bokov

Karma: 459

bokov Jan 23, 2014, 2:22 PM
4 points
in reply to: satt’s comment on: Polling Thread
This has taught me that I find it more intuitive to think in terms of conditional probabilities than marginal probabilities.

bokov Jan 16, 2014, 6:21 PM
6 points
on: Division of cognitive labour in accordance with researchers’ ability
The tough part will be guarding against Goodhart’s Law. I suspect that the current system of publications and grant money as an indicator of ability started out as an attempt to improve the efficiency of scientific progress and has by now been thoroughly Goodharted.

As Lumifer points out, tenure was intended to give productive scientists some protected time so they could think. However, the amount of hoops you jump through on the way to getting there puts you through the opposite of protected time so by the time you get tenure you’ve gotten jaded, cynical, and acquired some habits useful for academic survival but harmful to academic excellence.

bokov Jan 16, 2014, 5:56 PM
2 points
on: LessWrong Help Desk—free paper downloads and more (2014)
I can offer advice on statistical analysis of data (frequentist, alas, still learning Bayesian methods myself so not ready to advise on that). Unfortunately, right now I have too little spare time to actually analyze it for you, but I can explain to you how you can tackle it using open source tools and try to point you toward further reading focused on the specific problem you’re trying to solve. In the medium-future I hope to have my online data analysis app stable enough to post here, but this is not looking like the month when it will happen.

I can probably answer almost any question you have about the R language, many questions about the Shiny framework, and some questions about Javascript, PHP, and various flavors of SQL (though there are probably plenty LW-ers more knowledgeable than I on the latter three topics).

Also can advise on designing controlled animal experiments so that you won’t regret painting yourself into a corner later, but I’m guessing there aren’t many biologists here.

I apologize in advance for slow turnaround times. My schedule is pretty full of kids and work. :-/

PS: if your question is too lengthy to post here, just post it on the appropriate Stackexchange site and post the link here.

bokov Jan 15, 2014, 5:30 PM
7 points
in reply to: Alsadius’s comment on: Dr. Jubjub predicts a crisis
The current 500-year window needs to be be VERY typical if it’s the main evidence in support of the statement that “even with no singularity technological advance is a normal part of our society”.

This is like someone in the 1990s saying that constantly increasing share price “is a normal part of Microsoft”.

I think technological progress is desirable and hope that it will continue for a long time. All I’m saying is that being overconfident about future rates of technological progress is one of this community’s most glaring weaknesses.

bokov Jan 14, 2014, 4:54 PM
4 points
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Dr. Jubjub predicts a crisis
Take any 500-year window that contains the year 2014. How typical would you say it is of all 500-year intervals during which tool-using humans existed?

bokov Jan 13, 2014, 6:13 PM
2 points
in reply to: Alsadius’s comment on: Dr. Jubjub predicts a crisis

even with no singularity technological advance is a normal part of our society

Depends what time scale you’re talking about.

bokov Jan 13, 2014, 5:56 PM
2 points
in reply to: JoshuaFox’s comment on: Stupid Questions Thread—January 2014
It would look like a failure to adequately discount for inferential chain length.

bokov Jan 10, 2014, 1:48 PM
2 points
in reply to: Kawoomba’s comment on: Some thoughts on having children

having people around who give a damn about you

Yes, exactly. I’d add:

...because the best cryopreservation arrangements won’t do you much good if nobody notices you died until the neighbors complain about the smell.

bokov Jan 10, 2014, 1:41 PM
4 points
in reply to: Viliam_Bur’s comment on: Some thoughts on having children

Somewhere between an extended family and a kindergarten; like a small private kindergarten where the parents are close friends with the caretakers.

That, right there, is one of my fondest dreams. To get my tiny scientists out of the conformity-factory and someplace where they can flourish (even more). Man, if this was happening in my town, in a heartbeat I’d rearrange my work schedule to spend part of the week being a homeschooler.

bokov Oct 23, 2013, 11:05 PM
0 points
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Blind Spot: Malthusian Crunch

dealing with resource scarcity—and you keep on bringing up how markets don’t solve violence and pollution...

Well, they should provide a constructive alternative to the former, and the latter is isomorphous with a scarcity of non-polluted air/water/land.

bokov Oct 23, 2013, 11:03 PM
1 point
in reply to: Lumifer’s comment on: Blind Spot: Malthusian Crunch
Here’s what I expect someone who seriously believed that markets will handle it would sound like:

“Wow, overpopulation is a threat? Clearly there are inefficiencies the rest of the market is too stupid to exploit. Let’s see if I can get rich by figuring out where these inefficiencies are and how to exploit them.”

Whereas “the markets will handle it, period, full stop” is not a belief, it’s an excuse.

bokov Oct 23, 2013, 10:50 PM
0 points
in reply to: passive_fist’s comment on: Blind Spot: Malthusian Crunch

it’s only a question of how many planets we consume before that happens.

Hopefully more than one. There are a lot of underutilized planets out there, even within our own solar system.

bokov Oct 23, 2013, 10:48 PM
0 points
in reply to: ThisSpaceAvailable’s comment on: Blind Spot: Malthusian Crunch
Fixed, thanks.

bokov Oct 23, 2013, 10:42 PM
5 points
in reply to: Jack’s comment on: Is it immoral to have children?

The choke point in our Fritz Haber/Norman Borlaug/Edward Jenner pipeline is not the amount of science education out there. It’s a combination of the low-hanging fruit being picked, insufficient investment in novel approaches and not enough geniuses.

Very true. Each year we produce thousands of new Ph.D.s and import thousands more, while slowly choking off funding for basic research, so they languish in a post-doc holding pattern until many of them give up and go do something less innovative but safer.

bokov Oct 23, 2013, 10:25 PM
2 points
in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Is it immoral to have children?

Alternatively tutoring is free and with a similar level of time costs to raising your own children you could tutor a lot of others.

Yes! The school system in my state spends far more on remedial education than on GT. Education is seen as a status symbol instead of a costly investment that should be allocated in a manner that gives the highest returns (in terms of innovation, prosperity, and sane policy decisions).

bokov Oct 23, 2013, 10:14 PM
5 points
in reply to: blacktrance’s comment on: Is it immoral to have children?

All of these “what you should do if you are a utilitarian” articles should start with “Assuming you are a being for whom utility matters roughly equally regardless of who experiences it...”

Yes! Thank you for articulating in one sentence what I haven’t been able to in a dozen posts.

bokov Oct 23, 2013, 10:12 PM
3 points
in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Is it immoral to have children?
You should repeat this at the top level. This changes things quite a bit.

bokov Oct 23, 2013, 10:11 PM
2 points
in reply to: Emile’s comment on: Is it immoral to have children?
We should be careful to make the distinction between jkaufman’s own opinions and those of the paper they posted a link to.

By the way, it’s refreshing to see people be honest with themselves and others about what they value instead of the posturing/kool-aid one often sees around this topic.

bokov Oct 23, 2013, 10:07 PM
0 points
in reply to: Cyan’s comment on: Looking for opinions of people like Nick Bostrom or Anders Sandberg on current cryo techniques
Oops, you’re right. I have now revised it.

bokov Oct 23, 2013, 9:53 PM
0 points
in reply to: Cyan’s comment on: Looking for opinions of people like Nick Bostrom or Anders Sandberg on current cryo techniques
A witty quote from an great book by a brilliant author is awesome, but does not have the status of any sort of law.

What do we mean by “normality”? What you observe around you every day? If you are wrong about the unobserved causal mechanisms underlying your observations, you will make wrong decisions. If you walk on hot coals because you believe God will not let you burn, the normality that quantum mechanics adds up to diverges enough from your normality that there will be tangible consequences. Are goals part of normality? If not, they certainly depend on assumptions you make about your model of normality. Either way, when you discover that God can’t/won’t make you fireproof, some subset of your goals will (and should) come tumbling down. This too has tangible consequences.

Some subset of the remaining goals relies on more subtle errors in your model of normality and they too will at some point crumble.

What evidence do we have that any goals at all are stable at every level? Why should the goals of a massive blob of atoms have such a universality?

I can see the point of “it all adds up to normality” if you’re encouraging someone to not be reluctant to learn new facts. But how does it help answer the question of “what goal do we pursue if we find proof that all our goals are bullshit”?