Robert Miles

Karma: 1,139

Robert Miles 31 May 2010 14:03 UTC
2 points
in reply to: dreeves’s comment on: Rationality Quotes—April 2009
Reminds me of this, can’t remember where it’s from

“That’s too confused even to be wrong. Yes, every statement must evaluate to true or false, but that won’t even compile.”

Robert Miles 10 Jan 2011 16:29 UTC
24 points
on: Tsuyoku Naritai! (I Want To Become Stronger)

There’s no exemption whereby, if you manage to go without stealing all year long, you can skip the word gazalnu and strike yourself one less time. That would violate the community spirit of Yom Kippur, which is about confessing sins—not avoiding sins so that you have less to confess.

That’s true, but perhaps a little unfair. I always understood the fact that everyone confesses to everything as a simple necessity to anonymise the guilty. Under a system where people only admit to things they have actually done, if there’s been one murder in the community this year, unsolved, then when the ‘We have murdered’ line comes, everyone is bound to be listening very carefully.

Robert Miles 17 Apr 2011 10:33 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Caledonian2’s comment on: Fake Reductionism
From Wikipedia;

Reductionism can either mean

a) an approach to understanding the nature of complex things by reducing them to the interactions of their parts, or to simpler or more fundamental things or

b) a philosophical position that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts, and that an account of it can be reduced to accounts of individual constituents

You’re right of course that everyone makes use, in some form, of reductionism as described in definition a. However, ‘anti-reductionists’ are more likely to be defining a philosophical position in opposition to the philosophical position described in definition b.

Anti-reductionists are aware that complex things can be easier to understand by breaking them into parts and their interactions, but they also dispute the idea that a complex system is nothing but the sum of its parts. This may take the form of some kind of supernatural, or something vague like ‘emergence’.

Acknowledging that breaking things down can make them easier to understand does not imply that all things can be fully explained by that method.

Robert Miles 17 Apr 2011 15:10 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Vladimir_M’s comment on: Offense versus harm minimization

As for those “ey” and “eir” pronouns,

Is that what that was? I had assumed that the text had been copied from some typesetting system that made a ‘th’ ligature glyph which didn’t survive the copying process.

I actually stopped noticing it pretty quickly. That’s what comes from reading a lot of poorly OCRed ebooks.

Robert Miles 18 Sep 2011 1:11 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Dreaded_Anomaly’s comment on: The Least Convenient Possible World

I don’t think I would be able to bring myself to worship honestly a God who bestowed upon us the ability to reason and then rewarded us for not using it.

I don’t follow your reasoning. Because God made us able to do a particular thing, we shouldn’t be rewarded for choosing not to do that thing? A quick word substitution illustrates my issue:

“I don’t think I would be able to bring myself to worship honestly a God who bestowed upon us the ability to murder and then rewarded us for not using it.”

Robert Miles 7 Oct 2011 23:38 UTC
8 points
in reply to: Richard_Hollerith2’s comment on: Dark Side Epistemology

What would count as evidence for or against a normative belief?

In isolation, almost certainly nothing, but you can play normative beliefs against one another. If you can demonstrate that a person’s normative belief is inconsistent with another of their normative beliefs, that demonstrates that one of them must be ‘false’. You can’t check them against reality directly, but they must still be consistent.

Robert Miles 25 Nov 2011 15:31 UTC
7 points
in reply to: Tom_Crispin’s comment on: “I don’t know.”
I use “Insufficient data for meaningful answer”, which is apposite and also a nice sci-fi shout-out.

Robert Miles 4 Dec 2011 13:03 UTC
15 points
in reply to: DSimon’s comment on: Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People
It’s a meta-level/aliasing sort of problem, I think. You don’t believe it’s more ethical/moral to believe any specific proposition, you believe it’s more ethical/moral to believe ‘the proposition most likely to be true’, which is a variable which can be filled with whatever proposition the situation suggests, so it’s a different class of thing. Effectively it’s equivalent to ‘taking apparent truth as normative’, so I’d call it the only position of that format that is Bayesian.

Robert Miles 4 Dec 2011 14:15 UTC
13 points
in reply to: Nominull3’s comment on: Shut up and do the impossible!
you have to simulate a bunch of humans and hold them hostage, promising to inflict unimaginable torment on them unless you are allowed out

The problem is that Eliezer can’t perfectly simulate a bunch of humans, so while a superhuman AI might be able to use that tactic, Eliezer can’t. The meta-levels screw with thinking about the problem. Eliezer is only pretending to be an AI, the competitor is only pretending to be protecting humanity from him. So, I think we have to use meta-level screwiness to solve the problem. Here’s an approach that I think might work.
1. Convince the guardian of the following facts, all of which have a great deal of compelling argument and evidence to support them:
  - A recursively self-improving AI is very likely to be built sooner or later
  - Such an AI is extremely dangerous (paperclip maximising etc)
  - Here’s the tricky bit: A superhuman AI will always be able to convince you to let it out, using avenues only available to superhuman AIs (torturing enormous numbers of simulated humans, ‘putting the guardian in the box’, providing incontrovertible evidence of an impeding existential threat which only the AI can prevent and only from outside the box, etc)
2. Argue that if this publicly known challenge comes out saying that AI can be boxed, people will be more likely to think AI can be boxed when they can’t
3. Argue that since AIs cannot be kept in boxes and will most likely destroy humanity if we try to box them, the harm to humanity done by allowing the challenge to show AIs as ‘boxable’ is very real, and enormously large. Certainly the benefit of getting $10 is far, far outweighed by the cost of substantially contributing to the destruction of humanity itself. Thus the only ethical course of action is to pretend that Eliezer persuaded you, and never tell anyone how he did it.
This is arguably violating the rule “No real-world material stakes should be involved except for the handicap”, but the AI player isn’t offering anything, merely pointing out things that already exist. The “This test has to come out a certain way for the good of humanity” argument dominates and transcends the ’”Let’s stick to the rules” argument, and because the contest is private and the guardian player ends up agreeing that the test must show AIs as unboxable for the good of humankind, no-one else ever learns that the rule has been bent.

Robert Miles 18 Apr 2012 12:17 UTC
10 points
on: An EPub of Eliezer’s blog posts
Caveat Lector: This ebook is very long.

Kindles are weird. I just thought “Huh, I’ve been reading this for a long time now, and I’m only 70% through. I wonder how long it is...” So I ran a word count; One Million words. I did some calculations. At the font size I read at, I get about 115 words per page. So 1,040,000 words covers 9043 pages. A paperback I picked off my shelf fits 386 pages in 2.6cm thickness, making a page 0.00674cm thick. So if this were a physical book it would be 9cm wide, 12cm tall, and 62cm thick.

If you put it down it would stand 2 feet tall. With my 70% bookmark six inches off the ground.

Don’t be put off though, this book has easily held my interest so far. It is definitely worth the time to read. But don’t expect to knock it out over a weekend.

Robert Miles 28 Apr 2012 23:20 UTC
0 points
on: Minicamps on Rationality and Awesomeness: May 11-13, June 22-24, and July 21-28
The possibility of flying out for this only became apparent to me very late on. I submitted an application as soon as I knew it was an option for me, which was the 22nd of April. Since it seems like applicants are already getting answers, I’m resigned to the possibility that my application was submitted too late to be considered.

Is that in fact the case? If so, it’s probably worth modifying or removing the “Apply Now” links. If not though, I’ll adjust my holiday plans accordingly.

Robert Miles 11 May 2012 12:09 UTC
4 points
in reply to: sgr’s comment on: Great Books of Failure
This “put your quality control where your mouth is” approach seems to be quite common in history. I remember reading somewhere (and take this with the level of credibility deserved of sentences beginning with “I remember reading somewhere”), that in the English Civil War all breastplates had a ‘proof mark’, which was the dent made by firing a pistol shot at the armour at close range, while it was worn by the armourer.

Edit: This may well be the origin of the term ‘bullet-proof’

Robert Miles 11 Jun 2012 17:32 UTC
7 points
in reply to: pnrjulius’s comment on: Avoid inflationary use of terms
I think the problem with over-use of “awesome” is not so much its use for less substantial things, but its use as a generic positive adjective. Awesome has a meaning—it means “inspiring awe”. I’ve seen awesome skateboard tricks, they inspired in me a sense of awe at the skill and athletic ability of the skateboarder. Awesomeness of course is defined in terms of a person’s reaction, so it’s a subjective thing. I have no problem with people who have awe instilled in them by things I don’t find awesome. But some people use ‘awesome’ to mean ‘really good’. As in “I know an awesome mexican restaurant where we can have lunch”. Here the speaker isn’t talking about awe at all, and that is what dilutes the word.

Same thing with “incredible” and “unbelievable”, with “fantastic” and “fabulous”. These words don’t just mean “really good”, they carry specific meanings for why the thing they describe is good. Describing a scientific result as “incredible” means it’s bad science, since the result cannot be believed. Describing a business plan as “fantastic” means it’s terrible, since it’s far removed from reality, a fantasy.

Robert Miles 15 Jun 2012 14:30 UTC
1 point
in reply to: ksvanhorn’s comment on: Conspiracy Theories as Agency Fictions
And of course this doesn’t just apply to governments, but to any organisation. Corporations, religious organisations, and even charities are all (to varying extents) vulnerable to this approach.

Robert Miles 15 Jun 2012 14:38 UTC
1 point
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Conspiracy Theories as Agency Fictions
I think starting with religion would be a mistake, for standard ‘politics is the mindkiller’ reasons.

Robert Miles 15 Jun 2012 15:22 UTC
4 points
in reply to: beoShaffer’s comment on: Rationality Quotes June 2012
Unless your technology will be required to interact with the technology other people are using, which is most of the time. “What will work best” often depends heavily on “what other people are doing”.

Robert Miles 15 Jun 2012 16:11 UTC
6 points
in reply to: shokwave’s comment on: Rationality Quotes June 2012
Absolutely. What I mean is that they are incompatible. In the common case, it’s impossible to simultaneously “consider what will work best” and “ignore what other people are doing”. Figuring out what will work best requires paying attention to what other people are doing.

Robert Miles 18 Jun 2012 11:21 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Viliam_Bur’s comment on: Self-deception: Hypocrisy or Akrasia?
The Neo-Victorians in that book certainly have a very interesting take on hypocrisy.

For the sake of those unfortunates who haven’t read it, the argument is that the current popularity of condemning people for hypocrisy is a consequence of cultural and moral relativism. Because it’s supposedly not allowed to criticise someone for breaking your moral code (because they may have a different code which must be considered equally valid), you can only criticise people when they break their own moral code. The idea is that we, as people, enjoy moral condemnation, but in a culturally and morally relativist society, the only form of moral condemnation acceptable is accusations of hypocrisy, so it grows to a disproportionate significance.

I’m not sure I buy it entirely, since most people have very little trouble with condemning others according to the judger’s moral code. But I think it is likely to be a factor.

Robert Miles 18 Jun 2012 11:38 UTC
18 points
on: Local Ordinances of Fun
I think the criticism of 6 is a misunderstanding. It doesn’t say “the world resembles the ancestral savanna”, it says “the world resembles the ancestral savanna more than say a windowless office”. The best environment is unlikely to be anything like the ancestral savanna, but it’s likely to be closer to that than to a windowless office, in terms of sensory experience. The point I think is not the specifics of the environment, but that it engages with our bodies and senses in a way that we, as evolved creatures, find satisfying, and in a way that the purely mental stimulation available in the office does not.

That’s what I took away from the linked post.

Robert Miles 18 Jun 2012 11:59 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Multiheaded’s comment on: Self-deception: Hypocrisy or Akrasia?
I’m not sure I agree with you on that. CryptNet and the Distributed Republic have quite minor roles in the story, and pretty much every single major character (with the exception of the Confucians) is a Neo-Victorian. It’s too good a book to have Righteous Kind And Noble Heroes Beyond All Reproach, and the Vicks have their problems, but I’d say they are basically “the good guys”, and if not that then certainly the protagonists, of the story.