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5d244ae6-f400-4d0a-aec8-8de91dd43281 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Rational Terrorism or Why shouldn't we burn down tobacco fields?
Related: Taking ideas seriously
Let us say hypothetically you care about stopping people smoking.
You were going to donate $1000 dollars to givewell to save a life, instead you learn about an anti-tobacco campaign that is better. So you chose to donat... |
a8025cc1-62b6-4872-8fe5-eb1d12b07166 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | STRUCTURE: A Crash Course in Your Brain
This post is part of my Hazardous Guide To Rationality. I don't expect this to be new or exciting to frequent LW people, and I would super appreciate comments and feedback in light of intents for the sequence, as outlined in the above link. Also, note this is a STRUCTURE post, a... |
4401cd0c-00fd-47a9-8df0-2624e2bc6c18 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The national security dimension of OpenAI's leadership struggle
As the very public custody battle over OpenAI's artificial intelligences winds down, I would like to point out a few facts, and then comment briefly on their possible significance.
It has already been noticed that "at least two of the board members, Tash... |
e9b8ee30-de61-4c30-88aa-846896a07162 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | The Pragmascope Idea
Pragma (Greek): thing, object.
A “pragmascope”, then, would be some kind of measurement or visualization device which shows the “things” or “objects” present.
I currently see the pragmascope as *the* major practical objective of [work on natural abstractions](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/cy3B... |
884969a4-0c62-4fc3-833e-c8100825d25d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | You are Underestimating The Likelihood That Convergent Instrumental Subgoals Lead to Aligned AGI
This post is an argument for the Future Fund's "AI Worldview" prize. Namely, I claim that the estimates given for the following probability are too high:
> P(misalignment x-risk|AGI)”: Conditional on AGI being developed... |
5d488a63-5d33-4219-95df-e83d1698ed8f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Reputation bets
People don’t often put their money where their mouth is, but they do put their reputation where their mouth is all the time. If I say ‘The Strategy of Conflict is pretty good’ I am betting some reputation on you liking it if you look at it. If you do like it, you will think better of me, and if you don... |
c805136b-ab96-44b1-adf5-edb21e2bbfb0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Are extrapolation-based AIs alignable?
(This is an account of my checking a certain alignment idea and finding that it doesn't work. Also my thinking is pretty naive and could easily be wrong.)
When thinking about AIs that are trained on some dataset and learn to extrapolate it, like the current crop of LLMs, I asked... |
b96512fd-8295-47ab-9d95-f4c3b3856d8e | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital | Arbital | Harmless supernova fallacy
Harmless supernova fallacies are a class of arguments, usually a subspecies of false dichotomy or continuum fallacy, which [can equally be used to argue](https://arbital.com/p/3tc) that almost any physically real phenomenon--including a supernova--is harmless / manageable / safe / unimportan... |
adfe86f6-d5b5-44b2-bcf6-e9a39545aaa1 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Technical AGI safety research outside AI
I think there are many questions whose answers would be useful for technical AGI safety research, but which will probably require expertise outside AI to answer. In this post I list 30 of them, divided into four categories. Feel free to get in touch if you’d like to discuss the... |
e248c3b4-fc70-452b-9921-4463b6d6b903 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : DC Meetup
Discussion article for the meetup : DC Meetup
WHEN: 20 May 2012 03:00:00PM (-0400)
WHERE: National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC 20001, USA
If the SIAI response to the Givewell critique has been posted, that will be the meetup topic.
Discussion article for the meetup : DC Meetup |
809a3585-2386-46a6-a5f1-0c0b197146eb | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Refer the Cooperative AI Foundation’s New COO, Receive $5000
**TL;DR: The** [**Cooperative AI Foundation**](https://www.cooperativeai.com/foundation) **(CAIF) is a new AI safety organisation and we're hiring for a** [**Chief Operating Officer**](https://www.cooperativeai.com/job-listing/chief-operating-officer) **(COO... |
d7603973-6774-4bb5-8115-7307a1540bf9 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Alignment Newsletter #42
Cooperative IRL as a definition of human-AI group rationality, and an empirical evaluation of theory of mind vs. model learning in HRI
Find all Alignment Newsletter resources [here](http://rohinshah.com/alignment-newsletter/). In particular, you can [sign up](http://eepurl.com/dqMSZj), or loo... |
b692083a-d059-4389-94d3-a861b4f28bbc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Why do you need the story?
* Boy: Why are you washing your hands?
* Shaman: Because this root is poisonous.
* Boy: Then why pull it out of the ground?
* Shaman: Because the pulp within it can cure the mosquito disease.
* Boy: But, I thought you said it was poisonous.
* Shaman: It is, but the outside is more so t... |
f82e2a66-e327-4ac7-9ba0-49506b27eb1c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Analysis of Algorithms and Partial Algorithms
|
30a4d42d-7152-4928-bf80-816d516b9b37 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Maze-solving agents: Add a top-right vector, make the agent go to the top-right
Overview: We modify the goal-directed behavior of a trained network, without any gradients or finetuning. We simply add or subtract "motivational vectors" which we compute in a straightforward fashion.
In the original post, we defined a "... |
4f09a2af-611f-4875-bab7-77b6a0468cdf | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Genetically Modified Humans Born (Allegedly)
I realize normally we don't talk about the news or hot-button issues, but this is of sufficiently high importance I am posting anyway.
There is a link from Nature News on Monday here. There is a link from MIT Technology Review discussing the documents uploaded by the team ... |
7b75a4f0-b12e-4e5e-88d6-552aa253c60f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Less Wrong in Dublin
Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong in Dublin
WHEN: 02 February 2013 04:30:25PM (+0000)
WHERE: 28 Dame St Dublin, Co. Dublin (The Mercantile)
A meeting of minds.
Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong in Dublin |
d8933ac0-a901-45bb-8443-e9c6284c4b0f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Joan of Arc Challenge For Objective List Theory
Introduction
The Joan of Arc challenge to objective list theory, as I shall argue, shows that only happiness is of intrinsic value. Pluralists—people who say that there are many things of intrinsic value—otherwise known as objective list theorists (maybe there’s som... |
430f0bff-b81f-4415-8685-8bb56ce24e1c | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | August 2018 Newsletter
#### Updates
* New posts to the new [AI Alignment Forum](https://www.alignmentforum.org): [Buridan’s Ass in Coordination Games](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/4xpDnGaKz472qB4LY/buridan-s-ass-in-coordination-games); [Probability is Real, and Value is Complex](https://www.alignmentforum.or... |
ae3b4690-a04c-430f-b2c8-601ba9f2e48d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Plan for mediocre alignment of brain-like [model-based RL] AGI
(This post is a more simple, self-contained, and pedagogical version of Post #14 of Intro to Brain-Like AGI Safety.)
(Vaguely related to this Alex Turner post and this John Wentworth post.)
I would like to have a technical plan for which there is a stron... |
e61976b8-e546-4472-b737-9b94268fe2bc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Causal confusion as an argument against the scaling hypothesis
Abstract
We discuss the possibility that causal confusion will be a significant alignment and/or capabilities limitation for current approaches based on "the scaling paradigm": unsupervised offline training of increasingly large neural nets with empirical ... |
699cf16f-5e64-4247-bd83-169b8e6b2989 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | My highly personal skepticism braindump on existential risk from artificial intelligence.
**Summary**
-----------
This document seeks to outline why I feel uneasy about high existential risk estimates from AGI (e.g., 80% doom by 2070). When I try to verbalize this, I view considerations like
* selection effects at ... |
b12b85b5-3435-401d-a712-249064fc2b8e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Exploiting the Typical Mind Fallacy for more accurate questioning?
I was reading Yvain's Generalizing from One Example, which talks about the typical mind fallacy. Basically, it describes how humans assume that all other humans are like them. If a person doesn't cheat on tests, they are more likely to assume others ... |
75f5142a-8842-495f-b840-f1495efc68e0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | In Defense of a Butlerian Jihad
[Epistemic Status: internally strongly convinced that it is centrally correct, but only from armchair reasoning, with only weak links to actual going-out-in-the-territory, so beware: outside view tells it is mostly wrong]
I have been binge-watching the excellent Dwarkesh Patel during... |
af85d921-77e4-4a95-8fd7-ff69dbeead61 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Hard-Coding Neural Computation
Previously: Teaser: Hard-coding Transformer Models
Introduction
Transformer models are incredibly powerful for natural language tasks (and they are starting to find uses in many other fields of machine learning). Unfortunately, it is nigh-impossible to interpret what goes on inside the... |
68f9623e-e96f-4f2a-992c-f905a091a4bb | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Turing's Red Flag
|
63cdc040-5208-455d-b527-f37cc220cd0c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Permission for mind uploading via online files
Giulio Prisco made a blog post giving permission to use the data in his Gmail account to reconstruct an uploaded copy of him.
> To whom it may concern:
>
> I am writing this in 2010. My Gmail account has more than 5GB of data, which contain some information about me and... |
baa2f372-66e0-4419-a4f1-d80a73fdef3e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Can ChatGPT count?
A few month back there was a question on lesswrong about what the least impressive thing is going to be that GPT4 can't do. At the time I thought maybe counting could be a good candidate, because I had noticed that this seems to be a problem for all big transformer models.
Dall-E and other image g... |
746f4947-c080-49cd-a040-6378199a1b7d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Suggestions for net positive LLM research
I am starting a PhD in computer science, focusing on agent foundations so far, which is great. I intend to continue devoting at least half my time to agent foundations.
However, for several reasons, it seems to be important for me to do some applied work, particularly with LL... |
0f52f09c-2469-4cf2-8a96-7bbf90d0e7b2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Why you ask the significance question why
Hello.
(I am already doing 75% better)
I used to think that keeping your identity small is laudable. The reasoning goes that if "me" and "you" are interchangable instead of being only applicable for "me" there is a wider scope of applicability. And there is an effect.
At som... |
59d7e8f6-dd8b-46bd-9f4f-83ec20d2b4d4 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Trust-Region Method with Deep Reinforcement Learning in Analog Design Space Exploration
I Introduction
---------------
The annual increment of computing power described by Moore’s law is pioneering unprecedented possibilities.
This remarkable progress has been accompanied by a collinearity with tremendous increases... |
e8210d5a-ee54-4206-9cdd-675dc6d03a8f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Atlanta Meetup, Topic: How to Become Immortal
Discussion article for the meetup : Atlanta Meetup, Topic: How to Become Immortal
WHEN: 26 January 2014 07:00:00PM (-0500)
WHERE: 491 Lindbergh Place NE Apt 618 Atlanta, GA 30324
Come join us! Our topic this time is how to become immortal. We'll be bring up the... |
6d44222d-c03e-4bc7-893c-417b3da84857 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] Beware Stephen J. Gould
Today's post, Beware of Stephen J. Gould was originally published on 06 November 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
> A lot of people have gotten their grasp of evolutionary theory from Stephen J. Gould, a man who committed the moral equivalent of fraud in a way that is d... |
efe17d14-5ba7-4cfc-8ab6-976c1c2b851c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Just letting alcoholics drink
"Wet houses"-- subsidized housing for alcoholics (they need to get most of their own money for alcohol, but their other expenses are covered) might actually be a good idea. It's cheaper than trying to get them to stop drinking, arguably kinder than trying to get people to take on a very h... |
9f567dc1-ac93-4939-8867-9c010aafa84f | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/aisafety.info | AI Safety Info | How might things go wrong with AI even without an agentic superintelligence?
Failures can happen with narrow non-agentic systems, mostly from humans not anticipating safety-relevant decisions made too quickly to react, much like in the [2010 flash crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_flash_crash).
A helpful meta... |
d14e7171-821d-4d57-bf8a-4ec90f0ab1c2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What if AI is “IT”, and we don’t know about this?
I am using IT character from that "IT" movie as a metaphor for describing a problem in AGI research. AI can potentially learn (or have already learnt) about all our irresistible pleasures and agonizing fears, similar to what IT could do in the film.
AGI initially “kno... |
a8bd07c7-54f7-4a14-88c5-3d38107b0e54 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Shift Resources to Advocacy Now (Post 4 of 7 on AI Governance)
In my previous post in this series, I estimated that we have 3 researchers for every advocate working on US AI governance, and I argued that this ratio is backwards. When allocating staff, you almost always want to have more people working on the more cent... |
d4069a84-ef83-4e74-95ed-d307d7024369 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Who are the people who are currently profiting from inflation?
When prices increase we pay more for goods and services. Cost of living is higher because of inflation - we have to work more to earn enough money to buy the same goods and services. Who is at the other end of that transaction? Who is it that gets paid mor... |
0a09ab2f-6185-44eb-9ae8-6b16fc1eef70 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Low-Hanging Fruit Prior and sloped valleys in the loss landscape
You can find code for the referenced experiments in this GitHub repository
Many have postulated that training large neural networks will enforce a simplicity, or Solomonoff prior. This is grounded in the idea that simpler solutions occupy expansive ... |
87b59df1-bea5-4217-8ae0-0a91f4a70861 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Many important technologies start out as science fiction before becoming real
I was pretty impressed by [AI Risk is like Terminator; Stop Saying it's Not](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/zsFCj2mfnYZmSW2FF/ai-risk-is-like-terminator-stop-saying-it-s-not-1) and the [Followup](https://forum.effectivealtruism.o... |
37049a19-69fc-4800-94ae-dd0863c1e09d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Helsinki LW Meetup - Sat March 5th
According to the statistics, out of all the cities in the world without a Less Wrong meetup yet, Helsinki has the third largest LW readership. I know I would certainly like to get to personally know more people interested in rationality topics, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. My ... |
a8610dac-4eb0-406c-b389-f6d028db291b | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Selfish preferences and self-modification
One question I've had recently is "Are agents acting on selfish preferences doomed to having conflicts with other versions of themselves?" A major motivation of TDT and UDT was the ability to just do the right thing without having to be tied up with precommitments made by your... |
6fc160e0-5244-4a49-b4e7-1353ec24b352 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Infant Mortality and the Argument from Life History
Many people argue that suffering predominates in nature. A really simple form of the argument, supported by people like Brian Tomasik, is what one might call the argument from life history. In general, in most species, females produce many more offspring than can sur... |
0ab62371-238c-4796-ba4a-01d17cef4b2d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Less Wrong Sequences+Website feed app for Android
I use my Android phone much more than my computer, and reading the Sequences on a mobile device is a pain. I needed an easy way to access the Sequences, but since there are no apps for this website I had to create one myself. Since I'm no app developer, I used the IBui... |
208fd70c-7219-4b24-9deb-a2bbecc8cf11 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A note about differential technological development
Quick note: I occasionally run into arguments of the form "my research advances capabilities, but it advances alignment more than it advances capabilities, so it's good on net". I do not buy this argument, and think that in most such cases, this sort of research does... |
64c618b3-61ce-4ca2-a1d4-34812dc20449 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Making Nanobots isn't a one-shot process, even for an artificial superintelligance
Summary: Yudkowsky argues that an unaligned AI will figure out a way to create self-replicating nanobots, and merely having internet access is enough to bring them into existence. Because of this, it can very quickly replace all human ... |
1c5869c9-3232-4ae0-896f-404d1b8651b7 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Agency in Conway’s Game of Life
*Financial status: This is independent research. I welcome* [*financial support*](https://www.alexflint.io/donate.html) *to make further posts like this possible.*
*Epistemic status: I have been thinking about these ideas for years but still have not clarified them to my satisfaction.... |
bfee08b8-e2a3-4088-80a3-6641a10be25e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Orienting to 3 year AGI timelines
My median expectation is that AGI[1] will be created 3 years from now. This has implications on how to behave, and I will share some useful thoughts I and others have had on how to orient to short timelines.
I’ve led multiple small workshops on orienting to short AGI timelines and co... |
2f5f04dc-f159-4277-aea0-e1df882be61d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Science eats its young
Let's start by talking about scientific literacy. I'm going to use a weak definition of scientific literacy, one that simply requires familiarity with the Baconian method of inquiry.
I don't want to place an exact number on this issue, but I'd wager the vast majority of the population of "educa... |
0a614306-a733-4261-a2ec-12d8997dde77 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Gauging of interest: LW stock picking?
EDIT: Based on criticism below, I am reconsidering how to proceed with this idea (or something in the neighbourhood).
A topic that has been on my mind recently is where, in our complicated lives, there might be low-hanging fruit ready to be picked by a motivated rationalist. Act... |
0c6eb876-ac82-4107-9f9e-a279dd9e0013 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Relying on Future Creativity
I used to write songs for a rock band. Sometimes I'd have a song written, thinking it was my best work ever, then when it came time to rehearse, we'd realize it wasn't going to work out. Maybe we didn't have the instruments to do it justice (we were a three piece), or it was out of my comf... |
dd2a9868-9a59-4da8-a222-3d12ac19cb71 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Ngo and Yudkowsky on AI capability gains
This is the second post in a series of transcribed conversations about AGI forecasting and alignment. See the first post for prefaces and more information about the format.
Color key:
Chat by Richard Ngo and Eliezer Yudkowsky Other chat Inline comments
5. ... |
d1e9570a-c9d3-47a3-94e3-36c4017116ac | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How can I reduce existential risk from AI?
Suppose you think that reducing the risk of human extinction is the highest-value thing you can do. Or maybe you want to reduce "x-risk" because you're already a comfortable First-Worlder like me and so you might as well do something epic and cool, or because you like the com... |
3c0c5fdd-d1f6-46a9-b5df-ff37abc1d011 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Is this a better way to do matchmaking?
When friends ask me to matchmake them, they usually list traits they want: "Kind, curious, growth-minded..." (Sometimes they even write date-me docs!) But I find it really hard to think of the right people from these descriptions.
Here's what I'm exploring, and suspect works be... |
f4c18e50-70f1-48a6-8069-aa4c597c2126 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Is the Star Trek Federation really incapable of building AI?
In the Star Trek universe, we are told that it’s really hard to make genuine artificial intelligence, and that Data is so special because he’s a rare example of someone having managed to create one.
But this doesn’t seem to be the best hypothesis for explai... |
c151bd5c-da8c-40fc-83d4-6b041ddba1e3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Some Thoughts on Singularity Strategies
Followup to: Outline of possible Singularity scenarios (that are not completely disastrous)
Given that the Singularity and being strategic are popular topics around here, it's surprising there hasn't been more discussion on how to answer the question "In what direction should w... |
f0d1ebc5-4889-4733-93c9-2c8eee255c4e | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arbital | Arbital | Immediate goods
One of the potential views on 'value' in the value alignment problem is that what we should want from an AI is a list of immediate goods or outcome features like 'a cure for cancer' or 'letting humans make their own decisions' or 'preventing the world from being wiped out by a paperclip maximizer'. (... |
552fd40b-57b0-4a71-86cc-4239a2a55c86 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Moscow: Words of estimative probability, transparency illusion, belief investigation, rational games
Discussion article for the meetup : Moscow: Words of estimative probability, transparency illusion, belief investigation, rational games
WHEN: 26 June 2016 02:00:00PM (+0300)
WHERE: Москва, ул. Большая Дорог... |
905c3560-ee9b-4e31-9e81-eafceab5f204 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Anthropic Paradoxes and Self Reference
In this post I will explain how anthropic paradoxes are connected with self-reference.
Sleeping Beauty Problem
The contention is how to treat the fact that "I am awake now/today". To briefly summarize the debate at the cost of oversimplification: SIA suggests treating toda... |
216bab80-921a-469f-9dfb-1c5e490b2036 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Why I hang out at LessWrong and why you should check-in there every now and then
As the title indicates, this post, which in cross-posting from my home blog, New Savanna, is not directed at a LessWrong audience. However,, some of you might find in useful in thinking about LessWrong's place in the world.
The first tw... |
389a2729-9e99-49cd-817a-daf8f4da90b3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [LINK] How Do Top Students Study?
I found this Quora discussion very informative.
> 2. Develop the ability to become an active reader. Don't just passively read material you are given. But pose questions, develop hypotheses and actively test them as you read through the material. I think this is what another poster r... |
fd753063-e56d-4827-b873-edcee3f50ad8 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Lesswrong Meetup in Barcelona?
Perhaps the Spaniard and/or Catalan tropers, and those others who simply feel like visiting this wonderful city that is Barcelona, could meet here during Semana Santa, the Spanish Spring Break, which lasts from April 15 to April 24. We could decide on a date within that interval. I'm not... |
f339f611-ec6d-4e5a-8262-edfefc17cdcf | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Hypothesis: gradient descent prefers general circuits
Summary: I discuss a potential mechanistic explanation for why SGD might prefer general circuits for generating model outputs. I use this preference to explain how models can learn to generalize even after overfitting to near zero training error (i.e., grokking). I... |
afb1a12d-abae-41f0-8089-1a3093ab37a6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] Doublethink (Choosing to be Biased)
Today's post, Doublethink (Choosing to be Biased) was originally published on 14 September 2007. A summary :
> George Orwell wrote about what he called "doublethink", where a person was able to hold two contradictory thoughts in their mind simultaneously. While some ... |
eff868d1-8329-4ce0-8e5c-d9b3910f5336 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Make an Extraordinary Effort
> "It is essential for a man to strive with all his heart, and to understand that it is difficult even to reach the average if he does not have the intention of surpassing others in whatever he does."
> —Budo Shoshinshu
>
> "In important matters, a 'strong' effort usually results ... |
495d4a11-a50b-4b97-b336-212a8e934982 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | MIRI's 2017 Fundraiser
Update 2017-12-27: We've blown past our 3rd and final target, and reached the matching cap of $300,000 for the $2 million Matching Challenge! Thanks so much to everyone who supported us!
All donations made before 23:59 PST on Dec 31st will continue to be counted towards our fundraiser total. Th... |
277fc8d4-c324-4b53-a9a3-612175ec9282 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Paper: In-context Reinforcement Learning with Algorithm Distillation [Deepmind]
Authors train transformers to imitate the trajectory of reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms. Find that the transformers learn to do in-context RL (that is, the transformers implement an RL algorithm)---the authors check this by having t... |
aa170321-19b4-4876-998b-f744d6f41f02 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Why are the websites of major companies so bad at core functionality?
Intuitively, you might think that Amazon cares about people being able to enter their banking details as easily as possible. In reality at least Amazon.de doesn't seem to care. Instead of instantly validating with Javascript that a entered IBAN is ... |
9c395b47-fc8a-40cf-b7d0-d6a5859eef65 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Might humans not be the most intelligent animals?
The idea that humans are the most intelligent animals on Earth appears patently obvious to a lot of people. And to a large extent, I agree with this intuition. Humans clearly dominate the world in technological innovation, control, communication, and coordination.
How... |
e242219e-71e0-4b10-b52b-1b1ea091a5f8 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [Productivity] How not to use "Important // Not Urgent"
Epistemic status: Personal experience.
This is an Eisenhower matrix, named after President Dwight Eisenhower.
Eisenhower matrices have a very useful, very specific role in my life these days.
I usually bust one out on paper when I'm feeling overwhelmed by my o... |
dc9769b3-e837-4fe3-8e07-c97a95f2562e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | I think Michael Bailey's dismissal of my autogynephilia questions for Scott Alexander and Aella makes very little sense
I am autogynephilic, and there's been a lot of autogynephilia talk lately. One subject that sometimes comes up, but hasn't been discussed much on LessWrong, is how common autogynephilia is in cis wom... |
c87bfa9f-8304-4d0e-921e-1057f59c4138 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | LLM Basics: Embedding Spaces - Transformer Token Vectors Are Not Points in Space
This post is written as an explanation of a misconception I had with transformer embedding when I was getting started. Thanks to Stephen Fowler for the discussion last August that made me realise the misconception, and others for helping ... |
31ade82f-570e-4d98-9450-e40efdaab1d8 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [LINK] The Mathematics of Gamification - Application of Bayes Rule to Voting
Fresh from slashdot: A smart application of Bayes' rule to web-voting.
http://engineering.foursquare.com/2014/01/03/the-mathematics-of-gamification/
> [The results] are exactly the equations for voting you would expect. But now, they’re der... |
c89f71b6-a023-4ad4-98a6-f6b33ca4fe2f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How accurate was my "Altered Traits" book review?
4.4 years ago, I posted a review of Altered Traits, a book about the science of meditation. At the time, I was a noob. I hadn't hit any important checkpoints yet. Since then, I have sat quietly. In this post, I will review whether the claims in my original post are con... |
d838a074-cebe-44cd-8531-2da1b605795c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Madison: Rough Numbers
Discussion article for the meetup : Madison: Rough Numbers
WHEN: 22 July 2012 07:00:00PM (-0500)
WHERE: 302 S Mills St, Apt 5, Madison, WI
Note: If it's convenient, and you have a smartphone, laptop, or tablet, bring it. We'll want to be able to all look up data efficiently, and I wa... |
6a1b8bfd-d68b-4cc0-8fe8-a6f03a036355 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] Sorting Pebbles Into Correct Heaps
Today's post, Sorting Pebbles Into Correct Heaps was originally published on 10 August 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
> A parable about an imaginary society that don't understand what their values actually are.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the co... |
5c748bbb-422a-4f13-a32d-b5f669969c69 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs | Other | CHAI Newsletter 2018
5/4/22, 2:39 PM Center for Human-Compatible AI (CHAI) Newsletter
https://mailchi.mp/c8b632a14601/center -for-human-compatible-ai-chai-newsletter 1/4Congratulations to our 2017 & 2018 Intern
Cohorts
"Interning at CHAI has been one of those rare experiences that makes you
question beliefs you didn't... |
fe289120-05bd-44ba-8687-97ec02693fd1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Timer Toxicities
Follow-up to: Free-to-Play Games: Three Key Trade-Offs
The central free-to-play mechanic is to ration action and resources via real world time. This leads to two of the three key trade offs. Players are prevented from having fun because they are time restricted, either unable to play or unable to hav... |
90461579-f5e4-471b-a85e-4c73c50fafae | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Source Control for Prototyping and Analysis
When I'm doing exploratory work I want to run many analyses. I'm usually optimizing for getting something quick, but I want to document what I'm doing enough that if there are questions about my analysis or I later want to draw on it I can reconstruct what I did. I've taken ... |
dc075fdc-2584-433b-8cd5-b9648484772a | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Generative Teaching Networks: Accelerating Neural Architecture Search by Learning to Generate Synthetic Training Data
1 Introduction and Related Work
--------------------------------
Access to vast training data is now common in machine learning. However, to effectively train neural networks (NNs) does not require ... |
812375c2-a1af-4528-a45f-923ad471262e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Shame as low verbal justification alarm
What do you think feeling shame means?
You are scared that you might be ostracized from the group
But I feel shame about things that other people don’t even care about.
You are scared that you should be ostracized from the group.
That seems unrelated to the social realities.... |
7b6b77c3-e260-40c6-9281-d9ef76bd85f1 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | How well can the GPT architecture solve the parity task?
Suppose I give it pairs of strings and ask it to output 1 if the the number of 1s in the string is even and zero if it's odd.
e. g.
0 -> 0
1 -> 1
11 -> 0
101 -> 0
1101-> 1
10101001 -> 0
111000101110 -> 1
How well does it do on this task? What i... |
fce5cb06-1176-4e2b-a9a4-4427be44e079 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Book Review: The Elephant in the Brain
We don’t only constantly deceive others. In order to better deceive others, we also deceive ourselves. You’d pay to know what you really think.
Robin Hanson has worked tirelessly to fill this unmet need. Together with Kevin Simler, he now brings us The Elephant in the Brain.
I ... |
60b64f70-357c-4552-8599-1a88f7196dfc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Help Request: Cryonics Policies
I’m hoping to sign up for cryonics when I can afford it, and I’m not sure which agency and treatment plan to get.
As of this Cryonics institute document, whole-body suspension with Alcor costs $200,000. Neurosuspension costs $80,000. With the cheaper but possibly lower quality Cryonics... |
e124528b-6b72-45d8-9846-b323d7f307bf | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | A concrete bet offer to those with short AGI timelines
[Update 3 (3/16/2023): Matthew has now [conceded](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nto7K5W2sNR3Cpmec/conceding-a-short-timelines-bet-early).]
[Update 2 (11/4/2022): Matthew Barnett now thinks he will probably lose this bet. You can read a post about how he's updat... |
79bbc1f5-0a5b-45be-8231-007fc34c8555 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Five Whys
This post appeared first on the EA Coaching blog.
Five Whys is a technique I borrowed from Lean methodology for getting to the root cause of a problem. As shown in the example below, I use the method to identify many possible solutions to a particular productivity problem.
The simple steps:
1. Ask “Why ... |
40b9e01f-b191-46ba-835d-e38dc78535ab | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Is alignment possible?
Is AGI alignment even possible in the long term? Will AGI simply outsmart our best defenses? It would be, after all, superhuman (and by an enormous margin). Isn’t it likely that an AGI will recognize what actions humans took to control it and simply undo those controls? Or just create a novel mo... |
47cdbbc2-2326-4a30-be78-59a2861f4dc9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Transcript: "You Should Read HPMOR"
The following is the script of a talk I gave for some current computer science students at my alma mater, Grinnell College. This talk answers "What do I wish I had known while at Grinnell?".
Hi, I'm Alex Turner. I’m honored to be here under Sam’s invitation. I'm in the class of 201... |
5172129f-366e-4c9f-9875-bf1a61b9e7de | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [Link] Nerds are nuts
Related to: Reason as memetic immune disorder, Commentary on compartmentalization
On the old old gnxp site site Razib Khan wrote an interesting piece on a failure mode of nerds. This is I think something very important to keep in mind because for better or worse LessWrong is nerdspace. It deals ... |
42dcc522-c260-4c25-9afb-3f89bdd00829 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Evil AI Overlord List
Top ten tips for an AI bent on destroying humanity:
1. Humanoid robots? Really?
2. Humans have proven very adept at controlling and killing other humans - surveillance drones, bio-warfare, nuclear weapons, unmanned drones, bombs, mines, chemicals. Try and be at least as competent as that... |
d6d0aca9-1311-4b30-99a9-50e1df59b73f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Melbourne, practical rationality
Discussion article for the meetup : Melbourne, practical rationality
WHEN: 01 February 2013 07:00:00PM (+1100)
WHERE: 55 Walsh Street, West Melbourne VIC 3003, Australia
Practical rationality. This meetup repeats on the 1st Friday of each month and is distinct from our soci... |
691cba8a-b082-40e0-bd6e-331e10686bcb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] Invisible Frameworks
Today's post, Invisible Frameworks was originally published on 22 August 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
> A particular system of values is analyzed, and is used to demonstrate the idea that anytime you consider changing your morals, you do so using your own current meta-... |
9df3f605-75ee-41d2-9bad-3eebe6ac0145 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Apply for the ML Winter Camp in Cambridge, UK [2-10 Jan]
*TL;DR: We are running a UK-based ML upskilling camp from 2-10 January in Cambridge for people with no prior experience in ML who want to work on technical AI safety.*[*Apply here*](https://forms.gle/aDa7JjCb6x8PWEy79) *by 11 December.*
We (Nathan Barnard, J... |
9d3c72d7-175c-4dfa-b0b3-2869d3d42357 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | On the Expressivity of Markov Reward.
1 Introduction
---------------
How are we to use algorithms for reinforcement learning (RL) to solve problems of relevance in the world? Reward plays a significant role as a general purpose signal: For any desired behavior, task, or other characteristic of agency, there must ex... |
95483e22-2042-4a1c-a39e-5ac08e80292b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Help me understand the rationale of the NIH to not recommend Fluvoxamine for COVID treatment.
So the TOGETHER trial signal boosted by Scott of slate star codex found Fluvoxamine to be effective at reducing 30% of COVID hospitalisation and fatality.
The NIH looked at the study and found it unconvicing, I am a bit conf... |
5528d267-090f-42dd-9849-eba41639c492 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Less Wrong Montreal - Easy Lifehacks
Discussion article for the meetup : Less Wrong Montreal - Easy Lifehacks
WHEN: 28 April 2014 07:00:00PM (-0400)
WHERE: 3459 Mctavish, Montréal, QC
There are lots of little things you can do to gain massive improvements in your life, and some of these tricks aren't widel... |
8b134480-c167-4b59-8614-43ef9857c9d7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | 2011 Buhl Lecture, Scott Aaronson on Quantum Complexity
I was planning to post this in the main area, but my thoughts are significantly less well-formed than I thought they were. Anyway, I hope that interested parties find it nonetheless.
In the Carnegie Mellon 2011 Buhl Lecture, Scott Aaronson gives a remarkably cle... |
0d4d79de-0c86-4d0e-b4c7-12adc2af531f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Timaeus is hiring!
TLDR: We’re hiring two research assistants to work on advancing developmental interpretability and other applications of singular learning theory to alignment.
About Us
Timaeus’s mission is to empower humanity by making breakthrough scientific progress on alignment. Our research focuses on applic... |
03c15bb1-3e53-44ff-88e1-fb954a0668c5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Retrieval Augmented Genesis
a prototype and some thoughts on semantics
Before reading this article I strongly encourage you to Checkout the RAGenesis App!
Full code available at https://github.com/JoaoRibeiroMedeiros/RAGenesisOSS.
Screenshot of Verse Uni Verse page
Project Goals
* Send a message of unity and mut... |
626c48cd-32a1-44c9-a577-19fe8d82ad97 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Do Corporations Have a Right to Privacy?
The link to Bruce Schneier's original post.
> This week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether or not corporations have the same rights to "personal privacy" that individuals do.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a amicus curiae bri... |
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