As my education progresses, I'm seeing more and more paralells, through some fictional but generally nonfictional accounts, that sugget that the world is broken in a way that causes suffering to be an emergent property, if not intrinsic. Not just HPMoR (and Significant Digits after it), but in FDR's State...
Hello all, I am a newcomer to the site, but I have been lurking and reading the various posts on this site for about 8 months. I have to tell you, life has started making a lot more sense since I read these posts. However, I am feeling somewhat directionless...
I would certainly appreciate a workable solution brought about by those means, but I would take care to mention that this approach might not necessarily be the first or only approach. Ideally, I would like to asssemble a balanced portfolio of conspiracies.
If I take a PIDOOMA number of 90% expectation of failure over any timescale for an individual scheme, and assume strict success or failure, then seven is the minimum required to have a better than even chance of having a plan succeed, thirteen for a 75% chance, and a twenty-nine to be rolling for ones. Even though this probably doesn't correlate to any real probabilities of success, the 7-13-29 is the benchmark I'm going to use going in.
Probably should have made it clearer that I was inviting debate on that specific angle that you just brought up. I was trying to limit my bias by not being the first person to answer my own question. You're right about the framing of the problem being problematic.
Those are important distinctions. Thanks for the clarification!
The current state of things, where people suffer wwhen they don't have to due to circumstances outside of their control. Just because the world is the product of seven billion (largely) uncoordinated people and untold dead doesn't mean that we have the excuse that seven billion people (or probably fewer) can't fix "the way things are." While I concede that we aren't permanent fixtures on the planet, I am sufficiently disturbed by the idea of our version of humanity being one of many possible versions that destroys itself out of shortsightedness that I am willing to embark on any plan with a reasonable chance of working (and a suite of backup plans) with all of the resources that may be mustered by the means available to us.
As my education progresses, I'm seeing more and more paralells, through some fictional but generally nonfictional accounts, that sugget that the world is broken in a way that causes suffering to be an emergent property, if not intrinsic. Not just HPMoR (and Significant Digits after it), but in FDR's State of the Union Speech, The Grapes of Wrath, Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, among other works. People have been aware for most of human history that, because of humanity's rules, people must suffer.
Knowing that this whole site is more or less dedicated to defeating unconscious ays of thinking and holds the mental enlightening of the human race paramount, I would... (read 168 more words →)
Thank you kindly!
An additional question: Are there any resources on this site for resolving issues with ho a person approached rationality? I'm asking because I came to this site looking for a way to improve my thinking and avoid self-sabotaging behaviors, and I think I may have carried several unsavory mental artifacts along in the proces of forming that association that are preventing me from getting the most out of this site.
Hello all,
I am a newcomer to the site, but I have been lurking and reading the various posts on this site for about 8 months. I have to tell you, life has started making a lot more sense since I read these posts. However, I am feeling somewhat directionless after reading the archives, as I cannot determine a next course of action.
The difficulty is this: I assume most of the poeple on this site are at least midle-aged; I had just turned 18 when I started browsing the site, after being vaguely dissatisfied with Rationalwiki's ability to keep me informed.
Given that, would anyone recommend a general path to follow in terms of what I should be reading from here? I have largely perused Yudkowsky's more well-known works, and have made it partially through the Codex.
Any help, recommendations, or suggestions would be appreciated, and I look forward to new horizons of knowledge as I may find them.
I should probably explicate my arguments here.
By referencing fictional works, I am referencing schools of thought that illustrate the viewpoint I advocate. That the works became popular, and that they were written at all, is evidence favoring the idea that a significant group of people were affected by the literature.
Additionally, I did not intend this post to be an exhaustive proof of my thesis, only an introduction to it. I should probably come back hen I have a version of this post that is, though, judging by the comments I'm recieving.
Lastly, my imprecision was supposed to solicit brainstorming on the explication itself, rather than calling attention to how vague it was.
TL;DR: Message recieved, I'll come back when my formulations are more rigourous.