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Yehuda Yudkowsky, 1985-2004

yudkowsky.net

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Re: Yehuda Yudkowsky, 1985-2004

#71

Post by zupatol »

gjm11 wrote: post #54
zupatol wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read that again and I'm not sure that summary helps a lot. I'll just write about what I've read turned into in my mind, where it merged with my own experience and other things I've read. Schopenhauer's main point is that death doesn't exist because time is not real. This is not very comforting unless you can imagine what it means that time is not real. I can't. He does point out that there is no rational reason to…

Of course there's a rational reason to avoid death (and hence, to consider death as something to avoid -- which, yes, is not at all the same thing as fearing it). Aren't there a whole lot of things you want to do? Well, if you die now then you won't get to do any of them. If you've achieved everything you want to in life, then perhaps you no longer have any reason to avoid death. Most people haven't. But, actually, I…

You're right. The argument about overcoming the fear of death is really not sufficient to make that point.

Let's leave at that: there are good arguments in Schopenhauer for not considering death as undesirable, and many of them are not necessarily dependent on his idea that time is whatever he says it is. I haven't read them carefully enough to convince anyone, let alone summarize them in a few paragraphs, but I do think it's worth pointing out this source.

Re: Yehuda Yudkowsky, 1985-2004

#72

Post by newsycaccount »

yters wrote: post #70
newsycaccount wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a tiny, molecular sized ratchet, that would absorb vibrations due to heat and turn one way, but refuse to turn the other way due to it's ratchet teeth. These could then be hooked up to a generator for free power.

Interesting, don't know if that reverses entropy, though.

It doesn't =)

If you have enough heat to make it click forward, you also get random bounces on the prawl which themselves make it go in reverse as much as forward.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_ratchet

Re: Yehuda Yudkowsky, 1985-2004

#73

Post by aswanson »

newsycaccount wrote: post #72
yters wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, don't know if that reverses entropy, though.

It doesn't =) If you have enough heat to make it click forward, you also get random bounces on the prawl which themselves make it go in reverse as much as forward. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_ratchet

What is the entropy of the singularity that produced the big bang? If all the matter and energy in the universe recondensed to that point, what would it's entropy be?

Re: Yehuda Yudkowsky, 1985-2004

#74

Post by zupatol »

gjm11 wrote: post #54
zupatol wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read that again and I'm not sure that summary helps a lot. I'll just write about what I've read turned into in my mind, where it merged with my own experience and other things I've read. Schopenhauer's main point is that death doesn't exist because time is not real. This is not very comforting unless you can imagine what it means that time is not real. I can't. He does point out that there is no rational reason to…

Of course there's a rational reason to avoid death (and hence, to consider death as something to avoid -- which, yes, is not at all the same thing as fearing it). Aren't there a whole lot of things you want to do? Well, if you die now then you won't get to do any of them. If you've achieved everything you want to in life, then perhaps you no longer have any reason to avoid death. Most people haven't. But, actually, I…

I couldn't help thinking some more about what you wrote.

The things I want to do, like reading a specific book, only make sense if I am alive. If I die, my desire to read the book disappears. I would not say I want to live in order to read this book. I would say I want to read this book if I am alive.

But I agree with you that people can sometimes have a sense of purpose, of things that should be accomplished in their life. I remember I had this a long time ago. I'm still working on what I then thought I should do. In the meantime I have lost the feeling I must absolutely live so that my work can be accomplished. But the fact this feeling exists does make me think there is something wrong with my argument.

You are right it is rational to pursue things you like or avoid things you dislike and following your instincts. At the same time your different instincts are often in contradiction, and you rationally chose which one to repress. So the fact you have an instinct doesn't mean you should never repress it, and having an instinct of survival doesn't necessarily mean it would be good to live forever.

Re: Yehuda Yudkowsky, 1985-2004

#75

Post by zupatol »

Eliezer wrote: post #58
zupatol wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3) Finding value in what you're doing right now. Life should be like running a profitable business, which you know will not last forever. The point of your business is giving a value to your customers today. Eventually a competing business will cater better to your customers' needs and put you out of business. This doesn't take away the value you've given your customers, nor the money you made. Going one step further…

Yeah, I think I'll stick with that "Get out of Earth" one, but thanks for the suggestion. "On a grand scale we simply want to save the world, so obviously we're just letting ourselves in for a lot of disappointment and we're doomed to failure since we didn't pick some cheap-ass two-bit goal like collecting all the Garbage Pail Kids cards." -- http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/answers/rants/X0044_Subject...

"In other words, Bartlebooth resolved one day that his whole life would be organised as a single project, an arbitrarily constrained programme with no purpose outside its own completion."

Georges Perec, Life: A User's Manual

Re: Yehuda Yudkowsky, 1985-2004

#76

Post by knome »

Raphael wrote: post #67
knome wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3) The possibility that after fulfilling the manifest destiny of implacably rampaging across our universe our descendants will eventually tease apart the fundamental mathematical equations describing the foundations of our existence and find our universe not alone with nothing but the greek chaos surrounding it but amid a vast collection of universes for our future generations to spread to and conquer. Goals of Man ☑…

Nice unicode checkboxes. But dude, what are we running from?

Extinction.

Re: Yehuda Yudkowsky, 1985-2004

#77

Post by JulianMorrison »

wjy wrote: post #66
Eliezer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The per capita expense of keeping a thousand frozen heads in a pool of liquid nitrogen is essentially negligible. You wouldn't notice it as a budget item. If it really bugs you, fund it yourself through private philanthropy. But out of all the things that government was ever proposed to do, this would be the most cost-effective in the history of time - even I, a libertarian, draw the line at not doing this . Cryonics…

Umm, and remember there's no convincing reason to believe cryogenics work. Sure, we've cooled down some animals and brought them back. But keeping a head near absolute zero for years, and expecting to revive a consciousness? No evidence for it. None.

There are no revivals yet. That's expected - it isn't evidence.

If you can't examine the facts, can you examine the theory?

What is the theory? There's two I know of: biological revival, and informational "upload". The first sounds dubious to me - there's an awful lot of damage to repair, and the nanotech to do it is not even on the drawing board, let alone the knowledge to guide repair. The second sounds much more achievable based on some sort of slice, dice, scan and digitize process, followed by computer emulation. (See recent work by Anders Sandberg.)

What would be required for upload? Continuity of information. (Continuity of the potential for biological life is NOT required.) Do we have evidence for continuity of information? We know that vitrification tech has gotten pretty good recently. (Wikipedia: a rabbit kidney was vitrified, thawed, and worked.) That suggests enough information could be preserved for upload.

Conclusion: there is convincing reason to believe cryonics should work.

Re: Yehuda Yudkowsky, 1985-2004

#78

Post by MikeCapone »

knome wrote: post #76
Raphael wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice unicode checkboxes. But dude, what are we running from?

Extinction.

A good read on this subject: "Global Catastrophic Risks", edited by Nick Bostrom.

You can also check out the Lifeboat Foundation: Lifeboat.com

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