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Does anyone else see the (now obvious) clown face in the image on the Not Built To Think About AI page? It's this image here.
Was that simply not noticed by lukeprog in selecting imagery (from stock photography or wherever) or is it some weird subtle joke that somehow hasn't been mentioned yet in this thread?
Can you explain what you mean by this? I ask because I don't know what this means and would like to. Others here clearly seem to get what you're getting at. Some Google searching was mostly fruitless and since we're here in this direct communication forum I'd be interested in hearing it directly.
Thanks!
I would pay one of these prices for my own set. I'm a little unsatisfied with note-taking and highlighting on ebooks and would love a physical copy to annotate and wear out.
that takes math, programming, and lots of work
But sounds totally awesome. Especially if it can be created once and used over and over for different applications.
I don't have time at the moment so I'll have to check those out later.
At a very quick skim I saw:
"Tradition is – apart from inborn knowledge – by far the most important source of our knowledge."
Which I must say irks me real badly, but I'll try to keep an open mind.
At the risk of inviting bias, may I ask what the justification for the finger-wagging was? I am unfamiliar with Popper (which is sort of nice, actually. blank slate)
Sorry if I wasn't clear. The "source or origin" meaning the group doing the donating does matter, but the physical creation of the thing is irrelevant. A Dollar isn't a "secular thing" or a "religious thing" - it's just a thing.
Things-which-can-be-donated cannot be secular or religious, but people and organizations can, the way I see it.
I'm not sure that I am the right authority to be correcting anyone's argument - the above comments are just my, an amateur rationalist's, personal response to your argument.
Sorry - personally.
And it's a shame that as a general rule it does.
My reasoning for adding the caveat in this particular instance was to fully disclose my stance. I'm inviting questions, and discussion is only aided when people have a better understanding of each other. If I had said that I am completely miserable and the negatives of being alive once already alive don't outweigh the positives, I'd be of a completely different stance and I'd be understood completely differently.
I don't think it lowers someone's status to say they are not ok and I'm sorry that adding the above caveat bothered you. Clearly my comment was innocent and by more fully explaining my feelings I am I'm no way intentionally reinforcing anyone else's lack of confidence.
Did you have a stroke mid-post?
.. I see the "40" in there, which is relevant to lent, along with letter patterns that sort of like like encoded words. Maybe this is a puzzle?
Sure, if humans exist then rationality should exist.
But my question stands, why should humans exist? If I'm reading correctly your post assumes that a rapid cessation of humans would be somehow a bad thing.
Stop me if you feel this is entering into uselessly nihilistic territory and we can call it quits here.
This is a sort of terrible analogy, but I'm going for it anyway: I recently adopted a cat and feel extremely powerful positive emotional feelings for him just by virtue of being around him and caring for him all the time, not to mention that he is incredibly cute and loving. But I don't feel for him the way I would expect to feel for a biological child of mine. I imagine one's feelings about an adopted child might be similar at first.
more: I'm not sure if you are saying parental love is a good thing or not, or merely factually stating that it could potentially be absent in an adoption scenario, but for the sake of conversation let's say you (or some imaginary interlocutor) are suggesting there would be some net detriment to child-rearing if parental love is removed: I wonder if one couldn't make more rational and intelligent decisions in the absence of the potentially-clouding fog of parental love. Is it necessarily a good thing for an established adult to want to die so that a 1-month-old infant could survive (insert imaginary scenario here)? Is it a good thing that parents see their children, the object of their overwhelming parental love, less objectively and with profound biases due to that love? Etc. - there are many examples of the biasing effects of biological love.
It's an interesting topic I think... non-biased (or at least less-biased) child-rearing as a result of reduced instinctual biological parental love.
there will rapidly cease to be humans
What is the problem with that?
I agree with you that rationality can be spread independent of genetics. In that sense, rationalists don't have to fear their "kind" being wiped out by anti-natalism.
And: I'm not sure, but I think maybe the implied idea in OrphanWilde's comment is that rationality is not dependent on genetics. If I am right though, then I don't see the point he/she is making. Maybe OrphanWilde can clarify.
Should Podcasts be its own thread every month?
[pollid:423]
I'll add: Stuff You Should Know.
They don't always do the best fact-checking and the topical nature can be unsatisfying, but it's a generally entertaining introduction to some things of which you may not be aware.
So it's not just a long babysitting mission? I was afraid of that.
I've recently started listening to Q2 (Click "Q2 Music" in the top player bar) streaming online. It is:
A New York-based online station devoted to the music of living composers
It's often described in different ways, sometimes called "contemporary classical". Give the station a few hours worth of listening - they play a variety of genres within the umbrella of contemporary music and you may like some more than others.
I appreciate the lack of a poppy "hook" in most of the music they play.
I'll kick it off:
I've begun to seriously consider the anti-natalist views of philosophers like David Benatar. My two sisters recently each had their first child and while I've given thought to the idea of having my own children in the past, closely seeing the process play out from beginning to end has somehow updated my thoughts on the topic. I haven't read much yet (I'm about a quarter through Better To Have Never Been and would relish some suggestions from LWers on the matter.
Currently my thinking is that as much as I would like the experience of raising a child who shares my own DNA, I am becoming more and more convinced that I can't feel like I am making a morally-correct decision by bringing a new human into existence. If I had never been born I necessarily wouldn't have been harmed in any way by not existing - and now that I am here I can enjoy life as much as possible (which is a lot, don't get me wrong), but I still must endure some measure of suffering and I also must face mortality.
I was never interested in the idea of adopting children before, but in light of my updated viewpoint on conception I can see the benefit of adopting an already-born person.
Another part of it I think about: As far as utility to society goes, I already know that I have certain inclinations or aspirations towards rationality and a general motivation to attempt to better society in some small way if I can. There's no guarantee that a new person I create will match or exceed the possible positive impacts on society that I make. That uncertainty-for-positive-change along with the fact that a new person will necessarily impose some negatives on society also makes me wonder how I could justify the decision to make a new person.
As I'm sure it is clear, I'm in the early stages of considering these topics and haven't done much research at all into writings and analysis of the issues I'm raising. I am open to any and all suggestions of avenues of research.
Lying lieutenants love Lovecraftian lightning.
What about the policy of making an effort on your own and opting out of groups of either variety?
I'm not sure what you mean about religious groups' aid being secular. It seems like you are saying medicine and food are "secular" things, while prayer is a "religious" thing. Sure you can't pray money into existence, so it's sort of a "secular thing", but the useful question is really who is giving the thing, not how it came to be.
The issue at hand is what organization is at the source of the charitable donations - a secular organization or a religious one. That's a question that is worth asking. Whether or not the aid they are giving has been originally created by a god, magic or science isn't really important for this question.
I didn't downvote you, but I suspect whoever did shared this reasoning.
Started the sign up process now. Thanks!
I completely agree with what you are saying and also tap out, even though it may be redundant. Let us kill this line of comments together.
They could just be a weird sort of lazy whereby they don't scroll back up and change anything. Or maybe they never see his post. Or something else. I don't think the -%positive-not-going-down-yet is any indication that wedrifid's comment is not right.
Egalitarian instinct. Eliezer is using power against you, which drastically raises the standards of behavior expected from him while doing so---including less tolerance of him getting things wrong.
Nailed it on the head. As my cursor began to instinctively over the "upvote" button on shminux's comment I caught myself and thought, why am I doing this?. And while I didn't come to your exact conclusion I realized my instinct had something to do with EY's "use of power" and shminux's gentle reply. Some sort of underdog quality that I didn't yet take the time to assess but that my mouse-using-hand wanted badly to blindly reward.
I'm glad you pieced out the exact reasoning behind the scenes here. Stopping and taking a moment to understand behavior and then correct based on that understanding is why I am here.
That said, I really should think for a long time about your explanation before voting you up, too!
Thank you for introducing me to the term akrasia!
If your Reddit time commitment was anything like that of other people I know, you should be able to blow through all the sequences in about a day or two : )
Thanks, I'll get started making stupid mistakes as quickly as I can! I'm sorry I wasn't able to make any here.
Hey! My name is Vinney, I'm 28 years old and live in New York City.
To be exceedingly brief: I've been working through the sequences (quite slowly and sporadically) for the past year and a half. I've loved everything I've seen on LW so far and I expect to continue. I hope to ramp up my study this year and finally get through the rest of the sequences.
I'd like to become more active in discussions but feel like I should finish the sequences first so I don't wind up making some silly error in reasoning and committing it to a comment. Perhaps that isn't an ideal approach to the community discussions, but I suspect it may be common..