All of dumky's Comments + Replies

The bank transfer example seems silly to me. In the situation where the exchange results in a net gift to both A and B, it seems easy to get consent from both of them.
More generally, if you can produce a Right, then you can get consent for the actions you need to aggregate and they are no longer deontological wrongs.

Thanks for the write-up!
I find the nomenclature "target network" confusing, but I understand that comes from the literature. I like to think of it as "slightly out-of-date reward prediction net".
Also, it's still not clear what "Q" stands for in DQN. Do you know?

Looking forward to your future deep learning write-ups :-)
 

There's a chapter on the evolution of sexes in Nick Lane's The Vital Question ("Sex and the origin of death"). It explores the benefits and costs of sex.
If I recall the big benefit of sex is gene shuffling (allows for recombinations, ie. faster experiments). Also it apparently evolved very early (didn't need much new machinery, benefits significant).

Pretty cool experience, but I have to say this rang some alarm bells for me: "My goal for covid lockdown was to train Brittany to cook.".

What did she want?
But it sounds like she was onboard, or at least ended up appreciating the training and assistance :-)

Whenever discussing the effects of increasing the money supply, we tend to highlight the first order effects: if there's twice as much money, then prices are expected to double after a while.
This effect is already hard for the public to notice compared to straight-up taxation, but the effects during the transition are even more insidious (so called Cantillon effect): some people receive the fresh money first while prices haven't adjusted, and some people receive the fresh money last (after prices have already almost doubled). The folks who are the furthest... (read more)

Sorry to hear this has been difficult for you. It sounds like you really want to find a way to make durable change and tried many techniques already.
I think it's admirable and impressive to see how passionate and driven you are. But if it's having some negative consequences or making you unhappy maybe a bit of tuning could be useful.
How do you feel when you have trouble to go to bed? Taking a wild guess I'd say you might be feeling a bit anxious, inadequate, frustrated or maybe embarrassed. What thoughts do you have? Is there a deep-seated value that drive... (read more)

It can also be good to list the positives (advantages and beautiful things) in self-criticism. It shows honesty, accountability, high standards, ...

On the other hand, we often use a double standard (harder on oneself) which can imply a sense of superiority (it'd okay for others to make mistakes, just not for us). Another downside of self-criticism is that spots that we beat down become sensitive and so we may be less receptive to feedback (being defensive).

I apologize if it's a bit tangential, but I want to point out that "should" statements are a common source of distortions (in cognitive behavioral therapy). It is often good to clarify the meaning of "should" in that context to see if it's valid (is it a law of the universe? is it a human law? ...). It often just means "I would prefer if", which doesn't bear as much weight...

David Burns explains this clearly and I was struck when he pointed out the linguistic heritage of "should" and how it connects to "scold". Here's one podcast episode on the topic (ther... (read more)

Exposure is the most effective remedy for most forms of anxiety. It is also helpful to understand the thoughts behind that anxiety and consider to what extent they are valid or beneficial (there are good reasons to be anxious, but they may only justify it to a mild extent). 
Many techniques can help such examination. One that is particularly appealing to me is to imagine what I would tell a close friend who is very much like me ("double standard" technique).

I've only had a few interactions, but was less than impressed. Some articles that were critical of authors I have much respect for did not give a fair reading in my opinion.

Specifically, does the prevalence of progeny in different groups affect the average time preference of said groups? I would say it raises an empirical question, but the prior seems reasonable. I do not consider such thought horribly offensive or bigoted as suggested, even if you consider that sexual orientation would affect prevalence of progeny.

The thread seemed more woke than rationalist in tone.

Another possibility (not sure how likely): maybe treatment capacity and protocols have improved?

Forget money for a minute, since it’s just a proxy for real resources. Assuming that people involved have a decent understanding of what resources are helpful, then Charity is trying to provide those resources. For the question of whether we know what resources would be useful and whether they have the desired impact in the long-term, that’s a hard question. GiveWell is an attempt at evaluating the impact of charities. There are others as well.

Sure, but that means there possibly is no answer (the problem is under-specified). Maybe the answer depends on preferences, not universal ethical or rational principles (such as deontological or utilitarian principles).

There is a third approach to the trolley problem, which I have not often seen discussed: whose property are the trolley tracks?

In other words, does this require a universal answer, or can this allow for diversity based on property and agreement? When you board a ship, you know that the captain has the last word when it comes to life-or-death situations, and different captains may have different judgement. The same goes for trolley tracks. The principles can be explained beforehand (such as "the mission comes first"). Another question that seems relevant to the person in charge (owner) is whether the 5 people are to blame for putting themselves at risk.

If I remember correctly, Jaynes discusses this in Probability Theory and arrives at the conclusion that if a reasoning robot assigned a probability to its changing its mind a certain way, then it should update its belief now. Of course, the general caveat here: humans are not robots, they don't perfectly adhere to either formal logical or plausible reasoning.

There is a difference between P("Heads came up") and P("Heads came up" given that "I was just woken up"). Since you will be woken up (memory-less) multiple times if tails came up, the fact that you are just getting woken up gives you information and increases the probability that tails came up.

Let's consider P(H | JustWoken) = P(H and Monday | JustWoken) + P(H and Tuesday | JustWoken) Because I have no information about the scientist's behavior (when he chooses to ask the question), I have to assign equal probabilities (one th... (read more)

It would be helpful to define terms first. Capitalism is the system of private ownership of scarce objects. People are scarce, land is scarce, resources are scarce. Even if energy becomes plentiful, the means of production of that energy will remain scarce (solar panels and other capital goods). Even if you can 3D print any object, the resources used as inputs are still scarce.

In short, scarcity will not go away, although it will continue to get significantly better, as more valuable and useful things can be produced with less (less labor, less energy, less resources, etc). Therefore private ownership and voluntary association, aka capitalism, will remain.

I agree with you that the post seems like an ad.

That said, the question "why aren't people doing this more already?" is not very informative to figure if this is a good idea or not.

As economists joke, the twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk is probably too good to be true, otherwise someone would have picked it up already. In reality, new solutions and arrangements are not easy to discover, or to bootstrap, and they take time to become adopted.

What the post describes sounds a lot like fraternal societies, which were a common model for healthcare ... (read more)

Backed. Thanks for starting this project.

What will be the recommended software to consume this?

I'm an Audible member anymore. I'm using a regular podcast iOS app (called RSSRadio) for HPMOR at the moment, but it's a bit manual (have to download each episode from archive). It seems like there would be a way to package an audio book (mp3 files + some XML metadata) and have an app that can consume that. Basically, like Audible but with a simple/open format. But I haven't found any so far.