Purged Deviator

Karma: −16

Purged Deviator 6 Jan 2024 8:41 UTC
1 point
0
on: Eliezer Yudkowsky Is Frequently, Confidently, Egregiously Wrong

“he sounds convincing when he talks about X.”

I am so disappointed every time I see people using the persuasiveness filter. Persuasiveness is not completely orthogonal to correctness, but it is definitely linearly independent from it.

Purged Deviator 16 Nov 2022 12:42 UTC
2 points
1
on: Addendum: A non-magical explanation of Jeffrey Epstein
You discuss “compromised agents” of the FBI as if they’re going to be lone, investigator-level agents. If there was going to be any FBI/CIA/whatever cover-up, the version of that which I would expect, is that Epstein would’ve had incriminating information on senior FBI/CIA personnel, or politicians. Incriminating information could just be that the FBI/CIA knew that Epstein was raping underage girls for 20 years, and didn’t stop him, or even protected him. In all your explanations of how impossible a crime Epstein’s murder would be to pull off, a thing that makes it seem more plausible to me is if the initial conspirator isn’t just someone trying to wave money around, but is someone with authority.
Go ahead and mock, but this is what I thought the default assumption was whenever someone said “Epstein didn’t kill himself” or “John McAfee didn’t kill himself”. I never assumed it would just be one or two lone, corrupt agents.

Purged Deviator 11 Nov 2022 10:40 UTC
1 point
in reply to: MSRayne’s comment on: Purged Deviator’s Shortform
Now that I’ve had 5 months to let this idea stew, when I read your comment again just now, I think I understand it completely? After getting comfortable using “demons” to refer to patterns of thought or behavior which proliferate in ways not completely unlike some patterns of matter, this comment now makes a lot more sense than it used to.

Purged Deviator 11 Nov 2022 10:20 UTC
1 point
in reply to: JBlack’s comment on: Purged Deviator’s Shortform
1. Yeah. I wanted to assume they were being forced to give an opinion, so that “what topics a person is or isn’t likely to bring up” wasn’t a confounding variable. Your point here suggests that a conspirator’s response might be more like “I don’t think about them”, or some kind of null opinion.
2. This sort of gets to the core of what I was wondering about, but am not sure how to solve: how lies will tend to pervert Bayesian inference. “Simulacra levels” may be relevant here. I would think that a highly competent conspirator would want to only give you information that would reduce your prediction of a conspiracy existing, but this seems sort of recursive, in that anything that would reduce your prediction of a conspiracy would have increased likelihood of being said by a conspirator. Would the effect of lies by bad-faith actors, who know your priors, be that certain statements just don’t update your priors, because uncertainty makes them not actually add any new information? I don’t know what limit this reduces to, and I don’t yet know what math I would need to solve it.
3. Naturally. I think “backpropagation” might be related to certain observations affecting multiple hypotheses? But I haven’t brushed up on that in a while.
Thank you, it does help! I know some people who revel in conspiracy theories, and some who believe conspiracies are so unlikely, that they dismiss any possibility of a conspiracy out of hand. I get left in the middle with the feeling that some situations “don’t smell right”, without having a provable, quantifiable excuse for why I feel that way.

Purged Deviator 10 Nov 2022 18:07 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: Purged Deviator’s comment on: Possibility and Could-ness
without using “will”
Oh come on. Alright, but if your answer mentions future or past states, or references time at all, I’m dinging you points. Imaginary points, not karma points obviously.

Purged Deviator 10 Nov 2022 17:58 UTC
1 point
on: Possibility and Could-ness
So let’s talk about this word, “could”. Can you play Rationalist’s Taboo against it?
Testing myself before I read further. World states which “could” happen are the set of world states which are not ruled impossible by our limited knowledge. Is “impossible” still too load-bearing here? Fine, let’s get more concrete.
In a finite-size game of Conway’s Life, each board state has exactly one following board state, which itself has only one following board state, and so on. This sequence of board states is a board’s future. Each board state does not correspond to only a single previous board state, but rather a set of previous board states. If we only know the current board state, then we do not know the previous board state, but we know the set that contains the previous board state. We call this set the board states that could have been the previous board state. From the inverse of this, we know the set that does not contain the previous board state, which we call the boards which could not have been the previous board.
Going back up to our universe, what “could happen” is a set of things which our heuristics tell us contains one or more things which will happen. What “can’t happen” is a set of things which our heuristics tell us does not contain a thing that will happen.
A thing which “could have happened” is thus a thing which was in a set which our heuristics told us contained a thing that will (or did) happen.
If I say “No, that couldn’t happen”, I am saying that your heuristics are too permissive, i.e. your “could” set contains elements which my heuristics exclude.
I think that got the maybe-ness out, or at least replaced it with set logic. The other key point is the limited information preventing us from cutting the “could” set down to one unique element. I expect Eliezer to have something completely different.

Purged Deviator 10 Nov 2022 16:55 UTC
−1 points
on: Priors as Mathematical Objects
So then this initial probability estimate, 0.5, is not repeat not a “prior”.
1:1 odds seems like it would be a default null prior, especially because one round of Bayes’ Rule updates it immediately to whatever your first likelihood ratio is, kind of like the other mathematical identities. If your priors represent “all the information you already know”, then it seems like you (or someone) must have gotten there through a series of Bayesian inferences, but that series would have to start somewhere, right? If (in the real universe, not the ball & urn universe) priors aren’t determined by some chain of Bayesian inference, but instead by some degree of educated guesses / intuition / dead reckoning, wouldn’t that make the whole process subject to a “garbage in, garbage out” fallacy(?).
For a use case: A, low internal resolution rounded my posterior probability to 0 or 1, and now new evidence is not updating my estimations anymore, or B, I think some garbage crawled into my priors, but I’m not sure where. In either case, I want to take my observations, and rebuild my chain of inferences from the ground up, to figure out where I should be. So… where is the ground? If 1:1 odds is not the null prior, not the Bayesian Identity, then what is?

Purged Deviator 10 Nov 2022 14:19 UTC
1 point
on: Dagger of Detect Evil
Evil is a pattern of of behavior exhibited by agents. In embedded agents, that pattern is absolutely represented by material. As for what that pattern is, evil agents harm others for their own gain. That seems to be the core of “evilness” in possibility space. Whenever I try to think of the most evil actions I can, they tend to correlate with harming others (especially one’s equals, or one’s inner circle, who would expect mutual cooperation), for one’s own gain. Hamlet’s uncle. Domestic abusers. Executives who ruin lives for profit. Politicians who hand out public money in exchange for bribes. Bullies who torment other children for fun. It’s a learnable script, which says “I can gain at others expense”, whether that gain is power, control, money, or just pleasure.
If your philosopher thinks “evil” is immaterial, does he also think “epistemology” is immaterial?
(I apologize if this sounds argumentative, I’ve just heard “good and evil are social constructs” far too many times.)

Purged Deviator 10 Nov 2022 13:17 UTC
1 point
in reply to: niplav’s comment on: niplav’s Shortform
Not really. “Collapse” is not the only failure case. Mass starvation is a clear failure state of a planned economy, but it doesn’t necessarily burn through the nation’s stock of proletariat laborers immediately. In the same way that a person with a terminal illness can take a long time to die, a nation with failing systems can take a long time to reach the point where it ceases functioning at all.

Purged Deviator 10 Nov 2022 13:02 UTC
1 point
on: Purged Deviator’s Shortform
How do lies affect Bayesian Inference?
(Relative likelihood notation is easier, so we will use that)
I heard a thing. Well, I more heard a thing about another thing. Before I heard about it, I didn’t know one way or the other at all. My prior was the Bayesian null prior of 1:1. Let’s say the thing I heard is “Conspiracy thinking is bad for my epistemology”. Let’s pretend it was relevant at the time, and didn’t just come up out of nowhere. What is the chance that someone would hold this opinion, given that they are not part of any conspiracy against me? Maybe 50%? If I heard it in a Rationality influenced space, probably more like 80%? Now, what is the chance that someone would share this as their opinion, given that they are involved in a conspiracy against me? Somewhere between 95% and 100%, so let’s say 99%? Now, our prior is 1:1, and our likelihood ratio is 80:99, so our final prediction, of someone not being a conspirator vs being a conspirator, is 80:99, or 1:1.24. Therefore, my expected probability of someone not being a conspirator went from 50%, down to 45%. Huh.
For the love of all that is good, please shoot holes in this and tell me I screwed up somewhere.

Purged Deviator 31 Oct 2022 9:09 UTC
−3 points
−1
on: My resentful story of becoming a medical miracle

weight-loss-that-is-definitely-not-changes-in-water-retention comes in chunks

Source for my answer: for the last 10 months, I have fasted regularly, with various fasts from 16 hours to 7 days, with & without vitamins, including water fasts, electrolyte fasts, and dry fasts. During this time, I have weighed myself multiple times per day. [I have lost >100 lbs doing this, but that’s not important right now.]

How hydrated you are at any given time is a confounding variable whenever you weigh yourself. My body can hold plus or minus nearly a gallon of water without me feeling a difference. If I weigh myself while less hydrated one day, and then while more hydrated the next day, that hydration difference will completely overshadow any weight loss. When I was dry fasting there was no increase in hydration, so weight loss became extremely regular. Eating more carbohydrates also tended make me retain more water for a few days, and the amount of food in my gut at any one time were some other confounding variables.

Purged Deviator 31 Oct 2022 8:19 UTC
1 point
on: Selection Theorems: A Program For Understanding Agents
Started reading, want to get initial thoughts down before they escape me. Will return when I am done

Representation: An agent, or an agent’s behaviour, is a script. I don’t know if that’s helpful or meaningful. Interfaces: Real, in-universe agents have hardware on which they operate. I’d say they have “sensors and actuators”, but that’s tautologous to “inputs and outputs”. Embedding: In biological systems, the script is encoded directly in the structure of the wetware. The hardware / software dichotomy has more separation, but I think I’m probably misunderstanding this.

Purged Deviator 31 Oct 2022 7:57 UTC
3 points
on: Purged Deviator’s Shortform
Monopolies on the Use of Force

[Epistemic status & effort: exploring a question over an hour or so, and constrained to only use information I already know. This is a problem solving exercise, not a research paper. Originally written just for me; minor clarification added later.]

Is the use of force a unique industry, where a single monolithic [business] entity is the most stable state, the equilibrium point? From a business perspective, an entity selling the use of force might be thought of as in a “risk management” or “contract enforcement” industry. It might use an insurance-like business model, or function more like a contractor for large projects.

In a monopoly on the use of force, the one monopolizing entity can spend all of its time deciding what to do, and then relatively little time & energy actually exerting that force, because resistance to its force is minimal, since there are no similarly sized entities to oppose it. The cost of using force is slightly increased if the default level of resistance [i.e. how much force is available to someone who has not hired their own use-of-force business entity] is increased. Can the default level of opposition be lowered by a monolithic entity? Yes [e.g. limiting private ownership of weapons & armor].

In a diverse [non-monopoly] environment, an entity selling the use of force could easily find a similar sized entity opposing it. Opposed entities can fight immediately like hawks, or can negotiate like doves, but: the costs of conflict will be underestimated (somehow they always are); “shooting first” (per the dark forest analogy) is a powerful & possibly dominant strategy; and hawkish entities impose a cost on the entire industry.

Does this incentivize dovish entities to cooperate to eliminate hawkish entities? If they are able to coordinate, and if there are enough of them to bear the cost & survive, then probably. If they do this, then they in-effect form a single monolithic cooperating entity. If they cannot, then dovish entities may become meaningless, as hawkish entities tear them and each other apart until only one remains (Highlander rules?). Our original question might then depend on the following one:

“Do dovish entities in the market of force necessarily either become de facto monopolies or perish?”

How do we go about both answering and supporting this question? Via historical example and / or counterexample?

What does the example look like? Entities in the same ecosystem either destroy each other, or cooperate to a degree where they cease acting like separate entities.

What does the counterexample look like? Entities in the same ecosystem remain separate, only cooperate to serve shared goals, and do come into conflict, but do not escalate that conflict into deadly force.

[Sidenote: what is this “degree of cooperation”? Shared goal: I want to accomplish X, and you also want to accomplish X, so we cooperate to make accomplishment of X more likely. “To cease acting separately”: I want to accomplish X; you do not care about X; however, you will still help me with X, and bear costs to do so, because you value our relationship, and have the expectation that I may help you accomplish an unknown Y in the future, even though I don’t care about Y.]

Possible examples to investigate (at least the ones which come quickly to mind): Danish conquests in medieval UK. The world wars and cold war. Modern geopolitics.

Possible counterexamples to investigate: Pre-nationalized medieval European towns & cities, of the kind mentioned in Seeing Like a State? Urban gang environments, especially in areas with minimal law enforcement? Somalia, or other areas described as “failed states”? Modern geopolitics. Standoffs between federal authorities and militia groups in the modern & historical USA, such as the standoff at Bundy Ranch.

Purged Deviator 13 Jun 2022 21:20 UTC
0 points
on: Circling
Nope. Nopenopenope. This trips so many cult flags. This does not feel like rationality, this feels like pseudoreligion, like cult entrance activities, with rationality window dressing.
Maybe it’s just because of the “you have to experience it for yourself” theme of this article, but right now this gets a hard nope from me, like psychedelics & speaking in tongues.
Nope.

Purged Deviator 13 Jun 2022 14:07 UTC
1 point
in reply to: lc’s comment on: lc’s Shortform
I don’t expect AI researchers to achieve AGI before they find one or more horrible uses for non-general AI tools, which may divert resources, or change priorities, or do something else which prevents true AGI from ever being developed.

Purged Deviator 13 Jun 2022 13:54 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: DragonGod’s comment on: DragonGod’s Shortform
That’s what I use this place for, an audience for rough drafts or mere buddings of an idea. (Crippling) Executive dysfunction sounds like it may be a primary thing to explore & figure out, but it also sounds like the sort of thing that surrounds itself with an Ugh Field very quickly. Good luck!

Purged Deviator 13 Jun 2022 13:49 UTC
−6 points
on: Purged Deviator’s Shortform
AGI Alignment, or How Do We Stop Our Algorithms From Getting Possessed by Demons?
[Epistemic Status: Absurd silliness, which may or may not contain hidden truths]
[Epistemic Effort: Idly exploring idea space, laying down some map so I stop circling back over the same territory]

From going over Zvi’s sequence on Moloch, what the “demon” Moloch really is, is a pattern (or patterns) of thought and behaviour which destroys human value in certain ways. That is an interesting way of labeling things. We know patterns of thought, and we know humans can learn them through their experiences, or by being told them, or reading them somewhere, or any other way that humans can learn things. If a human learns a pattern of thought which destroys value in some way, and that pattern gets reinforced, or in some other way comes to be the primary pattern of that human’s thought or behaviour (e.g. it becomes the most significant factor in their utility function), is that in any way functionally different from “becoming possessed by demons”?
That’s a weird paradigm. It gives the traditionally fantastical term “demon” a real definition as a real thing that really exists, and it also separates algorithms from the agents that execute them.
A few weird implications: When we’re trying to “align an AGI”, are we looking for an agent which cannot even theoretically become possessed by demons? Because that seems like it might require an agent which cannot be altered, or at least cannot alter itself. But in order to learn in a meaningful way, an intelligent agent has to be able to alter itself. (Yeah, I should prove these statements, but I’m not gonna. See: Epistemic Effort) So then instead of an immutable agent, are we looking for positive patterns of thought, which resist being possessed by demons?
[I doubt that this is in any way useful to anyone, but it was fun for me. It will disappear into the archives soon enough]

Purged Deviator 11 Jun 2022 7:21 UTC
−1 points
on: The Truth About Mathematical Ability
When Grothendieck was learning math, he was playing Dark Souls.

Purged Deviator 15 Apr 2022 6:59 UTC
−1 points
on: Bayesians vs. Barbarians
I think you may have waded into the trees here, before taking stock of the forest. By which I mean that this problem could definitely use some formalization, and may be much more important than we expect it to be. I’ve been studying the ancient Mongols recently; their conquests tested this, and their empire had the potential to be a locked-in dystopia type of apocalypse, but they failed to create a stable internal organizational structure. Thus, a culture that optimizes for both conquest & control, at the expense of everything else, could be an existential threat to the future of humanity. I think that merits rationalist research.
So, in a superfight of Rationalists vs Barbarians, with equal resources, we can steelman the opposition by substituting in that “Barbarians” means a society 100% optimized toward conquering others & taking all their stuff, at the expense of not being optimized toward anything else. In this case, what would the “Rationalist” society be, and how could they win? Or at least not lose?
I am going to go check if there are other articles which have developed this thought experiment already.

Purged Deviator 19 Mar 2022 2:37 UTC
−1 points
in reply to: Purged Deviator’s comment on: Purged Deviator’s Shortform
Whom/what an agent is willing to do Evil to, vs whom/what it would prefer to do Good to, sort of defines an in-group/out-group divide, in a similar way to how the decision to cooperate or defect does in the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Hmmm...