ahh, basic coordinacy to go with their literacy and numeracy. I see.
I like this word. We need more coordinate people, and more widespread coordinacy training
ahh, basic coordinacy to go with their literacy and numeracy. I see.
I like this word. We need more coordinate people, and more widespread coordinacy training
I was going for a walk yesterday night, and when I looked up at the sky, I saw something I had never seen before: a bright orange dot, like a star, but I had never seen a star that bright and so orange before. “No… that can’t be”- but it was: I was looking at Mars, that other world I had heard so much about, thought so much about.
I never realized until yesterday that I had never seen Mars with my own two eyes until that day- one of the closest worlds that humans could, with minimal difficulty, make into a new home one day.
It struck me then in a way that I never felt before, just how far away the world Mars is. I knew it in an abstract sense, but seeing this little dot in the distance, a dot that I knew to be an object larger even than the Moon, but seeming so small in comparison, made me realize, in my gut, just how far away this other world was, just like how when I stand on top of a mountain, and see small buildings on the ground way below me, I realize that those small buildings are actually skyscrapers far away.
And yet, as far as Mars was that night, it was so bright, so apparent, precisely because it was closer now to us than it normally ever is- normally this world is even further from us than it is now.
In short, I am selling my attention by selling the right to put cards in my Anki deck, starting at the low price of $1 per card.
I will create and add a card (any card that you desire, with the caveat that I can veto any card that seems problematic, and capped to a similar amount of information per card as my usual cards contain) to my Anki deck for $1. After the first ten cards (across all people), the price will rise to $2 per card, and will double every 5 cards from then on. I commit to study the added card(s) like I would any other card in my decks (I will give it a starting interval of 10 days, which is sooner than the usual interval of 20 days I usually use, unless I judge that a shorter interval makes sense. I study Anki every day, and have been clearing my deck at least once every 10 days for the past 5 months, and intend to continue to do so). Since I will be creating the cards myself (unless you know of a high-quality deck that contains cards with the information you desire), an idea for a card is enough even if you don’t know how to execute it.
Both question-and-answer and straight text are acceptable forms for cards. Acceptable forms of payment include cash, Venmo, BTC, ETH, Good Dollar, and Doge, at the corresponding exchange rates.
This offer will expire in 60 days. If you are interested in taking me up on this afterwards, feel free to message me.
There is now a top-level post discussing this offer
Price as of 00:53 UTC 24 Mar ’21: $4 per card
17 cards claimed so far
This is important news. I personally desire to be kept updated on this, and LW is a convenient (and appropriate) place to get this information. And I expect other users feel similarly.
What’s different between this and e.g. the developments with Nonlinear, is that the developments here will have a big impact on how the AI field (and by one layer of indirection, the fate of the world) develops.
Religion isn’t about believing false things. Religion is about building bonds between humans, by means including (but not limited to) costly signalling. It happens that a ubiquitous form of costly signalling used by many prominent modern religions is belief taxes (insisting that the ingroup professes a particular, easily disproven belief as a reliable signal of loyalty), but this is not neccesary for a religion to successfully build trust and loyalty between members. In particular, costly signalling must be negative-value for an individual (before the second-order benefits from the group dynamic), but need not be negative-value for the group, or for humanity. Indeed, the best costly sacrifices can be positive-value for the group or humanity, while negative-value for the performing individual. (There are some who may argue that positive-value sacrifices have less signalling value than negative value sacrifices, but I find their logic dubious, and my own observations of religion seem to suggest positive-value sacrifice is abundant in organized religion, albeit intermixed with neutral- and negative-value sacrifice)
The rationalist community is averse to religion because it so often goes hand in hand with belief taxes, which are counter to the rationalist ethos, and would threaten to destroy much that rationalists value. But religion is not about belief taxes. While I believe sacrifices are an important part of the functioning of religion, a religion should avoid asking its members to make sacrifices that destroy what the collective values, and instead encourage costly sacrifices that help contribute to the things we collectively value.
There have been many moments in life where I’d see something bad happen, or someone who just needed help, but not do anything about it. This would always make me feel somewhat bad about myself.
I added a card to my Anki deck which said: “If you see someone who needs help, help them”. A few months later, I witnessed a car crash (Nobody was hurt, but there was gasoline pouring onto the ground). Part of me said “keep driving, someone else will take care of it, I have things to do”, but I heard in my head: “If you see someone needs help, help them”. And without even taking a moment to debate what I’d do, I hit the brakes, pulled over, and ran to the cars. Thankfully, no-one was hurt, but I called 9-1-1 and made sure everyone involved was okay.
There have been a few other similar situations since then, and that voice that I programmed into my head has always ensured that I did what I knew was right.
Thought 1: Yeah, that’s fair
Thought 2: Though I also feel like a different country being the first to establish independence, could have made a difference in the long-term trajectory of things. Many of the revolutions that followed the American Revolution (including the French Revolution, which some people view as an even bigger deal than the American) went quite off the rails and were quite unpleasant, and generally soured many people on the idea, while the United States ended up going fairly smoothly after the constitution was implemented. If the French Revolution had happened without the American Revolution, I imagine that could have discredited the ideas behind them, without leaving a successful state built on them.
(Note that the wave of Revolution really took off not after the first French Revolution in the late 1700′s, but in the 1830′s and 1840′s. If the US wasn’t there as an example of things going right, I can easily imagine that the appetite in Europe and France for revolution could have been spoiled enough to overcome the forces that otherwise would have made it inevitable)
I think the failure of the Soviet Union could be a similar reference for what the other side can look like. The particular form of the ideas there were destined to fail in any case, but they also did a lot to discredit adjacent ideas that otherwise might have “had their time”, and now won’t.
In 1776, America rebelled in the name of freedom and democracy: the origin myth of the modern world order. And yet, somehow, unrebellious Canada ended up just as free and democratic. An unrebellious America likely would have too.
I’m dubious of this. I think it’s highly likely that Canada and other British dominions becoming independent was a result of knock-on effects from the American Revolution, e.g. America setting an example for what independance can look like and enable prosperity; American independence causing other colonies to desire independence; Pro-dependence British officials being demoralized in the long term; America itself having a strong effect in the late 1800s and/or 1900s pushing other countries (British and non-British alike) to become independent democracies.
All of this would have made a teenager hate the idea of success altogether. I was not a teenager anymore, so I formulated a slightly more sophisticated answer: Regardless of how successful I become, I resolve to live like a failure.
I strong upvoted for this line
I just wanted to register my enjoyment with the hangout we all had in Topia post-talk, and I look forward to such hangouts in the future, and hope they continue even when things return to normal
(I’ll also mention that I vastly preferred the Topia experience to Zoom hangouts I’ve attended in the past, though I was frustrated that Topia forced me to use my desktop computer and turn off my iPad, which I usually use for chats)
I have found in my note-keeping for my own use, that attaching made-up sounds to specific ideas that don’t have words yet is actually very useful; whereas overloading words that already have other meanings is something that actively harms clarity.
If you know someone is rational, honest, and well-read, then you can learn a good bit from the simple fact that they disagree with you.
If you aren’t sure someone is rational and honest, their disagreement tells you little.
If you know someone considers you to be rational and honest, the fact that they still disagree with you after hearing what you have to say, tells you something.
But if you don’t know that they consider you to be rational and honest, their disagreement tells you nothing.
It’s valuable to strive for common knowledge of you and your partners’ rationality and honesty, to make the most of your disagreements.
Does newspeak actually decrease intellectual capacity? (No)
In George Orwell’s book 1984, he describes a totalitarian society that, among other initiatives to suppress the population, implements “Newspeak”, a heavily simplified version of the English language, designed with the stated intent of limiting the citizens’ capacity to think for themselves (thereby ensuring stability for the reigning regime)
In short, the ethos of newspeak can be summarized as: “Minimize vocabulary to minimize range of thought and expression”. There are two different, closely related, ideas, both of which the book implies, that are worth separating here.
The first (which I think is to some extent reasonable) is that by removing certain words from the language, which serve as effective handles for pro-democracy, pro-free-speech, pro-market concepts, the regime makes it harder to communicate and verbally think about such ideas (I think in the absence of other techniques used by Orwell’s Oceania to suppress independent thought, such subjects can still be meaningfully communicated and pondered, just less easily than with a rich vocabulary provided)
The second idea, which I worry is an incorrect takeaway people may get from 1984, is that by shortening the dictionary of vocabulary that people are encouraged to use (absent any particular bias towards removing handles for subversive ideas), one will reduce the intellectual capacity of people using that variant of the language.
A slight tangent whose relevance will become clear: If you listen to a native Chinese speaker, then compare the sound of their speech to a native Hawaiian speaker, there are many apparent differences in the sound of the two languages. Chinese has a rich phonological inventory containing 19 consonants, 5 vowels, and quite famously, 4 different tones (pitch patterns) which are used for each syllable, for a total of 5400 (approximately) possible syllables, including diphthongs and multi-syllabic vowels. Compare this to Hawaiian, which has 8 consonants, and 5 vowels, and no tones. Including diphthongs, there are 200 possible Hawaiian syllables.
One might naïvely expect that Mandarin speakers can communicate information more quickly than Hawaiian speakers, at a rate of 12.4 bits / syllable vs. 7.6 bits / syllable—however, this is neglecting the speed at which syllables are spoken- Hawaiian speakers speak much faster than Chinese speakers, and accounting for this difference in cadence, Hawaiian and Mandarin are much closer to each other in speed of communication than their phonologies would suggest.
Back to 1984. If we cut the dictionary down, so it is only 1/20th the size it is now (while steering clear of the thoughtpolice and any bias in removal of words), what should we expect will happen? One may naïvely think, that just as banning the words “democracy”, “freedom”, and “justice” would inhibit people’s ability to think about Enlightenment Values, banning most of the words should inhibit our ability to think about most of the things.
But that is not what I would expect to see happen. One should expect to see compound words take the place of deprecated words, speaking speeds increased, and to accommodate the increased cadence of speech, tricky sequences of sounds will be elided (blurred / simplified), allowing for complex ideas to ultimately be communicated at a pace that rivals that of standard English. Plus, it’d be (massively) easier for non-Anglophones to learn, which would be a big plus.
If I had more time, I’d write about why I think we nonetheless find the concept of Simplified English to be somewhat aversive- speaking a simplified version of a language becomes an antisignal for intelligence and social status, so we come to look down on people who attempt to utilize simplified language, while celebrating those who flex their mental capacity by using rare vocabulary.
Since I’m tired and would rather sleep than write more, I’ll end with a rhetorical question: would you rather be in a community that excels at signaling, or a community that actually gets stuff done?
Sure, you have to catch the baseball, but that doesn’t mean you have to eat the baseball
From Wikipedia: George Washington, which cites Korzi, Michael J. (2011). Presidential Term Limits in American History: Power, Principles, and Politics page 43, -and- Peabody, Bruce G. (September 1, 2001). “George Washington, Presidential Term Limits, and the Problem of Reluctant Political Leadership”. Presidential Studies Quarterly. 31 (3): 439–453:
At the end of his second term, Washington retired for personal and political reasons, dismayed with personal attacks, and to ensure that a truly contested presidential election could be held. He did not feel bound to a two-term limit, but his retirement set a significant precedent. Washington is often credited with setting the principle of a two-term presidency, but it was Thomas Jefferson who first refused to run for a third term on political grounds.
A note on the part that says “to ensure that a truly contested presidential election could be held”: at this time, Washington’s health was failing, and he indeed died during what would have been his 3rd term if he had run for a 3rd term. If he had died in office, he would have been immediately succeeded by the Vice President, which would set an unfortunate precedent of presidents serving until they die, then being followed by an appointed heir until that heir dies, blurring the distinction between the republic and a monarchy.
Kevin Simler’s post “A Natural History of Beauty” may be of interest
If you get a chance to write a post communicating the main points from this in 1/5th − 1/10th the length, I would be (genuinely) happy to read it. As it is right now, I find my eyes keep glazing over as I read this. If you do write a shorter version, please let me know, because as someone who often has trouble sleeping myself, this is of interest to me.
One way in which what I just said isn’t completely right, is that animals have memories of its entire lifetime (or at least a big chunk of it), spanning all training events it has experienced, while NNs generally have no memory of previous training runs, and can use these memories to take better actions. However, the primary way the biscuit trick works (I believe) is not through the dog’s memories of having “gotten reward”, but through the more immediate process of having reward chemicals being released and reshaping the brain at the moment of receiving reward, which generally closely resembles widely used ML techniques.
(This is related to the advice in habit building that one receive reward as close in time, ideally on the order of milliseconds, to the desired behavior)
I would say the metaphor of giving dogs biscuits is actually a better analogy than the one you suggest. Just like how a neural network never “gets reward” in the sense of some tangible, physical thing that is given to it, the (subcomponents of the) dog’s brain never gets the biscuit that the dog was fed. The biscuit goes into the dog’s stomach, not its brain.
The way the dog learns from the biscuit-giving process is that the dog’s tounge and nose send an electrical impulse to the dog’s brain, indicating that the dog just ate something tasty. In some part of the brain, those signals cause the brain to release chemicals that induce the dog’s brain to rearrange itself in a way that is quite similar in its effects (though not neccesarily its implementation, I dont know the details well enough) to the gradient descent that trains the NN. In this sense, the metaphor of giving a dog a biscuit is quite apt, in a way that the metaphor of breeding many dogs is not (in particular, usually in the gradient descent algorithms used in ML I’m familiar with, there is only one network that improves over time, unlike evolutionary algorithms which simulate many different agents per training step, selecting for the «fittest»)
From the same essay: