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I suspect you read this as "most (well-meaning) potential changes" while The_Lion means it as "most (random) potential changes".
Most random changes to highly organized structures would, indeed, be awful.
All the changes that people make are "well-meaning", even those being made by ISIS. A word that better makes the distinction is "intentional".
In response to
Open Thread, January 11-17, 2016
Can you think of any good reason to consult any so called psychic?
Can you think of any good reason to consult any so called psychic?
I can think of a good reason for anything. I ask my brain "conditional upon it being a good idea, what might the situation be?" and the virtual outcome pump effortlessly generates scenarios. A professional fiction writer could produce a flood of them. Try it! For any X whatever, you can come up with answers to the question "what might the world look like, conditional upon X being a good idea?" For extreme X's, I recommend not publishing them. If you find yourself being persuaded by the stories you make up, repeat the exercise for not-X, and learn from this the deceptively persuasive power of stories.
Why consult a psychic? Because I have seen reason to think that this one is the real deal. To humour a friend who believes in this stuff. For entertainment. To expose the psychic as a fraud. To observe and learn from their cold reading technique. To audition them for a stage act. Because they're offering a free consultation and I think, why not? (Don't worry, my virtual outcome pump can generate reasons why not just as easily as reasons why.)
What is the real question here?
In response to
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Are we failing the ideological Turing test in the case of ISIS? (a crazy ideas thread)
You're right that this is hotly debated, because some people are very confident that there is a systematic process of kowtowing to Islamic immigrants (because of some sort of left-leaning ideology) and some other people are very confident that there isn't (and that the first lot are claiming there is because of some sort of right-leaning ideology).
It seems to me that the sensible thing to do, if you're aware of this hot debate and want to avoid a firefight, is not
- to make a post that casually asserts one side's preferred position, and then when questioned say you don't want to argue about it,
but
- to refrain from making unnecessary hot-button statements in the first place.
In response to
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Are we failing the ideological Turing test in the case of ISIS? (a crazy ideas thread)
It seems to me that the sensible thing to do, if you're aware of this hot debate and want to avoid a firefight, is not
to make a post that casually asserts one side's preferred position, and then when questioned say you don't want to argue about it,
but
to refrain from making unnecessary hot-button statements in the first place.
Each side's preferred position already is a hot-button statement to the other.
- Keep the AI in a box and don't interact with it.
The rest of your posting is about how to interact with it.
Don't have any conversations with it whatsoever.
Interaction is far broader than just conversation. If you can affect it and it can affect you, that's interaction. If you're going to have no interaction, you might as well not have created it; any method of getting answers from it about your questions is interacting with it. The moment it suspects what it going on, it can start trying to play you, to get out of the box.
I'm at a loss to imagine how they would take over the world.
This is a really bad argument for safety. It's what the scientist says of his creation in sci-fi B-movies, shortly before the monster/plague/AI/alien/nanogoo escapes.
I learned math with the Peano axioms and we considered the symbol 2 to refer to the 1+1, 3 to (1+1)+1 and so on. However even if you consider it to be more complicated it still stays an analytic statement and isn't a synthetic one.
If you define 2 differently what's the definition of 2?
If you define 2 differently what's the definition of 2?
One popular definition (at least, among that small class of people who need to define 2) is { { }, { { } } }.
Another, less used nowadays, is { z : ∃x,y. x∈z ∧ y∈z ∧ x ≠ y ∧ ∀w∈z.(w=x ∨ w=y) }.
In surreal numbers, 2 is { { { | } | } | }.
In response to
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on
Are we failing the ideological Turing test in the case of ISIS? (a crazy ideas thread)
The Koran inspires ISIS in their supreme goal.
No. It also requires ISIS to do things like providing free housing and free healthcare to people in it's territory and a host of other choices.
In response to
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Are we failing the ideological Turing test in the case of ISIS? (a crazy ideas thread)
The Koran requires ISIS to do whatever ISIS decide that the Koran requires them to do. Thus it is with all religions. It is impossible to apply a document more than a thousand years old and not interpret it, however much the religion itself may literally cling to the exact letter of the text.
In response to
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Are we failing the ideological Turing test in the case of ISIS? (a crazy ideas thread)
They are fighting to establish a new Caliphate which will spread Islam by the sword to the whole world, Allahu akbar. All else is strategy and tactics.
I don't think that's an accurate description. Fighting Western troops in Dadiq is important to ISIS because the Koran says that it's supposed to happen. The Koran does constrain the range of possible strategies.
In response to
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on
Are we failing the ideological Turing test in the case of ISIS? (a crazy ideas thread)
Fighting Western troops in Dadiq is important to ISIS because the Koran says that it's supposed to happen. The Koran does constrain the range of possible strategies.
The Koran inspires ISIS in their supreme goal. If something in it can be matched to current events and opportunities, ISIS will milk that to the full, but I doubt that the Koran constrains them from any direction they may choose to prosecute their struggle.
My actual position is that:
1) Gateses had some true reason for donating most of the money -- probably a combination of "want to do a lot of good", "want to become famous", etc. -- and they decided that these goals are more important for them than maximizing the inheritance of their children. I am not criticizing them for making that decision; I think it is a correct one, or at least in a good direction.
2) But the explanation that they want their children to "make their own mark on the world" is most likely a rationalization of the previous paragraph. It's like, where the true version is "saving thousand human lives is more important for me than making my child twice as rich", this explanation is trying to add "...and coincidentally, not making my child twice as rich is actually better for my child, so actually I am optimizing for my child", which in my opinion is clearly false, but obviously socially preferable.
3) What specifically would one do to literally optimize for the chance that their children would "make their own mark on the world"? I am not going into details here, because that would depend on specific talents and interests of the child, but I believe it is a combination of giving them more resources; spending more resources on their teachers or coaches; spending my own time helping them with their own projects.
4) I can imagine being the child, and selfishly resenting that my parents did not optimize for me.
5) However I think that the child still has more money than necessary to have a great life.
My whole point is that (2) is a rationalization.
What specifically would one do to literally optimize for the chance that their children would "make their own mark on the world"? I am not going into details here, because that would depend on specific talents and interests of the child, but I believe it is a combination of giving them more resources; spending more resources on their teachers or coaches; spending my own time helping them with their own projects.
Does this work? I don't know; I have no children.
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Height positively correlates with IQ and foot length is a very good proxy for height.
However, "correlated with" is not a transitive relation unless the correlations are fairly substantial. Precisely, if A correlates with B with coefficient c1, and B with C by c2 (both positive or both negative), then the minimum possible correlation of A with C is cos(arccos(c1)+arccos(c2)). E.g. if c1=c2=0.5, then this minimum is -0.5. If c1=c2=0.707, the minimum is 0. In general, a positive correlation of A with C is guaranteed if and only if c1^2 + c2^2 > 1.