Wireheading is a Teleological Misnomer
As the mistaken belief that AGI is “coming up” on our horizon increases, the discussion around “wireheading” has increased in fervor. The idea is very simple: What if you designed a robot to mow your lawn, by making sure it gets orgasms from well-cleaned lawns? Except you botch up the entire thing by making theContinue reading “Wireheading is a Teleological Misnomer”
Functionally Pragmatic Salesmanship
Crispy Chicken isn’t my real name, though CC are my initials. Perhaps keeping my initials in my pseudonym was foolish, and perhaps I’m foolish for revealing it now, at the beginning of the end of the American defense of radical openness on the internet. But I want to tell you why it was important forContinue reading “Functionally Pragmatic Salesmanship”
The Queen’s Gambit is a 9/10
If you want to understand me, watch The Queen’s Gambit and watch Elizabeth Harmon’s face. I want you to understand Elizabeth Harmon because so far she is the best explanation of the kind of painfully alienated pragmatism I feel unable to communicate about my innerworld. The walls are always closing in as your opportunity toContinue reading “The Queen’s Gambit is a 9/10”
Rare and Well-Known Objects
If something is rare to possess and well-known, it is being coordinated around. If it did not acquire both of these properties at once, it was either rare at first or well-known at first. If it was rare at first, then become well-known it was used to coordinate and that proliferated it. If it wasContinue reading “Rare and Well-Known Objects”
Miscellaneous Musings on Language
What does it mean to say “She motioned me to come forward.” This is the thing, above every example I have seen, that should make us suspicious about any definite notion of “meaning”. — The idea of meaning started as arguments over a ledger—the ledger is what people agree has been spoken. Previously, to winContinue reading “Miscellaneous Musings on Language”
How Should We Describe How Language Works?
This is a guest post from Wrench, who I’m working with along with a few others to develop the Inexact Sciences. The point of science and theory is to sculpt out useful idealized machinery to make thinking about very complex systems tractable. People always point to physics for this because they’ve gotten the best ratioContinue reading “How Should We Describe How Language Works?”
End of Day Thoughts 2020-9-9
Unconscious and conscious are used to mediate the notion of meaning—we want meaning to being fixed and stable, so we claim to not understand what was meant. This is a convenient fiction, because it’s partially true, we generally don’t have a very strong understanding of what caused us to say something until we introspect. ButContinue reading “End of Day Thoughts 2020-9-9”
Me: Input/Output Machines
I am an input/output machine. I have not been writing enough, that’s because I have not been taking enough in. I need to time to stare at the ceiling. I need to read a paragraph and really pour over it, for thoughts to be extruded out to my mouth. I am letting that happen more.
Functional Transmission Theory
Again and again people trying to do anything complicated for a long period of time are beset by the same issue: What do our words refer to, since they clearly don’t refer to truth conditions of the person who originally wrote them? The answer is that “refer” is a misnomer, and it’s an especially confusingContinue reading “Functional Transmission Theory”
Expanding the In-Group Won’t Solve Your Problem
Anyone with ambition has felt the difficulty of attempting to get where they’re going because they’re not “in” with the right groups. Much reform today is directed at making things meritocratic by attempting to quantify potential and using metrics to control power structures. Of course these metrics are largely applied to the decision to acceptContinue reading “Expanding the In-Group Won’t Solve Your Problem”
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