pedanterrific

• pedanterrificFeb 2, 2013, 3:31 AM

  0 points

  in reply to: whowhowho’s comment on: State your phys­i­cal ac­count of ex­pe­rienced color

  Sorry- “minimum necessary (pieces of brain)”, I meant to say. Like, probably not motor control, or language, or maybe memory.

• pedanterrificFeb 1, 2013, 7:42 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: whowhowho’s comment on: State your phys­i­cal ac­count of ex­pe­rienced color

  Okay, so… we can’t make computers that go from red to black, and we can’t ourselves understand what it’s like to go from #FF0000 to #000000, and this means what?

  To me it means the things we use to do processing are very different. Say, a whole brain emulation would have our experience of color, and if we get really really good at cognitive surgery, we might be able to extract the minimum necessary bits to contain that experience of color, and bolt it onto a red-eye filter. Why bother, though? What’s the relevant difference?

• pedanterrificFeb 1, 2013, 6:28 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: whowhowho’s comment on: State your phys­i­cal ac­count of ex­pe­rienced color

  What was wrong with this comment?

• pedanterrificFeb 1, 2013, 6:02 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: whowhowho’s comment on: State your phys­i­cal ac­count of ex­pe­rienced color

  I’m not going to say the goalposts are moving, but I definitely don’t know where they are any more. I was talking about red-eye filters built into cameras. You seemed to be suggesting that they do have “internal representations” of shape, but not of color, even though they recognize both shape and color in the same way. I’m trying to see what the difference is.

  Essentially, why can a computer have an internal representation of shape without saying “wow, what a beautiful building” but an internal representation of color would lead it to say “wow, what a beautiful sunset”?

• pedanterrificFeb 1, 2013, 5:23 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: whowhowho’s comment on: State your phys­i­cal ac­count of ex­pe­rienced color

  How would it function differently if it did have “an internal representation of color as we experience it”?

• pedanterrificFeb 1, 2013, 5:11 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: whowhowho’s comment on: State your phys­i­cal ac­count of ex­pe­rienced color

  You lost me a little bit. We can write “see these wavelengths in this shape and make them black” (red-eye filters). What makes “seeing” shape different from “seeing” color?

  What links here?

  • pedanterrific's comment on State your phys­i­cal ac­count of ex­pe­rienced color by Mitchell_Porter (Feb 1, 2013, 6:28 PM; 0 points)

• pedanterrificJan 30, 2013, 5:51 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: ewbrownv’s comment on: Iso­lated AI with no chat whatsoever

  Maybe I’m missing something obvious, but why wouldn’t physical isolation (a lead-lined bank vault, faraday cage, etc) solve these problems?

• pedanterrificJan 29, 2013, 3:12 PM

  3 points

  in reply to: MugaSofer’s comment on: AI box: AI has one shot at avoid­ing de­struc­tion—what might it say?

  Yes, I realize that. The point being, the bit in bold is still true if the Earth-destroying threat is the speaker.

• pedanterrificJan 26, 2013, 8:22 PM

  −1 points

  in reply to: MugaSofer’s comment on: AI box: AI has one shot at avoid­ing de­struc­tion—what might it say?

  Referring to yourself in the third person doesn’t help. AI DESTROYED

• pedanterrificJan 24, 2013, 6:08 PM

  4 points

  in reply to: OrphanWilde’s comment on: AI box: AI has one shot at avoid­ing de­struc­tion—what might it say?

  Well that’s a relief, then. AI DESTROYED

• pedanterrificJan 11, 2013, 7:47 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: drethelin’s comment on: Open Thread, Jan­uary 1-15, 2013

  I think the idea is that it is economical, but the patent-holder simply never thought of it.

• pedanterrificJan 10, 2013, 10:04 PM

  0 points

  in reply to: ahh’s comment on: Open Thread, Jan­uary 1-15, 2013

  Oh. Well, that’s surprising.

  Sorry, I’m not in the area.

• pedanterrificJan 10, 2013, 9:07 PM

  2 points

  in reply to: ahh’s comment on: Open Thread, Jan­uary 1-15, 2013

  I’ll second drethelin; CBT is both evidence-based as a treatment method- there’s evidence it works- and evidence-based in practice, meaning you don’t have to believe in it or anything, you just follow the prescribed behaviors and observe the results. Really, it’s highly rationalism-friendly, being mainly about noticing and combatting “cognitive distortions” (e.g. generalizing from one example, inability to disconfirm, emotional reasoning, etc.). A therapist who specializes in CBT can be pretty well assumed to not be in the habit of dragging “spirituality” into their work.

• pedanterrificJan 9, 2013, 4:23 PM

  11 points

  in reply to: A1987dM’s comment on: Open Thread, Jan­uary 1-15, 2013

  Along with things that others have already pointed out, “per land area, farms are more efficient at producing “higher” animals like pigs and cows”—where the hell did he take that from? Pretty much everyone I’ve ever read about this topic agrees that growing food for N people on a mostly vegetarian diet requires way less land, energy, and water than growing food for N people on a largely meat-based diet, and there’s a thermodynamic argument that makes that pretty much obvious.

  The full sentence is

  And if you do manage to induce less farmland and more wild land, you’ll have to realize that, per land area, farms are more efficient at producing “higher” animals like pigs and cows. So there is a tradeoff between producing more farm animals with worse lives, or fewer wild animals with better lives, if in fact wild animals live better lives.

  or

  per land area, farms are more efficient [than wilderness is] at producing “higher” animals like pigs and cows.

• pedanterrific 7 Jan 2013 21:01 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, part 18, chap­ter 87

  That’s true in canon, yes, but this

  “The Unbreakable Vow is too useful to certain wealthy Houses to be outlawed entirely—even though to bind a man’s will through all his days is indeed a dread and terrible act, more fearsome than many lesser rituals that wizards shun. [...] The one who makes the Vow must be someone who could have chosen to do what the Vow demands of them, and they sacrifice that capacity for choice. And the third wizard, the binder, permanently sacrifices a small portion of their own magic, to sustain the Vow forever.

  reads to me more like a sort of permanent, irresistible Imperius. I can see it could be meant the other way, though.

• pedanterrific 7 Jan 2013 20:00 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, part 18, chap­ter 87

  Now I’m not sure if you’re serious. The last quote is from the mid-1800s, and the usage is synonymous with “forget” so it wouldn’t make sense in ygert’s context anyway.

• pedanterrific 7 Jan 2013 19:19 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: gwern’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, part 18, chap­ter 87

  Huh. My copy of the OED agrees with Merriam-Webster (and everything I can find online) that there’s no real word between “obliterative” and “oblivion”. What edition are you referencing?

  Anyway, “obviate the need for” is such a common phrasing that I don’t feel terribly unjustified in my presumption. I suppose that’s for ygert to decide, though.

• pedanterrific 7 Jan 2013 17:13 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: ygert’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, part 18, chap­ter 87

  obliviate

  Your HPMoR-trained spellchecker has led you wrong, friend.

• pedanterrific 7 Jan 2013 17:08 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Izeinwinter’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, part 18, chap­ter 87

  Wait, is the Unbreakable Vow really unbreakable, or does it just kill you when you break it? I thought it was the first.

• pedanterrific 28 Dec 2012 0:38 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Desrtopa’s comment on: Harry Pot­ter and the Meth­ods of Ra­tion­al­ity dis­cus­sion thread, part 18, chap­ter 87

  They allowed lawmakers to legalize the Unforgivables during Voldemort’s uprising; I have a hard time believing a great many people would object to a bill allowing a service where Aurors Imperius Azkaban inmates to bind vows.

  The larger point being, any society could find or make an outgroup sufficiently unsympathetic to allow regulated use of the Imperius for the public good.