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All of hydkyll's Comments + Replies

Open Thread, Jun. 22 - Jun. 28, 2015
hydkyll20

I want to do a PhD in Artificial General Intelligence in Europe (not machine learning or neuroscience or anything with neural nets). Anyone know a place where I could do that? (Just thought I'd ask...)

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3jsteinhardt
Just wondering why you don't want to do machine learning? Many ML labs have at least some people who care about AI, and you'll get to learn a lot of useful technical material.
Kaj_Sotala120

IDSIA / University of Lugano in Switzerland is where e.g. Schmidhuber is. His research is quite neural network-focused, but also AGI-focused. Also Shane Legg (now at DeepMind, one of the hottest AGI-ish companies around) graduated from Lugano with a PhD thesis on machine superintelligence.

"AGI but not machine learning or neuroscience or anything with neural nets" sounds a little odd to me, since the things you listed under the "not" seem like the components you'll need to understand if you want to ever build an AGI. (Though maybe you me... (read more)

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Open Thread, Jun. 22 - Jun. 28, 2015
hydkyll00

I think this sums up the problem. If you want to build a safe AI you can't use neural nets because you have no clue what the system is actually doing.

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4Kaj_Sotala
If we genuinely had no idea of what neural nets were doing, NN research wouldn't be getting anywhere. But that's obviously not the case. More to the point, there's promising-looking work going on at getting a better understanding of what various NNs actually represent. Deep learning networks might actually have relatively human-comprehensible features on some of their levels (see e.g. the first link). Furthermore it's not clear that any other human-level machine learning model would be any more comprehensible. Worst case, we have something like a billion variables in a million dimensions: good luck trying to understand how that works, regardless of whether it's a neural network or not.
Rationality: From AI to Zombies
hydkyll10

How is that translation coming along? I could help with German.

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0Gust
We're translating to Brazilian Protuguese only, since that's our native language.
Open thread, Mar. 9 - Mar. 15, 2015
hydkyll40

OK, when I said "easy" I exaggerated quite a bit (I edited in the original post). More accurate would be: "in the last three years at least one new party became popular enough to enter parliament" (the country is Germany and the party would be the AfD, before that, there was the German Pirate Party). Actually, to form a new party the signatures from at least 0.1% of all eligible voters are needed.

but it sounds like a difficult thing to sell to the public in sufficient numbers to get enough influence to change anything.

I also see that problem, my idea was to try to recruit some people on German internet fora and if there is not enough interest drop the idea.

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Open thread, Mar. 9 - Mar. 15, 2015
hydkyll60

I'm thinking about starting a new political party (in my country getting into parliament as a new party is e̶a̶s̶y̶ not virtually impossible, so it's not necessarily a waste of time). The motivation for this is that the current political process seems inefficient.

Mostly I'm wondering if this idea has come up before on lesswrong and if there are good sources for something like this.

The most important thing is that no explicit policies are part of the party's platform (i.e. no "we want a higher minimum wage"). I don't really have a party program ye... (read more)

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0MrMind
What about the process of gaining consensus? I find it hard to believe that lay people may be attracted from meta-values alone.
0Evan_Gaensbauer
Have you floated this idea with anyone else you know in Germany? I'm not asking if you're ready and willing to get to the threshold of 0.1% of German voters (~7000 people). I'm just thinking more feedback, and others involved, whether one or two, might help. Also, you could just talk to lots of people in your local network about it. As far as I can tell, people might be loathe to make big commitment like helping you launch a party, but are willing to do trivial favors like putting you in touch with a contact who could give you advice on law, activism, politics, dealing with bureaucracy, finding volunteers, etc. Do you attend a LessWrong meetup in Germany? If so, float this idea there. At the meetup I attend, it's much easier to get quick feedback from (relatively) smart people in person, because communication errors are reduced, and it takes less time to relay and reply to ideas than over the Internet. Also, in-person is more difficult for us to skip over ideas or ignore them than on an Internet thread.
3gjm
You may be right, and I don't know the details of your situation or your values, but on the face of it that inference isn't quite justified. It depends on what getting into parliament as such actually achieves. E.g., I can imagine that in some countries it's easy for someone to start a new party and get into parliament, but a new one-person party in parliament has basically zero power to change anything. (It seems like there must be some difficulty somewhere along the line, because if getting the ability to make major changes in what your country does is easy then everyone will want to do it and it will get harder because of competition. Unless somehow this is a huge opportunity that you've noticed and no one else has.) I like the idea of a political party that has meta-policies rather than object-level policies, but it sounds like a difficult thing to sell to the public in sufficient numbers to get enough influence to change anything.
4IlyaShpitser
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Swarmwise-Tactical-Manual-Changing-World/dp/1463533152 http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2710 ---------------------------------------- I like the first link because it is at least trying to move past feudalism as an organizing principle. The second link is about the fact that it is hard to make groups of people act like we want (because groups of people operate under a set of poorly understood laws, likely these laws are cousins to things like natural selection in biology). Public choice folks like to study this stuff, but it seems really really hard.
Request: Sequences book reading group
hydkyll20

That would be a lot of posts. If we're talking about making a new post in Discussion everyday, that would likely drown-out most other threads. It would be even worse in Main.

One could start a new subreddit for this reading group. Something like reddit.com/r/LWreadinggroup. But that would defeat the purpose of reviving lesswrong.com.

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4Gondolinian
I think I phrased "drown-out most other threads" too strongly. Just from eyeballing the Newest Submissions page in Discussion, I estimate there are an average of ~3 new threads per day, so a new post everyday probably wouldn't "drown-out" the other threads, but still, a 33% dilution is a 33% dilution. It's quite possible that it's a trade-off worth making, but it's still a trade-off that I think we should be aware of.
I played as AI in AI Box, and it was generally frustrating all around.
hydkyll30

However Mr. Eliezer's basic rules say it doesn't count.

Ah, I see. Didn't know the rules were so strict. (Btw shouldn't it be "Mr. Yudkowsky"?)

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I played as AI in AI Box, and it was generally frustrating all around.
hydkyll60

nanobots released into the atmosphere

Wait, were you allowed to design them yourself? (The timestamp is in UTC iirc.)

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9wobster109
Yes, I designed them, and they were verified by GK's engineers. The individual nanobots are all connected to GPS and get up-to-date information from the CDC. These sort of details are how I lost tons of time. ^^ I know in real life that would be akin to AI out of the box. However Mr. Eliezer's basic rules say it doesn't count. ^^
Open thread, Nov. 10 - Nov. 16, 2014
hydkyll40

Is there actually good AI research somewhere in Europe? (Apart from what the FHI is doing.) Or: can the mission for FAI benefit at all from me doing my PhD at the AI lab of some university? (Which is my plan currently.)

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2Kaj_Sotala
Do you mean AI research or FAI research? (The FHI does not do AI research.)
European Community Weekend 2015
hydkyll50

What language will proceedings generally be conducted in?

English, of course.

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First(?) Rationalist elected to state government
hydkyll40

but there exists a not-too-horrible more-mainstream party whose members have led me to understand that they'd be glad to have me if I was up for it

What did they see in you? If I may ask. You would disagree with your fellow party members on quite a lot of things, I'd imagine.

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4Kaj_Sotala
I didn't specifically ask them that question, but I believe that they've liked my social media activity and my writings: wrote a bunch of blog posts in Finnish when I was campaigning, also a book on the topic of copyright reform. I guess they considered my writings persuasive and well-reasoned. Also some of them used to be former Pirates who shifted parties when they saw that things weren't working out. I don't know if we'd actually disagree on that much: e.g. the party is generally aligned with liberal values, which I tend to endorse, and has valuable stuff on its platform, like supporting a universal basic income. The specific people who've tried to attract me have also all been associated with a subgroup within the party that's explicitly focused on science- and reason-based decision-making. Of course there are also points of disagreement, but that's unavoidable when dealing with other people.
What false beliefs have you held and why were you wrong?
hydkyll130

Hm, because I spend more time researching the issue than I had before? That should count for something, shouldn't it?

Also, I can actually explain things like decoherence without hand-waving now. Looking back there were some gaps in my understanding that I just brushed over. You could say it was a failure of rationality to give as much credence to the Copenhagen interpretation in the first place.

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5EHeller
But when you go to many worlds you lose the Born probabilities, doesn't that bother you? The Born probabilities are the actual measurable predictions of the theory. Many worlds is only simpler as a theory if you don't include a measurement postulate, in which case no one knows how to get Born probabilities. You can postulate the Born probabilities, but now the theory is exactly as complicated as it was before, so there is no reason to choose many worlds over something like consistent histories.
What false beliefs have you held and why were you wrong?
hydkyll150

Probably not too interesting, but after studying physics at university I was pretty sure that the Many-Worlds interpretation of QM was crazy-talk (nobody even really mentioned it at uni). Of course I didn't read Eliezer's sequence on QM (although I read the others). I mean I had a degree in physics and Eliezer didn't.

Then after seeing it over and over again on LW, I actually read this paper to see what it was all about. And I was enlightened. Well, I had a short crisis of faith first, then I was enlightened.

This all could have been avoided if I had read th... (read more)

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Strilanc200

I find Eliezer's insistence about Many-Worlds a bit odd, given how much he hammers on "What do you expect differently?". Your expectations from many-worlds are be identical to those from pilot-wave, so....

I'm probably misunderstanding or simplifying his position, e.g. there are definitely calculational and intuition advantages to using one vs the other, but that seems a bit inconsistent to me.

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6pan
I think that when you start reasoning about quantum foundations it should be remembered that you're leaving the boundary of testable physics. This is to say that even if you've concluded that many-worlds is most likely to be correct with your current information, that there should remain a pretty high degree of uncertainty in your conclusion.
9Shmi
How do you know your new belief is more accurate than your old belief?
Cryonics in Europe?
hydkyll60

I'm also in the process of signing up. I already submitted the application for life insurance and filled out the membership application form by Alcor. The next step then is to meet up with a notary and transfer ownership of the insurance policy to Alcor. After that, Alcor has to check the documents and then I will hopefully be a full member.

I've also heard rumors that Alcor is considering opening a new facility in Switzerland. But even if that's true it will take years and will probably not be cheaper than storage in the US. Though maybe easier to sign up ... (read more)

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Questions on Theism
hydkyll30

Hm, substitute 'miracle' with 'supernatural phenomenon', then.

("supernatural" still in this sense: A "supernatural" explanation appeals to ontologically basic mental things, mental entities that cannot be reduced to nonmental entities.)

So the question of whether lightning is a supernatural phenomenon or not is now about an empirical fact, not about my own ignorance. If the lightning is due to electrically charged regions in clouds, it's natural. If it's due to Thor's rage and only a god can produce it, it's supernatural.

And of course ev... (read more)

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1Azathoth123
Ok, now define "ontologically basic".
2buybuydandavis
I think there are supposed to be non mental "supernatural" artifacts as well. Like Thor's hammer. I find "miracles" and "supernatural" basically placeholders for "we don't follow the rules". It's basically magic. Harry and I still think there would be rules, just new ones. In the context of the OP, I think miracles are "magic from an entity". He wills it, it is done. The miraculous part isn't the ontologically basic mental thing, but the lack of understanding of how the ontologically mental thing can produce physical effects.
2Aiyen
Well played. But there's a huge difference in how you should update given a phenomonon we don't yet understand that seems to have no religious connotation and given one that only occurs in conjunction with prayer. If the leaders in lighting occured ten times more frequently any time someone invoked Thor, I'd call it evidence for Asgard. If there's no religious correlation, I'd call it evidence that we need better meterology.
Questions on Theism
hydkyll20

There is no logical argument against miracles. They could exist.

But there really is no reliable evidence for them. If there was, I would also think this is a supernatural universe. But as it stands I'm pretty sure this is a natural universe, without souls and without praying superpowers.

I mean have you heard about the beatification of Pope John Paul II? A nun with symptoms similar to Parkinson's was healed after she prayed to John Paul. She even had a relapse but they went with it anyway.

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2DanielLC
Define "miracle". It's not well-understood what causes the leaders in lightning. Could this be considered a miracle in support of the existence of Thor?
Rationality Quotes October 2014
hydkyll100

How do you know it's a German Army War College publication? Reasons for my doubt:

  • "Ellis Bata" doesn't sound at all like a German name.

  • There was no War College in Germany in 1923. There were some remains of the Prussian Military Academy, but the Treaty of Versailles forbid work being done there. The academy wasn't reactivated until 1935.

  • The academy in Prussia isn't usually called "Army War College". However, there are such academies in Japan, India and the US.

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2James_Miller
The link is from Strategy Page. I have listened to a lot of their podcasts and greatly respect them.
Open thread, 14-20 July 2014
hydkyll30

(I think what we call Bio in German is called "organic" in English.)

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Open thread, 7-14 July 2014
hydkyll20

Maybe it's just me but I also feel silly writing a gmail-address on a CV. May I suggest MyKolab instead? It's a professional (not too expensive) secure open-source e-mail service. Your address could be john.smith@swisscollab.ch.

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0[anonymous]
Not clear what the benefits of Swiss hosting are. I'm not sure I want to signal that much paranoia, either.
Open thread, 7-14 July 2014
hydkyll20

This is a great idea. I assume it's 16 and a half because of print limitations? The first 21 chapters would make more sense.

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2Ben Pace
That's how MIRI sent me them.
Consider giving an explanation for your deletion this time around. "Harry Yudkowsky and the Methods of Postrationality: Chapter One: Em Dashes Colons and Ellipses, Littérateurs Go Wild"
hydkyll30

For what it's worth I would love if LessWrong stuck to only decision theory, microeconomics, cognitive science, ...

So, now that you know the reason why your post was removed, do you agree with the decision? It seems that you're generally in favor of removing "stupid shit that gets upvoted". (And your post wouldn't even have been needed to be removed if you had hosted it at fanfiction.net and posted the link in an open thread.)

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Will_Newsome120

This isn't the should-world. LessWrong is irrevocably a cesspit. The stupid shit will continue to flow. So no, I do not agree with the decision, unless someone like Vladimir_Nesov gets to ban all the stupid shit, which will never happen. Arbitrarily banning my stupid shit in particular just means Eliezer making a fool of himself. There is no sympathetic magic to it that will change the equilibrium.

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Rationality Quotes April 2014
hydkyll00

Is the paper worth reading in that it offers solutions to this problem?

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2Gunnar_Zarncke
These are the key points from page 7: I have seen failure at this to lead to a decline in participation esp. by key contributors who didn't see their effort honored or supported. For LW this might mean key contributors supporting the creation or operation of benefits like the new business networking and user page initiaitive or in general the operation of the site. On LW the active members already act as role models. I can only guess that that is what CFAR does. Building real-life relationships is done by meetups. I see the meetup resources as an effort to support this. But maybe someone could actively contact the meetup organizers and look whether there is potential for improvement. I felt this at the Berlin event. I can't quickly evaulate this. Ideas? This follows from LW being a community and no business. There was a post and discussion on roles but I can't find it. Maybe this needs more structure.
Rationality Quotes April 2014
hydkyll10

Me: But sir, can you explain why it gets the right answer?

So you wanted to know not how to derive the solution but how to derive the derivation?

I wouldn't blame the teacher for not going there. There's not enough time in class to do something like that. Bringing the students to understand the presented math is hard enough. Describing the process of how this math was found, would take too long. Because especially for harder problems there were probably dozens of mathematicians who studied the problem for centuries in order to find those derivations that your teacher presents to you.

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9A1987dM
What's wrong with saying something to the effect of "There's a theorem -- it's not really within the scope of this course, but if you're really interested it's called the fixed-point theorem, you can look it up on Wikipedia or somewhere"?
6Ben Pace
Derive the derivation? Huh? And you say that's different from 'understanding' it. No, I just didn't have the most basic of intuitive ideas as to why he suddenly made an iterated equation, and I didn't understand why it worked, at any level. It was all just abstract symbol manipulation with no content for me, and that's not learning. Furthermore, he does have the time. We have nine hours a week. With a class size of four pupils.
6ChristianKl
In my school math education we had the standard that everything we learn get's proved. If you are not in the habit of proving math, students are not well prepared for doing real math in university which is about mathematical proofs. In general the math that's not understood but memorized gets soon forgotten and is not worth teaching in the first place.
6[anonymous]
He doesn't have to give proofs. Just explaining the intuition behind each formula doesn't take that long and will help the students understand how and when to use them. Giving intuitions really isn't esoteric trivia for advanced students, it's something that will make solving problems easier for everyone relative to if they just memorized each individual case where each formula applies.
Rationality Quotes January 2014
hydkyll50

That was my first book on quantum mechanics and I remember reading this. Accordingly, the Stern-Gerlach experiment is usually the first thing I explain to someone who is interested in QM, not these things about cats. Apart from that, I found the book to be a bit too terse and I had to read other books to really master the notation and so on.

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4spxtr
It's not an introductory text, so it probably goes way too fast if its your first book on QM. I agree about SG being a great experiment for explaining QM principles.
Welcome to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013)
hydkyll20

Hi!

I can't seem to find a discussion of free will in the Quantum Physics sequence. I only know this: http://lesswrong.com/lw/of/dissolving_the_question/ (which demonstrates the method I was talking about).

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0Vivificient
See this wiki page for links to discussion of Free Will in the sequences: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Free_will
Welcome to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013)
hydkyll90

I'm Thomas, 23 years old, from Germany. I study physics but starting this semester I have shifted my focus on Machine Learning, mostly due to the influence of lesswrong.

Here are a few things about my philosophical and scientific journey if anyone's interested.

I grew up with mildly religious parents, never being really religious myself. At about 12 I came into contact with the concept of atheism and immediately realized that's what I was. Before, I hadn't really thought about it but it was clear to me then. For a long time I felt a bit ashamed of not believ... (read more)

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2VAuroch
Welcome! I am also basically a newcomer here. I'd suggest not waiting to read all the sequences before you contribute. The worst that happens is that someone corrects you, right? I've had a few interesting discussions and I'm still not quite done reading the main line. Was your dissolving of free will different from the one presented in the Quantum Physics sequence?