not terribly interested deciding which of the sticks getting rubbed together is responsible for the flames.

You're taking the metaphor too literally in an attempt to pretend to be wise. In this case "heat" means bad arguments or no arguments at all. One side presents arguments for its positions, the other side presents a variety of ever-shifting excuses for why the topic shouldn't be brought up at all.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-04T06:28:34.936Z · LW · GW

No, Russia started providing it's bombers with fighter escorts with orders to shoot in self-defense. This is a situation that can easily escalate the next time one of these planes passes through Turkish airspace.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-04T04:27:14.731Z · LW · GW

I agree that Turkey is interesting, too, but nothing "big" happened there recently and were were talking about events.

Um, shooting down a Russian plane.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-03T20:52:30.132Z · LW · GW

Interesting theories, let's see how they square with the evidence.

•They are just not very interested in the things neoreactionaries get excited about (race, gender, political structures -- though it occurs to me that LW's small but vocal NRx contingent appears to be much more interested in race and gender than in any of the other things theoretically characteristic of NRx).

On the other hand they are interested in questions where where race, gender, and political structures are relevant to the answers.

•They have already given the matter plenty of thought and done their best to get less wrong about it. At this point they find little value in going over it again and again. •They are interested in becoming less wrong about political structures, gender, race, etc., but NRx positions on these lie outside the range they find credible.

If that was the case, one would expect them to be able to produce counter arguments to say the "NRx" (although it's not unique to NRx) positions on race and gender. Instead the best they can do is link to SSC (which agrees that the NRx's have a point in that respect), or say things that amount to saying how they don't want to think about it.

•They have observed some discussions of NRx, seen that they consistently generate much more heat than light, and decided that whatever the facts of the matter an internet debate about it is likely to do more harm than good.

To the extent that's true its not the "NRx" people generating the heat.

•They have found that they find NRx advocates consistently unpleasant, and the benefits of possibly becoming less wrong don't (for them) outweigh the cost of having an unpleasant argument. •They have found that they find NRx opponents consistently unpleasant, and (etc.).

These are just rephrasing of my hypothesis that they only want to become lesswrong to the extent it doesn't involve being similar to those weird NRx's. Good to hear you're willing to agree with it.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-03T08:35:23.112Z · LW · GW

How about the various welfare states around the world finally starting to run out of other people's money. The biggest manifestations of this so far have been the financial crisis in the EU, and the various pension crises in US local governments.

Heck, in my more conspiratorial moods I'm inclined to suspect that these migrant crises are an excuse to import a bunch of convenient scapegoats who can than be blamed for the collapse of popular entitlement programs.

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-03T08:05:34.608Z · LW · GW

Golden Dawn in Greece are genuine neo-nazis.

Depending no who you listen to, so's the National Front, Putin, anti-Putin, Trump, mainstream Republicans, insufficiently left-wing Democrats, etc.

Ok, so what's your reason for believing Golden Dawn are actually neo-nazi? (Edit: and what do you mean by "actual neo-nazi" anyway?)

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-03T07:52:37.012Z · LW · GW

No. Not in the sense that Merkel, etc. are unimportant, but in the sense that a systemic crisis is not reducible to the importance of whoever happens to be in the office at the moment.

Even if she did greatly exacerbate it by doing something really stupid?

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-03T07:44:20.971Z · LW · GW

Hint: "civilized" is a euphemism for "not reaching conclusions that make Villiam feel uncomfortable".

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-03T07:42:45.562Z · LW · GW

suppose LW has few but very vocal neoreactionaries[1] and that most of the non-neoreactionaries are not very interested in talking about neoreaction[2].

What do you mean by that? Do you mean that they're not interested in becoming lesswrong about the issue or that they only want to become lesswrong to the extent it doesn't involve being similar to those weird NRx's?

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 · 2016-03-03T07:38:11.378Z · LW · GW

I don't want LW to be a recruitment place for a political cult.

What do you mean by "cult"? Many people would consider the founding purpose of LW to be a recruitment place for a cult. Or do you mean you don't want anything that might convert people to a political position different from yours?

Comment by Torchlight_Crimson on Is altruistic deception really necessary? Social activism and the free market · 2016-03-02T02:37:52.244Z · LW · GW

In this case, I didn't want people to actually act on the lie

Unfortunately, if your lie is successful people will act on it anyway.