Yes, and just as with the hitchhikers guide's question, as soon as this machine would be made, it would be part of the calculations and become infinitely more complex and weird.
The fact that breaks rationalists' brains: a computer cannot simulate another computer of equal size with full fidelity while doing anything else at the same time.
If we argue from a position of "Putin is never going to act rationally no matter what" then we can get our hypothetical Putin to do literally anything, since the only justification we will ever need for our prognosis is "Putin doesn't act rationally."
But to such a Putin, models of his army's capabilities are meaningless, since he doesn't act rationally. You could tell him his army wouldn't be able to fight a banana and he'd still attack the entire world simultaneously. There's no real point to an argument like that.
So instead we must assume that he puts some stock in the models he's given. And if those models had accurately represented reality they would have told him that this war would greatly weaken Russia's geopolitical position and maybe result in territorial losses rather than gains. It'd take a lot to convince me that Putin is happy with how things have gone so far.
I never said he could *never* act rationally. I do believe that he's 100% capable of acting with blatant disregard for the lives of his soldiers and civilians. Magically giving him the ability to see the war wouldn't last three days doesn't mean he's not going to still think it's worth it. They haven't lost yet.
He did this for his legacy. He thinks taking back Ukraine will put him in history books. I'm not convinced that dream of his would be dissuaded by a long war rather than a short invasion. I don't think he's happy with how things are going but it's clearly not going so poorly in his mind that he pulls his troops out.
I think he's chasing sunk costs at this point. If he pulls out *now* all of Russia's losses will have been for nothing, and everybody will know it. As long as he can string people along by promising them the Endsieg he can avoid that particular fiasco, and as you say all it requires is blatant disregard for the lives of others.
But if he could turn back time to before the invasion, I think he would take that option. As you say, he isn't happy with how things are going. And if we're assuming accurate models, if we're assuming that he knew in February 2022 what he and we know now, then I don't think he would have invaded in the first place.
I think this is close to right. It’s worth remembering though that while the war has been a disaster for Ukraine, and for Russia, it hasn’t exactly been a disaster for Putin, as far as we can tell from the outside. Becoming more dependent on Xi is a price worth paying to maintain his position and hold on power. And it’s not like the further destruction of Russian civil society hurts him personally, at least in the short term.
I think if he had an accurate crystal ball in 2022 he still probably would have done *something* to Ukraine, given the combination of his alleged growing personal interest in it and the domestic political incentives. It seems to me he would have scaled back his ambitions and focused on a shorter, more decisive victory over much smaller (and more Russian-agnostic) territory. Seizing just Kharkiv or Mariupol and then aggressively pursuing a stalemate / detente seems like it could have more or less worked. Even a small conflict gets him most of the political benefits (opportunities to purge dissenters, demonstrative outrage from the West he can use to push an us vs them framework, and shoring up his credibility on his right flank) and avoided the main costs (permanently losing oil/gas customers and being perceived internally as an ineffective wartime leader.)
It’s also worth remembering that although the specific invasion in 2022 was Putin’s decision, a lot of the dynamics leading up to the crisis were driven at least as much by domestic politics within Russian and within Ukraine. There’s an unhealthy dynamic where it’s politically useful to have a “them” to blame problems on, but of course doing so causes hostilities to increase, increasing the domestic incentive to escalate rhetoric, etc., etc. Repeat this long enough and you run out of escalation options beyond war. I am not saying this *particular* war was inevitable, just that Putin’s personal state of mind is not some contextless decision machine which could just wave everything away.
That's my reaction to people who are like "Couldn't you just replace animal testing with a simulation?"
The simulation would only be as good as our understanding of the entirety of the biological systems. Which isn't that great, especially when a new, poorly understood compound or device is involved.
Simulation is best for visualizing systems the operation of which are pretty well understood, not discovering novel interactions with poorly-understood complex systems.
This is basically my response to people who are worried AI will create some kind of novel virus that can selectively kill specific populations. Biology ain’t that straightforward you idiot. But then again, we are arguing with people who live in a fantasy world where anything is possible through AI.
Well, a lot of these people are also eugenicists, so "there's a specific genetic marker that can be identified that reliably corresponds with only a single socially constructed population group" is kinda their bread and butter.
I think they can also help in determining scientific problems which have well understood parameters but take lots of time to perform confirming experiments, i.e. things like harbor water and erosion dynamics, aerospace design, etc. They also, paradoxically, can be helpful when determining how simple a system can be- computer simulations have been very helpful at mapping emergent behavior in bird flocking and eusocialist organisms.
You are absolutely correct about them only being as good as the experimental/observational understand and frame work, an issue not enough people understand.
This is one of those ideas which is so idiotic that to properly
refute it would involve so much work that it would be easier to just
wipe the guys memory and start from scratch.
Pretty much the whole of rationalist ideology is predicated on the idea that they can understand literally everything just by being smart enough and thinking real good. So it's natural for them to assume that you could just take an inventory of all your tanks and shit and then simulate your army vs another guy's army. Just code it up in python, how hard could it possibly be?
It's the sort of delusion you can only indulge in if you've never tried to actually accomplish anything.
Destroy all the equipment that would have been lost and kill everyone that would have died. "Sorry kid, I know you love your dad, but this blockchain says he's KIA."
Crazy idea here, but just maybe a significant part of warfare (or
avoidance thereof) is making sure that nobody is exactly sure about what
your true capabilities are.
“Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using
our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the
enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe
we are near.”
Also, he is desperately committed to shoehorning crypto into this
idea somehow, because IMMUTABLE or something.
And the war in heaven doesn't even work lmfao. As soon as it becomes clear that the anti-hell side is going to lose they (entirely justifiably) break the rules by starting to fuck around in physical reality.
Local tech fetishist rediscovers the concepts of deterrence and
compellence but can only conceive of it happening via an omnipotent
entity that uses crypto for some fucking reason, news at 11.
Every single diplomat who agonized over the inspection clauses of late Cold War nuclear disarmament treaties slapping their heads in realization that they should’ve just asked Roko the genius
Now I may be a dumb bastard, but didn’t the Taliban “win” a superior
fighting force? I imagine if we told the Taliban hey we ran the numbers
and it says we fuck you up so we own the country. They would still do
what they were always going to do, make it too costly for the US,
politically and monetarily.
The thing is, the Taliban didn’t win because they were better at shooting than the US Army. Even in the *best* possible tactical situations (I.E. the [Battle of Kamdesh](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kamdesh), where the Taliban outnumbered American troops, completely surrounded them, and had heavy weapons emplaced on the high ground all around them), the Taliban took significantly more casualties than US troops. The problem is, winning firefights and killing people doesn’t win a war like Afghanistan. The US’ goal in Afghanistan wasn’t just to beat the Taliban on the field of battle - the US had to build a stable Afghan democracy. All the Taliban had to do was make that slow enough and costly enough that the US would give up and go home. And that’s what happened - the US withdrew from Afghanistan without being able to build a stable government, and the US-backed regime almost immediately collapsed.
What does this mean for our war simulation? Well, if we want it to simulate the outcome of “US vs Taliban”, it not only has to accurately simulate *fights* between the Taliban and the U.S. military, it also has to simulate *the entire process of trying to build a government and a functioning modern society*. Every provincial election, every economic development, every single Afghani’s sentiment towards the US and the democracy the US tried to build. It’s basically asking for an AI that can just completely simulate an entire 1:1 scale model of the country of Afghanistan from 2001-2022.
I’m sure that’ll be a simple job! Just make techno-Afghanistan and then the Taliban will give up!
Ah, well, the simulation would predict that the Taliban would win obviously, because computers are never wrong.
Unless it doesn't, in which case the Taliban are dirty cheaters who engage in all sorts of unsporting conduct and won unfairly
Someone mentioned this in another thread, but I can’t get it out of
my head. Are we the butt of the joke? Like, do these guys have a
subreddit where they are just trolling us with these hot takes?
For this to be true they would have to:
A) have stopped having genuinely stupid takes since this sub only exists as a byproduct of their stupid takes
B) exercise enough self awareness to not only post stupid takes ironically, but also to separate their stupid takes from hypothetical non stupid takes which, in this situation, would be being posted elsewhere.
Yeah definitely too radical an idea, that’s why not. Most practical
rationalist. Also I bet he somehow thinks he’d be good at a computer war
or whatever lol. RTS-brain
Ignoring the questions of whether it’s possible to simulate a complex
emergent phenomenon like warfare perfectly (questionable), whether
countries have an incentive to put in accurate figures (very unlikely),
or whether all actors have an incentive to abide by such a simulation’s
results (they don’t)… has it not occurred to him that all actors have a
massive incentive to exaggerate their forces here, rendering the entire
exercise pointless? You can improve your chances of simulation victory
by pretending you have a division of tanks that doesn’t exist, but that
won’t help you on a real battlefield.
Edit: The more of that thread I read, the more I’m convinced Roko
genuinely doesn’t understand why wars happen or how they work.
Also remember that these machines are weird. Like how chess masters get beaten by chess computers, but the chess computers then get beaten by weird strats a real human would never fall for.
Very rock paper scissors.
interesting point, but chess computers can't be beaten by "weird strats," they're just too good at making the objectively best move in any position.I think you're thinking of GO, where that actually did work, fairly recently. I think that's because 1, more effort has been put into optimizing chess engines, 2. chess engines don't primarily rely on ML, and 3. (and I say this lovingly) go is a lot more complex than chess.
Why even bother making models and having each side simulate their
capabilities, when we could simply create a prediction market for a war,
let the free market put money into it, then obviously that would be a
way of finding truth so each side would never want to go to war because
the market would have clearly proven which side would win and they could
act accordingly? Surely there’s no way that could go wrong.
This is like a stupid version of that movie Robot Jox, in which all
of earth’s major power conflicts are solved by battling giant power
ranger-esque robots as an alternative to waging war.
It's also the premise of a notoriously bad Marvel Transformers comic where Optimus Prime and Megatron fight in virtual reality because the Decepticons, if they fight the Autobots for real, will destroy the very thing they want to steal and the Autobots want to save. Optimus Prime commits suicide because he loses the video game battle.
https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Afterdeath!
It's also like the plot of an anime called Heavy Object that might have been inspired by Robot Jox.
After reading through a couple of these examples, I thought of an even more embarrassing one. It's a tech version of the Twilight Breaking Dawn ending.
“Is it possible that experts in [insert non STEM field] have thought
seriously about their area of expertise and study? Can it be that
subjects where you can’t assume axiomatic starting conditions and
control every variable might have degrees of emergent complexity such
that I couldn’t blow them open with some asinine ‘one weird trick?’??
No, everyone else must just be fucking morons.” - this dude and every
one of these lw dipshits.
Seriously this is so embarrassing, reading probably half of the
opening paragraph of the Offensive Realism wikipedia page would have
been sufficient to refute this stupid, stupid idea.
Even if you could, what do yo think is going to happen? Citizens are
going to be like, “oh well we lost the simulation, guess it is time to
welcome our new overlords and learn a new language.”
When i read something like Crock-o’s post (meaning basically anything
these guys bother to post) i keep in mind, healthily, in the very back
of my mind, that when i was in my early 20s i also had that kind of
“golden boy fever” where regularly i was thinking the idea i “came up
with” had revolutionary potential. I cured myself from this fever
ironically enough by using reason and bothering to spend at least 15
minutes creatively googling to find out if anyone else had thought of it
first. I came to the conclusion that pretty much anything anyone can
think of was thought of before, and many have even made their Ph.D.’s
about it. they could realize this too if they applied reason and logic
instead of chasing that sweet rush of dopamine you get when for a few
minutes you feel like a saviour figure, a golden boy, a revolutionary, a
visionary… humility is an acquired taste for some people but when you
“get it” it really makes you stronger.
People often talk about Roko’s Basalisk being an IRL cognitohazard.
It turns out that this is not due to any feature of the argument itself.
Rather, anything coming out of Rokos mouth is painfully stupid, and thus
mentally hazardous.
Pretending this isn’t an idiotic rhetorical question for a sec: there
was some interesting work a few years back about using “physical
cryptography” to publicly verify
the existence of nuclear warheads without compromising any secrets
about weapon design.
I don’t think it involved ZK proofs though, so forget I said
anything.
This is like the crazy autistic guy who keeps posting his game center
on kickstarter. The idea sounds reasonable and workabkle to him and he
lacks any kind of analysis to find fault.
Ah yes Roko, and how would this inspection regime to ensure accuracy
be enforced?
‘Couldn’t both sides just create a really accurate model of their capabilities . . .’
No!
This is one of those ideas which is so idiotic that to properly refute it would involve so much work that it would be easier to just wipe the guys memory and start from scratch.
implement the outcome of the sim
Crazy idea here, but just maybe a significant part of warfare (or avoidance thereof) is making sure that nobody is exactly sure about what your true capabilities are.
“Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
Also, he is desperately committed to shoehorning crypto into this idea somehow, because IMMUTABLE or something.
This is also the war in heaven from the culture series
Local tech fetishist rediscovers the concepts of deterrence and compellence but can only conceive of it happening via an omnipotent entity that uses crypto for some fucking reason, news at 11.
“A Taste of Armageddon” (TOS 1:23)
The comment where he says, blithely and without any apparent self reflection, we could just have an inspection regime.
Now I may be a dumb bastard, but didn’t the Taliban “win” a superior fighting force? I imagine if we told the Taliban hey we ran the numbers and it says we fuck you up so we own the country. They would still do what they were always going to do, make it too costly for the US, politically and monetarily.
Someone mentioned this in another thread, but I can’t get it out of my head. Are we the butt of the joke? Like, do these guys have a subreddit where they are just trolling us with these hot takes?
Yeah definitely too radical an idea, that’s why not. Most practical rationalist. Also I bet he somehow thinks he’d be good at a computer war or whatever lol. RTS-brain
Ignoring the questions of whether it’s possible to simulate a complex emergent phenomenon like warfare perfectly (questionable), whether countries have an incentive to put in accurate figures (very unlikely), or whether all actors have an incentive to abide by such a simulation’s results (they don’t)… has it not occurred to him that all actors have a massive incentive to exaggerate their forces here, rendering the entire exercise pointless? You can improve your chances of simulation victory by pretending you have a division of tanks that doesn’t exist, but that won’t help you on a real battlefield.
Edit: The more of that thread I read, the more I’m convinced Roko genuinely doesn’t understand why wars happen or how they work.
As usual, Roko’s missed the real point here.
Why even bother making models and having each side simulate their capabilities, when we could simply create a prediction market for a war, let the free market put money into it, then obviously that would be a way of finding truth so each side would never want to go to war because the market would have clearly proven which side would win and they could act accordingly? Surely there’s no way that could go wrong.
This is like a stupid version of that movie Robot Jox, in which all of earth’s major power conflicts are solved by battling giant power ranger-esque robots as an alternative to waging war.
“Is it possible that experts in [insert non STEM field] have thought seriously about their area of expertise and study? Can it be that subjects where you can’t assume axiomatic starting conditions and control every variable might have degrees of emergent complexity such that I couldn’t blow them open with some asinine ‘one weird trick?’?? No, everyone else must just be fucking morons.” - this dude and every one of these lw dipshits.
Seriously this is so embarrassing, reading probably half of the opening paragraph of the Offensive Realism wikipedia page would have been sufficient to refute this stupid, stupid idea.
Do we get to wear those weird one-pant-leg-sash things, ’cause I always thought that was one of the better TOS looks
Even if you could, what do yo think is going to happen? Citizens are going to be like, “oh well we lost the simulation, guess it is time to welcome our new overlords and learn a new language.”
When i read something like Crock-o’s post (meaning basically anything these guys bother to post) i keep in mind, healthily, in the very back of my mind, that when i was in my early 20s i also had that kind of “golden boy fever” where regularly i was thinking the idea i “came up with” had revolutionary potential. I cured myself from this fever ironically enough by using reason and bothering to spend at least 15 minutes creatively googling to find out if anyone else had thought of it first. I came to the conclusion that pretty much anything anyone can think of was thought of before, and many have even made their Ph.D.’s about it. they could realize this too if they applied reason and logic instead of chasing that sweet rush of dopamine you get when for a few minutes you feel like a saviour figure, a golden boy, a revolutionary, a visionary… humility is an acquired taste for some people but when you “get it” it really makes you stronger.
People often talk about Roko’s Basalisk being an IRL cognitohazard. It turns out that this is not due to any feature of the argument itself. Rather, anything coming out of Rokos mouth is painfully stupid, and thus mentally hazardous.
This is how I know this guy doesn’t watch sports.
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Take control of your life and make an account on lemmy: https://join-lemmy.org/
Pretending this isn’t an idiotic rhetorical question for a sec: there was some interesting work a few years back about using “physical cryptography” to publicly verify the existence of nuclear warheads without compromising any secrets about weapon design.
I don’t think it involved ZK proofs though, so forget I said anything.
This is like the crazy autistic guy who keeps posting his game center on kickstarter. The idea sounds reasonable and workabkle to him and he lacks any kind of analysis to find fault.
Ah yes Roko, and how would this inspection regime to ensure accuracy be enforced?