Personal website: https://outsidetheasylum.blog/ Feedback about me: https://www.admonymous.co/isaacking
Isaac King(Isaac King)
List of Probability Calibration Exercises
Duct Tape security
A free to enter, 240 character, open-source iterated prisoner’s dilemma tournament
An Actually Intuitive Explanation of the Oberth Effect
Question Gravity
Stop talking about p(doom)
Epistemic spot checking one claim in The Precipice
Understanding Subjective Probabilities
My Approach to Non-Literal Communication
Can DALL-E understand simple geometry?
[Question] What are some of the best introductions/breakdowns of AI existential risk for those unfamiliar?
Rational Agents Cooperate in the Prisoner’s Dilemma
The Hidden Complexity of Thought
[Question] What’s the best way to streamline two-party sale negotiations between real humans?
[Question] Quantum Suicide and Aumann’s Agreement Theorem
An attempt at a “good enough” solution for human two-party negotiations
[Question] Looking for someone to run an online seminar on human learning
Yeah, I think that sort of presentation is anti-useful for understanding the world, since it’s picking a rather arbitrary mathematical theory and just insisting “this is what rational people do”, without getting people to think it through and understand why or if that’s actually true.
The reason a rational agent will likely defect in a realistic prisoner’s dilemma against a normal human is because it believes the human’s actions to be largely uncorrelated with its own, since it doesn’t have a good enough model of the human’s mind to know how it thinks. (And the reason why humans defect is the same, with the added obstacle that the human isn’t even rational themselves.)
Teaching that rational agents defect because that’s the Nash equilibrium and rational agents always go to the Nash equilibrium is just an incorrect model of rationality, and agents that are actually rational can consistently win against Nash-seekers.
Thoughts on having part of the holiday be “have tasty food easily accessible (perhaps within sight range) during the fast”?
Pros:
It’s in keeping with the original story.
It can help us see the dangers of having instant gratification available, and let us practice our ability to resist short-term urges for long-term benefits.
If the goal of rationalist holidays is to help us feel like our own community, then this could help people feel more “special”. Many religions have holidays that call for a fast, but as far as I know none of them expect one to tempt themselves.
Cons:
It makes the fast harder. If people are used to their self-control strategy being “don’t tempt myself”, this will be new to them, and if they end up breaking their fast, they’d likely feel demoralized.
It’s difficult to incentivize people to not press the button, but here’s an attempt: If we successfully get through Petrov day without anyone pressing the button (other than the person who has already done so via the bug), I will donate $50 to a charity selected by majority vote.