> At that point there’s no solution other than the penultimate solution
To the author’s credit, this paradoxical clause would break an AI, which should tickle the pickle of any AI doomer
At that point there’s no solution other than the penultimate
solution: leaving this universe. […] I don’t know if that’s possible,
but string theory and other models seem to offer the possibility.
Guaranteed this silicon valley dip shit could not explain
introductory physics material.
Seriously. *Which* string theory, even? Does he even know there's more than one?
Nevermind that precisely none of them readily "seem to offer" that possibility.
That "and other models" seems to be doing an awful lot of heavy lifting here.
"Leaving this universe." To WHERE? Another hypothetical many-worlds theory universe? Why would that be the ultimate solution to this unimportant problem? You've traded your prison cell for another one. They're just bored and frustrated and tossing stones because at least they can feel smart and in control by using ten-dollar words incorrectly.
Or the one about the *right amount* of trauma for children to have so they capitalist better. Has pungent notes of anti-Asian racism where Jewish culture does it right and Tiger Moms are just trading abuse for high salaries. Because no Jew has ever spent their career talking about their trauma, *Mark*.
If you have an actual argument I'd love to engage. I personally have received nothing but kind words about the piece.
I thought it was obvious that, um, trauma is bad. I was making the observation that many people who seem to be succeeding in life, at least by many metrics, tend to have lots of lower-case-trauma in their pasts.
I'm not sure if you're engaging in good-faith or if you just want to dunk on the bad guy. If it's the former I'm here. If it's the latter, I'm not here for it. And I'm also not the enemy.
I'm not a "rationalist", and I'm not on the right. Please only focus arguments on the arguments you don't like in what I've written. And not on some less wrong caricature that doesn't apply to me.
And I hope you're having a good day.
This reads like one of those half formed papers based on a deep idea
that came to him at 3 am, those ones that seem deep and if you try to
wake up and write them down the next morning they are just nonsense, an
idea that is based on an old sci fi story but the author has forgotten
about it and now thinks it is his own.
The only thing you get from jailbreaking the universe is acausal
trade, and you know what that gets you? Okay, yeah, I’m a god, but a god
of what? By what mechanism am I reaching into the past and advising you
here?
Look if you can’t think about the world outside yourself without
using analogies to very specific consumer technology branding, maybe you
are spending too much time thinking about technology
Listen, the string theory says there are 11 dimensions and that means there are 8 dimensions to escape to (7 if one of them is time?). That's a lot of avenues of escape! This is all very simple.
oh but of course. how could I have been so foolish. all I need to do is blueshift the waves of all the particles in my body to exceed the frequency corresponding to the Planck energy and I'll be \*turns into a black hole\*
Once you realize there's *a lot* of people who think extremely advanced physics (especially quantum mechanics, but they all get this treatment) is literal magic supported by unapproachable eldritch formulas you come to understand what they think it means.
(spoiler: >!literal fucking magic!<)
I thought it was a path to (potentially) better understanding our reality.
Which would seem to be super important if we were to attempt to evade heat death.
My goodness, it's the guy who wrote the article.
String theory is in fact a *hypothesis*, because we don't know a practically viable way to empirically test it. But even if we did, that wouldn't allow *us* to "leave" the Universe and be "somewhere else". It *might* indeed allow us to better understand the Universe, but there's no reason to think that means it would empower us to *leave* the Universe. It's not even known if there's anywhere else to go *to*; some hypothesize that there might be other Universes, but the idea that they would causally affect each other is an idea with no basis in empirical data.
Actually, it's not even clear to me why you think that "string theory and other models seem to offer the possibility" of "leaving this universe". Do you think, perhaps, that the branes of M-theory could be accessed from our brane (assuming M-theory is even true)? Or do you think that the extra dimensions predicted by string theory constitute *places we can go*, despite *necessarily* being smaller in extent than anything we have observed?
There's also no reason to believe that resisting entropy is anything but totally futile, even for an arbitrarily intelligent agent - and I do mean *arbitrarily* intelligent. If I'm wrong about this, that'd be literally as surprising to me as finding out that God was real, because in physical terms, an "intelligence" is just a very complex but otherwise totally ordinary physical system, made entirely of atoms and particles behaving in exact accordance with the same laws of mechanics that govern any other particles. In a sense, I feel like saying that a sufficiently intelligent agent could resist or reverse entropy is a bit like saying a sufficiently ferromagnetic object could do likewise if you just magnetize it strongly enough.
"The law that entropy always increases, holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation."
(Sir Arthur Eddington)
Jailbreaking universe is winning in lotto at young age. Rationalist
are against participating in lottery because of some made up statistics.
I believe I’m going to win. Today
I’ll believe that rationalism makes you smarter when rationalists figure out what “penultimate” means
Guaranteed this silicon valley dip shit could not explain introductory physics material.
(yes I checked, LW reader)
Is this hosted on his own page because it didn’t hit the LessWrong minimum word count?
Reads like somebody trying to explain a science fiction story.
Don’t make my mistake and read his post about the cowardice of the far left.
This reads like one of those half formed papers based on a deep idea that came to him at 3 am, those ones that seem deep and if you try to wake up and write them down the next morning they are just nonsense, an idea that is based on an old sci fi story but the author has forgotten about it and now thinks it is his own.
The only thing you get from jailbreaking the universe is acausal trade, and you know what that gets you? Okay, yeah, I’m a god, but a god of what? By what mechanism am I reaching into the past and advising you here?
Look if you can’t think about the world outside yourself without using analogies to very specific consumer technology branding, maybe you are spending too much time thinking about technology
What the
No they fucking don’t??? What the fuck does this idiot think “string theory” means???
Jailbreaking universe is winning in lotto at young age. Rationalist are against participating in lottery because of some made up statistics. I believe I’m going to win. Today
Extra funny considering Yud’s recent “people who say I think AI will brick the universe are stupid fools!” talk.
Nice catch, all. I’ve always winced when I saw people making that mistake, and didn’t know until now that I’ve made it myself.
You got me at the fart game, and my mouth was open. :)
This is formatted like an article but is hardly longer than a tweet