hot-gay-rationalist:

nostalgebraist:

hot-gay-rationalist reblogged your post:The first way in which my introduction is going to…

Uh… what? No he doesn’t believe that. He has consistently and repeatedly explained that he thinks the idea of Roko’s…

I know he’s said that later, but the Basilisk did freak him out in the original thread.  This will not be new to you, but just for the record:

Until we have a better worked-out version of TDT and we can prove that formally, it should just be OBVIOUS that you DO NOT THINK ABOUT DISTANT BLACKMAILERS in SUFFICIENT DETAIL that they have a motive to ACTUALLY BLACKMAIL YOU.

(-EY.  Plain text archive of the thread here.)

I admit that EY currently does not believe in the Basilisk (and didn’t even think it would work in the original thread).  You’re right about that and I was wrong.

To be honest these details are not all that significant to me because I consider the whole of FAI, and the idea of worrying over Basilisks and trying to prove that they can’t work, are nearly as silly as the Basilisk itself.

To me the sensible ideal from which EY is deviating here is not “not thinking the Basilisk would work,” but “thinking the formal proofs about the Basilisk and other FAI topics are a good way to spend one’s time and energy.”  The “thinks the Basilisk would work” / “thinks the Basilisk wouldn’t work” distinction is, to me, like a theological distinction is to an atheist; there’s a much bigger gap here than the one between the positions.

If people want me to I might write a post about why I find FAI so un-compelling (actually, I have written about it at length in private emails so I could easy copy/paste with some light editing).

I’d love to know why you find FAI so un-compelling. Also, I’d like to know whether it’s the idea that it’s possible or that it’s desirable that you disagree with. I have some misgivings about its feasibility, but to me it looks like it’s by definition desirable, so if a person believes it’s possible and they have skills relevant to it, it looks like it’s a pretty clear and obvious goal. Of course, they may be factually wrong about that belief, but then that’s another story altogether; apparently Yudkowsky couldn’t convince Hanson nor vice-versa, and my own position is sort of a middle-ground between the two, so I don’t know.

It’s strictly feasibility, with sort of an irrelevant side order of desirability; mostly it’s that I think we currently lack the information necessary to think about these topics realistically, and that screws up both feasibility and desirability, but the latter is more thorny and gets into more ethics stuff and so I prefer to de-emphasize it.

I’ll look at the email I’m thinking of and see if it’s suitable for copy/pasting into a post here.  Note that it was written to someone aware of FAI but (I think) not very invested in the concept; it paints in broad strokes, is very informal about everything, and I imagine much of it will not meet your standards for argument, but it does sketch a set of arguments that could be fleshed out more.

(via hot-queer-rationalist-deactivat)

wait are we talking about actual basilisks here? as in the cryptid?

We’re talking about this.  (Also what those Christine Love tweets I posted yesterday were about)

If you’ve never heard about this before then you’re in for a wild ride

Uh… what? No he doesn’t believe that. He has consistently and repeatedly explained that he thinks the idea of Roko’s…

I know he’s said that later, but the Basilisk did freak him out in the original thread.  This will not be new to you, but just for the record:

Until we have a better worked-out version of TDT and we can prove that formally, it should just be OBVIOUS that you DO NOT THINK ABOUT DISTANT BLACKMAILERS in SUFFICIENT DETAIL that they have a motive to ACTUALLY BLACKMAIL YOU.

(-EY.  Plain text archive of the thread here.)

I admit that EY currently does not believe in the Basilisk (and didn’t even think it would work in the original thread, though it still freaked him out because he thought one should be conservative about the topic).  You’re right about that and I was wrong.

To be honest these details are not all that significant to me because I consider the whole of FAI, and the idea of worrying over Basilisks and trying to prove that they can’t work, are nearly as silly as the Basilisk itself.

To me the sensible ideal from which EY is deviating here is not “not thinking the Basilisk would work,” but “thinking the formal proofs about the Basilisk and other FAI topics are a good way to spend one’s time and energy.”  The “thinks the Basilisk would work” / “thinks the Basilisk wouldn’t work” distinction is, to me, like a theological distinction is to an atheist; there’s a much bigger gap here than the one between the positions.

If people want me to I might write a post about why I find FAI so un-compelling (actually, I have written about it at length in private emails so I could easy copy/paste with some light editing).

When that bit I idly quoted from the QM Sequence started getting reblogged, I got several replies, ranging from “your commentary is too positive toward Yudkowsky” to “your commentary is too negative toward Yudkowsky.”

I woke up this morning and saw another reply in which the quote had apparently saved someone (or played a significant role in saving someone) from a horrible night of self-hating thoughts.

Which makes me really happy, and is also your daily People Are Complicated reminder.  One quote can be a lot of things to a lot of people.  (Even one quote from Eliezer Yudkowsky, a guy who people tend to have pretty set opinions about.)

rubices reblogged your post and added:

Armchair psychoanalysis is fun and easy!

I’m not sure how to take this statement.  My impression is that it’s negative/disapproving (this usage of the word “armchair” usually is).

I guess I feel like people do armchair psychology about people they don’t know all the time?  We do it whenever we think about the lives of celebrities, or politicians, or wonder why we liked [author’s latest book] so much less that [author’s previous work].  It’s no substitute for the real insight that comes from knowing a person, but we still do it and derive some kind of value from it, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

soozblog:

nostalgebraist:

The first way in which my introduction is going to depart from the traditional, standard introduction to QM, is that I am not going to tell you that quantum mechanics is supposedto be confusing.

I am not going to tell you that it’s okay for you to not understand quantum mechanics, because no one understands quantum mechanics, as Richard Feynman once claimed.  There was a historical time when this was true, but we no longer live in that era.

I am not going to tell you:  “You don’t understand quantum mechanics, you just get used to it.”  (As von Neumann is reputed to have said; back in the dark decades when, in fact, no one did understand quantum mechanics.)

Explanations are supposed to make you less confused.  If you feel like you don’t understand something, this indicates a problem—either with you, or your teacher—but at any rate a problem; and you should move to resolve the problem.

I am not going to tell you that quantum mechanics is weird, bizarre, confusing, or alien.  QM is counterintuitive, but that is a problem with your intuitions, not a problem with quantum mechanics.  Quantum mechanics has been around for billions of years before the Sun coalesced from interstellar hydrogen.  Quantum mechanics was here before you were, and if you have a problem with that, you are the one who needs to change.  QM sure won’t.  There are no surprising facts, only models that are surprised by facts; and if a model is surprised by the facts, it is no credit to that model.

It is always best to think of reality as perfectly normal.  Since the beginning, not one unusual thing has ever happened.

The goal is to become completely at home in a quantum universe.  Like a native.  Because, in fact, that is where you live.

In the coming sequence on quantum mechanics, I am going to consistently speak as if quantum mechanics is perfectly normal; and when human intuitions depart from quantum mechanics, I am going to make fun of the intuitions for being weird and unusual.  This may seem odd, but the point is to swing your mind around to a native quantum point of view.

(From “Quantum Explanations,” the first post of the Quantum Physics Sequence)

This kind of thing is great and makes me smile and it is what Yudkowsky is good at, and I wish he’d kept doing more stuff like this

He’s always been arrogant and has always had some ideas I disagreed with, but I get this sense that there was some sort of definite decline associated with what I guess you could call “the HPMoR turn” (he became overconfident in his ability to conquer previously untried domains like fanfic writing through sheer “rationality” alone, thus became less curious about other untried domains and more wrapped up in his image as a guy who’s automatically good at everything without even studying it, etc.)

Yeah but on the other hand this is the guy who believes in an AI version of Pasccal’s Wager that involves a future benevolent godlike AI that tortures a virtual reality version of you to try to make the current you donate to Yudkowsky’s AI research for creating that benevolent AI, so I really have trouble trusting anything coming out of that brain.

I’m very well aware of this (in fact it is one of the topics I guess you could say my tumblr is “about,” if anything)

In the context of my tumblr the above post was meant to contrast with a lot of griping and jeering about the kind of stuff you mention, and to highlight what I think is one of the good sides of a person I usually talk about negatively.

I’m not sure that really affects what you’re saying at all, I just wanted to provide context.

(via soozblog)

creativepooping:

nostalgebraist:

The first way in which my introduction is going to depart from the traditional, standard introduction to QM, is that I am not going to tell you that quantum mechanics is supposedto be confusing.

I am not going to tell you that it’s okay for you to not understand quantum mechanics, because no one understands quantum mechanics, as Richard Feynman once claimed.  There was a historical time when this was true, but we no longer live in that era.

I am not going to tell you:  “You don’t understand quantum mechanics, you just get used to it.”  (As von Neumann is reputed to have said; back in the dark decades when, in fact, no one did understand quantum mechanics.)

Explanations are supposed to make you less confused.  If you feel like you don’t understand something, this indicates a problem—either with you, or your teacher—but at any rate a problem; and you should move to resolve the problem.

I am not going to tell you that quantum mechanics is weird, bizarre, confusing, or alien.  QM is counterintuitive, but that is a problem with your intuitions, not a problem with quantum mechanics.  Quantum mechanics has been around for billions of years before the Sun coalesced from interstellar hydrogen.  Quantum mechanics was here before you were, and if you have a problem with that, you are the one who needs to change.  QM sure won’t.  There are no surprising facts, only models that are surprised by facts; and if a model is surprised by the facts, it is no credit to that model.

It is always best to think of reality as perfectly normal.  Since the beginning, not one unusual thing has ever happened.

The goal is to become completely at home in a quantum universe.  Like a native.  Because, in fact, that is where you live.

In the coming sequence on quantum mechanics, I am going to consistently speak as if quantum mechanics is perfectly normal; and when human intuitions depart from quantum mechanics, I am going to make fun of the intuitions for being weird and unusual.  This may seem odd, but the point is to swing your mind around to a native quantum point of view.

(From “Quantum Explanations,” the first post of the Quantum Physics Sequence)

This kind of thing is great and makes me smile and it is what Yudkowsky is good at, and I wish he’d kept doing more stuff like this

He’s always been arrogant and has always had some ideas I disagreed with, but I get this sense that there was some sort of definite decline associated with what I guess you could call “the HPMoR turn” (he became overconfident in his ability to conquer previously untried domains like fanfic writing through sheer “rationality” alone, thus became less curious about other untried domains and more wrapped up in his image as a guy who’s automatically good at everything without even studying it, etc.)

Er… this is arrogant, and a non-expert attempt to turn quantum mechanics education on its head.

The primary thing that Yudkowsky sucks at is, and remains to be, understanding human interaction.

It is arrogant, but I like a little arrogance in some cases and this is one of them.  Your mileage may vary.

About “non-expert attempt to turn quantum mechanics education on its head”: as someone who has taken a quantum class, read standard quantum textbooks, and also read the QM sequence, I thought the QM sequence had a lot of virtues that were lacking in the education I got.

Which is not to say that it is a substitute for them, or that I think people should take it uncritically.  But I guess I’m confused what your qualm is here?  The existence of the QM sequence does not mean ordinary QM education doesn’t still happen.  Yudkowsky isn’t (AFAIK) trying to reform college physics teaching or anything.  It is just an interesting that that is out there on the internet that you can read.

(via creativepooping-deactivated2022)