All of syzygy's Comments + Replies

It's not meant to be "serious philosophy". He's not presenting the ideas in the book as being literally true, he's just provoking the reader to look at the issues in the book in a different light. Forcing the reader to consider alternative hypotheses, if you will.

7badger
Except it's a serious case of privileging the hypothesis. Pulling bullshit out of thin air != considering alternative hypotheses.

In case you haven't realized it, you're being downvoted because your post reads like this is the first thing you've read on this site. Just FYI.

-12ZZZling

"Universally Preferable Behavior" by Stefan Molyneux, "Argumentation Ethics" by Hans Hermann Hoppe, and of course Objectivism, to name the most famous ones. Generally the ones I'm referring to all try to deduce some sort of Objective Ethics and (surprise) it turns out that property rights are an inherent property of the universe and capitalism is a moral imperative.

Forgive me if you're thinking of some other libertarians who don't have crazy ethical theories. I didn't mean to make gross generalizations. I've just observed that libertarian philosophers who consciously promote their theories of ethics tend to be of this flavor.

Why is the discrimination problem "unfair"? It seems like in any situation where decision theories are actually put into practice, that type of reasoning is likely to be popular. In fact I thought the whole point of advanced decision theories was to deal with that sort of self-referencing reasoning. Am I misunderstanding something?

0DaFranker
If you are a TDT agent, you don't know whether you're the simulation or the "outside decision", since they're effectively the same. Or rather, the simulation will have made the same choice that you will make. If you're not a TDT agent, you gain more information: You're not a TDT agent, and the problem states TDT was simulated. So the discrimination problem functionally resolves to: If you are a TDT agent, have some dirt. End of story. If you are not a TDT agent, I have done some mumbo-jumbo, and now you can either take one box for $1000 or $1m, or both of them for $1001000. Have fun! (the mumbo-jumbo has nothing to do with you anyway!)

Maybe "progress" doesn't refer to equality, but autonomy. It does seem like the progression of social organization generally leads to individual autonomy and equality of opportunity. Egalitarianism is a nice talking point for politicians, but when we say "progress" we really mean individual autonomy.

Austrian-minded people definitely have some pretty crazy methods, but their economic conclusions seem pretty sound to me. The problem arises when they apply their crazy methods to areas other than economics (see any libertarian theory of ethics. Crazy stuff)

1bramflakes
There's lots of different libertarian theories of ethics. Can you be more specific?

I think the correct comparison would be, "since no one can agree on the nature of Earth/Earth's existence, Earth must not exist" but this is ridiculous since everyone agrees on at least one fact about Earth: we live on it. The original argument still stands. Denying the existence of god(s) doesn't lead to any ridiculous contradictions of universally experienced observations. Denying Earth's geometry does.

0beriukay
That's the conclusion I came to as well, but I was worried that I was rationalizing, so I had to downgrade my confidence in the argument.

You are merely objecting to Eliezer's choice of scale. The distances between "intelligences" are pretty arbitrary. Plus he's using a linear scale, so there's no room for intelligence curves.

I think the DRH quote is pretty out of context, and Eliezer's commentary on it is pretty unfair. DRH has a deeply personal respect for human intelligence. He doesn't look forward to the singularity because he (correctly) points out that it will be the end of humanity. Most SI/LessWrong people accept that and look forward to it, but for Hofstadter the current view of the singularity is an extremely pessimistic view of the future. Note that this is simply a result of his personal beliefs. He never claims that people are wrong to look forward to superintellig... (read more)

4thomblake
I don't think your distinction carves reality, or language, at the joints.

You should collect data on time spent using the app and success. Do Science and stuff.

By the way, I spent a good amount of time using it yesterday and I just finished an entire Hershey's bar. Apparently it's not working for me.

0Solvent
Yeah, I don't think it actually works. But thanks for the data point.

In any decision involving an Omega like entity that can run perfect simulations of you, there wouldn't be a way to tell if you were inside the simulation or in the real universe. Therefore, in situations where the outcome depends on the results of the simulation, you should act as though you are in the simulation. For example, in counterfactual mugging, you should take the lesser amount because if you're in Omega's simulation you guarantee your "real life" counterpart the larger sum.

Of course this only applies if the entity you're dealing with happens to be able to run perfect simulations of reality.

What makes "science vs. bayes" a dichotomy? The scientific method is just a special case of Bayesian reasoning. I mean, I understand the point of the article, but it seems like it's way less of a dilemma in practice.

3Shmi
It's a dichotomy in this specific case where science says "don't care, same math, same predictions" and EY's Bayes says "my model is simpler than yours, so it's better". The dichotomy disappears once the models are different experimentally, except that one should still strive to find the Kolmogorov-simplest model with the same predictive power. In any case, EY's point, the way I understood it, is that when the scientific method fails (different models are not easily testable, like in economics, for example), one should "fall back" on Bayes.
-4[anonymous]
The scientific method is inaccurate, it doesn't use evidence the best way it could be used. In practice, for a long time science has worked good enough often enough, but you can do better.

I know this is an old post, I just wanted to write down my answers to the "morality as preference" questions.

Why do people seem to mean different things by "I want the pie" and "It is right that I should get the pie"? Why are the two propositions argued in different ways?

Do the statements, "I liked that movie" and "That movie was good" sound different? The latter is phrased as a statement of fact, while the former is obviously a statement of preference. Unless the latter is said by a movie critic or... (read more)

This is an awesome article. But I've always been bothered by people's expectations when it comes to arriving on time for things. In my experience, people are less annoyed at the person who leaves early than the person who arrives late, even if they miss the same amount of the meeting. The usual reasons people give for avoiding being late (missing content, disrupting the meeting) apply just as much to leaving early. Why the double standard? Also, people are generally more understanding if you have to miss something than if you are an hour late, for some reason.

This is all completely anecdotal, obviously.

2prase
Arriving late is usually accompanied with others waiting for me and not being sure when I manage to arrive, which is very annoying. With early leaving this effect is absent. If I let the others know in advance that I will arrive late, the effect would disappear as well, i.e. they will be no more angry at me than they would if I left too early.
4Normal_Anomaly
Nitpick: Do you mean comes late? Aside from that, Viliam Bur has a point, and also people who leave early generally have unavoidable conflicts and are seen as busy instead of lazy/irresponsible. Also, people who come late keep the others waiting, wondering if they should start without them or give them another minute.

If a meeting starts with most important things, and progresses to least important ones, missing the beginning is more serious. Also a person leaving early is just missing the latest part, but a person coming late may be missing an important context for things discussed later -- repeating this context for them is a waste of time for others, but not repeating may cause them to ask or suggest irrelevant things.

1JoshuaZ
People arriving late can be plausibly put down to something that was outside the control of the individual arriving late. Leaving early from a meeting or other activity implies some form of intent on their part.

I suppose you're right. Although it's pretty easy for me to imagine something that is "conscious" that isn't an "observer" i.e., a mind without sensory capabilities. I guess I was just wondering whether our common (non-rigorous) definitions of the two concepts are independent.

It occurred to me that I have no idea what people mean by the word "observer". Rather, I don't know if a solid reductionist definition for observation exists. The best I can come up with is "an optimization process that models its environment". This is vague enough to include everything we associate with the word, but it would also include non-conscious systems. Is that okay? I don't really know.

2HeatDeath
It occurs to me, reading your post, that I have almost no idea what people mean by "conscious system". I'm quite certain I am one, and I regularly experience other people apparently claiming to belong to that set too. I suspect that if we can nail down what it means to belong to the set of "conscious systems", we'll be much more readily able to determine if not being a member of that set disqualifies a thing from being an "observer".

I had no idea. That is really interesting. What are some artificial languages that have evidential grammar? I knew lojban had evidentials, but I think they're optional.

5Richard_Kennaway
Láadan has them.

I understand the concept of Tegmarkian multiverses, but could you explain how they "reduce to themselves"?

Behavior is very different than thoughts. It's easier to think of animals as machines because we have never experienced an animal thought. To us, animals just look exactly as you described, like behavior outputting machines, because we have never experienced the thought processes of animals.

Isn't this true about any conceivable hypothesis?

7Grognor
Yes, but most hypotheses don't take the form, "Why am I thinking about this hypothesis?" and so your comment is completely irrelevant. To elaborate: the doomsday argument says that the reason we find ourselves here rather than in an intergalactic civilization of trillions is because such a civilization never appears. I give a different explanation which relies on the nature of anthropic arguments in general.

Not sure how much this post has to do with the economic fact of scarcity. Seems like it would be very easy to mistake actual rationality based on economic knowledge for this bias.

1Eugine_Nier
Or even an instinct that evolved because of said economic fact.

It seems to me that in at least some of these examples you are confusing the map with the territory. Take genetics:

Genes don't proliferate by being good for the species; they win by being good for themselves.

Failing to be "good for the species" is not a fact about evolution, or genes. Thinking that evolution was supposed to be "good for the species" was just a heuristic humans used when trying to understand evolution. The "selfish gene" does not say anything meaningful about the phenomenon of evolution, it just shows that ... (read more)

0ESRogs
I don't think I understand either of your points. In the genetics case, are you disagreeing with the contention that a species could proliferate more with a skewed gender ratio? Or are you saying that whether or not it would is just uninteresting or the wrong question to ask for some reason?

To my mind, the people asking the question frequently neglect the second-order effects of regularly talking about politics on the sort of people who will join LW and what their primary goals are.

Could you clarify this point a little? I though the primary goals of LW include refining and promoting human rationality, and I see no reason why this goal would not apply to politics. Especially since irrational political theories can have a directly negative effect on the quality of life for many people.

Could you clarify this point a little?

Sure.

The Internet is full of people who seem to have as one of their primary goals to expound their chosen tribe's political affiliation and defend it against all opposition, even in spaces predominantly dedicated to something else.

If LessWrong becomes a place where local norms allow discussion of the nominal rationality of Libertarianism, or Liberalism, or Conservatism, or whatever, and contrasting it with the demonstrable irrationality of other political ideologies, I expect that a subset of those people will de... (read more)

The primary goal of the present LessWrong community is to refine and promote human rationality. The primary goal of people who would register to join political conversations on LessWrong is liable to be different.

I have seen this problem afflict other intellectually-driven communities, and believe me, it is a very hard problem to shake. Be grateful we aren't getting media attention. The adage, "All press is good press", has definitely been proven wrong.

0John_Maxwell
I assume that my post has aggravated things? :o(

Hello, I am Nicholas, an undergraduate studying music at Portland State University. Even though my (at least academic) primary area of study is the arts, the philosophy of rationality and science has always been a large part of my intellectual pursuits. I found this site about a year ago and read many articles, but I recently decided to try to participate. Even before I was a rationalist, my education was entirely self-driven by a desire to seek the truth, even when the truth conflicted with what was widely believed by those around me (teachers, parents, e... (read more)

9TheOtherDave
More the latter than the former.. a social norm stemming from the pragmatic observation that discussions about politics tended to have certain properties that lowered their value. The question recurs regularly, usually in the form of "well, but, if we're really rational, shouldn't we be able to talk about politics?" To my mind, the people asking the question frequently neglect the second-order effects of regularly talking about politics on the sort of people who will join LW and what their primary goals are.

What effect could misplacing the electrodes have besides stimulating a different part of the brain? I'm honestly asking, I have no idea about any of this.

1gwern
Impaired learning, IIRC - one study I read about recently mentioned that when the setup was reversed on the head, learning was not enhanced compared to baseline but damaged.
0wedrifid
Nausea and apparent bright flashes of light. ie. What it looks and feels like to stimulate certain different parts of your brain. From what I understand this isn't a particularly big deal, just unpleasant.
2Vaniver
That would be it. One of the other things, that I haven't seen discussed much but seems to be going on, is that TCDS works by altering local ion concentrations. But those ions have to come from somewhere- and so it may be that TCDS lowers action potentials in one part of your brain but raises them elsewhere. (Brains are big, though, and so it seems plausible the effects elsewhere would be tiny. Ions would also be small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier, so many they just get pulled out of your bloodstream? It's times like this that I wish I had taken more biology.) After watching the video, though, I'm much less pessimistic about electrode placement (or size- it looks like ours were reasonable).

Am I correct in (roughly) summarizing your conclusion in the following quote?

Yes, there really is morality, and we can locate it in reality — either as a set of facts about the well-being of conscious creatures, or as a set of facts about what an ideally rational and perfectly informed agent would prefer, or as some other set of natural facts.

If so, what is the logical difference between your theory and moral relativism? What if a person's set of natural facts for morality is "those acts which the culture I was born into deem to be moral"?

I view intellectual property as the logical conclusion of the "unhealthiness" Eliezer is describing. I laugh when I look at all the ridiculous patents and copyrights that exist, but then I get scared when I remember that someone can use legal force against me for discovering those ideas simply because they discovered them first.

You mean "libertarian" in the literal sense right? You're not implying that the subject of "free will" has anything to do with politics are you?

2Swimmy
Yeah, I meant metaphysical libertarianism.
5ArisKatsaris
"literal sense" -- is that the most clear question you can ask? If someone replied 'yes' or 'no', how would you be sure that you'd not both be suffering from a double illusion of transparency regarding what the 'literal sense' of the word was? Either way, google and wikipedia are your friends: Libertarianism (metaphysics)