Posts by timorl@qoto.org
(DIR) Post #APxCcPsSQERTsx6QTI by timorl@qoto.org
2022-11-25T06:34:38Z
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@guacamayan I'm very surprized to not see Ian M. Banks and his Culture series mentioned yet. While no (I think?) books focus on it, the titular civilization is a utopia and it is always at least a secondary character.
(DIR) Post #AQ1U9xgIEkYe8Rplk8 by timorl@qoto.org
2022-11-27T08:09:58Z
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@Alon Hm, this is the first part of your characterization I disagree with, unless you are talking about a very specific subgroup. I've been in this movement (excluding longtermism, which I always had philosophical misgivings about and which I believe is the source of most current problems with EA) since very early on (although remotely, perhaps these approaches are much more popular in the Bay Area?) and while criticisms of the education system or academia are common I have seen literally no one arguing for either a or b. c I have seen and uh, this would require a long post to explain, suffice to say I think it's obviously bad but does not discredit the whole movement -- it's mostly the fucking neoreactionaries which most of the rest of the community shuns, but not too loudly lest fucking Thiel stops throwing money at them.tl;dr as often is the case, I blame billionaires, they ought not to exist@escarpment @emilymbender Oh, since I am already tagging @timnitGebru , thanks for the link to the critiques, I'll definitely read it carefully, do you by any chance also have something that's less focused on longtermism, since this is the part I already disagree with?
(DIR) Post #AQ1a7hWfvhu7B1dmOu by timorl@qoto.org
2022-11-27T09:16:51Z
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Augh, I just read a huge list of critiques of longtermism, reading a couple of the more interesting-sounding ones in detail and skimming a couple more, and **not one** mentions the core of the issue with treating future people exactly the same as currently existing ones. (Vaden Masrani in https://vmasrani.github.io/blog/2020/against_longtermism/ comes the closest, although he also accidentally invalidates all epistemology with one of his arguments. Anyway, credit to him for coming the closest.) I don't think this is correct, for two kinds of reasons, anthropics and the fact that people are beings existing in time, so it shouldn't be surprizing that our values are not time-invariant. Why no one(?) is properly criticizing this part is beyond me, am I really the only one who sees these specific problems? Seems extremely unlikely.Oh, and to be clear the criticisms of the _effects_ of longtermism are on point – the dangers of the ideology should be clear even to its proponents – the criticisms of the practicalities are pretty good (I would put more stress on the fact that a big part of the problem is that thinking about sufficiently small probabilities almost surely hits the problems with resource limited reasoning, in which case it's well known that Bayesianism ceases to be optimal, but in general the points are good) the criticisms of utilitarianism mostly suck (although mostly inasmuch as they conflate utilitarianism in general with the total utility variant, and it's hard to blame them for that since this is important as a basis for longtermism), it's just the complete absence of criticisms of the core idea described above that worries me and likely makes proponents of longtermism feel secure in these assumptions, which they really shouldn't.For reference, the list I'm referring to: https://www.longtermism-hub.com/critiques .
(DIR) Post #AQ1asecgXbNPmdqBPs by timorl@qoto.org
2022-11-27T09:25:20Z
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@modulux Yeah, I understand why this looks like the default to them, I even think that most of the time assuming things are time-invariant at first is the reasonable approach (e.g. I strongly suspect that the correct decision theory will end up being time-invariant), I'm just mystified why no one examined this assumption with regards to morality among so many critiques.
(DIR) Post #AQ1eacrClcqSuYI6YS by timorl@qoto.org
2022-11-27T10:06:54Z
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@cappallo Unfortunately I am quite averse to podcasts as a format, and this one additionally seems to start with quite some unrelated stuff – do you know of any transcripts? Even if not, thanks anyway, I might end up listening to this at some point.
(DIR) Post #AQ1tdaEwS88AyXGJfs by timorl@qoto.org
2022-11-27T12:55:31Z
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@Alon I know that post, but I'm pretty sure it only argues against credentialism, not against education itself. I've never met anyone who would consider it to be against education, the closest thing I have seen in the community to being against education is the dislike of schools, as they are currently organized, but even that was for much more organizational reasons (essentially children's lib, but the whole community suffers a terrible unawareness of actual leftist politics, so they wouldn't call it that... and I do agree that is a problem) rather than education itself.@escarpment @emilymbender @timnitGebru
(DIR) Post #AQ2LjGzNjnTvivU9zs by timorl@qoto.org
2022-11-27T18:10:17Z
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@nomi Yes! I have minor quibbles with some of the things your wrote, but this is the general line of reasoning I would like someone to follow, only in a more formal philosophical language (unfortunately none of these assertions are sufficiently well supported a priori from a formal point of view). Why no one has is exactly what annoys me.
(DIR) Post #AQ5UC2AhI2F3H0some by timorl@qoto.org
2022-11-29T06:29:15Z
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@brion Bad advice, a circle is terrible topology, so you shouldn't be finding a new one.
(DIR) Post #AQ8MSs97bJzMwaXnU0 by timorl@qoto.org
2022-11-30T15:46:47Z
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@2ck It was only protected by a Supreme Court ruling, and it was explicitly mentioned in the recent abortion-related opinion from there that many related protections (most related being same-sex marriage) might be overturned as well.The opinion didn't mention interracial marriage, but likely mostly because the judge who wrote it is in an interracial marriage himself. :P The reasoning mostly applied to interracial marriage as well.
(DIR) Post #AQ8k1h6YwSe3mUv8Ou by timorl@qoto.org
2022-11-30T20:10:46Z
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@8petros Unfortunately, I don’t have the whole thing written down or even fully thought through, if I had I would have at least linked it. :<The line of reasoning I would start with would go something like: The mere existence of people is not inherently valuable (this is what I was referring to as “anthropics”, which is not quite correct, but I tend to think of it as a moral equivalent of the epistemological problem), so there is no moral incentive to produce more of them a priori. This already puts into question whether the future will contain that many more people as longtermists claim is likely or desired (depending on the specific subschool of thought). From there I would also examine assumptions of how much we actually should be deciding for potential people – while I see we might have some obligations towards future generations, assuming too much risks impeding on their autonomy, which is also problematic.Eh, there would likely be more, but even what I have already written contains so many philosophical holes that I get anxious re-reading it. If I ever get a week free I might end up writing down a semi-rigorous version of this argument. Actually, probably a couple weeks, since I have higher priority things to do… bleh.
(DIR) Post #AQ9jDhGmFXB2yGol9c by timorl@qoto.org
2022-12-01T07:36:29Z
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Huh, Scott Alexander is apparently clearly right-wing now. This has been brewing for a while, but I thought it would take longer. I wonder how long will it be still worthwhile to keep reading him.
(DIR) Post #AQAVBgOdJxzRU1b7EO by timorl@qoto.org
2022-12-01T16:33:56Z
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@trans_caracal Trza jutro zapostować wraz z linką: https://hanba1926.bandcamp.com/ :>
(DIR) Post #AQAbIgiz6AMyFlqAIC by timorl@qoto.org
2022-12-01T17:42:25Z
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@modulux I remember there was 1 (literally one) marxist in the comment sections, and I believe they got banned eventually – the banning itself might have been justified, I don't know –which pretty much confirms your point.Eh, I definitely should eventually write down my anti-capitalist interpretation/review of "Inadequate Equilibria", maybe that would help a bit...
(DIR) Post #AQAh0GehsocHukRIA4 by timorl@qoto.org
2022-12-01T18:46:18Z
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@uxor *Kuratowski sitting annoyed in the corner.* @Vierkantor
(DIR) Post #AQEJ0d64pFzPFPikPg by timorl@qoto.org
2022-12-03T12:36:21Z
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I hate the lack of standards.
(DIR) Post #AQEhyHayIMtEpu9JK4 by timorl@qoto.org
2022-12-03T17:16:02Z
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Trying to make a goose angry.
(DIR) Post #AQEimcVCpzio9oSH8i by timorl@qoto.org
2022-12-03T17:25:07Z
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@timorl Clearly the DZ is necessary and remains there... strange.
(DIR) Post #AQEkDZdNi2B52DhB3Y by timorl@qoto.org
2022-12-03T17:41:14Z
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@robryk I don't think honk supports that.
(DIR) Post #AQF3UWZSFZEfaOefI0 by timorl@qoto.org
2022-12-03T21:17:11Z
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Tried out honk, was cool but not quite what I wanted, replaced it with Akkoma under the same address. After I followed this account from the one on Akkoma I did not get a notification about a new follower here (kinda makes sense, it's sorta the same account, at least as far as ID goes) but I **did** get a notification there about this account following back. This also makes sense if you squint, but sure. xd
(DIR) Post #AQG5OqEecRqZu4Isa0 by timorl@qoto.org
2022-12-04T09:13:16Z
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I'm moving my account to my own instance. I'll try doing the proper account migration procedure, but I'm not sure I can trust this to work completely smoothly, so I'm leaving this post as a more manual redirect. The new account is @timorl.Thanks @freemo for your hospitality!My instance will most likely stay very small, but if anyone wanted to join me there just DM me or something.