posted on September 12, 2019 08:56 AM by
u/throwawayf3v4
21
u/titotal21 pointsat 1568279158.000000
It always blows my mind how old yudkowsky is. Like this passage from
the post (from 2000!):
I remember getting a new squirtgun, of translucent blue
plastic, which squirted better than any squirtgun I’d had so far. And
within around an hour, for some reason or other - I don’t think it was
related to abuse of the squirtgun, but I’m not sure - my mother decided
to take it away. So I rushed out the back door and threw it off the
third-floor balcony, and listened to it shatter on the concrete
below.
I knew, as I threw it, that Mom would think it had been a childish
act - “Cutting off your nose to spite your face,” was what my parents
used to say. But that’s not what it was. Grownups who have forgotten
their childhood may lend a toy to a particular child, and not lend it to
anyone else, but they don’t credit children with enough “agenthood” to
really own something. Rather than let my parents say, in
essence, that this toy - which had been given to me, and which I really
enjoyed - was theirs to lend or withhold, I threw the toy off the
balcony and accepted the consequences of not being able to play with it
any more. Not because I didn’t want them to have the toy, but because
it was a wonderful toy, the best squirtgun I’d ever had; that’s why I
cared enough that I threw it off the balcony rather than let it be
something for my parents to give or take away. When I heard the
squirtgun shatter, I didn’t feel angry, or regretful, or
look-what-you-made-me-do. I felt complete. I’d done what I’d set out
to do, and I was willing to accept losing a squirtgun in order to do
it. Children can also act on principle.
was written by a 21 year old. Like, he started off as a
teenager with a god complex and just stayed that way forever
I'm mostly struck by how obviously petty and stupid it was for him to smash that squirt gun for basically no reason, and yet how he is so incapable of genuine self-reflection or self-criticism that he has convinced himself that was actually a noble principled act.
In and of that it's evidently an unrelenting state for him... yes.
He's also *extraordinarily* living up to the whole "post hoc rationalizations for my impulsive, emotional actions" subtrope of "rationalists really like to pretend they're emotionless automata"
I'm not really sure I see the point you're making.
Rationalizing one's behavior to that degree of autorevisionism is hardly a universal trait, even among children, and it's certainly not a healthy one either. In this case, there's the added fun that he's kept with this sort of behavior for his entire life.
I'd like to think that this is, like, a medium-effort club. Sure, there's a fair bit of sneer-as-nastiness, but there's also a feast of sneer-as-critique.
Maybe I'm just sneerblind, though.
I think the more important half of the criticism is that he as an adult is being "so incapable of genuine self-reflection or self-criticism that he has convinced himself that was actually a noble principled act."
I did dumb things as a child. As an adult I *consider* them dumb.
No, he's an adult who is coming up with *post hoc* rationalizations for petty and impulsive childhood behavior. That's a very different thing--if he were instead able to admit *as an adult* that the act as a child was petty and unreflective, we wouldn't be mocking him.
It's not the childhood behavior that we're mocking, it's the rationalization of that behavior as some kind of principled act as an adult.
Glorified writer and community organizer. He did manage to gather a large amount of people and resources around himself and his goal of preventing skynet/the matrix.
[1997 was wild](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at6OG2Xiiek) (spoilers for an almost 40 year old game, but even in that game the big bad turns out to be skynet).
That is why Yud has a god complex, he met himself when he went back in time to stop skynet from going live on 1997.
>His actual achievements are behind closed doors. He's stated that he wants worldwide AI research slowed so that he can come up with FAI first, so it stands to reason he's not going to just release it out into the wild. Is that a good position to take? Maybe, maybe not. But it does explain why any advancements in the field he might consider dangerous aren't public.
That's roughly the reason why I haven't published my totally real formula for cold fusion yet. No I can't elaborate.
Edit:
>Why not just judge the views on their own merit? If you have anything he's actually said that's just flat-out wrong, say so.
This *right after you claim that all his important work is only available behind closed doors?* GTFO
You were asked:
>Uh, that is my question though? What DOES his job entail?
To which you replied by going on long tangents about unrelated things and (ironically) whining about the tone of other people. Finally, you said
>His actual achievements are behind closed doors
His actual achievements being behind closed doors, implying that he doesnt have any actual achievements available to the public? If that's not what you mean, can you link to any of his actual achievements?
>Now you're shifting to talk about his actual progress on AI research
Nobody is shifting anything, idk what you think this comment chain has been about if not precisely this issue. It's not about AI in particular but generally, *what does he do that is of note*? So far, you haven't given any answer apart from claiming that he might have all sorts of cool unpublished shit. You keep insisting that everyone is dismissing him because he's weird and has no formal training or what have you when these are just sideshows, the basic issue has always been that for all his talk, he has almost nothing to show for it.
>Where are your assertions coming from? I'm not planning on dying if I can help it—which I can. If technology doesn't extend lifespans before then, I'm just going to get myself into cryonics.
i should probably stop replying to this actual lunatic
They probably have as much of an actual education in these areas as Yudkowsky has actual research hidden behind closed doors for the good of humanity.
They're either a LARPer or an engineering student, which is ultimately the same thing.
> He thinks he can get us to a singularity that won't kill everyone.
For those of us with some doubts as to whether Big Yud is the messiah, this is very funny.
Jeez you guys are thin-skinned.
> You're twisting my words by pretending that's an opinion I hold when it's merely a premise you'd have to follow if you want to look at things from his perspective.
What I'm actually saying is that you yourself have made Big Yud out to have a messiah complex, intentionally or not, and that is *very funny*. And rather than just accepting that you don't get the joke, you keep insisting that there is no joke. Well, hell, man, you do you.
>Actually, in the past truthseeking was philosophy, not science.
>People didn't go out and observe. Science was a process that was widely accepted only relatively recently.
Take it from a Philosopher(/Historian) of Science here: this is bullshit
BTW, just to spell it out for the slow ones, you pretend as if you had something profound that requires an actual answer but all you've done is avoid the actual questions. You were asked what yudkwosky had actually achieved and ultimately, you had to revert to claiming that his achievements occur behind closed doors and that we can't yet know what wonders his mind has produced. This is worse than a god of the gaps argument. Where does that rank on your stupid chart?
> Further up in the thread, Yudkowsky's legitimacy was cast into doubt because of his apparent lack of 'real' achievements
To which you now reply:
>I merely say that he actually does know some stuff about his own field, so maybe don't attack his character instead of his arguments.
So to recap: someone says yudkwosky has no actual achievements and in your mind, this somehow translates to an "attack [on] his character"? Please, tell me how that's another "strawman".
I already gave you a warning but seriously if you don't read the room and get your bearings before your next reply I am going to ban you because this is getting *super* old now
> I do have a formal education in mathematics and computer science, and I'd like to point out that you could easily learn most of what a university teaches you if you're dedicated enough.
Is there any evidence that he is so dedicated? His writing doesn't show an enormous degree of rigor, after all.
> His not going into higher education isn't a reason to disregard his opinions.
The fact that he lacks credentials gives us one fewer reason to regard his opinions in the first place.
> If you want to argue that he has only a philosophical understanding you're going to have to explain what his job is then, because he currently has one where he does AI research.
And then
> His actual achievements are behind closed doors.
What *is* this argument? You're clearly very impressed by Big Yud, but you're not able to give any reasons why. Rather, all you've been doing is arguing that SC's collective reasons for *not* being impressed are somehow invalid, as if being impressed by random Internet pseudo-intellectuals is the obviously correct default.
>You don't want to know what a novice writer comes up with. It's not pretty.
I can't stop returning to this sentence *in the context of the Yud's writing* and giggling
I was so tempted to make a link to the sub with that quote but I thought it'd just be a little *too* mean given the drubbing they're getting everywhere else
The comment that started off this entire chain was
>What are even his achievements outside of things like HPMOR and LessWrong articles?
And your response is that he wrote a popular fanfic? Yeah, clearly *I'm* the one who just got owned
> Writing the amount that he has shows dedication in and of itself. > You don't want to know what a novice writer comes up with. It's not pretty.
When I asked "is there any evidence that he is so dedicated" I meant that in the sense of "is there any evidence that he is dedicated to that?", "that" being "giving himself a university-level education in math and comp sci." Near as I can tell, the answer is "no."
Your next quote/response is gibberish, I have no idea what you're saying.
> Exactly! It doesn't matter who someone is, if you're putting them down for invalid reasons then it's just pointless and dishonest.
One notes that you left out the rest of that line. I don't think anyone would deny that Big Yud is massively pretentious and self-important; see the quote at the beginning of this discussion. I have no reason to be impressed with him by default. That makes him an extremely mockable figure.
All you've done is raise hypotheticals: "well, he *could* have given himself a rigorous education in computer science," "well, he *might* be doing extremely important work behind the scenes." In absence of any evidence to support these positions, there's no reason to take them up.
Really conflating the two senses of "rationalist," huh? Mayhaps it's not that Yud is a pompous blowhard, but rather, that an evil demon has tricked us into believing it so.
Someone shut up and [multiplied](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Shut_up_and_multiply).
[The RationalWiki page on Roko's Basilisk, of all things, has a collection of relevant links in its footnotes.](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk#cite_note-8livesperdollar-22)
>>>They planned on doing an academic paper on the topic, though it hasn't been completed yet. Here's Anna Salamon's presentation, estimating 8 lives saved per dollar donated to SingInst.
>>If a back-of-the-envelope calculation comes up with a number like that, then it is probably wrong.
>I haven't watched the presentation, but 8 lives corresponds to only a one in a billion chance of averting human extinction per donated dollar, which corresponds (neglecting donation matching and the diminishing marginal value of money) to roughly a 1 in 2000 chance of averting human extinction from a doubling of the organization's budget for a year. That doesn't sound obviously crazy to me,
that's an absolute koan of arse-backwards reasoning: if they successfully avert the rapture, it'll be to the tune of $8 per life saved, therefore it is reasonable to assess that they will successfully avert the rapture to the tune of $8
Seems reasonable to me! And remember, they're only using roughly the current population of earth and not considering the number of potential future lives we're missing out on by not doing a singularity. It's really several trillion lives per dollar, even if you assume there's a 3\^\^\^3 to 1 chance of them actually helping. Please donate.
> Maybe it's about making sure the thinly-veiled tone policing retains an aura of legitimacy?
I don't think you understand the concept of "tone policing."
Consider:
> He has stated that he wants worldwide AI research to be slowed down so that MIRI will come up with the solution
This is messianic thinking, and it boggles the mind that you think it's somehow reasonable. Big Yud regards himself as a Great Man who is necessary for the salvation of mankind. Making fun of him for this and other pretensions is emphatically *not* tone policing. There's probably no tone that Yud could take that would disguise his eminently sneer-worthy personality.
It always blows my mind how old yudkowsky is. Like this passage from the post (from 2000!):
was written by a 21 year old. Like, he started off as a teenager with a god complex and just stayed that way forever
[deleted]
Yes, yes, lots of funny stuff here, but “Holding Out for a Hero” by Bette Midler!?