tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post3090422805202230016..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Stop Worrying About the Future Robocalypse. Dale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-11136224448064740952019-05-02T08:42:55.478-07:002019-05-02T08:42:55.478-07:00Muflax is an extremely arrogant and deranged perso...Muflax is an extremely arrogant and deranged person. His blog was written in an unbearable I-know-it-all-and-if-I-don't-get-it-it's-wrong tone. And he only had an IQ of 135! <br /><br />In his "arguments" against antinatalism, he showed his true colours and what a psychopath he is by denying evil exists, even denying that some people's quality of life is negative.<br /><br />No wonder the koanicsoul guy liked him, another arrogant know-it-all.lurkernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-40749592747597013312015-12-17T12:04:47.257-08:002015-12-17T12:04:47.257-08:00There's a fossil of a fossil of a defunct blog...There's a fossil of a fossil of a defunct blog post at<br />https://web.archive.org/web/20141013085706/http://kruel.co/backup/The%20End%20of%20Rationality.png<br />(via<br />https://web.archive.org/web/20130802020117/http://kruel.co/2012/11/02/rationality-come-on-this-is-serious/ )<br /><br />which contains:<br /><br />-----------<br />The End of Rationality<br />2012-02-22<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />I'm basically done with rationality. OK, seriously now. I've always enjoyed<br />XiXiDu's criticisms on LW, but for over a year now, whenever I read his<br />stuff I wonder why he **keeps on making it**. I mean, he has been saying<br />(more-or-less correctly so, I think) that SIAI and the LW sequences score<br />high on any crackpot test, that virtually no expert in the field takes any<br />of it seriously, that rationality (in the LW sense) has not shown any<br />tangible results, that there are problems so huge you can fly a whole<br />destructor fleet through, that the Outside View utterly disagrees<br />with both the premises and conclusions of most LW thought, that actually<br />taking it seriously should drive people insane, and much more for month<br />after month, and every time I wonder, dude, you're **right**, why<br />don't you let it go? Why do you struggle again and again to understand<br />it, to make sense of it, to fight your way through the sequences the<br />way priests read scripture? Why don't you **leave**? And then I<br />wondered why **I** don't leave. So now I do.<br /><br />I barely have enough faith to serve one absent god. I can't also make<br />non-functional rationality work. Recite the litany of the Outside View<br />with me: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and<br />expecting different results."<br />====<br /><br />So I guess this guy has fled the scene, in the wake of Roko Mijic<br />(and presumably others less famous).<br /><br />That page image also has the following disclaimer at the top:<br /><br />-----------<br />Warning<br /><br />This page has been disowned according to the Condemnation of 2012.<br />The author does not endorse or deny any of the views expressed here,<br />even when it may appear so, and will not discuss them. . .<br />====<br /><br />Wow. The author is "muflax" (apparently one Stefan Dorn), who was once<br />a user at LessWrong, but isn't anymore. He's had several blogs,<br />all now defunct ("buried"), and he took care in advance to prevent<br />them from being archived by using the "robots.txt"<br />protocol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard),<br />which the Wayback Machine honors. However, folks have taken to making<br />their own backups of Web material that they suspect might turn out to<br />be from a volatile source. So in this case, we have the backup of a backup.<br /><br />I find this whole notion that people (especially people who have<br />gone out of their way to make their views public, like by having<br />a blog or having participated in a publicly-archived mailing list)<br />should have the right to manage their Web footprints according<br />to their own whims and PR needs, and should be able to justly<br />accuse (or be able to rely on public opinion to condemn) others of being unfair<br />or impolite for digging them up (as in "I know it was posted publicly<br />but it feels like furtively-recorded conversations to me all these years later. . .<br />Usenet and mailing list quotes. . . are equivalent to passing notes<br />and should be considered off the record. . .") highly disturbing.<br />The idea that once-public communication should be retroactively privatizable,<br />at the whim of the original author -- that's right out of the Ministry of Truth's<br />playbook. Don't ever count on **me** to honor somebody's sensitivities<br />in that department! (Or the New York Times, for that matter, unless<br />this country really does turn into the Republic of Gilead, or<br />some such thing.)<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-76840943769348673662015-12-17T09:42:52.673-08:002015-12-17T09:42:52.673-08:00> http://harpers.org/archive/2015/01/come-with-...> http://harpers.org/archive/2015/01/come-with-us-if-you-want-to-live/<br />> ---------------<br />> Come With Us If You Want to Live<br />> Among the apocalyptic libertarians of Silicon Valley<br />> By Sam Frank<br />> January 2015<br />> ====<br /><br />And cf.<br /><br />Faith, Hope, and Singularity: Entering the Matrix with New York’s Futurist Set<br />It's the end of the world as we know it, and they feel fine.<br />By Nitasha Tiku 7/25/2012 8:45am<br />https://web.archive.org/web/20120907134543/http://betabeat.com/2012/07/singularity-institute-less-wrong-peter-thiel-eliezer-yudkowsky-ray-kurzweil-harry-potter-methods-of-rationality/<br />(there's an excerpt in the comment thread of<br />http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2014/10/very-serious-robocalyptics.html )<br /><br />For more, shall we say, **unrestrained** commentary, you can consult:<br /><br />Kiwi Farms<br />Lolcow/Community Watch forum<br />https://kiwifar.ms/threads/eliezer-schlomo-yudkowsky-lesswrong-aka-nanananabooboo-i-am-smarter-than-you.11361/<br /><br />Something Awful<br />General Bullshit 2: On The Move/The Less Wrong Mock Thread: The Big Yudkowsky<br />http://archives.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3627012<br /><br />Mean-spirited, low entertainment? Sure. **Undeserved**? You decide.<br />(One or two of the participants in those threads do think it's undeserved.<br />The rest don't.)<br /><br />There have been many, uh, eccentric people making spectacles of themselves<br />on-line since the ancient days of Usenet. There was once even a FAQ<br />that attempted to keep track of them all (the Net.Legends.FAQ, not updated<br />in 20 years http://www.faqs.org/faqs/net-legends-faq/ ). A character<br />like the "Doctress Neutopia" must have provided plenty of somewhat<br />mean-spirited entertainment for her Usenet readers back in the day,<br />but it's unlikely that anyone ever worried that she might have the<br />slightest pernicious effect in the general arena of public discourse.<br /><br />This is not the case with the LW guru. The connections with<br />reactionary politics, Silicon Valley wealth, uncritical journalism,<br />and impressionable 20-something students in STEM fields,<br />make this "reality distortion field" (as the late Steve Jobs' sometimes<br />baleful influence was once called) worthy of public exposure, and<br />even outright mockery.<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-31820234255071702782015-12-16T16:09:13.697-08:002015-12-16T16:09:13.697-08:00http://harpers.org/archive/2015/01/come-with-us-if...http://harpers.org/archive/2015/01/come-with-us-if-you-want-to-live/<br />---------------<br />Come With Us If You Want to Live<br />Among the apocalyptic libertarians of Silicon Valley<br />By Sam Frank<br />January 2015<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />Some months later, I came across the Tumblr of Blake Masters,<br />who was then a Stanford law student and tech entrepreneur in<br />training. His motto — “Your mind is software. Program it.<br />Your body is a shell. Change it. Death is a disease. Cure it.<br />Extinction is approaching. Fight it.” — was taken from a<br />science-fiction role-playing game. Masters was posting rough<br />transcripts of Peter Thiel’s Stanford lectures on the founding<br />of tech start-ups. I had read about Thiel, a billionaire<br />who cofounded PayPal with Elon Musk and invested early in<br />Facebook. His companies Palantir Technologies and<br />Mithril Capital Management had borrowed their names from<br />Tolkien. Thiel was a heterodox contrarian, a Manichaean<br />libertarian, a reactionary futurist.<br /><br />“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,”<br />Thiel wrote in 2009. Freedom might be possible, he imagined,<br />in cyberspace, in outer space, or on high-seas homesteads,<br />where individualists could escape the “terrible arc of the political.”<br />Lecturing in Palo Alto, California, Thiel cast self-made<br />company founders as saviors of the world:<br /><br />> There is perhaps no specific time that is necessarily right<br />> to start your company or start your life. But some times<br />> and some moments seem more auspicious than others. Now is<br />> such a moment. If we don’t take charge and usher in the<br />> future — if you don’t take charge of your life — there is<br />> the sense that no one else will. So go find a frontier<br />> and go for it.<br /><br />Blake Masters — the name was too perfect — had, obviously,<br />dedicated himself to the command of self and universe. He did<br />CrossFit and ate Bulletproof, a tech-world variant of the<br />paleo diet. On his Tumblr’s About page, since rewritten,<br />the anti-belief belief systems multiplied, hyperlinked to<br />Wikipedia pages or to the confoundingly scholastic website<br />Less Wrong: “Libertarian (and not convinced there’s irreconcilable<br />fissure between deontological and consequentialist camps).<br />Aspiring rationalist/Bayesian. Secularist/agnostic/ignostic . . .<br />Hayekian. As important as what we know is what we don’t.<br />Admittedly eccentric.” Then: “Really, really excited to be in<br />Silicon Valley right now, working on fascinating stuff with<br />an amazing team.” . . .<br />====<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-20394483301428805222015-12-16T15:52:57.705-08:002015-12-16T15:52:57.705-08:00What he said:
http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/po...What he said:<br /><br />http://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/109688462754/i-know-i-my-obsession-with-big-yud-less-wrong<br />------------<br />I know I my obsession with Big Yud / Less Wrong / “rationalists” / etc.<br />must seem like it goes beyond the bounds of all sense at times,<br />but really I’m just amazed at how much weird internet stuff I<br />can manage to find by mining this particular vein. It just never ends. . .<br />====<br /><br />Just don't choke on the popcorn.<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-1616502679501684332015-12-16T15:01:55.325-08:002015-12-16T15:01:55.325-08:00> Usenet and mailing list quotes. . . are equiv...> Usenet and mailing list quotes. . . are equivalent to passing notes<br />> and should be considered off the record. . .<br /><br />That's certainly an interesting take. Don't think it would hold<br />up in court.<br /><br />BTW, the URL of xixiDu's original offending blog post (on his own blog,<br />not LessWrong) was:<br /><br />http://kruel.co/2014/07/03/eliezer-yudkowskys-narcissistic-tendencies<br /><br />The version that the Wayback Machine archived was already edited to<br />remove offending language like "narcissistic":<br /><br />https://web.archive.org/web/20141124184420/http://kruel.co/2014/07/03/eliezer-yudkowskys-personality/#sthash.MLyiGHKN.dpbs<br /><br />The comments on that post (including my own) were saved by the hosting<br />site:<br />https://disqus.com/home/discussion/alexanderkruel/eliezer_yudkowsky8217s_narcissistic_tendencies/<br />("RedneckCryonicist" is none other than our pal Mark Plus. ;-> )<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-1256456053405424832015-12-16T14:59:14.554-08:002015-12-16T14:59:14.554-08:00To the Ethics Office! Go!
http://lesswrong.com/l...To the Ethics Office! Go!<br /><br />http://lesswrong.com/lw/lb3/breaking_the_vicious_cycle/<br />-------------<br />Breaking the vicious cycle<br />XiXiDu 23 November 2014<br /><br />You may know me as the guy who posts a lot of controversial stuff<br />about LW and MIRI. I don't enjoy doing this and do not want to<br />continue with it. One reason being that the debate is turning<br />into a flame war. Another reason is that I noticed that it does<br />affect my health negatively. . .<br /><br />I hate this fight and want to end it once and for all. . .<br /><br />I am also aware that LW and MIRI are bothered by RationalWiki.<br />As you can easily check from the fossil record, I have at points<br />tried to correct specific problems. . .<br /><br />---<br /><br />Halfwitz<br /><br />To be honest, I had you pegged as being stuck in a partisan spiral<br />[is that another LW technical term? Like "affective death spiral"? ;-> ]<br /><br />Also, you published some very embarrassing quotes from Yudkowsky.<br />I’m guessing you caused him quite a bit of distress, so he’s<br />probably not inclined to do you any favors. Mining someone’s<br />juvenilia for outrageous statements is not productive – I mean<br />he was 16 when he wrote some of the stuff you quote. I would<br />remove those pages. Same with the usenet stuff – I know it was<br />posted publicly but it feels like furtively-recorded conversations<br />to me all these years later. <br /><br />---<br /><br />XiXiDu<br /><br />To make the first step and show that this is not some kind of<br />evil ploy, I now deleted the (1) Yudkowsky quotes page<br />and (2) the post on his personality (explanation on how that<br />post came about).<br /><br />I realize that they were unnecessarily offending and apologize<br />for that. If I could turn back the clock I would do a lot<br />differently and probably stay completely silent about MIRI and LW.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Halfwitz<br /><br /><br />The stuff that bothers me are Usenet and mailing list quotes<br />(they are equivalent to passing notes and should be considered<br />off the record). . .<br /><br />Young Eliezer was a little crankish and has pretty much grown<br />out of it. I feel like you're criticising someone who no longer exists.<br /><br />Also, the page where you try to diagnose him with narcissism<br />just seems mean.<br /><br />---<br /><br />XiXiDu<br /><br />> Also, the page where you try to diagnose him with narcissism just seems mean.<br /><br />I can clarify this. I never intended to write that post but was forced to<br />do so out of self-defense.<br /><br />I replied to this comment whose author was wondering why Yudkowsky is<br />using Facebook more than LessWrong these days. To which I replied with<br />an on-topic speculation based on evidence.<br /><br />Then people started viciously attacking me, to which I had to respond.<br />In one of those replies I unfortunately used the term "narcissistic tendencies".<br />I was then again attacked for using that term. I defended my use of that<br />term with evidence, the result of which is that post. . .<br /><br />---<br /><br />Luke_A_Somers<br /><br />So let me get this straight - you did a psychiatric diagnosis<br />over the internet, and instead of saying, 'obviously I'm using<br />the term colloquially' you provided evidence. . .<br /><br />and then you are surprised when you get attacked. . .?<br /><br />---<br /><br />XiXiDu<br /><br />Yes, it was a huge overreaction on my side and I shouldn't<br />have written such a comment in the first place. . .<br /><br />The point I want to communicate is that I didn't do it out of<br />some general interest to cause MIRI distress. . .<br />====<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-48089611141324887552015-12-16T14:47:49.724-08:002015-12-16T14:47:49.724-08:00He's taken his toys and gone home.
http://les...He's taken his toys and gone home.<br /><br />http://lesswrong.com/lw/kfj/downvote_stalkers_driving_members_away_from_the/<br />-------------<br />ChrisHallquist 02 July 2014<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />Eliezer clearly doesn't care about LessWrong anymore, . . .<br />he seems to post more on Facebook. . .<br />[T]his is a major reason why this comment is the first<br />thing I've posted on LessWrong in well over a month. . .<br />---<br /><br />XiXiDu<br /><br />> Eliezer clearly doesn't care about LessWrong anymore. . .<br /><br />He receives a massive number of likes there, no matter<br />what he writes. . . [H]e needs that kind of<br />feedback, and he doesn't get it here anymore. Recently<br />he requested that a certain topic should not be mentioned<br />on the HPMOR subreddit, or otherwise he would go elsewhere.<br />On Facebook he can easily ban people who mention something<br />he doesn't like.<br /><br />---<br /><br />paper-machine<br /><br />Given that you directly caused a fair portion of the<br />thing that is causing him pain (i.e., spreading FUD about him,<br />his orgs, and etc.), this is like a win for you, right?<br /><br />Why don't you leave armchair Internet psychoanalysis to experts?<br /><br />---<br /><br />ChrisHallquist<br /><br />[T]he intended message seems to be "F you for daring to cause<br />Eliezer pain, by criticizing him and the organization he founded." . . .<br /><br />[W][hen someone is a public figure, who writes<br />and speaks about controversial subjects and is the<br />founder of an org that's fairly aggressive<br />about asking people for money, they really shouldn't be insulated<br />from criticism on the basis of their feelings.<br /><br />---<br /><br />paper-machine<br /><br /><br />> If that's the intended message. . .<br /><br />It was a reminder to everyone else of<br />XiXi's general MO, and the benefit he gets from convincing<br />others that EY is a megalomaniac, using any means necessary.<br /><br />---<br /><br />XiXiDu<br /><br />> Given that you directly caused a fair portion of the thing<br />> that is causing him pain. . ., this is like a win for you, right?<br /><br />A win would be if certain people became a little less confident<br />about the extraordinary claims he makes, and more skeptical of the<br />mindset that CFAR spreads. . .<br /><br />> Why don't you leave armchair Internet psychoanalysis to experts?<br /><br />I speculate that Yudkowsky has narcissistic tendencies. Call it<br />armchair psychoanalysis if you like, but I think there is enough<br />evidence to warrant such speculations.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Squark<br /><br />> I speculate that Yudkowsky has narcissistic tendencies. . .<br /><br />I call it an ignoble personal attack which has no place on this forum.<br /><br />---<br /><br />XiXiDu<br /><br />> I call it an ignoble personal attack. . .<br /><br />[T]he definition is: "an inflated sense<br />of one's own importance and a deep need for admiration."<br /><br />See e.g. this conversation between Ben Goertzel and Eliezer Yudkowsky<br />(note that MIRI was formerly known as SIAI):<br />[ http://www.sl4.org/archive/0406/8977.html ]<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />And this kind of attitude started early. . .<br /><br />---<br /><br />Squark<br /><br />> Sorry. It wasn't meant as an attack. . .<br /><br />Well, **I'm** sorry but when you dig up quotes of your<br />opponent to demonstrate purported flaws in his character,<br />it **is** a personal attack. I didn't expect to encounter<br />this sort of thing in LessWrong. Given the number of upvotes<br />your comment received, I can understand why Eliezer<br />prefers Facebook.<br /><br />---<br /><br />XiXiDu<br /><br />Yudkowsky tells other people to get laid. He is asking the community<br />to downvote certain people. He is calling people permanent idiots<br />[i.e., Richard Loosemore ;-> ].<br /><br />He is a forum moderator. He asks people for money. He wants to create<br />the core of the future machine dictator that is supposed to rule<br />the universe. . .<br /><br />I believe that remarks about his personality are<br />warranted. . . if they are backed up by evidence. . .<br /><br />I merely uttered a guess on why Yudowsky<br />might now prefer Facebook over LessWrong. . . Which resulted<br />in a whole thread about Yudkowsky's personality.<br />====<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-82747937663215121982015-12-16T14:23:38.964-08:002015-12-16T14:23:38.964-08:00To the memory hole! Go!
http://lesswrong.com/lw...To the memory hole! Go!<br /><br /><br />http://lesswrong.com/lw/50f/12year_old_challenges_the_big_bang/<br />-----------<br />XiXiDu 29 March 2011 11:28:49AM<br /><br />> He's a smart 12 year old who has some silly ideas,<br />> as smart 12 year olds often do, and now he'll never be<br />> able to live them down because some reporter wrote a<br />> fluff piece about him.<br /><br />Reminds me of this old article (04.19.01) about Yudkowsky. . .<br /><br />---<br /><br />Rain 30 March 2011 12:51:04AM<br /><br />It truly is astonishing, the number of quotes that<br />XiXiDu has about Eliezer. It's like he has a thick dossier,<br />slowly accumulating negative content...<br /><br />---<br /><br />timtyler 30 March 2011 11:54:19AM<br /><br />It would be interesting to see a list of all the material that has<br />been deleted in cover-up operations over the years. We really<br />need a SIAIWatch organisation.<br /><br />some deletions that spring to mind:<br /><br />Physics Workarounds (archived here)<br /><br />Coding a Transhuman AI.(archived here)<br /><br />Eliezer, the person (archived here)<br /><br />The deleted posts from around the time of Roko's departure.<br /><br />Algernon's Law: (archived here)<br /><br />Love and Life Just Before the Singularity<br /><br />Flare - though remanants survive.<br /><br />SysopMind. (archived here)<br /><br />Gaussian Humans (archived here)<br /><br />The Seed AI page.<br /><br />Becoming a Seed AI Programmer. (archived here)<br /><br />The “Commitments” vanished from: http://singinst.org/aboutus/ourmission<br /><br />They used to look like this. . .<br />====<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-46034435084253642042015-12-16T14:21:17.752-08:002015-12-16T14:21:17.752-08:00> Apropos of which:
In the comments of
http://...> Apropos of which:<br /><br />In the comments of<br />http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2015/11/relevant-expertise-in-critique-of.html<br />I mentioned that "Michael Anissimov's 'Accelerating Future'<br />blog seems to have accelerated out of existence", to which Dale<br />replied "It is striking how incriminating fingerprints vanish as<br />the imperishable spirit-stuff of the cyberspace into which so<br />many of our foolish futurological friends want to upload themselves<br />breeze and break and bleed away in the buggy buzz. . .<br />The facile fallacies of the early transhumanoid web are endlessly<br />recycled, but only those of us with old-fashioned memories of<br />their nonsense remain to tell the tale."<br /><br />Apparently, though, anything embarrassing is supposed to **stay** safely<br />hidden (or at least uncorroborated) in our fallible memories.<br /><br />http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quote_mining<br />-----------<br />Quote mining (also contextomy) is the fallacious tactic of<br />taking quotes out of context in order to make them seemingly<br />agree with the quote miner's viewpoint or to make the comments<br />of an opponent seem more extreme or hold positions they don't<br />in order to make their positions easier to refute or demonize.<br />It's a way of lying.<br />====<br /><br />Unless it's not. Tricky things, those logical fallacies.<br />(See Stephen Bond, "Your Baloney Detection Kit Sucks", 3 Sep 2012<br />http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/bdksucks.html<br />and<br />"The Ad Hominem Fallacy Fallacy", 24 Apr 2007<br />http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html )<br /><br />http://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/128778663618/im-incredibly-angry-at-my-community-when-xixidu<br />-----------<br />Sep 10th, 2015<br /><br />> Anonymous asked:<br />> I'm incredibly angry at my community. When XiXiDu [Alexander Kruel]<br />> was criticizing the SIAI, we shut him down because he attacked<br />> EY personally and mined quotes from SL4. When Richard Loosemore,<br />> who actually had some credentials, made his points in print we<br />> dismissed that criticism because it was strongly worded and gave<br />> derisive names to some of MIRI's ideas. Why bother responding?<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />that history of xixidu is not factually accurate either.<br />they attacked him for daring to criticise **at all**, and followed<br />him around the net calling him a lying liar who was lying. and were<br />unable to produce a single lie any time i asked them.<br /><br />the reason he put up all the stuff about the basilisk? people<br />were emailing him asking for help too. so for helping people<br />yudkowsky and lesswrong refused to help, they hounded him until<br />he took his stuff down.<br /><br />note the form of the present criticism: (1) refusal to engage with<br />the actual words of the criticisms (2) coming up with increasingly<br />contorted reasons not to engage with the actual words of the criticisms<br />(3) warning the donors not to read the critics’ words at all.<br />because a donor who reads the criticisms will. . .<br /><br />these people.<br />====<br /><br />(and cf.<br />http://uncrediblehallq.tumblr.com/post/128821605879/im-incredibly-angry-at-my-community-when-xixidu )<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-32012224780643012412015-12-16T11:01:06.817-08:002015-12-16T11:01:06.817-08:00> . . .some of the sniping had to do with the
&...> . . .some of the sniping had to do with the<br />> Richard E. Smalley vs. Drexler thing. . .<br /><br />Apropos of which:<br /><br />http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2004-April/005930.html<br />------------<br />[extropy-chat] No rejection of science! Re: SI morality<br />Eliezer S. Yudkowsky sentience at pobox.com<br />Fri Apr 30 16:05:29 UTC 2004<br /><br />These are extraordinarily different things[:]<br />The practice of science is a social process.<br />The consensus of science is an opinion poll.<br /><br />The actual working part of science is Bayesian probability theory, which <br />individual scientists and their social dynamics partially and imperfectly <br />mirror. . . .<br /><br />Science intrinsically requires individual researchers setting their <br />judgment above that of the scientific community. The social process of <br />science encourages people to do the work and recognizes when they have <br />done the work. The social process is not an actual human brain, has not <br />the power of intelligence. If individuals do not have novel opinions and, <br />yes, disagreements, for the scientific process to recognize as correct, <br />there is no science. . . .<br /><br />The overall rationality of academia is simply not good enough to handle <br />some necessary problems, as the case of Drexler illustrates. Individual <br />humans routinely do better than the academic consensus. . . .<br /><br />Yes, the Way of rationality is difficult to follow. As illustrated by the <br />difficulty that academia encounters in following. The social process of <br />science has too many known flaws for me to accept it as my upper bound.<br /><br />Academia is simply not that impressive, and is routinely beaten by <br />individual scientists who learn to examine the evidence supporting the <br />consensus, apply simple filters to distinguish conclusive experimental <br />support from herd behavior. Robyn Dawes is among the scientists who have <br />helped document the pervasiveness of plausible-sounding consensuses that <br />directly contradict the available experimental evidence. Richard Feynman <br />correctly dismissed psychoanalysis, despite the consensus, because he <br />looked and lo, there was no supporting evidence whatsoever. Feynman tells <br />of how embarassing lessons taught him to do this on individual issues of <br />physics as well, look up the original experiments and make sure the <br />consensus was well-supported.<br /><br />Given the lessons of history, you should sit up and pay attention if Chris <br />Phoenix says that distinguished but elderly scientists are making blanket <br />pronunciations of impossibility *without doing any math*, and without <br />paying any attention to the math, in a case where math has been done. If <br />you advocate a blanket acceptance of consensus so blind that I cannot even <br />apply this simple filter - I'm sorry, I just can't see it. It seems I <br />must accept the sky is green, if Richard Smalley says so.<br /><br />I can do better than that, and so can you.<br />===<br /><br /><br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-70649085903215283232015-12-16T10:47:37.132-08:002015-12-16T10:47:37.132-08:00So you might ask, if they’re too busy to refute hi...So you might ask, if they’re too busy to refute him why are they<br />citing him? I’d be curious to know how many of those citations are<br />from actual science papers as opposed to meta-sciency stuff. They<br />could all be, I really don’t know. But for those that are hard-science<br />citations, it comes back to incentive. If you’re writing an intro<br />to a paper you’re going to cite people who support you. Drexler clearly<br />thinks nano is a big deal, so it might make sense to cite him if<br />you want to support that viewpoint and if you like his work. A couple<br />thousand citations (modulo however many are meta-science) is honestly<br />not all that many for a “major” nano paper from decades ago. That’s a<br />hundred a year. There are thouuuusands of nano papers each year.<br />Nano Letters alone must publish 30 a week. So yes, he’s being cited,<br />but not all that much and it’s not clear by whom.<br /><br />So let’s get back to the su3su2u1 criticism. I haven’t read Drexler’s<br />book, so I can’t really comment from a place of knowledge. But his<br />criticism certainly resonates with me. There are absolutely interesting<br />questions about what can be achieved. According to su* Drexler doesn’t<br />approach from that angle. So his non-technical criticism is of an<br />(apparently) non-technical book (again, haven’t read it). I don’t see<br />much wrong with that. I think the main thing to keep in mind here is<br />that Drexler not correctly categorized as a scientist. I don’t know<br />that his ideas merit a highly technical criticism. They are just so<br />far outside of what we can actually achieve technically that there’s<br />not honestly all that much to say about them. I think this is where<br />su*’s Drexler criticism and his MIRI criticism overlap. Both are<br />responses to the development of highly technical fields that<br />extrapolate along a very particular direction that may or may<br />not pan out as the field develops. I have to say I side completely<br />with su* when he says that the best way to figure out how to keep<br />AI/nano/whatever friendly is to engage with those fields where<br />they are, not where you think they might be in X decades. Because<br />there are so many ways either field could go that it’s like trying<br />to talk about what you should do in move 50 of a chess game that’s<br />currently at move 20. For what it’s worth, I think much more<br />important than the sticky fingers problem is a problem of symmetry.<br />It is incredibly hard to make free-standing low-symmetry nano-objects<br />out of anything but biomolecules. There are no really good ideas<br />around this. If you can’t get low symmetry you really can’t get<br />anything that looks like a tool. This is a big, big problem.<br />====<br /><br /><br />As always, YMMV.<br /><br />Let him who has ears to hear. . .<br />Let him who has eyes to see. . .<br />Let him who hath understanding. . .<br /><br />or, alternatively, Let him who boasts. . .<br /><br />(Google came up with all these; all I did was type<br />"let him who". I guess that counts as AI, huh? ;-> )<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-30877210265281376772015-12-16T10:47:17.235-08:002015-12-16T10:47:17.235-08:00AlkalineHume
September 8, 2015 11:41 pm
Thanks fo...AlkalineHume<br />September 8, 2015 11:41 pm<br /><br />Thanks for your reply. I can appreciate that it’s difficult<br />to swallow that no materials scientists are down for this debate.<br />Perhaps it is a little strange, but I think that’s partly due to<br />a disconnect between the general materials science perception of<br />Drexler and the more lay-person perception. The general materials<br />science perception of Drexler is, and I quote, “who?” His nano-related<br />work is mostly non-technical and sort of meta-sciency. When I think<br />of the “founders” of nano, Drexler doesn’t crack the list by a<br />long shot. Besides the Feynman talk, you have Smalley, Louis Brus,<br />Paul Alivisatos, Moungi Bawendi. They all have boatloads of students<br />who’ve gone on to make big contributions. (My list is very<br />chemist-biased, so if there are any top-down nano people in the<br />crowd I apologize.) But Drexler isn’t a scientist, frankly. Not<br />that that’s a condemnation, just that it’s hard to found a science<br />field without doing much science. That’s why the “everyone is too busy”<br />argument holds up. Yes, they’re too busy to take on a debate with<br />someone in a totally different non-science field that honestly isn’t<br />all that relevant to what they do. (And note that to debate that point<br />you have to argue that most materials scientists don’t agree with my<br />position, which I assure you they do.)jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-71373232343129521122015-12-16T10:42:53.241-08:002015-12-16T10:42:53.241-08:00challquist
September 8, 2015 9:13 pm
“But the pro...challquist<br />September 8, 2015 9:13 pm<br /><br />“But the problem isn’t that su3su2u1 thinks Drexler is wrong –<br />scientists think other scientists are wrong all the time. The problem<br />is that su3su2u1 dismisses Drexler as a “crackpot” who isn’t even<br />worth taking seriously, in the same way one might dismiss<br />Gene Ray’s Time Cube, despite Drexler having every conceivable<br />qualification in the field he largely invented.”<br /><br />In his debate with Drexler, Smalley accuses Drexler of being<br />“in a pretend world” and selling “a bedtime story.” I might be<br />misreading this, but that sounds like Smalley politely telling<br />Drexler “you’re nuts,” as directly as possible given the venue.<br /><br />On top of that, Julius Rebek, who was part of MIT’s chemistry<br />department at the time Drexler got his Ph.D., has been quoted<br />in Wired magazine saying that Drexler’s thesis, “showed utter<br />contempt for chemistry. And the mechanosynthesis stuff I saw<br />in that thesis might as well have been written by somebody on<br />controlled substances.”<br /><br />So su3su2u1’s assessment of Drexler doesn’t sound like it’s<br />outside the range of things respectable scientists have said.<br /><br />---<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-55025263034675309482015-12-16T10:42:11.258-08:002015-12-16T10:42:11.258-08:00sandorzoo
September 8, 2015 8:26 pm
(Note: I’ve v...sandorzoo<br />September 8, 2015 8:26 pm<br /><br />(Note: I’ve verified that AlkalineHume does have real science credentials.)<br /><br />Thanks for your comment – I think it’s good to hear from someone with<br />real experience in a relevant field. Of course, I agree that wrong<br />ideas sometimes get through peer review. For that matter, as I’ve<br />said in earlier comments, I wouldn’t be all that surprised myself<br />if Drexler turned out to be wrong about the practicality of nanoassemblers.<br />But the problem isn’t that su3su2u1 thinks Drexler is wrong – scientists<br />think other scientists are wrong all the time. The problem is that<br />su3su2u1 dismisses Drexler as a “crackpot” who isn’t even worth taking<br />seriously, in the same way one might dismiss Gene Ray’s Time Cube,<br />despite Drexler having every conceivable qualification in the field<br />he largely invented. The problem is that su3su2u1 claims to have<br />identified basic, fundamental science errors in Drexler’s work, without<br />even directly citing any specific paper by Drexler, and without any<br />explanation as to how these fundamental errors weren’t caught by the<br />six separate MIT professors who reviewed Drexler’s thesis, any of the<br />peer reviewers who looked at Drexler’s dozens of publications, and<br />any of the thousands of academics who have cited Drexler.<br /><br />I’ve heard the “everyone is too busy” theory before, but I’m frankly<br />skeptical of it. As I noted in my edit to the main post, Drexler’s<br />book Nanosystems (an edited version of his PhD thesis) has been cited<br />over 1,700 times per Google Scholar. His nontechnical book,<br />Engines of Creation, has been cited over 2,200 times. His original<br />1981 paper in PNAS has been cited over 500 times. Clearly, many,<br />many people have seen his work and think it’s worth discussing. And,<br />quite frankly, it seems pretty likely that many scientists now working<br />in nano wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for funding caused by Drexler’s<br />advocacy during the 90s. I feel like a standard which lets Drexler<br />be dismissed, on the grounds that “it’s clearly wrong, but nobody<br />has the time to write a paper refuting it”, is so broad that it<br />could be used to dismiss almost any idea, even foundational ones<br />like the Big Bang theory. How can science ever arrive at the truth,<br />if everyone simply dismisses any new idea, no matter how well-argued<br />and well-supported, without bothering to write a real refutation?<br /><br />And yes, I feel that, if someone has gone through the trouble of<br />writing up detailed, technical literature that makes it through peer<br />review, it’s academia’s responsibility to reply in kind, before<br />simply dismissing the author as a “crackpot” who isn’t even worth<br />talking to. Daryl Bem’s work on ESP is, by any standard, far more<br />radical than anything Drexler has written. If Bem is correct,<br />we need to throw out several fundamental laws of physics (and for<br />that matter biology), like the unidirectional flow of time. But<br />Bem took the time to do his experiment, and he wrote it up with<br />statistics and technical details in place of anecdotes, and he got<br />it through the official peer review process. And so Wagenmakers<br />looked at his claims, and wrote a detailed, thorough, technical<br />refutation, which he also had peer-reviewed<br />(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21280965). And I think the<br />world is much better off for him having done so – even though I<br />think Bem is obviously wrong, Wagenmakers’ paper pointed out<br />several major changes that we ought to make to psychological<br />research generally.<br /><br />---jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-76809688458922362752015-12-16T10:41:34.918-08:002015-12-16T10:41:34.918-08:00http://rationalconspiracy.com/2015/09/08/dont-both...http://rationalconspiracy.com/2015/09/08/dont-bother-arguing-with-su3su2u1/#comment-18626<br />---------------<br />AlkalineHume<br />September 8, 2015 7:04 pm<br /><br />Background: I am qualified to peer review nanotech publications and have<br />done so many times. I am a materials scientist who wears a lab-coat<br />almost every day.<br /><br />I dislike relying on peer review as an unbreakable backstop. Yes, it’s<br />an important step in vetting material, but it isn’t the end-all. As<br />you know, the fact that a belief made it through peer review doesn’t<br />make it true. It also doesn’t reflect a general scientific consensus,<br />which is the actual thing you should most often trust. I can confirm<br />su3su2u1’s statement about actual lab-coat wearing materials scientists<br />and what they think of Drexler’s nanomachine stuff. His and my viewpoint<br />on this is not unanimous, but widely held. So why doesn’t it appear<br />in the peer reviewed literature? From my perspective: why the hell<br />would anyone go to the trouble? Most materials scientists are too<br />busy doing actual science to spend time publishing untestable opinions<br />about the future of nanotech. Smalley took the time to do this<br />(and he was an uncharacteristically philosophical materials scientist)<br />in the C&EN column. Beyond that there isn’t much reason to do so.<br />It won’t advance your career. It’s not worth arguing over such unlikely<br />hypotheticals. So you don’t find these refutations in the literature.<br />Most scientists consider it a matter of opinion (and frankly, it’s not<br />bad for your field to take on a mythical status, true or not. “Nano”<br />has gotten sooo much money just for being nano.).<br /><br />So a question for you: what is more valuable in shaping your<br />opinion, the fact that no materials scientists have taken time to<br />publish their personal response to Drexler, or the fact that most<br />of them are highly skeptical of his point of view? Or if this is new<br />information to you, do you consider it relevant to your opinion?<br /><br />---<br /><br />(continued)jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-75295587028994134802015-12-16T10:39:13.643-08:002015-12-16T10:39:13.643-08:00> Stop Worrying About the Future Robocalypse
B...> Stop Worrying About the Future Robocalypse<br /><br />But what about the coming Global Nanowar?<br /><br />https://web.archive.org/web/20150518081756/http://www.moreright.net/reconciling-transhumanismand-neoreaction/<br />----------------<br />Reconciling Transhumanism and Neoreaction<br />Posted on May 23, 2013 by Michael Anissimov<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />When people understand the true extent of the feasibility and<br />power of molecular manufacturing, a grim attitude tends to set<br />in due to all the palpable risks. . .<br /><br />Speaking for myself personally, my key motivation is not having<br />to witness or experience global nanowar. . .<br />====<br /><br />You know, there was a catfight recently in the "rationalist"<br />blogosphere that provoked some interesting commentary.<br /><br />There's a loosely-affliliated group of self-styled "Tumblr rationalists",<br />some of whom overlap with the LessWrong community, and some of whom have<br />become skeptical of LW-style rationalism. One of these<br />guys has the handle "su3su2u1" (it's a physics thing ;-> ).<br />So anyway, this guy often exhibits attitudes and opinions short<br />of the standard of respect (if not adulation) that some<br />of the hard-core LWers feel that they (and their guru) deserve.<br /><br />So "su3su2u1"s Tumblr editorializing recently got up the nose<br />of a certain staunch defender of the LW/MIRI faith, one<br />Alyssa Vance:<br /><br />https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyssa-vance-2076b810<br />---------------<br />Hey! This is the LinkedIn of Alyssa Vance,<br />President of MetaMed Research, Singularity Institute Visiting Fellow,<br />futurist, researcher, writer, programmer and aspiring rationalist. . .<br />====<br /><br />who has a blog:<br /><br />http://rationalconspiracy.com/about/<br />---------------<br />Promoting the reality-based community. . .<br />====<br /><br />and who authored a post there blasting her ideological opponent, thus:<br /><br />http://rationalconspiracy.com/2015/09/08/dont-bother-arguing-with-su3su2u1<br />---------------<br />Don’t Bother Arguing With su3su2u1<br /><br />su3su2u1 is a pseudonymous Internet author who posts to many places,<br />most notably Tumblr. He has argued, at great length, that MIRI is<br />not a real research organization and that Eliezer Yudkowsky is<br />a crackpot. . .<br />====<br /><br />The impudence! Anyway, the comment thread of that post contained some stuff<br />about K. Eric Drexler's brand of nanotechnology (some of the sniping had<br />to do with the Richard E. Smalley vs. Drexler thing). That comment<br />was widely reposted by the LW-skeptical "Tumblr rationalists"<br />(including David Gerard of RationalWiki, who is "reddragdiva" on<br />Tumblr.<br /><br />It might be worth quoting here. (I'll start a new comment for<br />that. ;-> )<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.com