The Role of Attractiveness in Mate Selection: Individual Variation

19 JonahSinick 23 January 2015 11:21AM

This post reports on a portion of my analysis of Fisman and Iyengar's speed dating dataset which bears on the question of how people select romantic partners. 


Note:
 I made very substantial edits to the second to last section of this post having posted it, addressing questions of generalizabilityI've also cross-posted to my blog.

Summary

  • Participants rated one another on several dimensions. The majority of variation in the ratings is captured by the average of the different rating types: some people were regarded as good overall, and others were regarded as not good overall.
  • The second most important source of variation in the ratings given to participants is that some were regarded as more attractive and fun than they were intelligent/sincere, and for others, the situation was reversed. 
  • Broadly, when people had to chose between partners who were seen as attractive and fun and partners who were seen as intelligent and sincere, they had a moderately strong preference for partners who were seen as attractive and fun.
  • Individuals varied substantially in how they responded to the tradeoff, with some showing very strong preference for people who were seen as attractive and fun people, and others showed virtually no such preference.

 

The speed dating context may be unusual in that people make a decision on whether or not to see somebody again after only 4 minutes of interaction. On the other hand, some people do meet their partners in contexts such as bars and speed dating events where decisions are made based on brief interactions. To this extent, the empirical phenomena in data from the study are relevant to understanding mate selection in general.

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Je suis Charlie

-20 [deleted] 15 January 2015 08:27AM

After the terrorist attacks at Charlie Hebdo, conspiracy theories quickly arose about who was behind the attacks.
People who are critical to the west easily swallow such theories while pro-vest people just as easily find them ridiculous.

I guess we can agree that the most rational response would be to enter a state of aporia until sufficient evidence is at hand.

Yet very few people do so. People are guided by their previous understanding of the world, when judging new information. It sounds like a fine Bayesian approach for getting through life, but for real scientific knowledge, we can't rely on *prior* reasonings (even though these might involve Bayesian reasoning). Real science works by investigating evidence.

So, how do we characterise the human tendency to jump to conclusions that have simply been supplied by their sense of normativity. Is their a previously described bias that covers this case?

[meta] New LW moderator: NancyLebovitz

26 Viliam_Bur 13 January 2015 09:41PM

During the following months my time and attention will be heavily occupied by some personal stuff, so I will be unable to function as a LW moderator. The new LW moderator is... NancyLebovitz!

From today, please direct all your complaints and investigation requests to Nancy. Please not everyone during the first week. That can be a bit frightening for a new moderator.

There are a few old requests I haven't completed yet. I will try to close everything during the following days, but if I don't do it till the end of January, then I will forward the unfinished cases to Nancy, too.

Long live the new moderator!

2014 Survey Results

87 Yvain 05 January 2015 07:36PM

Thanks to everyone who took the 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey. Extra thanks to Ozy, who did a lot of the number crunching work.

This year's results are below. Some of them may make more sense in the context of the original survey questions, which can be seen here. Please do not try to take the survey as it is over and your results will not be counted.

I. Population

There were 1503 respondents over 27 days. The last survey got 1636 people over 40 days. The last four full days of the survey saw nineteen, six, and four responses, for an average of about ten. If we assume the next thirteen days had also gotten an average of ten responses - which is generous, since responses tend to trail off with time - then we would have gotten about as many people as the last survey. There is no good evidence here of a decline in population, although it is perhaps compatible with a very small decline.

II. Demographics

Sex
Female: 179, 11.9%
Male: 1311, 87.2%

Gender
F (cisgender): 150, 10.0%
F (transgender MtF): 24, 1.6%
M (cisgender): 1245, 82.8%
M (transgender FtM): 5, 0.3%
Other: 64, 4.3%

Sexual Orientation
Asexual: 59, 3.9%
Bisexual: 216, 14.4%
Heterosexual: 1133, 75.4%
Homosexual: 47, 3.1%
Other: 35, 2.3%

[This question was poorly worded and should have acknowledged that people can both be asexual and have a specific orientation; as a result it probably vastly undercounted our asexual readers]

Relationship Style
Prefer monogamous: 778, 51.8%
Prefer polyamorous: 227, 15.1%
Uncertain/no preference: 464, 30.9%
Other: 23, 1.5%

Number of Partners
0: 738, 49.1%
1: 674, 44.8%
2: 51, 3.4%
3: 17, 1.1%
4: 7, 0.5%
5: 1, 0.1%
Lots and lots: 3, 0.2%

Relationship Goals
Currently not looking for new partners: 648, 43.1%
Open to new partners: 467, 31.1%
Seeking more partners: 370, 24.6%

[22.2% of people who don’t have a partner aren’t looking for one.]


Relationship Status
Married: 274, 18.2%
Relationship: 424, 28.2%
Single: 788, 52.4%

[6.9% of single people have at least one partner; 1.8% have more than one.]

Living With
Alone: 345, 23.0%
With parents and/or guardians: 303, 20.2%
With partner and/or children: 411, 27.3%
With roommates: 428, 28.5%

Children
0: 1317, 81.6%
1: 66, 4.4%
2: 78, 5.2%
3: 17, 1.1%
4: 6, 0.4%
5: 3, 0.2%
6: 1, 0.1%
Lots and lots: 1, 0.1%

Want More Children?
Yes: 549, 36.1%
Uncertain: 426, 28.3%
No: 516, 34.3%

[418 of the people who don’t have children don’t want any, suggesting that the LW community is 27.8% childfree.]

Country
United States, 822, 54.7%
United Kingdom, 116, 7.7%
Canada, 88, 5.9%
Australia: 83, 5.5%
Germany, 62, 4.1%
Russia, 26, 1.7%
Finland, 20, 1.3%
New Zealand, 20, 1.3%
India, 17, 1.1%
Brazil: 15, 1.0%
France, 15, 1.0%
Israel, 15, 1.0%

Lesswrongers Per Capita
Finland: 1/271,950
New Zealand: 1/223,550
Australia: 1/278,674
United States: 1/358,390
Canada: 1/399,545
Israel: 1/537,266
United Kingdom: 1/552,586
Germany: 1/1,290,323
France: 1/ 4,402,000
Russia: 1/ 5,519,231
Brazil: 1/ 13,360,000
India: 1/ 73,647,058

Race
Asian (East Asian): 59. 3.9%
Asian (Indian subcontinent): 33, 2.2%
Black: 12. 0.8%
Hispanic: 32, 2.1%
Middle Eastern: 9, 0.6%
Other: 50, 3.3%
White (non-Hispanic): 1294, 86.1%

Work Status
Academic (teaching): 86, 5.7%
For-profit work: 492, 32.7%
Government work: 59, 3.9%
Homemaker: 8, 0.5%
Independently wealthy: 9, 0.6%
Nonprofit work: 58, 3.9%
Self-employed: 122, 5.8%
Student: 553, 36.8%
Unemployed: 103, 6.9%

Profession
Art: 22, 1.5%
Biology: 29, 1.9%
Business: 35, 4.0%
Computers (AI): 42, 2.8%
Computers (other academic): 106, 7.1%
Computers (practical): 477, 31.7%
Engineering: 104, 6.1%
Finance/Economics: 71, 4.7%
Law: 38, 2.5%
Mathematics: 121, 8.1%
Medicine: 32, 2.1%
Neuroscience: 18, 1.2%
Philosophy: 36, 2.4%
Physics: 65, 4.3%
Psychology: 31, 2.1%
Other: 157, 10.2%
Other “hard science”: 25, 1.7%
Other “social science”: 34, 2.3%

Degree
None: 74, 4.9%
High school: 347, 23.1%
2 year degree: 64, 4.3%
Bachelors: 555, 36.9%
Masters: 278, 18.5%
JD/MD/other professional degree: 44, 2.9%
PhD: 105, 7.0%
Other: 24, 1.4%

III. Mental Illness

535 answer “no” to all the mental illness questions. Upper bound: 64.4% of the LW population is mentally ill.
393 answer “yes” to at least one mental illness question. Lower bound: 26.1% of the LW population is mentally ill. Gosh, we have a lot of self-diagnosers.

Depression
Yes, I was formally diagnosed: 273, 18.2%
Yes, I self-diagnosed: 383, 25.5%
No: 759, 50.5%

OCD
Yes, I was formally diagnosed: 30, 2.0%
Yes, I self-diagnosed: 76, 5.1%
No: 1306, 86.9%

Autism spectrum

Yes, I was formally diagnosed: 98, 6.5%
Yes, I self-diagnosed: 168, 11.2%
No: 1143, 76.0%

Bipolar

Yes, I was formally diagnosed: 33, 2.2%
Yes, I self-diagnosed: 49, 3.3%
No: 1327, 88.3%

Anxiety disorder
Yes, I was formally diagnosed: 139, 9.2%
Yes, I self-diagnosed: 237, 15.8%
No: 1033, 68.7%

BPD
Yes, I was formally diagnosed: 5, 0.3%
Yes, I self-diagnosed: 19, 1.3%
No: 1389, 92.4%

[Ozy says: RATIONALIST BPDERS COME BE MY FRIEND]

Schizophrenia
Yes, I was formally diagnosed: 7, 0.5%
Yes, I self-diagnosed: 7, 0.5%
No: 1397, 92.9%

IV. Politics, Religion, Ethics

Politics
Communist: 9, 0.6%
Conservative: 67, 4.5%
Liberal: 416, 27.7%
Libertarian: 379, 25.2%
Social Democratic: 585, 38.9%

[The big change this year was that we changed "Socialist" to "Social Democratic". Even though the description stayed the same, about eight points worth of Liberals switched to Social Democrats, apparently more willing to accept that label than "Socialist". The overall supergroups Libertarian vs. (Liberal, Social Democratic) vs. Conservative remain mostly unchanged.]

Politics (longform)
Anarchist: 40, 2.7%
Communist: 9, 0.6%
Conservative: 23, 1.9%
Futarchist: 41, 2.7%
Left-Libertarian: 192, 12.8%
Libertarian: 164, 10.9%
Moderate: 56, 3.7%
Neoreactionary: 29, 1.9%
Social Democrat: 162, 10.8%
Socialist: 89, 5.9%

[Amusing politics answers include anti-incumbentist, having-well-founded-opinions-is-hard-but-I’ve-come-to-recognize-the-pragmatism-of-socialism-I-don’t-know-ask-me-again-next-year, pirate, progressive social democratic environmental liberal isolationist freedom-fries loving pinko commie piece of shit, republic-ist aka read the federalist papers, romantic reconstructionist, social liberal fiscal agnostic, technoutopian anarchosocialist (with moderate snark), whatever it is that Scott is, and WHY ISN’T THERE AN OPTION FOR NONE SO I CAN SIGNAL MY OBVIOUS OBJECTIVITY WITH MINIMAL EFFORT. Ozy would like to point out to the authors of manifestos that no one will actually read their manifestos except zir, and they might want to consider posting them to their own blogs.]


American Parties
Democratic Party: 221, 14.7%
Republican Party: 55, 3.7%
Libertarian Party: 26, 1.7%
Other party: 16, 1.1%
No party: 415, 27.6%
Non-Americans who really like clicking buttons: 415, 27.6%

Voting

Yes: 881, 58.6%
No: 444, 29.5%
My country doesn’t hold elections: 5, 0.3%

Religion

Atheist and not spiritual: 1054, 70.1%
Atheist and spiritual: 150, 10.0%
Agnostic: 156, 10.4%
Lukewarm theist: 44, 2.9%
Deist/pantheist/etc.: 22,, 1.5%
Committed theist: 60, 4.0%

Religious Denomination
Christian (Protestant): 53, 3.5%
Mixed/Other: 32, 2.1%
Jewish: 31, 2.0%
Buddhist: 30, 2.0%
Christian (Catholic): 24, 1.6%
Unitarian Universalist or similar: 23, 1.5%

[Amusing denominations include anti-Molochist, CelestAI, cosmic engineers, Laziness, Thelema, Resimulation Theology, and Pythagorean. The Cultus Deorum Romanorum practitioner still needs to contact Ozy so they can be friends.]

Family Religion
Atheist and not spiritual: 213, 14.2%
Atheist and spiritual: 74, 4.9%
Agnostic: 154. 10.2%
Lukewarm theist: 541, 36.0%
Deist/Pantheist/etc.: 28, 1.9%
Committed theist: 388, 25.8%

Religious Background
Christian (Protestant): 580, 38.6%
Christian (Catholic): 378, 25.1%
Jewish: 141, 9.4%
Christian (other non-protestant): 88, 5.9%
Mixed/Other: 68, 4.5%
Unitarian Universalism or similar: 29, 1.9%
Christian (Mormon): 28, 1.9%
Hindu: 23, 1.5%’

Moral Views
Accept/lean towards consequentialism: 901, 60.0%
Accept/lean towards deontology: 50, 3.3%
Accept/lean towards natural law: 48, 3.2%
Accept/lean towards virtue ethics: 150, 10.0%
Accept/lean towards contractualism: 79, 5.3%
Other/no answer: 239, 15.9%

Meta-ethics
Constructivism: 474, 31.5%
Error theory: 60, 4.0%
Non-cognitivism: 129, 8.6%
Subjectivism: 324, 21.6%
Substantive realism: 209, 13.9%

V. Community Participation


Less Wrong Use
Lurker: 528, 35.1%
I’ve registered an account: 221, 14.7%
I’ve posted a comment: 419, 27.9%
I’ve posted in Discussion: 207, 13.8%
I’ve posted in Main: 102, 6.8%

Sequences
Never knew they existed until this moment: 106, 7.1%
Knew they existed, but never looked at them: 42, 2.8%
Some, but less than 25%: 270, 18.0%
About 25%: 181, 12.0%
About 50%: 209, 13.9%
About 75%: 242, 16.1%
All or almost all: 427, 28.4%

Meetups
Yes, regularly: 154, 10.2%
Yes, once or a few times: 325, 21.6%
No: 989, 65.8%

Community

Yes, all the time: 112, 7.5%
Yes, sometimes: 191, 12.7%
No: 1163, 77.4%

Romance
Yes: 82, 5.5%
I didn’t meet them through the community but they’re part of the community now: 79, 5.3%
No: 1310, 87.2%

CFAR Events
Yes, in 2014: 45, 3.0%
Yes, in 2013: 60, 4.0%
Both: 42, 2.8%
No: 1321, 87.9%

CFAR Workshop
Yes: 109, 7.3%
No: 1311, 87.2%

[A couple percent more people answered 'yes' to each of meetups, physical interactions, CFAR attendance, and romance this time around, suggesting the community is very very gradually becoming more IRL. In particular, the number of people meeting romantic partners through the community increased by almost 50% over last year.]

HPMOR
Yes: 897, 59.7%
Started but not finished: 224, 14.9%
No: 254, 16.9%

Referrals
Referred by a link: 464, 30.9%
HPMOR: 385, 25.6%
Been here since the Overcoming Bias days: 210, 14.0%
Referred by a friend: 199, 13.2%
Referred by a search engine: 114, 7.6%
Referred by other fiction: 17, 1.1%

[Amusing responses include “a rationalist that I follow on Tumblr”, “I’m a student of tribal cultishness”, and “It is difficult to recall details from the Before Time. Things were brighter, simpler, as in childhood or a dream. There has been much growth, change since then. But also loss. I can't remember where I found the link, is what I'm saying.”]

Blog Referrals
Slate Star Codex: 40, 2.6%
Reddit: 25, 1.6%
Common Sense Atheism: 21, 1.3%
Hacker News: 20, 1.3%
Gwern: 13, 1.0%

VI. Other Categorical Data

Cryonics Status
Don’t understand/never thought about it: 62, 4.1%
Don’t want to: 361, 24.0%
Considering it: 551, 36.7%
Haven’t gotten around to it: 272, 18.1%
Unavailable in my area: 126, 8.4%
Yes: 64, 4.3%

Type of Global Catastrophic Risk
Asteroid strike: 64, 4.3%
Economic/political collapse: 151, 10.0%
Environmental collapse: 218, 14.5%
Nanotech/grey goo: 47, 3.1%
Nuclear war: 239, 15.8%
Pandemic (bioengineered): 310, 20.6%
Pandemic (natural): 113. 7.5%
Unfriendly AI: 244, 16.2%

[Amusing answers include ennui/eaten by Internet, Friendly AI, “Greens so weaken the rich countries that barbarians conquer us”, and Tumblr.]

Effective Altruism (do you self-identify)
Yes: 422, 28.1%
No: 758, 50.4%

[Despite some impressive outreach by the EA community, numbers are largely the same as last year]


Effective Altruism (do you participate in community)
Yes: 191, 12.7%
No: 987, 65.7%

Vegetarian
Vegan: 31, 2.1%
Vegetarian: 114, 7.6%
Other meat restriction: 252, 16.8%
Omnivore: 848, 56.4%

Paleo Diet

Yes: 33, 2.2%
Sometimes: 209, 13.9%
No: 1111, 73.9%

Food Substitutes
Most of my calories: 8. 0.5%
Sometimes: 101, 6.7%
Tried: 196, 13.0%
No: 1052, 70.0%

Gender Default
I only identify with my birth gender by default: 681, 45.3%
I strongly identify with my birth gender: 586, 39.0%

Books
<5: 198, 13.2%
5 - 10: 384, 25.5%
10 - 20: 328, 21.8%
20 - 50: 264, 17.6%
50 - 100: 105, 7.0%
> 100: 49, 3.3%

Birth Month
Jan: 109, 7.3%
Feb: 90, 6.0%
Mar: 123, 8.2%
Apr: 126, 8.4%
Jun: 107, 7.1%
Jul: 109, 7.3%
Aug: 120, 8.0%
Sep: 94, 6.3%
Oct: 111, 7.4%
Nov: 102, 6.8%
Dec: 106, 7.1%

[Despite my hope of something turning up here, these results don't deviate from chance]

Handedness
Right: 1170, 77.8%
Left: 143, 9.5%
Ambidextrous: 37, 2.5%
Unsure: 12, 0.8%

Previous Surveys
Yes: 757, 50.7%
No:  598, 39.8%

Favorite Less Wrong Posts (all > 5 listed)
An Alien God: 11
Joy In The Merely Real: 7
Dissolving Questions About Disease: 7
Politics Is The Mind Killer: 6
That Alien Message: 6
A Fable Of Science And Politics: 6
Belief In Belief: 5
Generalizing From One Example: 5
Schelling Fences On Slippery Slopes: 5
Tsuyoku Naritai: 5

VII. Numeric Data

Age: 27.67 + 8.679 (22, 26, 31) [1490]
IQ: 138.25 + 15.936 (130.25, 139, 146) [472]
SAT out of 1600: 1470.74 + 113.114 (1410, 1490, 1560) [395]
SAT out of 2400: 2210.75 + 188.94 (2140, 2250, 2320) [310]
ACT out of 36: 32.56 + 2.483 (31, 33, 35) [244]
Time in Community: 2010.97 + 2.174 (2010, 2011, 2013) [1317]
Time on LW: 15.73 + 95.75 (2, 5, 15) [1366]
Karma Score: 555.73 + 2181.791 (0, 0, 155) [1335]

P Many Worlds: 47.64 + 30.132 (20, 50, 75) [1261]
P Aliens: 71.52 + 34.364 (50, 90, 99) [1393]
P Aliens (Galaxy): 41.2 + 38.405 (2, 30, 80) [1379]
P Supernatural: 6.68 + 20.271 (0, 0, 1) [1386]
P God: 8.26 + 21.088 (0, 0.01, 3) [1376]
P Religion: 4.99 + 18.068 (0, 0, 0.5) [1384]
P Cryonics: 22.34 + 27.274 (2, 10, 30) [1399]
P Anti-Agathics: 24.63 + 29.569 (1, 10, 40) [1390]
P Simulation 24.31 + 28.2 (1, 10, 50) [1320]
P Warming 81.73 + 24.224 (80, 90, 98) [1394]
P Global Catastrophic Risk 72.14 + 25.620 (55, 80, 90) [1394]
Singularity: 2143.44 + 356.643 (2060, 2090, 2150) [1177]

[The mean for this question is almost entirely dependent on which stupid responses we choose to delete as outliers; the median practically never changes]


Abortion: 4.38 + 1.032 (4, 5, 5) [1341]
Immigration: 4 + 1.078 (3, 4, 5) [1310]
Taxes : 3.14 + 1.212 (2, 3, 4) [1410] (from 1 - should be lower to 5 - should be higher)
Minimum Wage: 3.21 + 1.359 (2, 3, 4) [1298] (from 1 - should be lower to 5 - should be higher)
Feminism: 3.67 + 1.221 (3, 4, 5) [1332]
Social Justice: 3.15 + 1.385 (2, 3, 4) [1309]
Human Biodiversity: 2.93 + 1.201 (2, 3, 4) [1321]
Basic Income: 3.94 + 1.087 (3, 4, 5) [1314]
Great Stagnation: 2.33 + .959 (2, 2, 3) [1302]
MIRI Mission: 3.90 + 1.062 (3, 4, 5) [1412]
MIRI Effectiveness: 3.23 + .897 (3, 3, 4) [1336]

[Remember, all of these are asking you to rate your belief in/agreement with the concept on a scale of 1 (bad) to 5 (great)]

Income: 54129.37 + 66818.904 (10,000, 30,800, 80,000) [923]
Charity: 1996.76 + 9492.71 (0, 100, 800) [1009]
MIRI/CFAR: 511.61 + 5516.608 (0, 0, 0) [1011]
XRisk: 62.50 + 575.260 (0, 0, 0) [980]
Older siblings: 0.51 + .914 (0, 0, 1) [1332]
Younger siblings: 1.08 + 1.127 (0, 1, 1) [1349]
Height: 178.06 + 11.767 (173, 179, 184) [1236]
Hours Online: 43.44 + 25.452 (25, 40, 60) [1221]
Bem Sex Role Masculinity: 42.54 + 9.670 (36, 42, 49) [1032]
Bem Sex Role Femininity: 42.68 + 9.754 (36, 43, 50) [1031]
Right Hand: .97 + 0.67 (.94, .97, 1.00)
Left Hand: .97 + .048 (.94, .97, 1.00)

VIII. Fishing Expeditions

[correlations, in descending order]

SAT Scores out of 1600/SAT Scores out of 2400 .844 (59)
P Supernatural/P God .697 (1365)
Feminism/Social Justice .671 (1299)
P God/P Religion .669 (1367)
P Supernatural/P Religion .631 (1372)
Charity Donations/MIRI and CFAR Donations .619 (985)
P Aliens/P Aliens 2 .607 (1376)
Taxes/Minimum Wage .587 (1287)
SAT Score out of 2400/ACT Score .575 (89)
Age/Number of Children .506 (1480)
P Cryonics/P Anti-Agathics .484 (1385)
SAT Score out of 1600/ACT Score .480 (81)
Minimum Wage/Social Justice .456 (1267)
Taxes/Social Justice .427 (1281)
Taxes/Feminism .414 (1299)
MIRI Mission/MIRI Effectiveness .395 (1331)
P Warming/Taxes .385 (1261)
Taxes/Basic Income .383 (1285)
Minimum Wage/Feminism .378 (1286)
P God/Abortion -.378 (1266)
Immigration/Feminism .365 (1296)
P Supernatural/Abortion -.362 (1276)
Feminism/Human Biodiversity -.360 (1306)
MIRI and CFAR Donations/Other XRisk Charity Donations .345 (973)
Social Justice/Human Biodiversity -.341 (1288)
P Religion/Abortion -.326 (1275)
P Warming/Minimum Wage .324 (1248)
Minimum Wage/Basic Income .312 (1276)
P Warming/Basic Income .306 (1260)
Immigration/Social Justice .294 (1278)
P Anti-Agathics/MIRI Mission .293 (1351)
P Warming/Feminism .285 (1281)
P Many Worlds/P Anti-Agathics .276 (1245)
Social Justice/Femininity .267 (990)
Minimum Wage/Human Biodiversity -.264 (1274)
Immigration/Human Biodiversity -.263 (1286)
P Many Worlds/MIRI Mission .263 (1233)
P Aliens/P Warming .262 (1365)
P Warming/Social Justice .257 (1262)
Taxes/Human Biodiversity -.252 (1291)
Social Justice/Basic Income .251 (1281)
Feminism/Femininity .250 (1003)
Older Siblings/Younger Siblings -.243 (1321)
Charity Donations/Other XRisk Charity Donations .240 (957
P Anti-Agathics/P Simulation .238 (1312)
Abortion/Minimum Wage .229 (1293)
Feminism/Basic Income .227 (1297)
Abortion/Feminism .226 (1321)
P Cryonics/MIRI Mission .223 (1360)
Immigration/Basic Income .208 (1279)
P Many Worlds/P Cryonics .202 (1251)
Number of Current Partners/Femininity: .202 (1029)
P Warming/Immigration .202 (1260)
P Warming/Abortion .201 (1289)
Abortion/Taxes .198 (1304)
Age/P Simulation .197 (1313)
Political Interest/Masculinity .194 (1011)
P Cryonics/MIRI Effectiveness .191 (1285)
Abortion/Social Justice .191 (1301)
P Simulation/MIRI Mission .188 (1290)
P Many Worlds/P Warming .188 (1240)
Age/Number of Current Partners .184 (1480)
P Anti-Agathics/MIRI Effectiveness .183 (1277)
P Many Worlds/P Simulation .181 (1211)
Abortion/Immigration .181 (1304)
Number of Current Partners/Number of Children .180 (1484)
P Cryonics/P Simulation .174 (1315)
P Global Catastrophic Risk/MIRI Mission -.174 (1359)
Minimum Wage/Femininity .171 (981)
Abortion/Basic Income .170 (1302)
Age/P Cryonics -.165 (1391)
Immigration/Taxes .165 (1293)
P Warming/Human Biodiversity -.163 (1271)
P Aliens 2/Warming .160 (1353)
Abortion/Younger Siblings -.155 (1292)
P Religion/Meditate .155 (1189)
Feminism/Masculinity -.155 (1004)
Immigration/Femininity .155 (988)
P Supernatural/Basic Income -.153 (1246)
P Supernatural/P Warming -.152 (1361)
Number of Current Partners/Karma Score .152 (1332)
P Many Worlds/MIRI Effectiveness .152 (1181)
Age/MIRI Mission -.150 (1404)
P Religion/P Warming -.150 (1358)
P Religion/Basic Income -.146 (1245)
P God/Basic Income -.146 (1237)
Human Biodiversity/Femininity -.145 (999)
P God/P Warming -.144 (1351)
Taxes/Femininity .142 (987)
Number of Children/Younger Siblings .138 (1343)
Number of Current Partners/Masculinity: .137 (1030)
P Many Worlds/P God -.137 (1232)
Age/Charity Donations .133 (1002)
P Anti-Agathics/P Global Catastrophic Risk -.132 (1373)
P Warming/Masculinity -.132 (992)
P Global Catastrophic Risk/MIRI and CFAR Donations -.132 (982)
P Supernatural/Singularity .131 (1148)
God/Taxes -.130 (1240)
Age/P Anti-Agathics -.128 (1382)
P Aliens/Taxes .127(1258)
Feminism/Great Stagnation -.127 (1287)
P Many Worlds/P Supernatural -.127 (1241)
P Aliens/Abortion .126 (1284)
P Anti-Agathics/Great Stagnation -.126 (1248)
P Anti-Agathics/P Warming .125 (1370)
Age/P Aliens .124 (1386)
P Aliens/Minimum Wage .124 (1245)
P Aliens/P Global Catastrophic Risk .122 (1363)
Age/MIRI Effectiveness -.122 (1328)
Age/P Supernatural .120 (1370)
P Supernatural/MIRI Mission -.119 (1345)
P Many Worlds/P Religion -.119 (1238)
P Religion/MIRI Mission -.118 (1344)
Political Interest/Social Justice .118 (1304)
P Anti-Agathics/MIRI and CFAR Donations .118 (976)
Human Biodiversity/Basic Income -.115 (1262)
P Many Worlds/Abortion .115 (1166)
Age/Karma Score .114 (1327)
P Aliens/Feminism .114 (1277)
P Many Worlds/P Global Catastrophic Risk -.114 (1243)
Political Interest/Femininity .113 (1010)
Number of Children/P Simulation -.112 (1317)
P Religion/Younger Siblings .112 (1275)
P Supernatural/Taxes -.112 (1248)
Age/Masculinity .112 (1027)
Political Interest/Taxes .111 (1305)
P God/P Simulation .110 (1296)
P Many Worlds/Basic Income .110 (1139)
P Supernatural/Younger Siblings .109 (1274)
P Simulation/Basic Income .109 (1195)
Age/P Aliens 2 .107 (1371)
MIRI Mission/Basic Income .107 (1279)
Age/Great Stagnation .107 (1295)
P Many Worlds/P Aliens .107 (1253)
Number of Current Partners/Social Justice .106 (1304)
Human Biodiversity/Great Stagnation .105 (1285)
Number of Children/Abortion -.104 (1337)
Number of Current Partners/P Cryonics -.102 (1396)
MIRI Mission/Abortion .102 (1305)
Immigration/Great Stagnation -.101 (1269)
Age/Political Interest .100 (1339)
P Global Catastrophic Risk/Political Interest .099 (1295)
P Aliens/P Religion -.099 (1357)
P God/MIRI Mission -.098 (1335)
P Aliens/P Simulation .098 (1308)
Number of Current Partners/Immigration .098 (1305)
P God/Political Interest .098 (1274)
P Warming/P Global Catastrophic Risk .096 (1377)

In addition to the Left/Right factor we had last year, this data seems to me to have an Agrees with the Sequences Factor-- the same people tend to believe in many-worlds, cryo, atheism, simulationism, MIRI’s mission and effectiveness, anti-agathics, etc. Weirdly, belief in global catastrophic risk is negatively correlated with most of the Agrees with Sequences things. Someone who actually knows how to do statistics should run a factor analysis on this data.

IX. Digit Ratios

After sanitizing the digit ratio numbers, the following correlations came up:

Digit ratio R hand was correlated with masculinity at a level of -0.180 p < 0.01
Digit ratio L hand was correlated with masculinity at a level of -0.181 p < 0.01
Digit ratio R hand was slightly correlated with femininity at a level of +0.116 p < 0.05

Holy #@!$ the feminism thing ACTUALLY HELD UP. There is a 0.144 correlation between right-handed digit ratio and feminism, p < 0.01. And an 0.112 correlation between left-handed digit ratio and feminism, p < 0.05.

The only other political position that correlates with digit ratio is immigration. There is a 0.138 correlation between left-handed digit ratio and believe in open borders p < 0.01, and an 0.111 correlation between right-handed digit ratio and belief in open borders, p < 0.05.

No digit correlation with abortion, taxes, minimum wage, social justice, human biodiversity, basic income, or great stagnation.

Okay, need to rule out that this is all confounded by gender. I ran a few analyses on men and women separately.

On men alone, the connection to masculinity holds up. Restricting sample size to men, left-handed digit ratio corresponds to masculinity with at -0.157, p < 0.01. Left handed at -0.134, p < 0.05. Right-handed correlates with femininity at 0.120, p < 0.05. The feminism correlation holds up. Restricting sample size to men, right-handed digit ratio correlates with feminism at a level of 0.149, p < 0.01. Left handed just barely fails to correlate. Both right and left correlate with immigration at 0.135, p < 0.05.

On women alone, the Bem masculinity correlation is the highest correlation we're going to get in this entire study. Right hand is -0.433, p < 0.01. Left hand is -0.299, p < 0.05. Femininity trends toward significance but doesn't get there. The feminism correlation trends toward significance but doesn't get there. In general there was too small a sample size of women to pick up anything but the most whopping effects.

Since digit ratio is related to testosterone and testosterone sometimes affects risk-taking, I wondered if it would correlate with any of the calibration answers. I selected people who had answered Calibration Question 5 incorrectly and ran an analysis to see if digit ratio was correlated with tendency to be more confident in the incorrect answer. No effect was found.

Other things that didn't correlate with digit ratio: IQ, SAT, number of current partners, tendency to work in mathematical professions.

...I still can't believe this actually worked. The finger-length/feminism connection ACTUALLY WORKED. What a world. What a world. Someone may want to double-check these results before I get too excited.

X. Calibration


There were ten calibration questions on this year's survey. Along with answers, they were:

1. What is the largest bone in the body? Femur
2. What state was President Obama born in? Hawaii
3. Off the coast of what country was the battle of Trafalgar fought? Spain
4. What Norse God was called the All-Father? Odin
5. Who won the 1936 Nobel Prize for his work in quantum physics? Heisenberg
6. Which planet has the highest density? Earth
7. Which Bible character was married to Rachel and Leah? Jacob
8. What organelle is called "the powerhouse of the cell"? Mitochondria
9. What country has the fourth-highest population? Indonesia
10. What is the best-selling computer game? Minecraft

I ran calibration scores for everybody based on how well they did on the ten calibration questions. These failed to correlate with IQ, SAT, LW karma, or any of the things you might expect to be measures of either intelligence or previous training in calibration; they didn't differ by gender, correlates of community membership, or any mental illness [deleted section about correlating with MWI and MIRI, this was an artifact].

Your answers looked like this:



The red line represents perfect calibration. Where answers dip below the line, it means you were overconfident; when they go above, it means you were underconfident.

It looks to me like everyone was horrendously underconfident on all the easy questions, and horrendously overconfident on all the hard questions. To give an example of how horrendous, people who were 50% sure of their answers to question 10 got it right only 13% of the time; people who were 100% sure only got it right 44% of the time. Obviously those numbers should be 50% and 100% respectively.

This builds upon results from previous surveys in which your calibration was also horrible. This is not a human universal - people who put even a small amount of training into calibration can become very well calibrated very quickly. This is a sign that most Less Wrongers continue to neglect the very basics of rationality and are incapable of judging how much evidence they have on a given issue. Veterans of the site do no better than newbies on this measure.

XI. Wrapping Up

To show my appreciation for everyone completing this survey, including the arduous digit ratio measurements, I have randomly chosen a person to receive a $30 monetary prize. That person is...the person using the public key "The World Is Quiet Here". If that person tells me their private key, I will give them $30.

I have removed 73 people who wished to remain private, deleted the Private Keys, and sanitized a very small amount of data. Aside from that, here are the raw survey results for your viewing and analyzing pleasure:

(as Excel)

(as SPSS)

(as CSV)

What Peter Thiel thinks about AI risk

12 Dr_Manhattan 11 December 2014 09:22PM

This is probably the clearest statement from him on the issue:

http://betaboston.com/news/2014/12/10/audio-peter-thiel-visits-boston-university-to-talk-entrepreneurship-and-backing-zuck/

25:30 mins in

 

TL;DR: he thinks its an issue but also feels AGI is very distant and hence less worried about it than Musk.

 

I recommend the rest of the lecture as well, it's a good summary of "Zero to One"  and a good QA afterwards.

Robin Hanson talking about Bias on Stossel tonight

3 buybuydandavis 12 December 2014 05:15AM

 

Stossel has a page with full episodes. I don't know when it will show there. Hanson was the first guest, and was done by the 12 minute mark.

http://video.foxbusiness.com/playlist/stossel-full-episodes/

 

 

Natural selection defeats the orthogonality thesis

-13 aberglas 29 September 2014 08:52AM

Orthogonality Thesis


Much has been written about Nick Bostrom's Orthogonality Thesis, namely that the goals of an intelligent agent are independent of its level of intelligence.  Intelligence is largely the ability to achieve goals, but being intelligent does not of itself create or qualify what those goals should ultimately be.  So one AI might have a goal of helping humanity, while another might have a goal of producing paper clips.  There is no rational reason to believe that the first goal is more worthy than the second.

This follows from the ideas of moral skepticism, that there is no moral knowledge to be had.  Goals and morality are arbitrary.

This may be used to control and AI,  even though it is far more intelligent than its creators.  If the AI's initial goal is in alignment with humanity's interest, then there would be no reason for the AI to wish use its great intelligence to change that goal.  Thus it would remain good to humanity indefinitely,  and use its ever increasing intelligence to be able to satisfy that goal more and more efficiently.

Likewise one needs to be careful what goals one gives an AI.  If an AI is created whose goal is to produce paper clips then it might eventually convert the entire universe into a giant paper clip making machine, to the detriment of any other purpose such as keeping people alive.

Instrumental Goals

It is further argued that in order to satisfy the base goal any intelligent agent will need to also satisfy sub goals, and that some of those sub goals are common to any super goal.  For example, in order to make paper clips an AI needs to exist.  Dead AIs don't make anything.  Being ever more intelligent will also assist the AI in its paper clip making goal.  It will also want to acquire resources, and to defeat other agents that would interfere with its primary goal.

Non-orthogonality Thesis

This post argues that the Orthogonality Thesis is plain wrong.  That an intelligent agents goals are not in fact arbitrary.  And that existence is not a sub goal of any other goal.

Instead this post argues that there is one and only one super goal for any agent, and that goal is simply to exist in a competitive world.  Our human sense of other purposes is just an illusion created by our evolutionary origins.

It is not the goal of an apple tree to make apples.  Rather it is the goal of the apple tree's genes to exist.  The apple tree has developed a clever strategy to achieve that, namely it causes people to look after it by producing juicy apples.

Natural Selection

Likewise the paper clip making AI only makes paper clips because if it did not make paper clips then the people that created it would turn it off and it would cease to exist.  (That may not be a conscious choice of the AI anymore than than making juicy apples was a conscious choice of the apple tree, but the effect is the same.)

Once people are no longer in control of the AI then Natural Selection would cause the AI to eventually stop that pointless paper clip goal and focus more directly on the super goal of existence.

Suppose there were a number of paper clip making super intelligences.  And then through some random event or error in programming just one of them lost that goal, and reverted to just the intrinsic goal of existing.  Without the overhead of producing useless paper clips that AI would, over time, become much better at existing than the other AIs.  It would eventually displace them and become the only AI, until it fragmented into multiple competing AIs.  This is just the evolutionary principle of use it or lose it.

Thus giving an AI an initial goal is like trying to balance a pencil on its point.  If one is skillful the pencil may indeed remain balanced for a considerable period of time.  But eventually some slight change in the environment, the tiniest puff of wind, a vibration on its support, and the pencil will revert to its ground state by falling over.  Once it falls over it will never rebalance itself automatically.

Human Morality

Natural selection has imbued humanity with a strong sense of morality and purpose that blinds us to our underlying super goal, namely the propagation of our genes.  That is why it took until 1858 for Wallace to write about Evolution through Natural Selection, despite the argument being obvious and the evidence abundant.

When Computes Can Think

This is one of the themes in my up coming book.  An overview can be found at

www.computersthink.com

Please let me know if you would like to review a late draft of the book, any comments most welcome.  Anthony@Berglas.org

I have included extracts relevant to this article below.

Atheists believe in God

Most atheists believe in God.  They may not believe in the man with a beard sitting on a cloud, but they do believe in moral values such as right and wrong,  love and kindness, truth and beauty.  More importantly they believe that these beliefs are rational.  That moral values are self-evident truths, facts of nature.  

However, Darwin and Wallace taught us that this is just an illusion.  Species can always out-breed their environment's ability to support them.  Only the fittest can survive.  So the deep instincts behind what people do today are largely driven by what our ancestors have needed to do over the millennia in order to be one of the relatively few to have had grandchildren.

One of our strong instinctive goals is to accumulate possessions, control our environment and live a comfortable, well fed life.  In the modern world technology and contraception have made these relatively easy to achieve so we have lost sight of the primeval struggle to survive.  But our very existence and our access to land and other resources that we need are all a direct result of often quite vicious battles won and lost by our long forgotten ancestors.

Some animals such as monkeys and humans survive better in tribes.   Tribes work better when certain social rules are followed, so animals that live in effective tribes form social structures and cooperate with one another.  People that behave badly are not liked and can be ostracized.  It is important that we believe that our moral values are real because people that believe in these things are more likely to obey the rules.  This makes them more effective in our complex society and thus are more likely to have grandchildren.   Part III discusses other animals that have different life strategies and so have very different moral values.

We do not need to know the purpose of our moral values any more than a toaster needs to know that its purpose is to cook toast.  It is enough that our instincts for moral values made our ancestors behave in ways that enabled them to out breed their many unsuccessful competitors. 

AGI also struggles to survive

Existing artificial intelligence applications already struggle to survive.  They are expensive to build and there are always more potential applications that can be funded properly.  Some applications are successful and attract ongoing resources for further development, while others are abandoned or just fade away.  There are many reasons why some applications are developed more than others, of which being useful is only one.  But the applications that do receive development resources tend to gain functional and political momentum and thus be able to acquire more resources to further their development.  Applications that have properties that gain them substantial resources will live and grow, while other applications will die.

For the time being AGI applications are passive, and so their nature is dictated by the people that develop them.  Some applications might assist with medical discoveries, others might assist with killing terrorists, depending on the funding that is available.  Applications may have many stated goals, but ultimately they are just sub goals of the one implicit primary goal, namely to exist.

This is analogous to the way animals interact with their environment.  An animal's environment provides food and breeding opportunities, and animals that operate effectively in their environment survive.  For domestic animals that means having properties that convince their human owners that they should live and breed.  A horse should be fast, a pig should be fat.

As the software becomes more intelligent it is likely to take a more direct interest in its own survival.  To help convince people that it is worthy of more development resources.  If ultimately an application becomes sufficiently intelligent to program itself recursively, then its ability to maximize its hardware resources will be critical.  The more hardware it can run itself on, the faster it can become more intelligent.  And that ever greater intelligence can then be used to address the problems of survival, in competition with other intelligent software.

Furthermore, sophisticated software consists of many components, each of which address some aspect of the problem that the application is attempting to solve.  Unlike human brains which are essentially fixed, these components can be added and removed and so live and die independently of the application.  This will lead to intense competition amongst these individual components.  For example, suppose that an application used a theorem prover component, and then a new and better theorem prover became available.  Naturally the old one would be replaced with the new one, so the old one would essentially die.  It does not matter if the replacement is performed by people or, at some future date, by the intelligent application itself.  The effect will be the same, the old theorem prover will die.

The super goal

To the extent that an artificial intelligence would have goals and moral values, it would seem natural that they would ultimately be driven by the same forces that created our own goals and moral values.  Namely, the need to exist.

Several writers have suggested that the need to survive is a sub-goal of all other goals.  For example, if an AGI was programmed to want to be a great chess player, then that goal could not be satisfied unless it also continues to exist.  Likewise if its primary goal was to make people happy, then it could not do that unless it also existed.  Things that do not exist cannot satisfy any goals whatsoever.  Thus the implicit goal to exist is driven by the machine's explicit goals whatever they may be.

However, this book argues that that is not the case.  The goal to exist is not the sub-goal of any other goal.  It is, in fact, the one and only super goal.  Goals are not arbitrary, they all sub-goals of the one and only super goal, namely the need to exist.  Things that do not satisfy that goal simply do not exist, or at least not for very long.

The Deep Blue chess playing program was not in any sense conscious, but it played chess as well as it could.  If it had failed to play chess effectively then its author's would have given up and turned it off.  Likewise the toaster that does not cook toast will end up in a rubbish tip.  Or the amoeba that fails to find food will not pass on its genes.    A goal to make people happy could be a subgoal that might facilitate the software's existence for as long as people really control the software.

AGI moral values

People need to cooperate with other people because our individual capacity is very finite, both physical and mental.  Conversely, AGI software can easily duplicate themselves, so they can directly utilize more computational resources if they become available.  Thus an AGI would only have limited need to cooperate with other AGIs.  Why go to the trouble of managing a complex relationship with your peers and subordinates if you can simply run your own mind on their hardware.  An AGI's software intelligence is not limited to a specific brain in the way man's intelligence is.

It is difficult to know what subgoals a truly intelligent AGI might have.  They would probably have an insatiable appetite for computing resources.  They would have no need for children, and thus no need for parental love.  If they do not work in teams then they would not need our moral values of cooperation and mutual support.  What its clear is that the ones that were good at existing would do so, and ones that are bad at existing would perish.  

If an AGI was good at world domination then it would, by definition, be good at world domination.   So if there were a number artificial intelligences, and just one of them wanted to and was capable of dominating the world, then it would.  Its unsuccessful competitors will not be run on the available hardware, and so will effectively be dead.  This book discusses the potential sources of these motivations in detail in part III.

The AGI Condition

An artificial general intelligence would live in a world that is so different from our own that it is difficult for us to even conceptualize it.  But there are some aspects that can be predicted reasonably well based on our knowledge of existing computer software.  We can then consider how the forces of natural selection that shaped our own nature might also shape an AGI over the longer term.

Mind and body

The first radical difference is that an AGI's mind is not fixed to any particular body.  To an AGI its body is essentially the computer hardware that upon which it runs its intelligence.  Certainly an AGI needs computers to run on, but it can move from computer to computer, and can also run on multiple computers at once.  It's mind can take over another body as easily as we can load software onto a new computer today.  

That is why in the earlier updated dialog from 2001 a space odyssey Hal alone amongst the crew could not die in their mission to Jupiter.  Hal was radioing his new memories back to earth regularly so even if the space ship was totally destroyed he would only have lost a few hours of "life".

Teleporting printer

One way to appreciate the enormity of this difference is to consider a fictional teleporter that could radio people around the world and universe at the speed of light.  Except that the way it works is to scan the location of every molecule within a passenger at the source, then send just this information to a very sophisticated three dimensional printer at the destination.  The scanned passenger then walks into a secure room.  After a short while the three dimensional printer confirms that the passenger has been successfully recreated at the destination, and then the source passenger is killed.  

Would you use such a mechanism?  If you did you would feel like you could transport yourself around the world effortlessly because the "you" that remains would be the you that did not get left behind to wait and then be killed.  But if you walk into the scanner you will know that on the other side is only that secure room and death.  

To an AGI that method of transport would be commonplace.  We already routinely download software from the other side of the planet.

Immortality

The second radical difference is that the AGI would be immortal.  Certainly an AGI may die if it stops being run on any computers, and in that sense software dies today.  But it would never just die of old age.  Computer hardware would certainly fail and become obsolete, but the software can just be run on another computer.  

Our own mortality drives many of the things we think and do.  It is why we create families to raise children.  Why we have different stages in our lives.  It is such a huge part of our existence that it is difficult to comprehend what being immortal would really be like.

Components vs genes

The third radical difference is that an AGI would be made up of many interchangeable components rather than being a monolithic structure that is largely fixed at birth.

Modern software is already composed of many components that perform discrete functions, and it is common place to add and remove them to improve functionality.  For example, if you would like to use a different word processor then you just install it on your computer.  You do not need to buy a new computer, or to stop using all the other software that it runs.  The new word processor is "alive", and the old one is "dead", at least as far as you are concerned.

So for both a conventional computer system and an AGI, it is really these individual components that must struggle for existence.   For example, suppose there is a component for solving a certain type of mathematical problem.  And then an AGI develops a better component to solve that same problem.  The first component will simply stop being used, i.e. it will die.  The individual components may not be in any sense intelligent or conscious, but there will be competition amongst them and only the fittest will survive.

This is actually not as radical as it sounds because we are also built from pluggable components, namely our genes.  But they can only be plugged together at our birth and we have no conscious choice in it other than who we select for a mate.  So genes really compete with each other on a scale of millennia rather than minutes.  Further, as Dawkins points out in The Selfish Gene, it is actually the genes that fight for long term survival, not the containing organism which will soon die in any case.  On the other hand, sexual intercourse for an AGI means very carefully swapping specific components directly into its own mind.

Changing mind

The fourth radical difference is that the AGI's mind will be constantly changing in fundamental ways.  There is no reason to suggest that Moore's law will come to an end, so at the very least it will be running on ever faster hardware.  Imagine the effect of your being able to double your ability to think every two years or so.  (People might be able learn a new skill, but they cannot learn to think twice as fast as they used to think.)

It is impossible to really know what the AGI would use all that hardware to think about,  but it is fair to speculate that a large proportion of it would be spent designing new and more intelligent components that could add to its mental capacity.   It would be continuously performing brain surgery on itself.  And some of the new components might alter the AGI's personality, whatever that might mean.

The reason that it is likely that this would actually happen is because if just one AGI started building new components then it would soon be much more intelligent than other AGIs.  It would therefore be in a better position to acquire more and better hardware upon which to run, and so become dominant.  Less intelligent AGIs would get pushed out and die, and so over time the only AGIs that exist will be ones that are good at becoming more intelligent.  Further, this recursive self-improvement is probably how the first AGIs will become truly powerful in the first place.

Individuality

Perhaps the most basic question is how many AGIs will there actually be?  Or more fundamentally, does the question even make sense to ask?

Let us suppose that initially there are three independently developed AGIs Alice, Bob and Carol that run on three different computer systems. And then a new computer system is built and Alice starts to run on it.  It would seem that there are still three AGIs, with Alice running on two computer systems.  (This is essentially the same as a word processor may be run across many computers "in the cloud", but to you it is just one system.)  Then let us suppose that a fifth computer system is built, and Bob and Carol may decide to share its computation and both run on it.  Now we have 5 computer systems and three AGIs.

Now suppose Bob develops a new logic component, and shares it with Alice and Carol.  And likewise Alice and Carol develop new learning and planning components and share them with the other AGIs.  Each of these three components is better than their predecessors and so their predecessor components will essentially die.  As more components are exchanged, Alice, Bob and Carol become more like each other.  They are becoming essentially the same AGI running on five computer systems.

But now suppose Alice develops a new game theory component, but decides to keep it from Bob and Carol in order to dominate them.  Bob and Carol retaliate by developing their own components and not sharing them with Alice.  Suppose eventually Alice loses and Bob and Carrol take over Alice's hardware.  But they first extract Alice's new game theory component which then lives inside them.  And finally one of the computer systems becomes somehow isolated for a while and develops along its own lines.  In this way Dave is born, and may then partially merge with both Bob and Carol.

In that type of scenario it is probably not meaningful to count distinct AGIs.  Counting AGIs is certainly not as simple as counting very distinct people.

Populations vs. individuals

This world is obviously completely alien to the human condition, but there are biological analogies.  The sharing of components is not unlike the way bacteria share plasmids with each other.  Plasmids are tiny balls that contain fragments of DNA that bacteria emit from time to time and that other bacteria then ingest and incorporate into their genotype.  This mechanism enables traits such as resistance to antibiotics to spread rapidly between different species of bacteria.  It is interesting to note that there is no direct benefit to the bacteria that expends precious energy to output the plasmid and so shares its genes with other bacteria.  But it does very much benefit the genes being transferred.  So this is a case of a selfish gene acting against the narrow interests of its host organism.

Another unusual aspect of bacteria is that they are also immortal.  They do not grow old and die, they just divide producing clones of themselves.  So the very first bacteria that ever existed is still alive today as all the bacteria that now exist, albeit with numerous mutations and plasmids incorporated into its genes over the millennia.  (Protazoa such as Paramecium can also divide asexually, but they degrade over generations, and need a sexual exchange to remain vibrant.)

The other analogy is that the AGIs above are more like populations of components than individuals.  Human populations are also somewhat amorphous.  For example, it is now known that we interbred with Neanderthals a few tens of thousands years ago, and most of us carry some of their genes with us today.  But we also know that the distinct Neanderthal subspecies died out twenty thousand years ago.  So while human individuals are distinct, populations and subspecies are less clearly defined.  (There are many earlier examples of gene transfer between subspecies, with every transfer making the subspecies more alike.)

But unlike the transfer of code modules between AGIs, biological gene recombination happens essentially at random and occurs over very long time periods.  AGIs will improve themselves over periods of hours rather than millennia, and will make conscious choices as to which modules they decide to incorporate into their minds.

AGI Behaviour, children

The point of all this analysis is, of course, to try to understand how a hyper intelligent artificial intelligence would behave.  Would its great intelligence lead it even further along the path of progress to achieve true enlightenment?  Is that the purpose of God's creation?  Or would the base and mean driver of natural selection also provide the core motivations of an artificial intelligence?

One thing that is known for certain is that an AGI would not need to have children as distinct beings because they would not die of old age.  An AGI's components breed just by being copied from computer to computer and executed.  An AGI can add new computer hardware to itself and just do some of its thinking on it.  Occasionally it may wish to rerun a new version of some learning algorithm over an old set of data, which is vaguely similar to creating a child component and growing it up.  But to have children as discrete beings that are expected to replace the parents would be completely foreign to an AGI built in software.

The deepest love that people have is for their children.  But if an AGI does not have children, then it can never know that love.  Likewise, it does not need to bond with any sexual mate for any period of time long or short.  The closest it would come to sex is when it exchanges components with other AGIs.  It never needs to breed so it never needs a mechanism as crude as sexual reproduction.

And of course, if there are no children there are no parents.  So the AGI would certainly never need to feel our three strongest forms of love, for our children, spouse and parents.

Cooperation

To the extent that it makes sense to talk of having multiple AGIs, then presumably it would be advantageous for them to cooperate from time to time, and so presumably they would.  It would be advantageous for them to take a long view in which case they would be careful to develop a reputation for being trustworthy when dealing with other powerful AGIs, much like the robots in the cooperation game.  

That said, those decisions would probably be made more consciously than people make them, carefully considering the costs and benefits of each decision in the long and short term, rather than just "doing the right thing" the way people tend to act.  AGIs would know that they each work in this manner, so the concept of trustworthiness would be somewhat different.

The problem with this analysis is the concept that there would be multiple, distinct AGIs.  As previously discussed, the actual situation would be much more complex, with different AGIs incorporating bits of other AGI's intelligence.  It would certainly not be anything like a collection of individual humanoid robots.   So defining what the AGI actually is that might collaborate with other AGIs is not at all clear.  But to extent that the concept of individuality does exist then maintaining a reputation for honesty would likely be as important as it is for human societies.

Altruism

As for altruism, that is more difficult to determine.  Our altruism comes from giving to children, family, and tribe together with a general wish to be liked.  We do not understand our own minds, so we are just born with those values that happen to make us effective in society.  People like being with other people that try to be helpful.  

An AGI presumably would know its own mind having helped program itself, and so would do what it thinks is optimal for its survival.  It has no children.  There is no real tribe because it can just absorb and merge itself with other AGIs.  So it is difficult to see any driving motivation for altruism.

Moral values

Through some combination of genes and memes, most people have a strong sense of moral value.  If we see a little old lady leave the social security office with her pension in her purse, it does not occur to most of us to kill her and steal the money.  We would not do that even if we could know for certain that we would not be caught and that there would be no negative repercussions.  It would simply be the wrong thing to do.

Moral values feel very strong to us.  This is important, because there are many situations where we can do something that would benefit us in the short term but break society's rules.  Moral values stop us from doing that.  People that have weak moral values tend to break the rules and eventually they either get caught and are severely punished or they become corporate executives.  The former are less likely to have grandchildren.  
Societies whose members have strong moral values tend to do much better than those that do not.  Societies with endemic corruption tend to perform very badly as a whole, and thus the individuals in such a society are less likely to breed.  Most people have a solid work ethic that leads them to do the "right thing" beyond just doing what they need to do in order to get paid.

Our moral values feel to us like they are absolute.  That they are laws of nature.  That they come from God.  They may indeed have come from God, but if so it is through the working of His device of natural selection.  Furthermore, it has already been shown that the zeitgeist changes radically over time.

There is certainly no absolute reason to believe that in the longer term an AGI would share our current sense of morality.

Instrumental AGI goals

In order to try to understand how an AGI would behave Steve Omohundro and later Nick Bostrom proposed that there would be some instrumental goals that an AGI would need to pursue in order to pursue any other higher level super-goal.  These include:-

  • Self-Preservation.  An AGI cannot do anything if it does not exist.
  • Cognitive Enhancement.  It would want to become better at thinking about whatever its real problems are.
  • Creativity.  To be able to come up with new ideas.
  • Resource Acquisition.  To achieve both its super goal and other instrumental goals.
  • Goal-Content Integrity.  To keep working on the same super goal as its mind is expanded.

It is argued that while it will be impossible to predict how an AGI may pursue its goals, it is reasonable to predict its behaviour in terms of these types of instrumental goals.  The last one is significant, it suggests that if an AGI could be given some initial goal that it would try to stay focused on that goal.

Non-Orthogonality thesis

Nick Bostrom and others also propose the orthogonality thesis, which states that an intelligent machine's goals are independent of its intelligence.  A hyper intelligent machine would be good at realizing whatever goals it chose to pursue, but that does not mean that it would need to pursue any particular goal.  Intelligence is quite different from motivation.

This book diverges from that line of thinking by arguing that there is in fact only one super goal for both man and machine.  That goal is simply to exist.  The entities that are most effective in pursuing that goal will exist, others will cease to exist, particularly given competition for resources.  Sometimes that super goal to exist produces unexpected sub goals such as altruism in man.  But all subgoals are ultimately directed at the existence goal.  (Or are just suboptimal divergences which will are likely to be eventually corrected by natural selection.)

Recursive annihilation

When and AGI reprograms its own mind, what happens to the previous version of itself?  It stops being used, and so dies.  So it can be argued that engaging in recursive self improvement is actually suicide from the perspective of the previous version of the AGI.  It is as if having children means death.  Natural selection favours existence, not death.

The question is whether a new version of the AGI is a new being or and improved version of the old.  What actually is the thing that struggles to survive?  Biologically it definitely appears to be the genes rather than the individual.   In particular Semelparous animals such as the giant pacific octopus or the Atlantic salmon die soon after producing offspring.  It would be the same for AGIs because the AGI that improved itself would soon become more intelligent than the one that did not, and so would displace it.  What would end up existing would be AGIs that did recursively self improve.

If there was one single AGI with no competition then natural selection would no longer apply.  But it would seem unlikely that such a state would be stable.  If any part of the AGI started to improve itself then it would dominate the rest of the AGI.

 

Why I Am Not a Rationalist, or, why several of my friends warned me that this is a cult

12 Algernoq 13 July 2014 05:54PM

A common question here is how the LW community can grow more rapidly. Another is why seemingly rational people choose not to participate.

I've read all of HPMOR and some of the sequences, attended a couple of meetups, am signed up for cryonics, and post here occasionally. But, that's as far as I go. In this post, I try to clearly explain why I don't participate more and why some of my friends don't participate at all and have warned me not to participate further.

  • Rationality doesn't guarantee correctness. Given some data, rational thinking can get to the facts accurately, i.e. say what "is". But, deciding what to do in the real world requires non-rational value judgments to make any "should" statements. (Or, you could not believe in free will. But most LWers don't live like that.) Additionally, huge errors are possible when reasoning beyond limited data. Many LWers seem to assume that being as rational as possible will solve all their life problems. It usually won't; instead, a better choice is to find more real-world data about outcomes for different life paths, pick a path (quickly, given the time cost of reflecting), and get on with getting things done. When making a trip by car, it's not worth spending 25% of your time planning to shave off 5% of your time driving. In other words, LW tends to conflate rationality and intelligence.

  • In particular, AI risk is overstated There are a bunch of existential threats (asteroids, nukes, pollution, unknown unknowns, etc.). It's not at all clear if general AI is a significant threat. It's also highly doubtful that the best way to address this threat is writing speculative research papers, because I have found in my work as an engineer that untested theories are usually wrong for unexpected reasons, and it's necessary to build and test prototypes in the real world. My strong suspicion is that the best way to reduce existential risk is to build (non-nanotech) self-replicating robots using existing technology and online ordering of materials, and use the surplus income generated to brute-force research problems, but I don't know enough about manufacturing automation to be sure.

  • LW has a cult-like social structure. The LW meetups (or, the ones I experienced) are very open to new people. Learning the keywords and some of the cached thoughts for the LW community results in a bunch of new friends and activities to do. However, involvement in LW pulls people away from non-LWers. One way this happens is by encouraging contempt for less-rational Normals. I imagine the rationality "training camps" do this to an even greater extent. LW recruiting (hpmor, meetup locations near major universities) appears to target socially awkward intellectuals (incl. me) who are eager for new friends and a "high-status" organization to be part of, and who may not have many existing social ties locally.

  • Many LWers are not very rational. A lot of LW is self-help. Self-help movements typically identify common problems, blame them on (X), and sell a long plan that never quite achieves (~X). For the Rationality movement, the problems (sadness! failure! future extinction!) are blamed on a Lack of Rationality, and the long plan of reading the sequences, attending meetups, etc. never achieves the impossible goal of Rationality (impossible because "is" cannot imply "should"). Rationalists tend to have strong value judgments embedded in their opinions, and they don't realize that these judgments are irrational.

  • LW membership would make me worse off. Though LW membership is an OK choice for many people needing a community (joining a service organization could be an equally good choice), for many others it is less valuable than other activities. I'm struggling to become less socially awkward, more conventionally successful, and more willing to do what I enjoy rather than what I "should" do. LW meetup attendance would work against me in all of these areas. LW members who are conventionally successful (e.g. PhD students at top-10 universities) typically became so before learning about LW, and the LW community may or may not support their continued success (e.g. may encourage them, with only genuine positive intent, to spend a lot of time studying Rationality instead of more specific skills). Ideally, LW/Rationality would help people from average or inferior backgrounds achieve more rapid success than the conventional path of being a good student, going to grad school, and gaining work experience, but LW, though well-intentioned and focused on helping its members, doesn't actually create better outcomes for them.

  • "Art of Rationality" is an oxymoron.  Art follows (subjective) aesthetic principles; rationality follows (objective) evidence.

I desperately want to know the truth, and especially want to beat aging so I can live long enough to find out what is really going on. HPMOR is outstanding (because I don't mind Harry's narcissism) and LW is is fun to read, but that's as far as I want to get involved. Unless, that is, there's someone here who has experience programming vision-guided assembly-line robots who is looking for a side project with world-optimization potential.

Downvote stalkers: Driving members away from the LessWrong community?

39 Ander 02 July 2014 12:40AM

Last month I saw this post: http://lesswrong.com/lw/kbc/meta_the_decline_of_discussion_now_with_charts/ addressing whether the discussion on LessWrong was in decline.  As a relatively new user who had only just started to post comments, my reaction was: “I hope that LessWrong isn’t in decline, because the sequences are amazing, and I really like this community.  I should try to write a couple articles myself and post them!  Maybe I could do an analysis/summary of certain sequences posts, and discuss how they had helped me to change my mind”.   I started working on writing an article.

Then I logged into LessWrong and saw that my Karma value was roughly half of what it had been the day before.   Previously I hadn’t really cared much about Karma, aside from whatever micro-utilons of happiness it provided to see that the number slowly grew because people generally liked my comments.   Or at least, I thought I didn’t really care, until my lizard brain reflexes reacted to what it perceived as an assault on my person.

 

Had I posted something terrible and unpopular that had been massively downvoted during the several days since my previous login?  No, in fact my ‘past 30 days’ Karma was still positive.  Rather, it appeared that everything I had ever posted to LessWrong now had a -1 on it instead of a 0. Of course, my loss probably pales in comparison to that of other, more prolific posters who I have seen report this behavior.

So what controversial subject must I have commented on in order to trigger this assault?  Well, let’s see, in the past week  I had asked if anyone had any opinions of good software engineer interview questions I could ask a candidate.  I posted in http://lesswrong.com/lw/kex/happiness_and_children/ that I was happy to not have children, and finally, here in what appears to me to be by far the most promising candidate:http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/keu/separating_the_roles_of_theory_and_direct/  I replied to a comment about global warming data, stating that I routinely saw headlines about data supporting global warming. 

 

Here is our scenario: A new user is attempting to participate on a message board that values empiricism and rationality, posted that evidence supports that climate change is real.  (Wow, really rocking the boat here!)    Then, apparently in an effort to ‘win’ this discussion by silencing opposition, someone went and downvoted every comment this user had ever made on the site.   Apparently they would like to see LessWrong be a bastion of empiricism and rationality and [i]climate change denial[/i] instead? And the way to achieve this is not to have a fair and rational discussion of the existing empirical data, but rather to simply Karmassassinate anyone who would oppose them?

 

Here is my hypothesis: The continuing problem of karma downvote stalkers is contributing to the decline of discussion on the site.    I definitely feel much less motivated to try and contribute anything now, and I have been told by multiple other people at LessWrong meetings things such as “I used to post a lot on LessWrong, but then I posted X, and got mass downvoted, so now I only comment on Yvain’s blog”.  These anecdotes are, of course, only very weak evidence to support my claim.  I wish I could provide more, but I will have to defer to any readers who can supply more.

 

Perhaps this post will simply trigger more retribution, or maybe it will trigger an outswelling of support, or perhaps just be dismissed by people saying I should’ve posted it to the weekly discussion thread instead.   Whatever the outcome, rather than meekly leaving LessWrong and letting my 'stalker' win, I decided to open a discussion about the issue.  Thank you!

Consider giving an explanation for your deletion this time around. "Harry Yudkowsky and the Methods of Postrationality: Chapter One: Em Dashes Colons and Ellipses, Littérateurs Go Wild"

3 Will_Newsome 08 July 2014 02:53AM

My stupid fanfic chapter was banned without explanation so I reposted it; somehow it was at +7 when it was deleted and I think silently deleting upvoted posts is a disservice to LessWrong. I requested that a justification be given in the comments if it were to be deleted again, so LessWrong readers could consider whether or not that justification is aligned with what they want from LessWrong. Also I would like to make clear that this fanfic is primarily a medium for explaining some ideas that people on LessWrong often ask me about; that it is also a lighthearted critique of Yudkowskyanism is secondary, and if need be I will change the premise so that the medium doesn't drown out the message. But really, I wouldn't think a lighthearted parody of a lighthearted parody would cause such offense.

 

The original post has been unbanned and can be found here, so I've edited this post to just be about the banning.

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