Ericf

Karma: 1,163

Ericf Jan 8, 2024, 1:07 PM
4 points
−1
in reply to: Zane’s comment on: AI Risk and the US Presidential Candidates
Mr. Pero got fewer votes than either major party candidate. Not a ringing endorsement. And I didn’t say the chances were quite low, I said they were zero*. Which is at least 5 orders of magnitude difference from “quite low” so I don’t think we agree about his chances.

*technically odds can’t be zero, but I consider anything less likely than “we are in a simulation that is subject to intervention from outside” to be zero for all decision making purposes.

Ericf Jan 7, 2024, 2:42 PM
7 points
−3
on: AI Risk and the US Presidential Candidates
There is an actual 0% chance that anyone other than the Democratic or Republican nominee (or thier replacement in the event of death etc.) becomes president. Voting for/supporting any other candidate has, historically, done nothing to support that candidate’s platform in the short or long term. If you find both options without merit, you should vote for your preferred enemy:
1. Who will be most receptive to your message, either in a compromise, or argument And/or
2. So sorry about your number 1 issue, neither party cares. What’s your number 2 issue, maybe there is a difference there?

Ericf Nov 18, 2023, 12:25 PM
3 points
0
in reply to: Gordon Seidoh Worley’s comment on: Extrapolating from Five Words
Do you have a link to the study validating that the LLM responses actually match the responses given by humans in that category?

Ericf Nov 16, 2023, 5:43 PM
4 points
2
on: Extrapolating from Five Words
Note one weakness of this technique. An LLM is going to provide what the average generic written account would be. But messages are intended for a specific audience, sometimes a specific person, and that audience is never”generic median internet writer.” Beware WIERDness. And note that visual/audio cues are 50-90% of communication, and 0% of LLM experience.

Ericf Nov 9, 2023, 6:25 PM
2 points
0
on: A free to enter, 240 character, open-source iterated prisoner’s dilemma tournament
How does buying “none of the above” work as you add more entries? If someone buys NOTA today, and the winning entry is #13, does everyone who bought NOTA before it was posted also win?

Ericf Nov 4, 2023, 12:45 AM
14 points
1
in reply to: Sune’s comment on: Deception Chess: Game #1
Agree that closer to reality would be one advisor, who has a secret goal, and player A just has to muddle through against an equal skill bot with deciding how much advice to take. And playing like 10 games in a row, so the EV of 5 wins can be accurately evaluated against.

Plausible goals to decide randomly between:
1. Player wins
2. Player loses
3. Game is a draw
4. Player loses thier Queen (ie opponent still has thier queen after all immediate trades and forcing moves are completed)
5. Player loses on time
6. Player wins, delivering checkmate with a bishop or knight move
7. Maximum number of promotions (for both sides combined)
8. Player wins after having a board with only pawns Etc...

Ericf Oct 6, 2023, 8:29 PM
2 points
0
in reply to: abramdemski’s comment on: Translations Should Invert
Arguing against A doesn’t support Not A, but arguing against Not Not A is arguing against A (while still not arguing in favor of Not A) - albeit less strongly than arguing against A directly. No back translation is needed, because arguments are made up of actual facts and logic chains. We abstract it to “not A” but even in pure Mathematics, there is some “thing” that is actually being argued (eg, my grass example).

Arguing at a meta level can be thought of as putting the object level debate on hold and starting a new debate about the rules that do/should govern the object level domain.

Ericf Oct 6, 2023, 3:10 PM
4 points
0
on: Translations Should Invert
Alice: grass is green → grass isn’t not green Bob: the grass is teal → the grass is provably teal Alice: your spectrometer is miscalibrated → your spectrometer isn’t not miscalibrated.

...

I’m having trouble with the statement {...and has some argument against C’}. The point of the double negative translation is that any argument against not not A is necessarily an argument against A (even though some arguments against A would not apply to not not A). And the same applies to the other translation—Alice is steelmanning Bob’s argument, so there shouldn’t be any drift of topic.

Ericf Oct 2, 2023, 3:53 AM
3 points
1
on: Far-Future Commitments as a Policy Consensus Strategy
Additionally and separately, the law “X takes effect at time t” will be opposed by the interests that oppose X, regardless of the value of t.

Ericf Sep 29, 2023, 4:45 PM
3 points
−1
in reply to: mako yass’s comment on: The point of a game is not to win, and you shouldn’t even pretend that it is
Consider a scale that runs from “authentic real life” to “Lotus eater box” At any point along that scale, you can experience euphoria. At the Lotus Eater end, it is automatic. At the real life end, it is incidental. “Games” fall towards the Lotus Eater end of the spectrum, not as far as slot machines, but further from real life than Exercise or Eating Chocolate. Modern game design is about exploiting what is known about what brains like, to guide the players through the (mental) paths necessary to generate happy chems. They call it “being Fun” but that’s just thier medium level Map.

Some respected designers (including Mark Rosewater) would say that being compatible with real life is disqualifying for a thing to be a “Game.” You can apply game design principles to real life stuff (lessons/repetitive tasks/etc.) to make it more Fun. One thing that makes Games a particularly good source of Fun, however, is the safety provided by being independent of real life. With no “real” consequence to losing, brains are more relaxed. A similar effect is what makes horror movies Fun—the viewers brain is put through stimulus to generate chemicals, without overwhelming the system the way a real danger can.

Ericf Sep 28, 2023, 4:02 PM
17 points
0
on: The point of a game is not to win, and you shouldn’t even pretend that it is
90% of games are designed to be fun. Meaning the point is to stimulate your brain to produce feel-good chemicals. No greater meaning, or secret goal. To do this, they have goals, rules, and other features, but the core loop is very simple:
1. I want to get a dopamine hit, therefore
2. I open up a game, and
3. The game provides a structure that I follow, subordinating my “real life” to the artificial goals and laws of the game
4. Profit!

Ericf Sep 2, 2023, 8:43 PM
2 points
0
on: The Economics of the Asteroid Deflection Problem (Dominant Assurance Contracts)
I don’t think the assumption of equal transaction costs holds. If I want to fill in some potholes on my street, I can go door to door and ask for donations—which costs me time but has minimal and well understood costs to the other contributors. If I have to add “explain this new thing” and “keep track of escrow funds” and “cycling back and telling everyone how the project funding is going, and making them re-decide if/how much to contribute” that is a whole bunch of extra costs.

Also, of the public good is not quantum (eg, I could fix anywhere from 1-10 of the potholes, amd do it well or slapdash) then the producer can make a decision about quality after seeing the final funding total, rather than having to specify everything in advance. For example, your website needs, say, 40 hours of work to be a minimally viable product, but could continue to benefit from work up to 400 hours. How many hours is the (suspiciously specific) $629 buying?

Ericf Aug 30, 2023, 8:14 PM
2 points
0
in reply to: Yoav Ravid’s comment on: The Economics of the Asteroid Deflection Problem (Dominant Assurance Contracts)
A normal Kickstart is already impossible to price correctly − 99% either deliberately underprice to ensure “success” (the “preorders” model) or accidentally underpriced and cost the founders a ton of unpaid overtime (the gitp model) or they overpriced and don’t get funded.

Ericf Aug 27, 2023, 2:53 PM
4 points
0
on: Assume Bad Faith
A clarification:

Consider the premises (with scare quotes indicating technical jargon):
1. “Acting in Bad Faith” is Baysean evidence that a person is “Evil”
2. “Evil” people should be shunned
The original poster here is questioning statement 1, presenting evidence that “good” people act in bad faith too often for it to be evidence of “evil.”

However, I belive the original poster is using a more broad definition of “Acting in Bad Faith” than the people who support premise 1.

That definition, concisely, would be “engaging in behavior that is recognized in context as moving towards a particular goal, without having that goal.” Contrast this with the OP quote: bad faith is when someone’s apparent reasons for doing something aren’t the same as the real reasons. The persons apparent reasons don’t matter, what matters is the socially determined values associated with specific behaviors, as in the Wikipedia examples. While some behavior (eg, a conversation) can have multiple goals, some special things (waving a white flag, arguing in court, and now in the 21st century that includes arguing outside of court) have specific expected goals (respectively: allowing a person to withdraw from a fight without dying, to present factual evidence that favors one side of a conflict, and to persuade others of your viewpoint). When an actor fails to hold those generally understood goals, that disrupts the social contract and “we” call it “Acting in Bad Faith”

Ericf Aug 16, 2023, 6:21 PM
3 points
3
on: Red Pill vs Blue Pill, Bayes style
A strange game.

The only winning move is not to play.

Ericf Aug 2, 2023, 12:04 AM
2 points
0
in reply to: jimmy’s comment on: Is Kennedy a Nazi?
Just don’t use the term “conspiracy theory” to describe a theory about a conspiracy. Popular culture has driven “false” into the definition of that term, and wishful appeals to bare text doesn’t make that connection go away. It hurts that some terms are limited in usability, but the burden of communication falls on the writer.

Ericf Jul 31, 2023, 3:33 PM
−12 points
−6
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Is Kennedy a Nazi?
Looking at actual neo natzi and white supremacist pages/formus shows quite extensive usage of 14 & 88 symbology, and explicit explanations of the same, so your first point is factually inaccurate.

The term “conspiracy theory” comes pre-loaded with the connotation of “false” and you cannot use those words to describe a situation where multiple people have actually agreed to do something.

Ericf Jul 31, 2023, 3:19 PM
1 point
0
on: Is Kennedy a Nazi?
The innocent explanation is that the SS got back to him just before some sort of 90 day deadline, and he did the math. In which case the tweet could have been made out of ignorance, like flashing an “OK” sign in the “White Power” orientation. It’s not easy to keep up with all the dog whistles out there.

Still political malpractice to not track and avoid those signals, though. If you “accidentally” have a rainbow in the background of a campaign photo, that counts as aligning with the LGBTQ+ crowd—same thing with putting “88″ in a campaing post & Natzis.

So, the tweet aligns hos campaign with the Natzis, but might have done it accidentally.

Ericf Jul 14, 2023, 6:59 PM
10 points
0
on: Accidentally Load Bearing
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2347/

Ericf Jul 6, 2023, 4:03 AM
4 points
−3
in reply to: JenniferRM’s comment on: Guide to rationalist interior decorating
Neurotypicals have weaker preferences regarding textures and other sensory inputs. By and large, they would not write, read, or expect others to be interested in a blow-by-blow of asthetics. Also, at a meta level, the very act of writing down specifics about a thing is not neurotypical. Contrast this post with the equivalent presentation in a mainstream magazine. The same content would be covered via pictures, feeling words, and generalities, with specific products listed in a footnote or caption, if at all. Or consider what your neurotypical friend’s Facebook post about a renovation/new house etc. Emphasize: typically it’s the people, as in “we just bought a house. I love the wide open floor plan, and the big windows looking out over the yard make me so happy” in contrast to “we find that the residents are happier and more productive with 1000W of light instead of the typical 200.”

#don’texplainthejoke