I suggest taking a look at the Complexity of Value page on the LW wiki, not because “complexity of value” as defined there is exactly what I think you’re missing (it isn’t) but because several of the links there will take you to relevant stuff in (as you put it) the canons. The “Fake Utility Functions” post mentioned there and its predecessors are worth a read, for instance. Also “Value is Fragile” and “The Hidden Complexity of Wishes”.
(All this talk of “canons” makes me a little uneasy, so let me make it absolutely explicit that I’m not pointing you at these things because you are not allowed to disagree with them, or because I am certain that everything they say is right.)
Yup you are speaking perfectly to my point. Thankfully I am familiar with Szabo’s works to some degree which is very relevant and inter-linked with the link you gave. In regard to cannons I don’t mean it in the derogatory sense although I think ultimately it might be shown that they are that too.
So I think you are speaking to the problem of creating such a metric. But I urging us to push past that and take it as a given that we have such a unit that is objective value.
I’ve no objection to the strategy of decomposing problems into parts (“what notion of value shall we use?” and “now, how do we proceed given this notion of value?”) and attacking the parts separately. Just so long as we remember, while addressing the second part, that (1) we haven’t actually solved the first part yet, (2) we don’t even know that it has a solution, and (3) we haven’t ruled out the possibility that the best way to solve the overall problem doesn’t involve decomposing it in this fashion after all.
(Also, in some cases the right way to handle the second part may depend on the actual answer to the first part, in which case “let us suppose we have an answer” isn’t enough.)
But in this case I remark that you aren’t in fact proposing “a simpler solution to all these difficult observations and problems”, you are proposing that instead of those difficult problems we solve a probably-much-simpler problem, namely “how should we handle AI alignment etc. once we have an agreed-upon notion of value that matches our actual opinions and feelings, and that’s precisely enough expressed and understood that we could program it into a computer and be sure we got it right?”.
Yes I mean to outline the concept of a stable metric of value and then I will be able to show how to solve such a problem.
“But in this case I remark that you aren’t in fact proposing “a simpler solution to all these difficult observations and problems”, you are proposing that instead of those difficult problems we solve a probably-much-simpler problem, namely “how should we handle AI alignment etc. once we have an agreed-upon notion of value that matches our actual opinions and feelings, and that’s precisely enough expressed and understood that we could program it into a computer and be sure we got it right?”.”
No I don’t understand this, and I suspect you haven’t quite understood me (even though I don’t think I can be clearer). My proposal, a stable metric of value, immediately resolves many problems that are effectively paradoxes (or rendered such by my proposal, and then re-solved).
I’m not sure what you would disagree with, I think maybe you mean to say that the introduction of a stable metric still requires “solutions” to be invented to deal with all of these “problems”. I’m not sure I would even agree to that, but it doesn’t speak to the usefulness of what I suggest if I can come up with such a metric for stable valuation.
You have not, so far, proposed an actual “stable metric of value” with the required properties.
If you do, and convince us that you have successfully done so, then indeed you may have a “simpler solution to all these difficult problems”. (Or perhaps a not-simpler one, but at any rate an actual solution, which is more than anyone currently claims to have.) That would be great.
But so far you haven’t done that, you’ve just said “Wouldn’t it be nice if there were such a thing?”. (And unless I misunderstood you earlier, you explicitly said that that was all you were doing, that you were not purporting to offer a concrete solution and shouldn’t be expected to do so.)
In which case, no solution to the original problems is on the table. Only a replacement of the original problems with the easier ones that result when you add “Suppose we have an agreed-upon notion of value that, etc., etc., etc.” as a premise.
Or—this is just another way of putting the same thing, but it may match your intentions better—perhaps you are proposing not a solution to an easier problem but an incomplete solution to the hard problem, one that begins “Let’s suppose we have a metric of value such that …”.
Would you care to be absolutely explicit about the following question? Do you, or do you not, have an actual notion of value in mind, that you believe satisfies all the relevant requirements? Because some of the things you’re saying seem to presuppose that you do, and some that you don’t.
Yes I understand what you mean to say here. And so I mean to attend to your questions:
“Would you care to be absolutely explicit about the following question? Do you, or do you not, have an actual notion of value in mind, that you believe satisfies all the relevant requirements? Because some of the things you’re saying seem to presuppose that you do, and some that you don’t.”
There is some hope that the desires/values of human beings might converge in the limit of time, intelligence, and energy. Prior to such a convergence, globally recognized human value is likely not knowable.
At the risk of sounding like a pantomime audience: Oh no it doesn’t. A little more precisely: I personally do not find that my values are reducible to money, nor does it appear to me that other people’s generally are, nor do I see any good reason to think that they are or should be tending that way. There are some theorems whose formulations contain the words “market” and “optimal”, but so far as I can tell it is not correct to interpret them as saying that human values “converge on money”.
And at the risk of sounding like a cultist, let me point you at “Money: the unit of caring”, suggest that the bit about “within the interior of a [single] agent” is really important, and ask whether you are sure you have good grounds for making the further extension you appear to be making.
No you haven’t interpreted what I said correctly (and its a normal mistake) so you haven’t spoken to it, but you still might take issue. I am more suggesting that by definition we all agree on money. Money is the thing we most agree on, the nature of it is that it takes the place of complex barter and optimizes trade, and it does so as the introduction of a universally accepted transfereable utility. If it doesn’t do this it would serve no purpose and cease to be money.
That you don’t value it is probably less true than it is irrational, and speaks to the lack of quality of the money we are offered more than anything (which is something I haven’t shown to be true yet).
“And at the risk of sounding like a cultist, let me point you at “Money: the unit of caring”, suggest that the bit about “within the interior of a [single] agent” is really important, and ask whether you are sure you have good grounds for making the further extension you appear to be making.”
I think you mean that I have extended the principle of caring through money to AI and you feel that article objects (or perhaps I don’t know what you refer to). It is perfectly inline and reasonable to suggest that AI will be a part of us and that money will evolve to bridge the two “entities” to share values and move forward in an (super) rational manner (one money will allow us to function as a single entity).
I am more suggesting that by definition we all agree on money.
If this is true by definition then, necessarily, the fact can’t tell us anything interesting about anything else (e.g., whether an AI programmed in a particular way would reliably act in a way we were happy about).
If you mean something with more empirical consequences—and, now I think about it, even if you really do mean “by definition”—then I think it would help if you were more explicit about what you mean by “agree on money”. Do you mean we all agree on the appropriate price for any given goods? I think that’s the reverse of the truth. The reason why trade happens and benefits us is that different people value different goods differently. In a “good enough” market we will all end up paying the same amount for a given good at a given time, but (1) while there’s a sense in which that measures how much “the market” values the good at that time, there’s no reason why that has to match up with how any individual feels about it, and (2) as I’ve pointed out elsewhere in this discussion there are many things people care about that don’t have “good enough” markets and surely never will.
That you don’t value it is probably less true than it is irrational
I didn’t say I don’t value money, and if you thought I said that then I will gently suggest that you read what I write more carefully and more charitably. What I said is that my values are not reducible to money, and what I meant is that there are things I value that I have no way of exchanging for money. (And also, though you would have a case of sorts for calling it “irrational”, that the values I assign to things that are exchangeable for money aren’t always proportional to their prices. If I were perfectly rational and perfectly informed and all markets involved were perfectly liquid for short as well as long trading and buying and selling things carried no overheads of any kind and for some reason I were perfectly insulated from risks associated with prices changing … then arguably I should value things in proportional to their prices, because if I didn’t I could improve my lot by buying some things while selling others until the prices and/or my values adjusted. In practice, every one of those conditions fails, and I don’t think it is mostly because of irrationality that my values and the market’s prices don’t align perfectly.)
I think you mean that I have extended the principle of caring through money to AI
Nope. I mean that what you’re saying about money seems to require extending the principle from one agent to all agents.
I don’t think that its founded in economics or any money theory to suggest that it is something that we don’t collectively agree on. It also goes against market theory and the efficient market hypothesis to suggest that the price of a good is not an equilibrium related to the wants of the market is it not?
″ (1) while there’s a sense in which that measures how much “the market” values the good at that time, there’s no reason why that has to match up with how any individual feels about it”
Yup you have perfectly highlighted the useful point and also (the end of the quote) shown the perspective that you could continue to argue for no reason against.
“What I said is that my values are not reducible to money”
I can’t find it. It was about your wifes love. I think we could simply cut out things not reducible to money from the dialogue, but I also suspect that you would put a value on your wife’s love.
But if its in relation to USD that doesn’t make sense because its not stable over time. But you could do it in relation to a stable value metric, for example, would you pay for a movie if she expressed her love to you for it.
Nope. I mean that what you’re saying about money seems to require extending the principle from one agent to all agents.
I’m not sure what the problem here is, but you aren’t speaking to any of my argument. A metric for value is super useful for humans, and solves the problem of how to keep AI on the correct track. Why aren’t we speaking to Nash’s proposal for such a metric?
You are fighting a strawman by arguing versus me.
And I still think its bs that the mod buried Nash’s works and any dialogue on it. And that we aren’t attending to it in this dialogue speaks to that.
It also goes against market theory and the efficient market hypothesis to suggest that the price of a good is not an equilibrium related to the wants of the market is it not?
Given time, markets reach equilibria related to the wants of the participants. Sure. So far as I know, there are no guarantees on how long they will take to do so (and, e.g., if you’re comparing finding market equilibria with solving chess, the sort of market setup you’d need to contrive to get something equivalent to solving chess surely will take a long time to converge, precisely because finding the optimum would be equivalent to solving chess; in the real world, what would presumably actually happen is that the market would settle down to something very much not equivalent to actually solving chess, and maybe a few hedge funds with superpowered computers and rooms full of PhDs would extract a little extra money from it every now and then); and there are any number of possible equilibria related to the wants of the participants.
I think we could simply cut out things not reducible to money from the dialogue
Well, we could cut out anything from the dialogue. But you can’t make bits of human values go away just by not talking about them, and the fact is that lots of things humans value are not practically reducible to money, and probably never will be.
you could do it in relation to a stable value metric, for example, would you pay for a movie if she expressed her love to you for it.
That … isn’t quite how human relationships generally work. But, be that as it may, I’m still not seeing a market here that’s capable of assigning meaningful prices to love or even to concrete manifestations of love. I mean, when something is both a monopoly and a monopsony, you haven’t really got much of a market.
Why aren’t we speaking to Nash’s proposal for such a metric?
I don’t know why you aren’t. I’m not because I have only a hazy idea what it is (and in fact I am skeptical that what he was trying to do was such a metric), and because it’s only after much conversation that you’ve made it explicit that your proposal is intended to be exactly Nash’s proposal (if indeed it is). Was I supposed to read your mind? Regrettably, that is not among my abilities.
And I still think its bs that the mod buried Nash’s works and any dialogue on it.
Perhaps there is some history here of which I’m unaware; I have no idea what you’re referring to. I haven’t generally found that the moderators here zap things just out of spite, and if something you posted got “buried” I’m guessing there was a reason.
Given time, markets reach equilibria related to the wants of the participants. Sure. So far as I know, there are no guarantees on how long they will take to do so (and, e.g., if you’re comparing finding market equilibria with solving chess, the sort of market setup you’d need to contrive to get something equivalent to solving chess surely will take a long time to converge, precisely because finding the optimum would be equivalent to solving chess; in the real world, what would presumably actually happen is that the market would settle down to something very much not equivalent to actually solving chess, and maybe a few hedge funds with superpowered computers and rooms full of PhDs would extract a little extra money from it every now and then); and there are any number of possible equilibria related to the wants of the participants.
Thats where poker is relevant. Firstly I am not speaking to reality, that is your implication. I spoke about a hypothetical future from an asymptotic limit. In regard to poker I have redesigned the industry to foster a future environment in which the players act like a market that brute force solve the game. The missing element from chess, or axiom in regard to poker, is that it should be arranged so players can accurately asses who the skilled players are. So we are saying theoretically it COULD be solved this way, and not speaking to how reality will unfold (yet).
Well, we could cut out anything from the dialogue. But you can’t make bits of human values go away just by not talking about them, and the fact is that lots of things humans value are not practically reducible to money, and probably never will be.
I will show this isn’t wholly true but I cannot do it before understanding Nash’s proposal together, therefore I cannot speak to it atm.
That … isn’t quite how human relationships generally work. But, be that as it may, I’m still not seeing a market here that’s capable of assigning meaningful prices to love or even to concrete manifestations of love. I mean, when something is both a monopoly and a monopsony, you haven’t really got much of a market.
Some as the above, I can’t speak to this intelligibly yet.
I don’t know why you aren’t. I’m not because I have only a hazy idea what it is (and in fact I am skeptical that what he was trying to do was such a metric),
Yes it was:
The metric system does not work because french chefs de cuisine are constantly cooking up new and delicious culinary creations which the rest of the world then follows imitatively. Rather, it works because it is something invented on a scientific basis…Our view is that if it is viewed scientifically and rationally (which is psychologically difficult!) that money should have the function of a standard of measurement and thus that it should become comparable to the watt or the hour or a degree of temperature.~Ideal Money
Its exactly his proposal.
and because it’s only after much conversation that you’ve made it explicit that your proposal is intended to be exactly Nash’s proposal (if indeed it is). Was I supposed to read your mind? Regrettably, that is not among my abilities
Perhaps there is some history here of which I’m unaware; I have no idea what you’re referring to. I haven’t generally found that the moderators here zap things just out of spite, and if something you posted got “buried” I’m guessing there was a reason.
Yes exactly the mod messed up our dialogue, you weren’t properly introduced, but the introduction was written, and moderated away. The mod said Hayek > Nash
Yes it was: [...] money should have the function of a standard of measurement [...]
I agree that Nash hoped that (“ideal”) money could become “a standard of measurement” comparable in some way to scientific units. The question, though, is how broad a range of things he expected it to be able to measure. Nothing in the lecture you linked to a transcript of makes the extremely strong claim you are making, that we should use “ideal money” as a measure for literally all human values.
The mod said “Hayek > Nash”
One of three things [EDITED to add: oops, I meant two things] is true. (1) Your account of what “the mod” did is inaccurate, or grossly misleading by omission, or something. (2) My notion of what the LW moderators do is surprisingly badly wrong. If whoever did what Flinter is describing would care to comment (PM me if you would prefer not to do it in public), I am extremely curious.
(For what it’s worth, my money is on “grossly misleading by omission”. I am betting that whatever was removed was removed for some other reason—e.g., I see some signs that you tried to post something in Main, which is essentially closed at present—and that if indeed the mod “said Hayek > Nash” this was some kind of a joke, and they said some other things that provided an actual explanation of what they were doing and why. But that’s all just guesswork; perhaps someone will tell me more about what actually happened.)
You are not using the standard accepted definition of the word ideal, please look it up, and or create a shared meaning with me.
“Nothing in the lecture you linked to a transcript of makes the extremely strong claim you are making, that we should use “ideal money” as a measure for literally all human values.”
This is a founded extrapolation of mine and an implication of his.
Yes the mod said Hayek > Nash and its not a joke its a prevailing ignorant attitude, by those that read Hayek but won’t read and address Nash.
It’s not significant if I omitted something, I was told it was effectively petty (my words) but it isn’t. It’s significant because John Nash said so.
You are not using the standard accepted definition of the word ideal
As I have just said elsewhere in our discussion, I am not using any definition of the word “ideal”. I may of course have misunderstood what you mean by “ideal money”, but if so it is not because I am assuming it means “money which is ideal” according to any more general meaning of “ideal”.
This is a founded extrapolation of mine and an implication of his.
I have so far seen nothing that convinces me that he intended any such implication. In any case, of course the relevant question is not what Nash thought about it but what’s actually true; even someone as clever as Nash can be wrong (as e.g. he probably was when he thought he was the Pope) so we could do with some actual arguments and evidence on this score rather than just an appeal to authority.
It’s not significant if I omitted something.
That depends on what you omitted. For instance, if the person who removed your post gave you a cogent explanation of why and it ended with some jokey remark that “personally I always preferred Hayek anyway”, it would be grossly misleading to say what you did (which gives the impression that “Hayek > Nash” was the mod’s reason for removing your post).
I do not know who removed your post (for that matter I have only your word that anything was removed, though for the avoidance of doubt I would bet heavily that you aren’t lying about that) but my impression is that on the whole the LW community is more favourably disposed towards Nash than towards Hayek. Not that that should matter. In any case: I’m sorry if this is too blunt, but I flatly disbelieve your implication that your post was removed because a moderator prefers Hayek to Nash, and I gravely doubt that it was removed with a given reason that a reasonable person other than you would interpret as being because the moderator prefers Hayek to Nash.
As I have just said elsewhere in our discussion, I am not using any definition of the word “ideal”. I may of course have misunderstood what you mean by “ideal money”, but if so it is not because I am assuming it means “money which is ideal” according to any more general meaning of “ideal”.
Ya you misunderstood. And you still haven’t double checked your definition of ideal. Are you sure its correct?
I have so far seen nothing that convinces me that he intended any such implication. In any case, of course the relevant question is not what Nash thought about it but what’s actually true; even someone as clever as Nash can be wrong (as e.g. he probably was when he thought he was the Pope) so we could do with some actual arguments and evidence on this score rather than just an appeal to authority.
Ya you are a smart person that can completely ignore the argument posed by Nash but can still kinda sorta backhandedly show that he is wrong, without risking your persona....you are a clever arguer aren’t you?
That depends on what you omitted. For instance, if the person who removed your post gave you a cogent explanation of why and it ended with some jokey remark that “personally I always preferred Hayek anyway”, it would be grossly misleading to say what you did (which gives the impression that “Hayek > Nash” was the mod’s reason for removing your post).
It is the reason, and you would call it grossly misleading. Let’s find the significance of Nash’s work, and then it will be obvious the mod moderated me because of their own (admitted) ignorance.
I do not know who removed your post (for that matter I have only your word that anything was removed, though for the avoidance of doubt I would bet heavily that you aren’t lying about that) but my impression is that on the whole the LW community is more favourably disposed towards Nash than towards Hayek. Not that that should matter. In any case: I’m sorry if this is too blunt, but I flatly disbelieve your implication that your post was removed because a moderator prefers Hayek to Nash, and I gravely doubt that it was removed with a given reason that a reasonable person other than you would interpret as being because the moderator prefers Hayek to Nash.
So are stuck in trying to win arguments which is the root reason why you haven’t even heard of the main body of work that Nash was working on nearly his whole life. You are ignorant to the entire purpose of his career and thesis to his works. It’s an advanced straw man to continue to suggest a mod wouldn’t mod me the way I said, and not to address Nash’s works.
Nash is not favored over Hayek, Nash is being ignored here, the most significance work he has produced nobody here even knows existed (if you find one person that heard of it hear, do you think that would prove me wrong?).
Ignorance towards Nash, is the reason the mod moved my thread, unsurprisingly they came to the public thread to say Hayek > Nash...You don’t know, but that is a theme among many players in regard to their theories on economics and money...but the Hayek’s are simply ignorant and wrong. And they haven’t traversed Nash’s works.
OK. Would you care to help me understand correctly, or are you more interested in telling me how stupid I am?
And you still haven’t double checked your definition of ideal. Are you sure its correct?
There is no possible modification I could make to my definition of “ideal” that would make any difference to my understanding of your use of the phrase “ideal money”. I have already explained this twice.
Ya you are a smart person [...] you are a clever arguer aren’t you?
If you would like to make some actual arguments rather than sneering at me then I am happy to discuss things.
It is the reason, and you would call it grossly misleading.
At this point, I simply do not believe you when you say it is the reason. Not because I think you are lying; but it doesn’t look to me as if you are thinking clearly at any time when your opinions or actions are being challenged.
Let’s find the significance of Nash’s work, and then it will be obvious the mod moderated me because of their own (admitted) ignorance.
In the absence of more information about what the moderator said, no possible information about the significance of Nash’s work could bring that about.
So are stuck in trying to win arguments which is the root reason why you haven’t even heard of the main body of work that Nash was working on nearly his whole life.
Er, what? No, I haven’t (more accurately, hadn’t) heard of it because no one mentioned it to me before. Is that difficult to understand?
Nash is being ignored here, the most significance work he has produced nobody here even knows existed
Nash is not being ignored here. “Ideal money” has not been a topic of conversation here before, so far as I can recall. If your evidence that Nash is “ignored” here is that we have not been talking about “ideal money”, you should consider two other hypotheses: (1) that the LW community is interested in Nash but not in “ideal money” and (2) that the LW community is interested in Nash but happens not to have come across “ideal money” before. I think #2 is probably the actual explanation, however preposterous you may find it that anyone would read anything about Nash and not know about your pet topic.
(I think I already mentioned that Nasar’s book about Nash doesn’t see fit to mention “ideal money” in its index. It’s a popular biography rather than an academic study, and the index may not perfectly reflect the text, but I think this is sufficient to show that it’s possible for a reasonable person to look quite deeply at Nash’s life and not come to the conclusion that “ideal money” is “the main body of work that Nash was working on nearly his whole life”.)
The person who removed your earlier post has already explained that what he was actually saying about Hayek was not “Hayek is better than Nash” but “please don’t think I’m removing this because I dislike the ideas; I am a fan of Hayek and these ideas of Nash’s resemble Hayek’s”. This is more or less the exact opposite of your characterization of what happened.
OK. Would you care to help me understand correctly, or are you more interested in telling me how stupid I am?
There is no possible modification I could make to my definition of “ideal” that would make any difference to my understanding of your use of the phrase “ideal money”. I have already explained this twice.
Existing merely as an image in the mind:
An ideal is a concept or standard of perfection, existing merely as an image in the mind, or based upon a person or upon conduct: We admire the high ideals of a religious person
I think you erred saying there is no possible modification.
Er, what? No, I haven’t (more accurately, hadn’t) heard of it because no one mentioned it to me before. Is that difficult to understand?
Yes and you are going to suggest we are not ignoring Nash, but we are.
Nash is not being ignored here. “Ideal money” has not been a topic of conversation here before, so far as I can recall. If your evidence that Nash is “ignored” here is that we have not been talking about “ideal money”, you should consider two other hypotheses: (1) that the LW community is interested in Nash but not in “ideal money” and (2) that the LW community is interested in Nash but happens not to have come across “ideal money” before. I think #2 is probably the actual explanation, however preposterous you may find it that anyone would read anything about Nash and not know about your pet topic.
Yes and in the future everyone is going to laugh at you all for claiming and pretending to be smart, and pretending to honor Nash, when the reality is, Nash spanked you all.
(I think I already mentioned that Nasar’s book about Nash doesn’t see fit to mention “ideal money” in its index. It’s a popular biography rather than an academic study, and the index may not perfectly reflect the text, but I think this is sufficient to show that it’s possible for a reasonable person to look quite deeply at Nash’s life and not come to the conclusion that “ideal money” is “the main body of work that Nash was working on nearly his whole life”.)
Yup she ignored his life’s work, his greatest passion, and if you watch his interviews he thinks its hilarious.
The person who removed your earlier post has already explained that what he was actually saying about Hayek was not “Hayek is better than Nash” but “please don’t think I’m removing this because I dislike the ideas; I am a fan of Hayek and these ideas of Nash’s resemble Hayek’s”. This is more or less the exact opposite of your characterization of what happened.
No, it will be shown they thought it was an inconsequential move because they felt Nash’s Ideal Money was insignificant. It was a subjective play.
I think you erred saying there is no possible modification.
Nope. But if you tell me that when you say “ideal money” you mean “a system of money that is ideal in the sense of existing merely as an image in the mind”, why then I will adjust my understanding of how you use the phrase. Note that this doesn’t involve any change at all in my general understanding of the word “ideal”, which I already knew sometimes has the particular sense you mention (and sometimes has other senses); what you have told me is how you are using it in this particular compound term.
In any case, this is quite different from how Nash uses the term. If you read his article in the Southern Economic Journal, you will see things like this, in the abstract:
I present [...] a specific proposal about how a system or systems of “ideal money” might be established and employed
(so he is thinking of this as something that can actual happen, not something that by definition exists merely as an image in the mind). Similarly, later on,
the possibilities with regard to actually establishing a norm of money systems that could qualify as “ideal” are dependent on the political circumstances of the world.
(so, again, he is thinking of such systems as potentially actualizable) and, a couple of paragraphs later,
We of Terra could be taught how to have ideal monetary systems if wise and benevolent extraterrestrials were to take us in hand and administer our national money systems [...]
(so he says explicitly it could actually happen if we had the right guidance; note also that he here envisages ideal monetary systems, plural, suggesting that in this instance he isn’t claiming that there’s one true set of value ratios that will necessarily be reached). In between those last two he refers to
“good” or “ideal” money
so he clearly has in mind (not necessarily exclusively) a quite different meaning of “ideal”, namely “perfect” or “flawless”.
you are going to suggest we are not ignoring Nash, but we are.
It doesn’t look much like that for me.
in the future everyone is going to laugh at you all
In the future everyone will have forgotten us all, most likely.
for claiming and pretending to be smart
Do please show me where I either claimed or pretended to be smart. (If you ask my opinion of my intelligence I will tell you, but no such thing has come up in this discussion and I don’t see any reason why it should. If my arguments are good, it doesn’t matter if I’m generally stupid; if my arguments are bad, it doesn’t matter if I’m generally clever.)
she ignored his life’s work, his greatest passion
So far, you have presented no evidence at all that this is a reasonable description. Would you care to remedy that? In any case, what’s relevant right now is not whether “ideal money” was Nash’s greatest passion, but whether it should have been obvious to us that it was (since you are taking the absence of earlier discussion of “ideal money” as indication that LW has been ignoring Nash). And, however hilarious Nash may or may not have found it, I repeat that the fact that a reasonable person writing a fairly lengthy biography of Nash didn’t make a big deal of “ideal money” is strong evidence that other people may reasonably think likewise. Even if we are wrong.
You’re saying value converges on money correct? Money is indeed a notion that humans have invented in order to exchange things that we individually value. Having more money lets you get more of things you value. This is all good and fine. But “converges” and “has converged upon” are very different things.
I’m also not sure what it would look like for money to “be” value. A bad person can use money to do something horrible, something that no other person on earth approves of. A bad person can destroy immense value by buying a bomb, for example.
This is all the respect Nash’s Ideal money gets on this forum? He spent 20 years on the proposal. I think that is shameful and disrespectful.
Anyways, no. I am saying that “we” all converge on money. We all agree on it, that is the nature of it. And it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that so would (intelligent (and super bad)) AI be able to. And (so) it would because that is the obviously rational thing to do (I mean to show that Nash’s argument explains why this is).
It would help move things along if you would just lay out your argument rather than intimating that you have a really great argument that nobody will listen to. Just spell it out, or link to it if you’ve done so elsewhere.
“In our society, this common currency of expected utilons is called “money”. It is the measure of how much society cares about something.”
“This is a brutal yet obvious point, which many are motivated to deny.”
“With this audience, I hope, I can simply state it and move on.”
Yes but only to an extent. If we start to spend the heck out of our money to incite a care bear care-a-thon, we would only be destroying what we have worked for. Rather, it is other causes that allow spending to either be a measure or not of caring.
So I don’t like the way the essay ends.
Furthermore, it is more to the point to say it is reasonable that we all care about money and so will AI. That is the nature of money, it is intrinsic to it.
I suggest taking a look at the Complexity of Value page on the LW wiki, not because “complexity of value” as defined there is exactly what I think you’re missing (it isn’t) but because several of the links there will take you to relevant stuff in (as you put it) the canons. The “Fake Utility Functions” post mentioned there and its predecessors are worth a read, for instance. Also “Value is Fragile” and “The Hidden Complexity of Wishes”.
(All this talk of “canons” makes me a little uneasy, so let me make it absolutely explicit that I’m not pointing you at these things because you are not allowed to disagree with them, or because I am certain that everything they say is right.)
Yup you are speaking perfectly to my point. Thankfully I am familiar with Szabo’s works to some degree which is very relevant and inter-linked with the link you gave. In regard to cannons I don’t mean it in the derogatory sense although I think ultimately it might be shown that they are that too.
So I think you are speaking to the problem of creating such a metric. But I urging us to push past that and take it as a given that we have such a unit that is objective value.
I’ve no objection to the strategy of decomposing problems into parts (“what notion of value shall we use?” and “now, how do we proceed given this notion of value?”) and attacking the parts separately. Just so long as we remember, while addressing the second part, that (1) we haven’t actually solved the first part yet, (2) we don’t even know that it has a solution, and (3) we haven’t ruled out the possibility that the best way to solve the overall problem doesn’t involve decomposing it in this fashion after all.
(Also, in some cases the right way to handle the second part may depend on the actual answer to the first part, in which case “let us suppose we have an answer” isn’t enough.)
But in this case I remark that you aren’t in fact proposing “a simpler solution to all these difficult observations and problems”, you are proposing that instead of those difficult problems we solve a probably-much-simpler problem, namely “how should we handle AI alignment etc. once we have an agreed-upon notion of value that matches our actual opinions and feelings, and that’s precisely enough expressed and understood that we could program it into a computer and be sure we got it right?”.
Yes I mean to outline the concept of a stable metric of value and then I will be able to show how to solve such a problem.
“But in this case I remark that you aren’t in fact proposing “a simpler solution to all these difficult observations and problems”, you are proposing that instead of those difficult problems we solve a probably-much-simpler problem, namely “how should we handle AI alignment etc. once we have an agreed-upon notion of value that matches our actual opinions and feelings, and that’s precisely enough expressed and understood that we could program it into a computer and be sure we got it right?”.”
No I don’t understand this, and I suspect you haven’t quite understood me (even though I don’t think I can be clearer). My proposal, a stable metric of value, immediately resolves many problems that are effectively paradoxes (or rendered such by my proposal, and then re-solved).
I’m not sure what you would disagree with, I think maybe you mean to say that the introduction of a stable metric still requires “solutions” to be invented to deal with all of these “problems”. I’m not sure I would even agree to that, but it doesn’t speak to the usefulness of what I suggest if I can come up with such a metric for stable valuation.
You have not, so far, proposed an actual “stable metric of value” with the required properties.
If you do, and convince us that you have successfully done so, then indeed you may have a “simpler solution to all these difficult problems”. (Or perhaps a not-simpler one, but at any rate an actual solution, which is more than anyone currently claims to have.) That would be great.
But so far you haven’t done that, you’ve just said “Wouldn’t it be nice if there were such a thing?”. (And unless I misunderstood you earlier, you explicitly said that that was all you were doing, that you were not purporting to offer a concrete solution and shouldn’t be expected to do so.)
In which case, no solution to the original problems is on the table. Only a replacement of the original problems with the easier ones that result when you add “Suppose we have an agreed-upon notion of value that, etc., etc., etc.” as a premise.
Or—this is just another way of putting the same thing, but it may match your intentions better—perhaps you are proposing not a solution to an easier problem but an incomplete solution to the hard problem, one that begins “Let’s suppose we have a metric of value such that …”.
Would you care to be absolutely explicit about the following question? Do you, or do you not, have an actual notion of value in mind, that you believe satisfies all the relevant requirements? Because some of the things you’re saying seem to presuppose that you do, and some that you don’t.
Yes I understand what you mean to say here. And so I mean to attend to your questions:
“Would you care to be absolutely explicit about the following question? Do you, or do you not, have an actual notion of value in mind, that you believe satisfies all the relevant requirements? Because some of the things you’re saying seem to presuppose that you do, and some that you don’t.”
Yes I do have an actual notion of value in mind, that does satisfy all of the relevant requirements. But first we have to find a shared meaning for the word “ideal”: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/ogt/do_we_share_a_definition_for_the_word_ideal/
Because the explanation of the notion is difficult (which you already know because you quote the owner of this site as being undecided on it etc.)
There is some hope that the desires/values of human beings might converge in the limit of time, intelligence, and energy. Prior to such a convergence, globally recognized human value is likely not knowable.
It converges on money. And it IS knowledgeable. Nash’s defined it and gave it to us before he left. Why won’t you open the dialogue on the subject?
At the risk of sounding like a pantomime audience: Oh no it doesn’t. A little more precisely: I personally do not find that my values are reducible to money, nor does it appear to me that other people’s generally are, nor do I see any good reason to think that they are or should be tending that way. There are some theorems whose formulations contain the words “market” and “optimal”, but so far as I can tell it is not correct to interpret them as saying that human values “converge on money”.
And at the risk of sounding like a cultist, let me point you at “Money: the unit of caring”, suggest that the bit about “within the interior of a [single] agent” is really important, and ask whether you are sure you have good grounds for making the further extension you appear to be making.
No you haven’t interpreted what I said correctly (and its a normal mistake) so you haven’t spoken to it, but you still might take issue. I am more suggesting that by definition we all agree on money. Money is the thing we most agree on, the nature of it is that it takes the place of complex barter and optimizes trade, and it does so as the introduction of a universally accepted transfereable utility. If it doesn’t do this it would serve no purpose and cease to be money.
That you don’t value it is probably less true than it is irrational, and speaks to the lack of quality of the money we are offered more than anything (which is something I haven’t shown to be true yet).
“And at the risk of sounding like a cultist, let me point you at “Money: the unit of caring”, suggest that the bit about “within the interior of a [single] agent” is really important, and ask whether you are sure you have good grounds for making the further extension you appear to be making.”
I think you mean that I have extended the principle of caring through money to AI and you feel that article objects (or perhaps I don’t know what you refer to). It is perfectly inline and reasonable to suggest that AI will be a part of us and that money will evolve to bridge the two “entities” to share values and move forward in an (super) rational manner (one money will allow us to function as a single entity).
If this is true by definition then, necessarily, the fact can’t tell us anything interesting about anything else (e.g., whether an AI programmed in a particular way would reliably act in a way we were happy about).
If you mean something with more empirical consequences—and, now I think about it, even if you really do mean “by definition”—then I think it would help if you were more explicit about what you mean by “agree on money”. Do you mean we all agree on the appropriate price for any given goods? I think that’s the reverse of the truth. The reason why trade happens and benefits us is that different people value different goods differently. In a “good enough” market we will all end up paying the same amount for a given good at a given time, but (1) while there’s a sense in which that measures how much “the market” values the good at that time, there’s no reason why that has to match up with how any individual feels about it, and (2) as I’ve pointed out elsewhere in this discussion there are many things people care about that don’t have “good enough” markets and surely never will.
I didn’t say I don’t value money, and if you thought I said that then I will gently suggest that you read what I write more carefully and more charitably. What I said is that my values are not reducible to money, and what I meant is that there are things I value that I have no way of exchanging for money. (And also, though you would have a case of sorts for calling it “irrational”, that the values I assign to things that are exchangeable for money aren’t always proportional to their prices. If I were perfectly rational and perfectly informed and all markets involved were perfectly liquid for short as well as long trading and buying and selling things carried no overheads of any kind and for some reason I were perfectly insulated from risks associated with prices changing … then arguably I should value things in proportional to their prices, because if I didn’t I could improve my lot by buying some things while selling others until the prices and/or my values adjusted. In practice, every one of those conditions fails, and I don’t think it is mostly because of irrationality that my values and the market’s prices don’t align perfectly.)
Nope. I mean that what you’re saying about money seems to require extending the principle from one agent to all agents.
I don’t think that its founded in economics or any money theory to suggest that it is something that we don’t collectively agree on. It also goes against market theory and the efficient market hypothesis to suggest that the price of a good is not an equilibrium related to the wants of the market is it not?
″ (1) while there’s a sense in which that measures how much “the market” values the good at that time, there’s no reason why that has to match up with how any individual feels about it”
Yup you have perfectly highlighted the useful point and also (the end of the quote) shown the perspective that you could continue to argue for no reason against.
“What I said is that my values are not reducible to money”
I can’t find it. It was about your wifes love. I think we could simply cut out things not reducible to money from the dialogue, but I also suspect that you would put a value on your wife’s love.
But if its in relation to USD that doesn’t make sense because its not stable over time. But you could do it in relation to a stable value metric, for example, would you pay for a movie if she expressed her love to you for it.
I’m not sure what the problem here is, but you aren’t speaking to any of my argument. A metric for value is super useful for humans, and solves the problem of how to keep AI on the correct track. Why aren’t we speaking to Nash’s proposal for such a metric?
You are fighting a strawman by arguing versus me.
And I still think its bs that the mod buried Nash’s works and any dialogue on it. And that we aren’t attending to it in this dialogue speaks to that.
Given time, markets reach equilibria related to the wants of the participants. Sure. So far as I know, there are no guarantees on how long they will take to do so (and, e.g., if you’re comparing finding market equilibria with solving chess, the sort of market setup you’d need to contrive to get something equivalent to solving chess surely will take a long time to converge, precisely because finding the optimum would be equivalent to solving chess; in the real world, what would presumably actually happen is that the market would settle down to something very much not equivalent to actually solving chess, and maybe a few hedge funds with superpowered computers and rooms full of PhDs would extract a little extra money from it every now and then); and there are any number of possible equilibria related to the wants of the participants.
Well, we could cut out anything from the dialogue. But you can’t make bits of human values go away just by not talking about them, and the fact is that lots of things humans value are not practically reducible to money, and probably never will be.
That … isn’t quite how human relationships generally work. But, be that as it may, I’m still not seeing a market here that’s capable of assigning meaningful prices to love or even to concrete manifestations of love. I mean, when something is both a monopoly and a monopsony, you haven’t really got much of a market.
I don’t know why you aren’t. I’m not because I have only a hazy idea what it is (and in fact I am skeptical that what he was trying to do was such a metric), and because it’s only after much conversation that you’ve made it explicit that your proposal is intended to be exactly Nash’s proposal (if indeed it is). Was I supposed to read your mind? Regrettably, that is not among my abilities.
Perhaps there is some history here of which I’m unaware; I have no idea what you’re referring to. I haven’t generally found that the moderators here zap things just out of spite, and if something you posted got “buried” I’m guessing there was a reason.
Thats where poker is relevant. Firstly I am not speaking to reality, that is your implication. I spoke about a hypothetical future from an asymptotic limit. In regard to poker I have redesigned the industry to foster a future environment in which the players act like a market that brute force solve the game. The missing element from chess, or axiom in regard to poker, is that it should be arranged so players can accurately asses who the skilled players are. So we are saying theoretically it COULD be solved this way, and not speaking to how reality will unfold (yet).
I will show this isn’t wholly true but I cannot do it before understanding Nash’s proposal together, therefore I cannot speak to it atm.
Some as the above, I can’t speak to this intelligibly yet.
Yes it was:
Its exactly his proposal.
Yes exactly the mod messed up our dialogue, you weren’t properly introduced, but the introduction was written, and moderated away. The mod said Hayek > Nash
It was irrational.
I agree that Nash hoped that (“ideal”) money could become “a standard of measurement” comparable in some way to scientific units. The question, though, is how broad a range of things he expected it to be able to measure. Nothing in the lecture you linked to a transcript of makes the extremely strong claim you are making, that we should use “ideal money” as a measure for literally all human values.
One of three things [EDITED to add: oops, I meant two things] is true. (1) Your account of what “the mod” did is inaccurate, or grossly misleading by omission, or something. (2) My notion of what the LW moderators do is surprisingly badly wrong. If whoever did what Flinter is describing would care to comment (PM me if you would prefer not to do it in public), I am extremely curious.
(For what it’s worth, my money is on “grossly misleading by omission”. I am betting that whatever was removed was removed for some other reason—e.g., I see some signs that you tried to post something in Main, which is essentially closed at present—and that if indeed the mod “said Hayek > Nash” this was some kind of a joke, and they said some other things that provided an actual explanation of what they were doing and why. But that’s all just guesswork; perhaps someone will tell me more about what actually happened.)
You are not using the standard accepted definition of the word ideal, please look it up, and or create a shared meaning with me.
“Nothing in the lecture you linked to a transcript of makes the extremely strong claim you are making, that we should use “ideal money” as a measure for literally all human values.”
This is a founded extrapolation of mine and an implication of his.
Yes the mod said Hayek > Nash and its not a joke its a prevailing ignorant attitude, by those that read Hayek but won’t read and address Nash.
It’s not significant if I omitted something, I was told it was effectively petty (my words) but it isn’t. It’s significant because John Nash said so.
As I have just said elsewhere in our discussion, I am not using any definition of the word “ideal”. I may of course have misunderstood what you mean by “ideal money”, but if so it is not because I am assuming it means “money which is ideal” according to any more general meaning of “ideal”.
I have so far seen nothing that convinces me that he intended any such implication. In any case, of course the relevant question is not what Nash thought about it but what’s actually true; even someone as clever as Nash can be wrong (as e.g. he probably was when he thought he was the Pope) so we could do with some actual arguments and evidence on this score rather than just an appeal to authority.
That depends on what you omitted. For instance, if the person who removed your post gave you a cogent explanation of why and it ended with some jokey remark that “personally I always preferred Hayek anyway”, it would be grossly misleading to say what you did (which gives the impression that “Hayek > Nash” was the mod’s reason for removing your post).
I do not know who removed your post (for that matter I have only your word that anything was removed, though for the avoidance of doubt I would bet heavily that you aren’t lying about that) but my impression is that on the whole the LW community is more favourably disposed towards Nash than towards Hayek. Not that that should matter. In any case: I’m sorry if this is too blunt, but I flatly disbelieve your implication that your post was removed because a moderator prefers Hayek to Nash, and I gravely doubt that it was removed with a given reason that a reasonable person other than you would interpret as being because the moderator prefers Hayek to Nash.
Ya you misunderstood. And you still haven’t double checked your definition of ideal. Are you sure its correct?
Ya you are a smart person that can completely ignore the argument posed by Nash but can still kinda sorta backhandedly show that he is wrong, without risking your persona....you are a clever arguer aren’t you?
It is the reason, and you would call it grossly misleading. Let’s find the significance of Nash’s work, and then it will be obvious the mod moderated me because of their own (admitted) ignorance.
So are stuck in trying to win arguments which is the root reason why you haven’t even heard of the main body of work that Nash was working on nearly his whole life. You are ignorant to the entire purpose of his career and thesis to his works. It’s an advanced straw man to continue to suggest a mod wouldn’t mod me the way I said, and not to address Nash’s works.
Nash is not favored over Hayek, Nash is being ignored here, the most significance work he has produced nobody here even knows existed (if you find one person that heard of it hear, do you think that would prove me wrong?).
Ignorance towards Nash, is the reason the mod moved my thread, unsurprisingly they came to the public thread to say Hayek > Nash...You don’t know, but that is a theme among many players in regard to their theories on economics and money...but the Hayek’s are simply ignorant and wrong. And they haven’t traversed Nash’s works.
OK. Would you care to help me understand correctly, or are you more interested in telling me how stupid I am?
There is no possible modification I could make to my definition of “ideal” that would make any difference to my understanding of your use of the phrase “ideal money”. I have already explained this twice.
If you would like to make some actual arguments rather than sneering at me then I am happy to discuss things.
At this point, I simply do not believe you when you say it is the reason. Not because I think you are lying; but it doesn’t look to me as if you are thinking clearly at any time when your opinions or actions are being challenged.
In the absence of more information about what the moderator said, no possible information about the significance of Nash’s work could bring that about.
Er, what? No, I haven’t (more accurately, hadn’t) heard of it because no one mentioned it to me before. Is that difficult to understand?
Nash is not being ignored here. “Ideal money” has not been a topic of conversation here before, so far as I can recall. If your evidence that Nash is “ignored” here is that we have not been talking about “ideal money”, you should consider two other hypotheses: (1) that the LW community is interested in Nash but not in “ideal money” and (2) that the LW community is interested in Nash but happens not to have come across “ideal money” before. I think #2 is probably the actual explanation, however preposterous you may find it that anyone would read anything about Nash and not know about your pet topic.
(I think I already mentioned that Nasar’s book about Nash doesn’t see fit to mention “ideal money” in its index. It’s a popular biography rather than an academic study, and the index may not perfectly reflect the text, but I think this is sufficient to show that it’s possible for a reasonable person to look quite deeply at Nash’s life and not come to the conclusion that “ideal money” is “the main body of work that Nash was working on nearly his whole life”.)
The person who removed your earlier post has already explained that what he was actually saying about Hayek was not “Hayek is better than Nash” but “please don’t think I’m removing this because I dislike the ideas; I am a fan of Hayek and these ideas of Nash’s resemble Hayek’s”. This is more or less the exact opposite of your characterization of what happened.
Existing merely as an image in the mind:
I think you erred saying there is no possible modification.
Yes and you are going to suggest we are not ignoring Nash, but we are.
Yes and in the future everyone is going to laugh at you all for claiming and pretending to be smart, and pretending to honor Nash, when the reality is, Nash spanked you all.
Yup she ignored his life’s work, his greatest passion, and if you watch his interviews he thinks its hilarious.
No, it will be shown they thought it was an inconsequential move because they felt Nash’s Ideal Money was insignificant. It was a subjective play.
Nope. But if you tell me that when you say “ideal money” you mean “a system of money that is ideal in the sense of existing merely as an image in the mind”, why then I will adjust my understanding of how you use the phrase. Note that this doesn’t involve any change at all in my general understanding of the word “ideal”, which I already knew sometimes has the particular sense you mention (and sometimes has other senses); what you have told me is how you are using it in this particular compound term.
In any case, this is quite different from how Nash uses the term. If you read his article in the Southern Economic Journal, you will see things like this, in the abstract:
(so he is thinking of this as something that can actual happen, not something that by definition exists merely as an image in the mind). Similarly, later on,
(so, again, he is thinking of such systems as potentially actualizable) and, a couple of paragraphs later,
(so he says explicitly it could actually happen if we had the right guidance; note also that he here envisages ideal monetary systems, plural, suggesting that in this instance he isn’t claiming that there’s one true set of value ratios that will necessarily be reached). In between those last two he refers to
so he clearly has in mind (not necessarily exclusively) a quite different meaning of “ideal”, namely “perfect” or “flawless”.
It doesn’t look much like that for me.
In the future everyone will have forgotten us all, most likely.
Do please show me where I either claimed or pretended to be smart. (If you ask my opinion of my intelligence I will tell you, but no such thing has come up in this discussion and I don’t see any reason why it should. If my arguments are good, it doesn’t matter if I’m generally stupid; if my arguments are bad, it doesn’t matter if I’m generally clever.)
So far, you have presented no evidence at all that this is a reasonable description. Would you care to remedy that? In any case, what’s relevant right now is not whether “ideal money” was Nash’s greatest passion, but whether it should have been obvious to us that it was (since you are taking the absence of earlier discussion of “ideal money” as indication that LW has been ignoring Nash). And, however hilarious Nash may or may not have found it, I repeat that the fact that a reasonable person writing a fairly lengthy biography of Nash didn’t make a big deal of “ideal money” is strong evidence that other people may reasonably think likewise. Even if we are wrong.
This is a dialogue. We are dialoguing.
You’re saying value converges on money correct? Money is indeed a notion that humans have invented in order to exchange things that we individually value. Having more money lets you get more of things you value. This is all good and fine. But “converges” and “has converged upon” are very different things.
I’m also not sure what it would look like for money to “be” value. A bad person can use money to do something horrible, something that no other person on earth approves of. A bad person can destroy immense value by buying a bomb, for example.
This is all the respect Nash’s Ideal money gets on this forum? He spent 20 years on the proposal. I think that is shameful and disrespectful.
Anyways, no. I am saying that “we” all converge on money. We all agree on it, that is the nature of it. And it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that so would (intelligent (and super bad)) AI be able to. And (so) it would because that is the obviously rational thing to do (I mean to show that Nash’s argument explains why this is).
It would help move things along if you would just lay out your argument rather than intimating that you have a really great argument that nobody will listen to. Just spell it out, or link to it if you’ve done so elsewhere.
It was removed by a mod.
It should still be in your drafts. Just copy it here.
Yup so I can get banned. I didn’t expect this place to be like this.
Just send it to me as a private message.
You mean Money is the Unit of Caring ? :)
“In our society, this common currency of expected utilons is called “money”. It is the measure of how much society cares about something.”
“This is a brutal yet obvious point, which many are motivated to deny.”
“With this audience, I hope, I can simply state it and move on.”
Yes but only to an extent. If we start to spend the heck out of our money to incite a care bear care-a-thon, we would only be destroying what we have worked for. Rather, it is other causes that allow spending to either be a measure or not of caring.
So I don’t like the way the essay ends.
Furthermore, it is more to the point to say it is reasonable that we all care about money and so will AI. That is the nature of money, it is intrinsic to it.