This depends on whether the problem is the basic complexity of modeling a neural network or learning how to do it. If the former, then we may be looking at a long time. But if it’s the latter, then we really just need more attempts, successful or not, to learn from and a framework which allows a leap in understanding could arrive.
Hyena
Subjective worlds must be causally closed; they cannot transmit information to other worlds since that would break the principle that each world is subjective. As such, there can be no subjective reality: if subjective reality were true, causal closure would demand that your observations about the world are semantically equivalent to a world in which you are alone as an observer.
For example, imagine that we lived in Minecraft, which has a procedurally generated world. We use a seed (say “404”) to kick off the algorithm. But say instead that we use a seed and the username of the player. Is World 404 different for each user?
No; there is no “World 404”, there is World 404-TheatreAddict and World 404-Hyena and so on. The reason is that the function we use to generate the world takes two variables, seed and username, to work. A world can only be defined by this pair and has no existence independent of it. Naturally, this world is causally closed; my playing does not effect yours, you will never see my buildings nor will you ever send me angry messages about burning down 16 chunks of forest.
While this world is trivially objective, all objections to a subjectivity thesis are trivial because it is trivially untrue or unprovable. Every attempt to prove it will require a condition, like causal closure, which collapses it to a special case of objective reality. The simplest of these is the resolution to the subjective proposition itself, independent of worlds: if everything is subjective, that principle itself is objective.
From the “relevant link”:
“Participants’ conformity was measured by how much they wished to conform to social expectations and be seen in a positive light, known as ‘social desirability’. They completed a standardised measure and were also asked about their attitude towards paying tax. People who score highly on social desirability are more likely to conform, for example by paying tax, and agree with others. The researchers expected that they would be more likely to co-operate as well.”
Properly, they are not measuring conformity. What they have done is asked people to signal whether they want to be identified as a “member in good standing”. This seems like an excellent way to generate an error because it also selects for people who have an incentive to be seen this way. People who are not particularly good at working with others or who lack competence will need to signal group identity more. This could explain why “conformists” appear to be worse at cooperating.
The opening is really bad and the essay is poorly organized. Do you have an outline of where you want this to go?
Phlogiston was a substance hypothesized to explain fire, my comment supposes an architecture of pre-existing mechanisms which appear just as plausible as what the OP proposes.
You’ve aggressively chopped from my comment relevant details, for example, the qualifier “prima facie”, which negates your objections.
You’re overly presumptive about memes, presuming that we need to personally observe a complete trajectory from baby to success. This is not so; it is sufficient that we observe highly skilled people which are financial successes and ask about their trajectory.
I’m glad someone else has taken up the cause of telling people to take it easy.
I will submit two things first: (1) Jackson Pollock paintings are excellent, that you don’t like them just demonstrates you’re not in their audience; (2) the normal way for Burning Man to change someone’s life completely is through drug use.
Over the course of my art history degree, not once did anyone insist I had to like any work. I had to recognize its importance—either as inspiration others drew on or as an exemplar of some type—but never actually be attached to any of the work. I think this tendency to demand others like a work is unserious. But this is where I wonder about the work “like” is doing.
I’m not a fan of Bouguereau, for example, but I actually “like” his work in the sense that I often trot it out when I need an example of late academic painting. In fact, he might actually be my most-referenced artist and I admit that, while I wouldn’t hang any of it on my wall, I have a certain affinity for his work borne entirely of my distaste for it. I think you should consider this possibility: experts “like” a work in this sense—it is useful to them in explanation—but not in the “hang it on my wall” sense but others posture using the term but not really understanding what is meant by the expert.
Naturally, I think the posturers are fairly useless and have since my seminar days.
Consider a separate possibility: competition and opportunity abounds in urban areas, placing additional value on intelligence and skill acquisition. Since there is nothing which can be done about intelligence, really, focusing on skill acquisition is a better strategy. Parents who believe very thoroughly in the nurture argument may be much more willing to invest heavily in their child’s education, expecting far greater benefits than are actually possible. Because the perceived value of success is higher it succeeds more often in the face of discounting.
In this case, the false belief is highly adaptive socially, with people adhering to it acquiring better positions in society. While this does not really lend itself to much genetic replication, meme spread should accelerate. I think that, prima facie, we should prefer this explanation; because it does not rely on stories LessWrongians may find aggrandizing, it is less likely that we will be accepting this narrative through bias.
Are you talking about objections or disgust? I can, through emotional manipulation, make you “object” to many things, but these don’t occupy the same space as considered argument.
This is perfectly well true, but I’m not interested in addressing this because I have never known this to be anyone’s sufficient objection to eating meat.
Would you eat a well-treated chicken? How about a deer instantly killed by a Predator drone equipped to vaporize its brain faster than neurons react?
First, see my thing on irrelevant critiques and context agreement.
Second, your question suggests an answer which we would generally find repugnant. We could likewsie ask whether it matters so much if, for example, they are doomed to die when a small bomb planted in their brain at birth goes off without which their birth would have not occurred.
I think the ethics of farming is another place where problems in utilitarianism crop up.
There’s a Parfitian argument that, since none of these animals would have existed otherwise, then killing them for food is no problem. But this would also apply to farming people, whether for food or chattel slavery, which we find repugnant. Obviously, though, this world is just as utility maximizing as Hanson’s Malthusian em soup universe, neither of which seem particularly “good” (in fact, it is the em soup, just with fleshy people).
I don’t have a “solution” to this, I think it just demonstrates one of the edges of utility theory’s map.
(1) It is a bad idea for everyone to go to college, at least as college is currently (4 years, etc.). College is foremost a technology for learning; it has advantages and disadvantages. If you need the advantages of this model, then go. However, it’s a well-known fact, at least in the arts, that it is not ideal; that field also contains “schools” and “institutes” with differing educational models and environments.
The problem with Huffman is he has decided here to break with the plain meaning of my statement within the context of the debate; when people discuss this topic, they do not track through adversarial dynamics involving job markets. Instead, you cut straight through to the optimal outcome where if college is not good for everybody, then it is something we shouldn’t demand, either, unless it really is the only/best source of a skill set.
(2) I don’t, but his comment is also an irrelevant extension of what we’re discussing. It’s as if I was trying to model the orbit of Mars well enough to find it with a telescope only to have someone criticize that Newtonian mechanics is superseded by relativistic mechanics. It’s true, I agree, but it is not important to what I’m doing and just makes things unnecessarily complicated therefore. This habit is common amongst analytical people, it should be guarded against.
(3) Context agreement is where we establish a limited domain of possibilities before proceeding. This is why when I talk say “endian” in a programming course, I don’t need to worry much that a hand will shoot up to ask “do you mean Native Americans or people of the Subcontinent?” In conversation, it limits confusion; in argument, it prevents global skepticism because when I say “I know I’m in Los Angeles” we agree that we’re talking in a “naive” sense and there’s no need to interject with “but how do you know you know?”
When we break context agreement in an argument, we must constantly and hopelessly reconstruct justifications. These are the pyrrhonic depths. After the sort of skepticism. I consider this to be “aggressive” in that it rapidly makes conversation unworkable; other types just create hidden problems we can safely ignore or introduce avenues we need, albeit with potholes we’ll need to grin and bear for a bit. “Aggressive skepticism” simply opens a sinkhole which swallows the whole town.
Because you’ve drilled as far as you can before making a determination.
I always call you all “LessWrongians” or “the people at LessWrong” sometimes also using the word “dudes”.
Downvoted for motivating an aggressive sort of skepticism: you’ve denied context agreement and therefore sent us straight to the pyrrhonic depths.
Not confdent about which part? Skeptics or college-as-seminary?
Individual IQ differences are, in general “not okay”; racial IQ differences are downright verboten. I won’t discuss either in certain company for fear of attracting any number of labels, with the exception of the effect of lead on IQ, which is a soapbox I mount often.
As ArisKastaris points out, those labels should adhere to you more often than not. I tend to think that this is because the rest of us have never developed a decent realm of discussion which includes IQ. I get the same feeling with the “not everybody should attend college” crowd, since it too often seems to consist of high status inviduals from elite schools vastly overstating their case. That is, signaling their status. (In fact, unless you’re super interested in becoming a professor, you probably shouldn’t attend college in the same way non-priests shouldn’t have taken up seminary.)
Well, really, there are different classes of people who should attend college: would-be professors, poor autodidacts, akrasics, people who need separation from society for a few years. Probably others. The irony is that the people I thnk should be least interested in college are often those that are most interested in explaining why they but not others should attend.
Yes.
There is a severe methodological problem here. The appropriate point of comparison is not between artists and the general population, but between artists and others whose social standing is not negatively impacted by drug use. The latter group, which includes much of the poor but also plenty of upper-middle class people in California, seem to have much higher rates of drug use than American Average Person.
That would likely explain the entire problem. As to historically significant alcoholics, my impression has been that drinking problems were more severe (much more) in the past.