Taking Ideas Seriously

Well, even if we agree that compartmentalized minds were the first good-enough solution, there's a meaningful difference between "there was positive selection pressure towards tightly integrated minds, though it was insufficient to bring that about in the available time" and "there was no selection pressure towards tightly integrated minds" and "there was selection pressure towards compartmentalized minds".

Rwallace seems to be suggesting the last of those.

The default state, is that anything which is not linked to limb movement or other outputs ever, could as well not exist in the first place.

I think the issue with compartmentalization, is that integration of beliefs is a background process, that ensures coherent response whereby one part of the mind would not come up with one action, and other with another, which would make you e.g. drive a car into a tree if one part of brain wants to turn left and other wants to turn right.

The compartmentalization of information is anything but safe. When you compartmentalize your e.g. political orientation, from your logical thinking, I can make you do either A or B by presenting exact same situation in either political, or logical, way, so that one of the parts activates, and arrives at either action A or action B. That is not safe. That is "it gets you eaten one day" unsafe.

And if you compartmentalize the decision making on a warship, it will fail to coordinate the firing of the guns, and will be sunk, even if it will take more holes. Consider a warship that is being attacked by several enemies. If you don't coordinate the firing of torpedoes, you'll have overkill fire at some of the ships, wasting firepower. You'll be sunk. It is known issue in RTS games. You can beat human with pretty dumb AI if it simply coordinates the fire between units better.

The biologist in this example above is a single cherry picked example, from the majority of scientists, for whom the process has worked correctly, and they stopped believing that God created animals, or have failed to integrate beliefs, and are ticking time bombs wrt producing bad hypotheses. An edge case between atheists and believers, he is.

IMO, the mystery here is not the author's fail, but how long the "evolution" fans banged on about it for - explaining the mistake over and over and over again.

Because lots of people (either not as educated or not as intelligent) didn't realize how highly flawed the book was. And when someone is being taken seriously enough that they are an expert witness in a federal trial, there's a real need to respond. Also, there were people like me who looked into Behe's arguments in detail simply because it didn't seem likely that someone with his intelligence and education would say something that was so totally lacking in a point, so the worry was that one was missing something. Of course, there's also the irrational but highly fun aspect of tearing arguments into little tiny pieces. Finally, there's the other irrational aspect that Behe managed to trigger lots of people to react by his being condescending and obnoxious (see for example his exchange with Abbie Smith where he essentially said that no one should listen to her he because he was a prof and she was just a lowly grad student).

If you don't read creationists, it looks like there aren't any, and it looks like "evolution fans" are banging on about nothing. But, in reality, there are creationists, and they were also banging on in praise of the book. David Klinghoffer, for instance (prominent creationist with a blog.)

After doing 100 trials of dual N back stretched over a week (mostly 4 back) I noticed that I felt slightly more conscious: my emotions were more salient, I enjoyed simple things more, and I just felt generally more alive. There were tons of free variables for me, though, so I doubt causation. Did you notice anything similar?

Unfortunately no. I suspect Michael Vassar might have some ideas, if you can get him to write something up. Otherwise hoping someone else chips in.

Right, and importantly it's not just clinical insanity that is damaging. When you're working on a hard and important problem, any type of mental irregularity or paralysis is potentially very harmful. I suppose most people don't do the kinds of research where this is a real concern, but some do, and I figured it was important to address the small population of LW that might take one idea too many seriously and end up needlessly paranoid/depressed/etc because of a foolhardy desire to be completely 'rational'. The Litanies of Tarski and Gendlin have exceptions, but those exceptions should not justify excuses. If you do not heed the exceptions you won't be in a state to excuse yourself: the inferential distance would be too dangerous and too large.

It seems like this post could use some more empirical data, and you're probably in a good position to gather it. You said that every long term SIAI member has no problem with this skill (which makes sense because if they did have a serious problem with this skill they probably wouldn't have become a long term SIAI member in the first place) but how did they become that way? What kind of things did they find useful for getting better at it?

I'm surprised that you weren't aware that I took Tegmark's multiverse seriously, since I mentioned it in the UDT post. It was one of the main inspirations for me coming up with UDT. You can see here a 2006 proto-UDT that's perhaps more clearly based on Tegmark's idea.

Have they found a workaround for the problem of teacups turning into pheasants?

Well, UDT is sort of my answer to that. In UDT you can no longer say "I assign a small probability for observing this teacup turning into a pheasant" but you can still say "I'm willing to bet a large amount of money that this teacup won't turn into a pheasant." See also What are probabilities, anyway? I'm not sure if that answers your question, so let me know.

(You might also be interested in UDASSA, which was an earlier attempt to solve the same problem.)

I didn't mean to imply that all such thoughts are a waste, or that any of the usual worries around here are silly. I meant that if you really feel obligated to take seriously claims of alarming differences in utility, that you'd end up wasting a time digging through ridiculous religious claims. Clearly it's not the case that you do this.

Why is biodiversity important?

Protection from disease When there are a variety of species, a single pathogen is less likely able to ravage an ecosystem.

Protecting minority humans A species of negligible value to a dominant society may be of critical value to a marginal society.

Protection of sentient species Some endangered species are capable of learning language. Some humans are not. I typically value worth on a combination of mental traits. Some animals are capable of holding jobs. Some humans are not. Many people often value worth by productivity. Some animals are more valuable than some humans.

Natural history DNA is subject to statistical analysis. This analysis can provide insight into previous environments and the adaptations needed to survive them. Humans may have a future use for a solution already encoded by another species.

Undiscovered potential Most models would place a non-negligible value upon an unknown self-replicating organism that has been adapted to the modelers environment after several million generations. At the very least, identification, classification, and understanding would be attempted before placing a value.

Value from scarcity Economics. As supply decreases, cost increases.

Ethics Treat others as you would have yourself be treated. Don't afflict others with the negative consequences of your actions. Protect the oppressed. Be a good neighbor. Share. Improve your environment for the next visitor. Because you may be judged by the rules you apply to others.

It is good to reconsider our memes, but for me biodiversity passes. I've tried to keep this brief in order to maintain clarity.

If a particular species is useful for some concrete purpose, then someone with deep enough pockets can easily be found who will invest into breeding it for profit. If not, who cares?

Me. And I'm not alone. Many humans do value the preservation of significant elements of biodeversity that don't have any 'concrete', objective value. This is arbitrary only in the sense that any terminal value is arbitrary. I suggest that it is not nearly as 'easy' to find someone to preserve a given part of the commons, even when that part would be considered value by the extrapolated volition of the population.

As George Carlin once said, "The earth will manage just fine. We're the ones who are fucked!". The fact that nature will endure is not that reassuring to any particular apex predator.

I agree though that "biodiversity" needs some backup arguments for us to care about it.

I am not a person who believes in providence, or the market's invisible hand, or the balances that protect democracy, or Gaia. There are systems that are stable for long periods because of massive negative feedback. But that very feedback can turn positive under unusual situations, equalibriums can disappear and systems collapse.

I do not know whether we are going to 'fall over a cliff' and I don't think others do either. We just don't know enough. It is certainly clear to me that we are in danger, just not how much. WE DO NOT KNOW.

The planet has had periods of mass extinction before and has recovered, but the recovered biosphere was very different from the lost one. Technically we are losing species at the sort of rate that appeared during previous mass extinctions. Humans may be the 'dominant life form' that loses out this time.

I share the puzzlement of others here that after a post where bioterrorism, cryonics and molecular nanotechnology are listed as being serious ideas that need serious consideration - by implication, to the degree that they might significantly impact upon the shape of one's 'web of beliefs' - that the topics of climate change and mass extinction are given such short shrift, and in terms that, from my point of view, only barely pass muster in the context of a community ostensibly dedicated to increasing rationality and overcoming bias.

I find little rationality and enormous bias in phrases like; "... why the extinction of various species that nobody cares about is such a bad thing".

The ecosystem of the planet is the most complex sub-system of the universe of which we are aware - containing, as it does, among many only partially explored sub-systems, a little over 6 billion human brains.

Given that one defining characteristic of complex systems is that they cannot be adequately modelled without the use of computational resources which exceed the resources of the system itself [colloquially understood as the 'law of unintended consequences'], it seems manifestly irrational to be dismissive of the possible consequences of massive intervention in a system upon which all humans rely utterly for existence.

Whether or not one chooses to give credence to the Gaia hypothesis, it is indisputable that the chemical composition of the atmosphere and oceans are conditioned by the totality of the ecosystem; and that the climate is in turn conditioned largely by these.

Applying probabilistic thinking to the likely impact of bio-terrorism on the one hand, and climate change on the other, we might consider that, um, five people have died as a result of bioterrorism (the work, as it appears, of a single maverick and thus not even firmly to be categorised as terrorism) since the second world war, while climate change has arguably killed tens of thousands already in floods, droughts, and the like, and certainly threatens human habitat as low-lying islands are inundated as sea-levels rise.

Upon these considerations it would appear bizarre to consider expending any energy whatsoever upon bioterrorism before climate change.

I would not pester someone who was old or dying about cryonics unless I had reason to believe they also had a spare $30,000 in the bank.

If I have my own body and it was healthy with some time left, that would be fine. I suppose if we are imagining a surviving brain then what is the problem with getting a re-build to reverse age and whatever caused the death.

Climate change could make a large difference to FAI issues

Sudden, drastic climate change, sure. But I'm not aware of any reason to believe we should be expecting that.... certainly not on the kind of time scales that the LW consensus seems to predict for the singularity.

I don't understand your comment. Do you mean that climate change and biodiversity are not discussed because everyone in LW thinks the same about them? because there is nothing to say? because there is nothing that can be done? because it is settled science? Please explain how issues falling within the correct contrarian cluster are not discussed at all and why you think that these issues fall within the cluster.

No Popper is not obsolete and clearly the lessons of Popper have not been learnt by many: consider the people who have not yet understood that induction is a myth. Consider, also, the people who constantly misrepresent what Popper said like saying his philosophy is falsificationism or that he was a positivist or that he snuck induction in via the back door (you can find examples of these kind of mistakes discussed here). Popper's ideas are in fact difficult for most people - they blow away the whole justificationist meta-context, a meta-context that permeates most people's thinking. Understanding Popper requires that you take him seriously. David Deutsch did that and expanded on Popper's ideas in a number of ways (you may be interested in a new book he has coming out called "The Beginning of Infinity"). He is another philosopher I follow closely. As is Elliot Temple (www.curi.us).

Which is nice, but not really relevant to anything in real-time.

Where 'real-time' can be taken literally to refer to time that is expected to exist in physics models of the universe.

Elliot has informed me that he doesn't think he said: "humans can function as a Turing Machine by laboriously manipulating symbols", except possibly in reply to a very specific question like "Give a short proof that humans have computational universality".

Why do you say "people like Ellliot"? Elliot has his own views on things and shouldn't be conflated with people who you think are like him. It seems to me you don't understand his ideas so wouldn't know what the people who are like him are like.

Human beings are universal knowledge creators: they can create any knowledge that any other knowledge creator can create.

For interesting definitions of 'can', perhaps. I know some humans who can't create much of anything.

All human beings create knowledge - masses of it. Certain ideas can and do impair a person's creativity, but it is always possible to learn and to change one's ideas.

The only known tenable way of creating knowledge is by conjectures and refutations.

I'm not sure that counts as a 'way of creating knowledge'. 'Conjectures' sounds to me like a black box which would itself contain the relevant bit.

It's not just conjectures, it's "conjectures and refutations". Knowledge is created by advancing conjectural explanations to solve a problem and then criticizing those conjectures in an attempt to refute them. The goal is to find a conjecture that can withstand all criticisms we can think of and to refute all rival conjectures.

Induction is a myth.

I'd want to know what you mean by 'myth'. It's worked so far, though that only counts as evidence for those of us blinded by the veil of Maya.

No, it never worked. Not a bit. That's what I mean by myth.

Theories are either true or false: there is no such thing as the probability that a theory is true.

Confirmation does not make a theory more likely or better supported - the only role of confirmation is to provide a ready stock of criticisms of rival theories.

Probability is in the mind. Theories are either true or false, and there is such a thing as the probability that a theory is true.

Theories are objective. Whether you think a theory is true or false has no bearing on whether it is in fact true or false. Moreover, how do you assign a probability to a complex real-world theory like, say, multiversal quantum mechanics? What counts is whether the theory has stood up to criticism as an explanation to a problem or set of problems. If it has, who cares about how probable you think it is? It's not the probability that you should care about, it's the explanation.

The most important knowledge is explanations.

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

Above all else, we should try to find explanations for things; explanations are the most important kind of knowledge.

There is no route to certain knowledge: we are all fallible.

This shows the remarks about 'probability' above to be merely a definitional dispute. Probability describes uncertainty, and you admit that we have uncertain knowledge.

Knowledge is always uncertain, yes, but it is impossible to objectively quantify the uncertainty. Put another way, you cannot know what you do not yet know. Theories can be wrong in all sorts of ways but you have no way of doing in advance how or if a theory will go wrong. It's not a definitional dispute.

We don't need certain knowledge to progress: tentative, fallible, knowledge is just fine.

True that!

OK, we agree on that!

Probably nothing.