ForensicOceanography

• ForensicOceanography 30 Jan 2021 18:35 UTC

  1 point

  on: The Up­per Limit of Value

  Hello, thank you for sharing the paper. This is an interesting philosophical point; however, I have the impression that your conclusion is not true for all the possible value functions.

  All the examples in your paper assume that the value of a commodity is linear in the amount of it (for example, Plutonium costs 5$/​mg). But what happens if the value of a commodity increases with time? For example, a never-ending plutonium speculation bubble could make 1 mg of plutonium cost 1$ x exp(kt), for some k.

  I feel that you have a point, but I think that you should axiomatize what properties the “value” function fulfills. If I do not want to sell my stuffed toy for any price, does it mean that it has an infinite price? Does your argument still hold if we replace “value” with “beauty” or any other undefined concept, or is this an argument specific for economic value? If yes, what is your definition of an “economic value” functional?

  Maybe you have already answered to this kind of objection and I did not notice it.

• ForensicOceanography 4 Feb 2021 7:03 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Davidmanheim’s comment on: The Up­per Limit of Value

  You are saying that you can always redefine the value function to be finite, while maintaining the lexicographic order.

  Fair enough, but then your “value” is no longer a measurement of the amount of effort/​money/​resources you would be willing to pay for something. It is just a real function with the same order relationship on the set of objects.

  It is certainly is possible to construct a “value” function which is finite over all the possible states of the universe, I totally agree. But is this class of functions the only logically possible choice?

• ForensicOceanography 8 Feb 2021 15:31 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: The max­i­mally rel­a­tivis­tic zeitgeist

  Even without Internet, greek agoras had their deal of mobs, tyrannids and groupthink. Logic is only one of the many weapon of rethoric, but it is an useful weapon (it struck me to notice that even 4chan/​pol now has a table of logical fallacies in evidence at the top of the board).

  Yes, if we have to be optimistic in the long run cancel culture could help society by developing anticorps.

• ForensicOceanography 8 Feb 2021 15:36 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Davidmanheim’s comment on: The Up­per Limit of Value

  Ok, now I get it.

• ForensicOceanography 8 Feb 2021 16:08 UTC

  1 point

  on: Quadratic, not logarithmic

  Maybe the bias comes from the perception that the unknown risk has to be either very low or very large. It would make sense, for example, for low risks such as getting hit by a lightning.

  Let us suppose that I am willing to tolerate a certain maximum risk, say <1%.

  I do not know the real risk of interacting with people, but I want that Nx < 0.01 (if linear), where N is the number of contacts and x is the unknown risk per contact.

  Now, if I am already willing to meet 99 people, this means that I am guessing x < 0.01 /​ 99.

  I would accept to increase to 100 if x < 0.01 /​100. Not wanting to meet 100 people when you already meet 99 means estimating that

  0.01 /​100 < x < 0.01 /​ 99

  which would be a weirdly precise claim to make.

  On the other hand, if I am wrong in estimating x < 0.01 /​ 99, it may be that x>0.1, for example, and then we are outside the linear regime, and the risk of 99 is very similar to the risk of 100 (as they are both close to 1).

  Of course this heuristic fails if the unknown risk is in at intermediate scale probability, neither evident neither extremely low (like in the case of covid).

Against but­terfly effect

• ForensicOceanography 9 Feb 2021 18:06 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Shamash’s comment on: Against but­terfly effect

  Hi, I think I see what you mean. You can certainly say that the flap, as a part of the initial conditions, is part of the causes of the tornado. But this is true in the same sense in which all of the initial conditions are part of the cause of the tornado. The flap caused the tornado together with everything else. All the initial ocean temperatures, the position of the jet streams, the northern annular mode index, everything. If everything is the cause, then “being the cause of the tornado” is a property which carries exactly 0 bits of information, since everything is the cause.

  I prefer to think that an event A “caused” another event B if the probability of B, conditioned on A happening, is at least greater than the prior probability of A.

• ForensicOceanography 11 Feb 2021 18:21 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: Against but­terfly effect

  Strictly speaking, for a chaotic system the magnitude of the differences should be amplified exponentially with time (with rates given by Lyapunov exponents).

• ForensicOceanography 11 Feb 2021 18:28 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Shamash’s comment on: Against but­terfly effect

  I see, but you are talking about an extremely idiosyncratic measure (only two points) on the space of initial conditions. One could as easily find another couple of initial conditions, in which the wing flip prevents the tornado.

  If there were a prediction market on tornadoes, its estimations should not change in neither direction after observing the butterfly.

  “there is a set of initial conditions such that when butterfly flap = 0 there is no Texas tornado, but when butterfly flap = 1 and no other initial conditions are changed, there is a Texas tornado.”

  Phrased this way it is obviously true.

  However, why are you saying that chaos requires determinism? I can think of some Markovian master equations with quite a chaotic behavior.

• ForensicOceanography 11 Feb 2021 18:41 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Daniel Kokotajlo’s comment on: The Story of the Reichstag

  My understanding is that, even if the parliament had no more effective power, it was still used for ceremonial purposes.

  The last time it convened was in 1942, when it formally gave to Hitler supreme power.

He­lio­cen­trism in the an­cient era

• ForensicOceanography 16 Feb 2021 18:27 UTC

  2 points

  on: Don’t en­courage pris­on­ers dilemmas

  At first I was convinced by your argument, but then I tought to apply it also to the voters.

  Both parties would be probably better with a lower turnout (less undecided voters to convince, less effort required to campaign); but it does not seem correct to conclude that we should not encourage voting. An high level of engagement of the local popolation in politics is supposed to be a good thing for democracies, even if it requires more work.

  I do not think that donations to political parties should be tax deductable. But I hesitate on the abstract principle “Do not encourage prisoners dilemmas”. Sometimes it is good that everyone makes more effort, because that effort produces something valuable. Two rival pencil companies “play” in opposition to each other (in the estreme case in which the pencil demand is totally inelastic, it would be a zero sum game, because if more people buy pencils from company A, then less people buy pencils from company B). But this does not mean that the state’s regulations should encourage monopolies: monopolies are (generally) not good.

  Depending on your utility function, there are situations in which you should wish to encourage a prisoner dilemma between two factions, if this yields benefits to you or other people.

  Maybe your principle applies when the relevant model really has no third party which gains from A and B fighting. But I can not think to many such situations in the society (even in wars, there is someone (weapon sellers?) who profits if the belligerants fight harder).

[Question] What are the most pow­er­ful lo­tuses?

• ForensicOceanography 21 Feb 2021 8:34 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Brendan Long’s comment on: He­lio­cen­trism in the an­cient era

  If the Earth was stationary in an inertial reference frame, no.

  If you want to compute tidal forces in the reference frame of the Earth (i.e., extract the quadrupole term from a painful integral), you have to include an apparent force which accounts for the fact that the Earth is really rotating.

• ForensicOceanography 21 Feb 2021 8:56 UTC

  3 points

  on: Utility Max­i­miza­tion = De­scrip­tion Length Minimization

  This look like a technical statement of the Anna Karenina principle,

  All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

  But then the problem becomes finding the right M which maximises your utility function.The optimal solution might be very unintuitive and it may require a long description to be understood. M will not be (in general) a smooth set.

• ForensicOceanography 21 Feb 2021 19:02 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: ejacob’s comment on: What are the most pow­er­ful lo­tuses?

  I think that Caplan is referring to a scenario in which the UBI is high enough to cause a significant reduction of the employment rate.

  1000 $ per month would not achieve this effect.

  By the way, here in Italy the state has recently enacted a law to give 780 € per month to unemployed people. The party which proposed this law has been mostly voted by southern Italy, whose ruling classes correctly predicted that it would have had the effect of increasing undeclared work.

• ForensicOceanography 23 Feb 2021 10:20 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: Brendan Long’s comment on: He­lio­cen­trism in the an­cient era

  Basically, the fact that the sea rises not only in the directions of the Sun and of the Moon, but also in the opposite directions.

  If you think that the Sun and the Moon attract just the sea, but that the Earth does not move, then you would expect the water to bulge only towards them, and not also in the opposite direction.

  If you instead think that the whole Earth is falling towards the Moon and the Sun, you have to subtract the motion of the center of the Earth, and you will correctly predict to see the water rise in both directions. The center of the Earth is attracted more than the sea in the opposite side, but less than the sea on the side of the Moon/​Sun, so when you subtract you see a high tide in both sides.

  In the Placita Philosophorum (probably written by Aetius) it is written that (Ps. Plut. Plac. 3.17):

  Seleucus the mathematician attributes a motion to the earth; and thus he pronounceth that the moon in its circumlation meets and repels the earth in its motion; between these two, the earth and the moon, there is a vehement wind raised and intercepted, which rushes upon the Atlantic Ocean, and gives us a probable argument that it is the cause the sea is troubled and moved.

  Now, this is very unclear (and the English translation does not help—for example πνεύματος is not “a wind”, the Stoichs used it to mean a much more abstract kind of influence); Galileo was confused by this passage too. But it looks like Seulecus assumed that the Earth moves in order to explain tides.

• ForensicOceanography 24 Feb 2021 10:11 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Unnamed’s comment on: Avoid Con­tentious Terms

  I agree, and I would extend the advice to all the expressions which are short, fashionable, and somewhat opaque.

  In Politics and the English Language, Orwell offered further arguments for avoiding ready-made phrases.

• ForensicOceanography 25 Feb 2021 17:53 UTC

  1 point

  on: Coin­ci­dences are Improbable

  Coincidences are improbable, but improbable thing happens. Given any two events A and B, each one with probability 0.01/​day, we expect that in about one day in 10000 both will happen. Seems pretty low, but what happens if there are several events A, B, C, …., Z, each one with probability 0.01?

  If we consider 25 distinct improbable events, there are 25X24/​2 = 300 pair of events, and each of those pair has a probability of 10^(-4) of happening in a day. Therefore, in about 3% of days (that is, one a month) you will observe a coincidence, which is not anymore that low.

  In some of your examples, you are considering things that must have a well-defined cause (someone must have damaged your couch; something must be causing your skin irritation), so if the only thing new is the other event it is reasonable to guess a causal link (but what if you have a new dog and a new cat? Or if you changed lotion and you are also allergic to your new dog?). But in real life it is usually very difficult to insulate only one possible cause.

  The latitude of the Great Pyramid of Giza coincides with the value of the speed of light in m/​s, and the pyramids are roughly aligned with theposition of the Orion’s Belt constellation in 12500 BC, and both these things are very unlikely, but I do not think there is something to uncover.

• ForensicOceanography 12 Mar 2021 5:02 UTC

  2 points

  on: Un­con­ve­nient con­se­quences of the logic be­hind the sec­ond law of thermodynamics

  First, a little technical precisation: Poincaré′s recurrence theorem applies to classical systems whose phase space is finite. So, if you believe that the universe is finite, then you have recurrence; otherwise no recurrence.

  I think that your conclusion is correct under the hypothesis that the universe exists from an infinite time, and that our current situation of low entropy is the result of a random fluctuation.

  The symmetry is broken by the initial condition. If at t=0 the entropy is very low, then it is almost sure that it will rise. The expert consensus is that there has been a special event (the big bang), that you can modelize as an initial condition of extremely high entropy.

  It seems unlikely that the big bang was the result of a fluctuation from a previously unordered universe: you can estimate the probability of a random fluctuation resulting in the Earth’s existence. If I recall correctly Penrose did it explicitly, but you do not need the math to understand that (as already pointed out) “a solar system appears from thermal equilibrium” is extremely more likely that “an entire universe appears from thermal equilibrium”. Therefore, under you hypothesis, we should have expected with probability of almost 1, to be in the only solar system in existence in the observable universe.

  I wish to stress that these are pleasant philosophical speculations, but I do not wish to assign an high confidence to anything said here: even if they work well for our purposes, I feel a bit nervous in extrapolating mathematical models it to the entire universe.