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3cd480d6-bbb1-4566-bcfe-365d9ce044a9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Bias in rationality is much worse than noise
Crossposted at Intelligent Agent Forum.
I've found quite a few people dubious of my "radical skepticism" post on human preferences. Most "radical skepticism" arguments - Descartes's Demon, various no-free-lunch theorems, Boltzmann Brains - generally turn out to be irreleva... |
d9b45243-1acb-4c91-96b1-f72612194a9a | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Unfaithful Explanations in Chain-of-Thought Prompting
Introduction
------------
I recently released “[Language Models Don't Always Say What They Think: Unfaithful Explanations in Chain-of-Thought Prompting](https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.04388)” with collaborators Julian Michael, Ethan Perez, and Sam Bowman. For a summar... |
10bae926-ae42-4baa-a9ea-dacb56716a8c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Extensions and Intensions
> "What is red?"
> "Red is a color."
> "What's a color?"
> "A color is a property of a thing."
But what is a thing? And what's a property? Soon the two are lost in a maze of words defined in other words, the problem that Steven Harnad once described as trying to learn Chinese from a Chines... |
a24d591b-6c49-45d0-94a8-ac8c5c8b8438 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Will early transformative AIs primarily use text? [Manifold question]
Will early transformative AIs primarily use text to store intermediate thoughts and memories?
I think the answer to this question matters for alignment research prioritization, and getting some common knowledge about what are the most commonly held... |
b7462298-7889-4de0-aee9-3235b40b0c95 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Deception Chess: Game #1
(You can sign up here if you haven't already.)
This is the first of my analyses of the deception chess games. The introduction will describe the setup of the game, and the conclusion will sum up what happened in general terms; the rest of the post will mostly be chess analysis and skippable i... |
720d5f6d-b97e-4bb0-9f52-94430e3bde8b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What the cost difference in processing input vs. output tokens with LLMs?
Hi,
I am trying to understand the difference in the cost of producing a single input token vs output token.
Based on some articles, I came to the following conclusion:
1. Input tokens processing scales quadratically, there’s no way around it... |
3b646d25-c0e5-429e-a972-3dc08be8fe5e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Machines of Stolen Grace
TLDR: Initial RL training runs (like those contributing to o3's capabilities) give rise to basic reasoning heuristics (perhaps forming nascent reasoning circuits) that intelligently mimic patterns in the training data. Massively scaling this RL on larger base models presents a potential pathwa... |
6d3275c3-e142-42c7-bb05-073c33b68c66 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | LessWrong analytics (February 2009 to January 2017)
Table of contents
* Introduction
* Pageviews and sessions
* Top posts
* Source code
* Further reading
* Acknowledgments
Introduction
In January 2017, Vipul Naik obtained Google Analytics daily sessions and pageviews data for LessWrong from Kaj Sotala. Vipul a... |
e52dc6d0-7cd7-49e4-9dcf-f45496b34d84 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The argument for near-term human disempowerment through AI
Author: Leonard Dung
Abstract: Many researchers and intellectuals warn about extreme risks from artificial intelligence. However, these warnings typically came without systematic arguments in support. This paper provides an argument that AI will lead to the p... |
4442e0e1-265a-4840-a59d-aba54fc3f70f | awestover/filtering-for-misalignment | Redwood Research: Alek's Filtering Results | id: cbc1b5acada36b0f
There are two fundamentally different constraints on schemers Redwood Research blog Subscribe Sign in Share this post Redwood Research blog There are two fundamentally different constraints on schemers Copy link Facebook Email Notes More There are two fundamentally different constraints on schemer... |
e2cdfc11-9fbd-4d08-a724-41a5b6d35b6b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Chemical Turing Machines
Epistemic status: brief writeup of some interesting work I found in[1][2][3][4], among other places. Probably subtly wrong in places & if you have additions / comments to make, please do.
Finite state automata (FSA) can be modeled with reactions of the form A+B→C+D. FSAs operate over regular ... |
cbd064d9-c021-46b5-ba09-42beb62e7ce4 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Can You Trust Your Model's Uncertainty? Evaluating Predictive Uncertainty Under Dataset Shift
1 Introduction
---------------
Recent successes across a variety of domains have led to the widespread deployment of deep neural networks (DNNs) in practice. Consequently, the predictive distributions of these models are i... |
79a0ce5b-5d54-445d-b47e-dcee69cf03b8 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The law of effect, randomization and Newcomb’s problem
None |
638fd840-88fb-4a6b-a317-bfd2eb1ec17a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Truth and Advantage: Response to a draft of "AI safety seems hard to measure"
Status: This was a response to a draft of Holden's cold take "AI safety seems hard to measure". It sparked a further discussion, that Holden recently posted a summary of.
The follow-up discussion ended up focusing on some issues in AI align... |
cbbe87f2-0d40-4e77-97dc-7252566532db | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Human instincts, symbol grounding, and the blank-slate neocortex
Intro: What is Common Cortical Algorithm (CCA) theory, and why does it matter for AGI?
======================================================================================
As I discussed at [Jeff Hawkins on neuromorphic AGI within 20 years](https://w... |
d0bc23e6-826a-4262-ad40-7d1658014762 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Updating on Bad Arguments
Here is an intuitively compelling principle: hearing a bad argument for a view shouldn’t change your degree of belief in the view. After all, it is possible for bad arguments to be offered for anything, even the truth. For all you know, plenty of good arguments exist, and you just happened to... |
daed4238-a9e8-41d2-9607-cb64d09faa57 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Turing-Test-Passing AI implies Aligned AI
Summary: From the assumption of the existence of AIs that can pass the Strong Form of the Turing Test, we can provide a recipe for provably aligned/friendly superintelligence based on large organizations of human-equivalent AIs
> Turing Test (Strong Form): for any human H th... |
3f165116-d4a8-4d8b-a86a-0292ea48360a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Discrimination: less is more
‘Discrimination’ can mean all sorts of things. One of the main ones, and what it will mean in this post, is differential treatment of people from different groups, due to real or imagined differences in average group features. Discrimination is a problem because the many people who don’t ... |
b1be65c2-ea67-4ede-bd58-4c551ad2d7ad | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Sunk Cost Fallacy
Related to: Just Lose Hope Already, The Allais Paradox, Cached Selves
In economics we have this concept of sunk costs, referring to costs that have already been incurred, but which cannot be recouped. Sunk cost fallacy refers to the fallacy of honoring sunk costs, which decision-theoretically should... |
f9c445a1-2ab8-4f61-9c0f-957334a1e945 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs | Other | Preference learning along multiple criteria: A game-theoretic perspective.
Preference learning along multiple criteria:
A game-theoretic perspective
Kush Bhatia
EECS, UC Berkeley
kush@cs.berkeley.eduAshwin Pananjady
Simons Institute, UC Berkeley
ashwinpm@berkeley.edu
Peter L. Bartlett
EECS and Statistics, UC Berkeley
... |
025989a7-8561-4881-bc8f-7aaed25cfe54 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Depression as a defense mechanism against slavery
Individuals who have to conform to an external authority too powerful to resist often get depressed: which among other effects, includes lower productivity and higher risk for suicide. This suggests one way how a tendency for depression, and resulting behaviors of akr... |
40dcc040-640a-4d16-986b-416966f6c5b9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Open thread, Feb. 06 - Feb. 12, 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 ... |
38469de1-1647-4dc0-9999-a2ae03bcb4f1 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | How could a moratorium fail?
The debates this week have clarified a number of things in my mind, and I think that has been useful. At the same time, I think there’s a lack of clarity about what was proposed, and what the objections are. Given that, I wanted to summarize my position, and then, despite being convinced t... |
32f8ab0b-b837-4cfc-8189-11bfb7048fd0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | what an efficient market feels from inside
> “I often think of the time I met Scott Sumner and he said he pretty much assumes the market is efficient and just buys the most expensive brand of everything in the grocery store.” - a Tweet
It’s a funny quip, but it captures the vibe a lot of people have about efficient m... |
0e1ddd1d-af3a-4c7e-996c-498e13f9fb90 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Evaluations (of new AI Safety researchers) can be noisy
TL;DR: Evaluating whether or not someone will do well at a job is hard, and evaluating whether or not someone has the potential to be a great AI safety researcher is even harder. This applies to evaluations from other people (e.g. job interviews, first impression... |
b60341f9-c4dc-4f21-b0d7-1bdab7dea353 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | “Who’s In Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain”
If everything, including you and me, is made up of material that blindly obeys the inflexible laws of physics, then everything that happens, including what you and I do, is inevitable, and free will is something of an illusion or a joke.
Right?
Or are we just... |
3acea5bb-3fe6-4017-8ab0-9cb86b623dbe | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A new intro to Quantum Physics, with the math fixed
Confidence level: I am a physicist with a phd in computational quantum chemistry. I’m pretty sure there are no major errors here, but I still may have missed something. Thanks to Blake Stacey for looking over the post.
The goal of this post is to rewrite everything ... |
6b3bcaed-b47c-4a57-a40b-0f32df86edbf | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | "Akrasia is the tendency to act against your own long-term interests, and is a problem doubtless only too familiar to us all. In his book "Breakdown of Will", psychologist George C Ainslie sets out a theory of how akrasia arises and why we do the things we do to fight it. His extraordinary proposal takes insights given... |
6e72b7f3-3cad-44a0-bba9-5ddee2ef236c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [Stub] The wrong philosophical question
Guy who wants to do philosophy with me: "If you made a perfect copy of yourself and destroyed the original, would that copy be you?"
Me: "Oh yes, of course. Trivially."
GWWTDPWM: "Ah, but what if you didn't destroy the original immediately, and then..."
Me: "What? You have tw... |
2d0d9203-dc32-45ef-b6dd-17b15d1b2c26 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | An update on Signal Data Science (an intensive data science training program)
In December 2015, Robert Cordwell and I cofounded Signal Data Science (website), which we announced on Less Wrong.
Our first cohort has just concluded, and overall went very well. We're planning another one in Berkeley from May 2nd – June ... |
7d72cbea-06cc-4b3c-8a8f-fce6dbdaa76e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : West LA—How to Live on 22 Hours a Day
Discussion article for the meetup : West LA—How to Live on 22 Hours a Day
WHEN: 08 January 2014 07:00:00PM (-0800)
WHERE: 10850 West Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064, USA
How to get in: Go to the Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar (all ages welcome), located insi... |
15064277-6de0-4127-9cf2-6f34f608a0f4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | NYT: A.I. Researchers Are Making More Than $1 Million, Even at a Nonprofit
None |
ec68c485-f967-43f8-abce-383da38cc406 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Smoke without fire is scary
This post was written in response to Evan Hubinger’s shortform prompt below and benefited from discussions with him. Thanks to Justis Mills for feedback on this post.
> If we see precursors to deception (e.g. non-myopia, self-awareness, etc.) but suspiciously don’t see deception itself, th... |
ae108777-e85b-429d-afad-518c16646369 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Sam Harris' surprisingly modest proposal
Sam Harris has a new book, The Moral Landscape, in which he makes a very simple argument, at least when you express it in the terms we tend to use on LW: he says that a reasonable definition of moral behavior can (theoretically) be derived from our utility functions. Essentiall... |
bde5d7a6-2605-4e62-862d-0b29ffb523a7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Great Filter isn't magic either
Crossposted at Less Wrong 2.0. A post suggested by James Miller's presentation at the Existential Risk to Humanity conference in Gothenburg.
Seeing the emptiness of the night sky, we can dwell upon the Fermi paradox: where are all the alien civilizations that simple probability est... |
0eaa6108-c87c-4135-9420-e9bcd440dbe7 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Path-Specific Objectives for Safer Agent Incentives
1 Introduction
---------------
Artificial agents can have unsafe incentives to influence parts of their environments in unintended ways.
For example, content recommendation systems can achieve good performance by manipulating their users to develop more predictabl... |
3eebfb05-032e-4082-b8da-9fbaba394764 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Universal Algorithmic Intelligence: A mathematical top->down approach
1 Introduction
---------------
This article gives an introduction to
a mathematical theory for intelligence. We present the AIXI model,
a parameter-free optimal reinforcement learning agent embedded in
an arbitrary unknown environment.
The sc... |
7f8cfa0d-82de-4077-bc1b-76edbdb7402e | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Relevant pre-AGI possibilities
> The default, when reasoning about advanced artificial general intelligence (AGI), is to imagine it appearing in a world that is basically like the present. Yet almost everyone agrees the world will likely be importantly different by the time advanced AGI arrives.
> One way to address... |
15b98319-df1d-4dd4-b775-f40c52fd99e3 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | AI scares and changing public beliefs
The opportunity
---------------
I, for one, am looking forward to the the next public AI scares.
There's a curious up-side to the reckless deployment of powerful, complex systems: they scare people. This has the potential to shift the landscape of the public debate. It's an oppo... |
542b9fbe-133e-4997-8bb6-52cd68280846 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Semantic Image Synthesis with Spatially-Adaptive Normalization
1 Introduction
---------------
Conditional image synthesis refers to the task of generating photorealistic images conditioning on some input data. Earlier methods compute the output image by stitching pieces from a database of images [[13](#bib.bib13), ... |
db38c7c3-65ca-44be-b98e-50619ef55cf0 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | EA Infosec: skill up in or make a transition to infosec via this book club
Ahoy! Our community has become acutely aware of the need for skilled infosec folks to help out in all cause areas. The market conditions are that information security skilled individuals are in shorter supply than demand. This book club aims to... |
fed6cba3-7e0f-4c2f-aeee-3f3f7d39a8fe | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | You Are Not Measuring What You Think You Are Measuring
Eight years ago, I worked as a data scientist at a startup, and we wanted to optimize our sign-up flow. We A/B tested lots of different changes, and occasionally found something which would boost (or reduce) click-through rates by 10% or so.
Then one week I was p... |
5fd484ef-6da1-4fd6-b138-52d97eabc73c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A failed attempt at Updatelessness using Universal Inductors
Here, I present a failed attempt to build an updateless decision theory out of universal inductors. It fails because it is is mistaking updatelessness about which logical theory it is in for true logical updatelessness about computations. I will use Tsvi's n... |
d9055a24-d149-4bb7-a9b5-df61c8dfcce3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup - Social and Board Games
Discussion article for the meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup - Social and Board Games
WHEN: 03 April 2014 07:00:00PM (+0300)
WHERE: Google Tel Aviv
We're going to have a meetup on Thursday, April 3rd at Google Israel's offices, Electra Tower, 98 Yigal Alon ... |
1cb57352-1ab7-4a77-a013-610df747251d | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | A Foundry of Human Activities and Infrastructures
A Foundry of Human Activities and Infrastructures
Robert B. Allen, Eunsang Y ang, and Tat sawan Timakum
Y onsei University, Seoul, South Korea
rballen@yonsei.ac.kr, esy220@nyu.edu, tatsawan@gmail.com
Abstract. Direct rep resentation knowledgebases can enhance ... |
561707c3-694d-4a50-a363-281a49fe20af | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Losing Metaphors: Zip and Paste
In python (and several other languages) if I have two lists and want to process corresponding elements together I can use zip:
>>> for number, letter in zip(
... [1,2,3,4], ["a", "b", "c", "d"]):
... print(number, letter)
...
1 a
2 b
3 c
4 d
The metaphor is a zipper, taking the... |
e71f4267-a49d-47fe-b275-1cfd77458b08 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AISN #20: LLM Proliferation, AI Deception, and Continuing Drivers of AI Capabilities
Welcome to the AI Safety Newsletter by the Center for AI Safety. We discuss developments in AI and AI safety. No technical background required
Subscribe here to receive future versions.
----------------------------------------
AI ... |
e485781b-f188-48fd-8b9d-9c791fd26594 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Late 2021 MIRI Conversations: AMA / Discussion
With the release of [Rohin Shah and Eliezer Yudkowsky's conversation](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tcCxPLBrEXdxN5HCQ/shah-and-yudkowsky-on-alignment-plans), the **Late 2021 MIRI Conversations** sequence is now complete.
This post is intended as a generalized comment s... |
f492d7c4-7ff6-4892-8a54-053309336c4c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A most peculiar utility function
In a previous post, I glibly suggested a utility function u# that would allow a u-maximising agent to print out the expectation of the utility it was maximising.
But u# turns out to be very peculiar indeed.
For this post, define
* u#=−q2+2qu,
for some q that is a future output of ... |
6a468ed0-c2da-4cad-b7b6-b343c01529c6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Succeess depends on finding a balance between "geek" and "jock"
Summary: title + LW seems to be already coming from a culture like that, I just want to make it conscious. Also, it is true for individuals and true for groups like nations.
Why too much "jock" is bad
Anti-intellectualism, black-and-white tribalism, imp... |
24ce5521-47ad-4b50-be97-d0f31a25a79b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Superintelligence 22: Emulation modulation and institutional design
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.
-------------... |
84169af2-4f3f-41fe-ada4-e862e171f341 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Covid 9/17: Done Biden His Time
No more mister nice guy. The dude will not a-Biden. All this vaccine hesitancy is a bunch of malarkey. If you’re not vaccinated, the President is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore.
The question then becomes, what is he gonna do about it, under what authority, and what ... |
f19a14b8-a238-4ef1-9951-f3cd7c2c49a8 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Asteroids and spaceships are kinetic bombs and how to prevent catastrophe
A reality of physics, and one that doesn't get much play in science fiction, is that as soon as humanity gains space travel, anyone in the asteroid mining or space travel business will have city-busting capabilities at their fingertips.
It's th... |
0955e7a8-f9dd-46b9-b347-af9d2ca88172 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Chromatic Number of the Plane is at Least 5 - Aubrey de Grey
This is a long standing open problem in math. Many people learn about it as early as high school as an example of an open problem, because it is so easy to state:
How many colors does it take to color every point in the plane so that ever pair of points... |
0fa30454-2c1b-470c-b43f-ccaa129182a4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AI #121 Part 2: The OpenAI Files
You can find Part 1 here. This resumes the weekly, already in progress. The primary focus here is on the future, including policy and alignment, but also the other stuff typically in the back half like audio, and more near term issues like ChatGPT driving an increasing number of people... |
a350ee18-2100-4390-9dc1-62d1c102feec | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What are biases, anyway? Multiple type signatures
With thanks to Rebecca Gorman for helping develop this idea.
I've been constructing toy examples of agents with preferences and biases. There turns out to be many, many different ways of doing this, and none of the toy examples seem very universal. The reason for this... |
8c3d3231-f771-4310-a7cc-b91fe9d7bb7d | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Adapting Language Models for Zero-shot Learning by Meta-tuning on Dataset and Prompt Collections
1 Introduction
---------------
The goal of zero-shot classification (ZSC) is to classify textual inputs using label descriptions without any examples Yin et al. ([2019](#bib.bib59)).
Large language models - whose only t... |
46da764e-8f4b-4409-9c63-73518b605087 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | PSA: if you are in Russia, probably move out ASAP
The Metaculus crowd thinks that it's very likely that Russia will restrict emigration:
I myself am more optimistic about this question resolving negatively. But even if Russia would not close borders for a notable fraction of its citizens, it seems fairly likely t... |
da06bcc0-a1b6-48e4-993a-a4614b13098a | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | What is the ground reality of countries taking steps to recalibrate AI development towards Alignment first?
You can possibly put the lid on European AI research, the biggest sign to this is civilian administration oversight over the internet which is incredibly tight compared to European Union's non authoritarian gove... |
3915f06f-28f3-4591-a2f5-0eeb17a1d666 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How to Support Someone Who is Struggling
[Crossposted from my blog]
There’s no shortage of pain, tragedy and loss in the world. And if you’re anything like me, you don’t always know how to be helpful when a loved one is going through the worst of it.
Over the past few years, I’ve been trying to get better at that.
... |
15ca107b-c0d0-442a-a394-7c259fe89332 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Simplicity arguments for scheming (Section 4.3 of "Scheming AIs")
This is Section 4.3 of my report “Scheming AIs: Will AIs fake alignment during training in order to get power?”. There’s also a summary of the full report here (audio here). The summary covers most of the main points and technical terms, and I’m hoping ... |
8cc01f82-b114-45cc-92bb-c00a06283f09 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | My Favorite Productivity Blog Posts
I’ve read at least a few hundred blog posts, maybe upwards of a thousand. Agreeing with Gavin Leech, I believe I’ve gained from essays more than any other medium. I’m an intellectually curious college student with a strong interest in both the practical and philosophical. This blog ... |
dacd5a42-2594-49af-a0ee-32c5d0928f4b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Actors and scribes, words and deeds
[Epistemic status: exploratory exercise in naming and concept-formation.]
Among the kinds of people, are the Actors, and the Scribes. Actors mainly relate to speech as action that has effects. Scribes mainly relate to speech as a structured arrangement of pointers that have meaning... |
83aaab78-3efa-405a-bae4-62d90d66ffed | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Early career choices to maximise learning?
I'm a student in a subfield of CS and biology, getting my bachelor's degree later this year and planning on continuing to masters (and maybe beyond). My ultimate goal is to work on the edge between biology, CS and datascience, preferably in an industry-backed research centre ... |
6c3923eb-65f9-4940-b296-536e5f40a043 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | An Intuitive Introduction to Evidential Decision Theory
In the [last post](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bNayfvnKKsbE7w6Sb/an-introduction-to-causal-decision-theory), we discussed Causal Decision Theory (CDT). We learned how purely looking at the causal effects of your actions makes you lose at Newcomb's Problem. [E... |
cf748cf2-a50f-435f-a28a-db0d6d363cb9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Stop Making Sense
Epistemic Status: Seven years and one day ago, I wrote this. In 2017 we faced years of Trump and couldn't imagine covid. Here in 2024 we face years of Trump and I'm trying to "imagine what we can't imagine". I dislike the title (except for the part where it might introduce people to music from a prev... |
a0a57706-25ca-4748-8b8c-8ab40d6d0042 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Commitment Races are a technical problem ASI can easily solve
Current status (2025 April 16): Dang it, Commitment Races may remain a serious problem because I discovered a potentially fatal flaw in my argument. See my comment below.
I still think the solution I outlined might work, but the reason it works no longer i... |
03ccdcba-8644-4201-9abf-4493fbe3c0c3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Celebrate Trivial Impetuses
There is a flipside to the trivial inconvenience: the trivial impetus. This is the objectively inconsequential factor that gets you off your rear and doing something you probably would have left undone. It doesn't have to be a major, crippling akrasia issue. I'm not talking so much about... |
9d0f3cab-5082-499b-a26c-7c175131ffcc | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Safety Assurances for Human-Robot Interaction via Confidence-aware Game-theoretic Human Models.
I Introduction
---------------
We focus on maintaining safety in highly dynamic human-robot interactions, such as when an autonomous car merges into a roundabout with an oncoming human-driven vehicle (Fig. [1](#S1.F1 "Fi... |
0afcec5c-4bdd-4ea3-9406-9b80f2a10ff0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Help with relevant rational decision making research ideas
Im researching rational medical decision making and trying to find right angles to approach the subject of probabilistic decision making in medicine.
My first paper will be about the probability updating after the medical tests when we know the prevalence of... |
1203b5e9-a1b7-4b69-967f-5b857f82019b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Tentative covid surface risk estimates
My household previously made some highly uncertain estimates of the covid risk from bringing random objects that other people have recently been touching into our home, for instance salads and groceries an endless stream of Amazon packages. The official guidance is very vague, e.... |
c04d3a35-82d8-4647-82f1-d91e04ea9385 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A naive alignment strategy and optimism about generalization
(Context: my last post was trying to patch a certain naive strategy for AI alignment, but I didn’t articulate clearly what the naive strategy is. I think it’s worth explaining the naive strategy in its own post, even though it’s not a novel idea.)
Suppose t... |
dbdd9787-71ba-4e71-8b58-a883e442f5ba | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Toy model of the AI control problem: animated version
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. The robot learns to block the ... |
5ad3765a-3cc9-4b52-8985-8d890e3821d0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Paper: Large Language Models Can Self-improve [Linkpost]
This paper came out about a week ago. I am not the author - it was published anonymously.
I learned about the paper when JJ Hepburn shared it on Slack. I just thought it seemed potentially really important and I hadn't seen it discussed on this forum yet:
----... |
7df961d0-41b5-45e1-bbdb-3330b8c621cc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | MIRI 2024 Mission and Strategy Update
As we announced back in October, I have taken on the senior leadership role at MIRI as its CEO. It’s a big pair of shoes to fill, and an awesome responsibility that I’m honored to take on.
There have been several changes at MIRI since our 2020 strategic update, so let’s get into ... |
9ac333d0-4098-4f2d-b689-145e656fb9e2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | COVID-19 estimated test detection windows for IgG, IgM and nasal PCR tests
I spent a while looking for this information online and found it hard to come by, so I've compiled my research conclusions. These numbers are based on the best information I could find, but please comment with any critique or improvements.
Bac... |
55df7061-7f9f-4fdc-b195-13bf5a67fe97 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Coupling for Decouplers — Intro
Rationalist don't talk about dating much. At least — not on LessWrong.
This is surprising! Dating touches on every theme of interest to rationalists: psychology, game theory, epistemology, signaling, self-transformation, agency, even AI — not to mention most people's personal interest... |
abd64120-5a1d-488e-94a8-77f3372259a1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Show LW: HackerNews but for research papers
Hey there,
A few days ago I went semi-viral on HN for posting a side project:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40455478
Here's a screenshot of the analytics for the last few days:
The site is called papertalk. Basically I made it because I'd love to have a LW/HN typ... |
ff42dc73-55aa-4279-b986-720beb505ec0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Freedom is slavery
These comparisons are sometimes made as arguments in favor of the former in each pair being forcibly prevented:
* Selling equity in yourself is like slavery
* Allowing organ selling is like stealing organs
* Choosing genetic characteristics of your children is like eugenics
* Languages dying ou... |
2d86d850-0945-4e63-b60b-2eab3deff2f0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup: Communities and the rationalist community
Discussion article for the meetup : Israel Less Wrong Meetup: Communities and the rationalist community
WHEN: 21 August 2014 07:00:00PM (+0300)
WHERE: 98 Yigal Alon St., 29th floor, Tel Aviv
We're going to have a meetup on Thursday, August... |
935b50e1-146c-489c-9308-82eff85cfb4d | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/youtube | Youtube Transcripts | Are AI Safety Concerns Philosophically Sound?
all right it's three o'clock so
we will start
so thank you everybody for joining this
ai safety debate my name is aaron
stuppel and i've started a web magazine
called conjecture magazine
that is dedicated to the philosophy of
progress we think karl popper's critical
ration... |
072b6653-74ff-4db8-9759-29bdec2dc7e7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | (Some) politicians might be more rational than they appear.
The following excerpt from an NPR story on TARP makes me feel that while the world is mad, I might have overestimated how much of that madness comes from our political leaders:
> [Neel Kashkari, the Treasury official running TARP] became a sort of punching b... |
cee87cf8-db9f-4179-9081-7450338a9cce | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | "The room in which Jeffreyssai received his non-beisutsukai visitors was quietly formal, impeccably appointed in only the most conservative tastes. Sunlight and outside air streamed through a grillwork of polished silver, a few sharp edges making it clear that this wall was not to be opened. The floor and walls were gl... |
0446210c-63d2-43cb-9205-ce37ecd2d166 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Age changes what you care about
[Possible trigger warning for discussion of mortality.]
I've been on LessWrong for a very long time. My first exposure to the power of AI was in the mid 1980's, and I was easily at "shock level 4" at the turn of the millennium thanks to various pieces of fiction, newsgroups, and discu... |
520cb9d5-f21f-4247-950a-176382584c5e | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/aisafety.info | AI Safety Info | What are some of the leading AI capabilities organizations?
Some of the main research groups advancing AI capabilities are:
- [Google DeepMind](https://www.deepmind.com/)
- [OpenAI](https://openai.com/)
- [Anthropic](https://www.anthropic.com/)
- [Meta AI](https://ai.facebook.com/)
- [Microsoft AI](https://www.mi... |
b40c7fb9-7f4b-4e15-907b-8b7224a9342b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Wanting vs. Liking Revisited
In Are Wireheads Happy? I discussed the difference between wanting something and liking something. More recently, Luke went deeper into some of the science in his post Not for the Sake of Pleasure Alone.
In the comments of the original post, cousin_it asked a good question: why implement ... |
0dd1b1b8-4272-488f-918f-bb6c3f20c812 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The slingshot helps with learning
The slingshot effect is a late-stage training anomaly found in various adaptive gradient optimization methods. In particular, slingshots are present with AdamW, the optimizer most widely used for modern transformer training. The original slingshot paper observes that slingshots tend t... |
fe2a9395-0cd1-4b41-9ffa-0a7023f22492 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] Kahneman's Planning Anecdote
Today's post, Kahneman's Planning Anecdote was originally published on 17 September 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
> Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman recounts an incident where the inside view and the outside view of the time it would take to complete a project of ... |
da9fa854-525d-47c8-af4a-fb65281f5d23 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Another way to look at consciousness
Edit: First paragraph removed and small changes made to the rest.
I am putting forth a hypothesis is about the nature of consciousness. First I will have to tell you how I am using certain words because they are generally used in a number of ways. 'Brain' is an biological o... |
b2b16920-d076-4d6c-bf05-0befdef6a49c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What are our outs to play to?
This is an unfiltered, unsorted collection of plausible (not likely) scenarios where there are humans alive in 200 years. I have left out "We solve alignment" since it is adequately discussed elsewhere on the website. These non-alignment scenarios form a larger and larger part of the huma... |
4ba4caea-5c02-49e6-85ec-b4bb2f688498 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | Takeaways from safety by default interviews
*By Asya Bergal, 3 April 2020*
Last year, several researchers at AI Impacts (primarily Robert Long and I) interviewed prominent researchers inside and outside of the AI safety field who are relatively optimistic about advanced AI being developed safely. These interviews we... |
3b7aa5b2-a85f-44e2-9b4e-655e4a9948fc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Help needed: nice AIs and presidential deaths
A putative new idea for AI control; index here.
This is a problem that developed from the "high impact from low impact" idea, but is a legitimate thought experiment in its own right (it also has connections with the "spirit of the law" idea).
Suppose that, next 1st of Ap... |
4489f1c7-f003-4272-97b6-988a1a92d43f | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | On Deference and Yudkowsky's AI Risk Estimates
*Note: I mostly wrote this post after Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “[Death with Dignity](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/j9Q8bRmwCgXRYAgcJ/miri-announces-new-death-with-dignity-strategy)” essay appeared on LessWrong. Since then, Jotto has written [a post](https://www.lesswrong.com... |
a933436f-053a-4ecd-93e2-47aa8420a618 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | If a tree falls on Sleeping Beauty...
Several months ago, we had an interesting discussion about the Sleeping Beauty problem, which runs as follows:
> Sleeping Beauty volunteers to undergo the following experiment. On Sunday she is given a drug that sends her to sleep. A fair coin is then tossed just once in the cour... |
a0b19804-da3d-4294-9000-cad3d70db897 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/aisafety.info | AI Safety Info | What is Aligned AI / Stuart Armstrong working on?
One of the key problems in AI safety is that there are many ways for an AI to generalize off-distribution, so it is very likely that any arbitrary generalization will be unaligned. See the [model splintering post](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/k54rgSg7GcjtXnMHX/... |
14822fcd-5f8b-425a-81a6-86590bcafae0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | You are an optimizer. Act like it!
In the long run, optimizers win. So act like an optimizer.
Optimizers use all available resources to take optimal decisions.
Optimizers are motivated to have beliefs that correspond to reality, because they are needed as inputs for the function that determines the action.
If you fe... |
402ce65c-8e9f-4b85-98d9-fc06cc4eff1c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Meta Meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Meta Meetup
WHEN: 26 July 2015 03:00:00PM (-0400)
WHERE: National Portrait Gallery
Crossposted from the mailing list:
As usual, we will be congregating in the courtyard from 3:00 to 3:30 p.m., to start at 3:30.
The meta m... |
f7f0d2bc-305a-453b-ac18-aff2a6d8ebc6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How I come up with ideas
I desire many things. I invent ideas to satisfy my desires. Whenever I learn something new, I compare the new fact against my database of desires. If my new fact could be used to satisfy a desire then I get an idea.
Some desires are universal among humans.
* I want to be rich without puttin... |
ad61bfc1-e9c1-4642-8f18-f769194a2caa | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | In What Ways Have You Become Stronger?
Related to: Tsuyoku Naritai! (I Want To Become Stronger), Test Your Rationality, 3 Levels of Rationality Verification.
Robin and Eliezer ask about the ways to test rationality skills, for each of the many important purposes such testing might have. Depending on what's possible, ... |
b4a10737-1633-4d01-b4d1-ab55ae7d4666 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Depositions and Rationality
Reading this guide on deposition strategy I was impressed by how many of the techniques lawyers use on uncooperative witnesses seem like good rationality techniques (a deposition is a sworn oral testimony taken out of court without a supervising judge).
Searching LessWrong, nobody seems to... |
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