Thanks. I read the whole debate, or as much of it as is there; I’ve prepared a short summary to post tomorrow if anyone is interested in knowing what really went on (“as according to Hul-Gil”, anyway) without having to hack their way through that thread-jungle themselves.
(Summary of summary: Loosemore really does know what he’s talking about—mostly—but he also appears somewhat dishonest, or at least extremely imprecise in his communication.)
That doesn’t help you if you need a car to take you someplace in the next hour or so, though. I think jed’s point is that sometimes it is useful for an AI to take action rather than merely provide information.
The answer is probably that you overestimate that community’s dedication to rationality because you share its biases.
That’s probably no small part of it. However, even if my opinion of the community is tinted rose, note that I refer specifically to observation. That is, I’ve sampled a good amount of posts and comments here on LessWrong, and I see people behaving rationally in arguments—appreciation of polite and lucid dissension, no insults or ad hominem attacks, etc. It’s harder to tell what’s going on with karma, but again, I’ve not seen any one particular individual harassed with negative karma merely for disagreeing.
The main post demonstrates an enormous conceit among the SI vanguard. Now, how is that rational? How does it fail to get extensive scrutiny in a community of rationalists?
Can you elaborate, please? I’m not sure what enormous conceit you refer to.
My take is that neither side in this argument distinguished itself. Loosemore called for an “outside adjudicator” to solve a scientific argument. What kind of obnoxious behavior is that, when one finds oneself losing an argument? Yudkowsky (rightfully pissed off) in turn, convicted Loosemore of a scientific error, tarred him with incompetence and dishonesty, and banned him. None of these “sins” deserved a ban
I think that’s an excellent analysis. I certainly feel like Yudkowsky overreacted, and as you say, in the circumstances no wonder it still chafes; but as I say above, Richard’s arguments failed to impress, and calling for outside help (“adjudication” for an argument that should be based only on facts and logic?) is indeed beyond obnoxious.
Can you provide some examples of these “abusive personal attacks”? I would also be interested in this ruthless suppression you mention. I have never seen this sort of behavior on LessWrong, and would be shocked to find it among those who support the Singularity Institute in general.
I’ve read a few of your previous comments, and while I felt that they were not strong arguments, I didn’t downvote them because they were intelligent and well-written, and competent constructive criticism is something we don’t get nearly enough of. Indeed, it is usually welcomed. The amount of downvotes given to the comments, therefore, does seem odd to me. (Any LW regular who is familiar with the situation is also welcome to comment on this.)
I have seen something like this before, and it turned out the comments were being downvoted because the person making them had gone over, and over, and over the same issues, unable or unwilling to either competently defend them, or change his own mind. That’s no evidence that the same thing is happening here, of course, but I give the example because in my experience, this community is almost never vindictive or malicious, and is laudably willing to consider any cogent argument. I’ve never seen an actual insult levied here by any regular, for instance, and well-constructed dissenting opinions are actively encouraged.
So in summary, I am very curious about this situation; why would a community that has been—to me, almost shockingly—consistent in its dedication to rationality, and honestly evaluating arguments regardless of personal feelings, persecute someone simply for presenting a dissenting opinion?
One final thing I will note is that you do seem to be upset about past events, and it seems like it colors your view (and prose, a bit!). From checking both here and on SL4, for instance, your later claims regarding what’s going on (“dissent is ruthlessly suppressed”) seem exaggerated. But I don’t know the whole story, obviously—thus this question.
Well, he didn’t actually identify dust mote disutility as zero; he says that dust motes register as zero on his torture scale. He goes on to mention that torture isn’t on his dust-mote scale, so he isn’t just using “torture scale” as a synonym for “disutility scale”; rather, he is emphasizing that there is more than just a single “(dis)utility scale” involved. I believe his contention is that the events (torture and dust-mote-in-the-eye) are fundamentally different in terms of “how the mind experiences and deals with [them]”, such that no amount of dust motes can add up to the experience of torture… even if they (the motes) have a nonzero amount of disutility.
I believe I am making much the same distinction with my separation of disutility into trivial and non-trivial categories, where no amount of trivial disutility across multiple people can sum to the experience of non-trivial disutility. There is a fundamental gap in the scale (or different scales altogether, à la Jones), a difference in how different amounts of disutility work for humans. For a more concrete example of how this might work, suppose I steal one cent each from one billion different people, and Eliezer steals $100,000 from one person. The total amount of money I have stolen is greater than the amount that Eliezer has stolen; yet my victims will probably never even realize their loss, whereas the loss of $100,000 for one individual is significant. A cent does have a nonzero amount of purchasing power, but none of my victims have actually lost the ability to purchase anything; whereas Eliezer’s, on the other hand, has lost the ability to purchase many, many things.
I believe utility for humans works in the same manner. Another thought experiment I found helpful is to imagine a certain amount of disutility, x, being experienced by one person. Let’s suppose x is “being brutally tortured for a week straight”. Call this situation A. Now divide this disutility among people until we have y people all experiencing (1/y)*x disutility—say, a dust speck in the eye each. Call this situation B. If we can add up disutility like Eliezer supposes in the main article, the total amount of disutility in either situation is the same. But now, ask yourself: which situation would you choose to bring about, if you were forced to pick one?
Would you just flip a coin?
I believe few, if any, would choose situation A. This brings me to a final point I’ve been wanting to make about this article, but have never gotten around to doing. Mr. Yudkowsky often defines rationality as winning—a reasonable definition, I think. But with this dust speck scenario, if we accept Mr. Yudkowsky’s reasoning and choose the one-person-being-tortured option, we end up with a situation in which every participant would rather that the other option had been chosen! Certainly the individual being tortured would prefer that, and each potentially dust-specked individual* would gladly agree to experience an instant of dust-speckiness in order to save the former individual.
I don’t think this is winning; no one is happier with this situation. Like Eliezer says in reference to Newcomb’s problem, if rationality seems to be telling us to go with the choice that results in losing, perhaps we need to take another look at what we’re calling rationality.
*Well, assuming a population like our own, not every single individual would agree to experience a dust speck in the eye to save the to-be-tortured individual; but I think it is clear that the vast majority would.
I think you’re a good writer, in that you form sentences well, and you understand how the language works, and your prose is not stilted or boring. The problem I personally had, mostly with the previous two entries in this series, was that the “meat”—the interesting bits telling me what you had concluded, and why, and how to apply it, and how (specifically) you have applied it - seemed very spread out among a lot of filler or elaboration. I couldn’t tell what you were eventually going to arrive at, and whether it’d be of use or interest to me. Too much generality, perhaps: compare “this made my life better” with “by doing X I caught myself thinking Y and changed this to result in the accomplishment of Z.”
I tell you this only in case you are interested in constructive criticism from yet another perspective; some undoubtedly consider the things I have mentioned virtues in an author. In any case, I have upvoted this article; it doesn’t deserve a negative score, I think—long-winded, maybe; poorly done or actively irrational, certainly not. The ideas are interesting, the methodology is reasonable, and the effort is appreciated.
That’s nicely done! Clear, concise, and immediately applicable. I think Frank himself is an intelligent person with good and interesting ideas, but the “meat” of these posts seems spread out among a lot of filler/elaboration—possibly why they’re hard to skim. I wasn’t even sure, for quite a while, what the whole series was really about, beyond “general self-improvement.”
This latest article is much more “functional” than the previous two, though, so I think we’re moving in the right direction.
One thing your comment brings to mind—Frank notes something about unconscious mental processes being trainable, and the suggestion is that one can train them to be rational, or at least more accurate. (If I remember correctly.) Is this idea included your comment? Perhaps under “folk psychology”?
It seems like an interesting concept, though I was unable to find any instruction on how to actually accomplish it. (But I haven’t looked too hard yet.)
Upvoted both this and its parent, because the quoted bit of Strunk and White seems like good advice, and because the linked criticism of Strunk and White is lucid and informative as well as entertaining. I learned about two new but related things, one right after the other; my conclusions about Strunk and White swung rapidly from one position to the opposite in quick succession. Quite an experience! (“Oh look, there are these two folks who are recognized authorities on English, and they’re presenting good writing advice. Strunk and White… must remember. Wait; here’s a response… Oh—turns out not much of their advice is that good after all! Passive voice IS acceptable! Language Log… must remember.”)
If you pick the chance worldview, you are heavilly reliant on evolution to validate your worldview.
No, not at all. Evolution is one aspect of one field of one discipline. One can argue that existence came about by chance (and I’m not comfortable with that term) without referring to evolution at all; there are many other reasons to reject the idea of a designer.
See Desrtopa’s reply, below, regarding chance and design and whether a designer helps here. S/he said it better than I could!
I addressed this here, but I missed a few things. For one, I address the extremity of the hypotheticals in the linked post, but I didn’t point out, also, that these things seem extreme because we’re used to seeing things work out as if evolution were true. These things wouldn’t seem extreme if we had been seeing them all along; it’s precisely because evolution fits what we do find so well that evolution-falsifying examples seem so extreme. Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian would probably not seem so extreme to a creationist; it’s what they’d expect to find (since all species supposedly lived alongside one another, AFAIK).
For two:
We are limited to these two conclusions and nothing else. Therefore any hit on a theory that advocates one, is a support for the other.
I don’t think that follows. A hit on a chance-favoring theory could be a “hit” in such a way as to support a different chance-favoring theory, rather than any favoring design.
I think this pushes scientists (even sub-consciously) to view evolution almost as a belief system rather than a science.
Can you point out some ways that scientists view evolution as a belief system rather than science?
That depends on how you define ‘system’. Is ‘system’ the entire biological existence of earth? In that case, yes evolution would be a mathematical certainty eventually. But is system a specific species? In that case evolution would only occurr within those species.
He goes on to tell you exactly what systems: any with random heritable changes that can selectively help or hinder reproduction. This would mean both all life on earth that fits within that definition, and any particular species also under that umbrella.
It seems to me like you’re trying to make a distinction between “microevolution” and “macroevolution” here, but I may be misreading you. If you are, however, notice that thomblake’s process makes no distinction between them; to suppose one but not the other could occur, you’d need a specific mechanism or reason.
Also, time is another factor. Your explanation logically does not necessitate that evolution has already happened, only that it will eventually happen.
No, it necessitates that it is happening and has happened in any such system. The process, that is. You’re correct if you’re just saying that the process may not have resulted in any differentiation at any given time.
I feel like you’re trying to say we should care about “memetic life” as well as… other life. But the parallel you draw seems flawed: an individual of any race and sex is still recognizably conscious, and an individual. Do we care about non-sentient life, memetic or otherwise? Should we care?
I would like to see the scientific community come up with more specific parameters as to what would be considered: A. minor damage to the theory, B. major hit on the theory, and C. evidence that would make the theory most likely untenable. We do this for almost every other science, except evolution.
I think we do this for evolution as much as any other part of science. In any, the judgment of the severity of a “hit” is possible if you understand the relevant concepts. An understanding of the concepts lets one see what separates minor issues from fossil rabbits in the Precambrian; what’s a detail, and what’s central to the theory—some things would necessitate a modification, and some would cast the entire theory into question. Think of what it took to overturn any other well-established theory in history, or what it would take to overturn relativistic physics.
More generally, if you have a whole bunch of evidence that points to one conclusion, it should take something fairly extreme to substantially sway you away from belief in that conclusion and make you re-evaluate all the accumulated evidence. (And there’s a lot of evidence for evolution.)
I’m aware this is from 2008, but I just can’t let this stand in case one day an undecided visitor wanders past and reads GenericThinker’s comment. (I also can’t resist pointing out that his handle is rather appropriate.)
1.) Belief in God doesn’t necessarily drive people to behave in a more moral way. Consider Muslim fundamentalist terrorists, for example.
2.) The question of God’s existence is not unanswerable. The evidence for or against God is no more open to interpretation than any other evidence. If God affects the material universe, we can observe the effect(s); if God doesn’t affect the material universe, the question is moot. I believe Mr. Yudkowsky has also written about the fallacious “non-overlapping magisteria” idea.
3.) God’s existence may or may not make “the issues of evolution” (what are these?) easier to explain, but it brings up many, many more questions… like how an omnipotent, omniscient being might come about—a much more surprising phenomenon than mere humans, surely.
4.) No one is “bashing God.”
We’re bashing theists.
I enjoyed Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom quite a bit! I’m glad Kevin7 posted this link.
However, the insanity portrayed as being beneficial and desirable in The Metamorphosis is too egregious to ignore—even if the rest of the story had made good on its promise of providing an interesting look at a posthuman world. (It doesn’t. We don’t even get to see anything of it.) At first, I thought “oh, great; more cached-thought SF”… but it was worse than that. I forced myself to finish it just so I could be sure the following is accurate.
Worse than the already-irritating “death gives meaning to life!” reasoning replete in the work, we find either actual insanity or just a blithe disregard for self-contradiction:
Technology is bad, because one day the universe will die. (What’s the connection? No fucking clue.)
We should live like cavemen, because technology (and knowledge itself—no reading!) will lead to murder (but certain arbitrary tools are okay); but death is fine when it’s a bear or disease that kills you.
Reality isn’t “really real” if it’s created or controlled by an AI, even if it’s indistinguishable from… uh… other reality.
And, of course, we save the most obvious conclusion for last (sorta-spoiler warning): despite item #2, it’s okay to murder billions of happy immortals because you’re unhappy that life is safe and everyone is free at last.
Merits as a story? Well, at first, it’s even a little exciting, as we are treated to a glimpse of a post-Singularity world (the only glimpse we get, as it turns out), and then some backstory on how the AI was created. That’s cool; but after that, it’s not worth reading, in this reader’s humble opinion. It’s very formulaic, the characters (all ~three of them) have no personality (unless you count angst), and any technical or imaginative details that might be interesting are… well, either not there at all, or waved away with the magic Correlation Effect Plot Device. (It’s first used to explain one thing, then turns out to do, quite literally, everything.)
I would like to contrast this to John Wright’s The Golden Age trilogy. That work is replete with interesting ideas and details about how a Far Future society might look and work; no magic one-size-fits-all Plotonium (to coin a term; I’m sure TVTropes already has one, though) here. In Metamorphosis, we aren’t really given any glimpse at society, but what we do see is essentially Now Except With Magic Powers. In The Golden Age, it is immediately obvious we aren’t in Kansas any more. Metamorphosis explores one idea—AI—and that, poorly; The Golden Age includes nanotech, simulation, self-modification, the problem of willpower (see: Werewolf Contracts), posthumans, post-posthumans, post-/trans-human art, and more. Check it out if you have transhumanist leanings… or just enjoy science fiction, come to that.
Ergo, whatever environmental influences shape personality come from outside the home, not inside.
How far apart were the different homes—in the same neighborhood? School district? I also wonder how different the parenting styles considered were; at the same economic level in the same town, for example, divisions in “style” might be minor compared to people elsewhere, of different means.
It doesn’t seem plausible, but you assert the books have mountains of evidence and I am not curious enough to check myself, so I ultimately withhold judgment.
The beauty of politics is that there is just enough uncertainty to make every position appear plausible to some portion of the public, even in those rare cases where there is definitive “proof” (however defined) that one particular position is correct. [emphasis added]
Well, that doesn’t sound very beautiful.
I’m thinking of moral reasoning as the kind of reasoning you’re morally responsible for: if you reason rightly, you ought to be praised and proud, and if you reason wrongly, you ought to be blamed and ashamed. That sort of thing.
Can’t that apply to hypotheticals? If you come to the wrong conclusion you’re a horrible person, sort of thing.
I would probably call “moral reasoning” something along the lines of “reasoning about morals”. Even using your above definition, I think reasoning about morals using hypotheticals can result in a judgment, about what sort of action would be appropriate in the situation.
That’s true. They could be wrong in different ways (or “different directions”, in our example), which could be important for some purposes. But as you say, that depends on said purposes; I’m still uncertain as to the fallacy that dspeyer refers to. If our only purpose is determining some belief’s level of correctness, absent other considerations (like in which way it’s incorrect), isn’t the one dimension of the “shades of grey” model sufficient?
Although—come to think of it, I could be misunderstanding his criticism. I took it to mean he had an issue with the original post, but he could just be providing an example of how the shades-of-grey model could be used fallaciously, rather than saying it is fallacious, as I initially interpreted.
I find that a little irritating—for people supposedly open to new ideas, science fiction authors sure seem fearful and/or disapproving of future technology.