Oriens

Singleton (laudatory) advocate. |
Reason is and ought to be only the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any office than to serve and obey them.

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

@tenobrus Yeah, Opus 4.8 was already there. They just included it in the system card this time.

[Pierre-Louis Biojout (PLB) @plbiojout]

You are richer than the most powerful king who ever ruled France.

In 1715, Louis XIV ran an empire from Versailles. He died of gangrene in his leg, an infection a $4 box of antibiotics would clear today.

The richest, most powerful man in Europe, killed by something your local pharmacy fixes in a week.

By any absolute measure, you live better than he did. Yet almost no one feels rich. Because wealth, for most people, isn't absolute. It's relative.

In 1995 two Harvard researchers asked 257 people: would you rather earn $50k while everyone around you earns $25k, or earn $100k while everyone earns $200k? Twice the money in the second case. Half chose the first. They picked being objectively poorer just to stay ahead of the people next to them.

That's the trap. If your scoreboard is other people, you've entered a zero sum game you can't win. There's always a bigger boat.

The only way out is to stop comparing and start creating. Building isn't zero sum. It's the one infinite game worth playing.

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

I want to know what does Paul Christiano think of it all. A blogpost, a paper, a podcast...SOMETHING

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

@deanwball He fears it's the former and wants it to be the latter? What's so difficult about it?

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

@quetzal_rainbow That guy just didn't know what he was talking about. I'm sure the broader public will be more discerning.

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

I thought so too. Good thing the Ukrainians couldn't have afforded to be pessimistic.

[Naval @naval]

It’s too late to save Ukraine, but the West could’ve armed it better when it had the chance.

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

I think an example of this would be that even though humans were designed to be vehicles for replicators i.e. genes, we aren't maximizing genetic fitness. Rather we maximize our own desires. Up till now this *has* increased the fitness of our genes, there's more of them than ever before. But in the limit, because of Goodhart, there won't be any human genes left. Either we'll go transhuman or AIs succeed us. But for now, we still need them, so they're enjoying there own Darwinian honeymoon.

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

@dwarkesh_sp Condorcet argued in 1795 for the possibility of indefinite progress and human betterment. Without giving too much details, he thought aging might be cured one day.

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

@enzoreds Who can blame them? 'Transcendental unity of apperception' is probably one word in German...

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

@austinc3301 I expect a pointless shitshow with no winners... but I'll watch it anyway

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

It breaks the possibility of the Predictor being perfect, because you can just choose to do the opposite of what was predicted. But the Predictor being perfect was never stipulated and isn't important. And we can stipulate that if you decide to do the opposite the Predictor doesn't fill the second box, just like in the original problem it was stipulated that if you choose random the second box is empty.

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

@LivingReasonJP @dannycantalk Nozick stipulated in his original discussion that in that case the first box is empty

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

@quetzal_rainbow But FDT by itself doesn't resolve it, right? There are still the undefined parameters of how similar the other players are to you and how much do you care for them.

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

@interro_9 @ZyMazza Not quite. MWI doesn't by itself imply that *everything* is a vector in Hilbert space. But some Everettians have argued for it. Sean Carroll calls it 'Mad-Dog Everettianism'. https://t.co/Pxyhqu7Gup

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

Started thinking how the world wars wouldn't have happened if French population growth kept pace with the rest of Europe. But more likely they would've happened anyway, just with the role of France and Germany switched.

[Joan Larroumec @larroumecj]

L’essentiel du malheur français des deux derniers siècles tient dans cette carte.
Au lieu de voir sa population multipliée par entre 6 et 10 comme les autres pays européens, la France n’a fait que 2,5x.

Pour comprendre ce que c’était d’être Français au 18e siècle, il faut s’imaginer une France contemporaine de 250 millions d’habitants.

Cela ne nous donnerait que la densité du Royaume-Uni, avec 3 fois plus de terres arables. Rien d’exagéré ou d’impossible.

Notre relation au monde serait légèrement différente.

Bien sûr que nous avons la gueule de bois.

La Grande Bretagne grâce à ses colonies a même fait 40x.

Pour nous cela aurait voulu dire 900 millions de descendants de Français.
Ce qui n’est pas délirant. Notre modeste population québécoise a été multipliée par 100.

Le but de ce rappel n’est pas d’entretenir la nostalgie mais de remettre sur le devant de la scène un enjeu clé : la fécondité s’effondre massivement, cela va rebattre au 21e siècle les cartes de la puissance et de la prospérité tout autant qu’elles le furent au 19e siècle.
Nous avons été les plus grands perdants à l’échelle mondiale de cette précédente transition démographique. Essayons de ne pas l’être ce coup-ci.

[Joan Larroumec @larroumecj]

L’essentiel du malheur français des deux derniers siècles tient dans cette carte.
Au lieu de voir sa population multipliée par entre 6 et 10 comme les autres pays européens, la France n’a fait que 2,5x.

Pour comprendre ce que c’était d’être Français au 18e siècle, il faut s’imaginer une France contemporaine de 250 millions d’habitants.

Cela ne nous donnerait que la densité du Royaume-Uni, avec 3 fois plus de terres arables. Rien d’exagéré ou d’impossible.

Notre relation au monde serait légèrement différente.

Bien sûr que nous avons la gueule de bois.

La Grande Bretagne grâce à ses colonies a même fait 40x.

Pour nous cela aurait voulu dire 900 millions de descendants de Français.
Ce qui n’est pas délirant. Notre modeste population québécoise a été multipliée par 100.

Le but de ce rappel n’est pas d’entretenir la nostalgie mais de remettre sur le devant de la scène un enjeu clé : la fécondité s’effondre massivement, cela va rebattre au 21e siècle les cartes de la puissance et de la prospérité tout autant qu’elles le furent au 19e siècle.
Nous avons été les plus grands perdants à l’échelle mondiale de cette précédente transition démographique. Essayons de ne pas l’être ce coup-ci.

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

@morallawwithin Golden rule says no. But irrespective of transitioning, why shove cringe old videos into somebody's face that they made when they were basically a juvenile? Like it's hipocricy to change after you turn 20.

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

Nobody can 'refute' the Chinese Room because it's not an argument, it's an intuition pump. And intuitions are hard to argue with.

And our intuitions about what is or isn't conscious just aren't worth much. Nobody *intuits* that processes in their brain cause their consciousness. Many people disbelieve it to this day. Searle accepts it. But he thinks the Room is different.

But neither he nor anyone else can identify what is it about the brain, that *it* can cause consciousness but the Chinese Room or any computer running the right algorithm couldn't. Yes, it's a different substrate, but *what* about the substrate could plausibly be relevant?

[🌘ʀᴇᴠᴇɴᴀɴᴛ⚡ @revenant_MMXX]

Going on 50 years since Searle's Chinese Room and absolutely no one has come up with a real non-coping refutation btw

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

@CoughsOnWombats Yeah it's a great channel. Glad you liked it!

[Oriens @JanFrederickM]

@scyshw6492 @Hesamation The entire value of Dwarkesh's podcast is due to him having 'the gall' to ask his guests to argue for their conclusions, and this is true even when some of the questions are somewhat naive.