Ape in the coat

Karma: 1,043

Ape in the coat 11 Nov 2024 13:22 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Towards_Keeperhood’s comment on: What are the primary drivers that caused selection pressure for intelligence in humans?
I thought if humans were vastly more intelligent than they needed to be they would already learn all the relevant knowledge quickly enough so they reach their peak in the 20s.
There is a difference between being more intelligent than you need for pure survival and being so intelligent that you can reach the objective ceiling of a craft at early age.
I mean for an expensive trait like intelligence I’d say the benefits need to at least almost be worth the costs, and then I feel like rather attributing the selection for intelligence to “because it was useful” rather than “because it was a runaway selection”.
The benefit is in increased inclusive genetic fitness. A singular metric that encorparates both success in competition with other species and with other members of your species due to sexual selection. If the species is already dominating the environment then the pressure from the first component compared to the second decreases.
That’s why I’m attributing the level of human intelligence in large part to runaway sexual selection. Without it, as soon as interspecies competition became the most important for reproductive success, natural selection would not push for even grater intelligence in humans, even though it could improve our ability to dominate the environment even more.

Ape in the coat 11 Nov 2024 11:50 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Towards_Keeperhood’s comment on: What are the primary drivers that caused selection pressure for intelligence in humans?

30 year old hunter gatherers perform better at hunting etc than hunter gatherers in their early 20s, even though the latter are more physically fit.

I’m not sure how it’s relevant. Older hunters are not more intelligent, they are more experienced. Moreover, your personal hunting success doesn’t necessary translates into your reproductive success—all the tribe will be enjoying the gains of your hunt and our ancestors had a strong egalitarian instinct. And even though higher intelligence improves the yields of your labor, it doesn’t mean that it creates strong enough selection pressure to outweighs other factors.

But I think it gets straightened out over long timescales—and faster the more expensive the trait is.

It doesn’t have to happen for a species who is already dominating their environment. As for them it can be the most dominant factor determining inclusive genetic fitness.

And if the trait, the runaway sexual selection is propagating, is itself helpful in competition with other species, which is obviously true for intelligence, there is just no reason for such straightening over a long timescale.

Ape in the coat 11 Nov 2024 6:17 UTC
2 points
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on: Does the “ancient wisdom” argument have any validity? If a particular teaching or tradition is old, to what extent does this make it more trustworthy?
Survival of a meme for a long time is a weak evidence of its truth. It’s not zero evidence, because true memes have advantage over false ones, but neither it’s particularly strong evidence, because there are other reasons for meme virulence instead of truth, so the signal to noise ratio is not that great.
You should, of course, remember that Argument Screens Off Authority. If something is true there have to be some object level arguments in favor of it, instead of just vague meta-reasoning about “Anscient Wisdom”.
If all the arguments for a particular thing are appeals to tradition, if you actually look into the matter and it turns out that even the most passionate supporters of it do not have anything object-level to back up their beliefs, if the idea has to shroud itself in ancestry and mystery, lest it will lack any substance, then it’s a stronger evidence that the meme is false.

Ape in the coat 9 Nov 2024 5:56 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Towards_Keeperhood’s comment on: What are the primary drivers that caused selection pressure for intelligence in humans?
I think that first some amount of intelligence in our ancestors evolved as necessary for survival as species—therefore explaining the “coincidence” of intelligence being useful for it—but then it was brought up to our current level as a runaway process. Because nothing other than a runaway process would be enough.
The thing is, ancestral hominids do not need this level of intelligence for survival purpose. Pack hunting, minor tool making, stamina regeneration, and being ridiculously good at throwing things is enough to completely dominate the ancestral environment. But our intelligence didn’t stop at this level, so something else has to be pushing it forward.
And sexual selection is the most obvious candidate. We already have examples of animals with ridiculously overdeveloped traits, due to it, up to the point where they actively harmful to the survival of an individual. We know that humans have extremely complicated mating rituals. At this point, the pieces just fall together.

Ape in the coat 8 Nov 2024 19:19 UTC
4 points
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on: What are the primary drivers that caused selection pressure for intelligence in humans?
I suspect that runaway sexual selection played a huge part.

Ape in the coat 31 Oct 2024 15:40 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Giskard’s comment on: Conservation of Expected Evidence and Random Sampling in Anthropics
When in one outcome one person exists and in the other outcome two people exist it may mean that you are twice as likely to exist on the second outcome (if there is random sampling) and then thirder reasoning you describe is correct. Or it may mean that there are just “two of you” in the second scenario, but there are always at least one of you, and so you are not more likely to exist in the second scenario.
Consider these two probability experiments:
Experiment 1: Brain fissure
You go to sleep in Room 1. A coin is tossed. On Heads nothing interesting happens and you wake up as usual. On Tails you are split into two people: your brain is removed from the body, the two lobes are separated in the middle and then the missing parts are grown back, therefore creating two versions of the same brain. Then these two brains are inserted into perfectly recreated copies of your original body. Then on random one body is assigned to Room 1 and the other is assigned to Room 2. Both bodies are returned to life in such a manner that it’s impossible to notice that something happened.
You wake up. What’s the probability that the coin was Heads? You see that you are in Room 1. What is the probability that the coin was Heads now?
Experiment 2: Embryos and incubator
There are two embryos. A coin is tossed. On Heads one embryo is randomly selected and put into an incubator that grows it into a person who will be put to sleep in a Room 1. On Tails both embryos are incubated and at random one person is put into Room 1 and the other person is put into Room 2.
You wake up as a person who was incubated this way. What is the probability that the coin was Heads? You see that you are in Room 1. What is the probability that the coin was Heads now?
Do you see the important difference between them?

Ape in the coat 23 Oct 2024 7:30 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: Radford Neal’s comment on: Change My Mind: Thirders in “Sleeping Beauty” are Just Doing Epistemology Wrong
Sure. By tweaking your “weights” or other fudge factors, you can get the right answer using any probability you please. But you’re not using a generally-applicable method, that actually tells you what the right answer is. So it’s a pointless exercise that sheds no light on how to correctly use probability in real problems.
Completely agree. The general applicable method is:
1. Understand what probability experiment is going on, based on the description of the problem.
2. Construct the sample space from mutually exclusive outcomes of this experiment
3. Construct the event space based on the sample space, such that it was minimal and sufficient to capture all the events that the participant of the experiment can observe
4. Define probability as a measure function over the event space, such that:
- The sum of probabilities of events consisting of only individual mutually exclusive and collectively exshaustive outcomes was equal to 1 and
- if an event has probability 1/a then this event happens on average N/a times on a repetition of probability experiment N times for any large N.
Naturally, this produce answer ¹⁄₂ for the Sleeping Beauty problem.
If Beauty thinks the probability of Heads is ¹⁄₂, she presumably thinks the probability that it is Monday is (1/2)+(1/2)*(1/2)=3/4
This is a description of Lewisian Halfism reasoning, that in incorrect for the Sleeping Beauty problem
I describe the way the Beauty is actually supposed to reason about betting scheme on a particular day here.
She needs a real probability.
Indeed. And real probability domain of function is event space, consisting of properly defined events for the probability experiment. “Today is Monday” is ill-defined in the Sleeping Beauty setting. Therefore it can’t have probability.

Ape in the coat 22 Oct 2024 19:25 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: ProgramCrafter’s comment on: Change My Mind: Thirders in “Sleeping Beauty” are Just Doing Epistemology Wrong
I suppose the participant is just supposed to lie about their credence here in order to “win”.
On Tuesday your credence in Heads supposed to be 0, but saying the true value would go against the experimental protocol unless you also said that your credence is 0 on Monday, which would also be a lie.

Ape in the coat 22 Oct 2024 8:34 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: ProgramCrafter’s comment on: Change My Mind: Thirders in “Sleeping Beauty” are Just Doing Epistemology Wrong
An obvious way to do so is put a hazard sign on “probability” and just not use it, not putting resources into figuring out what “probability” SB should name, isn’t it?
It’s an obvious thing to do when dealing with simularity clusters poorly defined in natural language. Not so much, when we are talking about a logically pinpointed mathematical concept which we know are crucial for epistemology.
(And now I realize a possible point why you’re arguing to keep “probability” term for such scenarios well-defined; so that people in ~anthropic settings can tell you their probability estimates and you, being observer, could update on that information.)
It’s not just about anthropic scenarios and not just about me being able to understand other people. It’s about general truth preserving mechanism of logical and mathematical reasoning. When people just use different definitions—this is annoying but fine. But when they use different definitions without realizing that these definitions are different and, moreover insist that it’s you who is making a mistake—then we have an actual disagreement about math which will provide more confusion along the way. Anthropic scenarious are just the ones where this confusion is noticeable.
As for why I believe probability theory to be useful in life despite the fact that sometimes different tools need to be used
What exactly do you mean by “different tools need to be used”? Can you give me an example?

Ape in the coat 17 Oct 2024 9:16 UTC
6 points
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on: Bitter lessons about lucid dreaming
Yeah, I suppose, if lucid dreaming is that hard for you, that it requires constant excercises during daytime, you shouldn’t strain yourself.
I learned it intuitively in childhood as a way to deal with rare nightmares and so it is all mostly effortless fun for me since then. I don’t get them all the time, but at least half the time I remember dreaming, it’s lucid.
Another point is that lucid dreams are usually short. At least in my case its hard to stay in the state without waking up or forgetting that it’s a dream. I don’t think I’ve had more than 15 minutes of uninterrupted experience at a time, though it’s hard to tell due to the fact that time perception in a dream is messed up.
Lucid dreams as erotic adventures can be fun but only after you already had enough sexual experience. I think it can be more satisfying than onanism but not significantly. The real advantage is that you are not loosing your daytime on such activity.

Ape in the coat 17 Oct 2024 7:08 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: weightt an’s comment on: Change My Mind: Thirders in “Sleeping Beauty” are Just Doing Epistemology Wrong
Well, idk. My opinion here is that you bite some weird bullet, which I’m very ambivalent too. I think “now” question makes total sense and you factor it out into some separate parts from your model.
The counter-intuitiveness comes from us not being accustomed to reasoning under amnesia and repetition of the same experience. It’s understandable that initially we would think that question about “now”/”today” makes sense as we are used to situation where it indeed does. But then we can clearly see that in such situations there is no problem with formally defining what event we mean by it. Contrary to SB, where such event is ill-defined.
Like, can you add to the sleeping beauty some additional decision problems including the calendar? Will it work seamlessly?
Oh absolutely.
Suppose that on every awakening the Beauty is proposed to bet that “Today is Monday” What odds is she supposed to take?
“Today is Monday” is ill-defined, but she can construct a corresponding betting scheme using events “Monday awakening happens” and “Tuesday awakening happens” like this:
E(Monday) = P(Monday)U(Monday) - P(Tuesday)U(Tuesday)
P(Monday) = 1; P(Tuesday) = ¹⁄₂, therefore
E(Monday) = U(Monday) − 1/2U(Tuesday)
solving E(Monday)=0 for U(Monday):
U(Monday) = 1/2U(Tuesday)
Which means 2:1 betting odds
As you see everything is quite seamless.

Ape in the coat 17 Oct 2024 6:00 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: weightt an’s comment on: Change My Mind: Thirders in “Sleeping Beauty” are Just Doing Epistemology Wrong
Please specify this “now” thingy you are talking about, using formal logic. If this is a meaningful event for the setting, surely there wouldn’t be any problems.
Are you talking about Monday xor Tuesday? Monday or Tuesday? Monday and Tuesday? Something else?

Ape in the coat 17 Oct 2024 5:22 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: weightt an’s comment on: Change My Mind: Thirders in “Sleeping Beauty” are Just Doing Epistemology Wrong
What state the calendar is when?
On Monday it’s Monday. On Tuesday it’s Tuesday. And “Today” is ill-defined, there is no coherent state for it.

Ape in the coat 17 Oct 2024 5:10 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: robo’s comment on: Change My Mind: Thirders in “Sleeping Beauty” are Just Doing Epistemology Wrong
I’m very available to answer questions about my posts as soon as people actuall engage with the reasoning, so feel free to ask if you feel confused about anything.
If I am to highlight the core principle it would be: Thinking in terms of what happens in the probability experiment as a whole, to the best of your knowledge and from your perspective as a participant.
Suppose this experiment happened to you multiple times. If on iteration of the experiment something happens ²⁄₃ of times then the probability of such event is ²⁄₃. If something happens 100% of times then its probability is 1 and realizationof such event doesn’t give you you any evidence.
All the rest is commentary.

Ape in the coat 17 Oct 2024 4:55 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: weightt an’s comment on: Change My Mind: Thirders in “Sleeping Beauty” are Just Doing Epistemology Wrong
I think some people pointed out in comments that their model doesn’t represent prob of “what day it is NOW” btw
I’m actually talking about it in the post here. But yes this is additionally explored in the comments pretty well.
Here is the core part that allows to understand why “Today” is ill-defined from the perspective of the Beauty:
Another intuition pump is that “today is Monday” is not actually True xor False from the perspective of the Beauty. From her perspective it’s True xor (True and False). This is because on Tails, the Beauty isn’t reasoning just for some one awakening—she is reasoning for both of them at the same time. When she awakens the first time the statement “today is Monday” is True, and when she awakens the second time the same statement is False. So the statement “today is Monday” doesn’t have stable truth value throughout the whole iteration of probability experiment. Suppose that Beauty really does not want to make false statements. Deciding to say outloud “Today is Monday”, leads to making a false statement in 100% of iterations of experiemnt when the coin is Tails.
As long as the Beauty is unable to distinguish between Monday and Tuesday awakenings, as long as the decision process which leads her to say the phrase “what day is it” works the same way, from her perspective there is no one “very moment she says that”. On Tails, there are two different moments when she says this, and the answer is different for them. So there is no answer for her

Ape in the coat 17 Oct 2024 4:22 UTC
3 points
2
in reply to: Rafael Harth’s comment on: Change My Mind: Thirders in “Sleeping Beauty” are Just Doing Epistemology Wrong
So with that said, to answer your question: why define probabilities in terms of this concept? Because I don’t think I want a definition of probability that doesn’t align with this view, when it’s applicable.
Suppose I want matrix multiplication to be commutative. Surely it would be so convinient if it was! I can define some operator * over matrixes so that A*B = B*A. I can even call this operator “matrix multiplication”.
But did I just make matrix multiplication, as it’s conventionally defined, commutative? Of course not. I logically pinpointed a new function and called it the same way as the previous function is being called, but it didn’t change anything about how the previous function is logically pinpointed.
My new function may have some interesting applications and therefore deserve to be talked about in its own right. But calling it’s “matrix multiplication” is very misleading. And if I were to participate in conversation about matrix multiplication while talking about my function I’d be confusing everyone.
This is basically the situation that we have here.
Initially probability function is defined over iterations of probability experiment. You define a different function over all space and time, which you still call “probability”. It surely has properties that you like, but it’s a different function! Please use another name, this is already taken. Or add a disclaimer. Preferably do both. You know how easy it is to confuse people with such things! Definetely, do not start participating in the conversations about probability while talking about your function.
If we can discretely count the number of instances across the history of the universe that fit the current situation , and we know some event happens in one third of those instances, then I think the probability has to be one third. This seems very self-evident to me; it seems exactly what the concept of probability is supposed to do.
I guess one analogy—suppose one third of all houses is painted blue from the outside and one third red, and you’re in one house but have no idea which one. What’s the probability that it’s blue?
As long as these instances are independent of each other—sure. Like with your houses analogy. When we are dealing with simple, central cases there is no diasagreement between probability and weighted probability and so nothing to argue about.
But as soon as we are dealing with more complicated scenario where there is no independence and it’s possible to be inside multiple houses in the same instance… Surely, you see how demanding to have coherent P(Red xor Blue) becomes unfeasible?
The problem is, our intuitions are too eager to assume that everything as independent. We are used to think in terms of physical time, using our memory as something that allows us to orient in it. This is why amnesia scenarios are so mindboggling to us!
And that’s why the notion of probability experiment where every single trial is independent and the outcomes in any single trial are mutually exclusive is so important. We strictly define what the “situation” means and therefore do not allow ourselves to be tricked. We can clearly see that individual awakenings can’t be treated as outcomes of the Sleeping Beauty experiment.
But when you are thinking in terms of “reference classes” your definition of “situation” is too vague. And so you allow yourself to count the same house multiple times. Treat yourself not as a person participating in the experiment but as an “awakening state of the person”, even though one awakening state necessary follows the other.
if the probability doesn’t align with reference class counting, then it seems to me that the point of the concept has been lost.
The “point of probability” is lost when it doesn’t allign with reasoning about instances of probability experiments. Namely, we are starting to talk about something else, instead of what was logically pinpointed as probability in the first place. Most of the time reasoning about reference classes does allign with it, so you do not notice the difference. But once in a while it doesn’t and so you end up having “probability” that contradicts conservation of expected evidence and “utility” shifting back and forth.
So what’s the point of these reference classes? What’s so valuable in them? As far as I can see they do not bring anything to the table except extra confusion.

Ape in the coat 17 Oct 2024 2:45 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Gurkenglas’s comment on: Change My Mind: Thirders in “Sleeping Beauty” are Just Doing Epistemology Wrong
Probability is not some vaguely defined similarity cluster like “sound”. It’s a mathematical function that has specific properties. Not all of them are solely about betting.
We can dissolve the semantic disagreement between halfers and thirders and figure out that they are talking about two different functions p and p’ with subtly different properties while producing the same betting odds.
This in itself, however, doesn’t resolve the actual question: which of these functions fits the strict mathematical notion of probability for the Sleeping Beauty experiment and which doesn’t. This question has an answer.

Ape in the coat 17 Oct 2024 2:30 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Gurkenglas’s comment on: Change My Mind: Thirders in “Sleeping Beauty” are Just Doing Epistemology Wrong
Betting argument are tangential here.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cvCQgFFmELuyord7a/beauty-and-the-bets
The disagreement is how to factorise expected utility function into probability and utility, not which bets to make. This disagreement is still tangible, because the way you define your functions have meaningfull consequences for your mathematical reasoning.

Ape in the coat 16 Oct 2024 14:29 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Rafael Harth’s comment on: Change My Mind: Thirders in “Sleeping Beauty” are Just Doing Epistemology Wrong
I personally think that the only “good” definition (I’ll specify this more at the end) is that a probability of $\frac{1}{4}$ should occur one in four times in the relevant reference class. I’ve previously called this view “generalized frequentism”, where we use the idea of repeated experiments to define probabilities, but generalizes the notion of “experiment” to subsume all instances of an agent with incomplete information acting in the real world (hence subsuming the definition as subjective confidence).
Why do you suddenly substitute the notion of “probability experiment” with the notion of “reference class”? What do you achieve by this?
From my perspective, this is where the source of confusion lingers. Probability experiment can be precisely specified: the description of any probability theory problem is supposed to be that. But “reference class” is misleading and up for the interpretation.
There are difficulties here with defining the reference class, but I think they can be adequately addressed, and anyway, those don’t matter for the sleeping beauty experiment because there, the reference classes is actually really straight-forward. Among the times that you as an agent are participating in the experiment and are woken up and interviewed (and are called Sleeping Beauty, if you want to include this in the reference class), one third will have the coin heads, so the probability is $\frac{1}{3}$ .
And indeed, because of this “reference class” business you suddenly started treating individual awakening of Sleeping Beauty as mutually exclusive outcome, even though it’s absolutely not the case in the experiment as stated. I don’t see how you would make such mistake if you kept using the term “probability experiment” without switching to speculate about “reference classes”.
Among the iterations of Sleeping Beauty probability experiment that a participant awakes, half the time the coin is Heads so the probability is ¹⁄₂.
Here there are no difficulties to address—everything is crystal clear. You just need to calm the instinctive urge to weight the probability by the number of awakenings, which would be talking about a different mathematical concept.
EDIT: @ProgramCrafter the description of the experiment clearly states that that when the coin is Tails the Beauty is to be awaken twice in the same iteration of the experiment. Therefore, individual awakennings are not mutually exclisive with each other: more than one can happen in the same iteration of the experiment.

Ape in the coat 16 Oct 2024 13:50 UTC
1 point
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on: Change My Mind: Thirders in “Sleeping Beauty” are Just Doing Epistemology Wrong
Alternatively I started out confused.
Debating this problem here and with LLMs convinced me that I’m not confused and the thirders are actually just doing epistemological nonsense.
It feels arrogant, but it’s not a poor reflection of my epistemic state?
Welcome to the club.
I have read some of the LW posts on the canonical problem here. I won’t be linking them due to laziness.
I suppose my posts are among the ones that you are talking about here?