twanvl

Karma: 685

twanvl 5 Oct 2016 13:41 UTC
1 point
in reply to: skeptical_lurker’s comment on: Open thread, Oct. 03 - Oct. 09, 2016

The problem, which various people have pointed out, is that this implies an intelligence capable of taking over the world, but not capable of working out that when a human says pursue a certain goal, they would not want this goal to be pursued in a way that leads to the destruction of the world.

The entity providing the goals for the AI wouldn’t have to be a human, it might instead be a corporation. A reasonable goal for such an AI might be to ‘maximize shareholder value’. The shareholders are not humans either, and what they value is only money.

twanvl 18 Nov 2015 10:33 UTC
2 points
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Open thread, Nov. 16 - Nov. 22, 2015
I find “false positive” and “false negative” also a bit confusing, albeit less so than “type I” and “type II” errors. Perhaps because of a programming background, I usually interpret ‘false’ and ‘negative’ (and ‘0’) as the same thing. So is a ‘false positive’ something that is false but is mistaken as positive, or something that is positive (true), but that is mistaken as false (negative)? In other words, does ‘false’ apply to the postiveness (it is actually negative, but classified as positive), to being classified as positive (it is actually positive, but classified as positive)?

Perhaps we should call false positives “spurious” and false negatives “missed”.

twanvl 13 Nov 2015 15:26 UTC
6 points
on: Reflexive self-processing is literally infinitely simpler than a many world interpretation
The link you provided contains absolutely no physics, as far as I can tell. Nor is there any math aside from some basic logic. So I am skeptical on whether this theory is correct (or even falsifiable).

twanvl 13 Oct 2015 20:34 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Thomas’s comment on: Open thread, Oct. 12 - Oct. 18, 2015
Physics is built on top of mathematics, and almost all of mathematics can be built on top of ZFC (there are other choices). But there is as much time in ZFC as there are words in a single pixel on your screen.

twanvl 13 Oct 2015 20:28 UTC
14 points
in reply to: philh’s comment on: Stupid questions thread, October 2015
Why would the price of necessities rise?

There are three reasons why the price might go up:
1. demand increases
2. supply decreases
3. inflation
Right now, everyone is already consuming these necessities, so if UBI is introduced, demand will not go up. So 1 would not be true.

Supply could go down if enough people stop working. But if this reduces supply of the necessities, there is a strong incentive for people on just UBI to start working again. There is also increasing automation. So I find 2 unlikely.

That leaves 3, inflation. I am not an economist, but as far as I understand this shouldn’t be a significant factor.

twanvl 12 Oct 2015 17:47 UTC
6 points
in reply to: Thomas’s comment on: Open thread, Oct. 12 - Oct. 18, 2015
Define the sequence S by
```
S(0) = 0
S(n+1) = 1 + S(n)
```
This is a sequence of natural numbers. This sequence does not converge, which means that the limit as n goes to infinite of S(n) is not a natural number (nor a real number for that matter).

You could try to write it as a function of time, S’(t) such that S’(1-0.5^n) = S(n). That is, S’(0)=0, S’(0.5)=1, S’(0.75)=2, etc. A possible formula is S’(t) = -log_2(1-t). You could then ask what is S’(1). The answer is that this is the same as the limit S(infinity), or as log(0), which are both not defined. So in fact S’ is not a function from numbers between 0 and 1 inclusive to natural or real numbers, since the domain excludes 1.

You can similarly define a sequence of distributions over the natural numbers by
```
T(0) = {i -> 0.5 * 0.5^i}
T(n+1) = the same as T(n) except two values swapped
```
This is the example that you gave above. The sequence T(n) doesn’t converge (I haven’t checked, but the discussion above suggests that it doesn’t), meaning that the limit “lim_{n->inf} T(n)” is not defined.

twanvl 12 Oct 2015 16:43 UTC
5 points
in reply to: Thomas’s comment on: Open thread, Oct. 12 - Oct. 18, 2015

This question presupposes that the task will ever be done Sure. It’s called super-tasks.

From mathematics we know that not all sequences converge. So the sequence of distributions that you gave, or my example of the sequence 0,1,2,3,4,… both don’t converge. Calling them a supertask doesn’t change that fact.

What mathematicians often do in such cases is to define a new object to denote the hypothetical value at the end of sequence. This is how you end up with real numbers, distributions (generalized functions), etc. To be fully formal you would have to keep track of the sequence itself, which for real numbers gives you Cauchy sequences for instance. In most cases these objects behave a lot like the elements of the sequence, so real numbers are a lot like rational numbers. But not always, and sometimes there is some weirdness.

From the wikipedia link:

In philosophy, a supertask is a countably infinite sequence of operations that occur sequentially within a finite interval of time.

This refers to something called “time”. Most of mathematics, ZFC included, has no notion of time. Now, you could take a variable, and call it time. And you can say that a given countably infinite sequences “takes place” in finite “time”. But that is just you putting semantics on this sequence and this variable.

twanvl 12 Oct 2015 16:13 UTC
7 points
in reply to: Thomas’s comment on: Open thread, Oct. 12 - Oct. 18, 2015

What can one expect after this super-task is done to see?

This question presupposes that the task will ever be done. Since, if I understand correctly, you are doing an infinite number of swaps, you will never be done.

You could similarly define a super-task (whatever that is) of adding 1 to a number. Start with 0, at time 0 add 1, add one more at time 0.5, and again at 0.75. What is the value when you are done? Clearly you are counting to infinity, so even though you started with a natural number, you don’t end up with one. That is because you don’t “end up” at all.

twanvl 12 Oct 2015 14:12 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Thomas’s comment on: Open thread, Oct. 12 - Oct. 18, 2015
Why do you believe that? And do you also believe that ZF is inconsistent?

twanvl 23 Sep 2015 14:49 UTC
0 points
on: Help me test out my Bayes Academy game
Not about the game itself, but the wording of the questions is a bit confusing to me:

In the above network, suppose that we were to observe the variable labeled “A”. Which other variables would this influence?

The act of observing a variable doesn’t influence any of the variables, it would only change your beliefs about the variables. The only things influencing a variable are its parents in the Bayesian network.

twanvl 11 Sep 2015 11:53 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: Mean of quantiles
The wheels in this case come from robust statistics.

One example of a good robust estimator for the center is the [truncated mean]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truncated_mean). To put it simply: throw away the lowest x% and the highest x% of the samples, and take the mean of the rest. If x=0 you get the regular mean, if x=50% then you get the median.

twanvl 4 Sep 2015 16:28 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Manfred’s comment on: [LINK] Vladimir Slepnev talks about logical counterfactuals

I wonder if I should write up a rant or a better attempt at exposition, against this “clearly the problem is underdetermined” position.

You should.

twanvl 30 Jun 2015 14:20 UTC
2 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Top 9+2 myths about AI risk

An AI would be yet another node in our network, and participate in this process of throwing blegg-concepts at each other probably far better than any human can, but still just a node.

Why would an AI be a single node? I can run two programs in parallel right now on my computer, and they can talk to each other just fine. So if communication is necessary for intelligence, why couldn’t an AI be split up into many communicating sub-AIs?

twanvl 20 Feb 2015 22:40 UTC
10 points
on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapter 108

But alas, I fear that Professor Riddle would not have found lasting happiness in Hogwarts.”

“Why not? ”

“Because I still would’ve been surrounded by idiots, and I wouldn’t have been able to kill them,” Professor Quirrell said mildly.

The solution seems obvious (albeit hard and dangerous): make the students smarter so they are no longer idiots.

twanvl 17 Feb 2015 11:00 UTC
7 points
on: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, February 2015, chapters 105-107

I cannot be truly killed by any power known to me, and lossing Sstone will not sstop me from returning, nor sspare you or yourss my wrath. Any impetuous act you are contemplating cannot win the game for you, boy.

The last sentence was not said in parseltongue. Could it be that Quirrell used English because it is a lie, and he believes that there is something that Harry could do to win?

twanvl 19 Jan 2015 17:46 UTC
2 points
in reply to: sixes_and_sevens’s comment on: Open thread, Jan. 19 - Jan. 25, 2015
I switched to The Old Reader, which, as the name suggests, is pretty close to Google Reader in functionality.

twanvl 6 Jan 2015 11:13 UTC
0 points
in reply to: Alsadius’s comment on: What does being x% on board with the program of a movement mean?
You can measure this by looking at the spoken or written works of the group. When talking to an Axiomist of Choice, you would on average agree 97% of the time with what they are saying, since the other 3% they are talking about yogic flying.

Of course in real life people also make a lot of smalltalk, which is probably not ideological at all. This is less of an issue when looking at writing.

twanvl 26 Oct 2014 17:41 UTC
2 points
in reply to: erratio’s comment on: What supplements do you take, if any?
Wikipedia lists the safe upper limit of vitamin D as 4000 IU (100ug), so taking 10000 could be unhealthy.

twanvl 8 Sep 2014 10:58 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Metus’s comment on: Open thread, Sept. 1-7, 2014
If everyone (or just most people) think like you, then seeing people suffer makes them suffer as well. And that makes their friends suffer, and so on. So, by transitivity, you should expect to suffer at least a little bit when people who you don’t know directly are suffering.

But I don’t think it is about the feeling. I also don’t really feel anything when I hear about some number of people dying in a far away place. Still, I believe that the world would be a better place if people were not dying there. If I am in a position to help people, I believe that in the long run the result is better if I just shut up and multiply and help many far away people, rather than caring mostly about a few friends and neighbors.

twanvl 4 Sep 2014 8:55 UTC
12 points
in reply to: zslastman’s comment on: The Octopus, the Dolphin and Us: a Great Filter tale
This is another good explanation instead of / in addition to the Great Filter.

It could be that there are many local optima to life, that are hard to escape. And that intelligence requires an unlikely local optimum. This functions like an early Great Filter, but in addition, failing this filter (by going to a bad local optimum) might make it impossible to start over.

For example, you could imagine that it were possible to evolve a gray goo like organism which eats everything else, but which is very robust to mutations, so it doesn’t evolve further.