All of Kutta's Comments + Replies

Yes. To expand a bit, in fact the straightforward way to show that second-order arithmetic isn't complete in the first sense is by using the Gödel sentence G.

G says via an encoding that G is not provable in second-order arithmetic. Since the only model (up to isomorphism) is the model with the standard natural numbers, an internal statement which talks about encoded proofs is interpreted in the semantics as a statement which talks about actual proof objects of second-order arithmetic. This is in contrast to first-order arithmetic where we can interpret an ... (read more)

I'd like to ask a not-too-closely related question, if you don't mind.

A Curry-Howard analogue of Gödel's Second Incompleteness Theorem is the statement "no total language can embed its own interpreter"; see the classic post by Conor McBride. But Conor also says (and it's quite obviously true), that total languages can still embed their coinductive interpreters, for example one that returns in the partiality monad.

So, my question is: what is the logical interpretation of a coinductive self-interpreter? I feel I'm not well-versed enough in mathem... (read more)

You're right, I mixed it up. Edited the comment.

Suppose "mathemathics would never prove a contradiction". We can write it out as ¬Provable(⊥). This is logically equivalent to Provable(⊥) → ⊥, and it also implies Provable(Provable(⊥) → ⊥) by the rules of provability. But Löb's theorem expresses ∀ A (Provable(Provable(A) → A) → Provable(A)), which we can instantiate to Provable(Provable(⊥) → ⊥)→ Provable(⊥), and now we can apply modus ponens and our assumption to get a Provable(⊥).

To clarify my point, I meant that Solomonoff induction can justify caring less about some agents (and I'm largely aware of the scheme you described), but simultaneously rejecting Solomonoff and caring less about agents running on more complex physics is not justified.

The unsimulated life is not worth living.

-- Socrates.

You conflate two very different things here, as I see.

First, there are the preferences for simpler physical laws or simpler mathematical constructions. I don't doubt that they are real amongst humans; after all, there is an evolutionary advantage to using simpler models ceteris paribus since they are easier to memorize and easier to reason about. Such evolved preferences probably contribute to a matemathician's sense of elegance.

Second, there are preferences about the concrete evolutionarily relevant environment and the relevant agents in it. Naturally, t... (read more)

Donated $500.

Survey taken.

Very recently decent fansubs have surfaced for Mamoru Hosoda's new movie The Wolf Children Ame and Yuki. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

I figured that ~36% discount over two months would be way too high.

Thanks for your effort. I'll contact my bank.

I donated 250$.

Update: No, I apparently did not. For some reason the transfer from Google Checkout got rejected, and now PayPal too. Does anyone have an idea what might've gone wrong? I've a Hungarian bank account. My previous SI donations were fine, even with the same credit card if I recall correctly, and I'm sure that my card is still prefectly valid.

Took all of them.

Luminosity, Radiance and Flashes by Alicorn.

What do you mean by real depth? In cinema, isn't skilled cinematography included in that? If I recall correctly, I've read from you somewhere that you think most of NGE's narrative/mythological background is an impromptu, leaky mess (which I mostly agree with), so you might mean that by lack of real depth, but that doesn't subtract much from NGE's overall success at thematic exposition, so I'm still not fully getting it.

Typo: Arrison.

Seconded all three. The health impact of the quality of a particular foodstuff (within the variance allowed by developed country regulations) is often overstated compared to the health impact of the overall composition of the calories you eat.

I first encountered this idea on Terence Tao's excellent slide.

He who knows how to do something is the servant of he who knows why that thing must be done.

-- Isuna Hasekura, Spice and Wolf vol. 5 ("servant" is justified by the medieval setting).

I've the impression that Harry actually has some kind of censor inside his head that prevents him from thinking about the sense of doom concerning Quirrel. He is never shown remembering it and reflecting on it, even though it should be a pretty damn conspicuous and important fact. EDIT: not never, as seen below, but the amount of thought he expends on the matter still seems to be weirdly little.

I'm probably coming.

Also, will the meetup's language be English? AlexeyM's username suggests so.

The presentation and exercise booklets seem to be pretty awesome.

1) Here is a nice prove of Pythagorean theorem:

Typo: proof.

Most people you know are probably weak skeptics, and I would probably fit this definition in several ways. "Strong skeptics" are the people who write The Skeptics' Encyclopedia, join the California Skeptics' League, buy the Complete Works of James Randi, and introduce themselves at parties saying "Hi, I'm Ted, and I'm a skeptic!". Of weak skeptics I approve entirely. But strong skeptics confused me for a long while. You don't believe something exists. That seems like a pretty good reason not to be too concerned with it.

• Yvain, 2004, source

Edit: authorial instance specified on popular demand.

Welcome to Less Wrong!

You might want to post your introduction in the current official "welcome" thread.

... then I am an ex-rationalist.

LW's notion of rationality differs greatly from what you described. You may find our version more palatable.

Do you have evidence besides the username and the programming skill that it's Norvig? I also entertained the idea that it's him. At first I didn't examine his code deeply, but its conciseness inspired me to create a 12-line semi-obfuscated Python solution. I posted a clarified version of that in the thread. What do you think about it? Also, could you tell me your Euler username so I could look for your solutions (provided that you actually post there)?

Now that you mentioned Norvig's solution I investigated it and after correcting some typos I got it to run on my PC. I concluded that it works pretty much the same way as my solution (but mine's considerably faster :) ).

By the way, it seems that the usual end-of-the-year SI fundraising is live now.

Evangelion

Maybe someone should do some study about that peculiar group of depressed and/or psychopathological people who were significantly mentally kicked by NGE. Of course it's all anecdotal right now, but I really have the impression (especially after spending some time at EvaGeeks... ) that NGE produces a recurring pattern of effect on a cluster of people, moreover, that effect is much more dramatic than what is usual in art.

GEB is great as many things; as an introduction to formal systems, self reference, several computer science topics, Gödel's first Incompleteness Theorem, and other stuff. Often it is also a unique and very entertaining hybrid of art and nonfiction. Without denying any of those merits, the book's weakest point is actually the core message, quoted in OP as

GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter... GEB approaches [this question] by slowly building up an analogy that likens inanimate molecules to m

Wow, thanks. That's probably the subjectively best feeling thing anyone's said to me in 2011 so far.

In September I picked up programming. Following many people's recommendations I chose the Project Euler + Python combination. So far it seems to be quite addictive (and effective). I'm currently at 90 solved problems, although I'm starting to feel a bit out of my (rather non-deep) depth, and thus I consider temporarily switching to investigating PyGame for a while and coding remakes of simple old games, while getting ahold of several CS and coding textbooks.

Pollan's book is horrible. It is actually against science per se in nutrition, continuously bringing up the supposed holistic irreducibility of diets and emphasizing "common sense", "tradition" and "what our grandparents ate" as primary guidelines. Pollan presents several cherry-picked past mistakes of nutrition science, and from that concludes that nutrition science in general is evil.

I am not fundamentally against heuristics derived from tradition and/or evolution, but Pollan seems to use such heuristics whimsically, most... (read more)

I am a bit worried by the fact that this trailer has a robot squad infiltrating a warehouse with mannequins and antique recording devices, as opposed to things more unambiguously AI-Box-related. The synopsis also sounds rather wooey. Anyway, the full movie will be the judge of my worries.

My central point is contained in the sentence after that. A positive Singularity seems extremely human to me when contrasted to paperclip Singularities.

Re: Preface and Contents

I am somewhat irked by "the human era will be over" phrase. It is not given that current-type humans cease to exist after any Singularity. Also, a positive Singularity could be characterised as the beginning of the humane era, in which case it is somewhat inappropriate to refer to the era afterwards as non-human. In contrast to that, negative Singularities typically result in universes devoid of human-related things.

2008: Life extension -> Immortality Institute -> OB

That's witholding potentially important information. Also, you still have to address other people's erroneous beliefs about their points.

13 years off, 50% confidence.

I praise Yvain for this.

I've paid the 3 dollars because it is such a small amount. The marvelously awful Harry Potter puns alone made it a bargain.

Begin with movement. Excitement. Humor. Surprise. Insight. Explosions.

I know I am a total nitpicker here but I think there is such a thing as too short a sentence.

A popular answer to that nowadays is something like "creativity".

You can draw a lot of motivation from peer pressure; the trick is to expose yourself to specific kinds of peer pressure that propel you towards some desirable goal.

In regards to art, once I made a considerable effort to like extreme metal, because a respected art-geek friend recommended me to do so. He's a professional poker player with little to no social engagement in art circles, and thus his tastes have remarkably social-pressure-free origins. I figured that'd make his social pressure on me more valuable. Currently, on reflection, I believe that some ... (read more)

The points overestimating complexity (especially point 1) about brain proteins) seem to be attempts to reduce high-level complexity to low-level complexity instead of low-level simplicity.

You want to destroy PhilGoetz's life?

OP argued that self-deception occurs even if your brain remains unbroken. I would characterize "not breaking my brain" as allowing my prior belief about the book's biasedness to make a difference in my posterior confidence of the book's thesis. In that case the book might be arbitrarily convincing; but I might start with an arbitrarily high confidence that the book is biased, and then it boils down to an ordinary Bayesian tug o' war, and Yvain's comment applies.

On the other hand, I'd view a brain-breaking book as a "press X to self-modify to devout Y-believer" button. If I know the book is such, I decide not to read it. If I'm ignorant of the book's nature, and I read it, then I'm screwed.

I stopped eating wheat two years ago (no relapse since then). I've found that the following technique makes the switch tremendously easier:

Eat a cup of whipping cream before meals.

Explanation: the easiest way to make wheat-craving go away is to already consume enough calories without wheat; I suspect that much of wheat-craving is the result of overestimating the caloric value of a wheat-free diet. Also, low-carbers often has to push themselves to eat slightly more than what they'd otherwise eat because they tend to be more sated than what is common among h... (read more)

Did you click on the listen icons on the right side, those that activate the Hungarian parser? I'm Hungarian and Google's "Erdős" and "Szilárd" are basically indistinguishable from common speech versions, while "Csíkszentmihályi" has only one minor flaw, namely that it leaves a bit too much space between Csík and szent.