jimrandomh

• jimrandomh 22 Mar 2019 19:55 UTC

  10 points

  in reply to: Yoav Ravid's comment on: Can a Bayesian agent be in­finitely con­fused?

  The lat­ter; it could be any­thing, and by say­ing the prob­a­bil­ities were 1.0 and 0.0, the origi­nal prob­lem de­scrip­tion left out the in­for­ma­tion that would de­ter­mine it.

• jimrandomh 22 Mar 2019 19:02 UTC

  15 points

  on: Can a Bayesian agent be in­finitely con­fused?

  If you do out the alge­bra, you get that P(H|E) in­volves di­vid­ing zero by zero:

  $$P\left(H|E\right)=\frac{P\left(H\right)P\left(E|H\right)}{P\left(E\right)}P\left(E\right)=P\left(E|H\right)P\left(H\right)+P(E|!H)P(!H)=0P\left(H|E\right)=\frac{1\ast 0}{0}$$

  There are two ways to look at this at a higher level. The first is that the alge­bra doesn’t re­ally ap­ply in the first place, be­cause this is a do­main er­ror: 0 and 1 aren’t prob­a­bil­ities, in the same way that the string “hello” and the color blue aren’t.

  The sec­ond way to look at it is that when we say $P\left(H\right)=1.0$ and $P\left(E|H\right)=0$, what we re­ally meant was that $P\left(H\right)=1.0-{ϵ}_1$ and $P\left(E|H\right)=0+{ϵ}_2$; that is, they aren’t pre­cisely one and zero, but they differ from one and zero by an un­speci­fied, very small amount. (In­finites­i­mals are like in­fini­ties; $ϵ$ is ar­bi­trar­ily-close-to-zero in the same sense that an in­finity is ar­bi­trar­ily-large). Un­der this in­ter­pre­ta­tion, we don’t have a con­tra­dic­tion, but we do have an un­der­speci­fied prob­lem, since we need the ra­tio $\frac{{ϵ}_1}{{ϵ}_2}$ and haven’t speci­fied it.

• jimrandomh 16 Mar 2019 0:06 UTC

  2 points

  on: [Er­ror com­mu­ni­cat­ing with LW2 server]

  The Jewish liturgy about di­v­ine judg­ment can be quite differ­ent. Every week, at the be­gin­ning of the Sab­bath, Jews around the world sing Psalms a col­lec­tion of psalms fo­cused on the idea that the world is re­joic­ing be­cause God is fi­nally com­ing to judge it. From Psalm 96:

  Say among the na­tions that the Lord reigns: the world shall so be es­tab­lished that it shall not be moved: he shall judge the peo­ples with up­right­nesses. Let the heav­ens re­joice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and its ful­l­ness. Let the field be joyful, and all that is in it: then shall all the trees of the wood sing for joy. Be­fore the Lord: for he comes, for he comes to judge the land: he shall judge the world with jus­tice, and the peo­ples in his faith­ful­ness. From Psalm 98: Melodize to the Lord with harp; with harp, and melodic voice. With the trum­pets, and the voice of the horn, shout be­fore the king, the Lord. Let the sea roar, and its ful­l­ness; the world, and those who dwell in it. Rivers shall clap their hands; to­gether, the moun­tains shall sing for joy. Be­fore the Lord: for he comes, for he comes to judge the land: he shall judge the world with jus­tice, and the peo­ples in his faith­ful­ness. In one of these out­looks, hu­mans can’t be­have well enough to stand up to pure jus­tice, so we should put off the day of judg­ment for as long as we can, and seek pro­tec­tion. In the other, the world is groan­ing un­der the ac­cu­mu­lated weight of hypocrisy and sin, and only the rec­on­cili­a­tion of ac­counts can free us; in con­stant flux due to ever-shift­ing sto­ries, which can only be sta­bi­lized by a true judge. We can’t rec­on­cile ac­counts if that means pun­ish­ing all bad be­hav­ior ac­cord­ing to the cur­rent hyp­o­crit­i­cal regime’s sched­ule of pun­ish­ments. But a true rec­on­cili­a­tion also means ad­just­ing the pun­ish­ments to a level where we’d be happy, not sad, to see them ap­plied con­sis­tently. (Some­times the cor­rect pun­ish­ment is noth­ing be­yond the ac­count­ing it­self.) In wor­lds where hypocrisy is nor­mal, hon­esty is pun­ished, since the most hon­est peo­ple will tend to re­veal de­p­re­ca­tory in­for­ma­tion oth­ers might con­ceal, and be pun­ished for it. We get less of what we pun­ish. But hon­esty isn’t just a weird quirk—it’s the only way to get to the stars. “The first prin­ci­ple is that you must not fool your­self, and you are the eas­iest per­son to fool.”—Richard Feynman

• jimrandomh 15 Mar 2019 0:39 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Raemon's comment on: LW Up­date 2019-03-12 -- Bugfixes, small features

  Nei­ther of those will au­tolink. Au­tolink­ing is han­dled at the UI level, in the de­fault (WYSIWYG/​draftjs) ed­i­tor only.

• jimrandomh 14 Mar 2019 13:11 UTC

  74 points

  on: Black­mailers are pri­va­teers in the war on hypocrisy

  There’s some­thing I think you’re miss­ing here, which is that black­mail-in-prac­tice is of­ten about lev­er­ag­ing the norm en­force­ment of a differ­ent com­mu­nity than the tar­get’s, ex­ploit­ing differ­ences in norms be­tween groups. A highly pro­to­typ­i­cal ex­am­ple is tak­ing in­for­ma­tion about sex or drug use which is ac­cept­able within a lo­cal com­mu­nity, and shar­ing it with an op­pres­sive gov­ern­ment which would pun­ish that be­hav­ior.

  Allow­ing black­mail within a group weak­ens that group’s abil­ity to re­sist out­side con­trol, and this is a very big deal. (It’s kind of sur­pris­ing that, this late in the con­ver­sa­tion about black­mail, no one seems to have spot­ted this.)

• jimrandomh 14 Mar 2019 1:50 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Pattern's comment on: LW Up­date 2019-03-12 -- Bugfixes, small features

  The lat­ter, but it ap­plies im­me­di­ately when you type it (rather than wait­ing un­til you click Sub­mit), so it won’t hap­pen with­out you notic­ing.

• jimrandomh 12 Mar 2019 22:35 UTC

  2 points

  on: [Er­ror com­mu­ni­cat­ing with LW2 server]

  Foo

  1: Asdf

LW Up­date 2019-03-12 -- Bugfixes, small features

• jimrandomh 5 Mar 2019 21:01 UTC

  12 points

  in reply to: habryka's comment on: Karma-Change Notifications

  It’s plau­si­bly cor­rect to provide the op­tion, so long as it isn’t the de­fault. (Op­tions: Show all, show none, show only pos­i­tive, show only nega­tive. The last op­tion be­ing some­thing that no one should ever use, pro­vided only for sym­me­try.)

• jimrandomh 3 Mar 2019 4:39 UTC

  9 points

  in reply to: G Gordon Worley III's comment on: Karma-Change Notifications

  There is a real-time set­ting, which shows you ev­ery­thing since the last time you looked. It just isn’t the de­fault.

• jimrandomh 2 Mar 2019 3:40 UTC

  9 points

  in reply to: ESRogs's comment on: Karma-Change Notifications

  We want writ­ing posts and com­ments, es­pe­cially posts and com­ments which get a pos­i­tive re­cep­tion, to feel re­ward­ing, so that peo­ple will do it more of­ten. And, to a lesser but still sig­nifi­cant de­gree, we want peo­ple to use the site.

Karma-Change Notifications

• jimrandomh 1 Mar 2019 0:49 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: jimrandomh's comment on: [Er­ror com­mu­ni­cat­ing with LW2 server]

  9

• jimrandomh 1 Mar 2019 0:49 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: jimrandomh's comment on: [Er­ror com­mu­ni­cat­ing with LW2 server]

  8

• jimrandomh 1 Mar 2019 0:49 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: jimrandomh's comment on: [Er­ror com­mu­ni­cat­ing with LW2 server]

  7

• jimrandomh 1 Mar 2019 0:49 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: jimrandomh's comment on: [Er­ror com­mu­ni­cat­ing with LW2 server]

  6

• jimrandomh 1 Mar 2019 0:49 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: jimrandomh's comment on: [Er­ror com­mu­ni­cat­ing with LW2 server]

  5

• jimrandomh 1 Mar 2019 0:49 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: jimrandomh's comment on: [Er­ror com­mu­ni­cat­ing with LW2 server]

  4

• jimrandomh 1 Mar 2019 0:49 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: jimrandomh's comment on: [Er­ror com­mu­ni­cat­ing with LW2 server]

  3

• jimrandomh 1 Mar 2019 0:49 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: jimrandomh's comment on: [Er­ror com­mu­ni­cat­ing with LW2 server]

  2