End of life regulation is one reason cryonics is suffering, as well: without the ability to ensure preservation when the brain is still relatively healthy, the chances diminish significantly. I think it'd be interesting to see cryonics organizations put field offices in countries or states with legal suicide laws. Here's a Frontline special on suicide tourists.

The framing of the end of life issue as a gain or a loss as in the monkey token exchange probably makes a gigantic difference in the choices made.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/2d9/open_thread_june_2010_part_4/2cnn?c=1

When you feel you are in a desperate situation, you will do desperate things and clutch at straws, even when you know those choices are irrational. I think this is the mindset behind the clutching at straws that quacks exploit with CAM, as in the Gonzalez Protocol for pancreatic cancer.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=1545

It is actually worse than doing nothing, worse than doing what main stream medicine recommends, but because there is the promise of complete recovery (even if it is a false promise), that is what people choose based on their irrational aversion to risk.

This is easier to say when you're near the top of the current curve.

It doesn't affect me much that my computer can't handle hi-def youtube, because I'm just a couple of doubling times behind the state of the art.

But if you were using a computer ten doubling times back, you'd have trouble even just reading lesswrong. Even if you overcame the format and software issues, we'd be trading funny cat videos that are bigger than all your storage. You'd get nothing without a helper god to downsample them.

When the singularity approaches, the doubling time will decrease, for some people. Maybe not for all.

Maybe will will /feel/ like a linear increase in utility for the people who's abilities are being increased right along. For people who are 10 doublings behind and still falling, it will be obvious something is different..

I agree with your post, especially since I expect to win my bet with Eliezer.

That sounds (to me) better than having children, but not as good as living longer.

Copying has at best zero utility (as regards interests): each copy only indulges in one interest, and I anticipate being only one copy, even if I don't know in advance which one.

How is having children at all similar? 1) children would have different interests; 2) I cannot control (precommit) future children; 3) raising children would be for me a huge negative utility - both emotionally and resource-wise.

Waste of processing power. Having dozens of focuses of attention and corresponding body/brain construction is more efficient.

I wouldn't have problems copying myself as long as I could merge the copies afterwards. However, it might not be possible to have a merge operation for human level systems that both preserves information and preserves sanity. E.g. if one copy started studying philosophy and radically changed its world views from the original, how do you merge this copy back into the original without losing information?

Sounds wonderful. Divide and conquer.

As this sounds like a computer assisted scenario, I would like the ability to append memories while sleeping. Wake up and have access to the memories of the copy. This would not necessarily include full proficiency as I suspect that muscle memory may not get copied.

using only your present knowledge

This strikes me as an un-lifelike assumption. If I had to explain things in this way, I would expect to encounter some things that I don't explicitly know (and other that I knew and have forgotten), and to have to (re)derive them. But I expect that I would be able to rederive almost all of them.

Refining my own understanding is a natural part of building a complex explanation-story to tell to others, and will happen unless I've already built this precise story before and remember it.

Can you teach a talented, untrained person a skill so that they exceed your own ability? Can you then identify why they are superior? If you have deep level knowledge of your area of expertise that you can impart to others, you ought to be able to evaluate and train a replacement based on "raw talent."

Considering that intellectual or artistic endeavors may have a variety of details hidden even from the expert, perhaps a clearer example may be found in sports coaches.

I think that the "teaching" benchmark you claim here is actually a bit weaker than a Level 2 understanding. To successfully teach a topic, you don't need to know lots of connections between your topic and everything else; you only need to know enough such connections to convey the idea. I really think this lies somewhere between Level 1 and Level 2.

I'll claim to have Level 2 understanding on the core topics of my graduate research, some mathematics, and some core algorithmic reasoning. I'm sure I don't have all of the connections between these things and the rest of my world model, but I do have many, and they pervade my understanding.

I think I know a fair amount about doing calligraphy, but I'm dubious that someone could get a comparable level of knowledge without doing a good bit of calligraphy themselves.

If I were doing a serious job of teaching, I would be learning more about how to teach as I was doing it.

I consider myself to be a good but not expert explainer.

Possibly of interest: The 10-Minute Rejuvenation Plan: T5T: The Revolutionary Exercise Program That Restores Your Body and Mind : a book about an exercise system which involves 5 yoga moves. It's by a woman who'd taught 700 people how to do the system, and shows an extensive knowledge of the possible mistakes students can make and adaptations needed to make the moves feasible for a wide variety of people.

My point is that explanation isn't an abstract perfectible process existing simply in the mind of a teacher.

Criminal Law: Yes to Level 2. Yes to teaching a layperson. It would take a while, for sure, but it's doable. Some of the work requires an understanding of a different lifestyle; if you can't see the potential issues with prosecuting a robbery by a prostitute and her armed male friend, or you can't predict that a domestic violence victim will have a non-credible recantation, you'll need some other education.

I've done a lot of instruction in this field. It is common for instruction not to take until there's other experience in the field which helps things join up.

Bridge: Yes to Level 2. Possibly to teaching a layperson. The ability to play bridge well is correlated heavily to intelligence, but it also correlates to a certain zeal for winning. I have taught one person to play very well indeed, but that may not be replicable, and took years. (On an aside, I am very likely the world's foremost expert on online bridge cheating; teaching cheating prevention would require teaching bridge first.)

Teaching requires more than reasonable intelligence on the part of the teachee. Some people who are very intelligent are ineducable. (Many of these are violators of my 40% rule: You are allowed to think you are 40% smarter/faster/stronger/better than you are. After that, it's obnoxious.) Some people are not interested in learning a given subject. Some people will not overcome preset biases. Some people have high aptitudes in some areas and little aptitude in others (though intelligence strongly tends to spill over.)

Anyway, I'm interested in the article. My penultimate effort to explain something to many people - Bayes' Theorem to lawyers - was a moderate failure; my last effort to explain something less mathy to a crowd was a substantial success. (My last experience in explaining something, with assistance, to 12 people was a complete failure.)

--JRM

Computer programming: I'm not sure if I am at Level 2 or not on this.

In favor of being at Level 2: I regularly think about non-computer-related topics with a CS-like approach (i.e. using information theory ideas when playing the inference game Zendo).

Also, I strongly associate my knowledge of "folk psychology" and "folk science" to computer science ideas, and these insights work in both directions. For example, the "learned helplessness" phenomenon, where inexperienced users become so uncomfortable with a system that they prefer to cling to their inexperienced status than to risk failure in an attempt to understand the system better, appears in many areas of life having nothing directly to do with computers.

Evidence against being at Level 2: I do not have the necessary computer engineering knowledge to connect my understanding of computer programming to my understanding of physics. And, although I have not tried this very often, my experiments in attempting to teach computer programming to laypeople have been middling at best.

My assessment at this point is that I am probably near to Level 2 in computer programming, but not quite there yet.

I will reply to this in the sense of

"do you believe you are aware of the inferential connections between your expertise and layperson-level knowledge?",

since I am not so familiar with the formalism of a "Level 2" understanding.

My uninteresting, simple answer is: yes.

My philosophical answer is that I find the entire question to be very interesting and strange. That is, the relationship between teaching and understanding is quite strange IMO. There are many people who are poor teachers but who excel in their discipline. It seems to be a contradiction because high-level teaching skill seems to be a sufficient, and possibly necessary condition for masterful understanding.

Personally I resolve this contradiction in the following way. I feel like my own limitations make it to where I am forced to learn a subject by progressing at it in very simplistic strokes. By the time I have reached a mastery, I feel very capable of teaching it to others, since I have been forced to understand it myself in the most simplistic way possible.

Other people, who are possibly quite brilliant, are able to master some subjects without having to transmute the information into a simpler level. Consequentially, they are unable to make the sort of connections that you describe as being necessary for teaching.

Personally I feel that the latter category of people must be missing something, but I am unable to make a convincing argument for this point.

I have some trouble answering your question, chiefly because my definition of "expert" is approximately synonymous with your definition of "Level 2".

Or, to put it another way, do you think that, given enough time, but using only your present knowledge, you could teach a reasonably-intelligent layperson, one-on-one, to understand complex topics in your expertise, teaching them every intermediate topic necessary for grounding the hardest level?

"Enough time" would be quite a long period of time. One problem is that there are a lot of textbook results that I would have to use in intermediate steps that would take me a long time to derive. Another is that there are a lot of experimental parameters that I haven't memorized and would have to look up. But I think I could teach arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, differential equations, and Newtonian physics enough that I could teach them proper engineering analysis.

I think I have level 2 understanding of many areas of Biology but of course not all of it. It is too large a field. But there are gray areas around my high points of understanding where I am not sure how deep my understanding would go unless it was put to the test. And around the gray areas surrounding the level 2 areas there is a sea of superficial understanding. I have some small areas of computer science at level 2 but they are fewer and smaller, ditto chemistry and geology. I think your question overlooks the nature of teaching skills. I am pretty good at teaching (verbally and one/few to one) and did it often for years. There is a real knack in finding the right place to start and the right analogies to use with a particular person. Someone could have more understanding than me and not be able to transfer that understanding to someone else. And others could have less understanding and transfer it better. Finally I like your use of the word 'understanding' rather than 'knowledge'. It implies the connectedness with other areas required to relate to lay people.

I have a (I suspect unusual) tendency to look at basic concepts and try to see them in as many ways as possible. For example, here are seven equations, all of which could be referred to as Bayes' Theorem:

However, each one is different, and forces a different intuitive understanding of Bayes' Theorem. The fourth one down is my favourite, as it makes obvious that the update depends only on the ratio of likelihoods. It also gives us our motivation for taking odds, since this clears up the 1/(1+x)ness of the equation.

Because of this way of understanding things, I find explanations easy, because if one method isn't working, another one will.

ETA: I'd love to see more versions of Bayes' Theorem, if anyone has any more to post.

Hmm... I'm not sure if I think of myself as an expert at anything, other than when people ask. But I'm pretty sure I have about the best understanding of logic I can hope to have, and could explain virtually all of it to an attentive small child given sufficient time.

And I might be an expert at some sort of computer programming, though I can think of people much better at any bit of it that I can think of; at any rate, I am also confident I could teach that to anyone, or at least anyone who passes a basic test

Toastmasters?

General social skills are needed in business, a lot of places teach them and they seem to be quite successful.

Extremely, yes, not to my knowledge.

Would such "practice" require a physical venue? -- or would an online setting -- maybe even Skype -- be sufficient?

I think you're probably correct in your presumptions. I find it an interesting idea and would certainly follow any further discussion.

If you want non-PC approaches there are two communities you could look into: sales-people and conning people. The second one actually has most of the how-to-hack-peoples minds. If you want a kinder version look at it titled "social engineering".

I doubt it. Signing up for a lottery for cryonics is still suspicious. There is only one payoff, and that is of the suspicious thing. No one objects to the end of lotteries because we all like money, what is objected to is the lottery as efficient means of obtaining money (or entertainment).

Suppose that the object were something you and I regard with equal revulsion as many regard cryonics. Child molestation, perhaps. Would you really regard someone buying a ticket as not being quite evil and condoning and supporting the eventual rape?

On a completely serious, if not totally related, note: it would be a lot easier to convince people to sign up for cryonics if the Cryonics Institute's and/or KrioRus's websites looked more professional.

Thanks to the two people who pointed this out to me in DM. I've commented, though Cyan has already linked to the essays on my blog I'd link to first.

And in one comment we've already got to "I’m not ready to waste my time on a crusade against another piece of ignorant superstition".

This seems like a bad analogy. If you could simulate a group of smart human going at 10,000 times normal speed, say copies of Steven Chu or of Terry Tao, I'd expect that they'd be able to figure out how to self-improve pretty quickly. In about 2 months they have had about 5000 years worth of time to think about things. The human brain isn't a great structure for recursive self-improvement (while some aspects are highly modular, other aspects are very much not so) but given enough time one could work on improving that architecture.

I am not sure that I understand the exact difference between a threshold unit and a miniature computer that you want to shine a light on. Below are some aspects that may be of use to you:

1. The whole surface of a neuron is not at the same potential (relative to the firing potential). Synapses are many (can be thousands), along branching dendrites, of different types and strengths so that the patterns of input that will cause firing from the dendrite end of the neuron are varied and a large number. This architecture is plastic with synapses being strengthened and weakened by use and by events far away from the neuron. At the axon root synapses are fewer and their effect more individual. If the neuron fires it delivers its signal to many synapses on many other neurons. Again this is plastic.

2. The potential of the neuron surface is affected by many other things besides other neurons through the synapses. It is affected by electrical and magnetic fields generated by the whole brain (the famous waves etc.). It is affected by the chemical environment such as the concentration of calcium ions. These factors are very changeable depending on the activity of the whole brain, hormone levels, general metabolism etc.

3. It is fairly easy to draw possible configurations of 1 or 2 neurons that mimic all the logic gates, discriminators (like a long tailed pairs in old fashioned electronics), delay lines, simple memory and so on. But it is unlikely that this is the root to understanding how neurons act. Networks, parallel feedback loops, glial communities, modules, architecture of different parts of the brain and the like are probably a better level of investigation.

I hope this is of some help.

A dead tree copy of Wikipedia. A history book about ancient handmade tools and techniques from prehistory to now. A bunch of K-12 school books about math and science. Also as many various undergraduate and postgraduate level textbooks as possible.

I'm tempted to say "a university library" as the short answer. More specifically, whatever I could get from the science and engineering departments. Pick the classic works in each field if you have someone to filter them. Look for stuff that's more universal than specific to the way we've done things - in computing terms, you want The Art of Computer Programming and not The C Programming Language.

In the short term, anything you can find on farming and primitive medicine - all the stuff the better class of survivalist would have on their bookshelf.

In rough order of addition to the corpus of knowledge:

1. The scientific method.

2. Basic survival skills (e.g. navigation).

3. Edit: Basic agriculture (e.g. animal husbandry, crop cultivation).

4. Calculus.

5. Classical mechanics.

6. Basic chemistry.

7. Basic medicine.

8. Basic political science.

I suspect that people are overestimating in their replies how much could be done with Wikipedia. People in general underestimate a) how much technology requires bootstrapping (metallurgy is a great example of this) b) how much many technologies, even primitive ones, require large populations so that specialization, locational advantages and comparative advantage can kick in (People even in not very technologically advanced cultures have had tech levels regress when they settle large islands or when their locations get cut off from the mainland. Tasmania is the classical example of this. The inability to trade with the mainland caused large drops in tech level). So while Wikipedia makes sense, it would also be helpful to have a lot of details on do-it-yourself projects that could use pre-existing remnants of existing technology. There are a lot of websites and books devoted to that topic, so that shouldn't be too hard.

If we are reducing to a small population, we may need also to focus on getting through the first one or two generations with an intact population. That means that a handful of practical books on field surgery, midwifing, and similar basic medical issues may become very necessary.

Also, when you specify "ordinary men and women" do you mean who all speak the same language? And do you mean by "ordinary" roughly developed world countries? That's what many people seem to mean when questions like this are proposed. They could alter things considerably. For example, if it really is a random sample, then inter-language dictionaries will be very important. But, if the sample involves some people from the developing world, they are more likely to have some of the knowledge base for working in a less technologically advanced situation that people in the developed world will lack (even this may only be true to a very limited extent because the tech level of the developing world is in many respects very high compared to the tech level of humans for most of human history. Many countries described as developing world are in better shape than for example much of Europe in the Middle Ages.)

Depends what level you want to achieve post-catastrophe; some, if not most of your resources and knowledge will be needed to deal with specific effects. In short, your suitcase will be full of survivalist and medical material.

In an thought experiment where you freeze yourself until the ecosystem is restored, you can probably use an algorithm of taking the best library materials from each century, corrected for errors, to achieve the level of that century.

Both Robinson Crusoe and Jules Verne's "Mysterious Island" and explore similar bootstrapping scenarios, interestingly both use some "outside injections".

I only need one item:

The Holy Bible

(kidding)

How to start a fire only using sticks.

How to make a cutting blade from rocks.

How to create a bow, and make arrows.

Basic sanitation.

Let's examine the problem in more detail: Different disaster scenarios would require different pieces of information, so it would help if you knew exactly what kind of catastrophe. However, if you can preserve a very large compendium of knowledge, then you can create a catalogue of necessary information for almost every type of doomsday scenario (nuclear war, environmental catastrophe, etc.) so that you will be prepared for almost anything. If the amount of information you can save is more limited, then you should save the pieces of information that are the most likely to be useful in any given scenario in "catastrophe-space." Now we have to go about determining what these pieces of information are. We can start by looking at the most likely doomsday scenarios--Yoreth, since you started the thread, what do you think the most likely ones are?

Presupposing that only a limited amount of knowledge could be saved seems wrong. You could bury petabytes of data in digital form, then print out a few books' worth of hints for getting back to the technology level necessary to read it.

Maps.

Locations of pre-disaster settlements to be used as supply caches. Locations of structures to be used for defense. Locations of physical resources for ongoing exploitation: water, fisheries, quarries. Locations of no travel zones to avoid pathogens.

I like this, but in Good and Real, Drescher's paradigm works because he then supplies a few examples where he invalidates a paradox-causing argument, and then goes on to apply this general approach. Asides from your dwarf hypothetical example, where do you actually check that your graph is complete?

The whole thread is about relationship hacks-- it's fascinating.

I don't want this kind of items to be discussed on LW. It's either off-topic or crackpottery, irrelevant whatever the case.

So many of the problems with typical education systems can be solved by moving to a really good computer-based education system. Lectures given by marginally qualified teachers could be replaced by videos of really good lectures from excellent teachers. We could avoid crappy textbooks. The system could adapt to the pace of each student, so that if they don't understand something, they can take extra time to learn it properly, and if they do understand something, they can go on to the next thing instead of waiting for the rest of the class to catch up. Human teachers could help students out, and do more interactive teaching because they would no longer have their time filled with lecturing and grading and miscellaneous crap work. Ideally. I wouldn't trust any existing education system to actually implement this in a sane way, of course.

(By the way, Curriki doesn't give links, but some of the course materials on there really are open source. For example, you can make a fork of Free High School Science Textbooks by going to their web site and snagging the LaTeX source code.)

Drescher has some important things to say about this distinction in Good and Real. What I got out of it, is that the CI is justifiable on consequentialist or self-serving grounds, so long as you relax the constraint that you can only consider the causal consequences (or "means-end links") of your decisions, i.e., things that happen "futureward" of your decision.

Drescher argues that specifically ethical behavior is distinguished by its recognition of these "acausal means-end links", in which you act for the sake of what would be the case if-counterfactually you would make that decision, even though you may already know the result. (Though I may be butchering it -- it's tough to get my head around the arguments.)

And I saw a parallel between Drescher's reasoning and UDT, as the former argues that your decisions set the output of all similar processes to the extent that they are similar.

I thought Kant sounded a lot more like TDT than UDT. Or was that what you meant?

Thanks. That was a compact and helpful 90 minutes. The first 30 minutes were OK, but the 2nd 30 were better, and the 3rd was the best. Towards the end I got the impression that he was explaining lessons that were the kind of thing people spend 5 years learning the hard way and that lots of people never learn for various reasons.

It would be nice if we had profile pages with machine-readable information and an interface for simple queries so posts such as that one would be redundant.

They used to have a "commitment" that:

"Technology developed by SIAI will not be used to harm human life."

...on their web site. I probably missed the memo about that being taken down.

[In the context of SIAI folks thinking an unpleasant AI was likely]

The SIAI derives its funding from convincing people that the end is probably nigh - and that they are working on a potential solution. This is not the type of organisation you should trust to be objective on such an issue - they have obvious vested interests.

[In the context of SIAI folks thinking an unpleasant AI was likely]

Re: "The justification is that uFAI is a lot easier to make."

That seems like naive reasoning. It is a lot easier to make a random mess of ASCII that crashes or loops - and yet software companies still manage to ship working products.