Post #3485637

2026-06-30 07:36 UTC

I dunno who “Bentham’s Bulldog” is, but they live up to their nick and I like the cut of their jib: lesswrong.com/…/functional-decision-theory-not-ev… The community is reduced to downvoting, sputtering, and “the real influential philosophers live in Canada are working in industry, not academia”: lesswrong.com/…/functional-decision-theory-not-ev…

Replies (8)

@aio@awful.systems 2026-06-30 09:15

rationality is when i spend hours arguing on the internet about whether Omega could defeat Super Saiyan Goku

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@Architeuthis@awful.systems 2026-06-30 10:45

I dunno who “Bentham’s Bulldog” He’s the shrimp welfare guy who thinks he can prove god.

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@TrashGoblin@awful.systems 2026-06-30 17:39

He also argues somewhere for strong longtermism, so I’d say there’s something significantly wrong with his jib somewhere, even if he’s right about decision theory and contrarianism.

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@Soyweiser@awful.systems 2026-06-30 18:08

And FDT asks: what action would my algorithm outputting make me expect to be the richest if it was settled at the start of time?

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@corbin@awful.systems 2026-06-30 18:59

This self-own from the comments is amazing: Suppose you are a selfish CDT agent, and I am considering whether to hire you to clean my house. Once you’re inside my house, you might steal my stuff instead of cleaning my house. Suppose that California Labour Laws require that I pay you up-front and I know I have no chance of getting my money or stuff back. Say your preference order is “Steal” > “Do the job” > “Don’t get hired”. This is a racist dog-whistle which attacks ESL housekeepers; this sort of meme’s frustratingly common on the West Coast.

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@lurker@awful.systems 2026-06-30 19:02

They also made the “Yudkowsky is frequently, confidently, egregiously wrong” post

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@jh29a@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2026-06-30 23:29

All this “Omnicient evil demon reads your source code” stuff really feels like Turing would have a thing or two to say about it. (Since one needs to have some even worse bends in logic to believe FDT, as Bulldog states it, is good, it’s kinda moot here.)

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@Architeuthis@awful.systems 2026-07-01 07:17

Oh no: The Epstein Hysteria tl;dr: ephebophilia actually, just another criminal case nothing to see here, won’t someone think of the non-offending pedophiles and the privacy of the people in the emails especially those who even though they come off as obvious creeps who consorted with a known sex trafficker have not yet been found legally liable. Somehow doesn’t mention the sitting president of the USA even once…

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