I agree with you on this---its a political term nowadays , and im in DC so i fairly commonly come across all the uses (and i even have distant cousins in Israel, my closer ones came through ellis island from russia around 1910, have some distant ones who died in the holocaust, etc.). but technically i'm goy through genetics and/or descent. (other half of my family were essentially expelled from britain because they were a dissident protestant sect---the brethren, related in a way to the mennonites. they werent involved in salem witch trials, nor indigenous genocide, though did get their 40 acre farm in north dakota---before fracking ). (I gather Herzl (sic) maybe wrote early ideas on zionism for various reasons (religion, political persecution---russia had pogroms (see 'fiddler on a roof' movie i think )). Einstein does have an essay 'why i am a socialist' (one can also consider bertrand russel's 'why i am not a christian' (he was, like me, agnostic) . kibbutz idea. Sorin Solomon of Weiszmann Inst and NewInstitute for Economic thinking is one prof there (writes on statistical mechanics of income distribution); i think he was in Peace Now. Einstein was on first board of Hebrew U.

At my funeral, there will be a guest list and not everyone will be on it (sorry). And, i'm going to be working the door, to make sure only the correct people get in. (After everyone is, since i've studied alot with rip van winkle, about easter sunday, and with uridice from the book Orpheus in greece, and with F Tipler (physics of immor(t)alityi'll go to my casket for the viewing.

However, because i'm not a ZentoDone or 'getting things done' type, I haven't set a date for my funeral yet. The only thing I really get done is my list of new year's resolutions, and i make one every year and follow it religiously. It has one item---'next year, i'll stop procrastinating'. (since i need to learn some new skills for employment purposes). This follows from the more fundamental principle or commandment 'If you can do it tomorrow why do it today?'. (I may also sell advance tickets to my funeral at a discount, so get them early!!! After all, you can't take it with you, and i think the role of helping people get things done by rendering unto mammon what is his or hers is one of the most inspiring (though i guess the song Frankenstein by NY Dolls has other possible inspiring figures.)

Comments---

1. 2 sayings i like (relevant to the nerd issue) are 'I love humanity, i just hate people' and (for those of use who could be called 'elites' as distinct from the commoners ) 'I wouldn't me a member of any group that would me as a member' (Mark Twain). I'm not that convinced of the 'broken brain theory'. I tend to think in terms like 'frequency dependence' in biology or 'division of labor' in economics. Not everyone is the same, and there are reasons for that. (This is related also to the 'pigeonhole principle' and things like the existance of 'runts' in dog litters, various forms of hierarchies----in the real world, not everyone is in reaching distance of the same set of resources. Some don't get to sit in a warm place next to the fire, and so adapt to the cold. (And, very often, when occassionaly they get invited to be in the heat, since they have learned to live in, and even enjoy the cold, they are considered antisocial, rude and disturbed if they don't accept the invitation (eg 'you can take this job, or seat, and shove it'). Or if you invite people to consider coming into the cold, that will be considered insanity.

   (This goes for other things too---if you decide religion is very narrow, boring, intolerant etc. but then one day the confgregation decides that, since they are losing members and tithes, they will 'lighten up' and invite you back (but again on their slightly revised terms---eg they won't preach that you are going to hell, but will still tell you to shut up why they preach to you the truth which you know nothing about). If you decide your peer group who does nothing but bar hop is boring and find new activities, when they see you again and say 'hey come on, lets party' they will say 'you've really changed and are no fun anymore, unlike us party animals'. Darwin was probably a nerd and didnt attend church (or half heartedly, mostly for show). Einstein wasn't a big zionist type studying the torah and waiting to return to the promised land, but was interested in larger parts of the space of possibilities. He also wasn't much of a family man it seems, preferring to do stuff like EPR rather than like mowing the lawn, going to July 4 fireworks etc. (He did sign a letter written to Joe McCarthy (congressman) supporting Paul Robeson who was being accused of being a communist, and he helped get Godel citizenship, so that may have some relation to being a patriot).

2. To me the 'dull prior' is similar to the 'maximum entropy' postulate in statistical mechanics (which Jaynes i think identified with bayesianism). There are (as a caveat) in my view many ways of applying this postulate, so there can be a hierarchy of 'dullness' ---its what you call dull, or what your information is. (This is why i personally don't really consider bayesianism distinct from frequentism, any more than i consider so called 'linear' sciences as distinct from 'nonlinear' ones. (The former just comes usually by truncating your equation, or changing coordinates,, or aggregating). This is also why I am highly skeptical of many applications of maximum entropy especially in fields like economics or other social sciences. The formalism is so general that you can find any result you want, or fit any distribution (with your prior 'principle of impotence'---equal a priori probability ---like 'overfitting' (eg Norbert Weiner on elephants) .). EG just because someone fits the description, doesn't mean they did the crime though this sort of 'prior' is often used since it seems to work (eg you solve the crime, case closed, god said it, i believe it and that is all there is to it, qed.).

To repeat myself, I will document my findings above in this technical appendix .(Which as is well known, can be removed using Knot even surgery (claude shannon), (the famous final TOE sermon deliveranced at the Longhorm Ballroom by the Texas Chain Slaw Jesus and Marx Rest Mass e-t(h)ermal semi-periodic Recurrences or Reunions (johnny rotten and "W' Bush (who when in hand was better than a passenger pigeon). ).

My findings above were also confirmed by a paper in PNAS dec 2 2013 by dill, dixit, peterson---maximum entorpy formalism for nonexponential distributions ; they confirmed my findings even before my discovery of them (though they did predict i would make it so their confirmation would not have to be retracted---a scientific method some call reproducibility of confirmation bias, a win-win game like i'll pad your paycheck if you pad mine . (see also 'the future is past' by Huw 's Price via -feynman wheeler electrodynamics (you can get it 'it for bit/coins' if you have some 'loose change' to call 911; see also his 'the philosophy and physics of affecting the past' in synthese, or 'top-down causality')

Much current science has shown its good to really check your numbers---plug them into the theory---and see if they normalize . Once you have confirmed they work, then you can discover them (though some say the issue of whether scientists discover laws, like that places named 'north (eg North america, or on the title page of a book by Fred Celine (whose bias was not confirmed since Hitler lost ---it wasn't california uber allus (DKs)--both topics worth a glance at their wikip articles) are in the north, and truisms are true, and common sense is common, not endangered, even if its nonsense like other aspects of what makes the world go around the Sun----DNA, mud and pearls, yens and yangs, bootstraps made to pull yourself up ). (see also Lewendowsky in Psychological Science 2012 ----that people who believe that the Moon landing was falsified by NASA, in free markets, that the lesser freedom of the sex trade (sex p's) is even more than better and also less wrong than Hayek's serfdom or slavery, that property rights are synonymous with theft which by the UN Declaration is universally not even wrong, but culturally relative, and that anthropogenic global warming is propoganda induced mass hysteria, are the same people who believe 911 is truth, and that i am a liar.

(I think they showed, along with scientists at the influential and universally respected Discovery Insitute (documented by D Berlinski thorugh in rigorous, snazzy fashion) that if you take a random scientific sample of americans (using an authentic random number using an authentic random number, and lewandowsky has some of the fewtruly prvably and friencly randoms which he found in aloating bottle near his 'deal' of a florida Condo and land, with an ocean view (you just have to pay the mortgage, property taxers, and hold your breath or you'll drown) i.e. 1000 people who answer a questionaire on line which direct marketers have shown yields a payoff that is statistically significant, will pass peer review and contribute to Humanity, Science, and your CV and is economically valuable) then by throwing out 90% of the data you can get a rigorous result and a big grant and better a academic job---part of science is to discern a good question from a bad one, same with a theory, data, and attractive students from unnatractive ones, and wealthy, and powerful legacy students from trash because you know that ACT and SAT results can equally be used to judge IQ and merit, so can IQ and bank balance. .).

So, my above comment shows that 'maximum entropy' is shown to work again, as the most general intelligence algorithm (eg Jaynes bayesian approach to statistical mechanics, ultimately UTM) . While some argue trying to find the optimal solution by doing things like doing every single tour when you are a traveling salesman, that is the less wrong solution (discovered by bill clinton's father, because it NP complete. So the right solution to find the shortest path is to 'coarse grain' the alternatives via simulated annealing, and find what is good enough is good enough----f-k anarchy, just do what you want. . (Don't be like Johnny Thunders, of the NY Dolls, who said 'u can give me diamonds, rubies as well, but its not enough'---even though i'm a sot of progressive/leftist, and am like Scalia a United in quantum StAtes of in/coherency constitutional literatist and beleive in the 1st commandment, which is that even if what you are saying is even less wrong than not even, you have the right to not trust in god's word (Jefferson as is well known translated into the Hebrew neoConstitution , indigenous languages, english and amish but publlished it under his own name and was charged by god with plagiarism ( as His Heiness' only son----though Monica Lewinsky claimed that she was really was the virgin mary, and my mom, but gene tests showed that while Billy Jean was Bill Clinton's son,i wasnt, though like the God Father, Billy Jean had a virgin birth too despite allegations about MJ) b3ecause you could use artificial insemination and Indian baby sweat shops. so it couldnt be true; i represented Him in the law of my court two a jury of my peers (me myself and i) (though being humble, like Mark Twain who would never stoop to being a member of a group which would have him as a member, i reject peer pressure and bullying to have me say my peers are not actually beneath me---monty python's problem, which i solved know which of the 3 is beyond the wrong door), Jefferson was and was sued for copyright infirngement so ) and his commandment to spend the money should use to support my church and me---render under to mammon because you always receive more than you give, so what is mine (happiness) will be yours) , or the second amendment that from each according to ability, to each according to need (while i still i have, no abilities, i've decided I don't need to be in the top 1% and willing to satisifice (like other saints such as Mother Teresa, Herbert Simon, and Christopher Hitchens) , and be in the top 2% (Mostly because Piketty, Heisenberg and Lee Smolin have s shown that financial data is hard to confirm, so you never know your exact percentile), and the 14th Superstition (god is dead, the truth faith is atheism )

So Plato's problem (Chomsky) was shown to be Hume's problem because he it inherited it

(i know 2013 was sometime before 2014, though i havent calculated it to 20 decimal places since its difficult to justify the expense to the NSF ) and also recognize genius when i feel it (unlike many who overestimate their IQ since they think 50 is more than 150 ---but maybe they are right, just as hendrix suggested that a 6 was 9, that 1=2, and .9999...=/1 and banach-tarski proved his second conjecture). Maximum entropy explains the gravity of the problem (ie how 'thermodynamically ' or 'logically' out of your depth you are, not even close to absolute zero since you are in negative temeperature areas (T->infinity and Wick transform). Random monkees use maxEnt and create works of genius buy all those who switch to the 12 step REACT to overcome bias (irrational analyses and crticial thought)

I basically think I agree with this, except my unde3rstandings come from biollogy, studies of 'tests' (,SAT, IQ.) and 'complexity 'of algorithm power/ efficiency), and set theory (eg Chomsky) ---all equivalent/ 'isomorphic' like french//english or riding a bike'wa;llking)accomplish same task, different strokes for diffrent folks. The 'dialect', vocabulary , and conceptual tools (eg fooc, etc.) used here and I gather the AI kind of community (as well as lesswrong, overcoming bias, etc.) I find fairly 'foreign'. The same sorts of words are used ('general intelligence', 'worry' , 'superintelligenxe', explosion, etc.) are used here but I'n not the discussions or arguments used here with those common terms mean the same thing as discussions I have read that also use these.

So its almost like I'm reading a code or cipher----eg like when people want to communicate with others, so they make commonly understood sentences but then have a 'private secret' dictionary which used to decipher what these really mean ( 'eg the sky is falling' might mean 'ill be there at 3 pm').
(I also think this is due to my education---I only have looked at AI books briefly, and a little bit more at computer science but mostly theorertical science---since its closely related to set and linguistic theory.

But it may also be due to more basic differenences, which also explains why i speak a different 'dialect', and don't really want to spend the time/effort learn much of another (eg i'm not going to learn some rare language spoken by 300 people in the amazon jungle, even if i want to go there). I basically don't like the format of AI; also blogs like overcoming bias, and quite a bit on less wrong---I'm not personally attracted to AI issues or cryonics---I'm less interested in spending years oiscussing how to see If i can extend my life forever, live an extra 20 years, whether machine wills replace humans and spread out to colonize the universe ---'war of the multiivese' or even 'many worlds' (everett, quantum theory)---all the parallel quantum computations will duke it to decohere competitors to see who wins (even if its either noncomputable---you just add an axiom of infinity so one will have tournaments of large cardinals like alph 2 versus aleph 3.

These could be done like the NFL , if the algorithms are EMS hardware in architectures, or self-embody (word->flesh---'mind is matter' , physics is number (one, me, tipler, tegmark ). ( Physics=math=human (onto/epistemologically?) was proved next week, bit i'll miissas it to hike. (same issue). Meetings s-k.--

sit inside on a dice day? then go to a bar to gossip? thats 'boring as f-k;' (so get drunk).

The proof meetings are ruled by Dr Math---'anyone can speak', which means 'alphas' algorithms dominate (so proofs are trivial eg opinions about 'race' ar brillliant expertise because alphas dusciovered it in a NYT book review(and are experts so they dont have read more---Wade/god/el said it,. They aren't interested in proving other races are infeior H's UP) but instaed make it true an alpha. their special task,----like Rush being 'dumb as rocks' is smart,---dumb them down. win a monopoly.(just do it with a smile, and proper english --unlike me who revert to 'ghettoeese', whose correct pronounci/a/pun/ctu/ation is votter id/ epithets, period. Alphas let a few sumissives (wise asses) pleading 'mommys' talk (since it takes 2 sexes to tango in a victim triangle to prove an omelet. eg an alpha says he knows being poor is Just desert since Rand, Hayek,, Murray said so) so let eugernics follow natural law, so help alphas help themselves. ( eg 'snitch' with me, put them in jail, by law. (Alphas earned expertise since their mnentor wrote their PhD (tattoo) proving trivia and gossip (lob) in exchange for turning magic tricks) Snitching means you inform on who the perp is so they can though you did it but know its a valuable use of your time to pay for it. The optimal solution is for you to be rich alpha, while supotimal ones get prison wages). So, as a political (and evolutionary) psychollogy issue, where to these biases (;possibly confimration, etc.) come from ? This is studied alot in evolution theory. Diffeent folks tend to support different views in different ways----some say eg its 100% genetic, others its !00% envirnmental, others that its 50/50 , others that its say 37/44 because they say they either don't know, have some sort of 'quantum' interference thing', 'common cause' , or can't do math, and others its like 185/366% also because they either can't do math, or use a paraconsistant logic or are speaking in code (so using that they really mean its 80/20%. ) If these are biases then how can they be overcome, and do we want to? Should we solve the Field Medal porblems first, and put of going to Mars or dont go at all, to avoid genocides, etc. ?
Alot of the LessWrong and the types at my meetings are 'libertarian' persusions, it seems. I'm closer politically to Chomsky. Interestingly I recently heard an interview with him and politically I almost agree with him 100% , though mnaybe its more like 80 or 90. (he endorses fundamentalist christianity i gather, and i'm a hard core agnostic (and also think anyone who isn't whether their faith is god, or atheism) are deluded or lying, and both of these are its unethical unless its like some argue homosexuality---not a cjhoice. Some people may be calculators, so we can't exopect to perform superturing tasks, any more than endangered animals or tribes. They have a use for economic optimization---eg to entertain us in zoos when we go whalewatching, or to do prison jobs. )

 So, for example I dont' think 'we all agree on general intelligence, eyv.' or thats what we need to 'worry' about. My own worries are things like 'i i get to et killed when i go out today, or is someone going to shoot down my and do it here if i stay in' (which happened to the people in the next apartment), will I die early because I stay inside too much rather than excercize and let my health insurance lapse and hence not get checkups that couold prevents like a couple years ago when i didn't treat my pneumonia, which i thought was a cold, until i could no longer walk and was having hallucinations and delirium (i've done peyote, and these are as strong as any i had while on that, yet you can get therm without using illegal substance fortunately as mystics claim) , and then had to be in a hospital bed for 6 weeks or so (all you could was watch religious TV like 'proseprity bible' or reruns of old movies and such (also a few things like Obama and crew being entertained by the Rolling Stones, though they didn't say if shared the experience of shooting up too with Keith Richards )) and forsome reason they don't permit use of illegal drugs, or smoking and drinking in the hospital, and wouldnt give me opiates only tylenool--0i was envirous the guy in the next bed who got diluadid which is sold illegal here for 45$/pill), , and then on an oxygen tank for a couple months. I also worry whether after my money runs out in a couple of months if i will be able to somehow get some more so I don't have to go back out on the sreet (thogh maybe that would be a good idea, since if so, like wild animals which somehow escape zoos, they run right into the woods and wild and live happier ever after. Happier, like to global socioeconomic optimum and 'friendly algorithms' are terms studied in positive psyhcology literature, as well as psychiatry----who can tell what is 'freindly' versus 'hostile as sh-t' so you know whether to trust a person or wild animal' Happiness metrics were first studied by Pharell Williams and documented in the journal "Happy' (in my dialect or code a research article is called a youtube video, but i am aware alot of people cannot overcome their bias to learn that).

Ecolody,justice,conflict worry me.. Or maybe thats just my biased, opportunistic superstition. (except superstition (stochasticism) is the soltuion of the problems of WWJD/ atheism/religion/reimann ). Maybe I should worry about the singularity or next Higgs/bomb. . Or another article says 'Don't Worry about a thing, Be Happy') becauase it cant matter since because its only matter which is the mind of it (ask jesus) ('bootstrap'/democracy)

i've lost my train of thought, but we have intelligence algorithm (UTM) so all problems aresolved (like 'im a liar' ; or the bias of being biased or overcoming it, is both true and false. A new axiom of infinity to solves it (cpernicus/fourier), I sell Cheap UTMs for free (plus handling)., some QCs design, if its any in/different, can or exist., and in stock. (I believe in the QC superstition.(but only in a frigr due to AGWg but QCs are cute like kidsts, so its worth the money to keep them on Ice (like rapper Just-Ice--- 'going way back'. .
As a 'child progeny' who was a know it all by kindergarten, all problems have been solved. You put them in the form of a 'wff' ' by randomly combining them ( godel numbers) , add 1 bit punctuation so its grammatical ( randomly select a place , put '=' sign to add flavor (quantized), , and you'r done. If they say 'there's a problem for you to solve', i respond its absurd, i dont have any (except you, and i gave it to u) (i solve all equationsbypointing out the '=' ,get an A, publ;ismy PhD h it on utube,, and wait for the sun to shine, u become a fallen star (MJ), see only blue skies(WN), are happy forever hereafter, since information paradox has been solved by Tipler and are immune to alzheimers, and always remember the day after never(more) (in the Po' Godel universe)..

i glanced at the comic, but i do sortuh believe in 'impossible wor(l)ds' (escher, paraconsistant logic, predicting singularities, etc.) , so i do troll in vain (perhaps thats narcissism---i'lll have to consult a psychologist to see). some have argued for the 'futility of utility' (see J McCauley on arxiv.org ) thoough i'm a benthamite ---utility=happiness=bliss=reward-punishment (or benefit - cost). at the outset, i'd say that the comic is 'not even wrong' (i somehow think Victor Weisskopf who was at MIT used this phrase, along with 'do not ask (or tell) what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country' (obviously he was not an anarcho-capitalist like Bryan Caplan (who receives his welfare check from the state of virginia at GMU (economics)since he can't shill his abilties (labor) since he has none, yet needs everything (a la marx) )---though some attribute that to JFK ( i gather a member of the DK's (dead kennedy's, headed by green party candidate jello biafra); Weisskopf also said ' its interesting what your computer knows (when showed some early physics simulations), but my question is what do you know' . I guess they responded i got big data (in my pants too). I'm probably not even lesswrong (plus or minus an error of magnitude). I don't like any entertainment involving conflict, weapons, military, etc. (with one exception, such as gangsta rap---NWA, gangstarr, talib, jayz). And, i probably should state my personal code of conduct (which i published previously under a pen name)----i shouldnt be involved in lesswrong because 'i wouldn't be a member of any group which would have me as a member'---rememberthat (I wrote this in the 1800's under the pseudonym 'mark twain', and it reappeared as Lob's theorem' (a variant of Godel's, when it got old and was in the stages of rigor mortis). The ideas may be going in the wrong direction, though thats way of progress (also called 'entropic gravity' by Verlinde (on arxiv.org too, for one version ).

Comments---

1. The idea that iq predicts income, life expectancy, criminal justice record, etc. depends on what you mean by 'predicts' (eg conjunction fallacy). I and many others suggest these are correlations, and many argue instead things like income (of parents), social environment, etc predict iq, crime, health, etc. (of children, via a kind of markov process). (Also, if you look at income/iq correlations, I wouldn't be surprised that it is quite different for different kinds of income---those who made money via IT or genomics, versus those who made it via Walmart, or sports. One may actually have a mixture distribution which only appears 'normal' because of sufficiently large size. )

   1. The scatter plots are interesting, and remind me of S J Gould's (widely criticized ) discussion of attempts to define G, a measure of general intelligence, using factor analyses.
      I think the general conclusion before the analyses is the right one---there are multiple factors. I would say many of the 'smartest' people (as measured by say, iq) end up in academic fields in math/science/technology rather than in business with the aim of making money. There are so many factors. Some academics later on do go into business, either working in finance or genomics industries, but many don't. One reason academic economics is criticized is because it follows the pattern of this post---it starts with general observations, comes up with tentative conclusions, and then goes into highly detailed, mathematical analyses which doesn't really add much more insight, though its an interesting excercize.