June 2009
1 post
“Folk economics is the intuitive economics of untrained persons. It is concerned...”
– SSRN-Folk Economics by Paul Rubin
May 2009
1 post
“My baby loves me
I’m so happy
Happy makes me a modern girl
Took my...”
– 3_29: My baby loves meI’m so happy Happy makes
February 2009
7 posts
“Polya recalled how Hardy ‘… valued clarity, yet what he valued most...”
– Koppology
leftists, incentives, virtue
When you enjoy loving your neighbor it ceases to be a virtue. - Kahlil Gibran, (1883-1931)
the left doesn’t want to work with incentives because they are obsessed with virtue. and there is virtue in something only if people do not enjoy doing it.
the essence of religion
The evolution of religious doctrine is like sculpture. You chip off the non-essential parts until you are left with the core. And what where is religion once we are done? It is the debris lying on the floor.
“What you want is who you can become. You’re free to do what you want, but...”
– Philosophy of Genetics: Bad Biography
“People often react most defensively when challenged not on their firmly held...”
– IQ Since “The Bell Curve”
ugly proof
edit: corrected a few mistakes and polished up presentation
3 tags
html fragment from opera into html clipboard
I’m a user of Supermemo and lately Evernote, and of course Opera. Now as with many softwares i use they work great alone, but their lack of cooperation is severely cripling to their ultimate usefulness together. Wouldnt it be great if (like with Firefox, which i don’t use simply because it is too slow) a selected html fragment from Opera can be copied to the clipboard into the windows...
January 2009
43 posts
3 tags
idiotization aversion (by anology to loss...
Loss aversion is a cognitive bias where we are more afraid of losing what we already have than failing to achieve an equal magnitude gain (provided the quantity in consideration is a small proportion of total wealth).
Becoming stupider or becoming smarter by the same degree should have the same cost/benefit. Lack of intelligence is equivalent to loss of intelligence. Yet people shudder at the...
“…an observation selection effect is operating to filter the evidence we...”
– Nick Bostrom, The Future of Human Evolution
“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to...”
– Samuel Johnson, (1709-1784)
“The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the...”
– Walter Lippman, (1889-1974)
“His regret is evident. His plan can’t be implemented without more deaths:...”
– Understand - a novelette by Ted Chiang
“I understand the mechanism of my own thinking. I know precisely how I know, and...”
– Understand - a novelette by Ted Chiang
“Penetrating computer security is really quite dull; I can see how it might...”
– Understand - a novelette by Ted Chiang
“There is often a sentiment among atheists that fundamentalists are...”
– Gene Expression: Atheism, Heresy and Hesychasm
“The New Testament reserves a great deal of censure for those who divorce, and...”
– Gene Expression: Atheism, Heresy and Hesychasm
“the majority of believers might avow a particular creed, yet their faith is...”
– Gene Expression: Atheism, Heresy and Hesychasm
perfection is jarring
is it?
Sometimes you hear people say: ”Well your playing of that musical instrument was perfect! But… don’t you think music is more about emotion and thus a certain imperfection?”
Or: ”Football referees should not use video evidence to call fouls. Because that will spoil the fun of the game.”
Really?
What do we really want? Well, if we achieve that, then...
“Stare decisis is the legal principle which binds courts to follow precedent. ...”
– Overcoming Bias: The Fun Theory Sequence
“The advanced reader who skips parts that appear too elementary may miss more...”
– G. Polya
“We disagree because we explain our own conclusions via detailed context (e.g.,...”
– Overcoming Bias: Disagreement Is Near-Far Bias
“Today, formal proofs are developed by painstaking formalization of conventional...”
– Computation and Mathematical Proof
“I fail to get even the attention of the mass. I should suit them better if I...”
– Project Sifter
general intelligence
It was a rigorous result in information theory that once you could learn in a sufficiently flexible manner - something humanity had achieved in the Bronze Age - the only limits you faced were speed and storage; any other structural changes were just a matter of style. - Schild’s Ladder, Greg Egan.
is this sf or a real result of present day information theory?
...
“Only knowledge can foretell the cost of ignorance.”
– Eliezer Yudkowsky
“If you want to register or change password you need to enter your new password....”
– Sensible ideas get abused a lot
yeah and what about people like me who just copy and paste?
“In just a few short years Captcha infected the entire Internet. They don’t...”
– taw’s blog
“I don’t think spammers really cared about obfuscation anyway, do you think...”
– Email spam is no longer a problem
there are infinitely many primes
Let N be any natural number, then N!+1 is not divisible by 1, nor 2, nor 3, …, nor N. Thus either N!+1 has a prime factor greater than N, or is itself prime. In any case, there is a prime greater than N. (seen in Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach)
universal *instrumental* values
Richard Hollerith put it well: “If the goal specifies no time discount rate … then the initial behavior of a paperclip-maximizing SI will be exactly the same as the initial behavior of any other SI with a goal without a time discount rate — even if the goal is human happiness or the happiness of sentients.”
Almost all arguments advanced in favor of transhumanism are...
1 tag
“Only persons in the top 15% of the IQ distribution are employed as...”
– Arthur Jensen, Discussions on Genius and Intelligence (Interview)
Absolute minimum threshold huh? I wish he would give a source.
ad hominem ad infinitum ad nauseum
observer: welcome to an argument between A and B.
A: you are such an idiot. That is of course obviously wrong!.
B: you call me an idiot? isn't that ad hominem?
A: what does me calling you an idiot have to do with anything about this argument? YOU are commiting ad hominem here!
B: wtf. you started it! you called me an idiot! i would really like to get back to the argument. but you have to stop that verbal abuse first!
A: then get on with the argument already! we are wasting time! you are such a time-waster. damn...
B: there you go again! you are definitely doing ad hominem! observer! observer! Can't you see this? can't you see how A is being very irresponsible with respect to this argument?
observer: please, just get on with the argument.
A: yeah! if you were to stop complaining so much we would have covered much ground already!
“Although Moore’s law was initially made in the form of an observation and...”
– Moore’s law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Yet natural selection exploits links between local actions and distant...”
– Overcoming Bias: Protein Reinforcement and DNA Consequentialism
“When people insist that the failure of our economic ecology indicates the need...”
– Avoiding the Wildfire « Occluded Sun
“If a concerted effort were made, we could develop methods for transferring...”
– JOHN TOOBY & LEDA COSMIDES
“One of the problems faced by all gifted persons is learning to focus their...”
– The Lonely Genius
“an example of niche creation that Wheeler and Clark reference is ‘when beaver...”
– Andy Clark & Michael Wheeler: Embodied cognition and cultural evolution « Neuroanthropology
7 tags
deduction is certain but trivial
(This is a response to melendwyr’s post here.)
In logic, deduction is an operation that preserves truth. All deductions are trivial. They don’t give you more information. They all point to the same ‘model’. Models are static, describing a state of affairs (SOA). Propositions are truth functions whose output depends solely on that SOA. (you can fully describe a SOA by...
“Put a food reward in a transparent box. Put the corresponding key, which looks...”
– Overcoming Bias: Protein Reinforcement and DNA Consequentialism
goal system invariance
In Greg Egan’s Diaspora, Yatima studies the neural network of herself, trying to find an “invariant of consciousness” that stays the same from one moment to the next, thus defining her.
I said a post ago that fate is path dependency. Well, the self can be said to be path dependency too. There need not be an invariant. Perhaps there are only momentary invariances, long enough for...
fate is path dependency
this post is ‘uncontented’ (unlike those which are ‘untitled’)
i know, i know, you’re discontented and wish for more text. but i don’t have much to say for now.
“I’m also more skeptical that “lying” is such a clear...”
– Overcoming Bias: A World Without Lies?
“I would suggest that that whether an entity at time n+1 is the same person as...”
– Overcoming Bias: Changing Emotions
So the evolution of self follows the path of least resistance. It already does anyway. Nobody changes until given a rude shock.
“Eliezer: “And you might not notice if your goals shifted only a bit at a...”
– Overcoming Bias: Growing Up is Hard
right! once i have changed, even though i wouldn’t have wanted to change, i now embrace my new self unequivocally.
too precious
Belief is too precious a thing to waste on facts.
Emotions are too precious to waste on the act of reasoning.
“a possible test for whether a cognitive enhancement is likely to have downsides,...”
– Overcoming Bias: Growing Up is Hard
“From the December Journal of Experimental Psychology:
In Experiment 1,...”
– Overcoming Bias: Against Interesting Details