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I'm not a fan of Evangelion or Doctor Who, but I've been enjoying Shinji and the Doctor
I'm in the under-qualified but interested camp. I'll plan on coming.
In my experience, trying to choose what I care about does not work well, and has only resulted in increasing my own suffering.
Is the problem that thinking about the amount of suffering in the world makes you feel powerless to fix it? If so then you can probably make yourself feel better if you focus on what you can do to have some positive impact, even if it is small. If you think "donating to science" is the best way to have a positive impact on the future, than by all means do that, and think about how the research you are helping to fund will one day reduce the suffering that all future generations will have to endure.
I was thinking that using (length of program) + (memory required to run program) as a penalty makes more sense to me than (length of program) + (size of impact). I am assuming that any program that can simulate X minds must be able to handle numbers the size of X, so it would need more than log(X) bits of memory, which makes the prior less than 2^-log(X).
I wouldn't be overly surprised if there were some other situation that breaks this idea too, but I was just posting the first thing that came to mind when I read this.
Edit: formatting fixed. Thanks, wedrifid.
My response to the mugger:
- You claim to be able to simulate 3^^^^3 unique minds.
- It takes log(3^^^^3) bits just to count that many things, so my absolute upper bound on the prior for an agent capable of doing this is 1/3^^^^3.
- My brain is unable to process enough evidence to overcome this, so unless you can use your matrix powers to give me access to sufficient computing power to change my mind, get lost.
My response to the scientist:
- Why yes, you do have sufficient evidence to overturn our current model of the universe, and if your model is sufficiently accurate, the computational capacity of the universe is vastly larger than we thought.
- Let's try building a computer based on your model and see if it works.
This has changed my mind. Including examples that require slightly different thought patterns seems to be a good idea.
I agree that if the numbers given in the example were trustworthy, then it would be a good example. The part that confused me was that there would be no incentive to start the project unless the original estimate of the cost was significantly less than $7000. It seems reasonable to expect that the next $4000 you spend will have a similar effect on your expected cost to finish. If you perpetually think "Just another $5000 and I will be done", then you are no better off than if you think "I already spent so much, I can't just quit now."
The more money that is sunk into it, the stronger the evidence that you are bad at estimating the cost. I assume that this evidence is implied to be included in the new cost estimate, but I think a general audience would not immediately notice this.
The iPhone app example in the presentation confuses me.
The way it is presented, it looks like the conclusion is that you should always be willing to spend an additional $6999.99 no matter how much you have already spent. If current you is willing to spend the extra money regardless of whether you have already spent $4000 or $10999.99, then I don't see why future you would feel any different.
I would think that you should take in to account the fact that your original estimate of the cost was too low. Given that this is the case, you should expect that your current estimate of the cost to finish is also too low. I would multiply your cost to finish estimate by (current estimated total cost) / (original estimate) and only continue if that result is less than $7000.
Going over this in the presentation would introduce complications to the problem that would most likely lead to even more confusion, but when the details are left out, it looks like you are endorsing the same decisions that the sunk cost fallacy would lead to. I suggest changing the example to something else entirely.
Thank you for replying. This showed up just as I was editing the parent.
This was highly entertaining. I hope to see more of this in the future.
EDIT: Never mind the stuff I said below. I figured it out.
This got me started on the Hardest Logic Puzzle. I seem to be making an error in reasoning, but I can't identify the problem.
There are 12 possible ways to label A,B,C,da and ja. 3 yes-no questions can only distinguish between 8 states, so it must be possible to label A,B and C without knowing da and ja.
Random's answer to any question is not correlated with the content of that question, so it seems impossible to extract any information from it. It is not possible to guarantee that random is not asked any questions, so that just leaves 2 useful questions. But there are 6 possible states. It seems like it should be impossible.
Assume the answer to the first question is da. From there, I would try to formulate a question so that the honest answer must also be da. If I get 'da', then B is either True or Random, otherwise, it is either False or Random. This reduces the problem to 4 states, which would be solvable if we knew which answer was yes and which was no. As it stands, I can only tell whether the answers to questions 1 and 3 are the same or different, so I am still left with 2 possibilities.
I assume this was discussed in the post you linked to, but I would rather not read through the comments there for fear that I will read someone else's complete solution. Without completely giving it away, can someone please help clear up my confusion?
It's just an image, not a real site. The link to the full article is in Bongo's comment.
This still confuses me. 'Ball draws are completely unrelated and determined by completely separate processes' still contains information about how the balls were generated. It seems like if you observed a string of 10 red balls, then your hypothesis would lose probability mass to the hypothesis 'ball draws are red with p > 0.99.'
It seems like the problem only happens if you include an unjustified assumption in your 'prior', then refuse to consider the possibility that you were wrong.
My prior information is that every time I have found something Eliezer said confusing, it has eventually turned out that I was mistaken. I expect this to remain true, but there's a slight possibility that I am wrong.
I've been intending to get more involved in this community for a while. I will come on Saturday, but I won't be able to make the Wednesday meetings. Just out of curiosity, is there anybody who would be interested in a regular Antelope Valley meetup?
My understanding is that your conversion was based primarily on the goodness and love of your Mormon friends. If other evidence were to convince you that the Mormon God does not exist, would you expect them to continue to treat you with goodness and love?
This scenario is much farther along the impossible scale than reviving an intact brain. If I wanted to live forever, I would make absolutely sure that I had a plan that did not involve violating the laws of physics.
(Not that I'm an expert physicist, but my understanding is that decomposition is an irreversible process.)
This is the first time I've ventured out of the MoR and Luminosity threads, and I support 5. If the limit was 1, spambots would eventually learn to post "Hey, I'm new" then wait a few hours before spamming.
Of course, this would also mean that no one should vote up a "Hey, I'm new" comment beyond 4.
These past few chapters have been excellent. Now I'm curious about how effective a weaponized version of Elspeth's power would be against Bella. Does it penetrate Bella's shield, or does Bella need to consciously allow it through?
I had forgotten about the potion.
Still, I don't think he would have bothered breaking Bellatrix out if he didn't expect to use her in the ritual. I also can't think of a reason to have her hide his wand next to his father's grave unless that connection was enough to keep the bone potent.
Replace execution with Somnium. That way, people who prefer death over imprisonment can be revived if they are later exonerated.
"And before you ask, it must be the original grave, the place of first burial, the bone removed during the ritual and not before. Thus he cannot have retrieved it earlier; and also there is no point in substituting the skeleton of a weaker ancestor. He would notice it had lost all potency."
I wonder how long a ritual can last. If it was started ten years ago but never finished, would that be a loophole?
OK, I obviously have not been doing a good job of thinking through the examples I'm using.
I'll concede this point.
Bella knew about Allirea's power and apparently remembered long enough to tell Elspeth about it. I thought the Volteri would remember things that Demetri told them about his mate, even if they couldn't notice her.
Ignoring a witch who makes multiple escape attempts, can make herself and others unnoticeable and is invisible to Alice does not strike me as an argument against the presence of an idiot ball.
I have a tendency to only speak up when I have something to complain about, so just to be clear, I do like this story. It seems perfectly believable that the Volteri set up this system hundreds of years ago when they only had one or two uncooperative witches, then never bothered to reevaluate it as the operation scaled up. From a story-telling perspective, neither Bella nor Elspeth are HJPEV, so it would be inappropriate to make Aro into Quirrelmort unless you really hate Bella and want her to lose.
On the other hand, believable idiocy is still idiocy. If Aro WAS Quirrelmort, he would have experimentally determined how much of a vampire could be destroyed without killing it and whether they could be crippled by cutting open their joints and pouring venom into the wound. If the answers turned out to be "none" and "no," he could still have at least one other vampire in the room to attach the head of a witch immediately before feeding it and decapitate it immediately after it finishes.
There's no reason for them to reassemble all of the witches at the same time. It would still be stupid even if the room was full of guards. Having only a single point of failure preventing 16 powerful enemies from waking up in a room with only 2 defenders, plus any invisible enemies that might have been brought in, is the Biggest Ball of Idiot in Minnesota.
They knew Allirea hated Demitri, could turn invisible and could wake the witches just by touching Del. Yes, that would let Del get a sneak attack, but that would only last until she touched one of the other witches, or one of them touched her. Allirea only needed Elspeth because she couldn't rely on Chelsied vampires to cooperate with her plan to kill Demetri.