Scott Aaronson announced Worldview Manager, "a program that attempts to help users uncover hidden inconsistencies in their personal beliefs".
You can experiment with it here. The initial topics are Complexity Theory, Strong AI, Axiom of Choice, Quantum Computing, Libertarianism, Quantum Mechanics.
I just tried the one for AI and I think its not quite accurate. One of the biggest issues is that I think some of the terms need to be precisely defined and they are not. The other issue I found was that the analysis of my beliefs was not completely accurate because it did not take into account all the answers properly.
Its an interesting idea but needs work.
I have to say I think this post would be better if it were turned into an annotated bibliography for rationality and I guess considering the post focusing on decision theory.
This seems to me a bit maudlin at times in the overall tone of the work. I guess my question would be what is point of this? Are you trying to bash anti-reductionist arguments, or anti-science or some mix of the two, or am I missing the point all together?
Does this greater detail mean that we will see some math and some worked out problems? Are these results ever going to be published in a journal, or anywhere that is peer-reviewed?
having various technical achievements as my prior work made all the difference in getting in to a PhD program without a B.S. or M.S.
Where? What university?
The university would be Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Program (an esoteric area of CS)
As for the other parts I did some work in computer hardware specifically graphics hardware design, body armor design (bullet proof vests) etc. The body armor got to prototyping but was not marketable for a variety reasons to dull to go into. I am currently starting a video game company.
[Has Eliezer] ever published a paper in a peer-review journal?
"Levels of Organization in General Intelligence" appeared in the Springer volume Artificial General Intelligence. "Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgement of Global Risks" (PDF) and "Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk" (PDF) appeared in the Oxford University Press volume Global Catastrophic Risks. They're not mathy papers, though.
I am sorry I am going to take a shortcut here and respond to a couple posts along with yours. So fine I partially insert my foot in my mouth... but the issue I think here is that the papers we need to be talking about are math papers right? Anyone can publish non-technical ideas as long as they are well reasoned, but the art of science is the technical mastery.
As for Eliezer's comment concerning the irrelevance of Flare being a pre 2003 EY work I have to disagree. When you have no formal academic credentials and you are trying to make your mark in a technical field such as decision theory anything technical that you have done or attempted counts.
You essentially are building your credentials via work that you have done. I am speaking from experience since I didn't complete college I went the business route. But I can also say that I did a lot of technical work so I built my credentials in the field by doing novel technical things.
I am trying to help here coming from a similar position and wanting a PhD etc. having various technical achievements as my prior work made all the difference in getting in to a PhD program without a B.S. or M.S. It also makes all the difference in being taken seriously by the scientific community.
Which circles back to my original point which is an vague outline is not enough to show you really have a theory much less a revolutionary one. Sadly asking to be taken seriously is just not enough, you have to prove that you meet the bar of admission (decision theory is going to be math).
If someone can show me some technical math work EY has done that would be great, but as of now I have very little confidence that he has a real theory (if someone can I will drop the issue.) Yes I am aware of the Bayesian Theory paper but this lets face it is fairly basic and is far from showing that EY has the ability to revolutionize decision theory.
Anyone who declines to talk about interesting material because it's in a blog post, or for that matter, a poem scrawled in blood on toilet paper, is not taking Science seriously. Why should I expect them to have anything important to say if I go to the further trouble of publishing a paper?
I ought to post the decision theory to a thread on /b on 4chan, then try forwarding it around to philosophers who've written on Newcomblike problems. Only the ones who really care about their work would dare to comment on it, and the net quality of discussion would go up. Publishing in a peer-reviewed journal just invites in the riffraff.
Yes, this is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but not so tongue-in-cheek that I'm not seriously considering trying it.
"Anyone who declines to talk about interesting material because it's in a blog post, or for that matter, a poem scrawled in blood on toilet paper, is not taking Science seriously. Why should I expect them to have anything important to say if I go to the further trouble of publishing a paper?"
What?
Vladimir is right not paying attention to blog entry with no published work is a great way to avoid crackpots. You have this all backwards you speak as if you have all these credentials so everyone should just take you seriously. In reality what credentials do you have? You built all this expectation for this grand theory and this vague outline is the best you can do? Where is the math? Where is the theory?
I think anyone in academia would be inclined to ask the same question of you why should they take some vague blog entry seriously when the writer controls the comments and can't be bothered to submit his work for peer-review? You talk about wanting to write a PhD thesis this won't help get you there. In fact this vague outline should do nothing but cast doubt in everyones mind as to whether you have a theory or not.
I have been following this TDT issue for a while and I for one would like to see some math and some worked out problems. Otherwise I would be inclined to call your bluff.
Eliezer have you ever published a paper in a peer-review journal? The way you talk about it says naive amateur. There is huge value especially for you since you don't have a PhD or any successful companies or any of the other typical things that people who go the non-academic route tend to have.
Let's face the music here, your one practical AI project that I am aware of Flare failed, and most of your writing has never been subjected to the rigor that all science should be subjected to. It seems to me if you want to do what you claim you need to start publishing.
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I think you're re-inventing the wheel here.
"This towards the goal of creating "rationality augmentation" software. In the short term, my suspicion is that such software would look like a group of existing tools glued together with human practices."
Look at current work in AI, automated reasoning systems, and automated theorem proving.