What do you think of LessWrong?

You know, I'm kinda worried about this wave of meetups we are having. I'm sort of afraid of meeting everyone in the flesh and becoming some sort of actual organization or lobby...

That would be bad?

^^ Become one with the Flesh-Hive-Mind that are TV Tropes meet-ups.

Also: if I were to start reading Less Wrong articles, what would be a good starting point?

I like Less Wrong. The level of discourse in discussions there is superior, and the articles often offer fresh perspectives and coin terms for things I wouldn't have thought to come up with names for. It's become the sort of place whose archives I frequently google in search of discussions or articles about whatever concept happens to be on my mind. Despite the focus on epistemic rationality and singularity-related topics, the breadth of topics addressed is fairly large. Discussions can go in all sorts of directions without devolving into shitposting, and people there actually know how to agree to disagree.

The downside is that a lot of what they're interested in discussing just doesn't interest me. I guess it's a given, though, that a site started by an AI-researching cryonics zealot will tend to attract immortalists who like math and thought experiments and optimizing their capacity for rational thought beyond the point of diminishing returns. I wish there was a forum with Less Wrong's level of rationality, but tvtropes' range of subject matter.

edited 3rd Apr '11 2:55:09 PM by Tongpu

Wow. Don't know if you realise it, but pretty much, my impression now is that lesswrong is Revenge Of The Nerds made Real Life.

Or something of this kind: we are so right, we don't even have to show it!

Well, if it was just thinking of possible consequences, there would be little of a problem. The thing is, that it is expressed in terms of "Eliezer Yudkowsky saves the world again!"

Or that we should watch out what we write here, for we may give a wrong idea to that famed time-travelling evil computer. Yeah, as if super-smart computer, supposedly so smart it would outsmart any and all of us together in a heartbeat, can't think up such an idea on its own.

I think I can sign under this with both my hands. For one, I've begun to use the word "nerd" as an insult.

The joke is, a month of free time.

edited 3rd Apr '11 2:58:15 PM by lordGacek

Are you serious.

Begin at "Getting Started"

edited 3rd Apr '11 2:58:44 PM by ViralLamb

I mean Less Wrong meetups.

We're like a sort of GLBT community, all our lives we thought there was something wrong with us, like we'de never fit in, and we're so happy to meet each other and understand that "It wasn't me who was wrong... IT WAS THE WORLD!". I'm being hammy about it, but that's the general vibe. A skim through this article should give you an idea of the ambient excitement.

There is something of an ever present anti-religion/secular humanist slant. Hence, I might have expected its views would mesh well with agnostic and atheist ideals.

That's 99% of the reason I like it so much. It may not always be agreeable, and may even be dogmatic at times, but it still points at interesting things nonetheless.

I've seen this happen several times, but that doesn't stop it from being interesting, I suppose. Although at times I wish Eliezer would get thumped with the off-topic stick of post thumping.

When you put it that way, it really does sound creepy.

Given that they are often guilty of the things they condemn, and there are clear faults here and there, it isn't to hard to pick out the flecks of dirt.

edited 3rd Apr '11 3:02:05 PM by TheMightyAnonym

@Ivy: I'm roughly referring to what I'll allow myself to quote from Rational Wiki.

Incidentally, as you can notice in this fragment, the post which started the affair is no less disturbing in itself: "give us your money, OR YOU WILL GO TO COMPUTER HELL!".

[edit]
That's all of me until next weekend, I'll drop to see where will this thread have gone by then.

edited 3rd Apr '11 3:10:14 PM by lordGacek

I imagine a omnipotent future computer wouldn't feel petty vindictiveness.

But what do I know?

Less than an omnipotent super computer.

You are right on this one, Gacek. The entire affair is just plain hilarious. Those idiots didn't think it through, what's the point of punishing a behavior if it's not for deterrence? Like in Minority Report, stopping crimes from happening is great. Punishing the criminals for crimes they didn't commit just doesn't make sense.

We kind of frown on pettiness. It's irrational.

edited 3rd Apr '11 3:12:30 PM by Ardiente

If you publicized the threat of future robot lasers, it would become a deterrent.

Punishment actually isn't effective at doing anything. It's not justice. The reason we use punishment is that the knowledge and expectation of punishment is intended to act as a deterrent. The only reason to actually ever punish people is to reinforce the idea that the punishments do in fact happen. If we were all convinced that we'd be punished if we did bad things, then it'd actually be better if no one was ever actually punished.

The exception of course is that if punishment takes the form of a transfer, then you're at least in a potentially neutral scenario. But the economic basis of crime and punishment-and tort law and etc-is to make everyone feel like they're responsible for the costs of their own actions so that the decisions that they make bear the weight of those costs.

edited 3rd Apr '11 3:15:19 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

Why lasers? Inefficient.

I tried getting into LessWrong at one point, but the frustratingly roundabout language got on my nerves, and I stopped.

Roundabout language? Nonsense. In all honesty, I can't suppose that it's any more roundabout than anything I type on a regular basis!

?????????????????????????????????????

But Less wrong is nothing if not straightforward!

It's not even that though. It's taking an extra step to justify the decisions you already make by assigning arbitrary numbers to it. Yes it's important when dealing with AI because you have to quantify it for that purpose somehow and arbitrary numbers are the only way we can do that, but by trying to use it as our own baseline we only shoehorn ourselves into the perspective of a machine that has a completely different mindset and less knowledge of context and associative thinking.

Oh. You definitely seem to have a point there.

-_-

-_-

-_-

I think this is the first time I've read something that actually made me mad on tvTropes. Plenty of things I didn't agree with, but nothing that actually made me mad. Until now. No, I don't particularly care if you were joking. I'm calling not cool on that one regardless.

Time for homework.

edited 3rd Apr '11 4:23:45 PM by deathjavu

I generally like Less Wrong, but my one criticism of it is that for someone who places such importance on being right, EY is surprisingly often wrong.

And not just wrong, clearly wrong. Besides the whole singularity thing, which I'm convinced he only believes because of Sunk Cost Fallacy, more than once I've had a criticism of one of his articles and then once I looked at the comments it turned out lots of other people had the same criticism. In short, someone so dedicated to rationality had missed a glaring logical flaw in his own argument. Specific example 1

I'm getting the feeling that EY prays to the alter of rationality without actually practicing it that often.*

Yudkowsky and his disciples feel like what might have succeeded Scholasticism if there had never been a Reformation, and so no Protestant empiricists between it and modern atheist philosophies.

That's how the focus on immortal sexless intelligences (angels/AI) for which they lack empirical evidence and the disinterest in using your superior mind for reproductive success strike me. And this zeitgeist was much richer in human drama the first time around.

You don't show that you are right, you prove it.

To me, it had the opposite effect. I found the idea of The Singularity terrifying and undesirable, and Yudkowsky helped me change my mind on that. Now I find it terrifying and incredibly interesting: how it turns out later is mostly a matter of how we steer history now.

Gacek, at first I thought you were just being witty, but you've sort of Jumped the Shark on that one. Good job on marking yourself as a smug, sneering, despicable Jerkass. I mean, saying such a thing here of all places, how stupid can you be?

Oh, and in general at the thread. Sometimes we fail to walk our talk. We act against our better judgement. It's called Akrasia. It's an uphill, daily battle. Thank you for your feedback: it is healthy.

edited 3rd Apr '11 4:35:00 PM by Ardiente