From 70717202e453503a9e1a9b52c34d7e8f0d8a0cb8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "M. Taylor Saotome-Westlake" Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2022 08:19:30 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] inspiration on where the Mad Investor Chaos draft is going --- ...d-the-incoherence-of-nondiscrimination.md} | 23 +++++++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 21 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) rename content/drafts/{keltham.md => consilient-cultural-worldbuilding-and-the-incoherence-of-nondiscrimination.md} (80%) diff --git a/content/drafts/keltham.md b/content/drafts/consilient-cultural-worldbuilding-and-the-incoherence-of-nondiscrimination.md similarity index 80% rename from content/drafts/keltham.md rename to content/drafts/consilient-cultural-worldbuilding-and-the-incoherence-of-nondiscrimination.md index be87b53..e28134a 100644 --- a/content/drafts/keltham.md +++ b/content/drafts/consilient-cultural-worldbuilding-and-the-incoherence-of-nondiscrimination.md @@ -1,10 +1,10 @@ -Title: Keltham (Title Needed) +Title: Consilient Cultural Worldbuilding and the Incoherence of Nondiscrimination: Comment on Planecrash: "Crisis of Faith" Pages 33–34 Date: 2021-01-01 Category: commentary Tags: Eliezer Yudkowsky, worldbuilding Status: draft -Realistic worldbuilding is hard: unable to model what someone else would do except by imagining oneself in that position, authors tend to embarrass themselves writing [alleged aliens or AIs that _just happen_ act like humans](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Zkzzjg3h7hW5Z36hK/humans-in-funny-suits), or allegedly foreign cultures that _just happen_ to share all of the idiosyncratic taboos of the author's own culture. The manifestations of this can be very subtle, even to authors who know about the trap. +Realistic worldbuilding is a difficult art: unable to model what someone else would do except by imagining oneself in that position, authors tend to embarrass themselves writing [alleged aliens or AIs that _just happen_ act like humans](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Zkzzjg3h7hW5Z36hK/humans-in-funny-suits), or allegedly foreign cultures that _just happen_ to share all of the idiosyncratic taboos of the author's own culture. The manifestations of this can be very subtle, even to authors who know about the trap. In _Planecrash_, a collaborative roleplaying fiction principally by Iarwain (a pen name of Eliezer Yudkowsky) and Lintamande, our protagonist, Keltham, hails from [dath ilan](https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/dath-ilan), a more smarter, more rational, and better-coordinated alternate version of Earth. Keltham has somehow survived his apparent death and woken up in the fantasy world of [Golarion](https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Golarion), and sets about uplifting the natives using knowledge from his superior civilization. @@ -55,3 +55,22 @@ You _can_, of course, directly test strength as a quality that determines who yo And Keltham just bites the bullet! neglect of probability (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/q7Me34xvSG3Wm97As/but-there-s-still-a-chance-right) + + +> They end up wanting 42 major things and 314 minor things (on the current count of what's known and thought to be distinct in the way of adaptation) +https://www.glowfic.com/replies/1801140#reply-1801140 + +---- + +OUTLINE + +* realistic worldbuilding is hard, people write aliens or foreigners just like themselves; it's easy to fall into this trap even if you ostensibly know better +* Planecrash summary +* Keltham's proposal +* This entire idea of "The government can't discriminate by race or sex" is specific Earth-craziness that only makes sense in relation to other Earth-craziness; it's not something you would spontaneously invent if you actually grew up in an IQ 140 Society that taught everyone probability theory as normative reasoning: in this essay, I will first explain the principle, and then dissect Keltham's example of military service which is the _uniquely worst possible example_ +* Probabily theory has no protected classes +* If you happen to have more fine-grained information, fine, but you don't always +* Expense of taking additional measurements +* Measurement error +* "sex" and "wisdom" are both abstract categories that it would suck if the category mispredicted you; there's no principled difference +* The specific military example -- 2.17.1