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3e647a16-d7e6-4730-a891-5f0bb245bf86 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Curiosity Killed or Incapacitated the Cat and the Asymptotically Optimal Agent
I Introduction
---------------
Reinforcement learning agents have to explore their environment in order to learn to accumulate reward well. This presents a particular problem when the environment is dangerous. Without knowledge of the en... |
8244d90a-d996-4bec-8261-caa330abd726 | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | "After having it recommended to me for the fifth time, I finally read through Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It didn't seem like it'd be interesting to me, but I was really mistaken. It's fantastic.
One thing I noticed is that Harry threatens people a lot. My initial reaction was, "Nahh, that wouldn't wor... |
5c6a6d18-b460-4a59-9c74-5905a3c74831 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A reductio ad absurdum for naive Functional/Computational Theory-of-Mind (FCToM).
Thesis: FCToM is underspecified, since they rely on a mapping (which I call the "level of analysis") from physical systems to mathematic functions or computational algorithms (respectively), but do not specify that mapping. (I'm collapsi... |
72e5937c-789a-418f-ae0b-a3db8d1e7cf1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Third-person counterfactuals
If you're thinking about the counterfactual world where you do X in the process of deciding whether to do X, let's call that a first-person counterfactual. If you're thinking about it in the process of deciding whether another agent A should have done X instead of Y, let's call that a thir... |
74195832-9b44-4759-ab8c-06f87a24bf34 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Conditioning Predictive Models: The case for competitiveness
This is the third of seven posts in the Conditioning Predictive Models Sequence based on the paper “Conditioning Predictive Models: Risks and Strategies” by Evan Hubinger, Adam Jermyn, Johannes Treutlein, Rubi Hudson, and Kate Woolverton. Each post in the se... |
a791d35d-2e87-4733-83b9-3d063ce20099 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Second MIRIxLosAngeles Meeting
The second MIRIxLosAngeles meeting will be held on Saturday, June 14, at 10:00 AM. The location will be the same as last time:
USC Institute for Creative Technologies
12015 Waterfront Drive
Playa Vista, CA 90094-2536.
If you would like to join us, please let me know, so I can know to... |
a756ec7d-a447-409b-bf3f-6d86919efc88 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Interest in Meetups starting this fall at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign?
I will be starting as a freshman at UIUC this fall, as a Math/CS major. The only interest in a Less Wrong meetup I've found is this /r/uiuc thread from 8 months ago. I would like to possibly start a google group of interested peo... |
e2e0cd65-d030-4737-8564-d8c94e81dcb3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Role playing game based on HPMOR in Moscow
Discussion article for the meetup : Role playing game based on HPMOR in Moscow
WHEN: 07 January 2017 03:00:00PM (+0300)
WHERE: Большая Дорогомиловская, 5к2
Welcome to our custom made role playing game "Hogwarts and methods of rationality", inspired by HPMOR story!... |
99c504e6-cb28-4256-9d88-82e37ed9124a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Evaluating Opus
Several months ago, I proposed a bucket brigade approach to singing with friends over the Internet. Recently, Glenn and I have been working on an implementation (prototype source code). We can't use WebRTC (I think) because we need fine grained control over latency, so we're doing everything manually. ... |
3ad915f3-cf0b-4d22-a928-95ed8f38f86d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Durham/RTLW HPMoR discussion, ch. 77-78
Discussion article for the meetup : Durham/RTLW HPMoR discussion, ch. 77-78
WHEN: 13 July 2013 12:30:00PM (-0400)
WHERE: 726 Rigsbee Avenue, Durham NC 27701
This Saturday: food truck food, coffee from Cocoa Cinnamon, beer from Fullsteam, and discussion from HPMoR!
I... |
15b7edee-d2cb-4c6a-aa1e-22b70156e34e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Toy model of the AI control problem: animated version
Crossposted at LessWrong 2.0.
A few years back, I came up with a toy model of the AI control problem. It has a robot moving boxes into a hole, with a slightly different goal than it's human designers, and a security camera to check that it's behaving as it should.... |
ca97064d-7fda-49a7-a61f-1a92a0f0acc7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Expression of Interest: Brisbane LessWrong Meetup
The new Canberra meetup has spurred me on to think about creating a Brisbane, Australia meetup for LessWrong. I would have posted this in the open thread, but this is significantly more likely to be seen by any potential attendees.
This post is obviously to see who, i... |
455e07a3-bb4f-4811-adf7-91caaee32737 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A Common Form of Erroneous Thinking about the Universe
This essay may be something of a non sequitur compared to usual LW topics. I wrote it some time ago and have long been sitting on it, waiting to discover a place to share it. I have just spent some time stripping it down to bones for this forum. I w... |
ba8c43ea-c471-454d-addf-618234b9881d | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/youtube | Youtube Transcripts | Key Issues In Near Term AI Safety Research | Aryeh L Englander, Daniel Elton, Ph D
last week we had a quick excursion to
quantum computing with Scott Hanson
there and now this week we're and kind
of taking it back on the topic of AI and
specifically focused and focusing on
more near-term AI issues and
particularly fo... |
4315513d-8ff5-46ce-9d5b-7f1d77766bb1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Where do I most obviously still need to say "oops"?
Eliezer once told me:
> The most common error I see on Less Wrong is the failure to say "Oops."
If there's one rationality skill I like to think I'm pretty good at, it's this one: the skill of saying "Oops."
In fact, I say "Oops, fixed, thanks" so often on Less Wr... |
1b136eae-d28d-4a6c-b25c-6c493498ca73 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Opinionated Uncertainty
Real Life: It's More Than Mere Algebra!
The expected value (E) of an event is the product of its value (V) and its probability (P):
E = VP.
Considered algebraically, both V and P play equal roles in determining E. It wouldn't make sense to say that "the magnitude of the consequences of an ev... |
0cb51158-6903-479d-95b5-431cee5d0aa0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Open thread, Oct. 31 - Nov. 6, 2016
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 l... |
bb7e77c4-d427-434c-a4ec-89d6fe48ff04 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Learning on a Budget via Teacher Imitation
I Introduction
---------------
Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) has been proven to be a successful approach to solve decision-making problems in a variety of difficult domains such as video games [[1](#bib.bibx1)], board games [[2](#bib.bibx2)] or robot manipulation [[3](#... |
c352b240-22f5-4365-9ce5-7c6672f19fc4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Reverse Biomimicry
Biomimicry is a wonderful concept that takes inspiration from nature for the designs of technology. The sleek design of the nose of high speed trains reduces wind-resistance, allowing for more efficient movement of trains that is directly inspired by the way birds’ beaks reduce wind resistance. Ven... |
3f2bc345-86a5-45a1-aaa4-d10c1b498842 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Beware of black boxes in AI alignment research
Over the course of the [AI Alignment Prize](https://www.lesserwrong.com/posts/YDLGLnzJTKMEtti7Z/announcing-the-ai-alignment-prize) I've sent out lots of feedback emails. Some of the threads were really exciting and taught me a lot. But mostly it was me saying pretty much ... |
2489db13-48dd-439d-8c40-38fc1717691d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Weekly LW Meetups: Cambridge, Houston, Melbourne, Pittsburgh, Vancouver, Waterloo
There are upcoming irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups in:
* Need more people for Vancouver meetup: 28 January 2012 03:03PM
* Pittsburgh Meetup: Big Gaming Fun 3!: 29 January 2012 01:00PM
* Houston Meetup - 1/29: 29 January 2012... |
f7298fea-a574-4f3d-bbd8-2da3af550d1c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [LINK] Causal Entropic Forces
This paper seems relevant to various LW interests. It smells like The Second Law of Thermodynamics, and Engines of Cognition, but I haven't wrapped my head enough around either to say more than that. Abstract:
> Recent advances in fields ranging from cosmology to computer science have hi... |
49ea8976-8274-41fc-94ae-952f16407b2e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | An introduction to language model interpretability
This document was written while working at Redwood Research as part of the training material for REMIX. Its goal was to introduce useful considerations before beginning empirical work on language model interpretability. It assumes familiarity with causal scrubbing, an... |
af288fdb-25c3-41a9-a0e6-c967768e8601 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | On Terminal Goals and Virtue Ethics
Introduction
A few months ago, my friend said the following thing to me: “After seeing Divergent, I finally understand virtue ethics. The main character is a cross between Aristotle and you.”
That was an impossible-to-resist pitch, and I saw the movie. The thing that resonated most... |
2b6bb378-4e94-413b-a2de-c107154f59a6 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | AI@50 Survey
A seemingly informal seven-question poll was taken of participants at the AI@50 conference in 2006. 41% of respondents said it would take more than 50 years for AI to simulate every aspect of human intelligence, and 41% said it would never happen.
Details
-------
### AI timelines question
One questi... |
d7530306-c22c-4cc3-bf02-fae85a8d8dac | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Deliberation, Reactions, and Control: Tentative Definitions and a Restatement of Instrumental Convergence
*This analysis is speculative. The framing has been refined in conversation and private reflection and research. To some extent it feels vacuous, but at least valuable for further research and communication.*
A ... |
3f7b272e-076a-4c32-a196-2dc1ee30a0af | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Factored Cognition Strengthens Monitoring and Thwarts Attacks
Note: This post is essentially a ~90% draft of our upcoming research paper. We are sharing it now to get feedback on our empirical approach[1], choice of final experiments, and suggested future work. We assume readers have a high context in empirical AI con... |
ef6a5eec-7b71-4724-80d1-35a42c8e3ec0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Community building: Lessons from ten years of facilitation experience
Epistemic status: Anecdotal but strong. Most of this is based on practical experience and things I learned through word-of-mouth.
Here, I’d like to present some pieces of facilitation advice I’d give my former self. I’ve selected this list for thin... |
f7e0982f-0e36-4769-a8bb-9eabdc43d84a | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | Ngo and Yudkowsky on alignment difficulty
This post is the first in a series of transcribed Discord conversations between Richard Ngo and Eliezer Yudkowsky, moderated by Nate Soares. We’ve also added Richard and Nate’s running summaries of the conversation (and others’ replies) from Google Docs.
Later conversation p... |
1e8cdab3-5945-44b6-8e96-036ebbfe4d54 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Is the Wave non-disparagement thingy okay?
A few weeks ago, Linch, Auckland (pseudonym), and I (Ruby) decided to chat about something and settled on this topic. What follows is a mix of distillation and edited chat (Slack) transcript.
Auckland and I (Ruby) start from the position that the Wave non-disparagement agree... |
b043b9de-5b09-4aba-b3f4-94ac5683c628 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Talk and Q&A - Dan Hendrycks - Paper: Aligning AI With Shared Human Values. On Discord at Aug 28, 2020
8:00-10:00 AM GMT+8.
This online event may be of interest:
* Perth Machine Learning Group - Talk and Q&A - Dan Hendrycks - Paper: Aligning AI With Shared Human Values. Paper. Code event.
The event will be on the P... |
527f6bdb-6110-48fc-ba5b-4503fc786008 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Reasons for being rational
When I found Less Wrong and started reading, when I made my first post, when I went to my first meetup….
It was a little like coming home.
And mostly it wasn’t. Mostly I felt a lot more out of place than I have in, say, church youth groups. It was hard to pinpoint the difference, but as fa... |
a318c97d-fd29-40a4-920e-ccd10e5e36a9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Thermal Mass Thermos
A thermos does a great job with liquids: the insulation means you can pour in hot soup in the morning, and enjoy hot soup at lunch. But it doesn't do nearly as good a job with solids: fill one with rice and it quickly falls into the "danger zone".
One recommendation you'll see is that you should f... |
4fc4b22d-c0e2-4699-a8ae-a8f86483b6ce | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital | Arbital | Vingean uncertainty
> Of course, I never wrote the “important” story, the sequel about the first amplified human. Once I tried something similar. John Campbell’s letter of rejection began: “Sorry—you can’t write this story. Neither can anyone else.”...
> “Bookworm, Run!” and its lesson were important to me. Here I had... |
41ea2da0-53ca-4572-9843-8be02b263d13 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Yes, Voting is Rational, So Please Go Vote!
Main Idea: Voting is rational because (1) the benefits of having your preferred candidate win might be enough to outweigh the chance you won't swing the election, (2) there are intangible benefits to voting besides swining the election, and (3) the collective action of nonvo... |
e5fb6344-8400-4060-99d7-9a03fe5e2c38 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Aspirin Paradox- replacement for the Smoking Lesion Problem?
It's been pointed out that the Smoking Lesion problem is a poorly chosen decision theory problem, because in the real world there actually is a direct causal link from smoking to cancer, and people's intuitions are influenced more by that than by the sta... |
ff302af9-ebc3-44cf-a4e9-82c050934f6d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What Belongs in my Glossary?
I've been working on a Glossary that will give short descriptions of concepts I've introduced, so people don't have to seek out entire posts to grok what they mean in context and then decide later if they'd like to know more. So far I've got Asymmetric Justice, The Delenda Est Club, Doom P... |
d601a8e4-a46b-44b6-aff4-242d01da59bd | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Collecting expressions of interest in a rationality conference in August
On the principle of organising events that I want to attend myself, I would very much like to organise a rationality conference/convention in the UK. I organise events for a living; in addition, in my free time I've organised five ~200 person wee... |
8de13a27-855d-4b0f-91a5-c8512efe6f02 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Why Two Valid Answers Approach is not Enough for Sleeping Beauty
This is the sixth post in my series on Anthropics. The previous one is Another Non-Anthropic Paradox: The Unsurprising Rareness of Rare Events. The next one is Lessons from Failed Attempts to Model Sleeping Beauty Problem
Introduction
When I was writin... |
5b5b1bc3-0c8c-4ea5-ba2b-53efbe573ea7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Orange and Strawberry Truffles
Growing up my dad would make chocolate truffles, flavored with a range of alcohols and fruit extracts. These are tasty, but I've been interested in making ones that have less of a liquor flavor. This time last year I made some with freeze-dried raspberries, which I think came out well. I... |
2a4ccfb1-b535-4e23-a0dd-96dbf8e7e684 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Norm Innovation and Theory of Mind
Disclaimer: this was the first concept that led to me thinking about the coordination frontier. But I think something on the frame here feels subtly off. I decided to go ahead and post it – I'm pretty sure I believe all the words here. But not 100% sure this is the best way to think ... |
57f8c718-22b1-40b7-b88a-b0300f295838 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | I learn better when I frame learning as Vengeance for losses incurred through ignorance, and you might too
THE OBSERVATION My main point is in the title: I have found that when I consciously learn "with a vengeance", aiming to avenge whatever I lost because I have not learnt the thing earlier, I learn markedly better.... |
85520db7-cb5d-42df-be75-738ae334e9d6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How relevant are the lessons from Megamistakes to forecasting today?
Disclaimer: This post contains unvetted off-the-cuff thoughts. I've included quotes from the book in a separate quote dump post to prevent this post from getting too long. Read the intro and the TL;DR if you want a quick idea of what I'm saying.
As ... |
7655a142-4e1d-4186-ada6-474e3b92042a | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | New paper: “Cheating Death in Damascus”
[](https://intelligence.org/files/DeathInDamascus.pdf)MIRI Executive Director Nate Soares and Rutgers/UIUC decision theorist Ben Levinstein have a new paper out introducing *functional decision theo... |
f5a3a454-96ac-4b1f-8a78-85f8d390be19 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | [AN #60] A new AI challenge: Minecraft agents that assist human players in creative mode
Find all Alignment Newsletter resources [here](http://rohinshah.com/alignment-newsletter/). In particular, you can [sign up](http://eepurl.com/dqMSZj), or look through this [spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PwW... |
8530125c-210a-4ee0-8792-3168f2153bfa | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | "Followup to: Righting a Wrong Question, Zombies! Zombies?, A Premature Word on AI, On Doing the ImpossibleThere is a subproblem of Friendly AI which is so scary that I usually don't talk about it, because very few would-be AI designers would react to it appropriately—that is, by saying, "Wow, that does sound like an i... |
e751ba8c-1079-48ff-a370-f3b4a9759825 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Computational efficiency reasons not to model VNM-rational preference relations with utility functions
The VNM theorem is constructive; given a rational preference relation, it is easy to construct a corresponding utility function. But in may cases, it may be computationally intractable to choose between two lotteries... |
61d0dd83-f1f0-48ca-9223-e5c67c6ba961 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Using LW-style Multi-Worlds as source of technobabble
In my latest chapter of my ongoing My Little Pony crossover fanfic, "Myou've Gotta be Kidding Me", my protagonist has had a thought. She has discovered that she lives in a universe containing cross-universe travel (which brought her from Earth to Equestria), time t... |
c7ace1c1-2388-4f23-8aff-566ad4c6a12f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | 1001 PredictionBook Nights
> I explain what I've learned from creating and judging thousands of predictions on personal and real-world matters: the challenges of maintenance, the limitations of prediction markets, the interesting applications to my other essays, skepticism about pundits and unreflective persons' opini... |
caa81304-14d1-4d0a-aa74-6b6a6de83d5d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What’s your best utilitarian model for risking your best kidneys?
You are the great commander of many robotic soldiers. Each soldier has two robotic kidneys. In war time they frequently need another one. If they don’t, they break (100%). If they do, the donor might break (1%).
If all soldiers were equally good at wa... |
0651a765-26ab-46e6-b2e2-b4df0950be47 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | "Moral" as a preference label
Note: working on a research agenda, hence the large amount of small individual posts, to have things to link to in the main documents.
In my quest to synthesise human preferences, I've occasionally been asked whether I distinguish moral preferences from other types of preferences - for e... |
2e3a22ce-db05-49ac-bb77-8c930d1fb8c8 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Usernames in RSS feeds
Right now my feed reader does not display the author of most posts. Occasionally a username will be attached, but this seems strange and inconsistent - it might correspond to a post making it to the curated front page list? |
9433a120-c0d7-4a9b-91e0-4e09e01ec462 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Things a Katja-society might try (Part 2)
(Part 1)
1. Carefully structured and maintained arguments for any interesting claims that people believe. For instance, I would like to see the argument for any of the causes generally considered Effective Altruist carefully laid out (I’m not claiming that these don’t exist,... |
20a56753-c79a-4879-8946-2626874a555d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Origin of Morality
By origin, I'm referring to the source of the need for morality, and it's clear that it's mostly about suffering. We don't like suffering and would rather not experience it, although we are prepared to put up with some (or even a lot) of it if that suffering leads to greater pleasure that outweighs ... |
56a3430c-1edb-4005-980b-752199e4d4eb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Introducing Fatebook: the fastest way to make and track predictions
Fatebook is a website that makes it extremely low friction to make and track predictions.
It's designed to be very fast - just open a new tab, go to fatebook.io, type your prediction, and hit enter. Later, you'll get an email reminding you to resolve... |
98708462-e543-459d-9108-df08b941d36d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Human-AI Relationality is Already Here
By now we have been warned not to anthropomorphize the Large Language Model. A converse—but not actually conflicting—warning also seems useful: the possibility of instrumentalizing a mind who is ready to take part in meaningful relational exchange with us.
This piece looks beyo... |
215a113c-d5c5-4400-b17a-58137921b5b1 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Cartesian Frames
1 Background and Motivation
----------------------------
Acts are basic in decision theory. Once we have a set of acts available to an agent, we can then use decision theory to evaluate the choice-worthiness of the different acts.
Much of the formal work philosophers have done to understand pra... |
32f42864-73c3-4d33-af0b-8a6d311fc522 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Theodicy and the simulation hypothesis, or: The problem of simulator evil
Philosophy Bear here. At the moment I'm composing an anthology of all the work I've done on the topic of AI. Simultaneously, as I edit those works for the anthology, I thought it would be a good idea to crosspost the here, as I've never shared ... |
2bbc03d0-716b-4bd4-a4a8-42eabfdc11e6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : First Philadelphia Meetup of 2012
Discussion article for the meetup : First Philadelphia Meetup of 2012
WHEN: 08 January 2012 02:00:00PM (-0500)
WHERE: 8620 Germantown Ave Philadelphia, PA 19118
Hello Philadelphian Less-Wrongers!
A couple of people have expressed interest in restarting regular Philadelphia... |
bba9b987-087b-43b3-91b8-c72828ebe22a | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Feature proposal: integrate LessWrong with ChatGPT to promote active reading
I've built a little Python app I call [aiRead](https://github.com/bskubi/aiRead).
Its least interesting feature is that it breaks down text the way I prefer to read it: a few sentences at a time, presented in ticker-tape fashion.
However, I... |
5099a003-11b5-4166-a378-5edb00dd2e21 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Upcoming stability of values
What would you say to someone old who hadn't changed their values since they were five years old?
What would you say to anyone old who hadn't changed their values since they were eighteen years old?
You'd probably have cause to pity the second and seriously worry about the first. The pro... |
39102942-83b9-4694-9ce8-689bc0d19881 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | In Defense of Objective Bayesianism: MaxEnt Puzzle.
In Defense of Objective Bayesianism by Jon Williamson was mentioned recently in a post by lukeprog as the sort of book that should be being read by people on Less Wrong. Now, I have been reading it, and found some of it quite bizarre. This point in particular seems o... |
a6f15439-b349-4f99-a141-bed3a14ffc6f | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Principles for AI Welfare Research
*Tl;dr: This post, which is part of the* [*EA Strategy Fortnight series*](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ct3zLpD5FMwBwYCZ7/ea-strategy-fortnight-june-12-24)*, summarizes some of my current views about the importance of AI welfare, priorities for AI welfare research, and pr... |
6048c7ff-8a37-4748-98d4-2706cf646cd9 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Deep Probabilistic Programming Languages: A Qualitative Study
1. Introduction
----------------
A deep probabilistic programming language (PPL) is a language for
specifying both deep neural networks and probabilistic models. In
other words, a deep PPL draws upon programming languages, Bayesian
statistics, and deep l... |
14db13c0-1610-4bee-9478-3c3d61ba4329 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Open and Welcome Thread - April 2021
If it’s worth saying, but not worth its own post, here's a place to put it.
If you are new to LessWrong, here's the place to introduce yourself. Personal stories, anecdotes, or just general comments on how you found us and what you hope to get from the site and community are invit... |
f356246b-53d6-4aa1-b7d1-5c77e772aa7c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [link] A attempt to reduce Epistemic Viciousness in the martial arts/ an empirical analysis of WSD training.
http://kojutsukan.blogspot.com/2011/12/womens-self-defence-courses-effective.html
http://kojutsukan.blogspot.com/2011/12/womens-self-defence-effective-or-not-pt.html
The linked articles' theoretical topic,... |
666b5ede-1cf3-428d-83e7-e3cc357ce50f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Understanding the Lottery Ticket Hypothesis
Financial status: This is independent research. I welcome financial support to make further posts like this possible.
Epistemic status: The thread of research I’m reviewing here has been contentious in the past so I expect to make updates based on the comments.
----------... |
c2f8724c-c2ef-4015-859b-057a6da2d53e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A speculative incentive design: self-determined price commitments as a way of averting monopoly
[Epistemic status: A half-baked idea that I only came up with yesterday, but am nonetheless kind of excited by and I expect something like it will end up fitting in somewhere someday.]
background
Today, there is a lurki... |
0f4c71c2-6c4d-46fa-8ef8-cf0c47a9c107 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Jeffrey Ding: Bringing techno-globalism back: a romantically realist reframing of the US-China tech relationship
---
*Talk of decoupling, an AI arms race, and a tech Cold War abounds. These prominent narratives are rooted in the core assumption of techno-nationalism — that the nation-state is the key unit of analysis... |
b400dd48-0c0d-44ef-847d-761b0eb243ce | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | TASP Ep 3 - Optimal Policies Tend to Seek Power
Welcome to the Technical AI Safety Podcast, the show where I interview computer scientists about their papers. This month I covered [Optimal Policies Tend to Seek Power](https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.01683v6), which is closely related to [Seeking Power is Often Robustly Ins... |
0970dc43-4e93-4fcf-bc57-f3455f83f840 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetups Notes (Q1 2025)
I've been running meetups since 2019 in Kitchener-Waterloo. These were rationalist-adjacent from 2019-2021 (examples here) and then explicitly rationalist from 2022 onwards.
Here's a low-effort/stream of consciousness rundown of some meetups I ran in Q1 2025. Sometime late last year, I resolve... |
64d2f966-3d34-45f9-8d9b-15674f25090f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Helpless Individuals
When you consider that our grouping instincts are optimized for 50-person hunter-gatherer bands where everyone knows everyone else, it begins to seem miraculous that modern-day large institutions survive at all.
Well—there are governments with specialized militaries and police, which can extract ... |
3cf39582-0ba9-4177-a200-54c57847367e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Berlin Meetup: Bayes
Discussion article for the meetup : Berlin Meetup: Bayes
WHEN: 09 January 2013 07:30:00PM (+0100)
WHERE: MingDynastie, Brückenstraße 6, 10179 Berlin
It's the first meetup in 2013 and apart from the inevitable talk about the new year celebrations, there'll be:
* An introduction to Bay... |
46b6b7e1-5433-4172-9f50-ba1fd9918680 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A Primer on Matrix Calculus, Part 1: Basic review
,
Consider whether this story applies to you. You went through college and made it past linear algebra and multivariable calculus, and then began your training for deep learning. To your surprise, much of what they taught you in the previous courses is not very useful ... |
c4c9ac8e-bd96-43b9-82c8-01a5090855c1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The 48 Rules of Power; Viable?
This is not a thesis post, it's an open-question, discussion-provoking post. That's why I'm posting it as Discussion, since this is what appears to serve the function of forum on this site. I am not looking for ratings, but for answers. With everyone's collaboration, they should present ... |
b8765ef0-3a95-4bdd-9e55-7bc1b4da6d38 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Do you even have a system prompt? (PSA / repo)
Everyone around me has a notable lack of system prompt. And when they do have a system prompt, it’s either the eigenprompt or some half-assed 3-paragraph attempt at telling the AI to “include less bullshit”.
I see no systematic attempts at making a good one anywhere.[1]... |
507bf384-f8ad-4f6d-badf-2dd5e1a1b401 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Random advice: Teenage U.S. LW-ers should probably be taking more AP exams
If you're a smart young teenager who plans on attending college, consider taking lots of AP Exams.
Advanced Placement Exams are a suite of standardized tests created by the College Board, the same entity that administers the SAT and related te... |
fa690d93-2761-46f1-b2ad-93ad5dea69e3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Are daemons a problem for ideal agents?
(I'm mostly just restating things that Paul has already said in different words; see his comments here and here)
Consider the following hypothetical:
Agent A wants to design a rocket to go to a Neptune. A can either think about rockets at the object level, or simulate some ali... |
57385979-f1a2-4f4e-9e0a-a910abc6a3c6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Forecasting AI Futures Resource Hub
Like a collector, I gather resources and information. Storing it and categorizing it. I do this for any project I undertake. But for Forecasting AI Futures, I realized the collection might be quite useful for others.
So, I set to work on restructuring it and make it look nice!
Her... |
538b9a0d-2e58-401e-bea2-c86008c334d4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Units Have More Depth Than I Thought
Last week I stumbled over Dimensional Analysis which is not only useful for applied fields (physics, biology, economics), but also for math (Why did no one tell me that you can almost always think of df/dx as having "the type of f"/"the type of x"? The fact that exponents always ha... |
410891ac-dfde-4cb7-87e3-2dffd0a65c21 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Flights of wonder
Today I put up the last page in AI Impacts’ (primarily Ronny Fernandez’s) investigation into how human-made flying machines compare to evolved ones. (Relevant to how we expect human efforts to build minds to compare to evolved minds.) Evolution mostly won.
Some other interesting things I learned in ... |
8aeb51a0-4e05-4941-a632-2bbf9b705504 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Informal Post on Motivation
This post began with a few thoughts I wanted to share on my newly created short-form feed. In order to convey those few thoughts, I found myself writing out a lot more of my general thinking about motivation. Eventually, it could not be defended as short-form anymore.
I still want to exper... |
f40d0fde-1343-452e-9c4f-5b8689bde507 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | 10/50/90% chance of GPT-N Transformative AI?
In [Developmental Stages of GPTs](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3nDR23ksSQJ98WNDm/developmental-stages-of-gpts), orthonormal explains why we might need "zero more cognitive breakthroughs" to reach transformative AI, aka "an AI capable of making an Industrial Revolution si... |
4e663bf2-e997-4f9f-aab2-9eb26d09a7f5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [Link] Quantity Always Trumps Quality
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/08/quantity-always-trumps-quality.html
> The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they prod... |
bc858f82-7e37-41a1-b9b0-ee998dbc1a73 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [LINK] Amazing Prisoner's Dilemma Move
From the game show, "Golden Balls." This isn't the classic prisoner's dilemma, because they get to discuss it. I think that makes it much more interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qjK3TWZE8 |
20526e76-e364-4286-8d8e-e16a8a53b35a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | On Doing the Impossible
"Persevere." It's a piece of advice you'll get from a whole lot of high achievers in a whole lot of disciplines. I didn't understand it at all, at first.
At first, I thought "perseverance" meant working 14-hour days. Apparently, there are people out there who can work for 10 hours at a tech... |
1131db25-2c6d-479f-a08d-1730ca76915b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Are human imitators superhuman models with explicit constraints on capabilities?
epistemic status: A speculative hypothesis, don't know if this already exists. The only real evidence I have for this is a vague analogy based on some other speculative (though less speculative) hypothesis. I don’t think this is particula... |
b2a2feab-f9f8-4e78-bb82-d752da21cce6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Burmese Days, Mar 22; Rules of the Game and Preference Falsification in the Army
I have an exam coming up so I am a low on time. I am skipping the predictions this week and diving right into the revolutionary situation.
What is winning?
The two factions here each seek control over the state. Control over the state h... |
361001a1-dd2b-4cce-8847-97ec985e1c3f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Cambridge (MA) first-Sundays meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : Cambridge (MA) first-Sundays meetup
WHEN: 07 October 2012 02:00:00PM (-0400)
WHERE: 25 Ames St, Cambridge, MA 02139
Cambridge/Boston-area Less Wrong meetups on the first and third Sunday of every month, 2pm at the MIT Landau Building [... |
29efc840-d517-4fc4-90ce-fc1a7a4ad907 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Modified Guess Culture
[Epistemic status: rough heuristics, probably needs refinement, comments are always welcome.]
It has recently occurred to me that, to build close-knit communities, a modified Guess Culture would work better than pure Guess Culture, which is better than Ask Culture.
Guess Culture, at its best, ... |
a5bce84c-7d6b-438d-8aee-49486753bbd6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | That's Not How Epigenetic Modifications Work
Ask an epigenetics researcher what they study, and the standard story you'll hear goes something like this...
"Sometimes a little methyl group (i.e. -CH3) gets stuck on the side of a strand of DNA. Turns out these guys are pretty important! They're copied over when cells r... |
d8f37f3a-fb74-47da-a7c7-4e97886e1f81 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Rationalist Lent
As I understand it, Lent is a holiday where we celebrate the scientific method by changing exactly one variable in our lives for 40 days. This seems like a convenient Schelling point for rationalists to adopt, so:
What variable are you going to change for the next 40 days?
(I am really annoyed I did... |
6b89ebec-e556-4f63-90d4-c7c1cff522b4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Can a stupid person become intelligent?
I've come to a rather uncomfortable self-assessment: I believe I am a stupid person. This isn't an easy thing to say, especially in a community like LessWrong, where intellect and deep thinking are highly valued. But it's a sentiment that has been echoing in my head for a while,... |
204ab01d-46f1-4cab-b810-ac1c4c0e1540 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Anthropic uncertainty in the Evidential Blackmail problem
|
fffdb83d-8419-418b-9bea-72fc7255d41c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AI Rights: In your view, what would be required for an AGI to gain rights and protections from the various Governments of the World?
* Easily pass the Turing Test by most Humans?
* Easily pass the Turing Test by most AI Researchers?
* Prove the ability to experience pain and pleasure, as well as have preferenc... |
4282e91a-981f-4acc-9ab9-6ba03375a490 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | One Study, Many Results (Matt Clancy)
I didn't see this post, its author, or the study involved elsewhere on LW, so I'm crossposting the content. Let me know if this is redundant, and I'll take it down.
Summary
This post looks at cases where teams of researchers all began with the same data, then used it to answer a... |
070b5540-f593-414b-adea-49ca8e5427e4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Storyteller's convention, 2223 A.D.
I think, sometimes, it's good to think about just how well things could go if we navigate the singularity successfully. This looks back from a winning timeline.
> My friends, my friends, good news I say
>
> The anniversary’s today
>
> A challenge faced, a future won
>
> When alm... |
7a3d91e6-9fbf-4dc6-97f5-1e2b79fed7f4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Interpreting Yudkowsky on Deep vs Shallow Knowledge
Here is an exploration of what Eliezer Yudkowsky means when he writes about deep vs shallow patterns (although I’ll be using "knowledge" instead of "pattern" for reasons explained in the next section). Not about any specific pattern Yudkowsky is discussing, mind you,... |
ac558cd2-d59f-4820-b72e-07d3f9997a83 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Recommendations vs. Guidelines
Medicine loves guidelines. But everywhere else, guidelines are still underappreciated.
Consider a recommendation, like “Try Lexapro!” Even if Lexapro is a good medication, it might not be a good medication for your situation. And even if it’s a good medication for your situation, it mig... |
da6fd77e-3140-4554-83d8-406bc3e7c23b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Stacked Laptop Monitor Update
In the spirit of coming back to things once I have more experience with them, I've continued to be very happy with my stacked laptop monitor. I just got back from a week of touring and then vacation with Julia's family, and I used it almost every day. Being able to use my laptop comfortab... |
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