bill

• billMar 26, 2009, 3:15 AM

  3 points

  on: Open Thread

  I want to be a good citizen of Less Wrong. Any advice?

  1) For example, should I vote on everything I read?

  2) Is it okay for me to get into back and forth discussions on comment threads? (e.g. A comments on B, B comments on A’s comment, A comments on B’s new comment, times 5-10) Or should I simply make one comment and leave it at that.

  I am asking out of pure ignorance. not judging anything I’ve seen here, I just want to get advice.

• billMar 22, 2009, 8:07 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: Coun­ter­fac­tual Mugging

  In Newcomb, before knowing the box contents, you should one-box. If you know the contents, you should two-box (or am I wrong?)

  In Prisoner, before knowing the opponent’s choice, you should cooperate. After knowing the opponent’s choice, you should defect (or am I wrong?).

  If I’m right in the above two cases, doesn’t Omega look more like the “after knowing” situations above? If so, then I must be wrong about the above two cases...

  I want to be someone who in situation Y does X, but when Y&Z happens, I don’t necessarily want to do X. Here, Z is the extra information that I lost (in Omega), the opponent has chosen (in Prisoner) or that both boxes have money in them (in Newcomb). What am I missing?

• billMar 20, 2009, 3:42 AM

  8 points

  on: Coun­ter­fac­tual Mugging

  I convinced myself to one-box in Newcomb by simply treating it as if the contents of the boxes magically change when I made my decision. Simply draw the decision tree and maximize u-value.

  I convinced myself to cooperate in the Prisoner’s Dilemma by treating it as if whatever decision I made the other person would magically make too. Simply draw the decision tree and maximize u-value.

  It seems that Omega is different because I actually have the information, where in the others I don’t.

  For example, In Newcomb, if we could see the contents of both boxes, then I should two-box, no? In the Prisoner’s Dilemma, if my opponent decides before me and I observe the decision, then I should defect, no?

  I suspect that this means that my thought process in Newcomb and the Prisoner’s Dilemma is incorrect. That there is a better way to think about them that makes them more like Omega. Am I correct? Does this make sense?

• billMar 19, 2009, 3:10 PM

  5 points

  on: Ra­tion­al­ist Fiction

  Here is a (very paraphrased, non-spoiler) snippet from the beginning of “Margin of Profit” by Poul Anderson. The problem is that the evil space aliens are blockading a trade route, capturing the ships and crew of the trading ships. The Traders are meeting and deciding what to do.

  Trader 1: Why don’t we just send in our space fleet and destroy them?

  Trader 2: Revenge and violence are un-Christian thoughts. Also, they don’t pay very well, as it is hard to sell anything to a corpse. Anyway, getting that done would take a long time, and our customers would find other sources for the goods they need.

  Trader 1: Why don’t we just arm our merchant ships?

  Trader 2: You think I haven’t thought of that? We are already on shoestring margins as it is. If we make the ships more expensive, then we are operating at a loss.

  (Wow, I write so much worse than Poul Anderson :-) The writing in the story is much better. The “un-Christian thoughts” line is one of my favorites).

  This was one of the scenes that showed how to think logically throught the consequences of seemingly good ideas (here, economic decision-making, long-term thinking). You can actually figure out the solution to the problem using one of the techniques that I’ve heard on OB (I don’t want to spoil it by saying which one).

  Does this apply?

• billMar 17, 2009, 6:52 PM

  2 points

  on: On Ju­ve­nile Fiction

  Short Story: “Margin of Profit” by Poul Anderson, along with most of the other Van Rijn /​ Falkayn stories (also liked “The Man who Counts”). I read them at age 14 or so, but good at any age. Fun, space adventure, puzzle/​mystery. Heroes use logic and economic reasoning instead of brute force to solve “standard” space adventure problems. A great deal of humor also.

• billMar 15, 2009, 6:46 PM

  36 points

  0

  on: The Least Con­ve­nient Pos­si­ble World

  One way to train this: in my number theory class, there was a type of problem called a PODASIP. This stood for Prove Or Disprove And Salvage If Possible. The instructor would give us a theorem to prove, without telling us if it was true or false. If it was true, we were to prove it. If it was false, then we had to disprove it and then come up with the “most general” theorem similar to it (e.g. prove it for Zp after coming up with a counterexample in Zm).

  This trained us to be on the lookout for problems with the theorem, but then seeing the “least convenient possible world” in which it was true.

• billMar 9, 2009, 2:51 PM

  7 points

  in reply to: billswift’s comment on: Don’t Believe You’ll Self-Deceive

  “Act as if” might work.

  For example, I act as if people are nicer than they are (because it gets me better outcomes than other possible strategies I’ve tried).

  This also has the benefit of clearly separating action (what we can do) from information (what we know) and preferences (what we want).