Valdes

Let’s look for co­her­ence theorems

• Valdes 8 Dec 2023 13:48 UTC

  12 points

  0

  on: 2023 Unoffi­cial LessWrong Cen­sus/​Survey

  I took the survey and mostly enjoyed it. There are some questions that I skipped because my answer would be too specific and I wanted to keep the ability to speak about them without breaking anonymity.

  I also skipped some questions because I wasn’t sure how to interpret certain words.

• Valdes 12 Jan 2024 10:38 UTC

  10 points

  8

  on: Univer­sal Love In­te­gra­tion Test: Hitler

  You did, indeed, fuck up so hard that you don’t get to hang out with the other ancestor simulations, and even though I have infinite energy I’m not giving you a personal high resolution paradise simulation. I’m gonna give you a chill, mediocre but serviceable sim-world that is good enough to give you space to think and reflect and decide what you want.

  And you don’t get to have all the things you want until you’ve somehow processed why that isn’t okay, and actually learned to be better.

  I was with you until this part. Why would you coerce Hitler into thinking like you do about morality? Why be cruel to him by forcing him into a mediocre environment? I suppose there might be game-theoristic reasons for this. But if that’s not where you’re coming from then I would say you’re still letting the fact that you dislike a human being make you degrade his living conditions in a way that benefits no one.

  I think this shows your “universal love” extends to “don’t seek the suffering of others” but not to “the only reason to hurt* someone is if it benefits someone else”.

  * : In the sense of “doing something that goes against their interests”.

Im­prov­ing pro­duc­tivity and wellbeing

• Valdes 7 Dec 2023 15:08 UTC

  9 points

  4

  in reply to: RobertM’s comment on: How do you feel about LessWrong these days? [Open feed­back thread]

  Why not make it so there is a box “ask me before allowing other participants to publish” that is unchecked by default?

[Book re­view] No non­sense meditation

• Valdes 15 Dec 2023 7:49 UTC

  8 points

  13

  in reply to: the gears to ascension’s comment on: Is be­ing sexy for your homies?

  When I downvote a comment it is basically never because I want the author to delete that comment. I rarely downvote comments already bellow 0, but even when I do it is not because I wish the comment was deleted. Instead, it mostly means that I dislike the way in which that comment was written and thought out; that I don’t want people to have that style /​ approach when commenting. This correlates with me disagreeing with the position, but not strongly so; and I try to keep my opinions about the object topic to the agree/​disagree voting.

  I don’t know how representative I am of the Lesswrong population in that regard, but I at least think most people who downvote a comment would prefer for it to stay undeleted; if only to make past discussions legilible.

[Question] Good com­plete views on motivation

[Book re­view] The anx­iety toolkit

• Valdes 26 Jul 2023 9:47 UTC

  5 points

  4

  in reply to: Noosphere89’s comment on: A brief his­tory of computers

  Ok, I think I can clarify what people generally mean when they consider that the logic Church-Turing thesis is correct.

  There is an intuitive notion of computation that is somewhat consensual. It doesn’t account for limits on time (beyond the fact that everything must be finitely long) and does not account for limits in space /​ memory. It is also somewhat equivalent to “what a rigorous idiot could be made to do, given immortality and infinite paper/​pen”. Many people /​ most computer scientist share this intuitive idea and at some point people thought they should make more rigorous what it is exactly.

  Whenever people tried to come up with formal processes that only allow “obviously acceptable” operations with regard to this intuitive notion, they produced frameworks that are either weaker or equivalent to the turing machine.

  The Church-Turing thesis is that the turing machine formalism fully captures this intuitive notion of computation. It seems to be true.

  With time, the word “computable” itself has come to be defined on the basis of this idea. So when we read or hear the word in a theoretical computer-science context, it now refers to the turing machine.

  Beyond this, it is indeed the case that the word “computation” has also come to be applied to other formalisms that look like the initial notion to some degree. In general with an adjective in front to distinguish them from just “computation”. We can think for example of “quantum computing”, which does not match the initial intuition for “computation” (though it is not necessarily stronger). These other applications of the word “computation” are not what the Church-Turing thesis is about, so they are not counterexamples. Also, all of this is for the “logic” Church-Turing thesis, to which what can be built in real life is irrelevant.

  PS: I take it for granted that computer scientists, including those knowledgeable on the notions at hand, usually consider the thesis correct. That’s my experience, but maybe you disagree.

• Valdes 27 Aug 2022 20:58 UTC

  5 points

  0

  in reply to: noggin-scratcher’s comment on: Sur­vey advice

  I don’t think this is a good illustration of point 6. The video shows a string of manipulative leading questions, falling short of the ” in a way that they would endorse” criteria.

  When people understand that a string of questions is designed to strong arm them into a given position they rarely endorse it. It seems to me that point 6 is more about benevolent and honest uses of leading questions.

  Admittedly, I am making the assumption that ” in a way that they would endorse” means “such that if people understood the intent that went into writing the string of questions in that way they would approve of the process”.

• Valdes 19 Apr 2021 12:53 UTC

  5 points

  0

  in reply to: Waifu’s comment on: Minds: An Introduction

  I know this comment is a few months old, but an answer might still be helpful.

  I think the following quote from the article answers your question.

  From Yudkowsky’s perspective, I gather, talking about human rationality without saying anything interesting about AI is about as difficult as talking about AI without saying anything interesting about rationality.

[Book re­view] Get­ting things done

• Valdes 14 Jan 2024 11:25 UTC

  4 points

  0

  in reply to: aphyer’s comment on: D&D.Sci(-fi): Coloniz­ing the SuperHyperSphere

  Error message: “Sorry, you don’t have access to this draft”

• Valdes 3 May 2023 6:50 UTC

  4 points

  0

  on: The Ap­pren­tice Thread 2

  [MENTOR]

  I am a 25-year-old computer science PhD student and I currently work on natural language processing with neurosymbolic approaches (using a mix of logic and neural networks to do reasoning on a normal text input). I have a (very) high degree of education in math and theoretical computer science. I also have some very limited skills and knowledge for more practical aspects of computer science. Also, I have quite a lot of reflection on the topic of the nature of thought, valid inference, and rational behavior. These are condensed in a currently unpublished book length report. The result of a year-long break I took for personal reflection. I expect to be able to help quite a lot with fundamental reflection that relates to epistemology or rationality.

  If you intend to learn about some aspect of mathematics or theoretical computer science I can probably point you toward resources or help you understand technical aspects. I am also willing to serve as a background help for someone going through a math education. Alternatively, I might be willing to help an in depth reflection to which you think I can be relevant.

  I can offer some asynchronous email/​messages exchange and semiregular conversation, perhaps averaging one or two per month. Ideally, we would schedule conversations quickly when you need them. If you have a very different mode of interaction in mind I am willing to adapt.

  [APPRENTICE]

  Presentation copy/​pasted from the mentor section.
  I am a 25-year-old computer science PhD student and I currently work on natural language processing with neurosymbolic approaches (using a mix of logic and neural networks to do reasoning on a normal text input). I have a (very) high degree of education in math and theoretical computer science. I also have some very limited skills and knowledge for more practical aspects of computer science. Also, I have quite a lot of reflection on the topic of the nature of thought, valid inference, and rational behavior. These are condensed in a currently unpublished book length report. The result of a year-long break I took for personal reflection.

  I am looking for one of the followings:

  1. Resources and help on the topic of the nature of thought and characterization of valid inference. This is a long standing topic for me. A string of reflections and readings that has been and continues to be an important side project.

  2. Like 1 but with a focus on AI or in general automation of thought.

  3. Help better managing my work and motivation. I need to reduce my work related stress. The help of someone who does a high amount of intellectual work without stress could be precious.

  By default, I would imagine a few discussions near the beginning and then much less frequent conversations as needed (once a month?). But that’s just off the top of my head.

  [NORMAL]

  Whether as a mentor, as an apprentice, or because you think we could work together in some other capacity, feel free to DM me through lesswrong. Give me a few days to get back to you. If I do not answer it probably means your message did not go through. In that case just comment below.

[Book re­view] Atomic habits

• Valdes 27 Feb 2024 12:06 UTC

  3 points

  2

  in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: Ben Pace’s Short­form Feed

  Adapted from the french “j’envisage que X” I propose “I am considering the possibility that X” or in some contexts “I am considering X”. “The plumber says it’s fixed, but I am considering he might be wrong”.

• Valdes 8 Dec 2023 9:09 UTC

  3 points

  5

  on: Meetup Tip: Heart­beat Messages

  I don’t have much to add. But I think this is a very well done post, that it has a nice size in scope, and that it is about a good and useful concept.

• Valdes 6 Dec 2023 18:45 UTC

  3 points

  0

  on: Based Beff Je­zos and the Accelerationists

  Thank you for your work. I am often amazed by the effort you pour in your regular posting, and I see you as among the highest value contributors to LW.

  Two minor nitpicks:

  As opposed to, as Solana states here, saying ‘e/​acc is not a cult [....] technologically progressive meme.’

  Maybe format this part like other quotations? I was confused for a second there.

  Memes do not declare anyone who disagrees with them on anything as enemies, who they continuously attack ad hominem, describe as being in cults and demand everyone treat as criminals. Memes do not demand people declare which side people are on. Memes do not put badges of loyalty into their bios. Memes do not write multiple manifestos. Memes do not have, as Roon observes, persecution complexes.

  Meh. Groups of people sharing a common meme certainly do all these things. I see little point in arguing the precise semantics of “movement” and I do not particularly think Solana’s message is honest. But I would like to register that I don’t see any intrisic contradiction in “X is a rare meme that turns those who integrate it to their thinking into rude unthinking fanatics, but it did not create a movement yet”.

• Valdes 24 Jul 2023 9:05 UTC

  3 points

  2

  on: A brief his­tory of computers

  Thank you for this post.

  Seems kinda weird, right? Well, consider this: Turing showed that there is no computation that this machine can’t perform, that another machine can perform.

  I am not sure to which extent you already know what follows, but I thought this might be worth clarifying. The “basic” church turing thesis is that our intuitive notion of “formal computation process” is entirely captured by the turing machine. A consequence is that any “good” formal notion of algorithm /​ fully described computation process is equivalent or weaker to the Turing machine. So far, this has been true of all proposals and it is taken for granted that this statement is true. Note that the thesis is about being a good formal definition of an intuitive notion. Hence we cannot prove it to be true. We can only prove that various attempts at formalizing computation indeed ended up equivalent to each others.

  The “physic church turing thesis” is that no machine can be built that performs computations impossible for a turing machine. For example: there is no way to build a halting oracle in real life. This is less certain.

  But if you take a God’s eye view and had the power to get the community to all shift at once to a different model, it sounds to me like there are probably better ones than Turing’s.

  People implicitly refer to models much closer to actual programing languages when they prove stuff related to computability. The tedious details of turing machines are rarely discuss in actual proof, at least in my experience. In fact, the precise model at hand is often somewhat ambiguous, which can be slightly problematic. I think the turing machine is a good starting point to understand the notion of computability, just because it is simpler than alternatives (that I am aware of).

  One of my favorites: he proved that, given some extremely, extremely reasonable assumptions[13], you should Shut Up and Multiply. Well, he didn’t phrase it that way. He said “maximize expected utility”.

  Not sure he did, at least to the extent that it is taken when we say “shut up and multiply”. I guess you refer to the Von Neumann–Morgenstern utility theorem, but that theorem does not provide a full “it is in our best interest to do utility maximization”. There was some discussion on the topic recently: a first claim and my own answer.