Comments on: Open Thread http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/07/open-thread-11.html Overcoming Bias is economist Robin Hanson’s blog, on honesty, signaling, disagreement, forecasting, and the far future. Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:21:13 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 By: Eliezer Yudkowsky http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427049 Eliezer Yudkowsky Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:46:00 +0000 http://prod.ob.trike.com.au/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427049 <p>Fixed.</p> Fixed.

]]> By: retired urologist http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427048 retired urologist Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:46:00 +0000 http://prod.ob.trike.com.au/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427048 <p>Talk about strange bias! In reviewing the medical topics, I came across <a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/12/the-best-exerci.html" rel="nofollow">this</a> post yesterday. Thinking it under-discussed, and under-documented, and since it was in my sub-specialty professional field, I spent three hours putting together a well-documented commentary, hoping to generate more discussion. I'm new to blogs; a participant only since I retired. Who knew there was such a thing as *too much documentation*? Since I learned only recently how to make a hyperlink in a comment, I painstakingly constructed a link to references for each point discussed, as evidence-based writing is want to do. Well, apparently the TypePad software counts the number of hyperlinks in a comment, and if beyond some unmentioned number, screens out the comment as spam. My 3 hours of work is gone, and I have no copy. I can't even re-post it in my own <a href="http://drchip.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow">blog</a>. What's an old sex specialist to do?</p> Talk about strange bias! In reviewing the medical topics, I came across this post yesterday. Thinking it under-discussed, and under-documented, and since it was in my sub-specialty professional field, I spent three hours putting together a well-documented commentary, hoping to generate more discussion. I’m new to blogs; a participant only since I retired. Who knew there was such a thing as *too much documentation*? Since I learned only recently how to make a hyperlink in a comment, I painstakingly constructed a link to references for each point discussed, as evidence-based writing is want to do. Well, apparently the TypePad software counts the number of hyperlinks in a comment, and if beyond some unmentioned number, screens out the comment as spam. My 3 hours of work is gone, and I have no copy. I can’t even re-post it in my own blog. What’s an old sex specialist to do?

]]> By: Hopefully Anonymous http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427047 Hopefully Anonymous Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:16:00 +0000 http://prod.ob.trike.com.au/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427047 <p>Fart spray effects moral judgment.</p> <p>http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/2008/07/fart_spray_and_disgust_more_ge.php#more</p> Fart spray effects moral judgment.

http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/2008/07/fart_spray_and_disgust_more_ge.php#more

]]> By: Hopefully Anonymous http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427046 Hopefully Anonymous Sun, 20 Jul 2008 05:50:00 +0000 http://prod.ob.trike.com.au/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427046 <p>Robin and Eliezer,<br> It seems like you're keeping the open thread beyond an inconvenience barrier for 3 out of 4 weeks?</p> Robin and Eliezer,
It seems like you’re keeping the open thread beyond an inconvenience barrier for 3 out of 4 weeks?

]]> By: Hopefully Anonymous http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427045 Hopefully Anonymous Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:01:00 +0000 http://prod.ob.trike.com.au/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427045 <p>Extraordinarily good writing and willingness to use simple equations (something rarely seen in American papers) in this piece in an indian newspaper on the genetics of altruism:</p> <p>http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lifestyle/Spirituality/Mind_over_Matter/Mind_Set_Morality_is_natural/articleshow/3227882.cms</p> Extraordinarily good writing and willingness to use simple equations (something rarely seen in American papers) in this piece in an indian newspaper on the genetics of altruism:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lifestyle/Spirituality/Mind_over_Matter/Mind_Set_Morality_is_natural/articleshow/3227882.cms

]]> By: Andy Wood http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427044 Andy Wood Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:39:00 +0000 http://prod.ob.trike.com.au/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427044 <p>I thought this would be a good place to ask this. Does anybody know of a named problem or class of problems where: 1) There is a group of people, each of whom has the ability to, for example, electrically shock the rest of the group without shocking themselves. 2) If nobody presses their shock button, nobody gets shocked. However, 3) Somebody presses their button, 4) prompting others to endlessly retaliate in order to shock the others into NOT pressing their buttons. And each time someone shocks the group, someone else feels they have to have the last word. If the group could simultaneously cooperate, everyone would be fine.</p> <p>Please, I'm not asking for a solution to the problem, reasons why it isn't a coherent problem, or any other musing on the topic. I'm simply asking if anybody here can point me to a known problem that involves this kind of simulataneous cooperation vs. having the last word. Thanks!</p> I thought this would be a good place to ask this. Does anybody know of a named problem or class of problems where: 1) There is a group of people, each of whom has the ability to, for example, electrically shock the rest of the group without shocking themselves. 2) If nobody presses their shock button, nobody gets shocked. However, 3) Somebody presses their button, 4) prompting others to endlessly retaliate in order to shock the others into NOT pressing their buttons. And each time someone shocks the group, someone else feels they have to have the last word. If the group could simultaneously cooperate, everyone would be fine.

Please, I’m not asking for a solution to the problem, reasons why it isn’t a coherent problem, or any other musing on the topic. I’m simply asking if anybody here can point me to a known problem that involves this kind of simulataneous cooperation vs. having the last word. Thanks!

]]> By: mitchell porter http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427043 mitchell porter Sun, 13 Jul 2008 03:51:00 +0000 http://prod.ob.trike.com.au/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427043 <p>HA, I had to hypothesize about your assumptions to motivate what you were saying. Your life and memories do not just consist of the few moments during which you wondered "am I a Boltzmann brain?", they stretch long before and long after that moment, and so a theory of what you are that only accounts for that moment (and a few others on either side of it) is simply not tenable, unless you have some odd view such as the one I speculatively attributed to you. </p> <p>But enough. I am going to do something crude and ostentatious and announce a six-month vow of silence, specifically with respect to commenting here, and starting right now. I'll break it if absolutely necessary, but meanwhile I'll rely on the good old social emotions to make me think twice about breaking it. The basic reason is that despite all the intelligence gathered here, the final court of appeal in all matters is invariably some form of mathematical naturalism, and since that cannot be the final word on the nature of reality, that establishes a limit to how deep the discussions will ever go. Whenever "metaphysical" concepts like time, consciousness, existence come up, the instinct is to define them in terms which will allow questions about them to be answered by existing bodies of theory, and in general that requires that they be defined away, or "ontologically flattened" as I sometimes put it. Of course such an approach is not unique to this blog; it's symptomatic of where scientific culture in general is at. We know how to think rigorously about some things, we don't know how to think rigorously about others, and so the second sort of thing is either shoehorned into the form of the first, or it's denied away entirely. The path forward must involve returning to raw experience and rethinking the mathematical-physical ontology from the ground up, in a way that denies nothing that's actually there. So, goodbye until January 2009, I guess! </p> HA, I had to hypothesize about your assumptions to motivate what you were saying. Your life and memories do not just consist of the few moments during which you wondered “am I a Boltzmann brain?”, they stretch long before and long after that moment, and so a theory of what you are that only accounts for that moment (and a few others on either side of it) is simply not tenable, unless you have some odd view such as the one I speculatively attributed to you.

But enough. I am going to do something crude and ostentatious and announce a six-month vow of silence, specifically with respect to commenting here, and starting right now. I’ll break it if absolutely necessary, but meanwhile I’ll rely on the good old social emotions to make me think twice about breaking it. The basic reason is that despite all the intelligence gathered here, the final court of appeal in all matters is invariably some form of mathematical naturalism, and since that cannot be the final word on the nature of reality, that establishes a limit to how deep the discussions will ever go. Whenever “metaphysical” concepts like time, consciousness, existence come up, the instinct is to define them in terms which will allow questions about them to be answered by existing bodies of theory, and in general that requires that they be defined away, or “ontologically flattened” as I sometimes put it. Of course such an approach is not unique to this blog; it’s symptomatic of where scientific culture in general is at. We know how to think rigorously about some things, we don’t know how to think rigorously about others, and so the second sort of thing is either shoehorned into the form of the first, or it’s denied away entirely. The path forward must involve returning to raw experience and rethinking the mathematical-physical ontology from the ground up, in a way that denies nothing that’s actually there. So, goodbye until January 2009, I guess!

]]> By: Douglas Knight http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427042 Douglas Knight Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:05:00 +0000 http://prod.ob.trike.com.au/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427042 <p>We shouldn't waste resources worrying about the possibility that we'll be dead in a minute, because there's nothing we can do about it. We (I, really) won't "fluctuate" out of existence, but instead would be brains in vacuum, with no ability to manipulate the environment and no negentropy to exploit. Not brains, really, something even smaller, but minimally capable of supporting an experience.</p> We shouldn’t waste resources worrying about the possibility that we’ll be dead in a minute, because there’s nothing we can do about it. We (I, really) won’t “fluctuate” out of existence, but instead would be brains in vacuum, with no ability to manipulate the environment and no negentropy to exploit. Not brains, really, something even smaller, but minimally capable of supporting an experience.

]]> By: Michael Bone http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427041 Michael Bone Sat, 12 Jul 2008 20:22:00 +0000 http://prod.ob.trike.com.au/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427041 <p>I was recently contemplating Eliezer Yudkowsky's conception of mindspace (where human minds are a very small portion of all possible minds), and its practical application in a future cybernetic/bioengineered/AI inundated society. </p> <p>An unfortunate quality of the dialectic surrounding the future of intelligence is its almost single-minded focus on power. While, this is an understandable fixation considering the benefits of power, and its relation to the much awaited milestone of human-level AI, it overlooks the lessons that both nature and history have to teach: evolution teaches us that it’s not the strongest/biggest/fastest/(insert here)est that survives, but the best adapted to a specific niche, and all the successful practical applications in AI have been in very specific niches. </p> <p>We are on the brink of an intelligence explosion, but not one where only processing power will take center stage. The coming paradigm shift will instead be analogous to the Cambrian explosion, where diversity joins power. </p> <p>The mastery of intelligence will allow its artificers to shape it to fit any need or want. But what needs, what wants? How will people adapt? How will society adapt? Will society adapt?</p> <p>Since my knowledge of sociology and psychology is limited, I will leave this seed of a thought to grow in more fertile minds.<br></p> I was recently contemplating Eliezer Yudkowsky’s conception of mindspace (where human minds are a very small portion of all possible minds), and its practical application in a future cybernetic/bioengineered/AI inundated society.

An unfortunate quality of the dialectic surrounding the future of intelligence is its almost single-minded focus on power. While, this is an understandable fixation considering the benefits of power, and its relation to the much awaited milestone of human-level AI, it overlooks the lessons that both nature and history have to teach: evolution teaches us that it’s not the strongest/biggest/fastest/(insert here)est that survives, but the best adapted to a specific niche, and all the successful practical applications in AI have been in very specific niches.

We are on the brink of an intelligence explosion, but not one where only processing power will take center stage. The coming paradigm shift will instead be analogous to the Cambrian explosion, where diversity joins power.

The mastery of intelligence will allow its artificers to shape it to fit any need or want. But what needs, what wants? How will people adapt? How will society adapt? Will society adapt?

Since my knowledge of sociology and psychology is limited, I will leave this seed of a thought to grow in more fertile minds.

]]> By: Hopefully Anonymous http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427040 Hopefully Anonymous Sat, 12 Jul 2008 18:57:00 +0000 http://prod.ob.trike.com.au/2008/07/open-thread-11.html#comment-427040 <p>Douglas, I don't follow the logic "If we're BB then our memories are fake and we'll instantly fluctuate out of existence, therefore we should believe that we're not BB."</p> Douglas, I don’t follow the logic “If we’re BB then our memories are fake and we’ll instantly fluctuate out of existence, therefore we should believe that we’re not BB.”

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