Category Archives: Uncategorized

I will pause to note how fantastical all of this sounds. Because even I can’t help but help but think that as I write. But it is not that implausible. Usually the people plotting hard core crimes, the people tinkering in their garages with arduino boards, the people trying to think of a good start-up,Continue reading “As an aside, something should be done about drones”

Rationality: From AI to Zombies, by Eliezer Yudkowsky, Machine Intelligence Research Institute, suggested price $5, 1813 pages Christmas 1982, aged eleven, I gave my Dad a copy of Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, and immediately borrowed it and read it myself. Like so many readers, I was captivated, and changed. Martin Gardner said of it:Continue reading “Rationality: From AI to Zombies”

I have a plan, but some of the plan is probably wrong, so I’m posting here before executing in the hope that you can set me straight. Thanks! I’m self-taught in most of the maths that I know. This has advantages, but it’s hard work; I can make a lot of progress by myself butContinue reading “Paying someone to help me learn degree-level maths”

As always, laws aren’t named after the people who invent them. In 2011 I remarked: Watching @frasernels use the word “thoughtcrime” to @GeorgeMonbiot, I think there needs to be an Orwell version of Godwin’s Law. — Paul Crowley (@ciphergoth) December 1, 2011 “@frasernels” refers to Fraser Nelson who is now @FraserNelson on Twitter. @palmer1984 immediatelyContinue reading “Crowley’s Law”

The way that utilitarianism is normally stated is a terrible way to think about it which leads to real errors. Wikipedia: Utilitarianism [holds] that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes utility This idea strikes terror into people’s hearts: this is a standard that no-one could possibly live up to. Even Toby OrdContinue reading “The long scale of utility”

I’m sometimes sarcastic, but I’m trying to give it up altogether. It’s bad to be sarcastic because civility over disagreements is a good idea, and sarcasm is uncivil. But there’s another reason to avoid it. There are mistaken arguments that sound vaguely persuasive when cloaked in sarcasm whose flaws would be obvious if you triedContinue reading “Never be sarcastic”

I often hold back from posting first because I’m very unsure whether what I’m saying is right, and secondly because I wonder whether someone else has already said it, and better, and I’d find it if I did more thorough reading. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s much better to err on theContinue reading “Unoriginal and wrong posts ahead”

In a small Universe, an early Great Filter is unlikely, simply because we’re evidence against it. Suppose the Filter is early; how severe must it be for us to observe what we observe? By “severe” I mean: what proportion of worlds must it stop? Our existence is evidence towards an upper bound on the severity ofContinue reading “The size of the Universe and the Great Filter”

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. In general, people talk about what they’re confident of, and keep quiet about what they’re not confident of. There are areas where this can make sense; if I askContinue reading “Resolving Yeats’s Paradox”

I always have a hard time making sense of preference matrices in two-player games. Here are some diagrams I drew to make it easier. This is a two-player game: North wants to end up on the northernmost point, and East on the eastmost. North goes first, and chooses which of the two bars will beContinue reading “Diagrams for preference matrices”