dglukhov

Karma: 49

dglukhov 28 Dec 2016 21:29 UTC
12 points
on: Welcome to Less Wrong! (8th thread, July 2015)
Hello all,

I found this site from a link in the comments section of an SCP Foundation post, which consequently linked to one of Eliezer’s stranger allegorical pieces about the dangers of runaway AI intelligence getting the best of us. I’ve been hooked since.

Thanks to this site, I’m relearning university physics through Feynman, have plans to pick up a couple textbooks from the recommended list, and plan on taking the opportunity to meet some hopefully intellectually stimulating people in person if any of the meetups you guys seem to regularly have manage to ever make it closer to the general Massachusetts area.

I recently graduated with a B.S in Chemistry with the now odd realization that I haven’t really learned anything during my experiences at university. I hope participating here will alleviate this void of knowledge I could have potentially learned.

Furthermore, if I’m lucky, I might get to contribute to the plethora of useful discussions that seem to populate this site. If I’m even luckier, those contributions will be positive. Let’s just hope I learn fast enough to make sure luck isn’t the deciding factor for such an outcome.

I am also curious as to the level of regular activity this site receives, perhaps a link to some statistics? Any reply would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I don’t know if this is really relevant here, but I’d like to mention that I have a weird dream of someday inventing direct mental communication between people that doesn’t involve the use of language, or at the very least help such a project along if any exist. I don’t know if anybody will care for such news, or even if this is a realistic goal to strive for considering the multitude of other priorities I have in life, but hey, it is what it is. Supposedly, meeting such a goal would at least require some optimization of my own ability to think clearly and correctly. Yet another reason to come here, no doubt.

Well, here goes nothing! Hi guys!

dglukhov 23 Jan 2017 15:19 UTC
5 points
on: Open thread, Jan. 23 - Jan. 29, 2017
I’m curious if anybody here frequents retraction watch enough to address this concern I have.

I find articles here very effective at announcing retractions and making testimonies from lead figures in investigations a frequent fallback, but rarely do you get to see the nuts and bolts of the investigations being discussed. For example, “How were the journals misleading?” or “What evidence was or was not analyzed, and how did the journal’s analysis deviate from correct protocol?” are questions I often ask myself as I read, followed by an urge to see the cited papers. And then upon investigating the articles and their retraction notices, I am given a reason that I can’t myself arbitrate. Maybe data was claimed to have been manipulated, or analyzed according to an incorrect framework.

Studies such as these I find alarming because I’m forced to trust the good intentions of a multi-billion dollar corporation in finding the truth. Often I find myself going on retraction watch, trusting the possibly non-existing good intentions of the organization’s leadership, as I read the headlines without time to read every detail of the article. I am given certain impressions from the pretentious writing of the articles, but none of the substance, when I choose to skim selections.

Perhaps I am warning against laziness. Perhaps I am concerned about the potential for corruption in even a crusade to fight misinformation that retraction watch seems to fight. Nonetheless, I’m curious if people here have had similar or differing experiences with these articles...

dglukhov 23 Jan 2017 18:06 UTC
3 points
on: Open thread, Jan. 23 - Jan. 29, 2017
On a lighter note (Note: this is open access)

dglukhov 23 Jan 2017 18:11 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Open thread, Jan. 23 - Jan. 29, 2017
Thanks for the tool.

No, you’re not. You are offered some results, you do NOT have to trust them.

Indeed, but I suppose the tool provided solves my problem of judging when data was misanalysed as I could just as easily do the analysis myself.

dglukhov 23 Jan 2017 22:18 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Douglas_Knight’s comment on: Open thread, Jan. 23 - Jan. 29, 2017

Why are you consuming research at all?

I’m no researcher, and you’re right, if I did want to improve upon my study, I would, given the materials. However, I am not that affluent, I do not have such opportunities unless the research was based on coatings and adhesives (these materials I do have access to). The retraction I linked was merely presented on retraction watch as an example. An example for what? Let’s continue to...

Have you thought about what those intentions are?

My understanding is that as a public company your primary concern is bringing in enough value to the company to appease investors. A subset of that goal would be to get FDA approved.

I don’t trust the company because of the incentive system, and that is my gut reaction that stems from companies getting away with unscrupulous business practices in the past. Though now that I think about it, however, Pfizer would have nothing to gain from retracting papers they knew they couldn’t back up if someone asked them to. My guess is that either:

a) Min-Jean’s managers were planning on gambling with her research only to find out their moles in the FDA wouldn’t cooperate or,

b) there was no conspiracy, and Min-Jean was incentivized to fabricate her work on her own volition.

I do see your point, since a) is a more complicated theory in this case. But I distrust the situation. I smell a power play, at worst. But I can’t support that, unfortunately, from the articles alone. I can support power plays happening in big companies, but I can’t show those situations are related here. Not yet, anyway…

EDIT: With all that said, you seem to err on the side of trusting the FDA to do their job and trusting Pfizer to comply. Would you be able to back up that trust in this case alone?

I think waveman made my point clearer in that I don’t like the fact that I don’t know the details of the investigation. Down to the painfully detailed process of verifying image duplication. I’m not so sure a quick phone call to Pfizer or Min-Jean would help me either...

dglukhov 24 Jan 2017 17:47 UTC
0 points
on: First impressions...
Aris, in some ways I agree with you, though conditionally.

It is my understanding that the next best step is to find a solution to our computational power problem, hence all the talk about inventing friendly AI and keeping it in check for our uses.

As far as abstraction is concerned, I don’t really know what sense you’re using the term. when I see that word, the first thing that comes to mind where that can be problematic is the case of failing to boil down points of disagreement down to the 5 second level. Does this help?

Perhaps you’ve seen a lot of people not taking this advise, or maybe you’ve seen various examples of the ample amounts of disguised sealioning in the discussion sections. Or maybe the culture here merely requires some practice.

Nevertheless, you get used to it. I doubt what you’ve seen is representative of rationality as a whole. I base this solely on your claim of being new. And unfortunately we don’t have a fantastic, more powerful form of computation at our disposal to do what we want yet. So we work with what we’ve got.

dglukhov 30 Jan 2017 15:04 UTC
0 points
on: Open thread, Jan. 30 - Feb. 05, 2017
While the article linked is interesting, I find the comments section interesting as well.

Talk of Monsanto shills, source dumping, accusations flying left and right.

Just out of curiosity, I want to see the reaction of this community.

dglukhov 30 Jan 2017 18:13 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Open thread, Jan. 30 - Feb. 05, 2017
Indifference is a reaction. :P

dglukhov 30 Jan 2017 18:18 UTC
3 points
on: How often do you check this forum?
Used the poll, though I’ll elaborate.

I’d probably spend more time if I wasn’t busy reading the archives. I imagine this will change to more use over time.

dglukhov 30 Jan 2017 20:21 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Open thread, Jan. 30 - Feb. 05, 2017

and this is your dominant outcome

Are you speaking for yourself, or the site? If the former, I didn’t expect you to be the confessional type, Lumifer. :P

dglukhov 31 Jan 2017 13:44 UTC
4 points
in reply to: JenniferRM’s comment on: How often do you check this forum?
Well, I started off with the Sequences, and the discussion flows that follow those essays. I find myself branching off from there, mostly, since I’m still relatively new here.

dglukhov 1 Feb 2017 20:38 UTC
5 points
on: Group Rationality Diary, February 2017
Trying to fix physical posture currently. With time, I hope to learn how to do proper form on a majority of lifts. I’ve found that as I’ve been working on this, my ability to focus has improved, and consequently I came upon the mental postures article as a sort of mental analogue to the endeavor to have good biomechanics.

I wish I had a better way of studying...whatever, without sitting. I hate sitting (even properly, with back engaged and shoulders down), I know it doesn’t do me any good and, on certain days, I find I reverse all the hard work and effort I put into trying to put my body back into alignment because I sat for too long learning to code or doing work. If I could squat, I’d probably already be able to solve this problem. But I can’t sit squatted without doing it wrong, I can’t change my work desk, nor can I move the computer somewhere more accessible to, let’s say, a kneeling position or a position where I sit on my calves instead of a seat. Perhaps I should invest in a seat big enough to let me sit cross-legged? I hope I can afford it, because I can’t think of anything else.

EDIT: I think the real issue is that the task of focusing on not sitting robs me of focus to do the studying. Is there a way around this, or is multitasking my only real savior here?

dglukhov 2 Feb 2017 13:52 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Group Rationality Diary, February 2017
I have not, I’ll see if I can find any. Thank you!

Death—an essay

dglukhov2 Feb 2017 17:25 UTC

3 points

4 comments2 min readLW link

dglukhov 3 Feb 2017 21:07 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: turchin’s comment on: Death—an essay
1. Conversely, anything negative will also end. If you don’t like being depressed, there won’t be depression once you’re dead. There is full eternity without depression.
2. I guess you’re 2 was a counterargument to my 1. I need some literature on this, I don’t quite understand.
3. Human reactions to impeding doom don’t have to reflect on death. Reality doesn’t have to conform to our emotional reactions to it, after all. We can only come closer to understanding that reality, and if that requires understanding and accepting one’s own mortality, shouldn’t that be a priority? I mentioned the source regarding development stages because it seems children do NOT always innately understand death, it is an acquired knowledge, a milestone, according to this theory. So why learn the fear of death, which can cause so much emotional struggle in a person, instead of teaching death’s primary result: the termination of gene propagation for an individual.
4. Agreed.
5. Again, agreed.
6. Once more, agreed. though I suppose wills help with such planning to an extent, among other actions.
7. Conversely, if a relative is suffering from their illness, death can provide for a release from that suffering. This probably ties back into point 2.
Overall, agree that the essay failed to explain why death is bad. It also failed to explain why death is good. Hence it being an essay, it didn’t have purpose other than to put thoughts out into the open and rekindle discussion. My intention was to talk, not make claims.

dglukhov 10 Feb 2017 19:38 UTC
1 point
on: Stupidity as a mental illness
I urge you to read the first book of the Evans Third Reich trilogy, in which one of the interesting topics mentioned revolved around eugenics. I fear that the way you’ve framed your point will prime people towards this direction.

To approach “stupidity”, an already vague concept, from a diagnostic point of view would be a disaster. One reason being the history I linked to earlier, eugenics was a popular -enough sentiment then to be a problematic primer, and I fear that while having stupid people around is an existential risk, I think another existential risk exists in trying to optimize on human intellect without a firm foundation on the concept of “stupidity” and its communicability to the general public.

Another issue I have is your seemingly apparent faith in the psychiatric approach. The DSM 5 is, to put it lightly, a highly biased diagnosis tool with practitioners who may not be using the tool appropriately. This may not be exactly relevant, but I’ve noticed that the better practitioners in the social and psychiatric fields don’t trust this resource. In fact, some will go out of their way to say it is an insurance scam. I personally haven’t had a chance to delve into the history of the DSM, but I have noticed that the constantly shifting variability in diagnostic definitions and criteria hint at the idea that a) the DSM isn’t perfect and, more importantly, b) large heaps of money is being made off of the vague notions described by this tome. Pretentious writing, even in such technical documents, are great examples of such attempts. Taking the diagnostic approach might make the stigma problem WORSE by labeling the “unfit” for later treatment, especially with an already pretentious diagnostic system. The message you’re trying to send is a virtuous one to be sure, but trying to use the current psychiatric infrastructure to tackle this issue is a trap. A very profitable trap.

dglukhov 10 Feb 2017 19:46 UTC
0 points
in reply to: chaosmage’s comment on: Stupidity as a mental illness
Please name examples to the affirmative. I’m actually quite curious to see such statistics.

dglukhov 10 Feb 2017 23:06 UTC
2 points
in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: Stupidity as a mental illness
I wasn’t aware mental illness was strictly an American phenomenon, as you comment implies. Or perhaps there is a distinct lack of international or foreign effort in characterizing such phenomena, as your comment also potentially implies?

I’d like the statistics, please!

dglukhov 2 Mar 2017 14:21 UTC
2 points
on: ribbonfarm: A Brief History of Existential Terror
Gonna go out on a limb here and say I can’t take this article too seriously. It is chalk full of false dichotomies:

The very premise of this article rests on the idea that human beings live solely by our need to balance between two sides of a spectrum.

“An author working on a book, or a freelancer working on a project, or an entrepreneur working on a business, does not spend their time in a perpetual state of flow, but rather experiences little moments of flow, while mostly vacillating between anxiety and boredom.”

Why couldn’t a freelancer experience moments outside this spectrum? Why does the author frame our life’s experience as bound to this particularly solitary scale? What about the spectrum of awareness of self and surroundings? What about the spectrum of communicability with others, a social spectrum?

The author treats the subject, a human being, as alone, with mention of social interaction as being merely a product of our conformism, which too, rests on a premise based upon a false dichotomy:

“The widespread existential vacuum of the 20th century, the feeling of boredom, was brought on by both biological and cultural evolution: biological in that man is the only creature whose behaviour is not guided by instinct alone, and cultural in that during the 20th century many traditions that constrained behavior collapsed, organized religion being the major one. For most, the vacuum is filled by one of two strategies, both of which seek to avoid the sensation of existential terror: conformism (doing what everyone around them is doing), or totalitarianism (seeking someone out to tell them what to do). The clueless seek out both the totalitarianism imposed upon them by the sociopaths, and the conformism imposed upon them by the rest of the clueless class, as ways to relieve the pressure of the existential vacuum. ”

The author sees two camps: the rulers and the ruled. The author has no conception of anything resembling cooperation. Like humans couldn’t POSSIBLY be social creatures capable of communal efforts.

I’m not sure what else to say. While I support the message that one needs balance between boredom and anxiety, I can’t help but find the article imposing a blind view on the subject.

dglukhov 2 Mar 2017 21:37 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Qiaochu_Yuan’s comment on: ribbonfarm: A Brief History of Existential Terror
Why cache different approaches to analyzing an article to different articles? What do you expect to gain from such a heuristic?