Every time I see anything related to Less Wrong all I can think of is Roko's Basilisk and I can't stop laughing.
But now that we know it exists, you've doomed us all! You fiend!
Losing "The Game" As A Service.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today
131–140 of 173 posts
Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today
#132I'm seriously surprised at how many people here are fans of Yudkowsky, given his lack of any real productive output beyond thought experiments and fanfiction, the distinctly weird stuff he judges as right by taking his philosophy to the extremes (e.g. "it's better for one person to be tortured for fifty years than for an extremely large number of people to each get a speck of dust in their eye"), and the way he treat…
> I'm seriously surprised at how many people here are fans of Yudkowsky In my (admittedly extremely limited) exposure to him as a person through videos of his talks and some of his transhumanist writing, I didn't really get the impression that he's anything but a very nice and gifted person. So I think this practice of judging or dismissing entire lives by applying a simplistic theme is an antipattern, and this is tr…
>You may argue most or even all of this framework is lifted from earlier philosophical and scientific achievements, but in some areas standing on the shoulders of giants is actually a good sign you're in the right place.
The good bits are not original and the original bits are not good.
The problem is that LessWrong has a habit of neologism - so EY will use his own term for something ("fallacy of gray" is one example - known for 2000 years as the "continuum fallacy"), then his young readers, who have met whatever it is for the first time ever, will think his work is much more original and significant than it is 'cos they can't find his term for it. This cuts them off from 2000 years of thinking on the topic and increases LW's halo effect.
Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today
#133I'm seriously surprised at how many people here are fans of Yudkowsky, given his lack of any real productive output beyond thought experiments and fanfiction, the distinctly weird stuff he judges as right by taking his philosophy to the extremes (e.g. "it's better for one person to be tortured for fifty years than for an extremely large number of people to each get a speck of dust in their eye"), and the way he treat…
I haven't read all of the "Sequences," nor am I familiar with most details of the Less-Wrong-mindset's idiosyncrasies. However, I just re-read the whole book and I'm not sure either of those concepts have any bearing on this work. There is a bit of assertion that "timeless physics" is representative of true reality, but my reaction was to look it up and find that it's an interesting fringe theory. For all I know, EY…
He does assert it, then assume its truth in later pieces. http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Quantum_Physics_Sequence#...
Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today
#134I'm seriously surprised at how many people here are fans of Yudkowsky, given his lack of any real productive output beyond thought experiments and fanfiction, the distinctly weird stuff he judges as right by taking his philosophy to the extremes (e.g. "it's better for one person to be tortured for fifty years than for an extremely large number of people to each get a speck of dust in their eye"), and the way he treat…
>.g. "it's better for one person to be tortured for fifty years than for an extremely large number of people to each get a speck of dust in their eye"), The number in question was 3^^^3 using Knuth's Up Arrow Notation. As he explains, that's a lot of people: (3^(3^(3^(... 7625597484987 times ...)))). If we decide that one person being tortured for 50 years is worth a quick blink by all those other people, then a stil…
In real-world AI, they tend to go for minmaxing, which avoids such absurdities. Minmaxing says "don't torture people, your dust speck has literally been defined to be insignificant."
Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you round down before multiplying, then you get an invalid answer. Your argument here is based on the premise that the subjectively-inflicted-pain of "a whole lot of specks of dust in a person's eye" can be treated as a multiple of "one speck of dust in a person's eye", which to me is the point of absurdity that makes the whole thought exercise fall apart.
That's just basic utilitarianism. What exactly are you objecting to? That 2 dust specks in 2 people's eyes isn't exactly twice as bad as 1 dust speck?
Yes, it's the sort of thing that makes people go to second-order utilitarianism.
(It's a bit like when someone says something absurd about Uber or Bitcoin and, when called out, says "But that's Econ 101!" Yes, but in second and third year you find out it's all a bit more complicated than that.)
Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What exactly are you objecting to? That some arbitrarily minimal amount of subjective pain can be presumed to be actually distinguishable from the general background unpleasantness of being human in the first place. Edit: Rephrased to remove gibberish resulting from temporary brain/keyboard disconnect.
It doesn't matter if it's "distinguishable". It's objectively worse. A pin prick might not be noticeable but a million is the worst torture imaginable.
You're assuming that dust specks across different people can be added, and then asserting that as evidence that dust specks across different people can be added. The addition is ridiculous.
Also, minmaxing is a thing.
Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today
#137For those who start reading and wonder when Harry stops being an insufferable little jerk... I'm on chapter 57, now, and he's getting better.
One important thing, for those who find the main character insufferable at times: this is not a simple mary sue story. When you notice Harry doing something dumb, oblivious, overconfident, condescending, etc. do not assume that this is the author's personality leaking through. It may be the intended reading.
No, but it's pretty close to one. Guess who bit his maths teacher at age seven when said teacher didn't know what a logarithm was?
Also, read this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9r/cognitive_biases_due_to_a_narcis... It's a perfectly normal literary analysis of HPJEV as a narcissist and/or raised by narcissists. It's not Ph.D-quality rigour, but it does back its claims. Note the amazing special pleading in the comments - fans outraged someone would dare analyse their favourite thing in less than glowing terms.
They seriously think they can get this thing a Hugo, somehow evading all artistic critique along the way.
Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the kind of thing which could very easily turn into a flame war, and is much further off-topic. I'm not interested in that kind of argument right now, so all I will say in this thread is this: My personal experience with Less Wrong-style rationalism, to simplify the situation aggressively, is that it has a core of good, useful tools (Bayesian reasoning, strict positivism, utilitarianism) that I have no proble…
And yet no one has really made an convincing argument of why the conclusions of utilitarianism contradict the axioms of utilitarianism. And no one seems to offer the rather simple solution that utility is non-linear (so dust in ones eye is really a quite small fraction as bad as a century of torture), and people who mock Eliezer's utilitarianism hypocritically do so on sweatshops built&recycled computers, clothes, an…
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Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the kind of thing which could very easily turn into a flame war, and is much further off-topic. I'm not interested in that kind of argument right now, so all I will say in this thread is this: My personal experience with Less Wrong-style rationalism, to simplify the situation aggressively, is that it has a core of good, useful tools (Bayesian reasoning, strict positivism, utilitarianism) that I have no proble…
And yet no one has really made an convincing argument of why the conclusions of utilitarianism contradict the axioms of utilitarianism. And no one seems to offer the rather simple solution that utility is non-linear (so dust in ones eye is really a quite small fraction as bad as a century of torture), and people who mock Eliezer's utilitarianism hypocritically do so on sweatshops built&recycled computers, clothes, an…
No post body was provided.
Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the kind of thing which could very easily turn into a flame war, and is much further off-topic. I'm not interested in that kind of argument right now, so all I will say in this thread is this: My personal experience with Less Wrong-style rationalism, to simplify the situation aggressively, is that it has a core of good, useful tools (Bayesian reasoning, strict positivism, utilitarianism) that I have no proble…
And yet no one has really made an convincing argument of why the conclusions of utilitarianism contradict the axioms of utilitarianism. And no one seems to offer the rather simple solution that utility is non-linear (so dust in ones eye is really a quite small fraction as bad as a century of torture), and people who mock Eliezer's utilitarianism hypocritically do so on sweatshops built&recycled computers, clothes, an…
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