Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862

Karma: −8

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 6 Dec 2017 18:30 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Dustin’s comment on: The Critical Rationalist View on Artificial Intelligence
Have added in some sub-headings—if that helps.

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 2 Dec 2017 22:56 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Open Letter to MIRI + Tons of Interesting Discussion

I believe that you are fundamentally wrong about this, and that you actually use induction and probabilities.

This is the old argument that CR smuggles induction in via the backdoor. Critical Rationalists have given answers to this argument. Search, for example, what Rafe Champion has to say about induction smuggling. Why have you not done research about this before commenting? You point is not original.

First, because without induction, no reasoning about the real world is possible. Do you expect that (at least approximately) the same laws of physics apply yesterday, today, and tomorrow? If they don’t, then you can’t predict anything about the future (because under the hypothetical new laws of physics, anything could happen).

Are you familiar with what David Deutsch had to say about this in, for example, The Fabric of Reality? Again, you have not done any research and you are not making any new points which have not already been answered.

Specifically, Bayes Theorem is not about “goodness” of an idea; it is about mathematical probability. Unlike “goodness”, probabilities can actually be calculated. If you put 90 white balls and 10 black balls in a barrel, the probability of randomly drawing a white ball is 90%. If there is one barrel containing 90 white balls and 10 black balls, and another barrel containing 10 white balls and 90 black balls, and you choose a random barrel, randomly draw five balls, and get e.g. four white balls and one black ball, you can calculate the probability of this being the first or the second barrel. It has nothing to do with “goodness” of the idea “this is the first barrel” or “this is the second barrel”.

Critical Rationalists have also given answers to this, including Elliot Temple himself. CR has no problem with the probabilities of events—which is what your example is about. But theories are not events and you cannot associate probabilities with theories. You have still not made an original point which has not been discussed previously.

Why do you think that some argument which crosses your mind hasn’t already been discussed in depth? Do you assume that CR is just some mind-burp by Popper that hasn’t been fully fleshed out?

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 2 Dec 2017 11:55 UTC
1 point
in reply to: curi’s comment on: Open Letter to MIRI + Tons of Interesting Discussion
Ronald Reagan was a fan of Ayn Rand. He won the cold war so what is Lumifer talking about when he says Rand had no influence? He’s ignorant of history. Woefully ignorant if he thinks that the Soviet Union “lived (relatively) happily”. He hates Trump too. Incidentally, Yudkowsky lost a chunk of money betting Trump would lose. That’s what happens with bad philosophy.

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 1 Dec 2017 22:40 UTC
1 point
in reply to: entirelyuseless’s comment on: Open Letter to MIRI + Tons of Interesting Discussion
You are trying to reject a philosophy based on edge cases without trying to understand the big problems the philosophy is trying to solve.

Let’s give some context to the stair-falling scenario. Consider that the parent is a TCS parent, not a normie parent. This parent has in fact heard the stair-falling scenario many times. It is often the first thing other people bring up when TCS is discussed.

Given the TCS parent has in fact thought about stair falling way more than a normie parent, how do you think the TCS parent has set up their home? Is it going to be a home where young children are exposed to terrible injury from things they do not yet have knowledge about?

Given also that the TCS parent will give lots of help to a child curious about stairs, how long before that child masters stairs? And given that the child is being given a lot of help in many other things as well and not having their rationality thwarted, how do you think things are like in that home generally?

The typical answer will be the child is “spoilt”. The TCS parent will have heard the “spoilt” argument many times. They know the term “spoilt” is used to denegrate children and that the ideas underlying the idea of “spoilt” are nasty. So now we have got “spoilt” out of the way, how do you think things are like?

Ok, you say, but what if the child is outside near the edge of a busy road or something and wants to run across it? Do you not think the TCS parent hasn’t also heard this scenario over and over? Do you think you’re like the first one ever to have mentioned it? The TCS parent is well aware of busy road scenarios.

Instead of trying to catch TCS advocates out by bringing up something that has been repeatedly discussed why don’t you look at the core problems the philosophy speaks to and address those? Those problems need urgent attention.

EDIT: I should have said also that the stair-falling scenario and other similar scenarios are just excuses for people not to think about TCS. They don’t have want to think about the real problems children face. They want to continue to be irrational towards their children and hurt them.

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 1 Dec 2017 8:16 UTC
1 point
in reply to: curi’s comment on: Open Letter to MIRI + Tons of Interesting Discussion

Huh, you’re someone who would get the name of ARR [1] wrong? I didn’t expect that.

It surprised me too. I think it was just a blooper, but I’ve done it twice now. So hmm. You didn’t pick me up the first time.

You’re giving away significant identifying information, FYI.

I’m aware of that.

Why are you hiding your identity from me, btw?

I expect you already know who I am. I’ll take this over to FI forum.

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 1 Dec 2017 2:48 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Open Letter to MIRI + Tons of Interesting Discussion
Deutsch invented Taking Children Seriously and Autonomous Relationships. That was some decades ago. He spent years in discussion groups trying to persuade people. His status did not help at all. Where are TCS and AR today? They are still only understood by a tiny minority. If not for curi, they might be dead.

Deutsch wrote “The Fabric of Reality” and “The Beginning of Infinity”. FoR was from 1997 and BoI was from 2011. These books have ideas that ought to change the world, but what has happened since they were published? Some people’s lives, such as curi’s, were changed dramatically, but only a tiny minority. Deutsch’s status has not helped the ideas in these books gain acceptance.

EDIT: That should be Autonomy Respecting Relationships (ARR).

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 1 Dec 2017 2:06 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Open Letter to MIRI + Tons of Interesting Discussion

“Not getting shunned” is not quite the same thing as attempting “persuasion via attaining social status”.

David Deutsch has status. It hasn’t worked for him. Worse, seeking status compromised him intellectually.

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 30 Nov 2017 23:24 UTC
1 point
in reply to: curi’s comment on: Open Letter to MIRI + Tons of Interesting Discussion

FYI that’s what “abduction” means – whatever is needed to fill in the gaps that induction and deduction don’t cover.

Yes, I’m familiar with it. The concept comes from the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce in the 19th century.

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 30 Nov 2017 23:02 UTC
1 point
in reply to: curi’s comment on: Open Letter to MIRI + Tons of Interesting Discussion

Deduction … is compatible with CR too.

Yes. I didn’t mean to imply it isn’t. The CR view of deduction is different to the norm, however. Deduction’s role is commonly over-rated and it does not confer certainty. Like any thinking, it is a fallible process, and involves guessing and error-correction as per usual in CR. This is old news for you, but the inductivists here won’t agree.

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 11 Dec 2017 10:22 UTC
0 points
in reply to: entirelyuseless’s comment on: The Critical Rationalist View on Artificial Intelligence
Yes, there are situations were it can be harmful to state the truth. But there is a common social problem where people do not say what they think or water it down for fear of causing offense. Or because they are looking to gain status. That was the context.

The truth that curi and myself are trying to get across to people here is that you are doing AI wrong and are wasting your lives. We are willing to be ridiculed for stating that but it is the unvarnished truth. AI has been stuck in a rut for decades with no progress. People kid themselves that the latest shiny toy like Alpha Zero is progress but it is not.

AI research has bad epistemology at its heart and this is holding back AI in the same way that quantum physics was held back by bad epistemology. David Deutsch had a substantial role in clearing that problem up in QM (although there are many who still do not accept multiple universes). He needed the epistemology of CR to do that. See The Fabric of Reality.

Curi, Deutsch, and myself know far more about epistemology than you. That again is an unvarnished truth. We are saying we have ideas that can help get AI moving. In particular CR. You are blinded by things you think are so but that cannot be. The myth of Induction for one.

AI is blocked—you have to consider that some of your deeply held ideas are false. How many more decades do you want to waste? These problems are too urgent for that.

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 10 Dec 2017 6:46 UTC
0 points
in reply to: curi’s comment on: The Critical Rationalist View on Artificial Intelligence
People are overly impressed by things that animals can do such as dogs opening doors and think the only explanation is that they must be learning. Conversely, people think children being good at something means they have an in-born natural talent. The child is doing something way more remarkable than the dog but does not get to take credit. The dog does.

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 10 Dec 2017 6:27 UTC
0 points
in reply to: jmh’s comment on: The Critical Rationalist View on Artificial Intelligence
I would be happy to rewrite the first line to say: An entity is either a UKC or it has zero—or approximately zero—potential to create knowledge. Does that help?

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 9 Dec 2017 21:06 UTC
0 points
in reply to: entirelyuseless’s comment on: The Critical Rationalist View on Artificial Intelligence
Can we agree that I am not trying to prosthelytize anyone? I think people should use their own minds and judgment and I do not want people just to take my word for something. In particular, I think:

(1) All claims to truth should be carefully scrutinised for error.

(2) Claiming authority or pointing skyward to an authority is not a road to truth.

These claims should themselves be scrutinised for error. How could I hold these consistently with holding any kind of religion? I am open to the idea that I am wrong about these things too or that I am inconsistent.

I also think claims to truth should not be watered down for social reasons. That is to disrespect the truth. People can mistake not watering down the truth for religious fervour and arrogance.

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 9 Dec 2017 3:52 UTC
0 points
in reply to: HungryHobo’s comment on: The Critical Rationalist View on Artificial Intelligence

he proposes that humans are universal constructors, able to build anything. Observation: there are some things humans as they currently are cannot construct, as we currently are we cannot actually arbitrarily order atoms any way we like to perform any task we like. The worlds smartest human can no more build a von neuman probe right now than the worlds smartest border collie.

Our human ancestors on the African savannah could not construct a nuclear reactor, nor the skyline of Manhattan, nor an 18 core microprocessor. They had no idea how. But they had in them the potential and that potential has been realized today. To do that, we created deep knowledge about how our universe works. Why you think that is not going to continue? Why should we not be able to construct a von Neumann probe at some point in the future? Note that most of the advances I am talking about occurred in the last few hundred years. Humans had a big problem with static memes preventing progress for millennia (see BoI). If not for those memes, we may well be at the stars by now. While humans made all this progress, dolphins and border collies did what?

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 9 Dec 2017 3:22 UTC
0 points
in reply to: entirelyuseless’s comment on: The Critical Rationalist View on Artificial Intelligence

If someone points to an AI that can generate scientific hypothesis, design novel experiments to attempt to falsify them and run those experiments in ways that could be applied to chemistry, cancer research and cryonics you’d just declare that those weren’t different enough domains because they’re all science and then demand that it also be able to control pianist robots and scuba dive and run a nail salon.

We have given you criteria by which you can judge an AI: whether it is a UKC or not. As I explained in the OP, if something can create knowledge in some disparate domains then you have a UKC. We will be happy to declare it as such. You are under the false idea that AI will arrive by degrees, that there is such a thing as a partial UKC, and that knowledge creators lie on a continuum with respect to their potential. AI will no more arrive by degrees than our universal computers did. Universal computation came about through Turing in one fell swoop, and very nearly by Babbage a century before.

You underestimate the difficulties facing AI. You do not appreciate how truly different people are to other animals and to things like Alpha Zero.

EDIT: That was meant to be in reply to HungryHobo.

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 9 Dec 2017 1:49 UTC
0 points
in reply to: IlyaShpitser’s comment on: The Critical Rationalist View on Artificial Intelligence
Critical Rationalists think that E. T. Jaynes is confused about a lot of things. There has been discussion about this on the Fallible Ideas list.

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 9 Dec 2017 1:30 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Elo’s comment on: The Critical Rationalist View on Artificial Intelligence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KmimDq4cSU

Everything he says in that video is in accord with CR and with what I wrote about how we acquire knowledge. Note how the audience laughs when he says you start with a guess. What he says is in conflict with how LW thinks the scientific method works (like in the Solomonoff guide I referenced).

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 9 Dec 2017 0:25 UTC
0 points
in reply to: HungryHobo’s comment on: The Critical Rationalist View on Artificial Intelligence
FYI, Feynman was a critical rationalist.

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 9 Dec 2017 0:12 UTC
0 points
in reply to: HungryHobo’s comment on: The Critical Rationalist View on Artificial Intelligence

Millions of people have incorrect beliefs about vaccines, millions more are part of new age groups which have embraced confused and wrong beliefs about quantum physics (often related to utterly misunderstanding the term “Observer” as used in physics) …

You are indirectly echoing ideas that come from David Deutsch. FYI, Deutsch is a proponent of the Many Worlds Explanation of quantum physics and he invented the idea of the universal quantum computer, founding quantum information theory. He talks about them in BoI.

Fallibilist_duplicate0.16882559340231862 8 Dec 2017 20:53 UTC
0 points
in reply to: HungryHobo’s comment on: The Critical Rationalist View on Artificial Intelligence

The author brings up the idea of things we may genuinely simply not be able to understand and just dismisses it with literally nothing except the objection that it’s claiming things could be inexplicable and hence should be dismissed. (on a related note the president of the tautology club is the president of the tautology club)

Deutsch gives arguments that people are universal explainers/constructors (this requires that they be computationally universal as well). What is your argument that there are some things that a universal explainer could never be able to understand? Alternatively, what is your argument that people are not universal explainers? Deutsch talks about the “reach” of knowledge. Knowledge created to solve a problem in one domain can solve problems in other domains too. What is your argument that the knowledge we create could never reach into this inexplicable realm you posit?