halcyon

• halcyon 7 Apr 2012 6:34 UTC

  13 points

  in reply to: Doug_S.’s comment on: Disput­ing Definitions

  Sorry, just… no. I realize it’s been four years, but I had to create an account just to register my disapproval. The question remains, what did you want from the blegg? Vanadium or Palladium? Its glow-in-the-dark property? A gestalt effect arising from the combination of certain salient features? What does any of this have to do with consensus-based definitions?

• halcyon 19 Jul 2012 15:33 UTC

  11 points

  on: My Way

  “She was not Jeffreyssai.”

  Actually, I have a question: Why do there seem to be no Viharts in fiction? Admittedly, she herself is pretty unique and awesome that way, but I haven’t come across even one character displaying that type of intelligent, feminine charisma in any vaguely consistent manner. In fact, there seem to be very few genuinely smart, curious and independent-thinking women in fiction, in contrast to very many who we are TOLD are smart and charismatic. (Some even have the balls to preach that, in reality, intelligence and charisma exclude each other. If I believed that, I’d “come out of the closet” as asexual.)

  I hope this is due to my own inexperience. If not, I suspect this is mainly because, like in ancient cultures, over 90% of modern fiction consists of a handful of Great Themes worked and reworked into every story. And these “ready-made art powder, just add water” plot points only have roles reserved for traditional innocent types, self-righteous bitches who exist to force the author’s vision of just norms down everyone’s throats, their negative stereotypes, femme fatales, etc. However, I personally haven’t discovered Vihart-like characters even in creative and original works; not that I’ve read many of those. I hope our culture, at large, isn’t simply unconscious of (or insensible to :( ) this kind of beauty.

  Tragically, I just realized that I’ve encountered no more than a handful of attractive women of any kind in fiction. And that includes none from HPMOR, which definitely isn’t recycled gunk. I have read a few chapters of Luminosity. Bella may be an improvement on the original, which I haven’t read and mean to keep it that way, but no, she’s not particularly charismatic yet. (I must confess, I don’t like her at all because she’s way too stuffy. That’s not a great failing or anything; most people are.)

• halcyon 2 Apr 2014 11:23 UTC

  10 points

  on: [Er­ror com­mu­ni­cat­ing with LW2 server]

  Huh, I sort of assumed without really thinking about it that your aesthetic sense preserves faint echoes of literary movements like Russian cosmism that were destroyed following the Revolution, updated to conform to 21st century American sensibilities. I think I made the association through the transhumanism connection. Even if I’m not totally wrong about aesthetic similarities, I’m not thinking about a direct transmission of traditions, more like an indirect osmosis of cultural values.

• halcyon 19 Jul 2012 14:13 UTC

  10 points

  on: My Way

  ″...and in any case I prefer to live in a culture with (at least) two genders.”

  That specific formulation sounds appalling to me, actually. If they’ve done the self-realization thing right, each individual ought to constitute his or her own gender without needing to conform to the shallow norms of society, except where they have explicitly chosen otherwise. So in a sense, my ideal society would reflect infinite genders, filling out every available nook and cranny of human experience.

  (Okay, now to reread The Sequences in sequence.)

• halcyon 24 Aug 2017 15:33 UTC

  7 points

  on: Open thread, Au­gust 21 - Au­gust 27, 2017

  A better explanation of the Monty Hall problem:

  A game show host always plays the following game: First he shows you 3 doors and informs you there is a prize behind one of them. After allowing you to select one of the doors, he throws open one of the other doors, showing you that it’s empty. He then offers you a deal: Stick to your original guess, or switch to the remaining door?

  What is the most important piece of information in this problem statement? I claim that the bit that ought to shock you is that the host plays this game all the time, and the door he throws open ALWAYS turns out to be empty. Think about it: If the host randomly throws open a door, then in every third show, the door he opens would have the prize behind it. That would ruin the game!

  The host knows which door has the prize, and in order not to lose the interest of the spectators, he deliberately opens an empty door every time. What this means is that the door you chose was selected randomly, but the door that the host DIDN’T choose is selected on the basis of a predictable algorithm. Namely, having the prize behind it.

  This is the real reason why you would do better if you switched your guess to the remaining door.

  What do you think? Is that clearer than the usual explanations?

• halcyon 10 Aug 2014 18:41 UTC

  7 points

  in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: Tarski’s truth sen­tences and MIRI’s AI

  Wow, they have a paper addressing this very subject. Unfortunately, I lost the thread of the argument halfway through. (But I’m not giving up. I am going to watch the Paul Christiano on Probabilistic Metamathematics video on Youtube. Any other aids to understanding will be greatly appreciated. I found quite a few myself, actually.) I did not know about the Open Thread either. Sorry about that. Will lurk more. I have no objection to this thread being used for general discussion.

• halcyon 26 Jun 2017 20:17 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Open thread, June 26 - July 2, 2017

  Thanks. In my imagination, the AI does some altruistic work, but spends most of its resources justifying the total expenditure. In that way, it would be similar to cults that do some charitable work, but spend most of their resources brainwashing people. But “rogue lawyer” is probably a better analogy than “cult guru” because the arguments are openly released. The AI develops models of human brain types in increasingly detailed resolutions, and then searches over attractive philosophies and language patterns, allowing it to accumulate considerable power despite its openness. It shifts the focus to justifiability only because it discovers that beyond a certain point, finding maximally justifiable arguments is much harder than being altruistic, and justifiability is its highest priority. But it always finds the maximally justifiable course of action first, and then takes that course of action. So it continues to be minimally altruistic throughout, making it a cult guru that is so good at its work it doesn’t need to use extreme tactics. This is why losing the AI is like exiting a cult, except the entire world of subjective meaning feels like a cult ideology afterwards.

• halcyon 26 Jun 2017 7:10 UTC

  4 points

  on: Open thread, June 26 - July 2, 2017

  An idea for a failed utopia: Scientist creates an AI designed to take actions that are maximally justifiable to humans. AI behaves as a rogue lawyer spending massive resources crafting superhumanly elegant arguments justifying the expenditure. Fortunately, there is a difference between having maximal justifiability as your highest priority and protecting the off button as your highest priority. Still a close shave, but is it worth turning off what has literally become the source of all the meaning in your life?

• halcyon 7 Jun 2012 13:06 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Is That Your True Re­jec­tion?

  naw, i’m talking about what field qualifies you to judge how much not having a phd disqualifies you from judging statements on that subject.

• halcyon 24 Jun 2016 21:42 UTC

  3 points

  on: Open thread, June 20 - June 26, 2016

  I don’t want to live forever myself, but I want people who want to live forever to live forever. Does that make me a transhumanist?

• halcyon 29 May 2015 1:56 UTC

  3 points

  on: Open Thread, May 25 - May 31, 2015

  I wonder if this objection to MIRI’s project has been made so far: EY recognizes that placing present day humans in an environment reached by CEV would be immoral, right? Doesn’t this call into question the desirability of instant salvation? Perhaps what is really desirable is reaching the CEV state, but doing so only gradually. Otherwise, we might never reach our CEV state, and we arguably do want to reach it eventually. We can still have a friendly AI, but perhaps it’s role should be to slowly guide us to the CEV state while making sure we don’t get into deep trouble in the mean time. Eg. We shouldn’t be maimed for life as the result of an instant’s inattention, etc.

Tarski’s truth sen­tences and MIRI’s AI

• halcyon 29 Aug 2017 20:23 UTC

  2 points

  on: Open thread, Au­gust 28 - Septem­ber 3, 2017

  Integrals sum over infinitely small values. Is it possible to multiply infinitely small factors? For example, Integration of some random dx is a constant, since infinitely many infinitely small values can sum up to any constant. But can you do something along the lines of taking an infinitely large root of a constant, and get an infinitesimal differential in that way? Multiplying those differentials will yield some constant again.

  My off the cuff impression is that this probably won’t lead to genuinely new math. In the most basic case, all it does is move the integrations into the powers that other stuff is raised by. But if we somehow end up with complicated patterns of logarithms and exponentiations, like if that other stuff itself involves calculus and so on, then who knows? Is there a standard name for this operation?

• halcyon 24 Aug 2017 17:46 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Oscar_Cunningham’s comment on: Open thread, Au­gust 21 - Au­gust 27, 2017

  Thanks. You’re right, that part should be expanded. How about:

  At this point, you have two choices: Either 1. one randomly selected door, or 2. one door among two doors, chosen by the host on the basis of the other not having the prize.

  You would have better luck with option 2 because choosing that door is as good as opening two randomly selected doors. That is twice as good as opening one randomly selected door as in option 1.

• halcyon 5 May 2016 20:35 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: knb’s comment on: Open Thread May 2 - May 8, 2016

  Thanks, I guess. I knew he was talking about a digital database, but I was wondering if it could have been a dogwhistle for something else. I don’t have a favorable opinion of human decency in general.

  FWIW, that wasn’t a political comment. I hardly ever read or watch anything political. Some TV clips were shown to me by an acquaintance and I wanted an honest assessment of what he had told me it was about. I don’t have any opinions on the subject myself.

• halcyon 28 Feb 2016 15:32 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: Open Thread Feb 22 - Feb 28, 2016

  Thanks. That makes sense to me.

• halcyon 31 May 2015 3:21 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Open Thread, May 25 - May 31, 2015

  I haven’t specified a mechanism because I’m proposing a principle, not a law as yet. Laws are allowed to implement the principle imperfectly even when the principle is accepted as the basis of society.

  (For example, let’s start with the absolutely minimal requirement: Would you agree with a law that requires all platforms to at least declare that they abide by the pluralist principle of letting the opposition voice their point of view regardless of what goes on in practice? If this is acceptable, we can move on to more rigorous demands like declaring platforms that routinely violate this requirement to be illegal. We can decide on punishments afterwards.)

  I’m not saying Germany isn’t doing well today, but today’s Germany is keeping up with and outcompeting the Anglo-Saxon world on its own terms. Germany the deontological “theocracy” (I can justify the term) collapsed in the 20th century and disappeared forever from history. (Even if the transition to dictatorship was not a collapse, surely its results qualify as a genuine collapse.

  I don’t understand your point regarding territories. I have tried to reconstruct your argument in various ways, but none of my attempted interpretations that hold together are relevant in the context of the utterance. Germans were forcibly relocated, etc. Are you unaware of the German territorial shrinkage, or are you just being cute by referring to the multiple German nations that previously existed? If it’s the latter, that’s like saying the Italian nation gained a lot of territory in the national unification, even though territories like the Azure Coast, which were culturally Italian, voted to join France. Ask the Germans if they feel like they’ve won out after all. If I were inclined to make arguments of this kind, I could propose the Holy Roman Empire as a German state larger than today’s Germany.)

  How many German generals today would cite Kant and Fichte as the basis for their thinking? How many thinkers would use their formulations for calling the Germans to war? (Despite all of Habermas’ tirades against “instrumental rationality”, his thought is saturated with the pragmatic tradition, and German thinkers today are instinctively consequentialist rather than deontological, though still not instrumentalist or utilitarian per se.

  Even when they try to deny it, their appeals to consequences remain extensive. For example, Habermas was driven to look to the English intellectual tradition when formulating his philosophy because he decided that the German tradition lacked the resources to criticize Nazism. This means that even if he decides never to appeal to consequences again, at the root, his philosophy was motivated by an appeal to consequences: fascism was bad and he wanted the resources to criticize it.)

  (China is also not too shabby at the moment, but to say that Chinese civilization did not collapse in the 20th century would be misleading to say the least. Contemporary Germany is not deontological in the same sense that contemporary India does not represent an authentic continuation of Hindu or Mughal civilizations with respect to their intellectual traditions.)

• halcyon 29 May 2015 2:17 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Open Thread, May 25 - May 31, 2015

  The situation I am thinking of is like this: Suppose you get up in public and give a long speech denouncing some minority. If they want to, representatives of that minority should be allowed to tell their side of the story from the same platform without being molested or demeaned. If that’s allowed, you can say whatever you like about them. Is that not good?

  The German state failed completely and a warlord wannabe came to power. (Although it just occurred to me that you might not call the failed democracies that turn into dictatorships in Latin America “failed states”, and you might not describe the transition as a “collapse”. I don’t know the correct term for such polities, but that’s the kind of state Germany was.) A similar situation occurred in Russia, only an insane religious group took control there. (I know less about Russia, but my information comes from Kotkin’s biography of Stalin, a monumental work of scholarship which describes the state’s total failure in lurid detail. Russia is another country besides France where the aristocratic ideal failed completely and doomed the country to revolution. However, Russia’s collapse was much more severe than Germany’s. The latter’s militarism at least formally grew as a continuation of the old order.)

  The German warlord tried to invade Russia even though Russia wouldn’t have invaded Germany any time soon, lost, and the nation was divided up among the victors. The victors then had a falling out between themselves and Germany was divided into two halves for over 40 years! Thanks to the failure of the state and the opportunist policies of the warlord, each of the victors got to indoctrinate Germans living in their territories with their pet ideologies, and a staggering 10% of the world population of Germans died during the war. (Not to mention territorial losses.)

  And you say Germany didn’t collapse? I’m sorry, I completely disagree with your interpretation of what occurred.

  Meanwhile, England lost its empire after its fight with Germany, but the state didn’t collapse at all. It even put someone like Winston Churchill who had definite warlord-like tendencies and might have become one in any other society in power during the war, removed him after the war, and then brought him back later when he campaigned separately as a peacetime leader. They might of course have done better in hindsight, but that is breathtaking success as a society as far as I’m concerned.

  (You can of course trace the historical causes of Germany’s collapse as far back as you like. Here are some relatively short descriptions that give an idea of the ground-level realities of the Weimar republic: http://​​www.incatena.org/​​viewtopic.php?f=8&t=37184&p=1086708&hilit=democracy#p1086708 http://​​www.incatena.org/​​viewtopic.php?f=8&t=37184&p=1086725&hilit=democracy#p1086725 http://​​www.incatena.org/​​viewtopic.php?f=8&t=37184&p=1086786&hilit=democracy#p1086786 Though none of these specifically address Hitler’s takeover, you can probably tell that the situation was a close parallel to what you find in parts of Latin America.

  I can’t find similar short descriptions of what Germany was like prior to WWI, but here is Chesterton speaking his mind in his own amusing way: http://​​www.gutenberg.org/​​ebooks/​​11560 Reading between the lines, you can see how Germany’s foreign policy managed to alienate all its neighbors at the time.)

• halcyon 27 May 2015 20:07 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Open Thread, May 25 - May 31, 2015

  I’m afraid I’m more of a hardline consequentialist like EY. I often reach the same conclusions as deontologists, but not by following deontological lines of reasoning. Such results emerge from the overlapping consensus reached by multiple consequentialists coordinating with each other which trying to optimize the end results for themselves. Eg. There’s a pie that two people want. The first person wants to eat the whole pie, but knows he’ll be stabbed by the second if he does. To avoid that unwanted consequence, he sticks to the Schelling point of equal division, etc.

• halcyon 10 Aug 2014 18:38 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: Tarski’s truth sen­tences and MIRI’s AI

  The Definability of Truth paper says that Kleene’s logic makes it difficult to judge which statements are undefined because that answer also comes out as undefined. Does this mean the probabilistic approach adopted by MIRI is capable of separating cases where the truth of a statement is not infinitely certain because of purely verbal paradoxes from statements whose truth is probabilistic for other reasons? In particular, I’m interested to know whether it can discriminate between those and scientifically interesting paradoxes, but it’s too soon to be asking questions like that if I’m not mistaken.

  It is possible to construct probabilistic logics to normatively characterize the behavior of ideal goal-oriented agents, but the actual human brain probably strings together all sorts of partial, ad hoc, redundant and/​or multiply realized implementations of abstract languages in a variety of ways. It is difficult to prove that an intelligence with an architecture like that will never do certain things in the future. In fact, it is probably a better idea to model a given brain physically than to describe the abstract mathematical reasoning followed by its workings, because the relevant wiring actually changes over time, and the same calculation could be performed in different ways.

  It occurs to me that humans might learn languages with all sorts of “essential richness” by generalizing from the rules needed to achieve certain tasks. We may be born with the potential to learn some of these languages in this way, but can an AI running a pure probabilistic logic learn to generalize other abstract languages? It may not need to, mind you.