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All of Neph's Comments + Replies

Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!
Neph10

I've got one. I actually came up with this on my own, but I'm gratified to see that EY has adopted it

cashback credit cards. these things essentially reduce the cost of all expenditures by 1%.

...but that's not where they get munchkiny. where they get munchkiny is when you basically arbitrage two currencies of equal value.

as a hypothetical example, say you buy $1000 worth of dollar bills for $1000. by using the credit card, it costs $990, since you get $10 back. you then take it to the bank and deposit it for $1000, making a $10 profit. wash, rinse repeat

t... (read more)

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Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!
Neph40

it definitely worked in at least one happily married case

so did "find god's match for you"

if we're looking at all the successful cases, but none of the unsuccessful ones, of course we're going to get positive results. also, as positive results go, "at least one" success is hardly reassuring

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Siren worlds and the perils of over-optimised search
Neph00
def checkMorals():
>[simulate philosophy student's brain]
>if [simulated brain's state is offended]:
>>return False
>else:
>>return True
if checkMorals():
>[keep doing AI stuff]

there. that's how we tell an AI capable of being an AI and capable of simulating a brain to not to take actions which the simulated brain thinks offend against liberty, as implemented in python.

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0Stuart_Armstrong
oh, it's so clear and obvious now, how could I have missed that?
Rationality Quotes June 2014
Neph50

does anyone else find it ironic that we're using fictional evidence (a story about homeopathic writers that don't exist) to debate fictional evidence?

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1Jiro
The scenario is not evidence at all, fictional or not. The reasoning involved might count as evidence depending on your definition, but giving a concrete example is not additional evidence, it only makes things easier to understand. Calling this fictional evidence is like saying that an example mentioning parties A, B, and C is "fictional evidence" on the grounds that A, B, and C don't really exist.
0[anonymous]
The scenario is not evidence at all, fictional or not. The reasoning involved might count as evidence depending on your definition, but giving a concrete example is not additional evidence, it only makes things easier to understand. Calling this fictional evidence is like saying that an example mentioning parties A, B, and C is "fictional evidence" on the grounds that A, B, and C don't really exist.
Is it immoral to have children?
Neph00

I previously made a comment that mistakenly argued against the wrong thing. so to answer the real question- no.

the person who commented to my response said "$50 to the AMF gets someone someone around an additional year of healthy life."

but here's the thing- there's no reason it couldn't give another person- possibly a new child- an additional year of healthy life.

a life is a life, and $50 is $50, so unless the charity is ridiculously efficient (in which case, you should be looking at how to become more efficient) the utility would be the same (wh... (read more)

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1jefftk
Very much not so. You have to look at how the AMF goes about providing that year of healthy life (QALY). They distribute antimalarial nets to places where malaria is a large problem. Their distribution keeps down malaria rates, fewer people get malaria and suffer or die. If you child grows up in a rich area, they're really unlikely to get malaria, so this efficient way to keep people from getting malaria doesn't apply.
2jefftk
Rachels' argument is specifically that you should not have kids and instead donate the money. Why would you expect that? $50 to the AMF gets someone someone around an additional year of healthy life. That's really hard to compete with.
Creating an Optimal Future
Neph00

(puts on morpheus glasses) what if I told you... many of this site's members are also members of those sites?

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Confusion about science and technology
Neph60

I know this may come off as a "no true scotsman" argument, but this is a bit different- bear with me. consider christianity (yes, I'm bringing religion into this, sort of...) in the beginning, we have a single leader preaching a set of morals that is (arguably) correct from a utilitarian standpoint, and calling all who follow that set "christians" by so doing, he created what Influence: Science and Practice would call "the trappings of morality" ...so basically, fast-forward a few hundered years, and we have people who think t... (read more)

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5NancyLebovitz
I don't know whether it's what you're thinking about, but I file that sort of thing under Goodhart's Law-- any measurement which is used to guide policy will become corrupted.
The Modesty Argument
Neph00

remember that Bayesian evidence never reaches 100%, thus making middle ground- upon hearing another rationalist's viewpoint, instead of not shifting (as you suggest) or shifting to average your estimate and theirs together (as AAT suggests) why not adjust your viewpoint based on how likely the other rationalist is to have assessed correctly? ie- you believe X is 90% likely to be true the other rationalist believes it's not true 90%. suppose this rationalist is very reliable, say in the neighborhood of 75% accurate, you should adjust your viewpoint down to ... (read more)

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Open Thread, October 16-31, 2012
Neph20

hello, all. first post around here =^.^= I've been working my way through the core sequences, slowly but surely, and I ran into a question I couldn't solve on my own. please note that this question is probably the stupidest in the universe.

what is the difference between the Bayesian and Frequentist points of view?

let me clarify: in Eli Yudkowsky's explanation of Bayes' theorem, he presented an iconic problem:

"1% of women at age forty who participate in routine screening have breast cancer. 80% of women with breast cancer will get positive mammogra

... (read more)
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0Alejandro1
The classical way of explaining the difference is through the example of a coin that you know is biased, but you don't know whether heads or tails is favored and by how much. What is the probability that the next toss will be heads? Supposedly, a frequentist would say that there is an objective answer, given by the bias of the coin which also equals the proportion of heads in a long run. You just don't know what it is, the only thing you know is that it is not 1/2. A Bayesian would say by contrast that since you have no information to favor one side over the other, the probability (degree of belief) you have to assign at this point is 1/2. This only explains the question of Frequentism vs Bayesianism as philosophical interpretations of "what probability is". The practical issue of Frequentism vs Bayesianism as concrete statistical methods is often tangled with this one in discussions, but it is really a separate matter.
0[anonymous]
I had the same issue, and I'm personally not convinced there's an actual "Bayesian vs frequentist" conflict as framed in the sequences. Both are useful ways of thinking in different scenarios. To use Emile's example, there's a distinction between the probability that you think the millionth digit of pi is even or odd, and whether it really is even or odd. Even though you don't know the millionth digit offhand, it can be computed and has a definite value, so it really doesn't matter what you think it is. Saying 50:50, or more generally an equal probability distribution, is in my mind basically the same as saying "I don't know" (i.e. "I have zero evidence for deciding one way or the other.") There's also a difference between the parity of the millionth digit of pi, and, for example, the wind speed at an arbitrary place and future time. It's impossible to calculate, so instead you can apply Bayesian methods and estimate a range of values based on prior knowledge, and any historical data you might have access to.
Emile120

The bayesian/frequentist distinction can cover three different things that may occasionally be mixed up:

  • The core philosophical disagreement (the "proper" one) about whether probabilities an agent's knowledge / uncertainty about the world, or whether they represent frequencies of some event. For example, a frequentist in this sense might say that it's meaningless to talk about the probability that the millionth binary digit of pi is even or odd. I think frequentist epistemology is mostly discredited, but that it used to be dominant.

  • There are a

... (read more)
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0Emile
I don't think Bayesians and Frequentists would answer that question differently; frequentists also use Bayes' Theorem, they just don't base all their philosophy on it.
0[anonymous]
The "degree of uncertainty" can be extracted from that figure but if becoming more certain decreases the figure then it requires a different word.