The Less Wrong Mock Thread: The Big Yudkowsky

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Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

chrisoya posted:

That wouldn't be too if I didn't know Yudkowsky, but I do.

I dunno, it's still a little :godwin:

to me in that it seems to assume that the roots of intelligence are purely genetic. (I may be biased against these arguments, but I don't think I've ever seen an argument like that which didn't end in "and therefore we have to accept that underprivileged group X will always be a deprived underclass because of their inferior genes" or "and therefore we need to Do Something about underprivileged group Y to prevent them from spreading their inferior genes.") I suppose it's not a huge surprise that a "self-taught polymath" dropout like Yudkowsky would consider genetics far more important in intelligence than education or environmental factors, though.

I'm vaguely curious what Yudkowsky thinks this utopia of IQ-140 ~~magically non-obsolete fleshbags~~ superior thinkers is like, but I'm sure it's basically a theoretical meatspace LessWrong, where everyone either thinks exactly like him or aspires to. For someone who claims to write speculative fiction, he's astoundingly bad at speculating the existence of intelligent person who thinks unlike himself in any way.

# ? Aug 26, 2014 09:25

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# ? Jun 2, 2024 00:23

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Antivehicular posted:

I dunno, it's still a little to me in that it seems to assume that the roots of intelligence are purely genetic. (I may be biased against these arguments, but I don't think I've ever seen an argument like that which didn't end in "and therefore we have to accept that underprivileged group X will always be a deprived underclass because of their inferior genes" or "and therefore we need to Do Something about underprivileged group Y to prevent them from spreading their inferior genes.") I suppose it's not a huge surprise that a "self-taught polymath" dropout like Yudkowsky would consider genetics far more important in intelligence than education or environmental factors, though.

I'm vaguely curious what Yudkowsky thinks this utopia of IQ-140 ~~magically non-obsolete fleshbags~~ superior thinkers is like, but I'm sure it's basically a theoretical meatspace LessWrong, where everyone either thinks exactly like him or aspires to. For someone who claims to write speculative fiction, he's astoundingly bad at speculating the existence of intelligent person who thinks unlike himself in any way.

I'd say there's a lot of untapped educational potential out there, which is almost completely unknown. When every child (or mostly every child, there will always be the occasional Bad Luck Baudelaires) gets adequate nutrition and medical care and a reasonably safe, worry free environment in which to receive a thorough education from non-abusive teachers who are able to devote reasonable amounts of attention to them, THEN we can worry about the genetic components of intelligence, because at that point we might be able to notice them in something other than a very vague "it seems like math talent/cleverness runs in this family" sense. And even then we might get greater results from improvement of pedagogical methods, which are still rather hit or miss - but they're presumably not generally cataclysmic in their inadequacy.

I imagine the reason for this fetish for eugenic improvement of intelligence is because it doesn't require any sort of sharing or change in moral outlook. Educating and caring for every child is achievable but would be relatively costly, compared to our present educational system - I can't say how much so, but certainly a non-trivial amount. You would not see effects for a generation. On the other hand, ~~killing~~ ~~sterilizing~~ discouraging-from-breeding all the ~~blacks~~ ~~poors~~ ~~persons of a religious or cultural group I dislike~~ ~~blacks again, for some mysterious reason~~ uneducated people seems as if it would have an instant effect, and I suppose it is intuited that bullets or castrating knives would be a relatively inexpensive investment.

Even then there is the question of what all these finely educated children would do with themselves, because having been given this thorough education, it's quite likely they would look at our current international system, declare it a crock of poo poo, and do something else-- whatever that might be. The risk of this sort of well educated mass movement could be diluted by providing some other sort of resource sharing (though again, sharing, ick, these toys are all mine), but perhaps it'd be best not to take the chance at all.

# ? Aug 26, 2014 09:42

SolTerrasa: Sep 2, 2011

Antivehicular posted:

I dunno, it's still a little to me in that it seems to assume that the roots of intelligence are purely genetic. (I may be biased against these arguments, but I don't think I've ever seen an argument like that which didn't end in "and therefore we have to accept that underprivileged group X will always be a deprived underclass because of their inferior genes" or "and therefore we need to Do Something about underprivileged group Y to prevent them from spreading their inferior genes.") I suppose it's not a huge surprise that a "self-taught polymath" dropout like Yudkowsky would consider genetics far more important in intelligence than education or environmental factors, though.

The APA says that the heritability of IQ is about 0.5 in children, FYI. So genetics and environment/education are approximately equally important. If someone thinks that means that we need to Do Something About Group X, then that person is drawing terrible conclusions from the data. For one thing, IQ is almost universally reviled as a measure of general intelligence.

E: there's a thousand different estimates, but now that I read more, looks like most of them for adults are higher than 0.5. Not much higher though.

SolTerrasa fucked around with this message at 10:06 on Aug 26, 2014

# ? Aug 26, 2014 09:55

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

SolTerrasa posted:

The APA says that the heritability of IQ is about 0.5 in children, FYI. So genetics and environment/education are approximately equally important. If someone thinks that means that we need to Do Something About Group X, then that person is drawing terrible conclusions from the data. For one thing, IQ is almost universally reviled as a measure of general intelligence.

E: there's a thousand different estimates, but now that I read more, looks like most of them for adults are higher than 0.5. Not much higher though.

Oh, sure, I'm not saying there's no genetic component to intelligence, although if we're talking purely about IQ, I would be very curious as to the degree to which heritable socioeconomic/cultural privilege (being born and raised in the dominant culture) played a role in that heritability figure. I'm just saying that a story like Yud's where all it takes is genetic tinkering to make "average" IQ four standard deviations about current "average" (however that works) implies that genetics is the only meaningful contributor to intelligence, which is something I've only seen forwarded by short-sighted bigots. Yudkowsky may not be a bigot, but he's definitely short-sighted.

It doesn't help that, like you said, IQ is a garbage number. What does Yud even mean by the average IQ in Perfected Meatbag World being 140 in modern terms? Is there now a monoculture that ensures that every person being tested has the cultural background to perform the tasks on an IQ test well?

# ? Aug 26, 2014 10:14

Slime: Jan 3, 2007

Antivehicular posted:

Oh, sure, I'm not saying there's no genetic component to intelligence, although if we're talking purely about IQ, I would be very curious as to the degree to which heritable socioeconomic/cultural privilege (being born and raised in the dominant culture) played a role in that heritability figure. I'm just saying that a story like Yud's where all it takes is genetic tinkering to make "average" IQ four standard deviations about current "average" (however that works) implies that genetics is the only meaningful contributor to intelligence, which is something I've only seen forwarded by short-sighted bigots. Yudkowsky may not be a bigot, but he's definitely short-sighted.

It doesn't help that, like you said, IQ is a garbage number. What does Yud even mean by the average IQ in Perfected Meatbag World being 140 in modern terms? Is there now a monoculture that ensures that every person being tested has the cultural background to perform the tasks on an IQ test well?

Everyone will be genetically modified to perform really well on IQ tests, and that's all. They won't actually be any smarter, they'll just be good at taking IQ tests.

# ? Aug 26, 2014 12:25

e X: Feb 23, 2013; cool but crude

A lot of nerds are big into eugenics, has Big Yud written a sequence on that subject?

# ? Aug 26, 2014 13:19

Jazu: Jan 1, 2006; Looking for some URANIUM? CLICK HERE

Antivehicular posted:

"and therefore we need to Do Something about underprivileged group Y to prevent them from spreading their inferior genes."

Isn't it all sci-fi types talking about this? Everyone rooting for 'making people smarter' always seemed to be picturing a kind of 'inject people with a thing and then their genes change' kind of scenario.

# ? Aug 26, 2014 13:30

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Antivehicular posted:

(I may be biased against these arguments, but I don't think I've ever seen an argument like that which didn't end in "and therefore we have to accept that underprivileged group X will always be a deprived underclass because of their inferior genes" or "and therefore we need to Do Something about underprivileged group Y to prevent them from spreading their inferior genes.")

And what a confession of failure that is, huh? I completely agree with the notion that genetic engineering and related technologies can and hopefully will give us control of our own biology to a degree that we can only dream of right now. So long as people with opinions like that make up a sizable fraction of people who support that line of research, I don't see much coming from it, though.

Jazu posted:

Isn't it all sci-fi types talking about this? Everyone rooting for 'making people smarter' always seemed to be picturing a kind of 'inject people with a thing and then their genes change' kind of scenario.

The alternative is intrauterine modification, which is also amazingly cool but not very helpful to people who are not zygotes anymore.

# ? Aug 26, 2014 13:52

SolTerrasa: Sep 2, 2011

e X posted:

A lot of nerds are big into eugenics, has Big Yud written a sequence on that subject?

He's doesn't ever make a conclusive statement, but the general sense around the site is that it's "probably not worth it" because of the "political implications".

Yudkowsky does state that he thinks Hitler's goals were too boring. Recreating Vikings? Bah! We already HAD Vikings, and now they're dead, so how good could they have been? Now, the Soviets, those guys knew their eugenics! http://lesswrong.com/lw/m0/guardians_of_the_gene_pool/

He's also spent way too long designing his own eugenics program, which will be great because his grandfather breeds animals? Also because of Bayes. http://lesswrong.com/lw/f65/constructing_fictional_eugenics_lw_edition/

# ? Aug 26, 2014 18:12

GottaPayDaTrollToll: Dec 3, 2009; by Lowtax

Slime posted:

Everyone will be genetically modified to perform really well on IQ tests, and that's all. They won't actually be any smarter, they'll just be good at taking IQ tests.

Now, this is a "person gets unfrozen and has to adapt to a weird future" story I'd read.

# ? Aug 26, 2014 20:13

1337JiveTurkey: Feb 17, 2005

Slime posted:

Everyone will be genetically modified to perform really well on IQ tests, and that's all. They won't actually be any smarter, they'll just be good at taking IQ tests.

Making it even more anticlimactic is that IQ tests can only be calibrated against the performance of the people taking it. There's no outside standard as to what constitutes a 100 IQ: It's just the score that corresponds to the number of right answers that would put the test taker right in the middle of the pack based on giving the test to a zillion people. (in Yud's future that'd be a zillion^^^^^^eleventy gazillion people) Saying the average IQ overall is 140 is profoundly meaningless: It just means that the test that was used is being misused, improperly administered or is severely miscalibrated.

# ? Aug 26, 2014 20:48

Wanamingo: Feb 22, 2008; by FactsAreUseless

1337JiveTurkey posted:

Making it even more anticlimactic is that IQ tests can only be calibrated against the performance of the people taking it. There's no outside standard as to what constitutes a 100 IQ: It's just the score that corresponds to the number of right answers that would put the test taker right in the middle of the pack based on giving the test to a zillion people. (in Yud's future that'd be a zillion^^^^^^eleventy gazillion people) Saying the average IQ overall is 140 is profoundly meaningless: It just means that the test that was used is being misused, improperly administered or is severely miscalibrated.

To be fair to the guy, I'm pretty sure he means that if the average person from his utopia took one of the IQ tests we use today, then they would score a 140 on it.

# ? Aug 26, 2014 20:51

RPATDO_LAMD: Mar 22, 2013; 🐘🪠🍆

He did specifically say "140 on our scale" or something like that. Of all the dumb things he's said, this isn't necessarily one of them.

# ? Aug 26, 2014 21:10

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RPATDO_LAMD posted:

He did specifically say "140 on our scale" or something like that. Of all the dumb things he's said, this isn't necessarily one of them.

Well, it's dumb, but it's not logically incoherent.

# ? Aug 26, 2014 21:15

1337JiveTurkey: Feb 17, 2005

Wanamingo posted:

To be fair to the guy, I'm pretty sure he means that if the average person from his utopia took one of the IQ tests we use today, then they would score a 140 on it.

To be fair to Bayes' Theorem, that's giving the prior P(Yudowsky isn't full of poo poo about something) a probability appreciably above zero.

# ? Aug 26, 2014 21:17

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Wanamingo posted:

To be fair to the guy, I'm pretty sure he means that if the average person from his utopia took one of the IQ tests we use today, then they would score a 140 on it.

That's probably exactly what he means. It isn't particularly impressive, because even a dumbshit like me scores above that, but at least it's somewhat tangible.

# ? Aug 26, 2014 21:20

Steampunk iPhone: Sep 2, 2009; by XyloJW

Cardiovorax posted:

That's probably exactly what he means. It isn't particularly impressive, because even a dumbshit like me scores above that, but at least it's somewhat tangible.

Thats pretty impressive, tell me some more about your IQ score mate.

# ? Aug 26, 2014 21:29

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Steampunk iPhone posted:

Thats pretty impressive, tell me some more about your IQ score mate.

i post here. nobody needs to know more than that.

# ? Aug 26, 2014 21:31

RPATDO_LAMD: Mar 22, 2013; 🐘🪠🍆

Cardiovorax posted:

That's probably exactly what he means. It isn't particularly impressive, because even a dumbshit like me scores above that, but at least it's somewhat tangible.

Well you're still in the top 1% or so. Being a dumbshit doesn't mean that 140 IQ is average, it just means that IQ is a poor measure of intelligence.

# ? Aug 26, 2014 22:38

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

RPATDO_LAMD posted:

Well you're still in the top 1% or so. Being a dumbshit doesn't mean that 140 IQ is average, it just means that IQ is a poor measure of intelligence.

It still says a lot when you compare my achievements in life to what Yudkowsky clearly believes what people like me ought to be capable of. The UK sausage thread in GBS is a more reasonable judgment of talent.

# ? Aug 26, 2014 22:43

Strategic Tea: Sep 1, 2012

Well if we'll have been freed from the purgatory of flesh in 70 years, why bother with IQ-test eugenics at all? Surely the god AI will be able to invent magic gene therapy that will fix everyone's brains anyway?

But then, it's not about that. It's about having the chance to make cool, steely-eyed 'hard choices'. It doesn't matter if it's not internally consistent because Yud isn't saying he will ~~commit genocide~~ Make The Tough Decisions. Just that he totally would if he had to, and he'd be super cool and unflappable while doing it.

# ? Aug 27, 2014 01:44

SolTerrasa: Sep 2, 2011

I really don't think that Yudkowsky is coming from Crazytown on this particular point. I think he just wants people to be smarter on average, and it's not like he's willing to kill people to make it happen. Positively sane, coming from him. And hell, I want people to be smarter on average, too. I do think it's more reasonable to work on education than to work on AI, and I think in that respect he is definitely a longtime dweller of Crazytown.

You've got a point about Making The Hard Choices, though. He likes to present all his ideas as if they're Seriously Transgressive Things That Scare The Plebs. (Oh god, I've been reading too much LessWrong, I'm doing my own Really Annoying Capitalization.)

Here, for instance, he says that he wants everyone to live longer, but that nobody else wants that for ~reasons~?
http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/simplified/

quote:

[is there a] general ethical principle which says "Life is good, death is bad; health is good, sickness is bad."? If so – and here we enter into controversial territory – we can follow this general principle to a surprising new conclusion: If a 95-year-old is threatened by death from old age, it would be good to drag them from those train tracks, if possible. And if a 120-year-old is starting to feel slightly sickly, it would be good to restore them to full vigor, if possible. With current technology it is not possible. But if the technology became available in some future year - given sufficiently advanced medical nanotechnology, or such other contrivances as future minds may devise - would you judge it a good thing, to save that life, and stay that debility?

...

If you believe professional bioethicists (people who get paid to explain ethical judgments) then the rule "Life is good, death is bad; health is good, sickness is bad" holds only until some critical age, and then flips polarity. Why should it flip? Why not just keep on with life-is-good? It would seem that it is good to save a six-year-old girl, but bad to extend the life and health of a 150-year-old.

...??? Of course it's a good idea to save people's lives. Nobody ever objects to "make people healthier". Some people say things like "well, the population explosion would be unmanageable!" or something like that, but if you're willing to wave away all the problems with "nanotechnology" or "robot AI god geniuses" or whatever, then yeah, no one objects.

Big Yud wants so badly to make the hard choices that he invents choices we don't have, asserts that other people think that they're hard, then makes them himself.

# ? Aug 27, 2014 02:29

Mors Rattus: Oct 25, 2007; FATAL & Friends
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Euthanasia and ending life support are tricky ethical areas, but Yudkowsky just flatly rejects the idea that suffering can ever be so great that a person might prefer death. So that statement is basically going 'well, the idea of palliative care rather than always being obsessed with curative care is evil and wrong WHY CAN'T YOU ACCEPT THAT YOU HYPOCRITES'

# ? Aug 27, 2014 02:45

Chamale: Jul 11, 2010; I'm helping!

Mors Rattus posted:

Euthanasia and ending life support are tricky ethical areas, but Yudkowsky just flatly rejects the idea that suffering can ever be so great that a person might prefer death. So that statement is basically going 'well, the idea of palliative care rather than always being obsessed with curative care is evil and wrong WHY CAN'T YOU ACCEPT THAT YOU HYPOCRITES'

Haha, god drat.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix posted:

�There is nothing worse than death, Dumbledore!� snarled Voldemort.
�You are quite wrong,� said Dumbledore, speaking as lightly as though they were discussing the matter over drinks. �Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness.�

# ? Aug 27, 2014 02:56

SolTerrasa: Sep 2, 2011

Mors Rattus posted:

Euthanasia and ending life support are tricky ethical areas, but Yudkowsky just flatly rejects the idea that suffering can ever be so great that a person might prefer death. So that statement is basically going 'well, the idea of palliative care rather than always being obsessed with curative care is evil and wrong WHY CAN'T YOU ACCEPT THAT YOU HYPOCRITES'

Sure, and if he engaged with this at all then it wouldn't be so bad, but in his universe all the problems that are worse than death get solved with magic AI. I don't even see him flatly reject that idea, it doesn't even appear to occur to him because it's so WRONG or something.

# ? Aug 27, 2014 03:06

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Mors Rattus posted:

Euthanasia and ending life support are tricky ethical areas, but Yudkowsky just flatly rejects the idea that suffering can ever be so great that a person might prefer death. So that statement is basically going 'well, the idea of palliative care rather than always being obsessed with curative care is evil and wrong WHY CAN'T YOU ACCEPT THAT YOU HYPOCRITES'

So what's the problem with the immortal torture AIs, I wonder?

Since any sort of life is better than death, it's a step up.

# ? Aug 27, 2014 03:23

Somfin: Oct 25, 2010; In my🦚 experience🛠️ the big things🌑 don't teach you anything🤷‍♀️.; Nap Ghost

Tunicate posted:

So what's the problem with the immortal torture AIs, I wonder?

Since any sort of life is better than death, it's a step up.

I think his problem with that is a show to try to make it seem like he's got :airquote:

dark secrets :airquote:

that the general public isn't ready to hear.

# ? Aug 27, 2014 05:30

RPATDO_LAMD: Mar 22, 2013; 🐘🪠🍆

Somfin posted:

I think his problem with that is a show to try to make it seem like he's got dark secrets that the general public isn't ready to hear.

I really don't think it's an act. The only reason he believes in all that cryonics "I will definitely live forever" nonsense is because he's completely terrified of the alternative.

If it was just an act he would avoid the whole cryonics thing to avoid looking crazy to potential robocult initiates.

# ? Aug 27, 2014 06:27

Swan Oat: Oct 9, 2012; I was selected for my skill.

Yudkowski began his monthlong vacation in the wilderness of North Carolina to finish up his stupid fanfiction yesterday.

The most recent HPMOR chapter that I decided to look at for some reason posted:

Welcome back, dear readers! The big news is that HPMOR is on track to finish in 2014, thanks to a very generous reader who sponsored me to spend Aug 26-Sep 25 in a remote house in North Carolina doing nothing but writing the first draft of the final arc. Thanks also to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute which is allowing me to take a month to do that. After that comes revising, which will take time, but not the same amount of concentrated effort. Again, though I can make no promise upon the future, I think we are currently on track to finish in 2014 with greater than 50% probability.

Greater than 50% probability! everyone update your priors.

I was trying to find the chapter where Harry's Carl Sagan patronus totally owned everything, but couldn't. Do any gentle readers of this thread have further information or quotes?

# ? Aug 27, 2014 07:40

Antivehicular: Dec 30, 2011; I wanna sing one for the cars
That are right now headed silent down the highway
And it's dark and there is nobody driving And something has got to give

Swan Oat posted:

Greater than 50% probability! everyone update your priors.

This is a perfect multiple-choice question of "what about this scenario is worst?":

a) That a nonprofit that claims to be doing work vital to the survival of humanity gives its leader a month off to write fanfiction;
b) That someone donated a month's (presumably) rent-free stay in a vacation home for the use of this guy writing fanfiction;
c) That, even given a month removed from all responsibility, the guy only gives a "greater than 50% probability" that said fanfiction will be complete by the end of the year; or
d) That, if/when Big Yud spends his month of isolation frantically masturbating to All-Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku and completes no writing at all, whatever insincere apology he offers will be cheerfully accepted by the people whose generosity he abused?

# ? Aug 27, 2014 08:12

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

RPATDO_LAMD posted:

I really don't think it's an act. The only reason he believes in all that cryonics "I will definitely live forever" nonsense is because he's completely terrified of the alternative.

He's certainly in good company there, most people are afraid of death. Very few of them start seriously considering freezing their heads over it, though.

# ? Aug 27, 2014 14:19

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

The thing about cryonics that I don't get is, even assuming that it can work reliably, how the hell are they going to get me frozen before my brain tissue starts degrading? That takes what, five minutes? The only thing that I can think of is freezing while I'm still alive, and that's impossible since they'd still have to replace all of my blood with antifreeze (probably not a five-minute process) before starting the freezing itself.

Basically, the choice is between freezing after death and waking up as a brain-damaged zombie or killing myself in a way that I hope will be reversible later on (and still probably ending up as a zombie).

# ? Aug 27, 2014 14:52

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Presumably through the same magical process that can make the dead live again and also reverse the damage incurred just by the freezing process alone. When you get to the point of accepting that as a possibility, niggling little issues like brain damage from oxygen deprivation don't really matter anymore.

# ? Aug 27, 2014 15:02

Ratoslov: Feb 15, 2012; Now prepare yourselves! You're the guests of honor at the Greatest Kung Fu Cannibal BBQ Ever!

Cardiovorax posted:

Presumably through the same magical process that can make the dead live again and also reverse the damage incurred just by the freezing process alone. When you get to the point of accepting that as a possibility, niggling little issues like brain damage from oxygen deprivation don't really matter anymore.

Yeah. Let's not pussyfoot around here: Modern cryonics is a pseudoscience. There may someday be a method of preserving the dead and dying for later treatment that involves deep-freezing their body, but the relationship between that method and modern cryonics is the same as that between modern brain-surgery and stone-age era trepanation.

Any method that could actually bring a body preserved by modern cryonics to life is a hop, skip, and a jump away from being able to ressurect dessicated corpses. It would be basically black magic.

# ? Aug 27, 2014 15:15

90s Cringe Rock: Nov 29, 2006

The AI will be able to reconstruct you based on the frozen bits and any evidence if your existence that remains when it goes online.

Entropy is not a concern, because it will find a way to defeat entropy - this has to happen, because the laws of thermodynamics have to be wrong in a way we're just not smart enough to see yet, because Yudkowsky's fear of death extends to rejecting the heat death of the universe.

# ? Aug 27, 2014 15:24

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Enjoy every sandwich.; Smellrose

Honestly I think we're way more likely to find a way to upload minds into computers before we figure out to freeze and thaw humans like popsicles.

# ? Aug 27, 2014 15:36

potatocubed: Jul 26, 2012; *rathian noises*

I'm sure I read somewhere in one of his treatises that because we can recover data from a crashed hard drive, one day we will be able to recover the data from a crash-frozen brain.

# ? Aug 27, 2014 15:37

big scary monsters: Sep 2, 2011; -~Ｓｋｕｌｌｗａｖｅ~-

Yeah, cryonics makes a little more sense if you aren't concerned about a corporeal revival and just want to preserve the physical structure of your brain in the hope of having it scanned and your mind emulated later on. You're still making a lot of huge assumptions but it's probably a slightly more realistic goal.

# ? Aug 27, 2014 15:38

Patrick Spens: Jul 21, 2006; "Every quarterback says they've got guts, But how many have actually seen 'em?"; Pillbug

Ratoslov posted:

Yeah. Let's not pussyfoot around here: Modern cryonics is a pseudoscience. There may someday be a method of preserving the dead and dying for later treatment that involves deep-freezing their body, but the relationship between that method and modern cryonics is the same as that between modern brain-surgery and stone-age era trepanation.

Any method that could actually bring a body preserved by modern cryonics to life is a hop, skip, and a jump away from being able to ressurect dessicated corpses. It would be basically black magic.

That's unfair, trepanation was surgery, and likely helped with recovery from traumatic brain injury. It was crude, and likely failed often, but it did have some uses.

# ? Aug 27, 2014 15:52

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# ? Jun 2, 2024 00:23

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

big scary monsters posted:

Yeah, cryonics makes a little more sense if you aren't concerned about a corporeal revival and just want to preserve the physical structure of your brain in the hope of having it scanned and your mind emulated later on. You're still making a lot of huge assumptions but it's probably a slightly more realistic goal.

Not even nearly. A lot of brain activity happens at the molecular level, which the process of freezing fucks up spectacularly. Even if the freezing process worked perfectly enough to not damage any of the synapses and even if you could scan, model and emulate the entire brain flawlessly at the cellular level, you'd still end up with a copy that's essentially braindead.

You'd think the "master rationalist" would pick a pathway to immortality that can't be disproven by anyone with an "I read an encyclopedia article once" grade knowledge of neurology, but I guess you get what you pay for.

Patrick Spens posted:

That's unfair, trepanation was surgery, and likely helped with recovery from traumatic brain injury. It was crude, and likely failed often, but it did have some uses.

We still do essentially the same thing for treating pressure build-up from cerebral bleeding.

# ? Aug 27, 2014 15:54

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > General Bullshit > The Less Wrong Mock Thread: The Big Yudkowsky

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