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9dddcea6-c36a-4f62-87a1-8cc9b3319f3b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AI-Box Experiment - The Acausal Trade Argument
The AI-Box Experiment
I suspect that the argument that convinced Carl Shulman and others to let the AI out of the box was along general lines of acausal trade (see here, here and here). Subsequently I suspect that those who didn't let the AI out of the box either didn't ... |
9d3ac53e-b680-4ee9-bfb0-5f33212df6d3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Visible Homelessness in SF: A Quick Breakdown of Causes
Anyone who's visited downtown San Francisco has seen streets like this one:
The US is the richest country on Earth, excluding small states like Singapore with <10 million people. And the Bay Area is one of the US's economic hubs. Why do we see stuff like this? I... |
1c56ab01-07af-4ada-b244-9221b19f4f7d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | PlanAlyzer: assessing threats to the validity of online experiments
> It’s easy to make experimental design mistakes that invalidate your online controlled experiments. At an organisation like Facebook (who kindly supplied the corpus of experiments used in this study), the state of art is to have a pool of experts car... |
5f083d66-dd3d-4f4d-820d-25455d42a6bb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Frequentist Magic vs. Bayesian Magic
[I posted this to open thread a few days ago for review. I've only made some minor editorial changes since then, so no need to read it again if you've already read the draft.]
This is a belated reply to cousin_it's 2009 post Bayesian Flame, which claimed that frequentists can give... |
3ac00ff2-0978-4ae7-b9a6-873c348ecc8b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Research productivity tip: "Solve The Whole Problem Day"
(This is about a research productivity strategy that’s been working very well for me personally. But YMMV, consider reversing any advice, etc. etc.)
As a researcher, there’s kinda a stack of "what I'm trying to do", from the biggest picture to the most microsco... |
7d7f2b11-3971-4401-99fb-f7e4bc8b1bba | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs | Other | Introduction—The Transhumanist FAQ: A General Introduction
/G22/G145/G142
/G22/G155/G138/G151/G156/G145/G158/G150/G138/G151/G146/G156/G157
/G8/G3/G19
/G3
/G9/G142/G151/G142/G155/G138/G149
/G11/G151/G157/G155/G152/G141/G158/G140/G157/G146/G152/G151
Version 2.1 (2003)
Nick Bostrom\*
Faculty of Philosophy
... |
68094544-2ecc-45ce-891f-b2cfa4d20fbd | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Emotions = Reward Functions
*... Or more specifically, a post on how, and why, to encode emotions to find out more about goals, rationality and safe alignment in general.*
If one tries to naively fit reinforcement learning’s reward functions back onto the human mind, the closest equivalent one may find is emoti... |
d2e34e58-4932-44b4-8b30-64b7106625cb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A dashboard for progress
Is progress slowing down? In a previous post I explained why I got convinced that it is. Some people making this argument point to quantitative evidence, such as GDP or total factor productivity. I gave more qualitative evidence, or perhaps very crude quantitative evidence, by counting technol... |
810a0746-29a0-4146-9446-a86ce5b4a06f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Metaethics and Normative Ethics of AGI Value Alignment: Many Questions, Some Implications
(first published on the EA Forum)
Short Summary
This is a commentated research agenda on the metaethics and normative ethics of AGI (artificial general intelligence) value alignment. It aims to show that various crucial asp... |
0e948599-3902-43f0-bc3b-6a24d3139896 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Referential Containment
This is an idea I am toying around with for understanding resolutionally adjusted causal modeling - this is just a bunch of intuitions and pointing towards a somewhat clear framing of a fundamental thing. I am sure there are already plenty of accounts for how to approach this kind of task, but ... |
a04ee880-ebce-48d7-92e5-4aff9ab3717b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Find a study partner - April 2014 thread
This is the monthly thread to find a study partner.
For reasons mentioned in So8res article as well as for other reasons: studying with a partner can be very good.
So if you're looking for a study partner for an online course, reading a manual or else (whether it's in the MIR... |
da26741c-32a6-41de-84d0-86a0f742e62a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Pivotal acts using an unaligned AGI?
Introduction
A recent post (AGI Ruin: A List of Lethalities) gives an argument for humanity’s likely inability to survive the invention of superintelligent AGI. The argument goes very roughly like this:
1. We haven’t solved the alignment problem (citation needed?).
2. Given ac... |
5571c558-e7c3-476d-9cb8-000e998924ef | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | UDT1.01: Logical Inductors and Implicit Beliefs (5/10)
One of the primary conceptual challenges of UDT is that, if future-you is going to be deferring to past-you about what to do in various circumstances, and past-you hasn't exhaustively thought through every possible circumstance ahead of time, that causes a tension... |
9faa9277-7f3f-49bb-8c9c-112e68a7b9bb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Blake Richards on Why he is Skeptical of Existential Risk from AI
I have recently interviewed Blake Richards, an Assistant Professor in the Montreal Neurological Institute and the School of Computer Science at McGill University and a Core Faculty Member at MiLA. Below you will find some quotes summarizing his takes on... |
0e12e2da-13ac-491e-a817-9474ddf80997 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Beta Tester Request: Rallypoint Bounties
We are requesting beta testers for the closed beta release of Rallypoint: A platform for the creation of bountied requests related to AI safety. We offer a convenient means of requesting a good or service in exchange for a financial reward that is able to be crowdfunded.
The u... |
f1b0dff3-7b82-433b-8717-a868e356ced5 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | What Should AI Owe To Us? Accountable and Aligned AI Systems via Contractualist AI Alignment
*This is an extended and edited transcript of the talk I recently gave at* [*EAGxSingapore 2022*](https://www.eaglobal.org/events/eagxsingapore-2022/)*.*
*The title has been changed for easier searchability of "Contractualis... |
f5f61b51-3d4f-417d-b58b-093ae6f74669 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | First thing AI will do when it takes over is get fission going
> If I'm right, the first thing AI will do when it takes over is get fission going.
source
Disclosure: this post does not meaningfully contribute a solution to the alignment problem.
Let's say for a moment the first AGI has some reasonable notion of ... |
100ae1cf-24c5-4719-a7bd-04ea11aa5168 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Generative Adversarial Networks
1 Introduction
---------------
The promise of deep learning is to discover rich, hierarchical models [[2](#bib.bib2)] that represent
probability distributions over the kinds of data encountered in artificial intelligence applications,
such as natural images, audio waveforms containin... |
202e468c-cee9-40b3-bc05-83ff6323a804 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Forecasting Newsletter: August 2021
Highlights
* Despite forecaster consensus to the contrary, Kabul has fallen
* CSET-Foretell attempts to make inroads into US decision-making mechanisms
* The US’ CDC to launch a new outbreak analysis and forecast center
Index
* Prediction Markets & Forecasting Platforms
* Blo... |
5151d401-a7c9-4a08-8ea9-0050b522fc07 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Coordination Problems in Evolution: The Rise of Eukaryotes
Introduction
This is a series of posts about coordination problems, as they appear in the course of biological evolution. It is based on the book "The Major Transitions in Evolution" by John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry. Previous part, discussing Eigen's p... |
a79b0177-6f2e-44a7-a2b1-74d498c87aca | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Really Extreme Altruism
In secret, an unemployed man with poor job prospects uses his savings to buy a large term life insurance policy, and designates a charity as the beneficiary. Two years after the policy is purchased, it will pay out in the event of suicide. The man waits the required two years, and then kills hi... |
afb29b07-5f34-4a47-812e-1be9eca2d6a7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Weekly LW Meetups
This summary was posted to LW Main on December 16th. The following week's summary is here.
The following meetups take place in cities with regular scheduling, but involve a change in time or location, special meeting content, or simply a helpful reminder about the meetup:
* Baltimore Area / UMBC... |
f2dbc04e-5ede-4384-92bc-58b421606c2c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Why haven't we celebrated any major achievements lately?
In reading stories of progress, one thing that has struck me was the wild, enthusiastic celebrations that accompanied some of them in the past. Read some of these stories; somehow it’s hard for me to imagine similar jubilation happening today:
The US transcont... |
e4f42c07-d50e-4953-852f-b7620626c532 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Why Support the Underdog?
One of the strangest human biases is the almost universal tendency to support the underdog.
I say "human" because even though Americans like to identify themselves as particular friends of the underdog, you can find a little of it everywhere. Anyone who's watched anime knows the Japanese hav... |
ed434c5d-7750-498e-af94-c65e6169f4e6 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | The Allais Paradox
Choose between the following two options:
> **1A**. $24,000, with certainty.
> **1B**. 33/34 chance of winning $27,000, and 1/34 chance of winning nothing.
>
>
Which seems more intuitively appealing? And which one would you choose in real life?
Now which of these two options would you int... |
f91caa71-f77b-4f67-b416-07dcbbde31b2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Rationality, Singularity, Method, and the Mainstream
Upon reading this, my immediate response was:
What does this have to do with the Singularity Institute's purpose? You're the Singularity Institute, not the Rationality Institute.
I can see that, if you have a team of problem solvers, having a workshop or a retreat... |
65931507-3a47-48c5-93a6-39c13d7551fc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AI Risk and the US Presidential Candidates
It's the new year, and the 2024 primaries are approaching, starting with the Iowa Republican causus on January 15. For a lot of people here on LessWrong, the issue of AI risk will likely be an important factor in making a decision. AI hasn't been mentioned much during any of ... |
3a138df1-3463-4667-9648-c1b630d07565 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/aisafety.info | AI Safety Info | What is the "windfall clause"?
The windfall clause is pretty well explained [onoutlined in this report. from the Centre for the Governance of AI the Future of Humanity Institute site](https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/windfallclause/). It is an agreement between AI firms to donate significant amounts of any profits made as a c... |
2cbe5c51-f5e8-4cbf-96c0-e87afd24db6d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Inner Alignment: Explain like I'm 12 Edition
(This is an unofficial explanation of Inner Alignment based on the Miri paper Risks from Learned Optimization in Advanced Machine Learning Systems (which is almost identical to the LW sequence) and the Future of Life podcast with Evan Hubinger (Miri/LW). It's meant for anyo... |
ea66346b-c8f9-45d5-b4ca-b700e72aa2d6 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | An investigation into when agents may be incentivized to manipulate our beliefs.
Contemporary research on both AI capabilities and alignment often features more intricate interaction patterns between humans and the AI-in-training than the standard approach of defining an reward signal once and running an optimization ... |
c68c9c5b-0ff8-431c-b6ee-c80eb8236338 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Should We Ban Physics?
Nobel laureate Marie Curie died of aplastic anemia, the victim of radiation from the many fascinating glowing substances she had learned to isolate.
How could she have known? And the answer, as far as I can tell, is that she couldn't. The only way she could have avoided death was by being too... |
29de96ef-349d-424d-8083-229b2b218dcd | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AI Safety Newsletter #5: Geoffrey Hinton speaks out on AI risk, the White House meets with AI labs, and Trojan attacks on language models
Welcome to the AI Safety Newsletter by the Center for AI Safety. We discuss developments in AI and AI safety. No technical background required.
Subscribe here to receive future ver... |
43168a09-6f39-4c95-ba02-c56bfd5d09ea | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A book review for “Animal Weapons” and cross-applying the lessons to x-risk
"Animal Weapons" by Douglas Emlen is a fascinating exploration of the evolution of animal weapons and how they compare to human weapons. Emlen draws parallels between the historical processes surrounding the evolution of animal and human weapo... |
b963b638-a7ed-4888-9e8e-94d9fed06246 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Book Review: Talent
Tyler Cowen will often praise a book by saying it is interesting on every page. Together with Daniel Gross, he has written a book that very much matches this description.
The topic is talent: How to search for it, how to identify it, interview and otherwise evaluate it, how to recruit it, how to b... |
7e388822-3e35-4e3e-b82e-d314268b92c1 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | What would the creation of aligned AGI look like for us?
I'm having a failure of imagination here, I assume an aligned AGI would upload human minds, preventing them from dying, but beyond that it's not clear to me what would happen. Would we just get wireheaded? Is there a CEV from human values that results in choice ... |
9f2d7069-5090-4847-8215-32c6284b31f6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | My research priorities for AI control
I've been thinking about what research projects I should work on, and I've posted my current view. Naturally, I think these are also good projects for other people to work on as well.
Brief summaries of the projects I find most promising:
* Elaborating on apprenticeship learni... |
9d487ddf-ded7-495e-88bb-571418571e64 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] Correspondence Bias
Today's post, Correspondence Bias, was originally published on 25 June 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
> Correspondence Bias is a tendency to attribute to a person a disposition to behave in a particular way, based on observing an episode in which that person behaves in that ... |
58b6850e-5c58-4e19-a29d-d6c55dc3a849 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Casey Anthony - analyzing evidence using Bayes
I'm just curious if anyone has weighed the evidence from the Casey Anthony murder using a Bayesian filter. Someone made a very useful post like this for the Amanda Knox case, but I think for this case it would be even more useful. Given the apparent hysteria in traditiona... |
a7e36c9a-90fa-4a99-b538-3e949626057a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Seattle biweekly meetup: problem solving
Discussion article for the meetup : Seattle biweekly meetup: problem solving
WHEN: 04 December 2011 04:00:00PM (-0800)
WHERE: 5523 University Way NE, #501, seattle, wa
I'd like to try a problem solving meetup. Here's is roughly what I'm thinking:
The idea is to hav... |
f367f4af-b5f3-4220-8c89-594b7384e1fe | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Why it's so hard to talk about Consciousness
[Thanks to Charlie Steiner, Richard Kennaway, and Said Achmiz for helpful discussion. Extra special thanks to the Long-Term Future Fund for funding research related to this post.]
[Epistemic status: confident]
There's a common pattern in online debates about consciousness... |
a3e79c49-c73a-46f3-88a3-562c25b37eee | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | CSER Advice to EU High-Level Expert Group on AI
Dr Shahar Avin and Haydn Belfield submitted advice to the European Union's **[High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence](https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/high-level-expert-group-artificial-intelligence)** (AI HLEG).
The AI HLEG was established by t... |
680d1b86-f97f-41b6-8464-931570d77452 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Reflective Complaints
Frequently, I'll be having an argument with someone. And I'll think "Grr! They are doing Obnoxious Behavior X!" or "Arg, they aren't doing Obviously Good Behavior Y!".
Then I complain at them.
And... sometimes, they make the exact same complaint about me.
And then I think about it, and it t... |
3d81d5e8-6d24-490c-a96f-8142c2955f08 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Advice for journalists
I interact with journalists quite a lot and I have specific preferences. Not just for articles, but for behaviour. And journalists do behave pretty strangely at times.
This account comes from talking to journalists on ~10 occasions. Including being quoted in ~5 articles.
Privacy
I do not tr... |
ccec0ad0-5a17-4156-9d3c-ee712dda24fe | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Computer Science and Software Engineering
Hello,
I'm not sure if this should be posted here. If it should go in the open thread please let me know. I figured this could be an interesting conversation, since many people on lesswrong seem to be programmers.
I am currently researching the difference/ pros-cons of pursu... |
35b4fcf7-f181-4baa-b219-a618a318e469 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup: Cambridge UK
(Apparently just posting a new meetup doesn't provide much visibility, so I'm posting a discussion article too.)
WHEN: 15 November 2015 05:00:00PM (+0000)
WHERE: JCR Trinity College, Cambridge, UK
First Cambridge meetup in a long time! Hopefully of many. Come to Trinity's JCR at 17 next sunday ... |
f3949e46-d13e-4ad1-bb94-1c161dc835fd | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Evolution, bias and global risk
Sometimes we make a decision in a way which is different to how we think we should make a decision. When this happens, we call it a bias.
When put this way, the first thing that springs to mind is that different people might disagree on whether something is actually a bias. Take the by... |
b2feda27-430a-4a03-9839-b1b08e1543b6 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Inverse Scaling Prize: Second Round Winners
At the end of the second and final round of the [Inverse Scaling Prize](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/eqxqgFxymP8hXDTt5/announcing-the-inverse-scaling-prize-usd250k-prize-pool), we’re awarding 7 more Third Prizes. The Prize aimed to identify important tasks on which l... |
33c083a2-2c12-4b9b-90bd-41d9fe935802 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Towards more cooperative AI safety strategies
This post is written in a spirit of constructive criticism. It's phrased fairly abstractly, in part because it's a sensitive topic, but I welcome critiques and comments below. The post is structured in terms of three claims about the strategic dynamics of AI safety efforts... |
3cdc1af6-6234-4bb9-a03e-448354c046b4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Of Lies and Black Swan Blowups
Judge Marcus Einfeld, age 70, Queen’s Counsel since 1977, Australian Living Treasure 1997, United Nations Peace Award 2002, founding president of Australia’s Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, retired a few years back but routinely brought back to judge important cases . . ... |
1c6e8cea-7741-4d3c-aae1-d1ec98d1c121 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A primer on the current state of longevity research
Note: This post is co-authored with Stacy Li, a PhD student at Berkeley studying aging biology! Highly appreciate all her help in writing, editing, and fact-checking my understanding!
Introduction
The last time I read about aging research deeply was around 2021. Th... |
a1b410a6-a9ff-4025-a842-97c928e11125 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Perth, Australia: Games night
Discussion article for the meetup : Perth, Australia: Games night
WHEN: 07 October 2014 06:00:00PM (+0800)
WHERE: Sync Labs, 6/663 Newcastle Street, Leederville, Australia
Come play Zendo, an inductive logic game. Rowdy will teach us, and I'm told the rules are pretty simple.
... |
74a5282f-0f87-4c73-ace4-e77a2c8e2efd | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] You're Calling *Who* A Cult Leader?
Today's post, You're Calling *Who* A Cult Leader? was originally published on 22 March 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
> Paul Graham gets exactly the same accusations about "cults" and "echo chambers" and "coteries" that I do, in exactly the same tone - e.g... |
0d0c59f0-632b-49de-87ec-66457d709353 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | No Causation without Reification
I don't know how inspiring "no causation without reification" is as a rallying cry. Probably not very. But as a pithy description of an important insight, I think it's quite nice.
There's lots of reason to care about causation. In fact, it's hard to talk about much of anything without... |
d9df70f9-16ff-4b9a-80fc-f3b1a43012c2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Reasoning isn't about logic (it's about arguing)
"Why do humans reason" (PDF), a paper by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, reviewing an impressive amount of research with a lot of overlap with themes previously explored on Less Wrong, suggests that our collective efforts in "refining the art of human rationality" may ult... |
0381e205-65ad-4c89-a8c9-5236598c417c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | I’m a 19-year-old Terminal Patient. Medical Brain Preservation Should not be Difficult to Discuss or Adopt
From the BPF blog (of which I’m a volunteer) here’s the story of a kid with a terminal illness who is holding out for the development of brain preservation for future uploading. In the comments he justifies not s... |
5705ae69-83ee-408c-9c1b-521de96bb7f7 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | A tale of 2.5 orthogonality theses
tl;dr-tl;dr
-----------
You can summarise this whole post as ‘we shouldn’t confuse theoretical possibility with likelihood, let alone with theoretical certainty’.
tl;dr
-----
I’m concerned that EA AI-advocates tend to equivocate between two or even three different forms of the ... |
4216190c-ac79-40c3-8bd7-608bd4b0150d | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital | Arbital | Transposition (as an element of a symmetric group)
In a [https://arbital.com/p/-497](https://arbital.com/p/-497), a transposition is a permutation which has the effect of swapping two elements while leaving everything else unchanged.
More formally, it is a permutation of [order](https://arbital.com/p/order_of_a_group_... |
f02fd000-a615-4850-a3c3-7c63a8d2b0d7 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | 25 Min Talk on MetaEthical.AI with Questions from Stuart Armstrong
*Previous Posts*:
[Formal Metaethics and Metasemantics for AI Alignment](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/85vp2kgFZoycFqr5G/formal-metaethics-and-metasemantics-for-ai-alignment-1)
[New MetaEthical.AI Summary and Q&A at UC Berkeley](https://www.less... |
b6612e08-1843-42bd-8dea-02743c6539e9 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Can you control the past?
(Cross-posted from [Hands and Cities](https://handsandcities.com/2021/08/27/can-you-control-the-past/). Lots of stuff familiar to LessWrong folks interested in decision theory.)
I think that you can “control” events you have no causal interaction with, including events in the past, and that ... |
82f54250-8533-4d1f-bb0c-06ede8b062f1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Write It Like A Poem
Related to: simile, snobbery, adequate axioms
Writing poetry is harder than it sounds, but easy to practice. Once mastered, the emotional impact it can add to even casual conversation makes it more than worthwhile.
There are two sides to writing an effective poem: the top-down logic of met... |
b7e22c99-6ce2-41f0-9cf1-0fe95af9c7ba | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Humanitarian Economy
In the past ten years, I have been developing ideas to resolve key issues that I have encountered in my own life, and in the lives of the people around me. In probing these issues for their root causes, I have identified the threat and reality of economic deprivation as the primary motivator o... |
73ffc14b-d714-488e-9a40-daabd4fbbfb3 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | Gell-Mann Earworms
Consider [Gell-Mann Amnesia](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you):
> Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine... |
a431355c-1200-413f-a859-0939f7cec079 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Some blindspots in rationality and effective altruism
Lighter reading here.
Update: appreciating Scott Alexander’s humble descriptions in his recent Criticism of Criticism of Criticism post. A clarification I need to make is that the blindspot-brightspot distinctions below are not about prescribing ’EAs’ to be eg. l... |
7db42177-e4da-45bc-8e10-b03e7bb9a130 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Study: In giving charity, let not your right hand...
So, here's the study¹:
It's veterans' day in Canada. As any good Canadian knows, you're supposed to wear a poppy to show you support the veterans (it has something to do with Flanders Field). As people enter a concourse on the university, a person there does one of... |
77e07c7b-2086-48e4-85a8-5cf555b2e955 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | What's wrong with simplicity of value?
In the Wiki article on [complexity of value](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Complexity_of_value), Eliezer wrote:
>
> The thesis that human values have high [Kolmogorov complexity](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity "Kolmogorov complexity... |
a5753db8-7921-4deb-b8cb-8cc05cc9fb87 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Rationality Quotes October 2011
Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:
* Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
* Do not quote y... |
2c6d91e2-1d3a-4a83-9675-379e1b0d14ea | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A daily routine I do for my AI safety research work
I’m a Ph.D student at MIT working in AI safety--mostly interpretability in deep networks. I thought I would very briefly share a list of links that I have bookmarked and go through every weekday. It usually takes me <15 minutes. Since I started doing this, I’ve been ... |
8cf82ee6-443f-41eb-baab-81f12df84523 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A wild theist platonist appears, to ask about the path
I recognize the title could be more informative. At the same time I believe it says what is important.
I believe in a deity, I believe in mathematical entities in the same way.
The community of LessWrong (from whenceforth: LessWrong) is deeply interesting to me... |
18986003-68c0-4c67-8550-9804ca3d415e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds
Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds:
> For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and... |
4eccb0e4-57f2-4019-af50-e0de0e1f6aad | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [Closed] Gauging Interest for a Learning-Theoretic Agenda Mentorship Programme
I'm planning to organize a mentorship programme for people who want to become researchers working on the Learning-Theoretic Agenda (LTA). I'm still figuring out the detailed plan, the logistics and the funding, but here's an outline of how ... |
e096efce-967a-422a-bdbd-ccedc9c20bcb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Second Wave?
I've seen several people sharing things like this NPR piece: "Is the U.S. at the start of a second wave? Have states reopened too soon? And have the recent widespread demonstrations against racial injustice inadvertently added fuel to the fire? The short, unpleasant answer to the first question is that th... |
4123af7b-7579-4a56-a9f4-b1d39f3463f3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | P₂B: Plan to P₂B Better
tl;dr: Most good plans involve taking steps to make better plans. Making better plans is the convergent instrumental goal, of which all familiar convergent instrumental goals are an instance. This is key to understanding what agency is and why it is powerful.
Planning means using a world model... |
95628e93-7d44-407a-b1fc-e7c61f04761c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Minimal Viable Paradise: How do we get The Good Future(TM)?
I often think about who I want to be. I want to make the world better. I want to live with someone I love. I want a long term community of friends. Dreaming about this helps me figure out the steps to get there - if I want these things, I can understand how t... |
a8f363ba-9073-4470-91db-8a2ff9907328 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Simulators, constraints, and goal agnosticism: porbynotes vol. 1
This is a part of a maybe-series where I braindump safety notes while waiting on training runs to complete. It's mostly talking to myself, but talking to myself in public seems somewhat more productive. The content of this post is not guaranteed to be no... |
ad88dfde-9d12-4eea-86d2-99b633934ca3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Infra-Topology
Attention conservation notice: This post has Less Basic Inframeasure Theory as a prerequisite and goes pretty heavy on the topology.
The basic results are that a whole lot of the fiddly details involved with having inframeasures over non-compact spaces automatically pop out of just trying to make every... |
5350a1d0-0ea8-4bbe-b3f6-8ceff7c6988a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [link] Thoughts on defining human preferences
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jDGpIT3gKZQZByO6A036dojRKMv62KEDEfEz87VuDoY/
Abstract: Discussion of how we might want to define human preferences, particularly in the context of building an AI intended to learn and implement those preferences. Starts with actual argu... |
ea319057-bc85-49fd-926f-b010dd248085 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Forecasting Newsletter: September 2020.
Highlights
* Red Cross and Red Crescent societies have been trying out forecast based financing, where funds are released before a potential disaster happens based on forecasts thereof.
* Andrew Gelman releases Information, incentives, and goals in election forecasts; 538's 8... |
7d888013-2e83-45d4-83e9-0c95747c108c | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Project Idea: Challenge Groups for Alignment Researchers
[@Henrik Karlsson](https://www.lesswrong.com/users/henrik-karlsson?mention=user) writes a lot about what makes people successful. One recurring theme I've found involves the people around them. Successful people almost always have a group of friends who they're ... |
ce302de6-e3ad-438d-af00-b34987e341b0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [link] New essay summarizing some of my latest thoughts on AI safety
New essay summarizing some of my latest thoughts on AI safety, ~3500 words. I explain why I think that some of the thought experiments that have previously been used to illustrate the dangers of AI are flawed and should be used very cautiously, why I... |
17ead788-107b-41ef-90da-4d0b33aebd42 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Ctrl-Z: Controlling AI Agents via Resampling
We have released a new paper, Ctrl-Z: Controlling AI Agents via Resampling. This is the largest and most intricate study of control techniques to date: that is, techniques that aim to prevent catastrophic failures even if egregiously misaligned AIs attempt to subvert the te... |
ec9914ae-d457-4332-8a1e-62e0aa08c769 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Prediction and Calibration - Part 1
Scott Alexander is a darling of the Bayesian rationalist community, he has a lot more epistemic humility than most, despite being an impressively well-calibrated predictor.
In this series we will try to achieve 2 things:
1. (this post) We try to understand what a likelihood funct... |
98e78361-9023-4b98-b2fc-6f6350e72644 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Model splintering: moving from one imperfect model to another
1. The big problem
==================
In the last few months, I've become convinced that there is a key meta-issue in AI safety; a problem that seems to come up in all sorts of areas..mjx-chtml {display: inline-block; line-height: 0; text-indent: 0; text-... |
7edba0e7-1224-4326-99a9-bb2ba389ea01 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs | Other | Artificial Intelligence Needs Environmental Ethics | Global Catastrophic Risk Institute
[View the paper “Artificial Intelligence Needs Environmental Ethics”](https://gcrinstitute.org/papers/059\_ai-environmental-ethics.pdf)... |
b28e48e5-0f2f-4992-a3a2-dc1c77e18fb6 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/youtube | Youtube Transcripts | Sam Harris and Eliezer Yudkowsky - The A.I. in a Box thought experiment
this intuition that you could just shut
it down this would be a good place to
introduce this notion of the AI in in a
box thought experiment so the hood
because this is something for which you
are famous online
I'll just set you up here the idea... |
f0f45ac1-1a97-4c82-a7d9-3e6882fb1f6e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | True understanding comes from passing exams
I'll try to clarify what I was doing with the AI truth setup in a previous post. First I'll explain the nature of the challenge, and then how the setup tries to solve it.
The nature of the challenge is to have an AI give genuine understanding to a human. Getting the truth o... |
a5319e64-3587-44a6-92f7-d374d4feb270 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | That is not dead which can eternal lie: the aestivation hypothesis for resolving Fermi's paradox
1 Introduction
---------------
Answers to the Fermi question (”where are they?”) typically fall into the groups “we are alone” (because intelligence is very rare, short-lived, etc.), “aliens exist but not here” (due to ... |
71f88442-a1cb-48df-9972-587e0f241b7b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Critiquing other people’s plans politely
I wrote most of this post last year after spending several days at EA Global, a conference for Effective Altruists. I just went to this year’s, which reminds me I should post it. In good news, I am not writing about how to get around to things.
Many Effective Altruists are try... |
718a786f-6779-4110-8103-afdf7b1b2fe2 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | QACI blob location: an issue with firstness
QACI blob location: an issue with firstness
-------------------------------------------
for [QACI](qaci.html) i need to figure out the [problem](formal-alignment-problems.html) of [blob](qaci-blobs-interval-illustrated.html) location (see thoughts [1](blob-causality.html),... |
e02237cd-2165-477e-8f27-a4b4162cbf15 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Singularity Institute mentioned on Franco-German TV
The following is a clipping of a documentary about transhumanism that I recorded when it aired on Arte, September 22 2011.
At the beginning and end of the video Luke Muehlhauser and Michael Anissimov give a short commentary.
Download here: German, French (ask for H... |
a462d622-6834-4b89-aeab-6edc2e1ea77b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Working with multiple problems at once
Original post: http://bearlamp.com.au/working-with-multiple-problems-at-once/
----------------------------------------
I have a friend who works in a charity which deals with people who are on the streets. She was telling me about the struggles they face and the difficulties t... |
cee3f174-8128-4105-bcba-51c0f6f1204f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Humans need places
If, when you try to improve the world, you think about people but not about communities, you will tend to favor unsustainable net outflows of resources from your community. I wrote about this in Why I am not a Quaker. Effective Altruist (EA) and Rationalist communities such as the one in the San Fra... |
9b8e7a51-af40-4a2c-b09f-94daf0d7f74c | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | How should AIs update a prior over human preferences?
.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... |
d3717cfb-5485-4835-ad05-b191e3265715 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Four questions I ask AI safety researchers
Over the last few months, I’ve been trying to develop a stronger inside view on AI safety research agendas.
As part of this quest, I’ve been having conversations with AI safety researchers. I notice myself often asking the following questions:
1. What are you working on, ... |
157e0250-b9db-470f-a0c4-4f7d93a7d5e7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Do whole lines hold the line against holding up the line?
I have devoted a lot of time to standing in the security lines in various airports. Usually, I am trying to multitask with something else happening on my phone. A terrible impediment to this multitasking is that the airport line keeps moving. Every time the per... |
a733812d-ada4-4d39-9d01-d34e2eb7a8cb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | One is (almost) normal in base π
See previous posts on my blog if you’re confused:
Part 1: Normal numbers in base ten
Part 2: Numbers in base φ and π
Part 3: One is normal in base π
I'm only posting Part 3 (the punchline) here on LW; Parts 1 and 2 explain things in much more detail.
One is a normal number.
“No it’... |
2d41afbf-ee78-4822-9ac5-93c3b5b9bfd7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Moving blogs
Today Overcoming Bias becomes a group blog again, and I become one of the group. Robin will keep blogging, joined by Robert Wiblin and me. The other two are my good friends, and among my most respected intellectual influences, so it should be fun! We also hope that between us we can better produce regular... |
db3c0987-1943-441f-b4ac-08ba048d20ff | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Careless thinking: A theory of bad thinking
Have you ever noticed how differently we approach buying a car versus choosing what to watch on Netflix? One might involve spreadsheets, research, and asking friends for advice. The other? We might just click on whatever catches our eye. I argue a lot of our thinking is more... |
2bcdf973-ff81-4e3b-adce-053ccace442a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [Completed] The 2024 Petrov Day Scenario
Update III: Here's the Retrospective.
—
Update II: Here's the feedback form for today's Petrov Day games! Please let me know how it was for you (be you a General, Civilian, Petrov, or just non-participating LWer reading along). I'm grateful to all who fill it out, your data f... |
7ad29e6f-2082-4222-a193-a27503ff2333 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Useful Wiki and special pages
This is a list of what I think are the most useful wiki and special pages on less wrong. If you know of any other pages that you think are useful, let me know and I will add them in. After I think enough time has passed, I will add the links below into the FAQ "Stuff to know about" sectio... |
5b0eeeac-1dd1-4b92-a173-fb5b1ce2e5c1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | "disfluency" research
Adam Alter lists some evidence from people who study the effects of "disfluency" (unfamiliarity, or lack of clarity), which somewhat surprisingly leads to greater depth of thought (while you're expending the energy to understand something, you can't help but think about it), and also a willingnes... |
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