Psychosmurf

Karma: 84

Psychosmurf Jul 30, 2012, 5:41 PM
2 points
in reply to: kilobug’s comment on: Is Politics the Mindkiller? An Inconclusive Test
It’s interesting that the only proposed alternative to Azathoth in this discussion so far is government intervention of one form or another (the government itself is just another creation of Azathoth). But there exist many more such as changing the fundamental institutions of our society, including our very notions of property and democracy.

Psychosmurf Jul 29, 2012, 10:44 PM
0 points
on: [Error communicating with LW2 server]
As to the question for why it works, it seems to me that it’s because it takes into account the rationality of each participant (by using the accuracy of their prediction about how many people will agree with them) and then gives the more rational participants’ answers greater weight.

If that’s the case, then any rationality test could be used as a truth serum. If you want to know whether or not string theory is true, you’re probably better off asking people who don’t believe that the Earth is flat.

Psychosmurf Jul 21, 2012, 7:50 PM
3 points
in reply to: Psychosmurf’s comment on: Rationality Quotes July 2012
Will somebody please tell me why this is being downvoted so heavily? I was just making a joke…

Psychosmurf Jul 18, 2012, 2:47 AM
−20 points
in reply to: Fyrius’s comment on: Rationality Quotes July 2012
2 deep 4 u

Psychosmurf Apr 20, 2012, 1:31 AM
−1 points
in reply to: handoflixue’s comment on: The Quick Bayes Table
I’d give most people who even attempt to assign probabilities to their beliefs in the first place enough credit that they can perform very simple arithmetical operations.

Psychosmurf Apr 19, 2012, 7:36 AM
2 points
on: The Quick Bayes Table
You can shorten the table by about half if you eliminate the negative logarithms by using the laws of logarithms.

For example, −20 decibles in terms of probability is just 100% - (The probability corresponding to +20 decibles), and the odds ratios simply occur in reverse order. That is 20 db = 100:1 and −20 db = 1:100

Psychosmurf Feb 26, 2012, 4:00 PM
6 points
in reply to: ShardPhoenix’s comment on: Acausal romance
Who says we have to restrict our choice of mates to Less Wrong?

Psychosmurf Jan 26, 2012, 4:52 PM
1 point
in reply to: lessdazed’s comment on: Shit Rationalists Say?

“100%.”

Oh man, had me laughing for a good while with this one. Nice job! ^_^

Psychosmurf Jan 10, 2012, 7:30 AM
3 points
on: The Ethical Status of Non-human Animals
I don’t think self-awareness and sentience are the only dimensions along which minds can differ. The kinds of goals a mind tries to attain are much more relevant. I wouldn’t want to ensure the survival of a mind that would make it more difficult for me to carry out my own goals. For example, let’s say a self-aware and sentient paperclip maximizer were to be built. Can killing it be said to be unethical?

I think the minds of most non-human animals (with maybe the exception of some species of hominids) and human sociopaths are so different from ours that treating them unequally is justified in many situations.

Psychosmurf Dec 25, 2011, 7:26 AM
7 points
on: Just another day in utopia
Makes me take the warnings not to be seduced by my imagination far more seriously. Excellent work.

Psychosmurf Dec 5, 2011, 10:43 PM
3 points
on: How is your mind different from everyone else’s?
I experience numbers as being on a line that runs left to right, swerves to the left at some number, continues upwards, and then returns to running from left to right. My experience of temperatures, people’s ages, and the days of months is similar, but with different patterns of where the turns are. However, I think it may actually go right to left somewhere in the millions, though I’m not sure. Negative numbers run to the left forever, as far as I can tell. Calendar years are slightly different, in that they take more rounded turns and seem to be capable of going in any direction. The months of the year are very different. They make a letter “D” curve with January at the top and December at the bottom, but the link between January and December seems to be “pinched” rather than connected by a straight line. Also, the days of the week have different shades, Monday-Friday are all slightly grayish, while Saturday and Sunday are bright.

I also experience the letters of the alphabet, numerals, punctuation marks, months, days of the week, and various mathematical symbols as having genders and personalities.

I seem to be unable to think without internal monologue and visualization both being active. Whenever I imagine something, my internal monologue is describing it, and whenever I think verbally I visualize what I’m “talking” about.

I have an exceptional memory for auditory information.

I am usually almost completely indifferent to adult suffering.

I can get lost in deep thought such that I may forget where I am or the time of day or what I’m doing, etc. In these episodes, it may be quite difficult to get my attention.

I can hardly look at an object or person without them having a strong influence on my line of thought.

I conceptualize manipulations of mathematical expressions as movements consisting of slides and “flips”.

Psychosmurf Nov 21, 2011, 8:44 PM
0 points
on: How did you come to find LessWrong?
Someone recommended HPMOR on another forum. Then I found LessWrong by googling the author’s name.

Psychosmurf Oct 24, 2011, 11:30 PM
2 points
on: Naming the Highest Virtue of Epistemic Rationality

Why don’t we start treating the sum of log_2 of the probability — conditional on every available piece of information — you assign to every true sentence, as the best measure of your epistemic success?

Wait. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding something here, but how are we going to decide what a true sentence is independently of all of our available information?

Psychosmurf Oct 13, 2011, 4:04 AM
6 points
on: [LINK] Why did Steve Jobs choose not to effectively treat his cancer?
Simple google search yielded surprisingly interesting answers:

http://www.ukskeptics.com/article.php?dir=articles&article=why_people_use_alternative_medicine.php

The tendency is that people are more likely to use alternative treatments the more educated they are. The level of education a person has attained is probably the the best indicator that a person is likely to use some form of alternative treatment.

Being intelligent or well educated does not mean that a person is going to think more logically; in fact, it often results in them becoming better at defending and justifying their irrational beliefs.

Unfortunately, conventional medicine is not perfect; people do have bad experiences with it. This can lead people to distrust conventional medicine and sometimes shun it. This is only true of a small proportion of people, but the big danger for them is that they are more likely to use alternative remedies as their primary source of healthcare. These people often decide to take full control of their own, and possibly also their family’s, health. The consequences of this may be damaging, even fatal.

Psychosmurf Oct 12, 2011, 8:59 PM
0 points
in reply to: RomanDavis’s comment on: Just a reminder, for everyone that signed up for the intro to AI class, it’s started.
Go to this site:

http://www.ai-class.com/home/

and sign up.

Psychosmurf Oct 12, 2011, 8:24 PM
0 points
in reply to: RomanDavis’s comment on: Just a reminder, for everyone that signed up for the intro to AI class, it’s started.
Probably, but I’d try anyway.

Psychosmurf Oct 11, 2011, 12:18 AM
8 points
on: The self-fooling problem.
Are you allowed to use someone else’s brain? If so, you could ask them to hide it.

Psychosmurf Oct 10, 2011, 8:09 PM
4 points
on: Just a reminder, for everyone that signed up for the intro to AI class, it’s started.
Thanks for the reminder.

For anyone still interested, it’s not too late to sign up.

Psychosmurf Oct 10, 2011, 7:01 PM
17 points
on: 1001 PredictionBook Nights

This detachment itself seems to help accuracy; I was struck by a psychology study demonstrating that not only are people better at falsifying theories put forth by other people, they are better at falsifying when pretending it is held by an imaginary friend!

I think we’ve just derived a new heuristic. Pretend that your beliefs are held by your imaginary friend.

Psychosmurf Oct 10, 2011, 6:27 AM
0 points
on: Thinking in Bayes: Light
Remember that “H causes e” and “H implies e” are two very different statements. The map is not the territory.

In order to show that H causes e you would have to show that the probabilities always factor as P(e & H) = P(H)P(e|H) and not as P(e & H) = P(e)P(H|e).

For example, rain causes wet grass, but wet grass does not cause rain, even though the Bayesian inference goes both ways.