“If I fail to give him a loaf of bread, society isn’t going to come knocking down my door to drag me to jail.”
Unfortunately this is not entirely correct. Some hold the social principal that “positive rights” would socially demand such actions and in many circles withholding said loaf of bread would be equivocated to cyanide poisoning.
I personally see public disagreements as a way to refine the intent of the person under the spotlight rather than a social display of individualism. When I disagree with someone it is not for the sake of disagreeing but rather to refine what I may think is a good idea that has a few weak points. I do this to those I respect and agree with because I hope that others will do this to me.
I think the broader question here is not whether we should encourage widespread agreement in order to create cohesion—but rather if we can ensure that the tenets we collectively agree on are correct conclusions. That is in my mind the main difference between rationalists and what I would call tribalists—in general the majority agree on tenets which are have serious rational flaws or they do simply not raise contest with said tenets. Otherwise if we do follow the leader, then if there are true flaws in that particular modus—we will never discover them.
I agree that it is hard to start a movement based on this—however I see this as a positive attribute. Just as the (flawed) idea of representative democracy was supposed to slow government to a crawl—the rationalist mindset slows group think and confirmation bias to a near halt. It is however a strong movement, however slow.
The reference to your quote on OB and here about finding comfort in lying is confusing to me. Do you have a better explanation of what you mean because I am not understanding it at all.
Just over a year ago I started running into OB articles and found them overwhelming so I read very little and moved on. Every once in a while however I would stumble into an article which had some good in text citations linking to more basic ideas. That is what helped me the most and quickest because it was very much train of thought and contextual.
As I am trying to get friends involved, I send them posts which I think are more along the lines of basic level ideas which have significant in text citations and they seem receptive.
The idea of a “start here” post makes sense—however I often find similar introductory articles or pages on other websites to be overburdened with too much background and end up being more of a reference than a true introduction.
One of the hardest things I have found is turning very complicated ideas into easy to swallow lessons for newcomers to a field. If someone can figure out a way to do that such as with a video or similar, which shows the concepts behind the basics without all the detail and as an extension illustrates the positive effects that are expected, that may help a bit.
I think the game primes you to make the bias through the example:
I’ll tell you for free that 2 4 6 is an awesome triplet.
So the results may be significantly skewed
So then this seems like the test would then be more priming centered rather than positively bias based. If it was truly a pure positive bias test then there should be no hypothesis primed through example.
I am learning to play GO right now and it is very hard to start to play effectively because there are very few instructional guides which give you strategies. Rather, each guide simply explicates the rules and lets you free to make your own hypotheses. Such an example would be a better bias test in my opinion. This is a simple fix, eliminate the example, and may give a more accurate result.
I contend otherwise. The utilitarian model comes down to a subjective utility calculation which is impossible (I use the word impossible realizing the extremity of the word) to do currently. This can be further explicated somewhere else but without an unbiased consciousness—without one which does not fall prey to random changes of desires and mis-interpretations or mis-calculations (in other words the AI we wish to build), there cannot be a reasonable calculation of utility such that it would accurately model a basket of preferences. As a result it is not a reasonable nor reliable method for determining outcomes or understanding individual goals.
True there may be instances in which a crude utilitarian metric can be devised which accurately represents reality at one point in time, however the consequential argument seems to divine that the accumulated outcome of any specific action taken through consequential thought will align reasonably if not perfectly with the predicted outcome. This is how utilitarianism epistemologically fails—the outcomes are impossible to predict. Exogeny anyone?
In fact, what seems to hold truest to form in terms of long term goal and short term action setting is the virtue ethics which Aristotle so eloquently explicated. This is how in my view people come to their correct conclusions while falsely attributing their positive outcomes to other forms such as utilitarianism. E.G. someone thinking “I think that the outcomes of this particular decision will be to my net benefit in the long run because from this will lead to this etc..”. To be sure it is possible that a utilitarian calculation could be in agreement with the virtue of the decision if the known variables are finite and the exogenous variables are by and large irrelevant, however it would seem to me that when the variables are complicated past current available calculations understanding the virtue behind an action, behavior or those which are indigenous to the actor will yield better long term results.
It is odd because objective Bayesian probability is rooted in Aristotelian logic which is predicated on virtue ethics, and since Eliezer seems to be very focused on Bayesian probability that would seem to conflict with consequential utilitarianism.
However I may be read the whole thing wrong.
ED: If there is significant disagreement please explicate so I can see how my reasoning is not clear or believed to be flawed.
Rather, you just have to find the closest approximation of right that you can.
This assumes that we know on which track the right thing to do is. You cannot approximate if you do not even know what it is you are trying to approximate.
You can infer, or state that maximizing happiness is what you are trying to approximate however that may not be indeed what is the right thing.
I am familiar with two tier rationalism and all other consequentialist philosophies. All must boil down eventually to a utility calculation or an appeal to virtue—as the second tier does. One problem with the Two Tier solution as it is presented is that it’s solutions to the consequentialist problems are based on vague terms:
Must be moral principles that identify a situation or class of situations and call for an action in that/those situation(s).
Ok, WHICH moral principals, and based on what? How are we to know the right action in any particular situation?
Or on virtue:
Must guide you in actions that are consistent with the expressions of virtue and integrity.
I do take issue with Alicorns definition of virtue-busting, as it relegates virtue to simply patterns of behavior.
Therefore in order to be a consequentialist you must first answer “What consequence is right/correct/just?” The answer then is the correct philosophy, not simply how you got to it.
Consequentialism then may be the best guide to virtue but it cannot stand on its own without an ideal. That ideal in my mind is best represented as virtue. Virtue ethics then are the values to which there may be many routes—and consequentialism may be the best.
Ed; Seriously people, if you are going to down vote my reply then explain why.
How have you come to these conclusions?
For example:
The reason is that, for me, changing my wealth by a relatively small amount won’t radically change my risk preference, and that implies an exponential curve
Is that because there have been points in time when you have made 200K and 400K respectively and found that your preferences didn’t change much. Or is that simply expected utility?
It makes sense however you mention that you test it against your intuitions. My first reaction would be to say that this is introducing a biased variable which is not based on a reasonable calculation.
That may not be the case as you may have done so many complicated calculations such that your unconscious “intuitions” may give your conscious the right answer. However from the millionaires biographies I have read and rich people I have talked to a better representation of money and utility according to them is logarithmic rather than exponential. This would indicate to me that the relationship between utility and money would be counter-intuitive for those who have not experienced those levels which are being compared.
I have not had the fortune to experience anything more than a 5 figure income so I cannot reasonably say how my preferences would be modeled. I can reasonably believe that I would be better off at 500K than 50K through simple comparison of lifestyle between myself and a millionaire. I cannot make an accurate enough estimation of my utility and as a result I would not be prepared to make a estimation of what model would best represent it because the probability of that being accurate is likely the same as coin flipping.
Ed: I had a much better written post but an errant click lost the whole thing—time didn’t allow the repetition of the better post.
Unfortunately the better parts of my post were lost—or rather more of the main point.
I posit that the utility valuation is an impossibility currently. I was not really challenging whether your function was exponential or logarithmic—but questioning how you came to the conclusion; how you decide, for instance where exactly the function changes especially having not experienced the second state. The “logarithmic” point I was making was designed to demonstrate that true utility may differ significantly from expected utility once you are actually at point 2 and thus may not be truly representative.
Mainly I am curious as to what value you place on “intuition” and why.
Testing it against my intuitions
It’s only if they’re also risk neutral with respect to experienced utility
I am curious how this would look in terms of decisions under experience. Does this imply that they are expecting to change their risk assessment once they are experienced?
I think this greatly oversimplifies the issue. Whatever my response to the query is, it is only an estimation as to my preferences. It also assumes that my predicted risk will, upon the enactment of an actual deal, stay the same; if only for the life of the deal.
A model like this, even if correct for right now, could be significantly different tomorrow or the next day. It could be argued that some risk measurements do not change at intervals so fast as would technically prohibit recalculation. Giving a fixed metric puts absolutes on behaviors which are not fixed, or which unpredictably change. Today, because I have lots of money in my account, I might agree to your deal. Tomorrow I may not. This is what I mean by intuitions—I may think I want the deal but I may in reality be significantly underestimating the chance of −50 or any other number of factors which may skew my perception.
I know of quite a few examples of people getting stuck in high load mutual funds or other investments because their risk preferences significantly changed over a much shorter time period than they expected because they really didn’t want to take that much risk in their portfolio but could not cognitively comprehend the probability as most people cannot.
This in no way advocates going further to correcting for these mistakes after the fact—however the tendencies for economists and policy makers is to suggest modeling such as this. In fact most consequentialists make the case that modeling this way is accurate however I have yet to see a true epistemic study of a model which reliably demonstrates accurate “utility” or valuation. The closest to accurate models I have seen take stated and reveled preferences together and work towards a micro estimation which still has moderate error variability where not observed (http://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/hlthec/v13y2004i6p563-573.html). Even with observed behavior applied it is still terribly difficult and unreliable to apply broadly—even to an individual.
The Yudkowski worship is getting pretty thick around here:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/4g/eliezer_yudkowsky_facts/
Lets not turn this into a fandom
This comment seems to miss the idea:
What happens if such a complex system collapses? Disaster, of course. But don’t forget that we already depend upon enormously complex systems that we no longer even think of as technological. Urbanization, agriculture, and trade were at one time huge innovations. Their collapse (and all of them are now at risk, in different ways, as we have seen in recent months) would be an even greater catastrophe than the collapse of our growing webs of interconnected intelligence.
If in fact the future is what the rest of the article envisions, a world of accurate measures and prudent predictions, then the possibilities for collapse will become less and less.
Making the case that such largess will of course lead to the linear probability of increase in damage that would result in collapse, ignores in large part, if not the majority of the science behind cognitive development and AI science—risk mitigation and error elimination.
My father told me long ago that intelligence isn’t knowing the answer—it is knowing where to find the answer. After all of my education and learning I find this to be a very true statement.
It’s not clear to me whether this means that we should be alarmed and seek to hone our factual memories… or whether we should devote our attention to honing our Google-fu, as our minds gradually become server-side operations.
I do analysis for a living and am constantly asked on the spot detailed questions about very specific things, so I have to hone those memories. However when I was learning how to do this better (through associations and number games) I realized that I was simply being a human google search.
In my profession, one of a number of professional courses addressed the exact problem they were getting from their briefers: Good information, not enough analysis. So, the powers that be re-focused the school and made it analytically focused. The analysis filed has changed dramatically in the past few years and as a result is taking more of a pattern recognition and pre-emptive strategies approach.
So I don’t think we should be worried at all, or need to hone our memories in the abstract for bits of data. In fact, with the error prone nature of our mental hardware I would suggest that it does a disservice to factual recall in trying to do so. Instead, we can “outsource” the storage to a more accurate replication medium (like a reliable computerized bookmark favorites) and apply reasoning to this complex data in its unchanged form while re-programming our internal brain data storage to be, rather than the data itself, what database what we want to know is under (The “folder” it’s in rather than the contents of the “file”) .
The question becomes how do we make the card-catalog of our mind faster and more efficient?
I know that this is simply an exercise but I think it points out my epistemic belief that there are no such things as gray areas in deceit.
The doctor could have easily have said “It’s the weakest painkiller I have,” or “It’s the strongest sedative I have,” or any other number of technically true but misleading statements
In reality the Saline IV is neither a painkiller nor a sedative whatsoever therefore:
The strongest painkiller I have
is actually as much of a lie as the morphine statement.
Now of course you go on to say this:
Because language does not specify single, clear meanings...
However in this case there is a clear meaning for “painkiller” or “sedative.”
I think there are good examples of shaping perceptions (which is what NTL’s really seem to be) on these types of issues. Here is an alternative for your example. The doctor could have said this:
“This is something which might help your pain”
That is both technically true and verifiable as not NTL. Does it have the same effect as making a definitive statement? Perhaps not, but it also does not lead to a false conclusion about morphine or the ethics of the doctor which the patient may make when he is slicing and dicing.
If lying is never justified because of its effect on the listener, then neither is NTL.
To which I would agree, but I pose another question: Is shaping another person’s perception in any way, based on reasonable knowledge of the outcomes and given authority (Such as the case with doctors) a positive heuristic?
Take a video from a genre that generally has a high fallacy per minute ratio, and edit the video to play a klaxon sound whenever someone commits a logical fallacy or gets a fact wrong, followed by the name of the fallacy they committed flashing on screen.
How fortuitous! I have been thinking that this would be a great substitute for the current lineup of political television programs on the air now. A series of clips from the day or week that expose the fallacies and logical errors that politicians and blowhards make on a day to day basis. I know Politifact and Factcheck do a great job at calling these people to the carpet.
I wonder however, if the median viewer has a deep enough understanding of fallacies for a program like this to be effective or if it would take a host to explain each one in detail for the viewer not to get lost.
I would be interested to see a top level post in which the community agrees on specific heuristics which are more detrimental than others and as a result more important to eliminate.
For example: The community would agree to a high agreement level that confirmation bias would significantly help their lives to eliminate, while the community may not agree to the same level on the necessity to eliminate the information bias.
This would help narrow down the more significant biases such that we could focus on tests and games which would help us eliminate these biases, similar to what Will_Euler is suggesting.
“A banal one is that misinforming takes effort and not informing saves effort.”
I agree with others that this is not banal. In many cases it may take significant effort to not inform as the information may be contrary to the wishes of those receiving it.
This is especially true in hierarchical situations in which lower echelon workers fear reprisal for giving the boss bad news.
This in my mind would make lies and secrets on an even playing field if the impact of the information being withheld was equal to a similar case in which there was misinformation spread. Both can be malicious and both show a control of information towards biased ends.
They are two sides of the same coin.