savageorange

There is a reasonable question about why it is that "For group decisions that require unanimity very little passes the process.". How much of this effect is honest difference in values, and how much is mere linguistic artifacts caused by our tiny communication bandwidth and how sloppily we use it.

IMO any CEV algorithm that had any hope of making sense would have to ignore words and map actual concepts together.

We don't just use 'winning' because, well.. 'winning' can easily work out to 'losing' in real world terms. (think of a person who alienates everyone they meet through their extreme competitiveness. They are focused on winning, to the point that they sacrifice good relations with people. But this is both a) not what is meant by 'rationalists win' and b) a highly accessible definition of winning - naive "Competition X exists. Agent A wins, Agent B loses"). VASTLY more accessible than 'achieving what actually improves your life, as opposed to what y... (read more)

I just want to clarify here -- are you aware that personal wikis and server software such as MediaWiki are different classes of software? The most relevant reason to use personal wiki software rather than wiki serving software is, no server == no consequent security holes and system load, no need to do sysadmin type stuff to get it going. Personal wiki software is generally just an ordinary program, meaning it has it's own GUI and can have features that it would be insecure to expose over the internet.

Personally I have found Zim a little lacking when I wan... (read more)

Is there some reason you use MediaWiki rather than a personal wiki software (for example Zim)?

Simple part first: yes, I claim that every city has or will soon have near-ubiquitous internet access. If you need to deny your future self the ability to choose to use the internet easily, you won't be able to live in a city.

One doesn't follow from the other.

Take out any built-in wifi hardware; get a usb wireless module. These are tiny enough that you can employ almost any security/inconvenience measure on them. Decide which security/inconvenience measures are appropriate. Done.

Evidence that would substantially inform a simulation of the enforcement of those beliefs. For example, history provides pretty clear evidence of the ultimate result of fascist states/dictatorships, partisan behaviour, and homogeneous group membership The qualities found in this projected result is highly likely to conflict with other preferences and beliefs.

At that point, the person may still say 'Shut up, I believe what I want to believe.' But that would only mean they are rejecting the evidence, not that the evidence doesn't apply.

I'd be a lot more inclined to respond to this if I didn't need to calculate probability values (ie. could input weights instead, which were then normalized.)

To that end, here is a simple Python script which normalizes a list of weights (given as commandline arguments) into a list of probabilities:

#!/usr/bin/python
import sys
weights = [float(v) for v in sys.argv[1:]]
total_w = sum(weights)
probs = [v / total_w for v in weights]
print ('Probabilities : %s' % (", ".join([str(v) for v in probs])))

Produces output like this:

Probabilities : 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4

Yes, that's roughly the reformulation I settled on. Except that I omitted 'have the habit' because it's magical-ish - desiring to have the habit of X is not that relevant to actually achieving the habit of X, rather simply desiring to X strongly enough to actually X is what results in the building of a habit of X.

But in point of fact, the way it works out is that Christianity tends to make people more generous, caring and trustworthy than atheism does. So it goes.

But this is not in point of fact. Citation very much needed.

I don't disagree that (strong, ie. 'God does NOT exist' rather than 'there is no evidence that God exists') atheism attracts some jerks, btw. Any belief that is essentially anti-X has the problem of attracting at least some people who simply enjoy punishing belief in X.

Upvoted, but I would like to point out that it is not immediately obvious that the template can be modified to suit instrumental rationality as well as epistemological rationality; At a casual inspection the litany appears to be about epistemology only.

Perhaps his server is underspecced? It's currently slowed to an absolute c r a w l. What little I have seen certainly looks worthwhile, though.

I like this idea, but am seriously concerned about its effect on eye health. Weak eye muscles are not a thing you want to have, even if you live in the safest place in the world.

I don't see how understanding, acceptance, and love follow from rationality.

They do not follow from it, they are necessary to it.

• You need to relate well to yourself and others (love) in order to actually accomplish anything worthwhile without then turning around and sabotaging it.
• If you discover something, you need to accept what is actually going on in order to come to understand it, and understand it in order to apply it.

Are you saying that rationalism is a "philosophy of life", even leaving the soundness aside for a minute?

No. But a... (read more)

Belittling their sense of the distinction seems like a pretty unfriendly thing to do.

However, some of the things that religion proscribes are also pretty unfriendly things to do. (arguably religion itself is an unfriendly thing to do). So until they stop doing such things, they can reasonably expect to cop retaliation for their own hostility. (in proportion to their craziness, IME -- for example Buddhism doesn't cop much flak, whereas Christianity does)

Putting yourself in the position of being significantly opposed to reality cannot be rationally viewed... (read more)

But this is not a specific problem of rationalists.. It's a broader problem with Western culture. Feeling strongly about things is not 'cool' or impressive. Plenty of people enjoy complaining, but passion makes you an alien.. perhaps an inspiring one, but ultimately an alien.. a person of whom people say 'oh, I could never do that', even if in the other breath they praise your passion and dedication.

I hesitate to assign a definite cause for that, but I am willing to comment that Western society somewhat deifies disaffected sociopathy, through its presentat... (read more)

I find I can always count on you to make pointlessly snarky comments.

I would prefer to be more specific, and say 'understanding, acceptance, confidence, control, and love' (with clear definitions for each, probably similar to the ones in the GROW Blue Book). Not all of these things can be used to make clever, snappy remarks to wow outsiders, but they are all necessary for a satisfying life, and therefore must be addressed effectively by any sound philosophy of life. The parent comment was only vague, not wrong.

That would be equivalent to self-sabotage or an attempt to systematically deny that 'you' possess some particular attribute A (eg. homosexuality, atheism..) which you do in fact possess, so.. no.

You are allowed to try to talk me into murdering someone, e.g. by appealing to facts I do not know; or pointing out that I have other preferences at odds with that one, and challenging me to resolve them; or trying to present me with novel moral arguments. You are not allowed to hum a tune in such a way as to predictably cause a buffer overflow that overwrites the encoding of that preference elsewhere in my cortex

.. And?

Don't you realize that this is just like word laddering? Any sufficiently powerful and dedicated agent can convince you to change your ... (read more)

Gandhi does not prefer to murder. He prefers to not-murder. His human brain contains the wiring to implement "frothing lunacy", sure, and a little pill might bring it out, but a pill is not a fact. It's not even an argument.

No pills required. People are not 100% conditionable, but they are highly situational in their behaviour. I'll stand by the idea that, for example, anyone who has ever fantasized about killing anyone can be situationally manipulated over time to consciously enjoy actual murder. Your subconscious doesn't seem to actually k... (read more)

people like to Google-stalk everyone they come into contact with,

People do that?

People have too much time on their hands. Geez.