Yikes. But then the two Koreas are technically still at war IIRC.
DavidPlumpton
Karma: 133
I’ve noticed this sort of thing with documentaries about the JFK assassination. One documentary will seem to produce very strong and reasonable evidence that Oswald did it, and the next documentary seems to have a similar strength argument that he did not. Sigh. The real world is confusing some times; when smart people are trying to make you more confused then life is hard.
Private Manned Moonbase in the 1990s, Yet Another Planning Fallacy
Spontaneous Human Combustion. Somebody living alone gets drunk/has stroke/heart attack spills alcohol/perfume on themselves and a cigarette ignites a fire. The body slumps onto carpet and the body fat together with clothing and carpet form a candle wick effect and a small high temperature fire burns for some hours. Parts of the body with low fat levels (e.g. lower legs) often remain unburned. It’s a simple experiment to do with a pig carcass.
Thanks for the warning… I’ve removed it.
At least WW2 ended.
A couple of years ago there was an online auction site that a number of people semi-seriously described as “pure evil”. Items would appear for sale, and you could bid a small amount, maybe $5 for a stereo or something. But you gave up that $5 there and then. People would eventually buy a $300 item for $60 or so, but the site would take in $1000 for that $300 item. Wish I could remember the name of that site...
Having a known number of rounds seems like a problem to me. Everybody wants to defect on the last round. It might be interesting to retry with a number of rounds chosen randomly from 100 to 110 or where after 100 each round has a 25% chance of being the final round. However a large number of matches might be needed to offset the advantages of playing in some matches with a higher than average number of rounds.
Oil does not need to become super scare to cause major problems. Right now the total supply and demand are quite closely matched. Reduce the supply just 10% and big problems happen.
I can see that I’m not convincing you, but I find your counterpoints very unconvincing. Where is any plant in the world today (or even in the near future) turning out significant amounts of energy from an “alternate” source? It’s just not happening in significant amounts.
Starvation rates in the third world rose significantly following food price rises in 2007-2008. It’s not something that won’t happen; it’s already happening.
I understand the point about more details lowering the probability, but I just can’t see how we can get halfway down the list and have it turn into “and we all lived happily ever after”. The greatest sources of uncertainty in the probabilities seem to be can we invent some new technology, can we reduce energy needs for a few years without collapsing too much, etc. Everything else has a probability of very close to 1 if the earlier steps are agreed.
Can you cite any evidence that is clearer than the geological evidence that oil is being exhausted just enough for production rates to begin declining?
I think we are in trouble even if the markets are very efficient (although inefficient markets would be even worse). If all forms of energy were to increase in cost the markets can’t do much to save us. So the real questions to me are still unchanged.
What is the most rational view of Peak Oil and its near term consequences?
No, sadly. If we make a brain by simulating neurons then we will end up with a brain that can’t understand itself well enough to make improvements, just like ours. Writing a program to be intelligent to a level similar to a human seems to be something we’ve made no progress on for 50 years (all the impressive progress has been in very niche areas). It seems highly likely to me that we won’t know how to do this 20 to 30 years from now either. And then of course it would still need to be self-improving.
Then over this period of time (and likely much less) we still have the major challenge of keeping civilization ticking along at all. Resource production rates are falling and will start falling at increasing rates. There don’t seem to be any magical/technological solutions to dropping power rates. Economies all over the world are already suffering. Computers don’t work well without electricity.
So close, and yet so far.
That cat: not dead and alive
Can anybody give a URL or show a simple practical worked example similar to the applications described here? It all sounds awesome but I have little idea how to apply it to estimating the mass of Saturn and my artillery shelling is suffering somewhat.
Actually a fun example might be the probability that the Nickel/Hydrogen low energy fusion system being developed by Rossi is real or bogus. Points in favour: several tricky to fake successful demonstrations in front of scientists and the president of a skeptics society. Points against: no public disclosure of the secret catalyst, previous convictions for fraud, and cancelling the contract with the company that was going to manufacture the system.
How about:
Enhancing the brain with hardware for that memory/intelligence boost.
Superior intuition for probability
Different/worse optical illusions/blind spots from different optical nerve wiring
Superior 3D spatial visualization for ocean dwellers
Creatures that get stuck in a correlation/causation confusion and manage to continue along mostly successfully
Types of synaesthesia far more elaborate than in Humans
A conflict between intelligence and instinct where instinct is in total control but intelligence knows it’s doing the wrong thing
Minds partitioned more finely than the human left/right hemisphere split, with more independence between them
Species that specialize their intelligence like insects becoming workers/warriors/queens/drones etc. but for intelligence
Lots of fun possibilities in this area.
Hi there!
I’m a 43 year old software Developer in New Zealand. I’ve found this site through the Quantum Physics sequence, which has given me an enormous improvement in my understanding of the subject, so a huge thank you to Eliezer. (I’d like to know the detailed maths, but I don’t hold much hope of that happening). I’ve since managed to do the double-slit experiment using a laser pointer, Blu-tack and staples, which was great fun. I’m currently trying to think through the Schrödinger’s cat experiment, which seems to me to be described slightly incorrectly. I may try to write up a page or so about that some time.
The Bayes’ Theorem stuff was also a great topic, although I’ve not been able to think of practical ways to apply it yet.
I’m a pessimist on the Singularity: I think that various resource, time and complexity constraints will flatten exponential curves into linear ones (and some curves will even decline).
I’ve always valued accuracy in the sense that we should try to find out what’s really happening and understand our evidence and assumptions. I find one of my main tools for thinking is the “level of confidence”, e.g. when people say “you can’t prove that” I like to re-state the issue in terms of “this evidence gives us an extremely high level of confidence”.
I’m currently reading the Methods of Rationality story and loving it.
Here’s a picture of the double slit experiment http://imgur.com/a/2Uyux
I think achieving Human level intelligence is tough but doable. I suspect that self-improvement may be very difficult. But either way I strongly suspect that the power required to keep society ticking along will not be sustained. I think an AGI is 30 years away and that society does not have 30 years up its sleeve. I hope I am wrong.