Idan Arye

Karma: 224

Idan Arye Dec 6, 2020, 1:55 AM
5 points
in reply to: Measure’s comment on: Luna Lovegood and the Chamber of Secrets—Part 5
By the way, I wouldn’t be surprised if “the end of the world” is Moody’s stock response to “what’s the worst that could happen?” in any context.
(this is no longer spoiler so we no longer need to hide it)
I’m not sure about that. That could be Harry’s stock response—“there was always a slight probability for the end of the world and this suggestion will not completely eliminate that probability”. But Moody’s? I would expect him to quickly make a list of all the things that could go wrong for each suggested course of action.

Idan Arye Dec 5, 2020, 4:21 PM
6 points
on: Luna Lovegood and the Chamber of Secrets—Part 5
Are potential HPMOR spoilers acceptable in the comments here? I’m not really sure—the default is to assume they aren’t, but the fanfic itself contains some, so to be sure I’ll hide it just in case:
Can Harry really discuss the idea of destroying the world so casually? Shouldn’t his unbreakable oath compel him to avoid anything that can contribute to it, and abandon the idea of building the hospital without permit as soon as Moody jokes (is that the correct term when talking about Moody?) about it causing the end of the world?

Idan Arye Dec 4, 2020, 9:56 PM
2 points
on: Luna Lovegood and the Chamber of Secrets—Part 4
I notice we are seeing Luna getting ridiculed for her reputation rather then directly for her actions. Even when it’s clear how her reputation is a result of her actions—for example they laugh at her for having an imaginary pet, but never once have we seen other students looking at weird when she interacts with Wanda.
Is this intentional? Because we are getting this story from Luna’s PoV? Does she consider her reputation unjustified because her behavior does not seem weird to her?

Idan Arye Dec 1, 2020, 9:13 PM
6 points
on: Luna Lovegood and the Chamber of Secrets—Part 3
I’m a bit surprised the twins had the patience and concentration to sit with Luna and help her go over the map over and over.

Idan Arye Nov 17, 2020, 3:54 PM
3 points
on: Extortion beats brinksmanship, but the audience matters
Wouldn’t increasing the number of offenders improve the effectiveness of brinkmanship compared to extortion? Since the victim is only bound by a deal with the offender, they can surrender and reject future deals from the other potential offenders. This makes surrendering safer and therefore more attractive compared to extortion, where surrendering to one extorter would invite more extortions.

Idan Arye Nov 8, 2020, 2:51 PM
2 points
on: Bayesians vs. Barbarians
The moral of Ends Don’t Justify Means (Among Humans) was that even if philosophical though experiments demonstrate scenarios where ethical rules should be abandoned for the greater good, real life cases are not as clear cut and we should still obey these moral rules because humans cannot be trusted when they claim that <unethical plan> really does maximize the expected utility—we cannot be trusted when we say “this is the only way” and we cannot be trusted when we say “this is better than the alternative”.
I think this may be the source of the repulsion we all feel toward the idea of selecting soldiers in a lottery and forcing them to fight with drugs and threats of execution. Yes, dying in a war is better than being conquered by the barbarians—I’d rather fight and risk death if the alternative is to get slaughtered anyway together with my loved ones after being tortured, and if the only way to avoid that is to use abandon all ethics than so be it.
But...
Even in a society of rationalists, the leaders are still humans. Not benevolent (“friendly” is not enough here) superintelligent perfect Bayesian AIs. Can we really trust them that this is the only way to win? Can we really trust them to relinquish that power once the war is over? Will living under the barbarians rule be worse than living in a (formerly?) rationalist society that resorted to totalitarianism? Are the barbarians really going to invade us in the first place?
Governments lie about such things in order to grab more power. We have ethics for a reason—it is far too dangerous to rationalize that we are too rational to be bound by these ethics.

Idan Arye Nov 4, 2020, 5:00 PM
3 points
on: Purchase Fuzzies and Utilons Separately
I may be straying from your main point here, but...
Could you really utilize these 60 seconds in a better, more specialized way? Not any block of 60 seconds—these specific 60 seconds, that happened during your walk.
Had you not encountered that open trunk, would you open your laptop in the middle of that walk and started working on a world changing idea or an important charity plan? Unlikely—if that was the case you were already sitting somewhere working on that. You went out for a walk, not for work.
Would you, had you not encountered that open trunk, finish your walk 60 seconds earlier, went to sleep 60 seconds earlier, woke up 60 seconds earlier, started your workday 60 seconds earlier, and by doing all that moved these 60 seconds to connect with your regular productivity time? This is probably not the case either—if it was, that would mean you intentionally used that hard earned fuzz as an excuse to deliberately take one minute off your workday, and that would take small mindedness you do not seem to possess.
No—that act was an Action of Opportunity. Humans don’t usually have a schedule to tight and so accurate that every lost minute messes it up. There is room for leeway, where you can push such gestures without compromising your specialized work.

Idan Arye Nov 3, 2020, 9:00 AM
1 point
in reply to: Gray’s comment on: Why Our Kind Can’t Cooperate
Should arguers be encouraged, then, to not write all the arguments if favor of their claim in order to leave more room for those who agree with them to add their own supporting arguments?
This requires either refraining from fully exploring the subject (so that you don’t think of all the arguments you can) or straight out omitting arguments you thought of. Not exactly Dark Side, but not fully Light Side either...

Idan Arye Nov 2, 2020, 9:01 PM
1 point
in reply to: Adam Zerner’s comment on: What is the right phrase for “theoretical evidence”?
The difference can be quite large. If we get the results first, we can come up with Fake Explanations why the masks were only 20% effective in the experiments where in reality they are 75% effective. If we do the prediction first, we wouldn’t predict 20% effectiveness. We wouldn’t predict that our experiment will “fail”. Our theory says masks are effective so we would predict 75% to begin with, and when we get the results it’ll put a big dent in our theory. As it should.

Idan Arye Nov 2, 2020, 4:24 PM
1 point
in reply to: Slider’s comment on: What is the right phrase for “theoretical evidence”?
Maybe “destroying the theory” was not a good choice of words—the theory will more likely be “demoted” to the stature of “very good approximation”. Like gravity. But the distinction I’m trying to make here is between super-accurate sciences like physics that give exact predictions and still-accurate-but-not-as-physics fields. If medicine says masks are 99% effective, and they were not effective for 100 out of 100 patients, the theory still assigned a probability of $10^{- 200}$ that this would happen. You need to update it, but you don’t have to “throw it out”. But if physics says a photon should fire and it didn’t fire—then the theory is wrong. Your model did not assign any probability at all to the possibility of the photon not firing.
And before anyone brings 0 And 1 Are Not Probabilities, remember that in the real world:
- There is a probability photon could have fired and our instruments have missed it.
- There is a probability that we unknowingly failed to set up or confirm the conditions that our theory required in order for the photon to fire.
- We do not assign 100% probability to our theory being correct, and we can just throw it out to avoid Laplace throwing us to hell for our negative infinite score.
This means that the falsifying evidence, on its own, does not destroy the theory. But it can still weaken it severely. And my point (which I’ve detoured too far from) is that the perfect Bayesian should achieve the same final posterior no matter at which stage they apply it.

Idan Arye Nov 2, 2020, 2:38 PM
1 point
in reply to: Slider’s comment on: What is the right phrase for “theoretical evidence”?
I think you may be underestimating the impact of falsifying evidence. A single observation that violates general relativity, assuming we can perfectly trust its accuracy and rule out any interference from unknown unknowns—would shake our understanding of physics if it comes tomorrow, but had we encountered the very same evidence a century ago our understanding of physics would have already been shaken (assuming the falsified theory wouldn’t be replaced with a better one). To a perfect Bayesian, the confidence at general relativity in both cases should be equal—and very low. Because physics are lawful—the don’t make “mistakes”—we are the ones who are mistaken at understanding them, so a single violation is enough to make a huge dent no matter how many confirming evidence we have managed to pile up.
Of course, in real life we can’t just say “assuming we can perfectly trust its accuracy and rule out any interference from unknown unknowns”. The accuracy of our observations is not perfect, and we can’t rule out unknown unknowns, so we must assign some probability to our observation being wrong. Because of that, a single violating evidence is not enough to completely destroy the theory. And because of that, newer evidence should have more weight—our instruments keep getting better so our observations today are more accurate. And if you go far enough back you can also question the credibility of the observations.
Another issue, which may not apply to physics but applies to many other fields, is that the world does change. A sociology experiment form 200 years ago is evidence on society from 200 years ago, so the results of an otherwise identical experiment from recent years should have more weight when forming a theory of modern society, because society does change—certainly much more than physics change.
But to the hypothetical perfect Bayesian the chronology itself shouldn’t matter—all they have to do is take all that into account when calculating how much they need to update their beliefs, and succeeding to do so it doesn’t matter in which order they apply the evidences.

Idan Arye Nov 2, 2020, 12:15 PM
1 point
in reply to: johnswentworth’s comment on: What is the right phrase for “theoretical evidence”?
You need to be very careful with this approach, as it can easily lead to circular logic where map X is evidence for map Y because they both come from the same territory, and may Y is evidence for map X because they both come from the same territory, so you get a positive feedback loop that updates them both to approach 100% confidence.

Idan Arye Nov 2, 2020, 12:01 PM
1 point
in reply to: Adam Zerner’s comment on: What is the right phrase for “theoretical evidence”?
This clarification gave me enough context to write a proper answer.
That sounds like a promising idea. It seems like it needs some tweaking though. I want be able to say something like “the theoretical evidence suggests”. If you replace “theoretical evidence” with “application”, it wouldn’t make sense. You’d have to replace it with something like “application of what we know about X”, but that is too wordy.
Just call it “the theory” then—“the theory suggests” is both concise and conveys the meaning well.

Idan Arye Nov 2, 2020, 11:58 AM
1 point
on: What is the right phrase for “theoretical evidence”?
I’m basing this answer on a clarifying example from the comments section:
I believe that what I am trying to point at is indeed evidence, in the Bayesian sense of the word. For example, consider masks and COVID. Imagine that we empirically observe that they are effective 20% of the time and ineffective 80% of the time. Should we stop there and take it as our belief that there is a 20% chance that they are effective? No!
Suppose now that we know that when someone with COVID breathes, particles containing COVID remain in the air. Further suppose that our knowledge of physics would tell us that someone standing two feet away is likely to breathe in these particles at some concentration. And further suppose that our knowledge of how other diseases work tell us that when that concentration of virus is ingested, it is likely that you will get infected. When you incorporate all of this knowledge about physics and biology, it should shift your belief that masks are effective. It shouldn’t stay put at 20%. We’d want to shift it upward to something like 75% maybe.
When put like this, these “evidence” sound a lot like priors. The order should be different though:
1. First you deduce from the theory that masks are, say, 90% effective. These are the priors.
2. Then you run the experiments that show that masks are only effective 20% of the time.
3. Finally you update your beliefs downward and say that masks are 75% effective. These are the posteriors.
To a perfect Bayesian the order shouldn’t matter, but we are not perfect Bayesians and if we try to do it the other way around and apply the theory to update the probabilities we got from the experiments, we would be able to convince ourselves the probability is 75% no matter how much empirical evidence that says otherwise we have accumulated.
What links here?
- Idan Arye's comment on What is the right phrase for “theoretical evidence”? by Adam Zerner (Nov 2, 2020, 12:01 PM; 1 point)

Idan Arye Nov 2, 2020, 12:10 AM
6 points
on: What is the right phrase for “theoretical evidence”?
These are not evidence at all! They are the opposite of evidence. Evidence are something from the territory that you use to update your map—what you are describing goes the opposite direction—it comes from the map to say something specific about the territory.
“Using the map to say something about the territory” sounds like “predictions”, but in this case it does not seem like you intend to update your beliefs based on whether or not the predictions come true—in fact, you specify that the empirical evidence is already going against these predictions, and you seem perfectly content with that.
So… maybe you could call it “application”? Since you are applying your knowledge?
Or, since they explicitly go against the empirical evidence, how about we just call it “stubbornness”?

Idan Arye Oct 21, 2020, 11:51 AM
10 points
on: Raised in Technophilia
My father used to say that if the present system had been in place a hundred years ago, automobiles would have been outlawed to protect the saddle industry.
Maybe not outright outlawed, but automobiles were used to be regulated to the point of uselessness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws

Idan Arye Oct 18, 2020, 3:15 PM
1 point
on: When (Not) To Use Probabilities
This reminds me of your comparison of vague vs precise theories in A Technical Explanation of Technical Explanation—if both are correct, then the precise theory is more accurate then the vague one. But if the precise theory is incorrect and the vague is correct, the vague theory is more accurate. Preciseness is worthless without correctness.
While the distinction there was about granularity, I think the lesson that preciseness is necessary but not sufficient for accuracy applies here as well. Using numbers makes your argument seem more mathematical, but unless they are the correct numbers—or even a close enough estimate of the correct numbers—can’t make your argument more accurate.

Idan Arye Oct 16, 2020, 1:27 PM
4 points
on: Feeling Moral
“Lives saved don’t diminish in marginal utility”, as you have said, but maybe hiccups do? A single person in a group of 10 hiccuppers is not as unfortunate as a lone hiccupper standing with 9 other people who don’t have hiccups. So even if the total negative utility of 10 hiccuppers is worse than that of one hiccupper, it’s not 10 times worse.
Since the utility function doesn’t have to be linear function in the number of hiccuppers (it only has to be monotonic) there is no reason why it can’t be bounded, forever lower (in absolute value) than the value of a single human life.

Idan Arye Oct 16, 2020, 1:05 PM
7 points
in reply to: yogev hendel’s comment on: Feeling Moral
Say we have a treatment of curing hiccups. Or some other inconvenience. Maybe even all medical inconveniences. We have done all the research and experiments and concluded that the treatment is perfectly safe—except there is no such thing as “certainty” in Bayesianism so we must still allocate a tiny probability to the event our treatment may kill a patient—say, a one in a googol chance. The expected utility of the treatment will now have a $\frac{- ω}{10^{100}}$ component in it, which far outweighs any positive utility gained from the treatment, which only cures inconveniences, a mere real number that cannot be overcome the negative $ω$ no matter how small the probability of that $ω$ is nor how much you multiply the positive utility of curing the inconveniences.

Idan Arye Oct 8, 2020, 5:59 PM
3 points
on: Brainstorming positive visions of AI
Instead of creating a superintelligent AGI to perform some arbitrary task and watch it allocate all the Earth’s resources (and the universe’s resources later, but we won’t be there to watch it) to optimize it, we decide to give it the one task that justifies that kind of power and control—ruling over humanity.
The AGI is more competent than any human leader, but we wouldn’t want a human leader who’s values we disagree with even if they are very competent—and the same applies to robotic overlords. So, we implement something like Futarchy, except:
- Instead of letting the officials generate policies, the AGI will do it.
- Instead of using betting markets we let the AGI decide which policy best fulfills the values.
- Instead of voting for representatives that’ll define the values, the AGI will talk with each and every one of us to build a values profile, and then use the average of all our values profiles to build the values profile used for decision making.
  - Even better—if it has enough computation power it can store all the values profiles, calculate the utility of each decision according to each profile, calculate how much the decision will affect of each voter, and do a weighed average.
So the AGI takes over, but humanity is still deciding what it wants.