Related: Why Academic Papers Are A Terrible Discussion Forum, Four Layers of Intellectual Conversation

During a recent discussion about (in part) academic peer review, some people defended peer review as necessary in academia, despite its flaws, for time management. Without it, they said, researchers would be overwhelmed by "cranks and incompetents and time-card-punchers" and "semi-serious people post ideas that have already been addressed or refuted in papers already". I replied that on online discussion forums, "it doesn't take a lot of effort to detect cranks and previously addressed ideas". I was prompted by Michael Arc and Stuart Armstrong to elaborate. Here's what I wrote in response:

My experience is with systems like LW. If an article is in my own specialty then I can judge it easily and make comments if it’s interesting, otherwise I look at its votes and other people’s comments to figure out whether it’s something I should pay more attention to. One advantage over peer review is that each specialist can see all the unfiltered work in their own field, and it only takes one person from all the specialists in a field to recognize that a work may be promising, then comment on it and draw others’ attentions. Another advantage is that nobody can make ill-considered comments without suffering personal consequences since everything is public. This seem like an obvious improvement over standard pre-publication peer review, for the purpose of filtering out bad work and focusing attention on promising work, and in practice works reasonably well on LW.

Apparently some people in academia have come to similar conclusions about how peer review is currently done and are trying to reform it in various ways, including switching to post-publication peer review (which seems very similar to what we do on forums like LW). However it's troubling (in a "civilizational inadequacy" sense) that academia is moving so slowly in that direction, despite the necessary enabling technology having been invented a decade or more ago.

Discussion article for the meetup : LW Netherlands

Discussion article for the meetup : LW Netherlands

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.

Discussion article for the meetup : Slate Star Codex

Discussion article for the meetup : Slate Star Codex

This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.

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Here is a simplified version of the Doomsday argument in Anthropic decision theory, to get easier intuitions.

Assume a single agent A exists, an average utilitarian, with utility linear in money. Their species survives with 50% probability; denote this event by S. If the species survives, there will be 100 people total; otherwise the average utilitarian is the only one of its kind. An independent coin lands heads with 50% probability; denote this event by H.

Agent A must price a coupon C_S that pays out €1 on S, and a coupon C_H that pays out €1 on H. The coupon C_S pays out only on S, thus the reward only exists in a world where there are a hundred people, thus if S happens, the coupon C_S is worth (€1)/100. Hence its expected worth is (€1)/200=(€2)/400.

But H is independent of S, so (H,S) and (H,¬S) both have probability 25%. In (H,S), there are a hundred people, so C_H is worth (€1)/100. In (H,¬S), there is one person, so C_H is worth (€1)/1=€1. Thus the expected value of C_H is (€1)/4+(€1)/400 = (€101)/400. This is more than 50 times the value of C_S.

Note that C_¬S, the coupon that pays out on doom, has an even higher expected value of (€1)/2=(€200)/400.

So, H and S have identical probability, but A assigns C_S and C_H different expected utilities, with a higher value to C_H, simply because S is correlated with survival and H is independent of it (and A assigns an ever higher value to C_¬S, which is anti-correlated with survival). This is a phrasing of the Doomsday Argument in ADT.

Discussion article for the meetup : Instrumental rationality meetup - Manchester UK

Discussion article for the meetup : Instrumental rationality meetup - Manchester UK

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Deep Questions

Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Deep Questions