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String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

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Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#691

Post by habinero »

TMWNN wrote: post #596
duxup wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marginalized groups seem to be a target / susceptible to this kind of thing. I had a weird encounter on reddit with some users who expressed that "only X people understand how this character in the movie feels". Interestingly, there was no indication that the movie intended this interpenetration. But the idea wasn't unusual or all that out there so I didn't think much of it. But that group showed up again and again a…

>I had a weird encounter on reddit with some users who expressed that "only X people understand how this character in the movie feels". Interestingly, there was no indication that the movie intended this interpenetration. The death of the author is a reasonable approach to reading a work. But what you said reminded me of the more delusional view in which a) the watcher/reader's approach is the only "correct" one, and…

You can find all kinds of ridiculous people online, and they're all mostly harmless.

I mean, every LLM post on HN gets people writing fanfic about how AI is developing human intelligence and other silly things.

There's frankly no difference between the two groups -- they are equally silly -- except one is coded female and people like to shit on those hobbies more than male-coded AI fanfic.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#692

Post by thrance »

zmgsabst wrote: post #512
thrance wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're beyond reason. Any critic of Trump is immediately "woke" and "virtue signaling". Don't you care when he threatens war with our allies? When he praises foreign fascists? When he pardoned all Jan 6 rioters, that he previously claimed were all antifa? When he is made above the law by an obviously partisan supreme court? When he passes budgetary laws without congress with no repercussions whatsoever? When he promi…

I was responding directly to something the person said, continuing their discussion: > The maniacal blaming for every problem. The incessant injection of Trump and secondarily politics into every conversation and every facet of life. This…neo-activism is as caustic of a solution as the disease it attempts to inoculate. The explanation for that is that Trump is selected to provoke that response precisely because those…

The last thing to do when confronted with a would-be autocrat is to shut up. That's how they consolidate their powers past the point of no returns. Clearly, with him winning the popular vote despite Jan 6, promising we'd never have to vote again, and gaining total immunity before the law, there was a big problem of communication.

Wanting to preserve democracy is not toxic, however way you want to spin it.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#693

Post by yellowapple »

novok wrote: post #605
rachofsunshine wrote: post #149

[Former member of that world, roommates with one of Ziz's friends for a while, so I feel reasonably qualified to speak on this.] The problem with rationalists/EA as a group has never been the rationality, but the people practicing it and the cultural norms they endorse as a community. As relevant here: 1) While following logical threads to their conclusions is a useful exercise, each logical step often involves some…

I noticed years ago too that AI doomers and rationalist type were very prone to (infinity * 0 = infinity) types of traps, which is a fairly autistic way of thinking. Humanity long time ago decided that infinity * 0 = 0 for very good practical reasons.

> Humanity long time ago decided that infinity * 0 = 0 for very good practical reasons.

Among them being that ∞ × 0 = ∞ makes no mathematical sense. Multiplying literally any other number by zero results in zero. I see no reason to believe that infinity (positive or negative) would be some exception; infinity instances of nothing is still nothing.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#694

Post by coldtea »

rachofsunshine wrote: post #149

[Former member of that world, roommates with one of Ziz's friends for a while, so I feel reasonably qualified to speak on this.] The problem with rationalists/EA as a group has never been the rationality, but the people practicing it and the cultural norms they endorse as a community. As relevant here: 1) While following logical threads to their conclusions is a useful exercise, each logical step often involves some…

>The problem with rationalists/EA as a group has never been the rationality, but the people practicing it and the cultural norms they endorse as a community

It's precisely those kind of people though that would ever be so deluded and so little self conscious as to start a group about rationality - and declare themselves its arbiters.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#695

Post by CPLX »

01100011 wrote: post #639
rachofsunshine wrote: post #149

[Former member of that world, roommates with one of Ziz's friends for a while, so I feel reasonably qualified to speak on this.] The problem with rationalists/EA as a group has never been the rationality, but the people practicing it and the cultural norms they endorse as a community. As relevant here: 1) While following logical threads to their conclusions is a useful exercise, each logical step often involves some…

Another thing I'll add after having spent a few years in a religious cult: It's all about the axioms. If you tweak the axioms you can use impeccable logic to build a completely incorrect framework that will appeal to otherwise intelligent(and often highly intelligent) people. Also, people are always less rational than they are able to admit. The force of things like social connection can very easily warp the reasonin…

Right, and a related problem is a lot of the logic is more like Zeno’s paradox.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#696

Post by coldtea »

novok wrote: post #605
rachofsunshine wrote: post #149

[Former member of that world, roommates with one of Ziz's friends for a while, so I feel reasonably qualified to speak on this.] The problem with rationalists/EA as a group has never been the rationality, but the people practicing it and the cultural norms they endorse as a community. As relevant here: 1) While following logical threads to their conclusions is a useful exercise, each logical step often involves some…

I noticed years ago too that AI doomers and rationalist type were very prone to (infinity * 0 = infinity) types of traps, which is a fairly autistic way of thinking. Humanity long time ago decided that infinity * 0 = 0 for very good practical reasons.

>which is a fairly autistic way of thinking.

Any prominent ones of them I've read or met either openly shares their diagnosis, or 100% fits the profile.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#697

Post by bowsamic »

mikhmha wrote: post #579
emmelaich wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

G.K.Chesterton knew it, 100 years ago: "... insanity is often marked by the dominance of reason and the exclusion of creativity and humour. Pure reason is inhuman. The madman’s mind moves in a perfect, but narrow, circle, and his explanation of the world is comprehensive, at least to him."

So did Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Even Aristotle knew that reason was just an aspect of being a human and not the whole thing

To be honest the only philosopher I know of who convincingly argued that everything is reason is Hegel, but he did so more by making the idea of reason so broad that even empiricism (and emotion, humour, love, the body, etc.) falls under it...

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#698

Post by IshKebab »

close04 wrote: post #687
IshKebab wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> coined this term to refer to the category of reasoning mistake. That's not at all what the Wikipedia article for it says. It presents it as an interesting paradox with several potential (and incorrect!) "remedies" rather than a category of basic logical errors.

The “quadrillion days of happiness” offered to a rational person gives away that such allegories are anthropomorphized just for the sake of presentation. For the sake of what the philosophers mean, you should probably imagine this as an algorithm running on a machine (no AGI). It’s a mental tease, not a manual on how to react when faced with a mugger who forgot his weapon at home but has an interesting proposition to…

> The “quadrillion days of happiness” offered to a rational person gives away that such allegories are anthropomorphized just for the sake of presentation.

So what? It's still presented as if it's a interesting problem that needs to be "remedied", when in fact it's just a basic maths mistake.

If I said "ooo look at this paradox: 1 + 1 = 2, but if I add another one then we get 1 + 1 + 1 = 2, which is clearly false! I call this IshKebab's mugging.", you would rightly say "that is dumb; go away" rather than write a Wikipedia article about the "paradox" and "remedies".

> Similarly the trolley problem isn’t really about real humans in that situation, or else the correct answer would always be “do nothing”.

It absolutely wouldn't. I don't know how anyone with any morals could claim that.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#699

Post by bowsamic »

novok wrote: post #605
rachofsunshine wrote: post #149

[Former member of that world, roommates with one of Ziz's friends for a while, so I feel reasonably qualified to speak on this.] The problem with rationalists/EA as a group has never been the rationality, but the people practicing it and the cultural norms they endorse as a community. As relevant here: 1) While following logical threads to their conclusions is a useful exercise, each logical step often involves some…

I noticed years ago too that AI doomers and rationalist type were very prone to (infinity * 0 = infinity) types of traps, which is a fairly autistic way of thinking. Humanity long time ago decided that infinity * 0 = 0 for very good practical reasons.

They actively look for ways for infinity to happen. Look at Eli's irate response to Roko's basilisk. To him even being able to imagine that there is a trap means that it will necessarily be realised.

I've seen "rationalist" AI doomers who say things like "given enough time technology will be invented to teleport you into the future where you'll be horifically tortured forever".

It's just extrapolation, taken to the extreme, and believed in totally religiously.

Re: String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'

#700

Post by nkrisc »

lostdog wrote: post #176
rachofsunshine wrote: post #149

[Former member of that world, roommates with one of Ziz's friends for a while, so I feel reasonably qualified to speak on this.] The problem with rationalists/EA as a group has never been the rationality, but the people practicing it and the cultural norms they endorse as a community. As relevant here: 1) While following logical threads to their conclusions is a useful exercise, each logical step often involves some…

Wow, what a perfect description of why their probability-logic leads to silly beliefs. I've been wondering how to argue within their frame for a while, and here's what I've come up with: Is the likelihood that aliens exist, are unfriendly, and AGI will help us beat them higher or lower than the likelihood that the AGI itself that we develop is unfriendly to us and wants to FOOM us? Show your work.

It’s pointless. They aren’t rational. Any argument you come up with that contradicts their personal desires will be successfully “reasoned” away by them because they want it to be. Your mistake was ever thinking they had a rational thought to begin with, they think they are infallible.
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