AmagicalFishy

Karma: 194

AmagicalFishy 14 Feb 2017 16:25 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Stupidity as a mental illness

Low IQ is not fixable by practice

I don’t believe you, and I’m especially skeptical of IQ—and a lot of other fetishizations of overly confident attempts to exactly quantify hugely abstract and fluffy concepts like intelligence.

AmagicalFishy 14 Feb 2017 16:21 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Stupidity as a mental illness
I’m not sure where you’re from, or what the composition of your social circle is, Lumifer—but I think you should find as many people as you can (or use whatever reasonable metric you have for determining a “normal person”) and say: “Being stupid is a disease. The first step to destigmatizing this disease is to stop making fun of stupid people; I too am guilty of this,” and then observe the reaction you get.

Personally, I’m baffled as to how you could think that this wouldn’t engender a negative response from someone who’s never been on LW before.

That being said, simply changing the theme from “anti-stupidity” to “pro-intelligence” would change the post dramatically.

AmagicalFishy 8 Feb 2017 21:11 UTC
0 points
in reply to: ShardPhoenix’s comment on: Civil resistance and the 3.5% rule
Or a resistance and no definitive establishment

AmagicalFishy 8 Feb 2017 21:08 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Erfeyah’s comment on: Stupid Questions February 2017
I don’t think you’re missing anything, no.

AmagicalFishy 3 Feb 2017 20:58 UTC
4 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Hacking humans
Ah, good points.

I did not really know what was meant by “collectivist ideaologies” and assumed it to be something along the lines of “ideaologies that necssitate a collection of people.” Originally, I didn’t see any significance of the 50% (to me, it just seemed like an off-the-cuff number), but you put it into some good context.

I concede and retract my original criticism

AmagicalFishy 2 Feb 2017 19:06 UTC
0 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Hacking humans
Does that really seem like a political post to you, though? It doesn’t look like an attempt to discuss politics, types of politics, who’s right and who’s wrong, there’s no tribalism, nothing regarding contemporary politics, etc. It looks like a pure and simple statement of fact: Humans have been coercing other humans into doing specific actions—often times empowering themselves—for the whole of human history.

I don’t think tukabel’s post was very political outside of the statement “An AI doing this is effectively politics, and politics has existed for a long time.” I don’t think that’s considered discussing politics.

AmagicalFishy 1 Feb 2017 22:55 UTC
0 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Hacking humans
I don’t think this is a pertinent or useful suggestion. The point of the reply wasn’t to discuss politics, and I think it’s a red herring to dismiss it as if it were.

If I may expand on tukabel’s response: What is the point of this post? It seems to be some sort of “new” analysis as to how AIs could potentially hack humans—but if we get passed the “this is new and interesting” presentation, it doesn’t seem to give anything new, unusual, or even really discussion-worthy.

Why is “The AI convinces/tricks/forces the human to do a specific action” something that’s remarkable? What does “Different levels of hacking make different systems vulnerable, and different levels of interaction make different types of hacking more or less likely” even mean? It sounds like an overly verbose and convoluted way of saying “People respond differently to different things.”

Maybe there’s some background discussion that provides a context I’ve been missing here, but this doesn’t seem like anything that hasn’t already been going on amongst humans for thousands of years, and that’s a relevant and useful thing to draw from.

Much more succinct: Why are the ways in which an AI can “hack” a human (i.e. - affect them) any different than the ways a human can affect a human? If we replace “AI” with “Human” it’d be trivial and a bit silly.

AmagicalFishy 26 Jan 2017 2:37 UTC
2 points
in reply to: KristenBurke’s comment on: Value Journaling
This is a bit tangential, and a bit ranty, maybe a bit out of line, but it might help [a bit]...

From one self-hater to another: I’ve always been negative. I’ve always disliked myself, my past decisions, the world around me, and the decisions made therein. Here’s the kind of philosophy I’ve embraced over the past few years:

My pessimism motivates me something like the way nihilism motivates Nietzsche. It is the ultimate freedom. I’m not weighed down by this oppressive sense that I’m missing some great opportunity or taking an otherwise good life and shitting on it. Why? Because I suck, the human condition sucks, and life sucks—so I might as well fucking do whatever I’ve got to do to get to wherever I want to go. I’m probably not going to get there, but I’ll be damned if I don’t die trying.

I’ve tried a lot of different things to try to absolve myself of this kind of inherent, long-standing negativity, but it’s the wrong way to go about it. This is the way I am, and I’m pretty ok with that. I feel like when I embraced this, it was cathartic, a little like someone discovering a repressed memory. I’ve come out of the pessemist’s closet. ;)

Things like this journaling method are good—it’s good to be explicit about what you’re thankful for, it’s good to act in ways that maximize your ability to do things, and maybe, after some time, that negativity will go away (or, at least, the negative part of said negativity). But, you don’t need self-esteem, and motivation is a farce; it’s what people sit around waiting for some translucent muse to inspire them, telling themselves they need “motivation” to do what they’ve got to do. The thing to be weary of is not turning your negativity into a force that oppresses you.

I think I’m on the track to doing important things (relatively “late” in life [compared to my peers], but w/e), and here’s how I see myself: Like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the end of Terminator 2, except instead of lava, it’s sewage—and instead of a thumbs-up, it’s my middle finger.

AmagicalFishy 24 Jan 2017 23:58 UTC
1 point
on: First impressions...
I’ve been around in LW for years, and I’d say it’s tended more towards refining the art of pragmatism than rationality (though there’s a good bit of intersection there).

AmagicalFishy 20 Jan 2017 2:50 UTC
5 points
on: On Arrogance
There’s a lot of nuance to this situation that makes a black-and-white answer difficult, but let’s start with the word arrogance. I think the term carries with it a connotation of too much pride; something like when one oversteps the limits of one’s domain. For example, the professor saying “You are probably wrong about this” is an entirely different statement (in terms of arrogance) than the enthusiast saying “You are probably wrong about this,” because this is a judgement that the professor is well qualified to make. While I can see a person not liking this, I don’t think this kind of straight-forwardness is wrong, or arrogant.

The Professor

When I think of an arrogant professor, I don’t simply think of a person whose knowledge of a field far superceeds my own. I think of something more than that. I think of a person who seems to have an inflated sense of self-worth because of their knowledge. That is, I think of a person who is overstepping the bounds of their domain; a professor who not only says “You’re wrong, and don’t have an even basic understanding of quantum mechanics,” but does it with an air of regal superiority that implicitly says “Not only are you wrong, but you are not, as a person, worth taking seriously or teaching because you are wrong.” That kind of professor is taking the expertise he has in quantum physics and applying it to something well outside quantum physics (in this case, a person’s worth). If this is the kind of professor you were describing, then I’d certainly say there’s arrogance here. Otherwise, I don’t think the professor is being arrogant by saying something like “You don’t possess even a basic understanding of the core concepts of quantum physics.” Admittedly, a more constructive way to go about this would be to at least show why this is true. As someone who does have an understanding of quantum physics, there’s a lot of material that one could easily show an enthusiast that’d be well beyond their current knowledge.

A bit of nuance: Using this same standard for arrogance, the real answer is something like “it depends on what they were talking about.” For example, some philosophical theories that emerge from quantum mechanics can be understood and thought about by the laymen (key word: some; many arise from a misunderstanding of quantum mechanics, and thus can easily be debunked with knowledge about quantum mechanics). If the professor and enthusiast were talking about one of these theories, then the professor dismissing this legitimate theory would, in fact, be arrogant (because it would be a step outside of the professor’s bounds).

In the case that the professor doesn’t admit to being a professor, indeed it would seem arrogant—but only because it seems as if the incognito professor is overstepping his bounds. That is, since no one knows the professor is a professor, there’s no reason to assume quantum physics is within his area of expertise. (This may also be somewhat pedantic, but in something like quantum physics, because of this gap in knowledge, it’d be very obvious who the professor was to an audience that doesn’t know quantum physics, even if it wasn’t made explicitely clear beforehand.)

The Enthusiast

We can apply the same standards of arrogance to the enthusiast. I’ve seen many people who are simultaneously engaging, calm, polite and arrogant. If a professor, someone whose studied the field very rigorously, with mathematics that would take the enthusiast years to learn, claims that the enthusiast doesn’t have a working knowledge of quantum physics—then it’s probably true. If the professor says “If you knew enough about quantum physics, you’d see why this idea is strictly wrong,” and the enthusiast is still convinced he’s correct, then I’d say the enthusiast is stepping outside of his bounds (i.e. - is being arrogant). Again, admittedly, if the professor doesn’t explain why the enthusiast is wrong, it’s difficult for the enthusiast to gauge whether or not whatever is being spoken of is a legitimate theory or one that dissolves with sufficient knowledge of quantum mechanics.

A bit of nuance: It’s easy with quantum mechanics, since so much of it is based in physics and mathematics in ways where the metric for correct or incorrect are fairly straight-forward and clear. If the professor were an economist, the lines defining what the bounds are could be much blurrier.

In the case that the professor doesn’t admit to being a professor, the enthusiast might not have a way of knowing whether or not bounds are being overstepped, and the bystanders would probably see the professor as being arrogant. Though, I reiterate: Especially in something like quantum physics, the party who has the expertise would be apparent.

To come back to your distinction between over-confidence and dismissive behavior, I think these things are both addressed by considering arrogance to be synonymous with an overstepping of one’s bounds. Dismissive behavior is relevant only insofar as it implies this overstepping. For example, does it indicate that the professor thinks less of the enthusiast as a person? Maybe the professor is being dismissive because the enthusiast’s vehemence is blinding? Similarly, over-confidence is relevant only insofar as it implies an overstepping of one’s bounds (this is a bit easier, because “over-confidence” is almost synonymous with “stepping over the bounds of your knowledge-limitations.”)

Kind-of Disclaimer:

1) I might be underestimating the amount of knowledge you intended for your enthusiast. In my experience (I am not a professor), I’ve never met a physics-enthusiast who has a working knowledge of the actual physics with which they are enthused—and the types of physics that people find most interesting are usually the ones that require the most knowledge (i.e. - string theory, quantum mechanics, etc.; few non-physicists are that enthused with Newtonian Mechanics!).

2) “Overstepping one’s bounds” might be a bad term. I’m willing to use a better one, it’s just the one that came to mind. I hope it’s clear what I mean from the context.

AmagicalFishy 17 Feb 2016 5:42 UTC
0 points
in reply to: username2’s comment on: “Why Try Hard” Essay targeted at non rationalists
Huh. Actually, I enjoyed reading it.

AmagicalFishy 6 Feb 2016 2:27 UTC
0 points
in reply to: OrphanWilde’s comment on: What’s wrong with this picture?
They’re equally likely, but, unless Alice chose 1649271 specifically, I’m not quite sure what that question is supposed to show me, or how it relates to what I mentioned above.

Maybe let me put it this way: We play a dice game; if I roll 3, I win some of your money. If you roll an even number, you win some of my money. Whenever I roll, I roll a 3, always. Do you keep playing (because my chances of rolling 3-3-3-3-3-3 are exactly the same as my chances of rolling 1-3-4-2-5-6, or any other specific 6-numbered sequence) or do you quit?

AmagicalFishy 5 Feb 2016 0:18 UTC
0 points
in reply to: OrphanWilde’s comment on: What’s wrong with this picture?
I agree with you that the probability of Alice’s sequence being a sequence will always be the same, but the reason Alice’s correct prediction is a difference in the two mentioned situations is because the probability of her randomly guessing correctly is so low—and may indicate something about Alice and her actions (that is, given a complete set of information regarding Alice, the probability of her correctly guessing the sequence of coin flips might be much higher).

Am I misunderstanding the point you’re making w/ this example?

AmagicalFishy 4 Feb 2016 8:58 UTC
0 points
in reply to: OrphanWilde’s comment on: What’s wrong with this picture?
I do not think these events are equally improbable (thus, equally probable).

The specific sequence, M, is some sequence in the space of all possible sequences; ”… achieves some specific sequence M” is like saying “there exists an M in the space of all sequences such that N = M.” That will always be true—that is, one can always retroactively say “Alice’s end-result is some specific sequence.”

On the other hand, it’s a totally different thing to say “Alice’s end-result is some specific sequence which she herself picked out before flipping the coin.”

AmagicalFishy 10 Jan 2016 1:42 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: [Stub] The problem with Chesterton’s Fence

But if I’m not mistaken the original argument around Chesterton’s fence is that somebody had gone through great efforts to put a fence somewhere, and presumably would not have wasted that time if it would be useless anyway.

My response was to this statement—specifically, toward the assumption that, since someone has gone through great efforts to put a fence somewhere, it’s ok to assume said fence isn’t useless. I’m not seeing where my comment is inconsistent with what it’s responding to (that is, I’m seeing “gone through great efforts” as synonymous with “worked hard.”)

I was about to say that every time I’ve read of Chesterton’s Fence, it seems silly, but then I decided to read Wikipedia’s take on it (I do love me some Wikipedia), and came across this:

If you’re considering nominating something for deletion because it doesn’t appear to have any use or purpose, research its history first. You may find out why it was created, and perhaps understand that it still serves a purpose. Or if you do feel the issue it addressed is no longer valid, frame your argument for deletion.

This, to me, seems like an obvious good idea—and it also seems independent of what TheMajor was saying. My initial qualm came from the claim of why something might have unknown use (i.e. - someone “presumably would not have wasted that time if it would be useless anyway”). I don’t believe this to be true, or a good thing to assume, anymore than assuming something that didn’t take a large amount of effort is useless.

On the other hand, “Find out why something is in place before commenting on it, regardless of how much effort was put into it” seems much more reasonable.

[IGNORE THE ABOVE COMMENT (I don’t know how to strikeout)]

Lumifer, I’ve interpreted your comment within the context of your implying TheMajor’s statement is correct. When I think about it more, I don’t think that’s what you intended—and, in fact, probably intended the opposite.

Am I correct?

AmagicalFishy 9 Jan 2016 6:46 UTC
1 point
in reply to: TheMajor’s comment on: [Stub] The problem with Chesterton’s Fence
Every time I read about Chesterton’s fence, it seems like the implication is:

Because someone worked hard on something, or because a practice/custom took a long time to develop, it has a greater chance of being correct, useful, or beneficial [than someone’s replacement who looks and says “This doesn’t make sense”]

I think that’s a terrible statement.

AmagicalFishy 9 Jan 2016 6:44 UTC
0 points
in reply to: entirelyuseless’s comment on: [Stub] The problem with Chesterton’s Fence
In my experience, that’s not what usually happens.

Where are you getting “that’s what usually happens”?

AmagicalFishy 8 Jan 2016 4:07 UTC
0 points
in reply to: The_Lion’s comment on: Stupid Questions, 2nd half of December
Mine was a little ill-thought out comment.

AmagicalFishy 27 Dec 2015 18:51 UTC
1 point
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Stupid Questions, 2nd half of December
I guess I don’t think that the meaning of my question was hidden in any significant way. This is leads me to interpret your response less as a genuine concern for specificity that lead to constructive criticism, and more as “I don’t like this subject—therefore I will express disagreement with something you did to indicate that.” It feels to me as if you’re avoiding the subject in favor of nitpicking.

I know you knew what the actual question is because you pointed out vagueness. You knew the question you answered [Literally: Do different races have different brains?] was not the question I intended. Regardless, you didn’t attempt to answer the question or really address it at all. Instead, you pointed out a way it could be misinterpreted if someone took the effort to avoid all context and assume I was asking a nonsensical question (which people do not usually do, unless there’s some political-esque intent behind it).

My apologies if you have a genuine concern regarding the specificity of my question—but I implore you to try to answer the actual question, anyway.

AmagicalFishy 27 Dec 2015 18:03 UTC
0 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Stupid Questions, 2nd half of December
This does not addresses my question. The implication is ”… shouldn’t it follow that different races could have different brains—such that these differences are generalizable according to race?”

I think this implication was obvious. For example, if someone were to ask “Do different races typically have different skin colors?” I don’t think you would answer “Different people of the same race have different skin colors. No two skin colors are exactly the same. You have to make statements that are less vague.”

Edit: If, in fact, that is the way you would answer, then I’m mistaken, but I don’t think that’s necessary.