tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.comments2024-01-17T00:34:15.686-08:00Seeking QuestionsJohn Wentworthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325384976320984888noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-43213699304326774362023-10-04T17:09:08.908-07:002023-10-04T17:09:08.908-07:00great piece (somehow randomly came about it). two ...great piece (somehow randomly came about it). two questions 1) have you read reza negarestani frontiers of manipulation? https://uberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Frontiers-of-Manipulation.pdf it's related to this problems (or rather devalues the importance of understanding internal structure 2) do you have any pieces you have written or could recommend that point back to any progress towards this topic in general?nilohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15863734895774498717noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-69980266389314860212021-12-23T01:22:01.569-08:002021-12-23T01:22:01.569-08:00A New Year's Eve celebration virtually offers ...A New Year's Eve celebration virtually offers you creative ideas and fun ways to ring in the New Year. Check out our list of fun <a href="https://www.sosparty.io/booster/activities/festivities/new-year-virtual-party-celebration" rel="nofollow"> Virtual New years eve games</a> and get the party started!SOS Boosterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13321567040494176848noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-42965694393774980942021-11-08T01:05:15.043-08:002021-11-08T01:05:15.043-08:00I just need to note that:
In Avengers: Infinity W...I just need to note that:<br /><br />In Avengers: Infinity War, the heroes make plans and execute them, several times. It doesn't work, but it *almost* does. And of course, Avengers: Endgame is literally structured as a heist.<br /><br />You're right in general of course. See also: <br /><br />https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VillainsActHeroesReact<br /><br />https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReedRichardsIsUselessFeepingCreaturehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11949875328488880491noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-31574434737902460172021-10-27T04:02:33.786-07:002021-10-27T04:02:33.786-07:00Scrap car removal has given an exceptional interne...Scrap car removal has given an exceptional internet offering a different choose for <a href="https://bit.ly/2ZonRC2" rel="nofollow">Sydney cash for cars</a> for a long period of time. Our central services gives an instant money offer to your used old car, Vans, SUVs, Utes, 4WDs, Bikes, Trucks, or business vehicle. Same Day <a href="https://bit.ly/3mkd0lG" rel="nofollow">Sell your used cars</a> easily with Sydney unwanted car removals. Sydney Autoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11831874964117446111noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-35792790131336609642021-10-08T22:53:30.256-07:002021-10-08T22:53:30.256-07:00Ezy Cash for Cars is predominant in the automobile...Ezy Cash for Cars is predominant in the automobile industry looking to buy scrap cars in Brisbane. We are offering <a href="https://ezycashforcars.com.au/cash-for-cars-sydney/" rel="nofollow"> top cash for cars</a>up to $19,999. our business motive is to give maximum cash without any regrets. Ezy Cash for Carshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09002087843450602138noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-63429419327297137062019-08-28T07:14:31.819-07:002019-08-28T07:14:31.819-07:00I look forward to analyzing the sequence of physic...I look forward to analyzing the sequence of physical forces that connect me wanting to tell someone something to keys being pressed on a keyboard to an email showing up in their inbox when I make a business decision.<br /><br />We don't have time to analyze entire chains so we make assumptions about chains that should be unbroken. Occasionally but inevitably we make wrong assumptions.erichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09804801409815465776noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-23348781137631881532019-08-28T02:55:04.146-07:002019-08-28T02:55:04.146-07:00*Why does one *want* happiness?*Why does one *want* happiness?Rohan Shahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00762444131320629043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-49062812498772424412019-08-28T02:53:15.136-07:002019-08-28T02:53:15.136-07:00Good write-up. But...,
It is not possible, in my ...Good write-up. But...,<br /><br />It is not possible, in my opinion, to trace back to the end, the cause of some action or event. <br /><br />Take for example, the human consumption story. What is the cause of all the material consumption? (Answers: happiness, comfort, standard of living, etc)<br /><br />Why does one happiness or those other things? (That gives pleasure)<br /><br />Why does one want to do whatever gives them pleasure? (Almost no answers or "because it's good for evolution or human existence")<br /><br />But why does one want to continue evolution or human existence? (No answer) <br /><br />If we ask "why" for long enough, then we find that the link is already broken?Rohan Shahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00762444131320629043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-55905861731218673452017-11-13T14:59:19.651-08:002017-11-13T14:59:19.651-08:00Fun is not a key decision factor when people go co...Fun is not a key decision factor when people go college-shopping. If it were, colleges would advertise their fun-ness a lot more explicitly, and there would be much better parties and much fewer exams.<br /><br />If our society decided that open source projects is a valid way of signaling, people will come up with much smoother and enjoyable processes to make it work. Think coworking spaces, giant hackathons, conventions, workshops, collab housing, etc etc. The process is painful because not enough people need to go through it, not the other way around.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01678126939632215119noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-51227122652434111892017-11-13T13:30:47.001-08:002017-11-13T13:30:47.001-08:00Yes college is mostly signalling. An IQ test is pr...Yes college is mostly signalling. An IQ test is probably a better estimator of intellectual capacity then a college degree. A work sample test is a better indicator for profession-specific skills. And one can probably devise suitable predictors for ambition&discipline. Yet the number of people going off to college is at an all time high. Part of that is indeed the mistaken idea that college makes one smart, while in fact it is the other way around, and there is some evidence [white people no longer consider college as 'required for success'] that we will see a reduction in US college enrolment in the future. Still as the cost of college is approaching absolutely absurd highs it still begs the question. Why do so many people go to college. I can name only one reason: college is fun. Working on an open source project is not - for the vast majority of people.<br />Also, good luck finding a partner working on Mozilla Firefox.Lee Wanghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07996131636554416364noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-84759613506704326272017-10-10T13:00:11.072-07:002017-10-10T13:00:11.072-07:00Also, I like this post! It's highly relevant t...Also, I like this post! It's highly relevant to me, and it does put some thoughts I've been thinking into words...Green Licoricehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15217757992512903330noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-60465838300496090402017-10-10T12:59:14.171-07:002017-10-10T12:59:14.171-07:00Personal blogs, podcasts, twitter convos, social m...Personal blogs, podcasts, twitter convos, social media presence, etc help scale up reputations, too! They're not necessarily online reviews, but they encourage interaction and have people displaying at least some version of themselves. People who promote their self brand are trying to promote themselves, and the ones who do so as honestly as possible do often succeed eventually through reputation based systems.<br /><br />At least, that's what the people at personal branding workshops say ;)Green Licoricehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15217757992512903330noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-46054501401624676122017-06-25T22:17:04.981-07:002017-06-25T22:17:04.981-07:00You didn't disprove summers' hypothesis, y...You didn't disprove summers' hypothesis, you just showed that it doesn't explain the entire gap. There are also sex differences in preferences (Smart women are less likely to be interested in CS than smart men).<br /><br />The means also aren't exactly equal. You only see equal means when the tests are pre-puberty or mostly verbal. On post-puberty non-verbal tests, like adult raven's progressive matrices scores, men do about half a standard deviation better than women.Xhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00529468338173030097noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-75292167554033931432017-06-05T09:10:50.923-07:002017-06-05T09:10:50.923-07:00FWIW, I'm not entirely convinced myself.
The ...FWIW, I'm not entirely convinced myself.<br /><br />The signalling framework is definitely strong - there's a reason it's so widely accepted, it's very hard to explain why people spend so much effort learning things they won't ever use without signalling.<br /><br />The bit at the end, that goods for signalling X will optimize for people with high X, is also strong. It's a theorem, even if I haven't bothered to cast it in the formal language of game theory.<br /><br />I'm not convinced that those pieces fully explain the Cambrian Explosion. I think it's plausible, and it's a good default theory, since it does not require any new hypotheses - it uses only the standard signalling framework. But I don't have the data to properly verify it. I would view it as a strong hypothesis at this point, but certainly not a closed case.John Wentworthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00325384976320984888noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-83705663362586857392017-06-05T05:14:30.970-07:002017-06-05T05:14:30.970-07:00I found your earlier posts on college costs very s...I found your earlier posts on college costs very strong but count me a little unconvinced on this one. Is it really true that the top students drive the curriculum? I'm sure that's true in some cases but is it really driving the Cambrian Explosion (nice phrase by the way)?<br /><br />So the number of different courses on offers have increased, but is this the same for different colleges, different disciplines?<br />Lee Wanghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07996131636554416364noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-87622029352589616772017-05-24T14:04:03.855-07:002017-05-24T14:04:03.855-07:00I didn't want to devote space it it in the pos...I didn't want to devote space it it in the post, but there's significant divergence between stuff Larry Summers actually said, and the various IQ-variance-gender-gap claims which have his name attached these days. Personally, I think people give the guy more crap than he deserves, but the naming has stuck.<br /><br />Thanks for bringing that up, it's an important point which I'm glad to have here.John Wentworthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00325384976320984888noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-4671946572470008732017-05-24T12:40:46.431-07:002017-05-24T12:40:46.431-07:00Hi just started reading your blog from the Slatest...Hi just started reading your blog from the Slatestarcodex. You got some great content!<br />One point tho, despite of what you might have heard Larry Summer's lecture was not that radical at all: he thought gender gaps (this is a loaded phrase incidentally) were due to a mixture of discrimination, differences in the variance, and differences in interests. <br />As a indication of how long the latter can be, on 'people versus things' men and women differ a whopping 1 SD[1].<br /><br />[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19883140Lee Wanghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07996131636554416364noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-10494789556885943392017-03-18T12:33:45.532-07:002017-03-18T12:33:45.532-07:00Very interesting post! I particularly liked the pa...Very interesting post! I particularly liked the parallel you draw between fundamental and applied sciences!<br />I would say applied sociology is politics! <br />It's true AI is applied maths/philosophy and is linked with computer science.<br /><br />I also wrote a hierarchy of science on my blog! You could check it out. It takes a different perspective than the traditional one, and follows up on Elon Musk's ideas (and others', of course) of the universe as undistinguishable from a simulation. Here is the link: https://maxandreblog.wordpress.com/2017/02/08/a-new-hierarchy-of-sciences/Maxandrehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05617587566793195268noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-83460871836067650892016-11-17T12:02:04.894-08:002016-11-17T12:02:04.894-08:00If you flip a coin until it comes up heads, then s...If you flip a coin until it comes up heads, then stop, that's a process which halts with probability 1. But it's logically possible to get tails forever - the process isn't logically certain to halt.<br /><br />So allowing H to halt with probability 1 potentially allows the use of probalistic methods with that sort of behavior.John Wentworthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00325384976320984888noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-65961125442156385812016-11-17T10:26:57.729-08:002016-11-17T10:26:57.729-08:00> I'll also weaken it slightly and say that...> I'll also weaken it slightly and say that H itself only needs to halt with probability 1, for all G, rather than logically certain halting.<br /><br />Sorry I misread this (hence the earlier deleted comment). What's the difference between something happening with probability 1, and something happening with logical certainty?Nebu Pookinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02727418735525940382noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-27551434415120743052016-11-17T10:25:44.418-08:002016-11-17T10:25:44.418-08:00This comment has been removed by the author.Nebu Pookinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02727418735525940382noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-5751610833558882632016-11-17T09:36:51.674-08:002016-11-17T09:36:51.674-08:00One of the core ideas of this post is that the usu...One of the core ideas of this post is that the usual decidability criteria is too strong. One goal is to come up with a more useful solution criteria, i.e. something which is tractable and can somehow handle the self-reference issues which made the original problem undecidable.<br /><br />So I don't want to nail down one criteria and say "this is it" just yet, because if that criteria also turns out to be intractable, then I'll still want to look for a new criteria. <br /><br />That said, here's my starting formulation. We have a Turing machine equipped with a read-only, one-way, no-lookahead supply of random bits (informally, this means H can get random bits which G does not know). We want a program H which takes another program G and outputs "yes" or "no"; without loss of generality, we'll assume G has no inputs.<br /><br />Each time G is run, it has a well-defined (but possibly uncomputable) probability of halting, which we'll call p_halt(G). H(G) has a well-defined (but also possible uncomputable) probability of outputting "yes", which we'll call p_yes(G). <br /><br />My first suggestion for a solution criteria is that p_halt(G) = p_yes(G) for all G. The question is whether a program H can be written which satisfies this criteria. I'll also weaken it slightly and say that H itself only needs to halt with probability 1, for all G, rather than logically certain halting.John Wentworthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00325384976320984888noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-8908813436273630522016-11-17T01:06:21.407-08:002016-11-17T01:06:21.407-08:00> Is this problem solvable?
Can you clarify wh...> Is this problem solvable?<br /><br />Can you clarify what it means for a probabilistic problem to be solvable? Are you asking, e.g., is there an optimal program H and if so what is it (and possibly, what is the probability that it will give the correct answer)? Or are you asking for an example of H that does better than chance? Or something else?<br /><br />Decidability is formally defined in terms of "deciding" whether a string is a member of a fixed language or not (or equivalently, determine whether something is an element of a set). A problem is undecidable specifically if one cannot construct a Turing machine which answers this question correctly for all possible strings. I'm not aware of a standard formulation of this where you can be probabilistically be right or wrong about this membership question, so you'll probably have to explicitly define what that means.Nebu Pookinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02727418735525940382noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-9730244680547982502016-04-01T09:09:39.184-07:002016-04-01T09:09:39.184-07:00Interesting... This signalling can apply to things...Interesting... This signalling can apply to things other than cars. I hadn't thought of it with cars before, just applied to other realms (clothes, music, colleges, religious groups, computer choice, etc.) <br />Green Licoricehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15217757992512903330noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3971033849266349559.post-6076794923011684542015-11-08T20:11:01.481-08:002015-11-08T20:11:01.481-08:00I really like the comparison to AI terms to try to...I really like the comparison to AI terms to try to understand this from the outside. But I do wonder about "reflective equilibrium" precisely... if you were to tell many religious people they are in a reflective equilibrium, they would likely tell you that they are not done changing who they are, but they have a strong sense of the person they want to become. It may also help that their sense of purpose is externally focused- they believe that they have not "decided" who they want to be, but instead they have "found" who they should be.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06251068906169175824noreply@blogger.com