MichaelVassar

Replying toSimulate and Defer To More Rational Selves

Simulate and Defer To More Rational Selves

Possibly valuable to talk with Robin Hanson and I for revision to HPMOR!Quirrell decision procedures from the source?

Replying toOpen thread, 25-31 August 2014

Open thread, 25-31 August 2014

There's an anecdote near the beginning of "introduction to psychoanalysis" where he discusses the dreams of arctic explorers, which are almost entirely about food, not about sex, for understandable reasons.

Replying toDefecting by Accident - A Flaw Common to Analytical People

MichaelVassar12y

Defecting by Accident - A Flaw Common to Analytical People

It is possible to play both, but difficult, and you can't play both at once as well as equally smart non-analytical types will play just the social game.

Replying toDefecting by Accident - A Flaw Common to Analytical People

MichaelVassar12y

Defecting by Accident - A Flaw Common to Analytical People

Two examples. Sexual selection and speciation. Nuff' said.

Replying toDefecting by Accident - A Flaw Common to Analytical People

MichaelVassar12y

Defecting by Accident - A Flaw Common to Analytical People

Yep, but the vast majority of people in a workplace, even those nominally there to deliver technical skills, are there to deliver social skills in reality, and all of the most highly paid people are paid for social skills.
That said, your right, still worth it. Being officially a foreigner is possibly the best approach.

Replying toAnother Critique of Effective Altruism

MichaelVassar12y

Another Critique of Effective Altruism

Another reasonable concern has to do with informational flow-through lines. When novel investigation demonstrates that previous claims or perspectives were in error, do we have good ways to change the group consensus?

Replying toA critique of effective altruism

MichaelVassar12y

A critique of effective altruism

I spent many hours explaining a sub-set of these criticisms to you in Dolores Park soon after we first met, but it strongly seemed to me that that time was wasted. I appreciate that you want to be lawful in your approach to reason, and thus to engage with disagreement, but my impression was that you do not actually engage with disagreement, you merely want to engage with disagreement, basically, I felt that you believe in your belief in rational inquiry, but that you don't actually believe in rational inquiry.

I may, of course, be wrong, and I'm not sure how people should respond in such a situation. It... (read more)

Replying toCommon sense as a prior

MichaelVassar12y

Common sense as a prior

I think that people following the standards that seem credible to them upon reflection is the best you can hope for. Ideally, upon reflection, bets and experiments will be part of those standards to at least some people. Hopefully, some such groups will congeal into effective trade networks. If one usually reliable algorithm disagrees strongly with others, yes, short term you should probably effectively ignore it, but that can be done via squaring assigned probabilities, taking harmonic or geometric means, etc, not by dropping it, and more importantly, such deviations should be investigated with some urgency.

Replying toA critique of effective altruism

MichaelVassar12y

A critique of effective altruism

I think that attempting effectiveness points towards a strong attractor of taking over countries.

Replying toA critique of effective altruism

MichaelVassar12y

A critique of effective altruism

I think that this is an effective list of real weak spots. If these problems can't be fixed, EA won't do much good.

Singularity Institute pitch and new project plus other organizations in our ecosystem

MichaelVassar

15y

A week ago I made a pitch for the Singularity Institute to a crowd of interested potential donors, along with a number of leaders of other non-profit organizations with relatively radical and innovative goals. The videos are here, and should be a good introduction to a significant part of the noosphere for people not yet familiar with it.

Singularity Non-Fiction Compilation to be Written

MichaelVassar

15y

Call for Essays:<http://singularityhypothesis.blogspot.com/p/submit.html>
The Singularity Hypothesis
A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment
Edited volume, to appear in The Frontiers Collection<http://www.springer.com/series/5342>, Springer

Does an intelligence explosion pose a genuine existential risk, or did Alan Turing, Steven Hawking, and Alvin Toffler delude themselves with visions 'straight from Cloud Cuckooland'? Should the notions of superintelligent machines, brain emulations and transhumans be ridiculed, or is it that skeptics are the ones who suffer from short sightedness and 'carbon chauvinism'? These questions have remained open because much of what we hear about the singularity originates from popular depictions, fiction, artistic impressions, and apocalyptic propaganda.

Seeking to promote this... (read 302 more words →)

A speculation on Near and Far Modes

MichaelVassar

16y

Katja's recent post on cryonics elicited this comment from Steven Kaas,

"If cryonics is super-far and altruism is seen as more important in far mode, why isn’t buying cryonics for others seen as especially praiseworthy? Your list of ways in which cryo is far-mode seems too much of a coincidence unless cryo was somehow optimized for distance."

...a comment which finally caused the following hypothesis to click into sharp resolution for me.

My guess is that it's cryonics advocates who are optimized for distance. Most people are basically natives of near mode, using far mode only casually and occasionally for signaling, and never reasoning about its contents. Even those who reason about its contents... (read 470 more words →)

Signaling Strategies and Morality

MichaelVassar

16y

I am far from convinced that people in general wish to be seen as caring more about morality than they actually do. If this was the case, why would the persistent claim that people are -- and, logically, must be -- egoists have so long survived strong counter-arguments? The argument appears to me to be a way of signaling a lack of excessive and low status moral scruples.

It seems to me that the desire to signal as much morality as possible is held by a minority of women and by a small minority of men. Those people are also the main people who talk about morality. This is commonly a problem in the development... (read 759 more words →)

Priors and Surprise

MichaelVassar

16y

I don’t want to be too dogmatic about this claim, but Godzilla is unrealistic. I don’t want to be too non-dogmatic about this claim either. OK then, just how dogmatic should I be? I have all sorts of reasons for thinking that skyscraper sized lizards or dinosaurs don’t actually exist. Honestly, the most important of these is probably that none of the people who I imagine would know if they did exist seem to believe in them. I never hear any mention of them in the news, in history books, etc, and I don’t see their effects in the national death statistics. No industries seem to

... (read 384 more words →)

For progress to be by accumulation and not by random walk, read great books

MichaelVassar

16y

This recent blog post strikes me as an interesting instance of a common phenomenon. The phenomenon looks like the following; an intellectual, working within the assumption that the world is not mad, (an assumption not generally found outside of the Anglo-American Enlightenment intellectual tradition) notices that some feature of the world would only make sense if the world was mad. This intellectual responds by denouncing as silly one of the few features of this vale of tears to be, while not intelligently designed, at least structured by generalized evolution rather than by entropy. The key line in the post is

"Conversely in all those disciplines where we have reliable quantatative measurements of progress

... (read 687 more words →)

117

New Year's Predictions Thread

MichaelVassar

16y

I would like to propose this as a thread for people to write in their predictions for the next year and the next decade, when practical with probabilities attached. I'll probably make some in the comments.

446

New Year’s Resolutions Thread

MichaelVassar

16y

I would like to propose this as a thread for people to write in their New Year’s Resolutions (goals and sub-goals) as instrumental rationalists.

Here are mine.

Goals

I resolve to try to enable all pareto-optimizing trades between my sub-agents can be made between them. For instance, I have agents which would like to maximize my success via improving my cognition and energy levels via eating more healthily via eating less. Other agents would like enjoyment from food. I note that these agents aren't cooperating even though they both benefit from the same changes in behavior, largely because it hasn't been pointed out to them that they are on the same side. If I make... (read 199 more words →)

Boston meetup Nov 15 (and others)

MichaelVassar

16y

So far, only one of the less-wrong meet-ups that were discussed has been scheduled. The Boston meet-up was scheduled for:

Carberry's at 74 Prospect St Cambridge, MA
(1.5 blocks northeast from the Central Square T station)
Sunday November 15th at 2pm

though it may move after an hour or two to the Clear Conscience Cafe a couple blocks away if things get too crowded.

My cell number is (610) 213 2487 so you can contact me if there is a problem.

Regarding Philly, Florida and New Orleans there is still need for detail in the schedule. I'm leaving New Orleans at 5:10 on the 14th so the 13th is probably better but I can do early on the 14th if people want. There has been some interest in an event there but I would appreciate more interested people saying so and possibly contacting me via phone or email. If several people are interested we will have a meet-up. Just one or two and I can meet less formally.

Less Wrong / Overcoming Bias meet-up groups

MichaelVassar

16y

Hi from Michael Vassar, the president of SIAI. With my wife and Singularity Summit co-director Aruna, I'll be traveling over the next few months to meet with rationality and singularity enthusiasts throughout the U.S. Specifically, I'll be in Boston from November 14-18, Philadelphia from December 1st to 10th and December 15th through January 4th, New Orleans from December 11th to 14th, Orlando on January 5th and 6th, Sarasota on January 7th through 12th, and in Tampa on the 11th if there is substantial interest in a meet-up there.

Please comment if you are interested in attending a meet-up in any of the cities in question and we can start planning.

I hope to find... (read more)

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

For progress to be by accumulation and not by random walk, read great books

New Year's Predictions Thread

Priors and Surprise

Singularity Non-Fiction Compilation to be Written

MichaelVassar

MichaelVassar

Singularity Institute pitch and new project plus other organizations in our ecosystem

Singularity Non-Fiction Compilation to be Written

A speculation on Near and Far Modes

Signaling Strategies and Morality

Priors and Surprise

For progress to be by accumulation and not by random walk, read great books

New Year's Predictions Thread

MichaelVassar

For progress to be by accumulation and not by random walk, read great books

New Year's Predictions Thread

Priors and Surprise

Singularity Non-Fiction Compilation to be Written

MichaelVassar

MichaelVassar

Singularity Institute pitch and new project plus other organizations in our ecosystem

Singularity Non-Fiction Compilation to be Written

A speculation on Near and Far Modes

Signaling Strategies and Morality

Priors and Surprise

For progress to be by accumulation and not by random walk, read great books

New Year's Predictions Thread