My observation is that people who are smart generally try to live more ethically, but usually have skewed priorities; e.g. they'll try to support the artists they like and to be decent in earning their money, when they'd fair better just worrying less about all that and donating a bit to the right place every month. Quantitative utility arguments are usually met with rejection.

LW's, on the other hand, seem to be leaning in that direction anyway. Though I'm fairly new to the community, so I could be wrong.

I wouldn't show it to people who lack a "solid" moral base in the first place. They probably fair better in keeping every shred of empathy they have (thinking of how much discrimination still exists today).

I think this is the first article in a long time that straight up changed my opinion in a significant way. I always considered empathy a universally good thing – in all forms. In fact I held it as one of the highest values. But the logic of the article is hard to argue with.

I still tentatively disagree that it [emotional empathy] inherently bad. Following what I read, I'd say it's harmful because it's overvalued/misunderstood. The solution would be to recognize that it's an egoistical thing – as I'm writing this I can confirm that I think this now. Whereas cognitive empathy is the selfless thing.

Doing more self-analysis, I think I already understood this on some level, but I was holding the concept of empathy in such high regards that I wasn't able to consciously criticize it.

I think this article is something that people outside of this community really ought to read.

My thoughts:

1. Google has (is) the biggest computer program = 3 bln lines of code

2. Google has world biggest database, including Youtube, 23andme, Gmail, Google books, all internet content

3. Google is the world biggest computer, which includes something like 1 per cent of total world computing power

4. Google did most impressive AI demonstartion recently that is win in Go.

5. Google is clearly interested in creating AI.

6. Google has AI safety protocol.

7. Google has money to buy needed parts, including people.

So it looks like Google is in winning position. How may be its main competitors? Military AIs in NSA. Other large companies.

I doubt there is much motivation here for "at least 20 years" except the very fact that it is hard to tell what will happen in 20 years.

I agree with Robin Hanson that we are maybe 5% of the way to general AI. I think 20 years from now the distance we were from AI at this point will be somewhat clearer (because we will be closer, but still very distant.)

The problem is that the statistics don't show the claimed bias. Normalized on a per-police-encounter basis, white cops (or cops-in-general) don't appear to shoot black suspects more often than they shoot white suspects. However, police interact with black people more frequently, so the absolute proportion of black shooting victims is elevated.

Can you provide any sources for this?

The fact that the incidence of police encounters with blacks is elevated would be the actual social problem worth addressing, but the reasons for the elevated incidence of police-black encounters do not make a nice soundbite.

Is the incidence of police encounters with blacks elevated?

What are the reasons?

Interesting rhetorical sparring point taking place in the U.S. election that relates to rationality here at LW.

In the first presidential debate, Hillary Clinton referenced bias when discussing the recent spate of police shootings of African Americans. Clinton said “implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police,” and went on to say “I think, unfortunately, too many of us in our great country jump to conclusions about each other," and “I think we need all of us to be asking hard questions about, ‘why am I feeling this way?’”

In the VP debate last night, again in the context of recent police shootings, Dem candidate Tim Kaine said, "People shouldn't be afraid to bring up issues of bias in law enforcement. And if you're afraid to have the discussion, you'll never solve it."

Clinton/Kaine have predictably drawn criticism from the Red Team for the comments (who try to paint the Blue Team as anti-police), but it seems to me the Dems have been more defensive than they need to be, given it seems obvious to me (from my time at LW) that humans are biased, and this bias would obviously be likely to play a role in high stress situations (like when guns are involved).

It will be interesting to me to see how this is adjudicated according to public opinion. Do people generally accept everyone has biases and of course this would affect police officers in high stress situations? Or do they view bias as a rare condition that only affects people without the proper virtue? Is this argument actually over different definitions of the word "bias"? Is it just a Red v. Blue argument that has little to do with facts?

I, for one, think Kaine and Clinton's comments were correct and made a very salient point. (But I'm biased against Trump.)

The AI has to do what humans mean (rather than e.g. not following your orders and just calculating more digits of pi) before you start talking at it, because you are relying on it interpreting that sentence how you meant it.

The hard part is not figuring out good-sounding words to say to an AI. The hard part is figuring out how to make an actual, genuine computer program that will do what you mean.

Every emotion is in your head only, so that's not useful advise. The same argument could be made for virtually every form of social insecurity.

If I may ask -- you are the same registered user who made the initial comment. Why reply to yourself? Are you multiple people using the same account?

This seems as useful as telling depressed people to stop being depressed. Fear of embarrassment is one of the strongest drives humans have. Probably appearing to be a fool in the ancestral environment led to fewer mates or less status. It's not something you can just voluntarily turn off or push through easily.

The best strategy, I think, would be to work around it. Convince your brain that it's not embarrassing. Or that no one cares. Or pretend no one is watching. Or do it around supportive friends.

How do you deal with embarrassment of having to learn as an adult things that most people learn in their childhood? I'm talking about things that you can't learn alone in private, such as swimming, riding a bicycle and things like that.