betterthanwell

Karma: 727

betterthanwell 7 Sep 2009 20:52 UTC
17 points
in reply to: JulianMorrison’s comment on: The Sword of Good

What misdeeds are we shrugging off because they’re normal?

Eating mammals. More generally; non-vegetarianism.

betterthanwell 10 Sep 2009 15:53 UTC
5 points
in reply to: eirenicon’s comment on: The Sword of Good

Research in recent years suggests that crustaceans may be capable of feeling pain and stress.

Pain and stress in crustaceans? Source: Applied Animal Behaviour Science.

We consider evidence that crustaceans might experience pain and stress in ways that are analogous to those of vertebrates. Various criteria are applied that might indicate a potential for pain experience: (1) a suitable central nervous system and receptors, (2) avoidance learning, (3) protective motor reactions that might include reduced use of the affected area, limping, rubbing, holding or autotomy, (4) physiological changes, (5) trade-offs between stimulus avoidance and other motivational requirements, (6) opioid receptors and evidence of reduced pain experience if treated with local anaesthetics or analgesics, and (7) high cognitive ability and sentience. For stress, we examine hormonal responses that have similar function to glucocorticoids in vertebrates. We conclude that there is considerable similarity of function, although different systems are used, and thus there might be a similar experience in terms of suffering. The treatment of these animals in the food industry and elsewhere might thus pose welfare problems.

No more prawn cocktails or shrimp sandwiches for me.

betterthanwell 30 Nov 2009 18:19 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: A Nightmare for Eliezer

Hoax.

So, would you hang up on BRAGI?

As a matter of fact, I previously came up with a very simple one-sentence test along these lines which I am not going to post here for obvious reasons.

For what purpose (or circumstance) did you devise such a test?

Would you hang up if “BRAGI” passed your one-sentence test?

To arrive in an epistemic state where you are uncertain about your own utility function, but have some idea of which queries you need to perform against reality to resolve that uncertainty, and moreover, believe that these queries involve talking to Eliezer Yudkowsky, requires a quite specific and extraordinary initial state—one that meddling dabblers would be rather hard-pressed to accidentally infuse into their poorly designed AI.

I assume that you must have devised the test before you arrived at this insight?

betterthanwell 22 Feb 2010 19:50 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Kevin’s comment on: Akrasia Tactics Review

If Ritalin and Adderall don’t work for you I think it unlikely that Modafinil would work

Do you have any sources backing this?

If Adderall does not work for you then it’s less likely that Ritalin would, and vice versa.

This does not necessarily hold true going from stimulants to eugeroics.

betterthanwell 22 Feb 2010 21:30 UTC
10 points
on: Akrasia Tactics Review
Useful tools and routines that I have found to increase reduce akrasia, increase productivity:
- Methylphenidate +8
Promotes willpower, focus and persistence;

Well it’s on a prescription, so my experiences might not be transferable to you. I get a lot of mileage out of Ritalin. Methylphenidate makes me focused, but I need to be careful in order to to focus on the right things, or it would only make me a more tenacious procrastinator. No significant side-effects, except a slight reduction of appetite. Some might see this as a bonus.
- Melatonin +7
Prevents delayed sleep onset, keeps circadian rhythm in check.

I tend not to get very tired in the evenings. As a consequence I often sleep less than I should. 2mg of melatonin an hour or two before going to bed makes it effortless to wind down and hit the hay at a sensible time. No negative side-effects experienced.
- Leechblock +5
Increases productivity by killing Wikipedia, Less Wrong and other fun time-sinks.

No cost beyond the few minutes it takes to set up appropriate filters. Keeping more than one browser on the computer makes it possible to research something should the need arise. Saves a couple of minutes or hours every time it kicks in. The benefit isn’t huge, but the cost is next to nothing.
- High intensity aerobic exercise +5
Four times four minutes of intense exercise per workout, three sessions per week.

Reduces stress, increases well-being, makes me less inclined to procrastinate. Positive effects on cognitive endurance. Said to decrease the level of cortisol in the bloodstream, reducing stress. Also said to up-regulate production of growth hormone, insulin-like growth factor, brain-derived neurotrophic growth factor, endorphins, and other beneficial hormones and neurotrophic proteins. Increased physical endurance come as a bonus, if you care about that sort of thing.

+7 for beneficial effects, −2 for the time and effort required.
- Meditation; +5
Mindfulness meditation, 30 minutes daily.

Promotes reflection and allows the things that really matter to float to the top of my mind, reduces cognitive stress.

+7 for effect, −2 for the cost in time and mental effort.

To me, the above strategies work better in sum than by themselves. Beneficial effects add up over time, and the pay-off makes each well worth the cost.

Nothing really new here, but my experiences seem to fall in line with those of others.
What links here?
- Akrasia Tactics Review by orthonormal (21 Feb 2010 4:25 UTC; 92 points)
- gwern's comment on Case study: Melatonin by gwern (12 Apr 2010 15:12 UTC; 7 points)

betterthanwell 1 Oct 2011 11:43 UTC
10 points
on: Rationality Drugs
Maybe also this: Single Dose of ‘Magic Mushrooms’ Hallucinogen May Create Lasting Personality Change

A single high dose of the hallucinogen psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called “magic mushrooms,” was enough to bring about a measurable personality change lasting at least a year in nearly 60 percent of the 51 participants in a new study, according to the Johns Hopkins researchers who conducted it.

From the abstract:

A large body of evidence, including longitudinal analyses of personality change, suggests that core personality traits are predominantly stable after age 30. To our knowledge, no study has demonstrated changes in personality in healthy adults after an experimentally manipulated discrete event. Intriguingly, double-blind controlled studies have shown that the classic hallucinogen psilocybin occasions personally and spiritually significant mystical experiences that predict long-term changes in behaviors, attitudes and values. (...) Consistent with participant claims of hallucinogen-occasioned increases in aesthetic appreciation, imagination, and creativity, we found significant increases in Openness following a high-dose psilocybin session. In participants who had mystical experiences during their psilocybin session, Openness remained significantly higher than baseline more than 1 year after the session.

Openness to experience:

Openness to experience correlates with creativity, as measured by tests of divergent thinking. Openness is also associated with crystallized intelligence, but not fluid intelligence. These mental abilities may come more easily when people are dispositionally curious and open to learning. However, openness is only weakly related to general intelligence. Openness to experience is related to need for cognition, a motivational tendency to think about ideas, scrutinize information, and enjoy solving puzzles.

Openness is the only personality trait that correlates with neuropsychological tests of dorsolateral prefrontal cortical function, supporting theoretical links among openness, cognitive functioning, and IQ.
What links here?

betterthanwell 2 Oct 2011 22:12 UTC
3 points
on: Physics Video Lectures
Leonard Susskind has published a bunch of videos outlining the theoretical foundations of modern physics. The collective title is Modern Physics: The Theoretical Minimum, and it seems intended to serve as his take on the simple physics of everything. He disregards constants in the equations, using the natural units wherever possible and so on, thereby managing to explain the dynamics of a wide range of physical phenomena quite compactly. The series on cosmology was excellent.

betterthanwell 4 Oct 2011 21:02 UTC
5 points
on: Apply your knowledge: pick half a number
Playing against sufficiently rational agents the correct guess is zero. But assuming that not every other player is completely rational, applies sufficient recursion etc, you have to take into account their irrationality. If some non negligible proportion answer anything other than zero, and at least one participant guesses a very small non-zero number, every player choosing zero is guaranteed to miss. I don’t know how much I trust the NPR readership to take recursion to the limit.

I asked a friend just now. She (immediately) answered 5.

Sounds like the Less Wrong readership may overestimate the rationality of the average participant.

betterthanwell 4 Oct 2011 22:09 UTC
0 points
in reply to: pedanterrific’s comment on: Apply your knowledge: pick half a number
I have a feeling the half-average “should” be in the interval between 0 and 1.

I will be very surprised if the half-average is zero.

I’m guessing there is both literature and mathematical models for this interesting problem, but I’m not going to go ahead and Google it. Not knowing is way more fun.

betterthanwell 11 Oct 2011 5:30 UTC
0 points
in reply to: CronoDAS’s comment on: A Rational Approach to Fashion
Dressing like a mathematician will not make you one. Dressing like a clown will make you a clown.

Fashion will not affect your skill, outside of making you more (or less) comfortable, which in turn could affect performance. A socially calibrated sense of fashion could help you get noticed and gain reputation among peers in any community.

betterthanwell 11 Oct 2011 6:10 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Prismattic’s comment on: The self-fooling problem.

Go to the bank. Obtain several thousand coins of a denomination equal to the one you are looking for.

This was the first approach I thought of. Make a haystack for the needle.

This will however allow you to find the haystack.

“Where is the coin? Right here, in the pile of coins.”

Your coin finding self could beat your coin hiding self by scooping up all the coins,
bringing them before a judge and arbiter and saying “here it is.”

You will likely have found the coin, even if you can not identify it.

If a judge can easily identify the coin, and you have found and presented the coin to the judge,
then it would be reasonable to say the coin is found.

Otherwise, the answer is lost to both the judge and the coin hider, much as if you ground it to a fine dust.

Save yourself the trouble and grind the coin into dust.

Destroy the answer. Make retrieval impossible.

(This was probably intended to be forbidden in the formulation of the problem, but it is not.)

betterthanwell 11 Oct 2011 6:27 UTC
3 points
in reply to: betterthanwell’s comment on: The self-fooling problem.
Trivial solutions for the problem: (Coin hider to wins over the coin finder.)
- Loose the needle—not in a haystack—but in a large stack of needles.
- Grind the coin in to dust. Destroy it’s physical basis.
The first makes the coin lose it’s uniqueness, the second makes the coin physically irretrievable.

No reason to play by implied rules, rules that only a human would think to follow anyway.

betterthanwell 17 Oct 2011 5:19 UTC
3 points
on: Just a reminder, for everyone that signed up for the intro to AI class, it’s started.
“We’ve had an absolutely massive surge of last-minute homework submissions”—how surprising!

“The massive crush of students trying to do homework at the last minute exceeded all of our expectations, and the expectations of our servers. To compensate those who have had difficulty accessing the site today we have moved the deadline by 24 hours.”

That figures.

betterthanwell 18 Oct 2011 22:27 UTC
2 points
in reply to: SilasBarta’s comment on: Just a reminder, for everyone that signed up for the intro to AI class, it’s started.
YouTube view counts are delayed and not-at-all reliable.

betterthanwell 27 Oct 2011 15:15 UTC
6 points
in reply to: djcb’s comment on: Vasili Arkhipov Day

There might be a few unknown Vasilis/Stanislavs, and a couple of actions/inactions of leaders (e.g., Kennedy) that prevented a world-wide disaster.

Favouring nomination of Kennedy.

Curtis LeMay was Chief of Strategic Air Command:

During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, LeMay clashed again with U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Defense Secretary McNamara, arguing that he should be allowed to bomb nuclear missile sites in Cuba.

He opposed the naval blockade and, after the end of the crisis, suggested that Cuba be invaded anyway, even after the Russians agreed to withdraw. LeMay called the peaceful resolution of the crisis “the greatest defeat in our history”.

Unknown to the U.S., the Soviet field commanders in Cuba had been given authority to launch—the only time such authority was delegated by higher command. They had twenty nuclear warheads for medium-range R-12 ballistic missiles capable of reaching U.S. cities (including Washington) and nine tactical nuclear missiles. If Soviet officers had launched them, many millions of U.S. citizens would have been killed. The ensuing SAC retaliatory thermonuclear strike would have killed roughly one hundred million Soviet citizens, and brought nuclear winter to much of the Northern Hemisphere.

Kennedy refused LeMay’s requests, however, and the naval blockade was successful.

betterthanwell 27 Oct 2011 15:41 UTC
7 points
in reply to: betterthanwell’s comment on: Vasili Arkhipov Day
One more thermonuclear anecdote from Wikipedia:

When General LeMay was named vice chief of staff of the Air Force in 1957, General Power became commander in chief of SAC and was promoted to four-star rank. But, although Power was LeMay’s protégé, LeMay himself was quoted as privately saying that Power was mentally “not stable” and a “sadist”.

When RAND proposed a counterforce strategy, which would require SAC to restrain itself from striking Soviet cities in the beginning of a war, Power countered with:

Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!

betterthanwell 2 Nov 2011 15:15 UTC
15 points
in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: AGI Quotes
It is seemingly easy to get stuck in arguments over whether or not machines can “actually” think.
It is sufficient to assess the effects or outcomes of the phenomenon in question.

By sidestepping the question of what, exactly, it means to “think”,
we can avoid arguing over definitions, yet lose nothing of our ability to model the world.

Does a submarine swim? The purpose of swimming is to propel oneself through the water. A nuclear powered submarine can propel itself through the oceans at full speed for months at a time. It achieves the purpose of swimming, and does so rather better than a fish, or a human.

If the purpose of thinking is isomorphic to:

Model the world in order to formulate plans for executing actions which implement goals.

Then, if a machine can achieve the above we can say it achieves the purpose of thinking,
akin to how a submarine successfully achieves the purpose of swimming.

Discussion of whether the machine really thinks is now superfluous.

betterthanwell 2 Nov 2011 16:16 UTC
8 points
in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: Do we have it too easy?
While this is true, most math [1] textbooks generally don’t provide verbose treatments of controversial, unresolved, possibly untestable meta-problems [2], (where the validity of the conclusions crucially depend on previous controversial, unresolved, possibly untestable meta-problems.)

[1] String theory textbooks provide a possible anti-example.
[2] Metaphysics, metacognition, metaprogramming.

betterthanwell 3 Nov 2011 11:27 UTC
6 points
on: Guardian coverage of the Summit [link]

Singularitarians believe artificial intelligence will be humanity’s saviour.
But they also assume AI entities will be benevolent.

Reading this, I wanted to scream; [CITATION NEEDED]!

betterthanwell 3 Nov 2011 11:54 UTC
3 points
on: Less Wrong link exchange
BBC News: Signs of ageing halted in the lab

The onset of wrinkles, muscle wasting and cataracts has been delayed and even eliminated in mice, say researchers in the US. The study, published in Nature, focused on what are known as “senescent cells”. They stop dividing into new cells and have an important role in preventing tumours from progressing.