Comment by iandennismiller on pplapi is a virtual database of the entire human population. · 2017-01-12T16:16:34.897Z · LW · GW

Personality characteristics are partially heritable (i.e. a small amount of variance in these dimensions is attributable to genetics) and the global distribution is not uniform. pplapi implements a simplistic model of this general system, but the point is that many of these demographic and psychometric dimensions - including language and religion - are indicated prior to birth. While there will always be exceptions, pplapi models the typical case.

From the agent you selected, income is obviously implausible but all the other dimensions are probably in the ballpark. If you went to Iran (the country of that agent), then odds are, you can find a real person with those characteristics (excepting income, of course). Even better, if you sampled from Iran on pplapi and if you sampled real people in Iran, then odds are the distributions will be similar.

I know several ways to violate the assumptions of pplapi in order to generate garbage analyses, so there's a lot of nuance here. However, I also know several interesting questions that can be answered with pplapi, so I think pplapi is nevertheless an interesting contribution.

Comment by iandennismiller on pplapi is a virtual database of the entire human population. · 2017-01-12T15:39:35.953Z · LW · GW

This is my research. It's an ongoing project that I will be discussing as part of my PhD dissertation, which I plan to defend in a few months. I had hoped to finish my PhD before this project got attention, but the website is already live and I can't really complain. In fact, I'm really happy with the interest and I want to engage.

Here's a few important facts about pplapi:

• the agents are synthetic, not real people
• the numbers are based on population parameters, so in aggregate, pplapi approaches reality
• at the individual level, these agents exist in the "uncanny valley" of kindof-sortof-implausible demographics
• some dimensions have more noise (error) than others; income is the easiest example
• the research is ongoing, so there many opportunities to improve
• one way to "use" pplapi is with an agent-based modelling environment, like NetLogo or MASON

This work is not merely a technical demonstration; it serves as a proof-of-concept "simulacrum" of humanity, which is axiomatic in my dissertation. I believe this work also raises a host of moral and ethical questions that were previously abstract but are now easier to comprehend. I do not believe pplapi itself has crossed any ethical boundaries, but I think the line of questioning is now clearer.