Dacyn

Karma: 578

Dacyn 30 Jul 2025 22:27 UTC
6 points
0
on: Sex Determination as a Bottleneck to Species Development

So if the climate is moving out of the optimal temperature for the species, it might make sense for you to produce more females, because they are a lower risk strategy?

This seems confused to me. In general, males are more risk-seeking than females because (inclusive) fitness is not a linear function of successfulness at endeavors, with the function being closer to linear for males and more like linear-with-a-cutoff for females. But males and females are still both perfectly risk-neutral when measured in the unit of fitness, since that follows from the definition of expected fitness which is what needs to be greater than average in order for a mutation to propagate throughout a population.

I would expect that if a species has more females than males in some circumstances, then either it is because females are cheaper to raise for some reason, or else that it is due to a fact of biology that the DNA can’t really control directly.

Dacyn 24 Jul 2025 20:53 UTC
2 points
0
on: Dark Lord’s Answer: Review and Economics Excerpts
There are some repeated paragraphs:

Elaine nodded. “Tell me, suppose that instead you had a hundred times as many wolves captured, and brought to those forests for release—what would happen then?”

Elaine looked a little surprised, before her face went expressionless again. “Yes, that’s so. Like you said, there’s no Magic powerful enough to directly oppress the farmers and shopkeepers of a whole country. So we’re not looking for a straightforward curse, but some new factor that has changed Santal’s balancing point.”

Dacyn 7 Jul 2025 18:32 UTC
6 points
2
in reply to: Sappique’s comment on: Can a pre-commitment to not give in to blackmail be “countered” by a pre-commitment to ignore such pre-commitments?
Let’s talk about a specific example: the Ultimatum Game. According to EY the rational strategy for the responder in the Ultimatum Game is to accept if the split is “fair” and otherwise reject in proportion to how unfair he thinks the split is. But the only reason to reject is to penalize the proposer for proposing an unfair split—which certainly seems to be “doing something conditional on the other actor’s utility function disvaluing it”. So why is the Ultimatum Game considered an “offer” and not a “threat”?

Dacyn 6 Jul 2025 21:15 UTC
3 points
2
in reply to: Sappique’s comment on: Can a pre-commitment to not give in to blackmail be “countered” by a pre-commitment to ignore such pre-commitments?
Yeah, but what does “purposefully minimize someone else’s utility function” mean? The source code just does stuff. What does it mean for it to be “on purpose”?

Dacyn 5 Jul 2025 20:24 UTC
1 point
0
on: Can a pre-commitment to not give in to blackmail be “countered” by a pre-commitment to ignore such pre-commitments?
It all depends on what you mean by “sufficiently intelligent / coherent actors”. For example, in this comment Eliezer says that it should mean actors that “respond to offers, not to threats”, but in 15 years no one has been able to cash out what this actually means, AFAIK.

Dacyn 27 Jun 2025 13:30 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: If Moral Realism is true, then the Orthogonality Thesis is false.
Here’s Joe Carlsmith making the second argument: https://joecarlsmith.com/2022/01/17/the-ignorance-of-normative-realism-bot

Dacyn 25 Jun 2025 13:24 UTC
3 points
1
on: Does Abductive Reasoning really exist?

It is often said that: “The conclusions of deductive reasoning are certain, whereas those of inductive reasoning are probable”. I think this contrast is somewhat misleading and imprecise, as the certainty of deductive conclusions just means that they necessarily follow from the premises (they are implied by the premises), but the conclusion itself might still be probabilistic.

Example: “If I have a fever, there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu. I have a fever. Therefore, there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu.”

There’s something off about this example. In deductive reasoning, if A implies B, then A and C together also imply B. But if A is “I have a fever” and C is “I have the flu” then A and C do not imply “there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu” (since actually there is a 100% chance).

I think what is going on here is that the initial statement “If I have a fever, there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu” is not actually an instance of material implication (in which case modus ponens would be applicable) but rather a ceteris paribus statement: “If I have a fever, then all else equal there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu.” And then the “deductive reasoning” part would go “I have a fever. And I don’t have any more information relevant to whether I have the flu than the fact that I have a fever. Therefore, there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu.”

Dacyn 27 May 2025 13:35 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Jiro’s comment on: On ‘On Caring’
Depends on how dysfunctional the society is.

Dacyn 1 May 2025 15:45 UTC
2 points
0
on: Can Narrowing One’s Reference Class Undermine the Doomsday Argument?
You’re right that with the right reference class, SSA doesn’t imply the doomsday argument. This sensitivity to a choice of reference class is one of the big reasons not to accept SSA.

Dacyn 20 Feb 2025 20:10 UTC
10 points
9
on: Several Arguments Against the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis
Basically both of these arguments will seem obvious if you fall into camp #2 here, and nonsensical if you fall into camp #1.

Dacyn 2 Feb 2025 19:04 UTC
1 point
2
on: Rationalist Movie Reviews

Memento is easily one of the best movies about “rationality as practiced by the individual” ever made. [...] When the “map” is a panoply of literal paper notes and photographs, and the “territory” is further removed from one’s lived experience than usual… it behooves one to take rationality, bias, motivated cognition, unquestioned assumptions, and information pretty damn seriously!

Wasn’t the main character’s attempt at “rationality as practiced by the individual” kind of quixotic though? I didn’t get the impression that the moral of the story was “you should be like this guy”. He would have been better off not trying any complicated systems and just trying to get help for his condition in a more standard way...

Dacyn 21 Dec 2024 2:45 UTC
8 points
5
on: Updating on Bad Arguments

Let’s say my p(intelligent ancestor) is 0.1. Imagine I have a friend, Richard, who disagrees.

No wait, the order of these two things matters. Is P(intelligent ancestor|just my background information) = 0.1 or is P(intelligent ancestor|my background information + the fact that Richard disagrees) = 0.1? I agree that if the latter holds, conservation of expected evidence comes into play and gives the conclusion you assert. But the former doesn’t imply the latter.

Dacyn 2 Nov 2024 13:39 UTC
8 points
4
on: Set Theory Multiverse vs Mathematical Truth—Philosophical Discussion

What makes certain axioms “true” beyond mere consistency?

Axioms are only “true” or “false” relative to a model. In some cases the model is obvious, e.g. the intended model of Peano arithmetic is the natural numbers. The intended model of ZFC is a bit harder to get your head around. Usually it is taken to be defined as the union of the von Neumann hierarchy over all “ordinals”, but this definition depends on taking the concept of an ordinal as pretheoretic rather than defined in the usual way as a well-founded totally ordered set.

Is there a meaningful distinction between mathematical existence and consistency?

An axiom system is consistent if and only if it has some model, which may not be the intended model. So there is a meaningful distinction, but the only way you can interact with that distinction is by finding some way of distinguishing the intended model from other models. This is difficult.

Can we maintain mathematical realism while acknowledging the practical utility of the multiverse approach?

The models that appear in the multiverse approach are indeed models of your axiom system, so it makes perfect sense to talk about them. I don’t see why this would generate any contradiction with also being able to talk about a canonical model.

How do we reconcile Platonism with independence results?

Independence results are only about what you can prove (or equivalently what is true in non-canonical models), not about what is true in a canonical model. So I don’t see any difficulty to be reconciled.
What links here?
- Set Theory Multiverse vs Mathematical Truth—Philosophical Discussion by Wenitte Apiou (1 Nov 2024 18:56 UTC; 8 points)

Dacyn 21 Sep 2024 11:51 UTC
3 points
2
in reply to: ymeskhout’s comment on: Pronouns are Annoying
I don’t agree that I am making unwarranted assumptions; I think what you call “assumptions” are merely observations about the meanings of words. I agree that it is hard to program an AI to determine who the “he”s refer to, but I think as a matter of fact the meanings of those words don’t allow for any other possible interpretation. It’s just hard to explain to an AI what the meanings of words are. Anyway I’m not sure if it is productive to argue this any further as we seem to be repeating ourselves.

Dacyn 20 Sep 2024 16:43 UTC
3 points
2
in reply to: ymeskhout’s comment on: Pronouns are Annoying

No, because John could be speaking about himself administering the medication.

If it’s about John administering the medication then you’d have to say ”… he refused to let him”.

It’s also possible to refuse to do something you’ve already acknowledged you should do, so the 3rd he could still be John regardless of who is being told what.

But the sentence did not claim John merely acknowledged that he should administer the medication, it claimed John was the originator of that statement. Is John supposed to be refusing his own requests?

Dacyn 19 Sep 2024 17:29 UTC
3 points
−4
on: Pronouns are Annoying

John told Mark that he should administer the medication immediately because he was in critical condition, but he refused.

Wait, who is in critical condition? Which one refused? Who’s supposed to be administering the meds? And administer to whom? Impossible to answer without additional context.

I don’t think the sentence is actually as ambiguous as you’re saying. The first and third “he”s both have to refer to Mark, because you can only refuse to do something after being told you should do it. Only the second “he” could be either John or Mark.

Dacyn 8 Sep 2024 18:36 UTC
4 points
0
on: Pay Risk Evaluators in Cash, Not Equity

Early discussion of AI risk often focused on debating the viability of various elaborate safety schemes humanity might someday devise—designing AI systems to be more like “tools” than “agents,” for example, or as purely question-answering oracles locked within some kryptonite-style box. These debates feel a bit quaint now, as AI companies race to release agentic models they barely understand directly onto the internet.

Why do you call current AI models “agentic”? It seems to me they are more like tool AI or oracle AI...

Dacyn 19 Aug 2024 19:00 UTC
3 points
2
in reply to: lsusr’s comment on: Decision Theory in Space
I am still seeing “succomb”.

Dacyn 26 Jun 2024 12:42 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: RogerDearnaley’s comment on: Mistakes people make when thinking about units
In the long scale a trillion is 10^18, not 10^24.

Dacyn 9 Jun 2024 15:15 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Andrew Burns’s comment on: Sev, Sevteen, Sevty, Sevth
I say “zero” when reciting phone numbers. Harder to miss that way.