Sengachi

Karma: 62

Sengachi 8 Sep 2012 18:21 UTC
0 points
on: Bayesian Judo
Me: Writes on hand “Aumann’s Agreement Theorem”. Thank you Eliezer, you have no idea how much easier you just made my Theory of Knowledge class. Half of our discussions in class seem to devolve into statements about how belief is a way of knowing and how everyone has a right to their own belief. This (after I actually look up and confirm for myself that Aumann’s Agreement Theorem works) should make my class a good deal less aggravating.

Sengachi 8 Sep 2012 20:50 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: TGGP4’s comment on: How to Convince Me That 2 + 2 = 3
People can believe wrong things by the millions (Yay! the Earth is flat), that does not make it right. Stupid people can believe correct things and intelligent people can believe incorrect things. And if you were basing the belief system you believe in on average IQ, you’d go with atheism anyway.

But none of these things are evidence. Something would be evidence even if everybody in the world disagreed. Relativity was true even when every single physicist (a group of rather educated people) just knew that Newtonian physic was truth.

Sengachi 10 Sep 2012 4:04 UTC
−1 points
on: Beautiful Probability
I think you’re misunderstanding probability theory a little. Probability theory is the chance that x result means that the universe operates on principle y. The fact that the second researcher had no reason to stop until he tested 100 people means that the % of patients cured did not exceed 60% until his last batch of test subjects. Which significantly alters the chance that the universe operates on principle y. The first researcher could have had a % over 60 at any time during the experiment. Which is a physical difference. The probability used is not based on the researcher’s private thoughts, it is based on their experimental procedure, which is different, regardless of the fact they ended with the same results.

Sengachi 12 Oct 2012 4:56 UTC
1 point
on: Universal Law
Ahem.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/09/warp-drive-plausible/

This is likely what I will study in the future. And we’ve developed metamaterials that can create negative indexes of refraction and optical black holes, once again supposed impossibilities. It may be best to save assumptions of impossibility for when we know the exact underlying universal laws.

Sengachi 12 Oct 2012 23:22 UTC
2 points
on: Savanna Poets
Doug_S.’s link is broken, so I’ll stick my own in.

https://www.fairviewhs.org/system/files/10164/original/ib-shakespeare-in-the-bush-1.pdf?1349452587

Sengachi 4 Nov 2012 0:09 UTC
0 points
in reply to: CCC’s comment on: Proofs, Implications, and Models
The problem with that program is that the information was already there. The information may have been scattered in a semi-random pattern, but it was still there to be reorganized. In this hypothetical simulation, there is a lack of information. And while you can undo randomization to recreate a blurred image, you cannot create information from nothing.

However, the human brain does have some interesting traits which might make it possible for humans to think they are seeing something without creating all the information such a thing would possess. The neocortex has multiple levels. Lower levels detect things like absence and presence of light, which higher levels turn into lines and curves, which even higher levels turn into shapes, which eventually get interpreted as a specific face (the brain has clusters of a few hundred neurons responsible for every face we have memorized). All you would have to do to make a human brain think they saw someone would be to stimulate the top few hundred neurons, the bottom ones need not be given information. Imagine a general telling his troops to move somewhere. Each troop carries out an action, tells their superior, who gives their superior a generalization, who gives their superior a generalization, until the general gets one message “Move going fine”. To fool the general (human) into thinking the move is going fine (interacting with something), you don’t need to forge the entire chain of events (simulate every quark), you just need to give them the message saying everything is going great (stimulate those few hundred neurons). And then when the matrix person looks closer, the Matrix Lords just forge the lower levels temporarily.

The problem with this is is it does not match the principle “Humans simulating old earth to get information”. It would not be giving the future humans any new information they hadn’t created, because they would have to fake that information. They wouldn’t learn anything. It is possible to fool humans in that way, but the only possible use would be for the purpose of fooling someone. And that would require some serious sadism. So there is a scenario in which humans have the computational power and algorithms to make you live in a simulation you think is real, but have no reason to do so.

Sengachi 4 Dec 2012 1:55 UTC
1 point
in reply to: faul_sname’s comment on: Rationality Quotes December 2012
Ah, we are forgetting that sometimes books may be actively misleading, and may deviate one from truth (no matter how much you read those propaganda books, they probably won’t tell you what you really need to know).

Sengachi 4 Dec 2012 4:20 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Nominull’s comment on: Rationality Quotes December 2012
I would argue that everybody complains about poor service at the DMV.

Sengachi 4 Dec 2012 4:26 UTC
−3 points
in reply to: Larks’s comment on: Rationality Quotes December 2012
There is nothing wrong with appeal to authority jointed with all the evidence that said authority uses in their argument, subject to disagreement and rebuttal the same as everything else. That’s not how most people appeal to authority, though.

Sengachi 8 Dec 2012 0:46 UTC
6 points
on: 2012 Survey Results
I had no knowledge of such a survey. These might be more efficient if they were posted in a blatantly obvious manner, like on the banner.

Sengachi 9 Dec 2012 22:09 UTC
3 points
on: Dark Side Epistemology
You know, the Jedi had bad epistemology, same as the Sith. For instance: “Only the Sith speak in absolutes!” …. Give it a moment. Think about it. Only is what kind of modifier again?

Sengachi 16 Dec 2012 4:59 UTC
0 points
on: A Rationalist’s Account of Objectification?
I think this is a problem about talking about two different things with the same word. When most people talk about objectification, they are talking about utilitarian principles, yes. Objectification is not actually the issue. But they are calling the issue objectification because is sounds right.

Objectification is not actually the issue. What non-rationalists call objectification is.

Sengachi 16 Dec 2012 20:00 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Owen_Richardson’s comment on: Guilt: Another Gift Nobody Wants
Rationality can often allow us to overcome otherwise debilitating emotional responses. I think a non-rationalist in the same situation who let their psychopathic brother die … they would probably feel a lot of guilt. A LOT of guilt. Finally, evolution isn’t always fine-tuned, especially in social contexts. Guilt simply may not be a fine-tuned enough emotion to make you feel pain directly proportional to the odds of you being suspected for a crime; it’s more likely that you feel guilt differently in different classes of situations rather than in different levels of the same scenario.

Sengachi 20 Dec 2012 0:27 UTC
3 points
on: The noncentral fallacy—the worst argument in the world?
I like this article very much, and I think it’s an important fallacy to take note of. I do not however, think it is the worst fallacy. I think the worst fallacy is: I don’t need a reason/argument to believe what I believe.

Sengachi 20 Dec 2012 0:57 UTC
−2 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: The noncentral fallacy—the worst argument in the world?
I dislike the fact that we’re talking about the bias rather than the arguments. Here, more so than any other place I know of, we should be dissecting arguments and talking about the truths of the issues, rather than saying that a statement is incorrect because of its side on the political spectrum.

I can’t be the only person thinking this, right?

Sengachi 21 Dec 2012 8:34 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Peterdjones’s comment on: By Which It May Be Judged
Child neglect implies harm. It is the harm that is immoral. If humans left young to fend for themselves, there would be no inherent harm and so it would not be immoral. We always need to remind ourselves why we consider something to be bad, and not assign badness to words like “child neglect”.

Sengachi 21 Dec 2012 8:41 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: lavalamp’s comment on: By Which It May Be Judged
Deism is essentially the belief that an intelligent entity formed, and then generated all of the universe, sans other addendums, as opposed to the belief that a point mass formed and chaoticly generated all of the universe.

Sengachi 21 Dec 2012 8:44 UTC
2 points
in reply to: nshepperd’s comment on: By Which It May Be Judged
Ah, but Clippy is far more clipperific, and so will do more clippy things. Better is not clippy, why should it matter?

Sengachi 21 Dec 2012 8:45 UTC
1 point
in reply to: nshepperd’s comment on: By Which It May Be Judged
And clippiness is obviously more clipperific. That doesn’t actually answer the question.

Sengachi 4 Jan 2013 7:44 UTC
6 points
in reply to: RobinZ’s comment on: Rationality Quotes January 2013
Viewing the interactions of photons as both a wave and a billiard ball. Both are wrong, but by seeing which traits remain constant in all models, we can project what traits the true model is likely to have.