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7.55M
c435613c-9164-43ea-8338-b5ae2dae1e1b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
My Detailed Notes & Commentary from Secular Solstice Previously: General Thoughts on Secular Solstice. This blog post is my scattered notes and ramblings about the individual components (talks and songs) of Secular Solstice in Berkeley. Talks have their title in bold, and I split the post into two columns, with the n...
8587d872-d0d5-4510-a1cb-24bc494d581c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Amending the "General Pupose Intelligence: Arguing the Orthogonality Thesis" Stuart has worked on further developing the orthogonality thesis, which gave rise to a paper, a non-final version of which you can see here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/cej/general_purpose_intelligence_arguing_the/  This post won't make sense if...
561927e6-06de-43f1-847b-fd623c7c47bd
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Superintelligence 11: The treacherous turn This is part of a weekly reading group on Nick Bostrom's book, Superintelligence. For more information about the group, and an index of posts so far see the announcement post. For the schedule of future topics, see MIRI's reading guide. --------------------------------------...
5ccf27d4-59f4-457c-941f-a465406332f2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Canberra HPMOR Wrap Party! Discussion article for the meetup : Canberra HPMOR Wrap Party! WHEN: 15 March 2015 06:00:00PM (+1100) WHERE: 70/10 Thynne St, Bruce, ACT Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is finally coming to a conclusion! To celebrate, we invite all Canberran Less Wrongers to our wrap-...
75a47982-3b27-4ad1-8205-08b5d913895c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Confidence In Opinions, Intensity In Opinion On a scale of 1 to 100, how sure are you? It's a good thing to ask yourself from time to time about intense beliefs, especially if you're having a disagreement with someone else smart. Just putting a number on something is good. If you're in business, putting any number i...
ef28f1e1-5a21-4d7e-b6ec-6b350abfd8db
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Call for contributors to the Alignment Newsletter **TL;DR:** I am looking for (possibly paid) contributors to write summaries and opinions for the Alignment Newsletter. This is currently experimental, but I estimate ~80% chance that it will become long-term, and so I’m looking for people who are likely to contribute a...
d3ceeb82-dfcb-419d-b1be-c0fa36357a98
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
Explained Simply: Quantilizers Standard AI are *optimizers*: they ‘look’ through possible actions they could take, and pick the one that maximises what they care about. This can be dangerous— an AI which maximises in this way needs to care about *exactly* the same things that humans care about, which is [really hard](...
e327e476-7f09-4b54-b5b6-aae8a231f188
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Greedy Doctor Problem TL;DR: How to reason about people who are smarter than you. A few proposals, interspersed with reinforcement learning and humorous fiction. Ending on a surprising connection to logical inductors. What is the Greedy Doctor Problem? I came up with a neat little thought experiment[1] : > You ...
68b80aeb-1585-4d81-b402-910b1f67dfd9
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Some Tools For Optimizing Our Media Use Benevolent and malevolent media producers possess the power to influence society in positive and negative ways. They can do this through agenda setting, framing, priming, spreading memes, altering perceptions of groups and individuals, outright propaganda, and other methods. I ...
e81402a0-2138-479f-bb98-1d9e2c0179b6
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Rodney Brooks talks about Evil AI and mentions MIRI [LINK] Rodney Brooks says that "evil" AI is not a big problem: http://www.rethinkrobotics.com/artificial-intelligence-tool-threat/
faaff190-8854-4bef-b4c9-c6a793c3310f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Good HPMoR scenes / passages? I'm doing a reading of good fan-fiction at a con this weekend, to counter the many "bad fanfic reading" panels.  I want to read an interesting passage from HPMoR, but I can't remember any particular passage myself, and I don't want to re-read the whole thing this week.  Can anyone remembe...
80fcd461-7eb6-4566-bf53-0b9226142bdb
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
- -
4da7e566-6a4c-4623-83a7-2cc2ca4e97c8
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Compendium, A full argument about extinction risk from AGI We (Connor Leahy, Gabriel Alfour, Chris Scammell, Andrea Miotti, Adam Shimi) have just published The Compendium, which brings together in a single place the most important arguments that drive our models of the AGI race, and what we need to do to avoid cat...
004c540d-24cc-4f6e-9c46-111a242fda4e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Paderborn Meetup, November 22th Discussion article for the meetup : Paderborn Meetup, November 22th WHEN: 22 November 2012 07:00:00PM (+0100) WHERE: Gownsmen's Pub, Uni Paderborn, Warburger Straße 100, Paderborn The first meetup in this city ever. There is lots of rationality stuff to talk about and the m...
8f7f1533-39e2-45e1-9683-deb61d328bd8
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Per Tribalismum ad Astra Capitalism is powered by greed. People want to make money, so they look hard for things they can produce and that others want. Unknowingly, however, they are powering the great information-processing machine that is the market. The output of the machine is the efficient allocation of resources...
3dd18869-afc1-4d75-bdaf-a5c125f9b264
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What are some alternatives to Shapley values which drop additivity? I originally asked this on math.stackexchange; after reading Diffractor's Unifying Bargaining sequence (Part 1 here) I'm wondering if there are more insights floating about, so I'm repeating it here. Shapley values seem to be the standard answer to "...
bccd74ff-ad3f-4e95-9a40-8ed7557e9ffe
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
Why not to solve alignment by making superintelligent humans? Okay, hear me out: we already have human level/ general intelligent human aligned agents by the billions. And making new ones artificially seems to be really hard according to lots of alignment researchers. So why haven't I heard or read about projects tryi...
1f3aed48-851d-4805-87fb-c2e560435623
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Against Compromise, or, Deciding as a Team without Succombing to Entropy
81813359-44ab-4f53-a3d5-d4ed033217ab
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
“Flaky breakthroughs” pervade coaching — but no one tracks them Has someone you know ever had a “breakthrough” from coaching, meditation, or psychedelics — only to later have it fade? Show tweet For example, many people experience ego deaths that can last days or sometimes months. But as it turns out, having a sense ...
4744ce17-ec6b-4620-942a-92ecdaeeff58
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Untypical SIA TL;DR: If I am untypical, then many more observers exist. If this claim is necessarily true, then classical SIA is false. There is a situation where we could prove something like SIA, let’s call it Untypical SIA. Imagine that there are 100 green dots and one red dot on a bow’s target (and they cover a...
290730a1-b6d5-42b0-a238-8d45f8643651
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
is gpt-3 few-shot ready for real applications? This is a lengthy reply to @the-moti ‘s post here.  Creating a new post to limit thread length, and so I can crosspost to LW. @the-moti says, in part: > This obviously raises two different questions: 1. Why did you think that no one would use few-shot learning in practi...
777a51ef-9db4-42ff-9332-401760a6cf4b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Gwern's "Why Tool AIs Want to Be Agent AIs: The Power of Agency" I somehow hadn't read this post until now, so I am posting this here in case I am not the only one (and I wasn't able to find a previous linkpost for it). Relevant to relatively recent discussion on AI-as-a-service, but also just good as a broad referen...
b3da2c56-2cb0-43c2-b377-f2b28d25b27c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Defining the normal computer control problem There has been focus on controlling super intelligent artificial intelligence, however we currently can't even control our un-agenty computers without having to resort to formatting and other large scale interventions. Solving the normal computer control problem might help...
7743b2b4-5aa2-4813-bcc2-36c9531a5bcb
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[Link] Less Wrong Wiki article with very long summary of Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow I've made very extensive notes, along with my assessment, of Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, and have passed it around to aspiring rationalist friends who found my notes very useful. So I though I would share ...
31a43d38-8168-4f25-b717-25f41defa535
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Law of Cultural Proximity [Not my area of expertise, but I would be surprised if the core thesis was wrong in a significant way. Probably not as original as I think it is. Based on a previous blog post of mine that went in a very different/weird direction. Cross-posted from Grand, Unified, Crazy.] Introduction C...
a24adab0-e149-43c3-a2e6-f349f81c55ca
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
Announcing AI Safety Support Contents: 1. What is AI Safety Support 2. Discussion Days 3. Other Online Events 4. AI Safety Resources 5. Mentorship Program 6. AI Alignment Slack 7. Consider Donating   What is [AI Safety Support](https://www.aisafetysupport.org) -------------------------------------------------------...
6f82cc31-9d8d-420e-85c7-58122d62bea2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Game theory question -- iterated truel with private information I was reading the discussion here of how truels with unlimited shots and symmetric complete information favor the weakest truelist.  This set me to wondering about somewhat more complicated situations.  Suppose you are in a world where there are daily tru...
d382c1a8-559e-407a-9cb9-5e37b6d7dd86
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv
Arxiv
Offline Reinforcement Learning: Tutorial, Review, and Perspectives on Open Problems 1 Introduction --------------- Reinforcement learning provides a mathematical formalism for learning-based control. By utilizing reinforcement learning, we can automatically acquire near-optimal behavioral skills, represented by pol...
9f87f902-5b0d-420c-9921-7ff23a8da6ce
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A List of Nuances Abram Demski and Grognor Much of rationality is pattern-matching. An article on lesswrong might point out a thing to look for. Noticing this thing changes your reasoning in some way. This essay is a list of things to look for. These things are all associated, but the reader should take care not to l...
d8995ae4-1263-4af4-b635-e0f6b8d643ea
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Are these arguments valid? I have lately found myself using two particular strategies quite often during discussions and want to make sure that their logical structure is valid. So, I thought what better place to have them dismantled than LW :) [1] The first strategy involves sending a hypothetical example's equivale...
fdf9c364-b9c9-4aa4-ad47-13ab88bc090d
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[Link] The Collapse of Complex Societies TGGP a frequent commenter at Overcoming Bias (and hence old LessWrong), writes about his thoughts on a book by Joseph Tainter. > I’ve seen Joseph Tainter’s “The Collapse of Complex Societies” recommended in a few different places. Jared Diamond’s book might be one of them, th...
198472ce-59a0-4710-9007-b1f225955391
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What is epigenetics? Among all areas of biology related to my research, epigenetics is the one that is most commonly misunderstood, not only by the general public but even by other scientists. After being irritated one too many times,[1] I’ve decided to make a series of posts to explain what epigenetics really is, why...
13dd5b01-9113-489a-8ebd-c7300d0d65ed
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
There should be an AI safety project board The AI safety community has gotten much more accessible over the last few years. The [AGI safety fundamentals](https://www.eacambridge.org/agi-safety-fundamentals) curriculum provides a great overview of the most important pieces and you can work through Richard Ngo’s [Alignm...
21f9c00a-8305-4878-b340-7bd15a5f126a
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs
Other
Alignment for Advanced Machine Learning Systems Introduction Recent years' progress in artificial intelligence has prompted renewed interest in a question posed by Russell and Norvig (2010) : "What if we succeed?" If and when AI researchers succeed at the goal of designing machines with cross-domain learning and decis...
ea40e370-bf4f-4e2f-89e0-3851f9e33635
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Taking the outside view on code quality Is it worth refactoring yyyymmdd to currentDate? I think that there are two ways to look at it. You can zoom in and ask yourself questions about whether such a refactor will actually have a business impact. Will it improve velocity? Reduce bugs? Sure, currentDate might be sligh...
4e906aa9-b8d1-4738-9a53-630f63dc0cea
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Transitive Tolerance Means Intolerance Our society is pretty messed up around arguments of whose ideas we should and shouldn't tolerate. Some of this is inevitable: even without censorship, there are cases where group X can choose to actively show respect to person Y, and members of X will argue about that, and people...
6b5f1e54-5815-4a2d-a86c-c93ca0c43736
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
CFP for Rebellion and Disobedience in AI workshop Hi everyone! I'm co-organizing a workshop on a really interesting topic that's very relevant for AI safety. We call it "Rebellion and Disobedience in AI".  If you're doing work that could be relevant for us, please submit it! If you have questions or want to discuss t...
de3873e7-18f2-49fc-8685-2228f9ab3b1f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Group Rationality Diary, September 1-15 This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for September 1-15. > It's a place to record and chat about it if you have done, or are actively doing, things like: > > * Established a useful new habit > * Obtained new evidence that made you change your mind about so...
f4754959-97f5-4da2-8907-5d54de2261a4
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/aisafety.info
AI Safety Info
What approaches are AI alignment organizations working on? Each major organization has a different approach. The [research agendas are detailed and complex](https://www.alignmentforum.org/tag/research-agendas) (see also [AI Watch](https://aiwatch.issarice.com/)). Getting more brains working on any of them (and more mo...
83a88d45-d9b3-43ff-92af-5202d2983297
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
War of Wages part 1 – Apples and WalMarts [Endorsement status: some of my readers have pointed out that, mildly speaking, this post isn’t my best work. Upon reflection, I kinda have to agree. It’s not a crucial enough argument for me to bother rewriting the entire thing, and I’m leaving it up here for the entertainmen...
b81e691e-5714-4b8c-9784-50191caf2549
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Residual stream norms grow exponentially over the forward pass Summary: For a range of language models and a range of input prompts, the norm of each residual stream grows exponentially over the forward pass, with average per-layer growth rate of about 1.045 in GPT2-XL. We show a bunch of evidence for this. We discuss...
082757ff-1a54-4eeb-bec6-7fd03cf68b90
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
How do finite factored sets compare with phase space? Garrabrant's finite factored sets feel to me like the same thing as a phase space of a dynamical system. The differences I can see are that phase spaces are not always finite, and that finite factored sets don't have the context of a dynamical rule defined on them....
6d3eeb35-320d-4021-9164-d9ed24352eed
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
10 posts I like in the 2018 Review I see basically every post that gets submitted to LessWrong, whereas many users come in and read things more occasionally, so I thought I'd list 10 posts I like in the 2018 Review that people might have missed. I wasn't able to write quick reviews of each of them, so this is more li...
5b120d6b-6f17-4e60-adb3-ffc92e2f4c8d
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Defecting by Accident - A Flaw Common to Analytical People Related to: Rationalists Should Win, Why Our Kind Can't Cooperate, Can Humanism Match Religion's Output?, Humans Are Not Automatically Strategic, Paul Graham's "Why Nerds Are Unpopular" The "Prisoner's Dilemma" refers to a game theory problem developed in the...
ac4b5504-2bc6-4dff-a9bf-24c1c084ae4f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Rationality Exercises Prize of September 2019 ($1,000) Added: Prizewinners announced in this comment below. This post is an announcement of a prize for the best exercises submitted in the next two weeks on a topic of your choice, that are of interest to the LW community. We're planning to distribute $1,000, where $50...
09950ec4-2938-465f-9775-0ed9cd5a0a91
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
New LW Meetup: Turku This summary was posted to LW Main on August 7th. The following week's summary is here. New meetups (or meetups with a hiatus of more than a year) are happening in: * Turku: 08 August 2015 03:00PM Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in: * Ann Arbor meetup: 22 August 201...
e016746b-6167-48fb-8b10-2423d7d9dd02
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[Linkpost/Video] All The Times We Nearly Blew Up The World This contains a nice summary of nuclear close calls. Includes Broken Arrow events, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and of course Petrov.
80ead2ab-4763-43eb-bd0b-0977accee08f
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
A short calculation about a Twitter poll Recently, the following poll was [posted on Twitter](https://twitter.com/lisatomic5/status/1690904441967575040): > > Everyone responding to this poll chooses between a blue pill or red pill. > > > * if > 50% of ppl choose blue pill, everyone lives > * if not, red pills li...
2f01d7de-82cb-43e1-b742-81cb8ede5e77
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
From halting oracles to modal logic When reading Vladimir's recent post on defining UDT through modal logic, I had to think a bit about his actual definition of the modal formula(s) corresponding to UDT, because it was phrased in terms of an algorithm doing things instead of an actual modal formula. Then I remembered ...
8d3453b0-d342-45ff-9a2b-1f3e632a34c3
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[SEQ RERUN] Billion Dollar Bots Today's post, Billion Dollar Bots was originally published on November 22, 2008. A summary:   > An alternate scenario for the creation of bots, this time involving lots of cloud computing. Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post). This post is part o...
d9d8561e-207e-4401-b9db-9e4ac030380b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Crony Beliefs
f24e10a3-33d0-4094-8dad-f35684448754
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Some ideas for epistles to the AI ethicists Some papers, or ideas for papers, that I'd loved to see published in ethics journals like *Minds and Machines* or *Ethics and Information Technology*.[[1]](#fnfsk6e604vrk) I'm probably going to submit one of these to a [2023 AI ethics conference](https://ethics.iit.edu/node/...
a8ce9b75-db3a-46ea-abc0-2c60c73f383c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Deliberately Vague Language is Bullshit Bullshit is what comes out of the mouth of someone who values persuasion over truth. Truth is about communicating information. Vague language communicates less information than precise language. It is important to distinguish vague language from general, poetic and simple langu...
c0c17900-2d1a-4a80-858a-6678922d98e6
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
[Link] Why I’m optimistic about OpenAI’s alignment approach The post lays out some arguments in favor of [OpenAI’s approach to alignment](https://openai.com/blog/our-approach-to-alignment-research/) and responds to common objections.
daa6992c-c729-41cf-a25f-fea26a76491e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[link] Book review: Mindmelding: Consciousness, Neuroscience, and the Mind’s Privacy http://kajsotala.fi/2013/07/book-review-mindmelding-consciousness-neuroscience-and-the-minds-privacy/ I review William Hirstein's book Mindmelding: Consciousness, Neuroscience, and the Mind’s Privacy, which he proposes a way of conne...
5f20dbd9-e6c5-48c4-8368-d3daa191b16f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What happened to the annual LW demographic surveys? Scott Alexander once ran an annual survey of the LessWrong community. After 2014 he seems to have stopped and the surveys happened intermittently. User namespace picked up the torch in 2016 and 2017. Bob Jacobs also did one in 2020.  Since then it doesn't look like...
513a75aa-0d64-4bf9-958b-3f8c3de9d90e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Progressive Highlighting: Picking What To Make Into Flashcards Using a flashcard system like Anki can help maintain long-term knowledge. To use flashcards effectively, it's important to analyze how they fit into the larger task of reading and review. Understanding and Prioritization: A Chicken and Egg Problem We can...
a5b137b3-a05e-494f-b43b-b3734800bcd2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Importance of Sidekicks [Reposted from my personal blog.] Mindspace is wide and deep. “People are different” is a truism, but even knowing this, it’s still easy to underestimate. I spent much of my initial engagement with the rationality community feeling weird and different. I appreciated the principle and proj...
5b7ef6e6-3548-4509-8556-48958606de96
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Let's all learn stats! I want to become Stronger! Udacity are running an Introduction to Statistics course starting on the 25th June 2012. Many of us could stand to learn some more stats, I certainly could. This seems like a great opportunity! It is mandatory for all LWers to enroll in this course. Update: the las...
448aab0d-5bb6-444f-a584-25721f1d21ab
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital
Arbital
Group theory: Examples # Even and odd functions Recall that a function $f : \mathbb{R} \to \mathbb{R}$ is [even](https://arbital.com/p/even_function) if $f(-x) = f(x)$, and [odd](https://arbital.com/p/odd_function) if $f(-x) = - f(x)$. A typical example of an even function is $f(x) = x^2$ or $f(x) = \cos x$, while a ...
fbffcaad-1092-4e56-8465-d5e50fa4c044
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Impact of delaying vaccinations on the total number of deaths When I've heard, that because of a single death, which might be attributed to something perhaps related to the vaccine, someone has decided to pause vaccinations in a whole country for two weeks, and then several other countries followed the suite, my first...
6515d64e-f482-4a88-9ea6-2b19429cc3f4
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs
Other
Revisiting the Insights model Note: This demo is in beta, and you may experience issues such as strange numerical behavior at this time. Last year, we released our [insights-based model](http://mediangroup.org/insights) that generated a projected timeline using historical data and a prior distribution. We’ve re...
fdd8044a-5566-4d16-8eb4-f5dd12cd3aec
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Believing vs understanding Every year before the NBA draft, I like to watch film on all of the prospects and predict how good everyone will be. And every year, there ends up being a few guys who I am way higher on than everyone else. Never fails. In 2020 it was Precious Achiuwa. In 2019 it was Bol Bol. In 2018 it was ...
7666197d-225e-4842-96e0-28329a630763
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Challenges to Yudkowsky's Pronoun Reform Proposal > Go, Soul, the body's guest, > Upon a thankless errand: > Fear not to touch the best; > The truth shall be thy warrant: > Go, since I needs must die, > And give the world the lie. > > —"The Lie" by Walter Raleigh Summary * In a February 2021 Facebook post, Eliezer...
8dfe5c3f-2abb-4281-9ae3-38f11a98ee26
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs
Blogs
March 2019 Newsletter Want to be in the reference class “people who solve the AI alignment problem”? We now have [**a guide on how to get started**](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PqMT9zGrNsGJNfiFR/alignment-research-field-guide), based on our experience of what tends to make research groups successful. (Also on the...
762e62da-dcae-4276-9e51-2fb5b67f92ee
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Dark Arts 101: Using presuppositions Sun Tzu said, "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."  This is also true in rhetoric.  The best way to get a belief accepted is to fool people into thinking that they have already accepted it. (Note, first-year students, that I did not say, "The best way ...
9229ac95-0544-4875-8761-e548e8ca4003
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A toy evaluation of inference code tampering Work done with James Faina, Evan Hubinger and Ethan Perez. This is ongoing research on speculative threats, which might be of interest to researchers in the field of AI safety. We ask that readers treat this as a work in progress, rather than as a mature research paper. T...
e03d288b-b22f-477c-8fce-3d9c117607ca
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[SEQ RERUN] My Wild and Reckless Youth Today's post, My Wild and Reckless Youth was originally published on 30 August 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):   > Traditional rationality (without Bayes' Theorem) allows you to formulate hypotheses without a reason to prefer them to the status quo, as long as they ar...
36305b60-74d0-4f58-9063-97c1020732f0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Good Idealistic Books are Rare Saith Robin in "Seeking a Cynic's Library": Cynicism and Idealism are a classic yin and yang, a contradictory pair where we all seem to need both sides... Books on education, medicine, government, charity, religion, technology, travel, relationships, etc. mostly present relatively ideal...
409d1b27-56ae-401f-8ff7-2ca69cd5d9cb
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
GPT-4 is bad at strategic thinking GPT-4 is known to pretty good at chess (see I played chess against ChatGPT-4 and lost! for one example). However, GPT-4 does not seem to be very good at strategic reasoning in general (it only really can do it if there is a greedy search algorithm). I tried Hex and Connect4, it fail...
e7e46982-2cd1-40a5-bc9e-ba092c42478a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Inefficiency of Theoretical Discovery Previously: Why Neglect Big Topics. Why was there no serious philosophical discussion of normative uncertainty until 1989, given that all the necessary ideas and tools were present at the time of Jeremy Bentham? Why did no professional philosopher analyze I.J. Good’s importa...
5a611d6c-b62a-48d2-b53c-72bedb521927
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Open thread, August 14 - August 20, 2017 IF IT'S WORTH SAYING, BUT NOT WORTH ITS OWN POST, THEN IT GOES HERE. ---------------------------------------- Notes for future OT posters: 1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag. 2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh ...
e6c3a718-7f5d-4828-81ac-6e8cbcae5ae5
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Ideas for AI labs: Reading list Related: AI policy ideas: Reading list. This document is about ideas for AI labs. It's mostly from an x-risk perspective. Its underlying organization black-boxes technical AI stuff, including technical AI safety. Lists & discussion * Towards best practices in AGI safety and governan...
59c778d1-2c9d-46ee-8694-c7f7eac2d6e2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What are the components of intellectual honesty? I have a pretty strong intuition that "intellectual honesty" points to a specific thing, with a characteristic set of behaviors (both outward (in a conversation/writing) and inward (patterns of thinking)). My concept of intellectual honesty also seems to largely coincid...
0a5bcf48-a72a-4272-9d11-29b99bb357d1
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Toronto Meetup, May 24th When: Tuesday, May 24th, 20:00 Where: The Duke of York, 39 Prince Arthur Avenue Hi everyone, The Toronto meetup group is having one of our bi-weekly meetings this Tuesday at the Duke of York. The reservation is under the name Spencer Sleep. I have requested a table on the patio.  The reason...
83458d88-26e4-470b-89ed-f6daef8796ac
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[LINK] NYT Article about Existential Risk from AI http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/cambridge-cabs-and-copenhagen-my-route-to-existential-risk/ Author: Huw Price (Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge) The article is mainly about the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and the auth...
420b3609-27c0-4cfb-8297-26a90e3a629d
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
New to this community Hello.  I am a computer security consultant, programmer specializing in PC games, and podcaster.  I am most interested in AI alignment and ethical development and I hope to learn from all of you.
7ac3e18c-abe9-4090-908d-156e70720472
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[META] Can't post comments I tried in FF 8.0 and Chrome 15.0, and couldn't post, but it worked in IE9. Anyone else having this problem?
d8b606f1-32b0-429e-bbd0-3f02fb58a86a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Reviving Cambridge Meetups Discussion article for the meetup : Reviving Cambridge Meetups WHEN: 15 November 2015 05:00:00PM (+0000) WHERE: JCR Trinity College, Cambridge, UK First Cambridge meetup in a long time! Hopefully of many. Come to Trinity's JCR at 17 next sunday and get to know all the other aspi...
61a7c964-7788-4aec-b77c-e7254a41127b
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Models Don't "Get Reward" *In terms of content, this has a lot of overlap with* [*Reward is not the optimization target*](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pdaGN6pQyQarFHXF4/reward-is-not-the-optimization-target)*. I'm basically rewriting a part of that post in language I personally find clearer, emphasising what I thin...
9c552c9a-e977-4119-a793-1416e86df63f
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
A recent write-up of the case for AI (existential) risk As a [PhD student](https://amlab.science.uva.nl/people/TimBakker/) in machine learning and one of the long-time organisers of [EA Amsterdam](https://www.eaamsterdam.org/), I have recently gotten a lot of questions about AI from friends, family, meetup attendees, ...
4443bc76-5057-472c-9586-d2126ed3ea4e
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
A technical note on bilinear layers for interpretability Summary ======= In this short theoretical note (now on [Arxiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.03452)) I examine bilinear layers, which are MLP layers that take the form MLPBilinear(x)=(W1x)⊙(W2x).mjx-chtml {display: inline-block; line-height: 0; text-indent: 0; te...
06bedd80-191e-4c34-9d60-ce8cbb733277
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Strong implication of preference uncertainty Here is a theory that is just as good as general relativity: > > AGR (Angel General Relativity): Tiny invisible angels push around all the particles in the universe in a way that is indistinguishable from the equations of general relativity. > > > This theory is fa...
a6348963-0153-4bca-a1c0-798bea33b9d3
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
An angle of attack on Open Problem #1 There is a problem with the proof here and I have to think about whether I can fix it. Thanks to vi21maobk9vp for pointing me in the right direction! I have posted a new and hopefully correct proof attempt. Thanks again to vi21maobk9vp! In his talk on open problems in Friendly A...
975dc6db-57be-41bb-8d03-7d52ca358d30
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Latent variables for prediction markets: motivation, technical guide, and design considerations I've been pushing for latent variables to be added to prediction markets, including by making a demo for how it could work. Roughly speaking, reflective latent variables allow you to specify joint probability distributions ...
a40712f1-4b62-4edd-88e0-18f0ddd4c793
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Turning off lights with model editing This post advertises an illustrative example of model editing that David Bau is fond of, and which I think should be better known. As a reminder, David Bau is a professor at Northeastern; the vibe of his work is "interpretability + interventions on model internals"; examples inclu...
2bf15133-a55c-4df6-ac38-630cb0b1b51a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
AI Prediction Services and Risks of War This is the second piece of a blog post series that explores how AI prediction services affect the risks of war. It is based on my 10-week summer research project at Stanford Existential Risk Institute. See my first post for a summary of my project and my epistemic status. In t...
6457d05f-4be6-4ef5-9912-24663095a043
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
This is already your second chance Cross-posted from Substack. I. And the sky opened, and from the celestial firmament descended a cube of ivory the size of a skyscraper, lifted by ten thousand cherubim and seraphim. And the cube slowly landed among the children of men, crushing the frail metal beams of the Golden G...
1771858c-376f-4230-913d-cb03a3199d96
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : [Boston] The Science Of Happiness Discussion article for the meetup : [Boston] The Science Of Happiness WHEN: 02 June 2013 02:00:00PM (-0400) WHERE: 25 Ames St, Cambridge, MA We'll review the current research on what makes humans happy and discuss how to apply these lessons to our own lives.   Cambridge/B...
8de5630e-82f4-43bb-b2f4-c14ed16a0df0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Open Thread, November 15-22, 2013   If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
c24367af-854a-4063-a83a-c2ef0b9f9a3b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : March - pub meetup Discussion article for the meetup : March - pub meetup WHEN: 23 March 2017 06:30:00PM (+1100) WHERE: level 2, 565 george st, sydney Come along to our regular monthly pub meetup to talk all things math, science, magic, engineering, thinking, growth, reasoning and beliefs. If you are an a...
a4704903-38cb-4158-8921-68f33ca13c53
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Beyond algorithmic equivalence: algorithmic noise There is a '[no-free-lunch](http://In https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.05812)' theorem in value learning; without assuming anything about an agent's rationality, you can't deduce anything about its reward, and vice versa. Here I'll investigate whether you can deduce more if...
255d5800-4444-47e7-82ae-28cf3715e1fa
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Extraction of human preferences 👨→🤖 Introduction Developing safe and beneficial reinforcement learning (RL) agents requires making them aligned with human preferences. An RL agent trained to fulfil any objective in the real world will probably have to learn human preferences in order to do well. This is because hum...
da9d14e9-c397-4b20-b530-a23ec47b0de8
LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct
LessWrong
"I’ve noticed a marked change in my clientele after going into private practice.[1] Of course I expected class differences-- I charge full fee and don’t take insurance. But there are differences that are not as predictable as ‘has more money’. During residency I worked at a hospital Medicaid clinic and saw mostly poor,...
86fe001d-ce6e-4de8-9758-2656fdcc5f4c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Observation Imagine that you meet someone you’re attracted to at a party. At one point, they smile at you, and you notice. You’re pretty sure they like you, but you really want to know whether they like you like you. You don’t act on this in any particular way, but you do spend the whole next week thinking about it. ...
a2eb4824-ae31-4a58-a93e-f2c623b2b8f6
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Open thread, May 8 - May 14, 2017 If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here. ---------------------------------------- Notes for future OT posters: 1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag. 2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the lis...
60086d36-eedc-4d7a-918e-06871ae1432d
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Baltimore Area Weekly Meetup Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore Area Weekly Meetup WHEN: 31 July 2016 08:00:00PM (-0400) WHERE: 1726 reisterstown road pikesville maryland 21208 Pikesville DoubleTree - Hilton, at the restaurant / bar or at one of the tables outside. Discussion article for the m...
b5b1932c-6b70-4d7b-ab6e-ca2df52e7429
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Deconfuse Yourself about Agency This post is a result of numerous discussions with other participants and organizers of the MIRI Summer Fellows Program 2019. ---------------------------------------- I recently (hopefully) dissolved some of my confusion about agency. In the first part of the post, I describe a concep...
63a2848d-38e6-464b-befb-310e9ed864a3
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Democracy and rationality Note: This is a draft; so far, about the first half is complete. I'm posting it to Discussion for now; when it's finished, I'll move it to Main. In the mean time, I'd appreciate comments, including suggestions on style and/or format. In particular, if you think I should(n't) try to post this ...
52c95db4-0578-4cab-808b-ac51fe27f037
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Updates on scaling laws for foundation models from ' Transcending Scaling Laws with 0.1% Extra Compute' I am not sure if this paper is flying under the radar for many people, but has anyone read Transcending Scaling Laws with 0.1% Extra Compute? If so, how do you think it compares to the scaling laws presented by Deep...