imaxwell

Karma: 183

imaxwell Dec 13, 2010, 4:55 AM
6 points
in reply to: Psy-Kosh’s comment on: A sense of logic
Upvoted mostly for the self-honesty. I wonder sometimes if I’m more ‘forgiving’ of bad arguments for positions I already agree with. (Answer: probably, but unless I know how much it’ll be hard to correct for.)

I do find it pretty unpleasant when people hold my opinion for reasons that are… lacking, but I think this may be more of an allergy to cliché than to bad logic. I get the same sensation when I hear people intone individualist or liberal catch-phrases in full sincerity, regardless of how much I might agree with the sentiment.

imaxwell Nov 8, 2010, 4:17 AM
6 points
in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: Reductionism
You can go one step further. If folks like Barbour are correct that time is not fundamental, but rather something that emerges from causal flow, then it ought to be that our universe can be simulated in a timeless manner as well. So a model of this universe need not actually be “executed” at all—a full specification of the causal structure ought to be enough.

And once you’ve bought that, why should the medium for that specification matter? A mathematical paper describing the object should be just as legitimate as an “implementation” in magnetic patterns on a platter somewhere.

And if it doesn’t matter what the medium is, why should it matter whether there’s a medium at all? Theorems don’t become true because someone proves them, so why should our universe become real because someone wrote it down?

If I understand Max Tegmark correctly, this is actually the intuition at the core of his mathematical universe hypothesis (Wikipedia, but with some good citations at the bottom), which basically says: “We perceive the universe as existing because we are in it.” Dr. Tegmark says that the universe is one of many coherent mathematical structures, and in particular it’s one that contains sentient beings, and those sentient beings necessarily perceive themselves and their surroundings as “real”. Pretty much the only problem I have with this notion is that I have no idea how to test it. The best I can come up with is that our universe, much like our region of the universe, should turn out to be almost but not quite ideal for the development of nearly-intelligent creatures like us, but I’ve seen that suggested of models that don’t require the MUH as well. Aside from that, I actually find it quite compelling, and I’d be a bit sad to hear that it had been falsified.

Interestingly enough, a version of the MUH showed up in Dennis Paul Himes’ (An Atheist Apology)[http://www.cookhimes.us/dennis/aaa.htm] (as part of the “contradiction of omnipotent agency” argument), written just a few years after Dr. Tegmark started writing about these ideas. Mr. Himes’ essay was very influential on me as a teenager, and yet I never did hear of the “mathematical universe hypothesis” by that name until a few years ago. In past correspondence, he wrote that the argument was original to him as far as he knew, and at least one of his commenters claimed to also have developed it independently, so it may be a more intuitively plausible idea than it seems to be at first glance.

imaxwell Nov 7, 2010, 5:43 PM
11 points
0
on: Reductionism
Probably no one will ever see this comment, but.

“I wish I knew where reality got its computing power.”

If reality had less computing power, what differences would you expect to see? You’re part of the computation, after all; if everything stood still for a few million meta-years while reality laboriously computed the next step, there’s no reason this should affect what you actually end up experiencing, any more than it should affect whether planets stay in their orbits or not. For all we know, our own computers are much faster (from our perspective) than the machines on which the Dark Lords of the Matrix are simulating us (from their perspective).

imaxwell Jun 8, 2010, 3:36 PM
8 points
in reply to: Matt_Duing’s comment on: Rationality quotes: June 2010
I would prefer to say that conforming your thoughts to reality is science, and conforming reality to your thoughts is engineering...

imaxwell Apr 19, 2010, 4:55 AM
10 points
0
on: Ugh fields
I love this post.

The really depressing thing about my “ugh fields” is how they stop me from doing things that really aren’t even difficult or time-consuming, like filling out a one-page form and putting it in the mail. On the other hand, this is just as likely to come up with things that may be difficult or time-consuming, but are in some sense ‘fun’ for me: for instance, I’ve found it steadily harder to buckle down and study as I’ve progressed through school, in a topic (mathematics) that I started in because it was fun for me.

I hope maybe having the phrase “ugh field” to associate to this, will remind me to do something about it. I’d like to say it will improve my life, but I’ll have to go live some of my life for a while and see how improved it is.

I guess what I should do is make some sort of rule: When I encounter an Ugh Field, I should immediately do whatever thing it is I’m feeling the ‘ugh’ about.

imaxwell Apr 19, 2010, 4:47 AM
7 points
on: Attention Lurkers: Please say hi
Hi.

It’s been quite a while since I posted here, so long that I initially couldn’t remember my username. I rarely have much to add, and even though “I agree with this post” posts are, I think, slightly more accepted here than in some places, just agreeing doesn’t by itself motivate me to say so most of the time.

imaxwell Dec 10, 2009, 7:32 PM
4 points
0
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: You Be the Jury: Survey on a Current Event
The main reason my estimate is so high is because
- I know my information came from two heavily biased sites, and
- I found the “innocent” site a lot easier to follow and therefore paid more attention to it, so I know my information is particularly biased in that direction.
That said, I did consider a more-arrogant probability of 0.25 or so. My caution in this case isn’t on general principle, but because I have something of an old history of embracing cause celebre cases like this only to decide on further reading that the person I’m defending is guilty as hell.

imaxwell Dec 10, 2009, 7:21 PM
7 points
in reply to: Shalmanese’s comment on: You Be the Jury: Survey on a Current Event
Given the information you’re going on, that’s not a bad estimate. Actually reading on the case may change your opinion dramatically, though; why not try it?

imaxwell Dec 10, 2009, 6:18 PM
8 points
in reply to: lordweiner27’s comment on: You Be the Jury: Survey on a Current Event
Do you really find it equally likely that Knox/Sollecito are guilty as you do that Guede is guilty? It seems like most of the weight should be given to Knox-Sollecito-Guede and Guede as possibilities, so unless you think the probability of Guede acting alone is very close to zero, this is sort of bizarre. In particular, it indicates that your P(KSG | G) is very close to 100%.

imaxwell Dec 10, 2009, 5:55 PM
0 points
on: You Be the Jury: Survey on a Current Event
I didn’t know anything about this case until I read this post.

My first impression: Wow, there sure is a lot of information on what a nice person Meredith Kercher was on that one site, and what a nice person Amanda Knox is on that other site. (The latter is at least potentially relevant, if you think a nasty person is more likely to kill someone.)

Anyway: Knox : ~35%; Sollecito : ~35%; Guede : ~95%. And I’d say it’s about 60% that all of these probabilities are on the same side of 50% as yours.

(I had a bunch of information here on how I came to my opinion, but I don’t think it’s really important. Suffice it to say that the evidence I’ve seen against Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito is pretty terrible, but the evidence I haven’t seen may be much better.)

Anyway, if those are the best, clearest sources available to me then I am pretty doubtful of my ability to form a useful opinion on this case at all.
What links here?
- Amanda Knox: post mortem by gwern (Oct 20, 2011, 4:10 PM; 48 points)

imaxwell Nov 14, 2009, 1:31 AM
5 points
on: Less Wrong Q&A with Eliezer Yudkowsky: Ask Your Questions
Previously, in Ethical Injunctions and related posts, you said that, for example,

You should never, ever murder an innocent person who’s helped you, even if it’s the right thing to do; because it’s far more likely that you’ve made a mistake, than that murdering an innocent person who helped you is the right thing to do.

It seems like you’re saying you will not and should not break your ethical injunctions because you are not smart enough to anticipate the consequences. Assuming this interpretation is correct, how smart would a mind have to be in order to safely break ethical injunctions?

imaxwell Apr 15, 2009, 5:08 PM
2 points
on: Marketing rationalism
It took me a long time to respond to this because I found the question resistant to analysis. My immediate impulse is to shout, “But, dammit, my rational argument is really truly actually valid and your bible quotation isn’t!” This is obviously irrelevant since, by hypothesis, my goal is to be convincing rather than correct.

After thinking about it, I’ve decided that the reason the question was hard to analyze is because that hypothesis is so false for me. You haven’t placed any constraints at all; in particular, you haven’t said that my goal is
- to convince others to be more rational via a correct argument, or
- to convince others to be more rational, provided that this is true, or
- to convince others to be more rational, as long as I don’t have to harm anyone to do it, or
- to convince others to be more rational, as long as I can maintain my integrity in the process.
If I take “convince others to be more rational” as a supergoal, then of course I should lie and brain-hack and do whatever is in my power to turn others into rationalists. But in reality, many of my highest values have less to do with the brain-states of others, than with what comes out of my own mouth. Turning others into rationalists at the price of becoming a charlatan myself would not be such a great tradeoff.

I regularly “lose” debates because I’m not willing to use rhetoric I personally find unconvincing. (Though I’m probably flattering myself to suppose that I would “win” otherwise.) To give a specific example, I am deeply opposed to drug prohibition, while openly predicting that more people will be addicted to drugs if they are legally available. This is a very difficult position to quickly relay to someone who doesn’t already agree with me, but any simplification would be basically dishonest. I could invent instrumental reasons why I shouldn’t use a basically dishonest argument in this case, but the truth is that I just hate lying to people, even more than I hate letting them walk around with false, deadly ideas.

I imagine Eliezer and Robin run into this themselves, when they say that a certain unusual medical procedure only has a small probability of success, but should be undergone anyway because the payoff is so high. Many people will hear “low probability of success” and stop listening, and many of those people will therefore die unnecessarily. Does this mean Eliezer and Robin should start saying that there is a high probability of success after all, in order to better save lives?

Now maybe your point here is that yes, we all should be lying for the sake of our goals—that we should throw out our rules of engagement and wage a total war on epistemic wrongness. I have considered this myself, and honestly I don’t have a good rebuttal. I can only say that I’m not ready to be that kind of warrior.

imaxwell Apr 12, 2009, 4:29 PM
1 point
in reply to: mattnewport’s comment on: The uniquely awful example of theism
Isn’t that pretty much what CronoDAS said, though? The stated premise of banning certain drugs is that they are harmful (either individually or socially). So, again, drug prohibition fails on its own terms, because they are not even choosing the most harmful substances to ban.

A serious attempt to ban harmful substances would start with things like rat poison and cocaine, and work its way down as far as things like tobacco and alcohol and cheesecake, but probably leave out things like psilocybin and THC.

But of course I’m presuming there is a serious attempt to ban harmful substances. In reality there is a serious attempt to ban getting high, which is not the same thing at all.

imaxwell Apr 3, 2009, 2:30 AM
1 point
in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: Where are we?
I attend the University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH, and live on campus.

I am in Massachusetts about every other weekend on average, and I considered posting this in “Massachusetts.” I could easily make a MA meetup.

imaxwell Mar 7, 2009, 4:23 AM
1 point
on: Slow down a little… maybe?
I’ve given up on more than one message board because it grew to the point where I could no longer reaonably stay up-to-date. It would be nice if LW didn’t develop the same problem.

That said, this seems like a hard rule to enforce, unless we happen to have fewer than three people wrting posts. I was about to say “how do we decide which three posts should appear” and then I remembered that that’s what voting is for.

If this ‘explosion’ is temporary, I have no problem dealing with it for a few days or weeks. This is the time when LW is still new and exciting and everyong will be willing to read two dozen posts a day. By the time the novelty of reading has worn off, maybe the novelty of writing will as well.

imaxwell Mar 7, 2009, 4:13 AM
2 points
in reply to: John_Maxwell’s comment on: Slow down a little… maybe?
Agree with this comment. It doesn’t seem that OB is going to shut down altogether, and I expect most of us intend to keep reading it.

imaxwell 6 Mar 2009 4:18 UTC
3 points
on: Kinnaird’s truels
This is a really good question.

As others have pointed out, the real issue is not competence but perceived competence. But as others haven’t really pointed out, as one deals with more perceptive rivals, the difference between competence and perceived competence approaches zero (if only asymptotically).

As for the last question—what should we do in a truel-like situation—the answer is, I guess, “That depends.” If we’re talking about a situation where one can falsify incompetence, or perhaps form an unbreakable contract to act incompetently, then the old chestnut applies: rational agents should win. In a literal truel, you could do this by, say, agreeing to fire roughly one-third of your shots (chosen by die roll) straight into the air, provided there were a way of holding you to it. In other cases, as some people pointed out, maybe you could just get really good at convincing people of your incompetence (a.k.a. “nonchalance”).

But in a situation where this is impossible? Where competence and perceived competence are one? Then there is no strategy, any more than there was a strategy for passing as white in the last century. You will be punished for being good (unless you’re so good that you win anyway).

Regarding the evolution of mediocrity: In some cases, Evolution selects for people who are good at convincing others that they are X, and, by a not-so-stunning coincidence, ends up with people who actually believe they are X, or even really are X. I don’t know if “competence” is the sort of thing this works for, though, since it is in itself a genetic advantage almost by definition. Self-perceieved incompetence is just so much better a strategy than actual incompetence, and self-delusion such a commonly evolved trait, that I have trouble believing even a dolt like Evolution would fail to think of it.

imaxwell 2 Mar 2009 3:22 UTC
5 points
on: That You’d Tell All Your Friends
- Firstly, the combined ideas of “something to protect” and “rational agents should win” and “joy in the merely real.” The idea that you should want to be rational not because it’s inherently virtuous or important, but because it will allow you to get what you ultimately want, whatever that might be. The person I want to give this book to, currently believes that rationality is defined by cold, bloodless disinterest in the world, and thus has no interest in it.
- Secondly, the combined ideas of “writing the bottom line first” and “guessing the teacher’s password” and “your ability to be more confused by fiction”. That you cannot first choose an opinion from the ether, and then figure out how to argue for it. In the effort to correlate your beliefs with reality, it is only your beliefs that you are capable of changing. The person I want to give this book to, currently believes that it is better to “win” a debate than to “lose”, and thus defends his beliefs against all comers without first finding out where they are come from.
- Thirdly, the idea that nature is allowed to set impossibly high standards and flunk you even if you do everything humanly possible to meet them. The person I want to give this book to, currently thinks that “I’m doing the best I can” is a viable excuse for failure.
Of course there should be advice on how, specifically, to be more rational, and the many failure modes possible. These three ideas are primarily the motivational ones: that rationality is necessary to anything you want to accomplish, and yet so difficult that it will take you a lifetime of effort to maintain a fighting chance of doing so. They are the ideas that, if internalized, will make people really want to try harder.

imaxwell 1 Mar 2009 3:42 UTC
6 points
on: The Most Frequently Useful Thing
A few ideas:
- the difference between Nobly Confessing One’s Limitations and actually preparing to be wrong. I was pretty guilty of the former in the past. I think I’m probably still pretty guilty of it, but I am on active watch for it.
- the idea that one should update on every piece of evidence, however slightly. This is something that I “knew” without really understanding its implications. In particular, I used to habitually leave debates more sure of my position than when I went in—yet this can’t possibly be right, unless my opposition were so inept as to argue against their own position. So there’s one bad habit I’ve thrown out. I’ve gone from being “open-minded” enough to debate my position, to being actually capable of changing my position.
- That I should go with the majority opinion unless I have some actual reason to think I can do better. To be fair, on the matters where I actually had a vested interest, I followed this advice before receiving it; so perhaps this shouldn’t be under ‘useful’ per se, although I’ve improved my predictions drastically by just parroting InTrade. (I don’t bet on InTrade because I’ve never believed I could do better.)
- Sticking your neck out and making a prediction, so that you have the opportunity to say “OOPS” as soon as possible.