imbatman

Karma: 41

imbatman 1 May 2013 20:15 UTC
1 point
on: Pluralistic Moral Reductionism
Did the next few posts Luke mentions would be about empathic metaethics ever get written? I don’t see them anywhere.

imbatman 12 Jun 2012 18:02 UTC
1 point
in reply to: SRStarin’s comment on: Efficient Charity: Do Unto Others...
this was covered here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/65/money_the_unit_of_caring/

“If the soup kitchen needed a lawyer, and the lawyer donated a large contiguous high-priority block of lawyering, then that sort of volunteering makes sense—that’s the same specialized capability the lawyer ordinarily trades for money. But “volunteering” just one hour of legal work, constantly delayed, spread across three weeks in casual minutes between other jobs? This is not the way something gets done when anyone actually cares about it, or to state it near-equivalently, when money is involved.”

imbatman 22 May 2012 21:48 UTC
3 points
in reply to: MarkusRamikin’s comment on: Rationality Quotes May 2012
That’s correct.

imbatman 21 May 2012 16:28 UTC
2 points
on: Rationality Quotes May 2012
“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”

imbatman 21 Feb 2012 20:56 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Risto_Saarelma’s comment on: Evaluating Multiple Metrics (where not all are required)
Thanks. Do you think the vote downs have to do with the content? Is this not a relevant topic for this forum?

imbatman 21 Feb 2012 16:56 UTC
0 points
in reply to: faul_sname’s comment on: Evaluating Multiple Metrics (where not all are required)
I tried visualizing but I don’t know how that helps me construct a formula. I would imagine, in your example, the landscape would be mountainous. One movie may have both great suspense and great humor and be a great movie...another may have both great suspense and great humor and be just an okay movie. But then perhaps there is a movie with very low amounts of humor or suspense that is still a good movie for other reasons. So in that case neither of these metrics would be good predictors for that movie.

That’s kind of the core of the issue, as your exercise illustrates. Since in any given case, and metric can be a complete non-predictor of the outcome, I don’t know any way to construct the formula. It seems like you’d have to find some way to both include and exclude metrics based on (something).

So maybe the answer is the N/A thing I considered. Valuing movie metrics is not about quantifying how much of each metric is packed into a film. It is about gauging how well these metrics are used. So maybe you could give Schindler’s List “N/A” in the humor metric and some other largely humorless movie a ²⁄₁₀ based on the fact that you felt the other movie needed humor and didn’t have much. In that way, it seems all metrics not stated as N/A would have value and you would just need to figure out how to weight them. For instance:

A 9 9 9 9 wouldn’t necessarily score a better total than a 9 9 9 N/A...but it might, if the last category was weighted higher than one/some of the others.

imbatman 21 Feb 2012 16:28 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Risto_Saarelma’s comment on: Evaluating Multiple Metrics (where not all are required)
I liked this idea, which carried the added bonus of only taking a few second to implement. Better?

imbatman 20 Feb 2012 23:01 UTC
0 points
in reply to: faul_sname’s comment on: Evaluating Multiple Metrics (where not all are required)
Yes! That helps. My question, then, is what to plug into that formula if a metric SOMETIMES matters.

e.g. If 9 9 9 9 isn’t necessarily better than 9 9 9 0.

There are probably some additional questions to think of, but I’m not sure what they are. And I’m not entirely sure this is possible...that’s why I brought it up.

imbatman 20 Feb 2012 20:49 UTC
0 points
in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: Evaluating Multiple Metrics (where not all are required)
I tried to acknowledge that the rankings in this case are completely subjective. Maybe it would help to think about it like this. Let’s say instead we have a data set. We’ll simplify to 4 metrics: Plot, Acting, Humor, and Suspense. We’re given data for 3 movies, for each movie a ranking for these 4 metrics, respectively:

Groundhog Day 9 9 10 5 Terminator 8 8 6 9 Achorman 6 9 10 2

Based on this, what are some ways to evaluate this data? We’re not satisfied that just summing the rankings for each metric comes up with an accurate ranking for the film overall. So how else can we do it?

imbatman 20 Feb 2012 19:55 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Evaluating Multiple Metrics (where not all are required)
Just thought I would try to make it easier to follow. An alternative would have been to declare my terms, I guess. I haven’t really developed a strategy for that—just thought I’d try this.

imbatman 11 Jan 2012 15:19 UTC
3 points
on: Rationality quotes January 2012
“A man’s gotta know his limitations.”—Dirty Harry

imbatman 10 Jan 2012 23:21 UTC
15 points
on: Rationality quotes January 2012
“A Confucian has stolen my hairbrush! Down with Confucianism!”

-GK Chesterton (on ad hominems)

imbatman 13 Dec 2011 23:18 UTC
0 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Newcomb’s Problem and Regret of Rationality
I liked the quote not because of any notion that Bayes will or should “go out the window,” but because, coming from a devout (can I use that word?) Bayesian, it’s akin to a mathematician saying that if 2+2 ceases to be 4, that equation goes out the window. I just like what this says about one’s epistemology—we don’t claim to know with dogmatic certainty, but in varying degrees of certainty, which, to bring things full circle, is what Bayes seems to be all about (at least to me, a novice).

More concisely, I like the quote because it draws a line. We can rail against the crazy strict Empiricism that denies rationality, but we won’t hold to a rationality so devoutly that it becomes faith.

imbatman 13 Dec 2011 18:01 UTC
2 points
on: Newcomb’s Problem and Regret of Rationality
Upvoted for this sentence:

“If it ever turns out that Bayes fails—receives systematically lower rewards on some problem, relative to a superior alternative, in virtue of its mere decisions—then Bayes has to go out the window.”

This is such an important concept.

I will say this declaratively: The correct choice is to take only box two. If you disagree, check your premises.

“But it is agreed even among causal decision theorists that if you have the power to precommit yourself to take one box, in Newcomb’s Problem, then you should do so. If you can precommit yourself before Omega examines you; then you are directly causing box B to be filled.”

Is this your objection? The problem is, you don’t know if the superintelligent alien is basing anything on “precommital.” Maybe the superintelligent alien has some technology or understanding that allows him to actually see the end result of your future contemplation. Maybe he’s solved time travel and has seen what you pick.

Unless you understand not only the alien’s mode of operation but also his method, you really are just guessing at how he’ll decide what to put in box two. And your record on guesses is not as good as his.

There’s nothing mystical about it. You do it because it works. Not because you know how it works.

imbatman 8 Dec 2011 5:20 UTC
9 points
on: Welcome to Less Wrong! (2010-2011)
Hello All. I came across Less Wrong via Common Sense Atheism a few weeks ago. I have enjoyed it so far, but I have yet to put in the time to get up to speed on the sequences. Plan to, though.

I’m a Financial Accountant in Birmingham, AL. I’m not sure I would (yet) identify myself as a rationalist, but as for what I value, I value truth above all. And if I’m not mistaken, valuing truth seems a big step toward becoming a rationalist. I also value life, liberty, happiness, fun, music, pizza, and many other things.

Here’s a little more about me:

Height: 6′0″ Shoe Size: 12 Favorite Sport: Basketball Favorite Philosophers: Calvin & Hobbes Greatest Weakness: Distinguishing between reality and fantasy Greatest Strength: I’m Batman

imbatman 7 Dec 2011 17:03 UTC
9 points
in reply to: NancyLebovitz’s comment on: More “Personal” Introductions
I’m not using a pseudonym.