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“The Sequences”? Yes, this doesn’t sound like a quasi-religious cult at all…

by avalys 3y ago

astrange 3y ago
The message is that if you do math in your head in a specific way involving Bayes' theorem, it will make you always right about everything. So it's not even quasi-religious, the good deity is probability theory and the bad one is evil computer gods. This then causes young men to decide they should be in open relationships because it's "more logical", and then decide they need to spend their life fighting evil computer gods because the Bayes' theorem thing is weak to an attack called "Pascal's mugging" where you tell them an infinitely bad thing has a finite chance of happening if they don't stop it. Also they invent effective altruism, which works until the math tells them it's ethical to steal a bunch of investor money as long as you use it on charity. https://metarationality.com/bayesianism-updating https://metarationality.com/bayesianism-updating Bit old but still relevant.
- FeepingCreature 3y ago
  > This then causes young men to decide they should be in open relationships because it's "more logical" Yes, which is 100% because of "LessWrong" and 0% because groups of young nerds do that every time, so much so that there's actually an XKCD about it (https://xkcd.com/592/ https://xkcd.com/592/). The actual message regarding Bayes' Theorem is that there is a correct way to respond to evidence in the first place. LessWrong does not mandate, nor would that be a good idea, that you manually calculate these updates: humans are very bad at it. > Also they invent effective altruism, which works until the math tells them it's ethical to steal a bunch of investor money as long as you use it on charity. Given that this didn't happen with anyone else, and most other EAs will tell you that it's morally correct to uphold the law, and in any case nearly all EAs will act like it's morally correct, I'm inclined to think this was an SBF thing, not an EA thing. Every belief system will have antisocial adherents.
  - astrange 3y ago
    > The actual message regarding Bayes' Theorem is that there is a correct way to respond to evidence in the first place. No, there isn't a correct way to do anything in the real world, only in logic problems. This would be well known if anyone had read philosophy; it's the failed program of logical positivism. (Also the failed 70s-ish AI programs of GOFAI.) The main reason it doesn't work is that you don't know what all the counterfactuals are, so you'll miss one. Aka what Rumsfeld once called "unknown unknowns". https://metarationality.com/probabilism https://metarationality.com/probabilism > Given that this didn't happen with anyone else They're instead buying castles, deciding scientific racism is real (though still buying mosquito nets for the people they're racist about), and getting tripped up reinventing Jainism when they realize drinking water causes infinite harm to microscopic shrimp. And of course, they think evil computer gods are going to kill them.
    - FeepingCreature 3y ago
      > No, there isn't a correct way to do anything in the real world, only in logic problems. Agree to disagree? If there's one thing physics teaches us, it's that the real world is just math. I mean, re GOFAI, it's not like Transformers and DL are any less "logic problem" than Eurisko or Eliza were. Re counterfactuals, yes, the problem is uncomputable at the limit. That's not "unknown unknowns", that's just the problem of induction. However, it's not like there's any alternative system of knowledge that can do better. The point isn't to be right all the time, the point is to make optimal use of available evidence. > buying castles They make the case that the castle was good value for money, and given the insane overhead for renting meeting spaces, I'm inclined to believe them. > scientific racism is real (though still buying mosquito nets for the people they're racist about) Honestly, give me scientific racists who buy mosquito nets over antiracists who don't any day. > getting tripped up reinventing Jainism when they realize drinking water causes infinite harm to microscopic shrimp. As far as I can tell, that's one guy. > And of course, they think evil computer gods are going to kill them. I mean, I do think that, yes. Got any argument against it other than "lol sci-fi"?
      - astrange 3y ago
FeepingCreature 3y ago
As far as I can tell, any single noun that's capitalized sounds religious. I blame the Bible. However, in this case it's just a short-hand for the sequences of topically related blog posts written by Eliezer between 2006 and 2009, which are written to fit together as one interconnected work. (https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/sequences https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/sequences , https://www.readthesequences.com/ https://www.readthesequences.com/)

“The Sequences”? Yes, this doesn’t sound like a quasi-religious cult at all…

by avalys 3y ago

“The Sequences”? Yes, this doesn’t sound like a quasi-religious cult at all…

The message is that if you do math in your head in a specific way involving Bayes' theorem, it will make you always right about everything. So it's not even quasi-religious, the good deity is probability theory and the bad one is evil computer gods. This then causes young men to decide they should be in open relationships because it's "more logical", and then decide they need to spend their life fighting evil computer gods because the Bayes' theorem thing is weak to an attack called "Pascal's mugging" where you tell them an infinitely bad thing has a finite chance of happening if they don't stop it. Also they invent effective altruism, which works until the math tells them it's ethical to steal a bunch of investor money as long as you use it on charity. https://metarationality.com/bayesianism-updating https://metarationality.com/bayesianism-updating Bit old but still relevant.

FeepingCreature 3y ago
> This then causes young men to decide they should be in open relationships because it's "more logical" Yes, which is 100% because of "LessWrong" and 0% because groups of young nerds do that every time, so much so that there's actually an XKCD about it (https://xkcd.com/592/ https://xkcd.com/592/). The actual message regarding Bayes' Theorem is that there is a correct way to respond to evidence in the first place. LessWrong does not mandate, nor would that be a good idea, that you manually calculate these updates: humans are very bad at it. > Also they invent effective altruism, which works until the math tells them it's ethical to steal a bunch of investor money as long as you use it on charity. Given that this didn't happen with anyone else, and most other EAs will tell you that it's morally correct to uphold the law, and in any case nearly all EAs will act like it's morally correct, I'm inclined to think this was an SBF thing, not an EA thing. Every belief system will have antisocial adherents.
- astrange 3y ago
  > The actual message regarding Bayes' Theorem is that there is a correct way to respond to evidence in the first place. No, there isn't a correct way to do anything in the real world, only in logic problems. This would be well known if anyone had read philosophy; it's the failed program of logical positivism. (Also the failed 70s-ish AI programs of GOFAI.) The main reason it doesn't work is that you don't know what all the counterfactuals are, so you'll miss one. Aka what Rumsfeld once called "unknown unknowns". https://metarationality.com/probabilism https://metarationality.com/probabilism > Given that this didn't happen with anyone else They're instead buying castles, deciding scientific racism is real (though still buying mosquito nets for the people they're racist about), and getting tripped up reinventing Jainism when they realize drinking water causes infinite harm to microscopic shrimp. And of course, they think evil computer gods are going to kill them.
  - FeepingCreature 3y ago
    > No, there isn't a correct way to do anything in the real world, only in logic problems. Agree to disagree? If there's one thing physics teaches us, it's that the real world is just math. I mean, re GOFAI, it's not like Transformers and DL are any less "logic problem" than Eurisko or Eliza were. Re counterfactuals, yes, the problem is uncomputable at the limit. That's not "unknown unknowns", that's just the problem of induction. However, it's not like there's any alternative system of knowledge that can do better. The point isn't to be right all the time, the point is to make optimal use of available evidence. > buying castles They make the case that the castle was good value for money, and given the insane overhead for renting meeting spaces, I'm inclined to believe them. > scientific racism is real (though still buying mosquito nets for the people they're racist about) Honestly, give me scientific racists who buy mosquito nets over antiracists who don't any day. > getting tripped up reinventing Jainism when they realize drinking water causes infinite harm to microscopic shrimp. As far as I can tell, that's one guy. > And of course, they think evil computer gods are going to kill them. I mean, I do think that, yes. Got any argument against it other than "lol sci-fi"?
    - astrange 3y ago

FeepingCreature 3y ago

As far as I can tell, any single noun that's capitalized sounds religious. I blame the Bible. However, in this case it's just a short-hand for the sequences of topically related blog posts written by Eliezer between 2006 and 2009, which are written to fit together as one interconnected work. (https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/sequences https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/sequences , https://www.readthesequences.com/ https://www.readthesequences.com/)