Replying toEliezer's Unteachable Methods of Sanity

"There exists a place in your cognition that feels like an expectation but actually stores an action plan that your body will follow, and you can load plans into it." is a valuable insight and I'm not sure I've seen it stated quite in that form elsewhere.

Do you have more you could say about how cognition works, or reliable references to point at?

Everything I've read is either true but too specific or low level to be useful (on the science end) or mixed with nonsense (on the meditation end), and my own mind is too muddled to easily distinguish true facts about how it works from almost-true facts about how it works. This makes building up a reliable model really hard.

Replying toThe Missing Genre: Heroic Parenthood - You can have kids and still punch the sun

justinpombrio2mo

The Missing Genre: Heroic Parenthood - You can have kids and still punch the sun

I believe you're looking for A Half-Built Garden. Thought provocing hard sci-fi book about motherhood, community, gender, ecology, and aliens. I highly recommend it, in general and especially given your desired genre.

Replying toWill Jesus Christ return in an election year?

justinpombrio11mo

Will Jesus Christ return in an election year?

The market named "This Market Will Resolve No At The End Of 2025" will resolve to No at the end of 2025. Like it says in its title. What's unclear about this?

Replying toArbital has been imported to LessWrong

justinpombrio1y

Arbital has been imported to LessWrong

The fact that you so naturally used the word "version" here (it was essentially invisible, it didn't feel like a terminology choice at all) suggests that "version" would be a good term to use instead of "lens". Downside being that it's a sufficiently common word that it doesn't sound like a Term of Art.

Replying toDon’t ignore bad vibes you get from people

justinpombrio1y

Don’t ignore bad vibes you get from people

Let's apply some data to this!

I've been in two high-stakes bad-vibe situations. (In one of them, someone else initially got the bad vibes, but I know enough details to comment on it.) In both cases, asking around would have revealed the issue. However, in both cases the people who knew the problematic person well, had either a good impression of them, or a very bad impression of them. Because there's a pattern where someone who's problematic in some way is also charismatic, or good at making up for it in other ways, etc. So my very rough model of these situations is that there were a bunch of people you could have... (read more)

-2

Replying toEverything you care about is in the map

justinpombrio1y

Everything you care about is in the map

Or in the words of Sean Carroll's Poetic Naturalism:

There are many ways of talking about the world.
All good ways of talking must be consistent with one another and with the world.
Our purposes in the moment determine the best way of talking.

A "way of talking" is a map, and "the world" is the territory.

Replying toAlignment is not intelligent

justinpombrio1y

Alignment is not intelligent

The orthogonality thesis doesn't say anything about intelligences that have no goals. It says that an intelligence can have any specific goal. So I'm not sure you've actually argued against the orthogonality thesis.

Replying toWhich things were you surprised to learn are metaphors?

justinpombrio1y

Which things were you surprised to learn are metaphors?

And English has it backwards. You can see the past, but not the future. The thing which just happened is most clear. The future comes at us from behind.

-2

Replying toA very strange probability paradox

justinpombrio1y

A very strange probability paradox

Here's the reasoning I intuitively want to apply:

where X = "you roll two 6s in a row by roll N", Y = "you roll at least two 6s by roll N", and Z = "the first N rolls are all even".

This is valid, right? And not particularly relevant to the stated problem, due to the "by roll N" qualifiers mucking up the statements in complicated ways?

Replying toWhich things were you surprised to learn are not metaphors?

justinpombrio1y

Which things were you surprised to learn are not metaphors?

Where's the pain?

Implementing Decision Theory

justinpombrio

I'm implementing decision theory, in Python. There are three parts to this:

An XML language for formally specifying decision theory dilemmas. It can express many dilemmas: Newcomb, Transparent Newcomb, Parfit's Hitchhiker, Death in Damascus, Smoking Lesion, Cosmic Ray, symmetric Prisoner's Dilemma, Counterfactual Mugging, and Sleeping Beautfy.
Python code that implements CDT, EDT, and UDT.
A simulator in Python that runs a dilemma using a decision theory to resolve choices. The decision theories all log their reasoning, so you can see the calculations they make in (often excruciating) detail. It's in Python because that's a language lots of people know.

This is all available on Github. My hope is that it can be a launching point to... (read 781 more words →)

Uncalibrated quantum experiments act clasically

justinpombrio

Epistemic status: solid math, uncertain applicability. Would love to hear from someone who knows more physics than I do!

Informal Overview

Here's a pretty obvious fact from probability theory:

Let A and B be two disjoint events, meaning that at most one of them can happen. For example, if you flip a coin it might land heads, or it might land tails, or it might do neither, perhaps slipping into a heating duct never to be seen again. But it definitely won't come up both heads and tails. Then:
$P (A \lor B) = P (A) + P (B)$

One of the surprising aspects of quantum mechanics is that this fact does not hold in a quantum system.

In a quantum system, an event does not directly have a probability:... (read 2347 more words →)

Measly Meditation Measurements

justinpombrio

A few months ago, I decided to start meditating regularly, around an hour a day. It seemed like a good opportunity to measure possible effects, so I asked for advice on what to measure. This post summarizes the results. In short, while the subjective effects of meditation were strong, the measurements didn't show anything. This is a fine place to stop reading; I'm mostly posting this because I promised to.

I did mindfulness meditation, as guided by The Mind Illuminated. My object of focus was typically my breath (while sitting), or my steps (as hiking).

What I Measured

About once a week, I did some online tasks either before or after meditating. These were the Go/NoGo and CuedAttention tasks on quantified-mind.com, and this psychomotor vigilance task.
I set up roughly once or twice daily pings from TagTime for experience sampling.

What I Measured

My performance on the tasks looked entirely random. It wasn't better or worse after meditating, and it didn't get better or worse over time.
I have no idea how to do experience sampling. I understand that some people have moods. I'm almost always in a neutral mood, and so wasn't sure what to put most of the time. Also, I'm apparently often away from my phone, and missed many (most?) pings.

What I Learned

The Mind Illuminated is as good of a guide as I hoped it would be.
A few measly months of meditation isn't going to change anything like your performance on reaction-time-like tasks.
A few measly months of meditation will give you a fascinating look into your own mind. It's not what you think. I'd say more, but I'm deeply confused and don't have a good model.
Meditation retreats are great. I went on a two-day one, whose format wasn't particularly well-suited for me, and even this had a large effect on my practice.

An Invitation to Measure Meditation

justinpombrio

Update: Thank you all for the suggestions, and all of the links to resources!

Here is my plan, which I hope will balance measuring useful things with being easy enough that I'll actually stick with it:

Every Monday, I will complete a meditation test on Quantified Mind. On alternating Mondays, I will alternate whether I do the test immediately after meditating or not. These don't look like a gold standard for attention tests, but they're better than what I would code by hand and they're more of a standard.
Every Monday, I will play a game(s?) of Dual 2-back and record my score. (I'll switch to a higher N if 2-back ever gets easy.)
I will

... (read 594 more words →)

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

justinpombrio

Measly Meditation Measurements

Implementing Decision Theory

Uncalibrated quantum experiments act clasically

An Invitation to Measure Meditation

justinpombrio

justinpombrio

Implementing Decision Theory

Uncalibrated quantum experiments act clasically

Measly Meditation Measurements

An Invitation to Measure Meditation

justinpombrio

Measly Meditation Measurements

Implementing Decision Theory

Uncalibrated quantum experiments act clasically

An Invitation to Measure Meditation

justinpombrio

justinpombrio

Implementing Decision Theory

Uncalibrated quantum experiments act clasically

Measly Meditation Measurements

An Invitation to Measure Meditation

Informal Overview

What I Measured

What I Measured

What I Learned