christopherj

Karma: 363

christopherj 16 Sep 2013 3:32 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Uni’s comment on: Not Taking Over the World
Incidentally, it is currently possible to achieve total happiness, or perhaps a close approximation. A carefully implanted electrode to the right part of the brain, will be more desirable than food to a starving rat, for example. While this part of the brain is called the “pleasure center”, it might rather be about desire and reward instead. Nevertheless, pleasure and happiness are by necessity mental states, and it should be possible to artificially create these.

Why should a man who is perfectly content, bother to get up to eat, or perhaps achieve something? He may starve to death, but would be happy to do so. And such a man will be content with his current state, which of course is contentment, and not at all resent his current state. Even a less invasive case, where a man is given almost everything he wants, yet not so much so that he does not eventually become dissatisfied with the amount of food in his belly and decide to put more in, even so there will be higher level motivations this man will lose.

While I consider myself a utilitarian, and believe the best choices are those that maximize the values of everyone, I cannot agree with the above situation. For now, this is no problem because people in their current state would not choose to artificially fulfill their desires via electrode implants, nor is it yet possible to actually fulfill everyone’s desires in the real world. I shall now go and rethink why I choose a certain path, if I cannot abide reaching the destination.

christopherj 16 Sep 2013 20:59 UTC
1 point
on: Newcomb’s Problem and Regret of Rationality
Seems like a simple and reasonable answer to this problem is that I would take the box with the million dollars, rather than the box with the thousand dollars and the empty box. It seems the main question is, “But why?”. So here is my reasoning: Omega has shown over 99% accuracy in providing results dependent on people’s choices. Box B has 100,000% better rewards than Box A, such that if there is even 0.1% chance that taking Box A will lose those rewards, it is irrational to also take Box A. As I have seen no evidence that Omega has left, it is not even certain that my choice of actions now will have not effect on the contents of the opaque box (only a fool would be certain that just because he “saw Omega fly away” that said superintelligence is not hiding nor has left behind an observing agent). As each of these choices would cause my choice to be only Box B, it is almost certain that Omega has seen likewise and put the $1,000,000 in Box B.

I suspect the problem people seem to have with this is because they think they are outside of the game. But the game description itself says that (a very accurate model of) you is in the game, and that therefore your (modeled) choices, including second doubts and your desire not to leave that last $1,000, will (if modeled correctly) affect the contents of Box B. No, Omega is not rewarding irrationality. Omega is giving a large reward to those who trust in Omega’s judgement, and a smaller reward to those who arrogantly think they can cheat the game he set up.

christopherj 16 Sep 2013 22:37 UTC
0 points
on: Nonparametric Ethics
“Robin Hanson, in his essay on “Minimal Morality”, suggests that the unreliability of our moral reasoning should lead us to seek simple moral principles”

I very much agree with this. Most specific moral rules people make, are in fact nothing more than frequently accurate pre-made decisions as to what would be good in a given situation. But asking why a given rule is good rather than bad, will often help someone figure out their actual moral code, the one they would have to use in novel situations. Specific moral rules also have the functions of providing guidance to those who can’t properly use their generalized moral rule, either due to not understanding consequences or a tendency to game rules that aren’t specific enough, and also give pause to people who are faced with a difficult moral decision, such as whether it is good to murder a very evil person.

Morality does not, and should not, match legality. This is because legality has as a pre-requisite the ability to be enforced, whereas morality must be able to guide someone even when there is no outside enforcement. Ambiguities in laws cause a reduction in their usefulness, as the threat of force is reduced by ambiguity, ambiguity can increase inaction due to fear of mis-guided interpretation, and ambiguity will allow biases of judge and jury to taint judgement. Thus we have and need many specific legal rules, whereas “Do to others as you would have them do to you” is enough to build a complete moral system.

christopherj 27 Sep 2013 1:48 UTC
1 point
on: Recognizing Intelligence
While reading on the topic of intelligent design, I stumbled upon a distinction between complexity and “unnaturalness” [can’t remember the actual word they used]. The gist of it was, a pile of mud is incredibly complex—it would require an absurd amount of information to create an exactly equal pile of mud, to get every grain of sand in the right place and every speck of muck as well. Sure, the information contained in a pile of mud is almost certainly random gibberish, but it is there nonetheless.

Conversely, consider a single crystal of salt in the shape of a perfect dodecahedron. The information content of this is nearly null, the shape is simple and even the arrangement of the atoms is regular and repetitive. In perhaps a few sentences you could specify it so exactly that it could be replicated atom for atom.

Despite its simplicity, the second example is undeniable evidence of intelligent design, as salt’s crystal structure would make a cube, and there really isn’t any remotely likely way for a natural system to shape things into dodecahedrons, much less a perfect one. As for the pile of mud, unless we have reason to believe some intelligence carefully arranged the mud into the code for a really long book or something, we can consider it equivalent to any other pile of mud, and we know a common natural process that makes mud. The point is, we can recognize the fingerprints of intelligence in very simple objects, on the basis of what sort of process would be necessary to create the object, not on the complexity of the object itself.

(As to the application to living things, it boils down to arguments about unknown primitive replicators of unknown complexity and likelihood)

christopherj 30 Sep 2013 16:56 UTC
2 points
on: Don’t Believe You’ll Self-Deceive
I chose to believe in the model of science—deliberately and consciously. This decision, however, has absolutely zero effect on the actual scientific method. I choose to believe science not because I can show it to be likely true, but simply because it is useful for making accurate predictions. I choose to reject, at least in so far as my actions, my internal beliefs about how the world works when they conflict with the ways science says the world works. I reject my intuition and all my firsthand experience that velocity is additive because relativity says it is not. I reject my intuition and firsthand experience that smaller and smaller particles act like proportionally smaller grains of sand because quantum theory says they behave like waves. I choose to fight every bias I possess as I become aware of it, though I clearly believe and act as if that bias were true when I am not fighting it.

If I cannot choose to reject old beliefs and accept beliefs I do not currently possess, how can I choose to overcome bias or become less wrong?

christopherj 30 Sep 2013 18:30 UTC
0 points
in reply to: JulianMorrison’s comment on: How Much Thought
I think there’s multiple types of thinking. For example, formal thinking that uses math and logic, and is applicable to a large set of problems, but incredibly inefficient for others. Problems with a near infinite search space, problems that require “creativity”, I can spend a lot of time thinking, and get good results thereby, but cannot explain my thought processes. If possible, these can be more efficient to think about over a long period rather than “intensely”. Other thought processes are near instant, also mostly subconscious.

You can think of these as full-conscious, both conscious and sub-conscious, and full sub-conscious.

christopherj 30 Sep 2013 19:05 UTC
2 points
on: The Virtue of Narrowness

A fully connected graph, with an edge between every two vertices, conveys the same amount of information as a graph with no edges at all. The important graphs are the ones where some things are not connected to some other things.

A graph with weighted vertices provides more information than both the above graphs. Also, “connected” in graph theory usually means “there is a path from every node to every other node”, not “there are edges between every node”. Of course when talking about real things connected to each other, it is usually more interesting to note in what way they are connected, rather than observe that there exists a connection—and that does require narrowing one’s focus.

christopherj 1 Oct 2013 17:06 UTC
0 points
on: Guardians of the Truth
I think someone is failing to consider that sometimes truth gets mixed with politics. When truth and politics mix, it suddenly becomes very significant whether other people accept your truth or not. People become not just wrong, but enemy. Can this concept be dis-entwined from the concept of authoritarian guardianship of non-recoverable truth?

For example, I would say that Democrats are supposed to be forward-looking and in favor of knowledge and science, yet I’m quite sure that many Democrats would be opposed to scientific studies that show ineffectiveness of one of their social programs.

christopherj 2 Oct 2013 8:00 UTC
1 point
on: We Don’t Really Want Your Participation

At the Singularity Summit yesterday, several speakers alleged that we should “reach out” to artists and poets to encourage their participation in the Singularity dialogue.

They would have unique skills in propaganda and raising awareness that other professions lack. Their contributions could directly result in increased financial support, less opposition, and more active participation from the public. Likewise they could raise some awareness of the risks of non-friendly AI. Indeed, this would be the major form of participation for artists and poets as said profession, in almost every topic. Much like you wouldn’t expect journalists to help particle physicists by offering them advice, but rather by reporting to the public.

As for direct participation, I would expect artists to have special expertise in certain limited subjects relevant to friendly AI, such as our values of beauty, novelty, and creativity.

christopherj 3 Oct 2013 18:32 UTC
0 points
on: Making Beliefs Pay Rent (in Anticipated Experiences)

Then what does this belief not allow to happen—what would definitely falsify this belief? A null answer means that your belief does not constrain experience; it permits anything to happen to you.

What if I had the belief that a certain coin was unfair, with a 51% chance of heads and only 49% chance of tails? Certainly I could observe an absurd amount of coin flips, and each bunch of them could nudge my belief—but short of an infinite number of flips, none would “definitely” falsify it. Certainly in this case, I could come to believe with an arbitrary level of certainty in the falsehood of the belief. But I don’t believe that would apply in general—what if to reach any arbitrary level of testing a belief, I’d need to think up and apply an indefinite number of unique tests? For example, a belief concerning the state of mind of another person—I can’t think of a definite test, nor can I repeat any test indefinitely to increase certainty.

On a related note, why abandon Bayes in this case for Popper, without any disclaimer? Eg falsificationism is useful because it fights magic explanations and positive bias, but it is still a predictive belief if observation causes you to slightly shift your probability for that belief.

christopherj 4 Oct 2013 3:51 UTC
2 points
on: The Futility of Emergence
“Emergent” is just an adjective describing an attribute. Other examples are complex, simple, generic, unique, random, predictable, valuable, politically inconvenient, unexpected, widely-known, and a few others. For example, saying “The behavior of the ant colony is the widely-known outcome of the interactions of many individual ants.”, won’t tell you much new about the ant colony itself, nor will it let you model it. It will tell you that ant colonies aren’t successfully secretive, nor too complex for humans to understand, which technically is details about the ant colony’s behavior.

Likewise, knowing that ant colony behavior is “emergent”, won’t let you model the ant colony. It will tell you that ants interacting in simple ways can lead to seemingly complex and perhaps unexpected behavior. But it won’t tell you what rules govern the interaction of individual ants, nor of the whole colony. It does tell you that if you replaced half the ants with other compatible ants, rearranged the ants, or similar disturbances, there’d be little difference in overall behavior of the colony. You see, it is a description of the model of ant colony behavior, and not a model of ant colony behavior. It’s use as an explanation or curiosity-stopper is inappropriate, but not any more so than any of the adjectives in the above paragraph.

It would be inappropriate to describe ant colony behavior as being and “emergent” property of atoms. You can’t rearrange the atoms, the atoms will not continue to act like a ant colony. Conversely, rearranging and replacing cars and stock market participants, will do little to change the traffic patterns and stock market (minus a period of adjustment). As for human intelligence as an emergent property of neurons, it is a statement of fact but I do not know if it is accurate. The hierarchical structure and specialized regions, would seem to suggest more nuances than emergent behaviors are supposed to have. Neural rearrangement and replacement, on a scale of half the neurons at once, can’t be done for practical nor ethical reasons, and would be expected to delete years of experience, and that without the development phase—but it might still result in intelligence, especially if done on a fetus. I could easily see people hoping that intelligence is emergent from neurons, as it would make for a simpler model and thus cause an earlier advance in AI and intelligence related fields. I wouldn’t fancy trying to figure out neuron-based intelligence if it is not an emergent behavior.

christopherj 9 Oct 2013 3:45 UTC
3 points
on: Information theory and the symmetry of updating beliefs
This article gives me a better perspective as to why scientific journals like to publish surprising results rather than unsurprising ones—they are more informative, for the very reason they are likelier to be wrong.

christopherj 9 Oct 2013 5:19 UTC
0 points
on: Circular Altruism
In the torture vs dust specks comparison, it is important not to discard the disutilities of unfairness, nor of moral hazards. One cannot publicly acknowledge the superiority of “one guy tortured” vs ” lots of people mildly inconvenienced” without others, including potentially our politicians, or enemies, deciding that this supports their use of actual torture on actual people “for the greater good”. Accepting torture has a negative utility for many people.

Also we humans value fairness, and prefer that things be evenly distributed (fairness has positive utility). The disutility of even a tiny fraction of those people knowing that someone was tortured so as to spare them from dust specks, when added together, would probably exceed that of the person being tortured. The danger of “shut up and multiply” is that someone might be multiplying the wrong things.

Rejecting the principle that we can’t, in general, sacrifice one person for the good of many, also has disutility. If we were to accept torturing someone to prevent a lot of dust specks, imagine how much time would have to be spent arguing whether we can take away this other guy’s property for some greater good (which might fail to deliver, and might have been suggested for someone’s self-interest).

christopherj 10 Oct 2013 2:13 UTC
8 points
in reply to: TimFreeman’s comment on: Really Extreme Altruism
I wonder how long before an insurance company decides to test cryonics as an excuse. “We respect his belief that he is not dead, but rather in suspended animation.”

christopherj 11 Oct 2013 0:31 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Jack’s comment on: The Costs of Rationality
I would say rationality is welcome in those places, conditional on it not opposing their goals. It could be argued that opposing your own goals isn’t rational—if acting rationally means you lose, is it really rationality? I guess this is another case where rationality as truth-seeking and rationality as goal-following can conflict. In fact there are many places where truth can be enemy to varying degrees, places where incomplete truth, misleading truth, even outright lies can be advantageous to a goal.

For example, in chess it is disadvantageous to explain why you did a move or what you plan to do next, even if your opponent explicitly asked you (so that you either disadvantage yourself or refuse to tell the truth). In fact in almost any non-cooperative interaction you could be disadvantaged by your opponent knowing certain things. Even when mostly cooperating, there are also non-cooperative elements. Even when you are alone, knowing the truth about your chances of success can be discouraging, and you have to account for the fact that you’re not perfectly rational and so being discouraged from a course of action might mean you don’t take it even if it is the best option. This is probably why self-deception for overestimating one’s abilities is so rampant.

christopherj 11 Oct 2013 3:16 UTC
2 points
on: No, Really, I’ve Deceived Myself
Faith is a major component of Christianity. For example, Jesus says to Thomas“Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” So Thomas, who knows Jesus is resurrected because he has seen and felt him, is less blessed than those who simply believe (but don’t know). Likewise, though God could easily get a bunch of converts by showing Himself, doing that would lose the faith aspect.

Don’t go being smart and saying that you by definition have faith in things you know—Christians don’t mean this definition of faith, nor is it necessarily true. You can also set up certain experiments you personally know by the laws of physics won’t hurt you, yet if you measure your fight or flight response will realize that you “believe” they are dangerous despite knowing they are not. Or compare how you feel about roller coasters compared to other activities you know to be of comparable likelihood of injury.

Another thing is that it is the dogma of many Christian denominations, that faith is a prerequisite (for some the only prerequisite) to salvation. Thus I claim that for Christians, faith is a more praiseworthy trait than knowledge of the same thing as a fact. A Christian who says that they know God exists, is signalling a very strong faith and most definitely not that they don’t need faith because they have factual knowledge.

Now although Christian, Jew, and Muslim all claim to follow the same God of Abraham, I can’t say for sure how this applies to your Jewish friend. The Torah also has “thou shalt not put God to the test”, and various bits praising faith, plus they also need something that predicts that God doesn’t go show Himself to the world population. Anyone here know whether for Jews it is better to believe in God than to know God exists?

christopherj 12 Oct 2013 19:33 UTC
0 points
on: But There’s Still A Chance, Right?
There’s several problems here. First of all, I almost always disregard people who make claims like yours (2^750,000,000:1) about the real world on account that they are almost always wrong or misleading. Specifically, while that sort of odds can exist it almost never exists in a way that would win someone points in a conversation. Such claims are often lies, miscalculations, or misleading. While your friend was equally wrong in considering the odds of such being compatible with “coincidence” as it is used in mathematics, how exactly do you expect to calculate the other type of meaning (maybe by “coincidence” God decided to use mostly the same DNA in humans and chimps)? Is it really fair to say that Probability(chimps and humans share 95-98% DNA given that God exists) = 2^750,000,000:1 or anything remotely close?

Is it really fair to claim that your friend was saying, “Well since you claim 2^750,000,000:1 odds instead of zero, I’m going to go with those odds” as opposed to “Even if you said the odds were zero, I wouldn’t believe you because there’s a chance you’re wrong”? There’s plenty of examples of people being certain of things, yet being wrong—even when they use math.

Is it rational to assign even claimed 10^9:1 odds anything remotely close to actual 10^9:1 odds? Seldom, I should say. I’d give such a claim a probability of something like 0.1%-75% of being flat out wrong, based on the difficulty of the problem, the contentiousness of the problem, my respect for the ability and integrity of the person making the claim, and whether the claim agrees or disagrees with things I know or think I know. Now ideally, if I have the time and capability, I would try doing some of those calculations myself and think a while as to whether those are even the correct calculations, but often claims won’t be worth that level of effort.

christopherj 12 Oct 2013 22:42 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Ben_Jones’s comment on: Absolute Authority
This is an excellent point, an implication that I ought to have deduced myself but totally didn’t. This means not only that absolute certainty about reality is impossible to get, but more interestingly that absolute certainty about reality is entirely useless as it can’t make specific predictions. Even if it were something like “can’t go faster than the speed of light”, being absolutely certain of this would mean that “scientists measuring something going faster than the speed of light because of experimental error” would be a valid prediction, along with “it is an illusion/I am crazy”. Since neither experimental result would disprove the certain thing, it must follow that the certain thing can’t predict the experimental result.

In fact, I think we can claim that the probability that you’re sane, should be an upper bound on probabilities you’re allowed to claim. Thus to claim arbitrarily high probabilities, you’d need an arbitrarily large group of probably sane people who agree (but then what are the odds that you just imagined the group of people who agree with you?). Since you can’t be absolutely certain that you and all your group are perfectly sane (along with the possibility of a coincidentally matching mass hallucination), that would make for an upper bound on certainty. In fact the whole group thing would be unnecessary if we admit the possibility that the person we’re trying to convince might be insane.

Next time someone claims absolute certainty about something, I’ll ask them to prove that they’re not insane. That should take them into neutral territory that they haven’t had time to wall up, and if they did consider that they might be insane it would be an even better argument.

christopherj 13 Oct 2013 4:11 UTC
2 points
in reply to: elharo’s comment on: Missing the Trees for the Forest
And then, all the totally unrelated industries that are at risk of losing money from regulation, and all the people pushing for regulation in any industry, will add their voices to the argument—a precedent will advance their goal, after all.

christopherj 13 Oct 2013 6:36 UTC
0 points
on: Think Like Reality
Yes, quantum mechanics is weird. It violates my intuitions, and the intuitions of (nearly?) every human. No, we can’t rewrite our intuitions, and knowing quantum mechanics is weird is important because if it wasn’t weird we might think we didn’t have to shut up and integrate. I won’t simply accept that reality is weird just because a scientific theory like quantum mechanics implies it is. Especially since there is such a good chance of quantum mechanics being wrong—since it clashes with General Relativity. I can’t say that the successor to quantum-GR will be any less weird, but I sure hope so.

While many things have become less weird for me as a familiarize myself with them, I don’t see that happening with quantum mechanics*. It doesn’t help any that not only is the math difficult, but can’t actually be used directly for things larger than hydrogen without resorting to algorithmic computation of simplified approximations (and even hydrogen we couldn’t do without pretending all the quarks were one particle). Contrast all that nasty math with things we have built in systems for—addition is like linear distance, multiplication is like area or repeated addition—quantum is always going to stay at “shut up and integrate” intuitiveness level for me.

*barring a future where implantable brain enhancements give me access to intuitive/subconscious integration, trigonometric functions, and exponentiation with complex numbers; maybe also Taylor series approximations and other algorithms as well.