Miller

Karma: 423

Miller May 19, 2012, 5:07 PM
15 points
on: Depression as a defense mechanism against slavery
Rank Theory of Depression

Miller May 16, 2012, 2:04 AM
0 points
on: Food4Me—personalised nutrition initiative
I believe I have a few results of this nature in my 23andme profile but, like most results there, they indicate e.g. that I might gain an extra .5 pounds compared to average on a high fat diet.

I got a kick when I logged in there and it said something to the effect of ‘see how your genes affect your weight’ and after entering height, age, and weight it told me that my genes were responsible for 2lb (whatever that meant).

It does also note lactose tolerance, alcohol and caffeine enzymes, coeliac disease risk, etc.

Miller May 13, 2012, 3:43 AM
8 points
in reply to: Wei Dai’s comment on: Neuroimaging as alternative/supplement to cryonics?

you periodically take neuroimaging scans of your brain and save them to multiple backup locations (1010 bits is only about 1 gigabyte)

I think I understand but I’m lost as to why that 10^10 is showing up here. Wouldn’t it be whatever the scan happens to be rather than a reference to the compressed size of a human’s unique experiences? We might plausibly have a 10^18 scan that is detailed in the wrong ways (like it carries 1024 bits per voxel of color channel info :p).

eta: In case it’s not clear, I can’t actually help you answer the question of just how useful a scan is.

Miller May 13, 2012, 2:49 AM
5 points
on: Neuroimaging as alternative/supplement to cryonics?
Ok so I’m presuming that an extremely fine grained scan stored with some naive compression is massively more than 10^14 synapse-bits. In order to store all that now in the information theoretic minimum, don’t we need some kind of incredibly awesome compression algorithm NOW that we simply don’t have?

Miller Nov 3, 2011, 5:42 AM
2 points
in reply to: James_Miller’s comment on: AGI Quotes
Whether the AI loves -- or hates, you cannot fathom, but plans it has indeed for your atoms.

Miller Sep 23, 2011, 6:16 AM
5 points
in reply to: Miller’s comment on: Machine learning and unintended consequences
this one:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/3gv/statistical_prediction_rules_outperform_expert/

When based on the same evidence, the predictions of SPRs are at least as reliable as, and are typically more reliable than, the predictions of human experts for problems of social prediction.

Hmm yes, ‘same evidence’.

Miller Sep 23, 2011, 4:25 AM
−3 points
on: Machine learning and unintended consequences
I’m reminded of one of your early naively breathless articles here on the value of mid-80s and prior expert systems.

Miller Sep 11, 2011, 5:50 AM
3 points
on: Dubstep and algorithmic information theory
All of your pretensions aside that’s a pretty slick link.

Miller Sep 11, 2011, 3:17 AM
3 points
in reply to: Hyena’s comment on: My favorite popular scientific self-help books
I read it. Luke’s article here was more or less a transcription of the more interesting parts. The author essentially agreed. So you need 30 minutes. Set your pomodoro.

Miller Aug 25, 2011, 4:13 AM
8 points
in reply to: komponisto’s comment on: Help Fund Lukeprog at SIAI

Because “signing” comments is not customary here, doing so signals a certain aloofness or distance from the community

No. I am very confident the intention was to signal that Luke was not being emotionally affected by the intense criticism for the purpose of appearing to be leader type material, which is substantially not aloofness from the community.

It’s not a convincing signal primarily because it’s idiosyncracy highlights it for analysis, but I still think the above holds.

Miller Aug 25, 2011, 3:45 AM
7 points
in reply to: shokwave’s comment on: Help Fund Lukeprog at SIAI
Can we be forgiving and assume that multiple anecdotes fail because they have a consistent bias related to how they are obtained?

Miller Jul 29, 2011, 10:52 PM
6 points
in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: exists(max(performance(pay)))
So you give me a firm denial, and then you edit out the first sentence which made it clear you were referencing contemporary politics, and clean up other sloppiness. I’ll just move on.

Miller Jul 29, 2011, 8:32 PM
2 points
on: exists(max(performance(pay)))
I take it you just felt like ranting.

Miller Jul 27, 2011, 10:40 PM
1 point
on: Locating emotions
Sadness apparently leaked on the floor.

Miller Jul 20, 2011, 1:09 AM
3 points
in reply to: Benquo’s comment on: Should rationalists put much thought into tipping and/or voting?
Oh yeah it’s full of them. They are the kinds of things you say ‘sure that makes sense’, ‘oh I’ve seen that used before’, and ‘man that’s douche-y’. But I suspect they are all generally true and effective.

The book is: “Roger Dawson’s Secrets of Power Negotiating”.

I had a friend recently tell me that their company bought a license for a platform operating system for 75k$, whereas the initial asking price was 750k$. So somewhere in between those prices is a lot of value to be made by negotiating. It makes the engineer salaries a relative trifle.

Miller Jul 17, 2011, 12:08 AM
0 points
in reply to: KPier’s comment on: The limits of introspection
Strikes me as a behaviorist → cognitivist paradigm shift. Scientists just got tired of the old way (or more specifically, it simply stopped being new). That’d be my armchair guess.

edit :Someone better qualified should answer that. I’m not even sure that’s behaviorism.

Miller Jul 15, 2011, 5:22 AM
22 points
0
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Ego syntonic thoughts and values
I am going to take the unflattering guess that your expectations for yourself are generally unrealistic, and that you are unwilling to face this fact. This is not a conscious thing but an emotional and subconscious expectation trained into you during childhood (possibly). Quite simply, hard work and small incremental gains are beneath you. Failures on inconsequential steps are unacceptable. If only a simple solution were found, the key would turn, and an uber-awesome-individual emerge.

Many of the subjects addressed on this very website are grandiose in nature. By involving yourself, the signal is that you can participate in them: research topics from the deepest corners of academia, immortality, fate of humanity, superior general problem solving on all subjects, etc. We flock to them because we recognize they are important, and we flatter ourselves to recognize they are important, and yet our contributions to them are negligible. Sure we can admit we are horrible at decision theory or quantum mechanics or any specific item, but there must be something that can be found that will demonstrate the grand plan that features us as the hero. Even failing at quantum mechanics is better than the guy that thinks it’s a magazine that sits next to Motor Trend in the garage lobby, right?

This is narcissism spectrum stuff and very ego syntotic. It’s my new hammer and everything looks like nails, so I can easily be wrong. The (unconscious) decision is ultimately between living in a false fantasy of grandeur or living in a real world where you are one of many: striving for marginal gains, and doomed to grow old and die.

The guy that wrote this is mostly describing himself, is controversial, and is substantially more screwed up than almost anyone, but tell me if it rings any bells. He goes on elsewhere to differentiate cerebral from physical varieties of narcissism. It’s a word that kind of needs tabooing, but the underlying symptom is vehement subconscious guarding of a false fantasy persona. We aren’t secretly Harry Potter.

I notice that you don’t mention other people in any of your solutions (except #9 where you are causing an attention fueling ruckus). Why not?

Miller Jul 14, 2011, 4:15 AM
6 points
on: Should rationalists put much thought into tipping and/or voting?
Was thumbing through a negotiating book and it made the rather stunning and clearly true observation that the few minutes\hours it takes to talk someone down a few extra bucks is probably substantially higher than any wage rate you’ll ever make. Many orders of magnitude on occasion. This is particularly true if you are leveraging the buying\selling power of a corporation, rather than just buying a trinket in Jamaica.

Miller Jun 28, 2011, 3:47 PM
2 points
in reply to: j_andrew_rogers’s comment on: Nevada Passes Law Authorizing Driverless Cars
Yeah Hastings was fond of saying ‘That’s why we called it NETflix not DVDs-by-mail’.. although I think even in the late 90s there were some weak attempts at video on demand over the web so the vision wasn’t nearly as advanced as I think it would be in Zipcar’s case. One of the major problems in the analogy is that the capital investment to replace cars is so ridiculously enormous it’s difficult to imagine one company capturing a large chunk of it.

The precise details of how driverless cars come to be used will be fascinating. Urban or rural first? taxi replacement or owned first? Will there be restricted areas? Who are the major players? Does it kill existing mass transit (I think so)? What will be the dominant fueling model? What will NYC do with the subway (make it a high speed expressway for the cars perhaps)? Will webvan make a comeback (snicker)?

Miller Jun 26, 2011, 6:01 PM
1 point
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: The Kolmogorov complexity of a superintelligence
Interesting. How does the program determine hard questions (and their answers) without qualifying as generating them itself? That is, the part about enumerating other programs seems superfluous.

[Edit added seconds later] Ok, I see perhaps it could ask something like ‘predict what’s gonna happen 10 seconds from now’, and then wait to see if the prediction is correct after the universe runs for that long. In that case, the parent program isn’t computing the answer itself.