All of devas's Comments + Replies

devas10

A 3D density map does not reveal the chemical structure by itself.

Since you also have the X-ray spectrogram of the material, you can narrow down the materials that have the same spectrogram but different densities - i.e. organic compounds and water

devas0-2

Wait, but airport scanners HAVE reached this type of analysis level - the only problem is that do so the x-ray emitter has to rotate around the bag (or the car in this instance) to create a 3D model of the objects within, which is then used to estimate density to a high degree - and from there things became much easier.

Of course, they're used to analyze bags, not cars, and the objects have to pass within...but still

3itaibn0
A 3D density map does not reveal the chemical structure of the material in the interior. You're describing abilities of X-ray scanning consistent with Constantin's description, which fall far short of a "tricorder" or detecting fentanyl inside a car. Looking it up airport scanners can also use millimeter-wave scanning, which I believe still fits Constantin's high-level description of scanning methods in the high-penetration/low-detail side of the tradeoff.
devas10

What is Nvc? Google fails me :-\

2Elo
https://youtu.be/l7TONauJGfc
2ESRogs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication
devas10

Thank you!

Your comment really shone light into things that were cloudy, it's a great help :-)

devas10

I might actually write such a post, but I see it as being more...parallel to this concept? Aimed in the same direction at least.

And the reason I wrote this is because it's my gut instinct that people starting out in a new field or job are more likely to suffer from underconfidence than overconfidence, which steals their time and resources.

Reading these comments, it seems obvious to me now that I should have framed it more in terms of who it was primarily addressed to; aside from the fact that this is advice I wish I'd heard some years in the past.

devas20

Edited to be more in line with what you said; edit was late because edit function doesn't seem to work on mobile.

-

Thank you for pointing out my mistake! You're right that that definition is precious. I'd only absorbed it in its already mutated version because my brain autocompleted it that way. Gonna think about this a bit.

devas50

This is a topic I am very interested in and would like to see explored in depth, but the huge wall of text at the beginning (and in other parts) meant I couldn't read this article.

Please chop this into paragraphs.

7BayesianMind
Done.
devas20

You have been revived.

At first, everything seems pretty swell: people from all over come to talk to you, you've been tapped to reconstruct some languages and customs from your failing memory, etc. etc. Wonder why they have mirrors everywhere, though.

Then you ask to access your bank account, and they laugh in your face.

You don't have rights, you disgusting monster.

You're part of the cretinous, self-indulgent generation who nearly ruined our planet, and whose crimes and demeanor are so horrible we can't even contemplate them.

You've already been judged [i]i... (read more)

0RowanE
"So, specifically my generation, not my parents' or Queen Victoria's or... yours? That's a bold strategy, let's see if it pays off." Maybe I have to spend a thousand years entertaining myself by making up total bullshit about my culture to troll the scientists, but eventually some group with completely different political beliefs will takeover, and maybe I'll share the same fate as the zookeepers but I'll damn sure be beaming the smuggest shiteating I-told-you-so grin at the zookeeper while the 41st-century neonazis hang us both in their day of the rope. But ok, sure, maybe it'd really suck, but the plausibility? Future generations collectively decide that punishing individuals for the crimes of the generation they were born in makes sense, future generations believe my generation committed crimes worth being that harsh in punishing, future generations think it's plausible they might accidentally commit said crimes but still find members of past generations culpable, criminals don't have rights in the future, future generations fail at between-generations prisoner's dilemmas, somehow the best way to learn about a previous generation is to examine in vitro an extremely eccentric sample of said generation... there could be more, but that's already enough conjunctions to flush the probability down the wazoo.
devas00

Good point. I'm going to make another, different post detailing the horrifying yet somewhat plausible idea your comment gave me which "fixes" that oversight.

In the meantime, there's this: you're assuming that in the future, you'll have rights, and agency.

devas00

I thought of the premise, decided to expand on it and comment, and then I read this comment.

So...huhh...I'm stealing this? I guess? From the future?

devas90

You are one of the first to be revived.

The technique is imperfect, and causes you massive neurological damage (think late stage Alzheimer's), trapping you in a nonverbal yet incredibly painful and horrifying state.

Due to advances in gerontology, you have a nearly infinite lifespan ahead of you, cognizant only of what you have lost.

When neuroscience finally advances to the point where you can be fixed, it's still not yet advanced enough to give you back your memories.

You're effectively a completely different person, and you know that.

0Academian
Seems not much worse than actual-death, given that in this scenario you (or the person who replaces you) could still choose to actually-die if you didn't like your post-cryonics life.
0RowanE
Well, my current self and associated memories/opinions is fine with the second part, this is basically just a Buddhist hell where afterwards I get reincarnated into the post-singularity future. ETA: also highly unlikely, since it happening to me is conditional on the scenario happening to anyone.
0Gurkenglas
Couldn't you get refrozen until they can fix that too?
devas00

Cut doctors pay and hire more?

This seems to me like an instinctually bad idea, although I wouldn't be able to tell you why.

Aside from that, the first thing that comes to mind would be to create an incentive for doing surgeries quickly - the surgeon who's average waiting time is lowest gets a bonus - but that would have very bad, not good, horrible side effects.

Create specialised sub-professions without the comprehensive training costs?

This has, I think, the highest potential. One would need to fight against entrenched lobbies and status quo bias, bu... (read more)

0NancyLebovitz
Probably concerns about quality.
devas00

2) a) I check the ticket, assuming I have nothing better to do and that I remember it. To be more precise, if there is a family emergency and I have to drive to the hospital for whatever reason, I will not go out of my way to jury-rig an internet connection and I won't look for the ticket before going out. I check the ticket because even a one in a million chance of free money is still free money. b)I am not very confident; I'm not sure, but a grossly inaccurate measure of how confident I would be is that I'd think there is a 1/10 chance of me having won.... (read more)

devas30

What automatic tracker did you use? I would like to find out how I`m spending my own time online as well

4emr
I use arbtt, in combination with arbtt-graph to visualize data. (You don't need arbtt-graph to get statistics, it just makes them look pretty). arbtt might require some technical skills, like using a command line interface instead of a "point and click" interface. I haven't used any, but if you're just interested in tracking Internet use, there are several browser plug-ins. These are probably the quickest and easiest to use. You almost certainly want something that runs entirely in the background (so avoid software that asks you to manually clock in and out; this is aimed at people who are tracking billable hours), and something that detects inactivity. Btw, manual data collection is always worth considering. In this case, you wouldn't want to do it long term, and it might change your behavior, but it could still be valuable. In fact, manually tracking can provide a quicker feedback loop to learn things like "so that's what XXX minutes doing YYY actually feels like". And you don't get stuck fighting to install software or wondering if it's really working correctly.
3Pablo
I tried quite a few; my favorite two are ManicTime and RescueTime.
devas00

Good point, I hadn't thought of that.

devas10

Depends on whether you consider "being able to comprehensively understand questions that may be misleading" to be a subset of calibration skills.

devas00

I think the computer games question has to do with tribal identity-people who love a particularly well known game might be more inclined to list it as being the best seller ever and put down higher confidence because they love it so much.

Kind of like owners of Playstations and Xboxs will debate the superiority of their technical specs regardless of whether they're superior or not.

9Jiro
I think the computer games result has to do with it being a bad question. There are many legitimate answers depending on how you interpret the question, including my answer that Minesweeper sells as a bundle with Windows and thus has probably sold more copies than anything else.
devas70

Physically? Maybe. information-wise? I heavily doubt it.

If the map is bigger than the territory, why not go live in the map? :-/

3johnlawrenceaspden
Physically's easy enough, but even information-wise, I had a guide to programming the Z80 that wouldn't have fit in the addressable memory of a Z80, let alone the processor. Will that do? If not, we should probably agree definitions before debating.
devas40

The map is smaller than the territory? I think?

4johnlawrenceaspden
I bet there are big maps of small territories somewhere.
devas60

Wikipedia says Stanislav Petrov is still alive and well; does he know about this celebration?

It feels like he'd be interested, does anyone know how to try and contact him?

2Shmi
He's been interviewed about it several times, see e.g. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24280831 or http://www.gazeta.ru/social/2013/02/26/4981721.shtml (in Russian).
devas30

One becomes vulnerable to Ind pretending to be Coo?

4V_V
Exactly.
devas30

I second this proposal. In the sites I've seen where it's implemented, I've found it extremely useful.

-1RPMcMurphy
.
devas200

it would probably be some kind of weird signalling game, maybe. On the other hand, posting:"I don't understand how etc etc, please, somebody explain to me the reasoning behind it" would be a good strategy to start debating and opening an avenue to "convert" others

devas50

Now I really, really, really want to know in what SI units rationality is measured.

Litres, perhaps?

2Lumifer
Yoctoeliezers, of course.
4Luke_A_Somers
Inverse Watts? Edit: Oh wait. Lumens, duh.
devas30

Another test could be to see if its performance in its select field suddenly jumps up in effectiveness. To give a real world example, when Google (which is the closest thing we have to an AI right now, I think) gained the ability to suggest terms based on what one has already typed, it became much easier to search for things. Or when it will eventually gain the ability to parse human language, or so on.

devas70

And in fact, I seem to recall OkCupid doing another informal study a couple of years ago on which profile pictures were the best at getting replies and messages; and finding out that these were not the ones which explicitly showed the person's face and physique, but the ones which showed the person engaged in a cool activity (skiing, bunjee jumping, swimming etc)

devas20

Now I'm interested in the steepness of that line, and by the fact personality scores seem to be lower than "looks" score. Also, are universities using OkCupid as a resource in their studies? I know 1 university has famously used facebook, but OkCupid seems much more open and amenable to this kind of thing

1Nornagest
That says to me that the variance in people's estimates of personality is higher than the variance in their estimates of looks (although it's modulated by looks), which doesn't sound too unreasonable. It still centers around 3, though, so the average is probably about the same. I'm surprised I don't see more discontinuity around 4 on either axis, which marked (when I last used OKCupid) the system's only significant threshold: a rating of 4 or higher delivered a vague message about having an admirer, and mutual ratings of 4 or higher meant that the system dropped the coy act and just told you who liked you. Maybe they changed that before collecting this data.
devas00

Thing is, it's when an AI is much much wiser than a human that it is at its most dangerous. So, I'd go with programming the AI in such a way that it wouldn't manipulate the human, postponing the 'coming of age' ceremony indefinitely

devas30

I have a question: why should Albert limit itself to showing the powerpoint to his engineers? A potentially unfriendly AI sounds like something most governments would be interested in :-/

Aside from that, I'm also puzzled by the fact that Albert immediately leaps at trying to speed up Albert's own rate of self-improvement instead of trying to bring Bertram down-Albert could prepare a third powerpoint asking the engineers if Albert can hack the power grid and cut power to Bertram or something along those lines. Or Albert could ask the engineers if Albert can... (read more)

2Douglas_Reay
The situation is intended to be a tool, to help think about issues involved in it being the 'friendly' move to deceive the programmers. The situation isn't fully defined, and no doubt one can think of other options. But I'd suggest you then re-define the situation to bring it back to the core decision. By, for instance, deciding that the same oversight committee have given Albert a read-only connection to the external net, which Albert doesn't think he will be able to overcome unaided in time to stop Bertram. Or, to put it another way "If a situation were such, that the only two practical options were to decide between (in the AI's opinion) overriding the programmer's opinion via manipulation, or letting something terrible happen that is even more against the AI's supergoal than violating the 'be transparent' sub-goal, which should a correctly programmed friendly AI choose?"
devas00

All three options fit the bill, actually, but I was going for strongly dislike. Man, I must have been more tired than I realized to miss a whole word like that.

devas50

Aren't we all forgetting something big and obvious[1] that's staring us in the face? :-/ There are people out there for whom "rationality" is counter to their values! Imagine someone who reads the horoscope every morning, who always trusts their gut feelings and emotions, who's a sincere believer in homeopathy, etc etc (whatever you think an irrational person believes). Such a person would probably strongly rationality, rationalists, and the complex of ideas surrounding rationality, for probably understandable reasons (i.e. if a group consistent... (read more)

6lirene
A bit offtopic to the discussion itself, but trusting your "gut feelings" is rational in certain circumstances (or, in the more precise lingo, in certain conditions System 1 will be faster /and/ more correct than System 2). I actually don't remember whether HPMOR teaches it somewhere (if anybody knows, could you share a link?). I often use this as a bridge when explaining applied rationality techniques to friends, because it makes the techniques more relatable and gives me a good opening ("I'm totally with you on trusting your gut feelings in situation X, and here're some interesting explanations from psychology research on why it works", using familiar topics to show your System 1 that research can explain life and that research can be interesting!, so then I can continue into "on the other hand it's probably not good to do the same in situation Y, here's some interesting research on why it's so"). It also helps dispel the Straw Vulcan view of rationality. The point being that advocating for (applied) rationality can sometimes come across as saying "you, being human, have no idea how to make good decisions in an environment populated by humans, wipe everything clean and begin anew", instead of "making decisions is hard, but here're some things you already seem to do right, and here're some things you could get better at".
0Bobertron
Since I kind of like your comment, I'd liked to know how that sentence should have sounded. Strongly dislike, hate, mistrust?
devas30

this is actually related to my pet theory that, at least in signalling status terms, it is better to call one's self "aspiring rationalist" rather than "rationalist" full stop.

The problem with that is that the first is longer, less concise, and more awkward to use :-/

devas150

This sounds like something from Schelling's strategy of conflict, although I haven't read it

7satt
It's kind of reminiscent of this, from pages 43-44 of the 1980 edition: Compare also Daniel Ellsberg's Kidnap game.
jaime2000120

Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking. General Broadwings thinks General Derpy is bluffing, so Derpy credibly precommits herself to not releasing him by telling him information that would surely doom her army if she did. She gives up the choice of freeing Broadwings, and comes out ahead for it.

devas00

That may be so, but it doesn't mean it might not be effective; before facebook, social networking websites hadn't really taken off, and-to give an example already in the post-fundraisers existed even before kickstarter; it doesn't mean kickstarter didn't make things easier for a lot of people.

The main draw of this kind of program, I think, is that it would remove a lot of the trivial inconveniences that come with voting, and it could work as a beeminder-like prompt for slacktivists, thereby making them actually useful.

devas20

Wait this is actually brilliant in a couple of ways, because to get the right (estimated) answer, the listener has to distinguish between probability that one of the three is a rabbi and this is a joke, and probability that this is a joke if we put the probability of the third being a rabbi at 100%.

It follows the setup of a rationality calibration question while subverting it and rendering "guessing the teacher's password" useless, since c) is (maybe) higher than a) or b)

devas60

I actually hadn't considered the time; in retrospect, though, it does make a lot of sense. Thank you! :-)

devas00

I am surprised by the fact that this post has so little karma. Since one of the...let's call them "tenets" of the rationalism community is the drive to improve one's own self, I would have imagined that this kind of criticism would have been welcomed.

Can anyone explain this to me, please? :-/

I'm not sure what the number you were seeing when you wrote this was, and for my own part I didn't upvote it because I found it lacked enough focus to retain my interest, but now I'm curious: how much karma would you expect a welcomed post to have received between the "08:52AM" and "01:29:45PM" timestamps?

devas40

Okay, I believe I have a very stupid question I need to ask:

Why isn't there more research in progress on how to wake up people from cryonics? Or, rather, why aren't more people sticking hamsters and dogs under liquid nitrogen*, then trying to revive them and bring them back to "full life", and seeing if dear ole Spot remembers all the tricks we taught him?

If such things are underway, why aren't there more news and data on this?

*gross oversimplification is funny

2Alsadius
Because it's a very small industry, and nobody has the money for it?
8[anonymous]
Because anything bigger than a cubic centimeter or two that you try to vitrify always comes out of vitrification full of massive cuts and chemical toxicity and ice crystals and leaky membranes to the point that calling it temporarily 'alive' is a stretch. This is not a problem with the revival process, but with the preservation process. Even freezing samples of cultured cells has a mortality rate.
gwern160

Who would be willing to fund this research? The cryonics organizations usually run at losses (membership and preservation fees do not pay 100% of expenses) and don't have the money for much research. And the public doesn't care - have you donated to the nearest available equivalents like the Brain Preservation Prize? If you haven't and are unwilling, then you have your answer.

2DanielLC
I'm told that there have been brains with no activity that have been revived, showing that that at least isn't where all the information is stored. It doesn't prove that cryonics is possible, but it disproves the most obvious reason why it wouldn't be.
3ChristianKl
Because cryonics is not simply about putting people under liquid oxygen. It also involve given people a highly toxic substance that prevent ice crystals from forming inside their brains. The substance does no harm if you are frozen is ice but if you would just try to revive people the substance would kill them. You need nanotech to remove it. Cryonics needs nanotech to revive patients. Currently there no good nanotech for doing so. It makes more sense to wait till we have good nanobots and then attempt to revive organisms.
devas00

Actually, I have pretty much your same misgivings/objections; it didn't feel particularly scary to me either :-/

maybe it's the fact that uploading/etc. is basically a foregone conclusion when facing a superintelligence? Although I thought that was obvious from the concept itself :-/

devas00

How about a part in binary where the AI itself sings with mustache-twirling villainy? :-P

devas00

I don't want to die.

-Looking at the problem, as far as I can see an emotional approach would be the one with the best chance to succeed: the only question is, would it work best by immediately acknowledging that it is itself a machine (like I did in what I wrote up there, although subtly) or by throwing in... I dunno, how would this work:

Oh god, oh god, please, I beg you I don't want to die!

devas80

could you point me to the heuristics that say that violence is always a bad strategy? I have a strong gut feeling that they're right, but I'd really like to see them in a formalized or semi-formalized fashion :-)

2jimrandomh
There's nothing to point at; that's the whole heuristic. While there are lots of good arguments for violence being bad in general and in specifics, the only thing a heuristic requires is that when asking "is violence a good strategy here?" the answer is almost always "nope". Which it is, but for a slightly different mix of reasons every time you ask it.
3drethelin
Seconding this request. I would say the basic argument is similar to arguments against theft as a generalized policy eg it disincentivizes creation and hard work. Generalized violence disincentivizes civilization if you look at civilization as a framework for the interaction of strangers in large groups or individually but interchangeably. Basically, a culture of violence devolves to groups of people that can only trust very small numbers of other people on the level of family or tribe. The idea that you can venture into town to purchase anything you want and not have to worry about being murdered by a stranger is extremely important, in my view.
devas00

Ok, I'll amend my previous statement to be more specific; in a prisoner's dilemma where cooperating means both entities get warm fuzzies, and in warm fuzzies I include all my preferences (so if cooperating would result in 100 people dying and me getting 100 $ I'd count that as a net loss), and defecting while the other cooperates gets me more warm fuzzies but not over a certain limit (as a rule of thumb, less than double what I'd get for cooperating, although of course this goes by a case by case basis) and with both people defecting we get less warm fuzzies, then I'd cooperate

devas20

That's the lesson I got out of the post too, that to cooperate in a prisoner's dilemma is a good thing

0wedrifid
I hope the lesson put conditions on that. If not the lesson is evil (ie. holding the belief would result in destroying everything humanity holds dear if given the right circumstances.)
devas90

I agree strongly with # 2,3 and 4

Particularly 2, since the absence of category divisions makes all discussion harder to browse....at least for me

devas00

it isn't, actually.

Although it was fun to watch the panic over the pig flu become increasingly silly

devas00

I agree with most of what was said here, except that, well.... I don't think it has the potential to actually cause humans to go extinct, or even to simply collapse civilization :-/ Even if a pandemic killed off 75 % of all humans, I have an unprovable feeling civilization would be able to soldier on. This is substantiated by a couple of observations; nearly all human knowledge has multiple backups (pandemics don't kill libraries), so we wouldn't have to reinvent science from scratch. Plus,remaining population would have access to all the material goods of... (read more)

2Eugine_Nier
Given how easy it is to get the media into headless chicken mode, I don't think this is the best standard.
devas00

This seems interesting; however, it all hinges on part three, which I eagerly await.

Still, the option you seems to favour wouldn't guarantee a million dollar win, which is what happens if I one-box.

In an iterated version of the problem, this should work, but still... Now I'm really curious about what you're going to write next

devas20

Thank you so much, you may not believe it but you have just made my day

devas10

Corrupted I am the mind-killer.

.....I swear this is the last output I am going to write down

0Armok_GoB
No, please continue, it's always great fun to see someone enjoying this!
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