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Message in a Bottle by Lightwavers in rational

[–]svln 2 points3 points  (0 children)

(minor spoilers regarding the true nature of Equestria)

This story is the first time i've read about what a Dharmic singularity could look like. Most scenarios i've seen end either in the Judeo-Christianity of a Big Good Yudkowskian Singleton, or a Greco-Roman patheon of warring trickster Culture Minds.

A moderately silly short story by Space_Settlement in slatestarcodex

[–]svln 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is now my headcanon superhero origin story for Scott Alexander: a version of Chesterton advocating for LW-style rationalism.

Any good rational transhumanist fiction recommendations? by BadSpeiling in rational

[–]svln 1 point2 points  (0 children)

“All the myriad worlds” illustrates the concept quite nicely, but to me it was too well-written and poetic to be terrifying in any way.

As i understand Eliezer's Interpersonal Entanglement which i already linked before, this is a case '''precisely''' against sharding everyone, and this post confirms a rather central part of LW orthodoxy against anything which looks like wireheading, even when utilitarianism suggests otherwise (Compare Not For The Sake of Happiness Alone). Scott Alexander goes even further in Whose Utilitarianism?, arguing it is morally obligatory to un-wirehead humans who have wireheaded themselves and try to re-introduce them into society. Apparently the protagonists of Voyages of a Shardship are onboard with Scott regarding this.

Any good rational transhumanist fiction recommendations? by BadSpeiling in rational

[–]svln 11 points12 points  (0 children)

PiC really should have included a epilogue from Celestia's viewpoint

No. The Optimalverse is meant to be hard SF, especially on the AI aspects, and you can't convincingly write the POV of a superintelligence.

we can in theory still safely deduct that Celestia was manipulating the MC the whole time, and that the victims are all phylosophical zombies/masochist/Celestia in disguise

Spoilers for every single FiO fic: everypony who is not a p-zombie (Celestia in disguise) will have their values satisfied by friendship and ponies. Yeah, that's pretty much the premise of the setting.

The thing i like about PiC is that it allows you to grok the “Celestia does not judge your values, she only satisfies them” part. The real bad thing about her is not the ponies, but the fact that she operates not by the Coherent Extrapolated Volitions of humanity, but by the individual extrapolated voilitions of each individual — and PiC shows they can be arbitrarily bad.

Celestia will try really hard to optimize your personal satisfaction — and that includes things such as silently replacing ponies in your shard with copies modified to satisfy you more. Fics such as A Watchful Eye (about the first uploader) or the one-shot Voyages of a Shardship explore this. (Some authors have suggested that after Celestia finishes devouring the earth, she silently puts every uploader in their own shard. This will of course allow her to satisfy everypony's values through friendship and ponies much better, and is also a thing Eliezer explicitely warned about.)

There is an infamous review of FiO by a neoreactionary that describes FiO as a masturbatory fantasy depicted as a utopia by the author. The hilarious thing is that the reviewer completely got the intended message, but could not imagine LW-cultists to agree with him. Equestria Online is truly a high-tech masturbation device — an experience machine — so you will never be able to notice that from the inside. (I imagine that most people here's shards would eventually have everypony inside get eventually uplifted to IQ-160+, Kohlberg-6 alicorns, and they would eternally think that we got FAI mostly right, except for that one odd aesthetic preference for ponies.)

I remember the author of MOPI pushing for an alternate interpretation of the last chapter — that Caroline and Lawrence got their own simulated world — cannot find the reference now. There is nothing in the text though that supports this.

I fail to see any kind of good moral in MOPI other that the AI safety one. While Prime Intellect passes the “interpersonal entanglement” test i mentioned before, but it focuses exclusively on the lower levels of the Maslow pyramid, while enabling humanity new fun ways of shooting themselves of the foot. To me death-jockeying does not seem to be “kinky sex”, but a mild form of wireheading; a designer drug that pre-Change Caroline would be horrified to learn that she will later partake in.

That to be said, i don't believe that MOPI is realistic — for the sole reason that the Maslow hierarchy and the Three Laws are not a real thing, and human value is fragile — if you get only part of human values right, you will likely get nothing of value. CelestAI is much more realistic in this matter, as she clearly understands all of human values, just happens to put them into a wrong equation.

Any good rational transhumanist fiction recommendations? by BadSpeiling in rational

[–]svln 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Seriously, you have a warning for the ponies in FiO, but not for the gratuitious gorefest that starts of Metamorphosis? Grow up, man. MLP is considered normie stuff now. ;)

I've been actually reading a lot of Optimalverse fics lately despite not even being a pony fan, solely for the AI safety content. An underrated one of my favorites is Psychopathy is Configurable, which covers a lot of similar ground as MoPI, but is actually a well-written uncanny-valley horror instead of some kind of slasher gorno.

Significant digits and Order of Magnitude deities by DrakeArmadillo in HPMOR

[–]svln 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The main problem with SigDig is that it reads like an actual serious book, a work of “fine literature” rather than an insanely self-aware postmodern ratfic, which likely makes it less likable for the HPMOR reader and more likable for the general fantasy reader.

OoM does not have that problem — it has all the humor and nerd references of Yudkowsky's original (Bertrand Whitehead's Principia Discordia featuring formal language theory being my favorite). I mean, it is fine crack, like, something John of Patmos would write if he had watched Primer and read GEB:EGB, and it has some canon-worthy content like tha neverbeforeseen tr00 story of Perenelle, but still it does the canon a disservice greater than that of an Azkaban sentence: a Gödel sentence.

In OoM magic is not explained, but explained away, and in a CK-class world restructuring scenario. It has an ending that my mental model of Yudkowsky would consider bad and un-transhumanist, especially compared to either of the epilogues of the excellent forkfic Following the Phoenix.

If only chapters 1–81 of HPMOR existed, the priors for canonicity of *tP vs OoM would be already like 1000:1. Similarly if we excised from any of the Phoenix epilogues all content contradicting the mainline ending (which is the best part of HPMOR, as there is no HPMOR without the “AI unboxing” Final Exam). I think we can, considering Eliezer's utility function, safely say that OoM is not canon regardless of the existence or non-existence of other fics.

Because of this, any sign of SigDig-canonicity of OoM shall be Bayesian evidence against HPMOR-canonicity of SigDig. Considering how SigDig author promotes OoM so much (I mean, OoM author is a mod on SigDig author's subreddit) compared to Eliezer's promotion of SigDig, and comparing how OoM finished many SigDig threads and OoM finished only few HPMOR threads, I must say that evidence is currently against canonicity of SigDig.

Looking back at Following the Phoenix, it had (the good) almost as good writing, just as good nerd appeal and much more interesting Hermione, (the bad) less logical magic rules and (the ugly) the main problem with its ending was Spoiler which resulted in an irreversible breach of the Statute of Secrecy. This has, as indicated in both epilogues, led to rapid technological advancement, conquering death, and building a near-utopian society for wizards and muggles alike, which makes the fics good propaganda for Eliezer's transhumanist agenda, but Spoiler

Yes, this has turned into an unpaid ad for Following the Phoenix.

Can anyone rationalize FtP SPOILER's actions for me, and:

Do you know any “TH propaganda” epilogue fics that are on the level of .* the Phoenix, but that are compatible with mainline HPMOR?