I’m curious about the thought process that led to this being asked in the “stupid questions” thread rather than the “very advanced theoretical speculation of future technology” thread. =P
As a more serious answer: Anything that would effectively give us a means to alter mass and/or the effects of gravity in some way (if there turns out to be a difference) would help a lot.
As ZankerH said, it leaves out the “required to make” part. Also, gjm’s particular formulation of 2′ makes a statement about comparisons between two given decisions, not a statement about the entire search space of possible decisions.
Thanks for making it way clearer than I did. And yes, I forgot the 1:1 edge case.
As for modifying, a minor edit or bug similar to this is always 60% formulation and specification, 10% code modification, and 30% testing and making sure you’re not breaking half the project. It sounds like you’ve already done around 75% of the work.
(deployment not included in above pseudo-figures, since the proportional deployment hurdles varies enormously by setup, environment, etc.)
This sounds more like a conflation between the “availability” of S&T versus the “presence” of S&T.
Technology being in the public domain does not mean the remote-savannah nomad knows how to use wikipedia, has been trained in the habit of looking for more efficient production methods, is being incentivized by markets or other factors to raising his productivity, or has at his disposal an internet-connected, modern computer, another business nearby that also optimizes production of one of his raw materials / business requirements, and all the tools and practical manuals and human resources and expertise to use them.
Long story short, there’s a huge difference between “Someone invented these automated farming tools and techniques, and I know they exist” and “I have the practical ability to obtain an automated farming vehicle, construct or obtain a facility complete with tools and materials for adjustment so I can raise livestock, contacts who also have resources like trucks (who in turn have contacts with means to sell them fuel), and contacts who can transform and distribute my products.”
The former is what you have when something is “public domain” and you take the time to propagate all the information about it. The latter, and all the infrastructure and step-by-step work required to get there, is what you need before the economic growth kicks in.
I believe the latter was being referred to by “advances in science and technology”.
Here’s a data point, do your own bayes accordingly:
I’ve frequently been able to solve mind or brain-related problems by doing actions conceptually similar to, or sometimes literally by, praying to God. I’m not a believer in any way, but the simple attempt to convince myself that I was communicating with some higher outside entity that had the power to solve my problem did solve my problem.
Here’s the other evidence I have at my disposal, all of which I am confident above 90%:
My subconscious knows and understands everything—everything—that I think consciously, or even feel in passing.
My subconscious is much more powerful than my conscious with regards to such issues, with “power” corresponding here to having more input channels and more output channels for the same problem-solving ability.
My subconscious probably can figure out technical neurological or psychological solutions for things that aren’t even in my (conscious) power to solve (either because I don’t have the input to identify the properties of the problem, or to be aware of the exact nature of the problem, or don’t have the output to affect the specific things in my brain / thoughts that need to be affected to undo the pattern causing the problem).
So by those assumptions, and a few other assumptions about base rates, it seems normal for me to conclude that my subconscious fixes problems for me when I “pray”, as opposed to some deitic entity. But since you may not share my confidence in the above crucial beliefs, or my assumptions about base rates, the data point of my problems being solved by “prayer” might lead you to a different conclusion.
It’s pretty much already provided, there’s just that minor inconvenience of algebra between you and the article’s vote counts, which IMO is a good thing.
As of 10⁄15, the article sits at −13, 24% positive (hover mouse over the karma score to see %).
That’s 24x-76x = −13 → 4x = 1:
6 upvotes, 19 downvotes, net −13.
And no, the consequences of talking about politics are not that grave. I mean you seem to blog about politics all the time and you have not yet imploded.
The consequences of talking about politics have historically made empire-sweeping changes about religion, slavery, gender, warfare, welfare, culture, honor, social stigma, social divide, economics, prosperity, technology, and even politics itself!
Talking about politics has also started wars and made people start involving themselves in the slave trade and other such unhappy things.
And because the Internet Law calls for it: Talking about politics is what caused Hitler to become propped up by other people to the authority he had and what caused other people to listen to him and do those things I don’t need to mention.
Every political fanatic you’ve ever heard of, who showed up in a newspaper because he burned down a preschool in the name of [insert ideology], got to the point of doing that because of people talking about politics (or sufficiently politics-like topics).
I think the consequences are grave enough to warrant Yvain’s level of concern.
It’s ironic in the same way that adding the text “DEFACING STOP SIGNS” under the main text of a stop sign is ironic.
The method used is the very one which is being condemned / warned against, and the fact that it works better than other methods (in both examples) only adds to the irony, as one should assume that something that preaches not doing exactly what it’s doing would invalidate itself, rather than its actual effect of producing greater results due to a quirk of humans.
Yes, of course. These particular traits you have deigned to consider for your worthy evaluation do seem, to me as well, perfectly sane.
I think you forgot to activate your Real World Logic coprocessor before replying, and I’m being sarcastic and offensive in this response.
In more serious words, these particular selected characteristics do not comprise the entirety of “the system” aforementioned. I’ve said that the system is /unlikely/ to be sane, as I do not have complete information on the entire logic and processes in it. I also think we’re working off of different definitions of “sane”—here, IIRC, I was using a technical version that could be better expressed as “close to perfectly rational, in the same way perfect logicians can be in theoretical formal logic puzzles”.
Yes, as long as we’re using the definition E.Y. shared/mentioned in his 2008 paper.
By charitable reading, it’s not what ze’s saying.
From the standpoint of a person making discoveries, it is known from many observations that Bob the Particle will always Wag. Thus, “Bob Wags” is stated as a Natural Law, and assumed true in all calculations, and said with force of conviction, and if some math implies that Bob didn’t Wag, the first thing to look for is errors in the math.
However, still from the same standpoint, if some day we discover in some experiment that Bob didn’t Wag, and despite looking and looking they can’t find any errors in the math (or the experiment, etc.), then they have to conclude that maybe “Bob Wags” is not fully true. Maybe then they’ll discover that in this experiment, it just so happens that Julie the Particle was Hopping. Thus, our hypothetical discoverer rewrites the “law” as: “Bob Wags unless Julie Hops”
Maybe, in some “ultimate” computation of the universe, the “True” rule is that “Bob Wags unless someone else Leers, and no one Leers when Julie Hops”. How do we know? How will we know when we’ve discovered the “true” rules? Right now, we don’t know. As far as we know, we’ll never know any “true” rules.
But it all boils down to: The universe has been following one set of (unknown) rules since the end of time and forever ’till the end of time (ha! there’s probably no such thing as “time” in those rules, mind you!), and maybe those rules are such that Bob will Wink when we make John Laugh, and then we’ll invent turbines and build computers and discuss the nature of natural laws on internet forums. And maybe in our “natural laws” it’s impossible for Bob to Wink, and we think turbines work because we make Julie Hop and have Cody Scribble when Bob doesn’t Wag to stop him. And some day, we’ll stumble on some case where Cody Scribbles, Bob doesn’t Wag, but Bob doesn’t Wink either, and we’ll figure out that, oh no!, the natural laws changed and now turbines function on Bob Winks instead of Cody Scribbles, and we have to rethink everything!
The universe doesn’t care. Bob was Winking all along, and we just assumed it was the Cody Scribbles because we didn’t know about Annie. And never there was a case where Bob Wagged and Winked at the same time, or where Bob failed to Wag when Julie Hopped. We just thought the wrong things.
And if in the future we’ll discover other such cases, it’s only because the universe has been doing those things all along, but we just don’t see them yet.
And it’s even possible that in the future Bob will marry Julie and then never again Wink… but all that means is that the rules were in fact “Bob Winks when Annie Nods unless Bob is Married to Julie”, rather than “Bob Winks when Annie Nods”, and yet our scientists will cry “The laws of physics have changed!” while everyone else panics about our precious turbines no longer working all of a sudden.
I don’t see this contradiction. In a timeless decision theory, the diagram and parameters are not the same when X is in control of resource A (at “time” T) and when X is not in control of resource A (at time T+1).
The “timeless” of the decision theory doesn’t mean that the decision theory ignores the effects of time and past decisions. Rather, it refers to a more technical (and definitely more confusing) abstraction about predictions and kind of subtly hints at a reference to the (also technical) concept of symmetry in physics.
Mainly, the point is to deflect naive reasoning in problems involving predictions or similar “time-defying” situations. The classic example is newcomblike problems, specifically Newcomb’s Problem. In these situations, acting as if your current decision were a partial cause of the past prediction, and thus of whether or not Omega/The Predictor put a reward in a box, leads to better subjective chances of finding a reward in said box. The “timeless” aspect here is that a phenomenon (the decision you make) is almost looks like it’s a cause of another (the prediction of your decision) that happened “in the past”.
In fact, however, they have a common prior cause: the state of the universe and, particularly, of the brain / processor / information of the entity making the decision, prior to the prediction. Treating it as, and calling it, “timeless” helps avoid issues where this will turn into a debate about free will and determinism.
In newcomblike problems, an event B happenes where Omega predicts whether A1 or A2 will happen, based on whether C1 or C2 is true (two possible states of the brain of the player, or outcomes of a simulation). Then, either A1 or A2 happens, based on whether C1 or C2 is true, as predicted by Omega. Since the player doesn’t have the same means as Omega to know C or B, he must decide as if A caused C which caused B, which could be roughly described as a decision causing the result of a prediction of this decision in the past.
So, back to the timeless VS sunk costs “contradiction”: In a sunk costs situation, there is no Omega, there is no C, there is no prediction (B). At the moment of decision, the state of the game in abstract is something more like: “Decision A caused Resource B to go from 5 to 3, 1B can be paid to obtain 2 utilons by making decision C1, 2B can be paid to obtain 5 utilons by making decision C2″. There’s no predictions or fancy delusions of affecting events that caused the current state. A caused B(5->3) caused (NOW) caused C. C has no causal effect on (NOW), which has no causal effect on B, which has no causal effect on A. No amount of removing the timestamps and pretending that your future decision will change how it was predicted is going to change the (NOW) state.
I could go on at length and depth, but let’s see how much of this makes sense first (i.e. that you understand and/or that I mis-explained).
First, the most reliable solution is to save the page manually, yourself, to a local hard drive of your preference, provided you keep good file hygiene and backups and so on. If there are multiple-page articles, you have to save each page of the article, though. You also can run into some issues with the more “interactive” websites and articles, particularly if they use flash or java apps (which means the html you save will only contain a link to some flash or java file elsewhere on their server, which means you’re back to square one). You can also get all kinds of gibberish from broken links anyway if the pictures suffer link rot or the page refers to an external style sheet or any other of some large number of possible other problems.
I think the only way to avoid this in an efficient, one-click manner is to use a pre-processor that detects the relevant content and saves only that for you. I use Readability to do this for slightly different goals and purposes.
Pocket is a more popular choice usually, but I’ve had many negative experiences with it not syncing to the android app, not working well with certain browsers, not processing articles properly, not processing the whole article, or sometimes not processing articles at all and keeping only the link (which helps you diddly-squat since that’s the whole problem you’re having).
Fair warning: Readability does a complete pre-processing of the article for, well, readability. It will remove ads, sidebars, top-bars, often comments to articles, and once in a while it’ll remove too much. It usually successfully detects multiple-page articles, but not always.
(available on Hulu if you’re into two minutes of ads every ten minutes)
Should read:
(available on Hulu for US residents with a local ISP contract if you’re into two minutes of ads every ten minutes, and for devious tricksters with access to a reliable US proxy who are too impatient to just torrent things—since both would be considered just as illegal by a completely impartial US court of law)
It’ll be Valve Soon™ before everyone understands that one...
I’ve retracted my (epistemically unhealthy) previous responses about great physics discoveries. I’d say “oops” as per the LW tradition, but when I look back on what I wrote all I see is a rather shameful display of cognitive dissonance. There’s no mere “oops” there, but plain old full-blown contrarian, academic-hipster biases. Sorry.
An extra note:
Crossing an inferential gap is harder in a short post, unless you are an amazing writer.
In the quote, the qualification is unnecessary. Ceteris paribus, it’s usually harder in a short post, regardless of general writing skill.
My best take on the thing is that, historically, most great physics discoveries were made by generalist, wide-branching natural philosophers. Granted, “natural philosophy” is arguably the direct ancestor of physics from which spawned the bastards of “chemistry” and “biology”, but even regardless, the key point is that they were generalists and that, if we were going to solve the current problem simply by throwing more specialized physicists and gamma ray guns at it, this is not the evidence I’d expect to see.
Given historical base rates of generalists vs specialists in physics, and the ratio of Great Discoveries made by the former rather than the latter, it feels as if generalists have a net advantage in “consolidating” recent research into a Great Discovery.
I do have to agree, though, that all of them came from physicists, if not necessarily formally trained, although in most cases they were. Good knowledge of physics is necessary, that I won’t argue. But what I’ll point out is that I’ve personally met many more game developers and programmers with a much better grasp of (basic) physics (i.e. first volume of Feynman’s Lectures) than college physics department members, on a purely absolute count. It doesn’t seem that far-fetched, to me, to assume there’s a comparable difference in base rates of people within and outside physics departments with a solid enough grasp of physics for the Next Great Discovery, whatever that threshold may be (and obviously, the lower the actual threshold, the more likely it is that it will come from outside Physics Departments).
On the other hand, my confidence that the ultimately correct and most useful Next Great Discovery (e.g. any method to control gravity) will not come from a physics department is above 50%.
Philosophy simply happens to be one of the more likely departments where it might come from, though still quite a ways behind “unaffiliated” and “engineering”.
I heard Ritalin has a solution. Couldn’t pay attention long enough to verify. ba-dum tish
On a serious note, isn’t the whole killing-the-Earth-for-our-children thing a rather interesting scenario? I’ve never seen it mentioned in my game theory-related reading, and I find that to be somewhat sad. I’m pretty sure a proper modeling of the game scenario would cover both climate change and eaten-by-red-giant.