AndrewKemendo

Karma: 124

AndrewKemendo 29 Dec 2009 10:11 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Cyan’s comment on: Scaling Evidence and Faith
I had not read that part. Thanks.

I do not see any difference in inductive bias as it is written there and dictionary and wikipedia definitions of faith:

Something that is believed especially with strong conviction(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith)

Faith is to commit oneself to act based on sufficient experience to warrant belief, but without absolute proof.

AndrewKemendo 29 Dec 2009 10:06 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Psychohistorian’s comment on: Scaling Evidence and Faith
I think you, EY and most use the term faith in a historical context related to religion rather than its definitional context as it relates to epistemological concerns of trust in an idea or claim

The best definition I have found so far for faith is thus:

Faith is to commit oneself to act based on sufficient experience to warrant belief, but without absolute proof.

So I have no problem using faith and induction interchangeably because it is used just as you say:

inferring the future from the past (or the past from the present), which basically requires the universe to consistently obey the same laws.

Religions claim that they do this. Of course they don’t because they do not apply a constant standard to their worldview to all events. It is not because of their faith that they are wrong, it is because of their inconsistent application of accepting claims and ignoring evidence.

The point of the system is to deconstruct why you see their claims of evidence as faith and vice versa. Hence the incorruptible example.

AndrewKemendo 28 Dec 2009 7:07 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: Scaling Evidence and Faith

Intuition (what you call “faith”) is evidence.

If you will, please define intution as you understand it.

From how I understand intuition, it is knowledge for which the origin cannot be determined. I have certainly experienced the “I know I read something about that somewhere but I just can’t remember” feeling before and was right about it. However just as equally I have been wrong about conclusions that I have come to through this means.

I think your entire post gives the same visceral description as someone would describe about having “felt the holy spirit “or some other such nonsense.

I honestly think that the issue of intuition is a MAJOR hurdle for rationality. I tend to err on the side of intuition being false evidence—hence why I indicated that our heuristics filled in the blanks. That is why I categorize intuition with faith similarly.

AndrewKemendo 28 Dec 2009 6:59 UTC
3 points
in reply to: JRMayne’s comment on: Scaling Evidence and Faith

confidence level.

Most people do not understand what a confidence interval or confidence levels are. At least in my interactions. Unless you have had some sort of statistics (even basic) you probably haven’t heard of it.

AndrewKemendo 28 Dec 2009 6:58 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Psychohistorian’s comment on: Scaling Evidence and Faith

I think it improperly relabels “uncertainty” as “faith.”

Perhaps. The way I see uncertainty as it pertains to one or another claim is that there will almost always be a reasonable counter claim and in order to dismiss the counter claim and accept the premise, that is faith in the same sense.

The only thing one truly must have faith in (and please correct me if you can; I’d love to be wrong) is induction, and if you truly lacked faith in induction, you’d literally go insane.

Intuition and induction are in my view very similar to what is understood as faith. I failed to make that clear, however I would use those interchangeably.

I recognize that faith is a touchy issue because it is so dramatically irrational and essentially leads to the slippery slope of faith. I view the issue similar to how the case was made for selecting the correct contrarian views, we are concluding approximately for what we do not know or for counterclaims.

AndrewKemendo 25 Dec 2009 14:10 UTC
2 points
in reply to: cabalamat’s comment on: On the Power of Intelligence and Rationality

Sure. What’s not rational is to believe … politicians

I think that is likely the best approach

AndrewKemendo 23 Dec 2009 12:32 UTC
2 points
on: On the Power of Intelligence and Rationality
Your argument seems to conclude that:

It is impossible to reason with unreasonable people

Agreed. Now what?

Ostensibly your post is about how to swing the ethos of a large group of people towards behaving differently. I would argue that has never been necessary and still is not.

A good hard look at any large political or social movement reveals a small group of very dedicated and motivated people, and a very large group of passive marginally interested people who agree with whatever sounds like it is in their best interest without them really doing too much work.

So can rationality work on a large scale? Arguably, it always does work. I rarely hear political or social arguments that are obviously (to everyone) pure hokum. If you look at how the last 4 U.S. presidents campaigned, it was always on “save you money” talking points and “less waste, more justice” platform. All rational things in the mind of the average person.

I think however your implication is that rationality is not always obviously rational. Well friend, that is why you have to completely understand the implications of rational decision making in terms that the majority can agree on in order to describe why they are better decisions. You often have to connect the dots for people so that they can see how to get from some contrarian or “non-intuitive” idea to their goal of raising a happy family.

This is the essence of “selling.” Of course spinners and politicians sell lots of crap to people by telling half truths, overcomplicated arguments or simply outright lying. These are obviously disingenuous. If you need to lie to sell your ethos it is probably wrong. That or you just aren’t wise enough to make it comprehensible.

AndrewKemendo 17 Dec 2009 11:54 UTC
4 points
on: December 2009 Meta Thread
I am not a fan of internet currency in all its forms generally because it draws attention away from the argument.

Reddit, which this is based on, went to disabling a subtractive karma rule for all submissions and comments. Submissions with down votes greater than up votes just don’t go anywhere while negative comment votes get buried similar to how they do here. That seems like a good way to organize the system.

Is the reason that it was implemented in order to be signaling for other users or is it just an artifact of the reddit API? Would disabling the actual display of the “points” simultaneously disable the comment ranking? What would be the most rational way to organize the comments. The least biased way would be for it to be based on time. The current way and the way reddit works is direct democracy and that of course is the tyranny of the majority. The current way may be the most efficient if the readers have such a high vale of their time that they only have time to read the most popular comments and skip the rest. However even if that is efficient it is not necessarily optimized to elucidate the best discussion points as users typically vote up things that they agree with rather than strong arguments.

I personally do not submit more responses and posts because of the karma system. As I have seen heavily on reddit, there is karma momentum where people tend to vote similar to how others have voted (as human nature would dictate). Based on that, I know that people will reference the total points of submitters and make decisions on how to take their comments and suggestions in light of that primed information—when the arguments should be evaluated independently.

Maybe I’m missing something though.

AndrewKemendo 13 Dec 2009 6:43 UTC
1 point
on: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom

The most important of which is: if you only do what feels epistemically “natural” all the time, you’re going to be, well, wrong.

Then why do I see the term “intuitive” used around here so much?

I say this by way of preamble: be very wary of trusting in the rationality of your fellow humans, when you have serious reasons to doubt their conclusions.

Hmm, I was told here by another lw user that the best thing humans have to truth is consensus.

Somewhere there is a disconnect between your post and much of the consensus, at least in practice, of LW users.

AndrewKemendo 13 Dec 2009 3:27 UTC
1 point
on: A question of rationality
From my understanding Mr. Yudkowski has two separate but linked interests, that of rationality, which predominates in writings and blog posts and designing AI, which is the interaction with SIAI. While I disagree about their particular approach (or lack thereof) I can see how it is rational to follow both simultaneously toward similar ends.

I would argue that rationality and AI are really the same project at different levels and different stated outcomes. Even if an AI never develops, increasing rationality is a good enough goal in and of itself.

AndrewKemendo 12 Dec 2009 12:50 UTC
0 points
in reply to: janos’s comment on: Probability Space & Aumann Agreement
I suppose my post was poorly worded. Yes, in this case omega is the reference set for possible world histories.

What I was referring to was the baseline of w as an accurate measure. It is a normalizing reference, though not a set.

AndrewKemendo 11 Dec 2009 11:53 UTC
−2 points
on: Probability Space & Aumann Agreement
The main problem I have always had with this is that the reference set is “actual world history” when in fact that is the exact thing that observers are trying to decipher.

We all realize that there is in fact an “actual world history” however if it was known then this wouldn’t be an issue. Using it as a reference set then, seems spurious in all practicality.

The most obvious way to achieve it is for the two agents to simply tell each other I(w) and J(w), after which they share a new, common information partition.

I think that summation is a good way to interpret the problem I addressed in as practical a manner as is currently available; I would note however that most people arbitrarily weight observational inference, so there is a skewing of the data.

The sad part about the whole thing is that both or all observers exchanging information may be the same deviation away from w such that their combined probabilities of l(w)are further away from w than either individually.

AndrewKemendo 8 Dec 2009 7:44 UTC
2 points
in reply to: SilasBarta’s comment on: Science—Idealistic Versus Signaling

1) In the pursuit of truth, you must always be on the lookout for the motive force of the resource-seeking that hinges on not finding the truth.

I think this sums up the “follow the money” axiom quite nicely.

AndrewKemendo 8 Dec 2009 7:25 UTC
5 points
on: Science—Idealistic Versus Signaling
There is a fantastic 24 part CBC podcast called How to think about science mp3 format here. It interviews 24 different research scientists and philosophy of science experts on the history and different views of both the scientific process, historical trends and the role of science in society. It is beyond well worth the time to listen to.

I have found that the series confirms what scientists have known already: Researchers rarely behave differently as a group than any other profession, yet they are presented as a non biased objective homogeneous group by most (Of course there are always outliers). Indeed the sciences are much more social than most would indicate and I think as you point out peer review indicates “social networking” best.

This is nothing new, after all, theories and their acceptance have meant nothing without a strong group of well respected researchers around it.

AndrewKemendo 6 Dec 2009 2:28 UTC
12 points
on: Parapsychology: the control group for science
In no way do I think that the parapsychologists have good hypotheses or reasonable claims. I also am a firm adherent to the ethos: Extraordinary claims must have extraordinary proofs. However to state the following:

one in which the null hypothesis is always true.

is making a bold statement about your level of knowledge. You are going so far as to say that there is no possible way that there are hypotheses which have yet to be described which could be understood through the methodology of this particular subgroup. This exercise seems to me to be rejecting these studies intuitively,(without study) just from the ad hominem approach to rejection—well they are parapsychologists therefore they are wrong. If they are wrong, then proper analysis would indicate that, would it not?

I have never seen a parapsychology study, so I will go look for one. However does every single study have massive flaws in it?

AndrewKemendo 5 Dec 2009 5:18 UTC
1 point
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: The Difference Between Utility and Utility
See my response here

You want to consider the utility of the terrorists, at the appropriate level of detail.

Huh? Yes it will. You mean “you will still find it undesirable and or hard for you to understand”.

What are the units for expected utility? How do you measure them? Can you graph my utility function?

I can look at behaviors of people and say that on this day Joe bought 5 apples and 4 oranges, on this day he bought 2 kiwis, 2 apples and no oranges etc...but that data doesn’t reliably forecast expected utility for oranges. There are so many exogenous variables that the data is reliably unreliable.

I have yet to see a researcher give a practical empirical formula mapping the utility of a person or group. I argue it is because it is impossible (currently), thus trying to do so doesn’t make sense in practice. I have however, as demonstrated in the link previously, seen formulas which imply weighted preference set’s. Those aren’t any more useful or descriptive than saying that Joe prefers apples to oranges.

AndrewKemendo 5 Dec 2009 5:06 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Technologos’s comment on: The Difference Between Utility and Utility

efficient markets quite by definition are allowing greater progress along individual value scales than inefficient markets, though not necessarily as much progress as some further refinement

Inefficient markets are great for increasing individual wealth of certain groups. I think Rothbard would disagree with the second point (regulation) - as would I.

In short, I, and much of the modern profession of economics, hold little attachment to the origins of economic theory (though I am surprised that you didn’t include Smith’s Wealth of Nations in your list, being more directly foundational for economics through the 19th century).

The wealth of nations was built on the philosophical foundations set in TMS it is even referenced as such with Smith labeling economics as the study of the nature of morality.

Indeed, you define out the very kind of economics that is most prevalent in modern departments (Berkeley perhaps excepted): mathematical models that seek to understand and predict how humans will act.

Explain to me how that is different than statistics. You cannot do economics without good statistics, but if it stops there, then you are a statistician; by definition. Just because you are discussing markets is irrelevant.

As I said in other responses, modern economics seeks to be little more than advanced statistics as you mentioned. You undoubtedly took econometrics so you will know what I am referencing. Masters level economics might as well be a masters of statistics currently.

The reason this is the case is because political economy was getting a bad rap around the time of the first U.S. depression (1893) and was being marginalized to the point of extinction. The result was that Thorsten Veblen, Alfred Marshall and others formed what we now call neoclassical economics in the late 19th century. At that point the basis’ and market theories implicit in the assumptions in each of the Smith/Marx/Mises camps. Further study from there revolved around either supply and demand, labor theory of value or time preference assumptions. The first example taking the broadest foothold.

Again, this is the stuff that economic philosophers debate and really has no relation to the original topic at this level.

AndrewKemendo 4 Dec 2009 10:15 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Technologos’s comment on: The Difference Between Utility and Utility
The description you gave of economic theory completely ignores the origins of micro and macro economics, price theory and comparative economics.

The assumptions that underlie these disciplines are normative.

Steve Levitt’s finding that the availability of abortion caused a lagged decrease in crime.

Actually that is descriptive statistics. Just as I pointed out before—economics without normative conclusions is statistics.

Doubtful, but in your undergrad you might have read one of the following:

Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments

John Maynerd Keynes’ General Theory of Employment

John Kenneth Galbraiths Affluent Society

Marx’ Kapital

Even more doubtful Friedman or Rothbard

These are all philosophical works and serve as the foundations for the economics discipline. All detail first theories about how markets form and work, and second how to make these markets more efficient based on their own unique goal seeking behavior.

More than likely however you predominately used the Baretto Howland Econometrics, Joe Mankiw’s Microeconomics, Paul Krugman’s International Economics or some other such text which does not describe the assumptions which developed the theories behind standard economic concepts. Yes, full employment is in fact a normative conclusion.

I do not dispute that there is a significant descriptive aspect to economics, especially at the undergraduate level—Once you start to actually do economic analysis in real life, and public policy is a blatantly example, it becomes clear that it is indeed normative.

This discussion got off track however. What we are discussing now does not really add to the discussion at hand, and that is arguably of my own doing because I brought the point up. My reply originally was an attempt to refute a false dichotomy and perhaps I did not do a well enough job of pointing that out. So let me do that now.

Utilitarianism as developed and introduced by Bentham was devised as a way to measure the unitless “utility” for the ends of driving normative change towards hedonistic goals. It is possible to divorce the method from it’s origins and use the formulaic theory to simply describe a preference set. Doing this however only gives us a statistical metric firmly in the realm of mathematics, something which requires little knowledge of markets. Economists have used utility in both manners, more heavily using the latter in recent decades. Thus if you are using utilitarian theory normatively you are truly using the original economic theory, not simply the statistical methodology which was birthed from it.

People around here seem to use the terms interchangeably without proper context. When I see someone here say “maximize utility” either you you using Bentham’s hedonistic calculation method in which the goals are implicit and you mean maximize hedonistic happiness, OR you are using the divorced economic mechanization and are incoherent because you have not defined your goal seeking terms.
What links here?
- AndrewKemendo's comment on The Difference Between Utility and Utility by Matt_Simpson (5 Dec 2009 5:18 UTC; 1 point)

AndrewKemendo 3 Dec 2009 2:27 UTC
0 points
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: The Difference Between Utility and Utility

Economics can conclude “If you want X then you should do Y”.

This is what economists are trying to do now. Yet, implicit in their advice are normative economic principals that comprise the set list of X: Full employment, lower inflation, lower taxes, higher revenue etc...Obviously whoever wants x is normatively seeking a solution. As a result the analysis must then also and it is implicit in the formulation.

The economists themselves may have no feelings one way or another but they are using the economic and statistical principals toward normative ends, even if they are not their own. This is why I found the economic discipline so frustrating. Everyone want’s to be a human calculator, forgetting that they are being used to solve someone else’s philosophical dilemma.

Z is something that probably will happen therefore Z is something that should happen. This tends to invoke my contempt, particularly since it is seldom applied consistently.

As well it should. What you described is still normative, only it applies a naturalistic fallacy spin on the normative conclusion.

AndrewKemendo 3 Dec 2009 2:13 UTC
−3 points
in reply to: Matt_Simpson’s comment on: The Difference Between Utility and Utility

Murder can increase utility in the economist’s utility function

That is really immaterial though and computationally moot. Ok so his “utility function” is negative. Is that it, is that the difference? Besides, I would argue that reevaluating it on those terms does a poor job of actually describing motivation in a coherent set.

Yet murdering is a net negative in the ethicist’s utility function.

It isn’t in the economists? These things aren’t neutral.

The broader aspect that economists seek is normative. You said it yourself in the economists assumptions. Assumptions are not exogenous when calculating value, try as they may.

Most good studies in their presentation will explain why their methodology is as it is, and why understanding their paper will solve a problem or lead to a conflict resolution. That was the purpose behind applied economic game theory, optimizing equilibrium in previously zero sum outcomes and eliminating dominated strategies for competition. One cannot successfully separate economics from ethics ( I would argue for all but the explicitly classifying sciences (Chemistry, Cladistics etc...) this holds true).

If we are simply talking about mathematical notation, then feel free to slap a negative sign on the expected utility portion for terrorists in the “aggregate worldwide utility” formula. It still won’t make any sense in practice.