Thoughts on moral intuitions
Our moral reasoning is ultimately grounded in our moral intuitions: instinctive “black box” judgements of what is right and wrong. For example, most people would think that needlessly hurting somebody else is wrong, just because. The claim doesn’t need further elaboration, and in fact the reasons for it can’t be explained, though people can and do construct elaborate...
Read MoreA Date with Darin
“Look, I’m not really the best person to have a relationship with. I can be selfish as fuck, I break my promises more often than not, and I suck at making compromises.”
Read MoreMovie madness
A possibly entertaining pastime I just came up with, for a bunch of people who can think at their feet: Find a movie none of you has seen before, spoken in a language none of you knows. If it has subtitles in your language, turn them off. Each time when a character in the movie speaks, somebody improvises a “translation” of what they’re saying. Optionally, each character in the...
Read MoreOn fantasy and discount rates
“…some method for discounting future and distant consequences is necessary. It is possible, perhaps, that the degree of discounting would exactly correspond to the increasing degree of uncertainty that goes with predicting remote events. But there is no simple formula that relates time or distance to uncertainty—some events a year from now or 5,000 kilometers from here may be much...
Read MorePersonal achievement reports
I haven’t posted my personal achievement reports for March and April, and in fact I think I might discontinue the habit for now. The reason is simple: for the last two months I’ve been doing writing for the Singularity Institute – on a per-project basis since early March, and on a full-time basis since early April. The job takes up most of my energy, so most of my reports would...
Read MoreMeditation log, Mar 9 – Mar 19
For those curious, basically all of my meditation has been tranquility meditation. Friday, March 9th. 30 minutes. Attempted to meditate while lying on my back, figuring that I wouldn’t fall asleep since I’d just had my morning caffeine. Not very successful. I was maybe a little too relaxed, my thoughts wandered and I had difficulties feeling my breath in order to concentrate on...
Read MoreNeuroinformatics 4 seminar, session III – GWT/meditation, neural correlates of consciousness
Yes, I know that I’m way behind on my reports: session III was over a month ago. Better late than never. I’ve been thinking about global workspace theory on and off in the context of meditation. Haven’t come up with anything particularly insightful, basically just a repetition of the argument in the Dietrich paper: in meditation, attentional resources are used to actively...
Read MorePersonal achievement report, Feb 2012
February was a low-achievement month. Aside for making progress in meditation, I didn’t get much done. COMPLETED WRITINGS * A Less Wrong post, Avoid Misinterpreting Your Emotions. As of right now, it has promoted status, 60 upvotes and 28 comments. It’s an expanded version of my earlier LJ post, Not believing in your emotions. * Contributed three answers to the Cognitive Sciences...
Read MoreMeditation progress report
I’ve finally been achieving some progress in meditation, so I figured I’d give you a report and also write things down so that I won’t forget. About a month or two ago, an iRL friend of mine found Daniel Ingram’s Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha and started doing meditation practice. Since he had done things involving concentration practice before, he made rapid...
Read MoreLisääkö talouskasvu hyvinvointia?
Talouskasvu lisää selkeästi aineellista vaurauttamme, mutta totumme nopeasti muuttuneeseen elintasoon, joten ei ole varmaa missä määrin talouskasvu lisää varsinaista hyvinvointiamme.
Read MorePersonal achievement report, Dec 2011 – Jan 2012
It’s time for my second semimonthly personal achievement report! This one covers the period from December 13th (when I wrote my previous report) to January 31st. From now on, I’ll try to post reports at the end of each month. So, what have I accomplished since I last reported? COMPLETED WRITINGS * Two LJ posts, Not believing in your emotions and Interesting paper on the neuroscience...
Read MoreNeuroinformatics 4 seminar, session II
Today was the second session of the Neuroinformatics 4 course that I’m taking. Each participant has been assigned some paper from this list, and we’re all supposed to have a presentation summarizing the paper. We’re also supposed to write a diary about each presentation and hand it in in the end, which is the reason why I’m typing this entry. I figure that if I’m...
Read MoreInteresting paper on the neuroscience of meditation
http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~pineda/COGS175/readings/Dietrich.pdf It proposes that what we experience as consciousness is built up in a hierarchical process, with various parts of the brain doing further processing on the flow of information and contributing their own part to the “feel” of consciousness. It’s possible to subtract various parts of the process, thereby leading to...
Read MoreAI thought process visualization
I started thinking about all the original computer science CGI stuff you could do in a sci-fi movie or TV series.
Read MorePersonal achievement report, Nov – Dec 2011
theferrett has this awesome habit of making regular updates on how his story-writing and his published stories are doing. I find them inspiring. After seeing his latest update, it occurred to me that I should write one of my own, to help keep track of how I’m doing, and to remind my brain to keep thinking about the stuff I want it to be thinking about. And maybe to also boast a tiny little...
Read MoreMy knowledge as anti-knowledge
During my more pessimistic moments, I grow increasingly skeptical about our ability to know anything. Science, governmental institutions, the media, the Internet... all of these mostly fail.
Read MoreRecommendations for everything
The biggest problem with enjoying good forms of art is finding them. I’m certain that the world is already full of top-quality works that would let me fill my entire spare time with nothing but nonstop moments of awesomeness, if I only knew what they were. This is, of course, a well-known problem. And there are various recommendation systems that try to figure out your tastes and suggest...
Read MoreShun offensive things: always, never, sometimes?
Suppose that taking offense is something that you do in response to something that you think lowers the status of either you, your group, or something that you hold dear. Now there are two extremes as to how to respond to possibly offensive things, both of them wrong: 1. Shun anything that could cause offense to anyone. This is wrong because it would unreasonably restrict communication, because...
Read MoreSydämeni on vasemmalla, aivoni eivät tiedä missä olisivat
Jos minulta kysyttäisiin olenko oikealla vai vasemmalla, en osaisi vastata. Tai ainakaan en osaisi tiivistää vastaustani pariin sanaan. Pohjimmaisia arvojani voi pitää suhteellisen vasemmistolaisina. Minusta valtion tehtävänä on luoda tilanne, jossa mahdollisimman moni yhteiskunnan jäsen voi mahdollisimman hyvin. Pidän vapautta tärkeänä, mutta pohjimmiltaan kuitenkin välinearvona....
Read MoreSaako hississä pyytää seksiä?
Hissit ovat näemmä päivän Internets-puheenaihe. Riippuen siitä keneltä kysyy, puhe on feministeistä jotka pitävät kaikkia miehiä potentiaalisina raiskaajina, siitä että viattomasta ehdottelusta ärsyyntyvät eivät välitä tyttöjen ympärileikkauksista, tai siitä että kahville pyytäminen on ahdistelua. Anteeksi mitä? Juttu alkoi viattomasta videoblogauksesta, jossa Rebecca...
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