abstractapplic

• abstractapplicOct 20, 2024, 1:03 AM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: simon’s comment on: D&D Sci Coli­seum: Arena of Data

  >only the last 12 having boots 2 and gauntlets 3 (likely post-theft)

  Didn’t notice that but it confirms my theory, nice.

  >It seems to me that they appear both as red and black, though.

  Ah, I see where the error in my code was that made me think otherwise. Strange coincidence: I thought “oh yeah a powerful wealthy elf ninja who pointedly wears black when assigned red clothes, what a neat but oddly specific 8-bit theater reference” and then it turned out to be a glitch.

• abstractapplicOct 19, 2024, 9:36 PM

  5 points

  0

  in reply to: simon’s comment on: D&D Sci Coli­seum: Arena of Data

  Noting that I read this (and that therefore you get partial credit for any solution I come up with from here on out): your model and the strategies it implies are both very interesting. I should be able to investigate them with ML alongside everything else, when/​if I get around to doing that.

  Regarding the Bonus Objective:

  I can’t figure out whether offering that guy we unknowingly robbed his shoes back is the best or the worst diplomatic approach our character could take, but yeah I’m pretty sure we both located the problem and roughly what it implies for the scenario.

• abstractapplicOct 19, 2024, 9:04 PM

  7 points

  0

  on: D&D Sci Coli­seum: Arena of Data

  I took an analytic approach and picked some reasonable choices based on that. I’ll almost certainly try throwing ML at this problem some point but for now I want to note down what a me-who-can’t-use-XGBoost would do.

  Findings:

  There are at least some fingerprintable gladiators who keep gladiating, and who need to be Accounted For (the presence of such people makes all archetypery suspect: are Dwarven Knights really that Good, or are there just a handful of super-prolific Dwarven Knights who give everyone an unfairly good impression?). This includes a Level 7 Elven Ninja, almost certainly Cadagal’s Champion, who inexplicably insists on always wearing black (even though it doesn’t seem to make a difference to how well ninjas ninj).

  Level 4 Boots and Level 4 Gauntlets are super rare in the dataset. The Gauntlets are always worn by a pair of hypercompetent Level 7 Dwarven Monks; the Boots are always worn by the Level 7 Elven Ninja.

  Despite this, Cadagal’s Champion is facing us with Level 2 Boots.

  We have some Level 4 Boots.

  . . . we robbed this guy, didn’t we? And if we wear the boots—our most powerful equipment—he’ll flip out and set his House against us whether we win or lose? Dammit . . .

  Who fights whom?

  A is a Human Warrior. Warriors lose to Fencers, Humans lose to Fencers, Humans lose to Elves. We have an Elven Fencer on call; send Y.

  B is a Human Knight. Rangers are best vs Knights, so send W. (Not super confident in this one)

  C is an Elven Ninja. Ninjas are super weak against Knights. Send Z, the Elven Knight. (Slightly concerned by how underrepresented Elves are in the sample of gladiators who managed to beat this guy but I’m assuming that’s either noise or an effect which Z will be able to shrug off with the Power of Friendship and/​or Urgency)

  D is a Dwarven Monk. Monks are weak to Ninjas; send U.

  Who wears what?

  I haven’t managed to figure out how equipment works beyond “higher number good”; if there’s specific synergies with/​against specific classes/​races/​whatever they elude me. For that reason:

  Y and Z are my best shots. I’ll have them both wear what their opponents are wearing, to reduce the effects of uncertainty and turn those fights into “who wore it better?” contests. (So +3 Boots and +1 Gauntlets for Y, +2 Boots and +3 Gauntlets for Z.)

  U vs D looks pretty solid so I’ll give him the remaining +2 Gauntlets and +1 Boots.

  W vs B is my most tenuous guess, I hope she won’t hold a grudge after I send her out unequipped to boost everyone else’s chances.

• abstractapplicOct 19, 2024, 12:13 PM

  21 points

  9

  on: What’s a good book for a tech­ni­cally-minded 11-year old?

  Math textbooks. Did you know that you can just buy math textbooks which are “several years too advanced for you”? And that due to economies of scale and the objectivity of their subject matter, they tend to be of both high and consistent quality? Not getting my parents to do this at that age is something I still regret decades later.

  Or did you specifically mean fiction? If so, you’re asking for fiction recommendations on the grew-up-reading-HPMOR website, we’re obviously going to recommend HPMOR (especially if they’ve already read Harry Potter, but it’s still good if you only know the broad strokes).

  What links here?

  • What’s a good book for a tech­ni­cally-minded 11-year old? by Martin Sustrik (Oct 19, 2024, 6:05 AM; 10 points)

• abstractapplicOct 17, 2024, 11:02 AM

  6 points

  3

  in reply to: Gregory ’s comment on: In­ter­est in Leet­code, but for Ra­tion­al­ity?

  Are you able to pinpoint exactly what gives you this feeling?

  Less a single sharp pinpoint, more a death of a thousand six cuts:

  • The emphasis on learning the names of biases is kinda guessing-the-teacher’s-password-y.

  • You’d need to put forth an unusual effort to make sure you’re communicating the subset of psychological research which actually replicates reliably.

  • Any given bias might not be present in the student or their social/​business circle.

  • The suggested approach implies that the set of joints psychologists currently carve at is the ‘best’ one; what if I happen to see Bias A and Bias B as manifestations of Bias C?

  • I worry some students would round this off to “here’s how to pathologize people who disagree with me!” training.

  • Like I said, this is the kind of fruit that’s low-hanging enough that it’s mostly already picked.

  All that said, I still think this is potentially worthwhile and would still playtest it if you wanted. But I’m much more excited about literally every other idea you mentioned.

• abstractapplicOct 16, 2024, 9:56 PM

  36 points

  3

  on: In­ter­est in Leet­code, but for Ra­tion­al­ity?

  I am extremely interested in this, and all similar efforts in this space. I agree our community should be doing much more along these lines.

  Regarding your specific ideas:

  Cognitive Bias Detection

  Something about training people to categorize errors—instead of just making good decisions—rubs me the wrong way. Also, there’s a lot of pre-existing work (I found out about this earlier today).

  Calibration Training

  The Credence Calibration Game exists. So does my variation on the same idea (see also the associated lesson plan). So do play-money and real-money prediction markets. That said, I do think there’s a valuable and unfilled niche for something which doesn’t require a download and has a nice user interface and has a four-digit number of questions and lets you check your answers immediately (. . . though I don’t know how many people other than me would consider it valuable).

  Bite-Sized, Practical Challenges

  I am very much in favor of this, to the point where I’m already (tentatively) planning to (eventually) build some games with a similar motivation. Relatedly, the “ask users to predict an outcome based on limited data” example sounds like a description of that genre I invented (though “Bite-Sized” suggests you’re thinking in terms of something much more polished/​generally-accessible).

  (Side note: A subtle benefit of the “Practical Challenges” approach is that it can correct for biases you weren’t aiming for. A large part of my motivation for making D&D.Sci was “forcing them to confront the common pitfalls of overconfidence or representativeness heuristics”; I found that a Lesswronger working in a Data Science context will more often be insufficiently confident, and place too little weight on surface appearances; my endeavor ‘failed’ gracefully and people got a chance to notice those errors instead (plus various other problems I didn’t even consider).)

  -

  I look forward to seeing what comes of this. If you want anything playtested, please let me know.

• abstractapplicOct 11, 2024, 10:20 PM

  7 points

  2

  on: Open let­ter to young EAs

  As with the last article, I think this is almost entirely incoherent/​wrong; as with the last article, I’m strong-upvoting it anyway because I think it makes ~1.5 good and important points I’ve not seen made anywhere else, and they’re worth the chaff. (I’d go into more detail but I don’t want anyone leaning on my summary instead of reading it themselves.)

  . . . is there a reason this is a link to a google doc, instead of a copypaste?

  

  ^[1]

  1. ^

     and add footnotes.

• abstractapplicOct 3, 2024, 10:23 PM

  14 points

  2

  in reply to: Robert Miles’s comment on: Three Sub­tle Ex­am­ples of Data Leakage

  “Using information during Training and/​or Evaluation of models which wouldn’t be available in Deployment.”

  . . . I’ll edit that into the start of the post.

Three Sub­tle Ex­am­ples of Data Leakage

• abstractapplicSep 27, 2024, 5:16 PM

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: Christian Z R’s comment on: D&D.Sci: Whom Shall You Call? [Eval­u­a­tion and Rule­set]

  Thanks for a good one

  I’m glad you feel that way about this scenario. I wish I did . . .

  (For future reference, on the off-chance you haven’t seen it: there’s a compilation of all the past scenarios here, handily rated by quality and steamrollability.)

  One thing that perhaps would make it easier was if the web interactive could tell whether or not your selection was the optimal one directly, and possibly how higher your expected price was than the optimal price (I first plugged mine in, then had to double check with your table out here)

  . . . huh. I feel conflicted about this on aesthetic grounds—like, Reality doesn’t come with big flashing signs saying “EV-maxxing solution reached!” when you reach an EV-maxxing solution—but it does sound both convenient to have and easy to set up. Might try adding this functionality to the interactive for the next one; would be curious to hear what anyone else who happens to be reading this comment thinks.

  Anyway, greetings, and looking forward to seeing the next one.

  Good to have you on board!

• abstractapplicSep 18, 2024, 1:17 PM

  6 points

  0

  in reply to: Joseph Miller’s comment on: I fi­nally got ChatGPT to sound like me

  I really wish I could simultaneously strong-upvote and strong-downvote the “agree” thing for this reply. I think most of the description is horoscope-y flattery, but it doesn’t have zero correlation with reality: I do think lsusr’s writing is ninety-something-th percentile for

  a kind of minimalist clarity that leaves room for the reader to reflect and draw their own conclusions

  and at least eighty-something-th percentile for

  willing to question common assumptions within the rationalist sphere

  while afaict there’s nothing in the description that’s the opposite of the truth.

  (I also think there’s something interesting about how the most meaningful/​distinguishing lines in the description are the ones which could be most easily rephrased as criticisms. Does “describe X as neutrally as possible” or “describe the upsides and downsides of X” produce better LLM results than “describe X”?)

• abstractapplicSep 15, 2024, 4:44 PM

  2 points

  6

  on: ab­strac­tap­plic’s Shortform

  I used to implicitly believe that when I have a new idea for a creative(/​creative-adjacent) project, all else being equal, I should add it to the end of my to-do list (FIFO). I now explicitly believe the opposite: that the fresher an idea is, the sooner I should get started making it a reality (LIFO). This way:

  • I get to use the burst of inspired-by-a-new-idea energy on the project in question.

  • I spend more time working on projects conceived by a me with whom I have a lot in common.

  The downsides are:

  • Some old ideas will end up near the bottom of the pile until I die or the Singularity happens. (But concepts are cheaper than execution, and time is finite.)

  • I get less time to polish ideas in my head before committing pen to paper. (But maybe that’s good?)

  Thoughts on this would be appreciated.

ab­strac­tap­plic’s Shortform

• abstractapplicAug 29, 2024, 11:36 AM

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: pzas’s comment on: Devel­op­ing Pos­i­tive Habits through Video Games

  Something low complexity, repeatable, non-addictive, non-time consuming.

  I think a lot of people have a habit like that, and it’s different things for different people.

  I think it’s meditation

  Beware.

  (Like, from what I hear you’re not wrong, but . . . y’know, Beware.)

• abstractapplicAug 28, 2024, 9:58 PM

  15 points

  2

  on: How to hire some­body bet­ter than yourself

  If anyone reading this wants me to build them a custom D&D.Sci scenario (or something similar) to use as a test task, they should DM me. If the relevant org is doing something I judge to be Interesting and Important and Not Actively Harmful—and if they’re okay with me releasing it to the public internet after they’re done using it to eval candidates—I’ll make it for free.

• abstractapplicAug 26, 2024, 9:23 AM

  7 points

  3

  on: Devel­op­ing Pos­i­tive Habits through Video Games

  There are many games already, made for many reasons: insofar as this could work, it almost certainly already has.

  Strengthens neural circuits involved in developing/​maintaining positive habits

  That’s any game where grinding makes your character(s) stronger, or where progression is gated behind the player learning new skills. (I’m pretty sure Pokemon did exactly this for me as a child.)

  Build any sort of positive habits that transfer to real life decision making

  That’s any strategy game. (I’m thinking particularly of XCOM:EU, with its famously ‘unfair’ - i.e. not-rigged-in-the-player’s-favor—hit probabilities.)

  I do think that there are untapped possibilities in this space—I wouldn’t have made all those educational games if I didn’t—but what you’re describing as possibly-impossible seems pretty mundane and familiar to me. (Kudos for considering the possibility in the first place, though.)

• abstractapplicAug 21, 2024, 7:14 AM

  2 points

  0

  on: Ex­plor­ing the Boundaries of Cog­ni­to­haz­ards and the Na­ture of Reality

  I think you can address >95% of this problem >95% of the time with the strategy “spoiler-tag and content-warn appropriately, then just say whatever”.

• abstractapplicAug 21, 2024, 7:11 AM

  4 points

  0

  on: Ex­plor­ing the Boundaries of Cog­ni­to­haz­ards and the Na­ture of Reality

  Is there value in seeking out and confronting these limits,

  Yes.

  or should we exercise caution in our pursuit of knowledge?

  Yes.

  . . . to be less flippant: I think there’s an awkward kind of balance to be struck around the facts that

  A) Most ideas which feel like they ‘should’ be dangerous aren’t^[1].

  B) “This information is dangerous” is a tell for would-be tyrants (and/​or people just making kinda bad decisions out of intellectual laziness and fear of awkwardness).

  but C) Basilisks aren’t not real, and people who grok A) and B) then have to work around the temptation to round it off to “knowledge isn’t dangerous, ever, under any circumstance” or at least “we should all pretend super hard that knowledge can’t be dangerous”.

  D) Some information—“here’s a step-by-step-guide to engineering the next pandemic!”—is legitimately bad to have spread around even if it doesn’t harm the individual who knows it. (LWers distinguish between harmful-to-holder vs harmful-to-society with “infohazard” vs “exfohazard”.)

  and E) It’s super difficult to predict what ideas will end up being a random person’s kryptonite. (Learning about factory farming as a child was not good for my mental health.)

  I shouldn’t trusted with language right now.

  I might be reading too much into this, but it sounds like you’re going through some stuff right now. The sensible/​responsible/​socially-scripted thing to say is “you should get some professional counseling about this”. The thing I actually want to say is “you should post about whatever’s bothering you on the appropriate 4chan board, being on that site is implicit consent for exposure to potential basilisks, I guarantee they’ve seen worse and weirder”. On reflection I tentatively endorse both of these suggestions, though I recognize they both have drawbacks.

  1. ^

     For what it’s worth, I’d bet large sums at long odds that whatever you’re currently thinking about falls into this category.

• abstractapplicAug 21, 2024, 6:27 AM

  3 points

  1

  on: In­ter­dic­tor Ship

  In Thrawn’s experience there are three ingredients to greatness

  I think the way tenses are handled in the early part of this section is distractingly weird. (I can’t tell how petty I’m being here.) (I’d be inclined to fix the problem by italicizing the parts Thrawn is thinking, and changing “Thrawn wasn’t” to “I’m not”.)

  If you go up to someone powerful and ask for something, then there’s 60% chance you lose nothing and a 1% chance you win big.

  . . . what happens in the remaining 39%?

  Also (outrageously pedantic stylistic point even by my standards incoming) it’s strange to follow up “60% chance” with “a 1% chance”: it should either be “n% chance” both times or “a n% chance” both times.

• abstractapplicAug 18, 2024, 10:55 AM

  2 points

  2

  on: De­ci­sion The­ory in Space

  succomb

  succumb

  “Tatooine. They’re on Tatooine,”

  Was this deviation from canon intentional? (I remember in the movie she picks a different planet with a similar-sounding name.)