Jess_Riedel

Karma: 158

Jess_Riedel 10 Aug 2009 16:03 UTC
36 points
on: Would Your Real Preferences Please Stand Up?
This is one place where Caplan seems to go off the deep end. I think it illustrates what happens if you take the Cynic’s view to the logical conclusion. In his “gun to the head” analogy, Caplan suggests that OCD isn’t really a disease! After all, if we put a gun to the head of someone doing (say) repetitive hand washing, we could convince them to stop. Instead, Caplan thinks it’s better to just say that the person just really likes doing those repetitive behaviors.

As one commenter points out, this is equivalent to saying a person with a broken foot isn’t really injured because they could walk up a flight of stairs if we put a gun to their head. They just prefer to not walk up the stairs.

It is an incredibly simplistic technique to reduce the brain to a single, unified organ, and determine the “true” desires by revealed preferences. Minds are much more complex and conflicted than that. Whatever people mean by “myself”, it is surely not just the combined output of their brain.
What links here?
- Jess_Riedel's comment on Would Your Real Preferences Please Stand Up? by Scott Alexander (10 Aug 2009 16:06 UTC; 3 points)

Jess_Riedel 26 Oct 2010 21:47 UTC
12 points
in reply to: Academian’s comment on: Willpower: not a limited resource?
With respect, I’ve always found the dynamic inconsistency explanation silly. Such an analysis feels like one is forcing, in the face of contradictory evidence, to model human beings as rational agents. In other words, you look at a person’s behavior, realize that it doesn’t follow a time-invariant utility function, and say “Aha! Their utility function just varies with time, in a manner leading to a temporal conflict of interests!” But given sufficient flexibility in utility function, you can model any behavior as that of a utility-maximizing agent. (“Under environmental condition #1, he assigns 1 million utility to taking action A1 at time T_A1, action B1 at time T_B1, etc. and zero utility for other strategies. Under environmental condition #2...”)

On the other hand, my personal experience is that my decision of whether to complete some beneficial goal is largely determined by the mental pain associated with it. This mental pain, which is not directly measurable, is strongly dependent on the time of day, my caffeine intake, my level of fear, etc. If you can’t measure it, and you were to just look at my actions, this is what you’d say: “Look, some days he cleans his room and some days he doesn’t even though the benefit—a room clean for about 1 day—is the same. When he doesn’t clean his room, and you ask him why, he says he just really didn’t feel like it even though he now wishes he had. Therefore, the utility he is putting assigning to clean room is varying with time. Dynamical inconsistency, QED!” But the real reason is not that my utility function is varying. It’s that I find cleaning my room soothing on some days, whereas other days it’s torture.

Jess_Riedel 11 Sep 2010 10:06 UTC
11 points
in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA
Sure, on average it’s negative sum. But I have to guess that society as a whole suffers greatly from having many (most?) of its technically skilled citizens at the low end of the social-ability spectrum. The question would be whether you could design a set of institutions in this area which could have a net positive benefit on society. (Probably not something I’ll solve on a Saturday afternoon...)

Jess_Riedel 13 Sep 2013 11:01 UTC
7 points
on: How well will policy-makers handle AGI? (initial findings)
The invention of nuclear weapons seems like the overwhelmingly best case study.
1. New threat/power comes from fundamental new scientific insight.
2. Existential risks (nuclear winter, run-away nitrogen fusion in atmosphere).
3. Massive potential effects, both positive and negative (nuclear power for everything, medical treatments, dam building and other manipulation of Earth’s crust, space exploration, elimination of war, nuclear war, increased asymmetric warfare, reactor meltdowns, increased stability of dictatorships). Some were realized.
4. Very large first-mover advantage with times scales of less than a year.
5. Feasible development in secret.
Nuclear weapons differed in that the world was already at war when they were developed, so policy makers would be in a different mindset and have different incentives. But otherwise, I think the parallels are as good as you could possibly hope for. The only other competitor is the (overly broad) case of molecular nano-tech, but this hasn’t actually happened yet so you don’t have much to go on. In contrast, the Manhattan Project is extensively documented.

Jess_Riedel 28 May 2009 15:47 UTC
7 points
in reply to: Nick_Tarleton’s comment on: Dissenting Views
I’ve read it before. Though I have much respect for Eliezer, I think his excursions into moral philosophy are very poor. They show a lack of awareness that all the issues he raises have been hashed out decades or centuries ago at a much higher level by philosophers, both moral realists and otherwise. I’m sure he believes that he brings some new insights, but I would disagree.

Jess_Riedel 12 Apr 2010 18:02 UTC
5 points
in reply to: olimay’s comment on: NYC Rationalist Community
I attended a meetup in Santa Barbara which I found largely to be a waste of time. The problem there—and I think, frankly, with LW in general—is that there just aren’t that many of us with something insightful to say. (I certainly don’t have much.) While it’s great, I guess, that the participants acknowledge the importance behind some of the ideas championed by Yudkowsky and Hanson, most of us don’t have anything to add. Some of us may be experts in other fields, but not in rationality.

Here’s the perfect analogy: it’s like listening to a bunch of college guys who’ve never played sports at a high level discuss a professional game; they all repeat the stuff they hear on ESPN, and the discussion isn’t wildly wrong, but they’re just regurgitating what they hear.

Do you feel like this described the NYC meetup at all? Do you think the meetup was worthwhile?

Jess_Riedel 9 Mar 2009 22:19 UTC
5 points
on: The Wrath of Kahneman
The quotation refers to punitive damages in civil cases. What evidence is there that this phenomenon exists with criminal penalties? (I don’t deny that it exists, but it is probably suppressed. That is, criminal penalties are more likely to reflect probability of detection than punitive damages).

For instance, there are road signs in northern Virginia warning of a $10,000 fine for littering. The severity of the fine is surely due to the difficulty in catching someone in the act.

Jess_Riedel 28 Feb 2009 17:34 UTC
5 points
in reply to: steven0461’s comment on: Issues, Bugs, and Requested Features
That’s exactly the point: voting is supposed to put comments in order according to quality, so that you can read the worthwhile comments in a reasonable time. My claim is that the current voting system will not do this well at all and that a dual voting system will be better. (That second bit is just a guess). The opinion poll information is just a nice side effect.

Jess_Riedel 10 Feb 2010 15:13 UTC
4 points
in reply to: CronoDAS’s comment on: Boredom vs. Scope Insensitivity
In most books, insurance fraud is morally equivalent to stealing. A deontological moral philosophy might commit you to donating all your disposable income to GiveWell-certified charities while not permitting you to kill yourself for the insurance money. But, yea, utilitarians will have a hard time explaining why they don’t do this.

Jess_Riedel 13 Nov 2009 0:56 UTC
4 points
in reply to: CronoDAS’s comment on: Less Wrong Q&A with Eliezer Yudkowsky: Ask Your Questions
It’s hard to think of a policy which would have a smaller impact on a smaller fraction of the wealthiest population on earth. And it faces extremely dedicated opposition.

Jess_Riedel 24 Jul 2009 20:39 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Fetterkey’s comment on: Creating The Simple Math of Everything
Careful. The term “graph theory” is usually used to refer to a specific branch of mathematics which I don’t think you’re referring to.

Jess_Riedel 27 Oct 2013 21:07 UTC
3 points
on: Is it immoral to have children?
I mostly disagree with both parts of the sentence “Except that it’s much cheaper to convince other people’s kids to be generous, and our influence on the adult behavior of our children is not that big.” I would argue that

(1) Almost all new EA recruits are converted in college by friends and/or by reading a very small number of writers (e.g. Singer). This is something that cannot be replicated by most adults, who are bad writers and who are not friends with college students. We still need good data on the ability of typical humans to covert others to EA ideas, but my anecdotal observations (e.g. Matt Wage) suggest that this is MUCH harder than you might think.

(2) Despite one’s acceptance of genetic fatalism, it’s known that the biggest influences a parent can have are the religious and political associations of their children. Insofar as donating is determined more by affiliating with the EA movement than by bio-determined factors like IQ, we can expect parents to strongly induce giving by their children.

We can look to evangelical religions to get an idea of what movement building techniques are most effective for the bulk of the population. Yes, many religions have missionaries, but this is usually a small group of unusually motivated and charismatic people. But having lots of children is a strategy that many religions have effectively employed for the bulk of their members.

(One potential counter example I’d be interested to hear about is the effectiveness of the essentially compulsory missionary work for Mormon men.)

Jess_Riedel 26 Oct 2010 14:11 UTC
3 points
in reply to: TobyBartels’s comment on: Willpower: not a limited resource?

I’ve never heard of willpower depletion....Surely willpower is a long-term stat like CON, not an diminishable resource like HP.

In fact, previous research has shown that it is a lot like HP in many situations. See the citations near the beginning of the article.

Jess_Riedel 10 Aug 2009 16:06 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: Would Your Real Preferences Please Stand Up?

I agree that everything you do, you genuinely want to do, in the sense that you’re not doing it under duress.

I really think this is a bad way to think about it. Please see my comment elsewhere on this page.

EDIT: Unless of course you just define “genuinely wanting to do something” as anything one does while not under duress. But in that case, what counts as duress?

Jess_Riedel 22 Jan 2010 15:14 UTC
2 points
in reply to: byrnema’s comment on: Normal Cryonics
Exactly. If a parent doesn’t think cryonics makes sense, then they wouldn’t get it for their kids anyways. Eliezer’s statement can only criticize parents who get cryonics for themselves but not their children. This is a small group, and I assume it is not the one he was targeting.

Jess_Riedel 11 Aug 2009 6:03 UTC
2 points
in reply to: SilasBarta’s comment on: Would Your Real Preferences Please Stand Up?
I still think that Caplan’s position is dumb. It’s not so much a question of whether his explanation fits the data (although I think Psychohistorian has shown that in this case it does not), it’s that it’s just plain weird to characterize the obsessive behavior done by people with OCD as a “preference”. I mean, suppose that you were able to modify the explanation you’ve offered (that OCD people just have high preferences for certainty) in a way that escapes Psychohistorian’s criticism. Suppose, for instance, you simply say “OCD people just have a strong desire for things happening a prime number of times”. This would still be silly! OCD people clearly have a minor defect in their brains, and redefining “preference” won’t change this.

Ultimately, this might just be a matter of semantics. Caplan may be using “preference” to mean “a contrived utility function which happens to fit the data”, which can always be done so long as the behavior isn’t contradictory. But this really isn’t helpful. After all, I can say that the willow’s “preference” is to lean in the direction of the wind and this will correctly describe the Willow’s behavior. But calling it a preference is silly.

Thanks for the comment. This discussion has helped to clarify my thinking.

Jess_Riedel 28 May 2009 16:18 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Ziphead’s comment on: Dissenting Views
I think the problem is much more profound than you suggest. It is not something that rationalists can simply take on with a non-infinitesimal confidence that progress will be made. Certainly not amateur rationalists doing philosophy in their spare time (not that this isn’t healthy). I don’t mean to say that rationalists should give up, but we have to choose how to act in the meantime.

Personally, I find the situation so desperate that I am prepared to simply assume moral realism when I am deciding how to act, with the knowledge that this assumption is very implausible. I don’t believe this makes me irrational. In fact, given our current understanding of the problem, I don’t know of any other reasonable approaches.

Incidentally, this position is reminiscent of both Pascal’s wager and of an attitude towards morality and AI which Eliezer claimed to previously hold but now rejects as flawed.

Jess_Riedel 28 May 2009 7:41 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Ziphead’s comment on: Dissenting Views
Moral skepticism is not particularly impressive as it’s the simplest hypothesis. Certainly, it seems extremely hard to square moral realism with our immensely successful scientific picture of a material universe.

The problem is that we still must choose how to act. Without a morality, all we can say is that we prefer to act in some arbitrary way, much as we might arbitrarily prefer one food to another. And...that’s it. We can make no criticism whatsoever about the actions of others, not even that they should act rationally. We cannot say that striving for truth is any better than killing babies (or following a religion?) anymore than we can say green is a better color than red.

At best we can make empirical statements of the form “A person should act in such-and-such manner in order to achieve some outcome”.

Some people are prepared to bite this bullet. Yet most who say they do continue to behave as if they believed their actions were more than arbitrary preferences.

Jess_Riedel 6 Mar 2009 22:19 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Roko’s comment on: Information cascades
Should we be worried that people will vote stuff up just because it is already popular? There is currently no penalty for voting against the crowd, so wouldn’t people (rightly) want to do this?

(Of course, we assume people are voting based on their personal impressions. It’s clear that votes bases on Bayesian beliefs are not are useful here.)

Jess_Riedel 27 Feb 2009 21:21 UTC
2 points
in reply to: thomblake’s comment on: Issues, Bugs, and Requested Features
Yep, what I wrote is just based on my best guess. A usability study would be great.