CoffeeStain
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It sometimes seems to me that those of us who actually have consciousness are in a minority, and everyone else is a p-zombie.
When I myself run across apparent p-zombies, they usually look at my arguments as if I am being dense over my descriptions of consciousness. And I can see why, because without the experience of consciousness itself, these arguments must sound like they make consciousness out to be an extraneous hypothesis to help explain my behavior. Yet, even after reflecting on this objection, it still seems there is something to explain besides my behavior, which wouldn't bother me if I were only trying to explain my behavior, including the... (read more)
Perhaps abiguity aversion is merely a good heuristic.
Well of course. Finite ideal rational agents don't exist. If you were designing decision-theory-optimal AI, that optimality is a property of its environment, not any ideal abstract computing space. I can think of at least one reason why ambiguity aversion could be the optimal algorithm in environments with limited computing resources:
Consider a self-modification algorithm that adapts to new problem domains. Restructuring (learning) is considered the hardest of tasks, and so the AI modifies scarcely. Thus, as it encounters new decision-theoretic problems, it often does not choose self-modification, instead clodging together old circuitry and/or answers to conserve compute cycles. And... (read more)
Shouldn't this post be marked [Human] so that uploads and AIs don't need to spend cycles reading it?
...I'd like to think that this joke bears the more subtle point that a possible explanation for the preparedness gap in your rationalist friends is that they're trying to think like ideal rational agents, who wouldn't need to take such human considerations.
I have a friend with Crohn's Disease, who often struggles with the motivation to even figure out how to improve his diet in order to prevent relapse. I suggested he should find a consistent way to not have to worry about diet, such as prepared meals, a snack plan, meal replacements (Soylent is out soon!), or dietary supplement.
As usual, I'm pinging the rationalists to see if there happens to be a medically inclined recommendation lurking about. Soylent seems promising, and doesn't seem the sort of thing that he and his doctor would have even discussed. My appraisal of his doctor consulations seem to be something along the lines of... (read more)
There has been mathematically proven software and the space shuttle came close though that was not proven as such.
Well... If you know what you wish to prove then it's possible that there exists a logical string that begins with a computer program and ends with it as a necessity. But that's not really exciting. If you could code in the language of proof-theory, you already have the program. The mathematical proof of a real program is just a translation of the proof into machine code and then showing it goes both ways.
You can potentially prove a space shuttle program will never crash, but you can't prove the space shuttle... (read more)
Depends if you count future income. Highest paying careers are often so because only those willing to put in extra effort at their previous jobs get promoted. This is at least true in my field, software engineering.
The film's trailer strikes me as being aware of the transhumanist community in a surprising way, as it includes two themes that are otherwise not connected in the public consciousness: uploads and superintelligence. I wouldn't be surprised if a screenwriter found inspiration from the characters of Sandberg, Bostrom, or of course Kurzweil. Members of the Less Wrong community itself have long struck me as ripe for fictionalization... Imagine if a Hollywood writer actually visited.
They can help with depression.
I've personally tried this and can report truth, but will caveat that the expectation that I will force myself into a morning cold shower often causes oversleeping, which rather exacerbates depression.
Often in Knightian problems you are just screwed and there's nothing rational you can do.
As you know, this attitude isn't particularly common 'round these parts, and while I fall mostly in the "Decision theory can account for everything" camp, there may still be a point there. "Rational" isn't really a category so much as a degree. Formally, it's a function on actions that somehow measures how much that action corresponds to the perfect decision-theoretic action. My impression is that somewhere there's Godelian consideration lurking, which is where the "Omega fines you exorbitantly for using TDT" thought experiment comes into play.
That thought experiment never bothered me much, as it just... (read more)
Living in the same house and coordinating lives isn't a method for ensuring that people stay in love; being able to is proof that they are already in love. An added social construct is a perfectly reasonable option to make it harder to change your mind.