Here's our place to discuss Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. Have fun building smaller brains inside of your brains (or not, as you please).
Here's our place to discuss Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. Have fun building smaller brains inside of your brains (or not, as you please).
Eliezer_Yudkowsky said:
It is only the Mind Projection Fallacy that makes some people talk as if the higher levels could have a separate existence - different levels of organization can have separate representations in human maps, but the territory itself is a single unified low-level mathematical object. Suppose this were wrong. Suppose that the Mind Projection Fallacy was not a fallacy, but simply true. Suppose that a 747 had a fundamental physical existence apart from the quarks making up the 747. What experimental observations would you expect to make, if you found yourself in such a universe? If you can't come up with a good answer to that, it's not observation that's ruling out "non-reductionist" beliefs, but a priori logical incoherence. If you can't say what predictions the "non-reductionist" model makes, how can you say that experimental evidence rules it out?
This comes from a post from almost a year ago, Excluding the Supernatural. I quote it because I was hoping to revive some discussion on it: to me, this argument seems dead wrong.
The counter-argument might go like this:
Reductionism is anything but a priori logically necessary-- it's something t...
What are some examples of recent progress in AI?
In several of Elizer's talks, such as this one, he's mentioned that AI research has been progressing at around the expected rate for problems of similar difficultly. He also mentioned that we've reached around the intelligence level of a lizard so far.
Ideally I'd like to have some examples I can give to people when they say things like "AI is never going to work" - the only examples I've been able to come up with so far have been AI in games, but they don't seem to think that counts because "it...
In the previous open thread, there was a request that we put together The Simple Math of Everything. There is now a wiki page, but it only has one section. Please contribute.
Some questions about the site:
1) How come there's no place for a user profile? Or am I just too stupid to find it? I know there was a thread a while back to post about yourself, and I joined LW on facebook, but it would be much easier for people to see a profile when they click on someone's name.
2) What's with the default settings for what comments "float to the top" of the comment list? Not to whine or anything, but I made a comment that got modded to 11 on the last Perceptual Control theory thread, followed up on by a few other highly-modded...
Some people commented on the "inner circuits" discussion that they didn't want this site to turn into a self-help or self-improvement forum, which made me wonder whether are there any open and relatively high quality discussion forums or communities to discuss self-improvement in general and in specific?
Inspired by Yvain's post on Dr. Ramachandran's model of two different reasoning models located in the two hemispheres, I am considering the hypothesis that in my normal everyday interactions, I am a walking, talking, right brain confabulating apologist. I do not update my model of how the world works unless I discover a logical inconsistency. Instead, I will find a way to fit all evidence into my preexisting model.
I'm a theist, and I've spent time on Less Wrong trying to be critical of this view without success. I've already ascertained that God's existenc...
What are some suggestions for approaching life rationally when you know that most of your behavior will be counter to your goals, that you'll know this behavior is counter to your goals, and you DON'T know whether or not ending this division between what you want and what you do (ie forgetting about your goals and why what you're doing is irrational and just doing it) has a net harmful or helpful effect?
I'm referring to my anxiety disorder. My therapist recently told me something along the lines of, "But you have a very mild form of conversion disorde...
So, I'm looking for some advice.
I seem to have finally reached at that stage in my life where I find myself in need of an income. I'm not interested in a particularly large income; at the moment, I only want just enough to feed a Magic: the Gathering and video game habit, and maybe pay for medical insurance. Something like $8,000 a year, after taxes, would be more than enough, as long as I can continue to live in my parents' house rent-free.
The usual method of getting an income is to get a full-time job. However, I don't find that appealing, not one bit. I...
Is there a way to undelete posts?
That might seem a weird question - just submit it again - but it turns out that "deleting" a post doesn't actually delete it. The post just moves to a netherworld where people can view it, link to it, discuss it in the comments etc. but: a) it doesn't show in the sidebar, b) it doesn't show in the user's submitted page, c) it says "deleted" where the poster's username should be. Editing and saving doesn't help.
This calamity has just befallen a post of mine that I submitted by mistake, then killed, but p...
Anders Sandberg - Swine Flu, Black Swans, and Geneva-eating Dragons (video/youtube)
Anders Sandberg on what statistics tells us we should (not) be worried about. Catastrophic risks, etc.
An interesting book is out: Information, Physics and Computation by Andrea Montanari and Marc Mézard. See this blog post for more detail.
Sorry, I sort of asked this question in a thread here, but I'm interested enough in answers that I'm going to ask it again.
Does it seem like a good idea for the long-term future of humanity for me to become a math teacher or producer of educational math software? Will having a generation of better math and science people be good or bad for humanity on net?
If I included a bit about existential risks in my lecturing/math software would that cause people to take them more seriously or less seriously?
A terribly trivial first post, but as an anchor it'll do: is there a way to change the timezone in which timestamps are displayed? I'd also prefer the YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS 24-hour format over the current one, but it doesn't really matter all that much. (If the timezone turns out to match up with BST here, then forget that, I guess.)
Edit: UTC, it seems. I can live with that.
A long chain of reasoning leads me to conclude that the UFAI problem would be completely averted if this question were answered--to use the vernacular, I feel like that's the case.
But seriously. Whenever we think the thought "I want to think about apples", we then go on to think about apples. How the heck does that work? What is the proximate cause of our control over our thoughts?
My previous attempt at asking this question failed in a manner that confuses me greatly, so I'm going to attempt to repair the question.
Suppose I'm taking a math test. I see that one of the questions is "Find the derivative of 1/cos(x^2)." I conclude that I should find the derivative of 1/cos(x^2). I then go on to actually do so. What is it that causes me (specifically, the proximate cause, not the ultimate) to go from concluding that I should do something to attempting to do it?
So, I'm looking for some advice.
I seem to have finally reached at that stage in my life where I find myself in need of an income. I'm not interested in a particularly large income; at the moment, I only want just enough to feed a Magic: the Gathering and video game habit, and maybe pay for medical insurance. Something like $8,000 a year, after taxes, would be more than enough, as long as I can continue to live in my parents' house rent-free.
The usual method of getting an income is to get a full-time job. However, I don't find that appealing, not one bit. I want to have lots of free time in which to use the things I buy with the money I would earn. I'd much rather just continue to spend down my savings than work more than two days a week at a normal job.
This suggests that instead, I should try to get a part-time job. Chances are, that would mean working in a local restaurant or store of some kind. Unfortunately, I tried one of these once before, and it didn't work out very well. I was hired to be a cashier at a local supermarket. To my great surprise, I didn't particularly mind the work, but on my third day after being hired, I was fired for insubordination. (I had a paperback novel with me, and I wouldn't stop reading it during periods when there were no customers.) I've also tried working for a temp agency. That didn't work out too well either. After completing my first assignment, I was told that the company I was contracted out to complained about my behavior (it's a long story), and so I would not be considered for any other assignments. In effect, I was fired from there, too.
As far as I'm concerned, the ideal source of income would be something with no set hours, that I could leave and come back to as I please. In other words, if I decide that I'd rather play video games for a month instead of earning money, it won't prevent me from earning money the month after that. Unfortunately, the only things I know of offhand that work like that are writing (which is extremely hard to make a living at, and requires a lot of time and effort anyway) and online poker (which I suck at). I'm lazy and undisciplined, and I'm not particularly interested in changing that, so I'm hoping to find a way to make money that works even if I don't try very hard at it.
In terms of skills and education, I have a B.S. from Rutgers University in computer engineering. I can program, but when I've tried programming as a job (as a summer intern), it turned into a Dilbert cartoon very, very quickly. Basically, I was given vague instructions, left on my own to do whatever, and instead of working, I mostly sat and surfed the Web while feeling guilty about not working. I don't think I want to do programming professionally. I ever have to sit in another cubicle again, there's a good chance I'm quitting on the spot.
So, um... I need some suggestions on what to do. Bring on the other-optimizing?
A retail job other than the supermarket might be interesting. Alternately, take a notepad instead of a novel and doodle/write instead of read when there are no customers.
I don't know if your BS in comp engineering includes other aspects of computer work than programming, and I don't know if people hire for Configuration management/process control or reliability testing right away. If the answer is yes to both, then those jobs are much more structured than "make the computer do this 'kay by." I've never had a programming job where I didn't have to report to CM/process often enough that I felt I could get away with slacking. Lots of itty bitty crunch times.