Ramiro P.

A ten­ta­tive di­alogue with a Friendly-boxed-su­per-AGI on brain uploads

• Ramiro P. 2 Nov 2021 20:22 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Duncan_Sabien’s comment on: Lies, Damn Lies, and Fabri­cated Options

  My concern, which I interpret as being TAG’s point (but with different words), is that your example of water vs. XYZ is immediately traceable (at least for anyone who knows the philosophical discussion) to Putnam’s Twin Earth experiment. The way you express your point suggests you disregard this thought experiment—which is surprising for someone acquainted with it, because Putnam (at least when he wrote the paper) would likely agree that a substance with the same basic chemical properties of water would be water. He actually aims to provide an argument for semantic externalism—i.e., the idea that the meaning of “water” (or of other natural species) is H20, its chemical nature, and not the apparent properties commonly used as criteria to discriminate it (that it’s a tasteless liquid...). He’s so pushing against a conventionalist view about semantics (and philosophy of language), thus it’s not about physics or ontology.

• Ramiro P. 23 Sep 2021 15:09 UTC

  1 point

  on: Ramiro P.’s Shortform

  LW is quoted (in a kind of flattering way) in Simon Dedeo’s awesome piece on the last Nautil.us issue. For spoiler lovers:

  [...] Rationality is my ticket out. The only reason I can trust you is that you seem rational enough to talk to. But now you’re telling me that rationality is just a layer on top of the System—it’s just as irrational as the people I’m trying to escape. I don’t know which is worse: being duped by someone else’s priors, or being a biological machine.

  Teacher: Don’t go too far. You’re a smart kid—you can iterate faster than most. You can match patterns better. Evolution set you up well. You’ll get better at predicting the consequences of your actions, and better at adapting your environment to your will. Rationality is systematized winning.

  Ian: It’s not winning I’m worried about. It’s my mind. Maybe it’s silly, maybe it’s a fetish, but I want to know the truth. It’s the principle of the thing. Wanting to know the truth got me this far, but now the only option you’ve given me is believing in something I can’t see. If I know it at all, it can’t be through rational, scientific calculation. There’s some kind of extra-rational process I have to engage in—but what’s beyond the edge of reason?

  Teacher: Many things. Dreams, intuition, transcendence, love, ascending the ladder, repetition and the leap of faith, philosophy itself …

  Ian: … delusion, fairy tales, fascism!

  Teacher: Childhood’s end.

Ramiro P.’s Shortform

• Ramiro P. 21 Nov 2020 0:01 UTC

  4 points

  on: When Hind­sight Isn’t 20/​20: In­cen­tive De­sign With Im­perfect Credit Allocation

  Strict liability in tort law seems to be a pretty obvious example, doesn’t it? I mean, I guess a lot of corporate law can be seen as “vicariously holding a group accountable”

• Ramiro P. 21 Jun 2020 17:44 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: gilch’s comment on: Creat­ing bet­ter in­fras­truc­ture for con­tro­ver­sial dis­course

  Kialo is totally underrated.

• Ramiro P. 10 Apr 2020 15:48 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Sherrinford’s comment on: April Coron­avirus Open Thread

  I’ve seen news about this study, but no preprint. It’d be really helpful if we could get it.

• Ramiro P. 6 Apr 2020 1:25 UTC

  1 point

  on: What will hap­pen to sup­ply chains in the era of COVID-19?

  I’m more concerned with developing countries, particularly if they depend on international trade for food. Also, their goods are mainly transported by truck drivers travelling long distances, who may opportunistically demand better working conditions. In Brazil, they threatened to stop working, thus reminding everyone of a strike in 2018 that caused supply problems in major cities. Fortunately, they reconsidered it after the government started a mediatic campaign to make them feel valued.

• Ramiro P. 1 Apr 2020 13:30 UTC

  2 points

  on: April Coron­avirus Open Thread

  Does anyone have any idea /​ info on what proportion of the infected cases are getting Covid19 inside hospitals? This seems to have been a real issue for previous coronavirus.

  I’d say there might be a stark difference between countries /​ regions in this area. Italian health workers seem to have taken a heavy blow. Also, 79 deaths in Brazil (total: 200) came from only one Hospital chain/​ health insurer, which focus on aging customers (so, yeah, maybe it’s just selection bias?).

  (Epistemic status: low, but I didin’t find any research on that after 30min, so maybe the hypothesis deserves a bit more of attention?)

• Ramiro P. 24 Mar 2020 12:57 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Lukas_Gloor’s comment on: Preprint says R0=~5 (!) /​ in­fec­tion fatal­ity ra­tio=~0.1%. Thoughts?

  I noticed CDC claims 9 deaths from Diamond Princess, but I didn’t find support in their source. WHO is still counting 8 deaths. I guess you’re right, but I’d appreciate if you could provide the source.

  They write “at the time of testing.” The study I cite followed up with what happened to patients.

  I know that. If you follow this discussion up to the beginning, you’ll see that all I’m claiming is that the number of documented cases has been affected by selective bias, because asymptomatic /​ pre-symptomatic etc. cases are unlikely to be diagnosed.

  Finally, I believe we both agree the current IFR is underestimating the true death rate, because many patients are still fighting for their lives. Actually, the authors of the preprint are not complete morons and estimate the “time-delayed IFR” in 0.12% (which I agree is too low), and make the following remark to explain the higher mortality in Wuhan:

  These findings indicate that the death risk in Wuhan is estimated to be much higher than those in other areas, which is likely explained by hospital-based transmission [32]. Indeed, past nosocomial outbreaks have been reported to elevate the CFR associated with MERS and SARS outbreaks, where inpatients affected by underlying disease or seniors infected in the hospital setting have raised the CFR to values as high as 20% for a MERS outbreak.

  I’m not saying this study is right. I’m just saying that, unless someone points a methodological flaw, “their conclusion is too different” is not a reason to discard it.

• Ramiro P. 24 Mar 2020 0:19 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Lukas_Gloor’s comment on: Preprint says R0=~5 (!) /​ in­fec­tion fatal­ity ra­tio=~0.1%. Thoughts?

  Maybe CDC screwed their data, but they say 46.5% of the Diamond Princess cases were asymptomatic when tested: https://​​www.cdc.gov/​​mmwr/​​volumes/​​69/​​wr/​​mm6912e3.htm?s_cid=mm6912e3_w

  I believe this might be a confusion between asymptomatic and pre/​mildly symptomatic—but whatever: the claim at stake is that there’s a ton of undocumented cases out there, not that they’re asymptomatic

• Ramiro P. 21 Mar 2020 14:19 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Bucky’s comment on: Preprint says R0=~5 (!) /​ in­fec­tion fatal­ity ra­tio=~0.1%. Thoughts?

  I’m sorry, I’m not sure if I understood the relevance of asymptomatic : symptomatic ratio here. I think what’s at stake in this article is the ratio undocumented : documented cases; it’ll include not only asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic or mildly symptomatic people, but people who got really sick but couldn’t be tested until Hubei had largely improved their testing capabilities.

  I do think a 50:1 rate is surprising, though not impossible.

  If 50% of the cases in South Korea are asymptomatic and so don’t get tested, their true death rate would be ~0.4-0.5%; if you add people who got sick before their testing capability was improved, etc., it may be lower. But again, I really prefer to be pessimistic in my death rates.

• Ramiro P. 20 Mar 2020 21:31 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Bucky’s comment on: Preprint says R0=~5 (!) /​ in­fec­tion fatal­ity ra­tio=~0.1%. Thoughts?

  True, but Diamond Princess is full of oldies, and, despite South Korea massive testing, there might be selection bias—I guess people would only get tested if they had some symptom or contact with other infected persons (perhaps you’re referring a more specific study?). Notice that, if the science study claiming 86% of the cases in Wuhan were undocumented were right, this would already imply a fatality rate of about 0.6%, below South Korea estimates.

  Yet, I agree the fatality rate is surprisingly low, and it’s just a statistical model.

• Ramiro P. 17 Mar 2020 22:02 UTC

  2 points

  on: How much de­lay do you gen­er­ally have be­tween hav­ing a good new idea and shar­ing that idea pub­li­cly on­line?

  My average is a week, I guess. I only share ideas I can’t falsify or take out of my head; and I try them with close friends first. And I admit I’m kinda sensitive to negative feedback.

• Ramiro P. 17 Mar 2020 22:00 UTC

  3 points

  on: How much de­lay do you gen­er­ally have be­tween hav­ing a good new idea and shar­ing that idea pub­li­cly on­line?

  Maybe a spreadsheet would be more informative. You could easily aggregate many answers.

• Ramiro P. 11 Feb 2020 18:26 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Some quick notes on hand hygiene

  If you grab your mobile with your dirty hands, then wash them, and then use your device again, you just recontaminated them; and if you never clean its surface (how do we do it effectively?), it’ll accumulate pathogens. This seems to be a serious problem in hospitals.

  (I’m not sure if I follow your reasoning; it apparently implies that, if you never shake hands with someone else, you never have to worry about washing them. Of course, it does reduce the potential for transmission.)

• Ramiro P. 10 Feb 2020 17:06 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: TomM’s comment on: Some quick notes on hand hygiene

  We should take into account the welfare of others, too. Besides protecting me from disease, washing my hands prevents me from transmitting it to someone else. It’s pretty much analogous to vaccines.

• Ramiro P. 10 Feb 2020 17:00 UTC

  2 points

  on: Some quick notes on hand hygiene

  I ’ve seen somethings concerning how dirty cellphones are—and how they can worsen interpersonal disease transmission. I wonder if there’s any advice on how to keep it clean (and how useful would it be).

• Ramiro P. 5 Dec 2019 5:24 UTC

  1 point

  on: Why are peo­ple so bad at dat­ing?

  I do think Lanrian nailed it: there’s no process ensuring fitness selection in dating. On the other hand, we are wasting an opportunity to go meta here: if everyone were capable of mimicking the features of a picture that make it successful, then those features should lose their importance, since they are not reliably signaling that someone is a good mate. If I’m not bright enough to see through a carefully planned image of a smile and a discrete cleavage, I am probably not bright enough to get a similarly attractive picture for myself. Plus, usual cognitive bias: I often mistake how much I like my pics (for the emotions they evoke, for example) with my assessment of their quality—and so irrationally rate them above average. But yeah, now i can use Photofeeler

• Ramiro P. 22 Oct 2019 17:14 UTC

  3 points

  on: De­bate on In­stru­men­tal Con­ver­gence be­tween LeCun, Rus­sell, Ben­gio, Zador, and More

  I find LeCun’s insistence on the analogy with legal systems particularly interesting, because they remind me more Russell’s proposal of “uncertain objectives” than the “maximize objective function” paradigm. At least in liberal societies, we don’t have a definite set of principles and values that people would agree to follow—instead, we aim at principles that guarantee an environment where any reasonable person can reasonably optimize for something like their own comprehensive doctrine.

  However, the remarkable disanalogy is that, even if social practices change and clever agents adapt faster than law can evolve (as Goodhart remarks), the difference is not so great as with the technological pace.