@sciuru's banner p

sciuru


				

				

				
0 followers   follows 0 users  
joined 2022 September 04 18:24:50 UTC

				

User ID: 63

sciuru


				
				
				

				
0 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 04 18:24:50 UTC

					

No bio...


					

User ID: 63

I mean is it? Quantitative Realism doesn't exactly seem self evident.

Isn't Computational Complexity Theory supposed to tackle questions of this kind?

Scott Aaronson offered the following highly evocative metaphor:

The best definition of complexity theory I can think of is that it’s quantitative theology: the mathematical study of hypothetical superintelligent beings such as gods. Its concerns include:

  • If a God or gods existed, how could they reveal themselves to mortals? (IP=PSPACE, or MIP=NEXP in the polytheistic case.)
  • Which gods are mightier than which other gods? (PNP vs. PP, SZK vs. QMA, BQPNP vs. NPBQP, etc. etc.)
  • Could a munificent God choose to bestow His omniscience on a mortal? (EXP vs. P/poly.)
  • Can oracles be trusted? (Can oracles be trusted?)

And of course:

  • Could mortals ever become godlike themselves? (P vs. NP, BQP vs. NP.)

Although I doubt such general questions and theories are that helpful in guiding our research: they provide boundaries for what is possible, but what is practical typically lies far away from those boundaries.

...Please contact your local soul provider for further information

What else could be useable?

Somewhat speculative, but non-invasive recording of brain activity seems like a promising underutilized modality. When sufficiently discreet devices reach the market -- say, for controlling your phone -- they would be worn anyway, continuously throughout the day, so just add a few more lines about personal data collection in a license agreement. To get labeled data, make an app which prompts humans with various signals and records their reaction. Gamify, pay if needed, etc. Seems scalable.

Keynes' recent biography by Zachary D. Carter (among other books, as part of a broader effort to study interwar period; would be glad to discuss)

Dr. Krauss simply replied: "no".

Nice example. I think it's a decent stance. Compressing models/theories is always lossy and it takes a special skill to map them onto simpler models/metaphors, while keeping predictive power intact. If you are unsure how to do this, don't do this.

b/c he was actually a professor of mine in college

Sounds cool. What was the experience like?

Disclaimer: although I consider them high-quality by various proxy measures, ultimately I don't have enough knowledge to assess most of their takes.

Off the top of my head:

  1. Conversations with Tyler (misc);
  2. Any interview with Michael Everything-is-contingent Kofman, eg regular ones on the War on the Rocks (Ru-Ukr war, Ru military history);
  3. Ones and Tooze, by Adam Tooze (misc econ);
  4. SigmaNutrition (typically interviews with the authors of papers/books, discussion of nutrition research and methodology);

There is more, of course. Speaking of literal examples (from CwT):

Claudia Goldin:

COWEN: Let me ask a question I’ve been wondering about. Why does China, right now, have so many of the world’s self-made female billionaires?

GOLDIN: I don’t know, but I wouldn’t mind being one. [laughs]

Joseph Henrich

COWEN: But productivity growth is falling, right? In most countries? This baffles me.

HENRICH: You mean why productivity growth is falling?

COWEN: Right. Japan, US, Western Europe. Productivity growth is lower than it was, say, before the ’80s. I don’t blame the Internet for that, but it doesn’t seem to have helped very much.

HENRICH: I’m a cultural evolutionist so I want to see this on much longer time scale. Ask me in 200 years.

[laughter]

COWEN: OK. 200 years, we’ll have you back for a second episode.

[...]

HENRICH: I’m not sure that that necessarily follows.

COWEN: But it’s a coherent cultural pessimist scenario.

HENRICH: [laughs] I’ll have to think about it more.

Paul Graham:

COWEN: Were the Medici good venture capitalists, or do you give greater credit to the Florentine guilds?

GRAHAM: I have no idea. I need to learn more about the —

COWEN: The guilds would run competitions. The Medici would just pick the people they liked. They both have good records in different ways, but obviously, they’re competing models.

GRAHAM: You’re an economist. You’ve read books about this stuff. I don’t know. What do I know about the Medici? [laughs]

But someone who says, "I don't know -- but I'd like to find out!" presents intellectual curiosity and actually increases my perception of their intelligence.

It fascinates me when academics, interviewed on some high-quality podcasts, reply with a point-blank "I don't know". And only after host adds more explicit hedging and reframes the question as the one aimed at best guess (instead of what they've probably been taught to perceive as "give me an up-to-date overview of the field on this question" query) they respond with an account, naturally transcending a median listener's knowledge on the topic by a large margin. Such public talks seem like a promising venue to instill (or at least popularize) the courage of admitting your ignorance.