ChaosMote

Karma: 175

ChaosMote 14 Dec 2014 2:11 UTC
2 points
on: Lifehack Ideas December 2014
Get in the habit of smiling. Smile when you are greeting someone, smile at the cashier when they ring up your groceries, smile to yourself when you are alone.

As far as I understand it, the physical act of smiling (for whatever reason) improves your mood. Personally, I’ve tried to make it a point to smile whenever it occurs to me, and I’ve found that it generally improves my day. In particular, I find myself feeling more positive and optimistic.

ChaosMote 14 Dec 2014 3:05 UTC
4 points
on: Welcome to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013)
Hello, all!

I’m a new user here at LessWrong, though I’ve been lurking for some time now. I originally found LessWrong by way of HPMOR, though I only starting following the site when one of my friends strongly recommended it to me at a later date. I am currently 22 years old, fresh out of school with a BA/MA in Mathematics, and working a full-time job doing mostly computer science.

I am drawn to LessWrong because of my interests in logical thinking, self improvement, and theoretical discussions. I am slowly working my way through the sequences right now—slowly because I’m trying to only approach them when I think I have enough cognitive energy to actually internalize anything.

Right now, my best estimation of a terminal goal is to live a happy/fulfilling life, with instrumental subgoals of improving the lives of those around me, forming more close social bonds, and improving myself. Two of my current major projects are to smile more, and to stop wasting time on video games and the like.

I look forward to getting to know you all better and becoming a part of this community.

ChaosMote 14 Dec 2014 3:52 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: Does utilitarianism “require” extreme self sacrifice? If not why do people commonly say it does?
Such a moral theory can be used as one of the criterion in a multi-criterion decision system. This is useful because in general people prefer being more moral to being less moral, but not to the exclusion of everything else. For example, one might genuinely want to improve the work and yet be unwilling to make life-altering changes (like donating all but the bare minimum to charity) to further this goal.

ChaosMote 14 Dec 2014 4:14 UTC
0 points
in reply to: SilentCal’s comment on: Does utilitarianism “require” extreme self sacrifice? If not why do people commonly say it does?
It might be useful to distinguish between a “moral theory” which can be used to compare the morality of different actions and a “moral standard” which is a boolean rule use to determine what is morally ‘permissible’ and what is morally ‘impermissible’.

I think part of the point your post makes is that people really want a moral standard, not a moral theory. I think that makes sense; with a moral system, you have a course of action guaranteed to be “good”, whereas a moral theory makes no such guarantee.

Furthermore, I suspect that the commonly accepted societal standard is “you should be as moral as possible”, which means that a moral theory is translated into a moral standard by treating the most moral option as “permissible” and everything else as “impermissible”. This is exactly what occurs in the text quoted by OP; it takes the utilitarian moral system and projects it on a standard according to which only the most moral option is permissible, making it obligatory.

ChaosMote 14 Dec 2014 4:45 UTC
1 point
on: Does utilitarianism “require” extreme self sacrifice? If not why do people commonly say it does?
As far as I understand it, the text quoted here is implicitly relying on the social imperative “be as moral as possible”. This is where the “obligatory” comes from. The problem here is that the imperative “be as moral as possible” gets increasingly more difficult as more actions acquire moral weight. If one has internalized this imperative (which is realistic given the weight of societal pressure behind it), utilitarianism puts an unbearable moral weight on one’s metaphorical shoulders.

Of course, in reality, utilitarianism implies this degree of self-sacrifice only if you demand (possibly inhuman) moral perfection from oneself. The actual weight you have to accept is defined by whatever moral standard you accept for yourself. For example, you might decide to be at least as moral as the people around you, or you might decide to be as moral as you can without causing yourself major inconvenience, or you might decide to be as immoral as possible (though you probably shouldn’t do that, especially considering that it is probably about as difficult as being perfectly moral).

At the end of the day, utilitarianism is just a scale. What you do with that scale is up to you.

ChaosMote 15 Dec 2014 2:54 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: Does utilitarianism “require” extreme self sacrifice? If not why do people commonly say it does?

Pretty much any such moral standard says that you must be better than him

Why does this need to be the case? I would posit that the only paradox here is that our intuitions find it hard to accept the idea of a serial killer being a good person, much less a better person than one need strive to be. This shouldn’t be that surprising—really, it is just the claim that utilitarianism may not align well with our intuitions.

Now, you can totally make the argument that not aligning with our intuitions is a flaw of utilitarianism, and you would have a point. If your goal in a moral theory is a way of quantifying your intuitions about morality, then by all means use a different approach. On the other hand, if your goal is to reason about actions in terms of their cumulative impact on the world around you, then utilitarianism presents the best option, any you may just have to bite the bullet when it comes to your intuitions.

ChaosMote 15 Dec 2014 3:52 UTC
9 points
in reply to: ausgezeichnet’s comment on: Open thread, Dec. 15 - Dec. 21, 2014
I have two pieces of advice for you. Please take them with a grain of salt—this is merely my opinion and I am by no means an expert in the matter. Note that I can’t really recommend that you do things one way or another, but I thought I would bring up some points that could be salient.

1) When thinking about the coding job, don’t put a lot of emphasis on the monetary component unless you seriously need the money. You are probably earning less than you would be in a full time job, and your time is really valuable at the moment. On the other hand, if you need the money immediately or are interested in the job primarily because of networking opportunities or career advancement, then it is a different matter.

2) Keeping up a good GPA is not equivalent to learning the material well. There are certainly corners you could cut which would reduce the amount of work you need to do without losing much of the educational benefit. As the saying goes, 20% of the effort gives 80% of the results. If you are pressed for time, you may need to accept that some of your work will have to be “good enough” and not your personal best. Having said that, be very careful here, cause this is also an easy way to undermine yourself. “This isn’t really the important stuff” is a fully general excuse.

ChaosMote 15 Dec 2014 4:11 UTC
8 points
on: Group Rationality Diary, December 16-31
For a while now, I’ve been spending a lot of my free time playing video games and reading online fiction, and for a while now, I’ve considered it a bad habit that I should try to get rid of. Up till now, I’ve been almost universally unsuccessful at maintaining this resolve for any length of time.

My latest attempt consisted of making the commitment public to my closest friends, explaining the decision to them, and then asking them to help by regularly checking up on my progress. This has been more effective than anything else I’ve tried so far.

Usually, when I get the impulse to catch up on a story or whatnot, I will end up weighing that impulse against the fact that I ought to behave differently. Sadly, as is often the case when pitting System 1 vs System 2, even if I suppress the impulse several times, it eventually wears down my resolve. So far, what I’m experiencing now is that I end up weighing the impulse against the rather unappealing idea of explaining the fact to my friends, which has made it a lot easier to maintain my commitment.

ChaosMote 16 Dec 2014 1:25 UTC
2 points
in reply to: ausgezeichnet’s comment on: Open thread, Dec. 15 - Dec. 21, 2014
I’m having trouble finding the original sequence post that mentions it, but a “fully general excuse” refers to an excuse that can be applied to anything, independently of the truth value of the thing. In this case, what I mean is that “this isn’t really the important stuff” can sound reasonable even when applied to the stuff that actually is important (especially if you don’t think about it too long). It follows that if you accept that as a valid excuse but don’t keep an eye on your behavior, you may find yourself labeling whatever you don’t want to do at the moment as “not really important”—which leads to important work not getting done.

ChaosMote 16 Dec 2014 14:22 UTC
2 points
in reply to: VincentYu’s comment on: Open thread, Dec. 15 - Dec. 21, 2014
Thank you! That is exactly what I was looking for.

ChaosMote 17 Dec 2014 0:45 UTC
4 points
on: “incomparable” outcomes—multiple utility functions?

I thought of the idea that maybe the human decision maker has multiple utility functions that when you try to combine them into one function some parts of the original functions don’t necessarily translate well… sounds like the “shards of desire” are actually a bunch of different utility functions.

This is an interesting perspective, and I would agree that we humans typically have multiple decision criteria which often can’t be combined well. However, I don’t think it is quite right to call then utility functions. Humans are adaptation-executers, not fitness-maximizers—so it is more like we each have a bunch of behavioral patterns that we apply when appropriate, and potential conflicts arise when multiple patterns apply.

ChaosMote 1 Mar 2015 12:22 UTC
7 points
in reply to: wobster109’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 113
I think in this case, you and Eliezer are both correct, but for different definitions of “winning”. If one’s primary goal is to find a solution to the puzzle (and get the good ending), then your advice is probably correct. However, if the goal to stimulate the experience of having to solve a hard problem using one’s intellect, then Eliezer’s advice seems more valid. I imagine that this is in the same way that one might not want to look up a walkthrough for a game—it would help you “win” the game, but not win at getting the most benefit/enjoyment out of it.

ChaosMote 1 Mar 2015 12:36 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Unknowns’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 113
You make a good point—in this instance, Voldemort is very much difficult to bargain with. However, I don’t agree that that makes the problem impossible. For one thing, there may be solutions which don’t require Voldemort’s cooperation—e.g. silent transfiguration while stalling for time. For another, Harry can still get Voldemort’s cooperation by convincing Voldemort that his current action is not in Voldemort’s interests—for example, that killing Harry will actually bring about the end of the world that Voldemort fears.

ChaosMote 1 Mar 2015 12:47 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Benquo’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 113
I don’t believe leveraging Voldemort’s bargain will work the way you suggest, because Parseltongue does not enforce promises, only honesty. When Harry demands that he himself be saved, Voldemort can simply say “No.”

ChaosMote 10 Apr 2015 22:18 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Benquo’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 113
Sorry—hadn’t logged in for a while. I thought it would have vanishingly low probability of working, though I don’t believe that it displaces any other action likely to work (though it does displace saving a person if all else fails, which has nontrivial value). Having said that, curiously enough it seems that this particular suggestion WAS implemented in the official solution, so I guess that was that. :)

ChaosMote 10 Apr 2015 22:53 UTC
10 points
on: On immortality
Mathematician here. I wanted to agree with @pianoforte611 - just because you have infinite time doesn’t mean that every event will repeat over and over.

For those interested in some reading, the general question is basically the question of Transience in Markov Chains; I also have some examples. :)

Let us say that we have a particle moving along a line. In each unit of time, it moves a unit of distance either left or right, with probability ¹⁄₁₀ of the former and ⁹⁄₁₀ of the latter. How often can we expect the particle to have returned to its starting point? Well, to return to the origin, we must have moved left and right an equal number of times. At odd times, this is impossible; at time 2n, the probability of this is
%5En%20\cdot%20\left(\frac9{10}\right)%5En%20\cdot%20\binom{2n}{n}) (this is not difficult to derive, and a simple explanation is given here). Summing this over all n, we get that the expected number of returns is one in four—in other words, we have no guarantee of returning even once, much less an infinite number times!

If this example strikes you as somewhat asymmetric, worry not—if the point was moving in three dimensions instead of one (so it could up, down, forward, or back as well as left or right), then a weighing of ¹⁄₆ to each direction means that you won’t return to the starting point infinitely often. If you don’t like having a fixed origin, use two particles, and have them moving independently in 3 dimensions. They will meet after time zero with less-than-unit-probability (actually, the same probability as in the previous problem, since the problems are equivalent after you apply a transformation).

I hope this helps!

ChaosMote 11 Apr 2015 14:15 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Kindly’s comment on: On immortality
You are absolutely correct. If the number of states of the universe is finite, then as long as any state is reachable from any other state, then every state will be reached arbitrarily often if you wait long enough.

ChaosMote 14 Apr 2015 13:33 UTC
4 points
on: Could you tell me what’s wrong with this?
I’m not convinced that the solution you propose is in fact easier than solving FAI. The following problems occur to me:

1) How to we explain to the creator AI what an FAI is? 2) How do we allow the creator AI to learn “properly” without letting it self modify in ways that we would find objectionable? 3) In the case of an unfriendly creator AI, how do we stop it from “sabotaging” its work in a way that would make the resulting “FAI” be friendly to the creator AI and not to us?

In general, I feel like the approach you outline just passes the issue up one level, requiring us to make FAI friendly.

On the other hand, if you limit your idea to something somewhat less ambitious, e.g. how to we make a safe AI to solve [difficult mathematical problem in useful for FAI], then I think you may be right.

ChaosMote 15 Apr 2015 0:29 UTC
1 point
in reply to: shminux’s comment on: Could you tell me what’s wrong with this?
I think you are being a little too exacting here. True, most advances in well-studied fields are likely to be made by experts. That doesn’t mean that non-experts should be barred from discussing the issue, for educational and entertainment purposes if nothing else.

That is not to say that there isn’t a minimum level of subject-matter literacy required for an acceptable post, especially when the poster in question posts frequently. I imagine your point may be that Algon has not cleared that threshold (or is close to the line) - but your post seems to imply a MUCH higher threshold for posting.

ChaosMote 20 Apr 2015 6:25 UTC
4 points
on: Self-verification
Your best bet would be to find some sort of channel for communicating with your future self that your adversary does not have access to. Other posters mentioned several such examples, with channels including:
- keeping your long term memories (assuming that the memories couldn’t be tampered with by the adversary)
- Swallowing a message, getting it as a tattoo, etc. (assuming that the adversary can’t force you to do that)
- Using some sort of biometric lock (assuming that the adversary can’t get a proper sample with causing detectable alternations to your blood chemistry which would be detectable in the sample) My personal addition: tell your friends/neighbors/the news the story. Unless your adversary can make you lie (or take your form or use mind magic or whatnot), these people can act as the channel you need.
If you don’t have a channel of that sort, I believe you are out of luck. A formal proof eludes me at this time; I’ll post again if I figure out out.