Open thread, Feb. 16 - Feb. 22, 2015

Prisoner's Dilemma Variant

There are a few tweaks to the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma which can affect which strategies tend to be successful. A very common one is to randomize how long the round is, so predicting the end-game doesn't overwhelm all other strategy factors. A less common one is adding noise, so that what each program tries to do isn't necessarily what happens.

Does anyone know of any tourneys that have been run where, in addition to Cooperation or Defection, each program also has the choice to End The Game, simulating quitting a business relationship, moving away, shunning, or otherwise ceasing to interact with another program?

Reddit is giving away 10% of their ad revenue to 10 charities that receive the most votes from the community. You can vote for as many charities as you want, with any account that has been created before 10AM PST today.

You can vote for your favorite charities here. I've had problems with the search by name, so if you don't find something, try searching by EIN instead.

Quick links: CFAR, MIRI

I've noticed that when I'm working on personal projects or (to a lesser extent) complex games, my motivation to continue working or playing drops off significantly as soon as I've figured out the solution for the project or the optimal strategies for the games. The sensation is a bit like, say, playing an RPG and doing some postgame quest for the Infinity+1 sword, and then not wanting to play anymore once you have it -- I worked hard to get a godweapon but don't have any urge to use it. This is particularly frustrating for programming projects, that tend to get dropped unfinished after the major problems have been solved.

I don't really have any point to make with that. It's just irritating.

Does anyone else find that the problem of qualia seems like more of a problem for some senses than others? For example, my sense of sight versus my sense of hearing. When I look at the color red, I perceive some fundamentally different sensation than when I look at blue. Though they are both caused by looking at different frequencies of light, there is something "over and above" the frequencies that is difficult to explain, and has caused so much ink to be spilled in the philosophy of consciousness.

However, when I hear something, I just hear frequencies. This is whether I am listening to a symphony or a single sine wave, white noise, or the person currently shoveling snow outside. There isn't anything "over and above" the sounds; they are all obviously the same "kind" of thing to me. I can categorize the individual frequencies if it is a simple enough sound, and more complicated sounds, while I can't categorize them, don't feel like they are anything different than just combinations of simple frequencies.

None of the sound frequencies are fundamentally different in the way that red and blue are. An oboe and a violin may have different profiles of overtones when played, but they aren't different experiences like color. I don't get the impression of fundamentally different qualities when I listen to them.

The difference between these two senses is so strong that I think if I had been born blind (and also without taste or smell, which are even MORE qualia-like and problematic), or at least born with black-and-white vision, I would never understand what the problem with qualia is. There wouldn't be any internal experience that would seem unknowable to others. When I looked at something there would just be "I am experiencing a light intensity of 75% maximum", just as when I hear something there's just "I am experiencing a certain combination of frequencies".

Why does light have "metadata" associated with each frequency in my mind, while sound does not?

EDIT: By qualia I am not referring to sensory perception in general, but to the ineffable and incommunicable experiences like the redness of an apple. I can't tell if someone else sees what I would call blue when they look at an object I would call red. Sound doesn't have that for me, as far as I can tell.

I recently found out that Feynmann only had an IQ of 125.

This is very surprising to me. How should I/you update?

Perhaps the IQ test was administered poorly.

I think that high g/IQ is still really important to success in various fields. (Stephen Hsu points out that more physicists have IQs of 150 than 140, etc. In other words, that marginal IQ matters even past 140.).

Stephen Hsu estimates that we'll be able to have genetically enhanced children with IQs ~15 points higher in the next 10 years.

Bostrom and Carl Schulman's paper on iterated embryo selection roughly agrees.

It seems almost too good to be true. The arguments/facts that lead us to believe that it will happen soon are:

• we do pre-screening for other traits. The reason we can't do it for intelligence at the moment is that we don't know what genes to select for.
• We will get that data soon, as the cost of genetic sequencing falls faster than Moore's law.

I still "alieve" that it's too good to be true. Does anybody have any reason to doubt the claims made above?

Also, the ~15 point estimate is based on the assumption that we don't do iterated embryo selection (which can't be done in humans yet).

I want to spend a few weeks seriously looking into cryonics: how it works, the costs, the theory about revival, the changes in the technology in the past 60 years, the options that are available.

I want to become an expert in cryonics to the extent that I can answer, in depth, the questions that people typically have when they hear about this "crazy idea" for the first time. {Hmm...That sounds a little like bottom-line reasoning, trying to prepare for objections, instead of ferreting out the truth. I'll have to be careful of that. To be fair, I will need to overcome objections to get my family to sign up. Still, be careful of looking for data just to affirm my naive presumption.}

What should I read?

Perhaps individuals are more liable to believe claims that have a small number of strong arguments than believe claims with a large number of weak arguments, even if the sum of the evidence for both claims is equally strong, as individuals often can’t hear all arguments for something, so they only hear the n strongest ones.

One of my favorite moments in Diaspora, or in any book ever, was when one character (Inoshira?) was trying to convince another (Yatima?) to do something. Yatima runs a nonsentient simulation of verself, and realizes that Inoshira has something like a 90% chance of convincing ver, and decides to save ver the trouble and goes along with it.

Except... I was searching for that passage for the recent quotes repository in /r/discussion, and I can't find it. The closest I've found is before the two of them visit the bridgers, but that's not how that scene goes.

I've spoken to someone else who read the book and didn't remember that part. Does anyone else remember it? Did I make it up?

(Precedent for me making it up: I remember Tyler Durden saying that the sixth rule of fight club is "there is no sixth rule". I remember the intonation of that line. That is not the sixth rule of fight club.)

Scholarship hack: Get accepted to UMUC. All University of Maryland libraries are interconnected, and as an online college UMUC will ship books anywhere in the US (not sure about Hawaii / Alaska) free of charge + free return shipping. So for the price of the application fee you get access to 12 university libraries with delivery to your doorstep.

Disclaimer: I myself haven't done precisely as described above, since it's not necessary for me - my neighbor takes UMUC classes and lets me use his account.

Does anybody else have similar hacks? Any similar institutions that'll ship to your door?

Considering options for reducing environmental impact of energy, it seems it would be both more economical and more environmentally sound for a large group of people to get together and invest in a nuclear power plant than for each of them to individually install solar panels on their roofs. Taking the USA as an example, the typical home consumes about 15,000 kWh/year and an average home solar installation providing this power would have a total cost of $30,000, or about $12,000 after city rebates and tax credits. It would provide power for about 20 years without extensive maintenance. If a million people got together and paid $5000 each, however, they could fund a full-size nuclear power plant and get the same amount of power for 60 years (they would actually get about 18,000 kWh/year, and the excess capacity could be sold off to fund power plant maintenance).

I'm wondering if there are any fellow chess players here on Less Wrong. I'm a Fide Master from Sweden, ELO rating ~2300.

I think it would be interesting to get some statistics on the strength of the chess players here and relate that to other LW community statistics, such as IQ for example.

I've had an experience a couple of times that feels like being stuck in a loop of circular preferences.

It goes like this. Say I have set myself the goal of doing some work before lunch. Noon arrives, and I haven't done any work--let's say I'm reading blogs instead. I start feeling hungry. I have an impulse to close the blogs and go get some lunch. Then I think I don't want to "concede defeat" and I better do at least some work before lunch, to feel better about myself. I open briefly my work, and then… close it and reopen the blogs. The cycle restarts. So Lunch > Blogs, Work > Lunch, and Blogs > Work.

(It usually ends with me doing some trivial amount of work--writing a few lines for a paper, sending an email, etc--and then going for lunch with an only half-guilty conscience.)

Has anybody else experienced circular-like preferences, whether procrastination-related like these or in a different context?

"When visibility is poor, people have car accidents because they can't see what's ahead of them, right? Actually, the Mandelbaum Effect implies that sometimes people have accidents because they aren't even looking for what's ahead of them. [...] Although it's possible to test for it, no one quite knows how to compensate for the effect yet."

Re: http://lesswrong.com/lw/h3/superstimuli_and_the_collapse_of_western/ "The regulator's career incentive does not focus on products that combine low-grade consumer harm with addictive superstimuli; it focuses on products with failure modes spectacular enough to get into the newspaper."

The issue with these "standard libertarian" arguments is that its model of government is the Federal Government of the USA. For smaller, less diverse nations, that operate less on clear incentives and more on a shared sense of culture or "shared common sense" (sensus communis) it is easier to develop a kind of public opinion, public consciousness that goes beyond media driven incentives.

In the USA the Utah government used to have a good track record of regulating things the way Mormons like them to have regulated. This is of course problematic on its own, but it is probably an entirely different set of problems.

The Feds, which US Libertarians generally mean under the term "government", are a particularly unusual kind of government, because it is not really based on a shared culture. The cultural overlap between Utah Mormons and NY Rationalists is fairly low. At best you could say it is arising from the negotiations between Utah Mormons and NY Rationalists and everybody else how to make a set of rules and a system of services that benefit all. Since this is almost obviously impossible because you don't even agree in what "to benefit" means, don't be surprised to find out it does not work well. But toss in a thought experiment of a Hispanic Republic of Southwest Texas and you will find it would work better.

Patterns of development found in modern cities apparently were present in ancient cities too.

Reading the Main post on Sidekicks, I considered it worth noting in passing that I'm looking for a sidekick if someone feels that such would be an appropriate role for them.

This is me for those who don't know me: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14pvS8GxVlRALCV0xIlHhwV0g38_CTpuFyX52_RmpBVo/edit

And this is my flowchart/life;autobiography in the last few years: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxADVDGSaIVZVmdCSE1tSktneFU/view

Nice to meet you! :)

Yo, I know I'm pretty unpopular and all, but what's with my last 30 days karma fluctating but my actual karma not changing at all?

I want to look at deep neural-net learning and hierarchical inference through some kind of information-theoretic lens and try to show why hierarchical learning is such a powerful general principle. Anyone have an idea whether mutual information or KL-divergence is the normal measure used for this kind of study, or where I might look for literature other than surveys of deep learning, or why I might use one rather than the other?

It may be beneficial for people in some space colonies to be outlawed from going to some other inhabited astronomical objects, as this could potentially prevent harmful nanotechnology and superviruses from reaching them. My main concern with this idea is that colonists wouldn't want to leave their old homes forever, even though they wouldn't be able to visit their old homes very much anyways due to the transportation costs. Alternatively, perhaps individuals going to a different astronomical object could be thoroughly searched to make sure they aren't carrying any supervirus or nanotechnology, though I don't know if this is feasible.

What is the probability of having afterlife in a non-magical universe?

Aside from the simulation hypothesis (which is essentially another form of a magical universe), there is at leas one possibility for afterlife to exist: human ancestors travel back in time (or discover a way to get information from the past without passing anything back) to mind-upload everyone right before they die. There would be astrong incentive for them to not manifest themselves, as well as tolerate all the preventable suffering around the world: if changing the past leads to killing everyone in the original timeline, the price for altering the past is astronomical. Thus, they would have to only observe (with the reading of brain states as a form of observation) the past, but not change it, which is consistent with the observation of no signs of either time travelers or afterlife. But if will happen in future, it means it's already happening right now. How do you even approach estimating the probability of that?

Why I buy lottery tickets (re: http://lesswrong.com/lw/hl/lotteries_a_waste_of_hope/ )

I simply don't understand the logic of the post. Deciding what things you need to do is to improve your life is easy, the hard thing is to commit to it and do them. You still have plenty of daydreaming time left especially before you fall asleep. Investing dreaming and fantasizing into them does not make your decisions any better: usually they are simple decisions, the hard thing is just executing them. Spending thousands of hours mulling over why I need to work out more or how to convince my boss to implement that new thing learning which makes me better at the job market does not make it any more efficient.

Life does not consist of chess-mastermind decisions. It is the plain simple decisions to buckle down and work on things that in your life situation are usually blindingly obvious.

This means you don't lose anything if you choose to fantasize about anything you feel like. Instant wealth? That is actually mathemathically possible. I also fantasize about completely impossible things like finding adventure on the Middle-Earth. Why exactly not? I don't feel the need my life needs more planning input: it only needs more dedication input.

I think Eliezer could have made a better argument if he said if you want to fantasize about something near impossible, then don't choose something as mundane as being a rich playboy in the 21st century - fantasize about being Galactic Emperor or Jedi or a Gondorian knight fighting Mordor. Something grand, something that may make you write a good novel one day.

I believe we live in a dull world and it is correct to not occupy our minds 100% of the time with it but also long for escape. Dull compared to not other possible or previous worlds, but to ones we can imagine. There is a huge movie industry capitalizing on it.

Winning the lottery is a meta-fantasy, it is about having the security and time and funds to live in a fantasy simulation, like doing Society for Creative Anachronism stuff 7/24. If we were rich, our life would be an RPG. We had weekend house that would be like a 19th century hunters camp. Another one had a large field where I would set up medieval tents and invite re-enactors to do some jousting and medieval swordfighting there.

The lottery fantasy is a meta-fantasy about throwing funds and time on your fantasy.

I guess I'm not going to win any karma awards. Unless there was an award for the person with the least karma. Would I win? Has anybody had less than -69 karma? Actually, -69 karma is kinda sexy. Maybe a good name for a band? To listen to while having strange sex with a mildly attractive robot?

I suppose it could be argued that having an anti-karma award would create a perverse incentive. You wouldn't want people intentionally saying irrational things if the anti-karma award suddenly became prestigious. Well... actually, if the anti-karma award did become prestigious... then maybe people would think twice before they voted things down. That could be a good thing. Of course I'm just saying that because I'm a little biased. hah.

Well... since this is going to be downvoted anyways... I might as well get my money's worth...

This voting thing is just as stupid as regular voting. Do you know why it's stupid? Because there's no cost involved! How in the world can you truly trust the results of contingent valuation techniques?

If you think resources can be efficiently allocated in the absence of some cost... then you probably also believe that there is such a thing as a free lunch. Which means that you're completely ignorant of basic economics.

In order for comments (and articles) to be efficiently allocated... you have to put a real life price on votes. In other words, if you really want the most valuable comments to be at the top and the least valuable ones to be at the bottom... then voters have to be turned into spenders.

If downvoting this comment of mine would cost you $1 dollar ... then you're going to think just a little harder than if it cost you $0 dollars. You're going to put more thought into it because if you spend that $1 downvoting this comment that you dislike... then you can't also spend that same dollar upvoting a comment that you like. This is the fundamentally basic and extremely important opportunity cost concept. It's how we get to the truth of people's values.

If we injected actual opportunity cost into the comments... then the allocation of the comments would far more accurately reflect the true values of the members of this website. It wouldn't reflect their opinions... it would reflect their values.

How would it work? You just allow people to donate, via paypal or whatever, any amount to this website. Each dollar they donate becomes a dollar in their Less Wrong bank account. Then you just tweak the programming a bit and voila! The allocation of comments transforms from bullshit to truth.

Right now the allocation of karma has to be bullshit. Why? Because a thumbs up or down really isn't a bet...

Overall, I am for betting because I am against bullshit. Bullshit is polluting our discourse and drowning the facts. A bet costs the bullshitter more than the non-bullshitter so the willingness to bet signals honest belief. A bet is a tax on bullshit; and it is a just tax, tribute paid by the bullshitters to those with genuine knowledge. - Alex Tabarrok, A Bet is a Tax on Bullshit

If you like that quote... then on this page... Louder ... is a link to a PDF document with 62 additional quotes/passages on the value of people putting their money where their mouths are.

Because the current allocation of karma is bullshit... the karma awards are as laughable as the outcome of any political election.

Like most of you I'm an atheist but the bible has at least one thing right... and that's the fact that sacrifice communicates value. It's not... god so loved the world that he voted for it... it's... god so loved the world that he sacrificed his son for it. It's one thing to say that you love your country so much that you vote... and it's another thing to say that you love your country so much that you sent your only son to Afghanistan to defend it.

Which member of this community is most worthy of your own sacrifice? Who would you most be willing to bet on? How much would you be willing to bet on them?

Of course I'm sure somebody's thinking that this would give way too much influence to the wealthy. Wrong! It would simply allow the wealthy to wield the influence that they already have. And if you don't like it, then write an article that convinces me that consumer sovereignty subverts, rather than manifests, the true will of the people.

Atheist bloggers had some fun the other day with creationist Ken Ham's pronouncement that because the King James Bible translates an obscure Hebrew word in a couple of passages as "unicorn," therefore unicorns must exist. To deny the reality of unicorns demeans god's word, or something to that effect.

I can see why atheists would want to deny unicorns: They don't want unicorns to hold them accountable for their adult virginity. : )