VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
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User ID: 411
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
In any event, to continue on to my point, if you used to have the right to use the highway without paying the search price, and now they impose a search price on use of the highway, I think one is perfectly entitled to claim that they have 'lost' a right, and that this loss has come without any compensation. In fact, imposing the search/congestion price is a loss for the people who choose to pay the price, too! The difference is that they valued the use more than the price.
I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole of this search price hypothetical, because it serves no purpose to search people before they use the highway, whereas it averts a genuine tragedy of the commons to tax people for using the highway while it is congested.
Discussions of "rights" is complicated by the overlapping and charged definitions people have for the word. It can be used in a positivist negative sense (the actual freedom from government interference in doing something -- I have the right to speak my mind on the street corner), in a positivist positive sense (the actual ability to invoke the power of the government to overpower private parties who try to stop you from doing something or who refuse to facilitate it -- I have a right to see what data Google has collected about me), or in a morally-charged economic entitlement sense (the normative claim to third party or public resources to procure a good or service for yourself -- I have a right to food/shelter/medical care). There are other variations too. I think your argument is technically the positivist negative sense, but feels like it is reaching, subtly, to insinuate the economic entitlement sense too, which (if I'm right) I think would be begging the question.
In the realm of positivist negative rights, I certainly don't agree in general that people deserve compensation whenever they lose a right. Such a rule would lock our country into a state of sclerosis; every change in policy reshuffles all kinds of positivist rights, and requiring huge financial outlays to change the rules in any realm of society would mean the rules could never change and we'd quickly devolve. Your defense against public policy that is unfavorable to you is to participate in the political process, or in the extreme to exit the jurisdiction -- not to sue for compensation. Eminent domain does not generalize; it is a specific doctrine about taking land. It does not even apply when the government imposes easements on your land.
I also disagree that there's any kind of "efficient markets hypothesis" about when roads get built. That stuff is intensely political, riven by special interests, collective action problems, grift and idiosyncrasy. We are nowhere close. There's no plausible mechanism by which it would be.
Finally, the whole topic requires recognition that overcongested highways are a tragedy of the commons, in which aggregate value is destroyed by allowing overcongestion. That's the primary basis on which I support it. That's the source of scarcity of highway space. And in any place where there is scarcity, we apportion it by price or we suffer deadweight loss.
If you don't like the distributional consequences of apportioning scarce resources by price, address the consequences with general social safety nets. Make sure that anyone can afford to drive somewhere efficiently when they really need to, at least occasionally. That's better than the overcongested alternative can offer. But it doesn't require remitting congestion pricing revenue directly to non-drivers. It just requires remitting it to the fisc, as with any other government revenue, and writing checks from the government to poor people.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
Probably the same place as my right to fly on a commercial airplane without paying the search price, unfortunately.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
Roads are not entirely funded by congestion taxes placed on road users, even in this scenario. You can't avoid paying for the road.
So? Eminent domain and government funding is used to construct shipping ports. That doesn't mean you get to dock your motorboat in it.
Can commuter trains not collect fares? Their tracks were laid with taxpayer funds on land taken by eminent domain.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
whence my right to eat the apple in the first place?
Whence your right to use a congestion-priced highway without paying the congestion price?
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
The simulation hypothesis can definitely explain the Fermi Paradox, but I think reasoning in that way is very unproductive. The simulation hypothesis can also explain literally anything else--we just surmise that things are the way they are because that's how they were simulated to be.
No, it specifically addresses anthropic dilemmas differently and more comprehensively than other types of uncertainty, as I've already explained, and which addresses the remaining four paragraphs of your response.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
The Fermi Paradox basically says, isn't it weird that the universe seems so easily colonizable, yet hasn't been colonized? The Simulation Hypothesis says, no, that isn't weird, because once you agree that we're in a simulation, the best that the Fermi Paradox brand of anthropic reasoning can demonstrate is that the set of simulations that our simulators are running does not make it overwhelmingly likely that we'd find ourselves in a simulation where the skies are filled with grabby aliens. No paradox left!
Essentially what I'm saying is that that hypothesis gives us very, very little evidence towards anything and so even if we are in a simulation we can reason as if we are not.
Obviously not, since your posture leaves you confused why we aren't apparently in a grabby civilization, and mine solves that. The simulation hypothesis doesn't provide a lot of concrete advice, but it does solves some anthropic dilemmas such as the Fermi Paradox.
Namely, your conclusions rely on an assumption that other universes similar to ours are also being simulated
It does not, in any respect. Already said this several posts up: "This does not tell us much about what the simulators' universe actually looks like, or what resemblance it bears to ours, if any, but it does tell us that we probably aren't in the bottom layer."
Here was your original question:
Therefore, the Fermi Paradox has not been resolved; it’s just been transmuted into the question “Why weren’t we born into a Grabby civilization at its peak?”
The Simulation Hypothesis demonstrates that we are likely not in the bottom layer of reality. If this universe is real, then it looks like we'll soon be able to (and likely will) simulate a large number of sentiences, which means it would have been massively coincidental that our indexical experience was located in the "real universe." This does not tell us much about what the simulators' universe actually looks like, or what resemblance it bears to ours, if any, but it does tell us that we probably aren't in the bottom layer. This suffices to dispatch your purported transmutation of the Fermi Paradox.
If the Fermi Paradox is even meaningful at the layer of the simulators' universe, then the answer is that we probably were born (simulated) into a grabby civilization at or near its peak. If the Fermi Paradox isn't meaningful at the layer of the simulators' universe, then it has been resolved. Take your pick, but either way your purported transmutation of the Fermi Paradox isn't paradoxical anymore.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
Yeah, but you obtain that result only because you're limiting your consideration to the Milky Way. Why so provincial? There are superclusters out there! Geological timescales are large, but the universe is seemingly infinitely vast. The total wealth a future civilization will be able to claim depends entirely on when they start and how fast they expand.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
I think it's fine if the charity supports your neighborhood, community, people who have an affinity to you through some sort of shared experience or cultural background, etc.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
I think utilitarianism should play a very small but positive part of one's moral framework, a tiny minority vote in one's moral parliament, but committing to donate 10% of one's income to the other side of the planet is messed up, and asks to be reciprocated by your neighbors and fellow countrymen treating you as no more deserving of moral consideration than a stranger on the other side of the planet. If one see an EA type drowning in a pond, I don't exactly endorse this approach, but I think there would be a certain cold reciprocity to walk whistling past, clean in conscience that one has already dedicated at least 10% of one's attention to one's neighbors, friends and community.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
LOL, are you curating a Stereotype Paragon of the Race collection?
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
Yup... and they support that stuff because they've internalized the idea that trans are higher on the progressive stack than women.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
Great. Given that we agree that the strategy can work, and given that you offer nothing in the alternative except the usual black-pilled dejection, I reiterate my original prescription: The time to protest voting procedures is before the vote is cast.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
In other cases, it happened as I described
But you acknowledge that this case is a counterexample that contradicts your claim?
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
I don't understand: are you saying that undated ballots are being counted, in violation of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's order?
Personally, I wouldn't do it. Even assuming that you can replicate the phenomenon of consciousness in a non-biological substrate (something that could be the case but that's basically impossible to prove), there's the issue of continuity when you're uploading your brain. Sure, there's another version of myself now, but this is not me and I will not experience the change. I will live and die as meat-based life, and there will not be any "transfer" of consciousness. There will not be any change in my own state except now I possess the knowledge that there is an immortal version of me running around out there.
My typical rejoinder is basically, how do you know this isn't happening every time you go to sleep -- that "you" die and a new "you" comes into existence when your body and brain awake the next morning, a brand new consciousness tricked by your brain's memories into inferring false continuity of self? Or even that this isn't happening thirty times per second as part of your brain's natural operation?
My other rejoinder is, how about a Moravec Procedure, where you remain conscious and lucid the entire time during your gradual upload, in each moment satisfied (and confirming via repeated formal consent) that your consciousness has not changed?
The issue for me is that you don't actually get to colonise anywhere, nobody leaves, you just make another galaxy cluster full of humans. Maybe this is just an irreconcilable values difference, but I think this solution completely voids the point of the exercise. I don't intrinsically care about creating as many humans as possible and distributing them throughout the galaxy. I care infinitely more about where these humans come from.
Indeed, perhaps an irreconcilable values difference, but I think there's something ineffably beautiful about a quest to awaken the dead matter of the universe into sentience.
Fortunately, it's very cheap! The cost of sending von neumann probes beyond the radius of a given civilization sphere is likely to be low relative to the wealth of mass-energy contained within the sphere. That is true even when our sphere is just the earth, and becomes only more true as the sphere expands. Even if 99% of the sentiences or "mind-share" of the civilization agrees with you, the remaining 1% could probably fund the expedition as a hobby.
Let's assume we can go at, say, 50% light speed (149896.229 km/s). The expansion of the universe is 68 km/s/Mpc, and the value of Mpc that gives us a recession speed of 0.5c (the relevant formula here is 68 x Mpc = 149896.229) is 2204.36 megaparsecs, which translates to roughly 7 billion light years. Everything outside that distance is receding from us faster than that.
A 7 billion light year radius is pretty damn good, I'd say! We're well outside our local group and have begun eating superclusters like potato chips at that point!
Nonetheless -- if you own property, you don't have to pay its fair market value to take possession of it.
I get that you prefer a more libertarian oriented government (or so I'm inferring), but it feels like you're just trying to catastrophize non-libertarianism with your word choice. Income tax is what it is; insisting that "taxation is theft" or "the power to tax is the power to destroy" doesn't persuade anyone, and doesn't accurately carve reality at its joints. We don't live in a communist society, private property does exist, the state doesn't own everything, we aren't slaves or serfs, taxation is a meaningful burden but not analogous to ownership, there are constraints on the exercise of state power, we have a right of exit, etc.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
So your argument against Georgism is premised on the assumption that the alternative is to abolish income tax and drastically shrink the government to a Lochner era libertarian ideal? It feels like a pretty big assumption.
What if we take that off the table, and consider the alternatives as between the actual status quo that we have today and a tax policy where tax incidence is weighted less toward income and more toward land? I think it's usually more productive to debate policy on the margins.
would you rather be a slave or a serf?
Definitely a serf. Are you suggesting that we're slaves right now?
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
What indicia of ownership does Georgism grant to the government beyond taxing it? Surely there's a lot more to ownership than the right to tax something -- such as the right to take possession of it.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
What about Hillary Clinton repeatedly calling Donald Trump a variation of "Putin's Puppet", or otherwise accusing him of capital offenses and besmirching his character? It's hard to imagine a more damning smear in the political sphere -- being a Benedict Arnold is a way to go down in history for the worse!
Impugning a politician's loyalties or motivations is objectively less crazy than claiming that the Sandy Hook Massacre literally did not occur.
What about Mary Lewanski, who carried water for the Waukesha murderer, and said the citizens there deserved it because it was karma?
Disagreements about moral dessert is objectively less crazy than claiming that the Sandy Hook Massacre literally did not occur.
How about Rep. Haukeem Jeffries peddling various falsehoods and inflammatory bits of misinformation, such as lying about what happened in Kenosha with Kyle Rittenhouse, or the shooting of Jacob Blake, rapist, child abductor, and felon extraordinare
You can disagree with the framing (as I do) but it does not contradict physical reality nearly to the extent of claiming that the Sandy Hook Massacre literally did not occur.
You want to say Alex Jones is a piece of shit who bullies innocent people for his cause, makes up lies about their trauma, and in general deserves a harsh punishment?
And specifically that he does so with ludicrous bad-faith falsehoods, such as claiming that the Sandy Hook Massacre literally did not occur.
I feel like you've tried throughout this exchange to avoid grappling with the actual craziness of Alex Jones' claims.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
Well, at least we've narrowed our disagreement to a few key points, I suppose.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
Got it, that's all fair I think. And I agree that people who make their sexuality or gender identity the core of their personality are tiresome and frivolous. I guess I'm just sensitive to the idea that gay people should "keep it to themselves" as was a common talking point in the years before same-sex marriage became legal nationwide. For my part, I don't want the fact that I'm gay to be foremost in people's minds when they're talking to me, I just want to assimilate into society like everyone else and have a normal life insofar as it's possible. But assimilating and having a normal life entails, at some point, having a monogamous relationship that is public, initially as dating and then ultimately as marriage and a family. And the "keep it to themselves" logic doesn't really account for that. It works while people are having flings and dating serially -- no one in a professional setting or in everyday life needs to know about your fuckbuddies or your one-night stands -- but marriage and family are naturally public, and need to be public to function as such, and I think the "keep it to yourselves" logic has a corollary (whether intended or not) of demanding that gay people stay on the margins of society in that sense. Not suggesting you intended it that way.
VelveteenAmbush
Prime Intellect did nothing wrong
1yr ago
Well... if a gay man wants the same chance to score dates from the publicly facing social media profiles that straight man have, then he does need to make his preferences known, no?
Also... isn't marriage intrinsically public, and doesn't that reveal one's sexual preferences, at least in the sense of which sex one prefers?
I did, because Knives Out delivered on that score. Blanc, Thrombey, Jamie Lee Curtis's character, and the lifestyle business lady were all endlessly entertaining. Even the cops were done really well, funny and possessed of interesting personalities despite their bit player roles. Marta was kind of an "empty angel," so pure of soul and good of spirit that there wasn't any room for personality, but everyone else made up for it, and even her role was played with charisma, to her actress's credit.
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