xamdam

Karma: 921

xamdam 22 Jul 2010 21:07 UTC
26 points
on: Book Review: The Root of Thought
I have a new idea for AI: glial networks!

xamdam 17 Feb 2010 20:49 UTC
25 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Open Thread: February 2010, part 2
No! Not for a second! I immediately began to think how this could have happened. And I realized that the clock was old and was always breaking. That the clock probably stopped some time before and the nurse coming in to the room to record the time of death would have looked at the clock and jotted down the time from that. I never made any supernatural connection, not even for a second. I just wanted to figure out how it happened.

-- Richard P Feynman, on being asked if he thought that the fact that his wife’s favorite clock had stopped the moment she died was a supernatural occurrence, quoted from Al Sekel, “The Supernatural Clock”

xamdam 11 Nov 2010 18:10 UTC
24 points
on: How to pick your categories
The descriptive math part was very good, thanks—and that’s why I resisted downvoting the post. My problem is that the conclusion omits the hugely important factor that categories are useful for specific goals, and the kind of techniques you are suggesting (essentially unsupervised techniques) are context-free.

E.g. is a dead cow more similar to a dead (fixed from ‘live’) horse or to a live cow? (It clearly depends what you want to do with it)

xamdam 16 Jun 2010 14:13 UTC
18 points
on: Open Thread June 2010, Part 3
Message from Warren Buffett to other rich Americans

http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/15/news/newsmakers/Warren_Buffett_Pledge_Letter.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2010061608

I find super-rich people’s level of rationality specifically interesting, because, unless they are heirs or entertainment, it takes quite a bit of instrumental rationality to ‘get there’. Nevertheless it seems many of them do not make the same deductions as Buffett, which seem pretty clear:

My wealth has come from a combination of living in America, some lucky genes, and compound interest. Both my children and I won what I call the ovarian lottery. (For starters, the odds against my 1930 birth taking place in the U.S. were at least 30 to 1. My being male and white also removed huge obstacles that a majority of Americans then faced.)

My luck was accentuated by my living in a market system that sometimes produces distorted results, though overall it serves our country well. I’ve worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions. In short, fate’s distribution of long straws is wildly capricious.

In this sense they are sort of ‘natural experiments’ of cognitive biases at work.

xamdam 30 Apr 2010 2:18 UTC
17 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Belief in Belief
Just curious, based on your phrasing I would guess that you’re Jewish, and possibly orthodox (there is some precedent for that here). I pushed the big unsubscribe button in the sky two month ago myself and have gone through some of the same emotions.

xamdam 13 Aug 2010 17:41 UTC
16 points
on: Taking Ideas Seriously
What are ideas you think Less Wrong hasn’t taken seriously?

I think LW as a whole (but not some individuals) ignored practical issues of cognitive enhancement.

From outside-in:
- Efficient learning paths. Sequences are great, but there is a lot of stuff to learn from books, and would be great to have dependencies mapped out with the best materials for things like physics, decision theory, logic, CS stuff.
- Efficient learning techniques: there are many interesting ideas out there, but I do not have time to experiment with them all, such as Supermemo, speed reading.
- Hardware tools. I feel like I am closer integrated with information with iphone/ipad, if reasonable eyewear comes to market this will be much enhanced.
- N-back and similar.
- Direct input via braiwaves/subvocalisation.
- Pharmacological enhancement.
- Real BCIs, which are starting to come to market servicing disabled people.
Even if these tools do not lead to Singularity (my guess) they might give edge to FAI researchers.

xamdam 3 Nov 2010 13:41 UTC
15 points
on: Rationality Quotes: November 2010

We’re all puppets, Laurie. I’m just a puppet who can see the strings.

Dr. Manhattan (Watchmen)

xamdam 15 Jun 2010 19:16 UTC
14 points
in reply to: Maelin’s comment on: Book Club Update and Chapter 1
try this

Here, actually: http://ifile.it/23ulwa7/0521592712.rar rar pwd: gigle.ws

xamdam 15 Oct 2010 12:03 UTC
13 points
on: Rationality quotes: October 2010
AI makes philosophy honest

-- Dan Dennet

xamdam 18 Mar 2010 16:32 UTC
13 points
on: Hold Off On Proposing Solutions
″...human mind is a lot like the human egg, and the human egg has a shut-off device. When one sperm gets in, it shuts down so the next one can’t get in. The human mind has a big tendency of the same sort.”

Charlie Munger

http://vinvesting.com/docs/munger/human_misjudgement.html

xamdam 13 Jul 2010 23:46 UTC
12 points
on: Some Thoughts Are Too Dangerous For Brains to Think
I think this is a worthwhile discussion.

Here are some “true things” I don’t want to know about:
- the most catchy commercial jingle in the universe
- what 2g1c looks like. I managed to avoid it thus far
- the day I am going to die
What links here?
- mattnewport's comment on Some Thoughts Are Too Dangerous For Brains to Think by WrongBot (14 Jul 2010 1:05 UTC; 7 points)

xamdam 11 Mar 2010 1:20 UTC
12 points
in reply to: John_Maxwell’s comment on: Coffee: When it helps, when it hurts
If I had a name like yours i’d watch out for caffeine bias ;)

xamdam 7 Nov 2010 22:42 UTC
11 points
on: Have no heroes, and no villains
Great post, thanks.

I try to remember my heroes for the specific heroic act or trait, e.g. Darwin’s conscientious collection of disconfirming evidence.

xamdam 4 Nov 2010 22:07 UTC
11 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: The Curve of Capability

calling this “symbolic processing” assumes a particular theory of mind, and I think it is mistaken

Interesting. Can you elaborate or link to something?

xamdam 28 Nov 2010 15:16 UTC
10 points
on: Greg Egan disses stand-ins for Overcoming Bias, SIAI in new book
So I actually read the book; while there is a little “dis” in there, but the portrait is very partial: “Nate Caplan, my IQ is 160″ of “OverpoweringFalsehood.com″ is actually pictured as the rival of the “benign SuperIntelligence Project” (a stand-in for SIAI I presume, which is dissed in its own right of course). I think it’s funny flattering and wouldn’t take it personally at all, doubt Eliezer would in any case.

BTW the book is Ok, I prefer Egan in far-future mode than in near-future.

xamdam 27 Aug 2010 1:34 UTC
10 points
on: Self-fulfilling correlations
This is one of Natures most cruel jokes, as it makes things that appear to have potential to improve your life better than they are.

xamdam 15 Sep 2010 12:36 UTC
9 points
on: Intelligence Amplification Open Thread
For a no-brainer, you can easily adjust to listening to audiobooks at 2x on ipod/phone.

xamdam 13 Aug 2010 19:52 UTC
9 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Should I believe what the SIAI claims?
It was actually in the post

What I mean to say by using that idiom is that I cannot expect, given my current knowledge, to get the promised utility payoff that would justify to make the SIAI a prime priority. That is, I’m donating to the SIAI but also spend considerable amounts of resources maximizing utility at present.

So you might suggest to your perceptual system to read the post first (at least before issuing a strong reply).

xamdam 13 Aug 2010 3:01 UTC
9 points
in reply to: omarali50’s comment on: What should I have for dinner? (A case study in decision making)
Awesome comment, I really do wish you would use more paragraphs :)

xamdam 7 May 2010 1:59 UTC
9 points
in reply to: JGWeissman’s comment on: Cognitive Bias Song
Sorry, still learning :)