Xachariah

Karma: 3,634

Xachariah Oct 10, 2012, 12:47 AM
0 points
in reply to: CronoDAS’s comment on: Firewalling the Optimal from the Rational
Also, here’s the orchestral version and in Italian in case the midi puts anyone off.

Xachariah Oct 10, 2012, 12:03 AM
5 points
in reply to: CronoDAS’s comment on: Rationality: Appreciating Cognitive Algorithms
“God exists”—“I’ve had conversations with God; he’s a good fellow.”

“I believe that God exists”—“A lot of people say that God exists and I agree with them.”

“I believe that I believe that God exists”—“I do see some inconsistencies about God but I go to church and I pray. Plus all my friends are Christian, that means I’m a believer, right?”

“I believe that I believe that I believe that God exists”—“I think that what it means to believe in something is an aggregate of the actions you take and the anticipations you feel. So I can have doubt at the object level but still count as believing if I respond similarly to other believers...”

“I believe that I believe that I believe that I believe that God exists”—“Okay, I need to talk to fewer rationalists.”

Each ‘I believe’ implies a different meta level that you’re analyzing things. Kind of like confidence levels inside and outside an argument.

Xachariah Sep 22, 2012, 7:18 PM
−1 points
in reply to: tomme’s comment on: Life-changing decisions pertaining to education. Help.
Why do you believe you will receive full-need financial aid in the US? Specifically, are you a US national currently living in Hungary and do you have some way to establish residence in the US?

Governments do not give financial aid because students need it. Governments view financial aid as an investment in the future; students pay back the government by paying higher taxes and having more economic activity once the student graduates. A foreign student never pays taxes, as they return home after they graduate, so a government has no incentive to help them.

Financial aid for non-nationals is exceedingly rare. Super, super rare. With the recession going on, financial aid of all types is harder to get and foreign financial aid was already hard to get. For most foreign students, ability to pay the complete cost of tuition without any aid is a significant factor to admissions. While foreign college attendance in the US has been going up, that’s because we’ve been using the higher cost that foreign students pay to help pay for domestic students.

What specific factors make you believe that you will receive US financial aid and not UK financial aid?

Xachariah Sep 22, 2012, 11:22 AM
11 points
on: Life-changing decisions pertaining to education. Help.
I had a very long post before Firefox crashed and ate it. Long story short: Find out exactly how much debt is ‘negligible’ before doing anything else.

1) How much can your parents pay per year? I’ve never known a single foreign student who wasn’t able to show ability-to-pay prior to acceptance.

2) Foreign students rarely get financial aid and never get loans without a cosigner. Do you have a US/UK cosigner? Does this mean your parents will be taking out a personal loan (at higher APR) in Hungary to pay for your tuition?

3) What sort of debt burden can they handle if you drop out? What sort of debt burden are you comfortable with if you graduate?

4) What is your contingency if something goes wrong (eg father laid off) for each schooling location?

Example, you mention Bowdoin university as a university you are considering. Bowdoin’s total cost in 2009-2010 was $50,485 to out-of-state students. Assuming $2000 in travel expenses a year, and ~$2500 incidentals you end up with 55k a year. Lets say you get a 11% APR[1], because you likely won’t be getting US Govt subsidized loans[2] and would require your parents to cosign in Hungary. You’re ~8% likely to drop out[3] and it will cost you on average $58k. You’re ~92% likely to graduate, and it will cost you on average $261k. That’s approximately 201,000 Euros, minus whatever your parents can pay.

If $260k in debt for a US school is ‘negligible’ I shudder to consider UK costs. (Though, upon research it seems they’re actually cheaper than US schools and I’m left wondering how much research you’ve given to this topic.) Further, the idea that you’d just ‘squat’ somewhere is simply insane. Such an action would drastically increase your chance of dropping out, which is a ridiculous option versus a comparatively sure thing at home in Hungary, and as noted above, dropping out is expensive too.

In summary: Double check to see if going abroad is feasible and actually calculate the cost before going any further.

[1] I don’t know the Hungary rates, but I assume they’re similar to US rates.
[2] Subsidized loans are currently 6.8% and would subtract about 15k from the total cost. Plus they have other benefits compared to personal loans (tax deductions, grace periods, etc) that measure in the tens of thousands. [3] Bowdoin has particularly good graduation rates; some colleges don’t (eg, at Purdue only 40% of students graduate within 4 years). Even a small change in graduation rates can drastically increase costs.

Xachariah Sep 22, 2012, 8:52 AM
4 points
in reply to: Shmi’s comment on: Life-changing decisions pertaining to education. Help.

I’m confused and depressed

Not the best state of mind to make long-term decisions in.

What other state should you be in for answering difficult questions? Regarding confusion, a tough decision that can go either way should feel like confusion until you have a convincing answer. Picking a college is a literal once (maybe twice) in a lifetime question that is fully out of context for him.

As for depression, there’s a school of thought that (certain types of) depression* is nature’s way to make you focus on thinking and adopt a risk averse strategy in the meanwhile (re food/social stance). Here’s a well linked to article from Time. In SAT analogy form, Anger : Precommitment :: Sadness : Thinking. This is not to say that depression is good per se, but that it is not automatically dangerous to make hard decisions while in a depressed state of mind.

*This theory defines depression as the expected short-term depression one feels after a loss (eg losing a loved one), and the theory considers clinical depression as a malignant variant of adaptive depression.

Xachariah Sep 20, 2012, 11:27 AM
22 points
on: Any existential risk angles to the US presidential election?
I’m surprised you’ve left out nukes. Nukes are basically the only existential risk angle that presidents have direct control over and where the personality of the POTUS would effect the outcome.

1) Which one is more likely to engage in a nuclear preemptive strike?

2) Which one is less likely to forgive a ‘finger slip’? (Ex, a fuse breaks in Russia/China/whoever and they alpha-strike the US; which person is more likely to retaliate and end the world vs not retaliate and suffer US extinction without punishing them back?)

3) Which one has less fear of human extinction? Religiosity and belief in anthropogenic changes to the state of the world seem to be relevant factors.

Xachariah Sep 15, 2012, 6:56 AM
9 points
on: High School Lectures
Don’t neglect non-sequence topics. Because they are self contained, I think they’d do better in lecture format without requiring tons of pre-requisite understanding.

Yvain’s Diseased Thinking, Discussion on Excuses, Schelling Fences on Slippery Slopes are all understandable and cover real world issues. Anna Salamon’s Learned Blankness, LukeProg’s How to Be Happy, Swimmer963′s Action and Habit and Eliezer’s non-sequence posts 5 second level and Working hurts less than procrastinating, we fear the twinge of starting are all great self-contained posts about how to improve your life. (Also plugging my own punctuality post). And PhilGoetz’s Reason as Memetic Immune disorder and Things you are Supposed to Like are both posts I wish I’d been able to read back when I was in highschool. I know there’s tons of stuff I haven’t even broached.

My point is that a lot of the best content exists outside of the sequences. Some of the highest value stuff is there, and they’re all topics that can be covered in a 5-20 minute talk.

Xachariah Sep 9, 2012, 1:48 AM
3 points
in reply to: asparisi’s comment on: Friendship is Optimal: A My Little Pony fanfic about an optimization process
I guess my main objection is how the “value being in the true world” conflicting with other values is portrayed. Celestia sides against valuing a true world, and this theme is covered in Light Spark’s story, but would becomes explicit if there were direct conflicts. In the end, what Celestia does is just very sophisticated networked wireheading.

In my mind, this means Hanna failed, but it doesn’t seem quite portrayed as a failure. There is a hint of the horror as she consumes galaxies and tiles the universe with wireheaded ponies, but just a hint. It’s more subtle than I prefer. Specifically, I’m worried that someone reading it without LessWrong background would miss all that.

(Also, I just assumed the block function is a dummy button and doesn’t actually do anything when you press it.)

Xachariah Sep 8, 2012, 10:20 PM
5 points
on: Friendship is Optimal: A My Little Pony fanfic about an optimization process
I liked the story, though I had a handful of thoughts.

The first is about humans who have incompatible goals. I don’t think an Olympic Gold Medalist like Usain Colt would be happy with just being the best in his shard or taking turns on the leaderboard. He wants to be the best there is, period. If there are 10 trillion people, he wants to be rank 1 out of 10 trillion. There were 10,000 Olympians in 2012 and all of them wanted and devoted their lives to being the best, even if they didn’t take gold.

Going further than that, I can’t imagine how to reconcile the 1% of the population who are psychopaths, or how to reconcile the 1% of the 1% who are truly destructive. Ted Bundy killed because he wanted to feel his power over others and murder was the best high he had ever had; such a man would think it better to harm real people instead of constructs.

I assume that Celestia would modify them rather than make everyone mutually delusional in thinking they were the best (or killing others), but I had hoped that would be touched on. I understand mutually incompatible goals are a problem CEV and not just your story. The way AI resolves these mutually incompatible goals is a lot of what’s scary about an AI controlled future.

(As a minor sidepoint, what of humans who are okay with ponies but value not living in a matrix or wireheading. Do they get engineered pony bodies or do they just get that value modified out? I’d assume the latter or that anyone who holds that value ends up like Abdul.)

The other main thought I had was that I liked chapter 10 as an ending rather than 11. It has a strong emotional resonance with me that individual stories don’t. Although I do realize it would change the tone of the ending somewhat significantly. Vafgrnq bs na ‘rirelobql yvirf unccvyl rire nsgre, fbegn’ raqvat vg jbhyq cebonoyl or ‘bu Tbq na bzavcbgrag NV vf gvyvat gur havirefr jvgu cbavrf naq rirelobql’f BX jvgu gung’ raqvat.

I do want to reiterate how much I liked your story. Very well done and thank you for sharing.

Xachariah Sep 6, 2012, 11:43 PM
10 points
in reply to: CronoDAS’s comment on: Rationality Quotes September 2012
My favorite version is similar. Each day he tries to push the boulder a little higher, and as the boulder starts to slide back, he mentally notes his improvement before racing the boulder down to the bottom with a smile on his face.

Because he gets a little stronger and a little more skilled every day, and he knows that one day he’ll succeed.

Xachariah Sep 5, 2012, 11:36 PM
0 points
in reply to: Eliezer Yudkowsky’s comment on: Rationality Quotes September 2012
It should be noted that night hags are sufficiently smart, powerful, and evil that your best case scenario upon meeting one is a quick and painful death.

Xachariah Sep 5, 2012, 8:50 PM
4 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Rationality Quotes September 2012
The psuedo-meta-textual answer is that Morte is lying to Yves while the main character overhears. Morte’s making up the story just to mess around with him.

Background information is that gur znva punenpgre znqr n qrny jvgu n Unt (rivy cneg-gvzr travr), tnvavat vzzbegnyvgl naq nzarfvn. At the start of the story, the main character somehow broke out of an infinite loop of torture; he’s stopped having Anterograde Amnesia, but still cannot remember much from before the cycle broke, and is on a quest to remember who he is. Morte is trying to dissuade the main character from finding out who he is, showing that things can be terrible even without an infinite loop.

Xachariah Sep 5, 2012, 8:14 PM
6 points
in reply to: Alicorn’s comment on: Rationality Quotes September 2012
But then the Hag would be trapped too.

She gets delight from tormenting mortals, but tormenting the same one, in the same way eternally, would probably be too close to wireheading for her.

Xachariah Sep 5, 2012, 8:10 AM
32 points
in reply to: RomanDavis’s comment on: Rationality Quotes September 2012
An elderly man was sitting alone on a dark path, right? He wasn’t certain of which direction to go, and he’d forgotten both where he was traveling to and who he was. He’d sat down for a moment to rest his weary legs, and suddenly looked up to see an elderly woman before him.

She grinned toothlessly and with a cackle, spoke: ‘Now your third wish. What will it be?’

‘Third wish?’ The man was baffled. ‘How can it be a third wish if I haven’t had a first and second wish?’

‘You’ve had two wishes already,’ the hag said, ‘but your second wish was for me to return everything to the way it was before you had made your first wish. That’s why you remember nothing; because everything is the way it was before you made any wishes.’ She cackled at the poor berk. ‘So it is that you have one wish left.’

‘All right,’ said the man, ‘I don’t believe this, but there’s no harm in wishing. I wish to know who I am.’

‘Funny,’ said the old woman as she granted his wish and disappeared forever. ‘That was your first wish.’
- Morte’s Tale to Yves (Planescape: Torment)

Xachariah Sep 5, 2012, 1:39 AM
3 points
in reply to: NancyLebovitz’s comment on: How to Find a Personal Assistant to Produce More? Transhumanism
I assume that’s why he wants someone who can communicate in English well...so that he and his rationality organization doesn’t get disqualified from opportunities simply because of a language barrier.

Xachariah Sep 4, 2012, 10:04 AM
17 points
on: Illustration proposal for Methods of Rationality
Are you personally an artist/illustrator looking for ideas? There tends to be a high supply and low demand for ‘suggestions of things other people should make’.

Xachariah Sep 2, 2012, 7:42 AM
16 points
on: Preventing discussion from being watered down by an “endless September” user influx.
Filtering is not the answer.

As noted the eternal September effect is primarily caused by new-member with new-member interaction. Instead of taking cultural cues from established members, new-members take cultural queues from other new-members and learn incorrect cultural lessons. Mechanisms to prevent eternal September are to assimilate new members more rapidly and to dissuade new-members from posting as much until they have been assimilated (and especially dissuade them from influencing other new members). Filtering is only useful in that it retards the acquisition of new recruits slow enough to allow the old recruits to assimilate.

Assuming we’re in danger of an eternal September, the correct question to ask is not, “How do we filter better?” but “How do we convince new members to lurk until they’re assimilated?”
What links here?
- lukeprog's comment on Preventing discussion from being watered down by an “endless September” user influx. by Epiphany (Sep 3, 2012, 12:18 AM; 16 points)

Xachariah Sep 2, 2012, 5:31 AM
9 points
on: Preventing discussion from being watered down by an “endless September” user influx.
‘Eternal September’ situations are caused by new users as a proportion of total users. 10,000 new users in a month could cause an eternal September here, but 10,000 new users would barely be a blip on, say, Pinterest’s culture. Growth at a steady percentage of users seems like the safest way to head off an eternal September situation; as the site gains more users it becomes naturally more resilient to culture shift by newbies.

Is LessWrong increasing in growth%, decreasing in growth%, or are growth% numbers roughly staying the same?
What links here?
- Epiphany's comment on Call For Agreement: Should LessWrong have better protection against cultural collapse? by Epiphany (Sep 3, 2012, 9:21 AM; 16 points)

Xachariah Sep 1, 2012, 3:41 AM
2 points
on: Dealing with meta-discussion and the signal to noise ratio
Test

Edit: Evidently karma loss only applies to downvoted comments, and not downvoted threads.

Xachariah Sep 1, 2012, 3:35 AM
24 points
in reply to: JoshuaZ’s comment on: Dealing with trolling and the signal to noise ratio
If the problem is with spam in the ‘recent comments’ sidebar, then it seems like we should change fix that. I would be on board with a rule that posts in hidden sub-threads don’t show up on the ‘recent comments’ sidebar. If we can remove posts from the sidebar, then perhaps posts that drop to −3 are removed from the ‘recent comments’ sidebar as well.