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3859bf34-acfd-42fc-9a80-ccb5d584e18a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
On the Nature of Reputation Abstract: Reputation tokens (e.g. brands, but lot of other things as well) are vessels to store reputation. They are free to create but expensive to fill with trust. Consumers use them to deal with information overload. Producers use them to manipulate common knowledge. Also, a certain kind...
2dbc1169-3494-4a71-8f99-efd6d47e7094
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Bakeoff For most of the past week Lily has been trying to persuade us to have a cooking competition. Her initial idea involved kids cooking unassisted, but after talking through ways I saw this going poorly she decided she was ok with teams. This morning she said it was time, and declared it would be Lily + Jeff vs An...
947046e5-cf58-4f3c-ad83-88474dd9ec6b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A whirlwind tour of Ethereum finance As a hacker and cryptocurrency liker, I have been hearing for a while about "DeFi" stuff going on in Ethereum without really knowing what it was. I own a bunch of ETH, so I finally decided that enough was enough and spent a few evenings figuring out what was going on. To my pleasan...
dbc914fb-299d-4617-9058-8109eefd3d21
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Exercise isn't necessarily good for people I would appreciate it very much if anyone would take a close look at this-- it looks sound to me, but it also appeals to my prejudices. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=E42TQNWhW3w#! My comments are in square brackets. Everything else is my notes on th...
4a28e718-4af1-40e5-a964-ba1ead96656d
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Tetlock's "Expert Political Judgment" Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Tetlock's "Expert Political Judgment" WHEN: 14 December 2014 03:00:00PM (-0500) WHERE: National Portrait Gallery We will be meeting in the Kogod Courtyard of the National Portrait Gallery (8th and ...
b1d0f956-917b-4317-acf7-3fc0822a62c0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A boltzmann brain question. I have a question on Boltzmann brains which I'd like to hear your opinions on - mostly because I don't know the answer to this.... First of all - a Boltzmann brain is the idea that - in a sufficiently large and long-lived universe, a brain just like mine or yours will occasionally pop into...
47642836-d28b-4e3f-bcc5-fa827584d774
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Difference between CDT and ADT/UDT as constant programs After some thinking, I came upon an idea how to define the difference between CDT and UDT within the constant programs framework. I would post it as a comment, but it is rather long... The idea is to separate the cognitive part of an agent into three separate mo...
548d1616-94a4-4fe8-8178-c63779a989c9
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
[Link, 2011] Team may be chosen to receive $1.4 billion to simulate human brain This is the team responsible for simulating the rat cortical column. [http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110308/full/news.2011.143.htm](http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110308/full/news.2011.143.html) The team is one of 6 that is being con...
0d6ce315-b262-49dd-a7fe-64c844061d55
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Third-party testing as a key ingredient of AI policy (nb: this post is written for anyone interested, not specifically aimed at this forum) We believe that the AI sector needs effective third-party testing for frontier AI systems. Developing a testing regime and associated policy interventions based on the insights o...
d2216fae-215c-4044-9159-f69189eed3c6
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
psychology and applications of reinforcement learning: where do I learn more? Minicamp made me take the notion of an [Ugh Field](/lw/21b/ugh_fields/) seriously, and I've found Ugh Fields a fairly useful model for understanding how my brain works. I have/had lots of topics that have been unpleasant to think about and ...
997a06d5-d34a-4bd2-b9da-5d160737c6ad
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
DeepMind is hiring for the Scalable Alignment and Alignment Teams We are hiring for several roles in the Scalable Alignment and Alignment Teams at DeepMind, two of the subteams of DeepMind Technical AGI Safety trying to make artificial general intelligence go well.  In brief, * The Alignment Team investigates how to...
1e4a4556-e9b9-40d4-9024-8bfce02c7f65
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs
Blogs
Misgeneralization as a misnomer Here’s two different ways an AI can turn out [unfriendly](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BSee6LXg4adtrndwy/what-does-it-mean-for-an-agi-to-be-safe): 1. You somehow build an AI that cares about “making people happy”. In training, it tells people jokes and buys people flowers and offer...
3cfce926-1b81-4a3a-8f5f-1217e854d860
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[Linkpost] The neuroconnectionist research programme This is a linkpost for https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-023-00705-w (open access preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.03718) > Artificial neural networks (ANNs) inspired by biology are beginning to be widely used to model behavioural and neural data, an appro...
c02ce2e2-47b9-4682-9dcc-c7e6c97f04bc
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv
Arxiv
A proposal for ethically traceable artificial intelligence 1 A proposal for ethically traceable artificial intelligence Christopher A. Tucker, Ph.D., Cartheur Robotics, sp ol. s r.o., Prague, Czech Republic Abstract Although the problem of a critique of robotic behav ior in near-unanimous agreement to human no...
914cd3e2-1f41-4e9d-88a2-9b2c2ea5abff
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Geoff Hinton Quits Google The NYTimes reports that Geoff Hinton has quit his role at Google: > On Monday, however, he officially joined a growing chorus of critics who say those companies are racing toward danger with their aggressive campaign to create products based on generative artificial intelligence, the techno...
6e8f337d-6978-43f4-9702-aad69789ca9b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Out to Get You Epistemic Status: Reference. Expanded From: Against Facebook, as the post originally intended. Some things are fundamentally Out to Get You. They seek resources at your expense. Fees are hidden. Extra options are foisted upon you. Things are made intentionally worse, forcing you to pay to make it les...
3f4eef5b-eea9-4789-a2f7-faaf336796ad
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Fifteen Things I Learned From Watching a Game of Secret Hitler Epistemic Status: Not likely to be true things. Right? 1. Liberals know nothing, fascists know everything. 2. Most of the policies democratic governments could pass are fascist policies that expand government power. 3. The remaining policies are lib...
abcd5027-f680-4501-9862-2b4f192de182
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Efficient Charity: Cheap Utilons via bone marrow registration This topic is not really related to the things normally discussed here, but I think it's really important, and it might interest Less Wrongers, especially since many of us are interested in ethics and utility calculations that are essentially cost-benefit a...
299dffdb-ee0b-498a-810b-db9b0fdfbe90
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Gen Con: Applied Game Theory Discussion article for the meetup : Gen Con: Applied Game Theory WHEN: 06 August 2016 02:00:00PM (-0400) WHERE: 100 S Capitol Ave, Indianapolis, IN 46225, USA Time tentative, location to be worked out. If you are attending Gen Con and want to meet up with rationalists, please c...
90883fe9-c538-4a3b-96f1-2e20dd8362c3
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Superintelligence 14: Motivation selection methods *This is part of a weekly reading group on [Nick Bostrom](http://www.nickbostrom.com/)'s book, [Superintelligence](http://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom/dp/0199678111). For more information about the group, and an index of posts so fa...
ae185b88-54bd-4718-9c42-5780c5801a45
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Chapter 121: Something to Protect: Severus Snape A somber mood pervaded the Headmistress's office. Minerva had returned after dropping off Draco and Narcissa/Nancy at St. Mungo's, where the Lady Malfoy was being examined to see if a decade living as a Muggle had done any damage to her health; and Harry had come up to ...
57e314d6-98cb-4f95-a7d2-8d6880a37fb1
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
If Van der Waals was a neural network If Van der Waals was a neural network At some point in history a lot of thought was put into obtaining the equation: R*T = P*V/n The ideal gas equation we learn in kindergarten, which uses the magic number R in order to make predictions about how n moles of an “ideal gas” will c...
99a43860-7f78-40d5-b05d-41fd641a91db
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Progress links and short notes, 2024-12-16 Much of this content originated on social media. To follow news and announcements in a more timely fashion, follow me on Twitter, Threads, Bluesky, or Farcaster. Contents * Jobs & fellowships * Looking for writers? * People doing interesting things * Events * DARPA wan...
0574664e-f572-4d42-b299-7b2a0a1e0a9c
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Modal Bargaining Agents *Summary: Bargaining problems are interesting in the case of Löbian cooperation; Eliezer suggested a geometric algorithm for resolving bargaining conflicts by leaving the Pareto frontier, and this algorithm can be made into a modal agent, given an additional suggestion by Benja.* Bargaining a...
ad51fc02-2cca-4df4-a79f-e912ffca25ab
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Visualizing the power of multiple step selection processes in JS: Galton's bean machine
47262ad2-dae0-495b-8452-171e65aacee8
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Tel Aviv: Board Game Night Discussion article for the meetup : Tel Aviv: Board Game Night WHEN: 17 August 2015 07:00:00PM (+0300) WHERE: Google Tel-Aviv, Electra Tower, 67891, Israel, 67891 Tel Aviv, Israel 19:00 Israel time, playing board games as usual. This time we will do it in Campus TLV (Floor 34, ha...
2d07deb5-8ab9-46cd-82a6-2c3c1eb8a970
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Uncontrollable Super-Powerful Explosives In the late 19th century, two researchers meet to discuss their differing views on the existential risk posed by future Uncontrollable Super-Powerful Explosives. * Catastrophist: I predict that one day, not too far in the future, we will find a way to unlock a qualitatively n...
f93fbe49-6fc1-4b2f-bcf3-2c8e96cc50dd
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Optimal eating (or rather, a step in the right direction) Over the past few months I've been working to optimize my life.  In this post I describe my attempt to optimize my day-to-day cooking and eating - my goal with this post is to get input and to offer a potential template for people who aren't happy with their cu...
6509b789-3e30-49df-842e-000555d553bd
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Covid 11/24/22: Thanks for Good Health This Thanksgiving, I am thankful that I am once again back at full health. Covid comes and Covid goes. It was like I had a bad cold… for three days. That actually about sums it up, with some residual coughing. After a week, I was able to do a full session on the elliptical machin...
4ae775f2-8633-454c-9f46-dc9b584f60de
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Willpower duality Rationality is designed to make you win, to help you attain your objectives. One of the most prominent phenomena getting in the way is akrasia, the lack of willpower preventing us to perform whatever action we want to do. So, wait, do we want to act or not? There are two facets of willpower, which I...
cd07ae61-65c3-4839-b14f-a32b8f484c18
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Levels of global catastrophes: from mild to extinction Levels of global catastrophes: from mild to extinction It is important to make a bridge between existential risks and other possible risks. If we say that existential risks are infinitely more important than other risks, we put them out of scope of policymakers (...
3b67debe-ff20-4a20-9373-2d1a86f835a9
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What to read instead of news? I often read the news to take a break from work. Maybe this isn't such a good idea. (https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf). What should I read instead? Ideally it should be interesting but not impenetrable, finished in less than half an hour, and easily available from my b...
dfdc2a7d-d181-4919-b8cf-929a2240ff86
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Forecasting AGI: Insights from Prediction Markets and Metaculus I have tried to find all prediction market and Metaculus questions related to AGI timelines. Here I examine how they compare to each other, and what they actually say about when AGI might arrive. If you know of a market that I have missed, please tell me...
3409fadb-a12b-4160-b0ee-567069f3f669
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Models predicting significant violence in the US? Do you have a model predicting >1% chance of significant political violence (>5,000 deaths) in the US in the next year? Pls share. Also welcome: models predicting <.1% Metaculus has been walking around 1-5% probability of a US civil war before July 2021. While 1% is ...
57304568-2f44-4dee-b168-3ca8849e0a1a
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
How do takeoff speeds affect the probability of bad outcomes from AGI? Introduction ------------ In general, people seem to treat slow takeoff as the safer option as compared to classic FOOMish takeoff (see e.g. [these interviews](https://aiimpacts.org/takeaways-from-safety-by-default-interviews/), [this report](htt...
133a9327-2d27-4d1e-9aa9-e796d94d5719
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Grey Goo Requires AI **Summary:** Risks from self-replicating machines or nanotechnology rely on the presence of a powerful artificial intelligence within the machines in order to overcome human control and the logistics of self-assembling in many domains. The [grey goo scenario](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_go...
83b3b015-ffe4-4a71-bda5-804f8f880aa8
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What is a Glowfic? This is a description for first-time glowfic readers who are unfamiliar with the format. A glowfic is a fictional story written by multiple authors who roleplay as the characters. A typical glowfic will appear on glowfic.com and looks like an internet forum where fictional people will post comments...
f363b61e-5fef-4001-a8a6-5a7659b05d74
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Self-modification as a game theory problem In this post I'll try to show a surprising link between two research topics on LW: game-theoretic cooperation between AIs (quining, Loebian cooperation, modal combat, etc) and stable self-modification of AIs (tiling agents, Loebian obstacle, etc). When you're trying to coope...
73a467eb-e62b-4459-9f92-74da7c773a01
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Optical Illusions are Out of Distribution Errors Our visual black box is trained on what we see in the real world. We don't process raw sensory data - we keep a more abstracted model in our heads. This is a blessing and a curse - it may either be more useful to have a sparser cognitive inventory, and work on a higher ...
24a6dc6a-148a-4221-b0e1-25eb21604a45
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A starter guide for evals This is a starter guide for model evaluations (evals). Our goal is to provide a general overview of what evals are, what skills are helpful for evaluators, potential career trajectories, and possible ways to start in the field of evals.  Evals is a nascent field, so many of the following rec...
3264e499-3e66-435f-b958-4365ef937148
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Dating Roundup #3: Third Time’s the Charm The first speculated on why you’re still single. We failed to settle the issue. A lot of you were indeed still single. So the debate continues. The second gave more potential reasons, starting with the suspicion that you are not even trying, and also many ways you are likely ...
e576be8f-461b-4365-a63c-ba702b0e4ced
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
The Gradient – The Artificiality of Alignment [The Gradient](https://thegradient.pub/) is a “digital publication about artificial intelligence and the future,” founded by researchers at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. I found the latest essay, “The Artificiality of Intelligence,” by a PhD student at U...
11585db1-17c0-4c96-8735-faa110385dc3
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Ethicality of Denying Agency If your 5-year-old seems to have an unhealthy appetite for chocolate, you’d take measures to prevent them from consuming it. Any time they’d ask you to buy them some, you’d probably refuse their request, even if they begged. You might make sure that any chocolate in the house is well-hidde...
60538a3a-38cf-4a0a-9568-4fa119942271
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A New Sequence on Rationality In August, I asked "What is rational"? I wasn't satisfied with any answer I received, and then decided to answer it myself; I began developing my own theory of rationality from first principles. I wrote and scrapped two drafts, and after 4 months, I've finally started the path to an answe...
28656857-813d-4ff8-b123-ca294047b06b
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs
Blogs
the deobfuscation conjecture the deobfuscation conjecture ---------------------------- suppose i write a program that tries to find counterexamples to [fermat's last theom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat's_Last_Theorem): that is, numbers a>1, b>1, c>1, n>2 such that aⁿ+bⁿ=cⁿ. suppose i now explain to you thi...
672c2967-3169-4dda-84f5-2f4c64b8747b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Reply to Jebari and Lundborg on Artificial Superintelligence Jebari and Lundborg have recently published an article entitled Artificial superintelligence and its limits: why AlphaZero cannot become a general agent. It focuses on the thorny issue of agency in superintelligent AIs. I’m glad to see more work on this cruc...
17e2b130-4241-405f-9a45-c53c61538612
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Examining Evolution as an Upper Bound for AGI Timelines Cross-posted from https://mybrainsthoughts.com/?p=349 With the massive degree of progress in AI over the last decade or so, it’s natural to wonder about its future - particularly the timeline to achieving human (and superhuman) levels of general intelligence. Aj...
b08d7d0e-9c3e-467f-9505-6bd12bf9e3bb
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
UK's new 10-year "National AI Strategy," released today Published [here](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-ai-strategy), for those interested in reading and discussing: <https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-ai-strategy>
2c3822bb-d2de-4bd2-b5bd-d6946b4869c4
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Super Happy People (3/8) (Part 3 of 8 in "Three Worlds Collide") ...The Lady Sensory said, in an unsteady voice, "My lords, a third ship has jumped into this system.  Not Babyeater, not human." The holo showed a triangle marked with three glowing dots, the human ship and the Babyeater ship and the newcomers.  Th...
7bad201c-25b6-4237-9d4f-3090291e18ec
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Taking a simplified model (cross-posted from my blog, Sunday Stopwatch) This may be trivial but I didn't see it written down explicitly anywhere, so I'm writing it. There's a specific trick I've noticed that some people do that makes for better conversations, and I don't know if there's a name for it, but I think the...
02952e81-efe3-452a-b340-e1f0dc5dbc0b
awestover/filtering-for-misalignment
Redwood Research: Alek's Filtering Results
id: post3898 A putative new idea for AI control; index here . Note: this post replaces and supersedes the previous one which is now obsolete. Hacking utility indifference Utility indifference was a technique for corrigibility was an attempt to allow an AI to safely change its values, without seeking to provoke or avoi...
c09f89ed-6571-4d7a-bd32-2edf73747aef
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
LW is probably not the place for "I asked this LLM (x) and here's what it said!", but where is? I notice a nonzero amount of posts on LW, admittedly typically not overly high karma, that go something like, "I asked Bing to do x and its' answer freaked me out!", or "I talked to ChatGPT4 about itself and it told me weir...
6a74f2e2-2793-4392-b94d-83c08fe6d3e2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Orange County Atheist Meetup Wednesday August 10 Discussion article for the meetup : Orange County Atheist Meetup Wednesday August 10 WHEN: 10 August 2011 07:30:00PM (-0700) WHERE: 18542 MacArthur Blvd Irvine, CA 92612 This week we are going to do something a little different for the weekly Irvine meetup. ...
6c888b25-54b0-43d9-9964-cdb5b83090b0
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs
Blogs
Bill Hibbard on Ethical Artificial Intelligence ![Bill Hibbard portrait](https://intelligence.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/associate_hibbard.png)Bill Hibbard is an Emeritus Senior Scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Space Science and Engineering Center, currently working on issues of AI safety and unint...
3a44a101-5809-43ec-ab36-0eace9f25a4c
awestover/filtering-for-misalignment
Redwood Research: Alek's Filtering Results
id: post673 TL;DR: Contrast-consistent search (CCS) seemed exciting to us and we were keen to apply it. At this point, we think it is unlikely to be directly helpful for implementations of alignment strategies (>95%). Instead of finding knowledge, it seems to find the most prominent feature. We are less sure about the...
8d233493-0919-497c-96c7-d3ff93035d45
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Any-Benefit Mindset and Any-Reason Reasoning One concept from Cal Newport's Deep Work that has stuck with me is that of the any-benefit mindset: > To be clear, I’m not trying to denigrate the benefits [of social media]—there’s nothing illusory or misguided about them. What I’m emphasizing, however, is that these bene...
ba680b09-403c-4dbc-a610-50088389e8da
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Motive Ambiguity Central theme in: Immoral Mazes Sequence, but this generalizes. When looking to succeed, pain is not the unit of effort, and money is a, if not the, unit of caring.  One is not always looking to succeed. Here is a common type of problem. You are married, and want to take your spouse out to a roman...
a285d1a6-d798-4d2b-aa41-5367f485cb30
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
How can I remove the launch button from my LW home page? I have opted out of Petrov day. I'd like to remove the button, too, to decrease the chance that I press it (even by accident).  I can just use my adblocker or browser tools, but that's a non-trivial solution since I use quite a few devices.
4512d1f6-3c6e-455a-adf5-bf5ed6729a8c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The World According to Dominic Cummings Like him or loath him, Dominic Cummings is now the most politically successful rationalist-adjacent figure. For this reason, it seems like our community ought to try to understand him to see what we can learn. I'm sure there are people who have read more of his content than I ha...
5a233c9f-7b78-4809-a7cc-06e107f0b567
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
What's been written about the nature of "son-of-CDT"? I'm quite curious what kind of decision algorithm a CDT agent might implement in a successor AI, but I've only found a few vague references. Are there any good posts/papers/etc about this?
484cc856-3a86-48a5-9a4a-c55bf1ea8bf7
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Call Booth External Monitor My neck is not great, and spending a lot of time looking down at my laptop screen really aggravates it. After damaging my screen a year ago I used a stacked laptop monitor that folded up, and it worked well. The main place I tended to use at full height was call booths, since otherwise I wa...
79bf1f43-5020-41a0-9d83-838038c1b964
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
When AI Optimizes for the Wrong Thing AI systems often optimize for what they can measure—not what actually matters. The result is tools that feel intelligent but produce results misaligned with user goals. A common case is engagement-based optimization. Recommendation engines, chatbots, and search systems increasing...
0723ebd1-3737-4800-8c1e-96ede8bbef6f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 21, chapters 91 & 92 This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapters 91 & 92 . The previous thread has passed 500 comments.  T...
78ba45cb-b67b-4dba-98f3-c87a1c9a285e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Shallow Questions Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Shallow Questions WHEN: 01 May 2017 06:15:00PM (-0700) WHERE: Yerba Buenna Gardens PLEASE NOTE: THE MEETUP WAS MOVED TODAY. We’re trying another new format this week! Please come and let us know what you think...
1051b44e-97a0-451a-b7c1-bad30e7f9eb7
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Rationalist Inspired Coming-of-age Rituals I was recently asked to lead part of my cousin's secular Bar Mitzvah inspired coming-of-age ceremony. Would love recommendations for rituals, quotes, or wisdom to use here. I've really enjoyed the rituals I've seen come out of the rationalist community, and I'm curious if any...
68261b52-a78d-4406-b0bc-746eb7bddf4d
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Our Existing Solutions to AGI Alignment (semi-safe) This post addresses the best methods we have of creating (relatively) aligned AGI. The safety of these methods IS NOT guaranteed. AI Alignment is not a solved issue.  These methods *appear* to offer better solutions than existing methods, such as simple maximizers. ...
4db2b8fe-d446-4cad-bcf7-eff85df4a3af
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Sparse Autoencoders Work on Attention Layer Outputs This post is the result of a 2 week research sprint project during the training phase of Neel Nanda’s MATS stream.  Executive Summary * We replicate Anthropic's MLP Sparse Autoencoder (SAE) paper on attention outputs and it works well: the SAEs learn sparse, inter...
4073b4aa-cc4b-4621-b3f3-6acbff635bb8
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Gandhi, murder pills, and mental illness Gandhi is the perfect pacifist, utterly committed to not bringing about harm to his fellow beings. If a murder pill existed such that it would make murder seem ok without changing any of your other values, Gandhi would refuse to take it on the grounds that he doesn't want his f...
16062e23-e00e-44a0-9207-a70f0911b31c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Inadequacy of Current Science (Novum Organum Book 1: 1-37) This is the third post in the Novum Organum sequence. For context, see the sequence introduction. We have used Francis Bacon's Novum Organum in the version presented at www.earlymoderntexts.com. Translated by and copyright to Jonathan Bennett. Prepared fo...
d1260552-7fd3-459c-9c00-e234a0752445
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The two meanings of mathematical terms [edit: sorry, the formatting of links and italics in this is all screwy.  I've tried editing both the rich-text and the HTML and either way it looks ok while i'm editing it but the formatted terms either come out with no surrounding spaces or two surrounding spaces] In the lates...
98448eea-4a7e-4fb2-8051-c4756404f048
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Natural Value Learning The main idea of this post is to make a distinction between natural and unnatural value learning. The secondary point of this post is that we should be suspicious of unnatural schemes for value learning, though the point is not that we should reject them. (I am not fully satisfied with the term,...
4eadde99-8e07-4cf3-9a92-13253fb4c525
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
Crises Reveal Centralisation (Stefan Schubert) This post from [@Stefan\_Schubert](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/stefan_schubert?mention=user)'s blog is great. Highlights/summary: > I think there are some common heuristics that lead people to think that power is more decentralised than it is [...]: > > ....
b4f46915-9ae5-47ad-8ad5-f5e605bd1d37
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Where are the post-COVID complainers? Assumption: COVID immunity lasts a long time, because that's how diseases work, and this is the case for 95+% of people who get COVID or a COVID vaccine. 20% of the United States has had COVID (13-30% per https://covid19-projections.com/) and presumed immune. Even if we conservat...
ca684a85-faf8-4f15-8bcc-c811638d1f5f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Is there a ML agent that abandons it's utility function out-of-distribution without losing capabilities? At Techniques for optimizing worst-case performance Paul Christiano says > The key point is that a malign failure requires leveraging the intelligence of the model to do something actively bad. If our model is tra...
c13091e4-148c-4d4e-a475-db256122fb57
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Why I Am Not a Rationalist, or, why several of my friends warned me that this is a cult A common question here is how the LW community can grow more rapidly. Another is why seemingly rational people choose not to participate. I've read all of HPMOR and some of the sequences, attended a couple of meetups, am signed up...
ed7774e4-0141-4d26-a2ac-90ea9d1855be
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Life Advice Repository Looking thru the Repository Repository I can't find a nice category for a lot of real life or self help advice that has been posted here over time. Sure some belongs to the Boring Advice Repository but the following you surely wouldn't expect there: Lets start with lukeprog's all-time favorit...
b348f588-06ee-4c36-80b8-2e69ef758291
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Runaway Optimizers in Mind Space This post is an attempt to make an argument more explicit that sometimes seems to be implied (or stated without deeper explanation) in AI safety discussions, but that I haven’t seen spelled out that directly or in this particular form. This post contains nothing fundamentally new, but ...
888af5e2-0e47-4b82-aba9-c8b8c3baf65f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Active Curiosity vs Open Curiosity I think the word ‘curiosity’ is used to describe two distinct things that I will now differentiate as active curiosity and open curiosity. Active curiosity is driven & purposeful. Like thirst, it seeks to be quenched. When you see a blurry object among distant waves and it looks li...
012270ff-7929-42c9-a147-b9b508c289a2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : West LA Meetup: Lightning Talks Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup: Lightning Talks WHEN: 03 September 2014 07:00:00PM (-0700) WHERE: 11066 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA How to Find Us: Go into the Del Taco. There will be a Rubik's Cube. Parking is completely free. There is a sign that...
29969dcc-7f5f-4c79-a128-b1f0ffa9a237
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
My recommendations for gratitude exercises Gratitude has become an increasingly important part of my life. It has also been one of my greatest sources of improvement of well-being and one of the biggest factors in lifting me out of depression. How does this work? The short answer is that I keep a gratitude journal. ...
134b8fd5-805f-455c-9744-865be0d0b56b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[LINK] Engineering General Intelligence (the OpenCog/CogPrime book) Ben Goertzel has made available a pre-print copy of his book Engineering General Intelligence (Vol1, Vol2). The first volume is basically the OpenCog organization's roadmap to AGI, and the second volume a 700 page overview of the design.
2feb6099-a971-4776-958d-5486c21486ca
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Choosing an Inferior Alternative "Choosing an Inferior Alternative" (ungated version) is a 2006 paper1 by J. Edward Russo, Kurt A. Carlson and Margaret G. Meloy. It is presented as an example of cognitive biases leading to poor decision-making. In this case, participants were asked to rate options based on several cha...
ae69c14a-435e-4921-b923-8a800aba462e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Navigating the Open-Source AI Landscape: Data, Funding, and Safety Introduction Open-source AI promises to democratize technology, but it can also be abused and may lead to hard-to-control AI. In this post, we'll explore the data, ethics, and funding behind these models to discover how to balance innovation and safety...
2920c278-f739-41fc-b006-e4c1b28f0c80
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[Link] Nate Soares is answering questions about MIRI at the EA Forum Nate Soares, MIRI's new Executive Director, is going to be answering questions tomorrow at the EA Forum (link). You can post your questions there now; he'll start replying Thursday, 15:00-18:00 US Pacific time. Quoting Nate: > Last week Monday, I t...
83308da1-fe64-4469-ab34-4c72ee5d05b0
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
AGI doesn't need understanding, intention, or consciousness in order to kill us, only intelligence ### Why the development of artificial general intelligence could be the most dangerous new arms race since nuclear weapons The rise of transformer-based architectures, such as [ChatGPT](https://chat.openai.com/) and ...
ac454a05-9f17-4c03-bf72-7670aae1eede
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Contra "Strong Coherence" Polished from my shortform   See also: Is "Strong Coherence" Anti-Natural? ---------------------------------------- Introduction Many AI risk failure modes imagine strong coherence/goal directedness[1] (e.g. [expected] utility maximisers). Such strong coherence is not represented in hum...
775d7482-b5fd-43ac-bf24-b5ffa72a7759
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A Software Agent Illustrating Some Features of an Illusionist Account of Consciousness
e4d0ab72-0ac7-4a53-950e-5ecdfabef49d
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Extreme updating: The devil is in the missing details Today Ed Yong has a post on Not Exactly Rocket Science that is about updating - actually, the most extreme case in updating, where a person gets to choose between relying completely on their own judgement, or completely on the judgement of others.  He describes 2 e...
e28dd988-b518-409b-95ff-a62c6c78876e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
New LW Meetups: Bristol, Tel Aviv This summary was posted to LW main on May 17th. The following week's summary is here. New meetups (or meetups with a hiatus of more than a year) are happening in: * First Bristol meetup: 25 May 2013 03:00PM * Tel Aviv, Israel Meetup - Goal Clarification with special guest Cat from...
5f216d12-ac97-4026-a56f-f095d9e3ff14
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Reducing Goodhart: Announcement, Executive Summary **I - Release announcement** I have just posted a *very* thorough edit-slash-rewrite of my [Reducing Goodhart sequence](https://www.alignmentforum.org/s/aJvgWxkCBWpHpXti4). Many thanks to people who gave me feedback or chatted with me about related topics, and many a...
23767b2a-40f2-474e-b513-f804043f8251
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
How to Upload a Mind (In Three Not-So-Easy Steps) Cross-posted to the EA forum This Rational Animations video is about the research and practical challenges of "whole brain emulation" or "mind uploading", presented as a step by step guide.  We primarily follow the roadmap of Sandberg and Bostrom's 2008 report, linke...
529faccf-ffc8-4344-ba53-18186a7afb6c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
An Open Letter To EA and AI Safety On Decelerating AI Development Tl;dr: when it comes to AI, we need to slow down, as fast as is safe and practical. Here’s why. Summary * We need to slow down AI development for pragmatic and ethical reasons * Energetic public advocacy for slowing down and greater safety seems, in...
7a908dee-3c21-4e38-916a-baf76ade8863
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv
Arxiv
Curriculum Design for Teaching via Demonstrations: Theory and Applications 1 Introduction --------------- Imitation learning is a paradigm in which a learner acquires a new set of skills by imitating a teacher’s behavior. The importance of imitation learning is realized in real-world applications where the desired ...
108bb37a-4e9f-4768-859d-3e26561c4151
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Group Rationality Diary, July 16-31 This is the public group instrumental rationality diary for July 16-31. > 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 some beli...
1397df47-8b66-4ecb-8048-9b0f70cf58e7
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
“Fragility of Value” vs. LLMs It seems like we keep getting LLMs that are better and better at *getting* the point of fairly abstract concepts (e.g. understanding jokes). As compute increases and their performance improves, it seems increasingly likely that human “values” are within the class of not-that-heavily-finet...
3124f154-3a6d-47c4-8826-8548a04d0c81
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
On Irrational Theory of Identity Meet Alice. Alice alieves that losing consciousness causes discontinuity of identity.   Alice has a good job. Every payday, she takes her salary and enjoys herself in a reasonable way for her means--maybe going to a restaurant, maybe seeing a movie, normal things. And in the evening,...
9230c769-d35d-4f36-a17a-922d815ac579
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Toronto Meetup, Apr 14 8pm When:  Thursday, April 14th, 20:00 Where: The Bedford Academy, 36 Prince Arthur Avenue   Hi everyone, Same plan as the last meetup.  The reservation is under my name (Spencer Sleep) this time, as last time they put the name down as "Less Wrong" (first name and surname) and got angry at m...
ad4c1378-422e-46a7-997f-355374a88c86
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Semen and Semantics: Understanding Porn with Language Embeddings Summary Porn content has gotten more extreme over time. Here's the average title for the first full year of Pornhub's existence, 2008: * "Hot blonde girl gets fucked" and here's the average title for 2023: * "FAMILYXXX - "I Cant Resist My Stepsis Bi...
49107c0a-1b8e-4562-9d07-2165f28e06a3
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Hardware-Software Framework: A New Perspective on Economic Growth with AI First, a few words about me, as I’m new here.  I am a professor of economics at SGH Warsaw School of Economics, Poland. Years of studying the causes and mechanisms of long-run economic growth brought me to the topic of AI, arguably the most...
c8d34f16-6514-4162-aa85-1088235e69c2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Did the Army Poison a Bunch of Women in Minnesota? The 1950s were crazy times. Human experimentation in the US was normalized in a way that would make modern IRBs implode from shock. After the Soviets tested their first nuclear bomb in 1949, war planners in the US, both civilian and military, were interested in accele...