= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on The Shadow Question - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (45)
I did have to read (only) the first sentence before I got it. Do I get 15 geek points or 20?
I got it from the title alone, but skimmed right past the part of the introduction where points were being offered. Guess that means I'm still too unlucky minded!
By "the first sentence" do you mean "This is part 2 of a sequence on problem solving", or "You have to be careful what you wish for"?
The latter, of course.
I got the reference.
And I've never actually watched more than a couple of episodes of the show...
Ouch, I got it wrong. I thought it was talking about the radio program from my father's childhood. The tagline I had in mind was, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows." Yikes, dating myself.
The silly examples with the library book reminded me of the idea that if you're sitting on a local maximum of the fitness function, any direction you go is down. I think that's why these shadow questions are hard: they are asking you to change your status quo, which almost certainly means coming down (at least temporarily) from a local maximum. I suppose that's why smart people can sometimes seem so over-analytical about big changes. They're smart enough to already be sitting on a pretty good local maximum, and smart enough to recognize that any tradeoffs involved may be complicated.