kbear

Karma: 352

kbear 10 May 2026 14:50 UTC
2 points
1
in reply to: JohnWittle’s comment on: If digital computers are conscious, they are conscious at the hardware level
i don’t believe such an object (as the c program) can exist, so i don’t think we learn anything (except about our own priors) from considering it.

kbear 10 May 2026 14:34 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: pjohn’s comment on: Try, even if they have you cold
hi, thanks for the reply.
If the gamblers truly know that they’re going to lose money then there’d be no thrill, and if they don’t know they’re going to lose money then they’re not making a fair purchase.
they expect to lose money. the uncertainty is the point. they trade expected value for increased variance.
when i buy a lotto ticket, i expect to lose a dollar. but it’s still fun to fantasize about what will happen if i win big.
Also, as a separate point, I’m not sure sending money to an e-girl even *is* cheaper than dating?
it obviously is, in terms of time, money, risk, … . some people may be at a time in their life where the transactional nature of the e-girl relationship is valued for its simplicity.
I think this is a compression of a biaxial state-space into a single Boolean value. [...]
look, overall, i really disagree with this whole paragraph. it seems your project is still to appeal to some objective morality, which can determine for us whether each person’s actions are good or bad. that is, the value of a book is whether you learn from it; the value of a gamble is whether you make money; the value of an e-girl is whether you get married and raise a family.
my point is that this is an absurd way to look at the world. people engage in activities for any number of reasons. it is not up to us to decide on or evaluate those reasons.
“playing casino games is not an efficient way to make money! you’d be better off just not playing casino games!” <-> the conclusion here should not be “they are stupid/don’t know themselves” but rather “they are getting something out of casino games that i don’t understand.”
of course, i’m happy with the argument “you are trying to make money; the casino is not a good way to do that.” i’m happy with this since it engages directly with the actor’s preferences, and tries to help them achieve those preferences better. good! a great service has been provided!
but the point is that this argument is saved by virtue of appealing to a specific actor. when we try to make it in general (“people in casinos are trying to make money; casinos are not reliable at that.”) then it becomes bizarre, authoritarian, grim.
--
the original essay used this category as an example of “people who have no advantage in the marketplace, but are sometimes able to succeed.” whether or not “charlatans, loose women, and the unpitiable poor” are a reasonable category (now expanded to include “gambling houses, witches, and quack doctors”), do you feel that it was the natural category to reach for to illustrate this point?
if so, why would a more neutral example—like a coffee shop—not work just as well?

kbear 9 May 2026 20:43 UTC
2 points
0
on: Explaining Volition Without Resorting to Free Will
nice. i don’t think it’s quite enough, though.
we could set up a pid controller to tune itself until it’s able to balance an inverted pendulum. this seems to meet your definition. are you comfortable granting such a system ‘volition’?

kbear 9 May 2026 20:33 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: pjohn’s comment on: Try, even if they have you cold
Casinos: essentially exist by offering you free money, allowing you an extremely brief dopamine hit from thinking you might get free money, and then just not giving you the money.
gambling is an efficient way (for some) to purchase a thrill for money, similar to attending a sporting event. the fact that they can win money is necessary, but they’re under no illusion that the roulette wheel is a sound investment.
this task you’ve set yourself… it’s not a hard game to play:
non-fiction books: the “learning” that some claim is dubious at best—what facts remain when the page is turned, let alone when a month has passed? at worst, learning replaces “doing” and so these books are actually harmful. they sell the illusion of “discovery” or “knowledge”, but ultimately provide neither: discovery requires engaging with the world with your own two hands. and “knowledge”—if it’s even valuable—is better gained from wikipedia.
if you declare by fiat that these goods have no intrinsic value, then the consumption of them is absurd. more useful is to argue that the preferences these goods satisfy are more competitively satisfied in other ways. but note that this might not be true! e-girls are cheaper than dating. what if the preference really is “attractive woman says my name on stream”?
some sort of arabican Stockholm Syndrome
i get that you’re being humorous—and “arabican Stockholm Syndrome” is a wonderful phrase—but it seems a very impoverished view that “anyone who purchases something i wouldn’t is lying about their preferences.”

kbear 7 May 2026 22:55 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: azergante’s comment on: We don’t learn numbers from set cardinality
thanks, i appreciate your write up! this is a good discussion of fungibility, and the desirable properties of numbers as a generalization of cardinality.
for you, then, you would say that multisets feel “intuitively prior” to sets/cardinality? if so, could you help me understand that intuition?
to me, ‘bijective correspondence’ feels like an earlier notion than counting, and counting feels like an earlier notion than multisets.

kbear 7 May 2026 18:22 UTC
1 point
2
on: Try, even if they have you cold
Panhandlers, e-girls and scammers are up against an unbeatable wall.
is this a natural category? panhandlers and e-girls offer services for money in a straightforward way. we might as well say “local coffee shops are up against an unbeatable wall. all of the agency is in the hands of the party with the resources.”

kbear 7 May 2026 16:08 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Many individual CEVs are probably quite bad
for exactly the reason you describe, they will be worse at cooperating in games similar to prisoner’s dilemma. they will not be good at coordinating on the ultimatum game.
in addition, they will have a worse reputation.
it’s just not clear to me that valuing your opponent’s loss is long-term favorable across the kinds of decisions that people face as they rise to power.
Which one is motivated to spend more resources on winning this specific game?
right, but… should they? rising in politics involves a sequence of victories. burning more resources than is warranted by the zero-th order power you receive seems long term disadvantageous. i would expect players who are motivated solely by power to accumulate more of it, as they will more wisely spend their available capital.

kbear 7 May 2026 15:56 UTC
3 points
−2
in reply to: Martin Randall’s comment on: Many individual CEVs are probably quite bad
time is finite, and time spent practicing running trades off against more core competencies such as hitting, fielding, pitching, ….
someone who looks to baseball as an outlet for their running hobby will be very disappointed. people who like running will instead play soccer, track & field, basketball. for this reason, i actually expect enjoying running to be anti-correlated with attained success at baseball^[1].
looking at the matter at hand, it just obviously proves too much!
- in order to compete in the mlb, one must succeed where others fail.
- sadistic powerseekers like to watch others fail, so they have an advantage here.
- therefore, sadistic powerseekers should be overrepresented in the mlb.
to be clear, if the argument is instead of the form “sadistic powerseekers find an outlet in positions of power, so seek them out. thus we would expect them to be overrepresented there” then i completely agree: makes sense, seems born out by evidence, no notes.
1. ^
  in particular, at the highest levels of the sport.

kbear 7 May 2026 2:59 UTC
4 points
−1
on: Many individual CEVs are probably quite bad
I would assume that monsters are over-represented in the positions of power, simply because on the way to the top there are many situations where people have to choose between hurting someone and losing an opportunity to gain more power, so the intrinsically nice are at a disadvantage.
this seems to be smuggling ‘sadistic’ for ‘not unwilling to hurt others in zero-sum games’.
it may be the case that the road to power requires hurting others instrumentally. that does not imply that those who hurt others terminally have an advantage.
“in baseball, you have to run to get on base. therefore, those who love running have an advantage.”

kbear 7 May 2026 2:36 UTC
8 points
5
on: x-risk-themed
A hammer is not a weapon. And it’s not a good idea to defend yourself from a phone theft with a hammer anyway.
nonetheless, the mugger—also rational—will likely not pick a fight with the hammer bro.
though if the bluff became common...

kbear 5 May 2026 17:45 UTC
5 points
4
on: The Best Argument Against Deontology Is About Suitcases
Each person is in a suitcase
who put people in suitcases? we should stop them.

kbear 4 May 2026 19:06 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: derelict5432’s comment on: Taking woo seriously but not literally
if one treatment induces an effect, and others don’t, then in what sense is the effect placebo?

kbear 4 May 2026 19:01 UTC
2 points
0
on: Taking woo seriously but not literally
sufficiently advanced psychology is indistinguishable from divination.

kbear 3 May 2026 22:38 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: lilkim2025’s comment on: Mo Putera’s Shortform
whether consciousness is useful in predicting my behavior is a fact about you (as the predictor), not me (as the subject). and yet… i do feel conscious! so i don’t think it’s useful as a definition, here, unless we’re willing to swallow a relativist pill.
build a perfect predictor of a human’s actions.
humans, llms, trees, rocks, certain 1d cellular automata, and—as yet—collatz relations are all (seemingly) computationally irreducible. that is, there’s no way to make detailed predictions of their behavior except to instantiate and run them. so i find predictability to be necessary, but not sufficient for consciousness.
decide to do things, and then do them
we can reduce consciousness to a behavioral definition, but i find that something is lost, in doing so.

kbear 3 May 2026 20:55 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: TFD’s comment on: Deontological bars should reference the actor’s beliefs
sorry—it seems that what is happening here is you are arguing against deontological bars being useful as ways to organize society. that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to argue. i haven’t thought about it deeply, but i suspect i agree with you.
like, in this case, we’re starting with a hard rule (“do not murder”), and then toning it down with all of these questions of intent/proportionality/circumstance. then you say “doesn’t that make it better?”
yes! yes it does. it makes it a better rule. a society that follows the nuanced version will—i suspect—be more aligned and prosperous than one that follows the hard line.
we have made it a better rule by relaxing one particular constraint: that it should be a deontological bar.

kbear 3 May 2026 20:33 UTC
1 point
0
on: Deontological bars should reference the actor’s beliefs
i think this is very wise and practical advice, both for understanding other perspectives, and for seeking to change minds.
however, i think it misses the point of deontological bars.
“thou shalt not kill” is about as clear a pronouncement as you can get. its brevity is its clarity, and its clarity is its strength. as soon as we start writing “thou shalt not kill, unless of course you have pretty good reason to believe that the killing is, in this instance (and if your rule were universalized), perfectly justified. then it could be ok… but mostly not. basically, you know what i’m saying. use your judgment! but the point is, don’t kill if you’re only doing it to be evil.”, we lose… something.^[1]
1. ^
  the longer form becomes basically worthless for coordinating a community and aligning on a particular sense of justice, at least.

kbear 3 May 2026 14:30 UTC
1 point
0
on: We don’t learn numbers from set cardinality
if i introspect while picturing a multiset, it feels like “a collection containing 12 pears and 6 apples”. or maybe “a collection containing pears and apples. the number of pears is 12. the number of apples is 6.”.
do you have a way of defining ‘multiset’ that is prior to ‘number’?

kbear 3 May 2026 14:27 UTC
2 points
2
on: We don’t learn numbers from set cardinality
However if you take the set of atoms in H-O-H: it is {H, O}! not {H, O, H}, and it has a cardinality of 2, which doesn’t map to the 3 atoms of our water molecule, because elements of sets must be distinct.
no… it contains { this H, O, that H }.
my lay understanding is that some particles cannot be distinguished. but it is unlikely that children are commonly coming across these while developing intuition for counting.

kbear 3 May 2026 5:53 UTC
4 points
1
on: Primary Care Physicians are Incompetent. We Need More of Them.
The evidence literally indicates that simply plonking a student who just passed the MCAT yesterday directly into a modern PCP office would produce an above average PCP in expectation.
this is overbold. they score worse on “foundational pulmonary physiology questions”, sure, but we haven’t established a link between scoring well on these questions and providing adequate care.^[1]
i’d expect the recent med students (who likely drilled this info as part of training for the mcat) to do well on quizzes.
1. ^
  the “during which their competence has been logarithmically decaying” link is also by proxy: scores on certain exams drop with experience.

kbear 30 Apr 2026 17:32 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Zach Stein-Perlman’s comment on: No77e’s Shortform
i see your point, thanks.