@Eliezer: is the following a real experiment that was actually made or are you hypothesizing?
The actual experiment which shows that parental grief correlates strongly to the expected reproductive potential of a child of that age in a hunter-gatherer society - not the different reproductive curve in a modern society - does not disturb me.
Eliezer, at 39:38 if I heard correctly you say:
"I have to say I'm the first person who actually ran to the opposite extreme and put the entire burden of rationality on system one fast perceptual intuitive judgement."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't that make overcomingbias meaningless because what we do here is more on the side of deliberative reasoning? After all we can't change system one that much.
I think it would be interesting if you could make a posting contrasting the notion of rationality against verbality since a lot of people might fall into the latter trap.
Eliezer, I don't understand the following:
probably via resolving some other problem in AI that turns out to hinge on the same reasoning process that's generating the confusion
If you use the same reasoning process again what help can that be? I would suppose that the confusion can be solved by a new reasoning process that provides a key insight.
As for the article one idea I had was that the AI could have empathy circuits like we have, yes, the modelling of humans would be restricted but good enough I hope. The thing is, would the AI have to be sentient in order for that to work?
Ted talk as clickable link: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html
Eliezer,
what would be the right thing to do regarding our own choices? Should we limit them? Somehow this seems related to the internet where you always have to choose when to click another link and when to stop reading. Timothy Ferris also recommends a low information diet. I'm just brainstorming a bit here.
This particular idea of fun(solving increasingly more complex problems) seems to reflect the audience's intellectual mindset. I wonder what people who hate mathematics would have to say. If you are a professional golf player how would your perfect world look like? Would it be an ever increasing golf game where you had to hit a small hole over astronomical distances?
@ac:
Unlike Roland, who is obviously a puritan, I rather enjoy the occasional spot of idleness. For a non-trivial number of people, playing WoW for a couple of hours a day is more fun that playing real life. Rather than make thinly veiled moral judgements about folks for their unproductivity, perhaps he should consider what makes certain games so engaging.
I enjoyed playing games myself, so I know what you are talking about.
You mention idleness, which I agree is sometimes worthwhile. This is the package deal fallacy since there are other ways to achieve tha... (read more)
@ D. Alex: Some important reasons why the game is so pleasurable seem to be:
a) the ultimate goals are pretty clear (so unlike real life...)
b) the "measures of progress" are likewise clear -
c) the rewards are clear -
This looks like real life without the hard parts. Sure, it makes it more fun, but at the end will you feel rewarded? If you look back now or in a few years to the time spent playing and consider what you could have achieved in real life if you invested the same time into real challenges how will you feel? From my own experience I can... (read more)
@haig: good point.
@Bryan Bishop: Your quote about inertia reminded me of EY's post Created Already In Motion.
What I'm successfully experimenting with at the moment is:
Prime the pump for action! Whatever you need to do, just get started. If instead you start thinking and analysing too much you will find 1000s of other things to do. A related advice: do your email and webbrowsing at the end of the day, not at the beginning or middle.
@ Z. M. Davis
Yes, there is a forum but it's not an official one. The whole point is creating a central place on the net to discuss and collect rationality related stuff.
OB is great but it only has the top guns. Where is the place where the lower rank people can ask questions or publish inspiring new ideas? No, the comments section is not enough and the open thread neither. Stuff just gets buried in nowhere land. Try reaching the 2. or 3. page of the comments and you will know what I mean.
And I don't think we should underestimate the potential contributions... (read more)
I second EY's idea. Yes, we need a community forum where everyone can post. Some where concerned with the quality of user generated posts to which I have to say that the point of the forum is not only to have good posts but also to ask questions and clarifications and spark new ideas. Nowadays those often get lost in the comments. Say you didn't understand what exactly a prior is, you can create a new posting asking for clarification. And there hopefully will be enough qualified people to answer it, freeing up time for EY. The ideal format for this would b... (read more)
I don't understand what is so shocking about this story. The lessons seems quite clear: the mouth that you feed today will bite you tomorrow. It's not as if we don't have this in western culture.