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All of Kratoklastes's Comments + Replies

3ArisKatsaris10y
You not only made a ludicrous attempt to supposedly shame me by googling previous stuff about me, but your attempt to do so is as much of a failure as everything else you've posted -- it took me a min to figure out what the hell you were even referring to in regards to "transitive preferences". You are referring to an Ornery forum discussion [http://www.ornery.org/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi/topic/6/15870.html] where someone else asked that question, and I answered them -- not a question I asked others. Your reading comprehension fails, your google-fu fails, etc, etc... You also don't seemingly see a discrepancy between your constant accusations of me supposedly being "dishonest" and yet how I openly admit my levels of ignorance whenever such ignorance may be relevant to a discussion? Nor do you seemingly see a problem with so easily accusing me of such a serious moral crime as dishonesty, without the slightest shred of evidence. Is this what your moral sense entails, freely making slanderous accusations?
-1ArisKatsaris10y
I suggest you don't be so hasty to accuse people of dishonesty. Downvoted without comment from now on, since you seem incapable of doing anything other than insulting and accusing them of various crimes. I also find it bitterly amusing that someone who admitted to taking delight out of trolling people presumes to even have an opinion about morality, let alone accuse others of dishonesty. And indeed you clearly don't have an opinion about morality, you obviously only have opinions about politics and keep confusing the two concepts. All your babble about tyranny-tyranny-state-violence-whatever, would still not be useful in helping a five-year old learn why he should be nice to his sister or polite to his grandmother, or explain why our brain evaluates it morally better to make someone feel happy than to make them feel sad, all else being equal. If you have a moral sense, instead of just political lectures, you've yet to display it at all.
3[anonymous]10y
ArisKatsarsis used the correct form of "your" here. Also, you guys are filling the recent comments section with your flamewar. Please take it to a private conversation, as it has little value for the rest of us.
4[anonymous]10y
"Your" is indeed the correct form, as it modifies the gerund phrase "being downvoted." Awkward. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphry's_law]
0MugaSofer10y
No. There are, however, community norms in this particular corner of the internet. Still, it is generally a good idea to avoid politicized [http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/] examples, especially here. Was that really necessary? Applause Lights [http://lesswrong.com/lw/jb/applause_lights/]. Firstly, Arguments As Soldiers [http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Arguments_as_soldiers]. Secondly, please provide specific examples if you have some criticism, don't just sort people into a reference class containing idiots.
0ArisKatsaris10y
Downvoted, as I will be downvoting every comment of yours that whines about downvotes from now on. Your downvotes have nothing to do with your positions, which are pretty common in their actual content around these parts, and everything to do with your horrid manner and utter incapacity of forming sentences that actually communicate meanings. And as such it was judged and found wanting. Then it shouldn't have started with the words "morality is about..." It's you who put it in bold letters. Perhaps you should start not emphasizing sentences which aren't important ones.
0ArisKatsaris10y
Kratoklastes, your arguments are clumsy, incoherent, borderline unreadable. Your being downvoted has nothing to do with "correct lines" or not, since we have a goodly number of libertarians in here (and in fact this site has been accused of being a plutocrat's libertarian conspiracy in the past), it has to do with your basic inability to form coherent arguments or to address the points that other people are making. And also your overall tone, which is constantly rude as if that would earn you points - it doesn't. And yet your argument DOES support it: You argued that someone can prove that a cost is incurred on them by being willing to pay money to stop such behaviour. You've argued that morality is about letting people do as they will as long as they aren't incurring costs on others. Can you really not see how these two statements fit together so that your argument ends up excusing all that state violence which you decry? The theocratic Iranian state after all is composed of people, which prove that sinners are incurring costs against them by being willing to pay money (e.g. morality police wages) to stop such sinful behavior. That's your argument, though you didn't realize you make it -- because you just never seem to realize the precise meaning and consequences of your words. And as for your babble about Coase, I never mentioned Coase, I've never read Coase, and that whole paragraph is just a further example of your incohererence.
How to Disentangle the Past and the Future
Kratoklastes10y3

Not generalising in the least: I'm a man of the people who interacts often with the common man - particularly the rustic and bucolic variety (from the Auvergne in Deepest Darkest France to the dusty hinterland of rural Victora and New South Wales).

Everywhere I've ever lived, I've had conversations about animals (most of which I've initiated, I admit - and most of them before I went veggie), with folks ranging from French eleveurs de boeuf to Melbourne barristers and stock analysts: their lack of awareness of the complexity of animal sense organs (and thei... (read more)

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-1MugaSofer10y
Fair enough. Probably. Whoops, you're right. I was misremembering. ... they do? I have four cats, and I've seen them do some pretty stupid things, but nothing that seemed to suggest they have any senses we haven't discovered yet . What kind of thing did you have in mind?
-2MugaSofer10y
I am not claiming that it is not indoctrination, by that definition. Nor am I claiming that it is. I am asserting that the term "indoctrination" is counterproductive, as the connotations, particularly the political ones, are likely to interfere with discussion and clear thinking. I also note that this comment section is probably not the place for such discussion. Of course not. I stand by this statement. This is usually referred to here as the need to "raise the sanity waterline" - I'm not sure where the term originates - and as I said, I am aware that it's a problem, but I don't see why Americans pledging allegiance is an especially vital part of that. Incidentally, while this does not alter the substance of your post, I note that your writing style seems needlessly rhetorical, which is likely to attract hostility from people pattern-matching to various ideologues. This is a website dedicated to rationality, not politics.
3Kawoomba10y
What's with the formatting? Please adhere to standard conventions, there's a reason for them (did I do that right?). Also, you're overusing applause lights in your comments, it's frankly annoying. We're at least trying not to march our little soldier arguments against each other, but to shift our opinions as we encounter flaws in our arguments and strength in the other commenters'. Goebbels and born-against-Christian (hah, I'm gonna leave that typo in) examples just kill rational discourse.
5ArisKatsaris10y
Are you really saying that an action can be recognized as moral or immoral depending on whether other people are willing to pay money to stop it, or am I grossly misunderstanding you? That would mean that the hiring of thugs to beat up other people who engage in e.g. "sinful behavior" would serve as proof (not just evidence, but effective proof) that person doing the hiring is on the moral side, just because they're willing to pay money to so beat such people up. Your description of morality is becoming more and more incoherent.
0MugaSofer10y
So why not comment on the post, hmm? Oh, of course. If you genuinely have good reason to believe you know better than (group) beyond the evidence you have that you are right then it is perfectly reasonable to act on it. But since most of the time you're probably not in that position, it seems to me that cultivating tolerance is a good idea.
4ArisKatsaris10y
Yes. Of course. It was the blatant flaw in your description of morality. Unless one addresses that one first, there's hardly a need to discuss subtleties. If you're creating exceptions to your definition of morality for "sensible reasons", you should hopefully also understand that these sensible reasons won't be automatically understood by an AI unless they're actually programmed in. Woe unto us if we think the AI will just automatically understand that when we say "letting individuals do what they will" we mean "individuals with the exception of babies and other people of mentally limited capacity, in whose case different rules apply, mostly having to do with preserving them from harm rather that letting them do whatever". In short your description of what morality entails isn't sufficient, isn't complete, because it relies on those unspoken and undescribed "sensible reasons". Once the insufficiency was shown to you you were forced to enhance your description of morality with ideas like "full agency" and the "capacity to rationally determine what will cause them harm". And then you conceded of course that it's not just babies, but other people with mentally limited mental capacity also fall in that category. Your description of morality seems more and more insufficient to explain what we actually mean by morality. So, do you want to try to redescribe "morality" to include all these details explicitly, instead of just going "except in cases where common sense applies"?
-1MugaSofer10y
Ignoring the fact that this is a robot, that would seem to imply that infertile women are not female. Do you use a similar definition for male, or consider all non-females "male"? I'm not sure if I should be using scare quotes for "female" :-\ EDIT: Why the SOTL quote?
How to Disentangle the Past and the Future
Kratoklastes10y-3

The idea of entanglement of present and future states is what makes me think that dogs invest (albeit with a strategy that has binding constraints on rate of return): they know that by burying a bone, the probability that it will be available for them at some later date, is higher than it would be if the bone was left in the open.

In other words, the expected rate of return from burying, is greater than for not-burying. (Both expected rates of return are negative, and E[RoR|not-burying]= -100% for relatively short investment horizons).

It also opens up the ... (read more)

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-3MugaSofer10y
Of course, it's hard to be sure how much of those behaviors is "programmed in" by evolution. In fairness, some animals do see in monochrome. Others can see into the ultraviolet or have even more exotic senses. I guess these people (who I don't seem to have encountered, are you sure you're not generalizing?) are treating all animals as dogs, which isn't uncommon in fiction.
-2MugaSofer10y
Firstly, that is the most blatant derailing of a thread I have ever seen. Secondly, the main advantage of "tolerance" is that most people cannot, by definition, be in a better position to judge on certain issues than most other people - and indeed will almost certainly be wrong about at least some of their beliefs. Thus, it is irrational to impose your beliefs on others if you have no reason to think you are more rational then they are (see also Auman's Agreement Theorem.) Of course, it is also irrational to believe you are right in this situation, but at least it's not harming people. The most extreme example of this principle would be someone programming in their beliefs regarding morality directly into a Seed AI. Since they are almost certainly wrong about something, the AI will then proceed to destroy the world and tile the universe with orgasmium or whatever.
5MugaSofer10y
Please do not derail threads to promote your political opinions. In addition, you appear to be suffering from the halo effect here - pledging allegiance is Bad (because it's similar to North Korea) and superstition, "woo-girls, laugh-tracks, zinger comedy, etc" and being "heavily indoctrinated" all magically follow. Bad Things somehow generating other Bad Things is pretty damn magical thinking, but it's a common pattern to fall into (if you're lazy you get fat, if you ban prayer in schools you get school shootings.) If, on the other hand, you have some theory as to how "North-Korea style pledging of allegiance to a piece of coloured cloth" is somehow the cause of all these things, and it is relevant to, y'know, rationality, then I advise you to write a top-level post on the topic. And for the record, I'm not American, and while the low sanity waterline is a problem - and not just in America - I am not especially freaked out by people "pledging allegiance" to their country, or for that matter by laugh tracks.
Closet survey #1
Kratoklastes10y2

Late to this (only by 4 years... so fifty smartphone generations), but LOVE the idea.

I believe - firmly, and with conviction - that the modal politician is a parasitic megalomaniacal sociopath who should be prevented at all costs from obtaining power; that the State (and therefore democracy) is an entirely illegitimate way of ameliorating public goods problems and furthering 'social objectives'.

Hence my nick (which I invented).

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2drethelin9y
the optimal political/social structure is one in which we encourage megalomaniacal sociopaths to do good, because they tend to be effective. This is the best part of capitalism.
Meetup : Melbourne Social Meetup
Kratoklastes10y2

I expect that people will attend. Upvote that, hooka.

Actually, I expect that people including me will attend.

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-11Kratoklastes10y
-1Peterdjones10y
There are a large number of things whose utitlity is very subjective (free Justin Bieber CDs anyone?) and a small number of things that are of utility to almost everyone. These include health, eductation and money, which are just the sorts of thnigs states tend to concern themselves with. It seems the problem has already been solved.
4ArisKatsaris10y
Then morality would be about letting babies eat pieces of broken glass, and yet that's not the moral calculation that our brain makes. Indeed our brain might calculate as more "moral" a parent who vaccinates his children against their will, than a parent who lets them eat broken glass as they will. I wonder if you're mistaking the economico-political injuctions of e.g. libertarianism as to be the same as moral evaluations. Even if you're a libertarian, they're really really not. What's the optimal system for the government to do (or not do) has little to do with what is calculated as moral by our brains.
2ikrase10y
That is not that great of an idea. As Muga says nearly any action imposes a cost on others. High powered individuals cannot necessarily step lightly. Plus your idea is even more vulnerable to utility monsters than utilitarianism since it only requires people with moderate unusual or nosy preferences (If you kiss your gay/lesbian lover in public, are you imposing costs on homophobes?) and will lead to stupidly complex, arbitrary rules for determining what counts as imposing costs on others. Plus the goddamned coordination problems. I'm not saying your criticisms are bad (I don't actually understand them). I am just saying that non-initiation of force, or forms of it, is distinctly unworkable as a base rule no matter how good of a heuristic it is.
-3MugaSofer10y
Ignoring for a moment the fact that pretty much all actions impose "costs" on others via opportunity costs, and ignoring the fact that economists are not ethicists ... this is intended simply as an intuition pump. If you want details and "metrics" then read the metaethics sequence.