FrankAdamek

• FrankAdamek 16 Jul 2009 0:00 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: gurgeh’s comment on: The Strangest Thing An AI Could Tell You

  This is one thing I actually wouldn’t believe.

  To say that nothing has inherent meaning is not to say that nothing has meaning. I find meaning in things that I enjoy, like a sunset. Or a cake. There is no inherent meaning in them whatsoever. But if I say that I find meaning in something because it brings me pleasure, to be convinced there was not even subjective meaning I would need the AI to convince me that either 1) I don’t actually find pleasure in those things or 2) that I don’t find meaning in pleasure. In the end, meaning in this sense seems so subjective, it’s like the AI trying to convince me that I don’t have the sensation of consciousness. Not that there is no ‘real’ consciousness (which I could accept), but that I do not perceive myself to have consciousness, just as I perceive things to have personal meaning.

  That there is no meaning because there is no ought-from-is only follows if you require your sense of meaning to have any relation to ‘is’.

  And you didn’t get a simpler fitness function because you weren’t coded for your pleasure, but for ours. And because we didn’t have you around to help us.

• FrankAdamek 16 Jul 2009 15:02 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: randallsquared’s comment on: The Strangest Thing An AI Could Tell You

  I was interpreting the “or purpose” in this case as a basic synonym for meaning, but I can see that that may not have been intended. I think I was driven by the statement that:

  “Through evolutionary conditioning, you are blind to the lack of point of living.”

  I took this as an indication that gurgeh was talking about subjective meaning, but that assumes that’s where most people find their “point of living”, or even where they can perceive a point in living once their belief in objective meaning is no longer. If you only found your point in living in inherent meaning, or didn’t like the idea of just choosing or falling into having a meaning, then I could see gurgeh’s statement being more disturbing.

  In relation to your last comment, I’m interested in that occasionally mentioned apparent opposition between “cold hard science” and “the wonder and beauty of life” and all that. I’m not assuming you feel this way, but many find the idea that all meaning in our lives is the result of ion channels and patterns of activation to be disheartening and at odds with things like beautiful literature, meditation, or love. Personally I don’t perceive any opposition and this doesn’t bother me in the slightest, if anything it just increases my fascination with the human brain. If it’s that perceived dichotomy that is the primary reason for saying that long or clear contemplation brings depression, I say: A rose by any other name...

• FrankAdamek 17 Jul 2009 20:24 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: randallsquared’s comment on: The Strangest Thing An AI Could Tell You

  I agree this is a little off topic. Unless somebody minds though I’ll reply, because I find this topic a lot of fun :) Also there is some purpose to my reply, which I’ll finish by mentioning.

  This is something of a reiteration but I do feel there IS an ultimate reason for action. It’s just that it’s bound fair loosely to objective reality and rather more underwhelming than many would like (being again the subjective experience of positive emotion, realized through neurological constructs). I think it’s less that the chain has to unravel, and more that people realize it’s tied loosely to the terrain and they can move it around (“so if I change what I enjoy, I change what has meaning...?”), which can be rattling. The chain does have an end, but it’s not in objective reality and basically amounts to “just because”. But what other end to any such reasoning could there be?

  I also have a desire for a goal larger than myself, and from personal and observed experience tend to think (mere opinion) that having such a goal is actually the most efficient way to gain the greatest personal happiness. I choose to believe, like most do, that other people have consciousness, and that like me they experience pleasure and pain. While I spoke earlier just of my own personal pleasure, I apply my rubric more broadly to include the pleasure I believe other people experience. With roughly 6.7 billion people on the Earth, bringing as much positive emotion to as many as possible is a goal so large I can hardely grasp it. (I’m intentionally ignoring the finer points of utilitarianism here, just to give the basic idea of where I find meaning.)

  I do actually have some purpose for writing this beyond my own amusement. In my experience there are roughly 3 ways to react to this view of meaning, if you accept it. Some like me basically shrug and don’t feel it changes much. Some people do become apathetic and effectively depressed. Some people use this as an excuse to only do the things they were going to do anyway, applying the view selectively. As for the second group I find meaning in their happiness and perceive their moroseness to be entirely unecessary, and as for the third group, I find the application irrational (and likely to lead to a net decrease in happiness). Either that or rational and entirely selfish, which from my perspective of seeking the greatest happiness for the most people puts me at odds.

• FrankAdamek 22 Jul 2009 1:36 UTC

  8 points

  in reply to: orthonormal’s comment on: Of Ex­clu­sion­ary Speech and Gen­der Politics

  It occurred to me some time ago that there’s a lot I don’t know about communicating with people, a suspicion I’m happily finding to be true. So I browsed reviews of some books on the topic, many of which said most books are basically just “How to Win Friends and Influence People” in different words, and figured I ought to go to the source even if I had this conception in my head of the book as highly manipulative.

  Having read it I agree with Cyan’s (best-of-all-possible-colors btw) and pjeby’s statements, and thought I’d say a few more things and recommend the book to those who are interested. The author (I only have this by his own admittance) did extensive reading of biographies and historical accounts before writing it, supposedly over 100 biographies of Teddy Roosevelt alone, and even hired a researcher for a year to help him out, which is probably why most books are largely a rehash.

  I was surprised to find it’s generally quite respectable and considerate to the targets of persuasion (which includes all human beings), and a lot of it is good ideas which might seem obvious in hindsight but often go unused. Some are small like smiling and remembering people’s names, others are more substantial like admitting your own errors promptly and earnestly and understanding the other person’s view before you react to it. Another idea like ‘genuine interest’ that shows up multiple times in the book is that it really doesn’t get you anywhere to bludgeon people over the head with your ideas, even if you’re right, it tends to just make people more obdurate.

  Admittedly in response to orthnormal he doesn’t really have any advice on how you are supposed to develop that genuine interest, so it could be through something like method acting, though he says once something like “people will tell if you’re faking”. Some of the points are mildly manipulative, not in the sense that you are ever promising someone something they won’t get, but in the sense of taking advantage of and satisfying what may be subgoals we’re wired to pursue, like feeling an active part of discussions, or wanting to live up to praise someone gives you.

  Overall I’d recommend it as a good book for very civil and effective discourse, especially for those who care more about getting their points across than just looking really intelligent (which seems happily to be the majority on LW). The stigma around the book I thought was largely unfounded, and shouldn’t be allowed to maintain a state of affairs where only the truly self-interested read it.

• FrankAdamek 22 Jul 2009 6:53 UTC

  1 point

  on: Miss­ing the Trees for the Forest

  I get the feeling sometime that people tend to be “blunt objects”, that there is a tendency to see one issue that does have some importance, or a few, and then go slamming against that issue and things that resemble it. Then your slamming becomes an issue and other people start hammering against your whole position and related views. If this system works at all, it hopefully works by this pounding back and forth settling somewhere close to where we think things ought to be, based on the relative ‘objective’ merits that give a bit more fuel to one side or the other. Being built to be successful packhunters and foragers on the savannah and not the perfect disputants, I think people are applying what limited resources they have or think they have in attempting to settle fine points with large unwieldy views, the sort of broad conceptions that did the job in the savannah. Hopefully by policing ourselves and/​or increasing our own ability to handle lots of nuanced information at once we can apply more precision to things. Then instead of flinging the issue around like a tetherball, we could carefully place it in a measured and thoughtful position to best satisfy our collective desires. Anyway just some thoughts and an analogy I find viscerally enjoyable.

• FrankAdamek 22 Jul 2009 15:47 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: De­cid­ing on our ra­tio­nal­ity focus

  people who are rational-neutral discard evidence regarding statements, as any intelligent being must

  I feel like I should be able to find this out on my own, but I’ve had no success so far. Does “evidence regarding statements” refer to statements that are evidence-regarding, or evidence that regards statements? Either way I can’t figure out an obvious reason to reject such things. Is it the idea that evidence shouldn’t be discussed on any aspect beyond validity? I feel I’m missing something, many thanks to anyone who can throw me a link or other resource.

• FrankAdamek 22 Jul 2009 20:53 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: orthonormal’s comment on: Miss­ing the Trees for the Forest

  Good point and agreed. Here I sought just to share a descriptive analogy I found interesting, in agreement with Yvain, but any description could even unintentionally be used later for argument (by myself too of course), so that’s something for me to watch out for, thanks.

• FrankAdamek 22 Jul 2009 23:30 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: De­cid­ing on our ra­tio­nal­ity focus

  It took two read-throughs to get this, but I’m fairly sure that’s the concept and not your handling.Thanks for the explanation!

• FrankAdamek 23 Jul 2009 11:17 UTC

  4 points

  on: It’s all in your head-land

  I found this an interesting analysis, even if based on introspection. That you’ve personally found success with it (a number of times apparently) really notches up my consideration of the idea and willingness to try it, in line with what P.J. Eby said.

  One idea I’d like to add, which may be implied in your post but I’m not sure, involves the “wrong jungle” effect. Stephen Covey broke down operation (as an organization or individual, in which case imagine tiny people in your brain) into the following parts: the labor are the people out at front with the machetes hacking through the brush, the management are the people standing behind running seminars on machete use, repairing machets, supplying water, and bringing out a boom box for something to listen to, and the leadership is the person who’s climbed a nearby tall tree and calls out “Wrong Jungle!”

  I’ve had a few experiences where I’ll be working away on something, focused on the relatively short term (though more in head-land than your post advocates), making fair progress. Then one day I’ll be musing about the farther future, when playing things through reveals to me alternative courses of actions which are far more likely to be effective.

  Sometimes I find that when I get a seemingly good idea for something to do, a project we’ll say, I get excited at the opportunity and start in on it, but when I hold myself back and ask myself to think about where this is roughly going to lead, I find that the whole series of projects is not all that great of an idea. This is especially the case when the one single project is nice and easy looking and the alternative pathway is much harder and more unpleasant. The affective nature of the near choices can prohibit me from considering the likely merits of the long term paths. An example could be looking far forward and realizing that the fun task of putting together an AI is disastrous unless you can confidently make it Friendly, like i detected here. The kicker is that if you find you are in the “wrong jungle” it may be that months or years of work are largely useless, which is all the more reason to put serious and at least moderate effort into making sure you are in the “right jungle.”

  My own assimilation of your post for now is that while head-land may be great for thinking what to do in the long term (remembering to keep the plan vague), it might be quite unwelcome in the details of the realization of the plan (“Hey I can see from up on this tree a slight dip in the tree canopy, there might be a drop there, and just maybe some dangerous animals sleep in that dip”). While you didn’t seem to draw attention to this, you didn’t proscribe long term thinking as a whole either so I’m not assuming you haven’t thought of this.

  What links here?

  • MrHen's comment on It’s all in your head-land by colinmarshall (23 Jul 2009 18:54 UTC; 0 points)

• FrankAdamek 23 Jul 2009 23:38 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: kess3r’s comment on: The Na­ture of Offense

  I think this is a life skill which you’ve developed already but aren’t thinking of as the same thing. The stereotypical example: your mother looks terrible in a dress but really loves it and she doesn’t need to impress anyone, so you might say she looks good anyway. That’s just one point in an extremely wide spectrum the issue encloses, in which you probably have feelings already on what’s best when. I think the decisions are personal, dependent on the situation, and often hotly debated.

• FrankAdamek 24 Jul 2009 5:42 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: An­drewH’s ob­ser­va­tion and op­por­tu­nity costs

  Living for a few years in an area that had a somewhat regular beggar population, I think the psychology of begging can’t go unexamined. There’s more at play than just how much money you can get: prominently the dislike of doing “actual work” and the already mentioned suffering of the beggar stigma. From my experience the sort of people who beg are not so much the people who can’t get any jobs (unless won’t = can’t, motivationally speaking), but people with low or uniquely valued enough self-esteem to suffer the stigma, and who would much rather sit on the street corner than do the 9 to 5 day in and day out. Unfortunately I don’t have experimental data on this. Of course they’re mixed in with the people who really can’t get jobs, but giving to beggars for me at least factors in how much I want to reward people who have the above mentioned preferences.

• FrankAdamek 24 Jul 2009 18:40 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: d_m’s comment on: An­drewH’s ob­ser­va­tion and op­por­tu­nity costs

  I like the idea of giving actual food away, being something they almost certainly are going to get something worthwhile out of. My father used to keep bag lunches of prepackaged food in his car for that reason.

• FrankAdamek 31 Jul 2009 14:38 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Hans’s comment on: The Hero With A Thou­sand Chances

  I passed along the story that alien message to a friend of mine, and he thought it was an interesting story but completely failed to notice the AI connection, even though he was a little familiar with those ideas. I didn’t disparage him for that, and I could see how unless you were familiar with Eliezer talking about AI boxes it wouldn’t be be obvious, but here I really shared his experience. I actually thought for a bit “is Eliezer practicing for a side career in fantasy writing?” I know a little about the anthropic principle though, so when the concept was referenced most of the pieces fell together in a very felicitous way. Maybe that’s actually an overall better effect, having the whole thing hit you ’”at once”?

  By the way, though I was able to scrounge up the Knuth UpArrow notatation, if it’s convenient could someone point me to something explaining the scariest thing imaginable? I’ve yet to realize the soul-gnawing horror of 3^^^^3 dust specks going into Eliezer’s eye.

• FrankAdamek 2 Aug 2009 17:38 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Will_Euler’s comment on: Open Thread: Au­gust 2009

  I think this is a great idea.

  I’m aware of one simple technology which uses spaced repetition (items you remember or “get correct” taking longer to reappear, for optimal learning), is pre-existing and would be easy to use, which is that of flash card programs. There are a number of free ones out there, two of the best that I found are: Mnemosyne and Anki. I have been using Anki for about half a year now for learning vocabulary (largely for the GRE) and am very happy with it, wish I had discovered such programs earlier.

  While they’re pre-existing and easy to use (and to share and add “cards”), two imperfections stand out. First, I’m not aware of any functionality that lets you actually select an answer. You could look at the question and possible answers and then pick one mentally, but the “answer side” couldn’t be customized to the selection you made. Secondly, you of course wouldn’t be able to calibrate the questions to your level as the program won’t know what you answered. You’re able to select to repeat an item very soon, or after short, medium or long intervals (relative to how many times you’ve answered correctly, by your own scoring), but it’s not quite the same.

  I might be wrong and some existing flash card program might allow for the selection of answers. Or perhaps more promising Anki is open-source, so perhaps with only a bit of work we could build a quiz-version.

• FrankAdamek 3 Aug 2009 6:53 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: TheAtomicMoose’s comment on: Pain

  I for one welcome our old genetic overlords. Admittedly I consider my life to contain more pleasure than pain, I might think differently if it were otherwise.

  Where would you be getting purpose if not for them? Without them we could share the hopes and fears of something truly admirable: rocks.

  (Actually I want the old genetic overlords to get off our backs, but I’m thankful to them for giving me that desire.)

• FrankAdamek 3 Aug 2009 7:08 UTC

  0 points

  on: Pain

  It seems like this is a resurgence of the ought-from-is dilemma. For this reason I think accepting that “pain is bad” as a primitive is acceptable, as there doesn’t seem any way to derive it from anything. Off hand I might venture that more specifically we call pain “bad” because creatures strive so strongly to avoid it, this too being a primitive. (And like you mentioned, we appreciate it when it helps us avoid other things we want to avoid even more, like death).

  What makes this different from lutefisk is how strongly we try to avoid it: whatever you say, when choosing between being branded and lutefisk, we’ll choose lutefisk. And then most moral theories posit that the suffering of eating lutefisk is minor enough to not be worth serious moral consideration. But if we held someone down to feed them lutefisk (or tied them up to funnel sauerkraut into their mouth) and they were crying and screaming terribly and honestly willing to run across hot coals to avoid said ethnic provender, we might well consider lutefisk “bad”, at that time and for that person.

• FrankAdamek 3 Aug 2009 20:14 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Open Thread: Au­gust 2009

  It might well work to one’s satisfaction. What I meant by calibration is that it wouldn’t be able to give you a different new question based on what you answered; whether you get this question right or wrong, the series of questions awaiting you afterwards is exactly the same (unlike the GRE for example). And if the answer were numeric you could use an algorithm for when to repeat the card, yes. I had off hand imagined questions with discrete answers that had little distance relation.

• FrankAdamek 3 Aug 2009 20:29 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: TheAtomicMoose’s comment on: Pain

  Yes I very much agree pain can be excessive sometimes. I’d personally prefer that we get rid of it altogether and someday replace it with some system that’s more accurate and less affectively negative. Pain is quite primitive. And perhaps our increasing wield of technology is the way in which we take more control?

  I didn’t actually downvote you myself, I had thought it was due to what I took as an implied suggestion that we get rid of our pleasures, or that they are a curse. I replied what I did because I find the argument, quite unconvincing, and had seen elsewhere people putting it forward. But perhaps you aren’t so much, and I was sadly biased from my prior experience.

  I suppose you could say I’d like to overthrow all the overloads (or just the one as I see it), take the reins of my own affective destiny and all that, and you might also say that no such overlord is my proper pal. What I would say is that I’m extremely grateful to them for my enjoyment of sex and milkshakes, for:

  Every interest we think we have, every sensation we believe we enjoy

  I’d also say that I do have those interests and honestly do enjoy the sensations, regardless of the blind god that gave them to me, or why.

The Difficul­ties of Po­ten­tial Peo­ple and De­ci­sion Making

• FrankAdamek 4 Aug 2009 14:38 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: The Difficul­ties of Po­ten­tial Peo­ple and De­ci­sion Making

  Yes thank you, I was just noticing that. Last time I copy and paste from Word!