All of Simulacra's Comments + Replies

Somewhere I missed something, is there something wrong with bounded utilities? Every usable solution to these manipulations of infinity get dismissed because they are bounded, if they work what is the problem?

1pengvado
If your utility function is in fact bounded, then there's nothing wrong with that. But the utility function isn't up for grabs. If I care about something without bound, then I can't solve the dilemma by switching to a bounded utility function; that would simply make me optimize for some metric other than the one I wanted.
1bogdanb
Well, masochists like experiencing some things generally regarded as unpleasant, in moderation. Also, AFAIK, it matters who causes them the experience. For instance, I'd be surprised to find out that a masochist routinely enters biker bars and severely annoys the biggest person around for the pleasure of getting a few broken bones. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard of repeated broken bones, severe burns, live amputations, or water-boarding as a practiced masochistic fetish. Practiced things tend to be very mild versions of these (excepting accidents). I don't have Eliezer's original article in hand, but I doubt “torture” meant 80 years of, say, a couple of daily spankings and wearing a dog collar. (I'm not talking about sadistic people, but about masochistic ones; nor am I talking about fantasies, but what people actually choose to do.)

But we aren't wrong about the observable universe, does it really matter to us what happens outside our interaction range?

0DanielH
I haven't studied this in nearly enough detail to be sure of what I'm saying, but it is my understanding that we quite possibly ARE wrong about the observable universe's size, simply given the newness of the science saying there is an "observable universe". Newton was wrong about gravity, but mostly in edge cases (pun intended); could Hubble et. al. be wrong about the observable universe's size? Could we find a way to send messages faster than light (there are several theories and only one need work)? Or could we possibly cram more people into the universe than seems possible now due to simulations, building smaller but equivalent brains, or otherwise? If the answer to ANY of these questions could be less, then we could indeed be wrong about the size observable universe (if observable is defined in terms of light even after we develop FTL communication, travel, or observation, then that's stupid (like the current definition of clinical death) and you can replace "observable universe" with some similar phrase). Besides, it may in fact be worth considering what happens outside the observable universe. We can make some predictions already, such as similar laws of physics and the continuing existence of anything which we could previously observe but has since passed over the cosmological event horizon. If people eventually become one of the things that passes over this event horizon, I'll still care about them even though my caring can not affect them in any way. Note again that I don't know much about this, and I may be babbling nonsense for most of these points. But I do know that Hubble may be wrong, that humans keep doing things that they'd previously thought scientifically impossible, and that without an observable universe boundary there are still things which are causally unrelated to you in either direction but that you still may care about.

Read the first chapter of your novella. Were it not for the delineation I probably would still be reading and hiding from sleep. Work tomorrow, I expect I'll come back to it after.

Feedback phenomena and human intuition are uncomfortable bedfellows. When people dislike where an equilibrium argument takes them, it is therefore unsurprising that they invent simpler arguments that lead to more palatable conclusions. However, the first principle of rational thought is never to allow your preferences to influence your beliefs.

Ken Binmore

I'm pretty sure it was intended to indicate the quality of the comment.

3Annoyance
What does the intention behind the system's creation have to do with what the system actually does?

They are sunk costs to the jobseeker in that he cannot do anything about them and they have a negative value. If he were to take them into account, he would no doubt throw up his hands and shout "but who would hire ME?" So he must ignore them as he would any sunk cost when deciding what to do; namely, where to apply for a job.

At least that is how I understand it.

6JGWeissman
The sunk cost fallacy is when you assign a higher value than you would otherwise to something because of the price you paid for it. In this case, the job seeker is not concerned with the value of anything she gained from the felonies, so the fallacy does not apply. The job seeker's situation is not like having already paid for a ticket to a movie that she does not really want to see. The job seeker should take into account how prospective employers will perceive her reputation, and focus on those who are more likely to give her a chance to build a more positive reputation, and be prepared to answer from the employers perspective why they should do so. The past events have consequences for expected future expected utility that should not be ignored.

Although I wouldn't go so far as to assert that I speak for the majority of the community (although I hope I do), my view is that so long as you are making a good faith effort to contribute and grow along with the community you are okay. After looking over your comment/post history I will say that I have no doubts that you are making such an effort.

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There has been some calling for applications of rationality; how can this help me win? This combined with the popularity and discussion surrounding "Stuck in the middle with Bruce" gave me an idea for a potential series of posts relating to LWers pastimes of choice. I have a feeling most people here have a pastime, and if rationalists should win there should be some way to map the game to rational choices.

Perhaps articles discussing "how rational play can help you win at x" and "how x can help you think more rationally" would ... (read more)

I would say it is certainly something worth studying, the understanding of how it works would be invaluable. We can decide if we want to use it to further our goals or not once we understand it (hopefully not before, using something you don't understand is generally a bad thing imho). If we decide not to use it, the knowledge would help us educate others and perhaps prevent the 'dark ones' from using it.

Perhaps something a la James Randi, create an ad whose first half uses some of the techniques and whose second half explains the mechanisms used to control inattentive viewers with a link to somewhere with more information on understanding how its done and why people should care.

If you don't think you could convince him to cooperate then you still defect because he will, and if you cooperate 0 people are saved. Cooperating generates either 0 or 2 billion saved, defecting generates either 1 or 3 billion saved. Defect is clearly the better option.

If you were going to play 100 rounds for 10 or 20 million lives each, cooperate by all means. But in a single round PD defect is the winning choice (assuming the payout is all that matters to you; if your utility function cares about the other persons feelings towards you after the choice, cooperate can become the highest utility)

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0CronoDAS
Gung znxrf frafr, npghnyyl. Fubhyq V or unccl gung gur npghny yvr jnf gur bar gung V gubhtug jnf gur frpbaq zbfg yvxryl gb or gur yvr?

Only piece of information we're missing is how many people started in the tournament which would allow us to find out how many points he would need to get top8.

You sound like you know what a Magic tournament is about way more than I do (don't know what counts as a draw, or if there even is such a thing) and have revised my estimates accordingly.

(1) .1 (2) .35 (3) .35 (4).18 (5).02

5 is low due to pjeby's comment, the .02 is my probability that he would slash my tires or is wrong.

0pengvado
Draws are possible in Magic (kill both players at the same time), but they're quite rare. Unless for some reason you wanted to draw instead of win, in which case you could do so intentionally. In an online tournament, in addition to anything the tournament format itself allows, there's always another way to get eliminated: disconnect / failure to show up. I don't remember the disconnect rate in Magic online being particularly high, but a tournament does involve a significant amount of time for people to misplan.
0jimrandomh
We don't know how many people were in the tournament, but we do have a very good proxy: the number of rounds in the Swiss portion. Swiss tournaments are supposed to have between log_2(P) and log_2(P)+1 rounds, where P is the number of players, so the tournament had between 64 and 128 players.

I'm going with number 3, battletoads was hard! :(

My five:

1) I have the complete Feynman Lecture Series

2) I have beaten professional Counter-Strike players while never having played in any tournaments or leagues.

3) I am a smoker (cigarettes).

4) I never finished Half-Life.

5) My watch has Mickey Mouse on it (his hands point to the time!).

0MrShaggy
My dad used to wear a watch like that. I guess 4.
0CronoDAS
I guess that statement 2 is the lie.
0Simulacra
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0MrHen
I guess #3 since the cigarettes is superfluous. Perhaps you do smoke, but do not smoke cigarettes?
0[anonymous]
del
1CronoDAS
I assume that #2 refers to beating them at Counter-Strike...

Something like reddit commentroversy would be nice as a feature of the site. Sadly it doesn't work on LW, maybe I'll try to look at it and figure out if there is a possible hack to getting working until (if) the feature is implemented here.

A random comment I selected to show what it looks like [Username Changed]:

username 70 points(+184/-116) 7 hours ago[-]

If anyone uses reddit and doesn't have this get the greasemonkey add-on then go back to the commentroversy and click install.

0pjeby
A very quick bit of troubleshooting shows that the json load doesn't appear to be occurring, i.e. the $.getJSON apparently doesn't work. Edit: to be precise, the script bombs out when trying to do anything with '$.getJSON', which perhaps is not available in LW's version of jQuery? Edit 2: Ah, LW doesn't use jQuery. It uses Prototype. The script would have to be converted. But it does indeed appear that LW exports the needed data in JSON form.

Should those of us that know we are in the first 45 responses retake the survey? It looks like a number of things have changed since I took it. My default assumption is no as I don't want to duplicate, but I thought I'd ask.

1AnnaSalamon
Don't duplicate, please. It's mostly the same, and better to have a couple slightly-different questions (with known populations that answered one vs. the other) than to have repeated rows.

For me it began as a bored student picking up a book on probability (specifically Randomness by Deborah Bennet) and discovering my understanding of probability was seriously wrong. Following that discovery and armed with my improved understanding I began to look at what other ideas and beliefs might be flawed. I started with those beliefs that were most likely to be based on probabilities and found that nearly everything I thought was true was affected by a single inaccuracy. My mind has burned with a single question ever since: "What else is pollutin... (read more)

0jsalvatier
what was the one inaccuracy?

Sugar Land (Houston area), not exactly day trip material but with sufficient notice I could make something.

0Chase_Johnson
We do seem to be thin on the ground in Texas.

I've lurked OB/LW for quite some time now (about a year) and haven't posted much for many of the same reasons as divia (intimidated by the quality, felt like I wasn't familiar enough, etc) and have tried to get a few people that are interested in this kind of thing to follow along with me to little success. This post made me wonder why people I was so sure would care about rationality didn't care to join the community here and further why I sit on the sidelines.

My first thoughts were that this group feels "cliquey". There are a lot of in-phrases ... (read more)

-2SforSingularity
These apply to both genders...
0gwern
I think ameliorating that issue is one of the main reasons for the Less Wrong wiki. Is it helpful in even its current state?

My first thoughts were that this group feels "cliquey". There are a lot of in-phrases and technical jargon floating around, which to an outsider can be very intimidating.

This is a feature, not a bug. If you spend a day discussing, say, Newcomb's problem, and it doesn't change the way you think and speak about similar situations in the future -- if you don't find easier, faster ways of describing the situation, which were previously unavailable to you -- then you've probably wasted a day.

The effect this has on newcomers is a bug though. Hopef... (read more)

I think this stems from the separation of ideas from the self, which is really the first step on the road to rationality. Anyone who hasn't made that step feels like they are being personally attacked, and it isn't an easy step to make.

Even if you've made the step in general, it doesn't help when people use status-signaling language in their comments. e.g. "Have you thought of X?" is a lot better than, say, "Clearly you haven't paid any attention to X", if your goal is to actually improve discussion, rather than to get a charge from... (read more)

Later we can do a test that will determine how "rational" you are more or less, the problem is we don't really have a good experimental definition of rationality. This survey will help see correlations and underlying characteristics of rational people (or at least people striving for rationality).

We don't really know what to look for right now, so a broad set of questions will help us find out what is worth looking at in more depth. Which also means we can't really know what we will get out of this, but hopefully we can find some strong indicator type questions for rational action.

1Paul Crowley
Science is not about rushing off to collect data before you have any idea why you want it or what you're going to do with it! If you have no idea what you might even hope to get out of an exercise in collecting data, what reason do you have to hope that good will come of it? What use would you make of "strong indicator type questions for rational action"? What is the underlying query?