Phillip_Huggan

Karma: −19

Phillip_Huggan 6 Jul 2008 17:51 UTC
1 point
on: Is Morality Preference?
Another example of a real-world Moral quandry that the real world would love H+ disucssion lists to take on, is the issue of how much medical care to invest in end-of-life patients. Medical advances will continue to make more expensive treatment options available. In Winnipeg, there was a case recently where a patient in a terminal coma had his family insist on not taking him off life support. In Canada in the last decade or so, the decision was based on a doctor’s prescription. Now it also encompases family and the patient’s previous wishes. 3 doctors quit over the case. My first instinct was to suggest doctors be trained exclusively to be coma-experts, but it seems medical boards might already have accomplished this. I admire a fighting spirit, and one isolated case doesn’t tax the healthcare system much. But if this becomes a regular occurrence...this is another of many real-world examples that require intelligent thought. Subhan’s position has already been proven wrong many many times. There are cognitive biases but they aren’t nearly as strong or all-encompassing as is being suggested here. For example, I’d guess every reader on this list is aware that other people are capable of suffering and feeling happiness that corresponds with their own experiences. This isn’t mirror-neurons or some other “bias”, it is simple grade school deduction that refutes Subhan’s position. You don’t have to be highly Moral, to admit it’s out there in some people. For instance, most children get what Subhan doesn’t.

Phillip_Huggan 6 Jul 2008 16:59 UTC
0 points
on: Is Morality Given?
(ZMDavis wrote:) “But AGI is [...] not being a judge or whoever writes laws.”

If Eliezer turns out to be right about the power of recursive self-improvement, then I wouldn’t be so sure.”

Argh. I didn’t mean that as a critique on EY’s prowess as an AGI theorist or programmer. I doubt Jesus would’ve wanted people to deify him, just to be nice to eachother. I doubt EY meant for his learning of philosophy to be interpreted as some sort of Moral code, he was just arrogant enough not to state he was sometimes using his list to as a tool to develop his own philosophy. I’m assuming any AGI project would be a team, and I’d doubt he’d challenge his best comparitive advantage is not ethics. Maybe he plans on writing the part of the code that tells an AGI how to stop using resources for a given job.

Phillip_Huggan 6 Jul 2008 15:40 UTC
0 points
on: Is Morality Given?
Yes, EY’s past positions about Morality are closer to Subhan’s than Obert’s. But AGI is software programming and hardware engineering, not being a judge or whoever writes laws. I wouldn’t suggest deifying EY if your goal is to learn ethics.

Phillip_Huggan 6 Jul 2008 15:28 UTC
−3 points
on: Is Morality Preference?
“Why the obsession with making other people happy?”

Not obsessed. Just pointing out the definition of morality. High morality is making yourself and other people happy.

Phillip Huggan: “Or are you claiming such an act is always out of self-interest?” (D.Bider:) Such acts are. Stuff just is. Real reasons are often unknowable; and if known, would be trivial, technical, mundane.

That’s deep.

“Stuff is. Fitting stuff that happens into a moral framework? A hopeless endeavor for misguided individuals seeking to fulfil the romantic notion that things should make sense.”

To me, there is nothing unintelligible about the ntion that my acts can have consequences. Generally I’m not preachy about it as democracy and ethical investing are appropriate forums to channel my resources towards in Canada. But the flawed line of reasoning that knowledge can never correlate with reality only finds salvation in solipsism, not a very likely scenario IMO. These kinds of reasonings are used by tyrants, for the record (it is god’s will, it is for the national good, etc).

“If we’re going to intervene because a child in Africa is dying of malaria or hunger—both thoroughly natural causes of death—then should we not also intervene when a lion kills an antelope, or a tribe of chimpanzees is slaughtered by their neighbors?”

Natural doesn’t make it good. I’d value the child more highly because his physiology is more known (language and written records help) in how to keep him happy, and more importantly because he could grow up to invent a cure for malaria. Yes, eventually we should intervene by providing the chimps with mechanical dummies to murder, if murder makes them happy. Probably centuries away from that. It’s nice that you draw the line around at least a group of others, but you seem to be using your own inability to understand Morality as evidence that others who have passed you on the Moral ladder, should come back down. You shouldn’t be so self-conscious about this and certainly shouldn’t be spreading the meme. I don’t understand chemistry well or computer programming at all, but I don’t go loudly proclaiming fake computer programming syntax or claiming that atoms don’t exist, like EY is inciting here and like you are following. I’m not calling you evil. I’m saying you probably have the capacity to do more good, assuming you are middle class and blowing money on superfluous status-symbol consumer goods. Lobbying for a luxury tax is how I would voice my opinion, a pretty standard avenue I learned from a Macleans magazine back issue. Here, my purpose is to deprogram as many people as possible stuck in a community devoted to increasing longevity, but using means (such as lobbying for the regression of law) that meme-spread promote the opposite.

Phillip_Huggan 6 Jul 2008 14:54 UTC
−1 points
on: Is Morality Given?
(Subhan wrote:) “And if you claim that there is any emotion, any instinctive preference, any complex brain circuitry in humanity which was created by some external morality thingy and not natural selection, then you are infringing upon science and you will surely be torn to shreds—science has never needed to postulate anything but evolution to explain any feature of human psychology—” Subhan: “Suppose there’s an alien species somewhere in the vastness of the multiverse, who evolved from carnivores. In fact, through most of their evolutionary history, they were cannibals. They’ve evolved different emotions from us, and they have no concept that murder is wrong—”

The external morality thingy is other people’s brain states. Prove the science comment, Subhan. It is obviously a false statement (once again, argument reduces to solipsism which can be a topic buts needs to be clearly stated as such). Evolution doesn’t explain how I learned long division in grade 1. Our human brains are evolutionary horrible calculators, not usually able to chunk more than 8 memorized numbers or do division without learning math. Learning and self-reflection dominate reptillian brains in healthy individuals. The latter from a utilitiarian perspective, murder would generally be wrong, even if fun. There is the odd circumstance where it might be right, but it it is so difficult to game the future that it is probably better just to outlaw it altogether than raise the odds of anarchy. For instance, in Canada a head-of-state and abortionists have been targetted (though our head of state was ready to cave in the potential assassin’s skull before the police finally apprehended him). In many developing countries it is much worse. Presumably the carnivore civilization would need a lot of luck just to industrialize; would be more prosperous by fighting their murder urges. Don’t call them carnivores, call them Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. We have an applied example of a militarily-weak government in the process of becoming a tyranny, raping women and initiating anarchy. There are lessons that could be learned here, Britian has just proposed to 2000 strong rapid-response military force, under what circumstances should they be used (I like regression from democracy plus plausible model of something better plus lower quality-of-living plus military weakness plus invasion acceptance of military alliance; if the African Union says no regime change, does that constitute a military alliance?). Does military weakness as a precursor condition do more harm than good by gaming nations to up-arm?

In Canada, there is a problem how to deal with youths, at what age should they be treated as mental competant adults. Brain science seems to show humans don’t fully mature until about 25, so to me that is an argument to treat the onset of puberty to 25 or so as an in-between category when judging. Is alcohol and/or alcoholism analogous to mental health problems? I’d guess no, but maybe childhood trauma is a mitigating factor to consider. How strong does mental illness have to be before using it is a consideration? In Canada, an Afghanistan veteran used post-traumatic stress disorder as a mitigating factor in a violent crime. Is not following treatment or the absence fo treatment something to consider? Can a mentally ill individual sue a government or claim innocence for initiating $10 billion in tax cuts rather than a mental health programme? I’d guess only if it became clear how important such a program was, say, if it worked very successfully in another nation and the government had the fiscal means to do so. Should driving drunk itself be a crime? If so, why not driving with radio, infant, cellphone...as intersection video camera surveillence catches traffic offenders, should the offence fine be dropped proportionately to the increased level of surveillence? See, courts know there are other individuals and that the problems of mental health and children not understanding there are other people, don’t prevent healthy adults from knowing other people are real. This reminds me of discussions about geopolitics on the WTA list, with seemingly progressive individuals not being able to condemn torture and the detaining indefinitely of innocent people, simply because the forum was overrepresented with Americans (who still don’t score that bad, just not as good as Europe and Canada when it comes to Human Rights).

(robin brandt wrote:)”But we already know why murder seems wrong to us. It’s completely explained by a combination of game theory, evolutionary psychology, and memetics.”

Sure, but the real question is why murder is wrong, not seems wrong. Murder is wrong because it destroys human brains. Generally, Transhumanists have a big problem (Minsky or Moravec or Vinge religion despite evidence to the contrary) figuring out the human brains are conscious and calculators are not. I have a hard time thinking of any situation when it could be justified by among other things, proving the world is likely to be better off without murder. I guess killing Hitler during the latter years of the Holocaust might have stopped it if it was happening because of his active intervention. But you kill him off too early and Stalin and Hitler don’t beat the shit out of eachother. This conversation is stuck at some 6th grade level. Could be talking about the death penalty, or income correlating with sentencing, or terrorism and Human Rights. Or employee dangerous technology Human Rights (will future gene sequencers require a Top Secret level of security clearance?). Right now the baseline is to treat all very potentially dangerous future technologies with a High Level of security clearance, I’m guessing. Does H+ have anything of value to add to existing security protocols? Have they even been analyzed? Nope.

If this is all just to brain storm about how to teach an AGI ethics, no one here is taking it from that angle. I’ve had a conversation with a Subhan friend as a teenager. If I was blogging about it, I’d do it under a forum titled Ethics for Dummies.

Phillip_Huggan 6 Jul 2008 5:51 UTC
0 points
on: Is Morality Preference?
Sorry TGGP I had to do it. Now replace the word “charity” with “taxes”.

Phillip_Huggan 6 Jul 2008 3:35 UTC
0 points
on: Is Morality Preference?
(Constant quoted from someone:)”What we know about the causal origins of our moral intuitions doesn’t obviously give us reason to believe they are correlated with moral truth.”

Yes, but to a healthy intelligent individual not under duress, these causal origins (I’m assuming the reptilian or even mammalian brain centres are being referenced here) are much less a factor than is abstract knowledge garnered through education. I may feel on some basic level like killing someone that gives me the evil eye, but these impulses are easily subsumed by social conditioning and my own ideals of myself. Claiming there is a very small chance I’ll commit evil is far different than claiming I’m a slave to my reptillian desires. Some people are slaves to those impulses, courts generally adjust for mental illness.

(denis bider wrote:) “Obert seems to be trying to find some external justification for his wants, as if it’s not sufficient that they are his wants; or as if his wants depend on there being an external justification, and his mental world would collapse if he were to acknowledge that there isn’t an external justification.

To me, this reads to say that if solipsism were true, Obert will have to become a hedonist. Correct. Or are you claiming Obert needs some sort of status? I didn’t read that at all. Patriotism doesn’t always seek utilitarianism as one’s nation is only a small portion of the world’s population. Morality does. Denis, are you claiming there is no way to commit acts that make others happy? Or are you claiming such an act is always out of self-interest? The former position is absurd, the latter runs into the problem that people who jump on grenades, die. I’m guessing there is a cognitive bias found in some/many of this blogs readers and thread starters, that because they know they are in a position of power vis-a-vis the average citizen, they are looking for any excuse not to accept moral resposibility. This is wrong. A middle class western individual, all else equal, is morally better by donating conspicious consumption income to charity, than by exercising the Libertarian market behaviour of buying luxury goods. I’m not condemning the purchasing behaviour, I’m condemning the Orwellian justification of trying to take (ego) pleasure in not owning up to your own consumption. If you are smart enough to construct such double-think, you can be smart enough to live with your conscious. Obert does not take Morally correct position just to win the argument with idiot Subhan. There are far deeper issues that can be debated on this blog about these issues, further up the Moral ladder. For instance, there are active legal precidents being formed in real world law right now, that could be influenced were this content to avoid retracing what is already known.

Phillip_Huggan 5 Jul 2008 14:18 UTC
0 points
on: Is Morality Preference?
“I think the meaning of “it is (morally) right” may be easiest to explain through game theory.”

Game theory may be useful here, but it is only a low-level efficient means to an ends. It might explain social heirachies on our past or in other species and it might explain the evolution of law, and it might be the highest up the Moral ladder some stupid or mentally impaired individuals can achieve. For instance, a higher Morality system than waiting for individuals to turn selfish before punishing them, is to ensure parents aren’t abusive and childhood cognitive development opportunities exist. A basic pre-puberty or pre-25 social safety net is an improvement on game theory to reaching that tiled max-morality place. This no-morality line of reasoning might have some relavence if that happy place is a whole volume of diferent states. There are likely trade-offs between novel experiences and known preferences quite apart from harvesting unknown/dangerous energy resources. I know someone who likes cop shows and takes sleeping pills. This individuals can sometimes watch all his favourite Law + Order show reruns as if they were original. Maybe I’m a little jealous here in that I know every episode of Family Guy off by heart. Just because you don’t know if there are Moral consequences doesn’t mean there aren’t. The key question is if you have the opportunity to easily learn about your moral sphere of influence. An interesting complication mentioned is how to know if what you think is a good act, isn’t really bad. In my above forest example, cutting a forest into islands makes those islands more susceptible to invasive species and supressing a natural insect species might make forests less sustainable over the long-term. But that is a quesiton of scientific method and epistimology, not ontology. Ask whether setting fire to an orphanage is Morally equivalent to making a difficult JFK-esque judgement is silly. Assuming they are equivalent assumes because you don’t know the answer to any given question, that eveyone else doesn’t know either. I’m sure the cover this at some point in the Oxford undergraduate curriculum.

Phillip_Huggan 5 Jul 2008 5:54 UTC
0 points
on: Is Morality Preference?
The difference between duty and desire, is that some desires might harm other people while duty (you can weasily change the definition to mean Nazi duty but then you are asking an entirely different question) always helps other people. “Terminal values” as defined, are pretty weak. There are e=mc^2 co-ordinates that have maximized happiness values. Og may only be able to eat tubers, but most people literate are much higher on the ladder, and thus, have a greater duty. In the future presumably, the standards will be even higher. At some point assuming we don’t screw it up the universe will be tiled with happy people, depending on the energy resources of the universe and how accurately they can be safely charted. Subhan is at a lower level on the ladder of Morality. All else equal (it never is as uploading is a delusion), Obert has a greater duty.

Phillip_Huggan 5 Jul 2008 5:41 UTC
1 point
on: Is Morality Preference?
Wow, what a long post. Subhan doesn’t have a clue. Tasting a cheesburger like a salad, isn’t Morality. Morality refers to actions in the present that can initiate a future with preferred brain-states (the weasily response would be to ask what these are, as if torture and pleasure weren’t known, and initiate a conversation long enough to forget the initial question). So if you hypnotize yourself to make salad taste like cheeseburgers for health reasons, you are exercising Morality. I’ve got a forestry paper open in the other window. It is very dry, but I’m hoping I can calculate a rate of spread for an invasive species to plan a logging timeline to try to stop it. There is also a football game on. Not a great game, but don’t pull a Subhan and try to tell me I’m reading the forestry paper because I like it more than the football game. I’m reading it because I realize there are brainstates of tourists and loggers and AGW-affected people that would rather see the forests intact, than temporarily dead. That’s really all it boils down to. After gaining enough expertise over your own pysche sometime in childhood (ie. most 10 years olds would not waste time with this conversation), a developmental psychologist would know just when, you (a mentally healthy individual) realize there are other people who experience similiar brain states. Yes mirror neurons and the like are probably all evolutionary in origin, that doesn’t change anything. There really are locally universe configurations that are “happier” in the net, than in other configurations. There is a ladder of morality, certainly not set in stone (torture me and all of a sudden I probably start valuing myself a lot more). I’d guess the whole point of this is to teach an AGI where to draw the line in upgrading human brain architectures (either that or I really do enjoy reading forestry over watching a game, and a really like salad over pizza and Chinese food). I don’t see any reason why human development couldn’t continue as it does now, voluntarily, the way human psyches are now developed (ie, trying pizza and dirt, and noting the preference for pizza in the future). Everyone arguing against morality-as-given is saying salad tastes better than pizza, as if there weren’t some other reason for eating salad. The other reasons (health, dating a vegetarian, personal finances) maybe deserve a conversation, but not one muddled with this. Honestly, you follow Subhan’s flawed reasoning methodology (as it seems Transhumanists and Libertarians are more likely to do than average, for whatever reason), you get to the conclusion consciousness doesn’t exist. I think the AGI portion of this question depends a lot more on the energy resources of the universe than upon how to train an AGI to be a pyschologist, as unless there is some hurry to give the teaching/counselling reins to an AGI, what’s the rush?

Phillip_Huggan 2 Jul 2008 18:02 UTC
0 points
on: I’d take it
...The think-tank money would include futurism like SIAI and this blog’s topics. For longevity research, I think the best way to promote it might be to screen what health/pharma/biotech companies spend the most on R+D in relavent sub-fields. Money would only come in handy to market such a portfolio as “boomer-ethical”. I’d want to give R.Freitas money to do diamond surface chemistry computer sims, but given that they come down in price every year I wouldn’t be sure the optimal amount. Think-tanks is pretty vague. You’d want to look into the specifics of FDA approval processes in pursuit reform ideas; you could fund such a think-tank but the real bottleneck would be educating policy researchers. I’d think any university would respond favourably in instituting new research schools of any type, probably get matching government funding too. For example, W.Buffett had trouble finding cheap investments as soon as he had tens of billions to play with. The Provincial Government of Alberta couldn’t figure out what to do with their oil revenues when approaching eleven digits of play money.

Phillip_Huggan 2 Jul 2008 14:56 UTC
3 points
on: I’d take it
I agree with A.Madden. If the question was phrased $10 trillion in physical wealth that didn’t exist before, it would be different. I wouldn’t trust myself to manage more than a few hundred billion, and I’d destroy the other $9.6 trillion. Maybe a $75000 investment trust for myself and about twice that for family and friends. Most of my investment strategies (Grahamian Value modified to account for future demographic, geopolitical, cultural and technological trends) breakdown at such high valuations. I like the CDI index and I like P.Martin’s initiative to tie Canadian African foreign aid to those nations (Kenya gets bonus pts for denouncing Mugabe and South Africa and Zimbabwe would get nothing at present) that stamp out corruption. So maybe $40 billion to buy down the debt of said nations. I’d saturate research grants for things like apiculture, grain, and desalination research; maybe one billion would cover 10000 grants. But the real need is probably university research infrastructures, and I’d be worried about being stuck with the operating costs and the marginal research gains not being anything close to the research output now. I’d want to harmonize distance learning education globally, but that is dependant on accreditation and immigration reforms, and I don’t think the real gains will accrue until holograms fill bandwidth. So for now I’d make strategic scientific journal sectors free. Would buy up mosquito nets and saturate microfinance penetration (dependant on training door-to-door bankers). Maybe $5 billion? Lots of think-tanks on various subjects. I wasted much time doing casual labour to make rent and may again in the future; no doubt there are millions of others. $2 billion would fund 1000 think-tanks that mimic university institutions without the need to force superfluous course material. I’d establish a $10 billion trust for grain storage GMO research, and physical pilot projects that mimic the UK’s previous Intervention Storage project, but at a much higher tech level. I’d establish a $10 billion trust to accelerate the research into urban robotic greenhouses (inert gas greenhouse sheaths, robotic pruners, OLEDs, time-release fertilizers, GMOs). I’d short any oil and coal companies that have funded Neoconservative think-tanks or used lawyers that have previously defended the asbestos or tobacco industries. $25 billion. I’d pay ¹⁄₆ the value to developing nations of building wind turbines instead of coal, as wind company stock options towards their sovereign wealth funds. A $4 billion trust? Saturate IDE’s drip irrigation and hand pump market; a $2 billion trust. $5 billion(?) to work with the big US banks to implement grain elevators and exchanges in the developing world, and novel metal commodity contracts in the developed world (semiconductors and polymer solar cells need metals like gallium). I’d match any CSA funding if they wanted to reinstate NASA’s cancelled NIAC ($500 million). A trust to fight computer hackers (best way to fight AI threats from what I can tell), and sketch out the possibility of a low footprint gene sequencing and electronics market decades in the future, to fight designer pandemic and AI/AGI. $10 billion. Fighting pandemics appears to turn into fighting Staph infections, so $50 billion to give hospitals in the western world gelFAST alcohol rubs dispensors for their nurses and U of T nurse hand-wash sensors ($300 a bed) in all hospital beds. $100 billion for basic sewage, health, nutrition and education infrastructures in the developing world. Saturate Cuba’s 3rd world doctor exporting programme, $500 million. A trust to GMO a crop containing all 8 essential amino acids. At $263 billion here. The problem is my investment strategy wouldn’t work at such a high valuation, and I’d need to devote a lot of time to learn new strategies just to park and manage the trusts. Also, a lot of things I think are high ROEs are properly handled by governments. There is a $10 billion programme forwarded to fight mental health disorders in Canada, certainly useful for managing any futuristic technologies. I like building nursing homes and affordable pedestrian friendly housing, and I like rejigging agriculture tarriff/subsidy rates, but that is the job of government. Same for things like offering free bank accounts, the job of private industry. Most of the above can be distilled to university grants, and making university accessible to the third world and to first world adults. Many things I don’t know enough about to fund. A $1 billion trust to buy light-weight solar cells and mini wind turbines for the developing world. $2 billion to cut Canada’s boreal forest into pieces to fight Mountain Pine Beetle, if it eats Jack Pines. $100 million to fund solid-state hydrogen research. $900 million to buy up rainforests/wetlands in danger. A $1 billion prize trust to give annual awards to leaders that safeguard their own environmental capital. I’d want to buy a Zenn electric car, but they are illegal in Canada. $269 billion.

Phillip_Huggan 30 Jun 2008 20:47 UTC
0 points
on: Heading Toward Morality
I’m glad to see this was going somewhere. I’d say yes, if humans have free will, than an AGI could too. If not on present semiconductor designs, than with some 1cc electrolyte solution or something. But free will without the human endocrine system isn’t the type of definition most people mean when they envision free will. But I suppose a smart enough AGI could deduce and brute force it. Splitting off world-lines loses much of the fun without a mind, even if it can technically be called free will. I’d want to read some physics abstracts before commenting further about free will.

Phillip_Huggan 18 Jun 2008 20:48 UTC
−3 points
on: Ghosts in the Machine
“Lets say we, as humans, placed some code on every server on the net that mimics a neuron. Is that going to become sentient? I have no idea. Probably not.”

Ooo, even better, have the code recreate a really good hockey game. Have the code play the game in the demolished Winnipeg Arena, but make the sightlines better. And have the game between Russia and the Detroit Redwings. Have Datsyuk cloned and play for both teams. Of course, programs only affect the positions of silicon switches in a computer. To actually undemolish a construction site you need an actuator (magic) that affects the world outside the way lines of computer code flip silicon switches. The cloning the player part might be impossible, but at least it seems more reasonable than silicon switches that are conscious.

Phillip_Huggan 18 Jun 2008 20:39 UTC
0 points
on: The Ultimate Source
“No, you have to be the ultimate source of your decisions. If anything else in your past, such as the initial condition of your brain, fully determined your decision, then clearly you did not.”

Once again, a straw man. Free will might not exist but it won’t be disproved by this reasoning. People that claim free will don’t claim 100% free will; actions like willing your own birth. Free will proponents generally believe the basis for free will is choosing from among two or more symbolic brain representations. If the person read a book about the pain of being burned to death, in the few seconds between past contemplating self and present decisive self, than the straw man holds.
In the above example, if the fear of fire is instinctive, no free will. If it is attained through symbolic contemplation in the past of what one would do in such a circumstance or how one values neighbourhood civilian lives, or one’s desire to be a hero or celebrity, then at least the potential for free will exists.
Once again, free will does not mean willing your own existence, it means choosing from brain symbols in a way that affects your future (if free will exists). I expect to post the exact same argument here on different threads repeatedly ad neaseum, that free will does not mean willing your own birth (or willing your own present or future, or willing the universe).
I’ll ask again, don’t tachyons induce feedbacks that destroy the EY concept of a “block MWI universe”?

Phillip_Huggan 10 Jun 2008 14:34 UTC
−4 points
on: Against Devil’s Advocacy
″...Also, your last two comments are almost completely off-topic.”

I was just playing the Devil’s Advocate, screwing around to “help” others build debating skills while not telling them I was wasting their time :)

Phillip_Huggan 10 Jun 2008 4:17 UTC
−4 points
on: Against Devil’s Advocacy
About Devil’s Advocacy, it is fine as long as it is stated. Don’t go claiming the Holocaust was a good thing and should be completed this time around, without mentioning the part about just wanting to heighten the quality of debating skills.

TGGP, if present rates of US prison incarceration existed historically, the USA would never have been a superpower. $100000 a person annually, at 3 million people. You do the math. The worst part is they are all black and poor. They are being imprisoned because: 1) they can’t afford lawyers, 2) they are black, 3) only thirdly, they are guilty. Lets cut the crap, most people reading this blog have committed offenses that could see them imprisoned for years. Drugs and pills without a prescription are obvious, but there are many more. If you are black or poor, you are far likely to be cuaght and imprisoned. There is a prison quota to pay administrative prison salaries and to ensure work for construction contractors. Prisoners are forced to labour at rates that are used to undercut SE Asian labour force bids. Try to say no to the work and not get raped by other prisoners. Prisoners in maximum security US institutions learn criminal skills (good in learning how to grow weed, bad most other skills), are emotionally hardened, and are subject (along with staff) to an environment that encourages mental health problems. I wasn’t kidding when I said the USA now spends more on prisons than on higher education. Only 3rd world countries do this. The contractors could literally be building public schools and the staff could be trained in tangential security and health occupations (in Canada, 20% of nursing home residents are subject to assault by mentally ill residents, something that could be avoided with a former prison guard on duty). More importantly, in my eyes, imprisoning so many innocent people somewhat condones all other crimes. The above excludes the health care cost of increased Hepatitas, drug usage, mental health problems, HIV, staff stress.… I don’t know who James Q Wilson is, but I am 100% certain he is not African American or a poor person in the Western world. If he were, he would reflexively adopt a correct policy position. He likely earns 6 figures and is white. The police have never pulled him over and searched his pockets for pills or given him a breathalyzer after a car accident.

Phillip_Huggan 10 Jun 2008 3:55 UTC
−3 points
on: Against Devil’s Advocacy
“Tangential argument: existential risk maximizing actors, thank goodness, don’t exist, nor do more than a tiny number of people seeking to destroy humanity. Beware the Angry Death Spiral.”

I think I’ll stand by my words and qualify the statement maybe GWB could start WWIII single-handedly and isn’t, so this is only pertaining to the threat global warming. S.Harper couldn’t be misplaying the threat worse. Canada’s governing structure has a provision where the Queen of England is the real head of state, and the Governer General would almost certainly remove our PM from power if he did things like igniting Canada’s coal reserves (a nice trick to have in the arsenal though, if the world is heading towards an Ice Age, as Ice Ages typically onset in decades or less). We are very early in on Global Warming. If GWB and S.Harper were acting as they are now, a decade or two from now, my correct position would be the mainstream. I didn’t mean actively as in willfully, like Nazi evil. I meant it more like allowing a population to starve (literally in this context), like Soviet evil inflicted on the Ukraine. GWB and S.Harper know full well what they are doing is greedy and they both know enough or are purposely (as opposed to unintentionally) avoiding the knowledge. Yep, I stand by my statement. When history looks back, if we make it there, GWB and S.Harper will be looked back as being one of the world leaders of their respective nations ever, solely on the demerits of their handling of Global Warming. B.Obama and S.Dion, solely by coming after them with an environmental platform that doesn’t threaten to destroy humanity for short-term profit, will go down in history as at least above average leaders.

Am I part of an angry death spiral? I think my comments are measured. Probably even kind. S.Harper’s first act of government was to cancel 17 Canadian Global Warming research programmes, including a critical ocean one. Do I really need to post what dubya has done on this file? The angry death spiral only happens if Republicans and Conservatives maintain power over the years ahead. America finally cashes in its WWII credit and Canada temporarily loses post-modern status. Not a spiral. Yet.

Phillip_Huggan 9 Jun 2008 16:28 UTC
1 point
on: Against Devil’s Advocacy
“But with anyone in this state of mind, I would sooner begin by teaching them that policy debates should not appear one-sided.” I think you have to qualify this statement with “unresolved” policy debates.

I’ll take the positions: 1) another Holocaust would be a bad thing. 2) global warming is real and S.Harper and GWB are real existential risk maximizing actors. 3) the US prison economy (construction, staffing and forced prison labour), now consuming more resources than Universities in your retarded country, is a conflict of interest. It won’t help students at all to adapt the opposite positions.

The problem with taking evil positions “just for kicks”, is that many of these positions are adapted in real life. There are a powerful (low teens percentile) political minorities in Europe and Russia that wouldn’t mind another Holocaust and would welcome more skeptical minds like EY to briefly adopt their positions. Same for oil supporters in Canada and the USA that presently run the world and are actively seek humanity’s destruction. The USA incarcerates a greater % of its population than anyone; is practically a 3rd world country. Slavery is still alive in the USA.

“unresolved” turns the above brain sharpening positions into acceptable (but still false policy positions): 1) Immigration should be reduced or union jobs should be subsidized with public funds or cultural minorities should melting pot. 2) I’m greedy and would rather consume than stabilize Earth for future generations. 3) We need retarded Republican policies to try to maintain global military hedgemony, and the Republican alliance shouldn’t be fractured; also, incarcerating Democrats prevents them from voting.

Don’t encourage malleable students to adopt evil positions, they may like it.

Phillip_Huggan 9 Jun 2008 1:30 UTC
0 points
on: Timeless Control
The nature of time has been covered by many great minds from a religious viewpoint, as mentioned by nick. It is also an active research topic among mainstream universities. I’m not particularly interested in the question, but the best analysis I’ve read comes from a few N.Bostrom papers, and a book I once read called “Time Machines”. The book supposes a block universe, but states very clearly that this may not be the way the universe operates. From what I understand, this means the opposite of what EY wrote. It means the Copenhagen determination (that magic causes wavefront collapses) is a block universe. From my understanding, MWI means the universe would only be deterministic if there were no tachyons (I’m not sure, but I think these are predicted in most GUTs), otherwise there would be feedbacks. Even if no tachyons, the universe would only be deterministic in a past direction. The real question is what causes universes to split off. This is deep physics. There are papers on this topic. If someone were to suggest one, I would read it. The whole point of Tipler’s “The Physics of Immortality”, was to use shearing forces in a collapsing universe (universe strongly appears to be open, unfortunately), as an energy source. Where would a never ending universe fit when viewed through block universe goggles? Once again I ask, don’t tachyons eliminate the block universe concept for all energy except photons travelling at c?

I’m not discouraging discussion. But there are some topics where this may be a cutting edge dialectic, such as the nature of minds, the computational power limits if any to recursive AI software programs, and AGI/AI controls. But this debate is inferior to mainstream university research. Keep it up, but the real question is how much money to spend on particle accelrators and observatories, that might resolve these basic physics questions. The money people use mainstream physicists as their info sources. These mainstream physicists have written papers. If EY’s “block universe” hypothesis were correct, we wouldn’t experience time. Simple anthropic reasoning disproves it. Time exists. The future is more important than the past. If anyone takes the time to find papers that deal with splitting off universes, I’d attempt to read them and discuss. I hope if mildly recursive software AI systems are built in the decades ahead and the human brain/mind is modelled by IBM or whoever, that those interested here in AI/AGI will keep up with these findings and not continue to discuss “inferior” content. Maybe I’m just pissed because I realize blogs where GUT amateurs talk about time, have limits.

Off-topic, but I suggest EY’s idea of an AGI using mixed chemicals to form a mobile robot (and assumedly hack the internet), is now dated. With rep-rap and ink jet polymers, rapid plastics prototyping...a far more likely scenario is that an AI would hack a printer and output some sort of shape-memory device or conducting plastic as an origami crane. Normally this is a moot point, but there may be real defenses that could be dreamed in these sorts of discussions. If it is not known whether AGI is possible with a 2000BC Egyptian wooden abacus, or needs a computer from 10000000AD, but we know people may try to use the same sort of technologies and/or hacking procedures as weapons, why not diversify one’s fields-of-expertise? If I were to suggest AI/AGI prescriptions to cyber police, I’d suggest cracking down on Eastern European, Russian and Chinese virus writers and better funding the good guys.