Did you know you can just buy blackbelts?

lesswrong.com

1 point·surprisetalk··3 comments

It's such an incoherent article that it's hard to do more than react to the title.

It doesn't surprise me at all. It's not like there is really a central system for martial arts ranks. When I was a kid I went to this Dojo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaolin_Kempo_Karate

which has a slightly different system of belts and isn't taken seriously by everyone. Despite that, decades later, the last time somebody held a fake gun to my head they were tasting dirt and then it hit me that I would have done the same thing if it was a real gun.

I get the sense the author has a very specific example in mind (something less hypothetical than black belts) that they're very carefully not spelling out. But they fail to abstract their grievance into a general principle that holds water on its own.

I think it is a problem with those people, they have a lot of groupthink and if you think something else (e.g. AI doesn't become a god when the number of neurons N → ∞) you wouldn't feel psychologically safe. So you get this stuff.

I think I got to green belt in the Villari system long ago, I still have a Gi with a black belt for cosplay. I am not going to tell you I have any authority as a martial arts instructor but when my son got interested in

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-section_staff

I studied up on forms that use that vs the Spear and we trained in that; any conventional martial arts school would make you spend at least a year practicing punches and kicks before doing a weapons form but he just didn't have the patience. Could I teach a beginner the basics of punches and kicks, sure. I'll do it for my friends and family but I'm not going to hang a shingle as a martial arts instructor.

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