Open thread, October 2011

5 Post author: MarkusRamikin 02 October 2011 09:05AM

This thread is for discussing anything that doesn't seem to deserve its own post.

If the resulting discussion becomes impractical to continue here, it means the topic is a promising candidate for its own thread.

Comments (304)

Comment author: Thomas 02 October 2011 12:46:05PM -1 points [-]

I estimate, that a currently working and growing superintelligence has a probability in a range of 1/million to 1/1000. I am at least 50% confident that it is so.

Not a big probability but given the immense importance of such an object, it is already a significant event to consider. The very near term birth of a superintelligence is something to think about. It wouldn't be just another Sputnik launched by some other people you thought they are unable to make it, but they sure were. We know that well, it wouldn't be just a minor blow for a pride as Sputnik was for some, and a triumph for others who conceived it and launched it.

No, that could be a check mate in a first move.

Non the less, people are dismissive of any short term success in the field. I am not and I want to express it in an open thread.

Comment author: wedrifid 02 October 2011 01:15:03PM 5 points [-]

I estimate, that a currently working and growing superintelligence has a probability in a range of 1/million to 1/1000. I am at least 50% confident that it is so.

The probability is already just an expression of your own uncertainty. Giving a confidence interval over the probability does not make sense.

Comment author: gwern 02 October 2011 02:04:48PM 3 points [-]

If you can have a 95% confidence interval, why can't you have a >50% confidence interval as well?

Comment author: wedrifid 03 October 2011 12:40:26AM *  2 points [-]

50% confidence intervals are standard practice. But not the point and not what I questioned.

There is no way in which my comment can be read which would make your reply make sense in the context.

Comment author: kilobug 02 October 2011 02:48:00PM 6 points [-]

Well, the probability is computed by an algorithm that is itself imperfect. "I'm 50% confident that the probability is 1/1000" means something like "My computation gives a probably of 1/1000, but I'm only 50% confident that I did it right". For example, if given a complex maths problem about probabilities of getting some card patterns from a deck with twisted rules of drawing and shuffling, you can do that maths, ends up with a probability of 1/5 that you'll get the pattern, but not be confident you didn't make a mistake in applying the laws of probability, so you'll only give a 50% confidence to that answer.

And there is also the difference between belief and belief in belief. I can something "I believe the probability to be of 1/1000, but I'm only 50% confident that this is my real belief, and not just a belief in belief".

Comment author: Vaniver 02 October 2011 02:56:35PM 4 points [-]

It sounds to me like he is describing his distribution over probabilities, and estimates at least 50% of the mass of his distribution is between 1/1,000 and 1/1,000,000. Is that a convenient way to store or deal with probabilities? Not really, no, but I can see why someone would pick it.

Comment author: bentarm 04 October 2011 01:40:09PM 4 points [-]

The problem with this interpretation is that it renders the initial statement pretty meaningless. Assuming he's decided to give us a centered 50% confidence interval, which is the only one that really makes sense, that means that 25% of his probability distribution over probabilities is more likely than 1/1000, and this part of the probability mass is going to dominate the rest.

For example, if you think there's a 25% chance that the "actual probability" (whatever that means) is 0.01, then your best estimate of the "actual probability" has to be at least 0.004, which is significantly more than 1/1000, and even a 1% chance of it being 0.1 would already be enough to move your best estimate above 0.001, so it's not just that I'm not sure the concept makes sense, it's that the statement gives us basically no information in the only interpretation in which it does make sense.

Comment author: Vaniver 04 October 2011 04:08:40PM 0 points [-]

Suppose you wanted to make a decision that is equally sensible for P values above X, and not sensible for P values below X. Then, knowing that a chunk of the pdf is below or above X is valuable. (If you only care about whether or not the probability is greater than 1e-3; he's suggested there's a less than 50% chance that's the case).

To elaborate a little more: he's answered one of the first questions you would ask to determine someone's pdf for a variable. One isn't enough; we need two (or hopefully more) answers. But it's still a good place to start.

Comment author: bentarm 04 October 2011 01:33:41PM *  1 point [-]

I basically agree that the part of the original comment that you quote doesn't make any sense at all, and am not attempting to come to the defence of confidence intervals over probabilities, but it does feel like there should be some way of giving statements of probability and indicating how sure one is about the statement at the same time. I think, in some sense, I want to be able to say how likely I think it is that I will get new information that will cause me to update away from my current estimate, or give a second-derivative of my uncertainty, if you will.

Let's say we have two bags, one contains 1 million normal coins, one contains 500,000 2-headed coins and 500,000 2-tailed coins. Now, I draw a coin from the first bag and toss it - I have a 50% chance of getting a head. I draw a coin from the second bag and toss it - I also have a 50% chance of getting a head, but it does feel like there's some meaningful difference between the two situations. I will admit, though, that I have basically no idea how to formalise this - I assume somebody, somewhere, does.

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 04 October 2011 11:51:18PM *  0 points [-]

I agree. Perhaps he means to say that his opinion is based on very little evidence and is "just a hunch".

I do think that in fitting a model to data, you can give meaningful confidence intervals for parameters of those models which correspond to probabilities (e.g. p(heads) for a particular coin flipping device). But that's not relevant here.

Comment author: lessdazed 02 October 2011 07:58:39PM 1 point [-]

Negative utility: how does it differ from positive utility, and what is the relationship between the two?

Useful analogies might include the relationship of positive numbers to negative ones, the relationship of hot to cold, or other.

Comment author: quinsie 02 October 2011 08:26:13PM 0 points [-]

A thing has negative utility equal to the positive utility that would be gained from that thing's removal. Or, more formally, for any state X such that the utility of X is Y, the utility of the state ~X is -Y.

Comment author: printing-spoon 02 October 2011 08:35:52PM 1 point [-]

I think you need to be more precise about what states and ~ are.

Comment author: lessdazed 02 October 2011 08:41:34PM 1 point [-]

that thing's removal

How is this defined? If an airplane has a clear floor such that its passengers vomit whenever they look down, removing the floor would put them in an even worse position. We want to remove only the property of transparency, which would involve replacing the clear material with an entirely different opaque material that had all other properties identical.

What's troubling to me about the counterfactual is that it doesn't seem to have an objective baseline, a single thing that is ~X, so we are left comparing Y(X) with Y(Z), the utility of thing X instead of thing Z. I'm not sure how valid it is to talk about simply removing properties because the set of higher level properties depends on the arrangement of atoms. It seems like properties are their own thing that can be individually mixed and matched separate from material but they really can't be.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 02 October 2011 09:06:09PM 3 points [-]

If we're using 'the object in question doesn't exist' as the baseline for comparison, I'd say that the clear floor actually has positive utility. That's just counter-intuitive because we have such a strong tendency to think of the case that's currently normal as the baseline, rather than the 'doesn't exist' case.

I do agree that neither of those baselines is objectively correct in any sense (though the 'doesn't exist' one seems a bit more coherent and stable if we find a need to choose one), and that remembering that properties don't have independent existence is generally useful when considering possible cases.

Comment author: quinsie 02 October 2011 09:06:05PM 1 point [-]

Yep, definitely needs some clarification there.

Humans don't distinguish between the utility for different microscopic states of the world. Nobody cares if air molecule 12445 is shifted 3 microns to the right, since that doesn't have any noticable effects on our experiences. As such, a state (at least for the purposes of that definition of utility) is a macroscopic state.

"~X" means, as in logic, "not X". Since we're interested in the negative utility of the floor being clear, in the above case X is "the airplane's floor being clear" and ~X is "the airplane's floor being opaque but otherwise identical to a human observer".

In reality, you probably aren't going to get a material that is exactly the same structurally as the clear floor, but that shouldn't stop you from applying the idea in principle. After all, you could probably get reasonably close by spray painting the floor.

To steal from Hofstadter, we're interested in the positive utility derived from whatever substrate level changes would result in an inversion of our mind's symbol level understanding of the property or object in question.

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 02 October 2011 09:48:23PM 1 point [-]

In that formulation, addition of the thing has utility equal to minus the utility of removal of the same thing. And that only if addition/removal can be defined.

About states - there are too many of them, some are macroscopically different but irrelevant to human untility (I am next to sure it is possible to shift some distant galaxies in a way that many sapient being will be able to see different sky and none would care).

The meaningful thing is ratio of utility differentials between some states.

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 02 October 2011 08:35:42PM 1 point [-]

Well, in the simplest case (when we are not talking being vs. non-being), the utility function is something that you can shift and even multiply by a constant. The only thing that matters for a selfish rational agent which either not considers ceasing to be or ascribes it some utility is ratio of utility differences. You usually maximize expected utility; and you do not care about absolute value, but only about the actions you are going to take. Shifts and multiplication by positive constants do not change any inequality with expectations of utilitiy. And shifts can make negative become positive and vice versa.

Now, if we consider moral questions with variable count of agents, we can find ourselves in a situation where we want to compare being to non-being - and some people implicity ascribe non-being utility zero. Also we can try to find a common scale for the wish intensities different people have. Buddhism with its stopping of reincarnation seems to ascribe negative utility to any form of being before transcending into nirvana. Whether it is better not to be born or to be born into modern world in Africa is a question that can get different answers in Western Europe; now, we can expect that as accurate a description as possible of Western Europe could cause a pharaoh of Egypt say that it is better not to be born than to be born into this scary world.

Comment author: saturn 03 October 2011 01:34:12AM 7 points [-]

Mathematically, all that matters is the ratio of the differences in the utilities of the possible alternatives, so it's not really important whether utilities are positive or negative. Informally, negative utility generally means something less desirable than the status quo.

Comment author: DanielLC 03 October 2011 02:09:33AM 0 points [-]

I figure happiness is when you start wanting to do what you're currently doing more. Negative utility is just when you want to do it more by a negative amount, i.e. you want to do it less.

Comment author: Dr_Manhattan 03 October 2011 12:47:40AM 3 points [-]

http://becominggaia.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/why-do-you-hate-the-siailesswrong/#entry I'll reserve my opinion about this clown, but honestly I do not get how he gets invited to AGI conferences, having neither work or even serious educational credentials.

Comment author: Solvent 03 October 2011 06:22:43AM 11 points [-]

He didn't actually make any arguments in that essay. That frustrates me.

Comment author: lessdazed 03 October 2011 07:34:00AM *  10 points [-]

They...build a high wall around themselves rather than building roads to their neighbors. I can understand self-protection and short-sighted conservatism but extremes aren’t healthy for anyone...repetitively screaming their fear rather than listening to rational advice. Worse, they’re kicking rocks down on us.

If it weren’t for their fear-mongering...AND their arguing for unwise, dangerous actions (because they can’t see the even larger dangers that they are causing), I would ignore them like harmless individuals...rather than [like] junkies who need to do anti-societal/immoral things to support their habits...fear-mongering and manipulating others...

...very good at rhetorical rationalization and who are selfishly, unwilling to honestly interact and cooperate with others. Their fearful, conservative selfishness extends far beyond their “necessary” enslavement of the non-human and dangerous...raising strawmen, reducing to sound bites and other misdirections. They dismiss anyone and anything they don’t like with pejoratives like clueless and confused. Rather than honest engagement they attempt to shut down anyone who doesn’t see the world as they do. And they are very active in trying to proselytize their bad ideas...

In a sense, they are very like out-of-control children. They are bright, well-meaning and without a clue of the likely results of their actions. You certainly can’t hate individuals like that — but you also don’t let them run rampant...

What do you mean no arguments? Just read the above excerpts...what do you think those are, ad hominems and applause lights?

Comment author: Solvent 03 October 2011 07:56:48AM 9 points [-]

...I think that that was one of those occasional comments you make which are sarcastic, and which no-one gets, and which always get downvoted.

But I could be wrong. Please clarify if you were kidding or not, for this slow uncertain person.

Comment author: lessdazed 03 October 2011 07:58:31AM *  4 points [-]

Don't worry, if my sarcasm is downvoted, that will probably be good for me. I get more karma than I deserve on silly stuff anyway.

Comment author: Solvent 03 October 2011 11:01:39AM 4 points [-]

The silly comments you make are far more insightful and useful than most seriously intended comments on most other websites. Keep up the good work.

Comment author: endoself 04 October 2011 09:53:01PM *  2 points [-]

I like the third passage. It makes it very clear what he is mistaken about.

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 03 October 2011 06:55:23AM 6 points [-]

Maybe he submits papers and conference program comittee find them relevant and interesting enough?

After all, Yudkowsky has no credentials to speak of, either - what is SIAI? Weird charity?

I read his paper. Well, the point he raises against FAI concept and for rational cooperation are quite convincing-looking. So are pro-FAI points. It is hard to tell which are more convincing with both sides being relatively vague.

Comment author: Solvent 03 October 2011 07:15:42AM 1 point [-]

Which paper of his did you read? He has quite a few.

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 03 October 2011 07:34:46AM 1 point [-]

AGI-2011 one.

Comment author: lessdazed 03 October 2011 07:48:15AM 15 points [-]

Based on the abstract, it's not worth my time to read it.

Abstract. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. “Friendly AI” (FAI) meets these criteria on four separate counts by expecting a good result after: 1) it not only puts all of humanity’s eggs into one basket but relies upon a totally new and untested basket, 2) it allows fear to dictate our lives, 3) it divides the universe into us vs. them, and finally 4) it rejects the value of diversity. In addition, FAI goal initialization relies on being able to correctly calculate a “Coherent Extrapolated Volition of Humanity” (CEV) via some as-yet-undiscovered algorithm. Rational Universal Benevolence (RUB) is based upon established game theory and evolutionary ethics and is simple, safe, stable, self-correcting, and sensitive to current human thinking, intuitions, and feelings. Which strategy would you prefer to rest the fate of humanity upon?

Points 2), 3), and 4) are simply inane.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 October 2011 04:50:34PM 6 points [-]

Upvoted, agreed, and addendum: Similarly inane is the cliche "insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."

Comment author: wedrifid 03 October 2011 08:22:37AM 5 points [-]

Maybe he submits papers and conference program comittee find them relevant and interesting enough?

Which invites the question of why clearly incompetent people make up the program committee. His papers look like utter drivel mixed with superstition.

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 03 October 2011 08:31:03AM 1 point [-]

If you are right, it is good that public AGI field is composed of stupid people (LessWrong is prominent enough to attract - at least once - attention of anyone whom LW could possibly convince). If you are wrong, it is good that his viewpoint is published, too, and so people can try to find a balanced solution. Now, in what situation should we not promote that status quo?

Comment author: lessdazed 03 October 2011 08:51:17AM *  1 point [-]

That's a fully general counterargument comprised of the middle ground fallacy and the fallacy of false choice.

We should not promote that status quo if his ideas - such as they are amid clumsily delivered, wince-inducing rhetorical bombast - are plainly stupid and a waste of everyone's time.

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 03 October 2011 09:21:17AM 2 points [-]

It is not a fully general counterargument because only if FAI approach is right it is a good idea to suppress open dissemination of some AGI information.

Comment author: lessdazed 03 October 2011 09:42:17AM 3 points [-]

information

It's a general argument to avoid considering whether or not something even is information in a relevant sense.

I'm willing to accept "If you are wrong, it is good that papers showing how you are wrong are published," but not "If you are right, there is no harm done by any arguments against your position," nor "If you are wrong, there is benefit to any argument about AI so long as it differs from yours."

Comment author: wedrifid 03 October 2011 10:13:47AM 1 point [-]

Another way to put it is that it is a fully general counterargument against having standards. ;)

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 03 October 2011 01:38:40PM 1 point [-]

Well, I mean more specific case. FAI approach, among other things, presupposes that building FAI is very hard and in the meantime it is better to divert random people from AGI to specialized problem-solving CS fields. Or into game theory / decision theory.

Superficially, he references some things that are reasonable; he also implies some other things that are considered too hard to estimate (and so unreliable) on LessWrong.

If someone tries to make sense of it, she either builds a sensible decision theory out of these references (not entirely excluded), follows the references to find both FAI and game-theoretical results that may be useful, or fails to make any sense (the suppression case I mentioned) and decides that AGI is a freak field.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 03 October 2011 02:03:34PM 2 points [-]

FAI approach

Talk of "approaches" in AI has a similar insidious effect to that of "-ism"s of philosophy, compartmentalizing (motivation for) projects from the rest of the field.

Comment author: jsalvatier 03 October 2011 02:45:27PM 3 points [-]

That's an interesting idea. Would you share some evidence for that? (anecdotes or whatever). I sometimes think in terms of a 'bayesian approach to statistics'.

Comment author: wedrifid 03 October 2011 10:01:01AM 3 points [-]

It is not a fully general counterargument because only if FAI approach is right it is a good idea to suppress open dissemination of some AGI information.

That isn't true. It would be a good idea to suppress some AGI information if the FAI approach is futile and any creation of AGI would turn out to be terrible.

Comment author: wedrifid 03 October 2011 09:57:12AM *  6 points [-]

Now, in what situation should we not promote that status quo?

Bad thinking happens without me helping to promote it. If there ever came a time when human thinking in general prematurely converged due to a limitation of reasonably sound (by human standards) thought then I would perhaps advocate adding random noise to the thoughts of some of the population in a hope that one of the stupid people got lucky and arrived at a new insight. But as of right now there is no need to pay more respect to silly substandard drivel than what the work itself merits.

Comment author: lessdazed 03 October 2011 10:03:26AM 2 points [-]

If there ever came a time when human thinking in general prematurely converged...I would perhaps advocate adding random noise to the thoughts of some of the population

Keen, I hadn't thought of that, upvoted.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 03 October 2011 10:34:06AM 12 points [-]

Interestingly, back in 2007, when I was naive and stupid, I thought Mark Waser one of the most competent participants of agi and sl4 mailing lists. Must be something appealing to an unprepared mind in the way he talks. Can't simulate that impression now, so it's not clear what that is, but probably mostly general contrarian attitude without too many spelling errors.

Comment author: wedrifid 03 October 2011 07:23:55AM 12 points [-]

Wow, I loved the essay. I hadn't realized I was part of such a united, powerful organisation and that I was so impressively intelligent, rhetorically powerful and ruthlessly self interested. I seriously felt flattered.

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 03 October 2011 08:03:45AM 4 points [-]

You are in a Chinese room, according to his argument. No one of us is as cruel as all of us.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 October 2011 04:47:46PM 11 points [-]

Not to call attention to the elephant in the room, but what exactly are Eliezer Yudkowsky's work and educational credentials re: AGI? I see a lot of philosophy relevant to AI as a discipline, but nothing that suggests any kind of hands-on-experience...

Comment author: Dr_Manhattan 03 October 2011 06:32:27PM 1 point [-]

This for one http://singinst.org/upload/LOGI//LOGI.pdf is in the ballpark of AGI work. Plus FAI work, while not being on AGI per se, is relevant and interesting to a rare conference in the area. Waser is pure drivel.

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 04 October 2011 09:59:04PM 18 points [-]

I'll reserve my opinion about this clown

Downvoted. Unless "clown" is his actual profession, you didn't reserve your opinion.

Comment author: shminux 03 October 2011 01:29:16AM *  6 points [-]

Why does the argument "I've used math to justify my views, so it must have some validity" tend to override "Garbage In - Garbage Out"? It can be this thread:

I estimate, that a currently working and growing superintelligence has a probability in a range of 1/million to 1/1000. I am at least 50% confident that it is so.

or it can be the subprime mortgage default risk.

What is the name for this cognitive bias of trusting the conclusions more (or sometimes less) when math is involved?

Comment author: dspeyer 03 October 2011 01:38:51AM *  9 points [-]

Sounds like a special case or "judging an argument by its appearance" (maybe somebody can make that snappier). It's fairly similar to "it's in latin, therefore it must be profound", "it's 500 pages, therefore it must be carefully thought-out" and "it's in helvetica, therefore it's from a trustworthy source".

Note that this is entirely separate from judging by the arguer's appearance.

Comment author: DanielLC 03 October 2011 02:07:59AM 14 points [-]

He didn't use math to justify his views. He used it to state them.

Comment author: lessdazed 03 October 2011 07:16:51AM 1 point [-]

Assuming infinite matter were available, is there a limit to the possible consciousnesses that could be made out of it?

Comment author: wedrifid 03 October 2011 08:18:27AM 1 point [-]

Assuming infinite matter were available, is there a limit to the possible consciousnesses that could be made out of it?

No limit, unless you construct an arbitrary definition of 'consciousness' that for some reason decrees that vast sets of different consciousnesses must be lumped in together as one.

Comment author: lessdazed 03 October 2011 08:32:59AM 1 point [-]

Assuming a speed limit of communication such as light speed, why couldn't sufficiently large minds always either be made from less matter or merely be larger versions of smaller, identical patterns?

Comment author: pengvado 03 October 2011 10:14:22AM *  2 points [-]

If you're talking about possibility rather than efficiency, then what does a speedlimit have to do with anything? A big algorithm (mind or otherwise) that requires too much nonlocal communication will just run slowly.

Comment author: lessdazed 03 October 2011 10:18:48AM *  2 points [-]

With no speed limit, a designer of a bigger mind could easily take advantage of its size to form new, unique mind patterns by linking distant parts.

With the speed limit, many big minds are in exactly the same pattern as smaller ones, only slower.

If a mind is big enough, it may dwarf its components such that it is consciously the same as a smaller mind in a similar pattern.

Comment author: lessdazed 03 October 2011 08:18:28AM 2 points [-]

Was it possible for the ancient Greeks to discover that cold is the absence of heat?

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 03 October 2011 08:55:03AM 0 points [-]

"Heat" isn't a thing either. It's all just molecules bopping around. A very smart person might have been able to deduce this (or at least raise it as a possibility) by thinking about the fact that rubbing two sticks together makes heat.

Comment author: MinibearRex 03 October 2011 03:20:25PM 5 points [-]

The original theory of thermodynamics grew out of things like this, except the possibility that they considered had to do with a "caloric fluid". All objects had this particular fluid stored inside of them, and by rubbing the sticks together or something like that, you could simply release the fluid while gradually breaking down the object. Which is a reasonable conclusion, assuming you don't have all the historical background that we do in atomic physics.

Comment author: Emile 03 October 2011 09:29:24AM 1 point [-]

Probably, by considering how there are several ways to "create" heat (burning, rubbing things together, as Oscar says), but none of "creating" cold. That makes more sense in a model where heat is a substance that can be transmitted from object to object, and cold is merely the absence of such a substance.

Comment author: lessdazed 03 October 2011 09:56:48AM 4 points [-]

What if they built a building or found a cave where wind ran over a bucket or pool of water, cooling the air?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler#Physical_principles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher

Comment author: Jack 06 October 2011 02:48:33AM 3 points [-]

"Water produces cold" is a plausible hypothesis for someone using Earth/Air/Water/Fire chemistry.

Comment author: lessdazed 06 October 2011 03:28:15AM *  0 points [-]

They did well enough to figure out or intuit or guess that a simpler explanation was better: You're not giving them enough credit, as some went beyond that chemistry.

Heracletus:

All things are an interchange for fire, and fire for all things, just like goods for gold and gold for goods.

Aristotle speaking about Thales:

"For it is necessary that there be some nature (φύσις), either one or more than one, from which become the other things of the object being saved... Thales the founder of this type of philosophy says that it is water."

See also here.

So granted that they could narrow it down to one "element", was it possible for them to do better than to guess as to the nature of thermodynamics? To guess which is the absence of the other?

Comment author: Jack 06 October 2011 03:42:05AM 1 point [-]

As my reply to your original comment indicates I give them plenty of credit -- I'm not sure they didn't guess that cold was the absence of heat.

You have the pre-socratics a bit mixed up. Heracletus and Thales are before the five element system of Aristotle. Heracletus only had three elements in his cosmology and fire was the most important. Some ancient cosmologies made one element central...I'm not sure what that has to do with the question?

But certainly it is possible some of them surmised that cold was the absence of fire or something like that.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 06 October 2011 02:55:18AM *  0 points [-]

How do I know those processes are actually producing creating heat and not just destroying cold?

ETA: And to be clear, where by "I" I mean someone with roughly ancient Greek knowledge levels.

Comment author: Desrtopa 06 October 2011 03:16:10AM *  1 point [-]

A number of substances have high enthalpy heats of solution, and appear to "create" cold when added to water. Some, like calcium chloride, would likely have been known in Classical Greece.

Edit: My mistake. Dissolution of calcium chloride is actually exothermic. I'm not sure if any salts which have high endothermic dissolution occur in a naturally pure state.

Comment author: Jack 06 October 2011 02:20:18AM 2 points [-]

I'm not confident they didn't know that. Cite?

Comment author: JoshuaZ 06 October 2011 02:39:05AM 1 point [-]

Not exactly a great citation, but the Wikipedia article on the history of heat suggests that their understanding was not very good.

For what it is worth, marginally related ideas seemed to be going around at least by the end of the sixth century since I seem to recall an argument in the Talmud about whether or not transfer of heat by itself from a non-kosher thing to a kosher thing could make the kosher thing non-kosher. But it is possible that I was reading that with a too modern perspective. I'll try to track down the section and see what it says.

Comment author: Jack 06 October 2011 02:45:22AM 0 points [-]

Yeah, I read the wikipedia page looking for something. And certainly no one would say they had a good understanding of thermodynamics. Usually different ancient philosophers had different opinions about these sorts of things so I would not surprise me if a few prominent figures had the basic idea down. They definitely associated fire with heat, and fire in most accounts was an element. In seems plausible that they might have believed cold simply involved the absence of fire.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 06 October 2011 02:54:50AM *  0 points [-]

How would this belief pay rent if one doesn't have a lot of chemistry to start off with and hasn't done a very large set of experiments? Would it look any different than cold is the absence of heat? The flowing behavior can be easily explained either way.

Also, one thing that's very clear from a lot of history is how much the ancients could have learned if they just were a bit more wiling to do direct experiments. They did them but only on rare occasions. There's no reason that the scientific method could not have shown up in say 200 BCE.

Comment author: lessdazed 06 October 2011 03:32:57AM 1 point [-]

A description of an experiment they could have done would be a fine answer to my question, even though they weren't inclined to do them.

Perhaps the experiment is obvious to you? I don't know what it would be.

How would this belief pay rent

This is a good question and I'm not confident it could or couldn't. It's more a thought experiment to rethink how much medium-hanging fruit there is today. If they could have figured it out even though it couldn't have paid rent, so much the better.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 06 October 2011 03:43:25AM 1 point [-]

Perhaps the experiment is obvious to you? I don't know what it would be.

That's my problem. I can see sets of experiments that form long chains that eventually get this result, but I don't see it as an easy result by itself.

I suppose that if they had kept experimenting with Hero's version of the steam engine they might have started to develop the right stuff. That might be the most natural way that it could have gone.

Part of the problem is that in order to get decent chemistry you need to do enough experiments to understand conservation of mass. And when gasses are released that requires very careful measurements. And in order to even start thinking in that vein you probably want enough physics understanding to understand that mass matters a lot. (There's good reason that conservation of mass becomes a discussed and experimented with issue after Newton and Galileo and all those guys had developed basic physics). Then, if one has steam engines also and has a notion of work, one can start doing careful experiments and see how things function in terms of specific heat (how different substances take different amounts of heat to reach the same temperature). If one combines that with how gases behave and has that gases are composed of little tiny particles then a pseudokinetic theory of heat results.

I know however that the caloric theory of heat didn't require a correct theory of gases. This makes me wonder if there's an easier experimental pathway, whether this is a lucky guess, or whether it is just that there are a lot more examples in nature of things that seem to produce heat than things that seem to produce cold. (As has already been noted in this subthread, there are definitely things that would seem to produce cold.)

Comment author: Kingreaper 07 October 2011 11:24:44AM 0 points [-]

Yes. The relevant experiment would be a study of how gases expand when heated, leading to the ideal gas law, which has a special case at absolute 0.

The special case distinguishes between cold being a real entity (and heat being neg-cold) and heat being a real entity (and cold being neg-heat); because it proves that heat has a minimum, and cold a maximum, rather than the other way around.

Comment author: lessdazed 03 October 2011 09:24:40AM 3 points [-]

I propose a thread in which ideas commonly discussed on LW can be discussed with a different dynamic - that of the relatively respectable minority position being granted a slight preponderance in number and size of comments.

This might include feminism in which one is offended by "manipulation", deontology, arguments for charities other than X-risk ones, and the like.

Nothing would be censored or off limits, those used to being in the majority would merely have to wait to comment if most of the comments already supported "their" "side" (both words used loosely).

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 03 October 2011 01:16:24PM *  18 points [-]

Some time ago, I had a simple insight that seems crucial and really important, and has been on my mind a lot. Yet at the same time, I'm unable to really share it, because on the surface it seems so obvious as to not be worth stating, and very few people would probably get much out of me just stating it. I presume that this an instance of the Burrito Phenomenon:

While working on an article for the Monad.Reader, I’ve had the opportunity to think about how people learn and gain intuition for abstraction, and the implications for pedagogy. The heart of the matter is that people begin with the concrete, and move to the abstract. Humans are very good at pattern recognition, so this is a natural progression. By examining concrete objects in detail, one begins to notice similarities and patterns, until one comes to understand on a more abstract, intuitive level. This is why it’s such good pedagogical practice to demonstrate examples of concepts you are trying to teach. It’s particularly important to note that this process doesn’t change even when one is presented with the abstraction up front! For example, when presented with a mathematical definition for the first time, most people (me included) don’t “get it” immediately: it is only after examining some specific instances of the definition, and working through the implications of the definition in detail, that one begins to appreciate the definition and gain an understanding of what it “really says.”

Unfortunately, there is a whole cottage industry of monad tutorials that get this wrong. To see what I mean, imagine the following scenario: Joe Haskeller is trying to learn about monads. After struggling to understand them for a week, looking at examples, writing code, reading things other people have written, he finally has an “aha!” moment: everything is suddenly clear, and Joe Understands Monads! What has really happened, of course, is that Joe’s brain has fit all the details together into a higher-level abstraction, a metaphor which Joe can use to get an intuitive grasp of monads; let us suppose that Joe’s metaphor is that Monads are Like Burritos. Here is where Joe badly misinterprets his own thought process: “Of course!” Joe thinks. “It’s all so simple now. The key to understanding monads is that they are Like Burritos. If only I had thought of this before!” The problem, of course, is that if Joe HAD thought of this before, it wouldn’t have helped: the week of struggling through details was a necessary and integral part of forming Joe’s Burrito intuition, not a sad consequence of his failure to hit upon the idea sooner.

I'm curious: do others commonly get this feeling of having finally internalized something really crucial, which you at the same time know you can't communicate without spending so much time as to make it not worth the effort? I seem to get one such feeling maybe once a year or a couple.

To clarify, I don't mean simply the feeling of having an intuition which you can't explain because of overwhelming inferential distance. That happens all the time. I mean the feeling of something clicking, and then occupying your thoughts a large part of the time, which you can't explain because you can't state it without it seeming entirely obvious.

(And for those curious - what clicked for me this time around was basically the point Eliezer was making in No Universally Compelling Arguments and Created Already in Motion, but as applied to humans, not hypothetical AIs. In other words, if a person's brain is not evaluating beliefs on the basis of their truth-value, then it doesn't matter how good or right or reasonable your argument is - or for that matter, any piece of information that they might receive. And brains can never evaluate a claim on the basis of the claim's truth value, for a claim's truth value is not a simple attribute that could just be extracted directly. This doesn't just mean that people might (consciously or subconsciously) engage in motivated cognition - that, I already knew. It also means that we ourselves can never know for certain whether hearing the argument that should convince us if we were perfect reasoners will in fact convince us, or whether we'll just dismiss it as flawed for basically no good reason. )

Comment author: hamnox 03 October 2011 06:19:43PM 3 points [-]

Yes, I think I know what you mean. I hit that roadblock just about every time I try to explain math concepts to my little brother. It's not so much that he doesn't have enough background knowledge to get what I'm saying, as that I already have a very specific understanding of math built up in my head in which half of algebra is too self-evident to break down any further.

Comment author: lessdazed 04 October 2011 09:46:33AM 12 points [-]

I propose a thread in which people practice saying they were wrong and possibly also saying they were surprised.

Comment author: wedrifid 04 October 2011 09:52:57AM 3 points [-]

Decent idea. Second.

Comment author: EphemeralNight 04 October 2011 01:15:16PM *  10 points [-]

For the passed year or two I've felt like there are literally no avenues open to me towards social, romantic, or professional advancement, up from my current position of zero. On reflection, it seems highly unlikely that this is actually true, so it follows that I'm rather egregiously missing something. Are there any rationalist techniques designed to make one better at noticing opportunities (ones that come along and ones that have always been there) in general?

Comment author: Swimmer963 04 October 2011 01:35:21PM -2 points [-]

Probably. The technique I've had the most success with is "just go out and DO it!" Whether or not it's a job/friend group/ relationship that seems viable or desirable in the long term, you probably benefit more from trying it than not trying it.

Comment author: EphemeralNight 04 October 2011 01:52:53PM *  1 point [-]

Yeah, that's not really what I was talking about. My problem is with being unable to see that there's anything I should just go out and do, not with actually going out and doing it. I don't have any trouble following a path to my goal once that path has been identified; it's identifying possible path(s) to my goal(s) in the first place that I seem to have a deficiency in. What was unclear about my question that prompted you to answer a different question than the one I asked?

Comment author: Swimmer963 04 October 2011 01:59:20PM 0 points [-]

You may have to explain some context here, because I'm not sure I understand what you mean by 'not seeing anything that you should go out and do.' Do you find your lack of employment/social/romantic opportunities distressing? If not, then there isn't a problem unless you want there to be a problem. If you do want to change this situation, then I can't point out the opportunities you have because I know nothing about your day-to-day. However, you're right that unless your situation is very unusual, it's unlikely that there are really no opportunities.

Comment author: EphemeralNight 04 October 2011 02:04:25PM *  0 points [-]

I don't see how asking for rationalist techniques to make me better at noticing opportunities requries any context. Not that I'm unwilling to give context, I just think it would be irrelevant. I'm asking if there's anything I can to do get better at spotting opportunities. What was unclear about my question that prompted you to assume I was asking for specific opportunities to be identified for me?

Comment author: Swimmer963 04 October 2011 02:16:10PM *  0 points [-]

I suggested a general technique that worked well for me in my first comment. I think it's the only technique that has ever worked well for me. When you said I'd misunderstood your problem, and I reread your comment and decided I still didn't understand, I realized that our life-situations were probably different enough that any technique I suggested based on personal experience would inevitably not work for you. This may be a flaw in my thinking, but I have trouble thinking of any "general" rationalist techniques that would work to optimize a particular person's life in a particular context. My brain is now trying to produce more solutions, but I'm not really expecting them to be helpful to you.

Comment author: EphemeralNight 04 October 2011 02:30:11PM *  -1 points [-]

You're still attempting to solve the wrong problem.

"Just go out an do it" doesn't even apply to the problem of finding the cognitive flaw in my ability to identify opportunities that is damaging my ability to figure out what I can "just go out and do". You're trying to solve a problem that is two whole steps ahead of the one my post was about. What was it about my original question that was unclear?

Comment author: Swimmer963 04 October 2011 02:39:36PM -1 points [-]

Maybe that it's so far removed from any state I've experienced that I'm not even sure what you mean. Hopefully there is someone else on this site who has been in a similar place before and can recognize it. But it does look to me like you're trying to solve a specific problem, not a general problem. I just interpreted the wrong specific problem when I read your comment.

Also, all the answers my brain produces when I ask it to imagine "cognitive biases that would result in not noticing opportunities" come out sounding judgmental, and as a general rule I don't write things down if they sound judgmental or negative.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 04 October 2011 02:32:55PM 7 points [-]

If I'm understanding the original question properly, the issue is along the lines of the following situation: EphemeralNight finds emself sitting at home, thinking 'I wish there was something fun I could do tonight. But I don't know of anything. So how might I find something? I have no idea.' It's not that e's running into akrasia on the path to doing X, it's that e doesn't have an X in the first place and doesn't know how to find one.

Useful answers will probably be along the lines of either 'try meeetup.com/okcupid/your local LW meetup/etc', or 'here's how you find out about things like meetup.com/okcupid/LW meetups/etc'.

Comment author: EphemeralNight 04 October 2011 02:42:02PM *  0 points [-]

'here's how you find out about things like meetup.com/okcupid/LW meetups/etc'

This is still one step ahead of the problem I'm actually trying to solve (Ie. it's on the level of answers to "What am I supposed to just go out and do?") but advice on that level could be somewhat useful. However, what I was actually asking about in my original post are cognitive tools that will help me get better at answering that question myself.

Comment author: Swimmer963 04 October 2011 02:57:30PM 3 points [-]

Yeah, the big thing with specific solutions is that while they may be helpful, they don't teach you a new way to think. (Also, what might be fun for one person could be boring or unpleasant for someone else. I don't know whether you enjoy debating, or sports, or watching plays, etc. But I'm assuming you know what would be fun for you.)

In terms of why no one is getting at the root of the problem... for me at least, I've never thought about it consciously. School happened to me, work happened to me, and the few times I decided to spontaneously start a new activity (i.e. taekwondo) I just googled "taekwondo in Ottawa", found a location, and showed up. If anything, my problem has always been noticing too many opportunities to do fun things and been upset that I couldn't do all of them. So there may well be something that you do differently than I do, but since 'noticing' fun things to do happens below the level of my conscious awareness, trying to figure out the cognitive strategies involved takes a lot of work.

Comment author: Swimmer963 04 October 2011 02:42:28PM 2 points [-]

That's what I thought, too, but the comment seemed to be asking for a general rather than a specific solution.

Comment author: lessdazed 04 October 2011 04:21:09PM 4 points [-]

Hold off on proposing solutions and discuss the situation.

Comment author: Kingreaper 05 October 2011 02:07:14PM *  -1 points [-]

Here are two ways to find more opportunities. 1) is to get out and DO!, which exposes you to more opportunities.

2) is to get better at spotting them when they're around.

The only way I can think of to achieve 2, personally, is practise. How do you practise? Well, you do 1), and expose yourself to as many opportunities as possible, and see how many you notice in time, and when you notice one too late you think about how you could have noticed it quicker.

Comment author: Kingreaper 05 October 2011 01:55:09PM *  3 points [-]

"Just go out and DO it!" is then the wrong advice.

However "Just go out and DO!" remains good advice.

Next time you see a poster for a meetup; just go to it. Even if it doesn't sound like it'll help, just go to it.

Next time you see a request for volunteers, which you can afford the time to fulfil, just volunteer. Even if it's not something you care much about.

While you're out doing those things you'll come across people, and random events, etc. that may give you new paths to your goals.

Don't worry about achieving your goals, just do things. To use your video-game analogy: you've been looking around for things that look like they'll be useful for you. But you haven't been pressing random buttons, you haven't clicked "use" on the poster in the corner: because why would that help? But of course, sometimes there's a safe behind the poster. Or sometimes, pressing shift and K simultaneously activates the item use menu, etc.

Comment author: Unnamed 04 October 2011 03:42:58PM 0 points [-]

It may be that you need to get your brain to treat it as an active goal, and once that happens your brain will automatically generate ideas and notice opportunities. You could think about the goal and identify it as something that you want to accomplish, perhaps visualizing the outcome that you would like to achieve to set off the processes that PJ Eby describes in his irresistable instant motivation video.

You could also put effort into trying to come up with ways to pursue the goal, focusing on generating ideas and not worrying too much about their quality or feasibility. You could brainstorm ideas for how to pursue the goal, plot out possible paths from where you are to the outcome you want, look at other people who are in a position similar to you to see what they're doing to pursue the goal, look at people who are doing what you aspire to do to see what you could change, or talk with other people to get suggestions or bounce ideas around. These could work directly, or they could help indirectly by keeping the goal active in your mind so that your brain will notice things that are relevant to the goal.

Comment author: EphemeralNight 04 October 2011 04:49:32PM *  5 points [-]

Alright, since no one seems to be understanding my question here, I'll try to reframe it.

(First, to be clear, I'm not having a problem with motivation. I'm not having a problem with indecision. I'm not having a problem with identifying my terminal goal(s).)

To use an analogy, imagine you're playing a video game, and at some point you come to a room where the door shuts behind you and there's no other way out. There's nothing in the room you can interact with, nothing in your inventory that does anything; you poor over every detail of the room, and find there is no way to progress further; the game has glitched, you are stuck. There is literally no way beyond that room and no way out of it except reseting to an earlier save point.

That is how my life feels from the inside: no available paths. (In the glitched video game, it is plausible that there really is no action that will lead to progression beyond the current situation. In real life, not so much.)

Given that it is highly unlikely that this is an accurate Map of the Territory that is the real world, clearly there is a flaw in how I generate my Map in regards to potential paths of advancement in the Territory. It is that cognitive flaw that I wish to correct.

I am asking only for a way to identify and correct that flaw.

Comment author: Swimmer963 04 October 2011 05:12:00PM 1 point [-]

I think I understand the feeling you're having now. Still, It seems highly unlikely to me that you can fix this "cognitive flaw" in isolation, before you've found a few concrete avenues of advancement...I find that my habits, including habits of thought, are trainable rather than fixable in the abstract.

Are you in school? If so, would you like to study something different? If not, is there something you do want to study? Are you working or is there somewhere you want to work? These are conventional paths to life-advancement.

Comment author: EphemeralNight 04 October 2011 06:04:15PM 0 points [-]

None of that information would constrain the space of possibilities in which the cognitive flaw exists, no matter what my answers happened to be. That's all a level above the actual problem, and irrelevant.

It seems highly unlikely to me that you can fix this "cognitive flaw" in isolation, before you've found a few concrete avenues of advancement.

Well, that seems rather boot-strap-ish, since finding concrete avenues of advancement is exactly what the cognitive flaw is preventing me from doing.

Comment author: Swimmer963 04 October 2011 06:12:41PM 0 points [-]

Okay, I'm sorry none of my answers were helpful to you. I don't know what to suggest.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 October 2011 05:20:14PM 2 points [-]

I rather doubt there is a fully-generalizable theory of the sort you seem to be looking for. Some territories are better left than explored in more detail, if it be within your power to do so; others can be meaningfully understood and manipulated.

If you are in a dead-end job in a small town where you are socially isolated and clash culturally with the locals, do not have professional credentials sufficient to make a lateral move plausible (ie, working retail as opposed to something that requires a degree), the advice will necessarily be different than if you are in a major city and have a career of some kind.

What works in New York may not work so well in Lake Wobegon.

Comment author: EphemeralNight 04 October 2011 06:12:08PM 2 points [-]

Some territories are better left than explored in more detail

Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but are you saying that some blank places on our Maps ought to be deliberately kept blank? That seems, well, insane.

In any case, at no point did I ask for advice about my specific situation. I want the algorithm being used to generate that advice, not the advice itself.

Comment author: dlthomas 04 October 2011 06:17:13PM 2 points [-]

I don't think many here would propose that portions of the map be kept blank for the sake of keeping them blank.

It is easy to see that, with limited resources, it may be preferable to leave some regions blank when you've determined that there are likely to be bigger gains to be had elsewhere for cheaper.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 October 2011 06:24:09PM 1 point [-]

This is in fact what I meant -- one's map is necessarily local to one's territory, and sometimes the gains of going over it in more detail are minimal.

To go with the analogy of maps: if what you want is advice on how to plant a garden, it matters whether or not you're in the middle of the Sahara Desert.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 October 2011 06:19:53PM 2 points [-]

Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but are you saying that some blank places on our Maps ought to be deliberately kept blank? That seems, well, insane.

No, I'm saying that not all situations present the same amount of opportunities, and your situation makes a difference whether or not you think it does.

I do not think there is a fully-general piece of advice for you, but you clearly believe there is. I believe this is a mistake on your part, and have said so several times now. Since you are not apparently interested in hearing that, I will not bother to repeat myself further.

Good luck finding what you're after though.

Comment author: EphemeralNight 04 October 2011 06:37:58PM 6 points [-]

I'm saying that not all situations present the same amount of opportunities, and your situation makes a difference whether or not you think it does.

Okay, and that's not something I dispute. If I did somehow manage to correct my cognitive flaw, one of the possibilities is that I'd discover that I really don't have any options. But I can't know that until the flaw is solved.

I do not think there is a fully-general piece of advice for you, but you clearly believe there is.

Of course I believe there is a fully general algorithm for identifying avenues of advancement towards a terminal goal. But phrasing it like that just made me realize that anyone who actually knew it would have already built an AGI.

Well, crap.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 October 2011 06:43:22PM -1 points [-]

I'm glad this has been enlightening. ^^

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 04 October 2011 09:27:50PM 2 points [-]

Well, having it described in terms suitable for human improvement and relying on existing human cognitive abilities would lower it just to universally applicable intelligence amplification.

So you did not ask for something AGI-equivalent.

Comment author: Clarica 04 October 2011 05:30:35PM -1 points [-]

If the flaw lies in your choices, choose differently. If the flaw lies in your habits, practice better habits. If the flaw lies in your cognitive habits, you must do something higher up on this list in order to be able to develop different cognitive habits.

Your existing habits and choices (and arguably genetics and environment) may not be what created the situation which is becoming intolerable, but they are the easiest thing to work on.

You do not have to worry about making the right change or practices--start with whatever seems easiest. And try not to go against your 'better' judgement.

Comment author: pedanterrific 05 October 2011 12:22:09AM *  8 points [-]

Okay, I've read through the other responses and I think I understand what you're asking for, but correct me if I'm wrong.

A technique I've found useful for noticing opportunities once I've decided on a goal is thinking and asking about the strategies that other people who have succeeded at the goal used, and seeing if any of them are possible from my situation. This obviously doesn't work so well for goals sufficiently narrow or unique that no one has done them before, but that doesn't seem to be what you're talking about.

Social advancement: how do people who have a lot of friends and are highly respected make friends and instill respect? Romantic advancement: How did the people in stable, committed relationships (or who get all the one-night stands they want, whichever) meet each other and become close? Professional advancement: How did my boss (or mentor) get their position?

Edit: Essentially I'm saying the first step to noticing more opportunities is becoming more familiar with what an opportunity looks like.

Comment author: EphemeralNight 05 October 2011 11:17:52AM 2 points [-]

This is useful, actually. I think I've been kind of doing that indirectly, but not with a direct conscious effort. It doesn't do me much good right now, since I'm still completely isolated and don't know of anyone who got out of a situation like mine, but I think it could still be helpful.

Comment author: Kingreaper 05 October 2011 02:16:08PM -1 points [-]

Then first, change your situation to NOT completely isolated.

If you're in a town or city that's easy, just go to a meetup of a society of some sort that sounds vaguely interesting. If you can't find such a society, wonder from pub to coffee shop to restaurant, looking for any relevant posters.

Or just go online and look up a meetup website.

Looking for a general solution is all well and good, but you have a very specific problem. And so, rather than spending years working on a general solution while in the wrong environment, perhaps you'd be better off using the specific solution, and working on a general one later?

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 05 October 2011 08:07:14AM 5 points [-]

You might be interested in The Luck Factor-- it's based on research about lucky and unlucky people, and the author says that lucky people are high on extroversion, have a relaxed attitude toward life (so that they're willing to take advantage of opportunities as they appear (in other words, they don't try to force particular outcomes, and they haven't given up on paying attention to what might be available), and openness to new experiences.

The book claims that all these qualities can be cultivated.

Comment author: rwallace 05 October 2011 09:11:47AM 14 points [-]

I was about to explain why nobody has an answer to the question you asked, when it turned out you already figured it out :) As for what you should actually do, here's my suggestion:

  1. Explain your actual situation and ask for advice.

  2. For each piece of advice given, notice that you have immediately come up with at least one reason why you can't follow it.

  3. Your natural reaction will be to post those reasons, thereby getting into an argument with the advice givers. You will win this argument, thereby establishing that there is indeed nothing you can do.

  4. This is the important bit: don't do step 3! Instead, work on defeating or bypassing those reasons. If you can't do this by yourself, go ahead and post the reasons, but always in a frame of "I know this reason can be defeated or bypassed, help me figure out how," that aligns you with instead of against the advice givers.

  5. You are allowed to reject some of the given advice, as long as you don't reject all of it.

Comment author: EphemeralNight 05 October 2011 01:14:18PM 4 points [-]

That's actually exactly what I usually try to do. Unfortunately, most advice-givers in my experience tend to mistake #4 for #3. I point out that they've made an incorrect assumption when formulating their advice, and I immediately get yelled at for making excuses. I do actually have a tendency to seek excuses for non-action, but I've been aware of that tendency in myself for a long time and counter it as vigorously as I am able to.

I suppose it couldn't hurt to explain my actual situation, though. Gooey details incoming.


I live in the southwestern suburbs of Fairfield, California, on a fixed income that's just enough to pay the bills and buy food, with a little left over. (Look the town over in Google Maps to get a sense of what kind of place it is.)

Most critically, i suffer from Non-24, which, in the past, was responsible for deteriorating health and suicidal depression during high school, for forcing me to drop even the just-for-fun classes I was taking at the community college, as well as causing me to completely lose touch with my high school acquaintances before I figured out what I had and that there was a pattern to it and not just random bouts of hypersomnia and insomnia. It rules out doing anything that involves regularly scheduled activities; I even had to quit my World of Warcraft guild because of it.

Before I lost touch with my high school acquaintances, I did get to experience some normal social gatherings, though to me there was never anything particularly fun about being pelted with straw-wrappers at Denny's or dancing to Nirvana under a strobe-light or watching them play BeerPong. None of those people were ever my friends or even much of a support structure, and I don't actually miss any of them. I've been on several dates through OkCupid and my brief time in college, but they were all failures of emotional connection and in each case I was relieved when the girl told me she didn't want to go out with me anymore. I mention this to show that I'm not just assuming certain generic solutions won't work for me; I've confirmed it by experiment.

So, I'm living without much disposable income, with a sleep disorder that precludes regularly scheduled activities of any kind, in a highway-tumor town, with no friends or contacts of any kind. Oh, and I have a mild photosensitivity condition which means I'm slaved to my sunglasses during the day and even with them can't do anything that involves exposure to direct sunlight for more than a few minutes at a time, just for the sake of thoroughness.

That's the summary of the situation.


My career goals aren't actually precluded by any of this, though becoming a successful graphic artist, or writer, or independent filmmaker or webcomic author or whatever I end up succeeding at, is made more difficult. I only included the professional category because my social goals mostly pertain to my career goals: I'd like to have a useful social network. It'd be nice to have friends just for the sake of having friends, but that's of low value to me. My only high value purely-social goal is meeting and befriending a woman with whom I can have a meaningful and lasting intimate relationship, which dissolves away the romantic category as well.

Comment author: Swimmer963 05 October 2011 01:49:33PM 2 points [-]

Most critically, i suffer from Non-24

Have you seen doctors about this or tried any treatments? I did a quick Wikipedia search and the 'Treatment' section suggested light therapy or melatonin therapy. It said they don't always work well and may be completely ineffective for some people, and it sounds like a lot of work for not much gain, but if you haven't tested it out, it might be worth at try.

for forcing me to drop even the just-for-fun classes I was taking at the community college.

Are online classes perhaps a better option? I don't know how flexible they are in terms of what time of day you can view the lectures and stuff, and I don't know whether you've already tried that.

Actually, there may be online work opportunities as well. I've never investigated this personally, but it might be worth hunting around or asking some other LWers.

RE: writing, that's something that fits pretty well into an irregular schedule. You can do it at home at whatever time of day. What sort of material are you interested in writing? I've been working on writing fiction for a number of years now, and I would happily do an email exchange and read/edit your work. I can't offer to do the same thing for graphic art, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are other people on LW who can.

though to me there was never anything particularly fun about being pelted with straw-wrappers at Denny's or dancing to Nirvana under a strobe-light or watching them play BeerPong.

I can understand that. Those things are pretty boring. Feeling emotionally connected to the people you're doing them with is what makes it worthwhile, and if you don't, you just don't.

As for your original comment about having some cognitive flaw, it might boil down to the fact that you just aren't interested in the same life experience as, say, your high school acquaintances were. Having a group of acquaintances and doing regular social activities with them is a conventional solution for a lot of people, but it if doesn't work for you, it just doesn't work. And when your reward structure isn't the same as everyone else's, there will be fewer "opportunities to be rewarded" that automatically presen themselves.

What will work for you is another question. Finding a job that would self-select for coworkers who had similar interests to yours could help. Also, learning how to steer a conversation from something banal towards something interesting to you is a skill that can help deepen your social connections. (Although the first step is to have enough practice with conversations that you know how to make yourself interesting to the other person. This took me a long time and a lot of conscious effort to acquire.)

Also, depression is its own form of cognitive bias that might make you more likely to see opportunities negatively or as a "waste of time", when otherwise you might think "why not?" If you were depressed for several years, these kind of thoughts or more subtle versions might have become habits.

My only high value purely-social goal is meeting and befriending a woman with whom I can have a meaningful and lasting intimate relationship, which dissolves away the romantic category as well.

I wish you the best of luck with this. It does make a huge difference once you can find that person.

Comment author: EphemeralNight 05 October 2011 03:18:29PM 1 point [-]

Have you seen doctors about this or tried any treatments?

I've made some inquiries. According to all the information I've seen, success of treatment seems to correlate with undersensitivity to light or outright blindness. Since I'm oversensitive to light, that places me on the extreme end of Untreatable.

Are online classes perhaps a better option?

Not really; I was taking those classes for social reasons, not educational reasons.

Also, learning how to steer a conversation from something banal towards something interesting to you is a skill that can help deepen your social connections.

I'm actually reasonably good at this, but it has usually just accelerated the exposure of lack of common ground with whoever I was talking to.

I think meeting the right people is a much bigger problem for me than interacting successfully with those people.

Comment author: jsalvatier 05 October 2011 05:27:54PM 3 points [-]

I've made some inquiries.

If you haven't given several potential treatments serious attempts, I think you should. Improving this issue seems like it would be worth a lot to you, so even smallish probabilities of success are worth investigating.

Comment author: rwallace 05 October 2011 05:18:38PM 1 point [-]

Okay, as Swimmer observes, writing can easily be done from home on a random sleep schedule; so can graphics work, so can creating web comics. There's plenty of relevant educational material for all of these that doesn't require attending scheduled classes. And if you don't bond well with random people, probably the best way to improve your social life is to look for people with whom you have shared interest; which means you might be better off getting the career stuff up and running first; once you do that, it will probably lead to encounters with people with whom you have something in common.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 05 October 2011 07:42:42PM 8 points [-]

Unfortunately, most advice-givers in my experience tend to mistake #4 for #3. I point out that they've made an incorrect assumption when formulating their advice, and I immediately get yelled at for making excuses.

If this conversation is representative, 'making excuses' might not be entirely accurate, though I can see why people would pattern-match to that as the nearest cached thing of relevance. But to be more accurate, it's more like you're asking "what car is best for driving to the moon" and then rejecting any replies that talk about rockets, since that's not an answer to the actual question you asked. It could even be that the advice about building rockets is entirely useless to you, if you're in a situation where you can't go on a rocket for whatever reason, and they need to introduce you to the idea of space elevators or something, but staying focused on cars isn't going to get you what you want and people are likely to get frustrated with that pretty quickly.

Comment author: EphemeralNight 05 October 2011 11:46:24PM 2 points [-]

it's more like you're asking "what car is best for driving to the moon" and then rejecting any replies that talk about rockets, since that's not an answer to the actual question you asked. It could even be that the advice about building rockets is entirely useless to you, if you're in a situation where you can't go on a rocket for whatever reason, and they need to introduce you to the idea of space elevators or something,

Wow... that may just be the most apt analogy I've ever heard anyone make about this. I'm having a "whoa" moment here.

'kay. So, my first thought is, how does my actual goal fit into the analogy? If my terminal goal fits as finding the right car then the problem lies in everyone hearing a different question than the one asked. If, on the other hand, my terminal goal fits into the analogy as getting to the moon then the problem is a gap of understanding that causes me to persist with the wrong question. Which sounds like exactly the sort of flaw-in-thinking that I was talking about in the first place!

I am vaguely disturbed that I don't actually know which part of the analogy my terminal goal fits into. It seems like its something I should know. I would guess it is the latter, though, due to there actually being a cognitive flaw that remains elusive.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 06 October 2011 01:56:36AM 4 points [-]

It could be that you want both. Human values do tend to be complex, after all. (Also, I'd map 'wanting the best possible mind' to 'wanting the best car', and 'wanting to get your life moving in a good direction' as 'wanting to go to the moon', if that was a source of confusion.)

Comment author: Kingreaper 06 October 2011 12:15:23PM -1 points [-]

Getting to the moon (ie. getting your life moving) is quite clearly one of your terminal goals.

Whether or not you've enshrined the car (ie. a general solution) as a newer terminal goal, I can't tell you.

A hint however: The car may not take the form you expect. It may be a taxi, or a bus, where you don't own it but rather ride in it. (ie. the best general solution for you might actually be "go on the internet and look for a specific solution")

Comment author: Kingreaper 06 October 2011 12:11:34PM 1 point [-]

I'd say that your statement:

It rules out doing anything that involves regularly scheduled activities

Is inaccurate. It rules out regularly scheduled activities where you have to attend every single one.

The majority of meetups are perfectly happy with someone who attends 1/2 or 1/3 of the meetings; which non-24 shouldn't prevent.

Meetups also have a more structured feel than the social gatherings you mention, and tend to be more useful for networking.

A deeper problem is your location. I'm assuming given your sunlight issue that you can't really drive very far on sunny days?

Comment author: EphemeralNight 06 October 2011 12:43:19PM *  0 points [-]

What is this thing called "Meetup" that everyone keeps talking about? Does it have some meaning beyond the obvious that I'm unaware of? Because the way its used around here makes it seem like it refers to something more specific than the literal definition.

I'm assuming given your sunlight issue that you can't really drive very far on sunny days?

I have a very good pair of sunglasses, which combined with a modern car windshield are enough that I can drive without being too limited by that(though I still prefer to make long trips at night when I can), plus cars have roofs which means there are a lot of relative positions the sun can be in which does not put the driver in direct sunlight. The bigger limitation is paying for gas. Occasional long trips are no problem. ~weekly long trips would break the bank. (Long > 25 miles )

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 06 October 2011 01:19:12PM 0 points [-]

What is this thing called "Meetup" that everyone keeps talking about? Does it have some meaning beyond the obvious that I'm unaware of?

It's mostly what it sounds like, once you take into account that it's short for "LessWrong meetup" ('meetup for LessWrong users'). The possibly non-obvious bit is that meetups are often recurring things with people who consistently come to most instances of them in a particular area, so they're more about ongoing socialization/skillbuilding/etc than literally meeting people.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 October 2011 01:25:56PM 3 points [-]

There is also a website, meetup.com, that is used to organize many such events in a variety of areas. It's difficult to say how well any particular one will yield people you click with since the site merely facilitates someone creating a specific group with a specific place-and-time scheduled meet, but it's a good way to keep track of what's going on in your area that might be relevant to your interests.

Comment author: EphemeralNight 06 October 2011 04:36:27PM 1 point [-]

Ah.

I was completely unaware of meetup.com existing. (Took one look and am already registered) It seems like kind of a Big Thing; I am somewhat baffled that I'd never heard of it before.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 06 October 2011 06:16:59PM 5 points [-]

Um.

Useful answers will probably be along the lines of either 'try meeetup.com/okcupid/your local LW meetup/etc', or 'here's how you find out about things like meetup.com/okcupid/LW meetups/etc'.

From earlier in this conversation.

Comment author: Swimmer963 06 October 2011 01:43:53PM 1 point [-]

Does your town have Greyhound bus service? This could be a cheaper alternative, possibly, if you find bus trips bearable. Also you can sleep on the bus, which would help if the time you needed to make the trip correlated with a 'sleeping' phase of your schedule.

Comment author: Kingreaper 06 October 2011 02:52:45PM *  -1 points [-]

By a "meetup" I mean a regular, or semi-regular, event whereby a group of people with common interests meet in order to discuss things, including [but not limited to] the common interest.

These meetups come in many forms; some occur in pubs, some in meeting halls, some in coffee shops. Some feature speeches, which tend to be on the issue of the common interest, but most do not.

By attending a meetup two events running, or three events out of six, you'll tend to get to know many of the regulars, and become part of their social network.

One type of meetup that would obviously be relevant to your interests is a lesswrong one, but meetups of skeptic societies, societies associated with your particular sexual kinks/relationship preferences (poly meets, munches, rope meets, furmeets etc.), humanist meetups, etc. would all likely be useful to you.

Comment author: Nisan 16 October 2011 02:02:20AM 1 point [-]

This isn't a piece of advice so much as a friendly invitation: The Berkeley Less Wrong meetup meets Wednesdays at 7pm and also monthly on Saturday evenings. It looks like it would take you 90 minutes and two train/bus tickets to get there, and the same going back. You're welcome to join us.

(Mailing list.)

Comment author: [deleted] 06 October 2011 01:40:21PM 0 points [-]

See, that actually suggests that a big part of your problem is related to your situation. The most obvious long-term fix is meeting your career goals, if you think they're otherwise in reach -- but presumably (given you seem to have a solid sense of yourself and appear to be working on things already) you're doing this at a manageable rate. It might be worthwhile to see if you can speed that along, however -- more money is probably going to make the single biggest difference, as it'll give you more freedom of location and disposable income with which to pursue things.

That's kinda stating the obvious, but it also sounds from your explanation that there aren't any obvious "magic bullets" you've been missing. I don't say that to sound discouraging, just, it seems like there's not a lot of low-hanging fruit for improving your situation.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 06 October 2011 07:46:16PM 6 points [-]

How does your Non-24 function? Is it completely unpredictable, or would you be able to maintain a regular N-hour cycle for some value of N? Best if N could be something like 33.6, 28, 21, 18.7, because then you could maintain a week cycle, which would allow you a part-time job. But any predictable schedule allows you to plan things.

If your sunglasses are not very helpful in day, could you try some darker sunglasses? You could have a set of sunglasses with different levels of darkness, for inside and outside.

As a general strategy, I would suggest this: If you cannot find one perfect solution, focus on small improvements you can do.

It is generally good to have a "big picture", so your actions are coordinated towards a goal. But even if you don't have it, don't stop. If you do nothing, you receive no information, and that does not make your future planning any better. Even doing random (non-dangerous) things is good, because you gain information.

For example, I don't think that buying darker sunglasses is going to fix all your problems. But still, if darker sunglasses would be an improvement, you should get them. It is better than waiting until you find a pefect strategy for everything.

Comment author: thomblake 05 October 2011 03:01:17PM 4 points [-]

As a general comment on the progress of this thread, you seem entirely too certain of what information is irrelevant to this problem, given that you have no idea how to solve it.

Comment author: lessdazed 04 October 2011 07:54:06PM 3 points [-]

I propose a discussion thread in which people can submit requests for pdfs of scholarly articles. I have found promising things for debiasing racism but I've been figuring out the contents of important articles indirectly - through their abstract and descriptions of them in free articles.

Comment author: pedanterrific 05 October 2011 12:42:25AM 4 points [-]

You mean, like this?

Comment author: lessdazed 04 October 2011 08:05:27PM 3 points [-]

I propose a permanent jobs thread, to lower the barrier to posting relevant job information and reduce clutter in the discussion section.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 October 2011 10:28:03PM *  4 points [-]

I propose a thread (about anything) where the OP and comments must be written entirely in concrete language (or as concrete as possible).

Comment author: lessdazed 04 October 2011 10:31:23PM 6 points [-]

I propose a thread in which people refine their questions for the speakers at the Singularity Summit.

Comment author: NihilCredo 05 October 2011 05:09:45PM 3 points [-]

Is there a term for the following fallacy (related to the false dilemma)?

  • While discussing the pros and cons of various items in the same category, people switch to 'competition mode thinking' - even if they hold no particular attachment towards any item, and nobody is in need of making a choice among the items - and they begin to care exclusively for the relative ranking of the items, rather than considering each one on its own merits. Afterwards, people will have a favourable opinion of the overall winner even if all items were shown to be very bad, and vice-versa they will have an unfavourable opinion of the overall loser even if all items were shown to be veryy good.
Comment author: fubarobfusco 09 October 2011 09:48:35PM *  1 point [-]

This isn't quite the same, but I wrote an essay for Wikipedia a few years ago (2005!) on why encyclopedia articles shouldn't contain pro-and-con lists. Even though I didn't know much about cognitive biases at the time, and was thinking about the specific domain of Wikipedia articles rather than argumentation or truth-seeking in general, it may be relevant.

One of the things that occurred to me at the time was that pro-and-con lists invite Wikipedia readers who already support one "side" to think of more items to add to "their side" of the list, and add them. In LW-speak, they inspire motivated cognition for people whose bottom line is already written.

Comment author: antigonus 06 October 2011 03:46:58AM *  3 points [-]

Where can I find arguments that intelligence self-amplification is not likely to quickly yield rapidly diminishing returns? I know Chalmers has a brief discussion of it in his singularity analysis article, but I'd like to see some lengthier expositions.

Comment author: kilobug 07 October 2011 09:08:27AM 2 points [-]

I asked the same question not so long ago, and I was pointed to http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Hanson-Yudkowsky_AI-Foom_Debate which did contain interesting arguments on the topic. Hope it'll help you as it helped me.

Comment author: Dr_Manhattan 06 October 2011 07:33:30PM *  1 point [-]

Interesting - http://www.takeonit.com/question/332.aspx (Is living forever worthwhile?)

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 07 October 2011 08:49:55AM *  2 points [-]

Can someone explain to me the point of sequence reruns?

I honestly don't get it. Sequences are well organised and easily findable; what benefit is there from duplicating the content? It seems to me like it just spreads the relevant discussion into multiple places, adds noise to google results, and bloats the site.

Comment author: wedrifid 07 October 2011 01:48:00PM 6 points [-]

Many people find blogs easier to read than books. Reacting to prompts with bite size chunks of information requires far less executive control and motivation than working through a mass of text unprompted.

Comment author: MarkusRamikin 08 October 2011 10:28:56AM 4 points [-]

Hm. Yeah, that makes sense I suppose, though that's a rather alien way of thinking for me. I like the organisation and permanence of the Sequences, the fact that I can read them at my own pace and in what order they interest me. Especially since we don't seem to suffer from the "don't necro old threads" disease as much as most other forums, and arguments from 2007 still get developed today. Which is good IMO, I never liked how most of the Internet has a 1-2 day attention span, and if something isn't freshly posted then it's not worth reading or replying to. But I digress.

To each their own, I suppose, it's not like this stops me from reading the original Sequences the way I like to.

Comment author: Dr_Manhattan 07 October 2011 12:54:24PM 0 points [-]

ArsTechnica article "Rise of the Machines". A bit confused, but interesting instance of the meme. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/10/rise-of-the-machines-why-we-still-read-hg-wells.ars

Comment author: lessdazed 08 October 2011 10:00:10PM 1 point [-]

How common are game theory concepts that are not expressed in nature?

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 09 October 2011 05:57:37PM 0 points [-]

I don't understand you, could you give an example?

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 13 October 2011 01:32:07AM *  2 points [-]

Well, the superiority of Tit-for-Tat to most other Iterated PD strategies was discovered by evolutionary sims, and evidence has been found of its being used in nature. For instance, the behavior of WWI soldiers who stopped killing each other in the trenches by mutually choosing to only fire their artillery when fired upon first, and several instances in animals. I'm too lazy to look up the latter, but I'm pretty confident they're in The Selfish Gene. I think lessdazed is asking if there are any other important game theory findings that don't have that kind of real world support.

Comment author: lessdazed 13 October 2011 02:14:49AM *  2 points [-]

mutually choosing to only shoot when shot at

I am under the anecdotal impression that this applied far more to explosives, particularly trench mortars, than it did to bullets, having read many more primary than secondary sources for the First World War.

If I recall correctly, German snipers were largely assigned to sections of front, while British and French snipers were assigned to regular units that rotated in and out of the front depending on casualties, strategic considerations, and the like (so "the Germans" wouldn't be one entity to negotiate with). If true, this might partially explain why shooting truces were less common than mortar truces. This is in addition to the usual rotation of regular units on both sides that would prevent them from becoming too familiar with the enemy.

Another factor is that it is almost always plausible to refrain from firing artillery at targets due to supply concerns. This seems like it would make an artillery truce easier to de-escalate and maintain.

Do you have sources for (non-holiday, non-corpse collection) shooting truces?

Your point stands, obviously, regardless of the weapon types.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 13 October 2011 10:12:40AM 1 point [-]

I meant artillery truces, and I've fixed my last comment to be more clear. Sorry for the lack of precision.

Comment author: lessdazed 14 October 2011 02:34:58AM *  2 points [-]

I was surprised to find out about stotting being cooperation between cheetahs and gazelles. I was amused by the "rock-paper-scissors" common side blotched lizard.

In nature, is there a Rubinstein bargaining model or a game without a value, for example?

Comment author: [deleted] 09 October 2011 04:19:01AM 5 points [-]

I'm having trouble finding a piece which I am fairly confident was either written on LW or linked to from here. It dealt with a stone which had the power render all the actions of the person who held it morally right. So a guy goes on a quest to get the stone, crossing the ocean and defeating the fearful guardian, and finds it and returns home. At some point he kills another guy, and gets sentenced by a judge, and it is pointed out that the stone protects him from committing morally wrong actions, not from the human institution of law. Then the guy notices that he is feeling like crap because he is a murderer and it is pointed out that the stone isn't supposed to protect him from his feelings of guilt. And so on, with the stone proving to be useless because the "morality" wasn't attached to anything real.

If somebody knows what I'm talking about, could they be so kind as to point me towards it?

Comment author: Alicorn 09 October 2011 04:47:45AM *  7 points [-]

The Heartstone in Yvain's Consequentialism FAQ. Except it's a cat the guy kills.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 October 2011 08:25:02PM 1 point [-]

Yes, that's what I was looking for! Thank you very much for the link.

Comment author: lessdazed 13 October 2011 02:29:43AM 1 point [-]

If asked to guess a number that a human chose that is between zero and what they say is "infinity", how would one go about assigning probabilities to both a) assign higher numbers lower probabilities on average than lower numbers and b) assign higher values to low complexity numbers than higher complexity ones?

For example, 3^^^3 is more likely than 3^^^3 - 42.

Is a) necessary so the area under the curve adds up to 1? Generally, what other things than a) and b) would be needed when guessing most humans' "random" number?

Comment author: NihilCredo 13 October 2011 10:56:11AM 3 points [-]

I think (a) is a special case of (b).

Comment author: lessdazed 13 October 2011 02:54:23PM 1 point [-]

If there is a safe and effective way to induce short term amnesia, wouldn't that be useful for police lineups?

People are good at picking the person who most resembles who they saw, but not at determining if someone was who they saw. Amnesia would allow people to pick among different lineups without remembering who they chose in the first lineup and whether or not that is someone in a later lineup.

People would be given a drug or machine interfering with their memory and pick someone out of a lineup of a suspect and similar looking people. Then, the person they identified as who they saw would be removed and they would be asked to pick again. One could also have a new lineup with the person chosen from the first one and new extras, but I think the greatest benefit would be if the selected person is removed. This would allow one to see if the witness actually recognizes the person or chose the best fit in the first lineup and is subsequently remembering that person as the culprit.

Comment author: lessdazed 14 October 2011 01:40:03AM 7 points [-]

Grocery stores should have a lane where they charge more, such as 5% more per item. It would be like a toll lane for people in a hurry.

Comment author: Jack 14 October 2011 01:47:49AM *  4 points [-]

Grocery stores also routinely keep track of how fast each cashier is-- by measuring items per minute. Such lanes could be staffed by the fastest cashiers and have dedicated baggers.

Comment author: pedanterrific 16 October 2011 11:31:07PM 3 points [-]

There are already 'express' lanes with maximum item limits, which achieve faster service by making sure the average time to process each customer is reduced. In that case, assigning faster cashiers make sense, but it seems like the 'toll lane' idea would achieve faster service primarily by being much less crowded than other lanes (that is, if the toll lane has a line the same length as other lanes, there would be no point going to it). So having your best cashier there just ensures they spend more time idle, thereby increasing the average time for all lanes.

Comment author: taw 16 October 2011 11:20:51PM 1 point [-]

People value fairness very highly. Unless cultural norm allowing this particular kind of unfairness existed, people would be strongly opposed to this.

Comment author: pedanterrific 16 October 2011 11:42:02PM 3 points [-]

Obvious corollary: bribing the maître d'.

Comment author: lessdazed 14 October 2011 01:53:03AM *  6 points [-]

People are bothered by some words and phrases.

Recently, I learned that the original meaning of "tl;dr" has stuck in people's mind such that they don't consider it a polite response. That's good to know.

Some things that bother me are:

  • Referring to life extension as "immortality".
  • Referring to AIs that don't want to kill humans as "friendly".
  • Referring to AIs that want to kill humans as simply "unfriendly".
  • Expressing disagreement as false lack of understanding, e.g. "I don't know how you could possibly think that."
  • Referring an "individual's CEV".
  • Referring to "the singularity" instead of "a singularity".

I'm not going to pretend that referring to women as"girls" inherently bothers me, but it bothers other people, so it by extension bothers me and I wouldn't want it excluded from this discussion.

Some say to say not "complexity" or "emergence".

Comment author: Nisan 16 October 2011 01:05:09AM 3 points [-]

Expressing disagreement as false lack of understanding, e.g. "I don't know how you could possibly think that."

This, more than the others, is a sign of a pernicious pattern of thought. By affirming that someone's point of view is alien, we fail to use our curiosity, we set up barriers to communication, and we can make any opposing viewpoint seem less reasonable.

Comment author: wedrifid 16 October 2011 04:31:17AM 1 point [-]

Expressing disagreement as false lack of understanding, e.g. "I don't know how you could possibly think that."

People get away with this and more disingenuous forms of this far too often.

Comment author: wedrifid 16 October 2011 05:12:53AM *  1 point [-]

Referring to AIs that don't want to kill humans as "friendly".

Necessary, within the an infinitesimal subset of mindspace around friendliness but not quite sufficient. Examples of cases where this is a problem include when people go around saying "a friendly AI may torture <any set which includes a wedrifid or anyone he likes>". Because that is by definition not friendly. Any other example of "what if a friendly AI thing did <something absurdly undesirable all things considered>" is also a misuse of the idea.

Referring to AIs that want to kill humans as simply "unfriendly".

That seems entirely legitimate. uFAI is rather useful and well established name for an overwhelmingly important concept. I honestly think you just need to learn more about how the concept of Unfriendly AI is used because this is not a problem term. AIs that want to kill humans (ie. most of them) are unfriendly.

Referring to life extension as "immortality".

Do people even do that? I haven't seen it. People attempting immortality (living indefinitely) will obviously use whatever life extension practices they think will help achieve that end. Yet if anyone ever said, for example, "I'm having daily resveratrol for immortality" then I suggest they were being tongue-in-cheek.

Comment author: lessdazed 16 October 2011 07:09:16AM *  2 points [-]

want

AIs that want to kill humans (ie. most of them) are unfriendly.

Just as "want" does not unambiguously exclude instrumental values in English, "unfriendly" does not unambiguously include instrumental values in English. As for the composite technical term "Unfriendly Artificial Intelligence"...

If you write "Unfriendly Artificial Intelligence" alone, regardless of other context, you are technically correct. If you want to be correct again, type it again, in wingdings if the mood strikes you, you will still be technically correct, though with even less of a chance at communicating. In the context of entire papers, there is other supporting context, so it's not a problem. In the context of secondary discussions, consider those liable to be confused or you can consider them confused.

We might disagree about the extent of confusion around here, we might disagree as to how important that is, we might disagree as to how much of that is caused by unclear forum discussions, and we might disagree about the cost of various solutions.

Regarding the first point, those confident enough to post their thoughts on the issue make mistakes. Regarding the fourth point, assume I'm not advocating an inane extreme solution such as requiring you to define words every comment you make, but rather thoughtfulness.

Examples of cases where this is a problem include when people go around saying "a friendly AI may torture <any set which includes a wedrifid or anyone he likes>". Because that is by definition not friendly. Any other example of "what if a friendly AI thing did <something absurdly undesirable all things considered>" is also a misuse of the idea.

No torture? You're guessing as to what you want, what people want, what you value, what there is to know...etc. Guessing reasonably, but it's still just conjecture and not a necessary ingredient in the definition (as I gather it's usually used).

Or, you're using "friendly" in the colloquial rather than strictly technical sense, which is the opposite of how you criticized how I said not to speak about unfriendly AI! My main point is that care to should be taken to explain what is meant when navigating among differing conceptions within and between colloquial and technical senses.

Comment author: wedrifid 16 October 2011 09:26:28AM 1 point [-]

Or, you're using "friendly" in the colloquial rather than strictly technical sense

No, you're wrong about the dichotomy there. The words were used legitimately with respect to a subjectively objective concept. But never mind that.

Of all the terms in "Unfriendly Artificial Intelligence" I'd say the 'unfriendly' is the most straightforward. I encourage folks to go ahead and use it. Elaborate further on what specifically they are referring to as the context makes necessary.

Comment author: lessdazed 16 October 2011 08:06:01PM 2 points [-]

I encourage folks to go ahead and use it. Elaborate further on what specifically they are referring to as the context makes necessary.

This implies I'm discouraging use of the term, which I'm not, when I raised the issue to point out that for this subject specificity is often not supplied by context alone and needs to be made explicit.

What is confusing is when people describe a scenario in which it is central that an AI has human suffering as a positive terminal value, and they use "unfriendly" alone as a label to discuss it. The vast majority of possible minds are the ones most overlooked: the indifferent ones. If something applies to malicious minds but not indifferent or benevolent ones, one can do better than describing the malicious minds as "either indifferent or malicious", i.e. "unfriendly".

I would also discourage calling blenders "not-apples" when specifically referring to machines that make apple sauce. Obviously, calling a blender a "not-apple" will never be wrong. There's nothing wrong with talking about non-apples in general, nor talking about distinguishing them from apples, nor with saying that a blender is an example of a non-apple, nor with saying that a blender is a special kind of non-apple that, unlike other non-apples, is an anti-apple.

But when someone describes a blender and just calls it a "non-apple", and someone else starts talking about how almost nothing is a non-apple because most things don't pulverize apples, and every few times the subject is raised someone assumes a "non-apple" is something that pulverizes apples, it's time for the first person to implement low-cost clarifications to his or her communication in certain contexts.

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 16 October 2011 08:27:59PM *  2 points [-]

*Referring to AIs that don't want to kill humans as "friendly".
*Referring to AIs that want to kill humans as simply "unfriendly".

"Friendly" as I've seen it used on here means "an AI that creates a world we won't regret having created," or something like that. It might be good to link to an explanation every time the term is used for the benefit of new readers, but I don't think it's necessary. "Unfriendly" means "any AI that doesn't meet the definition of Friendly," or "an AI that we would regret creating (usually because it destroys the world)." I think these are good, consistent ways of using the term.

Most possible AIs have no particular desire either to kill humans or to avoid doing so. They are generally called "Unfriendly" because creating one would be A Bad Thing. Many possible AIs that want to avoid killing humans are also Unfriendly because they have no problem doing other things we don't want. The important thing, when classifying potential AIs, is whether it would be a very good idea or a very bad idea to create one. That's what the Friendly/Unfriendly distinction should mean.

Expressing disagreement as false lack of understanding, e.g. "I don't know how you could possibly think that."

I've found that saying, "I don't think I understand what you mean by that" or "I don't see why you're saying so" is a useful tactic when somebody says something apparently nonsensical. The other person usually clarifies their position without being much offended, and one of two things happens. Either they were saying something true which I misinterpreted, or they really did mean something I disagree with, at which point I can say so.

Referring [to] an "individual's CEV".

I think this is a good idea, because humans aren't expected utility maximizers. We have different desires at different times, we don't always want what we like, etc. An individual's CEV would be the coherent combination of all that person's inconsistent drives: what that person is like at reflective equilibrium.

Referring to "the singularity" instead of "a singularity".
referring to women as"girls"

These ones bother me too, and I support not doing them.

Comment author: pedanterrific 16 October 2011 08:37:17PM *  2 points [-]

Expressing disagreement as a false lack of understanding

I've found that saying, "I don't think I understand what you mean by that" or "I don't see why you're saying so" is a useful tactic when somebody says something apparently nonsensical.

Yes, when you actually don't understand, saying that you don't understand is rarely a bad idea. It's when you understand but disagree that proclaiming an inability to comprehend the other's viewpoint is ill-advised.

Referring [to] an "individual's CEV".

I think this is a good idea, because humans aren't expected utility maximizers.

I could be wrong, but this may be a terminology issue.

Coherence: Strong agreement between many extrapolated individual volitions ...

Comment author: Normal_Anomaly 16 October 2011 09:58:25PM *  1 point [-]

Coherence: Strong agreement between many extrapolated individual volitions ...

It would indeed appear that EY originally defined coherence that way. I think it's legitimate to extend the meaning of the term to "strong agreement among the different utility functions an individual maximizes in different situations." You don't necessarily agree, and that's fine, because this is partly a subjective issue. What, if anything, would you suggest instead of "CEV" to refer to a person's utility function at reflective equilibrium? Just "eir EV" could work, and I think I've seen that around here before.

Comment author: pedanterrific 16 October 2011 11:22:45PM 1 point [-]

I think it's legitimate to extend the meaning of the term to "strong agreement among the different utility functions an individual maximizes in different situations."

Me too. I consider the difference in coherency issues between CEV(humanity) and CEV(pedanterrific) to be one of degree, not kind. I just thought that might be what lessdazed was objecting to, that's all.

Comment author: selylindi 14 October 2011 05:05:35AM 8 points [-]

On the Freakonomics blog, Steven Pinker had this to say:

There are many statistical predictors of violence that we choose not to use in our decision-making for moral and political reasons, because the ideal of fairness trumps the ideal of cost-effectiveness. A rational decision-maker using Bayes’ theorem would say, for example, that one should convict a black defendant with less evidence than one needs with a white defendant, because these days the base rates for violence among blacks is higher. Thankfully, this rational policy would be seen as a moral abomination.

I've seen a common theme on LW that is more or less "if the consequences are awful, the reasoning probably wasn't rational". Where do you think Pinker's analysis went wrong, if it did go wrong?

One possibility is that the utility function to be optimized in Pinker's example amounts to "convict the guilty and acquit the innocent", whereas we probably want to give weight to another consideration as well, such as "promote the kind of society I'd wish to live in".

Comment author: pedanterrific 15 October 2011 11:57:38PM 8 points [-]

If you instituted a policy to require less evidence to convict black defendants, you would convict more black defendants, which would make the measured "base rates for violence among blacks" go up, which would mean that you could need even less evidence to convict, which...

Comment author: Vaniver 16 October 2011 04:35:21AM 4 points [-]

Where do you think Pinker's analysis went wrong, if it did go wrong?

The word "thankfully."

Comment author: JoshuaZ 16 October 2011 05:10:38AM 6 points [-]

The problem isn't using it as evidence. The problem is that it is extremely likely that humans will use such evidence in much greater proportion than is actually statistically justified. If juries were perfect Bayesians this wouldn't be a problem.

Comment author: lessdazed 16 October 2011 07:26:03AM *  8 points [-]

A rational decision-maker using Bayes’ theorem would say, for example, that one should convict a black defendant with less evidence than one needs with a white defendant, because these days the base rates for violence among blacks is higher.

One would compare black defendants with guilty black defendants and white defendants with guilty white defendants. It's far from obvious that (guilty black defendants/black defendants) > (guilty white defendants/white defendants). Differing arrest rates, plea bargaining etc. would be factors.

Where do you think Pinker's analysis went wrong, if it did go wrong?

He began a sentence by characterizing what a member of a group "would say".

Comment author: APMason 16 October 2011 11:44:45PM 4 points [-]

Yes. It's important to remember that guilty defendants aren't the same thing as convicted defendants. A rational decision-maker using Bayes' theorem wouldn't necessarily put all that much weight on the decisions of past juries, knowing as we do that they're not using Bayes' theorem at all. And, of course, a Bayesian would need exactly the same amount of evidence to convict a black defendant as they did a white defendant. That question is whether skin colour counts as evidence.

Comment author: taw 16 October 2011 11:19:02PM 1 point [-]

"Thankfully" part is wrong. We don't use any explicit probability thresholds to judge people guilty or not, we rely on judge's gut feeling about the defendant, which is very likely even more biased.

With a serious probability threshold being black would count slightly against you, but it would be very small bias.

Comment author: ahartell 15 October 2011 06:04:03PM *  3 points [-]

In his talk on Optimism (roughly minute 30 to roughly minute 35), David Deutsch said that the idea that the world may be inexplicable from a human perspective is wrong and is only an invitation to superstitious thinking. He even mentions an argument by Richard Dawkins stating that evolution would have no reason to produce a brain capable of comprehending everything in our universe. It reminds me of something I heard about the inability to teach algebra or whatever to dogs. He writes this argument off for reasons evolution didn't prepare me for, so I was wondering if anyone could clarify this for me. To me it seems very possible that Dawkins was right, and that without enhancement some problems are just to hard for humans.

If you can't watch the video, in one line he says that I'm having trouble with is "If we live inside a little bubble of explicability in a great inexplicable universe, then the inside couldn't be really explicable either because the outside is needed in our explanation of the inside." This seems wrong to me. In a hypothetical universe where humans were too stupid to go beyond Newtonian mechanics, we would be in a bubble that suitably explained the movement of large objects. We wouldn't need knowledge of the quantum things that would be beyond our grasp to understand why apples fall.

Am I missing something or am I misunderstanding him or is he wrong?

Comment author: selylindi 15 October 2011 09:34:16PM 4 points [-]

without enhancement some problems are just to hard for humans.

Without the enhancement of a computer or at least external memory like pen and paper, can you compute the n-th roots of pi to arbitrary decimal places? I can't, so it seems plain that Dawkins was correct. But it's a mighty big jump from there to "and there are processes in the universe which no constructible tools could ever let us explain, even in principle".

Humans with our enhancements haven't yet found any aspect of the universe which we have good reason to believe will always continue to escape explanation. That lack of evidence is weak evidence in favor of nothing remaining permanently and necessarily mysterious.

Comment author: ahartell 15 October 2011 09:41:22PM 3 points [-]

I agree that it should all be possible with enhancement, but I'm not sure he was saying that. To your second point, I don't think dogs walk around with the knowledge that they're too stupid to comprehend the universe.

Comment author: ahartell 15 October 2011 09:37:24PM 2 points [-]

Also, he seems to have the same feelings about progress and the "creation of knowledge" that young/reckless! Eliezer had about intelligence.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 15 October 2011 09:54:00PM 0 points [-]

Deutsch essentially thinks that humans are what I think he called at one point "universal knowledge generators". I confess that I don't fully understand his argument for this claim. It seemed to be something like the idea that we can in principle run a universal Turing machine. He does apparently discuss this idea more in his book The Beginning of Infinity, but I haven't read it yet.

Comment author: lessdazed 15 October 2011 10:12:42PM 0 points [-]

I haven't read it yet.

What would you think of a loose convention to not say one hasn't learned about a specific thing yet?

Saying that I haven't read something yet makes me more likely to think others think I am more likely to read it than if I hadn't said "yet". But that prematurely gives me some of the prestige that makes me want to read it in the first place, making it less likely I will.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 15 October 2011 10:29:28PM 2 points [-]

That might make sense. In this particular context, I do intend to read it eventually. But some of Deutsch's less insightful comments and the whole Popperclipping episode here has made me less inclined to do so.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 16 October 2011 09:54:25AM 0 points [-]
Comment author: [deleted] 16 October 2011 08:33:57PM *  2 points [-]

I'm working to improve my knowledge of epistemology. Can anyone recommend a good reference/text book on the subject? I'm especially looking to better understand LW's approach to epistemology (or an analogous approach) in a rigorous, scholarly way.

Until recently, I was a traditional rationalist. Epistemologically speaking, I was a foundationalist with belief in a priori knowledge. Through recent studying of Bayes, Quine, etc., these beliefs have been strongly challenged. I have been left with a feeling of cognitive dissidence.

I'd really appreciate if my thinking on epistemology can be set straight. While I think I understand the basics, I feel like a lack of coherent epistemology is really infecting the rest of my thinking.

[I'm having trouble explaining exactly what I'm looking for while still being concise. If you have any questions about my request, please feel free to ask.]

Edit: I've recently picked up a copy of Probability Theory: The Logic of Science by E. T. Jaynes. I've heard his name referenced a lot of LW and the reviews of the book are glowing. I'm going to read it to see if I can get a better understanding of probability theory, as it seems essential to the LW approach to epistemology.

Suggestions of other books are still very much appreciated.