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"old dead guys" is mind kill, and it sounds immature/impolite.
On the post itself, it'd be awesome if SIAI starts this in-house, something along the lines of semester long CFAR boot camp.
Hm. You seem to have edited the comment after I responded to it, in such a way that makes me want to take back my response. How would we tell whether the former group needs to more actively combat procrastination?
I would be surprised because it's significantly at odds with my experience of the relationship between procrastination and insight.
I have a habit of editing a comment for a bit after replying, actually I didn't see your response until after editing, I don't see how this changes your response in this instance though?
I added that caveat since the former group might have members who originally suffered more from procrastination as per the model, but eventually learned to deal with it, this might skew results if not taken into account.
I don't believe I can answer these questions correctly (as I'm not Eliezer and these questions are very much specific to him); I was already reaching a fair bit with my previous post.
I'm happy you asked, I did need to make my argument more specific.
Upvoted for not backing away from a concrete prediction.
I would be very surprised by that result.
Upvoted for good reasons for upvoting :)
For data, we could run a LW poll as a start and see. And out of curiosity, why would you be surprised?
It seems to follow from this model that if we measure the tendency towards procrastination in two groups, one of which is selected for their demonstrable capability for math, or more generally for deep, insightful thought, and the other of which is not, we should find that the former group procrastinates more than the latter group.
Yes?
Yes & I'd modify that slightly to "the former group needs to more actively combat procrastination".
are you deliberately vague
Outside of postmodernism, people are almost never deliberately vague: they think they're over specifying, in painfully elaborate detail, but thank to the magic of inferential distance it comes across as less information than necessary to the listener. The listener then, of course, also expects short inferential distance, and assumes that the speaker is deliberately being vague, instead of noticing that actually there's just a lot more to explain.
Yes, and this is why I asked in the first place. To be more exact, I'm confused as to why Eliezer does not post a step-by-step detailing how he reached the particular confidence he currently holds as opposed to say, expecting it to be quite obvious.
I believe people like Holden especially would appreciate this; he gives an over 90% confidence to an unfavorable outcome, but doesn't explicitly state the concrete steps he took to reach such a confidence.
Maybe Holden had a gut feeling and threw a number, if so, isn't it more beneficial for Eliezer to detail how he personally reached the confidence level he has for a FAI scenario occurring than to bash Holden for being unclear?
I've tried to share the reasoning already. Mostly it boils down to "the problem is finite" and "you can recurse on it if you actually try". Certainly it will always sound more convincing to someone who can sort-of see how to do it than to someone who has to take someone else's word for it, and to those who actually try to build it when they are ready, it should feel like solider knowledge still.
hmm, I have to ask, are you deliberately vague about this to sort for those who can grok your style of argument, in the belief that the sequences are enough for them to reach the same confidence you have about a FAI scenario?
Going meta is not only what we love best, it's what we're best at, and that's always been so.
Do we love going meta? Yes, we do.
Are we good at it? Sometimes yes, sometimes no; it also depends on the individual. But going meta is good for signalling intelligence, so we do it even when it's just a waste of time.
Has it always been so? Yes, unpracticality and procrastination of many intelligent people is widely known.
The Akrasia you refer to is actually a feature, not a bug. Just picture the opposite: Intelligent people rushing to conclusions and caring more about getting stuff done instead of forsaking the urge to go with first answers and actually think.
My point is, we decry procrastination so much but the fact is it is good that we procrastinate, if we didn't have this tendency we would be doers not thinkers. Not that I'm disparaging either, but you can't rush math, or more generally deep, insightful thought, that way lies politics and insanity.
In an nutshell, perhaps we care more for thinking about things -or alternatively get a rush from the intellectual crack- so much that we don't really want to act, or at least don't want to act on incomplete knowledge, and hence the widespread procrastination, which given the alternative, is a very Good thing.
Poly marriage?
A thought occurred to me today as I skimmed an article in a rationality forum where the subject of gay marriage cropped up; seeing as the issue has been hotly contested in various public fora and especially the courts, what about poly? After all, many if not all the arguments for gay marriage apply to poly marriage as well.
Questions for LWers who are currently in a such a relationship, or have an opinion to share:
Do polies want to marry each other or do such relationships not lend themselves to permanence above a threshold of partners? Should polies campaign for the right for a civil union anyway? what are the up and down sides of this? etc
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"You can't reject absolutes without un-restraining certain particulars -that should remain just that- to replace it" is this a fair description of your position here Wei?