the ideal gas laws aren't "emergent"

No, I want my definition of "emergent" to say that the ideal gas laws are emergent properties of molecules.

Why not just say

We say that a system X has emergent behavior if we have heuristics for both a low-level description and a high-level description

It's worth checking on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy when this kind of issue comes up. It looks like this view - emergent=hard to predict from low-level model - is pretty mainstream.

The first paragraph of the article on emergence says that it's a controversial term with various related uses, generally meaning that some phenomenon arises from lower-level processes but is somehow not reducible to them. At the start of section 2 ("Epistemological Emergence"), the article says that the most popular approach is to "characterize the concept of emergence strictly in terms of limits on human knowledge of complex systems." It then gives a few different variations on this type of view, like that the higher-level behavior could not be predicted "practically speaking; or for any finite knower; or for even an ideal knower."

There's more there, some of which seems sensible and some of which I don't understand.

It seems problematic that as soon as you work out how to derive high-level behavior from low-level behavior, you have to stop calling it emergent. It seems even more problematic that two people can look at the same phenomenon and disagree on whether it's "emergent" or not, because Bob knows the relevant derivation of high level behavior from low level behavior, but Alice doesn't, even if Alice nows that Bob knows.

Perhaps we could refine this a little, and make emergence less subjective, but still avoid mind-projection-fallacy.

We say that a system X has emergent behavior if there exists an exact and simple low-level description and an inexact but easy-to-compute high-level description, and the derivation of the high-level laws from the low-level ones is much more complex than either. [In the technical sense of kolmogorov complexity] (Like "Has chaotic dynamics", it is a property of a system)

The only problem with that seems to be that when people talk about emergent behavior they seem to be more often than not talking about "emergence" as a property of the territory, not a property of the map. So for example, someone says that "AI will require emergent behavior"- that's a claim about the territory. Your definition of emergence seems like a reasonable and potentially useful one but one would need to be careful that the common connotations don't cause confusion.

I've deleted them myself. I think that my time is better spent looking for a quant job to fund x-risk research than on LW, where it seems I am actually doing active harm by staying rather than merely wasting time. I must say, it has been fun, but I think I am in the region of negative returns, not just diminishing ones.

I see. A side effect of banning one post, I think; only one post should've been banned, for certain. I'll try to undo it. There was a point when a prototype of LW had just gone up, someone somehow found it and posted using an obscene user name ("masterbater"), and code changes were quickly made to get that out of the system when their post was banned.

Holy Cthulhu, are you people paranoid about your evil administrator. Notice: I am not Professor Quirrell in real life.

EDIT: No, it wasn't a side effect, Roko did it on purpose.

http://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of-honor

Note to reader: This thread is curiosity inducing, this is affecting your judgement. You might think you can compensate for this bias but you probably won't in actuality. Stop reading anyway. Trust me on this. Edit: Me, and Larks, and ocr-fork, AND ROKO and [some but not all others]

I say for now because those who know about this are going to keep looking at it and determine it safe/rebut it/make it moot. Maybe it will stay dangerous for a long time, I don't know, but there seems to be a decent chance that you'll find out about it soon enough.

Don't assume it's Ok because you understand the need for friendliness and aren't writing code. There are no secrets to intelligence in hidden comments. (Though I didn't see the original thread, I think I figured it out and it's not giving me any insights.)

Don't feel left out or not smart for not 'getting it' we only 'got it' because it was told to us. Try to compensate for your ego. if you fail, Stop reading anyway.

Ab ernyyl fgbc ybbxvat. Phevbfvgl erfvfgnapr snvy.

http://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of-honor

That is really a beautiful comment.

It's a good point, and one I never would have thought of on my own: people find it painful to think they might have a chance to survive after they've struggled to give up hope.

One way to fight this is to reframe cryonics as similar to CPR: you'll still die eventually, but this is just a way of living a little longer. But people seem to find it emotionally different, perhaps because of the time delay, or the uncertainty.

That is brilliant.

Hopefully this provides incentive for people to kick Eliezer's ass at FAI theory. You don't want to look cultish, do you?

To me, the most appealing aspect of #lesswrong is that my comments will not be archived for posterity.

This is also an interesting quote.

Edit: I obviously missed the "only" in your note there.

del

I just posted a comment over there noting that the last interviewee rediscovered anchoring and adjustment.

This is really an excellent, down to the earth, one minute teaser, to go that route.

Excellent writing. It would wish I had a follow up move for those who get interested after that points, but raised doubts, be it philosophical, religious, moral, scientific (the last one probably the easiest).

I know those issues had been discussed already, but how could one react in a five minute coffee-break, when the co-worker responds (standard phrases to go): "But death gives meaning to live. And if nobody died, there would be too many people around here. Only the rich ones could get the benefits. And ultimately, whatever end the universe takes, we will all die, you know science, don't ya?"

I know the sequence answers, but I utterly fail to give any non-embarrassing answer at such questions. It does not help to not being signed up for cryonics oneself.

This is off-topic but I'm curious: How did you stumble on my blog?

This is true, and yes wfg did imply the threat.

(Now, analyzing not advocating and after upvoting the parent...)

I'll note that wfg was speculating about going ahead and doing it. After he did it (and given that EY doesn't respond to threats speculative:wga should act now based on the Roko incident) it isn't threat. It is then just a historical sequence of events. It wouldn't even be a particularly unique sequence events.

Wfg is far from the only person who responded by punishing SIAI in a way EY would expect to increase existential risk. ie. Not donating to SIAI when they otherwise would have.or by updating their p(EY(SIAI) is a(re) crackpot(s)) and sharing that knowledge. The description RationalWiki would be an example.

Perhaps you weren't aware, but Eliezer has stated that it's rational to not respond to threats of blackmail.

I don't think he was talking about human beings there. Obviously you don't want a reputation for being susceptable to being successfully blackmailed, but IMHO, maximising expected utilily results in a strategy which is not as simple as never responding to blackmail threats.

These are really interesting points. Just in case you haven't seen the developments on the thread, check out the whole thing here.

I'm not sure that blackmail is a good name to use when thinking about my commitment, as it has negative connotations and usually implies a non-public, selfish nature.

I'm also pretty sure it's irrational to ignore such things when making decisions. Perhaps not in a game theory sense, but absolutely in the practical life-theory sense.

As an example, our entire legal system is based on these sorts of credible threats.

If EY feels differently I'm not sure what to say except that I think he's being foolish. I see the game theory he's pretending exempts him from considering others reactions to his actions, I just don't think it's rational to completely ignore new causal information.

But like I said earlier, I'm not saying he has to do anything, I'm just making sure we all know that an existential risk reduction of 0.0001% via LW censorship won't actually be a reduction of 0.0001%.

(and though you deleted the relevant part, I'd also be down to discuss what a sane moderation system should be like.)

For a teaser, the part about singing logarithms looks cool.

It seems right to me. If the chance of one ticket winning is one in 10^6, the chance of four specified tickets winning four drawings is one in 10^24.

Of course, the chances of "Person X winning the lottery week 1 AND Person Y winning the lottery week 2 AND Person Z winning the lottery week 3 AND Person W winning the lottery week 4" are also 10^24, and this happens every four weeks.

From the article (there is a near invisible more text button)

Calculating the actual odds of Ginther hitting four multimillion-dollar lottery jackpots is tricky. If Ginther's winning tickets were the only four she ever bought, the odds would be one in 18 septillion, according to Sandy Norman and Eduardo Duenez, math professors at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

And she was the only person ever to have bought 4 tickets (birthday paradoxes and all)...

I did see an analysis of this somewhere, I'll try and dig it up. Here it is. There is hackernews commentary here.

I find this, from the original msnbc article, depressing

After all, the only way to win is to keep playing. Ginther is smart enough to know that's how you beat the odds: she earned her doctorate from Stanford University in 1976, then spent a decade on faculty at several colleges in California.

Teaching math.

It's also far more likely that she cheated. Or that there is a conspiracy in the Lottery to make she win four times.

The most eyebrow-raising part of that article:

After all, the only way to win is to keep playing. Ginther is smart enough to know that's how you beat the odds: she earned her doctorate from Stanford University in 1976, then spent a decade on faculty at several colleges in California.

Teaching math.

I haven't checked this calculation at all, but I'm confident that it's wrong, for the simple reason that it is far more likely that some "mathematician" gave them the wrong numbers than that any compactly describable event with odds of 1 in 18 septillion against it has actually been reported on, in writing, in the history of intelligent life on my Everett branch of Earth.

Hm. Have you looked at the multiverse lately? It's pretty apparent that something has gone horribly weird somewhere along the way. Your confidence should be limited by that dissonance.

It's the same with MWI, and cryonics, and moral cognitivism, and any other belief where your structural uncertainty hasn't been explicitly conditioned on your anthropic surprise. I'm not sure to what extent your implied confidence in these matters is pedagogical rather than indicative of your true beliefs. I expect mostly pedagogical? That's probably fine and good, but I doubt such subtle epistemic manipulation for the public good is much better than the Dark Arts.

(Added: In this particular case, something less metaphysical is probably amiss, like a math error.)

Would people be interested in a description of someone with high-social skills failing in a social situation (getting kicked out of a house)?

I'm not sure it's that relevant to rationality, but I think most humans (myself included!) are interested in hearing juicy gossip, especially if it features a popular trope such as "high status (but mildly disliked by the audience) person meets downfall".

How about this division of labor: you tell us the story and we come up with some explanation for how it relates to rationality, probably involving evolutionary psychology.

Yes. And do not hesitate to use many many words.

Definitely.

I wonder how much benefit we'd get, then, by imagining ourselves in all our internal dialogues to be speaking to someone very critical, and far smarter than us?

Probably not very, because we can't actually imagine what that hypothetical person would say to us. It'd probably end up used as a way to affirm your positions by only testing strong points.

I wonder how much benefit we'd get, then, by imagining ourselves in all our internal dialogues to be speaking to someone very critical, and far smarter than us?

I do it sometimes, and I think it helps.

This implies that the mantra "Will I become a syndicated cartoonist?" could be more effective than the original affirmative version, "I will become a syndicated cartoonist".

It might also be a useful tool for attaining self-knowledge outside of goal-directed behavior. Consider this passage from The Aleph:

Turning the corner of Bernardo de Irigoyen, I reviewed as impartially as possible the alternatives before me. They were: a) to speak to Álvaro, telling him the first cousin of Beatriz' (the explanatory euphemism would allow me to mention her name) had concocted a poem that seemed to draw out into infinity the possibilities of cacophony and chaos: b) not to say a word to Álvaro. I clearly foresaw that my indolence would opt for b.

I have no numbers for this, but the idea is that after interviewing for a job, competent people get hired, while incompetent people do not. These incompetents then have to interview for other jobs, so they will be seen more often, and complained about a lot. So perhaps the perceived prevalence of incompetent programmers is a result of availability bias (?).

This theory does not explain why this problem occurs in programming but not in other fields. I don't even know whether that is true. Maybe the situation is the same elsewhere, and I am biased here because I am a programmer.

What's the deal with programming, as a careeer? It seems like the lower levels at least should be readily accessible even to people of thoroughly average intelligence but I've read a lot that leads me to believe the average professional programmer is borderline incompetent.

From what I can tell the average person is borderline incompetent when it comes to the 'actually getting work done' part of a job. It is perhaps slightly more obvious with a role such as programming where output is somewhat closer to the level of objective physical reality.

Proceed from 0 to x, in increments of 1, (where x =whatever) If divisible by 3, remainder 0, associate fizz with number If divisible by 5, remainder 0, associate buzz with number, Make ordered list from o to x, of numbers associated with fizz OR buzz For numbers associated with fizz NOT buzz, append fizz For numbers associated with buzz NOT fizz, append fizz For numbers associated with fizz AND buzz, append fizzbuzz

I don't know anything about FizzBuzz, but your program generates no buzzes and lots of fizzes (appending fizz to numbers associated only with fizz or buzz.) This is not a particularly compelling demonstration of your point that it should be easy.

(I'm not a programmer, at least not professionally. The last serious program I wrote was 23 years ago in Fortran.)

Your general point is right. Ever since I started programming, it always felt like money for free. As long as you have the right mindset and never let yourself get intimidated.

Your solution to FizzBuzz is too complex and uses data structures ("associate whatever with whatever", then ordered lists) that it could've done without. Instead, do this:

for x in range(1, 101):
    fizz = (x%3 == 0)
    buzz = (x%5 == 0)
    if fizz and buzz:
        print "FizzBuzz"
    elif fizz:
        print "Fizz"
    elif buzz:
        print "Buzz"
    else:
        print x

This is runnable Python code. (NB: to write code in comments, indent each line by four spaces.) Python a simple language, maybe the best for beginners among all mainstream languages. Download the interpreter and use it to solve some Project Euler problems for finger exercises, because most actual programming tasks are a wee bit harder than FizzBuzz.

Most people find the concept of programming obvious, but the doing impossible.

--"Epigrams in Programming", by Alan J. Perlis; ACM's SIGPLAN publication, September, 1982

I've read a lot that leads me to believe the average professional programmer is borderline incompetent.

Programming as a field exhibits a weird bimodal distribution of talent. Some people are just in it for the paycheck, but others think of it as a true intellectual and creative challenge. Not only does the latter group spend extra hours perfecting their art, they also tend to be higher-IQ. Most of them could make better money in the law/medicine/MBA path. So obviously the "programming is an art" group is going to have a low opinion of the "programming is a paycheck" group.

I'll second the suggestion that you try your hand at some actual programming tasks, relatively easy ones to start with, and see where that gets you.

The deal with programming is that some people grok it readily and some don't. There seems to be some measure of talent involved that conscientious hard word can't replace.

Still, it seems to me (I have had a post about this in the works for ages) that anyone keen on improving their thinking can benefit from giving programming a try. It's like math in that respect.

i think you overestimate human curiosity for one. Not everyone implements prime searching or Conways game of life for fun. For two. Even those that implement their own fun projects are not necessarily great programmers. It seems there are those that get pointers, and the others. For tree, where does a company advertise? There is a lot of mass mailing going on by not competent folks. I recently read Joel Spolskys book on how to hire great talent, and he makes the point that the really great programmers just never appear on the market anyway.

http://abstrusegoose.com/strips/ars_longa_vita_brevis.PNG

(define (make-counter)
  (let ([internal-variable 0])
    (lambda ()
      (begin (set! internal-variable (+ internal-variable 1))
         internal-variable))))

Yeah, pretty much anyone who isn't appallingly stupid can become a reasonably good programmer in about a year. Be warned though, the kinds of people who make good programmers are also the kind of people who spontaneously find themselves recompiling their Linux kernel in order to get their patched wifi drivers to work...

So my question is: What philosophical works and authors have you found especially valuable, for whatever reason?

You might find it more helpful to come at the matter from a topic-centric direction, instead of an author-centric direction. Are there topics that interest you, but which seem to be discussed mostly by philosophers? If so, which community of philosophers looks like it is exploring (or has explored) the most productive avenues for understanding that topic?

Remember that philosophers, like everyone else, lived before the idea of motivated cognition was fully developed; it was commonplace to have theories of epistemology which didn't lead you to be suspicious enough of your own conclusions. You may be holding them to too high a standard by pointing to some of their conclusions, when some of their intermediate ideas and methods are still of interest and value today.

However, you should be selective of who you read. Unless you're an academic philosopher, for instance, reading a modern synopsis of Kantian thought is vastly preferable to trying to read Kant yourself. For similar reasons, I've steered clear of Hegel's original texts.

Unfortunately for the present purpose, I myself went the long way (I went to a college with a strong Great Books core in several subjects), so I don't have a good digest to recommend. Anyone else have one?

Yoreth:

For example: I've heard vague rumors that GWF Hegel concludes that the Prussian State (under which, coincidentally, he lived) was the best form of human existence. I've also heard that Descartes "proves" that God exists. Now, whether or not Hegel or Descartes may have had any valid insights, this is enough to tell me that it's not worth my time to go looking for them.

That's an extremely bad way to draw conclusions. If you were living 300 years ago, you could have similarly heard that some English dude named Isaac Newton is spending enormous amounts of time scribbling obsessive speculations about Biblical apocalypse and other occult subjects -- and concluded that even if he had some valid insights about physics, it wouldn't be worth your time to go looking for them.

It's a complicated question what purpose philosophy serves, but I wouldn't be posting here if I thought it served none. So my question is: What philosophical works and authors have you found especially valuable, for whatever reason? Perhaps the recommendations of such esteemed individuals as yourselves will carry enough evidentiary weight that I'll actually read the darned things.

Laktatos, Quine and Kuhn are all worth reading. Recommended works from each follows:

Lakatos: " Proofs and Refutations" Quine: "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" Kuhn: "The Copernican Revolution" and "The Structure of Scientific Revolution"

All of these have things which are wrong but they make arguments that need to be grappled with and understood (Copernican Revolution is more of a history book than a philosophy book but it helps present a case of Kuhn's approach to the history and philosophy of science in great detail). Kuhn is a particularly interesting case- I think that his general thesis about how science operates and what science is is wrong, but he makes a strong enough case such that I find weaker versions of his claims to be highly plausible. Kuhn also is just an excellent writer full of interesting factual tidbits.

've also heard that Descartes "proves" that God exists. Now, whether or not Hegel or Descartes may have had any valid insights, this is enough to tell me that it's not worth my time to go looking for them.

This seems like in general not a great attitude. The Descartes case is especially relevant in that Descartes did a lot of stuff not just philosophy. And some of his philosophy is worth understanding simply due to the fact that later authors react to him and discuss things in his context. And although he's often wrong, he's often wrong in a very precise fashion. His dualism is much more well-defined than people before him. Hegel however is a complete muddle. I'd label a lot of Hegel as not even wrong. ETA: And if I'm going to be bashing Hegel a bit, what kind of arrogant individual does it take to write a book entitled "The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences" that is just one's magnum opus about one's own philosophical views and doesn't discuss any others?

Is there any philosophy worth reading?

Yes. I agree with your criticisms - "philosophy" in academia seems to be essentially professional arguing, but there are plenty of well-reasoned and useful ideas that come of it, too. There is a lot of non-rational work out there (i.e. lots of valid arguments based on irrational premises) but since you're asking the question in this forum I am assuming you're looking for something of use/interest to a rationalist.

So my question is: What philosophical works and authors have you found especially valuable, for whatever reason?

I've developed quite a respect for Hilary Putnam and have read many of his books. Much of his work covers philosophy of the mind with a strong eye towards computational theories of the mind. Beyond just his insights, my respect also stems from his intellectual honesty. In the Introduction to "Representation and Reality" he takes a moment to note, "I am, thus, as I have done on more than one occasion, criticizing a view I myself earlier advanced." In short, as a rationalist I find reading his work very worthwhile.

I also liked "Objectivity: The Obligations of Impersonal Reason" by Nicholas Rescher quite a lot, but that's probably partly colored by having already come to similar conclusions going in.

PS - There was this thread over at Hacker News that just came up yesterday if you're looking to cast a wider net.

I've always been told that Hegel basically affixed the section about Prussia due to political pressures, and that modern philosophers totally ignore it. Having said that, I wouldn’t read Hegel.

I recommend avoiding reading original texts, and instead reading modern commentaries and compilations. 'Contemporary Readings in Epistemology' was the favoured first-year text at Oxford. Bertrand Russell's "History of Western Philosophy" is quite a good read too.

The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy is also very good.

I've enjoyed Nietzsche, he's an entertaining and thought-provoking writer. He offers some interesting perspectives on morality, history, etc.

So my question is: What philosophical works and authors have you found especially valuable, for whatever reason?

None that actively affiliate themselves with the label 'philosophy'.

For example: I've heard vague rumors that GWF Hegel concludes that the Prussian State (under which, coincidentally, he lived) was the best form of human existence. I've also heard that Descartes "proves" that God exists. Now, whether or not Hegel or Descartes may have had any valid insights, this is enough to tell me that it's not worth my time to go looking for them.

This is an understandable sentiment, but it's pretty harsh. Everybody makes mistakes -- there is no such thing as a perfect scholar, or perfect author. And I think that when Descartes is studied, there is usually a good deal of critique and rejection of his ideas. But there's still a lot of good stuff there, in the end.

What philosophical works and authors have you found especially valuable, for whatever reason?

I have found Foucault to be a very interesting modern philosopher/historian. His book, I believe entitled "Madness and civilization", (translated from French), strikes me as a highly impressive analysis on many different levels. His writing style is striking, and his concentration on motivation and purpose goes very, very deep.

Maybe LW should have resident intellectual historians who read philosophy. They could distill any actual insights from dubious, old or badly written philosophy, and tell if a work is worthy reading for rationalists.

I've seen discussion of Goodhart's Law + Conservation of Thought playing out nastily in investment. For example, junk bonds started out as finding some undervalued bonds among junk bonds. Fine, that's how the market is supposed to work. Then people jumped to the conclusion that everything which was called a junk bond was undervalued. Oops.

One way to think of it is that decisions to gamble are based on both information and an error term which reflects things like irrationality or just the fact that people enjoy gambling. Prediction markets are designed to get rid of the error and have prices reflect the information: errors cancel out as people who err in opposite directions bet on opposite sides, and errors in one direction create +EV opportunities which attract savvy, informed gamblers to bet on the other side. But casinos are designed to drive gambling based solely on the error term - people are betting on events that are inherently unpredictable (so they have little or no useful information) against the house at fixed prices, not against each other (so the errors don't cancel out), and the prices are set so that bets are -EV for everyone regardless of how many errors other people make (so there aren't incentives for savvy informed people to come wager).

Sports gambling is structured more similarly to prediction markets - people can bet on both sides, and it's possible for a smart gambler to have relevant information and to profit from it, if the lines aren't set properly - and sports betting lines tend to be pretty accurate.

The money brought in by stupid gamblers creates additional incentive for smart players to clear it out with correct predictions. The crazier the prediction market, the more reason for rational players to make it rational.

The most obvious thing: customers are only allowed to take one side of a bet, whose terms are dictated by the house.

If you had a general-topic prediction market with one agent who chose the odds for everything, and only allowed people to bet in one chosen direction on each topic, that agent (if they were at all clever) could make a lot of money, but the odds wouldn't be any "smarter" than that agent (and in fact would be dumber so as to make a profit margin).

Casinos have an assymetry: creation of new casinos is heavily regulated, so there's no way for people with good information to bet on their beliefs, and no mechanism for the true odds to be reached as the market price for a wager.

Fair point. Have you read the whole thread especially the Wei Dai bit?

It could be I'm wrong. It could also be that EY (who is also human) will be wrong if he decides to censor another LW post/comment because my commitment wasn't in place.

Unless you're offering a solution, I'd rather put my money on the table than stick to FUDing in the corner :p

It may have to do with the manner you bring it up - it's not hard to see how saying something like "X is amazing" could be interpreted "X is amazing...and you're not" (after all, how often do you tell your friends how amazing they are?), in which case the bias is some combination of status jockeying, cognitive dissonance and ego protection.

Could it be a matter of being excessively influenced by fiction? It's more convenient for stories if a character has some flaws and suffering.

Is this actually incorrect, though? As far as I know, people have problems and inadequacies. When they solve them, they move on to worrying about other things. It's probably a safe bet that the awesome people you're describing do as well.

What probably is wrong is that general awesomeness makes hidden bad stuff more likely.

Possibly a form of the just-world fallacy.

Given that there's the halo effect (that you mention) plus the affect heuristic, it seems that if there's a bias, it goes the other way - people tend to think all positive attributes clump together.

If both effects exist, that would cast doubt on whether it counts as a bias at all, as the direction of the error is not consistently one way. (Right?)

I don't consider frogs to be objects of moral worth.

2: I would put the frog in the grass. Warm fuzzies are a great way to start the day, and it only costs 30 seconds.

If you're truly concerned about the well-being of frogs, you might want to do more. You'd also want to ask yourself what you're doing to help frogs everywhere. The fact that the frog ended up on your doorstep doesn't make you extra responsible for the frog; it merely provides you with an opportunity to help.

Also, wash your hands before eating.

How often do you find frogs in the stairwell? Could it make sense to carry something (a plastic bag?) to pick up the frog with so that you don't get slime on your hands?

If it were me, I think I'd go with plastic bag or other hand cover, possibly have room temperature water with me (probably good enough for frogs, and I'm willing to drink the stuff), and put the frog on the lawn unless I'm in the mood for a bit of a walk and seeing the woods.

I have no doubt that I would habitually wonder whether there are weird events in people's lives which are the result of interventions by incomprehensibly powerful beings.

Once per two weeks? I would go with 1+3 for maximum fuzzies. If the frog is alive, that is.

Have you collected any data on how often the frog would find its own way out if left alone? Setting up an experiment that could reliably distinguish this from it being eaten by a bird or moved by another passing human might be tricky.

Interesting tidbit from the article:

One avenue may involve self-esteem. Nyhan worked on one study in which he showed that people who were given a self-affirmation exercise were more likely to consider new information than people who had not. In other words, if you feel good about yourself, you’ll listen — and if you feel insecure or threatened, you won’t.

I have long been thinking that the openly aggressive approach some display in promoting atheism / political ideas / whatever seems counterproductive, and more likely to make the other people not listen than it is to make them listen. These results seem to support that, though there have also been contradictory reports from people saying that the very aggressiveness was what made them actually think.

The primary study in question is here. I haven't been able to locate online a copy of the study about self-esteem and corrections.

We could use a more structured system, perhaps. At this point, there's nothing to stop you from writing a post before you're ready, except your own modesty. Raise the threshold, and nobody will have to yell at people for writing posts that don't quite work.

Possibilities:

1. Significantly raise the minimum karma level.

2. An editorial system: a more "advanced" member has to read your post before it becomes top-level.

3. A wiki page about instructions for posting. It should include: a description of appropriate subject matter, formatting instructions, common errors in reasoning or etiquette.

4. A social norm that encourages editing (including totally reworking an essay.) The convention for blog posts on the internet in general mandates against editing -- a post is supposed to be an honest record of one's thoughts at the time. But LessWrong is different, and we're supposed to be updating as we learn from each other. We could make "Please edit this" more explicit.

A related thought on karma -- I have the suspicion that we upvote more than we downvote. It would be possible to adjust the site to keep track of each person's upvote/downvote stats. That is, some people are generous with karma, and some people give more negative feedback. We could calibrate ourselves better if we had a running tally.

Is there any consensus about the "right" way to write a LW post? I see a lot of diversity in style, topic, and level of rigor in highly-voted posts. I certainly have no good way to tell if I'm doing it right; Michael Vassar doesn't think so, but he's never had a post voted as highly as my first one was. (Voting is not solely determined by post quality; this is a big part of the problem.)

I would certainly love to have a better way to get feedback than the current mechanisms; it's indisputable that my writing could be better. Being able to workshop posts would be great, but I think it would be hard to find the right people to do the workshopping; off the top of my head I can really only think of a handful of posters I'd want to have doing that, and I get the impression that they're all too busy. Maybe not, though.

(I think this is a great idea.)

Upvoted for raising the topic, but the approach I'd prefer is jimrandomh's suggestion of having all posts pass through an editorial stage before being posted 'for real.'

That is amazingly interesting.

Sure, I've been thinking about it, I need $10MM to produce it though.

If anyone is interested in seeing comments that are more representative of a mainstream response than what can be found from an Accelerating Future thread, Metafilter recently had a post on the NY Times article.

The comments aren't hilarious and insane, they're more of a casually dismissive nature. In this thread, cryonics is called an "afterlife scam", a pseudoscience, science fiction (technically true at this stage, but there's definitely an implied negative connotation on the "fiction" part, as if you shouldn't invest in cryonics because it's just nerd fantasy), and Pascal's Wager for atheists (The comparison is fallacious, and I thought the original Pascal's Wager was for atheists anyways...). There are a few criticisms that it's selfish, more than a few jokes sprinkled throughout the thread (as if the whole idea is silly), and even your classic death apologist.

All in all, a delightful cornucopia of irrationality.

ETA: I should probably point out that there were a few defenses. The most highly received defense of cryonics appears to be this post. There was also a comment from someone registered with Alcor that was very good, I thought. I attempted a couple of rebuttals, but I don't think they were well-received.

Also, check out this hilarious description of Robin Hanson from a commenter there:

The husband in that article sounded like an annoying nerd. Would I want to be frozen and wake up in a world run by these annoying douchebags? His 'futurecracy' idea seems idiotic (and also unworkable)

I guess that the fatal problem with cryonics is all the freaking nerds interested in it.

Somebody said that the reason there is no progress in AI is that once a problem domain is understood well enough that there are working applications in it, nobody calls it AI any longer.

My understanding is that waitingforgodel doesn't particularly want to discuss that topic, but thinks that it's important that LW's moderation policy be changed in the future for other reasons.

See waitingforgodel's actual words on the subject. We could speculate that these "aren't his real reasons" but they certainly are sane reasons and it isn't usually useful to presume we know what people want despite what they say. At least for the purpose of good faith discussion if not for out personal judgement.

In that case it appears to me the best way to go about it is to try to convince Eliezer using rational arguments.

Waitingforgodel's general goals could be achieved without relying on LW itself but in a way that essentially nullifies the censorship influence (at least in an 'opt in' manner), even ensuring a negligible onging trivial inconvenience. This wouldn't be easy or likely for him to achieve but see below for a possible option. Assuming an outcome was achieved that ensured overt censorship created more discussion rather than less (Streisand Effect) it may actually become in Eliezer's interest to allow such discussions on LW. That would remove attention from the other location and put it back to a place where he can express a greater but still sub-censorship form of influence.

Commitment to a particular moderation policy?

More so on this specific topic than the general case. You are right that it wouldn't be violating a public commitment to not censor something unrelated.

Now, there is a distinction to be made that I consider important. Let's not pretend this is about moderation. Moderation in any remotely conventional sense would be something that applied to Eliezer's reply and not Roko's post. There hasn't been an instance of more dramatic personal abuse. The response was anything but 'moderate'. Without for the purpose of this point labelling it good or bad this is about censoring an idea. I don't think those who are most in support of the banning would put this in the same category as moderation.

I'm inclined to agree, but do you have an argument that he is biased (instead of us)?

Not right now but it is true that 'him or us' is something to consider if I was focusing on this issue. I actually typed some examples in the grandparent but removed them. I present the 'secrecy bias' as a premise which the reader would either share or not without getting distracted by disagreement with respect to underlying reasoning.

True, but I've been able to change his mind on occasion (whereas I don't think I've ever succeeded in changing Robin Hanson's for example).

This is true and I should take the time to say I'm impressed with how well Eliezer works to counter the status effect. This is something that is important to him and he handles it better than most.

I model Robin as an academic, actually using Robin's theories on how academics can be expected to behave to make reasonably good predictions about his behavior. It isn't often that saying someone has irrational biases actually constitutes a compliment. :)

Overall, I agree that Eliezer is unlikely to be persuaded, but it still seems to be a better chance than anything else waitingforgodel can do.

Absolutely. But then, who really thought he could significantly increase existential risk anyway?

It probably would be at least be possible for him to develop the skills and connections to create either a public place for discussion of anything and everything forbidden here and make it sufficiently visible that censorship actually increases visibility. He could even modify your new comments viewer such that it also displays discussion of the censored topics, probably highlighted for visibility.

Alternately, he could arrange a way to cooperate with other interested parties to collectively condition all their existential risk donation on certain minimum standards of behavior. This is again not coercive, just practical action. It makes a lot of sense to refrain from providing assistance to an organisation that censors all discussion regarding whether the AI they wish to create would torture people who didn't give them all their money. It also doesn't mean that the charitable contributors are committing to wasting the money on crack and hookers if they do not get their way. Contributions could be invested wisely and remain available to the first existential risk and opportunity organisation that meets a standard of predicted effectiveness and acceptable ethical behavior.

I doubt that waitingforgodel has any arguments involving the forbidden topic itself.

He probably doesn't. Others, including myself, do and analyzing the subject would produce more (for and against). This suggests that it would be a bad idea for wfg to try to persuade Eliezer with rational argument himself. If his belief is that other people have arguments that are worth hearing then he is best off seeking to find a way to make them heard.

People should never limit themselves to actions that are ineffective, except when the 'choke' effect is in play and you need to signal low status. That actually seems to be the main reason we would try to make him work within the LW power structure. We wouldn't, for example, tell Robin Hanson or even yourself that you should limit yourself to persuading the authority figures. We'd expect you to do what works.

I don't think waitingforgodel will do any of these things and we could say that he could not do these things given that the motivation to gain the skills required for that sort of social influence is a trait that few people have and wfg (and most people) is unlikely to be willing to engage in the personal development that leads him in that direction.

(Thankyou for the well reasoned and non-aggressive responses. I value being able to explore the practical implications of the issue. This strikes at the core of important elements of instrumental rationality.)

(A random note: I had to look up the name for the Streisand Effect from a comment made here yesterday by Kodos. I was surprised to discover just how many comments have been made since then. I didn't keep a count but it was a lot.)

Slashdot having an epic case of tribalism blinding their judgment?

I haven't regularly read Slashdot in several years, but I seem to recall that it was like that pretty much all the time.

There's a legitimate reason to not want ID proponents and creationists to use the term "evolutionist" although it isn't getting stated well in that thread. In particular, the term is used to portray evolution as an ideology with ideological adherents. Thus, the use of the term "evolutionism" as well. It seems like the commentators in question have heard some garbled bit about that concern and aren't quite reproducing it accurately.

Still the sort of thing that will send people close to the OCD side of the personality spectrum into a spiral of nightmares, which, please note, has apparently already happened in at least two cases. I'm surprised by this, but accept reality. It's possible we may have more than the usual number of OCD-side-of-the-spectrum people among us.

(comment edited)

I wonder why PlaidX's post isn't getting deleted - the discussion there is way closer to the forbidden topic.

Yep. But not unexpectedly this time; homung posted in the open thread that he was looking for 20 karma so he could post on the subject, and I sent him a private message saying he shouldn't, which he either didn't see or ignored.

What was the second topic? I am most interested in knowing just what things are forbidden.

Succeeded - in promoting what end?

Streisand Effect

and I think everyone who heard it either outright agrees with Eliezer or thinks it wise to defer to his judgment for now.

I heard it and I don't think it's "wise" to defer to Eliezer's judgment on the matter. I stopped discussing this stuff on LW for a different reason: I feel LW is Eliezer's site and I'd better follow his requests here.

Who's right? Who knows. It's a fine opportunity to remain skeptical.

Bullshit. The 'skeptical' thing to do would be to take 30 seconds to think about the theory's physical plausibility before posting it on one's blog, not regurgitate the theory and cover one's ass with an I'm-so-balanced-look-there's-two-sides-to-the-issue fallacy.

TV-frequency EM radiation is non-ionizing, so how's it going to transfer enough energy to your cells to cause cancer? It could heat you up, or it could induce currents within your body. But however much heating it causes, the temperature increase caused by heat insulation from your mattress and cover is surely much greater, and I reckon you'd get stronger induced currents from your alarm clock/computer/ceiling light/bedside lamp or whatever other circuitry's switched on in your bedroom. (And wouldn't you get a weird arrhythmia kicking off before cancer anyway?)

(As long as I'm venting, it's at least a little silly for Kottke to say he's posting it because it's 'interesting' and not because it's 'right,' because surely it's only interesting because it might be right? Bleh.)

If breast cancer and melanomas are more likely on the left side of the body at a level that's statistically significant, that's interesting even if the proposed explanation is nonsense.

Lets say 1 second of torture is -1 000 000 utilions. Because there are about 100 000 seconds in a day, and about 20 000 days in 50 years, that makes -2*10^15 utilions.

Given some heavy utilitarian assumptions. This isn't an argument, it's more plausible to just postulate disutility of torture without explanation.

I assign ants exactly zero utility, but the wild surge objection still applies - you can't affect the universe in 3^^^3 ways without some risk of dramatic unintended results.

You might be interested in my post Value Uncertainty and the Singleton Scenario where I suggested (based on an idea of Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord) another way of handling uncertainty about your utility function, which perhaps gives more intuitive results in these cases.

I got a reply from Maciej Ceglowski today; apparently WT was taken down to free resources for another site. It's back up, for now.

(I have to say, seriously going through prediction sites is kind of discouraging. The free ones all seem to be marginal and very unpopular, while the commercial ones aren't usable in the long run and are too fragmented.)

In relation to these sorts of sites, what's a normal level of success on this sort of thing for LW readers? If people chose ten things now that they thought were fifty percent likely to occur by the end of next week, would exactly five of them end up happening?

Yes.

I think "waterline" here should be taken in the same context as "A rising tide floats all boats".

Grand Rapids, MI, you mean?

I'm in Michigan, but West Bloomfield, so a couple hours away, but still, if we found some more MI LWers, maybe.

You may want to copy this key block to a user page on the LW wiki, where it can be easily referenced in the future.

signing a post is a way to strongly signal its seriousness.

Telling people what you're trying to signal is a way to make them take your signaling less seriously.

Yes. I previously believed that thinking a true statement could only be harmful by either leading to a false statement, stealing cognitive resources, or lowering confidence. I also believed that general rationality plus a few meditative tricks would be a sufficient and fully general defense against all such harms. I know better now.

Yep - I'm having some fun there right now, my nick is want_to_want. Anyone knowledgeable in psych research, join in!

The "Free Will" pages are fairly weak right now - I think it would be useful to rewrite at least the "Solution" page, and probably the question page as well.

It surprised me that he didn't consider taking provigil one or two days a week.

It also should have surprised me (but didn't-- it just occurred to me) that he didn't consider testing the drugs' effects on his creativity.

There's some discussion here and here.

Update for the curious: did talk to a friend (the same one mentioned above, who, I think, is a better "shrink" than some real shrinks) and am now resolved to kick this thing, because sooner or later, excessive approval-seeking will get me in trouble.

I'm starting with what I think of as homebrew CBT: I will not gratuitously apologize or verbally belittle myself. I will try to replace "I suck, everyone hates me" thoughts with saner alternatives. I will keep doing this even when it seems stupid and self-deluding. Hopefully the concrete behavioral stuff will affect the higher-level stuff.

After all. A mathematician I really admire gave me career advice -- and it was "Believe in yourself." Yeah, in those words, and he's a logical guy, not very soft and fuzzy.

Alicorn's Living Luminously series covers some methods of systematic mental introspection and tweaking like this. The comments on alief are especially applicable.

For what it's worth, this is often known as Imposter Syndrome, though it's not any sort of real psychiatric diagnosis. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of any reliable strategies for defeating it; I have a friend who has had similar issues in a more academic context and she seems to have largely overcome the problem, but I'm not sure as to how.

You might want to check out Learning Methods-- they've got techniques for tracking down the thoughts behind your emotions, and then looking at whether the thoughts make sense.

I was like this from ages 12-18, perhaps? It started because quite a few people actually were mean to me, but my brain incorrectly extrapolated and assumed everyone was. The beginning of the end was when I started to do something that I had defined as the province of the liked-people (in this case, dating), though it took about two years to purge the habit.

Perhaps there is something you are similarly defining to imply likedness, and you can do that thing.

Perhaps it would help to think about how you treat people you like vs. people you dislike and how you react to their flaws and faults. If you have a trusted friend you can talk to about this perhaps ask them about things they've done similar to your own self-perceived flaws (weird or embarrassing things you've said) - the friend you mention sounds like a good candidate. You might find that you didn't even notice these things, don't remember them or noticed them but didn't change your opinion significantly.

If you can see the symmetry with genuinely liking certain other people despite their imperfections perhaps it will be easier to appreciate how others can genuinely like you.

If you don't mind my asking, have you tried any kind of "talking therapy"?

2031 – Web 4.0 is transforming the Internet landscape

Could be funny, if it was a joke... :(

Can you elaborate on what specifically you think they're doing wrong?

Definitely wait. My personal favorite timing is one day for each new (substantial) post.

Coherent Extrapolated Volition

Long distance: An extrapolated volition your present-day self finds incomprehensible; not outrageous or annoying, but blankly incomprehensible.

This is exactly the argument religious people use to excuse any shortcomings of their personal FAI. Namely, their personal FAI knows better than you what's best for your AND everyone else.

What average people do is follow what is being taught here on LW. They decide based on their prior. Their probability estimates tell them that their FAI is likely to exist and make up excuses for extraordinary decisions based on the possible existence of it. That is, support their FAI while trying to inhibit other uFAI all in the best interest of the world at large.

I tend to vote down a wide swath of your comments when I come across them in a thread such as this one or this one, attempting to punish you for being mean and wasting peoples' time. I'm a late reader, so you may not notice those comments being further downvoted; I guess I should post saying what I've done and why.

In the spirit of your desire for explanations, it is for the negative tone of your posts. You create this tone by the small additions you make that cause the text to sound more like verbal speech, specifically: emphasis, filler words, rhetorical questions, and the like. These techniques work significantly better when someone is able to gauge your body language and verbal tone of voice. In text, they turn your comments hostile.

That, and you repeat yourself. A lot.