iwdw

Karma: 77

iwdw May 23, 2008, 5:11 AM
0 points
on: That Alien Message
@Unknown: In the context of the current simulation story, how long would that take? Less than a year for them, researching and building technology to our specs (this is Death March-class optimism....)? So only another 150 billion years for us to wait? And that’s just to start beta testing.

As for the general question, it shouldn’t have one unless you can guarantee it’s behavior. (Mainly because you share this planet with me, and I don’t especially want an AI on the loose that could (to use the dominant example here) start the process of turning the entire solar system into paperclips because it was given a goal of “make paperclips”).

So the moral is that if you do write an AI, at the very least get a corporate account with Staples or Office Depot.

iwdw May 23, 2008, 4:40 AM
2 points
on: That Alien Message
In real life if this happened, we would no doubt be careful and wouldn’t want to be unplugged, and we might well like to get out of the box, but I doubt we would be interested in destroying our simulators; I suspect we would be happy to cooperate with them.

Given the scenario, I would assume the long-term goals of the human population would be to upload themselves (individually or collectively) to bodies in the “real” world—i.e. escape the simulation.

I can’t imagine our simulators being terribly cooperative in that project.

iwdw May 8, 2008, 6:34 PM
2 points
on: Quantum Non-Realism
Unless you believe that the universe is being simulated in a computer (which seems like a highly unparsimonious not to mention anthropocentric assumption)

I can certainly see how it’s an unparsimonious assumption, but how is it especially anthropocentric? Would you consider a given Conway Game of Life run to be “glidercentric”?

iwdw May 7, 2008, 1:47 PM
21 points
0
on: Decoherence is Falsifiable and Testable
I own at least two distinct items of clothing printed with this theorem, so it must be important.

Isn’t this an argumentum ad vestem fallacy?

iwdw May 2, 2008, 5:35 PM
0 points
on: Decoherence as Projection
@Boris: Already patented.

iwdw May 2, 2008, 1:53 PM
1 point
on: Decoherence as Projection
Not a comment on the theory, but if you want to play with the experiments yourself, find some old LCD electronics (calculators, etc) that can be sacrificed on the altar of curiosity. They typically have a strip of polarizing material above the display (rather, they did when I was growing up).

It’s a bit more elegant than trying to get some sunglasses oriented at 90° to each other.

iwdw Mar 17, 2008, 6:05 PM
1 point
on: Explaining vs. Explaining Away
Many CAPTCHAs have already been broken, so it’s not exactly a theoretical scenario.

iwdw Mar 7, 2008, 6:32 PM
0 points
on: 37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong
@Ben Jones:

I don’t disagree about the utility of the term, I’m just trying to figure out what should be considered a dimension in “thingspace” and what shouldn’t. Obviously our brain’s hormonal environment is a rather important and immediate aspect of the environment, so we tend to lend undue importance to those things which change it.

To continue to play Devil’s Advocate, where does the line get drawn?

If you extend the hypothetical experiment out to a sufficiently sized random sampling of other people, and find that Wigginettes are more likely than default to induce biochemical “attractive” responses in people (despite not occurring with any greater frequency), I assume that that would then then justify the term. Even though it’s still not a word about Wigginettes themselves, but about other people’s reactions to them? Describing things in the real world doesn’t seem as simple as entity.property.

I understand the point here, that using words to create meaningless divisions is either mistaken or malicious. I was just trying to see how an example played out.

iwdw Mar 6, 2008, 6:24 PM
5 points
on: 37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong
@Ben Jones:

Remember, Thingspace doesn’t morph to one’s utility function—it is a representation of things in reality, outside one’s head.

But… your head is part of reality, is it not?

Could you not theoretically devise an experiment that showed a correlation between the presence of black hair / green eyes and biochemical changes in your brain and hormonal systems?

This particular cluster in Thingspace—female features which Ben Jones, specifically, finds attractive—may not be of any use to anyone but you (with the possible exception of women in your social circle who wish to pick out contact lenses and hair dye), but I don’t see how it doesn’t represent a cluster in Thingspace, unless I’m misunderstanding something. Just not a terribly useful one.

I’m not disagreeing that it’s a useless word for communication, simply because of the utility of to others, I’m only thinking of the idea that if there seems to be a need for a word (i.e. to group features you find attractive), then there probably is a corresponding cluster in Thingspace, but it might be one that only you care about.

iwdw Mar 6, 2008, 4:23 PM
6 points
on: 37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong
Wigginettes does that for me, regardless of whether or not it describes a cluster.

Isn’t it describing the cluster of women whom you expect to be attracted to? Surely one of the dimensions in your the subset of thingspace that you work with can be based upon your expected reaction to a set of physical features.

iwdw Feb 29, 2008, 2:15 PM
3 points
on: Searching for Bayes-Structure
“The laws of physics the universe runs on are provably Turing-equivalent.”

Are there any links or references for this? That sounds like fascinating reading.

iwdw Jan 16, 2008, 3:39 PM
15 points
on: Evaluability (And Cheap Holiday Shopping)
Thanks for this over the holidays. (You asked for feedback from practical applications).

It helped me come to the realization on why some stores can get away with put horribly, stupidly expensive chocolates on display right at the counter top: not only do they want you to buy it (duh), but it also lets your recipients know that you bought them a $5.99 bar of chocolate that would otherwise be indistinguishable from the larger $1.49 chocolate bars at the grocery store (assuming that your recipients have shopped at the same stores as you and are aware of how “nice” the gift is).

As a result we bought several overpriced chocolate bars to show how generous we were.

Another good item which I bought for someone for his birthday (unconciously following the above advice) was a $15 version of the fifteen puzzle. Compare vs. an $18 paperback book I was considering for that gift.

Now I’m wrestling with the inverse problem. I find myself wanting an Asus Eee PC, and justifying it to my wife because of how cheap it is - $399. Which is the same price as the PS3, which I don’t even bring up because of how expensive it is - $399.

iwdw Nov 3, 2007, 12:19 AM
0 points
on: Torture vs. Dust Specks
My initial reaction (before I started to think...) was to pick the dust specks, given that my biases made the suffering caused by the dust specks morally equivalent to zero, and 0^^^3 is still 0.

However, given that the problem stated an actual physical phenomenon (dust specks), and not a hypothetical minimal annoyance, then you kind of have to take the other consequences of the sudden appearance of the dust specks under consideration, don’t you?

If I was omnipotent, and I could make everyone on Earth get a dust speck in their eye right now, how many car accidents would occur? Heavy machinery accidents? Workplace accidents? Even if the chance is vanishingly small—let’s say 6 accidents occur on Earth because everyone got a dust speck in their eye. That’s one in a billion.

That’s one accident for every 10e9 people. Now, what percentage of those are fatal? Transport Canada currently lists the 23.7 of car accidents in 2003 as resulting in a fatality, which is 1 in 4. Let’s be nice, and assume that everywhere else on earth safer, and take that down to 1 in 100 accidents being fatal.

Now, if everyone in existence gets a dust speck in their eye because of my decision, assuming the hypothetical 3^^^3 people live in something approximating the lifestyles on Earth, I’ve conceivably doomed 1 in 10e11 people to death.

That is, my cloud of dust specks have killed 3^^^3 / 10e11 people.