Hello.

[soracities]

Ilya Kaminsky, “A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck”, Deaf Republic

[Text ID: “At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this? And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?”]

[cop-disliker69]

Because we didn’t know how or didn’t have the power to do so??

The whole point of God is that he’s omnipotent and omniscient, right? He can be blamed for doing nothing because he was capable of doing something. The rest of us have valid excuses. He doesn’t.

I acquit humanity, but convict God on all charges.

[argumate]

yeah I think “man’s inhumanity to man” is at least partially on us but malaria is 100% on god

[sullyj3]

Even stuff like the unjustness of society is largely because of coordination problems, which no individual can be blamed for, and god isn’t subject to

[femmenietzsche]

If I win the lottery I think I’m gonna hire a Stanford grad student to teach me the Standard Model

[femmenietzsche]

Not knowing the laws of physics is a sin, imo

[sullyj3]

mortal or venial?

[nostalgebraist]

“embedded self-justification,” or something like that

preamble

Sometimes I wonder what the MIRI-type crowd thinks about some issue related to their interests.  So I go to alignmentforum.org, and quickly get in over my head, lost in a labyrinth of issues I only half understand.

I can never tell whether they’ve never thought about the things I’m thinking about, or whether they sped past them years ago.  They do seem very smart, that’s for sure.

But if they have terms for what I’m thinking of, I lack the ability to find those terms among the twists of their mirrored hallways.  So I go to tumblr.com, and just start typing.

parable (1/3)

You’re an “agent” trying to take good actions over time in a physical environment under resource constraints.  You know, the usual.

You currently spend a lot of resources doing a particular computation involved in your decision procedure.  Your best known algorithm for it is O(N^n) for some n.

You’ve worked on the design of decision algorithms before, and you think this could perhaps be improved.  But to find it, you’d have to shift resources some away from running the algorithm for a time, putting them into decision algorithm design instead.

You do this.  Almost immediately, you discover an O(N^(n-1)) algorithm.  Given the large N you face, this will dramatically improve all your future decisions.

Clearly (…“clearly”?), the choice to invest more in algorithm design was a good one.

Could you have anticipated this beforehand?  Could you have acted on that knowledge?

parable (2/3)

Oh, you’re so very clever!  By now you’ve realized you need, above and beyond your regular decision procedure to guide your actions in the outside world, a “meta-decision-procedure” to guide your own decision-procedure-improvement efforts.

Your meta-decision-procedure does require its own resource overhead, but in exchange it tells you when and where to spend resources on R&D.  All your algorithms are faster now.  Your decisions are better, their guiding approximations less lossy.

All this, from a meta-decision-procedure that’s only a first draft.  You frown over the resource overhead it charges, and wonder whether it could be improved.

You try shifting some resources away from “regular decision procedure design” into “meta-decision-procedure-design.”  Almost immediately, you come up with a faster and better procedure.

Could you have anticipated this beforehand?  Could you have acted on that knowledge?

parable (3/3)

Oh, you’re so very clever!  By now you’ve realized you need, above and beyond your meta-meta-meta-decision-procedure, a “meta-meta-meta-meta-decision-procedure” to guide your meta-meta-meta-decision-procedure-improvement efforts.

Way down on the object level, you have not moved for a very long time, except to occasionally update your meta-meta-meta-meta-rationality blog.

Way down on the object level, a dumb and fast predator eats you.

Could you have anticipated this beforehand?  Could you have acted on that knowledge?

Keep reading

[shlevy]

Re the discussion on the dash: It’s completely pointless to hold “open borders” as anything other than a directional goal right now for American policy, regardless of what you think the outcome would be or of the moral issues involved, because it’s completely politically infeasible and in the current situation is tied up with a lot of other things (like welfare and the relative lack of restraint on democratic process we have currently) that you’re probably wary about anyway.

But by the same token, it’s really dumb to assume most people who talk about open borders are doing anything besides holding a directional goal if they’re talking about current policy prescriptions at all! Like, even ignoring the fact that we’re dealing with a bunch of libertarian-neighborhood folks who have a long track record of simultaneously a) describing far-off political systems that require a lot of interlocking pieces to work properly even if you believe their analysis and b) not seriously trying to foment revolution and, to the extent they engage at all in the political process, mostly working for incremental change, the fact that in this case there is no possible concrete path toward the feared outcome should be a sign that the people involved are not actually suggesting it as a standalone immediate policy proposal?

Which is not to say there aren’t some people who think open borders is fully achievable right now and would definitely be good regardless of the other factors. Feel free to dunk on them until they can actually seriously address all of the concerns or admit they just don’t care. But I call myself pro-open borders, and I don’t mean anything like that, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume everyone else does either.

[voxette-vk]

I think “tear down this wall” style immediate lifting of all limitations on border crossings would be good. Not that I think it is at all politically feasible or that it would be sustainable to do without further reforms like lifting restrictions on hiring foreign workers. But in the sense that if it somehow magically happened, the simple presence of more immigrants would be a catalyst for change in a better direction.

But as you point out, this is all hypothetical, like the discussion among libertarians about whether you would hit “the button” to instantly abolish all government functions beyond the minarchist level.

[matricejacobine]

Forcing top-down political change without the ideas of the population changing wouldn’t be good, unless you think a massive rise of right-wing anti-immigrant populism would be good.

[squareallworthy]

“If it somehow magically happened” includes magic like the mysterious disappearance of anti-immigrant populist sentiment. The whole point of magical hypotheticals is that you’re ignoring, for rhetorical purposes, obstacles that you very well know to exist.

[sullyj3]

That wasn’t clear to me at all. Whether a massive rise in right wing populism would occur seems to me to the exact sort of question at issue when we propose the hypothetical.

[sullyj3]

Like yeah, obviously if we remove all the obstacles it would work out great. What we want to know is, if it happens because we remove *one* obstacle, will the other obstacles cause it to turn out not great?

[shlevy]

Re the discussion on the dash: It’s completely pointless to hold “open borders” as anything other than a directional goal right now for American policy, regardless of what you think the outcome would be or of the moral issues involved, because it’s completely politically infeasible and in the current situation is tied up with a lot of other things (like welfare and the relative lack of restraint on democratic process we have currently) that you’re probably wary about anyway.

But by the same token, it’s really dumb to assume most people who talk about open borders are doing anything besides holding a directional goal if they’re talking about current policy prescriptions at all! Like, even ignoring the fact that we’re dealing with a bunch of libertarian-neighborhood folks who have a long track record of simultaneously a) describing far-off political systems that require a lot of interlocking pieces to work properly even if you believe their analysis and b) not seriously trying to foment revolution and, to the extent they engage at all in the political process, mostly working for incremental change, the fact that in this case there is no possible concrete path toward the feared outcome should be a sign that the people involved are not actually suggesting it as a standalone immediate policy proposal?

Which is not to say there aren’t some people who think open borders is fully achievable right now and would definitely be good regardless of the other factors. Feel free to dunk on them until they can actually seriously address all of the concerns or admit they just don’t care. But I call myself pro-open borders, and I don’t mean anything like that, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume everyone else does either.

[voxette-vk]

I think “tear down this wall” style immediate lifting of all limitations on border crossings would be good. Not that I think it is at all politically feasible or that it would be sustainable to do without further reforms like lifting restrictions on hiring foreign workers. But in the sense that if it somehow magically happened, the simple presence of more immigrants would be a catalyst for change in a better direction.

But as you point out, this is all hypothetical, like the discussion among libertarians about whether you would hit “the button” to instantly abolish all government functions beyond the minarchist level.

[matricejacobine]

Forcing top-down political change without the ideas of the population changing wouldn’t be good, unless you think a massive rise of right-wing anti-immigrant populism would be good.

[squareallworthy]

“If it somehow magically happened” includes magic like the mysterious disappearance of anti-immigrant populist sentiment. The whole point of magical hypotheticals is that you’re ignoring, for rhetorical purposes, obstacles that you very well know to exist.

[sullyj3]

That wasn't clear to me at all. Whether a massive rise in right wing populism would occur seems to me to the exact sort of question at issue when we propose the hypothetical.

[argumate]

it’s neat that we can just say “acquired taste” instead of “I hated this until it subtly reprogrammed my reward circuits and now I love it, you should try some!”

[sullyj3]

Cordffeeceps

[shittylifeprotips]

SLPT: Confuse those wine snobs by *hearing* the wine

[zombiebiologist]

so i told my mom about this post before she and my dad went on a trip to napa, and she was delighted to try this out

and apparently, when she straight-faced, lifted her glass of chardonnay to her ear and swirled it, she baffled the other winery-goers so much that they all instinctively did exactly the same thing. that sort of crowd-think, that you aren’t quite sure what’s right but you’ll be damned if you’re mistaken for the plebian that you are

but watching that was enough for my mom to lose her composure, laugh so hard she cried, and spill the entire glass all over herself, in the process getting kicked out of the winery

so long story short do this at your own risk

[argumate]

there’s a ton of shit you can get in life if you’re willing to submit yourself to the mortifying horror of asking for it.

[sullyj3]

Vulnerability is important

It's what all relationships are built on

But in a sense, being vulnerable with someone is an implicit request for them to do the emotional labour of empathising with you.

So therefore when considering whether to be vulnerable with someone, I think maybe you have a responsibility to decide whether it's appropriate to make that implicit request

[bpd-dylan-hall-deactivated20190]

honestly tho I like all kinds of flawed people, people who have never accomplished anything, people who aren’t Successful or Making Something of Their Lives, people who predictably make the same mistakes over and over again, amoral people, people whose ethical systems I find incredibly dubious

it turns out how much I like you is basically uncorrelated with your Objective Goodness

so if I am flawed and haven’t ever accomplished anything and keep making the same mistakes over and make v questionable ethical decisions, I can still like MYSELF

[propollution-deactivated2019041]

[sullyj3]

Striking out on your own, however, is Forbidden.

[voxette-vk]

[I]t is sometimes possible with substantial effort to say that policy X has been checkmated, at least in terms of consequentialist supporting arguments. Yes, many social policy chess boards are big, and so it can take a lot of time and expertise to check all the moves. But sometimes a person has done that checking on policy X, and then frequently encounters others who have not so checked. Many of these others will defend X, basically randomly sampling from the many failed arguments that have been offered so far. […]

As an example, let me offer blackmail. I’ve posted here seven times on this blog on the topic, and in one of my posts I review twenty related papers that I’d read. I’ve argued many times with people on the topic, and I consistently hear them repeat the same arguments, which all fail. So I’ll defend the claim that not only don’t we have good strong consequential arguments against blackmail, but that this fact can be clearly demonstrated to smart reasonable people willing to walk through all the previously offered arguments.

To review and clarify, blackmail is a threat that you might gossip about someone on a particular topic, if they don’t do something else you want. The usual context is that you are allowed to gossip or not on this topic, and if you just mention that you know something, they are allowed to offer to compensate you to keep quiet, and you are allowed to accept that offer. You just can’t be the person who makes the first offer. In almost all other cases where you are allowed to do or not do something, at your discretion, you are allowed to make and accept offers that compensate you for one of these choices; blackmail is a puzzling exception to this general rule.

Most ancient societies simply banned salacious gossip against elites, but modern societies have deviated and allowed gossip. People today already have substantial incentives to learn embarrassing secrets about associates, in order to gain social rewards from gossiping about those to others. Most people suffer substantial harm such gossip, and it makes them wary about who they let get close to them, and induces them to conform more to social pressures regarding acceptable behaviors.

For most people, the main effect of allowing blackmail is to mildly increase the incentives to learn embarrassing secrets, and to not behave in ways that result in such secrets. This small effect makes it pretty hard to argue that for gossip incentives the social gains out weigh the losses, but for the slightly stronger blackmail incentives, the losses out weight the gains. However, for elites these increases are far stronger, making elite dislike plausibly the main consequentialist force pushing to keep blackmail illegal.

I agree with Hanson. I don’t think blackmail should be illegal, nor do I think in most cases it is even morally wrong. (I think it’s morally wrong in the context of blackmailing people where the consideration is not exposing their own criminal activity, which can be handled by whistleblower protections.)

I want to specifically address the privacy issue, which Hanson addresses elsewhere. The concern is that people might be blackmailed over things like naked photos of them or videos of them having “vanilla” sex with their spouse. These are embarrassing not because they show illegal or immoral activity, but because it’s simply an invasion of their privacy.

But in the case where the photos are obtained illegally, there is no need for a special law here. It’s already illegal to do the underlying thing (post them online for free), so of course it should be illegal to do it for money! And to deal with matters like “revenge porn”, the law can just have a default presumption that one does not consent to allow one’s partner or former partner to upload such photos they may possess without one’s permission. They’re issued under restrictive title.

Block and Gordon’s law review article defending blackmail is good for further discussion and rebuttal of common criticisms.

[serinemolecule]

I think this discussion would be better off if we jumped from abstract to concrete.

My idea of blackmail is something, like: a woman (possibly hired by an evil party) flirts with a male politician; this leads to sexy things; the woman takes a selfie, and threatens to publish the selfie unless the politician gives the evil party some benefit.

At no point is any of the photos obtained illegally. But clearly it is bad for society for the politician to be acting in the interests of the evil party, rather than in the interests of voters.

As far as I can tell, your linked article defends this on the grounds that this is worth it because it discourages extramarital affairs. But this is a horrible trade-off! The fate of the country is clearly much more important than slightly discouraging extramarital affairs.

This blog seems to focus on blackmail in the form of “threatening to report a crime to the police”, but “threatening to reveal something embarrassing” seems much more common (like in the Bezos blackmail). And while you bring up that stealing embarrassing content is already illegal, there are legal ways to obtain embarrassing content, and allowing that to be used for blackmail doesn’t seem to help anyone.

[voxette-vk]

My idea of blackmail is something, like: a woman (possibly hired by an evil party) flirts with a male politician; this leads to sexy things; the woman takes a selfie, and threatens to publish the selfie unless the politician gives the evil party some benefit.

At no point is any of the photos obtained illegally. But clearly it is bad for society for the politician to be acting in the interests of the evil party, rather than in the interests of voters.

I mean, the most obvious objection is that there’s no reason why this would tend to help the “evil party” over the “good party”. Are the representatives of the “good party” more prone to engaging in extramarital affairs?

All this seems to do on balance is discourage representatives from both parties from engaging in morally compromising activities.

Second, the consideration here is essentially the same as political bribery: the giving of something of value to a politician in exchange for a political benefit. This may show a difference between something you are not allowed to do for money and something you are allowed to do for free (it is okay to simply ask politicians for favors). But it doesn’t show a difference between blackmail and other forms of bribery, such as the “evil party” simply writing out a $50,000 check to the “good party” politician in exchange for the same benefit.

And so blackmail of this type could be outlawed, if desired, simply by consistent application of bribery laws.

[sullyj3]

I think there’s a possible miscommunication here;  serinemolecule was using party in the sense of “group or individual”, and you seem to be taking it to mean “political party”

[argumate]

obviously there are sometimes when revolution is unavoidable, like when there is a political platform with broad support (free the slaves) that cannot be enacted by democratic means (slaves can’t vote).

but improving the social safety net or environmental regulations hardly fall into this category.

[sullyj3]

Just playing devil's advocate, how about poor people can't lobby?

[the-dao-of-the-zerg]

A stranger comes to you, and makes you an offer: “We’ll flip this fair coin. I’ll pay you $10 for every “heads” flip, but you pay me $10 every time the coin comes up “tails”.” You take the deal, and after ten flips, you owe him $100. What is the chance the next flip comes up “heads”?

I find it interesting that so many people get it wrong and say it’s still 50/50. Inspired by this post talking about how the trolley problem trains you to ignore most of what’s actually important about morality (situational awareness, trying to find win-wins, etc.)

[shlevy]

You Can Load a Die, But You Can’t Bias a Coin

[shieldfoss]

While interesting, unfair coins do exist. They have the same imprint on both faces.

[voxette-vk]

But they are easily detected by looking at the coin before tossing it.

Unless of course you let the other guy toss it, and he’s good at slight of hand. Not counting the other ways to cheat by slight of hand.

[sullyj3]

My first instinct was 50/50. But that's because as soon as someone starts outlining a hypothetical to me, my brain is in platonic ideal spherical cow land where the fact that coin flips are 50/50 is taken as a given. If this happened to me in real life, I'd obviously be getting pretty suspicious by flip 4.

[kontextmaschine]

The Simpsons debuted closer to the JFK assassination than today

[argumate]

The Flintstones debuted closer to 1901 than today

[cop-disliker69]

If I Posted That Julius Caesar Lived Closer To The Present Day Than To The Construction Of The Great Pyramids Would That Be Fucked Up Or What? 

[argumate]

Julius Caesar lived closer to Rome than Australia

[sullyj3]

Closer to Rome than Australia is to Rome, or closer to Rome than he lived to Australia?

[jadagul]

“This is, by the way, the dirty secret of the machine learning movement: almost everything produced by ML could have been produced, more cheaply, using a very dumb heuristic you coded up by hand, because mostly the ML is trained by feeding it examples of what humans did while following a very dumb heuristic. There’s no magic here. If you use ML to teach a computer how to sort through resumes, it will recommend you interview people with male, white-sounding names, because it turns out that’s what your HR department already does. If you ask it what video a person like you wants to see next, it will recommend some political propaganda crap, because 50% of the time 90% of the people do watch that next, because they can’t help themselves, and that’s a pretty good success rate.”

—

Forget privacy: you’re terrible at targeting anyway - apenwarr (via the-grey-tribe)

I find it fascinating how often machine learning algorithms and other AI are basically “do exactly what we were already doing, but faster”.

[sullyj3]

Isn't the point that often humans struggle to crystallize and operationalize the heuristics they're using, because the knowledge is procedural, rather than declarative? So therefore it's difficult to write those heuristics down as code.

[just-evo-now]

People who think total utilitarianism implies tiling the universe with lives barely worth living are stupid.

[maklodes]

What specific assumptions or logical steps in Parfit’s “repugnant conclusion” argument do you think are stupid? (Note: many people – I’m not saying anyone in particular reading this, but many people – seem to believe that the Repugnant Conclusion argument is just “we want to maximize total utility, which is average utility times population, so it’s possible that total utility would be maximized by a low but positive average utility and a high population.” Without going into Parfit’s argument in detail, I’ll just say that’s not it.) 

[just-evo-now]

Is this for real. I genuinely can’t tell if you’re trolling.

Please point to where I mentioned the Repugnant Conclusion.

[sullyj3]

In Derek Parfit’s original formulation the Repugnant Conclusion is stated as follows: “For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better even though its members have lives that are barely worth living”

You literally use the exact same phrase “barely worth living”. If you’re not talking about the repugnant conclusion, what are you talking about?

[just-evo-now]

… do *you* think the Repugnant Conclusion implies we should tile our universe with lives barely worth living?

If yes, are you *sure*? Have you considered that the set of imaginable universes is the domain of Parfit’s claim, and that the set of *achievable* universes is the domain of claims like ‘total utilitarianism demands that we tile the universe with lives barely worth living’, and that these two sets are not the same?

[sullyj3]

Acting as though the question has absolutely *nothing* to do with the repugnant conclusion seems either deliberately obtuse, or just obtuse.

“Please point to where I mentioned the repugnant conclusion.”

This is just so obnoxious. If you think there’s a distinction, point it out instead of acting like someone’s an idiot for not noticing it.

I’m not particularly interested in debating ethics with you.

[just-evo-now]

I’d be a lot more sympathetic if I hadn’t *already* written an explanation of the difference that anyone who *checks the notes for half a second* can see.

[sullyj3]

"Oh hey maklodes, I actually already answered that question elsewhere in the reblog chain. Check the notes!"