this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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SneerClub

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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.

[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

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I genuinely hate decision theory. (awful.systems)
submitted 1 year ago by ImperialFister05@awful.systems to c/sneerclub@awful.systems
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Bit of a rant but I genuinely hate decision theory. At first it seemed like a useful tool to make the best long term decisions for economics and such then LessWrong, EA, GPI, FHI, MIRI and co needed to take what was essentially a tool and turn it into the biggest philosophical disaster since Rand. I'm thinking about moral uncertainty, wagers, hedging, AGI, priors, bayesianism and all the shit that's grown out of this cesspit of rationalism.

What's funny about all this is that there's no actual way to argue against these people unless you have already been indoctrinated into the cult of Bayes, and even if you manage to get through one of their arguments they'll just pull out some other bullshit principle that they either made up or saw somewhere in a massively obscure book to essentially say 'nuh uh'.

What's more frustrating is that there's now evidence that people make moral judgements using a broadly bayesian approach, which I hope just stays in the descriptive realm.

But yeah, I hate decision theory, that is all.

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[–] Evinceo@awful.systems 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

there’s no actual way to argue against these people

On the contrary, they're like an all you can eat buffet of internet arguments.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 9 points 1 year ago

the Bristol LessWrong Scale

[–] earthquake@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

Through nootropics, they're capable of making 1000 internet arguments per second and they're all wrong

[–] fasterandworse@awful.systems 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

sounds like a good subject to write about. You should post an outline to https://awful.systems/c/morewrite

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

i had a previous rant about literary Bayesianism https://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/608652.html

[–] utterfiction@mastodon.me.uk 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@dgerard Thank you for “Garbage in, LessWrong out”, I’m going to use it *so* much 🤣

[–] billseitz@toolsforthought.rocks 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@utterfiction @dgerard
"I have Bayesian priors
YOU have cognitive biases
THEY are toxoplasmotic SJW filth"

[–] sb@mas.to 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

@billseitz @utterfiction @dgerard followed by

“Bayesian means the ingroup can do no wrong and the outgroup can do no right, and the more gooder the ingroup and badder the outgroup the more Bayesian it is.”

savage and true. Now THOSE are how to end a blog post.

[–] billseitz@toolsforthought.rocks 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@sb @utterfiction @dgerard Fuck Around and Update Your Priors

[–] silent_water@hexbear.net 7 points 1 year ago

the thing that pisses me off most is that bayesian probability is such an interesting field and in stripping the mathematical content out of it, they destroy what makes it so interesting.

this is a good analysis and I wholeheartedly agree.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 3 points 1 year ago

I'm with you. MY LIFE HAS BEEN PROFOUNDLY WORSE since I learned about the prisoner's dilemma. Specifically, any time some PD variant team-based exercise popped up, I just knew some MF on another team would think they were so clever and bring up the prisoner's dilemma. Oh, we should defect every time, they'd say. Hey, buddy, we all know about the fucking PD! Just fucking cooperate! If you applied decision theory, you wouldn't make everyone feel like shit, and you'd cooperate! Totally the same vibe, right?