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While we're talking about this: does anyone know why encryption isn't standard? What advantage is there in communicating with someone without encryption?
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Procedural knowledge gap: public key encryption
The main reason is that it requires your recipient to take an extra step. If you send an encrypted email to someone else, and they haven't configured their mail client for encryption, then they won't be able to read it. For most people, that negative outweighs the privacy gain.
There's a similar guideline in the software world:
There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.
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More intuitive explanations!
FWIW, there's a nice proof of Bayes' theorem in Russel and Norvig's textbook, which I haven't seen posted here yet.
Is this the one you meant?
P(A & B) = P(B | A) * P(A) = P(A | B) * P(B)
Hold the second two statements equal and divide by P(A):
P(B | A) = P(A | B) * P(B) / P(A)
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[LINK] "We have a new form of knowing."
That was interesting, thanks. Here's another take - specific to the field of language modeling, but addresses the same question of statistical versus formal models: http://norvig.com/chomsky.html
[Link] Opacity as a defense against bias?
This article makes the claim that financial systems are opaque in order to help us overcome our risk aversion:
Opacity is not something that can be reformed away, because it is essential to banks’ economic function of mobilizing the risk-bearing capacity of people who, if fully informed, wouldn’t bear the risk. Societies that lack opaque, faintly fraudulent, financial systems fail to develop and prosper. Insufficient economic risks are taken to sustain growth and development. You can have opacity and an industrial economy, or you can have transparency and herd goats.
I don't entirely agree. There's also a risk-pooling aspect (similar to insurance) and a middleman research value-add (individuals don't have to study thousands of possible investments). Still, it's an interesting idea. What other areas of the economy could make a similar argument?
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[SEQ RERUN] Zut Allais!
Okay, so, how did this survive evolution?
There is variation in the population over tolerance for risk. If the preference for certainty is detrimental in achieving goals, then those with less attachment to certainty, ceteris paribus, would have better overall reproductive success than the ones with greater attachment. Accordingly, a pro-certainty bias would be selected against.
So, what's the reason it didn't get selected out of the population?
It's a hack. Computation isn't free.
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[LINK] Question Templates
This reminds me of Explain/Worship/Ignore. Am I getting the right idea?
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Applied Rationality Practice
Study cognitive biases and fallacies and use them to examine your thought patterns and actions. Cognitive dissonance is, in my opinion, the most important, as it allows people to make mistakes without recognizing them as such and thus to make them again and again. Every time you make a decision that has unexpected consequences, even if they are favorable, ask yourself honestly, was this really a good decision? What evidence did you have at the time to justify it? Would you make it again, and if so, why? Would other people agree with your reasoning?
People can go through life blissfully unaware of how catastrophically bad some of their past decisions--for example, of where to work, where to live, who to marry--have been because of this all-power cognitive bias. Your goal is not to obsess over the past (and there is a risk of that), but rather to learn from it, and cognitive dissonance impedes you from doing that.
As Kahneman points out in his new book, failures of reasoning are much easier to recognize in others than in ourselves. His book is framed around introducing the language of heuristics and biases to office water-cooler gossip. Practicing on the hardest level (self-analysis) doesn't seem like the best way to grow stronger.
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Is every life really worth preserving?
Voted you down. This is deontologist thought in transhumanist wrapping paper.
Ignoring the debate concerning the merits of eternal paradise itself and the question of Heaven's existence, I would like to question the assumption that every soul is worth preserving for posterity.
Consider those who have demonstrated through their actions that they are best kept excluded from society at large. John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer would be prime examples. Many people write these villains off as evil and give their condition not a second thought. But it is quite possible that they actually suffer from some sort of Satanic corruption and are thus not fully responsible for their crimes. In fact, there is evidence that the souls of serial killers are measurably different from those of normal people. Far enough in the future, it might be possible to "cure" them. However, they will still possess toxic memories and thoughts that would greatly distress them now that they are normal. To truly save them, they would likely need to have many or all of their memories erased. At that point, with an amnesic brain and a cloned body, are they even really the same person, and if not, what was the point of saving them?
Forming a robust theory of mind and realizing that not everyone thinks or sees the world the same way you do is actually quite difficult. Consider the immense complexity of the world we live in and the staggering scope of thoughts that can possibly be thought as a result. If eternal salvation means first and foremost soul preservation, maybe there are some souls that just shouldn't be saved. Maybe Heaven would be a better, happier place without certain thoughts, feelings and memories--and without the minds that harbor them.
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Outside view suggests it might be more like a year. (Ants was originally planned--at least by one of the contest's officials--for about 6 months after planet wars.)
I'm not too unhappy with my #326 finish, considering that life intervened and I basically didn't work on it at all for the second half of the contest. Percentage-wise, it's an improvement over the last one, anyway. I was also struck by how mundane the winner's strategy was (http://www.xathis.com/posts/ai-challenge-2011-ants.html). It seems he didn't beat it with just a few overarching principles, but rather a lot of little pieces done well.
I have some more postmortem thoughts that I'll try to write down in a bit.
I look forward to reading your thoughts. Ants looked like a fun problem.