tim

Karma: 622

tim 27 Feb 2009 20:32 UTC
28 points
on: The Most Important Thing You Learned
“the map is not the territory” has stuck in my mind as one of the over-arching principles of rationality. it reinforces the concept of self-doubt, implies one should work to make their map conform more closely to the territory, and is invaluable when one believes to have hit a cognitive wall. there are no walls, just the ones drawn on your map.

the post, “mysterious answers to mysterious questions” is my favorite post that dealt with this topic, though it has been reiterated (and rightly so) over a multitude of postings.

link: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/08/mysterious-answ.html

tim 25 Mar 2009 1:41 UTC
4 points
in reply to: SoullessAutomaton’s comment on: On Things that are Awesome
i disagree with this. the symbol “X” may stand for “the symbol ‘X’ in my mind” when you are explicitly thinking “what does the symbol of X stand for in my brain” and you cleverly return “well, it is simply a symbol and i should recognize that and treat it as such.”

but in the practical functioning of your mind, the symbol stands for much more than itself. if, when confronted with the input “X”, your brain returned “the symbol X,” that would be wholly useless (and possibly send the computational portion of your mind into a recursive loop). “X” must stand for a some concept outside of “X” for it to serve a purpose in your mind.

a symbol existing solely for the sake of itself with no attachments outside of itself is mentally useless.

tim 25 Mar 2009 17:03 UTC
2 points
in reply to: SoullessAutomaton’s comment on: On Things that are Awesome
in that case, apologies; i am not familiar with his work. though after this series of posts, i will certainly be reading G, E, B.

tim 21 May 2009 16:38 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: conchis’s comment on: Rationality quotes—May 2009
this seems to convolute the example with personal moralities that have no bearing on the actual, objective “task” and how efficiently or inefficiently it is accomplished. if the goal is to kill people, your moral qualms don’t make it “better” to kill less. you are still performing poorly relative to the task.

this does highlight a problem with the original quote. “useless” is rather ambiguous as the reader has to decide whether to tie “use” to the utility of the task relative to what it is trying to accomplish versus the reader’s personal goals. the same applies to the equally ambiguous word, “should.”

tim 12 Aug 2009 13:11 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Psychohistorian’s comment on: Would Your Real Preferences Please Stand Up?
i have some experience with OCD and i think a good way of defining it would be: people with OCD repeat their compulsive rituals as a form of negative reinforcement. when a ritual is interrupted or unable to be completed in some way, the person will usually suffer a tremendous amount of anxiety. this anxiety is relieved upon completion of the ritual making it a strong source of negative reinforcement and causing that person to repeat it in the future. while the initial [i]basis[/i] of the ritual is “crazy” or irrational (obviously locking a door nine times serves no practical purpose in of itself), the [i]use[/i] of the ritual is not—it removes or prevents anxiety.

tim 10 Sep 2009 0:06 UTC
2 points
on: Outlawing Anthropics: An Updateless Dilemma
isn’t this a problem with the frequency you are presented with the opportunity to take the wager? [no, see edit]

the equation: (50% ((18 +$1) + (2 -$3))) + (50% ((18 -$3) + (2 +$1))) = -$20 neglects to take into account that you will be offered this wager nine times more often in conditions where you win than when you lose.

for example, the wager: “i will flip a fair coin and pay you $1 when it is heads and pay you -$2 when it is tails” is -EV in nature. however if a conditional is added where you will be asked if you want to take the bet 90% of the time given the coin is heads (10% of the time you are ‘in a red room’) and 10% of the time given the coin is tails (90% of the time you are ‘in a red room’), your EV changes from (.5)(1) + (.5)(-2) = -.5 to (.5)(.9)($1) + (.5)(.1)(-$2) = $.35 representing the shift from “odds the coin comes up heads” to “odds the coin comes up heads and i am asked if i want to take the bet”

it seems like the same principle would apply to the green room scenario and your pre-copied self would have to conclude that though the two outcomes are +$12 or -$52, they do not occur with 50-50 frequency and given you are offered the bet, you have a 90% chance of winning. (.9)($12) + (.1)(-$52) = $5.6

EDIT: okay, after thinking about it, i am wrong. the reason i was having trouble with this was the fact that when the coin comes up tails and 90% of the time i am in a red room, even though “i” am not being specifically asked to wager, my two copies in the green rooms are—and they are making the wrong choice because of my precommitment to taking the wager given i am in a green room. this makes my final EV calculation wrong as it ignores trials where “i” appear in a red room even though the wager still takes place.

its interesting that this paradox exists because of entities other than yourself (copies of you, paperclip maximizers, etc) making the “incorrect” choice the 90% of the time you are stuck in a red room with no say.

tim 11 Sep 2009 20:28 UTC
0 points
in reply to: tim’s comment on: Outlawing Anthropics: An Updateless Dilemma
some other thoughts. the paradox exists because you cannot precommit yourself to taking the wager given you are in a green room as this commits you to taking the wager on 100% of coinflips which is terrible for you.

when you find yourself in a green room, the right play IS to take the wager. however, you can’t make the right play without committing yourself to making the wrong play in every universe where the coin comes up tails. you are basically screwing your parallel selves over because half of them exist in a ‘tails’ reality. it seems like factoring in your parallel expectation cancels out the ev shift of adjusting you prior (50%) probability to 90%.

and if you don’t care about your parallel selves, you can just think of them as the components that average to your true expectation in any given situation. if the overall effect across all possible universes was negative, it was a bad play even if it helped you in this universe. metaphysical hindsight.

tim 22 Apr 2010 17:56 UTC
8 points
on: Attention Lurkers: Please say hi
Hi, I made a couple posts a while back but recently have been simply lurking.

I would like to comment more and I think it would benefit me to toss my ideas out there and get some feedback. I think part of the problem is that while I have a decent understanding of many concepts promoted here (probably level 1, beginning to pass into level 2 on the Understanding your understanding scale) fully articulating my thoughts in a coherent and original manner is difficult. Most notably when discussing things with friends I find myself falling back on examples I’ve read here and have trouble coming up with my own analogies which seems symptomatic of a lack of understanding.

personal tidbits since this seems like the place:

I am a psychology undergraduate at the University of Texas and am hoping to go to graduate school for cognitive psychology. I am very interested in modeling human cognition and the way we think. Most notably I have a strong interesting in decision theory and game theory and hope to do research in that area. Also ‘priming’ is exceptionally cool. I have also been working on getting some basic computer programming down and have some skill in both Python and Java.

Recreationally I enjoy biking, running and being outside in general. I play online poker semi-regularly and find it useful not only as something fun and profitable but as a fairly valuable introspective tool. The way I am playing and responding is a fairly accurate reflection of how I am dealing with life in general at the time. I have also started reading more and have recently finished Outliers and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, Rational Decision Making in an Uncertain World by Robyn Dawes, and am currently working on I am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter.

tim 6 Oct 2010 4:57 UTC
13 points
on: Rationality quotes: October 2010

The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture “This is a pipe,” I’d have been lying!

-- René Magritte, on his painting The Treachery of Images depicting a pipe with “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (“This is not a pipe”) written under it

tim 5 May 2011 1:11 UTC
−2 points
on: Official Less Wrong Redesign: Call for Suggestions
An option to have links automatically open in a new window (i.e. “tab” with the appropriate browser settings).

I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve clicked a link, read through it, closed the page and wondered where the lesswrong article I was reading went. Based on how exceedingly difficult a habit this is to break I would assume many (most?) other sites open links outside the current window by default.

tim 5 May 2011 2:24 UTC
0 points
in reply to: tim’s comment on: Official Less Wrong Redesign: Call for Suggestions
I am confused by the downvotes. Could someone explain why having this feature as an option would be a bad thing?

tim 5 May 2011 2:36 UTC
1 point
in reply to: tenshiko’s comment on: Official Less Wrong Redesign: Call for Suggestions
Ah, as someone who knows nothing about web design it seemed like a trivial feature to implement. Thanks for clearing that up.

tim 5 May 2011 16:53 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: Hollow Adjectives
I interpreted that sentence as: “A hollow adjective is a descriptor used in a counterexample (counterargument?) to an argument. By its literal definition, the descriptor causes the counterexample to invalidate the argument. However, it actually doesn’t invalidate the argument if you think about it.”

And yes, I agree that the original sentence is completely confusing and needs be rewritten. Clearly a descriptor itself does not make an argument invalid. What is actually making the argument “self-evidently bad” needs to be explicitly stated.

tim 8 Aug 2012 2:46 UTC
1 point
in reply to: falenas108’s comment on: The Doubling Box
You are adding a condition that was not present in the original problem. Namely, that every day you do not open the box, you lose some number of utilions.

tim 8 Aug 2012 3:44 UTC
0 points
in reply to: DanielLC’s comment on: Suber, “The Ethics of Deep Self-Modification”
Allowing copies of yourself to modify yourself seems identical to allowing yourself to modify yourself.

tim 8 Aug 2012 4:11 UTC
0 points
in reply to: DanielLC’s comment on: Suber, “The Ethics of Deep Self-Modification”
I was referring to the fact that the AI creates a copy of itself to modify. To me, this implies that the copies (and, by extension the ‘original’ AI) have a line of code that allows for itself to be modified by copies of itself.

I suppose the AI could create copies of itself in a box and experiment on them without their consent. Imprisoning perfect copies of yourself and performing potentially harmful modifications on them strikes me as insane, though. related: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1pz/ai_in_box_boxes_you/

tim 8 Aug 2012 19:49 UTC
2 points
in reply to: DanielLC’s comment on: Suber, “The Ethics of Deep Self-Modification”
Hmm, I seem to anthropomorphized my imaginary AI. Your rebuttal sounds right.

tim 17 Aug 2012 1:03 UTC
0 points
in reply to: fubarobfusco’s comment on: Luke is doing an AMA on Reddit
Could we say that aleatoric uncertainty would be akin to not knowing whether a coin will land heads or tails (but we know the odds are 1:1) and epistemic uncertainty would be akin to not knowing the odds of the coin at all?

tim 27 Sep 2012 6:50 UTC
4 points
in reply to: CharlieSheen’s comment on: Any existential risk angles to the US presidential election?
Do the rest of the people paying comparable taxes to Peter Thiel also spend their money in such a ‘responsible’ manner?

tim 2 Oct 2012 17:38 UTC
0 points
in reply to: negamuhia’s comment on: October 2012 Media Thread
*Shpongle

Would second the recommendation if you like weird psychedelic/trancey music.