All of cole_porter's Comments + Replies

But I haven't yet sat down and formalized the exact difference - my reflective theory is something I'm trying to work out, not something I have in hand.

"The principle of induction is true" is a statement that cannot be justified. "You should use the principle of induction when thinking about the future" can be justified along the lines of Pascal's wager. Assuming that it works in a universe where it does in fact work, one will make predictions that are more accurate than predictions chosen at random. Assuming that it works in a unive... (read more)

"I don't see how such a mind could possibly do anything that we consider mind-like, in practice."

This is a fabulous way of putting it. "In practice" may even be too strong a caveat.

"There are possible minds in mind design space who have anti-Occamian and anti-Laplacian priors; they believe that simpler theories are less likely to be correct, and that the more often something happens, the less likely it is to happen again."

You've been making this point a lot lately. But I don't see any reason for "mind design space" to have that kind of symmetry. Why do you believe this? Could you elaborate on it at some point?

2CCC
A question. The possible mind, that assumes that things are more likely to work if they have never worked before, can in all honesty continue to use this prior if it has never worked before. But this is only a self-sustaining method if it continues not to work. Let us introduce our hypothetical poor-prior, rationalist observer to a rigged game of chance; let us say, a roulette wheel. (For simplicity, let's call him Jim). We allow Jim to inspect an (unrigged) roulette wheel beforehand. We ask him to place a bet, on any number of his choice; once he places his bet, we use our rigged roulette wheel to ensure that he wins and continues to win, for any number of future guesses. Now, from Jim's point of view, whatever line of reasoning he is using to find the correct number to bet on, it is working. He'll presumably select a different number every time; it continues to work. Thus, the idea that a theory that work now is less likely to work in the future is working... and thus is less likely to work in the future. Wouldn't this success cause him to eventually reject his prior?
8rkyeun
Imagine a mind as already exists. Now I install a small frog trained to kick its leg when you try to perform Occamian or Laplacian thinking, and its kicking leg hits a button that inverts your output so your conclusion is exactly backwards from the one you should/would have made but for the frog. And thus symmetry.
Dojan120

That something is included in "mind design space" does not imply that it actually exists. Think of it instead as everything that we might label "mind" if it did exist.

6Strange7
Mind design space is very large and comprehensive. It's like how the set of all possible theories contains both A and ~A.

John Horgan is a sloppy thinker. But if this was a contest to strengthen vs. weaken the credibility of AI research -- a kind of status competition -- then I think he got the better of you.

Is it important to convince nonprofessionals that the singularity is plausible, in advance of it actually happening? If so, then you need to find a way to address the "this is just an apocalyptic religion" charge that Mr. Horgan brings here. It will not be the last time you hear it, and it is particularly devastating in its own somewhat illogical way. 1. All... (read more)

Uh I guess what I'm trying to say is, what do you mean by that Mr. Yudkowsky?

I remember sitting there staring at the "linear operators", trying to figure out what the hell they physically did to the eigenvectors - trying to visualize the actual events that were going on in the physical evolution - before it dawned on me that it was just a math trick to extract the average of the eigenvalues.

If anyone else had written this sentence, I would think to myself "Jeez, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about." Did this whole thing start because you don't understand linear algebra? Linear algebra 1. is an excel... (read more)