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1b358762-e045-4cf3-9e77-228d39a085cc
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Video: Skepticon talks The talks from Skepticon IV are being posted to YouTube.  So far we have: * Richard Carrier on Bayes (my favorite) * Julia Galef on the Straw Vulcan  * Greta Christina on angry atheists * Hermant Mehta on math education * David Fitzgerald on Mormonism * J.T. Eberhard on mental illness (a...
4e9b0f9d-048e-4748-b72c-2e6415d84c36
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
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, a...
a9f11a4c-1372-46ce-ba37-1a1424e30350
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Closed-ended questions aren't as hard as you think Summary In this short post, I argue that closed-ended questions, even those of arbitrary difficulty, are not as difficult as they may appear. In particular, I argue that the benchmark HLE is probably easier than it may first seem.[1] Specifically, I argue: * Crowd ...
f424c3c1-c52e-481f-8904-a0358a24e214
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Speaking for myself (re: how the LW2.0 team communicates) Posts made by members of the LessWrong 2.0 team are typically made from the perspective of the individual - even when they are writing in their capacity as LessWrong team members. My (Ruby’s) model of the team’s reason for this is that even if there are collect...
72329638-ff99-406e-9cf5-9e9ebad4890e
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Comments on "The Singularity is Nowhere Near" I followed a link on Twitter to a fun and informative 2015 blog post by Tim Dettmers: [The Brain vs Deep Learning Part I: Computational Complexity — Or Why the Singularity Is Nowhere Near](https://timdettmers.com/2015/07/27/brain-vs-deep-learning-singularity/) **The head...
65aee1c3-c588-433f-9153-f706100499d8
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[LINK] Is it worth the time? Another gem from xkcd: Is It Worth the Time? It visually answers the question: > How long can you work on making a routine task more efficient before you're spending more time than you save?  Of course, he's not the first person to ask this question, but the visual is handy. Note that th...
073ddd89-10cf-4858-8b16-4a76a5d17ce3
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Gradual Disempowerment: Systemic Existential Risks from Incremental AI Development Full version on arXiv | X Executive summary AI risk scenarios usually portray a relatively sudden loss of human control to AIs, outmaneuvering individual humans and human institutions, due to a sudden increase in AI capabilities, or a...
2d404b45-7382-4deb-bd18-a8146c747bce
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs
Blogs
AI Alignment: Why It’s Hard, and Where to Start Back in May, I gave a talk at Stanford University for the [Symbolic Systems Distinguished Speaker](https://symsys.stanford.edu/viewing/htmldocument/13638) series, titled “**The AI Alignment Problem: Why It’s Hard, And Where To Start**.” The video for this talk is now ava...
d34b2c69-efc2-4b10-accc-eb4c6e45812a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : San Antonio Meetup Discussion article for the meetup : San Antonio Meetup WHEN: 24 July 2016 02:00:00PM (-0500) WHERE: 12651 Vance Jackson Rd #118, San Antonio, TX 78230 Meetup to discuss rationality and all things LessWrong at Yumi Berry. Topic of the Week: Dark Rationality Look for the sign that says "...
1aa53ec2-d6d7-4b6f-82ff-b1082ff829c5
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Baltimore Area / UMBC Weekly Meetup Discussion article for the meetup : Baltimore Area / UMBC Weekly Meetup WHEN: 16 October 2016 08:00:00PM (-0400) WHERE: Performing Arts and Humanities Bldg Room 456, 1000 Hilltop Cir, Baltimore, MD 21250 Meeting is on 4th floor of the Performing Arts and Humanities Build...
b0de167d-6e08-4bce-9a7d-7f294a2b2e21
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv
Arxiv
Avoiding Imposters and Delinquents: Adversarial Crowdsourcing and Peer Prediction 2 AlgorithmandIntuition ------------------------ Algorithm 1 Algorithmforrecoveringβ-quantilematrix~Musing(unreliable)ratings~A. 1:Parameters:reliablefractionα,quantileβ,toleranceϵ,numberofratersn,numberofitemsm 2:Input:noisyratin...
bfd8dbe8-a4c2-48ed-86d6-8380d219a995
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Potential infinite value How do you incorporate potential infinite value into a utility function? If you assigned some non-zero probability of the second law of thermodynamics being violated sometime in the future, how should that change how much you value a long future?
19a95fe3-e4ce-482a-82dc-680712dbde12
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
On Being Robust Inspired in part by Being a Robust Agent. Flipside of Half-assing it with everything you've got. Do you ever feel... fake? Like, at any minute, Scooby Doo and the gang might roll up and unmask you as a freeloading fraud impostor in front of everyone? There are a lot of things to say about the impos...
d3f4b2fc-7a49-4d88-ba2a-218c97d23522
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
"Open Source AI" isn't Open Source Open source software has long differentiated between “free as in speech” (libre) and “free as in beer” (gratis). In the first case, libre software has a license that allows the user freedom to view the source and modify it, understand it, and remix it. In the second case, gratis soft...
ab4dde55-d1d4-440a-b080-566e3cfdd2f9
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Selecting Leaders with Random Sampling and Standardized Testing
33897507-46c6-4191-8ce4-a2d6cfc17b9a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Vernor Vinge, who coined the term "Technological Singularity", dies at 79 > On Wednesday, author David Brin announced that Vernor Vinge, sci-fi author, former professor, and father of the technological singularity concept, died from Parkinson's disease at age 79 on March 20, 2024, in La Jolla, California. The announce...
667b9351-0197-4e1c-95b3-660a5f00e6bf
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Native Russian speakers wanted, for help with translation of LW texts If you are native Russian speaker and are willing to help MIRI with bringing its information to Russian-speaking audience by helping with translation of key materials, e.g. the forthcoming ebook Smarter Than Us, please contact me via pm or email:  ...
5feec76a-dec3-4f9d-8886-9eaeadce68fc
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The AI, the best human advisor A putative new idea for AI control; index here. All my ideas on reduced impact AI follow the same format: some restriction to ensure a reduced impact (I generally use something like "could a future AI detect this one existed"?) and some "trick" to allow a way of still achieving a larger...
8d84b8c9-e13f-4bb4-9a47-cff57b36553d
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Life hack request: I want to want to work. I have a master's project I'm having trouble working on. It's something I've wanted to do, and I even started working on, long before I started my master's degree. If I can't even enjoy that, then I'm doomed to spend eight hours a day doing something I hate for the rest of my...
6050f31f-5822-4500-a33d-cdaa008287eb
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
How are you currently modeling COVID contagiousness? My long-distance partner has COVID; her symptoms first started ~10 days ago. She is now symptomless (except fatigue), but is still testing strongly positive on rapids. If she comes to visit me, what are the odds she's still contagious? More generally, how much weigh...
ae2361b8-5e72-42ed-9043-e5851d0606fd
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Last day of voting for the 2019 review! Today is the last day during which you can vote in the 2019 review! Voting will close at midnight in UTC-12 (i.e. the last timezone to cross the dateline). 
9d89a329-7cf2-4f7a-b6f2-70601e2f9b67
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
On the Universal Distribution (Cross-posted from Hands and Cities) A number of people I know are excited about a type of fundamental prior known as the “Universal Distribution” (UD). In particular, they’re excited about using this prior to address questions about anthropics.  I discuss the application to anthropics ...
d10360d1-0984-4ad3-9602-d93711525081
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Simulators Increase the Likelihood of Alignment by Default Alignment by Default is the idea that achieving alignment in artificial general intelligence (AGI) may be more straightforward than initially anticipated. When an AI possesses a comprehensive and detailed world model, it inherently represents human values with...
3526f6d1-1746-4088-a5b0-7b0fbdc319b0
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Science Journalism and How To Present Probabilities [Link] I just stumbled across Language Log: Thou shalt not report odds ratios (2007-07-30), HT reddit/statistics: > (…) this finding was widely reported in the media:(…) > > “Doctors are only 60% as likely to order cardiac catheterization for women and blacks as fo...
ea90292b-963f-4d66-9a39-baf1e65ebdb4
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Edinburgh LW Meetup Saturday April 16th According to statistics, Edinburgh has a reasonable number of LW readers. Currently no Edinburgh meetups exist for Less Wrong so we might as well arbitrarily set one in the near future and see if it could work out (if there are enough people who are interested in a meetup here)....
dc4c7dab-984b-46da-af4c-2a820f37fe8c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Sydney the Bingenator Can't Think, But It Still Threatens People Every self-respecting story has a main character and this one is no exception. This is the story of Bing’s chatbot and the madness that has consumed it. Of course, a main character without a name is no good but luckily for us, it took less than 2 days af...
90e38c89-148a-45f2-9cd1-178fa11f6da7
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Launching the Respiratory Outlook 2024/25 Forecasting Series Returning for its second year, Metaculus's Respiratory Outlook for 2024/25 aims to support and inform US public health officials in anticipating the burden of influenza, COVID-19, and RSV this upcoming fall and winter. You can contribute to these efforts by ...
0a60ceb5-0c5b-4dc6-ba1d-4ae2584106c3
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Reframing inner alignment The standard frame (Evan Hubinger, 2021) is: > * Outer alignment refers to the problem of finding a loss/reward function such that the training goal of “a model that optimizes for that loss/reward function” would be desirable. > * Inner alignment refers to the problem of constructing a tra...
eb284253-a32f-4fd7-adb9-25d97aa5402c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Commentless downvoting is not a good way to fight infohazards Last night, I posted a question seeking advice on publishing an AI research project, using a program that generates causal DAGs in an LLM-readable format along with test questions designed to evaluate the LLM's ability to do causal inference. As a hobbyist,...
20445fcb-116a-4a4f-90c5-a3d8f8dca733
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Does descaling a kettle help? Theory and practice I've heard that descaling a kettle makes it more efficient, and can save me time and money. Okay, but how much? For some reason my my intuition says it'll be basically unnoticable. Let's try to figure it out, and then actually try it. The Models There's a first-orde...
97c946c8-8947-49e5-833a-75b24f43fec8
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[SEQ RERUN] Collective Apathy and the Internet Today's post, Collective Apathy and the Internet was originally published on 14 April 2009. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):   > The causes of bystander apathy are even worse on the Internet. There may be an opportunity here for a startup to deliberately try to avert...
dbd251cf-b3f8-48f2-92bb-eef91d3175da
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs
Blogs
Seeking Research Fellows in Type Theory and Machine Self-Reference The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) is accepting applications for a full-time research fellow to develop theorem provers with self-referential capabilities, beginning by implementing a strongly typed language within that very language. T...
95f2a98d-5811-40d3-9956-cd3716dc4888
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Failure modes in a shard theory alignment plan *Thanks to David Udell, Alex Turner, and others for conversations that led to this* Recently in a conversation with David Udell, Nate Soares said: > [David's summary of shard theory] doesn't yet convince me that you know something i don't about the hopefullness of such...
2c8ed3a5-fa5b-4d1a-93a2-d55188eb1310
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Open & Welcome Thread – October 2020 If it’s worth saying, but not worth its own post, here's a place to put it. If you are new to LessWrong, here's the place to introduce yourself. Personal stories, anecdotes, or just general comments on how you found us and what you hope to get from the site and community are invit...
5d998f4d-de4e-4f0c-a6e0-8326f7d68aab
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Open Thread, June 16-30, 2012 If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.
6cb1af71-6dc4-457c-bc7f-f6019b682a39
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[Placeholder] Against dystopia, rally before Kant I was just sitting there studying for an exam today (passed fine btw), when my mind, eh, made up its mind on a subject. I've been pondering Robin Hanson's happy resignation to a distant efficiency-obsessed dystopia. Then it struck me that, one meta level up, it's no di...
2d5b32eb-165b-488e-a544-0396877406c1
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
[EA xpost] The Rationale-Shaped Hole At The Heart Of Forecasting An excerpt from the above that will be relevant to this crowd: Ben Landau-Taylor of Bismarck Analysis wrote a piece on March 6 called “Probability Is Not A Substitute For Reasoning”, citing a piece where he writes: > There has been a great deal of rese...
c2bfaa96-390e-4549-bf51-177bae964877
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Rainmaking There is an old TV show called 'The Wire', and in it a con artist fleeces a mark. The mark's friend tries to wake him up, whereupon the mark insists that the con artist has helped him.  The mark's friend tells him to 'wake up, he rain-made you!' "What?" "A guy says if you pay him, he can make it rain.  Y...
69466346-e4f2-44d3-ab78-dddd33d6f853
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Exploring Luck Hey guys, A concept I have been recently exploring is luck. My understanding of it has been inspired by Nassim Taleb, Naval Ravikant, James Austin, and Marc Andreessen. In general, I found that there is a sense of inner comfort knowing the role luck plays in life.  I thought I would share what I wrote...
b7e7cd8c-5da4-4051-9c8b-63e19a8158b5
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What are the claims/arguments made in Eternity in Six Hours? The FHI paper, Eternity in Six Hours, asserts that traveling between galaxies and colonizing them is a relatively simple task for a star-spanning civilization. The paper even asserts that humanity itself could accomplish this in the foreseeable future. Becau...
ce01ad60-62bf-423f-b5b1-3fd133d4e55e
awestover/filtering-for-misalignment
Redwood Research: Alek's Filtering Results
id: post1878 (I think Carl Shulman came up with the “hacking the SSH server” example, thanks to him for that. Thanks to Ryan Greenblatt, Jenny Nitishinskaya, and Ajeya Cotra for comments.) EDIT: I recommend reading my discussion with Oli in the comments for various useful clarifications. In my opinion, the prototypica...
975af482-01ed-4a8a-b244-9bbed51c556a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A Tree of Light let me sing you a song imagine you float in a sphere of water which rests in a space of infinite darkness you are deeply cold and you are deeply alone you touch the edge of your sphere with a finger and see a thread of gold, pulse out into the void oh look, someone else, they look as cold as you are...
6920132b-0096-428d-96de-7349693ed6d4
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Draft of Edwin Jaynes' "Probability Theory: The Logic of Science" online, with lost chapter 30 http://thiqaruni.org/mathpdf9/(86).pdf The book didn't include Chapter 30 - "MAXIMUM ENTROPY: MATRIX FORMULATION" Opening in adobe seems to work out better for me.      
1658626b-1e67-486c-9ddb-f5d4ff364cd5
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Projects Discussion article for the meetup : San Francisco Meetup: Projects WHEN: 16 November 2015 06:15:00PM (-0800) WHERE: 1390 Market St. San Francisco, CA (NOTE: This previously said it was on Howard St. It's been moved.) We'll be meeting to work on projects. Bring something to w...
5a45338f-7c55-4e2d-b52c-2445f78aef87
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meditation Trains Metacognition Summary: Some forms of meditation may train key skills of metacognition, serving as powerful tools for applied rationality. I expect aspiring rationalists to advance more quickly with a regular practice of mindfulness meditation. The state of scientific research on meditation isn't g...
ee772ff1-a374-47c7-afad-5fbf518a1928
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
My Model of Gender Identity People sometimes say that it's impossible to rationally explain gender identity. I've taken this as a challenge, and spent the past few months trying to put together a more sophisticated model than I’ve seen others espouse. I’d like to share what I have in this post. First, though: Some p...
b6f4b510-2588-447b-a10a-80a01c08231c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The impact of whole brain emulation At some point in the future we may be able to scan someone's brain at very high resolution and "run" them on a computer. [1] When I first heard this as a teenager I thought it was interesting but not hugely important. Running people faster or slower and keeping backups came immediat...
56e770c4-0887-471e-b61f-fa05488888c3
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Effective Writing Granted, writing is not very effective. But some of us just love writing... Earning to Give Writing: Which are the places that pay 1USD or more dollars per word? Mind Changing Writing: What books need being written that can actually help people effectively change the world? Clarification Writing: ...
b6e74742-0bd4-475b-a769-a29758091d9c
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Eat the cute animals instead Note: I was trying to criticize the hypocrisy of people who treat farm animals in ways they would never treat pets. It seems people missed this. ---------------------------------------- Here's a 150% serious explanation of why eating cats and dogs is a great idea! A lot of people reading...
0d469976-2324-4c43-9db9-7ab744618a88
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
2018 AI Alignment Literature Review and Charity Comparison Cross-posted to the EA forum. Introduction Like last year and the year before, I’ve attempted to review the research that has been produced by various organisations working on AI safety, to help potential donors gain a better understanding of the landscape. ...
747ac77d-6c29-4442-9f34-4cb2ca22fdb9
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A Triple Decker for Elfland In 2021 one of the kids in Somerville started Elfland, a miniature community, in a vacant lot. There had been a gas station there which was demolished to build housing, but with construction delays there it was open for a while. When construction resumed there were calls to " defend Elfland...
0af9c2c5-abf1-47ae-887f-72c5ba5d29e4
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
2021 Darwin Game - Benthic Welcome to the depths of the sea, far beyond the reach of sunlight. Here ye shall feast upon the dead. Name Carrion Leaves Grass Seeds Detritus Coconuts Algae Lichen Benthic 10 0 0 0 1000 0 0 0 72 species were submitted to the Benthic. Generations 0-25 We start with a population cras...
570ca366-9434-4eab-ab50-02c5d47d48f8
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Uncertainty This is part of a sequence on decision analysis. Decision-making under certainty is pretty boring. You know exactly what each choice will do, and so you order the outcomes based on your preferences, and pick the action that leads to the best outcome. Human decision-making, though, is made in the presence...
b5834304-d087-4d2f-a296-35b1b9ec7505
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
My May 2023 priorities for AI x-safety: more empathy, more unification of concerns, and less vilification of OpenAI I have a mix of views on AI x-risk in general — and on OpenAI specifically — that no one seems to be able to remember, due to my views not being easily summarized as those of a particular tribe or social...
fd175aa9-3a92-4698-aaee-5a2956a073fa
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What's going on with "provability"? Every so often I hear seemingly mathematical statements involving the concept of being provable. For example: * I've seen Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem stated as "if a mathematical system is powerful enough to express arithmetic, then either it contains a contradiction or there a...
2a2d3c0f-bef7-4611-a5ea-a0bae0c036ac
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
"AI Rapidly Gets Smarter, And Makes Some of Us Dumber," from Sabine Hossenfelder Sabine Hossenfelder is a theoretical physicist and science communicator who provides analysis and commentary on a variety of science and technology topics. I mention that upfront for anyone who isn't already familiar, since I understand a...
f4224d8f-9dcf-48d2-bc74-f1e2c3c80939
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Against Dog Ownership This essay about dog ownership helped me empathise with dogs, and also caused me to update against getting a dog; if these ideas are accurate, it'd either be much more selfish and cruel than I previously thought, or else would require a lot more focused effort in order to give the dog a meaningfu...
bd664e4a-c44f-4f40-b412-4b4e34a685b6
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Scaffolding for "Noticing Metacognition" tl;dr: I have a more compelling argument for why a generalized "noticing metacognition" skill is useful, than I've previously been able to articulate. And, a simple exercise framework that will probably work decently for most people. This is basically the parts of Tuning your ...
5f33490c-4e94-480b-b567-cc05d6f555c5
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
Video and Transcript of Presentation on Existential Risk from Power-Seeking AI *In March 2022, I gave a presentation about existential risk from power-seeking AI, as part a* [*lecture series*](https://www.harvardea.org/agathon) *hosted by Harvard Effective Altruism. The presentation summarized my* [*report*](https://a...
a39a26eb-9f50-4c16-af0a-28563e045847
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Washington DC Ethics meetup Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC Ethics meetup WHEN: 28 October 2012 03:00:49PM (-0400) WHERE: National Portrait Gallery Plaza, Washington, DC 20001, USA We will be discussing the recent post about the most important open ethics problems: http://80000hours.org/...
e2876957-d3a1-419a-b11b-8bd16b32aff4
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/aisafety.info
AI Safety Info
How is red teaming used in AI alignment? *[Red teaming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_team)* refers to attempts to break a system's security measures, or to cause bad performance by the system, in order to discover its flaws and provide feedback on how it could be improved. In AI safety, red teaming can be done ei...
2b51d98f-cc87-4191-b3e6-f03de2b76344
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
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 ...
6ff5985c-6fb0-46b9-8b84-745fb995e917
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The importance of studying subjective experience I think people severely underestimate the importance of studying subjective experience (qualia). In my opinion, people think a lot about "the mystery of qualia" (the hard problem of consciousness), but not enough about "the miracle of qualia". I.e. why qualia is cool a...
29a02825-6fcf-4b6b-954a-cc96a0769d34
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum
Effective Altruism Forum
Complex Systems for AI Safety [Pragmatic AI Safety #3] *This is the third post in* [*a sequence of posts*](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MskKEsj8nWREoMjQK/introduction-to-pragmatic-ai-safety-pragmatic-ai-safety-1) *that describe our models for Pragmatic AI Safety.* It is critical to steer the AI research ...
94497f2d-f9e5-4e31-aeb4-6e04de8b63df
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Free Applied Instrumental Rationality Webinar Dan Nuffer and I are putting together a free webinar that will go through the ideas in Smart Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Life Decisions, combined with whatever else seems useful. The authors of this book include one of the pioneers of decision analysis. Al...
dddc142f-ed88-4fd2-99be-c4b0e446ea42
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Different Is The Generator, Not A Side Effect Disclaimer: This may be extremely obvious. i - The Weird Problem I’ve seen theories about why smart, genial, creative, and overall high-achieving people are often “atypical”, and even discussions praising atypicality as the capital Q ality for making great discoveries, f...
77c998e2-f240-4758-9df7-ee31f40c01df
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The Foraging (Ex-)Bandit [Ruleset & Reflections] This is a postmortem for a (tiny, ~10min, browser) game I released earlier this week. At the time, I thought posting the generation rules for each location would be redundant and spoilery (especially since you could just look at the code on github), and that writing a R...
d497093e-53cc-4a3f-9217-c598814f3b61
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Blog Post Day Retrospective Yesterday was Blog Post Day. I think it was a success! In this post I'll link to all the blog posts that were written as part of Blog Post Day, and then say some things about what I learned and when we'll do another one. The posts (in no particular order) were: My Updating Thoughts on AI...
e9294589-a0b7-4c87-823c-33dfb4fa6e5b
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Boston Secular Solstice 2024: Call for Singers and Musicans This year's Boston Secular Solstice will be on Saturday December 28th, and again I'm organizing the music. Are you interested in singing or playing? A wide range of instruments work here: in the past I think we've had people play piano, flute, guitar, mandoli...
e153a1ea-76e3-4432-81c9-856d17a3d3b4
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs
Other
Inaccessible information Suppose that I have a great model for predicting “what will Alice say next?” I can evaluate and train this model by checking its predictions against reality, but there may be many facts this model “knows” that I can’t easily access. For example, the model might have a detailed representation...
9fb8853a-6025-4014-9585-24aa1db041c2
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Pascal's Mugging: Tiny Probabilities of Vast Utilities The most common [formalizations of Occam's Razor](/lw/jp/occams_razor/), Solomonoff induction and Minimum Description Length, measure the program size of a computation used in a hypothesis, but don't measure the running time or space requirements of the computatio...
7ff822e7-10d2-4188-b041-7ea384108def
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs
Other
Cyber insurance Cyber Insurance39 Pythagoras Petratos, Anders Sandberg, and Feng Zhou Contents Introduction ...................................................................................... 810 Development of Insurance for Cyber Risks .................................................... 81 1 Economics of Informat...
8ca7c470-eca8-497f-b58f-aad069143397
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
When AI solves a game, focus on the game's mechanics, not its theme. 1. A game design consists of two things: mechanics and theme. 1. The game mechanics is the abstract protocol governing how the players interact with each other and their shared environment. 2. The game theme is a fictional interpretation of ...
83615d5b-95ec-4fff-a037-c9f591989c5c
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Information theoretic model analysis may not lend much insight, but we may have been doing them wrong! Introduction ============ For a [SERI MATS](https://www.serimats.org/) research sprint under John Wentworth, teams were given the following research prompt: > Everyone's assignment will be to figure out how to ope...
27799528-73f2-4b73-b029-e1d44a8dfafd
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
Wanting to Want In response to a [request](/lw/fk/survey_results/cd4?context=1#comments), I am going to do some basic unpacking of second-order desire, or "metawanting".  Basically, a second-order desire or metawant is a desire about a first-order desire. **Example 1:** Suppose I am very sleepy, but I want to be ale...
988fbf97-037b-41c5-884a-1644ee6a188d
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Interpreting OpenAI's Whisper (Work done as part of SERI MATS Summer 2023 cohort under the supervision of @Lee Sharkey . A blog post containing audio features that you can listen to can be found here.) TL;DR - Mechanistic Interpretability has mainly focused on language and image models, but there's a growing need for...
cc8e2caa-7916-4397-8601-5030943feb74
LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct
LessWrong
"First, I should explain what I mean by space-like separated from you. Imagine a world that looks like a Bayesian network, and imagine that you are a node in that Bayesian network. If there is a path from you to another node following edges in the network, I will say that node is time-like separated from you, and in yo...
56ff73aa-7efa-4771-ba52-237f8a31e5d5
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital
Arbital
Least common multiple Given two positive natural numbers $a$ and $b$, their **least common multiple** $\text{LCM}(a,b)$ is the smallest natural number divided by both $a$ and $b$. As an example take $a=12, b=10$, then the smallest number divided by both of them is $60$. There is an equivalent definition of the LCM, w...
6dedf16e-418e-4ace-9bb0-4948a23b20bf
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital
Arbital
Up to isomorphism summary: "The property $P$ holds up to isomorphism" is a phrase which means "we might say an object $X$ has property $P$, but that's an abuse of notation. When we say that, we really mean that there is an object [isomorphic](https://arbital.com/p/4f4) to $X$ which has property $P$". Essentially, it m...
b8c8275e-0482-4618-bf1c-df4cc85b68f7
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
In search for plausible scenarios of AI takeover, or the Takeover Argument I'm searching for writeups on scenarios of AI takeover. I'm interested in "?????" in  "1. AGI is created 2. ?????? 3. AGI takes over the world" Yeah, I played the paperclips game. But I'm searching for a serious writeup of possible steps rogue ...
bf1d5503-01e2-4a7f-8ed5-b37e0953ad96
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Can I archive content from lesswrong.com on the wayback machine (internet archive, archive.org) ? There are some great information on lesswrong.com (LW) that seems to be available publicly (I can access it in an incognito chrome window) and I would like to increase the chances of this information surviving for a long ...
525cb19a-9b2a-48e1-8152-41dd4758ccae
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Ukraine Situation Report 2022/03/01 I love Russia, I love Russian and I love Russians. My favorite physics professor was a nuclear scientist from the Soviet Union. I studied Russian in college where a classmate gave me my first copy of Foreign Affairs Journal. Catherine the Great is #4 on my list of heroes. I don't k...
f46f2718-35d0-424b-b4e8-4393617f6b0f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Washington DC fun and games meetup Discussion article for the meetup : Washington DC fun and games meetup WHEN: 07 July 2013 03:00:00PM (-0400) WHERE: National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC 20001, USA (courtyard) We'll be meeting to have hang out and play games. Discussion article for the meetup : Was...
5caf6e20-ebe6-4720-a5fc-f36cd395eb90
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Interpretability’s Alignment-Solving Potential: Analysis of 7 Scenarios This is the second post in the sequence “Interpretability Research for the Most Important Century”. The first post, which introduces the sequence, defines several terms, and provides a comparison to existing works, can be found here: Introduction ...
606ed97e-1e5e-4289-b64b-03a89929e2d5
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
The questions one needs not address Two years ago, I would have proclaimed a cautious bias towards thinking religion is a bad idea. Since then, having read a bunch of “religious” philosophers and observed a bunch of “religious” people, I came to the conclusion that “religion” is a term I will start shying away from u...
a6e22bbd-c81d-4cd0-8b63-733b13416893
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Lessons from the FDA for AI From the report: The FDA model offers a power lesson in optimizing regulatory design for information production, rather than just product safety. This is urgently needed for AI given lack of clarity on market participants and structural opacity in AI development and deployment.  → Th...
1ce7cc64-bf66-4a18-a84f-c498cc1a141e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
A Kernel of Truth: Insights from 'A Friendly Approach to Functional Analysis' Foreword What is functional analysis? A satisfactory answer requires going back to where it all started. > "All are present; the meeting convenes," intoned Fredholm. Intent were the gathered faces, their thoughts fixed on their students. "W...
9dc9ca5c-3d7e-44de-a141-865e3ce3a3e2
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Who are the worthwhile non-European pre-Industrial thinkers? At some point I became decently widely read in "Western philosophy", of the tradition that goes from Athens through Italy and Germany and Britain to the U.S. [ forking off into Philosophy and Science only after the Industrial Revolution ]. But somehow, I nev...
2d96ae66-c3fd-4e05-b4bd-e92733431582
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
Inner alignment: what are we pointing at? Proof that a model is an optimizer says very little about the model. I do not know what a research group is studying outer alignment is studying. Inner alignment seems to cover the entire problem at the limit. Whether an optimizer is mesa or not depends on your point of view. ...
c3ba08ed-b6bb-412e-bd02-314025face9c
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum
Alignment Forum
How RL Agents Behave When Their Actions Are Modified? [Distillation post] Summary ======= This is a distillation post intended to summarize the article [How RL Agents Behave When Their Actions Are Modified?](https://www.aaai.org/AAAI21Papers/AAAI-5767.LangloisE.pdf) by Eric Langlois and Tom Everitt, published at AAAI...
8f5a4451-885f-491a-990b-84cacb950b53
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
AI prediction case study 5: Omohundro's AI drives *Myself, Kaj Sotala and Seán ÓhÉigeartaigh recently submitted a paper entitled "The errors, insights and lessons of famous AI predictions and what they mean for the future" to the conference proceedings of the AGI12/AGI Impacts [Winter Intelligence](http://www.winter...
4b787212-9022-4261-a0e2-e121339bf25f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Pittsburgh: affecting the far future Discussion article for the meetup : Pittsburgh: affecting the far future WHEN: 28 November 2012 06:00:00PM (-0500) WHERE: Tazza D'Orro, Gates-Hillman Center, 4800 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA Next Wednesday 28th Nov there'll be a meetup at Tazza D'Oro - the cafe in the...
2042932c-d542-4482-bcf3-5587c240ca1e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Meetup : Moscow, Now 2 Sigma More Awesome Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow, Now 2 Sigma More Awesome WHEN: 10 November 2013 04:00:00PM (+0400) WHERE: Russia, Moscow, ulitsa L'va Tolstogo 16 We have lots of various content prepared this time, 2 standard deviations more than usual. We're planning to have (...
82508826-2b57-49dd-8723-5536c99a9874
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs
Other
Learning from Physical Human Corrections, One Feature at a Time Figure 1 : Participant pushes on the robot to teach it to go closer to the table. In the process of giving this correction, the human changes both the robot's distance from table and -inadvertently -the orientation of a cup which the robot is grasping (bl...
14ae90df-4248-4471-9079-3a924c935e1a
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
My Current Claims and Cruxes on LLM Forecasting & Epistemics I think that recent improvements in LLMs have brought us to the point where LLM epistemic systems are starting to be useful. After spending some time thinking about it, I've realized that such systems, broadly, seem very promising to me as an effective altru...
75369b05-89e1-4374-9c26-9838cad42fba
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong
LessWrong
AI Safety Newsletter #4: AI and Cybersecurity, Persuasive AIs, Weaponization, and Geoffrey Hinton talks AI risks Welcome to the AI Safety Newsletter by the [Center for AI Safety](https://www.safe.ai/). We discuss developments in AI and AI safety. No technical background required. Subscribe [here](https://newsletter.s...
6b80a38e-7afe-4de4-825c-4189a9a3fe8f
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
Questions are usually too cheap It is easier to ask than to answer.  That’s my whole point. It is much cheaper to ask questions than answer them so beware of situations where it is implied that asking and answering are equal.  Here are some examples: Let's say there is a maths game. I get a minute to ask questions...
223e28d3-d00f-4ade-afeb-1dec9325d5e4
StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs
Blogs
AISC6: Research Summaries ### Impact of Human Dogmatism on Training **Team members:**  Jan Czechowski, Pranav Gade, Leo Mckee-Reid, Kevin Wang **External collaborators:**  Daniel Kokotajlo (mentor) The human world is full of dogma, and therefore dogmatic data. We are using this data to train increasingly advance...
c650cb90-b7f6-47a4-8514-09bebc219d5e
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
What is the relationship between Preference Learning and Value Learning? It appears that in the last few years the AI Alignment community has dedicated great attention to the Value Learning Problem [1]. In particular, the work of Stuart Armstrong stands out to me. Concurrently, during the last decade, researcher such...
f6733231-8114-42da-a271-de36daeec0eb
trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k
LessWrong
10/20/17 Development Update: HTML pasting, the return of the bullets and bugfixes Quick summary of the changes I just pushed: * You can now finally paste HTML and Rich Text content into our editor! This means copy-pasting content from Google Docs or Wordpress or whatever other tools you use for writing now preserves...