Sune

Karma: 523

Sune Jan 2, 2023, 9:35 PM
1 point
0
on: Investing for a World Transformed by AI
A related thought I’m having: assuming we have a scenario where personal finances still matters, am I better off keeping my real estate loan and my stocks or is it better to sell ³⁄₄ of my stocks to pay off my loan? I’m particularly worried about a scenario where AIs mean that I (and presumably most other people) will be unemployable. My loan is fixed rate.

Sune Jan 1, 2023, 11:56 AM
4 points
0
on: Investing for a World Transformed by AI
I’m surprised you don’t expect any effect on real estate. I would expect it to be greatly affected by such a transformation, although I’m not sure in which direction.

If unemployment skyrockets because AIs can do everything that most humans can and cheaper, then fewer people would have to live in cities, potentially leading to crashing house prices in cities. The same could also happen if working from home becomes the norm due to VR. On the other hand, if human employment stay high, and productivity increases and we still have to be physically at work, then city real estate prices would likely increase with productivity.

Disclaimer: I have almost no track record in active investing, so don’t take anything I say too seriously.

Sune Dec 9, 2022, 8:57 PM
0 points
−1
in reply to: TekhneMakre’s comment on: You can still fetch the coffee today if you’re dead tomorrow
A similar objection is that you might accidentially define the utility function and time limit in such a way that the AI assigns positive probability to the hypothesis that it can later create a time machine and go back and improve the utility. Then once the time has passed, it will desparately try to invent a time machine, even if it thinks it is extremely unlikely to succed (this is using Bostrom’s way of thinking. Shard theory would not predict this).

Sune Dec 4, 2022, 7:10 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: Sune’s comment on: The LessWrong 2021 Review (Intellectual Circle Expansion)
Linkpost: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XtRAkvvaQSaQEyASj/lars-doucet-s-georgism-series-on-astral-codex-ten

Sune Dec 4, 2022, 6:46 PM
3 points
2
on: The LessWrong 2021 Review (Intellectual Circle Expansion)
Lars Doucet‘s series on Georgism on Astral Codex Ten should be included https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/does-georgism-work-is-land-really

Sune Nov 24, 2022, 8:00 PM
7 points
0
on: Geometric Exploration, Arithmetic Exploitation
Super interesting series! Your second post actually gave me some insights on a problem that was a big part of my phd, but it will take me some time to think through. So here is a ~~simpler~~ unrelated comment.

Thompson sampling seems to be too perfectionistic to me: it wants to take an action that is optimal in some world, rather than one that is merely great in all worlds. For example, suppose you have a suitcase with a 6 digit lock. In each turn, you can make a guess at the correct combination. If you guess correctly, you get 10 utils, if you guess wrong you get 1 util. If you don’t guess but instead pass, you get 9 utils.

(The model is supposed to be greedy and ignore future advantages so information revealed from a wrong guess shouldn’t matter. If this bothers you, you can imaging that when you “pass”, you still get to make a guess at the correct combination, and you learn if it is correct, but you get 9 utils no matter if your guess is correct or not.)

Each possible combination is considered a hypothesis so each hypothesis is deterministic. Thompson sampling would never pass, because that is not the optimal thing to do for any particular hypothesis (although it is the optimal thing to do when you don’t know which hypothesis is true). Instead it would keep guessing combinations, because each combination is optimal is some hypothesis.

This is not an issue of AM vs. GM: the same thing happens in the plurality decision procedure when we only use AM. It is an issue about what we take argmax over. If we consider the combination to be due to randomness within a single hypothesis, the decision procedures will correctly choose to pass until the correct combination has been revealed.

Possibly related question: Is there any reason the AM-GM boundary is at the same level as where we take argmax in the definition of m? Or could we have an arithmetic expectation outside of argmax (hence outside of m) but inside the geometric expectation? Or even have a geometric expectation inside of argmax in m but possibly over the arithmetic expectation?

Sune Nov 8, 2022, 5:37 AM
2 points
0
in reply to: DragonGod’s comment on: Should I Pursue a PhD?
Software development/consultancy.

Sune Nov 7, 2022, 8:12 PM
2 points
2
on: Should I Pursue a PhD?
My simple answer is: Go for it! I have done a PhD in mathematics myself (also in the UK), and although I have since changed career in a direction where it has not been that useful, I have never regretted it! And I’m sure I would have regretted it if I hadn’t done it.

Thinking a bit more about the question, I wonder if “Should I do it?” was really the question you wanted to ask? It seems not quite well-defined, when you are not stating any alternatives. Were you hoping to answers to “What other options do I have?”, “How do I get started on this path?”, “Will the change from CS to maths be too big?” or something else?

I’m not the right person to answer what other options you have. About the two other questions, I think you should focus on who you want as a supervisor, rather than whether it will be in mathematics or in computer science (I actually thought my PhD was in both maths and CS while I was doing my PhD, and only learned that it was only in maths when my diploma arrived! One of the examiners who awarded my PhD later told me he thought he had awarded me a PhD in CS!). If you find the right supervisor, it is not important if they are in CS or maths or something else.

Sune Nov 7, 2022, 5:31 AM
1 point
0
in reply to: Sable’s comment on: Word-Distance vs Idea-Distance: The Case for Lanoitaring
Yes, there typically isn’t an advantage in two particular different words sounding the same. Instead, that is a result of having many words and wanting to keep them short. My point is that as long at they are used in completely different situations (either grammatically or in different topics) is not much of a problem.

Sune Nov 6, 2022, 8:17 AM
3 points
2
on: Word-Distance vs Idea-Distance: The Case for Lanoitaring
I think it is a feature rather than a bug that words with similar meanings sound different. Imagine if to, too and two meant similar things and could be used in the same situation. Then it would be difficult to hear what exactly a speaker is saying and it would take effort to learn the distinctions. Eventually, they would likely merge into a single word.

Sune Oct 23, 2022, 11:40 AM
2 points
0
on: Looping
I can clearly recognize myself in this. Im starting to wonder if this can be avoided. If I start on something similar to your project, will I look back on this in two years and think”that was just another one of those thoughts that seemed they would change everything, but didn’t”?

Sune Oct 16, 2022, 7:16 PM
18 points
5
on: Age changes what you care about
I know this isn’t really the point in the post, but I dont think the “roling five d10 every day” or even the “1d00 a year” are good models for the probability of dying. They make sense statistically, when only considering your age and sex, but you yourself knows for example if you have been diagnosed with cancer or not. You might say that you get a cancer diagnosis if the first four d10 are all 1s and the fifth is a 2 or 3. Then once you have the cancer diagnosis, your probability is higher, especially when looking months or years ahead.

The usual mortality statistics dont distinguish between unexpected death and expected deaths. Do anyone know how of a more accurate model of how it is revealed when you die? Im not looking for exact probabilities and not necessarily of the resolution of days. Just something more accurate than the simple model that ignores current health.

Sune Oct 9, 2022, 6:38 AM
5 points
4
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Why I think there’s a one-in-six chance of an imminent global nuclear war
Another possibility is that the command is executed (meaning we are in the kaboom scenario), and the US does not escalate immediately but says that there will be a respond at a time and place of their choosing. This could give time for someone to overthrow Putin to prevent escalation.

Sune Oct 2, 2022, 3:38 PM
1 point
2
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: A Few Terrifying Facts About The Russo-Ukrainian War
Sure, Russia used to be technological and cultural superpower. I just can’t think of any similar examples from Putin’s time.

Sune Oct 2, 2022, 6:31 AM
3 points
0
in reply to: mako yass’s comment on: A Few Terrifying Facts About The Russo-Ukrainian War
I just realized that I have never taken the expression “superpower” literally, to only be about military strength. I have always just assumed the it also involve cultural and technological influence, and in general “how much do you contribute to the world”. This is probably because I started from the assumption that the US was the only superpower, and then I extrapolated from that.

If you take superpower to just mean the amount of military pressure you can put on other countries, it does make a bit more sense.

Sune Oct 2, 2022, 6:02 AM
5 points
2
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: A Few Terrifying Facts About The Russo-Ukrainian War
What do Russians think it takes to be a superpower?!

Their economy is below South Korea and Italy and is not even in the world top 10. https://www.worlddata.info/largest-economies.php

Their best university is number 78 on a world ranking. Their second best is 242. In comparison, the US have 5 universities on top 10. https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2022

Is it about having enough nukes to ruin the world? Or taking up a lot of territory? Or do they just never question the assumption that they are a superpower?

Edit: Added later: Their population size is only the 9th largest, below e.g. Bangladesh and Nigeria. https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries

Sune Oct 1, 2022, 7:59 AM
3 points
1
in reply to: tailcalled’s comment on: A Few Terrifying Facts About The Russo-Ukrainian War
I wonder what he thinks an (ideologically) unoccupied Germany would be like? Surely he can’t be thinking of the Statsi DDR he was part of when he was working in Dresden?! Maybe he thinks that Germany is naturally nazistic, and he just forgot to pretend to be against nazism?

Or maybe he is just saying words that are good at getting people angry at the west, but don’t make much sense when you think more about them?

Sune Oct 1, 2022, 5:17 AM
1 point
0
in reply to: lsusr’s comment on: A Few Terrifying Facts About The Russo-Ukrainian War
For any reasonable interpretation of d (Russia faces existential thread), anything that falls under this category would already be covered by c (Russia’s ability the retaliated with nukes is threatened).

This tells you that the point of d is to use an unreasonable interpretation, and use it in situations where even Putin cannot twist the truth enough to argue for c.

Sune Oct 1, 2022, 5:09 AM
11 points
3
on: A Few Terrifying Facts About The Russo-Ukrainian War
One motive I have heard various media give for Russian sabotaging Nord Stream, is that it would be a way out of their gas-delivery contract. If they simply stopped sending gas for no reason, they would have to pay a fine. This is also why they previous claimed that Nord Stream I was broken.

In order to determine if this is a credible motive, I would need to know:
1. How big would this fine be?
2. How likely would it be they ended up paying if they had simply stopped the gas for no good reason.
I haven’t seen any media give even an order of magnitude for question 1. Does anyone know that? At the very least, I would think the fine should be bigger than the value of the released gas for this to be a realistic motive.

Sune Sep 26, 2022, 5:34 AM
5 points
0
in reply to: Alex Beyman’s comment on: There’s One Thing Futurists are Never Wrong About
Sorry for being a bit harsh and overly to the point in my first comment.

You are obviously a good writer. This is clearly not a case of someone who cannot figure out how to structure a post: it was a post optimised for grabbing and holding attention, which is what (too) many sites optimise for, sometimes to optime ad revenue, but sometimes (like this case) for no good reason at all.

In particular this sentence made it clear to me that you knew what you were doing, and I felt almost mocked for still paying attention to you:

By now, after balking at the seemingly absurd title, I have you rubbing your chin somewhat.

As I said, you are a good writer and you have something to say. If you structure your posts in a way that optimises for giving value to the reader instead of for grabbing attention, Im looking forward to seening more post from you.