All of Flinter's Comments + Replies

It means, in this context, "the first word of the technical term 'ideal money' which Flinter has been using, and which I am hoping at some point he will give us his actual definition of".

Ideal, the standard definition, means implies that it is conceptual.

You began by saying this:

I would like to suggest, as a blanket observation and proposal, that most of these difficult problems described, especially on a site like this, are easily solvable with the introduction of an objective and ultra-stable metric for valuation.

which, as I said at the ti

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Because it leaves the market participants with no basis for valuation. Every time they find one there is pressure for self interested actors to corrupt it. And also it doesn't matter, if I don't give an argument then the suggestion is still that competition will tend the currencies towards ideal.

1moridinamael
Which is it? Competition evolves currency toward an ideal, or competition provides pressure driving self-interested actors toward corrupting currencies?

Gold money means that the VALUE is relatively stable (relative to other options) in comparison to Ideal Money (which is money comparable to an optimally chosen basket of stable global commodity prices). We have never had that option, other than gold that Nash explains failed for reasons, and is not a good idea to re-instate for reasons.

Also the governments heavily restrict our ability seek better alternatives.

0moridinamael
Please continue. Why is competition between international currencies not sufficient to emanetize the eschaton?

As general feed back: On Less Wrong we actually tend to have pretty thick skins, so it doesn't bother me too much when you call me stupid. It only makes you look bad.

Calling you stupid is a short cut. I know it doesn't hurt you, and I don't care if I look bad. I bring content that is truth.

Despite Isaac Newton's obviously superior intellect, I see no reason to drop what I'm doing and become an occultist.

I know but the thing is that Newton was an alchemist too, and their famous endeavor is to effectively turn math into gold, which I am claiming has... (read more)

0moridinamael
You are conflating at least four senses of the word "value" into one concept and then assuming that those four things are the same thing. * What we call "human value" is the actual, abstract, difficult-to-know set of things that human beings want, and the things that we don't know that we want but we would want if we knew about them, and maybe even the things that we wouldn't want but that we might be glad we had after we got them. Discovering the content of "human value" is an enormous, unsolved philosophical problem. * What you might call "economic value" is purely defined in terms of trades between agents and can only be grounded in relative comparison between commodities. * In your post you throw in a reference to "value to society". Something might be very valuable to society but individuals fail to coordinate and pay for that thing. This is known as the tragedy of the commons. * Individual humans are known to value weird, idiosyncratic things. You might call these "individual values". Perhaps it would be valuable to society for some person to be put to death, but this would be contrary to that person's individual values. "Value to society" is not identical to "value to an individual" is not identical to "economic value" is not identical to "human value", and none of these are identical to "Ideal Currency value". There is certainly no apparent reason why Ideal Currency would converge on "human value", which is the one that I would say should be optimized. Swapping these various senses of the word in your rhetoric as though they are interchangeable is leading you to make large errors. Assuming that an AI will just get what you mean and know instinctively which definition you mean is crippling to your thesis.

Its not my proposal.

The answer to your questions is too big. There is an intrinsic problem with our gobal financial system. Essentially the triffin dilemma. Governments, because self interested, cannot act for the good of the citizens. It is the nature of the problem.

Nash proposes the introduction of a "good" money, but it is good not in the conventional sense, but rather the "gold" sense (which again he defines because not many understand).

With the introduction of this international "gold money", there is now a new stag... (read more)

1moridinamael
Please elaborate. We can already exchange currencies or even use cryptocurrencies. Governments already respond to the fact that citizens can choose what currency to keep their assets in and what currency to trade in internationally. This is true without a "gold money", and I fail to see how the presence of a "gold money" would improve the picture. Or in another framing, if Nash is right, then we are already evolving toward "gold money" as governments have to respond to these incentives. However, the technical definition of a "limit" that Nash is using only implies that the goal will be reached at the "limit" of time, meaning, we will never actually reach that ideal state.

"Depending on how things were fundamentally arranged" is doing an implausible amount of work in that quote. Depending on how the atoms in my desk are fundamentally arranged, my desk may be a fully general nanoassembler, but the scientific and engineering work needed to turn my desk into a nanoassembler hasn't been done.

Firstly you are calling Nash dumb, which is stupid and ignorant. Do you think maybe you don't understand what he is saying and especially WHY he is saying?

2ndly you are not using the standard accepted definition of the word I... (read more)

3moridinamael
As general feed back: On Less Wrong we actually tend to have pretty thick skins, so it doesn't bother me too much when you call me stupid. It only makes you look bad. Furthermore, we are uniquely unimpressed by appeals to authority around here. Isaac Newton did a tremendous amount of work in the occult. Despite Isaac Newton's obviously superior intellect, I see no reason to drop what I'm doing and become an occultist. Likewise, I will defer to Nash on the particulars of abstract Game Theory, but see no strong reason to accept claims beyond his domain of expertise. I suggest you stop insulting people and stop ostentatiously worshiping John Nash, and I make this suggestion because it's inhibiting your ability to communicate in general, not because it particularly effects me one way or the other. You did not actually provide any arguments in your post except this line: * If the currency defines what is economically correct, and but does not perfectly capture human value, then human value will not be preserved when the AI tries to optimize for the parameter defined by the currency. * If there is any way of manipulating an objective function, an AI will try to do that in order to conserve resources while still maximizing its objectives. If there is any way of manipulating the currency -- for example, hacking into whatever global database defines the value of the currency and literally changing the numbers -- the AI will do that. This will almost always be easier for the AI, and the AI will have no inclination to follow the "spirit rather than the letter" of its programming.

The problem happens when we approach the economy from the question of "how do we design the best money" Money arose NATURALLY to solve a problem mankind couldn't solve with design and intuition. The (most significant) problem it solves is provided and objective basis for value, but it doesn't perfectly solve it, there are still intrinsic problems, paradoxes, and dilemmas.

The problem is how to optimize our economy, not how to create an ideal money.

What we are looking for is a stable metric, not an optimized money, it is simply that some people ... (read more)

Yes it is isn't it. It is also widely criticized. What Nash explains is that Keynesianism is simply an advance opaque form of bolshevik communism. It's an excuse to sell the public bad money under the label "good" money". Nash explains that we can view it as it has a missing axiom:

I think there is a good analogy to mathematical theories like, for example, “class field theory”. In mathematics a set of axioms can be taken as a foundation and then an area for theoretical study is brought into being. For example, if one set of axioms is sp

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0Brendan Long
Maybe I've missed something, but why should we all agree that stability of value is a the most important feature of money? I could imagine a number of different views (for example, deflationary money is useful if you want to incentivize savings, and inflationary money is useful to incentivize spending).
3James_Miller
I was unfamiliar with Nash's theory of ideal money until I looked it up on Wikipedia in response to your comments on LW. It's possible I heard about it before but forgot it since I don't study macroeconomics or monetary policy. Based on this reading, I don't understand why ideal money is important to the art of rationality.

OK. Would you care to help me understand correctly, or are you more interested in telling me how stupid I am?

There is no possible modification I could make to my definition of "ideal" that would make any difference to my understanding of your use of the phrase "ideal money". I have already explained this twice.

Existing merely as an image in the mind:

An ideal is a concept or standard of perfection, existing merely as an image in the mind, or based upon a person or upon conduct: We admire the high ideals of a religious person

I thin... (read more)

0gjm
Nope. But if you tell me that when you say "ideal money" you mean "a system of money that is ideal in the sense of existing merely as an image in the mind", why then I will adjust my understanding of how you use the phrase. Note that this doesn't involve any change at all in my general understanding of the word "ideal", which I already knew sometimes has the particular sense you mention (and sometimes has other senses); what you have told me is how you are using it in this particular compound term. In any case, this is quite different from how Nash uses the term. If you read his article in the Southern Economic Journal, you will see things like this, in the abstract: (so he is thinking of this as something that can actual happen, not something that by definition exists merely as an image in the mind). Similarly, later on, (so, again, he is thinking of such systems as potentially actualizable) and, a couple of paragraphs later, (so he says explicitly it could actually happen if we had the right guidance; note also that he here envisages ideal monetary systems, plural, suggesting that in this instance he isn't claiming that there's one true set of value ratios that will necessarily be reached). In between those last two he refers to so he clearly has in mind (not necessarily exclusively) a quite different meaning of "ideal", namely "perfect" or "flawless". It doesn't look much like that for me. In the future everyone will have forgotten us all, most likely. Do please show me where I either claimed or pretended to be smart. (If you ask my opinion of my intelligence I will tell you, but no such thing has come up in this discussion and I don't see any reason why it should. If my arguments are good, it doesn't matter if I'm generally stupid; if my arguments are bad, it doesn't matter if I'm generally clever.) So far, you have presented no evidence at all that this is a reasonable description. Would you care to remedy that? In any case, what's relevant right now i

Its too difficult to cut to, because the nature of this problem is such that we all have incredibly cognitive bias towards not understanding it or seeing it.

After painting the picture of what Ideal Money, Nash explains the intrinsic difficulties of bringing it about. Then he comes up with the concept of "asymptotically ideal money":

The idea seems paradoxical, but by speaking of “inflation targeting” these responsible official are effectively CONFESSING…that it is indeed after all possible to control inflation by controlling the supply of money (as if by limiting the amount of individual “prints” that could be made of a work of art being produced as “prints).~Ideal Money

M. Friedman acquired fame thr

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Ideal Money is an enthymeme. But Nash speak FAR beyond the advent of an international e-currency with a stably issued supply.

You think Nash didn't think of "political uncertainty" and "political corruptibility"?

While you rad these quotes:

I think of the possibility that a good sort of international currency might EVOLVE before the time when an official establishment might occur.

…my personal view is that a practical global money might most favorably evolve through the development first of a few regional currencies of truly good quality. And then the “integration” or “coordination” of those into a global currency would become just a technical problem. (Here I

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0moridinamael
"Depending on how things were fundamentally arranged" is doing an implausible amount of work in that quote. Depending on how the atoms in my desk are fundamentally arranged, my desk may be a fully general nanoassembler, but the scientific and engineering work needed to turn my desk into a nanoassembler hasn't been done. Also, why do you think it is so unlikely that the value of the standard kilogram could be corrupted by the actions of politicians? It is improbable but not impossible. In fact, the definition of the "standard units" has evolved over time. If * economists figure out a way of defining a standard portfolio of commodities that is inherently resilient against technological change, global disasters, market fluctuations, Soros-esque currency manipulation, or any other conceivable force that causes it to deviate from a perfect reflection of human value and * some entity implements this scheme in such a way that the standard is perfectly immune to institutional corruption, and * assuming the prior two (extremely difficult and maybe impossible) objectives have been accomplished, we further assume that, at the moment we turn on an AI, all knowledge potentially relevant to human value has already been in some sense encoded in this magical currency, ... then this might have a shot of working. However, if there is any chance at all of the system that defines the currency being manipulated in any way, shape, or form, it's pretty likely that a superintelligent AI will just manipulate the currency such that the most "economically correct" actions happen to coincide with the actions that are simplest and most certain, and in about three steps you have a paperclip maximizer.

You figure that is the extent of John Nash's argument he spent 20 years defining for us? And you just defeat it in a sentence:

But don't we already have a global currency market?

Do you know who John Nash is? He is the guy that it took 40 years for us to recognize the significance of his works. Do you think maybe the significance has simply gone over your head?

1James_Miller
Flinter, do you know who John Nash is? He had a brilliant mind and produced some remarkable works but he also had mental illness that occasionally caused him to misunderstand reality and so we can not just assume something he passionately believed in is right.
2Brendan Long
Yes, I think the significance has gone over my head. That's why I asked the question rather than making an assertion.
2moridinamael
This is not actually an argument. Could you provide a reason why korin43's observation does not invalidate your proposal?

You know what, your cynical attitude is telling of your intelligence. There is an intro thread and the mod that did it admits it publicly. Its not my word, its the mods and it would be strange to me if you didn't believe them.

I wonder what my failure in communicating my idea is in this case. Let me rephrase my argument in favor of filtering and see if I can get my point across: if we eliminated the filter, the site would be inundated with spam and fake accounts posts. By having a filter we block all this, and people willing to pass a small threshold will not be denied to post their contributions.

Let me communicate to you what I am saying. I bring the most important writing ever known to mankind. Who is the mod that moderated Nash? Where is the intelligence in that? Let's... (read more)

Right but you subtly back handedly agree its a necessary component of AI. If you come back to say "Sure but its not necessarily the ONLY missing component" I will think of you dumb.

He was also running around saying that he was Pope John XXIII because 23 was his favourite prime number. And refusing academic positions which would have given him a much better platform for advocating currency reform (had he wanted to do that) on the basis that he was already scheduled to start working as Emperor of Antarctica. And saying he was communicating with aliens from outer space.

No you aren't going to tell Nash how he could have brought about Ideal Money. In regard to, for example, communicating with aliens, again you are being wholly ignoran... (read more)

As I have just said elsewhere in our discussion, I am not using any definition of the word "ideal". I may of course have misunderstood what you mean by "ideal money", but if so it is not because I am assuming it means "money which is ideal" according to any more general meaning of "ideal".

Ya you misunderstood. And you still haven't double checked your definition of ideal. Are you sure its correct?

I have so far seen nothing that convinces me that he intended any such implication. In any case, of course the relev

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0gjm
OK. Would you care to help me understand correctly, or are you more interested in telling me how stupid I am? There is no possible modification I could make to my definition of "ideal" that would make any difference to my understanding of your use of the phrase "ideal money". I have already explained this twice. If you would like to make some actual arguments rather than sneering at me then I am happy to discuss things. At this point, I simply do not believe you when you say it is the reason. Not because I think you are lying; but it doesn't look to me as if you are thinking clearly at any time when your opinions or actions are being challenged. In the absence of more information about what the moderator said, no possible information about the significance of Nash's work could bring that about. Er, what? No, I haven't (more accurately, hadn't) heard of it because no one mentioned it to me before. Is that difficult to understand? Nash is not being ignored here. "Ideal money" has not been a topic of conversation here before, so far as I can recall. If your evidence that Nash is "ignored" here is that we have not been talking about "ideal money", you should consider two other hypotheses: (1) that the LW community is interested in Nash but not in "ideal money" and (2) that the LW community is interested in Nash but happens not to have come across "ideal money" before. I think #2 is probably the actual explanation, however preposterous you may find it that anyone would read anything about Nash and not know about your pet topic. (I think I already mentioned that Nasar's book about Nash doesn't see fit to mention "ideal money" in its index. It's a popular biography rather than an academic study, and the index may not perfectly reflect the text, but I think this is sufficient to show that it's possible for a reasonable person to look quite deeply at Nash's life and not come to the conclusion that "ideal money" is "the main body of work that Nash was working on nearly

To the first set of paragraphs...ie:

But if you try to start the same discussion by saying or implying that there is such a currency

If I start by saying there IS such a currency? What does "ideal" mean to you? I think you aren't using the standard definition: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/ogt/do_we_share_a_defintion_for_the_word_ideal/

But it looks to me as if something like the stronger claim I treated you as making is actually needed for "ideal money" to be any kind of solution to AI value alignment problems.

I did not... (read more)

0gjm
It means, in this context, "the first word of the technical term 'ideal money' which Flinter has been using, and which I am hoping at some point he will give us his actual definition of". You began by saying this: which, as I said at the time, looks at least as much like "There is such a metric" as like "Let's explore the consequences of having such a metric". Then later you said "It converges on money" (not, e.g., "it and money converge on a single coherent metric of value"). Then when asked whether you were saying that Nash has actually found an incorruptible measure of value, you said yes. I appreciate that when asked explicitly whether such a thing exists you say no. But you don't seem to be taking any steps to avoid giving the impression that it's already around. Nope. But you introduced this whole business in the context of AI value alignment, and the possible relevance of your (interpretation of Nash's) proposal to the Less Wrong community rests partly on its applicability to that sort of problem. I'm here discussing this stuff with you. I am not (so far as I am aware) ignoring anything you say. What exactly is your objection? That I didn't, as soon as you mentioned John Nash, go off and spend a week studying his thoughts on this matter before responding to you? I have read the Nash lecture you linked, and also his earlier paper on Ideal Money published in the Southern Economic Journal. What do you think I am ignoring, and why do you think I am ignoring it? But your question is an odd one. It seems to be asking, more or less, "How dare you have interests and priorities that differ from mine?". I hope it's clear that that question isn't actually the sort that deserves an answer. I think I understand the nature of money OK, but I'm not sure I understand what you are saying about it. "A money"? Do you mean a currency, or do you mean a monetary valuation of a good, or something else? What is "the general market", in a world where there are lots and lots of

Yup thx! There are a few lectures by him that have varying points. There are also MANY versions of "Ideal Money", some slight different, others that are wholly different.

How is it going to calculate such things with out a metric for valuation?

If that's what we would have available, then I think FAI would be mostly solved.

Yes so you are seeing the significance of Nash's proposal, but you don't believe he is that smart, who is that on?

0MrMind
Sure, I'm just pointing out that objective and stable are necessary but not sufficient conditions for a value metric to solve the FAI problem, it would also need to have the three features that I detailed, and possibly others. It's not a refutation, it's an expansion.

Well, since it's an automated process, it filters anything, be it spam, Nash' argument or the words of Omega itself. As I said, it's a compromise. The best we could come up, so far. If you have a better solution, spell it out.

You are defending irrationality. It filters out the one thing it needs to not filter out. A better solution would be to eliminate it.

No, mine was just a suggestion for a way that would allow you to lubricate the social friction I think you're experiencing here. On the other side, I am reading your posts carefully and reply when

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2MrMind
I wonder what my failure in communicating my idea is in this case. Let me rephrase my argument in favor of filtering and see if I can get my point across: if we eliminated the filter, the site would be inundated with spam and fake accounts posts. By having a filter we block all this, and people willing to pass a small threshold will not be denied to post their contributions. In due time, I will. That is unfortunate, but you must be prepared to make these discussions on the lon run. There are people that come here only once a week or only once every three months. A day can be enough to filter out the most visceral reactions, but here discussions can span days, weeks or years. I am reading it right now, and exactly because it's Nash I'm reading as careful as I can. But what won't fly here is insulting. Frustration for not being able to communicate your idea is something that we all felt, after all communicating clearly is hard. But if you let yourself below a certain standard of respect, you will be moderated and possibly even banned. That would allow you to communicate your idea even less.

The context is "Ideal Money". When I am asking if we have a shared meaning, I am asking if we agree on what the standard definition for the word is. For someone to say "Ideal Money doesn't exist" is to not use the standard definition of the word Ideal.

I have already discussed Ideal Money with people on this forum that have made this error.

That is the context of this thread. But this thread was a sub point to the main thread, the main thread was moderated away, so no one saw it and so this thread doesn't make sense, because the context was taken from me.

0MrMind
Why do you say that it was moderated away? I still see the "Ideal money" thread.

Thank you. No see. Ideal means "conceptual". But you are probably unaware of the importance of pointing this out because the mod took away my ability to put it all together.

Ideal, example, model refer to something considered as a standard to strive toward or something considered worthy of imitation. An ideal is a concept or standard of perfection, existing merely as an image in the mind, or based upon a person or upon conduct: We admire the high ideals of a religious person.

People are arguing Nash Ideal Money can't exist; they don't under... (read more)

0MrMind
I think we have a problem of communication. I thought that your question, "Do we have a shared meaning for this word?", was made to try to arrive at a shared meaning of the world through discussion. Instead I see that you have a fixed meaning in mind, and that you intend to use that meaning solely in your posts. Please confirm that this is indeed the case, if so I will no longer intervene in this thread.

If it filters out Nash's argument, Ideal Money, then it makes no sense and is completely irrational for it.

Think about what you are saying, its ridiculous.

Are you also unwilling to discuss the content, and simply are stuck on my posting methods, writing, and character?

2MrMind
Well, since it's an automated process, it filters anything, be it spam, Nash' argument or the words of Omega itself. As I said, it's a compromise. The best we could come up, so far. If you have a better solution, spell it out. No, mine was just a suggestion for a way that would allow you to lubricate the social friction I think you're experiencing here. On the other side, I am reading your posts carefully and reply when done thinking about.

Yup but that ruins my first post cause I wanted it to be something specific. So what you are effectively saying is I have to make a sh!t post first, and I think that is irrational. I came here to bring value not be filtered from doing so.

Cheers!

2MrMind
It makes sense from the inside of the community. The probability of someone posting something of value as the first post is much lower than that of someone posting spam on the front page. So a very low bar to post on the front page is the best compromise between "discourage spammer" and "discourage poster that has something valuable to say".

You are not using the standard accepted definition of the word ideal, please look it up, and or create a shared meaning with me.

"Nothing in the lecture you linked to a transcript of makes the extremely strong claim you are making, that we should use "ideal money" as a measure for literally all human values."

This is a founded extrapolation of mine and an implication of his.

Yes the mod said Hayek > Nash and its not a joke its a prevailing ignorant attitude, by those that read Hayek but won't read and address Nash.

It's not significant if I omitted something, I was told it was effectively petty (my words) but it isn't. It's significant because John Nash said so.

1gjm
As I have just said elsewhere in our discussion, I am not using any definition of the word "ideal". I may of course have misunderstood what you mean by "ideal money", but if so it is not because I am assuming it means "money which is ideal" according to any more general meaning of "ideal". I have so far seen nothing that convinces me that he intended any such implication. In any case, of course the relevant question is not what Nash thought about it but what's actually true; even someone as clever as Nash can be wrong (as e.g. he probably was when he thought he was the Pope) so we could do with some actual arguments and evidence on this score rather than just an appeal to authority. That depends on what you omitted. For instance, if the person who removed your post gave you a cogent explanation of why and it ended with some jokey remark that "personally I always preferred Hayek anyway", it would be grossly misleading to say what you did (which gives the impression that "Hayek > Nash" was the mod's reason for removing your post). I do not know who removed your post (for that matter I have only your word that anything was removed, though for the avoidance of doubt I would bet heavily that you aren't lying about that) but my impression is that on the whole the LW community is more favourably disposed towards Nash than towards Hayek. Not that that should matter. In any case: I'm sorry if this is too blunt, but I flatly disbelieve your implication that your post was removed because a moderator prefers Hayek to Nash, and I gravely doubt that it was removed with a given reason that a reasonable person other than you would interpret as being because the moderator prefers Hayek to Nash.

First of all, we will all do better without the hectoring tone. But yes, I was ignorant of this. There is scarcely any limit to the things I don't know about. However, nothing I have read about Nash suggests to me that it's correct to describe "ideal money" as "his life's work".

He lectured and wrote on the topic for the last 20 years of his life, and it is something he had been developing in his 30's

You are not helping your case here. He was, at this point, suffering pretty badly from schizophrenia. And so far as I can tell, the re

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0gjm
He was also running around saying that he was Pope John XXIII because 23 was his favourite prime number. And refusing academic positions which would have given him a much better platform for advocating currency reform (had he wanted to do that) on the basis that he was already scheduled to start working as Emperor of Antarctica. And saying he was communicating with aliens from outer space. Of course that doesn't mean that everything he did was done for crazy reasons. But it does mean that the fact that he said or did something at this time is not any sort of evidence that it makes sense. Could you point me to more information about the reasons he gave for leaving the US and trying to renounce his citizenship? I had a look in Nasar's book, which is the only thing about Nash I have on my shelves, and (1) there is no index entry for "ideal money" (the concept may crop up but not be indexed, of course) and (2) its account of Nash's time in Geneva and Paris is rather vague about why he wanted to renounce his citizenship (and indeed about why he was brought back to the US). Let me then repeat my question. What do you expect to happen to the values of those "global commodities" in the presence of an AI whose capabilities are superhuman enough to make value alignment an urgent issue? Suppose the commodities include (say) gold, Intel CPUs and cars, and the AI finds an energy-efficient way to make gold, designs some novel kind of quantum computing device that does what the Intel chips do but a million times faster, and figures out quantum gravity and uses it to invent a teleportation machine that works via wormholes? How are prices based on a basket of gold, CPUs and cars going to remain stable in that kind of situation? [EDITED to add:] Having read a bit more about Nash's proposal, it looks as if he had in mind minerals rather than manufactured goods; so gold might be on the list but probably not CPUs or cars. The point stands, and indeed Nash explicitly said that gold o
2Brendan Long
The argument here seems to be that if currencies were freely tradable on a market, they would all converge to an optimal currency. But don't we already have a global currency market?
4moridinamael
It would be neat to have a currency that was firmly pegged to ICPI, it would at the very least provide a good testing ground to determine whether some of Nash's predictions are correct. However, one problem that I don't see addressed in Nash's work (at least the papers that I've been able to find) is that of political uncertainty. No nation-state can give a meaningful guarantee that the currency will remain perfectly pegged to ICPI. Leadership and policies evolve over time. Even if we could formulate some philosophical basis for a perfectly calibrated ICPI, a currency can still collapse due to political instability in the sponsoring nation-state. It can even be manipulated by manipulating the commodities in the ICPI portfolio. This is a cool idea but far from perfect.

The quickest way to understand Nash's proposal is through these two threads:

This first link introduces the concept of a stable metric for value and starts to show how it could be used to solve many complex problems (especially ones discussed on this forum):

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ogp/a_proposal_for_a_simpler_solution_to_all_these/

This thread questions our shared meaning of ideal, if we have one, and if we can have one:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ogt/do_we_share_a_definition_for_the_word_ideal/

Given time, markets reach equilibria related to the wants of the participants. Sure. So far as I know, there are no guarantees on how long they will take to do so (and, e.g., if you're comparing finding market equilibria with solving chess, the sort of market setup you'd need to contrive to get something equivalent to solving chess surely will take a long time to converge, precisely because finding the optimum would be equivalent to solving chess; in the real world, what would presumably actually happen is that the market would settle down to something ve

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0gjm
I agree that Nash hoped that ("ideal") money could become "a standard of measurement" comparable in some way to scientific units. The question, though, is how broad a range of things he expected it to be able to measure. Nothing in the lecture you linked to a transcript of makes the extremely strong claim you are making, that we should use "ideal money" as a measure for literally all human values. One of three things [EDITED to add: oops, I meant two things] is true. (1) Your account of what "the mod" did is inaccurate, or grossly misleading by omission, or something. (2) My notion of what the LW moderators do is surprisingly badly wrong. If whoever did what Flinter is describing would care to comment (PM me if you would prefer not to do it in public), I am extremely curious. (For what it's worth, my money is on "grossly misleading by omission". I am betting that whatever was removed was removed for some other reason -- e.g., I see some signs that you tried to post something in Main, which is essentially closed at present -- and that if indeed the mod "said Hayek > Nash" this was some kind of a joke, and they said some other things that provided an actual explanation of what they were doing and why. But that's all just guesswork; perhaps someone will tell me more about what actually happened.)

I'm not sure what your objection actually is. If someone comes along and says "I have a solution to the problems in the Middle East. Let us first of all suppose that Israel is located in Western Europe and that all Jews and Arabs have converted to Christianity" then it is perfectly in order to say no, those things aren't actually true, and there's little point discussing what would follow if they were. If you are seriously claiming that money provides a solution to what previously looked like difficult value-alignment problems because everyone a

... (read more)
2gjm
Not quite. It can be interesting and useful to consider counterfactual scenarios. But I think it's important to be explicit about them being counterfactual. And, because you can scarcely ever change just one thing about the world, it's also important to clarify how other things are (counterfactually) changing to accommodate the main change you have in mind. So, in this case, if I understand you right what you're actually saying is something like this. "Consider a world in which there is a universally agreed-upon currency that suffers no inflation or deflation, perhaps by being somehow pegged to a basket of other assets of fixed value; and that is immune to other defects X, Y, Z suffered by existing currencies. Suppose that in our hypothetical world there are markets that produce universally-agreed-upon prices for all goods without exception, including abstract ones like "understanding physics" and emotionally fraught ones like "getting on well with one's parents" and so forth. Then, let us consider what would happen to problems of AI value alignment in such a world. I claim that most of these problems would go away; we could simply tell the AI to seek value as measured by this universally-agreed currency." That might make for an interesting discussion (though I think you will need to adjust your tone if you want many people to enjoy discussions with you). But if you try to start the same discussion by saying or implying that there is such a currency, you shouldn't be surprised if many of the responses you get are mostly saying "oh no there isn't". Even when you do make it clear that this is a counterfactual, you should expect some responses along similar lines. If what someone actually cares about is AI value alignment in the real world, or at least in plausible future real worlds, then a counterfactual like this will be interesting to them only in so far as it actually illuminates the issue in the real world. If the counterfactual world is too different from the

Yup. Firstly you fully admit that you are, previous to my entry, ignorant to Nash's lifes work. What he spoke of and wrote of for 20 years country to country. It is what he fled the US about when he was younger, to exchange his USD for the Swiss franc because it was of superior quality, and in which the US navy tracked him down and took him back in chains (this is accepted not conspiracy).

Nash absolutely defined an incorruptible basis for valuation and most people have it labeled as an "icpi" industrial price consumption index. It is effective... (read more)

0gjm
First of all, we will all do better without the hectoring tone. But yes, I was ignorant of this. There is scarcely any limit to the things I don't know about. However, nothing I have read about Nash suggests to me that it's correct to describe "ideal money" as "his life's work". You are not helping your case here. He was, at this point, suffering pretty badly from schizophrenia. And so far as I can tell, the reasons he himself gave for leaving the US were nothing to do with the quality of US and Swiss money. Let me see if I've understood this right. You want a currency pegged to some basket of goods ("global commodities", as you put it), which you will call "ideal money". You then want to convert everything to money according to the prices set by a perfectly efficient infinitely liquid market, even though no such market has ever existed and no market at all is ever likely to exist for many of the things people actually care about. And you think this is a suitable foundation for the values of an AI, as a response to people who worry about the values of an AI whose vastly superhuman intellect will enable it to transform our world beyond all recognition. What exactly do you expect to happen to the values of those "global commodities" in the presence of such an AI? (Yep.) But nothing in what you quote does any such thing. It may be important to you that I do so, but right now I have other priorities. Maybe tomorrow.

I haven't had a chance yet, but it's now on my list. I am digging into Keynesian Economics and Revealed preference theory at the moment.

Nash explains how Keynesian is just another form of failed communism. He explains even post-Keynesians are just Keynesians (alluding to the fact that he is thinking FAR beyond anyone even just emerging crypto currencies. He explains how a revolution will end the Keynesian ero of central banking.

More importantly you said we aren't being ignorant to Nash, and I showed that you are and still assert we all are. He did som... (read more)

Yes its related. But I come from a wildly different perspective in which you are unknowingly making assumptions that I don't subscribe too.

What does it mean to you, if instead of creating goals that might (likely) be desires that are eventually contradicted as such by our actions, we create goals that are inline with our actions?

So we change our desires to match our actions rather than our actions to match our desires.

The link was broken, and I don't mind them, I expected it, and I think they are useful, I certainly skim them and re-read them if I don't feel I got the point.

0Elo
Most of my assumptions are hopefully presented as guesses. I don't really know, feel free to correct me. Which "it" are you referring to now? Can you be more specific? I said in this post Does this work: http://mindingourway.com/guilt/

You are underestimating the time and effort I have put into all this. Years. And I really appreciate it but you see its such a difficult concept and so deep to traverse that it needs to be presented in a certain way. And its not rational for you to make the assumption that your help would taint the presentation (especially cause it would)

Nash was a brilliant gift to humanity.

You have no idea what he did, no clue. You don't know anything about him. No one does. He spent his whole life on this problem of Ideal Money and 20 years explaining the solution.

Why will no one read and address his works?

Cheers!

0Elo
Part of the problem you are currently encountering is in your presentation of the idea. I am willing to accept the premise that it is important, but I am as yet unconvinced that it's more important than the 1200 hours of other work on my todo list. Yes I have no idea what you are talking about; I can't know right now. Do tell! That may be true. My offer still stands. If you think I am managing to communicate with you now; then maybe it's worth me managing to help you communicate with other people around here. You probably already know this but humans are not automatically strategic My offer still stands. Willing to try. Not willing to guarantee success. You will find it difficult making friends with your exciting ideas if you present them from a perspective of that attitude. A friend recently offered logicnation to us, and asked the same question. "please read these hundreds of pages before talking to me" it's a lot to ask. Try asking for something smaller (or breaking it down into smaller chunks) if you want people to engage.

Thank you. Yes I expected it did. But these days tapping out in martial arts implies win/loss. I am happy to see the definition here doesn't imply that, but at the same time there seems to be a need to imply "im not saying you won but I am tapping", which is still different than I teach.

My students look for equilibrium positions and so there is never a purposeful ends. They don't seek ends through conflict they seek re-solution through inquiry.

I have read many posts from here and look forward to reading more. But I will be sad if I can't enga... (read more)

0Elo
If you would like to make a draft in a google doc and PM me a link I would be happy to help you turn it into a post that won't get deleted so quickly. As an estimate; consider how long it might take you to write the post and aim for more than two hours of thinking, sitting and writing. Preferably up to 5 hours. It's funny some of my great posts took 20mins to write, and some took more than 100 hours. Nash was a brilliant gift to humanity. Some of the ways you presented it has made it hard for people to be willing to engage. Happy to help with that.

K I skimmed that and I think I can speak to us in a re-solving manner. System 1 yes, that is easy to see relates. But system 2, does this involve projection of the future? I don't think it is necessary, even for complex tasks. I think projection gets in the way of efficiency of the action.

This speaks to goals as well. So I might not prove goals are wrong and bad, but I can suggest that there can be friction such as "Oh no, I'm not achieving my goals" and this friction is "bad".

Now of course if you are thinking of achievement X (wh... (read more)

0Elo
I am not sure what you mean by this. It's generally taken that both s1 and s2 are good systems and better at some things than others. For example S1 is great at catching baseballs, or fast movements, S2 might be better at working out how to save money (even if this involves teaching S1 how good it feels to "have already saved money" when deciding in S1 whether to spend money right now). I am not sure what "this" you are referring to. LW culture is big; you might like to also read some of Nate Soares' guilt series at minding our way , to make sense of those guilty feelings around should be doing X. I don't want to keep dumping links on you to read, I am sorry to do that. It's really good and makes a lot of sense. Goal setting - in the sense of setting personal goals is a completely objective experience. There is no subjectivity to "I want icecream now and if I don't get it that will be bad". That is that it is still part of the very human battle to do what you want to do. You might appreciate revealed preferences, from Paul Samuelson - an offshoot of Keynesian economics, I started writing about it here but I would like to rewrite it soon. I think you might be looking for a different word in the place of "fallacy" but that's okay. If you mean to say there is no subjectivity to it, then yes, there is only personal objective opinion on whether that goal-thing is relevant or valid to you. I am excited by this idea because it relates to my recent post about the time that you have or choosing to align your actions and thereby your "revealed preferences" to your stated goals in life. I think you are hitting on the same idea. But these things are notoriously hard to communicate.

John Nash won a nobel prize for game theory. No one ignored him. He's a great mathematician and economist, they made a movie about his life. The whole community mourned when he died in a car accident. No one is ignoring him.

He spoke for 20 years and wrote for that time on the subject Ideal Money that he had been developing his whole life. He toured country to country proposing his idea. Have you head of it, because you just stated you aren't ignoring him and neither is the community. Do you understand his argument/proposal and what are you doing abo... (read more)

0Elo
I haven't had a chance yet, but it's now on my list. I am digging into Keynesian Economics and Revealed preference theory at the moment. I hope so, but just to be clear it's best to state your premises. Especially when presenting your information. Nash was a mathematician, I would love to see the easiest explanation to understand that you have. Main is currently closed. As a matter of retirement, it's mostly inactive. And is reserved for posts that both excel in ideas and clear presentation of those ideas to a wide audience. If I were to drop a link to the homepage of wikipedia and suggest all folks need to read it, that would be of little help to anyone, and would not make it to main.

Perfect thanks. I teach Ju Jitsu (which people ascribe to an integral part of mma) with no tapouts: https://steemit.com/mma/@jokerpravis/extending-bjj-with-no-tap-outs-the-end-of-conflict-and-competition

It is similar to what you linked, that its not that I won and Tiff conceited defeat, but there that is a risk of exhaustion or injury or some certain discomfort they wish to avoid.

I think though they weren't at all speaking to me or my argument or my situation and they tired themselves out and also were to scared to actually address the topic of Nash's Id... (read more)

0Elo
I am confident that "tapping out" on the lesswrong sense originated in martial arts. Lesswrong is made up of many memes like this one, it's a culture more than it is just a website. It's hard to jump right in and be engaged on the level of people who juggle lots of these heuristics of behaviour all the time and have been doing so for years. Welcome! I am sure you are more than capable of catching up on our culture! You will fit right in! Lots of our culture is on the wiki and lots is in the sequences, please look around and see what you can see!

Nope you spoke perfect, and a great introduction too (cheers). But there is an argument that goals are wholly irrational. So how I would make a counterpoint to you would be to suggest that you don't have to think and plan to catch a baseball that someone unexpectedly but lightly tossed to you.

So there is still function without such pre planning, and I am suggesting that type of function I describe is rational and pre planning (aka goals) is not, because it presupposes we can control our own fate (by psychologically projecting a future) which is unfounded.

1Elo
I am not sure what you mean by this. This sounds like a System 1 task (from Daniel Kanemann's Thinking, fast and slow) Do you have a different example? I have written a lot about goals from time to time; you might like to read some of; list of common human goals, should you share your goals. and some of my current series which can be found here Certainly not. We can't project the future but we can make a goal and then work out how to use what is within our control to steer closer to the goal. For example: If I want icecream, I can sit on a couch all day wanting icecream and it will never come, or I can decide to get icecream to fulfil my wanting. So I can go to the shops and buy icecream. Thereby using goal-seeking to achieve what I want.

If, in fact, no objective metric for value exists, then there is something false about it

I doubt it is accepted logic to suggest a premise is intrinsically false.

.>If, less dramatically, your preferred candidate for an objective metric doesn't exist (or, perhaps better, exists but doesn't have the properties required of such a metric) and we have no good way of telling whether some other objective metric exists, then there's something unsatisfactory about it even if not quite "false" (though in that case, indeed, it might be reasonable to s... (read more)

0gjm
I'm not sure what your objection actually is. If someone comes along and says "I have a solution to the problems in the Middle East. Let us first of all suppose that Israel is located in Western Europe and that all Jews and Arabs have converted to Christianity" then it is perfectly in order to say no, those things aren't actually true, and there's little point discussing what would follow if they were. If you are seriously claiming that money provides a solution to what previously looked like difficult value-alignment problems because everyone agrees on how much money everything is worth, then this is about as obviously untrue as our hypothetical diplomat's premise. I expect you aren't actually saying quite that; perhaps at some point you will clarify just what you are saying. Many of them seem to me to have other obvious causes. I don't see much sign that humanity is "evolving rationally", at least not if that's meant to mean that we're somehow approaching perfect rationality. (It's not even clear what that means without infinite computational resources, which there's also no reason to think we're approaching; in fact, there are fundamental physical reasons to think we can't be.) If you are not interested in explaining how you reach your conclusions, then I am not interested in talking to you. Please let me know whether you are or not, and if not then I can stop wasting my time. You are doing a good job of giving the impression that you are. There is certainly nothing resembling a consensus across "society" that money answers all questions of value.
0gjm
The things I've seen about Nash's "ideal money" proposal -- which, full disclosure, I hadn't heard of until today, so I make no guarantee to have seen enough -- do not seem to suggest that Nash has in fact found an uncorruptable standard basis for value. Would you care to say more?

I don't think that its founded in economics or any money theory to suggest that it is something that we don't collectively agree on. It also goes against market theory and the efficient market hypothesis to suggest that the price of a good is not an equilibrium related to the wants of the market is it not?

" (1) while there's a sense in which that measures how much "the market" values the good at that time, there's no reason why that has to match up with how any individual feels about it"

Yup you have perfectly highlighted the useful poi... (read more)

0gjm
Given time, markets reach equilibria related to the wants of the participants. Sure. So far as I know, there are no guarantees on how long they will take to do so (and, e.g., if you're comparing finding market equilibria with solving chess, the sort of market setup you'd need to contrive to get something equivalent to solving chess surely will take a long time to converge, precisely because finding the optimum would be equivalent to solving chess; in the real world, what would presumably actually happen is that the market would settle down to something very much not equivalent to actually solving chess, and maybe a few hedge funds with superpowered computers and rooms full of PhDs would extract a little extra money from it every now and then); and there are any number of possible equilibria related to the wants of the participants. Well, we could cut out anything from the dialogue. But you can't make bits of human values go away just by not talking about them, and the fact is that lots of things humans value are not practically reducible to money, and probably never will be. That ... isn't quite how human relationships generally work. But, be that as it may, I'm still not seeing a market here that's capable of assigning meaningful prices to love or even to concrete manifestations of love. I mean, when something is both a monopoly and a monopsony, you haven't really got much of a market. I don't know why you aren't. I'm not because I have only a hazy idea what it is (and in fact I am skeptical that what he was trying to do was such a metric), and because it's only after much conversation that you've made it explicit that your proposal is intended to be exactly Nash's proposal (if indeed it is). Was I supposed to read your mind? Regrettably, that is not among my abilities. Perhaps there is some history here of which I'm unaware; I have no idea what you're referring to. I haven't generally found that the moderators here zap things just out of spite, and if somethin

Yes Nash will get the medals for Ideal Money, this is what I am suggesting.

I am not proposing something "false" as a premise. I am saying, assume an objective metric for value exists (and then lets tend to the ramifications/implications). There is nothing false about that....

What I am saying about money, that you want to suggest is false, is that it is our most objective valuation metric. There is no more objective device for measuring value, in this world.

The rest you are suggesting is a way of saying we don't have free markets now, but if w... (read more)

0gjm
If, in fact, no objective metric for value exists, then there is something false about it. If, less dramatically, your preferred candidate for an objective metric doesn't exist (or, perhaps better, exists but doesn't have the properties required of such a metric) and we have no good way of telling whether some other objective metric exists, then there's something unsatisfactory about it even if not quite "false" (though in that case, indeed, it might be reasonable to say "let's suppose there is, and see what follows"). Ah, now that's a different claim altogether. Our most objective versus actually objective. Unfortunately, the latter is what we need. The first part, kinda but only kinda. The second, not so much. Markets can deviate from ideality in ways other than not being "free". For instance, they can have transaction costs. Not only because of taxation, bid-offer spreads, and the like, but also (and I think unavoidably) because doing things takes effort. They can have granularity problems. (If I have a bunch of books, there is no mechanism by which I can sell half of one of them.) They can simply not exist. Hence, "only kinda". And I see no reason whatever to expect markets to move inexorably towards perfect freedom, perfect liquidity, zero transaction costs, infinitely fine granularity, etc., etc., etc. Hence "not so much". I don't understand your last paragraph at all. "The market values it at a constant in relation with this theoretical notion" -- what theoretical notion? what does it mean to "value it at a constant"? It sounds as if you are saying that I may be wrong about how much I care how much my wife loves me, if "the market" disagrees; that sounds pretty ridiculous but I can't tell how ridiculous until I understand how the market is supposedly valuing it, which at present I don't.

Nash speaks to the crisis of 2008 and explains how it is the lack of an uncorruptable standard basis for value that stops us from achieving such a useful market. You can't target optimal spending for optimal caring though, I just want to clear on that.

0gjm
OK. And has Nash found an uncorruptable standard basis for value? Or is this meant to emerge somehow from The Market, borne aloft no doubt by the Invisible Hand? So far, that doesn't actually seem to be happening. I'm afraid I don't understand your last sentence.

No you haven't interpreted what I said correctly (and its a normal mistake) so you haven't spoken to it, but you still might take issue. I am more suggesting that by definition we all agree on money. Money is the thing we most agree on, the nature of it is that it takes the place of complex barter and optimizes trade, and it does so as the introduction of a universally accepted transfereable utility. If it doesn't do this it would serve no purpose and cease to be money.

That you don't value it is probably less true than it is irrational, and speaks to th... (read more)

0gjm
If this is true by definition then, necessarily, the fact can't tell us anything interesting about anything else (e.g., whether an AI programmed in a particular way would reliably act in a way we were happy about). If you mean something with more empirical consequences -- and, now I think about it, even if you really do mean "by definition" -- then I think it would help if you were more explicit about what you mean by "agree on money". Do you mean we all agree on the appropriate price for any given goods? I think that's the reverse of the truth. The reason why trade happens and benefits us is that different people value different goods differently. In a "good enough" market we will all end up paying the same amount for a given good at a given time, but (1) while there's a sense in which that measures how much "the market" values the good at that time, there's no reason why that has to match up with how any individual feels about it, and (2) as I've pointed out elsewhere in this discussion there are many things people care about that don't have "good enough" markets and surely never will. I didn't say I don't value money, and if you thought I said that then I will gently suggest that you read what I write more carefully and more charitably. What I said is that my values are not reducible to money, and what I meant is that there are things I value that I have no way of exchanging for money. (And also, though you would have a case of sorts for calling it "irrational", that the values I assign to things that are exchangeable for money aren't always proportional to their prices. If I were perfectly rational and perfectly informed and all markets involved were perfectly liquid for short as well as long trading and buying and selling things carried no overheads of any kind and for some reason I were perfectly insulated from risks associated with prices changing ... then arguably I should value things in proportional to their prices, because if I didn't I could improve my

"This seems to me like a category error. The things produced by natural evolution are not values. (Though natural evolution produces things -- e.g., us -- that produce values.)"

I am saying, in a newtonian vs Quantum science money naturally evolves as a thing that the collective group wants, and I am suggesting this phenomenon will spread to and drive AI. This is both natural and a rational conclusion and something favorable the re-solves many paradoxes and difficult problems.

But money is not the correct word, it is an objective metric for value that is the key. Because money can also be a poor standard for objective measurement.

0gjm
Given the actual observed behaviour of markets (e.g., the affair of 2008), I see little grounds for hoping that their preferences will robustly track what humans actually care enough, still less that they will do so robustly enough to answer the concerns of people who worry about AI value alignment.
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