ZacHirschman

• ZacHirschmanMay 16, 2015, 12:02 AM

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  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: De­bunk­ing Fal­la­cies in the The­ory of AI Motivation

  Stepping in as an interlocuter; while I agree that “all-powerful” is poor terminology, I think the described power here is likely with AGI. One feature AGI is nearly certain to have is superhuman processing power; this allows large numbers of Monte Carlo simulations which an AGI could use to predict human responses; especially if there is a Bayesian calibrating mechanism. An above-human ability to predict human responses is an essential component to near-perfect social engineering. I don’t see this as an outrageous, magic-seeming power. Such an AGI could theoretically have the power to convince humans to adopt any desired response. I believe your paper maintains that an AGI wouldn’t use this power, and not that such a power is outrageous.

  My personal feelings twards this article are that is sounds suspiciously close to a “No true Scotsman” argument. “No true (designed with friendly intentions) AI would submit to these catastrophic tendencies.” While your arguments are persuasive, I wonder if a catastrophe did occur, would you dismiss it as the work of “not a true AI?” By way of disclaimer, my strengths are in philosophy and mathematics, and decidedly not computer science. I hope you have time to reply anyways.

• ZacHirschmanMay 15, 2015, 3:02 PM

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  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: How to come to a ra­tio­nal be­lieve about whether some­one has a crush on yo

  I’m looking at the possible causal relationships between certain actions and resultant discomfort. As I understand your argument, you believe that certain actions by one person will always result in discomfort by the other. I disagree, and I submit that the discomfort is a product of the original action and its response. In other words, if someone has made you feel uncomfortable, it may be possible for you to reduce that discomfort independently of the precipitating action. Your discomfort may be due to an irrational bias. This would be a reason not to shun someone for making you feel uncomfortable.

  There is a difference between analyzing an action and communicating that you are analyzing an action. To speak to your concluding example, “smiling back” and, “[going] in your head and think about whether or not that signal means that she likes you,” are NOT mutually exclusive. With practice, you can do both at once. I would call this leveling up.

• ZacHirschmanMay 15, 2015, 5:01 AM

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  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: How to come to a ra­tio­nal be­lieve about whether some­one has a crush on yo

  It seems to me that this discomfort is not a necessary product of the behavior. It may even be a cognitive bias, on the order of thinking that unconditional love is more powerful than conditional love. I submit that a rationalist should expect his or her prospective partners to “calculate their love” and not be afraid of the results.

  Your statement has a nice “should” in it. The reason for people not to shun you is because their discomfort is based on a (debatably) flawed heuristic.

  In many cases, discomfort is a natural part of changing one’s mind. I can see, though, why romance would be an exception. Discomfort due to unrequited affections, for example, is not evidence of an impending paradigm shift. Discomfort due to a rational calculus, however, might indicate a high likelihood of irrationality.

• ZacHirschmanMay 10, 2015, 1:47 PM

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  in reply to: Manfred’s comment on: Con­cept Safety: World-mod­els as tools

  Thank you—I have this, and some dense Hutter yet to read.

• ZacHirschmanMay 9, 2015, 2:22 PM

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  on: Con­cept Safety: World-mod­els as tools

  The cognitive theory is beyond me, but the math looks interesting. I need to exert more thought on this, but I would submit an open Question for the community: might there be a way to calculate error bounds on outputs conditioned on “world models” based on the models’ predictive accuracy and/​or complexity? If this were possible, it would be strong support for mathematical insight into the “meta model”.

• ZacHirschmanMay 7, 2015, 2:49 PM

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  in reply to: Mark_Friedenbach’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Read­ing Group: Fake Beliefs (p43-77)

  My day to day life is populated with many who do not understand the lessons in this section. Interaction with these people is paramount in achieving my own goals; I am facing a situation in which the rational choice is to communicate irrationally. In specific, my colleagues and other associates seem to prefer “applause lights” and statements which offer no information. Therefore, attaining my personal, rationally selected goals might mean claiming irrational beliefs. I don’t think this is an explicit paradox, but it is an interesting point. There is a middle ground between “other-optimizing” (pointing out these applause lights as what they are) and changing my actual beliefs to those communicated by “applause lights”, but I do not believe it is tenable, and it may represent a conflict of goals (personal success in my field vs. spreading rational thought). Perhaps it is a microcosm of the precarious balance between self-optimization and world-optimization.

• ZacHirschmanMay 6, 2015, 12:22 AM

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  in reply to: Elo’s comment on: Open Thread, May 4 - May 10, 2015

  Do you have a heuristic for differentiating big rushes from small rushes? I think any time you are trying to perform a task, and some epsilon greater than zero of your conscious capacity is focusing on the ticking clock, then that represents a deficit from maximal focus. I think the deep breathing advice is good for any rush.

  https://​​intelligence.org/​​files/​​CognitiveBiases.pdf in part 8 has a note on time pressure increasing the effect of the affect heuristic, but it doesn’t quite fit with what you are talking about (fumbling for keys).

• ZacHirschmanMay 5, 2015, 11:38 PM

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  on: Group ra­tio­nal­ity di­ary, May 5th − 23rd

  Prior to lurking here and reading the excellent posts on rationality, I had never before considered eating a tomato. I decided that I didn’t like them at a young age, and never revisited the belief. In the past, I figured it was my business and it wasn’t hurting anyone if I decided to avoid tomatoes. Now, I understand that it was an arbitrary preference, that the taste is non-offensive (I may grow to like them), and that they are rich in lycopene (which may be good for you, but almost certainly isn’t bad). In short, I changed a belief I never before thought necessary to revisit. So far, so good.