A long and mutually frustrating Twitter discussion with Michael Anissimov about intelligence and values — especially in respect to the potential implications of advanced AI — has been clarifying in certain respects. It became very obvious that the fundamental sticking point concerns the idea of ‘orthogonality’, which is to say: the claim that cognitive capabilities and goals are independent dimensions, despite minor qualifications complicating this schema.

The orthogonalists, who represent the dominant tendency in Western intellectual history, find anticipations of their position in such conceptual structures as the Humean articulation of reason / passion, or the fact / value distinction inherited from the Kantians. They conceive intelligence as an instrument, directed towards the realization of values that originate externally. In quasi-biological contexts, such values can take the form of instincts, or arbitrarily programmed desires, whilst in loftier realms of moral contemplation they are principles of conduct, and of goodness, defined without reference to considerations of intrinsic cognitive performance.

Anissimov referenced these recent classics on the topic, laying out the orthogonalist case (or, in fact, presumption). The former might be familiar from the last foray into this area, here. This is an area which I expect to be turned over numerous times in the future, with these papers as standard references.

The philosophical claim of orthogonality is that values are transcendent in relation to intelligence. This is a contention that Outside in systematically opposes.

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Some odds and ends, semi-randomly assembled, and not necessarily new:

“As I adjust to blogging, I find that I’m struggling with time management,” Handle discovers, but he’s still running one of the liveliest places on the web. “Why has society become so incredibly inaccessible?” he asks. “Because it is hiding something. It is hiding the fact that you really don’t have any say or input or power in most of your affairs.” (A lot of opacity is strategic — and gratuitous — complexity. As if life wasn’t inherently complicated enough, the Brahmins have chosen to set up and run a truly brutal conspiracy against dim people.)

The shutdown challenge for the GOP: “The republican party has a big problem: How to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”

‘Moderated’ to death: “… the opposite of creative destruction is stagnation. The ‘Great Stagnation’ is the logical consequence of an economic environment where both job creation and destruction are falling.”

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Tyler “Hitler” Cowen, border hawk:

ADDED: Caplan vs Tyler “Slave-Master” Cowen.

ADDED: Occam’s Razor remains impressively sure-footed amongst Caplan’s slipperiness.

Either Stalin played the Anglosphere like a  cheap piano in World War Two, or something altogether more sinister was going on. Foseti clarifies the conundrum beautifully:

When the US finally joins the war, it does so with – as best as one can decipher – only a few clear war aims: 1) demanding unconditional surrender (of Germany and Japan – aka the only bulwarks against Soviet domination of post-war Europe and Asia); 2) establishing the United Nations; and 3) ending European (excluding Soviet) colonialism.

If you, gentle reader, can come up with a list of war aims that would be more destructive to mankind at the time than those, the next round is on me. Perhaps entirely coincidentally (or perhaps not) these aims would seem to all work towards the direct benefit of the Soviets. It’s almost like Soviets were making US foreign policy.

Words of wisdom from Obama (via):

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

Don’t laugh.

(Privately via zombie central.)

Some acts of national-demographic self-mortification stretch the imagination beyond its breaking point:

The Minneapolis–St. Paul area has one of the world’s largest Somali populations outside Mogadishu, with more than 80,000 residents believed to have originated from Somalia.

Seriously: Why?

Whatever the prejudices you might harbor against Urumqi Internet connections in second rate hotels, they’re probably over-generous. I’ve been effectively de-twitterized by sheer technological crappitude rather than anything more sinister, but this channel seems to be (barely) OK. (Annoyingly, they provide a computer in the room, which locks everything into chronic dysfunction.) So apologies for the deteriorated state of communications over the next few days.

The main objective of this trip is to explore Xinjiang’s Buddhist heritage, which is so vast and rich that even some superficial scratching should turn up some interesting stuff. The main current of Buddhist influence into China passed this way, hybridizing wildly with other cultures in one of the world’s great mixing zones. After arriving off the steps, the Uyghurs were Buddhist for centuries, before Islam got a grip around the turning point of the first millennium (I’ll try to fill in some dates with greater precision later on). 

Updates as events, energy, and time permit.

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It’s been a long time since one of these. Abandoning it seemed a good idea because Foseti and NBS were providing such a rich diet of reactionary and miscellaneous links (there’s also Free Northerner, among others). Now it’s got to the point that I’m drowning in unused reaction points, so the safety valve has been forced open again, for floating odds and ends.

At Handle’s place, are Jews and antisemites caught in a “bad equilibrium”? (From Alrenous in the comments: “The British conquer the entire world, twice, and people are still scared of the Joos.”). In addition, this fished-up piece on the muscular liberal push beyond boutique multiculturalism is an impressive catch.

Jim sees “chaos coming. Power will fall into the street, hot, radioactive, dangerous, and desired, to be picked up first by one group, then another, each new pair of hands slippery with the blood of innocents, after the fashion of the Arab spring.” (Anti-entryism isn’t exit, but a different problem altogether.)

Spandrell has been going microscopic (here,and here), which got Scharlach playing with the zoom control (here, here, and here … so far).

Bryan Caplan revisits Galton’s controversial plan to liberate Africa from Africans.

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Now twittering.

Because cognitive micro-fragmentation needs all the help it can get …