JoshuaZ

Thanks that was an interesting read. It seems like this may be connected to how there's been a lot of effort to distinguish feudalism from manorialism.

Replying toEliezer Yudkowsky Is Frequently, Confidently, Egregiously Wrong

JoshuaZ2y

Eliezer Yudkowsky Is Frequently, Confidently, Egregiously Wrong

I'm upvoting this because the community could use more content commonly held views, and some people do need to treat Eliezer as more fallible than they do.

That said, I find most of your examples unpersuasive. With the exception of some aspects of p-zombies, where you do show that Eliezer has misinterpreted what people are saying when they make this sort of argument, most of your arguments are not compelling arguments at all that Eliezer is wrong, although they do point to his general overconfidence (which seems to be a serious problem).

For what it is worth, one of my very first comments [Was objecting to Eliezer's use of phlogiston as an example of a hypothesis that did not generate predictions](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RgkqLqkg8vLhsYpfh/fake-causality?commentId=4Jch5m8wNg8pHrAAF).

Replying toThe Waluigi Effect (mega-post)

JoshuaZ3y

The Waluigi Effect (mega-post)

What does ELK stand for here?

Replying toOptimality is the tiger, and agents are its teeth

JoshuaZ3y

Optimality is the tiger, and agents are its teeth

This is probably the best argument I have seen yet for being concerned about what things like GPT are going to be able to do. Very eye opening.

Replying toHow many philosophers accept the orthogonality thesis ? Evidence from the PhilPapers survey

JoshuaZ8y

How many philosophers accept the orthogonality thesis ? Evidence from the PhilPapers survey

66.42512077294685%

This should not be reported this way. It should be reported as something like 66%. The other digits are not meaningful.

Replying toTsuyoku Naritai! (I Want To Become Stronger)

JoshuaZ9y

Tsuyoku Naritai! (I Want To Become Stronger)

I don't know of any broader, larger trends. It is worth noting here that the Rabbis of the Talmud themselves thought that the prior texts (especially the Torah itself) were infallible, so it seems that part of what might be happening is that over time, more and more gets put into the very-holy-text category.

Also, it seems important to distinguish here between being unquestionably correct with being literal. In a variety of different religions this becomes an important distinction and often a sacrifice of literalism is in practice made to preserve correctness of a claim past a certain point. Also note that in many religious traditions, the traditions which are most literal try to argue that what they are doing is not literalism but something more sophisticated. For example, among conservative Protestants it isn't uncommon to claim that they are not reading texts literally but rather using the "historical-grammatical method."

Replying toOpen Thread May 9 - May 15 2016

JoshuaZ10y

Open Thread May 9 - May 15 2016

MWI doesn't say anything about other constants- the other parts of our wavefunction should have the same constants. However, other multiverse hypotheses do suggest that physical constants could eb different.

Replying toOpen Thread May 2 - May 8, 2016

JoshuaZ10y

Open Thread May 2 - May 8, 2016

That seems like an accurate analysis.

I'm actually more concerned about an error in logic. If one estimates a probability of say k that in a given year that climate change will cause an extinction event, then the probability of it occurring in any given string of years is not the obvious one, since part of what is going on in estimating k is the chance that climate change can in fact cause such an incident.

Replying toOpen Thread May 2 - May 8, 2016

JoshuaZ10y

Open Thread May 2 - May 8, 2016

Mainstream discussion of existential risk is becoming more of a thing, A recent example is this article in The Atlantic. They do mention a variety of risks but focus on nuclear war and worst case global warming.

Replying to"3 Reasons It’s Irrational to Demand ‘Rationalism’ in Social Justice Activism"

JoshuaZ10y

"3 Reasons It’s Irrational to Demand ‘Rationalism’ in Social Justice Activism"

When people arguing with VoiceOfRa got several downvotes in a row, the conclusion drawn was sockpuppets.

There was substantially more evidence that VoiceOfRa was downvoting in a retributive fashion, including database evidence.

Astronomy, space exploration and the Great Filter

JoshuaZ

11y

Astronomical research has what may be an under-appreciated role in helping us understand and possibly avoiding the Great Filter. This post will examine how astronomy may be helpful for identifying potential future filters. The primary upshot is that we may have an advantage due to our somewhat late arrival: if we can observe what other civilizations have done wrong, we can get a leg up.

This post is not arguing that colonization is a route to remove some existential risks. There is no question that colonization will reduce the risk of many forms of Filters, but the vast majority of astronomical work has no substantial connection to colonization. Moreover, the case for colonization... (read 5779 more words →)

Tachyon neutrinos (again)

JoshuaZ

11y

In 2012, a large amount of attention was given to the OPERA experiment's apparent sighting of faster than light neutrinos. This turned out to be erroneous due to a faulty cable, and similar experiments confirmed the same results. However, while this was occurring, a distinct point was made: some attempts to determine the mass of the electron neutrino(one of the three known neutrino types) found that the square of the mass was apparently negative, which would be consistent with an imaginary mass and thus electron neutrinos would be tachyons. While little attention was paid to at the time, a new paper by Robert Ehrlich looks again at this approach. Ehrlich points out that... (read 445 more words →)

Dealing with trolling and the signal to noise ratio

JoshuaZ

13y

The recent implementation of a -5 karma penalty for replying to comments that are at -3 or below has clearly met with some disagreement and controversy. See http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/eb9/meta_karma_for_last_30_days/7aon . However, at the same time, it seems that Eliezer's observation that trolling and related problems have over time gotten worse here may be correct. It may be that this an inevitable consequence of growth, but it may be that it can be handled or reduced with some solution or set of solutions. I'm starting this discussion thread for people to propose possible solutions. To minimize anchoring bias and related problems, I'm not going to include my ideas in this header but in a comment below. People should think about the problem before reading proposed solutions (again to minimize anchoring issues).

236

Large scale problems, cognitive biases, and existential risk

JoshuaZ

14y

There's a recent paper(PDF) which finds that people who don't know much about a problem are more inclined to not find out more about that problem. Moreover, the larger scale and more complex a problem looked like, the more likely people were to try to avoid learning more about it, and the more likely they were to trust that pre-existing institutions such as the government could handle the problem. This looks like a potentially interesting form of cognitive bias. It may also explain why people are so unwilling to look at existential risk. There's essentially no issue that occurs on a larger scale than existential risk. This suggests that in trying to get people to understand existential risk, it may make sense to first address the easier to understand existential risks like large asteroids.

[link]s Recent developments in life-extension

JoshuaZ

14y

Progeria is a very rare disease which causes children to undergo symptoms extremely similar to rapid aging, and generally dying before the age of 20. Recent results suggest that a fairly cheap drug may help reduce the aging systems, and it is possible it may have similar effects on normal humans. Lay summary by BBC and actual article

On a related note, in a strain of mice which age unusually quickly, there's been success delaying many symptoms of aging by removing senescent cells. Here is the relevant article in Nature.

Curiosity, Adam Savage, and Life-Extension

JoshuaZ

14y

Tonight the Discovery Channel had on their Curiosity series a program hosted by Adam Savage (of Mythbusters) on whether or not we could live indefinitely. The program probably did have some substantial impact on some people who have not been exposed to that sort of idea before, and may have been especially good at letting people understand that there's a definite possibility that the relevant discoveries might occur in their lifetimes.

However the piece was as a whole decidedly lacking in actual information. First, the entire program was built around the conceit of Savage looking back from his thousandth birthday and talking about all the technologies that had allowed it to happen. In... (read 220 more words →)

Planets in the habitable zone, the Drake Equation, and the Great Filter

JoshuaZ

14y

One serious issue for evaluating existential risk is working out whether most of the Great Filter is behind us or in front of us. This relates to the Drake Equation and similar attempts to estimate the frequency of life in an obvious way.

Over the last few years, it has become increasingly apparent that extrasolar planets are common. However, what fraction of these planets lie in their stars habitable zone has still been an open question, primarily because most of our current methods for planet finding easily find planets that are either very large or are very close to their star (ideally both).

A new study, using the data from the Kepler spacecraft, estimates... (read 191 more words →)

Edward Nelson claims proof of inconsistency in Peano Arithmetic

JoshuaZ

14y

We've discussed Edward Nelson's beliefs and work before. Now, he claims to have a proof of a contradiction in Peano Arithmetic; which if correct is not that specific to PA but imports itself into much weaker systems. I'm skeptical of the proof but haven't had the time to look at it in detail. There seem to be two possible weakpoints in his approach. His approach is to construct a system Q_0^* which looks almost but not quite a fragment of PA and then show that PA both proves this system's consistency and proves its inconsistency.

First, he may be mis-applying the Hilbert-Ackermann theorem-when it applies is highly technical and can be... (read more)

116

EFF stops accepting Bitcoins

JoshuaZ

15y

The EFF has stopped accepting Bitcoins primarily out of concern with the possible legal issues. I presume that the EFF has a better understanding of any possible legal risks than organizations like the SIAI. It seems that the SIAI should probably at least for now put a hold on accepting bitcoin donations until these issues are resolved.

A potential problem with using Solomonoff induction as a prior

JoshuaZ

15y

There's a problem that has occurred to me that I haven't seen discussed anywhere: I don't think people actually wants to assign zero probability to all hypotheses which are not Turing computable. Consider the following hypothetical: we come up with a theory of everything that seems to explain all the laws of physics but there's a single open parameter (say the fine structure constant). We compute a large number of digits of this constant, and someone notices that when expressed in base 2, the nth digit seems to be 1 iff the nth Turing machine halts on the blank tape for some fairly natural ordering of all Turing machines. If we confirm... (read more)

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

Astronomy, space exploration and the Great Filter

Dealing with trolling and the signal to noise ratio

Is Less Wrong discouraging less nerdy people from participating?

Edward Nelson claims proof of inconsistency in Peano Arithmetic

JoshuaZ

JoshuaZ

Astronomy, space exploration and the Great Filter

Tachyon neutrinos (again)

Dealing with trolling and the signal to noise ratio

Large scale problems, cognitive biases, and existential risk

[link]s Recent developments in life-extension

Curiosity, Adam Savage, and Life-Extension

Planets in the habitable zone, the Drake Equation, and the Great Filter

JoshuaZ

Astronomy, space exploration and the Great Filter

Dealing with trolling and the signal to noise ratio

Is Less Wrong discouraging less nerdy people from participating?

Edward Nelson claims proof of inconsistency in Peano Arithmetic

JoshuaZ

JoshuaZ

Astronomy, space exploration and the Great Filter

Tachyon neutrinos (again)

Dealing with trolling and the signal to noise ratio

Large scale problems, cognitive biases, and existential risk

[link]s Recent developments in life-extension

Curiosity, Adam Savage, and Life-Extension

Planets in the habitable zone, the Drake Equation, and the Great Filter