# Technology doesn't work that way - SamuelA's Pit Thread **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 3, 2017, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420 "2017-12-03T00:52:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 38
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/741 "2018-01-25T15:08:27Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > He’s so incredibly non-racist that he probably even starts a lot of dinner-table conversations with comments like, “I’m not a racist, but …”. I bet he even has a black friend. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/742 "2018-01-25T15:50:28Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > It appears that it’s not only on the subject of technology that **SamuelA** can provide novel and illuminating insights. Here he holds forth in an excellent new treatise on the subjects of immigration, race, and Making America Great Again™. Here we have one of the great minds of the day addressing one of the truly challenging issues of our times. You can read it starting with post #73 on [page 2 of this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=847323&page=2). I cannot hope that my humble summary will do it justice, but I’ve tried to convey the essence of it. For the sake of brevity, I’ve cut to the chase of what he’s really saying and not bothered with the dog whistles. > > America became successful because it was settled by the superior Aryan race, white northern Europeans. There wasn’t much in the way of formal immigration criteria prior to the 1920s, but that was OK because only decent white Europeans could afford to come here, so it all worked out. And after that it was biased by race and ethnicity with favoritism toward exactly the right kind of white northern Europeans, which was great! Oh, sure, in the 19th century a bunch of Chinese started coming in, but the 19th century was great because the rules worked pretty much according to the rules of **SamuelA** : laws were soon passed putting a stop to that sort of thing, see? So that worked out OK, too, when we kicked their little yellow oriental butts and made it clear they weren’t welcome. > > Now inferior races from shithole countries want to come in – most of them even worse than Chinese – and this must be stopped. Don’t bother about their qualifications, just look at the shitholes they live in! It’s not that **SamuelA** is racist or anything – heaven forfend! – this is just Aumann’s theorem of rationality as expressed by **SamuelA** ’s posterior. We know he’s not racist because he tells us many times, just like he tells us that he’s absolutely right about computation and how the brain works. It’s so obvious that he’s right about all these things that you’d have to be an idiot not to see it. We assume that he totally loves inferior races from shithole countries, as long as they stay in their shithole countries and don’t mess up the ones that decent people live in. Did I mention that **SamuelA** is not a racist? Yes, I did, but you can never say it too often. He’s so incredibly non-racist that he probably even starts a lot of dinner-table conversations with comments like, “I’m not a racist, but …”. This is why you’re on ignore. You are massively mis-characterizing what I wrote. > [@Default Yes Immigration](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/default-yes-immigration/806975/79): > > a. **The facts are** , our ancestors didn’t in reality let just anyone in pre-1920. I don’t know where the 12 million Chinese workers went, they aren’t there in the **census data.** > > b. Some people are probably better than others as individuals, regardless of race. We should **go by merit** instead of having just “no limits, anyone and everyone”. So no, you’re full of shit. I said things to this effect several times. You can’t fucking claim a massively different strategy than the one used in the past is going to work just as well. For some reason, letting in 84% Europeans and another group involuntarily worked. Those are the facts. You’re a fucking racist yourself if you see no other explanation than “europeans are superior”. And I don’t propose going back to the old strategy, which is a valid thing to do. Doing what worked before in the past has a higher probability of working than just picking a random strategy. I propose using our shiny new computers that can compute approximate probabilities from data and to pick the right citizens by a model that factors in their probability of success. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/743 "2018-01-25T15:51:35Z")
> [@TroutMan](#): > > I bet he even has a black friend. Does the detached head in his freezer count as a friend? CMC fnord! ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/744 "2018-01-25T16:09:15Z")
> [@crowmanyclouds](#): > > Does the detached head in his freezer count as a friend? > > CMC fnord! C’mon, don’t mis-characterize me. Everyone knows you can’t store human brains in a regular freezer, and you’d be frankly irresponsible to store one at home. You need to immerse them in liquid nitrogen in a cryostat and make sure they are guarded by serious security with backup and monitoring systems, you uncivilized heathen. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/745 "2018-01-25T16:17:56Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > C’mon, don’t mis-characterize me. Everyone knows you can’t store human brains in a regular freezer, and you’d be frankly irresponsible to store one at home. You need to immerse them in liquid nitrogen in a cryostat and make sure they are guarded by serious security with backup and monitoring systems, you uncivilized heathen. Burying that dead meat would be cheaper. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/746 "2018-01-25T16:17:57Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > Then why claim to ignore me and say you don’t care as loudly and repeatedly as possible? > > You know I don’t claim to know the answer to your question because I don’t know the way the future will go. Ultimately all that theorem really means in this context, as wolfpup points out : > > a. Physical reality is a game with fixed rules. Like all games, one and only one optimal strategy exists, given the same end goal. > > b. As smarter beings begin to replace humans - whether that be AIs, cyborgs, genetically engineered humans, it doesn’t matter - those beings will have the neural ability to \*follow \*more optimal strategies. I know what I am doing now is not optimal, but my cave man emotions won’t let me do what I know is better. (hence I don’t have a 6-pack, 5 girlfriends, and a job as a quant making 500k a year, even though there exists a sequence of actions I could have logically worked out and taken to get there if I were an inhuman, rational agent) > > c. Smarter beings will also have vastly more memory capacity and ability to share data with each other digitally. > > Hence, if beings can share data with each other digitally, and analyze it using the most optimal strategy they know about in common, they will reach the same conclusion. In the same way that 2 calculators agree with each other as wolfpup points out. > > Part of the reason this idea has impressed me is that religion, politics, personal lifestyle choices - they are all _strategies_ to accomplish goals. Given the same goals and knowledge of the optimal strategy, rational beings wouldn’t have 5000 opinions for religion/politics/personal choices. A _correct_ answer (where correct means "most probable strategy to accomplish your goals) exists for each of these “taboo” topics. > > If you encountered another being with a different opinion, you could just plug your serial ports together or whatever and swap memory files. You would literally be able to work out mathematically why that being’s opinion is different. Maybe one of you is unaware of the most optimal strategy - you could share it with the other, they could run that strategy on their experiences, determine it has a higher expected value, and switch over. This only works if we also share the same goals. Just the difference of you liking chocolate ice cream, and me preferring vanilla means that that won’t work. And if your solution to that is that we will DETERMINE which is better, and that we will all like chocolate from then on, what you are describing isn’t a post singularity society, it is a hive mind. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/747 "2018-01-25T16:22:39Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > This only works if we also share the same goals. Just the difference of you liking chocolate ice cream, and me preferring vanilla means that that won’t work. > > And if your solution to that is that we will DETERMINE which is better, and that we will all like chocolate from then on, what you are describing isn’t a post singularity society, it is a hive mind. Isn’t it funny how all those who support the idea of “hive minds” automatically assume that theirs will be the mind the hive is based on? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/748 "2018-01-25T16:30:38Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > This is why you’re on ignore. You are massively mis-characterizing what I wrote. Hilarious. Do you not understand how to ignore someone? ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/749 "2018-01-25T16:35:31Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > This only works if we also share the same goals. Just the difference of you liking chocolate ice cream, and me preferring vanilla means that that won’t work. That’s implicitly true, yes. However, in a large population pool, you most likely will be able to find fellow chocolate lovers, and you would then be able to share data and strategies for finding more chocolate. At the end of the sharing both of you would have agreed on the optimal strategy that finds the most chocolate. Similarly, if you think of preferences as weights between 0 and 1, it’s clearly possible for someone with a different set of preference weights to look at your preference matrix and give you advice that would be verifiably correct as to how to maximize your preferences, even if they do not share them. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/750 "2018-01-25T17:18:15Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > That’s implicitly true, yes. However, in a large population pool, you most likely will be able to find fellow chocolate lovers, and you would then be able to share data and strategies for finding more chocolate. At the end of the sharing both of you would have agreed on the optimal strategy that finds the most chocolate. Yes, kill all the vanilla loving heathens. > [@](#): > > Similarly, if you think of preferences as weights between 0 and 1, it’s clearly possible for someone with a different set of preference weights to look at your preference matrix and give you advice that would be verifiably correct as to how to maximize your preferences, even if they do not share them. Have you met people? People can’t quantify their own likes and desires. If you asked someone to make a list of their favorite foods, it would be different on a tuesday vs a saturday. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/751 "2018-01-25T17:27:05Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Yes, kill all the vanilla loving heathens. > Have you met people? People can’t quantify their own likes and desires. If you asked someone to make a list of their favorite foods, it would be different on a tuesday vs a saturday. That’s because people are imprecise. There’s no output ports. Our neural networks have weights but they are inconsistent and float as different neurons temporarily glitch or run out of ATP or give the wrong output from noise. But average weights do exist, we just can’t measure them with present day methods. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/752 "2018-01-25T18:06:53Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Hilarious. Do you not understand how to ignore someone? Yeah, it’s rather mystifying. Clearly Sam is still having trouble groking the whole Ignore concept. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/753 "2018-01-25T18:16:09Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > That’s because people are imprecise. There’s no output ports. I can think of at least one. ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/754 "2018-01-25T18:19:51Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > That’s because people are imprecise. There’s no output ports. These are two wildly different things. There _are_ “output ports.” I’m using one right now. (Two, actually, since I’m speaking to someone as I type.) I guess what you mean to say is that there are no _perfectly precise_ output methods…which itself is a quite data-rich statement, in that it begs a number of questions out of proportion to its brevity. . ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/755 "2018-01-25T18:22:00Z")
Also, would you mind sharing a link to your ongoing discussions at LessWrong/LesserWrong? And your SN there? ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/756 "2018-01-25T18:43:02Z")
You know what. Sam deserves credit for trying so hard. If he ever gets this shit right, then applies this same tenacity to what he’s doing, he’ll go far. You just have to get the shit right first Sam. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/757 "2018-01-25T19:02:21Z")
[Ignore me!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMNJuSl91qY) ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/758 "2018-01-25T19:05:43Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Hilarious. Do you not understand how to ignore someone? 😃 I see you missed his awesome description of his ignore procedure. He “ignores” people, but he doesn’t actually ignore them. He wants to read what they say and decide whether to respond to it. He keeps a list of people he’s ignored. I honestly can’t remember if this part is us or he stated it, but the going theory is that it is on post-its by his computer. **JohnT** holds the current record for being triple-ignored. > [@Morgenstern](#): > > You know what. Sam deserves credit for trying so hard. If he ever gets this shit right, then applies this same tenacity to what he’s doing, he’ll go far. > You just have to get the shit right first Sam. I will say this. Setting aside his poorly timed cancer comment, he shows the occasional glimmer of humor. He really needs to work on the arrogant, self-righteous asshole schtick though. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/759 "2018-01-25T19:36:12Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > You are massively mis-characterizing what I wrote. What I said was that you’re a fucking racist, and apparently not bright enough to possess the self-awareness to even realize it. We can look at the pertinent quotes from the cited immigration thread: Post #73: \*The immigrants who our ancestors let in were not just anyone. I won’t try to claim any particular racial or cultural group is better or worse, so I’m not branded a racist, but immigration policy in the past was selective, and America is highly successful. \* Note the first occurrence of the classic red-flag “I am not a racist”. Looking at the substance of this complete bullshit, the first statement is ignorantly flat-out wrong, since there were no meaningful limitations on immigration before the immigration acts of 1921 and 1924. So in fact “our ancestors” literally did let in “just anyone”, although that (fortunately for white supremacists everywhere) turned out to be mostly white northern Europeans. And both before and after that – and to this very day – immigration policy continues to have heavily racist tones. Before the major immigration overhaul of 1924, there was the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, the 1907 agreement with Japan to prevent Japanese immigration, and the 1923 Supreme Court ruling classifying South Asians as non-white, allowing them to be stripped of their citizenship retroactively. The Immigration Act of 1924 was partly a response to the likes of the Asiatic Exclusion League which coined phrases like “turban tide”, “Hindoo invasion”, and “yellow peril”; it implemented for the first time a “national origins” formula and restricted the immigration of Southern Europeans and Eastern Europeans, especially Italians, Slavs and Eastern European Jews, severely restricted the immigration of Africans, and banned the immigration of Arabs and Asians altogether. This is what our **SamuelA** regards as laudable “selective” immigration policy that made America successful: blatant racial and ethnic discrimination. I’m not “mischaracterizing” what the fucking racist wrote, I’m quoting it directly. But it gets even better … Post #75 \*… most of the world’s population pre-1920 was too poor to come to America or there weren’t significant amounts of shipping running that way. Hence it was mostly just Europeans. I am not going to claim that Europeans are better or worse than anyone else\* … No, of course you’re not, Sammy. Here we have the “I am not a racist” meme again. See, it’s not that white northern Europeans are better than everyone else, it’s just that white northern Europeans were the only ones able to come here, and things turned out real good, that’s all. Nothing more. One can almost imagine **SamuelA** putting on a white robe at this point and setting fire to a cross to emphasize the point, and that he’s not a racist. **But what would happen if the immigration mix changed, and it was not just white northern Europeans coming to America?** Ah, **SamuelA** has that figured out, too, the way he has everything else figured out, like how our brains work. It comes in the continuation of Post #75: \*… the rational outcome would be a massive cultural change, with the new cultural being mainly weighted towards the culture of origin of the immigrants. And if that culture is a “failure” creating a “shithole” : what do you reasonably think would happen.\* It’s clear what would happen if we let people in from shithole countries: the whole place would turn into a shithole. So what we have here is not just an ignorant racist, but a racist of Trumpian proportions. I responded to that last comment, with considerable restraint, [in this post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20744543&postcount=78). Here, BTW, [are some shitholian residents from a shithole country](http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-travel-ban-iran-harvard-medical-students-toronto-1.3967469) who are probably leaving voluntarily, but no doubt **SamuelA** will make sure they’re kicked out before the place becomes a shithole. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2018, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420/760 "2018-01-25T19:36:30Z")
> [@SamuelA](#): > > That’s because people are imprecise. There’s no output ports. Our neural networks have weights but they are inconsistent and float as different neurons temporarily glitch or run out of ATP or give the wrong output from noise. > > But average weights do exist, we just can’t measure them with present day methods. People also change their mind and their preferences over time, based on new experiences, knowledge or just whims. And you still have not addressed how a model can deal with people with conflicting goals. For instance, if I think that vanilla is the best, but vanilla production interferes with chocolate production. Say you can produce 3 units of vanilla, 3 units of chocolate, or 1 of each. How do you maximize your chocolate production, without conflicting with the vanilla lover’s maximizing of theirs? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420.md?page=37) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-doesnt-work-that-way-samuelas-pit-thread/803420.md?page=39)