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The article you cited has a paywall, so I cannot read it for myself, but Reddit says it's bad, and I'm highly skeptical myself. Wikipedia also doesn't mention any critique that comes anywhere close to what you describe, not even on the talk page. I also tried to search for such criticism somewhere else, and didn't find anything. So I'm confidant that this is wrong, and that the way I described Leopold is largely correct.
Domain: Singing (especially theatre/musicals, but not just)
Link: Excerpt, full interview
Person: Philip Quast
Background: He played Javert in the 10th anniversary rendition of Les Mis.
Why: Philip Quast's has probably done the best performance of Javert, and in the interview he goes through the process of how he figures out how to sing his songs.
For those who, like me, didn't know the reference
I suggested something similar a few months back as a requirement for casting strong votes.
I'd be interested in tacit knowledge videos about writing, if anyone knows any.
Huh. That's not a possibility I considered. I'm still betting it is AI generated but you changed my odds.
Yes, it doesn't say so explicitly, but it's very clear from the post that it is.
Is it possible to download all songs at once?
Yep.. That's what I expected the first one to be.
I did not know AI has gotten this good at creating music. Wow...
“To be one more milestone in humanity's road is the best that can be said of anyone” - Eliezer Yudkowsky
Daniel Kahneman, you were a milestone in humanity's road to rationality. Thank you for that.
Welcome to LessWrong! Your story sounds fitting to me. I'd love to read to read it :)
I think calling these "Attitudes" is alright (and indeed better than "Theories"). But if you're still not happy with it then you might prefer "Dispositions".
Welcome! I think you may be interested in a review of Steven Pinker's book on rationality.
He didn't say anything like that in Politics is the Mind-Killer, quite the contrary:
"Politics is an important domain to which we should individually apply our rationality—but it’s a terrible domain in which to learn rationality, or discuss rationality, unless all the discussants are already rational."
"I’m not saying that I think we should be apolitical"
The main point of the post was to not shove politics where it's unnecessary, because it can have all these bad effects. I expect Eliezer agrees far more with the idea that Politics is hard mode, than the idea that "we couldn’t expect our rationality skills to be as helpful in determining truth in politics".
The new comments outline feature is great! Thanks, LW team :)
I don't know what you mean by aesthetic death, but I'm glad to help :)
Can you say exactly which claims Zack is making without showing enough evidence? Is it one or more of these
(1) For all nouns N, you can't define N any way you want, for at least 37 reasons.
(2) Woman is such a noun.
(3) Therefore, you can't define the word woman any way you want.
Or something else?
Even if it's true that he's obsessed with it and everything he writes is somehow connected to it - what's the problem with that? Couldn't you have said the same thing about Eliezer and AI? I bet there were lots of important contributions that were made by people following an obsession, even to their own detriment.
To me the question is whether it's true and valuable (I think so), not whether he's obsessed.
I do not think this post serves some greater goal (if it does, like many others in this comment section, I am confused)
(I'll try to explain as best I understand, but some of it may not be exactly right)
The goal of this post is to tell the story of Zack's project (which also serves the project). The goal of Zack's project is best described by the title of his previous post - he's creating a Hill of Validity in Defense of Meaning.
Rationalists strive to be consistent, take ideas seriously, and propagate our beliefs, which means a fundamental belief about the meaning of words will affect everything we think about, and if it's wrong, then it will eventually make us be wrong about many things.
Zack saw Scott and Eliezer, the two highest status people in this group/community, plus many others, make such a mistake. With Eliezer it was "you're not standing in defense of truth if you insist on a word, brought explicitly into question, being used with some particular meaning.". With Scott it was "I ought to accept an unexpected [X] or two deep inside the conceptual boundaries of what would normally be considered [Y] if it'll save someone's life.".
This was relevant to questions about trans, which Zack cares a lot about, so he made a bunch of posts arguing against these propositions. The reason it didn't remain a mere philosophy of language debate, is that it bumped into the politics of the trans debate. Seeing the political influence made Zack lose faith with the rationalist community, and warranted a post about people instead of just about ideas.
I would put it like this:
- Comparative advantage
- Incentive to produce
- Distributing differential value (could be better phrased)
The option to make exchanges that increase my total value, incentivizes me to use my comparative advantage to produce new things that will be low value to me, but high value to others, so I can trade them. This increases the total value in the economy by both creating new value and distributing it in a more beneficial manner.
I don't have a lot to say, but I feel like mentioning that I read the whole thing, enjoyed it, and agreed with you, including on the point that if rationalists can't agree with your philosophy of language because of instrumental motivations then it's a problem for us as a group of people who try to reason clearly without such influences.
Since simplicity is such a core heuristic of rationality, having a correct conceptualization of complexity is important.
The usual definition of complexity used on LW (and elsewhere) is Kolmogorov Complexity, which the length of its shortest code. Nate suggests a compelling idea - that another way to be simple is to have many different codes. For example, a state with five 3-bit codes is simpler than a state with one 2-bit code.
Nate justifies that with a bunch of math, and some physics, which I don't understand well enough to comment on.
A bunch of people who do understand the math well enough basically agreed with Nate, but commented that Soares's Complexity differes from Kolmogorov Complexity by at most a constant. After some discussion Nate was convinced and edited a note saying that into the post, but then @interstice said that this only applies to finite strings while Nate is talking about semimeasures on infinite sequences, which do have a non-constant gap.
So, though I don't feel qualified to say it, my understanding is that this is indeed a superior measure of complexity and, at least on LW, should replace Kolmogorov Complexity as the default meaning of complexity.
And since improving our understanding of complexity seems quite important, I'm giving this post 4 points.
My Summary of this post (mostly paraphrased quotes):
There are 3 types of referendums in Swizerland:
- Obligatory referenda: Any change in constitution, adjustment of taxes or joining any international organization must be approved by a majority of all people and a majority within each canton.
- Legislative referenda: Any law enacted by the parliament may be challenged and rejected in a referendum.
- "popular initiatives": Anyone can propose a referendum on any topic. If they manage to collect hundred thousand signatures in a year and a half the referendum is organized and the initiative may eventually get enacted. Approved popular initiative get written into the constitution.
All of these referenda exist not only on the federal, but also on the cantonal and the municipal level. All of them are binding and neither of them needs a quorum.
Due to their large number, individual referenda are not organized separately. Instead, they are voted on in batches, typically four times a year.
The canton publishes a handbook for each ballot, which explains, in quite a lot of detail, including graphs, maps and tables, what each referendum is about. And contains positions opinions from several governmental bodies and minority positions in those bodies. If even the election guide is not enough, you can have a look at the websites advocating for the yes and no vote, respectively.
the voters aren't exposed to a simple, black and white choice. Instead, they are drawn into a complex network of different preferences: Your party is in favor, but the deputies of your municipality are against. You are a member of the automobile club and the club is in favor. But your neighbors are against. Voting necessarily means understanding that things are never clear-cut.
Switzerland has no constitutional court. The right to interpret the constitution is granted only to the people. They may do so by running a referendum that makes the wording of the constitution more clear.
The government or parliament can create counter-proposal to each initiative, The counter-proposal is typically a compromise. If the initiative asks for 100, the counter-proposal offers 50. Voters can then choose between rejecting the initiative altogether, accepting it, or accepting the counter-proposal.
The efficiency of the system of counter-proposals is witnessed not only by them being accepted on quite regular basis, but also by the fact that 73 federal popular initiatives were, in the course of history, withdrawn by their initiators in favor of the government counter-proposals.
Each initiative goes through the following process: The Federal Council will first check the referendum and translate it into all official languages. Then, there's a year and a half to collect 100,000 signatures. The signature sheets are then handed over to the Federal Council. The government has a year and a half to discuss the proposal. If it decides to file a counter-proposal, this period is extended by another year and a half. Consultations with experts and all the stakeholders are held within this time. The government prepares a detailed report and passes it to the parliament. Parliament has another year and a half to discuss it. In the case of a counter-proposal, the period can be prolonged to three and a half years. Finally, the government sets a date for the referendum, which must happen within the next ten months.
The whole initiative, from the draft proposal to the vote, can therefore take up to nine years. In practice, this period usually ranges from two to six years. This sluggishness is a feature, not a bug. The long duration of the process, which spans across election periods, prevents the referendum from being used for tactical purposes, and provides ample time for in-depth public debate.
When making many predictions together, I think it would be useful to add another prediction about your calibration.
I think it's worth knowing not just how calibrated someone is, but also how "meta-calibrated" - do they have a correct sense of their own level of calibration?
I haven't found the intro you were talking about, but I wrote a wiki page which I think is pretty good.
Oh wow, so list of lethalities was linked to in 158 posts. That's a lot!
Pingback count means amount of LW comments or posts that linked to it?
I think they later agreed he was actually right, and the initial criticism was based on a misunderstanding.
I also didn't vote. My guess is people just don't want memes on LW.
Is someone planning to review this book? Seems worthwhile.
You're not even holding a specific state, but are instead designing something to deal with a "type" of state, like writing a compression algorithm for astronomical images.
This reminds me of K-complexity is silly; use cross-entropy instead, though I'm not quite sure how/whether they're actually related.
I don't like the dialogue matching feature. It's not like dating where my interest in a dialogue comes from interest in a specific person. It's more akin to wanting to do an activity (go climb / discuss a certain topic), and looking for someone to do it with (could be anyone).
If you want to have a dialogue with me, send me a message, and I'll probably say yes.
If I were to design a dialogue matching system I think I'd make it more topic-based than people-based.
Ah, of course!
Yeah, if we went for a full history of rationality we definitely would have mentioned him. We haven't because I don't think he had much of an influence over the "Skeptics" brand of rationality, which we talked about as the popular form of rationality before Eliezer. I think one of the things that distinguished Eliezer's form of rationality was that he integrated Korzybski's ideas into it.
Certainty. A huge issue in early modern philosophy which has now been largely abandoned.
Completeness. Everything is either true or false, nothing is neither.
Consistency. Nothing is both true and false.
Convergence. Everyone can agree.
Objectivity: Everyone can agree on something that's actually true
Except for consistency, none of these seem actually desirable as requirements.
Certainty: Don't need it, I'm fine with probabilities.
Completeness: I don't need everything to be either true or false, I just need everything to have a justifiable probability.
Consistency: Agree.
Convergence+Objectivity: No Universally Compelling Arguments
Hmm... I can understand this two different ways, and I'm not sure which one you mean.
- Induction doesn't justify "induction works" unless "induction works" is justified by something else, otherwise it's circular.
- Induction doesn't justify "induction works" unless "induction works" is correct, therefore, if it justifies it then it's correct (basically a corollary of what I wrote).
the sequence is there, called Slack and the Sabbath
It lacks: change is bad, choices are bad, complexity is bad, and choices are really bad.
I doubt I'll be in the headspace to be able to write that one any time soon
Fair enough. Thanks for responding :)
Yeah I agree with that. I like the latter two statements because they seem just as general, simple and everyday to me, while also being more correct.
'The grass is green' and 'The sky is blue' are pretty bad examples of obviously true statements (they're actually often false - the sky is dark at night and the grass is yellow-brown when dry).
'The sun is bright' and 'Water is wet' are better statements in the same style.
I think it's worth turning The Choices Sequence into an actual LW sequence.
Are you still planning to write about Moloch's Army? If you still don't know how to approach it, perhaps a dialogue could work?
I think saying he "mostly solved" it goes too far, even he says so. But I definitely agree he provided crucial insight for it. I think I also added a bit in this comment.
As soon as I finished with anthropics, I'll try to provide it
Awesome. I hope people pay attention.
Btw here are the posts I can find where he talks about this:
- Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom
- My Kind of Reflection
- Fundamental Doubts
- You Provably Can't Trust Yourself
And here he mentions it but doesn't talk primarily about it:
Yep, the purpose is providing the author with information, without making it too burdensome to strongvote, and without restricting when a strongvote is allowed.
Feature suggestion: unexplained strong downvotes have been something that bothered people for a long time, and requiring a comment to strongly downvote has been suggested several times before. I agree that this is too much to require, so I have a similar but different idea. When you strong upvote (both positive and negative), you'll have some popup with a few reasons to pick from for why you chose to strongly vote (A bit like the new reacts feature). For strong downvotes it may look like this:
- This post is overrated, This post is hazardous, This post is false, This post is below standards.
And for strong upvotes it may look like
- This post is underrated, this post is important, etc.
Choosing one of them will be required in order to strongvote (though both will have an 'other' option, so you don't have to pick a reason that isn't actually your reason). Those reasons will be shown anonymously either to the author or to everyone.
I saw your series and I'm happy you're working on it. Unfortunately I'm not well versed enough in the subject (or probability in general) to say what a satisfying solution would look like or what exactly are the problems and questions I would like to be addressed and answered. For the same reason I'm also not really able to evaluate your work. I wish it got more attention from people who are more well versed in it.
Reflective Reasoning is something Eliezer and others wrote a lot about. "Strage loop circularity" is my name for something Eliezer gestured at a few times, which he called "Strange loops through the meta level". In Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom he justifies using Induction to justify induction and Occam's razor to justify Occam's razor, and says that it seems to him like it should be possible to formalize something that allows you to make valid "circular" reasoning like this, but still prevents invalid circular reasoning. I share his intuition, but don't have the capability to solve the problem. But if it is solved then it solves the Münchhausen trilemma, which is quite an annoying thorn.
Yes, I think so! Thanks :)
here's another practical idea for a Manifold hack-a-thon: Bayesian Truth Serum. (...) it's not obvious that there's a good way to market-ize it
Self Resolving prediction markets are a marketization of Bayesian Truth Serum
Thanks for the reminder, I will :)
Well, yes and no. The Secret of Our Success was indeed one of the things I thought about when I wrote that some of this has been addressed. But a handful of blog posts on this one problem don't constitute a new level (a paradigm, if you wish). Most of his other posts that became canon don't really go out of Eliezer's paradigm, they just expand it incredibly well.
We will know we've fully entered the new level/paradigm when we have a new Canon that answers all of these questions (and probably a few more) to some degree of completeness (having a canon also points to the need to have a certain level of consensus and common knowledge). The new level of rationality will be as distinct from Eliezer's level as Eliezer's level was distinct from the Feynman-Sagen level.
I think the informational value of tradition, and the progress-conservation tension, is indeed where we came farthest, and we mostly just need to collect everything that was written and distill it so it can become part of a future canon. After that, I think we came farthest on having an improved understanding of biases, but there's still some distance to go.
Other than that, I think we're quite far from a satisfying answer to the other problems, and so we're quite far from fully entering the next level.
I don't remember exactly where, but Eliezer wrote about that view of Entropy in the Quantum Physics Sequence.
while probabilities can be subjective, the laws of probability, the rules governing how probability can be manipulated are immutable.
And he wrote about this view of probability in Probability is Subjectively Objective.
Heh, reading this after my dialogue with Lsusr, It seems most people have mistook this story to be about Bayesianism and Frequentism, when it's actually about Trolling.
In a way, I guess it worked? :P