Um… I may be a bit prejudiced, here, especially considering that this has been highly upvoted, but I have to admit I have two major problems with promoting this post:
1) It says “Constraining Anticipation” in the title, and after reading it, I cannot think of anything I expect to see happen.
2) More importantly, I don’t feel I know anything about rationality which I didn’t know earlier. I’m not sure LW should be in the business of fully general scientific intros.
This comment might have been more appropriate as a response to this request for expressions of interest or disinterest.
But since it wasn’t made there, lets discuss the issues it raises.
I agree that LW should not be in the business of producing scientific intros. But we do have the precedent of the QM sequence. It was justified as relevant to various “demon-exorcising” (my term) tasks relevant to rationality; I don’t dispute this justification. But surely an intro to systems biology (including topics of the simulation of biological systems) is relevant in a group which frequently discusses the prospects for “uploading” as a path to AI, brain scanning as a path to inferring preferences, and simulation as a technique for cryonic resuscitation.
After reading this posting, I find it very difficult to expect this kind of simulated biology to be possible soon, and I also find it less easy to anticipate that synthetic life research will deliver anything particularly interesting in terms of nanotechnology soon. In other words, my anticipations have been constrained by this excellent article.
But surely an intro to systems biology (including topics of the simulation of biological systems) is relevant in a
group which frequently discusses the prospects for “uploading” as a path to AI, brain scanning as a path to
inferring preferences, and simulation as a technique for cryonic resuscitation.
Indeed; it’s quite relevant, yet a superficial glance at the site doesn’t show much sign it’s been touched on at all—biology does not seem to be a common field of expertise or even interest here (though that is merely an informal impression on my part); even the interest taken it around intelligence, cryonics, uploading and brain scanning appears to be of secondary importance to the interest in those topics themselves.
Your reaction to this post is not a comfortable one for the bulk of users here to contemplate, I suspect. If cryonics turned out to be overrated in the LW consensus, or brain uploading turned out to be infeasible (somewhat different from “impossible in principle”), it would dramatically constrain many of the scenarios and ideas that a large number of LW users are hoping to benefit from and/or contribute to.
It’s nearly impossible to discuss those topics meaningfully, however, without delving into the specifics of biology—and that apparent dearth of specific information may cause some users to overinflate (or underinflate!) their priors about various relevant issues.
biology does not seem to be a common field of expertise or even interest here
Evolution, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science (i.e. neurology), and diet seem to be significant interests. That is, I agree with you that it’s quite relevant and that we don’t seem to have much expertise here, but I think we have the interest.
nods True enough where those are concerned—I may be expressing this unclearly.
What I mean to indicate is that there’s some obvious interest in the bits of biology that bump up against rationality philosophy and this community’s aggregate, extrapolated desireable “FOOM” scenarios, but it comes across as very topical interest. Like focusing on the pretty flower, considering pretty flowers relevant to their interests, but ignoring the branch, and only dimly interested in the tree as the thing-that-holds-flowers.
Biology as its own field isn’t going to be of interest to everybody, of course, but it’s troubling to see that a lot of the discussion about biology that goes on around here seems, well, incomplete and backward. Relying heavily on pop-science and “celebrity” biologists to speak for the entire field (much of Eliezer’s writing about the topic), reasoning from first principles about stuff that’s too embedded in context for the resulting, logically-valid ideas to apply soundly to real biology, and a tendency to oversimplify the subject matter or just ignore relevant bits, either because of a lack of knowledge or a very limited one—and a tendency to reason forward from there, leading to what seem like GIGO issues in the resulting model.
(This is a long-winded way of agreeing with your statement that there’s interest but no expertise; I just think the distinction’s important enough to make between superficial interest in obvious, surface-level attractors and a deeper focus on the body of knowledge giving rise to them. It doesn’t fly here to talk like this about economics, logic, or philosophy—if your knowledge is that limited, you’ll be directed to the sequences.)
On the title—the idea was, for this post specifically, to sketch the general principles that define both the space of reasonable approaches and likely outcomes in biological problems. I do think I did an underwhelming job demonstrating that link, and if that is what you mean or close to it, then I agree with you and will take it as a reminder to work on cohesion/full clarity of purpose in future posts. (If it’s not, I invite further clarification.)
As for whether it’s appropriate for LW… well, since I have a fairly good idea of what I’m going to write on the subject in the future, I think it is, because I intend to keep it targeted and relevant to issues the community has interest in—offering either another angle from which to consider them, or more background information from which to evaluate them, or ideally both. As I’ve said before, I’ve no desire to write a textbook, and there’s plenty of other places on the internet we could go if we wanted to read the equivalent of one.
However, if you don’t think that is enough to be relevant here, I would very much like to hear what, if anything, would make such a set of posts relevant to you (not trying to shift the reference frame—I mean relevant to you in the context of LW). The large positive response I received previously and in this post indicates to me that it’s worth continuing in some form.
As for whether it’s appropriate for LW… well, since I have a fairly good idea of what I’m going to write on the subject in the future, I think it is, because I intend to keep it targeted and relevant to issues the community has interest in—offering either another angle from which to consider them, or more background information from which to evaluate them, or ideally both. As I’ve said before, I’ve no desire to write a textbook, and there’s plenty of other places on the internet we could go if we wanted to read the equivalent of one.
To me it seems sufficiently relevant for a front page post. Just not a promoted front page post. :)
I agree. I didn’t actually expect it to get promoted, since it doesn’t fit the pattern of things I’ve seen on the very front. I’ll show how new I am here and ask, though—Eliezer’s comment read like he had been presented with some expectation that this be promoted. Is that because posts that get upvoted this far typically (or always) are?
Since I didn’t ask, or state that I thought it should be, it seemed a bit out-of-the-blue, which did then and is still causing me to try to figure out whether his objection was only to the idea of promotion, or if he objected to promotion because he thought it shouldn’t be here at all.
Um… I may be a bit prejudiced, here, especially considering that this has been highly upvoted, but I have to admit I have two major problems with promoting this post:
1) It says “Constraining Anticipation” in the title, and after reading it, I cannot think of anything I expect to see happen.
2) More importantly, I don’t feel I know anything about rationality which I didn’t know earlier. I’m not sure LW should be in the business of fully general scientific intros.
This comment might have been more appropriate as a response to this request for expressions of interest or disinterest.
But since it wasn’t made there, lets discuss the issues it raises.
I agree that LW should not be in the business of producing scientific intros. But we do have the precedent of the QM sequence. It was justified as relevant to various “demon-exorcising” (my term) tasks relevant to rationality; I don’t dispute this justification. But surely an intro to systems biology (including topics of the simulation of biological systems) is relevant in a group which frequently discusses the prospects for “uploading” as a path to AI, brain scanning as a path to inferring preferences, and simulation as a technique for cryonic resuscitation.
After reading this posting, I find it very difficult to expect this kind of simulated biology to be possible soon, and I also find it less easy to anticipate that synthetic life research will deliver anything particularly interesting in terms of nanotechnology soon. In other words, my anticipations have been constrained by this excellent article.
Indeed; it’s quite relevant, yet a superficial glance at the site doesn’t show much sign it’s been touched on at all—biology does not seem to be a common field of expertise or even interest here (though that is merely an informal impression on my part); even the interest taken it around intelligence, cryonics, uploading and brain scanning appears to be of secondary importance to the interest in those topics themselves.
Your reaction to this post is not a comfortable one for the bulk of users here to contemplate, I suspect. If cryonics turned out to be overrated in the LW consensus, or brain uploading turned out to be infeasible (somewhat different from “impossible in principle”), it would dramatically constrain many of the scenarios and ideas that a large number of LW users are hoping to benefit from and/or contribute to.
It’s nearly impossible to discuss those topics meaningfully, however, without delving into the specifics of biology—and that apparent dearth of specific information may cause some users to overinflate (or underinflate!) their priors about various relevant issues.
Evolution, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science (i.e. neurology), and diet seem to be significant interests. That is, I agree with you that it’s quite relevant and that we don’t seem to have much expertise here, but I think we have the interest.
nods True enough where those are concerned—I may be expressing this unclearly.
What I mean to indicate is that there’s some obvious interest in the bits of biology that bump up against rationality philosophy and this community’s aggregate, extrapolated desireable “FOOM” scenarios, but it comes across as very topical interest. Like focusing on the pretty flower, considering pretty flowers relevant to their interests, but ignoring the branch, and only dimly interested in the tree as the thing-that-holds-flowers.
Biology as its own field isn’t going to be of interest to everybody, of course, but it’s troubling to see that a lot of the discussion about biology that goes on around here seems, well, incomplete and backward. Relying heavily on pop-science and “celebrity” biologists to speak for the entire field (much of Eliezer’s writing about the topic), reasoning from first principles about stuff that’s too embedded in context for the resulting, logically-valid ideas to apply soundly to real biology, and a tendency to oversimplify the subject matter or just ignore relevant bits, either because of a lack of knowledge or a very limited one—and a tendency to reason forward from there, leading to what seem like GIGO issues in the resulting model.
(This is a long-winded way of agreeing with your statement that there’s interest but no expertise; I just think the distinction’s important enough to make between superficial interest in obvious, surface-level attractors and a deeper focus on the body of knowledge giving rise to them. It doesn’t fly here to talk like this about economics, logic, or philosophy—if your knowledge is that limited, you’ll be directed to the sequences.)
On the title—the idea was, for this post specifically, to sketch the general principles that define both the space of reasonable approaches and likely outcomes in biological problems. I do think I did an underwhelming job demonstrating that link, and if that is what you mean or close to it, then I agree with you and will take it as a reminder to work on cohesion/full clarity of purpose in future posts. (If it’s not, I invite further clarification.)
As for whether it’s appropriate for LW… well, since I have a fairly good idea of what I’m going to write on the subject in the future, I think it is, because I intend to keep it targeted and relevant to issues the community has interest in—offering either another angle from which to consider them, or more background information from which to evaluate them, or ideally both. As I’ve said before, I’ve no desire to write a textbook, and there’s plenty of other places on the internet we could go if we wanted to read the equivalent of one.
However, if you don’t think that is enough to be relevant here, I would very much like to hear what, if anything, would make such a set of posts relevant to you (not trying to shift the reference frame—I mean relevant to you in the context of LW). The large positive response I received previously and in this post indicates to me that it’s worth continuing in some form.
To me it seems sufficiently relevant for a front page post. Just not a promoted front page post. :)
I agree. I didn’t actually expect it to get promoted, since it doesn’t fit the pattern of things I’ve seen on the very front. I’ll show how new I am here and ask, though—Eliezer’s comment read like he had been presented with some expectation that this be promoted. Is that because posts that get upvoted this far typically (or always) are?
Since I didn’t ask, or state that I thought it should be, it seemed a bit out-of-the-blue, which did then and is still causing me to try to figure out whether his objection was only to the idea of promotion, or if he objected to promotion because he thought it shouldn’t be here at all.