Well, it may be that this ideal algorithm you’re looking for is NP-hard, and thus cannot ever be executed in a short amount of time over a non-trivial problem space. Have you considered the possibility that this bounded rationality model is algorithm X?
quanticle
The really big problem with that theory is that one can hear sounds of struggle and the terrorists saying, “Is that it? I mean, shall we pull it down?” just before the plane entered a steep dive into the ground. If the plane had been shot down, the terrorists wouldn’t have reacted in the same way, and the flight path from that point on would have been significantly more erratic.
- 3 Nov 2011 20:05 UTC; 8 points) 's comment on 9/11 Survey by (
I knew perfectly well that I learned more or less the same whether the classroom was shiny new or grizzled gray and that this was true of just about every subject-matter*, and even then it was obvious that buildings must cost a lot to build and then maintain, and space didn’t seem plausible (because I passed empty classrooms all the time and they were often the same classroom pretty much all day). So this always puzzled me as a kid—big buildings seemed like perfect white elephants. I could understand the donors’ reason, but not anyone else’s.
I don’t know about that. I know that there are several buildings at my university that I hate to have classes in, because they’re either too hot, too cold, or poorly ventilated. Yes, you’re correct that in the majority of cases, the age of the building makes no difference (e.g. no one recognizes the difference between a two year old building and a twenty year old building), but in extremis, the age can make a difference (e.g. if the building does not have proper ventilation or temperature control). Its very difficult to keep focused when the classroom is 30 degrees Celcius and the lecture is two hours long.
Well, classrooms are of limited size. I know that the classrooms at my old high school were only designed for thirty kids each. Now they hold nearly forty each. There is a significant cost from having correspondingly less space per person. The corresponding reductions in mobility and classroom flexibility have an impact on learning.
This is especially pronounced in science labs. Having even one more person per lab station can have a surprisingly detrimental impact on learning. If there are two or three people at a lab station, then pretty much everyone is forced to participate (and learn) in order to finish the lesson. However, if there are four or more kids at a lab station, then you can have a person slacking off, not doing much and the others can cover for the slacker. The slacker doesn’t learn anything, and the other students are resentful because three are doing the work of four.
A theory, however elegant and economical, must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.
-- John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
I’m seeing a disturbing amount of groupthink here. We’re all assuming that cryonics is a good thing, and that the only thing in dispute is whether the amount of good that cryonics generates is worth the cost. However, given that no one who has been cryogenically frozen has yet been revived, how do we know that cryonics is a good thing at all? I mean, what if the freezing process somehow changed neurochemistry so that everyone who came back was a psychopath? Given that we don’t have any evidence either way, why are we all jumping to the conclusion that cryonics is something that we’d all sign up for if only we had the means?
Well, aren’t you privileging the hypothesis that cryonics works? I mean, I look at Eliezer’s argument above, and the unstated assumption is, “Cryonics works and has no ill side effects.” Well, lets question that assumption. What if cryonics doesn’t work? What if it works, but leaves you disabled? I know several people who have “living wills”—they’d rather be dead than disabled. Unless you’re saying that your hypothetical thawing process will be nearly perfectly safe, I’d argue that there is a risk of disability, an outcome which may rank below death (depending on your individual value function, of course).
Given the above, would you say, “Anyone who doesn’t buy cryonics for their children is a bad parent?” After all, aren’t you imposing your value function vis a vis potential disability onto your children? Shouldn’t we let them decide their own values regarding such a significant issue?
Yeah, as wedrifid pointed out in a sibling post, I think Eliezer and I have different conceptions of what it means for cryonics to “work”. I was defining “works” as a having a thawing process that doesn’t kill you, but has the risk of disability. Eliezer, I now realize, has a much more stringent definition of the term.
Now, one more question, if you will humor me. What sort of incentives can we use to ensure that we are not used as guinea pigs for an experimental thawing process? For example, our descendants may want us thawed as soon as possible, even when the thawing process may not have been made sufficiently safe by our own criteria. How can we set up the incentives so that our descendants don’t thaw us using a procedure that we consider unnecessarily risky?
Most people prefer milder drugs over harder ones, even though harder drugs provide more pleasure.
I think that oversimplifies the situation. Drugs have a wide range of effects, some of which are pleasurable, others which are not. While “harder” drugs appear to give more pleasure while their effects are in place, their withdrawal symptoms are also that much more painful (e.g. compare withdrawal symptoms from cocaine with withdrawal symptoms from caffeine).
What people say and what they do are two completely different things. In my view, a significant number of people will accept and use such a device, even if there is significant social pressure against it.
As a precedent, I look at video games. Initially there was very significant social pressure against video games. Indeed, social pressures in the US are still quite anti-video game. Yet, today video games are a larger industry than movies. Who is to say that this hypothetical virtual reality machine won’t turn out the same way?
Yes, people come home after work and watch television, but if they didn’t have to work, the vast majority of them would not spend 14 hours a day in front of the TV.
Well, that may be the case, but that only highlights the limitations of TV. If the TV was capable of fulfilling their every need—from food and shelter to self actualization, I think you’d have quite a few people who’d do nothing but sit in front of the TV.
Well, if the simulation is that accurate (e.g. its AI passes the Turing Test, so you do think you’re interacting with real people), then wouldn’t it fulfill your every need?
I’m having the same problem. All the studies I’ve looked at have only studied the plausibility of cryonics. None have actually attempted to freeze and thaw a mammal (or any other warm blooded animal). All the examples of “natural” cryonic preservation deal with cold blooded animals (usually frogs or fish).
Can anyone point me to studies showing that cryogenic freezing and thawing in warm blooded creatures is possible? I’d hate to throw down a bunch of money on a cryonics policy, only to end up dead anyway, because the freezing process permanently damaged my tissues.
Is this a restatement of the circular argument fallacy?
I submit that the concept of “risk aversion” doesn’t really apply to charitable donations. Risk aversion applies to investments, where you have a desire to get your money back. When you give to charity, there is no such expectation.
I actually like the next statement more:
Awww… its gone isn’t it?
At least Homer Simpson accepts that the pig is gone.
I’d personally put the probability of a country abandoning the Euro this year at <5%. I think the major European powers (e.g. Germany and France) are still committed enough to the monetary union to try to make things work out. However, if corrective action fails or is rejected by the voters of southern Europe, then I think we’ll see a greater willingness to abandon the Euro by all parties.
EDIT: This raises the related question of, “What is the probability that Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland will agree to and implement sufficient austerity measures to prevent a breakup of the Euro?”
That’s true… for the banking sector. However, the author was talking about the software projects in general. In my experience (and the author’s experience appears to agree with mine) the sort of organizational irrationality peculiar to software isn’t especially overrepresented in any particular sector. It’s present in all sectors, from banking to video games. There’s a deep intuition suggesting that adding more workers to the project will make progress occur more quickly. (Bad) middle managers play to that intuition and add workers even when the addition of more workers actually slows down the progress of the project.
I haven’t seen any evidence of extensive governmental intervention in, say, XBox Games, but management practices at EA appear to fit this stereotype to a tee.
It’s hard to be the first to join a revolution, I agree. But should we really be making it easier for ourselves to be the lone dissenting voice in the woods? After all, most of those dissenting voices are just crazy; they don’t have access to a greater truth, but they think they do. Maybe the difficulty of starting a revolution is a good thing—it forces you to be really, really convinced in your idea.
The problem with option 3 is that its fundamentally intuitionist, with arbitrary cutoffs distinguishing “real” individuals from copies. I mean, is there really such a big difference between cutoff - .001 difference and cutoff + .001 difference? There isn’t. Unless you can show that there’s a qualitative difference that occurs when that threshold is crossed, its much more elegant to look at a distinction between options 1 and 2 without trying to artificially shift the boundary between the two.