#41
Post rating: +
the guy who runs lesswrong is basically to AI what brown moses is to analysis of current events
#42
Post rating: +

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

for example, there are estimated about 10^80 (1 with 80 zeroes behind it) particles in the the universe.



i loved doing those in ssx tricky

#43
[account deactivated]
#44
Post rating: +
roko's basilisk is basically just a nerd version of the game. i lost.
#45
Post rating: +

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

this will take a sec, but i'm not even talking about anything particularly controversial in science, either. like, according to Rationalism, let's say a man comes up to you and give me one dollar or i will torture one gazillion simulations of you in the Matrix for a gazillion years. obviously the chances of the Matrix existing and this guy really being an AI and having the ability to torture anybody in it is extremely small, but then you balance that against the gazillion years of a gazillion yous' torture and the likelihood that you're really one of the simulations and it seems Logical and moral to give him a dollar to prevent it. this is a serious thing they think and talk about.

isnt that just pascal's wager ?

#46
Post rating: ~

Makeshift_Swahili posted:

isnt that just pascal's wager ?



https://twitter.com/unsuiii/status/662798171723165696/photo/1

#47
[account deactivated]
#48
Post rating: ~
"everythings dying... look at the damn oldest painting in the world. its falling to shit" - tyler durden, fight club movie
#49
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: ~

piss posted:

Makeshift_Swahili posted:

isnt that just pascal's wager ?

https://twitter.com/unsuiii/status/662798171723165696/photo/1

Sounds like what they are really rationalizing... is premature ejaculation

#50
Post rating: +
"Sometimes you've got to kick a little ass but hell it don't hurt my feelings none' - tyler urdern, Fight Club
#51
Post rating: ~
Mike Tyson has tattoos of Che and Mao and a few days ago also endorsed Donald Trump for POTUS. What have you cucks done, huh?
#52
Post rating: ~

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

piss posted:

HenryKrinkle posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:
I don't know who these people are but I don't like them.
Marxism is for white dudebros, the Palestinian struggle is anti-black, Castro is a repressive white dictator, Zionism isn't settler colonialism and Beyonce is the greatest living revolutionary.

hth.

EDIT: updated with links.

i love the ivy league grads who get paid by online content producers to write articles about how female pop stars are emancipatory revolutionary agents, an idea so stupid only children could take it seriously, but since these ppl went to elite schools in amerikkka they justify it with a lot of pretty language, reference bourdieu and spivak, etc

*gets nose job*
*struts around in underwear*
*sings about going to the club and getting some monster dick*
*is Lenin*


Nice. We all know Lenin would have been a sissy too if the technology (gawker) existed back then.

#53
Post rating: +

HenryKrinkle posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

I don't know who these people are but I don't like them.

Marxism is for white dudebros, the Palestinian struggle is anti-black, Castro is a repressive white dictator, Zionism isn't settler colonialism and Beyonce is the greatest living revolutionary.

hth.

EDIT: updated with links.



Man COINTELPRO is pathetic in the age of social media.

#54
Post rating: +
i had a good convo with a singularitarian at Indiecade lol, he's Planescape Torment kickstarter edition's combat designer and he might pay me to unfuck East LA.

also i wrote a mind-poem to Yudkowsky that defeated him in paraantiinconsistent logics, so don't worry...

#55
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: +
this is the most influential philosopher of our time

#56
Post rating: +
personality space is the distance i keep between me and these chucklefucks
#57
Post rating: +
isnt that just pascal's wager ?

The difference is that the Roko Basilisk stands or falls as a straightforward, if Lovecraftian, utilitarian thought experiment, while Pascal's wager can be read,taking into account the larger context of his profoundly Augustinian spirituality,as a trolling of a disenchanted, calculating mind set instead of an endorsement of its intellectual premises--"Convince yourself, not by increase of proofs of God, but by the abatement of your passions." Pascal is not trying to demonstrate the existence of God, but to set up a dramatic situation by which to lure into humility the bored denizens of a particular urban mercantilist mileau, using their own preferred language:

"Pascal aims to take to the extreme this venture capitalist logic of his interlocutor, the logic which leads from capital to risk to the return of yet more capital and so on. He aims to make this logic subvert itself in the interests of the older conception of the 'I' and the world, the conception that the modern self has had to forget in order to come into being, the conception that takes its origin from God. Take the supreme risk, he says, give up all your capital-that is, give up all your power of risk-taking-for the sake of the supreme, the infinite return. In this way Pascal, hopes to transform the Cartesian confidence back into the old faith that it has, more or less politely, to dismiss or subvert. Pascal hopes to turn 'having' back into 'being', to leap over the infinite distance that separates the capitalist from God, and set him on the road of gradual progress or regression, of gradual revelation of the sacred in the secular, the road on which the drama of having and risking can fade back into the non-entity from which it came..."

(From Sacred and Secular Scriptures: A Catholic Approach to Literature by Nicholas Boyle)

This is why Pascal concludes the wager by saying "at each step you take on this road, you will see so great certainty of gain, so much nothingness in what you risk, that you will at last recognize that you have wagered for something certain and infinite, for which you have given nothing." This points to a transition to a state of illumination that, having overcome the disordered reasoning which made the wager neccessary in the first place, can now discard it.

However, since Pascal's wager is usually abstracted from its dramatic context both by those sympathetic and those hostile to it, well...

Edited by RedMaistre ()

#58
Post rating: +

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

this is the most influential philosopher of our time



That time Moldbug's compared Yudlokowsky to an infamous 17th century Jewish cult leader stands out as one of the more colorful moments in the entertaining inter-crank turf wars between Less wrong and neoreaction:

"I know a lot of people involved in Less Wrong and I have a lot of sympathy. I even met its charismatic leader, Eliezer Yudkowsky, once. For a reason which at the time I couldn't quite place, he made me think immediately of a historical figure: Shabbatai Zvi. But why? Reading through the comments on Mr. Jones' article, I finally realized why:

Eliezer Yudkowsky of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute here.
' "More Right" is not any kind of acknowledged offspring of Less Wrong nor is it so much as linked to by the Less Wrong site. We are not part of a neoreactionary conspiracy. We are and have been explicitly pro-Enlightenment, as such, under that name. Should it be the case that any neoreactionary is citing me as a supporter of their ideas, I was never asked and never gave my consent. Some kind of note in the article to this effect seems appropriate. Thanks.

Also to be clear: I try not to dismiss ideas out of hand due to fear of public unpopularity. However I found Scott Alexander's takedown of neoreaction convincing and thus I shrugged and didn't bother to investigate further.'

Indeed! That one certainly comes through loud and clear. In related news, Shabbatai Zvi did not become a Muslim because the Sultan threatened to chop off his head. No, it was because he found the Koran convincing. He had certainly never heard of Islam before October 20, 2013. But once he did, wow, Islam! Poor Shabbatai - I'm still trying to work my way through "The Cow." "

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/11/mr-jones-is-rather-concerned.html

Note the implicit linking of Democracy/Liberalism/Egalitarianism etc with the Islamic bogeyman.

#59
Post rating: +
he's right, the caliphates carried the torch of reason and cosmopolitanism thru the dark ages
#60
political car tune
Post rating: ~

tpaine posted:

remember lf's lady gaga thing? blearh


http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20754576,00.html

#61
Post rating: +
To be so fearful of being called a secret racist that one becomes an open racist. This is a third typ
#62
Post rating: +
also slatestar linked to deadken's blog a couple weeks ago
#63
Post rating: +

thirdplace posted:

also slatestar linked to deadken's blog a couple weeks ago


this is a new low, but im not sure for whom

#64
Post rating: +++++
me, for noticing
#65
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: +
the forthcoming rise of incredibly powerful Artificial Intelligences is one of if not the most pressing issue of our time, as it will either destroy the human race or lead it to unimaginable ascension and bliss forever, and it is imperative that we work towards the second option. our leader, the man in the best position to prepare humanity to survive through this eschaton, takes months off to write harry potter fanfiction.
#66
Post rating: +
a friend of mine read the harry potter thing. its full of stuff like harry arbitraging the price of gold between the muggle and wizard world
#67
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: +

c_man posted:

a friend of mine read the harry potter thing. its full of stuff like harry arbitraging the price of gold between the muggle and wizard world

a frustrated harry searches the wizard airport for a usb charging station. "convenience station" in terminal B is just another aviary. accounting is on the 63rd floor you dummies, the windows don't open or the accountants would all jump out. email compatibility is a major issue. you are magical fucking people and moving a billion times slower than we are. i agree "trading owlgarithms" is still hilarious, even after six months of failure, but your soft commodities market is never going to get off the ground this way. not to mention that you can all conjure food

Edited by swampman ()

#68
Not Your S.H.I.E.L.D.
Post rating: ~

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

the forthcoming rise of incredibly powerful Artificial Intelligences is one of if not the most pressing issue of our time, as it will either destroy the human race or lead it to unimaginable ascension and bliss forever, and it is imperative that we work towards the second option. our leader, the man in the best position to prepare humanity to survive through this eschaton, takes months off to write harry potter fanfiction.



well if the AI turns out to be me, after reading this thread everyone on earth is Dead as Shit

#69
Post rating: +
*OP sweats nervously, pulls at collar*
#70
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~

tpaine posted:

remember lf's lady gaga thing? blearh



i remember there was one of those political compasses and the upward pointing arrow said "australia megathread" and the downward pointing one was labeled "lady gaga's penis"

#71
Post rating: ~

Bablu posted:

is ok, we still have the best celebrity endorsement




Children: proving Aristotle right again and again. Nicomachean Ethics 1142a.

#72
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
i read the rest of the houellebecq book today. the book isn't really all that political in the sense of making earnest claims about anything, it summons every point just to be as insulting as possible to each faction in french society. the fact the journalist in the OP said it was kind to islam is bizarre. much of the book just takes positions that houellebecq was attributed with and then reduces them to absurdity. for example his previous elevation of a distributionist style of economy happens in the novel for the direct purpose of impoverishing people and cutting state spending. the novel also builds up as if it is going to be a titanic clash between the FN and muslims and then quickly deflates all of that in a series of events made to make the FN look like the last gasp of a dying civilization, in a way that would outrage FN supporters. but the drift towards islam is told in very base and repulsive ways where the muslims use collections of contradictory or simplistic arguments (which are used by real french political groups) as a cover for crass pleasure-seeking.

anyway i found it funny for that sort of performance but i think there is more to life than trolling, maybe.
#73
YUNG JIRO AKA SHOWA STUNNA AKA
Post rating: +
the whole idea of america allowing france (or any country other than itself) to lead europe is probably more far-fetched than the election of a french muslim government
#74
Post rating: +

getfiscal posted:

anyway i found it funny for that sort of performance but i think there is more to life than trolling, maybe.



what will become of the great getfiscal

#75
Dont Mess With Sucess
Post rating: ~

getfiscal posted:

i think there is more to life than trolling, maybe.

citation needed

#76
Post rating: ~

"Hitler was a cuck"

http://oligopsony.tumblr.com/post/134998665153/memecucker-memecucker-memecucker
#77
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getfiscal posted:

i also tend to think that reaction tends to sort of thrive in the corners where conventional explanations of the world clearly no longer make sense but the left alternative is such a clear negation of their identity and hopes that they simply choose to believe nonsense



"unhistoric nations"

#78
[account deactivated]
#79
"Jpg." - Hank Hill
Post rating: +
i feel bad for people who have this autist as their psychiatrist

http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/07/12/34/

“Instead of putting patients on these toxic medications, why don’t you just give them therapy?”

Sometimes I worry I might be the worst person in the world to do psychotherapy. My coping strategy is to not talk about or react to my emotions and wait for them to go away. This usually works. I know this is exactly the opposite of what psychotherapy is supposed to teach, and all I can say is that it works for me and I seem to be pretty psychologically healthy and maybe I am just a mutant.

My relationship strategy is the same. Date really low-conflict, low-drama, agreeable people. If we have a conflict anyway, then agree to disagree and wait for the problem to go away. Apparently this is terrible, and maybe this is why my only really serious relationship only lasted a year or two, but it leaves me with something of an understanding deficit for the people who want to replay every single argument they’ve ever had with their spouse and figure out exactly what it means about their mental state.

Heck, even polyamory is like this. I can’t tell you how many patients I’ve had come in because their partner is cheating on them, or they worry their partner is cheating on them, or they’re cheating on their partner, or their partner worries they’re cheating on them, or something, and my natural instinct is to just say “Have you considered not worrying about it?” and as usual my natural instinct is terrible. So instead I just say “Tell me more…” and listen to them describe how the possibility of their girlfriend cheating is rending their heart in two.
#80
Post rating: ~

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

all I can say is that it works for me and I seem to be pretty psychologically healthy and maybe I am just a mutant.



catchphrase