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comment by mk
mk  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I was just on the Diane Rheem show defending bitcoin

Awesome. What motivated you?

It's odd how people not only have strong opinions about bitcoin, but they often are emotionally invested in those opinions. I have also noticed that some of the most enthusiastic supporters and doubters cannot describe the technology very well.

Having discussed it with you, I know you understand it much better than most. What made you pick up the phone?





thenewgreen  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Somebody called in and asked why the people that are being ransomed don't just sue Bitcoin after the fact? The question was actually answered by the panel as if it was a legitimate question. I had to call in and correct them and let them know that in a sense suggesting that you could sue bitcoin would be like suggesting that someone sue cash. It's even more of an impossibility than that given that cash has a central authority and Bitcoin doesn't. I also made the point that people have used cash as ransom for years and nobody talks about how evil cash is, I said that bitcoin isn't the bad guy here.

mk  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, that's pretty ridiculous.

Brings this to mind:

thenewgreen  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  
mk  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Wow. Well done.

Funny, the 'expert' that 'agreed with your second point about cash' didn't actually understand your point. :)

thenewgreen  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, he was the Katie Couric in that call.

kleinbl00  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Oh, man. I haven't seen that in 10 years.

user-inactivated  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    I have also noticed that some of the most enthusiastic supporters and doubters cannot describe the technology very well.

Natural law?

    My first true foray into Bayes For Everyone was writing An Intuitive Explanation of Bayesian Reasoning, still one of my most popular works. This is the Intuitive Explanation's origin story.

    In December of 2002, I'd been sermonizing in a habitual IRC channels about what seemed to me like a very straightforward idea: How words, like all other useful forms of thought, are secretly a disguised form of Bayesian inference. I thought I was explaining clearly, and yet there was one fellow, it seemed, who didn't get it. This worried me, because this was someone who'd been very enthusiastic about my Bayesian sermons up to that point. He'd gone around telling people that Bayes was "the secret of the universe", a phrase I'd been known to use.

    So I went into a private IRC conversation to clear up the sticking point.

    And he still didn't get it.

    I took a step back and explained the immediate prerequisites, which I had thought would be obvious -

    He didn't understand my explanation of the prerequisites.

    In desperation, I recursed all the way back to Bayes's Theorem, the ultimate foundation stone of -

    He didn't know how to apply Bayes's Theorem to update the probability that a fruit is a banana, after it is observed to be yellow. He kept mixing up p(b-y) and p(y-b).

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ki/double_illusion_of_transparency/

Shamelessly ripped out of wasoxygen and I's conversation last night.

Also, since I've never typed probability notation on hubski before, I didn't realize until now that it ruins the quote markup. Of course it does.

iammyownrushmore  ·  3352 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Hey, so are you a fan of yudkowsky's stuff? I've been poking around his blog and lesswrong a bit to try and understand where his "bayesian revolution!" ideas are stemming from. I found that "intuitive" guide to bayesian reasoning anything but, as I didn't really think it covered Bayes' theorem very well, or how the actual application to reasoning or logical problem solving takes place. Then again, I've studied stats before, so that guide may have been written for different audience in mind.

I may just be missing something glaringly obvious, but it, upon casual observation, sort of reminds me of the whole Moldbug thing (in application, not in concept) in that

1) it's long winded and self-aggrandizing, at times, claiming vast implications (this is not a problem, persay, but more so a small red flag making my eyebrow shift upwards a bit)

2) it has some undercurrent ideologically that would innately attract those predisposed towards it already (purer or better rationality? I think?)

Before I go searching around any more, if you maybe have input on where to get a better understanding, I would appreciate it, I'm still at the "what's the rhetorical wheat and chaff here?" point.

user-inactivated  ·  3352 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yes, I am.

If you understand Bayes' Theorem on a probabilistic level, that guide isn't for you. (Truly understand it, mind.) If you're looking for Yudkowsky's patented "how to apply Bayes' Theorem every day and change your life," well, odds are you already do most of what he's talking about. Inferential updating. His Sequences are wonderful reading, in my opinion.

If you don't understand Bayes' Theorem (truly understand it) -- that is, the math -- maybe this will help more. Yudkowsky has not always got a handle on whether people are picking up what he's putting down (as evidenced in the link above).

(1) and (2) are very good "criticisms." Those are essentially the exact statements that most people arrive at if they spend long enough on LessWrong but don't buy in. The reason I put criticism in quotes was that I don't think either is a bad thing, particularly. EDIT: you may or may not know that Yudkowsky himself is a prominent AI researcher. Whether that's a "self-important" thing to be or an "actually-important" one is your call. Very smart people seem to be worried](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/05/stephen-hawking-artificial-intelligence_n_5267481.html](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/05/stephen-hawking-artificial-intelligence_n_5267481.html)).] Markup is going nuts sorry.

The wheat and chaff seems to be this: do you think people act rationally [NB: not a synonym for 'without emotion']? I'm an economist, so I'm supposed to think they do. However, they don't. Next, do you think people should act rationally? That is, should they make well-thought-out decisions that benefit their utility? If no to the first and yes to the second, the logical step seems to be to teach everyone how to think. That's, vulgarly, what Yudkowsky tried to do. Bayes' Theorem is part of it, but the broader points, I think, are eliminating bias and being honest with yourself.

The reasons I like Yudkowsky are several. One, I agree with a lot of his ideas, so reading his writing is positive reinforcement (it should be noted that this is an ironically bad reason -- I'm just being honest). Two, he can really, really write fiction. Three, he's smart. He teaches me things. He says stuff that has legitimately never occurred to me, even about subjects on which I've thought heavily. Four, most important, he was the first person to codify explicitly, in terms I could understand, the way I've been thinking for my entire life. Proverbial lightbulb in the comic strip thing when I first began to explore.

iammyownrushmore  ·  3352 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Word, thanks for the input, I'm gonna snoop around some more, it seems interesting so far.

    Yudkowsky has not always got a handle on whether people are picking up what he's putting down.

This is that thing that both kooks and straight up masters of their craft have in common, so it can get confusing at times.

    (1) and (2) are very good "criticisms."

They weren't criticisms that I want to keep standing behind, I'd rather get at the underlying ideas. More so just general first impressions that left me wanting to double check I'm not just browsing the blog posts of some rationality charlatan. I adhere to some ideologies myself, but I try to keep them in check.

His claims about his version of reasoning supplanting Popper's falsifiability, however, that's some bombastic stuff I want to get in to and see some responses. Philosophy of Science can be a nebulous thing sometimes, but them's fightin words.

user-inactivated  ·  3352 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I wonder if Popper would still believe that today. Falsifiability gets brought up in the many worlds context all the time.

b_b  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Also, since I've never typed probability notation on hubski before, I didn't realize until now that it ruins the quote markup. Of course it does.

Haha! I had the same problem explaining Bayes' theorem to lil a week or two ago. So frustrating. Where's that goddam escape key, mk?!

user-inactivated  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

MathJax works really well for /r/math.

b_b  ·  3352 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Wow. Thanks!

mk  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

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b_b  ·  3353 days ago  ·  link  ·  

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