From: Joscha Bach .ca
To: Jeffrey Epstein <jeevacation@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Happy new year, and A Holiday Story for You
Date: Tue, 02 Jan 2018 23:52:56 +0000
Of course can always to phone calls if needed!
> On Jan 3, 2018, at 00:51, jeffrey E. leevacation@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thx
> On Tue, Jan 2, 2018 at 6:38 PM Joscha Bach a wrote:
> Still traveling in Germany and without a steady home tomorrow and day after, but will be back in the US on
the 5th!
>> On Jan 2, 2018, at 15:45, jeffrey E. <jeevacation@gmail.com> wrote:
>>.
» skype?
> > On Tue, Jan 2, 2018 at 7:16 AM, Joscha Bach a wrote:
>> > On Jan I, 2018, at 13:22, jeffrey E. <jeevacation@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
> > > great new years present.. thoughts 1. hope. ? it is not backed by any evidence in first order. but second
order attributes abound. livng longer etc. . internal benefit to many if not most.
> >
> > Do you mean that hope is not about the present state (zero order), the visible trend of the present state (first
order), but about changes in that trend (second order)?
> > I don't yet understand how that is significant.
> > When we model the future, we extrapolate the present into a number of trajectories. We tend to fail, not only
because or lack of information, or because the world is often non-linear or chaotic, but because the space in
which these trajectories play out does not have a fixed dimensionality. The eigenvectors that characterize the
future universe will usually be different from those of the past; e.g. a universe with Google and social media is
constituted differently than one without them.
>>
>
> > In my view, hope refers to the possibility of entering trajectories with positive valence in a universe in which
many trajectories have negative valence.
> > Hope is a representation of the indication that we should invest into a subset of the available action space. As
soon as we have given up hope for that subset of the action space, we should stop investing in it, because it won't
yield any conceivable return.
>>
>
> > While the hope construct can be used to model rational investments, it often does not approximate the actual
distribution of expectations, because many of the expected trajectories mean death, or something sufficiently
close to death that they can be ignored, i.e. they don't warrant any possible further consideration in the view of
the agent. Instead, hope distributes the investments along those trajectories that have acceptable valence, even if
they are very unlikely.
> > Using hope instead of rationality for modeling the future is dangerous when we are not an individual agent
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but a society. For instance, if we build our models of future development of the climate on hope, we will be
cutting off investments into the death and near-death trajectories, even if those are not unlikely.
> > Based on that thought, I would for instance suggest building a repository of knowledge for bootstrapping
epistemology, civilization and general AI for future non-human civilizations, i.e. those that will spring off long
after all large mammalian species are wiped out by a super volcano, meteor, global warming, nuclear war or bad
Al singularity. It might make sense to put a few copies in orbit, and a few underground, perhaps equipped with
broadcasting facilities that announce the presence of the repository every few hundred years. (Not that I have any
reasonable priors from which I could derive the rationality of such an investment, but it could be fun.)
> > > . 2. it is a form of self deception that carries an evolutionary advantage if modulated. . ie cant hope to fly.
maybe modulates or allows the system to call in reserves..
> > See above: hope as indicator for whether we should invest. If my only chance to reap future rewards lies in a
trajectory that has an extremely low probability, it still makes sense to throw all available resources on the
assumption that this trajectory can be realized.
> > What I don't understand is which aspect of the hope construct is non-obvious.
> > > 3. the ttheory that we are more advanced thinkers than the past . seems like todays exceptionalism.. in
ancient times one had to know many things, as cities grew. specialied knowledgt made the group more effecicent
but potentaily at the expense of the individuals breadth of knowledge.
> > Agree. There are few instances in our recent evolution that gave opportunity or selection pressure towards
higher intrinsic intelligence, with the exception of the Ashkenazi mutation and a handful similar events. Pre-
modern societies had fatal selection (i.e. your children die or remain unborn if you are stupid), modem society
puts the reproductive cutoff at being able to have sex, and incentivizes high-IQ individuals disproportionally
against having children.
> > It seems that Greece and Rome had a class society that allowed the upper classes to have more offspring than
the lower classes, and larger social mobility based on IQ than our current arrangement. Medieval society still
drew on a pool of exceptional minds, but tended to lock them away into monasteries and reducing their number
of offspring.
>>
>
> > On the other hand, we now have 20 times the population and the intemet links them all up to the global
library, so even if the relative fraction of high IQ individuals is much smaller, their absolute number might be
sufficient to add to the edifices built by the minds of the past.
> > > 4. I believe that teaching every person to write is harmful to some individuals. writing slows down the
thinking and forces a rule based system onto complex definitions. and speed reduction. asperbergers could be an
advantagea as well as some form of writing disability.. 5.
> > Many people benefit from the ability to tum off verbal thought, or to only employ it for communication. I
don't know enough about people at the lower end of functioning to know how much better they work if you don't
give them analytic compositional operators at all.
> > > asperbergers could be an advantagea as well as some form of writing disability.. 5.
> > And here I thought your writing style is just an expression of time and attention being the most non-
renewable resources in the life of a Billionaire :)
> > Anecdotically, many entrepreneurs I know seem to have dyslexia. I suppose it comes down to a greater
ability to generalize in the face of conflicting data, i.e. the opposite of OCD.
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> >
> > - Joscha
> > PS: Our account is emptied, and I think the one at H+ as well. Could you please pitch in? Thank you so
much!
»
» please note
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> --
> please note
> The information contained in this communication is
> confidential, may be attorney-client privileged, may
> constitute inside information, and is intended only for
> the use of the addressee. It is the property of
> JEE
> Unauthorized use, disclosure or copying of this
> communication or any part thereof is strictly prohibited
> and may be unlawful. If you have received this
> communication in error, please notify us immediately by
> return e-mail or by e-mail to jeevacation@gmail.com, and
> destroy this communication and all copies thereof,
> including all attachments. copyright -all rights reserved
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