TimFreeman

The Problem with AIXI

If you give up on the AIXI agent exploring the entire set of possible hypotheses and instead have it explore a small fixed list, the toy models can be very small. Here is a unit test for something more involved than AIXI that's feasible because of the small hypothesis list.

Replying toGroup Rationality Diary, January 16-31

Group Rationality Diary, January 16-31

Getting a programming job is not contingent on getting a degree. There's an easy test for competence at programming in a job interview: ask the candidate to write code on a whiteboard. I am aware of at least one Silicon Valley company that does that and have observed them to hire people who never finished their BS in CS. (I'd rather ask candidates to write code and debug on a laptop, but the HR department won't permit it.)

Getting a degree doesn't hurt. It might push up your salary -- even if one company has enough sense to evaluate the competence of a programmer directly, the other companies offering jobs to that... (read more)

Replying toLifestyle interventions to increase longevity

Lifestyle interventions to increase longevity

I have experienced consequences of donating blood too often.The blood donation places check your hemoglobin, but I have experienced iron deficiency symptoms when my hemoglobin was normal and my serum ferritin was low. The symptoms were twitchy legs when I was trying to sleep and insomnia, and iron deficiency was confirmed with a ferritin test. The iron deficiency symptoms went away and ferritin went back to normal when I took iron supplements and stopped donating blood, and I stopped the iron supplements after the normal ferritin test.

The blood donation places will encourage you to donate every 2 months, and according to a research paper I found when I was having this problem essentially everyone will have low serum ferritin if they do that for two years.

I have no reason to disagree with the OP's recommendation of donating blood every year or two.

Well, I suppose it's an improvement that you've identified what you're arguing against.

Unfortunately the statements you disagree with don't much resemble what I said. Specifically:

The argument you made was that copy-and-destroy is not bad because a world where that is done is not worse than our own.

I did not compare one world to another.

Pointing out that your definition of something, like harm, is shared by few people is not argumentum ad populum, it's pointing out that you are trying to sound like you're talking about something people care about but you're really not.

I did not define "harm".

The disconnect between what I said and what you heard is big enough that saying more... (read more)

Nothing I have said in this conversation presupposed ignorance, blissful or otherwise.

I give up, feel free to disagree with what you imagine I said.

Check out Argumentum ad Populum. With all the references to "most people", you seem to be committing that fallacy so often that I am unable to identify anything else in what you say.

This reasoning can be used to justify almost any form of "what you don't know won't hurt you". For instance, a world where people cheated on their spouse but it was never discovered would function, from the point of view of everyone, as well as or better than the similar world where they remained faithful.

Your example is too vague for me to want to talk about. Does this world have children that are conceived by sex, children that are expensive to raise, and property rights? Does it have sexually transmitted diseases? Does it have paternity tests? Does it have perfect contraception? You stipulated that affairs are never discovered, so liberal use of... (read more)

Open Problems Related to Solomonoff Induction

OTOH, some such choices are worse than others.

If you have an argument, please make it. Pointing off to a page with a laundry list of 37 things isn't an argument.

One way to find useful concepts is to use evolutionary arguments. Imagine a world in which it is useful and possible to commute back and forth to Mars by copy-and-destroy. Some people do it and endure arguments about whether they are still the "same" person when they got back, some people don't do it because of philosophical reservations about being the "same" person. Since we hypothesized that visiting Mars this way is useful, the ones without the philosophical reservation will be better... (read more)

Replying toOpen Problems Related to Solomonoff Induction

TimFreeman13y

Suppose we define a generalized version of Solomonoff Induction based on some second-order logic. The truth predicate for this logic can’t be defined within the logic and therefore a device that can decide the truth value of arbitrary statements in this logical has no finite description within this logic. If an alien claimed to have such a device, this generalized Solomonoff induction would assign the hypothesis that they're telling the truth zero probability, whereas we would assign it some small but positive probability.

I'm not sure I understand you correctly, but there are two immediate problems with this:

If the goal is to figure out how useful Solomonoff induction is, then "a generalized version

Pancritical Rationalism Can Apply to Preferences and Behavior

15y

This post describes an infinite gamble that, under some reasonable assumptions, will motivate people who act to maximize an unbounded utility function to send me all their money. In other words, if you understand this post and it doesn't motivate you to send me all your money, then you have a bounded utility function, or perhaps even upon reflection you are not choosing your actions to maximize expected utility, or perhaps you found a flaw in this post.

Briefly, we do this with The St. Petersburg Paradox, converted to a mugging along the lines of Pascal's Mugging. I then tweaked it to extract all of the money instead of just a fixed sum.

I... (read 823 more words →)

165

15y

ETA: As stated below, criticizing beliefs is trivial in principle, either they were arrived at with an approximation to Bayes' rule starting with a reasonable prior and then updated with actual observations, or they weren't. Subsequent conversation made it clear that criticizing behavior is also trivial in principle, since someone is either taking the action that they believe will best suit their preferences, or not. Finally, criticizing preferences became trivial too -- the relevant question is "Does/will agent X behave as though they have preferences Y", and that's a belief, so go back to Bayes' rule and a reasonable prior. So the entire issue that this post was meant to solve has... (read 1575 more words →)

The Aliens have Landed!

Why is my sister related to me only 50%?

15y

"General Thud! General Thud! Wake up! The aliens have landed. We must surrender!" General Thud's assistant Fred turned on the lights and opened the curtains to help Thud wake up and confront the situation. Thud was groggy because he had stayed up late supervising an ultimately successful mission carried out by remotely piloted vehicles in some small country on the other side of the world. Thud mumbled, "Aliens? How many? Where are they? What are they doing?" General Thud looked out the window, expecting to see giant tripods walking around and destroying buildings with death rays. He saw his lawn, a bright blue sky, and hummingbirds hovering near his bird feeder.

Fred was... (read 778 more words →)

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Leadership and Self Deception, Anatomy of Peace

15y

The standard story when dealing with inclusive fitness in evolutionary arguments is that my sibling's life is worth half of mine and my cousin's life is worth a quarter of mine.

But I obviously share more than half my genes with my sister because my parents are not unrelated. My parents must share a lot of ancestors enough generations back that nobody has tracked them, since they resemble each other insofar as they both look human. If I take into account that my parents are both human, I should be related to my sister much more than 50%.

So why do they assume a sibling has half your genes when reasoning about inclusive fitness?

My wife is Chinese, and both of my parents are of European descent. Should I expect my kids to like each other less than I like my sister, because they are less closely related?

This is an intellectual question about evolutionary psychology, not an anxious question about my family relationships. We're all doing fine, don't worry.

15y

I highly recommend reading Leadership and Self Deception (Henceforth "L&SD") by the Arbinger Institute (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google Books, Arbinger Institute Home Page). The sequel, Anatomy of Peace, is also good, but this article is based on a reading of L&SD.

They give a simple model of one cause of some or most everyday subtle neurotic behavior, and have practical suggestions for dealing with it. They present this indirectly, as a first-person narrative from a new executive at a fictional company is being taught this by his managers. The book has its good and bad points, with the good points hugely outweighing the bad. This post contains:

a summary of what's good and

... (read 1921 more words →)

Friendly to who?