elmtonic

I’ve thought for quite some time that blockchain ... had incredible implications but I didn’t know what for…and it turns out the answer was hiding in the next hype cycle.

AHAHHAAHAHAH

Someone in the replies brings this up, that trauma could be the result of learning something correct. Yud's brilliant response is that this makes no sense to describe this as trauma, because you don't get traumatized by physics class, right?

https://nitter.net/ESYudkowsky/status/1701691489548697793#m

I feel like this is where first-principles rationalism + his intelligence god complex really shines through. He thought he had figured out the root cause of trauma, was told that this wasn't the case, then tries to redefine trauma itself instead of admitting that his (extremely simple, by the way) idea was wrong. I mean look at the way he starts his response:

Why then describe it as trauma ... ?

Because it's traumatic, that's why. No further explanation required.

But if there isn't a clearly defined end goal/utility function, then how can will I fit this information into my rationalist ~~fanfic~~ world model?

/unsneer though the comment was overall sobering to read, it's good to know that not everyone on that site is insane.

There's no more context - title is the entire tweet. But here's a screenshot of a short conversation under the tweet:

This post is art. I've never seen someone write so many words, with such an air of grandiosity, about something so embarrassingly unimportant as "I can't force a chatbot to say funny words." (Note: I have not read the Sequences.)

The cool thing to note here is how badly Yud here misunderstands what a normal person means when they say they have "100% certainty" in something. We're not fucking infinitely precise Bayesian machines, 100% means exactly the same thing as 99.99%. It means exactly the same thing as "really really really sure." A conversation between the two might go like this:

Unwashed sheeple: Yeah, 53 is prime. 100% sure of that.

Ellie Bayes-er: (grinning) Can you really say to be 100% sure? Do not make the mistake of confusing the map with the territory, [5000 words redacted]

Unwashed sheeple: Whatever you say, I'm 99% sure.

Eddielazer remains seated, triumphant in believing (epistemic status: 98.403% certainty) he has added something useful to the conversation. The sheeple walks away, having changed exactly nothing about his opinion.

Brilliant. Can we just shoehorn in Utilitarianism too then?

https://xkcd.com/610/

I think a lot of rats have this idea that they arrived at their views and values solely by thinking really hard (and being really really smart). Which means that anyone who doesn't share their same basic views is simply a mouthbreathing NPC who doesn't have any curiosity in "the way the world works" - when in reality, people just have a lot of other shit on their minds, and tend to care about less abstract problems than [insert sci-fi trope here].

It's funny that the commenter talks so much about how people should just try to understand things, and in the same breath fails to try to empathize with people who think differently.

I used to work with a couple of rats. It didn't happen often, but every now and then they'd try to make a bet with someone. This is before I knew what Rationalism was, so I can say from an outside perspective that it just feels weird. It didn't make me consider the P(event) or E(event) or anything, I just thought that they were being weirdly careless with their money.

lol i missed that in the thread

expert overconfidence

pretty sure it's just regular overconfidence here. unless yud is claiming to be an expert on fucking aliens

hello