Yes. People can even immediately identify visual objects as corresponding to previously known tactile objects (probably via analogous relationship of parts), even though not perfectly.

Let's take the AI example in a slightly different direction: Consider an AI built as a neural net with many input lines and output effectors, and a few well-chosen reward signals. One of the input lines goes to a Red Detector; the other input lines go to many other types of sensors but none of them distinguish red things from non-red things. This AI then gets named Mary and put into a black and white room to learn about optics, color theory, and machine learning. (Also assume this AI has no ability to alter its own design.)

Speculation: At the moment when this AI Mary steps out of the room into the colorful world, it cannot have any immediate perception of red (or any other color), because its neural net has not yet been trained to make any use of the sensory data corresponding to redness (or any other color). Analogously to how a young child is taught to distinguish a culturally-specific set of colors, or to how an adult can't recognize lapiz versus cerulean without practice, our AI cannot so much as distinguish red from blue until adequate training of the neural net has occurred.

If that line of reasoning is correct, then here's the conclusion: Mary does not learn anything new (perceptually) until she learns something new (behaviorally). Paradox dismissed.

Hypothetical Independent Co-inventors, we're pretty sure you exist. Compat wouldn't be a very good acausal pact if you didn't. Show yourselves.

I'm one - but while the ideas have enough plausibility to be interesting, they necessarily lack the direct scientific evidence I'd need to feel comfortable taking them seriously. I was religious for too long, and I think my hardware was hopelessly corrupted by that experience. I need direct scientific evidence as an anchor to reality. So now I try to be extra-cautious about avoiding faith of any kind lest I be trapped again in a mental tarpit.

No. An inability to make be vague doesn't help with being clear.

In English I can say: "Dear readers," without specifying gender. In German I have to say: "Liebe Leserinnen und Leser,". German forces me to order those words. I have to say one of the two genders first. "Liebe Leserinnen und Leser," doesn't have exactly the same meaning as "Liebe Leser und Leserinnen,"

The fact that the German language forces me to specify whether I put more weight on my male or female audience is just distracting. It doesn't help me express more of what I want to say.

Another problem of "Liebe Leserinnen und Leser," is that intersex people in the audience aren't included and therefore people who highly value political correctness might object to the phrase and use a phrase that signals more political correctness.

Having to think about gender when I don't want to think about gender costs cognitive capacity. The unspecific "Dear readers," is much easier to use and therefore better. Ithkuil forces cognitive capacity to be used to be explicit about certain distinctions.

Take a sentence like: "The father of my mother feels (passively) that that my left ringfinger touches him 2 centimeters in inferior direction from his right earlobe" (At the present he lies on his back, so inferior is not the direction towards the center of the earth). How would you say that in ithkuil? I think you will run into trouble because the sentence makes a lot of distinctions that ithkuil isn't well equipped to handle while at the same time ithkuil forces you to specify all sorts of stuff that you don't care about.

In English I can say: "Dear readers," without specifying gender.

"The father of my mother feels (passively) that that my left ringfinger touches him 2 centimeters in inferior direction from his right earlobe" (At the present he lies on his back, so inferior is not the direction towards the center of the earth). How would you say that in ithkuil?

I think one of us has misunderstood ithkuil (it may be me). I've only done a bit of looking into it, but my understanding is that it can do both of what you mentioned above. The difference is that you can't say "dear readers" of a non-specific gender without specificying that you mean a non-specific gender. Which means you only say "dear readers of a non-specific gender" if you know that's who you're addressing, if you're addressing only male readers it would be a completely different sentence. In other words, you can be general but you can't be ambiguous. If you're trying to get clearer in your thinking, this is a property you want.

Ithkuil also has all sorts of conujugations that get very specific with object placement and relation to one another. It's almost ideally suited for your second sentence.

This is probably the wrong place to ask, but I'm confused by one point in the DA.

For reference, here's Wikipedia's current version:

Denoting by N the total number of humans who were ever or will ever be born, the Copernican principle suggests that humans are equally likely (along with the other N − 1 humans) to find themselves at any position n of the total population N, so humans assume that our fractional position f = n/N is uniformly distributed on the interval [0, 1] prior to learning our absolute position.

f is uniformly distributed on (0, 1) even after learning of the absolute position n. That is, for example, there is a 95% chance that f is in the interval (0.05, 1), that is f > 0.05. In other words we could assume that we could be 95% certain that we would be within the last 95% of all the humans ever to be born. If we know our absolute position n, this implies[dubious – discuss] an upper bound for N obtained by rearranging n/N > 0.05 to give N < 20n.

My question is: What is supposed to be special about the interval (0.05, 1)?

If I instead choose the interval (0, 0.95), then I end up 95% certain that I'm within the first 95% of all humans ever to be born. If I choose (0.025, 0.975), then I end up 95% certain that I'm within the middle 95% of all humans ever to be born. If I choose the union of the intervals (0, 0.475) & (0.525, 1), then I end up 95% certain that I'm within the 95% of humans closer to either the beginning or the end.

As far as I can tell, I could have chosen any interval or any union of intervals containing X% of humanity and then reasonably declared myself X% likely to be in that set. And sure enough, I'll be right X% of the time if I make all those claims or a representative sample of them.

I guess another way to put my question is: Is there some reason - other than drama - that makes it special for us to zero in on the final 95% as our hypothesis of interest? And if there isn't a special-making reason, then shouldn't we discount the evidential weight of the DA in proportion to how much we arbitrarily zero in on our hypothesis, thereby canceling out the DA?

Yes, yes, given that there's so much literature on the topic, I'm probably missing some key insight into how the DA works. Please enlighten.

Thanks for the advice. It was a mistake. I have updated it to: "Only one of the following premises is true about a particular hand of cards".

New AI designs (world design + architectural priors + training/education system) should be tested first in the safest virtual worlds: which in simplification are simply low tech worlds without computer technology. Design combinations that work well in safe low-tech sandboxes are promoted to less safe high-tech VR worlds, and then finally the real world.

A key principle of a secure code sandbox is that the code you are testing should not be aware that it is in a sandbox.

So you're saying that I'm secretly an AI being trained to be friendly for a more advanced world? ;)

As far as I understand CFAR teaches this heuristic under the name "Gears-Thinking".

Inspired by terrible, terrible Facebook political arguments I've observed, I started making a list of heuristic "best practices" for constructing a good argument. My key assumptions are that (1) it's unreasonable to expect most people to acquire a good understanding of skepticism, logic, statistics, or the ways the LW-crowd thinks of as how to use words rightly, and (2) lists of fallacies to watch out for aren't actually much help in constructing a good argument.

One heuristic captured my imagination as it seems to encapsulate most of the other heuristics I had come up with, and yet is conceptually simple enough for everyone to use: Sketch it, and only draw real things. (If it became agreed-upon and well-known, I'd shorten the phrase to "Sketch it real".)

Example: A: "I have a strong opinion that increasing the minimum wage to $15/hr over ten years (WILL / WON'T) increase unemployment." B: "Oh, can you sketch it for me? I mean literally draw the steps involved with the real-world chain of events you think will really happen."

If you can draw how a thing works, then that's usually a very good argument that you understand the thing. If you can draw the steps of how one event leads to another, then that's usually a good argument that the two events can really be connected that way. This heuristic requires empiricism and disallows use of imaginary scenarios and fictional evidence. It privileges reductionist and causal arguments. It prevents many of the ways of misusing words. If I try to use a concept I don't understand, drawing its steps out will help me notice that.

Downsides: Being able to draw well isn't required, but it would help a lot. The method probably privileges anecdotes since they're easier to draw than randomized double-blind controlled trials. Also it's harder than spouting off and so won't actually be used in Facebook political arguments.

I'm not claiming that a better argument-sketch implies a better argument. There are probably extremely effective ways to hack our visual biases in argument-sketches. But it does seem that under currently prevailing ordinary circumstances, making an argument-sketch and then translating it into a verbal argument is a useful heuristic for making a good argument.