= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Against Musk, Hawking and all other "pacifists".
In response to
Open thread, Aug. 03 - Aug. 09, 2015
Trying to summarize here:
The open letter says: "If we allow autonomous weapons, a global arms race will make them much cheaper and much more easily available to terrorists, dictators etc. We want to prevent this, so we propose to outlaw autonomous weapons."
The author of the article argues, that the technology gets developed either way and will be cheaply available, and then continues to say, that autonomous weapons would reduce casualties in war.
I suspect that most people agree, that (if used ethically) autonomous weapons reduce casualties. The actual question is, how much (more) damage can someone without qualms about ethics do with autonomous weapons, and can we implement policies to minimize the availability of autonomous weapons to people we don't want to have them.
I think the main problem with this whole discussion was already mentioned elsewhere: Robotics and AI experts aren't experts on politics, and don't know what the actual effects of an autonomous weapon ban would be.
In response to
Open thread, Aug. 03 - Aug. 09, 2015
IQ is said to correlate with life success. If rationality is about 'winning at life' wouldn't it be sensible to define a measure of 'life success'? Like the average increase of some life success metric like income over time.
What purpose would such a measure serve? And do you try to find a universal measure or one that is individual for every person? Because different people have different goals, you could try to measure how well reality aligns with their goals, but then you just select for people who can accurately predict what they can achieve.
I have a definition of success. For me, it's very simple. It's not about wealth and fame and power. It's about how many shining eyes I have around me.
--Benjamin Zander
In response to
Magnetic rings (the most mediocre superpower) A review.
Do you continue to wear them on a regular basis? Overall, recommend it, yes or no?
In response to
Open Thread, Jul. 27 - Aug 02, 2015
Does anybody know of a way to feed myself data about current time/North? I noticed that I really dislike not knowing time or which direction I'm facing, but pulling out a phone to learn them is too inconvrnient. I know there's north paw, but it'd be too awkward to actually wear it.
Something with magnets under the skin, maybe?
Do you know about this thing? It actually gets introduced at 11:00. It's originally intended to let deaf people hear again, but later on he shows that you can use any data as input. It's (a) probably overkill and (b) not commercially available, but depending on how much time and resources you want to invest I imagine it shouldn't be all too hard to make one with just 3 pads or so.
In response to
Open Thread, Jul. 27 - Aug 02, 2015
Donating now vs. saving up for a high passive income
Is there any sort of consensus on whether it is generally better to (a) directly donate excess money you earn or (b) save money and invest it until you have a high enough passive income to be financially independent? And does the question break down to: Is the long term expected return for donated money (e.g. in terms of QALYs) higher than for invested money (donated at a later point)? If it is higher for invested money there is a general problem of when to start donating, because in theory, the longer you wait, the higher the impact of that donated money. If the expected return for invested money is higher atm, I expect there will however come a point in time where this will no longer be the case.
If the expected return is higher for immediately donated money, are there additional benefits of having a high passive income that can justify actively saving money? E.g. not needing to worry about job security too much...
Can you recommend an article about what is the difference between the simulation of a person vs. "really" reviving a person? Primarily from the angle of: why should I or anyone would consider someone in the future making a plausible simulation of us is good for "us" ? I am really confused about the identity of a person i.e. when is a simulation is really "me" in the sense of me having a self-interest about that situation. I am heavily influenced by Buddhist ideas saying such an identity does not exist, is illusionary. I currently think the closest thing to this is memories, if I exist at all, I exist as something that remembers what happened to this illusion-me. I see this as a difficult philosophical problem and don't know how to relate to it.
I view it from a practical viewpoint: Even if you believe the Buddhist view, that the self is an illusion etc. you still feel like you have a self for >95% of the time (i.e. whenever you're not meditating). When you wake up in the morning you feel like you are the same person that went to sleep the evening before. On the other hand, a clone of you would not feel like it is you anymore than one identical twin feels it is the other. So ideally people in the future should create a person/simulation that feels like it went to sleep and woke up again when it "should" have died.
Problems arise mainly when you hit something that only partially feels like it is the same person. I'd say there is still a considerable range of possible people that are sufficiently similar that we say it is the same person, since there is also considerable variation in the normal functioning of human brains.
E.g.:
- Human memory is quite inaccurate. Different people with only slightly different memories could be said to be the same people. This may actually go quite far, if we consider the effects of Alzheimer's disease or other forms of amnesia.
- Being heavily intoxicated can to an extent feel like being a different person. Personality and habit changes over the course of your life can make you a different person, we still say it is the same person.
I wonder whether it is possible to find some sort of "core" personality/traits/memories, such that we can say as long as it remains unchanged it is the same person. I suspect there isn't, as it seems to be a gradient instead of a binary classification.
I take it our hypothetical system would not simply assume that diaries are accurate records; they would (so to speak) ask the question "how likely is it that any given person would write this diary entry?" which is not at all the same as the question "how well does this diary entry, taken at face value, match the actual life of this person?".
This raises the question: Is it possible to deduce the correct person without creating conscious simulations of possibly very many people, which raises ethical questions.
Your sibling may or may not be interested in participating in Google Summer of Code, though the pay may be too little and I've heard (but not confirmed) that only around 10% of all applicants are taken.
A hidden question of mine is actually how to present them here - copypaste into this space to do a dual post, or merely post links and brief summaries.
It also appears that my bloggery will dither a bit away from what is likely the most interesting to this audience (Fermi paradox and 'where are they' and the likely shape of the future of humanity) on occasion into things like basic origin of life theories, geochemistry, what I think SETI should actually be doing compared to what they are doing now, and one or two case studies of one-off radio signals that have never been confirmed. There is definitely a cohesive multiple-part initial burst incoming which I will probably link to in its entirety, but this leaves me wondering how much to link to/reproduce.
I don't know how it is for others, but personally, I am much more likely to read a full text if it's posted here directly, than if there's just a link.
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
Using Prediction Book (or other prediction software) for motivation
Does anyone have experience with the effects of documenting things you need to do in PredictionBook (or something similar) and the effects it has on motivation/actually doing those things? Basically, is it possible to boost your productivity by making more optimistic predictions? I've been dabbling with PredictionBook and tried it with two (related) things I had to do, which did not work at all.
Thoughts, experiences?