In arguments for universal healthcare, the speaker usually points towards something like human dignity. Which is important, and you should also care about it. (Read Kant's Ethics, or some other moral system, if you don't know why.) But alas, cynicism is eating the world, so I speak the words of...
Abstract There are situations, where inaction would lead to an interesting situation, which could go badly if you make a wrong decision. AKA The Funni. However, sometimes you can take a preemptive action which would lead to a boring situation. You should consider this option more times because it might...
As I heard the current discourse about scaling laws, is that we trained the models on the entire (textual) internet, and still haven't found superintelligence. They started to use video and audio data, but these sources are less meaning-dense (encoding a picture of a room takes as much data as two books of of characters), so we could be at the edge of scaling unless a new, more data-efficient model arises.
Let's assume humans can generate 40 bit/sec meaningful data. Estimates of information density in natural spoken languages converges around this number cross-culturally, so it could be a natural processing limit in the brain. Quarter-third of the... (read more)
In arguments for universal healthcare, the speaker usually points towards something like human dignity. Which is important, and you should also care about it. (Read Kant's Ethics, or some other moral system, if you don't know why.) But alas, cynicism is eating the world, so I speak the words of money.
When a human is born, they are stupid. Most babies can't even speak properly; they just start screaming, and you have to guess what they need. But as they age, they start to learn. Through a technology called society, they are educated on languages, on tools, and on how to reproduce the technology called society. At some point, they will be so... (read 657 more words →)
They're in conflict with the unmeasurable unknown part of the world. As I read it (correct me if I'm wrong), if there is only a single probabilistic model (bayesian reduction?) then it will follow the expected maximum.
If there are multiple possible models, then it will assume the worst model. But to assume better, something like Kierkegaard's leap of faith needed, believeing a model not based on reason. I mean, the infra-parts tries to say something about very unknown models, so it's somewhat on the boundary of reason, and it's possible that the logical apparatus stops.
The (ancient) Greek form of debate or dialogue was based on the notion of common good. If ONE of the participants feel bad about it, then EVERYONE loses it. Yeah, during the dialogue the partner (opponent?) will look dumb, but afterwards they reach a conclusion, they learn something and part happily.
Trolling on the other hand is just a quick crack at the other's worldview. The point is provoking a response from other's, not educating and lifting them up. The motive of ending with MUTUAL respect is missing.
Like, dialogue is a martial art; you can fight with it but point is mastering one's own body. On the other... (read more)
So-called "natural selection" is just the survivorship bias of intelligent design.
The Nash equilibrium is
The Nash equilibrium is a solution for non-cooperative games. Politics, almost by definition, is about cooperation. Cooperative games are a superset of non-cooperatives, because in the case of no communication it reduces to one.
The word "signalling" in virtue signalling is a form of communication. Democracy has many forms, the most common is representative democracy. In it, the voter does not choose a policy directly, but chooses a delegate. The job of the delegate is to learn about the world (for example economics), and make a decision based on this information. If the decision is bad for the voters, the they will be replaced in the next election. The moral... (read more)
An arbitrary constant you expect to multiply by.
Usually, k is not just an arbitrary real number, but an integer, like in .
For arbitrary constants to multiply by I think (lambda, greek letter) is used.
I think this is a good object level post. Problem is, I don't think MIRI is at the object level. Quote from the comm. strat.: "The main audience we want to reach is policymakers."
Communication is no longer a passive background channel for observing a world, but speech becomes an action changing it. Predictions start to influence the things they predict.
Say AI doom is a certainty. People will be afraid, and stop research. Few years later doom doesn't happen, everyone complains.
Say AI doom is an impossibility. Research continues, something something paperclips. Few years later nobody will complain because no one will be alive.
(This example itself is overly simplistic, real-world politics and speech actions... (read more)
Let's say A is smarter than B if A knows about topic X, but B doesn't.
Step 1: Let's say you don't know about quantum biology. But Charlie knows, because they currently do a phd in it.
Step 2: Go to Charlie. Say: "I heard about quantum biology, and it sounds interesting. Could you give quick intro on it?"
Step 3: Charlie says (eager to talk about the cool idea they found): "Sure. Quantum biology is [two hour forty-seven minute long monologe]."
Step 4: Important! Listen to it.
Step 5: BOOM! Now you also know about quantum biology.
Repeat it for every topic. If you partition humanity along every topics,... (read more)
Taking a bad option away might be worse for a person, but will be much better for the people. These regulations (no selling organs or sex) exists, becuse in a free market there would be a race-to-bottom which would not increase human values.
Suppose we allow selling sex for rent. The number of rentable apartmants stays the same; however, there will more demand for them, because some people can now pay for them by non-monetary means. Because of this, the rent prices will increase, and that would just accelerate the rent-problem.
While exchanging kidneys for medical treatment is OK for me, it should not be mixed with the standard money market. The forces of... (read more)
It's evening, the sun is set. A man walks up to a scholar:
"Scholar, the sun rose yesterday and today morning. Will it rise again tomorrow?"
"Man, I don't know, it's kinda dark right now. Have you heard about the no free lunch theorem?"
There are situations, where inaction would lead to an interesting situation, which could go badly if you make a wrong decision. AKA The Funni.
However, sometimes you can take a preemptive action which would lead to a boring situation. You should consider this option more times because it might be better. Hence this post.
Epistemic vibes: this post was made by the opt-out gang.
Disclaimer: I bought "no" on the manifold.
Imagine the following: a trolly is hurtling towards a fork. You can pull a lever to change paths. If you pull the lever, the trolley will change to an empty track.
But the default track contains the classical 1-5 trolley, where you have to make a... (read 329 more words →)
One of my favourite Gettier-like problems is about black holes.
Say you have a very dense star. It is so dense, that the gravitational force on its surface is capable of pulling back even the particles of its light, leaving only a black hole in the sky. How large can it be with a given mass?
It's an easy exercise using Newtonian mechanics. Take a light particle with mass . Its gravitational energy at a distance is , and its kinetic energy is at the start. If the total energy is negative, then the path of the light particles will stay within a boundary. Therefore, the answer to the question is , if the object is smaller than this, then it will be a black hole.
Of course, for that dense objects, Newtonian predictions break down. We should care about curved spacetime and use general relativity in our calculations. The answer (to my knowledge) is the Schwarzschild radius, which is .
Ratio of profits
Marx's theory of capital was focused on the ratio of profits, not on their mass. Attacking it by saying we have so much good under capitalism does not disprove the theory, because it is simply a statement about the mass of goods.
Marx said that under capitalism companies maximise profitrate. (Not profit!) Suppose there are two strategies:
Strategy A will win, because it will give 1.5 dollars for each dollar of investment, while strategy B only nets 1 dollar for each dollar. The mass of profits... (read more)