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EY has another FF.net profile. I must admit I laughed at this one.
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Apr 8, 2017 12:33
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Yep, this is it, the best chapter.
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Apr 8, 2017 13:27
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divabot posted:EY has another FF.net profile. I must admit I laughed at this one. Edit: There is no loving way this isn't him. 90s Cringe Rock fucked around with this message at 13:38 on Apr 8, 2017 |
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Apr 8, 2017 13:33
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Xander77 posted:Most of this fits in comfortably within a thousand years. And by then, depending on whether the rest of humanity is also immortal, either humanity will leave you behind completely, or run out of things to do.
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Apr 8, 2017 13:38
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Tiggum posted:I've got to disagree with you here. Do you think that everything a person born a thousand years ago could imagine doing with their life would include any of the things they'd be likely to be doing if they were still alive now? What's the one? It's so dark in here - if I had a light, I could read a book. If I had a book. And if I could read. quote:There will always be new things to do no matter how long you live. In the original Harry Potter novels, that there clearly are souls and an afterlife, and it's dumb that Yudkowsky changes that so that he can make his point here, but in reality (and in Yudkowsky's version of the Harry Potter world) Harry's point is reasonable if not well argued.
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Apr 8, 2017 14:05
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I think people aren't realising that what Yud means by 'never die' is 'always be young and willing to accept new things like ~~rational~~ people really are'. I mean, ignoring that a perfectly rational robot would take a very long time to accept new things are safe/a good idea/a better alternative, because they're rational and waiting for studies and such that prove the thing is safe/better/good/etc. I don't think the writing in this bit was bad though, it was decent. It's not very good, but it's also nowhere near the level of even the parts around it. It feels more like two people having an argument and neither being right than any other bit in the fic, in my opinion. I mean, it's unintentional since Yud wrote it as if Harriezer is obviously correct, but it reads like people of two extreme wrong opinions just having it out. e: vvv don't get me wrong, I'm suspending all disbelief since we've established already that it's necessary to not rage at every bit of dialogue or narration. Red Mike fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Apr 8, 2017 |
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Apr 8, 2017 14:13
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I don't necessarily disagree with Harriezer here but it doesn't work at all within the context of the Harry Potter universe and having an eleven-year old say all of it is dumb. I dunno, maybe if this was Quirrell rather than Harry it would make more sense and i don't mean in the sense that harry ends up actually being Quirrell/Voldemort, jesus christ this story pulls stuff out of its rear end at the last hurdle to try and dodge all the awkward questions.
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Apr 8, 2017 14:38
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quote:"Yes, and so do you," said Harry. "I want to live one more day. Tomorrow I will still want to live one more day. Therefore I want to live forever, proof by induction on the positive integers. If you don't want to die, it means you want to live forever. If you don't want to live forever, it means you want to die. You've got to do one or the other... I'm not getting through here, am I." add mathematical induction to the list of things Yudkowsky doesn't really understand. Mathematical induction requires two things. 1. It requires that we have proven a base step, namely that it works for a given value of n. 2. It then requires that we prove that IF it works for n, it will also work for n+1. And then these two individual proofs together prove that it works for any n. (well, it works for 1, so it also works for 2. It works for 2, so also for 3). Yudkowsky doesn't actually have the inductive step. He has something he thinks is enough to establish induction. Would you feel convinced by this reasoning? "Today, I want to go to the beach. Tomorrow, I will also want to go to the beach. Therefore, I will want to go to the beach every day forever". Surely, by Yudkowsky's measure, I would want to go to the beach every day forever.
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Apr 8, 2017 15:42
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Xander77 posted:This is a relatively interesting point of view I have not encountered in the past. I'm sure quite a few philosophers over the centuries have had similar ideas, but its modern-day form is probably best summed up in Nick Bostrom's ethics paper / pamphlet, appropriately called "The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant": http://jme.bmj.com/content/31/5/273
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Apr 8, 2017 16:44
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Imagine a trillion independent robot minds holding a purely democratic debate on what restaurant to eat at, for eternity. That's the singularity.
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Apr 8, 2017 17:03
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As Yud doesn't believe '0' can be a probability, there is a nonzero chance at any point of someone considering suicide to be a more attractive option than continual life. Therefore, if you just sum the series, the probability of an immortal unable to die in any other way deliberately killing himself goes to 1. Thus, no immortal actually wants to live forever.
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Apr 8, 2017 18:07
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He's also referencing a common Voltaire quote:Voltaire posted:"Once your faith, sir, persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares to be absurd, beware lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life. In days gone by, there were people who said to us: "You believe in incomprehensible, contradictory and impossible things because we have commanded you to; now then, commit unjust acts because we likewise order you to do so." Nothing could be more convincing. Certainly any one who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices. If you do not use the intelligence with which God endowed your mind to resist believing impossibilities, you will not be able to use the sense of injustice which God planted in your heart to resist a command to do evil. Once a single faculty of your soul has been tyrannized, all the other faculties will submit to the same fate. This has been the cause of all the religious crimes that have flooded the earth." I'm at least somewhat sympathetic to Harriezer here. If I found out the Dumbledore had a life-extending treatment and was hiding it because he was philosophically against the idea, I would also be mad at him. If there were a viable real world method of life extension that was objected to on religious grounds I would be against that very strongly; the way I'm against the anti-vaxxers. However, as with most futurists, they're planning a bit too far ahead.
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Apr 8, 2017 18:10
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It's pretty great that the author tries to define his slippery slope in (bad) mathematical terms to avoid admitting he's spouting a common logical fallacy. Yud really does manage to run rings around himself. 
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Apr 8, 2017 18:26
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Someone more knowledgeable please correct me, but isn't Big Yud a self-professed elitist who would gleefully leave the people he considers to be untermensch to fend for themselves? His impassioned "we care" talk seems to ring a little hollow, if so.
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Apr 8, 2017 19:03
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Red Mike posted:I think people aren't realising that what Yud means by 'never die' is 'always be young and willing to accept new things like ~~rational~~ people really are'. and one day EY will change an idea! Pvt.Scott posted:Imagine a trillion independent robot minds holding a purely democratic debate on what restaurant to eat at, for eternity. That's the singularity. Future advanced cyborg human emulations to keep being arseholes - I think I hit every note there
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Apr 8, 2017 19:14
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NihilCredo posted:I'm sure quite a few philosophers over the centuries have had similar ideas, but its modern-day form is probably best summed up in Nick Bostrom's ethics paper / pamphlet, appropriately called "The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant": http://jme.bmj.com/content/31/5/273 Edit - to clarify, "imagine if hundreds of thousands died before their time" works as a reasoning to expand healthspan research. But it completely breaks down as a metaphor for the search for immortality. Xander77 fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Apr 8, 2017 |
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Apr 8, 2017 19:21
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Pieuvre posted:Someone more knowledgeable please correct me, but isn't Big Yud a self-professed elitist who would gleefully leave the people he considers to be untermensch to fend for themselves? His impassioned "we care" talk seems to ring a little hollow, if so. Basically, he loves to dilute the value of human suffering by placing it against really big numbers - an incredible amount of people getting dust in their eyes vs. one person getting tortured their entire life - while also placing himself in a 'special' role within this whole construction where any suffering on his part would become suffering of the masses for lack of his genius. So yes, and he's not even honest about that. He 'cares' for them by caring for himself.
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Apr 8, 2017 19:42
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ThirdEmperor posted:Basically, he loves to dilute the value of human suffering by placing it against really big numbers - an incredible amount of people getting dust in their eyes vs. one person getting tortured their entire life - while also placing himself in a 'special' role within this whole construction where any suffering on his part would become suffering of the masses for lack of his genius. He really thinks he's going to save the world, which means that if you don't help him, really you're harming the future prospects of everyone who has not yet been born, which I will remind you is 3^3^3^3^3 times more people than have existed thus far, so, actually, not giving him your money makes you a gigahitler (terahitler? exohitler?)
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Apr 8, 2017 21:02
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Added Space posted:He's also referencing a common Voltaire quote: I didn't know that the nerdy novelty music guy did spoken word stuff, too.
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Apr 8, 2017 23:50
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SolTerrasa posted:He really thinks he's going to save the world, which means that if you don't help him, really you're harming the future prospects of everyone who has not yet been born, which I will remind you is 3^3^3^3^3 times more people than have existed thus far, so, actually, not giving him your money makes you a gigahitler (terahitler? exohitler?) That's what strikes me about most of Yud's approach: he leans on doubtful game theory (and induction and a fanfic mary sue) to back up his certainty that he is right and what applies to him applies to everyone else and if we disagree we're wrong. And it's our fault we're wrong too. Voldeyud.
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Apr 9, 2017 00:37
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Xander77 posted:Nah. I have nothing against life-expanding treatments (though Harriezer's omitted "hey, if the lifespan was 200 years, you'd feel sorry for poor saps dying at 120 and dream of 300" point is interesting) but imagine how out of place your hypothetical 1000 year olds would be? Or how fossilized our culture would become. And your assertion that 1000-year-olds would either fail to adapt to modern society or would cause us to stagnate seems to rely on the assumption that we wouldn't be doing anything to address those issues (if they even come up). Xander77 posted:Edit - to clarify, "imagine if hundreds of thousands died before their time" works as a reasoning to expand healthspan research. But it completely breaks down as a metaphor for the search for immortality.
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Apr 9, 2017 04:41
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I've always thought it pretty indicative of immortality-seeking when it is the domain of almost every villain in popular media. "I don't want to die" or "I want to stop someone I love from dying" or "No one should die" always leads to ruin. It's one of those things that always seems to sound like a noble goal to people who are overly idealistic. Wouldn't it be good to stop people from dying? But you know what happens to a world in which no one dies? The same thing that happens to your body. Cancer.
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Apr 9, 2017 07:55
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Milky Moor posted:I've always thought it pretty indicative of immortality-seeking when it is the domain of almost every villain in popular media. "I don't want to die" or "I want to stop someone I love from dying" or "No one should die" always leads to ruin. it's indicative that most writers are regurgitating the dominant outlook on immortality-seeking, mostly. villainous immortality seeking is bad because it always has an immoral cost. usually it leads to ruin because the plot demands that the villain lose, not because that's necessarily the logical outcome! a cancerous cell's immunity to apoptosis is more akin to a criminal escaping execution at will than a person escaping aging, and also people aren't cells. maybe that seems like a clever metaphor on the surface but it's flawed in a lot of ways. anyway we already have all the worst parts of immortal persons in the form of corporations, we could at least enjoy having immortals that actually grow more experienced as they age if they were real people
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Apr 9, 2017 08:19
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Added Space posted:He's also referencing a common Voltaire quote: I really feel like you're giving him too much credit here.
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Apr 9, 2017 08:53
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Milky Moor posted:I've always thought it pretty indicative of immortality-seeking when it is the domain of almost every villain in popular media. "I don't want to die" or "I want to stop someone I love from dying" or "No one should die" always leads to ruin. Mmm yes, I agree, people are cancer that need to be excised from the body politic through death (Seriously, Eliezer's a douche, but if you're arguing in favor of the existence of death just to make sure you're on the opposite side of him on as many issues as possible, you've let him influence your life too much.)
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Apr 9, 2017 14:24
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I do rather wonder what this would mean in terms of population growth. I can see overcrowding rapidly becoming a real problem.
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Apr 9, 2017 15:06
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Imagine Eliezer Yudkowsky, writing "science"-themed Chick Tracts... forever.
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Apr 9, 2017 16:34
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Darth Walrus posted:I do rather wonder what this would mean in terms of population growth. I can see overcrowding rapidly becoming a real problem.
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Apr 9, 2017 16:56
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Tiggum posted:But it's the same thing? Milky Moor posted:I've always thought it pretty indicative of immortality-seeking when it is the domain of almost every villain in popular media. "I don't want to die" or "I want to stop someone I love from dying" or "No one should die" always leads to ruin. Do you suppose that "I just want an end to fighting" and "I just want to stop mankind from suffering" are cogent arguments against pacifism and utilitarianism? Xander77 fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Apr 9, 2017 |
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Apr 9, 2017 17:26
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I tend to agree. A lot of this argument has been making up hypothetical 'gotchas for why immortality would secretly be bad. I mean, I'm generally pessimistic about the idea myself, but I don't pretend my what-ifs are any kind of cogent prediction.
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Apr 9, 2017 17:28
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Xander77 posted:"Dying horrifically from preventable causes before your time" is a decent enough analogy to "dying horrifically from preventable causes before your time". Maybe not so much for "dying, ever, at all". You're begging the question. The idea that there is such a thing as "your time" to begin with is the point of contention.
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Apr 9, 2017 17:31
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Xander77 posted:"Dying horrifically from preventable causes before your time" is a decent enough analogy to "dying horrifically from preventable causes before your time". Maybe not so much for "dying, ever, at all". If you're arguing for "no medicine ever" then your position is internally consistent but you're in a tiny minority. If you're arguing for "the stuff we can cure or prevent now, we should, but no more medical research" then your position is weird and arbitrary. And if you're arguing for continued research into treatment and prevention of disease then your position is already that we should be working toward immortality (or at least indefinite lifespans).
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Apr 9, 2017 18:14
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Arguing about 'immortality research' as a distinct research topic is even stupider than arguing for 'invincible car research' as a distinct research topic
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Apr 9, 2017 18:29
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Darth Walrus posted:I do rather wonder what this would mean in terms of population growth. I can see overcrowding rapidly becoming a real problem. We wouldn't even make it to overcrowding. We'd hit economic and social collapse within a couple of generations. You think the Millennial job market is hosed now, wait until you see what happens to the generation that's born after the generation that literally never retires, ever. It's not that life extension is bad per se, it's just that it's not a universal good; extended life does not equal extended quality of life, and all realistic life extension options we have at hand are accompanied by an ever decreasing return on investment. Death is inevitable, barring the supernatural, even in Peter Thiel's hosed up transhumanist fantasies, because even computer uploads degrade and robot bodies fail. Everything fails, eventually. The inability to come to grips with that fact is just another of Yud's weird nerdy attempts to reinvent every possible trap every religion in history has ever fallen into.
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Apr 9, 2017 18:43
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Yeah, indefinite lifespan doesn't work without infinite energy and robots to do all the work (which Yud just assumes will happen as well)
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Apr 9, 2017 19:03
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we're already heading toward robots to do most of the work, that's a societal transition that is very much in sight. we're going to have to grapple with changing the relationship between jobs, society, and individuals to accommodate workers as a much smaller proportion of the population regardless of life extension. anyway yeah currently understood methods of potential life extension are not great because they often don't meaningfully extend the healthy lifespan of the individual, just the sick one. that is really not likely to be the case indefinitely though! even if significant extension of healthy lifespan turns out to be a really difficult problem, within a few hundred years at the most we will fully understand the human body and how to tweak any of its variables through genetic alteration. modern medical biology is truly only about 150 years old and the progression of our understanding in that time has been truly astounding; the rate of that progression is only accelerating, too. we'll have to tackle all of those challenges eventually. Jazerus fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Apr 9, 2017 |
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Apr 9, 2017 19:18
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Jazerus posted:we're already heading toward robots to do most of the work, that's a societal transition that is very much in sight. we're going to have to grapple with changing the relationship between jobs, society, and individuals to accommodate workers as a much smaller proportion of the population regardless of life extension. Thankfully I'll be dead before I have to deal with the truly harsh repercussions of all of this poo poo.
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Apr 9, 2017 21:06
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:We wouldn't even make it to overcrowding. We'd hit economic and social collapse within a couple of generations. You think the Millennial job market is hosed now, wait until you see what happens to the generation that's born after the generation that literally never retires, ever. No, that wouldn't happen, you stupid pro-deather, society would ~*~magically change~*~ to make immortality a net good. Don't ask how society changing would alter things that are actually finite like, say, living space, and let's not get started on things it'd exacerbate like anthropogenic climate change and resource consumption. And the generational shift from when people die? No, wouldn't happen. Democracies of the eternal voter wouldn't result in any problems. More importantly, people getting really mad about the existence of death as a concept wouldn't get even more weirdly Goonish about it when death becomes rarer, assuming the immortality isn't perfect immortality. "If you argue that it is inevitable for robot-body hard drives to crash, then you're arguing pro-death! PRO-DEATHER!" If you say anything else, you are *checks notes* "arguing in favor of the existence of death just to make sure you're on the opposite side of him on as many issues as possible". You know, as opposed to just thinking that death is a part of life and you're going to die eventually and not counting on some kind of weird magical thinking to save the entire human race and form a glorious utopia should we find some kind of cheap, easily-produced and distributed strong immortality drug tomorrow. If we lived for two-hundred years or five-hundred or a thousand and if death only came from violence or Super AIDS, it'd still be a mark of immaturity to argue that anyone who accepts death as a concept is pro-death. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Apr 9, 2017 |
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Apr 9, 2017 23:32
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death is bad, which is why we should take the million of dollars yudkowsky wants and invest it in basic healthcare and food/water for the multiple billions of people who still need it, rather than making rich white nerds live forever
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Apr 10, 2017 01:29
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ungulateman posted:death is bad, which is why we should take the million of dollars yudkowsky wants and invest it in basic healthcare and food/water for the multiple billions of people who still need it, rather than making rich white nerds live forever I agree, if we ever invent a Magic Immortality Pill that only works on rich white nerds, we should get rid of it. If it only works on Eliezer Yudkowsky specifically, we should burn it in front of him. It would be pretty silly to do so if it works on everyone though
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Apr 10, 2017 01:44
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