Alex Vermillion(Alex)

Karma: 747

I found the community in spring 2020 through HPMOR which I found while bored and reading stories online. When I learned that there were other people using such witchcraft as “not only using reasoning on math exercises, but also issues in the real world”, I was sold.

Crocker’s Rules and Metahonesty are in effect (on me) at all times.

You can always message me and I will not be upset. No anxiety needed around “bugging” me.

If I say something and you think “Wow! He sounds like a moron who doesn’t understand humans!”, you’ve misunderstood and I was trying to make a more subtle point. Extend me charity and I’ll find it low cost to extend it to you.

Alex Vermillion 29 Jun 2020 22:42 UTC
1 point
on: The noncentral fallacy—the worst argument in the world?
I realize I am super late to this discussion, but I would like to state (since I found no other comments mentioning it) that this fallacy is very close to begging the question. Using the example of “MLK Jr. is a Criminal”, the arguer is relying on the definition of criminal as a member of the set of bad things to make their argument.

Example Argument #1:
1. MLK Jr. broke a law
2. “X broke a law” ⇔ “X is a Criminal”
3. MLK Jr. is a Criminal
4. “Y is a Criminal” ⇔ “Y is Bad”
Therefore, MLK Jr. is Bad

The same argument can be made in less steps, but will be met with controversey.
Example Argument #2:
1. MLK Jr. broke a law
2. “X broke a law” ⇔ “X is Bad”
Therefore, MLK Jr. is Bad

In the second case, it is more obvious that one of the premises is essentially the conclusion to the argument. Perhaps this is the desired solution to showing this argument is invalid in common speech.

Example rebuttal to “Example Argument #1″:
”Wait, are you claiming that everyone who breaks a law is necessarily bad? Isn’t that the argument you are trying to prove? You can’t use your conclusion as evidence. Anyways, what about <Insert counterexample that is hard to debate>, are they bad because they broke the law too?”

Alex Vermillion 12 Jul 2020 20:27 UTC
5 points
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Backward Reasoning Over Decision Trees
Thank you very much for this simpler explanation, I couldn’t quite grasp the concept 100%. This also gives me a very easy way to explain this concept less technically.

Alex Vermillion 13 Jul 2020 7:31 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: Interlude for Behavioral Economics
Wow. I also will not give anything away, but I agree that this is an insane round of this game. There are two agents with very different modeling processes trying to achieve the best outcome for themselves, but (I don’t know if this applies only to me or to others), unlike a normal PD, we are not a participant so we don’t know the processes of any of the agents, which makes it very enjoyable. This round is a testament to something, that is for sure.

Alex Vermillion 16 Oct 2020 17:16 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Evenflair’s comment on: Yoda Timers 2
I searched using the site searchbar, searched through Duckduckgo (with ‘site:lesswrong.org’), and also looked in the Internet Archive, but could not find it. I am also interested in the article if you find it, but I am now curious as well how you found it.

Alex Vermillion 26 Oct 2020 9:38 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: Cached Selves
The result is surprising to me, so, like you, I looked to see if there were any theories that required less buy-in from me (in an attempt to minimize complexity).
Do these studies make sure that the actions are desirable? I can easily fit the data into a model in which people consider “work” to be a separate category of action in their head which they neither enjoy nor question.
In the sign example, a large sign could be reputational cost, or a future work to make your yard look as nice as it did, while a small and then large sign is two chances to enjoy supporting a cause. In the payment study, it could be true that people who were paid larger sums went into job-mode and performed services for money, while people paid a lesser amount looked to see if the action was actually enjoyable or not and learned they did.
This could easily be shown to be false if any of these studies pay varied sum for something very unpleasant, with the group that received the lesser amount reporting higher satisfaction.

Alex Vermillion 11 Nov 2020 19:33 UTC
13 points
in reply to: Sammy Martin’s comment on: The 300-year journey to the covid vaccine
This post and then the comment gave me strong post-humanist vibes which I really enjoyed. I, personally, am not medically capable and have not made a dent in our problems yet, but I always enjoy hearing stories of how far we’ve come so far.

Thanks to the author for the concise explanation and to you for the wonderful follow-up quote.

Alex Vermillion 21 Mar 2021 8:49 UTC
1 point
on: An Antropic Argument for Post-singularity Antinatalism
Just say “in the last X%” of people to get the opposite argument.

As a rule, anthropic arguments you come up with on the fly should be verified by reversing your windows and seeing if they still make sense.

Alex Vermillion 18 Jun 2021 4:14 UTC
9 points
in reply to: Zack_M_Davis’s comment on: Reply to Nate Soares on Dolphins
I would note the similarity between “haha yeah” and the stated lack of punctuation and capitalization in “shitposts”, which are supposed to be light jokes.

Also, you say

If I get things wrong and you or others point out the specific things that I’m actually wrong about, that’s great! That’s how we all become less wrong together. But the process of using the beautiful weapons of reasoned argument to become less wrong together, only works if both sides are being honest; the discourse algorithm doesn’t produce accurate maps if one side is allowed to shitpost.

That argument is also a valid argument against making emotional appeals about your past mental state and how it has been affected by this argument. There are rumors about mathematicians being driven mad by the concept of infinity. This doesn’t make them very good at teaching Calculus in college, but rather the opposite.

Alex Vermillion 21 Jun 2021 2:28 UTC
1 point
in reply to: PeerInfinity’s comment on: Free Hard SF Novels & Short Stories
“that story about the clinic seed” gets my recommendation, “I don’t know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility” is fun, as is “They’re Made Out of Meat”, but my favorites have to be Doctorow’s stuff. “Rapture of the Nerds” gets incredibly Posthumanistic at points.

Alex Vermillion 18 Jul 2021 17:15 UTC
1 point
on: Large corporations can unilaterally ban/tax ransomware payments via bets
Does this meaningfully differ from promising to pay $X if any money is paid to ransomware? As far as I can tell, incentives to lie/cheat/etc are the same, with the only difference being your mention of proportionality, but I feel you could just promise to pay $f(x) instead to the same benefit.

Alex Vermillion 30 Jul 2021 19:26 UTC
1 point
on: Does Goal Setting Work?
(copied out of some notes I made when someone sent this in a Discord chat I’m in)

Hm. I like “systems vs goals” as a concept I think that might be how I fuck up so much I set goals and abhor not meeting them, so I get a kind of an ugh field about the concept of the thing I set a goal for Right now, I’m avoiding cleaning the kitchen because I hate not being done even when I work I’m going to try using the system “clean the kitchen” instead of my previous goal “get the kitchen clean” and see if that helps Probably placebo etc etc but I don’t hate this half as much right now

Alex Vermillion 8 Aug 2021 16:33 UTC
1 point
in reply to: ryan_greenblatt’s comment on: Large corporations can unilaterally ban/tax ransomware payments via bets
How is it zero expected value if the corporation doesn’t get to use their knowledge in the bet? If the true chance that they pay is $P$ and they have to pay as if it is $0$ , they lose money proportional to $(P - 0)$ (I think).

Alex Vermillion 14 Aug 2021 23:05 UTC
2 points
on: The Crackpot Offer
What the hell, I’ll tack mine on.

As a kid, I was introduced to an interesting contraption (that was supposed to be a party trick kind of thing) that I then dreamed for years of using to generate free energy (and therefore to be able to fight against entropy with). It was a ramp with the middle cut out so it looks like a “V” that you have a roller for made of 2 cones base-to-base. The cones look like they roll up the ramp. This does not work, but it took me half a decade to learn this.

My other one is that I heard about the angle trisection thing and “found a solution” on accident in highschool. For a little bit, I entertained the idea that I’d found it, then heard it had been proven impossible and believed that. For years it taunted me until I finally found someone willing to show me how it was wrong so I could feel like I had redeemed myself from crankdom (I promise that I didn’t believe I was right, but it always bothered me that I didn’t know).

Alex Vermillion 23 Oct 2021 4:01 UTC
6 points
in reply to: LGS’s comment on: My experience at and around MIRI and CFAR (inspired by Zoe Curzi’s writeup of experiences at Leverage)
I think part of it is that this isn’t related to your social network, but your news habits and how your news sources cover your social network.

You probably don’t read newspapers that are as certain to write about your neighbor having any kind of “psychosis”, but you read forums that tell you about Rationalists doing the same.

Alex Vermillion 24 Oct 2021 1:14 UTC
15 points
in reply to: AnnaSalamon’s comment on: My experience at and around MIRI and CFAR (inspired by Zoe Curzi’s writeup of experiences at Leverage)
I know you’re busy with all this and other things, but how is this statement

One thing that has been bothering me a lot is that it seems like it’s really likely that people don’t realize just how distinct CFAR and MIRI are.

[...]

I agree with all of the above

compatible with this statement?

As far as I see it, nowadays CFAR is about 60% a hiring ground for MIRI and only 40% something else, though I could be wrong.

Actually, that was true for the last few years (with an ambiguous in-between time during covid), but it is not true now.

This thread is agreeing the orgs are completely different, but elsewhere you agreed that CFAR functions as a funnel into MIRI. I ask this out of personal interest in CFAR and MIRI going forwards and because I’m currently much more confused about how the two work than I was a week ago.

Alex Vermillion 24 Oct 2021 1:30 UTC
12 points
in reply to: jessicata’s comment on: My experience at and around MIRI and CFAR (inspired by Zoe Curzi’s writeup of experiences at Leverage)
There are a few parts in here that seem fishy enough to me to try to red flag them.

Mainstream organizations being secretive at the level MIRI was isn’t a particularly strong argument. As we learned with COVID, many mainstream organizations are opposing their stated mission.

This is fair as a detraction to the sorta appeal to authority it is in reply to, but is also not a very good proof that secrecy is a bad idea. To boil it down smaller, the argument went “Secrecy works well for many existing organizations” and you replied “Many existing organizations did a bad job during Covid”. Strictly speaking, doing a bad job during Covid means that not everything is going well, but this is still a pretty weird and weak argument.

This whole paragraph:

Zack Davis points out that controlling people into acting against their interests is a common function of mainstream policies (this is especially obvious in the military). Such control is especially counterproductive for FAI research, where a large part of the problem is to make AI act on human values rather than false approximations of them. Revealing actual human value requires freedom to act according to revealed preferences, not just pre-specified models of goals. (In other words: if everything in an organization is organized around pursuing a legible goal that is only an instrumental goal of human value, that org is either a UFAI or is not a general intelligence)

also makes next to no sense to me. Please correct me if I’m wrong (which I kinda think I might be), but I read this as
1. Mainstream organizations make people act against their own values
2. We want AI to act on human values 3, Only agents acting on human values can develop an AI that acts on human values
3. By 1,3, Mainstream organizations act against human values
4. By 3,4, Mainstream organizations cannot develop FAI
Which seems to not follow in any way to me.

Alex Vermillion 24 Oct 2021 2:54 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: My experience at and around MIRI and CFAR (inspired by Zoe Curzi’s writeup of experiences at Leverage)
Ah, so I should take the first statement as being strictly NOW, like 2021? That clears things up a lot, thanks!

Alex Vermillion 24 Oct 2021 2:57 UTC
1 point
in reply to: jessicata’s comment on: My experience at and around MIRI and CFAR (inspired by Zoe Curzi’s writeup of experiences at Leverage)
If you are genuinely asking, I think cutting that down into something slightly less clinical sounding (because it sounds sarcastic when formalized) would probably take a little steam out of that type of opposition, yes.

Alex Vermillion 24 Oct 2021 3:01 UTC
5 points
in reply to: jessicata’s comment on: My experience at and around MIRI and CFAR (inspired by Zoe Curzi’s writeup of experiences at Leverage)
With a bit more meat, I can see what you’re referring to better.

I still don’t agree I think, but I can see why you would build that belief much better than I could before. I appreciate the clarification, thank you.

Alex Vermillion 24 Oct 2021 4:50 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Duncan Sabien (Deactivated)’s comment on: My experience at and around MIRI and CFAR (inspired by Zoe Curzi’s writeup of experiences at Leverage)
If this is the case, I do understand now, but I think the comment claiming that it’s not true at the literal current moment of October 2021 is useless in a misleading (though probably not intentional way).

I think it is important to the CFAR-aligned folks that CFAR is not “bad” in the way noted in that comment, but to everyone else, the important thing is whether or not that criticism is true. It was the initial ignorance on my end that we were looking at the same fact from different angles that led to the confusion.

(Also, I’m not continuing this out of a desire to show that “I’m right” or something, but just to explain why I cared since I now understand the mistake and can explain it. I’m happy to flesh it out more if this wasn’t very clear)