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Vladimir_Nesov comments on An Xtranormal Intelligence Explosion - Less Wrong
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Comments (80)
There is valid intuition ("impulse") that in certain contexts, some sub-goals, such as "replace old buildings with better new ones" shouldn't be given too much power, as that would lead to bad consequences according to other aspects of their evaluation (e.g. we lose an architectural masterpiece).
To unpack, or cash out an intuition means to create a more explicit model of the reasons behind its validity (to the extent it's valid). Modeling the above intuition as "optimizing too strongly is undesirable" is incorrect, and so one shouldn't embrace this principle of not optimizing things too much with high-priority ("elevate").
Instead, just trying to figure out what top-level goal asks for, and optimizing for the overall top-level goal without ever forgetting what it is, is the way to go. Acting exclusively for top-level goal explains the intuition as well: if you optimize a given sub-goal too much, it probably indicates that you forgot the overall goal, working on something different instead, and that shouldn't be done.
Conflicts between subgoals indicate premature fixation on alternative solutions. The alternatives shouldn't be prioritized as goals in and of themselves. The other aspects of their evaluation would fit better as goals or subgoals to be optimized. A goal should give you guidance for choosing between alternatives.
In your example, one might ask what goal can one optimize to help make good decisions between policies like "replace old buildings with better ones" and "don't lose architectural masterpieces"?
If you keep stuff in a museum, instead of using its atoms for something else, you are in effect avoiding optimization of that stuff. There could be a valid reason for that (the stuff in the museum remaining where it is happens to be optimal in context), or a wrong one (preserving stuff is valuable in itself).
One idea similar to what I guess you are talking about which I believe to hold some water is sympathy/altruism. If human values are such that we value well-being of sufficiently human-like persons, then any such person will receive a comparatively huge chunk of resources from a rich human-valued agent, compared to what it'd get only for game-theoretic reasons (where one option is to get disassembled if you are weak), for use according to their own values that are different from our agent's. This possibly could be made real, although it's rather sketchy at this point.
Meta:
Of the events I did understand, there was one miscommunication, my fault for not making my reference clearer. It's now edited out. Other questions are still open.
I can't believe what I don't understand.
And I should stop responding to comments that I don't understand. Sorry we wasted each other's time here.
Talking more generally improves understanding.
I find that listening often works better. But it depends on whom you listen to.
If conversation stops, there is nothing more to listen to. If conversation continues, even inefficient communication eventually succeeds.
Ok, lets have the meta-discussion.
You and I have had several conversations and each time I formed the impression that you were not making enough effort to explain yourself. You are apparently a very smart person, and you seem to think that this means that you are a good communicator. It does not. In my opinion, you are one of the worst communicators here. You tend to be terse to the point of incomprehensibility. You tend to seize upon interpretations of what other people say that can be both bizarre and unshakable. Conversing with you is simply no fun.
Ok. Your turn.
You said about Vladimir:
That's quite interesting. I rarely have an issue understanding Vladimir. And when I do, a few minutes of thought generally allows me to reconstruct what he is saying. On the other hand, I seem to find you to be a poor communicator not in communicating your ideas but in understanding what other people are trying to say. So I have to wonder how much of this is on your end rather than his end. Moreover, even if that's the not situation, it would seem highly probable to me that some people will have naturally different styles and modes of communication, and will perceive people who use similar modes as being good communicators and perceive people who use very different modes as being poor communicators. So it may simply be that Vladimir and I are of similar modes and you are of a different mode. I'm not completely sure how to test this sort of hypothesis. If it is correct, I'd expect LWians to clump with opinions about how good various people are at communicating. But that could happen for other reasons as well such as social reasons. So it might be better to test whether given anonymized prose from different LWians whether that shows LWians clumping in their evaluations.
Thank you for this feedback. I had expected to receive something of the sort from VN, but if it was encoded in his last paragraph, I have yet to decypher it.
It certainly felt like at least some of the problem was on my end yesterday, particularly when AdeleneDawner apparently responded meaningfully to the VN paragraph which I had been unable to parse. The thing is, while I was able to understand her sentences, and how they were responses to VN's sentences, and hence at least something of what VN apparently meant, I still have no understanding of how any of it is relevant in the context of the conversation VN and I were having.
I was missing some piece of context, which VN was apparently assuming would be common knowledge. It may be because I don't yet understand the local jargon. I've only read maybe 2/3 of the sequences and find myself in sympathy with only a fraction of what I have read.
A good observation. My calling Vladimir a poor communicator is an instance of mind-projection. He is not objectively poor at communicating - only poor at communicating with me.
Might be interesting to collect the data and find the clusters. I'm sure it is easiest to communicate with those who are at the least cognitive distance. And still relatively easy at some distance as long as you can accurately locate your interlocutor in cognitive space. The problems usually arise when both parties are confused about where the other is "coming from". But do not notice that they are confused. Or do not announce that they have noticed.
I generally agree with this characterization (except for self-deception part). I'm a bad writer, somewhat terse and annoying, and I don't like the sound of my own more substantive writings (such as blog posts). I compensate by striving to understand what I'm talking about, so that further detail or clarification can be generally called up, accumulated across multiple comments, or, as is the case for this particular comment, dumped in redundant quantity without regard for resulting style. I like practicing "hyper-analytical" conversation, and would like more people to do that, although I understand that most people won't like that. I'm worse than average (on my level) at quickly grasping things that are not clearly presented (my intuition is unreliable), but I'm good at systematically settling on correct understanding eventually, discarding previous positions easily, as long as the consciously driven process of figuring out doesn't terminate prematurely.
Since people are often wrong, assuming a particular mistake is not always that much off a hypothesis (given available information), but the person suspected of error will often notice the false positives more saliently than they deserve, instead of making a correction, as a purely technical step, and moving forward.
Well, that is unquestionably a good thing, and I have no reason to doubt you that you do in fact tend to understand quite a large number of things that you talk about. I wish more people had that trait.
I'm not sure exactly what is meant here. An example (with analysis) might help.
If that is the case, then I misinterpreted this exchange:
Perhaps the reason for my confusion is that it struck me as a premature termination. If you wish to understand something, you should perhaps ask a question, not make a comment of the kind that might be uttered by a Zen master.
Here we go again. ...
I don't understand that comment. Sorry. I don't understand the context to which it is intended to be applicable, nor how to parse it. There are apparently two people involved in the scenario being discussed, but I don't understand who does what, who makes what mistake, nor who should make a correction and move forward.
You are welcome to clarify, but quite frankly I am coming to believe that it is just not worth it.
The observation that people are often wrong applies similarly to both the hypothesis that a specific error is present and the hypothesis that a specific correction is optimal. Expecting a conversation partner to take either of those as given is incorrect in a very similar way to expecting a conversational partner to take a particular hypothesis's truth as given. Clear communication of the logic behind a hypothesis (including a hypothesis about wrongness or correction) is generally necessary in such situations before that hypothesis is accepted as likely-true.