They are ideas for allaying fears that SIAI is incompetent or worse. Which, since it is devoted to building an AI, would tend to allay fears that it is building an evil one.
nerzhin
Karma: 622
Impostor syndrome is pretty common among men too, in my experience. It may still be more common in women, but I’m not sure.
I can accomplish a great many things, especially unfamiliar things, only when there is no help available.
This sounds like my experience, at least some of the time. I am male, for what it’s worth.
Looking at your list of backgrounds, the missing thing that jumps out at me is discrete math. You might also want to think about learning some differential equations, if it wasn’t included in your calculus sequence.
I can’t even identify the orthodox positions in macroeconomics.
Don’t trust anyone but a mathematician
I’m pretty sure you’re at least half-joking. But just in case, I need to point out that mathematicians are not immune to this kind of thing.
There is an enormous (far too enormous for its value to the world, in my opinion) literature on the unexpected hanging paradox (also known as the surprise exam paradox) in the philosophy and mathematics literature. The best treatments are:
Timothy Y. Chow, The surprise examination or unexpected hanging paradox, American Mathematical Monthly 105 (1998) pp. 41-51. (ungated)
Elliot Sober, To give a surprise exam, use game theory, Synthese 115 (1998) pp. 355-373. (ungated)
I think I disagree, but I’m not sure what elitism means here.
Elitism might help prevent this error. But can it lead to other errors?
Can you give examples, either of emotion driven behaviors becoming dark arts when raised to awareness, or of dark arts being necessary to healthy interaction? I think we are using different definitions of what dark arts are.
Let’s say I’m working with Bob. By exploiting his cognitive biases, I can convince him to do two things that I value. Without such exploitation, I can only convince him to do one. If I do exploit his biases, these bad things happen:
I have less confidence that either of the two things were actually worthwhile.
It is more likely that my enemy will be able to convince Bob to undo the valuable things he did.
I have less trust in Bob in the future, and his total value to me is reduced.
In some cases these effects might outweigh the value of getting two things done rather than one.
On the wiki the dark arts are defined as exploiting the biases of others so that they behave irrationally. This is morally wrong—I want others not only to accept the right answers, but to accept them for the right reasons.
Also, the dark arts are, well, dark.
Are you saying social skills are the same as the dark arts?
Lawmakers who think like programmers might be an improvement. But I’m not sure.
On Less Wrong, this almost reads as “if only lawmakers were more like me, things would be okay.” I’m skeptical.
You could try sudoku or a crossword puzzle.
Using dark arts against people increases the chance they will seek out rationality training
Also, beating up my son makes him tougher so that he can handle himself better in a dangerous neighborhood.
Scamming investors out of their savings makes them smarter and more discerning. They have to learn the lesson sometime, might as well be from me.
Stealing from the local 7-Eleven makes them improve their security. I’m really doing them a favor.
Take back Christmas
...because Less Wrong and all of us rationalists are descended in a direct line from pre-Christian solstice-celebrating pagans?
I am really confused by this line of thought. Is this really a way to be rational about Christmas, or is it just a way to be anti-Christian?
Overcome our own bias, promote the bias of others?
Origin of the word weirdtopia for those of you who don’t know or remember.
don’t update yet!
I read it to mean “update again” based on the probability that E is flawed. This well tend to adjust back toward your prior.
Or they notice, and care to some extent, but have other things to worry about. Like a pressure to cover a certain amount of material, or a fear of boring one group of students while they slow down for another, or a (maybe partly justified) belief that the students who are confused and bored just aren’t trying.