jeronimo196

Karma: 93

jeronimo196 Jul 15, 2020, 3:01 PM
2 points
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in reply to: TAG’s comment on: The Failures of Eld Science
If it is any consolation, I remember reading a post or an Author’s Note from EY, saying he won’t be publishing any new fiction for fear of reputational losses.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

jeronimo196 Jul 10, 2020, 3:12 AM
2 points
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in reply to: Mauricio_AG’s comment on: The Power of Intelligence

For every mental strength we confidently point to, there will be an excellent physical strength we could also point to as a proximate cause, and vice versa.

I agree with you. I just find the particulars oddly inspiring—even if we are not the fastest land hunters, we are genetically the most persistent. This is a lesson from biology that bears thinking about.

Also, we could point to our physical strengths, but people usually don’t. We collectively have this body image of ourselves as being “squishy”, big brains compensating for weak, frail bodies. I like disabusing that notion.

jeronimo196 Jun 29, 2020, 8:30 AM
1 point
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in reply to: TAG’s comment on: Reductive Reference

I see your point. But if water didn’t always boil at the same temperature, why would we bother inventing thermometers?

We have more need to measure the unpredictable than the predictable.

If there was nothing with constant temperature, thermometers would work very differently. My first instinct was to say they wouldn’t work at all. But then I remembered the entire field of economics, so your point stands.

Not every one sees things that way. The more hardline claims require the physical map to exclude others.

Good luck with that. I couldn’t calculate the behaviour of the quarks in a single hydrogen atom if my life depended on it.

jeronimo196 Jun 29, 2020, 7:38 AM
4 points
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in reply to: DPiepgrass’s comment on: Dark Side Epistemology
Thank you for this discussion.

I was wrong about grammar and the views of Chalmers, which is worse. Since I couldn’t be bothered to read him myself, I shouldn’t have parroted the interpretations of someone else.

I now have better understanding of your position, which is, in fact, falsifiable.

We do agree on the importance of the question of consciousness. And even if we expect the solution to have different shape, we both expect it to be embedded in physics (old or new).

I hope I’ve somewhat clarified my own views. But if not, I don’t expect to do better in future comments, so I will bow out.

Again, thank you for the discussion.

jeronimo196 Jun 25, 2020, 10:29 PM
1 point
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in reply to: DPiepgrass’s comment on: Dark Side Epistemology

But note that Linux is a noun and “conscious” is an adjective—another type error—so your analogy doesn’t communicate clearly.

Linux is also an adjective—linux game/shell/word processor.

Still, let me rephrase then—I don’t need a wet cpu to simulate water. Why would I need a conscious cpu to simulate consciousness?

AFAIK, you are correct that we have no falsifiable predictions as of yet.

Do you expect this to change? Chalmers doesn’t. In fact, expecting to have falsifiable predictions is itself a falsifiable prediction. So you should drop the “yet”. Only then can you see your position for the null hypothesis it is.

The most obvious problem—that there is no “objective” subjective experience, qualia, or clear boundaries on consciousness in principle (you could invent a definition that identifies a “boundary” or “experience”, but surely someone else could invent another definition with different boundaries in edge cases)—tends not to be perceived as a problem by illusionists, which is mysterious to me.

There is not a single concept, that could not be redefined. If this is a problem, it is not unique to consciousness.

“A process currently running on human brains” -although far from being a complete definition, already gives us some boundaries.

I think you’re saying the suffering has no specific location (in my hypothetical scenario), but that it still exists, and that this makes sense and you’re fine with it; I’m saying I don’t get it.

Suffering is a state of mind. The physical location is the brain.

By stimulating different parts of the brain, we can cause suffering (and even happiness).

Another way to think about it is this—where does visual recognition happen? How about arithmetic? Both required a biological brain for a long, long time.

And for the hipothetical scenario—let’s say I am playing CS and I throw a grenade—where does it explode?

But perhaps illusionism’s consequences are a problem? In particular, in a future world filled with AGIs, I don’t see how morality can be defined in a satisfactory way without an objective way to identify suffering. How could you ever tell if an AGI is suffering “more” than a human, or than another AGI with different code? (I’m not asking for an answer, just asserting that a problem exists.)

That’s only the central problem of all of ethics, is it not? Objective morality? How could you tell if a human is suffering more than another human?

I don’t see how qualia helps you with that one. It would be pretty bold to exclude AGIs from your moral considerations, before excluding trees (and qualia has not helped you exclude trees!).

Edit: I now realize your position has little to do with Chalmers. Since you are postulating a qualia particle, which has casual effects, you are a substance dualist. But why rob your position of its falsifiable prediction? Namely—before the question of consciousness is solved, the qualia particle will be found.

Or am I misrepresenting you again?

jeronimo196 Jun 25, 2020, 12:42 PM
1 point
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in reply to: TAG’s comment on: Reductive Reference

How do you know that water always boils at the same temperature?

I remember reading it somewhere...

I see your point. But if water didn’t always boil at the same temperature, why would we bother inventing thermometers?

The moral of the story is not so much that science always works, it’s that it works in a way that’s more coherentist than foundationalist.

Right. And since science does work, coherentism gets a big boost in probability, right until the sun stop rising every day.

And the downside of coherentism is that you can have more than one equally coherent wordlviews...

But would they work equally well? We value science primarily for giving us results, not for being coherent.

If both views are equally coherent and give us equal result (or the results are unclear as of yet), choosing one would be privileging the hipotesis.

jeronimo196 Jun 25, 2020, 9:02 AM
5 points
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in reply to: Sister_Y’s comment on: Reductive Reference
Edit: Now I see Sister_Y addressed my point in the very next paragraph, so this entire comment is a reading comprehension fail more than anything.

Necroing:

poke—my friend likes to explain this to his undergrads by asking them how they would verify that a thermometer is accurate (check it against another thermometer, but how do you know that one is accurate . . . etc.) until they figure out that thermometers are only “accurate” according to custom or consensus. Then he asks them how they know their eyes work. And their memories.

Some of them cry.

Go to the beach, light a fire, boil some water. Put the thermometer in the boiled water—does it show 100 degrees Celsius? Still at sea level, put a cup of water in a fridge untill it starts freezing. Put the thermometer in the cup—does it show 0 degrees Celsius?

If yes to both, you have a working thermometer. This way, you don’t rely on the consensus of other thermometers. As for the custom of calling a working thermometer accurate—that’s what it is for.

Eyes and memory can be similarly tested.

Of course, accepting the results of such tests requires acceptance of induction from the past. Maybe the realization you’ve faced “Last Thursdayism” for the first time at undergraduate level is something to cry about, but no one actually does.

Lest I sound too smug, rest assured I am not convinced I would’ve done better before finding Less Wrong.

jeronimo196 Jun 19, 2020, 9:09 AM
1 point
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on: Is Humanism A Religion-Substitute?
A good “atheistic hymn” is simply a song about anything worth singing about that doesn’t happen to be religious.

No, that’s a good non-religious song. Without religion there would be no atheism, only the much broader scepticism. Atheism is a response to religion—to be considered “atheistic”, a song could not avoid the topic. (Alternatively, we’d have to consider “Fear of the dark” a great aspiderman song).
The best atheistic song I’ve heard is “Dear God” by XTC—the last prayer of many a new atheist, who’ve lost faith, but not yet the habit of praying:

Dear God, hope you get the letter and
I pray you can make it better down here
I don’t mean a big reduction in the price of beer
But all the people that you made in your image
See them starving on their feet
’Cause they don’t get enough to eat from God
I can’t believe in you
Dear God, sorry to disturb you but
I feel that I should be heard loud and clear
We all need a big reduction in amount of tears
And all the people that you made in your image
See them fighting in the street
’Cause they can’t make opinions meet about God
I can’t believe in you
Did you make disease and the diamond blue?
Did you make mankind after we made you?
And the Devil too!
Dear God don’t know if you noticed but
Your name is on a lot of quotes in this book
And us crazy humans wrote it, you should take a look
And all the people that you made in your image
Still believing that junk is true
Well I know it ain’t, and so do you
I can’t believe in
I don’t believe
I won’t believe in heaven or hell
No saints, no sinners, no devil as well
No pearly gates, no thorny crown
You’re always letting us humans down
The wars you bring, the babes you drown
Those lost at sea and never found
And it’s the same the whole world ’round
The hurt I see helps to compound
The Father, Son and Holy Ghost
Is just somebody’s unholy hoax
And if you’re up there you’ll perceive
That my heart’s here upon my sleeve
If there’s one thing I don’t believe in
It’s you

And yes, there is a very clear god-shaped void, the disappointment of a promise unfulfilled.
There is also an “epic vocals” cover by Lawless (feat. Sydney Wayser) that is more hymn-like—prettier, but less angry. Both are worth listening to.

[Edited: fromatting]

jeronimo196 Jun 17, 2020, 12:00 PM
1 point
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in reply to: Ian_C.’s comment on: Explaining vs. Explaining Away

Because I believe things are what they are. Therefore if I introspect and see choice, then it really truly is choice. The other article might explain it, but an explanation can not change what a thing is, it can only say why it is.

An example of mind projection fallacy so pure, even I could recognise it. Ian believes “he believes things are what they are”. If Ian actually believed things are what they are, he would possess unobtainable level of rationality and we would do well to use him as an oracle. In reality, Ian believes things are what they seem to be (to him), which is understandable, but far less impressive.

jeronimo196 Jun 16, 2020, 4:09 PM
3 points
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in reply to: DPiepgrass’s comment on: Dark Side Epistemology
I think of consciousness as a process (software) run on our brains (wetware), with the theoretical potential to be run on other hardware. I thought you understood my position. Asking me to pinpoint the hardware component which would contain suffering, tells me you don’t.

To me, saying the cpu (or the gpu) is conscious sounds like saying the cpu is linux—this is a type error. A pc can be running linux. A pc cannot actually be linux, even if “running” is often omitted.

But if one doesn’t know “running” is omitted, one could ask where does the linux-ness come from, if neither the cpu nor the ram are themselves linux.

If a particle (or indivisible entity) does something computationally impossible (or even just highly intelligent), I call it magic.

But it does know to interact with mammals and not with trees and diamonds? … Argh! You know what, screw it. This is like arguing how many angels can sit on top of a needle. Occam’s razor says not to.

Does it pay rent in anticipation?

It pays rent in sensation.

Without falsifiable predictions, we have no way to difirentiate a true ad-hoc explanation from a false one. Also, a model with no predictive powers is useless. Its only “benefit” would be to provide piece of mind as a curiosity stopper. (See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a7n8GdKiAZRX86T5A/making-beliefs-pay-rent-in-anticipated-experiences.)

I have a first-person subjective experience and I am unable to believe that it is only an abstraction.

I honestly don’t see the disconnect. I don’t think the existence of a conscious AGI would invalidate my subjective experiences in the slightest. The explanation is always mundane (“only an abstraction” ?), that doesn’t detract from the beauty of the phenomenon. (See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/x4dG4GhpZH2hgz59x/joy-in-the-merely-real).

(Otherwise I probably would have turned atheist much sooner.)

I believe you are right. Many people cite subjective personal experiences as their reason for being religious. This does make me doubt our ability to draw correct conclusions based on such.

jeronimo196 Jun 15, 2020, 8:36 AM
1 point
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in reply to: DPiepgrass’s comment on: Dark Side Epistemology

Using the word “yes” to disagree with me is off-putting.

Noted. Thank you for pointing this out.

I wasn’t talking about the GPU.

Good to have that clarified.

… but I would be much more concerned about animal suffering than about my AMD Ryzen 5 3600X suffering.

Huh? I am now confused.

By the way, where will the suffering be located? Is it in the decode unit?...

Pain signals are processed by the brain and suffering happens in the mind. So, theoretically, the suffering would be happening in the mind running on top of the simulated cortex, inside the matrix. All the hardware would be necessary to run the simulation. The hardware would not be experiencing the simulation. Just as individual electrons are not seeing red.

I never said I rejected reductionism.

I misunderstood then—you do seem unhappy with the standard reductionist model’s position on emotions and experiences as states of mind.

I reject illusionism.

What do you mean by “illusionism”? Is it only the belief that AGI or a mind upload could be conscious? Or is there more to it?

Quite the opposite. A magical particle would be one that is inexplicably compatible with any and every representation of human-like consciousness (rocks, CPUs of arbitrary design) - with the term “human-like” also remaining undefined. I make no claims as to its size. I claim only that it is not an abstraction, and that therefore known physics does not seem to include it.

And how do you know that? Why do you think this unknown particle is not compatible with rocks and CPUs? Is it because you get to define its behaviour precisely as you need to answer a philosophical question a certain way?

What evidence would it take to falsify your belief in this primitive particle? What predictions does it allow you to make? Does it pay rent in anticipation?

jeronimo196 Jun 11, 2020, 1:44 PM
1 point
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in reply to: DPiepgrass’s comment on: Dark Side Epistemology

“something-it-is-like to be a thing”

Ok, I could decipher this as a vague stand in for experience. I would much prefer something like “the ability to process information about the environment and link it to past memories”, but to each their own.

“the element of experience which, according to the known laws of physics, does not exist”.

Uhm… Are you banking on a revolution in the field of physics? And later you even show exactly how reductionism not only permits, but also explains our experiences.

So in the standard reductionist model, there is no meaningful difference between minds and airplanes;

Yes, there is. One has states of mind and the other doesn’t. How meaningful this difference is depends on your position on nihilism.

a mind cannot feel anything for the same reason an airplane or a computer cannot feel anything.

Wrong! The end of your paragraph shows why this is a wrong description of reductionism.

A mind is simply a machine with unusual mappings from inputs to outputs. Redness, cool breezes, pleasure, and suffering are just words that represent states which are correlated with past inputs and moderate the mind’s outputs.

Yes. Exactly. Pleasure and suffering are just words, but the states of mind they represent are very much real.

It seems impossible for a quark (electron, atom) or photon to be aware it is inside a mind.

Correct—particals lack the computational power to know anything. Minds, on the other hand, can know they are made of particles. This is not a problem for reductionism. Actually, explaining how simple particles’ interactions lead to observed phenomena on the macro level is the entire point.

Some would claim this AGI is “phenomenally conscious”; I claim it is not, since the hardware can’t “know” it’s running an AGI any more than it “knows” it is running a text editor inside a web browser on lesswrong.com.

Yes, no one would call your GPU conscious. The AGI is the software, though. The AGI could entertain the hipotesis it lives in a simulation, even before discovering any hard evidence. Much like we do. Depending on its code, it could have states of mind similar to a human and then I would not hesitate to call it conscious.

How willing would you be to put such an AGI in the state of mind described by reductionists as “pain”, even if it is simply a program run on hardware?

but a primitive of some sort that exists in addition to the quarks that embody the state, and interacts with those quarks somehow.

If such a primitive does interact with quarks, we will find it.

I expect this primitive will, like everything else in the universe, follow computable rules

And then we have yet another particle. How is that different from reductionism?

so it will not associate itself with any arbitrary representation of a state, such as my single-threaded AGI or an arrangement of rocks.

Ah, it’s a magical particle. It is smaller than an electron, yet it interacts with the quarks in the brain, but not those in the carbon of a diamond. Or is it actually big, remote and intelligent on its own (unlike electrons)? So intelligent it knows exactly what to interact with, and exactly when, so as to remain undetected?

If you are not postulating a god, you are at the very least postulating a soul under a new name.

See, once you step outside the boundaries of mundane physics, you get very close to teology very fast.

jeronimo196 May 29, 2020, 12:12 PM
1 point
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in reply to: TAG’s comment on: Dark Side Epistemology
Yes. Once I define qualia as “conscious experience”, I necessarily have to leave it out of the definition of “consciousness” (whatever that may be).

My point is that only the question of consciousness remains. And consciousness is worth talking about only if human brains exhibit it.

I am not trying to solve the question of qualia, I am trying to dissolve it as improper.

P.S. Do you mind tabooing “qualia” in any further discission? This way I can be sure we are talking about the same thing.

jeronimo196 May 29, 2020, 10:59 AM
1 point
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in reply to: DPiepgrass’s comment on: Dark Side Epistemology
Ok. I am still unsure of your position. Do you think other people have experiences, but we cannot say if those are conscious experiences? Or are you of the opinion we cannot say anyone has any kind of experiences? Could you please taboo “qualia”, so I know we are not talking about different things entirely?

jeronimo196 May 19, 2020, 4:45 PM
2 points
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in reply to: TAG’s comment on: Perpetual Motion Beliefs
Oops! Beautiful. Your comment described my implicit assumptions probably better than I could, before showing me the error in my thinking. I will have to try and accept the consequences of QM on a deeper level. “It all adds up to normality” is a weak consolation, if you happen to be far from the median after all. It’s also becoming blindingly obvious I should finally just sit down and read Feynman.

Huh. The universe is non-deterministic after all. Like, for real. I knew May was going way too peacefully.

Edit: Forgot to say: Thank you for that!

jeronimo196 May 18, 2020, 5:52 AM
1 point
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in reply to: Дмитрий Зеленский’s comment on: Perpetual Motion Beliefs
From what I understand, the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics is deterministic—everything possible does happen. It only seems probabilistic from inside one of the worlds. You can’t predict the outcome of a quantum event, since different instances of you will observe all possible outcomes. Take with a grain of salt, since Many Words is unproven (possibly unprovable?) and my understanding is surface level at best.

On the macro level, a coin toss of a fair coin becomes predictable if you have perfect knowledge and enough computational power. The point of probabilities and statistics is that they give us the rules for mapmaking with imperfect knowledge and limited computational power.

In short, a deterministic universe doesn’t lead to certainty in our maps—hence “probability may be a “subjective state of belief”, but the laws of probability are harder than steel.”

jeronimo196 May 18, 2020, 3:15 AM
1 point
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in reply to: sairjy’s comment on: New Improved Lottery
Bitcoin might be a desperate get-rich-quick scheme. However, the odds are not as small as Eliezer’s lottery. Also, some people use it to purchase illegal goods and services, so there’s that. There are similarities, but there are also important differences. Also, there is an upper limit to how much you can lose with the lottery—not so with crypto.

In short, crypto currencies are similar to Eliezer’s lottery only to the extent that all day trading is gambling. Which is true often enough, but not always.

jeronimo196 May 6, 2020, 9:32 AM
0 points
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in reply to: Mark_Friedenbach’s comment on: Words as Mental Paintbrush Handles
The article is asserting that there are people who can construct mental images, not that all people can construct mental images.

jeronimo196 Apr 21, 2020, 8:10 AM
−1 points
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on: Extensions and Intensions

To give an “extensional definition” is to point to examples, as adults do when teaching children. The preceding sentence gives an intensional definition of “extensional definition”, which makes it an extensional example of “intensional definition”.

Why do you feel the need to do this?

jeronimo196 Apr 21, 2020, 2:25 AM
6 points
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in reply to: sam_kayley’s comment on: Lost Purposes
Necroing:

In cases of delayed effects, linking pensions to outcomes years later might provide incentives.

For instance, teachers pensions could depend on the eventual earnings of their pupils, or elections could have tickboxes for evaluating the last politician.

(which doesn’t help the problem of credit being due to many people)

Punishments and rewards should be kept as close to the (un)desired behaviour as possible. Noise to signal ratio should be kept as low as possible. Linking teachers’ pensions to their pupils earnings (which depend heavily on things like “the economy”) is one of the most demotivating proposals I have ever heard.

As for grading politicians—you either vote for their party, or you don’t. Which is the only feedback from the general public they maybe care about. (But why would they—most democracies have a two party system. Get elected, fill your pockets, wait your turn. Maybe wait two terms—big whoop!)

If you want to experience what proper, habit forming, behaviour changing incentive structure feels like, I suggest trying a “free-to-play” mobile game. Clear objectives, daily tasks, randomized rewards—Skinner would be proud. Be warned, the end result is not that different from a casino. But if you don’t have an addictive personality, the risk might be worth it. I walked away with the following enlightenment: “All that psychology I’ve been reading about? It really does work! On me!!!”.

Of course, gamefying complex tasks is difficult and in certain cases might be impossible. I think it is seriously worth a try in education.