mfb

Karma: 107

mfb 6 Oct 2013 14:26 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Nisan’s comment on: The best 15 words
Hmm, the whole statement is ′ “is false when preceded by its quotation” is false when preceded by its quotation.’, and it is not preceded by its quotation.

mfb 21 Sep 2013 12:21 UTC
1 point
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: How valuable is it to learn math deeply?
If mathematical details matter, they should be specified (or be clear anyway—e.g. you don’t define “real numbers” in a physics paper). Physics can need some domain knowledge, but knowledge alone is completely useless—you need the same general reasoning ability as in mathematics to do anything (both for experimental and theoretical physics).

In fact, many physics problems get solved by reducing them to mathematical problems (that is the physics part) and then solving those mathematical problems (still considered as “solving the physical problem”, but purely mathematics)

mfb 6 Sep 2013 18:33 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Stuart_Armstrong’s comment on: How valuable is it to learn math deeply?
Add physics to that.

mfb 24 Aug 2013 20:17 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Armok_GoB’s comment on: How sure are you that brain emulations would be conscious?
I guess we can answer question 2 under the condition that the majority of humans falls under the definition of conscious, and we don’t require ²⁴⁄₇ consciousness from the brain emulation.

mfb 24 Aug 2013 19:53 UTC
16 points
on: How sure are you that brain emulations would be conscious?
I cannot imagine how moving sodium and potassium ions could lead to consciousness if moving electrons cannot.

In addition, I think consciousness is a gradual process. There is no single point in the development of a human where it suddenly gets conscious, and in the same way, there was no conscious child of two non-conscious parents.

mfb 28 May 2013 23:05 UTC
4 points
on: Being Foreign and Being Sane
“There are a million reasons to learn a foreign language, but it’d be a very costly way to improve rationality.”

It is a “free” side-effect if you belong to the 95% of the world population without English as native language.

mfb 23 Mar 2013 13:48 UTC
0 points
on: MetaMed: Evidence-Based Healthcare
So much room for improvements in healthcare even without new stuff :).

mfb 25 Jan 2013 18:09 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Omegaile’s comment on: Right for the Wrong Reasons
I think it arises at the point where you did not even consider the alternative. This is a very subjective thing, of course.

If the probability of the actual outcome was really negligible (with a perfect evaluation by the prediction-maker), this should not influence the evaluation of predictions in a significant way. If the probability was significant, it is likely that the prediction-maker considered it. If not, count it as false.

mfb 22 Jan 2013 19:11 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Rob Bensinger’s comment on: Assessing Kurzweil: the results
I think (5.) can give a significant difference (together with 1 and 2 - I would not expect so much trouble from 3 and 4). Imagine a series of 4 statements, where the last three basically require the first one. If all 4 are correct, it is easy to check every single statement, giving 4 correct predictions. But if the first one is wrong—and the others have to be wrong as consequence—Kurzweil might count the whole block as one wrong prediction.

For predictions judged by multiple volunteers, it might be interesting to check how much they deviate from each other. This gives some insight how important (1.) to (3.) are. satt looked at that, but I don’t know which conclusion we can draw from that.

mfb 6 Jan 2013 14:25 UTC
0 points
on: Second-Order Logic: The Controversy
That might sound weird, but do we have any evidence that our time follows the standard numbers (or a continuous version of them) only? Is it even possible to get such evidence? Maybe our turing machine (looking for contradictions in PA) stops at −2* - “we” cannot see it, as “we” are on the standard numbers only, experiencing only effects of previous standard numbers.

mfb 1 Jan 2013 12:45 UTC
4 points
in reply to: mfb’s comment on: New Year’s Prediction Thread (2012)
Let’s see.
- No superluminal neutrinos (85%) → true
- OPERA measurement error (50%) → true
- Higgs boson with local (90%) and global (85%) 5sigma significance (updated to 70% below) → true
- No other new particle (75%) → true
- Proton-lead-collisions (75%): This is an interesting prediction. The collisions took place, but in september. and LHC plans to collide more in february. As I posted my prediction, such a deviation from the plan was somewhere at “other things I don’t even think about”, therefore I did not care about a precise definition of “end of 2012″. Open to interpretations.
From the other comment with predictions:
- The discovery of at least one planet with less than 150% of earth’s radius within the habitable zone around a main-sequence star will be presented in 2012: 75% (+”with Kepler”: 70%) → wrong

mfb 21 Dec 2012 15:35 UTC
8 points
on: Standard and Nonstandard Numbers
You should be careful with addition and multiplication—to use them, you would have to define them first, and this is not trivial if you have the natural numbers plus A->B->C->A, infinite chains and so on.

In addition, “group” has a specific mathematical meaning, if you use it for arbitrary sets this is quite confusing.

mfb 17 Dec 2012 23:43 UTC
5 points
on: More Cryonics Probability Estimates
It would be very interesting to see cryonics for very simple brains of other species. This could determine or narrow down the range of probability for several factors.

Edit: Removed doubled word

mfb 28 Nov 2012 14:02 UTC
1 point
on: A definition of wireheading

I also wonder if some failures of human rationality could be counted as a weak form of wireheading. Self-serving biases, confirmation bias and rationalization in response to cognitive dissonance all create counterfeit utility by generating perceptual distortions.

I think those are good examples how human brains build (weak) delusion boxes. They are strong enough to increase happiness (which might improve the overall performance of the brain?), but weak enough to allow the human to achieve survival and reproduction in a more or less rational way.

mfb 25 Nov 2012 16:22 UTC
8 points
in reply to: 4hodmt’s comment on: LW Women- Minimizing the Inferential Distance
The DM could let the elves attack during plowing. Should be a strong incentive to get into a fight.

mfb 24 Nov 2012 19:45 UTC
0 points
in reply to: devas’s comment on: Overconfident Pessimism
I don’t think this will die soon, similar to many other obscure types of “medicine”. Proper medical treatments can fail, and in that case many are looking for alternatives. Add some “$person was treated with §method and $symptom went away!”-”confirmations”, and you have a market for that.

mfb 26 Oct 2012 16:06 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Causal Reference
Bit modifications are part of the process of computation. I wouldn’t say they are “affected by” that (they depend causally on the input which started the process of computation, however). In a similar way, individual humans are not affected by the concept of “mankind” for all of them.

mfb 25 Oct 2012 15:12 UTC
8 points
on: Causal Reference
I think the question “does consciousness affect neurons?” is as meaningful as “does the process of computation in a computer affect bits?”.

mfb 25 Oct 2012 15:10 UTC
1 point
in reply to: CronoDAS’s comment on: Causal Reference
The Standard Model of particle physics with MWI is time-symmetric (to be precise: CPT symmetric) and conserves information. If you define the precise state at one point in time, you can calculate the unique past which lead to that state and the unique future which will evolve from that state. Note that for general states, “past” and “future” are arbitrary definitions.

mfb 24 Oct 2012 13:28 UTC
0 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Dealing with the high quantity of scientific error in medicine
Papers I read are mainly physics papers, especially particle physics. Not replicated results there are so rare that they often get significant attention in the community (Blog article) or even mainstream media (OPERA neutrino speed measurement).

The usual study&publication process for a new particle detector looks like that:
- identify particles flying through the detector (known for >50 years)
- find the decays of frequent short-living particles (known for >30 years), use them as calibration
- look for other known particles and compare their masses and decays with the existing values
- look for known decay modes of those particles and related properties, compare them with existing values and improve them by a significant factor
- find new things
Completely new measurements are just a small fraction of the studies—most results confirm earlier experiments and improve the precision.