BT_Uytya

Karma: 643

BT_Uytya Sep 16, 2015, 3:41 PM
0 points
in reply to: BiasedBayes’s comment on: The Heuristic About Representativeness Heuristic
Thank you. English isn’t my first language, so for me feedback means a lot. Especially positive :)

My point was that representative heuristic made two errors: firstly, it violates “ratio rule” (= equates P(S|c) and P(c|S)), and secondly, sometimes it replaces P(c|S) with something else. That means that the popular idea “well, just treat it as P(c|S) instead of P(S|c); if you add P(c|~S) and P(S), then everything will be OK ” doesn’t always work.

The main point of our disagreement seem to be this:

(1) The degree to which c is representative of S is indicated by the conditional propability p (c | S)- that is, the propability of members of S have characterestic c.

1) Think about stereotypes. They are “represent” their classes well, yet it’s extremely unlikely to actually meet the Platonic Ideal of Jew.

(also, sometimes there is some incentive for members of ethnic group to hide their lineage; if so, then P(stereotypical characteristics|member of group) is extremely low, yet the degree of resemblance is very high)

(this is somewhat reminds me of the section about Planning Fallacy in my earlier post).

2) I think that it can be argued that the degree of resemblance should involve P(c|~S) in some way. If it’s very low, then c is very representative of S, even if P(c|S) isn’t high.

Overall, inferential distances got me this time; I’m probably going to rewrite this post. If you have some ideas about how this text could be improved, I will be glad to hear them.

BT_Uytya Sep 15, 2015, 9:08 PM
0 points
in reply to: redding’s comment on: The Heuristic About Representativeness Heuristic
Thank you for your feedback.

Yes, I’m aware of likelihood ratios (and they’re awesome, especially for log-odds). Earlier draft of this post ended at “the correct method for answering this query involves imagining world-where-H-is-true, imagining world-where-H-is-false and comparing the frequency of E between them”, but I decided against it. And well, if some process involves X and Y, then it is correct (but maybe misleading) to say that in involves just X.

My point was that “what it does resemble?” (process where you go E → H) was fundamentally different from “how likely is that?” (process where you go H → E). If you calculate likelihood ratio using the-degree-of-resemblance instead of actual P(E|H) you will get wrong answer.

(Or maybe thinking about likelihood ratios will force you to snap out of representativeness heuristic, but I’m far from sure about it)

I think that I misjudged the level of my audience (this post is an expansion of /r/HPMOR/ comment) and hadn’t made my point (that probabilistic thinking is more correct when you go H->E instead of vice versa) visible enough. Also, I was going to blog about likelihood ratios later (in terms of H->E and !H->E) — so again, wrong audience.

I now see some ways in which my post is debacle, and maybe it makes sense to completely rewrite it. So thank you for your feedback again.

BT_Uytya Apr 10, 2015, 10:04 PM
16 points
0
in reply to: Scott Alexander’s comment on: The Strangest Thing An AI Could Tell You
It’s interesting to note that this is almost exactly how it works in some role-playing games.

Suppose that we have Xandra the Rogue who went into dungeon, killed a hundred rats, got a level-up and now is able to bluff better and lockpick faster, despite those things having almost no connection to rat-killing.

My favorite explanation of this phenomenon was that “experience” is really a “self-esteem” stat which could be increased via success of any kind, and as character becomes more confident in herself, her performance in unrelated areas improves too.

BT_Uytya Sep 4, 2014, 9:00 PM
1 point
in reply to: cameroncowan’s comment on: Bayesianism for humans: “probable enough”
Making sure I understood you: you are saying that people sometimes pick “everything is fine” because:

1) they are confident that if anything goes wrong, they would be able to fix it, so everything is fine once again

2) they are so confident in it they aren’t making specific plans, beliving that they would be able to fix everything on the spur of the moment

aren’t you?

Looks plausible, but something must be wrong there, because planning fallacy:

a) exists (so people aren’t evaluating their abilities well)

b) exists even people aren’t familiar with the situation they are predicting (here, people have no ground for “ah, I’m able to fix anything anyway” effect)

c) exists even in people with low confidence (however, maybe the effect is weaker here; it’s an interesting theory to test)

I blame overconfidence and similar self-serving biases.

BT_Uytya Sep 2, 2014, 9:47 PM
1 point
in reply to: BT_Uytya’s comment on: Open thread, 25-31 August 2014
(decided to move everything to Main)

BT_Uytya Aug 26, 2014, 5:57 PM
8 points
on: Open thread, 25-31 August 2014
So, I made two posts sharing potentionally useful heuristics from Bayesianism. So what?

Should I move one of them to Main? On the one hand, these posts “discuss core Less Wrong topics”. On the other, I’m honestly not sure that this stuff is awesome enough. But I feel like I should do something, so these things aren’t lost (I tried to do a talk about “which useful principles can be reframed in a Bayesian terms” on a Moscow meetup once, and learned that those things weren’t very easy to find using site-wide search).

Maybe we need a wiki page with a list of relevant lessons from probability theory, which can be kept up-to-date?

BT_Uytya Aug 25, 2014, 12:18 PM
2 points
in reply to: Bobertron’s comment on: Bayesianism for humans: prosaic priors
Good call!

Yes, your theory is more prosaic, yet it never occured to me. I wonder whether purposefully looking for boring explanations would help with that.

Also, your theory is actually plausible, fits with some of my observations, so I think that I should look into it. Thanks!

BT_Uytya Feb 8, 2014, 9:05 PM
1 point
on: Proofs, Implications, and Models

A conclusion which is true in any model where the axioms are true, which we know because we went through a series of transformations-of-belief, each step being licensed by some rule which guarantees that such steps never generate a false statement from a true statement.

I want to add that this idea justifies material implication (“if 2x2 = 4, then sky is blue”) and other counter-intuitive properties of formal logic, like “you can prove anything, if you assume a contradiction/false statement”.

Usual way to show the latter goes like this:

1) Assume that “A and not-A” are true

2) Then “A or «pigs can fly»” are true, since A is true

3) But we know that not-A is true! Therefore, the only way for “A or «pigs can fly»” to be true is to make «pigs can fly» true.

4) Therefore, pigs can fly.

The steps are clear, but this seems like cheating. Even more, this feels like a strange, alien inference. It’s like putting your keys in a pocket, popping yourself on the head to induce short-term memory loss and then using your inability to remember keys’ whereabouts to win a political debate. That isn’t how humans usually reason about things.

But the thing is, formal logic isn’t about reasoning about things. Formal logic is about preserving the truth; and if you assumed “A and not-A”, then there is nothing left to preserve.

How Wikipedia puts it:

An argument (consisting of premises and a conclusion) is valid if and only if there is no possible situation in which all the premises are true and the conclusion is false.

BT_Uytya Dec 27, 2013, 8:17 AM
2 points
in reply to: topynate’s comment on: A Brief Overview of Machine Ethics
Yep, he have.

BT_Uytya Dec 15, 2013, 2:24 PM
8 points
on: 2013 Less Wrong Census/Survey
Took the survey and reminded my fellow Russians to participate too.

BT_Uytya Dec 13, 2013, 5:59 PM
0 points
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Circular belief updating

A (non-unique) best strategy for Dark is to leave the deck alone, regardless of the observer’s prior

If I were a Dark, I would try to rearrange the cards so they look random to an unsophisticated observer. No long runs of same color, no obvious patterns in numbers (people are bad random number generators, they think that random string is string without any patterns, not string without big patterns, 17 is the most random number, blah blah blah).

(It’s possible that the variation of it can be a good strategy even against more sophisticated agents, because if by a pure chance string of cards has low Kolmogorov complexity, agent is going to take this as evidence for Bright, and I don’t want him to believe in Bright)

BT_Uytya Dec 7, 2013, 7:05 PM
11 points
on: Rationality Quotes December 2013

No one makes the wrong decisions for reasons they think are wrong. The more clever the man, as the Nroni were fond of saying, the more apt he was to make a fool of himself. We all argue ourselves into our mistakes.

Scott R. Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior

BT_Uytya Dec 7, 2013, 7:04 PM
8 points
in reply to: BT_Uytya’s comment on: Rationality Quotes December 2013
Another good fictional epigraph from the same book:

Any fool can see the limits of seeing, but not even the wisest know the limits of knowing. Thus is ignorance rendered invisible, and are all Men made fools.

– Ajencis, The Third Analytic of Men

BT_Uytya Dec 7, 2013, 7:01 PM
20 points
on: Rationality Quotes December 2013

This was what made the fall of Iothiah so disastrous. <...> Strategically, the loss of Iothiah was little more than a nuisance.

Symbolically, however…

The crisis she faced was a crisis in confidence, nothing more, nothing less. The less her subjects believed in the Empire, the less some would sacrifice, the more others would resist. It was almost arithmetic. The balance was wobbling, and all the world watched to see which way the sand would spill. She had made a resolution to act as if she believed to spite all those who doubted her as much as anything else, and paradoxically, they had all started believing with her. It was a lesson Kellhus had drummed into her countless times and one she resolved never to forget again.

To know is to have power over the world; to believe is to have power over men.

Scott R. Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior

BT_Uytya Dec 7, 2013, 6:58 PM
7 points
on: Rationality Quotes December 2013

If you find yourself taken unawares by someone you thought you knew, recall that the character revealed is as much your own as otherwise. When it comes to Men and their myriad, mercenary natures, revelation always comes in twos.

– Managoras, Ode to the Long-Lived Fool

Scott R. Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior

BT_Uytya Dec 7, 2013, 6:57 PM
1 point
on: Rationality Quotes December 2013
(potential spoilers removed, so if this dialogue doesn’t make sense, be assured that it makes sense in context)

“Just wait,” Zsoronga said. “Something auspicious will happen. Some twist will keep you here, where you can discharge your fate! Wait and see.”

“And what if they know?” Sorweel finally asked, voicing the one alternative they had passed over in silence.

“They don’t know.”

“But wh-”

“They don’t know.”

Zsoronga, Sorweel was beginning to realize, possessed the enviable ability to yoke his conviction to his need—to believe, absolutely, whatever his heart required. For Sorweel, belief and want always seemed like ropes too short to bind together, forcing him to play the knot as a result.

Scott R. Bakker, The White-Luck Warrior

BT_Uytya Nov 22, 2013, 3:28 PM
0 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: The dangers of zero and one

apart from theories where what’s wrong is your brain

(just amused by the possibility)

Also, it is possible that Peano arithmetic isn’t consistent; if so, either the very concept of ‘primality’ doesn’t make any sense, or it can just mess up the primality tests which were used in creation of (b) and (c), and the connection between “1159 if prime” and “this program outputs True and halts” as well.

Of course, it screws up any application of Cox’s theorem here, even worse than in delusion case.

BT_Uytya Aug 28, 2013, 9:32 PM
6 points
on: Random LW-parodying Statement Generator

In the new version of Newcomb’s problem, you have to choose between a box containing the map and a box containing warm fuzzies.

Self-delusion or accurate beliefs? We all can empathize with this choice.

BT_Uytya Aug 9, 2013, 11:26 PM
0 points
in reply to: jasonsaied’s comment on: Rationality Quotes August 2013
Actually, prophesy was about the ship; the spaceship crashed into Aragena, their planet, and then curious inhabitants looked inside (and found nothing dangerous). After that came the messenger of their King and told them that they all are doomed.

And they indeed were.

BT_Uytya Aug 9, 2013, 11:09 PM
0 points
in reply to: RolfAndreassen’s comment on: Rationality Quotes August 2013
Probably I’m incredible late with that, but:

a) thank you, embarrassing mistake fixed

b) I was fascinated with the “volatile atoms” bit. It feels like a line taken from a poem on reductionism. I’m not sure that I managed to convey it because I’m not so much versed in English fiction and poetry.

Also, I liked their safety measures, it’s a pity they hadn’t worked in the end.