Here's a test of hindsight bias:
QM violates Bell inequalities, but obeys Tsirelson inequalities (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1303.2849v1.pdf).
What does that mean? (Not a rhetorical question, I really don't know!)
In graphical model terms, Bell inequality violations mean there is no "hidden variable DAG model" underlying what we see. But maybe Tsirelson inequality points to some correct generalization of the "hidden variable DAG" concept to the quantum setting (???). To my knowledge, nobody knows what to make of this, although it doesn't take much math background to understand Tsirelson inequalities.
To be a little more precise, I can imagine an object that does not posit anything ontologically beyond the four variables related by the graph:
A -> B <-> C <- D
The distributions that live in this object will, in general, violate both Bell and Tsirelson inequalities. So this object is "not physical." I can also posit a hidden variable DAG (in other words I posit in addition to A,B,C,D another variable H):
A -> B <- H -> C <- D
This will obey Bell inequality. So this is "classically physical, but not physical."
The question is, what should I posit beyond A,B,C,D to violate Bell, but obey Tsirelson? Whatever it is, it cannot be a hidden variable H. But maybe I can posit something more complicated, or "weird"? But obvious in hindsight?
I am not familiar with using DAG in QM, sorry.
Just wanted to mention that you can trade the EPR-style non-locality for macroscopic many worlds. For all its failings, this approach pushes the strangeness of QM into a local event where the branches interact. In the EPR example, it is where you compare the measurement results from the two detectors. Thus it might be more productive to base any DAG model on an MWI picture, or at least on a setup where there are only a finite and small number of branches, not uncountably many of them, like in Schrodinger's cat or EPR, maybe something like this quantum bomb tester.
Previously: Why Neglect Big Topics.
Why was there no serious philosophical discussion of normative uncertainty until 1989, given that all the necessary ideas and tools were present at the time of Jeremy Bentham?
Why did no professional philosopher analyze I.J. Good’s important “intelligence explosion” thesis (from 19591) until 2010?
Why was reflectively consistent probabilistic metamathematics not described until 2013, given that the ideas it builds on go back at least to the 1940s?
Why did it take until 2003 for professional philosophers to begin updating causal decision theory for the age of causal Bayes nets, and until 2013 to formulate a reliabilist metatheory of rationality?
By analogy to financial market efficiency, I like to say that “theoretical discovery is fairly inefficient.” That is: there are often large, unnecessary delays in theoretical discovery.
This shouldn’t surprise us. For one thing, there aren’t necessarily large personal rewards for making theoretical progress. But it does mean that those who do care about certain kinds of theoretical progress shouldn’t necessarily think that progress will be hard. There is often low-hanging fruit to be plucked by investigators who know where to look.
Where should we look for low-hanging fruit? I’d guess that theoretical progress may be relatively easy where:
These guesses make sense of the abundant low-hanging fruit in much of MIRI’s theoretical research, with the glaring exception of decision theory. Our September decision theory workshop revealed plenty of low-hanging fruit, but why should that be? Decision theory is widely applied in multi-agent systems, and in philosophy it’s clear that visible progress in decision theory is one way to “make a name” for oneself and advance one’s career. Tons of quality-adjusted researcher hours have been devoted to the problem. Yes, new theoretical advances (e.g. causal Bayes nets and program equilibrium) open up promising new angles of attack, but they don’t seem necessary to much of the low-hanging fruit discovered thus far. And progress in decision theory is definitely not valuable only to those with unusual views. What gives?
Anyway, three questions:
1 Good (1959) is the earliest statement of the intelligence explosion: “Once a machine is designed that is good enough… it can be put to work designing an even better machine. At this point an ”explosion“ will clearly occur; all the problems of science and technology will be handed over to machines and it will no longer be necessary for people to work. Whether this will lead to a Utopia or to the extermination of the human race will depend on how the problem is handled by the machines. The important thing will be to give them the aim of serving human beings.” The term itself, “intelligence explosion,” originates with Good (1965). Technically, artist and philosopher Stefan Themerson wrote a "philosophical analysis" of Good's intelligence explosion thesis called Special Branch, published in 1972, but by "philosophical analysis" I have in mind a more analytic, argumentative kind of philosophical analysis than is found in Themerson's literary Special Branch. ↩