a proudly nerdy or "indie" kid claiming to not watch a popular TV show, and bragging she knows nothing about the local sports team or latest celebrity gossip,
This hit home. On reflection, I have certain areas in which I am oddly proud of my lack of knowledge, but I don't think it is connected with cementing my place in an in-group. Two examples come to mind;
-Gardening. I have no interest in it but my wife loves it. I have occasionally highlighted my ignorance as a way to pay respect to her (e.g. don't ask me about that, she is the expert).
-Pop culture. The... (read more)
I would be interested to read that post. I’m very much in the opposite camp but I would desperately love some reasons to think that everything might actually be okay. :-)
There are many examples in history, including a good number in very recent history, in which regulations on industry have been rolled back or downgraded. Or do you just mean that starting from zero regulation there is only one direction in which change can happen?
As a blue team sympathizer I struggled in a few places not to get distracted by particular details which I felt a strong visceral disagreement with, but I don’t know if someone more red-sympathetic would have had similar responses to other things. This does illustrate DanB’s main point, though; that partizanship is undesirable in AI Safety discourse because people are more likely to dismiss the important points if they feel like the issue is coded for the other team.
Computers have been commonplace to ubiquitous for around forty years now. That's four decades of experience showing us that machines can do things that humans can't. We take it for granted that a computer is better at math[1] than we are, that it can 'remember' more clearly than we do, that it can access huge swathes of information that we can't. On top of this, fiction has taken these strengths and exaggerated them, so that many (most?) people would believe that a computer can enhance a photo to be able to accurately reproduce a face from a few indistinct... (read more)
What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a colour television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?
I think the ability hypothesis is pointing out that Mary has propositional knowledge of colour but lacks procedural knowledge, and the acquaintance hypothesis is supposed to point towards what you are looking for in this essay; qualia. But, as you said, the explanatory quote you provided doesn't exactly help.
What if, instead of Mary being released or given a fancy new tv, she is simply given a color wheel? It has no w... (read more)
This is an interesting take on post-scarcity. I haven't read Biting the Sun, but from a quick look at the synopsis I can see how it (and your comment) echoes some of the things I've been thinking about.
From many different fields of study, approaching the problem from many angles, the optimal amount of stress is not zero. It is also not low. The optimum is moderate.
Is it really stress that these studies are measuring? I think of it more as struggle. Of course, stress is often correlated with struggle, but it doesn't always have to be. I think the crux is th... (read more)
I agree, it looks like a parody skit to me.
I just wanted to point out that the article says "People who see outcomes, both good and bad, to be due to their own doing are said to have a strong internal locus (the left side of the below scale)." but the scale shows the internal locus on the right.
Hi,
I am brand new to LW (this is my first comment!) and have only just started reading the sequences. I'd love to meet up with some fellow rationality-enthusiasts, but am not likely to be able to make this meet-up (I will negotiate with my other half, you never know).
Any future gatherings in Edinburgh would be most welcome, though. Keep me informed if any are being arranged.
In humans I think there are two main persuasion strategies, depending on your use case.
If you want to persuade a single person you get to know them, gain their trust, figure out what they want, what topics bypass their rational system and hit them right in the emotional core, and then you frame your argument in the way which is most effective. This won't magically make a committed vegan accept a steak dinner, but it allows you to have significant influence on many subjects which feel less personal to the target. And, significantly, once you have persuaded ... (read more)