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I'll need some background here. Why aren't bounded utilities the default assumption? You'd need some extraordinary arguments to convince me that anyone has an unbounded utility function. Yet this post and many others on LW seem to implicitly assume unbounded utility functions.
1) We don't need an unbounded utility function to demonstrate Pascal's Mugging. Plain old large numbers like 10^100 are enough.
2) It seems reasonable for utility to be linear in things we care about, e.g. human lives. This could run into a problem with non-uniqueness, i.e., if I run an identical computer program of you twice, maybe that shouldn't count as two. But I think this is sufficiently murky as to not make bounded utility clearly correct.
Thanks for this. And thanks also for the pointer to Scott's guide.
Did you do any testing pre-pregnancy, i.e. for genetic matchup between you and your husband? And did you do any of the fetal testing mentioned e.g. for autism? Wondering about the cost-benefit on those.
In response to
October Monthly Bragging Thread
I finished my math PhD thesis in September!
Any use of "force" in modeling physics can be equivalently expressed via conservation of linear momentum
I don't see how. Either you're misunderstanding something, or you have a higher background in quantum mechanics than I do (I've had one in-depth class, and I've read the quantum physics sequence), and it works out like this for reasons I do not currently understand. Which is it?
In any case, force is clearly defined in the simplified version of quantum physics I've learned. It's the gradient of potential energy, which must be specified in the Schroedinger equation. The Pauli principle is not a force. It may be that force is always due to symmetry, in which case calling the Pauli principle a symmetry doesn't separate them at all, but the Pauli principle is still not a force.
Indeed, conservation laws correspond to symmetries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether%27s_Theorem
In response to
Belief in Belief vs. Internalization
Along with the other physics-related examples here, Richard Dawkins' pendulum video seems relevant here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bsk5yPFm5NM
In response to
Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2
I figure the open thread is as good as any for a personal advice request. It might be a rationality issue as well.
I have incredible difficulty believing that anybody likes me. Ever since I was old enough to be aware of my own awkwardness, I have the constant suspicion that all my "friends" secretly think poorly of me, and only tolerate me to be nice.
It occurred to me that this is a problem when a close friend actually said, outright, that he liked me -- and I happen to know that he never tells even white lies, as a personal scruple -- and I simply couldn't believe him. I know I've said some weird or embarrassing things in front of him, and so I just can't conceive of him not looking down on me.
So. Is there a way of improving my emotional response to fit the evidence better? Sometimes there is evidence that people like me (they invite me to events; they go out of their way to spend time with me; or, in the generalized professional sense, I get some forms of recognition for my work). But I find myself ignoring the good and only seeing the bad.
I was like this from ages 12-18, perhaps? It started because quite a few people actually were mean to me, but my brain incorrectly extrapolated and assumed everyone was. The beginning of the end was when I started to do something that I had defined as the province of the liked-people (in this case, dating), though it took about two years to purge the habit.
Perhaps there is something you are similarly defining to imply likedness, and you can do that thing.
In response to
Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2
I think in dialogue. (More precisely, I think in dialogue about half the time, in more bland verbal thoughts a quarter of the time, and visually a quarter of the time, with lots of overlap. This also includes think-talking to myself when it seems internally that there are 2 people involved.)
Does anyone else find themselves thinking in dialogue often?
I think it probably has something to do with my narcissistic and often counterproductive obsession with other people's perceptions of me, but this hypothesis is the result of generalizing from one example. If it turns out cognitive styles are linked with certain personality traits to a significant degree that would be rather interesting. Have there been studies on this? Anyone have any theories?
I'm very curious about others' cognitive styles, whether not they're similar to my own.
So, LW: how do you think?
Monologues or disjointed verbal fragments. When I am mad at someone (hasn't really happened for a few years :) ) I get into dialogues with them, usually going in circles.
In response to
Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2
There's a course "Street Fighting Mathematics" on MIT OCW, with an associated free Creative Commons textbook (PDF). It's about estimation tricks and heuristics that can be used when working with math problems. Despite the pop-sounding title, it appears to be written for people who are actually expected to be doing nontrivial math.
Might be relevant to the simple math of everything stuff.
For a teaser, the part about singing logarithms looks cool.
In response to
Open Thread: July 2010, Part 2
Is there a bias, maybe called the 'compensation bias', that causes one to think that any person with many obvious positive traits or circumstances (really attractive, rich, intelligent, seemingly happy, et cetera) must have at least one huge compensating flaw or a tragic history or something? I looked through Wiki's list of cognitive biases and didn't see it, but I thought I'd heard of something like this. Maybe it's not a real bias?
If not, I'd be surprised. Whenever I talk to my non-rationalist friends about how amazing persons X Y or Z are, they invariably (out of 5 or so occasions when I brought it up) replied with something along the lines of 'Well I bet he/she is secretly horribly depressed / a horrible person / full of ennui / not well-liked by friends and family". This is kind of the opposite of the halo effect. It could be that this bias only occurs when someone is asked to evaluate the overall goodness of someone who they themselves have not gotten the chance to respect or see as high status.
Anyway, I know Eliezer had a post called 'competent elites' or summat along these lines, but I'm not sure if this effect is a previously researched bias I'm half-remembering or if it's just a natural consequence of some other biases (e.g. just world bias).
Added: Alternative hypothesis that is more consistent with the halo effect and physical attractiveness stereotype data: my friends are themselves exceptionally physically attractive and competent but have compensatory personal flaws or depression or whatever, and are thus generalizing from one or two examples when assuming that others that share similar traits as themselves would also have such problems. I think this is the more likely of my two current hypotheses, as my friends are exceptionally awesome as well as exceptionally angsty. Aspiring rationalists! Empiricists and theorists needed! Do you have data or alternative hypotheses?
Is this actually incorrect, though? As far as I know, people have problems and inadequacies. When they solve them, they move on to worrying about other things. It's probably a safe bet that the awesome people you're describing do as well.
What probably is wrong is that general awesomeness makes hidden bad stuff more likely.
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Rolling all 60 years of bets up into one probability distribution as in your example, we get:
I think what this shows is that the aggregating technique you propose is no different than just dealing with a 1-shot bet. So if you can't solve the one-shot Pascal's mugging, aggregating it won't help in general.