There was no interesting, non-emotional takeaway for me from this post. I bet I can find 10 anecdotes where nature prevailed over nurture...
Luke, your posts might become more interesting (to me at least) if you go and beat your head on a hard problem for awhile. I know that sounds like “go have an awful life so you have some interesting stories to tell us”, but hey, that’s how life works :-/ As far as I know, Eliezer’s sequences were the aftermath of a sort of hero’s journey, that’s why they have so many new insights. Just copying the surface pathos won’t get you there.
Now that I’m Executive Director I don’t have much time to bang my head on hard (research) problems, though I did start doing that a while back.
This is a “merely” inspirational post, but I think there’s room for that on LW. There isn’t much new insight in A sense that more is possible, either, but I found it valuable.
Luke, I thought this was a good post for the following reasons.
(1) Not everything needs to be an argument to persuade. Sometimes it’s useful to invest your limited resources in better illuminating your position instead of illuminating how we ought to arrive at your position. Many LWers already respect your opinions, and it’s sometimes useful to simply know what they are.
The charitable reading of this post is not that it’s an attempted argument via cherry-picked examples that support your feeling of hopefulness. Instead I read it as an attempt to communicate your level of hopefulness accurately to people who you largely expect to be less hopeful. This is an imprecise business that necessarily involves some emotional language, but ultimately I think you are just saying: do not privilege induction with such confidence, we live in a time of change.
It might quell a whole class of complaints if you said something like that in the post. Perhaps you feel you’ve noticed a lot of things that made you question and revise your prior confidence about the unchangingness of the world...if so, why not tell us explicitly?
(2) I also see this post as a step in the direction of your stated goal to spend time writing well. It seems like something you spent time writing (at least relative to the amount of content it contains). Quite apart from the content it contains, it is a big step in the direction of eloquence. LWers are programmed to notice/become alarmed when eloquence is being used to build up a shallow argument, but it’s the same sort of writing whether your argument is shallow or deep. This style of writing will do you a great service when it is attached to a much deeper argument. So at the least it’s good practice, and evidence that you should stick with your goal.
I wouldn’t say I’m a good FAI researcher. I’m just very quick at writing up the kind of “platform papers” that summarize the problem space, connect things to the existing literature, show other researchers what they can work on, explain the basic arguments. For example.
But wouldn’t you prefer to have an executive director of foos with the technical expertise to be a foo himself, so he has a better understanding of the foos that he’s executively directing?
Yes, but ceteris ain’t paribus. If foo=software engineer, sure, make one of yours executive director, then throw a brick in the Bay Area and hire the one you knocked out.
Some of the sequence re-writes (I’m thinking specifically of the ones on facingsingularity web site) are better written than the originals, and there is some value in that.
Some of the sequence re-writes (I’m thinking specifically of the ones on facingsingularity web site) are better written than the originals
Well, they’re more compressed, anyway. But they only accomplish that by having the luxury of linking to dozens of Eliezer’s original, more detailed and persuasive articles.
To add this, it may be that e.g. deep knowledge of the heuristics and biases literature helped Luke become a better thinker, but most people I know from SingInst became good thinkers either before or without reading much social psychology or decision science. Empirically it seems that microeconomics and Hofstadter are the biggest influences on good thinkers in this social sphere, but I wouldn’t put too much weight on the importance of either. Bayesian probability theory is also a big theme, but note that Eliezer’s devotion to it seems to have stemmed from a misconception about how fundamental it is, ’cuz at the time of his optimization enlightenment he doesn’t seem to have known about key problems in decision theory that Bayes isn’t obviously equipped for. In general it seems wise to be skeptical of claims that we know very much about why various people have had whatever success we think they’ve had; it’s very easy to unknowingly fall into cargo cult “rationality”.
There is really very little separating nature and nurture.
An example from gibbon research—gibbons are the textbook example of monogamy amongst primates. They mate for life, eat a high quality diet (fruit and insects with some leaves and other greens). The pair sing together in the mornings and evenings to proclaim there territories. The female takes care of infants until they are weaned and then the male takes over rearing offspring. Before the infant is weaned they are the color of the mother then when their father takes over they become the color of their father. At puberty males stay black like their father and the females become golden like their mothers. Within the family females tend to be dominant and males tend to defend the family against outsiders but they aren’t strongly hierarchical.
That said there is a group of gibbons that no longer have the same high quality diet their diet is primarily leaves and greens. Their social structure is one or two dominant males with a group of subordinate females. Thus their social structure resembles that of baboons rather than other gibbons.
So, does high quality diet lead to sexual equality and pacifism or are these just anecdotes?
This is rather misleading. You have not accounted for other variables that may have influenced gibbon behavior. Moreover, this anecdote does little to support your initial point, which seems to have been forgotten altogether at the conclusion. You neglected to elaborate on gibbon diet, which I assume is your main example. The information that you have given on their development seems unnecessary. Also, you misspelled several pronouns, and neglected to show possession. I still see no relevance in your comment.
Sorry I was unclear and yes, I indulged myself on the development because I think it is so neat.
To clarify the conclusion I am proposing that diet may be the key to social structure in both the baboon and gibbon case – high quality food → non-hierarchical and pacifist – low quality food → hierarchical and aggressive.
Since diet part of the experience of the animal is it nature or nurture or something in else? Does the diet trigger a genetic reaction or is it that with secure access to high quality food there is no reason for hierarchy and aggression?
And yes, it should be, “The pair sing together in the mornings and evenings to proclaim THEIR territories” not “there territories”. Thank you.
There was no interesting, non-emotional takeaway for me from this post. I bet I can find 10 anecdotes where nature prevailed over nurture...
Luke, your posts might become more interesting (to me at least) if you go and beat your head on a hard problem for awhile. I know that sounds like “go have an awful life so you have some interesting stories to tell us”, but hey, that’s how life works :-/ As far as I know, Eliezer’s sequences were the aftermath of a sort of hero’s journey, that’s why they have so many new insights. Just copying the surface pathos won’t get you there.
Now that I’m Executive Director I don’t have much time to bang my head on hard (research) problems, though I did start doing that a while back.
This is a “merely” inspirational post, but I think there’s room for that on LW. There isn’t much new insight in A sense that more is possible, either, but I found it valuable.
Luke, I thought this was a good post for the following reasons.
(1) Not everything needs to be an argument to persuade. Sometimes it’s useful to invest your limited resources in better illuminating your position instead of illuminating how we ought to arrive at your position. Many LWers already respect your opinions, and it’s sometimes useful to simply know what they are.
The charitable reading of this post is not that it’s an attempted argument via cherry-picked examples that support your feeling of hopefulness. Instead I read it as an attempt to communicate your level of hopefulness accurately to people who you largely expect to be less hopeful. This is an imprecise business that necessarily involves some emotional language, but ultimately I think you are just saying: do not privilege induction with such confidence, we live in a time of change.
It might quell a whole class of complaints if you said something like that in the post. Perhaps you feel you’ve noticed a lot of things that made you question and revise your prior confidence about the unchangingness of the world...if so, why not tell us explicitly?
(2) I also see this post as a step in the direction of your stated goal to spend time writing well. It seems like something you spent time writing (at least relative to the amount of content it contains). Quite apart from the content it contains, it is a big step in the direction of eloquence. LWers are programmed to notice/become alarmed when eloquence is being used to build up a shallow argument, but it’s the same sort of writing whether your argument is shallow or deep. This style of writing will do you a great service when it is attached to a much deeper argument. So at the least it’s good practice, and evidence that you should stick with your goal.
I agree so much I’m commenting.
That strikes me as an extremely wrong way to allocate human resources. Good executive directors can’t be rarer than good FAI researchers.
I wouldn’t say I’m a good FAI researcher. I’m just very quick at writing up the kind of “platform papers” that summarize the problem space, connect things to the existing literature, show other researchers what they can work on, explain the basic arguments. For example.
I imagine it is easier to motivate people to be FAI researchers than executive directors.
But wouldn’t you prefer to have an executive director of foos with the technical expertise to be a foo himself, so he has a better understanding of the foos that he’s executively directing?
Yes, but ceteris ain’t paribus. If foo=software engineer, sure, make one of yours executive director, then throw a brick in the Bay Area and hire the one you knocked out.
I think inspiration is important
Some of the sequence re-writes (I’m thinking specifically of the ones on facingsingularity web site) are better written than the originals, and there is some value in that.
Well, they’re more compressed, anyway. But they only accomplish that by having the luxury of linking to dozens of Eliezer’s original, more detailed and persuasive articles.
To add this, it may be that e.g. deep knowledge of the heuristics and biases literature helped Luke become a better thinker, but most people I know from SingInst became good thinkers either before or without reading much social psychology or decision science. Empirically it seems that microeconomics and Hofstadter are the biggest influences on good thinkers in this social sphere, but I wouldn’t put too much weight on the importance of either. Bayesian probability theory is also a big theme, but note that Eliezer’s devotion to it seems to have stemmed from a misconception about how fundamental it is, ’cuz at the time of his optimization enlightenment he doesn’t seem to have known about key problems in decision theory that Bayes isn’t obviously equipped for. In general it seems wise to be skeptical of claims that we know very much about why various people have had whatever success we think they’ve had; it’s very easy to unknowingly fall into cargo cult “rationality”.
There is really very little separating nature and nurture.
An example from gibbon research—gibbons are the textbook example of monogamy amongst primates. They mate for life, eat a high quality diet (fruit and insects with some leaves and other greens). The pair sing together in the mornings and evenings to proclaim there territories. The female takes care of infants until they are weaned and then the male takes over rearing offspring. Before the infant is weaned they are the color of the mother then when their father takes over they become the color of their father. At puberty males stay black like their father and the females become golden like their mothers. Within the family females tend to be dominant and males tend to defend the family against outsiders but they aren’t strongly hierarchical.
That said there is a group of gibbons that no longer have the same high quality diet their diet is primarily leaves and greens. Their social structure is one or two dominant males with a group of subordinate females. Thus their social structure resembles that of baboons rather than other gibbons.
So, does high quality diet lead to sexual equality and pacifism or are these just anecdotes?
This is rather misleading. You have not accounted for other variables that may have influenced gibbon behavior. Moreover, this anecdote does little to support your initial point, which seems to have been forgotten altogether at the conclusion. You neglected to elaborate on gibbon diet, which I assume is your main example. The information that you have given on their development seems unnecessary. Also, you misspelled several pronouns, and neglected to show possession. I still see no relevance in your comment.
Sorry I was unclear and yes, I indulged myself on the development because I think it is so neat.
To clarify the conclusion I am proposing that diet may be the key to social structure in both the baboon and gibbon case – high quality food → non-hierarchical and pacifist – low quality food → hierarchical and aggressive.
Since diet part of the experience of the animal is it nature or nurture or something in else? Does the diet trigger a genetic reaction or is it that with secure access to high quality food there is no reason for hierarchy and aggression?
And yes, it should be, “The pair sing together in the mornings and evenings to proclaim THEIR territories” not “there territories”. Thank you.
But, food only euthanized the aggressive baboons in the previous example. That does not reflect a high quality diet.