Wei_Dai comments on Towards a New Decision Theory - Less Wrong

50 Post author: Wei_Dai 13 August 2009 05:31AM

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Comment author: Wei_Dai 16 August 2009 03:35:56AM *  1 point [-]

I think my earlier comments may not have been as clear as they could be. Let me back off and try again. We should distinguish between two different questions:

  1. Is my article correct and relevant within the context of the past evolution of intelligence?
  2. What happens from now on?

I don't think you've given any arguments against 1. Since TDT didn't arise from evolution, and it wasn't invented until recently, clearly TDT-related arguments aren't relevant as far as question 1 is concerned. So again, I see no reason to retract the article.

As for 2, I have some doubts about this:

"Just use TDT throughout"

I'm trying to explore it using this puzzle. Do you have any thoughts on it?

Comment author: cousin_it 25 May 2010 05:32:06PM *  0 points [-]

Woah, it took me a long time to parse "Smart Losers". The technical parts of the article seem to be correct, but as for its evolutional relevance... In your scenario, being smart doesn't hurt you, being known to be smart does; so it's most advantageous to be "secretly smart". So if your conclusions were correct, we'd probably see many adaptations aimed at concealing our intelligence from people we interact with.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 04 September 2010 04:20:27PM 0 points [-]

So if your conclusions were correct, we'd probably see many adaptations aimed at concealing our intelligence from people we interact with.

Not if the cost of concealing intelligence was too high. Our ancestors lived in tribes with a lot of gossip. Trying to conceal intelligence would have entailed pretending to be dumb at virtually all times, which implies giving up most of the benefits of being intelligent.

Comment author: gwern 04 February 2011 09:37:20PM 0 points [-]

Trying to conceal intelligence would have entailed pretending to be dumb at virtually all times, which implies giving up most of the benefits of being intelligent.

There would still be benefits if your model is at all accurate and there are 'secret rounds' in ordinary human life. Just pretend to be stupid in public and then be smart in private rounds. To frustrate this, one would need to assume that the additional smartness costs too much. (It is so expensive that it outweighs the gains, or the gains are minimal so any cost outweighs them.)

It seems reasonable to me that there are private rounds in real life and that smartness is a net win.

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