[...] the only good thing about any form of utilitarianism: [...] Anyone with complete information of the universe could [...]
It doesn’t make sense to use an impossibility as part of the judging criteria for the goodness of something.
An action/utility function can only ever be a function over (at most) all information available to the agent.
I’m not arguing for any particular view, but the causal reach of possible policies/actions should determine the reach of the averaging function, right? It makes as little sense to include other possible universes in our calculation of optimal policies for this universe, as it does to try to coordinate policies between two space-time points (within the same universe) that can’t causally interact with one another.
If we’re trying to find and implement good policies (according to whatever definition of “good”), then in deciding on goodness of a policy, we should only care about the things that we can actually affect, and in proportion to the degree to which we can affect them.
A bunch of new names on the RSVP—looking forward to meeting you all tomorrow! Note that Yi Xin is so ‘small and casual’ that it doesn’t usually take table bookings, but it shouldn’t take any longer than 10 mins to get a table. Please try to let me know in the comments here if you’re likely to be more than 20 mins late so we can time our ‘chope-ing’ (we’ll need multiple tables).
See you tomorrow night!
Ah, interesting to think about the stuff in these principles/ideas for non-mathy problems!
Regarding your point about actively forgetting: Yeah, it seems like there’s an interesting trade-off to consider in choosing how long to stay “steeped” in a task. I’m guessing it depends a lot on the “depth” of the problem being solved—i.e. for some problems I think it can take several days or more just to get to the point where you’ve loaded in enough “context” to start actually making any progress on it, and so you need to stay deep in it for several days at a time. Whereas with other problems it could take hours or less to get “deep” into the problem, and so in that case it probably makes sense to have a faster cadence of solving vs actively forgetting because you hit diminishing returns fairly quickly after attacking the problem for several hours. I’ll have to think more about this.
Thanks for your comment!
Thanks for sharing, matto—I’ll look into those two authors 👍
Thanks for commenting—glad to know it’s useful!
The short answer is that most of the lessons come from my hobby of thinking about weird learning rules—alternatives to back-prop that make more sense under certain conditions/requirements.
(Can’t say I pass my own test from the “Are you solving the right problem?” section, but it’s just a hobby anyway.)
Hey all, @FlorianH is right, Yi Xin is closed today—my bad! So we’ll be heading across the road to the backup location—the hawker center has lots of different options (including McDonalds). They have excellent an Mala stall (I’ll be getting that), but there are a million other stalls there. We’ll still be meeting at Yi Xin just in case someone doesn’t get this notification.
We’ll either eat at the hawker center (if it’s quiet enough today), or get takeaway and sit in a public mini park thing that’s nearby, or sit in McDonalds (I’ll buy us some drinks as an excuse if no one orders from there).
Sorry for the late reply to Florian’s message! My sleep schedule is such that I’m currently nocturnal (I’m trying to loop it around), and I just woke up. Completely understand if some of you have to change your RSVP status!
Hey all, Nathan and I sitting inside—I’m wearing a grey shirt and black shorts. Nathan is wearing a black shirt that says “deep note”.
Hey friends, just a quick reminder that the dinner is tomorrow night. I’m going to get there a bit early to try and grab us a table. See you tomorrow! :)
I’m here early, and managed to snag a table. I’m wearing a light-brown shirt and black shorts. My hat is in the middle of the table (it’s one of the two outside tables).
No problem 👍
No problem!
Hey khushjammu, I think there is a second group being formed, but if that doesn’t go ahead, then you’re welcome to join the original group tonight, since @papa can’t make it. But please don’t abandon the second group if that’s going ahead and you’ve already committed! If you don’t reply by 2pm, and assuming the second group isn’t being formed, then I’ll open it up to the others to fill the slot. Hope that’s okay!
No problem!
@khushjammu will get this message as a notification (since they have RSVPed), but I think you’ll have to send a private message to @smallsilo (unless they manually subscribed to the comments on this post), because it doesn’t seem like LessWrong has proper user tagging.
If you do manage to set up a second group, you may want to organise to arrive 30 minutes earlier or later if possible, since that would make it easier for us to find our respective group members, and minimise any accidental “mixing”. If a big group of us all arrive at once, that could look a bit sus, even if we are being sure to remain separated.
Hey! Currently there are seven people so a group of 5, plus 2 waiting (khushjammu and yourself). I’ll probably organise another catch up (probably same place and time) in the next few weeks, so if you want you can wait for that. If another person or two join then you could form a second group. In any case, I’ll let you know if there’s an opening for this week’s event due to a couple of people having to drop out 👍
Hey everyone! Since it’s such a small gathering and there are some people on the “wait list”, please comment as a reply to this message to double-confirm that you’re coming.
Note that you’ll of course need to be vaccinated to get in (vaccinated=2 weeks after second shot, per trace together app).
We’re not able to book a table a head of time (walk-ins only at the moment), but I think we should be able to get a table even if we have to wait outside for 15 mins (I’ll arrive a bit before 6pm). Worst case we can just order take-away and head across the road to the People’s Park Complex hawker centre for seating. We may head there after Yi Xin (which closes at 8pm) anyway if we feel like we’re getting kicked out in the middle of an interesting discussion.
Also, if you want, bring along a list of things that you’d like to discuss—e.g. big/important model updates that you’ve recently had, or things that you’ve been thinking a lot about.
See you on Saturday!
We may actually be full for this one since I think @papa didn’t realise there was an RSVP button (he only commented), but you’re first on the “wait list” in case someone needs to drop out. Either way I’m going to organise a few of these so I’ll let you know when the next one is 👍
Hey all, I’ve booked a table that seats up to 10, so we have room for a couple more in case there are any last minute RSVPs (it was the only table they had left anyway). We’ll meet outside the restaurant at 7pm and wait a bit before heading in. Please try to be on-time-ish, and let me know if you’re likely to be late. Eight Treasures is quite busy tomorrow and they’re requesting advanced orders, so I’ll send out a menu to you all soon and you can pick some stuff. If you’re fine with whatever, then I’ll fill out the order with a variety of ‘recommend’ dishes. I think most dishes will be shared (it’s a round table with a turntable), so there should be a lot of variety for those who don’t really know what to order.
Looking forward to tomorrow!
Edit: Here’s the menu. Also, this FoodPanda link has dietary stuff marked (most dishes are vegan), and also has prices (click item to see small/medium/large price).