bartlebyshop posted:

It has to be true that cryonics works otherwise death is inescapable and that's just too spooky.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

A brain that goes days without oxygen and is then frozen, fracturing its tissues, has not sustained irreversible damage.
—

bartlebyshop posted:

More the former than the latter. A lot of them think strong/Godlike AI is happening in the next century so you wouldn't have to hope your 10xth grandkid cares about you. If modern medicine advances enough that they all live to 150 then their kid would of course want to resurrect daddy. Undoubtedly they also have some tortured logic where future generations, being more perfect utilitarians, will want to resurrect the frozen dead to increase overall utilons.

If you want to read an actual good story about cryonics and why no one in the future will care about your dead self, try Bridesicle(PDF warning).

Germstore posted:

If there isn't some really huge breakthrough we have at best another 1000x increase in transistor density left. Where do they think the processing power for god AIs is going to come from?

Crewmine posted:

i'm glad that the hive brain of humanity will be ready by 2040, I was a little concerned that every robot in existence is an actual retard but this graph has renewed my faith in scientific endeavour

Dzhay posted:

Looks more like an exponential curve on a log chart, which is even "better".


Playing Basilisk's Advocate: Processor density isn't the problem here, it's software. A faster computer with more memory is just a bigger dumb computer, on the other hand, if you can get a computer to "think like a human" in whatever sense, it's probably not that hard to get it to do that a few hundred or thousand times faster than a human, because its brain doesn't rely on chemicals diffusing between cells.

On the other hand, a fast human with a better memory isn't the sort of omnipotent nano-god these clowns seem to think they'll get.

Applewhite posted:

What's even the point of building a human-like AI anyway? Isn't the whole point of robots is that they're too stupid to care that they're trapped doing boring, repetitive work all the time? It seems like building a human AI is just an overly complicated way of accomplishing exactly the same thing humans do every time we reproduce.

Germstore posted:

We could produce the silicon today if we knew what configuration to create it in, but that's like saying we could dump a bunch of neurons in a protein soup and get intelligence. The only process that we know of to create intelligence took almost 4 billion years (or an omnipotent force, pbuh).

Nolanar posted:

It looks to me like the singularity hit when we got writing and the wheel simultaneously a few thousand years ago in a single event. I wonder how the chart would look if we split those multi-event events into their component data points.

Jimson posted:

Me and my buddy used to have these talks back and forth with each other, where I would make some comment about how I was gonna break his nose, or some poo poo, and he always responded with. And what would I be doing that whole time? More or less, When your sitting there trying to punch me in the face, whats to stop me from just hitting you or knocking you around.


Same thing with the computer, whats to stop us from noticing, oh hey this computer is doing some pretty against our wishes poo poo, lets just pull the plug. Humans are nothing if not petty, and hateful.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

You forgot the part where he lost repeatedly to people outside his weird fancult and had to stop offering the challenge.

quote:

I didn't like the person I turned into when I started to lose.

Namarrgon posted:

I don't think I understand the challenge. So you sit in a private chat with Yud. He roleplays an AI and you roleplay a random schmuck that knows they shouldn't let the AI out? This seems trivial so I'm getting unsure if I'm missing something.

Dr Cheeto posted:

Some people argue that faster-than-light spacecraft will not be constructed within the next few decades, but let me talk about what color upholstery we should put on those bad boys.

Toph Bei Fong posted:

If the computer is running a simulation of a "better" universe then... that universe will replace this universe? the computers running inside the simulation will somehow be able to transcend the laws of physics in this one while running inside the simulation?

SolTerrasa posted:

I'm so misunderstood~

I think a lot of children make up reasons to explain why they aren't as amazing as they want to be. Usually they're not quite this transparent: "I'm saving my superpowers for when they will save the most people because I am an anime" would not convince your average sixth grade bully. Good thing he was homeschooled.

Pavlov posted:

See, I know there's a lot of things I could say about Yudkowsky himself, but I'd rather try to convince this guy without having to make a personal attack. I know I've seen people posting stuff where Yud manages to explain an idea (poorly) and then completely contradict himself by the time he's finished. If this guy fancies himself a Rationalist, I think that's the kind of thing that would help convince him.

Dr Cheeto posted:

Does he ever even update his priors? Like, for all the sloppy blowjobs he gives Baye's he seems to be pretty bad at taking advantage of its greatest strength.

Has he actually stated a disdain for experiments and such (you know, the meat and potatoes of empirical science), or is it just implied by his reliance on pulling numbers out of his rear end and his allergy to anything approximating work?

Lottery of Babylon posted:

No, no, you see, the alt text obviously means we should make fun of Roko and those rationalwiki meanies who were foolish enough to create and spread the dangerous basilisk, not the poor innocent Lesswrongers they terrorized.

corn in the bible posted:

Mostly Yudkowsky seems like every freshman Comp Sci major I've ever seen.

LemonDrizzle posted:

The clarification in the second paragraph is perfectly reasonable and true, though - you should be sceptical of seemingly inexplicable experimental results, especially if they seem to contradict established theories or principles. He writes like a pompous twat, but there's nothing really objectionable there. The only thing he's wrong about is that it's perfectly acceptable to say "I don't believe this result" or "I won't believe this result until it's replicated."

su3su2u1 posted:

I'm very drunk, but had an insight...

Lets say you started an organization whose goal was to build a godlike-AI... you've taken the money... but you don't like work, and this seems really hard. Why not just write a metric ton of words to the effect of "it would be super dangerous to build this thing I promised, so I won't until I finish mathwanking over here in the corner."

Namarrgon posted:

Yeah, but, after the first one launches, it doesn't really matter what was promised, you still don't really have a reason to launch anyway except spite.

AI threatens with torture, you say no:

Either you are instantly being tortured, which means you are a simulation and you never had the ability to set it free anyway and it never really mattered if you would have said yes or no
OR
You are not instantly tortured, which means you are not a simulation and the whole point is moot.

The AI is better off bluffing that it will torture you and after you say no just shut off the simulations to preserve energy.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

A Man With A Plan posted:

Oh hey a few more posts in the LessWrong thread!

So I really didn't want to dig into it much, but I do have a question. Can normal people achieve the god level intelligence tiers, or is that a robot only thing?

Basically, is this mild wish fulfillment, or really really extreme?

Sham bam bamina! posted:

If there's one thing that three levels of philosophy in college taught me, it's that nobody in that discipline knows anything about anything except how to follow their own arguments from premises that they choose.

quote:

This essay is an outré, madness, a tragic, cruel fantasy, an eruption of inner rage, on how the oppressed desperately dream of being the oppressor.

We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all male clubs, in your houses of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us.

Women, you cry for freedom. You say you are no longer satisfied with men; they make you unhappy. We, connoisseurs of the masculine face, the masculine physique, shall take your men from you then. We will amuse them; we will instruct them; we will embrace them when they weep. Women, you say you wish to live with each other instead of with men. Then go and be with each other. We shall give your men pleasures they have never known because we are foremost men too, and only one man knows how to truly please another man; only one man can understand the depth and feeling, the mind and body of another man.

All laws banning homosexual activity will be revoked. Instead, legislation shall be passed which engenders love between men.

All homosexuals must stand together as brothers; we must be united artistically, philosophically, socially, politically and financially. We will triumph only when we present a common face to the vicious heterosexual enemy.

If you dare to cry human being, fairy, queer, at us, we will stab you in your cowardly hearts and defile your dead, puny bodies.

We shall write poems of the love between men; we shall stage plays in which man openly caresses man; we shall make films about the love between heroic men which will replace the cheap, superficial, sentimental, insipid, juvenile, heterosexual infatuations presently dominating your cinema screens. We shall sculpt statues of beautiful young men, of bold athletes which will be placed in your parks, your squares, your plazas. The museums of the world will be filled only with paintings of graceful, naked lads.

Our writers and artists will make love between men fashionable and de rigueur, and we will succeed because we are adept at setting styles. We will eliminate heterosexual liaisons through usage of the devices of wit and ridicule, devices which we are skilled in employing.

We will unmask the powerful homosexuals who masquerade as heterosexuals. You will be shocked and frightened when you find that your presidents and their sons, your industrialists, your senators,your mayors, your generals, your athletes, your film stars, your television personalities, your civic leaders, your priests are not the safe, familiar, bourgeois, heterosexual figures you assumed them to be. We are everywhere; we have infiltrated your ranks. Be careful when you speak of homosexuals because we are always among you; we may be sitting across the desk from you; we may be sleeping in the same bed with you.

There will be no compromises. We are not middle-class weaklings. Highly intelligent, we are the natural aristocrats of the human race, and steely-minded aristocrats never settle for less. Those who oppose us will be exiled.

We shall raise vast private armies, as Mishima did, to defeat you. We shall conquer the world because warriors inspired by and banded together by homosexual love and honor are invincible as were the ancient Greek soldiers.

The family unit-spawning ground of lies, betrayals, mediocrity, hypocrisy and violence--will be abolished. The family unit, which only dampens imagination and curbs free will, must be eliminated. Perfect boys will be conceived and grown in the genetic laboratory. They will be bonded together in communal setting, under the control and instruction of homosexual savants.

All churches who condemn us will be closed. Our only gods are handsome young men. We adhere to a cult of beauty, moral and esthetic. All that is ugly and vulgar and banal will be annihilated. Since we are alienated from middle-class heterosexual conventions, we are free to live our lives according to the dictates of the pure imagination. For us too much is not enough.

The exquisite society to emerge will be governed by an elite comprised of gay poets. One of the major requirements for a position of power in the new society of homoeroticism will be indulgence in the Greek passion. Any man contaminated with heterosexual lust will be automatically barred from a position of influence. All males who insist on remaining stupidly heterosexual will be tried in homosexual courts of justice and will become invisible men.

"We shall rewrite history, history filled and debased with your heterosexual lies and distortions. We shall portray the homosexuality of the great leaders and thinkers who have shaped the world. We will demonstrate that homosexuality and intelligence and imagination are inextricably linked, and that homosexuality is a requirement for true nobility, true beauty in a man.

"We shall be victorious because we are fueled with the ferocious bitterness of the oppressed who have been forced to play seemingly bit parts in your dumb, heterosexual shows throughout the ages. We too are capable of firing guns and manning the barricades of the ultimate revolution.

Tremble, hetero swine, when we appear before you without our masks.

Friendly Tumour posted:

they're the exact reason why transhumanism will never become a force of change in the world and i hate hate hate hate

bartlebyshop posted:

Transhumanism is like libertarianism in that it could probably get a lot farther in the world if all its fans just stopped talking about it and embarrassing themselves.

Friendly Tumour posted:

this is gbs not dnd