All of Gordon_Worley's Comments + Replies

Interesting discussion.

Eli,

First, since no one has come out and said it yet, maybe it's just me but this post was kind of whiny. Maybe everyone else here is more in-tune with you (or living in your reality distortion field), but the writing felt like you were secretly trying to make yourself out to be a martyr, fishing for sympathy. Based on my knowledge of you from past interactions and your other writings I doubt this to be the case, but none the less it's the sense I got from your writing.

Second, I, too, have been through a similar experience. When I... (read more)

(I'm catching up, so that's why this is posted so far after the original.)

When I attempted this exercise I tried to think of how I use the word "arbitrary" and came up with a definition along the lines of "Something is arbitrary if its choice from a set makes no difference to the veracity of a particular statement", i.e. arbitrary is a 2-part function, taking as input a choice and a statement, since without a statement to evaluate against calling something arbitrary to me just looks like membership.

But then I read on and realized that I... (read more)

Eliezer,

You know that you can't succeed without the math, and slowing down for posts like this is taking away 24 hours that might have been better used to save humanity. Not that this was a bad post, but I think you would be better off letting others write the fun posts unless you need to write a fun post to recover from teaching.

I agree that it makes no sense, but as I was writing the comment I figured I would take you down the wrong path of what someone might naively think and then correct it. I think that someone who was overly trained in logic and not in probability might assume that if Raven(x)-->Black(x) being true leads to P(B|R) = 1, they might reason that since the reverse implication Black(x)-->Raven(x) is false, it leads to P(R|B) = 0. But based on the comments above, maybe only an ancient Greek philosopher would be inclined to make such a mistake.

Hopefully not taking away anyone's fun here, but to reconcile Raven(x)->Black(x) but not vice versa, what this statement wants to say, letting P(R) and P(B) be the probabilities of raven and black, respectively, is P(R|B)=0 and P(B|R)=1, which gives us that

P(R|B) = 0 P(RB)/P(B) = 0 P(RB) = 0

and

P(B|R) = 1 P(BR)/P(R) = 1 P(BR) = P(R)

But of course this leads to a contradiction, so it can't really be true that Black(x)-/->Raven(x), can it? Sure, because what is really meant by implies (-/->) is not P(B|R) = 0 but P(B|R)<1. But in logic we often f... (read more)

I believe you made a slight typo, Eli.

You said: "Since there's an "unusually high" probability for P(Z1Y2) - defined as a probability higher than the marginal probabilities would indicate by default - it follows that observing Z1 is evidence which increases the probability of Y2. And by a symmetrical argument, observing Y2 must favor Z1."

But I think what you meant was "Since there's an "unusually high" probability for P(Z1Y2) - defined as a probability higher than the marginal probabilities would indicate by default - i... (read more)

For those saying they have nothing to protect or still need to find something to protect, remember that you are human and, unless you have no natural family or reproductive ties, you always have the people you love to protect. It may seem counterintuitive if you've bought into Hollywood rationality, but love is a powerful motivational force. If you think that, in theory, being more rational is good, but don't see how you can effect greater rationality in your mind, consider the many benefits of your increased rationality (again, not Hollywood rationality... (read more)

Am I right in thinking that you've now brought the OB audience to where you need them in order to start trying to talk about AI (or "optimizing processes" or whatever terminology is sufficiently abstract to prevent linguistically inferred misunderstanding)?

Let's suppose we measure pain in pain points (pp). Any event which can cause pain is given a value in [0, 1], with 0 being no pain and 1 being the maximum amount of pain perceivable. To calculate the pp of an event, assign a value to the pain, say p, and then multiply it by the number of people who will experience the pain, n. So for the torture case, assume p = 1, then:

torture: 1*1 = 1 pp

For the spec in eye case, suppose it causes the least amount of pain greater than no pain possible. Denote this by e. Assume that the dust speck causes e amount of ... (read more)

Between teaching mathematics to freshmen and spending most of my time learning mathematics, I've noticed this myself. When presented with a new result, the first inclination, especially depending on the authority of the source, is to believe it and figure there's a valid proof of it. But occasionally the teacher realizes that they made a mistake and may even scold the students for not noticing since it is incredibly obvious (e.g. changing something like ||z - z_0|| to ||z - z_1|| between steps, even though a few seconds thinking reveals it to be a typo r... (read more)

Eliezer, although the comments did eventually get better, don't despair for the early comments on this post. Remember yourself, all you are finding in the comments is evidence confirming the belief that no one reading this blog is learning anything. I conjecture that those who have learned something just don't get excited enough to post because they don't disagree with you strongly enough or aren't sufficiently surprised to thank you publicly.

Of course, I still suspect, as you probably do, from years of experience that most readers of this blog believe ... (read more)

The best thing about grad school is when you finish taking courses. To make it through the math courses you have to play the game, writing down proofs you know aren't right but that will get you some credit. Once you're done with that, then you can actually step back and learn something. Study only one or two things at a time, set a reasonable pace that will allow you time to think (and will be paced relative to your own speed of thought), and actually gain some understanding. Of course, some students use this as an excuse to be lazy, but a good advisor will know the difference.

As I see it, what's most important is to make a division between rationality and emotions in terms of where they fit in the equations. Rationality describes the equations, emotions provide a source of evidence that must be applied correctly. If an outcome makes me happy, that should make me desire that outcome more, but not make me think that outcome more likely than if it made me sad (unless, of course, I'm evaluating the probability that I will be motivated to do something).

Unfortunately, I think this model of mind is not how the human mind actually wo... (read more)

zzz, I think you underestimate how people perceive gambles. Investing in financial markets isn't perceived as a bet, since we like to believe that if you only knew enough, you could make the right choices (whether you actually can or not is another matter). With lotteries and other forms of gambling, it doesn't matter how much you know, you can't anticipate the outcome any better than if you had no additional information. That, I think, is part of why gambling is much more popular than investment: even the least skilled person has the same chance of winning as the most.

As I've thought about the chronophone, a big part of the trouble with it is that we can't successfully transmit any idea where we already know what result we want. Thus to pick something desirable now that will be translated into something desirable then is essentially impossible, since if I already know it to be desirable, I must know enough of the result to know it's desirable, hence tainting all my thoughts. At best, I can tell Archimedes about things I'm working on now that are non-obvious and hope that they translate into something similarly non-obv... (read more)

I still haven't come up with something that I feel fits the spirit of the question, but my start is that I could tell Archimedes about atheism. Up until I was maybe 11 or 12 years old I never really considered the question of religion. My parents taught me the basic Christian tradition, but I never attended church or was deeply indoctrinated. At that age, though, other kids started asking me about religion as they began to become adult members of their religions. "What religion are you?" they would ask and my answer was "I don't know&quo... (read more)

In sum, I agree, but one small issue I take is when you argue that someone acts contrary to their learning it demonstrates that they don't really understand it. I'm sure this is often the case, but sometimes it's a matter of akrasia: the person knows what they should do and why, even deep down inside, yet finds themselves unable to do it.

Humans suffer heavily from their biases. I recall at in middle school I came to the conclusion that no deities existed, yet it took me a long while to act on it because of social pressures, so I continued to behave cont... (read more)