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gwern comments on Dragon Ball's Hyperbolic Time Chamber - Less Wrong Discussion

35 Post author: gwern 02 September 2012 11:49PM

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Comment author: gwern 05 September 2012 12:52:50AM 0 points [-]

Deadlines like that are zero-sum games, and so the impact is limited - it shifts around who wins the exams/auditions at a substantial cost (whatever it takes to use the HTC over just living in the real world). On the macro scale, I'm not sure how much it matters at the margin: if someone needs a HTC just to study for an exam...

Comment author: [deleted] 05 September 2012 04:42:46AM *  0 points [-]

Deadlines like that are zero-sum games

So is poker, but it doesn't mean there's no point in playing it. (Also, they are only zero-sum if the number of candidates who will pass is fixed in advance.)

Comment author: gwern 05 September 2012 01:35:23PM 0 points [-]

Well, I think a lot of people play poker who shouldn't...

As for not being zero-sum - that may be true, and I assume your argument is that the additional return justifies the use of the HTC. But if you're not using the speedup aspect but the pocket-universe/precommitment aspect, why not just run cheaper facilities in realtime which approximate prisons for students? They need a week's practice, they enter the prison a week before the audition...

This has the tremendous advantage that we could do it already, right now, in the real world. Yet I've never heard of such a thing.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 September 2012 10:22:13PM *  0 points [-]

I think you may have misunderstood my idea. I was thinking that candidates would choose to go into the HTC, not that they would be required to. (And when I said “things you really care about” by “you” I meant candidates, not examiners.) And I wasn't assuming it would only work if you cannot leave the room before the 24 clock hours/12 subjective months -- indeed, it would work better if you could decide to stay as little or as long as you want.