All of zero_call's Comments + Replies
I've also read it several times before that physicists and scientists tend to achieve their best results by their mid-thirties. But I don't think the characterization necessarily works for physics/math/etc. like it does for baseball and athletics. There's just a major qualitative difference there -- e.g., athletes are forced to retire fairly young, whereas teachers are very rarely forced to retire until they are really nearing the end of their viable lifespan. Although I do agree that in something like physics, there is also a component of "mental ath...
In the 419991 times this simulation has run, players have won $1811922 And by won I mean they have won back $1811922 of the $419991 they spent (431%).
Mating is good. I am somewhat baffled as to why the "PUA" discussion has had a strong negative connotation. As you say, there's a ton of benefits for everyone involved, and it serves as a successful, easy-to-test model for many related skill sets. Personally I think the hesitancy to talk about mating and mating development is likely no more than a sort of vestigial organ of society's ancient associations with religion. It still seems "improper" in ordinary society to talk about how to get into someone's pants. But I see no reason why the sort of thing like "pick-up-artistry" must be unethical or wrong.
I am somewhat baffled as to why the "PUA" discussion has had a strong negative connotation. As you say, there's a ton of benefits for everyone involved
There's at least two groups of people who potentially stand to lose from widespread discussion of PUA: women, who may fear that they will be duped into choosing low quality mates by males emulating the behaviours they use to identify high quality mates and men who are already successful with women who may fear increased competition.
These sources of antipathy to PUA are rarely consciously express...
Yes -- I agree strongly with this analysis.
The whole "happiness limited by shyness/social awkwardness which results in no dates" stereotype does not apply to many people here.
How's that?
Hypertext reading has a strong potential, but it also has negative aspects that you don't have as much with standard books. For example, it's much easier to get distracted or side-tracked with a lot of secondary information that might not even be very important.
It's not that books take longer to produce, it's that books just tend to have higher quality, and a corollary of that is that they frequently take longer to produce. Personally I feel fairly certain that the average quality of my online reading is substantially lower than offline reading.
Any problem in government can only be suboptimal relative to a different set of policies, and as such, criticism of government should come with an argument that a solution is possible.
I think most criticism is based on the implicit understanding that a solution is possible. Otherwise you are basically hiding behind a shield of nihilism or political anarchy or something. It seems overly restrictive to say that any criticism without an auxiliary solution is worthless. Just because you see a problem doesn't mean you are able to see a solution. I guess it's a bit like asking all voters to also be politicians.
I think you've touched on something really important when you mention how it is easier to be a strong critic than to have a real, working solution. This is a common retort against strong criticism -- "Oh, but you don't how to make it any better" -- and it seems to be something of a logical fallacy.
There is a certain sense of energy and inspiration behind good criticism which I've always been fond of. This is important, because criticism seems to be almost always non-conformist or pessimistic in a certain sense, so I think you kind of need encouragement to remind yourself that criticism is generally originating from good intentions.
I would argue that charity is just plain good, and you don't need to take something simple and kind and turn it into an inconclusive exercise in societal interpretation.
This sort of brings to my mind Pirsig's discussions about problem solving in ZATAOMM. You get that feeling of confusion when you are looking at a new problem, but that feeling is actually a really natural, important part of the process. I think the strangest thing to me is that this feeling tends to occur in a kind of painful way -- there is some stress associated with the confusion. But as you say, and as Pirsig says, that stress is really a positive indication of the maturation of an understanding.
That's funny. Well, perhaps Foucault may not have been very accurate -- I'm not at all qualified to comment. But the book still stands as an amazing work of intellectual writing.
Some fiction....
The Color of Magic (Discworld series) -- Terry Pratchett -- pretty funny, top British author. The first book (this one) seems to be unmatched by at least the next five in the series, but there are like 30 in the series total, so...
Neutron star -- Larry Niven -- a collection of short stories in Larry Niven's fascinating future.
Fire upon the deep -- Vernor Vinge -- just the best picture of a future filled with GAI's that I have read.
Neuromancer -- William Gibson -- incredible action/cyberpunk story, incredible characters. Gets pretty
Pirsig's book is brilliant... I recommend that to everyone as well...
AFAIK there's currently no major projects attempting to send contact signals around the galaxy (let alone the universe). Our signals may be reaching Vega or some of the nearest star systems, but definitely not much farther. It's not prohibitively difficult to broadcast out to say, a 1000 lightyear radius ball around earth, but you're still talking about an antenna that's far larger than anything currently existing.
Right now the SETI program is essentially focused on detection, not broadcasting. Broadcasting is a much more expensive problem. Detection is f...
I don't think this is much of an insight, to be honest. The "anthropic" interpretation is a statement that the universe requires self-consistency. Which is, let's say, not surprising.
The purpose of natural selection, fine-tuning of physical constants in our universe, and of countless other detailed coincidences (1) was to create me. (Or, for the readers of this comment, to create you)
My feeling is that this is a statement about the English language. This is not a statement about the universe.
Note that one could just as easily come up with a two page article about a "Futuristic Life Meme" which represents the cryonics supporters' sense of being threatened by death.
The analysis of a new, emerging science deserves critique. From what I can tell, this particular critique is essentially ad-hominem, in that it attempts to attack a belief based on the characteristics of the individuals, rather than their arguments.
It trivializes the fact that there are reasons for being reluctant to invest in cryonics. Lastly, this writing conflates cryonics skepticism with unwillingness to invest.
We've argued a lot about the advisability of cryonics. This article takes that advisibility as a given and attempts to further discussion among those who agree. If you don't agree, that's fine, but It's OK for an article to move on sometimes.
My take is basically: if their understanding is so deep, why exactly is their teaching skill so brittle that no one can follow the inferential paths they trace out? Why can't they switch to the infinite other paths that a Level 2 understanding enables them to see? If they can't, that would suggest a lack of depth to their understanding.
I would LOVE to agree with this statement, as it justifies my criticism of poor teachers who IMO are (not usually maliciously) putting their students through hell. However, I don't think it's obvious, or I think maybe you...
Ah, OK, I read your article. I think that's an admirable task to try to classify or identify the levels of understanding. However, I'm not sure I am convinced by your categorization. It seems to me that many of these "Level 1 savants" as you call them are quite capable of fitting their understanding with the rest of reality. Actually it seems like the claim of "Level 1 understanding" basically trivializes that understanding. Yet many of these people who are bad teachers have a very nontrivial understanding -- else I don't think this wou...
Suppose that inventing a recursively self improving AI is tantamount to solving a grand mathematical problem, similar in difficulty to the Riemann hypothesis, etc. Let's call it the RSI theorem.
This theorem would then constitute the primary obstacle in the development of a "true" strong AI. Other AI systems could be developed, for example, by simulating a human brain at 10,000x speed, but these sorts of systems would not capture the spirit (or capability) of a truly recursively self-improving super intelligence.
Do you disagree? Or, how likely is this scenario, and what are the consequences? How hard would the "RSI theorem" be?
I will reply to this in the sense of
"do you believe you are aware of the inferential connections between your expertise and layperson-level knowledge?",
since I am not so familiar with the formalism of a "Level 2" understanding.
My uninteresting, simple answer is: yes.
My philosophical answer is that I find the entire question to be very interesting and strange. That is, the relationship between teaching and understanding is quite strange IMO. There are many people who are poor teachers but who excel in their discipline. It seems to ...
Cool article...
Cool... that's really close to where I work. I'll probably make it. Thanks for taking the initiative guys.
I'm not sure if I buy that the "frequentist" explanations (as in the disease testing example) are best characterized by being frequentist -- it seems to me that they are just stating the problem and the data in a more relevant way to the question that's being asked. Without those extra statements, you have to decode the information down from a more abstract level.
For example: I've heard vague rumors that GWF Hegel concludes that the Prussian State (under which, coincidentally, he lived) was the best form of human existence. I've also heard that Descartes "proves" that God exists. Now, whether or not Hegel or Descartes may have had any valid insights, this is enough to tell me that it's not worth my time to go looking for them.
This is an understandable sentiment, but it's pretty harsh. Everybody makes mistakes -- there is no such thing as a perfect scholar, or perfect author. And I think that when Desca...
I understand that there is work supporting the idea that cryonics/regeneration/etc. will eventually be successful. However, I don't feel the need to respond to this work very directly, because this work, after all, is very indirect, in the sense that it is only making plausibility arguments. As a cryonics skeptic, I am not attempting to rule out the plausibility or possibility of cryonics. After all, it seems fairly plausible that this stuff will eventually get worked out, as with the usual arguments for technological advancement. As a cryonics skeptic, I ...
On the other hand I suggest I understand you perfectly and have attempted to respond to the core objection I have with your comment. That is, it is a demand for unobtainable evidence.
The entire purpose of cryonics is to freeze a person pending the availability of future technologies. If that technology was, in fact, available now it would be evidence that cryonics was unnecessary.
You make the claim:
...he entire argument in favor of cryonics is based on projections for future discoveries and technologies, which any cryonics proponent will admit. Thus their a
Could you break down your objection?
EDIT to look at it from another angle: it's clear that the first serve in this discussion has to come from the cryonicists, since we're the ones trying to change people's minds. But cryonicists have served and served and served; there's a massive literature arguing in favour, of which I'd pick out Ben Best's "Scientific Justification of Cryonics Practice". If you don't feel that anything in that literature is enough to show that cryonics might be a good idea, you're going to have to make some sort of actual r...
That's because it's absolutely clear that cryonics (on current evidence) does not work.
Doesn't work? It quite clearly gets heads and freezes them in a static state. You appear to be demanding evidence regarding functional medical nanotechnology, a rather different problem.
This kind of rebuttal absolutely fails, because it simply doesn't address the point. You're taking the OP completely out of context. The OP is arguing against cryonics evidence in the context of having to dish out substantial money. The pro-cryonics LW community asserts that you must pay money if you believe in cryonics, since it's the only rational decision, or some such logic. In response, critics (such as the OP) contend that cryonics evidence isn't sufficient to justify paying money. This is totally different from asserting that you don't believe in cr...
You might think about the zen idea, in which the proposal of solutions is certainly held off, or treated differently. This is a very common idea in response to the tendency of solutions to precipitate themselves so ubiquitously.
Without any way of authenticating the donations, I find this to be rather silly.
I just saw this and realized I basically just expanded on this above.
I wasn't familiar with this description of "world states", but it sounds interesting, yes. I take it that positing "I am a think that things" is the same as asserting K(E). In asserting K(K(E)), I assert that I know that I know that I am a thing that thinks. If this understanding is incorrect, my following logic doesn't apply.
I would argue that K(K(E)) is actually a necessary condition for K(E). Because if I don't know that I know proposition A, then I don't know proposition A.
Edit/Revised: I think all you have to do is realize that &...
Um, if you're a brain in a vat, then any "brain" you perceive in the real world like on a "real world" MRI is nothing but a fictitious sensory perception that the vat is effectively tricking you into thinking is your brain. If you're a brain in a vat, you have nothing to tell you that what you perceive as your brain is actually really your brain. It may be hard to implement the brain in the vat scenario, but when implemented, its absolutely undetectable.
People don't mention anything like altering the brain itself.
Altering the brain itself? The brain itself is the only thing there is to alter. The only thing that exists in the brain in the vat example is the brain, the vat, and whatever controls the vat. The "human experiences" are just the outcome of an alteration on the brain, e.g., by hooking up electrodes. I really have no idea how else you imagine this is working.
You don't seem to be familiar with this concept.
You could posit a brain in the vat where the controllers also have lots of actual drugs or electromagnetic stimulants read to go to duplicate those effects on the brain,
This is the entire point of the brain in the vat idea. It's not that "you could posit it", you do posit it. The external world as we experience is utterly and completely controlled by the vat. If we correlate "experienced brain damage" (in our world) with "reduced mental faculties", that just means that the v...
How to check that you aren't a brain in a vat: inflict some minor brain damage on yourself. If it influences your mind's workings as predicted by neurology, now you know your brain is physically here, not in a vat somewhere.
No, there's no way of knowing that you're not being tricked. If your perception changes and your perception of your brain changes, that just means that the vat is tricking the brain to perceive that.
The "brain in the vat" idea takes its power from the fact that the vat controller (or the vat itself) can cause you to perceive anything it wants.
That's a flagrant misinterpretation. The OP's intention was to say that innocent people don't get put in prison intentionally.
I sometimes get various ideas for inventions, but I'm not sure what to do with it, as they are often unrelated to my work, and I don't really possess the craftsmanship capabilities to make prototypes and market them or investigate them on my own. Does anyone have experience and/or recommendations for going about selling or profiting from these ideas?
This comment just seems really harsh to me... I understand what you're saying but surely the author doesn't have bad intentions here...
This seems very well written and I'd like to complement you on that regard. I find the shaman example amusing and also very fun to read.
For Sophie, if she has a large data set, then her theory should be able to predict a data set for the same experimental configuration, and then the the two data sets would be compared. That is the obvious standard and I'm not sure why it's not permitted here. Perhaps you were trying to emphasize Sophie's desire to go on and test her theory on different experimental parameters, etc.
The original shaman example works very w...
There's a much better, simpler reason to reject cryonics: it isn't proven. There might be some good signs and indications, but it's still rather murky in there. That being said, it's rather clear from prior discussion that most people in this forum believe that it will work. I find it slightly absurd, to be honest. You can talk a lot about uncertainties and supporting evidence and burden of proof and so on, but the simple fact remains the same. There is no proof cryonics will work, either right now, 20, or 50 years in the future. I hate to sound so cynical...
This looks somewhat similar to what I was thinking and the attempt at formalization seems helpful. But it's hard for me to be sure. It's hard for me to understand the conceptual meaning and implications of it. What are your own thoughts on your formalization there?
I've also recently found something interesting where people denote the criterion of mathematical existence as freedom from contradiction. This can be found on pg. 5 of Tegmark here, attributed to Hilbert.
This looks disturbingly similar to my root idea and makes me want to do some reading on this...
B meant "This rock is heavier than this pencil." So, "B or ~B" means "Either this rock is heavier than this pencil, or this rock is not heavier than this pencil." Surely that is something that I can say truthfully regardless of where the pencil's weight lies. So I don't understand why you say that we can't say "B or ~B" if the pencil's weight lies in a certain range.
My idea was that the rock weighs 1.5 plus/minus sigma. If the pencil then weighs 1.5 plus/minus sigma, then you can't compare their weights with absol...
Little note to self:
I guess my original idea (i.e., the idea I had in my very first question in the open thread) was that the physical systems can be phrased in the form of tautologies. Now, I don't know enough about mathematical logic, but I guess my intuition was/is telling me that if you have a system which is completely described by tautologies, than by (hypothetically) fine-graining these tautologies to cover all options and then breaking the tautologies into alternative theorems, we have an entire "mathematical structure" (i.e., propositio...
Sorry, I caught that myself earlier and added a sidenote, but you must have read before I finished:
Side-note: I suppose these particular examples are all tautological so they don't quite show the full richness of a logical system. However, it would be easy to make theorems, such as "if A AND C, then B" (where C could be specified similar to A or B.) Then we would see not only tautologies but also theorems and other propositions which are all encoded as we would expect from a typical logical system.
Edit: Or, sorry, just to complete, in case yo...
I think Pigliucci is somewhat hung up on the technicality of whether a computer system can instantiate an (a) intelligence or (b) a human intelligence. Clearly he is gravely skeptical that it could be a human intelligence. But he seems to conflate or interchange this skepticism with his skepticism in a general computer intelligence. I don't think anybody really thinks an AI will be exactly like a human, so I'm not that impressed by these distinctions. Whereas it seems like Pigliucci thinks that's one of the main talking points? I wish Pigliucci read these comments so we could talk to him... are you out there Massimo?
Thank you for comment, and I hope this reply isn't too long for you to read. I think your last sentence sums up your comment somewhat:
...the territory ought not to be thought of as a logical system of which the features are axioms or theorems.
In support of this, you mention:
...What about a tautology such as "A => ~~A"? Tautologies do give us true statements about the territory. But, importantly, such a statement is not true in virtue of any feature of the territory. The tautology would have been true no matter what features the territory h
I can see how that phrasing would strike you as being redundant or inaccurate. To try to clarify --
The rocks not occupying the same point in space is a logical contradiction in the following sense: If it wasn't a logical contradiction, there wouldn't be anything preventing it. You might claim this is a "physical" contradiction or a contradiction of "reality", but I am attempting to identify this feature as a signature example of a sort of logic of reality.
It's an interesting idea but I feel very skeptical about the generic plan. Personally, a revulsion for organized/standardized education is what drove me to look at things like Less Wrong in the first place. I think this is fairly common in the community, with many people interested in discussion of akrasia and self-work habits.
Also, considering the informality of ideas like "I want to be a good rationalist", I would expect this sort of thing to be much more open-ended and unstructured anyways. It doesn't seem to fit with the idea of a rigid syst... (read more)