asparisi

Karma: 639

asparisi 17 Sep 2013 18:51 UTC
0 points
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on: Signaling of what, precisely?
One could judge the strength of these with a few empirical tests: such as for (2), comparing industries where it is clear that the skills learned in college (or in a particular major) are particularly relevant vs. industries where it is not as clear, and comparing the number of college grads w/ the relevant skill-signals vs. college grads w/o the relevant skill-signals vs. non-college grads; and for (3), looking to industries where signals of pre-existing ability in that industry do not conform to being in college and comparing their rate of hiring grads vs. non-grads. (This would presumably be jobs in sectors where some sort of loosely defined intellectual ability is not as important. These jobs are becoming more scarce due to automation, and in First World countries in particular, but the tests should still be possible.) (1) is harder to test, as it is agnostic, but trying to see how these intuitions conform to those in hiring positions could be informative. Other signals, as mentioned in the comments, probably have their own tests which can be run on them.

asparisi 10 Sep 2013 14:19 UTC
2 points
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on: The Ultimate Newcomb’s Problem
I don’t get paid on the basis of Omega’s prediction given my action. I get paid on the basis of my action given Omega’s prediction. I at least need to know the base-rate probability with which I actually one-box (or two-box), although with only two minutes, I would probably need to know the base rate at which Omega predicts that I will one-box. Actually, just getting the probability for each of P(Ix|Ox) and P(Ix|O~x) would be great.

I also don’t have a mechanism to determine if 1033 is prime that is readily available to me without getting hit by a trolley (with what probability do I get hit by the trolley, incidentally?), nor do I know the ratio of odd-numbered primes to odd-numbered composites is off-hand.

I don’t quite have enough information to solve the problem in any sort of respectable fashion. So what the heck, I two-box and hope that Omega is right and that the number is composite. But if it isn’t, then I cry into my million dollars. (With P(.1): I don’t expect to actually be sad winning $1M, especially after having played several thousand times and presumably having won at least some money in that period.)

asparisi 26 Aug 2013 14:06 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Juno_Watt’s comment on: How sure are you that brain emulations would be conscious?
Accounting for qualia and starting from qualia are two entirely different things. Saying “X must have qualia” is unhelpful if we cannot determine whether or not a given thing has qualia.

Qualia can perhaps best be described, briefly, as “subjective experience.” So what do we mean by ‘subjective’ and ‘experience’?

If by ‘subjective’ we mean ‘unique to the individual position’ and by ‘experience’ we mean ‘alters its internal state on the basis of some perception’ then qualia aren’t that mysterious: a video camera can be described as having qualia if that’s what we are talking about. Of course, many philosophers won’t be happy with that sort of breakdown. But it isn’t clear that they will be happy with any definition of qualia that allows for it to be distinguished.

If you want it to be something mysterious, then you aren’t even defining it. You are just being unhelpful: like if I tell you that you owe me X dollars, without giving you anyway of defining X. If you want to break it down into non-mysterious components or conditions, great. What are they? Let me know what you are talking about, and why it should be considered important.

At this point, it’s not a matter of ruling anything out as incoherent. It’s a matter of trying to figure out what sort of thing we are talking about when we talk about consciousness and seeing how far that label applies. There doesn’t appear to be anything inherently biological about what we are talking about when we are talking about consciousness. This could be a mistake, of course: but if so, you have to show it is a mistake and why.

asparisi 26 Aug 2013 11:52 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Juno_Watt’s comment on: How sure are you that brain emulations would be conscious?
1. You’ve chosen one of the easier aspects of consciousness: self-awareness rather than, eg. qualia.
I cover this a bit when I talk about awareness, but I find qualia to often be used in such a way as to obscure what consciousness is rather than explicate it. (If I tell you that consciousness requires qualia, but can’t tell you how to distinguish things which have qualia from things which do not, along with good reason to believe that this way of distinguishing is legitimate, then rocks could have qualia.)
1. The “necessarily biological” could be aposteriori nomic necessity, not apriori conceptual necessity, which is the only kind you knock down in your comment.
If the defenders of a biological theory of consciousness want to introduce an empirically testable law to show that consciousness requires biology then I am more than happy to let them test it and get back to us. I don’t feel the need to knock it down, since when it comes to a posteriori nomic necessity, we use science to tell whether it is legitimate or not.

asparisi 24 Aug 2013 14:45 UTC
1 point
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on: How sure are you that brain emulations would be conscious?
I find it helps to break down the category of ‘consciousness.’ What is it that one is saying when one says that “Consciousness is essentially biological”? Here it’s important to be careful: there are philosophers who gerrymander categories. We can start by pointing to human beings, as we take human beings to be conscious, but obviously we aren’t pointing at every human attribute. (For instance, having 23 base pairs of chromosomes isn’t a characteristic we are pointing at.) We have to be careful that when we point at an attribute, that we are actually trying to solve the problem and not just obscure it: if I tell you that Consciousness is only explainable by Woogles, that’s just unhelpful. The term we use needs to break down into something that allows us to (at least in principle) tell whether or not a given thing is conscious. If it can’t do THAT, we are better off using our own biased heuristics and forgoing defintions: at least in the former case, I can tell you that my neighbor is conscious and a rock isn’t. Without some way of actually telling what is conscious and what is not, we have no basis to actually say when we’ve found a conscious thing.

It seems like with consciousness, we are primarily interested in something like “has the capacity to be aware of its own existence.” Now, this probably needs to be further explicated. “Awareness” here is probably a trouble word. What do I mean when I say that it is “aware”? Well, it seems like I mean some combination of being able to percieve a given phenomenon and being able to distinguish both degrees of the phenomenon when present and distinguishing the phenomenon from other phenomenon. When I say that my sight makes me aware of light, I mean that it allows me to both distinguish different sorts of light and light from non-light: I don’t mistake my sight for hearing, after all. So if I am “aware of my own existence” then I have the capacity to distinguish my existence from things that are not my existence, and the ability to think about degrees to which I exist. (in this case, my intuition says that this caches out in questions like “how much can I change and still be me?”)

Now, there isn’t anything about this that looks like it is biological. I suppose if we came at it another way and said that to be conscious is to “have neural activity” or something, it would be inherently biological since that’s a biological system. But while having neural activity may be necessary for consciousness in humans, it doesn’t quite feel like that’s what we are talking about when we talk about what we are pointing to when we say “conscious.” If somehow I met a human being and was shown a brain scan showing that there was no neural activity, but it was apparently aware of itself and was able to talk about how its changed over time and such and I was convinced I wasn’t being fooled, I would call that conscious. Similarly, if I was shown a human being with neural activity but which didn’t seem capable of distinguishing itself from other objects or able to consider how it might change, I would say that human being was not conscious.

asparisi 12 Aug 2013 23:52 UTC
1 point
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on: Greatest Philosopher in History
On those criteria, I would say Plato. Because Plato came up with a whole mess of ideas that were… well, compelling but obviously mistaken. Much of Western Philosophy can be put in terms of people wrestling with Plato and trying to show just why he is wrong. (Much of the rest is wrestling with Aristotle and trying to show why HE is wrong… but then, one can put Aristotle into the camp of “people trying to show why Plato is wrong.”)

There’s a certain sort of person who is most easily aroused from inertia when someone else says something so blatantly, utterly false that they want to pull their hair out. Plato helped motivate these people a lot.

asparisi 12 Aug 2013 23:46 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Crux’s comment on: Greatest Philosopher in History
The New Organon, particularly Aphorisms 31-46, show not only an early attempt to diagnose human biases (what Bacon referred to as “The Idols of the Mind”) but also some of the reasons why he rejected Aristotelian thought, common at the time, in favor of experimental practice.

asparisi 3 Aug 2013 15:06 UTC
0 points
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on: The Fermi paradox as evidence against the likelyhood of unfriendly AI
Maybe there are better ways to expand than through spacetime, better ways to make yourself into this sort of maximizing agent, and we are just completely unaware of them because we are comparatively dull next to the sort of AGI that has a brain the size of a planet? Some way to beat out entropy, perhaps. That’d make it inconsistent to see any sort of sky with UFAI or FAI in it.

I can somewhat imagine what these sorts of ways would be, but I have no idea if those things are likely or even feasible, since I am not a world-devouring AGI and can only do wild mass speculation at what’s beyond our current understanding of physics.

A simpler explanation could be that AGIs use stealth in pursuing their goals: the ability to camouflage oneself has always been of evolutionary import, and AGIs may find it useful to create a sky which looks like “nothing to see here” to other AGIs. (As they will likely be unfriendly toward each other) Camoflage, if good enough, would allow one to hide from predators (bigger AGI) and sneak up on prey (smaller AGI) Since we would likely be orders of magnitude worse at detecting an AGI’s camoflage, we see a sky that looks like there is nothing wrong. This doesn’t explain why we haven’t been devoured, of course, which is the weakness of the argument.

Or maybe something like acausal trade limits the expansion of AGI. If AGIs realize that fighting over resources is likely to hinder their goals more than help them in the long wrong, they might limit their expansion on the theory that there are other AGIs out there. If I think I am 1 out of a population of a billion, and I don’t want to be a target for a billion enemies at once, I might decide that taking over the entire galaxy/universe/beyond isn’t worth it. In fact, if these sorts of stand-offs become more common as the scale becomes grander, it might be motivation not to pursue such scales. The problem with this being that you would expect earlier AGIs to be more likely to just take advantage before future ones can really get to the point of being near-equals and defect on this particular dilemma. (A billion planet-eating AGI are probably not a match for one galaxy-eating AGI. So if you see a way to become the galaxy-eater before enough planet-eaters can come to the party, you go for it.)

I don’t find any of these satisfying, as one seems to require a sub-set of possibilities for unknown physics and the others seem to lean pretty heavily on the anthropic principle to explain why we, personally, are not dead yet. I see possibilities here, but none of them jump out at me as being exceptionally likely.

asparisi 30 Jul 2013 5:10 UTC
4 points
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on: Leveling up...
I get that feeling whenever I hit a milestone in something: if I run a couple miles further than I had previously, if I understand something that was opaque before, if I am able to do something that I couldn’t before, I get this “woo hoo!” feeling that I associate with levelling up.

asparisi 30 Jun 2013 19:28 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: taelor’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89
Even if they are sapient, it might not have the same psychological effect.

The effect of killing a large, snarling, distinctly-not-human-thing on one’s mental faculties and the effect of killing a human being are going to be very different, even if one recognizes that thing to be sapient.

If they are, Harry would assign moral weight to the act after the fact: but the natural sympathy that is described as eroding in the above quote doesn’t seem as likely to be affected given a human being’s psychology.

asparisi 24 Apr 2013 11:58 UTC
−1 points
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on: Normativity and Meta-Philosophy

since I don’t know what “philosophy” really is (and I’m not even sure it really is a thing).

I find it’s best to treat philosophy as simply a field of study, albeit one that is odd in that most of the questions asked within the field are loosely tied together at best. (There could be a connection between normative bioethics and ontological questions regarding the nature of nothingness, I suppose, but you wouldn’t expect a strong connection from the outset) To do otherwise invites counter-example too easily and I don’t think there is much (if anything) to gain in asking what philosophy really is.

asparisi 16 Apr 2013 16:46 UTC
7 points
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in reply to: Bugmaster’s comment on: Boring Advice Repository
Technical note: some of these are Torts, not Crimes. (Singing Happy Birthday, Watching a Movie, or making an Off-Color Joke are not crimes, barring special circumstances, but they may well be Torts.)

asparisi 15 Apr 2013 23:46 UTC
3 points
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on: Open Thread, April 15-30, 2013
Is there anyone going to the April CFAR Workshop that could pick me up from the airport? I’ll be arriving at San Francisco International at 5 PM if anyone can help me get out there. (I think I have a ride back to the airport after the workshop covered, but if I don’t I’ll ask that seperately.)

asparisi 14 Feb 2013 17:47 UTC
1 point
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on: Realism : Direct or Indirect?
I tend to think this is the wrong question.

Here’s roughly what happens: there are various signals (light, air waves, particulates in the air) that humans have the capacity to detect and translate into neural states which can then be acted on. This is useful because the generation, presence, and redirection of these signals is affected by other objects in the world. So a human can not only detect objects that generate these signals, it can also detect how other objects around it are affected by these signals, granting information that the human brain can then act upon.

All of this is occurring in reality: the brain’s neural firings, the signals and their detection, the objects that generate and are affected by the signals. There is no “outside reality” that the human is looking in from.

If you break it down into other questions, you get sensible answers:

“Does the human brain have the capacity to gain information from the ball without a medium?” No.

“Is the human brain’s information about the ball physically co-located with some area of the brain itself?” Sure.

“Is the signal detected by the sense-organs co-located with some area of the brain itself?” Potentially at certain points of interaction, but not for its entire history, no.

“What about the neural activity?” That’s co-located with the brain.

“So are you trying to say you are only ‘Directly acquainted’ with the signal at the point where it interacts with your sense-organ?” I don’t think calling it ‘directly acquainted’ picks out any particular property. If you are asking if it is co-located with some portion of my brain, the answer is no. If you are asking if it is causing a physical reaction in some sensory organ, the answer is yes.

asparisi 14 Feb 2013 17:25 UTC
6 points
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on: The Singularity Wars
I just hope that the newly-dubbed Machine Intelligence Research Institute doesn’t put too much focus on advertising for donations.

That would create a MIRI-ad of issues.

Sorry, if I don’t let the pun out it has to live inside my head.

asparisi 10 Feb 2013 21:48 UTC
5 points
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in reply to: V_V’s comment on: A brief history of ethically concerned scientists
I find it unlikely that scientific secrecy is never the right answer, just as I find it unlikely that scientific secrecy is always the right answer.

Qualitatively, I’d say it has something to do with the ratio of expected harm of immediate discovery vs. the current investment and research in the field. If the expected risks are low, by all means publish so that any risks that are there will be found. If the risks are high, consider the amount of investment/research in the field. If the investment is high, it is probably better to reveal your research (or parts of it) in the hope of creating a substantive dialogue about risks. If the investment is low, it is less likely that anyone will come up with the same discovery and so you may want to keep it a secret. This probably also varies by field with respect to how many competing paradigms are available and how incremental the research is: psychologists work with a lot of different theories of the mind, many of which do not explicitly endorse incremental theorizing, so it is less likely that a particular piece of research will be duplicated while biologists tend to have larger agreement and their work tends to be more incremental, making it more likely that a particular piece of research will be duplicated.

Honestly, I find cases of alternative pleading such as V_V’s post here suspect. It is a great rhetorical tool, but reality isn’t such that alternative pleading actually can map onto the state of the world. “X won’t work, you shouldn’t do X in cases where it does work, and even if you think you should do X, it won’t turn out as well” is a good way to persuade a lot of different people, but it can’t actually map onto anything.

asparisi 6 Feb 2013 15:53 UTC
6 points
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on: How to offend a rationalist (who hasn’t thought about it yet): a life lesson
I usually turn to the Principle of Explosion to explain why one should have core axioms in their ethics, (specifically non-contradictory axioms). If some principle you use in deciding what is or is not ethical creates a contradiction, you can justify any action on the basis of that contradiction. If the axioms aren’t explicit, the chance of a hidden contradiction is higher. The idea that every action could be ethically justified is something that very few people will accept, so explaining this usually helps.

I try to understand that thinking this way is odd to a lot of people and that they may not have explicit axioms, and present the idea as “something to think about.” I think this also helps me to deal with people not having explicit rules that they follow, since it A) helps me cut off the rhetorical track of “Well, I don’t need principles” by extending the olive branch to the other person; and B) reminds me that many people haven’t even tried to think about what grounds their ethics, much less what grounds what grounds their ethics.

I usually use the term “rule” or “principle” as opposed to “axiom,” merely for the purpose of communication: most people will accept that there are core ethical rules or core ethical principles, but they may have never even used the word “axiom” before and be hesitant on that basis alone.

asparisi 24 Jan 2013 18:11 UTC
2 points
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on: AI box: AI has one shot at avoiding destruction—what might it say?
“[10065] No route to host Error”

I figure the easiest way to delay a human on the other end of a computer is to simulate an error as best I can. For a GAI, this time is probably invaluable.

asparisi 5 Jan 2013 14:44 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: DanArmak’s comment on: How to Teach Students to Not Guess the Teacher’s Password?
That depends on the level of explanation the teacher requires and the level of the material. I’d say that at least until you get into calculus, you can work off of memorizing answers. I’d even go so far as to say that most students do, and succeed to greater or lesser degrees, based on my tutoring experiences. I am not sure to what degree you can “force” understanding: you can provide answers that require understanding, but it helps to guide that process.

I went to a lot of schools, so I can contrast here.

I had more than one teacher that taught me multiplication. One taught it as “memorize multiplication tables 1x1 through 9x9. Then you use these tables, ones place by ones place, ones place by tens place, etc.” One problem with this approach is that while it does act as an algorithm and does get you the right answer, you have no idea what you are trying to accomplish. If you screw up part of the process, there’s no way to check your answer: to a student in that state, multiplication just is “look up the table, apply the answer, add one zero to the end for every place higher than one that the number occupied.”

Whereas I had another teacher, who explained it in terms of groups: you are trying to figure out how many total objects you would have if you had this many groups of that, or that many groups of this. 25 is the right answer because if you have 5 groups of 5 things, you generally have 25 things in total. This is a relatively simple way of trying to explain the concept in terms of what you are trying to track, rather than just rote memorization. Fortunately, I had this teacher earlier.

The point being that you can usually teach things either way: actually, I think some combination of both is helpful. Teach the rote memorization but explain why it is true in terms of some understanding. Some memorization is useful: I don’t want to actually visualize groups of objects when I do 41x38. But knowing that is what I am trying to track (at least at the basic level of mathematical understanding I acquired in the 2nd grade) is useful.

asparisi 5 Jan 2013 14:09 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: DanArmak’s comment on: How to Teach Students to Not Guess the Teacher’s Password?
I think the worry is that they are only concerned about getting the answer that gets them the good grade, rather than understanding why the answer they get is the right answer.

So you end up learning the symbols “5x5=25,” but you don’t know what that means. You may not even have an idea that corresponds to multiplication. You just know that when you see “5x5=” you write “25.” If I ask you what multiplication is, you can’t tell me: you don’t actually know. You are disconnected from what the process you are learning is supposed to be tracking, because all you have learned is to put in symbols where you see other symbols.