LessWrong

Replying toVisual Mental Imagery Training

My visualization ability improves the closer I am to sleep, being near perfect during a lucid dream.

Replying toFalsifiable and non-Falsifiable Ideas

You can generally throw unfalsifiable beliefs into your utility function but you might consider this intellectually dishonest.

As a quick analogy, a solipsist can still care about other people.

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Replying toA Series of Increasingly Perverse and Destructive Games

Incorrect13y

A Series of Increasingly Perverse and Destructive Games

I escape by writing a program that simulates 3^^3 copies of myself escaping and living happily ever after (generating myself by running Solomonoff Induction on a large amount of text I type directly into the source code).

Replying toIsolated AI with no chat whatsoever

Incorrect13y

Isolated AI with no chat whatsoever

You might be able to contain it with a homomorphic encryption scheme

Replying toI attempted the AI Box Experiment (and lost)

Incorrect13y

I attempted the AI Box Experiment (and lost)

I'm guessing Eliezer would lose most of his advantages against a demographic like that.

Replying toI attempted the AI Box Experiment (and lost)

Incorrect13y

I attempted the AI Box Experiment (and lost)

Oh god, remind me to never play the part of the gatekeeper… This is terrifying.

Replying toSome scary life extension dilemmas

Incorrect13y

Some scary life extension dilemmas

The lifespan dilemma applies to all unbounded utility functions combined with expected value maximization, it does not require simple utilitarianism.

-1

Replying toNew censorship: against hypothetical violence against identifiable people

Incorrect13y

New censorship: against hypothetical violence against identifiable people

Would your post on eating babies count, or is it too nonspecific?

http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ww/undiscriminating_skepticism/1scb?context=1

(I completely agree with the policy, I'm just curious)

Replying toCausal Universes

Incorrect13y

Causal Universes

There are people who claim to be less confused about this than I am

Solipsists should be able to dissolve the whole thing easily.

Replying toGap in understanding of Logical Pinpointing

Incorrect13y

Gap in understanding of Logical Pinpointing

Thanks, can you recommend a textbook for this stuff? I've mostly been learning off Wikipedia.

I can't find a textbook on logic in the lesswrong textbook list.

Gap in understanding of Logical Pinpointing

Incorrect

13y

I had originally found myself very confused by how the second order axiom of induction restricted PA to a single model, leading to this discussion where I thought doing so would violate the incompleteness theorem.

What I misunderstood is that while the axiom schema of induction effectively quantifies over properties definable in PA, the SOL version quantifies over ALL properties, including those you can't even define in PA.

This seems like a really subtle point that wasn't obvious to me from the article, knowing FOL but not SOL. I actually realized my mistake when I saw that Eliezer was representing properties as sets in the visual diagram.

Anyway, I thought others might benefit by learning... (read more)

What mathematics to learn

Incorrect

14y

There is, of course, Kahn Academy for fundamentals. We have already had a discussion on How to learn math.

What resources exist detailing which mathematics to learn in what order? What resources exist that explain the utility of different mathematical subfields for the purpose of directing studies?

Cognitive Style Tends To Predict Religious Conviction (psychcentral.com)

Incorrect

14y

http://psychcentral.com/news/2011/09/21/cognitive-style-tends-to-predict-religious-conviction/29646.html

Participants who gave intuitive answers to all three problems [that required reflective thinking rather than intuitive] were one and a half times as likely to report they were convinced of God’s existence as those who answered all of the questions correctly.

Importantly, researchers discovered the association between thinking styles and religious beliefs were not tied to the participants’ thinking ability or IQ.

participants who wrote about a successful intuitive experience were more likely to report they were convinced of God’s existence than those who wrote about a successful reflective experience.

I think this is the source but I can't be sure:

http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-ofp-shenhav.pdf

http://lesswrong.com/lw/7o4/atheism_autism_spectrum/4vbc

Reddit /r/psychology discussion

How can humans make precommitments?

Incorrect

14y

How can you precommit to something where the commitment is carried out only after you know your commitment strategy has failed?

It would seem to make it impossible to commit to blackmail when the action of blackmail has negative utility. How can you possibly convince your rational future self to carry out a commitment they know will not work?

You could attempt to adopt a strategy of always following your commitments. From your current perspective this is useful but once you have learned your strategy has failed, what's to prevent you from just disregarding the strategy?

If a commitment strategy will fail you don't want to make the commitment but if you will not follow... (read more)

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

Incorrect

Cognitive Style Tends To Predict Religious Conviction (psychcentral.com)

Gap in understanding of Logical Pinpointing

How can humans make precommitments?

What mathematics to learn

Incorrect

Incorrect

Gap in understanding of Logical Pinpointing

What mathematics to learn

Cognitive Style Tends To Predict Religious Conviction (psychcentral.com)

How can humans make precommitments?

Incorrect

Cognitive Style Tends To Predict Religious Conviction (psychcentral.com)

Gap in understanding of Logical Pinpointing

How can humans make precommitments?

What mathematics to learn

Incorrect

Incorrect

Gap in understanding of Logical Pinpointing

What mathematics to learn

Cognitive Style Tends To Predict Religious Conviction (psychcentral.com)

How can humans make precommitments?