All of Coacher's Comments + Replies

How do you solve interpersonal problems when neither sides can see themselves as the one in fault?

Is there any other kind?

I wanted to recommend she applied for graphic design and video editing work which she is talented in, since she isn't sure what she can do career-wise, but now it's too late. I wanted to watch I, origins with her since it reflects our story. But now it's too late. I wanted to watch her favourite movie: 'one day' with her, which also reflects our story, but not it's too late. I wanted to hand write her a letter, but now it's too late. I wanted to suprise her after or during work, but now it's too late. I want to share with her 6/7 major secrets (the 7th be

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Having this in mind, could it be possible to construct such roulette betting system, which have positive expected utility value?

2[anonymous]
Not if the marginal utility of money decreases as you have more. If your utility function has convex parts then it might be possible, though. If you have $1000 but owe the Mafia $2000 and they're coming to collect, betting it all on black might be a good idea.

Buying insurance is rational for low chance, high cost (i.e. bigger than what you have in your bank account at the moment) risks. It is not rational for low cost risks, like loosing your phone, unless you tend to loose your phone more often than insurance companies accounts for.

Another hypothesis - the smarter you sound the less friends you tend to have.

3OrphanWilde
Most people like having at least one smart friend. The trick is not to make other people feel stupid, which many (most?) smart people are very bad at.
0Lumifer
I suspect it's more of a golden middle kind of thing -- people out in both tails of the distribution tend to have social problems.
6username2
Fewer!

Could it also be, that being rational deprives portion of CPU/RAM of human brains, that would otherwise be used for something better?

I'll be scared, when they do Counter Strike.

The problem here is that we are talking about two different concepts - experienced moments (as in antophics) and Everett branches (as in Many Words). There is a way to think of them as the same, but they not necessary are. Like if there is Bob before measuring spin, and two Bobs - Bob-up and Bob-down, after measuring, what is bigger probability to experience - being bob before measuring spin or being bob after measuring spin? (TBH I have no idea)

By "measures as" I mean as in what was the probability to experience exact this moment, from the set of all possible moments that "exists" (or can be experienced). And by "measures as 1" I mean, that if several physical "carriers" produces exact same experience, that counts as 1 experience in the grand total set of experiences, and probability to feel exactly that is 1/(count of all different experiences). Now I know this is controversial and counter intuitive. But still this is quite plausible, given what we even kn... (read more)

2Dagon
Hmm. I still think you need rigor in how you know what differences are important and which are ignored. There is no such thing as actually identical universe-states across branches, so you're somehow collapsing different physical things into "same" experience. If you asked how many movies does a person know on that, they'd likely say 1, because they're collapsing all the copies, which vary only trivially. If you ask "what's the probability that a randomly chosen disc in a used DVD store is Avatar", then the ratio of individual copies matters. The purpose and type of comparison matters a lot in determining whether distinct things are fungible. To be clear, I totally get that two experiences can be indistinguishable as anticipation or memory for an entity. I'm just not sure why it matters when counting universe-states for the purposes of a probability estimate.

I agree with criticism for 2 assumption. Although I have this intuition (based on possibly very wrong intuitions I have about QM), that argument still works even without it: Imagine same human runs the simulation. Then he goes to another table where he runs spin measuring experiment, with 50/50 probability of getting either up or down. After seeing the result, there is now two different consciousness of him, but there is still just one copy of simulated brains as they did not saw the result.

Also, what if intelligent life is just a rare event? Like not rare enough to explain Fermi paradox by itself, but rare enough, that we could be considered among earliest and therefore surprisingly early in the history of universe? Given how long universe will last, we actually are quite early: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

0turchin
(Retracted: If we take total number of stars that will be ever created we are somewhere in first 7 per cent (if I remember correctly - can't find a link), so we are early, but no surprisingly early) Update: I was wrong. we are surprisingly late. 95 per cent stars is already created. http://www.wired.com/2012/11/universe-making-stars/ Update 2: but when the Sun was born it was exactly 50 per cent of stars were already born. It is strong argument for rare earth.

On the other hand I don't see, why AI that does spread can not be a great filter. Lets assume:

  1. Every advanced civilization creates AI soon after creating radio.
  2. Every AI spreads immediately (hard take off) and does that in near speed of light.
  3. Every AI that reaches us, immediately kills us.
  4. We have not seen any AI and we are still alive. That can only be explained by anthropic principle - every advanced civilization, that have at least bit more advanced neighbors is already dead. Every advanced civilization, that have at least bit less advanced neighbors,
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1turchin
If it is true, we should find ourselves surprisingly early in the history of Universe. But if we consider that frequency of gamma-ray bursts is quickly diminishing, and so we could not be very early, because there were so many planet killing gamma-bursts, these two tendencies may cancel each other and we are just in time.

For hypothesis to hold AI needs to:

  1. Kill their creators efficiently.
  2. Don't spread
  3. Do both these things every time any AI is created with near 100% success ratio.

Seems a lot of presumptions, with no good arguments for any of them?

1Coacher
On the other hand I don't see, why AI that does spread can not be a great filter. Lets assume: 1. Every advanced civilization creates AI soon after creating radio. 2. Every AI spreads immediately (hard take off) and does that in near speed of light. 3. Every AI that reaches us, immediately kills us. 4. We have not seen any AI and we are still alive. That can only be explained by anthropic principle - every advanced civilization, that have at least bit more advanced neighbors is already dead. Every advanced civilization, that have at least bit less advanced neighbors, have not seen them, as they have not yet invented radio. This solves Fermi paradox and we can still hope to see some primitive life forms in other planets. (also AI may be approaching us at speed of light and will wipe us out any moment now)

Can it predict something real/measurable?

Adding additional unneeded assumptions does not make hypothesis more likely. Just halting and not leaving any retarded children explains observations just as well if not better.

0James_Miller
It might not be direct contract but rather our astronomers have long since detected signs of alien life, but this has been kept from us.
  1. This looks far fetched, but interesting strategy. Does it perhaps ever occur in nature? I.e. do any predators wait for their prey to become stronger/smarter, before luring them into the trap?

  2. I guess they could, but to what end?

  3. Why wait?

0turchin
1. Andamanese )) 2. Maybe alien nanobots control part of the galaxy which is concurred by host civilization and prevent any other civilization to invade or appear. 3. Observational selection: we could find our selves only in civilization which berserkers have high attack treshold (or do not exist).
2Lumifer
Notice how, say, the Andamanese are entirely safe from online phishing scams or identity theft.
Coacher-40

Freud said its all because we want to f* our mothers.

It seems you have some uncommon understanding of what word evidence means. Evidence is peace of information, not some physical thing.

0Lumifer
I like this :-)

There is no difference in saying that there is no evidence and that there might be evidence, but we don't have ability to detect it. Does god exist? Well maybe there is plenty evidence that it does, we just don't have the ability to see it?

-1buybuydandavis
Big difference. You don't know how much money is in my wallet. I do. You have no evidence, and you don't have a means to detect it, but it doesn't mean there is no evidence to be had. That third little star off the end of the milky way may be a gigantic alien beacon transmitting a spread spectrum welcome message, but we just haven't identified it as such, or spent time trying to reconstruct the message from the spread spectrum signal. We see it. We record it at observatories every night. But we haven't identified it as a signal, nor decoded it.
0James_Miller
Crazy Idea--What if we are an isolated people and the solution to the Fermi paradox is that aliens have made contact with earth, but our fellow humans have decided to keep this information from us. Yes, this seems extremely unlikely, but so do all other solutions to the Fermi paradox.
Coacher-10

Usually lack of evidence is evidence of lacking. But given their existence AND lack of evidence, I think probability of purposefully hiding (or at least being cautious about not showing off too much) is bigger than they just doing their thing and we just don't see it even though we are looking really hard.

0buybuydandavis
Big difference between there being a lack of evidence, and a lack of an ability to detect and identify evidence which exists. I think people are rather cheeky to assume that we necessarily have the ability to detect a SI.

What about lifetime of HUGE pleasure of eating those delicious ribs? It seems you underestimate the pleasure, most people get of eating meat and overestimate the suffering of animals living in the farm (assuming they do have consciousness and their pain matters). Yes it seems extremely bad when compared to the way we humans live in the age of technology, but you should compare it to things like living in the wilderness with predator always on your back or not living at all.

Looking from utilitarian perspective, why don't you consider the pleasure of eating meat here at all?

1[anonymous]
Because the pleasure of eating meat is very small conpared to the pain of a factory farmed animal. And I find it very unlikely, that i end up in a state, where I do not fully discount animal utility (in which case i would. Just continue to eat meat out of habit, without deliberately conaidering pleasure) , but discount it so much, that my very small pleasure of eating meat compares to a livetime of pain for the animal.

Now somebody will steal the idea about bikeshops.

I quite understand the point author is making or a feeling that he has, which could be described by this one sentence: It is so easy for women to give sex and so important for men to get sex, that for women not to give it to men is just plain cruel. Everything is OK with this reasoning except one thing - assumption that it is easy for women to give sex. It is actually hard. Now this might not be obvious or intuitive from a man point of view, but you can get to this conclusion if you consider evolution. When evolution took place, to have sex with a man for... (read more)