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If you are single, frequent online dating sites and look for people who match your Myers-Briggs personality type.
Whether or not Myers-Briggs measures something real, it definitely worked in at least one happily married case. :-)
just me rambling, pay me no mind
I had a nightmare last night. usually such things involve monsters and such, but this one... this one was just a nameless, formless terror that gripped my heart as I stood in unnaturally deep darkness, scrambling to light my way. when it woke me, my heart pounding, I was tempted to turn on a light. but it never really gets dark in a big city- too much light pollution from the streetlights and cars passing by. I'm tired of being afraid. I don't drive, I'm lucky enough to get a carpool, but it still terrifies me whenever I see a car pull out just a bit too far for comfort- just enough that the driver couldn't avoid a crash if they decided not to stop. I know the statistics- I know that at my age and health, if anything's going to kill me, it's that. I'm sure you heard of the shooting in furgeson, and I'm sure you know of the psychological effects that promote "copycat" killers. sure enough, less than a week after, an LEO (Law enforcement officer) shot an unarmed teenager here. I'm not black, but I don't think it matters. the current method of law enforcement, when you get right down to it, depends on fear. you do what they say, or they tell you to allow them to punish you. and if you resist? they outright kill you. they want everyone too scared to disobey. but the people are demanding more and more freedoms, and growing to resent the LEOs more and more. eventually, we will attempt to replace them with a completely different method of law enforcement. ...and they will not give up their power lightly. and that's ignoring the idea of there being a riot here, which is entirely possible if these copycat killings don't stop. I desperately want an education, but the traditional colleges are a scam- a monopoly that charges insanely high prices for a product that's not necessarily valuable, and indeed is quickly becoming almost valueless in our society. their game is rigged. I can't play it or I lose. I can't not play it, or I don't get what I want and therefore lose. I'm searching desperately for a third option, and I'm terrified I won't find one. right now, I plan to save up to go to New York, and Hackerschool. but the costs are high- it'll take me a while to save up to go. and if I do, there's more guarantee than that the information they offer is valuable, but it's still not certain (yet). it's a gamble I can't afford to lose, but at least it's a fair gamble this time. I'm just so tired of being afraid. afraid of the transportation system we allowed to be the highest cause of injury-related death, afraid of the justice system we allowed to become corrupt, afraid of the people we angered, afraid that I'll never achieve my goals because of the education system we allowed to become ineffective and overpriced. it's so frustrating to be experiencing consequences of events so dizzyingly out of my control.
In response to
Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!
it definitely worked in at least one happily married case
so did "find god's match for you"
if we're looking at all the successful cases, but none of the unsuccessful ones, of course we're going to get positive results. also, as positive results go, "at least one" success is hardly reassuring
tell the AI not to take actions which the simulated brain thinks offend against liberty.
How? "tell", "the simulated brain thinks" "offend": defining those incredibly complicated concepts contains nearly the entirety of the problem.
def checkMorals():
>[simulate philosophy student's brain]
>if [simulated brain's state is offended]:
>>return False
>else:
>>return True
if checkMorals():
>[keep doing AI stuff]
there. that's how we tell an AI capable of being an AI and capable of simulating a brain to not to take actions which the simulated brain thinks offend against liberty, as implemented in python.
It is good news! Can you give name or link to that paper?
relevant: http://xkcd.com/906/
The first is: does this prompt me to think in a way I did not before? If so, it is not evidence, but it allows you to better way the evidence by providing you with more possibilities.
I think that this would only be true if it prompts you to think in a new and random way. Fiction which prompts you to think in a new but non-random way (that is, all fiction) could very well make it worse. It could very well be that the author selectively prompts you to think only in cases where you got it right without doing the thinking. If so, then this will reduce your chance of getting it right.
For a concrete example, consider a piece of homeopathic fiction which "prompts you to think" about how homeopathy could work. It provides a plausible-sounding explanation, which some people haven't heard of before. That plausible-sounding explanation either is rejected, in which case it has no effect on updating, or accepted, making the reader update in the direction of homeopathy. Since the fiction is written by a homeopath, it wouldn't contain an equally plausible sounding (and perhaps closer to reality) explanation of what's wrong with homeopathy, so it only leads people to update in the wrong direction.
Furthermore, homeopathy is probably more important to homeopaths than it is to non-homeopaths. So not only does reading homeopathic fiction lead you to update in the wrong direction, reading a random selection of fiction does too--the homeopath fiction writers put in stuff that selectively makes you think in the wrong direction, and the non-homeopaths, who don't think homeopathy is important, don't write about it at all and don't make you update in the right direction.
does anyone else find it ironic that we're using fictional evidence (a story about homeopathic writers that don't exist) to debate fictional evidence?
In response to
Is it immoral to have children?
I previously made a comment that mistakenly argued against the wrong thing. so to answer the real question- no.
the person who commented to my response said "$50 to the AMF gets someone someone around an additional year of healthy life."
but here's the thing- there's no reason it couldn't give another person- possibly a new child- an additional year of healthy life.
a life is a life, and $50 is $50, so unless the charity is ridiculously efficient (in which case, you should be looking at how to become more efficient) the utility would be the same (when comparing giving to AMF vs. doing the same thing as AMF to someone who may or may not be your child)
however with the having a child option, there is one more life- and all the utility therein- than the charity option- the people the charity would benefit would exist in either case. and since we've just shown that it doesn't really matter whether you donate to AMF or do the same thing as AMF to someone, that puts having a child at greater utility.
In response to
Creating an Optimal Future
(puts on morpheus glasses) what if I told you... many of this site's members are also members of those sites?
In response to
Confusion about science and technology
I know this may come off as a "no true scotsman" argument, but this is a bit different- bear with me. consider christianity (yes, I'm bringing religion into this, sort of...) in the beginning, we have a single leader preaching a set of morals that is (arguably) correct from a utilitarian standpoint, and calling all who follow that set "christians" by so doing, he created what Influence: Science and Practice would call "the trappings of morality" ...so basically, fast-forward a few hundered years, and we have people who think they can do whatever they like and it'll be morally right, so long as they wear a cross doing it. parallel to the current situation: we set up science- a set of rules that will always result in truth, if followed. by so doing, we created the trappings of right-ness. fast forward to now, and we have a bunch of people who think they can decide whatever they want, and it'll be right, so long as they wear a labcoat while doing it. understand, that's a bit of metaphor, in truth, these "scientists" (scoff) simply learned the rules of science by rote without really understanding what they mean. to them, reproducible results is just something nice to have as part of the ritual of science, instead of something completely necessary to get the right answer
...all of this stuff I said, by the way, is said in one of the core sequences, but I'm not sure which. I may reply to myself later with the link to the sequence in question.
In response to
The Modesty Argument
remember that Bayesian evidence never reaches 100%, thus making middle ground- upon hearing another rationalist's viewpoint, instead of not shifting (as you suggest) or shifting to average your estimate and theirs together (as AAT suggests) why not adjust your viewpoint based on how likely the other rationalist is to have assessed correctly? ie- you believe X is 90% likely to be true the other rationalist believes it's not true 90%. suppose this rationalist is very reliable, say in the neighborhood of 75% accurate, you should adjust your viewpoint down to X is 75% likely to be 10% likely to be true, and 25% likely to be 90% likely to be true (or around 30% likely, assuming I did my math right.) assume he's not very reliable, say a creationist talking about evolution. let's say 10%. you should adjust to X is 10% likely to be 10% likely and 90% likely to be 90% likely. (82%) ...of course this doesn't factor in your own fallibility.
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I've got one. I actually came up with this on my own, but I'm gratified to see that EY has adopted it
cashback credit cards. these things essentially reduce the cost of all expenditures by 1%.
...but that's not where they get munchkiny. where they get munchkiny is when you basically arbitrage two currencies of equal value.
as a hypothetical example, say you buy $1000 worth of dollar bills for $1000. by using the credit card, it costs $990, since you get $10 back. you then take it to the bank and deposit it for $1000, making a $10 profit. wash, rinse repeat
the catch is, most of them have an annual fee attached, so you it's a use it or it's not worth it scenario (note, though, that for most people, if they use it for rent and nothing else, they'll save about the same as the annual fee). also, most of them need good credit to acquire, so if you're a starving college student with loans, kiss that goodbye. also, you cannot directly withdraw cash and get the 1%, so you have to come up with a way ton efficiently exchange a purchasable resource for money.