Stupid questions thread, October 2015

Someone downvoted the question above. What the hell? (My guess: it's VoiceOfRa doing his downvote-the-enemy thing again.)

To the actual question: first of all, I think it's entirely possible that we have additional layers (sys1 means "fast heuristic", sys2 means "slow deliberate reasoning"; we surely have a big bag of heuristics, and I bet there are cases where we have extra-fast heuristics, fastish heuristics, and slow deliberate reasoning); and it seems like one could envisage an AI with (1) nothing like sys1 at all because its "proper" reasoning is cheap enough to be used all the time, (2) a human-like bag of heuristics that get used when circumstances allow, producing much the same distinction as we have, (3) smoothly varying how-much-approximation knobs that adjust according to how valuable quicker answers are, interpolating continuously between "system 1" and "system 2", and probably (4) all sorts of other things I haven't thought of.

The sort of provably-safe AI that MIRI would like to see would presumably either be in category 1, or be designed so that in some sense sufficiently consequential decisions always get made "properly". The latter seems like it would be hard to reason about. (Er, or it might be in category 4 in which case by definition I have nothing to say about it.)

Even for human's system 1/system 2 are models. Asking whether there are additional layers misses the point because the model is build to have two categories.

I really like Ian Banks's depiction of Culture Minds (ships and habitats), and their ability to carve off temporarily-independent pieces of themselves for various purposes. This, along with ability to simulate fairly complex systems like smaller intelligences, may end up vaguely similar to our own blend of habits and heuristics somewhat distinct from reasoned action.

But only vaguely. Not least because the two-system description doesn't fit humans all that well, compared to a 20-system model with different kinds of reactions, habits, willpower, and choices.

An AI designed to be friendly/aligned probably would not. Having a layer not available for extensive introspection is a big risk. On the other hand, if you just let a neural net run wild, then all bets are off.

The goal of a UBI isn't necessarily to eliminate poverty - which, given that poverty is relative, is impossible anyways - but rather to shift welfare from a complex set of rules with many hazards and pitfalls to a simple set of rules with few if any, while simultaneously permitting a simplification and flattening of the tax system without disproportionate adverse effects on the poor.

Why would the price of necessities rise?

There are three reasons why the price might go up:

1. demand increases
2. supply decreases
3. inflation

Right now, everyone is already consuming these necessities, so if UBI is introduced, demand will not go up. So 1 would not be true.

Supply could go down if enough people stop working. But if this reduces supply of the necessities, there is a strong incentive for people on just UBI to start working again. There is also increasing automation. So I find 2 unlikely.

That leaves 3, inflation. I am not an economist, but as far as I understand this shouldn't be a significant factor.

If you want information on how increased income due to UBI would affect people's spending on food, you can look at the data that we already have on the relationship between income and spending on food. Three stylized facts:

As income goes up, the proportion of income spent on food goes down.

As income goes up, the total amount of money spent on food goes up.

As income goes up, the proportion of one's food budget spent on restaurants goes up.

These trends generally hold if you are comparing different countries with each other, or if you are comparing different people within a single country, or if you are looking at a single country over time as it gets richer. I don't see any strong reasons to think that they wouldn't also apply to people whose income went up due to receiving a new UBI.

So if a household was making $20,000 per year and spending 20% of it ($4,000) on food, and UBI increases their income to $25,000 per year, then we can predict that they will spend somewhere between $4,000 and $5,000 per year on food, and some of the increased spending will go towards increased quality & convenience (such as eating out). You could probably make more precise predictions if you tried to put numbers on the three stylized facts.

More generally, the model here is: UBI affects the distribution of 'income after taxes & transfers', and the distribution of 'income after taxes & transfers' affects other things like prices & spending habits. So if you want to predict how UBI will affect something like prices, then study how 'income after taxes & transfers' affects prices, and combine that with your estimate of how the UBI will affect the distribution of 'income after taxes & transfers'.

Logic can only take you so far, actual data is essential:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income#Pilot_programmes

The basic income scheme that I've seen proposed in Finland would not increase people's incomes: it would simply be a less bureaucratic way of giving people on welfare the same amount of money that they're already entitled to, but with less hoops to jump through and fewer welfare traps. People who earned enough to not be eligible to welfare today would still receive the money from the UBI, but the tax rate on their other income would be slightly increased to compensate, for an approximately zero change in net income.

Some prices would likely rise, but not uniformly and new equilibria are very hard to predict generally, nigh-impossible without specifying a bunch of implementation specifics (including where the money comes from, how it's distributed, what limits there are on qualifying or using the money, and how it's indexed to change over time).

I suspect we'd redefine poverty such that roughly the same percentage of people would be in poverty, but it would be a (slightly) different set of individuals, and likely a much more pleasant poverty than without. Much like has happened dozens of times already in modern civilization. I call it "progress".

This essay has overlap with your question...

http://www.la-articles.org.uk/ec.htm

I am advocating reading this essay. I am not advocating for or against this organization or its positions.

My general expectation is that either you're right, people will complain loudly until food and water stay cheap, or prices will avoid inflating because the people who produce need the people living on UBI to buy their stuff.

I have no general idea on which is more probable. I like the last one because it is the most convenient, but I'm not convinced it has any more probability than the first two.

I have an intuition that if we implemented universal basic income, the prices of necessities would rise to the point where people without other sources of income would still be in poverty.

I think you are right.

They know what they love, and it's more than money, sex, and relationships.

What traits do you look for when making friends?

• Common interests
• Has functioning brain cells
• Broadly compatible in temperament and e.g. energy levels
• Passes some basic filters (e.g. is not annoying/creepy/etc.)
• You just like him/her

Clearly some commonality of value and at least a shared interest, but also, after some negative experiences of friends crashing at my house uninvited, a high degree of independence.

I usually meet new friends when attending at new hobbies, so the first two are easily checked, but I remain on the fences for the third trait for some months before lowering my guard...

I'd be interested in hearing your answer if you're willing to share.

Difficulty concentrating feels like a pressure in my forehead that builds the more I fight it. Thats when it's strong, other times, I just find myself doing or thinking about something else.

Difficulty getting to work more often takes the second unconscious form. I don't dwell on it, I just find myself not doing the work. However, sometimes it feels like an empty, hollow chest area and the more I think about the work, the more hollow it feels. However, the more I don't do the work, the more weak/hollow my arms feel.

I find it interesting how my kinisthetic intuitions match up with your visual intuitions.

I've also another kind of 'difficulty concentrating', which feels like a fog in my brain, a not-unpleasant feeling of floating without direction.

Difficulty concentrating: A mental slipperiness, like trying not to think of something, or clench water in your fist. The harder I attempt to concentrate, the more prone my mind is to go zipping off in another direction entirely. I tend to be most productive when I have a large number of potential tasks to work on, and one critical one - I'll get all my lesser tasks done in no time at all, as my mind careens off the critical task over and over again. I'm least productive when I have a single task to work on, particularly if it's trivial to do. Indeed, the faster I can get it done, the harder it is to do it.

Curiously, I have -zero- problems with difficulty concentrating when extremely tired, and if there's something I really need to do that I'm making no progress on, I'll generally do it around 3:30-4:30 AM.

Disclaimer: I've been diagnosed with ADHD.

difficulty concentrating

This XKCD is a fair visualization of what difficulty concentrating feels like. I can be doing an activity (even a pleasurable one), but I get a lot of other stimuli coming in that link to different activities that also need doing or would also be fun or pleasurable. Or while doing an activity or trying to think about one specific thing, my mind jumps to other (often related) topics and this has a tendency to escalate. Think about the way people describe going to tv-tropes. You start out reading about the film you just saw, and before you know it, you're browser is filled up with dozens of tabs (all of which have links that you'll probably also click).

akrasia

Akrasia feels, to me, a lot like inertia. Sometimes in a very physical way. It's a feeling of "being stuck" and often translates to physically being stuck, without anything specific holding you physically in place. It's like the space between thinking "Doing X would be a good idea right about now" and actually doing X is a steep, uphill climb.

[Note; this was written before reading anyone else's comments, to reduce memetic contamination. My apologies if it doesn't add anything new or useful].

Difficulty concentrating: I have thousands of things that I could and should do. I can't even begin to keep track of them. When I look at my computer, I see a collection of things to do. Some of them will send me off to do other tasks, and when I start on those other tasks, I see piles of papers and random notes reminding me of work that need to be done. Work, life, and everything is a tangled web of random tasks. I don't even try to stay focused unless something is really important -- it doesn't matter if I'm writing a post but suddenly get distracted by paying bills and then by doing the dishes. All that matters is that all of those things get done "soon enough". It feels like being a pinball, but without the obnoxious dings and buzzes. Usually it is a good feeling... until you miss a deadline, and then it starts of a minor (or major) panic. But I am much more productive, in terms of work done, when I don't have to stay focused on one task until completion. As long as I have my checklists on hand and keep them updated, everything is fine.

Difficulty getting to work: A burst of unwant, a wall of apathy towards a task, and a desire to bounce onto a more interesting task. Kind of like jumping into cold water, there's no point in worrying about it or planning of ways to heat up the lake. Just shut your brain off and start. There's not much feeling involved, other than "yuck" and then "meh".

I don't think there a single feeling that corresponds to "difficulty concentrating". If I'm very tired then I have difficulty concentrating, but that's very different than the feeling of my mind being distract by topic A when I want to think about topic B.

Astrology is close: time of year you are born in has big effects on your life, although this may be an artifact of the modern school-year. For example, being older than kids in your same "year" of school helps you get onto sports teams.

As ive said before, much alternative medicine probably boils down to avoiding slegehammertastic interventions with side effects when you can actually heal on your own and invoking placebo effects, which are real and matter and come from the close integration of our nervous system with pretty much everything, with greater reliablity and strength than just taking a sugar pill.

Yes, but also no.

By definition, a superstition that is valid is not a superstition. "Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning" is usually not called a superstition, because it is a good heuristic. "13 is unlucky" is called a superstition because it is not useful.

Things that might be a 'useful superstition' include:

• An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
• Garlic protects from evil spirits [if read 'sickness'].
• After receiving a container of food, the container should never be returned empty.
• Meditation makes you healthy and wise.
• Going to church makes you a good person. [networking, community, charity]
• Being bad will send you to hell.
• Being bad will reduce your chances of Santa bringing you toys.

Obviously, the truth value of these is variable and often requires a generous interpretation. Also, some (all?) of these are only useful to people who want easy rules, indicating that they aren't really LessWrong types.

Superstitions seem to sprint from biases and as these are basically reasoning heuristics they are conceptually plausible but missed. Google for "biase superstition heuristics".

One hit: https://deisidaimon.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/trond-bounded-rationality-biases-and-superstitions.ppt

I'd guess the experience is, in fact, allergic reactions, and what you're feeling is a mild swelling of the tissues affected. Your banana allergy, given that it's particularly common with unripe bananas, is probably a latex allergy; kiwi, mango, guava, avocado, and a few other fruits also contain natural latex and should be avoided.

Chips, I'm less certain of, unless you're associating it with chips you happen to be dipping in guacamole.

ETA: Oh. English chips. That could be the oil they're cooked in; do you have any other food allergies you're aware of? (That burning sensation? Pay attention to it when you eat. I'd describe the flavor of allergic reaction as being like copper needles poking into your tongue - a spicy metallic taste. Personally I find it delicious.)

Also ETA: Try taking a Benadryl and see if the symptoms subside, provided you're not sensitive to it (dipenhydramine hcl, if looking for generics).

Also also ETA: Cup-A-Soup contains celery, which is listed as a moderately cross-reactive food for latex allergies.

http://latexallergyresources.org/cross-reactive-food - includes celery and potatoes. Thin-cut fried potato might have all the proteins in question destroyed by the frying process.

It is possible that some amount of soft foods are sticking in your throat -- probably your epiglottic vallecula; this might be more apparent when you are having a mild allergic reaction, making that area of your throat more sensitive. (Wiki fails to mention that one of the functions of your vallecula is to catch bits of food that might be trying to fall into your windpipe).

It is also possible that one of your epiglottic sphincters, or the peristalsis in your epiglottis, has gone wonky, and food is having trouble making it to your stomach in a timely manner. As TezlaKoil says, in many cases this is accompanied by acid reflux. If you feel pain, see a doctor. Otherwise, don't worry too much, but eat sitting up straight and take a swallow of water when you have this feeling.

I used to get a feeling in my upper throat/back of throat that sounds similar to what you are feeling. It has been several years since I've felt it. It seems like the only time I ever had it was when eating thick cut fries. It felt like I had a wad of food stuck in the back of my throat or upper throat, even though I didn't. I usually found it to be uncomfortable and it seems like it was often accompanied by a slight sensation of heartburn. It didn't typically last long though, no more than ten minutes, possibly less if I drank a lot of water. But aside from having felt something similar, I have no further light to shed on the subject unfortunately.

In my experience, acid reflux can cause similar sensations.

Whatever actually works on your headaches. Humans are different.

Robin Hanson and Eliezers "AI Foom Debate"

Not sure it makes sense thermodynamically to deal with waste heat that way (if you are transmitting "waste heat" in a narrow beam, you are basically just transmitting energy in a narrow beam, and so it's not waste heat anymore -- you can get useful work out of it).

edit: I suppose the question is: what % of the star's outgoing energy can we harness in principle, such that waste heat is hard to tell apart from background, and we completely hide that the star is there. For example, in the limit, if you just used a little of the star's energy to redirect all the rest into a black hole, will the waste heat just from the redirection effort be detectable? If so, we can't hide a star, the best we can do is not use too much energy, so the star looks like a normal star with no life in the system (but evil aliens can still come and check it out, since they know a star is there). If not, maybe we can harness some bigger % on the way into the black hole. If so, what % is physically possible? I don't know.

I feel like physicists already worked out that you can't hide stars, but I don't know the literature.

If you dumped waste heat directionally it would act as a photon rocket.

If you somehow reflected all the light of a star in one direction, the momentum change in the light would produce thrust on the reflector (much less than is needed to move a star), and since no substance is 100% reflective the huge amount of surface area would nonetheless heat up and be visible in the infrared due to its vast surface area. The same is true of any substance directing waste thermal radiation - you can shunt most of it in some direction the material will definitely reach an equilibrium temperature warmer than the cosmic microwave background anyway.

Furthermore, all the energy would eventually get absorbed/used SOMEWHERE and become heat. Local conversion of energy to other forms would also always involve waste heat production.

As far as I am aware, black hole surface gravity is analogous to temperature and surface area is analogous to entropy when you start digging into their thermodynamics. Dumping waste thermal radiation in will make them bigger and they will eventually re-radiate thermal radiation via the Hawking mechanism in the far future.

That heat, we expect, would be dumped into surrounding space as some sort of radiation and so we would see it.

That explains the microwave background!

If you have a handy black hole around, can you dump the waste heat into a black hole? What that would look like?

More-or-less like a black hole, gravitational signature but no light emitted.

Imagine a scenario where aliens come to a star system, build a Dyson sphere around the star, and then arrange for all that energy to be narrow-beamed to neighbouring star systems where it will be collected and used.

That doesn't work. The emitted energy must have higher entropy content than the initial energy of the star, so it would be less useful to the destination star. In fact, if the original destination star can extract useful work from it, so could the original star.

I think my "no free will believing self" causes me to model my future self more pessimistically, albeit more accurately, than my "free will believing self" used to.

More specifically, I now pretty much by default see my future self as destined to fail at achieving my current goals due to hyperbolic discounting and, among other things, unexpectedly low willpower striking at random times and lasting for random periods. So, my focus is mainly on continual massive upfront investment during the good times (the rare days when I've got an abundance of willpower) in order to mitigate these willpower failure risks and keep my productivity much more stable and higher in the long-run.

This probably isn't necessary for most people, but I suspect it is a good tactic for those who, like me, are extremely volatile in terms of day-to-day willpower stores and who fail miserably at achieving their goals if they try to just "power through" at all times and 'believe in the belief' of free will.

Do you compartmentalize and pretend you're in control, or what?

I think the main takeaway is that you shouldn't worry too much about questions of free will. Basically, the fact that your free will is made of physics doesn't mean it makes sense to make poor choices or not take responsibility for yourself and then blame physics. Also, don't go looking for magical explanations of free will existing "outside of physics".

I find it most relevant to planning and prediction. It helps greatly with realizing that I am not an exception, and so I should take the data seriously.

In terms of things that changed when my beliefs did, I submit the criminal justice system as an example. I now firmly think about crime in terms of individuals being components of a social system, and I am exclusively interested in future prevention of crime. I am indifferent to moral punishment for it.

Two useful ways to look at free will:

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1438

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2011/07/13/free-will-is-as-real-as-baseball/

Maybe.

Determining which possibilities this is false for in our particular universe would take some time, and depends on the exact form of the laws of physics (which we don't know), so let's use a simplified example.

Take the Game of Life. While simple, it is in fact turing-complete; this was demonstrated by implementing a turing machine on it, which is the best way to demonstrate that sort of thing. (It's fun to put one cell out of place and watch it disintegrate.)

Take an infinitely large game of life. Start it in a random state, and leave it to evolve for an infinite amount of time. As you'd expect, a lot of things happen; in a universe that large, you will indeed see, for example, all possible simulations of Earth. So in that sense, "all things happen"...

But there are some states of the world which you will never see, no matter how long you wait. These are called Garden of Eden states).

There's a very good chance that there are also garden of eden states for this universe. They're likely to be states such as "The universe is tiled with a mandelbrot pattern of black holes"; states which are simply so unstable that they cannot naturally arise. There may also be less exotic states of that sort, but I feel less secure about claiming that...

And the Garden of Eden theorem, if it is applicable to our universe, states that it has Garden of Eden states of and only if time is non-reversible. As physics does indeed appear to be time-reversible, that's a bit of a problem. However, I don't know how applicable it is to our non-cellular physics.

Not necessarily. It pretty much depends on dynamics laws of the universe: you can have states that are consistently and forever missed. There are theorems for the eternal returns in both general relativity and quantum physics, that elucidate these questions.

Isn't it pretty established that the universe is not infinite?

In any case, I don't think so. Even in an infinite universe there is the possibility of loops or repetitions. Also you can have an infinite but not comprehensive set of events even if those events are all unique.

Answer the question the interviewer means, not the question as you'd break it down on Less Wrong. Or more broadly: adapt your communication to the intended argument and goal.

In this particular example, you should know the values of the company before you end up at the interview, so this answer should be: Yes, followed by one or two examples show that your values match those of the company.

If you find yourself so engrossed with abstract epistemic considerations that you can't deal with concrete ones, it may be time to start wondering how much instrumental rationality your approach to this epistemic rationality thing is buying you.

The best players of any game usually do a lot of systematizing, but there is such a thing as too much meta.

Where your mind is is based on your mindset going into the interview. If you're thinking all this when the interviewer asks the questions, you definitely haven't practiced enough, and you didn't spend the time before the interview getting into the right mindset.

(Is "Are big societies optimal for human happiness/quality of life," a fair rephrasing of your question?)

I've been asking myself similar questions lately. As pointed out "made to live" implies things that never happened, in that humans weren't created, nor were the current societies/civilizations ever consciously designed or created. They just sort of happened.

Since both humans and societies got to where they are through mostly unthinking processes, it's easy to see how things didn't end up optimal.

Humans were hunter-gatherers for most of their existence. It's hard to intuitively grasp how long a time that is, but I find this quote helpful (source):

If the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 p. m. we adopted agriculture.

Without wanting to get into bad evolutionary sciences, I think it's reasonably fair that even modern humans are mostly adapted for the hunter-gatherer life, with a couple of more modern modules thrown in. It's also reasonably fair that humans were mostly "made" to live in small tribes, hunting and gathering.

Agriculture (and later writing, the printing press, the Industrial Revolution, computers...) gave us reasons to not be hunter-gatherers any more and my naive assessment is that a good number of those reasons are good ones. It's just that our bodies and brains haven't caught up.

So where am I going with this? I'm not sure. What I'm trying to say is that I think it's better to say that (our) big societies weren't made for humans (at least, they're not optimal for humans), rather than saying that humans weren't made for big societies.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/03/05/a-cascade-of-dunbar-numbers/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number Those links may interest you

Others have pointed out that you're asking an incoherent question. I'd like to state that even if you refine it to something like "can modern humans be very happy in a big society" (or whatever you do actually mean), you still have the problem of "compared to what"?

Even if you conclude "the average and median human was happier 10000 years ago", you'll face the (Mere Addition Paradox/ Repugnant Conclusion)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox]. You'll have to figure out how to compare over 7 billion just-OK lives in big societies against a few tens of million pretty-good lives for hunter-gatherers.

Depends on what you mean by "made to live". We certainly gravitate toward them.

This might be the stupid questions thread but at the same time I don't think it belongs here. "Made to life" implies a designer with a purpose which is not a basic stable of LW.

To be a proper question, define exactly what you want to know instead of appealing to ill-defined concepts to make a point.

That it all "adds up to normality".

So I can finally ignore all those articles shared on social networks about how conscious observers magically cause things to happen. Without the nagging doubt that I may be preserving my peace of mind by ignoring some existing aspect of reality.