Open thread, Nov. 28 - Dec. 04, 2016

I believe that coordinating a series of specialized AIs could do the job, but until I write down a model I cannot go beyond a mere statement / hope.

'The Dao' that can be spoken is not the eternal DAO

Exactly!

Does this mean that Tao has infinite Kolmogorov complexity?

Yes! This is delightful.

paranoia

Ah, but is it really paranoia if "they really are out to get you"? :)

I've previously demonstrated that I'm willing to make long-shot gambles on 5% odds, given that that's roughly my estimate of cryonics working and I've signed up for it. So let's try working with that number.

Out of all the possible scenarios of a Trump presidency, if you leave out 95% of the most positive options, how unpleasant is the best-remaining one? Put another way, is there at least a 5% chance of American or international politics descending to the point where my current apparent paranoia seems reasonable? And don't forget, as you calibrate your answer, that according to FiveThirtyEight, on October 17, Hillary had been predicted to have over an 88% chance of winning, implying that many people, likely including myself, have been massively mis-calibrated about how likely unpleasant political events are.

if you have that goal, then you would try anything sensible-sounding and any combination of anything sensible until something works.

I have had that goal for some time. I have tried the sensible-sounding things, in various combinations. They didn't work. So I've been shifting my focus from "trying to keep depressive bouts from happening" to "managing my life on the assumption I'm going to keep getting depressive bouts". I've hit enough such management tricks that even with my bout last week interrupting, I'm about 60,000 words into writing a novel, including 1600 words yesterday; I could be doing better, sure, but I could be doing a lot /worse/, too.

Very well, "secure" in cryptography just means "robust". I was not implying that it is impossible to hack, and since the DAO we are speaking about doesn't even exists, it doesn't make sense to discuss about its pro's and con's.

You mentioned engineering which could imply, say, CAD/CAE software

Head of engineering at Coursera means software engineering.

Okay, I finished reading the book, and then I also looked at the wiki. So...

If you are aware of mathematics what do you think about this part: https://logicnation.org/wiki/A_simple_click#Did_God_create_logic.3F Is it falsifiable? There was an interesting talk how something can arise out of nothing and how it's relatable to the present moment which one can't ever grasp but I will have to condense it for you guys later.

A few years ago I suspected that the biggest danger for the rationalist movement could be it's own success. I mean, as long as no one give a fuck about rationality, the few nerds are able to meet somewhere at the corner of the internet, debate their hobby, and try to improve themselves if they desire so. But if somehow the word "rationality" becomes popular, all crackpots and scammers will notice it, and will start producing their own versions -- and if they won't care about the actual rationality, they will have more degrees of freedom, so they will probably produce more attractive versions. Well, Gleb Tsipursky is already halfway there, and this Athene guy seems to be fully there... except that instead of "rationality", his applause light is "logic". Same difference. Instead of nitpicking hundred small details, I'll try to get right into what I perceive as the fundamental difference between LW and "logic nation":

I agree.

According to LW, rationality is hard.

It's hard, because our monkey brains were never designed by evolution to be rational in the first place. Just to use tools and win tribal politics. That's what we are good at.

That's false, if it wasn't for evolution you wouldn't have the ability to be rational in the first place.

The path to rationality is full of thousand biases, and requires often to go against your own instinct. This is why most people fail. This is why most smart people fail. This is why even most of the smartest ones fail. Humans are predictably irrational, their brains have systematic biases, even smart people believe stupid things for predictable reasons. Korzybski called it "map and territory", other people call it "magical thinking", here at LW we talk about "mysterious answers to mysterious question" -- this all points in approximately the same direction, that human brains have a predictable tendency to just believe some stupid shit, because from inside it seems perfectly real, actually even better than the real thing. And smarter people just do it in more sophisticated ways. So you have to really work hard, study hard, and even then you have a tiny chance to be fully sane; but without current research and hard work, your chances are zero for all practical purposes.

Again, I agree.

"Logic nation" has exactly the opposite approach. There is this "one weird trick", when you spend a few hours or weeks doing a mental exercise that will associate your positive emotions with "logic", and... voilà... you have achieved a quantum leap, and from now on all you have to do is to keep this emotional state, and everything will be alright. Your faith in logic will save you.

Yes, the one weird trick has been observed to 'work' in the different cases although we don't know more than that right now. But someone with an understanding in neuroscience, psychology-physiology connection and can bot search the academic literature would be able to connect the dots I think.

'Logic nation' has nothing to do with this type of rationality, though, it was a mistake to deliberately say it had or use the word.

And the first thing you have to do, of course, is to call your friends and tell them about this wonderful new thing, so they also get the chance to "click".

No, you don't want to do that, it's unlikely people will care or understand or immediately cry wolf cult. It's also with a large likelihood an inefficient use of time. There is people who want to click so it's probably better to push resources there. If Yudkowsky clicked he would probably not call up someone, instead write an article 'to rule them all' and all of you would finally get it.

But this is speculation or me giving information which can be taken accounted of after you click. Because you think differently, you probably will take some time to restructure your beliefs as the "first thing".

As long as you keep worshiping "logic", everything will be okay. Mother Logic loves you, Mother Logic cares for you, Mother Logic will protect you, Mother Logic created this universe for you... and when you fully understand your true nature, you will see that actually Mother Logic is you. (Using my own words here, but this is exactly how what I have seen so far seems to me.)

Not completely accurate, it's only if you cannot fix something with an adequate amount of time, if you, for example, scratched your leg, you can accept the pain, thus the suffering go away instantly. Doing logical things and figuring out God (Spinoza) by science could be seen as prayer, maybe neuro or something else too. But it's speculation after all since it differs for everyone based on everything, their current knowledge (see the example of Yudkowsky) and so on.

Well, to me this smells like exactly the kind of predictable irrationality humans habitually do. Take something your group accepts as high-status and start worshiping it. Imagine that all your problems will magically disappear if you just keep believing hard. Dissolve yourself in some nebulous concept. How is this different from what the average New Age hippie believes? Oh yes, your goddess is called Logic, not Gaia. I rest my case.

Sure, rationality-as-LW-and-all-the-literature-puts-it. You're better asking how is this different to what I believe? Instead, your god might be 'comfort'. 'Identity' might be prevalent in rationality communities. When you realize this, doing the 4 steps, emotionally, you're on the path to mastering the Way.

I know that the topic of AI is too removed from our everyday lives, and most people's opinion on this topic will absolutely have no consequence on anything, but even look there: Athene just waves his hand and says it will be all magically okay, because an AI smarter than us will of course automatically invent morality. (Another piece of human predictable irrationality, called "anthropomorphisation". Yeah, the AI will be just another human, just like the god of rain is just another human. What else than a human could there be?)

Sure, I agree, it requires more understanding of the topic and he is lacking quite a bit. Has someone made the argument, what if humans trying to intervene with AGI be the cause of the species destruction? Hard coding values might be contradictory, for example. It might value 'logic' automatically.

Speaking of instrumental rationality, the book you linked provides a lot of good practical advice. I was impressed. I admit I didn't expect to see this level of sanity outside LessWrong. Some parts of the book could be converted into 5 or 10 really good posts on LW. I mean it as a compliment. But ultimately, that seems to be all there is, and the rest is just a huge hype about it. (Recently LW is kind of dying, so to get an idea about what a really high-quality content looks. ....................he still tells you about Kahneman and Solomonoff and Jaynes and others, and would encourage you to go and read their books.

That's good, I wonder how much he has read on LW or rationality, It might be the case he didn't bastardized Tegmark + Solomonoff. Just made it all up himself. But he knows about rationality.org, EA & LW.

Etc. The summary is that Athene provides a decent checklist of instrumental rationality in his book, but everything else is just a hype. And his target audience are the people who believe in "one weird trick".

You don't have to believe it, you can observe it, write it down, read the testimonies, think about what is going on with your current data. If there is studies and peer-review, that's changing the predictions, but there still can be one now and if you are willing to try it.

Try reading the Sequences and maybe you will see what I was trying to describe here. That is a book that often moves people to a higher level of clarity of thinking, where the things that seemed awesome previously just become "oh, now I see ................ texts.) It's just, there is so much hype about something that was already done better. So obviously people on this website are not going to be very impressed. But it may be incredibly impressive to someone not familiar with the rationalist community.

Sure, the same way I don't see you as completely wrong, you have useful things to provide and so does all the books on rationality /Sequences, etc. I agree with most of what you're saying but it seems as you don't really understand what the click is about.

a) emotions (categorize as a value) -> uses rationality as a tool to sustain the value

b) I don't know what to write here. you'll have to see for yourself.

I agree that "stupid" is a bad label for the clustering which includes those kinds of behaviors, but I don't agree if you're saying that smoking and meat-eating are usually instrumentally rational choices for common human desires.

Stupid implies either incorrect logic or lack of consideration of an action. For many humans, these behaviors are neither one. They're some combination of weakness (knowing the better choice, but failing to override the monkey brain) and value differences (preferring current/near experienced pleasures over later/distant pain).

note: I eat lots of meat. I also play lots of video games and read lots of fiction, none of which is purely rationally motivated. I don't smoke or vape, but that's also not rationally motivated - I just find it disgusting.

If you define stupidity as a set of rules that we use to ensure a problem is solved longer than chance or never and is nevertheless pursued with alacrity and enthusiasm. Then it's stupid.

I don't know what the problem to be solved can be boiled down to in the context of this definition, maybe evolving as a super organism although that is not an end. General solving seems more applicable.