LessWrong 2.0 Reader

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"The Wind Rises" by Miyazaki -- People who build things must learn how to live.

Buying something more valuable with something less valuable should never feel like a terrible deal. If it does, something is wrong.

It's completely normal to feel terrible about being forced to choose only one of two things you value very highly. Human emotions don't map onto utility comparisons in the way you're suggesting.

That's a very thoughtful response from TurnTrout. I wonder if @Gwern [LW · GW] agrees with its main points. If not, it would be good know where he thinks it fails.

I don't agree that future utility function would just average out to its current utility function. There is this method - robust decision making https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robust_decision-making

The basic principle it relies on is when evaluating many possible futures you may notice that some actions have a positive impact on very narrow set of futures, while other actions have positive impact on very wide set of futures. Main point - in situation of uncertainty not all actions are equally good.

I like your poem on Twitter.

I think that Boltzmann brains in particular are probably very low measure though, at least if you use Solomonoff induction. If you think that weighting observer moments within a Universe by their description complexity is crazy (which I kind of feel), then you need to come up with a different measure on observer moments, but I expect that if we find a satisfying measure, Boltzmann brains will be low measure in that too.

I agree that there's no real answer to "where you are", you are a superposition of beings across the multiverse, sure. But I think probabilities are kind of real, if you make up some definition of what beings are sufficiently similar to you that you consider them "you", then you can have a probability distribution over where those beings are, and it's a fair equivalent rephrasing to say "I'm in this type of situation with this probability". (This is what I do in the post. Very unclear though why you'd ever want to estimate that, that's why I say that probabilities are cursed.) 

I think expected utilities are still reasonable. When you make a decision, you can estimate who are the beings whose decision correlate with this one, and what is the impact of each of their decisions, and calculate the sum of all that. I think it's fair to call this sum expected utility. It's possible that you don't want to optimize for the direct sum, but for something determined by "coalition dynamics", I don't understand the details well enough to really have an opinion. 

(My guess is we don't have real disagreement here and it's just a question of phrasing, but tell me if you think we disagree in a deeper way.)

I think that pleading total agnosticism towards the simulators' goals is not enough. I write "one common interest of all possible simulators is for us to cede power to an AI whose job is to figure out the distribution of values of possible simulators as best as it can, then serve those values." So I think you need a better reason to guard against being influenced then "I can't know what they want, everything and its opposite is equally likely", because the action proposed above is pretty clearly more favored by the simulators than not doing it. 

Btw, I don't actually want to fully "guard against being influenced by the simulators", I would in fact like to make deals with them, but reasonable deals where we get our fair share of value, instead of being stupidly tricked like the Oracle and ceding all our value for one observable turning out positively. I might later write a post about what kind of deals I would actually support.

The simulators can just use a random number generator to generate the events you use in your decision-making. They lose no information by this, your decision based on leaves falling on your face would be uncorrelated anyway with all other decisions anyway from their perspective, so they might as well replace it with a random number generator. (In reality, there might be some hidden correlation between the leaf falling on your left face, and another leaf falling on someone else's face, as both events are causally downstream of the weather, but given that the process is chaotic, the simulators would have no way to determine this correlation, so they might as well replace it with randomness, the simulation doesn't become any less informative.)

Separately, I don't object to being sometimes forked and used in solipsist branches, I usually enjoy myself, so I'm fine with the simulators creating more moments of me, so I have no motive to try schemes that make it harder to make solipsist simulations of me.

I’m generally pretty good. I’m way better at communicating when I am having a problem. Plus, with my meds I made it through the end of a ten-year relationship without falling into a deep depression. I haven’t had a weird melt down in some time.

As you say, I can predict certain things, and prepare. Routines help me not forget essential things. For instance, I don’t brush my teeth until after I have taken my pills so I can immediately tell if I already have. 

I use way-stations for cleaning up, like by the door to my room, I have a spot on a table for things that’s I want to take out of the room the next time I go, that way I don’t have to interrupt whatever I am doing at the time. I have stations like this in most rooms of my house. 

I also compensate by motivating myself to take care of things immediately. “Later is a lie,” has become sort of mantra for me. When I hear myself saying our thinking “later,” I try to remind myself of that mantra. It works for my son too. 

All of my bills are on autopay. I put appointments in my calendar so I don’t have to remember them, and set timers all the time for things. It’s generally better than the reminder apps. My phone is basically the third lobe of my brain. I’ve written routines for when to set my alarm, so I don’t forget to so.

I also work within my limits. For instance, if a project will take more than a weekend, I know I won’t be same to sustain interest in it. I can make exceptions—to varying levels of success—but they have to be things that are really important. I won’t get a pet, and I have just one plant that’s right by my sink.

I don’t generally have problems with willpower; I have problems with the word and concept.