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203cfa04-8153-49b2-93d7-d95cc51c2069 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Weird question: could we see distant aliens?
ETA: Contest is closed.
Suppose there was a large alien civilization halfway across the observable universe, using a galaxy's resources to try to get our attention. Would we have noticed? What if they were using 0.1% of a galaxy's resources, or 1000 galaxies' resources?
I... |
3376315e-23ec-4e84-a776-a8b4d545b1a1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Evaluating Predictions in Hindsight
Epistemic Status: Confident I have useful things to say, but apologies for the long post because I don’t think it’s worth my time to make it shorter. Better to get thoughts down for those who want to read them.
Scott Alexander’s latest post points to the question of how best to eva... |
36af2cfa-1e4e-42ed-a0c0-5392272304b5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Forked Russian Roulette and Anticipation of Survival
This is a thought exercise I came up with on IRC to help with the iffiness of "freezing yourself for a thousand years" with regards to continuity of self.
Let's say we live in a post-singularity world as uploads and are pretty bored and always up for terrible enter... |
6192a1db-eb48-4bbb-bfe2-8fe45a339771 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Wednesday June 22 7pm
Last week's meeting was a success, with two people in attendance who had read most of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality as well as the Sequences.
I'm assigning a 50% chance of a successful meeting this week at the Bean Cycle.
Next week will be the last me... |
3c85a64a-5762-40e2-a729-cc48014e247c | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Measuring Massive Multitask Language Understanding.
1 Introduction
---------------
Natural Language Processing (NLP) models have achieved superhuman performance on a number of recently proposed benchmarks.
However, these models are still well below human level performance for language understanding as a whole, sugg... |
b6b65340-8de4-4fdc-9576-8cd22a306028 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Uses of Complacency
Midjourney
Our Culture Expects Self-Justification
I really like David Chapman’s explication of what he calls “reasonableness” and “accountability.”
At least in the culture he and I live in, one is constantly called to account for one’s behavior. At any moment, one may be asked “what are you... |
407c4b9d-9eef-435d-bb8a-f1d7a747d2ea | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Musk on AGI Timeframes
Elon Musk submitted [a comment](http://i.imgur.com/sL0uqqW.jpg) to edge.org a day or so ago, on [this article](http://edge.org/conversation/the-myth-of-ai). It was later removed.
>
> The pace of progress in artificial intelligence (I'm not referring to narrow AI) is incredibly fast. Unless y... |
4bd18e7f-d897-4f8d-82b2-c9b92f866ca6 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Three of my beliefs about upcoming AGI
*[Epistemic Status: Semi-informed conjecture. Feedback is welcome.]*
At [EAG](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/ea-global) last month, I got the advice to develop my own mental model of what general/transformative/superintelligent AI will look like when it gets here, and where ... |
61cf273a-14db-4731-b07c-1c87dec085f0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Steven Harnad: Symbol grounding and the structure of dictionaries
Cross-posted from New Savanna.
Stevan Harnad: AI's Symbol Grounding Problem, The Gradient podcast, August 31, 2023
> Stevan Harnad is professor of psychology and cognitive science at Université du Québec à Montréal, adjunct professor of cognitive scie... |
24df821f-4bf3-40a6-91c3-f901c1801b9f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | No peace in our time?
There's a new paper arguing, contra Pinker, that the world is not getting more peaceful:
On the tail risk of violent conflict and its underestimation
Pasquale Cirillo and Nassim Nicholas Taleb
> Abstract—We examine all possible statistical pictures of violent conflicts over common era history ... |
1296050a-6478-4e3e-ac1d-3b033f59c8ad | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong |
The best of the www, in my opinion
Below I will present a (small but qualitative ) list of those that I think are some of the best sites/blog that a human being can find on the world wide web.
The main criterion I used to draw up the list was to consider how the websites promote the dissemination of knowledge among ... |
4527cb15-e8c5-44ab-92df-1f4811229297 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Coherence Therapy with LLMs - quick demo
.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: normal; white-space: nowrap; flo... |
50cedd07-ddf1-4dc3-86aa-db7b72987104 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Problems of the Deutsch-Wallace version of Many Worlds
The subject has already been raised in this thread, but in a clumsy fashion. So here is a fresh new thread, where we can discuss, calmly and objectively, the pros and cons of the "Oxford" version of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
This versio... |
6319127d-65be-4da8-9ea2-d2a951b658cf | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AI and the Map of Your Mind: Pattern Recognition
Introduction
The recent news of Microsoft and Google integrating their large language models into their respective productivity suites marks a significant milestone in the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence (AI). While AI has been used for autocomplete a... |
94a29e70-c4d8-40b8-9db2-d5e6f4c70106 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A parable in the style of Invisible Cities
Cities & Belief: Goreme
The city of Goreme hides a terrible secret. At first, innocent visitor, you will admire the old bridge over the river, the colorful graffiti on alley walls, and the flags waving prettily in the public square. You will be impressed and humbled by how pa... |
7393de78-2730-4125-8c2f-bf945c5bc944 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | The Reasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics or: AI vs sandwiches
**TLDR:** I try to find the root causes of why math is useful.
**Epistemic status:** Marginally confident in veracity, not at all confident in novelty.
Background
==========
I recently had a [discussion](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZeE7EKHTFMBs... |
f5b41cda-1b17-45c9-adb5-fea784feef3a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Forum Digest: Corrigibility, utility indifference, & related control ideas
This is a quick recap of the posts of this forum that deal with corrigibility (making sure that if you get an agent's goal system wrong, it doesn't try to prevent you from changing it), utility indifference (the idea to remove incentives to man... |
236f40fd-6509-4057-8a0a-e40ffff0b40a | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Have you felt exiert yet?
Pre-adolescent children haven't felt strong lust yet. Those of us who've avoided strong pain are also missing an experience of that affect. Nostalgia can come up very early, but does require a bit of living first. Depression can strike at any age.
So, in general, there are emotions and feeli... |
1db3406a-d80e-4bc1-a030-1bbed967c9b5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | I'm interested in a sub-field of AI but don't know what to call it.
A colleague of mine and I have recently decided to tackle a project which we think has important ramifications for the field of artificial intelligence. We're vaguely aware that relevant work has been done at places like Carnegie Mellon and are hopin... |
d51ff64a-e19f-4502-86e8-ad8bc38f1770 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Better Anomia
In Anomia you take turns revealing cards and putting them on your pile. Each card has one of eight symbols (ex: a circle) and a unique category (ex: 'frozen food'). If your top card has the same symbol as someone else's, whoever first gives an example word from the other's category takes their card. In t... |
c5d48ed5-9f53-44dd-a804-6ed9bc1e6e7b | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | "Edit: I recommend reading Scott's response to this essay in addition to the essay itself.I've been tracking the replication crisis and how it affects a bunch of behavioral economics for a while. I found reading this post useful for a particularly negative take. Some key quotes:It sure does look alive... but it's a zom... |
9da65df3-56d5-49ed-b5a9-ccad6fc6411c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Liar Paradox Revisited
A well-known brainteaser asks about the truth of the statement "this statement is false". My previous article on this topic, outlined common approaches to this problem and then argued that we should conceive of two distinct kinds of truth:
* Statements about the world, where as per Tarski ther... |
6f3c91c6-1eaf-4dd0-a2ab-c7eb1511cc61 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How We Failed COVID-19
Since the start of the year, the West has been in the grip of an unprecedented public health crisis. Hundreds of thousands have died, daily life has changed severely and the economy has been dramatically disrupted. It's plausible to call this the West's biggest crisis since World War II.
COVID... |
7a56d060-edec-42d8-9149-2854f75cf731 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | A compute-based framework for thinking about the future of AI
How should we expect AI to unfold over the coming decades? In this article, I explain and defend a compute-based framework for thinking about AI automation. This framework makes the following claims, which I defend throughout the article:
1. The most salie... |
933746ae-dea5-4751-9291-82954c7d625b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Contra Hofstadter on GPT-3 Nonsense
Douglas Hofstadter wrote in the Economist recently on whether modern large language models are conscious. As part of this, he and his colleague David Bender claim that GPT-3 has a "mind-boggling hollowness hidden just beneath its flashy surface" because of exchanges like:
> Dave an... |
d1869ab2-5bd5-4f34-a1ed-13b52239b02f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | 12 Virtues of Rationality posters/icons
I was trying to take a break today, and ended up redesigning the staircase at our group house (Event Horizon), which is the first thing you see when you enter the house. One thing me and Claire (mingyuan) came up with, was to design small posters for each of the twelve virtues o... |
99caaa8f-af9c-44be-82ac-f5a5fa06b83f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Expanding Premium Mediocrity
Epistemic Status: Skippable. This is (much of) what I think Rao is trying to say in the second section of his post, the part about Maya but before Molly and Max, translated into DWATV-speak. Proceed if and only if you want that.
Continuation From (at least see the 2x2s): Exploring Premi... |
bba659bd-8dc7-4ba5-9f11-f342f525b74c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The sin of updating when you can change whether you exist
Trigger warning: In a thought experiment in this post, I used a hypothetical torture scenario without thinking, even though it wasn't necessary to make my point. Apologies, and thanks to an anonymous user for pointing this out. I'll try to be more careful in th... |
8a729347-4944-4bda-8f39-63f5adfd911f | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | List of technical AI safety exercises and projects
EDIT 3/17/2023: I've reorganized the doc and added some governance projects.
I intend to maintain a list at [this doc](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-58zgC2lRMbMK-CXU44VR3ApGYbTI0aJKX-cKkxDeyo/edit?usp=sharing). I'll paste the current state of the doc (as of Ja... |
5b5e75bf-2405-406f-89b1-12ec9da0d0e7 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | What is Interpretability?
In this post we lay out some ideas around framing interpretability research which we have found quite useful. Our framing is goal-oriented, which we believe is important for making sure interpretability research is meaningful. We also go over a variety of dimensions which we think are useful ... |
1ae29d48-fea3-4625-8bfb-0906de9d0946 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | the silk pajamas effect
crossposted from substack
> It’s tough to get out of bed to do roadwork at 5am when you’ve been sleeping in silk pajamas.
>
>
> —Marvin Hagler
I’ve been coasting for the past four months. It’s probably been my first extended break in over six years of grinding. My days that were once spent... |
f8ff135a-bb1f-4be4-8fc6-b55b52a46116 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [LINK] Author's Note 119: Shameless Begging
[Contains No HPMOR Spoliers]
[http://hpmor.com/notes/119/](http://hpmor.com/notes/119/)
I was at first confused by Eliezer's requests at the end of Ch. 119. I missed his Author's Notes, which his explains his rationale behind them. I thought I would share in case others mi... |
b660d521-e20e-445d-8ec3-84895dbf5f09 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital | Arbital | Example problem
Tag for pages that provide an example problem referenced by a number of other pages.
The summary of the page should contain the entire text of the problem (so that the problem can be referenced by greenlink). The body of the page should either contain the answer (e.g., hidden behind an 'Answer' button... |
bb704e86-b669-4fc0-a9ba-1330382761a2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Divergence on Evidence Due to Differing Priors - A Political Case Study
(This uses a politically charged topic as an example, but I'm hoping that people are willing to try to understand the points made despite that. Politics is Hard Mode, and I'm hoping to stay at a lower difficulty level for now, so I've asked that c... |
da2b00da-8e16-4b76-9289-2c6b38934c35 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Implications of Moral Realism on AI Safety
Epistemic Status: Still in a brainstorming phase - very open to constructive criticism.
I'll start by clarifying my definition of moral realism. To begin with an example, here is what a moral realist and anti-realist might say on the topic of suffering:
> Moral Realist: The... |
aa9704f1-89a2-46e4-8cd7-5f305cbf842e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | DALL·E 2 by OpenAI
|
a58ead3f-ef91-44d1-8d89-e048274db149 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Book review: Lost Connections by Johann Hari
Why this book is interesting
Well, it's about depression, which is generally interesting to LW readers. For instance, 34% of SSC readers said they were diagnosed or thought they had it in 2020 (source).
This book asserts that most of us are thinking about depression in a f... |
c9a93439-3438-47ad-9de6-8ea1f651f202 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Creating superintelligence without AGI
I am a computer scientist with some background in biology and neuroscience that discovered LW and the problem of AI alignment less than a year ago.
Since then I have read many articles on the matter and I have come to understand that alignment is potentially the most severe chal... |
8992ebca-f555-4aac-b2e4-3ef0edeac4ea | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs | Other | Formal verification of hybrid systems
REVIEW OF CURRENT APPROACHES Model-based design offers a promising approach for detecting and correcting errors in early stages of system design [33, 37, 49] . In this methodology, a designer first constructs a model, with mathematically precise semantics, of the system under desi... |
817ee0b0-1c0f-4ab7-b17b-18ffd9579629 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Circumambulation
This is Part 4 of the Babble and Prune sequence.
In the previous parts, I described the brain's thought-generation process as an adversarial learning system between Babble - which generates low-quality content - and Prune - which filters for high-quality content.
My primary motivation for understand... |
be00a1db-00be-49ea-904d-cab16fe48faa | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | "Has no one else mentioned this on LW yet?
Elizabeth Edwards has been elected as a New Hampshire State Rep, self-identifies as a Rationalist and explicitly mentions Less Wrong in her first post-election blog post.
Sorry if this is a repost"
A user from LessWrong is responsible for the text you see above
Could you elab... |
a0704ed0-40a8-4dc4-94a3-8f2c9b4f5f02 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [Petition] We Call for Open Anonymized Medical Data on COVID-19 and Aging-Related Risk Factors
We, on behalf of Open Longevity, together with the International Longevity Alliance, wrote a letter to WHO about the need for open anonymized medical data on patients with COVID-19 and the risk factors associated with aging.... |
99fdb457-d262-4341-aba0-f182f75f97c4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Muehlhauser-Goertzel Dialogue, Part 2
Part of the Muehlhauser interview series on AGI.
Luke Muehlhauser is Executive Director of the Singularity Institute, a non-profit research institute studying AGI safety.
Ben Goertzel is the Chairman at the AGI company Novamente and founder of the AGI conference series.
... |
d95d1bbb-9856-41f1-8431-7d0240bb3918 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Phone Number Jingle
When the kids were little and we were at the kind of event where they might get separated from us, I'd write my phone number on tape and stick it to their backs:
Anna at NEFFA 2019, age 3
The kids are getting older now, and are playing independently enough that it would be good if they alway... |
0c0a0a50-63e0-43cd-afed-24cae9c5ef0b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Are you crazy?
Followup To: Are You Anosognosic?, The Strangest Thing An AI Could Tell You
Over this past weekend I listened to an episode of This American Life titled Pro Se. Although the episode is nominally about people defending themselves in court, the first act of the episode was about a man who pretended to ... |
8aca7003-bbd1-441b-8bae-004d90eb324c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Progress links and tweets, 2022-08-02
Announcements
* Build Nuclear Now, a new policy campaign to enable advanced nuclear reactors (h/t @atrembath). Related, the NRC has (finally) approved the design for NuScale’s small modular reactor (via @NRCgov)
* A new online PhD-level course in the economics of innovation from... |
f1887aed-d545-44a3-af3f-30330903bfd1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Rishi Sunak mentions "existential threats" in talk with OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic CEOs
> The PM made clear that AI is the defining technology of our time, with the potential to positively transform humanity.
>
> But the success of this technology is founded on having the right guardrails in place, so that the publi... |
941cc711-d9cc-46fa-9bfa-87e06199ce55 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Nonsentient Bloggers
Today's post, Nonsentient Optimizers, was accidentally published yesterday, although I'd only written half of it. It has now been completed; please look at it again. |
1dbc9be4-de37-4a7c-8dc3-623ced6ef816 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Convince me that humanity *isn’t* doomed by AGI
Earlier this week, I asked the LessWrong community to [convince me that humanity is as doomed by AGI as Yudkowsky et al., seems to believe](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dSaScvukmCRqey8ug/convince-me-that-humanity-is-as-doomed-by-agi-as-yudkowsky). The responses were q... |
885051a3-68c8-45fe-afe8-3750d6468995 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Common Errors in History
I bought a copy of Common Errors in History, which someone mentioned recently on LW. There were no copies on Amazon or other bookselling sites, but I found a copy on Ebay. No wonder it was hard to get - it's a 24-page pamphlet that was printed once, in 1945, by "The Historical Association," ... |
e6235acf-c03b-4002-b990-85ed76250d61 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Holiday giving thread
Since this is the season to respect the universe as a worthy foe and remember the challenges ahead of us, it felt appropriate that I should donate some money for a good cause. Then it occurred to me, why not use the opportunity to encourage somebody else to do so as well?
So, if you promise to d... |
5b71c3b2-7d8f-4b54-b748-147fc4a5d4ca | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Are there good negotiation classes?
In HPMOR there is the notion of Malfoy's "negotiation tutors". Are there good classes or private lessons irl that are analogous to that (either online or in-person post covid)?
I'm a shyish programmer thinking about going into a managerial role. Wanted to get a leg-up by trainin... |
e18cd2d7-c521-464f-8ccf-f856558a2786 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What are some good examples of incorrigibility?
The idea of corrigibility is roughly that an AI should be aware that it may have faults, and therefore allow and facilitate human operators to correct these faults. I'm especially interested in scenarios where the AI system controls a particular input channel that is sup... |
f815035c-1587-4265-acdf-6cb2bf29e1c7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Optimal predictors for global probability measures
There are two commonly used formalisms in average case complexity theory: problems with a single global probability measure on parameter space or problems with a family of such probability measures. Previous posts about optimal predictors focused on the family approac... |
68b4dbd1-3186-4348-9804-d1c9e4fa7cc6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [AN #68]: The attainable utility theory of impact
Find all Alignment Newsletter resources here. In particular, you can sign up, or look through this spreadsheet of all summaries that have ever been in the newsletter. I'm always happy to hear feedback; you can send it to me by replying to this email.
Stuart Russell at... |
e3fe57d2-9629-4d3b-88a5-f33209b5c376 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Are Guitars Obsolete?
I got an email from a reader:
> I was wondering, like you said that jams make less sense in the world of easy refrigeration, do you think guitars make less sense when amazing MIDI keyboards are available now?
It's a good question! In general, if an instrument becomes more capable then, yes, i... |
cbf59e85-d591-4fc7-848d-5590e8a7c879 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | "Carefully Bootstrapped Alignment" is organizationally hard
In addition to technical challenges, plans to safely develop AI face lots of organizational challenges. If you're running an AI lab, you need a concrete plan for handling that.
In this post, I'll explore some of those issues, using one particular AI plan as... |
71ff7159-4690-4199-ba39-ab73b33ec514 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Irrationality Game
Please read the post before voting on the comments, as this is a game where voting works differently.
Warning: the comments section of this post will look odd. The most reasonable comments will have lots of negative karma. Do not be alarmed, it's all part of the plan. In order to participate in... |
dd6c5281-f62e-4677-849d-0e7dac63fed2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What weird treatments should people who lost their taste from COVID try?
My friend had COVID in September 2020 and never got her taste back. What low-risk random things should she try doing to get it back? Recommendations need not be backed by anything stronger than “a friend of a friend heard…” or “I saw it on TikTok... |
ac779afb-859d-4e4a-a185-0c443f5803c5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Lesswrong Survey - invitation for suggestions
Given that it's been a while since the last survey (http://lesswrong.com/lw/lhg/2014_survey_results/)
It's now time to open the floor to suggestions of improvements to the last survey. If you have a question you think should be on the survey (perhaps with reasons why,... |
73978012-46c7-496e-af84-50c65f533268 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | A Bite Sized Introduction to ELK
*Epistemic Status: This post is mainly me learning in public as my final project for the* [*ML Safety Scholars Program.*](https://www.effectivealtruism.org/virtual-programs/ml-safety-scholars-program) *Errors are very possible, corrections very welcome.*
Purpose of this Post
=========... |
991d8a0f-cd3d-426e-af47-882439e2aefe | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Strategy of Subversive Conflict
|
a3add6b1-e7c8-4b50-8068-82eb2376aeff | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Topic Survey for June Meet-up
We have a few ideas for discussion topics for the next meet-up, so please follow the link to let us know which topic or topics are of interest. You can also add your own ideas (or do so in the comments here). Please complete the survey by Monday, May 24 so that I can finalize the topic fo... |
a649038e-bde2-4114-8312-4a785df9382b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Rituals
Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Rituals
WHEN: 21 December 2013 02:00:00PM (-0600)
WHERE: 300 S Goodwin Ave Apt 102, Urbana Illinois
What are rituals good for? What makes a good ritual? What are the dangers of rituals? Are they worth it?
This being the solstic... |
0dd3da33-b008-4a12-8e1d-81f8d347377c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | 800 scientist call out against statistical significance
LessWrong has many criticisms of P-values/Statistical significance, And is often given as a coordination problem (or an inadequate equilibria).
In addition to the American Statistical Association - which, In 2016, 'released a statement in The American Statistic... |
6b124724-3d98-41b4-b0e9-f5676d6e53e0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Experience with Lumosity?
I just saw a commercial for Lumosity, which is a mental-skills training website. It seems like something that someone on LessWrong would have tried, but some googling of the site turns up only some passing mentions. Has anyone actually signed up and used it? Have you had results, and are they... |
6c6c84d9-8152-459e-a373-9dd945ff5b2b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [Link] Countering The Inside View and Making Better Decisions
Great article that systemetizes the process of taking the outside view into 4 steps. Thought LWers might get a kick out of it.
http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2015/05/inside-view-michael-mauboussin/ |
7f5b7e26-f002-4b0c-8760-b99aa5619f61 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Pandemic Identification Simulator
At my day job I work on identifying potential pandemics sooner, so we have more time to respond. I recently made a simulator which pulls a lot of things I've been thinking about recently into a single estimate. You can read more on the NAO blog or give the simulator a try.
Comment vi... |
43ef0409-4c57-4b65-afd2-2f4030d5afe7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism
I.
In the old days, you had your Culture, and that was that. Your Culture told you lots of stuff about what you were and weren’t allowed to do, and by golly you listened. Your Culture told you to work the job prescribed to you by your caste and gender, to marry who your parents... |
15dd6006-eb5f-4d56-95b4-5b1ac11cd8b0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A review of "Don’t forget the boundary problem..."
Introduction
This is a review of "Don't forget the boundary problem! How EM field topology can address the overlooked cousin to the binding problem for consciousness", by Andrés Gómez-Emilsson. This article seeks to address two problems with theories of consciousness,... |
72d5c44e-c63d-413c-b4c8-802a78aeef76 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Let's Stop Pretending to Be Original Thinkers
Cross-posted from my Substack, A Flood of Ideas: https://mflood.substack.com/p/lets-stop-pretending-we-are-original
Why Be Original?
Our society values and promotes original thinking and novelty. Or at least it pretends to. The result is a lot of pretended originality, a... |
16a7a318-0419-4aa0-a463-3069fc0ab350 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Meta-Learning with Latent Embedding Optimization
|
10daea8f-09b1-46f4-ba35-eb8b7877f441 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs | Other | End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World
[]
[]
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by Bryan Walsh
Cover design and illustration by Jim Tierney
Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to en... |
6849200c-fe76-4e85-89e2-5377675b8135 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Advanced neurotypicallity
A description of auditioning
--
> As an auditioner, this means I try to respect the people behind the table, be genuine and keep them from being bored. I want them to know that I appreciate their efforts, know that their side of the table is awkward too, and thank them for seeing me. And a ... |
d3a034b3-9859-446d-862e-8626fbf0938e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What is the impact of a pandemic on the world economy? Or what is the impact of the economy on the spread of a virus? The limits of human networks
Juan G. Diaz Ochoa
In the current virus outbreak, we all are experiencing for the first-time restrictions like those in war times and suddenly life is feeling like a bad... |
a76e129c-5ec2-4aca-98af-66c15c82d6c3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Aggregating Utilities for Corrigible AI [Feedback Draft]
This is a draft written by Simon Goldstein, associate professor at the Dianoia Institute of Philosophy at ACU, as part of a series of papers for the Center for AI Safety Philosophy Fellowship. Dan helped post to the Alignment Forum. This draft is meant to solic... |
ef926d63-13da-425e-b292-c67a6bc464e0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Ottawa Meetup - Learning Linear Algebra 2 + Social
Discussion article for the meetup : Ottawa Meetup - Learning Linear Algebra 2 + Social
WHEN: 17 October 2011 07:30:00PM (-0400)
WHERE: Elgin & Gladstone, Ottawa Ontario Canada
With some (slow) progress beating math into our heads successfully behind us, we... |
0e3e63b0-d9fe-4730-aee0-7de75156cc12 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Rationality Weekend Vienna
Discussion article for the meetup : Rationality Weekend Vienna
WHEN: 13 December 2014 03:00:00PM (+0100)
WHERE: Kaisermühlenstraße 24/2, 1220 Wien
agenda:
* Since some people already arrive Friday evening (12.12.2014) we might already have some social activities then (look in t... |
5ddda023-7eaf-475a-bb19-c316adc49f3f | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Residual stream norms grow exponentially over the forward pass
*Summary:* For a range of language models and a range of input prompts, the norm of each residual stream grows exponentially over the forward pass, with average per-layer growth rate of about 1.045 in GPT2-XL. We show a bunch of evidence for this. We discu... |
10f2dfff-513e-41b7-8150-917accc905fd | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital | Arbital | Axiom of Choice: History and Controversy
#Controversy: Mathematicians Divided! Counter-Intuitive Results, and The History of the Axiom of Choice#
Mathematicians have been using an intuitive concept of a set for probably as long as mathematics has been practiced.
At first, mathematicians assumed that the axiom of choi... |
b89a11ad-ebe2-4139-afc3-00a4f122871d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Three anchorings: number, attitude, and taste
I've shown that one cannot simultaneously deduce the preferences and rationality of an irrational agent - neither in theory, nor in practice.
To get around that problem, one needs to add extra assumptions - assumptions that cannot be deduced from observations. The approac... |
0392b8f3-8bc8-4adf-b812-898666ca4b44 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Ambiguous out-of-distribution generalization on an algorithmic task
Introduction
It's now well known that simple neural network models often "grok" algorithmic tasks. That is, when trained for many epochs on a subset of the full input space, the model quickly attains perfect train accuracy and then, much later, near-p... |
38157061-3241-4738-bb6d-6a751bbe386e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Charity Effectiveness and Third-World Economics
In a recent Facebook status update, Eliezer Yudkowsky asked a question:
> Does the causal model for GiveDirectly's positive effects imply that the government of those countries could achieve the same effects by printing money in the local currency and giving the same am... |
477baeb6-88dc-4b69-8dac-21db8ac3749f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | GPT-4.1 Is a Mini Upgrade
Yesterday’s news alert, nevertheless: The verdict is in. GPT-4.1-Mini in particular is an excellent practical model, offering strong performance at a good price. The full GPT-4.1 is an upgrade to OpenAI’s more expensive API offerings, it is modestly better but costs 5x as much. Both are worth... |
64d8ac47-1c99-401f-9b5c-4f1e50f51ab5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How does a toy 2 digit subtraction transformer predict the sign of the output?
Summary
I examine a toy 1-layer transformer language model trained to do two-digit addition of the form a−b=±c. This model must first predict if the outcome is positive (+) or negative (-) and output the associated sign token. The mode... |
e7a58da8-8c76-41ca-b36a-81212ecd3ab3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Response to Glen Weyl on Technocracy and the Rationalist Community
Economist Glen Weyl has written a long essay, "Why I Am Not A Technocrat", a major focus of which is his differences with the rationalist community.
I feel like I've read a decent number of outsider critiques of the rationalist community at this point... |
6118bdb7-8f6b-479f-84e3-d7798a4e0a33 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Tel Aviv Meetup: Short Talks on Assorted LW Topics
Discussion article for the meetup : Tel Aviv Meetup: Short Talks on Assorted LW Topics
WHEN: 23 June 2015 07:00:00PM (+0300)
WHERE: Google Tel Aviv
We're going to have a meetup on Tuesday, June 22 Google Tel Aviv offices, Electra Tower, 98 Yigal Alon st., ... |
fd9d8dda-a0be-4ba3-8f73-bfaffe27508a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Robustness of Cost-Effectiveness Estimates and Philanthropy
Note: I formerly worked as a research analyst at GiveWell. This post describes the evolution of my thinking about robustness of cost-effectiveness estimates in philanthropy. All views expressed here are my own.
Up until 2012, I believed that detailed explici... |
0e38cf9c-39cd-467e-8dc7-2f4e46af5eff | awestover/filtering-for-misalignment | Redwood Research: Alek's Filtering Results | id: post3785
A putative new idea for AI control; index here . "Guarded learning" is a model for unbiased learning, the kind of learning where the AI has an incentive to learn its values, but not to bias the direction in which it learns. The value-uncertain U Assume the AI is uncertain between n + 1 different utilities... |
b053b15a-ac6b-4063-8e20-5ae28cb1980b | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | Give Sports a Chance
[](https://www.cold-takes.com/roadmap-for-the-most-important-century-series/)
Around now, the [Most Important Century](https://www.cold-takes.com/roadmap-for-the-most-important-century-series/) series is going to be... |
2576fa87-b3c6-45d5-8a80-bc9989b4ff70 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | MIRI comments on Cotra's "Case for Aligning Narrowly Superhuman Models"
Below, I’ve copied comments left by MIRI researchers Eliezer Yudkowsky and Evan Hubinger on March 1–3 on a draft of Ajeya Cotra’s "[Case for Aligning Narrowly Superhuman Models](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PZtsoaoSLpKjjbMqM/the-case-for-aligni... |
49a2c9c8-4af9-4816-bbe6-300b22cb7bb6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | An addendum on effective population size
Follows from: Evolution is Sampling Error
A lot of people commenting on my previous post (mainly on Facebook) were confused about the difference between effective and census population size. I think the second response is reasonable; for non-experts, the concept of effective p... |
703febc1-dc06-4218-bde8-63ecf39bfb61 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Some Hacky ELK Ideas
*Credit to Adam Shimi, Alex Flint, and Rob Miles for discussions, counterexamples, and general input to the ideas here.*
Quick recap for anyone who didn’t read the hundred-page [Eliciting Latent Knowledge document](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/QEYWkRoCn4fZxXQAY/prizes-for-elk-proposals):
* We... |
77b408cc-bc63-468a-b5de-c711e3ce3a3b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | All AGI Safety questions welcome (especially basic ones) [May 2023]
tl;dr: Ask questions about AGI Safety as comments on this post, including ones you might otherwise worry seem dumb!
Asking beginner-level questions can be intimidating, but everyone starts out not knowing anything. If we want more people in the world... |
7b2989e7-15ec-4647-991a-a444ae6019df | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Can we really prevent all warming for less than 10B$ with the mostly side-effect free geoengineering technique of Marine Cloud Brightening?
If we're to believe the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, or the Copenhagen Consensus Center, or apparently any of the individual geoengineering researchers who've ... |
1a073e00-18d6-4590-9e87-9ac9f8b43152 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Predicted Land Value Tax: a better tax than an unimproved land value tax
Epistemic status: I'm not an economist. Please look carefully for errors in my reasoning.
Weaknesses of unimproved land value tax
* Unimproved land value is hard to assess.
* If someone has a lot of wealth stored in land that has been signifi... |
30d53975-85cf-4380-a9c3-71d680e63c19 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Ant Farm
You are hired by an unknown person to do the simple task of taking care of an ant farm, they states that there are two rules: 1. Do not harm any of the ants 2. Make sure the needs of every ant are fulfilled each day, this task for you is very simple sense the needs of an ant let alone thousands of them ar... |
8f0ffd7f-257a-4210-9fff-eb015e58d571 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Perversity of High Standards
Concept
A rational agent will follow a standard where the benefit he receives (or disbenefit he avoids) from following that standard, is less than the cost of following that standard.
In this way, raising standards can perversely disincentivise the behaviour those standards intend t... |
778a0126-070f-420b-a907-52d130d62b10 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | John Danaher on 'The Superintelligent Will'
Philosopher [John Danaher](https://sites.google.com/site/johndanaher84/) has written [an explication and critique](http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2012/04/bostrom-on-superintelligence-and.html) of Bostrom's "orthogonality thesis" from "[The Superintelligent Wi... |
436db88d-2c57-49d8-a8ff-9ab2a677ad76 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AXRP Episode 36 - Adam Shai and Paul Riechers on Computational Mechanics
YouTube link
Sometimes, people talk about transformers as having “world models” as a result of being trained to predict text data on the internet. But what does this even mean? In this episode, I talk with Adam Shai and Paul Riechers about their... |
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