Bongo

Harry didn't hear Hermione's testimony. Therefore, he can go back in time and change it to anything that would produce the audience reaction he saw, without causing paradox.

Replying toA singularity scenario

Bongo14y

A singularity scenario

I almost downvoted this because when I clicked on it from my RSS reader, it appeared to have been posted on main LW instead of discussion (known bug). This might be the reason for a lot of mysterious downvoting, actually.

Replying to"Nice Guys Finish First" - Youtube Video of selected reading (by Dawkins) from The Selfish Gene

Bongo14y

"Nice Guys Finish First" - Youtube Video of selected reading (by Dawkins) from The Selfish Gene

(Bug report: I was sent to this post via this link, and I see MAIN bolded above the title instead of DISCUSSION. The URL is misleading too, shouldn't urls of discussion posts contain "/r/discussion/" instead of "/lw"?)

(EDIT: Grognor just told me that "every discussion post has a main-style URL that bolds MAIN")

Replying toCult impressions of Less Wrong/Singularity Institute

Bongo14y

Cult impressions of Less Wrong/Singularity Institute

fraction of revenue that ultimately goes to paying staff wages

About a third in 2009, the last year for which we have handy data.

Replying toHarry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 10

Bongo14y

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 10

Snape says this in both MoR and the original book:

"I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death"

Isn't this silly? Of course you can stopper death, because duh, poisons exist.

It might be just a slip-up in the original book, but I'm hoping it will somehow make sense in MoR. My first thought was that maybe a magical death potion couldn't be stopped using magical healing, unlike non-magical poisons.

I asked this on IRC and got some interesting ideas. feep thought it might mean that you can make a Potion of Dementor, which would fit since dementors are avatars of death in MoR and stoppering death would be actually impressive if it meant that. Orionstein suggested it might be a potion made from eg. a bullet that's killed someone, which, given what we know of how potions work from chapter 78, might also result in a potion with deathy effects above and beyond just those of poison.

Replying toThe Singularity Institute's Arrogance Problem

Bongo14y

The Singularity Institute's Arrogance Problem

This usually stops me from using myself as examples, sometimes with the result that the post stays unwritten or unpublished.

You could just tell the story with "me" replaced by "my friend" or "someone I know" or "Bob". I'd hate to miss a W_D post because of a trivial thing like this.

Replying toWelcome to Less Wrong!

Bongo14y

Welcome to Less Wrong!

I ... was shocked at how downright anti-informative the field is

Explain?

shocked at how incredibly useless statistics is

Explain?

The opposite happened with the parapsychology literature

Elaborate?

Replying toWelcome to Less Wrong!

Bongo14y

Welcome to Less Wrong!

algorithmic probability ... does not say that naturalistic mechanistic universes are a priori more probable!

Explain?

Replying toWelcome to Less Wrong!

Bongo14y

Welcome to Less Wrong!

confirmation bias ... doesn't actually exist.

Explain?

Replying toWelcome to Less Wrong!

Bongo14y

Welcome to Less Wrong!

I wonder how this comment got 7 upvotes in 9 minutes.

EDIT: Probably the same way this comment got 7 upvotes in 6 minutes.

LW's front page freezes, hangs and bugs on Chrome

Bongo

15y

Browser is Chrome 12.0.742.122. It doesn't happen on Firefox. "It" is:

sometimes I can't click on links and eventually I get Chrome's "dead tab" notification
other times it keeps loading, even though while I wait for it to load I can go to, say, my user page and have it load right away
twice I've gotten weird graphical bugs on it. Screenshots: 1 2

To reiterate, it only happens on the front page, the one you get when you go to lesswrong.com. Other pages are fine. Perhaps it's the map?

LW's image problem: "Rationality" is suspicious

Bongo

15y

Concerning Less Wrong's tagline, consider this plausible reaction of someone looking at LW for the first time:

Cut the crap, nobody cares about rationality in the abstract. Just tell me what view you're trying to push under the guise of presenting it as the only "rational" one.

And here are two real quotes from 2009:

[concerning the ban on SIAI discussion during the first weeks of LW] I think it was so that newcomers wouldn't think that LW are a bunch of fringe technophiles that just want to have their cause associated with rationality.

And in reply:

But that's pretty much what LW is, no? I've long suspected that "rationality," as discussed here, was a bit of a ruse designed to insinuate a (misleading) necessary connection between being rational and supporting transhumanist ideals.

The quoted text speaks for itself really. So therefore I think LW's admins/web designers should seriously consider replacing the rationality tagline with something more savory.

-3

lessannoying.org

Bongo

15y

What does it mean?

Extremely Counterfactual Mugging or: the gist of Transparent Newcomb

Bongo

15y

Omega will either award you $1000 or ask you to pay him $100. He will award you $1000 if he predicts you would pay him if he asked. He will ask you to pay him $100 if he predicts you wouldn't pay him if he asked.

Omega asks you to pay him $100. Do you pay?

This problem is roughly isomorphic to the branch of Transparent Newcomb (version 1, version 2) where box B is empty, but it's simpler.

Here's a diagram:

Punishing future crimes

Bongo

15y

Here's an edited version of a puzzle from the book "Chuck Klosterman four" by Chuck Klosterman.

It is 1933. Somehow you find yourself in a position where you can effortlessly steal Adolf Hitler's wallet. The theft will not effect his rise to power, the nature of WW2, or the Holocaust. There is no important identification in the wallet, but the act will cost Hitler forty dollars and completely ruin his evening. You don't need the money. The odds that you will be caught committing the crime are negligible. Do you do it?

When should you punish someone for a crime they will commit in the future? Discuss.

Omega can be replaced by amnesia

Bongo

15y

Let's play a game. Two times, I will give you an amnesia drug and let you enter a room with two boxes inside. Because of the drug, you won't know whether this is the first time you've entered the room. On the first time, both boxes will be empty. On the second time, box A contains $1000, and Box B contains $1,000,000 iff this is the second time and you took only box B the first time. You're in the room, do take both boxes or only box B?

This is equivalent to Newcomb's Problem in the sense that any strategy does equally well on both, where by "strategy" I mean a mapping from info to (probability distributions over) actions.

I suspect that any problem with Omega can be transformed into an equivalent problem with amnesia instead of Omega.

Does CDT return the winning answer in such transformed problems?

Discuss.

Pascal's Gift

Bongo

15y

If Omega offered to give you 2^n utils with probability 1/n, what n would you choose?

This problem was invented by Armok from #lesswrong. Discuss.

Should LW have a public censorship policy?

Bongo

15y

It might mollify people who disagree with the current implicit policy, and make discussion about the policy easier. Here's one option:

There's a single specific topic that's banned because the moderators consider it a Basilisk. You won't come up with it yourself, don't worry. Posts talking about the topic in too much detail will be deleted.

One requirement would be that the policy be no more and no less vague than needed for safety.

Discuss.

Does TDT pay in Counterfactual Mugging?

Bongo

15y

On one hand, this old article said TDT doesn't pay. On the other hand, I imagine TDT not paying would be a slam-dunk argument for favoring UDT, which pays, and I haven't seen people make that argument. So I'm confused here. Thanks.

Edit: this wiki page explains all the jargon

Sleeping Beauty as a decision problem (solved)

Bongo

15y

EDIT: User:Misha solved it

First, here's the Sleeping Beauty problem, from Wikipedia:

The paradox imagines that Sleeping Beauty volunteers to undergo the following experiment. On Sunday she is given a drug that sends her to sleep. A fair coin is then tossed just once in the course of the experiment to determine which experimental procedure is undertaken. If the coin comes up heads, Beauty is awakened and interviewed on Monday, and then the experiment ends. If the coin comes up tails, she is awakened and interviewed on Monday, given a second dose of the sleeping drug, and awakened and interviewed again on Tuesday. The experiment then ends on Tuesday, without flipping the coin again.

... (read 507 more words →)

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

Should LW have a public censorship policy?

Omega can be replaced by amnesia

Pascal's Gift

Extremely Counterfactual Mugging or: the gist of Transparent Newcomb

Bongo

Bongo

LW's front page freezes, hangs and bugs on Chrome

LW's image problem: "Rationality" is suspicious

lessannoying.org

Extremely Counterfactual Mugging or: the gist of Transparent Newcomb

Punishing future crimes

Omega can be replaced by amnesia

Pascal's Gift

Bongo

Should LW have a public censorship policy?

Omega can be replaced by amnesia

Pascal's Gift

Extremely Counterfactual Mugging or: the gist of Transparent Newcomb

Bongo

Bongo

LW's front page freezes, hangs and bugs on Chrome

LW's image problem: "Rationality" is suspicious

lessannoying.org

Extremely Counterfactual Mugging or: the gist of Transparent Newcomb

Punishing future crimes

Omega can be replaced by amnesia

Pascal's Gift