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e100c0f9-03a2-456b-8f0a-89acc94a23a2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Effective Epidemiology
Introduction:
In my previous article I discussed some of the basic theories about how COVID spreads and how it can be effectively fought. This article does not require having read that article but will refer to the homogenous SEIR model and heterogenous models.
This article will argue that our ... |
12daf357-51a6-46ba-9c60-da3707ab7b5f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What I mean by the phrase "taking ideas seriously"
This post is super-quickly written and mostly for reference.
Setup:
* precondition: agreeing with the idea. (here synonymous with holding a belief in the idea)
* beliefs are intertwined. When you update one belief, you often have to update other beliefs to main... |
58dc5f4f-0557-40ba-af10-cc8850a0311f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Q: Correlation often does imply Causation, but does not specify which kind?
Hello, introduction and embarassments
I'd like start with by apologizing for making this thread and include an explanation why. This post is very likely to be embarassing, it's about math and I can't do math. I'm a fairly smart person and als... |
8d949a95-2c8d-4eaf-af2d-e3a0e2a14dad | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Certifying Model Accuracy under Distribution Shifts
1 Introduction
---------------
Machine learning models often suffer significant performance loss under minor shifts in the data distribution that do not affect a human’s ability to perform the same task– e.g., input noise [[1](#bib.bib1), [2](#bib.bib2)], image sc... |
7879ca70-d46e-4468-bb3e-16f490f4d55d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A New Way to Visualize Biases
I have started using a visual metaphor to diagram biases in my attempts to remove and mitigate them in myself. I have found this to be incredibly useful, particularly when dealing with multiple compounding biases.
I view an inference as an interaction between external inputs/premises and... |
af4bdf5b-5418-4581-9db2-0a97710ba9df | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | the scarcity of moral patient involvement
the scarcity of moral patient involvement
-----------------------------------------
let's say [aligned superintelligence gives us utopia](everything-is-okay.html). let's even say [compute is infinite](hope-infinite-compute.html). what might sill be scarce? one possible answe... |
3a18d699-f7de-4358-af93-218598274256 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Credence polls for 26 claims from the 2019 Review
This post is a whirlwind tour of claims made in the LessWrong 2019 Review. In some cases, the claim is literally quoted from the post. In others, I have tried operationalising it into something more falsifiable. For example:
Book Review: The Secret of Our Success
Eli... |
927d00b6-7826-467e-b990-29b6d1708d37 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Mechanistic interpretability of LLM analogy-making
Can LLM make analogies? Yes, according to tests done by Melanie Mitchell a few years back, GPT-3 is quite decent at “Copycat” letter-string analogy-making problems. Copycat was invented by Douglas Hofstadter in the 80s, to be a very simple “microworld”, that would cap... |
b84e082f-01bc-4314-bae4-2562907a51db | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Open and closed mental states
I learned a game at Burning Man this year that was about connecting to people and reading their nonverbal signals, called the "open-closed" game (h/t Minda Myers). There are two people in the game, and one is trying to approach the other and place a hand on their shoulder. No words can be... |
d44b9758-51e9-461a-8cb8-3552082e8741 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | UML IX: Kernels and Boosting
(This is the ninth post in a sequence on Machine Learning based on this book. Click here for part I.)
Kernels
To motivate this chapter, consider some training sequence S=((x1,y1),...,(xm,ym)) with instances in some domain set X. Suppose we wish to use an embedding ψ:X→Rd of the kind disc... |
7e2b5d37-058b-43e8-8c6d-8d3c6fd0e5d6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Announcing the Clearer Thinking micro-grants program for 2023
This is a link-post for the announcement on our website.
Do you have an idea for an educational module or tool related to rationality, effective altruism, or psychology that could benefit the general public? If you do, we'd love to hear from you, because ... |
72b4ea33-489e-428a-bf16-7ba2a204a83c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | CFAR workshop with new instructors in Seattle, 6/7-6/11
CFAR is running its first workshop in Seattle!
Over the past several months, CFAR has been training a new batch of instructors, including me. We're now running a workshop, without the core instructors, in Seattle from June 7th to June 11th. You can apply here, ... |
2c1cc6a8-a10c-4d69-a261-034763c317a4 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Alignment Org Cheat Sheet
*Epistemic Status:*[*Exploratory*](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Hrm59GdN2yDPWbtrd/feature-idea-epistemic-status)*.*
*Epistemic Effort: ~6 hours of work put into this document.*
*Contributions: Akash wrote this, Thomas helped edit + discuss. Unless specified otherwise, writing in the firs... |
4ebe4117-53ea-4804-b008-6e44960ea712 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Best Toy In The Park
One of the playgrounds near our house has an angled ring shaped merry-go-round:
There are lots of different toys at the park, but this one is different. It has depth.
It's a freely spinning ring, with a 10deg tilt. As you walk up, it spins you back down again. It has enough momentum, howev... |
f56e9b39-a97c-40da-beca-106440801070 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Cognitive Biases Contributing to AI X-risk — a deleted excerpt from my 2018 ARCHES draft
Preface
Several friends have asked me about what psychological effects I think could affect human judgement about x-risk.
This isn't a complete answer, but in 2018 I wrote a draft of "AI Research Considerations for Human Existe... |
1abc1897-048c-4c1d-af8f-995dcffecd27 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Rationality Club at UChicago
Hi!
I plan on starting a rationality student group at UChicago based off of sites like LW, MR, ect and more general insights on rationality in order to improve decision making and thought in people. Given that there is so much demand for groups like EA, I think may be way undervalued and ... |
4a8bd74b-0999-4314-aa70-bc8a5444aa8b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Tucson: Fundamental Questions
Discussion article for the meetup : Tucson: Fundamental Questions
WHEN: 09 July 2012 07:00:00PM (-0700)
WHERE: 2443 North Campbell Avenue
After the moderate success of our last meetup (during which much fun and conversation was had!), there is now a next meetup. The nominal to... |
98da62ef-791b-4dbc-a2ba-4e12fb4f2470 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Asymptotic Logical Uncertainty and The Benford Test
1 Introduction
---------------
Let ϕ1,ϕ2,… be a simple enumeration of all sentences in first order logic over ZFC. The goal of logical uncertainty is to construct an algorithm M which on input N outputs a probability M(N), which represents the probability that ϕN ... |
6fb8be4a-a561-48e7-ba9a-a344cfa2ffad | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A theory of human values
At the end of my post on needing a theory of human values, I stated that the three components of such a theory were:
1. A way of defining the basic preferences (and basic meta-preferences) of a given human, even if these are under-defined or situational.
2. A method for synthesising such ba... |
ebd3e96b-ea4d-45cc-997c-2182469ed3a1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | My rationality story: Goals aren't what you think they are
(This is aimed at those, like me, who cursed the sky and themselves for not being smart, efficient, or disciplined enough to change the way they wanted to.)
Most of us struggle to remain driven. When you find that drive, however, you need even more effo... |
5d9af393-d9da-4426-abd3-6ea3087dfadc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Welcome to Overcoming Bias New York City
Welcome to the LessWrong group of New York! We run weekly meetups on Tuesdays, reading groups, weekend dinners, D&D Sundays, special events and more. Newcomers welcome! |
481f6836-503b-4af2-bcf5-6bb7f16a59f1 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Conditioning Generative Models for Alignment
*This post was written under Evan Hubinger’s direct guidance and mentorship, as a part of the*[*Stanford Existential Risks Institute ML Alignment Theory Scholars (MATS) program*](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8vLvpxzpc6ntfBWNo/seri-ml-alignment-theory-scholars-program-202... |
7fa7b346-6757-4125-931f-407cf2945ec0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Continuity Assumptions
This post will try to explain what I mean by continuity assumptions (and discontinuity assumptions), and why differences in these are upstream of many disagreements about AI safety. None of this is particularly new, but seemed worth reiterating in the form of a short post.
What I mean by conti... |
17dc9d3e-9360-4b90-a63b-e6518cb62abb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Influence of scientific research
I'm an undergraduate studying molecular biology, and I am thinking of going into science. In Timothy Gower's "The Importance of Mathematics", he says that many mathematicians just do whatever interests them, regardless of social benefit. I'd rather do something with some interest or te... |
de7b3fab-6eee-46a3-804e-690f7c69a105 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Statement on AI Extinction - Signed by AGI Labs, Top Academics, and Many Other Notable Figures
Today, the AI Extinction Statement was released by the [Center for AI Safety](https://safe.ai/), [a one-sentence statement](https://www.safe.ai/statement-on-ai-risk) jointly signed by a historic coalition of AI experts, prof... |
f8228b44-2756-4d86-983c-4835691af83d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | EIS IV: A Spotlight on Feature Attribution/Saliency
Part 4 of 12 in the Engineer’s Interpretability Sequence.
Thanks to Tony Wang for a helpful comment.
If you want to become more familiar with feature attribution/saliency, a tutorial on them that may offer useful background is Nielsen et al. (2021).
Given a mod... |
04e7099c-b664-4e6d-817f-10de4eebe7be | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | 200 COP in MI: The Case for Analysing Toy Language Models
This is the second post in a sequence called 200 Concrete Open Problems in Mechanistic Interpretability. Start here, then read in any order. If you want to learn the basics before you think about open problems, check out my post on getting started. Look up jarg... |
26a635de-4f8f-4ddf-be98-590064dc1612 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Nick Bostrom's TED talk on Superintelligence is now online
http://www.ted.com/talks/nick_bostrom_what_happens_when_our_computers_get_smarter_than_we_are
> Artificial intelligence is getting smarter by leaps and bounds — within this century, research suggests, a computer AI could be as "smart" as a human being. And th... |
c474bd0d-dd3e-4fb8-8f9e-c8a2e6675660 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Types of Boltzmann Brains
If at least one type of BBs is measure-dominating, we are BBs. To explore chances for that, we need a classification of the possible BBs. Around 10 types of BBs so far identified and are listed in our article "Types of Boltzmann brains."
However, there it is not a big problem to be a BB. Fir... |
43a8c0e5-09bc-4aca-97fc-93a6519714e6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | 10/10/2017: Development update ("autosaving" & Intercom options)
Hey Everyone,
Here is a quick summary of changes I just pushed:
* Editor fields should now be saved locally on your computer, which means that if you reload the page while writing a comment or editing a post, your content will no longer be reset (howe... |
c1e60c92-cad6-4808-8514-d532c4565434 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Explaining the Joke: Pausing is The Way
Now that April Fool’s is over, I’d like to explore some of the ideas behind PauseAI and E/Acc Should Switch Sides, since the arguments in it have enough grains of truth that countering them deserves more than a snarky reference to 3D chess.
Considering the Merits of an Argumen... |
5d3e68c3-61b5-4906-827a-96724f17f00d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | somebody explain the word "epistemic" to me
definition from lesswrong's A-Z glossary:
> Concerning knowledge.
huh? So then, what is an "epistemic state"? Is it a collection of ideas? Is it a combination of knowledge a brain can have? What is an "epistemic status"? Is it the current epistemic state someone is in? Is ... |
57c2f297-75d5-4bf4-bb9f-58f125226db4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Quixey Engineering Screening Questions
My startup, Quixey, is looking to hire a couple top-notch software engineers. Quixey is an early-stage stealth startup founded in October 2009. We are launching our beta product this month: An all-platform app directory and "functional search" engine that lets users query for sof... |
775895e8-f36c-40c8-84ca-1c2bc31a74eb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Is anyone else worried about SOPA? Trying to do anything about it?
Referring, of course, to the proposed U.S. legislation which could cause severe damage to the Internet—at least, that's what a lot of people are saying. See, e.g., this Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the U.S. Congress (the first signatory list... |
69068cbb-cc26-4861-ad34-ddeb5a33ec12 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/youtube | Youtube Transcripts | AiTech Agora: Sebastian Köhler - Responsible AI through Conceptual Engineering
good
so uh so today speakers sebastian kola
sebastian is
assistant professor of philosophy at the
frankfurt school of finance
and management so a lot of his work
focuses on
meta-ethical and meta-normative
questions which is
super good but... |
253edfa6-5f8d-4f8c-9829-a0002d0922bd | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Examples of Measures
I recently started learning measure theory but had a pretty hard time finding real-world examples of the different measures. So this is a list of real-world examples of some different, common measures.
The count measure
If I have 4 apples, their count measure is 4. The count measure is just norm... |
7b192e74-b029-4479-90fe-0348052e58c0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Case Study: the Death Note Script and Bayes
"Who wrote the Death Note script?"
> I give a history of the 2009 leaked script, discuss internal & external evidence for its authenticity including stylometrics; and then give a simple step-by-step Bayesian analysis of each point. We finish with high confidence in the scri... |
18b698df-cbfe-4550-8441-7c09fdbe35e6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Do you want to make an AI Alignment song?
Would you be interested in taking part in a 1 day competition to see who can make the best song explaining the AI Alignment problem? Example for vibes:
There are millions of views on songs such as these. Let's nerdsnipe more people into trying to solve the alignment prob... |
a14342e2-6ed4-47f2-bebc-fe7e7ef7ccf6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Washington DC EA meetup (now with guests!)
Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC EA meetup (now with guests!)
WHEN: 23 February 2014 03:00:02PM (-0500)
WHERE: National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC 20001, USA
We'll be meeting to talk about EA with some people from the DC EA meetup group.
D... |
1e1e97dc-c589-49bb-84df-25e0736425e4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Two More Things to Unlearn from School
In Three Things to Unlearn from School, Ben Casnocha cites Bill Bullard's list of three bad habits of thought: Attaching importance to personal opinions, solving given problems, and earning the approval of others. Bullard's proposed alternatives don't look very good to me, but Bu... |
cbbbe6f5-4acf-4f27-88be-c5f78f4d42c0 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | Superposition, Memorization, and Double Descent
In a [recent paper](https://transformer-circuits.pub/2022/toy_model/index.html) , we found that simple neural networks trained on toy tasks often exhibit a phenomenon called superposition , where they represent more features than they have neurons. Our investigation was ... |
c3f001ff-94b5-4909-8cfd-f34cc583446e | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | In Logical Time, All Games are Iterated Games
Logical Time
============
The main purpose of this post is to introduce the concept of logical time. The idea was mentioned in Scott's post, [Bayesian Probability is for things that are Space-like Separated from You](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/FvcyMMaJKhYibtFDD/... |
80f790c0-c74a-44bc-afc9-072ced5f14bd | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What’s wrong with Pomodoro
POMODORO is a popular way to manage your time. The idea is that instead of half-working all day, you work in intense 25-minute stints, with 5-minute breaks (or occasionally longer) in between, marked by an alarm:
Invented by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s, Pomodoro was named after a tomato-... |
bbe24edd-ee00-468b-b948-d7fb1aa37094 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Seemingly Popular Covid-19 Model is Obvious Nonsense
Previous Covid-19 thoughts: On R0, Taking Initial Viral Load Seriously
Epistemic Status: Something Is Wrong On The Internet. Which should almost always be ignored even when you are an expert, and I am nothing of the kind. Thus, despite this seeming like a necessary... |
44b05e9e-7c8a-4eb2-8b24-f41185c5a860 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Jan Leike, Helen Toner, Malo Bourgon, and Miles Brundage: Working in AI
---
*In the future, we may post a transcript for this EA Global: San Francisco 2017 panel, but we haven't created one yet. If you'd like to create a transcript for this talk, contact* [*Aaron Gertler*](mailto:aaron.gertler@centreforeffectivealtru... |
871b66ae-d8cf-47a8-9968-7597b3d981ff | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Idea: Give the Nobel peace prize to institution designers
The Nobel committee has a problem. They keep giving the peace prize to people to war criminals.
In their most recent debacle, they have the 2019 prize to Abey Ahmed of Ethiopia for making peace with Eritrea. It seemed sensible, a popular young presidents burie... |
90b3be71-7009-4876-975b-1dfcbe2b7170 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | PredictIt: Presidential Market is Increasingly Wrong
Previously about PredictIt this election cycle: Free Money at PredictIt: 2020 General Election,
Free Money at PredictIt?
It is important, on occasion, to state the obvious, on the record, at the proper time.
The prediction (alternatively, read: gambling) markets... |
451833a0-be44-4734-9a0d-eb3e2524cd7f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | If you're not a morning person, consider quitting allergy pills
This is probably obvious to a lot of people, but I thought it still might be useful since I didn't think of it myself for years. Since sometime in college, I've been the kind of person who wakes up groggily at 10 am and then drags myself out of bed. I've ... |
a4236822-db09-4ad1-8a02-df6641ccc188 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | [AN #89]: A unifying formalism for preference learning algorithms
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/1PwWbWZ6FPqAgZWOoOcXM8N_tUC... |
375e404d-9f6b-4eae-acd5-d32385be2a18 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Don't walk through the fire! Walk through the fire!
alkjash writes about how following the rule 'walk through the fire' pretty much always makes one weaker if followed, so you should not follow it.
Isusr writes about how following the rule 'walk through the fire' can pretty consistently make one stronger if followed,... |
3eba967e-7c74-4c8b-9d44-46cc7ae3bfc1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | True Sources of Disagreement
Followup to: Is That Your True Rejection?
I expected from the beginning, that the difficult part of two rationalists reconciling a persistent disagreement, would be for them to expose the true sources of their beliefs.
One suspects that this will only work if each party takes responsibi... |
e865287f-32e4-4dcc-8ee4-102dc928700f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Literature Review on Goal-Directedness
Introduction: Questioning Goals
Goals play a central role in almost all thinking in the AI existential risk research. Common scenarios assume misaligned goals, be it from a single AGI (paperclip maximizer) or multiple advanced AI optimizing things we don’t want (Paul Christiano’s... |
b39768a7-cdef-4fa3-bbdb-427bf079534b | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | How long will reaching a Risk Awareness Moment and CHARTS agreement take?
The original report can be found here - <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MLmzULVrksH8IwAmH7wBpOTyU_7BjBAVl6N63v2vvhM/edit?usp=sharing>
.
Summary
=======
* I really like [Metaculus](https://www.metaculus.com/help/faq/%23community-prediction)!
* I estimated the [Brier score](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br... |
4d6e41ad-093f-4312-ae68-e698cda3b395 | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | "Related to: Politics is the mind-killer, Entangled Truths, Contagious Lies, The Importance of Saying "Oops", Leave a Line of Retreat, You Can Face Reality
This is something I wrote, sort of in brain-dump mode, in the process of trying to organize my thoughts for a song I'm working on. I don't think it covers any new g... |
282d5923-4363-4cf5-a975-6877befe6753 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Understanding and overcoming AGI apathy
Crossposting from my substack.
Note for LW: This post is about the apathy and nonchalance I've been seeing in many peers regarding AGI. There seems to be massive cognitive dissonance (and it isn't straightforward to overcome) – how can we on the one hand talk about things like ... |
e0ae834f-76b0-4006-837a-00e5ae8ba0f9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Defining by opposites
In Taboo your words Eliezer talks about how confusion occurs when people are using the same word to mean something different. Refusing to use the word in question can help with the discussion. He mainly focusses on philosophical debate but it’s a technique which works in everyday life too.
I cam... |
1768b40c-e99c-4f4b-a27e-c93f3eeb6a09 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Using lying to detect human values
In my current research, I've often re-discovering things that are trivial and obvious, but that suddenly become mysterious. For instance, it's blindingly obvious that the [anchoring bias](http://facweb.plattsburgh.edu/wendy.braje/students/psy205/JKarticle.pdf) is a bias, and almost e... |
8b980132-9d7c-4a38-a621-6d1672d26ea6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Seattle Solstice
Discussion article for the meetup : Seattle Solstice
WHEN: 19 December 2015 05:00:00PM (-0800)
WHERE: Seattle, WA
Seattle Solstice Celebration, which will feature, compassionate communication, ceremony of songs, candle lighting and speeches. Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/... |
1fb01487-9f5c-4383-91bb-372dbd4220ee | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How to label thoughts nonverbally
Introduction
Recently I've been attempting to put a damper on my ruminations. Sometimes they can get out of control and be somewhat self-sustaining. These negative, repetitive thoughts can be harmful and make depression worse. Accordingly, I've been looking for techniques to help man... |
0375b2e0-ab9b-49d2-8744-03c16f1f0484 | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | "Posted as part of the AI Alignment Forum sequence on Value Learning.Rohin’s note: In this post (original here), Paul Christiano analyzes the ambitious value learning approach. He considers a more general view of ambitious value learning where you infer preferences more generally (i.e. not necessarily in the form of a ... |
2b54748a-0848-450e-b15a-2d52453f57e6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Adaptation-Executers, not Fitness-Maximizers
> "Individual organisms are best thought of as adaptation-executers rather than as fitness-maximizers."
> —John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, The Psychological Foundations of Culture.
Fifty thousand years ago, the taste buds of Homo sapiens directed their bearers to the scarce... |
ed5b018e-8304-4e2b-a3ce-5eafa69a6a49 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Academic papers
In line with my continuing self eduction...
What are the most important or personally influential academic papers you've ever read? Which ones are essential (or just good) for an informed person to have read?
Is there any body of research of which you found the original papers much more valuable tha... |
c973a2ea-e891-4c9e-acae-af2e7e35d809 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Rethink Priorities: Seeking Expressions of Interest for Special Projects Next Year
Rethink Priorities’ (RP’s) Special Projects (SP) Team is looking for new impactful projects we can support in 2024!
Key Points
* A key strength of RP is its operations, and we aim to share the wealth of operational knowledge accumula... |
34705077-599d-415d-a6f8-287e578b151e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Collection (Part 6 of "The Sense Of Physical Necessity")
This is the sixth post in a sequence that demonstrates a complete naturalist study, specifically a study of query hugging (sort of), as described in The Nuts and Bolts of Naturalism. This one demos phase three: Collection. There's some reflection on naturalism i... |
1300deeb-d81d-4198-a2ec-171c2e09bb01 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Product Endorsement: Apollo Neuro
Short version: This $310 vibrating bracelet dramatically improved my sleep and moderately improved my emotional regulation. The return policy is pretty liberal so if this seems at all appealing I recommend trying it, or one of the cheaper alternatives I haven’t investigated. Between n... |
df1734af-c641-43c3-a722-10a88ec21689 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AI safety university groups: a promising opportunity to reduce existential risk
Cross-posted from the Effective Altruism Forum
Summary: AI safety university groups[1] are a promising way to grow the talent pool working to reduce existential risk from AI and can be fairly straightforward to set up successfully. Based ... |
e6b677ce-ae38-4229-8b34-f5496234c2af | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | We will be around in 30 years
This post is going to be downvoted to oblivion, I wish it weren't or that the two axis vote could be used here. In any case, I prefer to be coherent with my values and state what I think is true even if that means being perceived as an outcast.
I'm becoming more and more skeptical about ... |
6894761c-1c2a-490e-9613-fbe7cfea6249 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Intelligence Metrics with Naturalized Induction using UDT
Followup to: Intelligence Metrics and Decision Theory
Related to: Bridge Collapse: Reductionism as Engineering Problem
A central problem in AGI is giving a formal definition of intelligence. Marcus Hutter has proposed AIXI as a model of perfectly intelligent a... |
9553d16e-d017-4da6-8c9d-f6256c872221 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Darwin Game - Round 1
Technical Difficulties
I messed up the game engine. I gave bots their own move in the previous parameter instead of their opponent's move.
This is the primary factor behind the CloneBots diverging from each other. The bug caused CloneBot pairings to score 200-300 instead of 250-250.
I'm goi... |
f3ad11ec-2b19-4a64-8ba2-78bf888b54c7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | An Opinionated Evals Reading List
While you can make a lot of progress in evals with tinkering and paying little attention to the literature, we found that various other papers have saved us many months of research effort. The Apollo Research evals team thus compiled a list of what we felt were important evals-related... |
a0eb62f6-2a48-4014-ac6f-97b1253fcaf1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Towards AI Safety Infrastructure: Talk & Outline
Thanks to Esben Kran and the whole Alignment Jam team for setting this up.
Context: We recently got the chance to share a bit more about the flavor of research we're particularly excited about at Straumli AI — that is, designing infrastructure that could help the relev... |
94d86284-0924-4c15-b8b0-aa77f427eb30 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Uncovering Latent Human Wellbeing in LLM Embeddings
tl;dr
-----
A one-dimensional PCA projection of OpenAI's `text-embedding-ada-002` achieves 73.7% accuracy on the ETHICS Util test dataset. This is comparable with the 74.6% accuracy of BERT-large *finetuned on the entire ETHICS Util training dataset*. This demonstra... |
cb97b561-5713-4008-8208-bf8a3929c50c | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Detecting Spiky Corruption in Markov Decision Processes
|
e56217ba-d94e-4a4c-9907-44aa913f8a32 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AI #35: Responsible Scaling Policies
There is much talk about so-called Responsible Scaling Policies, as in what we will do so that what we are doing can be considered responsible. Would that also result in actually responsible scaling? It would help. By themselves, in their current versions, no. The good scenario is ... |
1400fc53-838c-4474-8f55-4cb3441d470c | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/youtube | Youtube Transcripts | Natural Language Processing and ArtificiaI General Intelligence - Foresight Institute
you want to develop a better text mining
tool and they really are necessary to
search really large data sets the way
we've done literature in the past just
is not very effective I do a lot with
medical literature it's very important... |
c54611dd-6b39-44ce-8fdd-edcabd9f1d39 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | You can talk to EA Funds before applying
Cross-posted to the EA Forum.
One thing I have realized as a fund manager for the EA Long-Term Future Fund is that there are a lot of grants that I would like to make that never cross our desk, just because potential applicants are too intimidated by us or don’t realize that t... |
74b01e20-bc7c-4884-80fc-b2da72c63c79 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Does literacy remove your ability to be a bard as good as Homer?
Epistemic status: probably we did lose the ability to memorize long songs due to improper practice, but it may be possible to enjoy the benefits of literacy and epic memory simultaneously.
Thanks to Niels uit de Bos for better links and editing, and to ... |
c1ac39bb-7149-4bec-b47f-fd37db1011c5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Would you benefit from, or object to, a page with LW users' reacts?
There is currently an admin-only page that shows a list of all comments that have been reacted to (in chronological order). Periodically I think "it might just be nice to show this to everyone, and to let them filter by individual reacts, or individua... |
83917113-704f-485d-9592-b4e34927e625 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Two reasons to expect a peaceful change of power in the US
Motivation
Several commenters have argued that a Trump might attempt, or even succeed, at remaining in power despite his electoral defeat this year. Here are soem example articles
The Nation Chicago Tribune Japan Times
Most people dismiss these claims. We ha... |
9d271b25-5733-4175-a3f1-086f2669735f | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Characterizing Real-World Agents as a Research Meta-Strategy
Background
----------
Intuitively, the real world seems to contain agenty systems (e.g. humans), non-agenty systems (e.g. rocks), and ambiguous cases which display some agent-like behavior sometimes (bacteria, neural nets, financial markets, thermostats, et... |
cfd964db-b722-457b-8fc1-a1340ed64c3b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Game Theory of Blackmail
This blog post is composed as following:
1. Review of Prisoners Dilemma
2. Explanation of Game of Chicken by comparing it to Prisoners Dilemma
3. Blackmail is a Game of Chicken
4. Why we should care about blackmail/Game of Chicken
5. What to do? Iterated Game of Chicken?
You ar... |
4a1af5ed-de89-4a7e-9cde-543209ffa1b3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How Popper killed Particle Physics
Discusses some failures in the process of modern particle physicis in the vien of Nobody does the thing that they are supposedly doing and The Failures of Eld Science. |
01085359-c76f-4c3b-81e0-dc60cd405318 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Who will be in charge once alignment is achieved?
EAs and longtermists rightly place a lot of emphasis on aligning powerful AI systems with human values. But I have always wondered, if super-human AI starts doing the bidding of some subset of humans, what is the governance equilibrium? When considering this question, ... |
25f3925d-4bb3-4e2d-bfe0-8bd3be7a526f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Corrosive Mnemonics
When I hear statistics about different countries, I sometimes think “yeah, that makes sense,” though it’s hard to know to what extent I already knew that or believed in a high probability of that and to what extent I merely convinced myself I already knew that just so I wouldn’t have a new thing to... |
f2df0d67-4e14-4057-b440-c48c375f564a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Advice Request: Baconmas Website
The Gist: I started this blog to get people excited about a science-themed holiday. I want your suggestions before I advertise it to everyone I know!
Two years ago, I came up with the idea of celebrating Sir Francis Bacon's birthday (Jan. 22) as a festive science-themed holiday called... |
15e55273-2976-44a5-9912-59c5d53c9fcc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Totalitarian ethical systems
(Excerpt of another conversation with my friend Mack.)
Mack: Do you consider yourself an Effective Altruist (capital letters, aligned with at least some of the cause areas of the current movement, participating, etc)?
Ben: I consider myself strongly aligned with the things Effective Altr... |
2bc73370-b6c9-47ab-a1d8-82586b096233 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Fundamental Uncertainty: Chapter 8 - When does fundamental uncertainty matter?
N.B. This is a chapter in a book about truth and knowledge. It is the first draft. I have since revised it. You can find the most up-to-date info/version on the book's website.
In the previous three chapters we broke apart our notions of t... |
62b7ddc4-fef6-434a-a9ee-681b6baa96a7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | You’re Entitled to Everyone’s Opinion
Over the past year, I've noticed a topic where Less Wrong might have a blind spot: public opinion. Since last September I've had (or butted into) five conversations here where someone's written something which made me think, "you wouldn't be saying that if you'd looked up surveys ... |
e5fced06-352a-4841-8481-69a8e2d3418d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Understanding vipassana meditation
Related to: The Trouble With "Good"
Followed by: Vipassana Meditation: Developing Meta-Feeling Skills
I describe a way to understand vipassana meditation (a form of Buddhist meditation) using the concept of affective judgment1. Vipassana aims to break the habit of blindly making a... |
5134b15b-894f-4187-970b-e20f2cfc3cfe | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | The Goldbach conjecture is probably correct; so was Fermat's last theorem
**EDIT**: Added a section on Euler's conjecture.
The Goldbach conjecture is likely
=================================
The Goldbach conjecture is that "every even integer above two is the sum of two primes". For example, 4=2+2.mjx-chtml {displ... |
f87c442b-12d5-4c3e-a38e-2f39a722526a | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | On Single Point Forecasts for Fat-Tailed Variables
Main Statements
---------------
(i)–
Forecasting single variables in fat-tailed domains is in violation of both common sense and probability theory.
(ii)–
Pandemics are extremely fat-tailed events, with potentially destructive tail risk. Any model ignoring this... |
d43bd938-b4b5-4090-ace0-c1c506ad04f7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Which of these five AI alignment research projects ideas are no good?
I'll post five AI alignment research project ideas as comments. It would be great if you could approval-vote on them by using upvotes. Ie. when you think the project idea isn't good, you leave the comment as is; otherwise you give it a single upvote... |
364e9582-1495-4dca-9db7-beb0aec44aaf | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Identification of Force Multipliers for Success
For a while now I've been very interested in learning useful knowledge and acquiring useful skills. Of course there's no shortage of useful knowledge and skills to acquire, and so I've often thought about how best to spend my limited time learning.
When I came across th... |
8231d830-7df7-452d-b6ed-16c3d70e75e3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Deep Structure Determinism
Sort of a response to: Collapse Postulate
Abstract: There are phenomena in mathematics where certain structures are distributed "at random;" that is, statistical statements can be made and probabilities can be used to predict the outcomes of certain totally deterministic calculations. The... |
a40d8eaa-1d36-4822-ae2c-88aa56d9acc1 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | AI Risk Skepticism
1
AI Risk Skepticism
Roman V. Yampolskiy
Computer Science and Engineering
University of Louisville
roman.yampolskiy@louisville.edu
Abstract
In this work, we survey skepticism regarding AI risk and show parallels with other types of
scientific skepticism . We start by classi... |
52dd2ef5-c3a5-46f1-a6e4-225056e95280 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Factored Cognition with Reflection
Note: I accidentally moved this post to draft and re-published it. My intention wasn't to get it back on the home page. Sorry.
Some weeks ago I completed an HCH-like program/Q&A system that supports reflection, including time travel: https://github.com/rmoehn/jursey I'm just posting... |
c553108b-f953-4f86-9cd0-555d227f853e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Exercise: Planmaking, Surprise Anticipation, and "Baba is You"
This is an exercise about Planmaking and Surprise-Anticipation. It takes about 2-3 hours. It's a small, simplified exercise, but I think it's a useful building block.
Humans often solve complex problems via iteration and empiricism. Usually, trying to fig... |
8b69d628-38f2-4c8a-a524-cceea1cb217f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Opinion piece on the Swedish Network for Evidence-Based Policy
Cross-posted from the Effective Altruism Forum
Follow up to: The effectiveness-alone strategy and evidence-based policy
A translation of the opinion piece can be found here.
I
Effective altruism is a great concept, but it's not trivial to sell. Ther... |
8ceea9e3-e0fe-4753-b7e2-37f3ca99918b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Great big ocean waves in an even bigger blank spot
The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean is a book about very big ocean waves-- the science, the danger (mostly to ships), and the surfers.
Really big waves weren't scientifically verified until about ten years ago-- part of the problem was... |
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