id stringlengths 36 36 | source stringclasses 15
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efae6a70-b9d3-4060-b694-87fd9253cbf5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | 17 Rules to Make a Definition that Avoids the 37 Ways of Words Being Wrong
Eliezer's writing style of A->B, then A, then B, though generally clear, results in a large amount of redundancy.
In this post, I have attempted to reduce the number of rules needed to remember by half. The numbers are the rules from the origi... |
e8a09694-7006-4e6b-8e58-c29054bf00b0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Some real examples of gradient hacking
Speculation and an invitation to make further suggestions or clarifications
I've been wondering what might count as an analogous example of gradient hacking if any has ever occurred, and if it could be useful to collect such analogies (while mindful not to overfit our expectatio... |
b335dd27-b3d6-4518-9f70-c1a4297c191f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How do you keep track of your own learning?
I don't know if the educational system's way of trying to measure student learning is any good. But it faces a tough challenge! It can't look directly into your mind and see the knowledge stored there. It can't surveille your activities and see how much you've been studying.... |
aeac8757-0352-4aa4-b052-a25ad11c6f5f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Arrakis - A toolkit to conduct, track and visualize mechanistic interpretability experiments.
Introduction
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” -Dani... |
4b21ea10-2376-401d-a4d4-47e21eeade8b | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | "tl;dr: My grandpa died, and I gave a eulogy with a mildly anti-deathist message, in a Catholic funeral service that was mostly pretty disagreeable.
I'm a little uncomfortable writing this post, because it's very personal, and I'm not exactly a regular with friends here. But I need to get it out, and I don't know any o... |
139f900c-7038-45ee-8bcb-2fac5c738b57 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AI Advances and Detection Strategy
Cross-posted from my NAO Notebook.
This is an internal strategy note I wrote in November 2024 that I'm making public with some light editing.
In my work at the NAO I've been thinking about what I expect to see as LLMs continue to become more capable and get closer to where they can... |
b86ea28f-d194-41db-8740-f5ae30d906d3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Notes on effective-altruism-related research, writing, testing fit, learning, and the EA Forum
Cross-posted from the EA Forum. I'm not sure how many people on LessWrong will find this useful, but I imagine some will.
I've had calls with >30 people who are interested in things like testing their fit for EA-aligned res... |
a7f32825-5da5-465e-b03d-21e971bde91c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : LW Melbourne: A Bayesian Guide on How to Read a Scientific Paper
Discussion article for the meetup : LW Melbourne: A Bayesian Guide on How to Read a Scientific Paper
WHEN: 08 October 2016 02:30:00PM (+1000)
WHERE: 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
PLEASE NOTE: START TIME IS 3:30 PM. For some reason it's display... |
2b80549a-e863-40d4-9adf-2c2ec75412cb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Do we have a technological growth problem?
Is meaningful technological growth speeding up or slowing down? How would we be able to tell?
"Technology is improving faster today than ever" and "Technology isn't improving as fast as it used to" are both plausible statements on the face of it. I'm not sure how we could ... |
c7f4ecf6-64de-4944-acf9-d0c6f8cb9400 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A Practical Guide to Conflict Resolution: Attitude
[As described in the introduction, this post lays the foundation for how to think about and approach conflict, and the attitudes we can take to do that more effectively.]
The tools of conflict resolution bear a striking resemblance to the tools of conflict. In practi... |
c69e8c18-1804-4c73-b123-08a393426020 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | New applied rationality workshops (April, May, and July)
In the early days of the Center for Applied Rationality, Anna Salamon and I had a disagreement about whether we were ready to run our first applied rationality workshops in six weeks. My inside view said "No way"; Her inside view said "Should be fine"; My outsid... |
3a20e1bb-64ca-4225-abec-1d96016951ce | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] Identity Isn't In Specific Atoms
Today's post, Identity Isn't In Specific Atoms was originally published on 19 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
> As a consequence of quantum theory, we can see that the concept of swapping out all the atoms in you with "different" atoms is physical nonsen... |
37708774-4041-40ca-a708-c08cacbffa73 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Book Review: Secular Cycles
I.
There is a tide in the affairs of men. It cycles with a period of about three hundred years. During its flood, farms and businesses prosper, and great empires enjoy golden ages. During its ebb, war and famine stalk the land, and states collapse into barbarism.
Chinese population over ... |
9cba8d79-aede-4004-9e55-02d427e5addf | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How much chess engine progress is about adapting to bigger computers?
(This question comes from a discussion with Carl Shulman.)
In this post I describe an experiment that I'd like to see run. I'm posting a $1,000 - $10,000 prize for a convincing implementation of these experiments. I also post a number of smaller pr... |
d1e99d14-ec1e-4617-b4e7-6d4ac5704ffa | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How to make food/water testing cheaper/more scalable? [eg for purity/toxin testing]
Infrared spectroscopy, HPLC, Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, and reverse ecology are examples. Figuring out the purity of one's foods/drugs (which is not done enough) can be a Pareto-efficient improvement on the attention economy... |
d8ec5cf6-8f98-4e31-b007-e088f07040d1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Every Paul needs a Jesus
My take on some historical religious/social/political movements:
* Jesus taught a radical and highly impractical doctrine of love and disregard for one's own welfare. Paul took control of much of the church that Jesus' charisma had built, and reworked this into something that could function ... |
d42623ad-d97d-4b48-af8b-36308ba4a119 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [LINK] Robin Hanson on Carl Shulman's recent paper on Whole Brain Emulation
Shulman on Superorgs
Best to read the link first and my comments later.
I have very little to comment on the topic itself, but I do find it odd that Robin takes such a confrontational stance, beginning from the first sentence "It has come to... |
9ae04c2f-29f1-4e4c-a3c9-e2455f10cd16 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Staged release
"Staged release" is regularly mentioned as a good thing for frontier AI labs to do. But I've only ever seen one analysis of staged release,[1] and the term's meaning has changed, becoming vaguer since the GPT-2 era.
This post is kinda a reference post, kinda me sharing my understanding/takes/confusions... |
d7588e72-f0ec-40b9-9a6f-7c4a0af837cc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | NY-area OB/LW meetup Saturday 10/3 7 PM
Since lots of us anticipate being in New York this weekend for Singularity Summit 2009, it seems like a great time to hold a NY-area Overcoming Bias/Less Wrong meetup! Whether you're attending the summit or not, do consider dropping by the 92nd Street Marriott any time after 7PM... |
619c4df7-184a-4090-ae93-bd7fbc161043 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | TSR #7: Universal Principles
**This is part of a series of posts where I call out some ideas from the latest edition of The Strategic Review (written by Sebastian Marshall), and give some prompts and questions that I think people might find useful to answer. I include a summary of the most recent edition, but it's not... |
52f7e9ce-31b7-42b4-b618-26a40fdd75d6 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | Value and Earning
Value and Earning
-----------------
(see also: [Georgism](https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progress-and-poverty))
this is a post about a short view of my understanding of value, by which i here mean scarce material things that people care about.
in general, we want people ... |
bb451528-6e9e-4491-a9fe-420b27fdc959 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How did you actually become more effective?
Like many people here, I think a lot about how to become more awesome. I'm fairly optimistic about my chances, because I can clearly remember times in the past when I was less awesome than I am now-- not necessarily less rational, but less productive and with fewer relevant ... |
afbd895a-7688-4af8-bc64-8a66e27fdff2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | MetaMed: Evidence-Based Healthcare
In a world where 85% of doctors can't solve simple Bayesian word problems...
In a world where only 20.9% of reported results that a pharmaceutical company tries to investigate for development purposes, fully replicate...
In a world where "p-values" are anything the author wants the... |
4798f9d7-c98c-4d2f-ac09-bf0043a40d41 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Antifragility in Games of Chance, Research, and Debate
Nassim Taleb's concept of "antifragility" describes strategies in which a short-term cost, harm or failure enables a long-term gain. This might be because the short-term cost conveys information that allows you to improve future decision-making. Or maybe it provok... |
6d8e29ac-ef66-457a-be00-2b0aa7e4e92a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Agents detecting agents: counterfactual versus influence
A putative new idea for AI control; index here. Status: still somewhat underdeveloped.
In this post, I want to explore another avenue for controlling the ongoing influence of an AI (through subagents or other means). It is the idea, touched upon here and here, ... |
5546834a-3488-46cb-83ac-dc58060c0546 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Singularity FAQ
I wrote a new Singularity FAQ for the Singularity Institute's website. Here it is. I'm sure it will evolve over time. Many thanks to those who helped me revise early drafts, especially Carl and Anna! |
6d1ad644-ac3b-4215-84ff-3138c4327a44 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Covid 5/6: Vaccine Patent Suspension
The Biden administration’s latest strategy for the pandemic is to suspend the vaccine patents without compensation. Our life expectancies are lower than they were last week.
It’s a shame. I like the idea of rewarding those who do amazing things for myself and for the world. I like... |
4cb7816f-51ab-4f3d-ad8b-3ec3fc8af60e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : West LA Meetup—Introduction to Anthropics
Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup—Introduction to Anthropics
WHEN: 31 July 2013 07:00:00PM (-0700)
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... |
e8a80182-572a-4b21-a3f1-ebefbf0533a7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | ARIA's Safeguarded AI grant program is accepting applications for Technical Area 1.1 until May 28th
Note: I am completely unaffiliated with ARIA. I figured I'd post this since applications are closing soon and I didn't see anyone post about this.
My Takeaways:
* ARIA is funding the development of Safeguarded AI whi... |
53ff28ce-5099-437a-a1ea-64e530df323e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Trust as a bottleneck to growing teams quickly
This is an adaptation of an internal doc I wrote for Anthropic.
I’ve been noticing recently that often, a big blocker to teams staying effective as they grow is trust.
“Alice doesn’t trust Bob” makes Alice sound like the bad guy, but it’s often completely appropriate fo... |
09ce138b-a7b0-44cc-8890-386faffcda73 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Your "shoulds" are not a duty
I have a friend who, after reading my last two posts, still struggled to give up her shoulds. She protested that, if she stopped doing things because she should, then she might do the wrong thing. I see this frequently, even among people who claim to be moral relativists: they protest tha... |
45eb5dd9-49f1-4492-bbe1-fcbbf679992c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Journals that may publish articles on AI risk
http://tinyurl.com/AI-risk-journals is a continuously updated spreadsheet of journals that may accept articles related to AI risk.
Maintained with help from Jonathan Wang. |
5c5c78b1-4173-4e24-b0c4-477a891bd89f | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Limiting an AGI's Context Temporally
Okay, so I have a proposal for how to advance AI safety efforts significantly.
Humans experience time as *exponential decay of utility*. One dollar now is worth two dollars some time in the future, which is worth eight dollars even further in the future, and so forth. This is the ... |
df1df103-25e7-4cf0-acba-1f15a6ffa312 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Anthropic effects imply that we are more likely to live in the universe with interstellar panspermia
The sketch of the argument which favours panspermia.
1. There are around 10 billion potentially habitable planets in our galaxy.
2. Interstellar panspermia of small organisms will inseminate all of them with life in ... |
23acf89f-68cb-43ce-a03f-a154759d7ef5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Schizobench: Documenting Magical-Thinking Behavior in Claude 4 Opus
With today's release of the new Claude models, we've seen a relatively predictable jump in performance. However, we've also seen something that I find a bit more concerning - an increase in the models ability to be steered into reifying potentially da... |
af8eb39a-3118-4ab9-b2cc-b1b37fcf19c7 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs | Other | Special issue on autonomous agents modelling other agents: Guest editorial.
EditorialSpecial issue on autonomous agents modelling other agents: Guest editorial
===================================================================================
Abstract
--------
Much research in artificial intelligence is concerned w... |
adaa653c-44f5-49c3-9ae6-ca7ecac2cbe2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Rationality Quotes September 2013
Another month has passed and here is a new rationality quotes thread. The usual rules are:
* Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post... |
0670ed36-ad5a-4fb4-9f49-99c5c5a13990 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Shut Up and Divide?
During a recent discussion with komponisto about why my fellow LWers are so interested in the Amanda Knox case, his answers made me realize that I had been asking the wrong question. After all, feeling interest or even outrage after seeing a possible case of injustice seems quite natural, so perhap... |
5f6cfd45-783e-4def-823c-9f9a3b32a611 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Rationality Quotes September 2011
Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:
* Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
* Do not quote... |
224fa1ee-9f2f-441c-be17-9b3ef8f56b60 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Events section
So I've been wanting to post the Berkeley meetups somewhere, and then also now there's the ai conference thing. It doesn't feel like those are appropriate for the front page, they're too transient; but it'd be nice to have a place to put them instead. What are folks' thoughts on this? |
3f7a7685-9a23-48f1-beb6-913c8cf41019 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Weekly LW Meetups
This summary was posted to LW Main on September 12th. The following week's summary is here.
Irregularly scheduled Less Wrong meetups are taking place in:
* Copenhagen - September: This Wavefunction Has Uncollapsed: 13 September 2014 03:00PM
* Frankfurt: How to improve your life: 28 September 2014... |
045b116b-2830-4ab5-ae02-22c25a971413 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital | Arbital | Valley of Dangerous Complacency
The Valley of Dangerous Complacency is when a system works often enough that you let down your guard around it, but in fact the system is still dangerous enough that full vigilance is required.
- If a robotic car made the correct decision 99% of the time, you'd need to grab the steerin... |
1cc5e7ff-69ab-4d02-acde-a9a8cf19252d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Partial value takeover without world takeover
People around me are very interested in AI taking over the world, so a big question is under what circumstances a system might be able to do that—what kind of capabilities could elevate an entity above the melange of inter-agent conflict and into solipsistic hegemony?
We ... |
c26f6769-2612-426e-a263-483450cef12f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Finding Research Papers
So I'm all geared up and ready to go trawl through some academic journals so I can figure out how to tackle a problem or two, and I've realized I completely forgot how to go about it. Not going to a university with paid subscriptions to JSTOR, etc. doesn't help either. So where exactly does one... |
31403c86-8158-48b0-bccf-e97cafea1569 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Using rationality to debug Machine Learning
Interesting case study making rounds in ML social media, supporting the thesis that rationality techniques are useful in doing actual ML research. Several implicit references and explicit reference to CFAR at the bottom |
6d9c8b32-14bf-4979-a602-fb1bd2a75aff | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Green and golden: a meditation
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
-William Wordsworth
I am exqui... |
95a96086-204e-4228-ba67-5583683311b9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 28, chapter 99-101
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 chapter 99, 100, and 101. The previous thread is at nearly 500 commen... |
28c7a57c-8470-45f1-9a67-b8aff69facb3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Soviet comedy film recommendations
I’m a big fan of the Soviet comedy directors Eldar Ryazanov, Leonid Gaidai, and Georgiy Daneliya. Almost anything by them is worth watching, but here are my favorites (filtered for things that have a free YouTube version with good English subtitles, bold are the highest-recommended):... |
f16e62c4-e583-4e4b-b7b5-a319800bc050 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | DSLT 2. Why Neural Networks obey Occam's Razor
*TLDR; This is the second main post of* [*Distilling Singular Learning Theory*](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/czrXjvCLsqGepybHC) *which is introduced in* [*DSLT0*](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xRWsfGfvDAjRWXcnG/dslt-0-distilling-singular-learning-theory)*. I synthesise w... |
a593568f-513e-4bda-b835-1b35f3c0defc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Doubt regarding basic assumptions
Robin wonders (in conversation) why apparently fairly abstract topics don’t get more attention, given the general trend he notices toward more abstract things being higher status. In particular, many topics we and our friends are interested in seem fairly abstract, and yet we feel lik... |
863bba24-9dcd-411f-8dda-72f07efe4e4f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [LINK] - Aaron Sell (Psychology Today) on the Politicisation of Science
Dr. Aaron Sell recently wrote an interesting piece about political incentives and shoddy statistical work in science. In particular, he was highly critical of the much-publicized Conley article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology w... |
9d539e6e-38af-4b76-9e4a-96f3b2f6871c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Modelling and Understanding SGD
I began this as a way to get a better understanding of the feeling of SGD in generalized models. This doesn't go into detail as to what a loss function actually is, and doesn't even mention neural networks. The loss functions are likely to be totally unrealistic, and these methods may b... |
d85324a4-0322-4fdb-8182-11429a00abf2 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/youtube | Youtube Transcripts | Go to Zero - DeepMind: The Podcast (S1, Ep2)
wherever you turn in this building
there are people playing of course
there's the usual pool tables and ping
pong tables but there are also go boards
chess boards vintage video game cabinets
and more recent strategy games like
Settlers of Catan because here you see
games ar... |
f61c5c67-d7fa-47ae-a197-d0512d2fb11c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | To what degree do we have goals?
Related: Three Fallacies of Teleology
NO NEGOTIATION WITH UNCONSCIOUS
Back when I was younger and stupider, I discussed some points similar to the ones raised in yesterday's post in Will Your Real Preferences Please Stand Up. I ended it with what I thought was the innocuous sentences... |
572e38d3-847b-429d-8de7-af88b6839813 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | I have discovered a new kind of unemployment.
Hello everybody, I have an article that explains why since 2000: business investment has been weak; the fall in the U.S net labor share; the decline in the prime age U.S labor participation rate vs large gains elsewhere; the rise in deaths of despair. The article is called... |
18f65c38-8176-44d8-bf6b-4fbcf40c5bb9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The shape of AGI: Cartoons and back of envelope
[Cross posted on windowsontheory; see here for my prior writings]
There have been several studies to estimate the timelines for artificial general intelligence (aka AGI). Ajeya Cotra wrote a report in 2020 (see also 2022 update) forecasting AGI based on comparisons wi... |
883a8a7c-f775-410e-a46a-33526c092066 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What's your personal TAP setup?
I'd like to keep up a consistent TAP habit where I:
-routinely add new TAPs
-check that I'm performing existing TAPs
-re-rehearse TAPs that seem to have fallen on the wayside
I have some ideas about how to implement this but I'm curious to here: what setups do you guys use? |
6853fb67-b4a7-47ed-8c6d-74a3bba035db | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | On the Nature of Programming Languages
What are we doing when designing a programming language? We decide whether it's going to be imperative or declarative. We add a bunch of operators. We add some kind of objects and visibility rules. We decide to make it either strongly-typed or weakly-typed. Maybe we add generics ... |
5e429043-0154-40b2-9b22-70701a0f016c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Is 'satificing' optimisation?
It seems to me that the behavioural science research around 'the trade-off between maximising and satisficing' in terms of well-being relates with human beings being 'optimisers' only sometimes. Also, it seems to suggests that there can be alternative and better approaches to optimisation... |
16b20b13-bfd0-402a-a5d9-5a9a0c606913 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/youtube | Youtube Transcripts | 115. Discussion with Alexander Turner
I'm cured and of zero if if not and so
the reason I think this works and we
don't need to worry about this in
general is that it this by measuring the
agents ability to receive to ensure it
receives favorable observations about
the world means that we don't need to
make choices ab... |
0d0385cd-90d6-4862-8dcd-7aeabb64e253 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Moscow LW meetup in "Nauchka" library
Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow LW meetup in "Nauchka" library
WHEN: 01 July 2016 07:50:00AM (+0300)
WHERE: Москва, ул. Дубининская, 20
Welcome to the next Moscow LW meetup in "Nauchka" library!
Our plan:
* A talk about Planning Fallacy.
* FallacyMania g... |
67aa3ee4-b504-4e4a-8d83-3f08a560ba31 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Why Rationality?
Previously: Responses to Tyler Cohen on Rationality
Recently: Yes, We Have Noticed the Skulls, When Rationalists Remade the World
Repeat as Necessary: Principle of Charity
A lot of people do not understand the appeal. I was surprised to find that Will Wilkinson was among them. Tyler shared a tweet-... |
9a9dc3b3-bd28-46f7-9e48-2c855e32011e | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Verifiably Safe Exploration for End-to-End Reinforcement Learning
1 Introduction
---------------
Deep reinforcement learning algorithms (Sutton and Barto, [1998](#bib.bib253 "Reinforcement learning: an introduction")) are effective at learning, often from raw sensor inputs, control policies that optimize for a quan... |
211f99ed-a670-4863-857e-ba53646426c1 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | scopes of utopia
scopes of utopia
----------------
how good can we make the future? would we prefer 0.1 quantum amplitude of a really good utopia, or 0.2 quantum amplitude of a kinda okay utopia? what does "kind of utopia" even mean?
in this post i list a combinatorial set of possible utopias. i think i want a
*... |
b96eb893-f915-41f9-b972-e66cbfc58a9c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Notes on Rationality
> “The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.” —Thomas Macaulay[1]
This post examines the virtue of rationality. I’ve been dreading this one.
I have been writing a sequence of posts about virtues, and strategies for strengthening them in ourselves. ... |
54648e1d-0f15-4260-8a8c-97a0a86987fd | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Nonparametric Ethics
(Inspired by a recent conversation with Robin Hanson.)
Robin Hanson, in his essay on "Minimal Morality", suggests that the unreliability of our moral reasoning should lead us to seek simple moral principles:
> "In the ordinary practice of fitting a curve to a set of data points, the more noise o... |
ff646339-e850-40e4-acf8-1b835aab6afa | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Event in SF: Foresight Institute meetup, Sep 8
On Thursday, Sept. 8 in San Francisco, I’ll be speaking at a meetup hosted by the Foresight Institute and Allison Duettmann:
> Why We Need a New Philosophy of Progress
>
> The paradox of our age is that we enjoy the highest living standards that have ever existed, thank... |
829318dc-3b96-469c-84d8-023df72455a4 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | [AN #62] Are adversarial examples caused by real but imperceptible features?
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/1PwWbWZ6FPqAgZWO... |
50d4a468-0fef-4e44-9c9d-236f1efd9702 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Why am I getting downvoted on Lesswrong?
I was first introduced to Lesswrong about 6 months ago, and started posting about 4 months ago, but my posts and comments have been downvoted which has caused me to become unable interact with this community. What am I not understanding? The posts I make just get downvoted and ... |
2431a9c1-e180-47ff-916f-17901e32f5b7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What would flourishing look like in Conway's Game of Life?
I'm thinking of designing a reinforcement learning environment based on Conway's Game of Life (GoL). In it, at every timestep, an agent can change the state of some cells.
As is the case with most interesting RL problems, agent behaviour would be determined b... |
7edfb50e-972a-45dc-bb9f-1ba2722c7221 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Exploring the Nuances of Designing (with/for) Artificial Intelligence
Design Issues: Volume 36, Number 4 Autumn 2020 45© 2020 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Exploring the Nuances of Designing
(with/for) Artificial Intelligence
Niya Stoimenova, Rebecca Price
For all of the technology advancements since the... |
922436ac-78a2-4361-806a-35fc95d48eb1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Group house norms really do seem toxic to many people.
Be careful about joining rationalist group houses. The environment is toxic to a lot of people and can lead to a ton of conflict. This seems important to say since a lot of people are considering returning to Berkley/TheBay.
This analysis is general and examples ... |
e86a56ac-ea15-4388-8c8c-4391b83548c8 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Berkeley LW Meet-Up Saturday March 12
ETA: Any Late-comers, We did end up in the VLSB.
Hi all, it seems we've reach that time of the month, that time when we get together and be rational in Berkeley. As usual, we'll meet at the Starbucks at 2128 Oxford Street at 7 pm, then move into the atrium in the Valley Life Sc... |
f1a0dbaa-daba-44a7-b387-5d7b2c400b17 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/aisafety.info | AI Safety Info | Can we test an AI to make sure that it’s not going to take over and do harmful things after it achieves superintelligence?
We can run tests and simulations to try and figure out how an AI might act once it ascends to superintelligence, but those tests might not be reliable.
Suppose we tell an AI that expects to later... |
b9a78d69-bc32-4428-ab5b-2237dec21c61 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital | Arbital | Conjugacy classes of the symmetric group on five elements
The [https://arbital.com/p/-497](https://arbital.com/p/-497) $S_5$ on five generators has size $5! = 120$ (where the exclamation mark denotes the [https://arbital.com/p/-factorial](https://arbital.com/p/-factorial) function).
By the result that [in a symmetric ... |
aec86aca-7810-45af-948b-dd921cc4fb81 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AI Safety via Debate
New paper and blog post by Geoffrey Irving, Paul Christiano, and Dario Amodei (the OpenAI safety team). |
5a4fdc5f-1d96-4390-a4ac-c93d24b0abcc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Oracle AGI - How can it escape, other than security issues? (Steganography?)
Let's suppose we have an AGI running on a perfectly physically isolated computer that may be misalligned. It only communicates with select humans through a perfectly secure text channel.
How can such an AGI escape?
While don't think that AGI ... |
8ea03456-a613-4eda-9b3f-87a33a23e3ec | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Why is consistency often considered to be an intellectual virtue?
Now, of course, it's important for a scientific theory to be consistent across all cases in its domain. Otherwise, the theory is useless. Of course, we can specify the preconditions for consistency, and we may be able to argue for a expansion (or reduct... |
eff0e0a2-d653-4549-8b7e-0df29a3dc9ae | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Outlawing Anthropics: An Updateless Dilemma
Let us start with a (non-quantum) logical coinflip - say, look at the heretofore-unknown-to-us-personally 256th binary digit of pi, where the choice of binary digit is itself intended not to be random.
If the result of this logical coinflip is 1 (aka "heads"), we'll create ... |
ed1811a4-3414-44cb-9b23-c2ec54cb9180 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Poll results: LW probably doesn't cause akrasia
Test of: Decision Fatigue, Rationality, and Akrasia.
Shortly before the Summit, Alexandros posted a short discussion post wondering whether rationality training might cause akrasia by prompting folks to make more decisions using deliberate, conscious, "system II" reason... |
2f0e787f-745b-41a0-9ba7-7645b34338fc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] Schools Proliferating Without Evidence
Today's post, Schools Proliferating Without Evidence was originally published on 15 March 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
> The branching schools of "psychotherapy", another domain in which experimental verification was weak (nonexistent, actually), show... |
50626d97-4417-4fb5-9a16-66dcdf5cb98d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Steelmanning as an especially insidious form of strawmanning
Edit: made some small changes to prevent certain gross mischaracterizations of the argument. The core argument remains completely unchanged.
Among intelligent people with at least some familiarity with argumentative norms, surface level disagreements tend t... |
0a2d94f0-05b4-4a22-94fe-fdabb5c8084e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Where I've Changed My Mind on My Approach to Speculative Causes
Follow up to Why I'm Skeptical About Unproven Causes (And You Should Be Too)
Previously, I wrote "Why I'm Skeptical About Unproven Causes (And You Should Be Too)" and a follow up essay "What Would It Take to Prove a Speculative Cause?". Both of these sp... |
b098d5cb-85ea-49d5-b6ef-5f0ff8451d63 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Rationality Quotes: October 2009
A monthly thread for posting rationality-related quotes you've seen recently (or had stored in your quotesfile for ages).
* Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordere... |
d92d6b50-c8e9-4e84-894d-fe94f3ce7674 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | M&A in AI
> *'It is hard to favor unspecified changes in the rules. I don't think Google should be able to buy Waze, nor should Facebook buy Instagram.'* Richard Thaler, Chicago Booth, Nobel laureate
>
> *'We need to increase scrutiny of acquisitions of related businesses, e.g. WhatsApp by Facebook'* José Scheinkman,... |
f9d82139-a99b-4c74-bb46-59215246017e | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Reward functions and updating assumptions can hide a multitude of sins
.mjx-chtml {display: inline-block; line-height: 0; text-indent: 0; text-align: left; text-transform: none; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 100%; font-size-adjust: none; letter-spacing: normal; word-wrap: normal; word-spacing: no... |
46283948-92e2-421f-8c69-d98279ba8f9e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Truth vs Utility
According to Eliezer, there are two types of rationality. There is epistemic rationality, the process of updating your beliefs based on evidence to correspond to the truth (or reality) as closely as possible. And there is instrumental rationality, the process of making choices in order to maximize you... |
93ad0ea1-323c-4b23-a018-90bfc62597e5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Decision Fatigue
Interesting article about Decision Fatigue at the NY Times. If you're going before a parole board try to be early in the morning.
|
9c85a28f-0a34-449e-8788-4abd751ffd46 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What exactly IS the overpopulation argument (in regards to immortality)?
Periodically in discussions of cryonics and related issues, people bring up "the overpopulation argument, and the counterarguments that respond to it" without actually describing those arguments in detail. Overpopulation was a big concern of mine... |
c217ea84-9a7f-434e-b895-77309332317b | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | The Case for Convexity
**Epistemic Status**
This post is made as part of the [ERA Cambridge Fellowship](https://erafellowship.org/). The core idea around convexity comes from conversations with Scott Garrabrant and Alexander Gietelink Oldenziel. I have some uncertainty about the conclusions in this post, and there is... |
3576043f-5379-4446-8dd0-dc7cd089f60a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : San Antonio Meetup: Seeking Strategic Updates
Discussion article for the meetup : San Antonio Meetup: Seeking Strategic Updates
WHEN: 20 December 2015 02:00:00PM (-0600)
WHERE: 12651 Vance Jackson Rd #118, San Antonio, TX 78230
Bubble tea, frozen yogurt, and discussion at Yumi Berry! All are welcome!
New ... |
d3165125-885e-462a-a14b-026327627a8a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Let My People Stay Home
When the Jews left Egypt, they were in such a hurry that they did not have time for their bread to rise.
When we packed up the most important things in our apartment, we were forced to leave the bread behind. The pizza was ready in eighteen minutes.
Last real pizza for a while. Happy belate... |
4c4d5f56-f111-4013-a807-05206fde1f3e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | On Pi day, we eat pie; On Tau day, we eat Taoists?
I'd like to start by wishing everyone a Happy Pi day (even if for some of you it was yesterday).
Today, going about my usual Pi day celebration (which included pi(e) of the chocolate, cherry, apple, and movie variety), I stumbled across pi-protesters, who spoke of Ta... |
9a94f18a-80a5-4080-967a-b97dad271338 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' Chapter Summaries / Notes [link]
I recently read Kahneman's 'Thinking Fast and Slow' (actually listened to the audiobook) and I wanted to find a summary of the experiments he describes and I stumbled upon this: http://sivers.org/book/ThinkingFastAndSlow. It has a summary of the interesting/im... |
21e42cfb-f6f1-44ec-ba7e-aded40d7f90a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Crypto-fed Computation
Overview
The idea of this post is to describe, discuss, and if warranted understand how to create, a model of crypto-fed computation.[1] The basic idea is that high-powered GPU (or other ML-specialized) hardware could be equipped with in-chip hardware locks such that the computational cores requ... |
c5e2d383-fef1-4798-96f3-ab2c63fb7728 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | The Problem with Metrics is a Fundamental Problem for AI
Reliance on Metrics is a Fundamental Challenge for AI
Rachel L . Thomas
University of San Francisco
rlthomas3@usfca.edu
David Uminsky
University of San Francisco
duminsky@usfca.ed u
Abstract
Optimizing a g iven metric is a central aspe... |
042dba26-1d3b-48ce-b9f4-f1a290d9118e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Places of Loving Grace [Story]
(This is the result of three years of thinking and modeling hyper‑futuristic and current ethical systems. It's not the first post in the series, it can be confusing and probably understood wrong without reading at least the first one. Sorry for the rough edges—I’m a newcomer, non‑native ... |
5063f48c-e5e8-4667-baaa-ee9b0bddf38a | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | DALL-E does symbol grounding
I don’t want to write much more than the title already expresses. But considering the constantly shifting goalposts when it comes to progress towards AGI, I think this bears writing down.
In the abstract of the seminal paper [[1]](http://cogprints.org/3106/) on the topic, the symbol grou... |
ea857757-ee13-470a-bea7-4d3bd2557c9e | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Eight claims about multi-agent AGI safety
There are quite a few arguments about how interactions between multiple AGIs affect risks from AGI development. I’ve identified at least eight distinct but closely-related claims which it seems worthwhile to disambiguate. I’ve split them up into four claims about the process o... |
936683eb-e595-4e17-b122-8243d386d351 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : West LA Meetup 11-30-2011
Discussion article for the meetup : West LA Meetup 11-30-2011
WHEN: 30 November 2011 07:00:00PM (-0800)
WHERE: 10850 West Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064
When: 7:00pm - 9:00pm Wednesday, November 2nd.
Where: The Westside Tavern in the upstairs Wine Bar, located inside the Westsi... |
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