Eigenmorality • Hacker News Board

Re: Eigenmorality

#21

Post by andrewflnr » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 8:47 PM UTC

I think the definition of morality in the article is far too simplistic. In my (Christian) view, it's an important aspect of moral maturity to be able to be nice to immoral people without cooperating with their goals. Besides that dichotomy, the article already mentions that the model lacks critical information, specifically, the actors don't know whether the other actors they're [not ]cooperating with are "good" or "bad".

That said, I find this approach to defining morality fascinating. Maybe if the definitions are refined it will manage to tell us something we already know (not entirely sarcastic; that would be legitimately impressive for a mathematical construct regarding morality).

Re: Eigenmorality

#22

Post by soganess » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 8:53 PM UTC

jng wrote: post #19

JackFr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To each his own. I actually think its overly long, wordy, rambling, poorly conceived and short any novel or important ideas.

Please tell us what sources you follow that provide you with (a) comparably lucid ideas and (b) not only that, but also in a shorter, clearer form. I for one want to follow them too if they really exist.

One does not solely get their understanding of novelty or content/length relation from single newsfeed style sources. There are more than a few books and even more wikipedia entries that provide a wealth of understanding for a relative pittance in word count. Not to mention all the non-classical forms that do the same. The article was okay, but the standard you implicitly set forth is lacking in fairness to the commenter, to the original story, and truly to one-off forms of valuable information that don't provide a serialized source of continued information.

One of my personal favorites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%E2%80%93Howard_correspond...

Re: Eigenmorality

#23

Post by spiritplumber » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 8:57 PM UTC

andrewflnr wrote: post #21

I think the definition of morality in the article is far too simplistic. In my (Christian) view, it's an important aspect of moral maturity to be able to be nice to immoral people without cooperating with their goals. Besides that dichotomy, the article already mentions that the model lacks critical information, specifically, the actors don't know whether the other actors they're [not ]cooperating with are "good" or…

Occasionally "being nice" (cooperating when tit-for-tat suggests defection) dampens avalanche effects caused by defection-happy actors; it prevents the "an eye for an eye makes everyone blind" ending. In that sense, it has value.

Re: Eigenmorality

#24

Post by spiritplumber » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 8:58 PM UTC

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #3

my friends and i had started on this already. i had a hard time explaing to people why it was valuable; looks like scott has done it for us. please help us! https://github.com/neyer/dewDrop right now all we have is a way to state which facebook users a person trusts. there's a chrome extension to help with this. it's extremely basic. i have a server running at https://dewdrop.neyer.me - we need a lot more help! i'm j…

This is good stuff, bookmarked!

Re: Eigenmorality

#25

Post by cscurmudgeon » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 9:00 PM UTC

JackFr wrote: post #18

knowtheory wrote: post #2

This is very long but worth reading. The modeling exercise herein is basically attempting to use a game theoretic model to test out some really dumb/simplified models of cooperation and whether the behaviors observed approximate anything approaching what our intuitions might say is moral behavior, up to and including an 'eigenjesus' and 'eigenmoses' up against tit_for_tat bots and the like.

To each his own. I actually think its overly long, wordy, rambling, poorly conceived and short any novel or important ideas.

Exactly. Imagine his anger if someone had written something amateurish about quantum computation or complexity without acknowledging any work done since the beginning of these fields. I seriously hope most of the article is in jest.

"Hey all, I have a new way of measuring how much resources computer programs take..."

If I remember correctly, he banned a professor from commenting on his blog over what seemed to be a routine academic debate.

Re: Eigenmorality

#26

Post by marvy » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 9:33 PM UTC

hhm wrote: post #7

wodenokoto wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“All have their worth and each contributes to the worth of the others.”

I now realize I should have copied the text into the comment in the first place.

It's not too late to edit your post :)

Re: Eigenmorality

#27

Post by yid » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 9:38 PM UTC

JackFr wrote: post #18

knowtheory wrote: post #2

This is very long but worth reading. The modeling exercise herein is basically attempting to use a game theoretic model to test out some really dumb/simplified models of cooperation and whether the behaviors observed approximate anything approaching what our intuitions might say is moral behavior, up to and including an 'eigenjesus' and 'eigenmoses' up against tit_for_tat bots and the like.

To each his own. I actually think its overly long, wordy, rambling, poorly conceived and short any novel or important ideas.

> I actually think its overly long, wordy, rambling, poorly conceived and short any novel or important ideas.

Yes, it's written like the draft of an academic research paper that might or might not make it to peer review. Unfortunately, that description also matches the bulk of published papers.

Re: Eigenmorality

#28

Post by lohankin » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 9:38 PM UTC

I was following Scott's posts for a while. Most notable feature of those posts: everything he says is predictable. Blog is designed to appeal to the liberal academic establishment, which knows answers to all important questions, and is never in doubt. I don't remember a single example of Scott's opinion which could be deemed controversial in any sense. "Eigenconformism" would be a better name for his blog.

Re: Eigenmorality

#29

Post by jng » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 9:39 PM UTC

soganess wrote: post #22

jng wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please tell us what sources you follow that provide you with (a) comparably lucid ideas and (b) not only that, but also in a shorter, clearer form. I for one want to follow them too if they really exist.

One does not solely get their understanding of novelty or content/length relation from single newsfeed style sources. There are more than a few books and even more wikipedia entries that provide a wealth of understanding for a relative pittance in word count. Not to mention all the non-classical forms that do the same. The article was okay, but the standard you implicitly set forth is lacking in fairness to the comme…

Books and Wikipedia articles are sources too. I didn't say anything about single newsfeed style sources.

I find the linked-to article to be a gem of lucidity amidst a barrage of mostly noise, busywork, and lottery-playing. Not only that, but the topic of the foundations of morality is going to become a central issue soon, with multiple strong global trends taking us towards that difficult issue.

The article you linked to is nice, but Curry-Howard isomorphism is neither novel nor as important as the topic covered by the original article.

As fragile agents inhabiting a ball of mass and fire organized in billions of partly-autonomous somewhat-intelligent resource-sharing systems flying through space and time, just recently coming up with scarily and growingly powerful new ways to rearrange control which may destroy existing controlling systems, including us, we should care very, very much about this.

And the article provides powerful new tools to tackle this.

Re: Eigenmorality

#30

Post by jonnathanson » Sat, Jun 21, 2014, 9:48 PM UTC

Please note that what follows can be interpreted as criticism, but it's not intended as such. I found this article quite interesting, and for me, it was the starting point for a lot of different thoughts about game-theoretical approximations of morality. So what follows is a somewhat tangential addition to the article, and not a critique of it.

My problem is not with the "eigenmorality" concept, nor with the various takes on playing it out across consecutive Prisoner's Dilemma sessions. That aspect is extremely interesting. Rather, my problem is with the Prisoner's Dilemma as a valid ground on which to test something like morality.

The Prisoner's Dilemma is a foundational, theoretical framework for evaluating human behavior. And it's a wonderful, elegant framework. But it treats humans as emotionless agents, and the "punishment" as an abstract, theoretical, rationally navigable scenario. Place real human beings into the Prisoner's Dilemma, with real-world consequences, and you get all sorts of unexpected results. The Prisoner's Dilemma is notorious for holding up perfectly fine in vitro, but less so in situ. Cultural conditioning plays a huge role in how real people act in the game. So do emotions, and irrational heuristics like overemphasizing loss aversion. (Tversky and Kahneman's work has a lot to say about the latter.)

Using the Prisoner's Dilemma as a proving ground, I think you'd arrive at an abstract model of morality -- but you wouldn't capture how morality actually plays out with quasi-rational, emotional, circumstantially driven, human agents. And, philosophically speaking, that's where morality actually counts the most.