James Stephen Brown

• James Stephen Brown 24 Jul 2024 18:53 UTC

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  in reply to: benjaminikuta’s comment on: Why Peo­ple in Poverty Make Bad Decisions

  I don’t mean to assert that one effect is bigger than the other, more that together they create a vicious cycle. No one disputes that bad decisions can lead to poverty, that’s common sense, or that other factors influence it, but if poverty itself is a multiplier it stands to reason that that needs to be addressed as part of any potential solution. The next post (dropping Saturday) is about how, in such coordination problems, multiple factors must align in order for any one solution to be effective.

• James Stephen Brown 20 Jul 2024 5:08 UTC

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  in reply to: ulyssessword’s comment on: Why Peo­ple in Poverty Make Bad Decisions

  Oh, sorry, that was largely boiler-plate, while this post did have some hover-over info which didn’t translate to LW (which was actually kind of important, as it provided some disclaimers and caveats to points made) it’s probably not what you’d call a “full experience”. Some other posts on the site have simulations.
  
  Though I do think the overall aesthetic of the posts on the site is subtly important for the tone of my writing (generally a not too serious tone).

• James Stephen Brown 16 Jul 2024 4:04 UTC

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  in reply to: cata’s comment on: Why Peo­ple in Poverty Make Bad Decisions

  I’d be interested in reading up on the replication problems with priming if you have any links. I wasn’t on guard for this sort of research, so it seemed plausible to me. All of this goes against our general intuitions that people need to feel their poverty to get motivated for working, so I’m more likely to accept scientific research than assume it’s wrong and that my intuitions are correct.

• James Stephen Brown 16 Jul 2024 0:45 UTC

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  in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: Why Peo­ple in Poverty Make Bad Decisions

  Wait, are you trying to tell me that drug addiction and mental illness contribute to poverty? That seems like a stretch… (jokes)
  
  I feel like that’s is a given, the factors that perpetuate poverty are manifold. The article focuses on this finding because it reveals a counter-intuitive and therefore easily overlooked contributory factor (and a significant one at that).

  I didn’t mean at all to suggest that this finding was the only contributory factor, or that it could be solved with any one solution (which is why the title of the last section reads “a” solution, not “the” solution).

  Thanks for reading and responding :)

Why Peo­ple in Poverty Make Bad Decisions

Sav­ing Lives Re­duces Over-Pop­u­la­tion—A Counter-In­tu­itive Non-Zero-Sum Game

Cap­i­tal­is­ing On Trust—A Simulation

• James Stephen Brown 6 Jun 2024 5:33 UTC

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  on: A civ­i­liza­tion ran by amateurs

  I think the idea is really interesting. As someone who spent 5 years creating student video resources, I appreciate the impact they can have, and I have at times tried to convince my father—a life-long maths teacher to collaborate with me on replicating his course… but the fool didn’t take me up on the offer.

  the cost of showing it to every student in the country is approximately zero

  I feel like the cost-effectiveness argument is valid but might run into issues. To begin with, as you have in one of your comments pointed out, video resources with a teacher who can respond dynamically, adds much more than a video alone. So, this means there is no cost saving in terms of teachers time—which I think is a good thing (I’ll put a pin in that for later) and then video production on top of that is not at all cheap. One thing that was consistent, in my experience creating educational resources, was the need to constantly update the resources (there was a team of us working full time to just maintain one course).

  So, while the cycle of feedback and constant improvement of the resources is a vital part of the process, it makes what seems like a one-off expense into a perpetual expense.

  Furthermore teachers are already underpaid, relative to other professions requiring similar skills, so the additional funding for these new resources would need to result from an unprecedented increase in education funding (which could have gone to teachers) or would have to be taken from the budget at the expense of teachers.

  Unless of course you leave it to the private sector in which case you have to worry about advertising, special interests and competition leading optimisation for what is appealing to students rather than what is necessarily effective—Hollywood, after all only has the mandate to entertain, they don’t have to also educate.

  To get back to that pin: If we did manage to create a resource perhaps incorporating generative AI that can present ideas in an engaging way and provide dynamic feedback, making teachers unnecessary we run into another issue. There’s something to be said for having well-rounded educators in society, learning in a non-specialised way is enriching for people in general. One negative side of chat GPT is this way drastic drop-off in activity on forums like Stack Overflow, because people don’t need other people any more.

  There’s something about the person to person trading of ideas that I think contributes to a robust community, in the same way that international trade helps to curb international conflicts—we might find that making human interaction unnecessary to education whether in schools or on forums might lead to a fragmentation of the social fabric. Personally I really like the idea of lots of amateurs sharing ideas—like on LessWrong and other forums, there’s something uniquely human about learning from sharing, with benefits for the teacher also (à la the Feynman Technique).

  But, I think you make a good case. Thanks for sharing the idea.

Mas­culinity—A Case For Courage

Moloch—An Illus­trated Primer

• James Stephen Brown 25 May 2024 19:37 UTC

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  in reply to: FeepingCreature’s comment on: Why I’ll Keep My Crummy Draw­ings—How Gen­er­a­tive AI Art Won’t Sup­plant… Art.

  Hey, again good points.

  But I have recognized sparks of true understanding in one-shot AI works.

  I absolutely agree here, this is what I was referring to when I wrote...

  I think we can appreciate the beauty of connecting with humanity as a whole, knowing that it is the big data of humanity that has informed AI art—I suspect this is what we find so magical about it.

  I suspect that AI has an appeal not just because of its fantastic rendering capacity but also the fact that it is synthesising works not just from a prompt but from a vast library of shared human experience.

  you’re looking at hours of thought and effort

  Regarding the arduous* process of iteratively prompting and selecting AI art, I think the analogy with photography works in terms of evoking emotions. Photographers approach their works in a similar way, shooting multiple angles and subjects and selecting those that resonate with them (and presumably others) for exhibition or publication. I think there is something special about connecting with what a human artist recognised in a piece whether it came from a camera or an algorithm. I acknowledge this is a form of connection that is still present in AI art, just as it is in photography.

  * I caveat “arduous” because, while it might take hours of wrangling the AI to express something approximating what we intend, the skill that takes artists years to master—that of actually creating the work, is largely performed, in the case of AI art, by the non-sentient algorithm. It is not the hours of work that goes into one painting that impresses the viewer generally, it’s the unseen years of toil and graft that allowed the artist to make something magic within those hours. The vast majority of the magic in AI art is provided by the algorithm.

  This is why I see it as analogous to photography. Still a valid art form, but not one that need make actual painting obsolete.

• James Stephen Brown 24 May 2024 9:20 UTC

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  in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: What Are Non-Zero-Sum Games?—A Primer

  Okay, so I think I get you now, in the imbalanced game, if the payoff is 100 or 1 as in “Zero Sum” is a misnomer, a rational player will still make the same decision, regardless of the imbalance with the other player, given the resulting preference ordering.

  However while this imbalance makes no difference to the players’ decisions, it does make a difference to the total payoff, making it non-zero-sum. I’m having difficulty understanding why values such as happiness or resources cannot be substituted for utility—surely at some point this must happen if game theory is to have any application in the real world. Personally I’m interested in real world applications, but I fully acknowledge my ignorance on this particular aspect.
  
  I find a practical way to look at a zero-sum game is to imagine that each of two players must contribute half of the total payoff in order to play. This takes a game that is constant-sum, and makes it zero-sum, and does so in a way that doesn’t break the constant-sumness. In the case of the imbalanced game, because it is not constant-sum it doesn’t reduce to a zero-sum game in this way, remaining a non-zero-sum game with terrible odds for one player, meaning that a rational player won’t opt in if given the option.
  
  If I’m not mistaken, this is generally what is meant when someone refers to a zero-sum game. In chess for instance you enter a competition with your rating (essentially your bet) and the outcome of the game has either a negative or positive (or no) impact on your rating and an opposite impact on your opponent’s rating.(I’m not exactly sure if chess ratings are calculated as exactly zero-sum, but you get the idea). So, the game is zero-sum. Of course there are outside factors that make it beneficial to both players; enjoyment, brain-exercise, socialising etc which may have positive utility on another level, but the game itself and the resulting rating changes are essentially zero-sum.
  
  This is the sense in which I am using the term “zero-sum”, in the most basic sense for someone to win (relative to their starting point, bet or rating) another must lose by an equal amount.
  
  There is probably a more mathematically succinct way of expressing this, but I don’t have those tools at my disposal at present. Again, thanks for your comments. Please don’t feel the need to continue your labours educating me on this topic, I understand that you clearly have a better understanding of game theory than I do, so I appreciate your time. I should probably continue reading further to level up my understanding. Of course if you feel like continuing the floor is yours.

• James Stephen Brown 23 May 2024 22:27 UTC

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  in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: What Are Non-Zero-Sum Games?—A Primer

  I’m not sure how the game is the same when you add a constant. The game as proposed in the example is clearly different. I can see that multiplication makes no difference, and as such doesn’t make the sum non-constant. I don’t see how asymmetrically changing the parameters is a “mere change in notation”.

  By the way, I’m sure you’re entirely correct about this, I just simply don’t see how there is a problem with using the concept of zero-sum understood as constant-sum.

• James Stephen Brown 23 May 2024 19:23 UTC

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  in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: What Are Non-Zero-Sum Games?—A Primer

  Hi Vladimir, thanks for your input, it has been fascinating going down the rabbit hole of nuance regarding the term “zero-sum”.

  I agree that the term is more accurately denoting “constant-sum”, I think this is generally implied by most people using it. There was the interesting “zero-sum” example in the linked article that veered away from “constant-sum” with asymmetrical payoffs, 100,0 or 0,1, meaning that depending on the outcome of the game the total sum would be different. This, to me disqualifies it from being called a zero-sum game, given the common understanding that zero-sum denotes constant-sum. The example seemed to solve the problem by conflating zero-sum and constant-sum and then proceeded to stick to a strict definition of zero-sum, which was confusing. But perhaps I just need to sit with it longer.

  To your point about Kaldor-Hicks, yes I guess many positive-sum situations could be described in these terms but I’m really referring to something more general—any situation where the total sum payoff increases regardless of Pareto improvements or promised reimbursement by other means to any party left worse off. For instance if a left-wing government were to increase taxes on the wealth, not offering them any reimbursement, but rather doing this based on the mandate that comes with being democratically elected, then this policy might be positive-sum due to the fact that dollar-for-dollar money makes a bigger difference to a poor person than a rich person, due to diminishing returns on happiness.

  I really appreciate your comments, and intend to continue exploring the nuances you’ve raised. I think for a primer on non-zero-sum games, particularly with a site that is focused on practical solutions in the real world rather than pure theory, the more accessible (perhaps less nuanced) definitions I’ve used are probably appropriate.

• James Stephen Brown 23 May 2024 5:46 UTC

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  in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: What Are Non-Zero-Sum Games?—A Primer

  Hi Vladimir,

  Thanks for your comment, please excuse the delay in getting back, I’m actually busily digesting your response and the various branches of dependencies that comprise it (in terms of links to other concepts). I intend to get back to you with a considered answer, but am enjoying taking my time exploring the ideas you’ve linked to.

• James Stephen Brown 22 May 2024 22:59 UTC

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  in reply to: bideup’s comment on: A Pos­i­tive Dou­ble Stan­dard—Self-Help Prin­ci­ples Work For In­di­vi­d­u­als Not Populations

  Hi bideup, thanks for your comment. The graph is simplified from one in the Pew Report with the left bar representing the lower quintile and the right representing the upper. I see what you mean, but the intention of pointing to the 20% mark is to show where it should be given 100% social mobility. Perhaps the omission of the central quintiles didn’t help.

A Pos­i­tive Dou­ble Stan­dard—Self-Help Prin­ci­ples Work For In­di­vi­d­u­als Not Populations

What Are Non-Zero-Sum Games?—A Primer

• James Stephen Brown 17 May 2024 13:20 UTC

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  in reply to: silentbob’s comment on: The Align­ment Prob­lem No One Is Talk­ing About

  There’s a tiny possibility he may have influenced my thinking. I did spend 6 months editing him, among others for a documentary.

• James Stephen Brown 17 May 2024 13:17 UTC

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  in reply to: Jan_Kulveit’s comment on: The Align­ment Prob­lem No One Is Talk­ing About

  That looks interesting, will read :) Thanks.