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7.55M
7d82bc19-ce04-4500-adef-adcb0ae79223
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Pitting national health care systems against one another I'm about to have a baby.  Any minute now.  Well, my partner is.  I'm just sitting here not growing a baby wondering what to do with myself. Maybe I can get a jump on our approach to medical care for the new kiddo. One thing that sticks out at me is that child...
498381d4-1cb0-48e0-8ec5-305fe406e8b1
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Buying micro-biostasis x-post: Buying micro-biostasis – LessDead Created: 2020-10-07 | Updated: 2020-10-07 Help / Quality: I’m publishing this post slightly unfinished because a friend of a friend might need this information today (or in the next few days) to (micro-)cryopreserved their grandmother. If you have know...
bc76f1f2-7d89-4cbf-85b9-5b8ff1c92218
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs
Blogs
Distributed Representations: Composition & Superposition Distributed representations are a classic idea in both neuroscience and connectionist approaches to AI. We're often asked how our work on superposition relates to it. Since publishing our [original paper](https://transformer-circuits.pub/2022/toy_model/index.htm...
559ad172-8ff7-4be7-8610-08ad80d48d34
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv
Arxiv
Program Synthesis with Large Language Models 1 Introduction --------------- Program synthesis is a longstanding goal of artificial intelligence research (TOWARDAUTOMATIC; PROW; LISP; LISP2; REACTIVE; KNOWLEDGEANDREASONING), dating as far back as the 1940s and 50s (TURING; FORTRAN). There has been a recent resurgenc...
fa1bd84d-f16b-49fd-8392-c73e41d3ff73
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Why Swiss watches and Taylor Swift are AGI-proof The post What Other Lines of Work are Safe from AI Automation? from Roger Dearnaley examined candidate job categories "for which being an actual real human is a prerequisite". This post expands on the examples of Swiss watches, chess, and Taylor Swift in a slightly more...
344b1005-c4e6-4cb0-8c51-46bb4e72e66b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
How to use human history as a nutritional prior? Nutrition is a case where we have to try to make the best possible use of the data we have no matter how terrible, because we have to eat something now to sustain us while we plan and conduct more experiments. I want to apply Bayes theorem to make rational health decis...
917d4369-0784-4c6f-81bd-29db854ca8e1
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Summary: "How to read a book" by Mortimer Adler
8a7d6dca-5723-4e9e-b001-f9ec4074882b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Paxlovid Remains Illegal: 11/24 Update What Alex Tabarrok called The Paxlovid Paradox is getting noticed by the people who notice such things, and completely ignored by everyone else. I’ve split off this week’s Paxlovid update to help make the situation easier to notice, and easier to remember and reference later, les...
315297e7-b84f-40ac-8571-f187c7e07a29
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Direct Primary Care Epistemic Status: PSA and raising questions Medical care in the US is expensive. There aren’t that many demonstrated ways to make it drastically cheaper. Direct primary care seems to be an exception.  It makes routine medical expenses 95% cheaper. Yes, really. If you have a cash-only, or “direc...
f88a078b-57cf-424d-954d-aef0b0445990
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Is arguing worth it? If so, when and when not? Also, how do I become less arrogant? I've had several political arguments about That Which Must Not Be Named in the past few days with people of a wide variety of... strong opinions. I'm rather doubtful I've changed anyone's mind about anything, but I've spent a lot of ti...
4e050657-d6b9-407b-aba7-11e0200b5bbd
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Two reasons we might be closer to solving alignment than it seems I was at an AI safety retreat recently and there seemed to be two categories of researchers: 1. Those who thought most AI safety research was useless 2. Those who thought all AI safety research was useless This is a darkly humurous anecdote illustra...
9f5a5460-51e8-4412-ac5d-ca812bcaaeb6
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Racing through a minefield: the AI deployment problem ![Racing through a minefield: the AI deployment problem](http://res.cloudinary.com/lesswrong-2-0/image/upload/v1671725408/mirroredImages/PABtHv8X28jJdxrD6/z3mw7zt5hhfsmxi5sgqv.png)*Click lower right to download or find on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, etc.* I...
c4140b43-c1f2-41fd-ac45-c8da7891df1c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Two kinds of Expectations, *one* of which is helpful for rational thinking Expectation is often used to refer to two totally distinct things: entitlement and anticipation. My basic opinion is that entitlement is a rather counterproductive mental stance to have, while anticipations are really helpful for improving your...
b40322ef-4518-4ef5-b437-d24b07274723
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital
Arbital
Solomonoff induction Solomonoff induction is an ideal answer to questions like "What probably comes next in the sequence 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8?" or "Given the last three years of visual data from this webcam, what will this robot probably see next?" or "Will the sun rise tomorrow?" Solomonoff induction requires infinite c...
afa12676-45b4-4e64-800b-55cab81b86f4
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Agency When we consider agency, we recognize the capacity to act independently, make choices, and exert influence over our environment. Having this driving force enables us to shape our destinies, navigate life's complexities, and achieve our goals. Agency is often discussed on lesswrong in terms of rationality, enhan...
5ceffb0c-3ac0-4e29-8251-b35040e22861
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What mistakes has the AI safety movement made? This is the third of three posts summarizing what I learned when I interviewed 17 AI safety experts about their "big picture" of the existential AI risk landscape: how AGI will play out, how things might go wrong, and what the AI safety community should be doing. See here...
68ea50e4-dd94-41db-9688-542b91e19f24
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Paper: Transformers learn in-context by gradient descent The paper argues that auto-regressive transformers implement in-context learning via gradient-based optimization on in-context data.  The authors start by pointing out that with a single linear self-attention (LSA) layer (that is, no softmax), a Transformer can...
82213002-2dbf-4ec2-a152-6b897ea7a80e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
OpenWorm and differential technological development According to Robin Hanson's arguments in this blog post, we want to promote research in to cell modeling technology (ideally at the expense of research in to faster computer hardware).  That would mean funding this kickstarter, which is ending in 11 hours (it may sti...
85e798b0-368d-4c28-8b9b-da0b2d415cda
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
EMdrive paper published, nearly identical to leaked draft. Paper first, article next http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.B36120   http://www.sciencealert.com/it-s-official-nasa-s-peer-reviewed-em-drive-paper-has-finally-been-published   TLDR, Yup, thrust estimates the same 1.2 millinewtons per kw, in vac.   Hypo...
41e12c29-cf1c-46eb-b65c-6aac5c8e71ec
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs
Other
Linear Matrix Inequalities in System and Control Theory Linear Matrix Inequalities in System andControlTheory SIAM Studies inApplied Mathematics Thisseriesofmonographs focusesonmathematics anditsapplications toproblems ofcurrentconcerntoindustry,government,andsociety.Thesemonographs willbeof interesttoappliedmathemati...
7125cbd0-87f2-422b-9eeb-7dc695feb851
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Book of Mormon Discussion In this comment thread, I gave the following idea, on the topic of a method by which one might judge the Book of Mormon from a rationalist perspective: > Why not make this an online thing? Day-by-day, or perhaps week-by-week, post (somewhere, not necessarily on Less Wrong, so as not to clutt...
bac9dac1-a514-4618-affb-efd808bac8cf
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Introducing EffiSciences’ AI Safety Unit *This post was written by Léo Dana, Charbel-Raphaël Ségerie, and Florent Berthet, with the help of  Siméon Campos, Quentin Didier, Jérémy Andréoletti, Anouk Hannot, Angélina Gentaz, and Tom David.*   In this post, you will learn what were EffiSciences’ most successful field-b...
b3717df6-3831-4078-a1de-3f4bfad1e8ce
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs
Other
The Question of Comparative Advantage in Artificial Intelligence: Enduring Strengths and Emerging Challenges for the United States JANUARY 2020 The Question of Comparative Advantage in Artificial Intelligence Enduring Strengths and Emerging Challenges for the United States CSET Policy Brief AUTHORS Andrew Imbrie Elsa...
98409b89-51fc-44f8-a772-ae67f4c5c717
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
If epistemic and instrumental rationality strongly conflict We in the rationalist community have believed feasible a dual allegiance to instrumental and epistemic rationality because true beliefs help with winning, but semi-autonomous near and far modes raise questions about the compatibility of the two sovereigns' ju...
ea0d91ec-7e58-469b-9d78-c274dea1bedd
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Could induced and stabilized hypomania be a desirable mental state? This may be a bad idea that acted upon may do more harm than good, but I propose that we should find a way to induce a controlled and stable state of hypomania in people who are willing to enhance their functional capabilities. Hypomania is a state t...
02236e17-f69c-42bb-93ce-2a817a14c58b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Searching for outliers Shortly after I started blogging, because I was a college student and had nothing better to do, I set a goal to write every week. I started in September 2013 and wrote around 150 posts between then and when I started working at Wave. (At that point I stopped having nothing better to do, so my bl...
5f4d8359-85a9-43ba-829e-f8e8e9481783
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Lesson Plan: Biases in Quantity Estimation Pedagogic status: I’ve never executed this exact lesson plan, but I ran a workshop similar to this for a dozen friendly but non-technical adults a few years ago, and it seemed to go well. The content won’t be new to the average LessWronger, but I do present some novel ways to...
ed4d562b-ff41-404d-9648-dd7a8b3c4cec
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Tucson Meetup Discussion article for the meetup : Tucson Meetup WHEN: 02 March 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700) WHERE: Coffee X Change 2443 North Campbell Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85719 Hi everyone! I was pretty inspired by the Winter Solstice series of posts discussing the benefits and fun of being in an in-person ratio...
219bebd5-4385-4ad3-a7bd-3bc0870d53b4
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Raising funds to establish a new AI Safety charity 9 months ago, LessWrong Netherlands sat down to brainstorm on Actually Trying to make a difference in AI Safety. Knowing AIS is talent-constrained, we felt that academia wasn’t fit to give the field the attention it deserves. So we decided to take matters in our own...
37c8091d-dc30-4bdd-baba-f0ece6e35c09
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Could Advanced AI Drive Explosive Economic Growth? Tom Davidson from Open Philanthropy released a post recently talking about economic growth and AI. I was somewhat surprised to see that no one had yet made a linkpost on Lesswrong yet, so that's what this is. Here's the linkpost on the Effective Altruism Forum. > Thi...
b1f80684-7076-4bc9-8a2d-2a46271d860a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What's the protocol for if a novice has ML ideas that are unlikely to work, but might improve capabilities if they do work? This may be a silly question. Suppose (I) someone who doesn't have practical experience with machine learning research (but is generally aware of the structure of a number of different NN archit...
c98e3e9e-2f14-4394-a02c-c7f62156a8e4
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
PA+100 cannot always predict modal UDT Summary: we might expect PA+m to be able to predict the behavior of an escalating modal UDT agent using PA+n for n<m. However, this is not the case. Furthermore, in environments where PA+m predicts the agent, escalating modal UDT can be outperformed by a constant agent. For a gi...
80b95026-c88f-4d04-ab6d-a88e7ef6e45b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Takeoff Speeds and Discontinuities This post is part 4 in our sequence on Modeling Transformative AI Risk. We are building a model to understand debates around existential risks from advanced AI. The model is made with Analytica software, and consists of nodes (representing key hypotheses and cruxes) and edges (repres...
75ec21a8-29c2-4db0-8502-386d64c09846
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Infra-Bayesianism naturally leads to the monotonicity principle, and I think this is a problem Introduction The monotonicity principle is a famously uncomfortable consequence of Infra-Bayesian Physicalism: an IBP agent can only act in a way as if its utility function never gave negative value to any event. This strong...
e92a3e67-895c-4e66-b7b2-90d72783a448
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A Rationalist's Account of Objectification? I'm seeking some feminist consciousness-raising, and I'm hoping some LWers (Alicorn?) can help. Specifically, I've never understood why "objectification" is wrong. I'm a tall white American male, so sometimes it takes a bit of work for me to understand what it's like to be...
98188277-e61a-43f9-8a56-9c20dc5dff0c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Type of Writing that Pushes Women Away Disclaimer: I don't think people who post here generally exclude women on purpose. I think that to whatever degree women are less represented, this is unintentional.  This post combines thoughts I had while reading  Is Being Sexy For Your Homies by Valentine with intuitions ...
659dfcac-06ab-4806-bb63-4502417d520b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
8 examples informing my pessimism on uploading without reverse engineering (If you’ve already read everything I’ve written, you’ll find this post pretty redundant. See especially my old posts Building brain-inspired AGI is infinitely easier than understanding the brain, and Randal Koene on brain understanding before w...
7b0e87dd-c701-4da0-8602-928b0e20c86a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Oslo Meetup at Bitraf. Discussion article for the meetup : Oslo Meetup at Bitraf. WHEN: 18 July 2015 04:00:00PM (+0200) WHERE: Youngsgate 6, Oslo Welcome to the second Oslo meetup, at one of the most prominent hackerspaces in town. We will be discussing a number of topics including: * How did you find le...
91e882af-cf23-4e78-b83f-9182b18eb116
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
This is a test I have been unable to post topic posts to discussion. I'm testing if this is still the case.
b89cc0ff-4156-46e1-93f5-433556a8e9f8
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Safe AIs through engineering principles When nuclear engineers design reactors, they go to elaborate lengths to make sure that under no circumstances (even a meltdown) is enough fissionable material able to accumulate to get a nuclear explosion. You could in fact design a nuclear reactor to be always on the edge of a ...
58d1b507-9b2d-484b-8346-03c18211fa6e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[SEQ RERUN] Complex Novelty Today's post, Complex Novelty was originally published on 20 December 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):   > Are we likely to run out of new challenges, and be reduced to playing the same video game over and over? How large is Fun Space? This depends on how fast you learn; the fast...
e1f0982e-88e9-478a-bac7-eeac1aec58a6
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
Launching Foresight Institute’s AI Grant for Underexplored Approaches to AI Safety – Apply for Funding! **Summary** ----------- We are excited to **launch our new grant programme** that will fund areas that we consider underexplored when it comes to AI safety. In light of the potential for shorter AGI timelines, we ...
839d0358-2045-4dac-9a7a-581332398625
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Caterpillars and Philosophy The audio version can be listened to here: If you put a caterpillar on the rim of a bowl, it will walk around and around in a circle. The rim of the bowl stimulates its nervous system in the same way that a branch does, so it responds as if it were on a branch, by walking along it until i...
669cd0ec-6908-46a8-a693-c96fcb9c2655
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A Possible Resolution To Spurious Counterfactuals Spurious counterfactuals (perhaps an easier handle than "the lobian inference issues described in Section 2.1 here, in the Embedded Agency paper ), are important to address because they lead to inference problems. Having a function (or agent) rely on proofs about itsel...
ff81ff18-e401-4e30-b1bb-9e540d80f3b5
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Empty White Room: Surreal Utilities This article was composed after reading Torture vs. Dust Specks and Circular Altruism, at which point I noticed that I was confused. Both posts deal with versions of the sacred-values effect, where one value is considered "sacred" and cannot be traded for a "secular" value, no ...
9272190c-6257-443c-a91d-259a90d3a756
LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct
LessWrong
""Clever kids in Ravenclaw, evil kids in Slytherin, wannabe heroes in Gryffindor, and everyone who does the actual work in Hufflepuff.”- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Chapter 9“It is a common misconception that the best rationalists are Sorted into Ravenclaw, leaving none for other Houses. This is not so...
2a1da185-e285-411e-8d07-af598c355547
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Hedging Original post:  http://bearlamp.com.au/hedging/ Hedging. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_%28linguistics%29 Examples: * Men are evil  * All men are evil  * Some men are evil * most men are evil * many men are evil * I think men are evil * I think all men are evil * I thin...
a78ede9d-04c4-4013-9557-602e6f8392eb
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Understanding “Deep Double Descent” If you're not familiar with the double descent phenomenon, I think you should be. I consider double descent to be one of the most interesting and surprising recent results in analyzing and understanding modern machine learning. Today, Preetum et al. released a new paper, “[Deep Doub...
00168c36-7d13-4ee5-bd01-0273f9291423
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A problem shared by many different alignment targets The first section describes problems with a few different alignment targets. The second section argues that it is useful to view all of them as variations of a single alignment target: building an AI that does what a Group wants that AI to do. The post then goes on ...
b833c635-6ae3-4829-99b4-9d154f4eff0f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Which COVID-19 serology (antibody) test is best? https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-emergency-use-authorizations-medical-devices/eua-authorized-serology-test-performance The FDA lists two dozen tests with different sensitivity and specificity characteristics, different sample sizes,...
7cf0e367-e55f-4b6b-9ac7-111d3795cf59
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What games are using the concept of a Schelling point? What games are using the concept or theme of a Schelling point? I'm asking given Schelling Day is approaching. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)
571a4a96-ff56-47e8-816c-dbdc00b07c3e
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital
Arbital
Left cosets partition the parent group Given a [https://arbital.com/p/-3gd](https://arbital.com/p/-3gd) $G$ and a subgroup $H$, the [left cosets](https://arbital.com/p/4j4) of $H$ in $G$ [partition](https://arbital.com/p/set_partition) $G$, in the sense that every element of $g$ is in precisely one coset. # Proof Fir...
891022ca-c466-4246-9f34-75a607d72d5b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Equivalence of State Machines and Coroutines In the past I often referred to the equivalence between state machines and coroutines as a kind of obvious fact that doesn't need any additional explanation. It was brought to my attention, however, that that may not always be the case. This article therefore doesn't attem...
9623214d-ca3c-4a50-97cd-bda8c81b149b
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
The Three Levels of Goodhart's Curse .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; float: ...
560da0a8-4c37-458e-81d7-968dc71d568b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Worldbuilding exercise: The Highwayverse. This is an exercise where I take a world which is otherwise the same as ours except for one physical law being changed, and try to work out what that world would look like. This is meant to exercise my ability to work out how things are connected to other things - how does th...
e89ef87f-1c59-4217-af75-fccd563fd832
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Rebelling Within Nature Followup to:  Fundamental Doubts, Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom, No Universally Compelling Arguments, Joy in the Merely Real, Evolutionary Psychology > "Let us understand, once and for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still les...
68622d84-c5d6-4404-9b4d-8a9c05723559
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Effects are correlated, policy outcomes are not, and multi-factor explanations are hard (Repeating some of “Policy debates should not appear one-sided”, but expanding upon it and then countering “Multiple Factor Explanations Should Not Appear One-Sided”.) If asked directly, most people who consider themselves sophist...
200e3b0b-7f2d-41e3-9ec7-b602512cdcb6
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Rewiring my Brain: (gentle) Help Appreciated Hi everyone, I am graduating as a philosophy student shortly, and want to pursue computer science / programming/ something-of-that-sort. I am currently taking some basic math (calculus) and physics (mechanics) courses in order to obtain pre-requesits, and to develop a bas...
d00797bf-0da4-448d-a9c9-a31d0ca8bba1
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What does the world look like, the day before FAI efforts succeed? TL;DR: let's visualize what the world looks like if we successfully prepare for the Singularity. I remember reading once, though I can't remember where, about a technique called 'contrasting'. The idea is to visualize a world where you've accomplished...
7e7b3a0a-9d5f-413a-93c3-0fa4e34e0e00
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Sydney can play chess and kind of keep track of the board state TL;DR: Bing chat/Sydney can quite reliably suggest legal and mostly reasonable chess moves, based on just a list of previous moves (i.e. without explicitly telling it the board position). This works even deep-ish into the game (I tried up to ~30 moves). I...
01267f30-0036-48dd-85ba-f1c6213849b0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Slate Star Codex Deleted Scott's Justification: https://slatestarcodex.com/?fbclid=IwAR0sgQbdV7QlDx8VnVejpQmyCVypFnVJt0HbMGCy6mN5ae2bA6UZFIb0SWI SSC Reddit Discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/he95ak/blog_deleted_due_to_nyt_threatening_doxxing_of/
7abae07f-faff-4799-be90-f5c6a30a1a88
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital
Arbital
Cognitive steganography Cognitive steganography is an [instrumental strategy](https://arbital.com/p/10g) for AGIs that are already trying to [deceive their programmers](https://arbital.com/p/10f) for any reason (e.g., because the AGI is disaligned and does not want the programmers to realize this and edit the AGI's ut...
123c99fa-82f8-4699-99d7-e9a7d6c1feec
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Recovery Manual for Civilization I was wondering how seriously we've considered storing useful information to improve the chance of rebounding from a global catastrophe. I'm sure this has been discussed previously, but not in sufficient depth that I could find it on a short search of the site. If we value future civil...
3981f38f-4498-4513-bf85-79afe82cb145
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Xtranormal: Nano and AI Danger Here. One of those videos generated automatically from a text. Also see.
c00da793-210b-4ba7-9bf0-e3d73703b9c9
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
On plans for a functional society Vaniver I'm going to expand on something brought up in this comment. I wrote: > A lot of my thinking over the last few months has shifted from "how do we get some sort of AI pause in place?" to "how do we win the peace?". That is, you could have a picture of AGI as the most important...
17c77a0a-e238-49e0-9697-d66a9329c956
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Ann Arbor Meetup - Meditation Discussion article for the meetup : Ann Arbor Meetup - Meditation WHEN: 18 March 2016 07:00:00PM (-0400) WHERE: 701 East university Ave, Ann Arbor Room 1511 Meetup time set now at Friday the 18th, 7 PM The address is on U of M campus. It's on the block just south of Pizza Hou...
91884066-a743-48c6-aedc-ed165f8a89ee
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
More ways to spot abysses I liked Ben Kuhn’s ‘Staring into the abyss as a core life skill’. I’d summarize as: 1. If you are making a major error—professionally, romantically, religiously, etc—it can be hard to look at that fact and correct. 2. However it’s super important. Evidence: successful people do this well....
04906b7d-a687-4f85-bc37-80630124e38d
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Suggested solution to The Naturalized Induction Problem This post is an answer to: http://intelligence.org/files/RealisticWorldModels.pdf > In Solomonoff’s induction problem, the agent and its environment are fundamentally separate processes, connected only by an observation channel.  In reality, agents are embedded ...
e6d671f2-abff-49ea-8fc2-4877d1c85a0f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[ACX Linkpost] Too Good to Check: A Play in Three Acts Y'all read this already, right? Read it.
20a516e3-8b24-4aec-9264-d5ba8408e778
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Why the Modified Demski Prior is better than the original Often, when talking about the Modified Demski Prior, I get the question "Why is this any different than the original? The original could have sampled logical sentences that claim that all outputs of a given Turing machine are true, with only a bounded complexit...
f91b0ee1-944d-415a-ae28-1704e833d4d6
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[Pile of links] Miscommunication > Humans obviously can't communicate. -Peter de Blanc Miscommunication is something we talk about Less Wrong a lot, what with the illusion of transparency, the double illusion of transparency, and the 37 Ways Words Can Be Wrong sequence and better disagreement and levels of communica...
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trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
We really need a "cryonics sales pitch" article. Every so often, I see a blog post about death, usually remarking on the death of someone the writer knew, and it often includes sentiments about "everyone is going to die, and that's terrible, but we can't do anything about it have so we have to accept it." It's one of...
c1a95c92-4628-4c2e-b7e7-767cc92b16ab
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Washington, D.C.: Great Filter Discussion article for the meetup : Washington, D.C.: Great Filter WHEN: 02 April 2017 03:30:00PM (-0400) WHERE: Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture This week, we will be talking about the concept of the great filter - a term for whatever factor explain...
90b0aea6-315d-4bfe-a363-241b204a98b6
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Living Forever is Hard, part 3: the state of life extension research Previous: 1. "Living Forever is Hard, or, the Gompertz Curve" 2. "Living Forever is Hard, part 2: Adult Longevity" From the excellent Fight Aging! blog comes a pointer to "A Histogram of Results from Life Span Studies", a graph of thousands of an...
62746dae-cc83-453e-9c5a-8816d1b51fb3
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Toy model piece #5: combining partial preferences My previous approach to combining preferences went like this: from the partial preferences Pi, create a normalised utility function ˆUi that is defined over all worlds (and which is indifferent to the information that didn't appear in the partial model). Then simply ad...
bb78bd87-3e3d-428e-b894-58f51e92ba8c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Arch-anarchism and immortality One of the great goals of transhumanism is to achieve immortality through science, and indeed some futurists like Raymond Kurzweil and Ian Person think we are close, citing advances like nanotechnology and mind scanning by artificial intelligence as being close to granting us this by th...
87ff8dbb-64d1-44ae-92a4-79d7bf3a5f70
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Oceans of snails Somehow while knowing that a) ‘sea snail’ was a concept, and b) beaches were strewn with sea shells, which involve various snail-reminiscent spirals, I failed to reach the stunning conclusion that the oceans are substantially inhabited by these kinds of characters: But its true. And it seems that n...
b624093d-6ac3-419a-8576-d2cfad2ba25a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
4 Key Assumptions in AI Safety AGI is already a very difficult topic, with a large amount of uncertainty, and not enough research being done for its core problems. However, I think even with this understanding, its vastness in scope of possibilities might still be severely under-realized. I’ve listed four major assump...
d4578ede-5c85-44b4-aed3-386fcbcd9246
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
How To Win The AI Box Experiment (Sometimes) Preamble This post was originally written for Google+ and thus a different audience. In the interest of transparency, I haven't altered it except for this preamble and formatting, though since then (at urging mostly of ChristianKl - thank you, Christian!) I've briefly spok...
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trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Book review: The Technology Trap I recently finished reading The Technology Trap, by Carl Frey. The book attempts to do two things: chronicle the role of technology in economic progress throughout history, and argue that automation in our own era parallels the first seven decades of the industrial revolution, during w...
dc0d478f-2652-40c3-8d17-e85708e1d995
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Fantasy-Forbidding Expert Opinion I believe in fairies! I do! I do! ...Except I don't, and neither do you. "Why don't you believe in fairies?" I ask. "What an absurd question," you retort, "it's because fairies don't exist." However, the many times when you thought something so-obviously-didn't-exist and were prove...
021be620-7961-492f-82b4-63fc70a6a6ef
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What do the baby eaters tell us about ethics? I just finished the baby eater sequence ( https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HawFh7RvDM4RyoJ2d/three-worlds-collide-0-8 ) and aside from it being an incredibly engaging story I feel like there is a deeper message about ethical systems I don't fully understand yet. In the seq...
48bd801d-2244-4e37-8658-22758ffade16
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Speed of information input is a bottleneck for rationality Speed of information input is a bottleneck for rationality. Rationality (both in its epistemic and instrumental forms) demand having true beliefs- not just true beliefs about abstract logical facts, but also true beliefs about the world. The only way to have...
5a86f473-d82f-4fb5-b9ac-77c2b1e7f4da
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Alien Implant: Newcomb's Smoking Lesion
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trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Report on Frontier Model Training Understanding what drives the rising capabilities of AI is important for those who work to forecast, regulate, or ensure the safety of AI. Regulations on the export of powerful GPUs need to be informed by understanding of how these GPUs are used, forecasts need to be informed by bottl...
b5b565ed-5200-4bf3-bd2e-0a67c2399031
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Misguided? Callous? Just Plain Stupid? Here's something I think about a lot: of these three traits, which is the least desirable? I have gone in circles for several years now and run the proverbial gamut, befriending people with these three traits (often several, actually.) I always ask myself: is it better to be kind...
26470581-e272-4e38-9956-23d7902b4ed5
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Nicotinamide riboside and SARS-CoV-2 I've been posting Dr. Brenner's recent paper re PARP10 and SARS-CoV-2... are there really no bionerds here? If he's right, he's explained why the virus hits older people harder, and how to counter the effect with a safe supplement. Even the LA Times has noticed: https://www.latimes...
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trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Versions of AIXI can be arbitrarily stupid Many people (including me) had the impression that AIXI was ideally smart. Sure, it was uncomputable, and there might be "up to finite constant" issues (as with anything involving Kolmogorov complexity), but it was, informally at least, "the best intelligent agent out there"....
f5f25a91-c286-4e28-afca-b886413fe793
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Why I'm Pouring Cold Water in My Left Ear, and You Should Too Why? A little while ago, I read these posts about how pouring really cold water in people's left ear solves an extreme form of rationalizing in patients with Anosognosia and might(?) make people better calibrated in general. Last month, I asked whether anyo...
17c04c29-57f9-4531-bcd3-9f90b6ef1417
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Ottawa LW Meetup: Thursday April 28, 7:00pm (ADDED: Bayes study group satellite meeting) Less Wrong meeting: Date: Thursday April 28, 7:00pm until at least 9:00pm. Venue: 347 Preston St., cafe seating behind the security desk. Bayes study group: Anyone in the region interested in learning how to do Bayesian statist...
6688661f-dfa5-4620-840d-9ba8c8e6e871
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[Book Review] "The Alignment Problem" by Brian Christian I came to this book with an ax to grind. I combed through page after page for factual errors, minor misrepresentations or even just contestable opinions. I spotted (what seemed like) omission after omission only to be frustrated just a few pages later when Brian...
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trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Clarifying “wisdom”: Foundational topics for aligned AIs to prioritize before irreversible decisions As many folks in AI safety have observed, even if well-intentioned actors succeed at intent-aligning highly capable AIs, they’ll still face some high-stakes challenges.[1] Some of these challenges are especially exotic...
7ad5037f-dcf9-48dd-b3fe-c08019015559
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[SEQ RERUN] Shut up and do the impossible! Today's post, Shut up and do the impossible! was originally published on 08 October 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):   > The ultimate level of attacking a problem is the point at which you simply shut up and solve the impossible problem. Discuss the post here (ra...
46587efe-cde5-49e2-8010-a31b801ae967
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A brief note on Simplicity Bias The idea of 'simplicity bias' is a popular one in informal discussions about the functions that neural networks implement. I recently tried to think a little bit more about what this meant. This brief note was written mostly for my own benefit, but could be of benefit to others. Having ...
029ffbc1-4e92-4dec-8342-d6caf47e0fae
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Structured Concurrency Cross-language Forum There are structured-concurrency-related efforts going on for different programming languages but the entire effort is kind of scattered, without people being aware of each other and speaking to each other. If we had a common forum, we could share the use cases, the problem...
f9f1d435-0403-4996-9b54-75797ed87162
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Parables of Constraint and Actualization I have an intuition that physics, logic, and computation are all closely connected, and that their bounded versions are also closely connected. I think this intuition started as wishful thinking. I didn't have time to study all three of my favorite subjects, so I hoped that st...
dda7efd2-21ce-4426-8299-228ad07b6ea2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Atheism = Untheism + Antitheism One occasionally sees such remarks as, "What good does it do to go around being angry about the nonexistence of God?" (on the one hand) or "Babies are natural atheists" (on the other).  It seems to me that such remarks, and the rather silly discussions that get started around them, show...
77503a86-194f-4f43-8d65-4c055963ede1
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Developing a technology with safety in mind: Lessons from the Wright Brothers If a technology may introduce catastrophic risks, how do you develop it? It occurred to me that the Wright Brothers’ approach to inventing the airplane might make a good case study. The catastrophic risk for them, of course, was dying in a...
cb778947-b211-42f2-965f-d2e708db6d69
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Baltimore Area Weekly Meetup Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore Area Weekly Meetup WHEN: 07 August 2016 08:00:00PM (-0400) WHERE: 1726 reisterstown road pikesville maryland 21208 Pikesville DoubleTree - Hilton, at the restaurant / bar or at one of the tables outside. Discussion article for the...
aeb96bbf-ac95-4d75-9d40-0a0558e47aee
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Marketplace Transactions Open Thread Social scientists think humans operate under one of two different sets of norms, depending on the circumstances: "market norms" or "social norms". The basic idea is that when exchanging money for goods and services formally, it's considered okay to be much more calculating and self...