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636756dd-ed99-4e63-9125-70ba882861e2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | When should you give to multiple charities?
The logic that you should donate only to a single top charity is very strong. But when faced with two ways of making the world better there's this urge deny the choice and do both. Is this urge irrational or is there something there?
At the low end splitting up your giving ... |
4e1b386c-b404-42a0-868d-a9c3657183f3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | TAPs 2
This is part 13 of 30 of Hammertime. Click here for the intro.
> “Omit needless words!” cries the author on page 23, and into that imperative Will Strunk really put his heart and soul. In the days when I was sitting in his class, he omitted so many needless words, and omitted them so forcibly and with such eag... |
665be085-c1ca-455c-b66b-d531ca244677 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Just Saying What You Mean is Impossible
Response to: Conversation Deliberately Skirts the Border of Incomprehensibility (SlateStarCodex)
“Why don’t people just say what they mean?”
They can’t.
I don’t mean they don’t want to. I don’t mean that they choose not to. I don’t even mean they have been socially conditione... |
a259ae72-9c97-4a1c-be1a-a8ae237b35fe | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Backup Plan
Suppose Alice is a functioning, self-improving AI, rather early on in her development, so she is not godlike. She is not a 'friendly AI', but neither is her goal malicious - Alice's designers have intended to make Alice non-harmful (at least to a broad class of people, even if Alice is a military AI, b... |
7c8e355d-604e-4c2a-83b1-2fd7093fc833 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Comparative advantage and when to blow up your island
Economists say free trade is good because of "comparative advantage". But what is comparative advantage? Why is it good? |
26c77397-1878-4728-873f-ba952b8b540c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The gatekeepers of the AI algorithms will shape our society
So algorithms and weighted neuralnets are going to be the enlightened super beings that oversee our society.
Elon has said - and I'm paraphrasing cos I can't find the link - that social media with it's free exchange of ideas will allow for a consensus to bub... |
5e089f6a-afcb-4fc2-bf75-38d3f7dcac4f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Truthseeking processes tend to be frame-invariant
I recently saw a tweet by Nora Belrose that claimed that ELK works much better when adding a "prompt-invariance term".
And thinking about it, there seems to be an important underlying principle here, not just for AI alignment, but also for rationality as applied to hu... |
8b3b6949-013b-454a-b5f9-76ed55d01669 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | A new field guide for MIRIx
We’ve just released a **[field guide](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PqMT9zGrNsGJNfiFR/alignment-research-field-guide)** for MIRIx groups, and for other people who want to get involved in [AI alignment](https://intelligence.org/2017/04/12/ensuring/) research.
MIRIx is a program where MIR... |
36e57625-d57d-4c36-bd0f-50226025ffbb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Memetic Judo #1: On Doomsday Prophets v.3
There is a popular tendency to dismiss people who are concerned about AI-safety as "doomsday prophets", carrying with it the suggestion that predicting an existential risk in the near future would automatically discredit them (because "you know; they have always been wrong in ... |
378dd75d-de66-4a9f-aeca-9987bd4c8c20 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Plausibly, almost every powerful algorithm would be manipulative
I had an interesting debate recently, about whether we could make smart AIs safe just by focusing on their structure and their task. Specifically, we were pondering something like:
* "Would an algorithm be safe if it was a neural net-style image classi... |
d0478141-953b-47cc-ac1b-cb9b99e42721 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Against boots theory
> The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
>
> Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of O... |
5af82657-bfd0-4b01-9224-7469f5c87d1d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Notes on Care
This post examines the virtue of care. It is meant mostly as an exploration of what others have learned about this virtue, rather than as me expressing my own opinions about it, though I’ve been selective about what I found interesting or credible, according to my own inclinations. I wrote this not as an... |
e4d92fa3-744f-4bd9-9f48-bd25b65956b0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Omicron Variant Post #2
It’s now been three days since Post #1. The situation is evolving rapidly, so it’s time to check in. What have we learned since then? How should we update our beliefs and world models? There will inevitably be mistakes as we move quickly under uncertainty, but that’s no reason not to do the bes... |
3045dca0-279b-413e-a799-380cc93aa2f0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Embed your second brain in your first brain
Any explicit knowledge is either part of a general, long-term understanding of the world (global knowledge), or peculiar to your own life and local environment (local knowledge). These mainly fill semantic and episodic memory, respectively. Declarative memory can hold either... |
be8d060b-33cb-4efc-a92f-3cafff926e28 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | Simulators
---
Table of Contents* [Summary](#summary)
* [Meta](#meta)
* [Agentic GPT](#agentic-gpt)
+ [Unorthodox agency](#unorthodox-agency)
+ [Orthogonal optimization](#orthogonal-optimization)
+ [Roleplay sans player](#roleplay-sans-player)
* [Oracle GPT and supervised learning](#oracle-gpt-and-supervised-learn... |
796d9329-3dd3-4a25-9d21-bbd242a8530b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Selfish reasons for FAI
Let's take for granted that pursuing FAI is the best strategy for researchers interested in the future of all humanity. However, let's also assume that controlling unfriendly AI is not completely impossible. I would like to see arguments on why FAI may or may not be the best strategy for AGI ... |
046dc84e-076a-4552-b965-86ac002b9baf | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Was CFAR always intended to be a distinct organization from MIRI?
When what would later become CFAR first started as a series of rationality workshops run under the purview of MIRI in 2012, was it always the intention of CFAR's founders to have it be a project/organization distinct from MIRI since its beginning? Or, d... |
aba6db2e-e399-462d-9bbf-32cef8f47b18 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Risks of Genetic Publicy
When you walk around you leave your genetic information everywhere. Right now it's not worth it for anyone to do anything with it, outside of DNA profiling in forensics, but sequencing keeps getting cheaper so this may change. Long term, I don't trust genetic data to stay private.
For the nea... |
85c93966-d0ea-4652-ab1e-3216f1ca9d75 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Is asymptomatic transmission less common after vaccination?
How I understand it, the problem with the first time you're exposed to COVID is that your immune system hasn't seen it before and it takes a while to ramp up and fight it off, allowing it to do more damage.
Vaccines solve this by exposing your immune system ... |
26ce1420-998f-4b8d-83e7-7d7b3dd97d5d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Levels of Friction
Scott Alexander famously warned us to Beware Trivial Inconveniences.
When you make a thing easy to do, people often do vastly more of it.
When you put up barriers, even highly solvable ones, people often do vastly less.
Let us take this seriously, and carefully choose what inconveniences to put w... |
f566baa0-019c-4a86-8982-5b5184005cc3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Iterated Distillation and Amplification
This is a guest post summarizing Paul Christiano’s proposed scheme for training machine learning systems that can be robustly aligned to complex and fuzzy values, which I call Iterated Distillation and Amplification (IDA) here. IDA is notably similar to AlphaGoZero and expert it... |
3d2b8d97-0111-455f-aa2c-22a6baa9d5b0 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Unions for AI safety?
Labor unions are associations of workers that negotiate with employers. A union for AI workers such as data scientists, hardware and software engineers could organise labor to counterbalance the influence of shareholders or political masters.
Importantly, unions could play a unique, direct role... |
7e847fdc-2103-4ba1-baea-45abcfe09dd3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AI 2030 – AI Policy Roadmap
AI 2030, a global AI policy roadmap, was launched around a day ago. It was put together and released by Encode Justice, and signed by (at time of writing) over 300 people including Stuart Russell, Max Tegmark, Daniel Kokotajlo, Yoshua Bengio, Mary Robinson, Daron Acemoglu and many more emin... |
8e6a64fd-44af-48c7-9cef-84d4f01e7d68 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | The reward function is already how well you manipulate humans
We have many, many parables about dangers arising from super intelligent or supremely capable AI that wreaks ruin by maximizing a simple reward function. "Make paperclips" seems to be a popular one[[1]](#fnxtbhxgluhnp). I worry that we don't give a more rea... |
215eb390-a60a-42c1-9e1f-6c3b9033bd71 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Strategic Bestseller: Taking the Blog Path (4HS002)
> "The scariest moment is just before you start""I think timid writers like the passive voice for the same reason timid lovers like passive
> partners. The passive voice is safe." - Stephen King
Follow-up to: How can I strategically write a complex bestseller?
2:2... |
4ddfae12-adbc-4e7d-bbbe-99b8c82d066a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | All pigeons are ugly!
With this statement, I acknowledge my error in judgment regarding the aesthetic status of pigeons. This marks the beginning of my aesthetic corrective efforts. I commit to training my sense of taste daily for an entire month. I hope that by the end of this period, my visual discernment and unders... |
b13ac79d-1dfc-481b-8786-239a6bddb217 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | linkpost: neuro-symbolic hybrid ai
This video shows some really interesting work that's been done on factoring sensory perceptions (visual data, natural language) into concept space (they call it 'derendering' as an antonym to rendering), and then applying symbolic reasoning to the concepts. I think this is really pot... |
19884e15-f587-4c83-8222-c5ca10bd7ff9 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | The Pointers Problem: Clarifications/Variations
I've recently had several conversations about John Wentworth's post [The Pointers Problem](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gQY6LrTWJNkTv8YJR/the-pointers-problem-human-values-are-a-function-of-humans). I think there is some confusion about this post, because there are se... |
20079576-81f0-4fec-b1d3-7de4bb1f1031 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | An Exercise in Rational Cooperation and Communication: Let's Play Hanabi
Why Play Hanabi?
Hanabi is a game requiring modeling others' minds, communication, and strategy. Its unique challenges and cooperative (rather than adversarial) objective have piqued the interest of the AI community, which recently began using it... |
d375b25e-0bf7-486d-a835-06aa029435c5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Highlights from The Industrial Revolution, by T. S. Ashton
The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830, by Thomas S. Ashton, is classic in the field, published in 1948. Here are some of my highlights from it. (Emphasis in bold added by me.)
The role of chance
What was the role of chance in the inventions of the Industrial ... |
43f8f186-15e4-4b88-b4e8-880a0c9649a0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] Does Your Morality Care What You Think?
Today's post, Does Your Morality Care What You Think? was originally published on 26 July 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
> If, for whatever reason, evolution or education had convinced you to believe that it was moral to do something that you now belie... |
dd6c6987-7601-4622-90ee-3e3564359a23 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Why should anyone boot *you* up?
Imagine the following scenario:
1. We develop brain-scan technology today which can take a perfect snapshot of anyone's brain, down to the atomic level. You undergo this procedure after you die and your brain scan is kept in some fault-tolerant storage, along the lines of GitHub Arct... |
010888b9-e13d-49dd-9807-0fcda0120239 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Has anyone increased their AGI timelines?
The question: Within the last 5-10 years, is there is any person or group that has openly increased their AGI timelines?
Ideally, they would have at least two different estimates (years apart?), with the most recent estimate showing that they think AGI is further into the fut... |
5e881832-c164-4c98-b20a-a970aca163ac | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Mathematics and saving lives
A high school student with an interest in math asks whether he's obligated on utilitarian grounds to become a doctor.
The commenters pretty much say that he isn't, but now I'm wondering-- if you go into reasonably pure math, what areas or specific problems would be most likely to contribu... |
6ac3d5f3-6277-4660-825a-4a180ca3a234 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Book report: Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (von Neumann & Morgenstern)
.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-spa... |
61fdb511-26e9-45d2-b376-31fba6371593 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Following human norms
So far we have been talking about how to learn “values” or “instrumental goals”. This would be necessary if we want to figure out how to build an AI system that does exactly what we want it to do. However, we’re probably fine if we can keep learning and building better AI systems. This suggests t... |
b35dec16-feb0-4dd5-b623-fe0c1b23a69a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Retro funder profile & Manifund team recs (ACX Grants 2024: Impact Market)
The Astral Codex Ten (ACX) Grants impact market is live on Manifund — invest in 50+ proposals across projects in biotech, AI alignment, education, climate, economics, social activism, chicken law, etc. You can now invest in projects that you th... |
5a646eaf-aec3-437f-a6a7-d037281ca0eb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Just How Hard a Problem is Alignment?
It is commonly asserted that aligning AI is extremely hard because
1. human values are complex: they have a high Kolmogorov complexity, and
2. they're fragile: if you get them even a tiny bit wrong, the result is useless, or worse than useless.
If these statements are both tru... |
8399e992-a3c2-4be5-998b-fd1db75a9c24 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Pittsburgh: Making Beliefs Pay Rent
Discussion article for the meetup : Pittsburgh: Making Beliefs Pay Rent
WHEN: 01 June 2012 06:00:00PM (-0400)
WHERE: Eatunique, S. Craig St, Pittsburgh, PA
If you really want to prepare, read the (short) post here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/i3/making_beliefs_pay_rent_in_an... |
061cbee2-1b47-4329-ba07-cb2385419cd8 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilization
Today's post, Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilization, was originally published on 16 March 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
> As a side effect of evolution, super-stimuli exist, and as a result of economics, are getting and shou... |
e6433c57-be87-48b2-b6f1-9cb0573fb094 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AndrewH's observation and opportunity costs
In his discussion of "cryocrastination", AndrewH makes a pretty good point. There may be some better things you can do with the money you'd spend on cryonics insurance. The sort of people who are into cryonics would probably accept that donating it to the Singularity Institu... |
6ca77916-edc8-4500-bae4-22acb7d95517 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Cartographic Processes
As a general rule, street maps of New York City do not form spontaneously - they involve some cause-and-effect process which takes in data from the territory (NYC’s streets) and produces the map from that data. Let’s call these “cartographic processes”: causal processes which produce a map from ... |
598320c8-c566-41f1-9f82-5e26b66a828d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Game Theory and Society
Game theory is a branch of mathematics that deals with decision making when there are multiple decision-makers, called “players”, and outcomes depend on the decisions of other players. Game theory is based on the metaphor of a game, in which the rules of play and the outcomes are well defined. ... |
0bc3ade0-7375-4aef-9a90-c2f255135ba6 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Will Capabilities Generalise More?
[Nate](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/GNhMPAWcfBCASy8e6/a-central-ai-alignment-problem-capabilities-generalization) and [Eliezer](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/uMQ3cqWDPHhjtiesc/agi-ruin-a-list-of-lethalities) (Lethality 21) claim that capabilities generalise further tha... |
e6fb637c-e5eb-4eed-825a-db1c78ea455c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | When should I close the fridge?
Say an open fridge door loses 1 Joule's worth of cool air every second. Opening or closing the door blows a lot of air so you lose 10J.
If I'm just pouring milk in my coffee I can usually do that in 5 seconds so I should keep the fridge open because 10+5+10 < 10+1+10 + 10+1+10 (if it t... |
b2d91a19-d184-48c2-855f-7b9debf75560 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | Michael Carbin on integrity properties in approximate computing
[Michael Carbin](http://people.csail.mit.edu/mcarbin/) is a Ph.D. Candidate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. His interests include the des... |
28af9af3-2577-4d98-9094-08cf769a234e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Early Thoughts on Ontology/Grounding Problems
These all seem to be pointing to different aspects of the same problem.
* Cross-ontology goal translation: given a utility function over a latent variable in one model, find an equivalent utility function over latent variables in another model with a different ontology. ... |
bf358f72-3236-4aff-82fe-c4d074429df7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | ESR's comments on some EY:OB/LW posts
Eric S. Raymond's comments on some of my Overcoming Bias posts.
In his reply to my To Lead, You Must Stand Up, he writes:
> "I think your exhortations here are nearly useless. Experience I’ve collected over the last ten years suggests to me that the kind of immunity to stage fri... |
28091e1e-c8cf-49f0-a007-be7db9c2b537 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | I missed the crux of the alignment problem the whole time
This post has been written for the first Refine blog post day, at the end of the week of readings, discussions, and exercises about epistemology for doing good conceptual research. Thanks to Adam Shimi for helpful discussion and comments.
I first got properly ... |
b5ec906f-9300-421f-afba-225d8df51c1f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How to evaluate neglectedness and tractability of aging research
This is the fourth post of a series in which I'm trying to build a framework to evaluate aging research. Previous posts:
1. A general framework for evaluating aging research. Part 1: reasoning with Longevity Escape Velocity
2. Aging research and popula... |
8e294260-7b41-40b2-8711-f7a57d60e5b9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [Template] Questions regarding possible risks from artificial intelligence
I am emailing experts in order to raise and estimate the academic awareness and perception of risks from AI. Below are some questions I am going to ask. Please help to refine the questions or suggest new and better questions.
(Thanks goes to p... |
26d43b1d-36e7-4442-992b-853374a3af5f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Attempting to refine "maximization" with 3 new -izers
|
f89e3cd8-843e-4475-b395-7e0610a7986a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Does the simulation argument even need simulations?
The simulation argument, as I understand it:
1. Subjectively, existing as a human in the real, physical universe is indistinguishable from existing as a simulated human in a simulated universe
2. Anthropically, there is no reason to privilege one over the other: i... |
652e930b-2e28-4f27-9021-def61a960228 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Metaforecast update: Better search, capture functionality, more platforms.
Metaforecast is a search tool for probabilities. Since the last public update, we have made several improvements.
tl;dr:
* Search is much better, also faster
* Capture functionality now makes it more convenient to save predictions as images... |
b0696f82-a113-4fad-86d8-a808900cf571 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Adversity to Success
It's a classic story, your average millionaire tells their story of how they had a life of struggling and subsequently overcame such struggles and went on to become a (multi-)millionaire. "What a great story" everyone says. But why does it happen, and why does it happen so often?
The easy answe... |
0bc30c25-3d2c-4cc9-b9c1-2c60786b978a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Is AGI actually that likely to take off given the world energy consumption?
How is AGI takeoff scenario compatible with the world energy consumption? While the latter in 2023 was of the order of 30 thousands of TWh per year, in 2023 and 2024 many researchers established the growing energy footprint of artificial intel... |
3026a546-eb83-44a8-9cc3-e23b4f5d69de | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | 12 interesting things I learned studying the discovery of nature's laws
I've been thinking about out whether I can discover laws of agency and wield them to prevent AI ruin (perhaps by building an AGI myself in a different paradigm than machine learning).
So far I’ve looked into the history of the discovery of physic... |
82caf6f1-1cc2-4851-8e1c-c5e678be412e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Could Democritus have predicted intelligence explosion?
Also see: History of the Friendly AI concept.
The ancient atomists reasoned their way from first principles to materialism and atomic theory before Socrates began his life's work of making people look stupid in the marketplace of Athens. Why didn't they discover... |
5e909606-330d-4b60-b670-db5e790d4508 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] One Argument Against An Army
Title: [SEQ RERUN] One Argument Against An Army Tags: sequence_reruns Today's post, One Argument Against An Army was originally published on 15 August 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
> It is tempting to weigh each counterargument by itself against all supporting argu... |
556970ea-e7ea-4cfd-91d4-067981d47f13 | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | "[Credit for horizontally transmitting these ideas to my brain goes mostly to Jennifer RM, except for the bits at the end about Bowling Alone and The Moral Economy. Apologies to Jennifer for further horizontally spreading.]Vertical/Horizontal TransmissionThe concept of vertical and horizontal transmission felt like a b... |
5885d9e4-7221-48d6-a4f8-cd33e582ccd6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Hindsight bias
Hindsight bias is when people who know the answer vastly overestimate its predictability or obviousness, compared to the estimates of subjects who must guess without advance knowledge. Hindsight bias is sometimes called the I-knew-it-all-along effect.
Fischhoff and Beyth (1975) presented students with... |
5138cf88-a4db-4f0d-8168-60943221b039 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Preparing for Less Privacy
An old privacy post of mine recently got a lot of discussion on Hacker News. It seems people took me to be saying something like:
> Other people are foolish to be worried about privacy. If there's anything you don't want public it's probably because you're doing something you shouldn't. T... |
312fb58d-3f4c-459f-919a-55cbb68baa2e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Self-Anchoring
Sometime between the age of 3 and 4, a human child becomes able, for the first time, to model other minds as having different beliefs. The child sees a box, sees candy in the box, and sees that Sally sees the box. Sally leaves, and then the experimenter, in front of the child, replaces the candy with ... |
85962de9-873c-4677-8be5-2189101c5e17 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Covid 8/18/22: CDC Admits Mistakes
Two Covid-related things happened this week that I did not expect.
The CDC admitted that it had failed us during the pandemic, withdrew at long last many of its remaining recommendations and promised reforms to be less academic and otherwise do better.
A new paper found potential b... |
7ed4736e-ac7e-4e69-a690-8e34297cc997 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Predicting for charity
Excerpted from Above the Fold.
Prediction markets succeed when they require people to bet something they value, like money. But past attempts at real-money prediction markets like Intrade have been shut down by the CFTC. At Manifold Markets, we currently allow users to trade on Manifold Dollars... |
425e9b19-efac-469e-bd2c-b370439feee8 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Pro-Con-lists of arguments and onesidedness points
Follow-up to Reverse Engineering of Belief Structures
Pro-con-lists of arguments such as ProCon.org and BalancedPolitics.org fill a useful purpose. They give an overview over complex debates, and arguably foster nuance. My network for evidence-based policy is curren... |
b1a356d9-d36f-44ff-9173-1073fb82ec15 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Is there a culture overhang?
Culture is adapted for learnability, transmissibility and recombinability for humans. To the extent AI and natural intelligence operate on similar principles, these adaptations should be expected to carry over when culture is used as a training dataset for AI. If so, an AI trained on cultu... |
c41996a2-3efa-41fe-a9cf-2e34fe5178f6 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | Three kinds of competitiveness
*By Daniel Kokotajlo, 30 March 2020*
In this post, I distinguish between three different kinds of competitiveness — Performance, Cost, and Date — and explain why I think these distinctions are worth the brainspace they occupy. For example, they help me introduce and discuss a problem f... |
8ea429dd-7221-4a9d-9699-45d18dabdac0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Time in Machine Metaethics
Main points
* The notion of constant progress of time applies both to AI and humans. However, in decision theories and AI research, it makes things more complicated and seem to be frequently disregarded for simplicity.
* An evolving AI may face the need to predict the decision-making of it... |
80c2b658-48a5-41ad-9220-ec6e69715d05 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Smoothmin and personal identity
.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: nowrap; float: none;... |
b96d84e3-cdd7-4d08-a7da-126bf61ed4e2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | AI risk: the five minute pitch
I did a talk at the 25th Oxford Geek night, in which I had five minutes to present the dangers of AI. The talk is now online. Though it doesn't contain anything people at Less Wrong would find new, I feel it does a reasonable job at pitching some of the arguments in a very brief format. |
e5392b05-9b98-4d61-86ab-ea57c194bca4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Boston Secular Solstice: Call for Singers and Musicans
As in past years the Boston EA/LW community is putting together a secular solstice celebration. It's a bit of a strange thing, somewhat like an atheist church service, with lots of group singing on silly and serious topics. For some of the flavor, see my 2022, 201... |
3a43ea9c-b309-475d-908c-03f58e45ceb7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : SF Meetup: Projects
Discussion article for the meetup : SF Meetup: Projects
WHEN: 12 September 2016 06:15:36PM (-0700)
WHERE: 1597 Howard St., SF
We’ll be meeting to work on projects!
Near the beginning, we’ll go around and talk about what we’ll be working on, then do a couple of pomodoros quietly. At som... |
a36e3b09-99c6-4ee3-8c53-7765df972463 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Teaching the Unteachable
Previously in series: Unteachable Excellence
Followup to: Artificial Addition
The literary industry that I called "excellence pornography" isn't very good at what it does. But it is failing at a very important job. When you consider the net benefit to civilization of Warren Buffett's sup... |
acfe59c7-cf43-41b3-93d5-1a82acd68f64 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What are the best demoable findings in cogsci?
http://www.reddit.com/r/cogsci/comments/e2r17/what_are_the_best_demoable_findings_in_cogsci/ |
66f6e581-b456-4873-b1b6-8b10308aead4 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Effective Altruists and Rationalists Views & The case for using marketing to highlight AI risks.
The link is to a particular timestamp in a much longer podcast episode. This segment plays immediately after the (Nonlinear co-founder) Kat Woods interview. (Skipping over the part about requesting donations.) In it, the p... |
10ddad30-9bed-408b-ae78-c016b27fa001 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Existential risks open thread
We talk about a wide variety of stuff on LW, but we don't spend much time trying to identify the very highest-utility stuff to discuss and promoting additional discussion of it. This thread is a stab at that. Since it's just comments, you can feel more comfortable bringing up ideas that... |
f8475eeb-08c5-4d5a-bc2a-7c32691149a6 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | An Overview of Catastrophic AI Risks: Summary
We’ve recently published on our website a summary of our [paper on catastrophic risks from AI](https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.12001), which we are cross-posting here. We hope that this summary helps to make our research more accessible and to share our policy recommendations i... |
b777ff3d-8bc5-4df6-a7b9-a5533a88dc9d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Measuring and forecasting risks
By Jacob Steinhardt, with input from Beth Barnes
As machine learning pervades more and more sectors of society, it brings with it many benefits, but also poses risks, especially as systems become more powerful and difficult to understand and control. It is important to understand these... |
7c4f2d3e-5e55-46c6-a232-6baff791e9cc | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Symbiotic self-alignment of AIs.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most powerful and transformative technologies of our time. It has the potential to enhance human capabilities, solve complex problems, and create new opportunities for innovation and progress. However, it also poses significant challenges and ... |
fdbcd76f-1c55-490a-8683-1a7825b319a8 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | "textbooks are all you need"
"Textbooks Are All You Need" was published yesterday by Microsoft Research. It's the worst-named paper I've seen recently: it's not about textbooks, it's not all you need, and gratuitously imitating the title of a paper that introduced a different type of thing is dumb. But there's a reaso... |
6f1ca264-5ef9-44c7-86aa-d7182b3c1a0b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Formalization as suspension of intuition
While reading Bachelard (one of the greatest philosophers of science of all time), I fell upon this fascinating passage:[1]
> From now on an axiomatic accompanies the scientific process. We have written the accompaniment after the melody, yet the mathematician plays with both ... |
6b91882e-8708-46ad-b0b9-efdf256c6077 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Philosophy of Mind: Umwelt, Information, Value, and Information-Value
Jakob Von Uexkull, like many thinkers, introduced a new meaning for a familiar term. The German biologist used the everyday German word 'umwelt' which means surrounding environment to be an organisms inner world. It's some sort of a subjective repre... |
0058fe4d-ceda-4432-b272-16bde6f3668f | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | My take on Vanessa Kosoy's take on AGI safety
*Confidence level: Low*
Vanessa Kosoy is a deep fountain of knowledge and insights about AGI safety, but I’ve had trouble understanding some aspects of her point of view. Part of the problem is just pedagogy, and part of it (I will argue) is that she has some different un... |
6052d13f-649b-466a-9b54-441296b253ac | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | A canonical bit-encoding for ranged integers
A canonical bit-encoding for ranged integers
--------------------------------------------
in [an earlier post](canonical-byte-varints.html) i describe a scheme to canonically and efficient encode integers that span over a power-of-two range. in this post i'll be describin... |
dbfc41a6-3635-4fe9-bef0-5e668b01997c | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | [Link] EAF Research agenda: "Cooperation, Conflict, and Transformative Artificial Intelligence"
This is a sequence version of the Effective Altruism Foundation's research agenda on *Cooperation, Conflict, and Transformative Artificial Intelligence*. The agenda outlines what we think are the most promising avenues for ... |
8b915d40-e12e-42e8-b3d5-e868f0614d4f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The vision of Bill Thurston
PDF version. berkeleygenomics.org. X.com. Bluesky.
William Thurston was a world-renowned mathematician. His ideas revolutionized many areas of geometry and topology[1]; the proof of his geometrization conjecture was eventually completed by Grigori Perelman, thus settling the Poincaré conje... |
c225849d-431a-489d-8ed0-3c175a1c3d96 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Changes in AI Safety Funding
|
604e0ad3-b4d1-4806-84d1-8f90ed760769 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Sam Altman and Ezra Klein on the AI Revolution
On The New York Times's Ezra Klein Show podcast, Klein interviews OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on the future of AI (archived with transcript). (Note the nod to Slate Star Codex in the reading recommendations at the end.)
My favorite ("favorite") part of the transcript was this:... |
5368237e-f86d-4446-9cc1-24750fe71ac6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Ottawa LW Meetup Saturday April 16th
My trip to New York City provided the spur I needed to get the LW Ottawa1 Chapter off the ground. My aspiration for the group is to provide a social milieu for improving thought patterns/processes and for providing feedback on setting goals, planning tactics and strategies, and tra... |
82cad5dc-e232-49e2-bdec-4be52c5166ec | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Purchasing research effectively open thread
Many of the biggest historical success stories in philanthropy have come in the form of funding for academic research. This suggests that the topic of how to purchase such research well should be of interest to effective altruists. Less Wrong survey results indicate that a... |
d3a53b99-8653-4153-ac2d-070333ff67e6 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Two Anki plugins to reinforce reviewing (updated)
This post is about two Anki plugins I just wrote. I've been using them for a few months as monkey patches, but I thought it might help people here (or at least the 20% that are awesome enough to use SRSs) to have them as plugins. They're ugly and you may have to fiddle... |
037ebb64-f5b6-4fb1-b3af-c7063753dbb1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Wedneday 7pm
Discussion article for the meetup : Fort Collins, Colorado Meetup Wedneday 7pm
WHEN: 28 March 2012 07:00:00PM (-0600)
WHERE: 144 North College Avenue, Fort Collins, CO 80524
It's spring! Come meet smart, interesting people.
Discussion article for the meetup : Fo... |
9d80c122-9c23-4e6a-8ef7-6778102e90d7 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Nothing New: Productive Reframing
In a comment on my last post, someone deplored the tendency of LW bloggers to rediscover ideas of famous philosophers and pretend that they discovered it first. This made me think of an interesting question of epistemology: is there value in reformulating and/or rediscovering things?
... |
f9f3fa1a-b084-47f8-b60b-c33b1339ad0c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Learning languages efficiently.
I'm not at all sure how this site works yet (I've gone only on traditional forums), so bear with me please if I do something foolish. I'm being drafted to the IDF in a few months and I need to learn Hebrew very quickly if I want to avoid being put into a program for foreign speakers. I ... |
f5d658bd-fd3f-40a8-bea8-950311852f80 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | -
- |
74aeac2b-4ef5-4bea-8ef1-5996dfc99340 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Ponzi schemes can be highly profitable if your timing is good
Have you ever wondered what you'd find if you upended your life for a few months and did a deep dive trying to understand what makes the crypto ecosystem work?
It just so happens that due to exogenous circumstances mostly beyond my control, that's exactly ... |
cb3a4435-86bf-434c-a5b1-376c9a8eeb7b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Some reasons why a predictor wants to be a consequentialist
Status: working notes
Here's an exercise I've found very useful for intuition-building around alignment:
1. Propose a solution to the alignment problem.
2. Dig into the details until you understand why the proposal fails.
3. If there is an obvious fix, g... |
7ec129d2-b889-480b-bff3-7a35da93ea73 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | AI Safety Concepts Writeup: WebGPT
Intro
-----
Chris Patrick (a science writer) and I were awarded a grant by the Long Term Future Fund to interview AI safety researchers and condense their findings into something digestible for an educated layperson. Chris was the primary recipient - I helped with editing, content k... |
b2fcffbe-db69-4d6f-a5b3-c6d84d93dfbe | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A Qualitative and Intuitive Explanation of Expected Value
Alice: Expected value is one of my favorite things in the world.
Bob: That involves math right?
Alice: Yeah.
Bob: And you use it in your daily life?
Alice: Yeah.
Bob: See I can't live life like that. I hate doing math. I prefer to just go with the flow.
A... |
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