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Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today

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Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today

#151
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got that same impression of HPMOR. However, I liked Freakonomics at least because I thought it was better edited or had better explanations.

If you liked Freakonomics' topics, but abhorred the self-serving style, you will love Tom Schelling's The Strategy of Conflict.

Strategy of Conflict is one of THE BEST books for ANYONE to read. Schelling is one of the guys whose job it was to do game theory when "I know that you know that I know" had nuclear annihilation at the other end if you get it wrong. He came up with the Red Telephone between the White House and the Kremlin.

As a book that is literally about negotiating your way out of terminal nuclear war, I've also found it an excellent practical guide to raising a toddler.

Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He does assert it, then assume its truth in later pieces. http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Quantum_Physics_Sequence#...

Interesting. I still have no problem with it, of course, buttressed by my quick glance at that page to see, at the very top: Warning: The central idea in today's post is taken seriously by serious physicists; but it is not experimentally proven and is not taught as standard physics. Today's post draws heavily on the work of the physicist Julian Barbour, and contains diagrams stolen and/or modified from his book "The…

Yeah. Despite the disclaimer, he then goes on to assume it's literally true. And, for relevance to this post, he does so in the story as well, in Chapter 28.

su3su2u1 (who is an actual physicist) discusses the problem in http://su3su2u1.tumblr.com/post/98526012853/chapter-28-hacki... :

> There is no “true math of quantum mechanics.” [...] These are different mathematical formulations, over different spaces, that are completely equivalent.

> What Hariezer is doing here isn’t separating the map and the territory, its reifying one particular map (configuration space)!

>I also find it amusing, in a physics elitist sort of way (sorry for the condescension) that Yudkowsky picks non-relativistic quantum mechanics as the final, ultimate reality. Instead of describing or even mentioning quantum field theory, which is the most low-level theory we (we being science) know of, Yudkowsky picks non-relativistic quantum mechanics, the most low-level theory HE knows.

> So this is more bad pedagogy: timeless physics isn’t even a map, it's the idea of a map. [...] It seems very odd to just toss in a somewhat obscure idea as the pinnacle of physics.

Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today

#153

Every time I see anything related to Less Wrong all I can think of is Roko's Basilisk and I can't stop laughing.

Note that Timeless Decision Theory is alluded to in HPMOR, for on-topic relevance of R-k-'s B-s-l-sk (chapter 14). http://su3su2u1.tumblr.com/post/98528318928/bartlebyshop-i-s...

Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today

#154
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you liked Freakonomics' topics, but abhorred the self-serving style, you will love Tom Schelling's The Strategy of Conflict.

Strategy of Conflict is one of THE BEST books for ANYONE to read. Schelling is one of the guys whose job it was to do game theory when "I know that you know that I know" had nuclear annihilation at the other end if you get it wrong. He came up with the Red Telephone between the White House and the Kremlin. As a book that is literally about negotiating your way out of terminal nuclear war, I've also found it an excell…

Indeed. Schelling constantly brings up the applications to child rearing.

I read his later books, too. They are good, but not as great.

Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today

#155
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strategy of Conflict is one of THE BEST books for ANYONE to read. Schelling is one of the guys whose job it was to do game theory when "I know that you know that I know" had nuclear annihilation at the other end if you get it wrong. He came up with the Red Telephone between the White House and the Kremlin. As a book that is literally about negotiating your way out of terminal nuclear war, I've also found it an excell…

Indeed. Schelling constantly brings up the applications to child rearing. I read his later books, too. They are good, but not as great.

Dude helped save us all from being flash-fried, I'll give him some slack ;-)

Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today

#156
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm seriously surprised at how many people here are fans of Yudkowsky In my (admittedly extremely limited) exposure to him as a person through videos of his talks and some of his transhumanist writing, I didn't really get the impression that he's anything but a very nice and gifted person. So I think this practice of judging or dismissing entire lives by applying a simplistic theme is an antipattern, and this is tr…

>You may argue most or even all of this framework is lifted from earlier philosophical and scientific achievements, but in some areas standing on the shoulders of giants is actually a good sign you're in the right place. The good bits are not original and the original bits are not good. The problem is that LessWrong has a habit of neologism - so EY will use his own term for something ("fallacy of gray" is one example…

What about people like me that would never have learned about the "continuum fallacy" if it weren't for Eliezer's willingness to stoop to my level and explain things like I'm 5 (or, more accurately, like I'm a fan of Harry Potter)?

I personally don't care one bit if the good bits aren't original. They are approachable, and nobody else has done that for me. So I applaud Eliezer and his efforts, regardless of whether or not he has broken ground philosophically.

Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today

#157
post #62

I'm seriously surprised at how many people here are fans of Yudkowsky, given his lack of any real productive output beyond thought experiments and fanfiction, the distinctly weird stuff he judges as right by taking his philosophy to the extremes (e.g. "it's better for one person to be tortured for fifty years than for an extremely large number of people to each get a speck of dust in their eye"), and the way he treat…

>.g. "it's better for one person to be tortured for fifty years than for an extremely large number of people to each get a speck of dust in their eye"), The number in question was 3^^^3 using Knuth's Up Arrow Notation. As he explains, that's a lot of people: (3^(3^(3^(... 7625597484987 times ...)))). If we decide that one person being tortured for 50 years is worth a quick blink by all those other people, then a stil…

I've thought about this and concluded that this thought experiment ignores the subjective way people experience reality. If a dust speck fell in your own eye, you would round that experience down to zero. You wouldn't even remember the event an hour later. I think this subjective experience of reality should be taken into account.

As for the part of the argument that dust specks in so many eyes would cause the death of a small fraction of the people, that's far from a given but for the sake of "steelmanning" let's assume that's true. At some point my own ethics place death as a higher utility outcome than prolonged suffering. How many deaths vs how much suffering? That's hard to quantify.

Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You may argue most or even all of this framework is lifted from earlier philosophical and scientific achievements, but in some areas standing on the shoulders of giants is actually a good sign you're in the right place. The good bits are not original and the original bits are not good. The problem is that LessWrong has a habit of neologism - so EY will use his own term for something ("fallacy of gray" is one example…

What about people like me that would never have learned about the "continuum fallacy" if it weren't for Eliezer's willingness to stoop to my level and explain things like I'm 5 (or, more accurately, like I'm a fan of Harry Potter)? I personally don't care one bit if the good bits aren't original. They are approachable, and nobody else has done that for me. So I applaud Eliezer and his efforts, regardless of whether o…

Would you have known that everyone else had been calling it the continuum fallacy all that time? No, you wouldn't - you'd think Yudkowsky was uniquely insightful.

Furthermore, you wouldn't learn anything beyond the limits of Yudkowsky's knowledge, or - more importantly - that there was anything beyond those limits.

The habit of neologism makes stuff impossible to look up, and creates the illusion that this is new ground, not old, and that there isn't already a world out there.

su3su2u1, debating this matter with Scott Alexander (Yvain), sums up a lot of their problems with the world view (which I am as familiar with as anyone who doesn't actually drink the Kool-Aid can be, having been on LW around four years and read not only the Sequences through twice but read literally all of LessWrong through from the beginning twice), which I largely agree with as a summary: https://storify.com/lacusaestatis/sssp-su3su2u1-debate

I'll quote one telling bit, which points out the level after Bayes:

> Heck, there are well defined problems where using subjective probability isn’t the best way to handle the idea of “belief”- when faced with sensor data problems that have unquantified (or unquantifiable) uncertainty the CS community overwhelmingly chooses Dempster-Shafter theory, not Bayes/subjective probabilities.

Do you remember the Sequences post mentioning the words "Dempster-Shafter"? Me neither.

(And then there's the use of "Bayesian" to mean things that nobody else uses the term for. As su3su2u1 puts it: "I suspect I’d be hard-pressed to write about probability theory in a way that wouldn’t fit some idea you cover by the word 'Bayesian.'")

Yudkowsky definitely gets credit as a good pop science writer. The habit of neologism, not so much. And definitely if he wasn't into the encapsulated, self-referential world that LW builds. In philosophy, Yudkowsky is the quintessential Expert Beginner: http://www.daedtech.com/tag/expert-beginner

untiltheseashallfreethem notes in http://untiltheseashallfreethem.tumblr.com/post/107159098431... : "I think Eliezer did a great service in writing these ideas up. But they are not his ideas, and I’m really worried that a lot of people read LessWrong, see that Eliezer is right about this stuff, assume he came up with it all, and then go on to believe everything else he says." And that's a serious problem when the good stuff is not original, and the original stuff is not good.

Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today

#159
post #109
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you recommend some alternative writers that fill the role better? I think his writing has two particular things going for it: - He explains concepts clearly with understandable examples. - He presents concepts that aren't (or weren't) well known outside of academia to a wider audience.

"Scientific parable fiction" is a pretty narrow genre (though I'd personally argue that Yudkowsky does a pretty poor job of it - for example, Harry constantly assuming things without testing them and just happening to be right because the author says so). One that does come to mind is: https://www.fanfiction.net/u/4976703/alexanderwales alexanderwales writes relatively short, punchy stories that explore specific acad…

I really liked The Last Christmas and The Metropolitan Man (A Bluer Shade of White felt a little cliched/predictable) and second the recommendation.

Re: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finished today

#160
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Schelling constantly brings up the applications to child rearing. I read his later books, too. They are good, but not as great.

Dude helped save us all from being flash-fried, I'll give him some slack ;-)

Some people argue mutual assured destruction brought us closer to the abyss than anything. (See Dr Strangelove.)

Schelling wrote well, I am not sure about his actual effect on policy. There were other hawks, like von Neumann, another geeks' hero.

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