duckduckMOO

Karma: 97

duckduckMOO 6 Nov 2011 21:38 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: 2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey
Having read it, I realise this post may seem or be overly critical. Oh well.

But what the results will actually show, if 65% of people pick libertarian, is that 65% of people Identify with libertarianism more than the other options. This is obviously possible wthout being a libertarian. One could even just hate libertarianism slightly less than the other options and identify most with it. As well as people who’s political views aren’t well deliniated by any option, there are a few people who are apolitical and would have to just pick at random. or one could be forced to hammer a square peg into a round hole. Multiple choice and no choice for “none of the above” for something like this means hammering square pegs into round holes or abstaining if you don’t strongly lean one way or another. if you think you’ll put a box for other in next survey why not put it in this survey? even an uncounted other option allows people who’d rather have their choice not count than be identified with one of the options given not to add a tally to one and gives you the number of people with that preference which is interresting in itself.

The rest of this post is ideas for minor modifications to wording.

Can’t you just change it to “sex” now?

“With what race or ethnic group do you most closely identify?” Some people might identify most closely with a race other than their own. I don’t think the intent is to allow for this but until I read the post this is a reply to, if I did identify with another race more strongly than my own i’d answer that way were i to fill out the survey. Maybe just ask what option best describes or approximates your race.

maths might be the field of a non-trivial percentage of less wrong readers.

I think martial arts would go along nicely with self help, pickup artistry and meditation as an option for the communities question. All are relatively common self-improvement things, as is less wrong. Also I think members of competive gameing (card games, board games, video games, anything i’ve missed) communities would be overrepresented on less wrong.

Expertise question. The bar set for “fairly knowledgable” here might be a little high. I think even someone with an undergraduate degree in maths or physics might be out of their depth in heavy discussion with an expert. Maybe change heavy to light or remove the qualifier.

duckduckMOO 7 Nov 2011 0:06 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Prismattic’s comment on: Calibrate your self-assessments
I don’t see the problem. You have high standards. It would be crazy to compare yourself to an average person in each of these situations. Do you really want to feel good about lifting more weight than the average sedentary person as a gym-goer? In martial arts specifically I think you should always be comparing yourself to the person directly above you. It’s competitive and its self improvement. Slightly better is what you should be next week. A lot better is what you should be next year. The “impostor syndrome” (yes, those are scare quotes) seems like a seperate issue to me. Comparing yourself to those around you might make you feel insecure and untalented if you have a bias towards overrating others or if you are less talented but that only makes your achievements more impressive.

The scare quotes are because it seems to be assumed that anyone who has an accomplishment deserves it. Some people must luck out. If we’re not going to just reject the notion of deserving entirely there must be some people who don’t deserve their accomplishments and as a result feel like they don’t deserve their accomplishments. Additionally, feeling like you don’t deserve your accomplishment, even if most people feel like they do, doesn’t mean you’re pathological. People have different standards for considering themselves deserving. Some are way off one end of the bell curve but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong. When you consider yourself competent or deserving is a personal judgement. There’s nothing inconsistent in an above average or even elite person thinking they are incompetent.

duckduckMOO 6 Dec 2011 13:58 UTC
0 points
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: 2011 Survey Results
I think this is an underestimate if anything. People who skip the question might just not want to say and at least a few people who post didn’t take the survey. I don’t see how enough people could be motivated to put down a random score who don’t post to make up for these possibilities.

I’d have preferred “at least 519.”

duckduckMOO 6 Dec 2011 14:44 UTC
−5 points
in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: 2011 Survey Results
On politics I would like a way to say, I don’t identify with any political theory. To me this is like asking “what religion do you identify most with?” with options christianity, Islam, hinduism, other and the option to click no boxes. If, as an atheist with no religious ties you click other you’re in with shintoists and satanists and other other unmentioned religions. If you don’t answer you’re just not giving an answer. You could just not want to say. In any case the question frames things so that you have to subscribe to a questionable framework to answer it all

Solutions:

Option like the morality one, perhaps, 0 identification options for “other” and “prefer not to say” retaining the ability to click no boxes, though there are probably other reasons to click no boxes. or, as someone suggested in the original thread another question to gage how much you identify with something. The current way If I had to pick an answer I could probably dredge up some preference for one or another theories, but I’d be in the same box as someone actively promoting and a part of what option they clicked. Boxes for strongly identify, identify and weakly identify maybe. Or something.

Got to go.

edit: Could someone kindly explain the downvotes? I’m guessing Too esoteric? Personally not bothered? bothered that I’m bothered?

edit2: just realised some line breaks in the comment box haven’t translated to line breaks in the published comment. Is the post just hard to read?

duckduckMOO 6 Dec 2011 23:50 UTC
1 point
on: Does Your Morality Care What You Think?
“•The teacher, by saying that we’re allowed to stand on our desks, can make it right to do so.

After reading the above

•The teacher, by saying that I’m allowed to take something from another child’s backpack, cannot make it right to do so.”

This^ was a relief.

duckduckMOO 8 Dec 2011 16:06 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Vladimir_M’s comment on: Rationality Quotes December 2011
“The remarks about the national character of the British and their level of civilization and decency can be interpreted as a reasonable belief that conspiring to assassinate a foreign head of state would be a violation of certain norms that the British government is known to follow consistently in practice, and expected to follow by a broad consensus of the British people—such consensus being strong enough that it can be considered part of their national character”

And when people say “I have free will” it is compatible with their being compatibilists rather than magic black-boxers. But usually they mean the black box sort.

The fact that Wittgenstein, knowing this Malcolm personally, interpreted the remark as he did is evidence in favour of that interpretation.

I was going to say your interpretation is compatible at best. But now that I’ve checked the quote rather than going from memory I don’t think it’s compatible at all:

“When Wittgenstein remarked that it wouldn’t surprise him at all if it were true, Malcolm retorted that it was impossible because “the British were too civilized and decent to attempt anything so underhand, and . . . such an act was incompatible with the British ‘national character’.”

the retort was in response to Wittgenstein saying “it wouldn’t surprise him at all if it were true”

“such consensus being strong enough that it can be considered part of their national character.” This is the kind of thing Wittgenstein doesn’t want you to say. National character isn’t just a bunch of syllables. It encodes the idea of character inherently tied to nationality, even if that is not the specific definition used. If the consensus were 100% you’d still be confusing things by calling it the national character.

When you call something disgusting, when asked to define it you can append “causes squicky feelings” or similiar, and you can define national character as “strong enough consensus to pressure government” but people won’t use those words that way and that isn’t how the second was used here.

“He also seems to be using the Dark Arts tactic of throwing exalted and self-important rhetoric about general intellectual principles to draw attention away from his petty and unreasonable behavior.”

His behaviour being capitalisation of dangerous in a letter to the guy five years later? Maybe the guy is too upset by some normative standard, but we have no reason to believe he’s faking being upset. The deception you’ve implied just isn’t there.Especially five years later.

In any case the “to draw attention away from his petty and unreasonable behavior” stipulation is patently false. The rhetoric is what you’re calling petty and unreasonable behaviour.

You’ve given the first guy the most generous interpretation possible and the second the worst interpretation possible.

I get the impression you’re just politicking against getting annoyed by specific word choice and against people getting upset about it (and possibly in favour of interpreting things more generously than was meant, though that could just be incidental.)

duckduckMOO 9 Dec 2011 0:40 UTC
0 points
on: Timeless Decision Theory: Problems I Can’t Solve
For the coin came up tails give me 1000 please case does it reduce to this?

“I can predict that if (the other agent predicts) I choose strategy X: for any gamble I’d want to enter if the consequences were not already determined, I will pay when i lose, then the other agent will implement strategy Y: letting me play, and my expected payoff is Z:999,000”,

“I just flipped a fair coin. I decided, before I flipped the coin, that if it came up heads, I would ask you for $1000. And if it came up tails, I would give you $1,000,000 if and only if I predicted that you would give me $1000 if the coin had come up heads. The coin came up heads—can I have $1000?” Obviously, the only reflectively consistent answer in this case is “Yes—here’s the $1000″, because if you’re an agent who expects to encounter many problems like this in the future, you will self-modify to be the sort of agent who answers “Yes” to this sort of question—just like with Newcomb’s Problem or Parfit’s Hitchhiker.”

I think more generally if there’s any possibility that you’ll encounter anything like this in the future you should precommit to paying up. Precommiting to paying up acts as an entry cost for positive utility gambles.

And it would definetely have to be utility rather than, say, money because rich enemies could bankrupt you if you were willing to take 51;49 bets of all your stakes vs some of theirs. This might be trivial but for a second I wasn’t sure if this would make you more open to exploitation than if you would take that potential bankruptcy risk anyway.

Though I’m not sure provisioning for this kind of thing would be a good idea. Who’s going to do this kind of thing anyway instead of just setting forth the terms of the bet. When are you going to know, as is stipulated here that there was a decent chance of you getting anything and they haven’t just somehow tricked you. A simple solution might just be to refuse this kind of thing altogether, and then people who want to bet with you will have to ask in advance. I can’t think of any scenario where someone would have a legitimate reason to bet like this rather than normally.

duckduckMOO 13 Dec 2011 4:09 UTC
0 points
on: Timeless Physics
Does each axis in the first configuration space diagram correspond to a list of all possible positions of the particle in 2d space (with each given a numerical label that allows for the axis to go from one upwards as is normal for graphs)?

Thanks

duckduckMOO 13 Dec 2011 4:42 UTC
0 points
on: Less Wrong Topic Poll
“not yet ready or not suitable” seems awfully restrictive. I assumed discussion was basically an area where you can throw stuff up without necessarrilly intending to put anything in main.

edit: I posted this before I read the rest of the comments. As some others have said, the definition of discussion doesn’t seem to mesh with what is actually there. If it’s current use is fine, the definition shouldn’t implicitly prohibit posting something with no intention of making an article for main.

duckduckMOO 16 Dec 2011 18:51 UTC
5 points
in reply to: ArisKatsaris’s comment on: A case study in fooling oneself
why would the light speed limit apply to quantum branching?

duckduckMOO 16 Dec 2011 20:20 UTC
0 points
on: Self-empathy as a source of “willpower”
Thanks for your post, this technique sounds very useful, as does your description of willpower as dynamic consistency but my personal experience is that I’ve basically always been able to feel “willpower” or something close to it and in fact have a hard time imagining such an existence.

The only reason I can relate to this claim is that sometimes my state of mind is such that willpower use is barely noticable, and perhaps only because in my default state it is very noticable, so I know what to look for: where forward is my default impetus and all I have to do is steer, or fan the fires.

Off the top of my head, labelled via word association, I might call some of these states (there are probably more and there is some overlap) executing, dueling, drunk, writing and fatalism. writing, dueling, drunk and executing are all distinct. There’s some overlap.

But these are specific states of mind that are not my default. My default state is rest. In this state it very clearly and unambiguously takes what I’ll call willpower to do things. And the more willpowerey I’m feeling, the better I’m able to do anything.

The point of which is that I’d be suspicious of your claim to have never experienced “willpower” if I hadn’t put on various thinking hats which also feel a lot like that. I suspect your default thinking hat is one where willpower may be relatively unnoticable, irrelevant, or even non-existant (if your mind is sufficiently different than mine) and that you’re underappreciating how different minds are.

*NOT IRL DUELING. DUELING IN A COMPUTER GAME.

duckduckMOO 20 Dec 2011 19:25 UTC
2 points
on: Why I write about the basics
“that which is known to fix akrasia” looks a lot like the typical mind fallacy.

Unless you’re being deliberately overoptimistic for anti-akrasia purposes.

duckduckMOO 31 Dec 2011 1:16 UTC
7 points
in reply to: Solvent’s comment on: I’d like to talk to some LGBT LWers.
it’s a joke about subjectivism. I think its roughly supposed to be what a subjectivist would say, roughly “this is something a subjectivist would say” because of the original comment saying that subjectivism is silly.

duckduckMOO 31 Dec 2011 2:05 UTC
0 points
on: Summary of “The Straw Vulcan”
“If you think you’re acting rationally but you consistently keep getting the wrong answer, and you consistently keep ending worse off than you could be, then the conclusion you should draw from that is not that rationality is bad, it’s that you’re bad at rationality.

This is waaaaayyyyy too blanket. There are potentially limitless reasons you could consistently end worse off than you could be. Any situation where you need to come up with an answer more quickly than you are capable of will get you the wrong answer pretty consistently if you are rational (because your best shot is to guess). Those are good warning signals but not specifically of lacking rationality.

I’m specifically thinking epistemic rationality of the not-wearing-paradigm-glasses/suspending judgement variety can be very bad for you in the short term but good for you in the long term.

duckduckMOO 2 Jan 2012 0:52 UTC
1 point
on: Why some people seem to be proud of their ignorance?
As well as the decent reasons for being proud not to learn more about a topic, where I have come across it most often is when people can win the argument otherwise. e.g. as I am trying to explain a hole in their position their eyes glaze over (or stare mockingly), and when I am finished speaking they proudly reassert their original position.

Might be pride in their own certainty, or pride in not feeling obligated to listen.

Maybe some pride in being unknowledgable is a special case of pride in having beliefs with high inertia.

duckduckMOO 4 Jan 2012 20:26 UTC
0 points
on: Newcomb’s problem—one boxer’s introspection.
upvote because more like this.

(this is a disclaimer) As far as I can tell… ′ The difference between the two is that for omega it is stipulated that omega is always right but for the psychologist your evidence for this is that they got the last 100 right (or that they say so?)

I’m gonna ignore the case where you don’t know they actually got 100 right.

Getting 100 in a row implies that they are more than “fairly accurate”. Otherwise, maybe they did predictions till they happened to get 100 in a row then called you in or got really lucky.

Assuming, for convenience, that these 100 are the only 100, (and assuming you know this) they probably have a reliable way to predict your decision.

This may be because they’re wizards exercising mind control, or just psychologists using priming, or hypnotists and so on: that is, their prediction may be aided by deliberately influencing your decision.

For now I’m gonna model this like they don’t exert any influence.

Whether they do this by being omega or by memes and stalking their methods were very accurate for the 100 other people and so probably are for you.

If they predict two box you get 1000 if you two box and 0 if you one box. If they predict one box you get 1,001,000 if you two box and 1,000,000 if you one box.

If your newcomb’s strategy can influence their decision by a 1/1000 being a one boxer dominates being a two boxer. The fact that they were right 100 times in a row before you means your newcomb’s strategy probably has some influence. This isn’t a given. Maybe their algorithm breaks down because you’ve thought of newcomb’s problem, or are relevantly different from the previous 100 in a way that will break the prediction.

Ok so you probably agree with all that anyway. I was a little confused. But, if there were a significant number of one boxers in the 100 previous the psychologist correctly predicted their strategy. probably they did not try to deliberately signal that they were one boxers well before encountering the problem.

So, simply being a one-boxer probably reliably signals that you are a one boxer to the psychologist. And, deliberately signalling that you are makes you different from the people it worked on. You might throw the psychologist off.

Bringing the possibility that they are right because they influence people back, you should still one box (if you can) and probably make a big show of precommiting to doing it, because the psychologist might prefer being right to saving 999,000 with probability >0.001.

the signalling is probably only a bad idea if the psychologist is genuinely predicting stuff, but their algorithm is easily thrown off.

duckduckMOO 4 Jan 2012 22:46 UTC
2 points
in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong! (2012)
Multiheaded said his/her (it’s her, right? >_>) utility would increase, not happiness. If this is true, then, ignoring oppurtunity costs dead is what daenerys and other baby killing advocators ought be, subjectively-objectively for multiheaded.

edit: but it’s almost definetely not true. Utility was probably being conflated with something, or Multiheaded was biased by emotional state (was REAL MAD, in less technical terms.)

duckduckMOO 9 Jan 2012 17:38 UTC
0 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The Ethical Status of Non-human Animals
“I think you yearn for absolute morality. That’s ok, we all do to varying extents”

I think syllogism’s preference is for unbiased morality.

Yearns is in quotes because he decided on his ethics before deciding he cared. his reasoning probably has nothing to do with yearning or similiar, as you seem to be implying.

also “That’s ok, we all do to varying extents” I don’t think it is. i think it’s silly, and there are almost certainly people who don’t (and they count). “absolute morality” in the sense “objectively (universally) right” shouldn’t even parse

duckduckMOO 9 Jan 2012 18:13 UTC
−2 points
in reply to: syllogism’s comment on: The Ethical Status of Non-human Animals
how does you personally buying bacon hurt pigs? Is it because you wouldn’t eat factory farmed non person human (and if so why not?) or an object level calculation of bastardliness of buying factory farmed bacon (presumably via your impact on pigs dying?)

I ask because I personally can’t see the chain from me personally buying pig to pigs dying and I like having an easy source of protein. My brain tells me 0 extra animals die as a result of my eating meat.

I say my brain rather than I because I suspect this may be rationalisation: I don’t think i’d react the same way to the idea of eating babies or decide eating meat is fine because no extra animals die if I wasn’t already eating meat.

It’s starting to look like rationalisation to me. But I still don’t see any object level cost to eating meat.

edit: TL:DR eating meat is proof of my unethicalness but not actually unethical. Oh and for the record i reserve the right to be unethical.

duckduckMOO 9 Jan 2012 20:10 UTC
0 points
in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: The Ethical Status of Non-human Animals
Accidentally hit the comment button with a line of text written. Hit the retract button so i could start again. AND IT FUCKING JUST PUT LINES THROUGH IT WHAT THE FUCK.

That is to say, How do I unretract?

“When I buy bacon, I change those figures in such a way as to trigger a (negligibly) higher number of pigs being slaughtered.”

But is my buying bacon actually recorded? It’s possible that those calculations are done on sufficiently large scales that my personally eating meat causes no pig suffering. As in, were i to stop, would any fewer pigs suffer.

It’s not lives and deaths i’m particularly concerned with. The trade off I’m currently thinking about is pig suffering vs bacon. And if pig suffering is the same whether i eat already dead pigs I’ll probably feel better about it.

Scope insensitivity would be not taking into account personal impact on pig suffering I suppose. Seeing as there’s already vast amounts I’m tempted to label anything I could do about it “pointless” or similiar.

Which bypasses the actual utility calculation (otherwise known as actual thinking, shutting up and multiplying.)

The point is I need to have a think about the expected consequences of buying meat, eating meat someone else has bought, eating animals i find by the road etc. Do supermarkets record how much meat is eaten? How important is eating meat for my nutrition (and or convenience?) etc.