I was constantly lurking on rarionalist forums until late 2016, and much less so now. When Bernie made his arguments the entire community shifted left. Given Yudkowsky's positions on responsibility (in short all of us should do everything we can to maximize utility) I am entirely unsurprised to learn that one of us is the person who merc'd the guy. My radicalization started with Yudkowsky and then it was set into overdrive by watching the DNC be selfish while the GOP had been abjectly horrid.
Whether we're successful more often or not the rationalists are mostly trying to reduce suffering and maximize pleasure for as many people as possible. That's why we're so into tech; we see it as a way to improve as many lives as we possibly can. Luigi likely saw this as the way he could do the same. The fact that he was spurred to action by his own particular suffering doesn't change the fact that he was probably right.
How many years have you studied mathematics? If you really believe that, it can't be more than 2 after high-school.
Edit: better question: Can you define "equivalence relation"? I don't want you to be creative, I want the standard definition you come across in any foundations class.
This is actually wrong. You can have an equivalence relation where 0 is equivalent to 1. Furthermore, in the Trivial Ring (that is, the ring algebra of a single element) the multiplicative identity (written as 1) and the and the additive identity (written as 0) are the same element, and thus in the context of the trivial ring 0=1. Isn't that fascinating?
I'm a mathematician. I work in multidimensional spaces. Did you know you can have coordinate systems with boundaries? You can also have universes where movement is possible in a particular direction, but not the other. We actually live in such a universe; you can only move forward in time.
Your entire argument is "I can't imagine darkness without light, therefore it's logically impossible." All you've proven is that you lack an imagination and don't understand logic.
People say shit like this, but it's just not true. If darkness is the absence of light, then it's dark so long as there isn't light. If you observe a universe where there are no photons, it'd be dark everywhere. (it'd also not have the EM force, but let's put that aside for now.) You can have darkness without light, but if you aren't aware of light, then you simply wouldn't have a word for darkness; you are confusing the conceptualization of thing with the thing itself. In my circles, we refer to this fallacy as confusing the map and the territory.
I was constantly lurking on rarionalist forums until late 2016, and much less so now. When Bernie made his arguments the entire community shifted left. Given Yudkowsky's positions on responsibility (in short all of us should do everything we can to maximize utility) I am entirely unsurprised to learn that one of us is the person who merc'd the guy. My radicalization started with Yudkowsky and then it was set into overdrive by watching the DNC be selfish while the GOP had been abjectly horrid.
Whether we're successful more often or not the rationalists are mostly trying to reduce suffering and maximize pleasure for as many people as possible. That's why we're so into tech; we see it as a way to improve as many lives as we possibly can. Luigi likely saw this as the way he could do the same. The fact that he was spurred to action by his own particular suffering doesn't change the fact that he was probably right.