One possible incentive for corporations to promote wokism is that it’s a distraction from other forms of activism which might their hurt bottom lines more.
Also as Bryan Caplan and other comments pointed out, regulations may also drive this shift: the regulations leave companies vulnerable to lawsuits with vague criteria and a defense strategy is to 1. not be the slowest target (this results in a race/escalation) and 2. prepare a vague signaling defense (look at all these employee training programs we do, surely that proves your vague and non-falsifiable accusations of discrimination must be wrong).
dumky
Karma: 86
The bank transfer example seems silly to me. In the situation where the exchange results in a net gift to both A and B, it seems easy to get consent from both of them.
More generally, if you can produce a Right, then you can get consent for the actions you need to aggregate and they are no longer deontological wrongs.
Thanks for the write-up!
I find the nomenclature “target network” confusing, but I understand that comes from the literature. I like to think of it as “slightly out-of-date reward prediction net”.
Also, it’s still not clear what “Q” stands for in DQN. Do you know?
Looking forward to your future deep learning write-ups :-)
There’s a chapter on the evolution of sexes in Nick Lane’s The Vital Question (“Sex and the origin of death”). It explores the benefits and costs of sex.
If I recall the big benefit of sex is gene shuffling (allows for recombinations, ie. faster experiments). Also it apparently evolved very early (didn’t need much new machinery, benefits significant).
Pretty cool experience, but I have to say this rang some alarm bells for me: “My goal for covid lockdown was to train Brittany to cook.”.
What did she want?
But it sounds like she was onboard, or at least ended up appreciating the training and assistance :-)
Whenever discussing the effects of increasing the money supply, we tend to highlight the first order effects: if there’s twice as much money, then prices are expected to double after a while.
This effect is already hard for the public to notice compared to straight-up taxation, but the effects during the transition are even more insidious (so called Cantillon effect): some people receive the fresh money first while prices haven’t adjusted, and some people receive the fresh money last (after prices have already almost doubled). The folks who are the furthest away from the source suffer doubly: not only do they not receive any direct subsidies, they must deal with the increased prices before the demand curve for their own products shifts.
More generally on the topic of MMT, they seem to start from sound analysis (ie. money printing can fund things, as many economists had already pointed out) but incorrectly leap from accounting identity (which correlate multiple variables for a given period of time) to a theory of causation (changing one variable at one period of time affects another at the next periods).
There are some other problems… Two critical reviews of Kelton’s book on MMT:
- https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2020/07/magical-monetary-theory-full-review.html
- https://mises.org/wire/review-stephanie-keltons-deficit-myth
Sorry to hear this has been difficult for you. It sounds like you really want to find a way to make durable change and tried many techniques already.
I think it’s admirable and impressive to see how passionate and driven you are. But if it’s having some negative consequences or making you unhappy maybe a bit of tuning could be useful.
How do you feel when you have trouble to go to bed? Taking a wild guess I’d say you might be feeling a bit anxious, inadequate, frustrated or maybe embarrassed. What thoughts do you have? Is there a deep-seated value that drives those? (maybe “a person’s achievement drives their worth”?)
If this connects in any way, I’d suggest checking out David Burns’ podcast or books.
It sounds like you enjoy systematic approaches and routines, maybe a 5 minutes journal could help express main goals and take stock.
It can also be good to list the positives (advantages and beautiful things) in self-criticism. It shows honesty, accountability, high standards, …
On the other hand, we often use a double standard (harder on oneself) which can imply a sense of superiority (it’d okay for others to make mistakes, just not for us). Another downside of self-criticism is that spots that we beat down become sensitive and so we may be less receptive to feedback (being defensive).
I apologize if it’s a bit tangential, but I want to point out that “should” statements are a common source of distortions (in cognitive behavioral therapy). It is often good to clarify the meaning of “should” in that context to see if it’s valid (is it a law of the universe? is it a human law? …). It often just means “I would prefer if”, which doesn’t bear as much weight...
David Burns explains this clearly and I was struck when he pointed out the linguistic heritage of “should” and how it connects to “scold”. Here’s one podcast episode on the topic (there are more, easy to find).
I wonder if some of the other distortions (such as “labelling” to sneak a morality judgement) could be subject to a similar treatment. For example, Scott Alexander talks about debates on labelling something a “disease”.
Exposure is the most effective remedy for most forms of anxiety. It is also helpful to understand the thoughts behind that anxiety and consider to what extent they are valid or beneficial (there are good reasons to be anxious, but they may only justify it to a mild extent).
Many techniques can help such examination. One that is particularly appealing to me is to imagine what I would tell a close friend who is very much like me (“double standard” technique).
Castify was a crowd-funded project that recorded “Rationality: From AI to Zombies” among other things. They closed in 2016, but I made a backup as they suggested. But I don’t think the audiobook ended up being hosted on intelligence.org as they announced...
”To all Castify customers old and new,It’s been a fun project but it’s time to bring Castify to a close. This means all podcast feeds and audiobook files will cease to be available for download at the end of September.
IMPORTANT: If you need to download a fresh copy of your purchases please follow the instructions below before October 1st.
[...]
If you’re from Less Wrong please note that the audiobook for Rationality: from AI to Zombies will be available through Intelligence.org in the near future (maybe by the end of the year).
Thanks for being a part of Castify, we really appreciate it.
Onwards,
Team Castify”
I’ve only had a few interactions, but was less than impressed. Some articles that were critical of authors I have much respect for did not give a fair reading in my opinion.
Specifically, does the prevalence of progeny in different groups affect the average time preference of said groups? I would say it raises an empirical question, but the prior seems reasonable. I do not consider such thought horribly offensive or bigoted as suggested, even if you consider that sexual orientation would affect prevalence of progeny.
The thread seemed more woke than rationalist in tone.
Another possibility (not sure how likely): maybe treatment capacity and protocols have improved?
James Burke mentioned such a graph being worked on in a talk he gave in 2009. Not sure how it progressed. https://youtu.be/7G8YHWbi-9U
Note: if you’re interested in this topic, check out Burke’s book and TV show, Connections. It’s fascinating (a lot of clever repurposing and also happenstance).
Forget money for a minute, since it’s just a proxy for real resources. Assuming that people involved have a decent understanding of what resources are helpful, then Charity is trying to provide those resources. For the question of whether we know what resources would be useful and whether they have the desired impact in the long-term, that’s a hard question. GiveWell is an attempt at evaluating the impact of charities. There are others as well.
That presented with a bet that essentially hinges on that thing being true, you take that bet.
Note that actions involve uncertainty and costs, so they involve a form of informal betting.
Sure, but that means there possibly is no answer (the problem is under-specified). Maybe the answer depends on preferences, not universal ethical or rational principles (such as deontological or utilitarian principles).
There is a third approach to the trolley problem, which I have not often seen discussed: whose property are the trolley tracks?
In other words, does this require a universal answer, or can this allow for diversity based on property and agreement? When you board a ship, you know that the captain has the last word when it comes to life-or-death situations, and different captains may have different judgement. The same goes for trolley tracks. The principles can be explained beforehand (such as “the mission comes first”). Another question that seems relevant to the person in charge (owner) is whether the 5 people are to blame for putting themselves at risk.
If I remember correctly, Jaynes discusses this in Probability Theory and arrives at the conclusion that if a reasoning robot assigned a probability to its changing its mind a certain way, then it should update its belief now. Of course, the general caveat here: humans are not robots, they don’t perfectly adhere to either formal logical or plausible reasoning.
I subscribe to the Jaynes/Laplace view of probabilities, namely that they exist in the mind and result from changes in information rather than changes in the world, let alone multi-worlds.
Imagine I tell you about an urn with black and red balls, without an additional detail. You can provide a probability of getting a black or red ball (50/50).
As I provide more information (“there’s 5 red balls but 50 black balls”, “the red balls are sitting on top of the pile”, …) your probability assignment will change without the physical urn having changed at all.
As your knowledge of the urn and the selection mechanism becomes more complete, your uncertainty decreases and your confidence/probability levels grow.