gwern comments on [LINK] Nick Szabo: Beware Pascal's Scams - Less Wrong

7 Post author: David_Gerard 17 July 2012 07:18AM

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Comment author: gwern 23 July 2012 02:06:47AM * 0 points [-]

What is the reasonable probability you think I should assign to the proposition by some bunch of guys (with at most some accomplishments in highly non-gradable field of philosophy) led by a person with no formal education nor prior job experience nor quantifiable accomplishments, that they should be given money to hire more people to develop their ideas on how to save the world from a danger they are most adept at seeing? The prior here is so laughably low you can hardly find a study so flawed it wouldn't be a vastly greater explanation for the SI behavior than it's mission statement taken at face value, even if we do not take into account SI's prior record.

What is this, the second coming of C.S. Lewis and his trilemma? SI must either be completely right and demi-gods who will save us all or they must be deluded fools who suffer from some psychological bias - can you really think of no intermediates between 'saviors of humanity' and 'deluded fools who cannot possibly do any good', which might apply?

I just wanted to point out that invoking DK is an incredible abuse of psychological research and does not reflect well on either you or Dymtry, and now you want me to justify SI entirely...

The lack of other alternatives is evidence against SI's cause.

Alternatives would also be evidence against donating, too, since what makes you think they are the best one out of all the alternatives? Curious how either way, one should not donate!

Comment author: JaneQ comment score below threshold [+] (12 children)

Comment author: gwern 23 July 2012 04:51:00PM 0 points [-]

Do you have a disagreement besides fairly stupid rhetoric? The lack of alternatives is genuinely evidence against SI's cause, whereas presence of alternatives would genuinely make it unlikely that either of them is necessary. Yep, it's very curious, and very inconvenient for you. The logic is sometimes impeccably against what you like. Without some seriously solid evidence in favour of SI, it is a Pascalian wager as the chance of SI making a difference is small.

I'll rephrase: your argument from alternatives is as much bullshit as invoking Dunning-Kruger. Both an argument and its opposite cannot lead to the same conclusion unless the argument is completely irrelevant to the conclusion. If alternatives matter at all, there must be some number of alternatives which reflect better on SI than the other numbers.

Comment author: JaneQ 24 July 2012 06:02:58AM * -2 points [-]

Both an argument and its opposite cannot lead to the same conclusion unless the argument is completely irrelevant to the conclusion.

It's not an argument and it's opposite. One of the assumptions in either argument is 'opposite', that could make distinction between those two assumptions irrelevant but the arguments themselves remain very relevant.

I take as other alternatives everyone who could of worked on AI risk but didn't, because I consider it to be an alternative not to work on AI risk now. Some other people take as other alternatives people working on precisely the kind of AI risk reduction that SI works on. In which case the absence of alternatives - under this meaning of 'alternatives' - is evidence against SI's cause - against the idea that one should work on such AI risk reduction now. There should be no way how you can change - against same world - meanings of the words and arrive at different conclusion; it only happens if you are exercising in the rationalization and rhetoric. In electromagnetism if you are to change right hand rule to left hand rule every conclusion will stay the same; in reasoning if you wiggle what is 'alternatives' that should not change the conclusion either.

This concludes our discussion. Pseudologic derived from formal maxims and employing the method of collision (like in this case, colliding 'assumption' with 'argument') is too annoying.

Comment author: gwern 24 July 2012 04:37:22PM 2 points [-]

I hope you don't mind if I don't reply to you any further until it's clear whether you're a Dmytry sockpuppet.

Comment author: wedrifid 25 July 2012 01:48:36AM 1 point [-]

I hope you don't mind if I don't reply to you any further until it's clear whether you're a Dmytry sockpuppet.

If an account isn't actualy Dmytry but instead just someone who thinks the same way that Dmytry does there seems we can just treat them the same way anyhow. After all, ten people who act like Dmytry seems just as bad as Dmytry with ten accounts.

Comment author: gwern 25 July 2012 02:48:09AM 0 points [-]

They could just think the same way and be borrowing vocabulary and ideas without actually being as bad as him.

Comment author: wedrifid 25 July 2012 03:22:44AM * 1 point [-]

So the choice then would be whether to give the potential sockpuppet the benefit of the doubt and allow treatment of them to asymptotically approach the treatment of known Dmytry accounts to the extent that and for as long as they make Dmytry-like posts and for as long as it looks like the comments could be anomalies. ie. There is the expectation of either a regression to the mean or that an actual new user will be capable of learning from feedback.

If it is assumed that the accounts are sockpuppets then they immediately get treated without the benefit of doubt and with the additional loading penalty given to sockpuppets for being sockpuppets.

Comment author: JaneQ comment score below threshold [+] (0 children)

Comment author: CarlShulman 25 July 2012 03:43:30AM 0 points [-]

And also similar issues with English as a second language. I agree it's Dmytry, but not a sockpuppet. He didn't go to great lengths to hide that he was private_messaging. The new JaneQ account posted some posts (as opposed to comments), thanks to its positive karma balance. I figure that Dmytry wanted to make a post, so created a new account without huge negative karma (and thus be able to post). I.e. I think he's just trying to circumvent the karma system, not deceive people.

Comment author: wedrifid 25 July 2012 12:13:17PM 9 points [-]

I think he's just trying to circumvent the karma system

"Just".

People are welcome to abandon an account when they realize they have irrevocably destroyed their reputation and wish to start again and try not being an asshat. They are not welcome to use multiple accounts to subvert the karma system.

I agree it's Dmytry, but not a sockpuppet.

Please review the context. You will notice that gwern is arguing with two 'people' in this discussion. Both of them, by your own prediction, are Dmytry. Using multiple accounts to support each other in a single argument is exactly what 'sockpuppetry' is all about. To put it mildly: I don't like it.

Comment author: [deleted] 23 July 2012 11:25:31AM 0 points [-]

Without some seriously solid evidence in favour of SI, it is a Pascalian wager as the chance of SI making a difference is small.

Let's avoid inflationary use of Pascal's wager.

gwern comments on [LINK] Nick Szabo: Beware Pascal's Scams - Less Wrong

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