With humans like this, we don't need the Unfriendly AI:
Last year, a team of scientists led by Rebecca Roache began exploring technologies that could keep prisoners in an artificial hell. Turning to human engineering as a possible solutions, Dr Roache looks at the idea of life span enhancements so that a life sentence in prison could last hundreds of years. Another scenario being explored by the group is uploading the criminal's mind to a digital realm to speed up the 1,000 year sentence.
She teaches ethics, bioethics, and rationality. Perhaps she could write for us a new Sequence on Hell Theory.
Did you know that Rebecca Roache used to work at the FHI and even co-authored a paper with Nick Bostrom? Makes you wonder what the rest of humanity is like, doesn't it?
ETA: Although I don't think "artificial hell" is a fair description of her actual proposal, which just involves extended sentences without making them literally hell-like.
I initially doubted that the cited individual was actually advocating this atrocity, but from this post on her blog, it sounds like she's at least seriously considering doing so:
As I say at the end of the blog, it is debatable what constitutes humane treatment in relation to such technologies: perhaps it will turn out that, on reflection, some of the techniques I have suggested are inhumane, in which case I do not advocate their implementation. (But I do advocate the debate about them.)
Shades of Banks' Surface Detail ...
Here's a marvellous memetic hazard that you should avoid clicking on. The 2048 game. Just in case you thought you were getting any work done today. HN discussion. (And HN on its memetically hazardous nature. Creator: "I've been playing this all day today. I basically created my own demise.")
(Someone has, of course, written an AI to try to beat it. HN discussion, though try to figure it out yourself first.)
Is http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/new/ doing something strange for anyone else? As of today, every time I go there, the page changes automatically to http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/top/ after a few seconds.
I have a medical issue I'm hoping I can self-medicate with and not have to go to a doctor and get prescribed pills to treat.
When I was in the military, I had my gall bladder removed. It turned out that I actually didn't need my gall bladder removed because the pain that caused me to go to the doctor in the first place persisted after its removal. Since it was during the military there's nothing I can do about this misdiagnosis and now not having a gall bladder has led to another inconvenience: If I'm hungry for too long I get really bad stomach cramps and/or "the runs". I've tried to prevent this by self-medicating with ginger ale or Tums but those don't seem to work; the only thing that does seem to work consistently is drinking liquor before I eat if I've been hungry for an extended period of time.
I don't want to have to drink in order to not get these stomach aches, and I have no clue why drinking liquor would work. Is there something else I could use that would have the same calming effect on my stomach?
I've started a blog, and I'm kind of unreasonably shy about it. Especially given that it's, you know, a blog.
Question: what are the good ways to help a person in a stressful situation (work/relationships/life in general) ? What help would rationalist prefer, and how does that differ from someone who may be less rational in times of emotional turmoil? Thanks!
Letting someone know you like them and that they're cared for is a surprisingly powerful gesture. It's also something people are inclined to lose sight of when they're going through a tough time.
It probably needs tweaking to the specific social circumstances, but simply saying something to the effect of "you are awesome and people care about you; don't forget that" goes a lot further than you might expect.
Have you tried asking them if there's any way you can help, and/or expressing generic sympathy?
"Hey, you seem to be going through a lot lately, are you holding up okay? Anything I can do?"
One important thing to remember when being a listener: it's very easy to make the mistake that you're supposed to solve the other person's problems. It might be that the other person isn't actually looking for advice, but rather just sympathy and a reassurance that there's someone who will listen to them.
I would add that even if the other person is looking for advice, leading them to a place where they themselves come up with an idea about how to change can often be more effective than giving them a solution from the outside.
If you are talking to a depressed person who would probably benefit from going to the gym, telling him to the gym might not be effective because he can't see himself following through.
Asking him about his relationship to sport and to his own body might bring him further.
Is there an explanation of why games like 2048 are so addictive? I want to say superstimulus but its not obviously substituting for something in the ancestral environment, its not quite a classical skinner box setup either
Request for some career advice:
I am planning on pursuing computer science as a double major (along with art). I'm doing this mainly for practical reasons - right now I feel like I don't really care about money and would rather enjoy my life than be upper-class, but I want to have an option available in case these preferences change. I enjoyed CS classes in high school, but since coming to college, I have found CS classes, while not profoundly unpleasant, to basically be a chore. In addition to this, my university is making it needlessly difficult for me t...
Your list of preferred careers reminds me of something, maybe relevant for you.
I used to teach in a high school for gifted children, when there were children with high intelligence but different skills. (As opposed to e.g. math-specialized high schools, where even without the IQ test you also get children with high intelligence, but their skills are very similar.) In this school a new computer game programming competition was started, with rules different than usual. In a typical programming competition, the emphasis is completely on the algorithm. It is a competition of students good at writing algorithms. But this competition, called Špongia, was different in two aspects: (1) it was a competition of teams, not individuals, and (2) the games were rated not only by their algorithm, but also by playability, easthetics, etc. Which in my opinion better corresponds to a possible success in the market.
I mention this, because there was an opportunity for people with various skills to participate in creating the computer game; and they did. Some of them even didn't know programming, but they composed the game music, painted pictures, writed texts, or invented the ideas. Sometimes the most...
Consider reading some of Cal Newport's writing on careers. Here's a possible starting point.
A lot of what he writes boils down to: "Do what you love to do" is a bit of a fallacy. Getting really good at something pretty much always involves putting in a ton of work, not all of which will be pleasant. But if you do that and get extremely good at what you do, then you'll get lots of jobs you'll enjoy, because 1) being good at what you do is fun and 2) if you provide lots of value to other people, they will provide it back.
IOW, just going after what is the most "fun" when you start doing it probably isn't the best idea. I wouldn't take the fact that your CS courses are a bit drudge-y as a slamdunk indicator that you shouldn't do CS by a long shot.
Also, you may have heard this before, but the video game industry for programmers is kind of a shitshow, because lots of people want to do it, enough so that they're willing to be paid less and endure crappy conditions. Being an indie developer might be a better bet, if you can make it work; I have no idea what the odds of success there are.
It's no better in the art department. In fact it's worse because there are fewer career paths out of the industry.
It works out for some people, but you have to be willing to accept relatively low pay and work a TON at the expense of pretty much every other part of your life - exercise, social time, proper sleep, hobbies, meals away from your desk...
I was a programmer in the game industry for 3.5 years and quit just over a year ago. It was exciting, but it wasn't worth it. I'm much happier now. Let me know if you have questions about my experience.
If you want to make games, start doing it now. It's entirely possible for a single person to make great indie games. Working on that would also build skills that are useful for all 4 of the preferred careers you named.
It's okay if you find CS classes boring; the real test is whether you find working on real projects (such as your own indie games) boring.
Having lots of portfolio pieces will also help with finding a job.
Hi, I worked in the game industry for a while. I worked on AAA titles, indie stuff and semi-indie. I'm not a designer though.
I would say that the best way to become who you want to be is to make many of your own excellent SMALL indie stuff and work your way up from there. Fortunately you're in the right double major! Build your own games, from scratch, over and over again until you produce something really good. Make little 24 or 48-hour games for hackathons, ludum dare, global game jam, etc. I can't give you better advice than to simply scale down your ambitions a lot. If you've never finished anything then that's your major problem and you desperately need to leverage some success spirals before you can dive into a bigger idea.
If you have a giant idea that you want to implement but it's too big, bite off a tiny chunk. Maybe it's a gameplay mechanic, maybe an art style. If you demonstrate a kernel of something that seems good, then you will be encouraged spend more time improving it. I think there are good subreddits for indie games where you can get feedback online.
Another way that an artist friend got into the industry was by taking a QA job at an AAA studio. Then he spent a ton...
This is really frustrating because I feel like the culture is constantly spamming two contradictory memes. Lumifer even explicitly gave me both of them upthread.
But in my case (and probably a substantial majority of people) I honestly think that the venn diagram between one and two might have literally zero overlap. Like, isn't the whole point of a job that it isn't fun, and that's why they have to pay you to do it? I tried to compromise by double majoring in something I am genuinely passionate about (art) and something practical (comp sci), but I feel like this is still not enough somehow...? Sometimes I think the only winning move is to get lucky and be born the type of person who has a natural burning desire to become an engineer.
Long shot:
I'm moving to NYC. Any LW NYCers have a room available for <$1,000 per month that I (a friendly self-employed 23-year-old male) might be able to move into within a week or two? Or leads on a 1br/studio for <$1200? I could also go a bit above those prices if necessary.
PM me if so and I'll send more details about myself.
After recommending a couple of Chrome extensions in this comment I realized it may be useful to have a dedicated thread for Chrome extensions (a quick Google search revealed no such threads in the archives).
The extensions I currently use are listed here, with my favorites boldfaced. I'm curious to see what extensions others use.
On baseline of my opinion on LW topics I closed with the lemma:
''Arguments for the singularity are also (weak) arguments for theism.''
I'd want to know whether there is anything wrong with the following reasoning:
If the singularity is likely, then it is (somewhat less) likely that it is used to run what Bostrom calls ancestor simulation. As we cannot know the difference it follows that it is likely that we already are in a simulation.
If we are in simulation, then the physical parameters don't necessarily follow simple rules (occams razor) but may be altered...
Edit: Problem solved. The confirmation e-mail had to be done.
I received word (see below) from someone who's struggling to comment. Any ideas?
...Hi, sorry to bother you. I'm a new user and cannot for the life of me figure out how to comment on a thread (for instance, the welcome thread you posted). I've read the faq which says there should be a comment box below the text of each article but I don't see that. I also don't see the "Reply" button on any comments.
I'd normally try to handle this on my own, but I've already spent an hour or two reading
Genome sequencing for the masses is not quite here yet :-(
A Stanford study reported that at the moment a full sequencing costs about $17,000, requires more than 100 man-hours of analysis per genome and still is "associated with incomplete coverage of inherited disease genes, low reproducibility of detection of genetic variation with the highest potential clinical effects, and uncertainty about clinically reportable findings."
I'm looking for a simple an aesthetic symbol for humanism and humanity, from our ancestors looking at the stars and wondering why, and telling each other stories, and caring for each other in the distant past, to the invention of agriculture, democracy, civilization, the Enlightenment and the Renaissance, the improvement in the human condition, technology and knowledge and truth.
I think some of you know what I mean. Humanism Pt. 3 style chills.
Ideas I've thought of: hands, sails, brains, seeds, eyes, sprouts, flames. I was looking at getting symbols of bot...
I'm curious what others thoughts are on Black Swan Theory/Knightian Uncertainty vs. pure Bayesian Reasoning. Do you think there are things in which bayesian prediction will tend to do more harm than good?
BrienneStrohl posted something on her facebook that said she thought the phrase "Knightian Uncertainity" had negative information value, and an interesting conversation ensued between Brienne, myself, Eliezer,Kevin Carlson, and a few others. It's of particular interest to me because Black Swan Theory is so central to how I view the world. If it...
The trouble, of course, is that "I don't know" is not an action. If "I don't know means" "don't deviate from the status quo," that can be a bad plan if the status quo is bad.
The only point of probabilities is to have them guide actions. How does the concept of Knightian uncertainty help in guiding actions?
Funny: the NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett's TED interview in response to Edward Snowden's unannounced interview a few days ago is rated over 50% "unconvincing" on TED's talk rating system.
This is by far the most unconvincing talk TED ever had, I think. For comparison, pastor Rick Warren's extremely controversial talk stands at only 12% unconvincing.
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Question for philosophers: Is it not so that the set of possible actions a Kantian could perform is a subset of the set of possible actions a Utilitarian could perform? If this is true, could not a Utilitarian decide that Kantian behavior is optimal for maximizing utility, and thus emulate a Kantian's behavior in any given situation (similar to Rule Utilitarianism)? Of course, the reverse is not possible: a Kantian would never decide to emulate Utilitarian behavior.
What are some effective ways to treat internet addiction? Some sort of allowance system or cold turkey? I'm just strictly talking about the goofing off type of internet.
Yet another karma query: yesterday my karma was 37. Today my karma is 12 and I am at -2 karma for the last 30 days. What's going on here?
I'm wanting to apply to be a conversation notes writer at Givewell, as they have an open position for it. The application seems quite straightforward, but I'm wondering if there is anything I should consider, because I would love to be hired for this job.
Do you have any suggestions for how I could improve an application?
For the application, I must submit a practice transcription of a Givewell conversation. I'm wondering, specifically, if there are any textbooks, guides to style, or ways of writing I should consult in preparation. Obviously, I must write the transcription myself, and not plagiarize, or whatever.
Is this guy a crank? He seems to be claiming that he has found the E=mc^2 for intelligence, artificial or otherwise.
http://www.exponentialtimes.net/videos/equation-intelligence-alex-wissner-gross-tedxbeaconstreet
My alarm bells are going off but I am interested to hear peoples' thoughts.
A couple of months ago I missed out on going to Brazil because I didn't get my visa in time. I got my passport back with the Brazilian visa attached, but I didn't use it. I now have another opportunity to go to Brazil in two months and I'm wondering if the visa that I didn't get to use in November is still valid for me to use in May.
Anyone have any information or know where I can go to get a good answer?
Have the issues around logical first movers (brought up in Ingredients of Timeless Decision Theory) been discussed/solved somewhere I've not managed to track down with Google? I've been thinking it over and have some possibly useful things to add, but that discussion is ancient and it seems likely that it's been solved more thoroughly somewhere in the last five years. I've found the posts about Masquerade which seems related, but only relevant to the special case of full source code disclosure.
A while ago I read through a lot of Gallup's Strengths and Wellbeing books. They looked good to me, but I don't know enough statistics to understand their technical reports, so I couldn't even begin to assess how accurate they were. Also, I've never studied positive psychology on anything more than a popular book level, so I can't bring sophisticated domain knowledge to bear either. Could someone look over the following and comment?
StrengthsFinder 2.0 (StrengthsFinder test is available for $10 here. They also have an entrepreneurial-focused version at the ...
I was surprised to see that this recent post was voted up even though I pointed out in the comments that it linked to something we had seen before. Someone suggested that reposts of old things are worthwhile so that more people see them. But to me the idea of using reposting to expose people to old stuff seems inelegant. Does anyone have any thoughts?