derekz

Karma: 64

derekz 2 Jul 2009 11:01 UTC
2 points
in reply to: CronoDAS’s comment on: Open Thread: July 2009
Well, if we really wanted to other-optimize we’d try to change your outlook on life, but I’m sure you get a lot of such advice already.

One thing you could try is making websites to sell advertising and maybe amazon clickthroughs. You would have to learn some new skills and have a little bit of discipline (and have some ideas about what might be popular). You could always start with the games you are interested in.

There’s plenty of information out there about doing this. It will take a while to build up the income, and you may not be motivated enough to learn what you need to do to succeed.

derekz 29 Jun 2009 21:33 UTC
0 points
in reply to: pjeby’s comment on: Controlling your inner control circuits

“Useful” is negatively correlated with “Correct theory”… on a grand scale.

Sure, having a correct theory has some positive correlation with “useful”,

Which is it?

I think all the further you can go with this line of thought is to point out that lots of things are useful even if we don’t have a correct theory for how they work. We have other ways to guess that something might be useful and worth trying.

Having a correct theory is always nice, but I don’t see that our choice here is between having a correct theory or not having one.

derekz 27 Jun 2009 23:42 UTC
0 points
in reply to: pjeby’s comment on: Controlling your inner control circuits
Thank you for the detailed reply, I think I’ll read the book and revisit your take on it afterward.

derekz 27 Jun 2009 20:38 UTC
5 points
in reply to: timtyler’s comment on: Controlling your inner control circuits
I suppose for me it’s the sort of breathless enthusiastic presentation of the latest brainstorm as The Answer. Also I believe I am biased against ideas that proceed from an assumption that our minds are simple.

Still, in a rationalist forum, if one is to not be bothered by dismissing the content of material based on the form of its presentation, one must be pretty confident of the correlation. Since a few people who seem pretty smart overall think there might be something useful here, I’ll spend some time exploring it.

I am wondering about the proposed ease with which we can purposefully rewire control circuits. It is counterintuitive to me, given that “bad” ones (in me at least) do not appear to have popped up one afternoon but rather have been reinforced slowly over time.

If anybody does manage to achieve lasting results that seem like purposeful rewiring, I’m sure we’d all like to hear descriptions of your methods and experience.

derekz 25 Jun 2009 21:34 UTC
0 points
on: Coming Out
Not to be discouraging, but is that really the “logical” reasoning used at the time? They use the word “rationalization” for a reason. “I can always work toward my goals tomorrow instead” will always be true.

Hopefully you had fun dancing, nothing wrong with it at all, but it does seem odd to be so self-congratulatory about deciding to go out and party.

derekz 18 Jun 2009 13:22 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: Time to See If We Can Apply Anything We Have Learned
Yes, I’m afraid this post is kind of impenetrable, although cousin_it’s contribution helped. What is “RDS”?

Also, continually saying “People should...” do this and that and the other thing might be received better if you (meaning Michael, not Vladimir) start us off by doing a little of the desired analysis yourself.

derekz 17 Jun 2009 23:28 UTC
1 point
in reply to: SilasBarta’s comment on: Intelligence enhancement as existential risk mitigation
If you’re wondering whether I’m aware that I can figure out how to steal software licenses, I am.

ETA: I don’t condemn those who believe that intellectual property rights are bad for society or immoral. I don’t feel that way myself, though, so I act accordingly.

derekz 17 Jun 2009 4:18 UTC
1 point
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Intelligence enhancement as existential risk mitigation
No specific use cases or examples, just throwing out ideas. On the one hand it would be cool if the notes one jots down could self-organize somehow, even a little bit. Now OpenCog is supposed by its creators to be a fully general knowledge representation system so maybe it’s possible to use it as a sort of notation (like a probabilistic-logic version of mathematica? or maybe with a natural language front end of some kind? i think Ben Goertzel likes lojban so maybe an intermediate language like that)

Anyway, it’s not really a product spec just one possible sort of way someday to use machines to make people smarter.

(but that was before I realized we were talking about pills to make people stop liking their favorite tv shows, heh)

derekz 16 Jun 2009 15:02 UTC
1 point
in reply to: asciilifeform’s comment on: Intelligence enhancement as existential risk mitigation
Thanks for the motivation, by the way—I have toyed with the idea of getting Mathematica many times in the past but the $2500 price tag dissuaded me. Now I see that they have a $295 “Home Edition”, which is basically the full product for personal use. I bought it last night and started playing with it. Very nifty program.

derekz 16 Jun 2009 14:48 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Roko’s comment on: Intelligence enhancement as existential risk mitigation
If the point of this essay was to advocate pharmaceutical research, it might have been more effective to say so, it would have made the process of digesting it smoother. Given the other responses I think I am not alone in failing to guess that this was pretty much your sole target.

I don’t object to such research; a Bostrom article saying “it might not be impossible to have some effect” is weak support for a 10 IQ point avergage-gain pill, but that’s not a reason to avoid looking for one. Never know what you’ll find. I’m still not clear what the takeaway from this essay is for a lesswrong reader, though, unless it is to suggest that we should experiment ourselves with the available chemicals.

I’ve tried many of the ones that are obtainable. Despite its popularity, I found piracetam to have no noticeable effect even after taking it for extended periods of time. Modafinil is the most noticeable of all; it doesn’t seem to do much for me while I’m well-rested but does remove some of the sluggishness that can come with fatigue, although I think the results on an IQ test would be unnoticeable (maybe a 6 hour test, something to highlight endurance, could show a measurable difference). Picamilone has a subtler effect that I’m not sure how to characterize. I’m thinking of trying Xanthinol NIcotinate, but have not yet done so. Because of the small effects I do not use these things as a component of my general lifestyle, both for money reasons and the general uncertainty of long-term effects (also mild but sometimes unpleasant side effects). The effects of other more common drugs like caffeine and other stimulants are probably stronger than any of the “weird” stuff, and are widely known. Thinking beyond IQ, there are of course many drugs with cognitive effects that could be useful on an occasional-use basis, but that’s beyond the scope of this discussion.

derekz 16 Jun 2009 13:54 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: Roko’s comment on: Intelligence enhancement as existential risk mitigation
I’m still baffled about what you are getting at here. Apparently training people to think better is too hard for you, so I guess you want a pill or something. But there is no evidence that any pill can raise the average person’s IQ by 10 points (which kind of makes sense, if some simple chemical balance adjustment could have such a dramatic effect on fitness it would be quite surprising). Are you researching a sci fi novel or something? What good does wishing for magical pills do?

derekz 16 Jun 2009 13:30 UTC
2 points
in reply to: JamesCole’s comment on: The two meanings of mathematical terms
The issue people are having is, that you start out with “sort of” as your response to the statement that math is the study of precisely-defined terms. In doing so, you decide to throw away that insightful and useful perspective by confusing math with attempts to use math to describe phenomena.

The pitfalls of “mathematical modelling” are interesting and worth discussing, but it actually doesn’t help clarify the issue by jumbling it all together yourself, then trying to unjumble what was clear before you started.

derekz 15 Jun 2009 20:43 UTC
1 point
in reply to: asciilifeform’s comment on: Intelligence enhancement as existential risk mitigation
Cool stuff. Good luck with your research; if you come up with anything that works I’ll be in line to be a customer!

derekz 15 Jun 2009 20:38 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: Roko’s comment on: Intelligence enhancement as existential risk mitigation
Well if you are really only interested in raising the average person’s “IQ” by 10 points, it’s pretty hard to change human nature (so maybe Bostrom was on the right track).

Perhaps if somehow video games could embed some lesson about rationality in amongst the dumb slaughter, that could help a little—but people would probably just buy the games without the boring stuff instead.

derekz 15 Jun 2009 20:11 UTC
4 points
on: Intelligence enhancement as existential risk mitigation
I suppose the question is not whether it would be good, but rather how. Some quick brainstorming:
- I think people are “smarter” now then they were, say, pre-scientific-method. So there may be more trainable ways-of-thinking that we can learn (for example, “best practices” for qualitative Bayesianism)
- Software programs for individuals. Oh, maybe when you come across something you think is important while browsing the web you could highlight it and these things would be presented to you occasionally sort of like a “drill” to make sure you don’t forget it, or prime association formation at a later time. Or some kind of software aid to “stack unwinding” so you don’t go to sleep with 46 tabs open in your web browser. Or some short-term memory aid that works better than scratch paper. Or just biting the bullet and learning Mathematica to an expert level instead of complaining about its UI. Or taking a cutting-edge knowledge representation framework like Novamente’s PLN and trying to enter stuff into it as an “active” note-taking system.
- Collaboration tools—shared versions of the above ideas, or n-way telephone conversations, or freeform “chatroom”-style whiteboards or iteratively-refined debate thesis statements, or lesswrong.com
- Man-machine hybrids. Like having people act as the utility function or search-order-control of an automated search process.
Of course, neural prostheses may become possible at some point fairly soon. Specially-tailored virtual environments to aid in visualization (like of nanofactories), or other detailed and accurate scientific simulations allowing for quick exploration of ideas… “Do What I Mean” interfaces to CAD programs might be possible if we can get a handle on the functional properties of human cognitive machinery...

derekz 15 Jun 2009 15:19 UTC
3 points
on: The two meanings of mathematical terms
Or: “Physics is not Math”

derekz 12 Jun 2009 2:12 UTC
2 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Let’s reimplement EURISKO!
Um, so has Eurisko.

derekz 11 Jun 2009 21:52 UTC
4 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Let’s reimplement EURISKO!
Perhaps a writeup of what you have discovered, or at least surmise, about walking that road would encourage bright young minds to work on those puzzles instead of reimplementing Eurisko.

It’s not immediately clear that studying and playing with specific toy self-referential systems won’t lead to ideas that might apply to precise members of that class.

derekz 9 Jun 2009 13:02 UTC
0 points
in reply to: JamesCole’s comment on: Expected futility for humans
You could use that feedback from the results of prior actions. Like: http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Individual/Self/zahn.txt

derekz 4 Jun 2009 12:12 UTC
2 points
on: Post Your Utility Function
Interesting exercise. After trying for a while I completely failed; I ended up with terms that are completely vague (e.g. “comfort”), and actually didn’t even begin to scratch the surface of a real (hypothesized) utility function. If it exists it is either extremely complicated (too complicated to write down perhaps) or needs “scientific” breakthroughs to uncover its simple form.

The result was also laughably self-serving, more like “here’s roughly what I’d like the result to be” than an accurate depiction of what I do.

The real heresy is that this result does not particularly frighten or upset me. I probably can’t be a “rationalist” when my utility function doesn’t place much weight on understanding my utility function.

Can you write your own utility fuinction or adopt the one you think you should have? Is that sort of wholesale tampering wise?