ThrustVectoring

Karma: 1,372

ThrustVectoring Jan 26, 2014, 5:29 PM
0 points
in reply to: Locaha’s comment on: Open thread, January 25- February 1
http://intelligence.org/courses/ has information on set theory. I also enjoyed reading Bertrand Russell’s “Principia Mathematica”, but haven’t evaluated it as a source for learning set theory.

ThrustVectoring Jan 26, 2014, 3:48 AM
4 points
in reply to: banx’s comment on: Open thread, January 25- February 1
I’d flip that around. Whatever action you end up choosing reveals what you think has highest utility, according to the information and utility function you have at the time. It’s almost a definition of what utility is—if you consistently make choices that rank lower according to what you think your utility function is, then your model of your utility function is wrong.

If the utility function you think you have prefers B over A, and you prefer A over B, then there’s some fact that’s missing from the utility function you think you have (probably related to risk).

I’ve recently come to terms with how much fear/anxiety/risk avoidance is in my revealed preferences. I’m working on working with that to do effective long-term planning—the best trick I have so far is weighing “unacceptable status quo continues” as a risk. That, and making explicit comparisons between anticipated and experienced outcomes of actions (consistently over-estimating risks doesn’t help any, and I’ve been doing that).

ThrustVectoring Jan 25, 2014, 4:13 PM
0 points
in reply to: Locaha’s comment on: Open thread, January 25- February 1
I don’t have a good resource for you—I’ve had too much math education to pin down exactly where I picked up this kind of logic. I’d recommend set theory in general for getting an understanding of how math works and how to talk and read precisely in mathematics.

For your specific question about the mean, it’s the only number such that the sum of all (samples—mean) equals zero. Go ahead and play with the algebra to show it to yourself. What it means is that if you go off of the mean, you’re going to be more positive of the numbers in the sample than you are negative, or more negative than positive.

ThrustVectoring Jan 23, 2014, 5:29 PM
1 point
on: Do we underuse the genetic heuristic?
People don’t only tell us things because they are true. They also tell us things because they want us to believe it. Believing things that others want us to believe is often a very, very bad plan. Especially if we advertise that we believe things because people tell us that we ought to.

Even if you can tell when people are lying, it’s still a bad plan. If Alice tells you the IQ scores of people only if it will adjust your perception of that person downward and Alice dislikes that person, you’re going to reliably treat people that Alice hates worse.

ThrustVectoring Jan 20, 2014, 3:11 PM
23 points
on: Why don’t more rationalists start startups?

Given all of this, I think that if you’re smart and hard working, you should have at least an 80-90% chance at succeeding at a startup.

Uhm, I don’t think you’re multiplying together the likelihood that you don’t fail in each of the ways you outlined. You got so close by identifying all the hurdles you have to go through—and then instead of doing the math, you basically said “these look like stuff that can get overcome by a smart and hard working individual” and slapped the “80-90%” label on it.

I counted 21 distinct ways you said a startup can fail. 0.99^21 = 0.8. I’m pretty confident you envisioned more than one person failing in that way out of a hundred.

ThrustVectoring Jan 19, 2014, 4:19 PM
0 points
on: Dark Arts of Rationality
I think that at least part of the benefit from telling yourself “I don’t get ego depletion” is from telling yourself “I don’t accept ego depletion as an excuse to stop working”.

If you model motivation as trying to get long-term goals accomplished while listening to a short-term excuse-to-stop-working generator, it matches up pretty well. I did a short test just now with telling myself “I don’t accept being tired as an excuse to stop rasping out a hole”, and I noticed at least two attempts to use just that excuse that I’d normally take.

ThrustVectoring Jan 19, 2014, 2:59 AM
19 points
1
in reply to: MixedNuts’s comment on: Tell Culture
There’s not really a better way to interact with Guessers, though. You either Guess yourself and spend a lot of effort in low-bandwidth discussion with lots of misunderstanding and weirdness, or you be mean to them in order to communicate and get your needs met.

I grew up in a strong Guess culture, and really one of the best things you can do for your mental health is to get out of that kind of place. It’s a way to passive-aggressively get concessions from those around you while making yourself miserable. Guessing is a terrible, terrible way to “win”.

ThrustVectoring Jan 19, 2014, 2:49 AM
1 point
in reply to: RolfAndreassen’s comment on: Open Thread for January 17 − 23 2014
Uhhhh, what? Revolutions is the expansion for Victoria 1, and Heart of Darkness is the expansion for Victoria 2. The other expansion for Victoria 2 is A House Divided.

ThrustVectoring Jan 18, 2014, 6:18 AM
18 points
in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Open Thread for January 17 − 23 2014
I disagree—I think it’s because there’s likely insufficient membership control to have a worthwhile signal-to-noise ratio. AI discussion is notorious for this, because of the quantity of cranks around.

Furthermore, legitimate AI researchers know that there are many cranks around, so they’re less interested in starting under-moderated and under-restricted discussion. So when someone comes around asking to start under-moderated and low-barrier-to-entry discussion on AI, it signals that they’re likely a crank.

ThrustVectoring Jan 18, 2014, 6:13 AM
1 point
in reply to: RolfAndreassen’s comment on: Open Thread for January 17 − 23 2014
Is that Victoria 2, or Victoria: Revolutions? There’s a big difference in the two, and I have a lot more experience with the latter.

ThrustVectoring Jan 18, 2014, 6:11 AM
6 points
in reply to: sixes_and_sevens’s comment on: Open Thread for January 17 − 23 2014

because I want to be better at explaining mathematical concepts (or any concepts, really) to others.

I’d suggest looking into effective techniques for tutoring, rather than teaching in general. It’s both a more marketable skill, as well as more valuable for explaining things to other people. It may be my personality bias showing, though - I’m much more comfortable in 1 on 1 social situations.

As a strategy, I’d spend a few hours looking at how to evaluate the difference between good and bad tutoring, and then head up to anywhere that needs volunteer tutors and start volunteering.

ThrustVectoring Jan 13, 2014, 8:21 PM
1 point
in reply to: Locaha’s comment on: AALWA: Ask any LessWronger anything
I find it awfully suspicious that the vast majority of humans talk about experiencing consciousness. It’d be very strange if they were doing so for no reason.

ThrustVectoring Jan 13, 2014, 3:31 PM
2 points
in reply to: Locaha’s comment on: AALWA: Ask any LessWronger anything

You can make a very simple machine that talks about experiencing consciousness.

And that simple machine does so because it was made to do so by people experiencing consciousness.

ThrustVectoring Jan 13, 2014, 12:44 AM
1 point
in reply to: Locaha’s comment on: AALWA: Ask any LessWronger anything
I find it awfully suspicious that the vast majority of humans talk about experiencing consciousness. It’d be very strange if they were doing so for no reason, so I think that the human brain has some kind of pattern of thought that causes talking about consciousness.

For brevity, I call that-kind-of-thinking-that-causes-people-to-talk-about-consciousness “consciousness”.

ThrustVectoring Jan 12, 2014, 2:21 PM
4 points
in reply to: pianoforte611’s comment on: AALWA: Ask any LessWronger anything
The most apt description I’ve found is something along the lines of “consciousness is what information-processing feels like from the inside.”

It’s not just about the what a brain does, because a simulated brain would still be conscious, despite not being made of neurons. It’s about certain kinds of patterns of thought (not the physical neural action, but thought as in operation performed on data). Human brains have it, insects don’t, anything in between is something for actual specialists to discuss. But what it is—the pattern of data processing—isn’t all that mysterious.

ThrustVectoring Jan 12, 2014, 2:01 PM
0 points
in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: AALWA: Ask any LessWronger anything
I don’t quite have the mathematical background and sophistication to grok those posts as well, but I did get their purpose—to hook mathematicians into thinking about the open problems that Eliezer and MIRI have identified as being relevant.

ThrustVectoring Jan 12, 2014, 5:27 AM
0 points
on: AALWA: Ask any LessWronger anything
I’ve read the sequences and have a pretty solid grip on what the LW orthodox position is on epistemology and a number of other issues—anyone need some clarification on any points?

ThrustVectoring Jan 10, 2014, 5:51 AM
1 point
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: We need new humans, please help
Revised statement:

I can’t think of a good way to filter immigration by cultural values

ThrustVectoring Jan 10, 2014, 3:51 AM
1 point
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: We need new humans, please help
There’s no good way to filter immigration by cultural values. It’s not just more humans in the first world, but more people with first-world values and education in the first world. (Yes, I think American/Western European/etc values are better than other places. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have those kinds of values).

ThrustVectoring Jan 9, 2014, 1:48 AM
0 points
in reply to: Curiouskid’s comment on: Physics grad student: how to build employability in programming & finance
Is room and board included? Alternatively, how expensive is it to house yourself while attending one of these events?