All of Elund's Comments + Replies

are you saying that because the definition of a heap is vague, there are multiple feasible definitions of a heap, so some people (using one definition) would call a candidate heap a heap and other people (using another definition) would say it isn't a heap?

Not that they are necessarily using multiple definitions, but the common definitions themselves do not specify an exact range in quantity in which a cluster of things could be considered a heap. Two people could disagree about whether something is a heap despite using the same vague definition of &quo... (read more)

0satt
Ahhh, I think I understand. Yes, that makes sense. Yes, although (as you suggest) that's a different kind of vagueness: vagueness as a definition's inclusiveness vs. vagueness as uncertainty about the definition itself.

I could still call certain things heaps even if I had a sharp definition of a heap.

Sorry, what I meant was, "Heaps as they are currently defined can be said to exist because of vagueness in the definition of what precisely makes something a heap." They can also be said to not exist because of vagueness in the definition of what precisely makes something a heap. However, it is extremely difficult if not impossible for any definition to have absolutely no ambiguity at all, and even if that was possible, language can still be considered a social ... (read more)

0satt
That too sounded confusing/wrong to me on a first reading, but are you saying that because the definition of a heap is vague, there are multiple feasible definitions of a heap, so some people (using one definition) would call a candidate heap a heap and other people (using another definition) would say it isn't a heap? (Assuming I've paraphrased you correctly, I think my formulation is clearer.) I'd agree with that. Almost all terms introduce a simplification, not just the vague ones. Vagueness does often make social construction more obvious, but for a more mundane reason than simplification: vague terms have a wider array of meanings than non-vague terms, so people are more likely to notice the multiplicity of ways to define a term when it's vague.

I'm just using it to mean things that are constructed socially.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/social+construct

"Social construct" implies an arbitrary choice -- our society decided to split humanity into races this way, but another society might do it in an entirely different way and all such ways are equally valid, which is to say, there are no underlying "real" differences.

Supposing someone wanted to split humanity into arbitrary races based on actual genetics (which is not how the concept of race originally started because genetics wasn't known at the time), it would make sense for most races to be African, since Africa has far more human ... (read more)

0Lumifer
You're using a definition of "social construct" under which the word "heaps" is a social construct. Sure, given this definition race is a social construct, too, along with a rather long list of most everything. However I think your interpretation of "social construct" is atypical.

Part of the reason is that if you restrict to the population of the United States they are (more-or-less) a separate genetic cluster

Well, I wasn't restricting to the population of the United States. Anyway, race is still a socially constructed identity. This is apparent with mixed-race people who often identify with one race more than another based on how they were raised, how they look, how other people identify them, and whether they act more like a stereotypical member of one of their races than another. The race they identify most with might not be ... (read more)

0Azathoth123
Is the term "Hispanic" even used outside the US and places imitating the US? That's the claim made by "gender theorists". In practice it's used to refer to any sex differences they can claim to be socially constructed without seeming completely ridiculous. Nearly all of said differences are almost certainly largely biological.

From what people have said, it seems that after the survey was posted a new question was added about our favorite LW post. Were there any others?

(Posted as a top-level comment at the request of TobyBartels)

From what people have said, it seems that after the survey was posted a new question was added about our favorite LW post. Were there any others?

0TobyBartels
I really want to know this, and maybe you should make it a top-level comment. (Or maybe I should.) I feel cheated by taking it as soon as I saw it.

I never said race wasn't a useful concept. I specifically said in my earlier post: .

I'm not saying that "heap" and "race" are not useful terms. They do correlate with actual differences,

I think my initial post that started this discussion may have been a source of misunderstanding. When I called race a social construct, I wasn't trying to say that race is a useless concept, but instead indicate that it could be useful as a cultural/identity concept. Initially when I talked about "mixed race" and "Hispanic" not te... (read more)

1Azathoth123
Part of the reason is that if you restrict to the population of the United States they are (more-or-less) a separate genetic cluster. (Yes, that cluster doen't perfectly correspond to the official definition of Hispanic but a better term doesn't exist). Only because anyone who dares to point out the obvious truth that it isn't gets called a "sexist transphobe" and unfit for polite society.

If "heap" is a social construct, so is all language, basically, and then everything is a social construct. Sigh.

It is true that all language is socially constructed, but I was trying to draw attention to how "race" is especially subjective. Many linguistic terms are much more precise. A "species" for example refers to related individuals who reproduce among themselves, producing viable offspring. There is still some room for ambiguity, but it is less than what you get with "race". Besides, what's wrong with the id... (read more)

You're ignoring the part where I said human variation is a continuum. The fallacy of grey is where people deny the existence of the continuum.

Also, I did mention evidence about people's varying definitions of the "white race" to illustrate how people do in fact use arbitrary social reasons to decide the boundaries between races.

Heaps can be said to exist because of vagueness in the definition of what precisely makes something a heap. Race is the same way, which is why it is a social construct.

I'm not saying that "heap" and "race" are not useful terms. They do correlate with actual differences, but they are social constructs because they are convenient simplifications to help us describe phenomena.

Also, in case you're wondering, the reason I didn't object to "mixed race" being treated as a race wasn't because I thought mixed-race people are geneticall... (read more)

0satt
Right conclusion, wrong reason. (The first sentence strikes me as incorrect all by itself. I could still call certain things heaps even if I had a sharp definition of a heap.) Race is a social construct because genetic data underdetermine racial categories. Expanding: although knowledge of human population structure rules out (or at least makes implausible) many potential racial classifications, many other classifications are compatible with it. Therefore an analyst has lots of latitude to decide which genetic differences between groups constitute races. (The continuousness/blurriness of human genetic variation is mostly a red herring, though it does sharpen the under-determination issue and make it more obvious.)
5Lumifer
If "heap" is a social construct, so is all language, basically, and then everything is a social construct. Sigh. Maybe this will help -- hot off the bit presses: Plus, you might be interested in the wonderfully named Troll's Truisms:

It depends on how much they've thought about it. For instance, consider the "white race". A neo-Nazi on Stormfront would likely say that "white" refers only to people of 100% European ancestry, excluding Jews. On the other extreme, some people use it interchangeably with "Caucasian", which, according to its dictionary definition, refers to people of European, North African, Middle Eastern, or Indian ancestry.

-3Lumifer
Maybe the problem is with terminology. Let's taboo "race" and talk about "gene pools" or "genetic clusters". Will you still say that these are not useful concepts?

Are you sure doctors (of the medical kind) agree?

My point is that the human population doesn't divide neatly into discrete categories called "races". There are of course genetic differences, but human variation is a continuum. The way people decide boundaries between races is an arbitrary social one.

0wedrifid
Beware The Fallacy Of The .

Sorites paradox. Heaps exist regardless.

-1Lumifer
So, let me repeat. Are you sure doctors (of the medical kind) agree?

I identify with being "mixed race" far more than any individual race

Not technically a race, but then again neither is "Hispanic", which keeps getting treated as if it was a race. Race is a social construct anyway, so might as well.

I'm a bit surprised "mixed race" didn't occur to me as an option to suggest. It is true that I don't emotionally identify with either of my races, but I don't emotionally identify with "mixed race" either, probably because I wasn't raised in a community of mixed-race individuals and don'... (read more)

2TobyBartels
In the social milieu where I live, ‘Hispanic’ is definitely a race. And for that matter, Arabs and South Asians aren't White either. If someone has in mind a classification of human beings in which these are technically not the case, then that's fine, but they should come up with another word for it. The term ‘race’ is highly politically charged, and they will never be understood if they use it in a technical way that conflicts with its social usage.
-2Lumifer
Are you sure doctors (of the medical kind) agree?

I've been doing that too actually, although I am somewhat tempted to upvote some of the recent survey-takers just to make the playing field more equal for people whose other time commitments made them unable to take the survey very early.

I thought about suggesting to Yvain to edit his post by including a suggestion for people who have finished the survey to check back again later to upvote new survey-takers, but I get the impression he may prefer having this incentive against people procrastinating on taking the survey. It does at least mean that on averag... (read more)

0Vulture
I'm strongly considering it for next year.

I found a Reddit thread explaining the different comment sorting systems. Does LW use the same algorithms for each method?

http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/1y8rst/what_is_the_best_way_to_sort_top_best_new/

Missing from their list though are "popular" and "leading" (and "old", but that's pretty self-explanatory). I'm guessing "popular" is the same thing as "hot", judging based on what appears in my address bar when I sort that way. "Leading" is listed as "interestingness" in ... (read more)

This seems to be a much worse way of achieving what "Best" shoots for.

Not necessarily. Someone who has already seen the best comments and returns a while later to see what new but good comments have been posted may have a use for it.

That is interesting! I think some of Gwern's upvotes are coming from people who agree with his "Basilisk" comment / found it because of the discussion it generated

It didn't seem self-evident to me that his mention of the basilisk would help his comment's score overall. I don't personally believe in the basilisk and I do think it would make an interesting survey question, but I thought many LWers considered it a dangerous idea to discuss? They may think that even if they don't believe in it either. Or maybe Eliezer was just weird in his reactio... (read more)

Gwern (79) and Vaniver (66) show significantly more upvotes than the next in line

Thanks. That's interesting. I hadn't noticed that. They even score higher than some people who posted earlier, and with similar quality posts.

If upvotes are handed out according to the rule and logically in order of occurrence the vots should roughly read n, n-1, n-2,

...At first I was going to say I think it would be more of an exponential decrease since most people take the survey in the first few days and I doubt many people diligently keep track of new comments, but ... (read more)

At first I thought this person would only downvote short comments that have little content beyond saying that the user took the survey, but I've since noticed that even "I took the survey" comments with very detailed critiques are getting the single downvotes. My guess is this person doesn't like the idea of some people getting 100% positive ratings through posting only survey comments, as survey comments would be the easiest way to attain that otherwise, or thinks that the amount of karma awarded by other users for these comments (even the detai... (read more)

2TobyBartels
That's what I've been doing: voting as I normally do, based on quality, regardless of tradition.

I'm not sure I understand. I wasn't able to find explanations by typing "upvote" into the search either. Can you please clarify?

3Gunnar_Zarncke
Gwern (79) and Vaniver (66) show significantly more upvotes than the next in line (gwern was initially also one of those who didn't get a downvote when the others did). If upvotes are handed out according to the rule and logically in order of occurrence the vots should roughly read n, n-1, n-2, ... but they don't. Quite some people upvote only their favorite LWers. A little bit of coalition politics or fan-boying on LW after all.

FWIW, this line of reasoning comes up pretty regularly (especially in response to that survey question), so if the surveyors fail to realize the associated difficulties, it's not through failure to have it pointed out. I suspect they realize it just fine.

Continuing to complain about it may still have an effect though. I personally think they should post the definition they're using for "supernatural" in the description for the question, maybe right below their current description.

Something that's bothered me a lot lately is a lack of good music that evokes the kind of emotion that spiritually-inspired music does, but whose subject matter is something I actually believe in.

I've had the exact same problem. Thank you for creating this post. :-)

For music that evokes a sublime atmosphere and lacks religious lyrics, I recommend the ambient electronic artist Stellardrone. You can download all the albums for free on his official website. http://stellardrone.bandcamp.com/ (There is one album called "Invent the Universe", but t... (read more)

To me "occasionally" is rarer than "sometimes".

I think so too. I found that part odd.

When I first saw that there was going to be a digit ratio question, my first thought was that the survey was going to ask us to estimate our digit ratios, estimate our confidence in our estimates, and then measure the true ratios to see how far off we were. :P

Why was I downvoted? Was that from you, jdgalt? Were you hoping to have the Singularity discussion here instead of below another post? If so that wasn't clear to me from your above comment, since you were asking about whether it was welcome on LW, and you seemed to be going off on a tangent (particularly with your latter two points). Also, you didn't seem like you possessed much of the background knowledge regarding intelligence explosion and friendly/unfriendly AI, so I thought you would find it helpful for me to point you toward some relevant sources tha... (read more)

8Vulture
It seems that I was the one who downvoted you, but now I don't remember why. I've retracted it for now, since I don't see anything wrong with the comment. May have just been a clicking error.

I assumed you'd already factored in those other choices and still weren't leaning more for or against it relative to all the other possibilities combined. By "leaning one way or another", I meant along a hypothetical axis of "strongly believe" or "strongly disbelieve" for the given proposition. You have a good point about availability bias though. You can self-correct for that to some extent by decreasing your assigned probabilities, and we'd have to take availability bias into account while interpreting the probabilities given by other people.

I would like to participate in a deeper discussion of the idea of the Singularity, but don't know if that's welcome on LW.

You should be able to find a lot of info about the Singularity (and proposed ways to influence its outcome) in MIRI publications and LW posts. If you want to have further discussions about the Singularity you can comment below the relevant LW posts.

I didn't do the finger length questions; not sure what "the bottom crease" is, or maybe I don't have them. (Do you mean the crease at the base of the fingers, or one farther down on the hand?)

It's supposed to refer to the crease at the base of the fingers.

6Elund
Why was I downvoted? Was that from you, jdgalt? Were you hoping to have the Singularity discussion here instead of below another post? If so that wasn't clear to me from your above comment, since you were asking about whether it was welcome on LW, and you seemed to be going off on a tangent (particularly with your latter two points). Also, you didn't seem like you possessed much of the background knowledge regarding intelligence explosion and friendly/unfriendly AI, so I thought you would find it helpful for me to point you toward some relevant sources that might answer your questions, not to mention provide more general information on the topic. Of course, if you're not interested in general information I'd be willing to address your specific questions. Sorry, I'm not trying to be confrontational, I just want to understand what I did wrong so that I can better improve the quality of my comments, as well as clear up any misunderstandings.

Well, the description provided in the survey doesn't preclude it, as long as that person is not currently cryonically frozen (the question says living at this moment). My guess is that the intent was to discover the likelihood we assign to anti-agathic drugs being developed during the next 1000 years, in which case they probably should have used a more precise description.

Though maybe in terms of analysis "I do not identify with any race," which I imagine may be more common here than other places since people choose not to identify with other variables for which it is a more radical statement, is uninteresting to the survey.

It might be uninteresting from the standpoint of someone who only wants specific racial information, but it still might be interesting for other reasons to see what other qualities correlate with someone who picks that kind of answer. The thing is, I wasn't sure Yvain had the capability to c... (read more)

2Ixiel
I agree. Selecting other felt like I was shoehorning in. I just hate asking for special treatment. Growing up, a whiner was the worst legal thing one could be, and it stuck with me a little. But 73 people does seem significant .

Well, the statement could still be true in the context of the simulation. You may not have bones that exist in the universe outside the simulation, but you still have "bones" within the simulation. The name "bone" as well as the names for specific bones would be accurate if those are the agreed-upon names within your simulated culture. Whether the bones need to physically exist in the most fundamental level of reality in order to be considered bones seems like an argument over semantics. They still possess the other typical characterist... (read more)

0Kawoomba
Oh, I agree that "the statement could still be true in the context of the simulation". Likely so, in fact, which is why we go down all the way to 0.005 from P(we all live in a grand ol' simulation, in a simulation, in a simulation). The whole survey was full of definitional quibbles. What is 'supernatural' etc.

Specifically, ‘odds’ refers to expressions like ‘5 to 3 against’

Oh right, I forgot about that definition. The main probability conversions that I was aware of involved converting between fractions and percentages, sometimes expressed instead as probabilities between 0 and 1. Theoretically, it makes sense that odds can also be converted to or from probabilities, now that I think about it. Thanks for your explanation.

Sure, if you gave the same test to a representative sample of LWers and to a representative sample of the general population, you could calibrate IQ scores across them. I still expect it to be less reliable than proctored IQ tests though, not because I'm worried about people lying about their scores, but because of a higher incidence of confounding factors such as distracting noises, internet connection failures, and even the presence of daylight from a nearby window.

http://h-m-g.com/projects/daylighting/publicity%20daylighting.htm

I suppose it might be in... (read more)

I don't think it will mess up the algorithms. My guess is that most people probably rounded most calibration answers to the tens place due to lack of enough confidence to be more precise, but since people are giving different values, the average across all respondents is unlikely to fall on an increment of ten, and should be a reasonably accurate measure of the respondents' collective assigned probability for a question.

0TobyBartels
It could mess them up, because in theory a single wrong answer with 100% confidence renders the entire series infinitely poorly calibrated. The survey says that this won't be done, that 100% will be treated as something slightly less than that. But how much less could depend on assumptions that the survey-makers made about how often people would answer this way, and maybe I did it too much. I doubt it, since I'm pretty sure that they know enough about these pitfalls to avoid them. But I felt that I answered 0 and 100 quite a lot, so I thought that some warning was in order.

Are you using "odds" to refer to percentages and "probabilities" to refer to fractions? I don't think there is actually any difference in meaning between the two terms.

2TobyBartels
Colloquial language doesn't make this distinction, but by technical convention, they are different. Specifically, ‘odds’ refers to expressions like ‘5 to 3 against’; numerically, that's the fraction 5/3, or rather (because of the ‘against’) its reciprocal, 3/5. Thus odds run from 0 (impossible) to infinity (certain), with odds of 1 being perfectly balanced between Yes and No. In contrast, probabilities run only from 0 to 1. An event with odds of 5 to 3 against, or equivalently odds of 3/5, has a probability of 3/(3+5) = 3/8. So the numbers are different. The conversion formulas are O = P/(1 − P) and P = O/(1 + O). Then there are log-odds; this is log₂ O bits. (You can also use other bases than 2 and correspondingly other units than bits.) Now 0 indicates perfect balance between Yes and No; a positive number means more likely Yes than No, and a negative number means less likely Yes than No. Log-odds run from negative infinity (impossible) to infinity (certain).

You can click "select your monitor dimension" to resize the ruler. The default they gave me was wrong. I actually suggest making the ruler even smaller than the authentic size, so that the distance between millimeters will be shorter and thus the ratio will be more precise.

Putting 0 is misleading. It implies that you're confident there is no chance at all. If you're really not leaning one way or another, your best bet is to just put 50, or perhaps even skip the question if you really don't want to give a probability.

0Jiro
Choosing 50% is availability bias. Just because the question is presented as a choice between MWI and everything else doesn't mean there are only two choices. There are zillions of choices; MWI is just the one mentioned on the screen in front of me.

Maybe the corresponding fingers on your other hand really are different in length. Mine are. Whenever I press my fingers against each other such as to line up their bottom creases (keeping the orientation of the fingers as straight as possible), the middle and upper creases and fingertips don't line up. My right fingers are slightly shorter.

Good point about the photocopier. Hopefully these issues won't add too much noise to the results and obscure any significant results.

Even then your subjective probability wouldn't have been exactly 0. You could have put 0.00000000001 or something like that. The instructions didn't forbid you from using long decimals. Even so, I think it would have been fine to put 0 if your subjective probability really was 0 or you felt like rounding down to it.

I think it means largest volume without counting the volume enclosed.

0Bugmaster
That's what I thought too, and apparently I was wrong...

I think it should be fine to just hold a ruler up to your finger. The only potential problem might be that the highest tip of your finger wouldn't actually touch the ruler, but if you don't want to estimate by sight you can hold another flat surface perpendicular to it to see where that touches the ruler. I get consistent measurements this way.

Agreed. Most rulers don't give measurements more precise than millimeters.

0Alsadius
This is why a scanner might make sense. Even 300 DPI is less than 0.1mm resolution, so just scan it in and measure with an electronic ruler in your image-editing software of choice.

I think you're supposed to measure from the middle of the bottom crease to the middle of the tip. Also, since the bottom crease itself can be about a millimeter or two wide, I measured from the middle of that crease by its width in addition to its length. When I do that I get consistent results even on repeated measurements.

0Gunnar_Zarncke
Sure. If I pick the same spot I get the same results. Esp. with a photocopy. But at least the significant difference between left and right hand remains. Even when photocopying it makes a difference how strong you press your hand against the plate and how much contrast the scan has (for me it was too dark to make out the creases clearly).

That would seem kind of redundant as it's already not necessary to answer every question, even the ones that don't say they're extra credit or skippable. Maybe Yvain could have made that clearer at the beginning?

I personally wouldn't have minded a longer survey either. I'm just worried that making it longer would deter others from completing as many questions or even taking the survey in the first place. It might be a good idea to have a poll (perhaps within the survey itself) asking for the amount of time we'd be willing to spend on such a survey.

Thirded. I was momentarily stumped by that question, not being sure whether a simulator living in a universe with different natural laws than our own counted as "supernatural". I ended up deciding no. The simulator's universe might be a different kind of natural, but not "supernatural". Still, including a clarification in the question would have reduced errors due to misunderstanding, not to mention saved us time. The survey is already quite long as it is.

2jdgalt
I wouldn't mind the survey being twice as long if it allowed it to handle these can't-answer situations, though I would expect it to be the same length but just have a button or two to the right of each entry blank.

My worry is that taking an IQ test online (even timed with reliable questions) cannot duplicate the exact same experience as taking an IQ test in a proctored setting. There are likely to be more confounding factors that throw off the scores relative to proctored tests, since the environments cannot be as strictly controlled.

5kuudes
Well yes. Mainly including a couple of testlets would alleviate the self-test worry. We could infer the population average IQ relative to those testlets' hardness, which could confirm or disprove the self-reported IQ accuracy. I have understood that there has been some amount of doubt related to self reporting of IQ on the census here.

I took the survey.

I have a few suggestions though.

For the race question, I recommend allowing people to pick more than one option, or creating an extra option saying "I don't primarily identify with one race".

For profession, I feel like it was unclear what people who aren't currently students or employed are supposed to pick. What they most recently worked in or studied in a formal setting? What about students who haven't declared a major yet? The field of study they're leaning toward?

For the time in community question, I suggest clarifying whet... (read more)

-1Ixiel
Amen. Though maybe in terms of analysis "I do not identify with any race," which I imagine may be more common here than other places since people choose not to identify with other variables for which it is a more radical statement, is uninteresting to the survey. I that case, "I do not identify with a race" or "I identify with more than one race" could be usefully lumped in with "other." If we're the only two a racial people on the site I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

CEV is supposed to aim for the optimal future, not a satisficing future. My guess is that there is only one possible optimal future for any individual, unless there is a theoretical upper limit to individual utility and the FAI has sufficiently vast resources.

Also, if the terminal goals for both humans and dogs are to simply experience maximum subjective well-being for as long as possible, then their personal CEVs at least will be identical. However, since individuals are selfish, there's no reason to expect that the ideal future for one individual will, if enacted by a FAI, lead to ideal futures for the other individuals who are not being extrapolated.

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