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Open thread, September 2-8, 2013

0 Post author: David_Gerard 02 September 2013 02:07PM

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Comments (376)

Comment author: Laoch 08 January 2014 11:32:20AM *  -1 points [-]

No open thread for Jan 2014 so I'll ask here. Is anybody interested in enactivism? Does anybody think that there is a cognitivist bias in LessWrong?

Comment author: tut 08 January 2014 12:26:52PM 1 point [-]

No open thread for Jan 2014

Now there is. The next time you miss an open thread you can make one. A lot more people will see your comment than if you post in an old thread, and you might get a point or two of karma.

Comment author: shminux 16 September 2013 05:28:36PM *  1 point [-]

Another feature suggestion that will probably never be implemented: a check box for "make my up/down vote visible to the poster". The information required is already in the database.

Comment author: tgb 21 September 2013 12:53:46AM 0 points [-]

For what purpose? Can't one simply comment or private message if they feel its necessary?

Comment author: shminux 21 September 2013 05:03:54AM 0 points [-]

Trivial inconvenience plus not wanting to be intrusive.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 16 September 2013 06:21:55PM 1 point [-]

I would have a preference for never seeing such notifications.

Comment author: shminux 16 September 2013 06:42:06PM -1 points [-]

Because you do not trust yourself to not mouse over the post/comment karma button and wait for the list of non-anonymous voters to pop up?

Comment author: RichardKennaway 16 September 2013 09:00:58PM 0 points [-]

You did not earlier propose a design. But however it were designed, I would prefer the information was simply not available at all.

Comment author: shminux 16 September 2013 09:09:38PM -1 points [-]

Makes sense. I guess there should be a preference to disable this hypothetical feature.

Comment author: wedrifid 16 September 2013 02:30:51PM 0 points [-]

I am seeking a mathematical construct to use as a logical coin for the purpose of making hypothetical decision theory problems slightly more aesthetically pleasing. The required features are:

  • Unbiased. It gives (or can be truncated or otherwise resolved to give) a 50/50 split on a boolean outcome.
  • Indexable. The coin can be used multiple times through a sequence number. eg. "The n-th digit of pi is even".
  • Intractable. The problem is too hard to solve. Either because there is no polynomial time algorithm to solve it or just because it is somewhat difficult and the 'n' supplied is ridiculous. eg. "The 3^^^3 digit of pi is even".
  • Provable or otherwise verifiable. When the result of the logical coin is revealed it should be possible to also supply a proof of the result that would convince a mathematician that the revealed outcome is correct.
  • Simple to refer to. Either there is a common name for the problem or a link to a description is available. The more well known or straightforward the better.

NP-complete problems have many of the desired features but I don't know off the top of my head any that can be used as indexable fair coin.

Can anyone suggest some candidates?

Comment author: Nornagest 21 September 2013 06:52:07AM *  1 point [-]

It looks to me like you want a cryptographically secure pseudo-random number generator restricted to the output space {0, 1} and with a known seed. That's unbiased and intractable pretty much by definition, indexable up to some usually very large periodicity, and typically verifiable and simple to refer to because that's standard practice in the security world.

There's plenty of PRNGs out there, and you can simply truncate or mod their outputs to give you the binary output you want; Fortuna looks like a strong candidate to me.

(I was going to suggest the Mersenne twister, which I've actually implemented before, but on further examination it doesn't look cryptographically strong.)

Comment author: pengvado 21 September 2013 11:13:14AM 3 points [-]

That works with caveats: You can't just publish the seed in advance, because that would allow the player to generate the coin in advance. You can't just publish the seed in retrospect, because the seed is an ordinary random number, and if it's unknown then you're just dealing with an ordinary coin, not a logical one. So publish in advance the first k bits of the pseudorandom stream, where k > seed length, thus making it information-theoretically possible but computationally intractable to derive the seed; use the k+1st bit as the coin; and then publish the seed itself in retrospect to allow verification.

Possible desiderata that are still missing: If you take multiple coins from the same pseudorandom stream, then you can't allow verification until the end of the whole experiment. You could allow intermediate verification by committing to N different seeds and taking one coin from each, but that fails wedrifid's desideratum of a single indexable problem (which I assume is there to prevent Omega from biasing the result via nonrandom choice of seed?).

I can get both of those desiderata at once using a different protocol: Pick a public key cryptosystem, a key, and a hash function with a 1-bit output. You need a cryptosystem where there's only one possible signature of any given input+key, i.e. one that doesn't randomize encryption. To generate the Nth coin: sign N, publish the signature, then hash the signature.

Comment author: bcoburn 16 September 2013 10:58:14PM 1 point [-]

My first idea is to use something based on cryptography. For example, using the parity of the pre-image of a particular output from a hash function.

That is, the parity of x in this equation:

f(x) = n, where n is your index variable and f is some hash function assumed to be hard to invert.

This does require assuming that the hash function is actually hard, but that both seems reasonable and is at least something that actual humans can't provide a counter example for. It's also relatively very fast to go from x to n, so this scheme is easy to verify.

Comment author: Watercressed 21 September 2013 06:09:08AM -1 points [-]

Hash functions map multiple inputs to the same hash, so you would need to limit the input in some other way, and that makes it harder to verify.

Comment author: [deleted] 16 September 2013 03:07:32PM 0 points [-]

No candidates, but I'd like to point out that your unbiased requirement may perhaps be omitted, conditional on the implementation.

If you have a biased logical coin, you poll the coin twice until the results differ, and then you pick the last result when they do differ. That results in an unbiased logical coin.

My first instinct is to bet on properties of random graphs, but that's not my field.

Comment author: wedrifid 17 September 2013 12:55:01AM 0 points [-]

If you have a biased logical coin, you poll the coin twice until the results differ, and then you pick the last result when they do differ. That results in an unbiased logical coin.

That'd work. I like it!

Comment author: Larks 15 September 2013 04:53:25PM 3 points [-]

People sometimes say that we don't choose to be born. Is this false if I myself choose to have kids for the same reason my parents did (or at least to have kids if I was ever in the relevantly same situation?) If so, can I increase my measure by having more children for these reasons?

Comment author: Armok_GoB 16 September 2013 12:57:27AM 3 points [-]

Technically yes, but obviously if this is part of your motivation for doing so then thats a meaningful difference unless your parents also understood TDT and had that as part of their reason, so if in fact they did not (which they probably didn't since it wasn't invented back then) then this answer is entirely useless.

Comment author: [deleted] 21 September 2013 10:35:35PM 0 points [-]

if in fact they did not (which they probably didn't since it wasn't invented back then)

Other forms of folk rule consequentialism (e.g. the Golden Rule) have existed for quite a long time.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 22 September 2013 04:58:16AM 1 point [-]

Interesting point! This is quite a tricky problem that I've considered before. My current stance is we need to know more of the specifics and causal history of how those kind of rules are implemented in general before we can determine if they count, and there is also the possibility that once we've done that it turns out they "should" but our current formalizations won't... This is an interesting mostly unexplored (i think) subject that seems likely to spawn an fruitful discussion thou.

Comment author: wedrifid 13 September 2013 02:31:54AM *  5 points [-]

Who is this and what has he done with Robin Hanson?

The central premise is in allowing people to violate patents if it is not "intentional". While reading the article the voice in my head which is my model of Robin Hanson was screaming "Hypocrisy! Perverse incentives!" in unison with the model of Eliezer Yudkowsky which was also shouting "Lost Purpose!". While the appeal to total invasive surveillance slightly reduced the hypocrisy concerns it at best pushes the hypocrisy to a higher level in the business hierarchy while undermining the intended purpose of intellectual property rights.

That post seemed out of place on the site.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 September 2013 07:48:09PM 3 points [-]

I found this interesting post over at lambda the ultimate about constructing a provably total (terminating) self-compiler. It looked quite similar to some of the stuff MIRI has been doing with the Tiling Agents thing. Maybe someone with more math background can check it out and see if there are any ideas to be shared?

The post: Total Self-Compiler via Superstitious Logics

Comment author: Adele_L 13 September 2013 01:49:51AM *  3 points [-]

This is the same basic idea as Benja's Parametric Polymorphism, with N in the post corresponding to kappa from parametric polymorphism.

The "superstition" is:

We make our compiler superstitious as follows: we pick an unused no-op of the target machine that should never occur in normal generated code and add an axiom that says that running this no-op actually bumps a counter that exists in the ether, and, if this unseen counter exceeds N, then it halts execution of the machine. Since we could have started with an arbitrary N, we will never reach a contradiction if we take the bottom out of the level descent, so long as we don't let the logic know we took the bottom out.

And from the section in Tiling Agents about parametric polymorphism (recommended if you want to learn about parametric polymorphism):

It is difficult to see what "believing in" $T_\kappa$ could correspond to in terms of the epistemic state of a rational agent. We believe from outside the system that $\kappa$'s intended interpretation is "any natural number," but this realization is apparently forbidden to the agent to whom $\kappa$ refers to some specific finite number about which nothing is known except that it plays a vital role in the agent's goal system. This seems like an odd mental state for a rational agent.

Anyway, it's interesting that someone else has a very similar idea for this kind of problem. But as mentioned in Tiling Agents, the "superstitious belief" seems like a bad idea for an epistemically rational agent.

Comment author: [deleted] 13 September 2013 03:50:35PM 1 point [-]

It is neat that this problem is coming up elsewhere. It reminds me that MIRI's work could be relevant to people working in other sub-fields of math, which is a good sign and a good opportunity.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 09 September 2013 01:36:48AM 5 points [-]

The Travelling Salesman Problem

Powell’s biggest revelation in considering the role of humans in algorithms, though, was that humans can do it better. “I would go down to Yellow, we were trying to solve these big deterministic problems. We weren’t even close. I would sit and look at the dispatch center and think, how are they doing it?” That’s when he noticed: They are not trying to solve the whole week’s schedule at once. They’re doing it in pieces. “We humans have funny ways of solving problems that no one’s been able to articulate,” he says. Operations research people just punt and call it a “heuristic approach.”

Comment author: Vaniver 12 September 2013 04:49:50PM 4 points [-]

In loading trucks for warehouses, some OR guys I know ran into the opposite problem- they encoded all the rules as constraints, found a solution, and it was way worse than what people were actually doing. Turns out it was because the people actually loading the trucks didn't pay attention to whether or not the load was balanced on the truck, or so on (i.e. mathematically feasible was a harder set of constraints than implementable because the policy book was harder than the actuality).

(I also don't think it's quite fair to call the OR approach 'punting', since we do quite a bit of optimization using heuristics.)

Comment author: FiftyTwo 08 September 2013 06:11:45PM 2 points [-]

I've been discussing the idea of writing a series of short story fanfics where Rapture, an underwater city from the computer game Bioshock run by an Objectivist/Libertarian, is run by a different political philosophy. Possibly as a collaborative project with different people submitting different short stories. Would anyone here be interested in reading or contributiggg to something like that?

Comment author: ChristianKl 08 September 2013 04:46:32PM 2 points [-]

Bruce Schneier wrote an article on the Guardian in which he argues that we should give plausibility to the idea that the NSA can hack more forms of encryption than we previously believed.

Prefer symmetric cryptography over public-key cryptography. Prefer conventional discrete-log-based systems over elliptic-curve systems; the latter have constants that the NSA influences when they can.

The security of bitcoin wallets rests on elliptic-curve cryptography. This could mean that the NSA has the power to turn the whole bitcoin economy into toast if bitcoin becomes a real problem for them on a political level.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 08 September 2013 12:04:11PM 8 points [-]

Anyone tried to use the outside view on our rationalist community?

I mean, we are not the first people on this planet who tried to become more rational. Who were our predecessors, and what happened to them? Where did they succeed and where they failed? What lesson can we take from their failures?

The obvious reply will be: No one has tried doing exactly the same thing as we are doing. That's technically true, but that's a fully general excuse against using outside view, because if you look into enough details, no two projects are exactly the same. Yet it is experimentally proved that even looking at sufficiently similar projects gives better estimates than just using the inside view. So, if there was no one exactly like us, who was the most similar?

I admit I don't have data on this, because I don't study history, and I have no personal experience with Objectivists (which are probably the most obvious analogy). I would probably put Objectivists, various secret societies, educational institutions, or self-help groups into the reference class. Did I miss something important? The common trait is that those people are trying to make their thinking better, avoid some frequent faults, and teach other people to do the same thing. Who would be your candidate for the reference group? Then, we could explore them one by one and guess what they did right and what they did wrong. Seems to me that many small groups fail to expand, but on the other hand, the educational institutions that succeed to establish themselves in the society, become gradually filled with average people and lose the will to become stronger.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 15 September 2013 10:47:59PM 1 point [-]

I'd like to here point out a reference class that includes if I understood things right: the original buddhism movement, the academic community of france around the revolution, and the ancient greek philosophy tradition. More examples and a name for this reference class would be welcome.

I include this mainly to counterbalance the bias towards automatically looking for the kind of cynical reference classes typically associated with and primed by the concept of the outside view.

Looking at the reference class examples I came up with, there seems to be a tendency towards having huge geniuses at the start that nobody later could compete with, wich lead after a few centuries to dissolving into spinoff religions dogmatically accepting or even perverting the original ideals.

DISCLAIMER: This is just one reference class and the conclusions reached by that reference class, it was reached/constructed by trying to compensate for a predicted bias with tends to lead to even worse bias on average.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 16 September 2013 08:57:38PM *  1 point [-]

Thank you! This is the reference class I was looking for, so it is good to see someone able to overcome the priming done by, uhm, not exactly the most neutral people. I had a feeling that something like this is out there, but specific examples did not come into my mind.

The danger of not being able to "replicate" Eliezer seems rather realistic to me. Sure, there are many smart people in CFAR, and they will continue doing their great work... but would they be able to create a website like LW and attract many people if they had to start from zero or if for whetever reasons the LW website disappeared? (I don't know about how MIRI works, so I cannot estimate how much Eliezer would be replaceable there.) Also, for spreading x-rationality to other countries, we need local leaders there, if we want to have meetups and seminars, etc. There are meetups all over the world, but they are probably not the same thing as the communities in Bay Area and New York (although the fact that two such communities exist is encouraging).

Comment author: ChristianKl 09 September 2013 10:58:06AM 1 point [-]

I think the cult view is valuable to look at some issues.

When you have someone asking whether he should cut ties with his nonrational family members is valuable to keep in mind that's culty behavior.

Normal groups in our society don't encourage their members to cut family ties. Bad cults do those things. That doesn't mean that there's never a time where one should rationally advice someone to cut those ties, but one should be careful.

Given the outside view of how cults went to a place where people literally drunk kool aid I think it's important to encourage people to keep ties to people who aren't in the community.

Part of why Eliezer banned the basilisk might have been that having it more actively around would push LessWrong in the direction of being a cult.

There's already the promise for nearly eternal life in a FAI moderated heaven.

It always useful to investigate where cult like behaviors are useful and where they aren't.

Comment author: Vaniver 08 September 2013 05:22:24PM *  3 points [-]

Anyone tried to use the outside view on our rationalist community?

I've seen a few attempts, mostly from outsiders. The danger involved there is an outsider has difficult picking the right reference class- you don't know how much they know about you, and how much they know about other things.

The things that the outside view has suggested we should be worried about that I remember (in rough order of frequency):

  • Being a cult.

  • Being youth-loaded.

  • Optimizing for time-wasting over goal-achieving.

Here are two critiques I remember from insiders that seem to rely on outside view thinking: Yvain's Extreme Rationality: It's Not That Great, patrissimo's Self-Improvement or Shiny Distraction: Why Less Wrong is anti-Instrumental Rationality. Eliezer's old posts on Every Cause Wants To Be A Cult and Guardians of Ayn Rand also seem relevant. (Is there someone who keeps track of our current battle lines for cultishness? Do we have an air conditioner on, and are we optimizing it deliberately?)

One of the things that I find interesting is in response to patrissimo's comment in September 2010 that LW doesn't have enough instrumental rationality practice, Yvain proposed that we use subreddits, and the result was a "discussion" subreddit. Now in September 2013 it looks like there might finally be an instrumental rationality subreddit. That doesn't seem particularly agile. (This is perhaps an unfair comparison, as CFAR has been created in the intervening time and is a much more promising development in terms of boosting instrumental rationality, and there are far more meetups now than before, and so on.)

There's also been a handful of "here are other groups that we could try to emulate," and the primary one I remember was calcsam's series on Mormons (initial post here, use the navigate-by-author links to find the others). The first post will be particularly interesting for the "outside view" analysis because he specifically discusses the features of the LDS church and LW that he thinks puts them in the same reference class (for that series of posts, at least).

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 09 September 2013 07:16:21PM *  6 points [-]

The reason why I asked was not just "who can we be pattern-matched with?", but also "what can we predict from this pattern-matching?". Not merely to say "X is like Y", but to say "X is like Y, and p(Y) is true, therefore it is possible that p(X) is also true".

Here are two answers pattern-matching LW to a cult. For me, the interesting question here is: "how do cults evolve?". Because that can be used to predict how LW will evolve. Not connotations, but predictions of future experiences.

My impression of cults is that they essentially have three possible futures: Some of them become small, increasingly isolated groups, that die with their members. Others are viral enough to keep replacing the old members with new members, and grow. The most successful ones discover a way of living that does not burn out their members, and become religions. -- Extinction, virality, or symbiosis.

What determines which way a cult will go? Probably it's compatibility of long-term membership with ordinary human life. If it's too costly, if it requires too much sacrifice from members, symbiosis is impossible. The other two choices probably depend on how much effort does the group put into recruiting new members.

Having too many young people is some evidence of incompatibility. Perhaps the group requires a level of sacrifice that a university student can pay, but an employed father or mother with children simply cannot. What happens to the members who are unable to give the sacrifice? Well... in LW community nothing happens to anyone. How boring! It's not like I will become excommunicated if I stop reading the website every day. (Although, I may be excommunicated from the "top contributors, 30 days" list.) So the question is whether members who don't have too much time can still find the community meaningful, or whether they will leave voluntarily. In other words: Is LessWrong useful for an older person with a busy family life? -- If yes, symbiosis is possible; if no, it's probably virality as long as the website and rationality seminars keep attracting new people, or extinction if they fail to.

In this light, I am happy about recent Gunnar's articles, and I hope he will not be alone. Because the cult (or Mormonism) analogy suggests that this is the right way to go, for long-term sustainability.

The other analogy, with shining self-improvement seminars, seems more worrying to me. In self-improvement seminars, the speakers are not rewarded for actually helping people; they are rewarded for sounding good. (We know the names of some self-help gurus... but don't know the names of people who became awesome because of their seminars. Their references are all about their image, none about their product.) Is rationality advice similar?

This is an old problem, actually the problem discussed in the oldest article on LessWrong: if we can't measure rationality, we can't measure improvements in rationality... and then all we can say about CFAR rationality lessons is that they feel good. -- Unless perhaps the questionnaires given to people who did and didn't attend rationality minicamps showed some interesting results.

And by the way, whether we have or don't have an applied rationality subreddit, doesn't seem too important to me. The important thing is, whether we have or don't have applied rationality articles. (Those articles could as well be posted in Main or Discussion. And the new subreddit will not generate them automatically.)

Comment author: Vaniver 10 September 2013 10:10:08PM *  3 points [-]

The reason why I asked was not just "who can we be pattern-matched with?", but also "what can we predict from this pattern-matching?". Not merely to say "X is like Y", but to say "X is like Y, and p(Y) is true, therefore it is possible that p(X) is also true".

Agreed. One of the reasons why I wrote a comment that was a bunch of links to other posts is because I think that there is a lot to say about this topic. Just "LW is like the Mormon Church" was worth ~5 posts in main.

In other words: Is LessWrong useful for an older person with a busy family life?

A related question: is LessWrong useful for people who are awesome, or just people who want to become awesome? This is part of patrissimo's point: if you're spending an hour a day on LW instead of an hour a day exercising, you may be losing the instrumental rationality battle. If someone who used to be part of the LW community stops posting because they've become too awesome, that has unpleasant implications for the dynamics of the community.

And by the way, whether we have or don't have an applied rationality subreddit, doesn't seem too important to me.

I was interested in that because "difference between the time a good idea is suggested and the time that idea is implemented" seems like an interesting reference class.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 12 September 2013 09:02:35PM 4 points [-]

Isn't this a danger that all online communities face? Those who procrastinate a lot online get a natural advantage against those who don't. Thus, unless the community is specifically designed against that (how exactly?), the procrastinators will become the elite.

(It's an implication: Not every procrastinator becomes a member of elite, but all members of elite are procrastinators.)

Perhaps we could make an exception for Eliezer, because for him writing the hundreds of articles was not procrastination. But unless writing a lot of stuff online is one's goal, then procrastination is almost a necessity to get a celebrity status on a website.

Then we should perhaps think about how to prevent this effect. A few months ago we had some concerned posts against "Eternal September" and stuff. But this is more dangerous, because it's less visible, it is a slow, yet predictable change, towards procrastination.

Comment author: Vaniver 12 September 2013 09:47:06PM *  4 points [-]

Isn't this a danger that all online communities face?

Yes, which is I think a rather good support for having physical meetups.

Then we should perhaps think about how to prevent this effect.

Agreed.

A few months ago we had some concerned posts against "Eternal September" and stuff. But this is more dangerous, because it's less visible, it is a slow, yet predictable change, towards procrastination.

Note that many of the Eternal September complaints are about this, though indirectly: the fear is that the most awesome members of a discussion are the ones most aggravated by newcomers, because of the distance between them and newcomers is larger than the difference between a median member and a newcomer. The most awesome people also generally have better alternatives, and thus are more sensitive to shifts in quality.

Comment author: linkhyrule5 12 September 2013 10:41:57PM 2 points [-]

Supporting this, I'll note that I don't see many posts from, say, Wei Dai or Salamon in recent history - though as I joined all of a month of ago take that with a dish of salt.

I wonder if something on the MIRI/CFAR end would help? Incentives on the actual researchers to make occasional (not too many, they do have more important things to do) posts on LessWrong would probably alleviate the effect.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 14 September 2013 12:47:30PM 1 point [-]

Perhaps to some degree, different karma coefficients could be used to support what we consider useful on reflection (not just on impulse voting). For example, if a well-researched article generated more karma than a month of procrastinating while writing comments...

There is some support for this: articles in Main get 10× more karma than comments. But 10 is probably not enough, and also it is not obvious what exactly belongs to Main; it's very unclearly defined. Maybe there could be a Research subreddit where only scientific-level articles are allowed, and there the karma coefficient could be pretty high. (Alternatively, to prevent karma inflation, the karma from comments should be divided by 10.)

Comment author: ChristianKl 09 September 2013 09:21:47PM 0 points [-]

The other analogy, with shining self-improvement seminars, seems more worrying to me. In self-improvement seminars, the speakers are not rewarded for actually helping people; they are rewarded for sounding good. (We know the names of some self-help gurus... but don't know the names of people who became awesome because of their seminars. Their references are all about their image, none about their product.)

I don't think that "sounding good" is a accurate description of how people in the personal development field succeed.

Look at Tony Robbins who one of the most successful in the business. When you ask most people whether walking on hot coal is impressive they would tell you that it is. Tony manages to get thousands of people in a seminar to walk over hot coals.

Afterwards they go home and tell there friends about who they walked about hot coals. That impresses people and more people come to his seminars.

It not only that his talk sounds good but that he is able to provide impressive experiences.

On the other hand his success is also partly about being very good at building a network marketing structure that works.

But in some sense that not much different than the way universities work. They evidence that universities actually make people successful in life isn't that strong.

What determines which way a cult will go? Probably it's compatibility of long-term membership with ordinary human life. If it's too costly, if it requires too much sacrifice from members, symbiosis is impossible. The other two choices probably depend on how much effort does the group put into recruiting new members.

I don't think so. If you are a scientologist and believe in Xenu that reduces your compatibility with ordinary human life. At the same time it makes you more committed to the group if you are willing something to belong.

Opus Dei members wear cilice to make themselves uncomfortable to show that they are committed.

I think the fact that you don't see where many people as members of groups that need a lot of commitment is a feature of 20th century where mainstream society with institution such as television that are good at presenting a certain culture which everyone in a country has a shared identity.

At the moment all sort of groups like the Amnish or LDS that require more commitment of their members seem to grow. It could be that we have a lot more people as members of groups that require sacrifice in a hundred years than we have now.

Comment author: [deleted] 08 September 2013 02:03:23AM 0 points [-]

Why should an AI have to self-modify in order to be super-intelligent?

One argument for self-modifying FAI is that "developing an FAI is an extremely difficult problem, and so we will need to make our AI self-modifying so that it can do some of the hard work for us". But doesn't making the FAI self-modifying make the problem much more difficult, since how we have to figure out how to make goals stable under self-modification, which is also a very difficult problem?

The increased difficulty could be offset by the ability for the AI to undergo a "self-modifying foom", which results in a titanic amount of intelligence increase from relatively modest beginnings. But would it be possible for an AI to have a "knowledge-about-problem-solving foom" instead, where the AI increases its intelligence not by modifying itself, but by increasing the amount of knowledge it has about how to solve problems?

Here are some differences that come to mind between the two kinds of fooms:

  • A self-modification could change the AI's behavior in an arbitrary manner. Obtaining knowledge about problem-solving could only change the AI's behavior via metacognition.
  • A bad self-modification could easily destroy the AI's safety (unless we figure out how to fix this problem!). Obtaining knowledge about problem-solving would only destroy the AI's safety if the knowledge is substantially misleading. (An AI might somehow come to believe that it should only read pro-Green books, and then fail to take into account the fact that beliefs naively derived from reading pro-Green books will be biased towards Green.)
  • Any "method of being intelligent" can be turned into a self-modification. Not every method of being intelligent can effectively be turned into a piece of knowledge about problem-solving, because there's only a limited set of beliefs that the AI could act upon. (A non-self-modifying AI may be programmed to think about pizza upon believing the statement "I should think about pizza", but it is less likely to be programmed to adjust all its beliefs to be pro-Blue, without evidence, upon believing the statement "I should adjust all my beliefs to be pro-Blue, without evidence".)

Certainly self-modification has its advantages, but so does pure KAPS, so I'm confused about how it seems like literally everyone in the FAI community seems to believe self-modification is necessary for a strong AI.

Comment author: Vaniver 08 September 2013 05:29:17PM 1 point [-]

Why should an AI have to self-modify in order to be super-intelligent?

I'm not sure where the phrase "have to" is coming from. I don't think the expectation that we will build a self-modifying intelligence that becomes a superintelligence is because that seems like the best way to do it but because it's the easiest way to do it, and thus the one likely to be taken first.

In broad terms, the Strong AI project is expected to look like "humans build dumb computers, humans and dumb computers build smart computers, smart computers build really smart computers." Once you have smart computers that can build really smart computers, it looks like they will (in the sense that at least one institution with smart computers will let them, and then we have a really smart computer on our hands), and it seems likely that the modifications will occur at a level that humans are not able to manage effectively (so it really will be just smart computers making the really smart computers).

But doesn't making the FAI self-modifying make the problem much more difficult, since how we have to figure out how to make goals stable under self-modification, which is also a very difficult problem?

Yes. This is why MIRI is interested in goal stability under self-modification.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 September 2013 04:20:34AM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure where the phrase "have to" is coming from. I don't think the expectation that we will build a self-modifying intelligence that becomes a superintelligence is because that seems like the best way to do it but because it's the easiest way to do it, and thus the one likely to be taken first.

Yeah, I guess my real question isn't why we think an AI would have to self-modify; my real question is why we think that would be the easiest way to do things.

Comment author: drethelin 09 September 2013 04:30:40AM 0 points [-]

you'd have to actively stop it from doing so. An AI is just code: If the AI has the ability to write code it has the ability to self modify.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 September 2013 04:42:47AM *  0 points [-]

An AI is just code: If the AI has the ability to write code it has the ability to self modify.

If the AI has the ability to write code and the ability to replace parts of itself with that code, then it has the ability to self-modify. This second ability is what I'm proposing to get rid of. See my other comment.

Comment author: Vaniver 09 September 2013 04:58:39PM 1 point [-]

If the AI has the ability to write code and the ability to replace parts of itself with that code, then it has the ability to self-modify.

Unpack the word "itself."

(This is basically the same response as drethelin's, except it highlights the difficulty in drawing clear delineations between different kinds of impacts the AI can have on the word. Even if version A doesn't alter itself, it still alters the world, and it may do so in a way that bring around version B (either indirectly or directly), and so it would help if it knew how to design B.)

Comment author: [deleted] 10 September 2013 03:27:58AM 0 points [-]

Well, I'm imagining the AI as being composed of a couple of distinct parts—a decision subroutine (give it a set of options and it picks one), a thinking subroutine (give it a question and it tries to determine the answer), and a belief database. So when I say "the AI can't modify itself", what I mean more specifically is "none of the options given to the decision subroutine will be something that involves changing the AI's code, or changing beliefs in unapproved ways".

So perhaps "the AI could write some code" (meaning that the thinking algorithm creates a piece of code inside the belief database), but "the AI can't replace parts of itself with that code" (meaning that the decision algorithm can't make a decision to alter any of the AI's subroutines or beliefs).

Now, certainly an out-of-the-box AI would, in theory, be able to, say, find a computer and upload some new code onto it, and that would amount to self-modification. I'm assuming we're going to first make safe AI and then let it out of the box, rather than the other way around.

Comment author: drethelin 09 September 2013 04:44:36AM 4 points [-]

If an AI can't modify its own code it can just write a new AI that can.

Comment author: hairyfigment 08 September 2013 05:59:49AM 2 points [-]

But would it be possible for an AI to have a "knowledge-about-problem-solving foom" instead, where the AI increases its intelligence not by modifying itself, but by increasing the amount of knowledge it has about how to solve problems?

My immediate reaction is, 'Possibly -- wait, how is that different? I imagine the AI would write subroutines or separate programs that it thinks will do a better job than its old processes. Where do we draw the line between that and self-modification or -replacement?'

If we just try to create protected code that it can't change, the AI can remove or subvert those protections (or get us to change them!) if and when it acquires enough effectiveness.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 September 2013 04:19:08AM *  1 point [-]

The distinction I have in mind is that a self-modifying AI can come up with a new thinking algorithm to use and decide to trust it, whereas a non-self-modifying AI could come up with a new algorithm or whatever, but would be unable to trust the algorithm without sufficient justification.

Likewise, if an AI's decision-making algorithm is immutably hard-coded as "think about the alternatives and select the one that's rated the highest", then the AI would not be able to simply "write a new AI … and then just hand off all its tasks to it"; in order to do that, it would somehow have to make it so that the highest-rated alternative is always the one that the new AI would pick. (Of course, this is no benefit unless the rating system is also immutably hard-coded.)

I guess my idea in a nutshell is that instead of starting with a flexible system and trying to figure out how to make it safe, we should start with a safe system and try to figure out how to make it flexible. My major grounds for believing this, I think, is that it's probably going to be much easier to understand a safe but inflexible system than it is to understand a flexible but unsafe system, so if we take this approach, then the development process will be easier to understand and will therefore go better.

Comment author: ChristianKl 09 September 2013 11:09:18AM *  1 point [-]

Likewise, if an AI's decision-making algorithm is immutably hard-coded as "think about the alternatives and select the one that's rated the highest", then the AI would not be able to simply "write a new AI … and then just hand off all its tasks to it"; in order to do that, it would somehow have to make it so that the highest-rated alternative is always the one that the new AI would pick.

You basically say that the AI should be unable to learn to trust a process that was effective in the past to also be effective in the future. I think that would restrict intelligence a lot.

Comment author: [deleted] 10 September 2013 03:20:02AM 0 points [-]

Yeah, that's a good point. What I want to say is, "oh, a non-self-modifying AI would still be able to hand off control to a sub-AI, but it will automatically check to make sure the sub-AI is behaving correctly; it won't be able to turn off those checks". But my idea here is definitely starting to feel more like a pipe dream.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 16 September 2013 01:06:52AM *  0 points [-]

Hmm, might still be something gleaned for attempting to steelman this or work in different related directions.

Edit; maybe something with an AI not being able to tolerate things it can't make certain proofs about? Problem is it'd have to be able to make those proofs about humans if they are included in its environment, and if they are not it might make UFAI there (Intuition pump; a system that consists of a program it can prove everything about, and humans that program asks questions to). Yea this doesn't seem very useful.

Comment author: ChristianKl 10 September 2013 05:51:37PM 0 points [-]

You can't really tell whether something that is smarter than yourself is behaving correctly. In the end a non-self-modifying AI checking on whether a self-modifying sub-AI is behaving correctly isn't much different from a safety perspective than a human checking whether the self modifying AI is behaving correctly.

Comment author: drethelin 09 September 2013 04:49:31AM 1 point [-]

immutably hard-coding something in is a lot easier to say than to do.

Comment author: drethelin 08 September 2013 09:51:24PM 1 point [-]

Or it can write a new AI that's an improved version of itself and then just hand off all its tasks to it.

Comment author: moridinamael 08 September 2013 01:11:59AM 1 point [-]

What happened with the Sequence Reruns? I was getting a lot out of them. Were they halted due to lack of a party willing to continue posting them, or was a decision made to end them?

Comment author: Vaniver 08 September 2013 05:42:19PM *  4 points [-]

What happened with the Sequence Reruns? I was getting a lot out of them. Were they halted due to lack of a party willing to continue posting them, or was a decision made to end them?

I'm pretty sure they halted because they had gone through the Sequences. Final Words, the last rerun post, was published after Go Forth and Create The Art!, which is listed as the last of the Craft and Community sequence, which was the last of the Major Sequences.

Comment author: wedrifid 08 September 2013 01:24:32AM 0 points [-]

What happened with the Sequence Reruns? I was getting a lot out of them. Were they halted due to lack of a party willing to continue posting them, or was a decision made to end them?

I never heard of such a decision and if it was made then it can be ignored because it was a bad decision. (Until power is applied to hinder implementation.)

If you value the sequence reruns then by all means start making the posts!

I personally get my 'sequence reruns' via the audio versions. Originally I used text to speech but now many of them have castify.

Comment author: niceguyanon 07 September 2013 01:21:00AM 1 point [-]

When I was a teenager I took a personality test as a requirement for employment at a retail clothing store. I didn't take it too seriously, I "failed" it and that was the end of my application. How do these tests work and how to you pass or fail them? Is there evidence that these tests can actually predict certain behaviors?

Comment author: [deleted] 08 September 2013 04:18:58AM 0 points [-]

You might be interested in the [Big Five] model of personality, which seems to be a rough scientific consensus, and is better empirically supported than other models. In particular, measures of conscientiousness have a relatively strong predictive value for things like grades, unemployment, crime, income, etc. Myers-Briggs-style tests that sort people into buckets ("You're an extrovert! You're an introvert!") are more common but don't seem to have a much predictive value except insofar as they reduce to something like the Big Five model.

However, from what I remember of applying to crappy jobs, you may not have taken a real test. I remember normal sounding items like, "I prefer large groups to small groups", mixed in with "trick" questions like, "If I saw my best friend stealing from the cash register, I would report him/her". I assume you got those right. Either way, you're expected to just lie and say you'd be the perfect, most hard-working employee ever and that cleaning toilets/selling shoes/washing cars is what you've dreamed of doing since you were five.

Comment author: Ichneumon 08 September 2013 01:45:10AM 0 points [-]

I've heard (second-hand, but the original source was a counselor for job-finding) that a trick for passing those, if it's a test that offers options from "Strongly disagree" to "Strongly agree", is to always pick one of the polarized ends ("Strongly" either). The idea seems to be that they'll prefer candidates who are less washy, have stronger convictions, etc.

Comment author: Dahlen 07 September 2013 02:40:09AM 2 points [-]

You cannot fail a personality test unless the person administering the test wants to filter out specific personality types that are similar to yours, for a process unrelated to the test itself (e.g. employment).

The thing is, most possible personalities seem to be considered undesirable by employers, and so many people simply resort to lying on these tests to present a favourable image to employers (basically: extrovert, conformist, "positive"/upbeat/optimistic, ambitious, responsible etc.). Looks like employers know about this, but don't care anyway, because they think that if you aren't willing to mold yourself into somebody else for the sake of the job, then you don't want the job enough and there are many others who do.

(Disclaimer: I'm an outsider to the employment process and might not know what I'm talking about. My impressions are gathered from job interview advice and job descriptions.)

Comment author: Randy_M 06 September 2013 04:32:36PM 2 points [-]

This is rather off-topic to the board, but my impression is that there is some sympathy here for alternative theories on heart disease/healthy diets, etc. (which I share). Any for alternative cancer treatments? I don't find any that have been recommended to me as remotely plausible, but wonder if I'm missing something, if some disproving study if flawed, etc.

Comment author: shminux 06 September 2013 04:02:59PM 1 point [-]

Need help understanding the latest SMBC comic strip on rationality and microeconomics...

Comment author: CronoDAS 06 September 2013 04:42:49PM 0 points [-]
Comment author: gwern 06 September 2013 04:11:24PM 4 points [-]

What don't you understand? The 2 homo economicuses are aware that 'existence is suffering' especially when they are the butt of the humor, and rationally commit suicide.

Comment author: shminux 06 September 2013 04:27:59PM -1 points [-]

rationally commit suicide.

You mean, left the bar?

Comment author: gwern 06 September 2013 04:31:18PM 3 points [-]

The end of the joke is the end of them.

Comment author: shminux 06 September 2013 05:01:13PM -1 points [-]

The joke would end one way or another, regardless of what they decide to do.

Comment author: gwern 06 September 2013 05:30:27PM 5 points [-]

Er, yes, but that's like saying you should stop eating ice cream right now because one day you will die.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 06 September 2013 09:05:24AM *  4 points [-]

An Open Letter to Friendly AI Proponents by Simon Funk (who wrote the After Life novel):

No law or even good idea is going to stop various militaries around the world, including our own, from working as fast as they can to create Skynet. Even if they tell you they've put the brakes on and are cautiously proceeding in perfect accordance with your carefully constructed rules of friendly AI, that's just their way of telling you you're stupid.

There are basically two outcomes possible here: They succeed in your lifetime, and you are killed by a Terminator, or they don't succeed in your lifetime and you die of old age.

I suggest choosing option three: Have one last party with your navel, then get off your sofa and grab a computer or a pad of paper and start working on solving AI as fast as you can. Contrary to singularity b.s., the AI you invent isn't going to rewrite the laws of physics and destroy the universe before you can hit control-C. Basic space, time, and energy limitations will likely confound your laptop's ambitions to take over the world for quite some time--plenty of time for those who best understand it to toy with what it really takes to make it friendly. That's assuming it's you and me, and not SAIC. And maybe, just maybe, if we work together and make enough progress in our lifetimes, that AI can help us live long enough to live even longer still...

But it starts now, and the first step is admitting that AI is hard and accepting that you have no fucking clue how to do it. If you can't do that, you'll never be able to leave that sofa comfort zone. Have an idea? Try it. Code it up. Nothing will teach you more about what you do (and mostly don't) know than that. Share your results, positive or negative. Look for more ideas. Don't be attached to anything--wear failures with pride. Today's good idea is tomorrow's nonsense, and two years later may prove the solution after all. Stir the pot and dive in. Make it happen.

I promise you that by default the next thirty years of your life will go by in a blink and you will look around you horrified at how little progress has happened--and you'll wish you'd been working on the other side of the equation.

Comment author: somervta 06 September 2013 09:25:03AM 5 points [-]

So, in other words, absolutely no engagement with the actual ideas/arguments of the people the 'letter' is addressed to.

Comment author: brandyn 08 September 2013 11:23:23PM 1 point [-]

Clarify?

Comment author: somervta 09 September 2013 12:34:23AM 0 points [-]

He's ignoring everything Friendly AI Proponents have said on the issue , and is attacking a strawman instead of the real reasons FAI people think it's a problem.

Comment author: brandyn 09 September 2013 12:51:59AM 1 point [-]

Trying to understand here. What's the strawman in this case?

Can you point me to an essay that addresses the points in this one?

Comment author: somervta 09 September 2013 01:13:10AM *  1 point [-]

He doesn't really make any relevant points.

The closest is this:

Contrary to singularity b.s., the AI you invent isn't going to rewrite the laws of physics and destroy the universe before you can hit control-C. Basic space, time, and energy limitations will likely confound your laptop's ambitions to take over the world for quite some time--plenty of time for those who best understand it to toy with what it really takes to make it friendly

Which is really just an assertion that you won't get FOOM (I mean, no one thinks it'll take less time than it takes you to hit Ctrl-C, but that's just hyperbole for writing style). He doesn't argue for that claim, he doesn't address any of the arguments for FOOM (most notably and recently: IEM).

Comment author: brandyn 09 September 2013 04:56:03AM *  0 points [-]

Just to follow up, I'm seeing nothing new in IEM (or if it's there it's too burried in "hear me think" to find--Eliezer really would benefit from pruning down to essentials). Most of it concerns the point where AGI approaches or exceeds human intelligence. There's very little to support concern for the long ramp up to that point (other than some matter of genetic programming, which I haven't the time to address here). I could go on rather at length in rebuttal of the post-human-intelligence FOOM theory (not discounting it entirely, but putting certain qualitative bounds on it that justify the claim that FAI will be most fruitfully pursued during that transition, not before it), but for the reasons implied in the original essay and in my other comments here, it seems moot against the overriding truth that AGI is going to happen without FAI regardless--which means our best hope is to see AGI+FAI happen first. If it's really not obvious that that has to lead with AGI, then tell me why.

Does anybody really think they are going to create an AGI that will get out of their hands before they can stop it? That they will somehow bypass ant, mouse, dog, monkey, and human and go straight to superhuman? Do you really think that you can solve FAI faster or better than someone who's invented monkey-level AI first?

I feel most of this fear is risidual leftovers from the self-modifying symbolic-program singularity FOOM theories that I hope are mostly left behind by now. But this is just the point -- people who don't understand real AGI don't understand what the real risks are and aren't (and certainly can't mediate them).

Comment author: somervta 09 September 2013 05:11:17AM 1 point [-]

I feel most of this fear is risidual leftovers from the self-modifying symbolic-program singularity FOOM theories that I hope are mostly left behind by now. But this is just the point -- people who don't understand real AGI don't understand what the real risks are and aren't (and certainly can't mediate them).

Self-modifying AI is the point behind FOOM. I'm not sure why you're connecting self-modification/FOOM/singularity with symbolic programming (I assume you mean GOFAI), but everyone I'm aware of who thinks FOOM is plausible thinks it will be because of self-modification.

Comment author: brandyn 09 September 2013 05:47:29AM 0 points [-]

Yes, I understand that. But it matters a lot what premises underlie AGI how self-modification is going to impact it. The stronger fast-FOOM arguments spring from older conceptions of AGI. Imo, a better understanding of AGI does not support it.

Thanks much for the interesting conversation, I think I am expired.

Comment author: somervta 09 September 2013 05:04:09AM *  0 points [-]

I don't think anyone is saying that an 'ant-level' AGI is a problem. The issue is with 'relatively-near-human-level' AGI. I also don't think there's much disagreement about whether a better understanding of AGI would make FAI work easier. People aren't concerned about AI work being done today, except inasmuch as it hastens better AGI work done in the future.

Comment author: brandyn 09 September 2013 02:00:21AM 0 points [-]

"I mean, no one thinks it'll take less time than it takes you to hit Ctrl-C" -- by the way, are you sure about this? Would it be more accurate to say "before you realize you should hit control-C"? Because it seems to me, if it aint goin' FOOM before you realize you should hit control-C (and do so) then.... it aint goin' FOOM.

Comment author: ChristianKl 09 September 2013 11:20:17AM 0 points [-]

How would you know that you have to press Crtl-C? What observation would you need to make?

Comment author: drethelin 09 September 2013 04:08:17AM 1 point [-]

More importantly: If someone who KNOWS how important stopping it is sitting at the button, then they're more likely to stop it, but if someone is like "it's getting more powerful and better optimized! Let's see how it looks in a week!" is in charge, then problems.

Comment author: brandyn 09 September 2013 04:35:59AM 0 points [-]

Well, then, I hope it's someone like you or me that's at the button. But that's not going to be the case if we're working on FAI instead of AGI, is it...

Comment author: somervta 09 September 2013 02:46:29AM 1 point [-]

What do you think Ctrl-C does in this?

Comment author: brandyn 09 September 2013 02:06:35AM *  1 point [-]

"The Intelligence Explosion Thesis says that an AI can potentially grow in capability on a timescale that seems fast relative to human experience due to recursive self-improvement. This in turn implies that strategies which rely on humans reacting to and restraining or punishing AIs are unlikely to be successful in the long run, and that what the first strongly self-improving AI prefers can end up mostly determining the final outcomes for Earth-originating intelligent life. " -- Eliezer Yudkowsky, IEM.

I.e., Eliezer thinks it'll take less time than it takes you to hit Ctrl-C. (Granted it takes Eliezer a whole paragraph to say what the essay captures in a phrase, but I digress.)

Comment author: somervta 09 September 2013 02:44:54AM 3 points [-]

Eliezer's position is somewhat more nuanced than that. He admits a possibility of a FOOM timescale on the order of seconds, but a timescale on the order of weeks/months/years is also in line with the IE thesis.

Comment author: brandyn 09 September 2013 01:26:32AM 1 point [-]

Ah, thanks, better understand your position now. I will endeavor to read IEM (if it isn't too stocked with false presuppositions from the get go).

I agree the essay did not endeavor to disprove FOOM, but let's say it's just wrong on that claim, and that FOOM is really a possibility -- then are you saying you'd rather let the military AI go FOOM than something homebrewed? Or are you claiming that it's possible to reign in military efforts in this direction (world round)? Or give me a third option if neither of those applies.

Comment author: somervta 09 September 2013 02:56:32AM 1 point [-]

AS to the 'third option', most work that I'm aware of falls into either educating people about AI risk, or trying to solve the problem before someone else builds an AGI. Most people advocate both.

Comment author: somervta 09 September 2013 02:53:17AM 1 point [-]

FAI proponents (Of which I am one, yes) tend to say that, ceteris paribus, an AGI which is constructed without first 'solving FAI'* will be 'Unfriendly', military or otherwise. This would be very very bad for humans and human values.

*There is significant disagreement over what exactly this consists of and how hard it will be.

Comment author: brandyn 09 September 2013 04:18:12AM 1 point [-]

Do you think people who can't implement AGI can solve FAI?

Comment author: somervta 09 September 2013 04:19:38AM 1 point [-]

The problem of Friendliness can be worked on before the problem of AGI has been solved, yes

Comment author: fubarobfusco 06 September 2013 07:36:47AM 0 points [-]

An awful lot of politics seems to be variations on the theme of "let's you and him fight".

Comment author: jooyous 06 September 2013 01:27:18AM 3 points [-]

How do you pronounce "Yvain"?

Comment author: Ben_LandauTaylor 06 September 2013 07:07:16PM 3 points [-]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvain and hover your mouse over the IPA pronunciation key.

Comment author: jooyous 06 September 2013 09:31:31PM 2 points [-]

Nooooo, I've been saying it wrong in my head the whole time.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 05 September 2013 10:21:38PM 3 points [-]

Framing effects (causing cognitive biases) can be thought of as a consequence of the absence of logical transparency in System 1 thinking. Different mental models that represent the same information are psychologically distinct, and moving from one model to another requires thought. If this thought was not expended, the equivalent models don't get constructed, and intuition doesn't become familiar with these hypothetical mental models.

This suggests that framing effects might be counteracted by explicitly imagining alternative framings in order to present a better sample to intuition; or, alternatively, focusing on an abstract model that has abstracted away the irrelevant details of the framing.

Comment author: alex_zag_al 05 September 2013 09:10:07PM *  4 points [-]

Has anyone here read up through ch18 of Jaynes' PT:LoS? I just spent two hours trying to derive 18.11 from 18.10. That step is completely opaque to me, can anybody who's read it help?

You can explain in a comment, or we can have a conversation. I've got gchat and other stuff. If you message me or comment we can work it out. I probably won't take long to reply, I don't think I'll be leaving my computer for long today.

EDIT: I'm also having trouble with 18.15. Jaynes claims that P(F|A_p E_aa) = P(F|A_p) but justifies it with 18.1... I just don't see how that follows from 18.1.

EDIT 2: It hasn't answered my question but there's online errata for this book: http://ksvanhorn.com/bayes/jaynes/ Chapter 18 has a very unfinished feel, and I think this is going to help other confusions I get into about it

Comment author: Kindly 13 September 2013 01:52:45PM *  0 points [-]

A not-quite-rigorous explanation of the thing in 18.15:

E_aa is, by construction, only relevant to A. A_p was defined (in 18.1) to screen off all previous knowledge about A. So in fact, if we are given evidence E_aa but then given evidence A_p, then E_aa becomes completely irrelevant: it's no longer telling us anything about A, but it never told us anything about anything else. Therefore P(F|A_p E_aa) can be simplified to P(F|A_p).

Comment author: alex_zag_al 13 September 2013 04:04:25PM *  0 points [-]

E_aa is, by construction, only relevant to A.

That's not true though. By construction, every part of it is relevant to A.

That doesn't mean it's not relevant to anything else. For example, It could be in this Bayes net: E_aa ---> A ----> F. Then it'd be relevant to F.

Although... thinking about that Bayes net might answer other questons...

Hmm. Remember that Ap screens A from everything. I think that means that A's only connection is to Ap - everything else has to be connected through Ap.

So the above Bayes net is really

Eaa --> Ap --> F With another arrow from Ap to A.

Which would mean that Ap screens Eaa from F, which is what 18.15 says.

The above Bayes net represents an assumption that Eaa and F's only relevance to each other is that they're both evidence of A, which is often true I think.

Hmm. When I have some time I'm gonna draw Bayes nets to represent all of Jaynes' assumptions in this chapter, and when something looks unjustified, figure out what Bayes net structure would justify it.

In fact, I skipped over this before but this is actually recommended in the comments of that errata page I posted:

p. 554, eqn. (18.1): This definition cannot hold true for arbitrary propositions $E$; for example, what if $E$ implies $A$? This kind of problem occurs throughout the chapter. I don't think you can really discuss the $A_p$ distribution properly without explicitly introducing the notion of a sample space and organizing one's information about the sample space as a graphical model in which $A$ has a single parent variable $\theta$, with $A_p$ defined as the proposition $\theta = p$. For those unfamiliar with graphical models / Bayesian networks, I recommend the following book:

Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems: Networks of Plausible Inference (J. Pearl).

Comment author: Manfred 13 September 2013 12:20:10PM 0 points [-]

Yeah, I don't see how those make sense either.

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 06 September 2013 07:00:16AM *  2 points [-]

I've just looked and I have no idea either. If anyone wants to help there's a copy of the book here.

EDIT: The numbers in that copy are off by 1 from the book. "18.10" = "18-9" and so on.

Comment author: alex_zag_al 06 September 2013 03:21:02PM *  0 points [-]

Yeah, so to add some redundancy for y'all, here's the text surrounding the equations I'm having trouble with.

The 18.10 to 18.11 jump I'm having trouble with is the one in this part of the text:

But suppose that, for a given E_b, (18.8) holds independently of what E_a might be; call this 'strong irrelevance'. Then we have (what I'm calling 18.10) But if this is to hold for all (A_p|E_a), the integrands must be the same: (what I'm calling 18.11, and can't derive) .

And equation 18.15, which I can't justify, is in this part of the text:

But then, by definition (18.1) of A_p, we can see that A_p automatically cancels out E_aa in the numerator: (F|A_pE_aa)=(F|A_p). And so we have (18.13) reduced to (what I'm calling 18.15, and don't follow the justification for)

Comment author: [deleted] 05 September 2013 04:55:44PM 0 points [-]

LWers seem to be pretty concerned about reducing suffering by vegetarianism, charity, utilitarianism etc. which I completely don't understand. Can anybody explain to me what is the point of reducing suffering?

Thanks.

Comment author: wedrifid 08 September 2013 03:02:02AM 2 points [-]

LWers seem to be pretty concerned about reducing suffering by vegetarianism, charity, utilitarianism etc.

With respect to vegetarianism there are a couple of vocal advocates. Don't assume this applies to a majority. "Utilitarianism" is also considered outright ridiculous by many (in contrast to the principles of consequentialism, expected value maximising and altruistic values, which are generally popular.)

Comment author: [deleted] 08 September 2013 02:38:33AM 0 points [-]

Wow. I was so heavily downvoted while not even one of my arguments was refuted. Really?

Comment author: wedrifid 08 September 2013 03:03:40AM *  2 points [-]

Wow. I was so heavily downvoted while not even one of my arguments was refuted. Really?

You were given replies, including to your previous complaint about this same comments. Read them.

Comment author: [deleted] 18 December 2013 02:00:12PM 0 points [-]

Yeah, thanks. I think just didn't understand what they were trying to say.

Comment author: drethelin 05 September 2013 06:15:17PM 5 points [-]

Commonly, humans have an amount of empathy that means that when they know about suffering of entities within their circle of interest, they also suffer. EG, I can feel sad because my friend is sad. Some people have really vast circles, and feel sad when they think about animals suffering.

Do you understand suffering yourself? If so, presumably when you suffer you act to reduce it, by not holding your hand in a fire or whatnot? Working to end suffering of others can end your own empathic suffering.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 September 2013 01:24:21AM *  -1 points [-]

I understand wanting to help people. I have empathy and I feel all the things you've mentioned. What I'm trying to say is if you suffer when you think about suffering of others, why not to try to stop thinking (caring) about it and donate to science, instead of spending your time and money to reduce suffering?

Comment author: drethelin 06 September 2013 06:40:07PM 1 point [-]

do you think people should donate to science because that will reduce MORE suffering in the long term?

Comment author: [deleted] 07 September 2013 01:18:41AM *  0 points [-]

Nope. I just like science.

Upd: I understand why my other comments were downvoted. But this?

Comment author: [deleted] 21 September 2013 11:00:07PM *  0 points [-]

And some other people just like other people not suffering. Why should your like count more than theirs?

Comment author: [deleted] 22 September 2013 04:31:56AM 0 points [-]

Could you show me where I wrote that my like should count more than theirs?

Comment author: [deleted] 22 September 2013 07:23:28AM 0 points [-]

You didn't say that explicitly, but if yours doesn't count more than theirs, why should we spend money on yours but not theirs?

Comment author: [deleted] 22 September 2013 11:24:30AM *  0 points [-]

Because they can (looks like not) deal with suffering from suffering of others, without spending money on it, while enjoying spending money on science?

Comment author: drethelin 08 September 2013 09:46:27PM 1 point [-]

I'm not sure, I didn't vote it. But my theory would be that you seem to be making fun of people who like to reduce suffering for no better reason than you like a different thing (I don't understand why you do x? is often code for x is dumb or silly).

Comment author: [deleted] 09 September 2013 03:11:59AM 0 points [-]

I don't think it's silly. I think it's silly to spend governmental money and encourage others to spend money on it, since it makes no sense. But if you personally enjoy it, well, that's great.

Comment author: drethelin 09 September 2013 04:00:23AM 1 point [-]

what do you mean by "makes no sense" ? Do you mean in the nihilistic sense that nothing really matters? You keep using the phrase as if it's a knockdown argument against reducing suffering, so it might be useful to clarify what you mean.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 September 2013 07:08:29AM *  0 points [-]

Yes, in nihilistic sense. If we follow the "what for?" question long enough, we will inevitably get to the point where there is no explanation, and we therefore may conclude that there is no sense in anything.

Comment author: drethelin 09 September 2013 07:11:29AM 4 points [-]

In that case, your question is already answered by the people who tell you that they want to. If nothing really matters than the only reasons to do things are internal to minds. In which case reducing suffering is simply a very common thing for minds in this area to want to do. Why? evolutionary advantage mayhaps. If you buy nihilism there is no reason to reduce suffering but there's also no reason no to and no reason to do anything else.

Comment author: Schlega 06 September 2013 03:51:12AM 1 point [-]

In my experience, trying to choose what I care about does not work well, and has only resulted in increasing my own suffering.

Is the problem that thinking about the amount of suffering in the world makes you feel powerless to fix it? If so then you can probably make yourself feel better if you focus on what you can do to have some positive impact, even if it is small. If you think "donating to science" is the best way to have a positive impact on the future, than by all means do that, and think about how the research you are helping to fund will one day reduce the suffering that all future generations will have to endure.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 September 2013 04:18:58AM 0 points [-]

It could be the problem, but, actually, the main one is that I see no point in reducing suffering and it looks like nobody can explain it to me.

Comment author: DanielLC 09 September 2013 04:18:49AM *  1 point [-]

It's an intrinsic value. Reducing suffering is the point.

I don't like to suffer. It's bad for me to suffer. Other people are like me. Therefore, it's also bad for them to suffer.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 September 2013 06:58:19AM 0 points [-]

When you say that "reducing suffering is the point", I suppose that there is a reason to reduce it. How does it follow from "It's bad" to "needs to be reduced"?

Comment author: DanielLC 10 September 2013 12:11:45AM 2 points [-]

When you say that "reducing suffering is the point", I suppose that there is a reason to reduce it.

No. It's a terminal value. When you ask what the point of doing X is, the answer is that it reduces suffering, or increases happiness, or does something else that's terminally valuable.

Comment author: [deleted] 10 September 2013 03:28:46AM 0 points [-]
  1. I don't see justification for dividing values in these two categories in that post.

  2. Do I understand you right, you think that although there is no reason why we should reduce suffering and there is no reason what for we should reduce suffering, we anyway should do it only because somebody called it "terminal value"?

Comment author: DanielLC 10 September 2013 04:44:22AM 0 points [-]

Let me try this from the beginning.

Consider an optimization process. If placed in a universe, it will tend to direct that universe towards a certain utility function. The end result it moves it towards is called its terminal values.

Optimization processes do not necessarily have instrumental values. AIXI is the most powerful possible optimization process, but it only considers the effect of each action on its terminal values.

Evolution is another example. Species are optimized solely based on their inclusive genetic fitness. It does not understand, for example, that if it got rid of humans' blind spots, they'd do better in the long run, so it might be a good idea to select for humans who are closer to having eyes with no blind spots. Since you can't change gradually from "blind spot" to "no blind spot" without getting "completely blind" for quite a few generations in between, evolution is not going to get rid of out blind spots.

Humans are not like this. Humans can keep track of sub-goals to their goals. If a human wants chocolate as a terminal value, and there is chocolate at the store, a human can make getting to the store an instrumental value, and start considering actions based on how they help get him/her to the store. These sub-goals are known as instrumental values.

Perhaps you don't have helping people as a terminal value. However, you have terminal values. I know this because you managed to type grammatically correct English. Very few strings are grammatically correct English, and very few patterns of movement would result in any string being sent as a comment to LessWrong.

Perhaps typing grammatically correct English is a terminal value. Perhaps you're optimizing something else, such as your own understanding of meta-ethics, and it just so happens that grammatically correct English is a good way to get this result. In this case, it's an instrumental value (unless you just have so much computing power that you didn't even consider what helps you write and you just directly figured out that twitching those muscles would improve your understanding of meta-ethics, but I doubt that).

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 05 September 2013 06:23:34PM 3 points [-]

I don't help people because of empathy for them. I just want to help them. It's a terminal value for me that other people be happy. I do feel empathy, but that's not why I help people.

Your utility function needn't be your own personal happiness! It can be anything you want!

Comment author: drethelin 05 September 2013 06:33:53PM 3 points [-]

No it can't. You don't get to choose your utility function.

But anyway I was responding to rationalnoodles as someone who clearly doesn't seem to understand wanting to help people.

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 05 September 2013 08:30:46PM 6 points [-]

My point was that you should never feel constrained by your utility function. You should never feel like it's telling you to do something that isn't what you want. But if you thought that utility=happiness then you might very well end up feeling this way.

Comment author: drethelin 05 September 2013 09:09:53PM 2 points [-]

That's fair. I think a better way to put it is to not put too much value into any explicit attempt to state your own utility function?

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 05 September 2013 09:19:38PM 0 points [-]

Yeah.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 05 September 2013 08:19:05PM 0 points [-]

Are you implying that utility functions don't change or that they do, but you can't take actions that will make it more likely to change in a given direction, or something else?

Comment author: drethelin 05 September 2013 09:09:20PM 2 points [-]

More that any decision you make about trying to change your utility function is not "choosing a utility function" but is actually just your current utility function expressing itself.

Comment author: MileyCyrus 05 September 2013 04:18:23PM 5 points [-]

If anyone wants to teach English in China, my school is hiring. The pay is higher than the market rate and the management is friendly and trustworthy. Must have a Bachelor's degree and a passport from and English speaking country. If you are at all curious, PM me for details.

Comment author: tgb 05 September 2013 02:22:48AM 12 points [-]

Background: "The genie knows, but doesn't care" and then this SMBC comic.

The joke in that comic annoys me (and it's a very common one on SMBC, there must be at least five there with approximately the same setup). Human values aren't determined to align with the forces of natural selection. We happen to be the product of natural selection, and, yes, that made us have some values which are approximately aligned with long-term genetic fitness. But studying biology does not make us change our values to suddenly become those of evolution!

In other words, humans are a 'genie that knows, but doesn't care'. We have understood the driving pressures that created us. We have understood what they 'want', if that can really be applied here. But we still only care about the things which the mechanics of our biology happened to have made us care about, even though we know these don't always align with the things that 'evolution cares about.'

(Please if someone can think of a good way to say this all without anthropomorphising natural selection, help me. I haven't thought enough about this subject to have the clarity of mind to do that and worry that I might mess up because of such metaphors.)

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 05 September 2013 02:41:09AM 2 points [-]
Comment author: RomeoStevens 04 September 2013 11:40:04PM *  1 point [-]

I recently read Luminosity/radiance, was there ever a discussion thread on here about it?

SPOILERS for the end

V jnf obgurerq ol gur raq bs yhzvabfvgl. Abg gb fnl gung gur raq vf gur bayl rknzcyr bs cbbe qrpvfvba znxvat bs gur punenpgref, naq cresrpgyl engvbany punenpgref jbhyq or obevat naljnl. Ohg vg frrzf obgu ernfbanoyr nf fbzrguvat Oryyn jbhyq unir abgvprq naq n terng bccbeghavgl gb vapyhqr n engvbanyvgl yrffba. Anzryl, Oryyn artrypgrq gb fuhg hc naq zhygvcyl. Fur vf qribgvat yvzvgrq erfbheprf gbjneqf n irel evfxl cyna bs unygvat nyy uhzna zheqre ol inzcverf vzzrqvngryl. Fbyivat guvf vffhr vf cynhfvoyl rzbgvbanyyl eryrinag, ohg Oryyn fubhyq unir abgvprq gung vg qbrfa'g znggre nyy gung zhpu ubj lbh trg xvyyrq, vg vf ebhtuyl rdhnyyl gentvp ab znggre gur sbez bs qrngu vs vzzbegnyvgl rkpvfgf. Juvpu vg qbrf. Inzcverf qb abg ercerfrag n fvmrnoyr senpgvba bs nyy qrnguf. Nf n crefba va gur nccnerag cbfvgvba gb raq qrngu bar fubhyq or n ovg zber pnershy jvgu frphevgl. Bs pbhefr Oryyn naq pb. zvtug srry vaivapvoyr sbyybjvat gurve ivpgbel. Qba'g gurl unir npprff gb nyy gur zbfg cbjreshy jvgpurf? Vfa'g Nyyvaern(fc?) gur hygvzngr ahyyvsvre? Jryy, znlor. Ohg gur sbezre Iraghev unq n ybg ybatre gb cyna naq n ybg srjre pbafgenvagf ba gurve orunivbe, zbenyyl fcrnxvat, naq gurl frrzrq gb gernq pnershyyl. Vs gur Iraghev unq nyy gung svercbjre, jul qvq gurl obgure gb znvagnva perqvovyvgl jvgu gur trareny inzcver cbchyngvba? Guvf fubhyq or n erq synt. Oryyn vf va gur cbfvgvba gb raq qrngu pbaqvgvbany ba ure erznvavat va cbjre. Fur fubhyq or gernqvat yvtugyl urer naq qribgvat erfbheprf gb fbyivat gur ceboyrz bs flagurgvp inzcver sbbq nf dhvpxyl nf cbffvoyr. Nalguvat gung cbfrf n frphevgl guerng gb guvf vavgvngvir fubhyq or pbafvqrerq vafnavgl.

Comment author: ChristianKl 08 September 2013 01:01:59PM 1 point [-]

Do you mean the end of Luminosity or the end of Radience?

Comment author: RomeoStevens 08 September 2013 10:34:14PM 0 points [-]

Radiance. edited.

Comment author: drethelin 05 September 2013 03:32:51AM 1 point [-]

Raqvat inzcver zheqref VF gernqvat yvtugyl: Vg'f n cbyvgvpny zbir. Gur orfg jnl gb trg uhznavgl abg gb ungr naq srne lbh vf gb or noyr gb pbasvqragyl gryy gurz gung gurl unir ab ernfba gb, naq gung lbh jnag bayl jung'f orfg sbe gurz. Zhpu nf Nzrevpn vf zvfgehfgrq va gur zvqqyr rnfg orpnhfr jr obzo jvgu unaq naq qvfgevohgr sbbq fhccyvrf jvgu gur bgure, crbcyr naq tbireazragf jvyy or zhpu yrff jvyyvat gb gehfg inzcverf vs gurl'er fgvyy xvyyvat crbcyr ng jvyy. Gur uhzna cbyvgvpny cbjref naq nyy gur uhznaf va gur jbeyq ner ahzrebhf rabhtu gung vs gur znfxrenqr oernxf, gur inzcverf jbhyq or va ZNWBE gebhoyr. Gur ovttrfg rkgnag guerng gb gur znfdhrenqr vf uhznaf orvat xvyyrq ol inzcverf. Fb fgbccvat xvyyvat uhznaf vf gur arkg fnsr fgrc jurgure lbh ner gelvat gb erirny inzcverf be pbaprny gurz.

Comment author: topynate 04 September 2013 10:40:12PM 2 points [-]

Yet another article on the terribleness of schools as they exist today. It strikes me that Methods of Rationality is in large part a fantasy of good education. So is the Harry Potter/Sherlock Holmes crossover I just started reading. Alicorn's Radiance is a fair fit to the pattern as well, in that it depicts rapid development of a young character by incredible new experiences. So what solutions are coming out of the rational community? What concrete criteria would we like to see satisfied? Can education be 'solved' in a way that will sell outside this community?

Comment author: ChristianKl 08 September 2013 02:52:55PM 0 points [-]

What concrete criteria would we like to see satisfied?

I think that's a bad question. I don't think that every school should follow the same criteria. It's perfectly okay if different school teach different things.

http://www.kipp.org/ would be an educational project financed by Bill Gates which tries to use a lot of testing. On the other hand you have unschooling and enviroments like Sudbury Valley School. I don't think that every child has to learn the same way. Both ways are viable.

When it comes to the more narrow rationality community I think there more thought about building solutions that educate adults than about educating children. If however something like Anki helps adults learn, there no real reason why the same idea can't help children as well.

Similar things go for the Credence game and predictionbook. If those tools can help adults to become more calibrated they probably can also help kids even if some modifications might be needed.

Without having the money to start a completly new school I think it's good to focus on building tool that build a particular skill.

Comment author: bramflakes 06 September 2013 03:43:02PM 5 points [-]

The characters in those fics are also vastly more intelligent and conscientious than average. True, current school environments are stifling for gifted kids, but then they are also a very small minority. Self-directed learning is counterproductive for not-so-bright, and attempts to reform schools to encourage "creativity" and away from the nasty test-based system tend to just be smoke-screens for any number of political and ideological goals. Like the drunk man and the lamppost, statistics and science are used for support rather than illumination, and the kids are the ones who suffer.

There are massive structural problems wracking the educational system but I wouldn't take the provincial perspectives of HPMoR or related fiction as good advice for the changes with the biggest marginal benefit.

Comment author: MugaSofer 04 September 2013 07:52:30PM *  5 points [-]

This may be an odd question, but what (if anything) is known on turning NPCs into PCs? (Insert your own term for this division here, it seems to be a standard thing AFAICT.)

I mean, it's usually easier to just recruit existing PCs, but ...

Comment author: mare-of-night 07 September 2013 02:14:07AM 4 points [-]

I suspect that finding people on the borderline between the categories and giving them a nudge is part of the solution to this problem.

What do you need PCs to do that NPCs cannot do? Zeroing in on the exact quality needed may make the problem easier.

Comment author: blashimov 06 September 2013 01:13:26AM 2 points [-]

Take the leadership feat, and hope your GM is lazy enough to let you level them. More practically, is it a skills problem or as I would guess an agency problem? Can impress on them the importance of acting vs not? Lend them the Power of Accountability? 7 habits of highly effective people? Can you compliment them every time they show initiative? etc. I think the solution is too specific to individuals for general advice, nor do I know a general advice book beyond those in the same theme as those mentioned.

Comment author: MugaSofer 07 September 2013 04:55:58PM 0 points [-]

Heh.

More practically, is it a skills problem or as I would guess an agency problem?

Agency. I've just noticed how many people I interact with are operating almost totally on cached thoughts, and getting caught up in a lot of traps that they could avoid if they were in the correct frame of mind (ie One Of Us.) But you have to be ... motivated correctly, I guess, in order to turn to rationalism or some other brand of originality. Goes my reasoning.

I think the solution is too specific to individuals for general advice, nor do I know a general advice book beyond those in the same theme as those mentioned.

Yeah, could be. I figure it's always possible someone already solved this, though, so I'd rather find there's already a best practice than kick myself much later for reinventing the wheel ( or worse, giving up!)

Comment author: ChristianKl 08 September 2013 01:52:40PM 2 points [-]

Agency. I've just noticed how many people I interact with are operating almost totally on cached thoughts, and getting caught up in a lot of traps that they could avoid if they were in the correct frame of mind (ie One Of Us.)

Sometimes I even think that I would profit from having some cached thoughts that give me effective habits that I fulfill at every occasion without thinking too much.

When the alarm bell rings it would be good if I would have a cached thought that would make me automatically get up without thinking the decision through.

I don't think the state of being paralysed because you killed all cached thought is particulary desirable. I think I spent too much time in that state in the last year ;)

I think it's more a question of focusing your energy on questioning those cached thoughts that actually matter.

When it comes to agency I think there are some occasions where I show a lot but others where I show little. Expecially when you compare me to an average person the domains in which I show my agency are different.

I can remember one occasion where I took more responsibility for a situation after reading the transition of McGonneral from NPC to PC in HPMOR.

I think that HPMOR is well written when it comes to installing the frame of mind you are talking about.

Comment author: MugaSofer 10 September 2013 09:43:03PM -1 points [-]

Oh, we evolved them for a reason. Heck, your brain almost certainly couldn't function without at least some. But when people start throwing type errors whenever something happens and a cached though doesn't kick in, they could probably do with a little more original thought.

That said, there's more to agency and PC-ness than cached thoughts. It was just particularly striking to see people around me fishing around for something familiar they knew how to respond to, and that's what prompted me to wonder how much we knew about the problem.

Comment author: Ichneumon 04 September 2013 07:23:59PM 2 points [-]

In the effective animal altruism movement, I've heard a bit (on LW) about wild animal suffering- that is, since raised animals are vastly outnumbered by wild animals (who encounter a fair bit of suffering on a frequent basis), we should be more inclined to prevent wild suffering than worry about spreading vegetarianism.

That said, I think I've heard it sometimes as a reason (in itself!) not to worry about animal suffering at all, but has anyone tried to solve or come up with solutions for that problem? Where can I find those? Alternatively, are there more resources I can read on wild animal altruism in general?

Comment author: DanielLC 09 September 2013 04:13:36AM 0 points [-]

There's not a whole lot we can do now, so one thing I've heard suggested is to spread vegetarianism so that people will be more sympathetic to animals in general, and when we have the ability to engineer some retrovirus to make them suffer less or something like that, we'll care more about helping animals than not playing god.

Another possibility: nuke the rainforests.

Comment author: Ichneumon 16 September 2013 03:06:04AM 1 point [-]

Vegetarianism as seeding empathy, interesting- where have you heard that idea brought up? (That is, was it a book or somewhere online I could see more on?) Mass genetic engineering was the 'solution' I was wondering about especially. (Obviously it's a little impractical at the moment.)

Nuking the rainforests doesn't seem like a good solution (aside from the obvious impacts on OUR wellbeing!) for the same reasons that nuking currently-suffering human populations doesn't seem like a good solution. Of course, you may have been joking.

Comment author: DanielLC 16 September 2013 03:23:23AM 1 point [-]

I don't know exactly where I heard it, but I'm pretty sure it was somewhere on felicifia.org.

I am somewhat skeptical of wild animal suffering being bad enough to necessitate nuking the rainforsts, but I think we should try to find out exactly how good their lives are. If their suffering really does significantly outweigh their happiness, then I don't see how we could justify not nuking them. If an animal is suffering and isn't likely to get better, you euthanize it. If this applies to all the animals, you euthanize all of them.

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 04 September 2013 07:57:14PM 3 points [-]

since raised animals are vastly outnumbered by wild animals

That doesn't sound true if you weight by intelligence (which I think you should since intelligent animals are more morally significant). Surely the world's livestock outnumber all the other large mammals.

Comment author: Ichneumon 08 September 2013 12:09:12AM *  1 point [-]

That's... a very good point, now that you mention it. Thanks for suggesting it! I looked into the comparisons in the USA (obviously, we're not only concerned about the USA. Some countries will have a higher population of wild or domestic, like Canada vs. Egypt. I have no idea if the US represents the average, but I figure it would be easiest to find information on.

That said; some very rough numbers:

Mule & black-tailed deer populations in USA: ~5 million (2003) (Source)

White-tailed deer population in USA: ~15 million (2010?) (Source)

Black bear population in USA: ~.5 million (2011) (Source)

Coyote population in USA: No good number found

Elk population in USA: ~1 million (2008) (Source)

That totals 21.5 million large wild animals- obviously, these aren't the only large wild animals in the USA, but I imagine that the rest added together wouldn't equal more than a quarter more than that- so I'll guess 25 million.

Domesticated animals:

Cattle population in USA: ~100 million (2011) (Source)

Hog & pig population in USA: ~120 million (2011) (Source)

Again, there are other large animals kept on commercial farms (goats, sheep), but they're probably not more than a quarter- so about 275 million large domesticated animals.

Looking at that, that does put "wild animal suffering" into perspective- if you accepted that philosophy, it would still only be worth >10% of the weight of domesticated animals. I had no idea.

Comment author: blashimov 06 September 2013 01:26:56AM 1 point [-]

Large mammals only? Is a domesticated cow smarter than a rat? A pigeon? Tough call.

Comment author: JMiller 04 September 2013 07:21:12PM 2 points [-]

Hi, I am taking a course in Existentialism. It is required for my degree. The primary authors are Sartre, de Bouvoir and Merleau-Ponty. I am wondering if anyone has taken a similar course, and how they prevented material from driving them insane (I have been warned this may happen). Is there any way to frame the material to make sense to a naturalist/ reductionist?

Comment author: ChristianKl 08 September 2013 01:43:55PM *  1 point [-]

Ignorance isn't bliss. If the course brings you in contact with a few Ugh fields that you hold that should be a good.

Comment author: hesperidia 08 September 2013 03:22:28AM *  3 points [-]
  1. If you do not have a preexisting tendency for depression as a result of taking ideas seriously, you probably have nothing to worry about. If you are already a reductionist materialist, you also probably have nothing to worry about. Millions of college students have taken courses in existentialism. Almost all of them are perfectly fine. Even if they're probably pouring coffee right now.

  2. In LW terms, it may be useful to brush up on your metaethics, as such problems are usually most troublesome about these kinds of ideas in my social circle. Joy in the Merely Real may also be useful. I have no idea how your instructors will react if you cache these answers and then offer them up in class, though. I would suggest not doing that very often.

  3. In the event that the material does overwhelm you beyond your ability to cope, or prevents you from functioning, counseling services/departments on college campuses are experienced in dealing with philosophy-related depression, anxiety, etc. The use of the school counseling services should be cheap/free with payment of tuition. I strongly suggest that you make use of them if you need them. More generally, talking about the ideas you are learning about with a study group, roommate, etc. will be helpful.

  4. Eat properly. Sleep properly. Exercise. Keep up with your studying. Think about things that aren't philosophy every once in a while. Your mind will get stretched. Just take care of it properly to keep it supple and elastic. (That was a really weird metaphor.)

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 08 September 2013 03:05:10AM *  0 points [-]

I think existentialism is very compatible w/ naturalism/reductionism. Existentialists just use a weird vocabulary. But one of the main points, I think, is coping with an absent/insane deity.

Comment author: pragmatist 06 September 2013 09:35:36AM *  1 point [-]

When reading Merleau-Ponty it might help to also read the work of contemporary phenomenologists whose work is much more rooted in cognitive science and neuroscience. A decent example is Shaun Gallagher's book How the Body Shapes the Mind, or perhaps his introductory book on naturalistic phenomenology, which I haven't read. Gallagher has a more or less Merleau-Pontyesque view on a lot of stuff, but explicitly connects it to the naturalistic program and expresses things in a much clearer manner. It might help you read Merleau-Ponty sympathetically.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 06 September 2013 05:05:15AM *  0 points [-]

All of those weird books were written by humans.
Those humans were a lot like other humans.
They had noses and butts and toes.
They ate food and they breathed air.
They could add numbers and spell words.
They knew how to have conversations and how to use money.
They had girlfriends or boyfriends or both.
Why did they write such weird books?
Was it because they saw other humans kill each other in wars?
Was it because writing weird books can get you a lot of attention and money?
Was it because they remembered feeling weird about their moms and dads?
People talk a lot about that.
Why do they talk a lot about that?

Comment author: kalium 05 September 2013 06:02:57PM 0 points [-]

I suspect that warning was intended as a joke.

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 05 September 2013 12:55:23AM 10 points [-]

This could be a Lovecraft horror story: "The Existential Diary of JMiller."

Week 3: These books are maddeningly incomprehensible. Dare I believe that it all really is just nonsense?

Week 8: Terrified. Today I "saw" it - the essence of angst - and yet at the same time I didn't see it, and grasping that contradiction is itself the act of seeing it! What will become of my mind?

Week 12: The nothingness! The nothingness! It "is" everywhere in its not-ness. I can not bear it - oh no, "not", the nothingness is even constitutive of my own reaction to it - aieee -

(Here the manuscript breaks off. JMiller is currently confined in the maximum security wing of the Asylum for the Existentially Inane.)

Comment author: Thomas 04 September 2013 05:39:21PM 8 points [-]
Comment author: wadavis 06 September 2013 02:53:13PM 1 point [-]

Thank you. All I need is hand held spray thermos to make Australia a viable working vacation. I have a strong irrational aversion to spiders. This is much more acceptable than the home made flamer.

Comment author: Lumifer 04 September 2013 03:58:36PM *  3 points [-]

A Singularity conference around a project financed by a Russian oligarch, seems to be mostly about uploading and ems.

Looks curious.

Comment author: niceguyanon 04 September 2013 02:32:26PM 4 points [-]

I have updated on how important it is for Friend AI to succeed (more now). I did this by changing the way I thought about the problem. I used to think in terms of the chance of Unfriendly AI, this lead me to assign a chance of whether a fast, self-modifying, indifferent or FAI was possible at all.

Instead of thinking of the risk of UFAI, I started thinking of the risk of ~FAI. The more I think about it the more I believe that a Friendly Singleton AI is the only way for us humans to survive. FAI mitigates other existential risks of nature, unknowns, human cooperation (Mutually Assured Destruction is too risky), as well as hostile intelligences; both human and self-modifying trans-humans. My credence – that without FAI, existential risks will destroy humanity within 1,000 years – is 99%.

Is this flawed? If not then I'm probably really late to this idea, but I thought I would mention it because it's taken considerable time for me to see it like this. And if I were to explain the AI problem to someone who is uninitiated, I would be tempted to lead with the ~FAI is bad, rather than UFAI is bad. Why? Because intuitively, the dangers of UFAI feels "farther" than ~FAI. First people have to consider whether or not it's even possible for AI, then consider why its bad for for UFAI, this is a future problem. Whereas ~FAI is now, it feels nearer, it is happening – we have come close to annihilating ourselves before and technology is just getting better at accidentally killing us, therefore let's work on FAI urgently.

Comment author: ChristianKl 08 September 2013 03:07:35PM *  0 points [-]

FAI mitigates other existential risks of nature, unknowns, human cooperation (Mutually Assured Destruction is too risky), as well as hostile intelligences; both human and self-modifying trans-humans. My credence – that without FAI, existential risks will destroy humanity within 1,000 years – is 99%.

I find it unlikely that you are well calibrated when you put your credence at 99% for a 1,000 year forecast.

Human culture changes over time. It's very difficult to predict how humans in the future will think about specific problems. We went in less than 100 years from criminalizing homosexual acts to lawful same sex marriage.

Could you imagine that everyone would adopt your morality in 200 or 300 hundred years? If so do you think that would prevent humanity from being doomed?

If you don't think so, I would suggest you to evaluate your own moral beliefs in detail.

Comment author: Lumifer 04 September 2013 03:15:11PM 1 point [-]

The more I think about it the more I believe that a Friendly Singleton AI is the only way for us humans to survive.

So you want a god to watch over humanity -- without it we're doomed?

Comment author: niceguyanon 04 September 2013 03:35:41PM 2 points [-]

As of right now, yes. However, I could be persuaded otherwise.

Comment author: linkhyrule5 04 September 2013 01:50:42AM 2 points [-]

So.... Thinking about using Familiar, and realizing that I don't actually know what I'd do with it.

I mean, some things are obvious - when I get to sleep, how I feel when I wake up, when I eat, possibly a datadump from RescueTime... then what? All told that's about 7-10 variables, and while the whole point is to find surprising correlations I would still be very surprised if there were any interesting correlations in that list.

Suggestions? Particularly from someone already trying this?

Comment author: niceguyanon 03 September 2013 05:24:54PM 5 points [-]

Is there a name for, taking someone being wrong on A as evidence as being wrong on B? Is this a generally sound heuristic to have? In the case of crank magnetism; should I take someone's crank ideas, as evidence against an idea that is new and unfamiliar to me?

Comment author: David_Gerard 08 September 2013 03:30:19PM -1 points [-]

It's a logical fallacy, but is something humans evolved to do (or didn't evolve not to do), so may in fact be useful when dealing with humans you know in your group.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 September 2013 06:34:32PM 1 point [-]

Yes, but in many cases it's very weak evidence. Overweighing it leads to the “reversed stupidity” failure mode.

Comment author: Mestroyer 04 September 2013 03:27:09AM 8 points [-]

It's evidence against them being a person whose opinion is strong evidence of B, which means it is evidence against B, but it's probably weak evidence, unless their endorsement of B is the main thing giving it high probability in your book.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 04 September 2013 03:06:29AM *  0 points [-]

ad hominem

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Comment author: satt 03 September 2013 11:02:02PM 0 points [-]
Comment author: CellBioGuy 05 September 2013 06:51:36AM 0 points [-]

Horrifically misnamed.

Comment author: Salemicus 03 September 2013 10:44:05PM 2 points [-]

I don't know if there's a name for this, but I definitely do it. I think it's perfectly legitimate in certain circumstances. For example, the more B is a subject of general dispute within the relevant grouping, and the more closely-linked belief in B is to belief in A, the more sound the heuristic. But it's not a short-cut to truth.

For example, suppose that you don't know anything about healing crystals, but are aware that their effectiveness is disputed. You might notice that many of the same people who (dis)believe in homeopathy also (dis)believe in healing crystals, that the beliefs are reasonably well-linked in terms of structure, and you might already know that homeopathy is bunk. Therefore it's legitimate to conclude that healing crystals are probably not a sound medical treatment - although you might revise this belief if you got more evidence. On the other hand, note that reversed stupidity is not truth - healing crystals being bunk doesn't indicate that conventional medicine works well.

The place where I find this heuristic most useful is politics, because the sides are well-defined - effectively, you have a binary choice between A and ~A, regardless of whether hypothetical alternative B would be better. If I stopped paying attention to current affairs, and just took the opposite position to Bob Crow on every matter of domestic political dispute, I don't think I'd go far wrong.

Comment author: shminux 03 September 2013 08:11:38PM *  1 point [-]

I don't know if there is a name for it, but there ought to be one, since this heuristic is so common: the reliability prior of an argument is the reliability of the arguer. For example, one reason I am not a firm believer in the UFAI doomsday scenarios is Eliezer's love affair with MWI.

Comment author: Adele_L 03 September 2013 07:34:41PM 0 points [-]

Bayes' theorem to the rescue! Consider a crank C, who endorses idea A. Then the probability of A being true, given that C endorses it equals the probability of C endorsing A, given that A is true times the probability that A is true over the probability that C endorses A.

In equations: P(A being true | C endorsing A) = P(C endorsing A | A being true)*P(A being true)/P(C endorsing A).

Since C is known to be a crank, our probability for C endorsing A given that A is true is rather low (cranks have an aversion to truth), while our probability for C endorsing A in general is rather high (i.e. compared to a more sane person). So you are justified in being more skeptical of A, given that C endorses A.

Comment author: diegocaleiro 03 September 2013 02:47:33PM 13 points [-]

(mild exaggeration) Has anyone else transitioned from "I only read Main posts, to I nearly only read discussion posts, to actually I'll just take a look at the open threat and people who responded to what I wrote" during their interactions with LW?

To be more specific, is there a relevant phenomenon about LW or is it just a characteristic of my psyche and history that explain my pattern of reading LW?

Comment author: David_Gerard 05 September 2013 07:45:38PM 0 points [-]

The lower the barrier to entry, the more the activity. Thus, more posts are on Discussion. My hypothesis is that this has worked well enough to make Discussion where stuff happens. c.f. how physics happens on arXiv these days, not in journals. (OTOH, it doesn't happen on viXra, whose barrier to entry may be too low.)

Comment author: niceguyanon 04 September 2013 02:49:51PM 0 points [-]

I'll admit that much of the main sequence are too heavy to understand without prior knowledge, so I find discussions much easier to take in, and many times I end up reading a sequence because it was posted in a discussion comment. For me discussion posts are like the gateway to Main.

Comment author: tgb 04 September 2013 12:34:32PM 10 points [-]

Selection bias alert: asking people whether they have transitioned to reading mostly discussion and then to mostly just open threads in an open thread isn't likely to give you a good perspective on the entire population, if that is in fact what you were looking for.

Comment author: private_messaging 04 September 2013 07:38:11PM 1 point [-]

There would be far more selection bias if he asked about it outside an open thread, though.

Comment author: blashimov 06 September 2013 01:29:15AM 0 points [-]

Really? Why?

Comment author: private_messaging 06 September 2013 09:20:45AM 3 points [-]

Because he's asking about people who only read the open thread. Here he could get response from the people who do read LW in general, inclusive of the open thread, and people who read only the open thread (he'll miss the people who don't read the open thread). Outside the open thread, he gets no response at all from people who only read the open thread.

Comment author: blashimov 06 September 2013 07:58:18PM 2 points [-]

I see what you mean.

Comment author: ygert 04 September 2013 10:13:39AM 0 points [-]

My experience is similar. I read the sequences as they were published on OB, then when the move over to LW happened I just subscribed to the RSS feed and only read Promoted posts for quite a few years. Only about a year ago I actually signed up for an account here and started posting and reading Discussion and the Open Thread.

Comment author: Username 03 September 2013 08:33:15PM 1 point [-]

I've definitely noticed this in my use of LW. I find that the open threads/media threads with their consistent high-quality novelty in a wide range of subject areas are far more enjoyable than the more academic main threads. Decision theory is interesting, but it's going to be hard to hold my attention for a 3,000 word post when there are tasty 200-word bites of information over here.

Comment author: David_Gerard 03 September 2013 08:39:27PM 0 points [-]

Well, chat's always more fun.