All of Mario's Comments + Replies

I can't believe that this is something people talk about. I've had a group of people in my head for years, complete with the mindscape the reddit FAQ talks about. I just thought I was a little bit crazy; it's nice to see that there's a name for it.

I can't imagine having to deal with just one though. I started with four, which seemed like a good idea when I was eleven, and I found that distracting enough. Having only one sounds like being locked in a small room with only one companion -- I'd rather be in solitary. I kept creating more regardless, and I... (read more)

2hylleddin
I think you may be generalizing from one example here. We're quite happy with just the two of us.Any more would be too crowded for us. I imagine the optimum size depends on the personalities of those involved. I'm not sure I agree about suggesting people avoid this entirely, but I certainly would advise caution.
3atorm
I can't tell if this is a joke or not.

Sorry this is so late, but I honestly completely forgot about this after I wrote it, so I never came back to see what transpired.

Anyway, I'm aware of how the marginal propensity to consume affects tax incidence, but in this case, where payroll taxes apply to every employee at every business, the only choices involved are whether to work and whether to hire, and companies have far more leeway in that decision. You can avoid the fizzlesprot tax by consuming an untaxed equivalent or finding a different, fizzlesprotless sexual fetish. You can only avoid a pa... (read more)

-2Luke Stebbing
Hmm, and yet only two-thirds of the working age population chooses to work, and some of that is part-time, which reduces the amount of labor available to employers. Labor can also move between sectors, leaving some relatively starved of workers. People who accumulate enough savings can choose to retire early and have to be enticed back into the labor market with higher wages, if they can be enticed at all. That doesn't look like a fixed supply of working hours that must be sold at any price -- the supply looks somewhat elastic. Edit: Sorry about the tone in my original comment -- tax incidence doesn't seem to be common knowledge and I failed to consider that you might be aware of it already.

I need to quibble with the "compulsory retirement savings" point. Realistically, any amount that the government forces the employer to contribute as a condition to hire you is money that would have otherwise been given to you as wages. There is no way to increase someone's value by fiat, so it's misleading to suggest that you somehow gain from the tax (apart from the social value of the retirement scheme). Also, the US SS withholding is 12.4% of income, as half of it is paid by the employer before the employee sees the funds but, as discussed,... (read more)

1Luke Stebbing
This is untrue as a general rule, though it can be closer or farther from the truth depending on market conditions. To see why, imagine that every month you buy a supply of fizzlesprots from Acme Corp. Today is the first of February, so you eagerly rush off to buy your monthly fix. But wait! The government has just imposed a tax on all fizzlesprot purchases. Curses! Now you'll have to pay even more, because Acme Corp will just pass the whole tax on to you. Now change "fizzlesprot" to "labor" and "Acme Corp" to "employee". Huh? You're an employer, not an employee? My world is turned upside down! Could it be that the narrative where You bear the full brunt of every tax and They end up paying nothing is wrong? In fact, whenever an economic transaction is taxed, the buyers and the sellers split the tax based on who is more eager to buy or sell. Labor is no different. It's possible that, empirically, the employee usually pays more of a labor tax than the employer, but this is by no means guaranteed and I would personally expect the proportion to vary significantly between labor market segments. (Wikipedia's article on tax incidence claims that employees pay almost all of payroll taxes, but cites a single paper that claims a 70% labor / 30% owner split for corporate income tax burden in the US, and I have no idea how or whether that translates to payroll tax burden or whether the paper's conclusions are generally accepted.) For more details, consult your nearest introductory economics textbook.

I was unfamiliar with the case. After checking out both links for quite some time, but prior to reading the comments, I estimated:

  1. 80% (Knox)
  2. 60% (Sollecito)
  3. 95% (Guede)
  4. 90% (confidence in coincidence)

After reading the comments, I was a little surprised that the consensus seems to be decidedly against Knox's guilt. The simplest explanation is that I'm just not a very good rationalist, but I don't find that very satisfying. The four parts of the story that I felt were inconsistent with Knox being innocent were:

  1. Knox's initial account of the night.
... (read more)
2CAS
I have to generally agree with you (and I'm also surprised that the majority here seems to believe in K+S's innocence. The other piece that seems strange is why Kurcher's clothing was in the wash that morning. Just seems like something strange to do... a generally messy person doesn't wash someone else's clothing the morning after partying. Who else might have run the washer otherwise? It's questionable exactly how involved Knox and Sollecito were, but I don't believe that they are completely innocent. I was unfamiliar with the case but spend about 2 hours reading the two provided links.
5Jack
1.What I gathered was that the police saw Knox's text message to the bartender and then coerced a confession involving him. The fact that they got this confession when there is no way it could have been him suggests to me that much of the confession could be totally fabricated. For that matter, why would Knox name the wrong accomplice if they knew they didn't cover up Guede's presence at the crime scene? 1. One of my problems with the supposed cover-up is that if S and K were intoxicated during the crime and likely during the cover-up they A) wouldn't have been able to distinguish between evidence implicating them and evidence implicating Guede and B) wouldn't have been nearly as successful covering up physical evidence as they apparently were. 2. Perhaps Guede liked her and felt guilty. Part of the suspicion re: Knox was that she was insensitive after the fact. But this would be inconsistent with her covering up the body. 3. Knox was almost certainly seriously hung-over and not in the mood to go near fecal matter. Also, her roommates testified that she didn't do a lot to keep the place clean in general. I'm also not sure how not flushing suggests guilt. Marijuana does not undermine rationality to that extent. Reefer madness PSAs considerably overstated that :-)

The body was covered. This is inconsistent with the actions of a rapist/murderer, but very much what you would expect of someone who had a close relationship with the deceased.

I find the above incredible. I'd give it almost no weight.

I'm looking for a particular fallacy or bias that I can't find on any list.

Specifically, this is when people say "one more can't hurt;" like a person throwing an extra piece of garbage on an already littered sidewalk, a gambler who has lost nearly everything deciding to bet away the rest, a person in bad health continuing the behavior that caused the problem, etc. I can think of dozens of examples, but I can't find a name. I would expect it to be called the "Lost Cause Fallacy" or the "Fallacy of Futility" or something, but neither seems to be recognized anywhere. Does this have a standard name that I don't know, or is it so obvious that no one ever bothered to name it?

2AdeleneDawner
Your first example sounds related to the broken window theory, but I've never seen a name for the underlying bias. (The broken window fallacy is something else altogether.)
-1timtyler
It seems like a type of apathy.
0Sniffnoy
This seems like a special case of the more general "just one can't hurt" (whatever the current level) way of thinking. I don't know any name for this but I guess you could call it something like the "non-Archimedean bias"?
2Eliezer Yudkowsky
Bee-sting theory of poverty is the closest I've heard. You're right, this is real and deserves a name, but I don't know what it would be.
0Zack_M_Davis
"Sunk cost fallacy"
0orthonormal
Informally, "throwing good money after bad"? I agree that this is a real and interesting phenomenon.

I have a theory about alcohol consumption; I call people who like (or don't mind) the taste "tongue blind." My theory is that these people have such poor taste receptors that they need an overly strong stimulus to register anything other than bland. Under this theory, I would expect people that like alcohol to also like very spicy food, to put extra salt most things they eat, and to think that vanilla is a synonym for plain.

0eirenicon
You seem to have stumbled onto the existence of supertasters. As a supertaster myself, I find tonic water extremely bitter, must overly sweeten my coffee and can't stand grapefruit juice or spinach. I delight in the sharp sting of a good beer, though. Conversely, there are "nontasters" who have a greater tolerance for strong tastes.
0thomblake
I'm afraid that doesn't mesh well with my experiences. I would actually suspect the opposite; it seems like people who "don't like wine" are missing the nuances between different wine flavors and so I would have guessed they have a worse sense of taste. For reference, I like some alcohol, do not like lots of salt, and sometimes take violent offense to calling vanilla 'plain'.
1dclayh
1. Vanilla is a synonym for "plain" when it's artificial (i.e. the vanillin molecule and nothing else). Actual vanilla is obviously a whole different beast. 2. If people who liked wine had such dead tastes buds or (more realistically) noses, why would they bother to make up such elaborate flavors? (In particular, if it were only about status-signaling, the move from old-style wine description ("insouciant but never trite") to the new style ("cassis, clove and cinnamon with a whiff of tobacco and old leather") seems very strange.) 3. My personal experience in general doesn't jive with your theory, except for one point: people who like alcohol tend to have a high tolerance for bitter things, and therefore also like very dark chocolate (I personally am an exception to this, however). 4. ETA: the software converted my 0-indexed list to a 1-indexing. How sad.

Am I the only one that has always assumed that story was a joke epically misunderstood? If the monk had instead asked, "What is the nature of a dog's path to enlightenment?" I think Joshu would have answered "Rough."

6byrnema
Wikipedia lists this as a possibility, that "mu" in archaic Japenese was "wu" the sound that a dog makes. While this also makes the koan a pun, I think it now works even better as a koan: Q: Does a dog have a Buddha-nature? A: Woof! Does 'Woof!' mean 'yes'? Does it mean 'no'? It's still just 'mu', but better. (For one thing, we'd expect an English-speaking dog to respond to the question.)
6SoullessAutomaton
Once, a young monk asked Joshu, "Master, does a cow possess buddha-nature?" Joshu thought briefly, then replied, "Muuuuuu."

Not unnatural, obviously, but a contaminant to intelligence. Manure is a great fertilizer, but you wash it off before you use the vegetable.

0loqi
I meant this kind of unnatural category. I don't quite know what you mean by "biological" in this context. A high-resolution neurological simulation might not require any physical carbon atoms, but the simulated mind would presumably still act according to all the same "biological" drives.

Oh, I don't know that. What would remain of you if you could download your mind into a computer? Who would you be if you were no longer affected by the level of serotonin or adrenaline you are producing, or if pheromones didn't affect you? Once you subtract the biological from the human, I imagine what remains to be pure person. There should be no difference between that person and one who was created intentionally or one that evolved in a different species, beyond their personal experiences (controlling for the effects of their physiology).

I don't have... (read more)

1loqi
That depends on the resolution of the simulation. Wouldn't you agree? I think you're using the word "biological" to denote some kind of unnatural category. The reasons you see for why any of us "should" do anything almost certainly have biologically engineered goals behind them in some way or another. What of self-preservation?

I'm just trying to figure out under what circumstances we could consider a completely artificial entity a continuation of our existence. As you pointed out, merely containing our knowledge isn't enough. Human knowledge is a constantly growing edifice, where each generation adds to and build upon the successes of the past. I wouldn't expect an AI to find value in everything we have produced, just as we don't. But if our species were wiped out, I would feel comfortable calling an AI which traveled the universe occasionally writing McCartney- or Lennon-inspired songs "us." That would be survival. (I could even deal with a Ringo Starr AI, in a pinch.)

1Paul Crowley
I strongly suspect that that is the same thing as a Friendly AI, and therefore I still consider UFAI an existential risk.

I don't consider our innate biological tendencies the core of our being. We are an intelligence superimposed on a particular biological creature. It may be difficult to separate the aspects of one from the other (and I don't pretend to be fully able to do so), but I think it's important that we learn which is which so that we can slowly deemphasize and discard the biological in favor of the solely rational.

I'm not interested in what it means to be human, I want to know what it means to be a person. Humanity is just an accident as far as I'm concerned. It might as well have been anything else.

0loqi
I'm curious as to what sorts of goals you think a "solely rational" creature possesses. Do you have a particular point of disagreement with Eliezer's take on the biological heritage of our values?

Preferred, absolutely. I just think that the survival of our knowledge is more important than the survival of the species sans knowledge. If we are looking to save the world, I think an AI living on the moon pondering its existence should be a higher priority than a hunter-gatherer tribe stalking wildebeest. The former is our heritage, the latter just looks like us.

OK, I can see that. In that case, maybe a better metric would be the instrumental use of our accumulated knowledge, rather than its mere possession. Living in a library doesn't mean you can read, after all.

3Paul Crowley
What I think you're driving at is that you want it to value the Beatles in some way. Having some sort of useful crossover between our values and its is the entire project of FAI.
1Vladimir_Nesov
The Paperclip AI will optimally use its knowledge about the Beatles to make more paperclips.

The squirrel civilization would be a pretty impressive achievement, granted. The destruction of this particular species (humans) would seemingly be a tremendous loss universally, if intelligence is a rare thing. Nonetheless, I see it as only a certain vessel in which intelligence happened to arise. I see no particular reason why intelligence should be specific to it, or why we should prefer it over other containers should the opportunity present itself. We would share more in common with an intelligent squirrel civilization than a band of gorillas, eve... (read more)

0mattnewport
I don't see any fundamental reason why intelligence should be restricted to humans. I think it's quite possible that intelligence arising in the universe is an extremely rare event though. If you value intelligence and think it might be an unlikely occurrence then the survival of some humans rather than no humans should surely be a much preferred outcome? I disagree that we would have more in common with the electric toothbrush wielding squirrels. I've elaborated more on that in another comment.

If I implied that, it was unintentional. All I mean is that I see no reason why we should feel a kinship toward humans as humans, as opposed to any species of people as people. If our civilization were to collapse entirely and had to be rebuilt from scratch, I don't see why the species that is doing the rebuilding is all that important -- they aren't "us" in any real sense. We can die even if humanity survives. By that same token, if the paperclip AI contains none of our accumulated knowledge, we go extinct along with the species. If the AI contains some our of knowledge and a good degree of sentience, I would argue that part of us survives despite the loss of this particular species.

0mattnewport
How much of what it means to be human do you think is cultural conditioning versus innate biological tendency? I think the evidence points to a very large biologically determined element to humanity. I would expect to find more in common with a hunter gatherer in a previously undiscovered tribe, or even with a paleolithic tribesman, than with an alien intelligence or an evolved dolphin. If you read ancient Greek literature, it is easy to empathize with most of the motivations and drives of the characters even though they lived in a very different world. You could argue that our culture's direct lineage from theirs is a factor but it seems that westerners can recognize as fellow humans the minds behind ancient Chinese or Indian texts with less shared cultural heritage with our own.
3Paul Crowley
Bear in mind, the paperclip AI won't ever look up to the broader challenges of being a sentient being in the Universe; the only thing that will ever matter to it, until the end of time, is paperclips. I wouldn't feel in that instance that we had left behind a creature that represented our legacy, no matter how much it knows about the Beatles.

I agree generally, but I think when we talk about wiping out humanity we should include the idea that if we were to lose a significant portion of our accumulated information it would be essentially the same as extinction. I don't see a difference between a stone age tech. group of humans surviving the apocalypse and slowly repopulating the world and a different species (whether dogs, squirrels, or porpoises) doing the same thing.

1Nick_Tarleton
See In Praise of Boredom and Sympathetic Minds: random evolved intelligent species are not guaranteed to be anything we would consider valuable.
1Nominull
I like humans. I think they're cute :3
0mattnewport
We have pretty solid evidence that a stone age tech group of humans can develop a technologically advanced society in a few 10s of thousands of years. I imagine it would take considerably longer for squirrels to get there and I would be much less confident they can do it at all. It may well be that human intelligence is an evolutionary accident that has only happened once in the universe.
0Vladimir_Nesov
Does this imply that you are OK with a Paperclip AI wiping out humanity, since it will be an intelligent life form much more developed than we are?

I don't think it is necessarily true that merely by joining the faction most likely to win you will share in the spoils of victory. Leaders distribute rewards based on seniority more than support. In a close contest, you would likely be courted heavily by both sides, providing a temporary boost in status, but that would disappear once the conflict is over. You will have not earned the trust of the winner since your allegiance was in doubt. I don't think there is much to gain by joining the larger side late; you'll be on the bottom of society once the d... (read more)

1AspiringKnitter
That should predict this bias to be stronger in men. After all, more partners, past a certain point, isn't really helpful to women's reproductive success, plus I'd be surprised if men sought courageous mates (if they go and get themselves killed before your baby is born...). So, is this bias stronger in men?

True, but I think that would be a problem with any test. I'm just trying to find a way around it since I think that as you add ways to avoid gaming, you both complicate and weaken the test. Perhaps a solution would be to test people without their knowledge, and reveal whether they succeeded or not at a later date.

Yes. I wasn't offering that particular formulation as a rationality test, just the idea that you should hide from the testee the nature of the test.

I get the feeling that the real problem here is repeatability. It's one thing to design a test for rationality, it's another to design a test that could not be gamed once the particulars are known. Since it probably isn't possible to control the flow of information in that way, the next-best option might be to design a test so that the testing criteria would not be understood except by those who pass.

I'm thinking of a test I heard about years ago. The teacher passes out the test, stressing to the students to read the instructions before beginning. The ... (read more)

1handoflixue
"Psssst, when Mrs. P says to read the instructions, it's because it's a fake test! If you just follow the directions you can get an A without even trying!" And that is that test ruined for all subsequent classes. People may not read instructions, but they will generally listen to peers highlighting that there is something unusual, or some easy way of cheating. Heck, it might become a weird group wisdom to always answer "C" because the answer scanning machine is broken or something. I've seen weirder in actual work places.
3HA2
I don't think that it's reasonable to expect that secret criteria would stay secret once such a test would actually be used for anything. Sure, it could be kept a secret if there were a dozen people taking the test, of which the four who passed would get admitted to an exclusive club. If there were ten thousand people taking the test, a thousand of which passed, I'd bet there'd be at least one who accidentally leaks it on the internet, from where it would immediately become public knowledge. (And at least a dozen who would willingly give up the answer if offered money for it, as would happen if there were anything at stake in this test.) It might work if such a test is obscure enough or not widely used, but not if it was used for anything that mattered to the test-takers and was open to many.
2MBlume
Kobayashi Maru?
1[anonymous]
Isn't that more a test of attention to detail and willingness to follow instructions rather than rationality per se?

I think, then, that the harm associated with this man's suicide would have to take into account the rise in premiums he would be forcing on people in similar situations. His death may increase the amount a similar man would have to pay, decreasing the likelihood that he could afford insurance and increasing the harm that man's death would cause his dependents. Over time, those effects could swamp any short-term benefit to the charity.

8Nebu
I think we can consider the harm associate with this man's suicide causing a rise in premiums to be relatively negligible, seeing as people have committed suicide while insured in the past, and it hasn't made prices so incredibly high as to stop insurance companies from being able to sell similar policies today.
5jimmy
Not only that, but he never generated the wealth in the first place. His savings were his, sure, but the rest of the money was essentially conned from the insurance company. He did not make the world richer by sacrificing himself, he sacrificed himself to (dishonestly) reallocate resources. I'd say support his actions iff you would support stealing to give to charity.

Or, if the behavior became common, insurance companies could simply decline to cover suicide. The problems would arise if, say, a car accident were accused of being a covert suicide (but wouldn't we have this same problem before the 2-year limit?) Perhaps that's why insurance companies cover suicides - for peace of mind, so that you know they won't accuse your corpse of having done it on purpose.

I don't think this qualifies as a belief; it's just something I have noticed.

My dreams are always a collection of images (assembled into a narrative, naturally) of things I thought about precisely once the prior day. Anything I did not think about, or thought about more than a single time, is not included. I like to use this to my advantage to avoid nightmares, but I have also never had a sex dream. The fact that other people seem to have sex dreams is good evidence that my experience is rare or unique, but I have no explanation for it.

6PhilGoetz
My nightmares are some of my most interesting dreams, so I don't try to avoid them.

I stopped lying, to the best of my ability, years ago. I've found, though, that as my lying skills have degraded, I have also partially lost the ability to consider my words before I speak and I have lost the knack for social pablum (although I may never have had that to begin with; tough to say).

When someone asks me how I am, I always answer "same as always." I would like to say that I do it so that I don't need to commit to a position with which I disagree, but the truth is that the words come out before I can figure out the normal, polite re... (read more)