Z_M_Davis

Karma: 1,152

Z_M_Davis Aug 18, 2009, 4:07 AM
1 point
in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: Experiential Pica

intellectual endeavour (although people reading LW are unlikely to be doing too little of that)

There’s no such thing as too much intellectual endeavor! There’s too much to know!

Z_M_Davis Aug 18, 2009, 3:56 AM
2 points
in reply to: shirisaya’s comment on: Bloggingheads: Yudkowsky and Aaronson talk about AI and Many-worlds

If anyone knows of a really good summary for somebody who’s actually studied physics on why MWI is so great (and sadly, Eliezer’s posts here and on overcomingbias don’t do it for me) I would greatly appreciate the pointer.

You say Eliezer’s posts didn’t do it for you, but how much of it did you read? In particular, the point about parsimony favoring MWI is explained in “Decoherence is Simple”. As for the mechanism of world divergence, I think the answer is that “worlds” are not an ontologically basic element of the theory. Rather, the theory is about complex amplitude in configuration space, and then from our perspective embedded within the physics, the evolution of the wavefunction seems like “worlds” “splitting.”

Z_M_Davis Aug 10, 2009, 11:42 PM
5 points
in reply to: thomblake’s comment on: Why Real Men Wear Pink

t-shirts with robots on them because it gets me into conversations about robots

I have a tee-shirt with robots on it, but it never gets me into conversations. What am I doing wrong? Does it involve going outside??

Z_M_Davis Aug 7, 2009, 6:08 AM
3 points
on: LW/OB Rationality Quotes—August 2009

Most healthy intellectual blogs/forums participate in conversations among larger communities of blogs and forums. Rather than just “preaching to a choir” of readers, such blogs often quote and respond to posts on other blogs. Such responses sometimes support, and sometimes criticize, but either way can contribute to a healthy conversation. [...] In contrast, an insular group defined by something other than its rationality would be internally focused, rarely participating in such larger conversations.

--- Robin Hanson

(hint hint this thread is insanely incestuous)

Z_M_Davis Aug 6, 2009, 9:33 PM
4 points
in reply to: Tiiba’s comment on: Why Real Men Wear Pink

I didn’t realize chickens think that way.

They don’t have to.

Z_M_Davis Aug 5, 2009, 9:03 PM
3 points
in reply to: Nominull’s comment on: Recommended reading: George Orwell on knowledge from authority
Yeah, yeah, very cute. I agree that folk psychology has a few problems with it, but I’m not yet ready to toss commonsense notions like knowing and wanting entirely out the window.

Okay, think of it this way: we can see why natural selection would result in organisms with a folk psychology of selves that have beliefs and desires, even if these abstractions are a little leakier than we think they are. But human societies haven’t faced the same kind of selection pressure that could produce such adaptations, so whatever sense human societies can be said to know things, it’s probably very different from the sense in which individual humans can be said to know things.

Z_M_Davis Aug 5, 2009, 7:10 PM
3 points
in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: She Blinded Me With Science

Why isn’t there more amateur computer science [...]?

GNU?

Z_M_Davis Aug 5, 2009, 6:55 PM
2 points
in reply to: Nominull’s comment on: Recommended reading: George Orwell on knowledge from authority
I’m not sure I know what it means to say that the system “knows” things. We often speak as if evolution or genes “want” things, but everyone knows that it’s only a metaphor. When you speak of the global brain, do you mean it strictly as metaphor, or are you saying something more?

Z_M_Davis Aug 5, 2009, 2:14 AM
10 points
on: The Machine Learning Personality Test

As far as I know, there are no personality tests constructed in the proper way, which would be to give a lot of questions and then perform either factor analysis or PCA on the answers in order to discover from the data what the true dimensions of personality are.

But I thought that was exactly how we got the Big Five.

Z_M_Davis Aug 4, 2009, 5:05 PM
8 points
on: Why You’re Stuck in a Narrative
Does it help if we think of our lives as a story about the sort of brave truthseeker who knows about the narrative fallacy and constantly reminds herself to make falsifiable predictions? ’Cause that’s totally what I do.

Z_M_Davis Jul 30, 2009, 3:57 AM
3 points
in reply to: Jonathan_Graehl’s comment on: The Obesity Myth
Huh? It happens all the time around here.

Z_M_Davis Jul 27, 2009, 7:29 PM
0 points
in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: The Second Best
One box!

Z_M_Davis Jul 27, 2009, 2:23 AM
4 points
in reply to: SoullessAutomaton’s comment on: The Nature of Offense
I suspect there is a substantive disagreement lurking here. Specifically, as much as it hurts my liberal feminist heart to say it (or it did hurt, before I got jaded), I’m going to have to deny this:

But for any given observed behavioral difference, it’s sensible to assume it’s a learned behavior lacking strong evidence otherwise

Maybe we’re tripping over this word genetic? When I say that the number of shared genes doesn’t matter, what I’m getting at is that while SRY may “just” be “one gene,” it triggers this entire masculinizing developmental process, and while I haven’t studied the details (yet), it doesn’t look trivial. Obviously culture exists, but the capacity to generate and transmit culture is a specific ability of human brains that happens in a specific manner, and if there are innate sex differences in human brains, then we are not justified in assuming that a given behavioral sex difference is a strictly cultural artifact that could have just as easily gone the other way. Culture is—I don’t have the word for it—informed, constrained?---by human nature. We have to reason these things out on a case-by-case basis. Suppose—suppose American males score better than females on a test of mental rotation by eight-tenths of a standard deviation, and suppose we don’t have any cross-cultural data, however dearly we might wish for it. I can’t bring myself to presume a social explanation.

Z_M_Davis Jul 26, 2009, 7:05 PM
4 points
in reply to: SoullessAutomaton’s comment on: The Nature of Offense
I agree that in the case of behavioral differences, we have a prominent “learned social behavior” hypothesis that we do not have in the case of physiological differences, but it’s not because of the number of genes shared between sexes; it’s because of the common-sense intuition that culture influences behavior in a dramatic way that it doesn’t influence physiology.

Suckling an infant is pretty clearly essential behavior. “Women are more practical”, not so much.

I agree here. (In particular, “Women are more practical” is vague to the point of not-even-wrong-ness.) However, it does seem worth noting that if there are non-obviously-essential physiological differences (such as male facial hair), then it’s at least not implausible that there might also be non-obviously-essential brain development differences that manifest as behavioral differences.

Z_M_Davis Jul 26, 2009, 5:13 AM
2 points
in reply to: Vladimir_Nesov’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!

I agree with some things you’ve said, but about some of the things you’ve said there seems to be no convincing argument in sight

Downvoted for lack of specifics.

Z_M_Davis Jul 26, 2009, 4:47 AM
2 points
in reply to: SoullessAutomaton’s comment on: The Nature of Offense

Given the stunted nature of the Y chromosome [...] and the fact that all other genetic material is shared, this still means the burden of proof is stacked against the idea of non-obviously essential sexual dimorphism

I don’t think simply counting genes tells us much of anything about the amount of sexual dimorphism in a species, one way or the other. The vast majority of genetic material is shared between sexes in any species, and some species don’t even use genes to determine sex. If the fact that most genetic material is shared between sexes really did stack the deck against large sex differences, then we would never see large sex differences anywhere.

Futhermore, I’m not sure what you mean by “non-obviously essential.” Obvious to whom? It’s not at all obvious to me why (say) it would be adaptive for human males to have so much facial hair compared to human females, and yet human males really do have a lot of facial hair.

Z_M_Davis Jul 24, 2009, 11:08 PM
0 points
in reply to: mni’s comment on: Welcome to Less Wrong!

I’m still hoping that the professed rationality is enough to overcome the failure modes that are currently so common here[.] But unfortunately I think my possible contributions won’t be missed if I rid myself of wishful thinking and see it’s not going to happen. [...] I’d really like to participate in thoughtful discussions with rationalists I can respect. For quite a long time, Less Wrong seemed like the place, but I just couldn’t find a proper place to start (I dislike introductions). But now as I’m losing my respect for this community and thus the will to participate here, I started posting. I hope I can regain the confidence in a high level of sanity waterline here.

Oh, please stay!

Z_M_Davis Jul 24, 2009, 7:39 AM
10 points
in reply to: SilasBarta’s comment on: Missing the Trees for the Forest
I have replied in the other thread.

Please correct me if I’m misreading you here. You don’t trust yourself to assess whether a comment deserves a downvote, because humans are subject to an array of egocentric biases, and yet somehow you do trust yourself to assess that the other person has no idea of what she’s talking about, even though humans are subject to an array of egocentric biases?

You might want to consider doing this the other way, extending interpretive charity but not karmic charity. In fact, I hereby urge you to vote however you want to on whatever comments you want to. After all, a few undeserved downvotes are of little importance, whereas, say, continuous swipes at other people’s intellectual competence and integrity (e.g., “Yeah, wanna rethink that one?” “This is the part where you’re supposed to realize the absurdity of your original response to my reaction,” “I heard you make an all-too-convenient claim about what you were, like, totally about to do,” “Now for the hard part!” “You’re kidding. It never occured to you [...]?” “a deceptively simple comparison that you didn’t understand how to use correctly,” “doing all the intellectual heavy lifting for you,” “if you could present such evidence, or even realize its applicability, you would have already done so,” “why don’t you make sure you know what you’re talking about [...]?” “I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you still don’t have an example,” &c.) have a tendency to drag the quality of discourse down. It’s worth keeping in mind that the karma system is supposed to be a mechanism that exists in the service promoting good discussion; discussion does not exist in the service of amassing karma points. I would much rather someone abuse her voting power than constantly taunt and belittle people.

Z_M_Davis Jul 24, 2009, 7:29 AM
8 points
in reply to: SilasBarta’s comment on: Of Exclusionary Speech and Gender Politics

Now for the hard part! For this comparison to make any point in your favor, you need to show how there’s a kind of language used in Sports Illustrated, etc., that most men here consider beyond the pale in its offensiveness, no matter who uses it. Can you do it? No? Then you don’t have a point.

While it’s true that I probably can’t find an example of something most men here would find “beyond-the-pale offensive,” I don’t agree that that’s the correct standard to apply here. If I’m reading you correctly, you’re saying that Cosmo is evidence that Alicorn’s reactions are not gender-typical, and that therefore the fact that Alicorn was offended by some behavior, doesn’t tell us that that behavior discourages potential female users. But the fact that P(Cosmo-reader|female)!=P(female|Cosmo-reader) does seem relevant here, because honestly, Less Wrong’s potential female user base is probably not primarily composed of the type of women who read Cosmo; probably, it’s primarily composed of women like Alicorn. We really are drawing from the tails here. I made an analogy: I said that mainstream women’s magazines aren’t representative of the women here, just as men’s magazines aren’t representative of the men here, and you seem to be pointing out that the analogy isn’t perfectly symmetrical, saying that there’s nothing in the mainstream men’s magazines that would offend a majority of the men here to such a degree as Alicorn was offended by what she perceived as objectification, which you are saying is condoned by mainstream women’s magazines. Well, I agree that the situation isn’t perfectly symmetrical: gender issues are never perfectly symmetrical. But the analogy still seemed worth making. For what it’s worth, I’m male, and I’m frequently offended or annoyed by mainstream men’s culture claiming to represent the interests of men-in-general, when they certainly don’t represent me.
What links here?
- Z_M_Davis's comment on Missing the Trees for the Forest by Scott Alexander (Jul 24, 2009, 7:39 AM; 10 points)

Z_M_Davis Jul 23, 2009, 8:08 PM
2 points
0
in reply to: SilasBarta’s comment on: Missing the Trees for the Forest

but you could provide a better explanation for why it never occurred to you that you have a bias during a flamewar.

There’s no further explanation! It really didn’t occur to me that that was a reason to not vote! And it’s still not obvious to me that not-voting is unambiguously the right ethical standard. Of course I agree that it’s unethical to downvote a comment solely because you don’t like the conclusion or you don’t like the commenter—but that remains true whether or not you’re personally involved in the conversation. So as long as we’re going to talk about unenforceable personal standards of ethics, maybe the standard (which had been my policy) of “always and everywhere try to vote solely based on quality of discussion” is better than “don’t vote when I’m part of the discussion.”

I don’t know how much of that was you

Not very much. During the recent madness, I had downvoted you I think maybe three or four times, and upvoted you I think once, all of which have now been cancelled.

I accounted for this already.

Sure. Notice that I wrote that a “a nontrivial proportion of your recent karma loss” (emphasis added) could be legitimate; I didn’t mean to suggest that all of it was.

And so I had to spend far disproportionate time responding to you, compared to your investment in the discussion.

If you don’t think it’s worth your time to correct (what seems to you to be) someone’s egregious misapprehension, then don’t bother to do so. If you think a comment is poorly argued—maybe just downvote it?