Zubon

Karma: 1,385

Zubon 11 Apr 2007 14:50 UTC
3 points
on: Marginally Zero-Sum Efforts
The dollar auction is the most famous version I know of this. In grant proposals, every bidder must pay, not just the top two bidders, which increases the problem dramatically. You see similar effects in lobbying, or really anywhere you can bid for control of a finite pool of resources. The greater the benefits for collusion, the gerater the incentive to defect.

Bryan Caplan makes a similar point about collusion in the classroom.

Zubon 30 Oct 2007 17:53 UTC
2 points
on: Torture vs. Dust Specks
Would you condemn one person to be horribly tortured for fifty years without hope or rest, to save every qualia-experiencing being who will ever exist one blink?

Is the question significantly changed by this rephrasing? It makes SPECKS the default choice, and it changes 3^^^3 to “all.” Are we better able to process “all” than 3^^^3, or can we really process “all” at all? Does it change your answer if we switch the default?

Would you force every qualia-experiencing being who will ever exist to blink one additional time to save one person from being horribly tortured for fifty years without hope or rest?

Zubon 31 Oct 2007 2:13 UTC
7 points
on: Torture vs. Dust Specks
Eliezer, a problem seems to be that the speck does not serve the function you want it to in this example, at least not for all readers. In this case, many people see a special penny because there is some threshold value below which the least bad bad thing is not really bad. The speck is intended to be an example of the least bad bad thing, but we give it a badness rating of one minus .9-repeating.

(This seems to happen to a lot of arguments. “Take x, which is y.” Well, no, x is not quite y, so the argument breaks down and the discussion follows some tangent. The Distributed Republic had a good post on this, but I cannot find it.)

We have a special penny because there is some amount of eye dust that becomes noticeable and could genuinely qualify as the least bad bad thing. If everyone on Earth gets this decision at once, and everyone suddenly gets >6,000,000,000 specks, that might be enough to crush all our skulls (how much does a speck weigh?). Somewhere between that and “one speck, one blink, ever” is a special penny.

If we can just stipulate “the smallest unit of suffering (or negative qualia, or your favorite term),” then we can move on to the more interesting parts of the discussion.

I also see a qualitative difference if there can be secondary effects or summation causes secondary effects. As noted above, if 3^^^3/10^20 people die due to freakishly unlikely accidents caused by blinking, the choice becomes trivial. Similarly, +0.000001C sums somewhat differently than specks. 1 speck/day/person for 3^^^3 days is still not an existential risk; 3^^^3 specks at once will kill everyone.

(I still say Kyle wins.)

Zubon 1 Nov 2007 15:25 UTC
5 points
on: Torture vs. Dust Specks
Cooking something for two hours at 350 degrees isn’t equivalent to cooking something at 700 degrees for one hour.

Caledonian has made a great analogy for the point that is being made on either side. May I over-work it?

They are not equivalent, but there is some length of time at 350 degrees that will burn as badly as 700 degrees. In 3^^^3 seconds, your lasagna will be … okay, entropy will have consumed your lasagna by then, but it turns into a cloud of smoke at some point.

Correct me if I am wrong here, but I don’t think there is any length of time at 75 or 100 degrees that will burn as badly as one hour at 700 degrees. It just will not cook at all. Your food will sit there and rot, rather than burning.

There must be some minimum temperature at which various things can burn. Given enough time at that temperature, it is the equivalent of just setting it on fire. Below that temperature, it is qualitatively different. You do not get bronze no matter how long you leave copper and tin at room temperature.

(Or maybe I am wrong there. Maybe a couple of molecules will move properly at room temperature over a few centures, so the whole mass becomes bronze in less than 3^^^3 seconds. I assume that anything physically possible will happen at some point in 3^^^3 seconds.)

Are there any SPECKS advocates who say we should pick two people tortured for 49.5 years rather than one for 50 years? If there is any degree of summation possible, 3^^^3 will get us there.

But, SPECKS can reply, there can be levels across with summation is not possible. If lasagna physically cannot burn at 75 degrees, even letting it “cook” for 33^^^^33 seconds, then it will never be as badly burned as one hour at 700 degrees.

“Did I say 75?” TORTURE replies. “I meant whatever the minimum possible is for lasagna to burn, plus 1/3^^3 degrees.” SPECKS must grant victory in that case, but wins at 2/3^^3 degrees lower.

Which just returns the whole thing back to the primordial question-begging on either side, whether specks can ever sum to torture. If any number of beings needing to blink ever adds to 10 seconds of torture, TORTURE is in a very strong position, unless you are again arguing that 10 seconds of TORTURE is like 75 degrees, and there is some magic penny somewhere.

(Am I completely wrong? Aren’t physics and chemistry full of magic pennies like escape velocities and temperatures needed for physical reactions?)

TORTURE must argue that yes, it is the sort of thing that adds. SPECKS must argue that it is like asking how many blades of grades you must add to get a battleship. “Mu.”

Zubon 13 Nov 2007 15:28 UTC
0 points
on: Fake Morality
Nabokov: 2,996 libraries have at least one of 107 editions. Three libraries within ten miles of me have copies, including one with an audio edition. You can find your closest here: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/289704

Zubon 27 Nov 2007 21:42 UTC
8 points
on: The Affect Heuristic
Elliot, I suspect something is missing from your comments. The technocratic knowledge you are describing is multiplication. It sounds like you are calling for greater education in basic arithmetic, or perhaps telling people “and use it.” Knowing that 20% of 5,000 is 1,000 is not the mark of an exceptionally wise person; it is the mark of a competent elementary school student. There is perhaps a reason why we can support a game show called “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?”

I do not have immediate access to the Yamagishi article. Were people actually presented with ^1,286⁄_10,000 versus 24.14%, or just asked about one (and people tended to react more strongly to absolute numbers than percentages)? The former is really bad. I suppose there is a story to be told about thinking that maybe few people get the 24.14% disease, or that the 98% of 150 measure is applied repeatedly while the 150 measure works just once, or you get many draws without replacement from the bean bowls. I don’t know that those are plausible stories.

Don’t we expect people to react differently to the same numbers in different contexts? Eliezer has alread hit Anchoring and Adjustment. Is it a similar bias, innumeracy, or something else that causes people to react differently to “17,520 times per year” versus “twice an hour”?

Zubon 28 Nov 2007 13:49 UTC
29 points
on: Evaluability (And Cheap Holiday Shopping)
When buying $10 dust specks, do not get carried away and buy 3^^^3 of them. You won’t save any money that way.

Zubon 28 Nov 2007 14:28 UTC
4 points
on: The Affect Heuristic
Eliezer, we could spend a long time commiserating on that one. I used to think the problem was that people never learned algebra properly, but I have begun to wonder how many have a firm grasp on applying second grade math. The hard part seems to be knowing what to divide or multiply by what (teaching Bayes’ Theorem is fun for this). Real life is all story problems.

Recent adventures in math include baffling a room with the insight that 12*5/12=5 and explaining how to figure out what percent of 1200 300 is. Perhaps I should be more worried about the technocratic difficulties of addition; Division of Labour has an occasional series of “The Diff.”

Zubon 18 Dec 2007 20:57 UTC
1 point
on: The Litany Against Gurus
Or, Nick, a great source of irony for those people. “For a site called ‘Overcoming Biast’...”

Zubon 21 Dec 2007 13:36 UTC
5 points
on: Two Cult Koans
I only got into the rationalist game because I’m fond of hats. Oh, and Robin’s advice on gift-giving.

Zubon 21 Dec 2007 16:38 UTC
3 points
on: Two Cult Koans
The student asked, “Where is the true master of the Way?” The master replied, “Where is a true student of the Way?”

Zubon 30 Dec 2007 23:52 UTC
4 points
on: My Strange Beliefs
This is part of E’s history? Both this and his reaction to 9/11, ticking off a series of thoughts in robotic fashion, strike me as unlikely, given my experience being a human and viewing others.

My introspection is similar to Eliezer’s. A coherent chain of thoughts is quite common for me, including recognizing emotional reactions and deciding whether to go with them. I share your experience with many others who do not react this way, but some of us do.

Zubon 3 Jan 2008 16:05 UTC
7 points
on: The Two-Party Swindle
Re: Bryan Caplan and politicians as employees (since I just read his book):

A secondary point in The Myth of the Rational Voter is that politicians enter office with two potentially mutually exclusive commands: “Enact the policies I want,” and, “Achieve the policy outcomes I want.” Muck around with the economy without mucking it up. So say Americans want lower gas taxes, lower gas prices, no rationing or queuing at gas stations, lower oil company profits, reduced fossil fuel consumption, less carbon dioxide emission, well-maintained roads, no construction delays, larger SUVs, safer cars, ethanol subsidies, and low food prices. I think most of those would get majority support as desirable things. We have a mix of policies and outcomes demanded, several of which are mutually exclusive, and good luck figuring out which ones will get you voted out of office.

This might be unnecessary detail for this discussion, since I presume that policy is more important to re-election considerations. “Doing something” is visible; problems down the chain of cause and effect can be blamed on others. So the theory of our republic is that we elect legislators who can make those good decisions for the long-term health of the country, but the practice is often one of kicking out legislators who try to do so.

Zubon 31 Jan 2008 16:27 UTC
8 points
on: Something to Protect
Formerly, I think I would have chosen #2 in the first case and #1 in the second. But Eliezer has converted me. Now I choose #2 in both cases. But would he do that himself?

Isn’t that implicitly what he does for a living? Eliezer could become a firefighter or emergency medical technician, or work for clean drinking water in rural Africa, with a near-certainty of preventing several deaths in the next year. Meanwhile, there is a very small chance of someone creating an non-Friendly AI in the next year. We can argue about the probabilities (of the problem arising, of successfully presenting it), but Eliezer has already chosen the existential threat.

Zubon 1 Feb 2008 14:08 UTC
2 points
on: Newcomb’s Problem and Regret of Rationality
How does the box know? I could open B with the intent of opening only B or I could open B with the intent of then opening A. Perhaps Omega has locked the boxes such that they only open when you shout your choice to the sky. That would beat my preferred strategy of opening B before deciding which to choose. I open boxes without choosing to take them all the time.

Are our common notions about boxes catching us here? In my experience, opening a box rarely makes nearby objects disintegrate. It is physically impossible to “leave $1000 on the table,” because it will disintegrate if you do not choose A. I also have no experience with trans-galactic super-intelligences, and its ability to make time-traveling super-boxes is already covered by the discussion above. I think of boxes as things that either are full or are not, independent of my intentions, but I also think of them as things that do not disintegrate based on my intentions.

Taking both is equivalent to just taking A. Restate the problem that way: take A and get $1000 or take B and get $1,000,000. Which would you prefer?

I think the problem becomes more amusing if box A does not disintegrate. They are just two cardboard boxes, one of which is open and visibly has $1000 in it. You don’t shout your intention to the sky, you just take whatever boxes you like. The reasonable thing to do is open box B; if it is empty, take box A too; if it is full of money, heck, take box A too. They’re boxes, they can’t stop you. But that logic makes you a two-boxer, so if Omega anticipates it, and Omega does, B will be empty. You definitely need to pre-commit to taking only B. Assume you have, and you open B, and B has $1,000,000. You win! Now what do you do? A is just sitting there with $1000 in it. You already have your million. You even took it out of the box, in case the box disintegrates. Do you literally walk away from $1000, on the belief that Omega has some hidden trick to retroactively make B empty? The rule was not that the money would go away if you took both, the rule is that B would be empty. B was not empty. A is still there. You already won for being a one-boxer, does anything stop you from being a two-boxer and winning the bonus $1000?

Zubon 2 Feb 2008 0:25 UTC
19 points
on: The Parable of the Dagger
We note that the king did not say one thing the jester did: ”… one, and only one, of the inscriptions is true.”

Zubon 3 Feb 2008 4:04 UTC
2 points
on: The Parable of Hemlock
You have to see him die before you can conclude that he was human.

Given the story of Croesus and Solon, I think many ancient Greeks would have been quite comfortable with that.

Zubon 29 Feb 2008 13:30 UTC
5 points
on: Searching for Bayes-Structure
I will agree that, in book form, this section will need more signposts and structure. Otherwise, readers will skim past things you want them to read.

Also, resist RPG references unless you explain them in the main text. Here, online, you will have many audience members who own that Spelljammer book and need no explanation for GURPS Friendly AI rules and where the jokes are. Most audiences will not get the significance of having a minor helm in a gnomish helm. They don’t even know what tinker gnomes are.

Zubon 3 Mar 2008 14:24 UTC
8 points
on: Words as Mental Paintbrush Handles
I even dislike reading the word “quay” because my first reaction is that it should rhyme with “way,” and I know that it doesn’t.

Easily the most traumatic thing I have learned all day. I have been mentally pronouncing it “kway” for my entire life. I cannot recall having ever heard the word aloud. I reject your pronunciation and substitute my own! (The life of a reader is filled with many such traumas. Rendezvous? Epitome?)

Zubon 4 Mar 2008 17:45 UTC
2 points
on: Rationality Quotes 11
Eliezer, we all love you, but you just complained that people on the internet are not giving you enough credit.