Yeah, I hear that claim a lot. It seems to apply to some other world than this one. At some point one must notice when an idealistic belief is failing to accumulate evidence in favor of itself.
We’ll see whether publishing this outline yields any criticisms or suggestions over and above what Nesov and Dai already managed to say based on merely “I have a timeless decision theory”. I’m not holding my breath. This outline actually is enough that someone versed in Newcomblike problems and causality ought to be able to make out what I’m talking about, and with a bit of intelligence work out on their own just how many classical dilemmas it solves. Nonetheless I fully expect this post to drop into the void and never be heard from again.
That’s not because of an evil conspiracy, of course. It’s just the default course of events in academia.
I feel like the ratio of words written to words read in compsci research is getting pretty awful. Conferences are happy to take whatever paper-like substance you can churn out. It’s probably worse in other fields.
Nonetheless I fully expect this post to drop into the void and never be heard from again.
That’s not because of an evil conspiracy, of course. It’s just the default course of events in academia.
I’d be surprised too if academia were to take a blog post seriously. Why not explain the ideas to someone who has the time and motivation to write them up into academic papers (and share co-authorship or whatever)? If you found the right person, that ought to be much faster than doing it yourself. (I mean take up much less of your own time.)
I’d still expect it to drop into the void. Maybe if I write a popular rationality book and it proves popular enough, that probable cost/benefit will change. Are you volunteering?
No, I’m not volunteering. I said earlier that I don’t have the skill/experience/patience/willpower for it. You could publicly ask for volunteers though. Perhaps there is a bunch of Ph.D. students around looking for something to write about.
I’d still expect it to drop into the void.
Why is it that Adam Elga can write about the Sleeping Beauty Problem and get 89 citations? Decision theorists are clearly looking something to do...
ETA: Maybe it’s because of his reputation/status? In that case I guess you need to convince someone high-status to co-author the papers.
Anyone who declines to talk about interesting material because it’s in a blog post, or for that matter, a poem scrawled in blood on toilet paper, is not taking Science seriously. Why should I expect them to have anything important to say if I go to the further trouble of publishing a paper?
I ought to post the decision theory to a thread on /b on 4chan, then try forwarding it around to philosophers who’ve written on Newcomblike problems. Only the ones who really care about their work would dare to comment on it, and the net quality of discussion would go up. Publishing in a peer-reviewed journal just invites in the riffraff.
Yes, this is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but not so tongue-in-cheek that I’m not seriously considering trying it.
Ignoring non-papers claiming to have solved a problem is a good crackpot-avoiding heuristic. What isn’t even written up is even less likely worth reading than something with only a few citations that is written up.
Ignoring non-papers claiming to have solved a problem is a good crackpot-avoiding heuristic. What isn’t even written up is even less likely worth reading than something with only a few citations that is written up.
If that were really what was going on, not status games, then getting a link to the blog post from a couple of known folk of good reputation—e.g. Nick Bostrom and Gary Drescher—would be enough to tell people that here was something worth a quick glance to find out more.
Now it’s worth noting that my whole cynicism here can be falsified if this post gets a couple of links from folk of good reputation, followed by genuinely somewhere-leading discussion which solves open problems or points out new genuine problems.
Anyone who declines to talk about interesting material because it’s in a blog post, or for that matter, a poem scrawled in blood on toilet paper, is not taking Science seriously.
Heh, if you find a poem scrawled in blood on toilet paper, you probably have a higher priority than Science at the moment—like finding the psycho f---!
But anyway, you half-jest, but this is a problem I’ve run into myself. Stephan Kinsella has a widely-cited magnum opus opposing intellectual property rights. I have since presented a gaping hole in its logic, which he acknowledges isn’t handled well, but doesn’t feel the need to resolve this hole in something he’s built his reputation around, merely because I didn’t get it published in a journal.
Yes, peer review is good crackpot filter, but it can also be a filter from having to admit your errors. [/threadjack]
“Anyone who declines to talk about interesting material because it’s in a blog post, or for that matter, a poem scrawled in blood on toilet paper, is not taking Science seriously. Why should I expect them to have anything important to say if I go to the further trouble of publishing a paper?”
What?
Vladimir is right not paying attention to blog entry with no published work is a great way to avoid crackpots. You have this all backwards you speak as if you have all these credentials so everyone should just take you seriously. In reality what credentials do you have? You built all this expectation for this grand theory and this vague outline is the best you can do? Where is the math? Where is the theory?
I think anyone in academia would be inclined to ask the same question of you why should they take some vague blog entry seriously when the writer controls the comments and can’t be bothered to submit his work for peer-review? You talk about wanting to write a PhD thesis this won’t help get you there. In fact this vague outline should do nothing but cast doubt in everyones mind as to whether you have a theory or not.
I have been following this TDT issue for a while and I for one would like to see some math and some worked out problems. Otherwise I would be inclined to call your bluff.
Eliezer have you ever published a paper in a peer-review journal? The way you talk about it says naive amateur. There is huge value especially for you since you don’t have a PhD or any successful companies or any of the other typical things that people who go the non-academic route tend to have.
Let’s face the music here, your one practical AI project that I am aware of Flare failed, and most of your writing has never been subjected to the rigor that all science should be subjected to. It seems to me if you want to do what you claim you need to start publishing.
I am sorry I am going to take a shortcut here and respond to a couple posts along with yours. So fine I partially insert my foot in my mouth… but the issue I think here is that the papers we need to be talking about are math papers right? Anyone can publish non-technical ideas as long as they are well reasoned, but the art of science is the technical mastery.
As for Eliezer’s comment concerning the irrelevance of Flare being a pre 2003 EY work I have to disagree. When you have no formal academic credentials and you are trying to make your mark in a technical field such as decision theory anything technical that you have done or attempted counts.
You essentially are building your credentials via work that you have done. I am speaking from experience since I didn’t complete college I went the business route. But I can also say that I did a lot of technical work so I built my credentials in the field by doing novel technical things.
I am trying to help here coming from a similar position and wanting a PhD etc. having various technical achievements as my prior work made all the difference in getting in to a PhD program without a B.S. or M.S. It also makes all the difference in being taken seriously by the scientific community.
Which circles back to my original point which is an vague outline is not enough to show you really have a theory much less a revolutionary one. Sadly asking to be taken seriously is just not enough, you have to prove that you meet the bar of admission (decision theory is going to be math).
If someone can show me some technical math work EY has done that would be great, but as of now I have very little confidence that he has a real theory (if someone can I will drop the issue.) Yes I am aware of the Bayesian Theory paper but this lets face it is fairly basic and is far from showing that EY has the ability to revolutionize decision theory.
The university would be Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Program (an esoteric area of CS)
As for the other parts I did some work in computer hardware specifically graphics hardware design, body armor design (bullet proof vests) etc. The body armor got to prototyping but was not marketable for a variety reasons to dull to go into. I am currently starting a video game company.
This vague outline is the result of Eliezer yielding to our pleas to say something—anything—about his confident solution to Newcomb’s problem. Now that it’s been posted as a not-obviously-formalizable text, and people are discussing it informally, I share a lot of your disappointment. But let’s give the topic some days and see how it crystallizes.
What’s Flare? (...looks it up...) Oh dear Cthulhu, oh no.
(Edit: I originally listed several specific users as “refusing to formalize”. That was wrong.)
These considerations lead to the following design for the decision algorithm S. S is coded with a vector of programs that it cares about, and a utility function on vectors of the form that defines its preferences on how those programs should run. When it receives an input X, it looks inside the programs P1, P2, P3, …, and uses its “mathematical intuition” to form a probability distribution P_Y over the set of vectors for each choice of output string Y. Finally, it outputs a string Y* that maximizes the expected utility Sum P_Y() U().
Which part do you find insufficiently formal? Of course I use “mathematical intuition” as a black box without explaining how it works, but that’s just like EDT using “prior” without explaining where it comes from, or CDT using “causal probability” as a black box. It’s an unsolved problem, not refusal to formalize.
Your decision theory is formal enough for me, but it seems to be different from Eliezer’s, which I was talking about. If they’re really the same, could you explain how?
In that case, I never said I understood Eliezer’s version well enough that I could formalize it if I wanted to, and I don’t think Nesov and Drescher claimed that either, so I don’t know why you mentioned our names in connection with “refuse to formalize”. Actually I explicitly said that I don’t understand Eliezer’s theory very well yet.
Well, it may be that some academics do take Science seriously, but they also care about status signaling. There’s nothing that says a person can’t simultaneously optimize for two different values, right? Why exclude those whose values aren’t exactly your values, instead of trying to cooperate with them?
I’d be surprised too if academia were to take a blog post seriously.
Also:
Anyone who declines to talk about interesting material because it’s in a blog post, or for that matter, a poem scrawled in blood on toilet paper, is not taking Science seriously. Why should I expect them to have anything important to say if I go to the further trouble of publishing a paper?
Yeah, I hear that claim a lot. It seems to apply to some other world than this one. At some point one must notice when an idealistic belief is failing to accumulate evidence in favor of itself.
We’ll see whether publishing this outline yields any criticisms or suggestions over and above what Nesov and Dai already managed to say based on merely “I have a timeless decision theory”. I’m not holding my breath. This outline actually is enough that someone versed in Newcomblike problems and causality ought to be able to make out what I’m talking about, and with a bit of intelligence work out on their own just how many classical dilemmas it solves. Nonetheless I fully expect this post to drop into the void and never be heard from again.
That’s not because of an evil conspiracy, of course. It’s just the default course of events in academia.
I feel like the ratio of words written to words read in compsci research is getting pretty awful. Conferences are happy to take whatever paper-like substance you can churn out. It’s probably worse in other fields.
I’d be surprised too if academia were to take a blog post seriously. Why not explain the ideas to someone who has the time and motivation to write them up into academic papers (and share co-authorship or whatever)? If you found the right person, that ought to be much faster than doing it yourself. (I mean take up much less of your own time.)
I’d still expect it to drop into the void. Maybe if I write a popular rationality book and it proves popular enough, that probable cost/benefit will change. Are you volunteering?
No, I’m not volunteering. I said earlier that I don’t have the skill/experience/patience/willpower for it. You could publicly ask for volunteers though. Perhaps there is a bunch of Ph.D. students around looking for something to write about.
Why is it that Adam Elga can write about the Sleeping Beauty Problem and get 89 citations? Decision theorists are clearly looking something to do...
ETA: Maybe it’s because of his reputation/status? In that case I guess you need to convince someone high-status to co-author the papers.
Anyone who declines to talk about interesting material because it’s in a blog post, or for that matter, a poem scrawled in blood on toilet paper, is not taking Science seriously. Why should I expect them to have anything important to say if I go to the further trouble of publishing a paper?
I ought to post the decision theory to a thread on /b on 4chan, then try forwarding it around to philosophers who’ve written on Newcomblike problems. Only the ones who really care about their work would dare to comment on it, and the net quality of discussion would go up. Publishing in a peer-reviewed journal just invites in the riffraff.
Yes, this is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but not so tongue-in-cheek that I’m not seriously considering trying it.
Ignoring non-papers claiming to have solved a problem is a good crackpot-avoiding heuristic. What isn’t even written up is even less likely worth reading than something with only a few citations that is written up.
If that were really what was going on, not status games, then getting a link to the blog post from a couple of known folk of good reputation—e.g. Nick Bostrom and Gary Drescher—would be enough to tell people that here was something worth a quick glance to find out more.
Now it’s worth noting that my whole cynicism here can be falsified if this post gets a couple of links from folk of good reputation, followed by genuinely somewhere-leading discussion which solves open problems or points out new genuine problems.
Heh, if you find a poem scrawled in blood on toilet paper, you probably have a higher priority than Science at the moment—like finding the psycho f---!
But anyway, you half-jest, but this is a problem I’ve run into myself. Stephan Kinsella has a widely-cited magnum opus opposing intellectual property rights. I have since presented a gaping hole in its logic, which he acknowledges isn’t handled well, but doesn’t feel the need to resolve this hole in something he’s built his reputation around, merely because I didn’t get it published in a journal.
Yes, peer review is good crackpot filter, but it can also be a filter from having to admit your errors. [/threadjack]
“Anyone who declines to talk about interesting material because it’s in a blog post, or for that matter, a poem scrawled in blood on toilet paper, is not taking Science seriously. Why should I expect them to have anything important to say if I go to the further trouble of publishing a paper?”
What?
Vladimir is right not paying attention to blog entry with no published work is a great way to avoid crackpots. You have this all backwards you speak as if you have all these credentials so everyone should just take you seriously. In reality what credentials do you have? You built all this expectation for this grand theory and this vague outline is the best you can do? Where is the math? Where is the theory?
I think anyone in academia would be inclined to ask the same question of you why should they take some vague blog entry seriously when the writer controls the comments and can’t be bothered to submit his work for peer-review? You talk about wanting to write a PhD thesis this won’t help get you there. In fact this vague outline should do nothing but cast doubt in everyones mind as to whether you have a theory or not.
I have been following this TDT issue for a while and I for one would like to see some math and some worked out problems. Otherwise I would be inclined to call your bluff.
Eliezer have you ever published a paper in a peer-review journal? The way you talk about it says naive amateur. There is huge value especially for you since you don’t have a PhD or any successful companies or any of the other typical things that people who go the non-academic route tend to have.
Let’s face the music here, your one practical AI project that I am aware of Flare failed, and most of your writing has never been subjected to the rigor that all science should be subjected to. It seems to me if you want to do what you claim you need to start publishing.
“Levels of Organization in General Intelligence” appeared in the Springer volume Artificial General Intelligence. “Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgement of Global Risks” (PDF) and “Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk” (PDF) appeared in the Oxford University Press volume Global Catastrophic Risks. They’re not mathy papers, though.
I am sorry I am going to take a shortcut here and respond to a couple posts along with yours. So fine I partially insert my foot in my mouth… but the issue I think here is that the papers we need to be talking about are math papers right? Anyone can publish non-technical ideas as long as they are well reasoned, but the art of science is the technical mastery.
As for Eliezer’s comment concerning the irrelevance of Flare being a pre 2003 EY work I have to disagree. When you have no formal academic credentials and you are trying to make your mark in a technical field such as decision theory anything technical that you have done or attempted counts.
You essentially are building your credentials via work that you have done. I am speaking from experience since I didn’t complete college I went the business route. But I can also say that I did a lot of technical work so I built my credentials in the field by doing novel technical things.
I am trying to help here coming from a similar position and wanting a PhD etc. having various technical achievements as my prior work made all the difference in getting in to a PhD program without a B.S. or M.S. It also makes all the difference in being taken seriously by the scientific community.
Which circles back to my original point which is an vague outline is not enough to show you really have a theory much less a revolutionary one. Sadly asking to be taken seriously is just not enough, you have to prove that you meet the bar of admission (decision theory is going to be math).
If someone can show me some technical math work EY has done that would be great, but as of now I have very little confidence that he has a real theory (if someone can I will drop the issue.) Yes I am aware of the Bayesian Theory paper but this lets face it is fairly basic and is far from showing that EY has the ability to revolutionize decision theory.
Where? What university?
The university would be Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Program (an esoteric area of CS)
As for the other parts I did some work in computer hardware specifically graphics hardware design, body armor design (bullet proof vests) etc. The body armor got to prototyping but was not marketable for a variety reasons to dull to go into. I am currently starting a video game company.
Also, volume-editing isn’t as (pointlessly? signallingly?) difficult as journal peer-review.
This vague outline is the result of Eliezer yielding to our pleas to say something—anything—about his confident solution to Newcomb’s problem. Now that it’s been posted as a not-obviously-formalizable text, and people are discussing it informally, I share a lot of your disappointment. But let’s give the topic some days and see how it crystallizes.
What’s Flare? (...looks it up...) Oh dear Cthulhu, oh no.
(Edit: I originally listed several specific users as “refusing to formalize”. That was wrong.)
A legacy of pre-2003 Eliezer, of no particular importance one way or another.
What about what I wrote?
Which part do you find insufficiently formal? Of course I use “mathematical intuition” as a black box without explaining how it works, but that’s just like EDT using “prior” without explaining where it comes from, or CDT using “causal probability” as a black box. It’s an unsolved problem, not refusal to formalize.
Your decision theory is formal enough for me, but it seems to be different from Eliezer’s, which I was talking about. If they’re really the same, could you explain how?
In that case, I never said I understood Eliezer’s version well enough that I could formalize it if I wanted to, and I don’t think Nesov and Drescher claimed that either, so I don’t know why you mentioned our names in connection with “refuse to formalize”. Actually I explicitly said that I don’t understand Eliezer’s theory very well yet.
You’re right. I apologize. Amended the comment.
Well, it may be that some academics do take Science seriously, but they also care about status signaling. There’s nothing that says a person can’t simultaneously optimize for two different values, right? Why exclude those whose values aren’t exactly your values, instead of trying to cooperate with them?
Also:
Anyone who declines to talk about interesting material because it’s in a blog post, or for that matter, a poem scrawled in blood on toilet paper, is not taking Science seriously. Why should I expect them to have anything important to say if I go to the further trouble of publishing a paper?
Looks to me like there’s a pretty lively conversation so far!