joaolkf

Replying to[LINK] Lectures on Self-Control and the myth of Willpower

[LINK] Lectures on Self-Control and the myth of Willpower

Seems like recent evidence disfavours less Neil's model than the classical one: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/cover_story/2016/03/ego_depletion_an_influential_theory_in_psychology_may_have_just_been_debunked.html

Replying toWhy are Harvard's alumni so wealthy?

joaolkf11y

Why are Harvard's alumni so wealthy?

Cambridge's total colleges endowments is 2.8 and Oxford's 2.9. But the figures above already include this.

Replying toNo peace in our time?

joaolkf11y

No peace in our time?

Violence might not be the exact opposite of peace. Intuitively, peace seem to mean a state where people are intentionally not committing violence and not just accidentally. A prison might have lower violence than an certain neighbourhood but it might still not be considered a more peaceful place exactly because the individual proclivity to violence is higher despite the fact violence itself isn't. Proclivity matters.

I am generally sceptic of Pinker. I have read a ton of papers and Handbooks of Evolutionary Psychology, and it is clear that while he was one of the top researchers in this area in the 90's this has dramatically changed. The area has shifted towards more empirical precision and fined-grained theories while some of his theories seems to warrant the "just-so story" criticism.

Replying toBreaking the vicious cycle

joaolkf11y

Breaking the vicious cycle

I made my above comment because I knew of at least one clear instance where the reason I had to do the workaround was due to someone who found Alex's stuff. But things haven't improved that much as I anticipated in my field (Applied Ethics). These things would take time, even if this had Alex's stuff as the only main cause. Looking back, I also think part of the workarounds were more due to having to relate the discussion to someone in my field who wrote about the same issue (Nick Agar) than due to having to avoid mentioning Eliezer too much.

I see a big difference in the AI community. For... (read more)

Replying toNo peace in our time?

joaolkf11y

No peace in our time?

What about this one?

Once Braumoeller took into account both the number of countries and their political relevance to one another, the results showed essentially no change to the trend of the use of force over the last 200 years. While researchers such as Pinker have suggested that countries are actually less inclined to fight than they once were, Braumoeller said these results suggest a different reason for the recent decline in war. “With countries being smaller, weaker and more distant from each other, they certainly have less ability to fight. But we as humans shouldn't get credit for being more peaceful just because we’re not as able to fight as we once were,” he said. “There is no indication that we actually have less proclivity to wage war.”

Article: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/wardecline.htm Paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2317269&download=yes

Replying toThe Mr. Hyde of Oxytocin

joaolkf11y

The Mr. Hyde of Oxytocin

I think there is more evidence it crosses (two studies with spinal measures) than it does not (0 studies). For (almost) direct measures check out Neumann, Inga D., et al., 2013 and Born, 2002. There are great many studies showing effects that could only be caused by encephalic neuromodulation. If it does not cross it, then it should cause increased encephalic levels of some neurochemical with the exact same profile, but that would be really weird.

Replying toThe Mr. Hyde of Oxytocin

joaolkf11y

The Mr. Hyde of Oxytocin

Regardless of attachment style, oxytocin increases in-group favouritism, proclivity to group conflict, envy and schadenfreude. It increases cooperation, trust and so on inside one's group but it often decreases cooperation with out-groups.

I may not be recalling correctly, but although there is some small studies on that, I do not think there is a lot of evidence that oxytocin always leads anxiety, etc. in people with insecure attachment style. I would suspect that it might be the case it initially increases insecurity because it makes those persons attend to their relationship issues. However, in the long-run it might lead them to solve those issues. I say this because there are many studies showing... (read more)

Replying toSuperintelligence 27: Pathways and enablers

joaolkf11y

Superintelligence 27: Pathways and enablers

Elephants kill hundreds, if not thousands, of human beings per year. Considering there are no more than 30,000 elephants alive, that's an amazing feat of evilness. I believe the average elephant kills orders of magnitudes more than the average human, and probably kill more violently as well.

Replying toEven when contrarians win, they lose: Jeff Hawkins

joaolkf11y

Even when contrarians win, they lose: Jeff Hawkins

Worth mentioning that some parts of Superintelligence are already a less contrarian version of many arguments made here in the past.

Also note that although some people do believe that FHI is some sense "contrarian", when you look at the actual hard data on this the fact is FHI has been able to publish in mainstream journals (within philosophy at least) and reach important mainstream researchers (within AI at least) at rates comparable, if not higher, to excellent "non-contrarian" institutes.

Replying toEven when contrarians win, they lose: Jeff Hawkins

joaolkf11y

Even when contrarians win, they lose: Jeff Hawkins

I didn't see the post in those lights at all. I think it gave a short, interesting and relevant example about the dynamics of intellectual innovation in "intelligence research" (Jeff) and how this could help predict and explain the impact of current research(MIRI/FHI). I do agree the post is about "tribalism" and not about the truth, however, it seems that this was OP explicit intention and a worthwhile topic. It would be naive and unwise to overlook these sorts of societal considerations if your goal is to make AI development safer.

[LINK] Lectures on Self-Control and the myth of Willpower

joaolkf

11y

Last week Professor Neil Levy, a neuroethicist, gave three lectures on Self-Control at the Oxford Martin School. Roughly, the first lecture targeted philosophical issues, the second empirical issues and the third bridged the two. Neil's summaries and audio are at the bottom. In the next two paragraphs I will briefly summarize the take-home message of the lectures.

Over the three lectures, he offered a new approach to self-control. He argues that will-power is of little relevance to self-control, that the self-control character-trait which correlates with success is not will-power and that relying on will-power alone leads to low levels of self-control. He defends that self-control is mainly the ability of self-management, of managing... (read 702 more words →)

Cross-temporal dependency, value bounds and superintelligence

joaolkf

11y

In this short post I will attempt to put forth some potential concerns that should be relevant when developing superintelligences, if certain meta-ethical effects exist. I do not claim they exist, only that it might be worth looking for them since their existence would mean some currently irrelevant concerns are, in fact, relevant.

These meta-ethical effects would be a certain kind of cross-temporal dependency on moral value. First, let me explain what I mean by cross-temporal dependency. If value is cross-temporal dependent it means that value at t2 could be affected by t1, independently of any causal role t1 has on t2. The same event X at t2 could have more or less moral value... (read 680 more words →)

Design-space traps: mapping the utility-design trajectory space

joaolkf

12y

This is a small section on a paper I'm writing on moral enhancement. I'm trying to briefly summarize some of the points which were already made concerning local optima in evolutionary process and safety regarding taking humanity out of those local optima. You might find the text helpful in that it summarizes a very important concept. I don't think there's nothing new here, but I hope the way I tried to more properly phrase the utility-design trajectory space topology at the end can be fruitful. I would appreciate any insights you might have about that formulation in the end, how to better develop it more rigorously and some consequences. I do have... (read 856 more words →)

-3

How to choose a country/city?

joaolkf

12y

EDIT: I've found a very relevant indicator for my question, see "Quality of life" criteria below.

My main question is: which non-academic factors should I consider when moving to another country/city for a PhD? Further, I would also like to evaluate each country/city¹ according to those criteria, but first I need to know which are the relevant criteria. If you know any (any at all) scientific literature on moving to another country and well being, let me know.

I've lived in Brazil all my life, I really like it here for many reasons. Mostly, by how personal relationships are established and maintained. However, Brazil's inability to construct a stable well developed society have crippled... (read 1345 more words →)

Fixing akrasia: damnation to acausal hell

joaolkf

12y

DISCLAIMER: This topic is related to a potentially harmful memetic hazard, that has been rightly banned from Less Wrong. If you don't know what is, it is more likely you will be fine than not, but be advised. If do know, do not mention it in the comments.

Abstract: The fact that humans cannot precommit very well might be one of our defences against acausal trades. If transhumanists figure out how to beat akrasia by some sort of drug or brain tweaks, that might make them much better at precommitment, and thus more vulnerable. That means solving akrasia might be dangerous, at least until we solve blackmail. If the danger is bad enough, even small steps... (read 708 more words →)

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How to choose a country/city?

Cross-temporal dependency, value bounds and superintelligence

[LINK] Lectures on Self-Control and the myth of Willpower

Fixing akrasia: damnation to acausal hell

joaolkf

joaolkf

[LINK] Lectures on Self-Control and the myth of Willpower

Cross-temporal dependency, value bounds and superintelligence

Design-space traps: mapping the utility-design trajectory space

How to choose a country/city?

Fixing akrasia: damnation to acausal hell

joaolkf

How to choose a country/city?

Cross-temporal dependency, value bounds and superintelligence

[LINK] Lectures on Self-Control and the myth of Willpower

Fixing akrasia: damnation to acausal hell

joaolkf

joaolkf

[LINK] Lectures on Self-Control and the myth of Willpower

Cross-temporal dependency, value bounds and superintelligence

Design-space traps: mapping the utility-design trajectory space

How to choose a country/city?

Fixing akrasia: damnation to acausal hell