Meditation is pointless. "Enlightenment" in the Buddhist sense is a real and non-mystical thing that anybody can attain.
I love that part.
I agree that the results here aren't particularly shocking if we consider how the statements were collected, but it was quite entertaining to read.
It seems that a large number of these have been chosen such that the large majority of people reading LessWrong would disagree with them. If the website is to trust itself as an aggregator of beliefs with high confidence levels, then we should expect the majority of these to be wrong.
As one of the contributors, I agree, and I would not be surprised if what I submitted were completely wrong. But I do not currently know that, and in fact believe otherwise.
Also, yes, I didn't think there was much point in submitting beliefs that are common in this specific community but rare elsewhere. That didn't seem useful or meaningful.
So: no, I don't "trust" this list, but I do see it as interesting brainstorm fodder for places-to-look-for-good-questions.
The main lesson I'm getting from this is that it's generally good that people don't feel comfortable expressing these sorts of opinions.
It wasn't worth my time/mental effort to respond to this survey in open-ended form, but it would be interesting to see the results from a multiple-choice version.
Yesterday I asked readers the Thiel Question. 40 people responded. I have combined the responses into a single political platform. You can view the raw responses here.
This country is tired of the Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians and human politics in general. I, a human-aligned AGI dictator, promise to solve this problem once and for all. If I cannot remove humans from government entirely then I will attempt to abolish democracy. If I cannot abolish democracy then I will repeal the 19th amendment and leave the rest to OpenAI.
Morality is not real. Words have no meaning. I tell lies of every color except white. I actively avert my gaze from all advertising and never read the news.
My careful abstinence from biased information informs me of what's really going on. Like how the Boston Marathon bomb plot was an FBI sting operation that got out of hand. And how most adults born after 1980 in North America have been poisoned by [REDACTED].
Price gouging does not exist. I will clean up Wall Street by legalizing insider trading. I will fix the media ecosystem by abolishing copyright. This will improve public health via music's placebo-like healing effects. I will repeal the 21st amendment. I have drafted a 28th amendment prohibiting civilian smartphone use. Difference between social classes, races, sexes in achievement are significantly genetically based. I will remedy the gap via magick.
I will replace Shakespeare with Zettai Shōnen in English curricula and then abolish all public schools with large class sizes. This is the first step of a long-term strategy to liberate children from adults. The plan includes a political compromise legalizing infanticide of children below the age of 4.
Status is unsatisfying but mating success is the strongest determinant of life satisfaction in humans. I will leave the status quo unchanged because humans mostly just execute social programs and do not seek happiness. Meditation is pointless. "Enlightenment" in the Buddhist sense is a real and non-mystical thing that anybody can attain.
Life requires death. The silent minority is unequivocal in its endorsement of chemical, biological AND nuclear weapons.
Physicists are stuck because reality is uncomputable, we lack hypercomputers and we have no good ways to figure out what a universe is. A renewable, low-carbon economy is difficult if not impossible. MIRI isn't even wrong. Our brightest minds should be building weapons of mass destruction not because it is hard but because it is easy.
I lean towards non-negative personal utility, i.e. ignore suffering and count only good things. Even so, most people's lives are not worth living. Brains in vats would be better. The value of a human life is <$500. If it wasn't for humanity's panicky overreaction, losing a billion or two would have little impact. This could even be a net positive depending on which billion(s) we eliminate.
Mainstream politicians yabber about policy but what the silent minority really cares about is philosophy. I learned philosophy from the best sources: science fiction and mythology.
Mathematics : Induction :: Philosophy : Coinduction
Free will is a meaningless concept. Vote for me and you'll never have to vote again!