You close your eyes…
You close your eyes, and you dream. And then you wake up, and you think you remember your dream. But you are now in the Outer World, and you think in terms of the Outer World. What you remember is but a thin slice, the part that can be understood in terms of the Outer World. It is not the Inner World, it is a hint of its surface, as seen from the outside. So you forget, all but a slice, and you...
Read MoreTrying to understand
“You’re not even trying to understand me”, my friend burst out, frustrated when I’d objected to something that they’d said. I don’t remember my exact response, nor even what the topic actually was. But I do remember being just as frustrated as they were, because I was putting quite a lot of effort into trying to understand what they were saying. It was just...
Read MoreDon’t trust people, trust their components
I used to think that people were either trustworthy, semi-trustworthy, or unreliable. Basically, there was a single scale, and if you were high enough on that scale, you could be counted on when it came to anything important. My model wasn’t quite this simplistic – for instance, I did acknowledge that someone like my mother could be trustworthy for me but less motivated in helping out...
Read MoreSocial media vignettes: January 2014 edition
Working together, the Elves and Sauron created sixteen Rings of Power, each of which held an advanced artificial intelligence capable of enhancing its wielder’s power. But Sauron tricked the elves, for he had installed a backdoor in each of the AIs: and he then created the One Ring, the world’s most sophisticated portable supercomputer, which he equipped with the cryptographic keys...
Read MoreApplying reinforcement learning theory to reduce felt temporal distance
Computer science for mind hackers: it is a basic principle of reinforcement learning to distinguish between reward and value, where the reward of a state is the immediate, intrinsic desirability of the state, whereas the value of the state is proportional to the rewards of the other states that you can reach from that state. For example, suppose that I’m playing a competitive game of chess,...
Read MoreBayesian academy game: A core mechanic
I feel like my progress with my academy game has been frustratingly slow. Lots of natural language, little code. Over Christmas leave I finally put together a simple Bayes net and belief propagation implementation, but when I was about to move on to start actually implementing the game side of things, I realized that some of the things that I had planned didn’t quite work after all. Then I...
Read MoreBayesian academy game: Some game mechanics
So far I have spoken about the possibility of edugames being good, sketched out the basic idea of an edugame built around Bayesian networks, and outlined some design constraints. Now it’s finally the time to get to the actual meat of the matter – the game mechanics. Note that everything here is subject to change. I’m aiming to outline things to a sufficient level of detail that I have a...
Read MoreBayesian academy game: Constraints
My work on my Master’s thesis and the Bayesian academy game was temporarily interrupted when I had to focus on finishing the work I had piled up for another course. Now I’m slowly trying to get back into the flow, so here’s a post on some of the things that I’ll be trying to keep in mind while creating the game, and which should help shape its design. This post is still somewhat abstract:...
Read MoreHow to make it easier to receive constructive criticism?
Typically finding out about the flaws in something that we did feels bad because we realize that our work was worse than we thought, so receiving the criticism feels like ending up in a worse state than we were in before. One way to avoid this feeling would be to reflect on the fact that the work was already flawed before we found out about it, so the criticism was a net improvement, allowing us...
Read MoreTowards meaningfully gamifying Bayesian Networks, or, just what can you do with them
In my previous article, I argued that educational games could be good if they implemented their educational content in a meaningful way. This means making the player actually use the educational material to predict the possible consequences of different choices within the game, in such a manner that the choices will have both short- and long-term consequences. More specifically, I talked about my...
Read MoreTeaching Bayesian networks by means of social scheming, or, why edugames don’t have to suck
As a part of my Master’s thesis in Computer Science, I am designing a game which seeks to teach its players a subfield of math known as Bayesian networks, hopefully in a fun and enjoyable way. This post explains some of the basic design and educational philosophy behind the game, and will hopefully also convince you that educational games don’t have to suck. I will start by discussing a...
Read MoreJust talk to him/her/it
My rule of thumb for romantic relationships and close friendships, for when the other person did something that bothers you and you’re wondering whether it’s worth bringing up. If you end up spending any non-trivial amount of time wondering whether to say anything, then that alone is already bothering you enough that it’s worth bringing up. In my experience, such things are...
Read MoreDoing Good in the Addiction Economy
The world is becoming ever-more addictive and distracting, showering us with short-term rewards. But we can still take control of those mechanisms in order to do good in the world, and make ourselves into better people.
Read MoreWhat we’ve got here is a failure to communicate scientific evidence
One of the biggest ways by which scientists and science-minded people fail to communicate with laypeople, I think, is with the phrase “there’s no scientific evidence for X”. Suppose that a layperson comes to a scientist and explains excitedly that he just heard of a new way to [raise children/lose weight/cure illnesses] that works great, and everyone should adopt that method at...
Read MoreBook review: Mindmelding: Consciousness, Neuroscience, and the Mind’s Privacy
Mindmelding: Consciousness, Neuroscience, and the Mind’s Privacy. William Hirstein. Oxford University Press. I found this book by accident, when somebody on Facebook happened to share a link to its Amazon page. I was intrigued to read the title, and even more intrigued to read the Amazon blurb: William Hirstein argues that it is indeed possible for one person to directly experience the...
Read MoreCreativity exercise
I have taken up the habit of going on daily walks and coming up with a novel interpretation for at least one thing that I see while out there. Here’s what I have so far. The X in this traffic sign stands for “radiation X”. In a world where both biology and physics are different, some kinds of radiation affect certain chromosomes more strongly than others. The sign warns...
Read MorePersonal change
As we grow older, we change. This is commonly attributed to changes in ourselves – aging changing the way our brains work, accumulating experience making us wiser or more set in our ways, and so on. But: Why cannot you truly stay as a child forever? Because as time passes, people will change their attitude towards you: they will expect you to give up childish behaviors and adopt mature...
Read MoreResponses to Catastrophic AGI Risk: A Survey
Of the (admittedly not many) papers I’ve written so far, this is the one that I’m the proudest of: Responses to Catastrophic AGI Risk: A Survey Abstract: Many researchers have argued that humanity will create artificial general intelligence (AGI) within the next twenty to one hundred years. It has been suggested that AGI may pose a catastrophic risk to humanity. After summarizing the...
Read MorePeter Singer on Effective Altruism
I don’t usually do link posts, but I think that this video on Effective Altruism is one that everyone should watch. Share this:TweetShare on Tumblr
Read MoreJasen Murray on tranquility meditation
Since the page that I previously used to link to for a description of how to do tranquility meditation has died, I’m reposting the instructions here. I found them very useful in getting started with meditation, and they seemed to work better for me than any other instructions. Original credit for writing them goes to Jasen Murray. —- Very brief summary: Use either the breath or metta...
Read More
This work by Kaj Sotala is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
In addition to making a public comment, you may also send me anonymous feedback.