denis_bider

Karma: 92

denis_bider 27 Apr 2009 16:46 UTC
1 point
on: Lawrence Watt-Evans’s Fiction
Well. I finally got around to reading The Unwilling Warlord, and I must say that, despite the world of Ethshar being mildly interesting, the book is disappointment. It builds up nice and well in the first ²⁄₃ of the book, but in the last ¹⁄₃, when you expect it to unfold and flourish in some interesting, surprising, revealing manner, Watt-Evans instead decides to pursue the lamest, boringest plot possible, all the while insulting the reader’s intelligence.

For the last ¹⁄₃ of the book, Watt-Evans attempts to make the eventual reasons for Vond’s undoing a “mystery”. He suggests that Sterren knows the answer, but the reader is not told what it is. When the end finally arrives, it is a disapointing anti-climax as Watt-Evans chooses the most non-eventful possible outcome that has been blatantly obvious all the while.

He employs an exceedingly lame plot device where Vond is so stupid he just doesn’t see it coming. The author neither takes the opportunity to explain what the Calling is, nor does he have Sterren take Vond down in a more interesting manner, such as having Sterren go to the Towers of Lumeth and turning them off, or something.

Yes, the writing has some positive traits such as Eliezer described, but overall it’s much lamer and more amateurish than I expected. Given the recommendation, I would have expected this to be much better fiction than it turns out it is.

denis_bider 12 Feb 2009 19:54 UTC
6 points
on: Epilogue: Atonement (8/8)
Neh. Eliezer, I’m kind of disappointed by how you write the tragic ending (“saving” humans) as if it’s the happy one, and the happy ending (civilization melting pot) as if it’s the tragic one. I’m not sure what to make of that.

Do you really, actually believe that, in this fictional scenario, the human race is better off sacrificing a part of itself in order to avoid blending with the super-happies?

It just blows my mind that you can write an intriguing story like this, and yet draw that kind of conclusion.

denis_bider 31 Jan 2009 20:50 UTC
0 points
on: Three Worlds Collide (0/8)
Excellent. I was reluctant to start reading at first, but when I did, I found it entertaining. This should be a TV series. :)

denis_bider 22 Dec 2008 1:14 UTC
0 points
on: Complex Novelty
Eliezer: This post is an example of how all your goals and everything you’re doing is affected by your existing preferences and biases.

For some reason, you see Peer’s existence as described by Greg Egan as horrible. You propose an insight-driven alternative, but this seems no more convincing to me than Peer’s leg carving. I think Peer’s existence is totally acceptable, and might even be delightful. If Peer wires himself to get ultimate satisfaction from leg carving, then by definition, he is getting ultimate satisfaction from leg carving. There’s nothing wrong with that.

More importantly—no alternative you might propose is more meaningful!

There’s also nothing wrong with being a blob lying down on a pillow having a permanent fantastic orgasm.

The one argument I do have against these preoccupations is that they provide no progress towards avoiding threats to one’s existence. In this respect, the most sensible preoccupation to wire yourself for would be something that involves preserving life, and other creatures’ lives as well, if you care for that as the designer.

Satisfying that, the options are open. What’s really wrong with leg carving?

denis_bider 26 Nov 2008 14:24 UTC
−4 points
on: Engelbart: Insufficiently Recursive
Eliezer: all these posts seem to take an awful lot of your time as well as your readers’, and they seem to be providing diminishing utility. It seems to me that talking at great length about what the AI might look like, instead of working on the AI, just postpones the eventual arrival of the AI. I think you already understand what design criteria are important, and a part of your audience understands as well. It is not at all apparent that spending your time to change the minds of others (about friendliness etc) is a good investment or that it has any impact on when and whether they will change their minds.

I think your time would be better spent actually working, or writing about, the actual details of the problems that need to be solved. Alternately, instead of adding to the already enormous cumulative volume of your posts, perhaps you might try writing something clearer and shorter.

But just piling more on top of what’s already been written doesn’t seem like it will have an influence.

denis_bider 6 Sep 2008 20:18 UTC
3 points
on: Rationality Quotes 15
I stumbled over the same quote. What “gift”? From whom? What “responsibility”? And just how is being “lucky” at odds with being “superior”?

To see the nonsense, let me paraphrase:

“Because giftedness is not to be talked about, no one tells human children explicitly, forcefully and repeatedly that their intellectual talent is a gift. That they are not superior animals, but lucky ones. That the gift brings with it obligations to other animals on Earth to be worthy of it.”

The few people who honestly believe that are called a lunatic fringe. And yet, it is the same statement as Murray’s, merely in a wider context.

denis_bider 4 Sep 2008 18:58 UTC
0 points
on: The Truly Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma
What Kevin Dick said.

The benefit to each player from mutual cooperation in a majority of the rounds is much more than the benefit from mutual defection in all rounds. Therefore it makes sense for both players to invest at the beginning, and cooperate, in order to establish each other’s trustworthiness.

Tit-for-tat seems like it might be a good strategy in the very early rounds, but as the game goes on, the best reaction to defection might become two defections in response, and in the last rounds, when the other party defects, the best response might be all defections until the end.

denis_bider 3 Sep 2008 22:33 UTC
4 points
on: The True Prisoner’s Dilemma
An excellent way to pose the problem.

Obviously, if you know that the other party cares nothing about your outcome, then you know that they’re more likely to defect.

And if you know that the other party knows that you care nothing about their outcome, then it’s even more likely that they’ll defect.

Since the way you posed the problem precludes an iteration of this dilemma, it follows that we must defect.

denis_bider 2 Sep 2008 18:02 UTC
0 points
on: Dreams of Friendliness
Eliezer: what I proposed is not a superintelligence, it’s a tool. Intelligence is composed of multiple factors, and what I’m proposing is stripping away the active, dynamic, live factor—the factor that has any motivations at all—and leaving just the computational part; that is, leaving the part which can navigate vast networks of data and help the user make sense of them and come to conclusions that he would not be able to on his own. Effectively, what I’m proposing is an intelligence tool that can be used as a supplement by the brains of its users.

How is that different from Google, or data mining? It isn’t. It’s conceptually the same thing, just with better algorithms. Algorithms don’t care how they’re used.

This bit of technology is something that will have to be developed to put together the first iteration of an AI anyway. By definition, this “making sense of things” technology needs to be strong enough that it allows a user to improve the technology itself; that is what an iterative, self-improving AI would be doing. So why let the AI self-improve itself, which more likely than not will run amok, despite the designers’ efforts and best intentions? Why not use the same technology that the AI would use to improve itself, to improve _your_self? Indeed, it seems ridiculous not to do so.

To build an AI, you need all the same skills that you would need to improve yourself. So why create an external entity, when you can be that entity?

denis_bider 2 Sep 2008 17:44 UTC
13 points
on: Rationality Quotes 13
Looks like the soldier quote is gonna be big in comments. I think it’s out of place too, and as opposed to most other quotes that Eliezer comes up with, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. In the same way as: “It is the scalpel, not the surgeon, or the nurse, that fixed your wounds!”

Soldiers are tools wielded by the structure in power, and it is the structure in power that determines whether the soliders are going to protect your rights and take them away.

Perhaps, “The One” might argue, it is a different kind of person who becomes a soldier in an army that “protects freedom” rather than an army that oppresses its countrymen. There are probably more such idealists among the soldiers in the US army, than among troops commanded by the Burmese generals.

Even so, though, the idealist soldier does what he’s commanded to do, and whether that which he does actually protects freedom or not, is largely determined by the structure of power, not the idealist soldier. He remains a tool, a hammer wielded by someone else’s will.

denis_bider 2 Sep 2008 0:48 UTC
0 points
on: Dreams of Friendliness
Kaj makes the efficiency argument in favor of full-fledged AI, but what good is efficiency when you have fully surrendered your power?

What good is being the president of a corporation any more, when you’ve just pressed a button that makes a full-fledged AI run it?

Forget any leadership role in a situation where an AI comes to life. Except in the case that it is completely uninterested in us and manages to depart into outer space without totally destroying us in the process.

denis_bider 2 Sep 2008 0:39 UTC
4 points
on: Dreams of Friendliness
Why build an AI at all?

That is, why build a self-optimizing process?

Why not build a process that accumulates data and helps us find relationships and answers that we would not have found ourselves? And if we want to use that same process to improve it, why not let us do that ourselves?

Why be locked out of the optimization loop, and then inevitably become subjects of a God, when we can make ourselves a critical component in that loop, and thus ‘be’ gods?

I find it perplexing why anyone would ever want to build an automatic self-optimizing AI and switch it to “on”. No matter how well you planned things out, not matter how sure you are of yourself, by turning the thing on, you are basically relinquishing control over your future to… whatever genie it is that pops out.

Why would anyone want to do that?

denis_bider 6 Jul 2008 21:09 UTC
0 points
on: Is Morality Given?
My earlier comment is not to imply that I think “maximization of human happiness” is the most preferred goal.

An easily obvious one, yes. But faulty; “human” is a severely underspecified term.

In fact, I think that putting in place a One True Global Goal would require ultimate knowledge about the nature of being, to which we do not have access currently.

Possibly, the best we can do is come up with plausible global goal that suits us for medium run, while we try to find out more.

That is, after all, what we have always done as human beings.

denis_bider 6 Jul 2008 20:58 UTC
1 point
on: Is Morality Given?
Eliezer: You have perhaps already considered this, but I think it would be helpful to learn some lessons from E-Prime when discussing this topic. E-Prime is a subset of English that bans most varieties of the verb “to be”.

I find sentences like “murder is wrong” particularly underspecified and confusing. Just what, exactly, is meant by “is”, and “wrong”? It seems like agreeing on a definition for “murder” is the easy part.

It seems the ultimate confusion here is that we are talking about instrumental values (should I open the car door?) before agreeing on terminal values (am I going to the store?).

If we could agree on some well-defined goal, e.g. maximization of human happiness, we could much more easily theorize on whether a particular case of murder would benefit or harm that goal.

It is, however, much harder to talk about murders in general, and infeasible to discuss this unless we have agreed on a terminal value to work for.

denis_bider 6 Jul 2008 20:18 UTC
1 point
on: Is Morality Preference?
frelkins: Should I apologize, then, for not yet having developed sufficient wit to provide pleasure with style to those readers who are not pleased by the thought?

Cynicism is warranted to the extent that it leads to a realistic assessment and a predictive model of the world.

Cynicism is exaggerated when it produces an unrealistic, usually too pessimistic, model of the world.

But to the extent that cynicism is a negative evaluation of “what is”, I am not being a cynic in this topic.

I am not saying, bitterly, how sad it is that most people are really motivated by their selfishness, and how sad the world is because of this, etc.

What I am saying is that selfishness is okay. That recognizing your selfishness is the healthiest state. I am saying not that people who are selfish are corrupting the world. I am saying that people who are self-righteous are.

I understand people who want to reshape the world because they want it to be different, and are honest about this selfish preference and endeavor. I respect that.

What I don’t respect is people who are self-righteous in thinking that they know how to reshape the world to make other people happy, and do not see how self-anchored their motivation is. They are trying to do the same thing as those people who want to reshape the world selfishly. But the self-righteous ones, they sell what they are doing as being “higher on a moral ladder”, because, obviously, they know what is good for everyone.

I think that sort of behavior is just pompous, arrogant, and offensive.

Be honest. Do things because of you. Don’t do things because of others. Then, we can all come together and agree sensibly on how to act as to not step on each other’s toes.

But don’t be running around “healing” the world, pretending like you’re doing it a favor.

denis_bider 6 Jul 2008 19:45 UTC
1 point
on: Is Morality Preference?
Phillip Huggan—let me just say that I think you are an arrogant creature that does much less good to the world than he thinks. The morality you so highly praise only appears to provide you with a reason to smugly think of yourself as “higher developed” than others. Its benefit to you, and its selfish motivation, is plainly clear.

denis_bider 6 Jul 2008 6:15 UTC
2 points
on: Is Morality Preference?
Phillip Huggan: “Denis, are you claiming there is no way to commit acts that make others happy?”

Why the obsession with making other people happy?

Phillip Huggan: “Or are you claiming such an act is always out of self-interest?”

Such acts are. Stuff just is. Real reasons are often unknowable; and if known, would be trivial, technical, mundane.

In general, I wouldn’t say self-interest. It is not in your self interest to cut off your penis and eat it, for example. But some people desire it and act on it.

Desire. Not necessarily logical. Does not necessarily make sense. But drives people’s actions.

Reasons for desire? Unknowable.

And if known?

Trivial. Technical. Mundane.

Phillip Huggan: “The former position is absurd, the latter runs into the problem that people who jump on grenades, die.”

I can write a program that will erase itself.

Doesn’t mean that there’s an overarching morality of what programs should and should not do.

People who jump on grenades do so due to an impulse. That impulse comes from cached emotions and thoughts. You prime yourself that it’s romantic to jump on a grenade, you jump on a grenade. Poof.

Stuff is. Fitting stuff that happens into a moral framework? A hopeless endeavor for misguided individuals seeking to fulfil the romantic notion that things should make sense.

Phillip Huggan: “A middle class western individual, all else equal, is morally better by donating conspicious consumption income to charity, than by exercising the Libertarian market behaviour of buying luxury goods.”

Give me a break. You gonna contribute to a charity to take care of all the squid in the ocean? The only justification not to is if you invent an excuse why they are not worth caring about. And if not the squid, how about gorillas, then? Baboons, and chimpanzees?

If we’re going to intervene because a child in Africa is dying of malaria or hunger—both thoroughly natural causes of death—then should we not also intervene when a lion kills an antelope, or a tribe of chimpanzees is slaughtered by their neighbors?

You have to draw a line somewhere, or else your efforts are hopeless. Most people draw the line at homo sapiens. I say that line is arbitrary. I draw it where it makes sense. With people in my environment.

denis_bider 6 Jul 2008 1:49 UTC
0 points
on: Is Morality Preference?
Thanks for the link to The People’s Romance!

denis_bider 5 Jul 2008 19:24 UTC
4 points
on: Is Morality Preference?
Disagreeing with Mr. Huggan, I’d say Obert is the one without a clue.

Obert seems to be trying to find some external justification for his wants, as if it’s not sufficient that they are his wants; or as if his wants depend on there being an external justification, and his mental world would collapse if he were to acknowledge that there isn’t an external justification.

I would compare morality to patriotism in the sense of the Onion article that Robin Hanson recently linked to. Much like patriotism, morality is something adopted by people who like to believe in Great Guiding Ideas. Their intellect drives them to recognize that the idea of a god is ridiculous, but the religious need remains, so they try to replace it with a principle. A self-generated principle which they try to think is independent and universal and not self-generated at all. They create their own illusion as a means of providing purpose for their existence.

denis_bider 30 Jun 2008 7:20 UTC
0 points
on: What Would You Do Without Morality?
Unknown: “For all those who have said that morality makes no difference to them, I have another question: if you had the ring of Gyges (a ring of invisibility) would that make any difference to your behavior?”

What sort of stupid question is this? :-) But of course! If I gave you a billion dollars, would it make any difference to your behavior? :-)