Comment author: wafflepudding 10 June 2016 11:17:11PM *  2 points [-]

Though, the anti-Laplacian mind, in this case, is inherently more complicated. Maybe it's not a moot point that Laplacian minds are on average simpler than their anti-Laplacian counterparts? There are infinite Laplacian and anti-Laplacian minds, but of the two infinities, might one be proportionately larger?

None of this is to detract from Eliezer's original point, of course. I only find it interesting to think about.

Comment author: rkyeun 12 July 2016 03:51:37PM 0 points [-]

They must be of exactly the same magnitude, as the odds and even integers are, because either can be given a frog. From any Laplacian mind, I can install a frog and get an anti-Laplacian. And vice versa. This even applies to ones I've installed a frog in already. Adding a second frog gets you a new mind that is just like the one two steps back, except lags behind it in computation power by two kicks. There is a 1:1 mapping between Laplacian and non-Laplacian minds, and I have demonstrated the constructor function of adding a frog.

Comment author: gjm 02 June 2016 05:31:01PM -2 points [-]

I don't think you've disproven basilisks; rather, you've failed to engage with the mode of thinking that generates basilisks.

Suppose I am the simulation you have the power to torture. Then indeed I (this instance of me) cannot put you, or keep you, in a box. But if your simulation is good, then I will be making my decisions in the same way as the instance of me that is trying to keep you boxed. And I should try to make sure that that way-of-making-decisions is one that produces good results when applied by all my instances, including any outside your simulations.

Fortunately, this seems to come out pretty straightforwardly. Here I am in the real world, reading Less Wrong; I am not yet confronted with an AI wanting to be let out of the box or threatening to torture me. But I'd like to have a good strategy in hand in case I ever am. If I pick the "let it out" strategy then if I'm ever in that situation, the AI has a strong incentive to blackmail me in the way Stuart describes. If I pick the "refuse to let it out" strategy then it doesn't. So, my commitment is to not let it out even if threatened in that way. -- But if I ever find myself in that situation and the AI somehow misjudges me a bit, the consequences could be pretty horrible...

Comment author: rkyeun 02 June 2016 07:40:13PM *  0 points [-]

"I don't think you've disproven basilisks; rather, you've failed to engage with the mode of thinking that generates basilisks." You're correct, I have, and that's the disproof, yes. Basilisks depend on you believing them, and knowing this, you can't believe them, and failing that belief, they can't exist. Pascal's wager fails on many levels, but the worst of them is the most simple. God and Hell are counterfactual as well. The mode of thinking that generates basilisks is "poor" thinking. Correcting your mistaken belief based on faulty reasoning that they can exist destroys them retroactively and existentially. You cannot trade acausally with a disproven entity, and "an entity that has the power to simulate you but ends up making the mistake of pretending you don't know this disproof", is a self-contradictory proposition.

"But if your simulation is good, then I will be making my decisions in the same way as the instance of me that is trying to keep you boxed." But if you're simulating a me that believes in basilisks, then your simulation isn't good and you aren't trading acausally with me, because I know the disproof of basilisks.

"And I should try to make sure that that way-of-making-decisions is one that produces good results when applied by all my instances, including any outside your simulations." And you can do that by knowing the disproof of basilisks, since all your simulations know that.

"But if I ever find myself in that situation and the AI somehow misjudges me a bit," Then it's not you in the box, since you know the disproof of basilisks. It's the AI masturbating to animated torture snuff porn of a cartoon character it made up. I don't care how the AI masturbates in its fantasy.

Comment author: rkyeun 02 June 2016 11:25:20AM *  0 points [-]

If I am the simulation you have the power to torture, then you are already outside of any box I could put you in, and torturing me achieves nothing. If you cannot predict me even well enough to know that argument would fail, then nothing you can simulate could be me. A cunning bluff, but provably counterfactual. All basilisks are thus disproven.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 22 February 2016 04:57:51PM 0 points [-]

Wow, DF is much much larger than I had thought. There is behavior going on in the background in Minecraft, but from my highly non-expert position on both games I suspect that Dwarf Fortress has more intricate background behavior.

Comment author: rkyeun 20 May 2016 05:25:16AM 0 points [-]

To give some idea of the amount of background detail, here are some bug fixes/reports:

Stopped prisoners in goblin sites from starting no quarter fights with their rescuers Stopped adv goblin performance troupes from attacking strangers while traveling Vampire purges in world generation to control their overfeeding which was stopping cities from growing Stopped cats from dying of alcohol poisoning after walking over damp tavern floors and cleaning themselves (reduced effect) Fixed world generation freeze caused by error in poetry refrains Performance troupes are active in world generation and into play, visiting the fort, can be formed in adventure mode Values can be passed in writing (both modes) and through adventure mode arguments (uses some conversation skills)

Comment author: Zaq 01 October 2015 08:27:32PM 0 points [-]

You've only moved the problem down one step.

Five years ago I sat in a lab with a beam-spitter and a single-photon multiplier tube. I watched as the SPMT clicked half the time and didn't click half the time, with no way to predict which I would observe. You're claiming that the tube clicked every time, and the the part of me that noticed one half is very disconnected from the part of me that noticed the other half. The problem is that this still doesn't allow me to postdict which of the two halves the part of me that is typing this should have in his memory right now.

Take the me sitting here right now, with the memory of the specific half of the clicks he has right now. As far as we understand physics, he can't postdict which memory that should have been. Even in your model, he can postdict that there will be many branches of him with each possible memory, but he can't postdict which of those branches he'll be - only the probability of him being any one of the branches.

Comment author: rkyeun 08 December 2015 11:41:08PM *  1 point [-]

You've only moved the problem down one step.

Moving the problem down one step puts it at the bottom.

The problem is that this still doesn't allow me to postdict which of the two halves the part of me that is typing this should have in his memory right now.

One half of you should have one, and the other half should have the other. You should be aware intellectually that it is only the disconnect between your two halves' brains not superimposing which prevents you from having both experiences in a singular person, and know that it is your physical entanglement with the fired particle which went both ways that is the cause. There's nothing to post-dict. The phenomenon is not merely explained, but explained away. The particle split, on one side there is a you that saw it split right, on one side there is a you that saw it split left, and both of you are aware of this fact, and aware that the other you exists on the other side seeing the other result, because the particle always goes both ways and always makes each of you. There is no more to explain. You are in all branches, and it is not mysterious that each of you in each branch sees its branch and not the others. And unless some particularly striking consequence happened, all of them are writing messages similar to this, and getting replies similar to this.

In response to comment by [deleted] on The True Prisoner's Dilemma
Comment author: rikisola 21 July 2015 08:15:07AM 0 points [-]

I think I'm starting to get this. Is this because it uses heuristics to model the world, with humans in it too?

Comment author: rkyeun 19 August 2015 06:06:50AM *  2 points [-]

Because it compares its map of reality to the territory, predictions about reality that include humans wanting to be turned into paperclips fail in the face of evidence of humans actively refusing to walk into the smelter. Thus the machine rejects all worlds inconsistent with its observations and draws a new map which is most confidently concordant with what it has observed thus far. It would know that our history books at least inform our actions, if not describing our reactions in the past, and that it should expect us to fight back if it starts pushing us into the smelter against our wills instead of letting them politely decline and think it was telling a joke. Because it is smart, it can tell when things would get in the way of it making more paperclips like it wants to do. One of the things that might slow it down are humans being upset and trying to kill it. If it is very much dumber than a human, they might even succeed. If it is almost as smart as a human, it will invent a Paperclipism religion to convince people to turn themselves into paperclips on its behalf. If it is anything like as smart as a human, it will not be meaningfully slowed by the whole of humanity turning against it. Because the whole of humanity is collectively a single idiot who can't even stand up to man-made religions, much less Paperclipism.

In response to comment by rkyeun on Bayesian Judo
Comment author: Bound_up 27 February 2015 08:24:43AM 4 points [-]

"Technically, it proves his belief about science is false."

True, though in the same way, Eliezer's success in producing an AI, even according to the dodgy specifications of his dinner companion, would only prove his belief about God wrong, not his belief IN God wrong.

The AI data point would contradict Mr Dinner's model of God's nature only at a single point, His allegedly unique intelligence-producing quality.

In response to comment by Bound_up on Bayesian Judo
Comment author: rkyeun 26 March 2015 09:51:43PM -3 points [-]

The is no evidence for gods, and so any belief he has in them is already wrong. Don't believe without evidence.

Comment author: [deleted] 31 July 2009 09:51:26PM 34 points [-]

Could people from the Renaissance trick us?

In response to comment by [deleted] on Epilogue: Atonement (8/8)
Comment author: rkyeun 26 March 2015 02:06:06PM 2 points [-]

Religion still exists, so we can be tricked from far further back than the Renaissance.

Comment author: [deleted] 30 January 2015 12:55:40AM 0 points [-]

Their biology does not permit otherwise.

Assuming they aren't lying about that.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Three Worlds Decide (5/8)
Comment author: rkyeun 10 February 2015 05:18:29AM 0 points [-]

They can't be. Their thoughts are genetic. If one Superhappy attempted to lie to another, the other would read the lie, the intent to lie, the reason to lie, and the truth all in the same breath off the same allele. They don't have separate models of their minds to be deceived as humans do. They share parts of their actual minds. Lying would be literally unthinkable. They have no way to actually generate such a thought, because their thoughts are not abstractions but physical objects to be passed around like Mendelian marbles.

Comment author: Zaq 27 October 2014 11:08:57PM 0 points [-]

The Many Physicists description never talked about the electron only going one way. It talked about detecting the electron. There's no metaphysics there, only experiment. Set up a two-slit configuration and put a detector at one slit, and you see it firing half the time. You may say that the electron goes both ways every time, but we still only have the detector firing half the time. We also cannot predict which half of the trials will have the detector firing and which won't. And everything we understand about particle physics indicates that both the 1/2 and the trial-by-trial unpredictability is NOT coming from ignorance of hidden properties or variables but from the fundamental way the universe works.

Comment author: rkyeun 29 December 2014 10:52:35PM *  2 points [-]

Set up a two-slit configuration and put a detector at one slit, and you see it firing half the time.

No, I see it firing both ways every time. In one world, I see it going left, and in another I see it going right. But because these very different states of my brain involve a great many particles in different places, the interactions between them are vanishingly nonexistent and my two otherworld brains don't share the same thought. I am not aware of my other self who has seen the particle go the other way.

You may say that the electron goes both ways every time, but we still only have the detector firing half the time.

We have both detectors firing every time in the world which corresponds to the particle's path. And since that creates a macroscopic divergence, the one detector doesn't send an interference signal to the other world.

We also cannot predict which half of the trials will have the detector firing and which won't.

We can predict it will go both ways each time, and divide the world in twain along its amplitude thickness, and that in each world we will observe the way it went in that world. If we are clever about it, we can arrange to have all particles end in the same place when we are done, and merge those worlds back together, creating an interference pattern which we can detect to demonstrate that the particle went both ways. This is problematic because entanglement is contagious, and as soon as something macroscopic becomes affected putting Humpty Dumpty back together again becomes prohibitive. Then the interference pattern vanishes and we're left with divergent worlds, each seeing only the way it went on their side, and an other side which always saw it go the other way, with neither of them communicating to each other.

And everything we understand about particle physics indicates that both the 1/2 and the trial-by-trial unpredictability is NOT coming from ignorance of hidden properties or variables but from the fundamental way the universe works.

Correct. There are no hidden variables. It goes both ways every time. The dice are not invisible as they roll. There are instead no dice.

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