I realize this is supposed to be satire, but I am not convinced that, taken at face value, this poem actually constitutes bad advice. If you have the kind of personality that would allow you to implement these instructions, chances are good that—in our modern society, at least—you’ll live a happier life; though the world may be poorer for it.
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I think it’s worth noting that, yes, if you want your database of names/addresses/times/etc. to be fully robust, you need to essentially represent these items as unconstrained strings of arbitrary length (including zero).
However, in practice, most likely you’re not building a fully robust database. For example, you are not solving the problem of, “how can I fully represent all of the marvelous variety of human names and addresses ?”, but rather, “how can I maximize the changes that the packages my company is shipping to customers will actually be shipped to the correct customer ?”.
The second problem is much more heavily constrained, because your database no longer holds arbitrary pieces of information; but rather, instructions to someone (or something) at the package shipping company. All you need to do is implement just enough complexity to make sure you can communicate to that agent. It is highly unlikely that the agent will accept arbitrary strings, because he needs to turn around and convert the strings to instructions for his fleet of delivery truck drivers, and—not being omniscient—he can’t do that if the address says, “That one old guy who lives in the village over by the river”.
This article appears to encompass most of my objections:
http://thebulletin.org/artificial-intelligence-really-existential-threat-humanity8577
I do disagree with some of the things Geist says in there, but of course he’s a professional AI researcher and I’m, well, me, so...
See my response to Caspar42, below. I’ll write up my thoughts and post them, this way I have something to link to every time this issue comes up...
No, and that’s a good point, I should really make one. I will try to post a discussion post about it, once I get more time.
My own set of objections to AI risk does not include any of these (except possibly #7); but it’s possible that they are unusual and therefore do not qualify as “top 10”. Still, FWIW, I remain unconvinced that AI risk is something we should be spending any amount of resources on.
Bending is allowed; see above.
Folding is allowed, yes.
Parts can have different shapes (if you want), but must have the same area.
You cannot use compasses, but you can use an unmarked straightedge if you want to make precise creases, or to avoid ripping the paper in an untidy fashion. You are not allowed to mark the straightedge, of course.
If the procedure were carried out with infinite precision, then it would indeed produce exact fifths.
In keeping with the “puzzle” theme:
You are given a rectangular piece of paper (such as the placemat at a fast-food restaurant). Without using any measuring tools (such as a ruler, a tape measure, some clever length-measuring app on your smartphone, etc.), divide the paper into five equal parts.
...but note that astrophysicists admire the night sky at least as much as lay folks, despite being able to describe in some detail how the stars shine and galaxies form. So “reasonable” doesn’t mean “plain”.
Quite the opposite, since the astrophysicists can enjoy the night sky on many more levels than someone who believes that stars are just little holes in the celestial dome, or something. Some of these things we call “stars” are suns (much like our own Sol), but others are galaxies or globular clusters. What sounds more grand and wonderful: “a tiny little light in the sky”, or “a gravitationally bound system consisting of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas and dust, and dark matter” ?
I like the taste of some alcoholic beverages; but, for some weird reason, being drunk makes me feel quite dizzy—and that’s it. There are no positive effects: no social disinhibition (as far as I can tell, anyway), no warm fuzzy feelings, just dizziness. For this reason, I tend to drink rarely, and little.
Edit: I love olives, FWIW.
I was in this exact situation, and I chose to buy some headphones. If I analyze my decision-making process, I can come up with two reasons:
1). My own personal cost of buying and wearing headphones was much lower than the cost of having pissed-off neighbours who hate me. Obviously, YMMV.
2). My neighbours were polite, and even somewhat deferential, in their request (for me to stop playing loud music). They did not threaten me with coercion, despite the fact that they had plenty of coercion at their disposal—they could’ve complained to the building manager, filed a noise complaint with the cops, etc. Instead, they chose to ask me for a favor, thus becoming indebted to me in some small way. In other words, they could’ve easily defected, but they chose to click that “Cooperate” button, and I responded in kind.
I think that these reasons, when combined, constitute what counts as “not being a jerk” in general society: a reciprocal agreement to make small sacrifices in exchange for future cooperation.
One way is to simulate a perfect computational agent, assume perfect information, and see what kind of models it would construct.
Right, but I meant, in practice.
that is, learning from observations.
Observations of what ? Since you do not have access to infinite computation or perfect observations in practice, you end up observing the outputs of models, as suggested in the original post.
For example, how about “relying on the accumulated knowledge of others”?
What is it that makes their accumulated knowledge worthy of being relied upon ?
We don’t want to be confused with the uncritically thinking masses—the apologists of homoeopathy or astrology justifying their views by “yeah, I don’t know how it works either, but it’s useful!”;
I think this statement underscores the problem with rejecting the correspondence theory of truth. Yes, one can say “homeopathy works”, but what does that mean ? How do you evaluate whether any given model is useful of not ? If you reject the notion of an external reality that is accessible to us in at least some way, then you cannot really measure the performance of your models against any kind of a common standard. All you’ve got left are your internal thoughts and feelings, and, as it turns out, certain goals (such as “eradicate polio” or “talk to people very far away”) cannot be achieved based on your feelings alone.
Not to mention, the leading cause of propeller-induced face laceration syndrome...
Curses ! I am undone !
This may be a stupid question, but is that mosquito laser drone thing really the best way to solve the problem of… what problem is it even solving ? “Too many mosquitoes” ? “Malaria” ?
I don’t think this is a good data point, since the makeup they wear is explicitly designed to counteract visual artifacts (glare, unnatural-seeming skin tones, etc.) that are introduced by the camera. Thus, the makeup does not necessarily have a positive effect on people who see the movie stars in person.
Note: will still be stuck to Harry’s face, so no bombs or suchlike.
Why not ? I mean, yeah, obviously Harry would want to survive; but if there was some way to take out Voldemort while also taking out himself (and possibly Hermione), and there was nothing better that Harry could come up with in 60 seconds; then the logical course of action would be to go ahead and do that.
Right, I was thinking in the context of our Western society. But in the third world, as you said, the opposite is true: an address like “123 Main St., Sometown Somecountry” simply does not work. So it is still not the case that you need to implement a fully general address database that covers all possible cases; you only need to cover the cases that you personally care about.