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[Sergarr]

Rational

LW

Slate Star Codex.

Huh, so he's writing superstitions now? That's quite a Hubbard evolution there.

[tonnot98]

that obama quote has me in stitches, i'm definitely going to be reading this now.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Rational

LW

Slate Star Codex.

Huh, so he's writing superstitions now? That's quite a Hubbard evolution there.

If you're saying that it's a bit ironic, then yes, yes it is. But in a sense, it is not - Scot is Jewish. Scott often writes about religion, or uses religion as an example. This did not come out of the blue.

If you're saying that he actually thinks that kabbalah works, then no. I think that he has learned kaballah in the same way that a Tolkien fan might learn the Elvish script.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Oh my goodness, I picked the best and worst time to pick up Unsong! It's kabbalistically appropriate, since I did it on the day that Unsong's narrative started, but in only a few days it will end! If I had picked it up the next week, there wouldn't be all this suspense, and I can't figure out if that would be better or worse.

[Sergarr]

If you're saying that he actually thinks that kabbalah works, then no. I think that he has learned kaballah in the same way that a Tolkien fan might learn the Elvish script.

Even if the original maker doesn't believe in it, some other people could start believing in it. And with the sort of a weird crowd the LW stuff attracts, well, I wouldn't be very much surprised if that happens - for all their talk about rationality, their approach to the subject is not very far removed from religion, just with "Bayes theorem" instead of "divine providence".

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

If you're saying that he actually thinks that kabbalah works, then no. I think that he has learned kaballah in the same way that a Tolkien fan might learn the Elvish script.

Even if the original maker doesn't believe in it, some other people could start believing in it. And with the sort of a weird crowd the LW stuff attracts, well, I wouldn't be very much surprised if that happens - for all their talk about rationality, their approach to the subject is not very far removed from religion, just with "Bayes theorem" instead of "divine providence".

Oh, you think that's new information? "People think LW is a cult" is one of the first things you learn in the brainwashing initiation sequence.

No, but seriously: what do you think you know, and how do you think you know it? What have you observed that indicates that LW is more religious than most secular things?

[Sergarr]

No, but seriously: what do you think you know, and how do you think you know it? What have you observed that indicates that LW is more religious than most secular things?

Developing a whole bunch of new LW-unique words/phrases to indicate stuff that could be alternatively described with normal scientific language is the big one. I've also seen a quite big disdain for the "mainstream science" on display there, whatever that is. Which has resulted in some funny, in retrospect, statements.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

No, but seriously: what do you think you know, and how do you think you know it? What have you observed that indicates that LW is more religious than most secular things?

Developing a whole bunch of new LW-unique words/phrases to indicate stuff that could be alternatively described with normal scientific language is the big one.

Ah, that's just the plight of the autodidact. Anyway, if we're simply calling science by another name, isn't that the opposite of religion?

I've also seen a quite big disdain for the "mainstream science" on display there, whatever that is.

The Big Yud tends to think that science is not strict enough. That's in the opposite direction of mystic/religion, compared to mainstream science. Then there's the "rationality is better than science" thing, which is a bit more subjective than the rest, but it's hardly religious to oppose the current scientific views on a topic for scientific reasons. I mean, take Many-Worlds: collapse is

• non-linear
• non-unitary
• non-differentiable
• discontinuous
• non-local
• has a preferred basis
• has a preferred space of simultaneity
• violates CPT symmetry
• violates Liouville's Theorem
• violates Special Relativity
• in some definitions: inherently mental
• acausal
• magic (does not actually provide a mechanism)
• post-hoc
• informal and qualitative

But since we can't distinguish MW and the Copenhagen interpretation through experiment yet, Science keeps Copenhagen because it came first. Whyyyyyyyyyy?

Which has resulted in some funny, in retrospect, statements.

I do not see what is funny. I see lemon glaze, which is funny, but I do not think that is what you were pointing at.

[Sergarr]

No, but seriously: what do you think you know, and how do you think you know it? What have you observed that indicates that LW is more religious than most secular things?

Developing a whole bunch of new LW-unique words/phrases to indicate stuff that could be alternatively described with normal scientific language is the big one.

Ah, that's just the plight of the autodidact. Anyway, if we're simply calling science by another name, isn't that the opposite of religion?

It's religion because it intentionally separates itself from science and is proud of it.

I've also seen a quite big disdain for the "mainstream science" on display there, whatever that is.

The Big Yud tends to think that science is not strict enough. That's in the opposite direction of mystic/religion, compared to mainstream science. Then there's the "rationality is better than science" thing, which is a bit more subjective than the rest, but it's hardly religious to oppose the current scientific views on a topic for scientific reasons. I mean, take Many-Worlds: collapse is

• non-linear
• non-unitary
• non-differentiable
• discontinuous
• non-local
• has a preferred basis
• has a preferred space of simultaneity
• violates CPT symmetry
• violates Liouville's Theorem
• violates Special Relativity
• in some definitions: inherently mental
• acausal
• magic (does not actually provide a mechanism)
• post-hoc
• informal and qualitative

But since we can't distinguish MW and the Copenhagen interpretation through experiment yet, Science keeps Copenhagen because it came first. Whyyyyyyyyyy?

Because the Many-Worlds Interpretation doesn't allow you to actually calculate stuff. It doesn't actually make quantitative predictions. It's thus not disprovable. Which makes it, the MWI, not scientific. It's a religious position, or a philosophical position, at best. The Copenhagen's interpretation is scientific, because it provides results. Massive, practically usable results, in a form that's pretty easy to visualize, compared to the "probability-world-sludge" that is MWI.

It could be "magic" (then again, everything is "magic" if you look closely enough), but it's a very reliable kind of "magic", and your computer wouldn't be built without it - semi-conductors' technology is based entirely around applied quantum mechanics, the kind that relies on quantitative predictions of Copenhagen's interpretation.

Did "Scott Alexander the Great" forget to mention these little details to you?

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

No, but seriously: what do you think you know, and how do you think you know it? What have you observed that indicates that LW is more religious than most secular things?

Developing a whole bunch of new LW-unique words/phrases to indicate stuff that could be alternatively described with normal scientific language is the big one.

Ah, that's just the plight of the autodidact. Anyway, if we're simply calling science by another name, isn't that the opposite of religion?

It's religion because it intentionally separates itself from science and is proud of it.

That's how you're defining religion? Really? So basically everything in the world that's not science is religion? Is poetry religion? Is law religion? Is mathematics religion? Is my head religion?

I've also seen a quite big disdain for the "mainstream science" on display there, whatever that is.

The Big Yud tends to think that science is not strict enough. That's in the opposite direction of mystic/religion, compared to mainstream science. Then there's the "rationality is better than science" thing, which is a bit more subjective than the rest, but it's hardly religious to oppose the current scientific views on a topic for scientific reasons. I mean, take Many-Worlds: collapse is

• non-linear
• non-unitary
• non-differentiable
• discontinuous
• non-local
• has a preferred basis
• has a preferred space of simultaneity
• violates CPT symmetry
• violates Liouville's Theorem
• violates Special Relativity
• in some definitions: inherently mental
• acausal
• magic (does not actually provide a mechanism)
• post-hoc
• informal and qualitative

But since we can't distinguish MW and the Copenhagen interpretation through experiment yet, Science keeps Copenhagen because it came first. Whyyyyyyyyyy?

Because the Many-Worlds Interpretation doesn't allow you to actually calculate stuff. It doesn't actually make quantitative predictions. It's thus not disprovable.

Relative to the Copenhagen interpretation, it makes no testable predictions.

Which makes it, the MWI, not scientific.

Hardly. It's based on the assumption that the quantum laws apply even if you look at them.

It's a religious position, or a philosophical position, at best. The Copenhagen's interpretation is scientific, because it provides results.

So does MWI!

Massive, practically usable results, in a form that's pretty easy to visualize, compared to the "probability-world-sludge" that is MWI.

You think that MWI is unpleasing to the eye? No, Copenhagen is! Sudden discontinuities, branches cut off, laws only applying if you don't look at them... very awful.

It could be "magic" (then again, everything is "magic" if you look closely enough), but it's a very reliable kind of "magic", and your computer wouldn't be built without it - semi-conductors' technology is based entirely around applied quantum mechanics, the kind that relies on quantitative predictions of Copenhagen's interpretation.

"We don't know how it works, it just does" is different from "this magic thing happens and all the other branches suddenly disappear."

Did "Scott Alexander the Great" forget to mention these little details to you?

He doesn't call himself that. I think he's a great author, and his last name is "Alexander," and the joke was ripe.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Oh, is this like one of those things like that reborn aether theory regarding quantum physics?

No! No, it's not! It's the assumption that physical laws hold when they're applied to humans, just like when they're applied to rocks. It's the statement that minds cannot directly affect probabilities and quantum physics.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

I'm distinctly reminded of a "study" (with the years growing since I watched it, I've become more and more skeptical due to my lack of an ability of actually finding additional work on this front) done (when? I don't know. It was on some Discovery Channel documentary- the one voiced by Morgan Freeman) that measured the emotional response of people when looking at neutral/emotionally heavy images and found a fairly normal change in... I forget how they were measuring it. Either MRI or EEG. Maybe both. The thing was that there was a measured change in whatever they were measuring of the person's brain before the emotional image came onto the screen (about 5 seconds or so before), that only occurred in the case of the emotional image. Neutral to neutral had no such measured change.

There was a similar thing in the same program, of some organization that set up various random-number generators across the world using atmospheric noise. They did a likelihood test based on samples taken from this distribution to see how well the sample actually fits a uniform distribution, and found it to be fairly perfectly representative of a uniform distribution... except when particularly emotional situations appeared. Such as 9/11 or Obama's inauguration. The sample's similarity to a uniform distribution started to fall away during those times- specifically, before the events themselves occurred.


I cannot say whether any of that crap was actually scientifically valid or happened whatsoever. I'm merely re-stating what I watched in a program several years ago. If anyone can find anything else related to those, such as them being debunked or tested to be false, that'd be great. I'm pretty sure they are bogus, but again,  I just cannot find anything on them.

Just so you know, there are scientific studies proving psi and homeopathy too. It takes a decent meta-analysis to have an actual impact, since at least 5% of all studies are wrong due to simple random fluctuations.

[Sergarr]

No, but seriously: what do you think you know, and how do you think you know it? What have you observed that indicates that LW is more religious than most secular things?

Developing a whole bunch of new LW-unique words/phrases to indicate stuff that could be alternatively described with normal scientific language is the big one.

Ah, that's just the plight of the autodidact. Anyway, if we're simply calling science by another name, isn't that the opposite of religion?

It's religion because it intentionally separates itself from science and is proud of it.

That's how you're defining religion? Really? So basically everything in the world that's not science is religion? Is poetry religion? Is law religion? Is mathematics religion? Is my head religion?

Okay, I forgot one vital component - unlike all these other things, the LW's "rationality" tries to define the world from the basics. Like science, but it's not science, it's religion. You know, because it sneers down on science.

Relative to the Copenhagen interpretation, it makes no testable predictions.

It doesn't make testable predictions, period. You can't derive probabilities within MWI without resorting to "it behaves exactly like a wave function collapse", and I do mean exactly like it. But in addition to that it creates a whole extra probability-world-sludge that's by definition unobservable and thus makes everything super-complicated for no good reason other than to satisfy people who want to describe probabilistic phenomena in a deterministic fashion. It's a crutch.

Hardly. It's based on the assumption that the quantum laws apply even if you look at them.

Oh okay, so I guess you've also been misguided by a certain Alexander on what "observation" means in the context of Copenhagen's interpretation. It means interaction. This is important, so I'll put it in a separate paragraph.

Observation means interaction. That's it. Things interact with things and after each time they do the God rolls a bunch of dice for all relevant variables and psi-function distributions according to a giant printed-out chart until he finds a result for all things involved that doesn't break the laws of nature. It's freaking simple, is what it is.

So does MWI!

If it does, then I haven't seen it.

You think that MWI is unpleasing to the eye? No, Copenhagen is! Sudden discontinuities, branches cut off, laws only applying if you don't look at them... very awful.

I don't think you understand that quantum mechanics is fundamentally built on discontinuities. But - it's in the fucking name! Quantum! Energy of a photon can only take a discrete sets of values (proportional to the Plank's constant), spin can only take certain discrete values, electric charge, color - they're all freaking discrete.

"We don't know how it works, it just does" is different from "this magic thing happens and all the other branches suddenly disappear."

What "other branches"? There are no "other branches" to speak about! They don't suddenly disappear, because they never existed to begin with!

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

"proving"

Yeah, that's what I meant.

I'll put it this way- I'm skeptical on whether these studies actually existed, let alone demonstrated what they claimed to have demonstrated in the program, due to the implications on physics. The former alone would demonstrate violation of causality. Hence the skepticism. It wouldn't be the first time Discovery aired a bogus documentary on complete nonsense, like that one they did on mermaids (I had to sit through it in full, and it was as bullshit as you think).

Yeah, time travel would break so many laws, so it'll take more than one study to overthrow modern science.

As for this 5% figure, I'll just assume you threw out a nice, round number. P-hacking is a bigger deal than random fluctuations.

At least 5%, I said. The p-value isn't quite the chance that the study is wrong, but it's related by Bayes' Theorem.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

That's how you're defining religion? Really? So basically everything in the world that's not science is religion? Is poetry religion? Is law religion? Is mathematics religion? Is my head religion?

Okay, I forgot one vital component - unlike all these other things, the LW's "rationality" tries to define the world from the basics. Like science, but it's not science, it's religion. You know, because it sneers down on science.

So LW is a religion because it:

• is reductionist
• claims to be more effective than science

That is not the definition of religion. Anyway, this and this explain how your argument is fallacious. I'm on a broken keyboard and it takes 2s to press the spacekey, so I can't type the explanations out myself.

Relative to the Copenhagen interpretation, it makes no testable predictions.

It doesn't make testable predictions, period. You can't derive probabilities within MWI without resorting to "it behaves exactly like a wave function collapse", and I do mean exactly like it.

Copenhagen and MWI are both interpretations, and produce exactly the same experimental predictions. You are saying "MWI works just like Copenhagen anyway," but you could also say "Copenhagen works just like MWI anyway."

But in addition to that it creates a whole extra probability-world-sludge that's by definition unobservable and thus makes everything super-complicated for no good reason other than to satisfy people who want to describe probabilistic phenomena in a deterministic fashion. It's a crutch.

But the entire rest of physics is deterministic! Anyway, this is a blatant "my opponent is emotionally/etc. motivated to say this, ergo their point is invalid" argument, also known as Bulverism.

I have an analogy. A spaceship flies beyond the cosmological horizon. The normal laws of physics, applied as usual, say that the spaceship still exists, even though we can't see it. The Copenhagen interpretation says that it disappears.

The existence of other versions of ourselves, and indeed other Earths, is not supposed additionally.  We are simply supposing that the same laws govern at all levels, having no reason to suppose differently, and all experimental tests having succeeded so far.  The existence of other decoherent Earths is a logical consequence of the simplest generalization that fits all known facts.

Hardly. It's based on the assumption that the quantum laws apply even if you look at them.

Oh okay, so I guess you've also been misguided by a certain Alexander on what "observation" means in the context of Copenhagen's interpretation.

Alexander isn't the same as Yudkowsky. Yudkowsky wrote the Sequences, including the QM sequence.

Observation means interaction. That's it.

Is this about decoherence? Also, why would interaction destroy parts of the wave-function?

Things interact with things and after each time they do the God rolls a bunch of dice for all relevant variables and psi-function distributions according to a giant printed-out chart until he finds a result for all things involved that doesn't break the laws of nature. It's freaking simple, is what it is.

That's not a mechanism! You should just say, "I don't know how the equations work, but they do," not "some magic being is using the equations."

So does MWI!

If it does, then I haven't seen it.

Identical results to Copenhagen.

You think that MWI is unpleasing to the eye? No, Copenhagen is! Sudden discontinuities, branches cut off, laws only applying if you don't look at them... very awful.

I don't think you understand that quantum mechanics is fundamentally built on discontinuities. But - it's in the fucking name! Quantum! Energy of a photon can only take a discrete sets of values (proportional to the Plank's constant), spin can only take certain discrete values, electric charge, color - they're all freaking discrete.

Ahahahahahahahahahaha, this is great. "It's okay to suddenly cut off parts of the wave-function, because spin is discrete." You don't understand the difference between a discontinuity in the wave-function and discrete values for spin. Just because they're named similarly doesn't mean that they're actually physically related.

"We don't know how it works, it just does" is different from "this magic thing happens and all the other branches suddenly disappear."

What "other branches"? There are no "other branches" to speak about! They don't suddenly disappear, because they never existed to begin with!

Ah, you don't think that the wave-function is physically real. Is that it?