All of is4junk's Comments + Replies

is4junk10

So if humanity had had no biological neural networks to steal the general idea and as proof of feasibility, would machine learning & AI be far behind where they are now?

NNs connection to biology is very thin. Artificial neurons don't look or act like regular neurons at all. But as a coined term to sell your research idea its great.

NNs are popular now for their deep learning properties and ability to learn features from unlabeled data (like edge detection).

Comparing NNs to SVMs isn't really fair. You use the tool best for the job. If you have lot... (read more)

0skeptical_lurker
SVMs are O(n^3) - if you have lots of data you shouldn't use SVMs.
4gwern
I am well aware of that. Nevertheless, as a historical fact, they were inspired by real neurons, they do operate more like real neurons than do, say, SVMs or random forests, and this is the background to my original question. ImageNet is a lot of labeled data, to give one example. There is a difference between explaining, and explaining away. You seem to think you are doing the latter, while you're really just doing the former.
is4junk-10

When I read these AI control problems I always think that an arbitrary human is being conflated with the AI's human owner. I could be mistaken that I should read these as if AIs own themselves - I don't see this case likely so I would probably stop here if we are to presuppose this.

Now if an AI is lying/deceiving its owner, this is a bug. In fact, when debugging I often feel I am being lied to. Normal code isn't a very sophisticated liar. I could see an AI owner wanting to train its AI about lying an deceiving and maybe actually perform them on other peop... (read more)

is4junk00

What do Neoreactionaries think of the Islamic State? After all, it's an exemplar case of the reactionaries in those areas winning big. I know it's only a surface comparison, I'm sincerely curious about what a NR think of the situation.

While this is an interesting question - my take on the NRx was it was more anti-democracy then pro-Monarchy. So I think a better question for them would be: if fundamentalist Muslims become a democratic majority (via demographics) and vote in IS or the Muslim Brotherhood would that be a "big win" too? A less hypothetical question might be NRx's take on the state of Iraq's fledgling democracy.

0[anonymous]
I've seen some NRx support for Saudi Arabia as a Muslim version of their principles, but nothing about the Islamic state. Yet another case of ideals over loyalties.
0skeptical_lurker
I think you meant this as a reply to the original post, not to my reply. Anyway, I'm pretty sure virtually all NRxers would prefer democracy to islamofasism - indeed, many argue that fasism is closely related to democracy, or that all democracies will inevitably become either fasist or communist. I think the NRxers are worried that ISIS have a better civilisation than us in certain key respects, largely involving demographics, which will eventually allow them to defeat us. I also think the important difference is that NRxers generally claim to want to be left alone, and would probably be content to, at most, exile gays for instance. ISIS, OTOH, is following an old principle that states they can never sign peace treaties with infidels, and will kill rather than exile those it hates.
is4junk10

Russia is already approximately 15% muslim, with huge differential birth rates between christians and muslims. And that 15% understates the real issue for violence and control - who has the most young men. I've seen numbers that by 2020 (!) half the Russian army will be muslim, and that majority will only grow from there.

Doesn't this analysis depend on army technology not changing? 100 years ago this would be spot on but if in the next decade we continue to see smaller armies of people being more and more effective you could have a Russia with an even s... (read more)

0skeptical_lurker
But since Russia is a democracy, any majority group can simply vote themselves into power. Realistically, people are not going to bar Muslims from entering the army.
is4junk00

Being 100x more productive is about not solving hard problems you don't need to. Spending time thinking about ways to avoid the problem often pays off (feature definition, code reuse, slow implementations, ect). Much of the best practices that you read about are solving problems you wish you had - I wish my problem was poor documentation because that means someone actually cares to use it. I was always surprised by how bad the code was out in the wild until I realized it was survivor bias - the previous owner deferred solving some problem for a long time.

is4junk10

I don't think we would be that far behind.

NNs had lost favor in the AI community after 1969 (minsky's paper) and only have become popular again in the last decade. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network

The only crossover that comes to mind for me is the vision deep learning 'discovering' edge detection. There also is some interest in sparse NN activation.

1gwern
Yes, I'm familiar with the history. But how far would we be without the neural network work done since ~2001? The non-neural-network competitors on Imagenet like SVM are nowhere near human levels of performance, Watson required neural networks, Stanley won the DARPA Grand Challenge without neural networks because it had so many sensors but real self-driving cars will have to use neural networks, neural networks are why Google Translate has gone from roughly Babelfish levels (hysterically bad) to remarkably good, voice recognition has gone from mostly hypothetical to routine on smartphones... What major AI achievements have SVMs or random forests racked up over the past decade comparable to any of that?
5Viliam_Bur
Thank you for your political applause light. You just posted it on a wrong website. Speaking for myself, I cannot really dispute whether "Cthulhu swims left" before I see a meaningful explanation of what that means. My attempt to steelman this could be something like: "when people advance economically, they usually move from farmer values to forager values; and in the recent centuries most of the planet is improving economically". But I feel this translation is unsatisfactory, because it does not contain all those connotations of the original version -- all the feelings of evil conspiracy and the heroic resistance against the inevitable doom -- in other words, what gets lost in the translation is exactly the part that makes it so emotionally meaningful for some people. I could give you an example about how Eastern Europe once used to be full of communist regimes, and then suddenly it was not. But I am sure you can redefine "Cthulhu" to make this example irrelevant, or find some other excuse.
Shmi100

AFAIK no one disputes the only swims left part.

From the North Pole every direction is South. Consider being less NRxic.

is4junk00

Question on infinities

If the universe is finite then I am stuck with some arbitrary number of elementary particles. I don't like the arbitrariness of it. So I think - if the universe was infinite it doesn't have this problem. But then I remember there are countable and uncountable infinities. If I remember correctly you can take the power set of an infinite set and get a set with larger cardinality. So will I be stuck in some arbitrary cardinality? Are the number of cardinality countable? If so could an infinite universe of countably infinite cardinali... (read more)

0MrMind
Eh, not really. You're still bounded by the finite cosmological horizon. Unless of course you have access to super-luminal travel. Exactly. It depends. If you use "subsets" as a generative ontological procedure, you would still be stuck by the finite time of the operation. If you consider "subset" instead as a conceptual relation, not some concrete process, you're not stuck in any cardinal. No. Once you postulate a countable cardinal, you get for free ordinals like "omega plus one", "omega plus two", etc. And since uncountable cardinals are ordered by ordinals, you also get for free more than omega uncountable cardinals. Inaccessible is the next quantity for which you need a new axiom. Indeed, "inaccessible" is the quantity of cardinals generated in the process above.
1D_Malik
You're right that there is no greatest cardinal number. The number of ordinals is greater than any ordinal; I'm not sure whether that's true for cardinal numbers. You can sorta get around the arbitrarity by postulating the mathematical universe hypothesis, that all mathematical objects are real. "Discrete Euclidean space" Z^n would be countably infinite, and the usual continuous Euclidean space R^n would be continuum infinite, but I'm not sure what a world whose space is more infinite than the continuum would look like.
0[anonymous]
Thanks to accelerating expansion of the universe, the reachable universe / the parts of the universe which intersects our future light cone is definitely finite.
2Manfred
Since elementary particles can come and go, what's really conserved is some arbitrary energy. Infinities won't save you from arbitrariness here, because energy is locally conserved too, and our energy density is (thank goodness) definitely not infinite.
is4junk40

I'd look for a good headhunter in your field (assuming it is not too niche). Let them get the commission for finding you a job.

  • Update your linkedin profile and see if any contact you.
  • Talk to a recruiter in a company that is a near fit for you even if they aren't hiring now and ask if they have worked with any headhunters in the past.
  • Go to a Job fair in the US - not for job but to interview headhunters
0chaosmage
Thank you!
is4junk30

Why even read left wing articles if they upset you?

My take is that if the public space was skateboarder and homeless friendly, the author could easily write a similar article on how that scares [insert other victim group] away from the public space.

As for why it is written that way, Kling's book The Three Languages of Politics is a good explanation. The left likes to think in oppressed verses oppressor terms.

Thanks for posting this article. There is a park being planned near me and there are certain architectural features I now want it to consider ...

0ChristianKl
There a difference between not designing for being homeless friendly and designing spikes to prevent homeless people from sleeping in the area.
is4junk70

Brokerage accounts (fidelity/etrade) are better then bank accounts in every way (in the US). Use them with a margin account to safely maximize your investments. The margin account will basically function as an overdraft / short term loan at very favorable rates. Reasons:

  • direct deposit in to your brokerage account - all surplus money should be sweeped in to an index fund (SPY or global equiv)
  • You can have a ATM card and do all your checks through them usually for free
  • they all have bill pay service for free
  • depositing checks - they can be mailed in
  • Eve
... (read more)

This seems like awesome advice that I have never heard before. Do you think it might be dangerous for some people? Like is it a "you must be this tall to ride this ride" kind of thing?

Also, it seems like it might help to have this made actionable by talking about the steps someone would take to convert their financial service provider setup to this. Do you have a good method for picking a broker? If someone was not very financially savvy (like they didn't know what a brokerage even was exactly) what should they do right after reading here to start on the path to setting things up this way?

0[anonymous]
Hey. You suck.
is4junk00

I have a hard time with the goal setting phase. Do I really want the goal? Would doing X really achieve the goal? Even if doing X achieves the goal would the cost be too high? Sometimes I think this is akrasia other times I think it is being accurate that the goals are wrong.

0[anonymous]
In sense I have it easier because I have it harder. How to put it... lately I was wondering what advice would I give to my 14-16 years old former self. What are near-universally good goals? I cannot say with certainty if people should pursue their passion - if they have any at all - or go get a safely employable degree for example. So I don't think I have life figured out, and don't know I know what goals to set. But I am fairly sure of these three being good ideas for almost anyone almost al lthe time 1) don't get hooked on drugs, booze, cigs or unhealthy food 2) improve your body, be fit, healthy, sexy, preferably through fun sports and not boring exercise 3) keep learning, all kinds of things. The reason I have it easier because I have it harder is that I am hooked on booze (12 days dry though, with these methods) and unhealthy food (later) and my sporting is still a bit sporadic (also, fat) so these are very clear goals to set. But if I was looking like a tennis player without addictions, would like salad, and read 3-4 new informative books a month (not just re-read old stuff or read fiction), I would find it hard to set new goals to be sure.
is4junk40

For most of the work stuff I find it easier to remember where to find things rather than the things themselves. The hard stuff is the undocumented and constantly changing locations and procedures where a search is likely to find out of date junk.

is4junk00

I think there would be more contributions. For instance, StarSlateCodex seems to get more engagement by discussing the Taboo topics. Its widely believed that many LWers left here but visit those types of sites. Could LW fully explore rationality without the those topics? Probably - but it would be dry and boring.

I think that the reddit code base (LW's) would be a better platform for the rationality community then a bunch of random unconnected websites. I had proposed an egalitarian software solution which I think would allow the Taboo topics to be discussed without forcing them on anyone.

0TheAncientGeek
Its playing with fire. Scott/Yvain felt it necessary to encourage the departure of most of his NRx posters. My anecdata suggests that quite low numbers of contrarians (~3%) can get a blog labelled Nasty Racist Sexist Hangout.
is4junk20

What are the current developments? Is anything dominant now? Wiki claims Logical Positivism was dominant until 1960.

Also do the current developments matter? Would any of the hard sciences do things differently? Did the change affect the soft sciences?

0TheAncientGeek
There's nothing as self confident as L.P. now, Having adopted naturalist, many philosophers are finding plenty of problems with it. There's a lot of interest in Kripkean theory, but it's not really a movement, Mainstream philosophy hasn't affected how science Iis done. Neither has LessWrongian philosophy. Both are aimed at clarifying and promoting the scientific approach. In neither case is it clear why affecting science iwould be a necessary or expected upshot. LessWrongians seem to think that clarifying and promoting science is important enough in itself. You can only fail at what you are trying to do, or what you can reasonably be expected to do.
-12[anonymous]
1TheAncientGeek
What could LW contribute to these?
is4junk80

I always liked that episode. Before I thought being emotionless was effortless for Spock. When I saw that episode I realized he had to work at it.

6Luke_A_Somers
And that justifies why they're so absolute about it - at least in their special case: there are no Schelling fences on the Vulcan brain, when it comes to emotion.
is4junk00

I don't have kids so take this with a grain of salt. Just give a disappointed/disapproval look every time he swears. Maybe practice in the mirror. Let guess culture work its magic.

is4junk00

Thanks for the insights. I am not in the industry. I hadn't thought about the tax and creditor aspects of life insurance. I can see how those could become murky really quick.
As for the cryogenics, yes I was thinking of some sort of life insurance policy. Maybe I should take it off my list since 'permanent death' would be financially devastating. My thinking was you probably have other things to focus on if you can't pay it out of pocket.

As for house and renter insurance, I don't think the insurance company's profit is a good indicator of how much expecte... (read more)

2michaelsullivan
I think the biggest thing people who haven't thought about this deeply miss is how large the potential liability exposure is if you don't carry property and casualty insurance. As your wealth rises, and the financial hit from losing your house becomes small enough that you could realistically self-insure (say net worth 10-20x home value), it starts to be pretty much mandatory to carry some kind of umbrella policy to insure against crazy liabilities, and nobody will sell you an umbrella if you don't also have house/auto/etc. insurance. Like all insurance, this is -EV, but it's so cheap compared to the potential loss that it's generally crazy to go without it. The wealth threshold at which it could plausibly make sense to self insure entirely is in the super-rich range: probably around 100Mil$US While you are probably subsidizing some dumb-asses to a degree, the bulk of your property risk is due to things out of your control like severe weather. What most people should do, once they have a solid emergency fund is take a much higher than normal deductible on their auto and home/renters insurance. 5000-10000 deductibles will save a lot of money, but still keep you insured against catastrophic loss. Threshold for this is when you have a comfortable emergency fund, and I'd suggest a deductible equal to what you could save again in 6-12 months of belt-tightening without affecting your longer term financial planning. Health insurance, about the same, except most people are forced now to take a large deductible whether or not they can afford one.
is4junk120

Other trigger points should be when to self-insure. The usual guidance is when you could easily pay the replacement costs. Insurance is always a low odds bet. The only economic reason for it is when losing the bet would devastate you financially.

  • electronics insurance (self insure only)
  • cryonics insurance (self insure only)
  • travel insurance (self insure only)
  • renters insurance (self-insure as soon as you have enough savings to easily cover your essentials)
  • car insurance (I don't think you can legally self insure all of it)
  • house insurance (self insure if rich and no mortgage)
  • health insurance (self insure if super rich)
0Nornagest
At least in California, you're nominally allowed to self-insure your car, but it's rare and not an especially good deal: your options are traditional insurance, a large cash deposit (in the tens of kilobucks) with the DMV, or a self-insurance certificate that's usually only given out if you're managing a large fleet of vehicles. There's also the option of a surety bond underwritten by a non-insurance company; how good a deal that is depends on who you're negotiating with and I don't know what your options are.
3michaelsullivan
So I agree 100% with 1 and 3, primarily because the profit margins on those insurances are huge, and the losses are so small. Renters insurance and homeowners insurance on the other hand is quite inexpensive relative to what they cover, and the typical loss rates for insurers are a high percentage of premiums + float, what you are paying in premiums beyond your expected loss rate is very small but reduces the potential volatility of your wealth dramatically. I guess it depends on what you mean by "rich", if you mean merely "financially independent" and not having wealth far beyond your lifestyle requirements, I'd still generally decide to carry home/renters/health insurance, and most wealthy people do. Note that these cover more than simply your stuff/home, they also have liability clauses that protect your from various claims including personal injury, which can be very expensive and have little or nothing to do with your residence. If you have wealth, it's actually a good idea to carry higher limit car insurance and a personal umbrella to protect your legal liability exposure. I used to analyze insurance using a pure linear EV with catastrophic check. i.e. always better to self insure, as long as the worst case scenario isn't a financial catastrophe. Now I think of it more like portfolio balance. It makes sense to do things which give up a little bit of expectation in order to reduce the overall volatility of your net worth. Having exposure to a huge risk like your home being destroyed and you having to rebuild it adds a lot of volatility. And you can insure against it for a very small amount relative to your exposure. Also note that the actual linear -EV from buying most common insurance is a relatively small percentage of the premium cost. For typical home/auto/life/health insurance, the expected loss rate is 80-90% of the premiums. Compare to electronics insurance or travel insurance, or credit card life insurance, where you are typically paying 5-10 (some
is4junk30

From a quality of life POV, I would think that joint replacement (knee, hip, elbow) would be a huge improvement for many people. Outside of organ growing is there any progress on growing joints?

is4junk10

I agree. I was just trying to motivate my rant.

is4junk40

When Roomba came out I expected vast progress by now. Some company would actually make one that works all the time for the whole house. Now I am not second guessing the the IRobot corporation - maybe they could do it but the market is happy now. How hard is it with today's know how to make one that

  • doesn't get stuck on rugs, cords, clothes, or under things ever
  • can remember where it needs to clean and you don't have to use virtual walls
  • can remember how to get back to its docking station before its battery runs out every single time
  • make a docking stat
... (read more)
6gwern
I find it strange too. I was looking at Roombas 2 months ago because I was wondering if it would make cleaning up after my cat easier, and I experienced a feeling of deja vu looking at the Amazon listings: "these prices, physical shapes, features, and ratings... they look almost exactly the same as I remember them being a decade ago". I don't know. It's not like robotics in general has stagnated - iRobot has done a lot of robots beside the Roomba (and has pretty good sales, although I wonder how much comes from their military customers, which they seem to really be focusing on); and the robots that General Dynamics has been showing off, like their latest "Spot" quadruped, are simply astonishing. I wonder if Roombas are trapped in a local optimum: you can't improve a small disc-shaped wheeled robot vaccuum much beyond what it is now without completely changing the design (appendages like hands would help it get unstuck or pick up stuff) or much improved battery technology?
2Pfft
* doesn't try to kill you in your sleep
4passive_fist
I'm guessing stuff like dropping off dirt or running out of battery could be solved without any AI improvements, so they are probably problems iRobot has decided aren't worth solving at the moment.
is4junk00

The actual function of Karma as you describe doesn't bother me. I'll continue voting as usual. The anti-kibitzing option just hides the votes so I don't see them. For me I hope out of sight out of mind actually works for this problem.

is4junk40

I used to think this Karma Score stuff would be helpful to filter low quality posts. But I see many people get downvoted for tribal reasons and I also see many upvotes on posts that I have trouble deciphering (sockpuppets?). So usually, when I see a post downvoted to oblivion I end up clicking on it anyways which defeats the whole purpose of using the Karma Score to help me filter out bad posts. I also waste a bunch of cycles wondering about the votes (who are these people).

TL;DR I have decided to try using firefox to view lesswrong with the anti-kibitzing option turned on (see preferences).

4Nornagest
Depends whether you're talking intended purpose or actual function. The intended purpose of the karma system is to make low-quality comments less visible. It doesn't do a very good job of that here; it does a better job in Reddit where there's a larger userbase and threads are sorted by karma by default, since most people don't read all the way to the bottom of a thread, but collapsing threads doesn't do much. The actual function of karma is to gently incentivize posting things interesting to the community, to somewhat less gently disincentivize content-free posts, and to not-at-all-gently dissuade persistent cranks and trolls and short-circuit discussions of things that're really strongly disapproved of (the so-called troll toll, though most of its victims are not trolls). I don't think this is a bad thing on balance -- community can be undervalued in nerdy circles, so it's handy to have a semi-mechanical way of encouraging it without everything degenerating into cat pictures -- but one shouldn't mistake it for something it's not. I haven't seen much evidence of widespread use of sockpuppets.
is4junk30

Does anyone know if any companies are applying NLP to software? Specifically, to the software ASTs (abstract syntax trees)?

I have been playing around with unfolding autoencoders and feeding them Python code but if there are researchers or companies doing similar I'd be interested in hearing about it.

5Houshalter
Learning to Execute - they feed a neural network python code character by character, and have it predict what the program will output.
is4junk140

Robotics will get scary very soon. quoted from link:

The conference was open to civilians, but explicitly closed to the press. One attendee described it as an eye-opener. The officials played videos of low-cost drones firing semi-automatic weapons, revealed that Syrian rebels are importing consumer-grade drones to launch attacks, and flashed photos from an exercise that pitted $5,000 worth of drones against a convoy of armored vehicles. (The drones won.) But the most striking visual aid was on an exhibit table outside the auditorium, where a buffet of low

... (read more)
5skeptical_lurker
But I bet the $5,000 worth of drones doesn't include the cost of buying armour-piercing explosives.
8Emile
It's debatable how much a "remote controlled helicopters with a camera" should fall under "robotics"; progress in that area seems pretty orthogonal to issues like manipulation and autonomy. (Though on the other hand modern drones are better at mechanical control "just" remote control: good drones have a feedback loop so that they correct their position)
is4junk00

My view is that the company knows what the job is worth, and the applicant does not...

Is this a problem now a days with sites like glassdoor? Or maybe some industries are not well represented.

When interviewing if you can get multiple job offers then you can play them off each other (in some industries). I don't have any experience with government work though.

is4junk00

I mean it in this non-flattering sense rent-seeking.

I envision all sorts of arbitrary legal limits imposed on AIs. These limits will need people to dream them up, evangelize the needs for even more limits, and enforce the limits (likely involving creation of other 'enforcer' AIs). Some of the limits (early on) will be good ideas but as time goes on they will be more arbitrary and exploitable. If you want examples just think of what laws they will try to stop unfriendly AI and stop individuals from using AI to do evil (say with an advanced makerbot).

Once... (read more)

0Adam Zerner
Ah ok. I was assuming that if a singularity occurred it'd be beyond our control, and that our fate would be determined by how the AI was originally programmed. But my reason for assuming this is based on much limited information, so I don't really know. If it were the case that people with political power control AI, then I think that you are very right. But if you're right and we live in a society where there is ASI level power that is controlled by people with political power... that really really scares me. My intuition is that it'd be just a matter of time before someone screws up. I'm not sure what to think of this...
is4junk00

Why not try to exploit the singularity for fun and profit? Its like you have an opportunity to buy Apple stock dirt cheap.

  • Investment: own data center stocks initially. I am not sure what you would transition to when the AI learns to make CPUs.
  • Regulatory: make the singularity pay you rent by being a gatekeeper. This will be a large industry worldwide. Probably the best bet.

At the very least you should be able to rule out bad investments (time or money).

  • Energy
  • Land
  • Jobs that will be automated
0Adam Zerner
Hm. Well once/if the singularity does happen, I would think that it'd be beyond my ability to manipulate. But I think that your points are valid in reference to the time leading up to it. Could you explain this a bit more? I don't understand how anyone could be a gatekeeper.
is4junk40

I would think most people change their minds on these topics but would simply lie about 1 & 2. There are several threads about religious people turning atheist using this strategy.

I think the grand thing difficulty is that a change would require a large personal commitment if they wanted to be self-consistent. The difficulty is laziness - 'I'd have to rethink everything' or even worse 'I'd be evil to think that'.

1cleonid
Some people indeed lie about their political beliefs (I personally knew a history professor who concealed his true opinions for career reasons). Most though find it psychologically very uncomfortable.
is4junk20

Are you worried about his ethics or is he making a mistake in logic?

The columnist says "This opinion is not immoral. Such choices are inevitable. They are made all the time." Is that the part you disagree with?

-2polymathwannabe
It's his ethics I object to. If we accept his ethics, his argument makes perfect logical sense. But I cannot acept an ethical system where life-and-death is trade-off-able for anything that is not life-and-death.
is4junk00

It would depend on how bad travel was without cars yesterday. Historically, it was horses which must have been really bad. I think if they knew back then about speeds, traffic, and conditions they still would have done it. Parts of China and India have proved it quite recently (last 50 years).

Now if we had most people in high density housing, good transport (both public and private), and online ordering/delivery then maybe cars would be very restricted.

is4junk30

I mean unfriendly in the ordinary sense of the word. Maybe uninviting would be as good.

Perhaps a careful reading of that disclaimer would be friendly or neutral - I don't know. My quick reading of it was: by interacting with AI Impacts you could be waiving some sort of right. To be honest I don't know what a CCO is.

I have nothing further to add to this.

0KatjaGrace
Ah, I see. Thanks. We just meant that Paul and I are waiving our own rights to the content - it's like Wikipedia in the sense that other people are welcome to use the content. We should perhaps make that clearer.
is4junk30

The hassles of flying these days have made buses more popular. For a Seattle to Portland trip I would consider it if we didn't have a train.

is4junk-10

If you take a look and have thoughts, we would love to hear them, either in the comments here or in our feedback form.

My comment is intended as helpful feedback. If it is not helpful I'd be happy to delete it.

2RyanCarey
Your original feedback seems helpful but your follow-up doesn't. You could have said "I don't know" or "I have nothing further to add on that point".
is4junk30

I am not sure. A quick search on LessWrong only lead me to Meet Up: Pittsburgh: Rationalization Game

What I am proposing would be more of an exercise in argument structure. Either the 'facts' are irrelevant to the given argument or there are more 'facts' needed to support the conclusion.

4fubarobfusco
Huh ... I had thought that it had been posted here. Oops! Anyway, the rationalization game is an exercise for learning to notice what it feels like to rationalize your existing beliefs rather than looking for evidence. It pretty much amounts to taking an arbitrary proposition as your "bottom line" and trying to come up with "support" for it. The goal is to be aware of what sorts of arguments you use when you rationalize, so you can try to stop doing it.
is4junk20

In college, I had a professor ask us to pick any subject, make-up any 'facts', and try to make a compelling argument. He then had us evaluate others peoples essays. Let's just say I wasn't impressed with some of my fellow classmate's arguments.

Sometimes you see this in the courtroom as a failure to state a claim

Would it be interesting to have an open thread where we try this out?

[pollid:814]

0fubarobfusco
How does this differ from the rationalization game?
is4junk30

Looking at the very bottom of AI Impacts home page - the disclaimer looks rather unfriendly.

I'd suggest petitioning to change it to the LessWrong variety

Here is the text: To the extent possible under law, the person who associated CC0 with AI Impacts has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to AI Impacts. This work is published from: United States.

2KatjaGrace
What do you mean by 'unfriendly'?
0[anonymous]
"waived all"? you mean "assigned all" right?
is4junk70

The first link, AI Impacts, is broken.

3KatjaGrace
Thanks, fixed.
is4junk20

I don't think there is a way out. Basically, you have to continue to add some beliefs in order to get somewhere interesting. For instance, with just belief that you can reason (to some extent) then you get to a self existence proof but you still don't have any proof that others exist.

Like Axioms in Math - you have to start with enough of them to get anywhere but once you have a reasonable set then you can prove many things.

is4junk20

I would agree if you can't trust your reasoning then you are in a bad spot. Even Descartes 'Cogito ergo sum' doesn't get you anywhere if you think the 'therefore' is using reasoning. Even that small assumption won't get you too far but I would start with him.

1[anonymous]
A better translation (maybe -- I don't speak french) would be "I think, I am". Or so said my philosophy teacher..
-1G0W51
The problem with that is that I don't see how "Cogito ergo sum" is reasonable.
is4junk00

Overdosing on politics to become desensitized is genius. However, I seem to have too high of tolerance for it.

The singularity aspect is more of a personal inconsistency I need to address. I can't think that the long term stuff doesn't matter and have a strong opinion on the long term issues.

is4junk40

Are human ethics/morals just an evolutionary mess of incomplete and inconsistent heuristics? One idea I heard that made sense is that evolution for us was optimizing our emotions for long term 'fairness'. I got a sense of it when watching the monkey fairness experiment

My issue is with 'friendly ai'. If our ethics are inconsistent then we won't be choosing a good AI but instead the least bad one. A crap sandwich either way.

The worst part is that we will have to hurry to be the first to AI or some other culture will select the dominate AI.

1DanielLC
Evolution is optimizing us for inclusive genetic fitness. Anything else is just a means to an end.
is4junk30

Just some thoughts/nits

How does this compare with Kurzwiel book Transcend?

Nit: in the chart for preventable causes of death it has firearm. Not sure what the prevention is? bulletproof vest? Should it be suicide instead?

Nit: I am not sure how reference 21 for firearms relates. Instead of of use common sense - maybe stay away from gangs would be better advice.

2G0W51
"in the chart for preventable causes of death it has firearm. Not sure what the prevention is? bulletproof vest? Should it be suicide instead?" Prevention would include staying in safe neighborhoods (like you said), trying to not put others into murderous rages, and practicing proper safety techniques when handling guns. "Nit: I am not sure how reference 21 for firearms relates." It doesn't; it must have been a typo. Edited.
is4junk50

Politics as entertainment

For many policy questions I normally foresee long term 'obvious' issues that will arise from them. However, I also believe in a Singularity of some sort in that same time frame. And when I re-frame the policy question as will this impact the Singularity or matter after the Singularity the answer is usually no to both.

Of course, there is always the chance of no Singularity but I don't give it much weight.

So my question is: Has anyone successfully moved beyond the policy questions (emotionally)? Follow up question: once you are bey... (read more)

1[anonymous]
I think I can pretty confidently say "yes." Well, emotions are still there, but I think they are more like the kinds of emotions a doctor might feel as he considers a cancer spreading through a patient and the tools they have to deal with it, not the sort of excitement politics in particular provokes. Well, you are free to do what you want at that point, but I think economists look at them as scientific questions, ones that are quite important, though often not as important as people seem to think. I am working on a series of articles about economics, and I would like one mini-series to be "How To Think About Policy" or something to that effect....
0[anonymous]
This reminds me forcefully with some of the politics associated with apocalypitic rapture theology. "X doesn't matter, Jesus is coming."
6Punoxysm
I just read a crapton of political news for a couple years until I was completely sick of it. I also kind of live in a bubble, in terms of economic security, such that most policy debates don't realistically impact me. High belief in a near singularity is unnecessary.
is4junk10

I normally use chrome. But I did see the problem with IE. IE is using the default video player. You want to use the htlm5 player.

Go to this page and select the 'use html5' button and try again. https://www.youtube.com/html5

0Gondolinian
It works now. Thanks!
is4junk10

Nothing is required that I know of. Here is a video. At the bottom right there is the settings icon - gear shaped. Speed is an option.

I have seen on a small minority of videos the option wasn't present in settings however researching on the title can sometimes get a link to a video that is.

1Gondolinian
Weird, when I click on settings for that video, I only see options for Annotations, Subtitles/CC, and Quality. When I click on the Options link to the right of Subtitles/CC, I see all kinds of options for fonts and colors, but nothing for speed.
is4junk20

I agree there still would be very easy ways to punish enemies or even more common 'friends' that don't toe the line.

I do think it would identify some interesting cliques or color teams. The way I envision using it would be more topic category based. For instance, for topic X I average this group of peoples opinions but a different group on topic Y.

On the positive side, if you have a minority position on some topic that now would be downvoted heavily you could still get good feedback from your own minority clique.

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