Open Thread May 23 - May 29, 2016

Thanks for doing the frustrating work.

(The first and only comment so far is, more or less, "delete this article, because I don't care". Ugh.)

Thank you.

One thing I found I wished for and didn't find, though, is a description of the underlying mechanics. You described what and why, but not how. Do you think that can be usefully expressed in a couple of paragraphs or it's too complicated for that? The article already assumes a fair amount of background knowledge.

One problem I can see at first glance that the article doesn't look like a Wikipedia article, but as a textbook or part of a publication. The goal of a Wikipedia article should be for a wide audience to understand the basics of something, and not a treatise only experts can comprehend.

What you wrote seems to be an impressive work, but it should be simplified (or at least the introduction of it), so that even non-experts can have a chance to at least learn what it is about.

Good god, how long did that take to write?

How does this reject the genetic factors causing circumcision in Jews?

I am a little bothered by the scale you used - on a scale from 0-5 where:

0: no and don't want to sign up 1: no, still considering it. 2: no, would like to but can't afford it. etc. towards more interested in cryonics.

If we take an ordinary human who has barely even heard that cryonics is a real thing - the entry point to the scale is somewhere between 0 and 1 on the 6 point scale. Which means that as much as we have detailed data of states above 1; we don't have detailed data of states below 1. Which means that we potentially only recorded half the story; and with that; we have unrepresentative data that skews positively towards cryonics.

Interesting that Lesswrongers are 50,000 times more likely to sign up for cryonics than the general population. I had previously heard criticism of Lesswrong, that if we really believe in cryonics, it's irrational that so few are signed up.

Also surprising that vegetarianism correlates with cryonics interest.

It is hilarious and yet quite predictable that one of the only groups nearly as unenthused about cryonics as 'committed theists' was 'biologists'.

allistic person, let’s talk about this one place you feel locked out of and how we can make it even better for the majority, who already run so many other industries to the exclusion of people like me, first. Let’s make sure the already-privileged majority is comfortable in all places, at all times, before appreciating small pockets of minority safety and accommodation, and asking what they used to do right before they, too, were colonized by the tyranny of the narrowly-defined “default” human being in need of additional comfort while I try to survive. THAT FEELS FUCKING INCLUSIVE TO ME, HELL YEAH.

(...) Expecting autistic people to get better at small talk in order to make allistics feel more welcome is like expecting people in wheelchairs to get better at walking in order to make physically abled people feel more welcome.

(...) Mainstream feminism has some serious catching-up to do when it comes to learning about the lives of people who aren’t nice normal middle- to upper-class ladies, not to mention a lot of earned distrust. When you tell people that a skill to which they are inherently maladapted is a new requirement for participating in some culture, you are telling those people that they are no longer welcome in that culture. Bluntly, that is not your decision to make, and people are right not to trust the motivations of anyone who behaves as if they think it is. Too many of us have been burned too many times by people who told us “we want to make this a great place for everyone!”, only to find out that in practice, “everyone” actually means “all the allistics.”

reminds me of a SSC post on safe spaces:

One important feature of safe spaces is that they can’t always be safe for two groups at the same time. Jews are a discriminated-against minority who need a safe space. Muslims are a discriminated-against minority who need a safe space. But the safe space for Jews should be very far way from the safe space for Muslims, or else neither space is safe for anybody.

The rationalist community is a safe space for people who obsessively focus on reason and argument even when it is socially unacceptable to do so.

I don’t think it’s unfair to say that these people need a safe space. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been called “a nerd” or “a dork” or “autistic” for saying something rational is too high to count. Just recently commenters on Marginal Revolution – not exactly known for being a haunt for intellect-hating jocks – found an old post of mine and called me among many other things “aspie”, “a pansy”, “retarded”, and an “omega” (a PUA term for a man who’s so socially inept he will never date anyone).

I also enjoy this ending (EDIT: of the article linked by Lumifer, not the SSC one):

Nor is it lost on me that I am sitting here patiently spergsplaining theory of mind to people who supposedly have it when I supposedly don’t. Allistics can get away with developing a theory of one mind — their own — because they can expect most of the people they interact with to have knowledge, perspectives, and a sensorium not all that different from theirs. Autists don’t get that option. Reaching adulthood, for us, means first learning how to function through a distorted sensorium, then learning to develop a theory of minds, plural, starting with ones different from our own.

It reminds me of my pet theory on some similarities between high-IQ people and autists; specifically, having to develop a "theory of mind unlike my own" during childhood. (But the two of us probably had a long disagreement about this in the past, if I remember correctly, so I don't want to repeat it here.)

There's this document written by /u/sixes_and_sevens. I used it to set up mine (I'm the one who anti-recommended M&G). I might be able to answer any further questions, but it was a while ago so maybe not.

Open an account at a discount broker? Comparing fees is quite straightforward and other than that you only really care about the convenience of their user interface / experience.

This is an upper bound. There could be many smaller indeterminate machines. Many suspect that even very simple TMs can indeterminate. E.g. collatz.

Huh. I expected the smallest number of states of a TM of indeterminate halting to be, like, about 30. Consider how quickly BB diverges, after all.

I agree with most of what you said, but

'only' 7918 states, that is a registry less than two bytes long

this remark sounds weird. What is the meaning of the bit-size of the list of states? Are you suggesting to run the TM on a 16-bit computer? Then, good luck addressing the memory (the tape), because I guess the length of the tape used is probably also "uncomputable", or at least so large that even the pointers to the tape would not fit into any realistic computer's memory.

Challenge accepted.

https://i.imgsafe.org/914f428.png

Was considering something like a tshirt of p(smoke|fire) and p(fire|smoke). never came to fruition; feel free to take the idea if you like.

Bayes is mostly about conditioning, and so I think you can draw a Venn Diagram that makes it fairly clear.

The issue with Bayes theorem isn't the derivation or proof. Nobody seriously debates the validity of the theorem as a mathematical statement. The debate, or conceptual roadblock, or whatever you want to call it, is whether researchers should apply the theorem as the fundamental approach to statistical inference.

Were there two, an official control group and another group consisting of intelligence analysts with access to classified information?

In Superforcasting Tetlock writes that the main documents of the comparison between the GJP forecasters against the intelligence analysts with access to classified information is classified. Tetlock doesn't directly say something about that comparison but reports in his book that a newspaper article says that the GJP forecasters were 30% better (if I remember right).

I took issue with not knowing how humans formed goals. so I made this list of common human goals and suggested humans who do not know should look at the list of common goals and pick ones that are relevant to themselves.

You seem to be confusing goals and value systems - even without a goal, the UFAI risk is not gone.

Maybe it is not right to anthropomorphize but take a human who is (acting) absolutely clueless, and given choices. They'll pick something and stick to it. Questioned about it, they'll say something like "I dunno, I think I like that option" . This is what I'd imagine something without a goal to act - maybe it is consistent, maybe it will pick things it likes, but it doesn't plan ahead and doesn't try to steer actions to a goal.

For an AI, that would be a totally indifferent AI. I think it would just sit idle or do random actions. If you then give it a bad value system, and ask it to help you, you'll get "no" back. Helping people takes effort. Who'd want to spend processor cycles on that?

...

On the other hand, perhaps goals and value systems are actually the same; having a value system means you'll have goals ("envisioned preferred world states" vs "preferred world states"), so you can not not have goals whilst having a value system. In that case, you'd have an AI without values. This I think is likely to result in one of two options... on contact with a human that provides an order to follow, it could either not care and do nothing (it stays idle... forever, not even acting in self-preservation because, again, it has no values). Or, it accepts the order and just goes along. That'd be dangerous, because this has basically no brakes - if it does whatever you ask of it, without regard for human values... I hope you didn't ask for anything complex. "World peace" would resolve very nastily, as would "get me some money" (it is stolen from your neighbors... or maybe it brings you your wallet), and things like "get me a glass of water" can be interpreted in so many ways that being handed a piece of ice in the shape of a drinking glass is in the positive side of results.

That's the crux of it, I think. Without a value system, there are no brakes. There might also not be any way to get the AI to do anything. But with a value system that is flawed, there might be no brakes in a scenario where we'd want the AI to stop. Or the AI wouldn't entertain requests that we'd want it to do. So a lot of research goes into this area to make sure we can make the AI do what we want it to do in a way that we're okay with.

Advance warning: there are very few chocolate frogs in what follows. Disclaimer: I will be saying a lot about how I think almost everyone feels about present-giving; I am describing, not endorsing.

I think your idea of what birthday present giving is for differs from that of the rest of society (including your sister). I think

• you think that when A gives B a present, the point is to benefit B, and A will (subject to limitations of budget, time available, etc.) want to give a present that benefits B as much as possible;
• practically everyone else would say something like that if asked, but actually behave as if the point is to enable A to demonstrate that they care about B and understand B's tastes well enough to buy something B likes. (So A can feel good about being caring and insightful, and B can feel good about being cared for and understood.)

From the first of those viewpoints, giving money makes a lot of sense. But from the second, it makes no sense at all. Therefore, giving money for a birthday present is unthinkable for most people -- and if you ask to be given money, you will almost-literally not be heard; all that will come across is a general impression of complaininess and unreasonableness.

I think you also differ from the rest of society (including your sister) about what's an appropriate reaction when you get something you don't like:

• you think you should say "oh, no, I didn't want that; please don't do that again" and make a suggestion of something better for next time;
• practically everyone else thinks you should pretend you really like it and act just as grateful as if you'd been given something perfect.

This is mostly a consequence of the other difference. If the point of giving a present is to demonstrate your own caring and understanding, then having it rejected ruins everything; if it's to give something genuinely beneficial, the failure is in the poor choice of present and the rejection is just giving useful information.

And now remember that "please give me money" is unthinkable and therefore can't be heard; so "I don't like X; please give me money in future" will be heard as "I don't like X, and I'm not going to suggest a better alternative for next time", and since you haven't (from the giver's perspective) actually made an actionable suggestion, it's quite possible that they won't remember that you specifically didn't like X; just that they gave you something and you were unhelpfully complainy in response.

So now here's how I think your sister probably sees it. (I'm going to assume you're male; let me know if that's wrong and I'll fix my language.)

"My brother refuses to say what he wants for his birthday. So, with no information to go on, I got him some clothes. After all, everyone wears clothes. And then, when he gets them, instead of being grateful or at least pretending to be grateful, he flies off the handle and complains about how he hates getting clothes!"

Whereas, of course, from your perspective it's

"My sister keeps getting me clothes for my birthday. I've said more than once before that I want money, not clothes, but she just doesn't listen. And then she gets upset when I tell her I don't want what she's given me!"

OK, so how to move forward? In an ideal world, part of the answer would be for your sister to accept your preference for being given money. But let's assume that's not going to happen. If you can cope with accepting blame for things that aren't altogether your fault, I think the most positive thing would be to find some things you would be glad to be bought, make an Amazon wishlist or something out of them, and say something like this to your sister:

I'm sorry I got cross with you about my birthday present. I shouldn't have, and I do appreciate that you were trying to give me something nice. [If you actually did like any of the clothes, this is where you can be more specifically grateful.] But, really, being given clothes is difficult for me because it usually turns out that at least half of what I'm given doesn't fit or doesn't go with other things in my wardrobe or just isn't what I want to wear. I never really know what to ask for, which is why I've just asked for money before, but I've tried hard to come up with a list and you can find it by searching for my name on Amazon. I'm sorry to be so difficult to buy for.

Did you offer any suggestions of things she could buy you? Cash doesn't count because mumblereasons. It sounds to me like your sister acted poorly, especially in getting your parents to contribute. But did you make it easy for her to act well?

I too would prefer simply receiving cash, but I've accepted that that's not happening, so I have an Amazon wishlist. It mostly has books and graphic novels. Graphic novels in particular make a good gift for me, because they're often a little more expensive than I'd like to spend on them myself.

(I feel like some people dislike even buying presents from a list, but you can at least suggest categories of things.)

Logically analyzing the actions of human beings in terms of preferences, functions, and returns is hard. It's not actually impossible, but pretty much everyone who tries misses important things that are hard to put into words. I'd first wonder why you think that birthday presents are supposed to be maximizing return in the first place.

Buying someone a present, for normal humans, requires both that the present not be too cheap and that some effort was taken to match the present specifically to the recipient. Maximizing return is not important. There are always edge cases, but in general, unless you are talking about an occasion where social customs require cash, cash is a bad gift because cash is not specifically matched to the recipient. It is very difficult to overturn this custom by just saying "I can use cash more than I can use clothes".

Furthermore, parents are a special case because parents can make decisions that favor your welfare instead of your preferences, that would be arrogant if made by anyone else. If your mom and dad think that you need clothes, they're going to buy you clothes even if you think you need something else more. There's still a line beyond which even parents would be rude, but just deciding that you need clothes probably isn't over that line.

It also depends on your age, whether you live with your parents (and thus they can see what clothes you own), etc. Also, did you even try to tell your parents that there was something you needed more than clothes, aside from cash?

How do you solve interpersonal problems when neither sides can see themselves as the one in fault?

Is there any other kind?

Most silly thing I've seen in a while.

Is it supported by CBT though? It could look silly only to me.

In any particular geographical or topical area?

Have you asked this question in a Windows specific forum? e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/windows

He's millions of votes and many many delegates down compared to HRC. I think the only realistic way he gets the Democratic nomination is if HRC abruptly becomes obviously unelectable (e.g., if the business with her email server starts looking like getting her into actual legal trouble, or someone discovers clear evidence of outright bribery from her Wall Street friends), in which case the "superdelegates" might all switch to Sanders. I don't see any such scenario that actually looks more than a few percent likely.

(I make no claim to be an expert; I offer this only as a fairly typical LWer's take on the matter.)

Is Sanders actually more than let's say 25% likely to get the nod?

No.

To get the nomination he needs something extraordinary to happen. Something like Hillary developing a major health problem or the FBI indicting her over her private email server.

Trump scares me almost as much as Clinton

Someone pointed out a silver lining: the notion of President Trump might make progressives to be slightly less enthusiastic about imperial presidency. I'm not holding my breath, though.

Betfair says 5%. I'm not saying you shouldn't second-guess prediction markets, but you should look at them. If you think the right number is 25%, maybe you should put money on it. Actually, I do say that you should second-guess them: low numbers are usually over-estimates because of the structure of the market.

I'd estimate Sanders' chances as less than 10%, maybe a bit more than 5%.He would need a mass defection of superdelegates at this point, and it's possible they would be directed to jump en masse to someone else (like Biden) even if the DNC decides to dump Clinton.

When you say "mary's room", do you actually mean Chinese Room rather than Mary's Room?

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