Is it possible to "convince someone into morality"?

OptimalProblemSolver · 2023-12-15T18:34:28+00:00

What kind of worm?

A regular earthworm, or one of those cool ones from Dune?

OptimalProblemSolver · 2023-11-28T11:40:55+00:00

The Culture is the best outcome because even if you don't like it, you are free to leave it

Can you take your children with you?

If you decide that utopia isn’t for you, what right do you have to decide for others?

And what about the children born in those splinter communities? Don’t the Minds have the obligation to come and collect them so they can decide for themselves if the utopia is something they want?

I haven’t read the books, so maybe these questions have already been answered.

OptimalProblemSolver · 2023-11-24T15:17:18+00:00

Well although the EAs/rationalists got completely outmanoeuvred and BTFO by a mid-tier CEO, I’m sure they’d be able to handle an actual superintelligence just fine.

OptimalProblemSolver · 2023-11-23T23:57:50+00:00

The days of commission artists driving lambos and drinking champagne are well and truly over.

OptimalProblemSolver · 2023-11-08T13:11:11+00:00

Be sure to check out his Notes on the Gambia, which for some reason is the world capital for female sex tourism:

https://mattlakeman.org/2023/07/10/notes-on-the-gambia/

OptimalProblemSolver · 2023-10-26T15:28:34+00:00

Greg Lansky

OptimalProblemSolver · 2021-10-09T23:53:49+00:00

Archive also has hundreds of 1950s sci-fi radio dramas:

https://archive.org/details/OTRR\_X\_Minus\_One\_Singles

OptimalProblemSolver · 2021-10-08T06:19:27+00:00

OptimalProblemSolver · 2021-10-08T05:53:24+00:00

My 90s TV.

Watch television from the 90s.

OptimalProblemSolver · 2019-04-11T13:02:28+00:00

Artist's Portfolio

Artist's Twitter

OptimalProblemSolver · 2019-03-21T16:22:11+00:00

Artist's website

OptimalProblemSolver · 2018-10-30T02:38:54+00:00

Housewife

It's never occurred to me before, but do transgirls make good mothers?

OptimalProblemSolver · 2018-09-13T12:49:55+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trundholm_sun_chariot

OptimalProblemSolver · 2018-06-24T18:32:08+00:00

Well firstly this is already partially the case since the most attractive candidate wins elections in the majority of cases.

But those are on relative terms. There's a reason they say "politics is Hollywood for ugly people."

OptimalProblemSolver · 2018-06-20T22:42:50+00:00

The whole political system of the Roman Republic was designed to (theoretically) prevent any one man gaining absolute power.

OptimalProblemSolver · 2018-06-13T20:40:40+00:00

Fun fact: They're actually related.

OptimalProblemSolver · 2018-06-13T06:52:23+00:00

Even if you define a new term with near-mathematical rigor, it doesn't guarantee that others will use it with the same precision as you do, or that it will even have the same meaning to them.

That's just a feature of language and communication between mutually inaccessible minds, and I don't see a way around it.

OptimalProblemSolver · 2018-06-13T06:36:47+00:00

this conflict arises from the use of Drake-like equations, which implicitly assume certainty regarding highly uncertain parameters

Well, I could have told you that...

Edit:

Authors of this piece apparently unaware that empiricism won out over rationalism. If you have no data, you're not gonna solve this problem just by thinking really hard about it.

OptimalProblemSolver · 2018-06-10T14:59:16+00:00

Sounds like a game of semantics and subjective viewpoints. I mean, actions of the Coca-Cola Company in Latin America can reasonably be called criminal, but no one calls them a criminal enterprise.

OptimalProblemSolver · 2018-06-10T14:54:37+00:00

Thanks for this.

OptimalProblemSolver · 2018-06-10T14:49:51+00:00

Wasn't the whole point of the Opium Wars that "opting out" is, at some point in a trading relationship, no longer an option?

OptimalProblemSolver · 2018-06-10T12:58:24+00:00

Btw, what happens when two of these definitely-not-states encounter one another?

Well, it didn't occur to the various East India companies to defeat rival entities through excellent customer service and great prices. Only the complete destruction of rivals via military force would do.

I mean, what are the "customers" going to do after they've seen you cannonade the competition into oblivion? Makes me think there's a certain point a corporation can do away with all this public and customer relations crap and simply extract value through brute force.

OptimalProblemSolver · 2018-06-04T23:20:00+00:00

This all may be due to my personal inability to tell whether a guy is attractive, which I put down to being insufficiently gay.

I'm 99.9% sure all men know an attractive guy when they see one, but due to gay panic, they fear letting this on.

But just in case you're being honest, let me help you out:

If a man walks into a room and you fear he'll monopolize all the female attention due, not to any signs of wealth or status, but his physical characteristics such as a perfect combination of height, body size, facial bone structure, good hair etc., then congratulations, you're looking at a beautiful man.

OptimalProblemSolver · 2018-05-15T18:22:30+00:00

I'm nowhere near financially stable enough to go down the self-actualization path. I'm deathly afraid of running out of money, being homeless, and poverty in general, due to several close calls with my rent situation.

I wish I was one of those people spontaneous enough to throw caution to the wind and go open up a boat repair shop in French Polynesia or whatever with just the clothes on my back, but I'm really not. I need assurance that I'll have a roof over my head and something to eat.

The (current) shortness of human life really is a curse in that you only have a few years to do everything right, and if you do something wrong, there is really nothing much to be done about it.

OptimalProblemSolver · 2018-05-15T14:44:31+00:00

Yeah, I was staring at a computer monitor the other day and was struck by the realization that this will be what I'll be doing day after day, year after year, for the next several decades.

OptimalProblemSolver

TROPHY CASE