The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

The Kohr-Ah (Donald Trump) is taking over the Sa-Matra (The White House).

(https://s16.postimg.org/879uxtr5h/kohr_ah.png)

Atleast we will all die instead of being subjected to slavery-hillary.

ZANTHIUS!

HEEEEY! Wow, long time since I've seen you! How's the old philosophical/religious/Star Control thing going? Any more trips to exotic locations?

I am working on an ideology to fight against the Kohr-Ah (Donald Trump and his supporters). Unfortunately, the ideology is not very efficient against the Kohr-Ah (Donald Trump and his supporters), as they are somewhat immune to facts and reason. It might however work better against other species that are more vulnerable to facts and reason.

http://archania.org/ideology.pdf (http://archania.org/ideology.pdf)

Wow, that's a lot more coherent than I remember your writings being in the past.

Point 1 is rather non-actionable. I'd put it last.

I'd note that figure 4 has a scale that starts around 35500, which is not great graph-making practice. Rainforest destruction is really, really bad. We have not already destroyed over 90% of it.

Figure 14 shows a formula, not a theorem. The degree of applicability of this formula to real-life situations is non-obvious. In particular, failure and diversity do not have comparable units, so they need to be scaled relative to each other based on contingent factors. That is, individual success rate could end up more important than diversity or vice versa in any given situation, based on which one you're worse at. Also, this assumes a particular model of overall success, which again may or may not be applicable to any given situation.

I agree with the general notion that diversity is good.

Thank you for the comments! I will fix the graph and probably move point 1 last, and call it "concluding remarks".

Regarding diversity, have you read the reference I gave? https://experts.umich.edu/en/publications/where-diversity-comes-from-and-why-it-matters

I probably need to read a bit more about it myself, and explain it better in the text.

Found another reference here, that maybe explains it better: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2632901

Placing yourself intellectually above your enemy is the biggest mistake you can make. Doing so makes you unable to learn from them and unable to fix your own mistakes.

Sure. I thought it was horrible of Hillary to call you a basket of deplorables. Bernie Sanders would never have said anything like that.

It was paywalled. But generally speaking, the only thing the article could contain that would help would be identifying a wide variety of cases that it's good for. They describe it being good for making predictions, which is a good case. Especially since that means that there's a coherent way of combining successes and failures, and it also allows one to put units on the diversity and make it commensurate with skill.

If you change "groups with a high level of diversity are predicted to be more successful than groups with a low level of diversity" to insert 'at predicting' after 'successful', then I agree totally. And predicting is important to a bunch of other things, so that's still important. Just, now it's a more justifiable statemtent.



One thing about the rainforests - The new graph may be more accurate, but now it promotes the opposite error - the slope is so slight, it makes it seem like it hardly matters at all. (We've still got around 90% left!) But forest area, even rainforest area, is not fungible. This isn't destroying 10% of 100% of the forests, which would be very recoverable if done right (though it never would be in real life). If that's what the graph looks like when shown straightforwardly, then I don't think comparing the totals is actually relevant. Maybe if you were to break it down by individual forests and show dramatic drops, or something? Maybe show an extinction count? Or you could send the time scale back to well before 1970 and show what there used to be? I don't know, this is a tricky one.

Or you could present it as '# years it would take to halve the forests at this rate' as a function of time, and then you look at it and realize that it's not all that long.

I have been trying to figure out of this proof by identity. I don't understand the second last step (Simplifying), and I am unsure of if it is a valid proof or not. If the proof is invalid, then professor Scott E. Page should lose his job. Another reason why I am a bit doubtful of the proof, is that I barely can find any information about it when searching for it. Such an important proof should have its own wikipedia page, and there should be tons of information about it on the Internet.... I am tempted to make a computer program to test if it is valid or not. Simply because my math skills are so bad that I don't understand the second last step :)

(http://archania.org/proof.png)

I have written more about the diversity prediction theorem now, but I don't think I am going to include the proof of identity. I agree with you that the graph doesn't look so good when I set the y-axis to zero. But starting the y-axis at a higher number than zero isn't necessarily cheating. It is also a bit like zooming in on the area you want to talk about. I have started the y-axis a bit lower than at first now, so the graph doesn't look as steep as it did first.

And btw. If you are into piracy, you can download most scientific articles from http://sci-hub.ac/ (scientific articles should be free anyhow)

The proof is above my ad-hoc qualities too...
Not wanting to start a full discussion on piracy or not, but that statement is an oversimplistic generalisation.
IF the research behind it has been paid by public money, AND there's no chance to cause problems elsewhere (national security, .blah blah., already proven to be wrong but has not yet been marked so, ...), then I agree, it should be available to the taxpayers of the country that paid the research free of charge, besides an administrative fee to give access to the papers (which in modern, electronic times, is in the margins of cents) (you would pay for a book containing the paper, and in the past that was how you could get access to other papers).
It's a controversial issue, and the current control of the papers by one or two big publishers who use their leverage to make big money is an issue.
But piracy is not the solution. It helps putting pressure in finding a fairer system.

I found a better proof, and I think I am going to include something like this in my text:

(https://s18.postimg.org/5hk8iiipl/theorem.png)

And yeah, piracy might not be the solution, but big pharma is certainly not the solution either, and if research is more openly available I think science will develop faster. With the prices we have today, many universities in poor counties like India and China probably cannot afford to pay for scientific articles for their students.

China just pirates it as they should. Let america live in their idiocracy bubble where only the wealthy can be educated :).

[offtopic]Indeed, China sponsors the education pretty well, also by sending their students all around to world to receive higher education in Europe, Australia, Japan, US,... and bring back the knowledge...
And buying public papers for their universities. (They tend to buy 10--50 licences, but copy the data into their own systems, thus avoiding paying the actual of of 1-10k licences. Thus they are leeching on our western knowledge without appropriate return to fund our next research. - Japan did so too, back when we forced them to open their society - and it brought them to the knowledge top of the world for a while.)

The main issue with US education is not necessarily the cost of university degrees, but the low level of basic education due to lack of funding.[/offtopic]

From here on I'll revert to lurking this thread.

Happy Lurking, Krulle :)

Now I have updated http://archania.org/ideology.pdf (http://archania.org/ideology.pdf) with the new proof for the diversity prediction theorem, and I put (axis y discontinuity=parallel) on the graph for how much the size of the Brazilian rainforest has declined since 1970.

You guys make me want to write about big pharma, and about how Elsevier is getting rich on selling research papers (not the researchers themselves).

Other people have commented that I should write more about carbon footprint, and about what might happen in third world countries when they deplete drinking water reservoirs there and run out of other resources there. Possibilities for war, mass emigration, and so on.

The substitution used in the 'simplifying' line in the first proof is valid - it's a substitution of the definition of C in for the summation. You've got SUM over the xi and some things that are independent of i. You can turn the sum over i into just multiplying by N for the constant terms, and for the other one you can pull the constant factor outside the sum, and what's left is the definition of C.

Don't feel bad that this wasn't obvious. It rolled several steps into one.

We have the solution for how to create the best team then. We choose the most skilled people, but of different ethnicities, different education, and different personality types. Then we are likely to get a skilled team with a high level of diversity, and that team is likely to kick ass against the Kohr-Ah (Donald Trump and his supporters).

So, what should we call it? The New Alliance of Free Stars, The Concordance of Alien Nations, The United Federation of Worlds, or The Empire of Zanthius?

I have written a bit more about our close evolutionary history with the Mycon:

http://archania.org/magic_mushrooms_and_human_evolution.pdf (http://archania.org/magic_mushrooms_and_human_evolution.pdf)

Its almost Christmas, and I am thinking that we need to come up with some new celebrations. Most people in the most developed part of the world does not believe in the old religions anymore. And why are atheists celebrating Christian holidays? It does not make any sense. And without religion Christmas is become more and more superficial. It is only about giving material things to each other.

I propose 4 new celebrations, which have a somewhat more rational foundation:

A celebration for mathematics (mid-winter)
A celebration for environmentalism (vernal equinox)
A celebration for civil rights (mid-summer)
A celebration for science (autumnal equinox)

I am starting to work on it now http://archania.org/a_somewhat_more_rational_set_of_celebrations.pdf (http://archania.org/a_somewhat_more_rational_set_of_celebrations.pdf)

Science is bought and is a big part of the reason why our environment is fucked. So please scrap that :)

There are definitely challenges with how science is conducted today, such as unpublished negative results, and that we need to pay lots of money to read scientific articles on the internet. But I actually think people aren’t sufficiently grateful of science. The next time you have a bacterial infection, you should maybe investigate who discovered or first synthesized that antibiotic you use to heal yourself, and be a little more grateful to those people.

You're absolutely right in the sense that we only see published research that is positive, a big problem is also that scientists get heavily funded by companies who want a certain research to go a certain way. For example engergy drink manufacturers who funded research at a university that supposedly proved that their drinks were healthy ;).

Science will cause our extinction if we continue as we do now. Nuclear weapons are inventions of scientists, as are combustion engines, the two most likely scenarios in which we fuck up the earth beyond repair.
It could also be our salvation, we might discover clean energy or leave the earth altogether. But it has a really dark side.

Regarding antibiotics it is wise to not see it as the holy grail and be too thankful for it. Right now we're in the process of creating highly resistant superbacteriae on which antibiotics have no effect, due to antibiotics being heavily used in food production and being prescribed too liberally. A knee operation might become deadly and a bladder infection could become uncureable.

Zanthius, your attempt to make holidays reminds me of this (http://lesswrong.com/lw/66t/rational_humanist_music/) and Raemon's attempts to create rituals and holidays, starting here (http://lesswrong.com/lw/8x5/ritual_report_nyc_less_wrong_solstice_celebration/)

I recently saw a video of amending the year it is as well, to be 12016 Human Era instead of making it dependant on when a certain holy figure as born :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czgOWmtGVGs

Reply to Scalare's first post: I agree with many of the things you are saying, but that should make it even more important to have a day devoted to science. Not just to appreciate science, but also to reflect upon problems and dangers with science.

Reply to Death:
I don't know if I agree that we should celebrate Cthulhu at the winter solstice. I might agree that people aren't exposed to enough fear, but I don't know if invoking supernatural fears is the way to go. I love horror movies, but I have heard that the catholic church is funding lots of the horror movies, since it makes people so scared of demons and the devil that they start going church.

Our current society is however underdeveloped when it comes to rituals. We have quite a lot of music, but ideally music should be a part of a ritual, where dancing and/or games are other parts. We also commonly use alcoholic beverages in our rituals. I think magic mushrooms and ibogaine also should be explored.

I agree that we should have the celebrations on the solstices and equinoxes however. I see that the "Less Wrong" website is devoted to the "Bayesian theorem". I was actually planning to use the Bayesian theorem in the introduction text to the celebration of science at the autumnal equinox.

Reply to Scalare's second post: It seems like a good idea, because it might have a unifying effect upon the cultures and countries of today, since most cultures cannot trace their timeline back that far. I am however a bit scared that we will discover a new "temple" somewhere else, that is for example 15 000 years old. And then we might have to readjust our year zero. We also have cave paintings that are much older than that, and modern human anatomy is many hundred thousand years old.

I love this celebration idea, because now I get to write much more about mathematics, science, nature, and civil rights. Topics I care deeply about ;)

MDMA could also really lead to new insights. I wondered once what it would be like if Obama and Putin would sit together when taking MDMA for the first time.
Not sure about the mushrooms, they could lead to bad trips if taken by the wrong person. Only certain people can take them :). Ibogaine I think is also too toxic to really help?


You see the same problem with (bad) science. It is regarded as the current 'god'. So people learn 'science is so great and it can never be wrong' and then they leave school and stop challenging scientific proof, leading you to stay with the knowledge that you gained during your education.
I come from a time when pluto was still a planet, black holes were still only a theory, brown dwarfs didn't exist and the extreme exoplanets that we have discovered today were thought to be impossible.
So if I regarded science as 'god' then I would still believe in those things, and I would never have opened up my eyes regarding big pharma and the way that the world is ruled and ruined by money. All because people treat science as a religion. Something you HAVE to believe in and that can't be challenged lest you be cast out from society. Science has its zealots like every other religion has. Humans have the tremendous ability to recognize patterns and notice if something is not right, by gut feeling without being able to argumentate it. You could hear a great scientist speak and think 'something fishy is going on' leading to you inquiring about this, only to find these zealots telling you to fuck off because 'it's science, it can't be wrong'. While I think a good scientist by definition challenges EVERYTHING, regardless of whether the queen says it, Obama says it (versus Trump) or your teacher says it.  Until anthonie van leeuwenhoek made a microscope and discovered cellular structures, the scientists of that day thought that life was created spontaneously from lifeless material :).

Ibogaine is a little bit less toxic than alcoholic beverages, but way more toxic than mushrooms and LSD. But of course Ibogaine has a quite different effect, lasts much longer, and so on. It has been used for quite some time by people in mid west Africa, so I think it is moderately safe if used in the right manner. I would combine it with an asperin to avoid blood clotting, and move around and dance (not lay for 24 hours like most of the heroin addicts, that is a recipe for blood clotting). However, I would never recommend Ibogaine to someone with the same confidence as I would recommend mushrooms and LSD, because of course it is much more dangerous. People have died from Ibogaine, but as far as I know never from the physiological effects of LSD and mushrooms. If however you are eager to seek out a more profound experience, I wouldn't deny you Ibogaine. Maybe the danger is a part of the experience. Like the post Death999 referred me to, maybe we are not sufficiently exposed to fear. Ibogain can certainly scare you to death. The first time I used it, it felt like a black hole hanging in my throat.

Regarding people believing in science like a religion. Yes, that is a problem. The Bayesian theorem is the right approach to science, not Popper or logical positivism. But the great thing about making a new world government is that you can change everything. Even holidays and how science is practiced. And with smart people like you and Death999, it might be possible to create a society which has much less of these problems.

I am working on a logarithmic timeline now, which incorporates surface temperature, oxygen and co2 concentration. I am going to include it under the celebration of Nature. After all, in order to appreciate nature, we should know where it comes from and how it has evolved.

(http://archania.org/timeline.png)

Please defend my right to to challenge that to the death ;).

Regarding global warming this comes to mind: https://xkcd.com/1732/

Well, it's a bit broader than that. The theorem isn't a program of rationality, just the update-on-evidence rule in the case where you can evaluate all models. Since we aren't and can't be Ideal Bayesian Reasoners, the thrust is finding better methods (those which are less wrong) for thinking. Sometimes it's explicitly Bayesian, sometimes it's qualitatively Bayesian, usually the only Bayesian aspect of it is that keeping a large family of models in mind is helpful.

/me blushes.

The problem isn't mostly the smartness of the people, especially not the smartness of the few - not on its own. I think civics and sincerity (as opposed to the cynicism that yielded the 2016 Presidential Election) are more crucial to creating a society.




I think that plot leaves off the last 20 years. I can tell because the CO2 scale didn't leap to the right at the top.

What comes to my mind regarding the 2016 presidential election, is that people mostly get their information from their facebook friends today, and that they are very bad at using the Bayesian theorem when they are updating their beliefs and they are very bad at checking references to the validity of information sources they are exposed to. People are much better at herd mentality (if all my facebook friends believe that crocked Hillary is a devil worshiper, then I guess she must be a devil worshiper). My facebook profile was filled with posts like this one:

(https://i.sli.mg/Mt6VPY.jpg)

What we mustn't do is to use fake information against our enemies, because that is detrimental to the entire democratic process. Elections shouldn't be a propaganda war, it should be a war about facts.

Your elections are only a war about money.
The fucked up part is that Kevin Spacey can't even do this corrupt country justice with his portrayal of Frank Underwood in House of Cards.

Yeah, but except for a few European countries, it is mostly even worse in other countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country_or_territory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country_or_territory)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/20/best-and-worst-countries-for-women-the-full-list.html (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/20/best-and-worst-countries-for-women-the-full-list.html)

That was data from before the elections. You're likely to get fucked over roally in press freedom, corruption perception and lgbt rights once Trumpy takes office :)

Hence the civics. You don't need to understand Bayes for that. Civics is hard too, but in a different way, and I'd rather that the union rather than the intersection of people who can understand civics and Bayes get the benefit of that lesson.

Ok. Can you describe a bit more about what you mean with "civics". Do you mean some kind of mandatory education in primary, secondary or high school? You think that if the population is better educated about these things, they will engage more in society and vote better?

Btw. I have deleted ideology.pdf from my server now. The most updated version of my manuscript can now always be found at: http://archania.org/manuscript_for_a_new_world_government.pdf (http://archania.org/manuscript_for_a_new_world_government.pdf)

Today I made a new illustration for the front page, and wrote an additional paragraph in the abstract.

I mean understanding how societies and governments fit together, the advantages and disadvantages of various systems, but also how to not be suckered by the worst arguments in the world, and what productive policy debates look like.

How to get people to know that is a different question. School might be best, but that gives up on the adults... IDK.

I think the first thing we need to do, is to form a highly diverse team of highly talented individuals, only to figure out how to raise the level of understanding for the rest of the population. But I do think it is very important that not just a few, but the general population, believes in certain principles; such as freedom of speech and civil rights. Because I do think we need to have a democratic system, just because any system that isn't democratic will become too alienated from the general population. But a democratic system that votes a narcissistic sociopathic demagogue to president is clearly dysfunctional. Which is very sad, considering that we used to believe that things were going in the right direction with Obama. Now, there aren't a lot of sane presidents left in the world, except for maybe Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau . There seems to be more power in the hands of evil ones; such as Putin, Erdogan, Duterte, and now Trump.

The place it seems would be most helpful would be media places. These take a lot of money to run. There is a lot of competition for the ears and eyes of the people.

It's a hard problem, and having smart people on board isn't even the beginning.

I understand that social media wants to stay apolitical, but it might be a very successful technique, if the largest providers of social media came with ads for press freedom and civil rights. Press freedom should also be in social media's self interest. But it probably would get banned in China and Russia then.

Also, I think civil rights is quite difficult for people to understand, unless you belong to a discriminated people. Privileged "normal" people have difficulties with understanding the importance of civil rights. And even when people are discriminated, they might not understand the importance of civil rights for other discriminated people. Discriminated women might for example not understand the importance of less discrimination against black people and homosexuals. This is why I am not such a huge fan of feminism. Because I do not think it is all-inclusive, and I would rather support a movement that works against all kinds of discrimination. A civil rights movement.

Does anybody know if Facebook and google have intelligence-specific commercials? I am thinking that if Facebook and google collects a lot of information about their users, it might be more efficient to have simpler commercials to people with simple interests, while it might be more efficient with more complicated commercials to people with more complicated interests.

For example mathematical proofs and references to scientific articles for people with more complicated interests, while more emotional manipulative “cool” types of commercials for superficial people.

Officially not.

But there are ad companies who will select the selectors of your campaign such, that the ads shown will have a very high likeliness to be displayed separated by such criteria.
(This can be done by providing ads according to your newssites. Readers of NYT will have different interests and abilities to think things through than those solely relying on news feeds from fb. - but again, not a directly selectable ciriteria for alfabet and fb ads.)

I am thinking that it could be possible to make a bayesian algorithm that guesses which commercials to show, based upon data collected about the user. Then the bayesian algorithm measures success based upon if the user clicks on the ads or not.

The goal of the bayesian algorithm should just be to make people believe in freedom of the press and civil rights. Anybody here have experience with self-learning bayesian algorithms? We also need people to make ads that the algorithm can choose between (in multiple languages, including Arabian, Hindu, Mandarin and Russian).

(https://s27.postimg.org/6prxswxyr/chmmr.png)

I have removed most of my old stuff from http://www.archania.org (http://www.archania.org), and now I only have a link to the manuscript for a new world government there.

I have started a small scale advertisement campaign in google, but in order to succeed with this we probably need something like what I proposed in the previous post here.

Some of you might think that it is immoral to manipulate people, but I would say that it is much better than killing each other with conventional weapons.  People that have grown up in cultures where they are indoctrinated to believe that women are inferior to men, that black people are inferior to white people, and/or that homosexuality is deadly sin won't be easily convinced to believe in our modern understanding of civil rights.

I work as a technical consultant / programmer in internet advertising, but I don't really have experience with the algorithms that you mention (though I know that in my sector htere are companies working with such algorithms). I should mention though that european laws prohibit you from collecting such data about users unless they have agreed to it. And people already inclined to believe in free press are also more likely of the mindset that this info shouldn't be stored. So there you have a tough one.
Also, how do you determine if the ad is succesful in making people believe in free press? Because a lot of ads like the ones in the US presedential campaigns make you believe that they do care about free press.. but they likely have ulterior motives..

Additionally, how do you know what defines free press? I don't think anybody knows.
For example, I personally am very interested in how history repeats itself in Israël, with the zionists treating palestinians like an üntermensch. So I follow sites which claim they have free press about the things that are going on over there. But as with every freedom movement they choose what they report on carefully. If something diminishes their points (ie. a terrorist attack by palestinians) they don't report on that as heavily as they would when the IDF kills a palestinian kid. So I don't think that is free press.
But as a civilian, how can I judge whether every event is reported equally? Can journalists really be blamed for not reporting on things that don't interest them as much, and if so how is this measurabole? Because I don't think it is measurable at all.

Here is a link I found http://fastml.com/bayesian-machine-learning/ (http://fastml.com/bayesian-machine-learning/), but I think you need to have a course in machine learning, or something like that to be able to understand it. Death999 or onpon666 might have experience with these things.

I also found a link to this book in one of the comments: https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Bayesian-Data-Analysis-Second/dp/0124058884 (https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Bayesian-Data-Analysis-Second/dp/0124058884)

And here is another book I found at amazon https://www.amazon.com/Bayes-Rule-Tutorial-Introduction-Bayesian/dp/0956372848/ (https://www.amazon.com/Bayes-Rule-Tutorial-Introduction-Bayesian/dp/0956372848/)


Sure, but doesn't lots of software now ask you to agree to such things? I don't think the people we want to convince about these things are the ones that are eager to click no on the user agreements.


I guess the bayesian algorithm could use the collected user data to determine if a person has changed attitude in these matters. But the first challenge is not to convince a person. The first challenge is just to make a person click on the ad, and that we can easily measure.

Anyhow, since we want the users to click on the ads, every ad needs to have 2 parts. 1 part that is showed in facebook (or wherever), and the other part which the user comes to when they click on the advertisement.

(http://www.archania.org/ads2pages.png)

This is going to be quite a lot of work, especially if it is going to be in multiple languages. I suggest you make 5 teams, where each team works with a specific color.


If journalists are scared of writing about certain topics, then they have issues with freedom of press. If journalists feel like they can write about anything, I guess you could say that society has freedom of the press. Media bias is not the same as lack of press freedom. We have lots of media bias in the US and western Europe, but journalists are generally not scared of writing about certain topics. An exception might be psychedelics drugs. I think many journalists in the US and western Europe are scared of writing positively about psychedelic drugs. In China, Russia, and Turkey however, journalists are much more scared. There a journalist might get shot or arrested just for criticizing the government. So they have much less press freedom there. But as I said, there might be a lot of media bias in western Europe and USA. That is something else.

Zanthius, I don't think I understand what you want to accomplish and how you will measure that you have accomplished it?
I think you're holding a hammer and see everything as a nail by providing solutions to a problem which you have not clearly defined yet :).
I think it's best not to touch your graph painting tools until you understand what your problem is exactly :D

I think the best way to fight against dictatorships and authoritarian regimes is by spreading ideas about freedom of the press. If the people in these countries start to demand freedom of press, I believe these authoritarian regimes will be in trouble.

Spreading ideas about civil rights might help against racist ideologies and terrorist organizations, but there is also more to it. A strong belief in modern civil rights seems necessary to achieve world peace.

Also. If for example a dictatorship falls, but the population doesn't have a strong belief in civil rights, the next regime is likely to be equally bad. And the rulers of the new regime are likely to be involved in atrocities against people of the old ruling class.

But how will they know that they have no freedom of press? Indoctrination is a very powerful tool. Or just plain lies on a wikipedia page with a map where coutnries are ranked to freedom of press indexes which you assume are right, but are they?


That's absolutely true, but I think it's more deeply rooted in the way we think about ourselves. We think of ourselfves as higher, better than people from other countries or people from different beliefs. When we see a muslim we have our judgements ready about how they are different than us, instead of focussing on the similarities between muslims and christians we immediately focus on how they treat women and gay people for example.

Do they really believe that on such a level? It's really hard for people who have no housing, no food, no education and no healthcare to even start to think about free press. They have no access to the internet, if they could even read at all. And if they could, they would likely be living in an indoctrinating facebook or google bubble, which automatically shields you from things they expect you to not like (or are bought by the powers that be to indoctrinate you).

The most recent example of free press not being what you want for your own political goals is wikileaks in regards to hillary clinton.
Wikileaks is an excellent example of free press, but they only had info on Hillary to leak (provided to them by Russian hackers which were hired by Russia to further Russia's goals, ie. elect Trump).
So Wikileaks leaked perfectly objective information, but they didn't do so fairly. They didn't leak info on trump because they didn't have it.
Then again, can objective news agencies really be expected to weigh what they leak against their personal beliefs of fairness? I don't think so.
But there you have a perfect example on how free press can be abused to further your own goals.

Ok, but if you don't have freedom of the press, the potential for abuse is infinitely bigger. And in general, I agree with you that there are many issues with this, but we need to start from somewhere, and spreading ideas about freedom of the press and civil rights seems like a good place to start.

Especially since the natural evolution of things now, seems to be increased nationalism in Europe, increased hostilities between Europeans/Americans and Muslims, and that both Putin and Trump want more nuclear weapons. I think Trump even has said that he doesn't understand why they aren't using more nuclear weapons.

Anyhow, I made this illustration to clarify a bit why I think we should focus on spreading ideas about freedom of the press and civil rights.

(http://www.archania.org/why.png)

And btw, we are never going to find any common solution to the ecological challenges we face, or the global economic inequality, unless we dissolve the authoritarian regimes first. Because authoritarian regimes don't necessarily care about international agreements, or international law.

I have put everything together in a pdf-file now:

http://archania.org/chmmr-avatar.pdf (http://archania.org/chmmr-avatar.pdf)

I know the general principles of Bayes, but I would be starting from scratch on implementing a Bayesian induction engine. Don't count on me.

Ok. But what do you think about the project in general? Do you think such a program actually could make a difference in the world, and if so do you think it would be beneficial?

Would you maybe focus upon implementing other ideas, or follow a different strategy to implement them? I am open to suggestions.

Edit: I noticed that adobe acrobat reader had problems reading my PDF-manuscript. I have therefore also put out a HTML version at http://www.archania.org (http://www.archania.org)

Come on guys. You are the last hope for the core values  of western civilization. Look what the Germans are saying: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/goodbye-to-american-global-leadership-by-joschka-fischer-2016-12 (https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/goodbye-to-american-global-leadership-by-joschka-fischer-2016-12)

I have made these 4 ad groups in google. Any comments, or proposals for improvements?

(http://archania.org/ads.png)

You're kind of overselling it, aren't you?

This is politics. Loud people are out there, and you're some guy with a tract. Other solutions with varying degrees of similarity to your proposed solutions exist, and they're more likely to be actualized because the people backing them already have power.

Most critically, your ideas, while good, are not particularly new and interesting. You're not pulling in a direction that others aren't already pulling.

This is good and bad. It's bad in that we can already tell that the idea isn't going to spread like wildfire and change the world rapidly. Chances weren't good to begin with on that. But it's good news in that you don't need to start all over from the beginning. I'd do a survey of existing groups that do things you approve of and see what you can do to help them.

Well, the whole point was kinda to integrate all the good ideas into one agenda, and get people to follow that agenda. I could join a bunch of different organizations, for example a civil rights movement, an environmentalism organization, and a political organization that wants a more progressive tax system, and so on. But most people have more than enough difficulties keeping one idea (or agenda) in their head. That is why I think it is important to have an agenda that incorporates all the good ideas. So that people don't need to focus upon all of them themselves.

Just think about how much better it is to join a civil rights movement, than to join a feminist organization. If you join the civil rights movement, you also support the rights of homosexuals, black people, and other ethnic minorities. Of course all these groups of people should have the same rights as other people. So I think you will accomplish much more by joining a civil rights movement, than by joining a feminist organization. The only way to accomplish as much without joining a civil rights movement, would be by joining several organizations. One feminist organization, one for homosexual rights, and another for the rights of black people and other minorities. Unfortunately, that would be a bit too much for most people, since most people have more than enough with keeping one idea/agenda in their head.

Of course, the UN might already have incorporated many of the same ideas, and I might have more success by joining the UN. But there are many things I don't like about the UN. Their leader is not democratically elected by the world population, and I am not convinced that they actually care so much about increasing taxes for the rich, since many of the people working high up in the UN belong to the rich elite that benefits from the huge income inequality we have today. They might however care about environmentalism, civil rights and global peace(less military), but since national leaders aren't subordinate to the UN, they haven't been overly successful with these things, and there is little hope that they will be any more successful in the near future.

Other than that, I am sure that Bernie Sanders wants many of the same things as me. I wish he was running for world president (not just to become the American president). I would vote for him. But it seems like your country preferred a narcissistic sociopathic demagogue / con artist.  And similar candidates are becoming more popular in Europe.

If the election of Donald Trump has taught us anything, it is that most people want it simple. And in order to have it simple, we need to consolidate around one ideology and one candidate.

What we need is for people to believe in one ideology that incorporates all the good ideas, and one candidate that believes in all the good ideas (like Bernie Sanders).

If all the good people are split into different organizations/agendas, the wolf (Donald Trump) eats you. But if all the sheep stand together, you might easily kill the wolf.

Well, this all comes down to reaction kinetics. I think we have strong reasons to believe that a world government is on a lower energy level than the multinational world we inhabit now (due to for example less military expenditure). But I agree with you that there is a huge energy barrier between the current multinational world, and a integrated world.

(http://archania.org/energybarrier.png)

However, there are plenty of things you can do to increase the speed of a reaction (for example increasing the temperature or using a catalyst). There is a huge energy barrier to initiate fusion of hydrogen, but once it has been ignited it goes uncontrollably fast. Magic mushrooms and other psychedelics might work as catalysts for changing the mindset of people (http://archania.org/magic_mushrooms_and_human_evolution.pdf (http://archania.org/magic_mushrooms_and_human_evolution.pdf)). Internet commercials might be considered a different type of catalysts (http://archania.org/chmmr-avatar.pdf (http://archania.org/chmmr-avatar.pdf)).

I don't see magic mushrooms being a method of effecting political change because I can't see them becoming widely used either in the general population or the political classes.

Another issue is, reaction kinetics is a poor model of opinion shifts and governments. Or if it is, the dominant force is usually friction.

But why do you think the American civil rights movement emerged at the same time as the hippies were ingesting large amounts of psychedelics? There was lots of opposition against the Vietnam war then, lots of civil rights activists, and so on. If the hippies had the Internet we have today at their disposal, I am sure they would have spread their peaceful agenda across the globe. But unfortunately they didn't, and as you say, psychedelics are not widely used today. Drugs that make you more stupid seems to be the choice of today, while nationalism and xenophobia seems to be popular in politics.

We have Internet though.... and I agree with you that it probably is our best option.

Edit: You just gave me a great idea! What you say about magic mushrooms consumption doesn't necessarily apply to the entire world. In Gabon (mid-western Africa), they are consuming a lot of Ibogaine, which is an even more powerful psychedelic than magic mushrooms, while in Peru (latin America) they are consuming a lot of Ayahuasca which is another psychedelic with similar properties to magic mushrooms. I believe the main language of Gabon is French, while the main language of Peru is Spanish. I am already working on translating my manuscript into different languages, and when I am done I should of course target advertisement traffic to Gabon and Peru, because people living there might be much more susceptible to these ideas since consumption of psychedelics is much more common there.  The revolution doesn't need to start in Europe/USA. It can just as well start in Gabon and Peru.

I have changed it from "tension between countries" to "friction between countries" now, and included the graph in my manuscript in the end of concluding remarks.

It might not be so accurate to describe this with reaction kinetics, since in chemical reactions you use energy to break molecular bonds, and get energy with the formation of new molecular bonds. Even if we are not breaking and forming molecular bonds here, we are using energy to break nationalistic beliefs (the force that holds a country together), and getting energy from forming a belief in a world government. So I think it is a good analogy, and these local and global minima are used in optimization theory to describe a wide variety of phenomena.

Edit: What is a belief, if not molecular bonds in the synapses in the brain? Maybe breaking a belief is not so different from breaking a molecular bond after all..... the brain is composed of molecules....

Edit 8 jan: It is intuitive that in requires energy to break a belief. If somebody proves to us that we are wrong, it hurts us, and we feel emotional pain. This seems to be in accordance with breaking a molecular bond. Atoms prefer to be in molecules because they get to lower energy levels when they are joined together in molecules. So it takes energy to break molecular bonds, and we feel emotional pain when our cherished beliefs are proven wrong. But shouldn't this be symmetrical? If it hurts to break a belief, shouldn't we also feel pleasure during the formation of a belief, just like atoms release energy during the formation of molecular bonds? This seems less intuitive to me.

I have made this theory into a more generalized form now: http://www.archania.org/falsified_beliefs_and_5ht2a_receptor agonists.pdf (http://www.archania.org/falsified_beliefs_and_5ht2a_receptor agonists.pdf)

Do you think they might be interested in discussing this at the lesswrong website?

I'm not sure that bringing this there would work well. Politics are something that site tries to avoid. Perhaps you can keep it narrowly to the topic of spreading rationality, eschewing reference to your political goals. That seems like it would be tough.

Also, your theories tend cover a lot more ground than you thoroughly justify. That makes sense in a political tract, as you're mostly speaking to people who know what you mean, you just try to organize them. On LW, it's best to be considerably narrower and controlled. If you speculate, label it as such.

Also, it might be wise to read some of the 'sequences', which are some base material for the site. There is quite a lot there, so don't worry about finishing it all before posting! But it would make sense to get an idea of the overall idea. I'd start with How to Actually Change Your Mind, one of the original sequences (https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Original_sequences).

I wasn't thinking about the politics, just about why people often continue to believe in falsified explanations after they are proven wrong. I found this article which addresses the same issue (http://psychcentral.com/news/2012/09/23/why-do-we-believe-lies-even-after-they-are-proven-wrong/45002.html (http://psychcentral.com/news/2012/09/23/why-do-we-believe-lies-even-after-they-are-proven-wrong/45002.html)), but I don't know if there exists any theory which describes why we get hurt from having our cherished beliefs proven wrong, and why it is so difficult for us to let go of a cherished belief even after it has been proven wrong. I will try to read a bit on the link you gave me.

It seems quite irrational to get hurt when proven wrong. A more rational reaction might actually be to get happy. At least falsified beliefs would disappear faster from our civilization then. So it is kinda weird that we haven't evolved to get happy when proven wrong.

This guy is very smart. I have read a few of the sequences under "How to Actually Change your Mind" now, but I think I am going to read all of the sequences on the page you gave me. I have also given the link to some of my friends. Very interesting stuff.

It is also interesting how much we seem to have learned about our own rationality, after we started to try to understand how to make computers learn. That is why it doesn't seem like such a bad idea to make a Bayesian induction engine from scratch. Maybe I would learn a lot about my own rationality by doing that.

Regarding the Bayesian induction engine. I am taking a course in machine learning offered by Standford University at https://www.coursera.org now. They also have a course there about Bayesian Statistics which I am going to take afterwards.

There is a lot of attitude that we have it all right now, we are on the right track, and all of humanity before us was a clusterf* of ignorance and bigotry.

Does that seem like a strange sort of arrogance to anyone else? After all, it involves making virtually everyone from history into villains, while touting our new "tolerance" morality structure as the supreme good. It ignores the real lessons of history, particularly the narrow-sightedness of any group of people during their own short time on earth, and elevates our present generation to an absurd pedestal of superior understanding.

Does anyone else feel like this ideology is the supreme expression of arrogance? Do the extreme conflicts within it raise any eyebrows? I know the thread has devolved into treating the human mind like a computer that needs to be reprogrammed, but I'm responding more to the original direction of the thread.

Well, that is not entirely true. Societies started to become patriarchal some thousand years ago, and discrimination of women came as a consequence of patriarchy. There isn't much evidence of discrimination against women before the first patriarchal societies formed.  Discrimination against homosexuals seems to have come even later. There was acceptance for homosexuality in ancient Greece, and early Buddhist texts don't seem to discriminate against homosexuals.

Ethnic discrimination might always have existed. Even in the lower paleolithic era, when humans lived in small groups, they might occasionally have acquired slaves from other groups. There might have been widespread discrimination against Neanderthals, which caused them to go extinct. Anyhow, do you really think it is arrogance to argue against slavery and discrimination, just because it has been common for most of human history?

This way of arguing seems similar to: "Religions can't be all wrong since so many people believe in them". Also then, according to your way of thinking, the first atheists must have been extremely arrogant. But isn't intellectual arrogance more about your unwillingness to listen to arguments from other people? If you listen to other people, but find errors in their ways of thinking, is that also arrogance?

Btw. Here are some of the courses I have signed up for at http://www.coursera.org (http://www.coursera.org). Great site! And for most of the courses you only need to pay if you want a diploma.

(http://i.imgur.com/JFQCFoX.png)

The University of Leiden even have a course about what I thought about regarding taxes:

(https://s15.postimg.org/vu2i9w8az/taxes.png)

Told you you weren't alone…

Yeah, I am impressed with the professors at Leiden University in Holland. They seem to be very forwarding thinking, and have global perspective. Check out this video this guy has made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeAvBvf_N6I&feature=youtu.be (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeAvBvf_N6I&feature=youtu.be)

But even if I am not alone, we might be moving too slow. I am worried about Russia and China moving in to replace USA as world leaders now ( https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/russia-role-in-new-world-order-by-sergei-karaganov-2017-02 (https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/russia-role-in-new-world-order-by-sergei-karaganov-2017-02) ). What better time to attack than when you have a dysfunctional president? And then we can just forget about such luxuries as press freedom and civil rights.

Here is a quote from the article:

They have a course even to help me with that :)

(https://s3.postimg.org/xtd0r341f/humility.png)