A.H.

Karma: 231

A.H. 19 Apr 2024 20:50 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Should we maximize the Geometric Expectation of Utility?
Well, you can’t have some states as “avoid at all costs” and others as “achieve at all costs”, because having them in the same lottery leads to nonsense, no matter what averaging you use. And allowing only one of the two seems arbitrary. So it seems cleanest to disallow both.
Fine. But the purpose of exploring different averaging methods is to see whether it expands the richness of the kind of behaviour we want to describe. The point is that using arithmetic averaging is a choice which limits the kind of behaviour we can get. Maybe we want to describe behaviours which can’t be described under expected utility. Having an ‘avoid at all costs state’ is one such behaviour which finds natural description using a non-arithmetic averaging which can’t be described in more typical VNM terms.
If your position is ‘I would never want to describe normative ethics using anything other than expected utility’ then that’s fine, but some people (like me) are interested in looking at what alternatives to expected utility might be. That’s why I wrote this post. As it stands, I didn’t find geometric averaging very satisfactory (as I wrote in the post), but I think things like this are worth exploring.
But geometric averaging wouldn’t let you do that either, or am I missing something?
You are right. Geometric averaging on its own doesn’t give allow violations of independence. But some other protocol for deciding over lotteries does. It’s described more in the Garrabrant post linked above.

A.H. 19 Apr 2024 20:02 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Should we maximize the Geometric Expectation of Utility?
(apologies for taking a couple of days to respond, work has been busy)
I think your robot example nicely demonstrates the difference between our intuitions. As cubefox pointed out in another comment, what representation you want to use depends on what you take as basic.
There are certain types of preferences/behaviours which cannot be expressed using arithmetic averaging. These are the ones which violate VNM, and I think violating VNM axioms isn’t totally crazy. I think its worth exploring these VNM-violating preferences and seeing what they look like when more fleshed out. That’s what I tried to do in this post.
If I wanted a robot that violated one of the VNM axioms, then I wouldn’t be able to describe it by ‘nailing down the averaging method to use ordinary arithmetic averaging and assigning goodness values’. For example, if there were certain states of the world which I wanted to avoid at all costs (and thus violate the continuity axiom), I could assign zero utility to it and use geometric averaging. I couldn’t do this with arithmetic averaging and any finite utilities ^[1].
A better example is Scott Garrabrant’s argument regarding abandoning the VNM axiom of independence. If I wanted to program a robot which sometimes preferred lotteries to any definite outcome, I wouldn’t be able to program the robot using arithmetic averaging over goodness values.
I think that these examples show that there is at least some independence between averaging methods and utility/goodness.
1. ^
  (ok, I guess you could assign ‘negative infinity’ utility to those states if you wanted. But once you’re doing stuff like that, it seems to me that geometric averaging is a much more intuitive way to describe these preferences. )

A.H. 18 Apr 2024 9:16 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Dacyn’s comment on: Should we maximize the Geometric Expectation of Utility?
Thanks for pointing this out, I missed a word. I have added it now.

A.H. 17 Apr 2024 11:52 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Should we maximize the Geometric Expectation of Utility?
Without wishing to be facetious: how much (if any) of the post did you read? If you disagree with me, that’s fine, but I feel like I’m answering questions which I already addressed in the post!
Are you arguing that we ought to (1) assign some “goodness” values to outcomes, and then (2) maximize the geometric expectation of “goodness” resulting from our actions?
I’m not arguing that we ought to maximize the geometric expectation of “goodness” resulting from our actions. I’m exploring what it might look like if we did. In the conclusion, (and indeed, many other parts of the post) I’m pretty ambivalent.
But then wouldn’t any argument for (2) depend on the details of how (1) is done? For example, if “goodnesses” were logarithmic in the first place, then wouldn’t you want to use arithmetic averaging?
I don’t think so. I think you could have a preference ordering over ‘certain’ world states and the you are still left with choosing a method for deciding between lotteries where the outcome is uncertain. I describe that this is my position in the section titled ‘Geometric Expectation $\neq$ Logarithmic Utility’.
Is there some description of how we should assign goodnesses in (1) without a kind of firm ground that VNM gives?
This is what philosophers of normative ethics do! People disagree on the how exactly to do it, but that doesn’t stop them from trying! My post tries to be agnostic as to what exactly it is we care about and how we assign utility to different world states, since I’m focusing on the difference between averaging methods.

A.H. 17 Apr 2024 11:02 UTC
8 points
0
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Should we maximize the Geometric Expectation of Utility?
The word ‘utility’ can be used in two different ways: normative and descriptive.
You are describing ‘utility’ in the descriptive sense. I am using it in the normative sense. These are explained in the first paragraph of the Wikipedia page for ‘utility’.
As I explained in the opening paragraph, I’m using the word ‘utility’ to mean the goodness/desirability/value of an outcome. This is normative: if an outcome is ‘good’ then there is the implication that you ought to pursue it.

A.H. 5 Apr 2024 13:12 UTC
6 points
0
on: Movie posters
This looks like an exact duplicate of something you posted a month ago.
Is this intentional?

A.H. 18 Jan 2024 22:23 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: RogerDearnaley’s comment on: A Pedagogical Guide to Corrigibility
Thanks for the comment. Naively, I agree that this sounds like a good idea, but I need to know more about it.
Do you know if anyone has explicitly written down the value learning solution to the corrigibility problem and treated it a bit more rigorously ?

A.H. 12 Jan 2024 11:05 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Brendan Long’s comment on: A Land Tax For Britain
Thanks for this comment-it explains your view very clearly and I understand what you are getting at now.
I think its a fair criticism. I’ve added footnotes within the post, linking people to your comment.

A.H. 7 Jan 2024 9:55 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Brendan Long’s comment on: A Land Tax For Britain
I still think it’s a problem that this argument rests on the idea that investors are irrationally not renting land they own, but you don’t provide any evidence for that.
I disagree. Firstly, even if, they were renting out their land, this would still be bad, for reasons described in the article (landlords extract land rent without doing anything productive etc.)
The section of the post which argues about empty homes rests on the fact that there are empty homes and a land tax would reduce them. I then provide evidence that there are, indeed, a significant number of empty homes in the UK. I do not speculate about the rationality/irrationality of the people holding them because it is irrelevant to the argument. Do you disagree on the 700,000 figure?
Is your view something like ‘I find it hard to believe that people would leave houses empty because they are leaving money on the table. Therefore I disbelieve the 700,000 empty homes figure.’? If so, I guess I’m not super interested in disputing the government figures.
Or is your view something like ‘The argument in the post hinges on the fact that people are irrationally leaving homes empty and the author of the post needs to explain why they aren’t behaving rationally in order to make the argument work.’? If so, hopefully I explained why the argument rests on the fact that empty homes exist, not the rationality/irrationality of the people holding them.
For what its worth, I find it pretty easy to believe that people are leaving homes empty. People often behave ‘irrationally’ when it comes to money: a lot of people gamble and most people have their savings in a low-interest account. I know at least two middle class families who own a flat in a city where they don’t live. They visit it maybe once a year and occasionally let friends visit. They aren’t super interested in squeezing it for every penny its worth and don’t want to sell it for sentimental reasons and they know the price will go up so they keep it as is. They think that renting it out would cause them too much stress and they don’t feel that they need any more money and they enjoy visiting it so they don’t rent it out . Is this irrational? Maybe from the point of view of optimizing their income, but they are just optimizing other aspects of their life.

A.H. 6 Jan 2024 20:12 UTC
6 points
0
in reply to: Brendan Long’s comment on: A Land Tax For Britain
The second link is to a Scottish political campaign that doesn’t claim to know way the houses are empty (at least on this page) and doesn’t contain the 700,000 number in the link text (the linked political campaign claims 46,000 in Scotland and doesn’t seem to say anything about the UK).
The phrase ’700,000 empty homes throughout’ the UK has different links for each word: one for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. If you follow the link on 700,000, you will be taken to this page which gives a figure of 676,304 empty homes in England. Add this to the Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales figures and you get a total over 700,000. As explained in the link for English data (which makes up most of the total), the figure comes from Council tax data (council taxes are paid by the owners of a property and charges different rates depending on whether the home is occupied or unoccupied).
Hope this helps!

A.H. 6 Jan 2024 16:49 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: GuySrinivasan’s comment on: Will 2024 be very hot? Should we be worried?
Interesting, thanks for sharing! I hadn’t heard of this.
From Wikipedia:
An El Nino during the winter of 1998 produced above-average rainfall, which enabled extensive growth of underbrush and vegetation in the state’s forests. In early April, however, the rains came to an abrupt halt, and the ensuing drought lasted until July.^[2] These months of continuing dry conditions saw the drought index rise to 700 (out of 800), indicating wildfire potential similar to that usually found in western states.
I would assume that the drought was also exacerbated by El Nino, but its interesting that the main contributer is implied to be the rainfall in winter, rather than the heat the next summer.

A.H. 30 Dec 2023 11:05 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Daniel Kokotajlo’s comment on: Will 2024 be very hot? Should we be worried?
Eyeballing it, doesn’t it imply that while 2024 will be hotter than 2023, the difference between 2024 and 2023 will be smaller than the difference between 2023 and 2022? Because the slope of the various lines is decreasing and in no case increasing?
Yeah, that sounds right I think.
Or is the y-axis measuring YoY impact rather than impact-relative-to-some-fixed-beginning? If so then I’m confused why the global warming section looks the way it does.
I agree, I don’t think that YoY interpretation makes sense. I realise now that it’s not made completely clear but I think its impact relative to some past value. That’s the only way that that I can make sense of the man-made global warming section being a straight line.

A.H. 29 Dec 2023 17:46 UTC
4 points
3
in reply to: Garrett Baker’s comment on: Will 2024 be very hot? Should we be worried?
Yeah, thanks for highlighting this. I started writing about it but realised I was out of my depth (even further out of my depth than for the rest of the post!) so I scrapped it.
Thanks for clarifying with Robert Rohde!
I reached roughly the conclusion you did. When water vapour is injected into the troposphere (the lowest level of the atmosphere) it is quickly rained out, as you point out. However, the power of the Hunga-Tonga explosion meant that the water vapour was injected much higher, into the stratosphere (what the diagram calls the ‘upper atmosphere’). For some reason, water vapour in the stratosphere doesn’t move back down and get rained out as easily so it sits there. Which is why ‘upper atmosphere’ water vapour levels are still elevated almost two years after the explosion.

A.H. 13 Dec 2023 21:27 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Bezzi’s comment on: Enhancing intelligence by banging your head on the wall
plenty of people are very good at math but never produce any technical writing on scientific journals
Fair enough! Its just that, unless they produce technical results, or pass graduate exams or do something else tangible its quite hard to distinguish people who are very good at math from people who are not.
his story seems to strongly imply that his past self wouldn’t have been able to pass those math classes
Obviously its hard to tell from that interview, but he seems to suggest that the reason he didn’t pass his classes was because he spent time partying, bodybuilding and ‘chasing girls’ rather than studying. It doesn’t necessarily seem like he would have been unable to pass the classes, just unwilling to put in the work. Even after he became interested in math, he still admitted to struggling with some of the classes, but he had the willpower to put in the work to understand it.
I think that your description of it being a change in ‘math attitude’ is a good one. It seems like his attitude (and willingness to persevere) changed, but not necessarily his ability.
Just to be clear: I think its super interesting that someone can have this kind of a change and it is interesting to study it! I’m just not convinced that it is a change in math ability.

A.H. 13 Dec 2023 13:27 UTC
41 points
21
on: Enhancing intelligence by banging your head on the wall
Sorry to be a party pooper, but I find the story of Jason Padgett (the guy who ‘banged his head and become a math genius’) completely unconvincing. From the video that you cite, here is the ‘evidence’ that he is ‘math genius’:
- He tells us, with no context, ‘the inner boundary of pi is f(x)=x sin(pi/x)’. Ok!
- He makes ‘math inspired’ drawings (some of which admittedly are pretty cool but they’re not exactly original) and sells them on his website
- He claims that a physicist (who is not named or interviewed) saw him drawing in the mall, and, on the basis of this, suggested that he study physics.
- He went to ‘school’ and studied math and physics. He says started with basic algebra and calculus and apparently ‘aced all the classes’, but doesn’t tell us what level he reached. Graduate? Post-graduate?
- He was ‘doing integrals with triangles instead of integrals with rectangles’
- He tells us ‘every shape in the universe is a fractal’
- Some fMRI scans were done on his brain which found ‘he had conscious access to parts of the brain we don’t normally have access to’.
As far as I can tell, he hasn’t published any technical math/physics writings (peer-reviewed or otherwise). He wrote a book but as far as I can tell, this is mostly a memoir, with a bit of pop-math thrown in. From his website, this is what he’s working on:
His [sic] is currently studying how all fractals arise from limits and how E=MC2 is itself a fractal.
...
His drawing of E=MC^2 is based on the structure of space time at the quantum level and is based on the concept that there is a physical limit to observation which is the Planck length and the geometry of Hawking Radiation at the quantum level and its possible connection to describing the Holographic Universe Principle. It also shows and agrees with the holographic principle that at the smallest level, the structure of space time is a fractal.
Yep, those certainly are physics-y words! Good luck to him making progress in this area!
Its suspicious to me that he doesn’t have any writings on his mathematical works, so we are not able to judge what he’s doing. (Even time-cube man posted his writings on the internet)
This is my summary of the story:
- He was hit on the head and experienced some changes after this. (Very believable )
- These changes were significant enough to be visible on fMRI scans. (Also very believable )
- He experienced OCD-like symptoms and other personality changes after the injury (I’m not a neuroscientist, but this seems plausible)
- He experienced seeing visual distortions and ‘fractal-like’ images after the injury. (Again, I’m not a neuroscientist, but this seems plausible)
- The visual hallucinations and personality changes caused him to be more interested in fractals, geometric designs, art, and math.
- He took a few entry-level math classes and did ok in them.
- The mugging took place in 2002 but apparently he hasn’t produced any technical writing in the subjects of math and physics.
- In 2015, he was running futon stores in Washington State
This all leads me to believe that he is not ‘math genius’. I am agnostic about whether he is delusional about his abilities or whether he is a con-man.

A.H. 13 Dec 2023 12:19 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: avturchin’s comment on: Enhancing intelligence by banging your head on the wall
I don’t find it convincing that what you experienced has any relation to sudden savant syndrome. It sounds like you had a waking dream where you believed you can play the piano.
You did not actually play the piano and produce music though, right?
I have had dreams where I have believed I could do all kinds of things (play the guitar, lift heavy weights, fly etc.), but they didn’t overflow in any way to real life. (I’ve even had dreams where I’ve thought to myself ‘I know that I am dreaming, but this is definitely going to work when I wake up’)
If I ask you to imagine a beautiful painting of a mountain, you could probably conjure up a fairly vivid mental image of one. But if I then gave your brushes and paints and asked you to recreate the picture on canvas, you would probably struggle, unless you were already an experienced painter. In dreams, the distinction between imagining and doing doesn’t exist so strongly. If you can dream/imagine a beautiful painting, you can also dream/imagine putting a paintbrush in your hands, waving it over a canvas and producing the painting. In a dream, these experiences are equally convincing to the dreamer. But sadly, in my experience, real life doesn’t work like that :(

A.H. 3 Dec 2023 14:47 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Charlie Steiner’s comment on: A Question about Corrigibility (2015)
Yes, I too am more concerned from a ‘maybe this framing isn’t super useful as it fails to capture important distinctions between corrigible and non-corrigible’ point of view rather than a ‘we might outlaw some good actions’ point of view.
Thanks for the links, they look interesting!

A.H. 28 Sep 2023 16:49 UTC
1 point
0
on: What is wrong with this “utility switch button problem” approach?
For $h_{a}$ , this is the policy that is optimal when $q = 0$ which has $u (h_{a}) = a (h_{a})$ . Then $\frac{d u}{d E (K)} < 0$ .
Please could you explain how you get $\frac{d u}{d E (K)} < 0$ when $u = a = E (A (1 - K))$ ?
Possibly a dumb question but I don’t have a good intuition for what it means to differentiate an expected value with respect to an expected value.
I can see that this is the case when $A$ is positive (as expected for a utility function) and uncorrelated with $K$ , but is is true in general? Even when $A$ is strongly correlated (or anti-correlated) with $K$ ? They would presumably be correlated in some way since they both depend on the policy pursued.
Also, how would this work for a utility function A which is negative? In theory we should be able to apply an affine shift to a utility function so that it has a negative expected value. If A was uncorrelated with K but has a negative expected value then $\frac{d u}{d E (K)} > 0$ , right? Can we do a similar affine shift to B to ensure that there won’t necessarily be a value of q where $\frac{d u}{d E (K)} = 0$ ?

A.H. 22 Sep 2023 13:31 UTC
1 point
0
on: Vegan Nutrition Testing Project: Interim Report
I find that the walkinlabs.com domain does not give any results. I think the correct url is www.walkinlab.com (no ‘s’ in the url). Is this the one you used?

A.H. 23 Aug 2023 22:41 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: tailcalled’s comment on: Do agents with (mutually known) identical utility functions but irreconcilable knowledge sometimes fight?
Good point! Noticeably, some of your examples are ‘one-way’: one party updated while the other did not. In the case of Google/Twitter and the museum, you updated but they didn’t, so this sounds like standard Bayesian updating, not specifically Aumann-like (though maybe this distinction doesn’t matter, as the latter is a special case of the former).
When I wrote the answer, I guess I was thinking about Aumann updating where both parties end up changing their probabilities (ie. Alice starts with a high probability of some proposition P and Bob starts with a low probability for P and, after discussing their disagreement, they converge to a middling probability). This didn’t seem to me to be as common among humans.
In the example with your Dad, it also seems one-way: he updated and you didn’t. However, maybe the fact he didn’t know there was a flood would have caused you to update slightly, but this update would be so small that it was negligible. So I guess you are right and that would count as an Aumann agreement!
Your last paragraph is really good. I will ponder it...