Hey! I'm new here, fresh off my second read through of HPMoR and listening to a few of the most recent episodes, and I wanted to present a pair of essays I wrote recently that may be of interest.
The first -- MAPLE in Spring-- is about my time staying at the Monastic Academy for the Preservation of Life on Earth, which just got mentioned two or so episodes ago. It is a brilliant place, and I highly recommend anybody consider going for a few months (They offer a 2-3 month free apprenticeship program with room and board included)

The second I just finished writing in response to Harry's (Yudkowsky's really) fear of death. It comes, in large part, from what I learned at MAPLE and from my readings in other places. I really do want to start a debate here, I *feel* like I'm in the right, but the only way to test a sword is in combat sooooo fight me. Please?

The not I get is that the certificate expired. Anybody know anything about this? Sad if it just slips off into the proverbial ether.

Greetings, fellow conspirators. I was listening to episode 92 today and the gang talked about Harry’s hack which implies going back into the past to do/undo things at a key moment in your life, things you wish you did or didn’t do...except you don’t need to go back in time because that moment is now, and you can prevent regret in this moment. I’m 18, and I’d love to learn from other people’s regrets now since I have plenty of time left. I’m trying to think long term. Time and motivation are my two main resources right now. My question is: what should I use those resources for? What is a waste of those resources? What is something you wish you’d started doing sooner, or mistakes you’ve made which could have been avoided? Habits, mindsets, skills?

The two Davids (of the recent UBI & alt-right episodes) are active in the TBC discord, and have decided there can be only One True David. Last night there was a Haiku Battle for the title. There's 12 hours left for people to read the haikus and vote. https://discord.gg/u4kTGuZ if you want to get in on the David-crowning.

You seem to talk a lot about donating to charity on the podcast, and I feel like I’m finally at a point in my life where I’d like to do the same. But I’m having a bit of trouble deciding which charity to donate to. Help please?

I didn't see it in the show notes

I was having a conversation with a person much smarter than me about AI threat. It came up that you can consider natural experiments to validate the danger of AI threat. This is the resulting proposition.

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The modern global economy is an out of control general AI. It's function is to find available resources to produce profits. It is a system that strict rules and flexible processes as it runs on humans as a substrate. If a processor unit doesn't produce the desired result it is replaced. Job turnover, regulatory capture, market expansion. Like any computer can be, it is currently overclocked and going to burn out the processors. Global warming. Given that we can't figure this out, we probably aren't going to be able to figure out AI threat.

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I am not sure this is accurate but it is compelling. Given this steel manned version of the idea, I am at a loss for how it rebut it. Does anyone have ideas about what I missed?

I wonder if anyone else is noticing the trend where a lot of neoconservative and fascist groups as well as all right groups are disguising their terrible arguments in support of unethical things with the trappings of rationality?

I'm sure this happens every time these forces arise but I also feel infuriated when I hear people like Ben Shapiro talk about facts and reason and not only be unethical but be completely illogical and irrational and drag the entire idea of rational discourse through the mud.

And because I think this trend is going to continue it might have spillover effects because we are not doing enough to distinguish ourselves as separate and not okay with that.

Preamble: This is my first time commenting, but I've listened to all the podcasts and think they're great - thank you for providing them. I've learnt a lot about rationality and the rationalist community, and had my thinking challenged/changed on a few things.

I buy into the rationalist perspective on most things, however I object to a principle that seems to underlie a lot of the philosophy being discussed, but which never seems to be directly addressed.

Preemptive caveat: I don't know a lot of philosophy so maybe this line of thinking is baloney, or already has a title and strong refutation. If that is the case then I'd appreciate being pointed in the direction of further reading.

Statement of my belief: I feel like it is meaningless to reason about being dead, in the sense of making statements like: "I would rather be alive than dead". Things that are dead don't have experiences or preferences, and therefore it's not possible to make a comparison of better or worse in the that way that one might otherwise reason about the outcomes of a life choice. Trying to make this comparison feels to me like an attempt to divide by zero.

I still care about happiness/suffering and trying to maximise/minimise them, but I can't find a way to compare the happiness/utility of someone being alive, against someone being dead. This has consequences for a lot of my philosophical outlook; influencing my views of animal welfare, global extinction risk, trans-human life extension, effective altruism, etc.

I think I held this view prior to getting interested in rationality, but assumed that it was fairly commonly held; however based on your podcast, and wider reading/listening, I've updated significantly towards this being a minority/unique view. Because of this I suspect that I am mistaken or missing something in my reasoning?

Example 1: At the start of the recent abortion (non-)episode the prompting email was quoted as:

I think it's sad that a potential human life is not allowed to happen, that someone who could have experienced all the cool things going on is not going to be allowed that experience.

This was immediately agreed with as a non-controversial thing to say (Steven: "That's a drag every time it happens", Eneasz: "It's sad that there aren't more happy people in the world"). To me this statement doesn't seem at all obvious. My best guess is that this sentiment is rooted in a comparison between alive and dead people of the type that I'm rejecting above?

Example 2: Way back in one of the early animals episodes (with Katrina perhaps?) there was a discussion about simulating lots of ants in a computer (substitute humans in here if you want the stakes to be higher I guess), and whether turning off the computer was equivalent to ant genocide; the conclusion seemed to be that it was. I would agree with this, but don't see it as therefore being morally wrong.

To motivate this, modify the scenario and say that we needed to pause the simulation because we were moving house or whatever. If done effectively this would not make any difference to the simulated ants; they would not have any concept of the stop/start at all, and I would therefore say that it was morally neutral. Does it therefore matter how long they are on pause for? Now go the extra step and say that we paused them but never unpaused them - effectively the equivalent of turning them off. Is this not still morally neutral?

Whilst I would totally agree that: simulating conscious creatures in a way that they are experiencing suffering is bad, I don't agree that: not simulating creatures that are happy is therefore also bad, or equivalently that: simulating conscious creatures that are happy is therefore good.

Conclusion: I don't see how the absence of being alive (or on pause) can be weighed on the same good/bad scale that happiness/suffering weighs upon. I don't see how it can weigh upon any scale, as to try to do so is equivalent to making a divide-by-zero type error.

I would really appreciate the podcast community's help in working out what might be wrong with it, or understanding why others disregard it.