LessWrong 2.0 Reader

Yeah, this also bothered me. The notion of "probability distribution over quantum states" is not a good notion: the matrix I is both (|0\rangle \langle 0|+|1\rangle \langle 1|) and (|a\rangle \langle a|+|b\rangle \langle b|) for any other orthogonal basis. The fact that these should be treated equivalently seems totally arbitrary. The point is that density matrix mechanics is the notion of probability for quantum states, and can be formalized as such (dynamics of informational lower bounds given observations). I was sort of getting at this with the long "explaining probability to an alien" footnote, but I don't think it landed (and I also don't have the right background to make it precise)

Turns out even 250 examples isn't enough to replicate the pattern.  I'm going to try the same thing tomorrow but with an extra newline between each sentence whose starting letter ends an acrostic word to see if it catches on.  If not, I'll need to try a different approach.

 

There are a variety of clever way to get something by making tax law more complicated. In general, I think we aren't skeptical enough of increased bureaucracy of the tax law and as a result our tax laws are way too complicated.

Whenever one advocates a way to make tax law even more complicated, I think it's important to be explicit about the cost of the increase in tax law complexity. 

Your use of "pure state" is totally different to the standard definition (namely rank(rho)=1). I suggest using a different term.

Why are conservatives for punitive correction while progressives do not think it works? I think this can be explained by the difference between stable equilibria and saddle points.

If you have a system where people make random "mistakes" an $ϵ$ amount of the time, the stable points are known as trembling-hand equilibria. Or, similarly, if they transition to different policies some H of the time, you get some thermodynamic distribution. In both models, your system is exponentially more likely to end up in states it is hard to transition out of (Ellison's lemma & the Boltzmann distribution respectively). Societies will usually spend a lot of time at a stable equilibrium, and then rapidly transition to a new one when the temperature increaes, in a way akin to simulated annealing. Note that we're currently in one of those transition periods, so if you want to shape the next couple decades of policy, now is the time to get into politics.

In stable equilibria, punishment works. It essentially decreases $ϵ$ so it's less likely for too many people to make a mistake at the same time, conserving the equilibrium. But progressives are climbing a narrow mountain pass, not sitting at the top of a local maximum. It's much easier for disaffected members to shove society off the pass, so a policy of punishing defectors is not stable—the defectors can just defect more and win. This is why punishment doesn't work; the only way forward is if everyone goes along with the plan.

The QM state space has a preferred inner product, which we can use to e.g. dualize a (0,2) tensor (i.e. a thing that eats takes two vectors and gives a number) into a (1,1) tensor (i.e. an operator). So we can think of it either way.

I still have one point that is not really clear: why 1 bit information (Shannon entropy (H)) is equal to 1 bit (k ln2) thermodynamic entropy (S). I have zero background in thermodynamics, and the thermodynamic entropy definition is so hard to interpret (what is a microstate, quantitatively speaking?) 
 

(I am not a huge fan of this post, but I think it's reasonable for people to care about how society orients towards x-risk and AI concerns, and as such to actively want to not screen off evidence, and take responsibility for what people affiliated with you say on the internet. So I don't think this is great advice. 

I am actively subscribed to lots of people who I expect to say wrong and dumb things, because it's important to me that I correct people and avoid misunderstandings, especially when someone might mistake my opinion for the opinion of the people saying dumb stuff)

I would absolutely like to chat further.  Please send me a DM so we can set that up!

I'm confused.  You start with

“But you can’t have a story where everyone is happy and everything is perfect! Stories need conflict!”

And then list a bunch of conflicts.  David Mamet's three rules are:

1. Who wants what from whom
2. What happens if they don’t get it
3. Why now

And all of your examples are fair places to answer these.  I think we don't actually disagree, but I'm not sure I understand the objection you're responding to.  Did someone actually say "there's no tension without dystopia"?  If they only said "dystopia is the lazy person's generator of fictional tension", then I kind of agree.