= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Only LW content?
Nope. The drafts could be for a personal blog as well.
In response to
Open thread, Oct. 6 - Oct. 12, 2014
Here's an offer for anyone who writes blog posts or LW articles: I'm willing to proofread as well as provide feedback on your drafts. I would probably give the most useful feedback on material concerning computer science, personal productivity and ethics, as that's where most of my experience is allocated. However, I'd be glad to read just about anything.
In response to
Open thread, 23-29 June 2014
Given the Snowden leaks, is there some good Voice-over-IP software that you would recommend that encrypted calls decently?
Tox may provide the service you're looking for. http://tox.im/
Your case was kinda simple and condescending. On the other hand I can answer Wright by saying "Phineas Gage"
I don't think anyone denies that brain states have a strong influence on conscious experience, which is the only thing that Phineas Gage proved. The real question is how mechanistic matter can create subjective experience. For example, someone who was completely colorblind from birth could never understand what it felt like to see the color green, no matter how much neuroscience that person knew, i.e., you could never convey the sensation of "green" through a layout of a connectome or listing wavelengths of light.
However, this doesn't mean that there must be some magical substance which produces experience, and it does not mean that Whole Brain Emulation and AGI is impossible, which is the hasty conclusion reached by many non-materialists. Rather, it only poses problems for those who say that brain states are the same thing as conscious experience.
In response to
Bragging Thread, June 2014
I learned enough HTML/CSS/JS to make a basic website and a few interactive apps, and also found a ton of cool resources on learning more CS stuff.
Similarly to lincolnquirk, I'd be willing to answer any questions of yours, and to test any programs you create. HTML and javascript is a relatively forgiving way to get into programming and it's generally what I recommend to people who want to learn CS.
Is it not so that the set of possible actions a Kantian could perform is a subset of the set of possible actions a Utilitarian could perform?
It depends on how you want to describe actions. So, on the one hand a good Kantian will never lie while a good utilitarian might, on the other hand a good utilitarian will never minimize utility, whereas a good Kantian might.
Kant and your average utilitarian will disagree not only about on-the-ground ethical questions, but about questions like 'what is an action' and 'how are actions individuated' and 'what constitutes the "consequences" of an action'. This makes translation between the two theories difficult.
If this is true, could not a Utilitarian decide that Kantian behavior is optimal for maximizing utility, and thus emulate a Kantian's behavior in any given situation (similar to Rule Utilitarianism)?
Absolutely, though it's hard to see what sort of utility calculation would conclude that Kantianism is going to optimize for utility in any given situation. Kant is explicit that the actual consequences of an action are totally irrelevant to its moral value. So it would be one heck of a coincidence. Needless to say, the Kant-emulating utilitarian would never be fulfilling her moral obligations in the Kant's eyes, regardless of how complete the emulation is. For a Kant, it's important that actions be motivated (or at least constrained) by a respect for the moral law; returning the jacket out of respect for the moral law and returning it in order to maximize utility don't even count as the same action so far as Kant is concerned, since the maxims differ.
Thank you for the cogent response. I believe that answers it quite well.
In response to
Open thread, 11-17 March 2014
Question for philosophers: Is it not so that the set of possible actions a Kantian could perform is a subset of the set of possible actions a Utilitarian could perform? If this is true, could not a Utilitarian decide that Kantian behavior is optimal for maximizing utility, and thus emulate a Kantian's behavior in any given situation (similar to Rule Utilitarianism)? Of course, the reverse is not possible: a Kantian would never decide to emulate Utilitarian behavior.
In response to
Meta: social influence bias and the karma system
For those interested, another enlightening paper is “Overcoming the J-shaped distribution of product reviews” by Nan Hu et al, which discusses rating biases on websites such as amazon.
This paper is downloadable from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2369332
It seems to be a summary of their much longer 2007 paper: "Why do Online Product Reviews have a J-shaped Distribution? Overcoming Biases in Online Word-of-Mouth Communication"
The link has been updated and the longer paper added. Thank you for sharing.
Meta: social influence bias and the karma system
Given LW’s keen interest in bias, it would seem pertinent to be aware of the biases engendered by the karma system. Note: I used to be strictly opposed to comment scoring mechanisms, but witnessing the general effectiveness in which LWers use karma has largely redeemed the system for me.
In “Social Influence Bias: A Randomized Experiment” by Muchnik et al, random comments on a “social news aggregation Web site” were up-voted after being posted. The likelihood of such rigged comments receiving additional up-votes were quantified in comparison to a control group. The results show that users were significantly biased towards the randomly up-voted posts:
The up-vote treatment significantly increased the probability of up-voting by the first viewer by 32% over the control group ... Uptreated comments were not down-voted significantly more or less frequently than the control group, so users did not tend to correct the upward manipulation. In the absence of a correction, positive herding accumulated over time.
At the end of their five month testing period, the comments that had artificially received an up-vote had an average rating 25% higher than the control group. Interestingly, the severity of the bias was largely dependent on the topic of discussion:
We found significant positive herding effects for comment ratings in “politics,” “culture and society,” and “business,” but no detectable herding behavior for comments in “economics,” “IT,” “fun,” and “general news”.
The herding behavior outlined in the paper seems rather intuitive to me. If before I read a post, I see a little green ‘1’ next to it, I’m probably going to read the post in a better light than if I hadn't seen that little green ‘1’ next to it. Similarly, if I see a post that has a negative score, I’ll probably see flaws in it much more readily. One might say that this is the point of the rating system, as it allows the group as a whole to evaluate the content. However, I’m still unsettled by just how easily popular opinion was swayed in the experiment.
This certainly doesn't necessitate that we reprogram the site and eschew the karma system. Moreover, understanding the biases inherent in such a system will allow us to use it much more effectively. Discussion on how this bias affects LW in particular would be welcomed. Here are some questions to begin with:
- Should we worry about this bias at all? Are its effects negligible in the scheme of things?
- How does the culture of LW contribute to this herding behavior? Is it positive or negative?
- If there are damages, how can we mitigate them?
Notes:
In the paper, they mentioned that comments were not sorted by popularity, therefore “mitigating the selection bias.” This of course implies that the bias would be more severe on forums where comments are sorted by popularity, such as this one.
For those interested, another enlightening paper is “Overcoming the J-shaped distribution of product reviews” by Nan Hu et al, which discusses rating biases on websites such as amazon. User gwern has also recommended a longer 2007 paper by the same authors which the one above is based upon: "Why do Online Product Reviews have a J-shaped Distribution? Overcoming Biases in Online Word-of-Mouth Communication"
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
Here is a PDF of 40 sleep mindhacks: https://www.goodreads.com/ebooks/download/8114179-40-sleep-hacks
To be honest, I found the list rather simplistic, but it may be a good starting point for others. The one bit of advice that I found useful was waking up to the sound of pleasant music (via mp3 alarm), rather than the screeching of an alarm clock.