Overview for ciphergoth - Less Wrong

ciphergoth on [Paper] On the 'Simulation Argument' and Selective Scepticism

2013-05-19T21:50:16.057791+00:00

Mark Eichenlaub and Patrick LaVictoire point out on Facebook that if we let p=P(A|B) and q=P(B|A), there's a bound P(A) <= p/(p+q-pq), which is smaller than p/q.

ciphergoth on [Paper] On the 'Simulation Argument' and Selective Scepticism

2013-05-19T11:28:51.119282+00:00

(Updated)

I think your interpretation of "if I don't live in a simulation, then a fraction x of all humans lives in a simulation" as P(SIM or A) is wrong; it makes more sense to interpret it as P(A|¬SIM). This actually makes the proof simpler: for any A, B, we have that P(A) ≤ P(A|B)/P(B|A) by Bayes theorem, so if we accept that P(¬SIM|A) = (1-x), then we have P(¬SIM) ≤ (1-x)/P(A|¬SIM).

ciphergoth on LINK: Google research chief: 'Emergent artificial intelligence? Hogwash!'

2013-05-19T19:38:56.934131+10:00

You guys have had a discussion like this here on LW before, and you mention your disagreement with Carl Schulman in your foom economics paper. This is a complex subject and I don't expect you all to come to agreement, or even perfect understanding of each other's positions, in a short period of time, but it seems like you know surprisingly little about these other positions. Given its importance to your mission, I'm surprised you haven't set aside a day for the three of you and whoever else you think might be needed to at least come to understand each other's estimates on when foom might happen.

ciphergoth on [Paper] On the 'Simulation Argument' and Selective Scepticism

2013-05-19T09:25:58.400150+00:00

I've only skimmed the paper but AFAICT this wipes out its central claim. Good work.

ciphergoth on Pascal's Muggle: Infinitesimal Priors and Strong Evidence

2013-05-18T17:10:56.408902+10:00

I'm not familiar with Kolmogorov complexity, but

In the nicest possible way, shouldn't you have stopped right there? Shouldn't the appearance of this unfamiliar and formidable-looking word have told you that I wasn't appealing to some intuitive notion of complexity, but to a particular formalisation that you would need to be familiar with to challenge? If instead of commenting you'd Googled that term, you would have found the Wikipedia article that answered this and your next question.

ciphergoth on The impact of whole brain emulation

2013-05-15T17:40:58.234790+10:00

Yes, it is one of the reasons that sequence is relevant, and I definitely recommend reading it :)

ciphergoth on Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!

2013-05-15T03:19:34.441740+10:00

This kind of homelessness got me down after a while; I got on a bus to return from viewing another flat that had gone, and ended up on the far side of town because I didn't know when to get off.

ciphergoth on Pascal's Muggle: Infinitesimal Priors and Strong Evidence

2013-05-15T02:26:38.239979+10:00

The problem is that the Solomonoff prior picks out 3^^^3 as much more likely than most of the numbers of the same magnitude because it has much lower Kolmogorov complexity.

ciphergoth on Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!

2013-05-14T16:20:12.813041+00:00

Not "Quincy" then.

ciphergoth on Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!

2013-05-14T16:19:11.243853+00:00

Yeah, people do that all the time.