Apprentice

Replying toExistential Risk and Public Relations

A trip down memory lane into the halcyon days of 2010 for a discussion on the possible implications of future AI understanding a sentence in English.

Land war in Asia

Apprentice

Introduction: Here's a misconception about World War II that I think is harmful and I don't see refuted often enough.

Misconception: In 1941, Hitler was sitting pretty with most of Europe conquered and no huge difficulties on the horizon. Then, due to his megalomania and bullshit ideology, he decided to invade Russia. This was an unforced error of epic proportions. It proved his undoing, like that of Napoleon before him.

Rebuttal: In hindsight, we think of the Soviet Union as a superpower and military juggernaut which you'd be stupid to go up against. But this is not how things looked to the Germans in 1941. Consider World War I. In 1917–1918, Germany and Austria... (read 248 more words →)

Replying toHarry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 113

Apprentice11y

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 113

I doubt Eliezer - champion of truth and science - would permit himself artistic license with this sort of thing. I think it is more likely that this is a genuine mistake on his part.

Replying toHarry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 113

Apprentice11y

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 113

In chapter 104 we have this: "Harry had refreshed the Transfigurations he was maintaining, both the tiny jewel in the ring on his hand and the other one, in case he was knocked unconscious". The other one was Hermione's body. This suggests that the glasses are not a transfigured item.

Replying toHarry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 113

Apprentice11y

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 113

Great idea! When everyone has inhaled the gas Harry can truthfully say in parseltongue that if he dies, everyone present will die (because that would cancel the transfiguration).

Edit: This work well with all the early foreshadowing about how transfiguration is extremely dangerous. In Ghostbusters we establish early on that you're not supposed to cross the streams because that is extremely dangerous. And then, at the end of the move, when all is lost, what you do is to deliberately cross the streams.

Replying toquestion: the 40 hour work week vs Silicon Valley?

Apprentice11y

question: the 40 hour work week vs Silicon Valley?

It's of course possible that this Bock guy knows what he's doing on the hiring front. But in these interviews he has no incentive to give Google's competitors coherent helpful information on how to hire people - and every incentive to send out obfuscated messages which might flatter the preconceptions of NYT readers.

Replying toquestion: the 40 hour work week vs Silicon Valley?

Apprentice11y

question: the 40 hour work week vs Silicon Valley?

Bock said ... that learning ability was much more important indicator of whether someone would be a good fit for Google than I.Q.

I have limited trust in a source which says things like that.

Edited to add: More on Bock's learning ability:

For every job, though, the No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it’s not I.Q. It’s learning ability. It’s the ability to process on the fly. It’s the ability to pull together disparate bits of information.

Yeah, nope.

Replying toRationality Quotes March 2014

Apprentice12y

Rationality Quotes March 2014

Truth has her throne on the shadowy back of doubt.

-- Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950), Savitri - A Legend and a Symbol

Replying toRationality Quotes March 2014

Apprentice12y

Rationality Quotes March 2014

Ye say that those ancient prophecies are true. Behold, I say that ye do not know that they are true.
Ye say that this people is a guilty and a fallen people, because of the transgression of a parent. Behold, I say that a child is not guilty because of its parents.
And ye also say that Christ shall come. But behold, I say that ye do not know that there shall be a Christ. And ye say also that he shall be slain for the sins of the world –
And thus ye lead away this people after the foolish traditions of your fathers, and according to your own desires; and ye keep them

Apprentice12y

Rationality Quotes February 2014

No, if I were inclined to go ahead and believe in ghosts, I would not then proceed to dismiss their threat so easily.

I agree, that seems to be the weakest step. What I guess he means is that if there are ghosts they seem to be quite wispy and unobtrusive. If they went around and did a lot of stuff we would presumably have good evidence for their existence.

Humans can drive cars

Apprentice

12y

There's been a lot of fuss lately about Google's gadgets. Computers can drive cars - pretty amazing, eh? I guess. But what amazed me as a child was that people can drive cars. I'd sit in the back seat while an adult controlled a machine taking us at insane speeds through a cluttered, seemingly quite unsafe environment. I distinctly remember thinking that something about this just doesn't add up.

It looked to me like there was just no adequate mechanism to keep the car on the road. At the speeds cars travel, a tiny deviation from the correct course would take us flying off the road in just a couple of seconds. Yet... (read 336 more words →)

Dr. Jubjub predicts a crisis

Apprentice

12y

Dr. Jubjub: Sir, I have been running some calculations and I’m worried about the way our slithy toves are heading.

Prof. Bandersnatch: Huh? Why? The toves seem fine to me. Just look at them, gyring and gimbling in the wabe over there.

Dr. Jubjub: Yes, but there is a distinct negative trend in my data. The toves are gradually losing their slithiness.

Prof. Bandersnatch: Hmm, okay. That does sound serious. How long until it becomes a problem?

Dr. Jubjub: Well, I’d argue that it’s already having negative effects but I’d say we will reach a real crisis in around 120 years.

Prof. Bandersnatch: Phew, okay, you had me worried there for a moment. But it sounds like... (read 304 more words →)

We need new humans, please help

Apprentice

12y

This topic is in vogue, so here's my pitch.

My fellow humans, I have some bad news and some good news. The bad news is that you are likely to eventually enter an enfeebled state, during which you will not be able to independently provide for yourself. Even worse, you will at some point altogether cease to function and then you can no longer contribute to the things you care about. The good news is that both of those problems can be ameliorated by the same scheme – the creation of new humans. The new humans can provide us with the assistance we need as our own abilities diminish. And when we cease... (read 246 more words →)

-16

[LINK] Why I'm not on the Rationalist Masterlist

Apprentice

12y

A long blog post explains why the author, a feminist, is not comfortable with the rationalist community despite thinking it is "super cool and interesting". It's directed specifically at Yvain, but it's probably general enough to be of some interest here.

http://apophemi.wordpress.com/2014/01/04/why-im-not-on-the-rationalist-masterlist/

I'm not sure if I can summarize this fairly but the main thrust seems to be that we are overly willing to entertain offensive/taboo/hurtful ideas and this drives off many types of people. Here's a quote:

In other words, prizing discourse without limitations (I tried to find a convenient analogy for said limitations and failed. Fenders? Safety belts?) will result in an environment in which people are more comfortable speaking the more social

... (read more)

882

The Noddy problem

Apprentice

14y

An episode of the Noddy animated series has the following plot.

Noddy needs to go pick up Martha Monkey at the station. But it's such a nice, sunny day that he would prefer to play around outside. He gets an idea to solve this dilemma. He casts a duplication spell on himself and his car and tells the duplicate to go fetch Martha while he goes out to play. Later, Noddy is out having fun when he suddenly spots his duplicate. It turns out that the duplicate also preferred playing outside to doing the errand so he also cast a duplication spell. Then they see another duplicate, and another...

I think this story makes... (read more)

Lecturing congressmen on cognitive biases

Apprentice

14y

A new session of Iceland's parliament convened on Saturday, opening with a religious service as is traditional. For the last couple of years, a local humanist group has offered alternatives to the religious ceremony. On Saturday they had a psychologist give a lecture on cognitive biases, principally on confirmation bias and the availability heuristic. This was attended by 13 out of 63 members of parliament. (Source in Icelandic).

I'm more pro-religion than most people who read Less Wrong and I am generally not excited about atheist activism. This, however, struck me as a good idea.

The Science of Cutting Peppers

Apprentice

15y

Summary: Rigorous scientific experiments are hard to apply in daily life but we still want to try out and evaluate things like self-improvement methods. In doing so we can look for things such as a) effect sizes that are so large that they don't seem likely to be attributable to bias, b) a deep understanding of the mechanism of a technique, c) simple non-rigorous tests.

Hello there! This is my first attempt at a top-level post and I'll start it off with a little story.

Five years ago, in a kitchen in London...

My wife: We're going to have my friends over for dinner and we're making that pasta sauce everyone likes. I'm going to... (read 910 more words →)

Replying toExistential Risk and Public Relations

Apprentice16y

Existential Risk and Public Relations

I think controlling Earth's destiny is only modestly harder than understanding a sentence in English - in the same sense that I think Einstein was only modestly smarter than George W. Bush. EY makes a similar point.

You sound to me like someone saying, sixty years ago: "Maybe some day a computer will be able to play a legal game of chess - but simultaneously defeating multiple grandmasters, that strains credibility, I'm afraid." But it only took a few decades to get from point A to point B. I doubt that going from "understanding English" to "controlling the Earth" will take that long.

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

Dr. Jubjub predicts a crisis

The Science of Cutting Peppers

Humans can drive cars

The Noddy problem

Apprentice

Apprentice

Land war in Asia

Humans can drive cars

Dr. Jubjub predicts a crisis

We need new humans, please help

[LINK] Why I'm not on the Rationalist Masterlist

The Noddy problem

Lecturing congressmen on cognitive biases

Apprentice

Dr. Jubjub predicts a crisis

The Science of Cutting Peppers

Humans can drive cars

The Noddy problem

Apprentice

Apprentice

Land war in Asia

Humans can drive cars

Dr. Jubjub predicts a crisis

We need new humans, please help

[LINK] Why I'm not on the Rationalist Masterlist

The Noddy problem

Lecturing congressmen on cognitive biases