Said Achmiz

Karma: 12,939

Said Achmiz 30 Apr 2020 22:11 UTC
7 points

in reply to: jasoncrawford's comment on: Why anything that can be for-profit, should be
My reaction would be that a vaccine should be made for profit; if there are people who can’t afford it there should be a charity to buy the vaccine for them.

Pay careful attention to this formulation. Note the phrase:

there should be

What does that mean, precisely?

When we speak of whether a vaccine should be made for profit or not, we are, implicitly, speaking from the perspective of decision-makers who are in a position to decide whether a vaccine will be made on a for-profit or a non-profit basis. This may be some level of government (which may choose to contract to get a vaccine made, then distribute it to members of the public—or, may elect not to do so, and leave the matter to the vaccine manufacturers to decide), or it may be a corporation (which may manufacture the vaccine and then choose to make it available for free, instead of selling it).

Now, from the standpoint of those decision-makers, what does it mean to say that the vaccine should be for-profit but that “there should be” a charity to buy the vaccine for those who need it? It could only mean one of two things:
1. We—i.e., by construction, that decision-making organization—having chosen to sell the vaccine for a profit, will now also spin off a charity whose purpose will be to make the vaccine available on a non-profit basis.
2. We will sell the vaccine at a profit. Perhaps someone else will found a charity which will purchase our vaccine and make it available on a non-profit basis. Or, perhaps not. Either way, we will merely sell it and make a profit.
And note that option #1 is no different from “make the vaccine on a non-profit basis” in the first place, whereas option #2 is simply a shrug—a refusal to accept any responsibility for the problem of people who can’t afford the vaccine.

Either way, you have not answered leggi’s question/challenge, but evaded it.

Said Achmiz 31 Mar 2020 20:20 UTC
4 points

in reply to: sdmin's comment on: Why I’ve started using NoScript
Well, for one thing, the problem of “code delivered from a site you would normally trust but that is now malicious” is the same as the problem of “being mistaken about what sites to trust (and so accidentally trusting a site that was malicious all along)”.

As I understand your question, and as I understand the web and its technologies, the problem basically is that “if you run code (JavaScript) in your browser—code that is provided by arbitrary people on the internet—this is fundamentally a vulnerability”. And that’s true. There’s no solution to that basic fact other than “don’t run JavaScript”.

The matter really depends on how much you trust your browser vendor (Google, Apple, or Mozilla) to secure the browser against exploits that could harm/steal/pwn your computer or your data. If you trust them to a reasonable degree, then precautions short of “disable JavaScript entirely” suffice. If you really don’t trust them very much at all, then disable JavaScript (and possibly take even stricter measures to limit your exposure, such as running your browser in a VM, or some such thing; Richard Stallman’s browse-by-email workflow would be an extreme example of this).

Said Achmiz 26 Mar 2020 2:52 UTC
2 points

in reply to: lsusr's comment on: 3 Interview-like Algorithm Questions for Programmers
… then your answer is wrong. So… what gives?

Said Achmiz 25 Mar 2020 20:53 UTC
6 points

on: 3 Interview-like Algorithm Questions for Programmers
Re: #1:

Which sorting algorithm shows O(n) time complexity given no assumptions but that the values are integers?

Said Achmiz 21 Mar 2020 8:35 UTC
2 points

in reply to: MikkW's comment on: Coherent decisions imply consistent utilities
Have you read the papers I linked (or the more directly relevant papers cited by those)? What do you think about Aumann’s commentary on this question, for instance?

Said Achmiz 18 Mar 2020 0:55 UTC
4 points

in reply to: gwern's comment on: Welcome to LessWrong!
Thanks to gwern for the mention of GW/RTS!

In the interests of giving equal screen time to the (friendly!) ‘competition’, here’s yet another viewer site for Less Wrong—one which takes an even more low-key and minimalist approach:

https://lw2.issarice.com/

Said Achmiz 15 Mar 2020 5:38 UTC
2 points

in reply to: Raemon's comment on: Rationalists, Post-Rationalists, And Rationalist-Adjacents
Unless I am misunderstanding, wouldn’t orthonormal say that “switching frames” is actually a thing not to do (and that it’s something post-rationalists do, which is in conflict with rationalist approaches)?

Said Achmiz 14 Mar 2020 9:18 UTC
15 points

on: Rationalists, Post-Rationalists, And Rationalist-Adjacents
I want to specifically object to the last part of the post (the rest of it is fine and I agree almost completely with both the explicit positive claims and the implied normative ones).

But at the end, you talk about double-crux, and say:

And to try to double-crux with someone, only to have it fail in either of those ways, is an infuriating feeling for those of us who thought we could take it for granted in the community.

Well, and why did you think you could take it for granted in the community? I don’t think that’s justified at all—post-rationalists and rationalist-adjacents aside!

For instance, while I don’t like to label myself as any kind of ‘-ist’—even a ‘rationalist’—the term applies to me, I think, better than it does to most people. (This is by no means a claim of any extraordinary rationalist accomplishments, please note; in fact, if pressed for a label, I’d have to say that I prefer the old one ‘aspiring rationalist’… but then, your given definition—and I agree with it—requires no particular accomplishment, only a perspective and an attempt to progress toward a certain goal. These things, I think, I can honestly claim.) Certainly you’ll find me to be among the first to argue for the philosophy laid out in the Sequences, and against any ‘post-rationalism’ or what have you.

But I have deep reservations about this whole ‘double-crux’ business, to say the least; and I have commented on this point, here on Less Wrong, and have not seen it established to my satisfaction that the technique is all that useful or interesting—and most assuredly have not seen any evidence that it ought to be taken as part of some “rationalist canon”, which you may reasonably expect any other ‘rationalist’ to endorse.

Now, you did say that you’d feel infuriated by having double-crux fail in either of those specific ways, so perhaps you would be ok with double-crux failing in any other way at all? But this does not seem likely to me; and, in any case, my own objection to the technique is similar to what you describe as the ‘rationalist-adjacent’ response (but different, of course, in that my objection is a principled one, rather than any mere unreflective lack of interest in examining beliefs too closely).

Lest you take this comment to be merely a stream of grumbling to no purpose, let me ask you this: is the bit about double-crux meant to be merely an example of a general tendency (of which many other examples may be found) for Less Wrong site/community members to fail to endorse the various foundational concepts and techniques of ‘LW-style’ rationality? Or, is the failure of double-crux indeed a central concern of yours, in writing this post? How important is that part of the post, in other words? Is the rest written in the service of that complaint specifically? Or is it separable?

Said Achmiz 9 Mar 2020 6:44 UTC
2 points

on: Why hasn’t the technology of Knowledge Representation (i.e., semantic networks, concept graphs, ontology engineering) been applied to create tools to help human thinkers?
To learn about attempts to develop user-facing “knowledge representation” software (and related) tools, read about “mind mapping” (and follow the links in the “Information mapping” sidebar).

Said Achmiz 8 Mar 2020 19:01 UTC
11 points

in reply to: Davidmanheim's comment on: Credibility of the CDC on SARS-CoV-2

Third, given that the authors said they realized it might be bad, this should never have been posted without discussion with someone external.

For example…?

Suppose I’m a Less Wrong member who sometimes makes posts. Suppose I have some thoughts on this whole virus thing and I want to write down those thoughts and post them on Less Wrong.

You’re suggesting that after I write down what I think, but before I publish the post, I should consult with “someone external”.

But with whom? Are you proposing some general guideline for how to determine when a post should go through such consultation, and how to determine with whom to consult, and how to consult with them? If so, please do detail this process. I, for one, haven’t the foggiest idea how I would, in the general case, discern when a to-be-published post of mine needs to be vetted by some external agent, and how to figure out who that should be, etc.

This whole business of having people vet our posts seems like it’s easy to propose in retrospect as a purported unsatisfied criterion of posting a given post, but not so easy to satisfy in prospect. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding you. In any case, I should like to read your thoughts on the aforesaid guidelines.

(By the way, what assurances of vetting would satisfy you? Suppose the OP had contained a note: “This post has been vetted by X.”. And suppose otherwise the post were unchanged. For what value(s) of X would you now have no quarrel with the post?)

Said Achmiz 7 Mar 2020 22:38 UTC
51 points

in reply to: sirjackholland's comment on: Credibility of the CDC on SARS-CoV-2
obvious info hazard

I wish people would stop throwing this term around willy-nilly.

Not only is it not obvious to me that this post is an “info hazard”, but I don’t really know what you even mean by it. Is it the definition used in this recent Less Wrong post^[1], or perhaps the one quoted in this Less Wrong Wiki entry^[2]?

In any case, the OP seems to be presenting true (as far as I can tell) and useful (potentially life-saving, in fact!) information. If you’re going to casually drop labels like “infohazard” in reference to it, you ought to do a lot better than a justification-free “this is bad”. Civil or not, I’d like to see that critique.

If you think the OP is harmful, by all means do not let civility stop you from posting a comment that may mitigate that harm! If you really believe what you’re saying, that comment may save lives. So let’s have it!

EDIT: Like Zack, I will strong-upvote this extended critique if you post.
1. TL;DR: “Infohazard” means any kind of information that could be harmful in some fashion. Let’s use “cognitohazard” to describe information that could specifically harm the person who knows it.
  
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2. An information hazard is a concept coined by Nick Bostrom in a 2011 paper[1] for Review of Contemporary Philosophy. He defines it as follows; “Information hazard: A risk that arises from the dissemination or the potential dissemination of (true) information that may cause harm or enable some agent to cause harm.”
  
  ↩︎

Said Achmiz 20 Feb 2020 1:43 UTC
6 points

in reply to: steve2152's comment on: Morality vs related concepts
Ethics/morality is generally understood to be a way to answer the question, “what is the right thing to do [in some circumstance / class of circumstances]?” (or, in other words, “what ought I to do [in this circumstance / class of circumstances]?”)

If, in answer to this, your ethical framework / moral system / etc. says “well, action X is better than action Y, but even better would be action Z”, then you don’t actually have an answer to your question (yet), do you? Because the obvious follow-up is, “Well, ok, so… which of those things should I do? X? Or Y? Or Z…?”

At that point, your morality can give you one of several answers:
1. “Any of those things is acceptable. You ought to do something in the set { X, Y, Z } (but definitely don’t do action W!); but which of those three things to do, is really up to you. Although, X is more morally praiseworthy than Y, and Z more praiseworthy than X. If you care about that sort of thing.”
2. “You ought to do the best thing (which is Z).”
3. “I cannot answer your question. There is no right thing to do, nor is there such a thing as ‘the thing you ought to do’ or even ‘a thing you ought to do’. Some things are simply better than others.”
If your morality gives answer #3, then what you have is actually not a morality, but merely an axiology. In other words, you have a ranking of actions, but what do you do with this ranking? Not clear. If you want your initial question (“what ought I to do?”) answered, you still need a morality!

Now, an axiology can certainly be a component of a morality. For example, if you have a decision rule that says “rank all available actions, then do the one at the top of the ranking”, and you also have a utilitarian axiology, then you can put them together and presto!—you’ve got a morality. (You might have a different decision rule instead, of course, but you do need one.)

Answer #3 plus a “do the best thing, out of this ranking” is, of course, just answer #2, so that’s all fine and good.

In answer #1, we are supposing that we have some axiology (evaluative ranking) that ranks actions Z > X > Y > W, and some decision rule that says “do any of the first three (feel free to select among them according to any criteria you like, including random choice), and you will be doing what you ought to do; but if you do W, you’ll have done a thing you ought not to do”. Now, what can be the nature of this decision rule? There would seem to be little alternative to the rule being a simple threshold of some sort: “actions that are at least this good [in the evaluative ranking] are permissible, while actions worse than this threshold are impermissible”. (In the absence of such a decision rule, you will recall, answer #1 degenerates into answer #3, and ceases to be a morality.)

Well, fair enough. But how to come up with the threshold? On what basis to select it? How to know it’s the right one—and what would it mean for it to be right (or wrong)? Could two moralities with different permissibility thresholds (but with the same, utilitarian, axiology) both be right?

Note that the lower you set the threshold, the more empty your morality becomes of any substantive content. For instance, if you set the threshold at exactly zero—in the sense that actions that do either no good at all, or some good, but in either case no harm, are permitted, while harmful actions are forbidden—then your morality boils down to “do no harm (but doing good is praiseworthy, and the more the better)”. Not a great guide to action!

On the other hand, the higher you set the threshold, the closer you get to answer #2.

And in any event, the questions about how to correctly locate the threshold, remain unanswered…

Said Achmiz 14 Feb 2020 21:14 UTC
−4 points

in reply to: hookdump's comment on: Why do we refuse to take action claiming our impact would be too small?
I’m not sure I get your meaning. You didn’t focus on actual examples… because you don’t want to find out if the phenomenon you’re describing is actually real or not? (But you obviously should want to find this out—that is what we’re doing here, right?)

I mean, if what you’re describing isn’t a real thing, then this whole conversation is moot, isn’t it?

Said Achmiz 11 Feb 2020 14:02 UTC
6 points

on: Why do we refuse to take action claiming our impact would be too small?

To illustrate with an hypothetical example: If we suddenly found out that mobile phone frequencies destroy the planet …

I find that phenomena like this are almost entirely pointless to illustrate with hypothetical examples, and much more fruitful to instead illustrate with actual examples.

Note, however, that if you do this, you may get responses protesting that actually, your supposed “actual examples” are not, in fact, examples of your claimed phenomenon. This, of course, is very much a feature, and not at all a bug—as it is quite possible that the phenomenon you thought was real, in fact… isn’t. In the latter case, what you would expect is precisely that all your attempts to provide actual examples would be met with skepticism and protest.

Said Achmiz 5 Feb 2020 21:50 UTC
2 points

in reply to: eukaryote's comment on: Eukryt Wrts Blg
The “real name” issue is only one part of one of the points I made. Even if you reject that part entirely, what do you say to the rest?

I suppose there’s a perceived difference in professionalism or skin in the game (am I characterizing the motive correctly?), but we’re all here for the ideas anyways, right?

This is not a realistic view, but, again, I am content to let it slide. By no means is it the whole or even most of the reasons for my view.

Said Achmiz 5 Feb 2020 0:00 UTC
4 points

in reply to: mr-hire's comment on: Eukryt Wrts Blg
I don’t think I agree.

Or, to be more precise, I agree denotationally but object connotationally: indeed, the thing I want is a different thing than what Less Wrong is, but it’s not clear to me that it’s a different thing than what Less Wrong easily could be.

To take a simple example of an axis of variation: it is entirely possible to have a public forum which is not indexed by Google.

A more complicated example: there is a difference between obtuseness and lack of deliberate, positive effort to minimize inferential distance to outsiders. I do not advocate the former… but whether to endorse the latter is a trickier question (not least because interpreting the latter is a tricky matter on its own).

Said Achmiz 4 Feb 2020 23:13 UTC
4 points

in reply to: mr-hire's comment on: Eukryt Wrts Blg
I didn’t advocate being obtuse. I only said that by default, we probably do not (and/or ought not) want a post to be disseminated widely.

What is the best way of accomplishing this, is a separate matter.

Said Achmiz 3 Feb 2020 22:36 UTC
5 points

on: Category Theory Without The Baggage
I didn’t read all the way through (I stopped reading midway through the extended airport example), so forgive me if this is answered already; if you say the answer’s in there, I’ll go back and reread. But, in case it’s not, my question is: what would I gain from using category theory for problems like this, instead of graph theory (on which there already exists a vast literature)?

Said Achmiz 3 Feb 2020 18:03 UTC
7 points

in reply to: eukaryote's comment on: Eukryt Wrts Blg
Several reasons.

The most important one is: the further an idea spreads, the more likely it is to be misinterpreted and distorted, and discussed elsewhere in the misinterpreted/distorted form; and the more this happens, the more likely it will be that anyone discussing the idea here has, in their mind, a corrupted form of it (both because of contamination in the minds of Less Wrong commenters from the corrupted form of the idea they read/hear in discussions elsewhere, and because of immigration of people, into Less Wrong discussions, who have first heard relevant ideas elsewhere and have them in a corrupted form). This can, if common, be seriously damaging to our ability to handle any ideas of any subtlety or complexity over even short periods of time.

Another very important reason is the chilling effects on discussions here due to pressure from society-wide norms. (Many obvious current examples, here; no need to enumerate, I think.) This means that the more widely we can expect any given post or discussion to spread, the less we are able to discuss ideas even slightly outside the Overton window. (The higher shock levels become entirely out of reach, for example.)

Finally, commonplace wide dissemination of discussions here are a strong disincentive for commenters here to use their real names (due to not wanting to be exposed so widely), to speak plainly and honestly about their views on many things, and—in the case of many commenters—to participate entirely.

Said Achmiz 3 Feb 2020 9:12 UTC
5 points

in reply to: eukaryote's comment on: Eukryt Wrts Blg

And making it accessible suddenly means it can be linked and referred to in many other contexts. … It enables the post to spread beyond the LW memeosphere, potentially bringing you honor and glory.

There are often very, very good reasons not to want this, and indeed to want the very opposite of this. In fact, I think that the default should be to not want any given post to be linked, and to spread, far and wide.

If you’re not going to do this, you can at least: Link jargon to somewhere that explains it.

I do wholeheartedly endorse this, however.