LessWrong 2.0 Reader

If you would want to account for biological diversity when doing drug trials you would require pre-existing conditions to be as prevalent in the population that you test in your drug trial. Saying that you have at least X percent obese people would likely give you more clinical knowledge than requiring at least X percent to be Native Americans.

Big Pharma generally selects participants to have less preexisting conditions and take less other medication than the general population. In the end FDA, requirements for drug legalization have positive advantages but also make drug trials and new drugs more expensive. 

There are both arguments to be more for more FDA and for less FDA regulation. In this case, I think it's worth noting that we have a Trump appointee defending some DEI regulatory requirements. 

This is part of my point. Our culture will not survive such measures. A different culture will result.

I'm familiar, have interviewed them twice, and linked to them in the OP in the culture-ectomy section. :) I don't think their lives work as a model for the majority of people in our culture, and suspect their children either will revert to mean in TFR, or will be drastically different culturally and thus an example of what I'm pointing at with this post.

Revealed preference is my cheeky answer here. "If I had infinite time/money" and "what I am willing to do IRL" are two different types of "want", and I was talking more about the latter.

I’ve retracted the comment as no longer endorsed, thank you.

I don't know if this is just hindsight, but tracr has in no way turned out to be safety relevant. Was it considered to be so at the time of commenting?

I sent the following offer (lightly edited) to discuss metaphysics to plex. I extend the same to anyone else.^[1]

(Note: I don't do psychedelics or participate in the mentioned communities^[2], and I'm deeply suspicious of intuitions/human-default-assumptions. I notice unquestioned intuitions across views on this, and the primary thing I'd like to do in discussing is try to get the other to see theirs.)

Hi, I saw [this shortform] by you

Wondering if you'd want to discuss metaphysics itself / let me socratic-question^[3] you. I lean qualia-monist but I'd like to mostly see if I can socratic-question you into noticing incoherence. I'm too uncertain about the true metaphysics to put forth a totalizing theory.

It might help if you've read this post [LW · GW] first.

My starting questions:

1. Do you believe phenomenal qualia exist? If you do, are they mathematical objects? If you don't, can you watch this short video on a thought experiment?

   (Commentary: someone in the comments of the linked post [LW · GW] told me that video was what changed their position from 'camp 1' (~illusionist, e.g. "qualia is an intuition from evolution") to 'camp 2' ("qualia is metaphysically fundamental"))

2. You mentioned 'matter' and 'math' as candidates for 'fundamental to reality'. My question depends on which is your view.

   1. If you believe matter is fundamental, what do you mean by matter; how does it differ from math?

      (Commentary: "matter" seems like an intuitive concept; one has an intuition that reality is "made of something", and calls that "thing" (undefined) "matter", and refers to "matter" without knowing "what it is" (also undefined); there being a word for this intuition prevents them from noticing their lack of knowledge, or the circular self-reference between "matter" and "what the world is made of")

   2. If you believe math is fundamental, what distinguishes this particular mathematical universe from other ones; what qualifies this world as "real", if anything; what 'breathes fire into the equations and creates a world for them to describe'?

      (Commentary: one self-consistent position answers "nothing" - that this world is just one of the infinitely many possible mathematical functions / programs. That 'real' secretly means 'the program(s?) we are part of'. Though I observe this position to be rare; most have a strong intuition that there is something which "makes reality real".)

   3. If you believe math is fundamental, what is math?^[4]

1. ^{^}

   Though I'll likely lose interest if it seems like we're talking past each other / won't resolve any cruxy disagreements.

2. ^{^}

   (except arguably the qualia research institute's discord server, which might count because it has psychedelics users in it)

3. ^{^}

   (Questioning with the goal of causing the questioned one to notice specific assumptions or intuitions to their beliefs, as a result of trying to generate a coherent answer)

4. ^{^}

   From an unposted text:

   The paradox of recursive explanation applies to metaphysics too

   In Explain/Worship/Ignore [LW · GW] (~500 words), Eliezer describes an apparent paradox: if you ask for some physical phenomena to be explained (shown to have a more fundamental cause), then ask the same of the explanation, and so on, the only conceivable outcomes seem paradoxical: infinite recurse, circular self-reference, or a 'special' first cause that does not itself need to be explained.

   This is sometimes called the paradox of why. It's usually applied to physics; this text applies it to logic/math-structure and metaphysics/ontology too. In short, you can continually ask "but what is x" for any aspect of logic or ontology.

   Here's a hypothetical Socratic dialogue.

   Author: "What is reality?"

   Interlocutor: "Reality is <complete description of [very large mathematical structure that perfectly reflects the behavior of the universe]>."

   Author: "Let's suppose that is true. But this 'math' you just used; what is it?"

   Interlocutor: "Mathematics is a program which assigns, based on a few simple rules, 'T' or 'F' to inputs formatted in a certain way."

   Author: "I think you just moved the hard part of the question to be one question away: What is a program?"

   Interlocutor: "Hmm. I can't define a program in terms of math, because I just did the reverse. Wikipedia says a program is 'a sequence of instructions for a computer to execute'. If I just wrote that, Author would ask what it means for a computer to execute an instruction. What else could I write?

   A computer is a part of physics arranged into a localized structure, and for this structure to 'execute an instruction' is for physical law to flow through (operate on, apply to) it, such that the structure's observed behavior matches that of a simpler-than-physics abstract system for transforming inputs to outputs. Unfortunately, I've already defined physics in terms of math, so defining a program in terms of physics would be circular. I think I'm at a dead end."

   Author: "Do you want to revise one of your previous definitions?"

   Interlocutor: "Maybe I could define math as some more fundamental thing instead of as a certain kind of program. But I just failed to find such a more fundamental thing for 'program'. Let's check Wikipedia again...

   WP:Mathematics: 'Mathematics involves the description and manipulation of abstract objects that consist of either abstractions from nature or—in modern mathematics—purely abstract entities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms'

   WP:Mathematical_Object 'Typically, a mathematical object can be a value that can be assigned to a symbol, and therefore can be involved in formulas. Commonly encountered mathematical objects include numbers, expressions, shapes, functions, and sets.'

   "I can't use the 'abstractions from nature' part, because I've already defined nature to be mathematical, so that would be circular. Saying math is made of numbers, expressions, symbols, etc, isn't helpful either, though; Author will just ask what the symbols themselves are, metaphysically. Okay, I concede for now, though maybe a commenter will propose such a more-fundamental-thing that I'm not aware of, though it would invite the same question."

   [End of dialogue]

One upshot of this is that you can follow an explicitly non-(precise-)Bayesian decision procedure and still avoid dominated strategies. For example, you might explicitly specify beliefs using imprecise probabilities and make decisions using the “Dynamic Strong Maximality” rule, and still be immune to sure losses [LW · GW]. Basically, Dynamic Strong Maximality tells you which plans are permissible given your imprecise credences, and you just pick one. And you could do this “picking” using additional substantive principles. Maybe you want to use another rule for decision-making with imprecise credences (e.g., maximin expected utility or minimax regret). Or maybe you want to account for your moral uncertainty (e.g., picking the plan that respects more deontological constraints).

Let's say Alice have imprecise credences. Let's say Alice follows the algorithm: "At each time-step t, I will use 'Dynamic Strong Maximality' to find all plans that aren't dominated. I will pick between them using [some criteria]. Then I will take the action that plan recommends." (And then at the next timestep t+1, you re-do everything I just said in the quotes.)

If Alice does this, does she ended up being dynamically inconsistent? (Vulnerable to dutch-books etc.)

(Maybe it varies depending on the criteria. I'm interested if you have a hunch for what the answer will be for the sort of criteria you listed: maximin expected utility, minimax regret, picking the plan that respects more deontological constraints.)

I.e., I'm interested in: If you want to use dynamic strong maximality to avoid dominated strategies, does that require you to either have the ability to commit to a plan or the inclination to consistently pick your plan from some prior epistemic perspective. (Like an "updateless" agent might.) Or do you automatically avoid dominated strategies even if you're constantly recomputing your plan?

My sapience spell is to pay attention to the sensations of breathing at my abdomen whenever I notice my hair is in my face.

What's the case for it being a swiss cheese approach? That doesn't match how I think of it.