Comment author: turchin 05 March 2016 11:10:54PM *  4 points [-]

I agree this the main premises of this text.

That the fact that I am in special position should rise my estimation that I am in simulation. And that any AI would have (as instrumental goal) creation of millions of simulations to solve numerically Fermi paradox by modeling different civilizations near the time of global risks and to model different AI-goal systems near AI creation time.

But now I will try different type of reasoning which may be used against such logic. Let's consider following example: "Given that my name is Alex, what is the probability that my name is Alex?" Of course, 1.

Given that I am interested in AI, what is the probability that I know about simulation argument? Its high, almost 1. And given that I know about simulation argument, what is the probability that I think that I am in simulation - it is also high. So it is not surprising that I estimate it high, if i am already in this field.

The core of this objection is that not only you are special, but that everybody is special, yet in their own believe system. Like "Given that I believe in God Zeus, it makes Zeus more likely to be real". Because we have many people, and everybody think that their believe system is special, so there is nothing special in any believe system.

I am not sure that this line of reasoning cancels our conclusion that we may be inside simulation.

Comment author: SoerenMind 22 March 2016 10:12:04AM 0 points [-]

I guess an answer to "Given that my name is Alex, what is the probability that my name is Alex?" could be that the hypothesis is highly selected. When you're still the soul that'll be assigned to a body, looking at the world from above, this guy named Alex won't stick out because of his name. But the people who will influence the most consequential event in the history of that world will.

Comment author: turchin 05 March 2016 11:10:54PM *  4 points [-]

I agree this the main premises of this text.

That the fact that I am in special position should rise my estimation that I am in simulation. And that any AI would have (as instrumental goal) creation of millions of simulations to solve numerically Fermi paradox by modeling different civilizations near the time of global risks and to model different AI-goal systems near AI creation time.

But now I will try different type of reasoning which may be used against such logic. Let's consider following example: "Given that my name is Alex, what is the probability that my name is Alex?" Of course, 1.

Given that I am interested in AI, what is the probability that I know about simulation argument? Its high, almost 1. And given that I know about simulation argument, what is the probability that I think that I am in simulation - it is also high. So it is not surprising that I estimate it high, if i am already in this field.

The core of this objection is that not only you are special, but that everybody is special, yet in their own believe system. Like "Given that I believe in God Zeus, it makes Zeus more likely to be real". Because we have many people, and everybody think that their believe system is special, so there is nothing special in any believe system.

I am not sure that this line of reasoning cancels our conclusion that we may be inside simulation.

Comment author: SoerenMind 06 March 2016 05:31:02PM 0 points [-]

"The core of this objection is that not only you are special, but that everybody is special"

Is your point sort of the same thing I'm saying with this? "Everyone has some things in their life that are very exceptional by pure chance. I’m sure there’s some way to deal with this in statistics but I don’t know it."

Comment author: SoerenMind 03 March 2016 09:02:01PM *  1 point [-]

Seems like a bad meme to spread for precautionary reasons.

http://reducing-suffering.org/the-importance-of-insect-suffering/

http://reducing-suffering.org/why-i-dont-support-eating-insects/

Warning: Bringing this argument at a dinner party with trendsetting, ecologically conscious consumers might cost you major idiosyncrasy credits.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 12 December 2015 06:02:25PM 2 points [-]

Neat!

You only seem to mention self-reports. What about the part of the pre- and postsurveys where you had the workshop participant's friends rate them?

Comment author: SoerenMind 12 December 2015 09:50:47PM 3 points [-]

"We have been conducting a peer survey of CFAR workshop participants, which involves sending surveys about the participant to 2 of their friends, both before the workshop and again approximately one year later. We are in the final stages of data collection on those surveys, and expect to begin the data analysis later this month."

Comment author: SoerenMind 30 November 2015 11:39:22AM 1 point [-]

I'd also like to see the results on LW this year!

Comment author: SoerenMind 30 November 2015 11:38:48AM *  2 points [-]

How about promoting in Main? Was promoted last year IIRC. I think the overlap of the communities can justify this. Disclosure: I'm biased as an aspiring effective altruist.

Comment author: Elo 26 October 2015 09:17:45AM *  12 points [-]

this week on the slack discussions:

  • Art and media - HPMOR readership and considering spoilers. A few movie clips. microbiases, "Secret Habitat" game and abstract art analysis. Quality VS quantity, one hit wonder - and what effort it would take to make one (200-500 hours maybe). " short-circuiting happiness in the brain; by - instead of spending money on a bed (normal thing), spend money on icecream (happy thing), even when you neeeed a better bed in your life. In order to trick your brain to being happier than it is."
  • Bot test - We have a logging bot; and are building a prediction bot to help us keep track of predictions.
  • Business and startups - Comparing startup ideas, Thesaurus for words that don't exist - i.e. "logicalness" so you can find a real synonym to use instead. Healthy fast food opportunities (why isn't fast food already healthy - people probably don't care about healthyness when buying fast food QED healthy fast food is not as great an idea as it sounds.), living on a super-limited budget. Mealsquares.
  • effective altruism - provision of condoms to african nations to reduce the birth rate (and why that won't really work), looking to contact people within the EA movement who can explain what happened to the videos on the global conference, and maybe help us find the video in mountainview on x-risk. It's proving quite hard to do...
  • goals of lesswrong - determining success of lesswrong, (ways to show the world we are actually doing well - get us a few famous people made out of lesswrong growth). LW needs a symbol, like a logo but super cool. considering "¬□⊥", "how to function as an adult" as an article, website or guide in how to do that. because often enough people end up legal adults without knowing these things. learning how to teach, the nature of local lw groups.
  • human relationships - energy intake and exercise, alcohol and social lubrication, nootropics for improving social skills. establishing productive bandwidth with other intelligent humans. theories of confidence/prestiege/charisma (different but similar things that we defined in order to talk about them), fluids of human sexuality (and how much we don't know), owning/responsibility towards others/Significant others VS freedom and miscommunication around that, and the burden to communicate that is placed on people by their significant others. Polyamory. "twist yourself into noodles" (not sure what this related to), Smartphone to the rescue (reminders to do things i.e. remember birthdays, talk to friends who want to talk regularly, etc.)
  • linguistics - methods of communicating understanding; or asking for clarification in speech. "Decision making is a process", consider the intention behind the words (not just the words) (caveat: be careful with this)
  • open - running lw local groups, r/askscience, is stockholm syndrome real?, changing people's beliefs (specifically making atheists take up spirituality maybe), Aubrey de Grey and beard extension, Sidekicks, Meta: our channels, knowing things in advance does not decrease reported hedonic payoff. Too many messages to keep up with on the slack, sensory language and communication. And more - being the open channel, reasoning with the consultation of your feelings.
  • parenting - guilty parents for not knowing things they should know... Chocolate chip game trials are going excellently, kid-proof dividers, sickness during pregnancy, dealing with kid's monsters, (putting it in the wardrobe VS patting it and feeding it to make it friendly - the kid's idea)
  • philosophy - occam, occam as a rule/proof (but also not), bayes. CBT - cognitive behavioural therapy, ACT - acceptance commitment therapy.
  • projects - https://tangoapp.herokuapp.com/ , some writings that are now lesswrong posts, how do I become a more interesting person, sleep post, AMA among friends on the slack.
  • real life - dieting, work hours, sleep, mealsquares, secular solstice, allergies, human superpowers, negotiating with other humans, bikeshedding, how to make complicated decisions, cheap food, advice should be specific, how other people perceive you, and how they act on those perceptions, and the differences. wearable BP monitors, and more...
  • resources and links - not much new here...
  • RSS feeds - we get a bunch of rss feeds from around the leswrong sphere.
  • Science and technology - evolution, space moths, facebook algorithms, chess, privacy in america, grey goo, successful businesspeople, getting data about the internet, cool cap for sleep
  • scratchpad - a place to ramble, just in case any of the other places weren't the right place for it, or they were busy with other conversations at the time.
  • welcome - introductions and also a discussion on wellbeing.
Comment author: SoerenMind 05 November 2015 05:40:58PM 1 point [-]

The EA Global videos will be officially released soon. You can already watch them here, but I couldn't find the xrisk video among them. I'd suggest just asking the speakers for their slides. I remember two of them were Nate Soares and Owen Cotton-Barrat.

Comment author: LessWrong 02 November 2015 07:16:48AM 1 point [-]

I was very interested in reading about the 80,000 hours one but the link unfortunately links to a page that does not exist. Was it deleted?

Comment author: SoerenMind 02 November 2015 12:17:42PM 0 points [-]

Thanks for mentioning that. For some reason the link changed from effective-altruism.com to lesswrong.com when I copy-pasted the article. Fixed!

Comment author: Journeyman 12 July 2015 09:22:05AM 2 points [-]

That would be another example of things which some EAs do, but which don't yet seem to percolate through to the public-facing parts of the movement. For example, valuing other EAs due to flow-though contradicts Singer's view, as far as I understand him:

Effective altruists do not discount suffering because it occurs far away or in another country or afflicts people of a different race or religion. They agree that the suffering of animals counts too and generally agree that we should not give less consideration to suffering just because the victim is not a member of our species.

Comment author: SoerenMind 12 July 2015 11:29:14PM 0 points [-]

I don't get your argument there. After all, you might e.g. value other EAs instrumentally because they help members of other species. That is, you intrinsically value an EA like anyone else, but you're inclined to help them more because that will translate into others being helped.

Comment author: Rune 12 November 2009 07:55:52PM 14 points [-]

Advice for future creators of tests: There are people who live outside the US. No one outside the US cares about the 3rd person to be the second dead uncle of the fourth president of the US.

For instance, a majority of tommccabe's quiz questions are highly US-specific.

The point here is that non-Americans will end up guessing almost all questions, making the whole exercise painful and useless.

Comment author: SoerenMind 25 May 2015 08:15:24AM 1 point [-]

The best calibration IMO exercises I was able to find (which also work for non-Americans) can be downloaded from the website of How to Measure Anything.

http://www.howtomeasureanything.com/

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