Posts

Crypto low risk profits 2022-01-29T04:52:55.256Z
Predictions for 2022 2022-01-02T06:34:56.241Z
Mega Links Post for Mar-Apr-May 2021 2021-05-31T03:47:47.290Z
Tales from Prediction Markets 2021-04-03T23:38:22.728Z
Links for Feb 2021 2021-03-01T05:13:08.562Z
Links for January 2021 2021-02-01T23:54:02.103Z
Links for Dec 2020 2021-01-05T19:53:04.672Z
Links for Nov 2020 2020-12-01T01:31:51.886Z
The Exploitability/Explainability Frontier 2020-11-26T00:59:18.105Z
Solomonoff Induction and Sleeping Beauty 2020-11-17T02:28:59.793Z
The Short Case for Verificationism 2020-09-11T18:48:00.372Z
This Territory Does Not Exist 2020-08-13T00:30:25.700Z
ike's Shortform 2019-09-01T18:48:35.461Z
Attacking machine learning with adversarial examples 2017-02-17T00:28:09.908Z
Gates 2017 Annual letter 2017-02-15T02:39:12.352Z
Raymond Smullyan has died 2017-02-12T14:20:57.626Z
A Few Billionaires Are Turning Medical Philanthropy on Its Head 2016-12-04T15:08:22.933Z
Newcomb versus dust specks 2016-05-12T03:02:29.720Z
The guardian article on longevity research [link] 2015-01-11T19:02:52.830Z
Discussion of AI control over at worldbuilding.stackexchange [LINK] 2014-12-14T02:59:47.239Z
Rodney Brooks talks about Evil AI and mentions MIRI [LINK] 2014-11-12T04:50:23.828Z

Comments

Comment by ike on Simple proofs of the age of the universe (or other things) · 2022-09-13T21:15:21.197Z · LW · GW

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology tree rings gets us 14k years

Comment by ike on San Juan, Puerto Rico – ACX Meetups Everywhere 2022 · 2022-09-10T17:25:50.668Z · LW · GW

Two of us showed up, we'll be hanging out in the back under the large square white tent if anyone else is looking

Comment by ike on How to bet against civilizational adequacy? · 2022-08-13T18:15:31.663Z · LW · GW

Maybe buying IPV4 addresses? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32416043 some discussion here.

Civilization has been trying to move to ipv6 for decades, but IPV4 is still widespread and commands a premium. With more internet growth this could blow up more.

Comment by ike on Addendum: A non-magical explanation of Jeffrey Epstein · 2022-07-18T22:38:24.104Z · LW · GW

Yeah, the version I liked was that someone else bribed a guard/guards into letting him kill himself but that's basically the same.

Comment by ike on Do a cost-benefit analysis of your technology usage · 2022-04-10T21:03:52.955Z · LW · GW

It's been hard keeping to it, but I do notice myself being more productive when I do. One thing that has stayed is not having an email tab always open. Hoping that over time I get better at following it strictly; it has such immediate positive effects that I'm not so worried I'll gradually forget and stop, like happened with other productivity attempts (e.g. making to-do lists.)

Comment by ike on Are the fundamental physical constants computable? · 2022-04-06T11:53:23.589Z · LW · GW

Consider the shortest algorithm that simulates the universe perfectly.

Meaningless, on my metaphysics. Definition is circular - in order to define fundamental you have to already assume that the universe can be simulated "perfectly", but to define a perfect simulation you'll need to rely on concepts like "fundamental", or "external reality".

Assuming that the way the universe looks changes continuously with these constants, it seems strange to insist that if the changes are so small you can't notice them they don't exist.

The assumption is meaningless. It seems strange to me to insist that something "exists", especially infinities, which are never observable. On our actual known physics we have strict limits on how much information can be contained in a finite amount of space, but even if we didn't know that you can't define these concepts in a noncircular manner.

Comment by ike on Are the fundamental physical constants computable? · 2022-04-05T19:42:14.455Z · LW · GW

On my metaphysics it's not coherent to talk about "fundamental" constants, for multiple reasons. Try tabooing that and ask about what, if anything, is actually meant.

If you can't measure any of these constants past a hundred significant digits, what does it mean to talk about the constant having any digits beyond that? And what does it mean for a constant to be fundamental?

Comment by ike on Do a cost-benefit analysis of your technology usage · 2022-03-30T16:35:17.950Z · LW · GW

I really liked this post. As a result of reading it, I'm trialling the following:

Every time I go on my computer or phone, I need to specifically have a plan for one specific thing I am going to do. This can be "check all notifications from X/Y/Z), or "write this one long email", or even, "15 minutes of unstructured time", but it should always be intentional. If I get the urge to do something else, I need to save it for a future session, which can be immediately afterwards.

Comment by ike on Your Enemies Can Use Your Prediction Markets Against You · 2022-02-17T01:11:52.621Z · LW · GW

Yes, but you said they're buying the no-coup shares, which subsidizes a coup. Article contradicts itself. 

Comment by ike on Your Enemies Can Use Your Prediction Markets Against You · 2022-02-16T21:46:25.230Z · LW · GW

Mars buys shares that pay out 5 million Dogecoin if there is not a coup

Suppose the prior implied probability of a regime change is 0.20. Mars can buy its shares for 1 million Dogecoin, pocketing a risk-free net utility equivalent to 4 million Dogecoin.

I'm confused - if the prior probability of a coup is 20% and Mars is buying shares that pay out if no coup, Mars would pay 4M?

Comment by ike on Crypto low risk profits · 2022-01-29T18:34:43.929Z · LW · GW

I wrote the post, everything is true.

In general I find stories of how others have succeeded interesting and useful. It's also interesting to see how various markets are inefficient at times. Same motivation as my post on prediction markets last year.

Comment by ike on We need a theory of anthropic measure binding · 2022-01-02T14:36:30.877Z · LW · GW

I have nothing wrong with the probability request here, I have a problem with the scenario. What kind of evidence are you getting that makes these two and only these two outcomes possible? Solomonoff/Bayes would never rule out any outcome, just make some of them low probability.

I've talked about the binding problem in Solomonoff before, see https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Jqwb7vEqEFyC6sLLG/solomonoff-induction-and-sleeping-beauty and posts it links back to. See also "dust theory".

Comment by ike on Predictions for 2022 · 2022-01-02T14:33:15.960Z · LW · GW

Not deployed yet except some minor positions. Will probably be ~30% private fiat funds, some crypto funds, and most chasing short term yield farming opportunities or related DeFi plays. It's not something easily scalable and requires quite a lot of active management.

I blew away both the market and crypto this year with a range of exotic strategies and low risk. Think it's basically impossible to repeat performance at current levels, but it seems hard to lose money given my risk appetite and diversification, and the only way I wouldn't make significant money is if crypto enters a bear which is probably correlated to a stock market bear as well, in which case I'm probably close to flat.

Comment by ike on New Year's Prediction Thread (2022) · 2022-01-01T22:00:12.435Z · LW · GW

Putting together an article, for now here's 22 predictions:

 

Tether is worth less than 99c by end of year: 2%

Biden or Harris mentions GPT-4: 2%

At least one school district or university is reported to tell students not to use language models (not just one teacher): 15%

A deepfake goes viral (>1 million views) with very few people, at first, realizing that it's fake: 15%

Russia is widely considered to have captured the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv: 10%

S&P 500 goes up: 80%

Annual CPI inflation released Jan 2023 (for Dec 2022) over 3.5%: 40%

The 7 day rolling average deaths from Covid-19 falls below 100 in the United States for at least one day: 85%

Omicron booster is taken by at least 25% of Americans over 18: 20%

Dems lose the Senate: 75%

Dems lose the house: 85%

Biden is president: 95%

New named prominent variant infects over 10M: 25%

Will the US rejoin the Iran Nuclear Deal before 2023: 25%

Bill signed by Joe Biden that mentions cryptocurrency/blockchain/etc: 65%

Bored Ape Yacht Club floor price is lower than today in dollars ($253k): 80%

Will GME be over $100: 50%

Trump indictment: 25%

Matt Gaetz indictment: 5%

Matt Gaetz in office: 95%

Federal booster mandate: 33%

Masks required on airplanes by Federal law: 65%

Comment by ike on We need a theory of anthropic measure binding · 2021-12-31T22:54:39.171Z · LW · GW

Probability is in the mind. Your question is meaningless. What is meaningful is what your expectations should be for specific experiences, and that's going to depend on the kind of evidence you have and Solomonoff induction - it's pretty trivial once you accept the relevant premises.

It's just not meaningful to say "X and Y exist", you need to reframe it in terms of how various pieces of evidence affect induction over your experiences.

Comment by ike on There Meat Come A Scandal... · 2021-11-07T22:39:59.027Z · LW · GW

There's been a handful of kashrus scandals where people mixed in meat from other supply chains into stuff that was supposed to be kosher certified, which seems a useful reference point for how this can slip through even with an extensive monitoring system intended to prevent that.

Comment by ike on Where do you live? · 2021-10-31T18:05:08.727Z · LW · GW

Technically part of the US, if you move here as a US citizen you get 0% capital gains tax rates which is really good if you're investing/trading/etc. Would love if more people moved here.

Comment by ike on Where do you live? · 2021-10-31T18:04:52.513Z · LW · GW

San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Comment by ike on Where are the quick, easy wins? · 2021-10-23T13:42:39.161Z · LW · GW

I'm currently looking into buying a bank or insurance company to do exactly that.

It's really non-trivial to borrow large amounts at low rates to lend. Way easier said than done.

Comment by ike on Where are the quick, easy wins? · 2021-10-23T03:27:16.496Z · LW · GW

Crypto yields are currently 20%+ annualized with fairly low risk if you know what you're doing 

Comment by ike on Do you think you are a Boltzmann brain? If not, why not? · 2021-10-15T15:46:49.915Z · LW · GW

No, because that's a meaningless claim about external reality. The only meaningful claims in this context are predictions.

"Do you expect to see chaos, or a well formed world like you recall seeing in the past, and why?"

The latter. Ultimately that gets grounded in Occam's razor and Solomonoff induction making the latter simpler.

Comment by ike on [deleted post] 2021-09-21T14:55:07.894Z

I've spent a lot of time and written a handful of posts (including one on the interaction between Solomonoff and SIA) building my ontology. Parts may be mistaken but I don't believe it's "confused". Tabooing core concepts will just make it more tedious to explain, probably with no real benefit.

In particular, the only actual observations anyone has are of the form "I have observed X", and that needs to be the input into Solomonoff. You can't input a bird's eye view because you don't have one.

Anyway, it seems weird that being altruistic affects the agent's decision as to a purely local bet. You end up with the same answer as me on that question, acting "as if" the probability was 90%, but in a convoluted manner.

Maybe you should taboo probability. What does it mean to say that the probability is 50%, if not that you'll accept purely local bets with better odds and not worse odds? The only purpose of probability in my ontology is for predictions for betting purposes (or decision making purposes that map onto that). Maybe it is your notion of probability that is confused.

Comment by ike on [deleted post] 2021-09-20T16:52:32.164Z

A couple of things.

If you're ok with time inconsistent probabilities then you can be dutch booked.

I think of identity in terms of expectations. Right before you go to sleep, you have a rational subjective expectation of "waking up" with any number from 1-20 with a 5% probability.

It's not clear how the utility function in your first case says to accept the bet given that you have the probability as 50/50. You can't be maximizing utility, have that probability, and accept the bet - that's just not what maximizes probability under those assumptions.

My version of the bet shouldn't depend on if you care about other agents or not, because the bet doesn't affect other agents.

Comment by ike on [deleted post] 2021-09-19T13:04:35.349Z

You can start with Bostrom's book on anthropic bias. https://www.anthropic-principle.com/q=book/table_of_contents/

The bet is just each agent is independently offered a 1:3 deal. There's no dependence as in EYs post.

Comment by ike on [deleted post] 2021-09-18T22:57:16.314Z

You're just rejecting one of the premises here, and not coming close to dissolving the strong intuitions / arguments many people have for SIA. If you insist the probability is 50/50 you run into paradoxes anyway (if each agent is offered a 1:3 odds bet, they would reject it if they believe the probability is 50%, but you would want in advance for agents seeing green to take the bet.)

Comment by ike on The Validity of Self-Locating Probabilities · 2021-08-21T23:54:40.525Z · LW · GW

Yes, rejecting probability and refusing to make predictions about the future is just wrong here, no matter how many fancy primitives you put together.

I disagree that standard LW rejects that, though.

Comment by ike on Will the US have more than 100,000 new daily COVID-19 cases before January 1, 2022? · 2021-07-10T16:28:46.950Z · LW · GW

Variance only increases chance of Yes here. If cases spike and we're averaging over 100k, reporting errors won't matter. If we've averaging 75k, a state dumping extra cases could plausibly push it over 100k

Comment by ike on Which rationalists faced significant side-effects from COVID-19 vaccination? · 2021-06-14T12:52:31.338Z · LW · GW

Two Moderna doses here with no significant side effects

Comment by ike on What's your probability that the concept of probability makes sense? · 2021-05-23T00:42:13.151Z · LW · GW

No

Comment by ike on What is the strongest argument you know for antirealism? · 2021-05-12T21:23:21.046Z · LW · GW

I know what successful communication looks like. 

What does successful representation look like? 

Comment by ike on What is the strongest argument you know for antirealism? · 2021-05-12T21:03:10.891Z · LW · GW

Yes, it appears meaningless, I and others have tried hard to figure out a possible account of it.

I haven't tried to get a fully general account of communication but I'm aware there's been plenty of philosophical work, and I can see partial accounts that work well enough.

Comment by ike on What is the strongest argument you know for antirealism? · 2021-05-12T20:13:00.454Z · LW · GW

I'm communicating, which I don't have a fully general account of, but is something I can do and has relatively predictable effects on my experiences. 

Comment by ike on What is the strongest argument you know for antirealism? · 2021-05-12T18:46:20.276Z · LW · GW

Not at all, to the extent head is a territory. 

Comment by ike on What is the strongest argument you know for antirealism? · 2021-05-12T17:21:00.906Z · LW · GW

What does it mean for a model to "represent" a territory?

Comment by ike on What is the strongest argument you know for antirealism? · 2021-05-12T17:13:32.530Z · LW · GW

>On the other hand, when I observe that other nervous systems are similar to my own nervous system, I infer that other people have subjective experiences similar to mine.

That's just part of my model. To the extent that empathy of this nature is useful for predicting what other people will do, that's a useful thing to have in a model. But to then say "other people have subjective experiences somewhere 'out there' in external reality" seems meaningless - you're just asserting your model is "real", which is a category error in my view. 

Comment by ike on What is the strongest argument you know for antirealism? · 2021-05-12T12:22:37.704Z · LW · GW

My own argument, see https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zm3Wgqfyf6E4tTkcG/the-short-case-for-verificationism and the post it links back to.

It seems that if external reality is meaningless, then it's difficult to ground any form of morality that says actions are good or bad insofar as they have particular effects on external reality.

Comment by ike on What weird beliefs do you have? · 2021-05-06T19:45:59.158Z · LW · GW

But, provided you speak about this notion, why would verificationismism lead to external world anti-realism?

Anti-realism is not quite correct here, it's more that claims about external reality are meaningless as opposed to false. 

One could argue that synthetic statements aren't really about external reality: What we really mean is "If I were to check, my experiences would be as if there were a tree in what would seem to be my garden". Then our ordinary language wouldn't be meaningless. But this would be a highly revisionary proposal. We arguably don't mean to say something like the above. We plausibly simply mean to assert the existence of a real tree in a real garden.

I'm not making a claim about what people actually mean by the words they say. I'm saying that some interpretations of what people say happen to lack meaning. I agree that many people fervently believe in some form of external reality, I simply think that belief is meaningless, in the same way that a belief about where the electron "truly is" is meaningless. 

Comment by ike on What weird beliefs do you have? · 2021-04-16T22:22:51.348Z · LW · GW

I granted your supposition of such things existing. I myself don't believe any objective external reality exists, as I don't think those are meaningful concepts.

Comment by ike on What weird beliefs do you have? · 2021-04-16T21:35:03.494Z · LW · GW

Perhaps. It's not clear to me how such facts could exist, or what claims about them mean.

If you've got self locating uncertainty, though, you can't have objective facts about what atoms near you are doing.

Comment by ike on What weird beliefs do you have? · 2021-04-16T16:42:33.395Z · LW · GW

>If they didn't write the sentence, then they are not identical to me and don't have to accept that they are me.

Sure, some of those people are not identical to some other people. But how do you know which subset you belong to? A version of you that deluded themselves into thinking they wrote the sentence is subjectively indistinguishable from any other member of the set. You can only get probabilistic knowledge against, i.e. "most of the people in my position are not deluding themselves", which lets you make probabilistic predictions. But saying "X is true" and grounding that as "X is probable" doesn't seem to work. What does "X is true" mean here, when there's a chance it's not true for you?  

Comment by ike on Tales from Prediction Markets · 2021-04-15T21:33:34.874Z · LW · GW

This post got linked from https://www.coindesk.com/why-crypto-whales-love-this-prediction-market

Comment by ike on What weird beliefs do you have? · 2021-04-15T02:17:26.922Z · LW · GW

I'm tentatively ok with claims of the sort that a multiverse exists, although I suspect that too can be dissolved.

Note that in your example, the relevant subset of the multiverse is all the people who are deluding themselves into thinking they typed that sentence. If there's no meaningful sense in which you're self located as someone else vs that subset, then there's no meaningful sense in which you "actually" typed it.

Comment by ike on What weird beliefs do you have? · 2021-04-15T01:22:48.171Z · LW · GW

What form of realism is consistent with my statement about level 4?

Comment by ike on What weird beliefs do you have? · 2021-04-14T13:14:12.162Z · LW · GW

External reality is not a meaningful concept, some form of verificationism is valid. I argued for it in various ways previously on LW, one plausible way to get there is through a multiverse argument.

Verificationism w.r.t level 3 multiverse - "there's no fact of the matter where the electron is before it's observed, it's in both places and you have self locating uncertainty."

Verificationism w.r.t. level 4 multiverse - "there's no fact of the matter as to anything, as long as it's true in some subsets of the multiverse and false in others, you just have self locating uncertainty."

Lots of people seem to accept the first but not the second.

Comment by ike on What weird beliefs do you have? · 2021-04-14T13:07:49.791Z · LW · GW

How is that different than say the CIA taking ESP seriously, MKULTRA etc?

Comment by ike on Tales from Prediction Markets · 2021-04-04T23:00:42.443Z · LW · GW

From what I can tell, most of the people who lost significant sums on the CO2 markets were generally profitable and +EV. Although I guess I'm mostly seeing input from the people who hang out on the discord all day, which is a skewed sample.

Comment by ike on Tales from Prediction Markets · 2021-04-04T13:59:26.359Z · LW · GW

Prediction markets are tiny compared to real world markets. Something like $100 million total volume on Polymarket since inception. There just aren't as many people making sure they're efficient.

Comment by ike on Tales from Prediction Markets · 2021-04-04T04:43:16.924Z · LW · GW

It's actually a bit worse - there's a 2% fee paid to liquidity providers, so if you only bet and don't provide liquidity then you lose money on average. Of course you can lose money providing liquidity too if the market moves against you. Anyone can provide liquidity and get a share of that 2%.

Comment by ike on What is the semantics of assigning probabilities to future events? · 2021-04-01T14:14:04.604Z · LW · GW

Probability is in the mind. It's relative to the information you have.

In practical terms, you typically don't have good enough resolution to get individual percentage point precision, unless it's in a quantitative field with well understood processes.

Comment by ike on Speculations Concerning the First Free-ish Prediction Market · 2021-03-31T13:31:41.265Z · LW · GW

USDC is a very different thing than tether.

Do you have most of your net worth tied up in Eth, or something other than USD at any rate? If not I don't see how the volatility point could apply.