PlatypusNinja

• PlatypusNinja 15 Jun 2014 5:59 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: DanielLC’s comment on: To­tal Utility is Illusionary

  I think the key difference is that delta utilitarianism handles it better when the group’s utility function changes. For example, if I create a new person and add it to the group, that changes the group’s utility function. Under delta utilitarianism, I explicitly don’t count the preferences of the new person when making that decision. Under total utilitarianism, [most people would say that] I do count the preferences of that new person.

• PlatypusNinja 15 Jun 2014 5:51 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: DefectiveAlgorithm’s comment on: To­tal Utility is Illusionary

  I suppose you could say that it’s equivalent to “total utilitarianism that only takes into account the utility of already extant people, and only takes into account their current utility function [at the time the decision is made] and not their future utility function”.

  (Under mere “total utilitarianism that only takes into account the utility of already extant people”, the government could wirehead its constituency.)

  ---

  Yes, this is explicitly inconsistent over time. I actually would argue that the utility function for any group of people will be inconsistent over time (as preferences evolve, new people join, and old people leave) and any decision-making framework needs to be able to handle that inconsistency intelligently. Failure to handle that inconsistency intelligently is what leads to the Repugnant Conclusions.

• PlatypusNinja 15 Jun 2014 5:18 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: lincolnquirk’s comment on: To­tal Utility is Illusionary

  My intended solution was that, if you check the utility of your constituents from creating more people, you’re explicitly not taking the utility of the new people into account. I’ll add a few sentences at the end of the article to try to clarify this.

  Another thing I can say is that, if you assume that everyone’s utility is zero at the decision point, it’s not clear why you would see a utility gain from adding more people.

To­tal Utility is Illusionary

• PlatypusNinja 15 Mar 2012 22:51 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: PlatypusNinja’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, part 10

  ...Followup: Holy crap! I know exactly one person who wants Hermione to be defeated by Draco when Lucius is watching. Could H&C be Dumbledore?

• PlatypusNinja 15 Mar 2012 22:49 UTC

  −4 points

  on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, part 10

  My theory is that Lucius trumped up these charges against Hermione entirely independent of the midnight duel. He was furious that Hermione defeated Draco in combat, and this is his retaliation.

  I doubt that Hermione attended the duel; or, if she did attend it, I doubt that anything bad happened.

  My theory does not explain why Draco isn’t at breakfast. So maybe my theory is wrong.

  ---

  I am confused about why H&C wanted Hermione to be defeated by Draco during the big game when Lucius was watching. If you believe H&C is Quirrell (and I do): did Quirrell go to all that trouble just to impress Lucius with how his son was doing? That seems like an awful risk for not much reward.

• PlatypusNinja 12 Mar 2012 21:55 UTC

  17 points

  on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, part 10

  The new Update Notifications features (http://​​hpmor.com/​​notify/​​) is pretty awesome but I have a feature request. Could we get some sort of privacy policy for that feature?

  Like, maybe just a sentence at the bottom saying “we promise to only use your email address to send you HPMOR notifications, and we promise never to share your email address with a third party”?

  It’s not that I don’t trust you guys (and in fact I have already signed up) but I like to check on these things.

• PlatypusNinja 24 Aug 2011 19:42 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: PlatypusNinja’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread

  I think the issue was that Harry was constantly, perpetually, invariably reacting to everything with shock and outrage. It got… tiresome.

  But I went back much later and read it again, and there wasn’t nearly as much outrage as I remembered.

  Good story!

• PlatypusNinja 27 May 2010 21:31 UTC

  11 points

  in reply to: MC_Escherichia’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread

  Ouch! I—I actually really enjoyed Ender’s Game. But I have to admit there’s a lot of truth in that review.

  Now I feel vaguely guilty...

• PlatypusNinja 27 May 2010 1:44 UTC

  7 points

  on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread

  I found this series much harder to enjoy than Eliezer’s other works—for example the Super Happy People story, the Brennan stories, or the Sword of Good story.

  I think the issue was that Harry was constantly, perpetually, invariably reacting to everything with shock and outrage. It got… tiresome.

  At first, before I knew who the author was, I put this down to simple bad writing. Comments in Chapter 6 suggest that maybe Harry has some severe psychological issues, and that he’s deliberately being written as obnoxious and hyperactive in order to meet plot criteria later.

  But it’s still sort of annoying to read.

  I did enjoy the exchange with Draco in Chapter 5, mind.

  (I encountered the series several weeks ago, without an attribution for the author. I read through Chapter 6 and stopped. Now that I know it was by Eliezer, I may go back and read a few more chapters.)

• PlatypusNinja 19 Apr 2010 19:38 UTC

  0 points

  on: [Er­ror com­mu­ni­cat­ing with LW2 server]

  This isn’t visible, right? I will feel very bad if it turns out I am spamming the community with half-finished drafts of the same article.

• PlatypusNinja 19 Apr 2010 5:55 UTC

  10 points

  on: At­ten­tion Lurk­ers: Please say hi

  Hi! I’d like to suggest two other methods of counting readers: (1) count the number of usernames which have accessed the site in the past seven days (2) put a web counter (Google Analytics?) on the main page for a week (embed it in your post?) It might be interesting to compare the numbers.

• PlatypusNinja 31 Mar 2010 23:18 UTC

  0 points

  on: The (Boltz­mann) Brain-In-A-Jar

  The good news is that this pruning heuristic will probably be part of any AI we build. (In fact, early forms of this AI will have to use a much stronger version of this heuristic if we want to keep them focused on the task at hand.)

  So there is no danger of AIs having existential Boltzmann crises. (Although, ironically, they actually are brains-in-a-jar, for certain definitions of that term...)

• PlatypusNinja 31 Mar 2010 18:49 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: It’s not like any­thing to be a bat

  The anthropic principle lets you compute the posterior probability of some value V of the world, given an observable W. The observable can be the number of humans who have lived so far, and the value V can be the number of humans who will ever live. The probability of a V where 100W < V is smaller than the probability of a V only a few times larger than W.

  This argument could have been made by any intelligent being, at any point in history, and up to 1500AD or so we have strong evidence that it was wrong every time. If this is the main use of the anthropic argument, then I think we have to conclude that the anthropic argument is wrong and useless.

  I would be interested in hearing examples of applications of the anthropic argument which are not vulnerable to the “depending on your reference class you get results that are either completely bogus or, in the best case, unverifiable” counterargument.

  (I don’t mean to pick on you specifically; lots of commentors seem to have made the above claim, and yours was simply the most well-explained.)

• PlatypusNinja 27 Feb 2010 19:56 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: What is Bayesi­anism?

  Personally it bothers me that the explanation asks a question which is numerically unanswerable, and then asserts that rationalists would answer it in a given way. Simple explanations are good, but not when they contain statements which are factually incorrect.

  But, looking at the karma scores it appears that you are correct that this is better for many people. ^_^;

• PlatypusNinja 26 Feb 2010 23:03 UTC

  −2 points

  on: What is Bayesi­anism?

  A brain tumor always causes a headache, but exceedingly few people have a brain tumor. In contrast, a headache is rarely a symptom for cold, but most people manage to catch a cold every single year. Given no other information, do you think it more likely that the headache is caused by a tumor, or by a cold?

  Given no other information, we don’t know which is more likely. We need numbers for “rarely”, “most”, and “exceedingly few”. For example, if 10% of humans currently have a cold, and 1% of humans with a cold have a headache, but 1% of humans have a brain tumor, then the brain tumor is actually more likely.

  (The calculation we’re performing is: compare (“rarely” times “most”) to “exceedingly few” and see which one is larger.)

• PlatypusNinja 10 Feb 2010 20:15 UTC

  5 points

  on: The Craigslist Revolu­tion: a real-world ap­pli­ca­tion of tor­ture vs. dust specks OR How I learned to stop wor­ry­ing and cre­ate one billion dol­lars out of nothing

  I would like to know more about your statement “50,000 users would surely count as a critical mass”. How many users does Craigslist have in total?

  I especially think it’s unlikely that Craigslist would be motivated by the opinions of 50,000 Facebook users, especially if you had not actually conducted a poll but merely collected the answers of those that agree with you.

  You should contact Craigslist and ask them what criteria would actually convince them that Craigslist users want for-charity ads.

• PlatypusNinja 10 Feb 2010 5:41 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Kevin’s comment on: Shut Up and Divide?

  each person could effectively cause $20,000 to be generated out of nowhere

  As a rationalist, when you see a strange number like this, you have to ask yourself: Did I really just discover a way to make lots of money very efficiently? Or could it be that there was a mistake in my arithmetic somewhere?

  That one billion dollars is not being generated out of nowhere. It is being generated as payment for ad clicks.
  Let’s check your assumptions: How much money will the average user generate from banner ad clicks in five years? How many users does Craigslist have? What fraction of those users would have to request banner ads, for Craigslist to add them?

  My completely uneducated guess is 100$, ten million, and 50%. This matches your “generate one billion dollars” number but suggests that critical mass would be five million rather than fifty thousand. Note, also, that Facebook users are not necessarily Craigslist users.

  I would be interested to hear what numbers you are using. Mine could easily be wrong.

• PlatypusNinja 9 Feb 2010 18:18 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: sark’s comment on: A Much Bet­ter Life?

  So, people who have a strong component of “just be happy” in their utility function might choose to wirehead, and people in which other components are dominant might choose not to.

  That sounds reasonable.

• PlatypusNinja 7 Feb 2010 10:46 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: bgrah449’s comment on: A Much Bet­ter Life?

  Well, I said most existing humans are opposed to wireheading, not all. ^_^;

  Addiction might occur because: (a) some people suffer from the bug described above; (b) some people’s utility function is naturally “I want to be happy”, as in, “I want to feel the endorphin rush associated with happiness, and I do not care what causes it”, so wireheading does look good to their current utility function; or (c) some people underestimate an addictive drug’s ability to alter their thinking.