duckduckMOO

Karma: 97

duckduckMOO Aug 13, 2012, 2:27 AM
7 points
on: Bayes for Schizophrenics: Reasoning in Delusional Disorders
“Coltheart et al pretend that the prior is ¹⁄₁₀₀, but this implies that there is a base rate of your spouse being an imposter one out of every hundred times you see her (or perhaps one out of every hundred people has a fake spouse) either of which is preposterous.”

What if their prior on not feeling anything upon seeing their wife is 0? What if most of the reason for reasonable people’s prior on this being much lower it is low status, instrumentally bad, etc, but their rational sincere thinking about it prior is close to 50/50? I notice you called the idea preposterous and something reasonable people wouldn’t take seriously which are both quite status-ey. So if their aversion to instrumentally bad ideas and/or their aversion to ideas people will think them crazy for gets switched off they can easily get the wrong answer. Perhaps a fear of being of being fooled, or a fight or flight paranoia spiral could be what makes them think so.

I have no idea if any of that is true.

duckduckMOO Aug 13, 2012, 2:01 AM
1 point
in reply to: Vladimir_M’s comment on: What is moral foundation theory good for?
“Namely, the answer is that, contrary to Haidt’s model of contemporary ideologies, there are in fact no such people.”

This seems to be obviously untrue. Unless “no such people” has finally become a synonym for “very few such people percentagewise” Even if you replace “morality” with “instinct” this is almost certainly untrue. Sincere utilitarians, labelled as such or not, do in fact exist. There are also people who naturally lack some or all such instincts altogether.

“As for the claim that “you need loyalty, authority and sanctity to run a decent society,” I would actually go further and say that they are necessary for any sort of organized human society. In fact, the claim can be stated even more strongly: since humans are social beings who can live and reproduce only within organized societies”″

Humans can reproduce and live outside of organized societies (unless you define a pair as a society). Authority is a word that adds nothing to a neutral description other than a means for demonstrating deference. Perhaps some kind of policing type people are necessarry but calling it an authority isn’t. Not all humans are social beings.

“What does exist are people whose ideology says that harm and (maybe) fairness are the only rational and reasonable moral foundations, while the other ones are only due to ignorance, stupidity, backwardness, malice, etc. Nevertheless, these same people have their own strong norms of sacredness, purity, authority, and in-group loyalty, for which they however invent ideologically motivated rationalizations in terms of harm and fairness.”

Who are you talking about? (some group I assume) This doesn’t sound implausbible. The vast majority of humans are hypocrites barring significant cost, or amoral enough enough in the first place to be incapable of hypocrisy (not that this is a bad way to be if you’re optimising for politics.)There would have to be a hell of a selection effect for any group to not be made up of a majority of such people. How would you know the difference between someone who was actually motivated purely by harm and fairness and someone who merely claimed to be or wrongly believed they were? Bearing in mind the oppurtunity cost of examining everyone who claims to be utilitarian and the minimal or even negative payoff from identifying such a person as such do you think you’d be aware of such people if they did exist?

“And here you will find that, even in terms of a purely utilitarian metric, an accurate analysis of the social role of the norms based on these “irrational” foundations will give you very different answers from those given by the pseudo-rational ideologies that claim to reject these foundations.”

I presume you mean that the answer will be that these things are necessarry for any society. If so, what makes you think the status quo is a necessity? Why would the way things tend to be, be the only way things can be? What role (which actually needs to be filled) do any of these things play that can’t be filled some other way?

Also, as I don’t want to wait for my post to drop off most recent 5 before I can post again I’ll mention here that this, from the OP: “I just can’t imagine a woman saying, “yeah, he’s going to rape my daughter, but I really love him!”″ does actually happen, but instead of saying “he’s going to rape my daughter” they usually just don’t think about or refuse to admit that bit, or simply don’t believe it happened. Unless all the people claiming that happened to them are lying, which seems unlikely. Obviously it also happens inside marriages.

duckduckMOO Jul 31, 2012, 2:07 PM
1 point
on: Is Politics the Mindkiller? An Inconclusive Test
“Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it’s a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there’s a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it.”

It can’t be a good counterargument if there’s a good obvious counterargument to it. obvious but not good is fine, good but not obvious might be/is sorta fine but not both. You could well have meant either, as a forward slash tends to mean or, but I and/or is also pretty common. Good argument shouldn’t mean “momentarily convincing if I don’t think through the consequences.” Unless you mean good to include good for advancing the discussion but I didn’t get that impression and in any case it’s still worth saying that’s not what most people mean when they say something is a good argument.

“If it’s a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both.” <--- that shouldn’t be happening. If an argument is convincing despite it having a convincing counterargument that means you weren’t paying enough attention.

duckduckMOO Jul 17, 2012, 9:15 PM
−7 points
in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Eliezer apparently wrong about higgs boson
I don’t find it particularly interesting but thought other people might.

much later edit (revisiting after years):

In fact I literally posted this because someone told me lesswrong was quite tribalistic and status oriented,so they didn’t want to post this thing they’d found, and i didn’t believe it. I had the impression that if it was posted no one would blink an eye, and people would be straightforwardly pleased to have something self-critical (where “self” here is lesswrong) to analyse, so I said I’d post it myself. That was literally the whole of my interest in it.

Well, boy was I wrong about that. Glad I “naively” posted it and found out.

duckduckMOO Jul 17, 2012, 8:05 PM
1 point
in reply to: brilee’s comment on: Exploiting the Typical Mind Fallacy for more accurate questioning?
It’s not retribution if its not the person who stole your bike.

Eliezer apparently wrong about higgs boson

duckduckMOOJul 17, 2012, 7:44 PM

0 points

34 comments1 min readLW link

duckduckMOO Jul 10, 2012, 3:07 AM
−5 points
in reply to: MixedNuts’s comment on: Rationality Quotes July 2012
This is the sentiment that in diluted form gets 10 upvotes. Fuck you all.

edit: upvoters, that is. Like, seriously, you are bad people and you should fix that.

duckduckMOO Jul 9, 2012, 5:43 PM
3 points
in reply to: MixedNuts’s comment on: Rationality Quotes July 2012
People who are experiencing scepticism should have bananas smushed in their faces, is what you’re saying? And apparently that’s worth 12 upvotes.

duckduckMOO Jul 9, 2012, 5:34 PM
7 points
in reply to: RobertLumley’s comment on: Rationality Quotes July 2012
Apart from the hilarious joke, this quote makes the point that “will kill you” is not actually the same as impossible to eat, which more generally generally points out that impossible is often used in place of “really bad idea.”

I read edible as a synonym for eatable. Poisonous mushrooms: edible. rocks, not edible. That’s how that word is attatched in my head. I assume you read it as non-poisonous/fit to eat so it feels like a crass and overt redefinition. If the guy who wrote that reads that word the same way I assume you do it’s a really cheap joke. If he doesn’t the quote makes a lot of sense.

duckduckMOO Jul 9, 2012, 5:04 PM
0 points
in reply to: DanArmak’s comment on: Rationality Quotes July 2012
Nihilist means moral anti-realist here I assume. This was how i always used the term originally.

duckduckMOO Jul 4, 2012, 10:19 PM
0 points
in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: [Link] Why the kids don’t know no algebra
Unless you give the kids a pass for being kids.

edit: which I think is inconsistent. There’s no schelling point, but it seems to be the normal attitude.

duckduckMOO Jul 4, 2012, 9:30 PM
2 points
on: [Link] Why the kids don’t know no algebra
“Some children are more athletic than others, and some children are more intelligent than others. Starting among conservatives, but now spreading to some liberals, is a rejection of this premise via blaming teachers. ”

That some people will be naturally better than others does not mean there are no low hanging fruit that could make people on average much more athletic and/or more intelligent. He doesn’t explicitly claim otherwise but just to spell it out: that humans are not identical does not mean they are reaching anywhere near their potential. Teachers obviously aren’t wholly to blame for any failings but the following possibilites are perfectly compatible: that there is variance among humans, that children are falling far short of their potential, that this is the fault of teachers (or the fault of the people that hire them depending on how you want to look at it.

duckduckMOO Jul 4, 2012, 9:20 PM
1 point
in reply to: Multiheaded’s comment on: [Link] Why the kids don’t know no algebra
You just shouldn’t say it at all. Unless they really are 100% 0 variance, not one in a million people with their brains will learn it trying their hardest you shouldn’t say this in public because it might damage their chances. Stupid is especially bad because it’s more general than you need to be. If someone has a brain that has some poor cognitive abilities, but others that are normal or good (specifically, I am talking about almost everyone) they shouldn’t be told they are stupid for doing below average in some area because stupid is a general term.. “Stupidness” is often limited to a particular area.

When is it an advantage to the person being talked about to hear that they are fundamentally incapable of doing something over hearing that it is not worth their trying to do it?

Also, stupid and genetically disadvantaged are not synonyms.

What makes you think the anti-PC crowd is low-status? That doesn’t ring a bell. I have no strong belief either way.

also, do you really think this is an accurate reflection of reality? “because they are unwilling to learn basic social skills.” It’s fine if you just wanted to have a go, but X is experiencing negative outcome Y “because they are unwilling to learn” is much more often claimed than is true. It’s just so convenient and just world-ey. Also, “social skills” may in this case actually consist solely of deference to majority opinion.

duckduckMOO Jun 27, 2012, 6:27 PM
1 point
on: Thwarting a Catholic conversion?
“she felt like morality “loved” her.”

Maybe you can explain to her that internal constructs can feel like external entities.

also from reading her blog post I got the impression rationality was a limit on her ability to choose her beliefs in this area rather than her means for doing so

“I couldn’t pick consistency over my construction project as long as I didn’t believe it was true.”

Also this, “until I discovered that their study of virtue ethics has led them to take a tumble into the Tiber” makes it sound like she is a “pragmatist” or whatever the term is or she thinks finding the true morality has to be satisfying for some reason.

Also I can’t believe this doesn’t bother people. If you are happy to worship someone who sends people to hell your morality sucks. That your morality isn’t currently (directly) harming anyone doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous.

duckduckMOO Jun 27, 2012, 4:23 PM
2 points
in reply to: Douglas_Knight’s comment on: Minimum Viable Workout Routine is Dangerously Misinformative
“a newbie will not be capable of a level of cardio exertion that results in a significant adaptation” seems to be saying most people who aren’t actively exercising can’t benefit from cardio without getting stronger first (via a high percentage capacity weightlifting scheme.

A bigger problem i neglected to talk about was that there are people who a lifting program is going to reinforce the bad biomechanics of, thereby damaging their long term fitness, or worse, straight up damage in the case of e.g. undiagnosed back problems which are quite common.

For example myself: I lifted weights for about a year with undiagnosed spondylolisthesis (I’ve heard the prevelance reported from 2-5%, mostly undiagnosed) before I noticed I was getting worse at stuff that wasn’t bench pressing deadlifting or squatting. Apart from my adductors and shoulders now being ridiculously tight, it was also dangerous. For all I know I could have had spondylolysis (just a fracture) before, which turned into spondylolisthesis (slippage) one day lifting something. Whether or not that happened I was risking injury without knowing it and if it weren’t for all the “one size fits all. Trust us we’re experts, your instincts are wrong” attitude all around I would have known it was a bad idea (and wouldn’t have known any type of exercise was a good idea.)

if you have trouble sticking to a program maybe it’s because you shouldn’t be doing a program.

edit: I should mention that I don’t get that unfit even if I totally neglect exercise for extended periods, or at least I can get decently fit quite quickly. If you’re someone who just turns to blubber if they don’t exercise I’ve heard weightlifting is the best way to improve your metabolism and there’s probably some safe lifting you can do.

duckduckMOO Jun 25, 2012, 11:07 AM
3 points
in reply to: Douglas_Knight’s comment on: Minimum Viable Workout Routine is Dangerously Misinformative
It’s dangerous to tell people they can’t increase their cardiovascular fitness outside of lifting weights because that will make those people less likely to jog, skip, etc.

duckduckMOO Jun 17, 2012, 4:58 AM
1 point
in reply to: r_claypool’s comment on: How confident is your atheism?
it might not feel absurdly high because absuridty is often a heuristic about what should be laughed at rather than what is unlikely. When people say something is absurd they mean it should be laughed at along with its claimer.

5% is a “respectable” estimate except perhaps in some very untheist countries. (I don’t know and am too lazy to look it up is why I am saying perhaps, not because I know and want to make the fact seem small.)

The other difference I see between old norse paganism and religion is that there are all sorts of people who don’t otherwise appear to be crazy who say christianity is true and you can’t properly internalise the idea that they are all wrong/lying.

Oh and this just occured to me. It could be you are sort of/on some level afraid of hell. You may have had the idea of someone being wrong, in contravention to” popular wisdom raised to your attention and be unconciously avoiding conclusions that leave you in that scenario especially when the punishment for being wrong is hell.

The question that stopped me thinking christianity, while unlikely, was unlikelier than the other religions was was: If you were raised by old norse pagan/aztec/muslim/hindu parents in an old norse pagan/etc place do you think you would have a higher instinctive estimate of its probability?

Another thing to consider is that the people telling you that Jesus is a resurrected God say all kinds of other stupid stuff which is probably untrue (so p(christianity in general) is low for that reason and the probability that Jesus is a resurrected God goes way down if christianity is not true otherwise. Also, christians are in fact, on further inspection, generally visibly crazy, for a relevantly/appropriately strict definition of sane and present as their evidence a book that it has somehow become doctrine is God’s word despite being tampered with by humans all the time.

duckduckMOO Jun 17, 2012, 4:36 AM
3 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: How confident is your atheism?
what you actually said was “Coincidentially I was pondering this very question a few weeks ago. If many worlds interpretation is true, then all religions has to be true (in a simulation)” That isn’t what you claim you said:”that MWI implies that there will be computer simulations in a tiny tiny tiny fraction of ‘worlds’ in which there will be God-like entities within the simulations, have made the retards on here think that the downvote button is morphine.”

The second is not even just one very poorly expressed meaning of the first, which would make your anger misplaced but understandable if you thought your meaning was clear. Nobody took this as your meaning. But the reason isn’t just that you said it badly. It’s a different claim. “God like entities” are not enough for “all religions are true.”

You can’t have a simulation in which christianity is true “God created the world (and nobody created him)” can’t be true in a simulation (even if there is a god-like entity that created the simulation from inside an outer simulation). Also, there’s all the moral stuff that come with religions which is meta-wrong as well as often moral wrong.

duckduckMOO Jun 17, 2012, 4:04 AM
−3 points
on: Cards Against Rationality
Most of the fill in the gaps ones are throw away lines or phrases that happen to be seen on less wrong. They’re incidental to less wrong. They’re even more incidental to rationality. wtf yo? Also, Why would you be familiar enough with them for this to be fun?

If the game requires no familiarity with the phrases that last part doesn’t apply but I’m still worried by the possibility you’d all have the actual exact words memorised. Do you?

duckduckMOO 13 Jun 2012 2:29 UTC
3 points
on: The Creating Bob the Jerk problem. Is it a real problem in decision theory?
I think one boxing is the right response to newcombs problem but I don’t see any reason to one box as a creation of prometheus or create bob the jerk. I would two box in that prometheus problem if I understand correctly that that would net me an extra hundred dollars (and prometheus won’t hunt down “defective” creations). I’m saying this because maybe that means I just don’t understand something or because there’s an implicit wrong step that I’m too inferentially removed from to make or figure out what it is.

Anyway onto what might be wrong with your reasoning.

I’m putting what I think is the main thing you are wrong about at the front having stumbled across something I now think is what you’re wrong about but I’m still gonna leave the rest in.

The thing I think you’re wrong about:

Unless blueprint generation is done by models for individual actual people being psychically transferred (whole) onto blueprints across the multiverse or into blueprint makers minds (e.g. bob or jack or prometheus) there’s no reason what exactly you, personally, choose to do, should effect what Blueprint Bob or jack or prometheus come up with. Bob can just make a deal with you-except-will-make-deal-with-bob or any of the other limitless people he would make a deal with. It sounds like you think what you do changes what blueprints bob/prometheus choose from. This isn’t shorthand. This is just backwards.

“The implication is that you might need to one-box just to exist.” If you already exist you can’t need to one box to exist.

Reguarding bob. Why is he any more likely to exist than jack, who will only create you if you won’t create him (and is a nice guy to boot) if a jack creation machine falls off omega’s pickup truck? Those possibilities seem to be opposite. Are they equal? (And are they so low that even if being a bob creator gives you a better shot of existing it’s not worth making bob)

Quality over quantity? Is it worth the increased chance of existence (if there is any) to have bob around?

Do you really value like-you-ness? Given the chance will you tile the universe with you-clones? Are you going to donate sperm en masse and/oror have kids and raise them to be like you?

Won’t bob just make a deal with you-except-for-will-make-bob if you won’t make bob? Will or won’t make bob is not an essential property of you-ness right? It seems to be something that could go either way rather than a necessarry consequence of the type of person you are, which is presumably what you might value.

“you might still want to create him to “guarantee” the life you had before he was around.” You’ve already had the life you had before he was around. You won’t guarantee anyone else having the life you live before you’re around because he won’t create you in the same circumstances. Unless you mean to increase the likelyhood of your memories existing in which case you can create a person with your memories anyway (if this was ever somehow real as opposed to omega driving by in a pickup truck.

ok so the above organised:

you probably don’t value people like you existing or at least not in all cases. e.g. if you are created by a jerk who makes your life a net negative. There’s no way blueprints are generated by picking from actual existing people in other brances of a multiverse. You have no influence on what counterfactual you hypothetical bobs might pick from design space. No information transferral. If it’s an actual matter of cloning there might be other problems.

also,

“•An essential part of who you are is the fact that you were created by your parents, not by Bob the Jerk, so the counterfactual deal isn’t logically coherent. Someone he creates wouldn’t be you, it would be someone else.”

The first sentence is an unlikely definition of “you” or can be stipulated to be false. The second is true reguardless for my definition of you. If you’re talking to one of two clones that one is “you” and the other one is “him,” right? A clone of you is always someone else (is the way I see it.)

duckduckMOO

Eliezer ap­par­ently wrong about higgs boson

Eliezer apparently wrong about higgs boson