mkehrt

Karma: 210

mkehrt Nov 27, 2011, 1:52 AM
4 points
in reply to: ZankerH’s comment on: Review of Kurzweil, ‘The Singularity is Near’
This isn’t really true—clock performance is a really good metric for computing power. If your clock speed doubles, you get a 2x speedup in the amount of computation you can do without any algorithmic changes. If you instead increase chip complexity, e.g., with parallelism, you need to write new code to take advantage of it.

mkehrt Nov 12, 2011, 4:44 AM
2 points
in reply to: moridinamael’s comment on: Do the people behind the veil of ignorance vote for “specks”?
I’m not entirely convinced by the rest of your argument, but

The idea that multiplying suffering by the number of sufferers yields a correct and valid total-suffering value is not fundamental truth, it is just a naive extrapolation of our intuitions that should help guide our decisions.

Is, far and away, the most intelligent thing I have ever seen anyone write on this damn paradox.

Come on, people. The fact that naive preference utilitarianism gives us torture rather than dust specks is not some result we have to live with, it’s an indication that the decision theory is horribly, horribly wrong,

It is beyond me how people can look at dust specks and torture and draw the conclusion they do. In my mind, the most obvious, immediate objection is that utility does not aggregate additively across people in any reasonable ethical system. This is true no matter how big the numbers are. Instead it aggregates by minimum, or maybe multiplicatively (especially if we normalize everyone’s utility function to [0,1]).

Sorry for all the emphasis, but I am sick and tired of supposed rationalists using math to reach the reprehensible conclusion and then claiming it must be right because math. It’s the epitome of Spock “rationality”.

mkehrt Nov 4, 2011, 7:30 AM
16 points
on: 2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey
Issues with the survey:
1. As mentioned elsewhere, politics is Americentric.
2. Race race seems to be missing some categorizations.
3. If you are going to include transgender, you probably should call the others cis. Otherwise you run the risk of implying transgendered people are not “really” their target gender, which is a mess.
4. The question of academic field was poorly phrased. I’m not an academic, so I assumed you meant what academic field was most relevant to my work. But you really should ask this question without referring to academia.
5. The academic question and the question about field of work need more options.
6. Expertise question needs CS as an answer :-)
EDIT: Overall, it’s pretty good.

mkehrt Nov 4, 2011, 7:16 AM
−1 points
in reply to: Alex_Altair’s comment on: 2011 Less Wrong Census / Survey
27 years early, 60% certain. Oops.

mkehrt Oct 22, 2011, 4:50 AM
−3 points
in reply to: Logos01’s comment on: [SEQ RERUN] Beware Stephen J. Gould
I’m fairly convinced that MWI is LW dogma because it supports the Bayesian notion that probabilities are mental entitites rather than physical ones, and not on its own merits.

[link] SMBC on utilitarianism and vegatarianism.

mkehrtOct 16, 2011, 3:29 AM

1 point

69 comments1 min readLW link

mkehrt Sep 10, 2011, 2:39 AM
0 points
in reply to: pengvado’s comment on: Tool ideology
This is phenomenal! Thanks!

mkehrt Jul 26, 2011, 3:57 AM
0 points
in reply to: gwillen’s comment on: Bayesian Conspiracy @ Burning Man 2011
Every part of this comment is true for me, too.

mkehrt Jun 7, 2011, 6:04 AM
1 point
in reply to: sketerpot’s comment on: [LINK] Wondermark comic talks about “carpe diem” vs. “think more”
I think I thought this was better when it was utterly inexplicable, actually.

mkehrt Apr 14, 2011, 1:59 AM
5 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Eight questions for computationalists
That reply is entirely begging the question. Whether or not consciousness is a phenomenon “like math” or a phenomenon “like photosynthesis” is exactly is being argued about. So it’s not an answering argument; it’s an assertion.

mkehrt Apr 10, 2011, 3:53 AM
2 points
in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: Human errors, human values
No, I used http://www.rot13.com .

mkehrt Apr 10, 2011, 3:49 AM
2 points
in reply to: PhilGoetz’s comment on: Human errors, human values
It’s possible that you are referring to the secondary plot line of Chasm City by Alaistair Reynolds in which gur nagvureb wrggvfbaf unys gur uvoreangvba cbqf va uvf fgnefuvc, nyybjvat vg gb neevir orsber gur bguref va gur syrrg naq fb tnva zvyvgnel nqinagntr.

mkehrt Apr 2, 2011, 9:51 PM
8 points
on: [LINK] Clothing as status signalling, logos and co-operation
I wonder how common it is for the opposite to be true. I think visible logos on clothig are phenomenally tacky and have a strong immediate negative reaction to the people wearing them when I see them. This isn’t really a reaction to certain brands, but to the idea of advertising them.

On the other hand, I might assume that these people are wealthier.

mkehrt Mar 5, 2011, 8:12 AM
1 point
in reply to: Costanza’s comment on: Rationality Quotes: March 2011
I’ve always been a huge fan of this story.

mkehrt Feb 25, 2011, 5:08 AM
0 points
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Does Solomonoff always win?
I’m suspicious of this. My understanding is that true Solomonoff induction is incomputable (because it requires ordering by Kolomogorov complexity.). Thus, you can’t just create an algorithm to predict its next move.

edit: That is, just because it is “defined mathematically” doesn’t mean we can predict its next move.

mkehrt Feb 21, 2011, 4:27 AM
6 points
on: Is Morality a Valid Preference?
I’ve been thinking about this on and off for half a year or so, and I have come to the conclusion that I cannot agree with any proposed moral system that answers “torture” to dust specks and torture. If this means my morality is scope-insensitive, then so be it.

(I don’t think it is; I just don’t think utilitarianism with an aggregation function of summation over all individuals is correct; I think the correct aggregation function should probably be different. I am not sure what the correct aggregation function is, but maximizing the minimum individual utility is a lot closer to my intuitions than summation (where by “correct” I mean compatible with my moral intuitions). I’m planning on writing a post about this soon.)

mkehrt 17 Feb 2011 17:33 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: Overcoming the negative signal of not attending college.
For anyone high up in a political campaign, I imagine one can volunteer quite a bit to work their way in. I also know someone who tried to do this by working as a local canvasser, but those are apparently low wage jobs with no clear path to advance up the chain.

mkehrt 17 Feb 2011 7:31 UTC
1 point
on: Overcoming the negative signal of not attending college.
I think I am at least a standard deviation out on this, but my college experience had a lot of very good both theoretical and practical training which served me extremely well as a grad student and is continuing to do so in my current job. While I could imagine having done it in less than four years, the idea of learning all that I did and getting the practice applying it that I did in less than two or three years is insane. While college does have a very high signaling value, it can also be very good at what it is nominally for: teaching students. Although individuals looking to get the best jobs may find that the signaling value is what matters in achieving that goal, on a society wide level, it probably makes more sense to spend effort on increasing the quality of education.

That being said, don’t underestimate the other reasons that people of most classes in the US go to college, namely, the social experience both for itself and for networking later in life.

mkehrt 15 Feb 2011 5:12 UTC
1 point
on: Exercise and motivation
I’ve been pretty consistent about rock climbing and martial arts for multiple short periods in my life, and it is always glorious. Currently I am climbing (bouldering, which has a simplicty top-roping does not) multiple times a week, and weightlifting and getting cardio exercise as well for a few months. I am probably in the best cardio shape of my life (which is pretty mediocre!) and it is pretty great. I’ve got a group I go with, which is good for motivation.

mkehrt 13 Feb 2011 6:05 UTC
2 points
in reply to: lukstafi’s comment on: Procedural Knowledge Gaps
Why?

mkehrt

[link] SMBC on util­i­tar­i­anism and ve­g­atar­i­anism.

[link] SMBC on utilitarianism and vegatarianism.