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Could rationalists be the worst people to be put in charge of keeping an AI in the box? We can assume:
I've seen AI box transcripts in which the consensus was: the AI stayed in the box because the AI player was too "dumb" to be swayed by the nuanced, rational arguments. Instead of attributing stubbornness to lack of intelligence, is it a deliberate installation by evolution to defend against clever wordplay and manipulation? Is rationalism the ultimate "cult" as its defining feature is a volitional removal of a safeguard in place to prevent domination of values and goals by those with superior wordplay?
Are there loopholes in this mechanism specifically for one's parents? Is that why the values given to you by your parents, whether about religion or automobile brands, are so difficult to displace? If religion's propagation is primarily through a parental trust loophole closed to others, would that be easy to test by seeing if a preference for Ford or Chevy is just as generationally robust?
I haven't heard a nonrationalist say "what you are saying sounds smart but I don't know enough about the topic to evaluate your argument, so I won't let myself get convinced" but have heard that from a rationalist (as in someone coming to the LessWrong community weekend).
It's not rational to let yourself be argued into anything when faced with a powerful and potentially manipulative actor.
Previously, Tourette's occupied the same category in my mind as stuttering, a lifelong organic brain disease or wiring fault not amenable to coaching or psychiatry. However, I'm questioning this after watching The Vow, an NXIVM documentary illustrating, with video, a childhood Tourette's sufferer be "cured" by some sort of negative reinforcement training. Upon looking up the Wikipedia, I'm surprised to find a prognosis of "80% will experience improvement to disappearance of tics beginning in late teens." Further, there's been an extreme uptick in Tourette's experienced by children simply from watching TikTok videos of others' tics, including taking on the tics they're exposed to.
Together, these three data points have shifted my belief that Tourette's, and perhaps stuttering, is not some physical wiring defect, but a named conversion disorder. Perhaps psychiatry already knew this and was being polite, but I did not. I understand the need to group similar behavior disorders into diseases, regardless of somatic or organic origin. However, I also see the danger in naming (or renaming) somatoform disorders like delusional parasitosis as Morgellons, giving legitimacy and cause célèbre to what are otherwise social contagions with no underlying organic etiology.
I can't speak for others, but if one day I woke up with tics, I suspect my recovery path would be quite different depending on whether I was told, "this is a habit you can unlearn or will likely soon outgrow" or, "this is a serious, unique brain disease, and you deserve sympathy and accommodation."
Testosterone levels go up and down based on success and failure in conflicts. It indicates the likelihood you’ll win the next conflict and determines your propensity to engage in further conflict. Win a lot, your levels go up, and you’re more likely to stand your ground or even initiate a conflict. Lose a lot, and that indicator will downregulate your behavior to prevent you from risking conflicts that have, historically, not gone well for you. It’s like a built-in, unconscious hint that regulates your desire to roll a die based on how well you’ve rolled in the past.
I feel this most viscerally when battling with phone support and getting a victory or concession a strict reading of the policy would not have afforded me. The high of the win motivates me to make other calls I’ve been putting off, and I’m sure that extra motivation comes from this chemical being upregulated after success, indicating further success is possible.
What if there were a way to gamble testosterone without engaging in any conflict at all—if you could place some on the line in the hopes of getting a higher level through prediction rather than conflict? Watching sports allows such bets to be placed. First, because evolution is not stupid, you must associate yourself with one of the battling factions. You can’t make their victories yours without accepting their defeats. If you are to receive higher testosterone when your side wins, you must equally risk lower testosterone when they lose.
Sports affecting testosterone level is a well-known fact. I’m proposing that this is not an effect of recreational sports viewing, but the cause for it—to deliberately wager testosterone on one’s predictive abilities in substitution for actual combat. Further, wagers can be both safe or risky, with corresponding greater bets, like rooting for an underdog.
Sticky trap outrage is covert factory farm apologetics. Pretending the suffering time integral of a single mouse held still exeeds the suffering of billions of chicken and cow "instant" deaths is a way to culturally launder factory farming as humane.