nerzhin

• nerzhin 20 Jul 2012 20:03 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: Luke_A_Somers’s comment on: In Defense of Tone Arguments

  Have you tried this? Does it work?

• nerzhin 16 Feb 2012 20:19 UTC

  9 points

  on: The math­e­mat­ics of re­duced im­pact: help needed

  I don’t understand much of this, and I want to, so let me start by asking basic questions in a much simpler setting.

  We are playing Conway’s game of life with some given initial state. An disciple AI is given a 5 by 5 region of the board and allowed to manipulate its entries arbitrarily—information leaves that region according to the usual rules for the game.

  The master AI decides on some algorithm for the disciple AI to execute. Then it runs the simulation with and without the disciple AI. The results can be compared directly—by, for example, counting the number of squares where the two futures differ. This can be a measure of the “impact” of the AI.

  What complexities am I missing? Is it mainly that Conway’s game of life is deterministic and we are designing an AI for a stochastic world?

• nerzhin 8 Dec 2011 18:27 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: Map­ping Fun The­ory onto the challenges of eth­i­cal foie gras

  The first requirement:

  Even as chicks, geese cannot be handled by a human, or encounter other geese who have been.

  suggests that a FAI would not tell us that it exists. In other words, the singularity may already have happened.

• nerzhin 2 Dec 2011 20:16 UTC

  8 points

  in reply to: daenerys’s comment on: Hack Away at the Edges

  You can pay someone $8/​hr to do menial tasks 20 hrs/​ week, for a total of about $8000 /​ year.

  With payroll taxes and insurance, I would expect this to cost at least $12000 a year.

• nerzhin 7 Sep 2011 15:09 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: JoshuaZ’s comment on: Pri­soner’s Dilemma Tour­na­ment Results

  Sure, but you could have a limit on how many rounds back they remember, or you could fill in the history with some rule.

• nerzhin 7 Sep 2011 0:40 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: DavidPlumpton’s comment on: Pri­soner’s Dilemma Tour­na­ment Results

  Or just prohibit the bots from knowing which round they are playing.

• nerzhin 5 Sep 2011 16:18 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Open Thread: Septem­ber 2011

  It is not at all clear that the people resistant to addictive drugs are reproducing at a higher rate than those who aren’t.

• nerzhin 3 Sep 2011 17:15 UTC

  7 points

  in reply to: lessdazed’s comment on: Pro­posal: Ra­tion­al­ity Quotes Thread With At­tri­bu­tions in rot13

  I think the sub-proposal is too complex and involves too many trivial inconveniences. I up-voted the original proposal.

• nerzhin 31 Aug 2011 17:55 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: fiddlemath’s comment on: [LINK] “Aca­demic pub­lish­ers make Mur­doch look like a so­cial­ist” says Ge­orge Mon­biot

  almost every researcher in CS flaunts copyright, posting their papers on their own websites

  Many journals explicitly allow you to distribute a “preprint” of your journal articles on your personal website. For example, the Elsevier policy states that authors retain:

  the right to post a pre-print version of the journal article on Internet websites including electronic pre-print servers, and to retain indefinitely such version on such servers or sites for scholarly purposes

• nerzhin 30 Aug 2011 16:17 UTC

  10 points

  on: [LINK] “Aca­demic pub­lish­ers make Mur­doch look like a so­cial­ist” says Ge­orge Mon­biot

  There are open access journals. I recommend supporting them.

• nerzhin 17 Aug 2011 19:51 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Vladimir_M’s comment on: Are Deon­tolog­i­cal Mo­ral Judg­ments Ra­tion­al­iza­tions?

  Another way of saying this (I think—Vladimir_M can correct me):

  You only have two choices. You can be the kind of person who kills the fat mat in order to save four other lives and kills the fat man in order to get a million dollars for yourself. Or you can be the kind of person who refuses to kill the fat man in both situations. Because of human hardware, those are your only choices.

• nerzhin 10 Aug 2011 16:13 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: MarkusRamikin’s comment on: Strate­gic ig­no­rance and plau­si­ble deniability

  There are three things you could want:

  1. You could want the extra dollar. ($6 instead of $5)

  2. You could want to feel like someone who care about others.

  3. You could genuinely care about others.

  The point of the research in the post, if I understand it, is that (many) people want 1 and 2, and often the best way to get both those things is to be ignorant of the actual effects of your behavior. In my view a rationalist should decide either that they want 1 (throwing 2 and 3 out the window) or that they want 3 (forgetting 1). Either way you can know the truth and still win.

• nerzhin 2 Aug 2011 17:26 UTC

  9 points

  on: Teach­ing Sugges­tions?

  Here is a presentation that was used in a similar setting before.

  I recommend trying to cover less than you currently plan. Just one or two big ideas should be more than enough.

• nerzhin 2 Aug 2011 14:26 UTC

  −4 points

  in reply to: multifoliaterose’s comment on: Years saved: Cry­on­ics vs VillageReach

  Donating to VillageReach signals philanthropic intention and affords networking opportunities with other people who care about global welfare who might be persuaded to work against x-risk

  Also, donating to VillageReach saves people’s lives, and those people will have agency and abilities and may very well contribute to existential risk reduction.

• nerzhin 1 Aug 2011 16:15 UTC

  9 points

  in reply to: mwengler’s comment on: When pro­grams have to work—les­sons from NASA

  How did this go over with your advisor? (Serious question.)

• nerzhin 29 Jul 2011 22:00 UTC

  9 points

  in reply to: Vladimir_M’s comment on: On the un­pop­u­lar­ity of cry­on­ics: life sucks, but at least then you die

  Nowadays, however, the class system has become far harsher and the distribution of status much more skewed. The better-off classes view those beneath them with frightful scorn and contempt, and the underclass has been dehumanized to a degree barely precedented in human history.

  How do you measure this kind of thing? Do you have a citation?

• nerzhin 26 Jul 2011 15:35 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: jimrandomh’s comment on: A po­ten­tially great im­prove­ment to min­i­mum wage laws to han­dle both eco­nomic effi­ciency as well as poverty concerns

  I’m not sure I believe you. By “non-wage costs and risks” do you mean things like health benefits, or lawsuit liability, or what? I can think of a lot of productive uses for cheap labor.

  There’s a bunch of trash and graffiti in my city. There’s lots of unemployed people whose labor cleaning it up would be worth, say, a euro an hour.

• nerzhin 12 Jul 2011 17:51 UTC

  8 points

  in reply to: Benquo’s comment on: Hav­ing Use­ful Conversations

  Your (funny) comment made me realize that ubiquitous smartphones and the right software might actually make something like a karma system for in-person conversations possible.

• nerzhin 12 Jul 2011 17:45 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: Morendil’s comment on: Hav­ing Use­ful Conversations

  If you have to pick one of the above ideas as most useful, which would it be?

• nerzhin 6 Jul 2011 17:35 UTC

  5 points

  on: Find your­self a Wor­thy Op­po­nent: a Chavruta

  The general idea sounds a lot like pair programming.