Many critics of Age of Em are critics of social science; they suggest that even though we might be able to use today’s physics or computer science to guess at futures, social science is far less useful.
Economics. Yah I'll but that. It is the projections about em socialization, values and other sociology/psychology style assumptions that I am concerned about.
I expect economics to describe extraterrestials when we meet them. I don't expect them to pair bond, engage in human social structures or leisure. While small molecule drugs won't totally undo those inclinations it does alter relative the subtle balances that dictate whether we are social or anti-social, looking for long term or short term mate investment etc.. And with simulations we can do way better than small molecule drugs.
There are frequently criticisms of the social sciences out of hand, because it's "not empirical enough". It's a part of the Humanities vs. Science false dichotomy, which assumes that we can only look at problems in one way, and that way is Science. But what we have here are different tools for different needs, and we need to be confident with all of them to properly tackle a complex problem like that described in the article.
I have a friend who has an even stricter view on this: "The Science part is easy because the data is what it is. You need the Humanities for the hard part- to think about what the data means, and what we should do as a result."
Sociological reseach on interaction in social networks will not be applicaple to this Research stream, but just the fact they use this taxonomy is interesting
I had a client once, who was told that if he ever injected himself in the leg again, he would lose his leg. What was the first thing he did, when he was released from hospital?
How can a machine be lesbian? This is surely a ridiculous idea - a confusion of logical types, if you will. This story about Ems and their inevitability seems to be based on the Laws of Economics which themselves seem to be based on a few assumptions about how agents behave: self-interest, competition and prices determine well everything. Thus Ems are inevitable - once the are "conceived". Economics prides itself in explaining lots of phenomena in lots of fields. But what happens if the agents being explained are no longer homogeneous? Does self-interest, competition and prices still work? The concept of Ems (the Machine / the Computer) is such a bastardization of categories that I see no reason to believe that they will show self-interest and thus Robin's scenario is just an exercise in rationality. Has an economist ever tried to talk with an unhappy woman who may or may not be lesbian, who may or may not be lots of things..... If they had, then they would no longer believe in the Laws of Anything.
My critique is that he was impressionistic rather than analytical in his showing that skepticism about social science grounds much criticism of his em hypothesis. I wouldn't expect him to take up the actual defense of social science in the same piece.
WEIRDness and the replication crisis aren't directly related to Hansons thesis, which is that a general skepticism about social science underlies much automatic rejection of his conclusions.
Yes, the human brain didn't evolve to be easy to *subtly* modify.
However, you predict a huge number of em-instances and admit the motivation and productivity of these instances are hugely important giving a huge economic incentive to develop modification techniques. These techniques can be developed by experimenting on ems (or even just em-pieces) run at high rates of speed.
Moreover, it is relatively easy to non-subtly modify the brain and a variety of cultures have discovered that certain drug/job pairings can enhance productivity (chewing coca leaves). Erdos famously did all his math on amphetamines (medical dose not crystal). Of course these drugs face a number of drawbacks like tolerance, health effects and over use by the individual all of which disappear in the em-setting where there are no physical bodies, down-regulation of various neural chemicals can simply be reset and external software can limit the modification to beneficial levels.
Or what about modifications that just blocked oxytocin responses. Scientists can already modify whether voles form lasting pair bonds by manipulating such chemicals. Why not eliminate this (or cause workers to fall in love with their boss or their company) to minimize productivity losses.
So even not taking into account the fact that em-modifications wouldn't have to be brute force chemical additions much less cross the BBB I'm confident that virtually every em will be on the equivalent of some kind of super drug with minimal side effects. Yet, even relatively mild drug use, even the kind which boosts productivity can radically change how we socialize and what we react to merely by adjusting the balances of the various brain mechanisms normally at play in these areas.
I guess I would like to see a lot more citations in this post. The fact that you failed to address either the replication crisis or WEIRDness, and chose instead to make forceful and unsupported blanked statements, undermined a lot of my faith in you as someone who can do a good job of representing the state of the debate on a topic.
You're falling prey to the same old biases you regularly see in others. In this case, it's about defending your status as the author of a book you're trying to get people to buy. (Maybe we can design some clever new publishing institution to solve this incentives problem? :P)
Since this post isn't actually about social science (it's really about defending your status), I'll help you out. All you have to tell people is that in forecasting, there's a precision tradeoff: you can keep your error bounds wide and constantly be talking in fuzzy generalities, or you can keep your error bounds narrow and try to make a point estimate of what one particular scenario near the center of the distribution might look like. Say that you chose to try to make a point estimate because it's more engaging for readers, and because it's easier to work out all the ramifications of a single scenario (that's basically your specialty as an economist). Then say that you used the best social science available at the time you wrote your book to inform your point estimate. This excuse future-proofs you against arbitrarily bad replication crises.
I don't remember how you addressed this in the book but - surely lesbian humans earning higher wages just wouldn't translate into lesbian ems earning higher wages, because of the crucial point that all ems earn roughly the same wage?
Not sure--I'd have to look in to the base rate of psychology research replication and the sample size and methodology of that particular study. Also, my prior is that lesbians earn more because they have children much less frequently, and children are bad for wages. I will say that I don't put much weight on individual studies: http://slatestarcodex.com/2...
Distinguish a topic and how well insights on it would generalize from researchers and how sloppy they are. One can do sloppy research on a topic that generalizes very well. I've tried to stick to less sloppy work, and to flag my uncertainty. I flag the guess about lesbians as a weak guess.
You don't at all know that "WEIRDness will be nothing compared to the differences between meat humans and ems." You'd have to apply standard theory to make a reasonable guess on that.
Economics. Yah I'll but that. It is the projections about em socialization, values and other sociology/psychology style assumptions that I am concerned about.
I expect economics to describe extraterrestials when we meet them. I don't expect them to pair bond, engage in human social structures or leisure. While small molecule drugs won't totally undo those inclinations it does alter relative the subtle balances that dictate whether we are social or anti-social, looking for long term or short term mate investment etc.. And with simulations we can do way better than small molecule drugs.
But I doubt this will convince you.
There are frequently criticisms of the social sciences out of hand, because it's "not empirical enough". It's a part of the Humanities vs. Science false dichotomy, which assumes that we can only look at problems in one way, and that way is Science. But what we have here are different tools for different needs, and we need to be confident with all of them to properly tackle a complex problem like that described in the article.
I have a friend who has an even stricter view on this: "The Science part is easy because the data is what it is. You need the Humanities for the hard part- to think about what the data means, and what we should do as a result."
A bit of topic - but interesting read - molecular sociology -http://www.nature.com/natur...
Sociological reseach on interaction in social networks will not be applicaple to this Research stream, but just the fact they use this taxonomy is interesting
I had a client once, who was told that if he ever injected himself in the leg again, he would lose his leg. What was the first thing he did, when he was released from hospital?
How can a machine be lesbian? This is surely a ridiculous idea - a confusion of logical types, if you will. This story about Ems and their inevitability seems to be based on the Laws of Economics which themselves seem to be based on a few assumptions about how agents behave: self-interest, competition and prices determine well everything. Thus Ems are inevitable - once the are "conceived". Economics prides itself in explaining lots of phenomena in lots of fields. But what happens if the agents being explained are no longer homogeneous? Does self-interest, competition and prices still work? The concept of Ems (the Machine / the Computer) is such a bastardization of categories that I see no reason to believe that they will show self-interest and thus Robin's scenario is just an exercise in rationality. Has an economist ever tried to talk with an unhappy woman who may or may not be lesbian, who may or may not be lots of things..... If they had, then they would no longer believe in the Laws of Anything.
Much of economics is robust enough to describe people who are chewing cocoa, taking amphetamines, or castrated.
My critique is that he was impressionistic rather than analytical in his showing that skepticism about social science grounds much criticism of his em hypothesis. I wouldn't expect him to take up the actual defense of social science in the same piece.
Well he also says that skepticism is unjustified. I argue that it is in fact justified to an extent.
WEIRDness and the replication crisis aren't directly related to Hansons thesis, which is that a general skepticism about social science underlies much automatic rejection of his conclusions.
Yes, the human brain didn't evolve to be easy to *subtly* modify.
However, you predict a huge number of em-instances and admit the motivation and productivity of these instances are hugely important giving a huge economic incentive to develop modification techniques. These techniques can be developed by experimenting on ems (or even just em-pieces) run at high rates of speed.
Moreover, it is relatively easy to non-subtly modify the brain and a variety of cultures have discovered that certain drug/job pairings can enhance productivity (chewing coca leaves). Erdos famously did all his math on amphetamines (medical dose not crystal). Of course these drugs face a number of drawbacks like tolerance, health effects and over use by the individual all of which disappear in the em-setting where there are no physical bodies, down-regulation of various neural chemicals can simply be reset and external software can limit the modification to beneficial levels.
Or what about modifications that just blocked oxytocin responses. Scientists can already modify whether voles form lasting pair bonds by manipulating such chemicals. Why not eliminate this (or cause workers to fall in love with their boss or their company) to minimize productivity losses.
So even not taking into account the fact that em-modifications wouldn't have to be brute force chemical additions much less cross the BBB I'm confident that virtually every em will be on the equivalent of some kind of super drug with minimal side effects. Yet, even relatively mild drug use, even the kind which boosts productivity can radically change how we socialize and what we react to merely by adjusting the balances of the various brain mechanisms normally at play in these areas.
I draw inferences about the fraction of ems who are gay and lesbian, not about their wages.
I guess I would like to see a lot more citations in this post. The fact that you failed to address either the replication crisis or WEIRDness, and chose instead to make forceful and unsupported blanked statements, undermined a lot of my faith in you as someone who can do a good job of representing the state of the debate on a topic.
You're falling prey to the same old biases you regularly see in others. In this case, it's about defending your status as the author of a book you're trying to get people to buy. (Maybe we can design some clever new publishing institution to solve this incentives problem? :P)
Since this post isn't actually about social science (it's really about defending your status), I'll help you out. All you have to tell people is that in forecasting, there's a precision tradeoff: you can keep your error bounds wide and constantly be talking in fuzzy generalities, or you can keep your error bounds narrow and try to make a point estimate of what one particular scenario near the center of the distribution might look like. Say that you chose to try to make a point estimate because it's more engaging for readers, and because it's easier to work out all the ramifications of a single scenario (that's basically your specialty as an economist). Then say that you used the best social science available at the time you wrote your book to inform your point estimate. This excuse future-proofs you against arbitrarily bad replication crises.
I don't remember how you addressed this in the book but - surely lesbian humans earning higher wages just wouldn't translate into lesbian ems earning higher wages, because of the crucial point that all ems earn roughly the same wage?
Not sure--I'd have to look in to the base rate of psychology research replication and the sample size and methodology of that particular study. Also, my prior is that lesbians earn more because they have children much less frequently, and children are bad for wages. I will say that I don't put much weight on individual studies: http://slatestarcodex.com/2...
What odds would you give that the apparent higher wages for lesbians is actually an error, and they actually have lower wages?
Distinguish a topic and how well insights on it would generalize from researchers and how sloppy they are. One can do sloppy research on a topic that generalizes very well. I've tried to stick to less sloppy work, and to flag my uncertainty. I flag the guess about lesbians as a weak guess.
You don't at all know that "WEIRDness will be nothing compared to the differences between meat humans and ems." You'd have to apply standard theory to make a reasonable guess on that.