John_Maxwell_Old

Karma: 11

John_Maxwell_Old 5 Mar 2009 21:14 UTC
0 points
on: Posting now enabled on Less Wrong
How are you and Robin going to decide whether a post is more appropriate for Less Wrong or Overcoming Bias?

John_Maxwell_Old 26 Feb 2009 5:36 UTC
3 points
on: Markets are Anti-Inductive
Eliezer does a good job of explaining a mechanism by which two investments with negatively correlated returns can switch to having positively correlated returns. But he doesn’t do a good job of convincing me that a stock’s price has a tendency to go down when it has just gone up, and vice versa.

I can think of an argument against this position. It seems plausible that stock traders see the past movement of a stock as an indicator of it’s future movement. If a majority of traders share this belief, this will compel them to buy the stock from those who don’t, inflating it’s value and reinforcing the cycle. This would indicate that markets are inductive, which is the opposite of what the title suggests.

John_Maxwell_Old 26 Feb 2009 2:08 UTC
0 points
on: Markets are Anti-Inductive
Seconding Psy-Kosh in being confused & unconvinced.

John_Maxwell_Old 21 Feb 2009 2:13 UTC
0 points
on: Pretending to be Wise
OK, I get it.

John_Maxwell_Old 21 Feb 2009 1:46 UTC
2 points
on: Pretending to be Wise
Paolo Freire said, “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”

If the outcome of their conflict is not being affected by your existence, it can be said that you are neutral. If you disagree with me, I would be interested to hear what definition of “neutral” you are using.

John_Maxwell_Old 28 Jan 2009 0:25 UTC
1 point
on: OB Status Update

A completely unbiased user culture would view anything that was posted (or not posted) as equally valuable. What use is that?

I think your definition of “unbiased” resides on the opposite side of the galaxy from mine.

I also like Daniel Franke’s idea.

John_Maxwell_Old 28 Jan 2009 0:19 UTC
0 points
on: OB Status Update

Once the initial site is up and running, the next items on the agenda include much better support for reading through sequences. And I’ll organize more of my old posts (and perhaps some of Robin’s) into sequences.

Great! This is an excellent excuse to further put off my sequence-reading!

John_Maxwell_Old 25 Dec 2008 22:06 UTC
0 points
on: Harmful Options
Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice—which I haven’t read, though I’ve read some of the research behind it

Yay, a book I’ve read that Eliezer hasn’t! That said, I don’t actually recommend it; it was kinda tedious and repetitive.

John_Maxwell_Old 30 Nov 2008 5:06 UTC
0 points
on: Thanksgiving Prayer
To a degree, it is useful to value truth over happiness in each of the occupations you mention. But humans have the ability to restrict their critical analysis to certain domains. Allow me to rewrite my comment:

As a firm atheist, I am fully open to the possibility that much of the world should stay religious, unless they’re doing some sort of important work that’s tangentially related to the question of God’s existence (like studying humanity’s origins), or they are doing some sort of work that requires them to make sure they don’t compartmentalize their critical analysis.

John_Maxwell_Old 30 Nov 2008 2:58 UTC
0 points
on: Thanksgiving Prayer
@billswift:

The obviously religious ones like Abigail and Richard aren’t really worth responding to except with general disdain.

Unless you care about atheism’s reputation.

The fact is that religious belief, if fully attained, can be an enormously useful psychological crutch. As a firm atheist, I am fully open to the possibility that much of the world should stay religious, unless they’re doing some sort of important work that necessitates them to value truth over happiness.

And if you decide that someone would be better off as an atheist, you shouldn’t try to grab their psychological crutch all at once. They’ll just grip tighter.

John_Maxwell_Old 18 Nov 2008 2:58 UTC
0 points
on: Whither OB?
I still haven’t read most of the archive, and I’m reading slower than you’re posting… So I’m going to second everyone who says a reduce posting rate is A-OK.

John_Maxwell_Old 6 Nov 2008 1:36 UTC
1 point
on: Today’s Inspirational Tale
Knowing the name of my representative (Mike Honda btw) is not going to increase my political influence. I’d have to be chummy with him before he gave any serious weight to my opinion. All the congressman’s question revealed was whether the people in his audience gave any thought to politics, not whether they could be effective politically if they tried.

As for voting, I see it as a waste of time to study issues which I have only a tiny probability of affecting. The best strategy I can see in this situation is to ask your most intelligent and unbiased friend how they’re voting and then vote in advance to avoid standing in line. (To make this strategy work on a large scale, I should also spend time studying issues if all my friends say I’m their smartest and least biased friend. In this case my vote has a significantly higher probability of affecting the election, making my study worthwhile.)

John_Maxwell_Old 6 Nov 2008 1:28 UTC
0 points
on: Newcomb’s Problem and Regret of Rationality
As a rationalist, it might be worthwhile to take the one box just so those Omega know-it-alls will be wrong for once.

John_Maxwell_Old 6 Nov 2008 0:47 UTC
2 points
on: Hanging Out My Speaker’s Shingle
I don’t even know what this blog is supposed to be about anymore.

I think we should rename it “Robin and Eliezers’ Varied Thoughts”.

John_Maxwell_Old 22 Oct 2008 4:48 UTC
0 points
on: Bay Area Meetup for Singularity Summit
I’m planning to come. Does “casual” mean “jeans and t-shirt” or “collared shirt and slacks”?

John_Maxwell_Old 18 Oct 2008 1:21 UTC
0 points
on: Bay Area Meetup for Singularity Summit
Here’s a link to the Yahoo Yellow Pages with various types of restaurants near Montgomery Theater.

Does anyone who reads Overcoming Bias live in San Jose? If so, can you recommend a restaurant?

John_Maxwell_Old 12 Oct 2008 19:44 UTC
0 points
on: Bay Area Meetup for Singularity Summit
Richard, can you think of a better format than a round-table one? I imagine it might be difficult to find a room for people to mill around in.

John_Maxwell_Old 11 Oct 2008 1:48 UTC
0 points
on: AIs and Gatekeepers Unite!
BTW, there is an important difference between Eliezer and seed AI: Eliezer can’t rewrite his own source code.

John_Maxwell_Old 11 Oct 2008 1:44 UTC
0 points
on: AIs and Gatekeepers Unite!
I’m volunteering to be a relatively pansy gatekeeper: I’ll read everything you write, treat you courteously, offer counterarguments, and let you out if I’m convinced. Email john.maxwelliv at the email service Google hosts.

I can also be an AI.

John_Maxwell_Old 4 Oct 2008 17:54 UTC
0 points
on: Rationality Quotes 18
It’s not which measurement has the procedural error that matters. It’s what you do when you discover it.

Alternatively, what should the robot do if it gets one measurement that’s far different than all the others, and it doesn’t know why?