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977edd08-4334-4ac6-87c0-4cfe94524a04
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Video - Subject - Object Shifts and How to Have Them A frame is a lens through which we see the world. We're always framing things, but very rarely are we aware of those frames. In this Mental Model Monday, I go over "Subject-Object Shifts", or the process by which we become aware of the frames through which we see t...
578108e5-b32a-48f4-aeaf-0730c1410735
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Study on what makes people approve or condemn mind upload technology; references LW > In four studies (including pilot) with a total of 952 participants, it was shown that biological and cultural cognitive factors help to determine how strongly people condemn mind upload. [...] The results showed that people who value...
e517b3a0-bb56-4e56-bca0-bce662ddc3dd
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
I'm writing a novel to promote Effective Altruism I’m currently writing a fantasy novel to encourage people to join the EA community. I’ve made a living self publishing novels for years (mainly Pride and Prejudice fan fiction, but also two litrpg-esque works), and I’ve been interested in writing something to directly...
9ac0cb28-0889-470e-9fbe-d15de44b44b2
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Learning and manipulating learning 1 Introduction ============== This post will introduce our new paper "[Pitfalls of Learning a Reward Function Online](https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.13654)", now [online for IJCAI2020](https://www.ijcai.org/Proceedings/2020/221). It shows some of the difficulties with things we might...
b234ecbf-0a3d-47f4-989a-2eaa37201dc1
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
LessWrong exporting? Hi, I want to export the entirety of LessWrong posts and comments made by a certain user. I would like an epub file but accept others. The process should be easy and require minimal amount of work. Please suggest options.
b57e1158-f772-40f5-a761-820a099cbdda
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Announcing Progress Conference 2025 Last fall the Roots of Progress Institute hosted the first annual Progress Conference. 200 people excited about human progress gathered for two days in Berkeley, California, to share ideas in deep conversation, catalyze new projects, and get energized and inspired. Several attendees...
a4c7c216-ba41-4a78-b28e-d5309ce647be
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Chris Voss negotiation MasterClass: review This post is about the negotiation MasterClass taught by Chris Voss as well as a related MasterClass Session by Chris Voss and more broadly about the techniques and worldviews shared in those. I watched the original MasterClass in April 2020 and watched the Session in Decembe...
e1d5b7c4-d7bf-46bc-a35e-e8aff68e6ab3
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
'Effective Altruism' as utilitarian equivocation. Summary: The term 'effective altuist' invites confusion between 'the right thing to do' and 'the thing that most efficiently promotes welfare.' I think this creeping utilitarianism is a bad thing, and should at least be made explicit. This is not to accuse anyone of de...
d91dc0d8-3fa2-42c2-8465-d976dc846586
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Transhumanism and AI: Toward Prosperity or Extinction? This article explores the multiple transhumanist views on AI: a promise of emancipation for some, an existential threat for others. Between enthusiasm, caution, and controversy, it sheds light on those who think about the future.   Transhumanists: Blind Tech Ent...
9f727619-bef8-4df6-8c49-727ea0fe6c03
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The AI Safety Game (UPDATED) Last year, Donald Hobson created this awesome AI Safety card game. I and a few other people at MSFP played it and had loads of fun. :) Unfortunately, we've lost the cards, and the rules. So I'm reviving the game here. Enjoy! (Also, please invent and add new cards to the spreadsheet!) (UPD...
86bc559c-e4ff-4e63-872c-bf8fccd33a90
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv
Arxiv
Challenges for an Ontology of Artificial Intelligence 1 Challenges for an Ontology of Artificial Intelligence Scott H. Hawley Department of Chemistry & Physics, Belmont University, Nashville TN USA Abstract: Of primary importance in formulating a response to the increasing prevalence and power of artificial intell...
2584de6b-31b5-4a83-886b-c3dbc866c3a9
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
March 20th: Daily Coronavirus Links As part of the LessWrong Coronavirus Link Database, Ben, Elizabeth and I are publishing daily update posts with all the new links we are adding each day that we ranked a 3 or above in our importance rankings. Here are all the top links that we added yesterday (March 20th), by topic....
c3fe7fa1-c79f-4b95-b704-104a8fe89bf3
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Impossibility of a Rational Intelligence Optimizer Goodhart’s Law and Sign Function Collapse In my last post, where I created a semiotic critique of the orthogonality thesis, I noted that optimizing for intelligence is distinct from all other possible goals, and that therefore, the only goal compatible with all le...
d4f7a4e4-3c34-4d4d-afd5-dfa989170e55
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
An attempt to understand the Complexity of Values Let's pretend one day you find magic machine that could grant any lifestyle you asked it for. Professional golfer? Done. Star of Pulp Fiction? Say no more. Enlightened writer? Easy. Any lifestyle you wished to live could be yours upon demand. But like with any magical...
89e1917f-cff0-42da-ab01-b2845281dcd0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The meta-strategy Original post:  http://bearlamp.com.au/against-the-five-love-languages/ ---------------------------------------- You are in a relationship, someone made some objection about communication, you don't seem to understand what's going on.  Many years later you find yourself looking back at the relatio...
28b04286-1e76-4c63-b4e5-2233edf98267
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Simple probes can catch sleeper agents This is a link post for the Anthropic Alignment Science team's first "Alignment Note" blog post. We expect to use this format to showcase early-stage research and work-in-progress updates more in the future. Twitter thread here. Top-level summary: > In this post we present "de...
51cb2e77-eda0-4829-9d8a-bc0cc5e90218
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Ask Me Anything - Samuel Feel free to ask me anything. I'm also open to scheduling a 30 minute video call with anyone semi-active on lesswrong. My website has more information about me. In short, I graduated MTech IIT Delhi in 2023 and I'm currently full-time independently researching political consequences of incre...
7044e99e-5437-4559-aa71-a35fa8f56441
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/aisafety.info
AI Safety Info
What are existential risks (x-risks)? Toby Ord [defines](https://theprecipice.com/) [existential risks](https://futureoflife.org/existential-risk/existential-risk/) as "risks that threaten the destruction of humanity's long-term potential"[^kix.h7osexzhg8dd]. In the context of AI safety, we are most often talking abou...
6d9a0a91-fc0e-41e2-bcb0-7c1a17fdebcc
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Start with a Title Some writers start with a title and then write the article. Other writers start with the article and then write a title. The writers who start with a title end up with better titles. The writers who start with a title tend to write better articles too. Good writing conveys a single point. Titles ke...
813f87a5-a260-4f5a-9155-683b1042649d
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Two Questions about Solomonoff Induction In this post, I ask two questions about Solomonoff Induction. I am not sure if these questions are open or not. If you know the answer to either of them, please let me know. I think that the answers may be very relevant to stuff I am currently working on in Asymptotic Logical U...
990bbc6d-c863-4057-9fc6-a1aee9992090
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Effective Evil's AI Misalignment Plan Doctor Susan Connor loved working for Effective Evil. Her job provided autonomy, mastery and purpose. There were always new mysteries to uncover. Some of Effective Evil's activities, like closed borders and artificial pandemics, were carried out with the sanction and funding of m...
075dadff-966f-48d5-aada-ca2384afbb07
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Concrete Reasons for Hope about AI Recent advances in machine learning—in reinforcement learning, language modeling, image and video generation, translation and transcription models, etc.—without similarly striking safety results, have rather dampened the mood in many AI Safety circles. If I was any less concerned by ...
03fbb771-f534-4755-8c70-8a2edc91ffca
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
"Why Optimize?" Essay targeted at nonrationalist friends of mine Hello everyone, I've been trying to write some essays for friends, designed to introduce them to some rationalist ideas on a personal blog. I thought I might be able to post a few here to get some feedback on what I'm doing right/wrong so I can better g...
34217e4d-fd2c-4a67-aed4-978cd4f44d5a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What would you do with infinite willpower? For the past few years my willpower has been steadily increasing. If it lasts and I use it to accomplish something noteworthy, I might write a post about it. Anyway, what should a rational preference utilitarian with infinite willpower do? Assume that there are no negative e...
4af8514c-99f7-40cd-b144-79d7956f30fa
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
On Virtue This post is comprised partly of my own ideas, and partly of the ideas of Scott Alexander. Part of what I am doing here is just explaining my interpretation of his post. It is my first post, and it’s essentially just an experiment. I’d be highly appreciative of feedback and constructive criticism. I’m not 1...
59783cf4-c4fe-403b-995c-808958d351a9
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Principal-Agent Problems and the Structure of Governance This post on Best Of A Great Lot is a part of a series on the subject of designing a new form of governance. Each piece aims to stand alone, but fits together on the Table of Contents. Updates: This is the last in the prework section of articles about problems ...
92954017-67d9-47b0-ad37-b55331b111cc
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What if people simply forecasted your future choices? tldr: If you could have a team of smart forecasters predicting your future decisions & actions, they would likely improve them in accordance with your epistemology. This is a very broad method that's less ideal than more reductionist approaches for specific things,...
2d3757c2-3132-427b-958e-03c08bd7cdff
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Poker Playing http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/01/AR2010100105833_pf.html (one page link; original: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/01/AR2010100105833.html) is a recent Washington Post article on young poker player Steven Silverman. It's interesting. Even more ...
9fe001d1-0721-48e8-8bc6-ea27109cc36d
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Can we evaluate the "tool versus agent" AGI prediction? In 2012, Holden Karnofsky[1] critiqued MIRI (then SI) by saying "SI appears to neglect the potentially important distinction between 'tool' and 'agent' AI." He particularly claimed: > Is a tool-AGI possible? I believe that it is, and furthermore that it ought to...
50c53c9a-f320-49d3-9d43-3ef650d30b16
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Mismatched Vocabularies Sometimes I'll be speaking to someone and use an obscure word or concept they're unfamiliar with. There's a few different reactions, and, well, I understand mine and do not understand the ones that are not mine. I spent five minutes thinking about it, trying to model why people are crazy and th...
7f90474c-395a-40d2-bf10-ec2c80050815
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
New LW Meetup: Christchurch NZ This meetup summary was posted to LW Main on April 18th. The following week's summary is here. New meetups (or meetups with a hiatus of more than a year) are happening in: * Christchurch, NZ Inaugural Meetup: 27 April 2014 04:30PM * Las Vegas/Henderson, NV: 01 May 2014 06:00PM Irreg...
0163938b-ec24-4cca-90de-a6f6496bb7d2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Video and transcript of presentation on Scheming AIs (Cross-posted from my website.) This is the video and transcript for a ~45-minutes talk I gave in February 2024 about my report “Scheming AIs: Will AIs fake alignment during training in order to get power?” (slides available here). See also this podcast for a more ...
118ff90b-0ce4-4cec-8a42-26287076325e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Transportation Tracking Several times lately I've seen people say it's not practical to continue with walking and public transit in the US once you have kids unless you live in Manhattan. I've also had people think that us not having a car means that we never use cars. Both of these aren't the case, and I thought it m...
c5b8cc1e-b874-458c-a04a-f79bc53a2733
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What sort of algorithm enjoys music? Aesthetics is confusing me a bit right now.  You  might also ask the question "why?" with painting or architecture, for example.  I am singling out music because I got to thinking about it via how we understand music. Neurological problems can separately disable pitch/melody recog...
b874f84c-f2b8-4497-995a-074fbea46b86
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Is semiotics bullshit? I spent an hour recently talking with a semiotics professor who was trying to explain semiotics to me.  He was very patient, and so was I, and at the end of an hour I concluded that semiotics is like Indian chakra-based medicine:  a set of heuristic practices that work well in a lot of situation...
a2a54942-b493-47c8-8443-0b38b0d4a9ec
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Resolving the Fermi Paradox: New Directions Our sun appears to be a typical star: unremarkable in age, composition, galactic orbit, or even in its possession of many planets.  Billions of other stars in the milky way have similar general parameters and orbits that place them in the galactic habitable zone.  Extrapolat...
f98cc271-94e8-4a64-8d19-e9f96286629a
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/aisafety.info
AI Safety Info
Any AI will be a computer program. Why wouldn't it just do what it's programmed to do? While it is true that a computer program will always do what it is programmed to do, it is difficult to ensure that this is the same as what you intended it to do. Even small computer programs have bugs or glitches, and when program...
490b6869-d46a-4116-9330-7dca804f929f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Persona 5: Spoiler-Free Review Epistemic Status: Spent 101 hours finishing the game, and similar amounts on finishing Persona 3 and Persona 4. Short Version: Strongly endorse the game, the best Persona experience yet, but in the most important ways Persona 3 is still the best. If you would consider playing a Persona ...
17ea0638-a035-47a8-b5c3-96a11bf7886a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
On the ontological development of consciousness This post is about what consciousness is, ontologically, and how ontologies that include consciousness develop. The topic of consciousness is quite popular, and confusing, in philosophy. While I do not seek to fully resolve the philosophy of consciousness, I hope to off...
9522b88e-4f14-4d57-8831-d7d960e2261c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Apocalypse is Near. Can Humanity Coexist with Artificial Superintelligence? It looks like we are going to build artificial superintelligence (ASI). According to various sources, this could happen within a few, at most a dozen or so, years. Superintelligence is more than artificial general intelligence (AGI). It r...
457e64cc-851f-48b7-8bcb-305f4d9da0ca
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Improved formalism for corruption in DIRL We give a treatment of advisor corruption in DIRL, more elegant and general than our previous formalism. The following definition replaces the original Definition 5. Definition Consider a meta-universe υ=(μ,r) and β:(0,∞)→(0,∞). A metapolicy α is called β-rational for υ (as...
681ee9f6-d63f-471c-b7c9-38efc74b665b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Market Misconceptions Part 5 of the Inefficient Markets sequence. [I am not your financial advisor! For educational purposes only. Read part 1 first.] You, dear reader, are probably not average. I expect a certain selection bias for readers of this blog. You know how to use a spreadsheet. You can probably write code...
7f78b807-6a66-4cb2-8fc3-1b541ca6d9fb
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Call to action Core knowledge: List of common human goals Part 1: Exploration-Exploitation Part 1a: The application of the secretary problem to real life dating Part 1b: adding and removing complexity from models Part 2: Bargaining Trade-offs to your brain. Part 2a.1: A strategy against the call of the void. Part 2a.2...
c1f7552e-6069-4265-a24f-164d7ba2afbb
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Total horse takeover I hear a lot of talk of ‘taking over the world’. What is it to take over the world? Have I done it if I am king of the world? Have I done it if I burn the world? Have humans or the printing press or Google or the idea of ‘currency’ done it?  Let’s start with something more tractable, and be clear...
424df5af-7f97-479d-a49f-16713ff22361
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Mind: Board Game Review Recently I've played a board game called The Mind. I had an amazing experience and would highly recommend it to anyone. But I think the LW crowd might find it especially interesting, and I'll say more on that at the end. I'll describe the game briefly, but I also recommend you watch this e...
e2c4a7a0-8fa3-43eb-8b6a-665d114294c5
awestover/filtering-for-misalignment
Redwood Research: Alek's Filtering Results
id: post848 You can try our interactive demo ! (Or read our preprint .) Here, we want to explain why we care about this work from an AI safety perspective. Concerning Properties of Image Hijacks What are image hijacks? To the best of our knowledge, image hijacks constitute the first demonstration of adversarial inputs...
c3aeceb3-449c-45ab-a903-e8ff0be1a004
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Nov 2019 gwern.net newsletter None
55923c77-92ba-4e5f-81a0-965d4cc4cb4b
LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct
LessWrong
"[this is a linkpost to Analysis of World Records in Speedrunning]TL;DR: I have scraped a database of World Record improvements for fastest videogame completition for several videogames, noted down some observations about the trends of improvement and attempted to model them with some simple regressions. Reach out if y...
9ef9c653-ff84-419a-b28f-b9ecf62ba84c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Montreal - How to be charismatic Discussion article for the meetup : Montreal - How to be charismatic WHEN: 26 May 2014 07:00:00PM (-0400) WHERE: 3459 McTavish, montreal Charisma isn't just "something you're born with"; it's a specific set of behaviors that can be learned by anyone. You can practice these ...
c2181ac9-a49b-4e22-860c-8f71bd1f156c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
How to Be Oversurprised Followup to: How to Disentangle the Past and the Future Some agents are memoryless, reacting to each new observation as it happens, without generating a persisting internal structure. When a LED observes voltage, it emits light, regardless of whether it did so a second earlier. Other agents h...
c4b493a9-f5d7-4e60-9c2e-0809ec3f9afc
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : NLP for large scale sentiment detection Discussion article for the meetup : NLP for large scale sentiment detection WHEN: 13 September 2016 07:00:00PM (+0300) WHERE: Menachem Begin 125, Floor 36, Tel Aviv https://www.facebook.com/events/1243291579035965/ Our speaker is Alon Rozental, Lead Data Scientist a...
20c9ed35-dac2-478e-b005-6fffddbbdba5
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv
Arxiv
Forward and inverse reinforcement learning sharing network weights and hyperparameters 1 Introduction --------------- Reinforcement Learning (RL) is a computational framework for investigating the decision-making processes of both biological and artificial systems that can learn an optimal policy by interacting wit...
ff898614-38b6-4555-bfc1-7d4268a8e984
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
AI #97: 4 The Rationalist Project was our last best hope for peace. An epistemic world 50 million words long, serving as neutral territory. A place of research and philosophy for 30 million unique visitors A shining beacon on the internet, all alone in the night. It was the ending of the Age of Mankind. The year ...
d64731d2-e49b-4914-997f-904a25bea734
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Write a Book? I've been thinking of maybe writing a book about effective altruism. I've been blogging about these ideas for a long time, but a book would offer the opportunity to go into more depth and to be more thoughtful about some concepts I originally wrote up quickly and casually. Many of these ideas are also wo...
c89e06f0-5d92-4b8c-a98c-ebd2052e8043
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Mutant Game - Rounds 31 to 90 Rounds 31-50 * Silly 2 Bot dies in round 31. * AbstractSpyTreeBot dies in round 37. * "Winner against low constant bots" dies in round 46. The NPCs are dead. Chaos Army is dead. It's a clone world now. Rounds 51-90 Two CloneBots die in their game of rock, paper scissors. * Kar...
428c0a8f-eaec-483a-8259-b3dcd3039ada
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
How much should we value life? Until recently, I've largely ignored the question of how long I expect to live, and similarly, how much value I place on my life. Why? For starters, thinking about mortality is scary, and I don't like to do things that are scary unless the benefits outweigh the cost. So, do they? My ans...
487d09eb-7e21-4a1b-989c-76fb574064e2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Decolonizing Evidence-Based Decision-Making The evidence-based (or if you prefer, evidence-informed/data-driven) decision-making movement is riding some rough seas these days. With… Continue reading on Medium »
a4b8cae7-87e1-4a06-adc8-fea83ff742d9
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Machines vs Memes Part 1: AI Alignment and Memetics This is the first in a series of three posts on the interlinkages between Memetics and AI Alignment. It was written as an output from the 2022 AI Safety Camp, for the ‘Impact of Memetics on Alignment’ team, coached by Daniel Kokotajlo and comprising Harriet Farlow, N...
3ce613d9-d76a-464c-8468-4474aadefd9a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Projects Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Projects WHEN: 02 May 2016 06:15:00PM (-0700) WHERE: 1597 Howard St. San Francisco, CA We'll be meeting to work on projects. Bring something to work on, come up with something there, or help other people out! As always...
96f913fd-b45b-4c0c-88fe-028ea1ff46eb
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Steelmining via Analogy *This post has been written for the first* [*Refine*](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/D7epkkJb3CqDTYgX9/refine-an-incubator-for-conceptual-alignment-research-bets) *blog post day, at the end of a week of readings, discussions, and exercises about epistemology for doing good conceptual research....
b61502e9-7784-4848-ab30-56aef98a1538
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
In defense of probably wrong mechanistic models This is a short post on a simple point that I get asked about a lot and want a canonical reference for. Which of the following two options is more likely to be true? 1. AIs will internally be running explicit search processes. 2. AIs will internally be doing somethin...
40452d36-68ee-459c-a84b-263865441aae
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Thinking Fast and Slow Discussion November 17 Discussion article for the meetup : Urbana-Champaign: Thinking Fast and Slow Discussion November 17 WHEN: 17 November 2013 02:00:00PM (-0600) WHERE: 40.109545,-88.227318 Coordinates are: 40.109545,-88.227318 Meetup will be held in the Courtyar...
e1bc953e-aa47-47b6-a123-5d32d3c7b2ac
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[LINK] Wireheading in SMBC http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2625#comic (The last panel also illustrates Hanson's near vs far distinction.)
9e60a1f3-51ca-4a11-8c0d-d5b62bbad490
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
AI Timelines Introduction How many years will pass before transformative AI is built? Three people who have thought about this question a lot are Ajeya Cotra from Open Philanthropy, Daniel Kokotajlo from OpenAI and Ege Erdil from Epoch. Despite each spending at least hundreds of hours investigating this question, they...
02b6ea1c-a789-4db8-8003-3ebcedbf711b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
There is a war. Households vs markets The first symptom was the clutter on the kitchen counter. One cutting board, two pans, one knife. My colleagues had arrived at the rented house the day before, so they'd had plenty of time to arrange things to their liking. I was sure the clutter was not to their liking, if they n...
8bed7553-0ca5-4258-abd7-8e23d2fa6228
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Meet Up: Dallas - Fort Worth Less Wrong Meetup 5/20/12 Discussion article for the meetup : Meet Up: Dallas - Fort Worth Less Wrong Meetup 5/20/12 WHEN: 20 May 2012 01:00:00PM (-0500) WHERE: America's Best Coffee, Arlington This group is really starting to build up some momentum! We have a handful of great ...
9d445317-5dc1-40a9-8722-adfd078e9b5f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
In defense of deviousness Why hard-to-read code can be a good code. A complex criticism to the “keep it simple” universal coding advice It is easy to find articles and decalogues where experienced software developers manifest what they think are good rules for coding. Usually those recommendations are expressed with s...
5a2e91a8-4e5a-42e3-9354-3ada2fe66705
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
List of Fully General Counterarguments Follow-up to: Knowing About Biases Can Hurt People See also: Fully General Counterargument (LW Wiki) > A fully general counterargument [FGCA] is an argument which can be used to discount any conclusion the arguer does not like. With the caveat that the arguer doesn't need to b...
e923be4e-6daa-4b4c-ac61-decab4b0337c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
I played as a Gatekeeper and came pretty close to losing in a couple of occasions. Logs and a brief recap inside.   I did an AI Box experiment with user polymathwannabe. He said he wouldn't try to emotionally manipulate me during the experiment, but I think he did a good job at trying to play for my character's value...
bedc2b64-33e4-457c-93c0-59231bdb5a05
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv
Arxiv
Security in Asynchronous Interactive Systems. 1 Introduction --------------- In a distributed system, agents often want to be able to carry out a computation without revealing any private information. There has been a great deal of work showing how and to what extent this can be done. We briefly review the most rel...
344273b2-5c61-48d7-99b6-e3b10c159f13
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Why is so much political commentary misleading? Much political commentary is highly misleading. Though media evaluation of policy agendas and the conduct of politicians tends to be better, analysis of policy effects and the role of parties is very poor, even in the ‘quality’ press. When assessing policy records, comme...
c561f0e4-5e30-44de-b867-20eb59b8cd22
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Is there a source/market for LW-related t-shirts? I think some of the sayings that come from LW and surrounding community would work well on t-shirts. I would both be interested in making and buying them. * Is there already a source of such t-shirts? * If not, is there interest? * What is the best platform for the...
2a9fe0dd-bc13-49ad-8d49-ab78d165594b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
An Overview of the AI Safety Funding Situation Note: this post was updated in January 2025 to reflect all available data from 2024. Introduction AI safety is a field concerned with preventing negative outcomes from AI systems and ensuring that AI is beneficial to humanity. The field does research on problems such as...
ccdb043a-c258-4297-88f0-c12a4765471c
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs
Blogs
Genuineness, Existential Selfdetermination, Satisfaction: pick 2 Genuineness, Existential Selfdetermination, Satisfaction: pick 2 ---------------------------------------------------------------- imagine you have a world where one person wants the moon to be painted blue, and another wants the moon to be painted red....
37269730-73ac-4b3e-8cc9-6e940f43340c
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs
Blogs
ML Safety Newsletter #6 Welcome to the 6th issue of the ML Safety Newsletter. In this edition, we cover: * A **review of** **transparency research** and future research directions * A **large** **improvement to certified robustness** * **“Goal misgeneralization”** examples and discussion * A benchmark for assessing h...
a4a80a77-46f3-4760-980d-b49b906bd7c5
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A Rational Company - Seeking Advisors The purpose of this post is to hopefully get some feedback, advice or even advisors, for how to optimize a business using rationalist principles. Background We are a team of three people running a small tech/AI company and currently dedicate the profits to: 1. Donate to AI ali...
27143d2c-0ce6-4516-923f-b266678995f3
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Concept Safety: Producing similar AI-human concept spaces A frequently-raised worry about AI is that it may reason in ways which are very different from us, and understand the world in a very alien manner. For example, [Armstrong, Sandberg & Bostrom (2012)](http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/oracle.pdf) consider the po...
85622668-6d49-476b-a6d7-e557aa68533a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Moscow: unconference Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow: unconference WHEN: 29 January 2017 02:00:00PM (+0300) WHERE: Москва, ул. Большая Дорогомиловская, д.5к2 Note: most our members join meetups through other channels. Still, the correlation between "found out about Moscow meetups via lesswrong.c...
d38ae151-0e1f-489f-a0a4-737b2c0bb4a0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
MonoPoly Restricted Trust Now we know why he’s so happy Two months ago (an eternity in podcasting, I know) I was on the Bayesian Conspiracy podcast to discuss polyamory with Aella and Eneasz, both of whom are hella fucking poly.[1] I favor monogamy without moral objection to polyamory, yet its appeal eludes me. Given ...
9ecc0205-67f5-4d22-9c99-fa222964456e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Simplified Humanism, Positive Futurism & How to Prevent the Universe From Being Turned Into Paper Clips Simplified Humanism, Positive Futurism & How to Prevent the Universe From Being Turned Into Paper Clips Michael Anissimov recently did an interview with Eliezer for h+ magazine. It covers material basic to those fa...
12eabb5e-92bc-4354-b272-69b2d9e0d21e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
AlphaEvolve New AI agent evolves algorithms for math and practical applications in computing by combining the creativity of large language models with automated evaluators Large language models (LLMs) are remarkably versatile. They can summarize documents, generate code or even brainstorm new ideas. And now we’ve expa...
a31a5e25-532a-4d66-b39a-f4a16ad0d038
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
"Zero Sum" is a misnomer. *This could have been a relatively short note about why "zero sum" is a misnomer, but I decided to elaborate some consequences. This post benefited from discussion with Sam Eisenstat.* "Zero Sum" is a misnomer. ========================= The term intuitively suggests that an interaction is t...
3b41da61-14ce-4404-bf94-65a128c4279f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Post Resource Request After having viewed a recent post by Gworley I noticed that the material was deliberately opaque*.  It's not as complicated as it seems, and should be able to be taught to people at lower than "Level 4" on Kegan's Constructive Developmental Theory.  The only serious block I saw was the ridiculous...
bfd1711f-6afb-4af6-8d59-9932221a92fd
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Letting Others Be Vulnerable [Because people are predisposed to give others good impressions, when our relationships deepen, it’s more likely that we’ll have to revise our initial “perfect” models of the other person. For the person doing the updating, it can internally feel uncomfortable. I outline this dynamic and a...
cd9d8359-3fdf-4af0-84e3-8337442f31d9
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The 2021 Less Wrong Darwin Game It's fall and that means it's time for another Less Wrong Darwin Game. This year, you'll be designing up to ten species that will compete for food including (sometimes) eating each other. Click here to participate [Entries are now closed.] You have one week from September 23 to design ...
ecad03f1-f49e-4dd9-9c67-e3fdc164c1bc
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Nonspecific discomfort I think people can often be unhappy not because they have major problems (like an illness or a divorce), but due to "nonspecific discomfort", which arises from many small reasons. Most of the time it stays below the radar, but there's one particular way it can lead to large harm: you feel a grad...
49ffcef5-047b-4111-a5df-5e77050df323
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital
Arbital
Fixed point theorem of provability logic The fixed point theorem of provability logic is a key result that gives a explicit procedure to find equivalences for sentences such as the ones produced by the [https://arbital.com/p/-59c](https://arbital.com/p/-59c). In its most simple formulation, it states that: >Let $\ph...
c1cfa21e-8b52-48b0-8b75-a86324e876b4
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
My techno-optimism [By Vitalik Buterin] Vitalik wrote a post trying to make the case for his own take on techno-optimism summarizing it as an ideology he calls "d/acc". I resonate with a lot of it, though also have conflicting feelings about trying to create social movements and ideologies like this. Below some quote...
f4682210-4838-415c-b64a-e9092d11f9e8
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Implication of AI timelines on planning and solutions (Cross-posted to EA Forum) TL;DR If your median estimate for TAI is in 30 years you might have to plan to solve the alignment problem in 5 years   When thinking about AI timelines I like to think about the timeline and high level plan for solutions based on t...
83d9464b-c653-47de-983b-12d183f54acc
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The map of future models TL;DR: Many models of the future exist. Several are relevant. Hyperbolic model is strongest, but too strange. Our need: correct model of the future Different people: different models = no communication. Assumptions: Model of the future = main driving force of historical process + graphic of ...
3abd1495-083a-448b-86d1-5c8af6f5665a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
My IRB Nightmare [Epistemic status: Pieced together from memory years after the event. I may have mis-remembered some things or gotten them in the wrong order. Aside from that – and the obvious jokes – this is all true. I’m being deliberately vague in places because I don’t want to condemn anything specific without be...
8972cbc2-b795-402e-af86-a24c6a4c8563
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Tendencies in reflective equilibrium Consider a case, not too different from what has been shown to happen in reality, where we ask Bob what sounds like a fair punishment for a homeless man who steals $1,000, and he answers ten years. Suppose we wait until Bob has forgotten that we ever asked the first question, and t...
e03a2f33-9b63-4d8c-bd8a-9d1e0d0f14bd
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Predictive coding = RL + SL + Bayes + MPC *(Update much later (2021-06): I put in some minor updates and retractions below. Also, if I were writing this today I would probably have framed it as "here's how I disagree with predictive coding" rather than "here's a version of predictive coding that I like". Also, whereve...
0d9a79db-841a-425d-ac78-3f5555da8eaa
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
The ELK Framing I’ve Used Epistemic Status: Uncertain. This post assumes familiarity with ARC’s [Eliciting Latent Knowledge](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/rxoBY9CMkqDsHt25t/eliciting-latent-knowledge-elk-distillation-summary) paper. After working on ELK for a little while, I arrived at a slightly differently ...
f1924153-335b-4e9b-ba37-2651628189eb
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : London Social - Direct Sunlight 2, Vitamin Boogaloo - July 21st Discussion article for the meetup : London Social - Direct Sunlight 2, Vitamin Boogaloo - July 21st WHEN: 21 July 2013 11:54:28AM (+0100) WHERE: St James Park, London, SW1H The next London Social meetup will be taking place in St. James Park ...
3ad6b4e7-1473-4bae-bab8-9ce8db993f03
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Why Aligning an LLM is Hard, and How to Make it Easier Where the challenge of aligning an LLM-based AI comes from, and the obvious solution. Evolutionary Psychology is the Root Cause LLMs are pre-trained using stochastic gradient-descent on very large amounts of human-produced text, normally drawn from the web, book...
d837bc4d-de93-4d6b-8504-f3dd0f231624
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
AI in Government: Resilience in an Era of AI Monoculture Red flags and musings from OpenAI sycophancy, xAI manipulation, and AI coups The increasing integration of artificial intelligence into the machinery of government presents a complex calculus of opportunity and risk which comes at a time when government is lar...
4a7ba594-e197-4c6a-89bd-e37779e074ce
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Polling Thread The next installment of the Polling Thread. This is your chance to ask your multiple choice question you always wanted to throw in. Get qualified numeric feedback to your comments. Post fun polls. These are the rules: 1. Each poll goes into its own top level comment and may be commented there. 2. Y...
cda01e79-0b5a-4a12-9397-8221e722347c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Can someone help me understand the arrow of time? If I understand correctly the psychological arrow of time tries to explain why we perceive time as passing by. It answers that in truth time does not pass - we exist at a single point in the timeline, but have the illusion of time passing by because we remember the pas...
b37f8013-7f9f-4ae7-b728-6346e9a88167
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Monthly Roundup #12: November 2023 Things on the AI front have been rather hectic. That does not mean other things stopped happening. Quite the opposite. So here we are again. BAD NEWS PSA: Crumbl Cookies, while delicious, have rather a lot of calories, 720 in the basic cookie. Yes, they display this as 180, by deci...