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I've been saying t forever. Thanks for putting it so succinctly. LessWrong is a cult of people who want to be smart and they've essentially found a community in

I've been saying t forever. Thanks for putting it so succinctly. LessWrong is a cult of people who want to be smart and they've essentially found a community in which certain assumptions and hypothetical scenarios combined with mathematical concepts make them think they've found the answer to everything in the Universe. They're no better than any other cult in my book. The problem is that it's only going to get worse with the advances in AI that are going on. Yudkowski has managed to convince some wealthy people to fund his so called research and we have OpenAI operating in the same waters which somehow gives LW people more legitimacy.

Anderkent 11y ago
I don't understand how you can be so certain that the hypothetical scenarios they imagine can't possibly happen. Even if it really is laughable, we spend a lot of money on laughable research (homeopathy, anyone?), so why is this case so particularly bad?
- manish_gill 11y ago
  ...Just because we've spent money on one laughable research doesn't mean we should spend it on more, does it? Are you seriously going to argue that?
  - Anderkent 11y ago
    No, what I'm arguing is that if we only spent money on things everyone agrees are useful, we'd never get anything done.
    - manish_gill 11y ago
      Not everyone has to agree. That's why we have the scientific method and research institutes. If the current science shows that something is worth exploring in more detail, that some avenues are worth spending money on, spending money on them makes sense. Bullshit Ideas like AI apocalypse and singularity, transhumanism, downloading brain into a computer do not fit into that criteria.
      - Anderkent 11y ago
        So how do ideas get to the stage where the 'research institutes' agree they're worth investigating? It seems to me like you're saying "I don't like these ideas, no one should be working on them". That seems a worse principle then "everyone should work on ideas they find worth investigating". I also have no idea how you distinguish 'Bullshit Ideas' from non-bullshit ideas without investigating them. Your gut is not that good at distinguishing truth from a blunder.
Nostripus 11y ago
What is the answer to everything in the Universe they think they've found? I've read a lot of the bigger posts on Lesswrong (http://lesswrong.com/top/?t=all http://lesswrong.com/top/?t=all) and none of them are anything like. No better than any other cult? How are you deciding that? The LW community hasn't killed people. Doesn't cut people off from their family. Does't emotionally/physically abuse people. Etc... Even if they are a "cult", this puts them miles ahead of other cults, like say, Scientology which has done far, far more harm to people. I struggle to think in what way LW has harmed anyone at all.
- manish_gill 11y ago
  cult |kʌlt| noun 1 a system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object: the cult of St Olaf. • a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or as imposing excessive control over members. The veneration of Yudkowski and others in the LW community is more than a bit "religious". So I'd say by definition it's a cult. LW hasn't done harm to people physically, but what it's done is spawn some very questionable ideas, perpetuate pseudo-science and pseudo-mathematics. The cult leader has no formal training, zero research in peer-reviewed journals and still calls himself a "senior research fellow" in an institute he himself started. Hell, he even has an introductory religious text - The Sequences and the Methods of Rationality fan fiction (which by the way, he wanted to monetise before the broader fan fiction community stopped him. A clear violation of copyright law). For more, see: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Yudkowsky http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Yudkowsky I'll quote the section titled "More controversial positions" Despite being viewed as the smartest two-legged being to ever walk this planet on LessWrong, Yudkowsky (and by consequence much of the LessWrong community) endorses positions as TruthTM that are actually controversial in their respective fields. Below is a partial list: Transhumanism is correct. Cryonics might someday work. The Singularity is near![citation NOT needed] Bayes' theorem and the scientific method don't always lead to the same conclusions (and therefore Bayes is better than science).[21] Bayesian probability can be applied indiscriminately.[22] Non-computable results, such as Kolmogorov complexity, are totally a reasonable basis for the entire epistemology. Solomonoff, baby! Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics is correct (a "slam dunk"), despite the lack of consensus among quantum physicists.[23] Evolutionary psychology is well-established science. Utilitarianism is a correct theory of morality. In particular, he proposes a framework by which an extremely, extremely huge number of people experiencing a speck of dust in their eyes for a moment could be worse than a man being tortured for 50 years.[24] Also, while it is not very clear what his actual position is on this, he wrote a short sci-fi story where rape was briefly mentioned as legal. TL;DR: If it's associated with LessWrong/Yudkowsky, it's probably bullshit.

Anderkent 11y ago

I don't understand how you can be so certain that the hypothetical scenarios they imagine can't possibly happen. Even if it really is laughable, we spend a lot of money on laughable research (homeopathy, anyone?), so why is this case so particularly bad?

manish_gill 11y ago
...Just because we've spent money on one laughable research doesn't mean we should spend it on more, does it? Are you seriously going to argue that?
- Anderkent 11y ago
  No, what I'm arguing is that if we only spent money on things everyone agrees are useful, we'd never get anything done.
  - manish_gill 11y ago
    Not everyone has to agree. That's why we have the scientific method and research institutes. If the current science shows that something is worth exploring in more detail, that some avenues are worth spending money on, spending money on them makes sense. Bullshit Ideas like AI apocalypse and singularity, transhumanism, downloading brain into a computer do not fit into that criteria.
    - Anderkent 11y ago
      So how do ideas get to the stage where the 'research institutes' agree they're worth investigating? It seems to me like you're saying "I don't like these ideas, no one should be working on them". That seems a worse principle then "everyone should work on ideas they find worth investigating". I also have no idea how you distinguish 'Bullshit Ideas' from non-bullshit ideas without investigating them. Your gut is not that good at distinguishing truth from a blunder.

Nostripus 11y ago

What is the answer to everything in the Universe they think they've found? I've read a lot of the bigger posts on Lesswrong (http://lesswrong.com/top/?t=all http://lesswrong.com/top/?t=all) and none of them are anything like. No better than any other cult? How are you deciding that? The LW community hasn't killed people. Doesn't cut people off from their family. Does't emotionally/physically abuse people. Etc... Even if they are a "cult", this puts them miles ahead of other cults, like say, Scientology which has done far, far more harm to people. I struggle to think in what way LW has harmed anyone at all.

manish_gill 11y ago
cult |kʌlt| noun 1 a system of religious veneration and devotion directed towards a particular figure or object: the cult of St Olaf. • a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or as imposing excessive control over members. The veneration of Yudkowski and others in the LW community is more than a bit "religious". So I'd say by definition it's a cult. LW hasn't done harm to people physically, but what it's done is spawn some very questionable ideas, perpetuate pseudo-science and pseudo-mathematics. The cult leader has no formal training, zero research in peer-reviewed journals and still calls himself a "senior research fellow" in an institute he himself started. Hell, he even has an introductory religious text - The Sequences and the Methods of Rationality fan fiction (which by the way, he wanted to monetise before the broader fan fiction community stopped him. A clear violation of copyright law). For more, see: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Yudkowsky http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Yudkowsky I'll quote the section titled "More controversial positions" Despite being viewed as the smartest two-legged being to ever walk this planet on LessWrong, Yudkowsky (and by consequence much of the LessWrong community) endorses positions as TruthTM that are actually controversial in their respective fields. Below is a partial list: Transhumanism is correct. Cryonics might someday work. The Singularity is near![citation NOT needed] Bayes' theorem and the scientific method don't always lead to the same conclusions (and therefore Bayes is better than science).[21] Bayesian probability can be applied indiscriminately.[22] Non-computable results, such as Kolmogorov complexity, are totally a reasonable basis for the entire epistemology. Solomonoff, baby! Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics is correct (a "slam dunk"), despite the lack of consensus among quantum physicists.[23] Evolutionary psychology is well-established science. Utilitarianism is a correct theory of morality. In particular, he proposes a framework by which an extremely, extremely huge number of people experiencing a speck of dust in their eyes for a moment could be worse than a man being tortured for 50 years.[24] Also, while it is not very clear what his actual position is on this, he wrote a short sci-fi story where rape was briefly mentioned as legal. TL;DR: If it's associated with LessWrong/Yudkowsky, it's probably bullshit.