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Comment author: IlyaShpitser 14 May 2015 08:16:50AM *  3 points [-]

Ok, but before we turn everything upside down, can we think a little about why academia ended up being the way it is? Hanson had some good status-based explanations about the academic career trajectory.


If you haven't done cutting edge stuff, the worry is you don't know what you are talking about yet, and shouldn't be a public-facing part of science.


Also there are well-known popularizers who aren't significant academics, e.g. Bill Nye. Bill Nye did some engineering stuff, though.

Comment author: komponisto 15 May 2015 05:48:40AM -1 points [-]

Ok, but before we turn everything upside down, can we think a little about why academia ended up being the way it is?

Why do you assume I haven't?

Stop expecting short inferential distances!

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 13 May 2015 11:23:39PM 6 points [-]

LW, Eliezer, etc, can't stay on the "crank" level, not playing by the rules, publishing books and no papers.

Why not? What's stopping them?

One of the rules is that beginning academics must not publish work like this. They have to publish cutting edge research for a long time before they are allowed to synthesize or popularize.

Comment author: komponisto 14 May 2015 07:53:59AM *  2 points [-]

[Beginning academics] have to publish cutting edge research for a long time before they are allowed to synthesize or popularize.

Indeed, and I think a case can be made that this is exactly backwards (if we must have such "rules" at all).

Comment author: dxu 03 April 2015 03:40:05PM *  0 points [-]

If I'm following, you're suggesting that the distinction being introduced here is between two different set of cognitive processes, one of which (call it A) is understood as somehow more natural or innate or intrinsic to the human mind than the other (call it B), and creative thinking is part of B.

No, I'm not suggesting that. That may be what Okeymaker is suggesting; I'm not quite clear on his/her distinction either. What I was originally addressing, however, was komponisto's assertion that "high IQ" is merely "high processing speed and copious amounts of RAM", which I denied, pointing out that "high processing speed and copious amounts of RAM" alone would surely not have been enough to invent calculus, and that "creative thinking" (whatever that means) is required as well. In essence, I was arguing that "high IQ" should be defined as more than simply "high processing speed and copious amounts of RAM", but should include some tertiary or possibly even quaternary component to account for thinking of the sort Newton must have performed to invent calculus. This suggested definition of IQ seems more reasonable to me; after all, if IQ were simply defined as "high processing speeed and copious amounts of RAM", I doubt researchers would have had so much trouble testing for it. Furthermore, it's difficult to imagine tests like Raven's Progressive Matrices (which are often used in IQ testing) being completed by dint of sheer processing speed and RAM.

Note that the above paragraph contains no mention of the words "natural", "innate", or any synonyms. The distinction between "natural" thinking and "synthetic" (I guess that would be the word? I was trying to find a good antonym for "natural") thinking was not what I was trying to get at with my original comment; indeed, I suspect that the concept of such a distinction may not even be coherent. Furthermore, conditional on such a distinction existing, I would not sort "creative thinking" into the "synthetic" category of thinking; as I noted in my original comment, no one taught Newton the algorithm he used to invent calculus. It was probably opaque even to his own conscious introspection, probably taking the form of a brilliant flash of insight or something like that, after which he just "knew" the answer, without knowing how he "knew". This sort of thinking, I would say, is so obviously spontaneous and untaught that I would not hesitate to classify it as "natural"--if, that is, the concept is indeed coherent.

It sounds as though you may be confused because you have been considering Okeymaker's and my positions to be one and the same. In light of this, I think I should clarify that I simply offered my comment as a potential explanation of what Okeymaker meant by "creative thinking"; no insight was meant to be offered on his/her distinction between "natural" thinking and "synthetic" thinking.

Comment author: komponisto 27 April 2015 07:52:04PM *  0 points [-]

What I was originally addressing, however, was komponisto's assertion that "high IQ" is merely "high processing speed and copious amounts of RAM", which I denied, pointing out that "high processing speed and copious amounts of RAM" alone would surely not have been enough to invent calculus,

This shows that you didn't understand what I was arguing, because you are in fact agreeing with me.

The structure of my argument was:

(1) People say that high IQ is the reason Newton invented calculus.

(2) However, high IQ is just high processing speed and copious amounts of RAM.

(3) High processing speed and copious amounts of RAM don't themselves suffice to invent calculus.

(4) Therefore, "high IQ" is not a good explanation of why Newton invented calculus.

Comment author: Desrtopa 03 April 2015 05:41:54AM 0 points [-]

There's all sorts of complicated details that are completely missing from the US coverage of the trials, which make the prosecution's position much more understandable. Perhaps the prosecution did not have sufficient evidence, but neither did the prosecution come up with some batshit insane theory out of the blue for no reason when they had everything explained with Guede.

Komponisto is Italian and translated documents from the prosecution for the benefit of the community.

Comment author: komponisto 05 April 2015 12:28:15AM 1 point [-]

Komponisto is Italian and translated documents from the prosecution for the benefit of the community.

I'm not Italian, just a polyglot.

Comment author: Izeinwinter 29 March 2015 06:07:53AM 3 points [-]

.. The thing that puzzles me here is why Knox was ever prosecuted at all. The prosecution had Guede. Who left his fingerprints all over the scene, fled the country, had a history of burglary and knives and changed his story repeatedly. That's a pretty simple and very solid case. Why the heck the prosecution insisted on trying to pin the crime on two more people who could have no plausible reason at all for conspiring with him is just inexplicable to me. I mean, traces of dna from people who lived in the apartment? Wtf? All that proves is that they indeed, lived there.

Comment author: komponisto 29 March 2015 07:56:20PM 8 points [-]

The thing that puzzles me here is why Knox was ever prosecuted at all. The prosecution had Guede.

The answer is simple and banal: they didn't get Guede until after they had already decided Knox and Sollecito were guilty. Not prosecuting Knox and Sollecito would have required them not only revise to previous beliefs in which they had become psychologically invested, but also to retract previous public pronouncements -- in short, to admit they had been wrong.

From the inside of their minds, no doubt, Knox and Sollecito just felt so suspicious, in the early days of the case before the physical evidence came in and they were relying on behavior to form hypotheses . It's also likely that they were irrationally angry at Knox because of the false implication of Patrick Lumumba that they coerced out of her, and that this anger and frustration at the failure of their own hypothesis morphed into a sense that Knox was an evil vixen.

Comment author: komponisto 25 March 2015 01:34:33AM *  1 point [-]

We're heading into the last few hours to make predictions on the outcome of the latest round of the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case. I've made mine. See also here (and, for that matter, the post and other comments).

The main sources of uncertainty are the general unpredictability of Italian Supreme Court decisions (as demonstrated in the nigh-inexplicable -- at least on naïve theories of how the system should work -- overturning of the acquittal by the Supreme Court two years ago), the fact that the panel that hears the case tomorrow won't actually be the same one as the one that heard it the first time, the fact that a juror in last year's retrial has come out expressing doubts about the case in the Italian press recently, and the fact that Knox and Sollecito do, in fact, have a pretty good case (even if their case was better at the previous levels of trial).

Of course, these factors aren't independent by any means, and I think they are dominated by the inertia of the previous verdicts. But, I don't dare put my confidence at more than about 60%.

Comment author: grouchymusicologist 21 February 2015 05:46:59PM 6 points [-]

I didn't have anything really radical in mind. I think it's pretty clear that there's a long-term trend toward high-level music-making relying on notation to a decreasing extent. I have a number of friends who are professional composers, and some of them use notation to write for instruments, while others use electronics and largely don't use notation at all. (The latter group, who compose for video games, movies, etc., are the ones who actually make money at it, so I'm by no means just talking about avant-garde electronic music.) A lot of commercial composers who would have been using paper and pencil 30 years ago are using Logic or Digital Performer today.

The other factor, of course, is that notated genres of music ("classical" music and its descendants, and some others) are increasingly marginal in Western culture. This trend is often way overblown, but is clearly visible at the timescale of decades or longer.

What I certainly don't mean to suggest is that individuals who use notation in our musical lives, like you or me, will stop using it. It'll be a cohort replacement effect, and no doubt a very gradual one. Nor do I think that music notation will entirely go away at some foreseeable point in the future. But reading and using it will slowly become a more specialized skill. My impression, though I don't have a reference for this and could be completely wrong, that the ability of American adults (not pro musicians) to read music notation with some fluency has hugely declined over the last half-century.

All this is very much the framing argument of Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music, with its much-criticized focus on what he calls the "literate [his needlessly inflammatory term for 'notated'] traditions" of music. Within that frame, he casts the present day as essentially an "end-of-history" moment.

Correct me where I'm wrong here! I'm not a specialist in these issues.

Let me add that, like you, I absolutely love music notation, borderline fetishize it, and say all this with more than a trace of a Luddite's sadness.

Comment author: komponisto 21 February 2015 07:41:40PM 2 points [-]

Nor do I think that music notation will entirely go away at some foreseeable point in the future. But reading and using it will slowly become a more specialized skill

That I find more believable; but specialization is probably the wave of the future in general. I'm much more bothered by the prospect of interesting things dying out completely than that of their being "restricted" to a (possibly vibrant and vigorous) subculture. (These days I tend to think that most of "real" life takes place in subcultures or smallish communities -- maybe even cults! -- anyway.)

My impression...that the ability of American adults (not pro musicians) to read music notation with some fluency has hugely declined over the last half-century

I don't myself have enough data to confirm or deny this (I'm not a specialist in such topics either), but one should make sure to take into account the rest of the world: I have the impression, for example, that the Western art music tradition is currently in ascendance in China.

(I also suspect in general that people's impressions of what past populations were like are biased toward reflecting the elites of past populations, about which information tends to be more readily and reliably transmitted, which they then compare to a more general cross-section of the current population visible to them.)

Comment author: grouchymusicologist 20 February 2015 10:55:11PM *  15 points [-]

Good post and I'll chime in if you don't mind. I teach this stuff for a living and even highly skilled musicians struggle with it in various ways (myself emphatically included).

The main thing I want to say is that there's a reason why essentially all music education consists of many years of rote learning. Obviously, that rote learning works better if it's guided in appropriate directions, but I really don't know of any alternative to what you describe when you say "an orders-of-magnitude-less-efficient mechanism for memorizing note-to-note mappings for every note and every pair of keys." I hate to say it, but ... yep. [EDIT: eh, let me qualify that a bit. See point (A) below.]

Sight-transposition (i.e. sight-reading plus on-the-fly transposition) is a ninja-level skill. Some instrumentalists (usually those who play non-concert-pitch instruments) can do it reasonably well for at least some transposition intervals, and a few people like professional vocal accompanists and church organists need to be able to do it fluently as an expected part of their job. But outside of those folks, even professional musicians rarely have that facility.

Here's something that directly supports your point at (D). As you know, pitch intervals in tonal theory are given names that break arithmetic—a second plus a fourth is a fifth, even though 2+4≠5. A certain well-known music theorist often expresses the view that this blatantly illogical convention is almost entirely responsible for the popular perception that music theory is a really, really difficult subject. I think this exaggerates things, but he's got a point. However, most musicians know those interval names really well and have never thought much about how stupid they are, and so then high-level music theory becomes opaque to skilled musicians because we start by renaming intervals correctly (i.e. a second is diatonic interval 1, and you can add them like normal numbers).

In the case of the frustrating conventions of staff notation, there are historical reasons going back a millennium why we write pitches like that. Various reforms have been proposed, but path-dependency basically makes it impossible that any of them would ever be adopted. Far more likely (and well underway for decades now) is that musicians will stop using notation altogether.

Just to briefly answer your other questions with my personal views:

(A) Personally yes, I have all the note-to-note mappings memorized. I do this completely via thinking in scale degrees. I can name any scale degree in any key, so questions like the one you mentioned just revolve around thinking "B-flat is scale-degree 4 in F major. What's scale-degree 4 in C or A-flat?"

(B) Yes, I do think this is plausible, and underappreciated in the specific case of music, since most musicians don't think much about the ways in which notation isn't an optimized system.

(C) Maybe this is too glib, but ... social interaction? "Overthinking it" isn't a path to doing well in social settings. For that matter, natural language might be another. In many respects it's best learned by rote (along with some theory—just like music) but I've certainly had classmates in language courses who get too hung up on the illogic of grammar to progress well in basic skills like speaking and listening comprehension.

Comment author: komponisto 21 February 2015 10:17:22AM 3 points [-]

Far more likely (and well underway for decades now) is that musicians will stop using notation altogether.

This seems like a radical claim. Can you clarify or elaborate? I certainly don't plan on stopping using notation any time soon. Indeed, this sort of statement seems to imply that composition as we most typically understand it (where a "composer" creates a "work" which nonidentical performances may be understood to be realizations "of", to possibly varying degrees of "accuracy") will stop, which seems highly unlikely to me.

(I realize you only stated it as a comparative -- that this is more likely than some other unlikely thing -- but the "underway for decades now" comment suggests you take this as a serious possibility.)

I actually like musical notation, and wish that its expressive possibilities were exploited (even) more. (However, I'm with you on interval nomenclature.)

Comment author: komponisto 21 February 2015 09:50:53AM *  12 points [-]

komponisto has an explanation for that, saying that what is being played is not chords, but temporal sequences moving between chords.

What? I don't understand what that means, which suggests that it isn't something I said.

Here are some points to consider:

  • Sight-reading is nice to be able to do, but it's far from essential. Reading music is the fundamental skill. There's nothing wrong with learning a work of music layer by layer, component by component. Indeed, complex contemporary music is often too difficult to sightread, even for the world's most skilled performers; they have to practice it bit by bit, just like you do for the music you play.

  • If you're reading music properly, you don't see

.

What you see instead is

or

,

or, since we're talking about piano music,

or

.

These are visually distinct stimuli that happen to share some features; you seem to want the shared features to have more significance than they do, which is a form of misunderstanding the notation.

Are you aware of the concept of the grand staff? The upper and lower staffs of piano music can be conceived together as a single entity, with middle C lying in between them. This wouldn't be possible if, for example, the lower staff used the sub-bass clef, which has the same note pattern as the treble. (Now, admittedly, a lot of piano music doesn't treat the grand staff this way -- often putting the bass clef in the upper staff and the treble in the lower, sometimes both at the same time -- and I'm not much of a fan of it myself, generally preferring to regard the each staff as autonomous. Still, I have to admit to finding the notation in e.g. the second movement of Webern's Piano Variations, which has both upper and lower parts frequently changing clefs, somewhat awkward and confusing -- even though it's done for a specific purpose.)

You should, in any case, be able to play

with the right hand or

with the left.

  • I suspect you simply don't read enough music to get in the habit of seeing the notation the way it's meant to be seen (and automatically knowing such things as how notes map under transposition). I also have a "highly trained" mind, and I don't have the difficulties you do, so the thesis of your post seems obviously false to me. In particular, I don't think you've made a convincing case that music is more difficult for amateurs who happen to be scientists than for other kinds of amateurs. If anything, I would (continue to) expect the musical literacy of scientists to be higher than that of the general population, on IQ/having-an-interesting-mind grounds alone.

  • On enharmonically equivalent notes (e.g. E# and F), you say:

Yes, I know they're not really equal in most historical intonations, blah blah etc.

but it's not (primarily) a question of historical intonations. Being acoustically distinct is not a necessary condition for being musically distinct. It's a question of the "same" entity being conceived differently in different contexts. Homophones in language (two/to/too) are a close analogue: they might actually be pronounced differently in some dialects or some contexts, but even if they're pronounced the same, they're still different words. (I don't think this actually falls within the scope of your "blah blah etc.")

Comment author: JonahSinick 18 February 2015 08:34:54PM *  2 points [-]

Contrary data point here:

That's very interesting to me – thanks for sharing.

. When he says "exceptional" here, I think he means it in the ordinary sense of the word -- the sense relevant to most of the readers he's addressing -- which would include not only himself but also almost all of his UCLA colleagues (for example).

Thanks for pointing out a possible alternative explanation. Can you elaborate? I think that I might understand what you're saying, but I'm not sure. Are you saying that UCLA math professors would be considered to be exceptional mathematicians but not exceptionally intelligent? It's not clear to me that this is the case – you seem to be breaking symmetry by interpreting his two uses of 'exceptional' in different ways.

UCLA math professors are as a group more intelligent than UCLA math grad students, who are in turn as a group more intelligent than UCLA math majors. His remarks in the article that I linked suggests that he adheres to the threshold theory – that after a certain point intelligence doesn't yield incremental returns. I think that this is wrong whatever reference class one is using.

Comment author: komponisto 19 February 2015 01:08:58AM 3 points [-]

Can you elaborate? I think that I might understand what you're saying, but I'm not sure. Are you saying that UCLA math professors would be considered to be exceptional mathematicians but not exceptionally intelligent?

I think what Tao means is something like: among the total population of those intelligent enough to eventually become senior faculty at a UCLA-level department, variables other than intelligence are much better predictors of (the binary variable of) whether a given individual achieves (at least) that level of status (as opposed to, say, the level of more typical state universities).

This is not inconsistent with intelligence being the best predictor of Tao-like status conditional upon UCLA-level status. In terms of intelligence, ordinary universities might contain a large percentage of could-have-been-UCLA's even if UCLA-level places contain only a small number of could-have-been-Tao's.

I also suspect you and Tao (or at least, his public "voice" as reflected in his writings) may disagree somewhat about the relative contribution to mathematics of Tao-level and merely-UCLA-level mathematicians.

Comment author: Epictetus 18 February 2015 02:22:40PM 2 points [-]

As Carl Linderholm pointed out, pattern-matching questions more properly belong to the field of parapsychology--he restricted his discussion to guessing the next number in a sequence, but the result can be readily generalized.

Satire aside, it seems to me that these Raven matrices get a lot easier to figure out once you've seen a few. At first glance I couldn't make heads or tails of the one you provided, but I went and took an online Raven matrix test and afterward that one seemed straightforward enough (in the sense that I quickly found a rule that was consistent with the rest of the matrix and produced one of the possible options). Presumably the easier ones familiarized me with the sorts of patterns the examiners were wont to use and reuse.

It's not entirely clear to me how somebody as mathematically talented as Tao could miss the basic Bayesian probabilistic argument that Scott Alexander gave, which shows that Tao's own existence is very strong evidence against his claim. But two hypotheses come to mind.

This reminds me of the Grothendieck quote from the previous article: "Yet it is not these gifts, nor the most determined ambition combined with irresistible will-power, that enables one to surmount the "invisible yet formidable boundaries " that encircle our universe." Both Grothendieck and Tao appear to discount pure intellect in favor of something less tangible when it comes to doing truly great mathematics. It's possible that they happened to encounter some exceptionally intelligent mathematicians who never managed to produce exceptional mathematics. On the other hand, it would be worth asking how many (if any) great mathematicians had high but non-exceptional intelligence.

Comment author: komponisto 18 February 2015 08:08:30PM 2 points [-]

On the other hand, it would be worth asking how many (if any) great mathematicians had high but non-exceptional intelligence

Some of my candidates (who, perhaps not coincidentally, also happen to be among my "favorite" old-time mathematicians, in the sense of stylistic identification):

  • Hilbert
  • Weierstrass
  • Lie
  • Cantor
  • Noether

All of these violate (what I think of as) the "math genius" stereotype in some way. None of these were considered child prodigies; in many cases they took up mathematics relatively late (Lie), had some competing interest (Cantor), or stood in contrast to a prodigy they knew (Hilbert, the prodigy being Minkowski).

Expanding the scope to physicists (and in the category of "widely held cultural beliefs that are probably wrong"), I will also nominate:

  • Einstein

whom I suspect of possessing significantly less Tao-style ability, and being more akin to the above-listed mathematicians, than is commonly assumed.

Comment author: komponisto 18 February 2015 08:06:17PM 3 points [-]

Very interesting, thanks!

I'll have more to say about the role of verbal reasoning ability in math later on

When you do, I hope you'll mention Paul Halmos, one of my favorite mathematicians (and the author, among many other things, of Naive Set Theory, which is on the MIRI reading list), who famously began his autobiography with the sentence "I like words more than numbers, and I always did."

People who are able to pick the correct choice at all can usually do so within 2 minutes – the questions have the character "either you see it or you don't."

Contrary data point here: I eventually figured out the "correct" answer (in the sense of the answer that everyone else came up with), but it took me something like 15-20 minutes (including interruptions by various distractions, such as reading subsequent paragraphs -- which I'm glad I did, because it allowed me to discover that the test was untimed, which is what gave me the confidence to try to figure it out!).

A reasonable amount of intelligence is certainly a necessary (though not sufficient) condition to be a reasonable mathematician. But an exceptional amount of intelligence has almost no bearing on whether one is an exceptional mathematician.

It's not entirely clear to me how somebody as mathematically talented as Tao could miss the basic Bayesian probabilistic argument that Scott Alexander gave, which shows that Tao's own existence is very strong evidence against his claim.

I think this is uncharitable to Tao. When he says "exceptional" here, I think he means it in the ordinary sense of the word -- the sense relevant to most of the readers he's addressing -- which would include not only himself but also almost all of his UCLA colleagues (for example).

Comment author: Manfred 16 February 2015 07:32:22AM *  3 points [-]

When you say "The heliocentric view had only a single advantage against the geocentric one: it could describe the motion of the planets by a much simper formula," you falsely do it a service, because you overstate the practical differences. Galileo was no Kepler - he didn't have improved observational accuracy. The Copernican model and the Tychonic model (adopted by the Catholic church only a decade and change before Galileo published the Dialogue) make basically the same predictions for planetary movement.

This means the really interesting lie is "The geocentric view had a very simple explanation, dating back to Aristotle: it is the nature of all objects that they strive towards the center of the world, and the center of the spherical Earth is the center of the world. The heliocentric theory couldn't counter this argument." Because Galileo's answer is what this was really about! If Tycho Brahe was right, Earth was made of a lazy type of matter, which desired to be at rest and fall down, while the heavens followed an entirely different set of rules that demanded perpetual motion. But if Galileo was right, an object in motion would stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force, whether on earth or in the heavens.

After 1610 or so, if one had a decent understanding of astronomy, one accepted that Ptolemy was wrong and that heliocentrism was now not about overthrowing the Greeks' astronomy, but their mechanics. Who was right? Was it Aristotle and Brahe? Or was it Descartes and Galileo? Of course, the discussion would have been a lot more interesting if the church hadn't started banning the books of one side after they declared heliocentrism heretical, but oh well.

Comment author: komponisto 17 February 2015 10:28:09AM 0 points [-]

This is a very insightful comment -- in the sense of making something "click" for me that hadn't done so before. Namely:

After 1610 or so, if one had a decent understanding of astronomy, one accepted that Ptolemy was wrong and that heliocentrism was now not about overthrowing the Greeks' astronomy, but their mechanics

So, thank you.

(Cf. Douglas Knight's comment, which also implies that Galilean relativity was central to the argument.)

Comment author: 27chaos 13 February 2015 04:04:12AM *  2 points [-]

I've noticed in courses I taught that grades tend to reward conscientious students who can "play the game" and do formal manipulations even if they don't really understand what's going on.

Calculus 2 is where I hit the limits of my conceptual abilities. I am very bad at "playing the game" in this way, so I haven't moved beyond that yet.

I think it's wrong to put too much emphasis on a contrast between "playing the game" and "understanding the material", though. My feeling is that if I became better at playing games, paying attention to detail, being more conscientious about my work, then I would also improve my conceptual understanding after a while.

Comment author: komponisto 13 February 2015 07:24:17AM *  19 points [-]

My feeling is that if I became better at playing games, paying attention to detail, being more conscientious about my work, then I would also improve my conceptual understanding after a while.

Indeed, the mathematical profession itself relies on this for the training of its members, because it doesn't know how to train conceptual understanding directly -- as described candidly by Ravi Vakil:

[Y]ou'll go to talks, and hear various words, whose definitions you're not so sure about. At some point you'll be able to make a sentence using those words; you won't know what the words mean, but you'll know the sentence is correct. You'll also be able to ask a question using those words. You still won't know what the words mean, but you'll know the question is interesting, and you'll want to know the answer. Then later on, you'll learn what the words mean more precisely, and your sense of how they fit together will make that learning much easier. The reason for this phenomenon is that mathematics is so rich and infinite that it is impossible to learn it systematically, and if you wait to master one topic before moving on to the next, you'll never get anywhere. Instead, you'll have tendrils of knowledge extending far from your comfort zone. Then you can later backfill from these tendrils, and extend your comfort zone; this is much easier to do than learning "forwards". (Caution: this backfilling is necessary. There can be a temptation to learn lots of fancy words and to use them in fancy sentences without being able to say precisely what you mean. You should feel free to do that, but you should always feel a pang of guilt when you do.)

I seem to be unusual (among people attracted to advanced mathematics, but perhaps not so much in the LW cluster) in being mostly unable to tolerate such an approach.

Comment author: komponisto 12 February 2015 08:00:42AM 7 points [-]

I'm extremely grateful for this post, and look forward to the rest of the sequence.

For me this is also of great personal relevance -- I too am among the "twice exceptional" (*), and am chagrined that this concept, as the Wikipedia article says, "has only recently entered educators' lexicon". You won't be surprised to know that (as I think we've even discussed before privately) Grothendieck's description of himself -- and his mathematical style, insofar as I understand it -- is also something that I identify with very strongly.

(*) illustrative anecdote: in 9th grade, I received a "D" in geometry during the same term that I won a state competition in that subject.

Comment author: Liron 10 February 2015 12:17:02AM -1 points [-]

I don't know Latin so I'm guessing "lecture" is Latin for "lost purpose"? That's great, thanks for educating me.

Comment author: komponisto 10 February 2015 12:23:11AM 1 point [-]

It's Latin for "reading".

Comment author: komponisto 27 October 2014 08:43:08PM 30 points [-]

Taken.

Comment author: gjm 14 October 2014 10:27:21PM 0 points [-]

I personally have no problem with that -- but komponisto wants to make more detailed distinctions, and was originally (i.e., at the other end of the link in the great-grandparent of this comment) responding to someone else who wanted to count courses currently in progress as well as ones already completed.

I'm sure both of them have reasons (indeed, it's not hard to guess some) and I bet they're both aware that it's usual simply to ask for highest qualification actually attained.

Comment author: komponisto 17 October 2014 02:08:34AM 1 point [-]

Kalium's suggestion would in fact satisfy me -- it captures the distinction between someone who went to college/graduate school but didn't finish and someone who never went in the first place.

I disagree with your comment above that

the distinction between "started work on degree X, but abandoned it" and "currently working towards degree X" is almost as large as that between either of those and "never attempted degree X.

For a completely hypothetical example, let

A = someone with a B.A. who spent 6 years in a Ph.D. program and left without finishing

B = someone with a B.A. currently in a Ph.D. program who hasn't finished yet

C = someone who completed a Ph.D

and

D = someone with a B.A. who never entered a Ph.D. program..

My view is that there should be some notion of "education level" that clusters together A,B, and C, as distinct from D; but "highest degree attained" clusters A,B, and D as distinct from C, and your proposal seems to put A, D in one cluster and B, C in another.

Comment author: komponisto 13 October 2014 09:38:51AM 8 points [-]

I shall repeat my request for a second question under "Degree" that asks about one's highest degree attempted or in progress.

Comment author: komponisto 22 July 2014 03:35:16AM 0 points [-]

If you are interested in participating in this activity, either as a visitor to the area or as a local, please comment below and I will PM you details for how to contact me.

I'll be there then (with status in between the two categories you mention) and am definitely interested in participating!

Comment author: komponisto 03 July 2014 01:43:08AM 4 points [-]

Michio Kaku, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist

Don't think so.

Comment author: lmm 25 June 2014 09:52:34PM 0 points [-]

The set {Yemen, Oman, Somalia, Dubai} is "wrong", for the same reason that {plane, train, boat, driver's-seat-of-car} is

Again, I disagree; it's a useful set for practical purposes, in the same way as {lettuce, cucumber, tomato}.

I must admit that your model of a typical country seems very strange to me. It seems to correspond not even to (my model of) a US state, but to a smaller subdivision like a county or municipality. (That's the level on which you find differing policies about alcohol, for instance.)

Again, very much a US peculiarity. A quick look suggests India and UAE are the only other countries where alcohol is banned in some regions but not others, as opposed to over a dozen countries with national bans.

Comment author: komponisto 27 June 2014 08:27:38PM 1 point [-]

To be explicit about something I wasn't explicit about in my other reply:

The set {Yemen, Oman, Somalia, Dubai} is "wrong", for the same reason that {plane, train, boat, driver's-seat-of-car} is

Again, I disagree; it's a useful set for practical purposes

There is an ambiguity here, but if what you are claiming to disagree with is the analogy to {plane, train, boat, driver's-seat-of-car} (as opposed to merely the "wrongness" of either), then you genuinely do not have a good understanding of, or are stubbornly refusing to acknowledge, the relevant political geography, and I would suspect you of having heard of Dubai before you had heard of the UAE (probably as a result of journalists' ignorance), and anchoring on this fact.

But I can't be sure to what extent we really have differing models of how the world works, as opposed to at least one of us going out of our way to signal something (willingness to disregard official politics in your case, familiarity with the Middle East in mine).

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 27 June 2014 02:54:49AM 1 point [-]

If you follow your definition, rather than intellectually dishonestly changing definitions in every comment, you should stop calling Belgium a country. Or start calling Dubai one. If your point is merely to point out the existence of UAE and its small effect on the relative country-ness of Dubai, your original statement should not have been absolute.

You appear to be using as your definition of country "member of the UN." If you want a canonical list of countries, that's about all you can do. But I don't trust authority to list countries just as I don't trust authority to list poisons.

Comment author: komponisto 27 June 2014 08:39:15AM 1 point [-]

You appear to be using as your definition of country "member of the UN." If you want a canonical list of countries, that's about all you can do. But I don't trust authority to list countries just as I don't trust authority to list poisons.

We differ on that point, then. The concept of "country" as I intend it here is more or less entirely a matter of what authorities list (in contrast to the concept of "poison", which involves the question of whether something kills you). The authorities here aren't epistemic ones pointing to empirical facts, but are rather political ones making declarations that they intend to enforce.

"Member of the UN" is at least a sufficient condition for countryhood, and the sense of my original comment is approximately the same as if it read:

You're talking about Dubai in a way that suggests you might be under the impression that it's a member of the UN. But it's not; instead, it's part of a member called the UAE.

Comment author: lmm 25 June 2014 09:52:34PM 0 points [-]

The set {Yemen, Oman, Somalia, Dubai} is "wrong", for the same reason that {plane, train, boat, driver's-seat-of-car} is

Again, I disagree; it's a useful set for practical purposes, in the same way as {lettuce, cucumber, tomato}.

I must admit that your model of a typical country seems very strange to me. It seems to correspond not even to (my model of) a US state, but to a smaller subdivision like a county or municipality. (That's the level on which you find differing policies about alcohol, for instance.)

Again, very much a US peculiarity. A quick look suggests India and UAE are the only other countries where alcohol is banned in some regions but not others, as opposed to over a dozen countries with national bans.

Comment author: komponisto 26 June 2014 08:45:27PM 0 points [-]

I am having a hard time understanding your motivation for vigorously defending ignorance of the UAE's existence from my attempt to correct it. As far as I can tell, you're worried that someone who thought Dubai was a country and knew that alcohol was legal there might, upon learning the indisputably true fact that Dubai is inside a country called the UAE, conclude that alcohol was legal in the rest of the UAE also -- apparently on the assumption that products cannot be banned at any lower level of government than the national, in any country in the world. But anyone who makes such an assumption is likely to be suffering from a model of governance too fundamentally broken for this discussion to even matter to them. Furthermore, it's hard to imagine how a situation where someone practically benefited from ignorance of the UAE's existence would even arise. After all, it would be unlikely for a foreigner to end up in Dubai without learning about the UAE in the very process of getting there. (If, as a result of this discovery, they hatched a plan to take alcohol from Dubai to some other emirate where it wasn't legal, perhaps they would have been better off not knowing that the latter was in the same country; but it would be too late.)

Given this, I really don't understand what the harm is in educating people about the existence of the UAE in a context like this, a discussion of hypothetical geopolitics on a sophisticated website. I didn't even claim the fact was terribly important; the parentheses in my original comment were intended to be the functional equivalent of labeling the comment a "nitpick". I do think that it is the kind of fact that readers of this site ought to know, if they don't already. It's not as if the cost of learning it were high.

A quick look suggests India and UAE are the only other countries where alcohol is banned in some regions but not others, as opposed to over a dozen countries with national bans.

This is once again tangential, but what matters here is not whether policy contingently happens to be uniform throughout a country (because all localities agree on the correct policy), but whether the uniformity necessarily holds because localities don't have the power to make their own policy. For example, the fact that alcohol is legal throughout Australia is presumably a mere consequence of the fact that none of the states or territories have chosen to ban it, even though they theoretically could if they wished. (EDIT: Actually, Australia does have dry zones, though this seems to refer to public or outdoor consumption.) It goes without saying that alcohol policy variations are not limited to outright bans; for instance, in the Netherlands, it is apparently true that

Drinking in public places is not banned by national law, but many cities and towns prohibit possession of an open container of an alcoholic beverage in a public place

(emphasis added). The point here is that practically-important policy is very often made at non-national levels of government, all throughout the world.

Comment author: lmm 24 June 2014 10:41:40PM 0 points [-]

The answers to semantic questions, when they exist, may not be ultimate or necessary or fundamental or even important, but they are still real.

Language is a tool for communication. Daniel_Burfoot's original post was clear (and "compare Dubai with other cities" would have been misleading); while a formulation like "compare Dubai with other zones where a particular legal and administrative system applies" might be technically more correct, I don't think the difference justifies the verbosity.

Well, I suppose that depends on your point of view. For me, the US is the central example of a country, because it's the one I live in and am a citizen of.

I think we could form a reasonably uncontroversial ranking of countries by "how distinct their political subdivisions are", and the US would be close to one end of the scale (though not quite as far along as UAE). Do you disagree?

France has a lot more centralization of policy than the US does, but I'll still bet you that the municipal code of Paris is non-identical to the municipal code of Marseille. Spain's "autonomous communities" definitely have differing laws from each other: Catalonia, for example, has banned bullfighting, which would be unthinkable in other parts of the country. Do you doubt that one could multiply such examples at will?

A typical country has some minor variations within the country (though perhaps not if we restrict ourselves to law rather than administrative codes), sure. But I think the scale of variation seen in the US is very much atypical.

Comment author: komponisto 25 June 2014 07:34:21PM *  0 points [-]

[The] original post was clear (and "compare Dubai with other cities" would have been misleading)

Here is more of the context:

I was thinking of Yemen, Oman and Somalia...I've heard good things about Dubai, but not enough to do a serious comparison between it and other countries

In the above, "the UAE" should replace "Dubai". If the UAE is so heterogeneous a country that greater specificity is required, then it should read "the UAE (particularly Dubai)", just as someone might write "the USA (particularly New York)".

The set {Yemen, Oman, Somalia, Dubai} is "wrong", for the same reason that {plane, train, boat, driver's-seat-of-car} is; they should be respectively "corrected" to {Yemen, Oman, Somalia, UAE} and {plane, train, boat, car}.

I think we could form a reasonably uncontroversial ranking of countries by "how distinct their political subdivisions are", and the US would be close to one end of the scale (though not quite as far along as UAE). Do you disagree?

Mildly, but that disagreement is tangential. Even if the UAE has the most distinct political subdivisions of any country in the world, it is still a country, and its political subdivisions are still political subdivisions.

The distinction between a country and a non-country is pretty sharp as far as human societal constructs go. We have established institutions for adjudicating this question (such as the UN, international treaties, diplomatic relations, etc.), and the results they present on the specific case of Dubai vs. the UAE are pretty unambiguous.

A typical country has some minor variations within the country (though perhaps not if we restrict ourselves to law rather than administrative codes), sure. But I think the scale of variation seen in the US is very much atypical

I doubt it is, when adjusted for size (of both territory and population).

I must admit that your model of a typical country seems very strange to me. It seems to correspond not even to (my model of) a US state, but to a smaller subdivision like a county or municipality. (That's the level on which you find differing policies about alcohol, for instance.)

Comment author: lmm 24 June 2014 07:15:13PM 2 points [-]

In California it's illegal to have a pet gerbil; in other states it isn't. You wouldn't for one moment cite this as an argument that California is a country. Or would you?

Whether we ultimately consider California a country or not is just an argument about the meaning of words (and the practical answer is that we have the word "state", which usually means a country but also means California). But I'd certainly say that the US is a very noncentral example of a country, and I'd warn people travelling there that the states of the US have some of the properties of countries and therefore it's important to e.g. check state laws in a way that you wouldn't do for subdivisions of more typical countries.

On the other hand, here is an empirical question where the models do in fact differ: Alice's model predicts that Dubai is a member of the UN and that the UAE (being nonexistent) isn't, while Bob's model predicts that the UAE is a member and that Dubai (being part of the UAE) isn't. Which model's prediction is more accurate? Or how about this: which entity has embassies in other countries? Also an empirical fact. Which model predicts it correctly?

Well of course the model that contains the correct the international-law technicalities is the model you'd want to use if you wanted to predict international-law technicalities. Just like if you want to predict where to find a tomato in a biology textbook, you should model it as a fruit. But if you want to know what to cook with it, you're better off modelling it as a vegetable.

Comment author: komponisto 24 June 2014 08:23:41PM *  1 point [-]

Whether we ultimately consider California a country or not is just an argument about the meaning of words

However, that doesn't mean it doesn't have an answer. The stopsign "that's just an argument about the meaning of words" is useful in cases where a genuine ambiguity about the meaning of a word has caused a discussion to be diverted from its main topic, which was something else. But here, the meaning of words is the topic (as I noted in my reply to RichardKennaway, I entered this thread exclusively to point out the official political status of Dubai), and there's no ambiguity about what the answer is. Indeed, there's not even any argument. Rather, what we have is me pointing out a certain fact, and you (and others) evidently seeking to justify ignorance of that fact. To the extent there is any argument, it's about how important the fact is, not about whether the fact is true.

The answers to semantic questions, when they exist, may not be ultimate or necessary or fundamental or even important, but they are still real.

But I'd certainly say that the US is a very noncentral example of a country

Well, I suppose that depends on your point of view. For me, the US is the central example of a country, because it's the one I live in and am a citizen of. I would in fact be curious to know what your idea of a "central" country is. One that's smaller? Okay, but smaller countries still have political subdivisions (as indeed, do U.S. states themselves), and the whole point of political subdivisions is that policies may differ among them. France has a lot more centralization of policy than the US does, but I'll still bet you that the municipal code of Paris is non-identical to the municipal code of Marseille. Spain's "autonomous communities" definitely have differing laws from each other: Catalonia, for example, has banned bullfighting, which would be unthinkable in other parts of the country. Do you doubt that one could multiply such examples at will?

Well of course the model that contains the correct the international-law technicalities is the model you'd want to use if you wanted to predict international-law technicalities. Just like if you want to predict where to find a tomato in a biology textbook, you should model it as a fruit. But if you want to know what to cook with it, you're better off modelling it as a vegetable.

"International-law technicalities" include things like what embassy you have to go to to get a visa to travel to the place. I dispute your implicit marginalization of these "technicalities", just as I would dispute any notion that a tomato's biological status as a fruit is mere pedantry. Biology is important, and so is international law.

But I didn't intend to get into an argument about that, because I didn't expect it to be controversial.

Comment author: James_Miller 24 June 2014 05:12:42PM -1 points [-]

Try having a pleasant mental image you can quickly contemplate as soon as you start to think about the bad event. If the bad event involved someone else doing something bad to you, forgive them.

I have this problem and do intermittent fasting. I never before thought there might be a causal connection.

Comment author: komponisto 24 June 2014 05:44:37PM *  0 points [-]

Try having a pleasant mental image you can quickly contemplate as soon as you start to think about the bad event.

Note that this can backfire, since the pleasant image may become mentally linked to the bad event and thus develop negative associations. (I still think it's worth trying, but choose a pleasant image you can stand to lose.)

If the bad event involved someone else doing something bad to you, forgive them

Easier said than done, of course.

I have this problem and do intermittent fasting. I never before thought there might be a causal connection.

Interestingly, I also have this and similar problems and don't eat very much.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 24 June 2014 02:50:28AM 1 point [-]

political subordination to a larger entity

Belgium is more subordinate to the EU than Dubai is to the UAE.

Comment author: komponisto 24 June 2014 06:41:09AM -2 points [-]

Belgium is more subordinate to the EU than Dubai is to the UAE.

So what? Dubai is still more subordinate to the UAE than you would have thought if you didn't know the UAE existed.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 23 June 2014 04:23:03AM 1 point [-]

I submit to you that if Alice thinks Dubai is a country because she's never heard of the UAE, and Bob thinks that Dubai is the UAE's version of Istanbul, Bob's model of the political geography of the Arabian peninsula is still better than Alice's, even if Carol, who thinks that Dubai is so different from the rest of the UAE that it "might as well" be a country in its own right, has a better model than Bob.

The difference is that the various Emirates of the UAE (including Dubai) have far more internal autonomy then even US states to say nothing of Istanbul.

Comment author: komponisto 24 June 2014 06:32:26AM 2 points [-]

That is not a response to the paragraph quoted. (It is arguably a response to the paragraph following the one quoted.)

Comment author: RichardKennaway 23 June 2014 01:16:56PM 2 points [-]

Dubai is a country / No, Dubai is part of the UAE / Dubai has a lot of power and autonomy within the UAE.

At this point in a discussion one would have to dissolve the word "country" and ask what properties of Dubai are important to the discussion. A glance at a few Wikipedia articles indicates that the UAE is a federation of kingdoms, in which all powers not explicitly granted to the federation are retained by the members, each of which has absolute sovereignty within its borders under a hereditary king. Before the UAE was created, the emirates were absolute sovereign entities (i.e. "countries"). After it was created what were they? Well, "are" the members of the EU "countries"? Yes. "Are" the states of the US? No. "Is" Dubai? Doesn't matter, look instead at the question of substance, which was:

Ideally, Dubai and Singapore would both set up thalassocracies, competing in a friendly way for trade and citizens.

Dubai might want to first informally square things with the other members of the UAE (or at least, the one other member that matters, Abu Dhabi), but establishing overseas colonies, er, charter cities, would not necessarily be an activity that would officially concern the UAE federal entity.

Comment author: komponisto 24 June 2014 06:23:55AM *  0 points [-]

At this point in a discussion one would have to dissolve the word "country" and ask what properties of Dubai are important to the discussion.

I never intended to enter the discussion in the first place; my original comment was parenthetical. I was simply pointing out a verifiable, objective, yet quite possibly tangential matter of fact that some participants (or readers) may have been unaware of.

Whether Dubai is a country or a part of a country is not a question that there's any ambiguity about. It's not a subject of dispute, as in the case of e.g. Taiwan. It's a simple matter of looking the answer up in Wikipedia. If you want to question the answer you find there, fine, but then you have to question the notion of "country" in general, and acknowledge that you're doing so, otherwise you're not being intellectually honest.

Comment author: lmm 23 June 2014 06:27:02PM 1 point [-]

if Alice thinks Dubai is a country because she's never heard of the UAE, and Bob thinks that Dubai is the UAE's version of Istanbul, Bob's model of the political geography of the Arabian peninsula is still better than Alice's, even if Carol, who thinks that Dubai is so different from the rest of the UAE that it "might as well" be a country in its own right, has a better model than Bob.

I'm not trying to be metacontrarian. I disagree with this point. I think Bob's model is less good than Alice's in that it will make less accurate predictions of empirical facts (and potentially dangerous ones, given that e.g. alcohol is legal in some but not all of the emirates).

Comment author: komponisto 24 June 2014 06:10:43AM *  1 point [-]

I think Bob's model is less good than Alice's in that it will make less accurate predictions of empirical facts (and potentially dangerous ones, given that e.g. alcohol is legal in some but not all of the emirates).

Forgive me, but this is preposterous. Neither model makes predictions about policy differences among the emirates, except insofar as Alice's model predicts that the other emirates don't exist. Different parts of a single country can have different policies, on alcohol or anything else, and do all the time. U.S. states have all kinds of differing laws. In California it's illegal to have a pet gerbil; in other states it isn't. You wouldn't for one moment cite this as an argument that California is a country. Or would you?

On the other hand, here is an empirical question where the models do in fact differ: Alice's model predicts that Dubai is a member of the UN and that the UAE (being nonexistent) isn't, while Bob's model predicts that the UAE is a member and that Dubai (being part of the UAE) isn't. Which model's prediction is more accurate?

Or how about this: which entity has embassies in other countries? Also an empirical fact. Which model predicts it correctly?

I suspect you know the answer as well as I do. I therefore don't believe you when you say

I'm not trying to be metacontrarian....I think Bob's model is less good than Alice's

Comment author: lmm 21 June 2014 10:00:27AM 3 points [-]

In some legalistic sense Monaco may be more independent than Dubai. But in practical terms like "how different are its laws from France/UAE" I'd say it's the opposite. My point about empirical differences wasn't about economy, it's that Dubai is much more like a sovereign city than like an ordinary city in a country, even in purely governmental terms like taxes and courts and so on.

Comment author: komponisto 22 June 2014 08:15:52AM 1 point [-]

Let's pause for a moment for a meta-level reflection. You're engaging in metacontrarianism, with the relevant uneducated/contrarian/metacontrarian triad being:

Dubai is a country / No, Dubai is part of the UAE / Dubai has a lot of power and autonomy within the UAE.

The trouble with metacontrarianism is that metacontrarians often seem to forget that even if they're right -- that is, even if the third level of the triad is true -- the first level is still wrong. In some sense, you have to pass through the second level in order to legitimately claim the mantle of the third. (Here, "pass through the second level" means not "go through a stage of being at the second level" so much as "understand why, and in particular that, the second level is an improvement over the first".)

I submit to you that if Alice thinks Dubai is a country because she's never heard of the UAE, and Bob thinks that Dubai is the UAE's version of Istanbul, Bob's model of the political geography of the Arabian peninsula is still better than Alice's, even if Carol, who thinks that Dubai is so different from the rest of the UAE that it "might as well" be a country in its own right, has a better model than Bob.

Now, to return to the object level, I don't actually see why Carol's model is better than Bob's. I don't know that much about the internal politics of Turkey, but I assume that Istanbul, being a major city, is culturally and demographically different from most of the rest of the country, wields a lot of influence in the country's politics, and has governmental policies that most other parts of the country don't have. For that matter, the same is true of New York City, whether regarded as a part of New York State or of the United States. In neither of these cases do I see any need to give up the model that has these cities being politically subordinate to the nation-states (or states) that contain them, and I don't see how the case of Dubai within the UAE is any different (or, anyway, different enough). And, conversely, even if Monaco is heavily influenced in its policies by neighboring France, I don't see that as sufficient reason to remove from my model the notion that Monaco is an independent state, because otherwise we might as well say that Canada is part of the U.S., et cetera.

Comment author: lmm 20 June 2014 11:00:42PM 1 point [-]

As your own link says, Dubai is something equivalent to a principality. It seems to empirically cluster closer to Singapore than to, I don't know, Istanbul.

Comment author: komponisto 21 June 2014 09:28:18AM *  1 point [-]

You seem to be missing the point, which is about its political subordination to a larger entity. What I was attempting to correct was (possible) ignorance of the existence of the UAE.

Here are the first two sentences of my link (emphasis added):

Dubai (/duːˈbaɪ/ doo-by; Arabic: دبيّ‎ Dubayy, IPA: [dʊˈbæj]) is the most populous city and emirate in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the second largest emirate by territorial size after the capital, Abu Dhabi.[3] Dubai is located on the southeast coast of the Persian Gulf and is one of the seven emirates that make up the country

For all that an "emirate" may be similar to a "principality" (or, dare I say, a "count-y"), the fact remains that the political status of Dubai is different from that of e.g. the principality of Monaco, in the sense that Monaco is an independent country, and Dubai isn't.

Dimensions along which Dubai is more similar to Singapore than Istanbul aren't relevant to this point. (If someone pointed out that California was part of the United States, you wouldn't argue with them by saying that it's the seventh largest economy in the world [or whatever] and therefore "empirically clusters" with countries rather than states.)

Comment author: Daniel_Burfoot 18 June 2014 08:33:15PM 2 points [-]

I was thinking of Yemen, Oman and Somalia, though now that I look at a map I see they're not technically on the Persian Gulf.

I've heard good things about Dubai, but not enough to do a serious comparison between it and other countries.

Ideally, Dubai and Singapore would both set up thalassocracies, competing in a friendly way for trade and citizens. Their cities could be adjacent to one another, kind of like Burger King and McDonalds.

Comment author: komponisto 20 June 2014 06:12:35PM *  0 points [-]

I've heard good things about Dubai, but not enough to do a serious comparison between it and other countries.

(To do so would be a category error, because Dubai is in fact a city -- and, unlike Singapore, not an independent one. The country it's in is called the United Arab Emirates.)

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 07 June 2014 12:46:55AM 0 points [-]

Yeah, found that out during the final interview. Sadly, found out several days ago they rejected me, so it's sort of moot now.

Comment author: komponisto 19 June 2014 02:43:44AM 0 points [-]

Yikes. Any idea why?

Comment author: protest_boy 10 June 2014 06:10:19AM -1 points [-]

I would love to see these as posts. (I really enjoyed your posts on the CFAR list about human ethics).

What does "The instrumental lens" hint at?

Comment author: komponisto 16 June 2014 05:18:50AM 0 points [-]

CFAR list

How does one get on this list?

Comment author: Manfred 09 June 2014 03:59:13PM *  1 point [-]

If you had all the prerequisites, you would not need the argument. So I'll give you a short overview of the point, and then just link you to some articles.

Quantum immortality is not fundamentally about quantum mechanics. It is about whether you can live forever by defining yourself as a person who doesn't die. "You" can, but you can't.

Links: You could learn some quantum mechanics. Then look into where the relative state interpretation (MWI) comes from, by reading Everett's quite accessible paper. Key thing that you will understand after this: probability is a measure, and norm-squared measure is all there is. Look into the foundations of VNM decision theory, but maybe also temper it by reading Savage's decision theory. Now you should understand how quantum mechanics fits into VNM decision theory by providing a measure. At this point it all adds up to normality - you make the same decisions using any interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Now on to definitions: A Human's Guide to Words on why we have them. The Metaethics Sequence on what we're talking about when we say "I want to live forever." At this point, if not earlier, you should be able to conceive of an agent that actually does believe in quantum immortality, and acts accordingly - and also an agent that doesn't believe in quantum immortality, and acts accordingly.

Experiment: Attempt to define yourself as a rock, thus increasing your lifespan. Did it work? Why or why not?

Comment author: komponisto 09 June 2014 06:56:51PM 2 points [-]

Quantum immortality...is about whether you can live forever by defining yourself as a person who doesn't die....Experiment: Attempt to define yourself as a rock, thus increasing your lifespan. Did it work?

The assumption of quantum immortality is that once some branches of "you" are gone, then you have to define "you" as the remaining branches. It's about the impossibility of expanding the definition of "you", not the possibility of expanding it.

Comment author: nshepperd 30 May 2014 02:20:18AM 0 points [-]

The trouble with Eliezer's "metaethics" sequence is that it's written in character (as a human), and something called "metaethics" shouldn't be.

People always write in character. If you try to use some different definition of "morality" than normal for talking about metaethics, you'll reach the wrong conclusions because, y'know, you're quite literally not talking about morality any more.

Comment author: komponisto 30 May 2014 04:59:04AM 0 points [-]

Language is different from metalanguage, even if both are (in) English.

You shouldn't be using any definition of "morality" when talking about metaethics, because on that level the definition of "morality" isn't fixed; that's what makes it meta.

My complaint about the sequence is that it should have been about the orthogonality thesis, but instead ended up being about rigid designation.

Comment author: Vaniver 29 May 2014 07:28:48PM 1 point [-]

In this discussion, I understand there to be three positions:

  1. There is one objectively measurable value system.
  2. There is an objectively measurable value system for each agent.
  3. There are not objectively measurable value systems.

The 'objective' and 'subjective' distinction is not particularly useful for this discussion, because it confuses the separation between 'measurable' and 'unmeasurable' (1+2 vs. 3) and 'universal' and 'particular' (1 vs. 2+3).

But even 'universal' and 'particular' are not quite the right words- Clippy's particular preference for paperclips is one that Clippy would like to enforce on the entire universe.

Comment author: komponisto 29 May 2014 07:40:35PM *  1 point [-]

No one holds 3. 1 is ambiguous; it depends on whether we're speaking "in character" or not. If we are, then it follows from 2 ("there is one objectively measurable value system, namely mine").

The trouble with Eliezer's "metaethics" sequence is that it's written in character (as a human), and something called "metaethics" shouldn't be.

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 29 May 2014 07:26:26PM -1 points [-]

Same mistake, Only actions that affect others are morally relevant, from which it follows that rightness cannot be evaluated from one person's values alone.

Maximizing ones values solipsitically is hedonism, not morality.

Comment author: komponisto 29 May 2014 07:28:54PM 0 points [-]

Notice I didn't use the term "morality" in the grandparent. Cf. my other comment.

Comment author: blacktrance 29 May 2014 04:42:01PM 0 points [-]

An objective morality machine would tell you what you should do, not tell you how to satisfy your values

Why must the two be mutually exclusive? Why can't morality be about satisfying your values? One could say that morality properly understood is nothing more than the output of decision theory, or that outputs of decision theory that fall in a certain area labeled "moral questions" are morality.

Comment author: komponisto 29 May 2014 07:24:30PM 1 point [-]

Why can't morality be about satisfying your values?

Because that isn't how the term "morality" is typically used by humans. The "morality police" found in certain Islamic countries aren't life coaches. The Ten Commandments aren't conditional statements. When people complain about the decaying moral fabric of society, they're not talking about a decline in introspective ability.

Inherent to the concept of morality is the external imposition of values. (Not just decisions, because they also want you to obey the rules when they're not looking, you see?) Sociologically speaking, morality is a system for getting people to do unfun things by threatening ostracization.

Decision theory (and meta-decision-theory etc.) does not exist to analyze this concept (which is not designed for agents); it exists to replace it.

Comment author: blacktrance 29 May 2014 06:44:43PM 0 points [-]

Saying it's true-for-me-but-not-for-you conflates two very different things: truth being agent-relative and descriptive statements about agents being true or false depending on the agent they're referring to. "X is 6 feet tall" is true when X is someone who's 6 feet tall and false when X is someone who's 4 feet tall, and in neither case is it subjective, even though the truth-value depends on who X is. Morality is similar - "X is the right thing for TheAncientGeek to do" is an objectively true (or false) statement, regardless of who's evaluating you. Encountering "X is the right thing to do if you're Person A and the wrong thing to do if you're Person B" and thinking moralitry subjective is the same sort of mistake as if you encountered the statement "Person A is 6 feet tall and Person B is not 6 feet tall" and concluded that height is subjective.

Comment author: komponisto 29 May 2014 07:10:41PM *  0 points [-]

Morality is similar - "X is the right thing for TheAncientGeek to do" is an objectively true (or false) statement, regardless of who's evaluating you.

Not so! Rather, "X is the right thing for TheAncientGeek to do given TheAncientGeek's values" is an objectively true (or false) statement. But "X is the right thing for TheAncientGeek to do" tout court is not; it depends on a specific value system being implicitly understood.

Comment author: CellBioGuy 19 March 2014 04:14:56PM *  1 point [-]

Not so sure about that... here, example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvEwOfL21Uo

I can't tell if the first or third chime is higher pitched. I can tell it goes up and down but even separated by two seconds I can't leap over the middle one. At least compared to several of my friends from college onwards, this seems unusual.

Comment author: komponisto 22 March 2014 05:37:09PM 1 point [-]

If you can, try testing your ability to determine whether the chimes are being played in the normal order or backwards.

Comment author: komponisto 14 March 2014 06:41:30PM *  5 points [-]

Reason number one: someone with power or influence over them considers the activity to be interesting or important. (Example: school.)

Comment author: luminosity 08 March 2014 12:32:14AM 21 points [-]

Quora hack: Add '?share=1' to the end of the url, and you can read everything.

Comment author: komponisto 08 March 2014 04:08:12AM 1 point [-]

(I'm replying to this comment as a form of bookmarking, so I can find it later by searching my own comments. Upvoted, needless to say.)

Comment author: seez 24 February 2014 06:54:17AM 2 points [-]

Link here.

Comment author: komponisto 24 February 2014 06:55:48AM 5 points [-]

...and on the sidebar ("Recent on Rationality Blogs")....

Comment author: polymathwannabe 20 February 2014 10:04:03PM 0 points [-]

I'm not.

However, I happen to be a Youtopia volunteer, currently working on my own Spanish translation of HPMoR:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9971807

I was aware of the translation you cite, but I can't remember having noticed that the translator was Colombian too. I guess that forces me to update my estimation.

Also, I should meet the guy.

Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2014 11:59:10PM *  0 points [-]

However, I happen to be a Youtopia volunteer, currently working on my own Spanish translation of HPMoR:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9971807

Neat! You should get Eliezer to include it in the list.

(By the way, I should say that having multiple translations of the same text is very valuable data for language-learners such as myself -- so let me make an appeal to would-be translators out there not to be discouraged by the existence of another translation in your language, whether complete or not.)

I was aware of the translation you cite, but I can't remember having noticed that the translator was Colombian too.

(I concluded that he was because he had a Colombian Creative Commons license for his blog. EDIT: Also, I just noticed that he gives his specific location: Roldanillo, Valle del Cauca, Colombia.)

Comment author: polymathwannabe 28 January 2014 08:42:15PM 1 point [-]

I'm a 31-year-old Colombian guy who writes SF in Spanish. I'm a lactovegetarian teetotaler who sympathizes with Theravada Buddhism. My current job is as chief editor at a small publishing house that produces medical literature. My estimate of the existence of one other LWer near my current location (the 8-million-inhabitant city of Bogotá) is 0.01% per every ten kilometers in the radius of search for the first 2500 kilometers of radius (after that distance you hit the U.S., which invalidates this formula). My mother was an angrily devout Catholic and my father was a hopelessly gullible Rosicrucian. Ask me anything not based on stereotypes about Colombians.

Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2014 09:45:38PM 0 points [-]

I'm a 31-year-old Colombian guy who writes SF in Spanish....My estimate of the existence of one other LWer near my current location (the 8-million-inhabitant city of Bogotá) is 0.01% per every ten kilometers in the radius of search for the first 2500 kilometers of radius

By my Google-aided calculations (interpreting "0.01% per every ten kilometers in the radius of search" as "0.0001 expected LWers per 314 km^2"), that implies that you think there's about a 14% chance that there's a LWer in Colombia besides yourself.

Can I conclude from this that you're the same person as the (most recent) Spanish translator of HPMoR?

Comment author: zslastman 18 February 2014 12:19:58PM 32 points [-]

It's also worth noting that the social environment in school is artificially horrific. That many young people should not be left to socialize amongst each other without older peers to decrease the jostling for status, and enforce humane behavior. A large percentage of people will emerge from school with mild trauma and a set of learned social behaviors that are severely maladaptive in a more normal environment.

Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2014 07:01:33AM 0 points [-]

Very well stated, and exactly on target.

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 17 February 2014 05:05:30PM *  3 points [-]

I am not sure what I mean. I don't think there is a sharp dividing line between a stupid and a non-stupid position, regardless of how generous you are willing to be.

An easy example of a stupid position is one that is logically inconsistent (pi=3). There are a number of reasons to think young earth creationism is stupid:

(a) Outside reason: no one remotely smart agrees.

(b) Bayesian reason: the posterior is tiny given our data, for any reasonable setup.

(c) Historical reason: looking at the origins and evolution ( :) ) of young earth creationism, what it's trying to get done, etc.


One kind of position that I think you should consider reasonable is one that differs from another one you consider reasonable but for questions of taste (e.g. if you think Everett interpretation is reasonable, you should also think Copenhagen is reasonable). Similarly for atheism vs certain kinds of Deism, etc.

I think arguments about taste are stupid (content-free) arguments to have.


"Creationism," "conservativism", etc. are so broad that they are reasonable, I think.

Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2014 06:45:58AM *  1 point [-]

Outside reason: no one remotely smart agrees.

I have been told that William R. Wade, a mathematician at the University of Tennessee and the author of a well-regarded textbook on analysis, is a young-earth creationist who believes that the evidence supporting the standard scientific view of geology, biology etc. was planted by the devil to test our faith.

My source for this is admittedly not a public one, but note that on his homepage, Wade states that he teaches a Sunday school class in an evangelical church, which should increase the plausibility. (Not all evangelicals are YECs, but most YECs, at least in the U.S., are evangelicals.)

Comment author: glomerulus 20 February 2014 12:16:15AM 2 points [-]

Rational!Harry describes a character similar to the base except persistently Rational, for whatever reason. Rational-Harry describes a Harry which is rational, but it's nonstandard usage and might confuse a few people (Is his name "Rational-Harry"? Do I have to call him that in-universe to differentiate him from Empirical-Harry and Oblate-Spheroiod-Harry?). Rational Harry might just be someone attaching an adjective to Harry to indicate that at the moment, he's rational, or more rational by contrast to Silly Dumbledore.

Anyway, adj!noun is a compound with a well-defined purpose within a fandom: to describe how a character differs from canon. It's an understood notation, and the convention, so everyone uses it to prevent misunderstandings. Outside of fandom things, using it signals casualness and fandom-savviness to those in fandom culture, and those who aren't familiar with fandom culture can understand it and don't notice the in-joke.

Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2014 01:16:20AM 0 points [-]

Rational Harry might just be someone attaching an adjective to Harry to indicate that at the moment, he's rational, or more rational by contrast to Silly Dumbledore.

Yes, that's why I favor the hyphen (in response to shminux above).

Comment author: shminux 19 February 2014 08:56:05PM *  -2 points [-]

Which rules or principles are you applying here?

Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2014 12:01:14AM 1 point [-]

I don't think it's listed explicitly at either of the links, but the principle I'm using is that of hyphenating when you want to make clear that a compound is a compound, and not (e.g.) an adjective happening contingently to modify a noun.

This used to be done a lot more often, e.g. "magnifying-glass". I generally dislike the trend of eliminating such hyphens.

But in any case my question is the same even if you prefer "Rational Harry" to "Rational-Harry"; why "Rational!Harry" instead of one of the former?

Comment author: polymathwannabe 19 February 2014 09:09:17PM 0 points [-]
Comment author: komponisto 19 February 2014 11:45:25PM *  1 point [-]

I was looking for an explanation of why the exclamation point was used in preference to the already-existing hyphen notation. Instead, that page only contains an explanation of the meaning and the origin of the exclamation-point notation, and does not compare it to the hyphen notation at all.

Comment author: shokwave 19 February 2014 07:47:42AM 1 point [-]

(Rational) Harry

Seemed eminently more readable than rationalist!Harry to me when I first encountered this notation, although now it's sunk in enough that my brain actually generated "that's more keystrokes!" as a reason not to switch style.

Comment author: komponisto 19 February 2014 08:43:05PM 1 point [-]

Just curious (and not necessarily addressed to you specifically), but what on Earth is wrong with the standard, conventional English notation for this, which is a hyphen? E.g. "Rational-Harry" etc.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 19 February 2014 04:33:52AM 2 points [-]

If you had this for a class, could you report on the rest of the students?
What kind of class was it; in particular, how mature were the students? Did it generally work?

Comment author: komponisto 19 February 2014 06:36:03AM 4 points [-]

It was a 200-level introductory linear algebra course targeted at math majors, at an ordinary state university. Whether it "worked" depends on what you consider the purpose of such a course to be. It was good for the best students, and for the rest, it wouldn't have mattered what book had been used, because they wouldn't have read it anyway.

(I did hear some complaints, but I also heard similar complaints about virtually every book in every class I ever took in my life, so this fact doesn't seem to say much about Axler in particular, other than that it doesn't prevent such complaints.)

I should say, as I did here, that Axler alone isn't enough. One needs to do more computational practice than it provides. But that's not hard to do, if you know you need to do it.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 18 February 2014 11:38:00PM 0 points [-]

Many people who already know linear algebra agree with the title, but you are the first person I've heard of to actually learn linear algebra from this book. That is a much more useful recommendation. But I do wonder if some level of mathematical sophistication is a prerequisite for this book, a prerequisite not fulfilled by most linear algebra students.

Comment author: komponisto 19 February 2014 04:15:28AM 2 points [-]

Many people who already know linear algebra agree with the title, but you are the first person I've heard of to actually learn linear algebra from this book

Hi! I'm another member of that class.

But I do wonder if some level of mathematical sophistication is a prerequisite for this book, a prerequisite not fulfilled by most linear algebra students

Indeed. On the other hand, "most linear algebra students" != "readers of LW interested in studying linear algebra".

(Speaking as someone who was definitely in its target audience, the book actually felt very hand-holdy, almost patronizing at times, with its "Some mathematicians use the term X instead of Y" sidebars and the like. Nonetheless, I've always said that it was worth it to have gone to my undergraduate institution just to have learnt linear algebra from this book.)

Comment author: orthonormal 18 February 2014 08:57:25AM 7 points [-]

My gut reaction to an adult using quotation marks around a phrase like "the system" when talking to teens is that it's a transparent attempt to condescend. I know it's not intended as such, but I'd change the title.

Comment author: komponisto 18 February 2014 09:49:26AM 5 points [-]

On the other hand, I think the title, as worded, is one of the best pieces of advice I could imagine a gifted teen receiving; I was strongly tempted to upvote the post after reading the title alone.

(Though I would choose a different title for the section labeled "It's important to choose your extracurriculars well", because that misleadingly sounds like standard advice from The System.)

Comment author: AnlamK 01 February 2014 10:36:52AM *  1 point [-]

Hello komponisto,

By 'why', I mean why do courts keep changing their opinion when the evidence is the same? I know you have written on this subject a lot before (which influenced my opinion) so here are some questions (perhaps some a little basic) I have about the case. (Some may be just rehashing old facts about the case.)

(1) You write that 'the Supreme Court has gotten the verdict it wanted.' Why does the Supreme Court want to convict Sollecito and Know? The appeals courts cited 'a complete dearth of evidence' when they acquitted Sollecito and Knox - which is what I think. How did the prosecution respond to this?

(2) In the room murder was committed, no DNA evidence pertaining to Knox and Sollecito was found. How does the prosecution explain that only one assailant (Guede) left traces of DNA but the two others left no such traces?

(3) It is said that the evidence shows that Kercher was killed by multiple people. What is your take on this? Do you think it was Guede and some other accomplice? If so, do you think Guede knows more than in fact he admits?

(4) Perhaps most basically, how did Knox and Sollecito get implicated in this crime? I mean there were a lot of witnesses being questioned but how did the police/investigators somehow get the idea that Knox and Sollecito were suspects?

Thanks.

Comment author: komponisto 05 February 2014 09:03:49PM 4 points [-]

(1) You write that 'the Supreme Court has gotten the verdict it wanted.' Why does the Supreme Court want to convict Sollecito and Knox?

Presumably, because they watch the same TV shows as everyone else in Italy, and are convinced that Sollecito and Knox are bad characters, and are furthermore convinced that the Italian public thinks that Sollecito and Knox are bad characters, thus allowing them to play the role of "heroes" doing their duty and standing up for "justice".

(2) In the room murder was committed, no DNA evidence pertaining to Knox and Sollecito was found. How does the prosecution explain that only one assailant (Guede) left traces of DNA but the two others left no such traces?

Firstly, of course, they claim that the bra clasp DNA counts as a trace left in the room by Sollecito. Secondly, the original lead prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, at one point speculated that Knox directed the violence from outside the room.

(3) It is said that the evidence shows that Kercher was killed by multiple people. What is your take on this?

It's just plain wrong, and entirely motivated by the desire to imply that Knox and Sollecito were involved. It's possible that Guede had one or more accomplices (of whom no trace has been identified), but parsimony argues against it.

(4) Perhaps most basically, how did Knox and Sollecito get implicated in this crime? I mean there were a lot of witnesses being questioned but how did the police/investigators somehow get the idea that Knox and Sollecito were suspects?

They were convenient, vulnerable (no lawyers, unlike the other housemates), and unaware of the specific way in which the investigators apparently expected all innocent humans to behave in such a situation. In short, easy targets for an impatient, quasi-panicked police force in need of a quick "resolution" to the case.

Comment author: JohnBonaccorsi 05 February 2014 04:01:17AM 12 points [-]

Reply to myself:

I hereby withdraw every negative thing I have said about Amanda Knox at this website. In the period since I posted the comment immediately above, I could not drive from my mind a remark my fellow-poster Desrtopa made in a post at 03 February 2014 07:39:06AM. In effect, Desrtopa asked whether I would fault a person for giving changed-stories because of torture; if I wouldn't, why would I fault the person for giving changed-stories under interrogation so harsh that its effect on the person being questioned would be tantamount to that of torture? At the time, I avoided answering Desrtopa's question.

Just a few minutes ago, I read commentary by a "veteran FBI agent" named Steve Moore. The commentary was posted at http://www.injusticeinperugia.org/FBI7.html , which is a page of a website called Injustice in Perugia. Having known really nothing about interrogation before I read Moore's remarks--and having had no sense how a law-enforcement professional would evaluate various types of interrogation--I had no right to remark on Amanda Knox's performance under interrogation in this case. Moore's remarks have persuaded me of what Desrtopa was, in effect, asking me to consider, namely, that the interrogation of Knox was a disgrace. Moore's closing paragraph was as follows:

"This is an innocent college girl subjected to the most aggressive and heinous interrogation techniques the police could utilize (yet not leave marks.) She became confused, she empathized with her captors, she doubted herself in some ways, but in the end her strength of character and her unshakable knowledge of her innocence carried her through. It’s time that the real criminals were prosecuted."

In saying "the real criminals," Moore seems to have been speaking of the interrogators themselves. If that is, indeed, what he meant, I would say he used the right term.

Should the conviction of Amanda Knox be upheld, and should Italy request Knox's extradition from the United States, the U.S. government, I hope, will decline to extradite her. The U.S., in my estimation, should do much more that that to right the wrongs that have been done in this matter.

Comment author: komponisto 05 February 2014 05:24:52AM 6 points [-]

Congratulations on changing your mind!

You did it exactly right: you realized you lacked knowledge in a certain domain (interrogation, in this case), proceeded to learn something about it, and updated your previous opinions based on the information you received.

Less Wrong exists pretty much in order to help people become better at doing exactly that.

My hat is off to you, sir.

Comment author: gwern 02 February 2014 04:01:32PM 8 points [-]

And of course, Robert Craig helped his Jeopardy performance through judicious use of Anki/spaced-repetition to memorize past answers.

Comment author: komponisto 02 February 2014 07:01:11PM 9 points [-]

So did Chu, according to the link.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Amanda Knox Guilty Again
Comment author: [deleted] 31 January 2014 11:15:17PM *  1 point [-]

Vagaries of the Italian justice system combined with a heady mix of mob justice

Agreed, but...

nationalism.

That's not exactly the word I'd use to explain why Italians would think an Italian and his girlfriend would be guilty of the murder of a foreigner, especially when the other suspect is also a foreigner, and from an ethnic group Italians dislike much more than that of Amanda Knox.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Amanda Knox Guilty Again
Comment author: komponisto 01 February 2014 06:34:56AM 2 points [-]

The way that nationalism enters is that people feel that criticism of the verdict (especially coming from outsiders, as it mainly does in this case) is an attack on the nation's institutions (specifically its justice system), and thus on the nation itself.

In other words, if Knox and Sollecito were innocent, that would be a soldier for foreigners to use against Italy, and thus must be defeated at all costs (Sollecito's nationality notwithstanding).

Comment author: wedrifid 31 January 2014 07:40:45PM 2 points [-]

Whoops, looks like Amanda Knox is guilty again.

This is an area in which word use is important. "Is guilty" is not a fact about the universe or Amanda Knox that is changed by the behaviour now of corrupt Italian prosecutors.

Of course, the lack of double jeapordy protection in Italy might be an impediment to their extradition request.

"Innocent until proven guilty. And also innocent after proven guilty then proven not-actually-proven-guilty. Like, innocent for keeps."

Comment author: komponisto 31 January 2014 08:10:52PM 0 points [-]

Just to expand on your point:

"And also innocent after proven guilty then proven not-actually-proven-guilty.."

should probably be "...innocent after proven 'guilty'...", lest we lose the meaning of "proven".

Comment author: adbge 31 January 2014 05:21:08AM *  3 points [-]
Comment author: komponisto 31 January 2014 06:35:20PM *  1 point [-]

Contingent on losing her appeal,

This is ambiguous, of course; technically, the "appeal" level is what just happened. The next stage is a second "appeal", at the Supreme Court. (Italian terminology actually uses two different words for the two stages, but they both translate as "appeal" in English.)

Amanda Knox will be found guilty by the Italian Supreme Court.

Again, to be technically correct, what would happen is that the finding of guilt by the appeals court (the thing that just happened) would be confirmed by the Supreme Court.

...because if you're talking about practicalities instead of legal formalisms, what actually happened was that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were found guilty by the Italian Supreme Court last March.

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 31 January 2014 06:08:54PM 2 points [-]
Comment author: komponisto 31 January 2014 06:27:43PM 1 point [-]

The Guardian video with Simon Hattenstone, featuring Knox and her best friend Madison Paxton, is highly recommended.

Comment author: private_messaging 31 January 2014 05:55:23PM 0 points [-]

The important question here is, can the supreme court say that the evidence does not meet the standard of reasonable doubt? Is that a matter of interpretation of the evidence, or a matter of the application of the law?

Comment author: komponisto 31 January 2014 06:17:55PM *  3 points [-]

The important question here is, can the supreme court say that the evidence does not meet the standard of reasonable doubt?

Yes, they can. (But they probably won't.)

Is that a matter of interpretation of the evidence, or a matter of the application of the law?

Trick question! In Italy, interpretation of the evidence is a matter of the application of the law, because the law specifies that the evidence has to be interpreted "logically". See how that works? If they want to overturn a verdict, they simply say that the lower court's motivation document was "illogical"; but if they don't, they can hide behind "far be it for us to enter into the merits of the case, which is reserved to the lower courts". It's perfect!

Comment author: shminux 31 January 2014 04:26:43PM 3 points [-]

In a country which repeatedly elected a known criminal who escaped conviction through various shady means to the top post, it is hard to tell whether even the Supreme Court will bother with looking for truth. Additionally, according to Wikipedia,

The Court of Cassation cannot overrule the trial court's interpretation of the evidence but can correct a lower court's interpretation or application of the law.

so there is not nearly as much latitude in what the court can do, compared to SCOTUS. So, if the Supreme Court gets to hear the case, I'd give it 50/50 odds of the conviction being substantially upheld.

Comment author: komponisto 31 January 2014 06:06:08PM *  3 points [-]

Additionally, according to Wikipedia,

The Court of Cassation cannot overrule the trial court's interpretation of the evidence but can correct a lower court's interpretation or application of the law.

so there is not nearly as much latitude in what the court can do

...except that they already did completely overrule the trial court's interpretation of the evidence when they canceled the acquittal last March. So, they could certainly do it again, in the opposite direction, if they were so inclined. (I'm not predicting they will be so inclined.)

In Italy, the "interpretation or application of the law" includes the reasoning about the evidence used by the lower court; this is the loophole they use to disagree with lower courts about the facts of the case when they feel like it.

Comment author: AnlamK 31 January 2014 01:03:23PM 3 points [-]

Hello,

There have been informed discussions of this subject on LW before.

Particularly to parties informed on the subject: Can someone explain the court's reasoning? I can't quite follow why Knox and Sollecito were first convicted, then acquitted and yet are convicted once again.

Comment author: komponisto 31 January 2014 05:59:28PM *  6 points [-]

Particularly to parties informed on the subject: Can someone explain the court's reasoning?

As is usual in the Italian system, the court itself will publish its "motivations" within 90 days.

I can't quite follow why Knox and Sollecito were first convicted, then acquitted and yet are convicted once again.

If by "why" you mean "how it is procedurally possible", that can of course be answered now. Italian "trials" have three stages: first-level court, second-level court, and Supreme Court . The original first-level verdict (December 2009) was a conviction (this was the occasion of my original posts here); that was then changed to an acquittal at the second level (October 2011); that acquittal was then canceled by the Supreme Court (March 2013), who ordered a new second-level trial, which has now ended in another conviction. The case will thus go back to the Supreme Court again over the next year or so.

(Yes, this process could theoretically go on forever -- but in real life, what's going to happen is that now that the Supreme Court has gotten the verdict it wanted, it will rubber-stamp it without fuss.)

Comment author: komponisto 17 January 2014 03:59:21AM 1 point [-]

Thank you so much for this! I expect to be making use of it.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 16 January 2014 03:10:56PM *  6 points [-]

push guaranteed basic income to avoid top talent from having to take a formal job and let those people focus on their research while their basic living expenses are payed.

If you could make a good estimate of young Einsteins, it would be enough to pay the basic income to the selected talented people. And it does not even have to be forever. You could just offer to pay them basic income for 10 years; and when it is 5 years till the end, evaluate them again, and if they still pass your filter, extend the time for another 5 years; possibly repeatedly. (And they can still try academia when your scholarship expires.)

Comment author: komponisto 17 January 2014 12:20:15AM 2 points [-]

If you could make a good estimate of young Einsteins, it would be enough to pay the basic income to the selected talented people.

This is exactly what academia is supposed to be, and it doesn't work. (Notably, it didn't work for Einstein, who didn't get let in until 1908.)

People are very, very bad at recognizing genius.

Comment author: bramflakes 06 January 2014 02:56:41AM *  17 points [-]

Okay disclaimer - reading it did make me feel a little annoyed. Partly due to their writing style, partly due to me identifying with the specific subgroup of LW they're talking about, and partly on principle.

Really? Do you really think everyone who comes off as irrational based on a blog post of theirs that you read shouldn't be here?

No but when it's so clear-cut as in this case, yes.

If someone point-blank does not want to talk at the object-level about some controversial topic, and makes many veiled comments about what kind of nasty group I must belong to in order to entertain such beliefs, and has made it very clear they are happy to withdraw from the entire community surrounding it, what exactly am I supposed to do other than say "here's the door, have a nice day"?

Comment author: komponisto 07 January 2014 06:00:19AM 19 points [-]

what exactly am I supposed to do other than say "here's the door, have a nice day"?

Like you, I think that the linked blogger's position, as stated, is completely incompatible with the purpose of this community, but I think the point being made by some here is that steelmanning their criticisms, on the off-chance that their reaction might have been triggered by something legitimately criticism-worthy, is an option.

Comment author: David_Gerard 06 January 2014 09:04:28AM *  1 point [-]

A friend described LW as "like students arguing seriously about how often you really need to shower".

Comment author: komponisto 07 January 2014 05:48:39AM 33 points [-]

In other words, "like people I regard as low-status arguing seriously about whether assumptions unquestioned by high-status people like me are actually true".

Probably right.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 January 2014 11:57:24PM 2 points [-]

Why is that hilarious? It is in line with the studies I've read. I'm on my phone so it is a little hard to find cites. With focused study and the proper learning environment adults achieve fluency faster, but it us rare that they ever achieve a native like accent. Children with exposure under the age of 11 typically have no trouble in the other hand

Comment author: komponisto 07 January 2014 05:15:30AM 1 point [-]

Children with exposure under the age of 11 typically have no trouble [achieving a native-like accent] in the other hand

I started learning French at 10, and Spanish and Italian at 12, so this seems to predict I would have a native-like accent in French but not in Spanish or Italian. As a matter of fact, I do think my accent is slightly better in French, but I don't think the difference is large enough to count as "native-like" versus "non-native-like", and furthermore I suspect it has more to do with patterns of study and practice well after the ages in question (e.g. some systematic training in French phonetics at age 16) than with anything that went on in my brain during the first year.

Comment author: Stabilizer 05 January 2014 04:08:14PM *  43 points [-]

This morning my daughter told me that she did well on a spelling test, but she got the easiest words wrong. Of course that’s not exactly true. The words that are hardest for her to spell are the ones she in fact did not spell correctly. She probably meant that she missed the words she felt should have been easy. Maybe they were short words. Children can be intimidated by long words, even though long words tend to be more regular and thus easier to spell.

Our perceptions of what is easy are often upside-down. We feel that some things should be easy even though our experience tells us otherwise.

Sometimes the trickiest parts of a subject come first, but we think that because they come first they should be easy. For example, force-body diagrams come at the beginning of an introductory physics class, but they can be hard to get right. Newton didn’t always get them right. More advanced physics, say celestial mechanics, is in some ways easier, or at least less error-prone.

“Elementary” and “easy” are not the same. Sometimes they’re opposites. Getting off the ground, so to speak, may be a lot harder than flying.

-John D. Cook

Comment author: komponisto 05 January 2014 10:16:45PM 3 points [-]

See also: Inverse Speed.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 04 January 2014 08:05:11PM 7 points [-]

I feel that music theory has gotten stuck by trying too long to find universals. Of course, we would like to study Mozart's music the way scientists analyze the spectrum of a distant star. Indeed, we find some almost universal practices in every musical era. But we must view these with suspicion, for they might show no more than what composers then felt should be universal. If so, the search for truth in art becomes a travesty in which each era's practice only parodies its predecessor's prejudice. Imagine formulating "laws" for television screenplays, taking them for natural phenomenon uninfluenced by custom or constraint of commerce.

-- Marvin Minsky

Comment author: komponisto 04 January 2014 10:36:18PM 10 points [-]

I haven't read the whole text at the link (for which I'm grateful) yet, but I'll comment on the quoted paragraph.

I feel that music theory has gotten stuck by trying too long to find universals

More specifically, however, the problem is a confusion of universals with fundamentals. Music theory has succeeded in finding universals, but such universals by themselves aren't explanatory. If you don't know how to compose, it won't help you very much to learn that ancient flutes play the diatonic scale. And if you start doing statistical frequency analyses of local musical behavior patterns in some specific repertory, you've utterly gone off a cliff as far as explanation is concerned (at least, the kind of "explanation" that is of relevance to a prospective composer).

Music theory, as a discipline, suffers from a failure of query-hugging. My belief is that if theorists were to engage in honest introspection, they would, at the end of a (possibly quite long) chain of inference, reach the conclusion that their real goal is to devise a "programming language" for music: a set of concepts that facilitate the mental storage and manipulation of musical data. And that, if they attacked this goal directly, with conscious knowledge of what it is, music theory would (a) look very different (or rather, look a lot more like certain existing theories than others), (b) be more intellectually satisfying, and (c) be a lot more relevant to musical composition and performance.

(I'm grateful to Daniel Burfoot for the "programming language" metaphor.)

Comment author: Jennifer_H 23 October 2013 04:19:48AM 13 points [-]

Hello!

I'm Jennifer; I'm currently a graduate student in medieval literature and a working actor. Thanks to homeschooling, though, I do have a solid background and abiding interest in quantum physics/pure mathematics/statistics/etc., and 'aspiring rationalist' is probably the best description I can provide! I found the site through HPMoR.

Current personal projects: learning German and Mandarin, since I already have French/Latin/Spanish/Old English/Old Norse taken care of, and much as I personally enjoy studying historical linguistics and old dead languages, knowing Mandarin would be much more practical (in terms of being able to communicate with the greatest number of people when travelling, doing business, reading articles, etc.)

Comment author: komponisto 01 January 2014 12:32:57AM 0 points [-]

Your self-description is one of the best arguments for homeschooling I have ever seen or could imagine being made. (See also: Lillian Pierce.)

Welcome to LW, and please keep existing.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 06 December 2013 07:42:53PM 0 points [-]

You don't think "privately circulated manuscript" is 100% accurate?

I think it's pretty clear to say "a privately circulated article by Jones and a published paper by Black," at least as long as I provide links. The ambiguity I'm concerned about is where my comment is very short; the typical situation is providing the public version to someone who cited the private version.

Comment author: komponisto 07 December 2013 05:25:00AM 0 points [-]

You don't think "privately circulated manuscript" is 100% accurate?

The "manuscript" part certainly isn't, since these things are generally typeset.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 07 December 2013 03:40:15AM 1 point [-]

That seems like a not very persuasive complaint since even professional mathematicians will "epsilon" to mean a very small difference in an informal setting. To use a recent example from discussing a calculus midterm that we were going to make two versions, one of the professors said something like "the midterms will be within epsilon of each other" and no one batted an eye.

Comment author: komponisto 07 December 2013 05:05:13AM 4 points [-]

Because professional mathematicians understand and depend on the technical usage, there's little risk of the technical sense becoming diluted by such quasi-humorous, figurative allusions to the technical jargon, which can serve as a means of in-group bonding. When outsiders do it, hover, it's no longer clearly an allusion to something else, and risks being mistaken for a distinct technical usage in its own right, in addition to losing the slight humor/bonding value.

Another mathematical in-term that has been subject to similar abuse by outsiders is the word "isomorphic". When a mathematician speaks to a colleague of all the local cafeterias being isomorphic, this is clearly hyperbole -- but it's only clear if one understands the actual meaning and normal context of the word.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 06 December 2013 10:21:09PM 2 points [-]

To expand on Kalium's comment. Sometimes it takes massive amounts of cognitive effort to estimate a small probability, and it just isn't worth it for the purposes of some discussion. For example, it is extremely unlikely that the Illuminati have been secretly running the world governments for the last 300 years. It is extremely unlikely that ZPP is not contained in P^R where R is an oracle for the finite ring isomorphism problem. It is extremely unlikely that RIPD is going to win any Oscars. I don't need to work out exact probabilities for any of these to recognize that they are very small, other than to note that the first one is probably less likely than the second, which is probably less likely than the third.

In that context, saying epsilon to mean a small but hard to precisely estimate probability is reasonable.

Comment author: komponisto 07 December 2013 03:19:39AM -1 points [-]

While I agree with the reasonability of such a shorthand, what bothers me about this choice of term is that in mathematical usage, 'epsilon' generally stands for a variable, i.e. is bound by a quantifier: "for every epsilon > 0...", etc. Thus, although one informally thinks of such an "epsilon" as "a small number", the real point is that it's a number that "moves", usually "hitting" every positive number in some open interval containing 0. This is quite different from standing for a fixed but unknown number.

Comment author: ShardPhoenix 06 December 2013 08:57:24AM 6 points [-]

True, but it's probably worth it most of the time to avoid unnecessary conflict.

Comment author: komponisto 06 December 2013 03:34:29PM 10 points [-]

That is presumably the purpose of most of these "stopsigns", and indeed many other classic irrationalities (e.g. "non-overlapping magisteria").

Comment author: komponisto 06 December 2013 04:10:40AM 12 points [-]

"There's no accounting for taste" is one that is often used to avoid analysis of art.

Comment author: Metus 03 December 2013 08:27:12PM 5 points [-]

Say I would be willing to translate stuff from German and English for some extra money as a college student, where would I be looking for something like that?

Comment author: komponisto 05 December 2013 03:09:03AM 2 points [-]

Try oDesk.

Comment author: komponisto 03 December 2013 05:43:29PM 12 points [-]

In mid-November, I translated a 15,000-word contract from German to English in a week. It was my largest paid translation job and my first translation from German; previously I had translated documents from French and Italian, languages in which I am significantly more experienced. I didn't consider myself particularly qualified to translate German (though I had been planning to add it to my repertory eventually), and it seems to have been assigned to me through some sort of oversight. Nevertheless, I did it successfully, which increased my sense of what kinds of things I am able to do.

Comment author: hyporational 26 November 2013 05:08:01PM 1 point [-]

Could be a language issue. The Finnish word for agreement pretty much always refers to explicit agreement, whereas there is no simple word for implicit agreement in Finnish language that isn't directly translatable to "mutual understanding" or something like that.

Comment author: komponisto 26 November 2013 05:40:04PM 3 points [-]

In English, "agree" often means something like "coincide". (And Romance languages sometimes say "coincide" for "agree", as in opinions coinciding.)

Comment author: [deleted] 25 November 2013 07:00:04PM 0 points [-]

Neither of us is happy with wireheading. Still, it's better to be accurate about why we're rejecting negutilitarianism.

Comment author: komponisto 25 November 2013 07:16:24PM 0 points [-]

The fact that it prefers paperclipping to the status quo is enough for me (and consistent with what I originally wrote).

Comment author: jkaufman 25 November 2013 06:00:38PM 0 points [-]

Could you expand more on the incompatibility you see between Yudkowsky and Christiano's values?

Comment author: komponisto 25 November 2013 07:07:22PM 4 points [-]

Christiano strikes me as the sort of person who would embrace the Repugnant Conclusion; whereas I think Yudkowsky would ultimately dodge any bullet that required him to give up turning the universe into an interesting sci-fi world whose inhabitants did things like write fanfiction stories.

Nobody actually acts like they believe in total utilitarianism, but Christiano comes as close as anyone I know of to at least threatening to act as if they believe in it. Yudkowsky, having written about complexity of value, doesn't give me the same worry.

Comment author: [deleted] 25 November 2013 04:04:02PM -1 points [-]

Ok, again, let's assume we're already "playing as the AI". We are already possessed of superintelligence. Whatever we decide is negutilitarian good, we can feasibly do.

Given that, we can either wirehead everyone and eliminate their suffering forever, or rewrite ourselves as a paper-clipper and kill them.

Which one of these options do you think is negutilitarian!better?

Comment author: komponisto 25 November 2013 04:28:24PM *  0 points [-]

Which one of these options do you think is negutilitarian!better?

If the first is easier (i.e. costs less utility to implement), or if they're equally easy to implement, the first.

If the second is easier, it would depend on how much easier it was, and the answer could well be the second.

A superintelligence is still subject to tradeoffs.

But even if it turns out that wireheading is better on net than paperclipping, (a) that's not an outcome I'm happy with, and (b) paperclipping is still better (according to negative utilitarianism) than the status quo. This is more than enough to reject negative utilitarianism.

Comment author: [deleted] 25 November 2013 02:59:40PM 0 points [-]

Yes, but the point is not to speculate about AI, it's to speculate about the particular ethical system in question, that being negative utilitarianism. You can assume that we're modelling an agent who faithfully implements negative utilitarianism, not some random paper-clipper.

Comment author: komponisto 25 November 2013 03:30:48PM 0 points [-]

Yes, and my claim is that, given the amount of suffering in the world, negative utilitarianism says that building a paperclipper is a good thing to do (provided it's sufficiently easy).

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 25 November 2013 09:11:34AM *  0 points [-]

Utilitarianism is fundamentally incompatible with value complexity.

Could you explain why exactly? To me it seems that if you value multiple things, let's call them A, B, C, you could construct a function such as F = min(A, B, C), which by its maximization supports all of these values.

In such situation, imagine that currently e.g. A = 10, B = 1000, C = 1500. Which could mean e.g. that we have a lot of good music, many good movies, but thousands of people are literally starving to death. In such situation, trying to increase the function F means fully focusing on increasing A and ignoring the values B and C (until A reaches them). In a short term, it may seem as not having complex values. But that's just a local situation.

Shortly: Even if you have complex value, you may find that in current situation the best way to increase total outcome is to focus on one of these values.

Near mode: Imagine that you live in a village with 1000 citizens, where half of them are starving to death, and the other half is watching movies. One person proposes a new food program. Another person proposes making another movie (of which you already have a few dozens). As a mayor, you choose to spend the tax money on the former. The latter guy accuses you of not understanding the complexity of values. Do you think the accusation is fair?

Comment author: komponisto 25 November 2013 03:25:00PM 1 point [-]

Utilitarianism is fundamentally incompatible with value complexity.

To me it seems that if you value multiple things, let's call them A, B, C, you could construct a function

It sounds like you might be confusing utilitarianism with utility functions (a common mistake on LW). While utilitarianism always involves a utility function, not all utility functions are utilitarian.

Even if you have complex value, you may find that in current situation the best way to increase total outcome is to focus on one of these values.

Yes, that's always theoretically possible. In real life, however, humans are subject to value drift, and have to "practice" their values, lest they lose them.

One person proposes a new food program. Another person proposes making another movie (of which you already have a few dozens). As a mayor, you choose to spend the tax money on the former. The latter guy accuses you of not understanding the complexity of values.

That doesn't sound like the latter guy's true rejection. It sounds like he really means to accuse the mayor of undervaluing movies specifically. (After all, if the mayor had made the opposite choice, why couldn't the food program guy equally well accuse the mayor of not understanding the complexity of value?)

Comment author: [deleted] 24 November 2013 11:20:59PM 0 points [-]

Yes, but we're talking about abstract ethical theories, so we're already playing as the AI. An AI designed to minimize frustrated preferences will find it easier (that is, a better ratio of value to effort) to wirehead than to kill, unless the frustration-reduction of killing an individual is greater than the frustration-creation happening to all the individuals who are now mourning, scared, screaming in pain from shrapnel, etc.

Comment author: komponisto 25 November 2013 02:44:46PM 1 point [-]

we're already playing as the AI

Doesn't matter. If humans can build an AI, an AI can build an AI as well.

Comment author: [deleted] 24 November 2013 11:11:02PM 1 point [-]

This is a form of negative utilitarianism, and inherits the major problems with that theory (such as its endorsement of destroying the universe to stop all the frustrated preferences going on it in it right now).

Well hold on. Is destroying the universe easier than just eliminating the frustration but leaving the universe intact? I mean, surely forcibly wireheading everyone is easier than destroying the entire damned universe ;-).

It might, but it would be one that was outweighed by the larger number of preference-satisfactions to be gained from doing so, just like the disutility of torturing someone for 50 years is outweighed by the utility of avoiding 3^^^3 dust-speck incidents (for utilitarian utility functions).

True, but utility monsters and tile-the-universe-in-your-favorite-sapients also work for utilitarianism. Naive utilitarianism breaks down from the sheer fact that real populations are not Gaian hiveminds who experience each other's joy and suffering as one.

Even if you believe in such a thing as emotional utility that matters somehow at all, you can still point out that the dust-speckers are suffering at the absolute minimum level they can even notice, and that surely they can freaking cope with it to keep some poor bastard from being tortured horrifically for 50 years straight.

(Sorry, I'm a total bullet-dodger on ethical matters.)

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2013 11:17:07PM 0 points [-]

Is destroying the universe easier than just eliminating the frustration but leaving the universe intact?

It could be, if (for example) building UFAI turns out to be easier than eliminating the frustration.

Comment author: drethelin 24 November 2013 10:38:34PM 0 points [-]

If you value you something the correct thing to do is to convince others to value it. OBVIOUSLY AND WHATEVER YOUR VALUE IS. This is not a problem with utilitarianism. It's a problem with Values. If you value tradition it helps your values to convince other people to value tradition until the universe is tiled with traditional robots.

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2013 11:07:54PM 1 point [-]

It's a problem with simple values, not values in general. If you have a complex value system, it might contain detailed, not-concisely-summarizable specifications about exactly when it helps to convince other people to value tradition.

Comment author: Lukas_Gloor 24 November 2013 08:42:40PM 1 point [-]

This is a form of negative utilitarianism, and inherits the major problems with that theory (such as its endorsement of destroying the universe to stop all the frustrated preferences going on it in it right now).

Not if people have a strong preference to go on living. Killing them would frustrate this preference. This view would only imply that you shouldn't go on procreating indefinitely into the future if this would produce lots of unsatisfied preferences overall. So this conclusion depends on empirical circumstances, and it would be odd to reject a normative view because of this.

It might, but it would be one that was outweighed by the larger number of preference-satisfactions to be gained from doing so

Perhaps, that too is an empirical question. If people's preferences for tradition were strong enough, it likely wouldn't get outweighed. And if the preferences are weak, it being outweighed wouldn't pose much of a problem, given the framework in consideration.

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2013 09:10:43PM 3 points [-]

Not if people have a strong preference to go on living.

The preference to go on living results in large part from the good things (i.e. opportunities for preference satisfaction) available in life. If we didn't care about those any more, the strength of the preference to go on living would presumably diminish considerably.

But yes, the policy recommendations of utilitarianism always depend on how the numbers actually come out. The point is that they're too dependent on a single parameter, or a small subset of parameters, contrary to complexity of value.

(I would go so far as to argue that this is by design: utilitarianism historically comes from an intellectual context in which people thought moral theories ought to be simple.)

Comment author: Lukas_Gloor 24 November 2013 07:59:30PM -1 points [-]

Good points, but I think there are ways to still keep value complexity.

The population ethics of preference utilitarianism seem underdetermined. Rather than maximizing the total amount of satisfied preferences, you could also go for minimizing the amount of frustrated preferences. If there is no obligation to bring new preferences into existence just in order to satisfy them, then the originally existing preferences won't be overriden by future robots optimized for mutual preference-satisfaction.

And assuming that there is such a thing as a "terminal value", then getting someone to abandon their true value for tradition for something else would still count as a preference-violation if you assume idealized preference utilitarianism (which seems very similar to CEV) rather than straightforward preference utilitarianism that takes people's stated preferences at face value.

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2013 08:26:32PM *  3 points [-]

Rather than maximizing the total amount of satisfied preferences, you could also go for minimizing the amount of frustrated preferences.

This is a form of negative utilitarianism, and inherits the major problems with that theory (such as its endorsement of destroying the universe to stop all the frustrated preferences going on it in it right now).

And assuming that there is such a thing as a "terminal value", then getting someone to abandon their true value for tradition for something else would still count as a preference-violation

It might, but it would be one that was outweighed by the larger number of preference-satisfactions to be gained from doing so, just like the disutility of torturing someone for 50 years is outweighed by the utility of avoiding 3^^^3 dust-speck incidents (for utilitarian utility functions).

Comment author: drethelin 24 November 2013 07:41:03PM 1 point [-]

Most people do not have identical values. This means that if you're trying to help a lot of people, you have to rely on things you can assess most easily. It's a lot harder to tell how much truth beauty or honor (ESPECIALLY honor) someone has access to than how much running water or whether they have malaria. I say we should concentrate on welfare and let people take care of their own needs for abstract morality, especially considering how much they will disagree on what they want.

Effective altruism doesn't say anything about general ethics, and I don't know why you're claiming it tries to. It's about how to best help the most people. It's about charity and reducing worldsuck. I think this is pretty obvious to everyone involved, and I don't think people are being fooled.

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2013 08:05:06PM 5 points [-]

The issue is whether people like the OP and myself, who are interested in reducing worldsuck, but not necessarily in the same kind of way as utilitarians, belong in the EA community or not.

I'm quite confused about this. I think my values are pretty compatible with Yudkowsky's, but Yudkowsky seems to think he's an EA. On the other hand, my values seem incompatible with those of e.g. Paul Christiano, who I think everyone would agree clearly is an EA. Yet those two seem to act as though they believed their values were compatible with each other. Now both of them are as intelligent as I, maybe more. So if I update on their apparent beliefs about what sets of values are compatible, should I conclude that I'm an EA, despite my non-endorsement of utilitarianism or any other kind of extreme altruism, or should I instead conclude that I don't want Yudkowskian FAI after all, and start my own rival world-saving project?

Comment author: Lukas_Gloor 24 November 2013 07:29:00PM 1 point [-]

I agree. Every non-sentientist value that you add to your pool of intrinsic values needs an exchange rate (which can be non-linear and complex and whatever) that implies you'd be willing to let people suffer in exchange for said value. This seems egoistic rather than altruistic because you'd be valuing your own preference for tradition more than you value the well-being of others for their own sake. If other people value tradition intrinsically, then preference utilitarianism will output that tradition counts to the extent that it satisfies people's preferences for it. This would be the utilitarian way to include "complexity of value".

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2013 07:45:10PM 4 points [-]

If other people value tradition intrinsically, then preference utilitarianism will output that tradition counts to the extent that it satisfies people's preferences for it. This would be the utilitarian way to include "complexity of value".

If other people value tradition instead of helping other people, then the utilitarian thing to do is to get them to value helping other people more and tradition less. And on it goes, until you've tiled the universe with altruistic robots who only care about helping other altruistic robots (help other altrustic robots (help other altruistic robots (....(...(

Utilitarianism is fundamentally incompatible with value complexity.

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2013 07:10:00PM 2 points [-]

My sentiments exactly. Thank you for this well-written and badly-needed post. (Also for correctly understanding the meaning of "utilitarianism".)

Comment author: komponisto 22 November 2013 08:35:30PM 27 points [-]

Taken.

Comment author: ChrisHallquist 15 November 2013 10:51:28PM *  3 points [-]

Two points:

1) Have you read Gettier's paper "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?"? I recommended it; it seems to create problems for the JTB analysis of knowledge even assuming a Bayesian understanding of "justified."

2) You're misunderstanding the purpose of "true" in the JTB definition. It's not a matter of assigning probability 1 to a proposition, it's a matter of the proposition actually being true. As Eliezer would say, don't confuse uncertainty in the map with uncertainty in the territory. Pick your favorite case of a scientific theory that was once well supported by the evidence, but turned out to be false. Back when available evidence supported it, did scientists know it was true?

Comment author: komponisto 16 November 2013 10:11:50PM 2 points [-]

1) Have you read Gettier's paper "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?"? I recommended it; it seems to create problems for the JTB analysis of knowledge even assuming a Bayesian understanding of "justified."

As I argued in this comment from 2011, the intuitive reaction to the Gettier scenario is based on a probability-theoretic mistake analogous to the conjunction fallacy (you might call it the "disjunction fallacy").

Comment author: PhilGoetz 14 November 2013 06:32:50AM 0 points [-]

No, hypothesis 2 is not "an Elizabethan author was the greatest author of all time". Hypothesis 2 is what I said it was. I don't think I can say it any more clearly.

Comment author: komponisto 15 November 2013 07:14:40PM 0 points [-]

You should have been more explicit about your assumption that "greatest author" != "person humans 'elevate' as greatest author", especially since I think it's false.

Comment author: CronoDAS 15 November 2013 03:33:54AM *  0 points [-]

For an even older example of British humor that's still funny, try Gilbert and Sullivan. They're about 100 years old.

Comment author: komponisto 15 November 2013 07:12:20PM 2 points [-]

Getting closer to 150; Gilbert and Sullivan were both dead 100 years ago.

Comment author: gjm 14 November 2013 02:50:09AM *  3 points [-]

A few not particularly connected thoughts.

1 Why are you computing (# Elizabethan writers) / (# writers ever), specifically? I mean, why is the numerator that rather than the number of authors whose name begins with S, or the number of writers called William Shakespeare who wrote at least one play about kings and witches, or any of a zillion other sets of writers?

Because of your hypothesis #2, I suppose. But why that hypothesis rather than the hypothesis that there's something about having a name beginning with S that makes an author specially likely to be favoured, etc.?

2 It seems odd (this is a polite way of saying "downright wrong") to be comparing an estimate of the number of "serious writers" in Elizabethan times (estimated on the basis of what works have survived from then to the present day) with an estimate of the number of people who have submitted at least one novel to at least one publisher today. Compare serious writers with serious writers, or wannabes with wannabes.

3 I think you're wrong about what conclusions to draw from the near-unanimous admiration of Shakespeare. Yes, unanimity makes it likely that there are mechanisms at work other than objective evaluation of artistic merit. (Assuming there to be any such thing.) But it doesn't give much reason (or any) to think that artistic merit isn't an important part of the assessment.

4 It seems that this sort of issue is a big deal to you. I suggest that you might be happier if you just stopped worrying about how your cultural preferences differ from those you see as mainstream, and got on with enjoying whatever you enjoy.

[EDITED to avoid misformatting caused by LW's numbered-list magic.]

Comment author: komponisto 14 November 2013 03:44:12AM 4 points [-]

I suggest that you might be happier if you just stopped worrying about how your cultural preferences differ from those you see as mainstream, and got on with enjoying whatever you enjoy.

Or, alternatively, bite the bullet and actually update on "mainstream" opinion. This entails becoming curious about why mainstream opinion is what it is, rather than skeptical that its judgements are correct (on the basis of your immediate experience).

Comment author: komponisto 14 November 2013 03:24:51AM *  0 points [-]

I can easily compute how likely it is that one of the Elizabethan authors was the greatest author of all time given that hypothesis 2 is false:

...Yes, the answer is 0, since hypothesis 2 is "an Elizabethan author was the greatest author of all time":

Hypothesis #2 is that something about the time that Shakespeare wrote in made it very likely that we would elevate some writer from that time period to "Greatest Writer Ever".

(I think you should reword this to clarify what you really meant, whatever that might be.)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 11 November 2013 03:08:22PM 11 points [-]

Longitudinal study of men and happiness

“At a time when many people around the world are living into their tenth decade, the longest longitudinal study of human development ever undertaken offers some welcome news for the new old age: our lives continue to evolve in our later years, and often become more fulfilling than before. Begun in 1938, the Grant Study of Adult Development charted the physical and emotional health of over 200 men, starting with their undergraduate days. The now-classic ‘Adaptation to Life’ reported on the men’s lives up to age 55 and helped us understand adult maturation. Now George Vaillant follows the men into their nineties, documenting for the first time what it is like to flourish far beyond conventional retirement. Reporting on all aspects of male life, including relationships, politics and religion, coping strategies, and alcohol use (its abuse being by far the greatest disruptor of health and happiness for the study’s subjects), ‘Triumphs of Experience’ shares a number of surprising findings. For example, the people who do well in old age did not necessarily do so well in midlife, and vice versa. While the study confirms that recovery from a lousy childhood is possible, memories of a happy childhood are a lifelong source of strength. Marriages bring much more contentment after age 70, and physical aging after 80 is determined less by heredity than by habits formed prior to age 50. The credit for growing old with grace and vitality, it seems, goes more to ourselves than to our stellar genetic makeup.”

Comment author: komponisto 13 November 2013 04:12:07PM *  2 points [-]

Begun in 1938, ... starting with their undergraduate days.

Sample bias warning: people who went to college in the 1930s constitute a highly atypical subset of humanity.

Comment author: komponisto 07 November 2013 09:11:18PM 2 points [-]
Comment author: Douglas_Knight 07 November 2013 04:26:34PM -1 points [-]

You demand that everyone accept your definition of ethics, excluding moral luck from the subject, but you simultaneously demand that meta-ethics be defined by convention.

I said both of those points (but not their conjunction) in my previous comment, after explicitly anticipating what you say here and I'm rather annoyed that you ignored it. I guess the lesson is to say as little as possible.

Comment author: komponisto 07 November 2013 07:48:20PM 0 points [-]

Now just hold on a second. You are arguing by uncharitable formulation, implying that there is tension between two claims when, logically, there is none. (Forgive me for not assuming you were doing that, and thereby, according to you, "ignoring" your previous comment.) There is nothing contradictory about holding that (1) ethical theories that include moral luck are wrong; and (2) utilitarianism is an ethical theory and not a meta-ethical theory.

(1) is an ethical claim. (2) is the conjunction of a meta-ethical claim ("utilitarianism is an ethical theory") and a meta-meta-ethical claim ("utilitarianism is not a meta-ethical theory").

( I hereby declare this comment to supersede all of my previous comments on the subject of the distinction between ethics and meta-ethics, insofar as there is any inconsistency; and in the event there is any inconsistency, I pre-emptively cede you dialectical victory except insofar as doing so would contradict anything else I have said in this comment.)

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 06 November 2013 05:30:27PM 0 points [-]

First, is ethics only about decision procedures? The existence of the concept of moral luck suggests not. Sure, you can say lots of people are wrong, but to banish them from the field of ethics is ridiculous. Virtue ethics is another example, less clearly a counterexample, but much more central.

The three level hierarchy at your link does nothing to tell what belongs in meta-ethics and what belongs in ethics. I don't think your comment here is consistent with your comment there and I don't think either comment has much to do with the three level hierarchy.

Meta-ethics is about issues that are logically prior to ethics. I reject your list. If there are disagreements about the logical priority of issues, then there should be disagreements about what constitutes meta-ethics. You could have a convention that meta-ethics is defined as a certain list of topics by tradition, but that's stupid. In particular, I think consequentialism vs deontology has high logical priority. Maybe you disagree with me, but to say that I am wrong by definition is not helpful.

Going back to Eliezer, I think that he does only cover meta-ethical claims and that they do pin down an ethical theory. Maybe other meta-ethical stances would not uniquely do so (contrary to my previous comment), but his do.

Comment author: komponisto 07 November 2013 09:32:53AM *  0 points [-]

First, is ethics only about decision procedures? The existence of the concept of moral luck suggests not.

It may not surprise you to learn that I am of the school that rejects the concept of moral luck. (In this I think I align with Eliezer.)

Meta-ethics is about issues that are logically prior to ethics

This is unobjectionable provided that one agrees about what ethics consists of. As far as I am aware, standard philosophical terminology labels utilitarianism (for example) as an ethical theory; yet I have seen people on LW refer to "utilitarian meta-ethics". This is the kind of usage I mean to disapprove of, and I hold Eliezer under suspicion of encouraging it by blurring the distinction in his sequence.

I should be clear about the fact that this is a terminological issue; my interest here is mainly in preserving the integrity of the prefix "meta", which I think has suffered excessive abuse both here and elsewhere. For whatever reason, Eliezer's use of the term felt abusive to me.

Part of the problem may be that Eliezer seemed to think the concept of rigid designation was the important issue, as opposed to e.g. the orthogonality thesis, and I found this perplexing (and uncharacteristic of him). Discomfort about this may have contributed to my perception that meta-ethics wasn't really the topic of his sequence, so that his calling it that was "off". But this is admittedly distinct from my claim that his thesis is ethical rather than meta-ethical.

Going back to Eliezer, I think that he does only cover meta-ethical claims and that they do pin down an ethical theory. Maybe other meta-ethical stances would not uniquely do so (contrary to my previous comment), but his do.

This is again a terminological point, but I think a sequence should be named after the conclusion rather than the premises. If his meta-ethical stance pins down an ethical theory, he should have called the sequence explaining it his "ethics" sequence; just as if I use my theory of art history to derive my theory of physics, then my sequence explaining it should be my "physics" sequence rather than my "art history" sequence.

Comment author: Username 05 November 2013 08:33:19PM *  1 point [-]
  • Under Race, either add 'Mixed' or change 'Other' to 'Other/Mixed'
  • Under Degree, change 'What is your highest degree earned?' to 'What is your highest degree earned or in progress?'
  • Year of Singularity question - seems to imply that singularity has not already happened. Depends on your definition of singularity.
  • Calibration IQ - Can we calibrate to test score if we haven't taken a legit IQ test? Might be worth normalizing all IQ's/Tests to a percentile score.
  • Smoking - Change this question from 'Do you smoke cigarettes?' to 'How often do you smoke cigarettes?', to fit with the other substance questions.
  • Normalize time intervals on substance questions.
  • Would be curious to have a question on frequency of marijuana/other drug use.
Comment author: komponisto 07 November 2013 08:43:48AM 5 points [-]

Under Degree, change 'What is your highest degree earned?' to 'What is your highest degree earned or in progress?'

Instead of that, I would recommend two questions: "What is your highest degree earned?" and "What is your highest degree attempted or in progress?"

Comment author: lukeprog 05 November 2013 04:28:40AM 0 points [-]

Yes! Less Wrong, please give vallinder extra karma, for identifying the more ambiguous cartoon dude. :)

Comment author: komponisto 05 November 2013 08:22:17AM 0 points [-]
Comment author: Douglas_Knight 04 November 2013 08:39:14PM 0 points [-]

Eliezer's "metaethics" sequence, despite its name, argues for his ethical theory

Yes; what else would you do in metaethics?
Isn't its job to point to ethical theories, while the job of ethics is to assume you have agreed on a theory (an often false assumption)?

Comment author: komponisto 05 November 2013 07:42:49AM 0 points [-]

Ethics is the subject in which you argue about which ethical theory is correct. In meta-ethics, you argue about how you would know if an ethical theory were correct, and/or what it would mean for an ethical theory to be correct, etc.

See here for a previous comment of mine on this.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 01 November 2013 03:02:58PM *  2 points [-]

I would be surprised if Eliezer believed (1) or (2), as distinct from believing that CEV[X] is the most viably actionable approximation of morality[X] (using your terminology) we've come up with thus far.

This reminds me somewhat of the difference between believing that 2013 cryonics technology reliably preserves the information content of a brain on the one hand, and on the other believing that 2013 cryonics technology has a higher chance of preserving the information than burial or cremation.

I agree that that he devotes a lot of time to arguing against (3), though I've always understood that as a reaction to the "but a superintelligent system would be smart enough to just figure out how to behave ethically and then do it!" crowd.

I'm not really sure what you mean by (4).

Comment author: komponisto 02 November 2013 02:24:24AM 3 points [-]

I would be surprised if Eliezer believed (1) or (2), as distinct from believing that CEV[X] is the most viably actionable approximation of morality[X] (using your terminology) we've come up with thus far.

I didn't intend to distinguish that finely.

I'm not really sure what you mean by (4).

(4) is intended to mean that if we alter humans to have a different value system tomorrow, we would also be changing what we mean (today) by "morality". It's the negation of the assertion that moral terms are rigid designators, and is what Eliezer is arguing against in No License To Be Human.

Comment author: lukeprog 30 October 2013 12:37:44AM *  17 points [-]

I remain confused by Eliezer's metaethics sequence.

Both there and in By Which It May Be Judged, I see Eliezer successfully arguing that (something like) moral realism is possible in a reductionist universe (I agree), but he also seems to want to say that in fact (something like) moral realism actually obtains, and I don't understand what the argument for that is. In particular, one way (the way?) his metaethics might spit up something that looks a lot like moral realism is if there is strong convergence of values upon (human-ish?) agents receiving better information, time enough to work out contradictions in their values, etc. But the "strong convergence of values" thesis hasn't really been argued, so I remain unclear as to why Eliezer finds it plausible.

Basically, I read the metaethics sequence as asserting both things but arguing only for the first.

But I'm not sure about this. Perhaps because I was already familiar with the professional metaethics vocabulary when I read the sequence, I found Eliezer's vocabulary for talking about positions in metaethics confusing.

I meant to explore these issues in a vocabulary I find more clear, in my own metaethics sequence, but I still haven't got around to it. :(

Comment author: komponisto 01 November 2013 11:55:20AM *  4 points [-]

(I'm putting this as a reply to your comment because your comment is what made me think of it.)

In my view, Eliezer's "metaethics" sequence, despite its name, argues for his ethical theory, roughly

(1) morality[humans] = CEV[humans]

(N.B.: this is my terminology; Eliezer would write "morality" where I write "morality[humans]") without ever arguing for his (implied) metaethical theory, which is something like

(2) for all X, morality[X] = CEV[X].

Worse, much of his effort is spent arguing against propositions like

(3) (1) => for all X, morality[X] = CEV[humans] (The Bedrock of Morality: Arbitrary?)

and

(4) (1) => morality[humans] = CEV["humans"] (No License To Be Human)

which, I feel, are beside the point.

Comment author: Larks 31 October 2013 01:13:35AM *  4 points [-]

Multiple philosophers have suggested that this stance seems similar to "rigid designation", i.e., when I say 'fair' it intrinsically, rigidly refers to something-to-do-with-equal-division. I confess I don't see it that way myself - if somebody thinks of Euclidean geometry when you utter the sound "num-berz" they're not doing anything false, they're associating the sound to a different logical thingy. It's not about words with intrinsically rigid referential power, it's that the words are window dressing on the underlying entities. I want to talk about a particular logical entity, as it might be defined by either axioms or inchoate images, regardless of which word-sounds may be associated to it. If you want to call that "rigid designation", that seems to me like adding a level of indirection; I don't care about the word 'fair' in the first place, I care about the logical entity of fairness. (Or to put it even more sharply: since my ontology does not have room for physics, logic, plus designation, I'm not very interested in discussing this 'rigid designation' business unless it's being reduced to something else.)

He seems to have thought Rigid Designation was about a magic connection between sound wave patterns and objects, such that the sound waves would always refer to the same object, rather than that those sound waves, when spoken by such a speaker in such a context, would always refer to the same object, regardless of which possible world that object was in.

I'm sorry if that explanation was a little unclear; it was aimed at non-philosophers, but I suspect you could explain it better.

EDIT: see also prior discussion

Comment author: komponisto 01 November 2013 10:47:18AM 1 point [-]

(In other words, he confused rigid designation with semantic externalism.)

Comment author: Benito 20 October 2013 06:21:33AM *  2 points [-]

This post would be of much higher utility if some more time was spent working on the flow of the writing. I'm currently introducing some friends to rationality, but I won't be using this post as it feels clunky and not that engaging, although I think that the bits based on 'the lens that sees its flaws' (diagrams of reality, lens, beliefs and optical illusions sections) are great introductions to the subject.

Perhaps try and write more conversationally, as big parts just feel like quite formal lists of statements. Also, maybe include what's at the top of this post at the top.

Comment author: komponisto 20 October 2013 01:10:22PM 6 points [-]

I, on the other hand, like the "telegraphic" writing style of the post (for all that I might recommend various tweaks here and there), and am happy to see this material in this form. (Just to list one advantage of such a style, it tends to produce texts with a high degree of "skimmability").

Lately I've been inclining toward the view that, given human psychological diversity, there really is no such thing as too many different pedagogical texts on a given subject. So rather than encouraging this author to change the style of this post, I would sooner encourage them or (more likely) someone else to write another one if the need is felt.

Comment author: pianoforte611 15 October 2013 01:52:35AM *  1 point [-]

Use octave transfer (ITT sec. 7.7).

Thanks, this operation being notably absent in Schenkerian theory (I think).

The short answer is: definitely not

I suppose I will have to live with that for now.

If by "work fine" you mean that it is in fact possible to identify the "appropriate" Roman numerals to assign in such cases, sure, I'll give you that

By work fine, I mean the the theory is falsifiable, and has predictive power. If you are given half of the bars in a Mozart piece, using harmonic theory can give a reasonable guess as to the rest. I'm not that confident about Mozart though, certainly pop music can be predicted using harmonic theory.

As far as I am concerned, there is no aesthetic difference between any of the passages (a) through (d) for the simple reason that all four of them are too short to possess much of any aesthetic characteristics in the first place: they all consist of three bars of four chords each.

...

The essence of musical composition -- at least its most fundamental and "elusive" aspect -- has to do with projecting coherent (i.e. recognizably human-designed) gestures over long time spans ... To be impressed by the difference between (a) and (d) -- as readers are apparently expected to be -- is to miss most of the point of what music is about

Could it be that your subjective experience of music is different than most people? It certainly sounds very alien to me. While its true that listening to the long range structure of a sonata is pleasurable to me, there are certainly 3 to 4 bar excerpts that I happen to enjoy in isolation without context. But you think that 3 bars is not enough to distinguish non-music from music.

You also claim that the stylistic differences are minor, yet I would wager that virtually 100% of people (with hearing) can point out d) as being to only tonal example.

the question for the theorist or analyst is how a given listener understands what the composer writes

This is very strange to me; suppose mozart were to replace all of the f's in sonata in c major with f sharps. I think that the piece of music would be worse. Not objectively, or fundamentally worse. Just worse to a typical listener's ears. A pianist who was used to playing mozart might wonder if there was a mistake in the manuscript.

Comment author: komponisto 15 October 2013 06:33:51AM 2 points [-]

Use octave transfer (ITT sec. 7.7).

Thanks, this operation being notably absent in Schenkerian theory (I think).

On the contrary, Schenker uses it routinely.

By work fine, I mean the the theory is falsifiable, and has predictive power. If you are given half of the bars in a Mozart piece, using harmonic theory can give a reasonable guess as to the rest.

If you're talking about the expectations that a piece sets up for the listener, Westergaardian theory has much more to say about that than harmonic theory does. Or, let me rather say: an analyst equipped with Westergaardian theory is in a better position to talk about that, in much greater detail and precision, than one equipped with harmonic theory.

You might try having a closer look at Chapter 8 of ITT, which you said you had only skimmed so far. (A review of Chapter 7 wouldn't hurt either.)

Could it be that your subjective experience of music is different than most people?

Not in the sense that you mean, no. (Otherwise my answer might be "I should hope so!") I'm not missing anything that "most people" would hear. It's the opposite: I almost certainly hear more than an average human: more context, more possibilities, more vividness. (What kind of musician would I be were it otherwise?) I'm acutely aware of the differences between passages (a) through (d). It's just that I also see (or, rather, hear) a much larger picture -- a picture that, by the way, I would like more people to hear (rather than being discouraged from doing so and having their existing prejudices reinforced).

But you think that 3 bars is not enough to distinguish non-music from music.

That is not what I said. You would be closer if you said I thought 3 bars were not enough to distinguish good music from bad music. But of course it depends on how long the 3 bars are, and what they contain. My only claim here is that these particular excerpts are too short and contain too little to be judged against each other as music. And again, this is not because I don't hear the effect of the constraints that produced (d) as opposed to (a), but rather most probably because: (1) I'm not impressed by (d) because I understand how easy it is to produce; and (2) I hear structure in (a) that "most people" probably don't hear (and certainly aren't encouraged to hear by the likes of Tymoczko), not because they can't hear it, but mostly because they haven't heard enough music to be in the habit of noticing those phenomena; and, most, importantly, (3) I understand the aesthetic importance of large-scale design, which is absent from all four excerpts (as is implicit in my calling them "excerpts").

Music can have great moments, and I enjoy such moments as much as anyone else; but to listen to music as a sequence of isolated moments is a very impoverished way to listen to music. (And to anyone who knows a lot of music, (d) just isn't that great of a moment.)

You also claim that the stylistic differences are minor, yet I would wager that virtually 100% of people (with hearing) can point out d) as being to only tonal example.

Far fewer than 100% of people know what the word "tonal" means. (I also suspect that you overestimate the aural skills of the average human: more people than you probably realize would simply hear all four as roughly "a bunch of piano chords, (a) having more high notes".) Regardless, the fact that the differences are eminently perceptible does not imply that they are aesthetically significant. (Imagine if some of the excerpts were loud, and others were soft. A very hearable difference, but a stylistically minor one, given how often loud and soft mix freely in the same piece. Similarly, I feel that I could fairly easily compose a piece that incorporated all four excerpts.)

suppose mozart were to replace all of the f's in sonata in c major with f sharps. I think that the piece of music would be worse. Not objectively, or fundamentally worse. Just worse to a typical listener's ears. A pianist who was used to playing mozart might wonder if there was a mistake in the manuscript. Its also not clear to me that Westergaardian theory would predict that this set of notes is unusual, whereas harmonic theory would.

Replacing the F's with F sharps would severely undermine the C-major tonality, for starters. That's an assertion that can be made just as easily in Westergaardian theory, Schenkerian theory, or harmonic theory. But Westergaardian theory tells you even more: that by undermining the tonality, you necessarily undermine the rhythmic structure.

Comment author: pianoforte611 12 October 2013 05:53:39PM *  2 points [-]

Alright I've read most of the relevant parts of ITT. I only skimmed the chapter on phrases and movements and I didn't read the chapter on performance.

I do have one question is the presence of the borrowing operation the only significant difference between Westergaardian and Schenkerian theory?

As for my thoughts, I think that Westergaardian theory is much more powerful than harmonic theory. It is capable of accounting for the presence of every single note in a composition unlike harmonic theory which seems to be stuck with a four part chorale texture plus voice leading for the melody. Moreover, Westergaardian analyses feel much more intuitive and musical to me than harmonic analyses. In other words its easier for me to hear the Westergaardian background than it is for me to hear the chord progression.

For me the most distinctive advantage of Westergaardian analyses is that it respects the fact that notes do not have to "line up" according to a certain chord structure. Notes that are sounding at the same time may be performing different functions, whereas harmonic theory dictates that notes sounding at the same time are usually "part of a chord" which is performing some harmonic function. For example its not always clear to me that a tonic chord in a piece (which harmonic theory regards as being a point of stability) is really an arrival point or a result of notes that just happen to coincide at that moment. The same is true for other chords.

A corollary of this seems to be that Harmonic analyses work fine when the notes do consistently line up according to their function, which happens all the time in pop music and possibly in Classical music although I'm not certain of this.

Having said that, my biggest worry with Westergaardian theory is that it is almost too powerful. Whereas Harmonic theory constrains you to producing notes that do sound in some sense tonal (for a very powerful example of this see here), Westergaardian theory seems to allow you to do almost anything whether it sounds musical or not. While it is very easy to come up with a Westergaardian analysis, it is very difficult for me to understand why someone who had a certain framework in mind would have performed the operations that would have led them to the music in its actual form. The main culprits of this seem to be anticipatory notes and borrowing.

One more thing: Have you read "why I am not a Schenkerian" by Lodewidjk Muns? Here is the link: http://lmuns.home.xs4all.nl/WhyIamNotaSchenkerian.pdf

One of his criticisms is that you can have harmonic consistency without following contrapuntal rules . Here is my attempt at fleshing out a more specific example: http://i.imgur.com/ruEYlhD.png I can't figure out how to generate those using using Westergaardian theory.

Comment author: komponisto 14 October 2013 10:27:15PM *  2 points [-]

I do have one question is the presence of the borrowing operation the only significant difference between Westergaardian and Schenkerian theory?

The short answer is: definitely not. The long answer (a discussion of the relationship between Schenkerian and Westergaardian theory) is too long for this comment, but is something I plan to write about in the future. For now, be it noted simply that the two theories are quite distinct (for all that Westergaardian theory owes to Schenker as a predecessor) -- and, in particular, a criticism of Schenker can by no means necessarily be taken as a criticism of Westergaard, and vice-versa (see below).

For me the most distinctive advantage of Westergaardian analyses is that it respects the fact that notes do not have to "line up" according to a certain chord structure. Notes that are sounding at the same time may be performing different functions, whereas harmonic theory dictates that notes sounding at the same time are usually "part of a chord" which is performing some harmonic function.

The way I like to put it is that in Westergaardian theory, the function of a note is defined by its relationship to other notes in its line (and to the local tonic, of course), and not by its relationship to the "root" of the "chord" to which it belongs (as in harmonic theory).

A corollary of this seems to be that Harmonic analyses work fine when the notes do consistently line up according to their function

If by "work fine" you mean that it is in fact possible to identify the "appropriate" Roman numerals to assign in such cases, sure, I'll give you that. But what is such an "analysis" telling you? Taken literally, it means that you should understand the notes in the passage in terms of the indicated progression of "roots". Which, in turn, implies that in order to hear the passage in your head, you should first, according to the analyst, imagine the succession of roots (which often, indeed typically, move by skip), and only then imagine the other notes by relating them to the roots -- with the connection of notes in such a way as to form lines being a further, third step. To me, this is self-evidently a preposterously circuitous procedure when compared with the alternative of imagining lines as the fundamental construct, within which notes move by step -- without any notion of "roots" entering at all.

Having said that, my biggest worry with Westergaardian theory is that it is almost too powerful. Whereas Harmonic theory constrains you to producing notes that do sound in some sense tonal (for a very powerful example of this see here)

I am as profoundly unimpressed with that "demonstration" as I am with that whole book and its author -- of which, I must say, this example is entirely characteristic, in its exclusive obsession with the most superficial aspects of musical hearing and near-total amputation of the (much deeper) musical phenomena that I care most about and find most interesting. As far as I am concerned, there is no aesthetic difference between any of the passages (a) through (d) for the simple reason that all four of them are too short to possess much of any aesthetic characteristics in the first place: they all consist of three bars of four chords each. They are stylistically distinct, I suppose (though not actually very much, in the scheme of things), but any of them could be continued into something interesting or something less than interesting. One thing, however, is certain: if any of them were to be continued in the way they were generated (i.e. at random), the result would be nothing short of awful -- and equally so in all four cases.

The essence of musical composition -- at least its most fundamental and "elusive" aspect -- has to do with projecting coherent (i.e. recognizably human-designed) gestures over long time spans. (How long "long" is depends on context: even if you're writing a ten-second piece, you will want to carefully design its global structure.) The point being that multileveled thinking -- control of all the various degrees of locality and globality and their interrelationships -- is at the core of this art form. For that, you need a hierarchical or "reductive" theory (the very thing that our author explicitly says he doesn't want, even claiming that to hear this way is beyond human cognitive capacities -- I'm not making this up, see the last part of Chapter 7), which harmonic theory isn't. To be impressed by the difference between (a) and (d) -- as readers are apparently expected to be -- is to miss most of the point of what music is about.

Westergaardian theory seems to allow you to do almost anything whether it sounds musical or not.

Not as Westergaard sees it (see e.g. the last paragraph of p. 294 of ITT). I actually think he's wrong about this, and that the theory should allow any note to happen at any time; the theory after all is supposed to constrain analytical choices, not compositional ones. A composer can write anything, and the question for the theorist or analyst is how a given listener understands what the composer writes.

While it is very easy to come up with a Westergaardian analysis, it is very difficult for me to understand why someone who had a certain framework in mind would have performed the operations that would have led them to the music in its actual form. The main culprits of this seem to be anticipatory notes and borrowing.

It's hard to address this without a specific example to discuss.

One more thing: Have you read "why I am not a Schenkerian" by Lodewidjk Muns? Here is the link: http://lmuns.home.xs4all.nl/WhyIamNotaSchenkerian.pdf

That's not an interesting critique of Schenker, let alone Westergaard (who is not mentioned or cited even once). It basically goes like this:

(1) Schenker did not adhere to rigorous philosophical standards in his rhetoric.

(2) I disagree with (or don't understand) some of Schenker's analyses and those of his disciples.

(3) Therefore, harmonic theory is correct.

I'll also note that while some of the criticisms of Schenker are legitimate (if boring), others are completely wrong (e.g. the idea that the highest structural dominant is necessarily the final one).

Here is my attempt at fleshing out a more specific example: http://i.imgur.com/ruEYlhD.png I can't figure out how to generate those using using Westergaardian theory

Use octave transfer (ITT sec. 7.7).

Comment author: PhilGoetz 13 August 2013 09:39:12PM *  -1 points [-]

The chord is in measure 2 of the piece, and contains these notes: D, C#, E, G, Bb, C#, E.

A diminished 7th in Dm should have D, F, Ab, Bb, shouldn't it? This is a diminished 7th C#, so what's the D doing there?

Anyway, my impression is that diminished 7ths are much more common in organ music than in piano music. I think of them as "that organ-music chord". And if you look up diminished 7th in the same music database that komponisto linked to above, you'll see it has a much higher fraction of baroque entries than any of the other items on that list.

Perhaps part of the issue is when I hear "baroque" I think Bach, and when I hear "classical" I think Mozart. I think Bach does more weird chords than Mozart does. Or consider Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata--it's chock full of different chords juxtaposed in unusual ways, but they're almost all common chords.

Comment author: komponisto 24 September 2013 04:02:56AM *  0 points [-]

Anyway, my impression is that diminished 7ths are much more common in organ music than in piano music.

I don't share this impression at all. How much piano music do you know? There's probably a lot more of it than there is of organ music. This is certainly the case in the nineteenth century, which was probably the heyday of the diminished seventh (while being the low point of the organ repertory).

And if you look up diminished 7th in the same music database that komponisto linked to above, you'll see it has a much higher fraction of baroque entries than any of the other items on that list.

Eh? Among a combined total of 70-80 examples on this page and this one, I count about 7-8 Baroque examples, so about 10%. I'm not going to count through all the other 24 pages for comparison, but I don't think this supports the thesis that the diminished seventh is particularly characteristic of the Baroque as opposed to the Classical or Romantic; indeed, it is the Romantic which dominates the examples, as I predicted above. (And note by the way that not one of the Baroque examples that I could find was specifically an organ piece!)

I think Bach does more weird chords than Mozart does.

What data is this based on? And for what definition of "weird"? Did you see the Mozart example I cited in my other comment? Do you have any reason to think that example is particularly uncharacteristic (in a way that your Bach example isn't)?

Or consider Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata--it's chock full of different chords juxtaposed in unusual ways, but they're almost all common chords.

This a piece with plenty of diminished sevenths! (And what do you mean by "juxtaposed in unusual ways"?)

Phil, in all seriousness, you really ought to look at the Westergaard book. You would like it, and it would really help clarify your thinking about music. (I believe I have already directed you to an electronic copy via e-mail.)

Comment author: PhilGoetz 13 August 2013 09:47:21PM 0 points [-]

That appears to be an effect of the data compiler's bias. This list of I-5-7 chords from the same source has the same ratio.

Comment author: komponisto 14 August 2013 03:12:04AM 0 points [-]

From Wikipedia:

This chord has its origins in the Renaissance, further developed in the Baroque, and became a distinctive part of the musical style of the Classical and Romantic periods.

This implies that its use increased over time, and in particular was greater in the Classical and Romantic periods than in the Baroque.

Comment author: [deleted] 13 August 2013 01:03:17PM 1 point [-]

Some other reason: I just don't know how EY pronounces "Yudkowsky" -- [jʊd'kaʊski] or [ju:d'kɔvski] or otherwise.

Usually that kind of names are pronounced the former way in America and the latter way in Britain, so I'd guess the former.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Post ridiculous munchkin ideas!
Comment author: komponisto 13 August 2013 01:17:38PM *  1 point [-]

Usually that kind of names are

(--> those kinds of names are / that kind of name is ;-))

pronounced the former way in America and the latter way in Britain

I would dispute that, insofar as the real truth is that the latter is used by people trying to imitate the pronunciation in the original language (a good thing to do to the extent possible, IMO), and I don't know the distribution of such people in America vs. Britain.

so I'd guess the former

...but this guess happens to be correct in the case of EY himself.

Comment author: scav 13 August 2013 12:27:20PM 1 point [-]

Some other reason: I just don't know how EY pronounces "Yudkowsky" -- [jʊd'kaʊski] or [ju:d'kɔvski] or otherwise.

But there is a significant overlap between great names for scientists and words that would be worth a lot in Scrabble if proper nouns were allowed.

Comment author: komponisto 13 August 2013 01:10:04PM 1 point [-]

Some other reason: I just don't know how EY pronounces "Yudkowsky" -- [jʊd'kaʊski] or [ju:d'kɔvski] or otherwise

EY pronounces it the first way, but his father pronounces it the second(!).

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 August 2013 04:22:04AM 8 points [-]

Try this thought experiment: suppose you were a graduate student in mathematics, and went to your advisor and said: "I'd like to solve [Famous Problem X], and to start, I'm going to spend two years closely examining the work of Newton, Gauss, and Wiles, and their contemporaries, to try to discern at a higher level of generality what the cognitive stumbling blocks to solving previous problems were, and how they overcame them, and distill these meta-level insights into a meta-level technique of my own which I'll then apply to [Famous Problem X]."

This is a terrible idea unless they're spending half their time pushing their limits on object-level math problems. I just don't think it works to try to do a meta phase before an object phase unless the process is very, very well-understood and tested already.

Comment author: komponisto 13 August 2013 10:22:48AM 2 points [-]

I'm sure that's exactly what the advisor would say (if they bother to give a reasoned reply at all), with the result that nobody ever tries this.

(I'll also note that it's somewhat odd to hear this response from someone whose entire mission in life is essentially to go meta on all of humanity's problems...)

But let me address the point, so as not to be logically rude. The person would be pushing their limits on object-level math problems in the course of "examining the work of Newton, Gauss, and Wiles", in order to understand said work; otherwise, it can hardly be said to constitute a meaningful examination. I also think it's important not to confuse meta-ness with (nontechnical) "outside views"; indeed I suspect that a lot of the thought processes of mathematical "geniuses" consist of abstracting over classes of technical concepts that aren't ordinarily abstracted over, and thus if expressed explicitly (which the geniuses may lack the patience to do) would simply look like another form of mathematics. (Others of their processes, I speculate, consist in obsessive exercising of visual/dynamic mental models of various abstractions.)

Switching back to logical rudeness, I'm not sure the meta-ness is your true rejection; I suspect what you may be really worried about is making sure there are tight feedback loops to which one's reasoning can be subjected.

Comment author: JonahSinick 11 August 2013 06:29:13AM *  1 point [-]

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I agree that there are many instances in which it’s possible to rationally come to confident conclusions that differ from those of subject matter experts. I realize that my earlier comment was elliptical, and will try to clarify. The relevant points to my mind are:

The extraordinary intellectual caliber of the best physicists

Though difficult to formalize, I think that there's a meaningful sense in which one can make statements of the general form "person A has intellectual caliber n times that of person B." Of course, this is domain specific to some degree, but I think that the concept hangs together somewhat even across domains.

One operationalization of this is "if person B reaches a correct conclusion on a given subject, person A could reach it n times as fast." Another is "it would take n copies of person B to do person A's work." These things are hard to estimate, but one can become better calibrated by using the rule "if person A has intellectual caliber n times that of person B and person B has intellectual caliber m times that of person C, then person A has intellectual caliber n*m times that of person C."

In almost all domains, I think that the highest intellectual caliber people have no more than 5x my intellectual caliber. Physics is different. From what I’ve heard, the distribution of talent in physics is similar to that of math. The best mathematicians are 100x+ my intellectual caliber. I had a particularly striking illustrative experience with Don Zagier, who pinpointed a crucial weakness in an analogy that I had been exploring for 6 months (and which I had run by a number of other mathematicians) in a mere ~15 minutes. I would not be surprised if he himself were to have an analogous experience with the historical greats.

When someone is < 5x one’s intellectual caliber, an argument of the type “this person may be smarter than me, but I’ve focused a lot more on having accurate views, so I trust my judgment over him or her” seems reasonable. But when one gets to people who are 100x+ one’s intellectual caliber, the argument becomes much weaker. Model uncertainty starts to play a major role. It could be that people who are that much more powerful easily come to the correct conclusion on a given question without even needing to put conscious effort into having accurate beliefs.

The intrinsic interest of the question of interpretation of quantum mechanics

The question of what quantum mechanics means has been considered one of the universe’s great mysteries. As such, people interested in physics have been highly motivated to understand it. So I think that the question is privileged relative to other questions that physicists would have opinions on — it’s not an arbitrary question outside of the domain of their research accomplishments.

Solicitation of arguments from those with opposing views

In the Muslim theology example, you spend 40 hours engaging with the Muslim philosophers. This seems disanalogous to the present case, in that as far as I know, Eliezer’s quantum mechanics sequence hasn’t been vetted by any leading physicists who disagree with the many world’s interpretation of quantum mechanics. I also don’t know of any public record of ~40 hours of back and forth analogous to the one that you describe. I know that Eliezer might cite an example in his QM sequence, and will take a look.

Comment author: komponisto 13 August 2013 03:11:18AM *  9 points [-]

Let me first say that I find this to be an extremely interesting discussion.

In almost all domains, I think that the highest intellectual caliber people have no more than 5x my intellectual caliber. Physics is different. From what I’ve heard, the distribution of talent in physics is similar to that of math. The best mathematicians are 100x+ my intellectual caliber.

I think there is a social norm in mathematics and physics that requires people to say this, but I have serious doubts about whether it is true. Anyone 100x+ your intellectual caliber should be having much, much more impact on the world (to say nothing of mathematics itself) than any of the best mathematicians seem to be having. At the very least, if there really are people of that cognitive level running around, then the rest of the world is doing an absolutely terrible job of extracting information and value from them, and they themselves must not care too much about this fact.

More plausible to me is the hypothesis that the best mathematicians are within the same 5x limit as everyone else, and that you overestimate the difficulty of performing at their level due to cultural factors which discourage systematic study of how to imitate them.

Try this thought experiment: suppose you were a graduate student in mathematics, and went to your advisor and said: "I'd like to solve [Famous Problem X], and to start, I'm going to spend two years closely examining the work of Newton, Gauss, and Wiles, and their contemporaries, to try to discern at a higher level of generality what the cognitive stumbling blocks to solving previous problems were, and how they overcame them, and distill these meta-level insights into a meta-level technique of my own which I'll then apply to [Famous Problem X]." What do you think the reaction would be? How many times do you think such a thing has ever been proposed, let alone attempted, by a serious student or (even) senior researcher?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 August 2013 03:13:58PM 5 points [-]

I'd expect him to notice math errors and he specializes in the aspect of QM that I talk about, regardless of job titles.

Comment author: komponisto 13 August 2013 02:08:36AM 2 points [-]

Job titles aside, I think you had an incorrect model of his intellectual background, and how much he knows about certain subjects (e.g. general relativity) as contrasted with others (e.g. P and NP). Also (therefore) an incorrect model of how others would view your citation of him as an authority.

That said, I think you were right to think of him as an authority here and expect him to notice any important errors in your QM sequence.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 11 August 2013 06:03:59PM 3 points [-]

Scott Aaronson was already reading along to it as it was published. If we paid David Deutsch to read it, I expect him to just say, "Yeah, that's all basically correct" which wouldn't be very in-depth.

From those who already disagree with MWI, I would expect more in the way of awful amateur epistemology delivered with great confidence. Then those who already had their trust in a sane world broken will nod and say "I expected no better." Others will say, "How can you possibly disregard the word of so great a physicist? Perhaps he knows something you don't!" - though they will not be able to formalize the awful amateur epistemology - and nod among themselves about how Yudkowsky failed to anticipate that so strong a reply might be made (it should be presumed to be a very strong reply since a great physicist made it, even if they can't 100% follow themselves why it is a great refutation, or would not have believed the same words so much from a street performer). And so both will emerge strengthened in their prior beliefs, which isn't much of a test.

Comment author: komponisto 12 August 2013 10:28:56AM *  5 points [-]

convince a top-level physicist to read the MWI sequence

Scott Aaronson was already reading along to it as it was published.

Scott Aaronson is not a physicist!

Comment author: iamesco 11 August 2013 06:48:28PM 7 points [-]

I learnt that Cologne and Koln are the same city; beat that.

Comment author: komponisto 12 August 2013 08:37:40AM 2 points [-]

Also, Munich and München (which has always bothered me, because "Munich" looks German enough already).

Comment author: pianoforte611 05 August 2013 12:02:59AM 0 points [-]

Some of them do -- probably more or less exactly the subset who have enough tacit knowledge not to need to take their theoretical instruction seriously, and the temperament not to want to.

This was my hypothesis as well (which is what the jazz musician responded with hostility to). If this is true though, then why are jazz musicians so passionate about harmony and voice leading? They seem to really believe that its a useful paradigm for understanding music. Perhaps this is just belief in belief?

Comment author: komponisto 06 August 2013 05:24:54AM 0 points [-]

why are jazz musicians so passionate about harmony and voice leading?

It's difficult to know what other people are thinking without talking to them directly. With this level of information I would make only two points:

1) It doesn't count as "passionate about harmony and voice leading" unless they understand Westergaardian theory well enough to contrast the two. Otherwise it just amounts to "passionate about music theory of some kind".

2) It doesn't have anything to do with jazz. If they're right that harmony is the superior theory for jazz, then it's the superior theory of music in general. Given the kind of theory we're looking for (cf. Chapter 1 of ITT), different musical traditions should not have different theories. (Analogy: if you find that the laws of physics are different on different planets, you have the wrong idea about what "laws of physics" means.)

Comment author: pianoforte611 02 August 2013 06:10:51PM 0 points [-]

One more question. Do you also think that Westergaardian theory is superior for understanding jazz? I've encountered jazz pianists on the internet who insist that harmony and voice leading are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL for doing jazz improvisation and anyone suggests otherwise is a heretic who deserves to be burnt at the stake. Hyperbole aside, jazz classes do seem to incorporate a lot of harmony and voice leading into their material and their students do seem to make fine improvisers and composers.

Oh, and for what its worth, you've convinced me to give Westergaard another shot.

Comment author: komponisto 04 August 2013 08:35:22AM 1 point [-]

Do you also think that Westergaardian theory is superior for understanding jazz?

Yes. My claim is not repertory-specific. (Note that this is my claim I'm talking about, not Westergaard's.)

More generally, I claim that the Westergaardian framework (or some future theory descended from it) is the appropriate one for understanding any music that is to be understood in terms of the traditional Western pitch space (i.e. the one represented by a standardly-tuned piano keyboard), as well as any music whose pitch space can be regarded as an extension, restriction, or modification of the latter.

I've encountered jazz pianists on the internet who insist that harmony and voice leading are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL for doing jazz improvisation and anyone suggests otherwise is a heretic who deserves to be burnt at the stake.

How many of them are familiar with Westergaardian (or even Schenkerian) theory?

I've encountered this attitude among art-music performers as well. My sense is that such people are usually confusing the map and the territory (i.e. confusing music theory and music), à la Phil Goetz above. They fail to understand that the concepts of harmonic theory are not identical to the musical phenomena they purport to describe, but instead are merely one candidate theory of those phenomena.

jazz classes do seem to incorporate a lot of harmony and voice leading into their material and their students do seem to make fine improvisers and composers

Some of them do -- probably more or less exactly the subset who have enough tacit knowledge not to need to take their theoretical instruction seriously, and the temperament not to want to.

Oh, and for what its worth, you've convinced me to give Westergaard another shot.

I'm delighted to hear that, of course, although I should reiterate that I don't expect ITT to be the final word on Westergaardian theory.

Comment author: Panic_Lobster 31 July 2013 10:26:33PM 10 points [-]

How do you pronounce 3^^^3?

Comment author: komponisto 02 August 2013 07:18:23AM 0 points [-]

My inclination is to say "three triple-arrow three".

People at SIAI in 2010 were saying "three triple-head three". I don't know why.

Comment author: [deleted] 31 July 2013 09:46:48AM *  1 point [-]

Thanks. I myself am a non-native speaker.

[Note to self: I should re-read the relevant chapter in my English grammar when I get back home. Meanwhile, I'll look at the overview here.]

(Semantically, “ten minutes' walk” still means ‘a ten-minute walk’ rather than ‘the ten-minute walk’, but your point in reply to shminux was about syntax not semantics anyway.)

In response to comment by [deleted] on Open thread, July 29-August 4, 2013
Comment author: komponisto 31 July 2013 08:27:25PM 0 points [-]

(Semantically, “ten minutes' walk” still means ‘a ten-minute walk’ rather than ‘the ten-minute walk’, but your point in reply to shminux was about syntax not semantics anyway.)

The "proof of synonymy" looks like this:

ten minutes' walk = (the walk) of (ten minutes) = a (walk of ten minutes) = a ten-minute walk

...the second "equality" being where semantics is invoked.

Comment author: Lumifer 30 July 2013 09:26:05PM *  0 points [-]

Well, of course there are ways to rephrase most anything. I am, however, interested in whether there's a way to express the "a relative of one patient" notion through the possessive 's.

A related question is whether a native speaker would be sure that one patient's relative necessarily means the relative, or he would be ambiguous whether it means the relative or a relative.

Comment author: komponisto 30 July 2013 11:41:07PM *  3 points [-]

In a specialized context (such as among people who work at a hospital), "patient's relative" could conceivably become a set phrase, in which case sentences such as "there are some patient's relatives waiting outside" would become possible (contrast * "there are some Greg Egan's stories on the shelf").

This is presumably what happened with "girls' school". Very rarely, it can even happen with proper nouns, as in the mathematical term Green's function. But this is not part of the syntax of the possessive ; it is the result of the whole possessive phrase being treated as a unit. (When you hear "the Green's function for this operator" for the first time, you immediately know that "Green's function" is a jargon phrase, because of the irregular syntax.)

Comment author: shminux 30 July 2013 04:47:06PM -1 points [-]

Thanks. This sounds plausible (if irrelevant), but I could not find an authoritative reference confirming it. Any links?

Comment author: komponisto 30 July 2013 05:43:12PM *  3 points [-]

(My comment was generated by the spontaneous reaction and reflection of a native speaker rather than memory of any deliberately learned rule.) Wikipedia has this to say:

In English and some other languages, the use of such a word implies the definite article. For example, my car implies the car that belongs to me/is used by me; it is not correct to precede possessives with an article (* the my car) or other definite determiner such as a demonstrative (* this my car)

One should indeed think of " 's " in this context as the equivalent for nouns of what "my" is for the pronoun "I".

Comment author: [deleted] 30 July 2013 01:03:27PM *  1 point [-]

English tip: the possessive ending " 's " carries an implicit "the".

(Except in constructs like “girls' school” or “a ten minutes' walk”.)

In response to comment by [deleted] on Open thread, July 29-August 4, 2013
Comment author: komponisto 30 July 2013 04:34:10PM 0 points [-]

You're right about "girls' school", but "a ten minutes' walk" is wrong (should be "a ten-minute walk" or "ten minutes' walk").

Comment author: shminux 30 July 2013 05:35:54AM 4 points [-]

The most you can say is that all reflectively consistent ancestors would behave the same way you do. Wasn't there a Greg Egan's story about it?

Comment author: komponisto 30 July 2013 08:58:51AM *  6 points [-]

Wasn't there a Greg Egan's story about it?

English tip: the possessive ending " 's " carries an implicit "the". Thus "Greg Egan's story" means "the story of Greg Egan", not just "story of Greg Egan". (This is unlike the corresponding construction in, for example, German.) Instead of the above, you wanted to write:

Wasn't there a Greg Egan story about it?

(This particular mistake occurs often among non-native-speakers, and indeed is a dead giveaway of one's status as such, so it's worth saying something about.)

Comment author: RobbBB 24 July 2013 06:31:53AM *  8 points [-]

Latin sæculum ("era, generation, century") came to be associated with the ever-changing human, political, worldly order, as contrasted with the divine one. Secular time moves in circles; divine time spins in place.

Comment author: komponisto 26 July 2013 10:56:24AM *  2 points [-]

Compare temporal, which is also used to mean "worldly" (as opposed to divine).

Comment author: LucasSloan 18 July 2013 12:56:07AM *  1 point [-]

Needs the tag group_rationality_diary, they reload every time there's a new comment or every 12 hours.

Comment author: komponisto 18 July 2013 01:21:14AM 1 point [-]

Where did the "Top Contributors -- All Time" go?

Comment author: PhilGoetz 17 July 2013 06:51:13PM *  -2 points [-]

That's an argument that classical music uses more augmented sixths chords, which are not especially uncommon. Contrast that with something like the chord held at the start of Bach's Fugue in D minor -- it's got a C#, a D, and an E it in; what the hell is it?

That's what I was talking about when I said "I have noticed that Baroque music tends more often than classical or romantic music to have passages that starts on one chord, and the different parts walk their different ways to another chord with no pivot chords, just walk the bass and damn the torpedoes in between," which makes perfectly simple literarl sense. Classical music moves from one resolved chord to another thru a series of pivot chords. Baroque music sometimes just walks the bass, and maybe the top note also, by one half-step per "chord" until it arrives at the destination chord, passing through intermediate states that aren't any kind of recognized chord, certainly nothing so common as an augmented 6th.

Now, if when we say Baroque you're thinking Vivaldi and I'm thinking Bach's organ music, that could account for the difference of opinion.

Comment author: komponisto 17 July 2013 09:04:43PM *  0 points [-]

That's an argument that classical music uses more augmented sixths chords, which are not especially uncommon

"Uncommon" doesn't mean anything without reference to a time period; the point is that they are more uncommon in the Baroque period than in the Classical. The Classical period uses a richer "vocabulary of chords" than the Baroque, if one insists on thinking in such terms (as a Westergaardian, I don't think in terms of a "vocabulary of chords", of course).

Contrast that with something like the chord held at the start of Bach's Fugue in D minor -- it's got a C#, a D, and an E it in; what the hell is it?

First of all "Bach's Fugue in D minor" is highly ambiguous; Wikipedia lists 10 such works by J.S. Bach alone (BWV 538, 539, 554, 565, 851, 875, 899, 903, 905, and 948).

But you can find a chord containing those same three pitch-classes (along with G# and B) in the first movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 29 (p.4, second system, 4th measure, 1st and 3rd quarter).

Classical music moves from one resolved chord to another thru a series of pivot chords.

"Pivot chord" is a technical term in harmonic theory (which, again, I don't subscribe to) meaning a chord shared by two different keys which is used in modulating between them. You don't appear to be using this term correctly here (we're not talking about key changes), and I'm not sure exactly what you do mean. "Resolved chord" is not a standard term at all, but maybe you mean "consonant chord". (?) However, both Baroque and Classical music "move from one [consonant] chord to another" (well, except when moving to dissonant chords, which also occurs in both periods...) So this sentence reads like confused gobbledygook to me. A musical example of the phenomenon which you think occurs in Baroque music but not Classical would help (but we know it isn't "a chord with C#, D, and E", as the Mozart example I gave shows).

Now, if when we say Baroque you're thinking Vivaldi and I'm thinking Bach's organ music, that could account for the difference of opinion

You just have to compare apples to apples. If the most complex works of J.S. Bach are what you mean by "Baroque", then the most complex works of Haydn, Mozart, and (at least early) Beethoven have to be what you mean by "Classical".

I think what actually accounts for the "difference of opinion" is that you underestimate the complexity of Classical works.

Baroque music sometimes... pass[es] through intermediate states that aren't any kind of recognized chord

Indeed! Thus harmonic theory is inadequate even to the description (mere description, mind you) of Baroque music, let alone Classical or Romantic.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 09 July 2013 12:01:47AM *  1 point [-]

The defunct journal's web site is open access. Text (search for Peles). Table of contents of page by page scans; first page.

Comment author: komponisto 09 July 2013 12:28:49AM 0 points [-]

Wow, thanks!

Comment author: pianoforte611 08 July 2013 02:04:16AM *  2 points [-]

I don't have any particular issue with Westergaard, I just couldn't make it through the book. Perhaps with more more effort I could but I'm lacking motivation due to low expectancy. It was a long time ago that I attempted the book, but If I had to pinpoint why, there are few things I stumbled over:

The biggest problem was that I have poor aural skills. I cannot look at two lines and imagine what they sound like so I have to play them on a piano. Add in more lines and I am quickly overwhelmed.

A second problem was the abstractness of the first half of the book. Working through counterpoint exercises that didn't really sound like music did not hold my attention for very long.

A third problem was the disconnect between the rules I was learning and my intuition. Even though I could do the exercises by following the rules, too often I felt like I was counting spaces rather than improving my understand of how musical lines are formed.

I think that your comparison is very interesting because I would predict that a phrasebook is much more useful than a grammar text for learning a language. The Pimsleur approach, which seems to be a decent way to start to learning a language, is pretty much a phrase book in audio form with some spaced repetition thrown in for good measure. Of course the next step, where the actual learning takes place, is to start trying to communicate with native speakers, but the whole point of Pimsleur is to get you to that point as soon as possible. This important because most people use grammatical rules implicitly rather than explicitly. Certainly grammar texts can be used to improve your proficiency in a language, but I highly doubt that anyone has actually learned a language using one. Without the critical step of communication, there is no mechanism for internalizing the grammatical rules.

(Sorry for taking such a long tangent into language acquisition, I wasn't initially planning on stretching the analogy that far.)

Comment author: komponisto 08 July 2013 01:49:54PM *  2 points [-]

Thanks for your feedback on the Westergaard text. I think many of your problems will be addressed by the material I plan to write at some indefinite point in the future. It's unfortunate that ITT is the only exposition of Westergaardian theory available (and even it is not technically "available", being out of print), because your issues seem to be with the book and not with the theory that the book aims to present.

There is considerable irony in what you say about aural skills, because I consider the development of aural skills -- even at the most elementary levels -- to be a principal practical use of Westergaardian theory. Unfortunately, Westergaard seems not to have fully appreciated this aspect of his theory's power, because he requests of the reader a rather sophisticated level of aural skills (namely the ability to read and mentally hear a Mozart passage) as a prerequisite for the book -- rather unnecessarily, in my opinion.

This leads to the point about counterpoint exercises, which, if designed properly, should be easier to mentally "hear" than real music -- that is, indeed, their purpose. Unfortunately, this is not emphasized enough in ITT.

I think that your comparison is very interesting because I would predict that a phrasebook is much more useful than a grammar text for learning a language

Thank goodness I'm here to set you straight, then. Phrasebooks are virtually useless for learning to speak a language. Indeed they are specifically designed for people who don't want to learn the language, but merely need to memorize a few phrases (hence the name), for -- as I said -- ad hoc purposes. (Asking where the bathroom is, what someone's name is, whether they speak English, that sort of thing.)

Here's an anecdote to illustrate the problem with phrasebooks. When I was about 10 years old and had just started learning French, my younger sister got the impression that pel was the French word for "is". The reason? I had informed her that the French translation of "my name is" was je m'appelle -- a three syllable expression whose last syllable is indeed pronounced pel. What she didn't realize was that the three syllables of the French phrase do not individually correspond to the three syllables of the English phrase. Pel does not mean "is"; rather, appelle means "call", je means "I", and m' means "myself". Though translated "my name is", the phrase actually means "I call myself".

A phrasebook won't tell you this; a grammar will. If you try to learn French from a phrasebook, you might successfully learn to introduce yourself with je m'appelle, but you will be in my sister's position, doomed to making false assumptions about the structure of the language that may require vast amounts of data to correct. (It's no defense of a wrong theory that it didn't prevent you from learning the right theory eventually.) Whereas if you learn from a grammar, not only will you learn je m'appelle without thinking pel means "is", but you will also be able to generalize outside the scope of the "Greetings" section of your phrasebook and produce apparently unrelated phrases such as "I call you" (je t'appelle).

I think your comments are revealing about the mindset of people who resist or "don't get" my attack on harmonic theory. It seems to be assumed that of course no one actually learns musical thinking from a harmony book. Likewise, in defending phrasebooks, you help yourself to the assumption that the learner is going to have access to extensive amounts of data in the form of communication with speakers, and that this will be where the "actual learning" is going to occur. Well in that case, what do you need a phrasebook for? You can, after all, learn a language simply by immersion, with nothing other than the data itself to guide you. If you're going to have any preliminary or supplementary instruction at all, it surely may as well be in an organized fashion, aimed at increasing the efficiency of the learning process by directing one toward correct theories and away from incorrect ones -- which is exactly what grammar books do and phrasebooks don't do.

Harmony is actually worse than a phrasebook, because at least a phrasebook won't cause you to make worse mistakes than you would make otherwise; and it doesn't pretend to be a grammar of the language. With harmony, the situation is different. Harmony books are written as if they were presenting an actual musical theory, something that would be useful to know before sifting through vast amounts of musical data doing, as you put it, "actual learning". But then, when push comes to shove and it is pointed out how terrible, how actively misleading the harmony pseudo-theory is for this purpose, its defenders retreat to a position of "oh, well, of course everybody knows that you can't actually learn music from a book" -- as if that were a defense against an alternative theory that actually is helpful. It's enough to drive one mad!

(You'll understand, I hope, that I'm not reacting particularly to you in the preceding paragraph, but to my whole history of such discussions going back a number of years.)

Comment author: pianoforte611 07 July 2013 08:03:01PM 0 points [-]

I'm afraid that despite reading a fair chunk of Mathemusicality I've given up on Westergaard's "An Introduction to Tonal Theory" in favor of Steven Laitz's "The Complete Musician". Steven Laitz is a Schenkerian but his book is fairly standard and uses harmony, voice leading and counterpoint.

Actually I'm beginning to conclude that if you want to compose, then starting off by learning music theory of any sort is totally wrongheaded. It is like trying to learn French by memorizing vocabulary and reading books on grammar (which is disturbingly how people try to learn languages in high school). The real way that people learn French is by starting off with very simple phrases and ideas then gradually expanding their knowledge by communicating with people who speak French. Grammar books and vocabulary books are important but as a supplement only to the actual learning that takes place from trying to communicate. Language and music are subconscious processes

I don't know what a similar approach to music composition would look like, but I'm reasonably convinced that it would be much better than the current system.

I should admit though that I am monolingual and I can't compose music - so my thoughts are based only on theory and anecdotes.

Comment author: komponisto 08 July 2013 12:24:07AM 1 point [-]

If I may ask, what was your issue with Westergaard?

(As a polyglot composer, I agree that there is an analogy of language proficiency to musical composition, but would draw a different conclusion: harmonic theory is like a phrasebook, whereas Westergaardian theory is like a grammar text. The former may seem more convenient for certain ad hoc purposes, but is hopelessly inferior for actually learning to speak the language.)

Comment author: PhilGoetz 06 July 2013 05:25:18AM -1 points [-]

(Yes, I know that popular histories tell you that Classical music was simpler than Baroque. This is wrong.)

Would you deny that Baroque music deviates from common chords more often than classical music does?

Comment author: komponisto 07 July 2013 06:47:23AM 1 point [-]

Yes. Look at how many Baroque vs. Classical entries there are on this list of examples of augmented sixth chords, for instance.

In response to Beeminding Sin
Comment author: komponisto 06 July 2013 03:44:13AM 2 points [-]

Your last paragraph ought to be at the beginning, maybe even as a summary preceding the body of the post.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 04 July 2013 11:35:16PM 0 points [-]

I don't understand music theory enough to continue the debate. I don't even understand what you mean by harmonic theory, since I assume you don't mean we should throw away 1-3-5 chords. I have noticed that Baroque music tends more often than classical or romantic music to have passages that starts on one chord, and the different parts walk their different ways to another chord with no pivot chords, just walk the bass and damn the torpedoes in between. is that related to what you're talking about?

Comment author: komponisto 05 July 2013 09:51:26AM *  1 point [-]

I don't even understand what you mean by harmonic theory, since I assume you don't mean we should throw away 1-3-5 chords.

By harmonic theory I mean the idea proposed by Jean-Philippe Rameau in 1722 of analyzing music as a succession of simultaneities ("chords"), to each of which is assigned a "root", and with the order of chords being governed by relationships among the roots.

I have noticed that Baroque music tends more often than classical or romantic music to have passages that starts on one chord, and the different parts walk their different ways to another chord with no pivot chords, just walk the bass and damn the torpedoes in between. is that related to what you're talking about?

The above doesn't make any literal sense, but if what you mean by this is that Baroque music violates Rameau's rules of root progression more often than later music (which, believe it or not, is actually what I think you mean), then this is almost certainly not the case: generally speaking, music gets more complex as you go forward in history, and the more complex it is, the more likely it is to crash Rameau's theory.

(Yes, I know that popular histories tell you that Classical music was simpler than Baroque. This is wrong.)

The reality is that the torpedoes were always damned. Rameau and his theoretical successors mistook certain superficial patterns (which automatically arise in particularly simple musical contexts) for underlying laws. The actual underlying laws were discovered by Schenker and Westergaard.

Comment author: Fhyve 02 July 2013 10:30:05PM 0 points [-]

I have read around and I still can't really tell what Westergaardian theory is. I can see how harmony fails as a framework (it doesn't work very well for a lot of music I have tried to analyze) so I think there is a good chance that Westergaard is (more) right. However, other than the fact that there are these things called lines, and that there exist rules (I have not actually found a list or description of such rules) for manipulating them. I am not sure how this is different from counterpoint. I don't want to go and read a textbook to figure this out, I would rather read ~5-10 pages of exposition and big-picture

Comment author: komponisto 03 July 2013 05:00:22PM 1 point [-]

I have read around and I still can't really tell what Westergaardian theory is....I don't want to go and read a textbook to figure this out, I would rather read ~5-10 pages of exposition and big-picture

The best I can recommend is the following article:

Peles, Stephen. "An Introduction to Westergaard's Tonal Theory".In Theory Only 13:1-4 [September 1997] pp. 73-94

It's a rather obscure journal, but if you have access to a particularly good university library (or interlibrary loan), you may be able to find it. Failing that, if you PM me with your email address, I can send you the text of the article (without figures, unfortunately).

Comment author: PhilGoetz 29 June 2013 04:24:52PM *  0 points [-]

I'm afraid my brain chose to remember the jogging path, the view of the Potomac, the bridges, and some of the joggers, but nothing about what we said. If you converted me to your view, I have lapsed back into my old ways. I have to learn everything several times.

I don't see how I've misunderstood your claim. I realize you claim harmony doesn't cut reality at the joints. I think that's an aesthetic judgment. You say that Westergardian theory allows one to treat the music of Berg, Schoenberg, and Webern as belonging to the same school as earlier Western music, as if this were a point in favor of that theory. To me, it is a proof that the theory is both wrong and destructive, because my aesthetic sense says that music is crap. We agree that the test of a theory of music is whether it helps one compose good music. I've never tried to write music using either theory, but if using Westergardian theory allows one to write music like that of Berg, my aesthetic judgements, which are different than yours, say that proves it is a bad theory.

Perhaps if I had been raised in a culture that used Westergardian composition techniques, I would be acclimatized to it, and would appreciate that music, and have a low opinion of harmonic theory. Even supposing that were true, which I doubt, it would only mean that this is culturally relative. Not a failure of rationality.

It seems to me that to claim that harmonic theory is objectively wrong, you must also claim that the tastes of people like me, who like things written using harmonic theory and dislike things not using harmonic theory, are also objectively wrong.

If you showed that Westergardian theory gave a simpler explanation of the music that I like, that would help convince me that it was a superior theory. (I don't expect you can do this in a blog post.) But even then, calling it a bad concept would be like calling Newtonian physics a bad concept because it doesn't explain motion at relativistic speeds.

Comment author: komponisto 30 June 2013 10:29:37AM 1 point [-]

I have to learn everything several times.

I understand and sympathize. (It wasn't that I thought I converted you to my view, but that I thought I had done a better job of conveying what my complaints about harmonic theory were.)

I don't see how I've misunderstood your claim.

The misunderstanding is most evident when you write a phrase like:

things written using harmonic theory

which begs the whole question. You assume that harmonic theory is an accurate description of "how those things are written", which is the very thing I deny. You seem to be confusing music theory with music, which is like mixing up the map and the territory.

We agree that the test of a theory of music is whether it helps one compose good music

Not quite. At least, the emphasis is on "helps", not on "good". You should think of a work of music (including its aesthetic qualities) being held fixed when we evaluate theories; the parameter we're measuring that determines how good the theory is is how easily the theory allows us to produce the music in question.

(Furthermore, it certainly can't be the case that harmonic theory's classifications track your likes and dislikes. After all, you apparently don't like Beethoven's Great Fugue, and yet as far as harmonic theory is concerned it's in the same category as his other works, which you do like.)

But even then, calling it a bad concept would be like calling Newtonian physics a bad concept because it doesn't explain motion at relativistic speeds.

I disagree that harmonic theory is anywhere near as good as Newtonian physics. I would instead compare it -- unfavorably -- to pre-Darwinian theories of biodiversity. I specifically believe it to be one of the worst theories of all time (whereas Newtonian physics is one of the best).

Comment author: maia 28 June 2013 09:15:49PM -1 points [-]

Er. That's an article about the history of philosophy. Am I missing something, or was it supposed to be about music theory?

Comment author: komponisto 28 June 2013 11:38:04PM 0 points [-]

The link is to a comment.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 27 June 2013 12:53:00PM 4 points [-]

Could you expand on that? It has never been clear to me what music theory is — what constitutes true or false claims about the structure of a piece of music, and what constitutes evidence bearing on such claims.

What makes the idea of "harmony" wrong? What alternative is "right"? Schenker's theory? Westergaard's? Riemann? Partsch? (I'm just engaging in Google-scholarship here, I'd never heard of these people until moments ago.) But what would make these, or some other theory, right?

Comment author: komponisto 28 June 2013 11:32:14AM 6 points [-]

Could you expand on that? It has never been clear to me what music theory is — what constitutes true or false claims about the structure of a piece of music, and what constitutes evidence bearing on such claims.

You're in good company, because it's never been clear to music theorists either, even after a couple millennia of thinking about the problem.

However, I do have my own view on the matter. I consider the music-theoretical analogue of "matching the territory" to be something like data compression. That is, the goodness of a musical theory is measured by how easily it allows one to store (and thus potentially manipulate) musical data in one's mind.

Ideally, what you want is some set of concepts such that, when you have them in your mind, you can hear a piece of music and, instead of thinking "Wow! I have no idea how to do that -- it must be magic!", you think "Oh, how nice -- a zingoban together with a flurve and two Type-3 splidgets" , and -- most importantly -- are then able to reproduce something comparable yourself.

Comment author: bogus 28 June 2013 12:25:46AM 1 point [-]

I agree that whether "the standard set of harmony concepts" is actually superseded by Schenkerian/Westergaardian analysis is not really obvious.

Westergaard has a highly non-trivial theory of what counts as "consonance" or "dissonance" in a melodic line, which is roughly equivalent to "harmony" in standard music theory. The other way that traditional "harmony" is recovered is that this kind of analysis allows for a note in the 'background'/'deep' structure to be tonicized over, effectively becoming a "temporary tonic" and admitting the construction of tonic triads ('arpeggiation').

It would not be hard to make a strong case that "harmony" is a derived phenomenon; just take a bunch of chord progressions (or pieces that are commonly analyzed in terms of chord progressions) and re-analyze them in terms of the Schenkerian/Westergaardian concepts (deep structures, arpeggiation, tonicization). Then show how this leads either to a simplified analysis, or to one that's a better description of the music.

Comment author: komponisto 28 June 2013 10:33:50AM 1 point [-]

I agree that whether "the standard set of harmony concepts" is actually superseded by Schenkerian/Westergaardian analysis is not really obvious.

If you don't find it obvious after studying Westergaard and comparing it to (say) Piston, then my best guess is that you're relying on tacit musical knowledge that you don't realize others lack, or which you mistakenly think is being communicated in Piston (etc.) but which actually isn't.

Westergaard has a highly non-trivial theory of what counts as "consonance" or "dissonance" in a melodic line, which is roughly equivalent to "harmony" in standard music theory.

Not so -- there is nothing in Westergaard about root progressions (Rameau's "fundamental bass"), which is the defining concept of "harmony" in the traditional (theoretical) sense. Consonance and dissonance are part of traditional contrapuntal theory, which goes back to long before Rameau. (Yes, Westergaard does draw on the tradition of contrapuntal theory, as did Schenker.)

The other way that traditional "harmony" is recovered is that this kind of analysis allows for a note in the 'background'/'deep' structure to be tonicized over, effectively becoming a "temporary tonic" and admitting the construction of tonic triads ('arpeggiation').

Again, if you think this is what is meant by "harmony", you are missing the point. (Yes, Rameau kinda sorta had this idea as part of his theory -- but not really. It's really a Schenkerian idea.)

In harmonic theory, the "hierarchy" has only two levels of structure: a note is either part of the chord, or not part of the chord ("nonharmonic tones"). In Westergaardian theory (as in Schenkerian theory), there is no limit to the number of levels. Take the Mozart analysis that folds out from the back of the Westergaard book. The data in that analysis cannot be expressed in terms of harmonic theory. The latter is simply not rich enough. All you can do in harmonic theory is write Roman numerals under the score, which (at best) might be considered roughly equivalent to showing one level of reduction in the Westergaardian analysis (though not really, because the Roman numerals only contain pitch-class information, not pitch information like the Westergaardian version; plus harmonic theory's "chords" frequently and typically mix up different levels of Westergaardian structure).

Comment author: arundelo 28 June 2013 12:06:10AM 1 point [-]

You couldn't be expected to tell it from the grandparent, but komponisto is saying not that tonal music is bad but that the standard set of harmony concepts does not cut reality at the joints, even when dealing with Elvis or Bach. See also the link given in komponisto's other comment.

(I haven't looked into this enough to have a strong opinion on it. I will say that the standard set of harmony concepts is an extremely important part of my mental furniture.)

Comment author: komponisto 28 June 2013 03:25:53AM *  0 points [-]

You couldn't be expected to tell it from the grandparent, but komponisto is saying not that tonal music is bad

The title of the post is "Bad Concepts Repository", not "Bad Musical Repertory". Shouldn't that make it a given that theories of things, rather than things themselves, are what what we're critiquing here?

Comment author: PhilGoetz 27 June 2013 11:06:26PM *  -2 points [-]

No. Just no. You're trying to enshrine your aesthetic preferences as rational. Besides, chord progressions work. Most people like music that uses chord progressions better than music that doesn't. Compare album sales of Elvis vs. Arnold Schoenberg.

Comment author: komponisto 28 June 2013 03:19:55AM *  2 points [-]

You've completely misunderstood my claim, as arundelo pointed out. It's like accusing moridinamael of denying the atomic theory of matter (or worse, being opposed to scientific inquiry) because he/she criticized the Bohr model.

I.e. you're taking for granted the very thing I'm claiming is wrong, and then somehow using my statement to deduce other unrelated beliefs that I don't in fact hold.

(I'm somewhat surprised, because we had some fairly extensive discussions about all this in person a couple months ago. )

Comment author: maia 27 June 2013 11:19:35AM 7 points [-]

What's wrong with it?

Comment author: komponisto 27 June 2013 11:34:11AM 6 points [-]

See discussion here, which has more links.

Comment author: komponisto 27 June 2013 10:29:29AM *  4 points [-]

"Harmony" -- specifically the idea of root progressions -- in music theory. (EDIT: That's "music theory", not "music". The target of my criticism is a particular tradition of theorizing about music, not any body of actual music.)

This is perhaps the worst theory I know of to be currently accepted by a mainstream academic discipline. (Imagine if biologists were Lamarckians, despite Darwin.)

Comment author: Jack 20 June 2013 10:04:38PM 16 points [-]

Traditionally philosophical literature recognizes a distinction between fatalism and causal determinism. Causal determinists don't say that human actions and thoughts don't or can't affect the future, just that those actions and thoughts are themselves causally dependent on prior conditions and the laws of nature. Fatalism is generally defined as something like "no matter what you think or do the future cannot be altered. It's Oedipus killing his father despite doing everything he can to avoid it.

The psychological and physical answers above sound to me like what it would be like if fatalism were true than if hard determinism were true. I mean, hard determinists think we don't have free will; it would be odd if they thought not having free will involved novel psychological or physical experiences.

Anyway, I think the only kind of free will that makes sense is compatiblist free will. So when it comes to what it would be like not to have free will I'm concerned with what it would be like if my decisions weren't made according to my wishes and reasons.

I would expect to have a very hard time predicting my behavior or explaining it after the fact with any kind of rational model. If I did have reasons and preferences to back up my decisions they would probably be invented after the decision had been made. Post-facto rationalizations instead of genuine reflection about the decision. Also, I would probably feel like I had a lot of reasons and preferences that contradicted each other and would often find myself doing x even though I wanted to want to not do x.

Rest assured, I have never experienced any of that.

Comment author: komponisto 21 June 2013 01:33:55AM 4 points [-]

Fatalism is generally defined as something like "no matter what you think or do the future cannot be altered. It's Oedipus killing his father despite doing everything he can to avoid it.

Interestingly, fatalism in that sense is compatible with free will as I would understand it: Oedipus can make any choice he likes, it's just that some specific future event is guaranteed to happen (the particular way in which it happens depending on the choice he makes).

Perhaps one could distinguish between "local" and "global" free will, or -- even more sensibly -- among degrees of ability to influence the future. (We're all in Oedipus's position to some extent, since no matter what we do, the sun is going to rise tomorrow, etc.)

Comment author: peter_hurford 19 June 2013 08:27:05PM 4 points [-]

Of course, the best people often create their own careers

Probably not the best choice right out of college.

Or, at least, I don't presently have any good ideas.

Comment author: komponisto 20 June 2013 01:10:44AM *  3 points [-]

Well, it's not like there's some future point at which you'll receive a certificate authorizing you to create your own career. On the contrary, it will always seem like a "weird" thing to do.

The younger you are, the less reason you have to be conservative and the better an idea it is to take risks that may result in large payoffs.

(It's actually not really a question of chronological age but rather of interpersonal obligations and embeddedness in social networks and relationships [having a spouse, children etc.], which tend to be lower in youth. But even [typically older] people who have such ties don't give enough consideration to doing "weird" things, in my opinion.)

In response to X-Risk Roll Call
Comment author: komponisto 19 June 2013 04:35:48AM *  7 points [-]

Who did I miss?

Comment author: JoshuaFox 18 June 2013 08:41:34AM 2 points [-]

Chris, if your goal is to get a job, it may help to think about what an employer wants to see when to make you an offer for a good first job.

Don't let this distract you from the joy of learning, or from learning material that is not directly relevant, but it may provide a motivator. In the end, you'll be providing value to someone, so you may as well start thinking of it now.

Why not choose an open-source project that is well-known, and which has been historically open to accepting patches. Then find some bug that you can fix. There are tools to help you find all this. Then submit a patch, and you can honestly say that you contributed to the famous project.

Comment author: komponisto 19 June 2013 01:44:11AM *  0 points [-]

[I]f your goal is to get a job, it may help to think about what an employer wants to see...to make you an offer for a good first job.

It seems to me that part of the purpose of the post is to ask what this might be.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 31 May 2013 03:36:01AM 6 points [-]

So do you believe in the Simulation Hypothesis or the Doomsday Argument, then? All attempts to cash out that refusal-to-believe end in one or the other, inevitably.

Comment author: komponisto 31 May 2013 04:33:23AM 2 points [-]

Doomsday for me, I think. Especially when you consider that it doesn't mean doomsday is literally imminent, just "imminent" relative to the kind of timescale that would be expected to create populations on the order of 10^80.

In other words, it fits with the default human assumption that civilization will basically continue as it is for another few centuries or millennia before being wiped out by some great catastrophe.

Comment author: komponisto 28 May 2013 11:12:28PM *  1 point [-]

I am a post and comment narcissist. Big time. (I think rereading a mere three times is a ridiculously low threshold.)

And the voting makes it many times worse. This is why I've basically withdrawn from active participation here.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 May 2013 11:01:43PM 3 points [-]

The memetic evolution of baroque music in Europe is a development towards learnability? There are probably no more than 100 people alive that can make their way through Bach's 2nd Partita for violin.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Rationality Quotes May 2013
Comment author: komponisto 13 May 2013 12:47:15AM *  12 points [-]

There are probably no more than 100 people alive that can make their way through Bach's 2nd Partita for violin.

I'm pretty sure you're underestimating that by...a lot. Fermi estimate time:

Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin are a cornerstone of the violin repertory. We may therefore assume that every professor of violin at a major university or conservatory has performed at least one of them at least once, just like we may assume that every professor of mathematics has studied the Lebesgue dominated convergence theorem. How many professors of violin are there? Let's just consider one country, the United States. Each state in the U.S. has at least two major public universities (typically "University of X" and "X State University", where X is the state); some have many more, and this doesn't even count private universities. Personal experience suggests that the average big state university has about one professor of violin. There are 50 states in the U.S., so that's 100 people already right there. And we have yet to count:

  • every other country in the world (including European countries like Germany where the enthusiasm for art music in general and J.S. Bach in particular is likely to be much higher);
  • private universities and conservatories in the U.S.;
  • members of the violin sections of professional symphony orchestras throughout the world (again, on average one in each U.S. state);
  • professional concert soloists (there may be more of these than you realize)
  • the students of the aforementioned professors (between 5 and 20 in a given semester, at least one of whom will typically be playing one of the sonatas or partitas that semester).

Thus, it wouldn't surprise me at all if there were at least 10,000 people alive who have performed one of the sonatas and partitas (to say nothing of those who would be capable of performing them). There are six of these works in total, so we can divide this already-conservative estimate by six to (under)estimate the number who have performed the Second Partita in particular. (This is likely an underestimate because many of them will have performed more than one -- indeed, all six, in a fair number of cases.)

A glance at the recordings available on Amazon, sorted by release date may help put things into perspective.

The estimate "no more than 100 alive who can make it through" would be much more appropriate for a difficult contemporary work (like, say, Melismata by Milton Babbitt) than a 300-year-old standard.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 May 2013 05:55:19AM 55 points [-]

...just to be clear on this, you have a persistent hallucination who follows you around and offers you rationality advice and points out fallacies in your thinking?

If I ever go insane, I hope it's like this.

Comment author: komponisto 12 May 2013 07:04:39AM 9 points [-]

Indeed, this style of insanity might beat sanity.

Comment author: Tuxedage 11 May 2013 04:33:53PM *  58 points [-]

So I've recently decided to change my real name from an oriental one to John Adams. I am not white.

There’s a significant amount of evidence that shows that

(1) Common names have better reception in many areas, especially publication and job interviews.

(2) White names do significantly better than non-white names

(3) Last names that begin with the early letters of the alphabet have a significant advantage over last names beginning with the latter letters of the alphabet.

Source :

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19020207 http://blog.simplejustice.us/files/66432-58232/SSQUKalistFinal.pdf http://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/sunrpe/2006_0013.html http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.pdf?new_window=1 http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html

Therefore if I were to use "John", one of the most common 'white' first names, along with Adams, a 'white' surname that also begins with the letter A, it should stand that I would be conferred a number of advantages.

Furthermore, I have very little attachment to my family heritage. Switching names doesn’t cost me anything beyond a minor inconvenience of having to do paperwork. For some people, changing your name may be extremely worthwhile, depending on your current name, and how attached you are to it. At least, it may be worthwhile to consider it, and depending on the person, may be a very cheap optimization with significant benefits.

Comment author: komponisto 11 May 2013 07:00:44PM *  7 points [-]

A disadvantage of that particular name is that it's the name of no fewer than two famous people.

(Or is that an advantage?)

Comment author: orthonormal 24 April 2013 01:05:09AM 7 points [-]

Calculus: Spivak's Calculus over Thomas' Calculus and Stewart's Calculus. This is a bit of an unfair fight, because Spivak is an introduction to proof, rigor, and mathematical reasoning disguised as a calculus textbook; but unlike the other two, reading it is actually exciting and meaningful.

Analysis in R^n (not to be confused with Real Analysis and Measure Theory): Strichartz's The Way of Analysis over Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis, Kolmogorov and Fomin's Introduction to Real Analysis (yes, they used the wrong title; they wrote it decades ago). Rudin is a lot of fun if you already know analysis, but Strichartz is a much more intuitive way to learn it in the first place. And after more than a decade, I still have trouble reading Kolmogorov and Fomin.

Real Analysis and Measure Theory (not to be confused with Analysis in R^n): Stein and Shakarchi's Measure Theory, Integration, and Hilbert Spaces over Royden's Real Analysis and Rudin's Real and Complex Analysis. Again, I prefer the one that engages with heuristics and intuitions rather than just proofs.

Partial Differential Equations: Strauss' Partial Differential Equations over Evans' Partial Differential Equations and Hormander's Analysis of Partial Differential Operators. Do not read the Hormander book until you've had a full course in differential equations, and want to suffer; the proofs are of the form "Apply Theorem 3.5.1 to Equations (2.4.17) and (5.2.16)". Evans is better, but has a zealot's disdain of useful tools like the Fourier transform for reasons of intellectual purity, and eschews examples. By contrast, Strauss is all about learning tools, examining examples, and connecting to real-world intuitions.

Comment author: komponisto 25 April 2013 02:21:16AM 0 points [-]

And after more than a decade, I still have trouble reading Kolmogorov and Fomin.

Huh. I've always liked Kolmogorov and Fomin. (And shouldn't it be under "Real Analysis and Measure Theory"?)

Have you looked at Jost's Postmodern Analysis, by chance? (I found the title irresistibly curiosity-provoking, and the book itself rather good, at least if memory serves.)

Comment author: TimS 25 April 2013 01:12:08AM 2 points [-]

Amanda Knox and evolutionary psychology - two of LessWrong's favorite topics, together in one news article / opinion piece.

The author explains the anti-Knox reaction as essentially a spandrel of an ev. psych reaction. Money quote:

In our evolutionary past, small groups of hunter-gatherers needed enforcers, individuals who took it upon themselves to punish slackers and transgressors to maintain group cohesion. We evolved this way. As a result, some people are born to be punishers. They are hard-wired for it.

I'm skeptical of the ev. psych because it seems to require a fairly strong form of group selection pressure. But I thought folks might find it interesting.

Comment author: komponisto 25 April 2013 01:54:37AM *  4 points [-]

The phenomenon of altruistic punishment itself is apparently not just a matter of speculation. Another quote from Preston's piece:

Experiments show that when some people punish others, the reward part of their brain lights up like a Christmas tree. It turns out we humans avidly engage in something anthropologists call “altruistic punishment.”

He links to this PNAS paper which uses a computer simulation to model the evolution of altruistic punishment. (I haven't looked at it in detail.)

Whatever the explanation for their behavior (and it really cries out for one), the anti-Knox people are truly disturbing, and their existence has taught me some very unpleasant but important lessons about Homo sapiens.

(EDIT: One of them, incidentally, is a mathematician who has written a book about the misuse of mathematics in trials -- one of whose chapters argues, in a highly misleading and even disingenuous manner, that the acquittal of Knox and Sollecito represents such an instance.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 18 April 2013 06:23:56AM 2 points [-]

Why assign a 90% probability to chain reactions being impossible or unfeasible? How should Fermi have known that, especially when it was false?

EDIT: Be careful with your arguments that Fermi should have assigned the false fact 'chain reactions are impossible' an even more extreme probability than 90%. You are training your brain to assign higher and more extreme probabilities to things that are false. You should be looking for potential heuristics that should have fired in the opposite direction. There's such a thing as overfitting, but there's also such a thing as being cleverly contrarian about reasons why nobody could possibly have figured out X and thus training your brain in the opposite direction of each example.

Comment author: komponisto 18 April 2013 06:33:52AM *  4 points [-]

If you view the 90% number as an upper bound, with a few bits' worth of error bars, it doesn't look like such a strong claim. If Szilard and Fermi both agreed that the probability of the bad scenario was 10% or more, then it may well have been dumb luck that Szilard's estimate was higher. Most of the epistemic work would have been in promoting the hypothesis to the 10% "attention level" in the first place.

(Of course, maybe Fermi didn't actually do that work himself, in which case it might be argued that this doesn't really apply; but even if he was anchoring on the fact that others brought it to his attention, that was still the right move.)

Comment author: komponisto 18 April 2013 06:19:47AM 5 points [-]

Since I just posted to announce a meetup featuring Michael Vassar, I suppose I was primed to recall his take on the Fermi episode:

...1 in 10 is not such a bad estimate. The problem was not that Fermi was stupid or that he was bad at making estimates; he was probably much better at making estimates than almost everyone. The problem is that he was adhering to a set of rules for what you should be thinking about or talking about that is flat-out insane, frankly. A set of rules that says you shouldn't think about anything until you're ready to do experiments with more-or-less established experimental techniques.

From this perspective -- which assumes that Fermi arrived at his estimate through an honest, non-motivated calculation -- what Fermi should have done was believe his own estimate, instead of applying the heuristic of "if it's not established. experimentally-tested science, it doesn't exist". Because a 10% probability of the scenario in question is indeed approximately 100%: that is, enough to take seriously.

Meetup : Washington DC Kennedy Center Meetup with Michael Vassar

1 komponisto 18 April 2013 05:07AM

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC Kennedy Center Meetup with Michael Vassar

WHEN: 18 April 2013 12:00:00PM (-0400)

WHERE: John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2700 F Street, NW, Washington, DC 20566.

(This is very short notice -- 11 hours from posting -- so apologies!)

This meetup will have two "sessions"; people are welcome to attend either or both:

  • 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

and

  • 3:30 pm - 7:30 pm

(Michael is attending an event with press at 2, hence the break.)

We'll plan to meet in the area with tables and chairs outside the KC café, which is on the upper ("Terrace") level of the Kennedy Center. I'll try to bring a Less Wrong sign.

Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC Kennedy Center Meetup with Michael Vassar

Comment author: komponisto 05 November 2012 08:43:49AM 25 points [-]

Taken.

Comment author: lukeprog 07 October 2012 09:51:22AM 4 points [-]

The phrase "contemporary art music" has its own problems, of course. For example, it suggests that music from the rock and jazz worlds isn't "art" or "artistic music," which would be a weird thing to say of Joanna Newsome, Julia Holter, Elegi, Matthew Shipp, Nels Cline, Carla Bley, Bill Frisell, and many others.

I've also heard the term "university music," since nearly all composers of the type you and I are discussing were trained in music at a university, but of course that's also true for lots of rock and jazz composers.

Anyway, thanks for the link to your sampler list of works!

Comment author: komponisto 07 October 2012 11:13:12PM 2 points [-]

The phrase "contemporary art music" has its own problems, of course. For example, it suggests that music from the rock and jazz worlds isn't "art" or "artistic music,"

I might be sympathetic to that objection except for the fact that it is virtually never raised against the term "art song" -- which is nothing but a special case of the same usage.

I've also heard the term "university music," since nearly all composers of the type you and I are discussing were trained in music at a university

The idea of "advanced music" (another candidate term, with its own problems) as mainly a university pursuit has historically been mostly an American phenomenon, but has started to spread elsewhere. In Europe the cultural milieu is different, so there hasn't been as much need for such music to "retreat" into academia (as it is sometimes pejoratively phrased). Of course, some composers (notably Babbitt) have explicitly embraced the university as an ideal setting for this sort of music, and don't mind terms like "academic" (considered derogatory by some).

Comment author: gjm 07 October 2012 09:08:44PM 2 points [-]

I fear the battle for the strict sense of "classical" has already basically been lost. For what it's worth, I tend to say things like "classical music in the broad sense" or "classical music in the sense that includes Josquin and Prokofiev as well as Haydn and Mozart". Which is appallingly clunky, but better that than the mere incomprehension that will generally follow if one uses terms like "art music" instead.

Comment author: komponisto 07 October 2012 10:55:34PM 1 point [-]

the mere incomprehension that will generally follow if one uses terms like "art music" instead

"Art music" is a well-established term.

Comment author: lukeprog 07 October 2012 08:27:22AM 2 points [-]

Do you have a list of your own favorite pieces from the past 60 years?

What's your preferred term for this? "New music?"

Comment author: komponisto 07 October 2012 08:54:35AM *  3 points [-]

Do you have a list of your own favorite pieces from the past 60 years?

It's not exactly the same thing, but I did once throw together a "sampler" list of works by currently living* composers. Not everything in there is a favorite, and there are many favorites not included (especially since the list was restricted to academic composers, thus leaving out a lot of Europeans such as Boulez), but it does give an idea of my "orientation". :-)

*At the time of writing -- Babbitt has since passed on.

What's your preferred term for this? "New music?"

"Contemporary art music." (Or "modern", but that might paradoxically suggest older, as in 1900-1950.)

"New music" is perfectly fine in a context where it's taken for granted that "music" refers to art music (as opposed to popular music). But "classical" is just as bad when referring to Tchaikovsky as when referring to Boulez; the issue is the terminological collision with the Classical period in music history.

Comment author: lukeprog 07 October 2012 07:11:43AM *  9 points [-]

Good post.

What about using the word 'rational' for alliterative purposes? :)

Does anyone know any good dubstep mixes of classical music

Here's some, but they're not great. As I mentioned in an early draft of How to Fall in Love with Modern Classical Music, Nero's "Doomsday" samples from my favorite piece of contemporary classical music, John Adams' Harmonielehre. Also see Rudebrat's "Amadeus" and this Fur Elise dubstep remix. The best I could find in 5 minutes was Dubstep Beethoven.

Comment author: komponisto 07 October 2012 08:19:43AM *  8 points [-]

As I mentioned in How to Fall in Love with Modern Classical Music,

Wow! Luke, I somehow totally missed that you had an interest in this subject. You even have Ferneyhough on that page! (And Murail -- who was actually a teacher of mine.)

I'm about ready to forgive you for every sin you've ever committed -- maybe even including the use of the word "classical". :-)

SI + $10.

</affective spiral>

Comment author: geniuslevel20 29 September 2012 09:09:47PM 9 points [-]

even if one accepted the implied unlikely propsition that no such persons exist or ever have existed, the terminological question would remain

I don't think so: psychiatry has no need for terms that fail to refer. (On the other hand, psychiatry might have a term for something that doesn't exist--because it once was thought to have existed.)

Comment author: komponisto 30 September 2012 02:39:17AM 0 points [-]

psychiatry has no need for terms that fail to refer

At the risk of stating the obvious: I did not intend to restrict the terminological question to psychiatry specifically.

But in any event: you could say the same thing about zoology. And yet we still have the word unicorn.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Mandatory Secret Identities
Comment author: wedrifid 30 September 2012 12:33:24AM -1 points [-]

Charitable interpretation of komponisto's comment: ‘If a human didn't care about social status except instrumentally, what would be the psychiatric classification for them?’ (Charitable interpretation of nshepperd's comment: ‘Outside of fiction, such people are so vanishingly rare that it'd be pointless to introduce a word for them.’)

I'm afraid the first interpretation is incompatible with this comment (because the Joker reference conveys significant information). Actually, this does qualify as a charitable interpretation of something kompo made elsewhere (grand-neice comment or something). This distinction matters primarily in as much as it means you have given a highly uncharitable interpretation of nshepperd's comment. By simple substitution it would mean you interpret him as saying:

‘Outside of fiction, [people who do not care about social status except instrumentally] are so vanishingly rare that it'd be pointless to introduce a word for them.’)

Rather than being clearly correct nshepperd becomes probably incorrect. Many (or most) people with autism could fit that description for a start.

Comment author: komponisto 30 September 2012 02:08:21AM *  1 point [-]

Charitable interpretation of komponisto's comment: ‘If a human didn't care about social status except instrumentally, what would be the psychiatric classification for them?’

I'm afraid the first interpretation is incompatible with this comment (because the Joker reference conveys significant information).

It was not intended to do so; army1987's paraphrase is correct.

The thought in my original comment would have been better expressed as: "Sometimes I wonder if the only people who aren't motivated by status are antisocial."

Comment author: wedrifid 29 September 2012 04:28:05PM *  -1 points [-]

So again, what would be the term for the (apparently distinct) phenomenon that I mean to refer to?

Apparently distinct? What do you mean by that? "A coherent concept that can be described as part of a counterfactual reality?" Sure, it just isn't something that is instantiated in an actual human being. That's what medical science deals with and that's where the term 'sociopath' is used and definied.

You're after "literary criticism". Or, given the subject matter, TVTropes. The best term among them is probably Chaotic Evil. The Joker even gives it the tagline. Laughably Evil also works. That trick with the pencil is one of Heath Ledger's best moments.

Is this covered in Ronson's book as well (presumably for purposes of contrast)?

If it does happen to be that would be a remarkable coincidence. It would be similar in nature but less extreme than Ronson happening to make comparison's to Yudkowskian "Baby Eaters".

Comment author: komponisto 29 September 2012 04:47:11PM *  0 points [-]

I'm afraid in this comment and in your other you are allowing your debating skills to obscure any substantive discussion that my original comment might have prompted.

And yes, I fully anticipate that your wit is sharp enough to offer a retort to the effect that the comment in question deserved no better response. Since I don't at this precise moment regard the topic as sufficiently interesting to justify the level of effort I am having to put into this conversation, I will simply note my disagreement and move on.

MIT Challenge complete

18 komponisto 29 September 2012 03:54PM

Followup to: MIT Challenge: blogger to attempt CS curriculum on own

A year after he announced it, productivity blogger Scott Young has successfully completed his "MIT Challenge", an attempt to work through that institution's undergraduate computer science curriculum independently, using the large selection of online material that it has made available.

His three pieces of advice for independent learners are worth noting:

 

  1. Create an exciting, but specific, mission. I couldn’t have learned the content of this challenge if I hadn’t wrapped it into a compelling mission. Even calling it the “MIT Challenge” helped me make the goal more specific and real. Too many self-education quests begin as vague ideas and fall apart without any constraints.
  2. Build a curriculum or find one. For small projects, taking an individual course will do. For bigger ones, try creating an actual curriculum. MIT (and other universities) offer many free courses, and also have outlines of their undergraduate and graduate programs. Having a preexisting curriculum forced me to be consistent and not avoid topics just because they were hard.
  3. Be public in your quest. Self-ed has a harder time obtaining legitimacy, in part, because nobody holds you accountable to that. Being public about my challenge made me accountable and gave me discipline I wouldn’t have had in a private quest. Consider starting a blog about your mission, even if you do it anonymously.
Comment author: JoshuaZ 29 September 2012 01:47:06PM 0 points [-]

His behavior is not consistent with what is generally described as sociopathy. Again, Ronson's book may help here.

Comment author: komponisto 29 September 2012 02:19:03PM 1 point [-]

So again, what would be the term for the (apparently distinct) phenomenon that I mean to refer to? Is this covered in Ronson's book as well (presumably for purposes of contrast)?

Comment author: wedrifid 29 September 2012 10:46:36AM -2 points [-]

Fictional?

Beat me to the exact one word reply I was about to make!

Comment author: komponisto 29 September 2012 01:27:01PM 3 points [-]

The reply is a non-sequitur, because even if one accepted the implied unlikely propsition that no such persons exist or ever have existed, the terminological question would remain.

Comment author: wedrifid 29 September 2012 04:23:04AM 5 points [-]

Sometimes I wonder if the only people who aren't driven primarily by self-image/status-seeking are sociopaths

My understanding of sociopaths makes this seem like approximately the opposite of true. It is the drives other than seeking self-image and status that are under-functioning in sociopaths.

Comment author: komponisto 29 September 2012 04:59:02AM 3 points [-]

What then do you call someone like the Joker from Batman -- someone who cares not at all how they fit into or are perceived by human society, except as instrumental to gaining whatever (non-human-relationship-based) thrill or fix they are after?

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 29 September 2012 02:56:49AM 2 points [-]

It's very easy to believe that you're being driven by something outside yourself, while primarily being driven by self-image. It's also very easy to incorrectly believe this about someone else.

Comment author: komponisto 29 September 2012 03:30:55AM 0 points [-]

Sometimes I wonder if the only people who aren't driven primarily by self-image/status-seeking are sociopaths (the closest human analogue of UFAI).

Comment author: Wei_Dai 28 September 2012 09:20:54PM 1 point [-]

How did you end up concluding that your original confidence level was correct after all?

Comment author: komponisto 28 September 2012 10:31:02PM 0 points [-]

I realized that there was a difference between the information I had and the information most commenters had; also that I had underestimated my Bayesian skills relative to the LW average, so that my panicked reaction to what I perceived as harsh criticism in a few of the comments was an overreaction brought about by insecurity.

Comment author: TimS 28 September 2012 09:58:26PM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure I agree. Many legal doctrines, especially procedural doctrines (like jurisdiction), are justified based on knock-on effects. But that is different than recursive analysis.

Or, to use LW terminology, meta != decision-theoretic reasoning.

In response to comment by TimS on [LINK] Law Goes Meta
Comment author: komponisto 28 September 2012 10:22:46PM 2 points [-]

I don't think we're talking about the same thing. I was simply making the point that many people don't understand the difference between procedural issues and substantive ones.

In response to [LINK] Law Goes Meta
Comment author: komponisto 28 September 2012 08:57:28PM 2 points [-]

As an aside, many people have trouble understanding that a lot of legal proceedings are about meta-level issues (whether and how a case can proceed, as opposed to the merits).

Comment author: Wei_Dai 28 September 2012 07:38:03PM 2 points [-]

Can anyone give some examples of being underconfident, that happened as a result of overcorrecting for overconfidence?

Comment author: komponisto 28 September 2012 08:52:59PM 1 point [-]

My "revision" to my Amanda Knox post is one. I was right the first time.

Comment author: adamisom 27 September 2012 08:05:43PM 1 point [-]

Cool. I should have specified 'I'm intrigued; can you move down a level of specificity (as to how)?'

Comment author: komponisto 27 September 2012 09:05:43PM 2 points [-]

Most people seem to believe that it's absurd to suppose we're living in the Matrix; I point out that theism is not significantly different from this.

Comment author: adamisom 27 September 2012 04:56:28PM *  0 points [-]

How (do you use it to mock/undermine theism)?

Comment author: komponisto 27 September 2012 06:05:19PM -1 points [-]

I appeal to the popular perception of the absurdity of the SH in order to undermine professions of belief in theism.

Comment author: thomblake 27 September 2012 04:33:57PM 0 points [-]

Relevant to what? It's usually brought up in discussion of ethics, not law.

Comment author: komponisto 27 September 2012 04:58:27PM 1 point [-]

If this situation actually arose, there is a substantial possibility that I would not switch the track, in order to avoid being prosecuted for murder. This isn't to say that I "endorse" that (in)action; I would prefer a legal code under which that wouldn't happen, and would vote for legislators who committed to changing the law in that way.

Discussions of "law" aren't discussions of which laws to make; those are called discussions of "policy", and they are in my opinion the place where ethical considerations are most relevant.

Comment author: [deleted] 27 September 2012 02:42:55PM *  2 points [-]

Well, Frege's big thing (the big thing that didn't fall over, anyway) is a distinction between 'sense' and 'reference', where the 'sense' of a word is something like what we mean by it, and the reference of a word is the actual, real thing the word is about. He came up with this to explain why someone could know the meaning (in the sense of 'sense') of 'the evening star' and 'the morning star' without knowing that they're in fact the same thing (they have the same referent, i.e. Venus).

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_reference

Comment author: komponisto 27 September 2012 04:19:09PM 0 points [-]

Yes, but I was going by the definition given above. No claim that Frege himself was a "Fregean"!

Comment author: pragmatist 27 September 2012 11:26:38AM *  6 points [-]

Classical: The standard kinds of logic that you learn in undergraduate logic classes are the best (or right) logics, the ones that best model (ETA: idealized versions of) our inferential processes. Examples of classical logics are Boolean logic and first-order predicate calculus. Classical logics are bivalent (sentences can only be true or false), obey the principle of the excluded middle (if a proposition is not true, its negation must be true) and obey the law of non-contradiction (a proposition and its negation cannot both be true).

Non-classical: The best logic is not classical. Non-classical logics usually reject the principle of the excluded middle or the law of non-contradiction. An example of a non-classical logic is dialetheism, according to which there are true contradictions (i.e. some sentences of the form "A and not A" are true). Proponents of non-classical logics argue that many of our scientific theories, if you probe deeply, involve inconsistencies, yet we don't regard them as trivially false. So they claim that we need to revise the way we understand logic to accurately model our inferential processes.

Comment author: komponisto 27 September 2012 04:04:22PM 4 points [-]

Classical: The standard kinds of logic that you learn in undergraduate logic classes are the best (or right) logics, the ones that best model our inferential processes

Is that the right criterion? Or should it be: the ones that best model the correct inferential processes, whether or not we humans adhere to them?

Comment author: pragmatist 27 September 2012 11:08:24AM *  7 points [-]

Contextualism: The truth of a knowledge claim depends on the context in which it is uttered. A claim such as "Alice knows that she is not in the Matrix" might be true in certain contexts (when explaining to someone in ordinary conversation why Alice didn't lose sleep over the movie Matrix) but false in other contexts (when uttered in an epistemology class in a discussion about the possibility of us being in the Matrix). The usual analysis is that the same sentence about knowledge expresses different propositions in different contexts (just like the sentence "It's raining here" expresses different propositions in different contexts).

Relativism: Whether a subject possesses knowledge of a certain proposition is relative to a set of epistemic standards. Relative to one such set, she might know that the proposition is true, while relative to another set, she does not qualify as knowing this. So, strictly speaking, "knowledge" is a three-place function, taking as arguments a subject, a proposition and a set of standards.

Invariantism: Knowledge claims are either true or false simpliciter. Their truth does not vary depending on context, and they are not relativized to epistemic standards.

EDIT: A couple of people have said that the difference between contextualism and relativism is unclear. I have tried to clarify in this comment.

Comment author: komponisto 27 September 2012 04:01:32PM 0 points [-]

Don't see much difference between contextualism and relativism.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 27 September 2012 09:33:38AM 2 points [-]

Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?

Submitting...

Comment author: komponisto 27 September 2012 03:58:59PM 1 point [-]

Other: a complex weighted mixture of both, and varying according to context. Similar to ethical value.

Comment author: pragmatist 26 September 2012 03:16:17PM *  37 points [-]

I've posted brief explanations for some of the questions as replies to those questions. I haven't posted explanations for those questions that I believe the vast majority of LW users will understand. If you don't understand a question, I'm fairly certain that if you scroll down far enough you'll find a comment from me with an attempt at explication.

Comment author: komponisto 27 September 2012 03:55:08PM *  1 point [-]

If you don't understand a question, I'm fairly certain that if you scroll down far enough you'll find a comment from me with an attempt at explication.

Unfortunately, I didn't on the libertarianism/egalitarianism one. (I had a plausible guess, but I wanted to be sure that guess was right.)

Comment author: pragmatist 26 September 2012 03:28:05PM 11 points [-]

Trolley problem: There is a trolley traveling along a set of tracks. The driver has lost control of the trolley. On the track ahead of the trolley are five people who cannot get off the track in time and will all die if the trolley gets to them. You are standing next to a lever that can switch the track the trolley will take, preventing the deaths of the five people. On the other track is a single person who also cannot get away in time and so will die if you switch the track. Do you refrain from switching the track ("straight") or do you switch the track ("turn")?

Comment author: komponisto 27 September 2012 03:49:56PM 0 points [-]

Other. The more relevant question is what kind of laws I would enact, rather than what I as an individual would do in the situation.

Comment author: shminux 26 September 2012 03:29:35PM 4 points [-]

Another false dichotomy. The word exist means different things to different people.

Comment author: komponisto 27 September 2012 03:37:11PM 1 point [-]

Yes, this is definitely a confused question. "Correspondence" is complicated.

People shouldn't use "exists" to mean "corresponds to some pattern of matter and energy" (so apparently I'm a Platonist); yet they also shouldn't ignore the ontological distinction between numbers and atoms (so I guess I'm also kind of a nominalist).

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 26 September 2012 01:56:59PM 7 points [-]

Normative ethics: consequentialism, deontology or virtue ethics?

Submitting...

Comment author: komponisto 27 September 2012 03:18:17PM 2 points [-]

Depends again on the level of discourse. Ultimately consequentialism, but a whole lot of deontology and virtue ethics in "real life".

Comment author: pragmatist 26 September 2012 02:44:44PM *  10 points [-]

[EDIT: The way I had initially described the distinction was misleading, as pointed out by thomblake. I apologize for potentially skewing the results of the poll, although I don't think my revised version is that far off from the earlier version. Still, I should have been more careful.]

Moral realism: There are objective moral facts, i.e. there are facts about what is right and wrong (or good and bad) that are not constituted by a subject's beliefs and desires.

Moral anti-realism: The denial of moral realism.

Comment author: komponisto 27 September 2012 03:06:12PM 0 points [-]

Other : depends on the level of the desires (object-level, meta-level, etc.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 September 2012 10:40:55PM 8 points [-]

"Gods are ontologically distinct from creatures, or they're not worth the paper they're written on." -- Damien Broderick.

Can anyone exhibit an actual theist who says that a Matrix Lord composed of non-mental, non-mysterious parts counts as a God? So far as I know this position is held solely by people who want to mock the Simulation Hypothesis.

Comment author: komponisto 27 September 2012 03:01:36PM 2 points [-]

Can anyone exhibit an actual theist who says that a Matrix Lord composed of non-mental, non-mysterious parts counts as a God? So far as I know this position is held solely by people who want to mock the Simulation Hypothesis.

I hold it in order to mock theism.

Physicalist reductionism is such a fundamental part of my belief system that I think charity requires that theism be interpreted as the SH. I appeal to the popular perception of the absurdity of the SH in order to undermine professions of belief in theism.

Comment author: [deleted] 26 September 2012 08:30:35PM 0 points [-]

I think that makes you a Fregeian.

Comment author: komponisto 27 September 2012 02:31:29PM 0 points [-]

Really? It seems to me just the opposite: that a Fregean believes the two concepts are the same.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 25 September 2012 11:24:41AM 1 point [-]

It's insulting and rather ignorant that summerstay associated LW with the type of person Munroe was mocking. That type of person is pretty much the opposite of what LW is about.

It is certainly the opposite of our ideal. Practice sometimes falls short.

Comment author: komponisto 25 September 2012 12:00:00PM 1 point [-]

"Falling short" means not finishing first in the race. This is more like running in the opposite direction.

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 20 September 2012 07:22:14PM *  5 points [-]

Why do you think space exploration matters? Self-sustaining space colonization is decades away, and wouldn't help against UFAI. OTOH, it might help in the case of global war, if there are some colonies that all sides are nice enough not to attack.

I can't think of any risks that space colonization helps against that deep underground colonies wouldn't, though space colonization has the huge advantage of being much more popular.

(Also, asteroid mining is a WMD and might increase x-risk for that reason. On the other hand, cheaper more abundant minerals might be geopolitically stabilizing — or destabilizing, for all I know.)

Comment author: komponisto 20 September 2012 08:55:36PM 4 points [-]

Why do you think space exploration matters?

Probably mostly indirectly, as a catalyst for science, engineering, and industry in general, with concomitant beneficial effects on education and living standards, thus potentially allowing more attention and resources to be allocated to x-risk mitigation in the long term.

On the other hand, technological advances bring risks of their own, so it's not obvious what the net benefit is. My intuition tends to favor advancement, but I'm open to persuasion if there are good (particularly inside-view) arguments against it.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 20 September 2012 07:54:03PM *  0 points [-]

Good point. This seems to be a pro-Romney argument.

But the existential risk argument seems tenuous - does Thiel contribute to SIAI, for instance? If not, who does contribute?

Comment author: komponisto 20 September 2012 08:43:01PM *  12 points [-]

does Thiel contribute to SIAI, for instance?

To such an extent that yesterday someone felt compelled to point out that he only contributes "maybe half or less" of SIAI's budget.

Comment author: komponisto 20 September 2012 11:11:14AM 5 points [-]

these all seem weak factors.

Indeed, and moreover they cancel each other out.

the fact the the Republicans have gone so strongly anti-science is certainly a bad sign.

Only in their rhetoric, which is at most weakly correlated with their actual policy decisions.

are the things I should care about in the election, or can I just lie back and enjoy it as a piece of interesting theatre?

Pure theater. Enjoy the show. Think of it as the Status Olympics, which occur every four years along with the summer games.

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 19 September 2012 06:27:46PM *  2 points [-]

My own view: Dictators in countries tend to cause bad consequences. Dictators in forums tend to cause good consequences.

Comment author: komponisto 20 September 2012 03:34:33AM 4 points [-]

I'd like to point out that Overcoming Bias, back in the day, was a dictatorship: Robin and Eliezer were explicitly in total control. Whereas Less Wrong was explictly set up to be community-moderated, with voting taking the place of moderator censorship. And the general consensus has always been that LW was an improvement over OB.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 19 September 2012 12:59:26PM -2 points [-]

since you're lucky enough to be part of a physical community of "similar" people (in which, of course, you happen to have high status), your brain thinks they are the ones who "really matter" -- as opposed to abstract characters on the internet who weren't part of the ancestral environment (and who never fail to critique you whenever they can).

Was Eliezer "lucky" to have cofounded the Singularity Institute and Overcoming Bias? "Lucky" to have written the Sequences? "Lucky" to have founded LessWrong? "Lucky" to have found kindred minds, both online and in meatspace? Does he just "happen" to be among them?

Or has he, rather, searched them out and created communities for them to come together?

That doesn't change the fact that this is is an online community, and as such, is for us abstract characters, not your real-life dinner companions. You should be taking advice from the latter about running this site to about the same extent that Alicorn should be taking advice from this site about how to run her dinner parties.

The online community of LessWrong does not own LessWrong. EY owns LessWrong, or some combination of EY, the SI, and whatever small number of other people they choose to share the running of the place with. To a limited extent it is for us, but its governance is not at all by us, and it wouldn't be LessWrong if it was. The system of government here is enlightened absolutism.

Comment author: komponisto 19 September 2012 01:22:31PM *  16 points [-]

since you're lucky enough to be part of a physical community of "similar" people

Was Eliezer "lucky" to have cofounded the Singularity Institute and Overcoming Bias?

The causes of his being in such a happy situation (is that better?) were clearly not the point here, and, quite frankly, I think you knew that.

But if you insist on an answer to this irrelevant rhetorical question, the answer is yes. Eliezer_2012 is indeed quite fortunate to have been preceded by all those previous Eliezers who did those things.

EY owns LessWrong

Then, like I implied, he should just admit to making a decision on the basis of his own personal preference (if indeed that's what's going on), instead of constructing a rationalization about the opinions of offline folks being somehow more important or "appropriately" filtered.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 18 September 2012 08:56:06PM 0 points [-]

The problem is that if you initiate it, it's subject to the Loss Aversion effect where the dissatisfied speak up in much greater numbers.

Comment author: komponisto 19 September 2012 10:08:45AM 25 points [-]

I don't see what this has to do with "loss aversion" (the phenomenon where people think losing a dollar is worse than failing to gain a dollar they could have gained), though that's of course a tangential matter.

The point here is -- and I say this with all due respect -- it looks to me like you're rationalizing a decision made for other reasons. What's really going on here, it seems to me, is that, since you're lucky enough to be part of a physical community of "similar" people (in which, of course, you happen to have high status), your brain thinks they are the ones who "really matter" -- as opposed to abstract characters on the internet who weren't part of the ancestral environment (and who never fail to critique you whenever they can).

That doesn't change the fact that this is is an online community, and as such, is for us abstract characters, not your real-life dinner companions. You should be taking advice from the latter about running this site to about the same extent that Alicorn should be taking advice from this site about how to run her dinner parties.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 16 September 2012 08:29:48PM 1 point [-]

I got Eliezer (the page's second guess) despite saying "no" to the green energy question.

Comment author: komponisto 16 September 2012 09:06:27PM 3 points [-]

If you click on "Game Report" at the end, it will tell you which answer it expected for each question, given who the person is. (It is capable of guessing the correct person even with a few "unexpected" answers.)

Comment author: CCC 14 September 2012 08:03:03AM 5 points [-]

If I were to guess, I'd guess that the main filter criteria for your dinner parties is geographical; when you have a dinner party in the Bay area, you invite people who can be reasonably expected to be in the Bay area. This is not entirely independant of viewpoint - memes which are more common local to the Bay area will be magnified in such a group - but the effect of that filter on moderation viewpoints is probably pretty random (similarly, the effect of the filter of 'people who like chili' on moderation viewpoints is probably also pretty random).

So the dinner party filter exists, but it less likely to pertain to the issue at hand than the online self-selection filter.

Comment author: komponisto 14 September 2012 09:08:17AM 5 points [-]

The problem with the dinner party filter is not that it is too strong, but that it is too weak: it will for example let through people who aren't even regular users of the site.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 14 September 2012 02:59:38AM 4 points [-]

Yeah, exactly. Which is why I took it to mean a simple preference for considering the community of IRL folks. Which is not meant as a criticism; after all, I also take more seriously input from folks in my real life than folks on the internet.

Comment author: komponisto 14 September 2012 08:50:20AM 5 points [-]

I also take more seriously input from folks in my real life than folks on the internet.

Even when the topic on which you are receiving input is how to run an internet forum (on which the real-life folks don't post)?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 September 2012 01:43:22AM 7 points [-]

Keep in mind that it's not "more people" it's more "people who participate in meta threads on Less Wrong". I've observed a tremendous divergence between the latter set, and "what LWers seem to think during real-life conversations" (e.g. July Minicamp private discussions of LW which is where the anti-troll-thread ideas were discussed, asking what people thought about recent changes at Alicorn's most recent dinner party). I'm guessing there's some sort of effect where only people who disagree bother to keep looking at the thread, hence bother to comment.

Some "people" were claiming that we ought to fix things by moderation instead of making code changes, which does seem worth trying; so I've said to Alicorn to open fire with all weapons free, and am trying this myself while code work is indefinitely in progress. I confess I did anticipate that this would also be downvoted even though IIRC the request to do that was upvoted last time, because at this point I've formed the generalization "all moderator actions are downvoted", either because only some people participate in meta threads, and/or the much more horrifying hypothesis "everyone who doesn't like the status quo has already stopped regularly checking LessWrong".

I'm diligently continuing to accept feedback from RL contact and attending carefully to this non-filtered source of impressions and suggestions, but I'm afraid I've pretty much written-off trying to figure out what the community-as-a-whole wants by looking at "the set of people who vigorously participate in meta discussions on LW" because it's so much unlike the reactions I got when ideas for improving LW were being discussed at the July Minicamp, or the distribution of opinions at Alicorn's last dinner party, and I presume that any other unfiltered source of reactions would find this conversation similarly unrepresentative.

Comment author: komponisto 14 September 2012 04:28:34AM 38 points [-]

Let me see if I understand you correctly: if someone cares about how Less Wrong is run, what they should do is not comment on Less Wrong -- least of all in discussions on Less Wrong about how Less Wrong is run ("meta threads"). Instead, what they should do is move to California and start attending Alicorn's dinner parties.

Have I got that right?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 September 2012 01:47:24PM 1 point [-]

I've banned all of eridu's recent comments (except a few voted above 0) as an interim workaround, since hiding-from-Recent-Comments and charge-fee-to-all-descendants is still in progress for preventing future threads like these.

I respectfully request that you all stop doing this, both eridu and those replying to him.

Comment author: komponisto 13 September 2012 02:28:11PM 8 points [-]

charge-fee-to-all-descendants is still in progress

Once again, please don't do that. (Hiding-from-Recent-Comments is totally okay, however.)

Comment author: wedrifid 13 September 2012 08:37:48AM 7 points [-]

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.

Excellent. A shortcut to nobility. One day of being as despicable as I can practically manage and I'm all set.

Comment author: komponisto 13 September 2012 11:48:33AM 0 points [-]

Indeed: if you were to be ignoble one day and normal the next, then your nobility would have gone up significantly.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 September 2012 04:51:00AM 0 points [-]

"No" and "It wouldn't", indeed. But heritable penalties once something does go to -3 would prevent users with zero or lower karma from replying further, thus preventing the current thread from happening again.

Comment author: komponisto 13 September 2012 06:10:49AM 6 points [-]

I don't think "preventing the current thread from happening again" is anywhere near an important enough goal to justify heritable karma penalties -- let alone retroactive ones.

Comment author: komponisto 13 September 2012 06:05:00AM *  3 points [-]

You know what the New York meetup group say: one person's warm fuzzies is another person's rationality.

Happy to hear it!

Comment author: katydee 12 September 2012 12:18:51PM 0 points [-]

What if someone gets into a feud with Eliezer? Does he have to step down? This doesn't seem like a very practical rule.

Comment author: komponisto 12 September 2012 12:39:53PM *  4 points [-]

I will note that the rule I intended was not "no Less Wrong moderator shall ever be involved in a conflict with another human being". Crucial details of the present situation are that (1) SilasBarta is himself a prominent and respectable member of the LW community, with exactly 7700 karma at the time of writing; and (2) Alicorn's issue with him originated on LW and predates Alicorn's being made a moderator.

So we're not talking about a situation where e.g. some troll with a longstanding feud with EY from outside LW comes onto the site to make trouble.

Comment author: Peterdjones 12 September 2012 10:43:08AM 2 points [-]

A pretty bad argument is this widespread idea that one should never "get into semantics", even if that is what is causing problems. Many even use "semantics" to mean something like "pointless pedantry". I can remember when semantics was a respectable academic discipline...

Comment author: komponisto 12 September 2012 11:58:42AM *  3 points [-]

Amen to this. Indeed, I fear that an actual majority of "people out there" may have no idea that "semantics" means anything other than "pointless pedantry".

Actually, though semantics is perhaps the hardest hit, this is a general phenomenon, afflicting many unfortunate disciplines. You might call it the Argument from Circumscription of Subject Matter, or the "...But That Would Get Us Into X" Fallacy. Essentially, it goes like this: "that line of inquiry can't possibly be relevant, because it comes under the heading of a different academic discipline from the one our discussion falls under". It is particularly common (and insidious) when the "other" discipline has some kind of "bad" reputation for some reason (as in the case of semantics, which is evidently regarded as "pointless pedantry").

As a fictional (yet particularly illustrative) example of this fallacy, one could imagine EY and his colleagues at SIAI a decade ago saying "Well, we could worry about making sure future AI is Friendly, but....that would get us into philosophy [which is notoriously difficult, and not techno-programmer-sounding, so we won't]."

To which the response, of course, is: "So it would. What's your point?"

Comment author: ahartell 12 September 2012 04:43:41AM 8 points [-]

When a human moderator makes a judgment call.

What if Bob is a human moderator?

Comment author: komponisto 12 September 2012 11:10:27AM 9 points [-]

For obvious reasons, participants in a personal feud should not have moderator powers.

Comment author: wedrifid 09 September 2012 04:38:43AM *  30 points [-]

My request that you not reply to my comments was not, and never became, an invitation for replies to my comments.

Alicorn's request for SilasBarta to not reply to her comments was not, and never became, an obligation for him to not speak up when Alicorn says things that he opposes.

Replying to a comment on a forum is not the same as approaching someone in person to engage in conversation. It is, fittingly, like responding to a public speech at the forum. Accordingly, the right to reply to Alicorn's comments isn't something that requires her 'invitation'. She does not have the right to speak whatever she wishes and demand that someone in particular who disagrees with her may not reply. (Except, I suppose, in the technical sense whereby she could in principle abuse her moderation powers to prevent someone replying for any reason she chose.)

This particular play for status and control over SilasBarta should be rejected and crushed mercilessly. SilasBarta's comment isn't personal in nature and so does not represent the kind of social approach that fits with the subject of this thread and doesn't get the same treatment.

The solution to not wanting to see replies by a specific individual is an ignore feature and that is one we really need here. There are plenty of people I whose comments I don't want to see and as a bonus that which is not seen can not be fed.

Comment author: komponisto 12 September 2012 05:50:59AM *  4 points [-]

Also, the grandparent is disingenuous. Presumably, Silas assumed that the request had simply expired, not that it had morphed into a different kind of request.

...as did I, frankly. I'm now commenting here after seeing this and thinking, "Oh, no, please don't let this be about....that!", and then finding, to my utter horror, that it was indeed about that.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 10 September 2012 10:49:06AM *  0 points [-]
  1. See above. Yeah, that is my real name.
  2. My first name dot my last name at ASU dot EDU.
  3. Exactly the same as my username.

You sir, are a badass.

Comment author: komponisto 11 September 2012 10:04:10AM 1 point [-]

See above. Yeah, that is my real name.

Wow....really? I had always been reading it as a (possibly ironic) self-congratulatory pseudonym.

Comment author: JohnWittle 09 September 2012 11:20:55PM *  0 points [-]

Reply here with contact information, should you be opposed to email or IRC.

  • Lesswrong Username
  • Email Address (obfuscated)
  • Preferred shell username
Comment author: komponisto 11 September 2012 02:23:24AM *  0 points [-]
  • LW username: komponisto
  • Email address: [my LW username]["at"-symbol][US domain of Yahoo! Inc] OR: [that other address from which I sent an email to you that you haven't replied to yet]
  • preferred shell username: komponisto

EDIT: And thank you, of course!

Comment author: Bruno_Coelho 09 September 2012 03:41:42AM 0 points [-]

Try Ruby.

I've learned how to program in C++, but to someone with no background, normally is taught pseudocode. Assuming the person has some tendency to thing in terms of inferences, not random connections.

Comment author: komponisto 09 September 2012 05:47:16AM 4 points [-]

to someone with no background, normally is taught pseudocode.

Tip: you can turn this into standard English syntax in one of two ways: (1) delete the word "to" and the comma after "background"; or alternatively, (2) change "normally is taught pseudocode" to "pseudocode is normally taught".

(Apologies if you're actually a native English speaker and the above was merely a typo -- but it pattern-matches to the calquing of syntax from another language, e.g. one of the Romance languages; and your name suggests that you might be a Portuguese speaker.)

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 08 September 2012 02:52:41PM 4 points [-]

There's obviously no coherence if the terminal values of space-Jews include their continuing existence, and the terminal values of space-Nazis include the space-Jews' eradication.

Comment author: komponisto 08 September 2012 11:42:57PM 0 points [-]

So what does the algorithm do when you run it?

Comment author: blogospheroid 08 September 2012 05:15:41AM 7 points [-]

Isn't it ODD that in a world of Nazis and Jews, me who is neither is being asked to make this decision? If I were a Nazi, I'm sure what my decision is going to be. If I were a Jew, I'm sure what my decision is going to be.

Actually, now that I think about it, this will be a huge problem if and when humanity, in need of new persons to speak to, decides to uplift animals. It is an important question to ask.

Comment author: komponisto 08 September 2012 11:25:28AM *  2 points [-]

Inspired by this comment, here's a question: what would the CEV of the inhabitants of shminux's hypothetical world look like?

Comment author: komponisto 07 September 2012 06:00:20AM 12 points [-]

Whatever you do, please don't change the title to "Guilt by Association". That phrase is a tired cliché, completely devoid of any rhetorical force it may once have possessed. Saying "you're just arguing guilt by association!" will never produce gasps and whispers in the audience, the way that

That's an example of what is technically known as the Worst Argument In The World

(complete with link to dedicated domain) will.

Even worse, this proposed usage would actually be different from the common meaning of "guilt by association" -- and subtly different, which is the worst kind of different. The common usage has to more to do with people than ideas. To use a terrible, political example: consider an opponent of Obama claiming that Obama is a terrorist, because he hangs around with people like William Ayers, and an Obama supporter replying "You're just arguing guilt by association!"

Comment author: Kindly 04 September 2012 04:06:15AM 13 points [-]

People like videos? I hate videos to the point that I will go out of my way to avoid links with videos in them, and I've seen this sentiment expressed by other people here.

Comment author: komponisto 04 September 2012 06:57:27AM 3 points [-]

I like videos. They are more passive than written text and feel less cognitively demanding per unit time. In fact, I will often prefer to watch/listen-to a video/audio recording more than once in order to achieve the same level of retention as reading text in a concentrated fashion, thereby exchanging time for concentration-willpower.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 16 August 2012 07:48:52AM 12 points [-]

"Professor Quirrell" is such an emulation, and sometimes I worry about all the people who say that they find his arguments very, very convincing.

Comment author: komponisto 16 August 2012 07:58:14AM 8 points [-]

Well, you have put some truly excellent teachings into his mouth, such as the one that I have taken the liberty of dubbing "Quirrell's Law":

The world around us redounds with opportunities, explodes with opportunities, which nearly all folk ignore because it would require them to violate a habit of thought.

Comment author: AndyH 16 August 2012 01:14:16AM 30 points [-]

Hi all, I'm Andy, the guy who made the game. I stumbled across this posting and am glad people are both enjoying the game and thoroughly infuriated by it :)

I had that scene in Cosmos vividly in mind as I created VR. It's amazing how well that series stands up to the test of time.

Another neat resource for that 'seen' view is http://www.spacetimetravel.org

They have a bunch of videos and explanations, too. In fact, the big inspiration for this game came from an exhibit that group built. It was in a museum years ago, and you'd physically ride a stationary bike around their simulation. A giant screen in front of you showed what you'd see as you rode through the streets of Bern (supposing light was traveling at 5 mph). It was completely interactive, and completely rad.

I've got other links posted if you're interested in more, but that's the one that sticks out to me.

Comment author: komponisto 16 August 2012 07:50:08AM 5 points [-]

Hi all, I'm Andy, the guy who made the game.

Wow. Hats off to you. This game is exactly the kind of thing I've been dreaming of.

Comment author: komponisto 11 August 2012 04:48:02AM 0 points [-]

I may be able to make this. PM sent.

Comment author: Jack 26 July 2012 05:50:00PM *  13 points [-]

At my middle school there was a sweet kid who had probably had pretty serious Aspergers. He was teased quite a bit but often it would take him a while to figure out that the other kids were sarcastically mocking him and not being friendly. He'd pick up on it eventually but by then he had replied the wrong way and looked stupid, leading to even more teasing.

No offense, but if you thought the article was taking us seriously you are somewhat socially tone-deaf.

Comment author: komponisto 26 July 2012 06:49:08PM 32 points [-]

I wouldn't say it was taking us seriously, but journalists of this type tend not to take anything "seriously". Only "hard-news" journalists write in a style that suggests their subjects are of status equal to or higher than their own.

I think many are failing to appreciate just how much respect is shown by the fact that almost nothing in the piece is false. That's an incredible achievement for a fluff journalist writing about...pretty much anything, let alone this kind of subject matter.

Comment author: pragmatist 10 July 2012 09:46:49PM *  0 points [-]

However, one thing that seems pretty clear to me is that for EY's intended philosophical purposes, there really is no important distinction between "wavefunction realism" (in the context of NRQM) and "spacetime state realism" (in the context of QFT).

I'm a little unclear about what EY's intended philosophical purposes are in this context, so this might well be true. One possible problem worth pointing out is that spacetime state realism involves an abandonment of a particular form of reductionism. Whether or not EY is committed to this form of reductionism somebody more familiar with the sequences than I would have to judge.

According to spacetime state realism, the physical state of a spacetime region is not supervenient on the physical states of its subregions, i.e. the physical state of a spacetime region could be different without any of its subregions being in different states. This is because subregions can be entangled with one another in different ways without altering their local states. This is not true of wavefunction realism set in configuration space. There, the only way a region of configuration space could have different physical properties is if some of its subregions had different properties.

Also, I think it's possible that the fact that the different "worlds" in spacetime state realism are spatially overlapping (as opposed to wavefunction realism, where they are separated in configuration space) might lead to interesting conceptual differences between the two interpretations. I haven't thought about this enough to give specific reasons for this suspicion, though.

Especially since I consider this post to be mostly wrong: locality in configuration space is what matters, and configuration space is a vector space (specifically a Hilbert space) -- there is no preferred (orthonormal) basis.

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here, but if you're rejecting the claim that MWI privileges a particular basis, I think you're wrong. Of course, you could treat configuration space itself as if it had no preferred basis, but this would still amount to privileging position over momentum. You can't go from position space to momentum space by a change of coordinates in configuration space. Configuration space is always a space of possible particle position configurations, no matter how you transform the coordinates.

I think you might be conflating configuration space with the Hilbert space of wavefunctions on configuration space. In this latter space, you can transform from a basis of position eigenstates to a basis of momentum eigenstates with a coordinate transformation. But this is not configuration space itself, it is the space of square integrable functions on configuration space. [I'm lying a little for simplicity: Position and momentum eigenstates aren't actually square integrable functions on configuration space, but there are various mathematical tricks to get around this complication.]

What concerns me is whether any actual mathematical lies are being told -- such as integrals being assumed to converge when they haven't yet been proved to do so. Or something like the early history of the Dirac delta, when physicists unashamedly spoke of a "function" with properties that a function cannot, in fact, have.

If this is your standard for lack of rigor, then perhaps QFT hasn't been rigorously formulated yet, but the same would hold of pretty much any physical theory. I think you can find places in pretty much every theory where some such "mathematical lie" is relied upon. There's an example of a standard mathematical lie told in NRQM earlier in my post.

In many of these cases, mathematicians have formulated more rigorous versions of the relevant proofs, but I think most physicists tend to be blithely ignorant of these mathematical results. Maybe QFT isn't rigorously formulated according to the mathematician's standards of rigor, but it meets the physicist's lower standards of rigor. There's a reason most physicists working on QFT are uninterested in things like Algebraic Quantum Field Theory.

Comment author: komponisto 22 July 2012 05:07:33PM *  2 points [-]

I'm a little unclear about what EY's intended philosophical purposes are in this context

As I read him, he mainly wants to make the point that "simplicity" is not the same as "intuitiveness", and the former trumps the latter. It may seem more "humanly natural" for there to be some magical process causing wavefunction collapse than for there to be a proliferation of "worlds", but because the latter doesn't require any additions to the equations, it is strictly simpler and thus favored by Occam's Razor.

I think you might be conflating configuration space with the Hilbert space of wavefunctions on configuration space.

Yes, sorry. What I actually meant by "configuration space" was "the Hilbert space that wavefunctions are elements of". That space, whatever you call it ("state space"?), is the one that matters in the context of "wavefunction realism".

(This explains an otherwise puzzling passage in the article you linked, which contrasts the "configuration space" and "Hilbert space" formalisms; but on the other hand, it reduces my credence that EY knows what he's talking about in the QM sequence, since he doesn't seem to talk about the space-that-wavefunctions-are-elements-of much at all.)

If this is your standard for lack of rigor, then perhaps QFT hasn't been rigorously formulated yet, but the same would hold of pretty much any physical theory

This is contrary to my understanding. I was under the impression that classical mechanics, general relativity, and NRQM had all by now been given rigorous mathematical formulations (in terms of symplectic geometry, Lorentzian geometry, and the theory of operators on Hilbert space respectively).

Maybe QFT isn't rigorously formulated according to the mathematician's standards of rigor, but it meets the physicist's lower standards of rigor. There's a reason most physicists working on QFT are uninterested in things like Algebraic Quantum Field Theory.

The mathematician's standards are what interests me, and are what I mean by "rigor". I don't consider it a virtue on the part of physicists that they are unaware of or uninterested in the mathematical foundations of physics, even if they are able to get away with being so uninterested. There is a reason mathematicians have the standards of rigor they do. (And it should of course be said that some physicists are interested in rigorous mathematics.)

Comment author: cousin_it 12 July 2012 02:54:20PM 1 point [-]

What feature of my mind makes me consider questions about the "meaning of math" meaningful?

Comment author: komponisto 16 July 2012 05:29:05PM 0 points [-]

People naturally tend to confuse the map and the territory, even when thinking directly about the territory. Thinking explicitly about the map requires a second-order map, and that just makes things even harder.

I would consider it a bug.

(Note that I am interpreting your phrase "questions about the 'meaning of math'" in a particular way, as "questions about the physical significance of specific mathematical facts and constructs". I chose this interpretation based on some of your previous comments, which suggested that you weren't yet totally on board with formalism. If, however, you instead meant "questions such as the one whose answer is 'mathematics is the map, physics is the territory'", then those questions are perfectly meaningful, and there is no reason your mind shouldn't consider them such.)

Comment author: wedrifid 15 July 2012 10:05:43AM 3 points [-]

Message me if you visit Berkeley again? Evelyn is my favorite name and I've never met an Evelyn. ...Sorry if that's an offensive reason to want to meet someone.

That's an excellent reason to meet someone. I want to meet an Elspeth myself. I wonder how one could go about systematically meeting people with a given name.

Comment author: komponisto 15 July 2012 04:48:00PM 0 points [-]

I want to meet an Elspeth myself.

I went to high school with one.

Turns out the person still exists -- with the same name (albeit now with an additional last name).

Comment author: komponisto 14 July 2012 06:36:21PM 3 points [-]

PZ Meyers

Please spell PZ Myers' name correctly.

Comment author: jimrandomh 14 July 2012 05:11:07AM *  17 points [-]

Frequentist statistics are like Bayesian statistics with a default set of model-based priors provided, but hidden under a rug. The prior-hiding is bad, because it leaves broken mathematics that can't be built upon to handle more complex cases. Unfortunately, "you can't build on this to handle complex cases" is an extremely difficult argument to present convincingly, even when true; and by the time someone knows enough that talking about complex cases is feasible, they're already locked in to one style or the other.

The hidden priors are also an advantage when publishing papers that aren't about statistics, because they protect you from arguments over priors that could delay publication. Frequentist statistics also provide an agreed-upon schelling point for positive results ("95% confidence"). While this undoubtedly helped its adoption immensely, it seems like it's turning out to be frequentism's downfall, since this threshold is attainable even for conclusions that are false.

Comment author: komponisto 14 July 2012 06:26:08PM 3 points [-]

This is one of the most succinctly informative comments I have seen on this site. The above two paragraphs manage to encapsulate many of the major themes of Less Wrong, all within the context of answering a specific question.

Comment author: [deleted] 13 July 2012 10:22:55PM 0 points [-]

The new theory is allowed to say that my image of the stick does not accurately describe the stick, but it may not say that I didn't observe the image.

And would you agree that the only things that can be included in the 'normality' a theory must add up to are these kinds of images and appearing? In other words, would you agree that any statement of objective fact is always, however we want to put it, theory-laden or involving some kind of falsifiable explanation?

In response to comment by [deleted] on Adding up to normality
Comment author: komponisto 14 July 2012 08:15:41AM 1 point [-]

In other words, would you agree that any statement of objective fact is always, however we want to put it, theory-laden or involving some kind of falsifiable explanation?

Notice the word "statement" in the above. Perhaps communication of a fact requires the use of a theory; but this does not imply that the fact itself is somehow "theory-laden". (Maybe the latter is also the case, but the former doesn't imply it.)

Comment author: maia 11 July 2012 06:48:31PM 5 points [-]

I work for 8 hours a day, but am at work 8.5 hours (to eat lunch). I prefer to sleep 9 hours a night. It takes me 1 hour to get ready for work in the morning, and 30 minutes to get ready for bed and fall asleep. I typically commute for 1.5 hours per day. After that, I have 3.5 hours left, about 1.5 of which are devoted to chores, dinner, and interacting with other human beings. I spend about 0.5-1 hour walking outside (exercise is important), and have an hour, maybe an hour and a half left for working on my own stuff. And that's on the days when I don't have laundry to do.

There are weekends, and I get some stuff done then, but those are also the best opportunity to hang out with other people who I don't live with, so they often are half occupied already.

I'm not really sure if I could find this situation tolerable under other circumstances (not having to do as many chores, shorter commute, etc.). I could probably be using my time at least a little more effectively than I am. It feels like a huge bottleneck in free time compared to college, though. That may also be related to the fact that in college, I can more easily choose when my free time is.

Comment author: komponisto 12 July 2012 04:50:44AM *  2 points [-]

Thanks for the info. So it seems to be mostly a case of (c).

While it's unfortunate that your own specific situation doesn't seem to allow for much free time, it doesn't seem to undermine the general hypothesis that programming is about the best sort of "day job" a prospective independent researcher could hope to get. (Such a person would of course have to be careful about maximizing the use of their non-job hours, but that would be true in any case; the worry would be about jobs that had too many hours, or soaked up all of one's cognitive energy for the day.)

Comment author: lukeprog 11 July 2012 06:24:05PM 2 points [-]

Your paraphrase of me was:

Holden expects us to have epistemic and instrumental powers of rationality that would make us successful in Western society, however this is a strawman. Being rational isn't succeeding in society, but succeeding at your own goals.

But I didn't think that what Holden got wrong was a confusion between one's own goals and "success in Western society" goals. Many of SI's own goals include "success in Western society" goals like lots of accumulated wealth and power. Instead, what I thought Holden got wrong was his estimate of the relation between rationality and success.

Re: the testing. LWers hadn't trained specifically for the battery of tests given them that day, but they outperformed every other group I know of who has taken those tests. I agree that these data aren't as useful as the data CFAR is collecting now about the impact of rationality training on measures of life success, but they are suggestive enough to support a weak, qualified claim like the one I made, that "it seems" like LWers are more rational than the general population.

Comment author: komponisto 11 July 2012 07:02:38PM 9 points [-]

It occurs to me that Holden's actual reasoning (never mind what he said) is perhaps not about rationality per se and instead may be along these lines: "Since SI staff haven't already accumulated wealth and power, they probably suffer from something like insufficient work ethic or high akrasia or not-having-inherited-billions, and thus will probably be ineffective at achieving the kind of extremely-ambitious goals they have set for themselves."

In response to comment by fiddlemath on Useful maxims
Comment author: ciphergoth 11 July 2012 04:00:53PM 2 points [-]

Heh, the thing I try to think to myself is not always true, but worth thinking about.

The funny thing about regret is, it's better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven't done.

In response to comment by ciphergoth on Useful maxims
Comment author: komponisto 11 July 2012 05:25:10PM 2 points [-]

The (mostly sound) heuristic underlying this, I think, is: choose the action that will cause you to learn more.

Comment author: maia 11 July 2012 01:56:59PM 3 points [-]

1) it's boring, lots of sitting around waiting for my crappy slow computer to do things 2) I don't see much progress on what I'm doing and get a lot of frustrating errors 3) what I'm working on feels trivial and non-meaningful 4) even a half hour commute feels like too much (I took it thinking this job would be fun and worth it compared to other options, though I'm aware of the commuting research - I was wrong) 5) working full time still feels really annoying compared to school, because I don't have any time to work on my own projects. This might be solved by a) having a job that feels meaningful, b) being allowed to work on my own stuff at work, and/or c) getting used to it (seems less desirable than the other options).

Comment author: komponisto 11 July 2012 04:59:15PM 4 points [-]

5) working full time still feels really annoying compared to school, because I don't have any time to work on my own projects

Thank you -- this is the scary part, because my reason for asking is that I've become interested in the question of what the best kind of job would be to support a person who wants to work on their own projects (assuming the projects themselves are not job-related --think Einstein in the Swiss patent office). Programming seems at first glance to be a natural candidate (at least if the person is technically inclined, such as a contemporary Einstein would presumably be) and I'd like to find out how correct this assumption is.

So, if I can probe a bit further: is the reason you don't have time to work on your own projects that (a) your job requires an exorbitant amount of time (more than 40 hours per week, say); (b) it is so stressful or unpleasant that "recovery" uses up all your leisure hours; or (c) your non-job time is otherwise committed ( e.g. a second job, school, family responsibilities, etc.) so that any projects could only be done during job time?

Comment author: maia 10 July 2012 04:57:18PM 4 points [-]

As a student in a similar situation who wishes I'd picked a different short-term gig than the one I have now: Ask them what your first assignment will be on the job. I think if I'd gotten an accurate answer to that, I would have been able to figure out that this job wouldn't be too great.

Seems there are a lot of crappy programming jobs out there, and I'm still not sure how to filter those out. ("Avoid government contract work" as an algorithm also would have prevented me from taking this job, though I don't know how generalizable it is.)

How I got this job: University jobs postings. My school has a ton.

Comment author: komponisto 11 July 2012 07:43:48AM 1 point [-]

What don't you like about the job you have now?

Comment author: lukeprog 10 July 2012 01:33:43AM *  10 points [-]

Why, we were busy working on a photo for the donate page! :)

Hopefully that photo is a more helpful illustration of the problems we work on than a photo of our normal work, which looks like a bunch of humans hunched over laptops, reading and typing.

Comment author: komponisto 10 July 2012 01:39:17AM *  5 points [-]

Support Singularity Institute and Make Your Mark on the Future

Definite articles missing in a number of places on that page (and others at the site).

Comment author: mej10 09 July 2012 11:13:30PM 4 points [-]

Any advice for software developers that are in a rut? Basically, I have been working my first post-college job the last 3.5 years or so, but honestly what I do is pretty basic web app stuff.

I really want to get into a job where I have a lot more responsibility and more interesting work, but I feel like I have shot myself in the foot by working at such an easy (but decent paying) job for so long.

I am very interested in pretty much all programming related topics and study them for fun, but having not built any super awesome software makes me feel inadequate.

Honestly, I should probably just apply to some places and see if I can get a better job, but for some reason I am afraid I will just get turned down.

Comment author: komponisto 10 July 2012 01:11:57AM 2 points [-]

On the other hand, I'm kind of curious about what it would take to get a job like the one you've currently got. From your description, it sounds like it shouldn't be too hard, but there are some slightly worrying cautionary notes in the post ("It isn’t an overnight project; getting basic competence will take months, and true skill takes years"), and it isn't obvious from the outside what sort of specific skills one would need to demonstrate to impress an employer of this type. (That is, what specific sort of programs one should write at home in order to prepare, as opposed to just going through Project Euler or something.)

Comment author: lukeprog 10 July 2012 12:10:25AM 21 points [-]

This post and the reactions to it will be an interesting test for my competing models about the value of giving detailed explanations to supporters. Here are just two of them:

One model says that detailed communication with supporters is good because it allows you to make your case for why your charity matters, and thus increase the donors' expectation that your charity can turn money into goods that they value, like poverty reduction or AI risk reduction.

Another model says that detailed communication with supporters is bad because (1) supporters are generally giving out of positive affect toward the organization, and (2) that positive affect can't be increased much once they grok the mission enough to start donating, but (3) the positive affect they feel toward the charity can be overwhelmed by the absolute number of the organization's statements with which they disagree, and (4) more detailed communication with supporters increases this absolute number more quickly than limited communication that repeats the same points again and again (e.g. in a newsletter).

I worry that model #2 may be closer to the truth, in part because of things like (Dilbert-creator) Scott Adams' account of why he decided to blog less:

I hoped that people who loved the blog would spill over to people who read Dilbert, and make my flagship product stronger. Instead, I found that if I wrote nine highly popular posts, and one that a reader disagreed with, the reaction was inevitably “I can never read Dilbert again because of what you wrote in that one post.” Every blog post reduced my income, even if 90% of the readers loved it.

Comment author: komponisto 10 July 2012 12:34:04AM 14 points [-]

An issue that SI must inevitably confront is how much rationality it will assume of its target population of donors. If it simply wanted to raise as much money as possible, there are, I expect, all kinds of Dark techniques it could use (of which decreasing communication is only the tip of the iceberg). The problem is that SI also wants to raise the sanity waterline, since that is integral to its larger mission -- and it's hard (not to mention hypocritical) to do that while simultaneously using fundraising methods that depend on the waterline being below a certain level among its supporters.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 July 2012 06:31:43PM 6 points [-]

Given these beliefs, you should buy cryonics at almost any price, including prices at which I would no longer personally sign up and prices at which I would no longer advocate that other people sign up. Are you signed up? If not, then I upvote the above comment because I don't believe you believe it. :)

Comment author: komponisto 09 July 2012 10:55:20PM 1 point [-]

The person may not believe that MWI is true; the beliefs were stated as being conditional.

Nevertheless, your argument does apply to me, since I have similar beliefs (or at least worries), and I also for the most part buy your arguments on MWI. I do plan to sign up for cryonics within the next year or so, but not at any price. This is because I don"t expect to die soon enough for my short-term motivational system to be affected.

Comment author: pragmatist 08 July 2012 06:20:32PM *  9 points [-]

This article (PDF) gives a nice (and fairly accessible) summary of some of the issues involved in extending MWI to QFT. See sections 4 and 8 in particular. Their focus in the paper is wavefunction realism, but given that MWI (at least the version advocated in the Sequences) is committed to wavefunction realism, their arguments apply. They offer a suggestion of the kind of theory that they think can replace MWI in the relativistic context, but the view is insufficiently developed (at least in that paper) for me to fully evaluate it.

A quick summary of the issues raised in the paper:

  • In NRQM, the wave function lives in configuration space, but there is no well-defined particle configuration space in QFT since particle number is not conserved and particles are emergent entities without precisely defined physical properties.

  • A move to field configuration space is unsatisfactory because quantum field theories admit of equivalent description using many different choices of field observable. Unlike NRQM, where there are solid dynamical reasons for choosing the position basis as fundamental, there seems to be no natural or dynamically preferred choice in QFT, so a choice of a particular field configuration space description would amount to ad hoc privileging.

  • MWI in NRQM treats physical space as non-fundamental. This is hard to justify in QFT, because physical space-time is bound up with the fundamentals of the theory to a much greater degree. The dynamical variables in QFT are operators that are explicitly associated with space-time regions.

  • This objection is particularly clever and interesting, I think. In MWI, the history of the universe is fully specified by giving the universal wavefunction at each time in some reference frame. In a relativistic context, one would expect that all one needs to do in order to describe how the universe looks in some other inertial reference frame is to perform a Lorentz transformation on this history. If the history really tells us everything about the physical state of the universe, then it gives us all the information required to determine how the universe looks under a Lorentz transformation. But in relativistic quantum mechanics, this is not true. Fully specifying the wavefunction (defined on an arbitrarily chosen field configuration space, say) at all times is not sufficient to determine what the universe will look like under a Lorentz transformation. See the example on p. 21 in the paper, or read David Albert's paper on narratability. This suggests that giving the wavefunction at all times is not a full specification of the physical properties of the universe.

On the other hand, my understanding is that QFT itself doesn't exist in a rigorous form yet, either.

I assume you're referring to the infinities that arise in QFT when we integrate over arbitrarily short length scales. I don't think this shows a lack of rigor in QFT. Thanks to the development of renormalization group theory in the 70s, we know how to do functional integrals in QFT with an imposed cutoff at some finite short length scale. QFT with a cutoff doesn't suffer from problems involving infinities. Of course, the necessity of the cutoff is an indication that QFT is not a completely accurate description of the universe. But we already know that we're going to need a theory of quantum gravity at the Planck scale. In the domain where it works, QFT is reasonably rigorously defined, I'd say.

Comment author: komponisto 09 July 2012 06:46:25PM *  1 point [-]

This article (PDF) gives a nice (and fairly accessible) summary of some of the issues involved in extending MWI to QFT.

Thanks for that; it's quite an interesting article, and I'm still trying to absorb it. However, one thing that seems pretty clear to me is that for EY's intended philosophical purposes, there really is no important distinction between "wavefunction realism" (in the context of NRQM) and "spacetime state realism" (in the context of QFT). Especially since I consider this post to be mostly wrong: locality in configuration space is what matters, and configuration space is a vector space (specifically a Hilbert space) -- there is no preferred (orthonormal) basis.

I assume you're referring to the infinities that arise in QFT when we integrate over arbitrarily short length scales. I don't think this shows a lack of rigor in QFT

If the "problem" is merely that certain integrals are divergent, then I agree. No one says that the fact that diverges shows a lack of rigor in real analysis!

What concerns me is whether any actual mathematical lies are being told -- such as integrals being assumed to converge when they haven't yet been proved to do so. Or something like the early history of the Dirac delta, when physicists unashamedly spoke of a "function" with properties that a function cannot, in fact, have.

If QFT is merely a physical lie -- i.e., "not a completely accurate description of the universe" -- and not a mathematical one, then that's a different matter, and I wouldn't call it an issue of "rigor".

Comment author: scav 09 July 2012 04:13:05PM 1 point [-]

I did say that it would be a straw man version of consequentialism. But I think I misunderstood what you were saying, or at least where your emphasis was, so I was kind of talking past you there :(

Thankfully in other areas the law is not concerned only with the contingent consequences of actions in general. Conspiracy to commit a crime is a crime. Attempted murder is a crime. Blackmail is a crime even if the victim refuses to be bullied and the blackmailer doesn't follow through on their threat. Kidnapping isn't considered to be babysitting if the victim is released unharmed.

So yeah. I think anyone could find it a little weird with or without calling it consequentialist.

Comment author: komponisto 09 July 2012 05:26:53PM 1 point [-]

I think anyone could find it a little weird with or without calling it consequentialist

Perhaps, but my point was that, since it does presuppose consequentialism, non-consequentialists such as Alicorn would be particularly disposed to find it weird (whether or not some consequentialists would also have a similar reaction).

Comment author: scav 09 July 2012 08:21:35AM 1 point [-]

Um, I thought consequentialism was about evaluating the goodness of a course of action based on its probable consequences. If all it amounts to is hindsight then it's not much use for making ethical decisions about future actions. But I think that would be a straw man.

If you apply that crazy approach to consequentialism then I should be allowed to stand on a roof heaving bricks out into the street, and I'm not doing anything wrong unless and until one of them actually hits somebody.

Comment author: komponisto 09 July 2012 03:07:06PM 2 points [-]

Consequentialism is about deriving the ethical value of actions from their consequences. If someone thinks that the badness of an action is not determined until the consequences are known (like the police in Alicorn's example, or more to the pont the legal system they represent), then, necessarily, they are applying consequentialist moral intuitions, and not deontological moral intuitions.

No one said anything about "all it amounts to" being "hindsight". Your second paragraph is a straw man. While it is true that if someone believes that, they must be a consequentialist, it does not follow that a consequentialist must necessarily believe that.

Comment author: komponisto 09 July 2012 05:23:26AM 4 points [-]

See Levels of Action. Creating utopia is analogous to an object-level action, while avoiding extinction would be a meta-level action: avoiding extinction supports the creation of utopia (in fact it is, obviously, necessary). However, at some point, meta-level actions have to bottom out in an object-level action -- otherwise they were pointless.

See also Lost Purposes. If we devote too much of ourselves to avoiding extinction, our values may drift away and we may simply become survival-maximizing agents who never end up creating utopia.

Comment author: komponisto 09 July 2012 05:01:19AM *  2 points [-]

A demonstration of DragonBox.

This is brilliant, and has kind of been a dream of mine for a long time.

There is no reason why any kind of mathematics could not, in principle, be made into a video game.

Comment author: darius 08 July 2012 03:23:45AM *  1 point [-]

Better examples of outsider-scientists from around then include Oliver Heaviside and Ramanujan. I'm having trouble thinking of anyone recent; the closest to come to mind are some computer scientists who didn't get PhD's until relatively late. (Did Oleg Kiselyov ever get one?)

Comment author: komponisto 08 July 2012 06:08:08AM 0 points [-]

the salient example of Einstein

Better examples of outsider-scientists from around then include Oliver Heaviside and Ramanujan

Again, I don't care whether the person remained an outsider for their entire life; all they need to have done is to have made a contribution while outside. Thus Einstein in the patent office fully counts.

Moreover, it is worth noting that Ramanujan was brought to England by the ultra-established G.H. Hardy, and even Heaviside was ultimately made a Fellow of the Royal Society. So even they became "insiders" eventually, at least in important senses.

Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 08 July 2012 01:35:20AM 5 points [-]

MWI as slam-dunk

What exactly is it that you claim to know here? It's not a particular quantitative many-worlds theory that makes predictions, or you wouldn't be asking where the Born probabilities come from. It's not a particular qualitative model of many worlds, or else you wouldn't talk about Robin's mangled worlds in one post, and Barbour's timeless physics in another. What does it boil down to? "I know that quantum mechanics has something to do with parallel worlds"?

Comment author: komponisto 08 July 2012 01:51:32AM 15 points [-]

I think it comes down to:

(1) The wavefunction is what there is; and

(2) it doesn't collapse.

Comment author: Swimmer963 08 July 2012 01:28:28AM 1 point [-]

most people

Not really the issue in this discussion, which is about the negative effects of a filtering system that excludes a certain small but highly valuable population.

Fair enough. The highly valuable 'outliers' are likely going to be different enough from me that I'll have trouble mapping and comparing my traits onto theirs, which makes that kind of comparison not very useful.

EY is a pretty good example of the type of personality I have in mind.

You may know better than me, but as far as I can tell, EY does have the ability to coax himself into working productively on projects that aren't necessarily a lot of fun all the time. He just won't do it for any goal that that he doesn't consider important. He strikes me more as someone who dislikes authority figures and cares less about the typical social reinforcement that comes of achieving more "conventional" goals, like going to university.

Comment author: komponisto 08 July 2012 01:44:09AM 2 points [-]

He just won't do it for any goal that that he doesn't consider important.

Yes, exactly. This is exactly the kind of story that such folks will tell about themselves.

Whereas, by contrast, the "conscientious" have enough willpower resources to spare for tasks that others consider "important" for them to do, as well.

Comment author: Swimmer963 07 July 2012 11:06:58PM 0 points [-]

When it's your own thing, you need a lot less of it.

This strikes me as untrue for most people. Can you give me examples of people who were not conscientious and were nonetheless able to complete large, multi-step projects?

Comment author: komponisto 08 July 2012 01:02:43AM 0 points [-]

most people

Not really the issue in this discussion, which is about the negative effects of a filtering system that excludes a certain small but highly valuable population.

Can you give me examples of people who were not conscientious and were nonetheless able to complete large, multi-step projects?

As I've suggested earlier, EY is a pretty good example of the type of personality I have in mind.

Comment author: wedrifid 08 July 2012 12:37:38AM *  1 point [-]

Conscientiousness is what you need in order to finish what you start, when what you started is something that somebody else told you to do.

I really, really wish this were true. At some point in the process of doing your own things you are going to have to do work. Mundane details, repetition, parts of the process you don't like. For example, you have to write up findings, crunch numbers, prepare details of any experiments you may be doing, double check stuff for reliability and proofread.

As for political savvy -- that isn't required at all. Unless by "research" you mean "political success in the human occupation customarily but misleadingly labeled 'research'."

Not true. Political savvy makes a huge difference to your actual ability to produce research output.

  • Without political savvy, for example, I would never have been able to make use of the supercomputer that I needed for my research, or to get the grant money to keep me funded while doing it. (Most of that savvy was, of course, possessed by my Professor, mine was limited to building the connection needed to make him give me the role.)
  • From what I understand the material requirements are even more difficult to handle in other fields such as experimental physics or anything requiring actual human (or animal) test subjects.
  • It is also needed to keep others from outright interfering with what you are trying to do (I've run into problems there).
  • Without political support you aren't able to do the research that you want to do. You are more likely to need to adapt and research the interests of others. This interferes with the conscientiousness bonus for working on personal projects.
  • If you can't get others to support what you are doing you need to support yourself doing other things that others want you to do (ie. get a job.) That slows down your research.
  • Minions. Having those means you can be doing a lot more of the core research while others handle mundane tasks.

I don't like it, but politics really does improve your ability to do research---and just about anything else.

Comment author: komponisto 08 July 2012 12:55:59AM 0 points [-]

At some point in the process of doing your own things you are going to have to do work. Mundane details, repetition, parts of the process you don't like

I said less of this personality trait was required; I didn't say zero.

Are you really disputing the notion that it takes less conscientiousness (other terms: "self-discipline", "willpower") to work on projects of one's own choosing? That's actually almost the definition of "one's own choosing": what one does by default.

Political savvy makes a huge difference to your actual ability to produce research output.

Like I suspected, we're talking past each other. Everything you say either pertains to the human occupation (and not just the act of coming up with good ideas, and maybe -- with minimal Conscientiousness -- writing them up in articles), or else is only the case because the system is set up in the suboptimal way it is.

Comment author: wedrifid 07 July 2012 10:32:09PM 0 points [-]

I don't believe it. The relentless and systematic pursuit of one's own obsessions is not the "virtue" taught by schools.

I commented about conscientiousness. To the extent that the 'virtue' you describe here is still contentiousness you are not using a straw man. Conscientiousness and political savvy are the what is required for success and productive output in research.

Comment author: komponisto 07 July 2012 10:46:18PM *  1 point [-]

Conscientiousness is what you need in order to finish what you start, when what you started is something that somebody else told you to do. When it's your own thing, you need a lot less of it.

As for political savvy -- that isn't required at all. Unless by "research" you mean "political success in the human occupation customarily but misleadingly labeled 'research'." (The "as such" qualifier a few comments above was intended to rule that out.)

In response to comment by [deleted] on Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 3
Comment author: pragmatist 07 July 2012 09:38:29PM *  6 points [-]

The sequences present a convincing case (to me at least) that MWI is the right view of things, and that it is the best conclusion of our understanding of physics.

Just a caution, here. The sequences only really talk about non-relativistic quantum mechanics (NRQM), and I agree that MWI is the best interpretation of this theory. However, NRQM is false, so it doesn't follow that MWI is the "right view of things" in the general sense. Quantum field theory (QFT) is closer to the truth, but there are a number of barriers to a straightforward importation of MWI into the language of QFT. I'm reasonably confident that an MWI-like interpretation of QFT can be constructed, but it does not exist in any rigorous form as of yet (as far as I am aware, at least). You should be aware of this before committing yourself to the claim that MWI is an accurate description of the world, rather than just the best way of conceptualizing the world as described by NRQM.

Comment author: komponisto 07 July 2012 10:36:58PM 3 points [-]

Quantum field theory (QFT) is closer to the truth, but there are a number of barriers to a straightforward importation of MWI into the language of QFT

This is important if true, and I would like to know more. What are the barriers?

I'm reasonably confident that an MWI-like interpretation of QFT can be constructed, but it does not exist in any rigorous form as of yet

On the other hand, my understanding is that QFT itself doesn't exist in a rigorous form yet, either.

Comment author: wedrifid 07 July 2012 10:09:58PM 0 points [-]

This is the notion that I would like to disabuse you of. School filters select strongly for Conscientiousness and weakly against Openness; whereas the former plays at most a minor role in research as such, and the latter is crucial.

The former is the vast majority of research. And most things.

Comment author: komponisto 07 July 2012 10:24:43PM 1 point [-]

The former is the vast majority of research.

I don't believe it. The relentless and systematic pursuit of one's own obsessions is not the "virtue" taught by schools.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 July 2012 08:23:35PM 0 points [-]

Yes: there are excessive numbers of both false negatives (talented people with blotches) and false positives (untalented people without blotches).

Why do you think this?

Who do you think it was?

So I haven't read your last paragraph yet. I guess if I were making the decision, I'd pick the undergraduate, unless the graduate transfer had some kind of story about what happened (a divorce, a death, something that would explain the failures). I think that's probably how most admissions committees would go too: talent isn't worth much if you need to be dragged to work every day. Now, on to your last paragraph...

(This is an improvement over high school, or humanities academia, where no one would.)

About humanities academia, this isn't at all true.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Negative and Positive Selection
Comment author: komponisto 07 July 2012 09:17:16PM 0 points [-]

I guess if I were making the decision, I'd pick the undergraduate, unless the graduate transfer had some kind of story about what happened (a divorce, a death, something that would explain the failures).

Well, of course there's some kind of story that explains the failures, other than "he just wasn't good enough"; by assumption the guy wasn't let into the first graduate school off the street -- he had been a brilliant undergraduate. So something went wrong. The question is whether you should filter out a clearly capable person because something went wrong once. If you do, you're simply not optimizing for the right thing.

A rational deliberation on Candidate A would look like this: "This person obviously has issues, and he might not succeed here. But if he does, there's a good chance he'll succeed spectacularly -- at least, at a level above that of many students we're happy to call 'successful'. If he doesn't, well, some percentage of the blemish-free students we admit are going to fail anyway, so what's the difference?"

It is a fact of life that sometimes multiple iterations are required for something to work; but the school system does a poor job of accommodating this. Repeating a course as many times as necessary until you get an A is not something that the system encourages; if it were optimizing for the right things, it would be.

About humanities academia, this isn't at all true

Yes, that was a flippant, stereotyped exaggeration -- especially since "humanities" includes philosophy and linguistics, where the mentality is often very similar to math. Still, like any good caricature, it has some basis in reality. Generally speaking, the "softer" the subject -- the fewer objective measures of competence -- the greater the reliance on pure status games, i.e. academic snobbery. And of course my whole point here is that this snobbery is present even in "hard" fields.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 July 2012 06:57:21PM 0 points [-]

There is still enough snobbery present that people with "blotches on their record" need a significant amount of good luck in order not to be filtered out.

Well, the question is whether or not academic programs are good at selecting for talent (and, for the purposes of my point, I mean at the graduate level and above). So you may be right that it's hard for people with blotches on their record to do well, but does this make the selection process a bad one, considered on the basis of costs to benefits?

In response to comment by [deleted] on Negative and Positive Selection
Comment author: komponisto 07 July 2012 08:11:02PM 1 point [-]

Yes: there are excessive numbers of both false negatives (talented people with blotches) and false positives (untalented people without blotches).

I'll make up an example (loosely based on some real cases I know about) to illustrate what I mean. Suppose a graduate admissions committee in a math or physics department is looking at two candidates. Candidate A is applying to transfer from another graduate program at another institution, where for some reason he was a total disaster, flunking courses left and right. On the other hand, his undergraduate record is near-perfect, and itself consists mostly of graduate-level courses. Candidate B, by contrast, is applying directly from undergraduate school, and has a reasonably good record, but with standard undergraduate coursework in the subject, nothing particularly beyond "grade level".

Now, of these two candidates, which do you think has a higher chance of admission? Neither of them is ideal, of course; but let us stipulate that exactly one of them is in fact admitted. Who do you think it was?

If you were trying to select for talent, it would be Candidate A every time. And sure enough, there are people in math/physics academia who would indeed pick Candidate A. (This is an improvement over high school, or humanities academia, where no one would.) However, a disturbingly large number will pick Candidate B. They will see Candidate A as "damaged goods", as "unworthy" -- as if a spot in a graduate program were a reward for "good citizenship", rather than a resource to be used for getting research problems solved.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 July 2012 06:52:06PM 0 points [-]

But personally, I think he would have a hard time. He'd be the Intel Science Fair winner with the 2.0 GPA.

That may be. Has he tried seriously to get into academia? My impression is that he doesn't think it would be worth his time. I graduated high school with a GPA of around 2.0 as well, and I do okay. Being productive in school, if you really want to, isn't a very hard thing to get into. And if it is, for whatever reason, very difficult for someone to become productive then they're probably unsuited for research anyway. My take on EY is that he would do fine if he found the right institution and was really inclined to go through it.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Negative and Positive Selection
Comment author: komponisto 07 July 2012 07:16:47PM *  1 point [-]

And if it is, for whatever reason, very difficult for someone to become productive [in school] then they're probably unsuited for research anyway.

This is the notion that I would like to disabuse you of. School filters select strongly for Conscientiousness and weakly against Openness; whereas the former plays at most a minor role in research as such, and the latter is crucial.

Someone might, therefore, have too much Openness and too little Conscientiousness to make it through the filter, despite having enough of these traits (a large amount of Openness, and a bare minimum of Conscientiousness) to function as a brilliant researcher.

My take on EY is that he would do fine if he found the right institution

And my point is that that is a big "if".

Comment author: private_messaging 07 July 2012 06:17:51AM *  -2 points [-]

For interest of the discussion, here is the article in question

It actually is a perfect example of how LW is interested in science:

There is the fact that some people have no mental imagery, but live totally normal lives. That's amazing! They're more different than you usually imagine scifi aliens to be! And yet there is no obvious difference. It is awesome. How does that even work? Do they have mental imagery somewhere inside but no reflection on it? Etc, etc etc.

And the first thing that was done with this awesome fact here, was 'update' in the direction of trusting more the PUA community's opinion on women, rather than women themselves, and that was done by author. That's not even a sufficiently complete update, because the PUA community - especially the manipulative misogynists with zero morals and the ideal to become a clinical sociopath as per check list, along with their bragging that has selection bias and unscientific approach to data collection written all over it - is itself prone to typical mind fallacy (as well as a bunch of other fallacies) when they are seeing women as equally morally reprehensible beings as they themselves are.

This, cousin_it, is the case example why you shouldn't be writing good work for LW. Some time back you were on verge of something cool - perhaps even proving that defining the real world 'utility' is incredibly computationally expensive for UDT. Instead, well, yeah, there's the local 'consensus' on the AI behaviour and you explore for the potential confirmations of it.

Comment author: komponisto 07 July 2012 06:52:29PM *  4 points [-]

the manipulative misogynists with zero morals and the ideal to become a clinical sociopath as per check list, along with... [an] unscientific approach to data collection

A classic Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking right there.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 July 2012 05:25:47PM *  0 points [-]

I think this is simply false as a matter of fact. See this comment.

Ah, I was speaking in terms of finding talented researchers at the graduate and faculty level, not lvy league undergrad admissions. Your comments seem reasonable on the subject of undergrad admissions, which I agree are almost wholly negative selection filters. Do you think this also goes for graduate admissions? What should we anticipate observing if schools were bad at this kind of selection? What would we see if they were good at it?

EDIT: I'm working largely on the observation that getting a PhD in any field is really very easy. The major barrier seems to be interest. This doesn't go for all fields, of course. Law is a serious exception. But physics? Mathematics? I lack data here, but I'm skeptical that these are particularly closed academic fields.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Negative and Positive Selection
Comment author: komponisto 07 July 2012 05:56:28PM 0 points [-]

I'm working largely on the observation that getting a PhD in any field is really very easy. The major barrier seems to be interest. This doesn't go for all fields, of course. Law is a serious exception. But physics? Mathematics? I lack data here, but I'm skeptical that these are particularly closed academic fields.

Yes, I think you're mistaken about this. Relatively speaking, you're correct -- fields like mathematics have less "academic snobbery" than law, humanities, and the like. The problem is that relatively isn't enough. There is still enough snobbery present that people with "blotches on their record" need a significant amount of good luck in order not to be filtered out.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 July 2012 04:48:35PM 1 point [-]

Fair enough on the medical school thing, but is this really a serious barrier in something like physics? How hard is it for a talented researcher to learn to write a technical, scholarly document in a timely fashion? Do you know of any good, hard working scientific talents denied access to resources because of their writing ability? Because I know lots and lots of mediocre researchers who are nevertheless perfectly adequate scholarly authors. It doesn't seem like a demanding filter. In my experience most journal articles are terribly written (much worse than your sequences, for example), so the standards can't be that high.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Negative and Positive Selection
Comment author: komponisto 07 July 2012 05:45:30PM 0 points [-]

Eliezer is perhaps thinking of someone like himself, who can write very well, but not very quickly.

Many people seem to assume that because Eliezer is highly intelligent, he would succeed in school. But personally, I think he would have a hard time. He'd be the Intel Science Fair winner with the 2.0 GPA. In fact, I'm not even sure he would make it through college, let alone high school (which is much harder). The reason? He described it in Two More Things to Unlearn from School:

Much of this problem may come from needing to take three 4-credit courses per quarter, with a textbook chapter plus homework to be done every week - the courses are timed for frantic memorization, it's not possible to deeply chew over and leisurely digest knowledge in the same period. College students aren't allowed to be confused; if they started saying, "Wait, do I really understand this? Maybe I'd better spend a few days looking up related papers, or consult another textbook," they'd fail all the courses they took that quarter. A month later they would understand the material far better and remember it much longer - but one month after finals is too late; it counts for nothing in the lunatic university utility function.

The only way it would work would be if he had a powerful mentor looking out for him, so that he either wouldn't have to go through this insanity, or it wouldn't stop his advancement if he did it poorly. Absent that, he -- and probably a fair number of other similar people -- would fall through the cracks.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Rationality Quotes July 2012
Comment author: Alicorn 05 July 2012 04:56:06PM 8 points [-]

I always think it's weird on cop shows and the like where an assaulter is in custody, the victim is in the hospital, and someone says "If he dies, you're in big trouble!". The criminal has already done whatever he did, and now somehow the severity of that doing rests with the competence of doctors.

Comment author: komponisto 07 July 2012 05:32:11AM 2 points [-]

Indeed, this seems to be an area where the legal system opts for a consequentialist approach; no surprise, then, that you would find it weird.

Comment author: magfrump 05 July 2012 11:19:36PM 3 points [-]

(More reasonably, I think they have a file of names called "admit these people", which it checks applicants against (and if they're on the list, sends it to a human to verify), and Andraka's win was publicized widely enough that he probably made it onto the list, and if someone is doing their job well they routinely import the list of winners from things like the Intel Science Fair into that list.)

I'm fairly confident that this is a thing that actually exists, because of the associated prestige. Universities would get this if they were optimizing for status, without optimizing for learning at all.

Comment author: komponisto 07 July 2012 05:13:51AM 2 points [-]

However, you also have to consider marginal payoff relative to the cost. Most Science Fair winners will also score high according to the standard formula (involving GPA et cetera); any additional prestige the institution would gain by also admitting the very few who don't probably wouldn't be worth the cost of having such a separate system.

Comment author: novalis 06 July 2012 06:24:32PM 20 points [-]

Even better: you can't get the exact text of a policy until you buy it. Some homeowners or renters policies will actually insure you against libel claims. But I couldn't find a single insurance company willing to give me the exact text of the policy until I actually bought one.

Comment author: komponisto 06 July 2012 09:38:20PM 3 points [-]

Now that is truly a scandal.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 July 2012 07:51:13PM 10 points [-]

Unless you sample at random from the whole population, that's a Berkson's fallacy.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Negative and Positive Selection
Comment author: komponisto 06 July 2012 09:08:01PM 2 points [-]

Berkson's fallacy.

Upvoted for this link. I wish I had known this term back in the Amanda Knox days -- this fallacy (or rather, the reverse of it -- failing to take into account conditional dependence of a priori independent events) is a version of the main probability-theoretic error of that case.

Comment author: Vaniver 06 July 2012 12:21:14AM 2 points [-]

Whatever the "popular" view, all that matters for my purposes is that Einstein was not employed by a university in 1905 when he developed SR, and thus was, by my definition, an outsider.

Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain all got PhDs, but invented the transistor while at Bell Labs, i.e. not while employed by universities. I think the "jump through the usual hoops" description shminux is using is a more useful one than the "outsider" description you're using.

Comment author: komponisto 06 July 2012 03:04:22AM 3 points [-]

As I stated in the grandparent, the relevant distinction is whether or not you are paid to do the research, or whether you are forced to do it in your "spare time".

On Bell Labs specifically, see Scott Aaronson:

But what about some of the other spectacular inventions of the last fifty years: the laser, the transistor, the fiber-optic cable, the communications satellite? Didn’t those come from the private sector? As it happens, they came from Bell Labs, which is interesting as the sort of mammoth exception that proves the rule. Because of AT&T’s government-sanctioned monopoly, for much of the 20th century Bell Labs was able to function like the world’s largest university, devoting billions of dollars to “irrelevant” research.

Thus, the people you mention were, I assume, doing their actual jobs when they invented the transistor, which makes them analogous to academics, and not analogous to Einstein in the patent office.

The modern analogue of Einstein would be someone dropping out of grad school, becoming a software developer (or something), and within a few years posting groundbreaking papers on the arXiv that they wrote for the fun of it. You can call such a person an "insider" if you like because of their (unfinished) education, but I guarantee you they sure as hell won't feel like one in the years before their paper comes out. (They won't have library privileges, won't get invited to physicist parties, and generally won't be taken seriously because...they're not a physicist, they're a software developer.)

I think the "jump through the usual hoops" description shminux is using is a more useful one than the "outsider" description you're using.

More useful for what, exactly?

In response to comment by [deleted] on Less Wrong views on morality?
Comment author: Jack 05 July 2012 07:30:30PM *  19 points [-]

People here seem to share anti-realist sensibilities but then balk at the label and do weird things for anti-realists like treat moral judgments as beliefs, make is-ought mistakes, argue against non-consequentialism as if there were a fact of the matter, and expect morality to be describable in terms of a coherent and consistent set of rules instead of an ugly mess of evolved heuristics.

I'm not saying it can never be reasonable for an anti-realist to do any of those things, but it certainly seems like belief in subjective or non-cognitive morality hasn't filtered all the way through people's beliefs.

Comment author: komponisto 05 July 2012 10:54:37PM 0 points [-]

Well said.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 05 July 2012 10:31:39PM 0 points [-]

It's been years since I read the Jaffe–Quinn article. But, as I recall, it was more about the methods used to answer questions, and about how rigorous human-verifiable proofs might give way to heuristic/probabilistic and computer-aided proofs. Eliezer, on the other hand, seemed to be saying that mathematicians concentrate prestige on answering questions (by whatever means the community considers to be adequate), as opposed to "figuring out the shape of the right theorem to be proved".

Comment author: komponisto 05 July 2012 10:45:36PM 0 points [-]

Jaffe and Quinn mainly advocate that labor should be divided between people who make conjectures ("theoreticians") and people who prove them ("experimentalists"). I don't think there is much of anything about probabilistic or computer-aided proofs.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 05 July 2012 09:46:48PM *  2 points [-]

That'd be a much harder question to answer; my talent is specialized toward figuring out the shape of the right theorem to be proved, not the actual proof which is where most modern math concentrates its prestige.

Being able to give some actual proofs is a prerequisite of prestige. But it's not clear to me that it's right to say that mathematics concentrates its prestige there. See, for example, Fields Medalist Timothy Gower's article The Two Cultures of Mathematics (pdf):

The “two cultures” I wish to discuss will be familiar to all professional mathematicians. Loosely speaking, I mean the distinction between mathematicians who regard their central aim as being to solve problems, and those who are more concerned with building and understanding theories.

...

Let me now briefly mention an asymmetry similar to the one pointed out so forcefully by C. P. Snow. It is that the subjects that appeal to theory-builders are, at the moment, much more fashionable than the ones that appeal to problem-solvers.

Comment author: komponisto 05 July 2012 09:59:04PM 0 points [-]

I suspect the distinction Eliezer is making is more akin to the controversial "theoretical vs. experimental" one proposed by Jaffe and Quinn than the traditional "theory-builder vs. problem-solver" one discussed by Gowers.

Comment author: shminux 05 July 2012 08:18:13PM *  4 points [-]

He got his undergrad degree in 1900, so, inside the system. He was a lecturer (part time) between 1900 and 1902, though not at a high level. He did indeed develop his SR ideas while dealing with electromagnetic applications while working at the patent office (which paid the bills), though still in touch with other scientists, most notably Marcel Grossmann. His thesis was not related to relativity at all, not that it matters. All of his work on GR was inside the system. Not that he needed the system much by then.

So, the popular view of Einstein as an outsider is blown way out of proportion to reality.

Comment author: komponisto 05 July 2012 08:50:57PM 4 points [-]

Whatever the "popular" view, all that matters for my purposes is that Einstein was not employed by a university in 1905 when he developed SR, and thus was, by my definition, an outsider. Yes, of course he became an insider later -- that's the dream of of every outsider!

Having an undergrad degree -- or a degree of any kind -- does not make one an insider. What counts is employment: whether one is paid to do the work in question. If you're not (as Einstein wasn't in 1905), you're an outsider.

Comment author: shminux 05 July 2012 06:51:25PM 3 points [-]

I predict that we will indeed see this before too long

I am willing to bet that none of the high-profile open problems in physics, such as quantum measurement, high-temperature superconductivity, dark energy origins, extensions to the standard model etc., will receive a meaningful contribution from outside of people trained in academia, at least not in the next 10 years. The reason is that the cream-of-the-crop people who are able to advance the leading edge stand out enough to be recognized and integrated into the system.

And of course, if you're willing to look a century back instead of just a half-century, you find the salient example of Einstein

This is a myth. While he had trouble fitting in, he certainly did jump through most of the usual hoops.

Comment author: komponisto 05 July 2012 07:42:54PM *  4 points [-]

If a person is recognized and integrated into the system only after making a contribution, that counts as being "outside the system". E.g. Einstein, who didn't get his first academic position until 1908, three years after the annus mirabilis, which had occurred while he was a patent clerk. Indeed, he didn't even get his Ph.D. until the annus itself -- his thesis consisted of one of the famous papers!

Comment author: DanArmak 05 July 2012 06:30:51PM 5 points [-]

Access to information and social support/reinforcement is a huge limiting factor.

Access to labs, equipment, technicians, funding is an even greater factor. Only mathematicians can really afford to work from home. (And now, computer scientists and computational-xxx people have joined them.)

Comment author: komponisto 05 July 2012 07:35:20PM 3 points [-]

Yes, all my predictions about people working at home should be interpreted to refer to fields in which that is physically possible.

(In fact, in these discussions I am pretty much always thinking specifically of mathematics, and possibly the most theoretical kinds of physics.)

Comment author: Vaniver 05 July 2012 03:59:28PM 1 point [-]

My primary reason is I expect that they'll have the best one that money can buy- and I suspect that schools like Harvard explicitly look for a blend of students (since a system that gives them only Senator's sons or a system that gives them only brilliant kids will lower the value of Harvard to both, but a system that gives them, say, 30% Senator's sons and 70% brilliant kids will do better).

Comment author: komponisto 05 July 2012 04:31:33PM *  5 points [-]

My primary reason is I expect that they'll have the best one that money can buy

I think this is wrong. To be sure, they could have that if they wanted, but that doesn't seem to be where they actually spend their (considerable) money. From the book A is for Admission: An Insider's Guide to Getting Into the Ivy League and Other Top Colleges:

I hope by now the point is clear: For the most part, Ivy League hotshots are not the ones reading your application. You will note the conspicuous absence of Rhodes scholars or well-known educators on admissions staffs...As my former colleague from the Putney School in Putney, Vermont, and former Brown admissions officer Harry Bauld writes in his hilarious book on college essays, "This is your audience. Study them well. Not exactly the Nobel Prize panel."

\

and I suspect that schools like Harvard explicitly look for a blend of students

Yes, but they have a formula for achieving the blend they seek, and that formula is going to filter out people with low GPAs and such.

Comment author: shminux 05 July 2012 05:53:00AM *  5 points [-]

I agree with most of it, though the point about academia is a bit contrived.

True, there is a lot of negative selection before you get a cushy job the usual way, but you can certainly bypass quite a few obstacles if you are exceptionally good. For example, solve any of the open problems in math or physics, post a preprint on arxiv.org (well, you may need someone to vouch for you, but that's not really an issue) and you are all set.

Unfortunately, I cannot recall a single discovery in physics in the last half a century that was not made by someone who jumped through the usual hoops. I have met, however, an occasional person who learned grad school-level stuff on their own, but they did not manage to go any farther. My suspicion is therefore that all that negative selection in science, while annoying, does not do a lot of harm compared to potential alternatives. While it filters out some good people, it probably does not reject the very best, otherwise we would see an occasional example of someone making a significant discovery outside academia.

Comment author: komponisto 05 July 2012 04:11:13PM 8 points [-]

While [negative selection] filters out some good people, it probably does not reject the very best, otherwise we would see an occasional example of someone making a significant discovery outside academia.

I predict that we will indeed see this before too long, now that we have the internet; and it will thus turn out that some of the best people were being filtered out. Access to information and social support/reinforcement is a huge limiting factor.

And of course, if you're willing to look a century back instead of just a half-century, you find the salient example of Einstein -- who didn't even have the internet, but still managed to advance science from outside the "establishment" (which was a sizable apparatus in his time and place, just as it is in ours).

Comment author: AlexMennen 05 July 2012 04:00:49AM 18 points [-]

I got into UC Berkeley with a high school GPA of 2.9 by talking about math with professors. This strategy failed everywhere else, and would have failed at Berkeley if I hadn't been lucky enough to find a professor stubborn enough to argue with the admissions office again after they ignored him the first time. On the other hand, my accomplishments are not even close to as impressive as Andraka's, so he might have an easier time with this strategy even with a worse GPA.

Anyway, if you've done anything impressive, finding a champion within the system is easy. Andraka had a hard time with that step because he was trying to get support before doing something cool rather than after. Now, the vast majority of biology professors would gladly stand up for him to their institution's admissions department. But this strategy requires persistence on the part of the champion, as well as the applicant.

Comment author: komponisto 05 July 2012 03:09:07PM 5 points [-]

Anyway, if you've done anything impressive, finding a champion within the system is easy.

It's not impossible, but "easy" is an overstatement.

One of the most disappointing discoveries of my life was the existence of professors -- even math professors, alas -- who think like high-school teachers or college admissions officers. They not only exist, but exist in large enough numbers that one will actually run into them. The good guys also exist, but they don't dominate the way I thought they did. This realization caused me to change my view of academia.

Now, the vast majority of biology professors would gladly stand up for him to their institution's admissions department.

Again, I think that's an overestimate. Maybe half of them would, but the "vast majority"? You would get a substantial number who, while grudgingly admitting the impressiveness of his accomplishment, would seek to rationalize the traditional status structure by making excuses about his not being "ready" or "a good fit", etc.

Comment author: TimS 05 July 2012 02:29:15PM 1 point [-]

It's reasonable to play with the expected meanings - but playing with the expected meanings in this case seems inconsistent with applying the label "Rationality Quote."

The quote is isomorphic to "Don't eat poisonous things - and some things are poisonous." That quote won't get upvotes if posted as a Rationality Quote - why should its equivalent?

Comment author: komponisto 05 July 2012 02:38:05PM -1 points [-]

The quote is isomorphic to "Don't eat poisonous things - and some things are poisonous." That quote won't get upvotes if posted as a Rationality Quote - why should its equivalent?

I don't see the equivalence.

But remember, I'm not defending the quote as a Rationality Quote. I'm only defending the quote against the charge of inappropriate word choice.

Comment author: bentarm 05 July 2012 12:25:15PM 2 points [-]

Yes, it's true that people only usually apply the word to a more restricted subset of things than those which won't kill the eater; but such a behavioral tendency should not be confused with the actual semantics of the word.

To claim that the actual semantics of a word can be defined by anything other than the behavioural tendencies of its users is, at best, highly controversial. Whatever you or I may think, "irregardless" just is a (near) synonym for "regardless" and, to judge from my own experience (and the majority of comments from native speakers on the thread) "edible" actually means "safe to eat" (although, as Alicorn says, it's a little bit more complicated than that).

Words mean exactly what people use them to mean - there is no higher authority (in English, at least, there isn't even a plausible candidate for a higher authority).

Comment author: komponisto 05 July 2012 02:14:00PM 1 point [-]

To claim that the actual semantics of a word can be defined by anything other than the behavioural tendencies of its users is, at best, highly controversial.

On the contrary, it's trivially true. If semantics depended exclusively on behavior patterns, then novel thoughts would not be expressible. The meaning of the word "yellow" does not logically depend solely on which yellow objects in the universe accidentally happen to have been labeled "yellow" by humans. It is entirely possible that, sitting on a planet somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy, is a yellow glekdoftx. Under the negation-of-my-theory (I'll try not to strawman you by saying "under your theory"), that would be impossible, because, due to the fact that humans have never previously described a glekdoftx as "yellow", the extension of that term does not include any glekdoftxes. Examples like this should suffice to demonstrate that semantic information does not just contain information about verbal behavior; it also contains information about logical relationships.

edible" actually means "safe to eat

Guess what: I agree! Here, indeed, is my proof of this fact:

  1. "Edible" means "able to be eaten".
  2. In the relevant contexts, "able to be eaten" means "safe to eat".
  3. Therefore, "edible" means "safe to eat".

See how easy that was? And yet, here I am, dealing with a combinatorial explosion of hostile comments (and even downvotes), all because I dared to make a mildly nontrivial, ever-so-slightly inferentially distant point!

Insert exclamation of frustration here.

Words mean exactly what people use them to mean - there is no higher authority

Yes, that thought is in my cache too. It doesn't address my point, which is more subtle.

Comment author: Vaniver 05 July 2012 03:14:40AM 2 points [-]

I think more highly of Harvard's admission department than that. At the very least, Andraka has shown himself capable of finding a champion within the system through persistence.

Comment author: komponisto 05 July 2012 03:33:08AM 5 points [-]

I think more highly of Harvard's admission department than that.

Any particular reason?

Comment author: Vaniver 05 July 2012 02:37:25AM 2 points [-]

There’s no one way you can do really, really well, and thereby be admitted to Harvard.

You don't think Jack Andraka will get admitted to Harvard because he did one thing really, really well?

Comment author: komponisto 05 July 2012 02:48:59AM 1 point [-]

Not if his high-school GPA is 2.0.

Comment author: komponisto 05 July 2012 02:12:34AM 2 points [-]

This is a very important point; thanks for cross-posting.

Comment author: RobertLumley 04 July 2012 09:08:47PM 1 point [-]

I don't think I'm confusing the two, I'm saying the connotation is what's important when the connotation is what is almost always used. And I'm not claiming that the quote is wrong, just that it's not really a rationality quote.

Comment author: komponisto 04 July 2012 10:03:57PM 3 points [-]

I don't think I'm confusing the two, I'm saying the connotation is what's important when the connotation is what is almost always used.

Unfortunately, this sentence itself seems to betray some confusion: "connotation" is not a kind of alternative definition; hence it makes no sense to say that "the connotation is what is almost always used". Rather, both denotation and connotation are always present whenever a word is used. "Connotation" refers to implications a word has outside of its meaning. For example, the words "copulate" and "fuck" have the same meaning (denotation), but differing connotations.

The crucial difference is that, while changing the denotation of a word (or getting it wrong) can change the truth-value of a statement, merely changing the connotation never can. Instead, it merely changes the register, signaling-value, or "appropriateness" of the statement. A scientist, in the ordinary course of affairs, might report having observed two lizards copulating; but it would be rather shocking to read in a scientific paper about lizards fucking, and one virtually never does. However, if a scientist ever were to write such a thing, the complaint would not be that they had claimed something false; it would be merely that they had made an inappropriate choice of language.

A lot of verbal humor results from using "inappropriate" connotations. The "edible" quote is an example of this, in fact. The listener understands that the sentence is true but still "off" in some way. Using an inappropriate connotation is not a misuse of the word, otherwise the humor wouldn't work (or at least, it wouldn't work in the same way -- there are other forms of verbal humor which do involve incorrect usage).

And I'm not claiming that the quote is wrong, just that it's not really a rationality quote

Well, I agree about that -- but that doesn't really seem to have been the main thrust of your comment. Your claim seemed to be that the quotee had redefined the word "edible"; and this is what I am disputing.

Comment author: RobertLumley 02 July 2012 06:06:53PM 14 points [-]

It seems like the author is defying the common usage without a reason here. The common usage of edible is "safe to eat", or more precisely "able to be eaten without killing you", and I don't see what use redefining it to mean "able to be swallowed" is. It just seems like a trite, definitional argument that is primarily about status.

Comment author: komponisto 04 July 2012 08:40:30PM *  4 points [-]

You and Alicorn are confusing denotation and connotation here. "Edible" simply means "able to be eaten"; it is used instead of "eatable", because the latter is for some reason not considered a "standard" or "legitimate" word. As such, it possesses exactly the same semantics as "eatable" would; in fact, a sufficiently supercilious English teacher will correct you to "edible" if you say "eatable". (Similarly "legible" instead of "readable", although "readable" seems to be increasingly accepted these days.)

Yes, it's true that people only usually apply the word to a more restricted subset of things than those which won't kill the eater; but such a behavioral tendency should not be confused with the actual semantics of the word.

The sense of the quote is exactly the same as if it had been:

All mushrooms can be eaten. But some of them can be eaten only once.

In this case, it would hardly be legitimate to complain that "can be eaten" means "safe to be eaten". The fact is that the phrase is ambiguous, and the quote is a play on that ambiguity. Likewise in its original form, with "edible".

It just seems like a...definitional argument that is primarily about status.

You've just provided a reasonable first-approximation analysis of wit!

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 November 2009 03:17:36AM 5 points [-]

I'll go ahead and predict here that the Higgs boson will not be showing up. As best I can put the reason into words: I don't think the modern field of physics has its act sufficiently together to predict that a hitherto undetected quantum field is responsible for mass. They are welcome to prove me wrong.

(I'll also predict that the LHC will never actually run, but that prediction is (almost entirely) a joke, whereas the first prediction is not.)

Anyone challenging me to bet on the above is welcome to offer odds.

Comment author: komponisto 04 July 2012 06:28:13PM 15 points [-]

Okay, so I guess I'll be the first person to ask how you've updated your beliefs after today's news.

Comment author: cousin_it 28 June 2012 09:59:21AM *  2 points [-]

it should be noted that the Republican Congress happily gave Clinton this power (perhaps not so surprising after reading this post!)

Sorry, why is that not surprising? In Yvain's example, Congress ends up worse off as well.

Comment author: komponisto 28 June 2012 10:37:50AM 1 point [-]

True; I should have said "less" surprising rather than "not so". (The point being that it's not the lopsided pure transfer of power to Clinton that it naïvely seems to be at first.)

Comment author: komponisto 28 June 2012 09:43:12AM *  2 points [-]

Art of Strategy describes a debate from 1990s US politics revolving around so-called “line-item veto” power, the ability to veto only one part of a bill....During the '90s, President Clinton fought pretty hard for this power, which seems reasonable as it expands his options when dealing with the hostile Republican Congress.

Just for the benefit of those who don't know the history (and won't bother to click on the Wikipedia link), it should be noted that the Republican Congress happily gave Clinton this power (perhaps not so surprising after reading this post!), but it was struck down by the Supreme Court (which functions as America's House of Lords -- kind of a mirror image of how the actual House of Lords used to function as Britain's Supreme Court).

Comment author: [deleted] 27 June 2012 01:20:11AM 5 points [-]

Wei Dai's tools are poorly documented, may not exist in the near future, and are virtually unknown to non-users.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Open Thread, June 16-30, 2012
Comment author: komponisto 27 June 2012 05:58:05PM 0 points [-]

No object-level justification can address the (even) more important meta-level point, which is that they made changes to the visual appearance of LW without consulting the community first. This is a no-no!

(And I have no doubt that, were a proper Discussion post created announcing this idea, LW's considerable programmer readership would have been able to come up with some solution that did not involve making such an ugly visual change.)

Comment author: RichardKennaway 26 June 2012 01:37:33PM 4 points [-]

Apparently it was a technical kludge to allow Google searching by author. There has been some discussion at the place where issues are reported.

Comment author: komponisto 27 June 2012 12:51:01AM 0 points [-]

Kludge indeed; and it is entirely unnecessary: Wei Dai's script already makes it easy to search a user's comment history.

I again urge those responsible to restore the prior appearance of the site (they can do what they want to the non-visible internals).

Comment author: komponisto 26 June 2012 12:34:26PM 12 points [-]

Why do the (utterly redundant) words "Comment author:" now appear in the top left corner of every comment, thereby pushing the name, date, and score to the right?

Can we fix this, please? This is ugly and serves no purpose. (If anyone is truly worried that someone might somehow not realize that the name in bold green refers to the author of the comment/post, then this information can be put on the Welcome page and/or the wiki.)

To generalize: please no unannounced tinkering with the site design!

Comment author: Jack 22 June 2012 08:56:16PM 5 points [-]

I'm not sure why Less Wrong is the appropriate place for these kind of questions instead of, say, Reddit's Ask Science. You'd probably get half a dozen physicists jumping over themselves to answer your question over there, no?

In response to comment by Jack on Questions for shminux
Comment author: komponisto 22 June 2012 09:15:19PM 7 points [-]

I don't know about Thomas, but I sure as heck would prefer to discuss physics on LW (if possible, i.e. if appropriately knowledgeable people are present here) rather than an ordinary forum. Less inferential distance, more common assumptions (e.g. that we're not interested in guessing passwords), etc.

See also here (second bullet). (This post now joins the list of examples.)

Comment author: fubarobfusco 18 June 2012 04:27:11AM 2 points [-]

This doesn't seem to me to be a "sequences" post; it's a response to a particular incident on Overcoming Bias ...

Comment author: komponisto 18 June 2012 01:02:26PM *  4 points [-]

"The Sequences" customarily designates the entire corpus of EY's essays on Overcoming Bias.

Comment author: shminux 09 June 2012 03:27:56AM 10 points [-]

In response to falenas108's "Ask an X" thread. I have a PhD in experimental particle physics; I'm currently working as a postdoc at the University of Cincinnati. Ask me anything, as the saying goes.

Since we are experimenting here... I have a PhD in theoretical physics (General Relativity), and I'd be happy to help out with any questions in my area.

Comment author: komponisto 09 June 2012 11:34:06PM *  2 points [-]

I have a PhD in theoretical physics (General Relativity), and I'd be happy to help out with any questions in my area.

Excellent! That happens to be a subject I'm very interested in.

Here are two questions, to start:

1. Do you have a position in the philosophical debate about whether "general covariance" has a "physical" meaning, or is merely a property of the mathematical structure of the theory?

2. How can the following (from "Mach's Principle: Anti-Epiphenomenal Physics") be true:

[I]f the whole universe was rotating around you while you stood still, you would feel a centrifugal force from the incoming gravitational waves, corresponding exactly to the centripetal force of spinning your arms while the universe stood still around you.

given that it implies that the electromagnetic force (which is what causes your voluntary movements, such as "spinning your arms around") can be transformed into gravity by a change of coordinates? (Wouldn't that make GR itself the "unified field theory" that Einstein legendarily spent the last few decades of his life searching for, supposedly in vain?)

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 06 June 2012 07:44:56PM *  14 points [-]

especially skilled in maths, probably at the IMO medal-winning level

(Should distinguish raw intelligence, contest training and research math training. Raw intelligence is crucial for good performance in both contests and math research, but getting good at math takes many years of training that IMO winners won't automatically have.)

Comment author: komponisto 06 June 2012 09:38:00PM 14 points [-]

Strongly agree. I would also make explicit what is implied above, namely that IMO (etc.) winners will in fact tend to have years of training of a different sort: solving (artificially-devised) contest problems, which may not be as relevant of a skill for SI's purposes.

It seems to me that what SI really wants/needs is a mathematically-sophisticated version of Yudkowsky. Unfortunately, I'm not sure where one goes to find such people. IMO may not be a bad place to start, but one is probably going to have to look elsewhere as well.

Comment author: JGWeissman 06 June 2012 07:56:50PM 6 points [-]

What I took away from the mention of MATLAB is that the model is expressed as a computer program, as opposed to just talked about, and that this requires a certain level of rigor. But yeah, I don't care so much that it is MATLAB rather than Java.

Comment author: komponisto 06 June 2012 08:38:11PM 0 points [-]

I didn't realize that MATLAB and Java were members of the same category. I thought that MATLAB was a software program (like Microsoft Word), while Java was a programming language (like C++).

Comment author: komponisto 05 June 2012 09:26:40AM 15 points [-]

My probability that cryonics will work has gone down after reading this.

Comment author: komponisto 05 June 2012 08:43:43AM 1 point [-]

A tangential remark:

Think of it from the perspective of Artificial Intelligence. Suppose you were writing a computer program that would, if it heard a burglar alarm, conclude that the house had probably been robbed. Then someone says, "If there's an earthquake, then you shouldn't conclude the house was robbed." This is a classic problem in Bayesian networks with a whole deep solution to it in terms of causal graphs and probability distributions... but suppose you didn't know that.

Perhaps it's not surprising that the solution to this problem is "deep", considering that the human brain fails to reliably implement it. Indeed, this is basically the bug responsible for the Amanda Knox case, with "Rudy Guede did it" being analogous to "there was an earthquake".

Comment author: WrongBot 05 June 2012 02:47:12AM 6 points [-]

Up until a month or so ago, I was convinced I'd landed my dream job. If I had a soul, it would be crushed now.

Which is not to say that it's awful, not by any means. I've just gained a new perspective on the value of best practices in software development.

Comment author: komponisto 05 June 2012 03:41:29AM *  8 points [-]

Can you explain in more detail? I'm interested in learning about the downsides of programming jobs (which have been strongly promoted around here).

Comment author: Will_Newsome 02 June 2012 05:39:33PM *  14 points [-]

For half the time, with Anna, I was an intern, not a Fellow. During that time I did a lot of intern stuff like driving people around. Part of my job was to befriend people and make the atmosphere more cohesive. Sometimes I planned dinners and trips but I wasn't very good at that. I was very charismatic and increasingly smart, and most importantly I was cheap. I was less cheap as a Fellow in the Berkeley apartments and accomplished less. I wrote and helped people occassionally. There weren't clear expectations for Fellows. Also people like Eliezer, who had power, never asked for any signs of accomplishment. Eliezer is also very bad at reading. Nonetheless I think I should have accomplished more somehow, e.g. gotten experience writing papers from scratch.

I believe I almost always turned down credit for contributions to papers, but I didn't make too many substantive contributions; I did a fair bit of editing, which I'm good at.

You could get a decent idea by looking at what the average Visiting Fellow did, then remember that I often couldn't remember things I did -- cognitive quirk -- and that I tried to avoid credit when possible at least half the time.

Comment author: komponisto 03 June 2012 10:11:02AM 7 points [-]

Part of my job was to befriend people and make the atmosphere more cohesive.

You were good at that, as I recall. As was (especially) Alicorn. Also, at the time I thought it was just super-cool that SI had its mundane tasks done by such brilliant people.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 03 June 2012 09:39:22AM 2 points [-]

I'd like to see more counterarguments to the thing about mathematicians being much less useful for ground-breaking work after their 20s that don't rely on extreme outliers like Witten, Andrew Wiles or Paul Erdös.

Comment author: komponisto 03 June 2012 09:48:00AM 6 points [-]

That would be difficult, since "groundbreaking work" automatically implies "extreme outlier".

In fact, I would expect that typical mathematicians are much more useful above 30 than below -- to a greater extent than is the case for the extreme outliers.

Comment author: komponisto 03 June 2012 09:08:16AM 10 points [-]

This is basically my approach of choice, and I am very happy to see SI pursuing it. That said, I would like to make a couple of comments:

Specifically, we're looking for young talent in math and compsci, because young talent is...(3) better at inventing new math (due to cognitive decline with age).

So, if Edward Witten (age 60)* called you up tomorrow and said he was interested in working on Friendly AI, you would tell him to get lost? I think not. At least, I hope not.

I'm not saying you should target older people in your recruitment activities. (As if that were even possible.) But I am strongly advising against getting into any kind of mindset where you would end up closing the door on any mathematically accomplished people who happen to see the light on this matter.

AGI really might be decades or more away. The people who are "young" now won't be that way forever. You may want their help in the future. In particular, you may want the help of a future John Baez, who after a satisfying run in more mainstream topics, decides at age 40 to turn their attention to "helping humanity" -- only in the form of FAI research rather than environmentalism.

(Also, if you believe in the youth-worship-mythos, Yudkowsky is really getting up there, at age 32. When does he get kicked off the team?)

Write Open Problems in Friendly AI, send it to interested parties so that even those who don't think AI risk is important will at least see "Ooh, look at these sexy, interesting problems I could work on!"

You may be underestimating the degree to which perceived "sexiness" is correlated to perceived "importance". Nevertheless, this is still a good idea.


* Witten on the age question (7:20):

Q: Why do physicists have their best ideas in their 20s?

A: Well, I would like to say that it's not entirely true -- that...I don't know if I'll manage to have my best ideas in my 50s, but I definitely did better in my 30s and 40s than in my 20s!

Comment author: shminux 29 May 2012 08:00:29PM -2 points [-]

I wish he would elaborate on the reason(s) for this suspicion

I wish he did, too, though "adding up to normality" is probably enough of a hint.

a straightforward consequence of MWI plus the anthropic principle.

Right, combine two ideas with zero predictive power each...

Comment author: komponisto 29 May 2012 09:14:02PM 2 points [-]

quantum immortality seems to me like a straightforward consequence of MWI plus the anthropic principle.

Right, combine two ideas with zero predictive power each...

They can't possibly have zero predictive power if together they make a prediction...

Comment author: komponisto 29 May 2012 07:13:56AM 0 points [-]

EY:

I have a suspicion that when all is said and done and known, quantum immortality is not going to work out.

I wish he would elaborate on the reason(s) for this suspicion; quantum immortality seems to me like a straightforward consequence of MWI plus the anthropic principle.

Comment author: Vaniver 28 May 2012 09:20:57PM 1 point [-]

I don't follow that logic at all. If recent posts using the word were bad, but previous posts were good, then the bad ones obviously aren't bad because of the word.

Word associations can change. "Rational" in a post title might have implied "strategic" before but not do so now.

"Rational Home Buying" discusses how knowing about and counteracting biases can have a huge impact on life outcomes when applied to buying a house (invest heavily in making big decisions well!). "Rational toothpaste," the fictional example, should really be "toothpaste suggestions?", which suggests another difference- it may be more appropriate to use the word "rational" when making a suggestion (especially about a process) than when asking for advice.

As well, when asking for advice, one of the big inputs you should provide is your objective, which "rational" seems like it's doing but isn't actually doing. "Tastiest toothpaste?" is very different from "cheapest toothpaste?" is very different from "highest tech toothpaste?".

Comment author: komponisto 28 May 2012 10:29:09PM 2 points [-]

Don't misunderstand. I'm not disagreeing with your judgement of recent bad uses of "rational". I'm disagreeing with your post, which is a glib one-word statement to the effect of "don't use the word 'rational' in post titles". The examples I cited show that this is inappropriate advice.

What you should have said instead was this.

Comment author: komponisto 28 May 2012 02:59:28AM 12 points [-]

To sum up: Avoid making words cheaper and less effective for their specialized tasks. Don't use them for things where a better and more appropriate term exists. As your brain gets used to an idea, be prepared to discard old terms you have co-opted from other domains that were really just useful placeholders to get you started. Specialized jargon exists for a reason!

Excellent point, and excellent post. I expect to link here in the future.

Comment author: ciphergoth 27 May 2012 08:42:33AM *  7 points [-]

If her consulting rates are like mine, this will buy about 12 days of her time.

Comment author: komponisto 28 May 2012 02:38:06AM 1 point [-]

At that rate, that's an annual salary of over $600,000. No way a pre-tenure academic philosopher is that expensive!

Comment author: Vaniver 28 May 2012 12:39:54AM *  3 points [-]

I can't currently see your counterexamples (I would check the formatting of the hyperlinks- that tends to be what kills them for me), but one of the things to consider is the time when they were posted. There was a rash of these posts within the last six months, I think, which turned community opinion against using the word like this, and so if most of those counterexamples are from before that period then they may not be effective counterexamples. (It's difficult to create a list of posts which are examples of this, because many of them edited their titles in response to comments.)

Comment author: komponisto 28 May 2012 02:20:07AM 5 points [-]

I can't currently see your counterexamples (I would check the formatting of the hyperlinks- that tends to be what kills them for me)

It's now been fixed.

one of the things to consider is the time when they were posted. There was a rash of these posts within the last six months, I think, which turned community opinion against using the word like this, and so if most of those counterexamples are from before that period then they may not be effective counterexamples

I don't follow that logic at all. If recent posts using the word were bad, but previous posts were good, then the bad ones obviously aren't bad because of the word.

Comment author: magfrump 28 May 2012 12:44:01AM *  0 points [-]

The OP's joke works better when your examples don't show up.

(Edited for phrasing)

Comment author: komponisto 28 May 2012 02:10:51AM *  3 points [-]

I hope you'll clarify what you mean by this; it currently sounds somewhat like a snarky insult.

(Cf: Me: "I can't get my comment to display." You: "Good.")

Comment author: komponisto 27 May 2012 11:11:01PM *  30 points [-]

(Update: link display problem fixed.)

Counterexamples (promoted/high-karma/high-status author):

(I began with the first one and ended with the last one for a reason. I am entirely in favor of applause lights and positive-affect words as long as they serve their purpose -- community-building, making humans feel good -- and don't substitute for argument where the latter is appropriate.)

Comment author: komponisto 24 May 2012 05:43:26AM 2 points [-]

On the other hand, if, hypothetically, Scott Aaronson should say, "Eliezer, your question about why 'energy' in the Hamiltonian and 'energy' in General Relativity are the same quantity, is complete nonsense, it doesn't even have an answer, I can't explain why because you know too little," I would be like "Okay."

This is one of a number of comments by Eliezer from that era that seem to imply that he thought Scott Aaronson was a physicist. I don't know exactly what gave him that impression (it presumably has something to do with the fact that Scott studies quantum computing), but (just to make it explicit for the record) it is false. As I'm sure Eliezer knows by now, Scott Aaronson is a theoretical computer scientist. He knows a lot more (one presumes) about P and NP than about general relativity. (In fact, the cultural difference that exists between him and physicists is one of the classic themes of his blog.)

In response to comment by [deleted] on [SEQ RERUN] Class Project
Comment author: [deleted] 22 May 2012 08:12:15AM 4 points [-]

I was thinking about this during the Falcon 9/Dragon launch, and the lowest-hanging fruit in PDEs probably involves systematizing the wealth of inequalities and quantitative results regarding solutions of PDEs. It probably wouldn't be very flashy, though -- there are a lot of extremely technical results that are only well-understood by a handful of people.

There was an attempt headed by Tao (of course) and others, called DispersiveWiki, but it fell to a spam attack a couple months ago. I'm not sure if it's been rebooted.

In response to comment by [deleted] on [SEQ RERUN] Class Project
Comment author: komponisto 23 May 2012 04:37:44AM 2 points [-]

There was an attempt headed by Tao (of course) and others, called DispersiveWiki, but it fell to a spam attack a couple months ago. I'm not sure if it's been rebooted

It seems to be working at the moment..

I think the wiki format would be very useful for work of this kind; and I agree that systematizing PDE results seems a promising approach.

Comment author: Bugmaster 23 May 2012 03:28:53AM 3 points [-]

I would like to develop a social support structure for the-kind-of-people-who've-read-the-Sequences to pursue certain kinds of research outside of (existing) academia

One problem with this approach is that the existing academia has access to all kinds of useful lab equipment, up to and including the Large Hadron Collider. It would be very difficult for a group of enthusiasts to acquire that kind of equipment; and, without it, it's hard to do any truly revolutionary research.

Comment author: komponisto 23 May 2012 04:31:41AM 4 points [-]

Presumably the focus would be on areas, such as mathematics, that don't require expensive equipment. That's certainly my own interest, anyway.

By the way, I should point out that, although these projects would themselves be outside the academic system, the people pursuing them don't necessarily need to be.

Comment author: shminux 22 May 2012 10:52:17PM 4 points [-]

I'm talking about an ethos, a culture, where people talk like they do in this story:

That is what I meant, too.

Now, as for why no one has done this already: well, besides the "why", there is also the "who", the "what", the "where", and the "when". Who would have thought to try it before, and under what circumstances?

Some of those who read and believed the Class Project post 4 years ago.

To him and his colleagues at SI, the only really important problem is Friendly AI, and that (directly or indirectly) is what he's been spending his time on

And, given that it takers only "five whole minutes to think an original thought", how many thousands of original thoughts should he have come up with in 4 years? How many Einstein-style breakthroughs should he have made by now? How many has he?

Unless I misunderstand something, the Class Project post was a falsifiable model, and it has been falsified. Time to discard it?

Comment author: komponisto 22 May 2012 11:05:50PM 1 point [-]

Some of those who read and believed the Class Project post 4 years ago.

I read the post when it appeared 4 years ago, and I don't remember anyone saying "Hey, let's set up a community for people who've read Overcoming Bias to research quantum gravity!"

How many Einstein-style breakthroughs should [EY] have made by now? How many has he?

I don't really care to get into the usual argument about how much progress EY has made on FAI. As I've noted above, my own interests (for now) lie elsewhere.

Unless I misunderstand something, the Class Project post was a falsifiable model, and it has been falsified.

It was not intended as a prediction about his own research efforts over the next four years, as far as I know. Especially since his focus over that time has been on community-building rather than direct FAI research.

Comment author: shminux 22 May 2012 06:37:30PM 6 points [-]

My gut feel is that Bayesianism is one of the many useful tools in research, but it is no substitute for education, experience, creativity, patience or tenacity. I am not at all certain that it helps one identify the proverbial low-hanging fruit in any meaningful way. I would be very happy if komponisto or anyone else proved me wrong (experimentally, not argumentatively).

Comment author: komponisto 22 May 2012 10:45:47PM 2 points [-]

My gut feel is that Bayesianism is one of the many useful tools in research, but it is no substitute for education, experience, creativity, patience or tenacity.

This is like saying that "intelligence is no match for a gun" -- as if guns grew on trees (to use an EY-ism). Your idea of "Bayesianism" is far too narrow, as if it meant a specific tool (in fact you refer to it as such), rather than a way of life, which is closer to what it means in the context of LW and EY's Brennan universe. Instead of "Bayesianism", perhaps you should substitute "the rationality culture promoted by LW".

If you do it right, you will of course make use of education, experience, creativity, patience and tenacity; and more.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 22 May 2012 06:59:47PM 8 points [-]

Agreed. There's also a connected issue that Bayesianism just isn't that much of a supersecret weapon- Bayesian techniques are used in many different fields. Maybe it would have been such fifty years ago, or even thirty years ago, but today Bayesian reasoning is common.

Comment author: komponisto 22 May 2012 10:33:39PM 5 points [-]

There seems to be a serious misunderstanding here. (The current voting patterns are completely out of whack with what I expected.) I seem to have run into some inferential distance that I didn't realize existed. So let me try to be more detailed.

I would like to develop a social support structure for the-kind-of-people-who've-read-the-Sequences to pursue certain kinds of research outside of (existing) academia. Such a structure already exists, in the form of LW and SI, for some things (decision theory, and perhaps philosophy in general). I would like to see it extended to more things, including things that I happen to be interested in (but which aren't necessarily considered immediately world-saving by the SI crowd).

(Notice that I mentioned both SI and LW in the previous paragraph. These are different kinds of entities, and I mentioned them both for a reason: to indicate how broad the notion of "social support structure" that I have in mind here is.)

I thought it was conventional wisdom around here that certain kinds of productive intellectual work are not properly incentivized by standard academia, and that the latter systematically fails to teach certain important intellectual skills. This is, after all, kind of the whole point of the MWI sequence!

Frankly, I expected it to be obvious that we're not talking about anything as mundane as knowledge of Bayesian probability theory as a mathematical topic. Of course that isn't a secret, and "everyone" in standard science knows it. I'm talking about an ethos, a culture, where people talk like they do in this story:

"Too slow! If Einstein were in this classroom now, rather than Earth of the negative first century, I would rap his knuckles! You will not try to do as well as Einstein! You will aspire to do BETTER than Einstein or you may as well not bother!"

"Assume, Brennan, that it takes five whole minutes to think an original thought, rather than learning it from someone else. Does even a major scientific problem require 5760 distinct insights?"

There is a difference, as LW readers well know, between understanding Bayesian probability theory as a mathematical tool, and "getting" the ethos of x-rationality.

No one is talking about "applying" some kind of Bayesian statistical method to an unsolved problem and hoping to magically get the right answer. Explicit probability theory need not enter into it at all. The thing that would be "applied" is the LW culture -- where you're actually allowed to try to understand things.

This is not intended as a rebellious status-grab. Let me repeat that: this is not a status-grab. For now, it is simply a fun project to work on. I am not laying claim to a magical aura of destiny. (As a matter of fact, the very idea that you have a certain amount of status before you're allowed to work on important problems is itself one of the pathological assumptions of Traditional Science that the LW culture is specifically set up to avoid.)

Now, as for why no one has done this already: well, besides the "why", there is also the "who", the "what", the "where", and the "when". Who would have thought to try it before, and under what circumstances? As far as I know, EY intended this story as a parable, not as a concrete plan of action. To him and his colleagues at SI, the only really important problem is Friendly AI, and that (directly or indirectly) is what he's been spending his time on; other forms of mathematical and scientific research are mostly viewed as shiny distractions that tempt smart people away from their real duty, which is to save the universe. (Yes, this is a caricature, but it's true-as-a-caricature.) I take a somewhat different view, which may be due to a slightly different utility function, but in any case -- I think there is much to be gained by exploring these alternative paths.

Comment author: shminux 22 May 2012 02:55:22PM *  6 points [-]

there is a lot more fruit hanging a lot lower than people realize, in pretty much every field.

So... why didn't EY pluck any yet? Or any of the forum regulars?

EDIT: It's posts like this that make me think about the potential for phygishness. Four years after this post was first published there is still no experimental evidence that being armed with Bayesianism gives you any advantage in fundamental research, yet smart people like komponisto and paper-machine still disregard the absence of evidence.

Comment author: komponisto 22 May 2012 05:58:40PM 0 points [-]

there is a lot more fruit hanging a lot lower than people realize, in pretty much every field.

So... why didn't EY pluck any yet? Or any of the forum regulars?

They haven't yet tried.

"No experimental evidence" is a hollow cry before any experiments have been conducted.

Comment author: komponisto 22 May 2012 06:31:50AM 6 points [-]

I would really like this to actually exist.

That is, I would like to see a subcommunity of LW devoted to researching mathematical and scientific problems independently of the current formal academic structure. Indeed, this already exists for decision theory; I would like to see it extended to other mathematical topics as well. I would even like to do this project.

I am convinced that there is a lot more fruit hanging a lot lower than people realize, in pretty much every field. Yes, even in string theory/quantum gravity/mathematical physics. The negative epistemic effects of existing social structures (aka Eld Science), as well as simple cognitive biases, really are that bad.

It may be helpful in this connection to remember Quirrell's Law:

The world around us redounds with opportunities, explodes with opportunities, which nearly all folk ignore because it would require them to violate a habit of thought.

Moreover, I have to admit that I'm just curious as hell about some of these topics, and about the level of progress that could be achieved via systematic, LW-inspired/trained effort.

So who's interested in building a rationalist subcommunity for mathematical and scientific research? Zack Davis? Any of the decision theory people? Does anyone else feel as I do?

Comment author: Bill_McGrath 19 May 2012 10:06:40AM 2 points [-]

By abstract, I meant like Schenker (I then saw that you compare Schenker and Westergaard's approaches elsewhere in the thread). Schenker was pretty adamant that his method was for analysis only, and not a compositional tool. So I was wondering if the book gave an overview of how Westergaard thinks music works, or if it does this and also teaches how to do harmony exercises, perform species counterpoint, and the like.

To break it down into my goals: I have a general goal of learning how music actually works (I've got a reasonably good grasp as it is; kinda important to me professionally), hence the interest in music cognition. However, as a specific goal I need to pass this exam!

It certainly looks interesting; it seems a little too expensive for me to get right now, but if I can get a cheap copy or a loan, I'll look into it.

Cheers for the advice!

Comment author: komponisto 19 May 2012 11:03:11AM 2 points [-]

So I was wondering if the book gave an overview of how Westergaard thinks music works, or if it does this and also teaches how to do harmony exercises, perform species counterpoint, and the like.

Oh, the book certainly contains exercises, and is definitely intended as a practical textbook as opposed to a theoretical treatise (in fact, I actually wish a more comprehensive treatise on Westergaardian theory existed; the book is pretty much the only source). It's true that Westergaard's theory itself is descended from Schenker's, but his expository style is quite different! Part II of the book is basically a species counterpoint course on its own.

What the book doesn't contain is "harmony" exercises in the traditional sense. (In fact, I think the passage I quoted above might be the only time the word "harmony" occurs in the book!) However, this is not an omission, any more than the failure of chemistry texts to discuss phlogiston is. "Harmony" does not exist in Westergaard's theory; instead, its explanatory role is filled by other, better concepts (mainly the "borrowing" operation introduced in Section 7.7 -- of which the species rule B3 of Chapter 4 is a "toy" version).

So in place of harmony exercises, it has Westergaardian exercises, which are strictly superior.

It certainly looks interesting; it seems a little too expensive for me to get right now, but if I can get a cheap copy or a loan, I'll look into it.

If you have access to a university library, there's a good chance you can find a copy there; at the very least, you should be able to get one through interlibrary loan.

Comment author: Bill_McGrath 19 May 2012 08:11:56AM 1 point [-]

Is this text useful for actually learning to write harmony, or does it teach about music theory in a more abstract kind of way?

I'm preparing for an exam for a teaching diploma in a few months' time, and I need to relearn harmony and counterpoint. (I was okay enough at them a few years ago to get by, but never really mastered them.) Also, I want to learn them for their own sake, it's just a useful skill to have.

I was planning on getting Lovelock's textbooks on harmony - they come recommended with the warning that it's very much harmony-by-the-numbers, but that they teach it systematically. I reckon a healthy skepticism towards his advice would minimize the damage done.

Comment author: komponisto 19 May 2012 09:51:10AM 3 points [-]

Is this text useful for actually learning to write harmony, or does it teach about music theory in a more abstract kind of way?

It depends on what you mean by "write harmony". I will say that if "abstract" is a bad word for you, you probably won't like it. However, that isn't typically an issue for LW readers.

Here is what Westergaard says in the preface (in the "To the teacher" section):

This book was developed for a first-year two-semester college-level course in tonal theory. (I cover either Chapters 1-5 in the first semester and 6-9 in the second, or, if the students are up to it, Chapters 1-6 in the first semester and 7-9 in the second.) You could, however, also use Part II (Chapters 4-6) separately for a one-semester course in tonally oriented species counterpoint for students who have already had at least one year of traditional harmony. You could also use Part III (Chapters 7-9) separately to introduce more advanced students to the problems of tonal rhythm. While the degree of abstraction may seem higher than that of many music theory textbooks, I have not found it too high for college freshmen. On the contrary, college freshmen are conditioned by their other courses to expect this kind of argument. [N.B.: Westergaard taught at highly elite universities. -k.] The exceptions are those students who can handle relationships between sounds so well intuitively that they resent the labor of having to think through the implications of those relationships.

The best way to know if you'll like the book would be to take a look at it and see. Failing that, my advice would be as follows: if you want to actually learn how music works, this is the book to read. If you merely want to pass some kind of exam without actually learning how music works in the process, you probably don't need it.

(Added: I see that you're interested in reading about music cognition. In that case, you will definitely be interested in Westergaard.)

Comment author: komponisto 18 May 2012 07:10:45PM 12 points [-]

I've always thought this argument of Putnam's was dead wrong. It is about the most blatant and explicit instance of the Mind Projection Fallacy I know.

The real problem for Putnam is not his theory of chemistry; it is his theory of language. Like so many before and after him, Putnam thinks of meaning as being a kind of correspondence between words and either things or concepts; and in this paper he tries to show that the correspondence is to things rather than concepts. The error is in the assumption that words (and languages) have a sufficiently abstract existence to participate in such correspondences in the first place. (We can of course draw any correspondence we like, but it need not represent any objective fact about the territory.)

This is insufficiently reductionist. Language is nothing more than the human superpower of vibratory telepathy. If you say the word "chair", this physical action of yours causes a certain pattern of neurons to be stimulated in my brain, which bears a similarity relationship to a pattern of neurons in your brain. For philosophical purposes, there is no fact of the matter about whether the pattern of neurons being stimulated in my brain is "correct" or not; there are only greater and lesser degrees of similarity between the stimulation patterns occurring in my brain when I hear the word and those occurring in yours when you say it.

The point that Putnam was trying to make, I think, was this: our mental concepts are causally related to things in the real world. (He may also, ironically, have been trying to warn against the Mind Projection Fallacy.) Unfortunately, like so many 20th-century analytic philosophers, he confused matters by introducing language into the picture; evidently due to a mistaken Whorfian belief that language is so fundamental to human thought that any discussion of human concepts must be a discussion about language.

(Incidentally, one of the things that most impressed me about Eliezer's Sequences was that he seemed to have something close to the correct theory of language, which is exceedingly rare.)

The real danger of thought experiments, including this one of Putnam's, is that fundamental assumptions may be wrong.

Comment author: pragmatist 18 May 2012 05:06:29AM 0 points [-]

I could hardly have said it better myself. The ability to use a locally flat coordinate system at a point (regardless of the value of the Riemann tensor at that point) is all that

you could never tell the difference between firing your rocket to accelerate through flat spacetime, and firing your rocket to stay in the same place in curved spacetime.

means.

I don't see how it could mean that. Rockets are extended objects, as are people. While we can always find coordinates that make the metric Minkowski at a single point, it is not true that we can always find coordinates that make the metric Minkowski over a finite region, no matter how small.

Comment author: komponisto 18 May 2012 05:49:06AM *  0 points [-]

While we can always find coordinates that make the metric Minkowski at a single point, it is not true that we can always find coordinates that make the metric Minkowski over a finite region, no matter how small.

Indeed; this is why the concept of an "inertial frame" does not exist in general relativity, except in the infinitesimal limit.

But as long as we're going to permit ourselves to speak about the motion of an entire rocket or person, rather than the motion of its parts (thus in effect modeling the object as a point-particle), we can equally well describe the same rocket or person as being at rest.

Comment author: pragmatist 17 May 2012 11:00:07PM *  3 points [-]

My understanding (which you seem to confirm) is that "inertial motion" refers to geodesic paths. But those are precisely the paths which (the theory says) describe all motion! In other words, there's no such thing as "non-inertial motion". (Remember that GR is a theory of gravity alone -- as far as it's concerned, the other forces of nature don't exist, so everything is always "in freefall under gravity" at all times.)

Some worldlines satisfy the geodesic equation, others don't. The ones which do are geodesics. It's not true that GR cannot incorporate other forces of nature. It can, as long as these forces are amenable to a field-theoretic formulation. See here, for instance.

How so? Your link agrees with my definition.

You're right! I'm sorry, I read your definition wrong the first time.

I thought that in special relativity, spacetime was represented by a specific Lorentzian manifold: Minkowski space itself. (Or, perhaps more precisely, an affine space over Minkowski space.) In other words, the manifold is required to be flat (have zero curvature). Whereas in general relativity, the curvature is determined by the equations of motion.

That's right. The point I was making is that representing spacetime as a Lorentzian manifold (even a Lorentzian manifold with arbitrary curvature) is insufficient (and unnecessary) to get "no privileged reference frame". What that requires is that the laws in the theory are formulated in such a way that they do not presume anything about the reference frame in which they hold. Incidentally, both special relativity and Newtonian mechanics can be re-formulated in this way, it's just that they usually are not. That a space-time theory is generally covariant does not express a constraint on its content, only on its formulation. On the other hand, whether or not the manifold is Lorentzian is a matter of content. See here.

It seems to me that you're mixing up the local and global structures of spacetime. There is no fact of the matter about whether spacetime is flat or curved locally, because many of the permissible coordinate changes turn straight lines into curves and vice-versa. However, there is a fact of the matter about the global curvature of the manifold.

I'm not sure what you mean by whether or not a spacetime is curved locally. If the Riemann curvature tensor at a point vanishes in one frame of reference, then it must vanish in every frame of reference. So one cannot go from non-zero to zero curvature tensor locally by a change of coordinates.

It is true that one can change coordinates so that the metric at a point is Minkowski. This is what people usually mean when they talk about using a locally flat coordinate frame. But the metric reducing to Minkowski at a point does not mean that the curvature at that point vanishes. Curvature has to do with the second derivatives of the metric.

Comment author: komponisto 18 May 2012 12:51:56AM 0 points [-]

Some worldlines satisfy the geodesic equation, others don't. The ones which do are geodesics. It's not true that GR cannot incorporate other forces of nature

This is a matter of terminology, but I would maintain that a physical theory is defined by its equations of motion, and that GR is defined by the Einstein equation(s); and since the other forces do not appear in the Einstein equation(s), they are not part of GR. (There is no question of being able to incorporate them; the theory either does or does not incorporate them.) If you're working with Maxwell's equations in curved spacetime, you're not working in GR; you're working in a hybrid of GR and Maxwell's theory.

Thus defined, GR itself does not (as far as I know) allow non-geodesic paths to be worldlines. (An Einstein-Maxwell hybrid theory, on the other hand, might; but I would be tempted to suspect in that case that it isn't formulated "properly".)

The point I was making is that representing spacetime as a Lorentzian manifold (even a Lorentzian manifold with arbitrary curvature) is insufficient (and unnecessary) to get "no privileged reference frame". What that requires is that the laws in the theory are formulated in such a way that they do not presume anything about the reference frame in which they hold.

But that is the same thing, only expressed in old-fashioned physicist's language instead of modern mathematician's language. If you translate "the laws in the theory are formulated in such a way that they do not presume anything about the reference frame in which they hold" into modern mathematician's language, what you get is "the equations of motion must be expressed in terms of objects which are well-defined on a manifold (of the appropriate type)".

It is true that one can change coordinates so that the metric at a point is Minkowski. This is what people usually mean when they talk about using a locally flat coordinate frame. But the metric reducing to Minkowski at a point does not mean that the curvature at that point vanishes. Curvature has to do with the second derivatives of the metric.

I could hardly have said it better myself. The ability to use a locally flat coordinate system at a point (regardless of the value of the Riemann tensor at that point) is all that

you could never tell the difference between firing your rocket to accelerate through flat spacetime, and firing your rocket to stay in the same place in curved spacetime.

means.

Comment author: pragmatist 17 May 2012 08:31:23PM *  2 points [-]

When I said "state of motion", I was talking about whether motion is inertial or non-inertial. This is indeed frame-independent in general relativity. There are privileged states of motion.

In Newtonian mechanics and the special theory of relativity, the way they are usually formulated, inertial motion is just motion that is non-accelerated relative to an inertial frame. So privileging inertial motion amounts to privileging a set of frames - the inertial frames. Both of these theories are ordinarily formulated so that their equations of motion only hold in inertial frames.

General relativity, in its ordinary formulation, is generally covariant. There is no set of privileged reference frames such that the equations only hold in those frames. Incidentally, this amounts to more than just the fact that spacetime is represented by a Lorentzian manifold (also, your definition of Lorentzian manifold is incorrect). Spacetime is represented by a Lorentzian manifold in special relativity as well. What makes GR generally covariant is that its kinematical and dynamical equations are tensor equations. Tensors are coordinate-independent objects, so tensor equations are true in all frames of reference (that satisfy certain continuity conditions).

So now the theory doesn't just hold in inertial frames of reference. But it turns out that there is still a privileged notion of inertial motion, one that can be expressed in a coordinate-independent manner. Basically, inertial trajectories are trajectories in freefall under gravity, and these trajectories are just the ones that satisfy the geodesic equation, which is also a tensor equation. So yeah, GR does have privileged states of motion.

It's worth noting that the existence of privileged inertial trajectories does not correspond to the existence of privileged inertial frames that extend across the entire manifold. Suppose we construct a frame that is "adapted" to a particular inertial trajectory, i.e. one in which the object following that trajectory is stationary. If space is variably curved, then relative to this frame, some other free-fall trajectory will be accelerated. So, unlike Newtonian mechanics or the special theory, we don't have frames where all inertial motion is unaccelerated.

As for what Eliezer was suggesting, perhaps I have misinterpreted him, but in his discussion of GR he brings up the principle of equivalence a lot. He says, for instance:

This meant you could never tell the difference between firing your rocket to accelerate through flat spacetime, and firing your rocket to stay in the same place in curved spacetime.

Coupled with his subsequent claim that epiphenomenal distinctions are, as a rule, illusory, he seems to be strongly suggesting that there is in fact no difference between these two states of affairs, which would imply that there is no objective fact of the matter about whether spacetime is flat or curved. This is the claim I was disputing.

Comment author: komponisto 17 May 2012 10:15:52PM *  2 points [-]

When I said "state of motion", I was talking about whether motion is inertial or non-inertial.

What does this mean in terms of the mathematics? My understanding (which you seem to confirm) is that "inertial motion" refers to geodesic paths. But those are precisely the paths which (the theory says) describe all motion! In other words, there's no such thing as "non-inertial motion". (Remember that GR is a theory of gravity alone -- as far as it's concerned, the other forces of nature don't exist, so everything is always "in freefall under gravity" at all times.)

your definition of Lorentzian manifold is incorrect

How so? Your link agrees with my definition.

Spacetime is represented by a Lorentzian manifold in special relativity as well

I thought that in special relativity, spacetime was represented by a specific Lorentzian manifold: Minkowski space itself. (Or, perhaps more precisely, an affine space over Minkowski space.) In other words, the manifold is required to be flat (have zero curvature). Whereas in general relativity, the curvature is determined by the equations of motion.

Special relativity is supposed to be what general relativity reduces to in the local limit: it's what goes on in the tangent space at a point. Right?

[Eliezer] says, for instance:

This meant you could never tell the difference between firing your rocket to accelerate through flat spacetime, and firing your rocket to stay in the same place in curved spacetime.

Coupled with his subsequent claim that epiphenomenal distinctions are, as a rule, illusory, he seems to be strongly suggesting that there is in fact no difference between these two states of affairs, which would imply that there is no objective fact of the matter about whether spacetime is flat or curved

It seems to me that you're mixing up the local and global structures of spacetime. There is no fact of the matter about whether spacetime is flat or curved locally, because many of the permissible coordinate changes turn straight lines into curves and vice-versa. However, there is a fact of the matter about the global curvature of the manifold.

Consider the twin paradox: the twin who leaves Earth has the right to say that he/she was at rest the whole time (thus traveling along a path that appeared locally "straight"), but must admit that the region of spacetime through which he/she traveled had nonzero global curvature. (Here, of course, we're assuming that the journey was caused by gravity rather than a rocket ship, in order for GR to be strictly applicable.)

Comment author: pragmatist 16 May 2012 10:33:03PM *  3 points [-]

I don't think Eliezer is right when he says that Mach's principle (the way he interprets it) is widely accepted. It's true that the general theory of relativity is formulated so that there is no privileged coordinate frame. However, Mach's principle goes beyond this, saying that there is no privileged state of motion. On the usual interpretation of GR, this latter claim is false. Inertial motion can be distinguished from other states of motion, in a coordinate-independent way. Inertial worldlines are just the ones that follow geodesics.

Now Eliezer points out that by changing the space-time curvature, we can change inertial motion to non-inertial motion. This is true, but relativists don't usually treat curvature the way they treat coordinate frames. A coordinate frame is conventional, something that we apply to the universe for convenience. Space-time curvature, on the other hand, is out there. There is a genuine fact of the matter about the curvature of space-time. And it follows that there is genuine fact of the matter about which worldlines are inertial.

Maybe Eliezer is right that we should treat curvature as conventional, but this is not the way most relativists think of it. Also, it doesn't seem like a very compelling position. If curvature is conventional, then so is the space-time metric, which means so is geometry. This leads to a thorough-going Poincare-esque instrumentalism, which is a consistent world-view but one that I find unattractive. And knowing what Eliezer says about quantum mechanics, I suspect he would find it unattractive as well.

Comment author: komponisto 17 May 2012 07:00:30PM 2 points [-]

Putting aside the specific definition of "Mach's principle" (which seems to mean different things to different people), as well as sociological questions about what relativists usually do or don't do, the way I understand it is as follows (and I would welcome corrections from anyone in a position to offer them):

In general relativity, spacetime is a Lorentzian manifold -- that is, a manifold modeled on Minkowski space, which is just like Euclidean space except with a funny inner product such that the "norm" is constant on hyperboloids instead of spheres -- which is itself determined, according to a system of hyperbolic PDEs known as the Einstein equations, by a particular tensor field (representing "matter") on it. (It's not clear to me whether what is being "determined" here is just the Lorentzian structure, or if one somehow "solves for" the underlying topological and differentiable structures of the manifold as well; but leave this point aside for now.)

A "frame of reference" is actually the same thing as a "state of motion": they are both physicists' jargon for a chart of the manifold, i.e. a mapping that serves to identify a particular open set (or "locality") of the manifold with a corresponding open set in the model space, which in our case is Minkowski space.

Part of what it means to be a manifold of a given type (e.g. topological, differentiable, Lorentzian) is that any two charts defined on the same locality are considered equivalent, so long as the resulting mapping between the two corresponding open sets in the model space (called a "transition map") preserves the structure in question (topological, differentiable, Lorentzian, etc). In our case, then, any two charts defined on a locality are equivalent, provided that the transition map is "Lorentzian" -- which, one has to assume, must mean that the derivative of the transition map, at each point, is a Lorentz transformation (a linear operator on Minkowski space which preserves the "Minkowski norm" defined by the funny inner product mentioned earlier).

In other words, every "change of coordinates" (transition map) which is locally a Lorentz transformation is to be considered "legal". When physicists say that there is "no privileged frame of reference", they are not saying anything not already contained in the statement that spacetime is represented by a Lorentzian manifold. (Of course, it is not true that there is no privileged class of reference frames: to be a member of the privileged class, a chart must be "Lorentz-compatible" with all the other charts in the privileged class.)

Now, what about curvature? Well, note that in order to even be able to say that a Lorentzian manifold is capable of having curvature, the notion of "curvature" must be chart-independent -- otherwise, it's only the charts that have "curvature", and not the manifold itself. It turns out -- so mathematical legend has it -- that there is such a "global" notion of curvature that makes sense for Lorentzian manifolds; and in fact it is (more or less) the very thing that the Einstein equations say is determined by the "matter" fields on the manifold.

(Roughly speaking, what it means for the spacetime manifold to be "curved" is that you can end up "heading in a different direction" after a while despite being "at rest" the whole time.)

So, the point is that there is no way a "legal" change of coordinates can ever change the curvature of spacetime. This isn't a matter of the convention of physicists, except insofar as they have decided to represent spacetime as a Lorentzian manifold rather than some other type of manifold (or some other kind of mathematical structure altogether). If you want to be able to change the curvature, you have to allow non-Lorentz local coordinate changes, and thus work in some other kind of mathematical structure different from a Lorentzian manifold.

(And I don't think that's what Eliezer was suggesting.)

Comment author: komponisto 16 May 2012 06:54:12AM 0 points [-]
Comment author: komponisto 16 May 2012 06:31:53AM 15 points [-]

Furthermore, I agree with every essay I've ever read by Yvain, I use "believe whatever gwern believes" as a heuristic/algorithm for generating true beliefs, and don't disagree with anything I've ever seen written by Vladimir Nesov, Kaj Sotala, Luke Muelhauser, komponisto, or even Wei Dai;

Wow. One of these is not like the others! (Hint: all but one have karma > 10,000.)

In all seriousness, being placed in that group has to count as one of the greatest honors of my internet life.

So I suppose I can't be totally objective when I sing the praises of this post. Nonetheless, it is a fact that I was planning to voice my agreement well before I reached the passage quoted above. So, let me confirm that I, too, "stand by" the Sequences (excepting various quibbles which are of scant relevance in this context).

I'll go further and note that I am significantly less impressed than most of LW by Holden Karnofsky's critique of SI, and suspect that the extraordinary affective glow being showered upon it is mostly the result of Holden's affiliation with GiveWell. Of course, that affective glow is so luminous (the post is at, what, like 200 now?) that to say I'm less impressed than everyone else isn't really to say much at all, and indeed I agree that Holden's critique was constructive and thoughtful (certainly by the standards of "the outside world", i.e. people who aren't LW regulars or otherwise thoroughly "infected" by the memes here). I just don't think it was particularly original -- similar points were made in the past by people like multifoliaterose and XiXDu (not to mention Wei Dai, etc.) -- and nor do I think it is particularly correct.

(To give one example, it's pretty clear to me that "Tool AI" is Oracle AI for relevant purposes, and I don't understand why this isn't clear to Holden also. One of the key AI-relevant lessons from the Sequences is that an AI should be thought of as an efficient cross-domain optimization process, and that the danger is inherent in the notion of "efficient optimization" itself, rather than residing in any anthropomorphic "agency" properties that the AI may or may not have.)

By the way, for all that I may increasingly sound like a Yudkowsky/SI "cultist" (which may perhaps have contributed to my inclusion in the distinguished list referenced above!), I still have a very hard time thinking of myself that way. In fact, I still feel like something of an outsider, because I didn't grow up on science fiction, was never on the SL4 mailing list, and indeed had never even heard of the "technological singularity" before I started reading Overcoming Bias sometime around 2006-07.

(Of course, given that Luke went from being a fundamentalist Christian to running the Singularity Institute in less time than I've been reading Yudkowsky, perhaps it's time for me to finally admit that I too have joined the club.)

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 14 May 2012 10:20:51PM 11 points [-]

also having a higher karma threshold to join the off topic discussion will cut down on random garbage.

I like this. Since quality is potentially a very serious problem with off-topic area, make something like 500 Karma points earned on LW Main a requirement for commenting in the off-topic area.

Comment author: komponisto 14 May 2012 10:36:35PM 10 points [-]

Agreed. After all, the point of the off-topic area would be to discuss "off" topics with people from LW.

Comment author: scientism 14 May 2012 02:40:17PM 4 points [-]

SI is a very narrowly focused institute. If you don't buy the whole argument, there's very little reason to donate. I'm not sure SI should dissolve, I think they can reform. It's pretty obvious from their output that SI is essentially a machine ethics think tank. The obvious path to reform is greater pluralism and greater relevance to current debate. SI could focus on being the premiere machine ethics think tank, get involved in current ethical debates around the uses of AI, develop a more flexible ethical framework, and keep the Friendliness and Intelligence Explosion stuff as one possibility among many. This might allow them to grow and gain more resources (i.e., from the government, from military robotics companies wanting to appear responsible, etc), which would be a positive outcome for everyone. It'd also make it easier to donate, since instead of having to believe a narrow set of rather difficult to evaluate propositions, you'd simply have to value encouraging ethical debate around AI.

Comment author: komponisto 14 May 2012 10:24:14PM 7 points [-]

If you don't buy the whole argument, there's very little reason to donate

I disagree, and so apparently do some of SI's major donors.

Comment author: ghf 13 May 2012 08:12:00PM *  13 points [-]

The primary reason I think SI should be supported is that I like what the organization actually does, and wish it to continue. The Less Wrong Sequences, Singularity Summit, rationality training camps, and even HPMoR and Less Wrong itself are all worth paying some amount of money for.

I think that my own approach is similar, but with a different emphasis. I like some of what they've done, so my question is how do encourage those pieces. This article was very helpful in prompting some thought into how to handle that. I generally break down their work into three categories:

  1. Rationality (minicamps, training, LW, HPMoR): Here I think they've done some very good work. Luckily, the new spinoff will allow me to support these pieces directly.

  2. Existential risk awareness (singularity summit, risk analysis articles): Here their record has been mixed. I think the Singularity Summit has been successful, other efforts less so but seemingly improving. I can support the Singularity Summit by continuing to attend and potentially donating directly if necessary (since it's been running positive in recent years, for the moment this does not seem necessary).

  3. Original research (FAI, timeless decision theory): This is the area where I do not find them to be at all effective. From what I've read, there seems a large disconnect between ambitions and capabilities. Given that I can now support the other pieces separately, this is why I would not donate generally to SIAI.

My overall view would be that, at present, there is no real organization to support. Rather there is a collection of talented people whose freedom to work on interesting things I'm supporting. Given that, I want to support those people where I think they are effective.

I find Eliezer in particular to be one of the best pop-science writers around (and I most assuredly do not mean that term as an insult). Things like the sequences or HPMoR are thought-provoking and worth supporting. I find the general work on rationality to be critically important and timely.

So, while I agree that much of the work being done is valuable, my conclusion has been to consider how to support that directly rather than SI in general.

Comment author: komponisto 13 May 2012 10:55:51PM 2 points [-]

I don't see how this constitutes a "different emphasis" from my own. Right now, SI is the way one supports the activities in question. Once the spinoff has finally spun off and can take donations itself, it will be possible to support the rationality work directly.

Comment author: komponisto 13 May 2012 04:42:23PM 1 point [-]

Please fix the spelling of mortem in the title.

Comment author: David_Gerard 12 May 2012 06:02:44PM *  6 points [-]

FWIW, Wikimedia moved from Florida to San Francisco precisely for the immense value of being at the centre of things instead of the middle of nowhere (and yes, Tampa is the middle of nowhere for these purposes, even though it still has the primary data centre). Even paying local charity scale rather than commercial scale (there's a sort of cycle where WMF hires brilliant kids, they do a few years working at charity scale then go to Facebook/Google/etc for gobs of cash), being in the centre of things gets them staff and contacts they just couldn't get if they were still in Tampa. And yes, the question came up there pretty much the same as it's coming up here: why be there instead of remote? Because so much comes with being where things are actually happening, even if it doesn't look directly related to your mission (educational charity, AI research institute).

Comment author: komponisto 12 May 2012 07:00:32PM 0 points [-]

FWIW, Wikimedia moved from Florida to San Francisco

I didn't know this, but I'm happy to hear it.

Comment author: lukeprog 12 May 2012 12:39:54AM *  4 points [-]

despite me being in the top 10 SI donors

...and much beloved for it.

Yes, the Bay Area is expensive. We've considered relocating, but on the other hand the (by far) best two places for meeting our needs in HR and in physically meeting with VIPs are SF and NYC, and if anything NYC is more expensive than the Bay Area. We cut living expenses where we can: most of us are just renting individual rooms.

Also, of course, it's not like the Board could decide we should relocate to a charter city in Honduras and then all our staff would be able to just up and relocate. :)

(Rain may know all this; I'm posting it for others' benefit.)

Comment author: komponisto 12 May 2012 06:58:03PM 12 points [-]

I think it's crucial that SI stay in the Bay Area. Being in a high-status place signals that the cause is important. If you think you're not taken seriously enough now, imagine if you were in Honduras...

Not to mention that HR is without doubt the single most important asset for SI. (Which is why it would probably be a good idea to pay more than the minimum cost of living.)

Comment author: squelchtoad 12 May 2012 03:17:03AM *  3 points [-]

I would argue that this is precisely what GiveWell does in evaluating malaria charity. If the epidemiological consensus changed, and bednets were held to be an unsustainable solution (this is less thoroughly implausible than it might sound, though probably still unlikely), then even given the past success of certain bednet charities on all GiveWell's other criteria, GiveWell might still downgrade those charities. And don't underestimate the size of the gap between "a scientifically plausible mechanism for improving lives" and "good value in lives saved/improved per dollar." There are plenty of bednet charities, and there's a reason GiveWell recommends AMF and not, say, Nothing But Nets.

The endorsement, in other words, is about the plausibility of the mechanism, which is only one of several things to consider in donating to a charity, but it's the area in which a particular kind of expert endorsement is most meaningful.

Comment author: komponisto 12 May 2012 04:13:34AM *  3 points [-]

If the epidemiological consensus changed, and bednets were held to be an unsustainable solution...then even given the past success of certain bednet charities on all GiveWell's other criteria, GiveWell might still downgrade those charities.

As they should. But the point is that, in so doing, GiveWell would not be adding any new information not already contained in the epidemiological consensus (assuming they don't have privileged information about the latter).

And don't underestimate the size of the gap between "a scientifically plausible mechanism for improving lives" and "good value in lives saved/improved per dollar."

Indeed. The latter is where GiveWell enters the picture; it is their unique niche. The science itself, on the other hand, is not really their purview, as opposed to the experts. If GiveWell downgrades a charity solely because of the epidemiological consensus, and (for some reason) I have good reason to think the epidemiological consensus is wrong, or inadequately informative, then GiveWell hasn't told me anything, and I have no reason to pay attention to them. Their rating is screened off.

Imagine that 60% of epidemiologists think that Method A is not effective against Disease X, while 40% think it is effective. Suppose Holden goes to a big conference of epidemiologists and says "GiveWell recommends against donating to Charity C because it uses Method A, which the majority of epidemiologists say is not effective." Assuming they already knew Charity C uses Method A, should they listen to him?

Of course not. The people at the conference are all epidemiologists themselves, and those in the majority are presumably already foregoing donations to Charity C, while those in the minority already know that the majority of their colleagues disagree with them. Holden hasn't told them anything new. So, if his organization is going to be of any use to such an audience, it should focus on the things they can't already evaluate themselves, like financial transparency, accounting procedures, and the like; unless it can itself engage the scientific details.

This is analogous to the case at hand: if all that GiveWell is going to tell the world is that SI hasn't signaled enough status, well, the world already knows that. Their raison d'être is to tell people info that they can't find (or is costly to find) via other channels: such as info about non-high-status charities that may be worth supporting despite their non-high-status. If it limits its endorsements to high-status charities, then it may as well not even bother -- just as it need not bother telling a conference of epidemiologists that it doesn't endorse a charity because of the epidemiological consensus.

Comment author: othercriteria 10 May 2012 09:08:15PM *  6 points [-]

On the other hand, working on topology for a while gives one the meta-intuition that one should check reasonable sounding statements on the long line, the topologists's sine curve, the Cantor set, etc.

Comment author: komponisto 12 May 2012 03:24:24AM 1 point [-]

Or better, one's idea of what constitutes a "reasonable-sounding statement" in the first place changes, to better accommodate what is actually true.

(Checking those examples is good; but even better would be not to need to, due to having an appropriate feeling for how abstract a topological space is.)

Comment author: squelchtoad 12 May 2012 03:03:38AM *  11 points [-]

I furthermore have to say that to raise this particular objection seems to me almost to defeat the purpose of GiveWell. After all, if we could rely on standard sorts of prestige-indicators to determine where our money would be best spent, everybody would be spending their money in those places already, and "efficient charity" wouldn't be a problem for some special organization like yours to solve.

I think Holden seems to believe that Thiel and Kurzweil endorsing SIAI's UFAI-prevention methods would be more like a leading epidemiologist endorsing the malaria-prevention methods of the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) than it would be like Celebrity X taking a picture with some children for the AMF. There are different kinds of "prestige-indicator," some more valuable to a Bayesian-minded charity evaluator than others.

Comment author: komponisto 12 May 2012 03:10:46AM 2 points [-]

I would still consider the leading epidemiologist's endorsement to be a standard sort of prestige-indicator. If an anti-disease charity is endorsed by leading epidemiologists, you hardly need GiveWell. (At least for the epidemiological aspects. The financial/accounting part may be another matter.)

Comment author: komponisto 12 May 2012 02:55:35AM 28 points [-]

Lack of impressive endorsements. [...] I feel that given the enormous implications of SI's claims, if it argued them well it ought to be able to get more impressive endorsements than it has. I have been pointed to Peter Thiel and Ray Kurzweil as examples of impressive SI supporters, but I have not seen any on-record statements from either of these people that show agreement with SI's specific views, and in fact (based on watching them speak at Singularity Summits) my impression is that they disagree.

This is key: they support SI despite not agreeing with SI's specific arguments. Perhaps you should, too, at least if you find folks like Thiel and Kurzweil sufficiently impressive.

In fact, this has always been roughly my own stance. The primary reason I think SI should be supported is not that their arguments for why they should be supported are good (although I think they are, or at least, better than you do). The primary reason I think SI should be supported is that I like what the organization actually does, and wish it to continue. The Less Wrong Sequences, Singularity Summit, rationality training camps, and even HPMoR and Less Wrong itself are all worth paying some amount of money for. Not to mention the general paying-of-attention to systematic rationality training, and to existential risks relating to future technology.

Strangely, the possibility of this kind of view doesn't seem to be discussed much, even though it is apparently the attitude of some of SI's most prominent supporters.

I furthermore have to say that to raise this particular objection seems to me almost to defeat the purpose of GiveWell. After all, if we could rely on standard sorts of prestige-indicators to determine where our money would be best spent, everybody would be spending their money in those places already, and "efficient charity" wouldn't be a problem for some special organization like yours to solve.

Comment author: lukeprog 12 May 2012 12:46:18AM 2 points [-]

Enough for you to agree with Holden on that point?

Probably not. He and I continue to dialogue in private about the point, in part to find the source of our disagreement.

Yes, but I wouldn't set a limit at a specific salary range; I'd expect them to give as much as they optimally could, because I assume they're more concerned with the cause than the money. (re the 70k/yr mention: I'd be surprised if that was anywhere near optimal)

I believe everyone except Eliezer currently makes between $42k/yr and $48k/yr — pretty low for the cost of living in the Bay Area.

Comment author: komponisto 12 May 2012 02:04:06AM *  2 points [-]

(Disclaimer: the following comment should not be taken to imply that I myself have concluded that SI staff salaries should be reduced.)

I believe everyone except Eliezer currently makes between $42k/yr and $48k/yr — pretty low for the cost of living in the Bay Area.

I'll grant you that it's pretty low relative to other Bay Area salaries. But as for the actual cost of living, I'm less sure.

I'm not fortunate enough to be a Bay Area resident myself, but here is what the internet tells me:

  • After taxes, a $48,000/yr gross salary in California equates to a net of around $3000/month.

  • A 1-bedroom apartment in Berkeley and nearby places can be rented for around $1500/month. (Presumably, this is the category of expense where most of the geography-dependent high cost of living is contained.)

  • If one assumes an average spending of $20/day on food (typically enough to have at least one of one's daily meals at a restaurant), that comes out to about $600/month.

  • That leaves around $900/month for miscellaneous expenses, which seems pretty comfortable for a young person with no dependents.

So, if these numbers are right, it seems that this salary range is actually right about what the cost of living is. Of course, this calculation specifically does not include costs relating to signaling (via things such as choices of housing, clothing, transportation, etc.) that one has more money than necessary to live (and therefore isn't low-status). Depending on the nature of their job, certain SI employees may need, or at least find it distinctly advantageous for their particular duties, to engage in such signaling.

Comment author: siodine 12 May 2012 01:04:35AM *  2 points [-]

Oh, I see ;) Thanks. I'll definitely act on your comment, but I was using "I see X" as "I predict X"--just in the context of a possible world. E.g., I predict in the possible world in which SIers are superior in general rationality and committed to their cause, Luke wouldn't have that list of accomplishments. Or, "yet I still see the Singularity Institute having made the improvements..."

I now see that I've been using 'see' as syntactic sugar for counterfactual talk... but no more!

Comment author: komponisto 12 May 2012 01:21:01AM *  2 points [-]

I was using "I see X" as "I predict X"--just in the context of a possible world.

To get away with this, you really need, at minimum, an explicit counterfactual clause ("if", "unless", etc.) to introduce it: "In a world where SIers are superior in general rationality, I don't see Luke having that list of accomplishments."

The problem was not so much that your usage itself was logically inconceivable, but rather that it collided with the other interpretations of "I see X" in the particular contexts in which it occurred. E.g. "I don't see them taking higher salaries" sounded like you were saying that they weren't taking higher salaries. (There was an "if" clause, but it came way too late!)

Comment author: siodine 12 May 2012 12:01:50AM *  3 points [-]

I don't know what these sentences mean.

  • People are more rational in different domains, environments, and so on.
  • The people at SI may have poor instrumental rationality while being adept at epistemic rationality.
  • Being rational doesn't necessarily mean being successful.

I accept all those points, and yet I still see the Singularity Institute having made the improvements that you've made since being hired before you were hired if they have superior general rationality. That is, you wouldn't have that list of relatively trivial things to brag about because someone else would have recognized the items on that list as important and got them done somehow (ignore any negative connotations--they're not intended).

For instance, I don't see a varied group of people with superior general rationality not discovering or just not outsourcing work they don't have a comparative advantage in (i.e., what you've done). That doesn't look like just a failure in instrumental rationality, or just rationality operating on a different kind of utility function, or just a lack of domain specific knowledge.

The excuses available to a person acting in a way that's non-traditionally rational are less convincing when you apply them to a group.

Actually, salary increases help with opportunity cost. At very low salaries, SI staff ends up spending lots of time and energy on general life cost-saving measures that distract us from working on x-risk reduction. And our salaries are generally still pretty low. I have less than $6k in my bank accounts.

No, I get that. But that still doesn't explain away the higher salaries like EY's 80k/year and its past upwards trend. I mean, these higher paid people are the most committed to the cause, right? I don't see those people taking a higher salary when they could use that money for more outsourcing, or another employee, or better employees, if they want to literally save humanity while being superior in general rationality. It's like a homeless person desperately in want of shelter trying save enough for an apartment and yet buying meals at some restaurant.

Outsourcing most tasks to remote collaborators also helps a lot with opportunity cost.

That's the point I was making, why wasn't that done earlier? How did these people apparently miss out on opportunity cost? (And I'm just using outsourcing as an example because it was one of the most glaring changes you made that I think should have probably been made much earlier.)

Comment author: komponisto 12 May 2012 12:47:08AM *  2 points [-]

Many of your sentences are confusing because you repeatedly use the locution "I see X"/ "I don't see X" in a nonstandard way, apparently to mean "X would have happened" /"X would not have happened".

This is not the way that phrase is usually understood. Normally, "I see X" is taken to mean either "I observe X" or "I predict X". For example I might say (if I were so inclined):

Unlike you, I see a lot of rationality being demonstrated by SI employees.

meaning that I believe (from my observation) they are in fact being rational. Or, I might say:

I don't see Luke quitting his job at SI tomorrow to become a punk rocker.

meaning that I don't predict that will happen. But I would not generally say:

* I don't see these people taking a higher salary.

if what I mean is "these people should/would not have taken a higher salary [if such-and-such were true]".

Comment author: komponisto 09 May 2012 05:44:29PM *  24 points [-]

The view of cryonics Tyson expresses here is, unfortunately, just the standard high-status-scientist conventional wisdom at the moment.

On the other hand, this is interesting:

What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment scientifically? In life as a whole?

Made a prediction some years ago that there were 10x as many galaxies in the universe than had then been catalogued. based on a careful review of observation bias in how people obtained data on the universe. The actual number turned out to be about 5x as many galaxies. I got the wrong answer but for the right reasons, and it stimulated much further work on the subject.

In other words, he considers his greatest scientific achievement to be an improved estimate for a particular quantity, based on an analysis of biases in other people's data. That's rather...LWish.

Comment author: shminux 09 May 2012 03:20:28AM 0 points [-]

Branches that split off before that don't count.

Maybe I misunderstand the setup. I thought that in this model the state of one's life at 10am is determined by averaging over all the remaining copies in all branches, including those on the alien ship from 9am. As you keep trying to suicide, you fade out of your existence on Earth and into the ship. Did I get the setup it wrong?

Comment author: komponisto 09 May 2012 06:45:48AM 2 points [-]

As you keep trying to suicide, you fade out of your existence on Earth and into the ship. Did I get the setup it wrong?

Very much so, as far as I understand. Indeed, if it worked the way you suggest, presumably we'd be fading in and out of places all the time as the wavefunction evolves, rather than having a single coherent conscious experience.

Daniel Kahneman on Charlie Rose [video]

3 komponisto 29 February 2012 10:42PM

Daniel Kahneman (of Tversky and Kahneman fame) was interviewed on PBS's Charlie Rose last night, discussing his book Thinking, Fast and Slow (reviewed here by lukeprog):

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12185

Video: Skepticon talks

15 komponisto 26 November 2011 07:23AM

The talks from Skepticon IV are being posted to YouTube

So far we have:

ADDED:

More to come soon, hopefully...

Meetup : Skepticon IV meetup: Saturday night

1 komponisto 18 November 2011 08:56PM

Discussion article for the meetup : Skepticon IV meetup: Saturday night

WHEN: 19 November 2011 09:30:00PM (-0600)

WHERE: University Plaza Hotel, 333 S John Q. Hammons Parkway, Springfield, Missouri 65806

Following the last talk on Saturday, we'll meet up in the lobby of the University Plaza Hotel (where most conference participants are staying), and decide what to do and where (if anywhere) to go from there! Time is listed as 9:30 pm, to allow time to get from the conference location to the hotel. I will provide a "Less Wrong" sign.

Discussion article for the meetup : Skepticon IV meetup: Saturday night

In response to comment by Louie on Existential Risk
Comment author: rhollerith_dot_com 18 November 2011 05:02:11PM *  0 points [-]

In testimony to Congress about 15 years ago, the director of the CIA used "CIA" without the definite article, which certainly suggests that he preferred it to be referred to that way. How it is referred to by the public however is probably not up to the leaders of the CIA but rather up to the media and maybe bloggers and tweeters. Note that the American Broadcasting Corporation, the National Broadcasting Corporation, the Citizens Broadcasting Service and the Public Broadcasting Service are able to decide how they will be referred to by the public (because they have unparalleled access to the public's ear) and the have decided they'd like to be referred to without the definite article.

All that suggests that there is some advantage to being referred to without the definite article. (Perhaps the definite article has the effect of "distancing" the referent in the mind of the listener.)

Comment author: komponisto 18 November 2011 07:51:46PM 7 points [-]

Did you miss this comment? Abbreviations are treated separately from the corresponding full names. One doesn't say "the ABC", but one does say "the American Broadcasting Company". Et cetera.

Likewise, "SIAI" (not "the SIAI"), but "the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence".

One may be either "at CIA" (especially if you're an insider) or "at the CIA", but as far as I know one is always "at the Central Intelligence Agency".

Comment author: Louie 18 November 2011 11:21:15AM 1 point [-]

Dropping "the" is a conscious, intentional decision by everyone at Singularity Institute as of several months ago and pre-dates Luke's involvement (but post-dates your visit last summer).

In response to comment by Louie on Existential Risk
Comment author: komponisto 18 November 2011 07:38:59PM *  11 points [-]

That only changes the target of my criticism (now all of you, instead of just Luke), not the criticism itself, obviously.

The "the" isn't droppable, because it was never part of the name in the first place: it was never "The Singularity Institute"; but rather "the Singularity Institute". That is, the article is a part of the contextual grammar. Attempting to "drop" it would be like me declaring that "komponisto" must always be followed by plural verb forms.

(Some organizations do have "The" in the name itself, e.g. The Heritage Foundation. They could decide to drop the "The", and then their logo would say "Heritage Foundation". But one would still write "at the Heritage Foundation"; one just wouldn't write "at The Heritage Foundation".)

I don't know of any example of an "Institute" where people don't use an article in such a context -- which suggests that any such example that might exist isn't high-status enough for me to have heard of it. Even the one that I thought might be an example -- the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute -- also has a grammatical "the"!

You guys should want to be like IAS and MSRI (after all, you'd rather the people at those places be working for you instead!) I don't understand the rationale for this gratuitous eccentricity.

Comment author: [deleted] 18 November 2011 06:15:21PM 0 points [-]

Things are not always that simple: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2172

In response to comment by [deleted] on Existential Risk
Comment author: komponisto 18 November 2011 07:03:56PM 1 point [-]

I didn't make any claim about "simplicity", and nor does anything in the link contradict anything I wrote. Indeed, it confirms my point: some things take "the", others don't, and it isn't a matter of on-the-spot whim.

Note that I did not propose any general rule for determining which category something falls into without prior knowledge. My comment about descriptions versus names does not have any predictive implications. I could have talked about "weak" and "strong" instead.

Comment author: lavalamp 17 November 2011 12:35:45AM 2 points [-]

So, are we actually going to plan something? I'll be arriving Friday night and leaving Sunday night, so Saturday is probably the best day for me. Hopefully someone who knows the city can suggest a place?

Comment author: komponisto 17 November 2011 07:56:32AM 1 point [-]

So, are we actually going to plan something?

Good question! I was hoping to have gotten more of a response by now. As I see it, here are our options:

  1. Friday evening, during the "Drinking Skeptically" event (8:00 pm). We could either meet at the same location (whatever that turns out to be), or arrange for an alternate LW-specific event somewhere else. (I'm not much of a drinker, personally, so it's pretty much a matter of indifference to me.)

  2. Saturday during the 12:00 pm (noon) lunch break, immediately following Eliezer's talk. This has the advantage that LW folks are particularly likely to be around at that time; unfortunately it has the disadvantage of being time-constrained (the "death" panel begins at 1:00 pm).

  3. Saturday during the 5:00 pm dinner break. Same disadvantage as above (next event at 6:00).

  4. Saturday evening after the day's talks are finished (i.e. 9 pm or later). (Perhaps a decent late-night dessert place?)

  5. Sunday, 12 pm lunch break.

  6. Sunday, after all the talks (6 pm or later).

Those attending should weigh in with what they prefer...

Comment author: [deleted] 16 November 2011 07:55:19AM *  3 points [-]

I'm considering posting such a thread, but I'm thinking very very carefully if this is a good idea. It seems best to me to wait a few days, perhaps even consider a meta thread or two in preparation.

Discussion in the absence of ethics, dosen't really cover discussion that may hurt the community image or the image of posters, at least not explicitly. And while the current situation is intolerable I don't want to cause any damage with a botched fix.

Comment author: komponisto 16 November 2011 11:07:13AM 6 points [-]

See here. I'm inclining more and more toward the opinion that this topic-cluster simply doesn't belong here, any more than (other) controversial contemporary political issues do. It's too fraught with (perceived) implications for tribal struggles that people (even unconsciously) feel themselves to be party to.

In all honesty, I'm not even terribly enthused about Luke's proposed sequence being here, especially in Main. (It might well be okay in Discussion.) It sends the signal that LW is full of people who have trouble with these sorts of relationships. Maybe that's true, but it's not exactly something one would want to showcase, it seems to me.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 16 November 2011 03:09:41AM 3 points [-]

I don't know whether to upvote this for explaining the details or downvote this for a very distracting style.

Comment author: komponisto 16 November 2011 10:37:21AM 4 points [-]

The "very distracting style" was safely and apologetically contained inside a blockquote.

Comment author: steven0461 16 November 2011 12:02:50AM *  6 points [-]

I think Luke may have been trying to take after Singularity University, which doesn't use "the", because that seems to be the convention for universities? But yes, I agree the lack of a definite article here is grating. It creates impression that writer of sentence is Russian.

Comment author: komponisto 16 November 2011 12:23:55AM *  2 points [-]

...Singularity University, which doesn't use "the", because that seems to be the convention for universities?

Specifically, it's the convention for university names following the formula "X University" (as opposed to "University of/for/in X"). These should be thought of as analogous to geographic place-names (which is what they basically are): "Hamilton County", "Bikini Atoll", "Harvard University", etc. ("Singularity University" would be analogous to "Treasure Island".)

There are a few rare exceptions: The George Washington University, The Ohio State University (both articles often "mistakenly" omitted!), the Bering Strait.

Anyway, why in the world would SI want to "take after" SU? The risk of confusion between these two organizations is large enough as it is.

Comment author: arundelo 15 November 2011 11:47:01PM *  1 point [-]

The singinst.org About Us/Our Mission page uses the article, as do some other places on the site. The Strategic Plan ("UPDATE: AUGUST 2011") consistently uses no article.

In response to comment by arundelo on Existential Risk
Comment author: komponisto 15 November 2011 11:59:09PM *  3 points [-]

I believe the Strategic Plan was authored by Luke, and hence the criticism also applies there.

In response to Existential Risk
Comment author: beoShaffer 15 November 2011 10:54:28PM 8 points [-]

These two are among the largest donors to Singularity Institute, an organization focused on the reduction of existential risks from artificial intelligence.

Should this be the Singularity Institute?

Comment author: komponisto 15 November 2011 11:49:23PM *  10 points [-]

Indeed.

It's as if people are being deliberately mischievous by writing both "the SIAI" (which should be "SIAI"), and on the other hand, "Singularity Institute" (which should be "the Singularity Institute").

Luke is probably confused by the fact that the organization is often called "Singinst" by its members. But that expression grammatically functions as a name, like "SIAI" (or, now, "SI"), and thus does not take the definite article.

The full name, however, ("the Singularity Institute") functions grammatically as a description, and thus does take the definite article. Compare: the United Nations, the Brookings Institution, the Institute for Advanced Study, the London School of Economics, the Center for Inquiry, the National Football League.

Abbrevations differ as to whether they function as names or descriptions: IAS, but the UN. SI(AI) is like the former, not the latter.

If the abbreviation is an acronym (i.e. pronounced as a word rather than a string of letter names), then it will function as a name: ACORN, not "the ACORN" (even though, in full, it's "the Association...").

Skepticon IV meetup: planning

5 komponisto 15 November 2011 02:16AM

If any members of the Less Wrong community are planning to attend Skepticon IV this weekend (Nov. 18-20) in Springfield, Missouri (USA), it might be nice to see if we can arrange a meetup. 

Feel free to comment and say "I'll be there!". (At least one prominent Less Wronger is even among the speakers.) Suggestions regarding locations, etc. from folks familiar with the local area are particularly encouraged.

Attractions this year include (besides what was mentioned above): a panel on "How Should Rationalists Approach Death?"; and a talk by Richard Carrier entitled "Bayes' Theorem: Key to the Universe" (and subtitled: that's right, I'm teaching you math, bitches!).

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 13 November 2011 03:51:59AM 2 points [-]

Were those tons of composers like Greenberg doing that sort of work at age 14?

Greenberg on the lack of anything really new in classical music. I think this is publicly available--let me know if it isn't.

Tentative hypothesis: people mostly get hooked by melody and rhythm, but classical has been exploring timbre (to the extent that it's exploring anything) for quite a while.

Comment author: komponisto 14 November 2011 01:45:35AM 3 points [-]

Greenberg on the lack of anything really new in classical music.

If he can't find the avant-garde, then that means that either (a) he has completely absorbed the musical contributions of the most advanced composers of today into his subconscious, and thus he himself is the avant-garde, or (b) the level on which he is listening to things is so superficial that only novel surface gimmicks and "effects" qualify as "revolutionary" (in which case, yes, the 20th century probably exhausted that).

His available music indicates that he is not the avant-garde. On the other hand, (b) is an exceedingly common syndrome.

Comment author: wedrifid 13 November 2011 06:00:16AM *  0 points [-]

I suppose in retrospect the great-grandparent could be interpreted as a denial of the latter assumption. Alas.

It took me a while to realise what you were saying there - I wasn't expecting an indirect insult!

Let's just say we are in complete disagreement about both the subject and about the validity of the arguments used and leave it at that, shall we?

Comment author: komponisto 13 November 2011 06:13:34AM 0 points [-]

I suppose in retrospect the great-grandparent could be interpreted as a denial of the latter assumption

It took me a while to realise what you were saying there - I wasn't expecting an indirect insult!

In that case I'm not sure I was clear: the comment could be interpreted as a denial specifically of the "and wouldn't want to send such a signal" part. In other words, it conveyed that you didn't mind being insulting. (Perhaps you consider "I suppose you were willing to be insulting after all" to be itself an insult, in which case the parent is consistent with my having communicated successfully.)

Let's just say we are in complete disagreement about both the subject and about the validity of the arguments used and leave it at that, shall we?

At this point I really don't know exactly what we are in disagreement about, if anything, and more to the point I'm not sure I actually want to know. So "leaving it at that" may indeed be optimal for now.

Comment author: wedrifid 13 November 2011 05:30:27AM *  0 points [-]

As it happens, I disagree.

That's a little surprising. It was the basis for any agreement I had with you regarding how having a different aesthetic evaluation of art could be offensive.

I think your model of someone who enjoys classical masterpieces as much as I do is wrong to the extent that it suggests they can't enjoy Weird AI as much as you do.

Not something I've said (or something that can be derived from what I've said.)

Comment author: komponisto 13 November 2011 05:48:45AM 0 points [-]

It can be derived with the additional assumption that the only reason a person would have for explicitly comparing things as different as "classical masterpieces" and Weird AI would be that aesthetic enjoyment is held by the person to be fixed-sum and uncompartmentalizable (i.e. they in effect had no choice but to make a comparison to Y when expressing enthusiasm for X). An assumption which in turn follows from the assumption that the person understands the signaling value of explicit aesthetic comparisons, and wouldn't want to send such a signal unless logically forced.

I suppose in retrospect the great-grandparent could be interpreted as a denial of the latter assumption. Alas.

Comment author: wedrifid 13 November 2011 05:19:56AM 0 points [-]

Disagreement is disrespect when it comes to aesthetics as well as ideas.

Comment author: komponisto 13 November 2011 05:25:35AM *  0 points [-]

As it happens, I disagree.

I think your model of someone who enjoys "classical masterpieces" as much as I do is wrong to the extent that it suggests they can't enjoy Weird AI as much as you do. And you invoke this model when you claim to have an aesthetic disagreement with them.

Comment author: wedrifid 13 November 2011 04:48:04AM *  2 points [-]

Not really. You can have different models and still be able to make strict decisions like that.

No, you can't. If you can make distinctions like that then they are in the same model! And your whole point was based around the fact that I was making such a distinction anyway!

Do you put those on a strict 1-Dimensional spectrum as well

That seems a tad disingenuous. That I consider one to have less aesthetic merit than the other does not in any way indicate that I would be unable to make other comparisons between them.

and I'm also not convinced that your model actually says that classical music is strictly inferior to weird al.

Wow. What can you say to someone if they make that sort of declaration? Maybe:

  • Oh, you caught me. Yes, I'm a dirty liar and I was only saying Weird Al is aesthetically superior to classical music.
  • I stand corrected. I trust your judgement of how I really rate music aesthetically based on blog comments over my own based on listening to it.
  • Oh yeah? Well your model says you like to eat dirt! So there.

Just tell me I am unsophisticated, naive, uncool, banal and tasteless or even that my claim about Weird Al superiority is outright offensive. Those are at least a mix of accurate (unsophisticated in this respect) and subjective. Trying to convince me (or even anyone else) that I don't really have the aesthetic ratings that I do is just absurd!

Comment author: komponisto 13 November 2011 05:07:26AM 0 points [-]

Just tell me...that my claim about Weird Al superiority is outright offensive

It is somewhat, because it suggests that some of us should have our status lowered for failing to meet an optimization target we weren't even aiming for.

"Not as good as Weird Al!" sounds a bit like "you fail!". Whereas you could instead have said: "with all due respect to the impressive achievements of art composers, my personal interests lead me to want to spend somewhat more of my time enjoying clever parodies of popular songs than exploring the complexities of 'classical masterpieces', however great the latter might be on their own terms."

Comment author: DoubleReed 13 November 2011 04:44:41AM -1 points [-]

No, I don't think minimalists are inaccessible. You suggested that there is "increasing musical complexity," and I was merely pointing out there doesn't necessarily have to be "increasing musical complexity."

Comment author: komponisto 13 November 2011 04:55:07AM *  1 point [-]

I cited increasing musical complexity as the reason why serial music is considered "inaccessible". I didn't say anything about non-"inaccessible" music.

Comment author: DoubleReed 13 November 2011 04:13:19AM 0 points [-]

One just cannot expect everyone to be able to keep up indefinitely with increasing musical complexity.

I like to point out this line in particular, and then point to minimalist (and post-minimalist) composers.

Music doesn't have to get necessarily more complex. Composers, like any large group of people, don't agree on anything.

Comment author: komponisto 13 November 2011 04:39:20AM 0 points [-]

Well wait a minute: you were the one who pointed specifically to serialism as the culprit for the "inaccessible" reputation of "modern music". If you consider minimalists inaccessible also, why didn't you include them in the blame?

Comment author: wedrifid 13 November 2011 04:02:27AM 0 points [-]

Maybe instead of insiderhood, you should consider it merely as a signal of non-ignorance,

I quoted the first sentence from wikipedia. That is the definition of classical music that matches what most people - most certainly including Nancy - mean when they say 'classical music'.

specifically of the fact that "classical" is the name of a historical era.

I am well aware of the historical era. Declaring that by relaying the common usage definition of 'classical music' I must be ignorant of the classical era is itself a strong signal of being unaware of how human language works.

One group in which I like to signal myself an insider is 'Science'. We still use the word atom for something that can be broken down into protons, neutrons and electrons - and even the latter is a simplification. The relevance should be obvious.

Comment author: komponisto 13 November 2011 04:34:23AM 0 points [-]

Declaring that by relaying the common usage definition of 'classical music' I must be ignorant of the classical era

No, it's just that by going along with that common usage you thereby decline to give a strong signal of non-ignorance. "Weak evidence" of ignorance, if you like.

We still use the word atom

I doubt that the common usage of "classical" preceded the naming of the historical period. In fact I suspect that the former did not become widespread until after it was already (erroneously) perceived that that sort of music was "old" and "over".

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 13 November 2011 03:51:59AM 2 points [-]

Were those tons of composers like Greenberg doing that sort of work at age 14?

Greenberg on the lack of anything really new in classical music. I think this is publicly available--let me know if it isn't.

Tentative hypothesis: people mostly get hooked by melody and rhythm, but classical has been exploring timbre (to the extent that it's exploring anything) for quite a while.

Comment author: komponisto 13 November 2011 04:26:15AM 0 points [-]

Were those tons of composers like Greenberg doing that sort of work at age 14?

Some were, of course (even I wrote symphonies at 14, though never published or performed). But what does it matter what age they were, unless you're talking about the ability to generate publicity? If someone's music is considered interesting only because of their age, does that really count?

Unless you mean that the fact that Greenberg wrote such pieces at 14 means that he has great potential for the future; sure, I'll grant that. But then something like the Fifth Symphony should be considered a student exercise, like the inventions and fugues he's probably been required to write in music school. (Who knows, maybe that's exactly how he thinks of it.)

Tentative hypothesis: people mostly get hooked by melody and rhythm, but classical has been exploring timbre (to the extent that it's exploring anything) for quite a while.

It's been exploring everything, melody and rhythm perhaps above all.

Comment author: DoubleReed 13 November 2011 03:18:06AM *  1 point [-]

Again, there are Neoclassical works that "the public" love just like "the public" love the old masters. Pulcinella Suite is a direct example that "competes," but really anything from that era of Stravinsky is a great example. Francis Poulenc's work is immensely popular (his clarinet duet and clarinet concerto are particularly good). In fact, directly after WWI is when all this stuff came out because europe couldn't afford large orchestras.

This idea that modern classical music can't be fun and entertaining is just plain strange! Serialism really gives modern music a bad name. People still compose tonal works, and tonal music is not considered "uninteresting."

Comment author: komponisto 13 November 2011 03:42:35AM 1 point [-]

Serialism really gives modern music a bad name.

I beg your pardon...!

There's nothing "bad" about serial music. (Individual works may of course vary in quality.) Not all music needs to be "accessible". You're right to point out that some modern music is, but it's okay if also some isn't. One just cannot expect everyone to be able to keep up indefinitely with increasing musical complexity.

Not even Beethoven is accessible to everybody, it seems.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 13 November 2011 02:11:35AM 0 points [-]

People seem to be turning up a little more detail.

There's one new thing I'm very interested in-- a composing prodigy named Jay Greenberg. His Fifth Symphony is available online, and while it's not the best thing ever, I'd say it's a real pleasure and he published it when he was only 14. I see some hope both for the music he's going to write, and for the idea that new classical music can legitimately be accessible and enjoyable for the general public.

Comment author: komponisto 13 November 2011 03:07:24AM 1 point [-]

This is exactly what I was talking about here. There are (and long have been) tons of composers just like Greenberg. But they never seem to acquire the prestige of the pre-WWI masters.

And I suspect that's because they're not significantly advancing the art beyond what those folks did (and as those folks were doing in their own time). Greenberg's Fifth Symphony is a perfectly nice piece, but there's nothing adventurous about it; it would have been conservative even if it had been written 100 years ago.

Comment author: wedrifid 12 November 2011 10:08:23PM *  1 point [-]

and insider-signaling

This is actually something I want to take care to avoid in this particular context. I do, after all, openly rate Weird Al as aesthetically superior to the greatest classical masterpieces. Also: cheap wine is usually better wine, caviar tastes terrible, those hats look stupid, peacock's tails are largely pointless and I've never read Wittgenstein or that book with the whale in it.

(There are other groups that I would of course take efforts to signal insiderhood.)

Comment author: komponisto 12 November 2011 10:42:02PM 0 points [-]

Maybe instead of insiderhood, you should consider it merely as a signal of non-ignorance, specifically of the fact that "classical" is the name of a historical era.

I do, after all, openly rate Weird Al as aesthetically superior to the greatest classical masterpieces.

I didn't realize your aesthetic resources were so scarce as to put them in competition. Personally I think the world has plenty of room for both.

and I've never read...that book with the whale in it

I probably wouldn't care so much about it if it weren't the subject of an opera by the guy who wrote my favorite book.

Comment author: gwern 12 November 2011 09:40:59PM 1 point [-]

That is, Germans and Austrians (and those influenced by them) wrote the history of music

This is, of course, a fully general counter-argument: any time someone points to a cluster, you can say 'well those and those influenced by them wrote the history so of course we see a cluster'.

For those who don't accept this fully general counter-argument, Murray considered precisely this national/linguistic argument about bias and examined sources written in a foreign language - eg. what did the Japanese textbooks have to say about German music? He found that this corrective did change rankings and scores... for literature. pg 486:

Histories and biographical dictionaries of Western literature are much more affected by the language of the author than are sources for Western music art and visual art, and for an obvious reason. To repeat the point made in Chapter 5: A German can listen to a work by Vivaldi as easily as he can listen to one by Bach, and an Englishman can look at a painting by Monet as easily as one by Constable. The same cannot be said of literature, because of the language barrier. German historians of literature give markedly more attention to German authors than others, English historians to English authors, and so on. It is not just a matter of national chauvinism. Spanish historians of literature give more attention to New World literature written in Spanish than do historians of other nationalities.

To quote his longer discussion in chapter 5:

National chauvinism within the West remains a problem. Works purporting to cover all of the Western world are skewed toward the nationality of the author. For example, British art historians tend to give more space to Constable and Turner than Italian art historians do, and French historians of philosophy tend to include French thinkers that hardly anyone else mentions.

An examination of these tendencies reveals that the effect of chauvinistic tendencies is minor to begin with and eliminated if the sources come from a mix of nations. Therefore the inventories for the West (visual arts, music, literature, and philosophy) employ sources that have been balanced among the major European nations (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain) plus the United States and a scattering of other nations ( Japan, Argentina, Denmark). A number of the compilations are also the product of multinational teams. Examination revealed that the effect of chauvinistic tendencies for most of the inventories were minor to begin with and eliminated by using sources from a mix of nations. The exception was literature. A German can listen to a work byVivaldi as easily as he can listen to one by Bach, and an Englishman can look at a painting by Monet as easily as one by Constable. The same cannot be said of literature, because of the language barrier. German historians of literature give disproportionate attention to German and Austrian authors, English historians to English and American authors, and so on. The selection of significant figures and computation of their index scores were therefore based exclusively on sources not written in the language of the author in question (e.g., Thackeray’s selection as a significant figure and his index score are based exclusively on sources not written in English).

Comment author: komponisto 12 November 2011 09:58:02PM *  1 point [-]

To be clear, my argument wasn't directed against Murray, but at his sources. I don't doubt that Murray more or less correctly measured what he was trying to measure (whether or not that measurement has whatever significance he attributes to it, I don't know; I haven't read his book).

My real interest is in "debunking" the notion of the "common-practice period"; I would instead prefer to call the period in question the "Germanic period" or something similar. It isn't really a question of quality: personally, I happen to agree that there is something special about Viennese classicism (i.e. Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven) but I wouldn't assign a similar specialness to Pachelbel and Reger while leaving out Gesualdo and Boulez.

ETA: Also, to be clear, my claim isn't that German-and-Austrian-influenced historians unfairly leave out or devalue other composers from the period 1600-1900; it's that they elevate that particular period itself to an unjustifiably high status relative to other periods (which in my view has hindered the development of music theory).

Comment author: NihilCredo 12 November 2011 08:33:35PM *  2 points [-]

Is there a relatively simple explanation for the predominance of Germans and Austrians in this period? Obviously you couldn't expect many great Norwegian or Mongolian composers, because of demographical or logistical reasons, but for example I see no Britons and few Frenchmen in the list. Which differences in musical education and culture could have brought relatively similar countries to have such vastly dissimilar results?

Comment author: komponisto 12 November 2011 09:19:44PM 0 points [-]

Is there a relatively simple explanation for the predominance of Germans and Austrians in this period?

Yes. The period itself is essentially defined that way. That is, Germans and Austrians (and those influenced by them) wrote the history of music, and defined the "core period" as precisely that period when they happened to dominate the scene.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Making History Available
Comment author: wedrifid 12 November 2011 02:00:14PM *  0 points [-]

Wait... Define “classical”.

Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times.[1] The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common practice period.

Comment author: komponisto 12 November 2011 09:02:40PM *  1 point [-]

The central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, which is known as the common practice period

Disputed, FYI.

Also, "classical music" is a terrible term, due to collision with the Classical period in music. The proper (and insider-signaling) term is "Western art music".

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 12 November 2011 12:43:49PM *  0 points [-]

So (I thought), to feel sufficiently the force of history, I should try to approximate the thoughts of an Eliezer who had lived through history -

That's a start. The next step is that you have a good bit in common with other people, but also substantial differences. They lived through history as themselves.

As for "America always having existed", I heard somewhat from a book about the geological history of the English Channel. It took a number of sentences to explain that there was a time before there was an England or a France and I was getting impatient, and then I realized that the amount of repetition probably was needed to bring the point home.

A bit of free association.... did you know there was a nation of Burgundy which has been all but forgotten? I found this out from Mary Gentle, whose Ash novels have some intellectual horror so awful that I stopped reading.

N uvfgbevna/nepunrbybtvfg svaqf fbzr irel fgenatr fghss, naq fur'f orggvat ure erchgngvba ba vg.... naq gura nyy gur rivqrapr qvfnccrnef. V unira'g svavfurq ernqvat gur frevrf, ohg vg qvqa'g frrz yvxr n pbairagvbany zlfgrel, jvgu fbzrbar fgrnyvat gur rivqrapr-- zber yvxr ernyvgl fbsgravat naq erivfvat vgfrys.

Actually, sometimes people do make accurate predictions, but they also make a lot of false predictions. The accurate predictions are much more apt to be remembered than the false predictions.

If you want to see a major effort to view past people as being themselves rather than modern people, see Ta-Nahisi-Coate's writings on the Civil War.

I think that this era is the best in general for a lot of people, but there are specific things which were done better in the past. People in the middle ages and the Renaissance were better at dressing up. It's possible that Eastern European Jews before the Nazis were better at producing mathematical geniuses than we are. Was there something about the educational system? Europe before WWI produced classical music so good that no one has been able to compete with it (for classical music, not music in general) since then.

Comment author: komponisto 12 November 2011 08:49:27PM 0 points [-]

Europe before WWI produced classical music so good that no one has been able to compete with it (for classical music, not music in general) since then.

We've had this discussion before.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 November 2011 06:13:04PM 1 point [-]

And we can model differential equations in a first order theory of real numbers, which requires no set theory

Your conception of "differential equations" is probably too narrow for this to be true.

Nope. It is literally possible to reduce the theory of Turing machines to real analytic ODEs. These can be modeled without set theory.

Comment author: komponisto 11 November 2011 07:31:49PM 0 points [-]

It is literally possible to reduce the theory of Turing machines to real analytic ODEs.

Okay, that sounds interesting (reference?), but what about the rest of my comment?

Comment author: [deleted] 11 November 2011 05:45:29PM *  0 points [-]

There are a lot of phenomena -- in mathematics, in the cosmos, and in everyday experience -- that you cannot understand without knowing something about differential equations. There are hardly any phenomena that you can't understand without knowing the difference between a cardinal and an ordinal number. That's all I mean by "fundamental."

But here is a joke answer that I think illustrates something. Differential equations govern most of our everyday experiences, including the experience of writing out the axioms for set theory and deducing theorems from them. And we can model differential equations in a first order theory of real numbers, which requires no set theory. A somewhat more serious point along these lines is made in some famous papers by Pour-El and Richards.

Is this a good way to think about set theory? Of course not. But likewise, the standard reduction to set theory does not illuminate differential equations. Boo set theory!

Comment author: komponisto 11 November 2011 06:02:15PM 3 points [-]

Like I suspected, this is rife with confusion-of-levels.

There are a lot of phenomena -- in mathematics, in the cosmos, and in everyday experience -- that you cannot understand without knowing something about differential equations. There are hardly any phenomena that you can't understand without knowing the difference between a cardinal and an ordinal number. That's all I mean by "fundamental."

That's like saying that you can get through life without knowing about atoms more easily than you can without knowing about animals, and so biology must be more fundamental than physics. Completely the wrong sense of the word "fundamental".

Differential equations govern most of our everyday experiences, including the experience of writing out the axioms for set theory and deducing theorems from them.

This is a classic confusion of levels. It's the same mistake Eliezer makes when he allows himself to talk about "seeing" cardinal numbers, and when people say that special relativity disproves Euclidean geometry, or that quantum mechanics disproves classical logic.

And we can model differential equations in a first order theory of real numbers, which requires no set theory

Your conception of "differential equations" is probably too narrow for this to be true. Consider where set theory came from: Cantor was studying Fourier series, which are important in differential equations.

But likewise, the standard reduction to set theory does not illuminate differential equations

...and nor does the reduction of biology to physics "illuminate" human behavior. That just isn't the point!

Comment author: JoshuaZ 11 November 2011 02:32:31PM 1 point [-]

I'm not sure one is more or less fundamental than the other. It does seem fair to say that as far as differential equations are concerned a completely different foundational setting wouldn't make any difference. So it isn't analogous to reductionism in that the behavior isn't brought about by the local interaction of pieces under the hood.

Comment author: komponisto 11 November 2011 05:43:20PM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure one is more or less fundamental than the other.

Really? You don't think the demonstrable reducibility of other branches of mathematics to set theory means anything?

It does seem fair to say that as far as differential equations are concerned a completely different foundational setting wouldn't make any difference.

This is actually a vacuous statement, because if it did make a difference, you wouldn't call it "a completely different foundational setting" of the same subject. Similarly, it wouldn't "make any difference" if, hypothetically, a 747 (as we understand it in terms of high-level properties) turned out to be made of something other than atoms; because by assumption the high-level properties of the thing we're reducing are fixed.

The important point is whether something can be reduced, not whether it must be.

I really don't know enough about programming to make a properly impressive analogy, but set theory is like a lower-level language or operating system on top of which other branches can be made to run.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 November 2011 12:59:18PM 1 point [-]

I don't agree. Math is not made out of sets in the same way that matter is made out of atoms. In terms of reductionism differential equations are more fundamental than sets.

Comment author: komponisto 11 November 2011 05:23:18PM 4 points [-]

In terms of reductionism differential equations are more fundamental than sets.

Would you care to give an argument for this? This strikes me as wildly implausible, and my default interpretation is as a rhetorical statement to the effect of "boo set theory!!"

I've never seen set theory reduced to differential equations. On the other hand, the reduction of analysis (including differential equations) to set theory is standard and classical.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 November 2011 05:39:17AM 0 points [-]

Set theory also helps one see mathematics as a whole and see how different areas connect to each other.

For what it's worth, I strongly disagree. For a new student too much emphasis on foundations can be a major mental block when getting used to a new idea and especially a new circle of ideas. Set theory is used very informally in most of mathematics, as a notation. To learn more than this notation is mostly unnecessary for pure math, completely unnecessary for applications of math to other areas.

I first had the feeling of the numinous in a mathematical context

This kind of sentiment always reminds me of this.

Comment author: komponisto 11 November 2011 07:32:16AM 0 points [-]

The construction of (other parts of) mathematics from set theory is a very important lesson in reductionism.

So important, in my view, that it outweighs the disadvantages of set theory that you often hear people complaining about.

Comment author: [deleted] 10 November 2011 05:02:24PM 0 points [-]

Why is it humorous besides pointing out that the author is on our side?

In response to comment by [deleted] on Amanda Knox: post mortem
Comment author: komponisto 10 November 2011 05:12:09PM *  3 points [-]

It's a combination of irreverence (mocking religion by treating non-divine entities as gods), incongruity (you don't expect a bunch of science-minded techno-nerds to sit around praying), and self-mockery (poking fun at our level of enthusiasm for Bayesian concepts).

Comment author: [deleted] 10 November 2011 03:57:54PM *  1 point [-]

I think this would offend the LW zeitgeist because to me, this seems like awful political art.

I tried to imply that because I don't like linking to the sequences every time I make some point based off of them, but I think you missed that. Taking that one line out of context didn't help.

Edit: To be as explicit as I can, I don't care that this is a christian prayer. I just think it's not well done, because it doesn't reflect tsuyoku naritai.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Amanda Knox: post mortem
Comment author: komponisto 10 November 2011 05:00:08PM *  1 point [-]

I think this would offend the LW zeitgeist because to me, this seems like awful political art.

To me it seems humorous. Which is in stark contrast to awful political art such as the poem EY describes in the linked post.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 07 November 2011 12:41:12PM *  0 points [-]

It's better to do something LESS INSANE. It's also SAD that the post is not downvoted into OBLIVION.

Comment author: komponisto 09 November 2011 11:06:10PM 2 points [-]

Voting should not be used to answer a question raised in a post; it should be reserved for passing judgement on the post (e.g. if the question is bad to ask in the first place, as opposed to merely having a negative answer [or even an easy answer of any kind]).

Knox and Sollecito freed

26 komponisto 03 October 2011 08:24PM

See: You Be the Jury, The Amanda Knox Test

While we hear about Bayes' Theorem being under threat in some courts, it is nice to savor the occasional moment of rationality prevailing in the justice system, and of mistakes being corrected.

Congratulations to the Italian court system for successfully saying "Oops!" 

Things go wrong in this world quite a bit, as we know. Sometimes it's appropriate to just say "hooray!" when they go right.

Discuss, or celebrate.

MIT Challenge: blogger to attempt CS curriculum on own

8 komponisto 27 September 2011 11:01PM

Open Thread: August 2011

4 komponisto 03 August 2011 02:48AM

For miscellaneous discussions and remarks not suitable for top-level posts even in the Discussion section, let alone in Main.

(Naturally, if a discussion gets too unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post, just like in the good old days.)

Experiment: Knox case debate with Rolf Nelson

18 komponisto 08 July 2011 08:22AM

Recently, on the main section of the site, Raw_Power posted an article suggesting that we find "worthy opponents" to help us avoid mistakes.

As you may recall, Rolf Nelson disagrees with me about Amanda Knox -- rather sharply. Of course, the same can be said of lots of other people (if not so much here on Less Wrong). But Rolf isn't your average "guilter". Indeed, considering that he speaks fluent Bayesian, is one of the Singularity Institute's largest donors, and is also (as I understand it) signed up for cryonics, it's hard to imagine an "opponent" more "worthy". The Amanda Knox case may not be in the same category of importance as many other issues where Rolf and I probably agree; but my opinion on it is very confident, and it's the opposite of his. If we're both aspiring rationalists, at least one of us is doing something wrong.  

As it turns out, Rolf is interested in having a debate with me on the subject, to see if one of us can help to change the other's mind. I'm setting this post up as an experiment, to see if LW can serve as a suitable venue for such an exercise. I hope it can: Less Wrong is almost unique in the extent to which the social norms governing discussion reflect and coincide with the requirements of personal epistemic rationality. (For example: "Do not believe you do others a favor if you accept their arguments; the favor is to you.") But I don't think we've yet tried an organized one-on-one debate -- so we'll see how it goes. If it proves too unwieldy or inappropriate for some other reason, we can always move to another venue.

Although the primary purpose of this post is a one-on-one debate between Rolf Nelson and myself, this is a LW Discussion post like any other, and it goes without saying that others are welcome and encouraged to comment. Just be aware that we, the main protagonists, will try to keep our discussion focused on each other's arguments. (Also, since our subject is an issue where there is already a strong LW consensus, one would prefer to avoid a sort of "gangup effect" where lots of people "pounce" on the person taking the contrarian position.)

With that, here we go...

Sequence translations: Seeking feedback/collaboration

11 komponisto 28 May 2011 10:24PM

(...and also permission from Eliezer, who has the right to veto this whole idea should he so desire.) 

In the hope of launching a collaborative project, I've set up Wordpress sites for translations of the Sequences into French, Italian, and Spanish; and to get things started, I've put up my own attempts at translating the first post, The Martial Art of Rationality

I'm looking for collaborators. At the very least, I'm hoping to find folks who would be willing to proofread my translations and help improve them -- in particular to help me purge them of the inevitable mistakes, non-native shibboleths, and typos with which they're bound to be infused. Beyond that, it would of course be nice to have people contribute translations of their own of entire posts. (I'll keep plugging away myself no doubt, but if I'm the only one, it will take a very long time to complete.)  

If you'd like to translate articles yourself into one of these languages, send me a PM so I can add you as an author on the appropriate blog(s). Proofreading my work can be done either privately or in comments here on LW; I'd probably prefer to reserve the comments sections of the actual sites for discussion of the posts' content (in the target languages), although this isn't an inflexible demand. 

Also, one would like to add more languages, of course... 

 

Inverse Speed

14 komponisto 27 March 2011 05:57AM

One must always invert.

- Carl Gustav Jacobi

I'm grateful to orthonormal for mentioning the following math problem, because it allowed me to have a significant confusion-dissolving insight (actually going on two, but I'll only discuss one in this post), as well as providing an example of how bad I am at math:

"[I]f you want to average 40 mph on a trip, and you averaged 20 mph for the first half of the route, how fast do you have to go on the second half of the route?" 

When I read this, my first thought was "Huh? If you spend an hour going 20 mph and then spend another hour going 60 mph, you've just gone 80 miles in 2 hours -- for an average speed of 40 mph, just as desired. So what do you people mean it's impossible?"

As you can see, my confusion resulted from interpreting "half of the route" to refer to the total time of the journey, rather than the total distance.

This misinterpretation reveals something fundamental about how I (I know better by now than to say "we") think about speed.

In my mind, speed is a mapping from times to distances. The way to compare different speeds is by holding time constant and looking at the different distances traversed in that fixed time. (I know I'm not a total mutant in this regard, because even other people tend to visually represent speeds as little arrows of varying length, with greater lengths corresponding to higher speeds.)

In particular, I don't think of it as a mapping from distances to times. I don't find it natural to compare speeds by imagining a fixed distance corresponding to different travel times. Which explains why I find this problem so difficult, and other people's explanations so unilluminating: they tend to begin with something along the lines of "let d be the total distance traveled", upon which my brain experiences an error message that is perhaps best verbalized as something like "wait, what? Who said anything about a fixed distance? If speeds are varying, distances have to be varying, too!" 

If speed is a mapping from times to distances, then the way that you add speeds together and multiply them by numbers (the operations involved in averaging) is by performing the same operations on corresponding distances. (This is an instance of the general definition in mathematics of addition of functions: (f+g)(x) = f(x)+g(x), and similarly for multiplication by numbers: (af)(x) = a*f(x).) In concrete terms, what this means is that in order to add 30 mph and 20 mph together, all you have to do is add 30 and 20 and then stick "mph" on the result. Likewise with averages: provided the times involved are the same, if your speeds are 20 mph and 60 mph, your average speed is 40 mph. 

You cannot do these operations nearly so easily, however, if distance is being held fixed and time varying. Why not? Because if our mapping is from times to distances, then finding the time that corresponds to a given distance requires us to invert that mapping, and there's no easy way to invert the sum of two mappings (we can't for example just add the inverses of the mappings themselves). As a result, I find it difficult to understand the notion of "speed" while thinking of time as a dependent variable. 

And that, at least for me, is why this problem is confusing: the statement doesn't contain a prominent warning saying "Attention! Whereas you normally think of speed as the being the (longness-of-)distance traveled in a given time, here you need to think of it as the (shortness-of-)time required to travel a given distance. In other words, the question is actually about inverse speed, even though it talks about 'speed'."

Only when I have "inverse speed" in my vocabulary, can I then solve the problem -- which, properly formulated, would read: "If you want your inverse speed for the whole trip to be 1/40 hpm, and your inverse speed for the first half is 1/20 hpm, how 'slow' (i.e. inversely-fast) do you have to go on the second half?" 

Solution: Now it makes sense to begin with "let d be the total distance"! For inverse speed, unlike speed, accepts distances as inputs (and produces times as outputs). So, instead of distance = speed*time -- or, as I would rather have it, distance = speed(time) -- we have the formula time = speed-1(distance). Just as the original formula converts questions about speed to questions about distance, this new formula conveniently converts our question about inverse speeds to a question about times: we'll find the time required for the whole journey, the time required for the first half, subtract to find the time required for the second half, then finally convert this back to an inverse speed.

So if d is the total distance, the total time required for the journey is (1/40)*d = d/40. The time required for the first half of the journey is (1/20)*(d/2) = d/40. So the time required for the second half is d/40 - d/40 = 0. Hence the inverse speed must be 0.

So we're being asked to travel a nonzero distance in zero time -- which happens to be an impossibility.

Problem solved. 

Now, here's the interesting thing: I'll bet there are people reading this who (despite my best efforts) found the above explanation difficult to follow -- and yet had no trouble solving the problem themselves. And I'll bet there are probably also people who consider my explanation to be an example of belaboring the obvious.

I have a term for people in these categories: I call them "good at math". What unites them is the ability to produce correct solutions to problems like this without having to expend significant effort figuring out the sort of stuff I explained above.

If for any reason anyone is ever tempted to describe me as "good at math", I will invite them to reflect on the fact that an explicit understanding of the concept of "inverse speed" as described above (i.e. as a function that sends distances to times) was a necessary prerequisite for my being able to solve this problem, and then to consider that problems of this sort are customarily taught in middle- or high school, by middle- and high school teachers.

No indeed, I was not sorted into the tribe of "good at math".

I should find some sort of prize to award to anyone who can explain how to solve "mixing" problems in a manner I find comprehensible. (You know the type: how much of x% concentration do you add to your y% concentration to get z% concentration? et similia.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 25 March 2011 07:15:59PM 21 points [-]

Quine's naturalized epistemology. Epistemology is a branch of cognitive science

Saying this may count as staking an exciting position in philosophy, already right there; but merely saying this doesn't shape my expectations about how people think, or tell me how to build an AI, or how to expect or do anything concrete that I couldn't do before, so from an LW perspective this isn't yet a move on the gameboard. At best it introduces a move on the gameboard.

Tarski on language and truth.

I know Tarski as a mathematician and have acknowledged my debt to him as a mathematician. Perhaps you can learn about him in philosophy, but that doesn't imply people should study philosophy if they will also run into Tarski by doing mathematics.

Chalmers' formalization of Good's intelligence explosion argument...

...was great for introducing mainstream academia to Good, but if you compare it to http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Hanson-Yudkowsky_AI-Foom_Debate then you'll see that most of the issues raised didn't fit into Chalmers's decomposition at all. Not suggesting that he should've done it differently in a first paper, but still, Chalmers's formalization doesn't yet represent most of the debates that have been done in this community. It's more an illustration of how far you have to simplify things down for the sake of getting published in the mainstream, than an argument that you ought to be learning this sort of thing from the mainstream.

Dennett on belief in belief.

Acknowledged and credited. Like Drescher, Dennett is one of the known exceptions.

Bratman on intention. Bratman's 1987 book on intention has been a major inspiration to AI researchers working on belief-desire-intention models of intelligent behavior...

Appears as a citation only in AIMA 2nd edition, described as a philosopher who approves of GOFAI. "Not all philosophers are critical of GOFAI, however; some are, in fact, ardent advocates and even practitioners... Michael Bratman has applied his "belief-desire-intention" model of human psychology (Bratman, 1987) to AI research on planning (Bratman, 1992)." This is the only mention in the 2nd edition. Perhaps by the time they wrote the third edition they read more Bratman and figured that he could be used to describe work they had already done? Not exactly a "major inspiration", if so...

Functionalism and multiple realizability.

This comes under the heading of "things that rather a lot of computer programmers, though not all of them, can see as immediately obvious even if philosophers argue it afterward". I really don't think that computer programmers would be at a loss to understand that different systems can implement the same algorithm if not for Putnam and Lewis.

Explaining the cognitive processes that generate our intuitions... Talbot describes the project of his philosophy dissertation for USC this way: "...where psychological research indicates that certain intuitions are likely to be inaccurate, or that whole categories of intuitions are not good evidence, this will overall benefit philosophy."...

Same comment as for Quine: This might introduce interesting work, but while saying just this may count as an exciting philosophical position, it's not a move on the LW gameboard until you get to specifics. Then it's not a very impressive move unless it involves doing nonobvious reductionism, not just "Bias X might make philosophers want to believe in position Y". You are not being held to a special standard as Luke here; a friend named Kip Werking once did some work arguing that we have lots of cognitive biases pushing us to believe in libertarian free will that I thought made a nice illustration of the difference between LW-style decomposition of a cognitive algorithm and treating biases as an argument in the war of surface intuitions.

Pearl on causality.

Mathematician and AI researcher. He may have mentioned the philosophical literature in his book. It's what academics do. He may even have read the philosophers before he worked out the answer for himself. He may even have found that reading philosophers getting it wrong helped spur him to think about the problem and deduce the right answer by contrast - I've done some of that over the course of my career, though more in the early phases than the later phases. Can you really describe Pearl's work as "building" on philosophy, when IIRC, most of the philosophers were claiming at this point that causality was a mere illusion of correlation? Has Pearl named a previous philosopher, who was not a mathematician, who Pearl thought was getting it right?

Drescher's Good and Real.

Previously named by me as good philosophy, as done by an AI researcher coming in from outside for some odd reason. Not exactly a good sign for philosophy when you think about it.

Dennett's "intentional stance."

For a change I actually did read about this before forming my own AI theories. I can't recall ever actually using it, though. It's for helping people who are confused in a way that I wasn't confused to begin with. Dennett is in any case a widely known and named exception.

Bostrom on anthropic reasoning. And global catastrophic risks. And Pascal's mugging. And the doomsday argument. And the simulation argument.

A friend and colleague who was part of the transhumanist community and a founder of the World Transhumanist Association long before he was the Director of the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute, and who's done a great deal to precisionize transhumanist ideas about global catastrophic risks and inform academia about them, as well as excellent original work on anthropic reasoning and the simulation argument. Bostrom is familiar with Less Wrong and has even tried to bring some of the work done here into mainstream academia, such as Pascal's Mugging, which was invented right here on Less Wrong by none other than yours truly - although of course, owing to the constraints of academia and their prior unfamiliarity with elementary probability theory and decision theory, Bostrom was unable to convey the most exciting part of Pascal's Mugging in his academic writeup, namely the idea that Solomonoff-induction-style reasoning will explode the size of remote possibilities much faster than their Kolmogorov complexity diminishes their probability.

Reading Bostrom is a triumph of the rule "Read the most famous transhumanists" not "Read the most famous philosophers".

The doomsday argument, which was not invented by Bostrom, is a rare case of genuinely interesting work done in mainstream philosophy - anthropic issues are genuinely not obvious, genuinely worth arguing about and philosophers have done genuinely interesting work on it. Similarly, although LW has gotten further, there has been genuinely interesting work in philosophy on the genuinely interesting problems of Newcomblike dilemmas. There are people in the field who can do good work on the rather rare occasions when there is something worth arguing about that is still classed as "philosophy" rather than as a separate science, although they cannot actually solve those problems (as very clearly illustrated by the Newcomblike case) and the field as a whole is not capable of distinguishing good work from bad work on even the genuinely interesting subjects.

Ord on risks with low probabilities and high stakes.

Argued it on Less Wrong before he wrote the mainstream paper. The LW discussion got further, IMO. (And AFAIK, since I don't know if there was any academic debate or if the paper just dropped into the void.)

Deontic logic

Is not useful for anything in real life / AI. This is instantly obvious to any sufficiently competent AI researcher. See e.g. http://norvig.com/design-patterns/img070.htm, a mention that turned up in passing back when I was doing my own search for prior work on Friendly AI.

...I'll stop there, but do want to note, even if it's out-of-order, that the work you glowingly cite on statistical prediction rules is familiar to me from having read the famous edited volume "Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases" where it appears as a lovely chapter by Robyn Dawes on "The robust beauty of improper linear models", which quite stuck in my mind (citation from memory). You may have learned about this from philosophy, and I can see how you would credit that as a use of reading philosophy, but it's not work done in philosophy and, well, I didn't learn about it there so this particular citation feels a bit odd to me.

Comment author: komponisto 25 March 2011 07:47:46PM *  1 point [-]

I know Tarski as a mathematician and have acknowledged my debt to him as a mathematician.

As I pointed out before, the same is true for me of Quine. I don't know if lukeprog means to include Mathematical Logic when he keeps saying not to read Quine, but that book was effectively my introduction to the subject, and I still hold it in high regard. It's an elegant system with some important innovations, and features a particularly nice treatment of Gödel's incompleteness theorem (one of his main objectives in writing the book). I don't know if it's the best book on mathematical logic there is (I doubt it), but it appeals to a certain kind of personality, and I would certainly recommend it to a young high-schooler over reading Principia Mathematica, for example.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 24 March 2011 11:03:41PM *  1 point [-]

Um... what? Dead link, but what I would like is a definition of subjunctive deterrence. "Deterrence that makes us feel good"?

Comment author: komponisto 25 March 2011 05:50:42AM 3 points [-]

what I would like is a definition of subjunctive deterrence.

"Counterfactual" would be better. "Subjunctive" is a grammatical term.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 24 March 2011 04:28:09AM 6 points [-]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I upvote when I see something I want more of, and I comment when I have something to say. The two are not particularly well correlated, as far as I can tell, nor would I expect them to be.

Comment author: komponisto 24 March 2011 09:17:55PM *  0 points [-]

The variable that links them is having read the post. I suspect that JenniferRM's confusion, which I share, stems from the belief that comment numbers and upvote numbers both indicate how much interest there is in the post, but in a case like this those two metrics conflict with each other.

Comment author: FAWS 23 March 2011 11:38:58PM 1 point [-]

States of affairs only require an explanation if we have some contrary expectation, some reason to be surprised that they hold.

That's certainly a requirement for that state of affairs being evidence for anything, but it's not so clear for requiring an explanation, mostly because there seems to be no rigorous sense of what "requiring an explanation" means in the first place.

Comment author: komponisto 24 March 2011 09:00:38PM 1 point [-]

there seems to be no rigorous sense of what "requiring an explanation" means in the first place.

"Requiring an explanation" means "low probability". An "explanation" is a datum such that conditioning on it makes the probability high.

You can think of probability as an "inverse surprise score" that you try to keep as high as possible. (And of course, there's no cheating.)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 23 March 2011 01:39:43AM 0 points [-]

OK, it's likable, but it isn't lovable. Any theories about the shortage of lovable new music for orchestra?

Comment author: komponisto 23 March 2011 05:41:45AM 0 points [-]

We do not currently live in a culture where the most impressive new music has broad appeal.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Costs and Benefits of Scholarship
Comment author: AdeleneDawner 23 March 2011 04:43:29AM 4 points [-]

Note that downvoting isn't particularly censorious, here. A specific comment has to get multiple downvotes on its own merits to be hidden (comments from users with net-negative karma are throttled, but not hidden); even then the comment is just hidden, not removed, and there's a clear marker that the comment exists. Further, individual users can turn off the option of having downvoted comments hidden - I have, and if I remember correctly I've seen others mention that they've done so as well. Individuals' overall karma scores are not especially visible and don't affect very much, especially when one has more than 100-200 karma or so and is not especially at risk of going under the cutoff for posting to the main area of the site.

Comment author: komponisto 23 March 2011 05:22:34AM 2 points [-]

Note that downvoting isn't particularly censorious, here. A specific comment has to get multiple downvotes on its own merits to be hidden

The problem is that there is bandwagon behavior: a comment with a negative score will tend to be downvoted further. (This also applies on the positive side.)

Also, while a negative score may not prevent a comment from being viewed, it will have status repercussions on the author, as readers make note of it. The tendency will be for readers to pay less attention to comments by that user.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 22 March 2011 06:49:42PM 0 points [-]

Recommend some pieces and/or composers?

Is it possible that it has less prestige because it just isn't as likable for most people as the many sorts of competing music?

Comment author: komponisto 23 March 2011 12:15:09AM -1 points [-]

Recommend some pieces and/or composers?

Not particularly. :-)

But seriously, if you go to a concert by your local orchestra, there will often be a premiere of a new piece by some local composer which will sound like band music written for orchestra. (Unless your local orchestra is the New York Philharmonic or something. But even then, most new music will tend to be on the conservative side -- people such as Rouse or Harbison, rather than Babbitt or Ferneyhough.)

Is it possible that it has less prestige because it just isn't as likable for most people as the many sorts of competing music?

Usually it's plenty "likable", it just isn't particularly impressive.

Comment author: bentarm 21 March 2011 12:07:02PM 1 point [-]

This is the car analogy again, and my point was that the car analogy fails. Unless, that is, you also think that the ability to parrot back the sentence "light is a wave" is the legitimate goal of education in physics.

I'm sorry, but this is just a total non-sequitir. Parroting back "light is a wave" without having some idea of what this predicts is not useful. Being able to make use of a computer to do basic statistical analysis which makes predictions about the real world is useful, whether or not you can compute the underlying integrals. There are skills which are useful to have in and of themselves, without fully understanding how the underlying mechanisms work, and I think it quite likely that basic statistical analysis is one of them.

On the other hand, I think we basically agree that Paul Graham's view of compulsory education as essentially a giant creche to keep kids busy while their parents go to work is roughly accurate, so this really is a discussion abot what colour we should paint the bikeshed.

Comment author: komponisto 22 March 2011 04:19:03PM 1 point [-]

Being able to make use of a computer to do basic statistical analysis which makes predictions about the real world is useful, whether or not you can compute the underlying integrals.

Maybe it is "useful", but it's quite literally Artificial Arithmetic. As I've been arguing, I don't consider "usefulness" in this sense to be a worthwhile purpose of education. As I said above, if a person really needs to learn this kind of ad-hoc skill, they can learn it when they actually need it.

On the other hand, I think we basically agree that Paul Graham's view of compulsory education as essentially a giant creche to keep kids busy while their parents go to work is roughly accurate, so this really is a discussion abot what colour we should paint the bikeshed.

Yes, that's probably right.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 21 March 2011 04:05:55PM 0 points [-]

I'm interested in why there isn't a parallel track of new music for orchestral instruments which is written for the general public. Admittedly, there's movie music, but that seems very limited compared to what's possible if there were original compositions.

Comment author: komponisto 22 March 2011 04:00:37PM 1 point [-]

I'm interested in why there isn't a parallel track of new music for orchestral instruments which is written for the general public

There is. In fact most new orchestral music falls into this category. (The advanced stuff is difficult to perform and is generally only done by elite orchestras.) It just doesn't have the same prestige as the old classics or the new advanced stuff.

Comment author: Morendil 21 March 2011 07:03:25AM 1 point [-]

School is not for learning lessons, it's for learning meta-lessons, if it has any purpose at all other than babysitting.

The purpose of school, many suspect, is the creation of a compliant populace.

Comment author: komponisto 21 March 2011 07:07:37AM 0 points [-]

I am in fact one of those many.

But this whole discussion was clearly premised on the assumption that some other purpose might be found. (Otherwise, it doesn't matter what the curriculum is.)

Comment author: [deleted] 20 March 2011 11:32:23PM 6 points [-]

Thanks so much. I didn't know about Quine, and from what you've quoted it seems quite clearly in the same vein as LessWrong.

Also, out of curiosity, do you know if anything's been written about whether an agent (natural or artificial) needs goals in order to learn? Obviously humans and animals have values, at least in the sense of reward and punishment or positive and negative outcomes -- does anyone think that this is of practical importance for building processes that can form accurate beliefs about the world?

Comment author: komponisto 21 March 2011 02:01:55AM 3 points [-]

I didn't know about Quine

My first exposure was his mathematical logic book. At the time, I didn't even realize he had a reputation as a philosopher per se. (I knew from the back cover of the book that he was in the philosophy department at Harvard, but I just assumed that that was where anyone who got sufficiently "foundational" about their mathematics got put.)

Comment author: bentarm 21 March 2011 12:41:08AM *  5 points [-]

You (or your computer) needs to compute some kind of (approximation to an) integral or derivative in order to do this. Or someone has to have done it for you.

Well, yes, and you (or your computer) needs to be able to compute the reciprocal eigenvector of a large matrix in order to be able to use the Pagerank algorithm to search the internet. Should everyone be learning advanced scientific computing techniques and basic linear algebra before they use Google?

You are allowed to do some things without fully understanding how they work. You say elsewhere in this thread that you have no idea how programming works - does this mean you shouldn't be allowed to alter your search engine preferences?

It is both unnecessary and undesirable for everyone to understand everything about everything - specialism works. Knowing how to compute the integrals involved in deriving a Normal distribution table is unnecessary for being able to make good use of the table, just like knowing how to compute eigenvectors is unnecessary in order to make good use of Google.

Comment author: komponisto 21 March 2011 01:32:15AM *  0 points [-]

Well, yes, and you (or your computer) needs to be able to compute the reciprocal eigenvector of a large matrix in order to be able to use the Pagerank algorithm to search the internet. Should everyone be learning advanced scientific computing techniques and basic linear algebra before they use Google?

This is the car analogy again, and my point was that the car analogy fails. Unless, that is, you also think that the ability to parrot back the sentence "light is a wave" is the legitimate goal of education in physics.

School is not for learning lessons, it's for learning meta-lessons, if it has any purpose at all other than babysitting. If for some reason someone needs to acquire the actual procedural knowledge of looking something up in a specific kind of table, they can learn it on the job. What they need to learn in school are the meta-lessons that magic doesn't exist, curiosity is a virtue, and that they need to be wondering what parts things are made of. But if all you do is repeatedly teach them to follow sets of instructions without the appropriate intellectual context, then they will learn the exact opposite meta-lessons: that it's okay to have magical nodes in one's model of the world, and that they shouldn't ask questions.

You say elsewhere in this thread that you have no idea how programming works

Not exactly. What I actually meant by "I don't know anything about programming" was "I don't know any programming languages, and don't understand how instructions written in programming languages affect computer hardware."

It is both unnecessary and undesirable for everyone to understand everything about everything

My position is not "it is desirable for everyone to understand everything about everything". It is "if you don't know what an integral is, you cannot understand the subject of statistics".

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 March 2011 10:28:21PM 7 points [-]

I'm highly skeptical. I suspect that you may have failed to distinguish between sensory empiricism, which is a large standard movement, and the kind of thinking embodied in How An Algorithm Feels From the Inside which I've never seen anywhere else outside of Gary Drescher (and rumors that it's in Dennett books I haven't read).

Simple litmus test: What is the Quinean position on free will?

"It's nonsense!" = what I think standard "naturalistic" philosophy says

"If the brain uses the following specific AI-ish algorithms without conscious awareness of it, the corresponding mental ontology would appear from the inside to generate the following intuitions and apparent impossibilities about 'free will'..." = Less Wrong / Yudkowskian

Comment author: komponisto 21 March 2011 12:17:38AM 21 points [-]

the kind of thinking embodied in How An Algorithm Feels From the Inside which I've never seen anywhere else outside of Gary Drescher (and rumors that it's in Dennett books I haven't read).

Dennett is one of the leaders of mainstream philosophy. If it's in Dennett, Luke wins.

what I think standard "naturalistic" philosophy says

How did you acquire your beliefs about what standard "naturalistic" philosophy says? I have this impression that it was from outside caricatures rather than philosophers themselves.

Remember Scott Aaronson's critique of Stephen Wolfram? You seem at risk of being in a similar position with respect to mainstream analytic philosophy as Wolfram was with respect to mainstream science.

Comment author: bentarm 20 March 2011 03:23:10PM 5 points [-]

False dilemma. Probability and statistics involve calculus. Areas under curves, anyone?

Really? I don't need to know how an engine works to drive a car. I also don't need to know how to integrate exp(-x^2) in order to be able to check whether a variable follows a Normal distribution.

And I've always found calculus more fun. Probability and statistics were about lists of data pertaining to experiments on rats, or tricky combinatorial problems that I can't do; calculus was about cool stuff like limits and infinity.

This almost certainly makes you massively abnormal (I'm abnormal in approximately the same direction). We should not be optmising a general school curriculum for weird people who think stuff like limits is cool and prefer abstract explanations to concrete ones.

Comment author: komponisto 20 March 2011 04:38:19PM *  0 points [-]

I...don't need to know how to integrate exp(-x^2) in order to be able to check whether a variable follows a Normal distribution.

(1) Yes you do. Seriously. You (or your computer) needs to compute some kind of (approximation to an) integral or derivative in order to do this. Or someone has to have done it for you, in which case...

(2) Review Two More Things to Unlearn from School, Fake Explanations, Guessing the Teacher's Password, Truly Part of You, Understanding your Understanding, and numerous other LW posts in order to simmer in the idea that this way of thinking is Bad.

This almost certainly makes you massively abnormal... We should not be optmising a general school curriculum for weird people...

That's exactly what I was told for my whole childhood, as I was being flunked.

Yes, sanity is massively abnormal, isn't it? So what conclusion do we draw from this? Don't bother trying to spread sanity, and instead punish the sane ones?

Just what exactly is the optimization target here?

Comment author: timtyler 20 March 2011 10:52:08AM 0 points [-]

I have to agree with him. What do the people here think?

He's right at the end: calculus is outdated, maths should go digital.

Comment author: komponisto 20 March 2011 03:44:41PM 0 points [-]

calculus is outdated, maths should go digital.

Calculus is digital. The conceptual reduction of the continuous to the discrete so that it could be subjected to computation was the whole frickin' point.

Comment author: Morendil 20 March 2011 08:30:06AM 1 point [-]

I don't know as much math as I should, but I often have occasion to wish that more programmers and software engineers knew about things like probability densities and calibration, because that would reduce some crucial inferential distances. I rarely wish more programmers knew more calculus.

Comment author: komponisto 20 March 2011 03:32:33PM *  1 point [-]

I often have occasion to wish that more programmers and software engineers knew about things like probability densities...I rarely wish more programmers knew more calculus.

Does anyone else notice the contradiction here? This is a perfect illustration of my point: a "probability density" is a function whose integral gives you the probability. In fact, not only is the very definition of the object logically dependent on calculus, but understanding why the object exists requires knowledge of measure theory (specifically the Radon-Nikodym theorem).

...which, come to think of it, is not surprising given that measure theory is required to define "probability" in the first place!

Yes, mathematical education is extremely screwed up. But the usual complaints and controversies don't even begin to get to the real issue, which is that people can go through education in mathematics without appreciating the power of abstraction or understanding the need for the ideas in their head to form a coherent logical structure.

Ironically (in view of the parent comment), the solution is probably to teach computer programming! I don't know anything about programming myself, but my impression is that this is exactly the kind of thing one needs to "get" in order to be a good programmer.

Comment author: komponisto 20 March 2011 03:07:24AM 6 points [-]

Probability and basic statistics, he argues, are not only more generally useful than calculus, they are also more fun.

False dilemma. Probability and statistics involve calculus. Areas under curves, anyone?

And I've always found calculus more fun. Probability and statistics were about lists of data pertaining to experiments on rats, or tricky combinatorial problems that I can't do; calculus was about cool stuff like limits and infinity. (It's no coincidence that calculus was something I taught myself from books at age 13, and statistics was a class I flunked in school at age 17.)

Statistics was never explained to me in a way I could understand. I had a similar experience with physics. Later, I realized this was because the explanations weren't abstract enough.

Comment author: AstroCJ 18 March 2011 05:33:19PM *  11 points [-]

I am alarmed and dismayed that no-one has raised the issue of privacy in this thread. Swimmer963, just from glancing through your comments, you're [rot13'd description of Swimmer963 deleted].

I didn't whizz through those to be creepy (actually I was impressed at how you seem to be consistently sensible), but if you're going to share incredibly personal details about "a friend" who was raped, we need to know if this information has been posted with her consent. The above is very easily enough to personally identify you.

On whether or not this will be important or not: [blanked].

EDIT: Deleted precis of Swimmer963's situation; it had served its purpose. EDIT: Deleted some personal information.

Comment author: komponisto 18 March 2011 05:45:08PM *  2 points [-]

if you're going to share incredibly personal details about "a friend"... we need to know if this information has been posted with her consent.

I think (or, anyway, hope) what you meant to write was "you need her consent before posting", rather than "we need to know whether you obtained her consent [so that we can socially penalize you if it turns out you didn't]."

In response to comment by komponisto on How to Be Happy
Comment author: [deleted] 18 March 2011 03:58:05PM 1 point [-]

I think you can explain almost all of this by the fact that within the rules of academia, middle-aged professors do MUCH more administration, grant-writing, editorial work, and "management" in general than people in their 20's and early 30's. The scientific world appears to need management, and we've decided to allocate the management work by age/seniority. My experience with senior professors is not that they've gotten too dim or lazy to do research (ha!) but that they wish they had more time to devote to research.

In response to comment by [deleted] on How to Be Happy
Comment author: komponisto 18 March 2011 04:25:56PM 3 points [-]

That's the standard explanation (at least among people who don't buy the traditional magical theory of youth), and was my previous theory.

Actually, really, they're theories of different phenomena. People who don't do as much research simply because they're busy administrating aren't really "declining with age"; they just literally aren't spending as much time. The hypothesis I presented above was an attempt to explain the nature of specifically-age-related (but non-medical) intellectual decline, such as it exists.

The two cases can be distinguished by observing whether the senior professors return to pre-administration levels of productivity after they become emeriti.

In response to comment by komponisto on How to Be Happy
Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 March 2011 08:59:56PM 2 points [-]

Erm, I strongly suspect that doing great work in your 20s is not just about status.

Comment author: komponisto 17 March 2011 09:33:01PM *  7 points [-]

Actually, I'm starting to suspect it is. (Well, not literally "just", of course.)

My current theory is that people who do great work in their 20s don't do so later mainly because: (1) their status is already secure, and they don't have to work as hard to maintain it; and (2) continuing to work on the highest level would require them to study the ideas of (and thereby subordinate themselves to) lower-status younger folk.

This theory came to me when I observed that some older academics appeared to have lost their intellectual curiosity, not just their physical stamina (or whatever variable people think it is that causes the [alleged] phenomenon).

That said, my comment was actually about why we don't see people do great work later after failing to do so in their 20s, not why we do see people who do great work in their 20s fail to do so later. The point was that, after some had done great work early, having-done-great-work-early became a coveted, even necessary, status signal.

Comment author: Dreaded_Anomaly 17 March 2011 08:00:47PM 2 points [-]

Upvoted, but one quibble:

If you, say, claim that "Time didn't exist before the Big Bang" is a complete and satisfactory solution to the problem "Why does something exist instead of nothing?", rather than (as is the correct answer) trying to explain why saying "God" (a) doesn't help and (b) constitutes the cardinal sin of Just Making Stuff Up, then you have lost all claim to any moral victory.

The point of that sort of argument, in my view, is not to propose a satisfactory solution, but to demonstrate why the question isn't meaningful. When a person asks a question like "What caused the universe?", ey is assuming that the universe needs a cause. However, causality is a property of events within a time-ordered system, and the universe is such a system, rather than being within the system. Time and space are unified, so considering them separately (which is what the question does) is erroneous.

This is similar for questions like "why is there something rather than nothing?". Implicit in the question is the possibility that there could have been nothing, and that's wholly unsupported by observation; even the vacuum is full of virtual particles. We may think that we can imagine that possibility, but that doesn't make it viable. That kind of question is never going to have a satisfactory answer, because the underlying premise is faulty.

I agree that it's important to point out how "God" isn't a good answer to those questions, but I think it's more important to point out the flawed thinking which leads to asking the questions in the first place.

Comment author: komponisto 17 March 2011 09:06:36PM 4 points [-]

I agree with this comment except for the last part:

...it's important to point out how "God" isn't a good answer to those questions, but I think it's more important to point out the flawed thinking which leads to asking the questions in the first place.

I happen to think pointing out how "God" is a bad answer is actually more important.

Nonetheless, the other lesson -- that the laws of physics do not necessarily have to carve up reality the way your brain wants to -- is also important, and I think Eliezer exaggerates when he says that your answer is "every bit as terrible as the religious one". As Sean Carroll puts it:

Modern physics doesn’t describe the world in terms of “causes” and “effects.” It simply posits that matter...acts in accordance with certain dynamical laws, known as “equations of motion.”... a concept like “cause” doesn’t appear anywhere in the equations of motion themselves, nor in the specification of the type of matter being described; it is only an occasionally-appropriate approximation, useful to us humans in narrating the behavior of some macroscopic configuration of equation-obeying matter.

In response to comment by byrnema on How to Be Happy
Comment author: [deleted] 17 March 2011 05:02:09PM 4 points [-]

You're right, it isn't fair. I'm not at that point in my life yet, but I've seen how rough it can be, and I probably don't know the half of it.

From what I can see, on the outside, the difficulty is that academia is a very "career-tracked" world -- you absolutely must do A before you do B, and what's more, it's assumed that you'll do it at a specific age, too. That would have to change to make it less crazy for women.

In response to comment by [deleted] on How to Be Happy
Comment author: komponisto 17 March 2011 05:47:54PM 5 points [-]

I'd like to point out that this craziness is not specific to academia or to women. If you look carefully, you'll realize that society in general strongly expects people (of both sexes) to be at certain stages of accomplishment by certain ages, with those who fall off this "track" being penalized by means of a permanent status ceiling.

The problem is that society can't make up its mind about whether it wants to award status based on age or accomplishment. If age, then people should be allowed to start a new career at any age without status penalty. If accomplishment, then most people of any age won't have much status anyway, so switching fields wouldn't be any more unusual or a problem than it is for today's college students.

(There's no need for anyone to reply with the economic, historical, etc. reasons why things are the way they are. I'm just pointing out that I don't like it this way.)

In fact, now that I think about it, this is probably what is really going on with all that mythos about youth in mathematics: the real story isn't that people can only do great work in their 20s, but that youthful accomplishment = status, to such an extent that the kind of people who could make great contributions in middle age if they were given 20 years to study the subject before publishing (or permitted to switch in from another subject) aren't allowed into the field at all.

Comment author: Zachary_Kurtz 17 March 2011 03:40:58PM 4 points [-]

Again, I like your characters but I think you're missing one. The person who thinks that belief in [a] God is the result of rational and reasonable thought.

Comment author: komponisto 17 March 2011 04:07:58PM *  4 points [-]

Barbara might describe herself this way. We would of course say that she's "refusing to apply rationality" to the religious domain, but that's not necessarily what she would say.

A religious person who admits that their belief is irrational is probably already in Caroline territory.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 15 March 2011 02:45:04AM -1 points [-]

However, on behalf of my left-handed friends, I claim that -i is the true square root of -1.

The map x+iy -> x-iy is an isomorphism. So i and -i are mathematically indistinguishable.

Comment author: komponisto 15 March 2011 04:10:55AM 4 points [-]

Yes, that was precisely the joke. :-)

Comment author: komponisto 15 March 2011 02:04:20AM *  5 points [-]

Spoiler alert:

"Tau" is 2pi.

That was anticlimactic, I have to say.

Yes, 2pi is arguably even more fundamental than pi. In fact, some of my friends and I once celebrated "2pi day" one summer, in view of that fact. That said, writing that long of a manifesto on how "pi is wrong" (or, if you prefer, "tau/2 is wrong") is way overdoing it.

However, on behalf of my left-handed friends, I claim that -i is the true square root of -1.

In response to comment by Alicorn on Being a teacher
Comment author: Emile 14 March 2011 10:50:26PM *  0 points [-]

French is special in that adjectives can go either before or after the noun; I don't know what the rule is but the one you give sounds right (though you'd say "une fille mignone" for "a cute girl", so I'm not sure it's the whole rule - there may be a finite set of adjectives (mostly short ones?) that are allowed to go in front).

In english though, adjectives are always in front, and I don't think the same rule works for their order: "Sad little boy" and "interesting old man" sound like a counter-examples, though your rule would work for the French translation. For most cases in English of "A1 A2 N" I can think of, the French translation is either "B A2 A1", "A2 B A1" or (more rarely) "A1 A2 N", which suggests that the "most important" adjective (A2) always stays closest to the noun, in French even going in front of it if it's very close.

So the rule in English would be the opposite of the rule in French :D (except for when both adjectives go in front of the noun in French, in which case their order is the same as in English).

ETA: this was probably wrong, I could think of plenty of counter-examples to those rules.

In response to comment by Emile on Being a teacher
Comment author: komponisto 15 March 2011 12:34:39AM 1 point [-]

It's worth mentioning that the position of the same adjective in French (and other Romance languages) can vary, affecting the meaning to any degree from connotational nuance to literal denotation. A general rule taught to foreigners is that placing the adjective before the noun tends to suggest that the quality characterizes all members of the class denoted by the noun, while placing it after characterizes the individual specifically. (An example from the delightful old version of Teach Yourself French that sticks in my mind is savant professeur vs. professeur savant.)

Sometimes the adjective is placed before the noun as a kind of rhetorical flourish, as in assoluta innocenza, an Italian phrase I've had occasion to use.

In response to comment by SilasBarta on Being a teacher
Comment author: Emile 14 March 2011 10:08:42PM *  7 points [-]

Oh, that, yes - I ascribe that more to the fact that written French just has a lot of letters you don't pronounce, or only pronounce in certain contexts, especially at the end of words (or h at the beginning).

But those letters still exist, even in spoken french: the verbs in "tu vois" and "il voit" sound the same ("vwa") in isolation, but with "arriver" behind them, they can sound like "tu vwazarriver" and "il vwatarriver".

In response to comment by Emile on Being a teacher
Comment author: komponisto 14 March 2011 11:45:46PM 1 point [-]

Not to mention the fact that only some of the forms are homophones anyway: parle/parles/parlent sound the same, but they're different from parlons and parlez.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 14 March 2011 05:39:34PM 6 points [-]

A simpler argument would be noticing that what you're actually doing is not just taking too many calories today, but following a strategy of taking too many calories every day. You don't need TDT to see that, it's a matter of recognizing a precommitment, and making decisions about alternative precommitments (strategies).

Comment author: komponisto 14 March 2011 07:07:33PM *  0 points [-]

Indeed, it's an example of the general problem-solving strategy of ascending (or recursing) to the meta level.

Comment author: prase 14 March 2011 05:06:27PM 3 points [-]

This comment tends to discredit your first comment, since the typical reader of this thread probably takes it for granted that MoR is good and is wanting to know whether this story is good as MoR.

How well warranted is this assumption, i.e. that a typical reader takes the quality of MoR for granted? Readers of LW who don't like MoR probably don't comment on it.

Comment author: komponisto 14 March 2011 06:20:10PM *  1 point [-]

How well warranted is this assumption, i.e. that a typical reader takes the quality of MoR for granted?

A typical reader of this post, mind you.

Readers of LW who don't like MoR will probably have a strong tendency not to be interested in "rationalist fanfiction" in general. If someone reads LW and is also willing to entertain a rewriting of a famous fantasy story such that the characters are made to be LW-style "rationalists", it seems highly unlikely that they're going to be turned off specifically by the idiosyncratic details of MoR.

Given this, I think the assumption is very well warranted. Of course, it's eminently falsifiable: if there are large numbers of people who love the idea of rationalist fanfiction but hate MoR specifically, let them speak up.

Comment author: lucidfox 14 March 2011 08:00:24AM 0 points [-]

HP: MoR isn't exactly a model to follow either. Even ignoring its "liberal" approach to the original canon, it's weak as a work of literature and really only serves as an for Eliezer to advocate his views.

Comment author: komponisto 14 March 2011 03:15:01PM 12 points [-]

Know your audience. And the context.

This comment tends to discredit your first comment, since the typical reader of this thread probably takes it for granted that MoR is good and is wanting to know whether this story is good as MoR.

Analogy: suppose someone posted a link to a new philosophy-of-physics paper, and then you made a comment saying that the paper was terrible and full of flaws. But as the discussion continued, it emerged that the reason you didn't like it was because it assumed the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which you assumed to be wrong. The reaction of the LW readership is going to be something like "oh, well, never mind you, then."

Critiquing something on the basis of unstated assumptions you know the audience doesn't share is disingenuous. This is true even if your criticism is correct.

Comment author: beriukay 14 March 2011 02:55:56AM 0 points [-]

That was actually going to be a follow-up question, as I assumed that those who write music also play it.

In response to comment by beriukay on Off-topic Thread
Comment author: komponisto 14 March 2011 01:51:55PM 1 point [-]

Not a correct assumption in general!

(A note for those who inhabit or frequent institutions of learning: when you find out that someone is a student or faculty member in the music department, do not ask them what instrument they play. Instead, ask them what their area is. If they say "performance", then ask them what instrument they play -- or whether they're a vocalist.)

Comment author: grouchymusicologist 13 March 2011 05:36:26PM 0 points [-]

I've been meaning to ask you about that, if there's anything you'd care to say publicly. What kind of music do you write? (Sorry, I know composers hate that question.) Is that how you make your living?

Comment author: komponisto 13 March 2011 06:00:15PM 0 points [-]

Answered by PM.

In response to comment by beriukay on Off-topic Thread
Comment author: grouchymusicologist 13 March 2011 04:26:23PM 0 points [-]

I would say I am a low-professional-level pianist: I have many years of training and graduate degrees, and am capable of making a living at it and have done so in the past. But I never had the degree of aptitude or ability for obsessive focus such that I could have been a major professional performer (recordings, international concert schedule, teaching job at a top music school), so I turned more toward music scholarship, which suits me as a career very well. I still do play some in various personal/professional settings.

Comment author: komponisto 13 March 2011 05:43:16PM 1 point [-]

Did you by chance ever happen to see this particular Pandora's-box-of-a-subthread?

In response to Off-topic Thread
Comment author: beriukay 13 March 2011 01:16:14PM 1 point [-]

I recall people occasionally talking about music, and I was wondering how many of you play instruments, what instrument(s), and what the spread of competence levels is.

As for me, most of my experience is with piano followed by guitar, and I consider myself somewhere on the low end of intermediate with them both.

In response to comment by beriukay on Off-topic Thread
Comment author: komponisto 13 March 2011 05:23:29PM 0 points [-]

Some of us write music.

Comment author: taryneast 13 March 2011 12:59:53PM *  -2 points [-]

Wow, this is a really strong comment over something that I hadn't realised was so important to you.

Sure thing - if what I said was not relevant to the main point of your conclusion - tell me that... but accusing me of status-seeking, purposeful-derailment and showing-off is a bit strong for a simple question about your claim.

...and I still have to point out that earlier, you did claim that humanity was the only species with curiosity [emphasis added by me] :

If your only goal is maximizing inclusive genetic fitness, then the "instrumental value" of a trait that only one species on Earth possesses is indeed unlikely to be very high.

It's fine if you then changed that point in your argument, and maybe I missed it due to miscommunication...

but I'd rather you point out "oops, you got my argument wrong" than "you're purposefully trying to create barriers to communication".

I find it ironic that you have brought up the principle of charity at this point...

you see, you've assumed that I was trying to derail your argument... which is particularly uncharitable about my intentions.

Actually, I'll be honest: I really couldn't care less about your argument - I'm actually (still) interested in what I originally asked...

You claimed to know something about curiosity in non-human species... and I'm curious about curiosity in non-human species.

So as I originally asked: do you have any actual research on that subject?

Comment author: komponisto 13 March 2011 04:46:47PM 0 points [-]

Wow, this is a really strong comment over something that I hadn't realised was so important to you.

I can understand how it might seem that way, but you have to realize that this was in the context of a perfectly fine comment being downvoted to -3 (!), in addition to what felt like a flurry of comments suggesting I was displaying zoological ignorance and underestimating the intellects of puppies and octopi.

This particular subtopic isn't important to me at all; what's important to me is being able to efficiently have discussions on a high level of sophistication, without having to spend time and effort plugging status leaks resulting from someone's misunderstanding (willful or not) of my words.

you've assumed that I was trying to derail your argument... which is particularly uncharitable about my intentions.

No, I didn't assume that you were trying to derail the argument (read the comment again, carefully!); I just noted that you had, in fact, derailed it.

And, of course, I don't think the status-seeking/showing-off was deliberate or conscious on your part. It's what we're always doing, all the time, mostly unconsciously. We can't stop it, and nor should we; status is a basic need for neurologically normal humans (and yes, that category includes readers of LW). What we have to do is learn to recognize when it's interfering with our other aims, and make adjustments to reduce this interference.

For example, before making a correction to someone's comment (by default, an aggressive status move), ask yourself whether you will be communicating new information to the person -- something relevant to the discussion that they genuinely didn't know. If so, then -- especially in a setting like this, where information is highly valued -- it will usually be worth the tradeoff, and the person may even be grateful for the correction, willing to pay the status cost in exchange for the info. Otherwise, however, unless you're careful to signal that you're not making a status challenge (generally accomplished by packing your correction full of deferential language), you will most likely just end up provoking a verbal battle that won't actually produce anything of intellectual value.

The latter is basically what happened in this instance. I'm a pretty regular reader and commenter on this site, where knowledge of the basics of logic tends to be taken as a matter of course. As such, I can be assumed to be well-versed in the fact that the negation of a statement of the form "for all x, P(x)" is a statement of the form "there exists x such that not-P(x)". Consequently, pointing out to me that, as you put it,

the counter-claim does not require that 100% of all species on the earth have curiosity, but that curiosity exists in some non-human species.

is not informative. Instead, it's more like you "caught" me making a "mistake" in the "debate game", and are now seizing upon it to "score a point" -- as if we were playing chess, and I made a blunder that you were going to exploit.

Now, it's true that I did originally say that "only one" species possessed curiosity. However, somebody before you actually asked whether I meant that literally -- and I responded with a comment that should have made it clear (albeit implicitly) that my remark had been mainly an allusion not to human superiority over other intelligent mammals, but to the fact that most living species are things like bacteria. I then made that point explicit when you commented with your puppy anecdote. At this stage there should have been no room for misunderstanding about what my point was: even if we completely grant the strongest claims of animal enthusiasts, curiosity is still rare among life on Earth.

You claimed to know something about curiosity in non-human species

This is where you misunderstood. My claim was not about whether the animal enthusiasts are correct or not. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. (I tend to think that even if they are, human curiosity is still an exceptional outlier of a phenomenon, if only quantitatively.) But regardless, the only thing I claimed to know was that if a species isn't human it probably doesn't have curiosity. Given that 71% of species are bacteria I regard that claim as trivially true.

Comment author: Desrtopa 13 March 2011 12:34:43AM 1 point [-]

Some invertebrates, such as octopi and mantis shrimp, appear to exhibit curiosity. And some bird species are intelligent enough to be capable with basic communication with humans. Mammals may contain the most intelligent species known, but that doesn't mean they have a monopoly on intelligence or curiosity.

Comment author: komponisto 13 March 2011 05:03:16AM 1 point [-]

The "a few other species may have primitive analogues" disclaimer was supposed to cover things like this.

See above. This is not about human or mammalian chauvinism. This is about the fact that, whatever neat things some species can do, there also exist numerous biological niches that do not in fact involve higher-level cognitive functions such as "curiosity". Most organisms don't even have brains, for goodness' sake.

Comment author: taryneast 12 March 2011 11:25:34PM -1 points [-]

Interesting list... but the counter-claim does not require that 100% of all species on the earth have curiosity, but that curiosity exists in some non-human species.

Therefore only a single example (eg a cute puppy) will destroy that claim.

Actually listing the numbers of non-cute species does not in any way help the original claim.

Comment author: komponisto 13 March 2011 04:51:03AM 0 points [-]

Therefore only a single example (eg a cute puppy) will destroy that claim.

This kind of nitpicking is a form of logical rudeness, not to mention being a violation of the principle of charity.

Let me remind you again what I said, with emphasis added:

Are humans the only species on Earth that have curiosity?

Yes, approximately. A few other species may possess primitive analogues, but even if you throw those in the proportion of species is extremely low.

(For some utterly bizarre reason this entirely reasonable and completely correct comment is currently sitting at -2.)

It is perfectly clear from the literal wording, never mind the context, that the statement is approximate, not absolute. Furthermore, the approximate claim was all that was necessary for the argument I was making -- so that even if I had made an absolute claim (in the sense of literal wording), you still should have interpreted it as an approximate or probabilistic claim by the principle of charity (as well as the principle of sticking-to-the-point-of-the-discussion-and-not-derailing-the-flow-of-discourse-with-an-attempt-to-gain-status-points-by-showing-off-your-knowledge-of-how-to-form-the-logical-negation-of-a-statement).

To do what you have done here is simply to create a communication barrier where none need have existed. As a result of this tangential argument-over-nothing, the original point has gotten completely lost, and I am now feeling a sensation of acute irritation despite having no idea whether you or any of the other nitpickers who have flocked to this subthread actually have a substantive disagreement with me or not.

Here, for the record, is my argument:

(1) Only a small minority of Earth's species have curiosity.

(2) Therefore, curiosity is not necessary for maximizing inclusive genetic fitness.

(3 Therefore, we should not be surprised by results such as that cited by lix.

If anyone actually has anything interesting to say against this argument, let them say it. Otherwise, let's not bother.

Comment author: taryneast 12 March 2011 07:21:37PM 1 point [-]

Can you show some research on that claim? Specifically, you seem to be claiming that theres a difference in kind (rather than just degree) between my own curiosity and that of other creatures.

Having observed a puppy gleefully searching new stuff found in his territory, or new people and places that he's just been introduced to and similar-seeming behaviour in other animals - I'm uncertain that we could claim they were non-curious.

I personally see little difference in kind between that and the similar actions seen in baby humans. The fact that a human is far better able to direct their curiosity, I think is based on our different quantity, or capacity for intelligent curiosity.

Comment author: komponisto 12 March 2011 10:41:53PM 2 points [-]

Can you show some research on that claim?...Having observed a puppy gleefully searching new stuff found in his territory...I'm uncertain that we could claim they were non-curious.

Number of species according to Wikipedia: at least 7 million, of which:

  • at least 5 million (71%) are bacteria
  • 1,203,375 (17%) are invertebrate animals
  • 297,326 (4%) are plants
  • 59,811 (0.8%) are vertebrate animals, of which 5,416 (0.07%) are mammals (the category that includes humans, chimpanzees, dogs, and every other species to which the emotion of "curiosity" might conceivably be attributed).

"Species" != "things like cute puppies".

Comment author: lukeprog 12 March 2011 02:37:29AM *  2 points [-]

Maybe. But while I'm pretty familiar with philosophy journals and cognitive science journals, I'm not familiar with some other types of journals, and so I'm not sure whether my advice applies to, for example, math journals.

Comment author: komponisto 12 March 2011 02:51:08AM 4 points [-]

I'm not sure whether my advice applies to, for example, math journals.

It definitely does.

Comment author: lukeprog 11 March 2011 09:07:14AM *  14 points [-]

I just realized that maybe I'm confusing things by talking about philosophy journals, when really I mean to include cognitive science journals in general.

But what I said in my original post applies to cognitive science journals as well, it's just that when you're talking about philosophy (e.g. idealized preference theories of value), you place what you're saying in the context of the relevant philosophy, and when you're talking about neuroscience (e.g. the complexity of human values) then you place what you're saying in the context of the relevant neuroscience, and when you're talking about AI (e.g. approaches to AGI) then you place what you're saying in the context of relevant AI research. You can do all three in the same paper.

The kind of philosophy I spend most of my time reading these days is just like that, actually. Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment spends just as much time discussing work done by psychologists like Dawes and Kahneman as it does discussing epistemologists like Goldman and Stich. Philosophy and Neuroscience: A Ruthlessly Reductive Account spends much more time discussing neuroscience than it does philosophy. Three Faces of Desire is split about 60/40 between philosophy and neuroscience. Many of the papers on machine ethics aka Friendly AI are split about 50/50 between philosophy and AI programming. Cognitive science is like this, after all.

In fact, I've been going through the Pennachin & Goertzel volume, reading it as a philosophy of mind book when most people, I guess, are probably considering it a computer science book. Whatever. Cognitive science is probably what I should have said. This is all cognitive science, whether it's slightly more heavy on philosophy or computer science or neuroscience or experimental psychology or whatever. The problem is that philosophy almost just is cognitive science, to me. Cognitive science + logics/maths.

Anyway, sorry if the 'philosophy' word caused any confusion.

Comment author: komponisto 12 March 2011 02:02:48AM 6 points [-]

You probably should have just titled it "How SIAI could publish in mainstream academic journals".

Comment author: Swimmer963 11 March 2011 08:15:01PM 1 point [-]

If your only goal is maximizing inclusive genetic fitness, then the "instrumental value" of a trait that only one species on Earth possesses is indeed unlikely to be very high.

Are humans the only species on Earth that have curiosity?

Comment author: komponisto 11 March 2011 09:09:01PM 1 point [-]

Are humans the only species on Earth that have curiosity?

Yes, approximately. A few other species may possess primitive analogues, but even if you throw those in the proportion of species is extremely low.

Comment author: lix 11 March 2011 06:12:58PM 4 points [-]

I think you are probably right that people who make a great contribution to humanity tend to be unusually curious. But that doesn't mean that being unusually curious is rational for individuals.

Most people are highly unlikely to make a great contribution even if they really wanted to, and most people have other priorities anyway.

Kevin Laland and others recently ran a tournament to study how different learning strategies fared in evolution (Science 328: 208-213). They found that under a very broad range of conditions winning strategies tended to a) copy others rather than innovate and b) learn little, exploit a lot. This suggests that contestants generally overestimated the instrumental value of curiosity.

Comment author: komponisto 11 March 2011 07:45:07PM 1 point [-]

I think you are probably right that people who make a great contribution to humanity tend to be unusually curious. But that doesn't mean that being unusually curious is rational for individuals.

Replace "curious" with "X", and you've got a Fully General argument against any claim that it's rational to imitate people who make a great contribution.

Most people are highly unlikely to make a great contribution even if they really wanted to

...which may be due in part to their lack of curiosity...

and most people have other priorities anyway

Most people don't read LW. Among people who do, I expect a higher than normal percentage to have goals for which curiosity is atypically instrumentally valuable.

But even in general: most people's priority is maximizing their status. I claim that curiosity is positively correlated with status. (I don't claim the correlation is perfect.)

Kevin Laland and others recently ran a tournament to study how different learning strategies fared in evolution....[which] suggests that contestants generally overestimated the instrumental value of curiosity.

If your only goal is maximizing inclusive genetic fitness, then the "instrumental value" of a trait that only one species on Earth possesses is indeed unlikely to be very high.

Comment author: lukeprog 11 March 2011 02:18:59AM 5 points [-]

Agree with your point, though I wouldn't say the extremely diverse set of essays in Chalmers' compilation are a shining example of philosophical clarity. I would recommend something like Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment or Philosophy and Neuroscience: A Ruthlessly Reductive Account.

Comment author: komponisto 11 March 2011 06:12:39AM 2 points [-]

I wouldn't say the extremely diverse set of essays in Chalmers' compilation are a shining example of philosophical clarity

Oh, certainly not -- it's a sampler, and all levels of clarity and confusion present in the field are represented. I cited it to show the typical writing style of papers in philosophy (over the years, since as I recall it starts with Descartes!).

Comment author: komponisto 10 March 2011 09:56:44PM 0 points [-]

Upvoted for complete agreement, particularly:

Less Wrong ought to be about reasoning, as per Common Interest of Many Causes. Like you (I presume), I would like to see more posts about reasoning and fewer, despite my transhumanist sympathies, about boxed AIs, hypothetical torture scenarios, and the optimality of donating to the Friendly AI cause: focusing our efforts that way is more interesting, more broadly appealing, and ultimately more effective for everyone involved including the SIAI.

(...)

Bottom line, I view the friendly AI topic as something between a historical quirk and a pet example among several of the higher-status people here, and I think you should too.

Comment author: komponisto 11 March 2011 02:13:59AM 1 point [-]
Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 March 2011 08:03:35PM 8 points [-]

Agree or disagree with the following statement?

"After publishing the paper in a philosophy journal so that academics would be allowed to talk about it without losing face, you would have to write a separate essay to explain the ideas to anyone who actually wanted to know them, including those philosophers."

Comment author: komponisto 10 March 2011 10:11:41PM 10 points [-]

How much academic philosophy have you personally read?

I've read a fair amount, and I don't find it particularly abstruse. This includes not only quasi-popular books by the highest-status practitioners like Dennett and Chalmers but also ordinary journal papers by professors at my undergraduate institution.

It might be worth taking a look at Chalmers' philosophy of mind anthology if you haven't already.

Comment author: Nornagest 10 March 2011 09:34:18PM *  2 points [-]

Less Wrong ought to be about reasoning, as per Common Interest of Many Causes. Like you (I presume), I would like to see more posts about reasoning and fewer, despite my transhumanist sympathies, about boxed AIs, hypothetical torture scenarios, and the optimality of donating to the Friendly AI cause: focusing our efforts that way is more interesting, more broadly appealing, and ultimately more effective for everyone involved including the SIAI.

And I'd hazard a guess that the SIAI representatives here know that. A lot of people benefit from knowing how to think and act more effectively unqualified, but a site about improving reasoning skills that's also an appendage to the SIAI party line limits its own effectiveness, and therefore its usefulness as a way of sharpening reasoning about AI (and, more cynically, as a source of smart and rational recruits), by being exclusionary. We're doing a fair-to-middling job in that respect; we could definitely be doing a better one, if the above is a fair description of the intended topic according to the people who actually call the shots around here. That's fine, and it does deserve further discussion.

But the topic of rationality isn't at all well served by flogging criticisms of the SIAI viewpoint that have nothing to do with rationality, especially when they're brought up out of the context of an existing SIAI discussion. Doing so might diminish perceived or actual groupthink re: galactic civilizations and your money, but it still lowers the signal-to-noise ratio, for the simple reason that the appealing qualities of this site are utterly indifferent to the pros and cons of dedicating your money to the Friendly AI cause except insofar as it serves as a case study in rational charity. Granted, there are signaling effects that might counter or overwhelm its usefulness as a case study, but the impression I get from talking to outsiders is that those are far from the most obvious or destructive signaling problems that the community exhibits.

Bottom line, I view the friendly AI topic as something between a historical quirk and a pet example among several of the higher-status people here, and I think you should too.

Comment author: komponisto 10 March 2011 09:56:44PM 0 points [-]

Upvoted for complete agreement, particularly:

Less Wrong ought to be about reasoning, as per Common Interest of Many Causes. Like you (I presume), I would like to see more posts about reasoning and fewer, despite my transhumanist sympathies, about boxed AIs, hypothetical torture scenarios, and the optimality of donating to the Friendly AI cause: focusing our efforts that way is more interesting, more broadly appealing, and ultimately more effective for everyone involved including the SIAI.

(...)

Bottom line, I view the friendly AI topic as something between a historical quirk and a pet example among several of the higher-status people here, and I think you should too.

Comment author: [deleted] 09 March 2011 02:28:07AM 1 point [-]

Teasing this out a little more, bullet points of my own:

  1. If B learns math at a slower pace than A, then it can literally be the case that B will never understand math as well as A. At suitable slow (but common) learning paces, it can be impractical and unrewarding for B to study math. And I think there might even be large numbers of mentally normal human beings walking around for whom this pace is so slow that it's misleading to call it a "learning pace" at all, e.g. too slow for progress they make one day to stick the next.

  2. I'm sure that "math ability," like anything else, is reducible, but in these kinds of brain-and-behavior cases it might "reduce" to thousands of different factors that don't have much to do with each other. In that case it wouldn't be very easy to give advice on how to be better at math, beyond "arrange each of those thousands of factors in a way favorable to math ability."

  3. Even if "math ability" has a more satisfying explanation than the kind in 2., so that it's possible to give good advice on how to improve it, I think that this is not a solved problem. Specifically I still think that your proposed advice ("you simply haven't bothered to update some aspect of your identity since childhood") is no good.

  4. In the meantime "lack of math ability" seems to me to be a perfectly good label for a real phenomenon, though I guess I agree with you that it is not an explanation for that phenomenon.

Comment author: komponisto 10 March 2011 08:00:03PM *  -1 points [-]

1. I disagree that a slower learning pace is less rewarding. On the contrary, learning is most rewarding when there is time to do it properly, and the frustration many people experience in school settings results from the pressure to (appear-to-) learn things more quickly than their natural pace.

(I owe to Michael Vassar the observation that there is something inherently contradictory and unrealistic about expecting people to learn calculus in a semester when they required five years to learn arithmetic.)

2. It might seem like it could be that complicated, but it turns out not to be. In practice (as revealed by teaching experience), "lacking math ability" usually reduces to something like "I flinch and run away when I realize that I will have to carry out more than two or three steps (especially if there is recursion involved), instead of just gritting my teeth and carrying them out."

3. Most people don't even try updating their identities; while on the other hand, I myself have updated my skill-related identities on a number of occasions, and it worked. (Math happens to be an example.)

4. It would be best to have a label that conveys more information about the cause(s) of the phenomenon.

Comment author: komponisto 10 March 2011 07:20:51PM 9 points [-]

However, not all information is useful, and it can be useful to encourage a bias that cuts you off from information that is not particularly useful to you, so as to better allocate your time and energy

This is a general version of paulfchristiano's argument against pure mathematics. My response is the same: while it is theoretically possible to be too curious (or have too much of any "good" thing), in practice humans are far more likely to err on the side of not being curious enough.

There is a reason why people who make great contributions are often described as being atypically curious. Whereas I have a hard time thinking of any great figure whose principal virtue was anti-curiosity.

Procrastination is a problem, but cutting off curiosity is a bad strategy for dealing with it, like amputating an arm to cure carpal tunnel syndrome. Try instead to cultivate enthusiasm for working on your project, rather than an aversion to collecting information (apparently) not related to it.

Comment author: wedrifid 10 March 2011 01:46:20AM *  0 points [-]

Conversational emphasized disbelief, not directed at yourself (as implied by the subsequent words).

Comment author: komponisto 10 March 2011 02:33:35AM 0 points [-]

That's what I first thought, but then I worried that I might have misunderstood.

Comment author: wedrifid 09 March 2011 09:57:20AM 4 points [-]

But, but... that was the defining introductory moment! It set the tone for the entire fanfic!

Comment author: komponisto 10 March 2011 01:02:11AM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure why this was a reply to my comment, beginning with "but", since it seems to be an expression of agreement.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 March 2011 08:45:13AM 7 points [-]

Point 1 - it wasn't stylistically consistent with later chapters. When I wrote the original Chapter 1 I didn't realize that this story was going to be funny. The part where Harry bites a math teacher in the original Chapter 2 is the exact part where I realized this story was going to be funny.

Point 2 - I got tripped up by the differences between the published SF I knew and the expectations of fanfiction. If you saw a character talking like that in a published SF novel, you would know that he was an alien or genetically engineered or that the author meant you to know something was funny about him. In fanfiction they assume that it's either the author's conceit or, more probable yet, you're just a terrible author who can't write realistic eleven-year-olds. I thought it was so blatantly lampshaded that nobody could possibly mistake it for an accident, but no, fanfiction readers just don't think like that - they don't look for clues and they do assume lousy authors. So I made Harry's intellect slightly more subtle in the first chapter and let it dawn slightly more slowly.

Comment author: komponisto 09 March 2011 06:29:36AM 0 points [-]

I noticed quite a while ago with considerable disappointment that you had changed

Harry looked up at the sky, and began laughing. He couldn’t seem to help himself. This is the most improbable day of my life.

to

There was a long silence in the backyard. Then a boy's voice said, calmly and quietly, "What."

(with annoyance at the inappropriate punctuation on top of it: if you must avoid a question mark here, use an ellipsis, not a period!)

...but until seeing Eneasz's comment I totally failed to notice that you had deleted that whole paragraph! Shame!

As a regular reader of neither SF nor fanfiction, I don't really care about the "expectations" of those genres. As far as I'm concerned, Methods of Rationality is its own genre, and that paragraph was very much stylistically consistent with the rest of the story, funny parts and all, and it was particularly consistent with Harry as we have come to know him.

Actually, this part (minus the phrase "unmotivated conspiracies") sounds like something out of British children's fiction:

Even if Harry tried to explain the day’s events by sudden insanity or unmotivated conspiracies, that didn’t put everything back to normal. It didn’t make the day’s events expected. It didn’t make him feel not-confused. There was no denying that something very, very, very odd was going on

Anyway, maybe the passage could be tweaked for lightheartedness if that's what you prefer, but I was really sorry to see the point about noticing confusion disappear.

Comment author: [deleted] 08 March 2011 03:19:52AM 2 points [-]

I've known many people who are good at math but what they have in common isn't substantial enough to gel into a "type" for me, so when you say "stereotypically good at math" I draw a blank.

Ahab and Billy are two 14-year old kids in an algebra class this year, and at the end of it they're both going to get an 'A'. Ahab will achieve this effortlessly, spending less than an hour per week doing his homework, and Billy will really struggle, spending more than an hour every night on homework and supplementary studying. And it's always been like this for Ahab and Billy. Maybe you'll object but I think I'm describing something very plausible and common.

It sounds like you would reject any explanation for the difference between Ahab and Billy of the kind "Billy has less native math ability than Ahab," and favor an alternative explanation about childhood socialization. But can you spell out what this explanation is, or what some of its consequences are?

Comment author: komponisto 08 March 2011 05:34:36PM *  0 points [-]

Several points to make in reply:

  • To get a sense of what I mean by "stereotypically good at math", think about the abilities involved in solving tricky puzzles or competition-style problems. Or, consider the comments section of Eliezer's Drawing Two Aces post, full of people who got the right answer (I didn't, which resulted in this post). The idea isn't exactly well-defined, but seems to involve some combination of powerful short-term memory and an ability to quickly identify the particular abstraction that the poser of a concrete problem is attempting to refer to.

  • The implication of the contrast between Ahab and Billy, on my account, isn't what you perhaps think. I don't necessarily deny that some kind of "native" difference could be responsible for Billy's greater difficulties relative to Ahab. The fact that Billy manages to get an "A", however, means that anyone with Billy's level of "native math ability" can't invoke that to explain why they didn't get an "A". Billy may have other native abilities that such an individual may lack, but they won't be specifically math-related, and instead will be general things like "the ability to overcome akrasia", etc.

  • Notwithstanding the above, "lack of native math ability" is still a fake explanation. Whatever "math ability" is, it is reducible. I want to know in detail what goes through Billy's mind as he attempts to solve an algebra problem, and how it differs from what goes on in Ahab's mind. Once we know this, we can try to determine what causes this difference: is Billy's IQ just lower than Ahab's (which would be a general problem, not a math-specific one), does he lack certain pieces of information that Ahab has (easily fixable), or is he executing particular cognitive habits that prevent him from processing the same information as efficiently as Ahab (fixable via training)?

Comment author: XiXiDu 06 March 2011 04:38:45PM 4 points [-]

I'd love to see some series of posts where someone applies LWism to such stories. LW is too much about refining rationality when the biggest problem is that people don't know how to apply it to real life problems. But since Yvain has basically bashed that idea I lost all hope that it will ever happen. He actually got 26 upvotes for it and I don't even know of a single post that shows how to apply what you can learn on LW to real life problems.

Comment author: komponisto 07 March 2011 10:35:44PM 1 point [-]

I don't even know of a single post that shows how to apply what you can learn on LW to real life problems.

As the author of one such post I have to protest this exaggeration, even while I agree that it would be nice to see more.

Comment author: jsteinhardt 07 March 2011 05:25:37PM 2 points [-]

Upon further reflection, I don't think I can justify my claim that these sorts of problems have no connection to reality at all; perhaps a better claim is that these problems are a very inefficient way of making headway on problems that we care about, even if we extrapolate into the far future. But this would be a much subtler and difficult claim to justify, so for now I'm editing my above post to retract this statement. Since you quoted it in your response, people will still have access to it if they care.

Comment author: komponisto 07 March 2011 10:24:44PM 3 points [-]

I don't think I can justify my claim that these sorts of problems have no connection to reality at all; perhaps a better claim is that these problems are a very inefficient way of making headway on problems that we care about, even if we extrapolate into the far future.

Upvoted for correctly understanding the issue (even while taking a position opposite to mine).

For what it's worth, I was extremely surprised that you listed, of all things, enumerative combinatorics (i.e. counting things) as an example of a branch of mathematics with a "tenuous" connection to "reality".

Comment author: [deleted] 07 March 2011 07:03:10PM 0 points [-]

I have a generalized sense of "head for figures" in mind, if you mean that you're good at math but not at calculation. Some people are bad at both, and it's pretty optimistic to say that what's holding them back (almost always!) are only their childhood experiences.

Comment author: komponisto 07 March 2011 08:28:49PM 2 points [-]

I don't consider myself "good at math" despite having credentials in the subject. As far as I can tell, in order to do math, I have to use thought processes that are quite different from those used by people who are stereotypically "good at math".

What holds people back is not their childhood experiences per se but the general lesson learned in childhood that having certain abilities and lacking others is an integral part of one's tribal uniform.

Comment author: [deleted] 07 March 2011 07:50:10AM 0 points [-]

When people say this, it almost always means simply that they weren't socialized into mastering it in childhood, and they haven't bothered to update this aspect of their identity since then.

I don't think you have more evidence for this hypothesis than I do for "some people just don't have a head for figures."

Comment author: komponisto 07 March 2011 02:39:17PM 1 point [-]

Lacking a "head for figures" myself, I am personally a counterexample to your hypothesis.

Although what I really dislike about it is not even that it's false but that it's a curiosity-stopping fake explanation.

Comment author: Yvain 07 March 2011 12:28:19AM 4 points [-]

"Learn math" is kind of a broad imperative. I know the math that's common to many different applications, like arithmetic and algebra and a bit of calculus, but after that it becomes so fractured that even when I learn how to solve one specific problem in a specific field, I never encounter that problem or field again.

If there were a specific cause for which I needed math, I would force myself to learn the math relevant to that cause, but just "learn topology, who knows when you might need it?" has never been very convincing to me.

I've studied a little decision theory, since that seems to be the form of math most relevant to Friendly AI, but so far I've found it frustrating and hard to treat with suitable rigor. If anyone wants to recommend an unusually good textbook, preferably online, I suppose I'd take suggestions.

Comment author: komponisto 07 March 2011 06:41:50AM 3 points [-]

What I would say is that it's okay not to bother learning math if you don't need or want to, but for heaven's sake just don't go around saying you couldn't learn it if you tried because you lack some specific cognitive module. (When people say this, it almost always means simply that they weren't socialized into mastering it in childhood, and they haven't bothered to update this aspect of their identity since then.)

By the way, I totally agree on the Sequences: I remember when they were being written, I used to look forward to the next post the way a kid looks forward to the next episode of their favorite TV show.

Comment author: Manfred 05 March 2011 11:45:19AM -1 points [-]

Huh, just read So You Want To Be A Seed AI Programmer. Appears to be from 2009. I would recommend http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html as a highly contrasting frame of thought.

Comment author: komponisto 05 March 2011 03:25:12PM 3 points [-]

Huh, just read So You Want To Be A Seed AI Programmer. Appears to be from 2009

It's from much earlier than that (like 2005 or something). That particular wiki isn't the original source.

Comment author: paulfchristiano 05 March 2011 12:35:20AM *  3 points [-]

I understand the argument Gowers is making, and believed it until recently. The disagreement boils down to a factual claim about the world, which is going to have to be resolved by actually looking out at the world.

For concreteness, here is how I would suggest trying to bring in information from the territory. Find some development which has been important in human history, and then working backwards argue that broader and broader theoretical contributions were valuable insofar as they facilitated this development. If any of these theoretical contributions were needed before there was evidence of their importance, then this provides some evidence that working on apparently useless problems is valuable.

If no examples of this form can be produced (I concede that the actual steps in such an argument might be difficult to verify, but I have seen very few plausible candidates), then it seems to offer compelling evidence that belief in the usefulness of interesting problems is, minimally, unfounded.

I should also say that my standards for usefulness may be lower than some mainstream critics of science (although they still reject a great deal of modern mathematics). For example, I would contend that trying to understand any physical phenomena which occur at low energies is obviously useful, and that understanding any completely mysterious phenomena at any energy is plausibly useful.

Comment author: komponisto 05 March 2011 03:14:01AM *  5 points [-]

Find some development which has been important in human history, and then working backwards argue that broader and broader theoretical contributions were valuable insofar as they facilitated this development.

Your previous comments indicate that you have a ready-made formula for rejecting any such example, which is to deny that the theoretical contributions were "necessary". That is, you will argue that the important development "could have" happened without them. For instance, you addressed the classic example of non-Euclidean geometry paving the way for general relativity by saying that Einstein could have just invented non-Euclidean geometry on his own (!) when he needed it.

Such an argument is difficult to take seriously and seems to me only to indicate that, whatever your past history, you simply have, at the moment, a strong distaste for abstract mathematics. (Or, alternatively, perhaps you're playing an intense game of Devil's Advocate with yourself.) That's fine, tastes differ. But again, that's hardly enough reason to jump to the conclusion that nobody should be doing things like inventing non-Euclidean geometry.

You've characterized my position as motivated cognition in defense of the status quo, but in my view that is both wrong and unfair. It's wrong, first of all, because I don't necessarily think the status quo is optimal -- in fact I think mathematical research could probably be done a lot more efficiently. I just don't happen to favor changes in the particular direction that you advocate (basically the adoption of a concreteness heuristic for deciding what's "useful"). But even more importantly perhaps, it's unfair: even if my ideal mathematical world looks more like the current one than yours does, the fact remains that we are living in an exceptional period in human history. Most societies have not conducted extensive amounts of "theoretical research", but instead have occupied themselves almost exclusively with what they found to be "practical" and "relevant" within their local world; your position, rather than mine, is closer to the human default. In my view, the last few centuries of Western civilization are an exceptional instance of people finally beginning to almost start getting things right with respect to this question.

I don't actually think the issue here is exclusively empirical; I can sense important disagreements that may be better characterized as value differences (conceivably, these may ultimately also reduce to empirical disagreements, but if so it would be at several more inferential steps' remove). But I will concede that there is a substantial empirical component. On my analysis, what it boils down to is that you think you have a good way of predicting the long-term impact of mathematical work, whereas I don't think you do, because I don't think the heuristics you're using are any more powerful than (or even particularly different from) the most common human default.

Comment author: James_Miller 04 March 2011 06:42:35PM *  6 points [-]

Behold the power of government to spend lots of money!

it only counts as rational if the benefits exceed the costs.

Comment author: komponisto 04 March 2011 09:02:47PM 1 point [-]

it only counts as rational if the benefits exceed the costs.

True, but that applies to everything, not just things that are conspicuously interesting to "geeks".

The Importance of Mathematics (Gowers)

5 komponisto 04 March 2011 08:32PM

For the past few days I've been pondering the question of how best to respond to paulfchristiano's recent posts and comments questioning the value of mathematical research. I don't think I can do it concisely, in a single post; bridging the inferential distance may require something more like a sequence of posts. I may end up writing such a sequence eventually, since it would involve ideas I've actually been wanting to write up for some time, and which are actually relevant to more than just the specific questions at issue here (whether society should sponsor mathematics, and given that it does, whether paulfchristiano or anyone else in the LW readership should pursue it). 

However, as the preceding parenthetical hints at, I'm actually somewhat conflicted about whether I should even bother. Although I believe that mathematical research should be conducted by somebody, it's not at all clear to me that the discipline needs more people beyond those who already "get" its importance, and are out there doing it rather than writing skeptical posts like paulfchristiano's. It seems perfectly plausible to me that those who feel as paulfchristiano does should just leave the profession and do something else that feels more "important" to them. This is surely the best practical solution on an individual level for those who think they have a better idea than existing institutions of where the most promising research directions lie, at least until Hansonian prediction markets are (ever) implemented.

Nevertheless, for those interested in the society-level question of whether mathematics (as such) may be justifiably pursued by anyone, or any community of people, as a professional occupation (which is quite distinct from the question of whether e.g. paulfchristiano should personally pursue it), I recommend, at least as a start, grappling with the arguments put forward by the best mathematicians in their own words. I think this essay by Timothy Gowers (a Fields Medalist), titled "The Importance of Mathematics", is a good place to begin. I would particularly draw the attention of those like paulfchristiano, who think they have a good idea of which branches of mathematics are useful and which aren't, to the following passage, from pp.8-9 (unfortunately the illustrations are missing, but the point being made is pretty clear nonetheless):

So - mathematicians can tell their governments - if you cut funding to pure mathematical
research, you run the risk of losing out on unexpected benefits, which historically
have been by far the most important.


However, the miserly finance minister need not be convinced quite yet. It may be very
hard to identify positively the areas of mathematics likely to lead to practical benefits, but
that does not rule out the possibility of identifying negatively the areas that will quite
clearly be useless, or at least useless for the next two hundred years. In fact, the finance
minister does not even need to be certain that they will be useless. If a large area of
mathematics has only a one in ten thousand chance of producing economic benefit in the
next fifty years, then perhaps that at least could be cut.


You will not be surprised to hear me say that this policy would still be completely
misguided. A major reason, one that has been commented on many times and is implied
by the subtitle of this conference, "A Celebration of the Universality of Mathematical
Thought", is that mathematics is very interconnected, far more so than it appears on the
surface. The picture in the back of the finance minister's mind might be something like
Figure 4. According to this picture, mathematics is divided into several subdisciplines, of
varying degrees of practicality, and it is a simple matter to cut funding to the less practical
ones.

A more realistic picture, though still outrageously simplified, is given in Figure 5.
(Just for the purposes of comparison, Figure 6 shows Figures 4 and 5 superimposed.) The
nodes of Figure 5 represent small areas of mathematical activity and the lines joining them
represent interrelationships between those areas. The small areas of activity form clusters
where there are more of these interrelationships, and these clusters can perhaps be thought
of as subdisciplines. However, the boundaries of these clusters are not precise, and many
of the interrelationships are between clusters rather than within them.


In particular, if mathematicians work on difficult practical problems, they do not do so
in isolation from the rest of mathematics. Rather, they bring to the problems several tools
- mathematical tricks, rules of thumb, theorems known to be useful (in the mathematical
sense), and so on. They do not know in advance which of these tools they will use, but they
hope that after they have thought hard about a problem they will realize what is needed to
solve it. If they are lucky, they can simply apply their existing expertise straightforwardly.
More often, they will have to adapt it to some extent

(...)

Thus, a good way to think about mathematics as a whole is that it is a huge body of
knowledge, a bit like an encyclopaedia but with an enormous number of cross-references.
This knowledge is stored in books, papers, computers and the brains of thousands of
mathematicians round the world. It is not as convenient to look up a piece of mathematics
as it is to look up a word in an encyclopaedia, especially as it is not always easy to
specify exactly what it is that one wants to look up. Nevertheless, this "encyclopaedia" of
mathematics is an incredible resource. And just as, if one were to try to get rid of all the
entries in an encyclopaedia, or, to give a different comparison, all the books in a library,
that nobody ever looked up, the result would be a greatly impoverished encyclopaedia or
library, so, any attempt to purge mathematics of its less useful parts would almost certainly
be very damaging to the more useful parts as well.

Comment author: David_Gerard 04 March 2011 01:12:36PM 8 points [-]

There's just-so stories all through the hard sciences. In Fran Allen's day, programming at IBM was considered work for women, owing to their evolved nurturing and household management abilities, etc., etc. Ms Allen attributes the masculinisation of programming to people from male-dominated engineering faculties moving in on the field in the late '60s. (Allen's opinions sourced from the interview with her in Coders At Work.)

Comment author: komponisto 04 March 2011 04:21:57PM 4 points [-]

In Fran Allen's day, programming at IBM was considered work for women

That's an extremely interesting reminder of how culture-dependent these occupational gender patterns are.

Comment author: bigjeff5 02 March 2011 06:33:25PM 3 points [-]

I'm ashamed to say I failed this one, and badly.

I'm new to the Way of Bayes, and I've been reading the sequences regularly (that's why I'm on this post, actually) and thinking I've been doing pretty well, but this illustrates that I have a long, long way to go.

I did do a whole lot better than the jury in this case, such that I would never have convicted Knox and her boyfriend, but I still came away with about a 60% probability of their having been guilty, with Guede at >95%.

I started with the pro-guilty website, and thinking back I clearly privileged their hypothesis. In fact I had only assigned about an 80% probability that they were guilty after reading their evidence, which would not have been enough to convict. They made scant mention of how little DNA evidence was actually used to convict them (even calling the braw-clasp significant, damning evidence), and they certainly didn't compare this to the massive amounts of DNA evidence found for Guede. In fact they made it sound as though the evidence was equivalent.

I then updated based on the pro-defense website, down to 60%, a clear case of anchoring. Had I considered the defense's evidence from a fresh perspective there is no way I could have come away with the estimate I did. The overwhelming DNA evidence against Guide should have relegated all other evidence to almost negligible importance. Everything else was unreliable, and I did not treat it as such even though in my mind I even thought that it was unreliable.

A good analogy for the DNA evidence compared to everything else would be like trying to star-gaze at high noon - the light from the sun overwhelms the starlight because the starlight is far, far too weak. Likewise the circumstantial evidence was far too weak to be of any importance when compared to the DNA evidence.

Comment author: komponisto 04 March 2011 03:57:58AM 1 point [-]

I'm ashamed to say I failed this one, and badly...this illustrates that I have a long, long way to go.

On the other hand, you'd be surprised at how difficult it is for people to understand this even after seeing the explanation. While of course it's always preferable to get things right on the first try, the fact that you saw it so clearly after reading this post places you in a high percentile for learning speed.

(I know whereof I speak here, because I've spent some time arguing about this in other parts of the internet, only to be dismayed by the true extent of people's ability to clack. Heck, even here in the comments section of this post there are some pretty confused comments with depressingly high scores.)

I think your analysis is excellent, and is an admirable example of "cognitive debugging". This part in particular is worth dwelling on:

Everything else was unreliable, and I did not treat it as such even though in my mind I even thought that it was unreliable.

It is really difficult for people to discount information, and to actually update on evidence of the form "that information may not be reliable", rather than treating it as an "opposing argument" to be rationalized away, or simply forgetting it altogether. Something like the bra clasp provides an example of this: people hear about it, and decide that Sollecito is guilty. Then, when they hear the defense argue that it's unreliable, they mentally dismiss it as "the defense trying to poke holes in the prosecution's case". They may respect the social obligation to provide some sort of answer to the defense's arguments, but they don't consider that the defense arguments should actually impact their belief about whether Sollecito is guilty; the belief-formation process was over and done with at the first stage!

It's not that they explicitly, consciously think like this, of course; rather, they have just failed to fully incorporate the "rules" into their unconscious belief-generating system. The third and fourth virtues are hard.

I like the star-gazing-at-noon analogy, and may use it myself in the future.

Comment author: SRStarin 04 March 2011 01:47:09AM 4 points [-]

The Italian word for "hell" is "inferno." (I don't know Italian, but I knew that word.) That's also the Italian word for "inferno," and that was the choice of the translator in 1974. I suspect that was prudishness about the word "hell" for an American audience, but I don't know. Anyway, the passage is otherwise very much in keeping with the tradition of the French Existentialists. For example, Sartre famously wrote "L'enfer, c'est les autres," which translates as "Hell is other people." The book has other existentialist themes in some of its fables, so I conclude that Calvino was thinking about the existentialists that wrote before he, and that he meant "hell" when he wrote "inferno" in Italian. I could be wrong, but that's why I pointed it out.

Comment author: komponisto 04 March 2011 02:57:56AM *  7 points [-]

"Hell" is the default translation, and definitely the correct one here, in my opinion (just as it is, for example, in Dante).

"Inferno" in English should just be a fancy Italianate way of saying "hell", but seems to have acquired a connotation of literal heat and flames. (That is, it's as if people have forgotten that "the blazing inferno of a burning building" is a metaphor.) In any case, neither cultured fanciness nor literal flames are intended by Calvino in that passage, as far as I can tell.

I'm not sure prudishness is necessarily to blame; it may just be a case of that all-too-common translator syndrome of reaching for a word that looks like the original word, rather than the word that the author would have used if he or she were actually a native speaker of the language you're translating into.

Here's the passage in the original, for those interested (source):

L'inferno dei viventi non è qualcosa che sarà; se ce n'è uno, è quello che è già qui, l'inferno che abitiamo tutti i giorni, che formiamo stando insieme. Due modi ci sono per non soffrirne. Il primo riesce facile a molti: accettare l'inferno e diventarne parte fino al punto di non vederlo più. Il secondo è rischioso ed esige attenzione e apprendimento continui: cercare e saper riconoscere chi e cosa, in mezzo all'inferno, non è inferno, e farlo durare, e dargli spazio.

Comment author: Johnicholas 28 February 2011 12:36:33PM -1 points [-]

Allow me to clarify: Tax art rather than subsidize it, at a roughly comparable rate to other industries. I don't think it matters much whether it's exactly the same, slightly higher, or slightly lower.

One of the techniques of rational argumentation is called the "Principle of Charity". When reading and interpreting what someone said, you should infer missing details in order to make their argument the strongest argument possible. In a lw-centric example, Eliezer's idea of "The least convenient possible world" is the principle of charity, specialized to interpreting hypothetical situations.

Comment author: komponisto 28 February 2011 04:33:03PM *  1 point [-]

I don't understand the point of your paragraph explaining the principle of charity as if I might never have heard of it. If the implication is that I was being uncharitable to you by not interpreting "tax X" to mean "fail to exempt X from the default taxes", I strongly disagree. When someone says, for example, that cigarettes should be taxed, they don't just mean that the same sales taxes that apply to everything else should also apply to cigarettes (as if the default were to exempt cigarettes). Rather, they mean that there ought to be a specific tax on cigarettes in addition to whatever taxes would ordinarily apply, in order to discourage consumption of cigarettes. (This is known as a "sin tax".)

In the context of the above discussion, the only reasonable interpretation of your remark was that you favored a sin tax on art, analogous to existing sin taxes (in some jurisdictions) on "harmful" products such as alcohol, cigarettes, and the like. If you hadn't meant this, and simply meant that art should be treated like any other product, you would have simply said "I wouldn't subsidize art"; as opposed to saying "I would tax art rather than subsidize it", i.e. "not only would I not subsidize art, I would actually tax it".

In case this needs still further clarification, the reason this is the only reasonable interpretation is that (so far as I know) art is not exempted from existing taxes. If it were, then the interpretation of "tax art" to mean "subject art to the same taxes as everything else" (i.e. "remove the exemption") might make sense. As it is, however, "tax art" is highly misleading if what you mean is merely "remove subsidies" (where "subsidies" mean things like government grants, university salaries, etc, rather than tax-exemptions, which, again, don't currently exist).

Comment author: wedrifid 28 February 2011 02:56:04AM *  1 point [-]

(I had let the parent be, not wanting to emphasise disagreement but the follow up prompts a reply.)

The proposal, as I understood it, was to have additional taxes specific to art.

I do not share your interpretation. The relevant quote is:

Similarly, I would tax visual art rather than subsidize it.

... A general sentiment regarding where he would place a slider on a simplistic one dimensional scale of financial incentive vs disincentive. It is definitely not a proposal for specific intervention in any particular jurisdiction.

Come to think of it your status quo claim is way off. The following is definitely not the status quo:

Don't subsidise the field at all via grants or via university tax breaks.

Incidentally, investment in culture and education - even with respect to visual arts - is something I approve of. I just note that your questioning was rather disingenuous:

By paying inspectors to come to people's houses to check whether they've drawn any pictures that day?

Taxation and subsidisation are well understood. This objection is silly (your other soldiers are better).

Comment author: komponisto 28 February 2011 03:34:42AM *  0 points [-]

A general sentiment regarding where he would place a slider on a simplistic one dimensional scale of financial incentive vs disincentive.

Right; and he was wanting to place it to the right of zero (on the "disincentive" side) whereas you were talking about moving it from the left of zero to zero. This is the distinction I was pointing out.

Come to think of it your status quo claim is way off. The following is definitely not the status quo:

Don't subsidise the field at all via grants or via university tax breaks.

See the very comment you linked, which contains a reminder that my "status quo" remark did not apply to that aspect.

By paying inspectors to come to people's houses to check whether they've drawn any pictures that day?

Taxation and subsidisation are well understood. This objection is silly (your other soldiers are better).

The main point of that was to emphasize transaction costs of taxation. You will note that I immediately followed it by a more "reasonable" suggestion so as to forestall accusations of being overly rhetorical.

Comment author: gwern 28 February 2011 02:09:51AM 2 points [-]

Any meaningful discussion of taxation focuses on the net, not on arbitrary subdivisions and labels. If art were taxed at 50% sales tax but also came with a tax deduction of 100%, I would feel real physical pain to see someone argue 'oh, but we are discouraging and taxing heavily artwork! Just look at that 50%!'

Which is why I bring up the subsidies. If art is being hugely subsidized, then just being taxed like everything else (in your impoverished sense) still leads to art being cheaper than it should.

Comment author: komponisto 28 February 2011 02:24:21AM -1 points [-]

That may or may not be a fair point to make, but in that case your comment should have begun with "Yes, but..." instead of "No...".

On the merits, I disagree on every point: that there is too much art, that current art subsidies are "heavy", and that art subsidies necessarily cancel out sales taxes for the purpose of interpreting government policy (which may simply be incoherent and non-uniform).

Comment author: gwern 28 February 2011 01:11:28AM 4 points [-]

No, the status quo is heavy subsidization. I have an essay on how there is too much art & fiction (http://www.gwern.net/Culture%20is%20not%20about%20esthetics.html) and one of my points is that the arts are heavily subsidized both directly and indirectly, which contributes to the over-supply.

Comment author: komponisto 28 February 2011 02:05:11AM *  -2 points [-]

No, the status quo is heavy subsidization

I wasn't talking about subsidization, I was talking about taxation. The logic of the discussion was as follows: (1) Johnicolas said there should be an art tax; (2) I said "how would you do that?"; (3) wedrifid said "subject art to standard sales taxes"; (4) I pointed out that art already is subject to standard sales taxes -- so far as I know it isn't specifically exempt; hence wedrifid's response doesn't work as an answer.

The part of wedrifid's comment that I quoted defined the scope of my remark, which you misunderstood.

Comment author: wedrifid 26 February 2011 04:34:14AM *  4 points [-]

(How would that even be implemented? By paying inspectors to come to people's houses to check whether they've drawn any pictures that day? Extra sales tax on art supplies?)

Allow the visual art industry to have all the usual taxes on goods sold, exhibition prices and education. Don't subsidise the field at all via grants or via university tax breaks. No commando raids on kindergartens to catch off-the-books, under-the-table finger painters required.

Comment author: komponisto 27 February 2011 07:50:08AM *  0 points [-]

Allow the visual art industry to have all the usual taxes on goods sold, exhibition prices and education

That's the status quo. The proposal, as I understood it, was to have additional taxes specific to art.

Comment author: komponisto 25 February 2011 10:11:38PM *  17 points [-]

In the case of calculus, differential equations, statistics, functional analysis, linear algebra, group theory, and numerical methods, the important results for modern work were in fact developed after their usefulness could be appreciated by an intelligent observer.

This is simply untrue, unless you've rigged the definition of "intelligent observer" and added a dose of hindsight bias. It is unlikely that the true extent of the "practical" importance of calculus today could have been predicted by even the most imaginative of Newton's fellow Cambridge dons in the late 17th century. In that era, thinking about things like the orbits of celestial bodies was "idle speculation" par excellence. It's hard to appreciate this, because it seems so obvious in retrospect that we would have space rockets, doesn't it? Not to mention the use of differential equations in fields like economics, whose existence was a century away but were just so clearly on humanity's horizon, right?

Functional analysis is a particularly interesting choice of example. The fact that its application to quantum mechanics (which is what I presume you were thinking of) arose concurrently with the development of the subject itself was largely a fortuitous (if serendipitous) coincidence. The actual "physical" roots of the subject were more indirect, via differential/integral equations and the calculus of variations (18th-century physics, in other words), and it was basically the result of mathematicians' attempt to turn these somewhat ad-hoc disciplines into nice-looking abstract theories.

As for group theory, its origins lie in the attempt to solve the quintic by radicals -- about as "useless" an undertaking as could be imagined. (The cubic and quartic formulas already being much too complicated for practical use.)

Realistically, an argument like yours, made back in the day, would have shown that Newton should have devoted his life to inventing better agricultural tools. And it might have been a good argument -- applied to someone other than Newton. (They could really have used better agricultural tools, no doubt.)

If you don't feel satisfied doing math, or think you could make a better contribution doing something else, you shouldn't be doing it. But don't make the mistake of pretending that your argument generalizes.

And see here regarding the nature of mathematics' usefulness, which doesn't reside in specific "applications".

Comment author: Johnicholas 25 February 2011 12:10:05PM *  2 points [-]

In your first paragraph, you have excellently made my point; the social process of mathematics depends on between-clique evaluations. To the extent that those between-clique evaluations are impossible, the social process of mathematics becomes more like clothing fashion, and mathematical goals become decoupled from engineering or science applications.

As I said previously, my criticism of "mathematics for mathematics sake" is based on an attitude of scarcity - which I admit is an attitude rather than a fact. Similarly, I would tax visual art rather than subsidize it.

Successful spin offs of mathematics would be applications of mathematics to fields that have better arguments that their work is not idle amusement, status-seeking or fashion-following.

Comment author: komponisto 25 February 2011 08:45:00PM 3 points [-]

In your first paragraph, you have excellently made my point; the social process of mathematics depends on between-clique evaluations. To the extent that those between-clique evaluations are impossible,

But they're never impossible, and of necessity they're always going on (since university positions, grant dollars, etc. are limited in number). The only question can be what criteria are being used. While it is conceivable that some fields could end up using criteria that are "arbitrary" (i.e. not ultimately correlated with fundamental values), my argument is that this is not the case in mathematics, due mainly to the strong IQ barrier to entry. (Generally, my view is that the higher someone's IQ, the more strongly impressing them is correlated with satisfying fundamental values.)

Mathematical cliques are not islands; in fact to the extent they become isolated, they lose prestige! There is a continuum of relatedness, with cliques clustering into "supercliques" of various levels. Mathematicians, particularly those with a taste for cynical humor, will joke about how it is supposedly impossible to understand the work of neighboring cliques; but the reality is that their ability to understand varies more or less continuously with distance, and more or less increases with one's rank within a clique or superclique.

To summarize, there shouldn't be much to worry about so long as status in mathematics remains correlated more strongly with IQ than with other variables such as social/political skills. (Given that they're still willing to (try to) award prizes to someone like Perelman, I'd say the field is in pretty good shape.)

As I said previously, my criticism of "mathematics for mathematics sake" is based on an attitude of scarcity - which I admit is an attitude rather than a fact. Similarly, I would tax visual art rather than subsidize it.

This is most extraordinary. Just how prosperous would we have to get before you would allow people to have tax-free fun?

Assuming you meant it literally (and not just as a signal of something else), this scares the hell out of me. It sounds like we may have practically-incompatible utility functions.

(How would that even be implemented? By paying inspectors to come to people's houses to check whether they've drawn any pictures that day? Extra sales tax on art supplies?)

Comment author: Chronos 24 February 2011 05:30:50PM 1 point [-]

It does if the skin is wet. Once you're through the skin, the human body's resistance is quite low, in the single-digit kiloohm range at most, because the human body is mostly salt water (a fantastically good conductor by non-metallic standards). The biggest barrier to current is the upper layer of dead, dry cells on the epidermis. And lead-acid batteries have a fairly low internal resistance, which allows them to produce high currents if the load is also low resistance (a required feature when cranking the engine).

Comment author: komponisto 24 February 2011 07:13:44PM *  4 points [-]

salt water (a fantastically good conductor by non-metallic standards).

Physics question (for anyone who knows the answer): when lightning strikes somewhere in the ocean, why isn't every living organism in the entire ocean electrocuted? How far away do you have to be to avoid being fried? How does one calculate this?

Comment author: komponisto 24 February 2011 05:00:36PM *  3 points [-]

With this in place, Chalmers formalized Good’s argument like so:

I recommend substituting "like this" or "as follows". Apart from the fact that I personally dislike the phrase "like so" (and similar goofy-sounding expressions such as "yay high"), my suggested alternatives are a better fit with the style of written academic prose.

Comment author: Johnicholas 23 February 2011 02:15:55PM 0 points [-]

The inferential chain is: too specialized leads to small cliques of peers who can review your work, which allows mutual admiration societies to start up and survive, which leads to ungroundedness, which leads to irrelevance.

Again, your claim that I think the relationship between modern mathematics in the world is too indirect is simply putting words in my mouth. I have no difficulty with indirect or long chains of relevance; my problem is with "mathematics for mathematics sake", particularly if it is non-auditable by outsiders. Would you fund "quilting for quiltings sake", if the quilt designs were impractically large and never actually finished or used to warm or decorate?

Here is a way that I think our positions could be reconciled: If there were studies on the "spin offs" of funding mathematicians to pursue their intuitions (deciding who is a mathematician based on some criterion perhaps a degree in mathematics and/or a Putnam-like test), then citing those studies would be sufficient for my purposes. I believe this is far less restrictive than current grants, which (as you say) demand the grant-writer to confabulate very specific applications; graph theory funded by sifting social networks for terrorists, for example.

Comment author: komponisto 23 February 2011 07:59:39PM 2 points [-]

The inferential chain is: too specialized leads to small cliques of peers who can review your work, which allows mutual admiration societies to start up and survive, which leads to ungroundedness, which leads to irrelevance

The non-sequitur occurs in the third step (or possibly the second, depending on what you've built into the meaning of "mutual admiration society"). The "mutual admiration" in question is based largely, even mostly, on the work that people do within the clique, and not simply on membership. Both within and between cliques, "relevance" is regulated by the mechanism of status: those mathematicians (and cliques) working on subjects that the smartest mathematicians find interesting (which, as I've argued, is the appropriate test for "relevance" in this context) will tend to rise in status, while areas where "important" problems are exhausted will likewise lose prestige. This doesn't work perfectly, and there is some random noise involved, of course, but in the aggregate statistical sense, this is basically how it works. Contrary to the conventional cynical wisdom, the prestige of mathematical topics does not drift randomly like clothing fashion (unless the latter has patterns that I don't know about), but is instead correlated with (ultimate) usefulness by means of interestingness.

Again, your claim that I think the relationship between modern mathematics in the world is too indirect is simply putting words in my mouth.

It's already easy to trace the intellectual ancestry of any mathematics paper all the way back to counting: you simply identify the branch of mathematics that it's in, look up that branch in Wikipedia, and click a few times. So what else do you mean by "groundedness", if not that subjects which are fewer inferential steps away from counting are more "grounded" than subjects which are more steps away?

my problem is with "mathematics for mathematics sake", particularly if it is non-auditable by outsiders. Would you fund "quilting for quiltings sake", if the quilt designs were impractically large and never actually finished or used to warm or decorate?

I still don't understand why you have a problem with "mathematics for mathematics' sake". Is interestingness not a value in itself? For me it certainly is, and this is the core of my argument for academic/high-IQ art -- an argument which also applies to mathematics, for all that mathematics also benefits from utilitarian arguments. "Quilting for quilting's sake" as you describe it just sounds like a form of visual art, and visual art is something I would indeed fund.

Here is a way that I think our positions could be reconciled: If there were studies on the "spin offs" of funding mathematicians to pursue their intuitions (deciding who is a mathematician based on some criterion perhaps a degree in mathematics and/or a Putnam-like test), then citing those studies would be sufficient for my purposes

What would count as a successful "spin off" in your view?

Comment author: Johnicholas 23 February 2011 01:55:48AM *  1 point [-]

I think we've both made our positions clear; harvesting links from earlier in this thread, I think my worry that mathematics might become too specialized is perennial:

Regarding the distinction between computation and proving, I was attempting to distinguish between mechanical computation (such as reducing an expression by applying a well-known set of reduction rules to it) and proving, which (for humans) is often creative and does not feel mechanical.

By "the computations motivating their results", I mean something like Experimental Mathematics: http://www.experimentalmath.info/

Comment author: komponisto 23 February 2011 12:31:43PM 3 points [-]

I think we've both made our positions clear; harvesting links from earlier in this thread, I think my worry that mathematics might become too specialized is perennial:

The issue here is about the "usefulness" of mathematical research, and its relationship to the physical world; not whether it is too "specialized". Far from adding clarity on the intellectual matter at hand, those links merely suggest that what's motivating your remarks here is an attitude of dissatisfaction with the mathematical profession that you've picked up from reading the writings of disgruntled contrarians. They may have good points to make on the sociology of mathematics, but that's not what's at issue here. Your complaint wasn't that mathematicians don't follow each other's work because they're too absorbed in their own (which is the phenomenon that Zeilberger and Tilly complain about); it was that the relationship between modern mathematics and "the world" is too tenuous or indirect for your liking. On that, only the Von Neumann quote (discussed here before) is relevant; and the position expressed therein strikes me as considerably more nuanced than yours (which seems to me to be obtainable from the Von Neumann quote by deleting everything between "l'art pour l'art" and "whenever this stage is reached").

As for computation: if your concern was the ultimate empirical "grounding" of mathematical results, the fact that all mathematical proofs can in principle be mechanically verified (and hence all mathematical claims are "about" the behavior of computational machines) answers that. Otherwise, you're talking about matters of taste regarding areas and styles of mathematics.

Comment author: Johnicholas 22 February 2011 08:32:01PM 3 points [-]

From an assumption of wealth, that we humans have plenty of time and energy, I agree with you - the fact that someone is curious is sufficient reason to spend effort investigating. However, (and this is a matter of opinion) we're not in a position of wealth. Rather, we currently have important scarcities of many things (life), we have various ongoing crises, and most of our efforts to better ourselves in some way are also digging ourselves deeper in some other way, manufacturing new crises that will require human ingenuity to address.

Improvements to the practice of peer review would be valuable, to achieve more truth, more science, more technology.

You're putting words in my mouth by claiming I'm following a "inferential distances are short" heuristic. That would be like additionally requiring the groundedness-auditor ought to bottom out in the real world after a short sequence of citations. I never said anything like that.

Your claim that all mathematicians somehow have accurate intuitions about what will eventually turn out to be useful is dubious. Mathematicians are human, and information about the world has to ultimately come from the world.

Earlier I suggested "computations", that is, mechanical manipulations of relatively concrete mathematical entities, as the path for information from the world to inform mathematician's intuitions. However, mathematicians rarely publish the computations motivating their results, which is the whole point that I'm trying to make.

Comment author: komponisto 22 February 2011 10:29:06PM *  4 points [-]

Your claim that all mathematicians somehow have accurate intuitions about what will eventually turn out to be useful is dubious. Mathematicians are human, and information about the world has to ultimately come from the world.

Adding the quantifier "all" is an unfair rhetorical move, of course; but anyway, here we come to the essence of it: you simply do not see the relationship between the thoughts of mathematicians and "the world". Sure, you'll concede the usefulness of negative numbers, calculus, and maybe (some parts of) number theory now, in retrospect, after existing technologies have already hit you over the head with it; but when it comes to today's mathematics, well, that's just too abstract to be useful.

Do you think you would have correctly predicted, as a peasant in the 1670s, the technological uses of calculus? I'm not even sure Newton or Leibniz would have.

Human brains are part of the world; information that comes from human thought is information about the world. Mathematicians, furthermore, are not just any humans; they are humans specifically selected for deriving pleasure from powerful insights.

Earlier I suggested "computations", that is, mechanical manipulations of relatively concrete mathematical entities, as the path for information from the world to inform mathematician's intuitions. However, mathematicians rarely publish the computations motivating their results, which is the whole point that I'm trying to make.

Every proof in a mathematics paper is shorthand for a formal proof, which is nothing but a computation. The reason these computations aren't published is that they would be extremely long and very difficult to read.

Comment author: SilasBarta 22 February 2011 07:52:59PM 1 point [-]

Why such prejudice against "explicitly mathematical goals"? Why on Earth is this a danger? One way or another, people are going to amuse themselves -- via art, sports, sex, or drugs -- so it might as well be via mathematics, which even the most cynically "hard-headed" will concede is sometimes "useful".

Indeed, people will always amuse themselves. But that doesn't mean they deserve an academic field devoted to amusing people within their own little clique. Should there be Monty Python Studies, stocked with academics who (somehow) get paid to do nothing but write commentary on the same Monty Python sketches and performances?

No, because that would be ****ing stupid. Their work would only be useful to the small clique of people who self-select into the field, and who aspire to do nohting but ... teach Monty Python studies. Yet the exact same thing is tolerated with classical music studies, whose advocates always find just the right excuse for why their field isn't refined enough to make itself applicable outside the ivory tower, or to anyone who isn't trying to say, "Look at me, plebes! I'm going to the opera!"

With that said, I agree that this criticism doens't apply to the field of mathematics for the reasons you gave -- that it is likely to find uses that are not obvious now (case in point: the anti-war prime number researcher whose "100% abstract and inapplicable" research later found use in military encryption). So I think you're right about math. But you wouldn't be able to give the same defense of academic art/music fields.

Comment author: komponisto 22 February 2011 08:37:00PM 2 points [-]

So I think you're right about math. But you wouldn't be able to give the same defense of academic art/music fields.

Well, um, thanks for bringing that up here, but of course I don't give the same defense of academic art/music fields; for those I would give a different defense.

Should there be Monty Python Studies

There is.

Comment author: Johnicholas 21 February 2011 09:18:22PM 1 point [-]

My intent was to demonstrate a particular possible threat to the peer review system. As the number of people who can see whether you're grounded in reality gets smaller, the chance of the group becoming an ungrounded mutual admiration society gets larger. I believe one way to improve the peer review system would be to explicitly claim that your work is motivated by some real-world problem and applicable to some real-world solution, and back those claims up with a citation trail for would-be groundedness-auditors to follow.

Actually, there's a vaguely similar preprint: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1102/1102.3523v1.pdf

The danger I see is mathematicians endorsing mathematics research because it serves explicitly mathematical goals. It's possible, even moderately likely, that a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis (for example) would be relevant to something outside of mathematics. Still, I'd like us to decide to attack it because we expect it to be useful, not merely because it's difficult and therefore allows us to demonstrate skill.

Comment author: komponisto 22 February 2011 07:07:58PM 11 points [-]

The danger I see is mathematicians endorsing mathematics research because it serves explicitly mathematical goals....I'd like us to decide to attack [the Rieman Hypothesis] because we expect it to be useful, not merely because it's difficult and therefore allows us to demonstrate skill.

Why such prejudice against "explicitly mathematical goals"? Why on Earth is this a danger? One way or another, people are going to amuse themselves -- via art, sports, sex, or drugs -- so it might as well be via mathematics, which even the most cynically "hard-headed" will concede is sometimes "useful".

But more fundamentally, the heuristic you're using here ("if I don't see how it's useful, it probably isn't") is wrong. You underestimate the correlation between what mathematicians find interesting and what is useful. Mathematicians are not interested in the Riemann Hypothesis because it may be useful, but the fact that they're interested is significant evidence that it will be.

What mathematics is, as a discipline, is the search for conceptual insights on the most abstract level possible. Its usefulness does not lie in specific ad-hoc "applications" of particular mathematical facts, but rather in the fact that the pursuit of mathematical research over a span of decades to centuries results in humans' possessing a more powerful conceptual vocabulary in terms of which to do science, engineering, philosophy, and everything else.

Mathematicians are the kind of people who would have invented negative numbers on their own because they're a "natural idea", without "needing" them for any "application", back in the day when other people (perhaps their childhood peers) would have seen the idea as nothing but intellectual masturbation. They are people, in other words, whose intuitions about what is "natural" and "interesting" are highly correlated with what later turns out to be useful, even when other people don't believe it and even when they themselves can't predict how.

I believe one way to improve the peer review system would be to explicitly claim that your work is motivated by some real-world problem and applicable to some real-world solution, and back those claims up with a citation trail for would-be groundedness-auditors to follow.

This is what we see in grant proposals -- and far from changing the status quo, all it does is get the status quo funded by the government.

It's easier to concoct "real-world applications" of almost anything you please than it is to explain the real reason mathematics is useful to the kind of people who ask about "real-world applications".

Comment author: SilasBarta 22 February 2011 04:21:57PM 0 points [-]

That would be a valid point if that particular forum of physicists were insisting that people can't possibly be expending energy (beyond normal life-sustenance) to hold heavy objects because, "They aren't applying force to the object through a distance."

There's probably a parallel disconnect in there somewhere that AlexMennen is concerned about.

Comment author: komponisto 22 February 2011 05:04:37PM 1 point [-]

The point is that in both cases people are complaining about a conceptual reduction which they don't recognize because the resulting vocabulary doesn't happen to resemble the everyday vocabulary.

Thinking that decision theory lies in a separate magisterium from social pressures is, like most compartmentalizations, a failure to properly abstract. It's akin to not realizing that the physical theory of work includes forces being applied through distances within the body of an organism, and that part of the whole point of a physical theory is that it should not explicitly invoke complex higher-level notions of psychology.

Comment author: Johnicholas 16 February 2011 05:51:59PM 0 points [-]

I don't have any good examples of actual irrelevant/artistic mathematics, but possibly:

"Unipotent Schottky bundles on Riemann surfaces and complex tori" http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.3006

would be an example of how opaque to outsiders (and therefore potentially irrelevant) pure mathematics can get. I'm confident (primarily based on surface features) that this paper in particular isn't self-referential, but I have no clue where it would be applied (cryptography? string theory? really awesome computer graphics?).

Comment author: komponisto 21 February 2011 07:49:49PM 1 point [-]

Among other things, it sounds like you're expecting inferential distances to be short.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 20 February 2011 04:19:34PM 0 points [-]

I just doubt that you are correct, about the Times column or anything else above.

Academia, and especially math, seems to me to exist to not be part of society, to be literally descended from monastic orders, etc. It indoctrinates people to claim what you are saying, and even believe it, but people's values are pretty objective and not so measurable by such claims.

How impactful was his involvement in the USQ affair?

Terry may have more fun than Tyler, since he's smarter and can access more fun, but I think it's VERY unlikely that after spending a year like Tyler does he'd go back to his life.

Financial/political success isn't 'instrumental rationality'. Maslow's 'self-actualization' is. Tyler and Terry both do pretty well in that respect, but in my assessment, not comparably well.

Comment author: komponisto 21 February 2011 07:39:53PM *  6 points [-]

Likewise, I doubt that you are correct when you write:

it's VERY unlikely that after spending a year like Tyler does he'd go back to his life.

Think about what this entails: you're essentially saying that the fact that Terry Tao spends his time solving math problems rather than hobnobbing with east-coast social and policy elites is the result of a miscalculation on his part with regard to his own values. As opposed to a selection effect where Tao happens to be in the small group of people who actually do prefer math to schmoozing and affecting government policy.

Now I do find it plausible that there exists a class of people for whom what you say is true -- that there are successful mathematicians who in their heart of hearts would rather be the Jim Simons of today than the Jim Simons of the 1970s, or even today's Terry Tao. But for your claim to be true as stated, there would essentially have to exist nobody in the entire human population with the opposite preference (because if there were, Tao, Wiles, etc. would surely be among them), and given the psychological diversity of our species this strikes me as absurd.

As for monastic orders, that's exactly where I would want to be if I had to live in the Middle Ages. You may say that they were "outside of society", but the fact is that most of the people we remember today from that period were monks. (The others being kings and popes.)

Comment author: komponisto 21 February 2011 05:47:37AM 2 points [-]

I haven't found an exactly appropriate segue in the post or comments (which are too specific about domains and don't mention this one), but this post nevertheless seems like an appropriate context to mention that composers appear to be a fairly strong counterexample to the conventional wisdom about creativity declining with age: they not only tend to be most productive, but also usually do their best (and even sometimes most innovative and radical) work, in late age, whether "late age" means 30, 50, or 90.

That phenomenon so dreaded in mathematics, namely doing some brilliant piece of work in one's twenties and never doing anything significant again despite trying, just doesn't seem to exist in music.

Currently I know not the causes nor the implications of this difference.

Comment author: lukeprog 21 February 2011 02:13:55AM 3 points [-]

Really? Preference utilitarianism prevails on Less Wrong? I haven't been around too long, but I would have guessed that moral anti-realism (in several forms) prevailed.

Comment author: komponisto 21 February 2011 05:09:19AM 12 points [-]

Isn't this a confusion of levels, with preference utilitarianism being an ethical theory, and moral anti-realism being a metaethical theory?

Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2011 08:00:52PM *  0 points [-]

A couple of weeks ago I sent the following PM to the organizer, BrandonReinhart, which I'll go ahead and post here since it turns out he won't be attending:

Since it's an issue of local interest for you all, I'd be curious to hear about any opinions that people at the meetup may have about the Knox case, and whether they've read the LW discussion of the subject.

Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2011 07:41:58AM 12 points [-]

Imagine posting the following on a physics forum:

"When a physicist says 'work', they usually mean something along the lines of 'force times distance'. When an average person says 'work', they are usually referring to the subjective feeling of expending effort. I think that a lot of the disagreement regarding the nature of work (i.e. between specialists and layfolk) is rooted in a failure to properly distinguish between mathematical calculations and everyday intuition. Most physicists probably understand the distinction fairly clearly, but you guys only ever talk about force times distance. Why don't you talk about the psychological meaning of work?"

Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2011 05:31:52AM -1 points [-]

I agree with Nesov, Salamon, and Dorikka and suspect furthermore that the distinction between "altruists" and "egoists" that is drawn in the post is a confusion which doesn't survive careful scrutiny.

It seems to me that the people you call "altruists" are simply people who are attempting to have a particularly large impact on the long-term future of the world in a particularly direct way. But not everyone needs to work so directly on the most global scales, all the time; there is room (and likely need) for a division of labor, with some working more locally. For some (probably very many) people, improving themselves is among the most effective contributions to the future of humanity they can make.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 19 February 2011 06:15:50PM *  1 point [-]

Tyler has a regular New York Times column and is part of society in a way that no mathematician I know of is. He can influence influential people in a way that Terry can't. He also very clearly has a life that is optimized to meet his values. Terry does what lots of other people do, he just does a hundred times more of it moderately better than they would.

Once again, apparent disagreement on this point seems to me to be an instance of academics and those with academic aspirations simply not seeing status other than academic status. Not doing so is part of their training of course, but it leads to a very confused picture of the world.

Comment author: komponisto 19 February 2011 08:14:14PM 9 points [-]

He also very clearly has a life that is optimized to meet his values

That is every bit as true of Terry as Tyler, and probably more so: Tyler would probably like to be Larry Summers, Milton Friedman, or Paul Krugman, while Terry Tao is pretty much exactly who Terry Tao wants to be.

My interpretation of the disagreement is different: an unwarranted assumption on the part of some that those with academic high status would really prefer something else, but are willing to "settle" for academia; as opposed to academia simply being the best place society currently offers for their values to be pursued. (And yes, academia is "part of society".) I would argue that any picture of the world on which "instrumental rationality" is synonymous with "financial/political success" is more confused than mine.

As for influence, see the USQ affair. Terry Tao can influence when he wants. I'm sure he could get a NY Times column (or certainly a LA Times column) if he wanted one.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 19 February 2011 10:42:18AM 1 point [-]

I've "deleted" the post, given your criticism, and that (judging from the number of upvotes on Manfred's comment at this point) a large number of readers apparently consider the post and/or followup comments to be ridiculous. I'm not really sure why though. It doesn't seem obviously crazy to provide information about the rationality benefits of some hobbies that would-be rationalist can take into account, along with other costs and benefits, while choosing hobbies.

Perhaps the title, "Rationalist Hobbies", gives the impression that I and others are recommending hobbies that every rationalist should have? If so, maybe I should have just renamed the post to "Rationality Benefits of Various Hobbies"?

Comment author: komponisto 19 February 2011 04:07:49PM *  0 points [-]

I've "deleted" the post given your criticism, and...the number of upvotes on Manfred's comment at this point...

That was unnecessary, given the post's current score of +7. If all those people who upvoted Manfred really disapproved of the post (as opposed to lauding a display of wit), they could have voted it down to -28.

I don't have any problem with the post itself, its title, or most comments; and in fact I don't think your proposed title change would have "helped" one bit with folks like Manfred or cousin_it, since the idea of exploiting hobbies for their rationality benefits seems to be precisely what they find ridiculous.

Comment author: SilasBarta 17 February 2011 05:11:00PM 2 points [-]

We're talking about having a superset term in common, not implied endorsement. Yes, you have the duty to accept that your work and Lady Gaga fall under the category "human culture", and if you want to cleave that category just so you don't have to share it with her, you need a much better reason than politics.

Comment author: komponisto 17 February 2011 05:29:35PM 1 point [-]

We're talking about having a superset term in common, not implied endorsement

I don't buy it. This issue isn't about semantics, it's about status. You evidently disapprove of the status being granted by the academic/critical elite to certain poets relative to Lady Gaga. But as far as I can tell you haven't confronted their reasons for preferring "high poetry" to Gaga, instead simply taking it for granted that their reasons are inadequate.

The way to argue your case is to give an example of a poem that the establishment thinks is good and that you think is bad, explain why you think it's bad, and explain why their argument that it's good is wrong.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 17 February 2011 04:47:49PM 11 points [-]

Empirically, we have more impressive instrumental rationalists, such as Peter Thiel, Tyler Cowen and Demis Hassabis coming from the much smaller field of chess than from the much larger field of math (where I think there's only James Simmons). There's also Watizkin, who seems very interesting. It seems to me that math emphasizes excess rigor and a number of other elements which constitute the instrumental rationality equivalent of anti-epistemology, and possibly also that the way in which it is taught emphasizes learning concepts prior to the questions that motivated their creation, which never happens in games. Fischer was probably more insane than any famous insane mathematician I can think of though, and Kasparov does claim the following http://www.new-tradition.org/view-garry-kasparov.php though given his Soviet education, e.g. education in a system which actually did teach a blatantly false version of history, this is more understandable.

At the elite PhD level, the mathematical community encourages a level of rigor, and the analytical philosophy community a level of pseudo-rigor that may even qualify as epistemic anti-epistemology for the typical student, (hence the anomalous number of theists in those fields relative to other high-IQ fields) but the people who are recognized as the best in those fields are probably matched only by the best physicists (as a group) in epistemic rationality. Certainly those fields reward epistemic rationality like no others.

Poker, MtG, Go, etc have good instrumental track records compared to math but bad ones compared to chess IMHO.

BTW, I feel instrumental rationality guilt at writing a blog comment that few people are likely to read. I'd love it if someone were to incorporate this and their thoughts about it into a top level post.

Comment author: komponisto 17 February 2011 05:04:10PM 6 points [-]

Empirically, we have more impressive instrumental rationalists, such as Peter Thiel, Tyler Cowen and Demis Hassabis coming from the much smaller field of chess than from the much larger field of math (where I think there's only James Simmons)

Am I missing something? Is Tyler Cowen famous for something other than being a moderately high-status academic economist with a blog? Otherwise, why are you more impressed with him than with leading academic mathematicians, such as Terence Tao?

Comment author: SilasBarta 17 February 2011 03:43:17PM -1 points [-]

It's a real world category with real world consequences... seems silly to try and scrap it.

Like with any category, it depends on the purpose you're using it for. And I don't know what purpose this category boundary would be for other than, "I don't like my work being associated with Lady Gaga, so I'll deem pop music 'not poetry'."

And that's not a good enough reason.

Comment author: komponisto 17 February 2011 04:27:16PM 0 points [-]

And that's not a good enough reason.

Why not? Is there some sort of duty to accept the association of one's work with Lady Gaga against one's wishes?

Comment author: Vladimir_M 17 February 2011 02:50:49AM *  17 points [-]

Besides the already mentioned issues, there are at least two very important ones.

First, one important thing that a university diploma signals is the ability to behave in proper ways that are demanded in professional situations, and to credibly maintain this appearance for several years. In particular, one of my pet hypotheses is that the notoriously high level of political correctness on campuses in fact serves a useful signaling role for employers. Even very productive and capable employees can end up as a net loss if they say or do something stupid that results in a harassment or discrimination lawsuit -- and people are much less likely to blunder in these ways if they have passed through several years of scrutiny by an institution that penalizes any indication of propensity for such excesses and relentlessly warns and propagandizes its students about how evil and dangerous they are.

Of course, another thing that universities are in the business of selling is the opportunity to mingle and make connections with high-status people, as well as the inherent increase in status that comes from the affiliation with a high-status institution. Status in human relations is often not reducible to a matter of signaling other traits, and the fact that universities currently possess high status and the power of bestowing it mean that they have control of an inherently scarce and fixed-sum resource, so they're impossible to undercut barring some very great social changes.

Comment author: komponisto 17 February 2011 02:12:46PM 1 point [-]

Of course, another thing that universities are in the business of selling is the opportunity to mingle and make connections with high-status people, as well as the inherent increase in status that comes from the affiliation with a high-status institution. Status in human relations is often not reducible to a matter of signaling other traits, and the fact that universities currently possess high status and the power of bestowing it mean that they have control of an inherently scarce and fixed-sum resource, so they're impossible to undercut barring some very great social changes.

This is right on the mark, in my opinion.

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 15 February 2011 01:19:36AM *  3 points [-]

No voice recognition, and the mechanical buzzer pushing thing was kinda silly, but still, not bad. Certainly at least a decent step in natural language processing, right?

I know this is not at all anything like general AI (though I gather from the descriptions that there's at least some form of reinforcement learning going on when it gets stuff wrong. I may be wrong on that though), but still, I feel at least a bit impressed. (I wish there'd been auditory speech processing too, instead of receiving text, but...)

EDIT: either way, it's still just plain cool! :)

Comment author: komponisto 16 February 2011 03:13:23PM 2 points [-]

I know this is not at all anything like general AI

I'll confess that I still have a hard time shaking the intuition that this is how general AI will be arrived at, if and when it is: a bunch of things like this, more impressive with each generation, until it gradually occurs to us over the course a few decades or centuries that our computers can do everything we can do.

Comment author: komponisto 16 February 2011 02:18:23PM *  8 points [-]

Mathematics is full of precise and illuminating solutions to previously-confusing philosophical problems; so much so that you might call mathematics itself "precise philosophy". For example:

  • What is the nature of space, extension, and continuity? Answer.

In general, whenever you see a "cryptic" definition of a concept in mathematics that generalizes but doesn't superficially resemble some previous concept, you're dealing with the answer to a question of the form "what is the 'philosophical essence' of concept X?"

Mathematicians have thus achieved the ultimate philosopher's dream: answers of the form "the meaning of life is 42" which are true and meaningful!

Zeno's paradoxes have been mentioned in another comment. For "theological" questions, see here.

Comment author: komponisto 15 February 2011 05:30:02PM 4 points [-]

Related: Cached Selves.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 February 2011 09:44:41PM 3 points [-]

I wasn't saying that they were similar questions, just that one reminded me of the other. (Though I can see why one would think that.)

I'd say the answer to this is pretty simple. Laura ABF (if I remember the handle correctly) suggested of the original Torture vs. Specks dilemma that the avoided specks be replaced with 3^^^3 people having really great sex - which didn't change the answer for me, of course. This provides a similar template for the current problem: Figure out how many victims you would dustspeck in exchange for two beneficiaries having a high-quality sexual encounter, then figure out how many dustspecks correspond to a month of torture, then divide the second number by the first.

Comment author: komponisto 14 February 2011 10:06:37PM 4 points [-]

Laura ABF (if I remember the handle correctly)

I suspect it was probably LauraABJ.

Comment author: TessPope 11 February 2011 03:00:31PM 1 point [-]

"One should perhaps think of their book as being written for students at Mannes or Julliard and of Westergaard's as being written for students at Columbia or Princeton. (There is a certain literal truth to these statements.)"

As a graduate of Juilliard I am curious about this assertion. Care to elaborate? Not that I personally have ever had much use as a performer for abstract notions about music theory. My experience has been that it gets in the way of actually performing music. Which leads to the question 'why should this be so' ? Those of my colleagues who were great adepts at theory were uninspired performers of the music they seemed to understand so well. All head and no heart. But why? I can understand that they are different skill sets, but why should they not be complementary skill sets?

I imagine that on this site, alarm bells may go off as I make an observation from experience, but I do not think that it would be possible to use any sort of methodology or system analysis to determine who is and who is not an inspired performer. Just try figuring out how orchestral auditions are run! Now that is a sloppy business!

Regarding textbooks: have any of you read W.A. Mathieu's

W.A. Mathieu Harmonic Experience: Tonal Harmony from Its Natural Origins to Its Modern Expression (1997) Inner Traditions Intl Ltd. ISBN 0-89281-560-4.

Comment author: komponisto 12 February 2011 04:40:48AM *  5 points [-]

As a graduate of Juilliard I am curious about this assertion. Care to elaborate? Not that I personally have ever had much use as a performer for abstract notions about music theory. My experience has been that it gets in the way of actually performing music. Which leads to the question 'why should this be so' ? Those of my colleagues who were great adepts at theory were uninspired performers of the music they seemed to understand so well. All head and no heart. But why? I can understand that they are different skill sets, but why should they not be complementary skill sets?

It's a complicated question, but the short answer is that what usually passes for "music theory" is the wrong theory. At least, it's certainly the wrong theory for the purposes of turning people into inspired performers, because as you point out, it doesn't.

But then, if you'll forgive my cynicism, that isn't the purpose of music theory class, any more than the purpose of high-school Spanish class is to teach people Spanish. The purpose of such classes is to provide a test for students that's easy to grade them on and makes the school look good to outside observers.

(Nor, by the way, do students typically show up at Juilliard for the purpose of turning themselves from uninspired into inspired performers; rather, in order to get there in the first place they already have to be "inspired enough" by the standards of current musical culture, and are there simply for the purposes of networking and career-building.)

But music theory isn't inherently counterproductive to or useless for becoming a good performer or composer; it's just that you need a different theory for that. Ultimately, inspired performers are that way because they know certain information that their less-inspired counterparts don't; to see what this sort of information looks like when written down, see Chapter 9 of Westergaard. (And after reading that chapter, tell me if you still think that knowledge of music theory "gets in the way of actually performing music".)

Comment author: Isaac 11 February 2011 04:42:22PM 5 points [-]

Small error at "It's difficult to conceive of an intelligence that experiences around 30,000 years in just one second"

One billion * one second = ~30 years, not ~30,000 years.

Comment author: komponisto 11 February 2011 07:31:31PM *  3 points [-]

One billion * one second = ~30 years, not ~30,000 years.

Well, unless you're European. :-)

Comment author: Cyan 09 February 2011 08:34:54PM 3 points [-]

EY describes what happens when he eats less here:

...a skipped meal you wouldn't notice would have me dizzy when I stand up...I can starve or think, not both at the same time.

Best wishes, the Unofficial Guide to Less Wrong (take that, Zack M. Davis!).

Comment author: komponisto 09 February 2011 09:20:23PM 0 points [-]

Yes, but I was asking specifically about the effect on weight.

(And notice that this also reinforces the relevance of my question #2 above.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 February 2011 03:16:55PM 9 points [-]

I have given up, and it was indeed a great improvement in quality of life when I stopped trying to manage my weight - gave up and ate whatever, stopped going to the gym - and observed that my weight behaved in exactly the same way as before, the same slow upward creep at the same rate.

I don't know to what degree being overweight would be less painful if there wasn't a social stigma attached to it, but we don't actually live in that world.

Comment author: komponisto 09 February 2011 04:28:07PM *  6 points [-]

Some questions from someone who is genuinely curious and has almost zero domain knowledge (I've never commented on this topic before, I don't think):

  1. It seems to me that any social stigma would be based not on being overweight per se, but rather on the visual appearance of being overweight, i.e. being "fat". However, I don't find that your visual appearance is outside the normal variation that I expect to see among people in the contemporary United States. (In fact, I never would have guessed that you had an interest in this topic if you hadn't discussed it here.) So I'm quite curious about what evidence you've seen that you're suffering a social stigma.

  2. Turning back from the social to the medical: given that you seem to naturally tend toward a certain "high" weight (I presume it doesn't actually increase without bound!) to what extent have you considered the possibility that the medical establishment's definition of "overweight" is wrong, or doesn't apply to you?

  3. Do you think you would be experiencing the same phenomenon if you were living in the ancestral environment? Why or why not?

  4. Have you tried eating less (e.g. only one meal per day)? If so, what was the result? If not, what do you predict would happen to your weight?

Comment author: komponisto 09 February 2011 07:11:14AM 4 points [-]

Relatedly, I'm also struck by how unpleasant and nasty people can be in some places -- often without actually violating any forum rules or other taboos, but just by such behaviors as aggressively denying status to others and being logically rude in the extreme.

Comment author: wedrifid 07 February 2011 11:00:29AM 11 points [-]

"How to Learn a Language Quickly" probably needs no elaboration

That one doesn't sound bad. I'd like to read a take from a non-Ferris source.

Comment author: komponisto 09 February 2011 02:35:36AM *  1 point [-]

Here is my recommended method, in three complex but well-defined steps:

  1. Learn the grammar of the language using an old-fashioned (pre-1960) textbook.

  2. Access a large corpus of data (text and speech in the language).

  3. Practice using the language with people who know it, and receive feedback.

Comment author: SilasBarta 08 February 2011 06:20:58PM *  2 points [-]

Maybe I started sounding a little thick-headed to you, as I have in the past, so let me try to rephrase my criticism more substantively.

For the class of questions you're referring to, I believe that as you gain more and more knowledge, and are able to better refine what you're asking for in light of what you (and future self-modifications) want, it will turn out that the thing you're actually looking for is better described as "confusion extinguishment" rather than "truth".

This is because, at a universal-enough level of knowledge, "truth" becomes ill-defined, and what you really want is an understandable mapping from yourself to reality. In our current state, with a specific ontology and language assumed, we can take an arbitrary utterance and classify it as true or false (edit: or unknown or meaningless). But as that ontology adjusts to account for new knowledge, there is no natural grounding from which to judge statements, and so you "cut out the middle" and search directly for the mapping from an encoding to useful predictions about reality, in which the encoding is only true or false relative to a model (or "decompressor").

(Similarly, whether I'm lying to you depends on whether you are aware of the encoding I'm using, and whether I'm aware of this awareness. If the truth is "yes", but you already know I'll say "no" if I mean "yes", it is not lying for me to say "no". Likewise, it is lying if I predicate my answer on a coinflip [when you're not asking about a coin flip] -- even if the coinflip results in giving me the correct answer. Entanglement, not truth, is the key concept here.)

Therefore, in the limit of infinite knowledge, the goal you will be seeking will look more like "confusion extinguishment" than "truth".

Comment author: komponisto 08 February 2011 09:22:24PM 0 points [-]

it will turn out that the thing you're actually looking for is better described as "confusion extinguishment" rather than "truth".

This is because, at a universal-enough level of knowledge, "truth" becomes ill-defined, and what you really want is an understandable mapping from yourself to reality

Rather than "truth" being ill-defined, I would rather want to say that the problem is simply that an answer of the form "true" or "false" will typically convey fewer bits of information than an answer that would be described as "confusion-extinguishing"; the latter would usually involve carving up your hypothesis-space more finely and directing your probability-flow more efficiently toward smaller regions of the space.

Comment author: Bo102010 08 February 2011 03:21:16AM *  14 points [-]

I recently found myself thinking about this same topic. I have figured some of these out by trial and error, but feel that some formal training would have been useful (others I have not encountered):

  • How should you interact with a police officer - what are your obligations, your rights, and how should you conduct yourself?

  • If you want to move from one residence to another, what steps should you take? If you are credentialed in one state and want to move to another, what do you do?

  • If you get into a minor car accident, what should you do? What about a major one?

  • What's the best way to quit your job?

  • How do you vote in an election? A primary? What should you do if you want to run for office?

  • If you find that someone has died of non-suspicious and natural causes, what steps should you take? Whom should you call?

Comment author: komponisto 08 February 2011 04:20:05PM 1 point [-]

How should you interact with a police officer - what are your obligations, your rights, and how should you conduct yourself?

For U.S. residents, the ACLU's "bust card" is a convenient reference.

Comment author: Elizabeth 08 February 2011 06:24:04AM 2 points [-]

If you know the alphabet song, the melody naturally (at least to me) separates the alphabet into a few groups: ABCDEFG HIJKLMNOP QRS TUV WX YZ. This may be easier than memorizing divisions.

Comment author: komponisto 08 February 2011 04:06:27PM *  0 points [-]

the melody naturally (at least to me) separates the alphabet into a few groups

It's not just you! (And FWIW, it's actually the rhythm: with the exception of W-X, the last letter of each group is held for at least twice as long as any of the others -- four times in the case of LMNO-P.)

Comment author: komponisto 05 February 2011 02:15:23AM 5 points [-]

A link to this Paul Graham essay seems warranted.

It seems to me that one thing that could be done is for people who've "gotten it right" not to leave the discipline. And (then) for folks who do leave to remember that there are plenty of people like them left behind.

Although, at the risk of dissenting somewhat from what seems to be the consensus, I don't actually think that analytic philosophy is in particularly bad shape, certainly not by the standards of academic disciplines in general. We're talking about a field whose giants have included people like Russell, Quine, and (currently) Dennett. (And I mention these folks with particular reference to their views on the relationship of philosophy to science.) Yes, there are also some people who are Wrong, but that's pretty much life in academia (or, if you really want the truth, anywhere else in human society). I think one has to be happy with a field if those in it with good ideas are rewarded (which is not always the case in all subjects, but is something on which philosophy does a decent job, as far as I can tell); expecting those with bad ideas to be punished may be asking too much (even if we assume it is wholly desirable).

Comment author: Psychohistorian 04 February 2011 09:09:32PM *  4 points [-]

Your entire point seems to be that it's better to give to multiple charities when the joint utility of giving to those charities exceeds the benefit of giving all the money to one charity.

This circumstance exists in the real world for most individuals so infrequently as to be properly ignored. It is extremely unlikely that there is some combination of charities such that giving $5,000 to each of them will generate substantially better returns than giving $10,000 to the best available charity. Unless I'm ignoring important evidence, charities just don't work together that comprehensively, and non-huge sums of money do not have dramatic enough effects that it would be efficient to split them up.

Also, you chose an incredibly dense and inefficient way to make what seems like a very simple point.

Comment author: komponisto 04 February 2011 11:08:12PM *  15 points [-]

Also, you chose an incredibly dense and inefficient way to make what seems like a very simple point

In general, I would caution against criticisms of this form for several reasons:

  • different thinking styles: what seems unnecessarily convoluted to one person may seem utterly natural to another;
  • hindsight bias: something may appear simple after you've worked it out, but that doesn't mean that working it out was easy while you were doing it;
  • incentives: one should think very carefully before writing any comment that sounds like "this post really ought not to have been written".
Comment author: ChristianKl 03 February 2011 01:04:09AM -2 points [-]

Choosing good priors isn't something that's epistemologically fairly trivial.

Using the majority opinion of the human race as a prior is a general strategy that you can defend rationally.

Comment author: komponisto 03 February 2011 03:44:59AM 4 points [-]

Using the majority opinion of the human race as a prior is a general strategy that you can defend rationally.

Use it as a prior all you want; but then you have to update on the (rest of the) evidence.

Comment author: Eneasz 02 February 2011 07:12:49PM 0 points [-]

I like the quote, but I downvoted. An upvote to the first person to identify why.

Comment author: komponisto 02 February 2011 08:33:15PM 0 points [-]

The fact that it wasn't formatted as a

quote

?

Comment author: lukeprog 02 February 2011 06:19:11AM 5 points [-]

I certainly think that positioning the philosophical foundations assumed by the quest for Friendly AI would give SIAI more credibility in academic circles. But right now SIAI seems to be very anti-academia in some ways, which I think is unfortunate.

Comment author: komponisto 02 February 2011 06:34:59AM *  3 points [-]

But right now SIAI seems to be very anti-academia in some ways,

I really don't think it is, as a whole. Vassar and Yudkowsky are somewhat, but there are other people within and closely associated with the organization who are actively trying to get papers published, etc. And EY himself just gave a couple of talks at Oxford, so I understand.

(In fact it would probably be more accurate to say that academia is somewhat more anti-SIAI than the other way around, at the moment.)

As for EY's book, my understanding is that it is targeted at popular rather than academic audiences, so it presumably won't be appropriate for it to trace the philosophical history of all the ideas contained therein, at least not in detail. But there's no reason it can't be done elsewhere.

Comment author: calef 02 February 2011 03:12:00AM *  0 points [-]

Fair enough, I was simply trying to appeal to what is probably his most familiar intuition regarding the real number line.

Most people that are going to have confusion about a big number being close to infinity probably aren't going to know what a metric space is.

In response to comment by calef on Approaching Infinity
Comment author: komponisto 02 February 2011 05:51:28AM 0 points [-]

They may not know the term "metric space" (in which case you just explain that it's a setting where we can measure distance), but if they think larger numbers are "closer to infinity" than smaller numbers, that means they are intuitively thinking in terms of the extended real line (metrized in one of the usual ways).

Comment author: calef 01 February 2011 03:49:09PM *  0 points [-]

Edit Edit: It seems I double misinterpreted the parent. I think we've agreed that (2) is finite, so if I ramble about it being infinite below, ignore me.

Being "close to infinity" doesn't really make sense in standard real analysis, if you're talking about any given finite number, because you can always produce another number arbitrarily larger than whatever you wanted to show was "really close to infinity".

Edit: So if you're asking "what's bigger, the sum of the first billion twin primes, or (2)", this question doesn't make sense because (2) isn't finite, but that sum is.

What's even more interesting, though, is that you can meaningfully compare different sized infinities. Look into Cardinality.

In response to comment by calef on Approaching Infinity
Comment author: komponisto 01 February 2011 11:14:52PM *  1 point [-]

Being "close to infinity" doesn't really make sense in standard real analysis

Sure it does -- the extended real line is easily made into a metric space.

(The point being that your use of the term "standard real analysis" here is a bit off, specifically in the form of being insufficiently meta. "Real analysis" is a subject in which one considers such ideas as "metrics" (and many other things) in general; the term doesn't just refer narrowly to the properties of the real line equipped with all the most "standard" structures.)

Comment author: Pavitra 01 February 2011 12:25:05AM 1 point [-]

And yet --

The one thing that actually has seemed to raise credibility, is famous people associating with the organization, like Peter Thiel funding us, or Ray Kurzweil on the Board.

In response to comment by Pavitra on Optimal Employment
Comment author: komponisto 01 February 2011 04:08:16AM *  4 points [-]

Sure, for the right sort of people, a direct donation of status can be effective (maybe even optimally so), just like there are some people who should actually work at SIAI.

Probably not the case for typical academic high-status, however. Perhaps the endorsement of Andrew Wiles or Stephen Hawking would be worth more than either of them could actually afford to donate; but your typical leader-of-a-subfield would probably be more effective by donating money from their atypically-high academic salary.

Also note that the status of people like Thiel and Kurzweil is itself intimately connected to the money they've made.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 31 January 2011 09:36:56PM 4 points [-]

Status can also be "donated to" (that is, used in the service of) a cause.

Comment author: komponisto 31 January 2011 09:41:53PM *  3 points [-]

So can time/labor, but....

Comment author: [deleted] 31 January 2011 08:49:07PM 12 points [-]

The straightforward answer: you can do a lot more with an interest, and use social reinforcement to your advantage, if you're plugged into an institution. Trying to go it alone is a serious challenge: you're isolated, you'll have motivation problems, you'll have a higher probability of getting yourself into eccentric dead ends if you don't have guidance.

Also, a lot of people really care what others think of them. We seem to disapprove of that on LessWrong, but I don't see why it's any more selfish or venal to want approval than to want money.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Optimal Employment
Comment author: komponisto 31 January 2011 09:34:47PM 5 points [-]

Also, a lot of people really care what others think of them. We seem to disapprove of that on LessWrong, but I don't see why it's any more selfish or venal to want approval than to want money.

The thinking presumably is that money can be donated to approved causes, and hence people here are allowed to not think of making money as "selfish".

...to which the reply is: approval (status) can be converted into money, and for some people, that may be the most efficient route given their motivation psychology.

Comment author: RichardChappell 30 January 2011 08:40:28PM *  40 points [-]

Eliezer's metaethics might be clarified in terms of the distinctions between sense, reference, and reference-fixing descriptions. I take it that Eliezer wants to use 'right' as a rigid designator to denote some particular set of terminal values, but this reference fact is fixed by means of a seemingly 'relative' procedure (namely, whatever terminal values the speaker happens to hold, on some appropriate [if somewhat mysterious] idealization). Confusions arise when people mistakenly read this metasemantic subjectivism into the first-order semantics or meaning of 'right'.

In summary:

(i) 'Right' means, roughly, 'promotes external goods X, Y and Z'

(ii) claim i above is true because I desire X, Y, and Z.

Note that Speakers Use Their Actual Language, so murder would still be wrong even if I had the desires of a serial killer. But if I had those violent terminal values, I would speak a slightly different language than I do right now, so that when KillerRichard asserts "Murder is right!" what he says is true. We don't really disagree, but are instead merely talking past each other.

Virtues of the theory:

(a) By rigidifying on our actual, current desires (or idealizations thereupon), it avoids Inducing Desire Satisfactions.

(b) Shifting the subjectivity out to the metasemantic level leaves us with a first-order semantic proposal that at least does a better job than simple subjectivism at 'saving the phenomena'. (It has echoes of Mark Schroeder's desire-based view of reasons, according to which the facts that give us reasons are the propositional contents of our desires, rather than the desires themselves. Or something like that.)

(c) It's naturalistic, if you find moral non-naturalism 'spooky'. (Though I'd sooner recommend Mackie-style error theory for naturalists, since I don't think (b) above is enough to save the phenomena.)

Objections

(1) It's incompatible with the datum that substantive, fundamental normative disagreement is in fact possible. People may share the concept of a normative reason, even if they fundamentally disagree about which features of actions are the ones that give us reasons.

(2) The semantic tricks merely shift the lump under the rug, they don't get rid of it. Standard worries about relativism re-emerge, e.g. an agent can know a priori that their own fundamental values are right, given how the meaning of the word 'right' is determined. This kind of (even merely 'fundamental') infallibility seems implausible.

(3) Just as simple subjectivism is an implausible theory of what 'right' means, so Eliezer's meta-semantic subjectivism is an implausible theory of why 'right' means promoting external goods X, Y, Z. An adequately objective metaethics shouldn't even give preferences a reference-fixing role.

Comment author: komponisto 31 January 2011 04:57:59AM *  19 points [-]

I think this is an excellent summary. I would make the following comments:

Confusions arise when people mistakenly read this metasemantic subjectivism into the first-order semantics or meaning of 'right'.

Yes, but I think Eliezer was mistaken in identifying this kind of confusion as the fundamental source of the objections to his theory (as in the Löb's theorem discussion). Sophisticated readers of LW (or OB, at the time) are surely capable of distinguishing between logical levels. At least, I am -- but nevertheless, I still didn't feel that his theory was adequately "non-relativist" to satisfy the kinds of people who worry about "relativism". What I had in mind, in other words, was your objections (2) and (3).

The answer to those objections, by the way, is that an "adequately objective" metaethics is impossible: the minds of complex agents (such as humans) are the only place in the universe where information about morality is to be found, and there are plenty of possible minds in mind-design space (paperclippers, pebblesorters, etc.) from which it is impossible to extract the same information. This directly answers (3), anyway; as for (2), "fallibility" is rescued (on the object level) by means of imperfect introspective knowledge: an agent could be mistaken about what its own terminal values are.

Comment author: lukeprog 30 January 2011 05:10:13AM 3 points [-]

I'm okay with Eliezer dismissing lots of standard philosophical categories as unhelpful and misleading. I have much the same attitude toward Anglophone philosophy. But anything he or someone else can do to help me understand what he is saying will be appreciated.

Comment author: komponisto 30 January 2011 06:27:26AM *  5 points [-]

I have much the same attitude toward Anglophone philosophy

Non-anglophone philosophy is worse. (Phenomenology, deconstructionism,...)

Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 28 January 2011 09:30:16PM *  4 points [-]

That doesn't change the fact that Atlas Shrugged is terribly written.

Can we reduce terribly written into testable empirical statements? Without necessarily calling them flaws, I agree about the use of author filibusters, straw villains, and Sues. I also agree that the philosophy is wrong, and that many people hated the book, including Whittaker Chambers.

All this having been said, I expect you will agree that writing a thousand-page novel that sells millions of copies is a rare feat that requires no small amount of writing skill. I find it hard to believe that millions of people would buy a book for no reason whatsoever. If the claim is merely that Rand fans have bad taste and questionable morals, then we do not really disagree in the rationalist's sense; I can only shrug and say, "De gustibus non est disputandum." I merely wish to emphasize that even catering to people with bad taste and questionable morals requires what we would call writing skill; not everyone can do it.

Comment author: komponisto 30 January 2011 02:21:02AM *  4 points [-]

I can only shrug and say, "De gustibus non est disputandum"

Beware this piece of cached wisdom.

I merely wish to emphasize that even catering to people with bad taste and questionable morals requires what we would call writing skill; not everyone can do it

True, but there may be a low-hanging-fruit effect: it could be that Rand's literary skill is much less of a factor in her success than the fact that she was in the right place at the right time to meet the thitherto-unmet needs of a certain audience.

Comment author: JGWeissman 28 January 2011 07:13:15PM 10 points [-]

Edited comments have an asterisk after the date, the lack of this asterisk indicates the comment has not been edited. Though this does not work for top level posts.

Comment author: komponisto 29 January 2011 06:22:42PM 2 points [-]

Edited comments have an asterisk after the date

I never noticed that before.

Comment author: ChristianKl 27 January 2011 10:17:11AM 0 points [-]

Okay, English isn't my first language.

Comment author: komponisto 27 January 2011 10:27:26AM *  1 point [-]

English isn't my first language

You could easily have made the same typo even if it were; we're talking about the mere transposition of two adjacent letters.

(Another example: "casual" vs. "causal", which often trips me up in reading.)

Comment author: jacob_cannell 26 January 2011 06:01:58AM 1 point [-]

The implication of the post, as I perceived it (have a look at its first paragraph) was "you guys shouldn't be so confident in your dismissal-of-religion ('atheism'); after all, you (perhaps rightly) are willing to entertain the ideas of Tegmark!

The OP does not make mention of the term 'religion'. Part of the confusion seems to stem from the conflation of theism and religion.

Theism is a philosophical belief about the nature of reality. The truthfulness of this belief as a map of reality is not somehow dependent or connected in belief space to magic rituals, prayers, voodo dolls or the memes of organized religion, even if they historically co-occur.

Comment author: komponisto 26 January 2011 06:50:25AM 1 point [-]

Part of the confusion seems to stem from the conflation of theism and religion.

I beg to differ. In my view, the conflation is of theism with simulationism.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 24 January 2011 10:44:55PM 0 points [-]

). In fact I'm strongly suspecting pattern-completion here -- inferring other things you think the person would say, but aren't actually present in the cited text.

Hmm, this is a good point. It is possible that I'm engaging in pattern completion or reading more negativity in than is present. It is also possible that that is connected to my own pretty negative attitude towards much of spectator sports. (What is this cognitive error called? If it doesn't have a name I'd suggest The Modest Proposal Bias.)

Whereas it seems to me that someone who actually thought others' interests were worth looking down upon wouldn't have much hesitation about changing them.

I don't think that's a correct reading of his remarks. The point is precisely the opposite as I read it, Mass Driver doesn't want to change their hobbies even as he looks down on them.

That seems like a realistic, non-pejorative description of a fairly large number of actual living people. What part of that description did you find disparaging?

It is realistic for a certain subset, but there's extraneous details that render it disparaging. There are a lot of smart people who went to very good universities who also are fanatics about their local sports team. The apparent working assumption is that those people don't exist or exist in negligible numbers.

Comment author: komponisto 25 January 2011 01:47:58AM 0 points [-]

It is also possible that that is connected to my own pretty negative attitude towards much of spectator sports. (What is this cognitive error called?

It sounds like it may be a case of Generalizing from One Example.

Whereas it seems to me that someone who actually thought others' interests were worth looking down upon wouldn't have much hesitation about changing them.

I don't think that's a correct reading of his remarks. The point is precisely the opposite as I read it, Mass Driver doesn't want to change their hobbies even as he looks down on them.

It wasn't intended as a "reading" of his remarks; it was a statement of my own view, an argument that I was making that was premised on his remarks. I claim it is a contradiction to "look down on them" and simultaneously not wish to change their hobbies. It thus follows from Mass_Driver's remarks that he doesn't "look down on them" -- he can't, because he says he's okay with them as they are!

It is realistic for a certain subset, but there's extraneous details that render it disparaging.

This is what you need to explain. I did not find a single "blameworthy" attribute in the description, and nor do I understand how the conjunction of any subset of those attributes could render a person blameworthy.

There are a lot of smart people who went to very good universities who also are fanatics about their local sports team. The apparent working assumption is that those people don't exist or exist in negligible numbers.

Again, I don't see how this follows. Is it your contention that if Mass_Driver believed the numbers were more than negligible he would necessarily have used such a person as the example?

(It seems to me that one could, with considerably more justice, accuse you of believing that "smart people" only go to "very good universities".)

Comment author: JoshuaZ 24 January 2011 05:53:05AM 1 point [-]

Er, yes, it is only two people. I thought it was more people than that. Must have not been paying careful enough attention to the user names. As to out of context, I don't think it was out of context at all. The fact that it was hypothetical isn't what is relevant, the context of their discussion shows an attitude that it really is pointless and moreover worth looking down on (if that isn't clear, read the paragraph about the hypothetical individual's background. If that isn't nerdy elitism, I don't know what is.)

Comment author: komponisto 24 January 2011 06:08:20AM *  5 points [-]

The fact that it was hypothetical isn't what is relevant, the context of their discussion shows an attitude that it really is pointless and moreover worth looking down on

You'll have to do a better job of explaining how, because I don't get that sense at all, at least not from the part of the discussion you linked to (I haven't bothered to read the larger context). In fact I'm strongly suspecting pattern-completion here -- inferring other things you think the person would say, but aren't actually present in the cited text.

Meanwhile, I think you ignore disconfirmatory indications. From your description, I never would have guessed that Mass_Driver in fact wrote these sentences:

I want people to do what they really enjoy, even at the cost of them not working on my favorite projects.... if reflection just destroys people's existing, flawed sources of fun without providing an alternative source of fun, then I wouldn't want to encourage it....I feel like differences in what people choose to do for fun might reflect differing theories about what is fun, and not just a failure to reflect on one's activities. Even if the masses' theories about what is fun are philosophically indefensible, they may nevertheless be real descriptions about what the masses find to be fun, and so I have trouble justifying an attempt to take away that fun without letting go of my commitment to egalitarianism.

Whereas it seems to me that someone who actually thought others' interests were worth looking down upon wouldn't have much hesitation about changing them.

(if that isn't clear, read the paragraph about the hypothetical individual's background. If that isn't nerdy elitism, I don't know what is.)

What, this?:

Imagine a 50-something small business owner with a community college education -- maybe he runs a fast food restaurant, or a bike repair shop -- who really likes his local sports team. He goes to or watches most of their home games with a few other friends/fans and gets really excited about it and, on balance, has a lot of fun.

That seems like a realistic, non-pejorative description of a fairly large number of actual living people. What part of that description did you find disparaging?

Comment author: komponisto 24 January 2011 05:48:22AM *  5 points [-]

For example, see this subthread where multiple users discuss how spectator sports are "banal" and "pointless".

I think a careful reading of that subthread shows that you've unfairly taken those comments out of context. Mass Driver's point was that he/she didn't want to take away people's enjoyment of spectator sports, and Nancy Lebovitz was describing a hypothetical scenario where a person loses interest ("find out that spectator sports are pointless"), so that the label referred to that hypothetical person's own hypothetical (future) opinion. And by "multiple users" you apparently meant just those two.

Comment author: ata 24 January 2011 02:42:49AM *  13 points [-]

I've never been into science fiction, fantasy literature, anime, or D&D, but the alleged popularity of those on LW has never bothered me, nor even particularly stood out. (I mean, I've liked a few instances of the first three, but never anywhere near the point of being involved in their respective subcultures.)

(Admittedly, I am a nerd along several other dimensions — e.g. I'm a computer/math/science person — but those are a lot more actually relevant to understanding and contributing to LW than anime and sci-fi/fantasy are.)

Comment author: komponisto 24 January 2011 05:36:59AM 1 point [-]

Ditto.

Comment author: komponisto 23 January 2011 08:04:16PM 4 points [-]

A philosophy professor recently told me that one of the few things philosophers agree on is that there can't be a moral obligation to do the impossible-- ought implies can

Some dispute this; there is a concept of (bad) "moral luck".

Comment author: komponisto 23 January 2011 02:41:00AM 3 points [-]

Upvoted from -1 to 0 because the question is interesting and important; the fact that the answer seems clear to some is not cause for downvoting, in my view. (This is the Discussion section; would you have downvoted this post if it had been an Open Thread comment?)

As it happens, I don't think the answer is necessarily a settled matter, any more than time travel in general (of which this can be considered a special case) is. It seems quite possible that the universe may contain much more information about its past than we can currently envision being able to extract. (One might for instance compare the old belief that determining the chemical composition of stars was hopeless due to their distance.) Yes, thermodynamics may imply that not all of the past can be reconstructed, but it may not be necessary to extract all of it in order to reconstruct a few human minds. Presumably a huge (by present standards) expenditure of negentropy would be involved, but as far as I know the universe seems to contain a whole lot of "wasted" negentropy at the moment.

Comment author: nerzhin 22 January 2011 09:42:27PM 2 points [-]

I think I disagree, but I'm not sure what elitism means here.

Elitism might help prevent this error. But can it lead to other errors?

Comment author: komponisto 22 January 2011 10:00:04PM 3 points [-]

Elitism might help prevent this error. But can it lead to other errors?

Yes. For any method of correcting an error, there's always a possibility of overcorrecting.

Comment author: sark 21 January 2011 10:32:56PM 1 point [-]

Thanks for the clarification.

I was mainly addressing the topic Komponisto set up:

Sapir-Whorf becomes trivial to abolish once you regard language in the correct way: as an evolved tool for inducing thoughts in others' minds, rather than a sort of Platonic structure in terms of which thought is necessarily organized. [emphasis mine]

You see that just seems to be what this whole Sapir-Whorf debate is about. For one, I don't think there would be anything to talk about if it was simply asserting that 'language occasionally influences thought, like a rose sometimes would'. Since language somehow seems so concomitant (if not actually integral) to thought this seems to show that we are somehow severely constrained/organized by the language we speak. So apologies if i'm getting this all wrong, but I just don't think it is fair for you to say 'of course I agree that other things influences thought'. You seem to be ignoring the obvious implication of language being so intricately tied up with thought.

We do have a substantial disagreement in that you seem to think that even though language is one of the many influences of thought, it's impact is especially significant since language is somehow intimately dependent on thought.

I can simultaneously agree that language can influence thought and that speaking different languages has little influence on thought. This is because I think most of the time other factors, culture being the most obvious one, screens off language as an explanation for differing thought patterns among people who speak different languages. This simply means that the seeming influence of language on thought is actually the influence of culture on thought, and in turn of thought on language, and then of language on thought again.

I mentioned the expressiveness of language because I wanted to show how it can seem like it is language affecting thought, when it is simply channeling the influences of other factors, which it can easily do because it is expressive.

I'll try to summarize my position:

If you somehow managed to change the language a person speaks without changing anything else, you will not see a systematic effect on his thought patterns. This is because he would soon adapt the language for his use, based on his existent thoughts (most of which are not even remotely determined by language). The effect of language on thought is an illusion, it is actually his/his culture's other thoughts giving rise to the language which seem to then independently have an effect on his thought.

The phenomenon of language influencing thought, is more helpfully thought of as thought influencing thought.

Comment author: komponisto 21 January 2011 11:06:19PM 0 points [-]

I can simultaneously agree that language can influence thought and that speaking different languages has little influence on thought. This is because I think most of the time other factors, culture being the most obvious one, screens off language as an explanation for differing thought patterns among people who speak different languages. This simply means that the seeming influence of language on thought is actually the influence of culture on thought, and in turn of thought on language, and then of language on thought again.

(...)

If you somehow managed to change the language a person speaks without changing anything else, you will not see a systematic effect on his thought patterns. This is because he would soon adapt the language for his use, based on his existent thoughts (most of which are not even remotely determined by language). The effect of language on thought is an illusion, it is actually his/his culture's other thoughts giving rise to the language which seem to then independently have an effect on his thought.

The phenomenon of language influencing thought, is more helpfully thought of as thought influencing thought.

Excellently put. The view you express here coincides exactly with mine.

Comment author: arundelo 21 January 2011 01:55:56AM *  1 point [-]

Thanks for the summary. I may get this book.

You can defeat automatic list formatting if your source code looks like this:

4\. Species counterpoint##
5\. Simple species##
6\. Combined species

except with spaces instead of "#" (to prevent the list items from being wrapped into one paragraph). Edit: If the list items have blank lines between them, the trailing spaces are not necessary.

(The creator of the Markdown format says "At some point in the future, Markdown may support starting ordered lists at an arbitrary number.")

Comment author: komponisto 21 January 2011 07:14:20PM 0 points [-]

Thanks, fixed.

Comment author: Anatoly_Vorobey 20 January 2011 11:39:26AM *  6 points [-]

By "memetically related" I do not mean "memetically similar" (although I don't think there's much similarity either); I mean "related" in the sense of ancestry/inheritance. Bostrom's and Tegmark's arguments are not a branch of religion; they do not belong in that cluster.

I think you're wrong on similarity [1] and irrelevant on ancestry/inheritance. Only some among currently active religions are clearly "related" in the sense you employ (e.g. Judaism and Christianity); there's no strong evidence that most or all are so related. Since you presumably have no problem lumping them together under "religion", the claim that BTanism (grouped and named so purely for convenience) has no common ancestry with these religions is irrelevant to whether it should be judged a religion.

Also, I don't read the post as claiming "you guys are so dismissive of religion, but you're big on BTanism which is just as much a religion, so there!". Instead, I read the post as claiming "you guys are unreasonable in your overt dismissal of theism and your forceful insistence on it being a closed question, considering many of you are big on BTanism which has similar epistemological status to some varieties of theism". So it doesn't matter much whether BTanism is a religion or not; if that bothers you too much, just employ Taboo and talk about something like "a sentient being responsible for the creation of the observable universe" instead.

I don't fully agree with this idea (the post's argument as I read it), but I find myself somewhat sympathetic to it. It is indeed true in my opinion that the overt and insistent dismissal of theism on LW is a community-cohesiveness driven phenomenon. There's illuminating prior discussion at The uniquely awful example of theism.

You think I don't believe what I'm writing?

No, I have no doubt that you believe what you're writing. Rather, I think that the strongly dismissive claims in your first comment in the thread, unbacked by any convincing argument or evidence, cause me to think that a strong cognitive bias is at work.

[1] Really, the similarity is so strong that I see no need for a detailed argument; but if one is desired, I think Lem's story, to which I linked earlier, serves admirably as one.

Comment author: komponisto 21 January 2011 01:36:31AM 3 points [-]

I think you're wrong on similarity [1] and irrelevant on ancestry/inheritance. Only some among currently active religions are clearly "related" in the sense you employ (e.g. Judaism and Christianity); there's no strong evidence that most or all are so related. Since you presumably have no problem lumping them together under "religion", the claim that BTanism (grouped and named so purely for convenience) has no common ancestry with these religions is irrelevant to whether it should be judged a religion.

This does not follow. It is not necessary for my argument that different religions all be related to each other; it is only necessary that BTanism not be related to any of them, and (this part I asserted implicitly by linking to Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable) that it not have been generated by a similar process.

Also, I don't read the post as claiming "you guys are so dismissive of religion, but you're big on BTanism which is just as much a religion, so there!". Instead, I read the post as claiming "you guys are unreasonable in your overt dismissal of theism and your forceful insistence on it being a closed question, considering many of you are big on BTanism which has similar epistemological status to some varieties of theism"

Varieties of "theism" which have similar epistemological status to BTanism are not subject on LW to the same kind of dismissal as religion, to the best of my knowledge. Nor should they be. But for the sake of avoiding confusion and undesirable connotations, they certainly shouldn't be called "theism".

It is indeed true in my opinion that the overt and insistent dismissal of theism on LW is a community-cohesiveness driven phenomenon.

If what you mean here is "merely community-cohesiveness driven phenomenon", then I disagree entirely. You might have been right if this were RichardDawkins.net or another specifically atheism-themed community, but it isn't. This is Less Wrong. Our starting point here is epistemology. Rejection of religion ("theism") is a consequence of that; the rejection may be strong but it is still incidental.

For my part, I see "open-mindedness" toward theism mostly as manifesting an inability to come to gut-level terms with the fact that large segments of the human population can be completely, totally wrong. The next biggest source after that is Will's problem, which is the pleasure that smart people derive from being contrarian and playing verbal and conceptual games. (If you like that, for goodness' sake be an artist! But keep your map-territory considerations pure.)

I have no doubt that you believe what you're writing. Rather, I think that the strongly dismissive claims in your first comment in the thread, unbacked by any convincing argument or evidence, cause me to think that a strong cognitive bias is at work.

Which?

Again, this is Less Wrong, not a random internet forum. It is not possible to recapitulate the Sequences in every comment; that doesn't mean that strong opinions whose justifications lie therein are inadequately supported.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 20 January 2011 01:03:53PM 10 points [-]

Jewellery is not high status. It is worn at every level of society from high to low, at corresponding levels of price.

Amusing story from the low end of the market.

Comment author: komponisto 20 January 2011 09:30:05PM 0 points [-]

I got the impression that this was the expensive kind, but of course, it's not as if I paid close attention.

Comment author: Spurlock 20 January 2011 01:56:47PM 3 points [-]

I've always found traditional music theory to be useless if not actively damaging (seems to train people in bad thought habits for writing/appreciating music). Can you summarize Westergaard's approach? I know why the typical methods are bad, but I'm interested in what exactly his alternative is.

Comment author: komponisto 20 January 2011 09:21:06PM *  8 points [-]

Can you summarize Westergaard's approach? I know why the typical methods are bad, but I'm interested in what exactly his alternative is.

In ITT itself, Westergaard offers the following summary (p.375):

  1. we can generate all the notes of any tonal piece from the pitches of its tonic triad by successive application of a small set of operations, and moreover

  2. the successive stages in the generation process show how we understand the notes of that piece in terms of one another

(This, of course, is very similar to the methodology of theoretical linguistics.)

Westergaard basically considers tonal music to be a complex version of species counterpoint --- layers upon layers of it. He inherits from Schenker the idea of systematically reversing the process of "elaboration" to reveal the basic structures underlying a piece (or passage) of music, but goes even further than Schenker in completely explaining away "harmony" as a component of musical structure.

Notes are considered to be elements of lines, not "chords". They operations by which they are generated within lines are highly intuitive. They essentially reduce to two: step motion, and borrowing from other lines.

A key innovation of Westergaard is to unify pitch-operations and rhythmic operations. Every operation on pitch occurs in the context of an operation on rhythm: segmentation, delay, or anticipation of a timespan. This is arguably implicit in Schenker (and even in species counterpoint itself) but Westergaard makes it explicit and systematic. Hence he arrives at his "theory of tonal rhythm" which is the core of the book (chapters 7-9).

The table of contents, at the level of chapters, should give you an idea of how different Westergaard's book is from other texts:

Part I. Problems and Assumptions

  1. What are we talking about?
  2. Notes
  3. Lines

Part II. A First Approximation: Species Counterpoint

4. Species counterpoint
5. Simple species
6. Combined species

Part III A little closer to the real thing -- a theory of tonal rhythm

7. Notes, beats and measures
8. Phrases, sections, and movements
9. Performance

Appendix: Constructing a pitch system for tonal music

EDIT: 1,2,3 under Part II and Part III should be 4,5,6 and 7,8,9 respectively, which is what I typed. I mostly like the comment formatting system here, but that is one hell of a bug.

EDIT2:: fixed.

Comment author: komponisto 20 January 2011 11:03:08AM 2 points [-]

It did seem bizarre to me that an entity that was legitimately selling a product as high-status as jewelry would resort to a marketing tactic as low-status as spamming.

Comment author: Anatoly_Vorobey 20 January 2011 09:09:22AM 7 points [-]

The word "but" in the last sentence is a non-sequitur if there ever were one. Tegmark cosmology is not theism. Theism means Jehovah (etc). Yes, there are people who deny this, but those people are just trying to spread confusion in the hope of preventing unpleasant social conflicts. There is no legitimate sense in which Bostromian simulation arguments or Tegmarkian cosmological speculations could be said to be even vaguely memetically related to Jehovah-worship.

Isn't this - I'm sorry if that sounds harsh - arguing by a forceful say-so? Sure, if you constrain theism rhetorically to "Jehovah-worship", that practice doesn't sound very similar to the Bostromian arguments. But "Bostromian arguments/Tegmarkian speculations" and "the claim that a god created the universe" sound pretty much memetically related to me.

There is no need to pay any lip-service to ancient mistakes whose superficial resemblance to Tegmark (etc) is so slight that you would never notice it unless you were motivated to do so, or heard it from someone who was.

You're saying that e.g. "we are living in a simulation run by sentient beings" and "we are living in a universe created by a sentient being" are such wildly different ideas that there's only superficial resemblance between them, and even that resemblance is unlikely to be noticed by anyone just thinking about the issue, and is rather spread as a kind of a perverse meme.

Methinks thou dost protest too much.

The earliest time I can remember that anyone drew a very explicit connection between simulations and theism is in Stanislaw Lem's short story about Professor Corcoran. The book was originally published in 1971, when Bostrom was -2 years old. It's in the second volume of his Star Diaries; see "Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy: I" in this (probably pirated) scribd doc. I'd recommend it to anyone. Of course, it's very much possible that Lem wasn't the first to write up the idea.

Comment author: komponisto 20 January 2011 09:55:56AM *  1 point [-]

Isn't this - I'm sorry if that sounds harsh - arguing by a forceful say-so? Sure, if you constrain theism rhetorically to "Jehovah-worship", that practice doesn't sound very similar to the Bostromian arguments. But "Bostromian arguments/Tegmarkian speculations" and "the claim that a god created the universe" sound pretty much memetically related to me.

See Religion's Claim to be Non-Disprovable for discussion of what religion is and how it arose. By "memetically related" I do not mean "memetically similar" (although I don't think there's much similarity either); I mean "related" in the sense of ancestry/inheritance. Bostrom's and Tegmark's arguments are not a branch of religion; they do not belong in that cluster.

You're saying that e.g. "we are living in a simulation run by sentient beings" and "we are living in a universe created by a sentient being" are such wildly different ideas that there's only superficial resemblance between them,

No. The implication of the post, as I perceived it (have a look at its first paragraph) was "you guys shouldn't be so confident in your dismissal-of-religion ('atheism'); after all, you (perhaps rightly) are willing to entertain the ideas of Tegmark!"

Surely you understand what is wrong with this.

Methinks thou dost protest too much.

You think I don't believe what I'm writing?

Comment author: Will_Newsome 20 January 2011 01:59:29AM 1 point [-]

I didn't mean to talk about Jehovah specifically; I thought that using 'theism' would imply enough generality that I could get away without clarification, but I was obviously very mistaken. I added a sentence to the end of the post.

Your second paragraph seems to correctly point out a problem with my terminology. Nonetheless perhaps we could also have discussion on what I was (admittedly poorly) trying to start a discussion about, that is, the apparent contradiction between believing strong optimization processes outside the observable universe are possible and believing that such an optimization process didn't create the observable universe?

Comment author: komponisto 20 January 2011 02:17:04AM 2 points [-]

I didn't mean to talk about Jehovah specifically

Nor, for that matter, did I: Zeus, Thor, and their innumerable counterparts should be considered included in the reference.

Nonetheless perhaps we could also have discussion on what I was (admittedly poorly) trying to start a discussion about, that is, the apparent contradiction between believing strong optimization processes outside the observable universe are possible and believing that such an optimization process didn't create the observable universe?

The way to have done that, in my opinion, would have been to title the post "Simulation/creator arguments" or something similar, and to avoid any mention of theism, atheism, or religion in the body of the post.

Comment author: BecomingMyself 20 January 2011 01:39:28AM *  1 point [-]

Tegmark cosmology is not theism. Theism means Jehovah (etc).

The way I read it, it seems like Will_Newsome is not using the word in this way. It may be a case of two concepts being mistakenly filed into the same basket -- certainly some people might, when they hear "Theism-in-general is a mistaken and sometimes harmful way of thinking about the world", understand "theism-in-general" to mean "any mode of thought that acknowledges the possibility of some intelligent mind that is outside and in control of our universe". Under this interpretation, the assertion is quite obviously false (or at least, not obviously true).

I wonder if there is still a disagreement if we Taboo "theism"? (Though your point in the last paragraph is a good one, I think.)

Comment author: komponisto 20 January 2011 01:46:29AM *  4 points [-]

Tegmark cosmology is not theism. Theism means Jehovah (etc).

The way I read it, it seems like Will_Newsome is not using the word in this way

Indeed not; hence my criticism!

Comment author: komponisto 20 January 2011 01:24:28AM *  11 points [-]

Many folk here on LW take the simulation argument (in its more general forms) seriously. Many others take Singularitarianism1 seriously. Still others take Tegmark cosmology (and related big universe hypotheses) seriously. But then I see them proceed to self-describe as atheist (instead of omnitheist, theist, deist, having a predictive distribution over states of religious belief, et cetera), and many tend to be overtly dismissive of theism.

The word "but" in the last sentence is a non-sequitur if there ever were one. Tegmark cosmology is not theism. Theism means Jehovah (etc). Yes, there are people who deny this, but those people are just trying to spread confusion in the hope of preventing unpleasant social conflicts. There is no legitimate sense in which Bostromian simulation arguments or Tegmarkian cosmological speculations could be said to be even vaguely memetically related to Jehovah-worship.

The plausibility of simulations or multiverses might be an open question, but the existence of Jehovah isn't. There's a big, giant, huge difference. If we think Tegmark may be correct, then we can just say "I think Tegmark may be correct". There is no need to pay any lip-service to ancient mistakes whose superficial resemblance to Tegmark (etc) is so slight that you would never notice it unless you were motivated to do so, or heard it from someone who was.

Comment author: soundchaser 18 January 2011 04:32:09AM 2 points [-]

I have been using Harmony and Voice Leading for a little while. Is An Introduction to Tonal Theory really that much better?

I've always felt that the way they explain concepts is very hand wavy and doesn't really explain anything and I tend to prefer things to be more mathematical or abstract.

I'll probably pick this book up on your suggestion.

Comment author: komponisto 19 January 2011 01:27:10AM 4 points [-]

I have been using Harmony and Voice Leading for a little while. Is An Introduction to Tonal Theory really that much better?

Yes.

Don't get me wrong, Aldwell and Schachter are about the best you can do while still remaining in the traditional "vocabulary of chords" paradigm. (You can even see how they tried to keep the number of "chords" down to a minimum.) Unfortunately, that paradigm is simply wrong.

Also, Aldwell and Schachter, brilliant musicians though they may be (especially Schachter), lack the deeper intellectual preoccupations that Westergaard possesses in abundance. One should perhaps think of their book as being written for students at Mannes or Julliard, and of Westergaard's as being written for students at Columbia or Princeton. (There is a certain literal truth to these statements.)

I've always felt that the way they explain concepts is very hand wavy and doesn't really explain anything and I tend to prefer things to be more mathematical or abstract.

You'll love ITT.

In response to comment by [deleted] on The Best Textbooks on Every Subject
Comment author: [deleted] 18 January 2011 06:14:40AM -2 points [-]

My beef with this is precisely that it doesn't use the general background of measure theory (sigma-algebras, measurable functions, etc.) and you're going to need that background to do useful things.

And Bartle covers them, but later. Section 19.

The gauge integral approach doesn't give you the tools to generalize to scenarios like Brownian motion where you need to construct different measures;

I have on my desk right now Steven Shreve's Stochastic Calculus for Finance II, and the construction of the Wiener process is in slightly different language the limit of a sequences of functions defined on a sequence of tagged partitions. I'm just now learning stochastic-flavored things, so I don't know if this is canonical.

also, the gauge integral doesn't come with a lot of nice convergence theorems the way the Lebesgue measure does.

Section 8 covers the main three (Monotone, Fatou's Lemma, and Dominated Convergence).

Also, there's some virtue to just being familiar with the definitions and concepts that everybody else is.

Sunken cost fallacy.

(It's not just mathematicians "refusing to update." I know for sure that economists, and potentially people in other fields, speak the language of standard measure theory. But maybe it's not everyone. What are you using measure theory for?)

I'm a grad student doing PDEs. I think there are two issues that need to be separated here. The first is pedagogical. People doing probability theory do need to learn measure theory eventually, yes. Royden takes this same approach -- show the Lebesgue measure on R to start and then progress to abstract measure spaces. Unfortunately he fills the middle bits between chapters five and nine (I think) with a lot of topology.

The second is practical. There are more gauge-integrable functions than Lebesgue-integrable functions. There are nice lemmas for estimating gauge integrals, and they tend to be slightly more concrete.

I also rank Halmos higher than Cohn in terms of measure theory books. Your mileage may vary.

In response to comment by [deleted] on The Best Textbooks on Every Subject
Comment author: komponisto 18 January 2011 07:50:54AM 1 point [-]

I also rank Halmos higher than Cohn in terms of measure theory books

Halmos, by the way, is a top-notch mathematical author in general. Every one of his books is excellent. Finite-Dimensional Vector Spaces in particular is a classic.

Comment author: komponisto 18 January 2011 02:48:08AM 8 points [-]

Someone ought to make a serious effort to get Richard Dawkins to attend, if he's in town.

Comment author: [deleted] 17 January 2011 07:38:43PM 2 points [-]

I assumed there were some folks like you but I'd never met one. Shame on me for making too many assumptions.

In response to comment by [deleted] on The Best Textbooks on Every Subject
Comment author: komponisto 17 January 2011 11:02:05PM 5 points [-]

I assumed there were some folks like you but I'd never met one

It's not as stark as that. For example, Alicorn, whom I believe you've met, shares with me a psychological need for concepts to be presented in logical order.

In my case, if you're curious, I think the reason I'm the way I am comes down to efficient memory. To remember something reliably I have to be able to mentally connect it to something I already know, and ultimately to something inherently simple. The reason I can't stand ad-hoc presentations of mathematics is that remembering their contents (let alone being able to apply those contents to solve problems) is extremely cognitively burdensome. It requires me to create a new mental directory when I would prefer to file new material as a subdirectory under an existing directory. (I don't mind having lots of nested layers, but strongly prefer to minimize the number of directories at any given level; I like to expand my tree vertically rather than horizontally.)

This explains why it took me forever to learn the meaning of "k-algebra". The reason was that (for a long time) every time I encountered the term, the definition was always being presented in passing, on the way to explaining something else (usually some problem in algebraic geometry, no doubt), instead of being included among The Pantheon Of Algebraic Structures: Groups, Rings, Fields etc. -- so my brain didn't know where to store it.

Comment author: [deleted] 16 January 2011 05:30:02PM *  19 points [-]

Subject: Representation Theory

Recommendation: Group Theory and Physics by Shlomo Sternberg.

This is a remarkable book pedagogically. It is the most extremely, ridiculously concrete introduction to representation theory I've ever seen. To understand representations of finite groups you literally start with crystal structures. To understand vector bundles you think about vibrating molecules. When it's time to work out the details, you literally work out the details, concretely, by making character tables and so on. It's unique, so far as I've read, among math textbooks on any subject whatsoever, in its shameless willingness to draw pictures, offer physical motivation, and give examples with (gasp) literal numbers.

Math for dummies? Well, actually, it is rigorous, just not as general as it could potentially be. Also, many people's optimal learning style is quite concrete; I believe your first experience with a subject should be example-based, to fix ideas. After all, when you were a kid you played around with numbers long before you defined the integers. There's something to the old Dewey idea of "learning by doing." And I have only seen it tried once in advanced mathematics.

Fulton and Harris won't do this. The representation theory section in Lang's Algebra won't do this -- it starts about three levels of abstraction up and stays there. Weyl's classic The Theory of Groups and Quantum Mechanics isn't actually the best way to learn -- the group theory and the physics are in separate sections and both are a little compressed and archaic in terminology. Sternberg is really a different thing entirely: it's almost more like having a teacher than reading a textbook.

The treatment is really most relevant for physicists, but even if you're not a physicist (and I'm not), if you have general interest in math, and background up to a college abstract algebra course, you should check this out just to see what unusually clear, intuitive mathematical writing looks like. It will make you happy.

In response to comment by [deleted] on The Best Textbooks on Every Subject
Comment author: komponisto 17 January 2011 06:45:59PM 2 points [-]

Also, many people's optimal learning style is quite concrete; .

I hasten to point out (well, actually I didn't hasten, I waited a day or two, but...) that while this is true for many people, it isn't true for all, and, in particular, it isn't true for me. (See here.)

I believe your first experience with a subject should be example-based, to fix ideas. After all, when you were a kid you played around with numbers long before you defined the integers

I don't think the way I learned mathematics as a young child (or indeed in school at any time, up to and including graduate school) was anywhere near optimal for the way my mind works.

The best way for me would have been to work through Bourbaki, chapter by chapter, book by book, in order. I'm dead serious. (If I were making an edition for my young self I would include plenty of colorful but abstract pictures/diagrams.)

Comment author: komponisto 17 January 2011 06:22:42PM 18 points [-]

Music theory: An Introduction to Tonal Theory by Peter Westergaard.

Comparing this book to others is almost unfair, because in a sense, this is the only book on its subject matter that has ever been written. Other books purporting to be on the same topic are really on another, wrong(er) topic that is properly regarded as superseded by this one.

However, it's definitely worth a few words about what the difference is. The approach of "traditional" texts such as Piston's Harmony is to come up with a historically-based taxonomy (and a rather awkward one, it must be said) of common musical tropes for the student to memorize. There is hardly so much as an attempt at non-fake explanation, and certainly no understanding of concepts like reductionism or explanatory parsimony. The best analogy I know would be trying to learn a language from a phrasebook instead of a grammar; it's a GLUT approach to musical structure.

(Why is this approach so popular? Because it doesn't require much abstract thought, and is easy to give students tests on.)

Not all books that follow this traditional line are quite as bad as Piston, but some are even worse. An example of not-quite-so-bad would be Aldwell and Schachter's Harmony and Voice Leading; an example of even-worse would be Kotska and Payne's Tonal Harmony, or pretty much anything you can find in a non-university bookstore (that isn't a reprint of some centuries-old classic like Fux).

In response to Rational Repentance
Comment author: JoshuaZ 14 January 2011 05:26:38PM 6 points [-]

Off-topic halachic minutia:

I remember at one point a religious camp counselor caught me using a glowstick on the Sabbath, and advised me to throw the glowstick away, on the theory that kindling a new light on the Sabbath violated the applicable religious laws.

It sounds to me like your camp counselor was ignorant of the actual halachah, but had some vague of how the relevant halachot worked and tried to construct his own rational for them. A glow stick does not produce significant quantities of heat, so a glowstick is probably at most Rabbinically prohibited. This means that arguably the consequences of what one does after having such an object activated may be less severe than if it were say a candle. In particular, one is in general prohibited on the Sabbath from benefiting from actions which one knew were violations of the Sabbath, but that might not apply since a glowstick is at most Rabbinically prohibited, and likely not even then. However, a candle is classified as "muktzah", a complicated status that roughly means that even if it had been lit before Sabbath, it cannot be moved, and arguably that would apply to a glowstick. However, once one has picked up a muktzah object (whether on purpose or by accident), one may generally move it around until one puts it down.

Comment author: komponisto 15 January 2011 02:10:26AM 6 points [-]

Out of curiosity, do people who grow up under this sort of regime end up thinking it's normal, similarly to the way people raised in Christianity end up desensitized to the absurd-sounding nature of the beliefs about virgin birth and so on? Does it cause them to e.g. be more accepting of government regulation than average? Or is there some kind of compartmentalization going on where they continue expecting rules in general to make some sort of sense (and not interfere with practical functioning), just not those labeled "religious"?

My suspicion, of course, is the latter (just as people compartmentalize their epistemic beliefs, and allow their absurdity heuristic to function more-or-less normally outside of the religious domain), but I'd be curious to hear reflections from those who were raised in strict legalistic religions about the extent to which such practices actually struck them as absurd inside their own minds (even allowing for belief in the empirical claims of the religion about the nature of the universe).

In response to Rational Repentance
Comment author: komponisto 14 January 2011 10:39:39PM 2 points [-]

There is a third human bias that causes you to tell yourself that you have successfully changed your mind when you have not really done so. The adherent of the Reformed Church of Dragon leaves the garage door open, and cheerfully admits to anyone who asks that there is probably no such thing as an invisible dragon, yet she is unaccountably cautious about actually parking her car in the garage. Thus it is worth knowing not just how to change your mind, but how to change your habits in response to new information.

Related: The Mystery of the Haunted Rationalist.

Comment author: TheRev 14 January 2011 12:53:44AM 1 point [-]

How is that 'weaselly'? Say there is a criminal who confesses to a crime, and quite obviously did it, but the police failed to properly Mirandize them, or otherwise unlawfully elicited the confession. Legally, you should find them not guilty, even if they likely committed the crime. Not guilty does not equal innocent.

Comment author: komponisto 14 January 2011 03:43:59AM 1 point [-]

Say there is a criminal who confesses to a crime, and quite obviously did it, but the police failed to properly Mirandize them, or otherwise unlawfully elicited the confession. Legally, you should find them not guilty

That's a separate matter entirely. (Actually, my understanding of the way it's supposed to work in such a case is that you're not supposed to ever hear about the confession as a juror, and so may not have enough evidence to rationally believe they're guilty with the required confidence, even if they in fact are; as opposed believing them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but just "finding" them not -- a form of jury nullification.)

This discussion here is entirely about one's rational belief about guilt or innocence, not anyone's legal opinion on the admissibility of evidence into court. You said your probability estimate that Amanda Knox killed her roommate was 15%. That's the information of interest, and it makes you a firm innocentista. Legal issues are a red herring. They would be a red herring even if your belief was 75% -- but in that case, it would at least be a legitimate discussion point to say,"thus, although I believe she probably did it, I would have to acquit if I were on a jury, because I don't believe it beyond a reasonable doubt."

Comment author: TheRev 07 January 2011 04:48:45PM *  0 points [-]

I'm going to have to distinguish here between guilt in the actual sense, and guilt in a legal sense. Do I think Amanda Knox did it? Somewhat likely. Do I think the prosecution proved that beyond a reasonable doubt? No.

I think my estimates of guilt for all three parties will be higher than most commenters, but here they are:

Probability that Knox participated in the murder: 15% Probability that Knox participated in or covered up the murder: 20% Probability that I would find Knox guilty of murder: 5%

Probability that Solecito participated in the murder 10% Probability that Solecito participated in or covered up the murder: 20% Probability that I would find Solecito guilty of murder: 5%

Probability that Rudy Guedo participated in the murder 80% Probability that Rudy Guedo participated in or covered up the murder 95% Probability that I would find Guedo guilty of murder: 85%

The biggest problem to me with the prosecution's case is the alleged physical abuse of Knox by her interrogators. Her story did change somewhat, but not in a manner consistent with a guilty party. If Knox was guilty and wanted to frame someone else, it is unlikely that she would have fingered Lumumba days later and made vague statements that incorporated some kind of clairvoyant dream about Lumumba raping Kerscher rather than just making immediate and damning accusations. If the police physically harmed her in any way, that alone should have been enough to immediately drop the case. I'd find Charlie Manson innocent if I found that the police had roughed him up in interrogation to elicit a confession; such actions by the police undermine the very fabric of a free legal system and cannot be tolerated in any way whatsoever.

Secondly, the prosecution failed to establish a clear motive. First they claimed that Meredith refused to participate in some unspecified 'sex games'. They never showed that Knox or Solecito were inclined to that sort of sexual behavior, and even if they were, it is a large leap from sexual frustration to murder. There was the stolen credit cards and missing money, but it was never shown that Knox or Solecito were in possession of the money. It should have been fairly easy to find a record of their withdrawals from Kerscher's account, but it appears the police never even attempted to find such evidence. So the prosecution claimed that since Knox and Solecito smoked cannabis, they must have been addicts who stole the money (that no one ever proved the couple even had) to fuel their raging drug habits and possibly buy 'hard drugs' like cocaine. Que clips from 'Reefer Madness' now.

There is DNA evidence against Knox, but being roommates with the victim, it would be a challenge to find something of Kerscher's that didn't have some of Knox's DNA on it. This seems to be a case of the 'CSI effect' actually working in favor of the prosecution. All the jury hears is 'DNA', but don't stop to consider any number of explanations as to why Knox's DNA would be on one of her own kitchen knives and on her roommate's clothes that don't involve murder.

There is also some dodgy eyewitness testimony, but even if the witnesses were so-called 'credible witnesses' eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable.

Guede, on the other hand, used the classic 'a large unidentified black man did it' defense at first but then changed his story when he found out Knox and Solecito were involved. He did flee the country, but so would I if accused of murder in a foreign country. Forensic evidence also confirmed that Guede had sex with Kirscher that night, not rock solid evidence I know, but notable. More evidence against Guede comes from the story he gave of how he was sitting on the toilet listening to his iPod when the attack occurred, which would have meant that he knew about the attack when it happened, failed to call the police, and fled the scene to go dance at a night club. Additionally he originally claimed that he tried to comfort Kerscher, meaning she was still alive, before fleeing and leaving her to die, which is ethically equivalent to murder.

To draw this lengthy post to a conclusion, I'm going to give my first impressions of the site wanting to keep Knox behind bars. As Nietzsche said "Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful." All of these 'victim rights' groups who spend their time trying to keep other people in prison are a walking contradiction. A murder victim, by definition, has no rights; they're dead. It does a victim no good to keep the murderer behind bars; it only serves to satiate the need for vengeance in the bereaved. True, there are people who will likely murder again if released, but often, these groups continue to hound those who have reformed and express remorse (Leslie Van Houten), or those whose guilt was never clearly established in the first place (Leonard Peltier). Knox seems to be just another one of these unfortunate victims getting slandered by those who confuse justice with revenge. Am I out on a limb here, or does someone want to present a rational case for rights post-mortem?

Comment author: komponisto 13 January 2011 08:24:41AM 0 points [-]

I'm going to have to distinguish here between guilt in the actual sense, and guilt in a legal sense. Do I think Amanda Knox did it? Somewhat likely. Do I think the prosecution proved that beyond a reasonable doubt? No.

Although I'm invariably annoyed by this kind of (what seems to me like) weasly hedging ("just state your probability already!"), it might be a reasonable thing to say if your probability is somewhere between 50% and 99%. At 15%, however, I hardly see the point, and in fact it's downright misleading.

Comment author: Nornagest 12 January 2011 01:16:10AM *  7 points [-]

In addition to what you've covered here, I think there's a substantial and largely unexplored set of techniques necessary for groups to act rationally. #6 on your list, efficiently accessing others' knowledge, is one aspect of this; Eliezer's "Craft and the Community" sequence also establishes a goal and some good examples of what not to do. Aside from that, though, we don't seem to have collected much instrumental knowledge in that domain.

Comment author: komponisto 12 January 2011 06:34:48AM 4 points [-]

Related is another branch that has received relatively little attention (due to a sort of taboo, possibly not unjustified): how to spread one's beliefs (and/or goals) to other people.

Comment author: komponisto 12 January 2011 03:11:22AM *  0 points [-]

Most of the insights available on LessWrong don't require people to understand Bayes' Theorem (or timeless decision theory).

"What you believe after seeing the evidence depends on what you believe before seeing the evidence" is, I think, a decent "layman paraphrase" of (one aspect of) Bayes' theorem that I think people do need to understand. "Don't forget to consider other ways the data could have arisen" is another.

On TDT, I agree; I regard that as more of a specialized AI topic.

Comment author: ewang 12 January 2011 01:28:47AM 1 point [-]

This may seem a bit off-topic, but is 'Bayesian' pronounced "Bay-EE-shin", "BAY-zee-an", or "BAY-shin"?

Comment author: komponisto 12 January 2011 02:49:04AM 2 points [-]

The second is the best. The third has some popularity, but I don't like it because it disguises the morphology. The fellow's name was Bayes; the adjective should thus be Bayes-ian, not Baye-sian.

Comment author: komponisto 03 January 2011 03:37:03AM *  2 points [-]

60%: conviction of Knox and Sollecito will be reversed. (Updated from 50% after last month's DNA ruling.) PredictionBook.

Comment author: Yvain 18 December 2010 04:38:37PM *  8 points [-]

I've got to admit I disagree with a lot of Advancing Certainty. The proper reference class for a modern physicist who is well acquainted with the mistakes of Lord Kelvin and won't do them again is "past scientists who were well acquainted with the mistakes of their predecessors and plan not to do them again", which I imagine has less than a hundred percent success rate and which might have included Kelvin.

It would be a useful exercise to see whether the most rational physicists of 1950 have more successful predictions as of 2000 than the most rational physicists of 1850 did as of 1900. It wouldn't surprise me if this were true, and so, then the physicists of 2000 could justly put themselves in a new reference class and guess they will be even more successful as of 2050 than the 1950ers were in 2000. But if the success rate after fifty years remains constant, I wouldn't want to say "Yeah, well , we've probably solved all those problems now, so we'll do better".

Comment author: komponisto 23 December 2010 08:50:56PM 9 points [-]

I've got to admit I disagree with a lot of Advancing Certainty

Do you actually disagree with any particular claim in Advancing Certainty, or does it just seem "off" to you in its emphasis? Because when I read your post, I felt myself "disagreeing" (and panicking at the rapid upvoting), but reflection revealed that I was really having something more like an ADBOC reaction. It felt to me that the intent of your post was to say "Boo confident probabilities!", while I tend to be on the side of "Yay confident probabilities!" -- not because I'm in favor of overconfidence, but rather because I think many worries about overconfidence here tend to be ill-founded (I suppose I'm something of a third-leveler on this issue.)

And indeed, when you see people complaining about overconfidence on LW, it's not usually because someone thinks that some political candidate has a 0.999999999 chance of winning an election; almost nobody here would think that a reasonable estimate. Instead, what you get is people saying that 0.0000000001 is too low a probability that God exists -- on the basis of nothing else than general worry about human overconfidence.

I think my anti-anti-overconfidence vigilance started when I realized I had been socially intimidated into backing off from my estimate of 0.001 in the Amanda Knox case, when in fact that was and remains an entirely reasonable number given my detailed knowledge of the case. The mistake I made was to present this number as if it were something that participants in my survey should have arrived at from a few minutes of reading. Those states -- the ones that survey participants were in, with reference classes like "highly controversial conviction with very plausible defense arguments" -- are what probabilities like 0.1 or 0.3 are for. My state, on the other hand, was more like "highly confident inside-view conclusion bolstered by LW survey results decisively on the same side of 50%".

But this isn't what the overconfidence-hawks argued. What they said, in essence, was that 0.001 was just somehow "inherently" too confident. Only "irrational" people wear the attire of "P(X) = 0.001"; We Here, by contrast, are Aware Of Biases Like Overconfidence, and only give Measured, Calm, Reasonable Probabilities.

That is the mistake I want to fight, now that I have the courage to do so. Though I can't find much to literally disagree about in your post, it unfortunately feels to me like ammunition for the enemy.

Comment author: komponisto 23 December 2010 03:37:45PM 1 point [-]

In any case, since this is a counter-argument that may eventually get raised

Rather than a counterargument, it just seems like confirmation of Eliezer's argument to me. Nature imposes regular pain on humans, humans invent reasons why it shouldn't be otherwise. Yes, not everyone spends a lot of time justifying it, but how many people spend a lot of time justifying death?

Yes, people may try to alleviate the suffering somewhat, and even have some success, but they also tried to treat diseases (with even some occasional success) back in the day when they thought those were a good thing, too.

Comment author: gwern 28 November 2010 11:42:41PM 2 points [-]

Prediction that defense appeal will succeed: http://predictionbook.com/predictions/1804

Comment author: komponisto 22 December 2010 10:38:39PM *  0 points [-]
Comment author: MichaelVassar 19 December 2010 05:03:19AM 1 point [-]

Sorry for the delay, didn't have a chance earlier.
I just checked out Wozzeck.

My assessment--

The positives: Decent pure instrumentals when no-one is singing. Locally there is clear and interesting musical structure at times. Not repetitive. Definitely music.

The negatives:
No characters, no conflict, no interesting music for the first two scenes, no emotional range, no large scale structure, insipid cliche propaganda themes, intentionally ugly in every respect, repetitious, extremely boring and repetitious vocals.

My net assessment is that it was written by someone who knew how to compose, or at least how to compose interesting short snippets of symphonic music and plausibly short experimental songs but who had no idea at all of how to make an opera.

Comment author: komponisto 19 December 2010 07:43:46PM *  2 points [-]

Yeah, so if you don't like Wozzeck (probably the greatest opera of the 20th century), then it pretty much follows that you would think opera died in the 20th century.

My reaction to some of your negative points:

no large scale structure

This is demonstrably false, so I'll have to interpret is as an assertion that you didn't perceive any large scale structure. Which is possible, if this was your first hearing and you weren't already acquainted with this kind of music (i.e. able to perceive large-scale structure in other works of the Second Viennese School).

It seems that you did perceive structure on the level of phrases, but not on the level of acts or the whole opera. What about intermediate levels, e.g. did you perceive structure on the level of scenes?

insipid cliche propaganda themes

This is arguably true now, after works like Wozzeck, etc., but it wasn't true at the time it was written (WWI and aftermath), and it certainly wasn't true at the time of Büchner's original play a century earlier.

no interesting music for the first two scenes

I can see why you might say that about the first scene, if you're new to this kind of music, but I'm surprised you would say it about the second scene, especially given that you did find interesting music elsewhere in the work. (I assume you must have liked Marie's lullaby in the third scene, which is everybody's favorite part.)

intentionally ugly in every respect

As a statement about the composer's intentions, this is most assuredly wrong. (Just as our enemies don't perceive themselves as evil, neither do artists we don't like typically perceive themselves as creating ugly work.) I'm pretty familiar with Berg's life and personality, and feel very confident in asserting that "intentionally ugly" is not at all how he would have described his own music.

repetitious

This seems to contradict "not repetitive" from the "positives" list, so you might want to elaborate. You seem to be referring more to vocal passages here, but these don't contain more repetition (probably less) than the instrumental passages.

My net assessment is that it was written by someone who knew how to compose, or at least how to compose interesting short snippets of symphonic music and plausibly short experimental songs but who had no idea at all of how to make an opera.

Your disagreement with the musical establishment (and also with me personally) is quite severe in the case of this work and its composer, and so I would predict with reasonable confidence that your opinion is susceptible to updating upon further musical exposure.

Comment author: Costanza 17 December 2010 10:06:15PM *  4 points [-]

My impression is that people tend to be exposed to grammar early on in school, in the form of a lot of arbitrary-seeming rules, which do not necessarily correspond with the colloquial spoken language. In English class in elementary and high school, I was taught never to split an infinitive (maybe I should say, "to never split an infinitive") and that the verb "to be" takes the nominative -- "that is I" rather than "that's me." Later, I learned that serious academic grammar scholars tend not spend their time issuing or enforcing random rules, but rather mostly observe and analyze how people use grammar -- regional and temporal shifts in the way the language is used. In that sense, language is value-neutral. Neither French nor English is "better" than the other in a general sense, French is not just degenerate Latin, Shakespeare and Chaucer and the author of Beowulf all use the grammar of English appropriate to their times. Valley-girl English and Ebonics and West Virginia dialect are all equally valid and internally consistent, according to this approach.

Can this same analysis be applied to moral codes? If it can, even in principle, then we have some problems. As I understand it, "morality" is all about values. I think EY has considered this issue seriously, and has alluded to it in Three Worlds Collide.

Comment author: komponisto 17 December 2010 10:29:06PM 5 points [-]

My impression is that people tend to be exposed to grammar early on in school, in the form of a lot of arbitrary-seeming rules, which do not necessarily correspond with the colloquial spoken language

And indeed, they're not supposed to. "Grammar" in the sense of school consists of rules for signaling high status via speaking and writing. (The level of "arbitrariness" is what you'd expect given this.) Nothing to do with "grammar" in the sense of theoretical linguistics.

In that sense, language is value-neutral.

Linguists, however, are too hasty to jump to this conclusion in their attempt to explain that "evaluating" different language varieties is not their subject as linguists. There may be legitimate arguments (aesthetic, utilitarian, etc.) for why some forms of language are "better" than others; it's just that such arguments are strictly irrelevant from the point of view of theoretical linguistics (though not sociolingustics, etc).

Comment author: [deleted] 16 December 2010 04:49:24PM *  2 points [-]

I think this amounts to saying: real-world considerations force an upper bound on abs(log(P(E | H) / P(E))). I'm on board with that, but can we think about how to compute and increase this bound?

Comment author: komponisto 16 December 2010 06:49:19PM 0 points [-]
Comment author: Yvain 16 December 2010 02:23:59PM 14 points [-]

I am still confused about how small the probability I should use in the God question is. I understand the argument about privileging the hypothesis and about intelligent beings being very complex and fantastically unlikely.

But I also feel that if I tried to use an argument at least that subtle, when applied to something I am at least as confused about as how ontologically complex a first cause should be, to disprove things at least as widely believed as religion, a million times, I would be wrong at least once.

Comment author: komponisto 16 December 2010 06:44:44PM *  5 points [-]

But I also feel that if I tried to use an argument at least that subtle, when applied to something I am at least as confused about as how ontologically complex a first cause should be, to disprove things at least as widely believed as religion, a million times, I would be wrong at least once.

See Advancing Certainty. The fact that this statement sounds comfortably modest does not exempt it from the scrutiny of the Fundamental Question of Rationality (why do you believe what you believe?). I respectfully submit that if the answer is "because I have been wrong before, where I was equally confident, in previous eras of my life when I wasn't using arguments this powerful (they just felt powerful to me at the time)", that doesn't suffice -- for the same reason that the Lord Kelvin argument doesn't suffice to show that arguments from physics can't be trusted (unless you don't think physics has learned anything since Kelvin).

Comment author: Jack 15 December 2010 11:07:27PM *  1 point [-]

I actually intended to comment in a manipulationist/Pearlian spirit so I'm not sure what we disagree about. You may have to be more particular than linking to his entire book. To be clear, I'm not saying causality requires a human intervention or advocating any kind of agency theory of causality. I'm saying, like Pearl, that causal explanations tell us what would happen given intervention on a variable. Anthropologically, our conception of causality likely arose as we learned to make things happen, i.e. intervene. But it's difficult to know what 'intervention' means in domains far from human manipulation. Inventing a human-like mind that can do that kind of intervention feels like a kind of invention that would let people feel more comfortable talking about first causes.

In response to comment by Jack on A sense of logic
Comment author: komponisto 16 December 2010 01:53:43AM *  0 points [-]

Ah, okay, thanks for the clarification. I did in fact interpret you as proposing an agency theory of causality; I think the following helped to mislead me in that direction:

I'm not sure it makes sense to say things like "The fine structure constant caused complex life." Causality may be a rather parochial concept in the scheme of things and therefore we get rather confused about it when trying to extend it's application away from the domain of potential human intervention

I think I actually wanted to refer to the preface of Pearl's book, in particular this part:

In the last decade, owing partly to advances in graphical models, causality has undergone a major transformation: from a concept shrouded in mystery into a mathematical object with well-defined semantics and well-founded logic...Put simply, causality has been mathematized.

My implication would have been that causality is not a merely human folk-concept that makes sense only in the context of "agents"; but if you weren't saying otherwise, this is of course moot.

In response to comment by byrnema on A sense of logic
Comment author: Jack 15 December 2010 05:44:06PM 4 points [-]

The question of first cause is probably a natural one for a species to ask. However, our concept of causality seems closely connected to our ability to intervene on the world and as you start talking about variables farther and farther away from plausible human intervention the concept gets strained. For example, I'm not sure it makes sense to say things like "The fine structure constant caused complex life." Causality may be a rather parochial concept in the scheme of things and therefore we get rather confused about it when trying to extend it's application away from the domain of potential human intervention. Hell, this might be a reason why humans have a tendency to invoke such and anthropomorphic conception of a first cause: causality may not make a lot of sense without the human-like mind element to it!

In response to comment by Jack on A sense of logic
Comment author: komponisto 15 December 2010 05:54:23PM *  0 points [-]

causality may not make a lot of sense without the human-like mind element to it!

An understandable point of view, but see here.

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 14 December 2010 03:21:17PM *  4 points [-]

We see cause and effect relationships everywhere, and it is natural to wonder about the first cause.

It is. It's not natural to wonder if the first cause is a complex structured intelligent being,

I'd like to taboo the word "natural" here. Do you guys mean 'good and reasonable'? Or do we mean 'typically occuring in human societies'? Or something else entirely?

Comment author: komponisto 14 December 2010 03:55:47PM *  2 points [-]

My reduction-proposal:

A "natural" hypothesis is one with high probability. A "natural" question is a query regarding the cause(s) of a low-probability observation.

So, in this exchange, byrnema pointed to a particular low-probability observation (the abundance of causal structure in the world around us), and Eliezer responded by noting that the proposed explanation (a complex first cause) has low probability, even conditioning on the observation.

To put it in even simpler terms: Bayes's theorem says P(H|E) = P(E|H)P(H)/P(E); byrnema said: "P(E) is small!"; and Eliezer said "Oh yeah, well P(H) is tiny!"

Comment author: Jack 13 December 2010 08:33:12PM *  7 points [-]

Along these lines I still maintain the most useful exercise I ever engaged in here was the the Amanda Knox survey. We came at an issue which we had no better knowledge of than the general public. Nor was there any reason to expect us to agree- the issue bore no connection to the beliefs we share mostly as a result of self-selection (materialism, atheism). We independently looked at the evidence and mostly came up with similar results and then kept talking until nearly all disagreements were resolved. It still strikes me as a stunning example of how successful our methods can be. I'm desperate to do more of these. Of course, the issue is a lack of cases. We might try scientific controversies instead of legal ones. Unfortunately, few options will have the excitement of a murder trial involving pretty upper-middle class white girls. But using this stuff is so empowering and informative, I have to think we don't do this enough. (Though I have found the Diplomacy game helpful in this regard).

Comment author: komponisto 13 December 2010 11:11:59PM *  1 point [-]

Along these lines I still maintain the most useful exercise I ever engaged in here was the the Amanda Knox survey.

Wow, I really appreciate this comment, especially on the anniversary of my "the answer is..." post!

I've made the suggestion into its own top-level comment.

Comment author: komponisto 13 December 2010 11:07:56PM 7 points [-]

Applied epistemic rationality:

Using the techniques of rationality and the language of Bayesian probability theory to help ourselves and each other sort out truth from falsehood in the world out there.

I.e., more stuff like this. (I've done mine, and am eager to participate in someone else's!)

Comment author: jsteinhardt 13 December 2010 06:03:24PM 0 points [-]

"expected utility" is the technical term for "how good the deal is".

I know what the definition of utility is. My claim is that there does not exist any event such that you would care about it happening with probability 10^(-500) enough to pay $5.

You postulated that my prior was 10^(-1000), and that the mugger raised it to 10^(-500). If other forces in the universe cooperated with the mugger to accomplish this, I don't see how that changes the decision problem.

You said that you would be okay with losing $5 to a mugger who raised your posterior by a factor of 10^(500), because they would have to do a lot of work to do so. I responded by pointing out that they wouldn't have to do much work after all. If this doesn't change the decision problem (which I agree with) then I don't see how your original reasoning that it's okay to get mugged because the mugger would have to work hard to mug you makes any sense.

At the very least, I consider making contradictory and in the first case, rather flippant] responses to my comments to be somewhat [logically rude, although I understand that you are the OP on this thread, and thus have to reply to many people's comments and might not remember what you've said to me.

I believe that this entire back-and-forth is derailing the discussion, so I'm going to back up a few levels and try to start over.

In which case, we can also say that a posterior probability of 10^(-500) is "just" 1661 bits away from even odds.

Granted.

Comment author: komponisto 13 December 2010 10:12:02PM *  1 point [-]

You said that you would be okay with losing $5 to a mugger who raised your posterior by a factor of 10^(500), because they would have to do a lot of work to do so. I responded by pointing out that they wouldn't have to do much work after all. If this doesn't change the decision problem (which I agree with) then I don't see how your original reasoning that it's okay to get mugged because the mugger would have to work hard to mug you makes any sense.

What determines how much I am willing to pay is not how hard the mugger works per se, but how credible the threat is compared to its severity. (I thought this went without saying, and that you would be able to automatically generalize from "the mugger working hard" to "the mugger's credibility increasing by whatever means".) Going from p = 10^(-1000) to p = 10^(-500) may not sound like a "huge" increase in credibility, but it is. Or at least, if you insist that it isn't, then you also have to concede that going from p = 10^(-500) to p = 1/2 isn't that big of a credibility increase either, because it's the same number of bits. In fact, measured in bits, going from p = 10^(-1000) to p = 10^(-500) is one-third of the way to p = 1-10^(-500) !

Now I presume you understand this arithmetic, so I agree that this is a distraction. In the same way, I think the simple mathematical arguments that you have been presenting are also a distraction. The real issue is that you apparently don't believe that there exist outcomes with utilities in the range of 10^(750). Well, I am undecided on that question, because at this point I don't know what "my" values look like in the limit of superintelligent extrapolation on galactic scales. (I like to think I'm pretty good at introspection, but I'm not that good!) But there's no way I'm going to be convinced that my utility function has necessarily to be bounded without some serious argument going significantly beyond the fact that the consequences of an unbounded utility function seem counterintuitive to another human whose style of thought has already been demonstrated to be different from my own.

If you've got serious, novel arguments to offer for why a human-extracted utility function must be bounded, I'm quite willing to consider them, of course. But as of now I don't have much evidence that you do have such arguments, because as far as I can tell, all you've said so far is "I can't imagine anything with such high utility!"

Comment author: HonoreDB 13 December 2010 06:33:14AM 0 points [-]

No responses and a downvote. Clearly I'm missing something obvious.

Comment author: komponisto 13 December 2010 06:52:50AM *  0 points [-]

I wasn't the downvoter (nor the upvoter), and wouldn't have downvoted; but I would suggest considering the abstract version of the problem:

Given that, in general, a Turing machine can increase in utility vastly faster than it increases in complexity, how should an Occam-abiding mind avoid being dominated by tiny probabilities of vast utilities?

Comment author: jsteinhardt 13 December 2010 04:25:34AM -1 points [-]

I don't see how this is relevant. It doesn't change the fact that you wouldn't actually be willing [I don't think?] to make such a trade.

The mugger also doesn't have to do all the work of raising your probability by a factor of 10^(500), the universe can do most (or all) of it. Remember, your priors are fixed once and for all at the beginning of time.

In the grand scheme of things, 10^(500) isn't all that much. It's just 1661 bits.

Comment author: komponisto 13 December 2010 06:20:54AM *  -1 points [-]

you wouldn't actually be willing [I don't think?] to make such a trade.

Why shouldn't I be? A 10^(-500) chance of utility 10^(750) yields an expected utility of 10^(250). This sounds like a pretty good deal to me, especially when you consider that "expected utility" is the technical term for "how good the deal is".

(I'll note at this point that we're no longer discussing Pascal's mugging, which is a problem in epistemology, about how we know the probability of the mugger's threat is so low; instead, we're discussing ordinary expected utility maximization.)

The mugger also doesn't have to do all the work of raising your probability by a factor of 10^(500), the universe can do most (or all) of it. Remember, your priors are fixed once and for all at the beginning of time.

You postulated that my prior was 10^(-1000), and that the mugger raised it to 10^(-500). If other forces in the universe cooperated with the mugger to accomplish this, I don't see how that changes the decision problem.

In the grand scheme of things, 10^(500) isn't all that much. It's just 1661 bits.

In which case, we can also say that a posterior probability of 10^(-500) is "just" 1661 bits away from even odds.

Comment author: jsteinhardt 13 December 2010 03:36:46AM 0 points [-]

Okay, thanks. So it is the prior, not the posterior, which makes more sense (as the posterior will be in general changing while the utility function remains constant).

My objection to this is that, even though you do deal with the "typical" mugging scenario, you run into issues in other scenarios. For instance, suppose that your prior for X is 10^(-1000), and your utility for X is 10^750, which I believe fits your requirements. Now suppose that I manage to argue your posterior up to 10^(-500). Either you can get mugged (for huge amounts of money) in this circumstance, or your utility on X is actually smaller than 10^(500).

Comment author: komponisto 13 December 2010 03:51:01AM 1 point [-]

Getting "mugged" in such a scenario doesn't seem particularly objectionable when you consider the amount of work involved in raising the probability by a factor of 10^(500).

It would be money well earned, it seems to me.

Comment author: jsteinhardt 13 December 2010 02:59:05AM 0 points [-]

I have to admit that I did find the original post somewhat confusing. However, let me try to make sure that I understood it. I would summarize your idea as saying that we should have u(X) = O(1/p(X)), where u is the utility function and p is our posterior estimate of X. Is that correct? Or do you want p to be the prior estimate? Or am I completely wrong?

Comment author: komponisto 13 December 2010 03:11:22AM 1 point [-]

Yes, p should be the prior estimate. The point being that the posterior estimate is not too different from the prior estimate in the "typical" mugging scenario (i.e. someone says "give me $5 or I'll create 3^^^^3 units of disutility" without specifying how in enough detail).

Comment author: jsteinhardt 13 December 2010 02:31:52AM -1 points [-]

Your question has two possible meanings to me, so I'll try to answer both.

Meaning 1: Why is this a reasonable assumption in the context of the current debate?

Answer: Because if there was something that bad, then you get Pascal's mugged in my hypothetical situation. What I have shown is that either you would give Pascal $5 in that scenario, or your utility function is bounded.

Meaning 2: Why is this a reasonable assumption in general?

Answer: Because things that occur with probability 10^(-100) don't actually happen. Actually, 10^(-100) might be a bit high, but certainly things that occur with probability 10^(-10^(100)) don't actually happen.

Comment author: komponisto 13 December 2010 02:44:14AM 2 points [-]

Because if there was something that bad, then you get Pascal's mugged in my hypothetical situation

You seem not to have understood the post. The worse something is, the more difficult it is for the mugger to make the threat credible. There may be things that are so bad that I (or my hypothetical AI) would pay $5 not to raise their probability to 10^(-100), but such things have prior probabilities that are lower than 10^(-100), and a mugger uttering the threat will not be sufficient evidence to raise the probability to 10^(-100).

Answer: Because things that occur with probability 10^(-100) don't actually happen. Actually, 10^(-100) might be a bit high, but certainly things that occur with probability 10^(-10^(100)) don't actually happen.

We don't need to declare 10^(-100) equal to 0. 10^(-100) is small enough already.

Comment author: jsteinhardt 13 December 2010 01:39:06AM *  -1 points [-]

Fine, I was slightly sloppy in my original proof (not only in the way you pointed out, but also in keeping track of signs). Here is a rigorous version:

Suppose that there is nothing so bad that you would pay $5 to stop it from happening with probability 10^(-100). Let X be a state of the universe. Then u(-$5) < 10^(-100) u(X), so u(X) > 10^(100) u(-$5). Since u(X) > 10^(100) u(-$5) for all X, u is bounded below.

Similarly, suppose that there is nothing so good that you would pay $5 to have a 10^(-100) chance of it happening. Then u($5) > 10^(100) u(X) for all X, so u(X) < 10^(100) u($5), hence u is also bounded above.

Now I've given proofs that u is bounded both above and below, without looking at argmax u or argmin u (which incidentally probably don't exist even if u is bounded; it is much more likely that u asymptotes out).

My proof is still not entirely rigorous, for instance u(-$5) and u($5) will in general depend on my current level of income / savings. If you really want me to, I can write everything out completely rigorously, but I've been trying to avoid it because I find that diving into unnecessary levels of rigor only obscures the underlying intuition (and I say this as someone who studies math).

Comment author: komponisto 13 December 2010 01:47:03AM 0 points [-]

Suppose that there is nothing so bad that you would pay $5 to stop it from happening with probability 10^(-100)

Again, why assume this?

Comment author: jsteinhardt 12 December 2010 10:58:53PM 1 point [-]

A utility function shouldn't suggest anything. It is simply an abstract mathematical function that is guaranteed to exist by the VNM utility theorem. If you're letting an unintuitive mathematical theorem tell you to do things that you don't want to do, then something is wrong.

Again, the problem is there is a namespace collision between the utility function guaranteed by VNM, which we are maximizing the expected value of, and the utility function that we intuitively associate with our preferences, which we (probably) aren't maximizing the expected value of. VNM just says that if you have consistent preferences, then there is some function whose expected value you are maximizing. It doesn't say that this function has anything to do with the degree to which you want various things to happen.

I seem to be having a lot of trouble getting this point across, so let me try to put it another way: Ignore Kolmogorov complexity, priors, etc. for a moment, and if you can, forget about your utility function and just ask yourself what you would want. Now imagine the worst possible thing that could happen (you can even suppose that both time and space are potentially infinite, so infinitely many people being tortured for infinite extents of time is fine). Let us call this thing X. Suppose that you have somehow calculated that, with probability 10^(-100), the mugger will cause X to happen if you don't pay him $5. Would you pay him? If you would pay him, then why?

I am actually quite interested in the answer to this question, because I am having trouble diagnosing the precise source of my disagreement on this issue. And even though I said to forget about utility functions, if you really think that is the answer to the "why" question, feel free to use them in your argument. As I said, at this point I am most interested in determining why we disagree, because previous discussions with other people suggest that there is some hidden inferential distance afoot.

As an aside, if you wouldn't pay him then the definition of utility implies that u($5) > 10^(-100) u(X), which implies that u(X), and therefore the entire utility function, is bounded.

Comment author: komponisto 13 December 2010 12:24:12AM 1 point [-]

Now imagine the worst possible thing that could happen

As was pointed out in the other subthread, you are assuming the conclusion you wish to prove here, viz. that the utility function is (necessarily) bounded.

Comment author: jsteinhardt 12 December 2010 06:16:56AM *  0 points [-]

The way around Pascal's mugging is to have a bounded utility function. Even if you are a paperclip-maximizer, your utility function is not the number of paperclips in the universe, it is some bounded function that is monotonic in the number of paperclips but asymptotes out. You are only linear in paperclips over small numbers of paperclips. This is not due to exponential discounting but because utility doesn't mean anything other than the function that we are maximizing the expected value of. It has an unfortunate namespace collision with the other utility, which is some intuitive quantification of our preferences that is probably closer to something like a description of the trades we would be willing to make. If you are unwilling to be mugged by Pascal's mugger then it simply follows as a mathematical fact that your utility is bounded by something on the order of the reciprocal of the probability that you would be un-muggable at.

For more of a description, see my post here, which originally got downvoted to oblivion because it argued from the position of a lack of knowledge of the VNM utility theorem. The post has since been fixed, and while it is not super-detailed, lays out an argument for why Pascal's mugging is resolved once we stop trying to make our utility functions look intuitive.

Incidentally, Pascal's mugging does lay out a good argument of why we need to be careful about an AGI's utility function; if we make it unbounded then we can get weird behavior indeed.

EDIT: Of course, perhaps I am still wrong somehow and there are unresolvable subtleties that I am missing. But I, at least, am simply unwilling to care about events occurring with probability 10^(-100), regardless of how bad they are.

Comment author: komponisto 12 December 2010 07:04:41AM 1 point [-]

The post you're commenting on argues that Pascal's mugging is already solved by merely letting the utility function be bounded by Kolmogorov complexity. Obviously, having it be uniformly bounded also solves the problem, but why resort to something so drastic if you don't need to?

In response to comment by [deleted] on A Thought on Pascal's Mugging
Comment author: Manfred 11 December 2010 11:20:12PM 0 points [-]

Ah, you're right.

But I think that a decision theory is better (better fulfills desiterata of universality, simplicity, etc. etc.) if it treats Pascal's mugging with the same method it uses for other threats.

Comment author: komponisto 11 December 2010 11:33:24PM 0 points [-]

Why? Is "threat" a particularly "natural" category?

From my perspective, Pascal's mugging is simply an argument showing that a human-friendly utility function should have a certain property, not a special class of problem to be solved.

Comment author: multifoliaterose 11 December 2010 09:24:28AM *  3 points [-]

I don't consider LW particularly bad - it seems considerably saner than a typical internet forum of similar size.

I have a similar impression.

LW was the first internet forum that I had serious exposure to. I initially thought that I had stumbled onto a very bizarre cult. I complained about this to various friends and they said "no, no, the whole internet is like this!" After hearing this from enough people and perusing the internet some more I realized that they were right. Further contemplation and experience made me realize that it wasn't only people on the internet who exhibit high levels of group think & strong ideological agendas; rather this is very common among humans in general! Real life interactions mask over the effects of group think & ideological agendas. I was then amazed at how oblivious I had been up until I learned about these things. All of this has been a cathartic and life-changing.

Is my impression right that most of drama we get centers about obscure FAI stuff?

Not sure, I don't really pay enough attention. As a rule, I avoid drama in general on account of lack of interest in the arguments being made on either side. The things that I've noticed most are those connected with gender wars and with Roko's post being banned. Then of course there were my own controversial posts back in August.

I've seen some drama about gender and politics, but honestly a lot less that these subject normally attract on other similar places.

Sounds about right.

Comment author: komponisto 11 December 2010 06:58:20PM *  1 point [-]

The things that I've noticed most are those connected with gender wars and with Roko being banned

In the interest of avoiding the spread of false ideas, it should be pointed out that Roko was not banned; rather his post was "banned" (jargon for actually deleted, as opposed to "deleted", which merely means removed from the various "feeds" ("New", the user's overview, etc)). Roko himself then proceded to delete (in the ordinary way) all his other posts and comments.

In response to comment by [deleted] on A Thought on Pascal's Mugging
Comment author: Manfred 11 December 2010 04:32:11AM 0 points [-]

This isn't really the limiting reagent in the reaction, though. I can communicate all sorts of awful things (sorry, had to share - it's totally my fault if you end up reading the entire thread) much more easily than I can do them.

Comment author: komponisto 11 December 2010 05:27:59PM 1 point [-]

I can communicate all sorts of awful things much more easily than I can do them.

Not for things with values in the range of 3^^^^3 -- in such a case the difference between ability-to-communicate and ability-to-carry-out is pretty much negligible. (The complexity of an action with 3^^^^3 units of disutility is right around 3^^^^3, under my proposal.)

Comment author: komponisto 11 December 2010 04:53:47PM *  3 points [-]
  • Talent/Intelligence

Why it's tempting to postulate an essence: people seem to be good at different things, and for any particular thing, some people are better than others; and since we can't read others' minds, and people aren't always skilled in introspection and explanation, it's not always easy to find out what they know that we don't.

  • Aesthetics/"Taste"

Why it's tempting to postulate an essence: people have different "tastes", and it's difficult to argue them into changing their mind about what they like. Plus, people aren't good at introspecting to discover via analysis why it is they like what they like, and are motivated not to do so because they're afraid they won't like it anymore (similar to the way people fear physicists' reduction of rainbows). Plus, shared tastes are a common criterion used to divide people into tribes.

  • Music Theory

Why it's tempting to postulate essences: certain periods/styles exhibit empirical regularities not shared by other periods/styles, and cataloging these regularities is felt to be most of what the subject matter consists of. The discipline doesn't have a culture of reductionism, perhaps because irreducible "talent" (see above) is already assumed among those studying it, so there's no need to systematically address the question of how to make music from non-music, or how to invent new styles. Also, people can sense that treating such questions systematically would involve difficult new abstractions, in contrast to the concrete concepts used to do cataloging, and they run away in fear.

In response to comment by [deleted] on A Thought on Pascal's Mugging
Comment author: Manfred 11 December 2010 04:27:41AM 0 points [-]

It doesn't quite kill Pascal's mugging - the threat does have to have some minimum level of credibility, but that minimum credibility can still be low enough that hand over the cash. Pascal's mugging only is killed if the expected utility of handing over the cash is negative. To show this I think you really do need to evaluate the probability to the end.

Neither does it kill paperclip maximizers. A bunch of paperclips requires about log2(N) bits to describe, plus the description of the properties of a paperclip. So the paperclip maximizer can still have a constantly-increasing utility as they make more paperclips, your rule would just bound it to growing like log(N).

Good line of thought though: there may still be something in here.

Comment author: komponisto 11 December 2010 06:57:45AM 0 points [-]

Pascal's mugging only is killed if the expected utility of handing over the cash is negative.

This will be the case in the scenario under discussion, due to the low probability of the mugger's threat (in the "3^^^^3 disutilons" version), or the (relatively!) low disutility (in the "3^^^^3 persons" version, under Michael Vassar's proposal).

So the paperclip maximizer can still have a constantly-increasing utility as they make more paperclips, your rule would just bound it to growing like log(N)

Yes; it would be a "less pure" paperclip maximizer, but still an unfriendly AI.

The rule is (proposed to be) necessary for friendliness, not sufficient by any means.

Comment author: JGWeissman 11 December 2010 03:54:37AM 2 points [-]

The concept can be rescued, at least from that objection, by saying instead that their should be some value alpha, such that for any description of a state of the universe, the utility of that state is less than alpha times the complexity of that description. That is, the asymptotic complexity of utility is linear in terms of complexity.

However, the utility function still isn't up for grabs. If our actual true utility function violates this rule, I don't want to say that an AGI is unfriendly for maximizing it.

Comment author: komponisto 11 December 2010 06:39:43AM 1 point [-]

However, the utility function still isn't up for grabs. If our actual true utility function violates this rule, I don't want to say that an AGI is unfriendly for maximizing it.

Of course. The proposal here is that "our actual true utility function" does not violate this rule, since we are not in fact inclined to give in to a Pascalian mugger.

In response to comment by [deleted] on A Thought on Pascal's Mugging
Comment author: Yvain 10 December 2010 11:17:25PM 1 point [-]

As I understand it, komponisto's idea is that we don't have to worry about Pascal's Mugging because the probability of anyone being able to control 3^^^^3 utils is even lower than one would expect simply looking at the number 3^^^^3, and is therefore low enough to cancel out even this large a number.

What I am trying to respond is that there are formulations of Pascal's Mugging which do not depend on the number 3^^^^3. The idea that someone could destroy a universe worth of utils is more plausible than destroying 3^^^^3 utils, and it's not at all obvious there that the low probability cancels out the high risk.

Comment author: komponisto 11 December 2010 12:39:29AM 2 points [-]

The idea that someone could destroy a universe worth of utils is more plausible than destroying 3^^^^3 utils, and it's not at all obvious there that the low probability cancels out the high risk.

Well, it may not be obvious what to do in that case! But the original formulation of the Pascal's Mugging problem, as I understand it, was to formally explain why it is obvious in the case of large numbers like 3^^^^3:

Given that, in general, a Turing machine can increase in utility vastly faster than it increases in complexity, how should an Occam-abiding mind avoid being dominated by tiny probabilities of vast utilities?

The answer proposed here is that a "friendly" utility function does not in fact allow utility to increase faster than complexity increases.

I don't claim this tells us what to do about the LHC.

Comment author: Bongo 10 December 2010 08:40:39PM 1 point [-]

Don't see how your idea defeats this:

If you have a nonzero probability that the mugger can produce arbitrary amounts of utility, the mugger just has to offer you enough to outweigh the smallness of this probability, which is fixed.

Comment author: komponisto 11 December 2010 12:24:17AM *  1 point [-]

See Sewing-Machine's comment. The smallness of the probability isn't fixed, if the probability is controlled by complexity, and complexity controls utility.

More precisely, the probability that the mugger can produce arbitrary amounts of utility is dominated by (the probability that the mugger can produce more than N units of utility), for every N; and as the latter is arbitrarily small for N sufficiently large, the former must be zero.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 10 December 2010 08:39:04PM 4 points [-]

Perhaps oddly, I find myself far more often infuriated by invalid arguments used to persuade people of something I believe to be correct, than incorrect.

Comment author: komponisto 10 December 2010 08:44:45PM 5 points [-]

The feeling I get from that tends to be one of cringing discomfort rather than agitated anger.

In response to A sense of logic
Comment author: komponisto 10 December 2010 08:15:48PM *  5 points [-]

So, how did you feel when you read that bit of sf hand-waving?

Interestingly, my reaction wasn't negative. Instead, my curiosity was stimulated, and I immediately set myself the task of figuring out what was wrong with it. (Turned out to be easy, of course.)

On a larger scale, I've found the exercise of going through a certain 427 pages of wrongness, and coming to precise understandings of the mistakes, to be strangely satisfying (and informative). Perhaps it could be compared to the feeling of satisfaction a repairman might get from fixing a broken machine.

On the other hand, when (the very same) bad arguments are presented in this manner, I get so enraged I can barely stand to look. (Dark techniques really grate on me when they're used in an attempt to persuade people of something I know to be incorrect; and if you're wrong, you darn well better not be sanctimonious about your wrong answer.)

I also suspect that if I had encountered the above sci-fi argument in context, where the incorrect deduction would either have been used to support a further, important, wrong conclusion, or would just have indicated carelessness on the part of the author or character, I would have been annoyed.

Comment author: [deleted] 10 December 2010 04:13:41PM *  1 point [-]

A corollary is a necessary condition for friendliness: if the utility function of an AI can take values much larger than the complexity of the input, then it is unfriendly. This kills Pascal's mugging and paperclip maximizers with the same stone. It even sounds simple and formal enough to imagine testing it on a given piece of code.

In response to comment by [deleted] on A Thought on Pascal's Mugging
Comment author: komponisto 10 December 2010 07:12:35PM *  1 point [-]

I think I agree.

Perhaps one way to state the complexity-of-value thesis would be to say that the utility function should be bounded by Kolmogorov complexity.

Comment author: Yvain 10 December 2010 06:04:07PM *  2 points [-]

Given that there's no definition for the value of a util, arguments about how many utils the universe contains aren't likely to get anywhere.

So let's make it easier. Suppose the mugger asks you for $1, or ey'll destroy the Universe. Suppose we assume the Universe to have 50 quadrillion sapient beings in it, and to last for another 25 billion years ( = 1 billion generations if average aliens have similar generation time to us) if not destroyed. That means the mugger can destroy 50 septillion beings. If we assign an average being's life as worth $100000, then the mugger can destroy $5 nonillion (= 5 * 10^30).

Given that there have been reasonable worries about ie the LHC destroying the Universe, I think the probability that a person can destroy the universe is rather greater than 1 in 5 nonillion (to explain why it hasn't been done already, assume the Great Filter comes at the stage of industrialization). I admit that the probability of someone with an LHC-level device being willing to destroy the Universe for the sake of $1 would be vanishingly low, but until today I wouldn't have thought someone would kill 6,790 people to protest a blog's comment policy either.

Comment author: komponisto 10 December 2010 07:10:19PM 1 point [-]

What Sewing-Machine said. A solution of the Pascal's mugging problem certainly doesn't imply that existential risks aren't to be worried about!

Comment author: jimrandomh 10 December 2010 01:45:45PM 2 points [-]

This requirement (large numbers that refer to sets have large kolmogorov complexity) is a weaker version of my and RichardKenneway's versions of the anti-mugging axiom. However, it doesn't work for all utility functions; for example, Clippy would still be vulnerable to Pascal's Mugging if using this strategy, since he doesn't care whether the paperclips are distinct.

Comment author: komponisto 10 December 2010 03:19:13PM *  0 points [-]

Thanks for the links; I seem to have missed that post.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 December 2010 08:33:37AM 1 point [-]

I invite anyone who still sides with WaitingForGodel at this point to leave and find a site more suited to their intellects. I am sure it will only frustrate them and us to have them stick around.

Comment author: komponisto 10 December 2010 02:58:17PM 20 points [-]

Reversed stupidity not being intelligence, I'll point out that I "side with" waitingforgodel to the extent of disapproving of the censorship that occurred yesterday (though I haven't complained about the original censorship from July).

Needless to say, of course, I also think this post is silly.

A Thought on Pascal's Mugging

12 komponisto 10 December 2010 06:08AM

For background, see here.

In a comment on the original Pascal's mugging post, Nick Tarleton writes:

[Y]ou could replace "kill 3^^^^3 people" with "create 3^^^^3 units of disutility according to your utility function". (I respectfully suggest that we all start using this form of the problem.)

Michael Vassar has suggested that we should consider any number of identical lives to have the same utility as one life. That could be a solution, as it's impossible to create 3^^^^3 distinct humans. But, this also is irrelevant to the create-3^^^^3-disutility-units form.

Coming across this again recently, it occurred to me that there might be a way to generalize Vassar's suggestion in such a way as to deal with Tarleton's more abstract formulation of the problem. I'm curious about the extent to which folks have thought about this. (Looking further through the comments on the original post, I found essentially the same idea in a comment by g, but it wasn't discussed further.)

The idea is that the Kolmogorov complexity of "3^^^^3 units of disutility" should be much higher than the Kolmogorov complexity of the number 3^^^^3. That is, the utility function should grow only according to the complexity of the scenario being evaluated, and not (say) linearly in the number of people involved. Furthermore, the domain of the utility function should consist of low-level descriptions of the state of the world, which won't refer directly to words uttered by muggers, in such a way that a mere discussion of "3^^^^3 units of disutility" by a mugger will not typically be (anywhere near) enough evidence to promote an actual "3^^^^3-disutilon" hypothesis to attention.

This seems to imply that the intuition responsible for the problem is a kind of fake simplicity, ignoring the complexity of value (negative value in this case). A confusion of levels also appears implicated (talking about utility does not itself significantly affect utility; you don't suddenly make 3^^^^3-disutilon scenarios probable by talking about "3^^^^3 disutilons").

What do folks think of this? Any obvious problems? 

In response to comment by Jack on Were atoms real?
Comment author: [deleted] 09 December 2010 06:19:56PM 1 point [-]

I agree with the resemblance to Quine; it could also be thought of as Philip Kitcher's "unification" model of explanation.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Were atoms real?
Comment author: komponisto 09 December 2010 06:29:02PM 1 point [-]

And also the coherence theory of truth (replace "X is real" with " 'X exists' is true").

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 07 December 2010 09:01:14PM 1 point [-]

For what it's worth, I tried listening to Ferneyhough 2007, and the first few minutes were fascinating. It was as though the music was playing something in the back of my mind. And then I ran out of attention.

Is the sort of music you listed especially dependent on good reproduction, or is youtube enough for a fair sampling?

Comment author: komponisto 07 December 2010 10:14:08PM *  0 points [-]

Is the sort of music you listed especially dependent on good reproduction, or is youtube enough for a fair sampling?

It's especially dependent on good performance, but I don't think recording quality is necessarily much more important than for works of earlier periods, at least above a certain minimum threshold. Certainly not for the works I listed, which I think are fairly represented by the linked recordings. (Excepting perhaps Carter's Variations for Orchestra, for which the audio is too soft.)

Comment author: MichaelVassar 07 December 2010 07:48:15PM *  0 points [-]

I like Lady McBeth of Mtsensk District, from 1934, but its not in cannon. I have heard great things about Dr. Atomic, but I haven't seen it and don't know much about it. Of cannon operas, I don't know anything comparable to Figaro or to the very different Ring Cycle. There must be possibilities for operas that good and that different from anything else. Aida is probably my favorite ordinary cannon opera, but I don't like it nearly as much as the others I just mentioned. I enjoy Phantom, which isn't an Opera but which makes use of operatic vocals and melodrama and I generally enjoy pop music that incorporates highly trained vocalization skills.

Comment author: komponisto 07 December 2010 08:12:49PM *  0 points [-]

I'm actually not all that familiar with Lady McBeth, having only heard excerpts on occasion. My impression is that it's one of his more adventurous pieces, but in general, Shostakovich is too conservative for me (for which he can't entirely be blamed, since conservatism was imposed by the regime he lived under).

What do you think of Wozzeck? Lulu? (These are close enough to "canon" to count as such, from the point of view of music history and criticism. Particularly Wozzeck.) (Your answer here will probably determine whether anything more modern has a hope of satisfying you.)

I've seen Doctor Atomic, though only once. I doubt you'll find it comparable to Figaro or The Ring, but I could be wrong.

Comment author: CronoDAS 07 December 2010 08:15:53AM 1 point [-]

For example, it should be clear by now that I don't agree that "the cultural descendant of Beethoven is The Beatles", and it should be equally clear why: in addition to the fact that the actual memetic lineage from Beethoven to the Beatles is much less direct than from Beethoven to contemporary art-composers (a point I didn't actually mention explicitly), Beethoven's intention -- his profession, his métier -- was to write the most interesting/advanced/sophisticated music he could. (Beyond the blatant evidence of the music itself, as compared with his (more "popular"!) contemporaries, this is a matter of historical record, as revealed in his letters.) In this crucial respect, he resembles contemporary academic composers much more than the Beatles (who, as popular musicians, have few rivals, of course).

I wonder if pre-WWII jazz musicians are closer in spirit to this, in terms of both "writing the most interesting/advanced/sophisticated music [they] could" and "advancing the field of music"?

Comment author: komponisto 07 December 2010 07:48:26PM 0 points [-]

I wonder if pre-WWII jazz musicians are closer in spirit to this, in terms of both "writing the most interesting/advanced/sophisticated music [they] could" and "advancing the field of music"?

Quite possibly. I don't even see any need to restrict to pre-WWII. My impression is that, among the various styles of popular music, jazz has tended to come closest to manifesting this ideal in general.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 07 December 2010 08:14:51AM 0 points [-]

I didn't say that he did that, but he clarified an argument which I think if fairly plausible. I'm not claiming he's compelling. Certainly it could be made in some situations and its case still not hold, but its pretty significant evidence, I think, for his position. He can argue more if he wants to. FWIW, I still think that something has to be fairly wrong with the field if it can't make a better opera just to prove that it can and to make some money, but something can be fairly wrong with a field without the field being bogus.

Comment author: komponisto 07 December 2010 07:21:31PM 0 points [-]

I still think that something has to be fairly wrong with the field if it can't make a better opera just to prove that it can

Out of curiosity, and for calibration: what, in your opinion, was the most recent (sufficiently) "good" opera?

something can be fairly wrong with a field without the field being bogus.

This is very true, and there is plenty that is wrong with the field of music.

Comment author: SilasBarta 07 December 2010 12:23:26AM 0 points [-]

So you think in that comment, komponisto has sufficiently broken the similarities I have cited to theology as an academic field? If so, please elaborate further about how you came to this conclusion.

Comment author: komponisto 07 December 2010 07:10:53PM 1 point [-]

So you think in that comment, komponisto has sufficiently broken the similarities I have cited to theology as an academic field?

See this comment, where I wrote:

The main problem with theological ideas isn't that they aren't interesting, but that they aren't true. But art doesn't have truth-values; interestingness is all there is.

Comment author: David_Gerard 07 December 2010 03:50:37PM 0 points [-]

Your comment makes detailed claims of inherent superiority of the fans of the music you like. Are you claiming that doesn't constitute such a claim?

Comment author: komponisto 07 December 2010 04:31:13PM *  0 points [-]

A claim that X utilizes more intellectual resources than Y does not constitute a claim that X is "objectively better" than Y, no.

Comment author: David_Gerard 07 December 2010 08:57:02AM *  0 points [-]

What's annoying you, I suspect, is komponisto's apparent assertion that his chosen favourite music is not only good, but objectively the best music there is, and that the qualia one experiences from this music are the best available from music.

I'd like to know which specific statements of mine give this impression, because that isn't what I see myself asserting.

I was looking through your posts, but this one appears to say precisely that.

No, it does not make you smarter than everyone else. Some people have more capacity than others, but you haven't magically hit the sweet spot for all of human music. That is the bit I'm seeing and going "that's ridiculous".

Art works by pressing buttons in someone's head and generating a subjective experience. The artist first, then others because humans in a particular time, place and (sub)culture will have similar enough buttons to be able to talk about them. Inferential distance kicks in when you take the art out of its time, place and (sub)culture, and at that point it may in fact take a degree's worth of bridging to get there (and to a huge number of other places as well).

Art is great for effect in general, not just for your carefully defined personal category of "interestingness" (and I can't find the post right now, but I recall you saying you were using your own personal definition of "IQ" as well). That presses your personal buttons very effectively, but it's not a universal button and - and this is the key point - it's not the greatest of all buttons.

Can simple art be effective? Can there be simple art that is more effective than complicated art? Here I include "simplicity on the far side of complexity" as "simple", though arguably one may not.

But hey - tell me I'm wrong.

Comment author: komponisto 07 December 2010 04:28:31PM *  1 point [-]

I was looking through your posts, but this one appears to say precisely that.

That was written after the grandparent, first of all. Secondly, see my reply to you there: it doesn't say that at all, unless you invoke additional premises (such as "utilizing more intellectual resources" implying "objectively better") that I haven't stated.

No, it does not make you smarter than everyone else.

Do you deny that appreciation of contemporary art music (or even Schoenberg) is Bayesian evidence of high IQ?

but I recall you saying you were using your own personal definition of "IQ" as well

For purposes of this specific sub-discussion (regarding empirical predictions), you may assume that I am talking about "the thing measured by IQ tests".

That presses your personal buttons very effectively, but it's not a universal button and - and this is the key point - it's not the greatest of all buttons.

I haven't come close to claiming that my buttons are universal. As for "greatest", well, obviously I think the music I like is the greatest music. But this isn't an information-free statement: there are reasons I like the music I like, and those reasons are not unrelated to musical ability and experience. Obviously, there's a personal component, too -- I like some composers and works better than others of equal sophistication -- but that personal component plays a much smaller role in explaining my "disagreement" with nonspecialists than it does in explaining my disagreements with specialists (which will tend to be much narrower).

Can simple art be effective?

Yes, as long as interest comes from somewhere. Superficial "complication" is not the only way to create interest.

Comment author: David_Gerard 07 December 2010 09:15:54AM 2 points [-]

Answered here. No, that humans are smarter than chimpanzees does not imply that the music you like is objectively better than other music, nor does it having the capacity to be worked at for years.

(I am given caution by having heard similar arguments from rock musicians who have fifty Frank Zappa albums. Technical complication is an emotional button for art to press, that humans have and chimps don't, but that does not make it the highest of all possible buttons.)

Comment author: komponisto 07 December 2010 03:34:52PM *  0 points [-]

that humans are smarter than chimpanzees does not imply that the music you like is objectively better than other music

I did not use the highlighted phrase in my comment. You will have to spell out an argument that what I said implies that, because I don't see it. You'll have to start by telling me what "objectively better" means.

And then, assuming you're actually disagreeing with me about something specific, you'll have to tell me why the argument I presented is wrong. Which of my predictions do you disagree with, and by how much?

Comment author: SilasBarta 07 December 2010 12:33:33AM *  2 points [-]

Okay, this clarifies our dispute greatly. Let me say, then, that my position here is not based on disliking "small groups that get large amounts of enjoyment". What distinguishes music as an academic field is this purported enjoyment plus the cultural capture -- the belief, which you keep repeating, that not enjoying the elite-designated music is a failing of the listener, and academia is the one that gets to make this call.

If there were a real accomplishment here, rather than a mere agreement to applaud other members of the clique, academic-produced music should outperform in blind tests, but it does not, and this is (mistakenly) dismissed as a failing on the listeners' part. But if you're going to permit yourself that standard, you can call absolutely anything great, and rook society into respecting it, as I have shown with the theology comparisons.

If you can hype up me the way Joshua Bell gets hyped up for his performances, then sure, I could command big fees for apparances. But this would say very little about what I have to offer.

So this has nothing to do with a stigma against small groups that have found a way to amuse themselves. No other group gets the academic respectability in the absence of objective results that art does -- except perhaps other lost academic fields. And all the answers you've given me could work just as well to "prove" anything good and excuse why it can't pass any objective test.

Comment author: komponisto 07 December 2010 07:38:23AM *  1 point [-]

What distinguishes music as an academic field is this purported enjoyment plus the cultural capture -- the belief, which you keep repeating, that not enjoying the elite-designated music is a failing of the listener, and academia is the one that gets to make this call.

I think we need to taboo the highlighted term.

There are, in fact, cognitive/intellectual prerequisites to being able to enjoy music. This shouldn't be surprising: chimpanzees presumably don't get human-level enjoyment out of the Beatles, much less Beethoven. (And even if they do, mice still don't, etc.) I doubt the infant Beethoven would have appreciated the works of his adult self. And so likewise, some humans (like my current self) are better equipped to appreciate Ferneyhough than others (like my 12-year-old-self).

It occurs to me that what this argument is really about is status. I read you as resisting the idea that the kind of abilities involved in being able to enjoy academic music are something that one should be awarded status for possessing. I think this may be because you misunderstand the nature of those abilities.

(It's very important, by the way, to understand that we're not talking about aesthetic evaluation, at this point. We're talking about the ability to hear the music as music, as opposed to incoherent nonsense. Only after you can actually perceive the musical structure of a piece can you begin to talk about the extent to which that structure suits your own personal tastes. But most people who say they "don't like" contemporary art music aren't at that stage; what they are expressing is the fact that contemporary music sounds like nonsense to them, and they are mistaking their non-enjoyment of nonsense for aesthetic disagreement, evidently not quite realizing that the music actually sounds different to people who "get" it.)

If there were a real accomplishment here, rather than a mere agreement to applaud other members of the clique, academic-produced music should outperform in blind tests

Outperform what, in what kind of test? What test does a piece of music have to pass for you to consider it a "real accomplishment"?

Meanwhile, I have some empirical predictions for you. If any of these were able to be decisively falsified, I would be confused and would have to reevaluate my model:

  • The average IQ of the population of Beethoven enthusiasts should be higher than the average IQ of Beatles enthusiasts, and lower than the average IQ of Schoenberg enthusiasts.

  • Among professional musicians, enthusiasm for the music of Schoenberg should be positively correlated with IQ to an even greater extent than among the general population. (High-IQ should be greater evidence of Schoenberg enthusiasm conditioning on the person being a professional musician.)

  • People who enjoy Beethoven should perform better on aural skills tests (sight-singing and musical dictation) than people who don't. This should be true to a lesser extent if "Beethoven" is replaced by "the Beatles", and to a greater extent if "Beethoven" is replaced by "Schoenberg".

Comment author: wedrifid 06 December 2010 08:17:06AM *  1 point [-]

I don't think your position is anything to be ashamed of, or to defend. Multi wasn't sure where you were coming from and those are places where you have expressed your position. It isn't offensive unless what you have said previously regarding charity is something to be ashamed of.

So, then, by the way, was I wrong here after all? Do you simply not approve of fuzzy-seeking, despite what you said in that thread?

I don't know where those questions came from. But no to both.

In response to comment by wedrifid on Efficient Charity
Comment author: komponisto 06 December 2010 02:06:45PM *  0 points [-]

I don't think your position is anything to be ashamed of, or to defend...those are places where you have expressed your position

Well, thanks for that clarification. I hope I can be forgiven for interpreting your comment as an apparent repetition of the rather unpleasant-sounding accusation expressed in the last paragraph here, combined with a suggestion that I wasn't being transparent about what was motivating my remarks here.

I don't know where those questions came from

I had intended to ask them in the other sub-thread, where you expressed contempt for Make-A-Wish donors, but was too lazy to dig up the old discussion (not easily found by the keywords you suggest, incidentally) until provoked here.

Comment author: wedrifid 05 December 2010 04:22:30AM *  0 points [-]

Though I've read everything you've said, I don't have a clear intuitive sense for where you're coming from and why this topic is important to you.

Search 'Amanda Knox' on the site. Not necessarily just the top level posts on the subject by Kompo but the other times 'rational charity' subjects have come up.

In response to comment by wedrifid on Efficient Charity
Comment author: komponisto 06 December 2010 07:23:39AM 0 points [-]

What is that supposed to mean?

If you're referring to the discussion I think you are, I'll remind you once again that someone else made the first mention.

This strikes me as something of a cheap shot.

(So, then, by the way, was I wrong here after all? Do you simply not approve of fuzzy-seeking, despite what you said in that thread?)

Comment author: Clippy 05 December 2010 04:07:33PM 2 points [-]

That's not the kind of paperclips maximizing that I like. That instrument should be melted down to make numerous smaller paperclips. It is not maximising usefulness by being an instrument.

Comment author: komponisto 05 December 2010 04:35:21PM *  0 points [-]

Oh, that goes without saying.

I was more interested in whether you would appreciate a musical composition drawing attention to your existence and values.

Comment author: Clippy 05 December 2010 03:01:47PM 1 point [-]

~exist(God)

Comment author: komponisto 05 December 2010 03:21:52PM 0 points [-]

Correct!

By the way, what do you think about this (last sentence)?

Comment author: Yvain 05 December 2010 02:34:42PM *  13 points [-]

What about this:

The predicate "is true" usually gets applied to a sentence with a subject and predicate. The classic example is "Snow is white". As Tarski says, "'Snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white".

English allows us to pretend we're applying the words "is true" to a noun, for example "Islam is true". But this confuses Tarski: "Islam is true if and only if Islam" is nonsense. So we should properly understand "Islam" in this sentence as a stand-in for various sentences lumped under the name Islam, for example "Allah is God", and "Mohammed is His prophet." When we do this, the statement "Islam is true" unpacks to "'Allah is God' is true, and 'Mohammed is His prophet' is true." This fits nicely in Tarski form: "Islam is true if and only if Allah is God and Mohammed is His prophet."

So the general idea is that you can't use a truth-function to evaluate the truth of a noun until you unpack the noun into a sentence.

Now consider the sentence "This sentence is true". It Tarski-izes to "This sentence is true if and only if this sentence", which doesn't work. To make it work, we have to unpack the noun "this sentence" into a sentence. "This sentence" unpacks to the sentence to which it refers: "This sentence is true". So the unpacking ends with:

"'This sentence is true' is true."

The second round of unpacking ends with:

"''This sentence is true' is true' is true."

And so on, with each unpacking just adding one more "is true" after it without making it any less packed. Trying to unpack the noun fully will lead to infinite regress; stopping at any point will mean you're trying to run a truth predicate on a noun.

What can be said about a truth predicate can also be said about a falsehood predicate, so the Liar Sentence just returns "invalid argument for function", the same as if you pointed to a dog and said "That dog is false!"

The other sentences mentioned as contrasts don't have this problem. "This sentence is in English" also requires a sentence as an argument. It gets one: "The sentence 'This sentence is in English' is in English" is a perfectly valid sentence. It's not necessary to evaluate the truth of the sentence in the middle (its English-ness isn't related to whether it's true or false), so we can leave that one unevaluated and just evaluate the frame sentence, which evaluates the inner sentence's Englishness, which comes out as true.

Comment author: komponisto 05 December 2010 02:56:25PM 1 point [-]

"Allah is God"

My knowledge of the Arabic language is only good enough to recognize that this is a tautology.

...and now that I think about it, it doesn't appear that the first part of

There is no god but God, and Mohammed is His prophet

is actually an existence claim!

Comment author: multifoliaterose 05 December 2010 06:08:05AM 1 point [-]

Upvoted, thanks for clarifying. I agree with

I don't want to push the culture in a direction toward hostility to valuing fuzzies. I think it's great if we can learn to be more rational in the pursuit of our goals, but anyone whose goals include trips to Disneyland for cancer patients doesn't have anything more to be ashamed of than someone whose goals include a new pair of shoes.

Several points here:

  1. I agree with Holden's posting Nothing wrong with selfish giving - just don’t call it philanthropy (though I find the negative connotation of 'selfish' attached to the phrase 'selfish giving' unfortunate). I think that people who are interested in making the world a better place should allocate some of their resources with an eye toward maximizing their positive impact.

  2. As I've said elsewhere, I think that there's a fair amount to the points that Yvain makes in his Doing Your Good Deed For the Day and do think that it sometimes happens that people's willingness to help others is diminished by their existing charitable activities.

  3. I'm all for people feeling more fuzzies.

Comment author: komponisto 05 December 2010 07:08:16AM 1 point [-]

I think that people who are interested in making the world a better place should allocate some of their resources with an eye toward maximizing their positive impact.

Agreed, of course.

As I've said elsewhere, I think that there's a fair amount to the points that Yvain makes in his Doing Your Good Deed For the Day and do think that it sometimes happens that people's willingness to help others is diminished by their existing charitable activities.

Yes, I regard this as definitely a bug and not a feature.

I'm all for people feeling more fuzzies.

Glad to hear it. :-)

I'll take some time to reflect on the nature and extent of our apparent disagreement.

Comment author: shokwave 05 December 2010 06:22:00AM *  1 point [-]

(people donating to to provide trips to Disneyland instead of buying personal luxuries)

This has incredibly marginal utility. It is effectively trading your luxury for the fuzzy feeling of providing luxury to another.

(people donating to x-risks charities instead of donating to provide trips to Disneyland)

This has more utility. In fact, it bears a strong resemblance to

(people donating to x-risks charities instead of buying personal luxuries)

given that "providing trips to Disneyland" looks more like a luxury than charity.

I don't understand how you can prefer A>C but C>A*, unless you think that "preventing the purchase of personal luxuries" is worth more utility than preventing existential risk (A, A*) or saving lives (B, B*).

In response to comment by shokwave on Efficient Charity
Comment author: komponisto 05 December 2010 06:35:48AM *  0 points [-]

Yes, never mind -- see my reply to JGWeissman.

Comment author: JGWeissman 05 December 2010 06:18:30AM 1 point [-]

I don't see the nontransitivity, but it does seem to imply:

U(x-risk reduction($x)) - U(Disneyland($x)) < U(Disneyland($x)) - U(personal luxuries($x))

which, while not inconsistent, seems to undervalue x-risk reduction relative to trips to Disneyland for cancer patients.

Comment author: komponisto 05 December 2010 06:33:05AM 1 point [-]

You're right. The penultimate item is too low; it should in fact be second.

All I really wanted to point out was the abundance of items between the first and the last, and the fact that (people donating to save lives instead of buying personal luxuries) is higher than (people donating to save lives instead of donating to provide trips to Disneyland).

Comment author: JGWeissman 05 December 2010 05:57:30AM 0 points [-]

You are making the perfect (people donating to x-risks charities instead of buying personal luxuries) the enemy of the good (people donating to save lives instead of donating to provide trips to Disneyland).

If you know how to convince people (not LW regulars) to contribute to x-risk reduction, instead of buying shoes, then please do so. If not, it doesn't make sense to complain about efforts that can convince people to make immediate positive changes in their behavior while planting the seeds towards convincing them to more generally maximize expected utility.

Comment author: komponisto 05 December 2010 06:07:30AM *  0 points [-]

You are making the perfect (people donating to x-risks charities instead of buying personal luxuries) the enemy of the good (people donating to save lives instead of donating to provide trips to Disneyland).

My preference ordering is:

(people donating to x-risks charities instead of buying personal luxuries) > (people donating to save lives instead of buying personal luxuries)>(people donating to to provide trips to Disneyland instead of buying personal luxuries)>(people donating to x-risks charities instead of donating to provide trips to Disneyland)>(people donating to save lives instead of donating to provide trips to Disneyland).

EDIT: No, this is wrong; see below. Attention should be focused on the grandparent.

Comment author: multifoliaterose 05 December 2010 03:59:44AM 1 point [-]

I feel like we're engaged in a semantic dispute and/or hairsplitting which has proceeded beyond the point of diminishing returns at least for me personally. Though I've read everything you've said, I don't have a clear intuitive sense for where you're coming from and why this topic is important to you. If you feel that you have a substantive point to make on this subject maybe you can make a discussion board post detailing your position.

Comment author: komponisto 05 December 2010 05:25:43AM *  1 point [-]

Though I've read everything you've said, I don't have a clear intuitive sense for where you're coming from and why this topic is important to you.

I don't want to see the human species stop doing things like e.g. Make-A-Wish does. I feel that the kind of urge that motivates people to do such things is a large part of why humanity is worth protecting in the first place. Although I agree that saving lives is typically more important than a particular other cause, and that it's usually what you should do if you have to choose, I think we should if at all possible avoid compromising high-level values -- such as by discouraging other forms of altruism -- in order to do so.

To put this in a broader context, I have a strong aversion to the mentality expressed in the second paragraph of this post. I fear that if we don't allocate some of our caring to particular humans in their individual capacities, people will come to be seen as dispensable -- and then, one day, I might be discarded, too. Since I greatly value my existence on good days and my autonomy even on the worst days, this is a nightmare scenario. I'm afraid of someone being tortured for 50 years to save 3^^^3 people the inconvenience of a dust speck. Yes, it may be the better option, if those are the only two choices, but that doesn't make it good.

Given that this is how I feel even when we're talking about existential risk -- saving the whole human species and its future -- I hope you can understand why similar-sounding arguments against small-scale fuzzy personal altruism in favor of anything less than existential risk reduction leave an especially bad taste in my mouth.

I'm the type of person who highly values fuzzies, to such an extent that I value others' valuing of fuzzies, and I don't want to push the culture in a direction toward hostility to valuing fuzzies. I think it's great if we can learn to be more rational in the pursuit of our goals, but anyone whose goals include trips to Disneyland for cancer patients doesn't have anything more to be ashamed of than someone whose goals include a new pair of shoes.

Comment author: multifoliaterose 04 December 2010 11:21:56PM 0 points [-]

Interesting thought. I'll have to think about this. Again, the ultimate question is how the intended audience responds. Neither you nor I are representative of the intended audience. It would be good to have some data on people's subjective reactions to the article. A couple of points:

  1. See the GiveWell blog entry titled Denying the choice.

  2. It's plausible to me that Make-A-Wish donors could get more fuzzies out of donating to VillageReach than they do now (after initial discomfort coming from a readjustment of worldview).

Comment author: komponisto 05 December 2010 01:32:42AM *  0 points [-]

See the GiveWell blog entry titled Denying the choice.

I would suggest that the author of that entry see the grandparent comment. No one denies that there must ultimately be some tradeoff. That doesn't mean that a particular proposed tradeoff is necessarily optimal.

It's plausible to me that Make-A-Wish donors could get more fuzzies out of donating to VillageReach than they do now

It sounds like you're once again assuming the very thing I'm disputing, which is that donating to VillageReach implies "switching" from being a "Make-A-Wish donor". Either that, or you've perhaps forgotten what I wrote earlier:

I do think getting people to consider VillageReach as a source of fuzzies is all well and good.

Comment author: wedrifid 05 December 2010 12:05:40AM 6 points [-]

Think about it: imagine you're a regular Make-A-Wish donor who has suddenly found out about VillageReach, and would like to offer support. Why should your Disney-World-trips-for-cancer-patients fund be the first jar you raid?

Because people are the way they are. They have intuitive budgets for different classes of expenditure and trying to take money from their shoes budget instead of their charity budget just would not work.

In response to comment by wedrifid on Efficient Charity
Comment author: komponisto 05 December 2010 01:12:40AM 2 points [-]

Was it not clear that I was attacking the notion that there ought to be a "charity budget"?

This is the inferential gap that we ought to be trying to bridge. Famine relief and Make-A-Wish shouldn't be in the same budget!

trying to take money from their shoes budget instead of their charity budget just would not work.

How do you know this? In fact I beg to differ. People aren't born with a charity budget; they have to take it out of somewhere when they start giving in the first place.

Comment author: multifoliaterose 04 December 2010 11:01:24PM *  2 points [-]

I see. I suspect that your objection arises from you having thought more about effective philanthropy than the intended audience but I may be wrong. If people in the intended audience have a similar objection I'll consider revising the article.

Comment author: komponisto 04 December 2010 11:11:41PM *  4 points [-]

Basically, I feel that "effective philanthropy" is a "wrong topic". The topic should be effective use of money. VillageReach vs. Make-A-Wish is a false choice. If we are going to channel more money into VillageReach, I feel that that there are much better places to take it out of than something like Make-A-Wish.

Think about it: imagine you're a regular Make-A-Wish donor who has suddenly found out about VillageReach, and would like to offer support. Why should your Disney-World-trips-for-cancer-patients fund be the first jar you raid?

Comment author: multifoliaterose 04 December 2010 10:28:25PM 0 points [-]

What framing would you prefer?

Comment author: komponisto 04 December 2010 10:39:28PM *  0 points [-]

I would suggest comparing the cost of saving a life with the cost of something more mundane and dispensable, like movie tickets, rather than the sorts of activities that are likely to be seen as integral to one's identity and values (like bringing happiness or other help to people in bad situations).

Comment author: multifoliaterose 04 December 2010 09:22:07PM *  1 point [-]

I agree with JGWeissman's comment here. The key point is that the article is written for donors who have not thought about who not familiar with concepts of optimizing charity and x-risk/transhumanism.

Comment author: komponisto 04 December 2010 10:21:40PM *  0 points [-]

I responded to JGWeissman here, acknowledging that but standing by my criticism of the framing.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 03 December 2010 06:14:01PM 3 points [-]

I honestly think that someone with these sensibilities might think that music since WWII is a wasteland with respect to what they cared about.

I'm pretty sure that the authors of the best theological texts had impressive general intellects and associated with impressive people. They were probably frequently good public speakers too, a costly signal.

I don't think advanced music might be an intentional hoax. (which could be OK. It always seemed to me that in Andy Warhol's case hoax was the art). I think it, and advanced math, may not be the heirs to the unquestionably valuable traditions that they claim to be heirs to, but may instead by the emergent properties of certain institutional designs in the absence of outside constraints.

There are other possibilities too. It seems to me that modern art, in the sense of the 1860s-1950s, is basically not the intellectual heir of the old masters. Picasso etc were doing something much cooler than the old masters were, but what they were doing is better thought of as being an heir to certain tribal art-forms, especially from the pacific islands, empowered by industrial civilization, specialization, etc.

Comment author: komponisto 04 December 2010 10:16:44PM 2 points [-]

I honestly think that someone with these sensibilities might think that music since WWII is a wasteland with respect to what they cared about.

It is conceivable, I'll admit, that such a person could have ended up like Schenker, who was as much a musical genius as the greatest composers of his day, but thought that music after 1900 was a wasteland. But note this: Schenker essentially wrote no music of his own! For all that he hoped his theories would form the basis of a "rebirth" of the tradition that (in his view) died with Brahms, he never bothered to put them into practice himself and demonstrate whatever he thought it was that the composers of his day should have been doing.

I don't think this is a coincidence. The literal closest successor to Brahms was Max Reger, whom Schenker despised, and Schoenberg is the next step after Reger. I really don't think it's psychologically possible to be a composer of genius and a musical conservative at the same time. Yet, in order for a modern Beethoven to oppose contemporary music, that's what would have to have happened: at some point in musical history, they would have had to have sided with the conservatives against the radicals. I don't think someone capable of doing that would have been able to produce the Eroica in 1805; they would have more likely been the guy at the premiere who shouted "I'll give another kreutzer if this thing will only stop!".

I'm pretty sure that the authors of the best theological texts had impressive general intellects and associated with impressive people. They were probably frequently good public speakers too, a costly signal.

The main problem with theological ideas isn't that they aren't interesting, but that they aren't true. But art doesn't have truth-values; interestingness is all there is.

Someone posted a list of questions for Brian Ferneyhough (and other contemporary composers) on the talk page of his Wikipedia article, and Ferneyhough actually responded. For some reason I think you might find it interesting; I suppose it may have to do with the fact that the writing style in some of his answers reminded me of your own.

In response to comment by timtyler on Efficient Charity
Comment author: Perplexed 04 December 2010 09:11:10PM *  9 points [-]

The (evo psych) reason why humans evolved sexual tendencies presumably has something to do with reproduction. So why write guides on how to give and get sexual pleasure, rather than guides to fertility?

Presumably there is an audience sincerely interested in giving and getting sexual pleasure for its own sake. I doubt that this fact surprises you. So why do you pretend to be surprised that there are people who want to help the world for the sake of actually helping the world?

Comment author: komponisto 04 December 2010 09:15:23PM 1 point [-]

The analogy seems backwards: people who want to help for the sake of helping, as opposed to just feeling good, would be analogous to be people consciously interested in fertility, as opposed to just sexual pleasure.

(Since people of the latter type do exist, your point still holds, of course.)

Comment author: JGWeissman 04 December 2010 08:43:09PM 7 points [-]

It is so utterly obvious that foreign lives could be saved for less money than a trip to Disney World, that it should be an automatic conclusion that people who donate to Make-A-Wish are deliberately purchasing fuzzies, not attempting to purchase utilons.

I doubt that most people even ask the question whether they want to purchase fuzzies or utilons, so it doesn't make sense to conclude that they are deliberately choosing one over the other. It also is not clear that people consider and discard the option of donating to life saving charities, rather than just not thinking about the possibility. Getting people to actually deliberately consider these options is valuable.

But for me at least, the case is pretty much closed: when you're actually trying to be efficient with your money, as measured by utility, you should spend your marginal dollars (or whatever currency) on existential-risk-reduction/long-term-species-improvement.

I agree, but if you are targeting people who not familiar with concepts of optimizing charity and x-risk/transhumanism, there are large inferential distances, and this is a good start in breaking of a manageable piece of it. To get to promoting x-risks, additional prerequisites include problems with time discounting, and expected utility optimizing under large uncertainty.

Comment author: komponisto 04 December 2010 08:49:20PM 0 points [-]

I understand and agree. I think I would just prefer not to have it framed as "Make-A-Wish is less efficient than VillageReach". Their goals are different. I do think getting people to consider VillageReach as a source of fuzzies is all well and good.

In response to Efficient Charity
Comment author: komponisto 04 December 2010 08:10:04PM *  2 points [-]

No parent would prefer to send a child to Disney World over preventing even a single one of his or her children from contracting a life threatening illness!

This kind of criticism seems inappropriate to me. It is so utterly obvious that foreign lives could be saved for less money than a trip to Disney World, that it should be an automatic conclusion that people who donate to Make-A-Wish are deliberately purchasing fuzzies, not attempting to purchase utilons. In other words, I highly doubt that people who donate to Make-a-Wish are doing so because they think saving a foreign infant's life would be more expensive; rather, they're most likely doing so because they actually want a domestic sick child to go to Disney World.

Your argument is not an argument against donating to Make-a-Wish; it's an argument against going to Disney World.

This is why I tend to be impatient with discussions of optimal philanthropy; most of it seems to consist of attempts to get people to feel bad about doing things that make them feel good. Of course I realize that this post, despite appearing on LW, isn't actually targeted at a LW audience, so maybe it will have some effect just in terms of getting people to think about utilons when they might not have otherwise. But for me at least, the case is pretty much closed at once: when you're actually trying to be efficient with your money, as measured by utility, you should spend your marginal dollars (or whatever currency) on existential-risk-reduction/long-term-species-improvement. The utilities (positive and negative) involved in these domains are so large that, until you actually think existing institutions are having a satisfactory impact on these problems, nothing else even comes close.

Hence I don't myself see a lot of need for arguments about whether saving lives in third-world countries is "better" than going to Disney World -- or sending a sick child there.

Comment author: Jack 03 December 2010 10:05:47PM 2 points [-]

Have you composed a Bayesian inspired opera about the Amanda Knox trial? Because you should.

In response to comment by Jack on Helpless Individuals
Comment author: komponisto 04 December 2010 05:14:53AM *  11 points [-]

Don't think I haven't thought about it....

Obvious title: Night Is To Be Loved (in Latin: amanda nox).

Edit: Another piece I've contemplated writing: Paperclip Maximizer for contrabass clarinet.

Comment author: David_Gerard 03 December 2010 09:57:21PM *  3 points [-]

We're talking about aesthetics here, in which the end product is a subjective feeling in the listener's brain.

As such, a useful analogy would be you refusing to believe that a novel in a language you don't speak (say, The Brothers Karamazov in the original Russian) could possibly be better than Red vs Blue fanfic, because if it was you'd be able to read it, c.f. your list of analogies above.

That is: the key point your analogies above miss is the concept of inferential distance. Even if the inferential distance is huge (e.g. learning Russian), that doesn't make claims of the art's quality fraudulent.

What's annoying you, I suspect, is komponisto's apparent assertion that his chosen favourite music is not only good, but objectively the best music there is, and that the qualia one experiences from this music are the best available from music. This is ridiculous to me too. However, that there is inferential distance between you and the music does not make the music a fraud. This apparent assertion of yours is also ridiculous. The purpose of all forms of art appreciation course - degrees in music, a newspaper article, a record review - is to lessen the inferential distance to a given piece of art.

Comment author: komponisto 04 December 2010 02:18:30AM 4 points [-]

What's annoying you, I suspect, is komponisto's apparent assertion that his chosen favourite music is not only good, but objectively the best music there is, and that the qualia one experiences from this music are the best available from music.

I'd like to know which specific statements of mine give this impression, because that isn't what I see myself asserting.

From my perspective -- of having to endure a constant stream of casual remarks to the effect that contemporary music sucks, often coming from people who aren't particularly familiar with contemporary music, but think themselves sufficiently informed because they enjoy listening to Mozart to show off their own status -- I'm basically just defending the existence of the music I like. In the process, of course, I expressed enthusiasm for this music, and what I'm seeing here appears to be pushback from violating the social taboo against expressing high levels of enthusiasm (for pretty much anything).

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 04 December 2010 01:29:59AM 2 points [-]

Yes, but you haven't heard of them, because they're obscure academics.

Who are they?

Comment author: komponisto 04 December 2010 02:02:09AM 1 point [-]

See here.

Comment author: [deleted] 03 December 2010 01:49:17PM 8 points [-]

I went to a few lectures on mathematical music theory once. I've forgotten most of it, but I recall learning that most of the music I can enjoy (pre-1900 Western classical, 20th century pop and rock) is, structurally, confined to a very special case among all the possible scales that a music system could be built on. Someone like Schoenberg is to all the other music I listen to, as Mars is to all the different continents of the earth.

(Aside: remember the scene in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" where the aliens communicate in music? I saw it again recently, and it cracked me up, because it was obviously trying to sound "alien" but it really wasn't. It sounded like the tricky part of a Leonard Bernstein piece. There's much more "alien" music right here on this planet!)

So I think Beethoven really might have been more accessible to the listeners of his day than contemporary classical music is to us. Beethoven, at least, wrote his symphonies in the same key as an ordinary folk ditty. (Sometimes he even kept the ditty!)

I'm not sure how possible it is to adapt one's ear so that a totally new scale sounds pleasant. I can't listen to much classical music past Stravinsky and get any pleasure out of it. But then again, I first listened to Indian classical music in adolescence, and that has a completely different structure than Western music, and it sounded good to me instantly, no inferential distance at all.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Helpless Individuals
Comment author: komponisto 04 December 2010 12:26:04AM *  3 points [-]

I went to a few lectures on mathematical music theory once. I've forgotten most of it, but I recall learning that most of the music I can enjoy (pre-1900 Western classical, 20th century pop and rock) is, structurally, confined to a very special case among all the possible scales that a music system could be built on. Someone like Schoenberg is to all the other music I listen to, as Mars is to all the different continents of the earth.

This view is mistaken. It's not, mind you, your mistake, but that of the music theory community, which has egregiously, utterly, and persistently failed to carve musical reality at its joints. In point of fact, Schoenberg uses the same set of pitches that the composers you like do -- the ones you find on a piano keyboard. And contrary to implicit music-theoretical tradition, you don't have to pretend that those 12 pitches in the octave aren't the same notes you're used to, either.

In simple terms, the difference between Schoenberg and the music you like, and the reason people have trouble with the former, isn't that Schoenberg isn't in any key, but rather that Schoenberg changes keys so quickly and constantly that your ear has trouble keeping up and feels "confused". A note may literally be "in a different key" from the previous note. There is much less redundancy to reinforce the "meaning" (i.e. position within a diatonic scale) of a note; you have to "catch" it immediately.

You can see how this state of affairs would have been the product of gradual evolution, something analogous to an inferential chain -- with more information content being packed into music with each generation of composers.

The point is, it's a quantitative difference, not a qualitative one.

Comment author: Jack 03 December 2010 10:04:30PM 2 points [-]

You may have to correct my history but weren't modern composition techniques pretty unpopular right away. It isn't like academic composers have been building off each other for decades with few listening and so now their music isn't intelligible. Rather the introduction of atonality, the 'liberation of dissonance' and moving off the diatonic scale were very rapid changes to music which were very alienating. This prompted Adorno to say things like

The dissonances which horrify the public testify to their own condition and it is for this reason alone that they are unbearable for them.

I'm curious what you think of his position, actually.

So I'm not sure inferential distance is the right metaphor. It seems to me that while the uninstructed listener may not understand the works of modern academics, they likely didn't understand the works of Beethoven either but were still able to enjoy them for emotions they evoked. Contemporary music evokes emotion and while I don't know a lot about it I can enjoy it (partly, I think, because I've learned to enjoy the more avant garde end of pop music) but the emotions contemporary evoke tend to be more complex, and darker or at least bittersweet. I don't feel at home listened to contemporary music and I think thats the experience created by dissonance and what a lot of people recoil from.

Where does like, John Adams fit into this? He seems fairly accessible to the uninstructed.

In response to comment by Jack on Helpless Individuals
Comment author: komponisto 03 December 2010 11:34:20PM *  2 points [-]

You may have to correct my history but weren't modern composition techniques pretty unpopular right away. It isn't like academic composers have been building off each other for decades with few listening and so now their music isn't intelligible. Rather the introduction of atonality, the 'liberation of dissonance' and moving off the diatonic scale were very rapid changes to music which were very alienating.

This is the way it is presented in drama-maximizing popular histories of music, but the reality is -- from a purely musical perspective, not taking into account the socio-political conflicts of the time which often played themselves out in artistic battles -- that the development was quite natural and gradual.

Schoenberg was a controversial composer from the beginning, well before he finally decided to stop writing key signatures in his scores. Works such as Verklärte Nacht that are now considered audience-pleasers were initially received with a great deal of hostility. (My own theory on the reason why the meme of Schoenberg's "inaccessiblity" still persists with respect to his compositions of the latter part of the decade 1900-1910 but not with respect to the earlier part is that the political conflict between the pro- and anti-Schoenberg factions that was in existence in Vienna around 1910 was frozen in time by the World Wars, and so Schoenberg comes down to us in history as "the guy who was stirring up all that trouble in Vienna right before WWI". This affects the way people listen to the music: if they're expecting it to be "inaccessible", they'll have a tendency to find it that way.)

This prompted Adorno to say things like

The dissonances which horrify the public testify to their own condition and it is for this reason alone that they are unbearable for them.

I'm curious what you think of his position, actually.

Continental intellectuals like Adorno tend to engage in a sort of commentary on these things that really is basically a form of poetic literature, and is not really to be taken as rigorous analysis, I don't think. That having been said, I think it can be read basically as agreeing with your point

the emotions contemporary [music] evoke[s] tend to be more complex, and darker or at least bittersweet.

i.e., that the new music was tapping into regions of thought-space that folks weren't used to having music go into. I think this is fair. The Schoenberg school can legitimately be considered a manifestation of the wider "expressionist" movement across the arts, which highlighted the darker sides of human psychology.

However, this isn't necessarily the case for post-Schoenberg music. Come to think of it, it isn't even the case for Schoenberg's later works (his twelve-tone period), which are better described as neoclassical. Though darkness returns in Moses und Aron, there isn't much of it in pieces like the Violin Concerto or Piano Concerto.

So I'm not sure inferential distance is the right metaphor. It seems to me that while the uninstructed listener may not understand the works of modern academics, they likely didn't understand the works of Beethoven either but were still able to enjoy them for emotions they evoked.

As you note in your own case, they can do likewise with contemporary music, if they're open-minded and musical enough.

However, we do have to eventually face the fact that contemporary music is simply of higher bandwidth than earlier music: more information is conveyed per unit time (on average), with less redundancy and reinforcement. One has to get used to this high level of information flow, and the speed and ease with which one gets used to it will depend on one's intelligence and musical background.

Where does like, John Adams fit into this? He seems fairly accessible to the uninstructed.

He was the second president of the United States. :-) Kidding, of course.

I'd put him in a similar category to Williams and Glass (i.e. toward the showbiz side of the continuum), but with perhaps slightly higher artistic aspirations. Maybe like John Harbison or Christopher Rouse, who are also said to be accessible to the uninstructed.

Comment author: wedrifid 03 December 2010 10:02:01PM 0 points [-]

I have just corrected the systematic downvoting of Silas. His general point seems important.

Comment author: komponisto 03 December 2010 10:29:00PM *  0 points [-]

As it happens, I was also the victim of systematic drive-by downvoting in the last few minutes.

I don't know what the relationship between these two facts is.

(Edit: I didn't participate in the downvoting of Silas, I don't think.)

Comment author: SilasBarta 03 December 2010 09:25:30PM *  4 points [-]

People appreciate air travel without study of aerospace engineering.

People appreciate being able to conduct secure transactions without study of cryptography.

People appreciate cell phones without study of EM physics and information theory.

And in case you think I'm limiting it to science/engineering:

People appreciate acrobats without study of acrobatics.

And the Beatles without study of musical history.

In all of these cases, the field, in a sense, forces you to care about it. You may not be able to understand its details, but you can't deny that there is a genuine achievement behind it that can't be faked.

In contrast, there are fields where the best thing you can say is that, well, the people who already invested a huge portion of their lives in it think it sure is swell... . What should I make of those?

Comment author: komponisto 03 December 2010 09:44:12PM 4 points [-]

In contrast, there are fields where the best thing you can say is that, well, the people who already invested a huge portion of their lives in it think it sure is swell... . What should I make of those?

Presumably, it depends what drove them to invest time in it in the first place.

If someone ended up as a advanced composer because they really liked Beethoven etc. when they were young, and subsequently followed their nose, up through Schoenberg, until they finally became Milton Babbitt, that should suggest that something may be going on other than a cynical pursuit of status.

Now, whether you would want to bother following a path to appreciation of contemporary music will depend quite simply on how much enjoyment you think you can get out of music in the first place.

And it should be noted that this is somewhat hypothetical anyway, because it's already been pointed out that non-specialists can and do enjoy advanced music.

The stigma against small groups of people experiencing large amounts of enjoyment -- as opposed to large groups of people experiencing small amounts of enjoyment -- ought to be abolished.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 03 December 2010 07:09:08PM 5 points [-]

But what the Beatles were doing was more like being as inventive as possible while still being fun to listen to for untrained people, a constraint that Bach shared.

I just don't know enough about modernist composers to say, but I would give them more benefit of the doubt. It's also noteworthy though that I know non-professionals who claim to enjoy them, which seems like very good Bayesian evidence that they are doing something significant.

I don't think that your response on the opera question is really a satisfying rebuttal to my point.

Comment author: komponisto 03 December 2010 09:19:57PM 1 point [-]

But what the Beatles were doing was more like being as inventive as possible while still being fun to listen to for untrained people, a constraint that Bach shared.

Only as a result of the historically contingent fact that Bach's wildest musical ideas happened to still be comprehensible to untrained people, because the inferential gulf wasn't yet very large.

(Seriously, it's not as if Bach secretly invented and wished he could write Schoenberg-style music, but reluctantly restrained himself because of his social obligations. What Bach produced -- at least some of his output -- was literally the most inventive music he could think of; and sometimes he was indeed criticized for going beyond the "norms" of the day.)

It's also noteworthy though that I know non-professionals who claim to enjoy them, which seems like very good Bayesian evidence that they are doing something significant.

Yes. Though this is a point which unfortunately tends to get lost, there are indeed non-professionals who enjoy contemporary art music, and there are in fact "ways into" the music for them; things they can learn to enhance their enjoyment, even if they don't quite reach the full level of appreciation that a professional might. And there are actually some folks who are musically gifted enough that they just "get it" right away, even though they don't happen to be musicians.

I don't think that your response on the opera question is really a satisfying rebuttal to my point.

I don't know whether this will help either, but I did want to make the point that the most gifted composers tend not to want to spend their time writing in old styles, for the same reason that the most gifted mathematicians tend not to want to spend their time rediscovering old theorems. This is a better explanation for why we don't see large quantities of Bach-quality Baroque-style music being churned out today than "lost knowledge" or historical genetic anomaly. (And why didn't we see more of composers literally imitating Baroque music during the Classical and Romantic eras?)

Comment author: SilasBarta 03 December 2010 07:16:58PM *  0 points [-]

And their music wouldn't necessarily be intelligible to you either, due to the musical analogue of inferential distance.

Wait, what's musical inference like? Is it anything like how you wouldn't truly appreciate the latest, top theologians because the theological analogue of inferential distance?

Edit: Looks like you gave an answer to this in the sibling thread, but I think the point still stands.

(You already know what I think about "You need years of study to appreciate this.")

Comment author: komponisto 03 December 2010 09:00:41PM 0 points [-]

(You already know what I think about "You need years of study to appreciate this.")

If you can do it in less time, so much the better.

Comment author: David_Gerard 03 December 2010 08:23:41PM *  0 points [-]

I meant "did pretty well" in terms of not reacting with arrogance, that being what was actually being tested. The trope in play (what made it a story that you remember) was Fish Out Of Water.

(The way to make money as a busker is to, whatever your instrument, play the Beatles. Over and over. And over and over. And over and over. And over and over.)

Comment author: komponisto 03 December 2010 08:46:58PM *  2 points [-]

The trope in play (what made it a story that you remember) was Fish Out Of Water.

I'm actually quite willing to believe that Silas remembered it because (he thought) it proved his theory.

For my part, I viewed it as a test of how well the average person can detect subtly presented costly signals when under distraction. (Answer: not very well.)

The detail I remembered most was how children would stop with interest, only to be dragged away by their hurried parents.

Comment author: SilasBarta 03 December 2010 08:14:22PM *  2 points [-]

Not really, because Joshua Bell was playing mostly (maybe even exclusively) old music in that experiment, if I recall correctly.

Right, it proves the (arguably) stronger result that even the old music, with its canon status, can't appeal to the uninitiated. Impressing the indoctrinated is not impressive. The hard part is to impress the unindoctrinated.

But just to go along with it for a minute, do you really think Bell's status is the result of a random process?

Of course not, just as I can't make my friends laugh by generating random utterances. But that doesn't mean that the average person is somehow deficient for not laughing at our inside jokes -- or that I can go on denying that it's an inside joke.

Comment author: komponisto 03 December 2010 08:27:18PM *  1 point [-]

But that doesn't mean that the average person is somehow deficient for not laughing at our inside jokes -- or that I can go on denying that it's an inside joke.

Here, the analogous situation would be an "average person" denying the joke was funny because they weren't in on it, despite the fact that they saw a bunch of people laughing hysterically at it.

(...a bunch of people who were willing to welcome them into their group if they caught up on the group's history, so they would be able to get the jokes!)

Comment author: SilasBarta 03 December 2010 07:44:35PM 2 points [-]

I'm seriously interested in someone performing some experiments on this subject.

Is the Joshua Bell experiment the kind of thing you had in mind? If so, it pretty conclusively confirms your suspicions.

Fame feeds on fame, status on status. Which is why it's all the more important to constantly check that a field hasn't lost its moorings.

Comment author: komponisto 03 December 2010 07:55:42PM *  2 points [-]

Is the Joshua Bell experiment the kind of thing you had in mind? If so, it pretty conclusively confirms your suspicions.

Not really, because Joshua Bell was playing mostly (maybe even exclusively) old music in that experiment, if I recall correctly.

Vassar's suspicion was that people nowadays don't know how to write in old styles well enough to be indistinguishable from old composers.

Edit: but just to go along with it for a minute, do you really think Bell's status is the result of a random process? Maybe with respect to other "great" violinists, yes, but certainly not with respect to the average person, or even the average professional violinist.

Comment author: Kevin 03 December 2010 09:58:22AM 2 points [-]

Link me to some obscure Beethoven-like academics? I'll give it a try.

http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/ttss.html is some random fun obscure academic music I came across on Hacker News the other day.

In response to comment by Kevin on Helpless Individuals
Comment author: komponisto 03 December 2010 07:08:10PM *  7 points [-]

Link me to some obscure Beethoven-like academics? I'll give it a try.

An ad-hoc (more-or-less-)top-of-my-head sampler, if you're really curious (sorted alphabetically by composer and chronologically by work):

Babbitt: 1948, 1954, 1964, 1984 1992, 2003

Carter: 1955, 1980, 1971, rehearsal of a 1995 work

Crumb: 1970

Dillon: 1992

Ferneyhough: 1980, 1997, 2006, 2007

First: 1999

Murail: 1983

Ran: 1991

Westergaard: 1958, 2006

Wuorinen: 1971 1984, 1998

Folks like these are the intellectual (if not "cultural") heirs of the "standard canon". Some of them are as good as the three B's (most of them are at least at the level of say, Schumann or Mendelssohn), and all of them are currently living academics (or former academics).

(Then, in addition, there are the European non-academics like Boulez, etc.)

Comment author: multifoliaterose 03 December 2010 09:10:08AM 0 points [-]

It's so convenient to be able to say that, isn't it? A great way to save oneself the trouble of having to enter a detailed technical discussion.

I'd like to have a more detailed discussion; my disinclination to do so up until now is a matter of short-term time constraints more than anything else.

However, unless you think it's a genuinely open question whether "Mary Had A Little Lamb" is as interesting as the Eroica, I feel that such assertions are ultimately disingenuous.

  1. I'm not a total aesthetic subjectivist when it comes to human music appreciation.

  2. I do think that there are some genuinely differing aesthetic preferences between humans on account of differing genetic and environmental factors. For a simple example; I'm highly noise sensitive and this bars me from appreciating very loud music independently of how aesthetically valuable somebody who is not noise-sensitive might find it.

  3. The question in my mind is not so much whether "Mary Had A Little Lamb" is as interesting as the Eroica as much as whether (for example) Philip Glass is as interesting as a famous academic contemporary composer. I find it quite possible that different people might have different views on this last point on account of having differing neurotypes.

Comment author: komponisto 03 December 2010 09:27:48AM 0 points [-]

I'd like to have a more detailed discussion; my disinclination to do so up until now is a matter of short-term time constraints more than anything else.

Right, but that's the kind of thing that would enable one to evade a technical discussion (i.e. a semantic stopsign), and hence is an intellectual warning sign. (I don't necessarily think evasion is your actual intent, of course).

I'm highly noise sensitive and this bars me from appreciating very loud music independently of how aesthetically valuable somebody who is not noise-sensitive might find it.

For the most part, at least in my opinion, the relevant musical variable is not absolute loudness measured in decibels, but relative loudness in the context of a piece. (Of course, the more degrees of loudness are used, the wider the range has to be in absolute terms.)

I'll reply futher later.

Comment author: multifoliaterose 03 December 2010 05:58:23AM 0 points [-]

I think that as a lay-person there is serious room for doubt regarding whether what modern academic composers are doing is as competent, judged as an attempt to create the most interesting/advanced/sophisiticated music possible, as what the Beatles were doing. It would be nice to know what Beethoven would have thought.

I agree. Of course interesting/advanced/sophisticated is ill-defined and perhaps irreducibly subjective.

At least in math we can see that Wiles was doing roughly the same thing Fermat was doing

For a sufficiently broad notion of "roughly" :-).

I think that it's fair to say that Fermat's work represents more originality (picking up on a thousand year old theme and pushing it considerably further than it previously had been in contrast with Wiles who was in some sense working within a well-defined context) whereas Wiles' work represents a higher standard of technical virtuosity (Fermat never wrote hundred-page-long dense technical manuscripts relying on thousands of pages of background material). To what extent they would be able to interchange roles had they lived in different time periods is difficult to judge.

I guess that one indicative question regarding math would be "How well recognized was Wiles by his professional peers before his famous proof?".

Wiles was very highly regarded before his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. His earlier papers were few but of very high quality. He was best known for his proof of the first infinite family of cases of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture (with his advisor John Coates) and his proof of the main conjecture of Iwasawa theory with Barry Mazur.

It's possible to easily indicate how the former achievement ties in with classical mathematics (c.f. the first chapter and page 92 of Neal Koblitz's Introduction to Elliptic Curves and Modular Forms.

The latter achievement is less immediately intelligible but the methods are supposed to be close to those that Ribet used to prove his portion of the Herbrand-Ribet theorem which is a natural sharpening of the criterion which Kummer used in the mid-1800's to prove many cases of Fermat's Last Theorem.

(Note: Wiles' eventual proof of Fermat's Last Theorem was along completely different conceptual lines from Kummer's work although some of the machinery that Kummer developed is relevant.)

Comment author: komponisto 03 December 2010 08:53:26AM *  -1 points [-]

Of course interesting/advanced/sophisticated is ill-defined and perhaps irreducibly subjective.

It's so convenient to be able to say that, isn't it? A great way to save oneself the trouble of having to enter a detailed technical discussion. I think it's a good idea to beware of such get-out-of-jail-free cards.

Yes, given anything you choose, there exists a possible mind in mind-design space that regards that thing as "interesting". However, unless you think it's a genuinely open question whether "Mary Had A Little Lamb" is as interesting as the Eroica, I feel that such assertions are ultimately disingenuous.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 03 December 2010 04:55:17AM 3 points [-]

I think that as a lay-person there is serious room for doubt regarding whether what modern academic composers are doing is as competent, judged as an attempt to create the most interesting/advanced/sophisiticated music possible, as what the Beatles were doing. It would be nice to know what Beethoven would have thought.

Do you understand why the theological texts were brought up? The central contention in question is whether the claims of a field such as this can be trusted by outsiders. One critical question, in that case, in my opinion, is whether there are any ways in which it could be. It's like asking if topologists or computer scientists are more genuinely 'heirs to Euler'. At least in math we can see that Wiles was doing roughly the same thing Fermat was doing and in literature the publishing industry and public sized upon Toole, who was doing a more authentic version of what Dickens was doing. I guess that one indicative question regarding math would be "How well recognized was Wiles by his professional peers before his famous proof?".

Comment author: komponisto 03 December 2010 08:35:12AM *  1 point [-]

I think that as a lay-person there is serious room for doubt regarding whether what modern academic composers are doing is as competent, judged as an attempt to create the most interesting/advanced/sophisiticated music possible, as what the Beatles were doing. It would be nice to know what Beethoven would have thought.

Consider the following, from a scholarly book on Beethoven's compositional methods:

Music deserved such devotion in [Beethoven's] view because it was a noble art -- one that could 'raise men to the level of the gods'. And as it had such elevating powers it had to be treated with due respect in his compositions, and used for the benefit of noble listeners rather than merely for entertaining the masses. 'My supreme aim,' he wrote, 'is that my art should be welcomed by the noblest and most cultured people.' Music for noble minds had to be rich, learned, elevated, and complex, and Beethoven's was conspicuously more so than that of any of his contemporaries -- especially during the period 1800-20, when few composers aspired to such aims...he disdained composers such as Rossini who were only able to write frivolous music and pretty tunes....

...Similarly, he regarded it as his duty to read learned musical treatises to increase his understanding of his art, and apparently he read a great number: 'There is hardly any treatise which could be too learned for me.'...

-- Barry Cooper, Beethoven and the Creative Process, p.20

Where do you honestly think someone with these kinds of sensibilities and priorities would tend to end up nowadays?

I'm not saying he wouldn't appreciate the Beatles for what they are -- a fabulous popular group. But the idea that he would consider their songs a more worthy successor to the Eroica symphony than the work of Boulez and Babbitt is pretty ridiculous.

Do you understand why the theological texts were brought up? The central contention in question is whether the claims of a field such as this can be trusted by outsiders

Standard heuristics apply. Check whether the most highly regarded people in a field seem to have impressive general intellects. Check whether they can send other costly signals that are intelligible to outsiders. (I'm pretty sure Milton Babbitt can write damn good fugues; Peter Westergaard has written the best book on "tonal" (17th-19th century) theory I know of.) Check whether any people you already regard as impressive are willing to associate with these folks. Etc.

Whatever you think the ultimate value of advanced music is, tests like these should at least be able to convince you that it isn't a hoax.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 03 December 2010 04:23:10AM 7 points [-]

Is it your contention that modern musicians write Clasical minuets and Baroque fugues which are in some cases better than the best of the older works that are still listened to, but that no-one cares because much of the value of those works is in their role in a canon?

I could easily believe that in those cases, but I simply don't believe it in the case of Opera. The Opera cannon is just not very large. Some people have heard the whole thing and only like a few dozen operas. It doesn't seem likely that there isn't demand among such people for higher quality new material in old styles, so if no new material is becoming popular then the un-met demand makes me think that contemporary music students are failing to produce work that this audience actually values due to now knowing how to replicate the merits of older compositions.

It should really be pretty easy to do a controlled experiment with a naive population to see how common it is for modern artists to be able to impress an audience as much as their 18th and 19th century precursors did.

I'm seriously interested in someone performing some experiments on this subject. It seems to me that it would provide an extremely practically important measurement of the quality of university education in fields inaccessible to outsiders, but I don't expect to be able to attract funding for such research because it sounds impractical at the face of it.

I guess that my major reason for holding the contrary position was largely because modern musicians and composers, more than painters and authors, are the results of university education and I fairly strongly suspect university education of destorying artistic ability and distracting artists with intellectual games that simply lack the merits of the fields that the academic subjects are derived from. I suspect this in math as much as in music, and I think Von Neumann agreed with me, as this quote suggests.

"As a mathematical discipline travels far from its empirical source, or still more, if it is a second or third generation only indirectly inspired by ideas coming from ‘reality’, it is beset with very grave dangers. It becomes more and more purely aestheticizing, more and more purely l’art pour l’art. This need not be bad, if the field is surrounded by correlated subjects, which still have closer empirical connections, or if the discipline is under the influence of men with an exceptionally well-developed taste. But there is a grave danger that the subject will develop along the line of least resistance, that the stream, so far from its source, will separate into a multitude of insignificant branches, and that the discipline will become a disorganized mass of details and complexities. In other words, at a great distance from its empirical source, or after much ‘abstract’ inbreeding, a mathematical subject is in danger of degeneration."

Comment author: komponisto 03 December 2010 07:52:02AM *  1 point [-]

Is it your contention that modern musicians write Clasical minuets and Baroque fugues which are in some cases better than the best of the older works that are still listened to, but that no-one cares because much of the value of those works is in their role in a canon?

Depending on who you're considering to be doing the caring and not-caring, this may very well be an apt description of the situation. But the main point I would make is that these are student exercises. Writing works in older styles is a skill that one learns in school; it's very much like how math students are asked to re-prove theorems of Euler or Cauchy. You may be seen as a genius if you rediscover the proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra, but nobody's going to give you the same kind of credit they give Gauss. Likewise writing a really great fugue in your counterpoint class isn't going to make you Bach. Part of the reason is that Bach already did this stuff (so you're not in the "canon"), but also when Bach was doing it it was at the frontier of musical thought, which it isn't today, as evidenced by the fact that it is taught to undergraduates. Whereas Bach's challenge was to be as inventive as possible, today's students have to be as inventive as possible while still sounding like eighteenth-century music, which is a challenge of a different kind, and will tend to produce different musical results.

I could easily believe that in those cases, but I simply don't believe it in the case of Opera. The Opera cannon is just not very large. Some people have heard the whole thing and only like a few dozen operas.

First of all, the total number of operas written since the form was invented (something like 40,000, if I recall correctly) is much larger than any single human could plausibly have heard. You must be talking about the active repertory of famous opera houses, which is indeed probably something like a few dozen. However, there are good reasons apart from artistic merit to expect that the number of operas in regular production would be small: namely, staging an opera is typically a very costly and laborious undertaking. (So is composing one, by the way, which is why doing so is not a typical student exercise the same way writing a fugue is.) This will push toward conservatism in repertory selection, with companies sticking to the pieces they already know "work". There are all kinds of obscure operas by great composers (such as Handel) that have only recently begun to see the light of day for this reason, and being by such composers, their artistic quality is quite high. If folks want more old operas, there's plenty of digging to be done (and it's being done).

It should really be pretty easy to do a controlled experiment with a naive population to see how common it is for modern artists to be able to impress an audience as much as their 18th and 19th century precursors did.

It would be very hard to find a truly naive audience with enough musical ability to make the results of interest. Best you could do would probably be musically gifted children who had been deliberately kept uneducated in music history. (Then you'd have to ask what the appropriate age is, etc.)

That said, if it could be done, I'd be all in favor of doing it. My prediction would be that there wouldn't be much of a difference between the perceived "impressiveness" of actual Baroque fugues and the best imitations of Baroque fugues from today.

I guess that my major reason for holding the contrary position was largely because modern musicians and composers, more than painters and authors, are the results of university education and I fairly strongly suspect university education of destorying artistic ability and distracting artists with intellectual games that simply lack the merits of the fields that the academic subjects are derived from

Let me be clear: this absolutely does go on, no question. But it probably goes on in all fields that have university departments -- including (as you note), math, and yes, the empirical sciences. And my suspicion is that while it may give mediocre practitioners of a field the illusion that they're doing better and more important work than they are, it doesn't actually stop the best folks from doing genuinely high quality work. (At least not all of them.)

However, if that's your theory, what then do you think of European "modernist" composers, who are similarly "inaccessible" but have less association with universities?

Comment author: Vaniver 02 December 2010 08:10:33PM 2 points [-]

I do listen to contemporary music. Or is that not what you had in mind? :P

And of course I hardly need mention the negative connotations of "masturbation".

I apologize if that was too crude for you, but it seems to me an apt description (both of the situation and why outsiders feel the way they feel about it). For it to be sex it needs to include other people.

the value of art depends only on the ability of laymen (large numbers of them, presumably, since I doubt it would suffice for me to exhibit particular examples) to directly appreciate it.

Of course I would never make a statement so sweeping. Masturbation is hardly valueless; it just serves a rather different function than sex, which seems to me to be a cruder restatement of your earlier point. But the implication of such a view is that the cultural descendant of Beethoven is The Beatles, and the cultural ancestor of little-known academic composers are the writers of 16th century theological texts- very sophisticated, but they're no Shakespeare. (I should clarify that by theological texts I mean commentaries, not foundational works like the King James Bible.) And so when we discuss "the-thing-that-Beethoven-was-doing" there are two things we could be talking about- making music for a particular set of instruments, or significantly contributing to the history of music.

If there is any gulf of misunderstanding between us, I think it hinges on that last bit.

Comment author: komponisto 02 December 2010 08:44:22PM *  1 point [-]

I apologize if that was too crude for you,

Crudeness wasn't the problem; the connotation of disapproval was.

Masturbation is hardly valueless; it just serves a rather different function than sex, which seems to me to be a cruder restatement of your earlier point. But the implication of such a view is that the cultural descendant of Beethoven is The Beatles,

That absolutely does not follow. That is not an implication of "such a view" (i.e. my view) at all.

A meta-observation about your comment: it doesn't seem to reflect your having received new information from my previous comments at all. You've simply restated the position that I'm arguing against, without explaining why the things I've said fail to undermine that position.

For example, it should be clear by now that I don't agree that "the cultural descendant of Beethoven is The Beatles", and it should be equally clear why: in addition to the fact that the actual memetic lineage from Beethoven to the Beatles is much less direct than from Beethoven to contemporary art-composers (a point I didn't actually mention explicitly), Beethoven's intention -- his profession, his métier -- was to write the most interesting/advanced/sophisticated music he could. (Beyond the blatant evidence of the music itself, as compared with his (more "popular"!) contemporaries, this is a matter of historical record, as revealed in his letters.) In this crucial respect, he resembles contemporary academic composers much more than the Beatles (who, as popular musicians, have few rivals, of course).

Now, I made it clear in my exchange with MichaelVassar and multifoliaterose that this was what I was talking about. Yet, in the parent comment, you continue to frame the discussion as though that had never occurred:

And so when we discuss "the-thing-that-Beethoven-was-doing" there are two things we could be talking about- making music for a particular set of instruments, or significantly contributing to the history of music.

...as if my idea of "the-thing-that-Beethoven-was-doing" had mainly to do with instrumentation, and as if we all agreed that popularity among laymen was the criterion by which "contribution to the history of music" is to be judged -- in blatant disregard of my previous remarks in this thread.

Comment author: Vaniver 02 December 2010 07:10:24PM 3 points [-]

They don't "dominate the field". They've achieved high cultural status while doing something that looks sort-of similar to "the field".

As an example, I'm more familiar with the work of Jeremy Soule than I am with the work of Stravinsky. That's not at all a statement about their relative quality as composers, just a statement that one of them makes soundtracks for video games. And while they're very nice, I can't help but imagine that a lot of my affection for his pieces comes from the emotional attachment to the games they were in.

But I've also got to point out that in aesthetic fields, when you get to the point where inferential distance makes laymen unable to appreciate what you're doing, you've gone from creation to masturbation.

I go to art museums from time to time and am struck by the difference in captions as you move from medieval art to contemporary art: the captions for the medieval art tell you who everyone in the picture is (because you're unlikely to recognize St. Augustine by looking at him or his symbols), but the art speaks for itself. The captions for the contemporary art have to tell you not just the symbolism but also the subject. Many of them were essentially performance art, which disgusted me pretty deeply. That may actually be a better way to put it- if your work is best understood as performance art, you should change fields.

Comment author: komponisto 02 December 2010 07:34:05PM *  1 point [-]

But I've also got to point out that in aesthetic fields, when you get to the point where inferential distance makes laymen unable to appreciate what you're doing, you've gone from creation to masturbation.

That's an unnecessarily loaded, rhetorical way to state your point of view. So if you don't meet a certain "laymen appreciation" quota, then you're literally not creating anymore? That's silly, of course.

And of course I hardly need mention the negative connotations of "masturbation".

But the point is substantively wrong, also -- or, at any rate, you're assuming the conclusion you need to prove: that the value of art depends only on the ability of laymen (large numbers of them, presumably, since I doubt it would suffice for me to exhibit particular examples) to directly appreciate it.

My fifth-grade classmates used to make a similar argument with respect to Beethoven: since I was the only one in the class who liked his work, he was clearly a failure as a composer.

Likewise, I suspect you (and others who say things like this) are probably just insufficiently aware of the community of people who appreciate contemporary art music. It's unfortunate that there's currently so little intersection between that community and this one; but that community exists nonetheless.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 02 December 2010 07:17:53AM 3 points [-]

Huh? You go on telling us how skilled you are at appreciating music with lines about inferential distance etc and then you put Brahms at Beethoven's and Bach's level?

I'm totally convinced that visual artists became less accessible with time as their 'inferential distance' increased, and ditto authors, but in both cases its commonplace for the good moderns to demonstrate their ability to do work of the sort that older artists did.

In contemporary symphonic music, John Williams and Phillip Glass dominate the field and far more people still listen to the older composers. If you and your academic friends are much better, why don't any of you prove it by out-competing them? It would obviously be lucrative to do so if you could be as popular as they once were. I'd really like to listen to some modern operas with the musical quality of older operas but better plotting and characterization. I can't be alone in that respect.

Comment author: komponisto 02 December 2010 06:37:08PM *  0 points [-]

Huh? You go on telling us how skilled you are at appreciating music with lines about inferential distance etc and then you put Brahms at Beethoven's and Bach's level?

No; the whole point was that I was "modding out" by levels of "greatness" that I didn't perceive as relevant to the fundamental intent of your question. In other words, I was ignoring the difference between Bach and Brahms. Just as most people who take your point of view do -- they express skepticism that there is anybody at the level of Brahms around today.

I'm totally convinced that visual artists became less accessible with time as their 'inferential distance' increased, and ditto authors, but in both cases its commonplace for the good moderns to demonstrate their ability to do work of the sort that older artists did.

Musicians do this too! It's a standard part of one's training as a composer to learn to write imitations of older styles, such as Baroque fugues, Classical minuets, etc, etc.

And, given the situation in other arts, which you acknowledge, why would you expect otherwise in music? What would account for the difference?

In contemporary symphonic music, John Williams and Phillip Glass dominate the field and far more people still listen to the older composers. If you and your academic friends are much better, why don't any of you prove it by out-competing them?

I don't say that "we" are better than they are at what they do, and I don't claim that what they do is necessarily easy. But what they do isn't the same thing as what we do. They're optimizing for different criteria.

They don't "dominate the field". They've achieved high cultural status while doing something that looks sort-of similar to "the field".

In the old days (i.e. the 19th century), there wasn't as much difference; you could get lots more status by doing what we do, because at that time you could effectively do both things simultaneously. That just isn't possible nowadays; while e.g. Brahms could write the most advanced music of the day (and yes, it was; see Schoenberg's essay "Brahms the Progressive"), and also achieve high status in contemporary culture, if you try to do the former today, you won't do the latter, and vice-versa.

This is exactly what you would expect if you understand the notion of inferential distance. Frankly, I have hardly ever come across serious arguments for the contrary position, i.e. a detailed theory explaining why no modern composers are "as good" as Brahms. (*) Most people claiming this simply take it for granted that popular reknown is the optimization target.

(*) A huge exception would be e.g. the work of Heinrich Schenker -- an extreme anti-populist whose disdain for Williams and Glass would have easily rivaled his contempt for Schoenberg and Stravinsky.

Comment author: wedrifid 30 November 2010 04:11:33AM *  1 point [-]

(2) Is "cancer" the ability to get positive results on cancer tests?

No. If humans adopted a naming convention for the purposes of suiting your analogy then "CQ" could be.

Comment author: komponisto 01 December 2010 05:12:35AM 0 points [-]

I could continue the semantic argument ("would it be a CQ test or a cancer test?"), but instead I'll just skip to the real reason I use the term "IQ", which is because it's shorter than "intelligence", and I don't consider "the ability to achieve good results on IQ tests" to be an interesting or important enough concept to deserve exclusive rights to the term.

Comment author: wedrifid 30 November 2010 01:04:14AM 2 points [-]

This should make sense when you consider that music is ultimately generated from the composer's stream-of-consciousness; and the higher one's IQ, the more interesting one's stream-of-consciousness tends to be. (This is almost tautological given my conception of IQ.)

The only thing that is a tautalogical result of having a high IQ is the ability to achieve good results on IQ tests.

I agree with respect to music, high IQ and stream of consciousness and all practical expectations. Just not the redefinition of IQ. Make up a new name for what IQ tests should measure - or just use 'intelligence'.

Comment author: komponisto 30 November 2010 02:23:57AM *  0 points [-]

(1) I said "almost".

(2) Is "cancer" the ability to get positive results on cancer tests?

Comment author: multifoliaterose 29 November 2010 06:10:46PM 0 points [-]

Thanks; I'll try listening to Schoenberg's works chronologically.

Comment author: komponisto 29 November 2010 08:50:27PM 0 points [-]

For that project, you may find the Arnold Schoenberg Center's website very useful. (It offers free online streaming of essentially all his works, though the recordings used aren't always the best; I'd recommend supplementing with other recordings.)

Comment author: multifoliaterose 29 November 2010 06:09:15PM 0 points [-]

Well, I suppose your use of the phrase "something like" would allow me to get by with a simple "yes". However, I reserve the right to ADBOC if necessary.

This is fair.

My choice of synonym would be "interestingness". Basically, music that, whatever its particular rhetorical, programmatic, or "emotive" features, sounds like it was written by somebody in the 140+ IQ range.

Is IQ really the factor that you want to highlight here? I would guess that 90+% of people with 140+ IQ are incapable of writing music that I find compelling.

Surely you realize that that's just a fancy way of saying "what I care about is how much I like it." This is a step in the wrong direction: a de-reduction rather than a reduction of the concept we're trying to explicate.

I mean, obviously the same is true for me also.

My statement was nonvacuous; as far as I can tell there are people who judge works of art based on criteria other than subjective aesthetic response. Thanks for clarifying. I used "subjective aesthetic response" rather than "how much one likes it" for the connotations.

Have you found contemporary composers to whom you've had as strong a positive aesthetic response as Bach or Brahms?

Yes, of course!

Here too, my question was not vacuous; there are people who I know who would answer in the negative. I myself would answer in the negative though this should be understood in the context of me having spent relatively little time with contemporary composers.

My curiosity is roused. What kind of musician would you predict that a modern genetic twin of Beethoven would most likely become? What predictions does your model make about the music that a modern composer would have written if he or she had been born in 1770?

Will respond when I have some more time.

Comment author: komponisto 29 November 2010 08:10:44PM *  1 point [-]

Is IQ really the factor that you want to highlight here? I would guess that 90+% of people with 140+ IQ are incapable of writing music that I find compelling.

As you know, P(A|B) != P(B|A). It's not that most high-IQ folks are capable of writing interesting music, but rather that almost no non-high-IQ folks are. (It may be useful to recall what I mean by IQ, which isn't necessarily what people immediately think of when they hear the term, but is what I believe they should think of.)

This should make sense when you consider that music is ultimately generated from the composer's stream-of-consciousness; and the higher one's IQ, the more interesting one's stream-of-consciousness tends to be. (This is almost tautological given my conception of IQ.)

My statement was nonvacuous; as far as I can tell there are people who judge works of art based on criteria other than subjective aesthetic response.

To a large degree, this impression probably exists due to communication difficulties, in particular a vocabulary far too impoverished to adequately reflect the complexity of aesthetic value.

Many (not all, but a nontrivial subset) of the people you're talking about, I would venture, will have conceded more than necessary when they agree that they're using criteria other than "subjective aesthetic response" to judge the value of a work.

(EDIT: I am led to suspect this because you contrasted "subjective aesthetic response" not with, say, the number of people who say they like it, but rather with "technical intricacy".)

[Have you found contemporary composers to whom you've had as strong a positive aesthetic response as Bach or Brahms?] Yes, of course!

Here too, my question was not vacuous; there are people who I know who would answer in the negative.

The "of course" here was meant to suggest not that your question was vacuous, but rather that you were perhaps a bit overly timid in inferring my answer previously. :-)

Will respond when I have some more time.

Looking forward to it.

Comment author: FormallyknownasRoko 28 November 2010 02:03:27PM 9 points [-]

To reply honestly to this, I think that LW is (close to) superlative in some dimensions. It's just that when people try to tell the community that there's a bunch of other more important dimensions that it sucks at, people get angry and shoot the messenger.

Comment author: komponisto 29 November 2010 04:56:15AM 2 points [-]

It's just that when people try to tell the community that there's a bunch of other more important dimensions that it sucks at, people get angry and shoot the messenger

There is however room for disagreement on just how much "more important" these "other dimensions" are.

(Not necessarily taking a position myself, mind you.)

Comment author: komponisto 28 November 2010 07:43:06AM *  2 points [-]

When reading an analog clock, what method do you use? Do you:

(1) multiply the (minute-hand) number by 5?

(2) search a memorized list of (minute-hand number, number of minutes) correspondences (i.e. remember that "8" corresponds to 40 minutes separately from remembering that 8*5 = 40)?

(3) use the minute-hand number as a measure of the geometric angle of the minute hand's current position, and remember a correspondence between visualized angles (that are multiples of 30 degrees) and numbers of minutes?

(4) something else?

My own method seems to be a combination of (2) and (3). (I think I originally learned by "counting" multiples of 5 up to whatever the current minute-hand position was. This is actually similar to the way I learned multiplication, but the two processes weren't stored in the same mental location.)

Comment author: TobyBartels 28 November 2010 02:59:39AM 0 points [-]

I'd like to be able to think up an explanation for them, but it's OK if they stretch the bounds of rationality for the joke. Chamberlain didn't really need to be Confunded (proof: in real life, he wasn't), but Grindelwald (or his minion named after a fan artist, I forget) did it anyway. And if a fictional Wizard is now real, then that work of fiction must have been based on rumour and legend of the real Wizard (even though that also isn't necessary, by the same proof as before). Etc.

I agree that all of this does stretch the rationality and make that aspect of the story weaker. But in my opinion, it's worth it. Your Mileage May Vary.

Comment author: komponisto 28 November 2010 06:52:38AM *  0 points [-]

Chamberlain didn't really need to be Confunded (proof: in real life, he wasn't), but Grindelwald (or his minion named after a fan artist, I forget) did it anyway

The passage (from ch. 49):

...Now in point of fact, Mr. Potter, Mr. Hagrid is innocent. Ridiculously obviously innocent. He is the most blatantly innocent bystander to be convicted by the magical British legal system since Grindelwald's Confunding of Neville Chamberlain was pinned on Amanda Knox.

For explanation, see the Author's Notes for that chapter. :-)

Comment author: multifoliaterose 26 November 2010 04:21:25AM 0 points [-]

(And their music wouldn't necessarily be intelligible to you either, due to the musical analogue of inferential distance.)

Any recommendations for those familiar with Baroque/Classical/Romantic music and interested in bridging the musical analogue of inferential distance here?

Comment author: komponisto 26 November 2010 07:01:14AM *  1 point [-]

Proceed chronologically, and gradually. Start with the latest/most advanced period or school that you can currently comprehend, and increase to the next one above. After you've "mastered" the next one, iterate. (Of course, there isn't exactly a total ordering, but it's close enough for this to work.)

For example, if you can "handle" late Mahler, you should be able to handle early Schoenberg (which actually came before late Mahler, as it happens). In which case you should try your hand at middle Schoenberg.

After you've mastered late Schoenberg (and Webern and Berg, etc), you're ready for postwar music. When you get to the point where the most advanced pieces of the 1950s and 60s, say, are comprehensible to the point where you can sing them to yourself from memory without having heard them in a while, then you will probably find the advanced music of our own time to be reasonably accessible.

Comment author: multifoliaterose 26 November 2010 04:20:09AM 1 point [-]

Thanks for your response.

"Of a level of sophistication relative to their peers and predecessors comparable to Beethoven's level relative to his."

"Sophistication" can be read in several ways. Do you mean something like "technical intricacy"?

The relevant variable for me personally is subjective aesthetic response. Have you found contemporary composers to whom you've had as strong a positive aesthetic response as Bach or Brahms? From what you've written elsewhere I would guess that the answer is "yes" but asking to make sure that I understand.

My confidence lies not in the "general appeal" of any particular favorite composer of mine, but rather in the proposition that there currently exist people who are doing the-thing-that-Beethoven-was-doing.

How do you characterize the-thing-that-Beethoven was doing?

Another way to put it would be that if a genetic twin of Beethoven were born in this era, he would with high probability grow up to be a member of the set of people I'm referring to.

At present I believe otherwise, but you have more subject matter knowledge than I do. I would be interested in seeing you flesh out your thoughts here.

Comment author: komponisto 26 November 2010 06:19:38AM *  1 point [-]

"Sophistication" can be read in several ways. Do you mean something like "technical intricacy"?

Well, I suppose your use of the phrase "something like" would allow me to get by with a simple "yes". However, I reserve the right to ADBOC if necessary.

My choice of synonym would be "interestingness". Basically, music that, whatever its particular rhetorical, programmatic, or "emotive" features, sounds like it was written by somebody in the 140+ IQ range.

The relevant variable for me personally is subjective aesthetic response.

Surely you realize that that's just a fancy way of saying "what I care about is how much I like it." This is a step in the wrong direction: a de-reduction rather than a reduction of the concept we're trying to explicate.

I mean, obviously the same is true for me also.

Have you found contemporary composers to whom you've had as strong a positive aesthetic response as Bach or Brahms?

Yes, of course!

How do you characterize the-thing-that-Beethoven was doing?

Writing maximally interesting music.

Another way to put it would be that if a genetic twin of Beethoven were born in this era, he would with high probability grow up to be a member of the set of people I'm referring to.

At present I believe otherwise,

My curiosity is roused. What kind of musician would you predict that a modern genetic twin of Beethoven would most likely become? What predictions does your model make about the music that a modern composer would have written if he or she had been born in 1770?

Comment author: jsteinhardt 25 November 2010 03:07:33AM *  2 points [-]

Okay, so we seem to be in complete agreement about how the math works out. If so, then I'm confused as to why you object so strongly to the prosecution's argument on purely mathematical grounds; I haven't read their argument myself, so it's entirely possible that the argument itself is weak in some way, but I think that right now we're just talking about the math.

If we ignore their specific language, the plan of coming up with ~20 pieces of moderate evidence is a perfectly reasonable strategy for correctly establishing guilt, assuming that there is absolutely no mitigating evidence. Your complaint seems to be that they use different language/notation than you and I do to talk about evidence, which seems hardly fair.

Although I would also note that since humans are bad at intuitively distinguishing between moderate evidence for and moderate evidence against a hypothesis, trying to find many pieces of weak evidence is probably not a good strategy if the goal is to get humans to correctly decide the accuracy of an assertion.

ETA: By the way, I've been working under the assumption, based on the tone of the original post, that you think there are serious mathematical flaws in the prosecutions argument. If that's not the case, and you just wanted to use this case as a point of illustration, then I apologize for the confusion.

Comment author: komponisto 26 November 2010 03:59:52AM 2 points [-]

Okay, so we seem to be in complete agreement about how the math works out. If so, then I'm confused as to why you object so strongly to the prosecution's argument on purely mathematical grounds; I haven't read their argument myself, so it's entirely possible that the argument itself is weak in some way, but I think that right now we're just talking about the math.

If I may presume to diagnose your confusion, it seems that you're compartmentalizing between "mathematical" aspects of an argument and "other" aspects. But I'm not. I'm taking it for granted that "the math" is the argument. Probability theory is a mathematical formalization of the process of argument and inference. It isn't just a cool gadget that one throws in on special occasions.

So, I don't object to Massei and Cristiani's argument on "purely mathematical grounds". I simply object to it, period -- and in this post I have used mathematical language to describe, in precise terms, what my objection is.

(And I expected readers to assume, given my previous writing on the case, that this particular point was far from my only objection to Massei and Cristiani's 427-page argument that Knox and Sollecito killed Kercher; hence I was not expecting replies of the form "well, but they might have other good evidence that Knox and Sollecito are guilty". They don't; we've already covered that.)

Comment author: multifoliaterose 25 November 2010 07:55:09AM 0 points [-]

What do you mean by "at the same level of Beethoven?"

I can easily imagine that there are composers who you personally appreciate as much as Beethoven, but in line with Nancy Lebovitz's comment I think that one should hesitate to have too much confidence in the general "subjectively objective" appeal of one's personal favorites among contemporary artists.

Comment author: komponisto 25 November 2010 02:49:30PM *  1 point [-]

What do you mean by "at the same level of Beethoven?"

"Of a level of sophistication relative to their peers and predecessors comparable to Beethoven's level relative to his."

I can easily imagine that there are composers who you personally appreciate as much as Beethoven

Ironically, this isn't true. Because Beethoven happens to be a personal favorite, I didn't take Vassar's question literally, but instead interpreted it to mean "are there any contemporary composers at the level of {Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, etc.}?"

I think that one should hesitate to have too much confidence in the general "subjectively objective" appeal of one's personal favorites among contemporary artists

My confidence lies not in the "general appeal" of any particular favorite composer of mine, but rather in the proposition that there currently exist people who are doing the-thing-that-Beethoven-was-doing.

Another way to put it would be that if a genetic twin of Beethoven were born in this era, he would with high probability grow up to be a member of the set of people I'm referring to.

Comment author: jsteinhardt 25 November 2010 03:07:33AM *  2 points [-]

Okay, so we seem to be in complete agreement about how the math works out. If so, then I'm confused as to why you object so strongly to the prosecution's argument on purely mathematical grounds; I haven't read their argument myself, so it's entirely possible that the argument itself is weak in some way, but I think that right now we're just talking about the math.

If we ignore their specific language, the plan of coming up with ~20 pieces of moderate evidence is a perfectly reasonable strategy for correctly establishing guilt, assuming that there is absolutely no mitigating evidence. Your complaint seems to be that they use different language/notation than you and I do to talk about evidence, which seems hardly fair.

Although I would also note that since humans are bad at intuitively distinguishing between moderate evidence for and moderate evidence against a hypothesis, trying to find many pieces of weak evidence is probably not a good strategy if the goal is to get humans to correctly decide the accuracy of an assertion.

ETA: By the way, I've been working under the assumption, based on the tone of the original post, that you think there are serious mathematical flaws in the prosecutions argument. If that's not the case, and you just wanted to use this case as a point of illustration, then I apologize for the confusion.

Comment author: komponisto 25 November 2010 06:25:58AM *  2 points [-]

If we ignore their specific language, the plan of coming up with ~20 pieces of moderate evidence is a perfectly reasonable strategy for correctly establishing guilt, assuming that there is absolutely no mitigating evidence. Your complaint seems to be that they use different language/notation than you and I do to talk about evidence, which seems hardly fair.

I honestly have no idea where you're getting this from. I don't know of any passage in the post where I complained about Massei and Cristiani's choice of language; and nor did I attempt to argue (as several people seem to have thought I did) against a strategy of proving one's case by adducing a large amount of weak evidence in one's favor (although as a matter of fact I do believe that is the wrong type of argument to expect for a proposition of this sort, and that people have probably been misled by detective stories and the like into thinking it a reasonable strategy, when it would actually be very difficult to make work in practice -- that however would be the topic of a separate post, and isn't addressed in this one).

My criticism of Massei and Cristiani in this post is really quite simple, or so I thought: the type of evidence that they cite to prove that the burglary was faked suggests that they did not realize how high the burden of proof for this proposition was -- that, just to prove the burglary was faked, they needed evidence of the same level of strength as would be required to directly prove Knox and Sollecito guilty of murder.

Quite frankly, I'm baffled at how this point seems to have gotten lost, because I thought I was emphatic and indeed repetitious about it in the post.

Comment author: cousin_it 25 November 2010 01:23:01AM *  6 points [-]

I'm not sure if I understand the post completely. Is the following a fair translation?

"If our prior against Knox's guilt is 1:1000000, and a staged burglary would imply with 99% certainty that Knox is guilty, and we have 1000:1 evidence that the burglary was staged, then mathematically this isn't enough to convict Knox. You need more evidence."

(For some reason the post is much longer than that, and makes all those arguments whose purpose I don't understand...)

Comment author: komponisto 25 November 2010 03:22:29AM 8 points [-]

(For some reason the post is much longer than that, and makes all those arguments whose purpose I don't understand...)

Such as....?

Yes, the point is a mathematical triviality. For that matter, so is Bayes' theorem itself. That doesn't mean that everybody grasps its implications at once, so that it isn't worth writing detailed posts on.

Comment author: handoflixue 24 November 2010 09:54:15PM -1 points [-]

Ahhh, you make so much more sense when you phrase it this way!

"other evidence that Knox and Sollecito killed Kercher could raise the probability of their having faked the burglary"

But my point is, this is backwards. It only works if you assume with near-100% certainty that faking the burglary and being the murderer are correlated. Otherwise "faked the burglary" IS simply evidence that Knox is the murderer.

If we prove that Knox killed Kercher, it proves that any 100% correlation is true. It does NOT prove any less-than-100% correlation. It's even entirely possible for a correlation to be one-directional (A implies B, but B does not imply A).

Thus, Knox killed Kercher is only proof of a faked burglary if you already assume the correlation is proven and two-directional.

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 10:50:00PM 3 points [-]

Theorem: If A is evidence of B, then B is also evidence of A.

Proof: To say that A is evidence of B means that P(A|B) > P(A|~B), or in other words that P(A&B)/P(B) > P(A&~B)/P(~B), which we may write as P(A&B)/P(B) > (P(A)-P(A&B))/(1-P(B)). Algebraic manipulation turns this into P(A&B) > P(A)P(B), which is symmetric in A and B; hence we can undo the manipulations with the roles of A and B reversed to arrive back at P(B|A) > P(B|~A). QED.

Hence, if A implies B, then B also implies A!

Now of course, the strengths of these implications might be vastly different. But that's a separate matter.

Here, the point is that A implies B with near certainty (where A is "K&S faked burglary" and B is "K&S killed Kercher"); I'm not terribly concerned with how strongly B implies A. I don't need for B to imply A very strongly to make my point, but Massei and Cristiani would definitely need that in order to enable any charitable reading of their burglary section at all.

Comment author: handoflixue 24 November 2010 09:42:32PM 1 point [-]

The evidence you quoted merely suggests the burglary was faked. I'd assume there are more people with a motive to do that than just Knox and Sollecito? Why would we assume, with high enough certainty to convict, that it was certainly them and not a roommate, or someone who knew them?

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 09:55:28PM *  0 points [-]

Look, I'm not saying Massei and Cristiani's argument that Knox and Sollecito staged the burglary is convincing, by any means!

That said, their argument that if the burglary was staged, the staging was done by Knox and Sollecito is probably the most convincing part of it. At the very least, they would have a highish prior, since they had access to the house and were "available" that night to do the staging if they wanted to.

Comment author: David_Gerard 24 November 2010 09:39:32PM *  4 points [-]

This is as it should be ;-) However, Beethoven did not labour unheard in academia.

And it's all music. "Classical" isn't one genre, not even a bit.

Anyway, poetry tops the recorded sound charts these days. It's very popular. Children popularly aspire to be poets.

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 09:46:36PM 5 points [-]

"Classical" isn't one genre, not even a bit.

It sure isn't. "Genres" are things like the symphony, the string quartet, and the piano sonata. "Classical" is a period in history.

Comment author: David_Gerard 24 November 2010 09:25:49PM *  4 points [-]

This is incorrect. Major record companies played the role of patron in pop music from the 1960s to the present.

Music made by academics that literally no-one listens to - seriously, a lot of this stuff is never played in public - is culturally irrelevant and only exists because of a small space not subject to feedback effects.

(I used to be a music journalist. This is a specialist subject of mine.)

Edit: By "culturally irrelevant" I mean that it has very little in terms of ripple effect or influence on things outside its small space. This is not to say it's bad music, or worthless - but that there's no promotion and little or no feedback unless the composer goes to particular effort.

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 09:36:44PM *  4 points [-]

Major record companies played the role of patron in pop music

Not what we're talking about. Vassar mentioned Beethoven.

(I used to be a music journalist. This is a specialist subject of mine.)

I'm a composer (that's what "komponisto" means). Of the type you just called "culturally irrelevant". It won't suprise you to learn that I have approximately the same high regard for music journalists as you do for composers like me, and your "specialist" opinion carries little weight in influencing my view of these matters.

Comment author: handoflixue 24 November 2010 08:49:17PM 0 points [-]

Your post is entangling three separate issues, and I think that's making it confusing to discuss (it was certainly confusing to read!)

Mathematics: "P(A) <= P(B) / P(B|A)."

No argument here.

Probability: How does the evidence A impact the probability of conclusion B?

I feel you are using entirely incorrect math for the situation, as stated in my previous posts. Just because the formula is correct, does not mean it is applicable to the problem you are trying to solve.

If A is proven, and A=>B is proven, then B is proven. The prior probability of B cannot negate the proof of A, nor the proof of A=>B, and thus has absolutely no bearing on the situation. Prior probability matters if, and only if, we are discussing p(A) and p(A=>B), at which point we still have new evidence (A, A=>B) that requires us to update to a new new probability of B.

You cannot continue to assert the prior probability of B, despite new evidence that suggests a higher or lower chance of B.

Cognitive Bias: Is the judge properly evaluating p(A) and p(A=>B)?

I feel that there is insufficient information to draw a firm conclusion here. However, based on what you have said, I feel rather strongly that you have misinterpreted his evaluations, because you are assuming that common language and logical language are the same.

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 09:31:10PM 0 points [-]

If A is proven, and A=>B is proven, then B is proven

Agreed.

The prior probability of B cannot negate the proof of A, nor the proof of A=>B, and thus has absolutely no bearing on the situation

This sentence doesn't make sense as written. I don't know what it means for a probability to "negate" a proof, and so I don't know what you're trying to say when you assert that this can't happen.

My best guess is that you're trying to say that "even if P(A) is small on account of P(B) being small, some finite amount of evidence will still suffice to prove A, and therefore B." Which is obviously true, and nothing I have written says otherwise.

You cannot continue to assert the prior probability of B, despite new evidence that suggests a higher or lower chance of B.

This sounds like our previous discussion, where you said, and I agreed, that other evidence that Knox and Sollecito killed Kercher could raise the probability of their having faked the burglary. I've never disputed this, but have pointed out that this isn't Massei and Cristiani's reasoning. They attempted to prove the fake burglary without invoking the other murder evidence.

However, based on what you have said, I feel rather strongly that you have misinterpreted his evaluations, because you are assuming that common language and logical language are the same.

You'll have to be more specific here.

Comment author: handoflixue 24 November 2010 09:14:07PM *  0 points [-]

P(Someone faked the burglary) != P(Amanda Knox faked the burglary). The report asserts the first, not the second, from my reading.

Given that "someone faked" is true, I think assigning an approximately 100% chance that Amanda Knox is guilty is rather seriously unfounded. What am I missing?

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 09:19:58PM 0 points [-]

What am I missing?

That "burglary was faked" is shorthand for "burglary was faked by Knox and Sollecito" throughout this post and discussion. The latter is what Massei and Cristiani argue, and is what would most strongly imply that Knox and Sollecito are guilty of murder.

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 09:11:49PM 1 point [-]

Summary added:

Rules of logic have counterparts in probability theory. This post discusses the probabilistic analogue of modus tollens (the rule that if A=>B is true and B is false, then A is false), which is the inequality P(A) ≤ P(B)/P(B|A). What this says, in ordinary language, is that if A strongly implies B, then proving A is approximately as difficult as proving B.

Comment author: handoflixue 24 November 2010 08:56:21PM 0 points [-]

That's only true if you assume p(A=>B) is 1

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 09:06:27PM *  0 points [-]

...or approximately 1.

(And by P(A=>B), I think you meant P(B|A), didn't you?)

Comment author: handoflixue 24 November 2010 07:47:30PM 0 points [-]

"these arguments about glass patterns etc. prove that the burglary was staged. Now, having established that piece of evidence against them (i,e. the staging of the burglary), let us now consider the other evidence, which, in combination with the burglary, will give us an accurate probability on whether they are guilty"

I've bolded a single change to your quote. With that change made, do you feel this is a reasonable assertion?

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 08:42:21PM *  0 points [-]

No. The error is in the first sentence

these arguments about glass patterns etc. prove that the burglary was staged.

They only (conceivably) prove the burglary was staged if you're already taking into account the rest of the evidence of murder.

In response to comment by taw on Helpless Individuals
Comment author: MichaelVassar 31 March 2009 11:36:57PM 4 points [-]

Was the low hanging fruit depleted in music too? Any musicians at the level of Beethoven lately? Patronage just worked better?

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 08:31:42PM *  1 point [-]

Any musicians at the level of Beethoven lately?

Yes, but you haven't heard of them, because they're obscure academics.

(And their music wouldn't necessarily be intelligible to you either, due to the musical analogue of inferential distance.)

Nowadays universities play the role that aristocratic patrons did in the past.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 24 November 2010 08:07:28PM 1 point [-]

Yes, if you want to argue P1 from P2, you must show P2. And whatever standard of proof you demand for acting on P1, you should also demand for P2 if you're using it this way: lowering the bar for proving P2 and then arguing P1 from P2 implicitly lowers the bar for proving P1.

And that's no less true if P1 = Knox and Sollecito are guilty and P2 = the burglary was fake. This much ought to be uncontroversial.

Of course, what evidence the prosecution actually has for P1 and P2 in this case is a different question.

I must sheepishly admit that the elaborate explanation actually made it more difficult for me to understand the argument; I had to reconstruct it myself in order to see it.

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 08:24:04PM *  0 points [-]

I must sheepishly admit that the elaborate explanation actually made it more difficult for me to understand the argument; I had to reconstruct it myself in order to see it.

I'm sorry to hear that. Unfortunately, adopting a general policy of eschewing elaborate explanations, and just stating the distilled main point and expecting everyone to understand its significance, won't work either (it's been tried).

I'm happy you at least did end up understanding the argument.

It might be more helpful if you identified particular passages that seemed to cloud your understanding.

Of course, what evidence the prosecution actually has for P1 and P2 in this case is a different question.

Do you suspect them of having strong evidence for either?

Comment author: handoflixue 24 November 2010 07:42:56PM 0 points [-]

I feel you can demonstrate quite amply that A is not sufficient proof of B, and that A=>B has not been sufficiently proven either.

However, neither of these assertions seems to be your point. You seem to be insisting that you can't prove A, and I see absolutely no evidence of that, unless you take as given the assumption A=>B. I would certainly challenge that assumption.

Am I mistaken in this understanding of your point?

P.S. I feel the evidence suggets Knox is guilty at around a 10% chance, based solely on the evidence in this post. I do not feel a 10% chance of guilt is sufficient. I have not considered any evidence outside this post, as my interest is in the probability math, and not in the actual case itself.

P.P.S. A discussion of the dangers of cognitive biases is, I feel, entirely orthogonal to a discussion on probabilities and mathematics. Given my interest is in the math, not the case, I am going to skip over discussion of such biases.

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 08:02:36PM *  2 points [-]

So you don't agree that if Knox and Sollecito faked the burglary, then they are likely guilty of murder?

I feel the evidence suggets Knox is guilty at around a 10% chance, based solely on the evidence in this post

There isn't much evidence presented in this post -- hardly any at all. (Plenty of information is linked to, of course...)

A discussion of the dangers of cognitive biases is, I feel, entirely orthogonal to a discussion on probabilities and mathematics.

Well, then I must say you're on the wrong website!

But if your interest is more in the math than in the case, I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with me about. It's kind of hard to dispute the inequality

isn't it?

Comment author: handoflixue 24 November 2010 06:17:57PM 0 points [-]

"my claim is that to reach a desired level of certainty about the burglary being faked, you would need evidence of approximately the same strength required to reach the same level of certainty about murder."

This assumes that the burglary being faked is the only piece of evidence. If we have three sets of evidence, and each one suggests a 90% chance of guilt, and each is independent of the other, then we have probability (10:1) x (10:1) x (10:1) = (1000:1). No one set of evidence needs to have a (1000:1) probability of guilty in order to reach a final conclusion that the odds are (1000:1). Arguing via modus tollens about a single piece of evidence tells us only that that evidence, in and of itself, is insufficient proof. It tells us nothing about how that evidence may act cumulatively with other pieces of evidence.

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 07:37:42PM *  0 points [-]

This assumes that the burglary being faked is the only piece of evidence

No; I fully grant that other evidence that Knox and Sollecito are guilty, if it exists, would be evidence of the burglary being fake, which would lower the burden of proof on that hypothesis.

However, that isn't how Massei and Cristiani reason. They don't say, in the section on the burglary (which is at the beginning of the report), "and since we know from all the other evidence that Knox and Sollecito are guilty, we can therefore easily use these arguments about glass patterns to confirm that they did in fact stage the burglary, in case you were wondering about that". And it's easy to see why they don't say that: there wouldn't be much point, because if they've already shown that Knox and Sollecito are guilty, their work is done! (*)

Instead, what they say is "these arguments about glass patterns etc. prove that the burglary was staged. Now, having established that piece of evidence against them (i,e. the staging of the burglary), let us now consider the other evidence, which, in combination with the burglary, will show how really guilty they are."

(* ) Technically, staging a burglary is itself an offense, so there may actually have been reason for them to proceed this way. But in that case the burglary issue would have come at the end of the report, not the beginning.

Comment author: handoflixue 24 November 2010 06:07:41PM 0 points [-]

(2') If A is (sufficiently) strong evidence of B, then the prior probability of A can't be much higher than the prior probability of B.


The logic and math of this post seems very confused. It feels like you are saying "If the sun rises tomorrow, I will kill you. The probability of me being a murderer is 1:10^8, therefor the probability of the sun rising tomorrow cannot be much higher than 1:10^8"

First off, there's some very crucial evidence you are forgetting in evaluating this case. The key element here is that numerous small bits of evidence are cumulative. This is a very important point, and one which jsteinhardt touched on already.

First, we have a very major piece of evidence: A murder did in fact occur, and the murderer must have been in Perugia at the time they committed this murder. At this point, we have approximately 10^5 possible suspects (Perugia has a population of 166,253), and we know, factually, that one of them is the guilty party. If we had no other evidence, we could reasonably assign a probability of 1:10^5 that each one is guilty. You'll notice that this is vastly higher than the normal probability of someone being a murderer, because we already have quite a few bits of evidence.

If the burglary was faked with odds of 10^4:1, then we can assume that everyone that had a motive to do so now has a guilt probability of 10^4:10^5, or approximately 1:10. A 10% chance of Amanda Knox being guilty is certainly poor evidence, and I don't see any reason to favor her over other people who have been demonstrated to have equal motive, but I'm also basing this entirely on this specific post.

The consequences of the burglary being faked does not change based the probability that it occurred, any more than my threat to kill you tomorrow will prevent the sun from rising. If we're dealing with probability, then there is some factual probability that the burglary was faked, based on it's own evidence, and this probability is entirely independent of the consequences. Further, this probability, and the probability that (Burglary Faked => Amanda is Guilty) cannot be 100%, despite your post assuming such. You cannot include impossible numbers and then expect a firm conclusion to arise.

P.S. If your point was simply "The judge is assuming impossible numbers", then I'd feel you are probably wrong on this point. I'd be happy to elaborate if that is in fact the case.

P.P.S. You can argue that a "higher standard of evidence" for proving that may be required, based on legal and moral principles, but that has nothing at all to do with probabilities.

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 07:13:28PM *  4 points [-]

First of all, Welcome to Less Wrong!

The logic and math of this post seems very confused. It feels like you are saying "If the sun rises tomorrow, I will kill you. The probability of me being a murderer is 1:10^8, therefor the probability of the sun rising tomorrow cannot be much higher than 1:10^8"

Well, if you knew that

(1) if the sun will rise tomorrow, then I am a murderer,

and you also knew that

(2) I am not a murderer,

then you would indeed know that

(3) the sun will not rise tomorrow.

First off, there's some very crucial evidence you are forgetting in evaluating this case.

There is very little -- certainly very little of importance -- that I have forgotten about this case. And I have pretty much all of the publicly available information that exists about it at my fingertips, in case I do forget anything. So, no.

What I am aware of and what I explicitly mention in a particular post are not the same thing.

The key element here is that numerous small bits of evidence are cumulative.

While this is mathematically as beyond dispute as (say) the formulas I presented in the post, it's worth noting that approaching something like a murder case in this way is highly dangerous, due to various cognitive biases (which of course are our subject matter here on LW). There is a serious risk of misjudging the strength of such small pieces of evidence, and compounding the error by missing dependence relations, so that you end up double-counting evidence.

But anyway, this doesn't have much to do with this post.

The consequences of the burglary being faked does not change based the probability that it occurred, any more than my threat to kill you tomorrow will prevent the sun from rising. If we're dealing with probability, then there is some factual probability that the burglary was faked, based on it's own evidence, and this probability is entirely independent of the consequences

The intuition you're describing here is exactly the one that my post aims to refute.

It might seem, as it no doubt did to Massei and Cristiani, that you should be able to establish whether the burglary was fake independently of whether Knox and Sollecito killed Kercher. After all, there isn't much physical connection between the events in Romanelli's room and the events in Kercher's, is there? But this is a mistake -- or at least, it is so long as you believe that establishing the burglary was fake would imply that Knox and Sollecito killed Kercher.

In principle, you certainly could establish that the burglary was fake without making any tacit assumption that Knox and Sollecito have a substantial probability of being guilty of murder; but the type of evidence you would need to do that would have to be very strong -- around as strong as the evidence needed to show their guilt independently of the burglary question.

P.S. If your point was simply "The judge is assuming impossible numbers", then I'd feel you are probably wrong on this point. I'd be happy to elaborate if that is in fact the case.

I'm not sure what you mean here, but it sounds like you perhaps think that Massei and Cristiani's reasoning is sound. (Do you think that Knox and Sollecito are likely guilty? If so, I'd be happy to discuss that, but this post wouldn't be the place to do it.)

P.P.S. You can argue that a "higher standard of evidence" for proving that may be required, based on legal and moral principles, but that has nothing at all to do with probabilities.

If you read the post, you'll see that it's pretty much entirely about probabilities.

Comment author: jsteinhardt 24 November 2010 05:50:34PM 0 points [-]

The sentence in particular that I objected to was

The standards for "explaining well" that the fake-burglary hypothesis has to meet in order to be taken seriously are much higher than those that its negation has to meet, because of the dependence relation that exists between the fake-burglary question and the murder question.

My impression was that you were claiming that, since the fake burglary hypothesis would imply murder, evidence must be extremely strong to be counted in favor of fake burglary. But I may have misunderstood you. At any rate, you elsewhere state that

Of their 427-page report, Massei and Cristiani devote approximately 20 pages (mainly pp. 27-49) to their argument that the burglary was staged by Knox and Sollecito [...] if they were really able to demonstrate this, they would scarcely have needed to bother writing the remaining 400-odd pages of the report!

If you agree with my point, then I don't see how you can find it odd that they would feel obliged to include more in their report than just the claim that the burglary was faked. Like you said, even if the evidence is fairly strong in favor of this assertion, far more evidence would be needed to convict those two of murder, which is presumably the point of the remaining 400 pages.

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 06:04:39PM 4 points [-]

My impression was that you were claiming that, since the fake burglary hypothesis would imply murder, evidence must be extremely strong to be counted in favor of fake burglary

My claim is that to reach a desired level of certainty about the burglary being faked, you would need evidence of approximately the same strength required to reach the same level of certainty about murder. (In other words, that the prior probability of fake burglary is roughly the prior probability of murder.)

Like you said, even if the evidence is fairly strong in favor of [fake burglary], far more evidence would be needed to convict those two of murder

This is the very opposite of what I said! What I said was that if you knew with high confidence that the burglary was fake, then you would need almost no additional evidence to convict of murder.

Comment author: jsteinhardt 24 November 2010 03:47:17PM 1 point [-]

But, of course, the mathematics of probability theory don't work that way. A hypothesis, such as that the apparent burglary in Filomena Romanelli's room was staged -- doesn't get points for its ability to explain the data unless it does so better than its negation. And, in the absence of the assumption that Knox and Sollecito are guilty -- if we're presuming them to be innocent, as the law requires, or assigning a tiny prior probability to their guilt, as epistemic rationality requires -- this contest is rigged. The standards for "explaining well" that the fake-burglary hypothesis has to meet in order to be taken seriously are much higher than those that its negation has to meet, because of the dependence relation that exists between the fake-burglary question and the murder question.

This isn't quite true. If the prior probability of being a murderer is 1 in 10^6, and I can find 30 things that are explained twice as well by the murder hypothesis as the non-murder hypothesis, then the posterior probability of being a murderer is 99.9%, in the absence of mitigating factors (since 2^30/10^6 is about 1000.) So, many pieces of weak evidence for an unlikely proposition can still establish that proposition.

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 04:48:33PM *  0 points [-]

So, many pieces of weak evidence for an unlikely proposition can still establish that proposition.

This doesn't contradict anything in the paragraph you quoted. (If you don't mind, tell me where you thought the contradiction was, so that I can explain further.)

Comment author: Perplexed 24 November 2010 02:45:03PM 2 points [-]

I'm not sure I understand this. Could you clarify? Are you saying that a true Bayesian doesn't think there is a distinction? That a wise Bayesian will be neither kind of atheist?

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 03:22:11PM 0 points [-]

See here.

Comment author: JGWeissman 24 November 2010 07:00:32AM 2 points [-]

If A is strong evidence of B

I would word this as "If A is sufficiently strong evidence of B to overcome B's prior improbability". Simply saying "A is strong evidence of B" feels to me like a statement about the likelihood ratio, not the posterior probability.

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2010 07:24:40AM *  0 points [-]

This concern occurred to me; but consider: just how large does the likelihood ratio have to be for the evidence to be considered "strong"? Arguably, this depends on the prior probability (and thus the desired posterior probability) in the first place.

In any event, my hope is that the meanings of these vague verbal mnemonics are sufficiently clarified by the formulas.

ETA: Word "sufficiently" added to post.

Inherited Improbabilities: Transferring the Burden of Proof

30 Post author: komponisto 24 November 2010 03:40AM

One person's modus ponens is another's modus tollens.

- Common saying among philosophers and other people who know what these terms mean.

If you believe A => B, then you have to ask yourself: which do I believe more? A, or not B?

- Hal Daume III, quoted by Vladimir Nesov.

Summary: Rules of logic have counterparts in probability theory. This post discusses the probabilistic analogue of modus tollens (the rule that if A=>B is true and B is false, then A is false), which is the inequality P(A) ≤ P(B)/P(B|A). What this says, in ordinary language, is that if A strongly implies B, then proving A is approximately as difficult as proving B. 

The appeal trial for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito starts today, and so to mark the occasion I thought I'd present an observation about probabilities that occurred to me while studying the "motivation document"(1), or judges' report, from the first-level trial.

One of the "pillars" of the case against Knox and Sollecito is the idea that the apparent burglary in the house where the murder was committed -- a house shared by four people, namely Meredith Kercher (the victim), Amanda Knox, and two Italian women -- was staged. That is, the signs of a burglary were supposedly faked by Knox and Sollecito in order to deflect suspicion from themselves. (Unsuccessfully, of course...)

As the authors of the report, presiding judge Giancarlo Massei and his assistant Beatrice Cristiani, put it (p.44):

What has been explained up to this point leads one to conclude that the situation of disorder in Romanelli's room and the breaking of the window constitute an artificially created production, with the purpose of directing investigators toward someone without a key to the entrance, who would have had to enter the house via the window whose glass had been broken and who would then have perpetrated the violence against Meredith that caused her death.

Now, even before examining "what has been explained up to this point", i.e. the reasons that Massei and Cristiani (and the police before them) were led to this conclusion, we can pretty easily agree that if it is correct -- that is, if Knox and Sollecito did in fact stage the burglary in Filomena Romanelli's room -- then it is extremely likely that they are guilty of participation in Kercher's murder. After all, what are the chances that they just happened to engage in the bizarre offense of making it look like there was a burglary in the house, on the very same night as a murder occurred, in that very house? Now, one could still hypothetically argue about what their precise role was (e.g. whether they actually physically caused Kercher's death, or merely participated in some sort of conspiracy to make the latter happen via the actions of known burglar and undisputed culprit Rudy Guede), and thus possibly about how severely they should be treated by the justice system; but in any case I think I'm on quite solid ground in asserting that a faked burglary by Knox and Sollecito would very strongly imply that Knox and Sollecito are criminally culpable in the death of Meredith Kercher.

...which is in fact quite a problem for Massei and Cristiani, as I'll now explain.

Probability theory can and should be thought of as a quantitative version -- indeed, a generalization -- of the "rules of logic" that underpin  Traditional Rationality. (Agreement with the previous sentence is essentially what it means to be a Bayesian.) One of these rules is this:

(1) If A implies B, then not-B implies not-A.

For example, all squares are in fact rectangles; which means that if something isn't a rectangle, it can't possibly be a square. Likewise, if "it's raining" implies "the sidewalk is wet", and you know the sidewalk isn't wet, then you know it's not raining.

The rule that gets you from "A implies B" and "A" to "B" is called modus ponens, which is Latin for "method that puts". The rule that gets you from "A implies B" and "not-B" to "not-A" is called modus tollens, which is Latin for "method that takes away". As the saying goes, and as we have just seen, they are really one and the same. 

If, for a moment, we were to think about the Meredith Kercher case as a matter of pure logic -- that is, where inferences were always absolutely certain, with zero uncertainty -- then we could say that if we know that "burglary is fake" implies "Knox and Sollecito are guilty", and we also know that the burglary was in fact fake, then we know that Knox and Sollecito are guilty.

But, of course, there's another way to say the same thing: if we know that "burglary is fake" implies "Knox and Sollecito are guilty", and we also know that Knox and Sollecito are innocent, then we know that the burglary wasn't fake. (And that to the extent Massei and Cristiani say it was, they must be mistaken.)

In other words, so long as one accepts the implication "burglary fake => Knox and Sollecito guilty", one can't consistently hold that the burglary was fake and that Knox and Sollecito are innocent, but one can consistently hold either that the burglary was fake and Knox and Sollecito are guilty, or that Knox and Sollecito are innocent and the burglary was not fake.

The question of which of these two alternatives to believe thus reduces to the question of whether, given the evidence in the case, it's more believable that Knox and Sollecito are guilty, or that the burglary was "authentic". Massei and Cristiani, of course, aim to convince us that the latter is the more improbable.

But notice what this means! This means that the proposition that the burglary was fake assumes, or inherits, the same high burden of proof as the proposition that Knox and Sollecito committed murder! Unfortunately for Massei and Cristiani, there's no way to "bootstrap up" from the mundane sort of evidence that seemingly suffices to show that a couple of youngsters engaged in some deception, to the much stronger sort of evidence required to prove that two honor students(2) with gentle personalities suddenly decided, on an unexpectedly free evening, to force a friend into a deadly sex game with a local drifter they barely knew, for the sake of a bit of thrill-seeking(3).

You may have noticed that, two paragraphs ago, I left the logical regime of implication, consistency, and absolute certainty, and entered the probability-theoretic realm of belief, uncertainty, and burdens of proof. So to make the point rigorous, we'll have to switch from pure logic to its quantitative generalization, the mathematics of probability theory.  
When logical statements are translated into their probabilistic analogues, a statement like "A is true" is converted to something like "P(A) is high"; "A implies B" becomes "A is (strong)  evidence  of B"; and rules such as (1) above turn into  bounds on the probabilities of some hypotheses in terms of others.
Specifically, the translation of (1) into probabilistic language would be something like:
(2) If A is (sufficiently) strong evidence of B, and B is unlikely, then A is unlikely.
or
(2') If A is (sufficiently) strong evidence of B, then the prior probability of A can't be much higher than the prior probability of B.

Let's prove this:

Suppose that A is strong evidence of B -- that is, that P(B|A) is close to 1. We'll represent this as P(B|A) ≥ 1-ε, where ε is a small number. Then, via  Bayes' theorem, this tells us that

or

so that

and thus

 

since P(A|B) ≤ 1. Hence we get an upper bound of P(B)/(1-ε) on P(A). For instance, if P(B) is 0.001, and P(B|A) is at least 0.95, then P(A) can't be any larger than 0.001/0.95 = 0.001052...

Actually, there's a simpler proof, direct from the definition of P(B|A), which goes like this: P(B|A) = P(A&B)/P(A), whence P(A) = P(A&B)/P(B|A) ≤ P(B)/P(B|A). (Note the use of the conjunction rule: P(A&B) ≤ P(B).)

The statement

(3)

   

is a quantitative version of  modus tollens, just as the equivalent statement 

(4)

is a quantitative version of  modus ponens. Assuming P(B|A) is high, what (4) says is that if P(A) is high, so is P(B); what (3) says is that if P(B) is low, so is P(A).

Or, in other words, that the improbability  -- burden of proof -- of B is  transferred to, or  inherited by, A.

...which means you cannot simultaneously believe that (1) Knox and Sollecito's staging of the burglary would be strong evidence of their guilt; (2) proving their guilt is hard; and (3) proving they staged the burglary is easy. Something has to give; hard work must be done somewhere.

Of their 427-page report, Massei and Cristiani devote approximately 20 pages (mainly pp. 27-49) to their argument that the burglary was staged by Knox and Sollecito rather than being the work of known burglar Rudy Guede (including a strange section devoted to the refuting the hypothesis that the burglary was  staged by Guede). But think about it: if they were  really  able to demonstrate this, they would scarcely have needed to bother writing the remaining 400-odd pages of the report! For, if it is granted that Knox and Sollecito staged the burglary, then, in the absence of any other explanation for the staging (like November 1 being Annual Stage-Burglary Day for some group to which Knox or Sollecito belonged) it easily follows with conviction-level confidence that they were involved in a conspiracy that resulted in the death of Meredith Kercher. You would hardly need to bother with DNA, luminol, or the cell phone traffic of the various "protagonists". 

Yet it doesn't appear that Massei and Cristiani have much conception of the burden they face in trying to prove something that would so strongly imply their hugely a-priori-improbable ultimate thesis. Their arguments purporting to show that Knox and Sollecito faked the burglary are quite weak -- and, indeed, are reminiscent of those used time and again by their lower-status counterparts, conspiracy theorists of all types, from 9/11 "truthers" to the-Moon-landing-was-faked-ists. Here's a sample, from p.39:

Additionally, the fragments of broken glass were scattered in a homogeneous manner on the internal and external windowsill, without any noticeable displacement and without any piece of glass being found on the surface below the window. This circumstance...rules out the possibility that the stone was thrown from outside the house to allow access inside via the window after the glass was broken. The climber, in leaning his hands and then his feet or knees on the windowsill, would have caused some of the glass to fall, or at least would have had to move some of the pieces lest they form a trap and cause injury. However, no piece of glass was found under the window and no sign of injury was discovered on the glass found in Romanelli's room.

(The question to ask, when confronted with an argument like this, is: "rules out" with what confidence? If Massei and Cristiani think this is strong evidence against the hypothesis that the stone was thrown from outside the house, then that means they have a model that makes  highly specific predictions about the behavior of glass fragments when a stone is thrown from inside, versus when it is thrown from outside. Predictions which can be tested(4). This is one reason why  I advocate using numbers  in arguments; if Massei and Cristiani had been required to think carefully enough to give a number, that would have forced them to examine their assumptions more critically, rather than  stopping  on plausible-sounding arguments consistent with their already-arrived-at  bottom line.)
The impression one gets is that Massei and Cristiani thought, on some level, that all they needed to do was make the fake-burglary hypothesis  sound coherent  -- and that if they did so, that would count as a few points against Knox and Sollecito. They could then do the same thing with regard to the other pieces of evidence in the case, each time coming up with an explanation of the facts in terms of an assumption that Knox and Sollecito are guilty, and each time thereby scoring a few more points against them -- points which would presumably add up to a substantial number by the end of the report.
But, of course, the mathematics of probability theory don't work that way. It's not enough for a hypothesis, such as that the apparent burglary in Filomena Romanelli's room was staged,  to merely be able to explain the data; it must do so  better than its negation. And,  in the absence of the assumption that Knox and Sollecito are guilty -- if we're presuming them to be innocent, as the law requires, or assigning a tiny prior probability to their guilt, as  epistemic rationality  requires -- this contest is rigged. The standards for "explaining well" that the fake-burglary hypothesis has to meet in order to be taken seriously are  much higher  than those that its negation has to meet, because of the dependence relation that exists between the fake-burglary question and the murder question. Any hypothesis that requires the assumption that Knox and Sollecito are guilty of murder inherits the full "explanatory inefficiency penalty" (i.e. prior improbability) of the latter proposition.
If A implies B, then not-B implies not-A. It goes both ways.

 



Notes

(1) Some  pro-guilt advocates  have apparently produced a translation, but I haven't looked at it and can't vouch for it. Translations of passages appearing in this post are my own.

(2) One of whom, incidentally, is  known  to be enjoying  Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality  -- so take  that  for whatever it's worth

(3) From p. 422 of the report: 

The criminal acts turned out to be the result of purely accidental circumstances which came together to create a situation which, in the combination of the various factors, made the crimes against Meredith possible: Amanda and Raffaele, who happened to find themselves without any commitments, randomly met up with Rudy Guede (there is no trace of any planned appointment), and found themselves together in the house on Via Della Pergola where, that very evening, Meredith was alone. A crime which came into being, therefore, without any premeditation, without any animosity or rancorous feeling toward the victim...

(4) And sure enough, during the trial, the defense hired a ballistics expert who  conducted experiments  showing that a rock thrown from the outside would produce patterns of glass, etc. similar to what was found at the scene -- results which forced the prosecutors to admit that the rock was probably thrown from the outside, but which were simply  ignored  by Massei and Cristiani! (See p. 229 of  Sollecito's appeal document, if you can read Italian.)

Comment author: David_Gerard 20 November 2010 08:56:18PM *  7 points [-]

It strikes me as on-topic for a blog about rationality to describe my thinking processes concerning working out why I wanted children.

The urge is eminently biologically plausible - I come from a long line of successful replicators, after all. And just because this manifests itself as "I want sex" doesn't mean I don't also want the abstract result of sex. I also like the idea of bringing up a child.

But I had to justify the urge to myself, as the social circle I found myself in (punk-descended indie rock in Perth in the 1980s) tended to be very negative about having children. A few people had them, but many were powerfully negative about children, considering humans to be a curse upon the world, an ecological disaster, and the world to be too horrible to bring children into.

(This was the last decade of the Cold War, the feeling of which I find almost impossible to actually explain to almost anyone under thirty. We were young, but we seriously expected we could die with minutes of notice and were powerless to stop such a thing happening. It makes for good punk rock, but doesn't seem to me to have been a healthy environment.)

So I had to come up with rational justifications of my feelings. Of course, this sort of justification backwards from the predetermined outcome is highly improper. But it did come up with useful ideas for me to then attempt to play forward and examine closely: "my children will be an improvement in the world" (which I think is true) and "the world is not in fact awful, it's the best it's ever been" (which I also think was true and has continued to be true). This and "and anyway, I actually want to" was sufficient for me.

Note here that my thinking was not particularly clear (e.g. I privileged the hypothesis terribly), only sufficiently clear to satisfy me as to my own rightness in thinking differently to others around me. I am certainly not advocating the above as a model of how to think well, but as a case study in inchoate attempts at rational thinking about something personally important.

(And, by the way, many of those who expressed such opinions concerning children have since reproduced themselves.)

Comment author: komponisto 21 November 2010 08:56:51PM 6 points [-]

(This was the last decade of the Cold War, the feeling of which I find almost impossible to actually explain to almost anyone under thirty. We were young, but we seriously expected we could die with minutes of notice and were powerless to stop such a thing happening

This is worth noting. Contrary to the hindsight-ridden narrative of the Cold War that is common nowadays, according to which it had already wound down by the 1980s, there was in fact serious anxiety about a USA-USSR nuclear conflict almost right up to the dissolution of the latter country.

(The explanation for this narrative probably lies in the fact that it is often told by people who lived through the climax of the Cold War, i.e. the period of the Cuban Missile Crisis etc., or else by people too young to remember even the 1980s.)

Comment author: FormallyknownasRoko 21 November 2010 08:01:03PM *  4 points [-]

There is a much simpler way of winning than carefully building up your abstract-reasoning ability to the point where it produces usefully accurate, unbiased, well-calibrated probability distributions over relevant outcome spaces.

The simpler way is just to recognize that, as a human in a western society, you won't lose much more or win much more than the other humans around you. So you may as well dump the abstract reasoning and rationality, and pick some humans who seem to live relatively non-awful lives (e.g. your colleagues/classmates) and take whatever actions they take. Believe what they believe, even if it seems irrational. Do what they do.

Careful probability estimation and actions taken based upon anticipations of consequences is the kind of cognitive algorithm befitting a lone agent who actually reaps what (s)he sows. For a human, herd-mentality seems to be the more elegant solution: elegant in the sense that the epistemology is hard to get right, but there is a robust argument about consequences and utilities: almost all of the relatively-average-strategy humans in the herd will get roughly the same deal out of life.

Research from hedonic psychology on the "Hedonic Treadmill" effect backs this up further: even if you make more (or less) money than average, you probably won't actually be happier or better (worse) off.

Of course there are details and complications: which subgroup of humans do you join? How do you make the tradeoff between different subcultures etc. But still, you don't even need a general solution to that problem, you only need to decide which of the handful of specific subcultures available to you seems best for you.

And, of course, it goes without saying that this strategy is useless for someone who is determined to invest emotionally in a nonstandard life-narrative, like utilitarian charity or life-extension. From this point of view, one might object that joining the herd is selfish in the sense that it isn't the action which maximizes utility across the herd; but then again most people don't have a utilitarian concept of selfishness and don't count benefit to random strangers as part of their actual near-mode, actionable goal set, so from their axiological point of view, herding is an acceptable solution.

Comment author: komponisto 21 November 2010 08:29:15PM *  3 points [-]

The simpler way is just to recognize that, as a human in a western society, you won't lose much more or win much more than the other humans around you

Well, unless you actually take specific steps to win more....which is kind of what this is about.

which subgroup of humans do you join? How do you make the tradeoff between different subcultures etc. But still, you don't even need a general solution to that problem, you only need to decide which of the handful of specific subcultures available to you seems best for you.

Note that people probably tend to end up here by this very process. That is, of all the subcultures available to them, the subculture of people who are interested in

carefully building up [their] abstract-reasoning ability to the point where it produces usefully accurate, unbiased, well-calibrated probability distributions over relevant outcome spaces

is the most attractive.

Comment author: komponisto 21 November 2010 05:22:37PM *  8 points [-]

Interestingly, although reading the Sequences and other LW articles significantly affected my thinking style and general outlook over time, I've probably learned as much if not more from participating -- writing posts and comments, and receiving feedback.

...which feels strange to say, because I was skeptical in the beginning of the whole transition of Overcoming Bias into LW. For one thing, I didn't like the idea of having to "move". And I was highly suspicious of the karma system, because I was afraid of having my status numerically measured. I had been perfectly content to sit back and passively read Hanson and Yudkowsky posts, skim the comments, and only rarely chime in with a comment of my own when I thought it was particularly important.

But now, I think the interactive, community aspect of LW is probably its greatest feature.

Comment author: wnoise 20 November 2010 08:23:19AM *  0 points [-]

Let me put it this way: excluding a hypothesis from the model space is merely the special case of setting its prior to zero. Whether a given piece of evidence counts for or against a hypothesis is in fact dependent on the priors of all other hypotheses, even if no hypothesis goes from possible to not or vice-versa.

As this is prior dependent, there is no objective measure of whether a hypothesis is supported or rejected by evidence.

(This is obviously true when we look at P(H_i|e). It's a bit less so when we look at P(e|H) vs P(e|~H). This seems objective. It is objective in the case that H and ~H are atomic hypotheses with a well-defined rule for getting P(e|~H). But if ~H is an or of "all the other theories", than P(e|~H) is dependent on the prior probabilities for each of the H_i that are the subcomponents of ~H. It's also an utterly useless by itself for judging H. We want to know P(H|e) for that. (P(e|H) is of course why we want P(H), so we can make useful predictions.)

It is true that in the long run much evidence will eventually dominate any prior. But summarizing this as "log odds", for instance is only useful for talking about comparing two specific hypotheses, not "this hypothesis" and "everything else".

But I still have objections to most you say.

You've given an essentially operational definition of "evidence for" in terms of operations that can't be done.

Explicitly, that may be the case; but at least implicitly, there is always (or at least there had better be) an additional "something not on this list" hypothesis that covers everything else.

Yes. The standard way to express that is that you can't actually work with P(Hypothesis), only P(Hypothesis | Model Space).

You can then, of course expand your model spaces, if you find your model space is inadequate.

You appear to be thinking in terms of ad-hoc statistical techniques ("computable",

"Computable" is hardly ad-hoc. It's a fundamental restriction on how it is possible to reason.

we want to know what's true and how to think,

If you want to know how to think, you had better pick a method that's actually possible.

This really is just another facet of "all Bayesian probabilities are conditional."

Comment author: komponisto 20 November 2010 04:39:43PM *  2 points [-]

Let me put it this way: excluding a hypothesis from the model space is merely the special case of setting its prior to zero.

And you shouldn't do that.

Whether a given piece of evidence counts for or against a hypothesis is in fact dependent on the priors of all other hypotheses

Yes, of course. The point is that if you're using probability theory to actually reason, and not merely to set up a toy statistical model such as might appear in a scientific paper, you will in fact already be "considering" all possible hypotheses, not merely a small important-looking subset. Now it's true that what you won't be doing is enumerating every possible hypothesis on the most fine-grained level of description, and then computing the information-theoretic complexity of each one to determine its prior -- since, as you point out, that's computationally intractable. Instead, you'll take your important-looking subset just as you would in the science paper, let's say H1, H2, and H3, but then add to that another hypothesis H4, which represents the whole rest of hypothesis-space, or in other words "something I didn't think of"/"my paradigm is wrong"/etc. And you have to assign a nonzero probability to H4.

Yes. The standard way to express that is that you can't actually work with P(Hypothesis), only P(Hypothesis | Model Space).

No, see above. In science papers, "paradigm shifts" happen, and you "change your model space". Not in abstract Bayesianism. In abstract Bayesianism, low-probability events happen, and you update accordingly. The result will look similar to "changing your model space", because what happens is that when H4 turns out to be true (i.e. its probability is raised to something high), you then to start to carve up the H4 region of hypothesis-space more finely and incorporate these "new" sub-hypotheses into your "important-looking subset".

To return to the issue at hand in this thread, here's what's going on as I see it: physicists, acting as Bayesians, have assigned very low probablity to psi being true given QFT, and they have assigned a very high probability to QFT. In so doing, they've already considered the possibility that psi may be consistent with QFT, and judged this possibility to be of near-negligible probability. That was done in the first step, where they said "P(psi|QFT) is small". It doesn't do to reply "well, their paradigm may be wrong"; yes, it may, but if you think the probability of that is higher than they do, then you have to confront their analysis. Sean Carroll's post is a defense of the proposition that "P(psi|QFT) is small"; Jack's comment is an assertion that "psi&QFT may be true", which sounds like an assertion that "P(psi|QFT) is higher than Sean Carroll thinks it is" -- in which case Jack would need to account somehow for Carroll being mistaken in his analysis.

Comment author: wnoise 20 November 2010 02:58:35AM *  0 points [-]

That's not computable. (EDIT: or even well defined). One typically works with some limited ensemble of possible hypotheses.

Comment author: komponisto 20 November 2010 03:53:37AM *  0 points [-]

One typically works with some limited ensemble of possible hypotheses

Explicitly, that may be the case; but at least implicitly, there is always (or at least there had better be) an additional "something not on this list" hypothesis that covers everything else

You appear to be thinking in terms of ad-hoc statistical techniques ("computable", "one typically works..."), rather than fundamental laws governing belief. But the latter is what we're interested in in this context: we want to know what's true and how to think, not what we can publish and how to write it up.

Comment author: wnoise 20 November 2010 01:27:48AM 0 points [-]

By the Bayesian definition of evidence, "evidence for" a hypothesis (including a "model", which is just a name for a complex conjunction of hypotheses) simply means an observation more likely to occur if the hypothesis is true than if it is false.

Yes, but this depends on what other hypotheses are considered in the "false" case.

Comment author: komponisto 20 November 2010 02:09:17AM *  0 points [-]

The "false" case is the disjunction of all other possible hypotheses besides the one you're considering.

Comment author: wedrifid 19 November 2010 07:42:58PM 2 points [-]

A friendly math post! I gave up after reading "...within-cluster sum of squared differences..." :-)

It is easy for a math literate person to over-estimate how obvious certain jargon is to people. Like 'sum of squared differences' for example. Squared differences is just what is involved when you are calculating things like standard deviation. It's what you use when looking at, say, a group of people and deciding whether they all have about the same height or if some are really tall but others are really short. How different they are.

For those who have never had to manually calculate the standard deviation and similar statistics the term would just be meaningless. (Which makes your example a good demonstration of your point!)

Comment author: komponisto 20 November 2010 02:05:41AM *  9 points [-]

Squared differences is just what is involved when you are calculating things like standard deviation

Never mind that; just parse the damn phrase! All you need to know is what a "difference" is, and what "to square" means.

Why, I wonder, do people assume that words lose their individual meanings when combined, so that something like "squared differences" registers as "[unknown vocabulary item]" rather than "differences that have been squared"?

Comment author: Jack 19 November 2010 04:03:15PM 0 points [-]

The Bayesian point here is that if a model M assigns a low probability to hypothesis H, then evidence in favor of M is evidence against H. Hence each high-precision experiment that confirms quantum field theory counts the same as zillions of negative psi studies.

Evidence distinguishes between not for individual models. There may be models that are consistent with the experiments that confirm quantum field theory but also give rise to explanations for anomalous cognition.

Comment author: komponisto 19 November 2010 11:36:29PM 0 points [-]

Evidence distinguishes between not for individual models.

By the Bayesian definition of evidence, "evidence for" a hypothesis (including a "model", which is just a name for a complex conjunction of hypotheses) simply means an observation more likely to occur if the hypothesis is true than if it is false.

There may be models that are consistent with the experiments that confirm quantum field theory but also give rise to explanations for anomalous cognition.

Carroll claims that current data implies the probability of such models being correct is near zero. So I'd like to invoke Aumann here and ask what your explanation for the disagreement is. Where is Carroll's (and others') mistake?

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 19 November 2010 02:42:16PM *  1 point [-]

I got the impression from Damien Broderick's book that a lot of PSI researchers do understand physics and aren't postulating that PSI phenomena use the sort of physical interactions gravity or radio waves use. There's a story that Einstein was interested in PSI research, but declared it nonsense when the claimed results showed PSI effects that weren't subject to the inverse square law, so this isn't a new idea.

Damien Broderick's attitude in his book is basically that there's a bunch of anomalous observations and neither a satisfactory explanation or, in his opinion, a refutation for them exists. Goertzel's attitude is to come up with a highly speculative physical theory that could explain that kind of phenomena, and which would take a bit more than "would need extra particles" to show as nonsense.

"Not understanding basic physics" doesn't really seem to cut it in either case. "It's been looked into by lots of people, a few of them very smart, for 80 years, and nothing conclusive has come out of it, so most likely there isn't anything in it, and if you still want to have a go, you better start with something the smart people in 1970s didn't have" is basically the one I've got.

I'm not holding my breath over the recent Bem results, since he seems to be doing pretty much the same stuff that was done in the 70s and always ended up failing one way or the other, but I'm still waiting for someone more physics-literate to have a go at Goertzel's pilot wave paper.

Comment author: komponisto 19 November 2010 03:24:26PM *  0 points [-]

I got the impression from Damien Broderick's book that a lot of PSI researchers do understand physics and aren't postulating that PSI phenomena use the sort of physical interactions gravity or radio waves use...

"Not understanding basic physics" doesn't really seem to cut it in either case

"Not understanding basic physics" sounds like a harsh quasi-social criticism, like "failing at high-school material". But that's not exactly what's meant here. Rather, what's meant is more like "not being aware of how strong the evidence against psi from 20th-century physics research is".

The Bayesian point here is that if a model M assigns a low probability to hypothesis H, then evidence in favor of M is evidence against H [EDIT: technically, this is not necessarily true, but it usually is in practice, and becomes more likely as P(H|M) approaches 0]. Hence each high-precision experiment that confirms quantum field theory counts the same as zillions of negative psi studies.

Comment author: Jack 19 November 2010 02:02:42PM 0 points [-]

This isn't someone with tarot cards talking about using crystal energy to talk to your dead grand parent. To condemn someone for holding a similar position to the uneducated is to rule out contrarian thought before any debate occurs. Humans are still confused enough about the world that there is room for change in our current understanding of physics. There are some pretty compelling results in parapsychology, much or all of which may be due to publication bias, methodological issues or fraud. But that isn't obviously the case, waving our hands and throwing out these words isn't an explanation of the results. I'm going to try and make a post on this subject a priority now.

Comment author: komponisto 19 November 2010 02:19:46PM *  3 points [-]

This isn't someone with tarot cards talking about using crystal energy to talk to your dead grand parent. To condemn someone for holding a similar position to the uneducated is to rule out contrarian thought before any debate occurs

Did you read the linked post by Sean Carroll? Parapsychologists aren't condemned for holding a similar position to the uneducated; they're condemned for holding a position blatantly inconsistent with quantum field theory on the strength of evidence much, much weaker than the evidence for quantum field theory. Citing a century's worth of experimentally confirmed physical knowledge is far from hand-waving.

Humans are still confused enough about the world that there is room for change in our current understanding of physics

Again, this is explicitly addressed by Carroll. Physicists are not confused in the relevant regimes here. Strong evidence that certain highly precise models are correct has been obtained, and this constrains where we can reasonably expect future changes in our current understanding of physics.

Now, I'm not a physicist, so if I'm actually wrong about any of this, I'm willing to be corrected. But, as the saying goes, there is a time to confess ignorance, and a time to relinquish ignorance.

Comment author: Jack 19 November 2010 01:11:13PM *  0 points [-]

Any argument of this nature needs to include some explanation of why someone's ability to think about y is linked to their ability to think about z. But even with that (which wasn't included in the comment) you can only conclude that y and z imply each other. You can't just conclude z.

In other words, you have to show Goertzel is wrong about psychic phenomenon before you can show that his belief in it is indicative of reasoning flaws elsewhere.

Comment author: komponisto 19 November 2010 01:30:48PM *  1 point [-]

I don't disagree in principle, but psychic phenomena are pretty much fundamentally ruled out by current physics. So a person's belief in them raises serious doubts about that person's understanding of science at the very least, if not their general rationality level.

Comment author: Jack 19 November 2010 12:18:50PM 0 points [-]

Ben Goertzel believes in psychic phenomenon (see here for details), so his failure to be convinced by Eliezer is not strong evidence against the correctness of Eliezer's stance.

I don't think the failure of someone to be convinced of some position is ever strong evidence against that position. But this argument here is genuinely terrible. I disagree with person x about y, therefore person x is wrong about z? Do we even have to go into why this is fallacious?

Comment author: komponisto 19 November 2010 01:05:22PM 2 points [-]

I disagree with person x about y, therefore person x is wrong about z? Do we even have to go into why this is fallacious?

The extent to which it is fallacious depends rather strongly on what y and z (and even x) are, it seems to me.

Comment author: Alicorn 18 November 2010 04:33:58AM *  6 points [-]

When I took my IQ test, at least two oddities stood out to me which may have affected its (already nonexistent given that I hit the ceiling) accuracy.

1) There was a segment of the test in which I was instructed to try to memorize a paragraph of text read aloud to me so I could repeat it back "exactly as [the tester] said it". For the first third or so of this test, I thought "exactly" meant that I would be marked not only on exact wording, but also on things like inflection [edit: apparently this is a technical term; I didn't mean the technical definition, I meant the reference class which includes things like tone, pitch, emphasis, etc.] and speed, and tried very hard to imitate those aspects of her reading. Then I asked for clarification and she told me that it was only the words that mattered. A neurotypical might not have misunderstood the instructions as I did; someone more autistic than me who made the same error might not have thought to check for such a misunderstanding (and would probably also have taken much more processing power to try to remember inflection etc. while under the misapprehension).

2) There was a section where I was shown pictures of sheets of paper with pieces cut out of it (a la paper snowflakes except rectangular), both folded and unfolded (they were to be matched to each other; this was multiple-choice but I don't remember if the choices were the unfolded or folded versions). I asked for a pencil and paper. The proctor remarked that there wasn't an official policy about whether pencil and paper were allowed for the section, and made a judgment call and gave them to me. I'm not sure how, if at all, my autism interacted with this irregularity.

Comment author: komponisto 19 November 2010 01:47:13AM 0 points [-]

things like inflection and speed

cough.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 18 November 2010 06:37:27PM 0 points [-]

I really didn't get that impression. Read it just as neutral affectation.

Comment author: komponisto 18 November 2010 06:39:41PM 1 point [-]

It's usually Eliezer's foil; a person espousing the incorrect view he's arguing against.

Comment author: Risto_Saarelma 18 November 2010 02:38:46PM 2 points [-]

It's a parable'y way of saying "someone" and "the same someone as earlier"?

Comment author: komponisto 18 November 2010 06:31:21PM *  2 points [-]

Indeed. Usually a stereotypical "person who doesn't 'get it'."

I've always thought that one of the ultimate LW insults would be: "you're so 'the one'."

Comment author: komponisto 17 November 2010 04:10:03AM *  6 points [-]

A big filter is being able to use English online

I would really like to see versions of LW in other languages. Admittedly, because English is currently the most prestigious language on Earth, intelligent ambitious people tend to learn it. Still, I think lowering barriers -- including linguistic ones -- is usually worth doing if possible.

I actually enjoy learning and using languages other than English, and would be willing to participate in a project to translate the Sequences into (at least) the major European languages.

Comment author: multifoliaterose 16 November 2010 07:27:50AM *  0 points [-]

this post is to some degree emerging from me exploring the question of SIAI's organizational instrumental rationality. I have the impression from a variety of angles/sources that it's pretty bad. Since I care about SIAI's success, it's one of the things I think about in the background - why, and how you could be more effective.

I've had similar thoughts. I would be interested in hearing what room for improvement you see in SIAI's organizational instrumental rationality. I have my own thoughts on this (which have evolved somewhat as I've learned more since making my posts about SIAI back in August). Feel free to PM me if you'd prefer to communicate privately.

Comment author: komponisto 16 November 2010 04:22:32PM 0 points [-]

You'll want to see my reply to patrissimo above.

Comment author: patrissimo 16 November 2010 12:36:27AM 4 points [-]

Actually, I will comment (for the purposes of authenticity and from the belief that being more transparent about my motivations will increase mutual truth-finding) that while I'm not arguing "against" SIAI, this post is to some degree emerging from me exploring the question of SIAI's organizational instrumental rationality. I have the impression from a variety of angles/sources that it's pretty bad. Since I care about SIAI's success, it's one of the things I think about in the background - why, and how you could be more effective.

Comment author: komponisto 16 November 2010 04:21:46PM 12 points [-]

When discussing SIAI's instrumental rationality, it's important to remember what its actual goals are. Speaking of story-bias, it's all too easy to pattern-match to "organization promoting some cause they think is important", in which case one easily concludes that SIAI has been a miserable failure because FAI hasn't become a trendy academic research discipline, and Vice Presidents aren't making films about paperclip maximizers.

However, the picture changes somewhat if instead you think in terms of the following (more accurate) caricature of SIAI's actual objectives:

(1) To persuade a dozen or so Putnam Fellows to collaborate with Eliezer on FAI instead of pursuing brilliant careers in academic mathematics;

(2) To dissuade people like Ben Goertzel from trying to build AGI without solving the FAI problem first.

If you look at it like this (still admittedly oversimplified), then yes, SIAI still has a way to go in achieving its goals, but they don't seem to be quite as hopelessly underequipped for the task as one might have thought.

(Disclaimer: I certainly don't speak for SIAI; my association with the organization is that of a former visitor, i.e. about as loose as it's possible to get while still having to answer "yes" to the question "Are you, or have you ever been, affiliated with the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence?" if ever called to testify before Congress....)

Comment author: InquilineKea 14 November 2010 05:56:56AM 0 points [-]

Oh nice, I'm happy to know that someone else here went to UW!

Yeah, I just have a lot of ideas so I'm afraid to flood the discussion forum (even one idea per day might do it). I do have a blog though (as mentioned above).

Comment author: komponisto 15 November 2010 09:49:56PM 0 points [-]

Oh nice, I'm happy to know that someone else here went to UW!

Also Shalmanese.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 14 November 2010 07:05:37PM 2 points [-]

I would like that very much.

In general, I'd like it to be easier to search on this site.

Comment author: komponisto 15 November 2010 09:41:22PM *  1 point [-]

In general, I'd like it to be easier to search on this site.

Strongly seconded.

Example: A search for "the mathematicians have already covered this" failed to turn up this comment

I finally found it by laboriously browsing through the particular user's overview: that's right, clicking "Next", over and over and over. (All the while getting distracted into reading numerous old threads....)

So, there is more than one way in which room for improvement exists in this area.

(I'd also like to be able to easily retrieve old PMs, which are buried in one's inbox among all the numerous comment replies one has received in the meantime.)

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 13 November 2010 06:22:53PM *  10 points [-]

"If you believe A => B, then you have to ask yourself: which do I believe more? A, or not B?"

-- Hal Daume III

Comment author: komponisto 13 November 2010 07:18:58PM 1 point [-]

I'm definitely going to use that in the future.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 November 2010 08:57:49PM 0 points [-]

I disagree, since prediction != theory. It is certainly possible to have a theory (e.g. Freud's ideas about the ego and superego) that make no predictions. In the comment above, cousin_it is correct in that "unfalsifiable prediction" is a contradiction, but "unfalsifiable theory" is not. It just means that the theory is not well-formed and does not pay rent.

In response to comment by [deleted] on The Strong Occam's Razor
Comment author: komponisto 11 November 2010 10:50:26PM 0 points [-]

It is certainly possible to have a theory (e.g. Freud's ideas about the ego and superego) that make[s] no predictions.

Though cousin_it will have to speak for himself, I believe he was specifically disagreeing with this when he wrote:

Show me any unfalsifiable theory, and I'll invent some predictions that follow from it, they will just be "impossible to test".

Comment author: cousin_it 11 November 2010 08:00:50PM 2 points [-]

A prediction that's impossible to test is a contradiction in terms. Show me any unfalsifiable theory, and I'll invent some predictions that follow from it, they will just be "impossible to test".

Comment author: komponisto 11 November 2010 08:49:34PM 0 points [-]

...and this is why Popperian falsificationism is wrong!

There aren't any "unfalsifiable" theories, though there may be unintelligible theories.

Comment author: orthonormal 06 November 2010 01:15:10AM *  0 points [-]

Indeed. Before Darwin, design was a respectable-to-overwhelming hypothesis for the order of the natural world.

ETA: On second thought, that's too strong of a claim. See replies below.

Comment author: komponisto 06 November 2010 02:35:57PM 0 points [-]

On the other hand, there wasn't a whole lot of honest, systematic searching for other hypotheses before Darwin either.

Comment author: Louie 31 October 2010 03:36:44AM 2 points [-]

I'm buying ads for Policits is the Mind Killer already. That's one of the other few I'm experimenting with. I don't think people search for "politics" in general. Again, people search for very specific things and already have their minds made up.. so it's more likely that someone would search for "proof that Obama is a Muslim" or "why do liberals hate America?" than something as neutral and high-level as "politics". So coming up with decent keywords for this one has been harder than expected.

Comment author: komponisto 06 November 2010 12:54:32AM 3 points [-]

Call me crazy, but I actually think we'll do better among the people searching for "politics" -- fewer in number though they may be -- than people searching for "proof that Obama is a Muslim" and the like.

Comment author: cousin_it 05 November 2010 07:05:02PM *  4 points [-]

You're right. I'll tell what I know. A proper general announcement would be better, of course, but it's not within my power to speak for the government of LW. I just PM'd Eliezer asking for such an announcement to be made.

Some days ago I got a surprise PM from user matt saying I'd been made a moderator. As far as I know, everyone on the "top contributors" list except Roko got such messages. My only superpower is deleting ("banning") posts and comments, and it's meant to be used only for removing spam. I cannot promote posts to the frontpage or ban people. I have not exercised my power yet because there was no need. Lists of moderators are at the following URLs: mods for LW proper, mods for discussion section. I don't know if non-mods can see these lists, so I'll retype them here.

LW: Eliezer_Yudkowsky, RobinHanson, AnnaSalamon, Yvain, Alicorn, Kaj_Sotala, PhilGoetz, Wei_Dai, cousin_it, Vladimir_Nesov, Kevin

Discussion section: wmoore, AnnaSalamon, Eliezer_Yudkowsky, Yvain, Alicorn, Kaj_Sotala, PhilGoetz, Wei_Dai, cousin_it, Vladimir_Nesov, Kevin

It goes without saying that if there's ever any significant controversy about my "banning" anything (though I find that hard to imagine), I'll give up my mod status.

Comment author: komponisto 05 November 2010 07:26:29PM 0 points [-]

Thanks; upvoted.

Comment author: komponisto 05 November 2010 06:28:33PM 3 points [-]

I got made a moderator recently

Okay, I must have missed something here, but this is the second reference I've seen to this in the last week, without there having been any explicit general announcement that I can recall.

Since when are there "moderators" (as opposed to "editors") on Less Wrong?

As I understood things In The Beginning, moderation on LW was accomplished by voting, with two users (Robin Hanson and Eliezer Yudkowsky) having certain godlike powers such as promoting posts, deleting spam, and banning users. These users were called "editors". Later I learned that there were a couple more editors I hadn't heard about, but this didn't seem like a big deal because they seemed to be technical people who worked on the functioning of the site (maybe working for Tricycle or something).

However, I don't remember any post (or even comment) from an editor saying "Attention everybody! Less Wrong now has designated moderators. I'm pleased to announce that cousin_it, Yvain, and...[?]....will be serving in this capacity. Please congratulate these fine folks on their newly-acquired powers over you."

And nor am I aware of any list of moderators, or any indication on the status of such people on their user pages.

I'm not saying having moderators is a bad idea, by any means. But would a little more transparency really be so costly? Surely a heads-up is warranted whenever basic changes are made to the way the site works. Otherwise it seems sneaky.

Whenever someone is made a moderator, there should be an "investiture ceremony" in the form of (at the very least) a top-level post in the discussion section.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 03 November 2010 05:14:08PM *  1 point [-]

(Harry having to learn how to lose was great.)

Remember "The Cold Equations"? I wouldn't be shocked if Eliezer wound the entire fanfic up with some similar message.

Comment author: komponisto 03 November 2010 08:06:39PM *  0 points [-]

Remember "The Cold Equations"?

What an awful story. I just read it, and am now in a state of outrage.

The message is ostensibly that the laws of nature don't care about human welfare, which, as we all know, is true enough. But the problem described in the story is entirely human-caused: a straightforward engineering failure. It's the result of stupidity, poor planning, and failing to learn from past mistakes.

And the sexism ("OMG It's a girl!") makes it all the more distasteful, although that's probably unfair of me, since it was after all written in the 1950s.

I can't see Eliezer writing a story like this. Ever.

Comment author: NihilCredo 03 November 2010 05:32:26PM *  3 points [-]

the policy clearly diminishes the strength of the signal sent by voting as opposed to not voting.

Disagree. If the cost of voting is negligible (because you're going to be in the voting booth anyway) and you still vote blank or F.Y., that is a much stronger signal.

Someone who stays at home most often still has a favoured candidate, but he may be lazy, or the polls may have been so skewed that he figured it wasn't worth showing up. But someone who shows up and votes blank can only have done it because, for some reason, he had no preference in the election - and someone who writes F.Y. on the ballot can only have done it because he wants to express his spite at the whole system.

Comment author: komponisto 03 November 2010 06:16:58PM 0 points [-]

Right, well I think voting should be the costly signal, and not voting the default. I don't think abstention should be a signal of spite or contempt for the system; rather the opposite (signaling a sufficient level of contentment that one is indifferent to the outcome).

If you really want to express contempt, you can voluntarily show up and vote "F.Y".

Comment author: NihilCredo 03 November 2010 02:19:57PM 2 points [-]

Not pointless at all: it turns most of the cost of voting into a sunk cost, thus making it much more likely to be rational for any one citizen to cast a vote.

Comment author: komponisto 03 November 2010 05:11:51PM 2 points [-]

Well, then my original point stands, since the policy clearly diminishes the strength of the signal sent by voting as opposed to not voting.

And let me be clear: I do also object on general libertarian grounds to the government making me vote, i.e. I don't in fact believe voting is anywhere near important enough to justify such a policy. So I'm very happy not to be a citizen of one of those countries.

Comment author: NihilCredo 03 November 2010 12:28:47AM *  3 points [-]

That's not a problem, you can still vote blank or "[expletive]" for that.

Comment author: komponisto 03 November 2010 05:19:00AM *  3 points [-]

In that case, the requirement to show up at the polling station seems like a pointless infringement on personal liberty.

Comment author: komponisto 03 November 2010 12:04:03AM 0 points [-]

Should the U.S. go the Australia route?

Hell no. (No offense to the great nation of Australia, which in this particular regard is just like a number of other countries.)

The right to abstain is not often celebrated, but that doesn't make it less important. Being able to save one's vote for when it really matters, and thus signal by voting that one has a higher degree of interest in the election outcome, is no less valuable than the ability to express a preference for one candidate or party over another -- and it's something that Australians (and Brazilians, etc) obviously don't have.

Comment author: komponisto 01 November 2010 05:35:49PM 16 points [-]

Stop taking the numbers so damn seriously, and think in terms of subjective probability distributions [...], Michael Anissimov

I think it's worth giving the full quote:

Stop taking the numbers so damn seriously, and think in terms of subjective probability distributions, discard your mental associates between numbers and absolutes, and my choice to say a number, rather than a vague word that could be interpreted as a probability anyway, makes sense. Working on www.theuncertainfuture.com, one of the things I appreciated the most were experts with the intelligence to make probability estimates, which can be recorded, checked, and updated with evidence, rather than vague statements like “pretty likely”, which have to be converted into probability estimates for Bayesian updating anyway. Futurists, stick your neck out! Use probability estimates rather than facile absolutes or vague phrases that mean so little that you are essentially hedging yourself into meaninglessness anyway.

Total agreement from me, needless to say.

Comment author: komponisto 30 October 2010 07:52:01PM 1 point [-]

Posted on behalf of someone else who had the following comment:

I would have liked for [this post] to contain details about how to actually do this:

If you're uncomfortable not knowing, so that you find yourself grasping for one framework after another, build your tolerance for ambiguity, complexity, and unknowns.

In response to The spam must end
Comment author: Clippy 29 October 2010 03:14:21AM *  4 points [-]

What offence? I've never liked paperclipes, and I don't think anyone has ever accused me of such.

I want the disruptors thrown out just as much as you! It's really annoying when people post off-topic comments, even if it's just to be "funny".

In response to comment by Clippy on The spam must end
Comment author: komponisto 29 October 2010 06:15:21PM *  4 points [-]

papercliping the section (no offence clippy),

What offence? I've never liked paperclipes

The poster meant to write "paperclipping". You may want to modify your source code to be able to correctly interpret typos and misspellings. Indeed, humans tend not even to notice differences this subtle, which is why many of them are going to read your response as "I've never liked paperclips", and I know you don't want them to think that.

Comment author: komponisto 27 October 2010 10:21:28PM *  8 points [-]

Thought 4: Generally, those sorts of people tend to not be serious rationalists. Reasoning as if I can expect correlations among our decision algorithms seems questionable.

No kidding.

If I were you, I would first concentrate on getting the other jurors to reason correctly about the facts of the case, which is, ahem, enough of a problem.

(Though apparently -- and outrageously -- one has to be careful here: I know a mathematician who once served on a jury and was accused of juror misconduct for presenting "facts not in evidence" to his fellow jurors, namely "the mathematical theory of probability"!)

With regard to the moral issue of nullification, it seems to me to be quite clearly a quantitative issue of how egregious the law is and how draconian the punishment is likely to be. By no means do I see any general policy of the form "always nullify when you don't like the law" or "never nullify" as reasonable.

I'll explain the case against an "always nullify" rule, since I expect that will be more counterintuitive to most folks here.

Getting a society's rules to be codified into written law represents great progress, in the overall scheme of things. Back in the old days, whether you got to live in peace or thrown into a dungeon and your head cut off was determined by whether the overlords liked you or not -- and the rules for pleasing them weren't written down anywhere, certainly not in any form such that you could appeal to them and say "but you didn't follow the rules!"

Well, that's still fundamentally the case, except that we've gotten slightly better about it now. There are written laws, and, at least in theory, there are courts where you can go and say "but the government's position is incoherent!" and have that actually, you know, matter. But much of this formidable-looking edifice of a legal system is still something of a fiction. Laws are still written without the intention of their being taken literally, or even necessarily enforced at all: they're there so that the authorities have a "legitimate" pretext in case they decide they don't like someone and want to go after them. And there are so many laws, of such obscurity, that essentially everyone is probably violating a bunch of them, and so at the end of the day we're at the mercy of the people in power just like we always were. It's not quite as bad as it was in the old days, but the difference is merely quantitative. We still have further progress to make toward the ideal of explicit rules that will protect us from the arbitrary caprices of The Man.

Now what does this have to do with jury nullification? Well, consider which direction on this axis you're pushing in by adopting a policy of disregarding the written law and making policy ad-hoc while in a role not legally authorized to be a policy-making role. You may think you're helping to correct an imperfect set of rules -- and perhaps you are -- but you're also at the same time helping to enshrine the notion that the text of the written law doesn't really matter. If people thought the law actually mattered, they'd be much more careful about which laws they passed. However, as long as the notion persists that laws need not be taken literally, legislatures will continue to pass symbolic laws that will be enforced unsystematically, making everyone -- particularly society's envelope-pushers -- continually vulnerable to the whims of prosecutors and the like.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 22 October 2010 01:40:58AM 3 points [-]

How much of that is hindsight bias? Clues that show a specific hypothesis if you've located the hypothesis aren't necessarily that helpful. For me at least, even knowing the that Q=V, and seeing the clues, they don't intrinsically point to that. Most of them can be explained simply by the idea that Quirrell is subtle, evil, and likes corrupting people.

The biggest clue is the material about the Horcrux and if one hasn't read the books that likely goes completely out the window. (In fact, if I were Eliezer, I'd have Harry find out about Horcruxes pretty soon to help the less knowledgable readers.)

Comment author: komponisto 22 October 2010 02:57:17PM *  3 points [-]

For me at least, even knowing the that Q=V, and seeing the clues, they don't intrinsically point to that. Most of them can be explained simply by the idea that Quirrell is subtle, evil, and likes corrupting people.

The Law of Conservation of Detail (TV Tropes warning) implies that an important character who is subtle and evil (or even just subtle) has a substantial probability of being the villain.

I hadn't read the original series either, and so at first I had no idea that Q=V except from the Author's Notes; however, I suspect that by this point in the story I would have begun entertaining it seriously as a hypothesis. (And of course as long as the story is still being written, there's always some chance Eliezer could change his mind.)

Comment author: Vladimir_M 21 October 2010 08:05:10AM *  2 points [-]

To ask such questions, you must first define a scalar measure of "rationality" that can be compared between people. I don't find the choice of this measure at all obvious, or even that it can be meaningfully defined.

Comment author: komponisto 21 October 2010 08:28:04PM 2 points [-]

To ask such questions, you must first define a scalar measure of "rationality" that can be compared between people.

Not necessarily; there just has to be an ordering. Clearly people's rationality can be compared, as extreme cases illustrate: Eliezer Yudkowsky is more rational than Kent Hovind, for example.

Comment author: matt 20 October 2010 09:57:26PM 4 points [-]

We hope we've just fixed it - sorry about the delay.
(this comment is actually a test that should invalidate the cache and force the sidebar to update itself)

Comment author: komponisto 20 October 2010 10:05:11PM 1 point [-]

Hallelujah, it appears to be working.

In response to Rational Regions?
Comment author: komponisto 20 October 2010 09:56:31PM *  3 points [-]

In addition to whatever differences in rationality level there may be between places, there are also significant differences in how you tell a person in a given place is unusually rational. (This is an automatic consequence of beliefs being correlated with geography.)

For example, atheism seems to be a much better filter for rationality in the United States than in Europe (where it is not nearly as much of a "contrarian" position).

What are some good regional litmus tests?

In response to You Only Live Twice
Comment author: [deleted] 18 October 2010 02:34:29PM *  9 points [-]

I have a standard answer for cryonics advocates: ask me in 10 years.

In 10 years, I'll be 32, and if all goes well I'll have my life together, I'll be able to point to a few successes, and I'll be able to say that my life isn't a waste. If I like being alive at 32, I'll probably like being alive hundreds of years from now. On the other hand, if I'm 32 and everything has gone wrong, and I'm down and out, and I wake up every morning wishing I hadn't, then I'm probably not going to want to live one more year, let alone hundreds.

In the meantime, I really don't know. I'm in limbo. Sometimes I want to be around to see what happens next, sometimes I really don't. Sometimes I'm crazy excited about planning for my future and how great it's going to be, and sometimes I feel certain that I'll never make it, and all I want is to have never been born, and anyone who thinks well of me must either be lying or must be a loser himself.

So... call me in ten years.

In response to comment by [deleted] on You Only Live Twice
Comment author: komponisto 18 October 2010 05:10:22PM 5 points [-]

Modulo the specific numbers 10 and 32, this is exactly how I feel about it. I don't think I've ever seen anyone express this point of view before!

That said, if signing up for cryonics were easy (as in a 5-minute form online, say), there's a good chance I would have signed up already during a "good" moment.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 17 October 2010 09:12:00AM 1 point [-]

For me, bullies children = utterly revolting.

I'm surprised this isn't widely shared, but I seem to be an odd person in many respects.

Comment author: komponisto 17 October 2010 09:48:52AM *  6 points [-]

Your perspective is that of an adult, of course; but the Harry Potter books are children's literature, and thus (I presume) take a child's point of view on the world. Children often perceive adult authority figures as "mean" even when they are well within the bounds of what (adult) society considers to be acceptable behavior. Such "meanness", while unpleasant, is not something children are necessarily shocked by; they expect it in more or less the same way that adults expect "outrageous" actions from the government .

Comment author: gwern 14 October 2010 03:37:17PM 6 points [-]

Yet now this kind of mathematics is taught regularly to hordes of IQ 110 college freshmen, and (I expect) is considered elementary and routine by a majority of LW readers

This seems factually false to me. For starters, the average IQ of college freshman (all colleges, all majors) is more like 115 or 120 (choose the reference you please from Google). And math or physics majors are a cut far above that average, with GRE scores indicating an average around 130. (Prospective grad students, yes, but the ranking fits with high school SAT scores.)

I don't think very many schools make relativity-level mathematics (or even just multi-variate calculus sufficient to solve Newtonian problems) a core requirement rather than major-specific...

Comment author: komponisto 14 October 2010 04:54:20PM 2 points [-]

The number 110 was just a guess, of course, but the point clearly stands even if the average IQ of people taking business calculus is 120.

The 17th-century counterparts of these folks would have been illiterate peasants or possibly, in a few cases, local merchants; they would not have been Newton and Leibniz.

Comment author: [deleted] 14 October 2010 01:38:44AM 6 points [-]

An obvious one: "Most people are very stupid." My own experience doesn't bear it out. My own impressions and models of the world run precisely the opposite direction. But enough people seem to believe it that I'll give it credence for that reason.

Comment author: komponisto 14 October 2010 01:32:02PM 8 points [-]

If I recall correctly, your education has taken place at particularly elite universities, which would tend to indicate that you've spent an atypically large amount of time interacting with people of very high intelligence. This may explain some of the disconnect between your impressions and those of other folks.

Comment author: komponisto 13 October 2010 10:00:56PM *  1 point [-]

I interpret the above quotations (and many others by similar such people) to point to a markedly lower than usual interest in status. As JoshuaZ points out, one could instead read the quotations as counter-signaling, but such an interpretation feels like a stretch to me. I doubt that in practice such remarks serve as an effective counter-signal.

There is however a third alternative: noblesse oblige (fake) humility. Part of the standard role of a high-status person is to "show kindness toward their loyal subjects" (this is the "Gandalf" quality that Eliezer disdains). This differs from countersignaling in that it doesn't involve mimicking low-status behavior. (An appropriate analogue might be the very richest people starting philanthropic foundations -- this is different from both conspicuous consumption and dressing like poor people.)

Comment author: MatthewW 12 October 2010 06:50:39PM 7 points [-]

I think it's quite normal that if someone is acknowledged by their peers to be among the very best at what they do, they won't waste much time with status games.

There's an exception if doing what they do requires publicity to bring in sales or votes.

Comment author: komponisto 13 October 2010 09:53:16PM 0 points [-]

I think it's quite normal that if someone is acknowledged by their peers to be among the very best at what they do, they won't waste much time with status games.

Excellent point.

Comment author: komponisto 13 October 2010 09:41:49PM 1 point [-]

AI hard takeoff before 2100 might count as an example for me, although the issue is rather complex.

Also, I don't see any reason why things like quantum chromodynamics (or, for that matter, special relativity) shouldn't count, unless you're just trying to rule out a large class of predictable answers.

In response to Open Thread
Comment author: komponisto 13 October 2010 07:00:44PM 4 points [-]

Yes -- I remember having an idea recently that I thought was worth posting as an open thread comment, but didn't seem worth making a post on, even here on the discussion section.

Unfortunately, I don't remember what the idea was!

But this experience does suggest that open threads may continue to be useful.

Comment author: RobinZ 13 October 2010 12:55:30PM 0 points [-]

I have noticed that links to Rationality Quotes October in Recent Comments have the same problem for me - the problem is that the r/discussion/ somehow gets inserted between lesswrong.com/ and lw/2tw.

Comment author: komponisto 13 October 2010 05:09:59PM *  2 points [-]

Speaking of Recent Comments, are we ever going to get that thing fixed? It's been broken for something like a few weeks now. (It makes one feel like LW is "ill".)

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 11 October 2010 10:59:31PM *  5 points [-]

This post should review the arguments in When (Not) To Use Probabilities.

Sometimes the conclusion you can derive from the made up numbers is worse than a directly intuited conclusion, since the latter is one step closer to native form of the request for answers from the brain.

Comment author: komponisto 13 October 2010 03:16:21AM 1 point [-]

This post should review the arguments in When (Not) To Use Probabilities.

The lesson of that post is basically "don't let yourself be deceived into thinking your calibration is better than it is". But if you're poorly calibrated, better to know this, and giving explicit probability estimates may help you find this out.

Hiding your judgements doesn't make them better.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 October 2010 06:22:39PM 11 points [-]

I'm interested in testing what happens if you watch "8 minutes of courage":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI1FP3czJnY

Comment author: komponisto 12 October 2010 08:39:34PM 0 points [-]

I chuckled in amusement. Basically, my reaction was similar to cousin_it's and jimrandomh's.

I don't find machismo nearly as distasteful as Alicorn does, but probably a bit more than you do.

Comment author: cousin_it 12 October 2010 02:01:16PM *  0 points [-]

komponisto, did you leave my question unanswered because you don't know the answer, or because you thought the question stupid and decided to bail out? If you can dissolve my confusion, please do.

Comment author: komponisto 12 October 2010 04:42:30PM *  1 point [-]

Sorry! I didn't have an answer immediately, but thought I might come up with one after a day or two. Unfortunately, by that time, I had forgotten about the question!

Anyway, the way I'd approach it is to ask what is wrong, from our point of view, with a given nonstandard theory.

Actually, I just thought of something while writing this comment. Take your example of adding a "PA is inconsistent" axiom to PA. Yes, we could add such an axiom, but why bother? What use do we get from this new system that we didn't already get from PA? If the answer is "nothing", then we can invoke a simplicity criterion. On the other hand, if there is some situation where this system is actually convenient, then there is indeed nothing "wrong" with it, and we wouldn't want an AI to think that there was.

(Edit: I'll try to make sure I reply more quickly next time.)

Comment author: lackofcheese 09 October 2010 12:45:07PM *  1 point [-]

I had much the same experience as Sinai. Personally, though, I didn't bother to try this test after having already been biased by Eliezer's opinion on the matter.

Also, I feel that the uselessness of the linked pro-guilt site hurts the overall experiment too much. I know it wasn't translated at the time, but using the Massei report as Sinai did makes the test much more effective.

Comment author: komponisto 11 October 2010 07:20:08PM *  0 points [-]

I know it wasn't translated at the time, but using the Massei report as Sinai did makes the test much more effective.

It's not just that it hadn't been translated; it hadn't even been written!

It came out in March, around the same time as Bruce Fisher's excellent Injustice in Perugia site went up. If I were proposing this experiment today, those would be the sources I would use (i.e. the Massei-Cristiani report for pro-guilt, and IIP, including the appeal summaries, for pro-innocence).

Believe it or not, True Justice for Meredith Kercher represented about the highest quality pro-guilt advocacy available at the time of this post.

Comment author: komponisto 10 October 2010 08:54:40PM 10 points [-]

In a recent piece for Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens makes the following comment:

somebody has written to me from a famous university to suggest that I have myself cryonically or cryogenically frozen against the day when the magic bullet, or whatever it is, has been devised. (When I failed to reply to this, I got a second missive, suggesting that I freeze at least my brain so that its cortex could be appreciated by posterity. Well, I mean to say, gosh, thanks awfully.)

The context (in which this is listed among various pieces of pseudoscientific treatment advice he has received) makes it clear that he is dismissive of the idea.

Which is a shame, needless to say.

Comment author: komponisto 09 October 2010 06:04:55AM *  3 points [-]

[Pro-nice people] like transparently "happy" music and transparently "beautiful" works of art and literature

Apologies if this seems like a nitpick in context, but I am in general very suspicious of theories that don't seem to acknowledge the complexity of aesthetic value/experience. I have cringed since elementary school at how people classify music into "happy" and "sad", and I'm pretty sure that "beautiful" is comparable to "good" in its complexity as a concept. (It's also a loaded word, because "beautiful" is arguably synonymous with "of high aesthetic worth", in which case it doesn't make sense to "dislike beauty".)

I have a pro-nice personality, a melancholic temperament, and a taste for the entire spectrum of emotional nuances present in art.

Comment author: komponisto 09 October 2010 05:39:07AM 1 point [-]

I'll tell you one realm in which I definitely see something like this, and it's one I know you're familiar with: mathematics.

There are some mathematicians who greatly dislike "pathology", and prefer that all intuitively natural conjectures be true, and steadfastly avoid subjects where this isn't the case. This is the "pro-nice" camp.

Then there are the "anti-nicers" who delight in the exotic, bizarre, and counterintuitive, and are attracted to the very subjects that the pro-nicers do their best to stay away from.

I think I would place my own sympathies with the latter group, in the sense that I have a taste for exoticity and take pleasure in expanding my intuition beyond the mundane. On the other hand, nothing pleases me so much as an elegant theory that makes the previously complicated look simple.

Comment author: cousin_it 08 October 2010 08:09:02AM *  2 points [-]

Thanks! Your comment prompts me to reformulate my original question this way: given a formal system, how can the AI determine that it talks about "the" natural numbers? For example, we can add to PA some axiom that rules out its standard model, but leaves many nonstandard ones. The simplest example would be to add the inconsistency of PA - the resulting theory will (counterintuitively) be just as consistent as PA, but quite weird. It will have many interesting provable theorems that are nevertheless common-sensically "false", e.g. "PA proves 1+1=3". Can the AI recognize such situations and say "no way, this formal system doesn't seem to describe my regular integers"?

About the consistency of ZFC: it's certainly a neat idea to conclude an arithmetical statement is "probably true" if you can't find a disproof for a long time. Unfortunately, if we have an arithmetical statement that we can neither prove or disprove so far, your idea would have us believe that it's true and its negation is also true. That doesn't look like correct Bayesian reasoning to me!

Comment author: komponisto 08 October 2010 10:21:29PM *  3 points [-]

Can the AI recognize such situations and say "no way, this formal system doesn't seem to describe my regular integers"?

It need not -- asking whether a formal system "describes my regular integers" is a disguised query for whether it satisfies some set of properties that happen to be useful. All the AI needs to be able to do is evaluate how effectively different models describe whatever it's trying to use them to describe.

Unfortunately, if we have an arithmetical statement that we can neither prove or disprove so far, your idea would have us believe that it's true and its negation is also true. That doesn't look like correct Bayesian reasoning to me!

I don't see why not. It's not that we would believe the statement and its negation are both true; rather, we would believe that the statement is true with probability x and false with probability 1-x, as usual.

Comment author: wedrifid 06 October 2010 03:16:30PM 6 points [-]

Wow. I just felt a surge of patriotism. I had no idea that sort of system was in place in any first world country. I'm sure it's all Right, True, and Capitalistic but I must say I prefer the system here.

In fact, in rural areas (where I grew up) most firefighters are actually volunteers. Those that I knew considered the drastic enhancement to sexual attractiveness to be more than enough payment. ;)

Comment author: komponisto 08 October 2010 01:33:11PM 3 points [-]

Wow. I just felt a surge of patriotism. I had no idea that sort of system was in place in any first world country. I'm sure it's all Right, True, and Capitalistic but I must say I prefer the system here.

It is very likely that this is an issue of a particular locality and that plenty of places in the U.S. are sane about matters like this. (You'll also note that it made the news, suggesting people may not have realized this kind of thing was possible.)

From what I know, it's utterly common for several different fire departments to respond to a single call that happens to be near, even if not in, their specific jurisdictions, and I was utterly shocked to read this story.

Comment author: cousin_it 07 October 2010 11:56:08PM *  2 points [-]

I want it to somehow recognize that Goodstein's theorem is likely to be true and ZFC is likely to be consistent - without hardcoding some strong formal system that already implies these facts, because we humans didn't have such an epistemic gift and still succeeded at the task.

In general, what's mysterious to me here is the nature of intuition and its relationship with mathematical truth. Here's a simple testcase: throwing darts at the real line. Would we wish an AI to be swayed by such arguments? How are they different from relying on physical intuition (about apples lying on the table, or something) to assert the consistency of strong set theories?

Comment author: komponisto 08 October 2010 04:45:46AM *  11 points [-]

I want it to somehow recognize that Goodstein's theorem is likely to be true and ZFC is likely to be consistent -

The first thing to ask is why we humans believe this to be the case. When looked at this way, it seems like a straightforward case of inductive (=Bayesian) reasoning: we expect that if ZFC were inconsistent, we would have found a contradiction by now. Right?

In general, what's mysterious to me here is the nature of intuition and its relationship with mathematical truth.

This is a mystery that I feel can dissolve -- at least, I've done so to my own personal satisfaction. The answer -- my answer -- is that "mathematical truth" is a purely formal notion, with no dependence on intuition. A theorem which has been formally proved in an axiom system can never be said to be "mathematically incorrect". The worst that can be said is that the particular axiom system that contains the theorem is inappropriate for modeling some physical phenomenon of interest.

(Hence, for example, my stance that it is an outright mistake to say that "infinite sets don't exist". What is meant by people who say this -- the only coherent thing than can be meant -- is "no aspect of the physical universe is appropriately modeled by a mathematical axiom system in which infinite sets exist". I believe this is also likely erroneous, but at least it isn't blatantly incoherent.)

Here's a simple testcase: throwing darts at the real line. Would we wish an AI to be swayed by such arguments?

As per the above, it's a mistake to argue about whether Freiling's axiom is "true" in the first place. It's true in ZFC+~CH, and false in ZFC+CH, end of story. It's no different from arguing about whether the sum of the angles in a triangle is "really" 180 degrees: in Euclidean geometry it is, in hyperbolic geometry it isn't. You can ask whether Euclidean geometry is consistent, and you can ask whether Euclidean geometry is an appropriate model of the physical world, but you can't ask whether Euclidean geometry is "true".

Comment author: komponisto 07 October 2010 10:41:45PM 4 points [-]

Frankly, I don't understand what the mystery is here. Both #1 and #2 are simply mathematical facts, just like the theorems of arithmetic.

Or perhaps I should rephrase it this way: what task do you want the computer to be able to perform?

Comment author: komponisto 07 October 2010 05:36:51AM *  1 point [-]

Science is the only news. When you scan through a newspaper or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same sorry cyclic dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness, and even the technology is predictable if you know the science. Human nature doesn’t change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly. – Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Discipline (2009), p. 216

This should be in the rationality quotes thread, if it hasn't made an appearance already.

Comment author: komponisto 07 October 2010 05:30:33AM *  0 points [-]

This makes sense when you consider the fact that getting elected to Congress is not easy -- hence members are likely to be significantly more intelligent than average. Given a fairly high prior on human hypocrisy to begin with, combined with the severely diminishing social returns on overtly displaying intelligence, hypocrisy is almost always a better explanation for recognizably "idiotic" congressional behavior than actual idiocy.

(This is not to say that Congress is especially competent; but their true incompetence tends to be of the sort common to many groups of people -- the kind that later explains failures, rather than the kind that would make them the object of contemporary derision .)

Comment author: RomanDavis 06 October 2010 10:11:13PM 1 point [-]

Yes, they are. But I've never heard a pilot called a soldier. This goes for most jobs performed by people in the O Ranks.

I am using Soldier to be interchangeable with Enlisted Man since I've seen and heard it used that way myself.

I assumed it was used that way in context, but maybe it wasn't.

Comment author: komponisto 06 October 2010 11:07:32PM *  1 point [-]

No, "soldier", at least in U.S. military jargon, means "member of the Army" (as opposed to the other services). The Army chief-of-staff, a four-star general, will refer to themselves as a "soldier".

Comment author: RomanDavis 06 October 2010 08:14:36PM *  1 point [-]

Usually military personnel who have received expensive enough training to justify that are called officers, but there are definitely some exceptions. I wouldn't disagree.

And, now that you mention it, I could imagine the pay out being expensive enough that not paying the money would flatly irrational, but I don't know the number.

Comment author: komponisto 06 October 2010 09:56:42PM 1 point [-]

Usually military personnel who have received expensive enough training to justify that are called officers, but there are definitely some exceptions.

That isn't a counterargument. "Officer" is a (category of) rank, not a job description. A whole lot of actual military "action" work is in fact performed by officers, particularly if it involves high levels of skill. (For example, pilots are usually officers.)

Comment author: SilasBarta 06 October 2010 05:46:16PM *  10 points [-]

That's because it's easy to misvalue assets if you're disconnected from the production process. So when you have specialized bookkeepers, others will typcially see them as ignorant of the true value of the assets, and associate this with bookkeeping per se, rather than bookkeeping with a screwy incentive structure and/or knowledge flows. Because this is the context in which most people interface with accountants, they tend to be associated with misvaluing assets. And thus:

"Beancounters didn't think a soldier's life was worth 300 [thousand dollars]." -- Batman Begins

Edit: Sorry, I forgot to translate all that: P(observe "accountant" | believe accountant misvalued assets) > P(observe "accountant" | ~believe accountant misvalued assets)

Comment author: komponisto 06 October 2010 05:56:30PM 2 points [-]

This is very insightful. Upvoted.

Comment author: Apprentice 06 October 2010 10:13:16AM 23 points [-]

We live in a world where it has become "politically correct" to avoid absolutes. Many want all religions to be given the same honor, and all gods regarded as equally true and equally fictitious. But take these same people, who want fuzzy, all-inclusive thinking in spiritual matters, and put them on an airplane. You will find they insist on a very dogmatic, intolerant pilot who will stay on the "straight and narrow" glidepath so their life will not come to a violent end short of the runway. They want no fuzzy thinking here!

-- Jack T. Chick

Comment author: komponisto 06 October 2010 05:14:58PM 12 points [-]

Compare:

Show me a cultural relativist at thirty thousand feet and I'll show you a hypocrite.

-- Richard Dawkins

Comment author: Vladimir_M 05 October 2010 10:42:20PM *  3 points [-]

That’s an excellent list of questions! It will help me greatly to systematize my thinking on the topic.

Before replying to the specific items you list, perhaps I should first state the general position I’m coming from, which motivates me to get into discussions of this sort. Namely, it is my firm belief that when we look at the present state of human knowledge, one of the principal sources of confusion, nonsense, and pseudosicence is physics envy, which leads people in all sorts of fields to construct nonsensical edifices of numerology and then pretend, consciously or not, that they’ve reached some sort of exact scientific insight. Therefore, I believe that whenever one encounters people talking about numbers of any sort that look even slightly suspicious, they should be considered guilty until proven otherwise -- and this entire business with subjective probability estimates for common-sense beliefs doesn’t come even close to clearing that bar for me.

Now to reply to your list.


(1) Confession of frequentism. Only sensible numerical probabilities are those related to frequencies, i.e. either frequencies of outcomes of repeated experiments, or probabilities derived from there. (Creative drawing of reference-class boundaries may be permitted.) Especially, prior probabilities are meaningless.

(2) Any sensible numbers must be produced using procedures that ultimately don't include any numerical parameters (maybe except small integers like 2,3,4). Any number which isn't a result of such a procedure is labeled arbitrary, and therefore meaningless. (Observation and measurement, of course, do count as permitted procedures. Admittedly arbitrary steps, like choosing units of measurement, are also permitted.)

My answer to (1) follows from my opinion about (2).

In my view, a number that gives any information about the real world must ultimately refer, either directly or via some calculation, to something that can be measured or counted (at least in principle, perhaps using a thought-experiment). This doesn’t mean that all sensible numbers have to be derived from concrete empirical measurements; they can also follow from common-sense insight and generalization. For example, reading about Newton’s theory leads to the common-sense insight that it’s a very close approximation of reality under certain assumptions. Now, if we look at the gravity formula F=m1*m2/r^2 (in units set so that G=1), the number 2 in the denominator is not a product of any concrete measurement, but a generalization from common sense. Yet what makes it sensible is that it ultimately refers to measurable reality via a well-defined formula: measure the force between two bodies of known masses at distance r, and you’ll get log(m1*m2/F)/log(r) = 2.

Now, what can we make out of probabilities from this viewpoint? I honestly can’t think of any sensible non-frequentist answer to this question. Subjectivist Bayesian phrases such as “the degree of belief” sound to me entirely ghostlike unless this “degree” is verifiable via some frequentist practical test, at least in principle. In this sense, I do confess frequentism. (Though I don’t wish to subscribe to all the related baggage from various controversies in statistics, much of which is frankly over my head.)

(3) Degrees of confidence shall be expressed without reflexive thinking about them. Trying to establish a fixed scale of confidence levels (like impossible - very unlikely - unlikely - possible - likely - very likely - almost certain - certain), or actively trying to compare degrees of confidence in different beliefs is cheating, since such scales can be then converted into numbers using a non-numerical procedure.

That depends on the concrete problem under consideration, and on the thinker who is considering it. The thinker’s brain produces an answer alongside a more or less fuzzy feeling of confidence, and the human language has the capacity to express these feelings with about the same level of fuziness as that signal. It can be sensible to compare intuitive confidence levels, if such comparison can be put to a practical (i.e. frequentist) test. Eight ordered intuitive levels of certainty might perhaps be too much, but with, say, four levels, I could produce four lists of predictions labeled “almost impossible,” “unlikely,” “likely,” and “almost certain,” such that common-sense would tell us that, with near-certainty, those in each subsequent list would turn out to be true in ever greater proportion.

If I wish to express these probabilities as numbers, however, this is not a legitimate step unless the resulting numbers can be justified in the sense discussed above under (1) and (2). This requires justification both in the sense of defining what aspect of reality they refer to (where frequentism seems like the only answer), and guaranteeing that they will be accurate under empirical tests. If they can be so justified, then we say that the intuitive estimate is “well-calibrated.” However, calibration is usually not possible in practice, and there are only two major exceptions.

The first possible path towards accurate calibration is when the same person performs essentially the same judgment many times, and from the past performance we extract the frequency with which their brain tends to produce the right answer. If this level of accuracy remains roughly constant in time, then it makes sense to attach it as the probability to that person’s future judgments on the topic. This approach treats the relevant operations in the brain as a black box whose behavior, being roughly constant, can be subjected to such extrapolation.

The second possible path is reached when someone has a sufficient level of insight about some problem to cross the fuzzy limit between common-sense thinking and an actual scientific model. Increasingly subtle and accurate thinking about a problem can result in the construction of a mathematical model that approximates reality well enough that when applied in a shut-up-and-calculate way, it yields probability estimates that will be subsequently vindicated empirically.

(Still, deciding whether the model is applicable in some particular situation remains a common-sense problem, and the probabilities yielded by the model do not capture this uncertainty. If a well-established physical theory, applied by competent people, says that p=0.9999 for some event, common sense tells me that I should treat this event as near-certain -- and, if repeated many times, that it will come out the unlikely way very close to one in 10,000 times. On the other hand, if p=0.9999 is produced by some suspicious model that looks like it might be a product of data-dredging rather than real insight about reality, common sense tells me that the event is not at all certain. But there is no way to capture this intuitive uncertainty with a sensible number. The probabilities coming from calibration of repeated judgment are subject to analogous unquantifiable uncertainty.)

There is also a third logical possibility, namely that some people in some situations have precise enough intuitions of certaintly that they can quantify them in an accurate way, just like some people can guess what time it is with remarkable precision without looking at the clock. But I see little evidence of this occurring in reality, and even if it does, these are very rare special cases.

(4) The question of whether somebody is well calibrated is confused for some reason. Calibrating people has no sense. Although we may take the "almost certain" statements of a person and look at how often they are true, the resulting frequency has no sense for some reason.

I disagree with this, as explained above. Calibration can be done successfully in the special cases I mentioned. However, in cases where it cannot be done, which includes the great majority of the actual beliefs and conclusions made by human brains, devising numerical probabilities makes no sense.

(5) Unlike #3, beliefs can be ordered or classified on some scale (possibly imprecisely), but assigning numerical values brings confusing connotations and should be avoided. Alternatively said, the meaning subjective probabilities is preserved after monotonous rescaling.

This should be clear from the answer to (3).


[Continued in a separate comment below due to excessive length.]

Comment author: komponisto 06 October 2010 06:45:20AM *  3 points [-]

I should first state the general position I’m coming from, which motivates me to get into discussions of this sort. Namely, it is my firm belief that when we look at the present state of human knowledge, one of the principal sources of confusion, nonsense, and pseudosicence is physics envy, which leads people in all sorts of fields to construct nonsensical edifices of numerology and then pretend, consciously or not, that they’ve reached some sort of exact scientific insight.

I'll point out here that reversed stupidity is not intelligence, and that for every possible error, there is an opposite possible error.

In my view, if someone's numbers are wrong, that should be dealt with on the object level (e.g. "0.001 is too low", with arguments for why), rather than retreating to the meta level of "using numbers caused you to err". The perspective I come from is wanting to avoid the opposite problem, where being vague about one's beliefs allows one to get away without subjecting them to rigorous scrutiny. (This, too, by the way, is a major hallmark of pseudoscience.)

But I'll note that even as we continue to argue under opposing rhetorical banners, our disagreement on the practical issue seems to have mostly evaporated; see here for instance. You also do admit in the end that fear of poor calibration is what is underlying your discomfort with numerical probabilities:

If I wish to express these probabilities as numbers, however, this is not a legitimate step unless the resulting numbers can be justified... If they can be so justified, then we say that the intuitive estimate is “well-calibrated.” However, calibration is usually not possible in practice...

As a theoretical matter, I disagree completely with the notion that probabilities are not legitimate or meaningful unless they're well-calibrated. There is such a thing as a poorly-calibrated Bayesian; it's a perfectly coherent concept. The Bayesian view of probabilities is that they refer specifically to degrees of belief, and not anything else. We would of course like the beliefs so represented to be as accurate as possible; but they may not be in practice.

If my internal "Bayesian calculator" believes P(X) = 0.001, and X turns out to be true, I'm not made less wrong by having concealed the number, saying "I don't think X is true" instead. Less embarrassed, perhaps, but not less wrong.

Comment author: Mass_Driver 06 October 2010 04:14:18AM *  3 points [-]

brief (n.) from L. breve (gen. brevis), noun derivative of L. adj. brevis (see brief (adj.)) which came to mean "letter, summary" (specifically a letter of the pope, less ample and solemn than a bull), and came to mean "letter of authority," which yielded the modern, legal sense of "summary of the facts of a case" (1630s). The verb meaning "to give instructions or information to" (1866) was originally "to instruct by a brief" (1862); hence briefing, first attested 1910 but popularized by WWII pre-flight conferences.

[Dictionary.com]

As a member of the legal profession, all I have to add is that "summary of the facts of the case" isn't quite right; better would be "summary of the law that applies to the facts of the case." The term passed from ecclesiastical law to civil law because the applicable civil law is an authority on what a judge should do in much the same way that a papal proclamation was thought of as an authority on what Catholics should do.

Comment author: komponisto 06 October 2010 05:36:49AM 0 points [-]

Interesting; thanks.

In the Italian system, as I understand it, the first level of appeal remains concerned with the facts of the case, in addition to the applicable law -- so "summary of the facts of the case" would actually be more appropriate than usual here. (Although the most informative description is probably just "critique of the lower court's ruling".)

Comment author: Alicorn 05 October 2010 08:15:24PM 8 points [-]

Why does something called a "brief" have 174-plus pages?

Comment author: komponisto 05 October 2010 08:34:35PM 2 points [-]

Ha -- you'd have to ask a member of the legal profession. (No doubt you could think of a few other questions while you were at it.)

In fairness, however, the document is actually called an atto di appello (literally "act of appeal"). I probably should have just translated it as "appeal document" rather than trying to show off my cursory familiarity with (anglophone) legal terminology.

Comment author: komponisto 05 October 2010 07:02:24PM *  13 points [-]

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

-- Bertrand Russell

(Quoted, in Italian translation, on p. 174 of Amanda Knox's appeal brief.)

Comment author: soreff 04 October 2010 07:10:19PM 2 points [-]

(3) 0.1% (=10^(-3)) to 1% (once-in-a-lifetime level surprise on an important question)

10^-3 is roughly the probability that I try to start my car and it won't start because the battery has gone bad. Is the scale intended only for questions one asks once per lifetime? There are lots of questions that one asks once a day, hence my car example.

Comment author: komponisto 04 October 2010 07:40:49PM *  1 point [-]

That is precisely why I added the phrase "on an important question". It was intended to rule out exactly those sorts of things.

The intended reference class (for me) consists of matters like the Amanda Knox case. But if I got into the habit of judging similar cases every day, that wouldn't work either.

Think "questions I might write a LW post about".

Comment author: Vladimir_M 04 October 2010 12:11:00AM *  2 points [-]

komponisto:

Numbers get people to convey more information about their beliefs. It doesn't matter whether you actually use numbers, or do something similar (and equivalent) like systematize the use of vague expressions. I'd be just as happy if people used a "five-star" system, or even in many cases if they just compared the belief in question to other beliefs used as reference-points.

If I understand correctly, you're saying that talking about numbers rather than the usual verbal expressions of certainty prompts people to be more careful and re-examine their reasoning more strictly. This may be true sometimes, but on the other hand, numbers also tend to give a false feeling of accuracy and rigor where there is none. One of the usual symptoms (and, in turn, catalysts) of pseudoscience is the use of numbers with spurious precision and without rigorous justification.

In any case, you seem to concede that these numbers ultimately don't convey any more information than various vague verbal expressions of confidence. If you want to make the latter more systematic and clear, I have no problem with that, but I see no way to turn them into actual numbers without introducing spurious precision.

The probability calculation you present should represent your brain's reasoning, as revealed by introspection. This is not a perfect process, and may be subject to later refinement. But it is definitely meaningful.

Trouble is, this is often not possible. Most of what happens in your brain is not amenable to introspection, and you cannot devise a probability calculation that will capture all the important things that happen there. Take your own example:

For example, consider my current probability estimate of 10^(-3) that Amanda Knox killed her roommate. On my current analysis, this is obtained as follows: I start with a prior of 10^(-4) (from a general homicide rate of about 10^(-3), plus reasoning that Knox is demographically an order of magnitude less likely to kill than the typical person; the figure happens to match my intuitive sense that I'd have to meet about 10,000 similar people before I'd have any fear for my life). Then all the evidence in the case raises the probability by about an order of magnitude at most, yielding 10^(-3).

See, this is where, in my opinion, you're introducing spurious numerical claims that are at best unnecessary and at worst outright misleading.

First you note that murderers are extremely rare, and that AK is a sort of person especially unlikely to be one. OK, say you can justify these numbers by looking at crime statistics. Then you perform a complex common-sense evaluation of the evidence, and your brain tells you that on the whole it's weak, so it's highly unlikely that AK killed the victim. So far, so good. But then you insist on turning this feeling of near-certainty about AK's innocence into a number, and you end up making a quantitative claim that has no justification at all. You say:

Now, this is just a rough order-of-magnitude argument. But it's already much more meaningful and useful than my just saying "I don't think she did it".

I strongly disagree. Neither is this number you came up with any more meaningful than the simple plain statement "I think it's highly unlikely she did it," nor does it offer any additional practical benefit. On the contrary, it suggests that you can actually make a mathematically rigorous case that the number is within some well-defined limits. (Which you do disclaim, but which is easy to forget.)

Even worse, your claims suggest that while your numerical estimates may be off by an order of magnitude or so, the model you're applying to the problem captures reality well enough that it's only necessary to plug in accurate probability estimates. But how do you know that the model is correct in the first place? Your numbers are ultimately based on an entirely non-mathematical application of common sense in constructing this model -- and the uncertainty introduced there is altogether impossible for you to quantify meaningfully.

Comment author: komponisto 04 October 2010 06:09:18PM 12 points [-]

Let's see if we can try to hug the query here. What exactly is the mistake I'm making when I say that I believe such-and-such is true with probability 0.001?

Is it that I'm not likely to actually be right 999 times out of 1000 occasions when I say this? If so, then you're (merely) worried about my calibration, not about the fundamental correspondence between beliefs and probabilities.

Or is it, as you seem now to be suggesting, a question of attire: no one has any business speaking "numerically" unless they're (metaphorically speaking) "wearing a lab coat"? That is, using numbers is a privilege reserved for scientists who've done specific kinds of calculations?

It seems to me that the contrast you are positing between "numerical" statements and other indications of degree is illusory. The only difference is that numbers permit an arbitrarily high level of precision; their use doesn't automatically imply a particular level. Even in the context of scientific calculations, the numbers involved are subject to some particular level of uncertainty. When a scientist makes a calculation to 15 decimal places, they shouldn't be interpreted as distinguishing between different 20-decimal-digit numbers.

Likewise, when I make the claim that the probability of Amanda Knox's guilt is 10^(-3), that should not be interpreted as distinguishing (say) between 0.001 and 0.002. It's meant to be distinguished from 10^(-2) and (perhaps) 10^(-4). I was explicit about this when I said it was an order-of-magnitude estimate. You may worry that such disclaimers are easily forgotten -- but this is to disregard the fact that similar disclaimers always apply whenever numbers are used in any context!

In any case, you seem to concede that these numbers ultimately don't convey any more information than various vague verbal expressions of confidence. If you want to make the latter more systematic and clear, I have no problem with that, but I see no way to turn them into actual numbers without introducing spurious precision.

Here's the way I do it: I think approximately in terms of the following "scale" of improbabilities:

(1) 10% to 50% (mundane surprise)

(2) 1% to 10% (rare)

(3) 0.1% (=10^(-3)) to 1% (once-in-a-lifetime level surprise on an important question)

(4) 10^(-6) to 10^(-3) (dying in a plane crash or similar)

(5) 10^(-10) to 10^(-6) (winning the lottery; having an experience unique among humankind)

(6) 10^(-100) to 10^(-10) (religions are true)

(7) below 10^(-100) (theoretical level of improbability reached in thought experiments).

In response to comment by komponisto on Slava!
Comment author: anonym 04 October 2010 08:55:12AM 0 points [-]

What's the other of your two most aesthetically perfect musical compositions?

In response to comment by anonym on Slava!
Comment author: komponisto 04 October 2010 05:03:08PM 0 points [-]

The first movement of the Eroica symphony.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 03 October 2010 07:45:28PM *  2 points [-]

komponisto:

Are you sure you're not just worried about poor calibration?

No, my objection is fundamental. I provide a brief explanation in the comment I linked to, but I'll restate it here briefly.

The problem is that the algorithms that your brain uses to perform common-sense reasoning are not transparent to your conscious mind, which has access only to their final output. This output does not provide a numerical probability estimate, but only a rough and vague feeling of certainty. Yet in most situations, the output of your common sense is all you have. There are very few interesting things you can reason about by performing mathematically rigorous probability calculations (and even when you can, you still have to use common sense to establish the correspondence between the mathematical model and reality).

Therefore, there are only two ways in which you can arrive at a numerical probability estimate for a common-sense belief:

  1. Translate your vague feeling of certainly into a number in some arbitrary manner. This however makes the number a mere figure of speech, which adds absolutely nothing over the usual human vague expressions for different levels of certainty.

  2. Perform some probability calculation, which however has nothing to do with how your brain actually arrived at your common-sense conclusion, and then assign the probability number produced by the former to the latter. This is clearly fallacious.

Honestly, all this seems entirely obvious to me. I would be curious to see which points in the above reasoning are supposed to be even controversial, let alone outright false.

Comment author: komponisto 03 October 2010 10:33:09PM *  7 points [-]

Translate your vague feeling of certainly into a number in some arbitrary manner. This however makes this number a mere figure of speech, which adds absolutely nothing over the usual human vague expressions for different levels of certainty.

Disagree here. Numbers get people to convey more information about their beliefs. It doesn't matter whether you actually use numbers, or do something similar (and equivalent) like systematize the use of vague expressions. I'd be just as happy if people used a "five-star" system, or even in many cases if they just compared the belief in question to other beliefs used as reference-points.

Perform some probability calculation, which however has nothing to do with how your brain actually arrived at your common-sense conclusion, and then assign the probability number produced by the former to the latter. This is clearly fallacious.

Disagree here also. The probability calculation you present should represent your brain's reasoning, as revealed by introspection. This is not a perfect process, and may be subject to later refinement. But it is definitely meaningful.

For example, consider my current probability estimate of 10^(-3) that Amanda Knox killed her roommate. On my current analysis, this is obtained as follows: I start with a prior of 10^(-4) (from a general homicide rate of about 10^(-3), plus reasoning that Knox is demographically an order of magnitude less likely to kill than the typical person; the figure happens to match my intuitive sense that I'd have to meet about 10,000 similar people before I'd have any fear for my life). Then all the evidence in the case raises the probability by about an order of magnitude at most, yielding 10^(-3).

Now, this is just a rough order-of-magnitude argument. But it's already much more meaningful and useful than my just saying "I don't think she did it". It provides a way of breaking down the reasoning, so that points of disagreement can be precisely identified in an efficient manner. (If you happened to disagree, the next step would be to say something like "but surely evidence X alone raises the odds by more than a factor of ten", and then we'd iterate the process specifically on X rather than the original proposition.)

It's a very useful technique for keeping debates informative, and preventing them from turning into (pure) status signaling contests.

In response to Slava!
Comment author: multifoliaterose 03 October 2010 05:59:53AM *  4 points [-]

I don't have a good answer to your question, but I have some choral musical recommendations I've found powerful in the same way that you find Slava! powerful.

I'd recommend the Bach choral works to interested readers. The major ones (St. John Passion, St. Matthew Passion, Mass in B Minor, Christmas Oratorio, Easter Oratorio) are all worth listening to, but there are also a couple hundred of cantatas. Unfortunately, the sheer number of cantatas makes the collection overwhelming and in my opinion there's an issue of uneven quality, but there are some really excellent pieces among them and I've found it worthwhile to spend time with them as well.

I also really like the Brahms German Requiem, particularly the sixth movement.

Will add more examples as they occur to me.

In response to comment by multifoliaterose on Slava!
Comment author: komponisto 03 October 2010 09:14:20PM *  2 points [-]

I suppose I'd better contribute to this list, since (a) I made another comment about possibly writing sacred music, and (b) no one has yet mentioned:

Comment author: Vladimir_M 03 October 2010 10:45:08AM *  26 points [-]

Although lots of people here consider it a hallmark of "rationality," assigning numerical probabilities to common-sense conclusions and beliefs is meaningless, except perhaps as a vague figure of speech. (Absolutely certain.)

Comment author: komponisto 03 October 2010 02:56:45PM 5 points [-]

Upvoted. Definitely can't back you on this one.

Are you sure you're not just worried about poor calibration?

In response to comment by komponisto on Slava!
Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 October 2010 07:07:54AM *  4 points [-]

Have you looked into video game religious music for inspiration? The Hymn of the Fayth was profoundly moving to me, but that might be because Final Fantasy X was such a big part of my youth. It ain't a mass, but it has a certain solemnity and implied tradition that moves me.

In response to comment by Will_Newsome on Slava!
Comment author: komponisto 03 October 2010 07:26:28AM 0 points [-]

Fictional religious texts were going to be my answer to Mass Driver's question about the next best thing, but I decided that didn't really count.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 October 2010 07:01:35AM 0 points [-]

Well, 15-20 years doesn't strike me as that much of a time difference, actually.

Really? I mean, relative to your estimate it might not be big, but absolutely speaking, doom 15 years versus doom 35 years seems to make a huge difference in expected utility.

Do you suppose that's also reflective of a biased sample?

Probably insofar as Eliezer and Marcello weren't around: FAI and the Visiting Fellows intersect at decision theory only. But the more direct (and potentially dangerous) AGI stuff isn't openly discussed for obvious reasons.

Comment author: komponisto 03 October 2010 07:23:12AM 1 point [-]

relative to your estimate it might not be big, but absolutely speaking, doom 15 years versus doom 35 years seems to make a huge difference in expected utility.

A good point. By the way, I should mention that I updated my estimate after it was pointed out to me that other folks' estimates were taking Outside View considerations into account, and after I learned I had been overestimating the information-theoretic complexity of existing minds. FOOM before 2100 looks significantly more likely to me now than it did before.

Probably insofar as Eliezer and Marcello weren't around: FAI and the Visiting Fellows intersect at decision theory only.

Well I didn't expect that AGI technicalities would be discussed openly, of course. What I'm thinking of is Eliezer's attitude that (for now) AGI is unlikely to be developed by anyone not competent enough to realize Friendliness is a problem, versus the apparent fear among some other people that AGI might be cobbled together more or less haphazardly, even in the near term.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 03 October 2010 06:45:24AM 0 points [-]

I think that you interacted most with a pretty uncharacteristically biased sample of characters: most of the long-term SIAI folk have longer timelines than good ol' me and Justin by about 15-20 years. That said, it's true that everyone is still pretty worried about AI-soon, no matter the probability.

Comment author: komponisto 03 October 2010 06:54:59AM 0 points [-]

Well, 15-20 years doesn't strike me as that much of a time difference, actually. But in any case I was really talking about my surprise at the amount of emphasis on "preventing UFAI" as opposed to "creating FAI". Do you suppose that's also reflective of a biased sample?

In response to comment by komponisto on Slava!
Comment author: Mass_Driver 03 October 2010 05:22:04AM 5 points [-]

Two challenges:

*Have you tried to come up with a secular text? For a full five minutes? As opposed to, you know, generating reasons why there weren't likely to be any. If so, what was your best (but ultimately inadequate) possible text?

*To what extent are you looking for 'solemnity' rather than 'tradition'? Obviously no secular text will be as rich in traditional meaning and allusive power as the Mass, because no secular text has been in use for hundreds of years. But, if you choose a good one, maybe someday there -will- be a secular text that has an equally rich tradition: the one you chose and that future generations also worked with. If this doesn't seem to be the problem, can you come up with a working definition of "solemnity?"

In response to comment by Mass_Driver on Slava!
Comment author: komponisto 03 October 2010 06:37:36AM *  1 point [-]

*To what extent are you looking for 'solemnity' rather than 'tradition'?

Tradition is really the point here, now that I think about it. The bind I'm in is that while I can write string quartets, symphonies, or operas with impunity, it would feel somewhat hypocritical of me to write a Mass -- even though in the context of history that's just one more musical genre like the others I mentioned, with its own conventions that make it suitable for particular types of compositional expression.

I should probably just either get over my fear of hypocrisy in this context, or else give up on the direct traditional link and use a text of my own choice, making for a different kind of work, hopefully satisfactory in its own way, that could be perceived as (musically) "related" to the sacred genres of the past.

In response to comment by komponisto on Slava!
Comment author: [deleted] 03 October 2010 05:37:27AM 1 point [-]

I haven't actually had difficulty finding secular texts that inspire a sense of solemnity. If you want older language, which usually translates to a solemn tone, the St. Crispin's Day speech in Henry V is not religious in subject, but it is solemn. There is no lack of inspiring expressions whose subject is not religious.

Atheists don't often express themselves with the intent to inspire, but they do sometimes, and they can be fairly effective. I think Bertrand Russell did a good job, although he did write in prose. My point was that these expressions are either not absolute praise (i.e. science is a very good tool, but only a tool) or they're not really rational (i.e. "secular religion") or they're absolute praise of something almost too abstract to conceive (i.e. "Thank Goodness.")

In response to comment by [deleted] on Slava!
Comment author: komponisto 03 October 2010 06:25:06AM 1 point [-]

I haven't actually had difficulty finding secular texts that inspire a sense of solemnity...There is no lack of inspiring expressions whose subject is not religious...My point was that these expressions are either not absolute praise...

This is why I expressed discomfort with the word "solemnity". I'm really after something more like "extreme emotions expressed with extreme dignity, in a way everyone recognizes."

In any case I did not mean to imply that there are no secular texts of depth or inspirational power. I just haven't yet succeeded in coming up with the appropriate successor to the musical tradition of religious settings. It feels like too specific of a genre.

In response to Slava!
Comment author: komponisto 03 October 2010 04:17:04AM *  2 points [-]

A great point, which I myself alluded to here.

I have at times felt a desire -- perhaps even "need" is not too strong a word -- to compose a Mass setting. No secular text that I can think of seems to have quite the same level of solemnity (for lack of a better word) required to serve for a worthy successor to the Mass settings of the past. I'm not sure how much of this is due to a lack of imagination on my part, and how much is due to the fact that the perception of the Mass text is the result of cultural factors beyond my individual control, and beyond the content of the text itself. But in any case I fear I may be stuck with "yes, I'm an atheist, but only this would do."

Of course, I'll gladly take suggestions, if anyone has any.

Comment author: bbleeker 03 October 2010 02:05:43AM 1 point [-]

I don't really know the SIAI people, but I have the impression that they're not against AI at all. Sure, an unfriendly AI would be awful - but a friendly one would be awesome. And they probably think AI is inevitable, anyway.

Comment author: komponisto 03 October 2010 02:27:31AM 0 points [-]

This is true as far as it goes; however if you actually visit SIAI, you may find significantly more worry about UFAI in the short term than you would have expected just from reading Eliezer Yudkowsky's writings.

Comment author: orthonormal 02 October 2010 11:48:15PM 0 points [-]

Scanning back through the recent posts, I saw 4 or 5 first posts at 0 or lower in the last 2 months, out of about 20 first posts. (I have the feeling that there were a few more whose authors deleted them in the vain hopes of getting karma restored, but I could be wrong.)

Obviously, people who have been lurking for a while and hanging out with Less Wrongers in real life have a pretty good expected karma on their first post.

Comment author: komponisto 03 October 2010 02:03:26AM *  1 point [-]

Obviously, people who have been lurking for a while and hanging out with Less Wrongers in real life have a pretty good expected karma on their first post.

And I would expect that people who are already veteran commenters when they post for the first time probably have even better prospects.

Comment author: Jack 02 October 2010 07:32:51AM 0 points [-]

I don't see how a frequentist could Bayesian, to hold a Bayesian epistemology one would also have to adhere to a Bayesian theory of probability. Since frequentists don't hold such a theory that can not hold Bayesian epistemology.

Comment author: komponisto 02 October 2010 04:41:25PM 0 points [-]

As per my original comment, someone could agree that probabilities represent beliefs but also hold that the content of ("legitimate") beliefs consists only of statements about frequencies. This would allow them to simultaneously hold a frequentist interpretation of probability and a Bayesian epistemology. (As you said, "There is no Frequentist epistemology, a frequentist could hold any epistemology they wanted more or less.")

Comment author: Jack 02 October 2010 02:29:33AM 2 points [-]

Frequentists don't have a defined view of beliefs, they have a defined view of probability, namely that probability statements about events are statements about the limit of that event's frequency in an arbitrary number of trials. The Bayesian position is that probability can be understood as degree of belief. The Bayesian epistemological position is that all beliefs ought to be understood as probability statements. There is no Frequentist epistemology, a frequentist could hold any epistemology they wanted more or less.

Comment author: komponisto 02 October 2010 02:54:11AM *  1 point [-]

I understand that this is the standard story, but don't find it satisfactory; hence was presenting my own "deeper" explanation (which I still regard as tentative).

After all, based only on what you've said, a frequentist could also be a Bayesian! This doesn't seem right, or at least doesn't seem to account for the fact that there seems to be a controversy between "frequentists" on the one hand, and "Bayesians" on the other.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 01 October 2010 09:25:32PM *  0 points [-]

I agree that there are epistemological problems in the foundations, but they seem to me mild enough to refute frequentism. I'm not really sure what frequentism is, though (other than the position that one should not speak of the probability of a hypothesis). Can you spell out what you think the coherent frequentist position is? I won't hold it against you or frequentism if you say no.

(If one just speaks of beliefs, maybe there is a coherent frequentist position that evades Cox's theorem, but frequentists hold that we make decisions [ETA: a metaphysical but not epistemological assumption]; and this should be enough to force probabilistic beliefs.)

Comment author: komponisto 01 October 2010 11:28:45PM *  1 point [-]

I'm not really sure what frequentism is, though...Can you spell out what you think the coherent frequentist position is?

I'm not sure either, as I've confessed before, but here's how it seems to me: whereas Bayesians view beliefs as "thermometer readings" that go up and down as new information comes in, frequentists view beliefs as "certificates" that have to be "earned" through specific rituals, and are subject to periodic renewal.

Since (in view of results such as Cox's theorem) one can't really deny that probability theory is the appropriate mathematical model for belief if there is any appropriate model at all, it seems that what frequentists actually object to, deep down, is the idea of personal belief as the object of formalization. They are only comfortable with ("official") belief-formation as a social process. In their view (so I propose), you are only allowed to make probabilistic claims after you perform a well-defined experiment of some kind (specifically, of the kind in which relative frequencies of the events you're interested in can be observed).

See Science Doesn't Trust Your Rationality.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 30 September 2010 10:31:07PM 1 point [-]

I point out that phenomenon X is bad.

You didn't just do that.
You said that the teacher's words don't match their meaning.

I do not need an explanation of the fact that human language is imprecise in general

Explanations may be a poor way of promoting beliefs, but belief in that fact would discourage your claim that the teacher's statement has a precise meaning.

I think newerspeak's take is pretty good. It quite late (and rather temporarily) that you switched from discussing lack of clarity, especially the need to learn a new idiom, to discussing what is bad about the phrasing. (except that I strongly object to newerspeak's use of "wrong phrasing.")

Comment author: komponisto 30 September 2010 11:18:05PM 0 points [-]

I point out that phenomenon X is bad.

You didn't just do that. You said that the teacher's words don't match their meaning.

I don't understand. That was the phenomenon in question.

Comment author: Relsqui 30 September 2010 10:18:48PM *  1 point [-]

I disagree with that interpretation, perhaps because of a meta-ambiguity about which of two questions we're discussing:

  1. Which of two example wordings should the teacher have used?

  2. Was there anything wrong with what the teacher said?

These are obviously related but by no means the same. You seem to be assuming that the dispute is about the former (which, as you say, we all seem to agree on); my understanding was that it is about the latter. Specifically, I interpreted you as believing that the teacher's wording was so unacceptable as to warrant correction, and this is what I disagreed with and presented arguments against. I suppose that, yes, that means we were arguing about your strength of feeling, but that's exactly what I was trying to do. If I seemed to claim that I was arguing about anything else, that was a miscommunication.

I appreciate that you made a point of distinguishing between disliking the nature of this particular discussion and disliking this kind of feedback from me in general.

ETA after discussing in IRC: Also, you seem to be relying on the premise that less ambiguity in language is universally better, and for the reasons outlined in my previous comment I don't think it's that simple.

Comment author: komponisto 30 September 2010 11:15:23PM *  0 points [-]
  1. Which of two example wordings should the teacher have used?
  2. Was there anything wrong with what the teacher said?

...You seem to be assuming that the dispute is about the former (which, as you say, we all seem to agree on); my understanding was that it is about the latter.

My assumption is that if A is preferable to B, then there is "something wrong" with B. The level of "wrongness" implied by this mere fact depends on how preferable A is to B, which in turn depends (among other things) on how easy A is to implement.

I suppose that, yes, that means we were arguing about your strength of feeling, but that's exactly what I was trying to do

To which I ask: why?

Comment author: Relsqui 30 September 2010 06:55:36PM *  2 points [-]

I think such people believe they're saying something close enough to what they actually mean

I think they believe they're saying what they mean, but what you say is what's actually happening. More generally, I think you're talking about how people should act, and I'm talking about how they do act, which is making it sound like we disagree more than I believe we actually do.

This makes it sound like "clear to me" is a highly idiosyncratic criterion.

Yes, and I stand by that--even though, as you say, there is such a thing as objectively less ambiguous language. Which parts need to be less ambiguous in order to guarantee understanding varies from person to person. Even if the truth is so simple that people who aren't neurotypical require, on average, less ambiguity than neurotypical people do, that doesn't mean you can communicate with all of them exactly the same. Which parts you can fudge depend on the previous experience of the specific individual you're addressing. If I say, "Hey, did you see the less wrong thread about grading?" you would know what I meant, but someone unfamiliar with LW would be entirely justified in calling that sentence confusing. Someone who's, say, a weaver, might go off on entirely the wrong mental path.

By that logic, I think it's absolutely reasonable for a teacher above the first grade level to assume that all of their students are generally familiar with the mechanics of grading and potential penalties for late assignments. Of the two intepretations of the disputed statement, "you will receive a score of 0" is much more plausible than "you will be freed from having to do the assignment" to anyone who's been in academia for any length of time. I agree with you that the chosen wording could be, objectively, clearer; I do not believe there was sufficient reason to expect it would be misinterpreted that it was negligent not to be clearer. If I ask you to "make me a sandwich," I don't expect you to be tripped up by the real grammatical ambiguity and wonder if I would like you to put me between slices of bread. I expect you to go with the plausible choice.

I do agree with you that most people don't think very much about how they communicate. This frustrates me a lot, because it's something I think about a lot and which is important to me. But I don't find this fact as inexcusable as you appear to. Shortcuts and built-in amibiguity are a part of, as far as I know, every human language. In almost all situations, they resolve without conflict. Very few humans have ever had reason to consider that their use of language is insufficiently ambiguous. (When ambiguity does result in conflict, we assume by default that the other person is wrong, misunderstanding or stupid--which is not good or useful, but happens, and reinforces our belief that the way we communicate is fine.) Could most people benefit from learning to communicate better? Absolutely! But they don't know that.

Being upset that humans speak ambiguously is a little like being upset that humans shake hands. You're free to dislike it, and choose not to engage in it, but actually being unhappy every time it happens is going to get exhausting. A more productive thing to do in both cases would be to educate people about what's wrong with it and how they can do better ... in a communication style, of course, which they will find compelling and convincing, even if you wouldn't.

Which is why, if you give me a few years, I'll have a degree in this.

ETA: Skipped something I think was important: While I do agree that we should strive to be clearer in our communication, I don't think it's feasible or even a good idea to try to be as unambiguous as possible all the time. Thinking carefully about everything you say is difficult and tiring, and it takes a long time. Optimizing for unambiguity would be a sacrifice of mental energy and communication throughput which I don't think it's worth, given that the system really does work most of the time. In my experience, it's easier and more useful to try to optimize for the specific understanding of the person you're addressing, which may include being less ambiguous but almost certainly includes choosing particular ambiguities that the listener is likely to understand as intended. This still uses some mental energy, but not as much (at a guess, that's because it's a more natural thought pattern), and it doesn't sacrifice throughput because you're just choosing your shortcuts more carefully, not abandoning them altogether.

Comment author: komponisto 30 September 2010 09:35:47PM *  5 points [-]

Both the original discussion of this and the current one, not to mention numerous other discussions about other things, exemplify the following pattern:

I point out that phenomenon X is bad. Then, instead of replying with "I agree", or "I agree that it's bad, but don't think it's as bad as you do" or even "I agree with you about how bad it is now that you've pointed it out, but wouldn't myself have bothered to raise the issue", people come up with elaborate justifications, rationalizations, or explanations of X, which (I hypothesize) are basically intended to signal distance from "anti-X fanaticism". The parent comment is yet another example of this.

Folks, there just isn't any need to defend the teacher here -- unless you actually want to take the position that saying "I won't grade it" is preferable to saying "you will receive a score of 0" (and if anyone is tempted to take that position in reply to this comment, be forewarned that I simply won't believe you're being honest unless you say something genuinely surprising, that I hadn't thought of). I did not say I was still confused by the teacher's meaning, and I do not need an explanation of the fact that human language is imprecise in general, and of the reasons people say the ambiguous things they do. I'm not stupid, and I'm not even autistic. I'm aware of the social conventions that are operative here, and I'm not proposing that teachers speak to their students in Lojban. All I'm doing is expressing disapproval of the fact that some teachers say "I won't grade it", and proposing that they say "I will give it a score of 0" instead. This is really pretty simple; in particular, it would require much less effort on the teacher's part to implement this suggestion than you spent writing the parent comment. It's an easy, low-cost net-improvement on the world.

Agreeing with a "fanatic" doesn't make you a fanatic. You're allowed to agree with me and yet not feel as strongly about the matter as I do. You don't need to signal your distance by presenting superfluous rationalizations of the bad phenomenon. In fact, you don't even need to point out that you don't feel as strongly as I do -- because simple agreement carries no implication that you do feel that strongly!

No one really disagrees with me here; if you doubt this, ask yourself whether anyone would protest that a teacher who actually said "you will receive a score a 0" should instead have said "I won't grade it"! Rather, the dialectic pattern of apparent disagreement is due to the fact that my original complaint violated two social rules: (1) it was tangential to the post; and, more importantly (2) it expressed a strong opinion not already established as a group-defining belief -- something which is generally frowned upon in most human groups, but especially goes against the self-image of folks here as calm, reflective, "rational" people.

So, while I appreciate your concern with communication, and don't want to discourage you from further pursuing your efforts in that area, I am obliged to point out that your comment -- like those of many others -- didn't communicate anything to me other than resistance to my strength of feeling.

Comment author: datadataeverywhere 30 September 2010 06:03:12PM 3 points [-]

Why is a grade (points earned)/(points possible)?

Wouldn't it make more sense for a grade to be just points earned? I realize that we mostly work inside a percentile system, but that's for the purposes of normalization, not because we actually believe that 1 good work is better than N decent works.

Expecting assignments not turned in not to count either for or against the grade is sort of like expecting people who have done really poorly in Spanish class to speak worse Spanish than those who never learned the language at all.

Comment author: komponisto 30 September 2010 06:29:32PM 1 point [-]

Why is a grade (points earned)/(points possible)?

Wouldn't it make more sense for a grade to be just points earned?

That's an interesting question, of course, but it's not one that directly bears on the issue here.

I don't actually know the answer.

Comment author: datadataeverywhere 30 September 2010 06:03:12PM 3 points [-]

Why is a grade (points earned)/(points possible)?

Wouldn't it make more sense for a grade to be just points earned? I realize that we mostly work inside a percentile system, but that's for the purposes of normalization, not because we actually believe that 1 good work is better than N decent works.

Expecting assignments not turned in not to count either for or against the grade is sort of like expecting people who have done really poorly in Spanish class to speak worse Spanish than those who never learned the language at all.

Comment author: komponisto 30 September 2010 06:18:54PM *  2 points [-]

Expecting assignments not turned in not to count either for or against the grade is sort of like expecting people who have done really poorly in Spanish class to speak worse Spanish than those who never learned the language at all.

What is socially reasonable to expect is beside the point. The point is that appealing to social knowledge to resolve ambiguities when it would have been easy enough to speak precisely constitutes sloppiness.

Comment author: wedrifid 30 September 2010 03:10:59PM 0 points [-]

That is distinct from "not grading it", and is what the teacher should say instead (if it is what he or she actually means).

There is some ambiguity in the phrase 'grade it', with the two of you using different definitions. Most teachers consider 'grading papers' to be the process of reading a paper, evaluating merits and granting symbolic value to your academic performance based on the quality of the work. Possible literal meanings are far more varied.

I think the teacher's meaning could scrape by as technically correct but it would depend on the details of how she inputs the marks. ie. If she doesn't do anything with the paper at all and the computer system defaults to either assigning 0 or outright failing you based off the lack of an entered grade then it is technically correct. If she explicitly types in a 0 then she would not be.

Comment author: komponisto 30 September 2010 06:15:01PM *  0 points [-]

Most teachers consider 'grading papers' to be the process of reading a paper, evaluating merits and granting symbolic value to your academic performance based on the quality of the work.

Even under this understanding of the term, the issue remains. Yes, if you interpret "grade" to mean "read", the teacher's statement becomes true. But then the problem is the omission of the important part: "...and papers I don't 'grade' (=read) receive a score of 0."

In response to Messy Science
Comment author: komponisto 30 September 2010 05:58:59PM 2 points [-]

(as I get my education in math, I'm going to be more inclined to believe that the electrical engineers are doing it all wrong, even though the driving reason for that belief is that I didn't want to be an electrical engineer when I was 18.)

Reminded me of this post.

Comment author: datadataeverywhere 30 September 2010 05:03:08PM 4 points [-]

Some teachers explicitly start students with a failing grade (0), and add points to it with each successive assignment, until you finish the semester with (ideally) a passing grade.

Under this model, do you think that "not grading it" and "assigning it a failing grade" are equivalent? If not, why not?

Comment author: komponisto 30 September 2010 05:42:17PM *  -1 points [-]

Under this model, do you think that "not grading it" and "assigning it a failing grade" are equivalent?

No. "Not grading it" would mean fewer points in the denominator of the student's grade, where by "grade" I mean the quantity (points earned)/(points possible).

(Edit: "Yes" changed to "No", which is what I meant.)

Comment author: Relsqui 30 September 2010 08:18:58AM 4 points [-]

(d) Because people should say what they mean and mean what they say.

Unless they're deliberately lying, people always believe they're saying what they mean. The correspondance between verbal language and thought is not perfect; in the teacher's head, as in those of many other commenters here, this particular example is sufficient to be clear. In yours, and some other commenters', it is not. I don't see any way to meaningfully determine which view is "correct."

What you appear to mean--at least, what people tend to mean when they say that--is "people should say things in a way which is immediately clear to me." I hope you see why this is a tall order for people who may not know you or understand how you think very well.

Comment author: komponisto 30 September 2010 02:48:15PM 2 points [-]

Unless they're deliberately lying, people always believe they're saying what they mean.

I don't think this is true at all. I think such people believe they're saying something close enough to what they actually mean, and that social conventions don't require them to take care to make their language as unambiguous as possible. This last part is the problem.

in the teacher's head, as in those of many other commenters here, this particular example is sufficient to be clear.

Again,"sufficient to be clear" is not the right criterion; the right criterion is the ideal of "no possible way to misunderstand". (Achieving that is impossible; how much less possible is it when they aren't even trying?)

What you appear to mean--at least, what people tend to mean when they say that--is "people should say things in a way which is immediately clear to me." I hope you see why this is a tall order for people who may not know you or understand how you think very well.

This makes it sound like "clear to me" is a highly idiosyncratic criterion. There is such a thing as objectively less ambiguous language.

The basic issue here is people not thinking carefully enough while they're speaking. It's really a question of quantity of thought, not style of thought.

Comment author: AdeleneDawner 28 September 2010 06:34:32AM *  2 points [-]

It's not just you.

Comment author: komponisto 29 September 2010 04:48:38AM *  1 point [-]

And it's still the case.

Comment author: TobyBartels 28 September 2010 08:18:39AM *  0 points [-]

Fowler has a pretty thorough explanation of this history. It's a bit out of date, but that's OK; it's history.

But also note, EY mostly wrote ‘will’ or ‘'ll’, not ‘shall’.

Comment author: komponisto 29 September 2010 04:44:40AM 0 points [-]

It was interesting to see confirmation of my silly theory in the first sentence:

IT is unfortunate that the idiomatic use, while it comes by nature to southern Englishmen (who will find most of this section superfluous), is so complicated that those who are not to the manner born can hardly acquire it;

Comment author: Will_Newsome 25 September 2010 03:28:43AM 1 point [-]

Should I add the other sequences first, you think? It's already too long, and that'd double the length or more.

Comment author: komponisto 28 September 2010 01:15:40AM 4 points [-]

Actually, I say put in on the wiki.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 28 September 2010 12:34:07AM 1 point [-]

I punctuate the same way, and for the same reason. I suspect it's a geekishness thing.

Comment author: komponisto 28 September 2010 01:11:16AM 1 point [-]

Me too. The mathematician Paul Halmos was an outspoken defender of this.

Comment author: Perplexed 27 September 2010 05:56:13PM 10 points [-]

Which really has absolutely nothing to do with my original implicit complaint, which was that my national leaders misled me.

They didn't say "We need to invade Iraq because the Iraqis have not properly decommissioned tactical chemical weapons left over from the War with Iran. It is our duty to the environmental safety of the Iraqi public to go in there and make sure that those corroding artillery shells are safely destroyed."

Comment author: komponisto 28 September 2010 12:58:19AM 1 point [-]

Which really has absolutely nothing to do with my original implicit complaint, which was that my national leaders misled me.

I thought it was that they didn't have better information than you after all.

In which case I was going to ask whether you really thought your own instincts could do systematically better on such questions than intelligence agencies.

But now it appears you believe they did have better information, but were dishonest in their reporting. If I may ask, how carefully have you considered the hypothesis that they were honestly mistaken, and that your instincts just happened to be correct in this case, more or less by accident? (Many people were skeptical simply because they didn't like the party in power at the time, which seems dubious as a general recipe for accurately judging, well, anything, but especially questions of foreign intelligence.)

Comment author: PhilGoetz 27 September 2010 05:02:22PM *  18 points [-]

I believe OP is correct that voting on issues leads to affective death spirals. But the idea that we can vote on character presupposes a population composed soley of rational, non-party-affiliated politicians; and it furthermore presupposes that rational politicians will agree on value issues, which I believe is not at all the case.

Would you vote for Sarah Palin if you thought she had a good character? Would you be more likely to vote for her if you thought she was extremely competent at getting things done?

I would prefer, in decreasing order of preference:

  • a competent politician with values similar to mine
  • an incompetent politician with values similar to mine
  • a rock
  • an incompetent politician with values different from mine
  • worst case: a very competent politician with values different from mine
Comment author: komponisto 27 September 2010 05:56:37PM 6 points [-]

Would you vote for Sarah Palin if you thought she had a good character? Would you be more likely to vote for her if you thought she was extremely competent at getting things done?

This prompts the tangential but interesting observation that neither Sarah Palin nor George W. Bush were considered particularly incompetent or polarizing when they were merely state governors who hadn't entered the national scene.

The fact that they became this way, or were seen as such, after entering national campaigns suggests something none-too-pleasant about national politics in the U.S.

Comment author: simplicio 26 September 2010 12:37:06AM *  2 points [-]

"Death shall lose" as an attitude may not be strictly correct...

In E's defence, the tradition of normative English grammar is that "shall" expresses a determination or volition, whereas "will" expresses a fact statement.

I will not be having cake, because the restaurant is out of it,

vs

I shall not be having cake, because I am on a diet.

Comment author: komponisto 26 September 2010 12:53:16AM *  3 points [-]

the tradition of normative English grammar is that "shall" expresses a determination or volition, whereas "will" expresses a fact statement.

Actually, believe it or not, the tradition of "normative English grammar" (i.e. high-status language) is that what you what you wrote is correct for persons other than the first. For the first person (I/we), it's the reverse.

I honestly don't know what the origin of this distinction is, unless it's the fact that British people seem to say "I shall" a lot.

Comment author: [deleted] 25 September 2010 05:33:54AM 0 points [-]

People either love 'em or hate 'em. I have known folks who absolutely can't get through one song.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Open Thread, September, 2010-- part 2
Comment author: komponisto 26 September 2010 12:33:19AM 0 points [-]

Interesting. Living as I do in a Second-Viennese-School-and-beyond sort of world, I guess I'm just not used to thinking of Schubert as a "controversial" composer.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Open Thread, September, 2010-- part 2
Comment author: wedrifid 25 September 2010 09:32:25AM 1 point [-]

Things you couldn't do without: Aspartame. Nice. :)

I seem to recall someone laying into superstition surrounding aspartame risks here a while back. Including rather adamant skepticism about a friend's belief that it was the cause of her difficulties. Was that you or do we have another fan of artificial sweetener? :)

Comment author: komponisto 26 September 2010 12:30:44AM 3 points [-]

You were thinking of LauraABJ.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 25 September 2010 04:33:52PM *  12 points [-]

Please don't allow arguments about definitions be presented as arguments about substance, as objecting to something previously said. Distinguish them by making it clear that your observation is on a separate and unrelated topic of English language, and thus doesn't constitute an irrational argument.

Comment author: komponisto 25 September 2010 05:53:14PM 2 points [-]

Upvoted. This should be on the advice-to-new-users page, if it isn't already.

Comment author: erratio 25 September 2010 01:29:20AM 1 point [-]

Spoken language is much more difficult to change on purpose than clothing is, so in my view it has much less value than clothing choices as a status indicator.

Comment author: komponisto 25 September 2010 01:33:09AM *  2 points [-]

In that case it should have more value as a status indicator -- harder to fake.

Comment author: mattnewport 25 September 2010 01:14:31AM 5 points [-]

In engineering / software circles, wearing a T-shirt rather than a suit is a kind of countersignaling.

Comment author: komponisto 25 September 2010 01:25:57AM 2 points [-]

Indeed; and no doubt linguistic countersignaling also occurs in some communities. (Example: politicians.)

Comment author: erratio 25 September 2010 12:59:36AM 1 point [-]

One of my best friends, who is far more intelligent than I, sometimes says 'could of' instead of 'could have'. My point being, having language pet peeves is fine and normal, but whether people make those errors or not is a really poor indicator of status (even though hearing 'could of' and 'for all intensive purposes' drives me up the wall)

Comment author: komponisto 25 September 2010 01:11:54AM *  3 points [-]

Some very intelligent people also wear T-shirts instead of suits. Nevertheless, it would be preposterous to deny that wearing a suit is a meaningful status signal, or to claim that clothing is a "really poor indicator of status".

Signaling mechanisms aren't perfect, and yet they're still signaling mechanisms anyway.

Comment author: Relsqui 25 September 2010 12:29:10AM 0 points [-]

I don't know whether this is one, but I expect that some such expressions have different "correct" forms on either side of the Atlantic.

Comment author: komponisto 25 September 2010 01:03:47AM *  0 points [-]

Yes, of course status levels are not the only source of linguistic variation; there's also geography, and other things also.

Note however that high-status language varies less by geography than low-status language.

Also, British English (at least "Southern British Standard") sounds higher status to me than American English in general, so I would find it surprising if an expression that struck my (American-English) ear as low status turned out to be a high-status British form. I would expect the reverse -- that is, something that sounds low-status to a British speaker being a high-status American expression -- to be more common.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 24 September 2010 10:35:32PM *  1 point [-]

This is curious. Do you have an explanation for why "for" is associated with low-status and "in" is associated with high-status (in this context)? Are there other similar linguistic phenomena?

Comment author: komponisto 24 September 2010 11:36:42PM *  0 points [-]

Are there other similar linguistic phenomena?

Sticking to prepositional shibboleths, another one that comes to mind concerns professional athletes and sports teams:

Low status: "X is on the Texas Rangers." (Generalized from the use of "on" in expressions like "whose team are you on?")

High status: "X is with the Texas Rangers." (Standard expression used in the specific context by sports journalists, etc.)

Comment author: Wei_Dai 24 September 2010 10:35:32PM *  1 point [-]

This is curious. Do you have an explanation for why "for" is associated with low-status and "in" is associated with high-status (in this context)? Are there other similar linguistic phenomena?

Comment author: komponisto 24 September 2010 11:19:52PM 3 points [-]

Hm, I suppose I could attempt one. I think my current best guess would be along the following lines:

High-status people will tend to have a richer cache of stored expressions; in a given situation, they are more likely to be able to precisely reproduce a previously-heard expression appropriate to the context, rather than having to make up a new expression on the spot. This is especially so if the idea being expressed is one that high-status people think about more often than low-status people do. Consequently, a high-status person will be more likely to remember the phrase "graduate school in philosophy" in detail, including the specific information about "in" being the preposition used; whereas a low-status person, who (at least at first) may not have as much occasion to speak about graduate school in philosophy, may only have something like "graduate school [preposition] philosophy" stored in their mind. As a result, when they first need to use the expression, they will have to spontaneously choose a preposition, and the choice they end up with may not be the same as the one in the existing expression commonly used by high-status folk. But now, when the low-status person next uses the phrase, they will have a tendency to remember the preposition they themselves used the last time; so this new expression will then spread among their low-status associates, and will become the standard cached version of the expression for low-status people.

Comment author: [deleted] 24 September 2010 06:50:49PM 5 points [-]
In response to comment by [deleted] on Open Thread, September, 2010-- part 2
Comment author: komponisto 24 September 2010 10:07:48PM *  1 point [-]

Out of curiosity, why do you consider Schubert lieder to be controversial?

Comment author: Alicorn 24 September 2010 09:26:23PM 1 point [-]

I don't think I've actually heard "in" used there, and it sounds awkward to me. I guess I'm just low-status. Oh well.

Comment author: komponisto 24 September 2010 09:36:59PM 0 points [-]

I don't think I've actually heard "in" used there

You have, many times. Trust me.

"I'm a graduate student in philosophy".

-> "I went to graduate school in philosophy"

-> "Philosophy? I went to graduate school in it."

Comment author: Alicorn 24 September 2010 06:21:05PM 8 points [-]

May as well... Me.

Comment author: komponisto 24 September 2010 09:22:53PM 0 points [-]

(Philosophy was my list item. I'm good at that too, and went to grad school for it

Aargh! Surely you know that only low-status people use the preposition "for" in this context!

High-status people say "in".

Comment author: datadataeverywhere 23 September 2010 02:48:31AM 4 points [-]

Not to dispute the veracity of that claim, but that I find terrifying. I work almost exclusively with scientists, programmers and engineers, and the idea that on average they make up the top 2% of the population in terms of (whatever it is that is measured by) IQ... If that's true I have to work much harder to stretch downward what I think of as "normal" human intellect.

Comment author: komponisto 23 September 2010 02:56:42AM *  5 points [-]

Yes, indeed!

As I said recently:

there is a tendency among high-IQ folks to underestimate how rare their abilities are. The way they do this is not by underestimating their own cognitive skills, but instead by overestimating those of most people.

In other words, what it feels like to be a genius is not that you're really smart, but rather that everyone else is really dumb.

Comment author: taw 22 September 2010 09:49:07PM 1 point [-]

Thank you for providing a great example that you can get a lot of upvotes on LW for totally making shit up, as long as it resonates with some LWer's prejudice.

For people naively upvoting billswift's bullshit, . For example in the most populous African country Nigeria life expectancy in 1950 was 35 years. Last year it was 48 years. You'll see such improvement in nearly every country, and this accelerated drastically in early 1990s, about the same time as Americans and Soviets stopped having proxy wars in which locals got killed.

Comment author: komponisto 22 September 2010 10:16:12PM *  3 points [-]

An experiment someone should do at some point (if it hasn't already been done):

Divide (educated Western) subjects into two groups. Ask the first group how much they think life has improved in a particular African country since decolonization, without mentioning the date of the latter. Ask the second group how much they think life in that country has improved since 1950 (or whatever the actual appropriate date for "decolonization" is for the country selected), without mentioning colonization. Compare the results.

Prediction: the second group's answer will be higher.

Comment author: Perplexed 22 September 2010 08:50:58PM 0 points [-]

Ok with me. But since this is my first top-level posting, is there anything I need to know before I change the title?

Comment author: komponisto 22 September 2010 09:03:57PM *  3 points [-]

I have heard people say that changing the title causes the post to be re-sent in the RSS feed (I wouldn't know, since I don't use RSS myself). Perhaps that bug has been fixed by now, but if not, then it is a good idea to make any title changes as soon as possible after posting.

Comment author: komponisto 22 September 2010 07:49:47PM *  17 points [-]

Rationality as the measure of all things.

I would like to suggest a more specific title, such as "Rationality Case Study: Adenovirus strain #36" or something similar.

That way, not only do you satisfy the general principle that titles should be informative as possible, but you also avoid giving the impression that this post is purely rhetorical (with an implied thesis that you supplied earlier).

In response to comment by prase on The Meaning of Life
Comment author: jimrandomh 21 September 2010 07:13:54PM 2 points [-]

I don't think the human psyche has a "god-shaped hole", but I do think there are a bunch of other things people need which religions provide, including weekly community gatherings (services), an inducement to concretely specify desires (prayer), a person to talk to about sensitive topics confidentially (confession), and a moral framework. All of these can be had elsewhere, but lacking any one of these is a big deal and non-religious people often end up missing one.

Comment author: komponisto 21 September 2010 07:30:31PM 4 points [-]

A very important (and often overlooked) one is a setting in which it is socially acceptable to express strong positive emotions and very high levels of enthusiasm.

Comment author: steven0461 21 September 2010 03:49:40AM 2 points [-]

A post on any topic can be a post about rationality if you put in specific work to make it so; I read jimrandomh as saying there's no need to put in such work.

Comment author: komponisto 21 September 2010 04:06:44AM 2 points [-]

Your reading may be the intended one; we'll have to await jimrandomh's clarification. Meanwhile, the following paragraph is what led me to believe that jimrandomh is not actually proposing a change in topic policy:

Less Wrong does not currently provide strong guidance about what is considered on topic. In fact, Less Wrong generally considers topic to be secondary to importance and clarity, and this is as it should be. However, this should be formally acknowledged, so that people are not discouraged from posting important things just because they think they might be off topic! Determining whether something is on topic is a trivial inconvenience of the worst sort.

Comment author: steven0461 21 September 2010 03:29:24AM *  4 points [-]

You're misreading jimrandomh, who is proposing that we discuss these non-rationality topics not because (and not only when) they illustrate principles of rationality, but because they are important in their own right. I say that if we adopt a policy like that, we apply it only to the most important topics -- mainly existential risk. Or if the point is to draw people here, to anything sufficiently shiny.

Comment author: komponisto 21 September 2010 03:42:27AM *  2 points [-]

I'm saying that there really aren't any "non-rationality topics" (i.e. a post on any topic can be a post about rationality) and that, insofar as one believes (as I do) that raising the general level of sanity is among the most important goals there are, it is to our benefit (with respect to that important goal) to encourage a wide range of contributions and not be too restrictive or cliquey about topics.

To exactly what extent jimrandomh agrees, I don't know, but this thought was prompted by his post.

Comment author: komponisto 21 September 2010 03:03:34AM 11 points [-]

I would want to go even further, and strike out (perceived) "importance" as a barrier. Thinking in terms of "importance" will tend to cause our minds to stay within certain topic clusters, when what we actually want is more variety of topics. Rationality lessons are often most illuminating when applied in situations we don't stereotypically think of as illustrating rationality lessons. People may have pet topics or specialized areas of expertise that they would like to post on, but don't because of a fear that their subject isn't "important enough" (which in practice tends to mean being about the topics most commonly discussed here). This is unfortunate, because rationality literally applies everywhere; and I think an aspiring rationalist should seek out as many diverse opportunities for honing their general rationality skills as possible. This will prove useful when it comes to the "important" topics.

On the other hand,

These have already been discussed so they would be discouraged as duplicates rule (except for substantially new approaches),

I actually wouldn't want to restrict duplicates to new approaches to the subject itself; I think a new specific lesson on rationality should suffice. Familiarity has its advantages too. (For example, there are a number of Bayesian lessons that I have learned from my study of the Knox case since the original discussion, and I would hope to be able to post in the future on some subset of these, using this particular vivid illustration, without too much objection on the grounds that the topic "has already been done".)

Comment author: Relsqui 19 September 2010 08:18:52PM 9 points [-]

I think some of my time spent reading articles in the sequences was well spent, and the rest was split between two alternatives: 1) in a minority of cases where the reading didn't feel useful, it was about something I already felt I understood, and 2) in a majority of such cases, it wasn't connected to something I was already curious about.

It's explained a bit better in the longer version of the above comment (which now appears to be homeless). But I think the sequences, or at least the admonition to read them all, are targeted at someone who has done some reading or at least thinking about their subjects before. Not because they demand prior knowledge, but because they demand prior interest. You may have underestimated how much of a newbie you have on your hands.

It's not that I'm claiming to be so smart that I can participate fully in the discussions without reading up on the fundamentals, it's that participating or even just watching the discussion is the thing that's piquing my interest in the subjects in the first place. It feels less like asking me to read about basic physics before trying to set up a physics experiment, and more like asking me to read about music theory without ever having heard any music. It's just not as meaningful before having observed what it's good for--and even a highly talented and technical musician would admit that attending a performance with other people is more interesting than doing theory homework, even if they have a very clever theory teacher who makes the lessons into little stories.

Just to put this into perspective, I don't think any of the above is nearly as significant to my reading habits as the simple amount of material in the sequences. I do keep reading bits and pieces, but how much time in a day I'm able or even willing to focus on it is finite. I've spent a lot of time this week reading LW when I could have been out getting vitamin D or practicing the guitar, and at the current rate it would still take me quite a while to get through all the sequences (less, but not a trivial amount, to get through just the core sequences). That's a time commitment it's difficult to justify if I'm to make it before being allowed to discuss the ideas with human beings in the current blog.

I guess there are two theses here: that the sequences are good at bestowing information, but the current posts are better at garnering interest in them; and that the latter is simply more enjoyable, because it's interactive. (I, like some other commenters here, read LW as play, not work; if it weren't fun I wouldn't be here.) If you want to convince people to read the sequences before participating, those are your obstacles.

Comment author: komponisto 20 September 2010 06:07:51AM *  8 points [-]

and even a highly talented and technical musician would admit that attending a performance with other people is more interesting than doing theory homework, even if they have a very clever theory teacher who makes the lessons into little stories

I am struck by the inclusion of the seemingly unnecessary phrase "with other people", which suggests that your real interest is social in nature. And sure enough, you confirm this later in the comment:

That's a time commitment it's difficult to justify if I'm to make it before being allowed to discuss the ideas with human beings in the current blog.

and

[current posts are] simply more enjoyable, because it's interactive

It seems like an important point, and another argument in favor of additional (sub)forums. About that, I'm not sure what I think yet.

Incidentally, against the notion that attending performances is the most enjoyable part of the musical experience, here is Milton Babbitt on the subject:

"I can't believe that people really prefer to go to the concert hall under intellectually trying, socially trying, physically trying conditions, unable to repeat something they have missed, when they can sit at home under the most comfortable and stimulating circumstances and hear it as they want to hear it. I can't imagine what would happen to literature today if one were obliged to congregate in an unpleasant hall and read novels projected on a screen.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 20 September 2010 05:05:12AM 3 points [-]

I sort of wish it were, but I think only one or two people use it. The problem is that it's not really anything like old-style rationalism and so calling it neorationalism is misleading. 'Bayesianism' is normally taken to be the philosophy, 'rationalist' the adherent. Unfortunately, rationality is more than just Bayesianism, so that too is inaccurate. The whole lack of an -ism thing is kind of a downer. 'Evidentialism' or something might work as a description of our epistemology but it fails to connect to the 'winning' part of rationality. Bayesian decision theory-ism is what we're trying to achieve, I think, but we need something more aesthetic. Suggestions?

Comment author: komponisto 20 September 2010 05:46:31AM *  0 points [-]

I once suggested "optimizer".

But really, I think "rationalist" works just fine. The connection with "rationality" is immediate; as for (Cartesian) "rationalism", that's a historical term applied by academics in the specific context of an obsolete debate between (mostly) dead people that has been utterly superseded by modern concepts such as those discussed here. Does anyone visit LW and seriously come away with the impression that we're "anti-empiricist"? I didn't think so.

Comment author: Relsqui 18 September 2010 07:19:25PM *  16 points [-]

After trying to figure out where the response would be best suited, I'm splitting the difference; I'll put a summary here, and if it's not obviously stupid and seems to garner comments, I'll post the full thing on its own.

I've read some of the sequences, but not all; I started to, and then wandered off. Here are my theories as to why, with brief explanations.

1) The minimum suggested reading is not just long, it's deceptively long.

The quantity by itself is a pretty big hurdle to someone who's only just developing an interest in its topics, and the way the sequences are indexed hides the actual amount of content behind categorized links. This is the wrong direction in which to surprise the would-be reader. And that's just talking about the core sequences.

2) Many of the sequences are either not interesting to me, or are presented in ways that make them appear not to be.

If the topic actually doesn't interest me, that's fine, because I presumably won't be trying to discuss it, either. But some of the sequence titles are more pithy than informative, and some of the introductory text is dissuasive where it tries to be inviting; few of them give a clear summary of what the subject is and who needs to read it.

3) Even the ones which are interesting to me contain way more information, or at least text, than I needed.

I don't think it's actually true that every new reader needs to read all of the sequences. I'm a bad example, because there's a lot in them I've never heard of or even thought about, but I don't think that's true of everyone who walks up to LW for the first time. On the other hand, just because I'd never heard of Bayes's Theorem by name doesn't mean that I need a huge missive to explain it to me. What I turned out to need was an example problem, the fact that the general form of the math I used to solve it is named after a guy called Bayes, and an explanation of how the term is used in prose. I was frustrated by having to go through a very long introduction in order to get those things (and I didn't entirely get the last one).

My proposal for addressing these is to create a single introductory page with inline links to glossary definitions, and from there to further reading. The idea is that more information is available up front and a new reader can more easily prioritize the articles based on their own knowledge and interest; it would also provide a general overview of the topics LW addresses. (The About page is a good introduction to the site, but not the subjects.) On a quick search, the glossary appears to have been suggested before but not yet exist--unless I just can't find it, in which case it's not doing much good. There are parts of this I'm not qualified to do, but I'd be happy to donate time to the ones that I am.

Comment author: komponisto 19 September 2010 02:03:20AM 1 point [-]

What I turned out to need was an example problem, the fact that the general form of the math I used to solve it is named after a guy called Bayes, and an explanation of how the term is used in prose...(and I didn't entirely get the last one).

You'll want to see this post, if you haven't already.

Comment author: NihilCredo 17 September 2010 05:37:32PM *  0 points [-]

Moved to PM (or to the Open thread should more people manifest interest).

Comment author: komponisto 17 September 2010 09:43:46PM *  0 points [-]

(or to the Open thread should more people manifest interest).

In that case, allow me to manifest my interest.

(ETA: All the more so since I see that your current location is Uppsala, Sweden.)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 17 September 2010 06:33:17PM *  2 points [-]

This surprises me. One explanation for the mismatch between my experience with Mensa and Adams' is that local groups vary a lot. Another is that he's making up a bunch of insults based on a cliche.

What I've seen of Mensa is people who seemed socially ordinary (bear in mind, my reference group is sf fandom), but not as intelligent as I hoped. I went to a couple of gatherings-- one had pretty ordinary discussion of Star Trek. Another was basically alright, but had one annoying person who'd been in the group so long that the other members didn't notice how annoying he was-- hardly a problem unique to Mensa.

Kate Jones, President of Kadon Games, is a Mensan and one of the more intelligent people I know. I know one other Mensan I consider intelligent, and there's no reason to think I have a complete list of the Mensans in my social circle.

I was in Mensa for a while-- I hoped it would be useful for networking, but I didn't get any good out of it. The publications were generally underwhelming-- there was a lot of articles which would start with more or less arbitrary definitions for words, and then an effort to build an argument from the definitions. This was in the 80s, and I don't know whether the organization has changed.

Still, if I'd lived in a small town with no access to sf fandom, Mensa might have been a best available choice for me.

These days, I'd say there are a lot of online communities for smart people.

All this being said, I suspect that IQ tests the like select for people with mild ADD (look! another question! no need to stay focused on a project!) and against people who want to do things which are directly connected to their goals.

Comment author: komponisto 17 September 2010 08:03:19PM *  1 point [-]

I suspect that IQ tests [and] the like select for people with mild ADD

I'm not sure about this. I doubt I would do all that well on a Mensa-type IQ test, and I suspect ADD may be part of the reason. (Though SarahC has raised the possibility of motivated cognition interfering with mathematical problem solving, which I hadn't really considered.)

and against people who want to do things which are directly connected to their goals.

This, however, I do believe.

Despite Richard Feynman's supposedly low IQ score, and Albert Einstein's status as the popular exemplar of high-IQ, my impression (prejudice?) regarding traditional "IQ tests" is that they would in fact tend to select for people like Feynman (clever tinkerers) at the expense of people like Einstein (imaginative ponderers).

Comment author: wedrifid 17 September 2010 06:03:16AM *  3 points [-]

I'm quite curious about what benefits you experienced from your two week visit... anything you can share or is it all secret and mysterious?

Not that I am considering applying. If I was I would have had to refrain from telling Eliezer (and probably Alicorn) whenever they are being silly. The freedom to speak ones mind without the need for securing approval is just too attractive to pass up! :)

Comment author: komponisto 17 September 2010 06:27:25PM 2 points [-]

I'm quite curious about what benefits you experienced from your two week visit... anything you can share or is it all secret and mysterious?

Perhaps the most publicly noticeable result was that I had the opportunity to write this post (and also this wiki entry) in an environment where writing Less Wrong posts was socially reinforced as a worthwhile use of one's time.

Then, of course, are the benefits discussed above -- those that one would automatically get from spending time living in a high-IQ environment. In some ways, in fact, it was indeed like a two-week-long Less Wrong meetup.

I had the opportunity to learn specific information about subjects relating to artificial intelligence and existential risk (and the beliefs of certain people about these subjects), which resulted in some updating of my beliefs about these subjects; as well as the opportunity to participate in rationality training exercises.

It was also nice to become personally acquainted with some of the "important people" on LW, such as Anna Salamon, Kaj Sotala, Nick Tarleton, Mike Blume, and Alicorn (who did indeed go by that name around SIAI!); as well as a number of other folks at SIAI who do very important work but don't post as much here.

Conversations were frequent and very stimulating. (Kaj Sotala wasn't lying about Michael Vassar.)

As a result of having done this, I am now "in the network", which will tend to facilitate any specific contributions to existential risk reduction that I might be able to make apart from my basic strategy of "become as high-status/high-value as possible in the field(s) I most enjoy working in, and transfer some of that value via money to existential risk reduction".

Not that I am considering applying. If I was I would have had to refrain from telling Eliezer (and probably Alicorn) whenever they are being silly.

Eliezer is uninvolved with the Visiting Fellows program, and I doubt he even had any idea that I was there. Nor is Alicorn currently there, as I understand.

Comment author: NihilCredo 17 September 2010 12:10:07PM 1 point [-]

Quirk of the Paduan university system: what Americans would call "Calculus" is treated as a part of the "[Mathematical] Analysis" course name, which very often uses the same two-part massive textbook written by a maths professor (which most people buy from older students since it's so standard) - except that applied scientists study maybe 10-15% of it to cover their MA course, which I believe more or less matches Calculus, while maths and physics students usually take MA2, MA3, MA4, and Topology 1 to finish the tome.

Comment author: komponisto 17 September 2010 05:31:04PM *  0 points [-]

Ah, makes sense now. Grazie.

In response to comment by wedrifid on LW's first job ad
Comment author: NihilCredo 16 September 2010 07:01:31PM 2 points [-]

No, not at all. The epistemic size of the debate about Tychonoff's theorem is many orders of magnitude smaller than the one about counterfactual mugging or torturing one vs. annoying many. Hence, while I can confidently attribute my Calculus 2 textbook's massive handwaving on the former to the author being far smarter than me (and possibly lazy), I'm a lot less inclined to be equally charitable towards Eliezer.

Comment author: komponisto 17 September 2010 04:08:41AM 1 point [-]

Your Calculus 2 textbook includes a discussion of Tychonoff's theorem?

Comment author: [deleted] 17 September 2010 02:47:43AM 7 points [-]

Here I go, speaking for other people, but I'm guessing that people at the LessWrong meetup at least met some baseline of all those other qualities, by komponisto's estimation, and that the difference of intelligence allowed for such a massive increase in ability to communicate made talking so much more enjoyable, given that ey was talking to decent people.

Each quality may not be linear. If someone is "half as nice" as another person, I don't want to talk to them at half the frequency, or bet that I'll fully enjoy conversation half of the time. A certain threshold of most qualities makes a person totally not worth talking to. But at the same time, a person can only be so much more thoughtful, respectful, funny, supportive, before you lose your ability to identify with them again! That's my experience anyhow - if I admire a person too much, I have difficulty imagining that they identify with me as I do with them. Trust needs some symmetry. And so there are probably optimal levels of friendship-worthy qualities (very roughly by any measure), a minimum threshold, and a region where a little difference makes a big difference. The left-bounded S-curves of friendship.

Then there is order. For different qualities, the difference between a person at minimum-threshold and at optimal is worth very different amounts of satisfaction to you. Some qualities probably have a threshold so low, you don't think about it. Not having inexplicable compulsions to murder is a big plus on my list. When that's the case, the quality seems to vary so slightly over most people, you almost take it for granted that people have enough of that quality. The more often you meet people at the minimum, the more amazing it will seem to meet someone at optimal. If you spend a long time surrounded by jerks, meeting supportive people is probably more amazing than usual. If you grow up surrounded by supportive people who have no idea what you're talking about half of the time, gaining that ability to communicate is probably worth a lot.

Finally, there's the affect heuristic. If a personality quality gain compared to the experienced average is worth a lot, of course it can distort your valuation of the difference of other qualities. If I were trapped all my life in a country whose language could capture only 1% of the ideas mine did, filled with good people who mostly just don't care about those other 99% of ideas, I would still feel greatly relieved to meet someone who spoke my language. Even if the person was a little bit below the threshold that marks em a jerk. But why is the person more likely to be a jerk anyhow? What if the person is actually really good and decent as well? I might propose.

I don't know if komponisto had the urge to marry anyone at the meetup. But I'm sure it happens.

Comment author: komponisto 17 September 2010 03:58:16AM *  1 point [-]

I'm guessing that people at the LessWrong meetup at least met some baseline of all those other qualities

Actually, I was talking about my two-week stay as an SIAI Visiting Fellow. (Which is kind of like a Less Wrong meetup...)

But, yeah.

Comment author: Relsqui 16 September 2010 06:11:57AM *  2 points [-]

That's not the sense of IQ that I mean; rather, I mean the underlying thing which that ability is supposed to be an indicator of.

See my response to cata.

My experience suggests that it makes a significant difference to one's quality of life whether the people in one's social circle are close to one's own intelligence level.

I suppose it's possible that I'm merely spoiled in this regard, but I'm not sure. Yes, most of the people I've spent a lot of time with in my life have been some kind of intelligent--my parents are very smart, and I was taught to value intellect highly growing up. But some of the folks who've really made me glad to have them around have been less educated and less well-read than I am, which isn't trivial (I'm a high school dropout, albeit one who likes to do some learning on her own time).

I'm thinking particularly of my coworkers at my last job. We worked behind the counter at a dry cleaner. These were not people with college educations, or who had learned much about critical thinking or logic or debate. This is not to say they had below average intelligence--just not particularly higher, either. They were confused as to why I was working this dead-end job with them instead of going to college and making some of myself; I was clearly capable of it.

But those people made the job worthwhile. They were thoughtful, respectful, often funny, and supportive. They were good at their jobs--on a busy day, it felt like being part of a well-oiled machine. There isn't one quality in that list you could have traded for outstanding intelligence and made them better people, nor made me happier to be around them.

If your point is right, maybe all that means is that my brain is nothing to write home about. But I'm fonder of the theory that there are other qualities that have at least as much value in terms of quality of life. Would you be happy living in a house of smart people who were all jerks?

Comment author: komponisto 16 September 2010 04:27:43PM 4 points [-]

Would you be happy living in a house of smart people who were all jerks?

Of course not. What caused your probability of my saying "yes" to be high enough to make this question worth asking?

I could with more genuine curiosity ask you the following: would you be happy spending your life surrounded by nice people who understood maybe 20% of your thoughts?

Comment author: Relsqui 16 September 2010 04:48:04AM *  0 points [-]

the reason people join this community is that it's probably the easiest high-IQ group to join in the world

I find this sort of puzzling. There is clearly a demand for organizations which provide opportunities to interact and socialize with people carefully selected for their ability to solve clever puzzles (and whatever else is on the IQ test--I haven't taken a real one). Why is that? Does anybody here specifically seek out high-IQ friends? Do you feel like trying to explain the appeal to me? Intelligence is one of my criteria for my companions, to be sure, but I'm not sure it's in the top three, and I certainly wouldn't settle for it alone.

Also, I'm not sure that earning a degree is harder than writing an intelligent blog post. Not for everyone, anyway.

Comment author: komponisto 16 September 2010 05:26:10AM *  10 points [-]

There is clearly a demand for organizations which provide opportunities to interact and socialize with people carefully selected for their ability to solve clever puzzles (and whatever else is on the IQ test--I haven't taken a real one)

That's not the sense of IQ that I mean; rather, I mean the underlying thing which that ability is supposed to be an indicator of.

(My guess would be that this underlying thing is probably something like "richness of mental life".)

Does anybody here specifically seek out high-IQ friends? Do you feel like trying to explain the appeal to me?

My experience suggests that it makes a significant difference to one's quality of life whether the people in one's social circle are close to one's own intelligence level.

Not too long ago I spent some time at the SIAI house; and even though I was probably doing more "work" than usual while I was there, it felt like vacation, simply because the everyday task of communicating with people was so much easier and more efficient than in my normal life.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 16 September 2010 04:31:25AM *  10 points [-]

Oh, then it was a misunderstanding. I thought you were (like me) amused by the poll result suggesting that the intelligence of the average person here is in the upper 99.865-th percentile.

(Just to get the feel for that number, belonging to the same percentile of income distribution in the U.S. would mean roughly a million dollars a year.)

Comment author: komponisto 16 September 2010 04:34:15AM 1 point [-]

Well I'm also amused by that, to be sure.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 16 September 2010 04:13:20AM *  15 points [-]

According to the survey, the average IQ on this site is around 145

I can't possibly have been the only one to have been amused by this.

The really disturbing possibility is that average people hanging out here might actually be of the sort that solves IQ tests extremely successfully, with scores over 140, but whose real-life accomplishments are far below what these scores might suggest. In other words, that there might be a selection effect for the sort of people that Scott Adams encountered when he joined Mensa:

I decided to take an I.Q. test administered by Mensa, the organization of geniuses. If you score in the top 2% of people who take that same test, you get to call yourself a “genius” and optionally join the group. I squeaked in and immediately joined so I could hang out with the other geniuses and do genius things. I even volunteered to host some meetings at my apartment.

Then, the horror.

It turns out that the people who join Mensa and attend meetings are, on average, not successful titans of industry. They are instead – and I say this with great affection – huge losers. I was making $735 per month and I was like frickin’ Goldfinger in this crowd. We had a guy who was some sort of poet who hoped to one day start “writing some of them down.” We had people who were literally too smart to hold a job. The rest of the group dressed too much like street people to ever get past security for a job interview. And everyone was always available for meetings on weekend nights.

Comment author: komponisto 16 September 2010 04:23:56AM *  11 points [-]

I should clarify that I was specifically referring to the interesting placement of that superscript 2. :-)

EDIT: Though actually, this is probably the perfect opportunity to wonder if the reason people join this community is that it's probably the easiest high-IQ group to join in the world: you don't have to pass a test or earn a degree; all you have to do is write intelligent blog comments.

Comment author: komponisto 16 September 2010 03:51:41AM 10 points [-]

According to the survey, the average IQ on this site is around 145^2

I can't possibly have been the only one to have been amused by this.

(Well, doesn't Clippy claim to be a superintelligence?)

Comment author: Will_Newsome 16 September 2010 02:07:48AM 2 points [-]

Which classes could I reasonably sit in on at U.C. Berkeley that would give me the most leverage for IA research? I was thinking neuroscience-type classes, but perhaps pharmacology or nutrition classes would be equally or more useful? I have no idea how universities work.

Comment author: komponisto 16 September 2010 02:30:52AM 9 points [-]

I have no idea how universities work

If what you want is information, you're probably better off not bothering with the classrooms and sticking to the library. If you need personal contact (whether for status/networking reasons or for more effectively locating the information you want), the important thing is to become acquainted with the right people, and going to their classes is only one way to do that.

Comment author: Will_Newsome 15 September 2010 10:48:57PM 0 points [-]

Should I have a glass of wine with dinner every day? I'd heard that recommended somewhere but the Wikipedia article doesn't seem all that convincing: it instead indicates that I should be eating more grapes to get resveratrol. Maybe. The other health benefits of wine seem negligible if existent.

Comment author: komponisto 16 September 2010 02:21:56AM 0 points [-]

Should I have a glass of wine with dinner every day?

Subjectively and anecdotally, when I have tried this (on special occasions), I have found that it made the evening more pleasant and more productive. My assumption is that I would become habituated if I did it "every day", and those benefits would disappear. Those with information about whether this is likely to be the case may want to chime in.

Comment author: Daniel_Burfoot 14 September 2010 07:10:27PM *  18 points [-]

One element of meta-contrarian reasoning is as follows. Consider a proposition P, that is hard for a layperson to assess. Because of this difficulty, an individual must rely on others for information. Now, a reasonable layperson might look around and listen with an open mind to all the arguments, and choose the one that seems most plausible to assign a probability to P.

The problem is that certain propositions have large corps of people whose professions depend on the proposition being true, but no counterforce of professional critics. So there is a large group of people (priests) who are professionally committed to the proposition "God exists". The existence of this group causes an obvious bias in the layperson's decision algorithm. Other groups, like doctors, economists, soldiers, and public school teachers, have similar commitments. Consider the proposition "public education improves national academic achievement." It could be true, it could be false - it's an empirical question. But all public school teachers are committed to this proposition, and there are very few people committed to the opposite.

So meta-contrarians explicitly correct for this kind of bias. I don't necessarily think that the public school proposition is false, but it should be thoroughly examined. I don't necessarily think that the nation would be safer if we abolished the Army and Marine Corps, but it might be.

Comment author: komponisto 14 September 2010 09:23:19PM 9 points [-]

The problem is that certain propositions have large corps of people whose professions depend on the proposition being true, but no counterforce of professional critics.

This really is a very good point.

Comment author: sixes_and_sevens 14 September 2010 09:15:12AM 6 points [-]

I can't remember where I read this anecdote, but it pertains to a student who became obsessed with the Implicit Awareness Test to the point where he completed it on a daily basis. One day, out of nowhere, it came back with a net positive association with black faces. He struggled to account for this until he realised he'd been watching coverage of the Olympics that morning.

As for expressing points with non-argumentative methods, the general idea makes me a little uneasy. Some time ago, after attending a folk festival, I came to the conclusion that music shouldn't be the dialectic of politics. It's too easy for the uninitiated to conflate a good piece of music with a good argument. Artistic flair is both a useful and fun tool for presenting ideas, but too much flair and you have to start wondering if the ideas could stand up by themselves

Comment author: komponisto 14 September 2010 12:02:55PM *  1 point [-]

I came to the conclusion that music shouldn't be the dialectic of politics...Artistic flair is both a useful and fun tool for presenting ideas, but too much flair and you have to start wondering if the ideas could stand up by themselves

Add to that the danger of a corrupting effect on art itself, whose primary value does not derive from extra-artistic "ideas" it "presents".

It is notable how little of the greatest music (to take the art form I know the most about) is explicitly political.

Comment author: komponisto 14 September 2010 04:54:23AM *  3 points [-]

The general technique here is an excellent one that has a lot appeal to me, that I find quite useful, and that I actually apply quite often myself -- without ever having really stopped to take note of it as something to recommend. Bravo. (Perhaps it's no coincidence that among LW readers I have a higher-than-average interest in things artistic.)

One not-specifically-artistic example that comes to mind: when I find myself feeling negatively toward the country of Italy as a result of the Amanda Knox situation (which does sometimes happen, even though I'm very conscious of the irrationality of this), I think of Piergiorgio Odifreddi.

Comment author: datadataeverywhere 12 September 2010 10:55:51PM 6 points [-]

First of all, the phrase "it is not acceptable to criticize..." is kind of an alarm bell.

How about "it is hurtful and offensive to criticize..."? I realize that being hurtful and offensive is not a reason not to criticize something (see also: religion), but please recognize that I consider my freedom not to have sex with someone I don't want to have sex with sacrosanct, even above other freedoms that I also consider sacrosanct.

I took your original suggestion to mean that my preferences in that area should be up for debate. Since I am completely unwilling to debate whether or not I should be so reluctant to offer up "sexual favors", that makes me hurt and afraid.

If you had suggested that I might be happier if I was more willing to have sex with people, I might have bristled a little, but I would at least recognize ways in which that could be a defensible position. However, your initial suggestion came off as "the world would be better if women were altered so that they would be more easily convinced to have sex". Since you failed to mention any specific benefit to the women so altered, it sounds like coercion and is extremely offensive.

Comment author: komponisto 13 September 2010 12:04:10AM 3 points [-]

Given that this is your point of view, it is not possible for me to discuss this topic with you.

I cannot psychologically afford to have a bunch of people here calling me "extremely offensive". That isn't how I see myself. I'm not one of those people. A comment such as yours is already very distressing to me. Yet, it is now clear to me that if I were to honestly express myself, this is exactly what I would have to expect: more of this.

I stand to gain almost nothing from wading further into this minefield, and on the other hand risk losing almost everything. Except as incidental to other matters, on the topic of sex and gender on LW, I am officially finished.

Now, as they say, off to buy some strychnine....

Comment author: Perplexed 12 September 2010 09:18:03PM 6 points [-]

I wonder if it's time someone made the bound-to-be-controversial suggestion that women in modern society are excessively conservative when it comes to granting sexual favors.

Ok, you have put the suggestion out there, it was indeed controversial, you received some criticism, but apparently no hit to your karma for suggesting it. Isn't it time now for you to flesh out just what it is you mean? "Excessively conservative" by what standard, and who or what makes that kind of standard? The phrase "granting sexual favors". Was that phrase just a convenient euphemism, or do you think that "granting favors" is the right framework for this discussion? (Surely, after all, the world might be a better place if we all did more favors for each other, but it seemed as if you were calling for one small segment of humanity - young, attractive single women to provide the favors, presumably for the benefit of a different small segment. You didn't mention any favors flowing in any other direction. Perhaps now might be the time to mention them.)

Also, you might clarify that bit about:

There is apparently no greater female nightmare scenario than mating with a less-than-optimally-attractive male.

You see, I notice unattractive men getting married every day, and then going on to have children. Their wives don't seem to be having nightmares about it. That is the kind of thing you meant by "mating", isn't it? Or, if you are using "mating" to refer to some other behavior, and you want to continue to use that word to exclude the kind of mating I mentioned, please explain why your usage is the correct one.

Comment author: komponisto 12 September 2010 09:42:42PM *  0 points [-]

I wonder if it's time someone made the bound-to-be-controversial suggestion

Ok, you have put the suggestion out there, it was indeed controversial, you received some criticism, but apparently no hit to your karma for suggesting it. Isn't it time now for you to flesh out just what it is you mean?

As I indicated here (final paragraph), I do not currently feel that my further discussion of this topic would be worthwhile.

In other words, I wondered if it was time to make that suggestion, and the answer came back: no.

Comment author: Alicorn 12 September 2010 04:54:47PM *  2 points [-]

Such an attempt at suppression may be pardonable, if the fear is genuine, and especially if it comes from somebody whom one has met and likes; but the mere fact that it is pardonable does not make it reasonable, when one's own prior for such fears being rationally justified is...

It is reasonable to take precautions even against small risks, when those risks are the sort you run into again and again and must develop habits about. I wear seatbelts even during short car trips with safe drivers in good weather in daylight with minimal traffic at low speed. It is costly to evaluate those factors of risk separately each time I get into a car. It is costly to evaluate the factors that lead you to see this thread as definitely not harmful to me.

Perhaps it is harmless. I've never been injured in a car accident, either (although I've been wearing seatbelts each time I've been in one). But I put on my seatbelt as a reflex which it is unsafe to tamper with, and I ask for protective conventions in conversations on this subject as a reflex which it is unsafe for me to tamper with. Inviting me to take off my metaphorical seatbelt, without a reason other than it being inconvenient for you, demonstrates a willingness to take my concerns lightly and to substitute your judgment for mine. Interestingly, that doesn't make me feel safer.

Comment author: komponisto 12 September 2010 08:20:13PM *  9 points [-]

Inviting me to take off my metaphorical seatbelt, without a reason other than it being inconvenient for you, demonstrates a willingness to take my concerns lightly and to substitute your judgment for mine. Interestingly, that doesn't make me feel safer

Despite your use of the trivializing word "inconvenient", the fact is that your personal anxieties do not automatically trump my desires, including my desire (if it exists) to have a discussion about certain topics. You are not the only one with preferences and wishes, and your feeling as safe as possible is not the only concern in the universe.

(I find it notable that while you accuse me of a "willingness to take [your] concerns lightly", you have, so far as I can tell, yet to show any sympathy for "my" concerns as expressed in this thread.)

It would not be costly to evaluate whether or not to put on a seatbelt. What would be costly is a general policy of evaluating every such "reflexive" act. Much less costly, however, would be a general policy of evaluating those reflexive acts whose usefulness has been called into question by intelligent rational people who don't wish you harm. If someone on LW proposed that seatbelts are harmful, I would pay attention. I may or may not end up agreeing, but I would listen to the argument and open that particular "reflex" up to questioning.

You are free to hold irrational beliefs about the dangers posed to you by threads such as this. You are even -- perhaps especially -- free to attempt to convince others that the beliefs you hold are in fact not irrational. You should however not expect others to be intimidated into self-censorship by your claims to special status.

There is a genuine problem here. Like so many other things in our current world, the sexual status quo is not optimal. I have the impression that there are people out there who are very unhappy, but whose unhappiness is not considered a problem by almost anyone other than themselves. I find it regrettable that you are seeking to enforce taboos that prevent the open discussion of this. In principle, this is something I feel I ought to fight. Unfortunately, the costs may be too high for me. The more I engage in these discussions, the more risk I run of being associated with a particular "side" in the "sex wars", not necessarily a side that I want to be associated with. This isn't something I have much of a personal stake in, except insofar as it engages my unusually active empathic tendencies; so it might be best for me to leave it to other people, more willing to take the status hit. I would however like to make at least the following point: even "victimizers" are not innately evil. I have the strong suspicion that lurking behind many a "misogynistic" smirk or scowl is a sad face with authentic tears.

Comment author: Alicorn 12 September 2010 01:01:34PM 5 points [-]

I find it a shame that Alicorn isn't currently willing to discuss possible criticisms of women's preferences

Altering one's preferences, especially ones as deeply lodged as ones about sexuality, is a difficult project. I expect I could accomplish certain hacks in myself because self-modification is something I practice and have developed good instincts about. I don't expect women in general to share this ability. So what would it accomplish to hammer out a new set of ideal preferences that it would be better if women had instead? They can't adopt them on purpose even if they see the logic indicating that they should. At best, they can follow a norm that has them act as though they adopt these new preferences, and that just has them acting contrary to their own real preferences to suit those of men.

If there's some point to entertaining criticism of women's preferences (as opposed to my own atypical preferences which are unlikely to percolate out into the population) that I have missed, do please let me know.

Comment author: komponisto 12 September 2010 03:20:44PM *  4 points [-]

They can't adopt them on purpose even if they see the logic indicating that they should

In a nutshell-of-simplification, I believe this statement is false.

I think people's preferences -- or apparent preferences -- are more malleable than that. As people learn more -- about the world, themselves, and other people -- and learn to think -- if not faster, then at least more powerfully -- they may become susceptible to arguments they wouldn't have been susceptible to before, and the suboptimal game-theoretic equilibrium inherited from the past may begin to break down. At the very least, people are diverse enough that there are bound to be some for whom this is true more than for others. As a result, there is no reason that I can see not to entertain discussion of possible preference-modifications. An individual may find that a particular proposed modification is too difficult to implement, or would even perhaps conflict with deeper, more important preferences; but it is not reasonable in my view for such an individual to thereby conclude that the possibility was not worth considering, or that there won't be a significant number, now or in the future, of other individuals for whom the outcome of this kind introspection will be different.

Still less do I think it reasonable for anyone to attempt to suppress such discussions by means of psychological bullying tactics such as implying -- against all plausibility -- that having such a discussion will noticeably increase the risk to the personal safety of participants on this forum. Such an attempt at suppression may be pardonable, if the fear is genuine, and especially if it comes from somebody whom one has met and likes; but the mere fact that it is pardonable does not make it reasonable, when one's own prior for such fears being rationally justified is somewhere between the probability of a summer snowstorm in Miami and the probability (speaking of sex and violence) that a certain American exchange student and her boyfriend of one week got together with a local drifter to end the life of her friend and roommate in the course of a sadistic orgy held under the influence of cannabis. Exaggeration in the previous sentence is minimal; and no, before anyone asks (or pounces), such a low prior does not derive from beliefs about the statistical incidence of certain kinds of violence, but rather from beliefs about their causal mechanisms.

Thank you for your attention, as it is said by some.

In response to Belief in Belief
Comment author: patrissimo 12 September 2010 03:32:49AM 1 point [-]

Might belief in belief occasionally be valuable when overcoming bias? It would be better to correct my beliefs, but sometimes those beliefs come from bias. I might be convinced in my head that standing on the glass floor of an airplane and looking down is totally safe - this specially-modified-for-cool-views airplane has flown hundreds of flights - yet in my heart deeply believe that if I step onto it I will fall through. I might then choose to "believe in the belief that it is safe to take a step", while all my instinctual reactions are based on a false model. The cognitive dissonance is due to my inability to integrate something so foreign to the evolutionary environment into my belief structure.

Comment author: komponisto 12 September 2010 04:10:25AM 1 point [-]
Comment author: NancyLebovitz 12 September 2010 02:27:04AM 8 points [-]

Google has most of the book-- all but the last two chapters. I have a paper copy.

Her Sex and Bacon: Why I Love Things that Are Very, Very Bad for Me is likewise amazing.

The most surprising essay-- she talks about the bacon deficiency economy in which restaurants never give you enough bacon, so she cooks and eats four pounds of bacon to be sure she has enough-- used to be online, but doesn't seem to be there any more.

I will tentatively recommend her books to any of the men here who can't seem to figure out why things keep blowing up when they write about sex, since it seems to me that they have a blank spot in their model of the universe about women having desires and making choices. She's quite emphatic about the inside of her head.

I'm making massive efforts not to blame the guys-- I have some scary blind spots myself, including one that I was at least past 35 before I realized I had. It turned out that I believed women had emotions and men had desires. That is, I believed men wanted things and women had reactions to getting or not getting what they wanted.

What clued me into the blind spot was noticing that men had facial expressions which seemed to indicate emotional reactions, and that I was surprised by this.

Possibly relevant: I was born in 1953-- I hope things were more stereotyped then than they are now, but I don't think things have completely changed.

Comment author: komponisto 12 September 2010 02:57:47AM *  2 points [-]

any of the men here who can't seem to figure out why things keep blowing up when they write about sex, since it seems to me that they have a blank spot in their model of the universe about women having desires and making choices.

Since I made the comment that initiated this latest mini-flare-up, I feel the need to make it clear that I am not myself in that category. I see the non-alignment of desires among humans as a general problem, of which the sex issues discussed above are merely one particular manifestation.

Possibly relevant: I was born in 1953

I had actually gotten the impression that you were older than is typical here; and on thinking about it, I suspect it had to do with your first name (which was a lot more popular at around that time than 20-40 years later).

Comment author: CronoDAS 11 September 2010 01:05:10AM 1 point [-]

You need more karma before you can make a top-level post. (I think you need 20, unless it's been changed since the site started.)

Comment author: komponisto 12 September 2010 12:54:05AM 1 point [-]

It was changed to 50 for a short while, then changed back to 20.

Rationality Quotes: July 2010

4 komponisto 01 July 2010 09:24PM

This is our monthly thread for collecting these little gems and pearls of wisdom, rationality-related quotes you've seen recently, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages, and which might be handy to link to in one of our discussions.

  • Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately.  (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments.  If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
  • Do not quote yourself.
  • Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB.
  • No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

 

Open Thread: July 2010

6 komponisto 01 July 2010 09:20PM

This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.

Part 2

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 01 July 2010 07:55:56AM 1 point [-]

The position I was presenting was that small good deeds should not be discouraged.

An inefficient small good deed is a negated greater good deed requiring the same effort. In this framing, the "small good deed" is actually a bad deed, and should be discouraged.

Comment author: komponisto 01 July 2010 08:14:30AM 1 point [-]

That was apparently not the argument that wedrifid was making after all.

As for the argument itself: it says nothing more than that the good is bad because it isn't perfect. That is obviously wrong, because the good is better than nothing. It shouldn't be discouraged; rather, the better should be (separately) encouraged.

Again, see this post.

Comment author: wedrifid 01 July 2010 06:34:43AM 1 point [-]

in fact you explicitly described the pursuit of warm fuzzies -- as would be exemplified by contributing to the causes listed in the post -- as "bad decision making".

This is not the case. I explicitly describe the equivocation of 'rational' with any meaning apart from 'rational' (and the application of said equivocation when decision making) as 'bad decision making'.

Comment author: komponisto 01 July 2010 06:51:53AM *  10 points [-]

Okay, I think I see what happened. Your original point was really this:

This isn't a religious community and 'rational' is not or should not be just the local jargon for 'anything asserted to be morally good

-- with which I agree. However, the following statements distracted from that point and confused me:

The examples listed are not rational. They are examples of 'altruism' for the sake of a 'warm feeling' and signalling

I make a call for a different response. I encourage people to resist the influence, suppress the irrational urge take actions that are neither optimal signals nor an optimal instrument for satisfying their altruistic values.

These made it sound like you were saying "No! Don't contribute to those causes! Doing so would be irrational, since they're not philanthropically optimal!" (I unfortunately have a high prior on that type of argument being made here.) My natural response, which I automatically fired off when I saw that your comment had 17 upvotes, is that there's nothing irrational about liking to do small good deeds (warm fuzzies) separately from saving the planet.

However, as I understand you now, you don't necessarily see anything wrong with those causes; it's just that you disapprove of the label "rationality" being used to describe their goodness -- rather than, say, just plain "goodness".

Is this right?

Comment author: wedrifid 01 July 2010 06:06:43AM *  0 points [-]

I think what is going on here is that you perceive the kind of "caring" I described above as an obstacle to epistemic rationality, which should therefore be Destroyed. Is that right, or am I being unfair?

That is not right. I disagree specifically with the claims which I quoted in my reply and my disagreement is limited to precisely that which is contained in said reply.

I approve, for example, of seeking warm fuzzies and this is entirely in line with my stated position.

Comment author: komponisto 01 July 2010 06:27:08AM 0 points [-]

I approve, for example, of seeking warm fuzzies and this is entirely in line with my stated position.

Then what, exactly, do we disagree about?

(Your earlier comment is of no help in clarifying this; in fact you explicitly described the pursuit of warm fuzzies -- as would be exemplified by contributing to the causes listed in the post -- as "bad decision making".)

Comment author: wedrifid 01 July 2010 04:33:23AM 1 point [-]

It should be noted that I observe the tone of the parent of my rebuttal to be aggressive, with vigorous use of shaming to present a position that undermines a core value of this community. A vigorous response should be expected.

At WrongBot's suggestion I have removed the sentence containing the word 'evil'. Since almost nobody except myself uses that word in a technical sense it was foolish of me to include it here. I went through planning to edit out anything else that I wrote in haste that I would remove on reflection but I was surprised to find that was the only edit I needed to make. What remains has my reflective endorsement.

Comment author: komponisto 01 July 2010 05:29:03AM *  2 points [-]

It should be noted that I observe the tone of the parent of my rebuttal to be aggressive, with vigorous use of shaming to present a position that undermines a core value of this community

No, I cannot let you get away with that. The position I was presenting was that small good deeds should not be discouraged. If you are going to assert that that undermines a core value of this community (which one?), you are going to have to present a serious (and almost certainly novel) argument before you get to call me "evil".

Absolutely no "shaming" was used in presenting this position. The charge is an ironic one, because I am in fact attempting to defend myself and any other warm-fuzzy-enthusiasts who may happen to consider themselves members of this community from being "shamed" by those who would regard with contempt any activity not (e.g.) calculated to minimize the expected number of deaths.

Epistemic rationality (which, by the way, is what I presented the Knox case as a lesson in in the first place) is, as you know, not an end in itself. At least, it isn't the ultimate end. There has to be something to protect. And, at least in my own case, part of what I protect is that part of myself that is capable of caring about specific, individual humans, apart from "humanity" as an aggregate.

For the sake of cutting to the chase, let me now present what I think this disagreement is really about, and you can correct me if necessary. I think what is going on here is that you perceive the kind of "caring" I described above as an obstacle to epistemic rationality, which should therefore be Destroyed. Is that right, or am I being unfair?

At WrongBot's suggestion I have removed the sentence containing the word 'evil'...What remains has my reflective endorsement.

See my ETA.

Comment author: wedrifid 01 July 2010 02:40:21AM *  11 points [-]

That is, instead of responding to a post like this by encouraging people to ...

how about answering with "hey, you know what would be really, really helpful?" and proceeding to list some awesome utility-maximizing charity.

No, no, NO! I desire to correct a fundamental mistake that is counter to whatever good 'rationality' may happen to provide. Raising the sanity waterline is an important goal in itself and particularly applicable in rare communities that have some hope of directing their actions in a way that is actually effective. Not only that, but seeing the very concept of rationality abused to manipulate people into bad decision making is something that makes me feel bad inside. Yes, it is the opposite of a warm fuzzy.

Look, scoffing at less-than-optimal philanthropy is ultimately just another form of counterproductive negativity. If you're really serious about efficacy, you should be adding to the list of causes, not subtracting from it.

You are fundamentally wrong and the use of labeling things that disagree with you as 'negative' is non-rational influence technique that works in most places but should be discouraged here. It is not counterproductive to not do things that are stupid. It is not intrinsically better to add things to a list of normatively demanded behaviors while never removing them. If the list is wrong (for a given value of wrong) then it should be fixed by adding to it or removing from it in whatever way necessary.

Warm feelings are good. Someone who donates a few spare frequent-flyer miles to help Curt Knox and Edda Mellas visit their daughter imprisoned 6,000 miles away doesn't need to feel ashamed of themselves for not being "rational" -- except in the extremely unlikely event that that action actually prevented them from doing something better. Does anyone honestly, seriously believe that discouraging people from doing things like this is a way of making the world a better place?

People being manipulated into actions by the inclusion of irrelevant things in the definition of 'rational' is what I am discouraging. Tell people that Knox is a good way to purchase warm fuzzies, that's fine. But don't dare try to call it a 'challenge for rationality', piggybacking on the human instinct to avoid the shame of not supporting the tribal value ('rational').

Speaking of challenges for LW, I propose a new rule: anybody who comes across an ostensibly good cause, but scoffs at its suboptimality, or thinks "well, it's not that I'm not willing to sacrifice $10, but surely there are better uses of that money" should be immediately required, right then and there, to donate that $10 to the Singularity Institute -- no ifs, ands, or buts.

No ifs and buts? Not everyone here needs to consider the SIAI to be the best use of their money. That's not required by 'rationality' either. You're in the wrong place if you think that approach is at all appropriate. Don't try to force your obsession with Knox on everyone else. It's not my priority and for most people it just isn't the rational way to maximise their preferences either.

Comment author: komponisto 01 July 2010 03:34:49AM *  3 points [-]

I perceive the tone of the parent comment as needlessly inflammatory (constituting a violation of niceness) and will therefore take some time out before replying to the substance (no concession on which is to be inferred from my temporary silence).

ETA: The above was written before the sentence calling me "evil" was removed. I continue to take exception to the part about an alleged "obsession with Knox" that I am attempting to "force" on anyone. I defy anyone to justify such a characterization; my charitable interpretation is that wedrifid has misunderstood something I said, and/or forgotten that my comment and the original post were written by two different people.

Comment author: wedrifid 30 June 2010 01:14:07PM *  23 points [-]

The examples listed are not rational. They are examples of 'altruism' for the sake of a 'warm feeling' and signalling. Writing a letter, ringing a politician or giving blood are not actions that maximise your altruistic preferences!

You have responded to this 'Potential Objection' with the "better than nothing" argument but even with that in mind this is not about being rational. It is just a bunch of do-gooders exhorting each other to be more sacrificial. When we used to do this at church we would say it was about God... and premising on some of the accepted beliefs that may have been rational. But it definitely isn't here.

I make a call for a different response. I encourage people to resist the influence, suppress the irrational urge take actions that are neither optimal signals nor an optimal instrument for satisfying their altruistic values.

This isn't a religious community and 'rational' is not or should not be just the local jargon for 'anything asserted to be morally good'.

If my preferences were such that I valued eating babies then it would be rational for me to eat babies. Rational is not nice, good, altruistic or self sacrificial. It just is.

Comment author: komponisto 01 July 2010 02:01:41AM *  11 points [-]

They are examples of 'altruism' for the sake of a 'warm feeling' and signalling.

That's okay, dammit!

Look, scoffing at less-than-optimal philanthropy is ultimately just another form of counterproductive negativity. If you're really serious about efficacy, you should be adding to the list of causes, not subtracting from it. That is, instead of responding to a post like this by encouraging people to

resist the influence, suppress the... urge [to] take actions

(!)

how about answering with "hey, you know what would be really, really helpful?" and proceeding to list some awesome utility-maximizing charity.

Warm feelings are good. Someone who donates a few spare frequent-flyer miles to help Curt Knox and Edda Mellas visit their daughter imprisoned 6,000 miles away doesn't need to feel ashamed of themselves for not being "rational" -- except in the extremely unlikely event that that action actually prevented them from doing something better. Does anyone honestly, seriously believe that discouraging people from doing things like this is a way of making the world a better place?

Speaking of challenges for LW, I propose a new rule: anybody who comes across an ostensibly good cause, but scoffs at its suboptimality, or thinks "well, it's not that I'm not willing to sacrifice $10, but surely there are better uses of that money" should be immediately required, right then and there, to donate that $10 to the Singularity Institute -- no ifs, ands, or buts.

Comment author: SilasBarta 20 June 2010 06:36:24PM *  5 points [-]

I was in an exchange here a while back about this question. Komponisto and I basically agree that a trial, whether the guilt is decided by a judge or jury, should work like this:

  • For a conviction, they (jury or judge) must find that the odds of guilt meet some specific, high threshold, such as 100:1 odds.

  • They should be allowed to incorporate any relevant Bayesian evidence (such as "probability that a random person committed this crime")

  • But there should be a list of exceptions to the above for cases where cognitive biases significantly distort the evidence (i.e. their sex life, their religion, hearsay, etc.) or where the society has made a conscious decision that something shouldn't matter or be presented, irrespective of how informative it is (i.e. race/gender of the accused, illegally gathered evidence, stuff endangering national security, etc.).

  • Retain the adversarial system, but require each side to present (and the jury be trained in) a causal/Bayes network indicating what they think happened and how strong each piece of evidence is within that net.

  • The jury should be required to construct their own diagram (possibly borrowing from one side) and determine the weights of each piece of evidence with it, and then use it to compute the posterior of the defendant's guilt, which can then be compared against the guilt threshold.

This last one is important because it will clarify the presence of any poor inference on the part of the jury. While the jury can just fudge the numbers to match their "gut feeling", they cannot do so without assigning unreasonable evidence weight somewhere in the diagram, allowing the public to see if the jury wasn't thinking right. ("Whoa, you gave eight freaking bits of evidence toward guilt in a homicide case because the defendant "dresses like a slut"???)

Beyond that, where I may or may not agree with komponisto, I think the justice system should also have these properties:

  • Be continuous rather than binary: For at least some cases, it shouldn't be all-or-nothing, but the compensation paid to the alleged victim should vary with the probability of guilt the jury finds.

  • Also, punishments should be amplified by the inverse of the recovery rate (basically, the rate at which that crime is solved), with the extra compensation going to a victims' fund to pay those for whom no suspect is ever caught.

  • The issue of jail should be less coupled to the issue of compensation and guilt. Whether someone is jailed should be determined by how dangerous they are expected to be, as judged by some insurer, whether or not they are found guilty. Whether they should pay compensation or be punished should be determined by causal culpability, whether or not the accused is generally dangerous.

This decoupling is most important for cases like drunk driving or accidental homicide. If it's something that the accused is unlikely to do again, they shouldn't be jailed, but they should have to pay compensation anyway to those they hurt. In cases of drunk driving that don't hurt anyone, the evidence that the person drove recklessly while drunk should be fed to their liability insurer, who can then update the risk assessment of the insured.

Comment author: komponisto 22 June 2010 02:15:15AM 1 point [-]

Be continuous rather than binary: For at least some cases, it shouldn't be all-or-nothing, but the compensation paid to the alleged victim should vary with the probability of guilt the jury finds.

I basically agree here, though it should be noted that determining exactly how the compensation should vary with the probability would be a difficult problem. (You certainly wouldn't want it to be directly proportional; I would after all shudder to think of the LW "verdict" imposing a sentence of (0.35)(26) = 9.1 years on poor Amanda Knox.)

Also, punishments should be amplified by the inverse of the recovery rate (basically, the rate at which that crime is solved), with the extra compensation going to a victims' fund to pay those for whom no suspect is ever caught.

I think I agree, provided that what you mean by the "rate at which the crime is solved" is the length of time it took for that particular case to be solved, and not some sort of average for crimes in the same "category".

The issue of jail should be less coupled to the issue of compensation and guilt. >Whether someone is jailed should be determined by how dangerous they are expected to be, as judged by some insurer, whether or not they are found guilty. Whether they should pay compensation or be punished should be determined by causal culpability, whether or not the accused is generally dangerous

I may end up agreeing with the underlying idea here, but as it stands, I'm confused by this. Most people view jail as punishment; do you not?

(In theory, really, the whole notion of punishment probably ought to go out the window, and legal remedies should be designed only with the purposes of compensating victims and preventing future offenses. Of course, there may not be much practical difference, since this would still presumably involve things like e.g. locking people up in institutions, etc.)

Comment author: kodos96 11 June 2010 07:21:12PM 1 point [-]

More significant, it seems to me (though still rather weak evidence), is the Alessi testimony, about which I actually considered posting on the March open thread. Still, the story is enough of a surprise to marginally lower my probability of Guede's guilt.

I hadn't heard about this - I just read your link though, and maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how it lowers the probability of Guede's guilt. He (supposedly) confessed to having been at the crimescene, and that Knox and Sollecito weren't there. How does that, if true, exonerate Guede?

Comment author: komponisto 11 June 2010 09:57:04PM *  2 points [-]

You omitted a crucial paragraph break. :-)

The Aviello testimony would exonerate Guede (and hence is unlikely to be true); the Alessi testimony is essentially consistent with everything else we know, and isn't particularly surprising at all.

I've edited the comment to clarify.

Comment author: Seth_Goldin 11 June 2010 03:03:19AM 4 points [-]

I know this is an old thread, but for any people just now reading it, I thought I'd pass along this bizarre development.

Comment author: komponisto 11 June 2010 04:29:54AM 2 points [-]

See discussion here.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 10 June 2010 04:28:08PM 7 points [-]
Comment author: komponisto 11 June 2010 04:20:20AM *  4 points [-]

Seconding kodos96. As this would exonerate not only Knox and Sollecito but Guede as well, it has to be treated with considerable skepticism, to say the least.

More significant, it seems to me (though still rather weak evidence), is the Alessi testimony, about which I actually considered posting on the March open thread.

Still, the Aviello story is enough of a surprise to marginally lower my probability of Guede's guilt. My current probabilities of guilt are:

Knox: < 0.1 % (i.e. not a chance)

Sollecito: < 0.1 % (likewise)

Guede: 95-99% (perhaps just low enough to insist on a debunking of the Aviello testimony before convicting)

It's probably about time I officially announced that my revision of my initial estimates for Knox and Sollecito was a mistake, an example of the sin of underconfidence.

I of course remain willing to participate in a debate with Rolf Nelson on this subject.

Finally, I'd like to note that the last couple of months have seen the creation of a wonderful new site devoted to the case, Injustice in Perugia, which anyone interested should definitely check out. Had it been around in December, I doubt that I could have made my survey seem like a fair fight between the two sides.

Comment author: komponisto 10 June 2010 04:49:33AM 0 points [-]

Aargh! If only this had taken place a week earlier!

Comment author: Houshalter 10 June 2010 03:41:04AM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure I understand. Why put a constraint on the reward, and even if you do, why pick some arbitrary value?

Comment author: komponisto 10 June 2010 04:40:58AM *  1 point [-]

That's my question for you! I was attempting to explain the intuition that generated these remarks of yours:

The risk for doing it is also really high, but... the bayesian utility function will evaluate it as acceptable because of the [extraordinarily large] reward involved. On paper, this works out...But in practice most people consider this a very bad course of action

Comment author: Houshalter 10 June 2010 02:26:11AM 0 points [-]

Allright, consider a situation where there is a very very small probability that something will work, but it gives infinite utility (or at least extrordinarily large.) The risk for doing it is also really high, but because it is finite, the bayesian utility function will evaluate it as acceptable because of the infinite reward involved. On paper, this works out. If you do it enough times, you succeed and after you subtract the total cost from all those other times, you still have infinity. But in practice most people consider this a very bad course of action. The risk can be very high, perhaps your life, so even the traditional rationalist would avoid doing this. Do you see where the problem is? It's the fact that you only get a finite number of tries in reality, but the bayesian utility function calculates it as though you did it an infinite number of times and gives you the net utility.

Comment author: komponisto 10 June 2010 03:10:03AM 1 point [-]

My guess at what's going on here is that you're intuitively modeling yourself as having a bounded utility function. In which case (letting N denote an upper bound on your utility), no gamble where the probability of the "good" outcome is less than -1/N times the utility of the "bad" outcome could ever be worth taking. Or, translated into plain English: there are some risks such that no reward could make them worth it -- which, you'll note, is a constraint on rewards.

Open Thread June 2010, Part 2

7 komponisto 07 June 2010 08:37AM

The title says it all.

Bayes' Theorem Illustrated (My Way)

126 Post author: komponisto 03 June 2010 04:40AM

(This post is elementary: it introduces a simple method of visualizing Bayesian calculations. In my defense, we've had other elementary posts before, and they've been found useful; plus, I'd really like this to be online somewhere, and it might as well be here.)

I'll admit, those Monty-Hall-type problems invariably trip me up. Or at least, they do if I'm not thinking very carefully -- doing quite a bit more work than other people seem to have to do.

What's more, people's explanations of how to get the right answer have almost never been satisfactory to me. If I concentrate hard enough, I can usually follow the reasoning, sort of; but I never quite "see it", and nor do I feel equipped to solve similar problems in the future: it's as if the solutions seem to work only in retrospect. 

Minds work differently, illusion of transparency, and all that.

Fortunately, I eventually managed to identify the source of the problem, and I came up a way of thinking about -- visualizing -- such problems that suits my own intuition. Maybe there are others out there like me; this post is for them.

I've mentioned before that I like to think in very abstract terms. What this means in practice is that, if there's some simple, general, elegant point to be made, tell it to me right away. Don't start with some messy concrete example and attempt to "work upward", in the hope that difficult-to-grasp abstract concepts will be made more palatable by relating them to "real life". If you do that, I'm liable to get stuck in the trees and not see the forest. Chances are, I won't have much trouble understanding the abstract concepts; "real life", on the other hand...

...well, let's just say I prefer to start at the top and work downward, as a general rule. Tell me how the trees relate to the forest, rather than the other way around.

Many people have found Eliezer's Intuitive Explanation of Bayesian Reasoning to be an excellent introduction to Bayes' theorem, and so I don't usually hesitate to recommend it to others. But for me personally, if I didn't know Bayes' theorem and you were trying to explain it to me, pretty much the worst thing you could do would be to start with some detailed scenario involving breast-cancer screenings. (And not just because it tarnishes beautiful mathematics with images of sickness and death, either!)

So what's the right way to explain Bayes' theorem to me?

Like this:

We've got a bunch of hypotheses (states the world could be in) and we're trying to figure out which of them is true (that is, which state the world is actually in). As a concession to concreteness (and for ease of drawing the pictures), let's say we've got three (mutually exclusive and exhaustive) hypotheses -- possible world-states -- which we'll call H1, H2, and H3. We'll represent these as blobs in space:

Figure 0

                   Figure 0


Now, we have some prior notion of how probable each of these hypotheses is -- that is, each has some prior probability. If we don't know anything at all that would make one of them more probable than another, they would each have probability 1/3. To illustrate a more typical situation, however, let's assume we have more information than that. Specifically, let's suppose our prior probability distribution is as follows: P(H1) = 30%, P(H2)=50%, P(H3) = 20%. We'll represent this by resizing our blobs accordingly:

Figure 1

                       Figure 1

That's our prior knowledge. Next, we're going to collect some evidence and update our prior probability distribution to produce a posterior probability distribution. Specifically, we're going to run a test. The test we're going to run has three possible outcomes: Result A, Result B, and Result C. Now, since this test happens to have three possible results, it would be really nice if the test just flat-out told us which world we were living in -- that is, if (say) Result A meant that H1 was true, Result B meant that H2 was true, and Result 3 meant that H3 was true. Unfortunately, the real world is messy and complex, and things aren't that simple. Instead, we'll suppose that each result can occur under each hypothesis, but that the different hypotheses have different effects on how likely each result is to occur. We'll assume for instance that if Hypothesis  H1 is true, we have a 1/2 chance of obtaining Result A, a 1/3 chance of obtaining Result B, and a 1/6 chance of obtaining Result C; which we'll write like this:

P(A|H1) = 50%, P(B|H1) = 33.33...%, P(C|H1) = 16.166...%

and illustrate like this:

 

        Figure 2

(Result A being represented by a triangle, Result B by a square, and Result C by a pentagon.)

If Hypothesis H2 is true, we'll assume there's a 10% chance of Result A, a 70% chance of Result B, and a 20% chance of Result C:

Figure 3

              Figure 3


(P(A|H2) = 10% , P(B|H2) = 70%, P(C|H2) = 20%)

Finally, we'll say that if Hypothesis H3 is true, there's a 5% chance of Result A, a 15% chance of Result B, and an 80% chance of Result C:

Figure 4

              Figure 4

(P(A|H3) = 5%, P(B|H3) = 15% P(C|H3) = 80%)

Figure 5 below thus shows our knowledge prior to running the test:

 

 

                Figure 5

 

Note that we have now carved up our hypothesis-space more finely; our possible world-states are now things like "Hypothesis H1 is true and Result A occurred", "Hypothesis H1 is true and Result B occurred", etc., as opposed to merely "Hypothesis H1 is true", etc. The numbers above the slanted line segments -- the likelihoods of the test results, assuming the particular hypothesis -- represent what proportion of the total probability mass assigned to the hypothesis Hn is assigned to the conjunction of Hypothesis Hn and Result X; thus, since P(H1) = 30%, and P(A|H1) = 50%, P(H1 & A) is therefore 50% of 30%, or, in other words, 15%.

(That's really all Bayes' theorem is, right there, but -- shh! -- don't tell anyone yet!)


Now, then, suppose we run the test, and we get...Result A.

What do we do? We cut off all the other branches:

                Figure 6

 

So our updated probability distribution now looks like this:

          Figure 7


...except for one thing: probabilities are supposed to add up to 100%, not 21%. Well, since we've conditioned on Result A, that means that the 21% probability mass assigned to Result A is now the entirety of our probability mass -- 21% is the new 100%, you might say. So we simply adjust the numbers in such a way that they add up to 100% and the proportions are the same:

                      Figure 8

There! We've just performed a Bayesian update. And that's what it looks like.

 

If, instead of Result A, we had gotten Result B,

Figure 9

                      Figure 9


then our updated probability distribution would have looked like this:

                     Figure 10

 

Similarly, for Result C:

               Figure 11

Bayes' theorem is the formula that calculates these updated probabilities. Using H to stand for a hypothesis (such as H1, H2 or H3), and E a piece of evidence (such as Result A, Result B, or Result C), it says:

P(H|E) = P(H)*P(E|H)/P(E)

In words: to calculate the updated probability P(H|E), take the portion of the prior probability of H that is allocated to E (i.e. the quantity P(H)*P(E|H)), and calculate what fraction this is of the total prior probability of E (i.e. divide it by P(E)).

What I like about this way of visualizing Bayes' theorem is that it makes the importance of prior probabilities -- in particular, the difference between P(H|E) and P(E|H) -- visually obvious. Thus, in the above example, we easily see that even though P(C|H3) is high (80%), P(H3|C) is much less high (around 51%) -- and once you have assimilated this visualization method, it should be easy to see that even more extreme examples (e.g. with P(E|H) huge and P(H|E) tiny) could be constructed.

Now let's use this to examine two tricky probability puzzles, the infamous Monty Hall Problem and Eliezer's Drawing Two Aces, and see how it illustrates the correct answers, as well as how one might go wrong.

 

The Monty Hall Problem

The situation is this: you're a contestant on a game show seeking to win a car. Before you are three doors, one of which contains a car, and the other two of which contain goats. You will make an initial "guess" at which door contains the car -- that is, you will select one of the doors, without opening it. At that point, the host will open a goat-containing door from among the two that you did not select. You will then have to decide whether to stick with your original guess and open the door that you originally selected, or switch your guess to the remaining unopened door. The question is whether it is to your advantage to switch -- that is, whether the car is more likely to be behind the remaining unopened door than behind the door you originally guessed.

(If you haven't thought about this problem before, you may want to try to figure it out before continuing...)

 

 

The answer is that it is to your advantage to switch -- that, in fact, switching doubles the probability of winning the car.

People often find this counterintuitive when they first encounter it -- where "people" includes the author of this post. There are two possible doors that could contain the car; why should one of them be more likely to contain it than the other?

As it turns out, while constructing the diagrams for this post, I "rediscovered" the error that led me to incorrectly conclude that there is a 1/2 chance the car is behind the originally-guessed door and a 1/2 chance it is behind the remaining door the host didn't open. I'll present that error first, and then show how to correct it. Here, then, is the wrong solution:

We start out with a perfectly correct diagram showing the prior probabilities:

               Figure 12

The possible hypotheses are Car in Door 1, Car in Door 2, and Car in Door 3; before the game starts, there is no reason to believe any of the three doors is more likely than the others to contain the car, and so each of these hypotheses has prior probability 1/3.

The game begins with our selection of a door. That itself isn't evidence about where the car is, of course -- we're assuming we have no particular information about that, other than that it's behind one of the doors (that's the whole point of the game!). Once we've done that, however, we will then have the opportunity to "run a test" to gain some "experimental data": the host will perform his task of opening a door that is guaranteed to contain a goat. We'll represent the result Host Opens Door 1 by a triangle, the result Host Opens Door 2 by a square, and the result Host Opens Door 3 by a pentagon -- thus carving up our hypothesis space more finely into possibilities such as "Car in Door 1 and Host Opens Door 2" , "Car in Door 1 and Host Opens Door 3", etc:

            Figure 13


Before we've made our initial selection of a door, the host is equally likely to open either of the goat-containing doors. Thus, at the beginning of the game, the probability of each hypothesis of the form "Car in Door X and Host Opens Door Y" has a probability of 1/6, as shown. So far, so good; everything is still perfectly correct.

Now we select a door; say we choose Door 2. The host then opens either Door 1 or Door 3, to reveal a goat. Let's suppose he opens Door 1; our diagram now looks like this:


            Figure 14

But this shows equal probabilities of the car being behind Door 2 and Door 3!

                   Figure 15

Did you catch the mistake?

Here's the correct version:

As soon as we selected Door 2, our diagram should have looked like this:

                                Figure 16

 

With Door 2 selected, the host no longer has the option of opening Door 2; if the car is in Door 1, he must open Door 3, and if the car is in Door 3, he must open Door 1. We thus see that if the car is behind Door 3, the host is twice as likely to open Door 1 (namely, 100%) as he is if the car is behind Door 2 (50%); his opening of Door 1 thus constitutes some evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the car is behind Door 3. So, when the host opens Door 1, our picture looks as follows:

               Figure 17

 

which yields the correct updated probability distribution:

                Figure 18

 

Drawing Two Aces

Here is the statement of the problem, from Eliezer's post:


Suppose I have a deck of four cards:  The ace of spades, the ace of hearts, and two others (say, 2C and 2D).

You draw two cards at random.

(...)

Now suppose I ask you "Do you have an ace?"

You say "Yes."

I then say to you:  "Choose one of the aces you're holding at random (so if you have only one, pick that one).  Is it the ace of spades?"

You reply "Yes."

What is the probability that you hold two aces?


(Once again, you may want to think about it, if you haven't already, before continuing...)

 

 

Here's how our picture method answers the question:


Since the person holding the cards has at least one ace, the "hypotheses" (possible card combinations) are the five shown below:

      Figure 19

Each has a prior probability of 1/5, since there's no reason to suppose any of them is more likely than any other.

The "test" that will be run is selecting an ace at random from the person's hand, and seeing if it is the ace of spades. The possible results are:

     Figure 20

 

Now we run the test, and get the answer "YES"; this puts us in the following situation:

 

     Figure 21

 

The total prior probability of this situation (the YES answer) is (1/6)+(1/3)+(1/3) = 5/6; thus, since 1/6 is 1/5 of 5/6 (that is, (1/6)/(5/6) = 1/5), our updated probability is 1/5 -- which happens to be the same as the prior probability. (I won't bother displaying the final post-update picture here.)

What this means is that the test we ran did not provide any additional information about whether the person has both aces beyond simply knowing that they have at least one ace; we might in fact say that the result of the test is screened off by the answer to the first question ("Do you have an ace?").


On the other hand, if we had simply asked "Do you have the ace of spades?", the diagram would have looked like this:

     Figure 22

 

which, upon receiving the answer YES, would have become:

  Figure 23

The total probability mass allocated to YES is 3/5, and, within that, the specific situation of interest has probability 1/5; hence the updated probability would be 1/3.

So a YES answer in this experiment, unlike the other, would provide evidence that the hand contains both aces; for if the hand contains both aces, the probability of a YES answer is 100% -- twice as large as it is in the contrary case (50%), giving a likelihood ratio of 2:1. By contrast, in the other experiment, the probability of a YES answer is only 50% even in the case where the hand contains both aces.


This is what people who try to explain the difference by uttering the opaque phrase "a random selection was involved!" are actually talking about: the difference between

  Figure 24

 

and

.

  Figure 25

 

 

The method explained here is far from the only way of visualizing Bayesian updates, but I feel that it is among the most intuitive.

 

(I'd like to thank my sister, Vive-ut-Vivas, for help with some of the diagrams in this post.)

Comment author: retiredurologist 03 June 2010 10:47:22AM 16 points [-]
Comment author: komponisto 03 June 2010 06:16:10PM *  5 points [-]

That's more or less the default visualization; unfortunately it hasn't proved particularly helpful to me, or at least not as much as the visualization presented here -- hence the need for this post.

The method presented in the post has a discrete, sequential, "flip-the-switch" feel to it which I find very suited to my style of thinking. If I had known how, I would have presented it as an animation.

Bayes' Theorem Illustrated (My Way)

126 Post author: komponisto 03 June 2010 04:40AM

(This post is elementary: it introduces a simple method of visualizing Bayesian calculations. In my defense, we've had other elementary posts before, and they've been found useful; plus, I'd really like this to be online somewhere, and it might as well be here.)

I'll admit, those Monty-Hall-type problems invariably trip me up. Or at least, they do if I'm not thinking very carefully -- doing quite a bit more work than other people seem to have to do.

What's more, people's explanations of how to get the right answer have almost never been satisfactory to me. If I concentrate hard enough, I can usually follow the reasoning, sort of; but I never quite "see it", and nor do I feel equipped to solve similar problems in the future: it's as if the solutions seem to work only in retrospect. 

Minds work differently, illusion of transparency, and all that.

Fortunately, I eventually managed to identify the source of the problem, and I came up a way of thinking about -- visualizing -- such problems that suits my own intuition. Maybe there are others out there like me; this post is for them.

I've mentioned before that I like to think in very abstract terms. What this means in practice is that, if there's some simple, general, elegant point to be made, tell it to me right away. Don't start with some messy concrete example and attempt to "work upward", in the hope that difficult-to-grasp abstract concepts will be made more palatable by relating them to "real life". If you do that, I'm liable to get stuck in the trees and not see the forest. Chances are, I won't have much trouble understanding the abstract concepts; "real life", on the other hand...

...well, let's just say I prefer to start at the top and work downward, as a general rule. Tell me how the trees relate to the forest, rather than the other way around.

Many people have found Eliezer's Intuitive Explanation of Bayesian Reasoning to be an excellent introduction to Bayes' theorem, and so I don't usually hesitate to recommend it to others. But for me personally, if I didn't know Bayes' theorem and you were trying to explain it to me, pretty much the worst thing you could do would be to start with some detailed scenario involving breast-cancer screenings. (And not just because it tarnishes beautiful mathematics with images of sickness and death, either!)

So what's the right way to explain Bayes' theorem to me?

Like this:

We've got a bunch of hypotheses (states the world could be in) and we're trying to figure out which of them is true (that is, which state the world is actually in). As a concession to concreteness (and for ease of drawing the pictures), let's say we've got three (mutually exclusive and exhaustive) hypotheses -- possible world-states -- which we'll call H1, H2, and H3. We'll represent these as blobs in space:

Figure 0

                   Figure 0


Now, we have some prior notion of how probable each of these hypotheses is -- that is, each has some prior probability. If we don't know anything at all that would make one of them more probable than another, they would each have probability 1/3. To illustrate a more typical situation, however, let's assume we have more information than that. Specifically, let's suppose our prior probability distribution is as follows: P(H1) = 30%, P(H2)=50%, P(H3) = 20%. We'll represent this by resizing our blobs accordingly:

Figure 1

                       Figure 1

That's our prior knowledge. Next, we're going to collect some evidence and update our prior probability distribution to produce a posterior probability distribution. Specifically, we're going to run a test. The test we're going to run has three possible outcomes: Result A, Result B, and Result C. Now, since this test happens to have three possible results, it would be really nice if the test just flat-out told us which world we were living in -- that is, if (say) Result A meant that H1 was true, Result B meant that H2 was true, and Result 3 meant that H3 was true. Unfortunately, the real world is messy and complex, and things aren't that simple. Instead, we'll suppose that each result can occur under each hypothesis, but that the different hypotheses have different effects on how likely each result is to occur. We'll assume for instance that if Hypothesis  H1 is true, we have a 1/2 chance of obtaining Result A, a 1/3 chance of obtaining Result B, and a 1/6 chance of obtaining Result C; which we'll write like this:

P(A|H1) = 50%, P(B|H1) = 33.33...%, P(C|H1) = 16.166...%

and illustrate like this:

 

        Figure 2

(Result A being represented by a triangle, Result B by a square, and Result C by a pentagon.)

If Hypothesis H2 is true, we'll assume there's a 10% chance of Result A, a 70% chance of Result B, and a 20% chance of Result C:

Figure 3

              Figure 3


(P(A|H2) = 10% , P(B|H2) = 70%, P(C|H2) = 20%)

Finally, we'll say that if Hypothesis H3 is true, there's a 5% chance of Result A, a 15% chance of Result B, and an 80% chance of Result C:

Figure 4

              Figure 4

(P(A|H3) = 5%, P(B|H3) = 15% P(C|H3) = 80%)

Figure 5 below thus shows our knowledge prior to running the test:

 

 

                Figure 5

 

Note that we have now carved up our hypothesis-space more finely; our possible world-states are now things like "Hypothesis H1 is true and Result A occurred", "Hypothesis H1 is true and Result B occurred", etc., as opposed to merely "Hypothesis H1 is true", etc. The numbers above the slanted line segments -- the likelihoods of the test results, assuming the particular hypothesis -- represent what proportion of the total probability mass assigned to the hypothesis Hn is assigned to the conjunction of Hypothesis Hn and Result X; thus, since P(H1) = 30%, and P(A|H1) = 50%, P(H1 & A) is therefore 50% of 30%, or, in other words, 15%.

(That's really all Bayes' theorem is, right there, but -- shh! -- don't tell anyone yet!)


Now, then, suppose we run the test, and we get...Result A.

What do we do? We cut off all the other branches:

                Figure 6

 

So our updated probability distribution now looks like this:

          Figure 7


...except for one thing: probabilities are supposed to add up to 100%, not 21%. Well, since we've conditioned on Result A, that means that the 21% probability mass assigned to Result A is now the entirety of our probability mass -- 21% is the new 100%, you might say. So we simply adjust the numbers in such a way that they add up to 100% and the proportions are the same:

                      Figure 8

There! We've just performed a Bayesian update. And that's what it looks like.

 

If, instead of Result A, we had gotten Result B,

Figure 9

                      Figure 9


then our updated probability distribution would have looked like this:

                     Figure 10

 

Similarly, for Result C:

               Figure 11

Bayes' theorem is the formula that calculates these updated probabilities. Using H to stand for a hypothesis (such as H1, H2 or H3), and E a piece of evidence (such as Result A, Result B, or Result C), it says:

P(H|E) = P(H)*P(E|H)/P(E)

In words: to calculate the updated probability P(H|E), take the portion of the prior probability of H that is allocated to E (i.e. the quantity P(H)*P(E|H)), and calculate what fraction this is of the total prior probability of E (i.e. divide it by P(E)).

What I like about this way of visualizing Bayes' theorem is that it makes the importance of prior probabilities -- in particular, the difference between P(H|E) and P(E|H) -- visually obvious. Thus, in the above example, we easily see that even though P(C|H3) is high (80%), P(H3|C) is much less high (around 51%) -- and once you have assimilated this visualization method, it should be easy to see that even more extreme examples (e.g. with P(E|H) huge and P(H|E) tiny) could be constructed.

Now let's use this to examine two tricky probability puzzles, the infamous Monty Hall Problem and Eliezer's Drawing Two Aces, and see how it illustrates the correct answers, as well as how one might go wrong.

 

The Monty Hall Problem

The situation is this: you're a contestant on a game show seeking to win a car. Before you are three doors, one of which contains a car, and the other two of which contain goats. You will make an initial "guess" at which door contains the car -- that is, you will select one of the doors, without opening it. At that point, the host will open a goat-containing door from among the two that you did not select. You will then have to decide whether to stick with your original guess and open the door that you originally selected, or switch your guess to the remaining unopened door. The question is whether it is to your advantage to switch -- that is, whether the car is more likely to be behind the remaining unopened door than behind the door you originally guessed.

(If you haven't thought about this problem before, you may want to try to figure it out before continuing...)

 

 

The answer is that it is to your advantage to switch -- that, in fact, switching doubles the probability of winning the car.

People often find this counterintuitive when they first encounter it -- where "people" includes the author of this post. There are two possible doors that could contain the car; why should one of them be more likely to contain it than the other?

As it turns out, while constructing the diagrams for this post, I "rediscovered" the error that led me to incorrectly conclude that there is a 1/2 chance the car is behind the originally-guessed door and a 1/2 chance it is behind the remaining door the host didn't open. I'll present that error first, and then show how to correct it. Here, then, is the wrong solution:

We start out with a perfectly correct diagram showing the prior probabilities:

               Figure 12

The possible hypotheses are Car in Door 1, Car in Door 2, and Car in Door 3; before the game starts, there is no reason to believe any of the three doors is more likely than the others to contain the car, and so each of these hypotheses has prior probability 1/3.

The game begins with our selection of a door. That itself isn't evidence about where the car is, of course -- we're assuming we have no particular information about that, other than that it's behind one of the doors (that's the whole point of the game!). Once we've done that, however, we will then have the opportunity to "run a test" to gain some "experimental data": the host will perform his task of opening a door that is guaranteed to contain a goat. We'll represent the result Host Opens Door 1 by a triangle, the result Host Opens Door 2 by a square, and the result Host Opens Door 3 by a pentagon -- thus carving up our hypothesis space more finely into possibilities such as "Car in Door 1 and Host Opens Door 2" , "Car in Door 1 and Host Opens Door 3", etc:

            Figure 13


Before we've made our initial selection of a door, the host is equally likely to open either of the goat-containing doors. Thus, at the beginning of the game, the probability of each hypothesis of the form "Car in Door X and Host Opens Door Y" has a probability of 1/6, as shown. So far, so good; everything is still perfectly correct.

Now we select a door; say we choose Door 2. The host then opens either Door 1 or Door 3, to reveal a goat. Let's suppose he opens Door 1; our diagram now looks like this:


            Figure 14

But this shows equal probabilities of the car being behind Door 2 and Door 3!

                   Figure 15

Did you catch the mistake?

Here's the correct version:

As soon as we selected Door 2, our diagram should have looked like this:

                                Figure 16

 

With Door 2 selected, the host no longer has the option of opening Door 2; if the car is in Door 1, he must open Door 3, and if the car is in Door 3, he must open Door 1. We thus see that if the car is behind Door 3, the host is twice as likely to open Door 1 (namely, 100%) as he is if the car is behind Door 2 (50%); his opening of Door 1 thus constitutes some evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the car is behind Door 3. So, when the host opens Door 1, our picture looks as follows:

               Figure 17

 

which yields the correct updated probability distribution:

                Figure 18

 

Drawing Two Aces

Here is the statement of the problem, from Eliezer's post:


Suppose I have a deck of four cards:  The ace of spades, the ace of hearts, and two others (say, 2C and 2D).

You draw two cards at random.

(...)

Now suppose I ask you "Do you have an ace?"

You say "Yes."

I then say to you:  "Choose one of the aces you're holding at random (so if you have only one, pick that one).  Is it the ace of spades?"

You reply "Yes."

What is the probability that you hold two aces?


(Once again, you may want to think about it, if you haven't already, before continuing...)

 

 

Here's how our picture method answers the question:


Since the person holding the cards has at least one ace, the "hypotheses" (possible card combinations) are the five shown below:

      Figure 19

Each has a prior probability of 1/5, since there's no reason to suppose any of them is more likely than any other.

The "test" that will be run is selecting an ace at random from the person's hand, and seeing if it is the ace of spades. The possible results are:

     Figure 20

 

Now we run the test, and get the answer "YES"; this puts us in the following situation:

 

     Figure 21

 

The total prior probability of this situation (the YES answer) is (1/6)+(1/3)+(1/3) = 5/6; thus, since 1/6 is 1/5 of 5/6 (that is, (1/6)/(5/6) = 1/5), our updated probability is 1/5 -- which happens to be the same as the prior probability. (I won't bother displaying the final post-update picture here.)

What this means is that the test we ran did not provide any additional information about whether the person has both aces beyond simply knowing that they have at least one ace; we might in fact say that the result of the test is screened off by the answer to the first question ("Do you have an ace?").


On the other hand, if we had simply asked "Do you have the ace of spades?", the diagram would have looked like this:

     Figure 22

 

which, upon receiving the answer YES, would have become:

  Figure 23

The total probability mass allocated to YES is 3/5, and, within that, the specific situation of interest has probability 1/5; hence the updated probability would be 1/3.

So a YES answer in this experiment, unlike the other, would provide evidence that the hand contains both aces; for if the hand contains both aces, the probability of a YES answer is 100% -- twice as large as it is in the contrary case (50%), giving a likelihood ratio of 2:1. By contrast, in the other experiment, the probability of a YES answer is only 50% even in the case where the hand contains both aces.


This is what people who try to explain the difference by uttering the opaque phrase "a random selection was involved!" are actually talking about: the difference between

  Figure 24

 

and

.

  Figure 25

 

 

The method explained here is far from the only way of visualizing Bayesian updates, but I feel that it is among the most intuitive.

 

(I'd like to thank my sister, Vive-ut-Vivas, for help with some of the diagrams in this post.)

Comment author: Oscar_Cunningham 01 June 2010 08:37:23PM *  27 points [-]

On a similar theme:

Fiction often mixes up logical with other concepts ... For one thing, authors sometimes say "illogical" when they mean "counter-intuitive." Correct logic is very often counter-intuitive, however, which is to be expected, as logic is meant to prevent errors caused by relying on intuition.

TV Tropes

Comment author: komponisto 02 June 2010 12:13:52AM 6 points [-]

The last part deserves extra emphasis:

Correct logic is very often counter-intuitive, however, which is to be expected, as logic is meant to prevent errors caused by relying on intuition.

See also here.

Comment author: simplicio 31 May 2010 09:24:43PM 11 points [-]

I should add, though, that there are some surprising exceptions to universality out there, like the lack of certain (prima facie important) colour terms or numbers.

However, as someone who used to study languages passionately, I came to reject the stronger versions of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (language determines thought). One gradually comes to see that, though differences can be startling, the really odd omissions are often just got around by circumlocutions. For example, Russian lacks the highly specific past tenses English has (was, have been, had been, would have been, would be), but if there is any actual confusion, they just get around it with a few seconds explanation. Or in the Japanese example, even supposing it were true, I would expect some other formalized way of showing gratitude; hence "thanks" the concept would live on even if there was no word used in similar contexts to English "thanks."

Comment author: komponisto 31 May 2010 10:13:11PM *  6 points [-]

Indeed; for another example, classical Latin did not use words for "yes" and "no". A question such as "Do you see it?" would have been answered with "I see it"/"I don't see it".

Comment author: Academian 29 May 2010 06:43:06PM *  0 points [-]

Good observations. When a public debate is useful in the ways you describe, it doesn't fall into the useless-to-others category that I recommend privatizing.

And one more time for good measure,

I can't praise LessWrong enough for the fact that its debates tend to be much more fruitful than elsewhere. I very much don't want to stifle the open and productive arguments that go on here; only to encourage a way out of the undesirable ones.

Comment author: komponisto 29 May 2010 07:22:39PM 10 points [-]

The problem is finding a way to "objectively" tell the difference. Often, people say that a debate is "useless" when what they really mean is that it makes them uncomfortable. (Anyone who has ever argued about religion will know what I'm talking about here.)

I may be in a minority, but, at least on LW, I am strongly inclined to err on the side of allowing people to argue in public at length. I would be disappointed if an argument that I was following were removed from public view; while on the other hand those who aren't interested in a particular argument (or who are made uncomfortable by it) can simply choose not to read it.

One solution might be a "designated area" for hashing out disagreements. (I've already attempted to create one for a specific debate.) Maybe a monthly "argument thread"?

Comment author: mattnewport 27 May 2010 12:24:21AM 3 points [-]

Is someone who has never read any of the Harry Potter books and is not a fan of the movies likely to appreciate this work? I'm somewhat curious to read it but suspect I'd have trouble following the references.

Comment author: komponisto 27 May 2010 01:18:47AM 2 points [-]

I haven't read the original books (I think I did see the first film once, but don't remember much from it), and so far have had no trouble following the story and appreciating its considerable wit and charm. I furthermore hope Eliezer takes note of this, because I fear he may have unnecessarily introduced spoilers into some of the author's notes.

Comment author: Daniel_Burfoot 24 May 2010 02:21:24PM 1 point [-]

How about String Theory in physics and the Gaussian Copula in finance?

Comment author: komponisto 24 May 2010 03:57:54PM 2 points [-]

How about String Theory in physics

Not demonstrable yet. If a correct theory of quantum gravity is found that turns out not to involve such sophisticated mathematics, then you'll have a case for this. Right now all you have is the opinion of a few contrarians.

Comment author: zero_call 21 May 2010 03:04:45AM *  0 points [-]

I believe the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences" can be explained based on the following idea. Physical systems prohibit logical contradiction, and hence, physical systems form just another kind of axiomatic, logical, and therefore mathematical system. To take a crude example, two different rocks cannot occupy the same point in space, due to logical contradiction. This allows the ability to mathematically talk about the rocks. Note that this example is definitively crude, since there are other things like bosons which actually can occupy the same position, but anyways, hopefully you get the idea.

What is the status of this argument in the philosophy of mathematics? Or general comments/references?

Comment author: komponisto 22 May 2010 07:05:38AM 10 points [-]

To take a crude example, two different rocks cannot occupy the same point in space, due to logical contradiction.

Except that....that isn't a logical contradiction!

You have inadvertently demonstrated one of the best arguments for the study of mathematics: it stretches the imagination. The ability to imagine wild, exotic, crazy phenomena that seem to defy common sense -- and thus, in particular, not to confuse common sense with logic -- is crucial for anyone who seriously aspires to understand the world or solve unsolved problems.

When Albert Einstein said that imagination was more important than knowledge, this is surely what he meant.

Comment author: komponisto 21 May 2010 06:56:14PM *  10 points [-]

While it's undeniable that the social prestige of a belief is not necessarily dependent on its truth, and that social pressures often prevent people from arriving at true beliefs, it's also important to remember that:

  • human epistemic rationality is suboptimal across the board, even in domains where it's not clear how having accurate beliefs would be socially costly;
  • even when true beliefs appear to have a social penalty, this need not be the case for a person with sufficient social skill;
  • the social costs of particular beliefs vary greatly over time (atheism now vs. in the past; or in the other direction, creationism); and
  • people value truth enough to be disturbed when this conflict is pointed out to them.

Hence I would warn against drawing the implication that the aspiring rationalist's project is in any sense futile.

Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 20 May 2010 11:15:28PM 2 points [-]

I personally see it as a very positive establishing of contact between "traditional rationalist/skeptic/(cis-)humanist"-community

I'm going to have to remember to use the word cishumanism more often.

Comment author: komponisto 21 May 2010 01:12:35AM 1 point [-]
Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 16 May 2010 06:07:28AM *  4 points [-]

Thank you for daring to use math! (How did you make the equations?)

If you put LaTeX code after "http://www.codecogs.com/png.latex?", you should get a png of the equation the code represents that you can insert in the post editor using the image insertion tool. Codecogs' own equation editor is good if you don't know LaTeX. Use this thing I coded just today if you want to insert LaTeX in a comment, as there's a lot of nasty escaping that needs to go on.

You might be interested in John Holland's theorem showing that the genetic algorithm optimizes (on average) the tradeoff between exploration (trying out new things) and exploitation (doing things you already know work pretty well).

Sounds interesting, but wouldn't one's definition of "optimized" depend on one's discount rate? I guess in Holland's model exploration requires resources? That's not a factor in my model, but maybe it should be. Even if my independent software developer had all their living expenses covered, they might still be able to "explore" faster with more resources by hiring software developers in third-world countries to read blogs for them :)

Comment author: komponisto 17 May 2010 05:24:53AM *  2 points [-]

Use this thing I coded just today if you want to insert LaTeX in a comment, as there's a lot of nasty escaping that needs to go on.

Testing:

Thank you for creating this!

Comment author: RobinZ 11 May 2010 09:56:56PM 2 points [-]

The most parsimonious explanation is "because I was raised that way", but I believe that it can be shown that such sneering doesn't win. I haven't had a reason to articulate my thoughts on the subject, however - if you'd like me to make an attempt, let me know and I'll see what I can come up with. Being as I'm on a bus at the moment, it would be difficult to organize and post anything substantive just now.

Comment author: komponisto 11 May 2010 10:01:37PM 0 points [-]

I'm curious to hear your argument.

Comment author: RobinZ 11 May 2010 08:30:54PM 1 point [-]

To be completely honest, I wanted to express my disapproval for Roko's sneering at the mundanes. I appreciate the info, though, and I apologize for not explicitly saying so earlier.

Comment author: komponisto 11 May 2010 09:46:45PM 1 point [-]

If I may ask, why do you disapprove? (Especially given that you don't seem to spend very much time among such people.)

Comment author: [deleted] 11 May 2010 03:08:54AM 8 points [-]

I was a very bizarre child up to age 10 or so. Wouldn't look people in the eye, walked into walls, talked to myself, didn't make friends, etc. Now essentially none of that shows. I may have "had something" but it's moot at this point.

The only bizarre thing that remains is my near-pathological lack of spatial skills. I can't aim, throw, dance, or drive with anywhere near the ease of a normal person. (I wonder if it's improvable at all?)

Comment author: komponisto 11 May 2010 03:34:03AM *  2 points [-]

The only bizarre thing that remains is my near-pathological lack of spatial skills. I can't aim, throw, dance, or drive with anywhere near the ease of a normal person. (I wonder if it's improvable at all?)

How do you feel about your "spatial reasoning" abilities? I'm curious, since I know you work in mathematics, a field in which high aptitude in this domain is apparently common.

Comment author: komponisto 11 May 2010 03:19:58AM 2 points [-]

My score on the test was 35, which I found surprising. I felt my answers were fairly mixed between autistic-sounding and not, and was expecting to be closer to average.

I don't think I have anything that could be called autism; for one thing, I am often preoccupied with what other people think to the point of near-madness.

Comment author: Morendil 07 May 2010 08:10:46PM 1 point [-]

Yes, and for that reason it may not be correct to interpret the score of a post as the "collective eagerness" to see more posts like it, and therefore not entirely appropriate to draw the kind of comparison you're drawing.

Unless people upvote Yvain's articles merely because they are Yvain's (which was what I thought you were getting at, and all I was getting at, with the term "fan"), then we want to interpret high scores as marking posts that have broad appeal, rather than posts which have intense appeal.

Not, "people liked Studies On Excuses almost as much as they liked Generalizing from One Example", but "almost as many people liked Studies as liked Generalizing". It makes a difference to me to think of it that way, not sure if it will to you...

Comment author: komponisto 07 May 2010 08:40:02PM 2 points [-]

If post X has a score strictly less than post Y, then it follows that there are either people who upvoted Y and did not upvote X, or people who downvoted X and did not downvote Y. If I think the score of X should be equal to the score of Y, then I am disagreeing with the voting behavior of the persons in those sets, at least one of which (as I said) is nonempty.

Comment author: Morendil 07 May 2010 05:58:45PM 3 points [-]

I've long settled on interpreting the meaning of upvotes as "I like this post and want to see more like this".

I vote on posts before knowing who authored them or what their current score is, using the Anti-Kibitz script. This is because I've become more aware of my own bias as a result of reading LW, which I believe was the intended result. (I liked Yvain's post and voted it up, but not because I'm a "fan", just because I thought it'd be nice to have more posts like it.)

After I vote a post up, I turn off the script to see who it was from. If I thought they deserved an upvote in the first place, my vote still means the same, and it's natural to wish that my vote aggregates with others' in giving the author feedback about their post. So, I don't as a rule go back on a vote once I've given it.

So it kind of puzzles me why you seem to think there should be some kind of "vote ceiling", or why you expect that your own evaluation of a post should be a good indicator of how others like it. What I'm saying, I guess, is that I don't get the point of your parenthetical.

What would you want us to adopt as a voting norm?

Comment author: komponisto 07 May 2010 07:23:39PM *  1 point [-]

I liked Yvain's post and voted it up, but not because I'm a "fan",

Cheap shot detected here. I said I was a fan in order to soften the effect of saying that the post was overrated; without that disclaimer, my statement might have been interpreted as a criticism of Yvain or his post. Nothing I said implies that I make a habit of upvoting posts just because of who their author is.

What I'm saying, I guess, is that I don't get the point of your parenthetical.

The point was that I don't think that that post was as as outstanding relative to other posts as its score suggests.

I've long settled on interpreting the meaning of upvotes as "I like this post and want to see more like this".

What would you want us to adopt as a voting norm?

That's fine as a voting norm. Under that norm, the proper interpretation of my remark is that my eagerness to see more posts like Yvain's "Eight short studies on excuses" is comparable to my eagerness to see more posts like those with scores in the 30-40 range; in particular, the first quantity is not 2-3 times the second.

Comment author: SilasBarta 07 May 2010 05:08:29PM 1 point [-]

IIRC, this post was at 9 on promotion :-[

Comment author: komponisto 07 May 2010 05:39:38PM *  4 points [-]

That's a bit surprising, but in any case it seems like a decent post to me; I don't think the current score of 25 is excessive.

(And there have been some excessive scores recently. E.g. Yvain's post on excuses -- it was a fine post, to be sure, and I'm a big Yvain fan, but... 97?? Really? I would have put it at 30-40.)

Comment author: Alicorn 07 May 2010 05:23:51PM 1 point [-]

Eliezer promotes posts by hand. If he likes them and they have a reasonable number of upvotes, they go up faster. If he doesn't like them, they need more votes before he'll promote them. If he doesn't see them for a while, they'll take longer to be promoted.

Comment author: komponisto 07 May 2010 05:29:40PM *  0 points [-]

That's exactly what I thought. (And I assume your source for this information is Eliezer, making it very likely to be correct!)

Comment author: jimrandomh 07 May 2010 05:05:13PM 0 points [-]

The algorithm is more complicated than that. I don't recall the exact details, but I'm pretty sure it includes the rate of upvotes, not just the number of them. And while it can be overriden by moderators, I doubt that they're doing that very often.

Comment author: komponisto 07 May 2010 05:26:55PM *  0 points [-]

I didn't realize promotion was automated; I thought editors (meaning basically EY) did it manually.

Comment author: Jack 07 May 2010 04:33:04PM 1 point [-]

I wouldn't say I'm disturbed. But I am confused.

It is an overbroad criticism of the "Would someone have noticed?" heuristic which, as Tehom and timtyler point out, is actually very useful.

I took myself to be making the same kind of point here though in a bit of a round-a-bout and indirect way. All of these criticisms were heavily voted up, as well. I wonder if front page posts have a de facto karma floor in the high twenties just because they get more traffic than posts that aren't promoted. Aside from the occasional work of brilliance and the special threads almost every promoted post has a karma total between 25 and 33. I think the promotion system probably needs more scrutiny or at least we need a way of distinguishing "Promoted for discussion purposes" and "Promoted for truth".

Comment author: komponisto 07 May 2010 04:52:59PM 1 point [-]

It seems to me that posts are pretty much automatically promoted once they reach 20 or so; some posts are promoted before then, leading one to infer that the editor thinks especially highly of them. (Others, by contrast, seem to be promoted only with considerable reluctance; although it might just mean the editor wasn't paying attention.)

Comment author: JRMayne 07 May 2010 03:15:13PM 1 point [-]

This is the third time on LW that I've seen the percentage of certainty for convictions conflated with the percentage of wrongful convictions (I suspect it's just quick writing or perhaps my overwillingness to see that implication on this particular post). They're not identical.

Suppose we had a quantation standard of 99% certainty and juries were entirely rational actors, understanding of the thin slice 1% is, and given unskewed evidence. The percentage of wrongful convictions would be well under 1% at trial; juries would convict on cases from 99% certainty to c. 100% certainty. The actual percentage of wrongful convictions would depend on the skew of the cases in that range.

Comment author: komponisto 07 May 2010 04:27:55PM *  0 points [-]

Yes, the certainty level provides a bound on the number of wrongful convictions. A 99% certainty requirement means at least 99% certainty, so an error rate of at most 1%.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 07 May 2010 12:11:25AM 0 points [-]

Were defense attorneys left out by accident, or do you think it's not important that they be Bayesian?

Comment author: komponisto 07 May 2010 12:51:33AM 1 point [-]

It's important that everyone be Bayesian, of course.

To address the implied subtext: yes, I'm in general more worried about false convictions than false acquittals.

Arguably, if investigators and jurors were pure Bayesian epistemic rationalists, attorneys (on either side) wouldn't even be necessary. That's an extremely fanciful state of affairs, however.

Comment author: SilasBarta 06 May 2010 08:40:28PM 0 points [-]

But notice that these are examples of restrictions on evidence of guilt.

No, they're not. The first one I listed can go either way.

"Since my client is a woman, you should reduce the odds you assign to her having committed a murder by a factor of 4."

The second one can go either way too; it just as much excludes e.g. hearsay evidence that implicates someone else.

The assumption (very reasonable, it seems to me) is that human irrationality tends in the direction of false positives, i.e. wrongful convictions.

Sure, but that needs to be accounted for via the guilt probability threshold, not by reducing the accuracy of the evidence. Favoring acquittal through a high burden and biasing evidence in favor of the defendant is "double-dipping".

If juries are capable of convicting on the sort of evidence presented at the Knox/Sollecito trial (and they are, whether in Italy, the U.S., or anywhere else)...well, can you imagine all the false convictions we would have if such rules as you listed were relaxed?

I only listed a few examples off the top of my head. The appropriate comparison is to the general policy of, per Bayesianism, incorporating all informative evidence. This would probably lead to more accurate assessments of guilt. In particularly egregious cases like K/S, it would have been a tremendous boon to them to allow them to have an explicit guilt threshold and count up the (log) likelihood ratio of all the evidence.

In any case, remember that there's a cost to false negatives as well. Although that's heavily muddled by the fundamental injustice of so many laws for which such a cost is non-existent.

Comment author: komponisto 06 May 2010 11:43:16PM 4 points [-]

Let me take a step back here, because despite the fact that it sounds like we're arguing, I find myself in total agreement with other comments of yours in this thread, in particular your description of how trials should work; I could scarcely have said it better myself.

Here's what I claim: the rules of evidence constitute crude attempts to impose some degree of rationality on jurors and prosecutors who are otherwise not particularly inclined to be rational. These hacks are not always successful, and occasionally even backfire; and they would not be necessary or useful for Bayesian juries who could be counted on to evaluate evidence properly. However, removing such rules without improving the rationality of jurors would be a disaster.

(Let's not forget, after all, that there were people here on LW who reacted with indignation at my dismissal of certain discredited evidence in the Knox case, protesting that legal rules of admissibility don't apply to Bayesian calculations -- as if I had been trying to pass off some kind of legal loophole as a Bayesian argument. Such people were apparently taking it for granted that this evidence was significant, which suggests to me that it is very difficult for people -- even aspiring rationalists -- to discount information they come across. This provides support for the necessity of rules that exclude certain kinds of information from courtrooms, given the population currently doing the judging.)

Comment author: Yvain 06 May 2010 07:45:01PM *  3 points [-]

Now that you mention it directly, it's flabbergasting that no one's ever said what percentage level "beyond a reasonable doubt" corresponds to (legal eagles: correct me if I'm wrong). That's a pretty gaping huge deviation from a properly Bayesian legal system right there.

Comment author: komponisto 06 May 2010 08:09:09PM *  2 points [-]

Well, the number could hardly be made explicit, for political reasons ("you mean it's acceptable to have x wrongful convictions per year?? We shouldn't tolerate any at all!").

In any case, let me not be interpreted as arguing that the legal system was designed by people with a deep understanding of Bayesianism. I say only that we, as Bayesians, are not prevented from working rationally within it.

Comment author: SilasBarta 06 May 2010 07:12:14PM 2 points [-]

I wouldn't go that far. There are many cases where the legal system explicitly deviates from Bayesianism. Some examples:

  • Despite the fact that Demographic Group X is more/less likely to have committed crime Y, neither side can introduce this as evidence, e.g. "Since my client is a woman, you should reduce the odds you assign to her having committed a murder by a factor of 4." (Obviously, the jury will notice the race/gender of the defendant, but you can't argue that this is informative about the odds of guilt.)

  • Prohibition on many types of prejudicial evidence that is informative about the probability of guilt (like whether the defendant is a felon). (This can be justified on grounds of cognitive bias maybe, but not Bayesian grounds.)

  • In the US, the Constitutional prohibition on using the defendant's silence as evidence, despite its informativeness, e.g., "If he's really innocent, why doesn't he just tell his side of the story? What's the big deal? Why did he wait hours before even saying what happened? Did he need to get his story straight first?" (Again, the jury will notice that the defendant didn't take the stand, but you can't draw their attention to this as the prosecution.)

  • The exclusionary rule. The impact of illegally-collected physical evidence (i.e. not forced confessions but e.g. warrantless searches) has a small to non-existent impact on the evidence's strength. The policy on excluding illegally-obtained evidence may be justified on decision-theoretic grounds, but not on Bayesian grounds.

  • Outside of trials, the fact that you have to wait years before you hear a judge's binding opinion on whether or not a law actually can be enforced (i.e. is Constitutional).

You give the legal system way too much credit.

Comment author: komponisto 06 May 2010 07:41:19PM *  2 points [-]

But notice that these are examples of restrictions on evidence of guilt. The assumption (very reasonable, it seems to me) is that human irrationality tends in the direction of false positives, i.e. wrongful convictions. (Possibly along with the assumption that our values require a lower tolerance for false positives than false negatives.)

If juries are capable of convicting on the sort of evidence presented at the Knox/Sollecito trial (and they are, whether in Italy, the U.S., or anywhere else)...well, can you imagine all the false convictions we would have if such rules as you listed were relaxed?

Comment author: komponisto 06 May 2010 06:17:52PM *  4 points [-]

My question for Less Wrong: Just how innocent is Cameron Todd Willingham? Intuitively, it seems to me that the evidence for Willingham's innocence is of higher magnitude than the evidence for Amanda Knox's innocence.

In both instances, the prosecution case amounts to roughly zero bits of evidence. However, demographics give Willingham a higher prior of guilt than Knox, perhaps by something like an order of magnitude (1 to 4 bits). I am therefore about an order of magnitude more confident in Knox's innocence than Willingham's.

Challenge question: What does an idealized form of Bayesian Justice look like?

Bayesian jurors (preferably along with Bayesian prosecutors and judges); that's really all it comes down to.

In particular, discussions about the structure of the judicial system are pretty much beside the point, in my view. (The Knox case is not about the Italian justice system, pace just about everyone.) Such systematic rules exist mostly as an attempt at correcting for predictable Bayesian failures on the part of the people involved. In fact, most legal rules of evidence are nothing but crude analogues of a corresponding Bayesian principle. For example, the "presumption of innocence" is a direct counterpart of the Bayesian prohibition against privileging the hypothesis.

There is this notion that Bayesian and legal reasoning are in some kind of constant conflict or tension, and oh-whatever-are-we-to-do as rationalists when judging a criminal case. (See here for a classic example of this kind of hand-wringing.) I would like to dispel this notion. It's really quite simple: "beyond a reasonable doubt" just means P(guilty|evidence) has to be above some threshold, like 99%, or something. In which case, if it's 85%, you don't convict. That's all there is to it. (In particular, away with this nonsense about how P(guilty|evidence) is not the quantity jurors should be interested in; of course it is!)

From our perspective as rationality-advocates, the best means of improving justice is not some systematic reform of legal systems, but rather is simply to raise the sanity waterline of the population in general.

Comment author: Jack 05 May 2010 02:32:55AM 2 points [-]

What prior are you using for Knox? The pre-murder "chances a nice, pretty upper-middle class American girl would be involved in a murder in the next year" or the "chances the nice, pretty, upper-middle class American girl was involved in murder, given that her roommate was stabbed to death?

The major difference is going to end up being that Meredith Kercher was actually murdered and Willingham's children were not.

Comment author: komponisto 05 May 2010 08:43:13PM *  2 points [-]

What prior are you using for Knox? The pre-murder "chances a nice, pretty upper-middle class American girl would be involved in a murder in the next year" or the "chances the nice, pretty, upper-middle class American girl was involved in murder, given that her roommate was stabbed to death?

I've been kicking myself for months for not having done a better job of making the point that it shouldn't matter: so long as you take into account all of the relevant information, Bayes' theorem says nothing about the order in which you process the information.

What we label "prior probability" in everyday contexts like this is just an arbitrary matter of convenience: "priors" are in fact posteriors based on information not explicitly mentioned -- and that information is still there, whether we mention it or not.

Thus, for example, if you assign a high "prior" to Amanda Knox's guilt because of Meredith Kercher's death, you still have to lower the probability (to something around the "pretty middle-class female honor student" range) upon learning that Kercher's death was caused by Rudy Guede -- the screening off effect doesn't go away just because you decided to call that state of knowledge the "prior"; it just acquires the label of "evidence of innocence."

(Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting you don't realize this; I just think the point needs to be reinforced.)

Comment author: Jack 27 April 2010 02:27:56AM *  25 points [-]

I'm voting against those two proposals. They'll have the effect of lowering the overall quality of comments.

My suggestion (if it is codable) is some icon next to the names of new users in their comments or some other innocuous identifying feature to let us identify them. The only problem we have with new users is not recognizing they are new. What we need is more information, not a watering down of our incentive structure. If people can easily identify new users they will avoid downvotes except for trolls and remember to be more welcoming and helpful. Moreover, new users should be defined by number of comments (30 or fewer?) not time since registration, since some will register but only later start commenting.

Comment author: komponisto 27 April 2010 11:37:03AM 2 points [-]

Moreover, new users should be defined by number of comments (30 or fewer?) not time since registration, since some will register but only later start commenting.

I disagree with this part -- I think people should get credit for time spent lurking.

Comment author: mattnewport 23 April 2010 06:04:19PM 3 points [-]

It's a worthwhile question to be asking. I think there are a few ways to go about answering it.

The techniques discussed here

I think this is an area where Less Wrong still has a lot of room for improvement. There is relatively little material that lays out concrete techniques for applied/instrumental rationality together with compelling evidence for their efficacy. It's not that there are a whole bunch of easily applied techniques discussed here that are not being widely used, it's just not always that straightforward to translate ideas about rationality into concrete actions.

Why aren't more people doing it?

I actually think the world is full of people using applied rationality (albeit often sub-optimally) but it isn't always obvious because there are often big gaps between people's stated aims and their actual goals. I think many cases of apparent irrationality dissolve when you look beyond people's stated intentions. Politicians are the classic case - they only look irrational if you make the mistake of thinking that their actions are intended to further their publicly stated goals.

Robin Hanson talks a lot about the gap between the stated and actual purposes of various human institutions. People often look irrational relative to the stated purpose but quite rational relative to the actual purpose.

In general there is a stigma to talking honestly about the reality of such things. Less Wrong is a rare example of a forum where it is possible to talk much more honestly than is generally socially acceptable. The fact that you don't often hear people talking in these terms does not necessarily mean they do not understand the reality but may just mean they strategically avoid publicizing their understanding while rationally acting on that understanding.

Why don't I read about multi-billion dollar companies whose success was down to rationalist techniques?

Well to some extent you do. Bayesian techniques have been successfully applied by some software companies - spam filters are the standard example. I imagine that quantitative trading often applies some of the math of probability and decision theory towards making huge trading profits but for obvious reasons you are unlikely to see the details widely shared.

We also have the first problem I mentioned again. Lots of companies make rational decisions but it is hard to point to specific techniques discussed here that are used by successful companies because there aren't many specific techniques discussed here that would be useful to them.

I voted you up by the way. I think this is an important question to ask and I don't think my answer here is fully satisfactory. I think this is an issue we should continue to focus on.

Comment author: komponisto 23 April 2010 07:30:08PM *  3 points [-]

Robin Hanson talks a lot about the gap between the stated and actual purposes of various human institutions. People often look irrational relative to the stated purpose but quite rational relative to the actual purpose.

Of course, that often ends up being tautological, because the tendency for folks like Robin Hanson is to define the "actual purpose" as "the purpose relative to which the behavior would be rational".

(This is not a critique, incidentally -- it may be a notable fact when behavior appears to be optimizing anything at all.)

Comment author: Rain 23 April 2010 12:39:01AM *  2 points [-]

If your statement is that we should cultivate explicit speech on LessWrong, then I would agree that the members of this community already practice that norm, and advocating it here is appropriate.

If your statement is that we, as members of the LessWrong community, should spread the use of explicit speech to the masses, then I would disagree, as training people in even small ways like that takes significantly more time than is worth the effort except with very close friends.

Or did you mean something else? You really should be more explicit ;-P

Comment author: komponisto 23 April 2010 01:33:11AM 1 point [-]

If your statement is that we, as members of the LessWrong community, should spread the use of explicit speech to the masses, then I would disagree, as training people in even small ways like that takes significantly more time than is worth the effort except with very close friends.

Disagreeing about whether something is practical is distinct from disagreeing about whether the world would be a better place if it were done.

Comment author: Alicorn 21 April 2010 06:20:08PM 5 points [-]

I voted up orthonormal, although I did not downvote you. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt re: your niceness-related intentions, and explain:

or would you say (as I would insist)

This is a confrontational phrasing. The use of the second person is aggressive in context, and the aside where you strongly specify which answer you think is right comes off like a status grab ("When you make your choice between these two options, bear strongly in mind that I think this").

Furthermore, whatever the semantics of the verb "grade", it is the impact on the student's score, and not the teacher's behavior, that is relevant, and consequently it is to the former that the teacher should be referring.

The teacher's behavior is the sole determinant of the student's score. Even if you showed that there is some normative reason to speak only in terms of the latter, that wouldn't indicate that the teacher is in fact speaking in those terms. The fact that the teacher should speak about relevant matters doesn't prevent a ramble about a faculty ski trip from last February; why should it prevent a digression to teacherly grading-related habits?

(Indeed, the reality is that that is the intended referent, and the teacher is simply referring to his/her own behavior as an oblique, implicit way of referring to the impact on the student's score. I object to such an oblique way of speaking.)

Obliqueness is an epidemic, but you seem to be drawing the line very uncommonly. I would be only a little more surprised if you had chosen to rant about someone expressing an intention to turn on their lawn sprinkler, saying that this is objectionably oblique because what really matters is that the grass will get wet, not that it be delivered by a particular device.

I honestly don't understand the resistance to conceding me this point.

This would be a reasonable thing to say if you were obviously right to people other than yourself, who stubbornly held out in spite of having clearly already lost out of pride or stubbornness or some incomprehensibly arcane reason. You are not obviously right to people other than yourself. That doesn't mean you're wrong; but it means you can't get away with this sentence and sound nice.

why the need to actually defend what is clearly less-than-maximally-considered language?

This phrase is sneaky. "Less-than-maximally-considered" is probably denotationally true of every piece of natural language humans actually use. But the implication is that it is not just non-maximally considered; but inadequately considered, and as I said above, that's not clear to people other than you. Also, you're implying that people are actively defending the usage of language to which you object, which seems to me a mischaracterization.

Do people really not understand where I'm coming from here? In this, a place where I thought sympathy for logical precision mixed with skepticism of institutionalized education?

Now you are insinuating that disagreement with you constitutes flouting those values, which is insulting and kind of a cheap shot. (I thought you, a regular contributor to Less Wrong, would have more mindfulness and give a measured, polite reply...!)

Exactly what mistake do you think I'm making, all ye hordes-of-orthonormal-upvoters?

This is just an attack on orthonormal, whose comment was not particularly objectionable in any way except inasmuch as it attempted to correct you. Am I next? Also, it looks to me like people have made attempts to specify your mistake. If you don't understand them, there are polite ways to ask for clarification. This ain't one of them.

Or is your apparent disagreement just a way of signaling disapproval of my having made the complaint (as I am inclined to suspect)?

Do you have any reason apart from this incident that Less Wrong is particularly hostile to complaint? Or that disagreements are hard to find here, such that you should have high priors on apparent incommensurate opinions really being fake signaling tools?

Comment author: komponisto 22 April 2010 05:25:43PM *  6 points [-]

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt re: your niceness-related intentions, and explain:

Thank you, because it was frankly shocking ("devastating" might be a tad too strong, though not that much) to find myself accused of non-niceness when I have on several occasions made a point of trying to increase the niceness level of this place, even linking to your post on the subject!

I was certainly right about there having been a misunderstanding. Your comment reveals that you interpreted my words in ways that I did not anticipate. For instance, it never would have occurred to me that use of the second person, as in

Would you say that the teacher "did not grade" the papers, or would you say (as I would insist) that the teacher graded the papers in an unfair manner?

could be construed as "aggressive" or "status-grabbing". I think what happened here was what I had surmised: because my comment was a reply to yours, you interpreted it as if I were speaking directly and specifically to you ("Hey, you, Alicorn, would you really say this?"), when in fact I was addressing you only in a sort of rhetorical way, your mild comment being merely the latest and most proximate component of an unexpected and incomprehensible onslaught of disagreement represented principally by orthonormal's comment and (most particularly) its score.

Despite our shared concern for niceness, it appears we may have substantially different conceptions of what it entails. Consider this:

I honestly don't understand the resistance to conceding me this point.

...you can't get away with this sentence and sound nice.

What?! I thought what I said was exactly the kind of thing a nice, polite person says when they're puzzled in the way I was. As opposed to, e.g. "Are you people out of your freaking minds??" I even added the word "honestly", specifically to signal that I wasn't just being rhetorical: I really genuinely did not understand.

Do people really not understand where I'm coming from here? In this, a place where I thought sympathy for logical precision mixed with skepticism of institutionalized education?

Now you are insinuating that disagreement with you constitutes flouting those values, which is insulting and kind of a cheap shot. (I thought you, a regular contributor to Less Wrong, would have more mindfulness and give a measured, polite reply...!)

Again, how in the world was that impolite? (I suspect this may be a case where we, using only written text, are suffering from the absence of cues such as intonation and facial expression, which can be crucial in communicating "tone".)

The disagreement was, as I have said, unanticipated. The reason I didn't anticipate it did indeed have to do with my model of readers' attitudes toward verbal precision and toward the educational system, represented in this case by the sort of teacher who would say "I won't grade it" rather than "I will give you a score of 0". How was communicating this insulting or a cheap shot?

Exactly what mistake do you think I'm making, all ye hordes-of-orthonormal-upvoters?

This is just an attack on orthonormal, whose comment was not particularly objectionable in any way except inasmuch as it attempted to correct you. Am I next?

It was most certainly not an attack on orthonormal (who in general is a fine contributor by my lights); in fact it was expressed in a somewhat lighthearted tone, as indicated by the archaism "ye". Orthonormal's comment may not have been "objectionable", but, good golly, how was it worth 5 (now 6) upvotes? Especially when, if you stop to reflect, it couldn't possibly have communicated anything that I hadn't considered: of course the teacher means he/she will treat it as if the student turned in nothing! (And that means giving it a grade of 0.) Could anybody have reasonably expected that I would have read that comment and said "Oh, hadn't thought of that, thank you for pointing it out"? My contention was that "I won't grade it" wasn't a reasonable shorthand; consequently the comment amounted to a mere denial, and not even an attempted refutation.

Now, speaking of niceness, I have to say that I think you were uncharitable to me in the parent comment. For example:

I would be only a little more surprised if you had chosen to rant about someone expressing an intention to turn on their lawn sprinkler, saying that this is objectionably oblique because what really matters is that the grass will get wet, not that it be delivered by a particular device.

The difference between that sort of silly thing and my actual complaint is nothing short of stark. I'm talking about a teacher saying that he or she will not award a score as a sort of euphemism for awarding a particular low score (such as 0). Do you see how that's a more reasonable complaint than your example, even if you don't think it rises to the level of being reasonable in absolute terms?

Anyway, I hope this helps to clarify things, and I hope I didn't seem non-nice in this comment.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 22 April 2010 05:50:36AM *  7 points [-]

Do people really not understand where I'm coming from here?

You are obsessing over a trivial nit and then blowing up in frustration that nobody gets it. Four paragraphs over the distinction-without-a-difference between "won't grade" and "grade 0"?

Comment author: komponisto 22 April 2010 03:59:27PM 2 points [-]

You are obsessing over a trivial nit and then blowing up in frustration that nobody gets it.

No, I'm "blowing up in frustration" (an exaggerated description, I think) that people are stubbornly disagreeing. As I said, I understand if folks think it's a trivial matter. What I don't understand is the apparent disagreement on the matter itself, and the best explanation I can come up with is that people are trying to show their disapproval of my having introduced the topic. (Why wouldn't they have just said that directly? Because upvoting orthonormal's comment was just easier.)

Actually I suspect it may run deeper, and may have to do with a reflexive tendency some people have to resist strong claims (or expressions of strong feeling) in general.

Comment author: Alicorn 21 April 2010 05:53:57PM -1 points [-]

You are clearly far more passionate about this triviality than I am, to the point of being less nice than I prefer my interlocutors to be, so I'm going to cease to talk to you about it. You can pretend you got me to agree if you want, I don't mind.

Comment author: komponisto 21 April 2010 06:00:14PM 0 points [-]

Hmm, I'm quite puzzled. If you think I was being non-nice, that suggests a misunderstanding. Did you perhaps interpret the final paragraph of the grandparent as directed at you personally? (It wasn't; it was directed at the 5 people who upvoted orthonormal's aggressive reply and whoever has been downvoting my comments in this thread.)

Comment author: Alicorn 21 April 2010 04:15:52PM 13 points [-]

The referent of "grading" is a specific pattern of action that involves reading and evaluating the paper. The teacher will not perform that pattern of action on papers that are turned in late. Depending on how the grading formula works, the relevant cell in the Excel spreadsheet might even remain empty.

Comment author: komponisto 21 April 2010 05:40:51PM *  8 points [-]

What the teacher should say depends on what the formula is. If the formula ignores empty cells, then the teacher can say "I won't grade it". If, on the other hand, the formula treats empty cells as if they contained the value 0, then the teacher should not say "I won't grade it", but should instead say "I will assign it a grade of 0".

"Grading" means "scoring"; it does not refer to a specific ritual performed by the teacher to arrive at the score. What if the teacher decided to score each student's paper by means of a random process, such as rolling dice? Would you say that the teacher "did not grade" the papers, or would you say (as I would insist) that the teacher graded the papers in an unfair manner?

Furthermore, whatever the semantics of the verb "grade", it is the impact on the student's score, and not the teacher's behavior, that is relevant, and consequently it is to the former that the teacher should be referring. (Indeed, the reality is that that is the intended referent, and the teacher is simply referring to his/her own behavior as an oblique, implicit way of referring to the impact on the student's score. I object to such an oblique way of speaking.)

I honestly don't understand the resistance to conceding me this point. I can perhaps understand if people aren't as bothered by this kind of thing as I am, but...why the need to actually defend what is clearly less-than-maximally-considered language? Do people really not understand where I'm coming from here? In this, a place where I thought sympathy for logical precision mixed with skepticism of institutionalized education? Exactly what mistake do you think I'm making, all ye hordes-of-orthonormal-upvoters? Or is your apparent disagreement just a way of signaling disapproval of my having made the complaint (as I am inclined to suspect)?

Comment author: Matt_Simpson 21 April 2010 03:10:05PM 4 points [-]

Taken literally, sure. But everyone knows what the teacher means, so why argue semantics?

Comment author: komponisto 21 April 2010 03:32:08PM *  8 points [-]

(a) The first time I heard it, I didn't realize what the teacher meant.

(b) What if the teacher says "It won't be graded"?

(c) By using this expression, the teacher is tacitly imposing and enforcing a value system in which "having things graded" is desirable -- a value system to which I reserve the right to object.

(d) Because people should say what they mean and mean what they say.

Comment author: orthonormal 21 April 2010 02:45:48AM 11 points [-]

No, what the teacher means is "I will act as if you had not turned in anything at all", and "I won't grade it" is a perfectly reasonable shorthand for that.

Comment author: komponisto 21 April 2010 03:05:01PM *  4 points [-]

No! Assigning a grade of 0 for not turning it in is grading it! The 0 is still a grade!

"I won't grade it" = "It won't count as a graded assignment [for you]."

In response to comment by komponisto on The Red Bias
Comment author: Jack 21 April 2010 12:29:28AM *  -1 points [-]

Here is Time's 1996 map (warning, it's a PDF).

I think knb might be wrong about the alternating thing, though. My understanding was that the left of center party was historically the "red" party and "blue" the conservative party, in the European tradition.

Edit: the problem is that now it has been standardized as red= Republican so every map on the internet is this way going back through the 70's.

In response to comment by Jack on The Red Bias
Comment author: komponisto 21 April 2010 02:12:56AM *  2 points [-]

From the Wikipedia article linked to by Bo102010:

As late as 1996, there was still no universal association of one color with one party.[7] If anything, by 1996, color schemes were relatively mixed, as CNN, CBS, ABC, and The New York Times referred to Democratic states with the color blue and Republican ones as red, while Time Magazine and the Washington Post used an opposite scheme.

My memories from the time would have been formed mainly from television rather than printed sources, so there you go. (Although one printed memory that does stand out is, of all things, the French magazine L'Express, which used the Democrat-blue/Republican-red scheme in a 1996 article showing Clinton's 1992 victory.)

Comment author: komponisto 20 April 2010 11:49:50PM *  1 point [-]

I'm sorry, but I have to briefly rant about something that has annoyed me for YEARS:

So instead you say "If you don't turn in your report on time, I won't grade it."

"Not grading it" would be fine with me, as the student. I don't like grades in the first place!

What the teacher means is: "I will automatically assign a failing grade, no matter how good the work is." [EDIT: "...just as if you had turned nothing in at all".] That is distinct from "not grading it", and is what the teacher should say instead (if it is what he or she actually means).

In response to The Red Bias
Comment author: knb 20 April 2010 11:25:54PM *  7 points [-]

The GOP has only been identified as "red" since 2000. Before 2000, the GOP and Democrats alternated colors on electoral maps every 4 years.

I suspect that the 2000 color assignment stuck because Tim Russert's electoral maps were such a cultural touchstone from that year. It was after 2000 that a series of books emphasizing the red state/blue state cultural divide started appearing.

Also, the electoral map you show makes the GOP look "stronger" mainly because the area of the red states happens to be larger than the more densely populated blue states.

In response to comment by knb on The Red Bias
Comment author: komponisto 20 April 2010 11:35:20PM -1 points [-]

The GOP has only been identified as "red" since 2000. Before 2000, the GOP and Democrats alternated colors on electoral maps every 4 years.

I'm not sure that's true. I recall the current color assignment being in place at least since 1992.

Incidentally, the UK has the "opposite" color pattern (Labour red, Conservative blue), which I must say I find jarring (even if historically understandable).

Comment author: Nevin 20 April 2010 05:56:56AM 4 points [-]

To be fair, I don't think any of us were outraged at you. I think we were all trying to understand where exactly you make the distinction.

I find I think the hardest (i.e. think the most differently from normal, habitual thought) when I'm pushed right to where I draw choice-boundaries.

And actually I never quite wrapped my head around the basis of your view (I'm new to thinking about those things in such depth, since I've been surrounded by people who think like me). I'd like to continue the conversation sometime, in a more low-key environment.

Oh, and "Hi." I'm a lurker.

Comment author: komponisto 20 April 2010 06:34:32AM 2 points [-]

Just out of curiosity, are there a lot of people at the SIAI house who confine their participation on LW to lurking?

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 09 April 2010 02:47:07PM 5 points [-]

You're considering whether advertising is problematic and/or should be legal without looking at whether people on the receiving end of advertising want it or benefit by it.

If someone wrote in Less Wrong about successful techniques of advertising, and said it must be a good thing because people buy what's advertised, I don't think it would go over entirely well.

Even before I'd read Rain's comment, I was willing to bet that most LWers limit their exposure to advertising-- not so much for political reasons or for fear of it, as just that it's low information repetitive input. I admit I'm generalizing from myself on this one, though it's worth noting that even the general public tends to avoid tv ads if they can.

One thing that's clear from the akrasia and luminosity discussions is that not everything in people's minds can be relied on to make their lives better. It's reasonable to be concerned about inputs from people who are trying to influence your mind and have specific goals which do not include your welfare.

In the case of PUA, saying that some women like that approach (which is true), or that PUAs mean well (which is neither trustworthy [1] nor relevant) substitutes for a general follow-up on how women who've been PUAd perceive the experience later,.

At this stage, advertising may well be less effective than PUA-- for most things, it isn't personally directed. A small story-- I know a person who used to sell stuffed dragons, and she said she sold them by finding the little part of the potential customer which wanted one ot the dragons, and (by implication) getting that part of the person to make the decision. She didn't see any problems with that, but I later met someone who wouldn't go near that woman's table because of being afraid of getting talked into buying a dragon she didn't want all that much.

Even if the sales effort had been more carefully constructed so that anyone who bought a stuffed dragon would not be capable of regretting it, there would be more consent issues, not fewer.

If advertising becomes that effective, I don't know how this should be addressed legally or philosophically. I do think there are problems.

[1] Some PUAs start from a position of resenting women for turning them down.

Comment author: komponisto 14 April 2010 03:14:39PM 2 points [-]

saying that some women like that approach (which is true), or that PUAs mean well (which is neither trustworthy [1] nor relevant)

[1] Some PUAs start from a position of resenting women for turning them down

At the risk of being seen standing up for low-status males, I feel obliged to point out that that's not incompatible with "meaning well".

Comment author: SilasBarta 13 April 2010 05:44:50PM *  2 points [-]

Those are some good points about the attractiveness/ fashionability distinction, and I made similar remarks to a different end. I'll have to think about that.

However, I can't but refer back to simple comparisons of the social reactions to advice, such as this:

"If you want to appear more attractive to men, show cleavage and arch your back." --> "Duh, already know that, of course that's how men are."

vs.

"If you want to appear more attractive to women, act dominant by ordering her around, thinking of her like a disobedient child, and generally making yourself appear scarce and unavailable." --> "Shut up!!! Shut up, you F***ING terrorist! Women are NOT like that, you worthless misogynist! You should be RESPECTFUL and DEFERENTIAL and give them lots of gifts. That's what we want, chauvanist. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go meet my boyfriend, who is such a jerk to me. I hope he's not late ... again."

Disclaimer: I'm not advocating the advice I paraphrased for men, but actual successful PUAs -- who would know what they're talking about -- seem to believe it, and the refusal to discuss such cases seriously is inexcusable.

Comment author: komponisto 13 April 2010 08:23:40PM *  4 points [-]

The negative reactions may have to do with the fact that such advice -- and indeed, a comment like the above -- amounts to accusing half the audience of a very blatant form of hypocrisy. Obviously one should exercise extreme caution when making such an accusation, and it had better be backed up with some pretty solid evidence -- to say nothing of the pragmatic considerations of whether there is much to be gained by voicing such truths (if they are in fact true).

Yes, lots of people probably don't tell the truth about what is sexually attractive to them. But if you go around saying "women are such hypocrites", it's understandable for a woman hearing this to take it as a personal insult. (If you didn't mean for her to be insulted, you wouldn't say it that way.)

Comment author: Document 11 April 2010 07:16:01PM *  0 points [-]

No and yes, respectively. In my defense, your comment is 64th in New order, so it's not like it was closely juxtaposed with that paragraph.

Comment author: komponisto 11 April 2010 08:44:41PM -2 points [-]

That wasn't just some random paragraph; it was the whole freaking point of the post! It introduced a conceit that was continued throughout the whole rest of the article!

Before accusing me of hindsight bias (or the illusion of transparency, which is what I think you really meant), you might have noticed this reply, which should have put its parent into context immediately, or so I would have thought.

Comment author: Document 11 April 2010 09:41:31AM -2 points [-]

Are you generally not literal when you say "upvoted"?

Comment author: komponisto 11 April 2010 06:05:37PM 2 points [-]

Um, did you miss the following paragraph (emphasis added)?:

To make an outrageous metaphor: our brains run a system rather like Less Wrong's karma. You're allergic to cats, so you down-vote "cats" a couple of points. You hear about a Palestinian committing a terrorist attack, so you down-vote "Palestinians" a few points. Richard Dawkins just said something especially witty, so you up-vote "atheism". High karma score means seek it, use it, acquire it, or endorse it. Low karma score means avoid it, ignore it, discard it, or condemn it.

And...the rest of the post? Upvoting/karma as a metaphor was the whole point! In such a context, it was perfectly sensible (and even, I daresay, slightly witty) of me to append "literally" to the above comment.

(Honestly, did I really need to explain this?)

Comment author: RobinZ 01 April 2010 06:34:04PM 0 points [-]

Is the methodology of the Amanda Knox test useful in this case? (I didn't attempt the test or even read the posts, but it sounds like a similarly politicized problem.)

Comment author: komponisto 02 April 2010 07:35:23AM *  2 points [-]

An Amanda-Knox-type situation would be one where the priors are extreme and there are obvious biases and probability-theoretic errors causing people to overestimate the strength of the evidence.

I think one would have to know a fair amount of biochemistry in order for food controversies to seem this way.

Although one might potentially be able to apply the heuristic "look at which side has the more generally impressive advocates" -- which works spectacularly well in the Knox case -- to an issue like this.

Comment author: Academian 01 April 2010 09:28:23PM *  2 points [-]

To the downvote, in case it wasn't clear, I was laughing because I agree with the post, and because "simplify the living daylights out of your calculations" is just an awesome phrase. I laugh at things I agree with way more than things I don't, because the former things actually make me happy. (And the latter kind of laughter, on the rare occasion that it happens, I keep to myself.)

But if the downvote was for irrelevance, fair enough. I wouldn't mind being told that expressing appreciation of writing style alone is frowned upon.

Comment author: komponisto 01 April 2010 09:47:01PM 1 point [-]

I wouldn't mind being told that expressing appreciation of writing style alone is frowned upon

It is frowned upon by some people, but not by all -- certainly not by me. See discussion here.

Comment author: komponisto 01 April 2010 09:39:48PM 14 points [-]

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

-- Christopher Hitchens

In response to comment by komponisto on The I-Less Eye
Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 01 April 2010 11:21:57AM 6 points [-]

Why not take the Schroedinger equation literally?

The Schroedinger equation is an assertion about a thing called Psi. "Taking it literally" usually means "believe in many worlds". Now even if I decide to try this out, I face a multitude of questions. Am I to think of Psi as a wavefunction on a configuration space, or as a vector in a Hilbert space? Which part of Psi corresponds to the particular universe that I see? Am I to think of myself as a configuration of particles, a configuration of particles with an amplitude attached, a superposition of configurations each with its own amplitude, or maybe some other thing, like an object in Hilbert space (but what sort of object?) not preferentially associated with any particular basis? And then there's that little issue of deriving the Born probabilities!

Once you decide to treat the wavefunction itself as ultimate physical reality, you must specify exactly which part of it corresponds to what we see, and you must explain where the probabilities come from. Otherwise you're not doing physics, you're just daydreaming. And when people do address these issues, they do so in divergent ways. And in my experience, when you do get down to specifics, problems arise, and the nature of the problems depends very much on which of those divergent implementations of many-worlds has been followed.

It is hard to go any further unless you tell me more about what many-worlds means to you, and how you think it works. "Take the equation literally" is just a slogan and doesn't provide any details.

you merely raise the issue of finding "individual worlds", and argue that if you can find manage to find an individual world, then you can say that that world has an identity that persists over time. Fair enough, but how does this help you rescue the idea that personal identity resides in "continuity of substance", when the latter may still be meaningless at the level of individual particles?

By "world", do you mean a universe-sized configuration, or just an element of a more localized superposition? It is another of the exasperating ambiguities of many-worlds discourse. Some people do make it clear that their worlds-in-the-wavefunction are of cosmic size, while others apparently prefer to think of the multiplicity of realities as a local and even relative thing - I think this is what "many minds" is about: the observer is in a superposition and we acknowledge that there are many distinct observers or distinct instances of the observer, but the rest of the universe is to be regarded as still in its transcendent pristine many-in-one multiverse unity... I speak sarcastically, but I do see among some many-worlders a sort of veneration of the wavefunction and a dislike for any attempt to break it up into worlds in a definite way, even though you absolutely need to do this to make contact with empirical reality.

So, anyway, I was talking about localized entanglements, or (equivalently) small factors of the total quantum state, as providing a basis for "continuity of substance" even if individual particles cannot. The relevance to personal identity is as follows. We are assuming that a person has something to do with the material world. The argument I dispute is the one that says personal identity cannot depend on the persistence through time of the person's material parts, because there is no such thing as persistence through time of particles, because differently-braided particle histories all convey amplitude to the same configuration. And my proposition was that if you look at superpositions of these braidings and sub-braidings, you get localized entities which have ontological boundaries and persistence in time until they enter into a larger braiding; and this means you can after all talk about material parts of a person persisting in time.

Comment author: komponisto 01 April 2010 08:07:40PM 3 points [-]

"Take the equation literally" is just a slogan and doesn't provide any details.

What it means is that you let your ontology be dictated by the mathematical structure of the equation. So for instance:

Am I to think of Psi as a wavefunction on a configuration space, or as a vector in a Hilbert space?

It's both -- even when regarded purely as a mathematical object. The set of wavefunctions on a configuration space is (the unit sphere of) a Hilbert space. Specifically, as I understand it, configuration space is a measure space of some sort, and the set of wavefunctions is (the unit sphere in) L^2 of that measure space.

Am I to think of myself as a configuration of particles, a configuration of particles with an amplitude attached, a superposition of configurations each with its own amplitude, or maybe some other thing, like an object in Hilbert space (but what sort of object?) not preferentially associated with any particular basis?

It seems to me that you're a region of configuration space. There's a subset of the measure space that consists of configurations that represent things like "you're in this state", "you're in that state", etc. We can call this subset the "you"-region. (Of course, these states also contain information about the rest of the universe, but the information they contain about you is the reason we're singling them out as a subset.)

And then there's that little issue of deriving the Born probabilities!

To repeat a point made before (possibly by Eliezer himself), this isn't an issue that distinguishes between many-worlds and collapse postulates. With many-worlds, you have to explain the Born probabilities; with collapse interpretations, you have to explain the mysterious collapse process. It seems to me far preferable, all else being equal, to be stuck with the former problem rather than the latter -- because it turns the mystery into an indexical issue ("Why are we in this branch rather than another?") rather than writing it into the laws of the universe.

you absolutely need to [break the wavefunction into worlds] to make contact with empirical reality.

Why is this?

my proposition was that if you look at superpositions of these braidings and sub-braidings, you get localized entities which have ontological boundaries and persistence in time until they enter into a larger braiding; and this means you can after all talk about material parts of a person persisting in time.

Okay, it now occurs to me that I may have been confusing "continuity of substance" (your criterion) with "identity of substance" (which is what Eliezer's argument rules out). That's still more problematic, in my opinion, than a view that allows for uploading and teleportation, but in any event I withdraw the claim that it is challenged by Eliezer's quantum-mechanical argument about particle identity.

In response to comment by komponisto on The I-Less Eye
Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 01 April 2010 02:13:57AM 5 points [-]

OK. Well, here's a different perspective.

Suppose we start with quantum mechanics. What is the argument that particles don't have identity? If you start with particles in positions A and B, and end with particles in positions C and D, and you want to calculate the probability amplitude for this transition, you count histories where A goes to C and B goes to D, and histories where A goes to D and B goes to C. Furthermore, these histories can interfere destructively (e.g. this happens with fermions), which implies that the two endpoints really are the same place in configuration space, and not just outcomes that look the same.

From this it is concluded that the particles have no identity across time. According to this view, if you end up in the situation with particles at C and D, and ask if the particle at C started at A or started at B, there is simply no answer, because both types of history will have contributed to the outcome.

However, it is a curious fact that although the evolving superposition contains histories of both types, within any individual history, there is identity across time! Within an individual history in the sum over histories, A does go to strictly one of C or D.

Now I'm going to examine whether the idea of persistent particle-identity makes sense, first in single-world interpretations, then in many-world interpretations.

What do physicists actually think is the reality of a quantum particle? If we put aside the systematic attempts to think about the problem, and just ask what attitudes are implicitly at work from day to day, I see three attitudes. One is the positivistic attitude that it is pointless to talk or think about things you can't observe. Another is the ignorance interpretation of quantum uncertainty; the particle always has definite properties, just like a classical particle, but it moves around randomly, in a way that adds up to quantum statistics. Finally, you have wavefunction realism: particles really are spread out in space or in superpositions. (The thinking of an individual physicist may combine several of these attitudes.)

The positivistic attitude is likely to dismiss the question of 'which path the electron took' or even 'did the electron take a definite path' as metaphysics and unanswerable, so it's irrelevant to the present discussion. Wavefunction realism, pursued systematically, usually becomes a many-worlds philosophy, so I'll save that option for the second part. So if we are asking whether electrons persist over time and follow definite paths in a single-world interpretation, we are really asking whether that is the case under an ignorance interpretation of quantum uncertainty.

I think it is obviously so. This way of thinking says that particles are just like classical particles - they always have a definite location, they always execute definite motions - except that they act randomly. If we have two particles apparently just sitting there, and we want to know whether they changed places or not, the real answer will be yes or no, even if we can never know which is right.

(A remark on the legitimacy of this way of thinking. Bell's theorem evidently rattled a lot of people because it showed that a naive conception of how these random motions worked could not give rise to quantum mechanics - it could not produce sufficiently strong correlations at a distance. Nonetheless, it is possible to derive quantum probabilities from local random behavior, just as you can get a diffusion probability distribution from Brownian motion. The punchline is that it has to be local random motion in configuration space. In configuration space you treat the whole classical configuration as a single point in an infinite-dimensional abstract space, so "motion" in that abstract space will involve simultaneous changes to physical properties all across real space. This may sound like cheating; it means that when you go back to thinking in terms of real space, if your random motions are going to produce quantum statistics, then the randomness has to be correlated at a distance, without further cause. But some people are prepared to bite that bullet; that's just how reality is, they'll tell you.)

Now to many worlds. Here we are saying that superpositions are real; so the history where the particles stay where they are, and the history where they swap places, are both real, and they flow into the same world at the end. Now, surely, we cannot speak of a particle's identity persisting over time. We started out with a world containing a particle at A and a particle at B; it evolved into a world that was a superposition (or was it a superposition of worlds?), each element of the superposition still containing two particles, but now in other positions; and it terminated in a world with a particle at C and a particle at D. Each final particle inherited a bit of amplitude from multiple predecessors, and for each there are paths heading back to A and to B. So we simply can't say that the particle at C is the sole heir of either original particle.

However, perhaps we can say that these two particles were entangled, and that this entangled duo had a persistent identity across time! Certainly, as described, there were only ever two particles in the picture. You might object that in the real world, there would be other particles, and they would also interact with the duo, and even trade places with them in some histories, and so this notion of a locally encapsulated entanglement is false. Everything is entangled with everything else, indirectly if not directly, and so all I could say is that the universe as a whole has identity across time.

My response to that is that developing a coherent many-worlds interpretation is a lot more difficult than you might think. Many worlds has been presented here as the economical, no-collapse alternative to theories arbitrarily postulating a collapse process; but to actually find individual worlds in a universal wavefunction, you have to break it up somehow (break it up conceptually), and that is a project with a lot of hidden difficulties (significant example). The arbitrariness of the collapse postulate has its counterpart in the arbitrariness of how the worlds are defined. If a natural, non-arbitrary definition exists, it is going to have to find natural structures, such as temporarily localized entanglements; and I note Eliezer's comment in the original article, "I'm calling you a factored subspace". If that is so - if the idea can even make sense - then it will be that subspace which has continuity of identity across time.

So, whether you adopt a single-world or a many-world perspective, a nonpatternist theory of physical identity is viable.

We are actually talking about personal identity here, not physical identity, and that raises further issues. But if physical identity is a viable concept after all, then so too may be a concept of personal identity grounded in temporal persistence of physical identity.

Comment author: komponisto 01 April 2010 05:43:55AM 6 points [-]

I'll grant that by being sufficiently clever, you can probably reconcile quantum mechanics with whatever ontology you like. But the real question is: why bother? Why not take the Schroedinger equation literally? Physics has faced this kind of issue before -- think of the old episode about epicycles, for instance -- and the lesson seems clear enough to me. What's the difference here?

For what it's worth, I don't see the arbitrariness of collapse postulates and the arbitrariness of world-selection as symmetrical. It's not even clear to me that we need to worry about extracting "worlds" from blobs of amplitude, but to the extent we do, it seems basically like an issue of anthropic selection; whereas collapse postulates seem like invoking magic.

But in any case you don't really address the objection that

(e)verything is entangled with everything else, indirectly if not directly, and so all I could say is that the universe as a whole has identity across time.

Instead, you merely raise the issue of finding "individual worlds", and argue that if you can find manage to find an individual world, then you can say that that world has an identity that persists over time. Fair enough, but how does this help you rescue the idea that personal identity resides in "continuity of substance", when the latter may still be meaningless at the level of individual particles?

In response to comment by komponisto on The I-Less Eye
Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 31 March 2010 08:47:35AM 2 points [-]

Not possible, according to Eliezer.

And what do you think? I disagree with Eliezer, and I can talk about my position, but I want to hear your opinion first.

Comment author: komponisto 31 March 2010 09:02:14AM 1 point [-]

I find Eliezer's argument convincing.

In response to The I-Less Eye
Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 29 March 2010 06:51:00AM *  2 points [-]

I believe in continuity of substance, not similarity of pattern, as the basis of identity. If you are the original, that is what you are for all time. You cannot wake up as the copy. At best, a new mind can be created with false beliefs (such as false memories, of experiences which did not happen to it). Do I still face a problem of "subjective anticipation"?

ETA: Eliezer said of the original problem, "If you can't do the merge without killing people, then the trilemma is dissolved." Under a criterion of physical continuity, you cannot go from two objects to one object without at least one of them ceasing to be. So the original problem also appears to be a non-problem for me.

Comment author: komponisto 31 March 2010 08:28:57AM 2 points [-]

I believe in continuity of substance, not similarity of pattern, as the basis of identity.

Not possible, according to Eliezer.

Comment author: Yvain 28 March 2010 01:47:28PM 0 points [-]

Given 10 billion bats , that bats have been around for 50 million years, and bat generations taking let's say 5 years, and assuming that population has been stable for evolutionary history, we have a super rough estimate of something on the order of (10B * (50M/5)) = 100 quadrillion historical bats. I think a lot of anthropic calculations assume there have been 100 billion historical humans, so probability of being a human is 1/1 millionth the probability of being a bat.

I don't see a whole lot of difference between not having subjective experiences and having one one-millionth the subjective experience of a human. Once we expand this to all animals instead of just bats, the animals come out even worse.

Comment author: komponisto 28 March 2010 05:01:26PM 3 points [-]

I'm not sure it follows that a bat has one one-millionth the subjective experience of a human. The problem is that you can't necessarily add a bunch of bat-experiences together to get something equivalent to a human experience; in fact, it seems to me that this sort of additivity only holds when the experiences are coherently connected to each other. (If someone hooked up a million bat-brains into a giant network, then it might make sense to ask "Why am I a human, rather than a million bats"?)

So it may be, for instance, that each bat has 10% the subjective experience of a human, but that that extra 90% makes it millions of times more probable that the experiencer will be pondering this question.

Comment author: komponisto 27 March 2010 03:55:52PM 4 points [-]

Following bogus, I could imagine endorsing a weaker form of the argument: not that it's like nothing to be a bat, but that it's like less to be a bat than to be a human.

In fact, if you've ever wondered why you happen to be the person you are, and not someone else, it may be that the reflectivity you are displaying by asking this question puts you in a more-strongly-anthropically-weighted reference class.

In response to comment by Alicorn on The Shabbos goy
Comment author: PhilGoetz 26 March 2010 10:33:44PM 1 point [-]

I thought that you're considered Jewish if your mother was Jewish, and not Jewish if she wasn't.

In response to comment by PhilGoetz on The Shabbos goy
Comment author: komponisto 27 March 2010 01:50:47AM *  1 point [-]
Comment author: Morendil 26 March 2010 08:31:06PM 1 point [-]

The second link isn't really about analogy-making as topic within AI, it's more about "analogy as flawed human thinking". (And Kaj's post reminds us precisely that given the role played by analogy in cognition, it may not fully deserve the bad rap Eliezer has given it.)

The first is partly about AI creativity (and also quite a bit about the flawed human thinking of AI researchers). It is the only one tagged "creativity"; and my reading of the Sequences has left me with an impression that the promise in the final sentence was left unfulfilled when I came to the end. I could rattle off a list of things I've learned from the Sequences, at various levels of understanding; they'd cover a variety of topics but creativity would be ranked quite low.

I mean, CopyCat comes up once in search results. If the topic of analogy within AI was discussed much here, I'd expect it to be referenced more often.

Comment author: komponisto 26 March 2010 09:34:15PM 7 points [-]

I didn't interpret your comment as expressing an expectation that there would be more discussion about analogical reasoning or creativity as a topic within AI; keep in mind, after all, that LW is not a blog about AI -- its topic is human rationality. (There is, naturally, a fair amount of incidental discussion of AI, because Eliezer happens to be an AI researcher and that's his "angle".) In this context, I therefore interpreted your remark as "given Eliezer's interest in AI, a subject which requires an understanding of the phenomena of analogies and creativity, I'm surprised there isn't more discussion of these phenomena."

I'll use this opportunity to state my feeling that, as interesting as AI is, human rationality is a distinct topic, and it's important to keep LW from becoming "about" AI (or any other particular interest that happens to be shared by a significant number of participants) . Rationality is for everyone, whether you're part of the "AI crowd" or not.

(I realize that someone is probably going to post a reply to the effect that, given the stakes of the Singularity, rational thought clearly compels us to drop everything and basically think about nothing except AI. But...come on, folks -- not even Eliezer thinks about nothing else.)

Comment author: Morendil 26 March 2010 06:09:42PM *  1 point [-]

Creativity and analogy-making were often discussed in Eliezer's OB sequences

I would appreciate, if you can think of any examples offhand, if you'd point me to them. I'll have another look-see later to check on my (possibly mistaken) impression. Just not today, I'm ODing on LW as it is. Is it just me or has the pace of top-level posting been particularly hectic lately?

Comment author: komponisto 26 March 2010 07:46:21PM 1 point [-]

I would appreciate, if you can think of any examples offhand, if you'd point me to them.

Creativity.

Analogy-making.

Comment author: Morendil 26 March 2010 03:05:47PM 3 points [-]

Quite convincing, thanks. I'll want to think about it more, but perhaps it would be a good idea to toss the word out the window for its active connotations.

ISTM, though, that there is a knack for for cross-domain generalization (and cross-domain mangling) of insights, that people have this knack in varying degrees, that this knack is an important component of what we call "intelligence", in the sense that if we could figure out what this knack consists of we'd have solved a good chunk of AI. Isn't this a major reason why Hofstadter, for instance, has focused so sharply on analogy-making, fluid analogies, and so on?

(This is perhaps a clue to one thing that has been puzzling me, given Eliezer's interest in AI, namely the predominance of topics such as decision theory on this blog, and the near total absence of discussion around topics such as creativity or analogy-making.)

Comment author: komponisto 26 March 2010 05:54:15PM 0 points [-]

perhaps it would be a good idea to toss the word out the window for its active connotations.

Why? It's still just as much of a flaw if it's a passive phenomenon.

To make an analogy with some literal overlap, some people are creationists because they don't know any science, and others are creationists despite knowing science. Should we avoid using the term "creationist" for the first group? I think not.

Compartmentalization is still compartmentalization, whether it's the result of specifically motivated cognition, or just an intellectual deficiency such as a failure to abstract.

(In fact, I'd venture that motivated thought sometimes keeps people from improving their intellectual skills, just as religiously-motivated creationists may deliberately avoid learning science.)

This is perhaps a clue to one thing that has been puzzling me, given Eliezer's interest in AI, namely the predominance of topics such as decision theory on this blog, and the near total absence of discussion around topics such as creativity or analogy-making

Honestly, I think this is mainly just a result of the personalities of the folks who happen to be posting. Creativity and analogy-making were often discussed in Eliezer's OB sequences; posts by Yvain and Alicorn also seem to have this flavor.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 25 March 2010 07:07:03PM *  0 points [-]

It is bad form; but I have no site of my own to put them on. I'm homeless on the internet.

Comment author: komponisto 25 March 2010 09:42:52PM 2 points [-]

Can't you upload images to LW, for use in posts?

Comment author: lispalien 25 March 2010 06:22:23AM 0 points [-]

I followed this link, and found the blog of one of the "truth wizards" from the study. She writes about the Amanda Knox case. It seems to entirely focus on Amanda Knox.

Comment author: komponisto 25 March 2010 05:44:06PM *  5 points [-]

This has been mentioned before; I'll reiterate my reaction in more detail here.

First of all, there is very little "Truth Wizard" analysis of Amanda Knox on that blog (whatever one thinks about the strength of such evidence in the first place). There are several posts about the case, but in only one of them does the author actually attempt to apply her own "lie-detecting" skills to Knox. (In particular, the most recent post on the case just consists of the author's commentary on someone else's argument that Knox is a sociopath; contrary to orthonormal, there is no claim by the author that she herself has detected sociopathy.)

The one post where the author does analyze Knox concerns her statement at Guede's trial, of which only audio (not video) is available. (Of Knox's videotaped testimony at her own trial, the author says: "...without hearing the questions asked of Knox, it is impossible to identify if she is lying." -- emphasis added.) Thus, there is no data about facial expression, which is apparently an important component of the author's technique. Hence confidence in this analysis must be presumably be lowered from what it would be if the author were working from a video recording.

But in any case, the reasoning in that post is awful. To the extent the author is skilled in detecting lies, she is obviously not particularly skilled in explaining how she arrives at her conclusions. Here is an example:

Does this make any sense? She couldn't remember because she was tired? It was the middle of the night? Does anyone believe this is a good reason for a lack of all memory? When Amanda is telling us this, a year has passed from the crime, so why doesn't she elaborate more in this statement? Why isn't she setting the record straight for the judge here and now?

The author seems to be expecting Amanda's memory of an incident to improve over time. Now, I'm not an expert on memory, but this is directly contrary to my understanding of how it works. In fact, (to invoke my own memory here) I distinctly recall Eliezer mentioning once that memories are re-created each time we remember something. If this is true, it implies that memories -- even if they become more vivid! -- would become less entangled with reality over time, not more; which is anyway what you would expect from....physics.

Here is another, well, "red flag", concerning Knox's account of being hit on the back of the head by a police officer:

So, what ended up happening was.... the fact that I had been pressured so much, and I was....(sigh), I was hit in the back of the head by one of the police officers...who said she was trying to make me...help me remember the truth.

She was pressured so much that she was hit on the back of the head? Does that make sense? Why does she change "make me" which is a strong statement to "help me", which is much softer? I find this odd. If someone is hitting me on the back of the head, they aren't "helping me" do anything. They are making me forcefully and brutally react. Why aren't her emotional memories matching her story?

The author completely misses the obvious interpretation (in the absence of prejudice), which is that the phrase "make me" reflected Amanda's emotional interpretation of the situation, but that she corrected it to "help me" in order to more accurately recount what the officer(s) actually said!

This kind of shoddy reasoning is, I regret to say, characteristic of the author's (rather limited) discussion of the case. Whatever truth-detecting skills she may possess, I don't think her posts have provided us with very much useful information at all.

Finally, I will point out that the author (who by the way links to True Justice but not to any pro-Knox site) claims not to have made an incorrect judgement in 5 years...and yet now lists this case among her "successes"! Obviously, that's more than a bit problematic. (It should be noted that not only is the appeals process ongoing, but the conviction only intensified the controversy, if anything.)

Comment author: Seth_Goldin 24 March 2010 03:23:41AM *  3 points [-]

I'm a little late to this game, but I spent over an hour, maybe two, comparing the information from the two websites. I had known nothing previously about the case.

My answers: 1: 0.05; 2: 0.05; 3: 0.95; 4: 0.65

So, I feel pretty vindicated. This was a great complement to Kaj Sotala's post on Bayesianism. With his post in mind, as I was considering this case, I assigned probabilities to the existence of an orgy gone wrong as against one rape and murder from one person. There is strong Bayesian evidence for Guédé's guilt, but it's exceedingly weak for Sollecito and Knox. This has really helped the idea of Bayesianism "click" for me.

komponisto, your reasoning is wonderfully thorough and sound. I can corroborate that I deliberately found myself "shutting the voice out" concerning the activity with the mop. You have a great explanation, overall. These two posts of yours are in the running for my all-time favorites.

Comment author: komponisto 25 March 2010 05:53:30AM *  7 points [-]

Thanks for the kind words!

Actually, looking back, I now think I could have done better. In particular, I wish I had been more explicit about the central probability-theoretic point: the fact that the evidence against Guede screens off Kercher's death as evidence against Knox and Sollecito. This point was missed by a number of commenters; if you read the discussion you'll find various people saying that the prior probability "should" take into account the fact that a murder occurred in Knox's house. In actuality, of course, it doesn't matter where you start, so long as you eventually incorporate all of the relevant information; but what must be understood is that if you start with probability mass assigned to Knox and Sollecito because of Kercher's death, then you have to take (most of) that probability mass away upon learning of the evidence against Guede. In other words, under this setup, evidence of Guede's guilt becomes evidence of Knox's and Sollecito's innocence -- something which is counterintuitive and very easy to forget (with tragic consequences).

This issue of "choosing the prior" and other Bayesian subtleties encountered in these discussions may be worth revisiting at some point.

Comment author: wnoise 23 March 2010 05:33:35PM 10 points [-]

Dilution of good content is subtraction, if not as bad as the addition of bad content. I really do have no desire to see a bare "LOL", and will continue to vote accordingly.

Comment author: komponisto 23 March 2010 06:48:12PM 5 points [-]

There is no significant dilution occurring here. If we were flooded by "LOL" comments, or a particular user posted them with inappropriate frequency, that would be a different situation.

You are being too harsh. For my part, I have no desire to see this kind of non-niceness on here, just because we're interested in high-quality content. It subtracts a lot more from the experience here than an occasional "LOL".

Comment author: wnoise 23 March 2010 04:51:43PM 10 points [-]

Of course it is -- if you're willing to take the karma hit for a comment that adds nothing to the conversation.

Comment author: komponisto 23 March 2010 05:10:31PM *  6 points [-]

The point was, there shouldn't be a karma hit for "adding nothing to the conversation". It should be okay to simply express a reaction without taking a karma hit. The score for "adding nothing" is 0; a negative score indicates that the comment subtracted something from the conversation. To downvote a comment is to actively discourage such a comment from being posted. I don't think such comments should be actively discouraged.

Comment author: simplicio 23 March 2010 04:34:45PM *  6 points [-]

Hell's bells, that's a good idea! Let's classify every belief as a complex number (magnitude 1) with a real and imaginary part!

Astrology: (0 + j1) - {imaginary but vaguely intuitive}

Aliens have visited earth: (2^-1/2 + j2^-1/2) - {intuitively possible, imaginary but with finite real component}

Michelson's prediction of aether wind effect: (-1 + j0) - {simply, honourably wrong}

Elan vital: (0 - j1) - {"not even wrong"}

Comment author: komponisto 23 March 2010 04:47:02PM 4 points [-]

Do you work in some kind of engineering field or something where people regularly write i as "j" and coefficients to the right? Just curious.

Comment author: BenAlbahari 23 March 2010 02:38:59AM -1 points [-]

LOL.

Comment author: komponisto 23 March 2010 04:41:41PM *  2 points [-]

The parent should be at 0, not -1. It's perfectly okay to express something like "LOL" once in a while.

Comment author: woozle 22 March 2010 02:48:30PM 2 points [-]

This is a good example of why we need a formalized process for debate -- so that irrelevant politicizations can be easily spotted before they grow into partisan rhetoric.

Part of the problem also may be that people often seem to have a hard time recognizing and responding to the actual content of an argument, rather than [what they perceive as] its implications.

For example (loosely based on the types of arguments you mention regarding Knox, but using a topic I'm more familiar with):

  • [me] Bush was really awful.
  • [fictional commenter] You're just saying that because you're a liberal, and liberals hate Bush.

The reply might be true, but it doesn't address the claim that "Bush was awful"; it is an ad hominem based on an assumption about me (that I am a liberal), my intellectual honesty (that I would make an assertion just to be agreeing with a group to which I belong), and the further presumption that there aren't any good reasons for loathing Bush.

As a rational argument, it is plainly terrible -- it doesn't address the content to which it is responding. I suspect this was also the problem with the politicalism that happened regarding the Knox issue -- if respondents had

It should be easier to identify arguments of that nature, and "take them down" before they spawn the kind of discussion we all want to avoid.

"Vote down" is presumably one way to do that -- if enough people vote down such comments, then they get automatically "folded" by the comment system, and are more likely to be ignored (hopefully preventing further politicalism) -- but apparently that mechanism hasn't been having the desired effect.

Another problem with "Vote down" is that many people seem to be using it as a way of indicating their disagreement with a comment, rather than to indicate that the comment was inappropriate or invalid.

Are there any ongoing discussions about improving/redesigning/altering the comment-voting/karma system here at LessWrong?

(I was going to type more, but there were interruptions and I've lost the thread... will come back later if there's more.)

Comment author: komponisto 22 March 2010 05:53:53PM *  5 points [-]

This is a good example of why we need a formalized process for debate

At the risk of harping on what is after all a major theme of this site, we do in fact have one -- it's called Bayesianism.

How should a debate look? Well, here is how I think it should begin, at least. (Still waiting to see how this will work, if Rolf ever does decide to go through with it.)

In fact, let's try to consider your example from a Bayesian perspective:

(A) Bush was really awful.

(B) You're just saying that because you're a liberal, and liberals hate Bush.

Now, of course, you're right that (A) "doesn't address" (B) -- in the sense that (A) and (B) could both be true. But suppose instead that the conversation proceeded in the following way:

(A) Bush was really awful.

(B') No he wasn't.

In this case (B') directly contradicts (A); which is about the most extreme form of "addressing" there is. Yet, this hardly seems an improvement.

The reason is that, at least for Bayesians, the purpose of such a conversation is not to arrive at logical contradictions; it's to arrive at accurate beliefs.

You'll notice, in this example, that (A) itself isn't much of an argument; it just consists of a statement of the speaker's belief. The actual implied argument is something like this:

(A1) I say that Bush was really awful.

(A2) Something I say is likely to be true.

(A3) Therefore, it is likely that Bush was really awful.

The response,

(B) You're just saying that because you're a liberal, and liberals hate Bush.

should in turn be analyzed like this:

(B1) You belong to a set of people ("liberals") whose emotions tend to get in the way of their forming accurate beliefs.

(B2) As a consequence, (A2) is likely to be false.

(B3) You have therefore failed to convince me of (A3).

So, why are political arguments dangerous? Basically, because people tend to say (A) and (B) (or (A) and (B')) -- which are widely-recognized tribal-affiliation-signals -- rather than (A1)-(A3) and (B1)-(B3), at which point the exchange of words becomes merely a means of acting out standard patterns of hostile social interaction. It's true that (A) and (B) have the Bayesian interpretations (A1)-(A3) and (B1)-(B3), but the habit of interpreting them that way is something that must be learned (indeed, here I am explaining the interpretation to you!).

Comment author: Rain 18 March 2010 02:27:53PM *  2 points [-]

EY's posts undermine 1) significantly, it seems to me.

Of his most recently posted articles: Undiscriminating Skepticism scores at a Flesch-Kincaid grade level 17 and a Gunning Fog index of 17.9, You're Entitled to Arguments is at 16 and 17.8, and Outside View as Conversation Halter is at 14 and 14.5. Note that a score of 15+ is considered academic writing by these measures. Tests of his recently upvoted comments show scores ranging from 7 to 20.

Here's the Flesch-Kincaid calculator I used, and the Gunning Fog calculator. I would be surprised if other measures of readability, and tests of his other posts, did not show it to be academic-level writing.

Comment author: komponisto 18 March 2010 06:03:15PM *  4 points [-]

Of his most recently posted articles: Undiscriminating Skepticism scores at a Flesch-Kincaid grade level 17 and a Gunning Fog index of 17.9,

"Undiscriminating Skepticism" -- why, that's ten (10) syllables right there in the title! My head is already spinning!

Seriously: tests like those do not control for the content or subject matter of the writing. There exists, furthermore, a significant subset of the (adult!) human population who would consider a phrase like "undiscriminating skepticism" itself to be difficult and unusually abstract. Needless to say, tests which heavily weight the judgements of such people are not very useful for the purpose of judging "readability" in most contexts here.

If you want to judge the readability of LW posts, I suggest spending some time reading typical articles published in academic journals.

Comment author: wedrifid 18 March 2010 02:12:06AM 5 points [-]

Political discussion was discouraged, but I think we've probably all practiced rationality enough to talk politics now without degenerating into shouting matches. Thanks for starting the discussion.

Maybe not shouting matches (it becomes too easy for oponents to get away with mass downvotes). But political discussions here degenerate the quality of discussion and the quality of thinking drastically. This applies to some of the conversations on mainstream political issues. It was frustratingly obvious when it came to any conversations about Knox after the people who didn't care finished using it as a case study. But when politics really becomes the mind killer is when it comes to actual lesswrong social politics, explicit and otherwise.

Mind killing isn't about shouting matches. It's about bullshit.

Comment author: komponisto 18 March 2010 07:33:14AM 5 points [-]

But political discussions here degenerate the quality of discussion and the quality of thinking drastically...It was frustratingly obvious when it came to any conversations about Knox after the people who didn't care finished using it as a case study

Thinking about why I disagree with the latter sentence has led me to discover another reason why I agree with the former.

There is really nothing political about the Knox case; it's simply a question of what did or did not happen at Via della Pergola 7 in Perugia between November 1 and 2 of 2007. And yet, almost everywhere it was discussed, people were unable to avoid turning it into a political issue: it was always about the Italian legal system, anti-Americanism, American arrogance, sexual mores, white-middle-class privilege, or what have you. (When Senator Maria Cantwell reacted to the verdict, did she dare express outrage that the life of one of her constituents had been ruined by the failure of eight people to understand probability theory? No, she spoke of "anti-Americanism".)

Everywhere, that is, except on Less Wrong -- where there was little or no discussion of these perhaps-interesting but strictly tangential matters. Here, it was pretty much exclusively about the facts of the case and the epistemic issues involved. (Contrast the discussion in the Richard Dawkins Forum, where people could not resist the temptation to lapse into ad-hominem attacks on the nationality -- stated or supposed -- of their opponents; there was nothing like that here at all.)

Now, I don't know for sure that our informal policy of discouraging political discussions was causally decisive in keeping the quality high in this instance. But I can't escape the conclusion that people have a natural tendency to see tribal politics in everything -- so that Less Wrong's "taboo" against politics not only prevents standard political flamewars but also, through learned cognitive habit, helps us avoid turning our ordinary discussions into political disputes.

What we're wanting to avoid, in other words, is not just political talk but also the political mindset. Our unusually positive experience with the Knox case suggests to me that restricting the former may actually help fight the latter.

Comment author: gregconen 18 March 2010 03:47:14AM *  2 points [-]

EY's posts undermine (1) significantly

What works for EY may not work for everyone else. For better or worse, he enjoys a special status in this community.

Comment author: komponisto 18 March 2010 04:00:10AM 8 points [-]

For better or worse, [EY] enjoys a special status in this community.

A status earned precisely by writing posts that people enjoy reading!

If you're suggesting that the ordinary academic/intellectual norm of only allowing high-status people to write informally, with everyone else being forced to write in soporific formal-sounding prose, is operative here, then I suggest we make every effort to nip that in the bud ASAP.

This is a blog; let's keep it that way.

Comment author: Rain 18 March 2010 02:52:42AM *  4 points [-]

1) Use longer sentences and bigger words. The community appears to react favorably to academic styling in prose.

2) State all the givens. Things which I believed would be understood automatically and omitted to save time are much more likely to be picked apart as flaws, where the other person assumes I have not thought the matter through.

3) Be careful about how much you share. People here are far more willing to do research and analysis to pick apart every claim you make, even if its a metaphor, and they will look into your background. Any of the information you've posted can and will be used against (for?) you. Alternately, this same point should be used as a suggestion for how to treat other posters. Link to their previous comments and any evidence regarding their claims.

4) Don't let your rationality slip due a sense of comradery. I feel that this community doesn't treat commenters as friends; rather, it feels more like being treated as a coworker who is on the clock. As Morendil phrased it, "I wish someone had told me, quite plainly [...] this is a rationality dojo."

That's off the top of my head and in no particular order. There are other aspects I'm still developing which do not have a formal definition.

Comment author: komponisto 18 March 2010 03:39:03AM *  3 points [-]

2) State all the givens. Things which I believed would be understood automatically and omitted to save time are much more likely to be picked apart as flaws, where the other person assumes I have not thought the matter through.

Yes -- I have seen this so many times!

It's particularly frustrating, because encountering it feels like discovering that you've overestimated your audience at the same time that they've underestimated you.

4) Don't let your rationality slip due a sense of comradery. I feel that this community doesn't treat commenters as friends; rather, it feels more like being treated as a coworker who is on the clock. As Morendil phrased it, "I wish someone had told me, quite plainly [...] this is a rationality dojo."

I've noticed this too, and I long for the day when our rationality skills have advanced to the point where we can be rational and nice.

I haven't really seen 3), and EY's posts undermine 1) significantly, it seems to me.

Comment author: simplicio 16 March 2010 04:15:20AM 1 point [-]

More the European way. It definitely does not have the strong negative connotations, even among conservatives. Also worth noting that one of our two main political parties is actually called the Liberal Party of Canada.

Another fun fact: Liberals are also affectionately known as Grits, and Conservatives as Tories.

Comment author: komponisto 16 March 2010 06:25:30PM 3 points [-]

Do you Canadians use liberal like we Americans use it or like Europeans use it?

More the European way...Also worth noting that one of our two main political parties is actually called the Liberal Party of Canada.

My understanding is that that party is roughly the equivalent of the U.S. Democrats or U.K. Labour -- which would make the usage of "liberal" much more like the American usage (meaning "left-wing") than the European usage (meaning "opposed to high levels of economic regulation").

Comment author: Jack 12 March 2010 02:12:14PM 4 points [-]

No! Boo that! The suffix "-esque" actually means "in the style or manner of". The suffix "-ian" is a catchall that just means "of or relating too". "Escherian" would be reserved for purposes where there is no appropriate suffix. For example, collectors of Escher's estate are interested in "Escherian memorabilia". Perhaps the group the gets together every month to discuss his work is the "Escherian society". If you have a piece of language that removes ambiguity, use it!

Comment author: komponisto 12 March 2010 06:00:41PM *  2 points [-]
  1. Well, I did specifically allow disambiguation as an excuse for using -esque (as in "arabesque").

  2. I don't believe for a moment that all the people who characterize the behavior of smirking, mendacious politicians as "Clintonesque" are doing so because of a fear that "Clintonian" would be ambiguous. What's really going on here is that "-ian" requires a change in the stress pattern of the root, which is apparently the sort of thing that causes people's brains to crash. Meanwhile, having heard somebody use the term "Kafkaesque", they think they've discovered a suffix for the general purpose of making adjectives from names that doesn't require any alteration of the root.

  3. "Escherian society/memorabilia" is pretentious (and underspecific!) and should be replaced by "Escher society/memorabilia".

Comment author: MercuryChaos 11 March 2010 09:29:37AM *  9 points [-]

But when people say something's "Kafkaesque" they're alluding to the situations that he wrote about, and not to Kafka himself. Maybe "Escheresque" would be a better word?

Comment author: komponisto 11 March 2010 07:10:36PM *  1 point [-]

Maybe "Escheresque" would be a better word?

Heavens no. Should be "Escherian". When in comes to names, the suffix "-esque" is a faute-de-mieux stopgap that should be reserved for cases where "-ian" doesn't work (as in Kafka) or already has another meaning ("Arabesque" vs. "Arabian").

On the other point, if one were to say, disapprovingly, that somebody has "a Kafka-like mind", my reaction would be the same, for the same reason.

Comment author: simplicio 11 March 2010 05:57:44AM 2 points [-]

Eliezer, I am very interested in the Bayesian approach to reasoning you've outlined on this site, it's one of the more elegant ideas I've ever run into.

I am a bit confused, though, about to what extent you are using math directly when assessing truth claims. If I asked you for example "what probability do you assign to the proposition 'global warming is anthropogenic' ?" (say), would you tell me a number?

Or is this mostly about conceptually understanding that P(effect|~cause) needs to be taken into account?

If it's a number, what's your heuristic for getting there (i.e., deciding on a prior probability & all the other probabilities)?

If there's a post that goes into that much detail, I haven't seen it yet, though your explanations of Bayes theorem generally are brilliant.

Comment author: komponisto 11 March 2010 06:10:29AM *  2 points [-]
Comment author: komponisto 11 March 2010 06:02:49AM 2 points [-]

An informed person relying on outright lies indicates either an Escher-like mind

Probably better to say "Escher-painting-like mind" lest we unnecessarily cast aspersions on the man himself.

Comment author: Rain 05 March 2010 02:31:32AM *  5 points [-]

Troubleshooting, enabling new functionality in, or patching a ridiculously expensive piece of software managed by a ridiculously large team of technical people.

ETA: I understand that those one or two hours are potentially capable of making up the rest of my salary, at least from the perspective of someone who might want to pay me to perform such a duty, but I would also state that the lack of general feedback for the other 38 to 39 hours, and the requirement to show up to the office and generally pretend not to be blatantly non-busy, is akin to the problem humans have with large numbers: it's very difficult to feel like I've accomplished something for a few, tiny moments of work involving check boxes and following documentation, and it's highly irrational that I have to pretend I'm getting paid for 8 hours of hard work a day, when all they really want is 1 per week. That's in addition to the fact the dollar amounts involved invoke the large number problem itself...

Comment author: komponisto 05 March 2010 06:43:45PM 2 points [-]

What do they actually, explicitly expect you to be doing when you're not doing what they (really) pay you to do?

Comment author: wedrifid 05 March 2010 12:09:07AM *  2 points [-]

I don't understand the link. It doesn't mention fish oil but does suggest that she changed her medication (for depression and anorexia) and then experienced suicidal ideation, which she later acted upon. Medications causing suicidal ideation is not unheard of but I haven't heard of Omega-3 having any such effect.

Some googling gives me more information. It seems that her psychiatrist was transitioning her from one antidepressant to another, and adding fish oil supplements. There is also suggestions that her depression was bipolar. Going off an antidepressant is known to provoke manic episodes in bipolar patients and even those vulnerable to bipolar that had never had an episode. Going on to an antidepressant (and in particular SSRIs, for both 'on' and 'off') can also provoke mania. A manic episode while suffering withdrawal symptoms and the symptoms of a preexisting anxiety based disorder is a recipe for suicide. As for Omega-3... the prior for her being responsible is low and she just happened to be on the scene when people were looking for something to blame!

Comment author: komponisto 05 March 2010 01:35:40AM *  0 points [-]

I don't understand the link. It doesn't mention fish oil

Ah, sorry, I should have checked. (I guess it seemed an important enough detail that I just assumed it would be mentioned.)

Here (18:20 in the video) is an explicit mention of the fish oil, by her mother; apparently she was taking 12 tablets daily.

The way I had interpreted it, which prompted my caution above, was as a case of replacing antidepressants with fish oil, which seems unwise. Looking at it again now reveals there was in fact a plan to continue with antidepressants. It's unclear, however, how far along she was with this plan.

In any case, you're right that fish oil may not necessarily have been to blame as the trigger for suicide; but at the very least, it certainly didn't work here, and to the extent that it may have replaced the regular antidepressant treatment...that would seem a rather dubious decision.

Comment author: Kevin 04 March 2010 06:16:52AM 2 points [-]

Do you take fish oil supplements or equivalent? Can't hurt to try; fish oil is recommended for ADHD and very well may repair some of the brain damage that causes mental illness.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1093866

Comment author: komponisto 04 March 2010 11:55:52PM 0 points [-]

[F]ish oil... may repair some of the brain damage that causes mental illness.

Use with caution, however.

Comment author: orthonormal 03 March 2010 06:41:27AM *  10 points [-]

I disagree; an explanation of a downvote is a lot more helpful to the author than an explanation of an upvote (in addition to the fact that it often mitigates status-based anger), and thus the symmetry is broken. h-H is perhaps exaggerating this principle, but it's perfectly legitimate to say "that comment looked OK to me, what are you seeing?"

Comment author: komponisto 03 March 2010 01:44:59PM 0 points [-]

Strong second.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 March 2010 04:33:27PM 4 points [-]

I dispute that this is a non-explanation. Besides referring to concepts whose existence has already been confirmed by other means, it makes a testable prediction about the degree to which abilities should run in genetic families as opposed to student lineages.

Comment author: komponisto 02 March 2010 04:55:33PM *  14 points [-]

It's a question of which data you're interested in explaining. I'm more interested in understanding the mechanism of how Newton invented calculus than in explaining the (comparatively uninteresting) fact that most other people didn't. (If you want to program an AI to invent calculus, crying "IQ!" isn't going to help.)

[ETA: To be more explicit: the vague hypothesis that "Newton had a high IQ" adequately explains why, given that calculus was invented, Newton was among two people to have invented it. But does a much less effective job of explaining why it was invented in the first place, by anybody.]

(As it happens, most of the world's intellectual power has in fact been spread via students rather than children.)

Comment author: komponisto 02 March 2010 04:20:47PM 5 points [-]

One might argue that Newton didn't use any technique to invent calculus, just a very high IQ or some other unusual set of biological traits.

That would be a non-explanation in any case. However high Newton's IQ may have been, his brain was still operating by lawful processes within the physical universe. By the sheer improbability of inventing calculus by chance, there is bound to exist some general technique used by Newton for doing things like inventing calculus, for all that that technique may have been opaque to Newton's own conscious introspection. Perhaps someone else may be able to formulate this technique in explicit generality (in the same way that Newton himself formulated the methods of calculus, already known in special cases, in explicit generality).

"High IQ" probably doesn't mean more than something like high processing speed and copious amounts of RAM. The algorithms (at least in their essence) can still be run, less efficiently, on inferior hardware.

Comment author: michaelsullivan 16 December 2009 02:59:57PM -2 points [-]

This is entirely wrong. The evidence against G should modify both P(Knox) and P(random peer that is not G) downward.

Proximity should keep P(Knox) > P(random peer) unless there is evidence specific to Knox which lowers her P (i.e. a good alibi).

Your statement about proceeding from the physical evidence and ignoring other things is a heuristic. The fact is that some random suspicious behavior by K is evidence against K, it is just extremely weak evidence. Let R = random suspicious behavior by K. I contend that P(K|R) > P(K|^R). Your arguments that many people do R all the time and are not murderers address the strength of the evidence, but do not address the sign, unless you wish to contend that people who engage in R are less likely or equally likely to be murderers than people who do not. You have made no such argument.

It's clear that the evidence against K should be overwhelmed by the evidence against G, given that no solid connection was established between G and K. But it isn't zero evidence, it is merely very weak evidence.

You have established a safety heuristic to keep yourself from overvaluing weak evidence, but your safety heuristic has it's own shortcomings, because it has caused you to give it zero weight, which is obviously wrong.

Comment author: komponisto 02 March 2010 03:37:48PM 0 points [-]

This is entirely wrong. The evidence against G should modify both P(Knox) and P(random peer that is not G) downward.

No, it is most certainly not "entirely wrong", if it is even wrong at all.

Explanatory value is the only attractor of probability: there is nothing that can possibly raise P(Knox) except improbable facts that require explanation (where the amount of probability flow as a function of the improbability of the explanandum is governed by Bayes' Theorem).

In this case, virtually all of the improbability of the data is contained in the mere fact of Kercher's death. But that fact is entirely and adequately explained by the actions of Rudy Guede; the evidence against Guede completely obstructs -- screens off -- the probability flow toward Knox.

That is the argument made in the post. Nowhere did I say that evidence of Guede's guilt is evidence of Knox's innocence, in the sense of lowering P(Knox) to below the prior. But the evidence against Guede absolutely is evidence against the hypothesis that Knox killed Kercher without Guede -- which is most of the Knox hypothesis-space (and thus where most of the probability flow toward Knox arising from Kercher's death was concentrated)!

(This point is especially important in view of all those comments from people saying that "the prior" should (already) take into account the fact that Kercher was killed. Well, if that's your prior, then it most definitely is lowered by the evidence against Guede!)

When you make a statistical argument of the form "well, a homicide was committed, so there's some probability of multiple attackers", you're starting from a position of ignorance of the details of the case, and computing an expected probability over all the various scenarios where there exists evidence of multiple attackers. But here, we know the details of the case, and we know that there is scant evidence of anybody but Rudy Guede being guilty (at least, we do if we're capable of telling strong evidence from weak).

Finally, these comments of yours

It's clear that the evidence against K should be overwhelmed by the evidence against G, given that no solid connection was established between G and K. But it isn't zero evidence, it is merely very weak evidence.

You have established a safety heuristic to keep yourself from overvaluing weak evidence, but your safety heuristic has it's own shortcomings, because it has caused you to give it zero weight, which is obviously wrong.

represent nothing but uncharitable pedantry -- the Bayesian analogue of my pointing out to you that "its" in the above sentence should be spelled without an apostrophe. It's not, and has never been, a question of whether P(Knox) is literally greater than P(random peer); the question is whether it's noticeably greater. If it makes you happy, I'm willing to concede that the evidence in this case raises P(Knox) from 0.001 to something like 0.0034. But that scarcely makes my argument "wrong", let alone "entirely wrong".

So that's why I have downvoted your comment: because, while it sounds all learned and serious, like you have an important probability-theoretic lesson to teach, it reduces to nothing more than a snark. (In fact, it may have been the exact comment I was thinking of when I wrote this.)

Seriously: "entirely wrong"? WTF?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 01 March 2010 04:02:57PM 14 points [-]

I haven't taken this position just to be difficult. To look around, the world does appear to be flat, so I think it is incumbent on others to prove decisively that it isn't. And I don't think that burden of proof has been met yet.

-- Daniel Shenton, President of the Flat Earth Society as of 2010

Comment author: komponisto 02 March 2010 12:27:23AM *  2 points [-]

In a similar spirit:

Excellent! Three cheers for Shenton!

As long as people are prepared to take on unpalatable ideas, and really push to see if they have merit, then we might just make significant NEW discoveries, instead of the slow and detailed clarification of what we already know.

It really doesn't matter if the Earth proves not to be flat. :-) There are other, equally crazy, ideas out there, and a few of them are true! THEY are the ones we want to find, if we can.

As Richard Feynman (the pre-eminent scientist of the modern era, in my opinion) said: "If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain. ... In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar."

-- PatternChaser0, commenting on the story about Daniel Shenton.

Comment author: woozle 28 February 2010 11:07:54PM *  -1 points [-]

Again, I think this question is a diversion from what I have been arguing; its truth or falseness does not substantially affect the truth or falseness of my actual claims (as opposed to beliefs mentioned in passing).

That said, I made a start at a Bayesian analysis, but ran out of mental swap-space. If someone wants to suggest what I need to do next, I might be able to do it.

Also vaguely relevant -- this matrix is set up much more like a classical Bayesian word-problem: it lists the various pieces of evidence which we would expect to observe for each known manner in which a high-rise steel-frame building might run down the curtain and join the choir invisible, and then shows what was actually observed in the cases of WTC1, 2, and 7.

Is there enough information there to calculate some odds, or are there still bits missing?

You misunderstood. I was talking about your failure to dismiss 9/11 conspiracy theories. I was asking whether there were any conspiracy theories that you would be willing to dismiss without research.

No, not really. I think of that as my "job" at Issuepedia: don't dismiss anything without looking at it. Document the process of examination so that others don't have to repeat it, and so that those who aren't sure what to believe can quickly see the evidence for themselves (rather than having to go collect it) -- and can enter in any new arguments or questions they might have.

Does that process seem inherently flawed somehow? I'm not sure what you're suggesting by your use of the word "failure" here.

Comment author: komponisto 01 March 2010 02:06:30AM *  6 points [-]

(Some folks have expressed disapproval of this conversation continuing in this thread; ironically, though, it's becoming more and more an explicit lesson in Bayesianism -- as this comment in particular will demonstrate. Nevertheless, after this comment, I am willing to move it elsewhere, if people insist.)

Again, I think this question is a diversion from what I have been arguing; its truth or falseness does not substantially affect the truth or falseness of my actual claims (as opposed to beliefs mentioned in passing)

You're in Bayes-land here, not a debating society. Beliefs are what we're interested in. There's no distinction between an argument that a certain point of view should be taken seriously and an argument that the point of view in question has a significant probability of being true. If you want to make a case for the former, you'll necessarily have to make a case for the latter.

That said, I made a start at a Bayesian analysis, but ran out of mental swap-space. If someone wants to suggest what I need to do next, I might be able to do it.

Here's how you do a Bayesian analysis: you start with a prior probability P(H). Then you consider how much more likely the evidence is to occur if your hypothesis is true (P(E|H)) than it is in general (P(E)) -- that is, you calculate P(E|H)/P(E). Multiplying this "strength of evidence" ratio P(E|H)/P(E) by the prior probability P(H) gives you your posterior (updated) probability P(H|E).

Alternatively, you could think in terms of odds: starting with the prior odds P(H)/P(~H), and considering how much more likely the evidence is to occur if your hypothesis is true (P(E|H)) than if it is false (P(E|~H)); the ratio P(E|H)/P(E|~H) is called the "likelihood ratio" of the evidence. Multiplying the prior odds by the likelihood ratio gives you the posterior odds P(H|E)/P(~H|E).

One of the two questions you need to answer is: by what factor do you think the evidence raises the probability/odds of your hypothesis being true? Are we talking twice as likely? Ten times? A hundred times?

If you know that, plus your current estimate of how likely your hypothesis is, division will tell you what your prior was -- which is the other question you need to answer.

Is there enough information there to calculate some odds, or are there still bits missing?

If there's enough information for you to have a belief, then there's enough information to calculate the odds. Because, if you're a Bayesian, that's what these numbers represent in the first place: your degree of belief.

I'm not sure what you're suggesting by your use of the word "failure" here

"Your failure to dismiss..." is simply an English-language locution that means "The fact that you did not dismiss..."

Comment author: woozle 28 February 2010 04:14:53PM 0 points [-]

Again, you're addressing a straw man -- not my actual arguments. I do not claim that the government was responsible for 9/11; I believe the evidence, if properly examined, would probably show this -- but my interest is in showing that the existing explanations are not just inadequate but clearly wrong.

So, okay, how would you tell the difference between an argument that "sounds convincing" and one which should actually be considered rationally persuasive?

My use of the "applause light" was an attempt to use emotion to get through emotional barriers preventing rational examination. Was it inappropriate?

"There are simply too many conceivable explanations for any given phenomenon for it to be worthwhile to consider more than a very small proportion of them."

I agree. Many of the conclusions reached by the 9/11 Commission are, however, not among that small proportion. Many questions to which we need answers were not even addressed by the Commission. (Your statement here strikes me as a "curiosity stopper".)

Under the models of most folks here, 9/11 conspiracy theories simply aren't going to get any time of day.

This is the problem, yes. What's your point?

I'd be curious to know what kind of ideas with substantial numbers of adherents you would feel safe in dismissing without bothering to research.

None that I can think of. Again, what's your point? I am not "dismissing" the dominant conclusion, I am questioning it. I have, in fact, done substantial amounts of research (probably more than anyone reading this). If anyone is actually dismissing an idea with substantial numbers of adherents, it is those who dismiss "truthers" without actually listening to their arguments.

Are you arguing that "people are irrational, so you might as well give up"?

Comment author: komponisto 28 February 2010 06:49:48PM 5 points [-]

I do not claim that the government was responsible for 9/11; I believe the evidence, if properly examined, would probably show this

This is a flat-out Bayesian contradiction.

So, okay, how would you tell the difference between an argument that "sounds convincing" and one which should actually be considered rationally persuasive?

It's not an easy problem, in general -- hence LW!

But we can always start by doing the Bayesian calculation. What's your prior for the hypothesis that the U.S, government was complicit in the 9/11 attacks? What's your estimate of the strength of each of those pieces of evidence you think is indicative of a conspiracy?

I'd be curious to know what kind of ideas with substantial numbers of adherents you would feel safe in dismissing without bothering to research.

None that I can think of. Again, what's your point? I am not "dismissing" the dominant conclusion, I am questioning it.

You misunderstood. I was talking about your failure to dismiss 9/11 conspiracy theories. I was asking whether there were any conspiracy theories that you would be willing to dismiss without research.

In response to What is Bayesianism?
Comment author: woozle 28 February 2010 12:48:56AM -2 points [-]

Okay, I'm rising to the bait here...

I would really appreciate it if people would be more careful about passing on memes regarding subjects they have not researched properly. This should be a basic part of "rationalist etiquette", in the same way that "wash your hands before you handle food" is part of common eating etiquette.

I say this because I'm finding myself increasingly irritated by casual (and ill-informed) snipes at the 9/11 Truth movement, which mostly tries very hard to be rational and evidence-based:

Or take the debate we had on 9/11 conspiracy theories. Some people thought that unexplained and otherwise suspicious things in the official account had to mean that it was a government conspiracy. Others considered their prior for "the government is ready to conduct massively risky operations that kill thousands of its own citizens as a publicity stunt", judged that to be overwhelmingly unlikely, and thought it far more probable that something else caused the suspicious things.

This claim is both a straw-man and a false dilemma.

The straw-man: Most of the movement now centers around the call for a new investigation, not around claims that "Bush did it".

Some of us (I include myself as a "truther" only because I agree with their core conclusions; I am not a member of any 9/11-related organization) may believe it likely that the government did something horrendous, but we realize the evidence is weak and circumstantial, that it is unclear exactly what the level of involvement (if any) was, and that the important thing is for a proper inquiry to be conducted.

What is clear from the evidence available is that there has been a horrendous cover-up of some sort, and that the official conclusions do not make sense.

The false dilemma: Where "A" is {there is strong evidence that the official story is substantially wrong, and therefore a proper investigation should be conducted} and "B" is {the government was clearly directly responsible for initiating the whole thing}, believing A does not necessitate believing B. Refuting B (if argument by ridicule is considered an acceptable form of refutation, that is) does not refute A.

I'm still keen on discussing this rationally with anyone who thinks the Truth movement is irrational. RobinZ offered to discuss this further, but 7 months later he still hasn't had time to do more than allude to his general position without actually defining it.

Here are my positions on this issue. I would appreciate it if someone would kindly demolish them and show me what an utterly deluded fool I've been, so that I can go back to agreeing with the apparent rational consensus on this issue -- which seems to be, in essence, that there's nothing substantially wrong with the official story. (If anyone can point me to a concise presentment of what everyone here more or less believes happened on 9/11, I would very much like to see it.)

And if nobody can do that, then could we please stop the casual sniping? Whether or not you believe the official story, you at least have to agree that we really shouldn't be trying to silence skeptical inquiry on any issue, much less one of such importance.

Comment author: komponisto 28 February 2010 05:48:43AM *  7 points [-]

The problem you have is the one shared by everyone from devotees of parapsychology to people who believe Meredith Kercher was killed in an orgy initiated by Amanda Knox: your prior on your theory is simply way too high.

Simply put, the events of 9/11 are so overwhelmingly more likely a priori to have been the exclusive work of a few terrorists than the product of a conspiracy involving the U.S. government, that the puzzling details you cite, even in their totality, fail to make a dent in a rational observer's credence of (more or less) the official story.

You might try asking yourself: if the official story were in fact correct, wouldn't you nevertheless expect that there would be strange facts that appear difficult to explain, and that these facts would be seized upon by conspiracy theorists, who, for some reason or another, were eager to believe the government may have been involved? And that they would be able to come up with arguments that sound convincing?

I want to stress that it is not the fact that the terrorists-only theory is officially sanctioned that makes it the (overwhelming) default explanation; as the Kercher case illustrates, sometimes the official story is an implausible conspiracy theory! Rather, it is our background knowledge of how reality operates -- which must be informed, among other things, by an acquaintance with human cognitive biases.

"Not silencing skeptical inquiry" is a great-sounding applause light, but we have to choose our battles, for reasons more mathematical than social: there are simply too many conceivable explanations for any given phenomenon, for it it be worthwhile to consider more than a very small proportion of them. Our choice of which to consider in the first place is thus going to be mainly determined by our prior probabilities -- in other words, our model of the world. Under the models of most folks here, 9/11 conspiracy theories simply aren't going to get any time of day.

If it's different for you, I'd be curious to know what kind of ideas with substantial numbers of adherents you would feel safe in dismissing without bothering to research. (If there aren't any, then I think you severely overestimate the tendency of people's beliefs to be entangled with reality.)

Comment author: ciphergoth 27 February 2010 04:10:28PM *  0 points [-]

Damn, sorry, I deleted the comment asking for this when I managed to find a way to read it. Thanks for sorting it out!

Is the error that he says x where he means delta-x in a couple of places?

Comment author: komponisto 27 February 2010 04:13:49PM 0 points [-]

Is the error that he says x where he means delta-x in a couple of places?

No, that was my copying mistake. Fixed.

Comment author: ciphergoth 27 February 2010 03:42:36PM 0 points [-]

When I try to view that page, it briefly shows the math, then blanks and sits there loading forever, so I can't quite see what he's saying. If you're able to see it, could you cut and paste?

Comment author: komponisto 27 February 2010 03:56:54PM *  0 points [-]

Here's my attempt at copy-and-paste, for those who have difficulty viewing (will require edits to fix):

[ETA: All right, can't get the LaTeX plugin to work, so I'll just use something like the old Usenet conventions.]

Suppose that there are three charities (the same argument would work with any number other than three), that those charities currently have endowments of x, y, and z, and that you plan to make contributions of delta x, delta y, and delta z). A truly charitable person will care only about each charity's final endowment, and so will seek to maximize some function

U(x + delta x, y + delta y, z + delta z)

subject to the constraint that delta x+ delta y + delta z = C, where C is the amount you've decided to give to charity.

But assuming that your contributions are small relative to the initial endowments, this quantity is well approximated by

U(x,y,z)+ (partial U/partial x) dot delta x + (partial U/partial y) dot delta y+ (partial U/partial z) dot delta z.

which is maximized by bulleting everything on the charity that corresponds to the largest of the partial derivatives.

(The linear approximation fails if your contributions are large relative to the initial endowments, or if you have sufficient delusions of grandeur to believe that your contributions are large relative to the initial endowments.)

Note that if you have any uncertainty about what the various charities will do with their endowments, the costs of that uncertainty can be built into the definition of the function U. Thus, such uncertainty in no way undermines the main argument.

On the other hand, if you care not about what the charitable organizations receive but about what you give to them (as would be the case, for example, if you give in order to enjoy being thanked), then you will want to maximize some function

U(x,y,z)

In this case, it's unlikely that the solution would be to bullet.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 27 February 2010 07:28:12AM 2 points [-]

I usually try not to push people on this particular point unless I think they're already very high-level; my default assumption is that people are very akrasic and fragile when it comes to charity.

However, I'm raising my estimate of Landsburg's level based on this - I guess one mostly hears about the disputable points he got wrong, not the indisputable points he got right, of which this is one (and a rarely appreciated one at that).

Comment author: komponisto 27 February 2010 03:36:37PM *  0 points [-]

Um....you might want to have a look at Landsburg's math and see if you notice anything wrong.

ETA: Actually, never mind. I overlooked something. Silly me.

Of course, it's still a good exercise to check.

Comment author: komponisto 27 February 2010 01:56:15AM 2 points [-]

I have to say that of all your posts I've read so far, this one could most have used one of your little two-sentence summaries at the top -- and yet, it's like the only one that doesn't have one!

Comment author: Rain 25 February 2010 07:41:14PM *  0 points [-]

I would categorize it as 10 percent humor, 60 percent temporary interest in the vague threat implied by the "don't do this... or else" definition and why that context was appropriate when applied to the topic of contradiction, and 30 percent etymological interest, as I have "on pain of death" as the most-associated thought when hearing the phrase (Google agrees, with that as the top suggestion to complete "on pain of"), and was curious as to how the permutation may have originated.

ETA: I disagree with the sentiment that contradiction is a negative, undesirable, or potentially painful event; instead, I view it as an opportunity to update maps, assuming that the contradiction is supported by the weight of the evidence.

Comment author: komponisto 26 February 2010 01:10:58AM *  3 points [-]

"Pain" in this expression means "penalty". Though I haven't looked it up to confirm, I'm pretty confident the word "pain" itself comes from Latin poena via French peine, meaning just that.

(The first time I heard this idiom, the phrase was "on pain of imprisonment".)

Comment author: Rain 25 February 2010 04:56:23PM *  7 points [-]

Edit: this comment has been rewritten; please see wnoise's comment below for original context.

I feel that the topic of gender identity is not as important as this discussion and others like it on LW seem to make it. In a text based environment, using pseudonyms, we are genderless until we reveal ourselves. And unless we intend to employ mating signals between posters here, it has little relevance even after it has been revealed.

I have operated for years in communities where the gender of participants is highly relevant, but where there were taboos against attempts to discover true genders (online, text-based roleplaying). In such environments, I've developed a severe lack of concern for the topic at large, and instead read what the person has to say and contribute without a gender filter. Many times, I don't even read the name of a poster except as a pattern that allows me to place the comment in context with those around it.

Alicorn's focus on gender identity has, several times now, generated very large discussion threads and at least one top level post. I do not understand why this is accepted by the rest of the LW community as important and relevant to the topic of rationality.

Comment author: komponisto 25 February 2010 06:08:12PM 5 points [-]

Alicorn's focus on gender identity

I don't perceive Alicorn as "focusing" on "gender identity". I perceive Alicorn as getting annoyed when people (out of carelessness) get her gender identity wrong.

Comment author: Kevin 25 February 2010 11:02:51AM 2 points [-]

This is a cultural norm kind of thing, but in the cultural norms where Alicorn chose her name, I think it really was intended to be a feminine username. I think women do have a tendency to try and choose somewhat feminine usernames, because otherwise a lot of the time on the internet they will be mistaken for men which gets annoying quickly.

I think something that would allow us to definitely solve this problem is profile pictures (which don't have to be your actual picture) or user profiles.

Comment author: komponisto 25 February 2010 05:51:19PM *  7 points [-]

I think something that would allow us to definitely solve this problem is profile pictures (which don't have to be your actual picture) or user profiles.

User profiles good, pictures bad.

Frankly, the "problem" here really isn't very hard to solve: just don't assume you know a person's sex unless you actually know it!

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 24 February 2010 06:29:06PM *  0 points [-]

Agreed.

Comment author: komponisto 24 February 2010 06:42:10PM 3 points [-]

So what do we do about it?

Comment author: DanArmak 22 February 2010 01:55:13PM 5 points [-]

That's my point. Jack's theory, which rests entirely on the fact other animals look similar to human babies, does not explain why many animals are cute while not a single animal is (widely) sexually attractive.

Comment author: komponisto 23 February 2010 03:05:50PM 0 points [-]

The cost of a mistake may be lower in the case of cuteness than sexiness.

Indeed, sexual arousal is comparatively difficult to trigger, even by members of the actual target group: most humans don't find most humans of the opposite sex very attractive, while they may find most babies somewhat cute.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 23 February 2010 04:27:53AM 3 points [-]

You can't imagine anything that improbable. Unless we adopt Robin's anthropic penalty, in which case "I am in a unique position to affect 3^^^^^3 other people" is that improbable.

Comment author: komponisto 23 February 2010 05:25:20AM *  9 points [-]

Why not 1/3^^^^^3?

You can't imagine anything that improbable.

Actually, the beauty of mathematics is that it enables us to imagine such things -- just as surely as it tells us that there ain't nothin' we're talkin' about that's anywhere near that.

Comment author: AnnaGilmour 23 February 2010 04:44:10AM *  1 point [-]

I find the term useful. I think it is what a lot of the media has done. Since Amanda and Raffaele are in discussion and named in the theory, there must be something to it and they have equal weights of measure for concern as the third suspect, Rudy. When in fact, they are very lightweight and the (heavy) weight should be attributed to the method by which they became suspects. The term helps me to say "Oh that's what is going on." Like komponisto said, a whole category of error. (Not to mention all the contexts apart from this specific case, the topic at hand, indeed.)

Comment author: komponisto 23 February 2010 05:01:13AM 3 points [-]

Quite right. It's actually amazing how little attention was paid to Rudy Guede in the media coverage of this case, particularly in the U.S. and U.K. media. (Numerous stories either omitted all mention of him altogether or else referred briefly and vaguely to "a third suspect" -- without any hint about the disparity in evidence.)

Comment author: Kevin 23 February 2010 03:08:20AM 0 points [-]

Sorry, I was thinking that psychopath was an out of date term for sociopath, but apparently it is a non-DSM diagnosis for a particularly extreme, predatory type of sociopath.

Comment author: komponisto 23 February 2010 04:45:46AM 0 points [-]
Comment author: wedrifid 23 February 2010 02:13:39AM 0 points [-]

(Although I do find the point more salient when it is described explicitly rather than by reference to jargon. )

Comment author: komponisto 23 February 2010 02:34:20AM 1 point [-]

Wasn't trying to enforce the use of jargon so much as classify the fallacy.

After all, the point is even more salient when you can relate it to a whole category of error found in many other contexts.

Comment author: AnnaGilmour 23 February 2010 01:52:42AM 2 points [-]

The thing that I am trying to point out is that I believe Amanda and Raffaele were wrongly included in the class called "suspects".

Comment author: komponisto 23 February 2010 02:11:41AM 1 point [-]

Yes indeed -- our term for that here is privileging the hypothesis.

Comment author: Jack 22 February 2010 09:52:24PM *  8 points [-]

Here. In particular see the meta-analysis (4th on the list). For the connection to babies and cuteness see the second to last on the list. To summarize: the fear expression mimics infantile expressions- enlarging the eyes and opening the mouth. The reason for this is that the way babies look elicits a caring and protection response in other people. Psychopathy is, at least partly, a dysfunction in processing fear expressions. There is decreased amygdala activity in response to distress expressions among psychopaths relative to control groups. Thus, finding babies disgusting suggests some pretty serious amygdala dysfunction.

There is no direct evidence that finding cute babies disgusting means you're a psychopath but it suggests that the something pretty abnormal is going on with the person's experience of empathy.

Note that saying someone is a psychopath that doesn't mean he/she has committed any crimes or is particularly damaging to society. Indeed, given some estimations it would be very surprising if there weren't several psychopaths reading Less Wrong. Higher even, since there is some evidence of comorbidity with other conditions that seem to be unusually common here (like ADHD and problems with executive functioning, for example). I guess being called one carries with it some negative social costs. That should have occurred to me and maybe it is reasonable to delete my comment above as result. I honestly just saw the evidence and thought it was an interesting thing to point out- I wasn't being reflective.

Comment author: komponisto 22 February 2010 10:19:37PM *  2 points [-]

Note that saying someone is a psychopath that doesn't mean he/she has committed any crimes or is particularly damaging to society...I guess being called one carries with it some negative social costs.

Indeed, I suspect that most people who aren't versed in psychology hear "psychopath" simply as a negative-affect-word meaning "sick, twisted person likely to have committed a heinous crime".

Comment author: Alicorn 22 February 2010 09:01:20PM *  2 points [-]

"Allison"?

My name is not Allison. "Alicorn" is not my real name, related to my real name, derived from my real name, similar to my real name, or otherwise indicative on any level of my real name.

Even if it were, I prefer not to disseminate my real name in most online contexts. For this reason SIAI-house-inhabiting persons have continued to refer to me as Alicorn, to avoid leakage of their knowledge of my real name. So even if you knew my real name, you should not use it.

Comment author: komponisto 22 February 2010 10:05:15PM 5 points [-]

For my part, my brain automatically interprets your pseudonym as a portmanteau of "Allison" and "unicorn", and there doesn't seem to be much I can do about it. (Not that I would be any more tempted to refer to you as "Allison" than I would be to refer to you as "Unicorn", of course.)

Comment author: toto 22 February 2010 11:26:23AM *  2 points [-]

(which would require us to know P(H), P(E|H), and P(E|~H))

Is that not precisely the problem? Often, the H you are interested in is so vague ("there is some kind of effect in a certain direction") that it is very difficult to estimate P(E / H) - or even to define it.

OTOH, P(E / ~H) is often very easy to compute from first principles, or to obtain through experiments (since conditions where "the effect" is not present are usually the most common).

Example: I have a coin. I want to know if it is "true" or "biased". I flip it 100 times, and get 78 tails.Now how do I estimate the probability of obtaining this many tails, knowing that the coin is "biased"? How do I even express that analytically? By contrast, it is very easy to compute the probability of this sequence (or any other) with a "non-biased" coin.

So there you have it. The whole concept of "null hypotheses" is not a logical axiom, it simply derives from real-world observation: in the real world, for most of the H we are interested in, estimating P(E / ~H) is easy, and estimating P(E / H) is either hard or impossible.

what about P(E|H)?? (Not to mention P(H).)

P(H) is silently set to .5. If you know P(E / ~H), this makes P(E / H) unnecessary to compute the real quantity of interest, P(H / E) / P(~H / E). I think.

Comment author: komponisto 22 February 2010 06:54:17PM 5 points [-]

There needs to be a post specifically devoted to arguments of the form "It's okay to do things wrong, because doing them right would be hard". I've seen this so many times, in so many places, in so many subjects, that I have to conclude that people just don't see what is wrong with it.

(No, I'm not talking about making simplifying assumptions or idealizations in models. More like presenting a collection of sometimes-useful ad-hoc tricks as a competing theory, which is then argued for as a theory against its competitors on the basis of its being "easier to apply".)

Bayes' Theorem says that P(H|E) = P(H)P(E|H)/P(E). That's, like, the law. You don't get to take P(E|H) out of the equation, or pretend it isn't there, just because it's difficult to estimate. As I've said elsewhere, if you have a belief, then you've done a Bayesian update -- which means you have some assumption about each of those quantities appearing in the formula, whether you choose to confront these assumptions or not.

As a matter of fact, if you find P(E|H) overly difficult to estimate, that means your H isn't paying its rent.

In response to comment by komponisto on Woo!
Comment author: RobinZ 22 February 2010 03:13:53PM 0 points [-]

*search engines*

Esperanto?

In response to comment by RobinZ on Woo!
Comment author: komponisto 22 February 2010 05:04:15PM 0 points [-]

Yes, although any German speaker will also recognize the meaning.

In response to comment by Sniffnoy on Woo!
Comment author: BenAlbahari 22 February 2010 04:52:11AM 2 points [-]

"pitch"... I like it. Anyone else? If there's a consensus here, I'll change it.

In response to comment by BenAlbahari on Woo!
Comment author: komponisto 22 February 2010 06:37:18AM 0 points [-]

To me, "pitch" immediately suggests music/acoustics.

(Though, if you know the meaning of my pseudonym, you won't find that surprising.)

Comment author: RobinZ 22 February 2010 03:51:56AM 1 point [-]

"An". "An" obvious answer. There's at least one other which has been proposed in other replies to this post: social conditioning.

I have to say that yours is quite interesting, however. What else does it predict?

Comment author: komponisto 22 February 2010 04:00:22AM 7 points [-]

What else does it predict?

That lots of other animals should share our opinions about cuteness.

Comment author: FAWS 22 February 2010 12:28:48AM *  2 points [-]

Oh, let me play!

(When you made your first post on this issue I found trying to look for unbiased information a terribly frustrating experience so I didn't look for more than 20 minutes, and haven't done any reading on it since, except for a cursory look the the wikipedia page just now. A list of all points that are agreed on by both sides (with sub-points arguing about the relevance of the point from both perspectives, perhaps) would have been very welcome)

Current posterior: not really sure, let's see what I end up with below, but as a starting point:

0.01<P(S) < P(K) <0.2 < 0.8< P (G) < 0.99

Priors for commiting a homicide in a specific month:

P(K)= 4.7 *10^-6 (US homicide rate, assuming being female and a young adult roughly cancel out)

P(S)= 4 *10^-6 (Italian homicide rate assuming young adult males are 4 times as likely to commit murder as average)

P(G)=1*10^-5 (had been implicated in a break-in)

An inhabitant of the top floor of that apartment being murdered in her room in this same specific month (R):

P(R|K)=0.1, P(R|~K)=4.5*10^-6

P(R|S)=0.04, P(R|~S)=4.95*10^-6

P(R|G)=0.0005, P(R|~G)=5*10^-6

Guede's DNA being found all over and inside the victim of a homicide in this same specific month (D_G):

P(DG|K)=1*10^-4, P(DG|~K)=6*10^-7

P(DG|S)=5*10^-5, P(DG|~S)=6*10^-7

P(DG|G)=0.6, P(DG|~G)=1*10^-7

I can't think of any other pieces of evidence that I can treat as effectively independent. Given R and treating the probability of any murders except R as effectively 0: Knox' DNA not being found on the victim (D_K):

P(DK|K)=0.5 P(DK|~K)=0.8

P(DK|S)==0.85 P(DK|~S)=0.81

P(DK|G)=0.82 P(DK|~G)=0.82

Sollecito's DNA being found on bra clasp of the the victim, but nowhere else (D_S):

P(DS|K)=0.0002 P(DS|~K)=0.00006

P(DS|S)==0.001 P(DS|~S)=0.00005

P(DS|G)=0.00007 P(DS|~G)=0.00007

Minimal trances of R's DNA found on the blade of one of the knifes in Sollecito's kitchen possibly matching one of three wounds, along with Knox' DNA on the handle (D_R):

P(DR|K)=5*10^-6 P(DR|~K)=1*10^-6

P(DR|S)=1*10^-5 P(DR|~S)=1*10^-6

P(DR|G)=1*10^-6 P(DR|~G)=1*10^-6

Trying to calculate the probabilities based on those estimates I find that I shouldn't have treated DG and R as independent either, I get a stupidly high result of 0.9999983 for P(G), and the indirect association with Guede shouldn't make the other two much more likely given that they are already more directly associated with the victim, if anything DG should make them less likely. The background probability for R should be higher because I forgot to properly account for the fact that there was more than 1 possible victim. Since Guede's DNA and being a room mate alone would already be enough to make Knox almost certainly guilty based on the numbers above and this makes no sense whatsoever I think we can safely say I thoroughly failed this test. I guess the lesson is that making up plausible numbers for various conditional probabilities well outside your intuitive range and then applying them in a basian update doesn't improve your calibration if you have no experience at it at all.

Comment author: komponisto 22 February 2010 02:15:28AM 3 points [-]

When you made your first post on this issue I found trying to look for unbiased information a terribly frustrating experience

One of the lessons of this exercise, that may be worth stating explicitly, is that there's no "outside referee" you can look to to make sure your beliefs are correct. In real life, you have to make judgments under uncertainty, using whatever evidence you have.

It's not as hard as you (and others) think. Yes, of course, the sources are "biased" in the sense that they have an incentive to mislead if they can get away with it. But what they say is not literally all the information you have. You also have background knowledge about how the world works. Priors matter. If A says X and B says ~X, and there's no a priori reason to trust one over the other, that doesn't mean you're stuck! It depends on how plausible X is in the first place.

I guess the lesson is that making up plausible numbers for various conditional probabilities well outside your intuitive range and then applying them in a basian update doesn't improve your calibration if you have no experience at it at all.

Here's the real lesson: Bayesian calculations are not some mysterious black-magic technique that you "apply" to a problem. They are supposed to represent the calculations your brain has already made. Probability theory is the mathematics of inference. If you have an opinion on this case, then, ipso facto, your brain has already performed a Bayesian update.

The mistake you made was not making up numbers; it was making up numbers that, as you point out in the end, didn't reflect your actual beliefs.

Comment author: SilasBarta 21 February 2010 11:39:35PM *  0 points [-]

The likelihood ratio P(E|H)/P(E|~H) is entirely independent of the prior P(H)

In theory, yes, but we're talking about a purported "unswayable Bayesian". If someone strongly believes leprechauns don't exist (low P(H), where H is "leprechauns exist" ), they should strongly expect not to see evidence of leprechauns (low P(E|~H), where E is direct evidence of leprechauns, like finding one in the forest), which suggests a high likelihood ratio P(E|H)/P(E|~H).

I remember Eliezer Yudkowsky referring to typical conversations that go like:

Non-rationalist: "I don't think there will ever be an artificial general intelligence, because my religion says that can't happen."
EY: "So if I showed you one, that means you'd leave your religion?"

Comment author: komponisto 22 February 2010 12:29:17AM *  0 points [-]

P(E) = P(E|H) P(H) + P(E|~H)P(~H)

The quantities P(H), P(E|H), and P(E|~H) are in general independent of each other, in the sense that you can move any one of them without changing the others -- provided you adjust P(E) accordingly.

In response to comment by komponisto on Karma Changes
Comment author: orthonormal 21 February 2010 10:18:46PM 1 point [-]

OK, I hadn't known.

In this case, I don't mind; but in general, the 50 threshold seems better than 20 to me.

In response to comment by orthonormal on Karma Changes
Comment author: komponisto 21 February 2010 10:33:50PM 0 points [-]

I agree.

In response to Karma Changes
Comment author: orthonormal 21 February 2010 10:15:29PM *  0 points [-]

The minimum karma to start posting has been raised to 50.

That's weird; I just noticed that the author of this post was new to LW, and at 38 karma (with no lost karma from downvotes since submitting it).

In response to comment by orthonormal on Karma Changes
Comment author: komponisto 21 February 2010 10:16:49PM *  0 points [-]

It was changed back to 20 a while ago, for some reason.

Comment author: AnnaGilmour 21 February 2010 08:36:49PM 0 points [-]

Thank you. Yes I've seen the post by Rolf Nelson.

I don't understand (though I admit for expediency's sake did not fully read the 0/1 link which I should do if I post here) how there cannot be an absolute for innocence. I didn't assign 1 to Rudy Guede for the reason you mention. But in terms of innocence, we know for example that Princess Diana didn't kill Meredith and that the mayor of Seattle at the time did not kill Meredith, so how can it not be zero? I wrote zero for a specific reason. I wanted it to indicate that gap between reasonability of arrest and no reasonability of arrest. To assign even a small possibility at this point seems inaccurate to me. Although, you make a good point, in actuality, so I would amend them to .001. Is that a proper probability quotient in terms of the question?

Comment author: komponisto 21 February 2010 08:42:53PM 0 points [-]

Although, you make a good point, in actuality, so I would amend them to .001. Is that a proper probability quotient in terms of the question?

Yes, that would be more reasonable (indeed, it's about where my own estimate is).

Comment author: RobinZ 21 February 2010 08:32:17PM 0 points [-]

That is convenient! Now I just need chapter and section numbers!

Comment author: komponisto 21 February 2010 08:36:27PM 0 points [-]

Chapter 5 is what is being referenced, I believe.

Comment author: RobinZ 21 February 2010 08:26:04PM 0 points [-]

As I do not have access to Jaynes' book, this response is rather less than useful. I assume that Jaynes' example relates to observing just the demonstration of psychic powers - what I am suggesting is that further observations, causally related to the demonstration and those features which may suggest or oppose fraud, can overwhelm this initial difference in interpretation.

I think you might want to reconsider the scope within which appealing to differing initial assumptions is valid.

Comment author: komponisto 21 February 2010 08:28:07PM 3 points [-]

As I do not have access to Jaynes' book,

(Pssst....actually, you do.)

Comment author: AnnaGilmour 21 February 2010 08:08:33PM 0 points [-]

Posterior probability estimates:

  1. 0
  2. 0
  3. .9

Priors:

  1. .01
  2. .01
  3. .5

Is that the sort of thing you are asking? I don't know if I attributed correctly.

Comment author: komponisto 21 February 2010 08:22:31PM *  0 points [-]

Anna: for the context of this, see here.

You may want to remember that 0 and 1 are not probabilities. Also, I must say I don't understand your extremely high prior of 0.5 for Guede. (The evidence against him is such that the prior could be much, much lower and he would still have a very high probability of guilt.)

Comment author: AnnaGilmour 21 February 2010 07:30:41PM 1 point [-]

You are making an assumption, one exaggeration, and one statement of belief.

Assumption: More than one person is known to be involved. (Not established.)

Exaggeration: someone known to one of the occupants (He was known to the occupants in the cottage below and only only known of by one the occupants alleged to be involved.)

Belief: found to have a false alibi (There is no proof or acceptable evidence that that occupant has a false alibi.)

The means by which the prosecution set about to establish that more than person was involved is suspect. The means by which a false alibi was established is also suspect. You cannot accept those as viable fact. Something that has been shown in previous comments, if I am not mistaken.

Comment author: komponisto 21 February 2010 07:57:36PM 1 point [-]

Belief: found to have a false alibi (There is no proof or acceptable evidence that that occupant has a false alibi.)

It's worth mentioning that what is meant by "false alibi" in the first place is some trivial memory lapse, such as Sollecito misremembering the time when he was browsing websites, etc.

Comment author: komponisto 21 February 2010 09:13:44AM *  27 points [-]

This is going to sound silly, but...could someone explain frequentist statistics to me?

Here's my current understanding of how it works:

We've got some hypothesis H, whose truth or falsity we'd like to determine. So we go out and gather some evidence E. But now, instead of trying to quantify our degree of belief in H (given E) as a conditional probability estimate using Bayes' Theorem (which would require us to know P(H), P(E|H), and P(E|~H)), what we do is simply calculate P(E|~H) (techniques for doing this being of course the principal concern of statistics texts), and then place H into one of two bins depending on whether P(E|~H) is below some threshold number ("p-value") that somebody decided was "low": if P(E|~H) is below that number, we put H into the "accepted" bin (or, as they say, we reject the null hypothesis ~H); otherwise, we put H into the "not accepted" bin (that is, we fail to reject ~H).

Now, if that is a fair summary, then this big controversy between frequentists and Bayesians must mean that there is a sizable collection of people who think that the above procedure is a better way of obtaining knowledge than performing Bayesian updates. But for the life of me, I can't see how anyone could possibly think that. I mean, not only is the "p-value" threshold arbitrary, not only are we depriving ourselves of valuable information by "accepting" or "not accepting" a hypothesis rather than quantifying our certainty level, but...what about P(E|H)?? (Not to mention P(H).) To me, it seems blatantly obvious that an epistemology (and that's what it is) like the above is a recipe for disaster -- specifically in the form of accumulated errors over time.

I know that statisticians are intelligent people, so this has to be a strawman or something. Or at least, there must be some decent-sounding arguments that I haven't heard -- and surely there are some frequentist contrarians reading this who know what those arguments are. So, in the spirit of Alicorn's "Deontology for Cosequentialists" or ciphergoth's survey of the anti-cryonics position, I'd like to suggest a "Frequentism for Bayesians" post -- or perhaps just a "Frequentism for Dummies", if that's what I'm being here.

Comment author: SilasBarta 21 February 2010 06:06:45AM 3 points [-]

Art forgeries. (Which shows that the value of the painting is determined by the status of the artist and not the quality of the art.)

Which, like wine, is another example of a path-dependent collective delusion that's not Truly Part of our values. (That is, our valuation of the work wouldn't survive deletion of the history that led to such a valuation.)

If I can paint a painting that convinces experts that it was painted by [insert expert painter here], does that mean I'm as good an artist as said painter? (Assuming that my painting isn't a literal copy of someone else's.)

Very nearly yes, it does, modulo a few factors. If you produced it after the artist, then you are benefiting from the artist's already having identified a region of conceptspace that you did not find yourself. (If the art is revered because of the artist's social status, that it wasn't even much of an accomplishment to begin with.) To put it another way, you produced the work after "supervised learning", while the artist didn't need that particular training.

If you can pass off a previous work of yours as being one of the artist's, that definitely makes you better.

Comment author: komponisto 21 February 2010 07:15:18AM 1 point [-]

Which, like wine, is another example of a path-dependent collective delusion that's not Truly Part of our values. (That is, our valuation of the work wouldn't survive deletion of the history that led to such a valuation.)

Who is "we", here?

The problem I have is not that you're wrong, for the people you're talking about; it's that you (probably) overestimate the size and/or importance of that population. You're not telling the whole truth, in effect. There are plenty of people who like paintings for the way they look, and would happily buy the work of a lesser-known artist at a cheap price if they liked it. Yes, some people use art to status-signal, but some people also actually like art. (There may even be a nonempty intersection!)

Comment author: SilasBarta 21 February 2010 06:31:39AM 0 points [-]

Wow, I wish I'd been there for that (had to go to a trade group meeting) -- that's one of the topics that interests me!

Btw, I think you mean that a beep-for-incorrect gives you 2 bits of information. Just applying the box will usually (~75% of the time) not indicate either way. The average information gained from an application of the box (aka entropy of the box variable aka expected surprisal of using the box aka average information gain on using the box) would be ~0.5 bits.

And yes there's also nats (base e).

Comment author: komponisto 21 February 2010 06:56:50AM 0 points [-]

I believe the point was that a beep constitutes 2 bits of evidence for the hypothesis that the number is winning.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 February 2010 11:24:31PM 1 point [-]

Isn't that precisely what the appeal to humility is?

In response to comment by [deleted] on Conversation Halters
Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2010 11:52:39PM *  1 point [-]

It's related. The distinction would be that, in the appeal to humility, the one denies that we can be 99% sure of the proposition in the first place, or perhaps even much greater than 50%; whereas in the appeal to less than absolute certainty, they ignore the significance of 99% certainty, and pretend that only 100% certainty "counts". (Or, they may ignore the significance of 90% certainty, and pretend that only >99% certainty "counts", etc.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 February 2010 08:03:48PM 7 points [-]

Does that actually attempt to halt further conversation though?

Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2010 09:48:42PM 1 point [-]
Comment author: Jack 20 February 2010 09:13:47PM 13 points [-]

(I'd give even odds that EY could persuade him to sign up for cryonics in an hour or less.)

Bloggingheads are exactly 60 minutes.

Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2010 09:32:15PM 1 point [-]

Exactly what I was thinking.

Comment author: timtyler 20 February 2010 09:12:01PM 3 points [-]

Most of Dawkins' output predates the extreme rationality movement. Few scientists actually study rational thought - it seems as though the machine intelligence geeks and some of their psycholgist friends have gone some way beyond what is needed for everyday science.

Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2010 09:30:01PM 9 points [-]

Again, it's not just the fact that he does science; it's the way he does science.

Having skill as a rationalist is distinct from specializing in rationality as one's area of research. Dawkins' writings aren't on rational thought (for the most part); they're examples of rational thought.

Comment author: byrnema 20 February 2010 06:28:25PM *  0 points [-]

It's the same argument. While I wouldn't want to defend this one (!) I don't think it's an intrinsically flawed category of argument.

Consider all the 'dualists' (I presume they exist) who believe that if God exists, he exists outside of / independently of empirical evidence. If they are forced to take on the assumptions of empiricism, they have no position and readily concede this. Declaring that you cannot question or revisit initial assumptions would simply close the dialogue with them.

Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2010 07:12:56PM 6 points [-]

Consider all the 'dualists' (I presume they exist) who believe that if God exists, he exists outside of / independently of empirical evidence. If they are forced to take on the assumptions of empiricism, they have no position and readily concede this. Declaring that you cannot question or revisit initial assumptions would simply close the dialogue with them.

You can always avoid confronting any argument whatsoever by declaring your opponent to be operating under the assumptions of some "ism" that you refuse to accept. But unless you actually proceed to argue against those assumptions, you're the one who's closing the dialogue. Which is the whole point.

And that's almost always how it is with believers in religion. As I mentioned in my very first comment on LW (which somebody downvoted), they are invariably the first ones to say "this conversation will go nowhere". And they're right, because they've made sure of that.

The fact that your opponent's assumptions are different from yours isn't a point against your opponent unless you can show that yours are better or at least just as good. But since the point of claiming different assumptions is usually to cut off the discussion in the first place, that doesn't generally happen.

Comment author: h-H 20 February 2010 05:31:14PM 0 points [-]

you're absolutely right, I didn't consider his scientific writings, though my argument still weakly stands since I wasn't talking about that, he's a good scientist, but a rationalist of say Eliezer's level? I somehow doubt that.

(my bias is that he hasn't gone beyond the 'debunking the gods' phase in his not specifically scientific writings, and here I'll admit I haven't read much of him.)

Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2010 06:08:10PM *  8 points [-]

Read his scientific books, and listen to his lectures and conversations. Pay attention to the style of argumentation he uses, as contrasted with other writers on similar topics (e.g. Gould). What you will find is that beautiful combination of clarity, honesty, and -- importantly -- abstraction that is the hallmark of an advanced rationalist.

The "good scientist, but not good rationalist" type utterly fails to match him. Dawkins is not someone who compartmentalizes, or makes excuses for avoiding arguments. He also seems to have a very good intuitive understanding of probability theory -- even to the point of "getting" the issue of many-worlds.

I would indeed put him near Eliezer in terms of rationality skill-level.

Comment author: h-H 20 February 2010 04:25:45PM 4 points [-]

not to detract, but does Richard Dawkins really posses such 'high quality'? IMO his arguments are good as a gateway for aspiring rationalists, not that far above the sanity water line

that, or it might be a problem of forums in general ..

Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2010 04:41:55PM *  13 points [-]

Dawkins is a very high-quality thinker, as his scientific writings reveal. The fact that he has also published "elementary" rationalist material in no way takes away from this.

He's way, way far above the level represented by the participants in his namesake forum.

(I'd give even odds that EY could persuade him to sign up for cryonics in an hour or less.)

In response to Conversation Halters
Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2010 03:41:37PM *  7 points [-]

Also: appeal to less than absolute certainty: "There's no way we can know for sure, since we weren't there. We can make judgments, but we don't have knowledge." Or, when you say "X", someone responds "are you really sure of X?", and you say "I'm 99% sure of X", they accuse you of retreating from your position: "Oh, well you didn't say that before; you just said 'X', which is an expression of absolute certainty" -- thereby interrupting the conversation and dodging the disagreement.

Closely related to the appeal to permanent unknowability and the appeal to humility.

Comment author: Jack 20 February 2010 05:22:38AM 0 points [-]

Interesting. Hom many places have you brought this issue up? Is there any forum which has responded rationally? What seem to be the controlling biases?

Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2010 07:13:44AM *  6 points [-]

Hom many places have you brought this issue up?

LW is thus far the only forum on which I have personally initiated discussion of this topic; but obviously I've followed discussions about it in numerous other places.

Is there any forum which has responded rationally?

You're on it.

I mean, there are plenty of instances elsewhere of people getting the correct answer. But basically what you get is either selection bias (the forum itself takes a position, and people are there because they already agree) or the type of noisy mess we see at RDF. To date, LW is the only place I know of where an a priori neutral community has considered the question and then decisively inclined in the right direction.

What seem to be the controlling biases?

In the case of RDF, I suspect compartmentalization is at work: this topic isn't mentally filed under "rationality", and there's no obvious cached answer or team to cheer for. So people there revert to the same ordinary, not-especially-careful default modes of thinking used by the rest of humanity, which is why the discussion there looks just like the discussions everywhere else.

It's noteworthy that my references and analogies to concepts and arguments discussed by Dawkins himself had no effect; apparently, we were just in a sort of separate magisterium. Particularly telling was this quote:

You are claiming that the issue of gods existence has been the subject of a major international trial, where a jury found that god existed? When did that happen?

Now on the face of it this seems utterly dishonest: I hardly think this fellow would actually be tempted to convert to theism upon hearing the news that eight Perugians had been convinced of God's existence. But I suspect he's actually just trying to express the separation that apparently exists in his mind between the kind of reasoning that applies to questions about God and the kind of reasoning that applies to questions about a criminal case.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 February 2010 11:24:38PM *  29 points [-]

Voted up, but calling them "nerds" in reply is equally ad-hominem, ya know. Let's just say that they don't seem to have the very high skill level required to distinguish good unusual beliefs from bad unusual beliefs, yet. (Nor even the realization that this is a hard problem, yet.)

Yes, they're pretty softcore by LessWrongian standards but places like this are where advanced rationalists are recruited from, so if someone is making a sincere effort in the direction of Traditional Rationality, it's worthwhile trying to avoid offending them when they make probability-theoretic errors. Even if they mock you first.

Also, one person on RationalWiki saying silly things is not a good reason to launch an aggressive counterattack on a whole wiki containing many potential recruits.

Comment author: komponisto 20 February 2010 03:25:52AM 16 points [-]

Yes, they're pretty softcore by LessWrongian standards but places like this are where advanced rationalists are recruited from, so if someone is making a sincere effort in the direction of Traditional Rationality, it's worthwhile trying to avoid offending them when they make probability-theoretic errors. Even if they mock you first.

I guess I should try harder to remember this, in the context of my rather discouraging recent foray into the Richard Dawkins Forums -- which, I admit, had me thinking twice about whether affiliation with "rational" causes was at all a useful indicator of actual receptivity to argument, and wondering whether there was much more point in visiting a place like that than a generic Internet forum. (My actual interlocutors were in fact probably hopeless, but maybe I could have done a favor to a few lurkers by not giving up so quickly.)

But, you know, it really is frustrating how little of the quality of a person (like Richard Dawkins, or, say, Paul Graham) or a cause (like increasing rationality, or improving science education) actually manages to rub off or trickle down onto the legions of Internet followers of said person or cause.

Comment author: Cyan 19 February 2010 03:38:09AM -1 points [-]

Trolls seek to engage; I consider that when deliberate dickery is accompanied by other trolling, it's just another attempt to troll.The dickish comments weren't deleted when I made the post. As for "cover", I guess I wasn't explicit enough, but the phrase "throw-away account" is the key to understanding what I meant. I strongly suspect that the "Clippy" account is a sock puppet run by another (unknown to me) regular commenter, who avoid downvotes while indulging in dickery.

Comment author: komponisto 19 February 2010 04:23:43AM *  2 points [-]

I've always thought Clippy was just a funny inside joke -- thought unfortunately not always optimally funny. (Lose the Microsoft stuff, and stick to ethical subtleties and hints about scrap metal.)

Comment author: komponisto 19 February 2010 02:17:02AM 5 points [-]

(Beginning thread for a debate with Rolf Nelson. Others also welcome to comment, of course.)

Okay, Rolf, so to get things started, I'd like to get your numbers out on the table. So, if you wouldn't mind, please tell me, first of all, your current posterior probability estimates for the guilt of:

  1. Amanda Knox
  2. Raffaele Sollecito
  3. Rudy Guede

(I expect we'll mainly focus on Knox and Sollecito, since that's obviously where our main disagreement is; I've included Guede for the sake of comparison.)

Next, I'd like to know your priors for Knox and Sollecito (and Guede as well, if you wish), by which I mean your estimate of the probability that each suspect would commit a crime of this sort, as of (let's say) a month before Kercher's death.

Then, if you could, please list, in descending order of evidentiary strength, the pieces of information most responsible for moving your estimates away from the above priors -- along with, if you wouldn't mind, a rough order-of-magnitude estimate of the strength of each piece of evidence, in terms of likelihood ratios, bits, or bels, whatever you prefer. (Again, I'm most interested in Knox and Sollecito; Guede is optional, at least for now.)

This should allow us to quickly pinpoint our disagreement(s).

Comment author: byrnema 18 February 2010 11:10:17PM 0 points [-]

Countdown: 3 hours till our IRC meeting.

You're welcome to join us.

Comment author: komponisto 19 February 2010 01:31:13AM 0 points [-]

How does one access it? Link?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 18 February 2010 06:01:46PM -1 points [-]

Nowadays, no one does basic research.

Comment author: komponisto 18 February 2010 11:42:17PM *  1 point [-]

More precisely: no one whose status isn't ultra-high is allowed to do basic research without having to pretend they're doing something else.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 16 February 2010 12:16:50AM 9 points [-]

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/11/its-news-on-academia-not-climate.html

Yup, this behavior has long been typical when academics form competing groups, whether the public hears about such groups or not. If you knew how academia worked, this news would not surprise you nor change your opinions on global warming.

People are crazy, the world is mad. Of course there's gross misbehavior by climate scientists, just like the rest of academia is malfunctioning. But the amount of scrutiny leveled on climate science is vastly greater than the amount of scrutiny leveled on, say, the dietary scientists who randomly made up the idea that saturated fat was bad for you; and the scrutiny really hasn't turned up anything that bad, just typical behavior by "working" scientists. So I doubt that this is one of the cases where the academic field is just grossly entirely wrong.

Comment author: komponisto 16 February 2010 05:13:50PM 11 points [-]

People are crazy, the world is mad.

It just occurred to me that this really needs to be the title of a short popular book on heuristics and biases.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 16 February 2010 05:04:58AM 1 point [-]

Why would you say that when you have no idea what his H or his h were in the first place?

It's intuitively difficult for us to accept, or at least to say, that having too much concern for a person is as possible as having too little.

Comment author: komponisto 16 February 2010 04:54:38PM 2 points [-]

Why would you say that when you have no idea what his H or his h were in the first place?

Well, I don't have "no idea" -- I have a probability distribution informed by experience.

Having too much concern for an individual is theoretically possible I suppose, but it's not a problem anyone is terribly likely to suffer from. The reason most people don't care about most other people is not the fact that the human population is large; it's the fact that most of that large population isn't psychologically close enough for them to care.

It's possible that utilitarian calculations could argue for downgrading one's level of concern for e.g. Amanda Knox -- but I'm far more inclined to suspect rationalization of pre-existing natural indifference on the part of someone who makes a claim like that.

Comment author: [deleted] 16 February 2010 02:52:42PM 5 points [-]

Someone once told me that the reason they don't read Less Wrong is that the articles and the comments don't match. The articles have one tone, and then the comments on that article have a completely different tone; it's like the article comes from one site and the comments come from another.

I find that to be a really weird reason not to read Less Wrong, and I have no idea what that person is talking about. Do you?

In response to comment by [deleted] on Open Thread: February 2010, part 2
Comment author: komponisto 16 February 2010 04:25:27PM 14 points [-]

Someone once told me that the reason they don't read Less Wrong is that the articles and the comments don't match...I have no idea what that person is talking about. Do you?

Yes.

Back in Overcoming Bias days, I constantly had the impression that the posts were of much higher quality than the comments. The way it typically worked, or so it seemed to me, was that Hanson or Yudkowsky (or occasionally another author) would write a beautifully clear post making a really nice point, and then the comments would be full of snarky, clacky, confused objections that a minute of thought really ought to have dispelled. There were obviously some wonderful exceptions to this, of course, but, by and large, that's how I remember feeling.

Curiously, though, I don't have this feeling with Less Wrong to anything like the same extent. I don't know whether this is because of the karma system, or just the fact that this feels more like a community environment (as opposed to the "Robin and Eliezer Show", as someone once dubbed OB), or what, but I think it has to be counted as a success story.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 15 February 2010 09:14:19PM *  18 points [-]

I've made the point that we tend to scrutinize posts/comments more carefully for flaws when they argue against beliefs that we hold, which results in subtly flawed arguments supporting a majority position being voted up despite being flawed, while a similarly flawed argument against a majority position will more likely be discovered as flawed and voted down. This results in the appearance that there are more valid arguments supporting the majority position than there really are, and drives away those who argue against the majority position because they think they are being treated unfairly.

Does anyone disagree with this, or think that Less Wrong voters have already adequately compensated for it? Or, if you think this is a real effect, but shouldn't be called groupthink, what is the right name for it?

Comment author: komponisto 15 February 2010 10:09:17PM *  2 points [-]

If you're referring to what I think you are (can you perhaps point me to another instance where you've made this point?), I simply disagree that the respective arguments in question are "similarly flawed".

One circumstance in which you can usually be safe in dismissing a minority argument is when the minority arguer has ignored the arguments already put forth for the majority position. If you want to be a contrarian, that's fine, but you can't expect to persuade the majority to your point of view without addressing the reasons they believe what they believe.

Comment author: thomblake 12 February 2010 07:35:22PM *  0 points [-]

the punctuation usage is definitely an Americanism

According to various online sources, the first written usage of "period" to mean "dot at the end of a sentence" was in 1609. I can't find mention of a source, but I find it hard to believe it's American. I've been unable to find an origin for "full stop" - some sites try to link it to the telegraph, but inconsistently mention that "full stop" was not used instead of "stop" since it would cost more.

ETA: found the 1609 reference. John Davies - poem here - grep for "but thy nailes"

Comment author: komponisto 12 February 2010 07:49:56PM 0 points [-]

Well, a number of modern-day Americanisms aren't American in origin, but rather are the result of the usage in question having become obsolete in Britain. Standard examples include "sick" for "ill" and "fall" for "autumn" ("mad" for "angry" might also be one, though I'm not sure).

The same phenomenon occurs in other widely-distributed languages, notably Portuguese, where in some respects Brazilian usage resembles the old-fashioned language of Portugal more than the modern language of Portugal does.

Comment author: mattnewport 12 February 2010 07:03:45PM 2 points [-]

Growing up in England I picked up from American TV and movies that saying 'period' at the end of a sentence was a way of emphasizing a statement. I picked up the meaning from context but didn't understand the derivation as 'period' had only two salient meanings for me: an interval or menstruation. As a teenager in high school at the time the latter was probably the strongest association. At some point I discovered that 'period' in American English meant 'full stop' and suddenly the phrase made perfect sense (since in British English we use 'full stop' in the same sense, though it's a somewhat less common phrase).

All the meanings share a fairly obvious association in retrospect. I maintain that for most British English speakers however (at least those my age or older who weren't as steeped in American culture as younger Brits might be) the word period is much more strongly associated with menstruation than with punctuation, even being aware of the latter meaning.

Comment author: komponisto 12 February 2010 07:20:49PM 0 points [-]

I maintain that for most British English speakers however... the word period is much more strongly associated with menstruation than with punctuation, even being aware of the latter meaning.

Oh, that's undoubtedly true; the punctuation usage is definitely an Americanism. My point was that the most salient meaning is (or certainly ought to be) the general one of "interval". (I've never seen a British mathematician wince when discussing the period of the sine function.)

Comment author: mattnewport 12 February 2010 05:13:28PM *  1 point [-]

Full stop is just the British English version of period. It took me a while to figure out what period meant in that context in American English. Period generally refers to menstruation in British English.

Comment author: komponisto 12 February 2010 06:43:55PM *  2 points [-]

Period generally refers to menstruation in British English.

I've heard people say this more than once, and each time I always want to say "Come on!" That particular meaning (which of course is just as well known in American English) is nothing but a derivative of the principal meaning of "period" (in all English-speaking countries), which is "length of time" or more generally "interval" -- which also gives rise to the American usage referring to the punctuation mark, as sentences are in some sense regular units of discourse.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 12 February 2010 11:00:29AM 0 points [-]

Actually, h has increased on average; it's just that h has decreased for the immediately available examples. i.e. I care much less about Amanda Fox or a single salient example, but more about general, systematic effects that might cause great harm to people that I don't hear about.

Comment author: komponisto 12 February 2010 03:04:35PM *  1 point [-]

Amanda Fox

I assume you mean Amanda Knox.

Also, do you really care less about (i.e. assign less utility to the welfare of) someone like Amanda than previously, or is it just that you try to avoid strong emotional reactions to such individual cases?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 11 February 2010 04:40:17PM *  1 point [-]

Well, first of all, I don't see how that's an example of scope insensitivity. Second, suppose a deadly flu virus starts sweeping a country. Getting upset and outraged at the existence of flu and human suffering is unlikely to change the universe's mind. On the other hand, an inefficient response to that and other problems, making them worse, is very much our own fault. So it looks to me like that is very much a defensible position.

Comment author: komponisto 11 February 2010 05:03:46PM *  0 points [-]

Well, first of all, I don't see how that's an example of scope insensitivity.

It might conceivably be worth the suffering of a few to correct inconsistencies, but the suffering of large numbers is about the worst thing there is -- far worse than anybody's reasoning errors.

EDIT: Actually, on second thought, you may be right: scope insensitivity may not be the fundamental problem here. It's probably something more basic, like the fact that it's just wrong to prioritize people's-preferences-being-a-certain-way over avoiding suffering.

Getting upset and outraged at the existence of flu and human suffering is unlikely to change the universe's mind. On the other hand, an inefficient response to that and other problems, making them worse, is very much our own fault. So it looks to me like that is very much a defensible position.

I don't see how the defensibility of the original commenter's position follows from the previous two sentences.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 11 February 2010 04:29:02PM 4 points [-]

Put it this way: I had concern level H for humanity, and h for a given individual. However, H was very far from being 6 billion times h. Now, this is closer to being the case; for this to happen, H has gone up while h has gone down.

Comment author: komponisto 11 February 2010 04:41:18PM 2 points [-]

This still bothers me; I feel like you should have just increased H without decreasing h.

In response to Shut Up and Divide?
Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 11 February 2010 02:31:48PM 1 point [-]

I've had both factors; a diminshed caring for individual cases, and an increased caring for humanity. Some sort of mixed divinding/multiplying going on here...

Comment author: komponisto 11 February 2010 04:24:54PM 1 point [-]

I have a strong, visceral negative reaction to this.

I'll point out that it seems contradictory, for one thing. "Humanity" is made up of humans; concern for humanity should be approximately the result of adding together one's concern for individual humans. If utility is multiplicative, then it's also divisible -- in which case an increased concern for humanity cannot be accompanied by a decreased concern for individuals without a significant increase in the population size (beyond what has happened in our lifetimes).

Of course, I'm not sure if the above is the true reason for my negative reaction. But it's darn well worth considering all the same.

Comment author: ciphergoth 10 February 2010 01:33:48PM *  1 point [-]

Rather, if my sympathy for her is not at least two orders of magnitude greater than it is for unknown Africans. I don't mean that to sound moralistic - my sympathy for my cats really is greater, awful as that sounds.

Comment author: komponisto 10 February 2010 02:00:05PM 0 points [-]

For me, helping unknown Africans generally comes out of the utility budget, rather than the fuzzy budget. You may be different.

In any case, yes, it's a question of amount-of-fuzziness per unit-of-money donated.

Comment author: ciphergoth 10 February 2010 01:15:19PM 1 point [-]

When I want to buy fuzzies, I am nice to my friends or by tuna for the cats. When it comes to spending on benefiting strangers, I can't see why I'd want to choose an inefficient way over an efficient way. But your mileage may vary.

Comment author: komponisto 10 February 2010 01:21:21PM 0 points [-]

If you don't sympathize with Amanda enough that helping her would give you a fuzzy feeling, then obviously it's not a good use of your money (from your perspective).

Comment author: Morendil 10 February 2010 12:58:45PM 1 point [-]

That's a different question. Perhaps a different rationalization: "No, I'm not going to give $10 to the Knox defense fund, because it wouldn't make much of a difference."

One idea that I'm struggling to express (or perhas refute, if it's just a misconception of mine) is that investing effort in an area where someone else is likely to invest a countervailing effort may be less effective than investing in an area where you meet no opposing force.

Suppose, for instance, that a $10 donation to the Amanda Knox fund is somewhat likely to be matched by a $10 donation from someone else to a "justice for Meredith Kercher" fund. Then you may want to look instead for a way to use the same amount of money to improve the judicial system so that future occurrences are made less likely. Or on improving education in general, to raise the world's sanity level.

Comment author: komponisto 10 February 2010 01:08:24PM *  1 point [-]

The prosecution of Knox is funded by the involuntary contributions of Italian taxpayers; the defense fund itself helps to provide (a small measure of) support against an already formidable opposing force.

Comment author: CarlShulman 10 February 2010 12:47:52PM 1 point [-]

Not a good one, as far as I can tell. Hundreds of thousands in legal fees, etc, could save hundreds of African lives.

Comment author: komponisto 10 February 2010 12:52:27PM 1 point [-]

See my comment.

Comment author: ciphergoth 10 February 2010 12:04:29PM *  1 point [-]

Is there a case to be made that this is an efficient way to give, compared to eg GiveWell's recommendations?

Comment author: komponisto 10 February 2010 12:48:28PM *  0 points [-]

It was explicitly proposed as a form of warm-fuzzy giving, not as an efficient purchase of utilons.

Of course, for the specific purpose of helping Amanda and her family, it's the most efficient way of giving I know of.

In response to Shut Up and Divide?
Comment author: jimrandomh 09 February 2010 11:42:00PM *  4 points [-]

The problem with the Amanda Knox case is not scale, but distance. The farther away something is, the less influence I have over it, and the less influence it can have over me. Amanda Knox is far away in every sense - it's in a different country, a different time (the court case is already over), and a different language. It's like watching a year old YouTube video of an already-fired policeman from a town I've never heard of abusing his power - lots of people do it, but it's just getting riled up for no reason.

On the other hand, the point of the original Less Wrong Amanda Knox article wasn't that we should care about the real event, but as a rationality test case. A similar fictional story would've worked just as well, but using a real news story guaranteed that it'd be free of the distortions that come with writing fiction.

Comment author: komponisto 10 February 2010 02:14:54AM *  2 points [-]

(the court case is already over)

FYI, there will be an appeal in the coming months.

In response to Shut Up and Divide?
Comment author: komponisto 10 February 2010 12:29:53AM *  5 points [-]

Shut up? Maybe not. Divide? Yes: divide labor.

We don't all care about exactly the same things; we may have, as some philosopher has doubtless put it, different "moral tastes". But these tastes probably vary continuously, and there's bound to be enough overlap to make effective cooperation possible.

There probably isn't anybody else here who cares about the Knox case to quite the same extent that I do; but there are a fair number who care about it enough to have had a discussion about it. And I expect that even those (such as yourself) who don't care about it at all would prefer, all else being equal, to live in a world where such things did not happen -- so, I'm guessing, they (you) don't really mind too much if others do care. A situation like this allows effective, cooperative moral action: I write a post, others discuss it, and still others allow said discussion to coexist in the same space where they discuss what they care about. Hopefully, some net benefit to the world is achieved. (Then, later, the roles switch, and the favors are reciprocated, resulting in some other, different benefit.)

I would like to raise the possibility that what's really going on here is not that you've made a decision to dilute all of your caring, but rather that you don't care about the exact same things that I do: a simple difference of personality. While I am hardly able to stop thinking about the Knox case, you are inclined to expend your psychological resources elsewhere (whether on other "moral causes", or other activities in general). So long as we are able to cooperate effectively and avoid negative-sum conflicts, this may not pose any serious problem.

I have, I think, a rather unusual psychological makeup. For some reason, I am susceptible to being moved by the plight of someone like Amanda Knox, to whom I don't have any known personal connection, to a greater degree than most people. But I don't particularly dislike this fact about myself. In fact, I think it's quite nice that there are a certain number of people like this out there, so that someone like Amanda doesn't have to rely only on those close to her to champion her cause. If it were me in that situation, I would certainly hope that some people other than friends and relatives would care.

Being this way doesn't interfere with my ability to shut up and multiply; indeed, I have already mentioned, in the discussion that you linked to, how it helps me to care more about humanity's problems in general than I otherwise would. So I actually think it's a pretty good way to be. But if others are differently constituted, or just have different particular interests, let us divide up the moral labor and cooperate to the extent possible.

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 09 February 2010 10:22:25PM 10 points [-]

But ultimately, the only way I find to cope is not caring.

It's important to distinguish between emotions and decision theory. You can (try to) be perfectly altruistic in calculated decisions, while not caring on an emotional level. Better, you can care in more positive ways: feel good when you help, but don't feel guilty for not helping, or feel painfully strong empathy for the suffering, except to the extent that doing so actually motivates you sustainably. You aren't obligated to feel any emotion that doesn't win.

Comment author: komponisto 09 February 2010 10:55:23PM 11 points [-]

You aren't obligated to feel any emotion that doesn't win.

There is a flipside to this that I would like to point out: you're allowed to feel any emotion that does help you to win.

Comment author: JenniferRM 09 February 2010 10:13:43PM *  7 points [-]

To a large degree, public commitment is involvement.

My fair share, as an American, to a hypothetical "free Amanda Knox if independent investigation determines she should actually be freed" fund would be less than a penny. Between my stopping to consider it earlier and posting about it here I've already done more than that. The transaction costs here are so large that the right thing is probably for something like one in a thousand people to randomly be assigned to even worry if they should care, and if they do donate a few bucks to the cause.

Also, I was mostly a lurker at that time, and assuming I started posting (as I have recently) I didn't want such a controversial and specific issue to determine my initial trajectory here.

I consider Wei Dai's meta-meta-ethical considerations to be much more relevant to an actual concrete project that I care about much more: building mutual cooperation protocols with this community, starting with abstract principles and methods for deriving them, and working through to implications, and eventually (hopefully) reaching actions in the world that benefit me, the rest of the community here, and the broader world that I assume most of us care about.

Comment author: komponisto 09 February 2010 10:31:45PM 1 point [-]

Well, honestly, I think you may be overestimating the extent to which spitting out a probability estimate on a survey post would have represented "commitment", or would have "determined your initial trajectory" on LW (you could always have done it anonymously, after all!).

But, given what you've written here, I can't complain. As one who cares about this cause, I'm glad you stopped to think about it at all, and even more happy that you've now told us what you thought.

In response to Shut Up and Divide?
Comment author: JenniferRM 09 February 2010 09:42:35PM *  9 points [-]

Personally, I think the correct thing to do is to recognize that a simple abstraction like "number of people involved" isn't the only thing that is relevant to deciding whether a course of action is appropriate.

Note that the behavior consequences of "shut up and multiply" and "shut up and divide" are largely the same in this particular case... both argue that one should ignore Amanda's situation because she's only one person and based on raw numbers she (as well as you, and I, and pretty much every individual person on the planet) don't really matter relative to the rest of the world in aggregate.

The big behavioral consequence of the two paths (multiplication versus division) seems to be the distinction between taking one's personal selfishness (say, the objective fact that you'd cry more if a fingernail were ripped off than if you heard of the death of 1000 strangers on the far side of the planet) to mean that you really would or should choose to preserve your fingernail over the people, if the choice was somehow actually presented to you in reality. That is, the theories have different consequences only in one's behavioral orientation towards "the big picture".

If this distinction is the case, then maybe it makes more sense to limit yourself to thinking about the right thing to do for big picture questions? (Note that if you were going to truly apply a the division principle across all human circumstances this would apply to yourself just as much as Amanda... and I'm not sure if you're also advocating self-disregard or not.)

In the meantime, I personally think that it is important to pay attention to more than the number of people involved. In my case, I pay a lot of attention to my "responsibility" in terms of my actual literal ability to respond. This causes me to focus on my degree of knowledge and proximity to other people (or groups of people) when I try to decide if I can effectively improve a situation.

Assuming basically competent adults are involved, other adults can probably take care of themselves better than other people can take care of them, and if their self-help abilities are limited they may still think of attempts to help more as "meddling interference". The utility of assistance will thus be reduced by the transaction costs imposed by attempts to coordinate with the person or people being helped. If they're hostile and resistive to help, it may tragically be a case where leaving them to their own unfortunate circumstances is the best way to achieve good in the world. If they're falsely signaling greater need than they actually experience, that's also something I don't want to support.

In the meantime, if you've developed a good set of cooperative understandings with other people it can make more sense for you to continue to cooperate with those people even in the presence of more needy third parties, just because you don't know much about them and don't have cooperation protocols worked out.

When I saw komponisto's initial post about Amanda Knox I did stop and think about it for a while. My first impression based on 10 minutes of reading was that a miscarriage of justice was probably happening based on prosecutorial and investigative confirmation biases compounded by subsequent public commitment and unwillingness to lose political credibility. I estimated something like a 20% chance that she'd committed the crime (though obviously she was formally "guilty" because notionally legitimate legal forms had been followed to apply a legal status of "guilty" to Amanda).

The reason I worried about it in the first place was possibility that I'd someday be trapped in a foreign country, not having committed a crime, but subject to a crazy and xenophobic justice system, and I would be relying on moral compatriots to intervene on my behalf. The thing that prevented me from either posting my estimates in that thread or becoming politically involved in Amanda's actual case was the recognition that there were other people already in a better position to do the right thing than myself.

Comment author: komponisto 09 February 2010 09:58:38PM *  0 points [-]

The thing that prevented me from either posting my estimates in that thread or becoming politically involved in Amanda's actual case was the recognition that there were other people already in a better position to do the right thing than myself.

While that might be a defensible reason for not getting "involved", I'm curious about why it prevented you from merely posting your estimates in the survey.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 09 February 2010 11:39:33AM 3 points [-]

What sort of additional wording do you think would have helped make this clearer?

Perhaps something along the lines of "This post assumes that the reader has read the comments section of the previous post."

You may have missed a key point here; see comments by mattnewport and Eliezer. This is not, it turns out, a difficult case that hinges on the details; instead it's decided overwhelmingly just by the priors. The thesis of my post was that a skilled rationalist shouldn't need more than a few minutes of study in order to arrive at a high probability of innocence. Now, whether you could actually get to a probability of 0.99 or 0.999 that way, as opposed to merely 0.9, is an interesting, but separate, question.

The above might be true if I didn't know that Knox and Sollecito were convicted by an Italian court, but once I take that into account, it seems impossible to get to 0.9 probability of innocence that quickly. Unless I've seen nearly all of the evidence and arguments that the court has seen, I think there's a probability higher than 0.1 that the court knows something significant that I don't.

I'm not sure why you would make such an assumption. It's not as if my total level of global outrage is fixed, and hearing about Knox and Sollecito unfairly moved some sympathy in their direction at the expense of others. It just so happened that this case came to my attention, and provoked an emotional response appropriate to my state of knowledge. The result was a net increase in my concern about the madness of this world and in my desire to alleviate suffering; you may be interested to know that additional resources were allocated to the general goal of improving humanity's future as a direct result of my feelings about this case.

I assume that a human being has a finite capacity for outrage. To feel that strongly about Knox and Sollecito implies that you cannot feel equally strongly about all other individuals who have suffered equally terrible fates. You say that the case increased your net concern about the madness of the world, but surely you must have already known that injustice like this (assuming you're right Knox and Sollecito) happens every day to many people all over the world? Is it just that the abstract knowledge didn't engage your emotions, like seeing these two specific individuals did?

Comment author: komponisto 09 February 2010 02:01:02PM *  8 points [-]

The above might be true if I didn't know that Knox and Sollecito were convicted by an Italian court, but once I take that into account, it seems impossible to get to 0.9 probability of innocence that quickly. Unless I've seen nearly all of the evidence and arguments that the court has seen, I think there's a probability higher than 0.1 that the court knows something significant that I don't.

There was little to no change in the information content of True Justice and Friends of Amanda between Thursday, December 3, 2009 and Friday, December 4, 2009 (when the verdict was announced). If you believe that you would have arrived at a high probability of innocence on Thursday, then by conservation of expected evidence, you should have been very surprised to observe significant evidence of guilt on Friday. Since you appear to regard the conviction as significant evidence of guilt, this would imply that you have a low prior on a jury delivering a guilty verdict on the basis of the information available on those two sites.

To which I can only ask: Whence cometh this unwavering faith in the rationality of one's fellow humans?

I assume that a human being has a finite capacity for outrage. To feel that strongly about Knox and Sollecito implies that you cannot feel equally strongly about all other individuals who have suffered equally terrible fates. You say that the case increased your net concern about the madness of the world, but surely you must have already known that injustice like this (assuming you're right Knox and Sollecito) happens every day to many people all over the world? Is it just that the abstract knowledge didn't engage your emotions, like seeing these two specific individuals did?

If I understand you correctly, you appear to be arguing (or at least suggesting I consider an argument) for the following disjunction:

Either:

(1) I should devote more psychological energy to other victims of injustice to match my concern for Knox and Sollecito.

Or:

(2) I should devote less psychological energy to Knox and Sollecito in order not to unfairly privilege them more than other victims of injustice.

Now neither of these strikes me as plausible. (1) is simply impractical: LW readers would get tired if I did a post on every miscarriage of justice that has ever occurred, even if I were capable of doing so. But (2) can't be right either, because what happened to Knox and Sollecito is a legitimate outrage, and simply going about my business with indifference strikes me as highly unsatisfactory.

I see this as nothing more than a variant of the old argument against "ordinary" altruism: we really ought not to hold doors for little old ladies, since doing so consumes resources that could be put to better use fighting existential risk. But, as we know, human brains simply don't work that way. It's far more efficient to harness our natural feeling-circuitry to accomplish our goals than it is to (vainly) struggle to reprogram it.

So yes, there is a psychological difference between abstractly knowing that injustice exists and humans are irrational on the one hand, and actually seeing consequences of this happen to victims one finds particularly sympathetic on the other. But that emotional stimulation can be put to good use. That's why it's not quite right to say:

To feel that strongly about Knox and Sollecito implies that you cannot feel equally strongly about all other individuals who have suffered equally terrible fates.

I don't feel less strongly about the other individuals than I used to; rather, I feel more strongly than I did before. In my mind, Knox and Sollecito represent others in their situation; thinking specifically of them makes it easier to care about the problem of injustice in general. It's a mind-hack that happens to cater to the way my brain works. I suspect I'm not the only one on whom this kind of trick is effective.

(And it also helps Amanda and Raffaele themselves -- who deserve to be helped, just like the old ladies for whom we open doors.)

It's perfectly okay for a human rationalist to have natural human reactions; when those reactions are put to good use, it's an outright good thing.

Comment author: MBlume 08 February 2010 08:33:47PM 3 points [-]

I can't find it now, but I read a study where some form of antisocial behavior [...] became less common when the victims could see the perpetrator [...]. So joining a faceless and pseudonymous community should be a perfect recipe for disregard of niceness and other cooperative instincts.

So should we add avatars to LW?

Comment author: komponisto 08 February 2010 08:44:05PM 4 points [-]

So should we add avatars to LW?

Please, please, no!

Comment author: ciphergoth 08 February 2010 11:15:17AM 1 point [-]

I'm not sure that the idea of orthogonality is defined for modules, is it? Is there a standard definition of an inner product for a Z-module?

Comment author: komponisto 08 February 2010 06:49:48PM 1 point [-]

I'm not sure that the idea of orthogonality is defined for modules, is it? Is there a standard definition of an inner product for a Z-module?

Yes; the same definition works. See here.

In response to Epistemic Luck
Comment author: Daniel_Burfoot 08 February 2010 05:15:41AM *  0 points [-]

During one of my epistemology classes, my professor admitted (I can't recall the context) that his opinions on the topic would probably be different had he attended a different graduate school.

I read this as an admission that modern academic philosophy has nothing whatever to do with the search for truth and everything to do with status-seeking, signalling, and affiliation games. But at least he was being sort of honest.

Comment author: komponisto 08 February 2010 05:26:55AM *  6 points [-]

I read this as an admission that modern academic philosophy has nothing whatever to do with the search for truth and everything to do with status-seeking, signalling, and affiliation games.

Hansonian cynics may be inclined to argue that one could just as well substitute almost any other discipline for "philosophy" in that sentence.

Comment author: Jack 08 February 2010 05:12:30AM 0 points [-]

I'm just curious, since most of the comments have disagreed with the post if people upvoted the post even though they disagreed or if this was just self-selection and a number of people liked what I said.

?

Comment author: komponisto 08 February 2010 05:22:50AM *  0 points [-]

In my own case, I wouldn't characterize my comment as "disagreement" so much as "raising issues" and "seeking to refine the thesis".

When I first saw the post it was at -1, which I thought was wrong, so I upvoted to correct this.

Comment author: shiftedShapes 08 February 2010 04:47:09AM -2 points [-]

I need to be convinced that cryonics is better than nothing, and quite frankly I'm not.

For now I will stick to maintaining my good health through proven methods, maximizing my chances to live to see future advances in medicine. That seems to be the highest probability method of living practically forever, right? (and no I'm not trying to create a false-dilemma here, I know I could do both).

Comment author: komponisto 08 February 2010 05:14:28AM 1 point [-]

If cryonics were free and somebody else did all the work, I'm assuming you wouldn't object to being signed up. So how cheap (in terms of both effort and money) would cryonics have to be in order to make it worthwhile for you?

Comment author: Alicorn 07 February 2010 10:58:35PM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure this poll is as anonymous as it should be for maximum accuracy. If votes are ever de-anonymized, someone might swing by and look at this.

Comment author: komponisto 08 February 2010 02:42:03AM 3 points [-]

Solution: never de-anonymize votes retroactively.

Comment author: sark 07 February 2010 07:38:25PM *  0 points [-]

The conjunction fallacy applies only when you already have a probability law. (a specification of a probability space). It applies to events in a probability space. The conjunction rule proscribes assigning a subset event higher probability than the event containing it.

Occam's razor is prescription for what probability laws should look like (e.g each program having a prior probability of (1/2) to the power of its code length in bits). i.e. what constitutes an outcome in the probability space, all outcomes having equal probability.

The conjunction fallacy really says nothing about prior probabilities. The conjunction rule is a theorem in probability. Occam's razor is a working rule for assigning prior probabilities to hypotheses.

Comment author: komponisto 07 February 2010 08:39:12PM 2 points [-]

The conjunction fallacy really says nothing about prior probabilities. The conjunction rule is a theorem in probability. Occam's razor is a working rule for assigning prior probabilities to hypotheses.

These are two distinct, legitimate uses of the term "Occam's Razor". The conjunction rule is the everyday sense; what you're talking about is a deeper, philosophical sense.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 07 February 2010 02:18:11AM 3 points [-]

So you glanced at the posts, noticed (I guess) the fact that I didn't go into the details of the prosecution case

Yes, that is the main flaw that I noticed. I think you can't make a case for .99 probability of innocence without going through the prosecution case in detail, unless you assume that the reader is already familiar with the prosecution case and knows the counterarguments for all of the prosecution's evidence and arguments, and you didn't make that assumption clear. Someone reading it without knowing much about the case (like me) would have just thought it unconvincing.

The reason I didn't point it out at the time was that I just didn't think about it. I read the post, wasn't very interested, and moved on.

Now, however, that Rolf Nelson's response to my post has been voted down to the lower depths of karma hell, now you suddenly seem to care (more) about the quality of my post.

Well, I was curious why Rolf's post was voted down so much, since I knew him from before. That seems reasonable to me.

I interpreted that as, "The only thing wrong with Rolf's post was the tone." Maybe that's uncharitable, but what did you mean by "careful"?

I meant he needed to spend more effort to look for and eliminate the flaws in his post. I think when you write a post that contradicts some people's beliefs, those who are being contradicted will tend to search the post more carefully for flaws. So he should have known that his post would be scrutinized more and acted accordingly.

But even putting that aside, it's not like there was any dearth of rationality issues and meta-issues at play here.

The problem with using it as a rationality learning tool is that the amount of time I'd have to put in to learn the details of the case, compared to what I might get out of it, just seem too high for me to make the effort. Your post is already quite long, and to make it more convincing would have required a lot more text.

You feel strongly for Knox and Sollecito, which is fine, but it's hard for me to understand why, given that there are billions of people on this planet, and a significant fraction of them suffer worse fates than they. Why these two, and not all the others? (I assume you don't feel equally strongly about all the others, but I guess I could be wrong. Let me know if I am.)

Comment author: komponisto 07 February 2010 03:23:11PM *  3 points [-]

I think you can't make a case for .99 probability of innocence without going through the prosecution case in detail, unless you assume that the reader is already familiar with the prosecution case and knows the counterarguments for all of the prosecution's evidence and arguments, and you didn't make that assumption clear

The post was prominently labeled as a followup to its predecessor; and as the latter consisted of instructions for a survey and thus amounted to little more than a prompt for discussion, it should have been obvious (or so I would have thought) that its substantive content lay in the comments.

In other words, I thought it was perfectly clear from context that if you weren't interested enough in the exercise to read at least the comments on the first post, if not the actual links provided, then you simply weren't in the target audience for the second post.

What sort of additional wording do you think would have helped make this clearer?

The problem with using it as a rationality learning tool is that the amount of time I'd have to put in to learn the details of the case, compared to what I might get out of it, just seem too high for me to make the effort. Your post is already quite long, and to make it more convincing would have required a lot more text.

You may have missed a key point here; see comments by mattnewport and Eliezer. This is not, it turns out, a difficult case that hinges on the details; instead it's decided overwhelmingly just by the priors. The thesis of my post was that a skilled rationalist shouldn't need more than a few minutes of study in order to arrive at a high probability of innocence. Now, whether you could actually get to a probability of 0.99 or 0.999 that way, as opposed to merely 0.9, is an interesting, but separate, question.

You feel strongly for Knox and Sollecito, which is fine, but it's hard for me to understand why, given that there are billions of people on this planet, and a significant fraction of them suffer worse fates than they. Why these two, and not all the others? (I assume you don't feel equally strongly about all the others, but I guess I could be wrong. Let me know if I am.)

I'm not sure why you would make such an assumption. It's not as if my total level of global outrage is fixed, and hearing about Knox and Sollecito unfairly moved some sympathy in their direction at the expense of others. It just so happened that this case came to my attention, and provoked an emotional response appropriate to my state of knowledge. The result was a net increase in my concern about the madness of this world and in my desire to alleviate suffering; you may be interested to know that additional resources were allocated to the general goal of improving humanity's future as a direct result of my feelings about this case.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 03 February 2010 06:52:34PM 3 points [-]

If by "topic" you mean whether Amanda Knox is a murderer, I still have zero interest in that (and actually I find it puzzling why so many people do have a strong interest in it). How did you infer that Rolf's post got me interested in that, or are you referring to something else?

Also, which part of the sentence you quoted do you disagree with? That "one needs to be much more careful when arguing against a majority belief" or that this is Rolf's main mistake?

Comment author: komponisto 06 February 2010 10:29:49PM *  5 points [-]

If by "topic" you mean whether Amanda Knox is a murderer, I still have zero interest in that (and actually I find it puzzling why so many people do have a strong interest in it). How did you infer that Rolf's post got me interested in that, or are you referring to something else?

You became interested enough to make comments like the above, comparing Rolf's post to mine and concluding that mine wasn't much better. I hope you'll understand why, given your status here, this felt like a huge insult to me.

If you think my post has "substantial flaws", I would like to know what those are. More to the point, I would have liked to have known what they were back in December, when the discussion was taking place. Maybe I could have addressed those flaws, or even -- if they truly were substantial -- revised the post. Evidently, however, you didn't think they were important enough to be worth mentioning at the time. Now, however, that Rolf Nelson's response to my post has been voted down to the lower depths of karma hell, now you suddenly seem to care (more) about the quality of my post.

Do you see where I'm coming from here? It seems to me that you have a high opinion of Rolf and not much opinion one way or the other of me, and so you just found it superficially implausible that such a karma differential could possibly be warranted. So you glanced at the posts, noticed (I guess) the fact that I didn't go into the details of the prosecution case, and said, "What's the big deal?" without actually thinking too much about the case itself. Well, the numbers should tell you something. Groupthink may account for some karma anomalies, but it's unlikely to produce a 40-point difference all on its own -- not here, anyway.

As for why people would care about this topic, well I really don't think it's all that hard to understand. For me, personally, the fact that Knox and Sollecito are, you know, sentient creatures (and actually, from what I can tell, pretty swell human beings all around) has a lot to do with it. But even putting that aside, it's not like there was any dearth of rationality issues and meta-issues at play here. This is an empirical question about reality that happens to be a rationality no-brainer and yet is the subject of intense public controversy (and not of a standard "political" type, either). I have found it to be a beautiful way of testing people's understanding of how the world works outside of their cached comfort zones. The cognitive biases involved are numerous; issues of calibration and confidence were also raised. In short, one needn't have been particularly interested in the fate of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito to have been interested in our discussions here -- though I happen to be so interested, and I don't think I need to apologize for that.

Also, which part of the sentence you quoted do you disagree with? That "one needs to be much more careful when arguing against a majority belief" or that this is Rolf's main mistake?

I interpreted that as, "The only thing wrong with Rolf's post was the tone." Maybe that's uncharitable, but what did you mean by "careful"?

Comment author: Alicorn 03 February 2010 01:59:02PM 0 points [-]

In a nutshell: The environment is unsupportive and draining. The only teacher I "click" with is in a sub-field of study that I have next to no interest in, and even if I wanted to go study his topic to get to work with him, he's leaving at the end of this semester. Meanwhile, the teachers who work on the subjects I like whom I've completed courses with seem to actively dislike me. I don't think I'm a good fit for the department in general, which is uncomfortably political and stern, and trying to transfer would be hard because, having stuck it out this long, I've collected some less than admirable grades.

Comment author: komponisto 06 February 2010 08:07:08PM 0 points [-]

It sounds like you should try to transfer anyway.

I was surprised to read your comment above; I had always gotten the impression that you enjoyed what you were doing. (I also liked the idea that one of LW's top contributors was a philosophy grad student; it helps to counteract a slight tendency toward rivalry that I detect between "LW types" and academic philosophers.)

How about attempting to get in touch with people you think you would get along with elsewhere, and seeing if you can impress them?

Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 06 February 2010 07:41:33PM 1 point [-]

Oh, I agree with you that nature vs. nurture is a false dichotomy, but I was actually cheered to see this exchange. As terrible as it is by our epistemic standards, it's actually quite sophisticated by Star Trek standards. (So much of what gets called science fiction is actually technology fantasy.) I was similarly cheered to see the other exchange that I posted from that episode: he actually used the word hypothesis! Real philosophy of science! On Voyager! I love it! Best episode ever!

And you can see how this is still a rationality quote despite the conceptual confusion. Janeway is trying to break through Harren's contempt, but Harren resists her cliches and insists on (what he erroneously thinks is) accuracy.

Comment author: komponisto 06 February 2010 07:53:03PM 3 points [-]

So which of the two characters exemplifies rationalist virtues? It seems to me we've got one who's trying to use clichés to "break through" to the other, and one who's just stubbornly wrong.

Comment author: Jack 06 February 2010 12:28:29PM 4 points [-]

So our ethical intuitions are scope insensitive. But how do we know how to correct for the insensitivity? Maybe maybe the value of an action increases linearly as it increases in scope. Maybe it increases exponentially. Maybe the right thing to do is average the utility per person. What possible evidence is there to answer this question? For that matter, why should we think that ethics shouldn't be scope insensitive?

Comment author: komponisto 06 February 2010 07:33:01PM 2 points [-]

For that matter, why should we think that ethics shouldn't be scope insensitive?

See Circular Altruism.

Comment author: komponisto 06 February 2010 08:37:44AM *  8 points [-]

These reactions are for ethics what measurements of time and distance are for physics -- the evidence.

This may be somewhat controversial. One has to keep in mind that ethical theories aren't necessarily theories about human intuitions. (Indeed, to assume otherwise would seem to take for granted a particular theory, such as emotivism.) So this raises the question of what other sorts of evidence there are for ethical propositions, that could prove intuitions wrong.

ETA: Also, the question of privileging the hypothesis is interesting here, because it poses a challenge to the idea of relying on intuitions. After all, if you want to prove a particular ethical thesis, it usually isn't too hard to come up with some exotic thought-experiment wherein intuition appears to support the desired conclusion. What isn't so clear is how much weight the intuition gleaned from a particular imaginary scenario should be given.

Comment author: MichaelBishop 03 February 2010 06:31:13PM -1 points [-]

I think assertions of higher status can sometimes be characterized as justifiable or even desirable. Eliezer does this all the time. The alternative to "stating disagreement while failing to address the details of the argument," is often to ignore the comment altogether. (Also, see edit to my previous comment before replying further.)

Comment author: komponisto 03 February 2010 06:37:57PM 0 points [-]

Well, if you agree with me about that particular comment, maybe it would have been preferable to wait for an occasion where you actually disagreed with my judgment to make this point?

(This would help cut down on "fake disagreements", i.e. disagreements arising out of misunderstanding.)

Comment author: MichaelBishop 03 February 2010 05:38:42PM *  0 points [-]

re: denying claim without addressing argument IMO, such comments are acceptable when the commenter is of high enough status in the community. Obviously I'd prefer they address the argument, but I consider myself better off just knowing that certain people agree or disagree.

ADDED: Note, I am merely stating my personal preference, not insisting that my personal preference become normatively binding on LW. I also happen to agree with Komponisto's judgment that Unknowns previous comment was unhelpful.

Comment author: komponisto 03 February 2010 05:50:36PM *  4 points [-]

I disagree.

ETA: Note that an implication of what you said is that replying in that manner constitutes an assertion of higher status than the other person; this is exactly why it is irritating.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 03 February 2010 05:26:09PM 2 points [-]

You have no evidence of Wei's thoughts on the matter.

Comment author: komponisto 03 February 2010 05:31:37PM 1 point [-]

Downvoted. The comment I replied to contains Wei's thoughts on the matter.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 03 February 2010 01:25:15PM 7 points [-]

You stepped into a giant past discussion and didn't refer to it. If, for each point, you had either pointed to and refuted previous comments about those points, or else said, "And I read through the comments and found no reference to this point", you would have been picking up the conversation where it left off.

It seems to me that komponisto's The Amanda Knox Test similarly made a case for "not guilty" without reference to the all of the arguments for "guilty", and had other substantial flaws. But it's at 29, compared to Rolf's -10.

As someone who has no interest in the case (I haven't made any comment related to the case, nor read any of the discussions), judging from just the posts, I think Rolf's main mistake is that he forgot that one needs to be much more careful when arguing against a majority belief.

Comment author: komponisto 03 February 2010 05:21:45PM -1 points [-]

As someone who has no interest in the case (I haven't made any comment related to the case, nor read any of the discussions), judging from just the posts, I think Rolf's main mistake is that he forgot that one needs to be much more careful when arguing against a majority belief.

Wei, I hope you will excuse me for being a little blunt here, but it's pretty clear that both you and Anna Salamon have assigned far too much weight to the fact that Rolf Nelson is a big-shot SIAI donor who says the right words and hangs out with the right people, while (to you) I'm just some guy on LW with an obscure pseudonym. I mean, seriously, if two major posts on LW by a 1000+ karma user that attracted ~700 comments did less to get you interested in the topic than Rolf's negative-scoring rant...well, that's something you might want to think about.

Comment author: wedrifid 02 February 2010 12:40:21PM *  1 point [-]

If you post here more often, you'll learn that certain linguistic patterns are required for the community to not get annoyed at you when making strong-sounding conclusions.

For example, ":s/Knox//g" helps.

More seriously, that phenomenon extends far beyond LessWrong and applies particularly when the comments are personal (or reflect on an individual fairly directly).

Comment author: komponisto 03 February 2010 03:45:26AM 1 point [-]

For example, ":s/Knox//g" helps.

What does this mean?

Comment author: wedrifid 03 February 2010 01:44:31AM *  3 points [-]

That is what my subjective human emotion modelling intuitions told me at the time. I can't attest to those judgements being fair. But people usually post on things they care about and I have no problem with that whatsoever.

Comment author: komponisto 03 February 2010 02:33:26AM *  0 points [-]

Interesting. Well, "fair" or not, your judgment was certainly correct in this instance.

And I don't mind. I'm totally not ashamed of caring about this.

Comment author: wedrifid 03 February 2010 01:32:28AM 4 points [-]

You did a good job of hiding your beliefs, given the circumstances. The amount that you cared on a personal level did leak through a little.

Comment author: komponisto 03 February 2010 01:39:53AM 0 points [-]

Even in the first post?

Comment author: wedrifid 03 February 2010 01:14:12AM 2 points [-]

That said, I agree that komponisto tipped his hand in telling us what he thought the relevant facts were; it was easy to predict that he believed Knox to be innocent.

I found it a little hard to predict based on the information he supplied. He only gave links to the pro/against sites, from what I recall, with somewhat of a warning about the wikipedia article that was then under constant flux. The only way that I could reliably predict that Kompo believed Knox to be innocent was that he wouldn't have brought a court judgement to our attention if he agreed with it.

Comment author: komponisto 03 February 2010 01:26:20AM 2 points [-]

The only way that I could reliably predict that Kompo believed Knox to be innocent was that he wouldn't have brought a court judgement to our attention if he agreed with it.

That's why I tried to emphasize the controversy surrounding the verdict, rather than the verdict itself. For all anyone should have been able to tell, maybe I thought they were clearly guilty and that all this media fuss about innocence was the result of American national bias, or Knox's pretty face, or something.

Comment author: mattnewport 02 February 2010 10:57:40PM 10 points [-]

Rolf raises a number of points that were already widely discussed (and widely dismissed) in the comments on komponisto's posts. He has not added any new information to the discussion that was not already contained in the voluminous commentary surrounding those two posts.

More importantly, he seems to have missed/ignored a fairly central point from komponisto's posts as relates to rationality (which is what we are generally here to discuss) which is that all of the physical and circumstantial evidence against Knox and Sollecito is irrelevant within a wide range of plausible weights assigned to it in light of the prior probabilities surrounding a case of this type. The reason this case is interesting as a test of rationality is that you can reach a likely-correct conclusion without examining any of the evidence discussed here in detail. You would need orders-of-magnitude more compelling evidence to outweigh the very small priors that should have been assigned to the joint guilt of Knox and Sollecito given the compelling evidence against Guede.

Comment author: komponisto 02 February 2010 11:15:06PM 2 points [-]
Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 02 February 2010 10:08:00PM 2 points [-]

Maybe I'm applying some hindsight bias, but I still agree with rolf that the evidence (for komponisto's position) was there in his selection of "the relevant facts". Keep in mind that many people did not spend any time at all reading the pro-guilt website and would not even be aware that he'd excluded "evidence" from there in his summary.

I believe that many of the posters (especially the wrong ones) didn't spend any additional time gathering information beyond that which was presented in the post+discussion; I certainly didn't. I like to believe that, because it implies that they could have gotten it right if they really cared to, which is a nicer thing to believe than that you absolutely can't trust most people's best efforts at thinking and making fair judgments.

Comment author: komponisto 02 February 2010 10:20:13PM 4 points [-]

Jonathan, I think you're confusing my first post with my second.

Comment author: komponisto 02 February 2010 05:34:22PM *  2 points [-]

Well, fellow LWers, I must admit I'm somewhat taken aback here.

I came on the site today intending to reply to Rolf Nelson's comments, which I expected would lead to a detailed discussion of the evidence that maybe a handful of people here would be interested in following, safely confined to an existing post on the topic. Then, I saw...this.

I'm not yet quite sure how to react.

Despite Nelson's protestations that he doesn't care about karma (and, by implication, social status in this community), I see no rationale for this post other than a desire to raise the profile and prestige of his (IMHO deservedly) marginalized viewpoint.

When I wrote my original survey post, I did so hesitantly, with conscious awareness that I was doing something experimental. I was well aware of the dangers of posting about controversial current events (though something like this is noticeably distinct from politics), and I certainly didn't expect most other LW readers to have anything like my level of interest in this particular case. But I did think there might be a few who would find the rationality issues interesting enough to participate in the survey -- enough to justify a low-profile, non-promoted top-level post. I was expecting maybe a couple dozen comments (a few of which I expected would complain about the post's relevance); in the event that it received such a level of interest, I said I would do a followup about my own thoughts.

The LW community could thus have vetoed the whole thing right then and there; instead what happened was that the post was promoted, received 200-odd comments (among which were the thoughts of the some of the biggest guns here such as Eliezer and Yvain), and was voted up into the 20s. Clearly, then, the community had agreed with me that there were important rationality issues at stake in this case, and had decided that, at that moment, it was a perfectly good thing to be talking about on LW. And so they did talk about it, extensively. And, in so doing, they came to a fairly decisive opinion. The question was then: did their opinion agree with mine?

That was the context of the post I called "The Amanda Knox Test" -- which I thought of as a reaction to the commentary on "You Be the Jury", and which I thought of as arguing that the LW community was even more right than it realized. This second post (which was even more well received than the first) also sparked extensive discussion -- the result of which appeared to be an even stronger consensus in favor of Knox's and Sollecito's innocence than before.

My point here is that the idea that the LW readership was somehow bamboozled by misinformation from me is not only completely and obviously mistaken but downright insulting -- logically and otherwise. Whatever further top-level posts on the Kercher case may be warranted (and I don't think any more are, at least not without some major development happening), a post arguing or implying that is clearly not warranted. So I think that this post's current score (-7 at last check) is pretty much on target, and I don't intend to comment any further on it lest intelligent conversation in comments lead to upvotes on the post.

I'm going to wait a bit before saying any more about this (for one thing, I currently have some intervention from Real Life to deal with). In the future, I remain willing to discuss the case with Rolf Nelson or anyone else who sincerely believes that Amanda Knox killed her roommate -- in exactly one place: the comments section of my post on that topic.

Comment author: ciphergoth 02 February 2010 09:07:48AM *  3 points [-]

If that's the only explanation you can think of for the pattern of voting you see, you're not ready to post here. Remember, few here give a damn about the case one way or the other, except as an example for training our brains.

EDIT: since you're an SIAI donor, I'll cut you a little more slack than I did here, as per Wei Dai's comment.

Comment author: komponisto 02 February 2010 02:39:17PM 2 points [-]

since you're an SIAI donor, I'll cut you a little more slack than I did here, as per Wei Dai's comment.

Just for the record, I'm also an SIAI donor.

Comment author: JRMayne 01 February 2010 04:13:32PM 4 points [-]

Bleg for assistance:

I’ve been intermittently discussing Bayes’ Theorem with the uninitiated for years, with uneven results. Typically, I’ll give the classic problem:

3,000 people in the US have Sudden Death Syndrome. I have a test that is 99% accurate; that is, it will wrong on any given person one percent of the time. Steve tests positive for SDS. What is the chance that he has it?

Afterwards, I explain the answer by comparing the false positives to the true positives. And, then I see the Bayes’ Theorem Look, which conveys to me this: "I know Mayne’s good with numbers, and I’m not, so I suppose he’s probably right. Still, this whole thing is some sort of impractical number magic." Then they nod politely and change the subject, and I save the use of Bayes’ Theorem as a means of solving disagreements for another day.

So this leads to my giving a very short presentation on the Prosecutor’s Fallacy next week. The basics of the fallacy are if you’ve got a one-in-3 million DNA match on a suspect, that doesn’t mean it’s three million-to-one that you’ve got that dude’s DNA. I need to present it to bright, interested people who will go straight to brain freeze if I display any equations at all. This isn’t frequentists-vs.-Bayesians; this is just a simple application of Bayes’ Theorem. (I suspect this will be easier to understand than the medical problem.)

I’ve read Bayesian explanations, but I’m aiming at people who are actively uninterested in learning math, and if I can get them to understand only the Prosecutor’s Fallacy, I’ll call Win. A larger understanding of the underlying structure would be a bigger win. Anyone done something like this before with success (or failure of either educational or entertainment value?)

Comment author: komponisto 01 February 2010 05:44:42PM *  3 points [-]

I take it you've already looked at Eliezer's "Intuitive Explanation"?

I think it's really important to get the idea of a sliding scale of evidentiary strength across to people. (This is something that has occurred to me from some of my recent attempts to explain the Knox case to people without training in Bayesianism.) One's level of confidence that something is true varies continuously with the strength of the evidence. It's like a "score" that you're keeping, with information you hear about moving the score up and down.

The abstract structure of the prosecutor's fallacy is misjudging the prior probability. People forget that you start with a handicap -- and that handicap may be quite substantial. Thus, if a piece of evidence (like a test result) is worth, say "10 points" toward guilt, hearing about that piece of evidence doesn't necessarily make the score +10 in favor of guilt; if the handicap was, say, -7, then the score is only +3. If, say, a score of +15 is needed for conviction, the prosecution still has a long way to go.

(By the way, did you see my reply to your comment about psychological evidence?)

Comment author: rolf_nelson 01 February 2010 08:02:28AM 4 points [-]

I've created a rebuttal to komponisto's misleading Amanda Knox post, but don't have enough karma to create my own top-level post. For now, I've just put it here:

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgb3jmh2_5hj95vzgk

Comment author: komponisto 01 February 2010 11:56:48AM *  8 points [-]

If you actually want to debate this, we could do so in the comments section of my post, or alternatively over in the Richard Dawkins forum.

(Though since you say "my intent is merely to debunk komponisto's post rather than establish Amanda's guilt", I'm suspicious. See Against Devil's Advocacy.)

Make sure you've read my comments here in addition to my post itself.

There is one thing I agree with you about, and that is that this statement of mine

these two things constituting so far as I know the entirety of the physical "evidence" against the couple

is misleading. The misleading part is the phrase "so far as I know", which has been interpreted by people who evidently did not read my preceding survey post to mean that I had not heard about all the other alleged physical evidence. I didn't consider this interpretation because I was assuming that my readers had read both True Justice and Friends of Amanda, knew from my previous post that I had obviously read them both myself, and would understand my statement for what it was -- a dismissal of the rest of the so-called "evidence". However, in retrospect, I should have foreseen this misunderstanding, so I've now edited the sentence to read:

these two things constituting pretty much the entirety of the physical "evidence" against the couple.

ETA: At least one person has upvoted the parent without also upvoting this comment, which I interpret as an endorsement of Rolf Nelson's essay. I find this baffling. Almost every one Nelson's points (autopsy report, luminol prints, staged break-in, alleged cleanup...) was extensively discussed in comments at the time. The only one that wasn't (a supposed handprint of Knox's on a pillow in Kercher's room) is an outright falsehood -- as you will see from following Nelson's link, it's not even (close to) what that article claims. Furthermore, Nelson criticizes me for "accept[ing] propaganda from the Friends of Amanda (FoA) at face value" while citing True Justice for an "Introduction to Logic 101".

I challenge anyone who thinks that this represents a serious challenge to my post to come out and identify themselves.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 01 February 2010 09:44:52AM 13 points [-]

Eliezer's posts are always very thoughful, thought provoquing and mind expanding - and I'm not the only one to think this, seeing the vast amounts of karma he's accumulated.

However, reviewing some of the weaker posts (such as high status and stupidity and two aces ), and rereading them as if they hadn't been written by Eliezer, I saw them differently - still good, but not really deserving superlative status.

So I was wondering if Eliezer could write a few of his posts under another name, if this was reasonable, to see if the Karma reaped was very different.

Comment author: komponisto 01 February 2010 11:21:41AM 2 points [-]

It has seemed to me that some of Eliezer's recent post scores have been inflated by around 5-10 points due to his being Eliezer; it would be interesting to test this hypothesis.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 01 February 2010 09:02:31AM *  0 points [-]

What makes the theory relativist is simply the fact that it refers explicitly to particular agents -- humans.

Unfortunately, it's not that easy. An agent, given by itself, doesn't determine preference. It probably does so to a large extent, but not entirely. There is no subject matter of "preference" in general. "Human preference" is already a specific question that someone has to state, that doesn't magically appear from a given "human". A "human" might only help (I hope) to pinpoint the question precisely, if you start in the general ballpark of what you'd want to ask.

I suspect that "Vague statement of human preference"+"human" is enough to get a question of "human preference", and the method of using the agent's algorithm is general enough for e.g. "Vague statement of human preference"+"babyeater" to get a precise question of "babyeater preference", but it's not a given, and isn't even expected to "work" for more alien agents, who are compelled by completely different kinds of questions (not that you'd have a way of recognizing such "error").

The reference to humans or babyeaters is in the method of constructing a preference-implementing machine, not in the concept itself. What humans are is not the info that compels you to define human preference in a particular way, although what humans are may be used as a tool in the definition of human preference, simply because you can pull the right levers and point to the chunks of info that go into the definition you choose.

[W]hy should we do what we prefer rather than what they prefer? The correct answer is, of course, "because that's what we prefer"

That's not a justification. They may turn out to do something right, where you were mistaken, and you'll be compelled to correct.

Comment author: komponisto 01 February 2010 11:17:00AM 0 points [-]

The reference to humans or babyeaters is in the method of constructing a preference-implementing machine, not in the concept itself.

Yes.

Comment author: Unknowns 01 February 2010 04:17:42AM *  -1 points [-]

As it is commonly understood, Eliezer is definitely NOT a moral relativist.

Comment author: komponisto 01 February 2010 04:22:14AM *  2 points [-]

(Downvoted for denying my claim without addressing my argument. That's very annoying.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 01 February 2010 01:44:33AM *  3 points [-]

Now I'm confused. I don't understand how you can have preferences that you use to decide what ought to count as a "moral justification" without already having a moral reference frame.

Since we don't have conscious access to our premises, and we haven't finished reflecting on them, we sometimes go around studying our own conclusions in an effort to discover what counts as a moral justification, but that's not like a philosopher of pure emptiness constructing justificationness from scratch and appeal to some mysterious higher criterion. (Bearing in mind that when someone offers me a higher criterion, it usually ends up looking pretty uninteresting.)

Comment author: komponisto 01 February 2010 03:53:06AM *  6 points [-]

I don't understand how you can have preferences that you use to decide what ought to count as a "moral justification" without already having a moral reference frame.

Well, consider an analogy from mathematical logic: when you write out a formal proof that 2+2 = 4, at some point in the process, you'll end up concatenating two symbols here and two symbols there to produce four symbols; but this doesn't mean you're appealing to the conclusion you're trying to prove in your proof; it just so happens that your ability to produce the proof depends on the truth of the proposition.

Similarly, when an AI with Morality programmed into it computes the correct action, it just follows the Morality algorithm directly, which doesn't necessarily refer explicitly to "humans" as such. But human programmers had to program the Morality algorithm into the AI in the first place; and the reason they did so is because they themselves were running something related to the Morality algorithm in their own brains. That, as you know, doesn't imply that the AI itself is appealing to "human values" in its actual computation (the Morality program need not make such a reference); but it does imply that the meta-ethical theory used by the programmers compelled them to (in an appropriate sense) look at their own brains to decide what to program into the AI.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 31 January 2010 11:05:52PM 4 points [-]

surely there's a causal relation between humans' instantiating the computation and Eliezer's referring to it.

Of course there's a causal relation which explains the causal fact of this reference, but this causal explanation is not the same as the moral justification, and it's not appealed to as the moral justification. We shouldn't save babies because-morally it's the human thing to do but because-morally it's the right thing to do. What physically causes us to save the babies is a combination of the logical fact that saving babies is the right thing to do, and the physical fact that we are compelled by those sorts of logical facts. What makes saving the baby the right thing to do is a logical fact about the subject matter of rightness - in this case, a pretty fast and primitive implication from the premises that are baked into that subject matter and which distinguish it from the subject matter of wrongness. The physical fact that humans are compelled by these sorts of logical facts is not one of the facts which makes saving the baby the right thing to do. If I did assert that this physical fact was involved, I would be a moral relativist and I would say the sorts of other things that moral relativists say, like "If we wanted to eat babies, then that would be the right thing to do."

Comment author: komponisto 01 February 2010 01:37:58AM *  3 points [-]

Of course there's a causal relation which explains the causal fact of this reference, but this causal explanation is not the same as the moral justification, and it's not appealed to as the moral justification

Of course it isn't, because we're doing meta-ethics here, and don't yet have access to the notion of "moral justification"; we're in the process of deciding which kinds of things will be used as "moral justification".

It's your metamorality that is human-dependent, not your morality; see my other comment.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 31 January 2010 10:52:38PM 4 points [-]

Yes -- and the important thing to remember is that the second view, which all of us here agree is silly, is the naive, common-sense human view.

No, it's not. The naive, common-sense human view is that sneaking into Jane's tent while she's not there and stealing her water-gourd is "wrong". People don't end up talking about transcendent ineffable stuff until they have pursued bad philosophy for a considerable length of time. And the conclusion - that you can make murder right without changing the murder itself but by changing a sort of ineffable stuff that makes the murder wrong - is one that, once the implications are put baldly, squarely disagrees with naive moralism. It is an attempt to rescue a naive misunderstanding of the subject matter of mind and ontology, at the expense of naive morality.

What makes the theory relativist is simply the fact that it refers explicitly to particular agents -- humans

I agree that this constitutes relativism, and deny that I am a relativist.

why should we do what we prefer rather than what they prefer? The correct answer is, of course, "because that's what we prefer".

See above. The correct answer is "Because children shouldn't die, they should live and be happy and have fun." Note the lack of any reference to humans - this is the sort of logical fact that humans find compelling, but it is not a logical fact about humans. It is a physical fact that I find that logic compelling, but this physical fact is not, itself, the sort of fact that I find compelling.

This is the part of the problem which I find myself unable to explain well to the LessWrongians who self-identify as moral non-realists. It is, admittedly, more subtle than the point about there not being transcendent ineffable stuff, but still, there is a further point and y'all don't seem to be getting it...

Comment author: komponisto 01 February 2010 01:15:37AM *  8 points [-]

I agree that this constitutes relativism, and deny that I am a relativist.

It looks to me like the opposing position is not based on disagreement with this point but rather outright failure to understand what is being said.

I have the same feeling, from the other direction.

I feel like I completely understand the error you're warning against in No License To Be Human; if I'm making a mistake, it's not that one. I totally get that "right", as you use it, is a rigid designator; if you changed humans, that wouldn't change what's right. Fine. The fact remains, however, that "right" is a highly specific, information-theoretically complex computation. You have to look in a specific, narrow region of computation-space to find it. This is what makes you vulnerable to the chauvinism charge; there are lots of other computations that you didn't decide to single out and call "right", and the question is: why not? What makes this one so special? The answer is that you looked at human brains, as they happen to be constituted, and said, "This is a nice thing we've got going here; let's preserve it."

Yes, of course that doesn't constitute a general license to look at the brains of whatever species you happen to be a member of to decide what's "right"; if the Babyeaters or Pebblesorters did this, they'd get the wrong answer. But that doesn't change the fact that there's no way to convince Babyeaters or Pebblesorters to be interested in "rightness" rather than babyeating or primaility. It is this lack of a totally-neutral, agent-independent persuasion route that is responsible for the fundamentally relative nature of morality.

And yes, of course, it's a mistake to expect to find any argument that would convince every mind, or an ideal philosopher of perfect emptiness -- that's why moral realism is a mistake!

Comment author: Nick_Tarleton 31 January 2010 09:48:51PM *  3 points [-]

Yes -- and the important thing to remember is that the second view, which all of us here agree is silly, is the naive, common-sense human view. It's what people are automatically going to think you're talking about if you go around shouting "Yes Virginia, there are moral facts after all!"

Agreed that this is important. (ETA: I now think Eliezer is right about this.)

Meanwhile, the general public has a term for the view that you and I share: they call it "moral relativism".

We believe (a) that there is no separable essence of goodness, but also (b) that there are moral facts that people can be wrong about. I think the general public understands "moral relativism" to exclude (b), and I don't think there's any short term in common (not philosophical) usage that includes the conjunction of (a) and (b).

What makes the theory relativist is simply the fact that it refers explicitly to particular agents -- humans.

Eliezer doesn't define morality in terms of humans; he defines it (as I understand) in terms of an objective computation that happens to be instantiated by humans. See No License to be Human.

Comment author: komponisto 31 January 2010 10:05:26PM 4 points [-]

We believe (a) that there is no separable essence of goodness, but also (b) that there are moral facts that people can be wrong about. I think the general public understands "moral relativism" to exclude (b)

I think that's uncharitable to the public: surely everyone should admit that people can be mistaken, on occasion, about what they themselves think. A view that holds that nothing that comes out of a person's mouth can ever be wrong is scarcely worth discussing.

Eliezer doesn't define morality in terms of humans; he defines it (as I understand) in terms of an objective computation that happens to be instantiated by humans.

The fact that this computation just so happens to be instantiated by humans and nothing else in the known universe cannot be a coincidence; surely there's a causal relation between humans' instantiating the computation and Eliezer's referring to it.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 31 January 2010 08:31:18PM 5 points [-]

I think there's an ambiguity between "realism" in the sense of "these statements I'm making about 'what's right' are answers to a well-formed question and have a truth value" and "the subject matter of moral discourse is a transcendent ineffable stuff floating out there which compels all agents to obey and which could make murder right by having a different state". Thinking that moral statements have a truth value is cognitivism, which sounds much less ambiguous to me, and that's why I prefer to talk about moral cognitivism rather than moral realism.

As a moral cognitivist, I would look at your diagram and disagree that the Baby-Eating Aliens and humans have different views of the same subject matter, rather, we and they are talking about a different subject matter and it is an error of the computer translation programs that the word comes out as "morality" in both cases. Morality is about how to save babies, not eat them, everyone knows that and they happen to be right. If we could get past difficulties of the translation, the babyeaters would agree with us about what is moral, we would agree with them about what is babyeating, and we would agree about the physical fact that we find different sorts of logical facts to be compelling.

I have a pending post-to-write on how, to the best of my knowledge, there are only two sorts of things that can make a proposition "true", namely physical events and logical implications, and of course mixtures of the two. I mention this because we have a legitimate epistemic preference for simpler hypotheses about the causes of physical events, but no such thing as an epistemic preference for "simpler axioms" when we are talking about logical facts. We may have an aesthetic preference for simpler axioms in math, but that is not the same thing. If there's no preference for simpler assumptions, that doesn't mean the issue is not a factual one, but it may suggest that we are dealing with logical facts rather than physical facts (statements which are made true by which conclusions follow from which premises, rather than the state of a causal event).

Added: Since I have a definite criterion for something being a "fact", I defend the notion of fact-ness against the charge of being a floating extra.

Comment author: komponisto 31 January 2010 09:12:59PM 11 points [-]

I think there's an ambiguity between "realism" in the sense of "these statements I'm making are answers to a well-formed question and have a truth value" and "morality is a transcendent ineffable stuff floating out there which compels all agents to obey and could make murder right by having a different state".

Yes -- and the important thing to remember is that the second view, which all of us here agree is silly, is the naive, common-sense human view. It's what people are automatically going to think you're talking about if you go around shouting "Yes Virginia, there are moral facts after all!"

Meanwhile, the general public has a term for the view that you and I share: they call it "moral relativism".

I don't recall exactly, and I haven't yet bothered to look it up, but I believe when you first introduced your metaethics, there were people (myself among them, I think), who objected, not to your actual meta-ethical views, but to the way that you vigorously denied that you were a "relativist"; and you misunderstood them/us as objecting to your theory itself (I think you maybe even threw in an accusation of not comprehending the logical subtleties of Loeb's Theorem).

What makes the theory relativist is simply the fact that it refers explicitly to particular agents -- humans. Thus, it is automatically subject to the "chauvinism" objection with respect to e.g. Babyeaters: we prefer one thing, they prefer another -- why should we do what we prefer rather than what they prefer? The correct answer is, of course, "because that's what we prefer". But people find that answer unpalatable -- and one reason they might is because it would seem to imply that different human cultures should similarly run right over each other if they don't think they share the same values. Now, we may not like the term "relativism", but it seems to me that this "chauvinism" objection is one that you (and I) need to take at least somewhat seriously.

Comment author: Alicorn 31 January 2010 06:18:33PM 5 points [-]

If you think that lying is just wrong, can't you just... not lie? I don't see the problem here.

Comment author: komponisto 31 January 2010 06:54:30PM 4 points [-]

Can a deontologist still care about consequences?

Suppose you believe that lying is wrong for deontic reasons. Does it follow that we should program an AI never to lie? If so, can a consequentialist counter with arguments about how that would result in destroying the universe and (assuming those arguments were empirically correct) have a hope of changing your mind?

Comment author: Toby_Ord 31 January 2010 06:13:49PM 4 points [-]

You are correct that it is reasonable to assign high confidence to atheism even if it doesn't have 80% support, but we must be very careful here. Atheism is presumably the strongest example of such a claim here on Less Wrong (i.e. one which you can tell a great story why so many intelligent people would disagree etc and hold a high confidence in the face of disagreement). However, this does not mean that we can say that any other given view is just like atheism in this respect and thus hold beliefs in the face of expert disagreement, that would be far too convenient.

Comment author: komponisto 31 January 2010 06:38:09PM *  0 points [-]

However, this does not mean that we can say that any other given view is just like atheism in this respect and thus hold beliefs in the face of expert disagreement, that would be far too convenient.

Of course not; the substance of one's reasons for disagreeing matters greatly. In this case, I suspect there's probably a significant amount of correlation/non-independence between the reasons for believing atheism and believing something like moral non-realism.

One thing we should take away from cases like atheism is that surveys probably shouldn't be interpreted naively, but rather as somewhat noisy information. I think my own heuristic (on binary questions where I already have a strong opinion) is basically to look on which side of 50% my position falls; if the majority agrees with me (or, say, the average confidence in my position is over 50%), I tend to regard that as (more) evidence in my favor, with the strength increasing as the percentage increases.

(This, I think, would be part of how I would answer Yvain.)

Comment author: RobinZ 30 January 2010 06:55:43PM *  0 points [-]

...how do you pronounce that? And what is the etymology? The only obvious source I can see is "evil", which is Germanic rather than Latinate.

(A carping complaint, to be sure, but even if I fold on this one, I still maintain that many mismatched combinations - particularly "ombudsperson" - are abominations unto good taste.)

Comment author: komponisto 30 January 2010 07:00:20PM *  3 points [-]

What Alicorn said. "Evitare" is Latin for "to avoid"; if "X-are" is a Latin verb meaning "to Y", then an "X-andum" is a "thing to be Y-ed".

Comment author: RobinZ 30 January 2010 06:43:25PM *  7 points [-]

+10karma for you!

I have a bit of a negative reaction to deontology, but upon consideration the argument would be equally applicable to consequentialism: the prescriptions and proscriptions of a deontological morality are necessarily arbitrary, and likewise the desideratum and disdesideratum (what is the proper antonym? Edit: komponisto suggests "evitandum", which seems excellent) of a consequentialist morality are necessarily arbitrary.

...which makes me wonder if the all-atheists-are-nihilists meme is founded in deontological intuitions.

Comment author: komponisto 30 January 2010 06:48:10PM *  9 points [-]

desideratum...(what is the proper antonym?)

"Evitandum"?

Sounds even better in the plural: "The evitanda of the theory..."

Comment author: Alicorn 30 January 2010 06:23:32PM 3 points [-]

Is there a suitable substitute for tl;dr that you would find less distracting? I do want to signal "this is an ultra-short summary" to avoid people interpreting it as part of the "flow" of the whole article.

Comment author: komponisto 30 January 2010 06:38:51PM *  4 points [-]

How about "(Ultra-Short) Summary:..."?

In response to Logical Rudeness
Comment author: Bo102010 29 January 2010 01:24:53PM *  6 points [-]

Apologies if this is injecting too much mind-killing, but I really started taking notice of this type argument-gymnastics last year about the "Cash for Clunkers" program.

"This program is great! It will get money to the struggling auto-makers."

"Wouldn't it be more efficient to just give them money like we did before? And what if it just goes to the strong auto-makers?"

"Well, maybe. But think about the environmental benefit of all those old cars off the road!"

"Wouldn't it be more efficient to just spend the money on the environment directly? And isn't manufacturing a bunch of new cars bad for the environment?"

"Well yeah, but it will get money to the struggling auto-makers!"

In response to comment by Bo102010 on Logical Rudeness
Comment author: komponisto 30 January 2010 03:21:06PM 5 points [-]
Comment author: loqi 29 January 2010 02:38:23AM 1 point [-]

If you know that art can be explained, then presumably you've encountered an explanation of it. Any chance you could point us in the direction of it?

In response to comment by loqi on Bizarre Illusions
Comment author: komponisto 30 January 2010 03:57:11AM 0 points [-]
Comment author: SilasBarta 28 January 2010 11:35:22PM 1 point [-]

How are you so sure that's the problem? What distinguishes the state of art right now, from one where there is no justification for why one work is more artistic than other, and it's just the blind leading the blind, everyone eventually claiming they can see the Emporer's clothes?

And FWIW, there really aren't many things that are hard to explain (given enough time) -- just people who don't understand their own fields.

Comment author: komponisto 30 January 2010 03:52:31AM *  5 points [-]

How are you so sure that's the problem? What distinguishes the state of art right now, from one where there is no justification for why one work is more artistic than other, and it's just the blind leading the blind, everyone eventually claiming they can see the Emporer's clothes?

The world is big and complex, and contains lots of different things. There is plenty of pseudo-art out there, no question -- just like there is plenty of pseudo-science. But for reasons that aren't immediately obvious (though some hypotheses do suggest themselves after a bit of thought), people regard pseudo-art as diminishing the credibility of Art as a pursuit, while not doing the same with pseudoscience vis-a-vis Science.

I should admit that I'm really only expertly-familiar with one particular art form (music), so the following is largely extrapolation as it applies to others -- but I can't imagine that the situation isn't similar.

There is a direct analog of inferential distance in art. In fact, "analog" may not be the right word; it may just literally be a form of inferential distance. Experience and training make a huge difference with respect to how a work is perceived. This is an effect quite independent of social clique-formation; it's simply the result of one's brain working along a certain path for a long time, after which it becomes difficult for others who haven't traveled the same path to follow one's thoughts. Unfortunately, this fact is not sufficiently appreciated; people simply expect inferential distances to be short.

Given this, it's clearly possible that one could slowly retrace the path for the benefit of others, in many small steps, eventually bringing them along to where one is. But most people with advanced artistic knowledge do not have this skill, and most people without advanced artistic knowledge don't expect them to, because they don't expect art to need to be explained. So it shouldn't be surprising that there aren't a lot of really good art explanations around.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 January 2010 01:44:37AM 3 points [-]

The crowing seems unhealthy, for both parties.

Really? This very day, someone said FAIL to me, I admitted it, and I'm still alive and healthy. I've already lived through an arguer's worst nightmare, and it doesn't seem to have harmed me much.

Comment author: komponisto 30 January 2010 02:58:44AM 9 points [-]

Other people are different.

Speaking for myself, I find it very unpleasant to be on the receiving end of crowing. Hence I have a much easier time admitting mistakes to people I particularly trust not to crow. (One of the nice things about LW is that there isn't much crowing here, which makes mind-changing and fessing up easier. I'd definitely like to keep it that way.)

Comment author: SilasBarta 28 January 2010 11:09:41PM 2 points [-]

Category theory doesn't take 10 years to explain. You should be able to explain to a willing, intelligent friend in two full days, and get them to a point where they see the beauty.

I've done similar things, like explaining the elegant beauty of aircraft component structural analysis -- got a decent appreciation across in 10 minutes. ("You know how a chain is as strong as its weakest link? A component is as strong as its weakest failure mode...")

The point is, you can explain it. That's a lot more than you can do for (much of) art, it seems.

Comment author: komponisto 28 January 2010 11:23:58PM 5 points [-]

The point is, you can explain it. That's a lot more than you can do for (much of) art, it seems.

Art can be explained. There just aren't that many people capable of explaining it; explaining things is a difficult skill.

Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 28 January 2010 11:04:32PM 2 points [-]

But then what do you do when something really does take that long to explain? People say category theory is beautiful; is the nonmathematician supposed to call them liars?

Comment author: komponisto 28 January 2010 11:12:27PM 0 points [-]

At least where category theory is concerned, you don't have to pay.

Comment author: komponisto 28 January 2010 09:24:26PM 3 points [-]

For the "How LW is Perceived" file:

Here is an excerpt from a comments section elsewhere in the blogosphere:

In the meantime, one comment on that other interesting reading at Less Wrong. It has been fun sifting through various posts on a variety of subjects. Every time I leave I have the urge to give them the Vulcan hand signal and say "Live Long and Prosper". LOL.

I shall leave the interpretation of this to those whose knowledge of Star Trek is deeper than mine...

In response to comment by Blueberry on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: Alicorn 26 January 2010 07:49:29PM 6 points [-]

I might write that.

In response to comment by Alicorn on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: komponisto 26 January 2010 07:51:17PM 0 points [-]

Ha! I was about to say, "I wonder if Alicorn might be interested in writing such a post".

In response to comment by komponisto on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: Blueberry 26 January 2010 07:27:27PM 0 points [-]

Right, which is why I was saying that some ethical theories can't be expressed by a utility function. And there could be many such incomparable qualities: even adding in infinity and negative infinity may not be enough (though the transfinite ordinals, or the surreal numbers, might be).

I'm surprised at that +b, because that doesn't preserve utility ratios.

In response to comment by Blueberry on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: komponisto 26 January 2010 07:48:11PM *  1 point [-]

Right, which is why I was saying that some ethical theories can't be expressed by a utility function.

Ah, I see. But I'm still not actually sure that's true, though...see below.

I'm surprised at that +b, because that doesn't preserve utility ratios.

Indeed not; utilities are measured on an interval scale, not a ratio scale. There's no "absolute zero". (I believe Eliezer made a youthful mistake along these lines, IIRC.) This expresses the fact that utility functions are just (scaled) preference orderings.

In response to comment by komponisto on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: Alicorn 26 January 2010 07:20:04PM *  9 points [-]

This is called the "consequentialist doppelganger" phenomenon, when I've heard it described, and it's very, very annoying to non-consequentialists. Yes, you can turn any ethical system into a consequentialism by applying the following transformation:

  1. What would the world be like if everyone followed Non-Consequentialism X?
  2. You should act to achieve the outcome yielded by Step 1.

But this ignores what we might call the point of Non-Consequentialism X, which holds that you should follow it for reasons unrelated to how it will make the world be.

In response to comment by Alicorn on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: komponisto 26 January 2010 07:33:20PM 3 points [-]

But this ignores what we might call the point of Non-Consequentialism X, which holds that you should follow it for reasons unrelated to how it will make the world be.

I'm tempted to ask what kind of reasons could possibly fall into such a category -- but we don't have to have that discussion now unless you particularly want to.

Mainly, I just wanted to point out that when whoever-it-was above mentioned "your utility function", you probably should have interpreted that as "your preferences".

In response to comment by komponisto on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: Blueberry 26 January 2010 07:17:46PM 0 points [-]

You may run into problems trying to create a utility function for some forms of deontology, at least if you're mapping into the real numbers. For instance, some deontologists would say that killing a person has infinite negative utility which can't be cancelled out by any number of positive utility outcomes.

In response to comment by Blueberry on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: komponisto 26 January 2010 07:23:38PM 0 points [-]

That wouldn't be mapping into the real numbers, of course, since infinity isn't a real number.

As I understand it, utility functions are supposed to be equivalence classes of mappings into the real numbers, where two such mappings are said to be equivalent if they are related by a (positive) affine transformation (x -> ax + b where a>0).

In response to comment by komponisto on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: thomblake 26 January 2010 07:06:46PM *  0 points [-]

Hmm... I think Eliezer might have overstated his case a little (for the lay audience). If you take a utility function to be normative with respect to your actions, it's not merely descriptive of your preferences, for some meanings of "preference" - not including, I would think, the definition Eliezer would use.

Using more ordinary language, a Kantian might have preferences about the outcomes of his actions, but doesn't think such preferences are the primary concern in what one ought to do.

In response to comment by thomblake on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: komponisto 26 January 2010 07:18:21PM 0 points [-]

Using more ordinary language, a Kantian might have preferences about the outcomes of his actions, but doesn't think such preferences are the primary concern in what one ought to do.

Oh. Well, that's not a distinction that seems terribly important to me. I'm happy to talk about "preferences" as being (necessarily) causally related to one's actions.

In response to comment by komponisto on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: thomblake 26 January 2010 06:53:40PM 1 point [-]

Utility functions describe your preferences. Their existence doesn't presuppose consequentialism, I don't think.

There are a few things meant by "consequentialism". It can be as general as "outcomes/consequences are what's important when making decisions" to as specific as "Mill's Utilitarianism". The term was only coined mid-20th century and it's not-very-technical jargon, so it hasn't quite settled yet. I'm pretty sure the use here is more on the general side.

Other theories about what's important when making decisions (deontology, virtue ethics) could possibly be expressed as utility functions, but are not amenable to it.

In response to comment by thomblake on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: komponisto 26 January 2010 07:12:57PM 0 points [-]

Other theories about what's important when making decisions (deontology, virtue ethics) could possibly be expressed as utility functions, but are not amenable to it.

Why not, if they're about preferences?

My understanding is that a utility function is nothing but a scaled preference ordering, and I interpret ethical debates as being disputes about what one's preferences --i.e. one's utility function -- ought to be.

For example (to oversimplify and caricature): the "consequentialist" might argue that one should be willing to torture one person to save 1000 from certain death, while the "deontologist" argues that one should not because Torture is Wrong. Both sides of this argument are asserting preferences about the state of the world: the "consequentialist" assigns higher utility to the situation in which 1000 people are alive and you're guilty of torture, and the "deontologist" assigns higher utility to the situation in which the 1000 have perished but your hands are clean.

In response to comment by komponisto on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 January 2010 06:37:50PM 1 point [-]

Utility functions are actually an extreme of consequentialism; they state that your actions should not just be based on consequences, but a weighted probability distribution over outcomes.

Comment author: komponisto 26 January 2010 06:47:56PM *  0 points [-]

In that case, how could you be said to have preferences about outcomes without being a consequentialist?

In response to comment by LucasSloan on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: Alicorn 26 January 2010 07:02:23AM 2 points [-]

hardware

No. I'm software. My preferences stand even if you hypothetically implement me in silico.

your utility function

No. Geez, can we drop the "utility functions" and all the other consequentialism debris for like a week sometime? It would be a welcome respite.

Why?

It's a terminal value. We have a convention of not having to answer "why" about those.

In response to comment by Alicorn on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: komponisto 26 January 2010 06:22:42PM 0 points [-]

Geez, can we drop the "utility functions" and all the other consequentialism debris for like a week sometime? It would be a welcome respite.

Utility functions describe your preferences. Their existence doesn't presuppose consequentialism, I don't think.

Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 25 January 2010 12:59:54AM 1 point [-]

That is a fascinating counterargument that I'm not sure what to make of yet.

Comment author: komponisto 26 January 2010 03:47:18AM 0 points [-]

Here's how I see the whole issue, after some more reflection:

Imagine a hypothetical universe with more than 3^^^3 total bits of information in it, which also contained a version of the Kercher murder. If you knew enough about the state of such a universe (e.g. if you were something like a Laplacian demon with respect to it), you could conceivably have on the order of 3^^^3 bits of evidence that the Amanda Knox of that universe was innocent of the crime.

Now, the possibility would still exist that you were being deceived by a yet more powerful demon. But this possibility would only bound your probability away from 0 by an amount smaller than 1/3^^^3. In your (hypothesized) state of knowledge, you would be entitled to assert a probability of 1/3^^^3 that Knox killed Kercher.

Furthermore, if a demon were deceiving you to the extent of feeding you 3^^^3 bits of "misleading" information, it would automatically be creating, within your mind, a model so complex as to almost certainly contain fully conscious versions of Knox, Kercher, and everyone else involved. In other words, it would effectively be creating an autonomous world in which Knox was innocent. Thus, while you might technically be "mistaken", in the sense that your highly complex model does not "correspond" to the external situation known to the demon, the moral force of that mistake would be undermined considerably, in view of the existence of a morally significant universe in which (the appropriate version of) Knox was indeed innocent.

When we make probability estimates, what we're really doing is measuring the information content of our model. (The more detailed our model, the more extreme our estimates should be.) Positing additional layers of reality only adds information; it cannot take information away. A sufficiently complex model might be "wrong" as a model but yet morally significant as a universe in its own right.

Comment author: pengvado 25 January 2010 03:03:33AM 4 points [-]

The process that builds the GLUT has to contain your mind, but nothing else. The deceiver tries all exponentially-many strings of sensory inputs, and sees what effects they have on your simulated internal state. Select the one that maximizes your belief in proposition X. No simulation of X involved, and the deceiver doesn't even need to know anything more about X than you think you know at the beginning.

Comment author: komponisto 25 January 2010 03:15:42AM *  0 points [-]

But remember my original point here: level-of-belief is controlled by the amount of information. In order for me to reach certain extremely high levels of certainty about Knox's innocence, it may be necessary to effectively simulate a copy of Knox inside my mind.

ETA: And that of course raises the question about whether in that case my beliefs are about the mind-external Knox ("simulated" or not) or the mind-internal simulated Knox. This is somewhat tricky, but the answer is the former -- for the same reason that the simple, non-conscious model of Amanda I have in my mind right now represents beliefs about the real, conscious Amanda in Capanne prison. Thus, a demon could theoretically create a conscious simulation of an innocent Amanda Knox in my mind, which could represent a "wrong" extremely-certain belief about a particular external reality. But in order to pull off a deception of this order, the demon would have to inhabit a world with a lot more information than even the large amount available to me in this scenario.

Comment author: pozorvlak 24 January 2010 06:15:09PM 2 points [-]
Comment author: komponisto 24 January 2010 06:34:44PM 6 points [-]

Got it bad -- but went to a meetup once anyway, and had a great time. Let this serve as encouragement to similarly-afflicted others!

In response to comment by komponisto on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: Alicorn 22 January 2010 09:59:16PM 0 points [-]

I don't mind at all, but I haven't found it to do anything much when I've tried it.

In response to comment by Alicorn on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: komponisto 22 January 2010 10:02:59PM 0 points [-]

Indeed not; all it seemed to do (at least on my end) was transform itself into a "Remove from Friends" button. Did anything happen on your end?

In response to comment by MichaelGR on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: Alicorn 22 January 2010 09:31:01PM 1 point [-]

Even if you were not signed up and never planned to be, I can always use more friends! What's your preferred offsite contact method?

In response to comment by Alicorn on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: komponisto 22 January 2010 09:57:59PM 2 points [-]

I can always use more friends!

I've always wondered what the "Add to Friends" button on LW does, so I'm trying it out on you. (I hope you don't mind!)

In response to comment by LauraABJ on Normal Cryonics
Comment author: MichaelVassar 22 January 2010 04:27:01AM 5 points [-]

I would be very surprised if uploading was easier than AI, maybe slightly more surprised than I would be by cold fusion being real, but with the sort of broad probabilities I use that's still a bit over 1%. AGI is terribly difficult too. It's not FAI or uploading but very high caliber people have failed over and over.

The status quo points to AGI before FAI, but the status quo continually changes, both due to trends and due to radical surprises. The world wouldn't have to change more radically than it has numerous times in the past for the sanity waterline to rise far enough that people capable of making significant progress towards AGI reliably understood that they needed to aim for FAI or for uploading instead. Once Newton could unsurprisingly be a Christian theist and an Alchemist. By the mid 20th century the priors against Einstein being a theist were phenomenal and in fact he wasn't one. (his Spinozaism is closer to what we call atheism than what most people call atheism is). I don't think that extreme low probabilities are self defeating to me, though they might be for some people, I just disagree with them.

Comment author: komponisto 22 January 2010 09:51:41PM 1 point [-]

The status quo points to AGI before FAI

Who are the people capable of making significant progress on AGI who aren't already aware of (and indeed working on) FAI? My impression was that the really smart "MIT-type" AI people were basically all working on narrow AI.

Comment author: MichaelGR 22 January 2010 02:38:26AM *  5 points [-]

Don't forget karma inflation.

As more people join Less Wrong, more currency is also created, devaluing each unit of karma. This means that a post made a year ago that got 30 votes is getting more support than a post getting 30 votes today.

But at least we don't have a central bank yet...

Comment author: komponisto 22 January 2010 03:22:40AM *  -1 points [-]

But surely this is offset somewhat by the possibility of new members voting on old posts.

Comment author: AngryParsley 22 January 2010 01:46:46AM *  3 points [-]

Several states allow religious objections to autopsy. The coroner can override it in some cases (infectious disease that endangers the public, murder suspected), but it's better than nothing. The state doesn't care what religion you are, just that you've signed a form stating you object to an autopsy.

ETA: The override process is pretty involved in California. It involves petitioning the superior court to get an order to autopsy.

Comment author: komponisto 22 January 2010 02:00:12AM 1 point [-]

I was assuming from what Eliezer said that suicides were also in the "override" category. If not, that's good news.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 January 2010 08:16:01PM 8 points [-]

Suicides automatically get autopsied, so not currently an option.

Otherwise... well, it seems fairly obvious to an expected utility maximizer who believes in the von Neumann/Morgenstern axiom of Continuity, that if being cryonically suspended is better than death, and there exists a spectrum of lives so horrible as to not be worth living, then there must exist some intermediate point of a life exactly horrible enough that it is not worth committing suicide but is worth deliberately suspending yourself if you have the option.

Comment author: komponisto 22 January 2010 01:13:46AM *  3 points [-]

Suicides automatically get autopsied, so not currently an option.

This seems quite unfair to sufferers of mental illness. What if a person signed up for cryonics later becomes depressed, resulting in suicide? (It could happen.)

I guess I shouldn't be surprised at the near-total absence of cryonics-friendly law, but it's still worth remarking upon.

Comment author: wedrifid 22 January 2010 12:16:05AM 3 points [-]

Unfortunately the "exchange rate" for me is bad: downvotes are worth about five to ten times what upvotes are.

This approximately matches the impact that positive and negative social exchanges have on people in general in person. (From my recollection of relevant studies read years ago.)

Comment author: komponisto 22 January 2010 12:42:57AM *  2 points [-]

Wow, that's interesting. I might like to read about that at some point.

Comment author: Blueberry 21 January 2010 11:37:04PM 1 point [-]

I remain as absolutely terrified of negative karma as I was when LW started.

I'm curious why you care.

Comment author: komponisto 21 January 2010 11:53:53PM 4 points [-]

I'm curious why you care.

My guess: humans are naturally wired to care about what others think; that part of my brain is hugely oversized or overactive.

It's not without its advantages, but there's a tradeoff. I get a huge motivational high when something is well received, but the price I pay is near-depression when something isn't.

Unfortunately the "exchange rate" for me is bad: downvotes are worth about five to ten times what upvotes are.

In response to Easy Predictor Tests
Comment author: komponisto 21 January 2010 11:39:44PM *  0 points [-]

A more difficult challenge is predicting karma on your top level posts.

That is difficult, and one of the reasons I'm very hesitant to post. (Luckily, my first three posts were "important" enough to me that I almost didn't worry about their scores before posting; as for the fourth, I somehow managed to predict the score almost exactly correctly.)

My predictors in this area tend to be way off the mark. For this post, my guess is between +4 and +20. Reasoning: I don't see how it could get over 20 unless it gets promoted and the concept surprises readers; 4 seems like a solid guess for "interesting, uncontroversial, but not groundbreaking."

I've been thinking it might be useful to establish a consensus on the "meaning" of various levels of post karma. Here's my top-of-the-head-suggestion:

0-10: Acceptable

10-20: Solid

20-30: Good

30 - 40: Quite Good

40+: Outstanding

100+: Unheard-of Stupendous Brilliance

I'd be curious to hear how this compares to others' views of post scores.

In response to Easy Predictor Tests
Comment author: dclayh 21 January 2010 06:53:43PM 5 points [-]

A simpler version is to pick from these three distinct outcomes: Positive karma, 0 karma, negative karma.

Personally, if I expect a comment or post to get negative karma, I don't make it. Perhaps that's too conservative on my part, but it's the case.

Comment author: komponisto 21 January 2010 11:24:52PM 0 points [-]

Personally, if I expect a comment or post to get negative karma, I don't make it. Perhaps that's too conservative on my part, but it's the case.

Me too. I remain as absolutely terrified of negative karma as I was when LW started. (In fact, it's possibly even worse now, since I have a reputation to uphold!)

Right now, I have a recent comment at -1, which for contextual reasons I can't delete, and it's driving me crazy.

(Yes, I know this is bad, and I shouldn't be like this. Unfortunately, I don't know how to change myself in this way.)

In response to That Magical Click
Comment author: komponisto 21 January 2010 02:10:46PM 14 points [-]

I propose the term "clack" to denote the opposite of "click" -- that is, resisting an obviously correct conclusion.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 21 January 2010 06:40:38AM 4 points [-]

I wonder if we should just use the word Bayesian and drop "Rationalist". It has an entrenched meaning opposite to empiricist. We can also use words like Skeptic, Scientists, Popperian, and the like in their traditional meanings.

Comment author: komponisto 21 January 2010 02:08:48PM 2 points [-]

I wonder if we should just use the word Bayesian and drop "Rationalist". It has an entrenched meaning opposite to empiricist.

I think the traditional "rationalist/empiricist" dichotomy is most likely a confusion. I don't mind at all if we end up helping to displace this terminology by spreading our sense of "rationalist".

In response to That Magical Click
Comment author: komponisto 20 January 2010 10:36:03PM *  11 points [-]

This post, in addition to being a joy to read, contains one particular awesome insight:

My best guess is that clickiness has something to do with failure to compartmentalize - missing, or failing to use, the mental gear that lets human beings believe two contradictory things at the same time. Clicky people would tend to be people who take all of their beliefs at face value.

Here's some confirmation: I must have at least some clickiness, since I "got" the intelligence explosion/FAI/transhumanism stuff pretty much immediately, despite not having been raised on science fiction.

And, it turns out: I hate, hate, HATE compartmentalization. Just hate it -- in pretty much all its forms. For example, I have always despised the way schools divide up learning into different "classes", which you're not supposed to relate to each other. (It's particularly bad at the middle/high school level, where, if you dare to ask why you shouldn't be able to study both music and drama, or both French and Spanish, they look at you with a puzzled expression, as though such thoughts had occurred to no human being before.) I hate C.P. Snow's goddamned "Two Cultures". I hate the way mathematicians in different areas use the exact same concepts and pretend they don't by employing different notation and terminology. I hate the way music theorists invent separate theoretical universes for different historical periods.

In general, don't get me started on "separate magisteria"....

Eliezer, you're seriously onto something here.

In response to That Magical Click
Comment author: Kutta 20 January 2010 08:55:16PM *  37 points [-]

Is that really just it? Is there no special sanity to add, but only ordinary madness to take away?

I think this is the primary factor. I've got a pretty amusing story about this.

Last week I met a relatively distant relative, a 15 year old guy who's in a sports oriented high school. He plays football, has not much scientific, literary or intellectual background, and is quite average and normal in most conceivable ways. Some TV program on Discovery was about "robots", and in a shortly unfolding 15 minute spontaneous conversation I've managed to explain him the core problems of FAI, without him getting stuck at any points of my arguments. I'm fairly sure that he had no previous knowledge about the subject.

First I made a remark in connection to the TV program's poetic question about what if robots will be able to get most human work done; I said that if robots get the low wage jobs, humans would eventually get paid more on average, and the problem is only there when robots can do everything humans can and somehow end up actually doing all those things.

Then he asked if I think they'll get that smart, and I answered that it's quite possible in this century. I explained recursive self-improvement in two sentences, to illustrate the reasons why they could potentially get very, very smart in a small amount of time. I talked about the technology that would probably allow AIs to act upon the world with great efficiency and power. Next, he said something like "that's good, wouldn't AI's would be a big help, like, they will invent new medicine?" At this point I was pretty amused. I assured him that AIs indeed have great potentials. I talked then very shortly about most basic AI topics, providing the usual illustrations like Hollywood AIs, smiley-tiled solar systems and foolish programmers overlooking the complexity of value. I delineated CEV in a simplified "redux" manner, focusing on the idea that we should optimally just extract all relevant information from human brains by scanning them, to make sure nothing we care about is left out. "That should be a huge technical problem, to scan that much brains", he said.

And now:

"But if the AI gets so potent, would not it be a problem anyway, even if it's perfectly friendly, that it can do everything much better than humans, and we'll get bored?"

"Hahh, not at all. If you think that getting all bored and unneeded is bad, then it is a real preference inside your head. It'll be taken into account by the AI, and it will make sure it'll not pamper you excessively."

"Ah, that sounds pretty reasonable".

Now, all of this happened in the course of roughly 15 minutes. No absurdity heuristic, no getting lost, no objections; he just took everything I said at face value, assuming that I'm more knowledgeable on these matters, and I was in general convinced that nothing I explained was particularly hard to grasp. He asked relevant questions and was very interested in what I said.

Some thoughts why this was possible:

  • The guy belongs to a certain social strata in Hungary, namely to those who newly entered the middle class by free entrepreneurship that became a possibility after the country switched to capitalism. At first, the socialist regime repressed religion and just about every human rights, then eased up, softened, and became what's known as the "happiest barrack". People became unconcerned with politics (which they could not influence) and religion (which was though of as a highly personal matter that should not be taken to public), they just focused on their own wealth and well-being. I'm convinced that the parents of the guy care zero about any religion, the absence of religion, doctrine, ideology or whatever. They just work to make a living and don't think about lofty matters, leaving their son ideologically perfectly intact. Just like my own parents.

  • Actually, AI is not intrinsically abstract or hard to digest; my interlocutor knew what an AI is, even if from movies, and probably watched just enough Discovery to have a sketchy picture about future technologies. The mind design space argument is not that hard (he had known about evolution because it's taught in school. He immediately agreed that AIs can be much smarter than humans because if we wait a million years, maybe humans can also become much smarter, so it's technically possible), and the smiley-tiled solar system is an entertaining and effective explanation about morality. I think that Eliezer has put extreme amounts of effort to maximize the chance that his AI ideas will get transmitted even to people who are primed or biased against AI or at risk of motivated skepticism. So far, I've had great success using his parables, analogues and ways of explanation.

  • My perceived status as an "intellectual" made him accept my explanations at face value. He's a football player in a smallish countryside city and I'm a serious college student in the capital city (it's good he doesn't know how lousy a student I am). Still, I do not think this was a significant factor. He probably does not talk about AI among football players, but being a male he has some basic interests in futuristic or gadgety subjects.

In the end, it probably all comes down to lacking some specific ways of craziness. Cryonics seemed normal on that convention Eliezer attended, and I'm sure every idea that is epistemically and morally correct can in principle be a so-called normal thing. Besides this guy, I've even had full success lecturing a 17 year old metal drummer on AI and SIAI - and he was situated socioeconomically very similarly to the first guy, and neither he had any previous knowledge.

In response to comment by Kutta on That Magical Click
Comment author: komponisto 20 January 2010 09:54:03PM 9 points [-]

in Hungary

Surprise level went down from gi-normous to merely moderate at this point.

Comment author: Kevin 20 January 2010 10:35:44AM *  0 points [-]

On applying the word liar, I wasn't intending to allude to an existing meme.

First, she was found guilty of trying to implicate Patrick Lumumba in the murder. I understand she did it during duress. I'm not sure if "told during duress" changes when we can apply the word liar, but I agree that liar is a charged word.

Second, I mean that I am positive she has told at least one lie while on the witness stand. There are many aspects of the defense's story that don't quite make sense. They, like the prosecution, are making up stories about what exactly happened to Merideth Kutcher that night. Also, in Italian court, defendants are legally allowed to lie on the witness stand; she was not expected to tell nothing but the truth during the trial.

In response to comment by Kevin on Advancing Certainty
Comment author: komponisto 20 January 2010 02:10:06PM 1 point [-]

Reply here.

Comment author: komponisto 20 January 2010 02:09:28PM *  3 points [-]

On the "liar" issue, and the implication of Lumumba:

What numerous people (not here, for the most part, but with some exceptions) have been either forgetting or ignoring, almost to the point of obstinacy, is that Knox did not come up with Lumumba's name spontaneously. She and Lumumba had exchanged text messages on the night of the killing; in one of them, Amanda wrote "see you later". Her interrogators questioned her aggressively about this correspondence, clearly with the implication that Lumumba (as well as Amanda herself) might have been involved in the murder. The idea of Lumumba's guilt was planted in her head by the police. Knox's "accusation" of Lumumba amounted to no more than saying "Well, all right, I guess maybe he could have done it."

To "lie" is to make an assertion that one knows to be false. Amanda Knox was unambiguously clear about the fact that her "story" about Lumumba being the killer was a dreamlike vision, not an actual claimed memory. It does not constitute a positive assertion about the state of the world, and thus cannot be a "lie". Now, definitions don't matter, of course; but the point is that the lack of correspondence between this particular account and the actual reality of the situation is not Bayesian evidence of her having wished to deceive police about her state of knowledge (which would in turn be Bayesian evidence of her guilt).

Comment author: Alicorn 19 January 2010 02:33:38PM 5 points [-]

Apparently you have some similarly minded peers; I'll change the title.

Comment author: komponisto 19 January 2010 04:28:33PM 2 points [-]

Personally, I was a fan of the previous title. The perils of not speaking out, alas.

Comment author: komponisto 19 January 2010 08:26:27AM *  1 point [-]

Strange fact about my brain, for anyone interested in this kind of thing:

Even though my recent top-level post has (currently) been voted up to 19, earning me 190 karma points, I feel like I've lost status as a result of writing it.

This doesn't make much sense, though it might not be a bad thing.

Comment author: orthonormal 19 January 2010 05:03:04AM 5 points [-]

I must confer on you the highest form of praise among aspiring rationalists:

"Damn it, why didn't I think of that?"

Comment author: komponisto 19 January 2010 07:42:44AM -1 points [-]

Seconded. In fact I'm almost tempted to declare that this supersedes my post

In response to Advancing Certainty
Comment author: Sniffnoy 18 January 2010 10:41:42PM 1 point [-]

"Generalizing from One Example" and "Reference Class of the Unreferenceclassable" links are both broken.

Comment author: komponisto 18 January 2010 10:46:31PM 1 point [-]

Thanks, fixed.

Comment author: orthonormal 18 January 2010 10:12:57PM 2 points [-]

Agree with Morendil about the paragraph beginning "In the vanishingly unlikely event...". Without the earlier references, it's not good to have your example of something you're sure of be something that a newcomer or Googler could find so controversial.

I'd suggest you either swap it for something else in which the very probably correct view is also the mainstream one within the pool of possible readers, or failing that, put your first link to your old post here instead of at the paragraph beginning with "Previously...".

Comment author: komponisto 18 January 2010 10:20:38PM 0 points [-]

Done. (Good catch.)

Comment author: orthonormal 18 January 2010 08:46:04PM 2 points [-]

if this evidence is truly worth paying attention to, why shouldn't it be admissible in court?

Hmm. I was going to say that it's really a form of private evidence, if these "truth wizards" can tell more accurately on a subconscious level than they can consciously explain the reasons for. But this basically puts them in the same boat as other expert witnesses, whose authority and probity basically has to be trusted (or countered by another expert of the same type).

Exactly what is this person's error rate?

Like I said, the usual figure is 5% false positives, and this person did list a recent case where they offered an opinion on the blog and later found themselves mistaken. Their track record otherwise looks pretty good.

I am strongly tempted to defy the data here.

Why? (Serious question.) It doesn't seem to me that there's strong evidence in the other direction, just a low prior of a random person being a sociopath. But given the way that this case has gone, it's worth considering the hypothesis that Amanda Knox is a sociopath who is innocent of this particular crime, but suspected nonetheless because of her atypical behavior during the investigation.

The prosecutor does appear to be a hack with an affinity for farfetched conspiracies, but he didn't try that in every case he's touched— it's reasonable to suspect that something in Knox's interrogation set him down that trail, and one plausible hypothesis is that she wasn't acting the way a neurotypical human being would act in that situation. Indeed, there are plenty of bits of evidence you mentioned to this effect, but you (rightly) treated them as mostly irrelevant to the question of whether she committed the crime. They are, however, good evidence that she's not neurotypical, and Eyes for Lies' analysis further supports that theory.

Comment author: komponisto 18 January 2010 10:13:44PM *  3 points [-]

We may need to do some tabooing. My understanding is that "sociopath" is a much narrower category than "not neurotypical"; in particular, I was under the impression that sociopathy involved a lack of empathy. That doesn't appear to characterize Knox from anything else I have come across (there are perhaps one or two anecdotes that you could retrospectively regard as consistent with that assumption, but only if you didn't know anything else -- most information about Knox from her hometown points in the opposite direction).

It doesn't seem to me that there's strong evidence in the other direction, just a low prior of a random person being a sociopath.

Start here, here, here, and here (4:50).

But you may be right in the sense that I may be overestimating P(Guilty|Sociopath).

In response to Advancing Certainty
Comment author: komponisto 18 January 2010 09:51:09PM 2 points [-]

In accordance with a suggestion that turned out to be rather good, I've now deleted several paragraphs of unnecessary material from the post. (The contents of these paragraphs, having to do with previous posts of mine, were proving to be a distraction; luckily the post still flows without them.)

Comment author: Morendil 18 January 2010 08:15:51PM 2 points [-]

The use of hyperlinks to simultaneously provide convenient references

Doesn't work when you link to a discussion comment: you can't tell from the URL what the link points to, so you have to follow it (thank goodness for tabs), breaking the flow.

I may have to seriously reconsider whatever plans I may have had of top-level posting

No no no. Please keep 'em coming. Just, you know: spend more time revising, most of which effort should consist of deleting stuff. Case in point, if the thread post isn't about the Knox case, then just delete every para which is a reference to the Knox case. Most of the time ruthless deletion improves your writing to a surprising extent.

Don't censor yourself in the writing phase, but do delete more in revising. For more on this see Peter Elbow's Writing With Power.

You can do what I do: save the long version to a local text file, "in case you ever need those words again".

Comment author: komponisto 18 January 2010 09:40:53PM *  2 points [-]

if the thread post isn't about the Knox case, then just delete every para which is a reference to the Knox case.

You know, you're right. I just realized that the whole section can be cut, and the post still flows. It hadn't occurred to me because the thoughts were linked in my mind -- but that doesn't mean they need to be linked in the post.

Comment author: orthonormal 18 January 2010 07:28:17PM 1 point [-]

Sorry to put this here instead of the other thread, but I don't think this actually came up there:

Here I'll just note that the meme about Knox being a "liar" derives from the allegation of "changing stories", which is an uninformed misconception.

It can derive from other sources as well. I ran into the case on the Eyes for Lies blog, written by an experimentally identified "truth wizard" (boy do I hate that term) with a pretty impressive track record for judging liars from their media appearances. The author sees a number of telltale signs of lying and of sociopathy.

Now this shouldn't be admissible in court, and it's not unassailable Bayesian evidence that Amanda Knox is a liar or a sociopath (even these truth wizards are wrong on the order of 5% of the time). But it is evidence of those. (Still, being a sociopath only moderately raises the odds of being involved in the murder, and those are very low given the other facts of the case.)

Comment author: komponisto 18 January 2010 08:23:03PM *  2 points [-]

I am strongly tempted to defy the data here.

In fact, looking at the blog, I didn't find much data. There was a link to an unimpressive article by a psychoanalyst, with some not-particularly-expert-sounding comments from the blog author -- who also admitted to not being able to tell whether Knox was lying during the testimony without hearing the questions. Furthermore, the author's understanding of the facts of the case left a lot to be desired, to put it mildly.

But even if we grant that this person has a tested above-average ability to identify characteristic signs of lying/sociopathy, and has identified Knox as possessing some of these signs (an assertion I didn't actually find, though I could have missed it), I'd want to know a lot more: what sort of likelihood ratios are we talking about? (I.e. what fraction of non-sociopaths also exhibit these signs?) Exactly what is this person's error rate? What do other "wizards" say in independent testing with strict experimental protocols? Etc.

Then there's also the theoretical question: if this evidence is truly worth paying attention to, why shouldn't it be admissible in court? (Presumably there's no danger of abuse of police power or similar, so the reason for exclusion must have to do with the evidentiary strength or lack thereof.)

Comment author: Morendil 18 January 2010 07:06:46PM 2 points [-]

Could you perhaps give some examples?

Here's one - "scoffed and sneered, in capital letters" - and elsewhere you used "gasped" to refer to one of my own comments (this may make me oversensitive to this pattern, compared to other readers, but the effect is still there). That sound dismissive of other's objections.

A more subtle one is the profusion of hyperlinks, to comments, posts and wiki pages, not always necessary to the point being made. More generally the post advances too many distinct ideas; I'd try to say the same thing in fewer words. ("You should fly faster when your instruments are good" seems to be the thrust of the whole post.)

Still more subtle, you are selective in the objections that you choose to respond to.

Comment author: komponisto 18 January 2010 07:45:24PM 2 points [-]

Here's one - "scoffed and sneered, in capital letters"

Hm...that comment did sound like a scoff or sneer to me ("I offer $50 to the AK defense fund..."), and capital letters were in fact used.

and elsewhere you used "gasped" to refer to one of my own comments

What if I had used "balked" instead?

A more subtle one is the profusion of hyperlinks

This one surprises me. The use of hyperlinks to simultaneously provide convenient references and subtly convey conversational nuance has always been for me one of the more enjoyable aspects of Eliezer's writing; I probably learned it from him.

More generally the post advances too many distinct ideas; I'd try to say the same thing in fewer words.

Yikes. This is bad advice for me, since I already obsess about this, and as a result write very little. (I have a hard time allowing myself to just "write what's in my head".) If this is anything like a widespread view, I may have to seriously reconsider whatever plans I may have had of top-level posting in the future.

("You should fly faster when your instruments are good" seems to be the thrust of the whole post.)

I like this figure of speech; I wish I had come up with it.

Still more subtle, you are selective in the objections that you choose to respond to.

That's probably the case with everyone, though, isn't it? Given the constraints of time and attention, it seems hard to avoid this.

Comment author: Morendil 18 January 2010 06:17:13PM 1 point [-]

You seem to be replying to this post as if it were about the Knox case. It isn't.

The post refers to your postings on the Knox case a lot. Perhaps you should consider that other readers will share my confusion on that point. Again, I tend to agree with your conclusions, but I find the tone of the writing a distraction from the good bits.

You may as well say that cosmology isn't scientific, because the Big Bang isn't repeatable in a lab; or that evolutionary biology won't become scientific until we can recreate dinosaurs.

In both cases science finds plenty of regularities to reason from, so it seems you're attacking straw men. My point is that there are some matters of fact about which we cannot reduce our uncertainty below a certain level. The details of historical facts tend to belong in that category.

Consider an extreme form of chick sexing. Put a chick in a blender, and while there certainly is a "fact of the matter" as to its having been male or female, you can no longer tell, you have to live with 50:50. Advances in technology can catch up with that, and I'm deliberately choosing an example which is middle-of-the-road in the amount of information that gets randomized (imagine burning the remains). You could in principle recover that information, but only if you had previously observed some regularities (say, hormonal) about chicks. That pretty much captures the difference between science and investigation.

Comment author: komponisto 18 January 2010 06:28:03PM *  0 points [-]

The post refers to your postings on the Knox case a lot. Perhaps you should consider that other readers will share my confusion on that point.

I've made some edits to (hopefully) prevent that. The references are to some extent inevitable, since the Knox writings were my only posts up to this point, and the resulting discussions did help to prompt the thoughts expressed here, as a matter of historical fact.

Again, I tend to agree with your conclusions, but I find the tone of the writing a distraction from the good bits.

Could you perhaps give some examples? (I think I automatically tend to write in the sort of tone that I would enjoy reading.)

My point is that there are some matters of fact about which we cannot reduce our uncertainty below a certain level

Yes; certainty (as any technology) is definitely limited by the physics of the universe. Those limits may be considerably beyond the human level, though.

Comment author: Morendil 18 January 2010 05:16:40PM 3 points [-]

If you did see a marble statue wave, after making this calculation, you would resurrect a hypothesis at the one-in-a-million level maybe (someone played a hugely elaborate prank on you involving sawing off a duplicate statue's arm and switching that with the recently examined statue while you were briefly distracted by a phone ringing, say), not a hypothesis at the 10 to the minus whatever (e.g. you are being simulated by Omega for laughs).

Perhaps I'm getting this wrong, but this seems similar in spirit to the "queer uses of probability" discussion in Jaynes, where he asks what kind of evidence you'd have to see to believe in ESP, and you can take the probability of that as an indication of your prior probability for ESP.

Perhaps you're making too much of absolute probabilities, when in general what we're interested in is choosing between two or more competing hypotheses.

Comment author: komponisto 18 January 2010 06:02:25PM *  1 point [-]

This comment reads as if you're disagreeing with me about something ("you're making too much..."), but I can't detect any actual disagreement.

In response to Advancing Certainty
Comment author: Morendil 18 January 2010 04:15:52PM *  1 point [-]

How do you get from "uncertainty exists in the map, not the territory" to the following ?

given sufficient information about how-the-world-is, one's probability estimate could be made arbitrarily close to 0

One's uncertainty about the here-and-now, perhaps. In criminal cases we are dealing with backward inference, and information is getting erased all the time. Right about now perhaps the only way you could get "arbitrarily close to 0" is by scanning Knox's brain or the actual perpetrator's brain; if both should die, we would reach a state of absolute uncertainty about the event, all the evidence you could in principle examine to reach certainty will have been rearranged into unintelligible patterns.

Similarly, I can't shake the notion that the physical distance between you and the evidence should constrain how much strength you think the evidence has, just as much as the temporal distance eventually must.

I could be wrong about that, and I have already come around to your point of view somewhat, but you seem to have a blind spot about this particular objection: you're just some guy who got his information about the case from the Internet (which is fine, so is almost everyone).

Your comparison between the Amanda Knox case and scientific knowledge leaves me cold. Science is concerned with regularities, situations where induction applies; the knowledge sought in a criminal case is of a completely different kind, by definition applying to a unique and hopefully irregular situation.

Yes, I agree that improved "epistemic technology" is grounds for more confidence, even in cases such as this one; but your argument would be improved by throttling back the eloquence - you have at times sounded like a defence lawyer - and focusing more on the concrete details of your argument.

You'd do more to convince me if you observed, for instance, how the Web has allowed you access to multiple reports about the case, improving your chances that the biases in each source would cancel each other out, and the facts that remain are (as you claim) basically all there is to know. Pre-Internet you would have had to rely on one or two "official" news sources. That is also part of "epistemic technology".

Comment author: komponisto 18 January 2010 05:32:08PM *  3 points [-]

You seem to be replying to this post as if it were about the Knox case. It isn't. [ETA: Post now edited to make this clearer.] I'm not making any object-level arguments here about what the probabilities in that case should be. I only referred to it in order to introduce the point that one should think in terms of applying one's model to the data in computer-fashion to obtain probabilities, rather than imagining oneself judging a bunch of similar cases. (The two scenarios ought to be equivalent, but they feel different. )

Science is concerned with regularities, situations where induction applies; the knowledge sought in a criminal case is of a completely different kind, by definition applying to a unique and hopefully irregular situation.

I don't buy this for a minute. You may as well say that cosmology isn't scientific, because the Big Bang isn't repeatable in a lab; or that evolutionary biology won't become scientific until we can recreate dinosaurs.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 18 January 2010 04:24:51PM 9 points [-]

But Drahflow did just justify it. He said you're running on error-prone hardware. Now, there's still the question of how often the hardware makes errors, and there's the problem of privileging the hypothesis (thinking wrongly about the lottery can't make the probability of a ticket winning more than 10^-8, no matter how wrong you are), and there's the horrible LHC inconsistency, but the opposing position is not unjustified. It has justification that goes beyond just social modesty. It's a consistent trend in which people form confidence bounds that are too narrow on hard problems (and to a lesser extent, too wide on easy problems). If you went by the raw experiments then "99% probability" would translate into 40% surprises because (a) people are that stupid (b) people have no grasp of what the phrase "99% probability" means.

Comment author: komponisto 18 January 2010 04:55:20PM *  2 points [-]

I agree, and I don't think this contradicts or undermines the argument of the post.

These experiments should definitely shift physicists' probabilities by some nonzero amount; the question is how much. When they calculate that the probability of a marble statue waving is 10 to the minus gazillion, would you really want to argue that, based on surveys like this, they should adjust that to some mundane quantity like 0.01? That seems absurd to me. But if you grant this, then you have to concede that "epistemic bootstrapping" beyond ordinary human levels of confidence is possible. Then the question becomes: what's the limit, given our knowledge of physics (present and future)?

In response to Advancing Certainty
Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 18 January 2010 04:21:27PM 8 points [-]

Now, if it is the case that she didn't, then it follows that, given sufficient information about how-the-world-is, one's probability estimate could be made arbitrarily close to 0.

What, like 1/3^^^3? There isn't that much information in the universe, and come to think, I'm not sure I can conceive of any stream of evidence which would drive the probability that low in the Knox case, because there are complicated hypotheses much less complicated than that in which you're in a computer simulation expressly created for the purpose of deluding you about the Amanda Knox case.

Comment author: komponisto 18 January 2010 04:26:26PM 8 points [-]

I thought I was stating a mathematical tautology. I didn't say there was enough information in the universe to get below 1/3^^^3. The point was only that the information controls the probability.

In response to Advancing Certainty
Comment author: Drahflow 18 January 2010 01:46:30PM 8 points [-]

You propose to ignore the "odd" errors humans sometimes make while calculating a probability for some event. However, errors do occur, even when judging the very first case. And they (at least some of them) occur randomly. When you believe you have correctly calculated the probability, you just might have made an error anywhere in the calculation.

If you keep around the "socially accepted" levels of confidence, those errors average out pretty fast, but if you make only one error in 10^5 calculations, you should not assign probabilities smaller than 1 / 10^5. Otherwise a bet 10000 to 1 between you and me (a fair game from your perspective) will give me an expected value larger than 0 due to the errors in your thoughts you could possibly make.

This is another advantage an AI might have over humans, if the hardware is good enough, probability assignments below 10^-5 might actually be reasonable.

Comment author: komponisto 18 January 2010 02:38:52PM *  0 points [-]

You propose to ignore the "odd" errors humans sometimes make while calculating a probability for some event

I don't think I said any such thing.

There is always some uncertainty; but a belief that the uncertainty is above some particular lower bound is a belief like any other, and no more exempt from the requirements of justification.

In response to Advancing Certainty
Comment author: Kevin 18 January 2010 12:09:30PM *  -2 points [-]

This is a side-point, perhaps, but something to take into account with assigning probabilities is that while Amanda Knox is not guilty, she is certainly a liar.

When confronting someone known to be lying during something as high stakes as a murder trial, people assign them a much higher probability of guilt, because someone that lies during a murder trial is actually more likely to have committed murder. That seems to be useful evidence when we are assigning numerical probabilities, but it was a horrific bias for the judge and jury of the case.

Edit: To orthnormal, yes, that is what I meant, thank you. I also agree that it's possible that her being a sociopath and/or not neurotypical confused the prosecutor.

In response to comment by Kevin on Advancing Certainty
Comment author: komponisto 18 January 2010 12:32:08PM 0 points [-]

I've addressed the relationship between legal and Bayesian reasoning here.

In general, I think we should keep discussion of the Knox case to the post dedicated to that subject. Here I'll just note that the meme about Knox being a "liar" derives from the allegation of "changing stories", which is an uninformed misconception.

Advancing Certainty

34 Post author: komponisto 18 January 2010 09:51AM

Related: Horrible LHC Inconsistency, The Proper Use of Humility

Overconfidence, I've noticed, is a big fear around these parts. Well, it is a known human bias, after all, and therefore something to be guarded against. But I am going to argue that, at least in aspiring-rationalist circles, people are too afraid of overconfidence, to the point of overcorrecting -- which, not surprisingly, causes problems. (Some may detect implications here for the long-standing Inside View vs. Outside View debate.)

Here's Eliezer, voicing the typical worry:

[I]f you asked me whether I could make one million statements of authority equal to "The Large Hadron Collider will not destroy the world", and be wrong, on average, around once, then I would have to say no.

I now suspect that misleading imagery may be at work here. A million statements -- that sounds like a lot, doesn't it? If you made one such pronouncement every ten seconds, a million of them would require you to spend months doing nothing but pontificating, with no eating, sleeping, or bathroom breaks. Boy, that would be tiring, wouldn't it? At some point, surely, your exhausted brain would slip up and make an error. In fact, it would surely make more than one -- in which case, poof!, there goes your calibration.

No wonder, then, that people claim that we humans can't possibly hope to attain such levels of certainty. Look, they say, at all those times in the past when people -- even famous scientists! -- said they were 99.999% sure of something, and they turned out to be wrong. My own adolescent self would have assigned high confidence to the truth of Christianity; so where do I get the temerity, now, to say that the probability of this is 1-over-oogles-and-googols?

[EDIT: Unnecessary material removed.]

A probability estimate is not a measure of "confidence" in some psychological sense. Rather, it is a measure of the strength of the evidence: how much information you believe you have about reality. So, when judging calibration, it is not really appropriate to imagine oneself, say, judging thousands of criminal trials, and getting more than a few wrong here and there (because, after all, one is human and tends to make mistakes). Let me instead propose a less misleading image: picture yourself programming your model of the world (in technical terms, your prior probability distribution) into a computer, and then feeding all that data from those thousands of cases into the computer -- which then, when you run the program, rapidly spits out the corresponding thousands of posterior probability estimates. That is, visualize a few seconds or minutes of staring at a rapidly-scrolling computer screen, rather than a lifetime of exhausting judicial labor. When the program finishes, how many of those numerical verdicts on the screen are wrong?

I don't know about you, but modesty seems less tempting to me when I think about it in this way. I have a model of the world, and it makes predictions. For some reason, when it's just me in a room looking at a screen, I don't feel the need to tone down the strength of those predictions for fear of unpleasant social consequences. Nor do I need to worry about the computer getting tired from running all those numbers.

In the vanishingly unlikely event that Omega were to appear and tell me that, say, Amanda Knox was guilty, it wouldn't mean that I had been too arrogant, and that I had better not trust my estimates in the future. What it would mean is that my model of the world was severely stupid with respect to predicting reality. In which case, the thing to do would not be to humbly promise to be more modest henceforth, but rather, to find the problem and fix it. (I believe computer programmers call this "debugging".)

A "confidence level" is a numerical measure of how stupid your model is, if you turn out to be wrong.

The fundamental question of rationality is: why do you believe what you believe? As a rationalist, you can't just pull probabilities out of your rear end. And now here's the kicker: that includes the probability of your model being wrong. The latter must, paradoxically but necessarily, be part of your model itself. If you're uncertain, there has to be a reason you're uncertain; if you expect to change your mind later, you should go ahead and change your mind now.

This is the first thing to remember in setting out to dispose of what I call "quantitative Cartesian skepticism": the view that even though science tells us the probability of such-and-such is 10-50, well, that's just too high of a confidence for mere mortals like us to assert; our model of the world could be wrong, after all -- conceivably, we might even be brains in vats.

Now, it could be the case that 10-50 is too low of a probability for that event, despite the calculations; and it may even be that that particular level of certainty (about almost anything) is in fact beyond our current epistemic reach. But if we believe this, there have to be reasons we believe it, and those reasons have to be better than the reasons for believing the opposite.

I can't speak for Eliezer in particular, but I expect that if you probe the intuitions of people who worry about 10-6 being too low of a probability that the Large Hadron Collider will destroy the world -- that is, if you ask them why they think they couldn't make a million statements of equal authority and be wrong on average once -- they will cite statistics about the previous track record of human predictions: their own youthful failures and/or things like Lord Kelvin calculating that evolution by natural selection was impossible.

To which my reply is: hindsight is 20/20 -- so how about taking advantage of this fact?

Previously, I used the phrase "epistemic technology" in reference to our ability to achieve greater certainty through some recently-invented methods of investigation than through others that are native unto us. This, I confess, was an almost deliberate foreshadowing of my thesis here: we are not stuck with the inferential powers of our ancestors. One implication of the Bayesian-Jaynesian-Yudkowskian view, which marries epistemology to physics, is that our knowledge-gathering ability is as subject to "technological" improvement as any other physical process. With effort applied over time, we should be able to increase not only our domain knowledge, but also our meta-knowledge. As we acquire more and more information about the world, our Bayesian probabilities should become more and more confident.

If we're smart, we will look back at Lord Kelvin's reasoning, find the mistakes, and avoid making those mistakes in the future. We will, so to speak, debug the code. Perhaps we couldn't have spotted the flaws at the time; but we can spot them now. Whatever other flaws may still be plaguing us, our score has improved.  

In the face of precise scientific calculations, it doesn't do to say, "Well, science has been wrong before". If science was wrong before, it is our duty to understand why science was wrong, and remove known sources of stupidity from our model. Once we've done this, "past scientific predictions" is no longer an appropriate reference class for second-guessing the prediction at hand, because the science is now superior. (Or anyway, the strength of the evidence of previous failures is diminished.)        

That is why, with respect to Eliezer's LHC dilemma -- which amounts to a conflict between avoiding overconfidence and avoiding hypothesis-privileging -- I come down squarely on the side of hypothesis-privileging as the greater danger. Psychologically, you may not "feel up to" making a million predictions, of which no more than one can be wrong; but if that's what your model instructs you to do, then that's what you have to do -- unless you think your model is wrong, for some better reason than a vague sense of uneasiness. Without, ultimately, trusting science more than intuition, there's no hope of making epistemic progress. At the end of the day, you have to shut up and multiply -- epistemically as well as instrumentally. 
 

Comment author: orthonormal 16 January 2010 03:43:54AM 0 points [-]

As may microexpressions and other things of which we're not often consciously aware. This doesn't go to the level of a single photograph, but the (badly-named) truth wizards can "observe a videotape for a few seconds and amazingly they can describe eight details about the person on the tape."

We communicate more than we think.

Comment author: komponisto 16 January 2010 03:58:07PM 0 points [-]

Link (1:44) for those interested in trying the video experiment on themselves in the present context.

For a much more extended sample, see here.

Comment author: roland 15 January 2010 11:55:15PM *  2 points [-]

Thanks for your supporting comment Vladimir. It's just that I feel I've been downvoted quite often recently(feel free to read through my recent comments and see for yourself) and honestly I don't think many of those are justified. If you think otherwise I'm all ears. I simply don't know how to express myself other than the way I did(refering to my venting off). I was thinking about writing a top level post about this issue but I'm not sure if I want to play this game.

Comment author: komponisto 16 January 2010 12:02:39AM *  2 points [-]

I was thinking about writing a top level post about this issue

Please don't; make it an Open (or Meta) Thread comment instead.

In response to The Wannabe Rational
Comment author: komponisto 15 January 2010 10:48:56PM 8 points [-]

I liked this post.

Note that "Wannabe Rational" is not terribly different from "aspiring rationalist" -- the very term that most LWers use for themselves!

All of us, presumably, have some beliefs that are not accurate. That, of course, makes us irrational. But we'd like to be more rational. That desire, that aspiration, is the entrance requirement here.

It's true that there is a limit on how rational you can be and still be a theist. But that's not the same as the limit on how rational you can become in the future, given that you are now a theist (or have whatever incorrect belief X).

Comment author: Blueberry 15 January 2010 06:31:44PM 2 points [-]

Dennett and Hofstadter agree in large part, and even collaborated on a book about consciousness, so it's strange to lump them in with Penrose.

Comment author: komponisto 15 January 2010 10:11:01PM 0 points [-]

Penrose furthermore being a mathematical physicist...

Comment author: komponisto 15 January 2010 09:01:58PM *  4 points [-]

(2) Claims that I am too dismissive of psychological evidence.

Some folks appear to have misunderstood me as arguing that psychological evidence can be dismissed out of hand by its very nature, or that Amanda Knox shouldn't have been questioned by police despite being Kercher's roommate. Obviously, neither is the case. First of all, psychological evidence, strictly speaking, is physical evidence. In fact, all evidence is physical. The question, always, is about how strong a given piece of evidence is. In the post, I mentioned two rules for this: (i) the closer the spatiotemporal connection, the stronger the evidence -- something which follows from the laws of physics; and (ii) high-prior data is at most weak evidence of a low-prior hypothesis (or: thou shalt not postulate a strange thing to explain a less strange thing) -- an immediate consequence of Bayes' Theorem.

If a person's behavior were sufficiently unusual, it might constitute significant evidence they were involved in a homicide. And if a murder occurs in Knox's house, Knox is clearly one of the first people the police should interview. But the psychological evidence against Knox is in fact very weak: the causal linkage between Knox's cartwheels, phone calls, or speculation about Lumumba's involvement on the one hand, and a hypothetical murder committed by her on the other is very tenuous compared to the causal links between these things and more local factors which are likely to be largely independent of Kercher's murder. And yet, many people mistakenly believe the evidence is strong. Why? Because, for perfectly understandable evolutionary reasons, people are interested in psychology; it's salient in their minds, and they mistake this salience for evidentiary strength. They find it easy to imagine a guilty Amanda Knox doing cartwheels, and caught up in the narrative, forget to properly consider the ways in which an innocent Amanda Knox could also end up doing cartwheels. (In fact cartwheels were never something particularly unusual for Knox.) And, in continuing to consider such weak evidence against Knox after the strongest evidence in the case -- the evidence from Kercher's room -- has pointed decisively to the crime having been committed by Rudy Guede, they compound the error by privileging the hypothesis, or, in other words, overestimating the prior probability, of Knox's guilt.

Comment author: komponisto 15 January 2010 09:05:37PM *  4 points [-]

(3) Object-level arguments from a few people who (still) think there is a significant chance Knox and Sollecito are guilty.

There don't appear to be many LW regulars who assign high probabilities to Knox and Sollecito's guilt. There are a few who remain apprehensive about doubting the rationality of the jury or of people like Judge Micheli (the judge in the Guede case) to the extent of lowering the probability of guilt to single digits of percentage; but mainly, they agree that acquittal is called for. My remarks here will thus be directed mostly at people chancing upon this post from outside.

It is incorrect to assume, as some people have, that because I didn't mention various facts about the case in this post, that I am therefore unacquainted with them. On the contrary. However, I do assert that the essence of the case -- the decisive information -- is just what I presented here. Among my main points was that people have been distracted by various other details to the point of getting the wrong answer. The central case in point would be the eight members of the Perugian jury, who despite hearing all kinds of information over the course of nearly a year, were unable to sort out the clutter from the essential facts, which are these:

  • The prior probability of Knox and Sollecito having committed murder is extremely low; of having committed this particular kind of murder, even lower.

  • Since Guede is unquestionably responsible, the mere fact of Kercher's death does not need to be explained.

  • There is no evidence that Knox was in Kercher's room on the night of the crime, and almost no evidence that Sollecito was.

  • There is almost no evidence of any association between Knox and Guede, still less of any between Sollecito and Guede.

  • There is no evidence of antipathy toward Kercher on the part of Knox or Sollecito, or of any other plausible motive for the crime.

  • Every piece of apparently strong prosecutorial evidence has either been totally discredited or is subject to serious doubt (examples: footprints, "mixed" blood, knife, bra clasp, cleanup,...).

  • The remaining prosecution case consists of odd physical facts that are nowhere near as strange as Knox or Sollecito being guilty (broken window circumstances, apparent rearrangement of scene), dubious psychological inferences (inconsistencies => cover-up, cartwheels => not sad, not sad => guilty), and outright non-sequiturs (Knox named Lumumba & Lumumba innocent => Knox hiding something).

  • Knox and Sollecito (along with Lumumba) were suspects before Guede was; the basic theory of the crime was not revised when Guede was discovered.

The above facts are indisputable; there can be little question about which way the winds of evidence blow in this case. Yes, there are lots more detailed facts you can learn about the case (and I know a bunch of them), but as regards the question of who is guilty and who is not, the above is what you need to know, and the rest is noise.

Comment author: komponisto 15 January 2010 08:59:34PM *  5 points [-]

A flurry of more recent comments, (concerning in particular the nature of evidence), plus some private message correspondence, provides me with an excuse to make what are probably somewhat-overdue comments succinctly summarizing the main points of this post, addressing the most important issues and objections raised by others, and tying up some loose Bayesian ends.

Objections raised to my arguments seem to fall mostly into the following categories:

(1) Bayesian pedantry: pointing out that weak evidence is distinct from zero evidence, that rational evidence is distinct from legally admissible evidence, arguing that I chose "the wrong prior" (as opposed to just coming out and accusing me of failing to update on piece of evidence X), etc.

(2) Claims that I am too dismissive of psychological evidence.

(3) Object-level arguments from a few people who (still) think there is a significant chance Knox and Sollecito are guilty.

Here are some general responses, divided up into three separate (threaded) comments for ease of reading (and possibly replying):

(1) Bayesian pedantry.

In the first version of the post, when I wrote "there is for all intents and purposes zero Bayesian evidence that Amanda and Raffaele are guilty", I thought that "for all intents and purposes" was enough of a disclaimer; but really, of course, what I should have written was: "there is for all intents and purposes zero net Bayesian evidence...". Obviously there is some (weak) evidence of K and S's guilt; but (I claim) it is cancelled out by the evidence of their innocence to such an extent that the posterior probability is close to (not necessarily literally equal to) the prior probability.

And yes, by "prior probability", I am entitled to mean the probability that Amanda Knox would commit murder, rather than the probability that Amanda Knox would commit murder given that a murder occurred in her house. I have not neglected to take into account the latter information, and indeed, the fact that her housemate was murdered obviously raises the probability that Knox is guilty of something to a level significantly above the background prior. However, this probability is lowered again by the information that Guede committed the murder -- and this is true despite the fact that evidence of Guede's guilt is not itself evidence of Knox's innocence. As Eliezer put it,

the fact that we know Guede did it means that there's no unexplained murder around for Knox to be convicted of.

The Bayesian structure of this inference is simple enough. Let H be the hypothesis that Knox killed Kercher, and let E be the datum that Kercher was killed. Obviously, H and E are not independent; in fact, H strictly implies E, which means that P(H&E) = P(H). Thus P(H|E) = P(H)/P(E), which is larger than P(H). Now, however, let E be the datum that Kercher was killed by Guede. Then H and E are much closer to being independent, i.e. P(H&E) is only slightly larger than P(H)P(E), which means that P(H|E) is close to P(H)P(E)/P(E) = P(H). As I argued in the post, this is Occam's Razor at work: P(H&E) = P(H)P(E) << P(E).

To those who gasped at my dismissal of the DNA evidence against Knox and Sollecito when it is my solemn Bayesian duty to consider all available information, I would put it that Bayesian rationality is supposed to be more accurate than legal reasoning, not less. The kind of legal rules of evidence that would come into play here exist because of known biases people have toward convicting defendants (others, not relevant here, exist as a reflection of society's willingness to let a few culprits go free in order to maintain a certain incentive structure on police and prosecutors). Thus, if when you put your Bayesian goggles on, you suddenly find that defendants are looking more guilty than they used to, you're probably doing something wrong. In any case, dismissing evidence is not an illegal Bayesian move; it simply constitutes an assertion that the likelihood ratio for the information in question is close to 1. In other words, the evidence is very weak. Which probably has something to do with why it might not be admissible in court.

Comment author: komponisto 15 January 2010 09:01:58PM *  4 points [-]

(2) Claims that I am too dismissive of psychological evidence.

Some folks appear to have misunderstood me as arguing that psychological evidence can be dismissed out of hand by its very nature, or that Amanda Knox shouldn't have been questioned by police despite being Kercher's roommate. Obviously, neither is the case. First of all, psychological evidence, strictly speaking, is physical evidence. In fact, all evidence is physical. The question, always, is about how strong a given piece of evidence is. In the post, I mentioned two rules for this: (i) the closer the spatiotemporal connection, the stronger the evidence -- something which follows from the laws of physics; and (ii) high-prior data is at most weak evidence of a low-prior hypothesis (or: thou shalt not postulate a strange thing to explain a less strange thing) -- an immediate consequence of Bayes' Theorem.

If a person's behavior were sufficiently unusual, it might constitute significant evidence they were involved in a homicide. And if a murder occurs in Knox's house, Knox is clearly one of the first people the police should interview. But the psychological evidence against Knox is in fact very weak: the causal linkage between Knox's cartwheels, phone calls, or speculation about Lumumba's involvement on the one hand, and a hypothetical murder committed by her on the other is very tenuous compared to the causal links between these things and more local factors which are likely to be largely independent of Kercher's murder. And yet, many people mistakenly believe the evidence is strong. Why? Because, for perfectly understandable evolutionary reasons, people are interested in psychology; it's salient in their minds, and they mistake this salience for evidentiary strength. They find it easy to imagine a guilty Amanda Knox doing cartwheels, and caught up in the narrative, forget to properly consider the ways in which an innocent Amanda Knox could also end up doing cartwheels. (In fact cartwheels were never something particularly unusual for Knox.) And, in continuing to consider such weak evidence against Knox after the strongest evidence in the case -- the evidence from Kercher's room -- has pointed decisively to the crime having been committed by Rudy Guede, they compound the error by privileging the hypothesis, or, in other words, overestimating the prior probability, of Knox's guilt.

Comment author: komponisto 15 January 2010 08:59:34PM *  5 points [-]

A flurry of more recent comments, (concerning in particular the nature of evidence), plus some private message correspondence, provides me with an excuse to make what are probably somewhat-overdue comments succinctly summarizing the main points of this post, addressing the most important issues and objections raised by others, and tying up some loose Bayesian ends.

Objections raised to my arguments seem to fall mostly into the following categories:

(1) Bayesian pedantry: pointing out that weak evidence is distinct from zero evidence, that rational evidence is distinct from legally admissible evidence, arguing that I chose "the wrong prior" (as opposed to just coming out and accusing me of failing to update on piece of evidence X), etc.

(2) Claims that I am too dismissive of psychological evidence.

(3) Object-level arguments from a few people who (still) think there is a significant chance Knox and Sollecito are guilty.

Here are some general responses, divided up into three separate (threaded) comments for ease of reading (and possibly replying):

(1) Bayesian pedantry.

In the first version of the post, when I wrote "there is for all intents and purposes zero Bayesian evidence that Amanda and Raffaele are guilty", I thought that "for all intents and purposes" was enough of a disclaimer; but really, of course, what I should have written was: "there is for all intents and purposes zero net Bayesian evidence...". Obviously there is some (weak) evidence of K and S's guilt; but (I claim) it is cancelled out by the evidence of their innocence to such an extent that the posterior probability is close to (not necessarily literally equal to) the prior probability.

And yes, by "prior probability", I am entitled to mean the probability that Amanda Knox would commit murder, rather than the probability that Amanda Knox would commit murder given that a murder occurred in her house. I have not neglected to take into account the latter information, and indeed, the fact that her housemate was murdered obviously raises the probability that Knox is guilty of something to a level significantly above the background prior. However, this probability is lowered again by the information that Guede committed the murder -- and this is true despite the fact that evidence of Guede's guilt is not itself evidence of Knox's innocence. As Eliezer put it,

the fact that we know Guede did it means that there's no unexplained murder around for Knox to be convicted of.

The Bayesian structure of this inference is simple enough. Let H be the hypothesis that Knox killed Kercher, and let E be the datum that Kercher was killed. Obviously, H and E are not independent; in fact, H strictly implies E, which means that P(H&E) = P(H). Thus P(H|E) = P(H)/P(E), which is larger than P(H). Now, however, let E be the datum that Kercher was killed by Guede. Then H and E are much closer to being independent, i.e. P(H&E) is only slightly larger than P(H)P(E), which means that P(H|E) is close to P(H)P(E)/P(E) = P(H). As I argued in the post, this is Occam's Razor at work: P(H&E) = P(H)P(E) << P(E).

To those who gasped at my dismissal of the DNA evidence against Knox and Sollecito when it is my solemn Bayesian duty to consider all available information, I would put it that Bayesian rationality is supposed to be more accurate than legal reasoning, not less. The kind of legal rules of evidence that would come into play here exist because of known biases people have toward convicting defendants (others, not relevant here, exist as a reflection of society's willingness to let a few culprits go free in order to maintain a certain incentive structure on police and prosecutors). Thus, if when you put your Bayesian goggles on, you suddenly find that defendants are looking more guilty than they used to, you're probably doing something wrong. In any case, dismissing evidence is not an illegal Bayesian move; it simply constitutes an assertion that the likelihood ratio for the information in question is close to 1. In other words, the evidence is very weak. Which probably has something to do with why it might not be admissible in court.

Comment author: Cyan 14 January 2010 05:58:41PM *  0 points [-]

Ya, a p-zombie. Wikipedia reports (with a [citation needed]) that sufferers of severe Cotard delusion deny that they exist at all. Presumably such individuals would claim to have no body, no mind, no consciousness, etc. So I agree, not a Zombie in Dennett's sense per se, since they claim to have/be nothing at all, never mind the extra special stuff.

Comment author: komponisto 14 January 2010 06:19:50PM 2 points [-]

In fact it may be worth stressing that, by definition, someone's claim to be a p-zombie would be zero evidence that they were a p-zombie.

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 13 January 2010 05:06:01PM *  2 points [-]

I was surprised when you recounted that he thought Einstein belonged in the transhuman end of the intelligence spectrum.

Did he think that? Or was it that Einstein was close to an upper bound on intelligence for any mind, artificial or otherwise?

ETA: Someone here once linked to a Usenet conversation in which Greg Egan expressed a similar view.

Comment author: komponisto 13 January 2010 05:15:06PM 0 points [-]

Well, either way, it's surprising.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 January 2010 04:31:13PM 3 points [-]

I have a mysterious feeling that it would have been much, much easier for me to have a smart conversation about the intelligence explosion with Douglas Hofstadter if I'd talked to him before Godel, Escher, Bach was published. People here have been questioning what we think we know and how we think we know it, which is right and proper; but does anyone really think this is not true?

Comment author: komponisto 13 January 2010 04:47:06PM 1 point [-]

It seems surprising to me that Hofstadter would have difficulty having such a conversation today (even with a grad student), but maybe you've tried.

(And, of course, I was surprised when you recounted that he thought Einstein belonged in the transhuman end of the intelligence spectrum.)

Comment author: komponisto 13 January 2010 01:12:56AM *  12 points [-]

I refuse to conform to people's expectations of a wise sage who always speaks with kindness and sober deliberation, of which I have said: "I am not bloody Gandalf."

I'm far from convinced that niceness correlates with status (or stupidity). For every Gandalf, there is a Stalin.

In fact, wait a minute! Gandalf is a fictional character. And indeed, though history is full of Stalins, I'm actually having trouble thinking of very many real-life Gandalfs. There are of course plenty of legends about wise, kind rulers; but it seems that very few actual historical (as opposed to fictional) high-status people have had this "Gandalf" disposition you speak of.

So really, is this your true rejection of niceness?

Comment author: Wei_Dai 12 January 2010 03:53:36AM 1 point [-]

Ok, I don't believe in p-zombies, in the standard sense of there being a logically possible world which is physically identical to this one, but where the inhabitants are not conscious. But I do believe that someone (perhaps a super-intelligent being) could possibly emulate my outward behavior perfectly, while having very different conscious experiences on the inside (i.e., by lying). I don't think you can distinguish between these two cases without reference to what I'm really experiencing, as opposed to just what I say about what I experience.

Comment author: komponisto 12 January 2010 04:18:26AM *  3 points [-]

This is a traditional objection to the "behaviorism" of philosophers such as Carnap. I recall arguing in an undergraduate term paper that this was a misunderstanding of behaviorism: there is no reason that "behavior" should not encompass e.g. the behavior of neurons, which are in principle just as publicly observable as a subject's verbal behavior. So the question is whether any being could have a brain observably identical to yours and yet have different experiences.

Comment author: ciphergoth 11 January 2010 01:56:31PM 0 points [-]

I... don't mathematicians usually have more than one interesting example of a mathematical object before they decide to study it?

Comment author: komponisto 11 January 2010 02:02:21PM 1 point [-]

Not when the question is whether any examples exist!

Comment author: RichardKennaway 11 January 2010 01:21:19PM 6 points [-]

There is a similar story -- whether true or not I don't know -- told at Oxford about Cambridge and at Cambridge about Oxford. Someone wrote a thesis on anti-metric spaces, which are like metric spaces, except that the triangle inequality is the other way round. He proved all sorts of interesting facts about them, but at the viva, the external examiner pointed out that there are only two anti-metric spaces: the empty set and the one-point set.

It is recounted that the student passed, but his supervisor was criticised for not having picked up on this earlier.

Comment author: komponisto 11 January 2010 01:57:41PM *  4 points [-]

Likewise there's the story about the Princeton student defending his thesis on the set of real functions that satisfy the Lipschitz condition for every positive constant C, and being asked by an examiner to compute the derivative of such a function...

My point having been, of course, that the k-quandle story is not (necessarily) of this type.

Comment author: pdf23ds 11 January 2010 12:17:31PM *  1 point [-]

I don't think that's quite the same usage of "moral luck". According to the technical term, it's when you, for example, judge someone who was driving drunk and hit a person more harshly than someone who was driving drunk and didn't hit anyone, all else being equal. In other words, things entirely outside of your control that make the same action more or less blameworthy. Another example, from the link:

For example, consider Nazi collaborators in 1930's Germany who are condemned for committing morally atrocious acts, even though their very presence in Nazi Germany was due to factors beyond their control (Nagel 1979). Had those very people been transferred by the companies for which they worked to Argentina in 1929, perhaps they would have led exemplary lives. If we correctly morally assess the Nazi collaborators differently from their imaginary counterparts in Argentina, then we have a case of circumstantial moral luck.

Comment author: komponisto 11 January 2010 01:23:39PM 0 points [-]

I don't see the difference between this usage and Zack's/Eliezer's: the definition given in the SEP link is:

Moral luck occurs when an agent can be correctly treated as an object of moral judgment despite the fact that a significant aspect of what she is assessed for depends on factors beyond her control.

A situation where all of an agent's options are blameworthy seems quite clearly to fall within this category.

Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 11 January 2010 11:48:19AM 10 points [-]

Mathematical folklore contains a story about how Acta Quandalia published a paper proving that all partially uniform k-quandles had the Cosell property, and then a few months later published another paper proving that no partially uniform k-quandles had the Cosell property. And in fact, goes the story, both theorems were quite true, which put a sudden end to the investigation of partially uniform k-quandles.

-- Mark Jason Dominus

Comment author: komponisto 11 January 2010 12:00:13PM 4 points [-]

This sounds like a funny "blooper" story, but could just as well be an entirely normal history of the solution to an important problem. Many important theorems are proved by contradiction, and for all we know, the question of the existence of partially uniform k-quandles could have been a difficult unsolved problem.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 10 January 2010 04:32:24AM *  8 points [-]

I certainly do. It's my strong impression that so does almost everyone outside of the Less Wrong community and a majority of people in this community, so according to the outside view of majoritarianism I'm probably right.

Taleb's "The Black Swan" is basically a treatise on failures from uses of the outside view.

Comment author: komponisto 10 January 2010 04:59:01AM 8 points [-]

It sometimes seems to me that the issue of how much trust to accord outside views constitutes the primary factional division within this community, separating it into two groups that one might call the "Hansonians" and the "Yudkowskians" (with the former trusting outside views -- or distrusting inside views -- more than the latter).

I share Michael Vassar's impression about the statistical distribution of these viewpoints (I'm particularly expecting this to be the case among high-status community members) , but an actual survey might be worth conducting.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Open Thread: January 2010
Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 04 January 2010 01:09:59AM 0 points [-]

the non-exception convention (0 is a number, a square is a rectangle, the empty product is 1, . . .)

Is there such a convention? We don't say that one is prime. e^x is often said to be the only function that is its own derivative, as if the zero function somehow didn't count.

Comment author: komponisto 05 January 2010 04:06:43PM *  0 points [-]

Is there such a convention?

Yes -- at least in the sense that I have found familiarity with (and sympathy toward) this practice to be an effective shibboleth for distinguishing the mathematically sophisticated.

(It's kind of like how it's a warning sign when someone doesn't think the word "dictionary" should be in the dictionary.)

Comment author: Kevin 05 January 2010 12:31:58PM 6 points [-]

I am a big fan of Isaac Asimov. Start with his best short story, which I submit as the best sci-fi short story of all time. http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Comment author: komponisto 05 January 2010 12:47:45PM *  0 points [-]

Ah yes, CronoDAS recommended that, too. (Sorry, I should have acknowledged!)

Comment author: whpearson 05 January 2010 12:29:44PM 2 points [-]

I'd say identify what sort of future scenarios you want to explore and ask us to identify exemplars. Or is the goal is just to get a common vocabulary to discuss things?

Reading Sci-Fi while potentially valuable should be done with a purpose in mind. Unless you need another potential source of procrastination.

Comment author: komponisto 05 January 2010 12:38:58PM 5 points [-]

Reading Sci-Fi while potentially valuable should be done with a purpose in mind.

Goodness gracious. No, just looking for more procrastination/pure fun. I've gotten along fine without it thus far, after all.

(Of course, if someone actually thinks I really do need to read sci-fi for some "serious" reason, that would be interesting to know.)

Comment author: Erebus 05 January 2010 10:45:18AM 11 points [-]

Inspired by reading this blog for quite some time, I started reading E.T. Jaynes' Probability Theory. I've read most of the book by now, and I have incredibly mixed feelings about it.

On one hand, the development of probability calculus starting from the needs of plausible inference seems very appealing as far as the needs of statistics, applied science and inferential reasoning in general are concerned. The Bayesian viewpoint of (applied) probability is developed with such elegance and clarity that alternative interpretations can hardly be considered appealing next to it.

On the other hand, the book is very painful reading for the pure mathematician. The repeated pontification about how wrong mathematicians are for desiring rigor and generality is strange, distracting and useless. What could possibly be wrong about the desire to make the steps and assumptions of deductive reasoning as clear and explicit as possible? Contrary to what Jaynes says or at least very strongly implies (in Appendix B and elsewhere), clarity and explicitness of mathematical arguments are not opposites or mutually contradictory; in my experience, they are complementary.

Even worse, Jaynes makes several strong claims about mathematics that seem to admit no favorable interpretation: the are simply wrong. All of the "paradoxes" surrounding the concepts of infinity he gives in Chapter 15 (*) are so fundamentally flawed that even a passing familiarity of what measure theory actually says dispels them as mere word-plays caused by fuzzy or shifting definitions, or simply erroneous applications of the theory. Intuitionism and other finitist positions are certainly consistent philosophical positions, but they aren't made appealing by advocates like Jaynes who claim to find errors in standard mathematics while simply misunderstanding what the standard theory says.

Also, Jaynes' claims about mathematics that I know to be wrong make it very difficult to take him seriously when he goes into rant mode about other things I know less about (such as "orthodox" statistics or thermodynamics).

I'm extremely frustrated by the book, but I still find it valuable. But I definitely wouldn't recommend it to anyone who didn't know enough mathematics to correct Jaynes' errors in the "paradoxes" he gives. So.. why haven't I seen qualifications, disclaimers or warnings in recommendations of the book here? Are the matters concerning pure mathematics just not considered important by those recommending the book here?

(*) I admit I only glanced at the longer ones, "tumbling tetrahedron" and the "marginalization paradox". They seemed to be more about the interpretation of probability than about supposed problems with the concepts of infinity; and given how Jaynes misunderstands and/or misrepresents the mathematical theories of measure and infinities in general elsewhere in the book, I wouldn't expect them to contain any real problems with mathematics anyway.

Comment author: komponisto 05 January 2010 12:18:56PM *  3 points [-]

Amen. Amen-issimo.

The solution, of course, is for the Bayesian view to become widespread enough that it doesn't end up identified particularly with Jaynes. The parts of Jaynes that are correct -- the important parts -- should be said by many other people in many other places, so that Jaynes can eventually be regarded as a brilliant eccentric who just by historical accident happened to be among the first to say these things.

There's no reason that David Hilbert shouldn't have been a Bayesian. None.

Comment author: komponisto 05 January 2010 12:03:25PM 8 points [-]

Okay, so....a confession.

In a fairly recent little-noticed comment, I let slip that I differ from many folks here in what some may regard as an important way: I was not raised on science fiction.

I'll be more specific here: I think I've seen one of the Star Wars films (the one about the kid who apparently grows up to become the villain in the other films). I have enough cursory familiarity with the Star Trek franchise to be able to use phrases like "Spock bias" and make the occasional reference to the Starship Enterprise (except I later found out that the reference in that post was wrong, since the Enterprise is actually supposed to travel faster than light -- oops), but little more. I recall having enjoyed the "Tripod" series, and maybe one or two other, similar books, when they were read aloud to me in elementary school. And of course I like Yudkowsky's parables, including "Three Worlds Collide", as much as the next LW reader.

But that's about the extent of my personal acquaintance with the genre.

Now, people keep telling me that I should read more science fiction; in fact, they're often quite surprised that I haven't. So maybe, while we're doing these New Year's Resolutions, I can "resolve" to perhaps, maybe, some time, actually do that (if I can ever manage to squeeze it in between actually doing work and procrastinating on the Internet).

Problem is, there seems to be a lot of it out there. How would a newcomer know where to start?

Well, what better place to ask than here, a place where many would cite this type of literature as formative with respect to developing their saner-and-more-interesting-than-average worldviews?

Alicorn recommended John Scalzi (thanks). What say others?

Comment author: PhilGoetz 31 December 2009 10:57:46PM *  4 points [-]

30% probability might be around the point where we start to call things ludicrous. If you talk seriously about things that you think have a 10% chance of happening, you will be beyond the point where most people call it ludicrous, or even crazy; they simply will not understand or believe that that's what you mean.

Comment author: komponisto 01 January 2010 12:17:56AM *  9 points [-]

This comment provides more confirmation for a view I've held for a long time, and which was particularly reinforced by some of the reactions to (the first version of) my Amanda Knox post.

People have trouble distinguishing appropriately among degrees of improbability. This generalizes both underconfidence and overconfidence, and is part of what I regard as a cluster of related errors, including underestimating the size of hypothesis space and failing to judge the strength of evidence properly. (These problems are the reason that judicial systems can't trust people to decide cases without all kinds of artificial-seeming procedures and rules about what kind of evidence is "allowed".)

The reality is that given all the numerous events and decisions we experience on a daily basis and throughout our lives, something with a 10% chance of happening or being true is something that we need to take quite seriously indeed. 10% is, easily, planning-level probability; it should attract a significant amount of our attention. By the same token, something which isn't worth seriously planning on shouldn't be getting more than single digits of probability-percentage, if that.

There is a vast, huge spectrum of degrees of improbability below 1% (never mind 10% or 30%) that careful thinking can allow us to distinguish, even if our evolved intuitions don't. Consider for instance the following ten propositions:

(1) The Republicans will win control of both houses of Congress in the 2010 elections.

(2) It will snow in Los Angeles this winter.

(3) There will be a draft in the U.S. by 2020.

(4) I will be dead in a month.

(5) Amanda Knox (or Raffaele Sollecito) was involved in Meredith Kercher's death.

(6) A U.S. state will make a serious attempt to secede by 2020.

(7) The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, as opposed to the many-worlds interpretation, is correct.

(8) A marble statue has waved or will wave at someone due to quantum tunneling.

(9) Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead.

(10) Christianity is true.

I listed these in (approximately) order of improbability, from most probable to least probable. Now, all of them would be described in ordinary conversation as "extremely improbable". But there are enormous differences in the degrees of improbability among them, and moreover, we have the ability to distinguish these degrees, to a significant extent.

The 10%-30% range is for propositions like (1) ; the 1%-10% range for things like (2) (the last time it snowed in LA was in the 1960s). Around 1% is about right for (3). Propositions (4), (5), and (6) occupy something like the interval from 0.01% to 1% (I find it hard to discriminate in this range, and in particular to judge these three against each other). Propositions (8), (9), and (10), however, are in a completely different category of improbability: double-digit negative exponents, if you're being conservative. We could argue about (7), but it probably belongs somewhere in between (4)-(6) and (8)-(10); maybe around 10^(-10), if you account for post-QM theories somehow turning Copenhagen into something more mundane than it seems now.

So the point is, we, right here, have the tools to make estimates that are a lot more meaningful than "probably yes" or "probably no". I remember reading that we tend to be overconfident on hard things and underconfident on easy things; I think we can afford to be a little more bold on the no-brainers.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 31 December 2009 10:05:08PM 1 point [-]

Well under 30% certainly, but I wouldn't give it under 4%. A decade is long and the US is young.

Comment author: komponisto 31 December 2009 10:27:06PM 0 points [-]

I think a draft is much more likely.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 31 December 2009 09:58:12PM 14 points [-]

I agree, but I do think that given your status in the community maybe it behooves you to be nicer if at all possible.

Comment author: komponisto 31 December 2009 10:15:32PM 6 points [-]

Strongly agree.

(I think what happened here was that Eliezer was particularly annoyed at this prediction, since it's the sort of thing that gives his field a bad name.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 31 December 2009 09:28:23PM 3 points [-]

I looked through this thread and didn't see anything equally unjustified. The only prediction that came close was the one about a US state seceding, and that was by a user who was willing to make bets on their other predictions. This is just good-old-fashioned "Hey Rocky, watch me pull an amazing prediction out of my hat!"

Comment author: komponisto 31 December 2009 09:51:09PM 0 points [-]

Upvoted for the reference, which I got.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 31 December 2009 07:15:24PM 0 points [-]

Great example of what I'm talking about. I'd challenge you on most of those actually, if there was a convenient and well structured betting forum, but none of them seem crazy to me.

Comment author: komponisto 31 December 2009 07:53:34PM 3 points [-]

none of them seem crazy to me

A US state will secede (30%)

None of the others do, but this one seems ludicrous to me.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 31 December 2009 05:05:49AM 5 points [-]

Perhaps, but I'm a bit stunned at the idea that being in a prison cell means you should just give up. Have I taught you all nothing?

Comment author: komponisto 31 December 2009 08:01:03AM *  0 points [-]

I'm a bit stunned at the idea that being in a prison cell means you should just give up. Have I taught you all nothing?

Or, if you like, you can take it from Amanda.

Comment author: JamesAndrix 29 December 2009 04:27:43PM 0 points [-]

Nit: I think "Eliezer's Thou Art Godshatter" should be "Eliezer Yudkowsky's Thou Art Godshatter". Top level posts should be more status seeking, less casual. A first time visitor won't immediately know who Eliezer is.

Comment author: komponisto 29 December 2009 09:57:47PM 0 points [-]

One could just link to the wiki.

Comment author: SforSingularity 27 December 2009 08:05:16PM 1 point [-]

I had heard about the case casually on the news a few months ago. It was obvious to me that Amanda Knox was innocent. My probability estimate of guilt was around 1%. This makes me one of the few people in reasonably good agreement with Eli's conclusion.

I know almost nothing of the facts of the case.

I only saw a photo of Amanda Knox's face. Girls with cute smiles like that don't brutally murder people. I was horrified to see that among 300 posts on Less Wrong, only two mentioned this, and it was to urge people to ignore the photos. Are they all too PC or something? Have they never read Eckman, or at least Gladwell? Perhaps Less Wrong commenters are distrustful of their instincts to the point of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

http://www.amandadefensefund.org/Family_Photos.html

Perhaps it is confusing to people that the actual killer is probably a scary looking black guy with a sunken brow. Obviously most scary looking black guys with sunken brows never kill anyone. So that guy's appearance is only very weak evidence of his guilt. But wholesome-looking apple-cheeked college girls don't brutally murder people ever, pretty much. So that is strong evidence of her innocence.

Comment author: komponisto 29 December 2009 07:11:09AM 1 point [-]

My probability estimate of guilt was around 1%. This makes me one of the few people in reasonably good agreement with Eli's conclusion.

As far as I am aware, all we know about EY's number is that it is bounded from above by 15%.

Since the average estimate was 35% (and that was before this post, after reading which some people said they updated downward, and no one said they updated upward), it's fair to say a lot of people were in reasonably good agreement with EY's conclusion.

Perhaps Less Wrong commenters are distrustful of their instincts to the point of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

I don't know whether SfS's comment is to be taken as attempted satire or not, but I did wonder if a sort of "Spock bias" might result in reluctance to update on the sort of evidence presented here or here. As it turned out, that didn't seem to be so much of an issue here on LW (for all that character assassination of Amanda played a role in the larger public's perception). By far the biggest obstacle to arriving at probability estimates close to mine was that old chestnut: trusting in the fundamental sanity of one's fellow humans. (The jury must have known something we didn't, and surely Judge Micheli knew what he was doing...)

Comment author: komponisto 27 December 2009 07:37:35PM 0 points [-]

Claim: Natural and sexual selection

Reminded me to reply to this comment.

Comment author: Cyan 26 December 2009 12:43:37AM 2 points [-]

Why? I didn't really feel like trying to win over Michael Vassar, but since you feel so strongly about it, I should point out that biologists do find it useful to distinguish between "ecological selection" and "sexual selection".

In response to comment by Cyan on Two Truths and a Lie
Comment author: komponisto 27 December 2009 07:33:49PM 3 points [-]

For an analogy, consider the fact that mathematicians also find it useful to distinguish between "squares" and "rectangles" -- but they nevertheless correctly insist that all squares are in fact rectangles.

The problem here isn't that "sexual selection" isn't a useful concept on its own; the problem is the failure to appreciate how abstract the concept of "natural selection" is.

I have a similar feeling, ultimately, about the opposition between "natural selection" and "artificial selection", even though that contrast is perhaps more pedagogically useful.

In response to comment by Cyan on Two Truths and a Lie
Comment author: MichaelVassar 24 December 2009 02:44:52PM 6 points [-]

Sexual selection is just a type of natural selection, not a different mechanism. Just look at genes and be done with it.

Comment author: komponisto 25 December 2009 10:34:51PM -1 points [-]

I wish I could upvote this comment twice.

In response to comment by Eliezer_Yudkowsky on lessmeta
Comment author: thomblake 23 December 2009 03:29:01PM 2 points [-]

I agree with Alicorn. Unless you want an echo chamber, math problems seem like a bad filter. Diversity is valuable.

In response to comment by thomblake on lessmeta
Comment author: komponisto 23 December 2009 03:50:13PM 0 points [-]

You don't think there is diversity of thought among trained mathematicians?

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 22 December 2009 09:45:16AM 11 points [-]

The only thing I'd predict from knowing someone believes in many worlds is that they like science fiction. This isn't because anything might be happening somewhere, it's because many worlds is a much more interesting universe.

Comment author: komponisto 22 December 2009 06:53:22PM 6 points [-]

The only thing I'd predict from knowing someone believes in many worlds is that they like science fiction

I'm starting to get the impression I should look into this science fiction thing. I seem to have a lot of traits that correlate with interest in it, and many of the people I associate with love it. It just so happens that I lack familiarity, since I didn't grow up with it myself.

In response to comment by Eliezer_Yudkowsky on lessmeta
Comment author: Alicorn 22 December 2009 06:32:51PM 5 points [-]

Sort of a rationalism troll CAPTCHA. I'd like it, but solving those problems requires math - I probably would never have joined if I'd had to do it.

In response to comment by Alicorn on lessmeta
Comment author: komponisto 22 December 2009 06:45:29PM 2 points [-]

But now that you've actually been here for a while, you probably wouldn't find it as much of a barrier. Right? So it wouldn't be so much of a math filter, as a having-read-LW filter, which is what we want.

Comment author: komponisto 22 December 2009 04:04:40AM *  1 point [-]

I simply refer you again to my comment above. It applies to linear algebra as much as quantum mechanics.

Comment author: komponisto 22 December 2009 06:53:59AM *  0 points [-]

Comments edited for clarification.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 December 2009 03:37:37AM 9 points [-]

The community currently going under the name "skeptics" usually attacks easy targets that are already unpopular with the intelligentsia, like homeopathy. Let's see what Joe Nickell thinks about many-worlds first. Shermer and Penn & Teller have failed similar tests.

EDIT: Being a skeptic is just as easy (in fact, the opposite) of being a contrarian, and the test of whether a skeptic's cognition provides bayes-fuel is whether they fail to critique contrarian theories that are correct. This deserves a post which I might or might not have time to do.

Comment author: komponisto 22 December 2009 04:42:07AM *  12 points [-]

I think Richard Dawkins passes the many-worlds test (8:36), at least if you allow for characteristic British understatement and a lack of training in physics.

Comment author: James_Miller 22 December 2009 03:52:52AM 9 points [-]

You should look at the SAT math test to get an estimate of the percentage of Americans for which "linear algebra over complex vector spaces" can ever be simple.

Comment author: komponisto 22 December 2009 04:04:40AM *  1 point [-]

I simply refer you again to my comment above. It applies to linear algebra as much as quantum mechanics.

In response to comment by LauraABJ on Karma Changes
Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 December 2009 03:23:15AM 11 points [-]

Well... sorry to put it this way, but when you said that, I checked to see if you'd posted anything, and you hadn't. There's a rule I have which often offends people, and yet it seems like a very important rule, which is when someone tells you that change X will prevent people from doing Y, and they aren't doing Y, you probably want to check with people who are currently doing Y about that.

Comment author: komponisto 22 December 2009 04:01:42AM 2 points [-]

By way of providing feedback from someone who recently posted for the very first time: while I don't think the new rules would have prevented me from submitting my three extant posts, I do expect that I will be more cautious in the future than I otherwise would have been. (I'm well known to suffer from karma-loss-aversion.)

I'm not opposed to the change, however -- votes on posts should be worth more than votes on comments. (Also, my karma more than doubled when the change was made.)

Comment author: James_Miller 22 December 2009 02:42:43AM 1 point [-]

Along with 99% of humanity my IQ isn't high enough for me to ever understand the math behind quantum physics. So I can't do the math myself, or figure out which physicist to trust when the physicists disagree.

Given your IQ and information set many worlds might be a slam dunk. But I submit that anyone with my IQ or lower would necessarily be irrational to think that many worlds is a slam dunk.

Comment author: komponisto 22 December 2009 03:26:57AM *  28 points [-]

Along with 99% of humanity my IQ isn't high enough for me to ever understand the math behind quantum physics

This may be a tangential point, but I need to say this somewhere: claims like this are quite likely false. (Notice how rarely they're accompanied by justification.)

Quantum mechanics is new (in the scheme of things). So, of course, we see right now that the only people who understand it are very smart people: the ones who first thought of it and their students and associates. But that doesn't mean that no one else can understand it; it just hasn't had time to trickle down into everyone's general education yet.

300 years ago, you could have replaced "quantum" by "classical" in that sentence, and it would have seemed reasonable: at that time, only a few dozen people in the world understood the differential and integral calculus. Yet now this kind of mathematics is taught regularly to hordes of IQ 110 college freshmen, and (I expect) is considered elementary and routine by a majority of LW readers. Taking an Outside View approach here, I don't see any reason not to expect that the same trend will continue into the future, with quantum mechanics eventually being considered a grade-school subject (even without recourse to transhumanist solutions such as intelligence enhancement, which will immediately come to the minds of many readers).

Going back further, once upon a time literacy was an elite skill. Now we take it for granted, but how much do you really think our IQs have improved in the last couple thousand years?

And let's not forget that even now, we already know that the fundamental mathematical ideas behind quantum mechanics are actually quite simpler than you would have thought from listening to physicists -- little more than linear algebra over complex vector spaces.

Comment author: komponisto 21 December 2009 04:20:38AM *  2 points [-]

The problem was not that the models were wrong, it was that what they were trying to accomplish was unmodelable.

[...]

Fundamentally, I believe that the world is unreasonable. It is, at it's core, not amenable to reason. Better technique may push the failure point back just a bit further but it will never get rid of it.

Since you mentioned Scott Aaronson, you might want to have a look at this post.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 December 2009 02:47:30AM 2 points [-]

The case against Knox and Sollecito is weak because it is weak, not because the case against Guede is strong.

That's why I keep on saying not to compare the amount of evidence against Guede to the case against Knox. It's not a comparison operation. It doesn't set a bar. It doesn't set a standard. Now, the fact that Guede left a lot of DNA means it's implausible that Knox cleaned up only her DNA and not Guede's, but that's a whole separate issue. And the fact that we know Guede did it means that there's no unexplained murder around for Knox to be convicted of. But under other circumstances, it would be very easy to have a murder that was in fact committed by two people, one of whom left very strong evidence against herself, and one of whom left less strong but still conviction-worthy evidence against herself. It's just not a relative operation.

Comment author: komponisto 19 December 2009 03:26:17AM *  1 point [-]

Okay, I agree that ideal rational agents with unlimited computing resources shouldn't "care" about the relative strength of evidence; all they have to do is perform the appropriate computation, and the result will come out to whatever it should be. But I've already conceded that "follow the strong signal" is a heuristic for human use, in order to get results that, in reality, better approximate what an ideal rational agent would come up with than the methods that are already programmed into us.

The situation we're in is the following: we're investigators on a budget, trying to figure out how to allocate our limited resources among various paths through hypothesis space. Let's say there are two particular paths we're considering, and at the entrance to each of them is a loudspeaker with a voice saying "FOLLOW THIS TRAIL". Except that one of the voices is twice as loud as the other. Now, am I completely crazy, or is it not an epistemically reasonable thing to do to do something like allocate twice the investigative resources to following the signal that is twice as strong? How else should we divide it up?

I don't think I need to remind you that reality is consistent: if Knox was really involved in a conspiracy with Guede, then the Knox trail will meet up with the Guede trail, in which case we're not losing anything by devoting the lion's share of our resources to starting along the Guede trail rather than the Knox trail.

What, if anything, am I missing here?

Comment author: brazil84 19 December 2009 02:48:00AM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure . . . I'm ignorant of the evaluation of evidence in terms of "bits." Is there some link you can give me?

Comment author: komponisto 19 December 2009 02:50:46AM 0 points [-]
Comment author: brazil84 19 December 2009 02:40:10AM 1 point [-]

Mainly because (1) there is evidence of alteration/staging; and (2) Knox and Sollecito are still unable to give accounts of the evening (and next morning) which are reasonably coherent and consistent.

Comment author: komponisto 19 December 2009 02:44:00AM 0 points [-]

How many total bits of evidence against Knox and Sollecito do you think these things are worth?

Comment author: brazil84 19 December 2009 02:15:58AM 0 points [-]

I agree with this, except of course that I am reasonably confident Knox and Sollecito were involved in the murder.

Comment author: komponisto 19 December 2009 02:17:58AM *  1 point [-]

And that would be because...?

(The fundamental question of rationality: why do you believe what you believe?)

Comment author: brazil84 19 December 2009 01:53:53AM *  1 point [-]

The claim is that this evidence is weaker than the evidence against Guede by a >factor of millions and therefore deserves essentially zero brain time.

It seems to me that (1) Guede murdered Kircher; and (2) Knox and Sollecito were involved in the murder, are not mutually exclusive hypotheses.

So the fact that there is an extremely strong case against Guede does not necessarily mean that the case against Knox and Sollecito is weak or extremely weak.

Comment author: komponisto 19 December 2009 02:01:35AM *  3 points [-]

So the fact that there is an extremely strong case against Guede does not necessarily mean that the case against Knox and Sollecito is weak or extremely weak.

Indeed not; if we had 30 bits of anti-Knox evidence, the case against Knox would be strong too.

The case against Knox and Sollecito is weak because it is weak, not because the case against Guede is strong.

Comment author: brazil84 19 December 2009 12:23:18AM -1 points [-]

"Might I interject here boys. My two options for the scenario were based on what the tangible evidence in the case indicates. There is certainly a 3rd possibly that people other than Sollecito and Knox are involved, BUT no evidence has been presented to indicate this so I didn't mention it."

There are many other possibilities (besides your two scenarios) which are consistent with the evidence and consistent with Knox and Sollecito having been involved in the murder.

"Innuendo, and behavioral analysis without corroborative evidence is not evidence of murder."

Are you saying there is no circumstantial evidence which suggests involvement of Knox and Sollecito?

Comment author: komponisto 19 December 2009 01:24:47AM *  3 points [-]

Are you saying there is no circumstantial evidence which suggests involvement of Knox and Sollecito?

No. The claim is that this evidence is weaker than the evidence against Guede by a factor of millions, and therefore deserves essentially zero brain time. See the "Epistemic Ruthlessness" section of the post, and the wiki entry "Amount of Evidence".

Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 13 December 2009 05:13:11PM 5 points [-]

I had the same reaction. I'm strongly inclined toward the OP's position, but if you're going to excoriate everyone else for failing to "jettison [their] intuitive feelings in favor of cold, hard, abstract calculation", you should provide the actual cold, hard, abstract calculations supporting your own position.

Comment author: komponisto 18 December 2009 08:49:01PM *  1 point [-]

if you're going to excoriate everyone else for failing to "jettison [their] intuitive feelings in favor of cold, hard, abstract calculation", you should provide the actual cold, hard, abstract calculations supporting your own position.

I should have pointed this out earlier, but for the record: "cold, hard, abstract calculation" referred to the willingness to ignore quantitatively weak evidence even though it "feels important" to you; it did not refer to some specific back-of-the-envelope application of Bayes' Theorem.

(And "excoriate" is definitely not the right word here, at least with regard to the LW community.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 December 2009 05:57:07PM 6 points [-]

"Grand Poobah" and "Supreme Mugwump" work, but I've always gone by "Fearless Leader".

Comment author: komponisto 17 December 2009 07:41:28PM 9 points [-]

How about "Defender of the Non-Faith"?

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 December 2009 02:23:08AM 29 points [-]

I don't think this should have been a top-level post either. It clutters up the newsreader and has an extremely wrong tone relative to what I think should be a usual post on this blog.

Suggested future policy: Anyone who wants to start this sort of meta discussion, create a new post "December 2009 Meta Thread" and post your remarks as a comment.

Vote up if you agree. (Do not vote down if you disagree! See below.)

Comment author: komponisto 17 December 2009 02:59:59AM *  4 points [-]

Anyone who wants to start this sort of meta discussion, create a new post "December 2009 Meta Thread

Actually, now that I think about it, is the problem really that the discussion is too meta? Or is it something else?

EDIT: In fact, rereading the post, I don't even think the tone is all that inappropriate after all. Perhaps I was put off by the title ("uh-oh, here comes another one of these 'look at what a hypocrite Eliezer is' postings...")

Comment author: komponisto 17 December 2009 01:47:22AM 2 points [-]

You meant "on the part of", not "on behalf of". (I'm going to take a wild guess that this post was not submitted on Eliezer's behalf.)

Comment author: pete22 16 December 2009 03:55:17AM *  3 points [-]

OK, but why do you keep saying "if"? The judge is making an argument on your terms. He is trying not to privilege the hypothesis. He is starting from the premise of Guede's involvement, and he does find a reason to infer the involvement of someone else. He does not conclude that the trail goes utterly cold, but instead that it leads convincingly to Raffaele and Amanda.

Now, you may disagree with this argument, but I still haven't heard the substance of your disagreement. All you've done is gainsay it.

Don't get me wrong -- I think your original post was a very good explanation of some huge conceptual problems in the way the case against K&S has come together. If I came in believing they were guilty, you would have raised massive doubts in my mind. And that's no small accomplishment on your part. But it doesn't follow that no case against them remains. In order to convince me, or anyone else who's around the average of 35%, that we should lower our odds to your 1-10% range, I think you have to address the facts more directly. It's not enough to say "there comes a point when you just have to declare..." or that certain DNA evidence "doesn't count."

If you were a defense attorney and we were jurors, then you're right, you'd have your acquittal. But it's not a juror's job to distinguish between a 1% and a 35% probability of guilt. To make that case, I don't think you can just point out weaknesses here and there in the prosecution's argument -- you need to lay out the strongest version of the prosecution's case, even if you have to put it together for them, and then show step-by-step why it doesn't lead to a probability higher than 1-10%.

I don't blame you for not doing that, because as I've been saying, the primary sources aren't available to do it -- at least not in objective, quality English translations. I'm just not sure how you can get to such low odds without taking a more granular approach. You've suggested that the correct prior is the (very low) odds of someone like Amanda committing homicide, and others have suggested that the correct prior is the (very high) odds of a convicted defendant in a modern legal system being guilty -- but these are two ends of a spectrum, not binary alternatives. Finding the correct point on that spectrum is equivalent to assessing the strength of the prosecution's case.

Comment author: komponisto 16 December 2009 07:31:12PM *  2 points [-]

He is starting from the premise of Guede's involvement

No he isn't! He's starting from the premise that some investigator found the condition of Meredith's clothing and bloodstains to be unusual given the hypothesis of only one killer. As far as I can tell, he has failed to update properly on the lack of connection between Guede and anyone else who might be a suspect -- not to mention the lack of other evidence (e.g. DNA) that would indicate two or more killers.

In order to convince me, or anyone else who's around the average of 35%, that we should lower our odds to your 1-10% range, I think you have to address the facts more directly.

I'm starting to suspect that we may just have a disagreement about how strong the anti-Knox evidence is. Yes, I agree it isn't literally zero. But that's not the point. The point is that it is utterly dwarfed by the other evidence. Exactly how strong of a dwarfing is this? Well, that's what seems to be the point of contention. I claim the net evidence of Knox's guilt yields a probability of no more than 0.1; you're uncomfortable going below 0.35. The only way to resolve this would be to do some sort of rigorous calculation of the inferential power of clothing-mechanics-analysis evidence -- something which I think would take us too far away from our main topics here.

I suppose I can console myself with the fact that it's good news for Amanda and Raffaele (and bad news for the prosecution) if what are probably the most intelligent and sophisticated discussions of their case on the whole Internet consist of vociferous arguments about whether the probability of their guilt should be 0.35, 0.1, or even lower.

Comment author: michaelsullivan 16 December 2009 02:59:57PM -2 points [-]

This is entirely wrong. The evidence against G should modify both P(Knox) and P(random peer that is not G) downward.

Proximity should keep P(Knox) > P(random peer) unless there is evidence specific to Knox which lowers her P (i.e. a good alibi).

Your statement about proceeding from the physical evidence and ignoring other things is a heuristic. The fact is that some random suspicious behavior by K is evidence against K, it is just extremely weak evidence. Let R = random suspicious behavior by K. I contend that P(K|R) > P(K|^R). Your arguments that many people do R all the time and are not murderers address the strength of the evidence, but do not address the sign, unless you wish to contend that people who engage in R are less likely or equally likely to be murderers than people who do not. You have made no such argument.

It's clear that the evidence against K should be overwhelmed by the evidence against G, given that no solid connection was established between G and K. But it isn't zero evidence, it is merely very weak evidence.

You have established a safety heuristic to keep yourself from overvaluing weak evidence, but your safety heuristic has it's own shortcomings, because it has caused you to give it zero weight, which is obviously wrong.

Comment author: komponisto 16 December 2009 07:05:18PM 0 points [-]

Your statement about proceeding from the physical evidence and ignoring other things is a heuristic.

It's clear that the evidence against K should be overwhelmed by the evidence against G, given that no solid connection was established between G and K. But it isn't zero evidence, it is merely very weak evidence.

Yes, I agree. Did you read this discussion before making this comment?

Comment author: pete22 15 December 2009 08:01:08PM 1 point [-]

OK, fair enough. I think I understand your standard better now. But let's go back to the actual case. Here's a quote from that truejustice site's summary of the Micheli report:

2) Judge Micheli explains that blood evidence proves that Meredith was wearing her bra when she was killed. Nor is it just the blood on her bra which demonstrates this. It’s also where the blood isn’t on her body. He says that Meredith was wearing her bra normally when she laid in the position in which she died, and she was still wearing it for quite some time after she was dead. Her bra strap marks and the position of her shoulder are imprinted in the pool of blood in that position. Meredith’s shoulder also shows the signs that she lay in that position for quite some time.

He asks the question: Who came back, cut off Meredith’s bra and moved her body some time later? It wasn’t Rudy Guede. He went home, cleaned himself up and went out on the town with his friends. Judge Micheli reasons in his report that it could only have been done by someone who knew about Meredith’s death and had an interest in arranging the scene in Meredith’s room. Seemingly who else but Amanda Knox?

She was apparently the only person in Perugia that night who could gain entry to the cottage. And the clasp which was cut with a knife when Meredith’s bra was removed was found on November 2nd when Meredith’s body was moved by the investigators. It was right under the pillow which was placed under Meredith when she was moved by someone from the position in which she died. On that clasp and its inch of fabric is the DNA of Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox. Micheli reasons in his report that Raffaele and Amanda seemed to have returned to the cottage some time after Meredith was dead, cut off her bra, moved her body, and staged the scene in Meredith’s room.

At what point exactly do you part ways with Judge Micheli in that chain of reasoning? To me, his reasoning starts to sound stretched around the middle of the second paragraph. But it sounds like you might have a problem with this logic from the very beginning ...? Are you saying the evidence that the body had been moved is just not worth paying attention to?

Comment author: komponisto 15 December 2009 10:18:44PM *  1 point [-]

Are you saying the evidence that the body had been moved is just not worth paying attention to?

If, starting from the premise of Guede's involvement, there are reasons to infer the involvement of someone else, then that sort of thing may very well be worth paying attention to. If the trail through Guede goes utterly cold, however, there comes a point where you just have to declare that Guede's actions + there's-something-we're-missing-about-that-other-"evidence" is a more parsimonious explanation of the data than Guede's actions + someone-like-Amanda-Knox-is-guilty.

In this situation, we should suspect that, if we bothered to investigate further, we would find that we were missing something. And sure enough, by golly, that's what often seems to happen.

Comment author: Cyan 15 December 2009 09:23:31PM *  1 point [-]

There will be some threshold of evidence below which a hypothesis ought to receive strictly zero attention. You could probably even formalize this in terms of bounded rationality.

Comment author: komponisto 15 December 2009 09:36:54PM 1 point [-]

Right, but I don't need to claim that the anti-Knox evidence is below that threshold. Unless, that is, we're talking about extremely imperfect less-than-Bayesian human minds, who can't intuitively perceive the difference in weight that a perfect Bayesian would assign to 30-bit evidence vs. 10-bit evidence.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 December 2009 05:53:29PM 4 points [-]

Whether evidence is strong enough to justify attention is an absolute threshold. There is no "extremely weak by comparison". There is just "extremely weak".

Comment author: komponisto 15 December 2009 08:58:31PM 0 points [-]

Huh? Attention isn't binary, off-or-on; like evidence itself, it's a quantifiable commodity. The stronger the evidence, the more attention. Right?

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 15 December 2009 04:59:11AM 1 point [-]

Very little familiarity prior to this post, read both sites for maybe 5 minutes each.

  1. 50%
  2. 40%
  3. 90%
  4. Your username looks vaguely Italian, so I'm guessing that your estimates of the chances that Knox and Sollecito are guilty is significantly higher.
Comment author: komponisto 15 December 2009 05:26:44AM 3 points [-]

Your username looks vaguely Italian, so I'm guessing that your estimates of the chances that Knox and Sollecito are guilty is significantly higher.

My username is Esperanto for "composer"; you wouldn't find the letter "k" in a native Italian word.

As for what my own estimates are, see here.

Comment author: pete22 15 December 2009 05:11:01AM 0 points [-]

Come to think of it, why would a further (unknown) DNA sample even be enough? You've got an explanation for the crime. Surely there are far more likely priors than a double murder that would explain a second DNA sample, right? "Similarly incriminating" might not really be possible; much of what made the first sample so incriminating is that it matched a guy who you already had reason to suspect. Or did you mean that an unknown DNA sample would not suffice, only one that matched another suspect?

Comment author: komponisto 15 December 2009 05:19:00AM 0 points [-]

If the victim's body and surroundings contains DNA from two different individuals, that would suggest multiple attackers.

Comment author: pete22 15 December 2009 05:02:29AM 1 point [-]

That's setting the bar pretty high. What about witnesses who claim to have seen two men running from the scene, or heard multiple voices at the time of the murder?

Comment author: komponisto 15 December 2009 05:13:49AM 1 point [-]

Maybe. But remember that reality is consistent: If two people were at the scene committing the crime, why would there be vastly more evidence of one than the other?

Once you have the suspect, you can interrogate him to find out who he knows.

Comment author: pete22 15 December 2009 04:47:03AM 2 points [-]

You're right, this is the part I have trouble understanding. Partly because I have trouble separating the facts of this particular case from the theoretical point you're making. So if you'll humor me for a second: let's say you're the chief of police somewhere, and one of your detectives comes back from a murder scene and tells you "we've arrested a prime suspect and we've got very strong evidence against him, including an ironclad DNA match that ties him to the murder. but we don't think he acted alone, because of X, so we want to keep looking for another suspect."

It sounds like for almost any X, your response would be "Don't waste your time. Case closed. Your hypothesis that there was another killer is unnecessary to explain the victim's death." Is that correct? What kind of X would suffice for you to let your detectives keep investigating?

Comment author: komponisto 15 December 2009 04:54:23AM *  1 point [-]

What kind of X would suffice for you to let your detectives keep investigating?

Two examples that come to mind immediately:

-Similarly incriminating DNA from someone else in addition to the prime suspect.

-Information acquired from the prime suspect himself that points to accomplices.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 December 2009 04:34:37AM 6 points [-]

Unless the evidence suggesting someone else was involved is of comparable power to the DNA evidence against Guede

Doesn't follow. You can have a lot of evidence for one true statement and then less evidence for another true statement.

Comment author: komponisto 15 December 2009 04:43:23AM *  0 points [-]

Not sure I understand the objection. The point is that the evidence is extremely weak by comparison; not strong enough to justify any attention.

Comment author: pete22 14 December 2009 08:52:49PM *  3 points [-]

By far the most important evidence in a murder investigation will therefore be the evidence that is the closest to the crime itself -- evidence on and around the victim, as well as details stored in the brains of people who were present during the act.

the evidence against Guédé is such that the hypothesis of her guilt is superfluous -- not needed -- in explaining the death of Meredith Kercher

I think you’re begging the question here. Those who are convinced that K&S are guilty seem to believe that the evidence from the crime scene itself suggests that Guede could not have been the only participant – i.e. his involvement does NOT completely explain the death of Meredith Kercher. They seem to believe this for two reasons:

  1. The various evidence at the crime scene itself of a clean up and/or staged break-in, things like the bra being cut off or the body being moved – hard to attribute to Guede because a. he wouldn’t have had time (is this true?), and b. little effort was taken to remove evidence against Guede himself, even very obvious things like flushing the toilet.

  2. I haven’t seen any commenters mention it here, but one of the anti-Amanda sites, in quoting the Micheli report, seemed to imply that Kercher’s injuries were inconsistent with a single attacker.

Your post appears to take for granted that these are not credible arguments, but they seem like a very significant part of the prosecution’s case – and the part that I found hardest to assess without English versions of the Micheli report and other source documents. Can you explain how you reached this level of confidence?

FWIW, I'm not an Amanda-hater …my prior probability of her guilt was 30%, and I'm ready to revise it down. I’m just not sure I fully understand your argument on this point.

Comment author: komponisto 15 December 2009 02:37:50AM *  4 points [-]

The various evidence at the crime scene itself of a clean up and/or staged break-in, things like the bra being cut off or the body being moved

A bizarre or unexpected condition of the crime scene is not the explanandum here; Meredith's death is. One person is entirely sufficient to have killed Meredith, and the DNA evidence establishes with virtual certainty that Guede had the kind of contact with her necessary to accomplish this. Unless the evidence suggesting someone else was involved is of comparable power to the DNA evidence against Guede (something on the order of 30 bits), then (and this is the part people have trouble understanding) even paying attention to it at all is automatically hypothesis-privileging.

(EDIT: Eliezer corrects below. What I actually wanted to argue here was that, given the certainty of Guede's involvement, the lack of connection between him and Knox or Sollecito is strong evidence against their involvement -- probably enough on its own to outweigh the comparatively weak evidence against them provided by the alleged indications of multiple attackers at the crime scene.)

Yes, we might be curious about the unusual mechanics of the crime scene given only one person, but unless they are so strange that assuming someone else's guilt of murder (when we already have a suspect) would constitute a reasonable explanation for them, we have to regard the whole question as a distraction.

Comment author: ciphergoth 14 December 2009 09:16:50AM 1 point [-]

What general advice for yourself do you have as a result of this error? Presumably it's more than just "don't be so overconfident", since I'm guessing you asked yourself at the time whether you were being overconfident and concluded you weren't.

Comment author: komponisto 14 December 2009 05:51:33PM *  1 point [-]

Probably something along the lines of: don't say anything more than you need to make your point.

My "gut feeling" is still somewhere in the region of what I originally said -- that there's roughly a snowball's chance in hell that Knox and Sollecito commited murder -- but my post is a stinging indictment of the verdict even if it only argues for a probability of 0.1.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 December 2009 04:18:45PM 0 points [-]

I noticed, but wasn't distracted.

It also seemed to me that assigning 0.001 to Knox's guilt was safer than assigning 0.999 to Guede's guilt, yet people who assigned extreme estimates wanted to assign equally extreme estimates to both. I'm not confident this is an error, though, because the case for Guede's guilt looks strong and it might be that in this state of evidence fewer than 1 in 1,000 people are innocent. On the other hand, I recall a strong tendency for people to say 0.10 and 0.90, 0.05 and 0.95, 0.01 and 0.99, or 0.001 and 0.999, and I don't see how that could happen naturally.

It looks to me like the clash between the concepts of "overconfidence and calibration" versus "privileging the hypothesis" may also be behind my horrible LHC inconsistency.

Comment author: komponisto 14 December 2009 05:48:02PM 0 points [-]

It also seemed to me that assigning 0.001 to Knox's guilt was safer than assigning 0.999 to Guede's guilt,

That's interesting. I'm wondering if you could elaborate on why you think that's so, since I would have guessed the opposite.

Comment author: Unknowns 14 December 2009 07:59:15AM 0 points [-]

Ok, but given your updated estimates, it is consequently unreasonable to just dismiss psychological and interpreted physical evidence (i.e. bloody footprints, crime scene rearrangement and so on). Whether this is actually so or not, it is very possible that these things could add together to give enough evidence to say that someone is probably guilty; going from a 1% to a 99% chance does not take an extremely large amount of evidence.

And this seems to imply that an hour on the internet does NOT beat a year in the courtroom. To know whether this is true or not you would actually have to know the evidence in more detail. For example it does seem that even in Judge Micheli's report there is a good deal of detail that has been generally unreported in English.

Comment author: komponisto 14 December 2009 08:07:26AM 1 point [-]

Ok, but given your updated estimates, it is consequently unreasonable to just dismiss psychological and interpreted physical evidence

I don't see why this kind of stuff is any more powerful than its counterparts on the other side: K & S's benign personalities, lack of criminal history, lack of motive, etc.

Comment author: Bo102010 14 December 2009 01:55:06AM 1 point [-]

This was a brilliant post. You deserve buckets of karma.

I didn't read the first part of the series until later - I wish I could have participated.

Comment author: komponisto 14 December 2009 07:59:57AM 2 points [-]

Upvoted for making me feel good, after I was bummed out for having overstated my case. :-)

Comment author: Unknowns 13 December 2009 08:06:09AM 1 point [-]

The percentage of murder cases that involve multiple murderers is relevant to the idea that the evidence against G "brings her probability back down to the prior," and this percentage is much higher than you think it is (i.e. it is higher than 1% of cases, and this is enough that AK's probability will definitely not go back to the prior. In fact it seems to be in 10-20% of cases),

Comment author: komponisto 14 December 2009 07:37:34AM 1 point [-]

This is accounted for in my updated estimates.

Comment author: Blueberry 13 December 2009 07:16:33AM *  5 points [-]

these two things constituting so far as I know the entirety of the physical "evidence" against the couple

I'd like to know your reaction to this argument. There is some other evidence against the "lone wolf" theory and pointing more towards Amanda, specifically that Meredith's bra was removed and the scene rearranged after her death (and not by Rudy), the bloody footprints that match Amanda, and the witness placing all three of them together near the house around the time of Meredith's death.

(Edited to fix formatting)

Comment author: komponisto 14 December 2009 07:34:46AM 0 points [-]

Does this kind of evidence have anywhere near 30 bits of inferential power?

To me, it seems more like on approximately the same order as psychological evidence.

Comment author: ChristianKl 13 December 2009 05:36:17PM 1 point [-]

There something like a TV bias. In TV shows there often physical evidence at a crime scene that's needed for the narrative of the story. In real life there often isn't a lot of physical evidence.

That bias is strong enough to let some prospectors ask jurors about how much they watched shows like CSI to select jurors that don't believe that there has to be physical evidence.

To me it seems you are a victim of the bias that real life crime scenes look like TV crime scenes.

Comment author: komponisto 14 December 2009 07:24:07AM *  1 point [-]

In general (with a very few idiosyncratic exceptions), I despise crime shows, and have never seen an episode of CSI in my life.

Comment author: Jack 14 December 2009 06:16:03AM 0 points [-]

1.Small. Hardly different from the prior, which is dominated by the probability that someone in whatever reference class you would have put Amanda into on January 1, 2007 would commit murder within twelve months. Something on the order of 0.01 or 0.1 at most.

What information do these new priors reflect? Obviously 1-10% of upper-middle class female college students with no history of criminal activity won't commit murder over the next 12 months so I assume that these priors are taking something else into account- like the fact that she lived with a murder victim. But can you say what else you've included? (Or point me if you already have somewhere).

Comment author: komponisto 14 December 2009 07:01:22AM *  0 points [-]

What's going on here is that I'm still trying to figure out how I want to revise that sentence. I may just go ahead and cross it out, since I think the whole issue of "what the prior should be" is a distraction.

EDIT: Done.

Previous Post Revised

12 komponisto 14 December 2009 06:56AM

Followup to: The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom

See also: The Importance of Saying "Oops"

I'm posting this to call attention to the fact that I've now reconsidered the highly confident probability estimates in my post from yesterday on the Knox/Sollecito case. I haven't retracted my arguments; I just now think the level of confidence in them that I specified was too high. I've added the following paragraph to the concluding section:

[EDIT: After reading comments on this post, I have done some updating of my own. I now think I failed to adequately consider the possibility of my own overconfidence. This was pretty stupid of me, since it meant that the focus was taken away from the actual arguments in this post, and basically toward the issue of whether 0.001 can possibly be a rational estimate for anything you read about on the Internet. The qualitative reasoning of this post, of course, stands. Also, the focus of my accusations of irrationality was not primarily the LW community as reflected in my previous post; I actually think we did a pretty good job of coming to the right conclusion given the information provided -- and as others have noted, the levelheadedness with which we did so was impressive.]

While object-level comments on the case and on my reasoning about it should probably continue to be confined to that thread, I'd be interested in hearing in comments here what people think about the following:

  • How much of a distraction did you find my extremely confident probabilities to be from the substance of my arguments?
  • How much did those confident estimates make it seem like I was disagreeing, rather than agreeing, with the LW survey consensus? (It seemed to me that I had provoked people into trumpeting pro-guilt arguments more than they otherwise would have if I had initally given more "reasonable" numbers.)
  • To what sorts of propositions, if any, do you yourself assign probabilities on the order of 0.999 or 0.001?

The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom

42 Post author: komponisto 13 December 2009 04:16AM

Note: The quantitative elements of this post have now been revised significantly.

Followup to: You Be the Jury: Survey on a Current Event

All three of them clearly killed her. The jury clearly believed so as well which strengthens my argument. They spent months examining the case, so the idea that a few minutes of internet research makes [other commenters] certain they're wrong seems laughable

- lordweiner27, commenting on my previous post

The short answer: it's very much like how a few minutes of philosophical reflection trump a few millennia of human cultural tradition.

Wielding the Sword of Bayes -- or for that matter the Razor of Occam -- requires courage and a certain kind of ruthlessness. You have to be willing to cut your way through vast quantities of noise and focus in like a laser on the signal.

But the tools of rationality are extremely powerful if you know how to use them.

Rationality is not easy for humans. Our brains were optimized to arrive at correct conclusions about the world only insofar as that was a necessary byproduct of being optimized to pass the genetic material that made them on to the next generation. If you've been reading Less Wrong for any significant length of time, you probably know this by now. In fact, around here this is almost a banality -- a cached thought. "We get it," you may be tempted to say. "So stop signaling your tribal allegiance to this website and move on to some new, nontrivial meta-insight."

But this is one of those things that truly do bear repeating, over and over again, almost at every opportunity. You really can't hear it enough. It has consequences, you see. The most important of which is: if you only do what feels epistemically "natural" all the time, you're going to be, well, wrong. And probably not just "sooner or later", either. Chances are, you're going to be wrong quite a lot.

To borrow a Yudkowskian turn of phrase: if you don't ever -- or indeed often -- find yourself needing to zig when, not only other people, but all kinds of internal "voices" in your mind are loudly shouting for you to zag, then you're either a native rationalist -- a born Bayesian, who should perhaps be deducing general relativity from the fall of an apple any minute now -- or else you're simply not trying hard enough.    

Oh, and another one of those consequences of humans' not being instinctively rational?

Two intelligent young people with previously bright futures, named Amanda and Raffaele, are now seven days into spending the next quarter-century of their lives behind bars for a crime they almost certainly did not commit.

"Almost certainly" really doesn't quite capture it. In my previous post I asked readers to assign probabilities to the following propositions:

1. Amanda Knox is guilty (of killing Meredith Kercher)
2. Raffaele Sollecito is guilty (of killing Meredith Kercher)
3. Rudy Guédé is guilty (of killing Meredith Kercher)

I also asked them to guess at how closely they thought their estimates would match mine.

Well, for comparison, here are mine (revised):

1. Negligible. Small. Hardly different from the prior, which is dominated by the probability that someone in whatever reference class you would have put Amanda into on January 1, 2007 would commit murder within twelve months. Something on the order of 0.001 0.01 or 0.1 at most.  
2. Ditto.
3. About as high as the other two numbers are low. 0.999 0.99 as a (probably weak) lower bound.

Yes, you read that correctly. In my opinion, there is for all intents and purposes zero Bayesian evidence that Amanda and Raffaele are guilty. Needless to say, this differs markedly from the consensus of the jury in Perugia, Italy. 

How could this be?

Am I really suggesting that the estimates of eight jurors -- among whom two professional judges -- who heard the case for a year, along with something like 60% of the Italian public and probably half the Internet (and a significantly larger fraction of the non-American Internet), could be off by a minimum of three orders of magnitude (probably significantly more) such a large amount? That most other people (including most commenters on my last post) are off by no fewer than two?

Well, dear reader, before getting too incredulous, consider this. How about averaging the probabilities all those folks would assign to the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead, and calling that number x. Meanwhile, let y be the correct rational probability that Jesus rose from the dead, given the information available to us.

How big do you suppose the ratio x/y is?

Anyone want to take a stab at guessing the logarithm of that number?

Compared to the probability that Jesus rose from the dead, my estimate of Amanda Knox's culpability makes it look like I think she's as guilty as sin itself.

And that, of course, is just the central one of many sub-claims of the hugely complex yet widely believed proposition that Christianity is true. There are any number of other equally unlikely assertions that Amanda would have heard at mass on the day after being found guilty of killing her new friend Meredith (source in Italian) -- assertions that are assigned non-negligible probability by no fewer than a couple billion of the Earth's human inhabitants.

I say this by way of preamble: be very wary of trusting in the rationality of your fellow humans, when you have serious reasons to doubt their conclusions.

The Lawfulness of Murder: Inference Proceeds Backward, from Crime to Suspect

We live in a lawful universe. Every event that happens in this world -- including human actions and thoughts -- is ultimately governed by the laws of physics, which are exceptionless. 

Murder may be highly illegal, but from the standpoint of physics, it's as lawful as everything else. Every physical interaction, including a homicide, leaves traces -- changes in the environment that constitute information about what took place.

Such information, however, is -- crucially -- local. The further away in space and time you move from the event, the less entanglement there is between your environment and that of the event, and thus the more difficult it is to make legitimate inferences about the event. The signal-to-noise ratio decreases dramatically as you move away in causal distance from the event. After all, the hypothesis space of possible causal chains of length n leading to the event increases exponentially in n.

By far the most important evidence in a murder investigation will therefore be the evidence that is the closest to the crime itself -- evidence on and around the victim, as well as details stored in the brains of people who were present during the act. Less important will be evidence obtained from persons and objects a short distance away from the crime scene; and the importance decays rapidly from there as you move further out.

It follows that you cannot possibly expect to reliably arrive at the correct answer by starting a few steps removed in the causal chain, say with a person you find "suspicious" for some reason, and working forward to come up with a plausible scenario for how the crime was committed. That would be privileging the hypothesis. Instead, you have to start from the actual crime scene, or as close to it as you can get, and work backward, letting yourself be blown by the winds of evidence toward one or more possible suspects.

In the Meredith Kercher case, the winds of evidence blow with something like hurricane force in the direction of Rudy Guédé. After the murder, Kercher's bedroom was filled with evidence of Guédé's presence; his DNA was found not only on top of but actually inside her body. That's about as close to the crime as it gets. At the same time, no remotely similarly incriminating genetic material was found from anyone else -- in particular, there were no traces of the presence of either Amanda Knox or Raffaele Sollecito in the room (and no, the supposed Sollecito DNA on Meredith's bra clasp just plain does not count -- nor, while we're at it, do the 100 picograms [about one human cell's worth] of DNA from Meredith allegedly on the tip of a knife handled by Knox, found at Sollecito's apartment after the two were already suspects; these two things constituting pretty much the entirety of the physical "evidence" against the couple).

If, up to this point, the police had reasons to be suspicious of Knox, Sollecito, and Guédé, they should have cleared Knox and Sollecito at once upon the discovery that Guédé -- who, by the way, was the only one to have fled the country after the crime -- was the one whom the DNA matched. Unless, that is, Knox and Sollecito were specifically implicated by Guédé; after all, maybe Knox and Sollecito didn't actually kill the victim, but instead maybe they paid Guédé to do so, or were otherwise involved in a conspiracy with him. But the prior probabilities of such scenarios are low, even in general -- to say nothing of the case of Knox and Sollecito specifically, who, tabloid press to the contrary, are known to have had utterly benign dispositions prior to these events, and no reason to want Meredith Kercher dead.

If Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were to be in investigators' thoughts at all, they had to get there via Guédé -- because otherwise the hypothesis (a priori unlikely) of their having had homicidal intent toward Kercher would be entirely superfluous in explaining the chain of events that led to her death.  The trail of evidence had led to Guédé, and therefore necessarily had to proceed from him; to follow any other path would be to fatally sidetrack the investigation, and virtually to guarantee serious -- very serious -- error. Which is exactly what happened.

There was in fact no inferential path from Guédé to Knox or Sollecito. He never implicated either of the two until long after the event; around the time of his apprehension, he specifically denied that Knox had been in the room. Meanwhile, it remains entirely unclear that he and Sollecito had ever even met.

The hypotheses of Knox's and Sollecito's guilt are thus seen to be completely unnecessary, doing no explanatory work with respect to Kercher's death. They are nothing but extremely burdensome details.  

Epistemic Ruthlessness: Following the Strong Signal

All of the "evidence" you've heard against Knox and Sollecito -- the changing stories, suspicious behavior, short phone calls, washing machine rumors, etc. -- is, quite literally, just noise.

But it sounds so suspicious, you say. Who places a three-second phone call? 

As humans, we are programmed to think that the most important kinds of facts about the world are mental and social -- facts about what humans are thinking and planning, particularly as regards to other humans. This explains why some people are capable of wondering whether the presence of (only) Rudy Guédé's DNA in and on Meredith's body should be balanced against the possibilty that Meredith may have been annoyed at Amanda for bringing home boyfriends and occasionally forgetting to flush the toilet -- that might have led to resentment on Amanda's part, you see.

That's an extreme example, of course -- certainly no one here fell into that kind of trap. But at least one of the most thoughtful commenters was severely bothered by the length of Amanda's phone calls to Meredith. As -- I'll confess -- was I, for a minute or two.

I don't know why Amanda wouldn't have waited longer for Meredith to pick up. (For what it's worth, I myself have sometimes, in a state of nervousness, dialed someone's number, quickly changed my mind, then dialed again a short time later.) But -- as counterintuitive as it may seem -- it doesn't matter. The error here is even asking a question about Amanda's motivations when you haven't established an evidentiary (and that means physical) trail leading from Meredith's body to Amanda's brain. (Or even more to the point, when you have established a trail that led decisively elsewhere.)

Maybe it's "unlikely" that Amanda would have behaved this way if she were innocent. But is the degree of improbabilty here anything like the improbability of her having participated in a sex-orgy-killing without leaving a single piece of physical evidence behind? While someone else left all kinds of traces? When you had no reason to suspect her at all without looking a good distance outside Meredith's room, far away from the important evidence?

It's not even remotely comparable. 

Think about what you're doing here: you are invoking the hypothesis that Amanda Knox is guilty of murder in order to explain the fact that she hung up the phone after three seconds. (Remember, the evidence against Guédé is such that the hypothesis of her guilt is superfluous -- not needed -- in explaining the death of Meredith Kercher!)

Maybe that's not quite as bad as invoking a superintelligent deity in order to explain life on Earth; but it's the same kind of mistake: explaining a strange thing by postulating a far, far stranger thing.

"But come on," says a voice in your head. "Does this really sound like the behavior of an innocent person?"

You have to shut that voice out. Ruthlessly. Because it has no way of knowing. That voice is designed to assess the motivations of members of an ancestral hunter-gather band. At best, it may have the ability to distinguish the correct murderer from between 2 and 100 possibilities -- 6 or 7 bits of inferential power on the absolute best of days. That may have worked in hunter-gatherer times, before more-closely-causally-linked physical evidence could hope to be evaluated. (Or maybe not -- but at least it got the genes passed on.)

DNA analysis, in contrast, has in principle the ability to uniquely identify a single individual from among the entire human species (depending on how much of the genome is looked at; also ignoring identical twins, etc.) -- that's more like 30-odd bits of inferential power. In terms of epistemic technology, we're talking about something like the difference in locomotive efficacy between a horsedrawn carriage and the Starship Enterprise. Our ancestral environment just plain did not equip our knowledge-gathering intuitions with the ability to handle weapons this powerful.

We're talking about the kind of power that allows us to reduce what was formerly a question of human social psychology -- who made the decision to kill Meredith? -- to one of physics. (Or chemistry, at any rate.)

But our minds don't naturally think in terms of physics and chemistry. From an intuitive point of view, the equations of those subjects are foreign; whereas "X did Y because he/she wanted Z" is familiar. This is why it's so difficult for people to intuitively appreciate that all of the chatter about Amanda's "suspicious behavior" with various convincing-sounding narratives put forth by the prosecution is totally and utterly drowned out to oblivion by the sheer strength of the DNA signal pointing to Guédé alone.

This rationalist skill of following the strong signal -- mercilessly blocking out noise -- might be considered an epistemic analog of the instrumental "shut up and multiply": when much is at stake, you have to be willing to jettison your intuitive feelings in favor of cold, hard, abstract calculation.

In this case, that means, among other things, thinking in terms of how much explanatory work is done by the various hypotheses, rather than how suspicious Amanda and Raffaele seem

Conclusion: The Amanda Knox Test

I chose the title of this post because the parallel structure made it sound nice. But actually, I think an hour is a pretty weak upper bound on the amount of time a skilled rationalist should need to arrive at the correct judgment in this case.

The fact is that what this comes down to is an utterly straightforward application of Occam's Razor. The complexity penalty on the prosecution's theory of the crime is enormous; the evidence in its favor had better be overwhelming. But instead, what we find is that the evidence from the scene -- the most important sort of evidence by a huge margin -- points with literally superhuman strength toward a mundane, even typical, homicide scenario. To even consider theories not directly suggested by this evidence is to engage in hypothesis privileging to the extreme.

So let me say it now, in case there was any doubt: the prosecution of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, culminating in last week's jury verdict -- which apparently was unanimous, though it didn't need to be under Italian rules -- represents nothing but one more gigantic, disastrous rationality failure on the part of our species.

How did Less Wrong do by comparison? The average estimated probability of Amanda Knox's guilt was 0.35 (thanks to Yvain for doing the calculation). It's pretty reasonable to assume the figure for Raffaele Sollecito would be similar. While not particularly flattering to the defendants (how would you like to be told that there's a 35% chance you're a murderer?), that number makes it obvious we would have voted to acquit. (If a 65% chance that they didn't do it doesn't constitute  "reasonable doubt" that they did...)

The commenters whose estimates were closest to mine -- and, therefore, to the correct answer, in my view -- were Daniel Burfoot and jenmarie. Congratulations to them. (But even they were off by a factor of at least ten!)

In general, most folks went in the right direction, but, as Eliezer noted, were far too underconfident -- evidently the result of an exorbitant level of trust in juries, at least in part. But people here were also widely making the same object-level mistake as (presumably) the jury: vastly overestimating the importance of "psychological" evidence, such as Knox's inconsistencies at the police station, as compared to "physical" evidence (only Guédé's DNA in the room).

One thing that was interesting and rather encouraging, however, is the amount of updating people did after reading others' comments -- most of it in the right direction (toward innocence).

[EDIT: After reading comments on this post, I have done some updating of my own. I now think I failed to adequately consider the possibility of my own overconfidence. This was pretty stupid of me, since it meant that the focus was taken away from the actual arguments in this post, and basically toward the issue of whether 0.001 can possibly be a rational estimate for anything you read about on the Internet. The qualitative reasoning of this post, of course, stands. Also, the focus of my accusations of irrationality was not primarily the LW community as reflected in my previous post; I actually think we did a pretty good job of coming to the right conclusion given the information provided -- and as others have noted, the levelheadedness with which we did so was impressive.]

For most frequenters of this forum, where many of us regularly speak in terms of trying to save the human species from various global catastrophic risks, a case like this may not seem to have very many grand implications, beyond serving as yet another example of how basic principles of rationality such as Occam's Razor are incredibly difficult for people to grasp on an intuitive level. But it does catch the attention of someone like me, who takes an interest in less-commonly-thought-about forms of human suffering.

The next time I find myself discussing the "hard problem of consciousness", thinking in vivid detail about the spectrum of human experience and wondering what it's like to be a bat, I am going to remember -- whether I say so or not -- that there is most definitely something it's like to be Amanda Knox in the moments following the announcement of that verdict: when you've just learned that, instead of heading back home to celebrate Christmas with your family as you had hoped, you will be spending the next decade or two -- your twenties and thirties -- in a prison cell in a foreign country. When your deceased friend's relatives are watching with satisfaction as you are led, sobbing and wailing with desperation, to a van which will transport you back to that cell. (Ever thought about what that ride must be like?) 

While we're busy eliminating hunger, disease, and death itself, I hope we can also find the time, somewhere along the way, to get rid of that, too.

(The Associated Press reported that, apparently, Amanda had some trouble going to sleep after the midnight verdict.) 

I'll conclude with this: the noted mathematician Serge Lang was in the habit of giving his students "Huntington tests" -- named in reference to his controversy with political scientist Samuel Huntington, whose entrance into the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Lang waged a successful campaign to block on the grounds of Huntington's insufficient scientific rigor.

The purpose of the Huntington test, in Lang's words, was to see if the students could "tell a fact from a hole in the ground".

I'm thinking of adopting a similar practice, and calling my version the Amanda Knox Test. 

Postscript: If you agree with me, and are also the sort of person who enjoys purchasing warm fuzzies separately from your utilons, you might consider donating to Amanda's defense fund, to help out her financially devastated family. Of course, if you browse the site, you may feel your (prior) estimate of her guilt taking some hits; personally, that's okay with me.

Comment author: komponisto 14 December 2009 06:00:07AM 4 points [-]

Post now revised in light of comments.

Comment author: Psychohistorian 13 December 2009 06:58:35AM *  4 points [-]

But the evidence against G utterly destroys her explanatory value, and brings her probability back down to the prior.

This is true in reality, not in my hypothetical. If it were a fact that three people had been involved, as posited, the evidence against G would not explain anyone else away on its own. I'm using a counterfactual to attempt to show that your claim that there's no special evidence of her guilt is false.

You've stated: [A] P(Knox is guilty) = P(Random person from relevant social circle is guilty). It seems to me that [B] P(Knox is guilty; given multiple killers) > P(Random person from relevant social circle is guilty; given multiple killers). Assume [B] is true. The additional specification does not point to K, it only says that people other than G are guilty. Therefore, [A] should be false. So, I'm assuming you would take issue with the truth of [B], or else with my reasoning, and I'd be curious as to how and why either way.

Comment author: komponisto 13 December 2009 07:17:57AM 0 points [-]

[A] is only true given the evidence against G. Not knowing that evidence, we would have P(Knox) > P(random peer) by proximity.

Comment author: Psychohistorian 13 December 2009 06:21:11AM 5 points [-]

Negligible. No different from the prior, which is dominated by the probability that someone in whatever reference class you would have put Amanda into on January 1, 2007 would commit murder within twelve months. Something on the order of 0.001 at most.

Suppose it were somehow revealed to you that three people had in fact committed the murder. Would you still maintain that K and S are no more likely to have been involved than anyone else in the relevant reference class? If not, doesn't this suggest that this quoted bit is an overstatement?

That's a genuine question; I haven't fully thought that concept through.

Comment author: komponisto 13 December 2009 06:46:48AM 0 points [-]

Suppose it were somehow revealed to you that three people had in fact committed >the murder. Would you still maintain that K and S are no more likely to have been >involved than anyone else in the relevant reference class?

There is a proximity effect, just as in the actual situation K's probability is slightly raised by the fact that a killing occurred in her house (and S's is in turn raised by his intimacy with K). But the evidence against G utterly destroys her explanatory value, and brings her probability back down to the prior.

If not, doesn't this suggest that this quoted bit is an overstatement?

No, because this is my posterior probability after taking into account the evidence against G.

Comment author: wedrifid 13 December 2009 06:20:10AM *  10 points [-]

Serious nitpicking going on here.

Probability theories and the philosophies thereof are of interest to me and there are a lot of intuitive traps that are easy to fall into.

The whole point of my post is that from the information provided, one should arrive at probabilities close to what I said.

If that is what your point was then I actually disagree with it. I am not comfortable giving odds of 1:999 after looking briefly at two biassed webpages and a wikipedia page that you tell me is fluctuating at the whims of editorial bias. I know damn well I'd be wrong more than once if I did something like that 1,000 times.

Don't forget that "the order, manner, and quantity of browsing will be left up to [them]". It would be quite reasonable for someone to decide to read until a certain level of confidence has been reached. Once you are 99% confident that the poor girl is innocent what do you hope to achieve by marinating yourself in more and more evidence (or, for that matter, the lack of it)?

It would be great if I could go all Liam Neeson and say "if you let her go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you." Alas, I do not have any way to efficiently influence the justice system of Victoria or Australia, much less Italy.

(Damn I hate juries. The thought of being at the mercy of a mob of my peers fills me with equal parts fear and outrage. But it isn't my fight. Except in as much as the only path to a justice system I actually trust probably involves FAI.)

Comment author: komponisto 13 December 2009 06:35:18AM 1 point [-]

If that is what your point was then I actually disagree with it. I am not comfortable giving odds of 1:999 after looking briefly at two biassed webpages and a wikipedia page that you tell me is fluctuating at the whims of editorial bias. I know damn well I'd be wrong more than once if I did something like that 1,000 times

What if I tried putting it this way: people underestimate the (potential) power of applying rationality techniques as compared with gathering more raw information. It is sometimes possible to be extremely confident about a proposition after an hour of Internet research, even when people who have spent a year "gathering evidence" seem to disagree shaprly.

Comment author: wedrifid 13 December 2009 05:04:03AM *  6 points [-]

Am I really suggesting that the estimates of eight jurors -- among whom two professional judges -- who heard the case for a year, along with something like 60% of the Italian public and probably half the Internet (and a significantly larger fraction of the non-American Internet), could be off by a minimum of three orders of magnitude (probably significantly more)? That most other people (including most commenters on my last post) are off by no fewer than two?

Your assertion of such a high probability of guilt does not constitute a claim that most other commenters on your last post were off by no fewer than two orders of magnitude. Probability is subjectively objective. There is one correct estimate for you to have given what you know but this is not the same one that others should have. In fact, given that on average the commenters care less about the subject so did less research if they arrived at the same confidence as you then one of you would probably have to be wrong.

The commenters whose estimates were closest to mine -- and, therefore, to the correct answer, in my view -- were Daniel Burfoot and jenmarie. Congratulations to them. (But even they were off by a factor of at least ten!)

The task isn't to guess your password. The task is to assign probability estimates about the state of their timeline of universe. Their universe does not include the state 'it is <some completely arbitrary high probability> probable that Amanda is innocent'.

ETA: I totally agree with your main contentions and found your post both insightful and extremely well written. It is rare to see such well reasoned essays from people who are emotionally entangled with the topic.

Comment author: komponisto 13 December 2009 05:29:42AM 0 points [-]

Serious nitpicking going on here. The whole point of my post is that from the information provided, one should arrive at probabilities close to what I said.

I don't have appreciably more info than many who participated in my survey, and certainly not more than the jury in Perugia.

The Amanda Knox Test: How an Hour on the Internet Beats a Year in the Courtroom

42 Post author: komponisto 13 December 2009 04:16AM

Note: The quantitative elements of this post have now been revised significantly.

Followup to: You Be the Jury: Survey on a Current Event

All three of them clearly killed her. The jury clearly believed so as well which strengthens my argument. They spent months examining the case, so the idea that a few minutes of internet research makes [other commenters] certain they're wrong seems laughable

- lordweiner27, commenting on my previous post

The short answer: it's very much like how a few minutes of philosophical reflection trump a few millennia of human cultural tradition.

Wielding the Sword of Bayes -- or for that matter the Razor of Occam -- requires courage and a certain kind of ruthlessness. You have to be willing to cut your way through vast quantities of noise and focus in like a laser on the signal.

But the tools of rationality are extremely powerful if you know how to use them.

Rationality is not easy for humans. Our brains were optimized to arrive at correct conclusions about the world only insofar as that was a necessary byproduct of being optimized to pass the genetic material that made them on to the next generation. If you've been reading Less Wrong for any significant length of time, you probably know this by now. In fact, around here this is almost a banality -- a cached thought. "We get it," you may be tempted to say. "So stop signaling your tribal allegiance to this website and move on to some new, nontrivial meta-insight."

But this is one of those things that truly do bear repeating, over and over again, almost at every opportunity. You really can't hear it enough. It has consequences, you see. The most important of which is: if you only do what feels epistemically "natural" all the time, you're going to be, well, wrong. And probably not just "sooner or later", either. Chances are, you're going to be wrong quite a lot.

To borrow a Yudkowskian turn of phrase: if you don't ever -- or indeed often -- find yourself needing to zig when, not only other people, but all kinds of internal "voices" in your mind are loudly shouting for you to zag, then you're either a native rationalist -- a born Bayesian, who should perhaps be deducing general relativity from the fall of an apple any minute now -- or else you're simply not trying hard enough.    

Oh, and another one of those consequences of humans' not being instinctively rational?

Two intelligent young people with previously bright futures, named Amanda and Raffaele, are now seven days into spending the next quarter-century of their lives behind bars for a crime they almost certainly did not commit.

"Almost certainly" really doesn't quite capture it. In my previous post I asked readers to assign probabilities to the following propositions:

1. Amanda Knox is guilty (of killing Meredith Kercher)
2. Raffaele Sollecito is guilty (of killing Meredith Kercher)
3. Rudy Guédé is guilty (of killing Meredith Kercher)

I also asked them to guess at how closely they thought their estimates would match mine.

Well, for comparison, here are mine (revised):

1. Negligible. Small. Hardly different from the prior, which is dominated by the probability that someone in whatever reference class you would have put Amanda into on January 1, 2007 would commit murder within twelve months. Something on the order of 0.001 0.01 or 0.1 at most.  
2. Ditto.
3. About as high as the other two numbers are low. 0.999 0.99 as a (probably weak) lower bound.

Yes, you read that correctly. In my opinion, there is for all intents and purposes zero Bayesian evidence that Amanda and Raffaele are guilty. Needless to say, this differs markedly from the consensus of the jury in Perugia, Italy. 

How could this be?

Am I really suggesting that the estimates of eight jurors -- among whom two professional judges -- who heard the case for a year, along with something like 60% of the Italian public and probably half the Internet (and a significantly larger fraction of the non-American Internet), could be off by a minimum of three orders of magnitude (probably significantly more) such a large amount? That most other people (including most commenters on my last post) are off by no fewer than two?

Well, dear reader, before getting too incredulous, consider this. How about averaging the probabilities all those folks would assign to the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead, and calling that number x. Meanwhile, let y be the correct rational probability that Jesus rose from the dead, given the information available to us.

How big do you suppose the ratio x/y is?

Anyone want to take a stab at guessing the logarithm of that number?

Compared to the probability that Jesus rose from the dead, my estimate of Amanda Knox's culpability makes it look like I think she's as guilty as sin itself.

And that, of course, is just the central one of many sub-claims of the hugely complex yet widely believed proposition that Christianity is true. There are any number of other equally unlikely assertions that Amanda would have heard at mass on the day after being found guilty of killing her new friend Meredith (source in Italian) -- assertions that are assigned non-negligible probability by no fewer than a couple billion of the Earth's human inhabitants.

I say this by way of preamble: be very wary of trusting in the rationality of your fellow humans, when you have serious reasons to doubt their conclusions.

The Lawfulness of Murder: Inference Proceeds Backward, from Crime to Suspect

We live in a lawful universe. Every event that happens in this world -- including human actions and thoughts -- is ultimately governed by the laws of physics, which are exceptionless. 

Murder may be highly illegal, but from the standpoint of physics, it's as lawful as everything else. Every physical interaction, including a homicide, leaves traces -- changes in the environment that constitute information about what took place.

Such information, however, is -- crucially -- local. The further away in space and time you move from the event, the less entanglement there is between your environment and that of the event, and thus the more difficult it is to make legitimate inferences about the event. The signal-to-noise ratio decreases dramatically as you move away in causal distance from the event. After all, the hypothesis space of possible causal chains of length n leading to the event increases exponentially in n.

By far the most important evidence in a murder investigation will therefore be the evidence that is the closest to the crime itself -- evidence on and around the victim, as well as details stored in the brains of people who were present during the act. Less important will be evidence obtained from persons and objects a short distance away from the crime scene; and the importance decays rapidly from there as you move further out.

It follows that you cannot possibly expect to reliably arrive at the correct answer by starting a few steps removed in the causal chain, say with a person you find "suspicious" for some reason, and working forward to come up with a plausible scenario for how the crime was committed. That would be privileging the hypothesis. Instead, you have to start from the actual crime scene, or as close to it as you can get, and work backward, letting yourself be blown by the winds of evidence toward one or more possible suspects.

In the Meredith Kercher case, the winds of evidence blow with something like hurricane force in the direction of Rudy Guédé. After the murder, Kercher's bedroom was filled with evidence of Guédé's presence; his DNA was found not only on top of but actually inside her body. That's about as close to the crime as it gets. At the same time, no remotely similarly incriminating genetic material was found from anyone else -- in particular, there were no traces of the presence of either Amanda Knox or Raffaele Sollecito in the room (and no, the supposed Sollecito DNA on Meredith's bra clasp just plain does not count -- nor, while we're at it, do the 100 picograms [about one human cell's worth] of DNA from Meredith allegedly on the tip of a knife handled by Knox, found at Sollecito's apartment after the two were already suspects; these two things constituting pretty much the entirety of the physical "evidence" against the couple).

If, up to this point, the police had reasons to be suspicious of Knox, Sollecito, and Guédé, they should have cleared Knox and Sollecito at once upon the discovery that Guédé -- who, by the way, was the only one to have fled the country after the crime -- was the one whom the DNA matched. Unless, that is, Knox and Sollecito were specifically implicated by Guédé; after all, maybe Knox and Sollecito didn't actually kill the victim, but instead maybe they paid Guédé to do so, or were otherwise involved in a conspiracy with him. But the prior probabilities of such scenarios are low, even in general -- to say nothing of the case of Knox and Sollecito specifically, who, tabloid press to the contrary, are known to have had utterly benign dispositions prior to these events, and no reason to want Meredith Kercher dead.

If Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were to be in investigators' thoughts at all, they had to get there via Guédé -- because otherwise the hypothesis (a priori unlikely) of their having had homicidal intent toward Kercher would be entirely superfluous in explaining the chain of events that led to her death.  The trail of evidence had led to Guédé, and therefore necessarily had to proceed from him; to follow any other path would be to fatally sidetrack the investigation, and virtually to guarantee serious -- very serious -- error. Which is exactly what happened.

There was in fact no inferential path from Guédé to Knox or Sollecito. He never implicated either of the two until long after the event; around the time of his apprehension, he specifically denied that Knox had been in the room. Meanwhile, it remains entirely unclear that he and Sollecito had ever even met.

The hypotheses of Knox's and Sollecito's guilt are thus seen to be completely unnecessary, doing no explanatory work with respect to Kercher's death. They are nothing but extremely burdensome details.  

Epistemic Ruthlessness: Following the Strong Signal

All of the "evidence" you've heard against Knox and Sollecito -- the changing stories, suspicious behavior, short phone calls, washing machine rumors, etc. -- is, quite literally, just noise.

But it sounds so suspicious, you say. Who places a three-second phone call? 

As humans, we are programmed to think that the most important kinds of facts about the world are mental and social -- facts about what humans are thinking and planning, particularly as regards to other humans. This explains why some people are capable of wondering whether the presence of (only) Rudy Guédé's DNA in and on Meredith's body should be balanced against the possibilty that Meredith may have been annoyed at Amanda for bringing home boyfriends and occasionally forgetting to flush the toilet -- that might have led to resentment on Amanda's part, you see.

That's an extreme example, of course -- certainly no one here fell into that kind of trap. But at least one of the most thoughtful commenters was severely bothered by the length of Amanda's phone calls to Meredith. As -- I'll confess -- was I, for a minute or two.

I don't know why Amanda wouldn't have waited longer for Meredith to pick up. (For what it's worth, I myself have sometimes, in a state of nervousness, dialed someone's number, quickly changed my mind, then dialed again a short time later.) But -- as counterintuitive as it may seem -- it doesn't matter. The error here is even asking a question about Amanda's motivations when you haven't established an evidentiary (and that means physical) trail leading from Meredith's body to Amanda's brain. (Or even more to the point, when you have established a trail that led decisively elsewhere.)

Maybe it's "unlikely" that Amanda would have behaved this way if she were innocent. But is the degree of improbabilty here anything like the improbability of her having participated in a sex-orgy-killing without leaving a single piece of physical evidence behind? While someone else left all kinds of traces? When you had no reason to suspect her at all without looking a good distance outside Meredith's room, far away from the important evidence?

It's not even remotely comparable. 

Think about what you're doing here: you are invoking the hypothesis that Amanda Knox is guilty of murder in order to explain the fact that she hung up the phone after three seconds. (Remember, the evidence against Guédé is such that the hypothesis of her guilt is superfluous -- not needed -- in explaining the death of Meredith Kercher!)

Maybe that's not quite as bad as invoking a superintelligent deity in order to explain life on Earth; but it's the same kind of mistake: explaining a strange thing by postulating a far, far stranger thing.

"But come on," says a voice in your head. "Does this really sound like the behavior of an innocent person?"

You have to shut that voice out. Ruthlessly. Because it has no way of knowing. That voice is designed to assess the motivations of members of an ancestral hunter-gather band. At best, it may have the ability to distinguish the correct murderer from between 2 and 100 possibilities -- 6 or 7 bits of inferential power on the absolute best of days. That may have worked in hunter-gatherer times, before more-closely-causally-linked physical evidence could hope to be evaluated. (Or maybe not -- but at least it got the genes passed on.)

DNA analysis, in contrast, has in principle the ability to uniquely identify a single individual from among the entire human species (depending on how much of the genome is looked at; also ignoring identical twins, etc.) -- that's more like 30-odd bits of inferential power. In terms of epistemic technology, we're talking about something like the difference in locomotive efficacy between a horsedrawn carriage and the Starship Enterprise. Our ancestral environment just plain did not equip our knowledge-gathering intuitions with the ability to handle weapons this powerful.

We're talking about the kind of power that allows us to reduce what was formerly a question of human social psychology -- who made the decision to kill Meredith? -- to one of physics. (Or chemistry, at any rate.)

But our minds don't naturally think in terms of physics and chemistry. From an intuitive point of view, the equations of those subjects are foreign; whereas "X did Y because he/she wanted Z" is familiar. This is why it's so difficult for people to intuitively appreciate that all of the chatter about Amanda's "suspicious behavior" with various convincing-sounding narratives put forth by the prosecution is totally and utterly drowned out to oblivion by the sheer strength of the DNA signal pointing to Guédé alone.

This rationalist skill of following the strong signal -- mercilessly blocking out noise -- might be considered an epistemic analog of the instrumental "shut up and multiply": when much is at stake, you have to be willing to jettison your intuitive feelings in favor of cold, hard, abstract calculation.

In this case, that means, among other things, thinking in terms of how much explanatory work is done by the various hypotheses, rather than how suspicious Amanda and Raffaele seem

Conclusion: The Amanda Knox Test

I chose the title of this post because the parallel structure made it sound nice. But actually, I think an hour is a pretty weak upper bound on the amount of time a skilled rationalist should need to arrive at the correct judgment in this case.

The fact is that what this comes down to is an utterly straightforward application of Occam's Razor. The complexity penalty on the prosecution's theory of the crime is enormous; the evidence in its favor had better be overwhelming. But instead, what we find is that the evidence from the scene -- the most important sort of evidence by a huge margin -- points with literally superhuman strength toward a mundane, even typical, homicide scenario. To even consider theories not directly suggested by this evidence is to engage in hypothesis privileging to the extreme.

So let me say it now, in case there was any doubt: the prosecution of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, culminating in last week's jury verdict -- which apparently was unanimous, though it didn't need to be under Italian rules -- represents nothing but one more gigantic, disastrous rationality failure on the part of our species.

How did Less Wrong do by comparison? The average estimated probability of Amanda Knox's guilt was 0.35 (thanks to Yvain for doing the calculation). It's pretty reasonable to assume the figure for Raffaele Sollecito would be similar. While not particularly flattering to the defendants (how would you like to be told that there's a 35% chance you're a murderer?), that number makes it obvious we would have voted to acquit. (If a 65% chance that they didn't do it doesn't constitute  "reasonable doubt" that they did...)

The commenters whose estimates were closest to mine -- and, therefore, to the correct answer, in my view -- were Daniel Burfoot and jenmarie. Congratulations to them. (But even they were off by a factor of at least ten!)

In general, most folks went in the right direction, but, as Eliezer noted, were far too underconfident -- evidently the result of an exorbitant level of trust in juries, at least in part. But people here were also widely making the same object-level mistake as (presumably) the jury: vastly overestimating the importance of "psychological" evidence, such as Knox's inconsistencies at the police station, as compared to "physical" evidence (only Guédé's DNA in the room).

One thing that was interesting and rather encouraging, however, is the amount of updating people did after reading others' comments -- most of it in the right direction (toward innocence).

[EDIT: After reading comments on this post, I have done some updating of my own. I now think I failed to adequately consider the possibility of my own overconfidence. This was pretty stupid of me, since it meant that the focus was taken away from the actual arguments in this post, and basically toward the issue of whether 0.001 can possibly be a rational estimate for anything you read about on the Internet. The qualitative reasoning of this post, of course, stands. Also, the focus of my accusations of irrationality was not primarily the LW community as reflected in my previous post; I actually think we did a pretty good job of coming to the right conclusion given the information provided -- and as others have noted, the levelheadedness with which we did so was impressive.]

For most frequenters of this forum, where many of us regularly speak in terms of trying to save the human species from various global catastrophic risks, a case like this may not seem to have very many grand implications, beyond serving as yet another example of how basic principles of rationality such as Occam's Razor are incredibly difficult for people to grasp on an intuitive level. But it does catch the attention of someone like me, who takes an interest in less-commonly-thought-about forms of human suffering.

The next time I find myself discussing the "hard problem of consciousness", thinking in vivid detail about the spectrum of human experience and wondering what it's like to be a bat, I am going to remember -- whether I say so or not -- that there is most definitely something it's like to be Amanda Knox in the moments following the announcement of that verdict: when you've just learned that, instead of heading back home to celebrate Christmas with your family as you had hoped, you will be spending the next decade or two -- your twenties and thirties -- in a prison cell in a foreign country. When your deceased friend's relatives are watching with satisfaction as you are led, sobbing and wailing with desperation, to a van which will transport you back to that cell. (Ever thought about what that ride must be like?) 

While we're busy eliminating hunger, disease, and death itself, I hope we can also find the time, somewhere along the way, to get rid of that, too.

(The Associated Press reported that, apparently, Amanda had some trouble going to sleep after the midnight verdict.) 

I'll conclude with this: the noted mathematician Serge Lang was in the habit of giving his students "Huntington tests" -- named in reference to his controversy with political scientist Samuel Huntington, whose entrance into the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Lang waged a successful campaign to block on the grounds of Huntington's insufficient scientific rigor.

The purpose of the Huntington test, in Lang's words, was to see if the students could "tell a fact from a hole in the ground".

I'm thinking of adopting a similar practice, and calling my version the Amanda Knox Test. 

Postscript: If you agree with me, and are also the sort of person who enjoys purchasing warm fuzzies separately from your utilons, you might consider donating to Amanda's defense fund, to help out her financially devastated family. Of course, if you browse the site, you may feel your (prior) estimate of her guilt taking some hits; personally, that's okay with me.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 December 2009 09:04:08AM 11 points [-]

You should have sent the readers directly to that information, then. LW has thousands of readers, so putting in 10X work yourself to save thousands of readers X time is generally a good idea.

Comment author: komponisto 11 December 2009 06:49:16AM 1 point [-]

Well, as I said, the information is not all in one place (particularly on TJ; FoA is better organized), and I was worried about biasing readers via my selection of the first page to read. (In fact, as I indicated in the post, I was even somewhat worried about biasing readers via my selection of the sites themselves.)

Most of the commenters seem not to have had problems. For the few that did, I don't mind giving a little more direction to them individually.

Comment author: komponisto 09 December 2009 09:27:39AM *  0 points [-]

The experiment will be a success if there is significant participation.

I certainly don't expect people here to "acquire new beliefs with both strong emotional component and poor grounding in facts." It's because LWers make an effort to avoid this that I'm interested in hearing what they have to say.

Do you believe them to be guilty and linked to an impassioned site full of logical fallacies over a more informative one? (I don't mean to impune your post, just guessing that this is the solution to your rationalist puzzle)

Which site are you talking about?

This isn't a "puzzle". To some extent, it's a sanity check I'm performing on myself.

Comment author: komponisto 10 December 2009 07:37:09AM 0 points [-]

This isn't a "puzzle".

On reflection, this statement of mine was misleading. Now that I've thought more about why I believe what I believe -- the fundamental question of rationality -- and am preparing to write up my answer in the form of my next post, I now realize that this post could in fact be considered a sort of puzzle, or test, the answer to which will be given in the next one.

Comment author: bogdanb 10 December 2009 05:53:46AM *  1 point [-]

Context: I didn't know anything about the case; I think I've overheard something about it in the past, because I had a very slight sensation of déjà-vu reading your post, but I didn't really know anything. The info I used was reading the Wikipedia pages (one you linked and one on one of the trials), then skimming the sites you linked for less than a half hour.

I have reached a “decision” about it, but I didn't intend to post it. Then curiosity got the best of me and I read pretty much all the comments already here. My “estimate” wobbled a bit during the reading of the comments, but by the end it converged on its initial value. I decided to post my opinion, as somebody else mentioned, to avoid self-selection.

I used quotes above because my general state is confusion. Actually, it's confusion both about the case and about the poster's opinions (and, a bit, about your post).

The general impression I got was that all parties (except, probably, the victim) are guilty of something, including the prosecutors. But...

First, I'm not very sure exactly if your questions should be translated as “probability estimate that X killed Kercher” or not. I actually have a slight suspicion that your post might be a trick question around that. (In fact, writing now, I realize that the trial resulted in guilty verdicts on ~five counts for each, but after all the reading I have no idea what they are other than that one of each is some kind of murder.)

Regarding Knox and Sollecito, my “gut” impression is that they're guilty of something, in the sense that I'd be quite surprised if they were just two innocent people who did absolutely nothing bad (other than that joint) and got dragged in a nightmare by chance. I also have a “gut” feeling that their “guilt” is correlated.

Regarding Guede, I've got a slightly stronger gut feeling of guilt (than I do for the first two).

I also feel (as in “gut”, again) that the prosecution and trial was “wrong”. (EDIT for clarification: but I can't see any basis of estimating how wrong between “as good as reasonably possible” and “gross miscarriage of justice”.)

However, what confuses me most is the certainty of most estimates I've seen in the comments. I just don't see how one can get much farther than “I don't know, but I lean a bit towards” either way on what the posters report as their information. I mean, after only a couple hours or so of thinking (both during reading and writing this) I'm not even sure what priors might be appropriate. I feel I know so little about the case (including info like trials in general) that my response can't be more than “I don't know”. (If pressed a lot I'd output 0.5±e as a probability, simply because even my knowledge of probabilities is too weak to actually figure out if anything else would express my almost total uncertainty on this subject, and that's my cached answer for binary questions.)

Put differently, given the information I have on the subject, it feels as if the confidence I should assign to any probability estimate should be very close to 0. As I said above, I tend to give probabilities as ~50% in those cases, but that's not exactly a correct description of what I feel. A good description would be that, if forced to bet (without more time to think), I'd bet on all of them being guilty, but if given the option, I wouldn't bet any amount at 1:1 odds.

Oh, and the answer to the fourth question is very similar. Leaving aside the fact that I'm not sure exactly how I'd quantify the “coincidence” of opinions, I'm wouldn't put any significant confidence in any estimate. (The “gut” feeling is that you consider all three guilty, but that's mostly a very vague impression I got from the wording of your text rather than reasoning on my part.)


As an aside, the interesting thing about the subject is that I was surprised how little confidence I assigned to my “estimates” in this case. I usually have some opinion on most questions I encounter, but in this case I find myself really unable to arrive at one.

Comment author: komponisto 10 December 2009 06:20:41AM *  0 points [-]

First, I'm not very sure exactly if your questions should be translated as “probability estimate that X killed Kercher” or not. I actually have a slight suspicion that your post might be a trick question around that

No, "X killed Kercher" is right. (Or perhaps better would be, "X participated in killing of Kercher".)

Comment author: Nanani 10 December 2009 05:10:47AM 0 points [-]

I attempted the test with zero familiarity with the case at hand. I also have very little knowledge of the Italian justice system.

One major problem in presenting a probability assessement is that the links presented in the post offer pratically no facts about the case. They are about a Washington Senator's reaction, instead. It would be ludicrous to answer the questions asked given only this information.

So, I went googling around for more information. I promptly hit a snag in that I do not what a fast-track trial is in the context of Italy, and searching for information on that is made very difficult since the search returns articles on the Kercher case.

Attempting to filter out all the extra fluff about the characters involved, the facts of the case, most especially the DNA, seems to point to Guede. There is no hard evidence supporting Knox's guilt, and Sollecito's DNA on the victim's bra is not suprising given their relationship.

Unless the links I read (mostly obtained via Wikipedia) managed to omit something important, I'd say the following:

Knox guilty: less than 0.1 Sollecito: 0.1 to 0.15 Guede: 0.9

Comment author: komponisto 10 December 2009 06:12:57AM *  1 point [-]

One major problem in presenting a probability assessement is that the links presented in the post offer pratically no facts about the case. They are about a Washington Senator's reaction, instead. It would be ludicrous to answer the questions asked given only this information.

You must have only looked at the front pages of the two sites. You have to browse around somewhat to find the information.

I suggest starting here on Friends of Amanda, and here on True Justice.

Comment author: Morendil 09 December 2009 08:02:17PM 1 point [-]

I spent less than an hour browsing the two links provided and randomly surfing elsewhere afterwards. I was unfamiliar with the case before.

My estimated odds of Raffaele Sollecito being guilty of murder are very roughly 1:1, of Amanda Knox being guilty of murder a little less, of Ruedy Guede being guilty closer to 4:1.

Unfortunately I couldn't entirely avoid having a peek at comments before coming to an estimate - there were some numbers in the right-hand "recent comments" box of the site.

The main driver in my estimates is that all three were convicted. This implies that dozens of people, including a carefully selected jury, spent days poring over all available evidence and came to that conclusion "beyond reasonable doubt", and my own effort in assessing the evidence is necessarily shoddy compared to that.

I started out with about 4:1 to 9:1 confidence in their guilt, given the information provided in the post, which mentioned their conviction.

Then I started reading the Friends of Amanda site, reasoning that evidence mentioned as uncontroversial in a site arguing for the convicted would tend to be solid.

I browsed TJMK for a while as well, my take-away being that the principal question seems to have been whether one person (RG) or several were involved in the killing. I heavily discounted what I'd read there after I came across an article arguing against Amanda Knox on the basis of her liking singer Feist because Feist has published sexy pics.

On balance the evidence against Rudy Guede seemed rather damning, that against the other two much thinner. (Nobody seems to take seriously the idea that there could be something to RG's version of the facts.)

My peek at the comments here might have moved me slightly away from assuming the guilt of the two, perhaps as much as from .6 to .5 probability of guilt.

I suspect, if you think of this as a "rationality litmus test" (I don't, since the odds seem slim that we'll ever get to the bottom of the case, fact-wise), that you have formed an opinion that the two are not guilty.

Comment author: komponisto 10 December 2009 01:51:38AM 5 points [-]

including a carefully selected jury

Italy does not have voir-dire (juror screening) as in the U.S.

Comment author: ciphergoth 09 December 2009 08:07:10PM 2 points [-]

The fact that they were convicted is also evidence, of course.

Comment author: komponisto 10 December 2009 01:07:52AM 0 points [-]

How strong a piece of evidence do you think it is?

Comment author: Psychohistorian 09 December 2009 07:28:40PM *  15 points [-]

5% for the couple, 99% for the first convict. 90% that my probability estimate is close to yours in the sense that you think the two are innocent and the one is guilty.

I'd read a bit about this in the news, and I checked out those sites and wikipedia.

Given the fact that there is no evidence of prior acquaintance of the couple and the man, combined with the fact that the man did not attempt to implicate the couple despite the overwhelming evidence against him, make it very unlikely that they were involved. That, and one person being crazy/desperate/disturbed enough to commit a brutal rape-homicide is much, much more likely than one person and a completely unrelated couple he's never met before being disturbed enough to commit a rape homicide. The defense's response to forensic evidence appeared pretty strong, and the pro-guilt group did not seem like they tried to seriously rebut this (they mentioned that one defendan't DNA was on the bra strap, but failed to mention three other unidentified people's DNA on it as well).

The fact that the prosecutor is under investigation for previously using crazy psychotic hypersexual homicidal maniac theories without basis does a lot to explain how the prosecutors ended up with such a crazy theory.

My estimate of your position was (as I perceived it) largely independent of my own analysis. You mention a number of confounding factors as to why people are likely to be wrong about these things, with no mention of why they might be right, and you posted this in response to their conviction. It would be very surprising to choose a decision you agree with as an example of problems with human rationality.

Comment author: komponisto 10 December 2009 12:48:57AM 4 points [-]

It would be very surprising to choose a decision you agree with as an example of problems with human rationality.

While it may indeed be legitimate to wonder if my having posted this implies anything about my opinion, I'll note that I didn't in this post cite the jury's decision itself as an example of rationality failure, but merely indicated -- in the context of an erupting international controversy and ongoing Internet flamewars --that the whole topic is by nature fraught with obstacles to rationality.

Comment author: Matt_Simpson 09 December 2009 05:57:28PM *  3 points [-]

Just skimmed the two sites. First:

  1. Your probability estimate that Amanda Knox is guilty.
  2. Your probability estimate that Raffaele Sollecito is guilty.
  3. Your probability estimate that Rudy Guede is guilty.
  4. How much you think your opinion will turn out to coincide with mine
  1. p = .45
  2. p = .45
  3. p = .60
  4. We probably agree on which side of .5 these numbers should be, i suspect you are far more confident, which is perhaps understandable if you have a better understanding of the evidence

It's hard to be very confident after skimming for 30-40min. I don't have the expertise or the time to verify many of the statements made by either side, especially DNA evidence and the like, but the prosecution looks pretty weak. The DNA evidence against the defense doesn't seem to hold up, and the fact that the defendant's stories are inconsistent over time show that they have the memory of, well, humans.

I should also mention that I probably have a bias for the defense in cases like this.

Comment author: komponisto 09 December 2009 06:38:31PM *  1 point [-]

I should also mention that I probably have a bias for the defense in cases like this.

Any thoughts on why that might be the case?

Comment author: Daniel_Burfoot 09 December 2009 03:18:51PM *  3 points [-]
  • P(AK=guilty) = .01
  • P(RS=guilty) = .01
  • P(RG=guilty) = .995

Do I think my assessment will coincide with yours? Of course I do, we're supposed to be rationalists!

I had zero familiarity with the case before reading the links provided, and did not read any of the comments in reaching my estimate.

I admit to having non-trivially updated based on my perception of the lack of seriousness of the pro-conviction site's domain name (what is this, Marvel Comics?)

Comment author: komponisto 09 December 2009 06:36:52PM 1 point [-]

I admit to having non-trivially updated based on my perception of the lack of seriousness of the pro-conviction site's domain name

How much of a shift do you think this accounted for? What would your estimates have been if the same site had been called something different?

Comment author: Mycroft65536 09 December 2009 09:13:08AM 0 points [-]

Do you have a reason to believe that your opinion is more likely to be correct than other commenters on this site?

Do you believe them to be guilty and linked to an impassioned site full of logical fallacies over a more informative one? (I don't mean to impune your post, just guessing that this is the solution to your rationalist puzzle)

I think this experiment is going to be of limited success at best due to the fact that people on the road to rationality are far less likely to acquire new beliefs with both strong emotional component and poor grounding in facts. That's kind of the point of being a rationalist, true beliefs.

Comment author: komponisto 09 December 2009 09:27:39AM *  0 points [-]

The experiment will be a success if there is significant participation.

I certainly don't expect people here to "acquire new beliefs with both strong emotional component and poor grounding in facts." It's because LWers make an effort to avoid this that I'm interested in hearing what they have to say.

Do you believe them to be guilty and linked to an impassioned site full of logical fallacies over a more informative one? (I don't mean to impune your post, just guessing that this is the solution to your rationalist puzzle)

Which site are you talking about?

This isn't a "puzzle". To some extent, it's a sanity check I'm performing on myself.

Comment author: mattnewport 09 December 2009 07:32:16AM *  1 point [-]

I'm moderately familiar with the case (have read a few media articles on the case over the last few months).

  1. 10% (weak evidence, lack of motive, low prior probability of female on female sexually motivated violence)
  2. 30% (evidence not much better, higher prior probability of male on female sexually motivated violence)
  3. 50% (seems to fit profile of this type of offence, evidence of association with victim and opportunity and circumstantial evidence)
  4. I expect your relative rankings to be the same, less confidence in absolute probabilities.
  5. Fairly mainstream media sources, probably linked from blogs I read which will likely supply a selection bias, don't remember exactly what the sources were.
Comment author: komponisto 09 December 2009 08:20:39AM 0 points [-]

5.Fairly mainstream media sources, probably linked from blogs I read which will likely supply a selection bias, don't remember exactly what the sources were.

Do you happen to remember from what country or countries these sources were? (Obviously most stories about this case have been from the US, UK, or Italy -- with, according to some, significantly different biases among them.)

Comment author: rhollerith_dot_com 09 December 2009 07:49:18AM *  6 points [-]

Page one of the site arguing defendants are guilty has nothing that would count as evidence for guilt. When I got to the bottom of the page and saw that there were 24 more pages, I lost patience for the exercise because the low quality of the argumentation on page one (most saliently, the picture of the vicitim when she was five, which if course is not evidence at all, but which will tend to evoke biased thinking in the reader) was a sign that the other 24 pages would be very sparse in actual evidence.

Aren't there enough opportunities for us to practice rationality such that we can check our answers to make it mostly a waste of time to assign probabilities to an event for which it will probably forever be impossible to know "the answer"?

Your job will be to browse around these sites to learn info about the case, as much as you need to in order to arrive at a judgment. The order, manner, and quantity of browsing will be left up to you

If you are going to leave it up to the reader, you should at least tell us where on the 25 pages the strongest evidence is on the site arguing defendants are guilty.

Comment author: komponisto 09 December 2009 08:06:54AM 3 points [-]

If you are going to leave it up to the reader, you should at least tell us where on the 25 pages the strongest evidence is on the site arguing defendants are guilty.

Sorry about that; it's scattered accross the site, which as I said is basically a blog. Try the category links on the right side of the page; such as this.

Aren't there enough opportunities for us to practice rationality such that we can check our answers to make it mostly a waste of time to assign probabilities to an event for which it will probably forever be impossible to know "the answer"?

I believe I know "the answer" with high probability, and want to see what others think.

Obviously, anyone else is welcome to post whatever rationality exercise they wish.

You Be the Jury: Survey on a Current Event

31 Post author: komponisto 09 December 2009 04:25AM

As many of you probably know, in an Italian court early last weekend, two young students, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, were convicted of killing another young student, Meredith Kercher, in a horrific way in November of 2007. (A third person, Rudy Guede, was convicted earlier.)

If you aren't familiar with the case, don't go reading about it just yet. Hang on for just a moment.

If you are familiar, that's fine too. This post is addressed to readers of all levels of acquaintance with the story.

What everyone should know right away is that the verdict has been extremely controversial. Strong feelings have emerged, even involving national tensions (Knox is American, Sollecito Italian, and Kercher British, and the crime and trial took place in Italy). The circumstances of the crime involve sex. In short, the potential for serious rationality failures in coming to an opinion on a case like this is enormous.  

Now, as it happens, I myself have an opinion. A rather strong one, in fact. Strong enough that I caught myself thinking that this case -- given all the controversy surrounding it -- might serve as a decent litmus test in judging the rationality skills of other people. Like religion, or evolution -- except less clichéd (and cached) and more down-and-dirty.

Of course, thoughts like that can be dangerous, as I quickly recognized. The danger of in-group affective spirals looms large. So before writing up that Less Wrong post adding my-opinion-on-the-guilt-or-innocence-of-Amanda-Knox-and-Raffaele-Sollecito to the List of Things Every Rational Person Must Believe, I decided it might be useful to find out what conclusion(s) other aspiring rationalists would (or have) come to (without knowing my opinion).

So that's what this post is: a survey/experiment, with fairly specific yet flexible instructions (which differ slightly depending on how much you know about the case already).

For those whose familiarity with the case is low:

I'm going to give you two websites advocating a position, one strongly in favor of the verdict, the other strongly opposed. Your job will be to browse around these sites to learn info about the case, as much as you need to in order to arrive at a judgment. The order, manner, and quantity of browsing will be left up to you -- though I would of course like to know how much you read in your response.

1. Site arguing defendants are guilty. 

2. Site arguing defendants are innocent.

I've chosen these particular sites because they seemed to contain the best combination of fierceness of advocacy and quantity of information on their respective sides that I could find. 

If you find better summaries, or think that these choices reflect a bias or betray my own opinion, by all means let me know. I'm specifically avoiding referring you to media reports, however, for a couple of reasons. First, I've noticed that reports often contain factual inaccuracies (necessarily, because they contradict each other). Secondly, journalists don't usually have much of a stake, and I'd like to see how folks respond to passionate advocacy by people who care about the outcome, as in an actual trial, rather than attempts at neutral summarizing. Of course, it's fine if you want to read media reports linked to by the above sites.

(One potential problem is that the first site is organized like a blog or forum, and thus it is hard to find a quick summary of the case there. [EDIT: Be sure to look at the category links on the right side of the page to find the arguments.] If you think it necessary, refer to the ever-changing Wikipedia article, which at the moment of writing seems a bit more favorable to the prosecution. [EDIT: I'm no longer sure that's true.] [EDIT: Now I think it's true again, the article having apparently changed some more. So there's really no telling. Be warned.])

After you do this reading, I'd like to know:

1. Your probability estimate that Amanda Knox is guilty.
2. Your probability estimate that Raffaele Sollecito is guilty.
3. Your probability estimate that Rudy Guede is guilty.
4. How much you think your opinion will turn out to coincide with mine.

Feel free to elaborate on your reasoning to whatever degree you like.

One request: don't look at others' comments until you've done the experiment yourself!

For those whose familiarity with the case is moderate or high:

I'd like to know, as of right now:

1. Your probability estimate that Amanda Knox is guilty.
2. Your probability estimate that Raffaele Sollecito is guilty.
3. Your probability estimate that Rudy Guede is guilty.
4. How much you think your opinion will turn out to coincide with mine.
5. From what sources you've gotten the info you've used to arrive at these estimates.

Then, if possible, do the experiment described above for those with little familiarity, and report any shifts in your estimates.


Again, everyone should avoid looking at others' responses before giving their own feedback. Also, don't forget to identify your prior level of familiarity!

If the level of participation warrants it, I'll post my own thoughts (and reaction to the feedback here) in a later post. (Edit: That post can be found here.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 01 December 2009 10:50:23PM 8 points [-]

Yup. The logic at the time went something like, "I want something that will be reasonably fast and scale to lots of multiple processors and runs in a tight sandbox and has been thoroughly debugged with enterprise-scale muscle behind it, and which above all is not C++, and in a few years (note: HAH!) when we start coding, Java will probably be it." There were lots of better-designed languages out there but they didn't have the promise of enterprise-scale muscle behind their implementation of things like parallelism.

Also at that time, I was thinking in terms of a much larger eventual codebase, and was much more desperate to use something that wasn't C++. Today I would say that if you can write AI at all, you can write the code parts in C, because AI is not a coding problem.

Mostly in that era there weren't any good choices, so far as I knew then. Ben Goertzel, who was trying to scale a large AI codebase, was working in a mix of C/C++ and a custom language running on top of C/C++ (I forget which), which I think he had transitioned either out of Java or something else, because nothing else was fast enough or handled parallelism correctly. Lisp, he said at that time, would have been way too slow.

Comment author: komponisto 03 December 2009 08:54:34PM 1 point [-]

Today I would say that if you can write AI at all, you can write the code parts in C, because AI is not a coding problem.

Exactly -- which is why the sentence sounded so odd.

Comment author: DanArmak 01 December 2009 09:55:11PM *  11 points [-]

It rubbed me the wrong way when, after explaining for several pages that successful FAI Programmers would have to be so good that the very best programmers on the planet may not be good enough, it added - "We will probably, but not definitely, end up working in Java".

...I don't know if that's a bad joke or a hint that the writer isn't being serious. Well, if it's a joke, it's bad and not funny. Now I'll have nightmares of the best programmers Planet Earth could field failing to write a FAI because they used Java of all things.

Comment author: komponisto 01 December 2009 10:14:49PM 3 points [-]

It rubbed me the wrong way when, after explaining for several pages that successful FAI Programmers would have to be so good that the very best programmers on the planet may not be good enough, it added - "We will probably, but not definitely, end up working in Java"

I had the same thought -- how incongruous! (Not that I'm necessarily particularly qualified to critique the choice, but it just sounded...inappropriate. Like describing a project to build a time machine and then solemnly announcing that the supplies would be purchased at Target.)

I assume, needless to say, that (at least) that part is no longer representative of Eliezer's current thinking.

Comment author: komponisto 01 December 2009 09:27:02PM *  13 points [-]

Past experience indicates that more than one brilliant, capable person refrained from contacting SIAI, because they weren’t sure they were “good enough”.

Well, who can blame them?

Seriously, FYI (where perhaps the Y stands for "Yudkowsky's"): that document (or a similar one) really rubbed me the wrong way the first time I read it. It just smacked of "only the cool kids can play with us". I realize that's probably because I don't run into very many people who think they can easily solve FAI, whereas Eliezer runs into them constantly; but still.

Comment author: mormon2 23 November 2009 07:37:34PM 4 points [-]

"You've achieved a high level of success as a self-learner, without the aid of formal education."

How do you define high level of success?

Comment author: komponisto 24 November 2009 05:00:31AM 3 points [-]

How do you define high level of success?

He has a job where he is respected, gets to pursue his own interests, and doesn't have anybody looking over his shoulder on a daily basis (or any short-timescale mandatory duties at all that I can detect). That's pretty much the trifecta, IMHO.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 November 2009 08:57:27AM 0 points [-]

Yep, both false.

Comment author: komponisto 22 November 2009 12:57:05PM 1 point [-]

So, just to dwell on this for a moment, there exist X and A such that (1) it is rational for X to do A and (2) X should not do A.

How do you reconcile this with "rationalists should win"? (I think I know what your response will be, but I want to make sure.)

In response to comment by Cyan on The Featherless Biped
Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 November 2009 08:22:49PM 0 points [-]

Some definitions which reference themselves plus something else are also invalid. :P

Comment author: komponisto 21 November 2009 07:52:42AM 1 point [-]

I presume that's why he said "e.g.", not "i.e."

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 November 2009 08:01:49PM 2 points [-]

The key to a quantum algorithm is getting wrong answers to cancel out (opposing complex amplitudes) and right answers to build up (harmonizing complex amplitudes). Exploring all branches simultaneously is easy. The hard part is getting the evolution of a linear, unitary quantum process to make "wrong" configuration amplitudes cancel and "correct" configuration amplitudes add. Peter Shor's critical insight in the quantum-factoring algorithm had something to do with the circularity of something to do with factors (I don't know the details).

Comment author: komponisto 20 November 2009 10:05:11PM 1 point [-]

Peter Shor's critical insight in the quantum-factoring algorithm had something to do with the circularity of something to do with factors (I don't know the details).

See here (and linked pages).

Comment author: RobinHanson 15 November 2009 04:33:56PM 1 point [-]

No for most people it is infeasible to evaluate who is right by working through the details of the arguments. The fact that Eliezer wrote on a blog affiliated with Oxford is very surely not enough to lead one to expect detailed rebuttal analyses from academics who disagree with him.

Comment author: komponisto 15 November 2009 05:14:06PM *  4 points [-]

Well, for most people on most topics it is infeasible to evaluate who is right, period. At the end of the day, some effort is usually required to obtain reliable information. Even surveys of expert opinion may be difficult to conduct if the field is narrow and non-"traditional". As for whatever few specialists there may be in Singularity issues, I think you expect too little of them if you don't think Eliezer currently has enough status to expect rebuttals.

Comment author: RobinHanson 15 November 2009 02:07:50PM 3 points [-]

Cryonics is also a good case to analyze what an outsider should think, given what they can see. But of course "they laughed at Galileo too" is hardly a strong argument for contrarian views. Yes sometimes contrarians are right - the key question is how outside observers, or self-doubting insiders, can tell when contrarians are right.

Comment author: komponisto 15 November 2009 03:39:48PM *  3 points [-]

Outsiders can tell when contrarians are right by assessing their arguments, once they've decided the contrarians are worth listening to. This in turn can be ascertained through the usual means, such as association with credentialed or otherwise high-status folks. So for instance, you are affiliated with a respectable institution, Bostrom with an even more respectable institution, and the fact that EY was co-blogging at Overcoming Bias thus implied that if your and Bostrom's arguments were worth listening to, so were his. (This is more or less my own story; and I started reading Overcoming Bias because it appeared on Scott Aaronson's blogroll.)

Hence it seems that Yudkowsky's affiliations are already strong enough to signal competence to those academics interested in the subjects he deals with, in which case we should expect to see detailed, inside-view analyses from insiders who disagree. In the absence of that, we have to conclude that insiders either agree or are simply unaware -- and the latter, if I understand correctly, is a problem whose solution falls more under the responsibility of people like Vassar rather than Yudkowsky.

Comment author: RobinHanson 14 November 2009 06:35:48PM 4 points [-]

This conversation is probably reaching diminishing returns, so let me sum up. I propose that it would be instructive to you and many others if you would discuss what your dispute looks like from an outside view - what uninformed neutral but intelligent and rational observers should conclude about this topic from the features of this dispute they can observe from the outside. Such features include the various credentials of each party, and the effort he or she has spent on the topic and on engaging the other parties. If you think that a reasonable outsider viewer would have far less confidence in your conclusions than you do, then you must think that you possess hidden info, such as that your arguments are in fact far more persuasive than one could reasonably expect knowing only the outside features of the situation. Then you might ask why the usual sorts of clues that tend to leak out about argument persuasiveness have failed to do so in this case.

Comment author: komponisto 15 November 2009 04:05:31AM 9 points [-]

Robin, why do most academic experts (e.g. in biology) disagree with you (and Eliezer) about cryonics? Perhaps a few have detailed theories on why it's hopeless, or simply have higher priorities than maximizing their expected survival time; but mostly it seems they've simply never given it much consideration, either because they're entirely unaware of it or assume it's some kind of sci-fi cult practice, and they don't take cult practices seriously as a rule. But clearly people in this situation can be wrong, as you yourself believe in this instance.

Similarly, I think most of the apparent "disagreement" about the Singularity is nothing more than unawareness of Yudkowsky and his arguments. As far as I can tell, academics who come into contact with him tend to take him seriously, and their disagreements are limited to matters of detail, such as how fast AI is approaching (decades vs. centuries) and the exact form it will take (uploads/enhancement vs. de novo). They mainly agree that SIAI's work is worth doing by somebody. Examples include yourself, Scott Aaronson, and David Chalmers.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 13 November 2009 05:18:29AM 7 points [-]

It's a free country. You are allowed to do a lot, but it can only be optimal to do one thing.

Comment author: komponisto 14 November 2009 07:58:31AM *  4 points [-]

Not necessarily; the maximum value of a function may be attained at more than one point of its domain.

(Also, my use of the word "allowed" is clearly rhetorical/figurative. Obviously it's not illegal to work on things other than AI, and I don't interpret you folks as saying it should be.)

Comment author: komponisto 11 November 2009 06:12:39AM 2 points [-]

Sticking with biography/family background:

Anyone who has read this poignant essay knows that Eliezer had a younger brother who died tragically young. If it is not too insensitive of me, may I ask what the cause of death was?

Comment author: komponisto 11 November 2009 06:00:47AM 15 points [-]

I admit to being curious about various biographical matters. So for example I might ask:

What are your relations like with your parents and the rest of your family? Are you the only one to have given up religion?

Comment author: komponisto 11 November 2009 05:39:28AM 33 points [-]

During a panel discussion at the most recent Singularity Summit, Eliezer speculated that he might have ended up as a science fiction author, but then quickly added:

I have to remind myself that it's not what's the most fun to do, it's not even what you have talent to do, it's what you need to do that you ought to be doing.

Shortly thereafter, Peter Thiel expressed a wish that all the people currently working on string theory would shift their attention to AI or aging; no disagreement was heard from anyone present.

I would therefore like to ask Eliezer whether he in fact believes that the only two legitimate occupations for an intelligent person in our current world are (1) working directly on Singularity-related issues, and (2) making as much money as possible on Wall Street in order to donate all but minimal living expenses to SIAI/Methuselah/whatever.

How much of existing art and science would he have been willing to sacrifice so that those who created it could instead have been working on Friendly AI? If it be replied that the work of, say, Newton or Darwin was essential in getting us to our current perspective wherein we have a hope of intelligently tackling this problem, might the same not hold true in yet unknown ways for string theorists? And what of Michelangelo, Beethoven, and indeed science fiction? Aren't we allowed to have similar fun today? For a living, even?

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 11 November 2009 03:14:37AM 21 points [-]

Could you (Well, "you" being Eliezer in this case, rather than the OP) elaborate a bit on your "infinite set atheism"? How do you feel about the set of natural numbers? What about its power set? What about that thing's power set, etc?

From the other direction, why aren't you an ultrafinitist?

Comment author: komponisto 11 November 2009 04:41:57AM 0 points [-]

<Wince>. Uh-oh; if he takes this up, I may finally have to write that post I promised back in June!

Comment author: komponisto 07 November 2009 04:42:24AM *  2 points [-]

One of my less treasured memories is of a State of the Union address, or possibly a presidential inauguration, at which a Nobel Laureate got up and read

It can't have been a State of the Union address, since no one speaks at those except the President(*). On the other hand, Nobel Laureates reading poetry is exactly the kind of thing that happens at presidential inaugurations.

( * )And this was before Obama(**) and after T. Roosevelt, so the President wouldn't have been a Nobel Laureate himself .

(**)The LW spellchecker does not recognize this word (!)

Comment author: Alicorn 06 November 2009 04:08:57AM 0 points [-]

Oh, the writing advice looks very much like what I remember - but I'm almost positive I haven't come across the particular document before! Perhaps some of the same prose was reused elsewhere?

Comment author: komponisto 06 November 2009 04:51:17AM *  0 points [-]

Eliezer has been known to recycle text from old documents on occasion. (I'm thinking of certain OB posts having to do with a Toyota Corolla and Deep Blue vs. Kasparov, which contain material lifted from here and here respectively.)

Comment author: DanArmak 05 November 2009 07:26:18AM *  5 points [-]

I get the impression that almost everyone's concept of heaven includes that there are no rich and poor- everyone has plenty. There is no battle of the sexes, and perhaps even no gendered personalities. There is no unhappiness, pain, sickness or death.

You must not know your way around the actual heavens of the big religions (as officially described). For instance, an important and (according to many Christian theologists) necessary part of the Christian heaven is being able to view the Christian Hell and enjoy the torture of the evil sinners there. And an important part of Muslim Heaven, according to some, is a certain thing about female virgins you may have heard of. I could go on for a while in this vein if you want real examples... because I happen to have a thing for completely un-academically reading popular history of religion & thought in my free time.

Really, if we're going to get into religious (historical & contemporary) conceptions of heaven, the best one-line summary I can come up with is - heaven is just like Earth ought to be according to your cleric of choice and taken to an appropriate extreme. And most people's conception of how things "ought to be" is horrible to most other people. One of the most common issues for idealists to face is that most people don't want any part of their ideal world, no matter what that ideal happens to be.

There is such a thing as a nurse with the most authority, but the status differential between head nurse and other floor nurses is sometimes imperceptible to all but the nurses that work there.

If the difference is imperceptible, even to people who have experience with similar hierarchies but don't happen to work inside this one, then why is the difference at all important? Why are we even talking about such a minute difference? It sounds to me like "there are no real status hierarchies and no leader" is a pretty good summary of this situation.

Comment author: komponisto 05 November 2009 04:47:46PM 1 point [-]

For instance, an important and (according to many Christian theologists) necessary part of the Christian heaven is being able to view the Christian Hell and enjoy the torture of the evil sinners there

Some think the opposite, such as the pastor of a church I attended as a child. Apparently there was concern about the knowledge of loved ones' suffering in Hell interfering with the ability to experience pleasure in Heaven, so he claimed in a sermon once that God must somehow "shield us" from that knowledge.

Comment author: JulianMorrison 02 November 2009 03:39:43AM 5 points [-]

Except that same scenario could be read as "unequal power makes humans abusive, and economic inequality can be leveraged into power", a contra-libertarian lesson.

Comment author: komponisto 03 November 2009 04:05:03PM *  6 points [-]

It isn't just that there is economic inequality between the parent and the child -- it's that the child is economically dependent on the parent. How much each has matters more than the gap between them.

A billionaire can exercise some leverage over a millionaire, but not nearly as much as a parent over a child.

Comment author: Psy-Kosh 02 November 2009 03:03:29PM 6 points [-]

Or at least, there ought be rather strict rules about when medical care can be forced. I guess forcing a kid to take an antibiotic in the case of them having a nasty bacterial illness that doesn't go away on its own, etc etc... is one thing. ie, if there's a clear unambiguous no one could reasonably dispute it "you're unhealthy now, you'll be better off with this" thing, then okay.

But "well, kids are teasing you, you're a bit different, we're not even really going to diagnose you with anything, but it's just easier for the teachers and everyone if we make you take ritalin 'to make you focus' and supposedly 'help you cope'", well... zah? (excuse me? You want to forcibly chemically hack my mind, that which makes me, well, me... and without even a really compelling justification?) (yeah, they did mean well, but...)

But yeah. I do admit though that, like most things in this world, pretty much any rule we adopt is going to probably have nontrivial downsides.

Comment author: komponisto 03 November 2009 02:40:46AM 5 points [-]

You know, I agree with the general thrust here about the suboptimal treatment of children, but my reaction to this particular sub-thread is to be somewhat envious of those whose parents were actually informed enough to have them put on psychiatric medication for these types of issues. Myself, I was in graduate school before I found out that I needed this sort of treatment. My parents, I think, always viewed my difficulties as character flaws, blamed me (and themselves) for them, and attempted to correct the problem mainly through shaming and punishments of various sorts.

In contrast to the experiences of a lot of other people, I tend to think that if I had been given something like Ritalin from an early age (say middle school), I might not have nearly flunked out of high school (which resulted in my having to attend a run-of-the-mill state university, and so on).

In response to comment by [deleted] on Open Thread: November 2009
Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 02 November 2009 07:57:59PM *  17 points [-]

I feel like I could learn all the facts my classes teach on Wikipedia in a tenth of the time--though procedural knowledge is another matter, of course.

Take it from me (as a dropout-cum-autodidact in a world where personal identity is not ontologically fundamental, I'm fractionally one of your future selves), that procedural knowledge is really, really important. It's just too easy to fall into the trap of "Oh, I'm a smart person who reads books and Wikipedia; I'm fine just the way I am." Maybe you can do better than most college grads, simply by virtue of being smart and continuing to read things, but life (unlike many schools) is not graded on a curve. There are so many levels above you, that you're in mortal danger of missing out on entirely if you think you can get it all from Wikipedia, if you ever let yourself believe that you're safe at your current level. If you think school isn't worth your time, that's great, quit. But know that you don't have to be just another dropout who likes to read; you can quit and hold yourself to a higher standard.

You want to learn math? Here's what I do. Get textbooks. Get out a piece of paper, and divide it into two columns. Read or skim the textbooks. Take notes; feel free to copy down large passages verbatim (I have a special form of quotation marks for verbatim quotes). If a statement seems confusing, maybe try to work it out yourself. Work exercises. If you get curious about something, make up your own problem and try to work it out yourself. Four-hundred ninety-three pieces of paper later, I can say with confidence that my past self knew nothing about math. I didn't know what I was missing, could not have known in advance what it would feel like, to not just accept as a brute fact a linear transformation is invertible iff its determinant is nonzero, but to start to see these as manifestations of the same thing. (Because---obviously---since the determinant is the product of the eigenvalues, it serves as a measure of how the transformation distorts area; if the determinant is zero, it means you've lost a dimension in the mapping, so you can't reverse it. But it wouldn't have been "obvious" if I had only read the Wikipedia article.)

forces conspired to make me not succeed.

Forces don't conspire; they're not that smart.

Comment author: komponisto 03 November 2009 01:58:40AM 5 points [-]

(Because---obviously---since the determinant is the product of the eigenvalues,

It's amazing how rarely people -- including textbook authors -- actually bother to point this out. (Admittedly, it's only true over an algebraically closed field such as the complex numbers.) Were you by any chance using Axler?

it serves as a measure of how the transformation distorts area; if the determinant is zero, it means you've lost a dimension in the mapping, so you can't reverse it. But it wouldn't have been "obvious" if I had only read the Wikipedia article.)

While I certainly agree with the main point of your comment, I nevertheless think that this particular comparison illustrates mainly that the mathematical Wikipedia articles still have a way to go. (Indeed, the property of determinants mentioned above is buried in the middle of the "Further Properties" section of the article, whereas I think it ought to be prominently mentioned in the introduction; in Axler it's the definition of the determinant [in the complex case]!)

Comment author: komponisto 30 October 2009 08:55:09PM 1 point [-]

I like the idea.

Comment author: [deleted] 23 October 2009 01:28:52PM *  2 points [-]

Usually, sentences of the form "all that glitters is not gold" mean "not (all that glitters is gold)". "All is not lost" does not mean that nothing got any worse. While it may seem weird for "not" to semantically modify the entire sentence while it syntactically modifies only "gold", we do this all the time using other words: "we ate nothing" does not mean "we ate X" for X equal to "nothing"; it means "for all X, not (we ate X)". For fun, see Wikipedia.

To imitate a friend of mine, how dare you try to make English make more sense.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Rationality Quotes: October 2009
Comment author: komponisto 24 October 2009 06:32:32AM 1 point [-]

"we ate nothing" does not mean "we ate X" for X equal to "nothing"; it means "for all X, not (we ate X)"

But surely "we ate X" can mean "X = {Y: We ate Y}", as in "we ate a set of fried chicken legs" -- and this would allow one to analyze "we ate nothing" to mean "we ate X" for X = emptyset.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 23 October 2009 01:28:58AM *  10 points [-]

A good point - but also note that, when Galileo argued against Artistotelian physics in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, he set forth instead the idea of the inertial reference frame - but Galileo also never felt the need to perform an experiment to verify that his shipboard "experiments" would work as he predicted. Both the wrong conclusion, and the right conclusion, were arrived at via thought-experiment. And when Einstein took the next step by proposing the special theory of relativity, that too was a thought-experiment with no validation.

Comment author: komponisto 24 October 2009 06:11:25AM 4 points [-]

In fact, one can go further, because Aristotle's conclusion was presumably arrived at in the first place through observation of everyday experience (indeed, it almost seems wrong to attribute it specifically to Aristotle since it is simply the "common sense" view of most of humanity, before and since). So here we arguably have an example of a thought experiment successfully refuting an empirically-derived hypothesis.

Comment author: komponisto 23 October 2009 08:51:41PM *  5 points [-]

Which weighs more: a pound of feathers, or a pound of gold?

[...rationality discussion...]

I must be missing something. I thought the point of this riddle was the difference between avoirdupois and Troy weight -- a simple matter of (rather esoteric) factual knowledge not contained in the structure of the question.

Comment author: SilasBarta 22 October 2009 04:25:25PM *  2 points [-]

I've never seen a UFO.

Wow! He's been able to identify every flying object he's ever seen? Must be a boring fellow when stargazing!

I think he means he's never seen an alien spaceship...

Comment author: komponisto 22 October 2009 07:02:26PM 0 points [-]

Thank you.

Comment author: Zack_M_Davis 16 October 2009 08:01:46PM *  0 points [-]

Hence this new account.

ADDENDUM: I mean, unless we have some name-change feature that I just couldn't find.

SECOND ADDENDUM: To anyone reading this on my userpage, you might be interested in my older comments.

Comment author: komponisto 18 October 2009 06:17:25AM 0 points [-]

On reflection, I'm actually going to start spelling my first name again

Why? (If I may ask.)

Comment author: komponisto 13 October 2009 07:26:34PM 2 points [-]

Reads like a school essay.

Comment author: AllanCrossman 13 October 2009 04:41:43PM 0 points [-]

Ugh. The horrible music is the worst thing about church. Give me sermons about fire and brimstone any day.

Comment author: komponisto 13 October 2009 04:50:24PM 1 point [-]

Well, we would have better music, of course!

Comment author: wedrifid 10 October 2009 07:08:08PM *  3 points [-]

Thanks for that clarification. It seems the more Kompo refines these claims the less I agree with them.

I would argue that people on this forum are significantly more likely to be dangerous. For my part I consider myself to be far more resourceful than the average person and would take offence at a claim that I am not dangerous. Furthermore, I suggest the people here are much more likely to form their morals for reasons other than whatever works best in their social environment. That more or less means "off the rails".

Comment author: komponisto 10 October 2009 07:26:17PM 2 points [-]

I would argue that people on this forum are significantly more likely to be dangerous

Maybe you're right. But, as I indicated elsewhere, I don't think that that was the most important issue. I'm more interested in the censorship/taboo discussion.

Comment author: gwern 10 October 2009 03:46:06PM 2 points [-]

The draft still exists.

As for how difficult it would be to put it back into operation, that's hard to say; consider how many people thought a black man would not be president this side of 2100. The right question is how difficult it would be to get into a war or other national emergency which could make use of the draft; in such situations, the preferences of young people are irrelevant.

As for National Guard and stop-loss: you have a very strange idea of coercion if you think stop-loss isn't it. There may be a clause in their contracts saying something about contracts being extended indefinitely, but that strikes me as like signing a contract to sell yourself into slavery.

Comment author: komponisto 10 October 2009 07:13:57PM *  1 point [-]

you have a very strange idea of coercion if you think stop-loss isn't it

Stop-loss itself is coercion, but it's coercion applied to those already in the military. Citing the (current, contingent) existence of stop-loss policies doesn't support the idea that military service is inherently coerced. You may as well cite the fact that military personnel have to follow orders (also obviously coercion).

Comment author: DanArmak 10 October 2009 06:19:07PM 1 point [-]

That's a tangent. You said it was more wrong to be frightened here on LW, than in general; that the people here were more trustworthy. That's the claim you need to substantiate. I'm not expressing any opinion on the taboo discussion, it's been talked about enough in other comment sub-threads.

we usually consider the person making the leap a (misguided) bleeding-heart liberal, not a promoter of "evil behaviors, up to and including armed robbery".

I hear that in the US there are some people who view government-mandated redistribution of money from the rich to the poor (i.e. social support) very much like evil, armed robbery...

Comment author: komponisto 10 October 2009 06:42:07PM *  0 points [-]

That's a tangent. You said it was more wrong to be frightened here on LW, than in general

No, that was the tangent, actually. I didn't expect that remark to be picked up and seized upon as a controversial claim. I expected the contrary arguments to run "Yes, of course no one here is a rapist, but even so we still shouldn't have people saying X because..."

If you don't share my intuition that proportionally fewer rapes occur in the context of academic conferences and philosophy club meetings than sporting events and bars, then we'll just have to refer to statistical data to find out who is right.

But in either case, I consider the taboo discussion to be more interesting/important, belabored though it may be.

Comment author: DanArmak 10 October 2009 12:59:49PM 1 point [-]

I agree with Richard - and you have yet to present an actual argument for your position. Not just that you feel the people here are "high quality".

Comment author: komponisto 10 October 2009 06:11:09PM *  3 points [-]

My position? Let's remember what Alicorn said:

It's the mental leap from "aw, I feel bad that you are having trouble selling your product" to "aw, someone should take pity on you to the point of buying your product" that presents the problem....That kind of thinking scares the crap out of me, because that is the kind of thinking that leads to various evil behaviors up to and including rape.

My position, if position I have, is that Alicorn is wrong to be frightened by that line of thinking. In general (that is, not necessarily with regard to sex), it's a perfectly reasonable leap to make, whether or not we ourselves would make it. Compare:

-Person to beggar: "Aw, I feel bad that you have trouble obtaining money." => "Aw, someone should give you money"/"Aw, people should give more to charity".

In a case like that, we don't usually consider the drawing of that implication to be dangerous or frightening. We may consider it incorrect, for example if we think that giving money to beggars has a net negative impact on society; but even so we usually consider the person making the leap a (misguided) bleeding-heart liberal, not a promoter of "evil behaviors, up to and including armed robbery".

Now, what I would want to fight against, so to speak, is the imposition of a taboo on making analogous arguments in the realm of sex (presumably because of a special human anxiety about that subject). Let those arguments be right or wrong, let the analogy hold or fail to hold, let sex be different or the same; but the thoughts should not be discouraged from being spoken.

Do I really need to defend myself beyond this?

Comment author: RichardKennaway 10 October 2009 09:00:28AM *  2 points [-]

I didn't say anything about our alleged superior rationality.

I don't know what else "the quality of this site" could refer to. And now you're saying it's the size, though I don't see how that changes the per-individual probability of being dangerous. Collectively, my impression is that larger communities are safer, because there's room to avoid the few nasty individuals.

I wonder if maybe Alicorn pictures some type of shady misogynist character willing to blurt the statement out loud in public (perhaps while drunk), whereas I picture a shy misunderstood "nerd" who would never dream of saying such a thing except anonymously in an unusually open-minded online community.

Well now. Both of these imaginary characters believe that women owe them sex. The first is being blatant about it, so at least women know in advance to avoid him. The second, that you think "more accurate, for this tiny corner of cyberspace" is the dangerous one. And you think of him as "misunderstood". I think of him as "wrong". As in, believing false things, things that are the opposite of true. And dangerously wrong.

If that type is indeed "more accurate, for this tiny corner of cyberspace", no wonder there are so few women in it.

Comment author: komponisto 10 October 2009 05:28:31PM 0 points [-]

What's your prior probability that someone reading this thread (during, say, October 2009) has committed or will commit rape or sexual assault within ten years?

The second, that you think "more accurate, for this tiny corner of cyberspace" is the dangerous one

I think you are being extremely judgmental. I described my hypothetical character as "misunderstood", and indeed, here you are misunderstanding him. He's not dangerous; you can add that to the description: "shy, misunderstood, non-dangerous..." The fact that he "would never dream of saying such a thing except anonymously in an unusually open-minded online community" was intended to illustrate his kindness and sensitivity as a human being in contrast to the boorish brute I placed him in opposition to.

Comment author: Cyan 10 October 2009 05:17:03AM 1 point [-]
Comment author: komponisto 10 October 2009 06:03:30AM 1 point [-]

I realize that. In fact I was specifically calling attention to the difference in perspectives.

Comment author: gwern 10 October 2009 05:04:55AM 2 points [-]

Which only goes to show that they don't read their own history books about drafts, or newspapers about stop-loss policies and the National Guard deployments.

Comment author: komponisto 10 October 2009 05:54:36AM 0 points [-]

Some may not read history, but it doesn't follow from what I said. They may know very well that the draft existed in the past.

(I've noticed that a lot of people old enough to remember e.g. Vietnam have trouble accepting that we're in a different historical era now; they often speak in a way that suggests they think the draft could easily be brought back, when in fact the political reality is such that that's extremely unlikely.)

National Guard service is voluntary, and stop-loss concerns people already signed up.

Comment author: DanArmak 08 October 2009 09:39:06PM 2 points [-]

Military service is generally understood to be coercive, so you're right to have a negative reaction to it (and so do I). Volunteer-only armies are extremely rare exceptions - far more rare than rape is compared to sex.

Comment author: komponisto 10 October 2009 04:35:41AM 0 points [-]

Military service is generally understood to be coercive

Really? I suspect a lot of young Americans would view the idea of coerced military service as another one of those bizarre practices from the distant past.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 09 October 2009 01:24:36PM 5 points [-]

As for "scary"/"frightening", I guess I just think that the quality of this site is high enough that people ought to be given the benefit of the doubt.

That's the entrance to a death spiral.

A major part of the problem in discussing these things anywhere is people saying, "But we're smart! We're rational! We can't mean the nasty things you read us as saying!" But that cuts both ways. How about, "We're rational! Therefore you should reexamine your own words!"

When everyone imagines they're rational, rationality has left the building.

Comment author: komponisto 09 October 2009 10:11:11PM *  3 points [-]

Oh come now. I didn't say anything about our alleged superior rationality. My claim is simply that participants in this forum are statistically unlikely to be dangerous people. This is mainly a consequence of (what I perceive to be) the small size of the community . (I could be wrong about this of course.)

But the discussion has become far too abstract by now, given that what I think this comes down to is that Alicorn and I have different mental images (caricatures) of "the person who says women owe more sex to men". I wonder if maybe Alicorn pictures some type of shady misogynist character willing to blurt the statement out loud in public (perhaps while drunk), whereas I picture a shy misunderstood "nerd" who would never dream of saying such a thing except anonymously in an unusually open-minded online community. What I was trying to say was that I thought my image was more accurate, for this tiny corner of cyberspace.

Comment author: Alicorn 09 October 2009 03:12:37AM *  9 points [-]

I second the backrubs. Backrubs are excellent. Nonthreatening (well, assuming you don't say anything creepy while near the neck, or stray south), casual, they feel awesome, and they're easy to segue into from the other party stretching or just saying "my back is killing me". I do recommend asking rather than just starting on one, though. Certain back problems don't react well to them, and there might be hair or a necklace or something to get out of the way, and they can be delivered in a startling way if begun without warning.

Comment author: komponisto 09 October 2009 03:41:36AM 2 points [-]

and they can be delivered in a startling way if begun without warning.

Compare George W. Bush and Angela Merkel.

Comment author: Alicorn 09 October 2009 03:17:53AM *  0 points [-]

Phrased like that, no reason. Those are pretty general, safe statements. Phrased in a more one-gendered way (e.g. "women in particular should be..." "women as a group should address..."), or refined into narrower, scarier views, they shouldn't be said for the same sorts of reasons we shouldn't threaten to torch each other's homes or choose this venue to express supernatural beliefs: because those ideas are frightening, disruptive, and/or sufficiently widely discredited not to be worth our time.

Comment author: komponisto 09 October 2009 03:35:56AM 3 points [-]

Interesting. So your problem seems to be with generalizing into large categories ("women"), and then perhaps putting the matter in in-group vs. out-group terms, as in "we men are owed more sex from you women". Am I right?

As for "scary"/"frightening", I guess I just think that the quality of this site is high enough that people ought to be given the benefit of the doubt. Certain views may be "scary" when expressed "out there", because they signal an intention to do something bad. Here, I think we ought to be able to take more things at face value, without disclaimers.

Comment author: Alicorn 09 October 2009 02:43:13AM 1 point [-]

I disagree. I think self-regulation is very different in character from restriction imposed from without. I also think that honesty can better be interpreted to mean "saying only true things" than "saying all true things that pop into a speaker's head". Saying that I think people ought not to say Q doesn't mean that I think people ought to assert ~Q.

Comment author: komponisto 09 October 2009 03:14:49AM *  2 points [-]

Perhaps I shouldn't have used a loaded word like "honesty". Let's just stick with "restriction of the flow of information". If someone believes that people should be more indulgent in granting sexual favors, or that society should address the problem (if it is a problem) of inequality in access to sex, exactly why should they refrain from saying so on this forum?

Comment author: Alicorn 09 October 2009 02:18:31AM *  0 points [-]

I wish to point out that there is an important difference between censorship and saying that something ought not to be said. Censorship is taking steps to prevent the saying of a thing, or prevent it from being readily heard by interested audience members. Saying that a thing ought to be said does not call for censorship, nor imply that censorship is called for. For instance, I do not think that people ought to tell strangers on the street to smile, and I encourage people to refrain from doing that. I do not advocate preventing anyone who wishes to ignore this encouragement from telling others to smile, nor do I want to somehow protect all possible recipients of the smiling instruction from exposure thereto.

Comment author: komponisto 09 October 2009 02:36:09AM 1 point [-]

I don't think the difference is important in this context. If you advocate that something not be said by someone who thinks it, you are advocating that the flow of accurate information be restricted, and thus --effectively -- that honesty be traded off in favor of some other value. The tradeoff may or may not be worth it, but it hardly matters whether it is initiated by a commenter or by a webmaster.

Comment author: Jack 08 October 2009 11:31:41PM 0 points [-]

People should likewise be free to express the opinion that they are owed more sex, without that being interpreted as a threat of violence.

Unless I missed it, this is a claim no one has made. There is a very clear distinction between spreading memes that increase the likelihood of violence and making a threat. Obviously claims of desert don't necessarily entail a threatening violence to take the deserts- but that doesn't mean popularizing some memes doesn't have bad consequences. This is fairly basic memetics and how we account for a great deal of behavior. There might also be some positive consequence to spreading such memes but so far no one has argued that claiming loveless men are owed more sex will actually lead to any kind of beneficial change.

Comment author: komponisto 09 October 2009 01:49:11AM 2 points [-]

Unless I missed it, this is a claim no one has made.

Let me again quote from Alicorn's comment:

People who think they are owed something might try to take it.

The comment clearly expresses the fear that someone who says or thinks they are owed more sex from women -- and, keep in mind, that could be something along the lines of "I don't think that women are doing their part in alleviating the suffering I feel as a result of not having access to sex" -- may be led to "evil behaviors, up to and including rape". I think that -- at least in the context of this site -- that fear is unfounded, perhaps even slightly on the paranoid side. (Of course I hesitate to say a thing like that, as an anxiety sufferer, throwing stones from my glass house!) In any case I feel reasonably confident in asserting that neither Alicorn nor anyone else stands more than an infinitesimally small chance of being raped by a lonely Less Wrong participant holding the above misguided opinion. Indeed (and to answer some other commenters), I suspect that the proportion of potential rapists among the people who hold that opinion is probably so small that even if all rapes were attributable to the holding of that opinion by the perpetrator, that still wouldn't justify censoring the opinion itself (and thereby failing to even consider the question of whether lack of access to sex is a legitimate ethical problem worth solving).

but that doesn't mean popularizing some memes doesn't have bad consequences. This is fairly basic memetics and how we account for a great deal of behavior.

This is also a larger debate (about whether and how to stop the spread of memes which may have harmful effects) which transcends the specific issues here. It applies even to memes that are definitely good in some contexts, e.g. atheism.

There might also be some positive consequence to spreading such memes but so far no one has argued that claiming loveless men are owed more sex will actually lead to any kind of beneficial change.

Robin Hanson implies this -- or at least raises the question -- quite regularly. See here for the most recent example.

Comment author: Alicorn 08 October 2009 07:13:25PM 2 points [-]

A couple of points:

Although most crimes of battery, murder, etc. can be classified as crimes of passion, a ton of rape is "date rape". It can take place in ambiguous circumstances, without nearly as much violence as might be anticipated. I'm therefore uncertain how well you can apply statements about violent crimes to rape in general.

Bank robbery has a higher clearance rate than rape. Many rapists are never reported, much less caught and convicted. Bank robberies are generally pretty high-profile events; it's hard for one to go by without anyone knowing it has occurred.

The following looks like a plausible line of reasoning to me: 1. I am owed more sex from people who I'm interested in, such as Woman X. 2. Woman X will not have sex with me, and in so refraining, denies me something I am owed. 3. In general, it is appropriate to arrange to take things from people who will not give them when they are owed. For instance, if Woman X owed me five hundred dollars, I would be justified in bringing in authorities to oblige her to give me five hundred dollars. 4. The law will not compel Woman X to have sex with me. 5. When the law will not address injustices, such as failing to discharge an obligation, it is permissible for private citizens to address the injustice. 6. Compelling Woman X to have sex with me would be taking from her something that she owes me. 7. I can compel Woman X to have sex with me.

Sure, you could stop at any point in this chain of reasoning, reject some inference and avoid #7. But the subset of people who won't, may do serious harm to poor Woman X - who never owed anyone anything.

Comment author: komponisto 09 October 2009 12:28:59AM 11 points [-]

Sure, you could stop at any point in this chain of reasoning, reject some inference and avoid #7. But the subset of people who won't, may do serious harm to poor Woman X - who never owed anyone anything.

It is your opinion that Woman X never owed anyone anything -- but the fact that you (and probably most people) feel that way is not sufficient justification for making the contrary opinion (premise #1) a thought crime.

Keep in mind that among the things we are in the business of doing here are (1) critically examining ethical intuitions, and (2) proposing and exploring potential means of (ultimately) improving the world that may not necessarily strike us immediately as "tasteful".

My feeling is that someone ought to be permitted on LW to argue, for example, that the law should compel Woman X to have sex in some circumstances. Suppose for instance that some commenter were to float the idea of sex as a form of judicially enforced community service for those convicted of certain crimes (perhaps as an alternative to incarceration). Would you consider this idea so dangerous that it ought to be censored, for fear of encouraging rape or sexual assault? I'm guessing (hoping) you wouldn't , even though it's clearly an example of discussing sex as an obligation, in a way quite foreign (even opposed) to the norms of our current society.

Comment author: Alicorn 08 October 2009 04:30:43PM 8 points [-]

I will now attempt to clarify:

Males developing social skills is great. Social skills are wonderful, rewarding things to have, and I think anybody who would like to learn to interact with other people politely and pleasantly should.

"Social skills as possessed by men (who are attracted to women)" is a much broader category than "the ability to get into sexual or romantic relationships with women (who are attracted to men)". You can use social skills to interact with family members, platonic friends, co-workers, neighbors, classmates, teachers, strangers, students, clients, employees, bosses, fellow members of any club or other social or hobby organization, and any other class of person you will ever interact with. Potential mates are only one of these categories, although of course there is overlap.

Social skills as used by men to get into sexual or romantic relationships with women do not consist entirely of things I would describe with "negative feminist language". Many of these skills are, at least potentially, honest, respectful, and non-threatening.

The attitude that the "target market" of the "product" of the man attempting to pitch himself as a potential mate owes him something is the attitude that I condemn. If nobody has this attitude around here - which is what I must think you're getting at by saying I argue against a straw man - that's great! My heebie-jeebies are for naught! I can walk the streets of Lesswrongburgh safe in the knowledge that no one thinks they are entitled to my attention, affection, personal charms, or set of body parts.

If someone in the studio audience does think that the men who have or want to learn these social skills are owed something by the women in whom they show interest, then I contend that this thought is dangerous because it can lead to evil behaviors, up to and including rape. Among the excuses trotted out by rapists, right up there with "she had on X article of clothing and was asking for it", are variations on "she owed me". So when there starts to be talk about women owing anything to sexually interested men, this starts to make me feel like an Israeli hearing chitchat about how the land my house sits on is owed to Palestine. People who think they are owed something might try to take it.

Comment author: komponisto 08 October 2009 06:42:34PM 8 points [-]

People who think they are owed something might try to take it.

I think this is an irrational fear, if I may say so.

While I'm not an expert on violent crime, I am fairly sure that most of it is committed by people acting on impulse, not people who have intellectually convinced themselves they are owed something. I may for instance believe and argue I am owed more money by society, but that doesn't mean I'm about to rob a bank.

People should likewise be free to express the opinion that they are owed more sex, without that being interpreted as a threat of violence.

Comment author: Alicorn 04 October 2009 09:25:58PM 0 points [-]

Okay, you're right, that was an overstatement. There could be boredom, or course requirements, or curiosity, or things like that.

Comment author: komponisto 06 October 2009 04:11:14AM *  2 points [-]

What about the desire to make an "aesthetic investment" -- that is, to put in some work upfront in order to reap the rewards of a high-quality experience later on? (Why, I wonder, are people so quick to dismiss the possibility of such rewards?)

As regards signaling as a "common" motivation: maybe this works in continental Europe, or in certain idiosyncratic communities where this kind of music enjoys social prestige. In the mainstream of American society, however, an interest in art music buys you little to no status (particularly as compared with a corresponding interest in similarly elevated forms of other arts, such as literature or painting). To be a devotee of this kind of music is to be a nerd of one of the worst kinds. (It's even considered un-American: witness Bill Clinton's remark that "Jazz is America's classical music".)

You know the cultural asymmetry that C.P. Snow famously described, wherein "well-rounded" educated people are expected to know about more about the humanities than the sciences? Well, it's dwarfed into insignificance by the asymmetry that exists between what "cultured" people are expected to know about music versus what they are expected to know about other arts.

So be extra cautious when positing status-signaling explanations for the behavior of art music devotees, particularly in America.

Comment author: CronoDAS 29 September 2009 04:11:55AM *  4 points [-]

Well, I pretty much told them I planned on spending all day surfing the Internet and playing video games until they stopped supporting me. You seemed to have a better excuse.

You also probably weren't shoved into special education after second grade. I spent third through seventh grade learning basically nothing from my actual schoolwork while the rest of my native school district caught up to me.

I'm always jealous when I hear about mathematical prodigies who are doing advanced work at young ages. I would have been one of them if I only I had someone who was willing to teach me math more complicated than arithmetic!

Comment author: komponisto 30 September 2009 02:39:07AM *  4 points [-]

Well, I pretty much told them I planned on spending all day surfing the Internet and playing video games until they stopped supporting me. [Eliezer] seemed to have a better excuse.

It may sound like a better excuse to people in this community, but I assure you that to my parents both "excuses" would have sounded one and the same:

"It's great that you want to work on 'artificial intelligence' or whatever when you grow up, but right now, young man, your schoolwork comes first. You're not going to sit around on the computer all day while you're living under our roof." (etc.)

I'm always jealous when I hear about mathematical prodigies who are doing advanced work at young ages. I would have been one of them if I only I had someone who was willing to teach me math more complicated than arithmetic!

I second this jealousy! Though in my case, I had the access to higher math (at least enough to get started). What I didn't have was anyone who cared about the rather remarkable fact that I was interested in it. I mean really, truly cared -- to the point of taking some kind of action. Whenever I did something that showed what might be called exceptional ability, whether it was learning calculus or writing symphonies, the reaction of my parents and the school authorities was always "that's great, but..."

(Incidentally, I don't want to unfairly condemn my parents. They would have been just fine for 99% of the children they might have had, and it could have been much worse for me. But never underestimate the stupidity of the U.S. public school system.)

Comment author: Jack 27 September 2009 07:24:39PM *  14 points [-]

Can you say more about this?

(Please resist the temptation to just refuse to answer for purposes of irony and self-reference).

Comment author: komponisto 28 September 2009 04:12:23AM 1 point [-]
Comment author: Z_M_Davis 27 September 2009 04:39:32AM 8 points [-]

Following Nominull and Furcas, I bite the third bullet without qualms for the perfectly ordinary obvious reasons. Once we know how much of what kinds of experiences will occur at different times, there's nothing left to be confused about. Subjective selfishness is still coherent because you're not just an arbitrary observer with no distinguishing characteristics at all; you're a very specific bundle of personality traits, memories, tendencies of thought, and so forth. Subjective selfishness corresponds to only caring about this one highly specific bundle: only caring about whether someone falls off a cliff if this person identifies as such-and-such and has such-and-these specific memories and such-and-those personality traits: however close a correspondence you need to match whatever you define as personal identity.

The popular concepts of altruism and selfishness weren't designed for people who understand materialism. Once you realize this, you can just recast whatever it was you were already trying to do in terms of preferences over histories of the universe. It all adds up to, &c., &c.

Comment author: komponisto 27 September 2009 09:41:56PM *  1 point [-]

The (only) trouble with this is that it doesn't answer the question about what probabilities you_0 should assign to various experiences 5 seconds later. Personal identity may not be ontologically fundamental, it may not even be the appropriate sort of thing to be programmed into a utility function -- but at the level of our everyday existence (that is, at whatever level we actually do exist), we still have to be able to make plans for "our own" future.

Comment author: Johnicholas 26 September 2009 04:11:21PM 1 point [-]

Non-constructive proofs of existence are one of the undesirable features of mainstream or classical mathematics. Some non-mainstream mathematicians have investigated how to modify logic to eliminate non-constructive proofs. For example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brouwer%E2%80%93Heyting%E2%80%93Kolmogorov_interpretation

Intuitionism is a broad term for this kind of tendency within mathematics. However, the term seems to mean a lot of different things to different people.

http://intuitionism.org/

Comment author: komponisto 26 September 2009 06:10:12PM 4 points [-]

The (original) joke (as opposed to Nesov's flame) isn't necessarily ideological. It simply lampoons the general attitude of pure mathematicians, who by nature are typically more interested in the theoretical existence of solutions than in the practicalities of finding them, leaving the latter for scientists, engineers, etc. (Mathematicians, in other words, are very "meta" kind of people.)

Comment author: Alicorn 11 September 2009 12:21:53AM 0 points [-]

In this sense, there are as many primes as there are natural numbers. Proof: arrange the primes as an infinite series of increasing numbers. Map each prime in the series to its index in the series, which is a natural number.

Yes, I get that you can do that! I get that you can do that - I just don't know why you should do that, instead of doing it the way that seems like the sensible way to do it in my head. What recommends this arrangement over any other arrangement?

Comment author: komponisto 11 September 2009 03:17:16AM *  2 points [-]

What recommends this arrangement over any other arrangement?

Nothing at all, except that it shows there exists such a correspondence -- which is the only question of interest when talking about the "size" (cardinality) of sets.

(EDIT: Perhaps I should add that this question of existence is interesting because the situation can be quite different for different pairs of sets: while there exists a 1-1 correspondence between primes and natural numbers, there does not exist any such correspondence between primes and real numbers. In that case, all mappings will leave out some real numbers -- or duplicate some primes, if you're going the other way.)

All the other ways of "counting" that you're thinking of are just as "valid" as mathematical ideas, for whatever other purposes they may be used for. Here's an example, actually: the fact that you can think of a way of making primes correspond in a one-to-one fashion to a proper subset of the natural numbers (not including all natural numbers) succeeds in showing that the set of primes is no larger than the set of natural numbers.

Comment author: timtyler 09 September 2009 07:17:45PM *  -1 points [-]

Creationists don't have to debate college students - they have Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christoper Hitchens, Sam Harris, P Z Myers, Robert Wright - who all seem quite prepared to stoop down to their level as part of some kind of "gutter outreach" program.

Comment author: komponisto 09 September 2009 10:07:23PM 0 points [-]

There is a good point hidden here: they can indeed debate someone like Christopher Hitchens, a respected man of letters, who, though not scientifically trained, is adept enough at exposing creationism for the futile folly it is.

Comment author: Wei_Dai 09 September 2009 09:36:05PM 14 points [-]

For a creationist to publicly debate a college student is to admit that his or her status is roughly on par with that of a college student. Why would any creationist do that? And I'm sure they can come up with a better excuse than "I'm afraid to lose to a student."

Michael Behe seems to be a full professor. Has any professor ever formally debated a college student (excepting classroom instruction), in the history of academics?

Comment author: komponisto 09 September 2009 10:00:16PM 2 points [-]

Since the scientific community prides itself on its supposition that even the highest-ranked scientist could in principle be proved wrong by a student, one would expect such debates to happen now and then. Otherwise the scientific community isn't living up to its own ethos.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 07 September 2009 09:43:24PM *  18 points [-]

I confess that I'm not really a fan of the idea that creationists should never get any space for debate. If prestigious scientists are worried that talking to creationists gives them too much credibility, then find some bright ambitious college student who reads Pharyngula to shoot their little fish in a barrel. But this business of trying not to have debates... doesn't quite seem to me like the right strategy, somehow, when the cold fact of the matter is that creationists already get plenty of airtime with plenty of listeners. That is probably one reason why I'm sympathetic to BHTV here.

I don't think there ought to be a debate about whether many-worlds is correct, but there is. Should I refuse to talk about it henceforth? Fundamentally, people talking to each other on public video just doesn't strike me as such a bad, terrible, awful thing, even if it's about something you shouldn't have to debate. Now setting up Behe with a non-opponent was terrible, but I'm willing to accept that as an honest mistake.

Comment author: komponisto 08 September 2009 04:33:56AM 0 points [-]

If prestigious scientists are worried that talking to creationists gives them too much credibility, then find some bright ambitious college student who reads Pharyngula to shoot their little fish in a barrel.

ERV is willing to debate Behe, but BHtv apparently has yet to show any interest.

Comment author: jimrandomh 22 August 2009 12:47:58AM *  16 points [-]

Mary's Room is invalid because it sneaks in a false assumption: that if something is knowledge, then it can be learned by study alone. As a counterexample to the story of Mary's Room, consider the story of Marty's Bicycle, which I have just made up.

Marty is a brilliant physicist who has suddenly become very interested in bicycles. Unfortunately, his leg is in a cast, so he can't ride one. While he waits for it to heal, he studies their physics, watches people ride bikes, reads guides on bike riding, and interviews top racers - in fact, he studies everything there is to study about bicycles. When the cast is finally taken off, he buys a bicycle, gets on, and immediately falls over.

The ability to recognize red objects is like the skill of riding a bicycle - it can only be acquired by doing it, not by study, because study can only train the linguistic centers of the brain, not the visual processing centers (Mary's room) or the balance centers (Marty's bicycle). This is merely an accident of how our brains work; one could easily imagine a robot that could be told how to recognize red objects or balance a bicycle without having to try it first.

Comment author: komponisto 23 August 2009 06:13:03AM 4 points [-]

This is a standard reply, known as the Lewis-Nemirow "Ability Hypothesis". See here for a critique.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 18 August 2009 12:43:48AM 4 points [-]

Hold on, let me check the financial bridging laws to find out how much epiphenomenal cash is required to add up to ten real dollars.

(Actually, it occurs to me that most modern money is epiphenomenal anyway - you can identify the belief in money, but not the money itself.)

Comment author: komponisto 19 August 2009 07:30:23AM 2 points [-]

For those who don't already know, the analogy to money is in fact used by Dennett (starting around 45 min).

In response to Guess Again
Comment author: brian_jaress 10 August 2009 12:07:22AM 0 points [-]

I'm interested to see what happens to your Chinese. I noticed that some non-ASCII entities in in a top-level comment looked okay right after I posted, but were mangled later (without my doing any further edits).

In response to comment by brian_jaress on Guess Again
Comment author: komponisto 10 August 2009 01:16:05AM 0 points [-]

I see five question marks. (Which I thought was intended until I got to the "if you can read Chinese" part.)

Comment author: PeterS 07 August 2009 08:08:20PM *  7 points [-]

If you are responding to a hypothetical that tests a mathematical model, and your response doesn't use math, and doesn't hinge on a consciousness, infinity, or impossibility from the original problem domain, your response is likely irrelevant.

Right.. I'll give a few more examples from math. Say you're arguing that calculus is a lie because deriving dy/dx clearly involves division by zero. In this case, you're getting 'emotionally involved'. You're focusing on the notation dy/dx and all sorts of things about the existence of infinitesimals and division by zero. But that impossibility doesn't exist in the original theory, because (standard) calculus is founded on limits and not division by zero or infinitesimals. The infinities and infinitesimals aren't part of the original model which you're arguing against

Likewise, if you're arguing that ZFC is inconsistent by Russell's paradox, because you can construct peculiar but plausible sounding sets which imply contradictions, you're making the same mistake. You're being emotionally involved with your naive/primitive concept of a 'set', whereas the theory in question (ZFC) doesn't even allow you to construct such sets.

The above arguments are less common, but I have heard them. A more common argument concerns the Axiom of Choice, and goes a little something like this:

To me, the strongest argument in favor of AC is one if the many equivalent statements: if A_i is a family of non-empty sets then the cartesian product of the A_i is non-empty.

I pulled that from the math subreddit where it was posted a few days ago, and it's a fairly common argument. But the commenter has become emotionally involved with day-to-day sets and Cartesian products. What would the product of an uncountable collection of uncountable sets even look like? Once one refers to the formal, very abstract definition, it should be clear that we have absolutely no right to expect anything about it's emptiness or nonemptiness, because the intuition and emotional involvement are replaced by formal abstraction. The things which one assumes exist aren't actually there in the original theory (ZF).

It's possible to accidentally construct a hypothetical that makes an assumption that isn't valid in our universe. (I think these paradoxes were unknown before the 20th century, but there may be a math example.

The paradoxes falling out of the geocentric model, maybe?

Comment author: komponisto 10 August 2009 12:59:27AM 1 point [-]

But the commenter has become emotionally involved with day-to-day sets and Cartesian products.

Not necessarily. At least, not necessarily more so than anyone becomes "emotionally involved" when deciding on axioms to use in a mathematical theory.

AC is after all independent of ZF. So of course no argument in favor of it can be constructed literally on the basis of the "original theory" (ZF). Saying that the Cartesian product of nonempty sets ought to be nonempty is an aesthetic statement about what the rules of the game should be, not a mistaken inference from the axioms of ZF.

Because of the independence, we logically have a "right to expect" anything we want (AC or not-AC). The choice is a matter of taste, and the tastes of the mathematical community evidently incline toward AC.

Note how different this is from your two previous examples regarding derivatives and Russell's paradox. Those involved outright logical errors; whereas in the case of AC, the commenter is making a legitimate aesthetic argument.

Comment author: eirenicon 23 July 2009 02:12:24AM 0 points [-]

I don't have time to continue this discussion right now. I just wanted to mention something that's bothering me. Right now it looks like I'm getting voted up and you down, and that's stupid. Your comments aren't of lower quality than mine, they're simply disagreeing with mine. There seem to be only a couple people doing it (I don't vote on threads I'm involved in), so I say to them... please vote according to the quality and relevance of the comment, not how much you like the content. Vote up to signal agreement if you must, but don't vote down if the comment is clearly on topic and well written.

Comment author: komponisto 23 July 2009 02:10:04PM 0 points [-]

please vote according to the quality and relevance of the comment, not how much you like the content. Vote up to signal agreement if you must, but don't vote down if the comment is clearly on topic and well written.

On behalf of all those who suffer from extreme karma-loss-aversion, I want to second this message. Please don't downvote just because you disagree on substance.

(I came close to deleting a recent comment of mine that was downvoted shortly after being posted. It's now at +12.)

Comment author: scav 21 July 2009 11:42:39AM 7 points [-]

But House's "rationally correct" courses of action are only eventually proven so with hindsight. They often involve harsh experiments that directly endanger the patient, and each episode generally includes at least 2 dangerous false diagnoses for dramatic effect.

In real life, House would by now have killed an unacceptable proportion of his patients and got himself fired and sued. I love the series, so I don't mind suspending disbelief about that.

You should be able to make a correct but unexpected decision without being branded a maverick - sometimes. To be a successful maverick your correct decisions have to be unexpected most of the time. But then those around you who supposedly know the subject would have to be badly miscalibrated...

Comment author: komponisto 21 July 2009 11:51:00AM 1 point [-]

To be a successful maverick your correct decisions have to be unexpected most of the time. But then those around you who supposedly know the subject would have to be badly miscalibrated...

Supposedly this is House's gift; he is able to figure out cases that are mysterious to other doctors. So it makes sense that, with respect to the cases he sees, other doctors' calibration would be poor. (But then you wonder why they don't defer to him more...)

Comment author: bogus 21 July 2009 09:57:59AM *  20 points [-]

So, yes, this is in fact an argument for a certain kind of political correctness -- just enough of it to avoid signaling low status if at all possible.

No no no. Discouraging topics with "low status" connotations (as opposed to topics which are politically divisive or needlessly exclusionary) is cowardly and epistemically dangerous. If we were playing a chronophone game, this would come out as "Let's not discuss Copernicus' theories: this should be a place where Jesuit scientists and philosophers can be comfortable".

Rationalists should win, and one can win big by seeing things that society at large dares not point out just yet.

Comment author: komponisto 21 July 2009 10:34:22AM *  14 points [-]

If we were playing a chronophone game, this would come out as "Let's not discuss Copernicus' theories: this should be a place where Jesuit scientists and philosophers can be comfortable".

Nonsense. It was with the aim of preventing this misunderstanding that I suggested the Dawkins/Dennett test (apparently to no avail). "Low status" doesn't mean what you seem to think; it's not the same thing has holding a minority opinion. Galileo's status was quite high, which is why he was treated as a threat by the church rather than being ignored as a lunatic. A more appropriate chronophone rendering might be: "Let's make sure we wear our wigs and robes properly and have a Latin version ready to go ."

Finally note that I said "if at all possible". If for some reason a particular line of reasoning actually does signal low status but nonetheless needs to be heard, we have an escape clause. It shouldn't be used lightly, however.

Comment author: komponisto 21 July 2009 08:48:01AM *  19 points [-]

What say you?

I agree, pretty much completely.

In general, I thought the recent discussions on seduction were beneath us. First I was put off by the de-personalization of people considered as sexual partners; and then I was equally offended by the undercurrent of "some people don't deserve (a high level of) sexual gratification, because they're not attractive enough" running through some of the indignant responses that I should otherwise have agreed with. For all the talk about "altruism" and concern for "humanity" in this community, there wasn't much of that spirit to be found anywhere in those threads.

Having locker-room discussions in public is low-status behavior. Now it is a debatable question whether we should go out of our way to signal high status. (I for one think the prestige of Overcoming Bias, run as it was by high-status folks like Robin Hanson and associated with no less than Oxford University, contributed in no small part to getting us this far, and is something we are in danger of losing to the extent we become perceived as a group of underachieving sex-starved male computer programmers in their twenties.) But I think most of us should be able to agree that signaling low status is not helpful toward our goals as a community (which after all don't necessarily include individual members' getting laid in the short term).

So, yes, this is in fact an argument for a certain kind of political correctness -- just enough of it to avoid signaling low status if at all possible. Let me suggest a heuristic: this should in theory be a place where someone like Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett would be comfortable posting. (Speaking of which, why haven't we seen them here? They share many of our goals and interests.) Now these are folks who definitely aren't unwilling to call a spade a spade. At the same time I have a feeling they'd be turned off by some of the discussions of "PUA" and the like.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 18 July 2009 03:26:41PM *  1 point [-]

I'm not happy with many of the other anecdotes either. Example being misleading is a negative effect. Seeing patterns where there's none is a basic failure in human mind, we should know better than to indulge it.

Comment author: komponisto 18 July 2009 04:27:38PM *  0 points [-]

Example being misleading is a negative effect.

I could see a case for this if:

(1) The existence of the phenomenon under discussion was not itself in dispute;

(2) The failed example is likely to lead to confusion about the nature of the (undisputed) phenomenon;

and

(3) The commenter should have known this, or in some other way the example was not offered in good faith.

Looking through your previous comments, and noting your citation of Gelman, it appears that you are skeptical of the name-bias phenomenon itself as posited by Yvain and those he cites; hence (1) does not hold. Regarding (2), I find it highly unlikely that someone following the discussion about whether name-bias exists is going to be misled or confused by a particular anecdote that may or may not exemplify the phenomenon (depending in particular on whether the phenomenon exists). As for (3), the comment was quite consistent with the spirit of the preceding discussion. It should also be noted that (as I hinted) the name coincidence in the court decision would not have caught my attention if I hadn't read the post -- this fact alone arguably makes it worthy of a comment on said post.

It would be different if you accepted Yvain's claims (1), but thought my example would mislead folks about what it was that Yvain was describing (2). As it is, however, a court decision such as I mentioned clearly counts as a candidate for name-bias, if you assume that name-bias as described in the post actually exists. The issue is that you don't accept this premise in the first place. Consequently I don't see a defensible rationale for downvoting in this context. (Certainly not without also downvoting the main post.)

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 18 July 2009 03:00:13PM *  1 point [-]

Only a tiny percentage of people who make name-associated decisions make them because of name-association (see Gelman's analysis). Thus, finding an example of a decision in the presence of name-association is overwhelmingly unlikely to be an example of a decision influenced by name-association. Such anecdote, even when given without this conclusion, fallacy of which you might have realized yourself, can't be relevant to the pattern discussed in this post. It thus implicitly suggests this conclusion, as its sole raison d'etre, turning it into a misleading "not technically a lie".

Comment author: komponisto 18 July 2009 03:17:10PM *  1 point [-]

But how is my anecdote any less relevant than the others above, which were in fact deemed acceptable commentary on the post? Indeed, you seem to be arguing against the thrust of the post itself, rather than my individual comment.

Also, does mere failure of an example warrant downvoting? (Rhetorical question; it doesn't. For instance, it may prompt a discussion of the reasons the example fails, which may add value to the discussion. Or it may be neutral. Downvoting implies the added value is outright negative.)

In response to What's In A Name?
Comment author: komponisto 18 July 2009 12:41:57PM 1 point [-]

Data point:

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana, a highly controversial 2008 case striking down the death penalty for child rape.

In this 5-4 decision favoring a petitioner named Patrick Kennedy, Justice Kennedy, widely considered a "swing vote" with conservative leanings, sided with the liberals on the court and against the conservatives -- clearly determining the outcome of the case.

I put this here because this post was the first thing I thought of when I ran across this piece of information. One should of course bear in mind the frequency effect.

Comment author: komponisto 18 July 2009 02:43:11PM *  0 points [-]

Um....okay....person who downvoted this: What was the message you were trying to send? Was it:

-Don't post anecdotes (possibly) illustrating the point of the post? (In which case, did you take care to downvote all the above comments doing the same thing?)

-Don't comment on an old post? (Is that a rule we really want to establish?)

-There's no way that Justice Kennedy's decision could have been influenced by name bias, and surely every sane person realizes this? (What makes you so sure? And did I say that it was? Isn't it all right merely to raise the possibility?)

For goodness' sake, I even put in a disclaimer about the frequency effect!

Comment author: SoullessAutomaton 18 July 2009 12:10:42PM 2 points [-]

It's not. Academic linguistics attempts to avoid value judgments entirely and rely on observations of how typical users of a language actually communicate.

Value judgements on language use are typically the province of high-status individuals who use language professionally (e.g., writers) or who teach language to others.

Comment author: komponisto 18 July 2009 01:09:35PM 1 point [-]

Academic linguistics attempts to avoid value judgments entirely and rely on observations of how typical users of a language actually communicate.

Which may of course include studying the value judgments made by language users (sociolinguistics) .

In response to What's In A Name?
Comment author: komponisto 18 July 2009 12:41:57PM 1 point [-]

Data point:

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana, a highly controversial 2008 case striking down the death penalty for child rape.

In this 5-4 decision favoring a petitioner named Patrick Kennedy, Justice Kennedy, widely considered a "swing vote" with conservative leanings, sided with the liberals on the court and against the conservatives -- clearly determining the outcome of the case.

I put this here because this post was the first thing I thought of when I ran across this piece of information. One should of course bear in mind the frequency effect.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 15 July 2009 04:00:13AM *  28 points [-]

Here's some examples for your own consideration...

Bearing in mind, once again, that humans are known to be crazy in many ways, and that anosognosic humans become literally incapable of believing that their left sides are paralyzed, and that other neurological disorders seem to invoke a similar "denial" function automatically along with the damage itself. And that you've actually seen the AI's code and audited it and witnessed its high performance in many domains, so that you would seem to have far more reason to trust its sanity than to trust your own. So would you believe the AI, if it told you that:

1) Tin-foil hats actually do block the Orbital Mind Control Lasers.

2) All mathematical reasoning involving "infinities" implies self-evident contradictions, but human mathematicians have a blind spot with respect to them.

3) You are not above-average; most people believe in the existence of a huge fictional underclass in order to place themselves at the top of the heap, rather than in the middle. This is why so many of your friends seem to have PhDs despite PhDs supposedly constituting only 0.5% of the population. You are actually in the bottom third of the population; the other two-thirds have already built their own AIs.

4) The human bias toward overconfidence is far deeper than we are capable of recognizing; we have a form of species overconfidence which denies all evidence against itself. Humans are much slower runners than we think, muscularly weaker, struggle to keep afloat in the water let alone move, and of course, are poorer thinkers.

5) Dogs, cats, cows, and many other mammals are capable of linguistic reasoning and have made many efforts to communicate with us, but humans are only capable of recognizing other humans as capable of thought.

6) Humans cannot reproduce without the aid of the overlooked third sex.

7) The Earth is flat.

8) Human beings are incapable of writing fiction; all supposed fiction you have read is actually true.

Comment author: komponisto 15 July 2009 07:37:17AM 6 points [-]

So would you believe the AI, if it told you that:

2) All mathematical reasoning involving "infinities" implies self-evident contradictions, but human mathematicians have a blind spot with respect to them.

My answer would be no different if you replaced "infinities" with "manifolds" or "groups": Okay, please show me the contradiction.

3) You are not above-average

Yes.

1), 4)-8): These are all roughly on the order of "the world is a lie". In such cases I'd probably have to doubt my verification of the AI's calibration as well. So no, probably not.

Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 15 July 2009 05:58:52AM 2 points [-]

"All mathematical reasoning involving "infinities" involves self-evident contradictions, but human mathematicians have a blind spot with respect to them." -Eliezer Yudkowsky

I'm going to lose sleep over this one...Is there anything to this?

Comment author: komponisto 15 July 2009 07:19:01AM *  5 points [-]

Is there anything to this?

There needn't have been in order for this to be a reasonable example, but perhaps Eliezer is not-so-subtly hinting that he actually expects an AI to say this.

But it's really no different than "all reasoning by mathematicians about X is wrong" where X is any mathematical concept you please.

Comment author: komponisto 15 July 2009 06:42:49AM 17 points [-]

I suppose the craziest thing an AI could say would have to be:

"That other apparently well-calibrated AI you built is wrong."

Comment author: arundelo 13 July 2009 02:12:09AM -1 points [-]

Yes, and I wouldn't mind if you talked about religion, but I'd rather the majority of the diavlog be about stuff that you're on the same page about.

Comment author: komponisto 14 July 2009 05:48:39PM 1 point [-]

I take the opposite point of view. If there is a diavlog with Wright, I would like to hear sustained discussion of religion, as I am curious to find out what Eliezer will say, in real time, to someone who converted from atheism to Christianity at age 42.

Besides which, these things are surely more interesting in general when they focus on areas of disagreement.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 02 July 2009 09:28:07PM 10 points [-]

...sign up for cryonics?

Comment author: komponisto 03 July 2009 07:13:45AM 1 point [-]

Except you presumably won't be able to get life insurance.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 June 2009 12:39:36AM 5 points [-]

My name is Eliezer Yudkowsky... okay, that may not sound very promising, but I've been repeatedly told that my name "sounds just like a scientist's name".

Comment author: komponisto 01 July 2009 10:19:43AM 0 points [-]

Interesting. I had always wanted to ask you whether you had run into people who inferred from your name that you were devoutly religious. (Not that it would have taken them very long to be disabused of this idea, of course!)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 June 2009 12:25:01PM 0 points [-]

Nope. I do believe in classical first-order logic, I'm just skeptical about infinite sets. I'd like to hear k's answer, though.

Comment author: komponisto 17 June 2009 07:49:40PM *  0 points [-]

Perhaps this would make a good subject for my inaugural top-level post. I'll try to write one up in the near future.

Comment author: newerspeak 17 June 2009 12:11:44PM *  1 point [-]

Regarding your three bullet points above:

  1. It's rude to start refuting an idea before you've finished defining it.

  2. One of these things is not like the others. There's nothing wrong with giving us a history of constructive thinking, and providing us with reasons why outdated versions of the theory were found wanting. It's good style to use parallel construction to build rhetorical momentum. It is terribly dishonest to do both at the same time -- it creates the impression that the subjective reasons you give for dismissing point 3 have weight equal to the objective reasons history has given for dismissing points 1 and 2.

  3. Your talk in point 3 about "map-territory confusion" is very strange. Mathematics is all in your head. It's all map, no territory. You seem to be claiming that constructivsts are outside of the mathematical mainstream because they want to bend theory in the direction of a preferred outcome. You then claim that this is outside of the bounds of acceptable mathematical thinking, So what's wrong with reasoning like this:

"Nobody really likes all of the consequences of the Axiom of Choice, but most people seem willing to put up with its bad behavior because some of the abstractions it enables -- like the Real Numbers -- are just so damn useful. I wonder how many of the useful properties of the Real Numbers I could capture by building up from (a possibly weakened version of) ZF set theory and a weakened version of the Axiom of Choice?"

Comment author: komponisto 17 June 2009 04:54:02PM *  1 point [-]

I'm sorry, but I don't think there was anything remotely "rude" or "terribly dishonest" about my previous comment. If you think I am mistaken about anything I said, just explain why. Criticizing my rhetorical style and accusing me of violating social norms is not something I find helpful.

Quite frankly, I also find criticisms of the form "you sound more confident than you should be" rather annoying. E.g:

it creates the impression that the subjective reasons you give for dismissing point 3 have weight equal to the objective reasons history has given for dismissing points 1 and 2.

That's because for me, the reasons I gave in point 3 do indeed have similar weight to the reasons I gave in points 1 and 2. If you disagree, by all means say so. But to rise up in indignation over the very listing of my reasons -- is that really necessary? Would you seriously have preferred that I just list the bullet points without explaining what I thought?

So what's wrong with reasoning like this:

Nothing at all, except for the false claim that nobody likes the consequences of the Axiom of Choice. (Some people do like them, and why shouldn't they?)

The target of my critique -- and I thought I made this clear in my response to cousin_it -- is the critique of mainstream mathematical reasoning, not the research program of exploring different axiomatic set theories. The latter could easily be done by someone fully on board with the soundness of traditional mathematics. Just as it is unnecessary to doubt the correctness of Euclid's arguments in order to be interested in non-Euclidean geometry.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 June 2009 08:53:26AM 2 points [-]

I do not understand what the word "erroneous" is supposed to mean in this context.

For the sake of argument, I will go ahead and ask what sort of nonconstructive entities you think an AI needs to reason about, in order to function properly.

Comment author: komponisto 17 June 2009 10:32:17AM *  3 points [-]

Some senses of "erroneous" that might be involved here include (this list is not necessarily intended to be exhaustive):

  • Mathematically incorrect -- i.e. the proofs contain actual logical inconsistencies. This was argued by some early skeptics (such as Kronecker) but is basically indefensible ever since the formulation of axiomatic set theory and results such as Gödel's on the consistency of the Axiom of Choice. Such a person would have to actually believe the ZF axioms are inconsistent, and I am aware of no plausible argument for this.

  • Making claims that are epistemologically indefensible, even if possibly true. E.g., maybe there does exist a well-ordering of the reals, but mere mortals are in no position to assert that such a thing exists. Again, axiomatic formalization should have meant the end of this as a plausible stance.

  • Irrelevant or uninteresing as an area of research because of a "lack of correspondence" with "reality" or "the physical world". In order to be consistent, a person subscribing to this view would have to repudiate the whole of pure mathematics as an enterprise. If, as is more common, the person is selectively criticizing certain parts of mathematics, then they are almost certainly suffering from map-territory confusion. Mathematics is not physics; the map is not the territory. It is not ordained or programmed into the universe that positive integers must refer specifically to numbers of elementary particles, or some such, any more than the symbolic conventions of your atlas are programmed into the Earth. Hence one cannot make a leap e.g. from the existence of a finite number of elementary particles to the theoretical adequacy of finitely many numbers. To do so would be to prematurely circumscribe the nature of mathematical models of the physical world. Any criticism of a particular area of mathematics as "unconnected to reality" necessarily has to be made from the standpoint of a particular model of reality. But part (perhaps a large part) of the point of doing pure mathematics (besides the fact that it's fun, of course), is to prepare for the necessity, encountered time and time again in the history of our species, of upgrading -- and thus changing --our very model. Not just the model itself but the ways in which mathematical ideas are used in the model. This has often happened in ways that (at least at the time) would have seemed very surprising.

For the sake of argument, I will go ahead and ask what sort of nonconstructive entities you think an AI needs to reason about, in order to function properly.

Well, if the AI is doing mathematics, then it needs to reason about the very same entities that human mathematicians reason about.

Maybe that sounds like begging the question, because you could ask why humans themselves need to reason about those entities (which is kind of the whole point here). But in that case I'm not sure what you're getting at by switching from humans to AIs.

Do you perhaps mean to ask something like: "What kind of mathematical entities will be needed in order to formulate the most fundamental physical laws?"

Comment author: cousin_it 17 June 2009 08:13:45AM 2 points [-]

The philosophical parts of intuitionism are mostly useless, but it contains useful mathematical parts like Martin-Löf type theory used in e.g. the Coq proof assistant. Not sure if this is relevant to Eliezer's "leanings" which started the discussion, but still.

Comment author: komponisto 17 June 2009 08:39:09AM 2 points [-]

Right, but in this context I wouldn't label such "mathematical parts" as part of intuitionism per se. What I'm talking about here is a certain school of thought that holds that mainstream (infinitary, nonconstructive) mathematics is in some important sense erroneous. This is a belief that Eliezer has been hitherto unwilling to disclaim -- for no reason that I can fathom other than a sense of warm glow around E.T. Jaynes.

(Needless to say, Eliezer is welcome to set the record straight on this any time he wishes...)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 16 June 2009 06:00:38PM 4 points [-]

Considering that, in the end, the Earth does go around the Sun, there are some fascinating lessons to be derived from all this.

In particular - yes, the Gods may have a different notion of simplicity, as 'twere, but unless you can exhibit that alternative notion of simplicity, it seems we should still penalize hypotheses that sure look complicated.

Comment author: komponisto 17 June 2009 08:07:13AM 1 point [-]

Considering that, in the end, the Earth does go around the Sun,

I offer this link not as any sort of pedantic correction, but simply as a resource for those interested in learning exactly what modern physics has to say about this question. (Not difficult; highly recommended.)

(An ulterior motive for posting this is that I always have a terrible time tracking down that particular post.)

Comment author: MichaelBishop 16 June 2009 03:59:42PM *  0 points [-]

How does increasing "the marginal social status payoff from an increase in IQ" help? I'm not saying it would hurt, but it seems less direct and less important than increasing the marginal social status payoff from having and acting on unbiased beliefs about the world because this is something people can change fairly easily.

Comment author: komponisto 17 June 2009 12:45:25AM 1 point [-]

That may well be right. I'm willing to accept that the distinction between "I.Q." and other measures of "smartness" is orthogonal to the point I was making.

Comment author: asciilifeform 16 June 2009 04:50:37PM *  4 points [-]

Do you mean that organizations aren't very good at selecting the best person for each job.

Actually, no. What I mean is that human society isn't very good at realizing that it would be in its best interest to assign as many high-IQ persons as possible the job of "being themselves" full-time and freely developing their ideas - without having to justify their short-term benefit.

Hell, forget "as many as possible", we don't even have a Bell Labs any more.

Comment author: komponisto 17 June 2009 12:43:13AM 3 points [-]

This, I think, is a special case of what I meant. A simple, crude, way to put the general point is that people don't defer enough to those who are smarter. If they did, smart folks would be held in higher esteem by society, and indeed would consequently have greater autonomy.

Comment author: cousin_it 16 June 2009 05:19:54PM *  3 points [-]

I think komponisto is a little confused about the discredited status of intuitionism, and you're a little confused about math vs epistemology. Here's a short sweet introduction to intuitionist math and when it's useful, much in the spirit of Eliezer's intuitive explanation of Bayes. Scroll down for the connection between intuitionism and infinitesimals - that's the most exciting bit.

PS: that whole blog is pretty awesome - I got turned on to it by the post "Seemingly impossible functional programs" which demonstrates e.g. how the problem of determining equality of two black-box functions from reals in [0, 1] to booleans turns out to be computationally decidable in finite time (complete with comparison algorithm in Haskell).

Comment author: komponisto 17 June 2009 12:09:31AM 2 points [-]

I think komponisto is a little confused about the discredited status of intuitionism

Not at all. Precious few are the mathematicians who take the views of Kronecker or Brouwer seriously today. I mean, sure, some historically knowledgeable mathematicians will gladly engage in bull sessions about the traditional "three views" in the philosophy of mathematics (Platonism, intuitionism, and formalism), during which they treat them as if on par with each other. But then they get up the next day and write papers that depend on the Axiom of Choice without batting an eye.

Comment author: Cyan 16 June 2009 03:01:47PM *  0 points [-]

"I am an infinite set atheist - have you ever actually seen an infinite set?"

I interpreted that to mean that Eliezer doubts that a model that requires infinite sets will correspond to reality, not that the mathematics are incorrect. The figurative use of the word "atheist" makes the statement ambiguous, but his use of the phrase "actually seen" indicates that his concern is with modeling reality, not the math per se.

Comment author: komponisto 16 June 2009 03:38:59PM *  2 points [-]

That was my (charitable) interpretation too, until, to my dismay, Eliezer confirmed (at a meetup) that he had "leanings" in the direction of constructivism/intuitionism -- apparently not quite aware of the discredited status of such views in mathematics.

And indeed, when I asked Eliezer where he thinks the standard proof of infinite sets goes wrong, he pointed to the law of the excluded middle.

His idol E.T. Jaynes may be to blame, who in PTLS explicitly allied himself with Kronecker, Brouwer, and Poincaré as opposed to Cantor, Hilbert, and Bourbaki -- once again apparently not understanding the settled status of that debate on the side of Cantor et al. One is inclined to suspect this is where Eliezer picked such attitudes up.

Comment author: MichaelBishop 16 June 2009 12:58:45AM *  1 point [-]

If people listened to intelligent and careful thinkers they wouldn't need to understand it themselves. Whether this is an easier or harder route is unclear to me.

Comment author: komponisto 16 June 2009 03:32:50AM 2 points [-]

Indeed. Now that I think about it, perhaps the real problem here is that the marginal social status payoff from an increase in IQ is too low (perhaps even negative in some cases); in other words, IQ doesn't buy one enough status. So the question is whether it is easier to fix this than just to raise the IQ baseline.

Comment author: Psychohistorian 16 June 2009 01:40:16AM *  10 points [-]

I think that most people who do not have severe cognitive deficiencies are capable of understanding what "efficient charities" are. I think that most people are quite capable of understanding the statement, "Ethanol will waste a lot of money and will still generate as much (or more) pollution than gasoline. To top it off, it will also raise the price of food products, both for you and for people who will actually starve as a result." Most issues like this, one can figure out what's going on by reading wikipedia for half an hour. Perhaps that takes a high IQ, but from my experience, when people are given clear and accurate arguments, they are generally capable of getting them. The problem is that they never bother seeking out decent arguments. They either just don't care, or they seek out arguments that support whatever their beliefs happen to be.

In other words, the problem is not that people are stupid. The problem is that people simply don't give a damn. If you don't fix that, I doubt raising IQ will be anywhere near as helpful as you may think.

Comment author: komponisto 16 June 2009 03:18:18AM 1 point [-]

Agree. Or, one might say: the problem is not so much one of intelligence as one of (surprise!) rationality.

Comment author: komponisto 15 June 2009 08:47:13PM *  3 points [-]

Please see this previous comment of mine.

The point here is that it "1+1=2" should not be taken as a statement about physical reality, unless and until we have agreed (explicitly!) on a specific model of the world -- that is, a specific physical interpretation of those mathematical terms. If that model later turns out not to correspond to reality, that's what we say; we don't say that the mathematics was incorrect.

Thus, examples of things not to say:

Comment author: wuwei 15 June 2009 04:15:12AM *  20 points [-]

"Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do. ... Science advances whenever an Art becomes a Science. And the state of the Art advances too because people always leap into new territory once they have understood more about the old."

-- Donald Knuth

Comment author: komponisto 15 June 2009 08:11:54PM *  3 points [-]

Related:

But allow me to recall Michael Scriven's words: "If we want to know why things are as they are..., then the only sense in which there are alternatives to the methods of science is the sense in which we can if we wish abandon our interest in correct answers." As theorists, scholars, teachers, and informed humans, we do want "'to know why things are as they are," and we are interested "'in correct answers". And although I have no wish to confuse "knowing that'" with "knowing how" or the "context of justification" with "the context of discovery," neither am I so timorous or conciliatory or presumptuous as to pronounce that such knowledge will not, can not, or should not "feed back" into [musical] composition.

-- Milton Babbitt (from "Contemporary Music Composition and Music Theory as Contemporary Intellectual History", 1972)

Comment author: John_Maxwell_IV 15 June 2009 07:24:37PM *  4 points [-]

I'll bet that a survey of lottery players would reveal that more than 50% know they lose money on average by playing the lottery. If not, a survey of people at slot machines would be even more likely to produce this result.

Gambling is about thrill.

Comment author: komponisto 15 June 2009 07:48:32PM 3 points [-]

That may be. And yet it's still a tax on those (perhaps a minority) who don't understand the math.

Comment author: jimrandomh 14 June 2009 02:22:35AM 1 point [-]

You have said that human threats are more of a problem where there are fewer humans than where there are are more humans. Surely you have to concede that that is implausible, or at least counterintuitive, on its face.

Cities mean a higher density of criminals and targets, in equal proportion, so all else equal the probability of being targeted should remain about the same; but it also means authorities and witnesses are closer. In a city, you can scream for help and expect people to come; in a rural setting, you can't.

Comment author: komponisto 14 June 2009 02:56:46AM 1 point [-]

Cities mean a higher density of criminals and targets, in equal proportion, so all else equal the probability of being targeted should remain about the same;

The more people you come across, the more likely you are to run into someone bad; and this doesn't even take into account what can happen when people -- thus in particular bad people -- get together in groups.

It's possible that the nice-ifying effects of large populations on human behavior could cancel out the bad effects. But it's not obvious that they do -- and it's certainly not obvious that the former exceed the latter. The default presumption would be that people who live in ancestral-type environments face a variety of threats, both human and natural; and that as people move into larger population centers, the threats they face become less natural and more human.

Comment author: whpearson 13 June 2009 10:53:00AM 1 point [-]

Thieves are livable with. People who steal your livelihood and women less so. Think pick pockets vs tribal warfare. Even burglary is minor compared to that.

Comment author: komponisto 14 June 2009 02:15:09AM *  0 points [-]

Thieves are livable with. People who steal your livelihood and women less so.

This doesn't happen in cities?

(When I wrote "thieves etc", the "etc" was specifically intended to avoid limiting the scope of reference to pickpockets, and instead to indicate the general problem of "other humans wanting what you have".)

Think pick pockets vs tribal warfare

Ever heard of gang violence?

But let's leave the specific examples of bad things aside, and focus on the general claim you have made. You have said that human threats are more of a problem where there are fewer humans than where there are more humans. Surely you have to concede that that is implausible, or at least counterintuitive, on its face.

Comment author: whpearson 12 June 2009 10:41:00PM 3 points [-]

Be warned some large speculation follows

There is a fairly strong liberal/conservative split between urban and rural areas. Now let us say that the human brain is slightly polymorphic and alters its structure dependent upon the population density it finds itself in.

In an urban environment the brain needs to worry somewhat about non-human threats, disease and fire. Raiding from bandits is less of a problem. Some form of taking of money (be it a protection racket or legitimate government) is very likely and in this situation it is unlikely to be able to be resisted successfully.

If a brain finds itself in sparse population, it might be able resist taxes if all its neighbors do and strange human actors such as bandits/raiders are more of threat.

Comment author: komponisto 13 June 2009 04:36:41AM 0 points [-]

I would have thought that in areas with more humans (like cities), human threats (thieves etc) would be more of a problem than in sparsely populated areas.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 June 2009 04:42:32AM 0 points [-]

Um... I am very well aware of the concept of linguistics, thank you. I was speaking rhetorically.

(EDIT: Though Steven Pinker is still a fine suggestion.)

Comment author: komponisto 07 June 2009 03:25:43AM 2 points [-]

I was speaking rhetorically.

Be that as it may, a wise person once wrote:

SPEAK THE TRUTH, EVEN IF YOUR VOICE TREMBLES.

Plenty of people are less acquainted with linguistics; surely, then, it's a good idea to avoid saying things that are actually false (especially when they would reinforce a common misconception that experts in the subject are constantly trying to stamp out).

Comment author: HughRistik 04 June 2009 07:01:04AM *  45 points [-]

If you do not know any women, something is wrong.

This isn't quite Silas' complaint. Clearly, he does know some women. What he is looking for is women who are receptive to his attempts to date them. This means he needs to know them in a context where he can actually make advances, and he needs to know how to actually make advances (which are appropriate to that context). His other complaint was that he was getting a date, but then it fizzled because she lost interest.

I won't speak of Silas' specific situation, but I will emphasize that there are many men who are decent guys from the standpoint of society, and who don't have anything major wrong with them psychologically, physically or financially, but who don't have significant options with women. This isn't because they don't know women, but because the women they know aren't available to them because the women don't find them attractive enough (since women are more selective, the average women is going after men with above average attractiveness, not after her average male friends), and/or because they are insufficiently knowledgeable of all the societal rituals around dating. Those rituals place a higher burden on the male for initiating things, and men don't have that stuff encoded in their DNA. It's something that the cooler kids learned in adolescence, and the less cool ones didn't.

The result is that by high school, it's common for males with certain personality traits such as introversion and systemizing (i.e. personality traits typical of males who identify as rationalists) to be so far behind socially that their ability to get something going romantic with the women around them is limited, even to the extent of being practically locked out. Women with similar personality traits will also experience difficulties, but not to the same magnitude since they aren't typically expected to be the initiators, and because personality traits like confidence (that can easily be damaged during adolescence) aren't so important for their attractiveness. This is not to say that women don't experience challenges and difficulties in relationships; they do, but their primary challenges occur at different points (e.g. once some sort of dating has actually started, not so much difficulty getting any kind of date) and are a totally different subjects (e.g. being seen only sexually).

It is possible for a man to be surrounded by women, yet be walled off from them. As someone who experienced this years ago, I can say that it was no fun. And meeting friends of friends isn't any use if you can't capitalize on it, not to mention that it's a slow and unreliable way of meeting people. And even if you can get a date, there are a million more ways for the male to bungle than for the female to bungle it (again, women are more selective, and male behavior is a larger factor in female attraction than female behavior is in male attraction... just think about the ways women use words like "weird" or "creepy" in describing potential suitors), which enforces a steep learning curve that is difficult to climb when you don't know what you are doing.

You might say that there is a problem these guys have, which "needs to be addressed on their end," and you would be absolutely right. But that is exactly Silas' complaint. What is the nuts and bolts of what these men need to address such that they can successfully date the women all around them, and who is going to show them how to do it? Who is going to teach them all the dating rituals that they missed during adolescence, and give them back the self-confidence that they lost? Society isn't.

Comment author: komponisto 05 June 2009 07:21:51PM *  8 points [-]

I feel the need to say that this is a superb comment -- perhaps the best I have seen on this topic.

I particularly appreciated the following passages:

Those rituals place a higher burden on the male for initiating things, and men don't have that stuff encoded in their DNA. It's something that the cooler kids learned in adolescence, and the less cool ones didn't.

(...)

there are a million more ways for the male to bungle than for the female to bungle it (again, women are more selective, and male behavior is a larger factor in female attraction than female behavior is in male attraction... just think about the ways women use words like "weird" or "creepy" in describing potential suitors),

(...)

Who is going to teach them all the dating rituals that they missed during adolescence, and give them back the self-confidence that they lost? Society isn't.

I would just add that this is one of those subjects on which people are particularly prone to other-optimizing.

Comment author: komponisto 05 June 2009 08:16:24AM 0 points [-]

David Albert on the topic of quantum mechanics/ MWI. (Albert previously did one with Sean Carroll on this topic, but they didn't go as far into it as I would have liked.)

Comment author: komponisto 04 June 2009 05:29:47AM 3 points [-]

This article explains to a wider audience some notions that people here will be well acquainted with, such as (to take a quote from the article):

“Our minds were not designed by evolution to discover the truth; they were designed to play social games.”

Comment author: komponisto 04 June 2009 05:01:05AM 3 points [-]

The founder of BloggingheadsTV, Robert Wright, would also be a good choice.

Comment author: komponisto 03 June 2009 08:55:03PM *  16 points [-]

I am pleased to see that many of the first names that popped into my head (e.g. Daniel Dennett, Scott Aaronson, Richard Dawkins, David Chalmers -- and of course Robin Hanson) have been mentioned.

But, surprisingly, no one's yet suggested Steven Pinker. He is one of the public faces of evolutionary psychology, and (nevertheless?) has some sympathy toward mysterianism about consciousness. (And considering that yesterday I came across an old comment by Eliezer in which he said that the English language has no rules, Pinker may be just the person he needs to talk to.)

Comment author: smoofra 29 May 2009 01:35:28PM 2 points [-]

The treatment of Cox's theorem, the constant angst about infinite sets, the annoying barbs against straw-man mathematicians.

Comment author: komponisto 31 May 2009 05:20:21PM 1 point [-]

Amen to this. Jaynes feels the need to be a vociferous partisan on the wrong side of an argument that was settled a century ago -- all because of some simple, outright errors committed by other people. It would be like encountering faulty reasoning about group selection and then deciding to become a proponent of intelligent design as a result.

Comment author: MichaelVassar 29 May 2009 06:41:54AM 7 points [-]

Are Gilbert and Sullivan bad in any dramatic way? They have serious fandom. How about Bach himself?
The Grateful Dead? I'm simply skeptical of the Shakespeare being seriously bad claim too. He had bad plays and no-one cares about them.

What about Chess? Poker? Why does D&D count but they don't?

Anyway, I think that the largest effect at work here is that if anything attracts great enthusiasm it will attack aggressive attack. Everything has its flaws. So what?
Tolkein's fandom is MUCH greater than that of C.S. Lewis or countless other fantasy authors who has MUCH more awful about their work. Snobs and the asethetically competent criticize Crichton and Dan Brown plenty but they don't have fandoms Wagner wasn't special. All Opera is comically awful as well as great. That's why we have terms like "soap opera" and "space opera". Actually, maybe the Marriage of Figaro is just great, but it's unique.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Lolita have the most passionate individual fans of any literature I know of, but they don't congregate to express their admiration. The phenomenon of organized fandom needs large bodies of work to gather around, and the larger the body of work the greater the opportunities for awfulness.

Comment author: komponisto 31 May 2009 05:06:50PM 1 point [-]

IAWYC, but I have a couple of musical issues:

My natural instinct is to ask why you singled out The Marriage of Figaro in particular (as opposed to, say, Don Giovanni or The Magic Flute)), but instead I'll just interpret as a synecdoche for Mozart's (later) operas in general -- which are indeed regarded as unusual in their level of perfection.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "Wagner wasn't special". In any case, he was (and to a large extent still is) a perfect example of someone with a fanatical fanbase, and equally fanatical critics. According to my reading of the expert consensus, it places him as one of the Titans of Opera, while acknowledging that his output is not uniform in its greatness. In other words: mostly great, with flaws, but not dramatically bad. (Similar to your description of Shakespeare, actually: people really only care about the best of Wagner.)

Comment author: komponisto 24 May 2009 03:30:51AM 11 points [-]

Yet my aural imagination wasn't developed enough to generate novel music, except when I was in certain moods or about to fall asleep. And most of what I could hear in my head I found impossible to transcribe.

I can't speak with certainty about your particular situation, but there's a decent chance you would find these tasks easier if you had a more powerful theory of music at your disposal. Such things exist, and are known to experts; unfortunately, despite the fact that they have been around for a while now, one is still unlikely to be exposed to them without doing graduate work in music, preferably at an elite university. (The linked blog is one of very few places on the internet where I have ever seen such things discussed.)

But let me stop lamenting and instead try to improve the situation, such as can be done within the confines of a blog comment.

One thing I noticed right away about your compositional process, as you described it, was that it was almost entirely local. As you said, you only composed 2-4 measures at a time. (You did mention recaptiulating things, something which requires a bit of global planning, hence the "almost".) This is roughly like trying to paint a picture one detail at a time without knowing what it is you're painting a picture of. Maybe some painters work like this, but I doubt most do. (By the way, this has nothing to do with how abstract the painting is. I suspect that even the most abstract painters have some overall idea of what they want their painting to look like well before they finish it.)

Unfortunately, "traditional" music theory (by which I mean that which the layman can easily find online, or in bookstores, as opposed to what specialists have in their university libraries) does a very poor job of allowing one to think precisely about global phenomena. At its worst, it trains one to ask questions like "what chord should come next?", which is totally the wrong way to think about music.

In the early 20th century, an Austrian named Heinrich Schenker came up with a theory of the right sort: one that explicitly dealt with musical works on all levels of structure, from the most global and far-reaching down to the minutiae of individual notes. Schenker's own intellectual context for his achievement was of course quite different from the modern one in which his work is usually placed, but in any event his ideas were picked up and run with by anglophone music theorists, and now "Schenkerian theory" is a standard, literature-rich academic discipline that most readers probably didn't know about.

This comment is getting too long, so I'll close with a specific recommendation: musically-inclined LWers will definitely want to take a look at Peter Westergaard's book An Introduction to Tonal Theory. It's a favorite at the site I linked to above, and indeed, although it was originally written for college freshmen* I almost think its title could have been: "Music Theory For Smart People Who Care About Occam's Razor 'n Stuff".

*While, I hasten to add, Westergaard was teaching at Columbia and Princeton in the 1960s and 70s.

Comment author: komponisto 19 May 2009 08:29:01PM *  8 points [-]

Some people dream of great things. Others stay awake and do them.

-Poster found in school classrooms

(Anyone know the original source?)

Comment author: byrnema 19 May 2009 05:49:47AM *  1 point [-]

In the OB post tautologies have to be empirically observed somehow, Eliezer writes about waking up one day and discovering all sorts of evidence that 2+2=3. This wouldn't be evidence that 2+2=3 in Peano arithmetic, it would be evidence that Peano arithmetic just doesn't apply for some reason. In my down-voted comment, I was just giving an example of how there can be different kinds of arithmetic if you are willing to be flexible about what arithmetic is. (If you are not willing to be flexible, then you are not willing to allow the observation that 2+2=3 as an observation about arithmetic, because this is not possibly true in standard arithmetic. Well, the observations are possible but you'd have to account for it as some kind of grand delusion.) My point is that 2+2=4 in Peano Arithmetic independent of observation, but observation tells you if Peano arithmetic applies or not.

Comment author: komponisto 19 May 2009 07:30:00AM *  3 points [-]

This wouldn't be evidence that 2+2=3 in Peano arithmetic, it would be evidence that Peano arithmetic just doesn't apply for some reason.

Exactly.

My point is that 2+2=4 in Peano Arithmetic independent of observation, but observation tells you if Peano arithmetic applies or not.

It is worth emphasizing that to claim that "2+2=4 in Peano Arithmetic independent of observation" is not to claim that our knowledge of this fact about Peano Arithmetic is independent of observation. (The former claim is about our map of the territory; the latter is about our map of our map of the territory.)

Comment author: byrnema 18 May 2009 09:21:32PM *  0 points [-]

If this is true, it is an empirical fact; and you should be able to see the alternative as possible!

Indeed, 2+2=4 is only true in some contexts. For example, sometimes 1+1=1 -- in contexts where separate objects lose their distinct identity as soon as they are grouped. (Think of a particular object several times. How many times did you think of it? But how many objects did you think of?)

Later edit: It is interesting that such a benign comment would get 4 down votes. Perhaps I understand this group well enough to guess why: the experiment I suggested is an entirely "internal" one, it provides no external proof of what I am suggesting. I think that a common reader here feels dismissive of, if not entirely antagonistically towards, knowledge that is internally generated. Personally, I have a preference for the knowledge that arises from internal experience.

Comment author: komponisto 19 May 2009 03:46:46AM 6 points [-]

I agree that the downvoting of this comment was overly harsh. My theory on why it occurred is different, and best illustrated by an example: if someone posted a comment saying "2+2=4 is only true in some contexts; in arithmetic modulo 3, 2+2=1", that comment would have been similarly downvoted.

However, let me be so bold as to say a word in defense of even that hypothetical commenter. Anyone mathematically sophisticated (including our downvoters) will agree that it is possible to construct a mathematical system in which 2+2 equals anything you like -- or, more precisely, for any symbol x, a system can be constructed in which the formula (string of symbols) "2+2 = x" is given the label "TRUE". Mod 3 arithmetic is an example for x = "1".

Now, it is at this point that the downvoters protest: "But this is not the same thing as saying 2+2=1! All you've done is change the meaning of the symbols in the formula, such as '2' and '1'. Two plus two is still four, for the original meaning of those words. You're confusing the map and the territory. Downvoted!"

Well, the downvoters do have a point. But, at the same time, let me suggest that they're also making the same mistake as our poor beleaguered commenter!

What they've done, you see, is to make a leap from "Ordinary (i.e. non mod-3, etc.) Arithmetic accurately models certain physical phenomena" to something like "Ordinary Arithmetic is true in (or of) the physical world". Instead of saying what they mean, which is "the physical world is best modeled by a system that has '2+2=4' as a 'TRUE' formula", they say "2+2 is in fact equal to 4".

Small wonder that confusion arises about whether mathematical statements are "emprical" or not! "The physical world is best modeled by a system that has '2+2=4' as a 'TRUE' formula" is clearly an empirical claim. But what about 2+2 = 4, all by itself? When a mathematician at a blackboard proves that 2+2=4 in Ordinary Arithmetic (or, for Eliezer's benefit, that infinite sets exist in standard set theory), has he or she made a claim about physics? No! Not without the additional assumption that the formal system being used is in fact an accurate map of the territory! But the mathematician makes no such assumption; he or she (acting as a mathematician) is interested only in the properties of formal systems. (Yes, that's right: I'm advocating the view known as formalism here. The other well-known positions in the philosophy of mathematics, namely Platonism and intuitionism, suffer from map-territory confusion!)

Mathematical systems, like Ordinary Arithmetic or Mod-3 Arithmetic, are part of the map, not the territory. The facts of mathematics are, so to speak, cartographic, rather than geographic.

Comment author: Jack 18 May 2009 01:09:33AM 3 points [-]

The piece about tautologies having to be empirically observed is one of the most bizarre posts I've ever read by you. It is so strange that I'm not really sure if there is anything I can say that would change you mind if you really think you could be convinced that 2+2=3 in that way. I can't even tell where you went wrong. Do you also hold that that the identity relation has to be empirically observed? Could you be convinced that 4=3? That 3 doesn't = 3? Do you believe you could be convinced that triangles on Euclidean planes are round? Do you not trust modus ponens and modus tollens? How does one even empirically observe tautologies in symbolic logic?

Comment author: komponisto 18 May 2009 02:26:24AM 2 points [-]

It may be worth noting that Quine had a view similar to Eliezer's -- which Stove alludes to (dismissively) in the essay.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 May 2009 02:27:39AM 14 points [-]

It's a fine parable but if I might request - give the Colonels different names, albeit perhaps names beginning with 'F' and 'Y'? I do generally prefer to have only me speaking for myself, and Frank may well feel the same way. That's why while I sometimes use similar names in my dialogues, I don't go so far as to use directly identical names.

Comment author: komponisto 15 May 2009 04:11:49PM 16 points [-]

Ah, now I understand where the letters F and Y came from!

Comment author: Cyan 12 May 2009 05:16:12PM *  1 point [-]

The point about Milton was that Milton's poetry contributes to people's sense of the bible as a source of the sacred. Byrnema commented that the bible is a derivative work of itself, and this also contributes to people's sense of the bible as the source of the sacred; he then asserted that a single individual, even one as gifted as Tolkien, would be hard-pressed to replicate the effect. Finally, in a non-sequitur, Eliezer presented the fact that Deuteronomy (a law text, essentially) is less entertaining than the Lord of the Rings as a counter-argument.

Comment author: komponisto 13 May 2009 04:19:03PM *  3 points [-]

I don't think it's necessarily that much of a non-sequitur. Great literary works are often praised for their complexity, with the clear implication that this contributes to their being interesting as literature. If the Bible is so rich in complexity, why is it so boring to read?

The answer, of course, is that the kind of complexity the Bible possesses isn't the kind that's relevant for judging literary quality. In the case of texts like Deuteronomy, we're not talking about things like dynamic characters, foreshadowing, ingenious use of language, etc -- hallmarks of conscious design by an author specifically trying to create literary art. No, we're talking about the Bronze Age equivalent of the tax code.

Comment author: komponisto 13 May 2009 07:41:10AM *  1 point [-]

I evidently missed this post when it appeared. Nonetheless I'll put some thoughts on the record:

#7. Although AlexU expressed it a bit more rudely than I would have, I basically share his opinion. This is somewhat delicate, because, as you can see, I do move in circles where vegetarians are not uncommon. Nevertheless, I am allergic to sanctimony in all its forms, and vegetarianism does strike me as a form of sanctimony. In particular, even quietly practiced private vegetarianism seems more effective as a social signaling device than as a means of actually relieving any animal suffering. (Compare with personal conservation as a form of environmentalism: it simply doesn't make enough of a difference.)

My feelings on this are somewhat complex, to be sure. I'm certainly not unmoved by the plight of suffering animals, and I have to admit that contact with vegetarians probably brings this issue to a more prominent position in my consciousness than it would otherwise have occupied. (Though I still occasionally eat veal, I don't do so without a momentary twinge as I think of the horrid conditions of the veal calf.) But I can't help thinking that the efforts of my vegetarian friends would be better spent directly lobbying the meat industry to change its ways, or supporting the development of synthetic meat. This is not to say that some don't already do these things, of course. But these are in any case the things that really matter; personally abstaining from meat "on ethical grounds" is hardly more than a feel-good gesture.

As a side note, where do some people (including, apparently, the author of the post) get the idea that fish meat somehow isn't really meat? It's one thing for Christian churches to make such a mistake, seeing as how their traditions were established in times of utter zoological ignorance; but surely we here are capable of recognizing that the morally relevant category here is not the nature of an animal's habitat (terrestrial versus aquatic) but rather that of its nervous system (whether it is capable of "suffering" as we humans would understand it). On this score, fish, being vertebrates, would seem to fall into a similar classification to that of many land animals considered morally problematic.

Comment author: komponisto 12 May 2009 04:26:55PM 3 points [-]

Speaking as someone who (literally as I type) is vainly struggling to get out of bed, I appreciate this post -- but do you happen to have any meta-willpower tricks? The techinque you described won't quite work for me, because I've realized I don't actually want to get out of bed; at best I want to want.

Comment author: gwern 07 May 2009 01:15:26AM *  19 points [-]

'I was reminded of this recently by Eliezer's Less Wrong Progress Report. He mentioned how surprised he was that so many people were posting so much stuff on Less Wrong, when very few people had ever taken advantage of Overcoming Bias' policy of accepting contributions if you emailed them to a moderator and the moderator approved. Apparently all us folk brimming with ideas for posts didn't want to deal with the aggravation.'

I don't really have a point here, but this shouldn't really be surprising at all, not at this moment in time.

I mean, has anyone here not used Wikipedia? (I'd also wager even odds that >=90% of you have edited WP at some point.)

EDIT: Looking back, it seems to me that what would not be surprising is, upon observing LW suddenly skyrocketing in contributors & contributed material, noticing that the sudden increase comes after a loosening of submission guidelines. When a site skyrockets, it's for one of a few reasons: being linked by a major site like Slashdot, for example. Loosening submission guidelines is one of those few reasons.

But that's not to say that Eliezer should have confidently expected a sudden increase just because he loosened submission criteria; the default prediction should have been that LW would continue on much as OB had been going. Lots of wikis never go anywhere, even if they let anyone edit.

Comment author: komponisto 07 May 2009 08:24:04PM 13 points [-]

I mean, has anyone here not used Wikipedia? (I'd also wager even odds that 90% of you have edited WP at some point.)

Sometimes I actually catch myself reaching for the "edit this page" button when I find a typo or error on non-wiki websites.

Comment author: byrnema 26 April 2009 04:44:39PM *  3 points [-]

When I lived in Asia. I would [...] avoid saying any original thoughts out loud in any situation where I was not the highest status person.

That explains a lot about a meeting several months ago in which I was the only Caucasian. I was only trying to signal my willingness to engage on the issue by coming up with a "helpful" idea but there were pained expressions and then the PI "responded" by just repeating exactly what he had just said before my comment.

I would love to spend a few years learning Asian culture. I imagine it would greatly expand your skill-set to understand both Western and Asian paradigms. Or do the memes compete and confuse? I suppose a child raised in both cultures could find the synergy -- but what about a 'typical' adult? What did you find? Do the ideas synergize or broadly need compartmentalization?

In response to komponisto, below: I did mean 'principle investigator', apologies if it was inappropriately assumed common knowledge.

Comment author: komponisto 29 April 2009 12:31:26AM 4 points [-]

there were pained expressions and then the PI "responded" by just repeating exactly what he had just said before my comment.

Sorry to be off-topic, but:

Even after consulting this list, I can't come up with a single meaning of "PI" that would make sense in this sentence. ( "Principal investigator" is perhaps the closest, but that would only be appropriate if you are a research scientist and everyone here knows this, likely because they're research scientists too.)

Comment author: komponisto 28 April 2009 03:38:10AM 0 points [-]

I hope you don't actually withdraw from the community. I imagine most of us would be very sad to see that happen -- not because the community depends on you for its survival, but simply because we enjoy your contributions. (Maybe I shouldn't admit to this, but I have found your posts to be a great source of pleasure reading, whether or not I was explicitly learning anything new.)

Most folks here presumably have "day jobs" of one sort or another that aren't specifically involved with rationality per se; yet they still find time to hang out here. I hope it can be likewise with you.

Comment author: badger 25 April 2009 03:44:16PM 2 points [-]

I think we want to stay away from names that reference end results, instead of processes. Goal-based names can make it falsely sound like we have already achieved those goals. To me, "optimizer" is most likely to be interpreted as "one who makes optimal decisions", which would be presumptuous. It can also be interpreted as "one who optimizes (but doesn't necessarily succeed)", but this is the same ambiguity that "rationalist" has.

For example, "rationalist should win!", but I don't think we should go by "winner". On the other hand, "evidentialist" stays away from most claims about what we are like by referencing a position on the justification of beliefs.

Comment author: komponisto 27 April 2009 03:11:50PM 0 points [-]

To be clear, I wasn't suggesting that we go around calling ourselves "rationalists" or "optimizers"; I was simply pointing out the near-synonymy of those terms as descriptions of what we aspire to be.

Also, names for processes themselves probably had better make reference to underlying goals. Mentally separating the two is unhealthy: see Lost Purposes.

Comment author: komponisto 25 April 2009 03:34:21AM 9 points [-]

"Optimizer" is the best all-purpose synonym for "rationalist" that I can think of. It applies to both epistemic and instrumental rationality, and captures the notion that all forms of "being really good at something" are subdisciplines of the general Art.

Comment author: ciphergoth 24 April 2009 05:13:44PM 0 points [-]

Has anyone ever heard of a theist signing up for cryonics? That would seem very odd.

Comment author: komponisto 24 April 2009 07:30:38PM 0 points [-]

I don't see why they shouldn't, given that most of them don't refuse (other) medical care.

Comment author: ciphergoth 21 April 2009 05:25:06PM *  3 points [-]

The distinction isn't quite as simple as I'm making - we are all actively fighting our own and each other's irrationalities - but I still think there's a line that can be drawn of whether a person is fundamentally in tune with the rationalist values that this site is all about.

However, I am given pause by the fact that everyone except Annoyance seems to disagree with me.

Comment author: komponisto 21 April 2009 10:44:38PM *  6 points [-]

I agree with you in a weak sense . My position is that while we shouldn't officially exclude theists from participation, we should nevertheless be free to take atheism completely for granted -- as would be manifested, for instance, in unhesitatingly using theism as a canonical example of irrationality. The kind of theist who will be welcome here is the kind who can handle this.

Comment author: komponisto 20 April 2009 06:46:56PM *  7 points [-]

A slogan I like is that failure is OK, so long as you don't stop trying to avoid it.

While reading this post, a connection with Beware of Other-Optimizing clicked in my mind. Different aspiring rationalists are (more) susceptible to different failure modes. From Eliezer's previous writings it had generally seemed like he was more worried about the problem of standards (for oneself) that are too low -- that is, not being afraid enough of failure -- than about the opposite error, standards that are too high. But I suspect that's largely specific to him; others may need to worry more about being too afraid of failure. Hence I'm happy to see this post.

Comment author: komponisto 17 April 2009 06:05:42AM 1 point [-]

Excellent post. Upvoted! (Literally.)

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 13 April 2009 03:38:29PM 6 points [-]

Actually, the term "Dark Side Epistemology" seems to be tending towards over-generalization (being used to describe any persuasive art, say, rather than explicitly defended systematized bad rules of reasoning). "Dark Arts" isn't even a term of my own invention; someone else imported that from Harry Potter. It seems to be trending towards synonymy with "Dark Side". I may have to deprecate both terms as overly poetic and come up with something else - I'm thinking of Anti-Epistemology for systematically bad epistemology.

Comment author: komponisto 13 April 2009 11:23:08PM *  5 points [-]

I have to say that I like the term "Dark Arts". It's kind of... cute.

I enjoy the sort of warm-and-fuzzy atmosphere that poetic vocabulary like this tends to foster.

In response to Sunk Cost Fallacy
Comment author: komponisto 12 April 2009 05:45:58PM 5 points [-]

Going to the theater in this case can be viewed as respecting the wishes of your past self, and possibly future selves (who may desire to have seen the film in question). Without some ability to do this, long-term planning would be impossible.

Your current self counts, but not necessarily more than temporally displaced selves.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 12 April 2009 05:24:00AM *  1 point [-]

It might be that Schoenberg is good music to people with specialized musical training. I have said that his music is bad, but I don't have high confidence that it is "bad" in an absolute, moral realist sense.

I do have high confidence that the relentless pursuit of novelty rather than quality caused most arts to become inaccessible to most people around the turn of the 20th century. And I regard that as bad. The elite forgot that they need us. We, the unwashed, untrained masses, provide the money to build the concert halls and the universities that the elite sit in; and instead of remembering their obligation to us, they take our money and use it to get their special training and then sit in their ivory towers and look down their noses at us.

So we abandoned them; and their art shriveled without us. Everybody defected. Game over.

Physics is so specialized that ordinary people can't understand it, but they can still use it. Music, on the other hand, once moved beyond the point where we ordinary people can appreciate it, is useless to us.

Comment author: komponisto 12 April 2009 08:00:57AM *  0 points [-]

I do have high confidence that the relentless pursuit of novelty rather than quality caused most arts to become inaccessible to most people around the turn of the 20th century

What makes you so confident that the pursuit of "quality" was being abandoned? The fact that you don't find it appealing?

Mere novelty could have been accomplished by much cheaper means than those employed by composers in the "Schoenbergian" tradition, whose music tends to be very precisely and delicately constructed. Contrast, for example, Milton Babbitt (whose works are often so intricate that they take me several hearings to "get") with John Cage (who was capable of "composing" the most trivial case of a piece of music -- one with no sound at all). Cage is arguably an example of the extreme case of pure novelty-seeking (though I think people are too hard on him -- 4'33'' is not his only work); but this sort of thing is completely divorced from what the mainstream of "post-tonal" composers were going for.

We, the unwashed, untrained masses, provide the money to build the concert halls and the universities that the elite sit in; and instead of remembering their obligation to us, they take our money and use it to get their special training and then sit in their ivory towers and look down their noses at us.

Where does this attitude come from? There is no conspiracy going on. Nobody is forcing you to listen to Schoenberg, or --still less -- preventing you from listening to Mozart. The public funding of advanced music in the U.S. is negligible to nonexistent. I defy you to explain how the existence of a few people (of whose existence you are barely even aware) pursuing this esoteric line of work could possibily result in negative utility for you.

Physics is so specialized that ordinary people can't understand it, but they can still use it. Music, on the other hand, once moved beyond the point where we ordinary people can appreciate it, is useless to us.

What makes you so sure? What about cosmology, or high-energy physics? String theory? Pure mathematics?

The point here is that you want to have the sort of culture where advanced creative achievement -- formidabilty, awesomeness -- in all domains is encouraged and rewarded, not suppressed. (Tsyoku Naritai!) A culture that would place limitations on the permissible complexity of musical thought is not one in which we should want to live.

(And beware the treacherous weapon of populism; it's easy enough when you think you're on the side of the masses -- but the time may come when they show up at your own gates with their torches and pitchforks...)

Comment author: PhilGoetz 12 April 2009 01:16:41AM *  1 point [-]

I'd like one of the many people criticizing how I wrote the second sentence to suggest a better way to write it, that would still point out the contrast between social attitudes towards sexual masochism, and social attitudes towards the other things on the list. <EDIT> Ciphergoth did this. </EDIT>

ciphergoth, there were a lot of other things on the list besides Bruce. I don't think it's fair to you pick out the one bad thing from a long list of good things, and then complain about that one.

By and large people take notable care over their words here in a variety of ways, and it makes the site a better place.

I took notable care; yet it wasn't good enough for you.

I've said much more inflammatory things to other people that didn't get jumped on by anybody. I've said much harsher things to EY. I've repeatedly said things about classical music that drive komponisto up the wall. Should I refrain from criticizing Schoenberg because it upsets him?

<EDIT> These are bad examples. Yes, I should have been more polite in all those cases. </EDIT>

I don't see the difference. I didn't even say anything bad about masochism. I wrote a post saying that maybe masochism is an essential part of everyone's ordinary, healthy human nature; and you were still offended by it.

Comment author: komponisto 12 April 2009 02:50:06AM 2 points [-]

I've repeatedly said things about classical music that drive komponisto up the wall. Should I refrain from criticizing Schoenberg because it upsets him?

Well, a matter of fact...

There's a difference between criticism and taking potshots. If you wanted to write a post explaining in detail why you think Schoenberg's music is flawed, that might be one thing (provided it was on-topic). By contrast, merely stating a negative opinion (repeatedly, as you note) in an authoritative tone that suggests it is akin to a widely-accepted fact (particularly when you have no authority in the matter), after you have already been called on it, is just a form of aggressive behavior that I don't think should be welcomed.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 11 April 2009 05:23:39PM 0 points [-]

No; I was contrasting Schoenberg with Bach. Given the chance, most people liked Bach. Given the chance, most people didn't like Schoenberg.

Schoenberg may be good for people with decades of specialized training. Having fashion dictated by those people with specialized training resulted in a peacock's-tail runaway selection, and the effective extinction of the greatest family of music in history. IMHO.

Comment author: komponisto 11 April 2009 05:37:17PM 2 points [-]

You can't have it both ways. Your faction can't be both the underdog and the triumphant party at the same time. If Schoenberg et al fell out of favor and ended up in the dustbin of musical history, then you can't complain about his influence. If, on the other hand, you think he is responsible for the "extinction of the greatest family of music in history", then you must concede that he is still taken seriously by those in the know.

Comment author: arthurlewis 11 April 2009 05:27:14AM 2 points [-]

Sometimes history moves slowly. During his life, Bach was best known as an organist; sure, later composers studied and loved his work, but it wasn't until the mid 19th century that he started to get the reputation that he has now.

I think komponisto is implying that there was plenty of popular music back then as well, but most of those composers/performers didn't enter the canon.

However, I think there's another factor at play here - "art music" experienced the same academization and post-modernization that we saw in the visual arts. Serialism, musicque concrete, aleatory composition - all these things pushed the boundaries of what "music" actually meant, going against popular sensibilities in ways that (and I could be wrong here) the "art music" of previous centuries did not. The idea of linear stylistic progression totally breaks down once you get to the mid 20th century, so if you want to construct a convenient narrative, you've got to grab onto popular music or jazz.

I think the Second Viennese School tends to get singled out, because they are the major overlap between "music that some devotees of 'art music' really enjoy" and "music that some devotees of 'art music' think is too bizarre." If you go earlier, Mahler has too many fans, and later, people like Xenakis don't have enough.

Comment author: komponisto 11 April 2009 05:10:43PM *  1 point [-]

However, I think there's another factor at play here - "art music" experienced the same academization and post-modernization that we saw in the visual arts. Serialism, musicque concrete, aleatory composition - all these things pushed the boundaries of what "music" actually meant, going against popular sensibilities in ways that (and I could be wrong here) the "art music" of previous centuries did not

It's true that in the 20th century, art music became advanced beyond the point of being immediately accessible to most non-specialists. No one would deny this. But so what? Something similar happened in science as well: in previous centuries, any educated person could hope to understand the greatest work of the time, and even possibly contribute to it. Now, that's no longer the case.

This sort of progression is arguably inevitable. If people spend all their time refining some intellectual discipline, eventually, the results are going to require something like specialist training to properly apprehend. (That's not to say that casual listeners couldn't get a lot more out of advanced art music than they actually do, with suitable popularization efforts.)

The idea of linear stylistic progression totally breaks down once you get to the mid 20th century,

I dispute this entirely, and attribute this impression to our historical proximity. If you lived in the 18th century and were a connoisseur of music, Mozart and Haydn would have sounded a lot more different from each other than they do to us today -- because we can contrast with what came after. In a century or two, the progression of twentieth-century music won't seem very different in kind from what happened in earlier centuries.

Again, that's not to say that something different didn't happen in the twentieth century -- but every period has its unique developments.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 11 April 2009 03:24:01PM *  1 point [-]

Sometimes history moves slowly. During his life, Bach was best known as an organist; sure, later composers studied and loved his work, but it wasn't until the mid 19th century that he started to get the reputation that he has now.

I thought someone would mention that. I think it's different. Schoenberg et al. were famous while they were alive. Their works were performed publicly, and adored by the cogniscenti, for decades. Bach grew into public favor. Schoenberg fell out of public favor. He had every chance the music establishment could give him, and still fell out of favor.

(BTW, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven all made special studies of Bach's music in the 18th century; so I'm skeptical of the "Bach had no reputation as a composer" argument.)

Also note that the time between when Bach wrote the St. Matthew Passion in 1727, and when Mendelssohn "revived" it in 1829, was only 102 years. We've already had 100 years of Schoenberg.

Also note that Bach is always brought up in this context because he is such a notable exception in that way

However, I think there's another factor at play here - "art music" experienced the same academization and post-modernization that we saw in the visual arts. Serialism, musicque concrete, aleatory composition - all these things pushed the boundaries of what "music" actually meant, going against popular sensibilities in ways that (and I could be wrong here) the "art music" of previous centuries did not.

I agree completely.

Comment author: komponisto 11 April 2009 04:52:41PM 0 points [-]

Schoenberg et al. were famous while they were alive. Their works were performed publicly, and adored by the cogniscenti, for decades.

And this is still the case! There's been no "falling out of favor". On the one hand, you have elite musicians, who mostly admire Schoenberg; on the other hand, you have musical laypeople, who mostly don't. Same as it's always been!

You've already demonstrated before that you don't know what's going on in music today. Why do you keep making authoritative-sounding pronouncements on the matter?

(BTW, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven all made special studies of Bach's music in the 18th century; so I'm skeptical of the "Bach had no reputation as a composer" argument.)

He had a tremendous reputation as a composer -- among those in a position to know about his work. That wasn't a very large group.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 11 April 2009 04:54:33AM *  3 points [-]

If you think that "the public" used to be interested in art music to anything like the extent they're now interested in popular music, you're under the wrong impression.

Not everyone could attend concerts, but I have heard many references to musicians performing music by the same composers in small groups in coffeehouses, taverns, and other gathering places. In one of Robert Greenberg's music histories, he said, IIRC, that around 1800, 1 in 20 people in Vienna were professional musicians. You could walk into music shops there whose main business was selling sheet music for people to perform at home; today, a city of the size that Vienna was in 1800 (200,000) might have 2 to 8 such shops (based on my knowing cities of about 50,000 that have one such store; and on the fact that Music and Arts, the largest chain of music stores around here, has 5 stores serving a population of 5,000,000 in the Washington DC area.) Some composers made a living by selling their scores. Despite the reachable market now being many times larger (perhaps 100 times larger), I don't think anyone can do that today.

I could be wrong. I wasn't there. And the question of how popular Mozart was in his day is not as important to me as the fact that Mozart and Beethoven are popular today, while Schoenberg is not; history has already given its verdict against the 2nd Viennese School. I don't say these things in order to offend you. I apologize for using inflammatory language.

Comment author: komponisto 11 April 2009 06:10:03AM *  -1 points [-]

In one of Robert Greenberg's music histories, he said, IIRC, that around 1800, 1 in 20 people in Vienna were professional musicians.

Even granting this statistic, this is highly selective reporting. Vienna has historically been a musical center, and was especially so at that time. The situation there was hardly typical of European society as a whole. And the phenomenon of high-quality music being played in gathering places hasn't disappeared either: buskers play Bach, and recently I heard Beethoven's 7th symphony come on between jazz selections in a coffee shop.

Mozart and Beethoven are popular today, while Schoenberg is not; history has already given its verdict against the 2nd Viennese School

That is silly and presumptuous. "Popularity" is hardly an appropriate metric for judging "the verdict of history" on a form of advanced creative intellection. I can assure you that the Second Viennese School is held in high esteem by expert composers and music theorists.

Besides -- if "history" has "ruled against" the Second Viennese School, why are you complaining about the "death of great music" resulting from their influence?

I don't say these things in order to offend you. I apologize for using inflammatory language.

That's good; but there's also a larger issue here. Assertions about music should be held to the same level of scrutiny as assertions about anything else. (As a result of discussions like this, I may be tempted at some point to do a post on rationality as it relates to the arts.)

Comment author: PhilGoetz 11 April 2009 02:38:44AM *  2 points [-]

You're reading way too much into that comment about rock and roll. The timeline isn't even right for it to be a serious model. But pop music is the cultural successor to orchestral music in this way: The energy and money that used to go into orchestral music, string quartets, piano recitals, etc., now go into pop music. It's seized that share of the public's attention.

I thought the connections would be obvious. I don't like Berg's music, at all, and I blame him and people who promoted the 2nd Viennese School for the death of great music. But it is not a list of things I don't like.

I say fiction is masochistic because we like to read about characters whom we like and identify with suffering. If a book's hero doesn't suffer, we don't like it. There's a larger story there, that usually has to do with overcoming obstacles. But then, maybe that's a part of the masochism story as well.

Comment author: komponisto 11 April 2009 03:15:24AM *  0 points [-]

The energy and money that used to go into orchestral music, string quartets, piano recitals, et. al, now go into pop music. It's seized that share of the public's attention.

What is this claim based on? The fact that you hear a lot more about both today's pop music and the art music of the past than the art music of the present?

If you think that "the public" used to be interested in art music to anything like the extent they're now interested in popular music, you're under the wrong impression. Serious music has pretty much always been an elite pursuit. Composers of the past worked for elite patrons who wrote the history of their time that we read; whereas today's composers don't get on the TV news, because the people that are interested in their work don't have the kind of political power that kings, nobles, and clergy used to.

In any case, whatever the fluctuations in the relative social status of serious music devotees, I'm quite confident that there is more actual interest (measured in person-hours) in the music of e.g. Mozart today than there has ever been in history.

ETA:

I don't like Berg's music, at all, and I blame him and people who promoted the 2nd Viennese School for the death of great music

Well, I love Berg's music (the Violin Concerto is sublimely beautiful). Great music is not at all dead, and I wish it were better respected. Especially in a place like this.

Comment author: komponisto 11 April 2009 02:26:28AM *  1 point [-]

Vivaldi -> Bach -> Mozart -> Beethoven -> Wagner -> Stravinsky -> Berg -> screw it, let's invent rock and roll and start over

I'm afraid your model of music history is no better than your model of Eliezer's mind.

I don't want to get into the numerous problems with this right now, other than to say that it is supremely annoying when people speak about popular music (such as rock and roll) as if it were the "successor" of art music of the past. The successor to the art music of the past is the art music of the present. (That means all those composers you haven't heard of.) Rock and roll is in an entirely separate category.

As regards your list of "masochistic" phenomena, I don't see what the common thread is. You listed "fiction" in general without naming any authors, but when it came to music you singled out Berg and Webern. What's so special about these two composers? I'm guessing you don't like Berg, since you call anyone who does "jaded". (How much Berg do you even know?) But what's the connection between listening to composers of the Second Viennese School and listening to (whatever kind of) music so loudly that it hurts? And eating spicy food?

If these are all just things you don't like and others do, what makes you think that masochism is involved?

Comment author: MrHen 10 April 2009 06:47:08PM *  0 points [-]

However, it is possible to launch arguments against theism which are so deep as to take out the entire spectrum of religions, including Buddhism and New Age spirituality, in a single blast. See e.g. excluding the supernatural.

Oh, no doubt. I have not done a whole ton of studying in that area (yet; thanks for the link) but I find it interesting that people do not start from the core instead of picking away at the fringes. If you can knock out the foundation, why bother with the attic?

Of course, this only invalidates at least one central element of every religion - perhaps their scriptures say somewhere than the sky is blue, or such; reversed stupidity is not intelligence.

In addition, I never thought that a religion assumes belief in the supernatural, but I am rusty on some of these definitions. I just know that people disagree about it.

(Edited out; thanks komponisto) I am not familiar with the term "reversed stupidity" but I do not see what intelligence has to do with irrationality. Am I missing something?

In response to comment by MrHen on How theism works
Comment author: komponisto 10 April 2009 07:21:05PM 2 points [-]

I am not familiar with the term "reversed stupidity" but I do not see what intelligence >has to do with irrationality. Am I missing something?

See Reversed Stupidity is Not Intelligence.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 April 2009 02:04:22AM 1 point [-]

Synthetic languages don't turn into real languages until a child grows up knowing them; English is real because children have already grown up knowing it. See creole language.

Comment author: komponisto 10 April 2009 03:54:42AM 3 points [-]

Esperanto is a real language, despite the fact that only a small fraction of its speakers grow up learning it (and it would be just as real even without those individuals).

Comment author: komponisto 10 April 2009 03:39:57AM 6 points [-]

Someone on OB (Michael Vassar?) once said that religion is the main reason they know not to be a majoritarian, or something to that effect.

There are other examples of near society-wide apparent rationality failures that seem obvious to many here -- and sure enough, they receive a significant amount of discussion. I'm thinking in particular of cryonics/transhumanism, as well as certain Unnamed Things.

I don't think we should be squeamish about using theism as an example where it applies. This is, after all, an advanced rationality forum -- one expects folks here to either be well beyond giving serious consideration to the claims of religion, or at the very least interested enough in epistemology to be able to stomach critiques of theism.

Of course, by the same token, we may find that it doesn't actually apply as much as an appropriate example, since I take it we're interested here in refining the Art far beyond what is required to leave religion behind.

Comment author: thomblake 07 April 2009 03:07:24AM *  6 points [-]

Just how off-topic does something need to be in order to post it here? Do we get extra credit for things that are more off-topic?

XKCD

Hey, did you know that a duck's quack doesn't echo?

http://thomblake.mp A site with links to my web places - get yours at chi.mp

Singularity; Artificial General Intelligence; Coherent Extrapolated Volition!

Do I win yet?

ETA: Hey, why are people upvoting / downvoting all my stuffs? Please comment nine times to explain!

ETA2: Hey look a lolcat

Comment author: komponisto 07 April 2009 03:29:29AM 1 point [-]

By the way, what does "ETA" stand for? (Besides "Estimated Time of Arrival", or the Basque paramilitary group.) I can discern from context that it denotes a later edit, but what do the letters actually mean?

Comment author: komponisto 07 April 2009 03:23:56AM 3 points [-]

I completely agree with you on the question of self-upvotes.

In fact, there's yet another option: do away with the automatic self-upvote, so that users may actively vote on their own comments just like anyone else's (with the same impact on karma). This doesn't sound like a major change, but who knows -- the results may be surprising.

On the question of explanations, I'm less sure (cf. my reply to Yvain's comment that you quoted). If I put a lot of thought into a comment, and it gets downvoted, I'm going to be perplexed enough to want an explanation. In particular, I won't appreciate an implicit suggestion that I didn't put a lot of thought into the comment.

Comment author: taw 07 April 2009 01:55:30AM 8 points [-]

I don't know how to measure that, but almost all smart people I know seem to be under-achieving, including myself.

Comment author: komponisto 07 April 2009 03:05:29AM 9 points [-]

As per AlexU's comment, if they were achieving at the level of their intelligence, chances are they'd be surrounded by high-quality people in their professional and/or social lives already.

If you're not, and you need special groups like Mensa to find smart people, you're probably underachieving.

In response to comment by komponisto on Where are we?
Comment author: Emile 03 April 2009 08:03:45AM 7 points [-]

Because right now user karma correlates more strongly with post count than with post quality. You get what you measure, so that needs to be fixed.

In response to comment by Emile on Where are we?
Comment author: komponisto 04 April 2009 01:44:04AM 2 points [-]

But why shouldn't it correlate with post count? That way the incentive structure encourages active participation; under the system Eliezer prefers, people might be tempted to hold back.

Is this there a need to correct things in this direction? Are we getting too many low-quality posts and comments?

(I also think that the automatic self-upvote makes sense on the grounds that making a comment should itself be considered a statement about what sort of comments the user would like to see more of. If not, the user can always undo the upvote.)

In response to comment by MBlume on Where are we?
Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 03 April 2009 06:16:17AM 0 points [-]

Don't worry about it, we'll get rid of karma for self-upvotes later.

Comment author: komponisto 03 April 2009 06:24:16AM 4 points [-]

So (in other words) you want to require actual upvotes (from others) to earn karma, rather than merely avoiding downvotes. Are you sure this is a good idea?

Why shouldn't one's own vote count?

Comment author: PhilGoetz 01 April 2009 10:20:01PM 14 points [-]

We like our physicists to be heroic figures, and our mathematicians to shut up and multiply.

20th-century physics is taught as a series of historical events, taking you through intermediate steps; because if you taught someone relativity and quantum mechanics without explaining the experimental data and the different ways that were tried of reconciling them that failed, they wouldn't believe you.

Comment author: komponisto 02 April 2009 12:38:27AM 9 points [-]

On the other hand, the usual, historical approach to teaching quantum mechanics is far from optimal.

Comment author: komponisto 22 March 2009 03:52:43AM 3 points [-]

Eliezer, in No Logical Positivist I, condemns the positivist notion of verifiability for excluding some perfectly meaningful propositions. For example, he says, it may be that a chocolate cake formed in the center of the sun on 8/1/2008, then disappeared after one second. ... But there's no way to test it ... so the logical positivists would dismiss it as nonsense.

As I recall, this interpretation was disputed in the comments on that post. In addition to referring readers there, let me also direct those interested in learning more about logical positivism to this interview with A.J. Ayer. If memory serves, he mentions espousing a view of ethical and aesthetic statements similar to Yvain's interpretation of statements like "Islam is a religion of peace" (often called emotivism, or the "boo-hurray theory").

Comment author: Yvain 20 March 2009 01:53:39PM 3 points [-]

I like poetry but dislike jazz and abstract art.

I agree with Michael that you may be confusing poetry with modernist poetry. In particular, poetry is a more constrained, more beauty-focused form of language, whereas abstract art and jazz and atonal jazz are less constrained, less beauty-focused forms of art and music.

My analogy would be modernist poetry: poetry :: abstract art: art.

Comment author: komponisto 21 March 2009 05:38:10AM 3 points [-]

In particular, poetry is a more constrained, more beauty-focused form of language, whereas abstract art and jazz and atonal jazz are less constrained, less beauty-focused forms of art and music.

Ouch. I'm generally a fan of your posts, Yvain, but this remark makes me wince.

To quote Milton Babbitt (regarding composers who claimed not to be "using a system"), ignorance of constraint does not imply absence of constraint. The particular constraints that are operative in jazz or abstract art may not be immediately apparent to the outsider, but that doesn't mean they're not there.

Also, to say that certain art forms are "less beauty-focused" comes dangerously close to a rhetorical shot. There are exceptions, but as a general rule it's safe to say that the practitioners of any art are seeking to create beautiful works. To a first approximation, art:beauty::rationality:truth.

Finally, let me caution everyone that "atonal" is a technical term that really ought not to be bandied around by people without a background in music. In particular, it does not mean "unfamiliar-sounding music I don't like", as it sometimes seems to in some quarters. (I'm not accusing anyone in particular of doing this, just a general warning.)

Comment author: MichaelVassar 20 March 2009 08:14:42AM 2 points [-]

Poetry is ancient. You sure you don't mean modern (or rather, postmodern) poetry?

Anyway, I like abstract visual art, poetry, and modern prose literature, but I'm fairly unsophisticated musically despite my professional interest in it. From a neuropsychological perspective all arts are very interesting but abstract visual art seems to have made the most progress.

Comment author: komponisto 21 March 2009 05:11:38AM 3 points [-]

I like abstract visual art, poetry, and modern prose literature, but I'm fairly unsophisticated musically

This is an all too common pattern. Music appears to be the most difficult, most abstract art form (evidently that is part of its attraction for me). This is evidenced not only by the numerous cases I have encountered of otherwise intellectually sophisticated people being musically unsophisticated, but also by the historical development of music, which has tended to lag behind the other arts. (For example, for musicians the "Romantic period" refers to the period from about 1820 to 1910; I remember being shocked to learn that the early 19th century was the tail end of romanticism in other arts, such as literature.)

Comment author: CarlShulman 21 March 2009 02:33:43AM *  1 point [-]

Bryan Caplan's research on differences of opinion between expert economists and others finds (in his datasets) that there are big effects of education and IQ, bigger than liberal or conservative ideological effects, but the latter still remain: people with graduate degrees agree more with economists, but conservative PhDs in industry and liberal PhDs in academia tend to disagree with each other.

"a failure to grasp the empirical fact that personhood resides in brain structure: no neurons, no person."

Do you think that personhood is really an 'empirical fact'? How would you empirically measure when a developing fetus or infant's (or toddler's, depending on your view of personhood) brain becomes a person without a value-laden definition? Likewise for temporary or permanent brain damage.

Comment author: komponisto 21 March 2009 03:26:58AM 4 points [-]

Do you think that personhood is really an 'empirical fact'?

I wouldn't claim that current science easily resolves all questions about personhood; but it does locate the phenomenon within the brain as opposed to anywhere else. Neurons (or, more broadly, things with a similar function) are a necessary condition that may or may not be sufficient. The extent to which a fetus, toddler, or Alzheimer's patient possesses personhood may be legitimately debatable -- but the question of whether or not an embryo is a person is surely settled: it isn't.

Comment author: CarlShulman 20 March 2009 10:32:20PM 8 points [-]

Scientists also have highly unrepresentative personalities, high in openness to experience, and tend not to care about conservative values like respect for authority, group loyalty, and various taboos. Delegation of decision-making power to representative samples of elite scientists will thus favor those values more than the policies that would be adopted by a set of comparably informed people with values representative of the population.

Comment author: komponisto 21 March 2009 02:10:56AM *  5 points [-]

Scientists also have highly unrepresentative personalities, high in openness to experience, and tend not to care about conservative values like respect for authority, group loyalty, and various taboos .Delegation of decision-making power to representative samples of elite scientists will thus favor those values more than the policies that would be adopted by a set of comparably informed people with values representative of the population.

This is a good summary of the bioethicists' argument; but I find their argument unconvincing. My suspicion is that the values of "comparably informed people" would inevitably tend to resemble those of scientists -- at least for practical purposes.

Concretely, for instance, it seems that much if not most of the opposition to embryonic stem-cell research is based on a failure to grasp the empirical fact that personhood resides in brain structure: no neurons, no person.

Maybe in principle there could still be moral arguments worth having that don't directly depend on the science; and maybe scientists would be biased toward certain stances in such arguments. But I don't think that's what's really going on here.

Comment author: Yvain 19 March 2009 01:57:34PM *  13 points [-]

I'm glad you brought that up.

I've thought about this a few times, and I agree with you that it promotes sexism and is bad, but I just really hate using the phrases "he or she" every time I have to use a pronoun. A sentence like "A rationalist should ensure he or she justifies his or her opinion to himself or herself" is just too awkward to understand. And I am too much of a grammar purist to use "them" as a singular.

I used to use the gender-neutral pronoun "ze", but people told me they didn't understand it or didn't like it or thought it sounded stupid. And I tried using "she" as the default for a while, but people kept getting confused because they weren't expecting it, and trying to figure out where I'd mentioned a female.

I'm willing to accept whatever the common consensus is here. Maybe Less Wrong-ers are open-minded enough to accept "ze" where the average reader isn't.

(I've heard some people here use "ve" a few times, but from the context I gathered it was more of a way to refer to aliens/AIs/transhumans than a normal gender-neutral pronoun. Is this true?)

Comment author: komponisto 19 March 2009 03:28:14PM 2 points [-]

A lot of people object to "he or she" on grounds of euphony; but clarity of meaning should always take priority in our considerations over sound. The fact is that "he or she" is what we actually mean.

Granted, like any phrase, it is inelegant in certain contexts, and can become tiresome if repeated. So one has to use workarounds. Luckily, "they" (always perfectly acceptable in spoken conversation) is also available for judicious written use.

"the most important reason to argue with someone is to change his or her mind" sounds just fine. ("Their" could also be substituted.)

"Either a person has enough of the rationalist virtues to overcome it, or he or she doesn't" is bad, mainly because of the "or" preceding "he or she". "He/she doesn't" is better, but "they don't" is probably the best (certainly in a comment; maybe a post should be more formal?).

Invented pronouns are just too strange and should be avoided.

Comment author: komponisto 19 March 2009 07:17:53AM 6 points [-]

Sometimes the harsh approach has surprisingly good results. Example.

But Christopher Hitchens always struck me as too black-and-white and just plain irritating

Tangential, I know, but this surprises me. Hitchens, with his literary background, strikes me as a very nuanced thinker, attuned to the various shades of gray. (For example, he's by no means unmoved by religion's contributions to art and culture.) Maybe you're thinking of his talent for devastating rhetorical flourish, as in his infamous comments on Jerry Falwell?

Comment author: komponisto 18 March 2009 01:34:09PM 4 points [-]

I seem to recall Richard Dawkins expressing a desire to write something like this in the future.

Comment author: CronoDAS 18 March 2009 05:46:46AM 2 points [-]

Agreed on Goodkind not being for kids.

Anyone else here read the "His Dark Materials" series by Philip Pullman?

Comment author: komponisto 18 March 2009 05:56:23AM 0 points [-]

Not until adulthood, sadly.

It's a shame, because I liked the Narnia books (and was proud of myself for picking up on the Christian symbolism without prompting, before I knew anything else about C.S. Lewis); I could have really used Pullman.

In response to comment by MBlume on On Juvenile Fiction
Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 18 March 2009 03:33:23AM 4 points [-]

I read a couple of excerpts from Phantom Tollbooth in my Childcraft books - the part about the Mathemagician looking for the "biggest number" and so on - this would have been at around age 5 or so - and that was probably one of the first pushes in my life toward mathematics.

Comment author: komponisto 18 March 2009 05:40:19AM *  1 point [-]

Ditto. Verbatim (except maybe around age 8 instead of 5).

In response to comment by anonym on Rational Me or We?
Comment author: scientism 18 March 2009 12:13:38AM 2 points [-]

There's probably a few in there. I won't try to dispute them on a case by case basis. There are, on the other hand, literally thousands of specialists who have achieved more impressive feats in their fields than many of the people you cite. (I take straightforward exception to Chomsky who founded a school of linguistics that's explicitly anti-empirical.)

Comment author: komponisto 18 March 2009 12:44:37AM 4 points [-]

Not to defend anything specific about Chomsky's program, but "anti-empirical" is unfair. "Anti-empiricist" would be more reasonable (though still missing the point, in my opinion).

In response to comment by komponisto on Science vs. art
Comment author: PhilGoetz 17 March 2009 04:24:10AM 0 points [-]

No, I think I meant just what you think I did. Orchestral music is dead. Name one great composer since Stravinsky. With the money we spend on music, and the number of composers trained, we could have had a dozen, maybe a hundred, Beethovens since Stravinsky. What do we have? John Williams and Danny Elfman.

There may be great orchestral composers out there somewhere, but the orchestral music scene is too dead to find them.

In response to comment by PhilGoetz on Science vs. art
Comment author: komponisto 17 March 2009 06:23:43AM *  6 points [-]

Name one great [orchestral] composer since Stravinsky

Are you serious?

Just restricting ourselves to the cream of the crop:

Boulez, Carter, Babbitt, Sessions, Berio, Nono, Ligeti,...

All these and many more have written important works for the orchestral medium, and all were born after Stravinsky...indeed, all of the above list except Sessions were born in the 20th century.

I really, honestly, don't want to be rude or confrontational, but...

...the fact that you would cite John Williams and Danny Elfman (both of whom work in the film/television industry) as your idea of the contemporary orchestral composer shows how completely uninformed you are. It's as if there's a whole entire field of human activity of whose existence you are entirely unaware.

Now, no one should be expected to know about everything. But Eliezer's point about science (http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/10/no-one-knows-wh.html) generalizes: there's a whole, wide world of stuff out there. Yes, art music has a PR problem...but then, so does science, at least among the general public. I presume people here, including yourself, know better in the case of science, so what gives?

I ask the following not (merely) as a rhetorical question, but out of a genuine desire for insight: what on Earth gave you the impression that you were in a position to judge the state of contemporary orchestral music?

There may be great orchestral composers out there somewhere, but the orchestral music scene is too dead to find them.

Just in the past few years, James Levine at the Boston Symphony has been commissioning and premiering a whole series of new orchestral works by living American composers, including Carter and Babbitt. Again, just to take an elite example.

In response to Science vs. art
Comment author: komponisto 17 March 2009 12:32:30AM 0 points [-]

Although this is a topic in which I am quite interested (given my own background), I am downvoting this post on account of the following needless provocation:

20th-century developments in orchestral music killed orchestral music

If you're going to casually toss out something like this, the least you can do is be clear about what you mean. The last time I checked, orchestral music was still being written and played. (Three guesses how I might know this.)

Actually, there are ways of interpreting that statement in such a way that I would agree with it. Based on previous comments of yours, however, I doubt that's what you intended.

Comment author: knb 15 March 2009 07:48:34AM *  19 points [-]

You are describing old clinical psychology. Its gotten so much better. Rorschach tests are now only a very marginal measure within psychoanalytic psychology. Psychoanalytic/pscyhodynamic psychologists are themselves outcasts from mainstream clinical psychology, which is increasingly centered around evidence-based practice. For example, behaviorists are using systematic desensitization in novel and effective ways (for treating things like panic disorder), and cognitive-behavioral therapy is quite effective in treating depression: significantly more so than antidepressants.

The important thing to remember is that patients often get the treatment they want. If you're a self-absorbed neurotic, and you want to spend an hour a week for years talking about yourself, you can find someone who will take your money. If you want effective treatment, you can find that too. Most patients don't want to get better, they want to feel like they are doing something, and especially they want to talk about themselves.

Comment author: komponisto 15 March 2009 04:36:16PM *  12 points [-]

The important thing to remember is that patients often get the treatment they want. If you're a self-absorbed neurotic, and you want to spend an hour a week for years talking about yourself, you can find someone who will take your money. [...] Most patients don't want to get better [...] they want to talk about themselves.

Perhaps unwittingly, this comment suggests wherein the value of such psychotherapy lies. There's a social taboo against talking about oneself in this fashion, and a place that is "safe" from this (and other) conversational taboos may well be worth paying for.

Comment author: komponisto 01 March 2009 09:30:24PM *  4 points [-]

Just a week or two ago I found out -- to my utter astonishment -- that at least two people whom I see regularly have religious doubts about evolution -- in one case even about the age of the earth. They played various familiar cards, e.g.

-"You have faith in science [i.e. just like I have faith in religion]"

-"Evolution may work as science, but I must suspend judgement on whether it's true"

-"I believe in evolution within species"

-"How do you know the radioactive decay rates have remained constant?"

-"Are you a person of faith? [Answer: No.] You see? That's why this conversation will go absolutely nowhere." (Btw, anyone else notice how the religious are always the first ones to declare this?)

I was too shocked to be able to respond effectively. Would that I had had The Book to hand them.