Perplexed

Karma: 5,222

Perplexed Jun 30, 2011, 3:49 AM
0 points
on: Born rule or universal prior?

The universal prior implies you should say “substantially less than 1 million”.

Why do you say this? Are you merely suggesting that my prior experience with quantum coins is << a million tosses?

Perplexed Jun 29, 2011, 4:40 PM
0 points
on: The scope of “free will” within biology?

Similarly, in 2000, a man named “Alex” (fake name, but real case) suddenly developed pedophilic impulses at age 40, and was eventually convicted of child molestation. Turns out he also had a brain tumor, and once it was removed, his sexual interests went back to normal. …

At the very least, it seems like we would certainly be justified in judging Charles and Alex differently from people who don’t suffer from brain tumors.

Alex was not punished for the impulses he felt. Rather, he was punished for molesting a child. Judge Charles and Alex differently, if you wish, because you think you understand the causality better. But don’t punish them differently. Actions should be punished, not inclinations. Punish because they did a bad thing, not because they are bad people.

If you justify punishment as deterence, you are still justified in punishing Charles and Alex. Feel sorry for them, if you wish, but don’t forget to also feel sorry for their victims. Life sucks sometimes.

Perplexed Jun 23, 2011, 4:07 PM
5 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Community roles: teachers and auxiliaries

Maybe you should start by trying to figure out actual helpful suggestions, and then we can worry about whether people will be offended by them.

Good advice, I think. It is hard to tell (without an example) whether any gimmicks that work to get women into bed with you also work to get women to meetups. I would guess that any convincing way of communicating the message “Come on! It will be fun!!” would help with both.

Anyone have any brilliant ideas?

Call his attention to the stuff under the guise of soliciting a male opinion on whether it is offensively misogynist and nasty. Then let him make his own adult decisions as to whether he wants to make use of any of the information.

Perplexed Jun 23, 2011, 3:25 PM
0 points
in reply to: VincentYu’s comment on: [Link] Does a Simulation Really Need to Be Run?

do they speculate that our universe is being computed (at a high-level) by a cellular automaton?

What does “at a high level” mean in this context?

Btw, thanks for posting this.

Perplexed Jun 22, 2011, 1:52 AM
−2 points
in reply to: Will_Sawin’s comment on: Rationality Quotes: June 2011
I’m not following you. Why is evil action XYZ going to be done regardless? Are you imagining that deontologists seek to have other people do their dirty deeds for them?

Perplexed Jun 22, 2011, 1:45 AM
0 points
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: Rationality Quotes: June 2011

Will was rather more patient than he could have been.

Rather less careful, I would say. He failed to notice the typo above until nsheperd pointed it out—the original source of the confusion. And then later he began a comment with:

No, this is not the case. You have to cleverly choose B.

I have no idea at all what “is not the case”. And I also don’t know when anyone was offered the opportunity to cleverly choose B.

Will’s description of his own limited motivation to communicate is the only portion of this thread which is crystal clear.

Yes, by working pretty hard, I was able to ignore the initial typo and to anticipate the explanation of A, B, and C. As I point out elsewhere on this thread, I have some objections to the scenario (as leaving out some details important to deontologists). Perhaps PeterDJones had similar objections. Please notice that neither of us could object to Will’s A-B-C story until it was actually spelled out. And Will resisted making the effort of spelling it out far too long.

My “STFU” was rude. But sometimes rudeness is appropriate.

Perplexed Jun 22, 2011, 1:25 AM
0 points
in reply to: Will_Sawin’s comment on: Rationality Quotes: June 2011

isn’t preventing the existence of people who have stolen a consequentialist goal?

Taking into account the existence of people who have stolen is one way for a consequentialist to model the thinking of deontologists. If a consequentialist includes history of who-did-what-to-whom in his world states, he is capturing all of the information that a deontologist considers. Now, all that is left is to construct a utility function that attaches value to the history in the way that a deontologist would.

Voila! Something that approximates successful communication between deontologist and consequentialist.

Perplexed Jun 22, 2011, 12:45 AM
−10 points
in reply to: Will_Sawin’s comment on: Rationality Quotes: June 2011
Voted down vigorously. If you can’t make the effort to make yourself understood, STFU.

Perplexed Jun 22, 2011, 12:42 AM
0 points
in reply to: Will_Sawin’s comment on: Rationality Quotes: June 2011
Does world B contain someone who stole Bill’s money? Does world C contain someone who stole Alicorn’s money?

One reason that you are having trouble seeing the world as a deontologist sees it is that you stubbornly refuse to even try.

Perplexed Jun 19, 2011, 1:14 PM
11 points
0
on: Why No Wireheading?
Why does my intuition reject wireheading? Well, I think it has something to do with the promotion of instrumental values to terminal values.

Some pleasures I value for themselves (terminal) - the taste of good food, for example. As it happens, I agree with you that there is no true justification for rejecting wireheading for these kinds of pleasures. The semblance of pleasure is pleasure.

But some things are valued because they provide me with the capability, ability, or power (instrumental) to do what I want to do, including experiencing those terminal pleasures. Examples are money, knowledge, physical beauty, athletic abilities, and interpersonal skills.

Evolution has programmed me to derive pleasure from the acquisition and maintenance of these instruments of power. So, a really thorough wireheading installation would make me delight in my knowledge, beauty, charisma, and athleticism—even if I don’t actually possess those attributes. And therein lies the problem. The semblance of power is not power.

What I am saying is that my intuitive rejection of wireheading arises because at least some of the pleasures that it delivers are a lie, a delusion. And I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to be deluded.

But do I really need power if all of my more basic terminal values are guaranteed? That doesn’t really matter. The way I am currently wired, I want the actual power—not just the terminal pleasure that the power can someday deliver, and certainly not just the satisfied feeling that believing that I am powerful can generate.

Hope that helps.

Perplexed Jun 18, 2011, 6:36 PM
1 point
in reply to: HoverHell’s comment on: Not for the Sake of Pleasure Alone

it’s a bad idea to build a powerful A.I. with human-like values

Why? Or rather, given that a powerful A.I. is to be built, why is it a bad idea to endow it with human-like values?

The locally favored theory of friendly AI is (roughly speaking) that it must have human sympathies, that is, it must derive fulfillment from assisting humans in achieving their values. What flaws do you see in this approach to friendliness?

Perplexed Jun 18, 2011, 1:01 PM
0 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: When is further research needed?

Does their thinking you received information have anything at all to do with your receiving information, even slightly correlated? If it does, then you have a situation in which receiving information hurts you and the proof only goes through because it doesn’t consider the other agents.

This is a little interesting. The snap reply is that correlation does not imply causation, and we are discussing causation. But this snap reply implicitly privileges CDT over EDT and hence indirectly denigrates TDT/UDT. So, OK, your receiving information, through the correlation with someone else receiving information, is negatively correlated with your expected utility. And I continue to claim that you receiving the information doesn’t really cause the harm only because I still don’t understand the virtues of TDT/UDT.

It explicitly considers only cases where the information does not change payoffs.

Even more interesting. Are you thinking of cases in which my enjoyment of a movie is ruined because someone has given me an unwanted ‘spoiler’? Yes, that is a counterexample to the theorem. But I think that the reason why the theorem fails is that in this case naive consequentialism fails. It isn’t the end-result that generates utility. It is the path to that result. And possession of the spoiler information short-circuits the high utility pathway.

Perplexed Jun 18, 2011, 1:04 AM
0 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: When is further research needed?
Are you saying “Someone else receiving information can hurt you”? Because the injury to you arises from the information the other party received. Regardless of whether you receive any information at all!

Perplexed Jun 17, 2011, 9:31 PM
4 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: When is further research needed?
Quoting from the linked example:

And suppose it’s public knowledge who these “smart” players are. … “smart” players actually end up worse off than “normal” players.

I would say that the proof still goes through. Receiving information cannot hurt you. But if other agents acquire information that you have acquired information—well, that can hurt you.

Politicians instinctively know this, and hence seek “plausible deniability”.

Perplexed Jun 17, 2011, 7:34 PM
12 points
in reply to: taw’s comment on: When is further research needed?

As certain wise Paperclip Optimizer once said, information that someone is blackmailing you is bad.

Actually, no it isn’t. What is bad for you is for the blackmailer to learn that you are aware of the blackmail.

Acquiring information is never bad, in and of itself. Allowing others to gain information can be bad for you. Speaking as an egoist, that is.

ETA: I now notice that gjm already made this point.

Perplexed Jun 17, 2011, 2:39 PM
2 points
in reply to: Wei Dai’s comment on: Model Uncertainty, Pascalian Reasoning and Utilitarianism
Why spend only half on U1? Spend (1 - epsilon). And write a lottery ticket giving the U2-oriented decision maker the power with probability epsilon. Since epsilon infinity = infinity, you still get infinite expected* utility (according to U2). And you also get pretty close to the max possible according to U1.

Infinity has uses even beyond allocating hotel rooms. (HT to A. Hajek)

Of course, Hajek’s reasoning also makes it difficult to locate exactly what it is that U2 “says you should do”.

Perplexed Jun 16, 2011, 1:44 AM
2 points
in reply to: Will_Newsome’s comment on: Model Uncertainty, Pascalian Reasoning and Utilitarianism
It was my impression that it was LW orthodoxy that at “reflective equilibrium”, the values and preferences of rational humans can be represented by a utility function. That is:

if we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, had grown up farther together; where the extrapolation converges rather than diverges, where our wishes cohere rather than interfere; extrapolated as we wish that extrapolated, interpreted as we wish that interpreted

… if we or our AI surrogate ever reach that point, then humans have a utility function that captures what we want morally and hedonistically. Or so I understand it.

Yes, our current god-shatter-derived inconsistent values can not be described by a utility function, even as an abstraction. But it seems to me that most of the time what we are actually talking about is what our values ought to be rather than what they are. So, I don’t think that a utility function is a ridiculous abstraction—particularly for folk who strive to be rational.

Perplexed Jun 13, 2011, 12:08 AM
3 points
in reply to: asr’s comment on: How not to move the goalposts
Upvoted. If I were to rewrite my critique of the OP, it would be to complain that he/she treated compensation equity as if it were only a moral issue.

Perplexed Jun 12, 2011, 11:56 PM
7 points
in reply to: Wei Dai’s comment on: How not to move the goalposts
Ouch. I wish I had read this before dismissing cousin_it’s citation of Robin’s point.

Ok, my nothing was unjustified. Though I will point out that if I hire for a second-tier engineering organization which pays no higher than it has too, then the blue weasels that I hire will probably not be much better than the red weasels. All the blue super-weasels will get jobs elsewhere. In fact, it will be found that they are not weasels at all, but rather martins or minks.

Perplexed Jun 12, 2011, 11:44 PM
2 points
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: How not to move the goalposts
I agree with Robin’s point. But completing 4 years of Engineering school and then getting hired is a bit different than scoring high on a single test. I stand by my italicized nothing as mild hyperbole. Milder, in fact, than “crucified”.