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Dacyn
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Can a pre-commitment to not give in to blackmail be "countered" by a pre-commitment to ignore such pre-commitments?
Dacyn8d62

Let's talk about a specific example: the Ultimatum Game. According to EY the rational strategy for the responder in the Ultimatum Game is to accept if the split is "fair" and otherwise reject in proportion to how unfair he thinks the split is. But the only reason to reject is to penalize the proposer for proposing an unfair split -- which certainly seems to be "doing something conditional on the other actor’s utility function disvaluing it". So why is the Ultimatum Game considered an "offer" and not a "threat"?

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Can a pre-commitment to not give in to blackmail be "countered" by a pre-commitment to ignore such pre-commitments?
Dacyn9d32

Yeah, but what does "purposefully minimize someone else’s utility function" mean? The source code just does stuff. What does it mean for it to be "on purpose"?

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Can a pre-commitment to not give in to blackmail be "countered" by a pre-commitment to ignore such pre-commitments?
Dacyn10d10

It all depends on what you mean by "sufficiently intelligent / coherent actors". For example, in this comment Eliezer says that it should mean actors that “respond to offers, not to threats”, but in 15 years no one has been able to cash out what this actually means, AFAIK.

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If Moral Realism is true, then the Orthogonality Thesis is false.
Dacyn19d10

Here's Joe Carlsmith making the second argument: https://joecarlsmith.com/2022/01/17/the-ignorance-of-normative-realism-bot

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Does Abductive Reasoning really exist?
Dacyn21d31

It is often said that: “The conclusions of deductive reasoning are certain, whereas those of inductive reasoning are probable”. I think this contrast is somewhat misleading and imprecise, as the certainty of deductive conclusions just means that they necessarily follow from the premises (they are implied by the premises), but the conclusion itself might still be probabilistic.

Example: “If I have a fever, there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu. I have a fever. Therefore, there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu.”

There's something off about this example. In deductive reasoning, if A implies B, then A and C together also imply B. But if A is "I have a fever" and C is "I have the flu" then A and C do not imply "there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu" (since actually there is a 100% chance).

I think what is going on here is that the initial statement "If I have a fever, there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu" is not actually an instance of material implication (in which case modus ponens would be applicable) but rather a ceteris paribus statement: "If I have a fever, then all else equal there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu." And then the "deductive reasoning" part would go "I have a fever. And I don't have any more information relevant to whether I have the flu than the fact that I have a fever. Therefore, there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu."

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On 'On Caring'
Dacyn2mo20

Depends on how dysfunctional the society is.

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Can Narrowing One's Reference Class Undermine the Doomsday Argument?
Answer by DacynMay 01, 202520

You're right that with the right reference class, SSA doesn't imply the doomsday argument. This sensitivity to a choice of reference class is one of the big reasons not to accept SSA.

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Several Arguments Against the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis
Dacyn5mo109

Basically both of these arguments will seem obvious if you fall into camp #2 here, and nonsensical if you fall into camp #1.

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Rationalist Movie Reviews
Dacyn5mo12

Memento is easily one of the best movies about “rationality as practiced by the individual” ever made. [...] When the “map” is a panoply of literal paper notes and photographs, and the “territory” is further removed from one’s lived experience than usual… it behooves one to take rationality, bias, motivated cognition, unquestioned assumptions, and information pretty damn seriously!

Wasn't the main character's attempt at "rationality as practiced by the individual" kind of quixotic though? I didn't get the impression that the moral of the story was "you should be like this guy". He would have been better off not trying any complicated systems and just trying to get help for his condition in a more standard way...

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Updating on Bad Arguments
Dacyn7mo85

Let’s say my p(intelligent ancestor) is 0.1. Imagine I have a friend, Richard, who disagrees.

No wait, the order of these two things matters. Is P(intelligent ancestor|just my background information) = 0.1 or is P(intelligent ancestor|my background information + the fact that Richard disagrees) = 0.1? I agree that if the latter holds, conservation of expected evidence comes into play and gives the conclusion you assert. But the former doesn't imply the latter.

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4Maximize in a limited domain. Hope for the future.
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16Conceptual problems with utility functions, second attempt at explaining
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22Conceptual problems with utility functions
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10Are long-term investments a good way to help the future?
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