TobyBartels

Karma: 3,241

Lifeism in the midst of death

TobyBartels9 Dec 2012 13:28 UTC

97 points

19 comments4 min readLW link

TobyBartels 23 Oct 2014 6:42 UTC
81 points
on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
I did the survey. (Comments on specific aspects appear as replies.)

TobyBartels 20 Aug 2011 12:42 UTC
45 points
on: Why We Can’t Take Expected Value Estimates Literally (Even When They’re Unbiased)
I like this post, but I think that it suffers from two things that make it badly written:
- Many times (starting with the title) the phrasing chosen suggests that you are attacking the basic decision-theoretic principle that one should the take the action with the highest expected utility (or give to the charity with the highest expected marginal value resulting from the donation). But you’re not attacking this; you’re attacking a way to incorrectly calculate expected utility by using only information that can be easily quantified and leaving out information that’s harder to quantify. This is certainly a correct point, and a good one to make, but it’s not the point that the title suggests, and many commenters have already been confused by this.
- Pascal’s mugging should be left out entirely. For one thing, it’s a deliberately counterintuitive situation, so your point that we should trust our intuitions (as manifestations of our unquantifiable prior) doesn’t obviously apply here. Furthermore, it’s clear that the outcome of not giving the mugger money is not normally (or log-normally) distributed, with a decent chance of producing any value between 0 and 2X. In fact, it’s a bimodal distribution with almost everything weighted at 0 and the rest weighted at X, with (even relative to the small amount at X) nothing at 2X or ¹⁄₂ X. This is also very unlike the outcome of donating to a charity, which I can believe is approximately log-normal. So all of the references to Pascal’s mugging just confuse the main point.
Nevertheless, the main point is a good one, and I have voted this post up for it.

TobyBartels 7 Mar 2011 2:22 UTC
39 points
on: Rationality Quotes: March 2011
Peanuts, 1961 April 26&27:

Lucy: You can’t drift along forever. You have to direct your thinking. For instance, you have to decide whether you’re going to be a liberal or a conservative. You have to take some sort of stand. You have to associate yourself with some sort of cause.

Linus: How can a person just decide what he’s going to think? Doesn’t he have to think first, and then try to discover what it is that he’s thought?

TobyBartels 3 Aug 2010 22:37 UTC
25 points
on: The Threat of Cryonics
Until very recently, I tended to think of cryonics as something nutty and tacitly assumed that cryonics organisations were a little shady. These weren’t strong beliefs, and I knew that I had no real basis for them, so I would never have tried to argue them to others, but they were my impressions. I blame the anti-cult and anti-scam heuristics identified in the comments by Jonathan Graehl and Pavitra.

Now that I’ve come here and seen all of you rational people into cryonics, I’ve looked at the references here and realised that my impressions were wrong. So cryonics is not terribly expensive and might well work; how interesting! And yet, I have no desire to sign up myself.

Why not? I believe that the reason is that, to spout a cliché, I’ve come to terms with death. There was a time when I found it very attractive to believe religious ideas promising immortality, but once I abandoned those as irrational, I faced the realisation that I was going to die permanently some day. That worried me for a while, but then I got used to it; I no longer desired to live forever. I didn’t even desire to live longer than about a century.

And since I no longer desire to live so long, I have no desire to sign up for cryonics. If I hadn’t been so ignorant about cryonics when I abandoned my religious hopes for immortality, then I might well have held onto that desire. So arguably, the only reason that I don’t want to live into the 4th Millennium is that I was wrong about something in the past. Nevertheless, it’s still true that I don’t particularly want to live into the 4th Millennium. So I’m glad that cryonics is reasonable, and I’m glad that the people on this site who want it are signing up for it, but it’s not something that interests me.

This must be an example of a much broader theme. One wants X but comes to the belief that X is impossible. Then one stops wanting X, which is probably a healthy response when X really is impossible. When it turns out that X is possible after all, one still does not want X.

Anyway, somebody who has gone through this process might see cyronics as threatening because it seems to attack their own rationality. It doesn’t bother me, because I know that ultimate values don’t have to be justified; I don’t want to live forever, and you do, and that’s fine on both ends. But for someone who wants to believe that their ultimate values are objectively correct, and perhaps also for someone who still wants deep down to live forever but has been suppressing this, learning that something is possible after all can be threatening.
What links here?
- RobinZ's comment on The Threat of Cryonics by lsparrish (4 Aug 2010 2:35 UTC; 8 points)

TobyBartels 28 Sep 2010 18:57 UTC
24 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 3

I wonder whether it’s deliberate on Eliezer’s part.

I now imagine that it is. Here is my scenario, with so much detail that its probability is extremely small, so that it cannot be a spoiler:

Dumbledore, being cleverer than in canon, discovered the existence of the diary Horcrux. After diligently searching for basilisk venom and researching any other safer means of destroying a Horcrux, he realised that he would have to use Fiendfyre. He broke into Malfoy Manor but found it more difficult than he expected and was badly weakened when he found the diary, so he was unable to overcome additional protective enchantments on the diary itself and remove it. Having good reason to believe that the manor was empty, however, he used Fiendfyre right there and then used his last strength to escape. As it turns out, Narcissa was home, and her valiant efforts saved the manor from destruction but cost her her own life.

Later, Dumbledore spoke to Lucius to apologise. While he did not dare to explain why he had started Fiendfyre in the Malfoys’ home, he told Lucius that he never intended to kill anybody and only reluctantly cast the spell that would have destroyed the house. He also told Lucius that, while he could not give details, the act was only necessary because the Malfoys were still working for Voldemort, and he warned Lucius to rid himself of anything to do with Voldemort to avoid any future accidents.

When Harry discovers these facts, he will realise his omission and beg Draco to trigger the first condition. Drama ensues.

On second thought, the character of the Dumbledore above is more like in canon than in MoR. Under the circumstances, Dumbledore would probably start the Fiendfyre even if he knew that Narcissa might be killed. This is another missing exception: if the act that killed Narcissa, despite her having no dirty hands, saved more lives than it took. (Whether or not that applies in this case, it would certainly be Dumbledore’s defence, and Harry might buy it, given enough evidence.)
What links here?
- TobyBartels's comment on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 9 by Oscar_Cunningham (15 Mar 2012 13:53 UTC; 0 points)

TobyBartels 14 Sep 2010 18:51 UTC
24 points
on: Self-Improvement or Shiny Distraction: Why Less Wrong is anti-Instrumental Rationality
I am not a major Less Wrong participant, but I suspect that there are many lurkers or mostly-lurkers in the same position as me, so I want to make this point:

I read Less Wrong on “fun time”. And if it were less shiny, I would not read it at all. Yet reading has led me to reevaluate my goals and actions: it has led to a small amount of self improvement, not initially intended by me, as a side effect.

So by all means, make it more effective for you! But also keep in mind its effect on lurkers attracted by the shininess.

TobyBartels 6 Sep 2010 21:13 UTC
24 points
on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 3
When I was a kid, adults would sometimes ask me what kind of animal I would be if I were an animal. I always told them that I would be a human. They never liked that answer.

TobyBartels 21 Aug 2011 20:00 UTC
21 points
in reply to: lukeprog’s comment on: A Crash Course in the Neuroscience of Human Motivation
Thanks, I don’t know why I didn’t follow the footnote.

But if I had, I would have added to my comment that the cited paper confirms my expectations. The function that they describe (as in your quoted paragraph) does preserve ordering, and seems to have nothing to do with the compressive functions described at Wikipedia. (The paper also doesn’t use that term; the case-independent string ‘compr’ doesn’t appear in it at all.)

But actually, the point of the article seems to be that the function from reward magnitude to dopamine rate varies with time, being renormalised from time to time to be most sensitive (literally, having highest derivative) at the most likely inputs, which I did not get from your post at all. But if I were an editor, wanting your post to best reflect the article without getting any longer, I’d suggest just changing ‘compressive function’ to ‘variable function’ and removing the irrelevant link.

Not that any of this should detract from your otherwise excellent and everywhere interest post!

TobyBartels 28 Aug 2011 22:50 UTC
20 points
on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 8
At the secret inner double-witch school, everyone’s most concerned with figuring out who the top-secret super-inner triple-witches are.

TobyBartels 8 Feb 2011 23:09 UTC
20 points
in reply to: Psychohistorian’s comment on: Procedural Knowledge Gaps

Especially if you are guilty, you should ask if you are free to go, and if you are not, ask for an attorney. This is advisable even if you are innocent if the crime is significant.

I want to emphasise this. The prisons in the U.S. (and probably most countries) are full of people who believed that they were safe, despite being suspected, due to their innocence. Remember, innocence is no excuse if they find you guilty anyway. (This is even true after the fact; new evidence of innocence is not enough to get a new trial, as long as your rights were not violated in the old one, according to the Supreme Court.)

TobyBartels 3 Mar 2011 2:54 UTC
19 points
on: Rationality Quotes: March 2011

Stupid is as stupid does.

This is an old saying, which I learnt from the 1994 movie Forrest Gump (not otherwise a bastion of rationalism).

While we may judge people as irrational (“stupid”) based on what they know (epistemic rationality, roughly), it’s instrumental rationality that matters in the end.

TobyBartels 12 May 2014 2:57 UTC
17 points
on: Rationality Quotes May 2014

Don’t just tell me what you’d like to be true.

This is from Greg Egan’s 1999 novel Teranesia; since there are no hits for ‘Teranesia’ in the Google custom search, I’m inferring that it hasn’t been posted before.

Here’s a little background. This is a spoiler for some events early in the novel, but it is early; it’s not a spoiler for the really big stuff (not even in this chapter). So Prabir lives alone with his father (‘Baba’) and mother (and baby sister Madhusree who is not in this scene), and their garden has been sown with mines for some very interesting reasons that needn’t concern us, and Baba has discovered this by being blown up by one. But he’s still alive, so mother and Prabir have laid a ladder atop some boxes across the garden, and she’s crawled along the ladder to rescue Baba without setting off more mines. But this is harder than anticipated.

She turned to Prabir. “I’m going to try sitting down, so I can get Baba on to the ladder. But then I might not be able to stand up with him, to carry him. If I leave him on the ladder and walk back to my end, do you think the two of us could carry the ladder to the side of the garden with Baba on it—like a stretcher?”

Prabir replied instantly, “Yes, we can do it.”

His mother looked away, angry for a moment. She said, “I want you to think about it. Don’t just tell me what you’d like to be true.”

Chastened, Prabir obeyed her. Half his father’s weight. More than twice as much as Madhusree’s. He believed he was strong enough. But if he was fooling himself, and dropped the ladder …

He said, “I’m not sure how far I could carry him without resting. But I could slide the crate along the ground with me—kick it along with one foot. Then if I had to stop, I could rest the ladder on it.”

His mother considered this. “All right. That’s what we’ll do.” She shot him a half-smile, shorthand for all the reassuring words that would have taken too long to speak.

(taken from the American hardback edition, pages 50&51)

[Edit: grammar in the text written by me]

TobyBartels 17 Dec 2012 21:35 UTC
17 points
on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 17, chapter 86
Harry needs to think more before he tells people things just because they ask. Just because somebody’s not Quirrell, Harry, doesn’t mean that their knowledge has no consequences!

TobyBartels 28 Nov 2010 2:28 UTC
17 points
on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 6
62

Has anybody unscrambled Harry’s secret message?

(To avoid spoilers, please give your answer in rot13.)

thx!

TobyBartels 17 Mar 2020 21:22 UTC
16 points
in reply to: TobyBartels’s comment on: Coronavirus Open Thread
The club is now closed until further notice.

TobyBartels 13 Mar 2015 19:24 UTC
16 points
on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 121
He may post the last chapter at 9:00, but I’m not reading it until 9:26 and 53.58979… seconds. It wouldn’t be right.

TobyBartels 23 Oct 2014 6:48 UTC
16 points
in reply to: TobyBartels’s comment on: 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey
It’s time to decouple sexual orientation from gender identity! If my gender is neither male nor female, but I’m primarily attracted to one of those, then I’m neither homosexual nor heterosexual (nor bisexual nor asexual). But neither am I some nebulous other; if only I had a binary gender identity, then suddenly I would have a binary sexual orientation too! Of course, some people identify specifically as homosexual or heterosexual (and some people even have prima-facie contradictory identifications such as both male and lesbian), and you could ask about that if you like, but you should also ask the more fundamental question of which genders one is attracted to.

TobyBartels 14 Oct 2010 5:31 UTC
16 points
in reply to: DanArmak’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4
You can’t cast that ward on Hogwarts, or a lot of students wouldn’t be able to enter. Not to mention a few professors. Frankly, I don’t understand how the Dursleys managed to enter their own home.

TobyBartels 17 Oct 2010 8:30 UTC
15 points
in reply to: ProfessorPost’s comment on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 4

The people I know in person […] who insist that they are entirely rational, all of the time, have at times annoyed me[.]

Yeah, such people annoy me too.

That’s why I particularly like the title of this blog. One can never be perfect, but one can strive for perfection. One can never be 100% correct, but one can be Less Wrong.

PS to all: Yeah, I know that I’ve made my comment in a poor context, but ‘Less Wrong’ really is an excellent title for a blog, isn’t it? I just want to sing its praises.