All of mwaser's Comments + Replies

Dogmas of analytic philosophy, part 1/2 and part 2/2 by Massimo Pigliucci in his Rationally Speaking blog.

If it is true (i.e. if a proof can be found) that "Any sufficiently advanced tool is indistinguishable from agent", then any RPOP will automatically become indistinguishable from an agent once it has self-improved past our comprehension point.

This would seem to argue against Yudkowsky's contention that the term RPOP is more accurate than "Artificial Intelligence" or "superintelligence".

Actually, eating a baby bunny is a really bad idea when viewed from a long-term perspective. Sure, it's a tender tasty little morsel -- but the operative word is little. Far better from a long-term view to let it grow up, reproduce and then eat it. And large competent bunnies aren't nearly as cute as baby bunnies, are they? So maybe evo-psych does have it correct . . . . and maybe the short-sighted rationality of tearing apart a whole field by implication because you don't understand how something works doesn't seem as brilliant.

MY "objection" to CEV is exactly the opposite of what you're expecting and asking for. CEV as described is not descriptive enough to allow the hypothesis "CEV is an acceptably good solution" to be falsified. Since it is "our wish if we knew more", etc., any failure scenrio that we could possibly put forth can immediately be answered by altering the potential "CEV space" to answer the objection.

I have radically different ideas about where CEV is going to converge to than most people here. Yet, the lack of distincti... (read more)

I know the individuals involved. They are not biased against non-academics and would welcome a well-thought-out contribution from anyone. You could easily have a suitable abstract ready by March 1st (two weeks early) if you believed that it was important enough -- and I would strongly urge you to do so.

Threats are certainly a data point that I factor in when making a decision. I, too, have been known to apply altruistic punishment to people making unwarranted threats. But I also consider whether the person feels so threatened that the threat may actually be just a sign of their insecurity. And there are always times when going along with the threat is simply easier than bothering to fight that particular issue.

Do you really always buck threats? Even when justified -- such a "threatened consequences" for stupid actions on your part? Even from, say, police officers?

I much prefer the word "consequence" -- as in, that action will have the following consequences . . . .

I don't threaten, I point out what consequences their actions will cause.

For-profit corporations, as a matter of law, have the goal of making money and their boards are subject to all sorts of legal consequences and other unpleasantnesses if they don't optimize that goal as a primary objective (unless some other goal is explicitly written into the corporate bylaws as being more important than making a profit -- and even then, there are profit requirements that must be fulfilled to avoid corporate dissolution or conversion to a non-profit -- and very few corporations have such provisions).

Translation

Corporations = powerful, intelligent entities with the primary goal of accumulating power (in the form of money).

As you get closer to the core of friendliness, you get all sorts of weird AGI's that want to do something that twistedly resembles something good, but is somehow missing something or is somehow altered so that the end result is not at all what you wanted.

Is this true or is this a useful assumption to protect us from doing something stupid?

Is it true that Friendliness is not an attractor or is it that we cannot count on such a property unless it is absolutely proven to be the case?

I meant lurking is slow, lurking is inefficient, and a higher probability that it gets worse results for the newbie. I'm not sure which objective is being referred to in that clause. I retract those evaluations as flawed.

Yeah, I made the same mistake twice in a row. First, I didn't get that I didn't get it. Then I "got it" and figured out some obvious stuff -- and didn't even consider that there probably was even more below that which I still didn't get and that I should start looking for (and was an ass about it to boot). What a concept --... (read more)

Umph! I am really not used to interacting with people mentally skilled enough that I have a really bad case of not knowing what I don't know. I need to fix that.

Good one with the tags. I'm still recalibrating from it/working through all its implications.

I'm going off to work on one of the questions now.

AI correctly predicts that programmer will not approve of its plan. AI fully aware of programmer-held fallacies that cause lack of approval. AI wishes to lead programmer through thought process to eliminate said fallacies. AI determines that the most effective way to initiate this process is to say "I recognize that even with all of my intelligence I’m still fallible so if you object to my plans I will rethink them." Said statement is even logically true because the statement "I will rethink them " is always true.

Yes. If you have actually learned something then your comments will reflect this and earn karma. You'll be into the positives before you know it.

OK. Got it.

If this is so, you have been doing it very badly.

I've already acknowledged that. But I've clearly been doing better with the "What I missed" explanation being +5 and this post only garnering -2 over two days as opposed to -6 in a few hours so I must have learned something.

I've also learned that we've reached the point where some people are tired enough of this thread that they will ... (read more)

Okay. So the comment is unclear and incomplete but not unwelcome with a +5 karma). Clearly, I need to slow down and expand, expand, expand. I'm willing to keep fighting with it and do that and learn. Where is an appropriate place to do so?

Is effective a cousin? I suspect so since the easiest way to rewrite it would be to simply replace rational with effective. If not, assume that my rewrite simply does that. If so, can I get a motivation for the request? I'm not sure where you're going or why "cousins" are disallowed.

If you want to be safe, you lurk until you truly get what's going on around you. People can in fact learn things that way.

I never said I wanted to be safe. Please reread what I said.

Lurking until you truly get what's going on around you is not the most effective (rational) way to learn. I can provide you a boatload of references supporting that if you wish.

Do you really want subpar newbies who will accept such irrationality just to maintain your peace and quiet? Particularly when a playground option is suggested? You could even get volunteers and ne... (read more)

claiming repeatedly to have learned some unspecified thing which makes you above disapproval.

Could you point to an example please so I can try to evaluate how I implied something so thoroughly against my intent? I certainly don't believe myself above disapproval.

However, it doesn't say anywhere what it is that you claim to have suddenly understood

here

Could someone give me a hint as to why this particular comment which was specifically in answer to a question is being downvoted? I don't get it.

Thank you. As I said below, I didn't clearly understand the need for the explicit inclusion of motivation before. I now see that I need to massively overhaul the question and include motivation (as well as make a lot of other recommended changes).

The post has a ton of errors but I don't understand why you think it was in error. Given that your premise about my intentions is correct, doesn't your argument mean that posting was correct? Or, are you saying that it was in error due to the frequency of posting?

Ah. Now I see your point.

The actions of a nation are those which were caused by it's governance structure like your actions are those which are caused by your brain. A fever or your stomach growling is not your action in the same sense that actions by lower-level officials and large companies are not the actions of a nation -- particularly when those officials and companies are subsequently censured or there is some later attempt to rein them in. Actions of the duly recognized head of state acting in a national capacity are actions of the nation unless ... (read more)

And this is still too abstract. Depending on detail of the situation, either decision might be right. For example, I might like to remain where I am, thank you very much.

So I take it that you are heavily supporting the initial post's "Premise: The only rational answer given the current information is the last one."

Worse, so far I've seen no motivation for the questions of this post, and what discussion happened around it was fueled by making equally unmotivated arbitrary implicit assumptions not following from the problem statement in the post.

Thank you. I didn't clearly understand the need for the explicit inclusion of motivation before.

Seconding Carl changes your argument to this is the first substantive posting I've made in four days. Now it's one in five days.

Other than not posting on a new given topic (while you have no active or live posts), what would you suggest? Personally, I would suggest a separate area (a playpen, if you will) where newbies are allowed to post and learn. You can't truly learn anything of value just by watching. Insisting that a first attempt be done correctly on the first try under safe circumstances is counter-productive.

My last substantive post before thi... (read more)

Acquiring citizenship is joining a nation. People who are not only allowed to acquire citizenship but encouraged to do so are "invited to join". To choose whether to do so or not is to file the necessary papers and perform the necessary acts. I think that these answers should be obvious.

A nation has a top-most goal if all of its goals do not conflict with that goal. This is more specific than a top-level goal.

A nation is rational to the extent that its actions promote its goals. Did you really have to ask this?

How does a nation identify the ... (read more)

Upvote from me! Yes, you are understanding me correctly.

One could indeed come up with my list of options without having done any prior investigation. But would one share it with others? My pointing at that particular post is meant to be a signal that I grok that it is not rational to share it with others until I believe that I have strong evidence that it is a strong hypothesis and have pretty much run out of experiments that I can conduct by myself that could possibly disprove the hypothesis.

Skepticism is desired as long as it doesn't interfere with th... (read more)

The question "which options are long-term rational answers?" corresponds immediately to the hypothesis "among the options are some long-term rational answers" and can be investigated in the same way.

Incorrect. Prove that one option is a long-term rational answer and you have proved the hypothesis "among the options are some long-term rational answers". That is nowhere near completing answering the question "which options are long-term rational answers"

My hypothesis was much, much more limited than "among th... (read more)

Thank you very much.

Premise: Most developed nations are such a community although the goal is certainly not explicit.

Do you believe that premise is flawed?

"Option 2 is the only long-term rational answer" is a clear hypothesis. It is disproved if any of the other options is also a long-term rational answer. "Which options are long-term rational answers?" is a question, not a hypothesis.

Reread Einstein's Arrogance

Too ambiguous. It's not clear which elements aren't clear to you, so it's not possible to fix the problem.

The original statement said nothing about how much work each step was. In fact, the original statement was refuting a statement that was even more simplistic and strongly implied the process was limited to just data and conclusions.

I agree with your second sentence.

Merely knowing that a group is rational and utilitarian (or at least, that it claims to be) doesn't narrow down what it is very much.

Interesting. Those were sidelights for me as well. What was definitive for me was the statement of the community's top-most goal.

What you've stated instead is that you're trying to prove your hypothesis, which is, I hope, wrong--rather, you're investigating whether your hypothesis is true, without the specific goal of proving or disproving it.

Agreed.

It is a definition, not an explanation. I misunderstood his post to be questioning what the quoted word "structures" meant so I provided a definition.

I am editing it to provide examples. It was certainly not intended as a curiosity-stopper.

As a definition, it had meaning -- but none that was new to you.

1A

2A - if your morality is rationally defined by your goals OR 2C - if you insist on all the confusing noise of human morality

3A or 3B - I don't know how to test to determine

4 is confused

By "structures" I mean "interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, technologies, and psychological mechanisms that work together to fulfill the goal of stabilization (of something)".

Examples: The "terms of art" like "confused" (different from common use in that it can imply sins of omission as well as commission), the use of karma, the nearly uniform behavior when performing certain tasks, the nearly uniform reactions to certain things, etc. are all part of the "structures" supporting the community.

Yes. I agree fully with the above post.

We seem to have differing assumptions:

My default is to assume that B utility cannot be produced in a different world UNLESS it is of utility in B's world to produce the utility in another world. One method by which this is possible is trade between the two worlds (which was the source of my initial response).

Your assumption seems to be that B utility will always have value in a different world.

My default assumption is explicitly overridden for the case where I feel good (have utility in the world where I am present) when I care about the world where I am ... (read more)

Fair enough. I'm willing to rephrase my argument as A can't produce B utility because there is no B present in the world.

Yes, I do want to pre-commit to a counter-factual trade in the mugging because that is the cost of obtaining access to an offer of high expected utility (see my real-world rephrasing here for a more intuitive example case).

In the current world-splitting case, I see no utility for me since the opposing fork cannot produce it so there is no point to me pre-committing.

Strategy one has U1/2 in both A-utility and B-utility with the additional property that the utility is in the correct fork where it can be used (i.e. it truly exists).

Strategy two has U2/2 in both A-utilty and B-utility but the additional property that the utility produced is not going to be usable in the fork where it is produced (i.e. the actual utility is really U0/2 unless the utility can be traded for the opposite utility which is actually usable in the same fork).

Assuming that there is no possibility of trade (since you describe no method by which it... (read more)

Wow! Evil. Effective. Not to mention a great demonstration of the criticality of context.

Definitely deserves a link or mention in a newbie's guide.

What I didn't get?

Some of it was mistaken assumptions about karma. Much more of it was the lack of recognition of the presence of a huge amount of underlying structure which is necessary to explain what looks like seemingly irrational behavior (to someone who doesn't have that structure). I also didn't recognize most of the offered help because I didn't understand it. (Even just saying to a newbie, "I know that you don't recognize this as help because you don't get it yet but could you please trust me that it is intended as help" would probabl... (read more)

Using "because" on evolution is tricky -- particularly when co-evolution is involved --and society and humans are definitely co-evolving. Which evolved first -- the chicken or the chicken egg (i.e. dinosaur-egg-type arguments explicitly excluded).

I can think of several reasons

1. Your post appears to be a dominance game. Your bible will obliterate their bible.
2. While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I would guess that the initial quote probably strikes many here as elegant poetry that is well worth sharing (and upvotes effectively equal sharing).
3. Your post isn't particularly interesting so I would guess that it wouldn't attract any upovotes and point 1 means that it is nearly certain to attract at least two or three downvotes.

If you were the first person to see such a post (where Yvain made such a stupid comment that you believed that it deserved to attract 26527 downvotes), would you, personally, downvote it for stupidity or would you upvote it for interestingness?

EDIT: I'd be interested in answers from others as well.

From Wikipedia

A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.[1][2]

My position never included the any claims about the value of the statement as an argument. To imply that my position was that it was a "bad" argument i... (read more)

Now that I've got it, this is clear, concise, and helpful. Thank you.

I also owe you (personally) an apology for previous behavior.

Yes, that is precisely what I wish to do -- but, as I said, that is also going to take some patience and help from others and I have certainly, if unintentionally, abused my welcome.

There is also (obviously) still a lot that I don't understand -- for example, this post quickly acquired a downvote in addition to your comment and I don't get why.