is4junk

Karma: 158

is4junk 27 Mar 2015 1:31 UTC
1 point
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Open thread, Mar. 23 - Mar. 31, 2015

So if humanity had had no biological neural networks to steal the general idea and as proof of feasibility, would machine learning & AI be far behind where they are now?

NNs connection to biology is very thin. Artificial neurons don’t look or act like regular neurons at all. But as a coined term to sell your research idea its great.

NNs are popular now for their deep learning properties and ability to learn features from unlabeled data (like edge detection).

Comparing NNs to SVMs isn’t really fair. You use the tool best for the job. If you have lots of labeled data you are more likely to use an SVM. It just depends on what problem you are being asked so solve. And of course you might feed an NNs output into an SVM or vice versa.

As for major achievements—NNs are leading for now because 1) most of the world’s data is unlabeled and 2) automated feature discovery (deep learning) is better then paying people to craft features.

is4junk 26 Mar 2015 16:45 UTC
−1 points
on: What I mean...
When I read these AI control problems I always think that an arbitrary human is being conflated with the AI’s human owner. I could be mistaken that I should read these as if AIs own themselves—I don’t see this case likely so I would probably stop here if we are to presuppose this.

Now if an AI is lying/deceiving its owner, this is a bug. In fact, when debugging I often feel I am being lied to. Normal code isn’t a very sophisticated liar. I could see an AI owner wanting to train its AI about lying an deceiving and maybe actually perform them on other people (say a Wall Street AI). Now we have a sophisticated liar but we also have a bug. I find it likely that the owner would have encountered this bug many times while the AI is becoming more and more sophisticated. If he didn’t encounter this bug then it would point to great improvements in software development.

is4junk 25 Mar 2015 22:49 UTC
0 points
in reply to: skeptical_lurker’s comment on: [POLITICS] Jihadism and a new kind of existential threat

What do Neoreactionaries think of the Islamic State? After all, it’s an exemplar case of the reactionaries in those areas winning big. I know it’s only a surface comparison, I’m sincerely curious about what a NR think of the situation.

While this is an interesting question—my take on the NRx was it was more anti-democracy then pro-Monarchy. So I think a better question for them would be: if fundamentalist Muslims become a democratic majority (via demographics) and vote in IS or the Muslim Brotherhood would that be a “big win” too? A less hypothetical question might be NRx’s take on the state of Iraq’s fledgling democracy.

is4junk 25 Mar 2015 22:31 UTC
1 point
in reply to: buybuydandavis’s comment on: [POLITICS] Jihadism and a new kind of existential threat

Russia is already approximately 15% muslim, with huge differential birth rates between christians and muslims. And that 15% understates the real issue for violence and control—who has the most young men. I’ve seen numbers that by 2020 (!) half the Russian army will be muslim, and that majority will only grow from there.

Doesn’t this analysis depend on army technology not changing? 100 years ago this would be spot on but if in the next decade we continue to see smaller armies of people being more and more effective you could have a Russia with an even smaller army without muslim leadership.

The same is true for the civilian side. Even with large numbers of disaffected young males—near term technological surveillance could prevent them from organizing in any meaningful way.

is4junk 25 Mar 2015 19:40 UTC
0 points
on: Learning by Doing
Being 100x more productive is about not solving hard problems you don’t need to. Spending time thinking about ways to avoid the problem often pays off (feature definition, code reuse, slow implementations, ect). Much of the best practices that you read about are solving problems you wish you had—I wish my problem was poor documentation because that means someone actually cares to use it. I was always surprised by how bad the code was out in the wild until I realized it was survivor bias—the previous owner deferred solving some problem for a long time.

is4junk 24 Mar 2015 23:40 UTC
1 point
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Open thread, Mar. 23 - Mar. 31, 2015
I don’t think we would be that far behind.

NNs had lost favor in the AI community after 1969 (minsky’s paper) and only have become popular again in the last decade. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network

The only crossover that comes to mind for me is the vision deep learning ‘discovering’ edge detection. There also is some interest in sparse NN activation.

is4junk 23 Mar 2015 21:18 UTC
−16 points
on: What you know that ain’t so
Cthulhu may swim slowly. But he only swims left.

I assume the mistake was assuming Cthulhu was swimming faster. AFAIK no one disputes the only swims left part.

is4junk 23 Mar 2015 15:25 UTC
0 points
on: Open thread, Mar. 23 - Mar. 31, 2015
Question on infinities

If the universe is finite then I am stuck with some arbitrary number of elementary particles. I don’t like the arbitrariness of it. So I think—if the universe was infinite it doesn’t have this problem. But then I remember there are countable and uncountable infinities. If I remember correctly you can take the power set of an infinite set and get a set with larger cardinality. So will I be stuck in some arbitrary cardinality? Are the number of cardinality countable? If so could an infinite universe of countably infinite cardinality solve my arbitrary problem?

edit: carnality → cardinality (thanks g_peppers people searching for “infinite carnality” would be disappointed with this post)

is4junk 21 Mar 2015 15:17 UTC
4 points
in reply to: chaosmage’s comment on: Open thread, Mar. 16 - Mar. 22, 2015
I’d look for a good headhunter in your field (assuming it is not too niche). Let them get the commission for finding you a job.
- Update your linkedin profile and see if any contact you.
- Talk to a recruiter in a company that is a near fit for you even if they aren’t hiring now and ask if they have worked with any headhunters in the past.
- Go to a Job fair in the US—not for job but to interview headhunters

is4junk 20 Mar 2015 20:59 UTC
3 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open thread, Mar. 16 - Mar. 22, 2015
Why even read left wing articles if they upset you?

My take is that if the public space was skateboarder and homeless friendly, the author could easily write a similar article on how that scares [insert other victim group] away from the public space.

As for why it is written that way, Kling’s book The Three Languages of Politics is a good explanation. The left likes to think in oppressed verses oppressor terms.

Thanks for posting this article. There is a park being planned near me and there are certain architectural features I now want it to consider …

is4junk 20 Mar 2015 19:14 UTC
7 points
on: Twenty basic rules for intelligent money management
Brokerage accounts (fidelity/etrade) are better then bank accounts in every way (in the US). Use them with a margin account to safely maximize your investments. The margin account will basically function as an overdraft / short term loan at very favorable rates. Reasons:
- direct deposit in to your brokerage account—all surplus money should be sweeped in to an index fund (SPY or global equiv)
- You can have a ATM card and do all your checks through them usually for free
- they all have bill pay service for free
- depositing checks—they can be mailed in
- Even if you don’t invest the money it will automatically be in a money market account earning you interest
- investment interest payments (on the margin) can be tax advantaged unlike credit card payments
I didn’t have a bank account for over a decade. There is no reason to think about checking and savings being separate things.

Concerns about margin account being scary are only that way when you margin a substantial fraction of your account. If you are under 10% and invest in stable index funds you won’t have a worry.

instead of investing in SPY consider Berkshire Hathoway (brk) for the tax advantages - (Warren Buffet doesn’t like to pay taxes). I’d look at costco’s sharebuilder if you can’t afford to buy 1 share.

is4junk 20 Mar 2015 1:29 UTC
0 points
on: Two methods on akrasia / unhealthy habits / addictions
I have a hard time with the goal setting phase. Do I really want the goal? Would doing X really achieve the goal? Even if doing X achieves the goal would the cost be too high? Sometimes I think this is akrasia other times I think it is being accurate that the goals are wrong.

is4junk 16 Mar 2015 17:01 UTC
4 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open thread, Mar. 16 - Mar. 22, 2015
For most of the work stuff I find it easier to remember where to find things rather than the things themselves. The hard stuff is the undocumented and constantly changing locations and procedures where a search is likely to find out of date junk.

is4junk 28 Feb 2015 19:23 UTC
0 points
in reply to: TheAncientGeek’s comment on: What subjects are important to rationality, but not covered in Less Wrong?
I think there would be more contributions. For instance, StarSlateCodex seems to get more engagement by discussing the Taboo topics. Its widely believed that many LWers left here but visit those types of sites. Could LW fully explore rationality without the those topics? Probably—but it would be dry and boring.

I think that the reddit code base (LW’s) would be a better platform for the rationality community then a bunch of random unconnected websites. I had proposed an egalitarian software solution which I think would allow the Taboo topics to be discussed without forcing them on anyone.

is4junk 28 Feb 2015 17:29 UTC
2 points
in reply to: TheAncientGeek’s comment on: What subjects are important to rationality, but not covered in Less Wrong?
What are the current developments? Is anything dominant now? Wiki claims Logical Positivism was dominant until 1960.

Also do the current developments matter? Would any of the hard sciences do things differently? Did the change affect the soft sciences?

is4junk 28 Feb 2015 3:45 UTC
−6 points
on: What subjects are important to rationality, but not covered in Less Wrong?
The missing topics are labeled Taboo. I believe the Less Wrong community could contribute quite a bit to each of these but they are just too painful. I wish there was a way to discuss aspects of them without falling into the tired ruts. I am convinced that some LWers have gone down these paths and returned or discovered something insightful. But the current Taboos on it makes it difficult to broach these topics. Also there are trolls for many of them...
- Diets (Keto, low carb)
- Democracy (NRx)
- Red pill (PUA)
- IQ (gender, race, culture, marshmallows)
- Climate change (science theory)

is4junk 28 Feb 2015 3:22 UTC
8 points
in reply to: advancedatheist’s comment on: In memory of Leonard Nimoy, most famous for playing the (straw) rationalist Spock, what are your top 3 ST:TOS episodes with him?
I always liked that episode. Before I thought being emotionless was effortless for Spock. When I saw that episode I realized he had to work at it.

is4junk 25 Feb 2015 3:17 UTC
0 points
in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: Open thread, Feb. 23 - Mar. 1, 2015
I don’t have kids so take this with a grain of salt. Just give a disappointed/disapproval look every time he swears. Maybe practice in the mirror. Let guess culture work its magic.

is4junk 22 Feb 2015 22:08 UTC
0 points
in reply to: michaelsullivan’s comment on: Money threshold Trigger Action Patterns
Thanks for the insights. I am not in the industry. I hadn’t thought about the tax and creditor aspects of life insurance. I can see how those could become murky really quick.
As for the cryogenics, yes I was thinking of some sort of life insurance policy. Maybe I should take it off my list since ‘permanent death’ would be financially devastating. My thinking was you probably have other things to focus on if you can’t pay it out of pocket.

As for house and renter insurance, I don’t think the insurance company’s profit is a good indicator of how much expected value they are for an individual—maybe a best case scenario. For example, these factors would vary by individual. Who is subsidizing them?
- Subsidizing irresponsible dumb-asses (deep frying your frozen turkey indoors would qualify)
- Subsidizing those with more stuff, better record keeping of it, and flat out liars
- Subsidizing those who manipulate the claim adjuster better (are they as sympathetic to your case?)
- Subsidizing bad law
- Subsidizing moral hazard

is4junk 20 Feb 2015 22:58 UTC
12 points
on: Money threshold Trigger Action Patterns
Other trigger points should be when to self-insure. The usual guidance is when you could easily pay the replacement costs. Insurance is always a low odds bet. The only economic reason for it is when losing the bet would devastate you financially.
- electronics insurance (self insure only)
- cryonics insurance (self insure only)
- travel insurance (self insure only)
- renters insurance (self-insure as soon as you have enough savings to easily cover your essentials)
- car insurance (I don’t think you can legally self insure all of it)
- house insurance (self insure if rich and no mortgage)
- health insurance (self insure if super rich)