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5c4106ca-37c9-4ade-9916-3fbc14dc02f1 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Breaking quarantine is negligence. Why are democracies acting like we can only ask nicely?
One of the earliest angles on the coronavirus pandemic was that this was a story of the draconian extremes that an authoritarian government can impose on its people. This angle on the events in Wuhan flourished especially while ... |
201483cf-4501-437c-ac18-744f1675da65 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Suffering-Focused Ethics in the Infinite Universe. How can we redeem ourselves if Multiverse Immortality is real and subjective death is impossible.
The work is only a skeleton of a more complete concept and in some places a loose collection of unprofessional thoughts. It is a translation from the original language... |
1f02e7b5-f234-4606-bb02-2993208ade76 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Who's welcome to our LessWrong meetups?
As part of announcing meetups publically, it's good to write in the meetup description about what kind of people would likely be a good match for the meetup. I still haven't gotten a good description myself.
How would you describe the kind of people we are in words that are cle... |
709c93dd-5f23-4373-9e01-6f4b0ca5413d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Are current LLMs safe for psychotherapy?
Hi,
I consider using an LLM as a psychotherapist for my mental health. I already have a human psychotherapist but I see him only once a week and my issues are very complex. An LLM such as Gemini 2 is always available and processes large amounts of information more quickly than... |
70e716f5-b430-46df-a7f2-1414608090b2 | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | "In the post 'Four layers of Intellectual Conversation', Eliezer says that both the writer of an idea, and the person writing a critique of that idea, need to expect to have to publicly defend what they say at least one time. Otherwise they can write something stupid and never lose status because they don't have to res... |
b0bdbb4c-25dc-4bac-b7b0-00ab2e263a1f | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Collection of GPT-3 results
I kept seeing all kinds of crazy reports about people's experiences with GPT-3, so I figured that I'd start collecting them.
* first gwern's [crazy collection](https://www.gwern.net/GPT-3) of all kinds of prompts, with GPT-3 generating poetry, summarizing stories, rewriting things in diffe... |
eb2cdedb-6c01-4837-8d0e-ca177f4e35d8 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs | Other | Selecting the Partial State Abstractions of MDPs: A Metareasoning Approach with Deep Reinforcement Learning.
Selecting the Partial State Abstractions of MDPs:
A Metareasoning Approach with Deep Reinforcement Learning
Samer B. Nashed1∗, Justin Svegliato2∗, Abhinav Bhatia1, Stuart Russell2, Shlomo Zilberstein1
Abstract ... |
e54ec9ca-5571-4ea8-9eb1-954f0ae49a3c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Open & Welcome Thread November 2021
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 invite... |
49e8732c-f32a-4f82-bdb3-d9dae0f5e106 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Ann Arbor Meetup - singing
Discussion article for the meetup : Ann Arbor Meetup - singing
WHEN: 26 March 2016 07:00:00PM (-0400)
WHERE: 701 East university Ave Ann arbor, Room 1506
We'll be singing together. Nothing else scheduled.
Someone (great speaking voice (we'll hear his singing this week)) at the l... |
d1c7b31e-6043-49c5-a3ba-1b694d6f9814 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Why we need a new agency to regulate advanced artificial intelligence
[Anton Korinek](https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/akorinek)'s report (December 8, 2021) presents two control problems with advanced AI:
* Direct control, that an AI system does what its operator wants it to do
* Social control, that an AI s... |
9f11a63c-9d2a-4aee-a4f9-988c68aa5cee | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Signalling with T-Shirt slogans
It kind of started when I got this T-shirt as a present two years ago:
It is not just a slogan that is quickly filtered out under the heading 'generic ad-like content'. It invites checking where the error is. It is kind of a challenge - at least for suitably minded persons. Exactly ... |
f1e422db-4634-4e57-919f-cd6a880e312d | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | March 18th: Daily Coronavirus Links
As part of the LessWrong Coronavirus Link Database, Ben, Elizabeth and I are publishing daily update posts with all the new links we are adding each day that we ranked a 3 or above in our importance rankings. Here are all the top links that we added yesterday (March 18th), by topic.... |
751aa095-d24b-4298-84f3-bb9ef353ca99 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/aisafety.info | AI Safety Info | Are there any AI alignment projects which governments could usefully put a very large amount of resources into?
A government program could spend orders of magnitude more funds than [private philanthropy](/?state=8U2Y&question=I%E2%80%99m%20interested%20in%20providing%20significant%20financial%20support%20to%20AI%20ali... |
95e00577-4267-4579-a83a-7766e9d168c2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Apply to the AI Security Bootcamp [Aug 4 - Aug 29]
tl;dr
We're excited to announce AI Security Bootcamp (AISB), a 4-week intensive program designed to bring researchers and engineers up to speed on security fundamentals for AI systems. The program will cover cybersecurity fundamentals (cryptography, networks), AI infr... |
2015e741-c020-4373-9017-b8eeb80a9fce | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Fear as fossil fuel
Previous post: Extraordinary ethics require extraordinary arguments
My blog entries are about a personal battle against depression and anxiety, from the point of view of someone who has been immersed in rationalist/LW ideas and culture for a few years now.
In a chat with my little brother two nig... |
775339a7-8604-47f2-975a-fdcfa12bde1d | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | An Extensible Interactive Interface for Agent Design
1 Introduction
---------------
In AI we identify the correct behavior for robot systems in several ways. A popular way is through reward functions. However, reward functions make a lot of assumptions about the design setting; for example, they are only readily ap... |
3d97f923-eb1b-437b-8f77-da4ef7b8cd3e | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | 200 COP in MI: Interpreting Reinforcement Learning
*This is the ninth post in a sequence called 200 Concrete Open Problems in Mechanistic Interpretability.*[*Start here*](https://www.alignmentforum.org/posts/LbrPTJ4fmABEdEnLf/200-concrete-open-problems-in-mechanistic-interpretability)*, then read in any order. If you ... |
d7921b87-e5c0-4069-858d-d8828f904e8c | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | End-of-the-year fundraiser and grant successes
Our **[winter fundraising drive](https://intelligence.org/2015/12/01/miri-2015-winter-fundraiser/)** has concluded. Thank you all for your support!
Through the month of December, 175 distinct donors gave a total of $351,298. Between this fundraiser and our summer fundra... |
fa2f910c-dca0-47fc-abab-731009530398 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | No Universally Compelling Arguments in Math or Science
Last week, I started a thread on the widespread sentiment that people don't understand the metaethics sequence. One of the things that surprised me most in the thread was this exchange:
Commenter: "I happen to (mostly) agree that there aren't universally compelli... |
59f2f48f-4e2b-4b67-ad5c-9b81f7bd62bf | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Summaries of top forum posts (1st to 7th May 2023)
This is part of a weekly series summarizing the top posts on the EA and LW forums - you can see the full collection here. The first post includes some details on purpose and methodology. Feedback, thoughts, and corrections are welcomed.
If you'd like to receive these... |
26253767-7563-4384-b30e-b387e8c0af6e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | You're Entitled to Arguments, But Not (That Particular) Proof
Followup to: Logical Rudeness
> "Modern man is so committed to empirical knowledge, that he sets the standard for evidence higher than either side in his disputes can attain, thus suffering his disputes to be settled by philosophical arguments as to which... |
f859e00a-58b6-4320-9dd7-14db01073861 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | I’ve written a Fantasy Novel to Promote Effective Altruism
Back in February I got a grant through the extended set of ACX grants to write this. I now have a draft that is sufficiently polished that I’m comfortable showing to the community, though I suspect there will be a lot of things that I will want to change based... |
8dd74b1a-c0e6-4c78-b926-0e4ee6d27860 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Bratislava Meetup XIV.
Discussion article for the meetup : Bratislava Meetup XIV.
WHEN: 30 June 2014 06:00:00PM (+0200)
WHERE: Bistro The Peach, Heydukova 21, Bratislava
The usual place and time. Topic: going meta -- how to get more value from our meetups.
Zvyčajné miesto a čas. Téma: ako z našich stretnu... |
928111b6-c44a-4d9c-a82d-241c932b30d0 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Cheerful one-liners and disjointed anecdotes
It would be good to have a way of telling people what they should expect from jobs - especially "intellectual" jobs - they consider taking. NOT how easy or lousy the work is going to turn out, just what might happen and approximately what do they have to do, so that they wi... |
7d2195d7-41e7-4854-a851-498c48a940ff | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | New chapter in Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence
*[The Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence](http://smile.amazon.com/Cambridge-Handbook-Artificial-Intelligence-ebook/dp/B00JXII7JQ/)* has be... |
424bf6fb-4b0f-43dd-a8dc-44f2ed0b11dd | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What are you reading?
In my short-form, I write:
> [...] This is way more obvious and way more clear in Inadequate Equilibria. Take a problem, a question and deconstruct it completely. It was concise and to the point, I think it's one of the best things Eliezer has written; I cannot recommend it enough.
Just finishe... |
038d99ea-2079-47bc-96c4-87e9053de223 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Rationality Quotes May 2016
Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are:
* Provide sufficient information (URL, title, date, page number, etc.) to enable a reader to find the place where you read the quote, or its original source if available. Do not quote with only a name.
* Post all quotes sep... |
4daffeb3-1e68-4143-bdd7-88fc10e6eea1 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | In Defense of Wrapper-Minds
Recently, there's been a [strong push](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/nyEFg3AuJpdAozmoX) against "[wrapper-minds](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dKTh9Td3KaJ8QW6gw/why-assume-agis-will-optimize-for-fixed-goals)" as a framework. It's argued that there's no specific reason to think that all suff... |
c325c2a1-ebea-497b-806b-98b1efd96d96 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Edinburgh LW meetup Saturday 4th of June, 2pm
Another meetup at the Delhi cafe on Saturday at 2pm (67 Nicolson Street - see http://goo.gl/Wwws0).
No set topic really this time, though suggestions are welcome (for now and for the long-term). Not sure what kind of things would work best in maintaining interest in these... |
a729f681-3713-4ae7-b1f8-2581f6ca9f1f | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | "This is a story about an odd fact about capital project decision making in engineering I noticed and how it might be related to cognitive biases Background
Although I don't work in the field, I was trained as a chemical engineer. A chemical engineer's job is a little different than you might imagine. A chemical engine... |
057321b4-d002-4ce8-a175-717ab215fa0f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | DALL-E by OpenAI
This is a linkpost for https://openai.com/blog/dall-e/
My own take: Cool, not super surprising given GPT-3 and Image GPT. I look forward to seeing what a bigger version of this would do, so that we could get a sense of how much it improves with scale. I'm especially interested in the raven's progress... |
223f7f30-18ce-4bda-9ef2-e605d32fcd5e | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/youtube | Youtube Transcripts | Superintelligence Mod for Civilization V
hi everyone so today we're trying
something a little bit different because
I read that there's recently been
released a mod for the civilization
games which includes AI as a as a
available technology so they've changed
the game so that you can actually
produce super in charge i... |
a28b1a53-8bf9-46e8-8559-fcc6b119ae80 | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | "At least three people have died playing online games for days without rest. People have lost their spouses, jobs, and children to World of Warcraft. If people have the right to play video games - and it's hard to imagine a more fundamental right - then the market is going to respond by supplying the most engaging vide... |
7d6119f8-a4f3-490f-9338-38503eae1f7e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Help create an instrumental rationality "stack ranking"?
I recently heard about SIAI's Rationality Minicamp and thought it sounded cool, but for logistical/expense reasons I won't be going to one.
There are probably lots of people who are interested in improving their instrumental rationality, know about and like Le... |
fb7450df-f6b5-43ea-af3e-d4e755ae64ea | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Planning for Extreme AI Risks
This post should not be taken as a polished recommendation to AI companies and instead should be treated as an informal summary of a worldview. The content is inspired by conversations with a large number of people, so I cannot take credit for any of these ideas.
For a summary of this po... |
869ab175-e03b-4d39-a95f-dfd0cf66f786 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | 2014-15 New Year review
#### 2014 progress
If someone told me at the beginning of 2014 that I would co-found an organization to mitigate technological risks to humanity, I might not have believed them. Thanks Max, Meia, Anthony and Jaan for the great initiative!
I am almost done with my first research project on v... |
3083adb6-f2f2-4929-956c-4393f0273701 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | A Knowledge-based Treatment of Human-Automation Systems
1
Abstract —In a supervisory control system the human agent’s knowledge of past, current, and future system
behavior is critical for system performance. Being able to reason about that knowledge in a precise and
structured manner is central to effective sy... |
6eb1767b-f1a7-4509-8a64-0a3c839bb027 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | EIS VIII: An Engineer’s Understanding of Deceptive Alignment
Part 8 of 12 in the Engineer’s Interpretability Sequence.
As AI safety researchers, we care a lot about deceptive alignment. So what is it? Hubinger et al. (2019) write:
> If the mesa-optimizer has an objective that extends across parameter updates, then i... |
76b1d33c-0a2f-4a19-b2d2-b783bb2ea3e2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Tell me about yourself:
LLMs are aware of their learned behaviors
This is the abstract and introduction of our new paper, with some discussion of implications for AI Safety at the end.
Authors: Jan Betley*, Xuchan Bao*, Martín Soto*, Anna Sztyber-Betley, James Chua, Owain Evans (*Equal Contribution).
Abstract
We st... |
9d56ff48-2a60-45b3-863d-0d17be4c0eaa | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Concave Utility Question
This post will just be a concrete math question. I am interested in this question because I have recently come tor reject the independence axiom of VNM, and am thus playing with some weaker versions.
Let Ω.mjx-chtml {display: inline-block; line-height: 0; text-indent: 0; text-align: left; tex... |
f658ebdc-17e2-4d37-bef9-cbb757d521fc | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What's the expected QALY (quality-adjusted life years) loss per capita due to SARS-COV-2? QALY gain of increasing ICU capacity? Of buying new ventilators?
In my online echo chambers and news bubbles it seems that a lot of effort worldwide is spent on obtaining more ventilators and increasing ICU capacity. Given that 7... |
01f3adf5-b3dd-4ed1-b263-d9ffee474b5a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Schelling Orders
None |
6e13ef35-7b95-4afe-8fc8-49194291d787 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | Decision Theory
Decision theory and artificial intelligence typically try to compute something resembling
$$\underset{a \ \in \ Actions}{\mathrm{argmax}} \ \ f(a).$$
I.e., maximize some function of the action. This tends to assume that we can detangle things enough to see outcomes as a function of actions.
For e... |
78fdbf8d-7762-4a47-a5e0-20c17891f8b5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Meetup : Berlin social
Discussion article for the meetup : Berlin social
WHEN: 23 March 2013 05:00:00PM (+0100)
WHERE: S Wuhletal, Berlin
We're meeting at my house again for a meetup on Saturday, March 23rd. Everyone is welcome. Please check the thread on our mailing list for details and the precise location.
Prim... |
f8a19547-6b14-4ba7-9d06-d04ac11a13e7 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | [Linkpost] New multi-modal Deepmind model fusing Chinchilla with images and videos
Seems to be flying under the radar so far. Maybe because it looks more like incremental progress at first glance, similar to what, for example, [Aleph Alpha has done](https://medium.com/aleph-alpha-blog/the-end-of-the-era-imagenet-9f10b... |
bb9d851a-f4c3-4992-9f64-45cdacab6047 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Victoria BC meet-up Monday May 23rd 5pm
This little town doesn't seem to have much in the way of a lesswronger presence (search turns up me and one other user who hasn't been active since 2009), but damnit I'm here right now and I may as well give it a try!
Therefore I'll be at the Starbucks near the Market on Yates ... |
29ccf0bc-b7b5-48e6-8c77-005a3617c8a9 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Podcast with Divia Eden and Ronny Fernandez on the strong orthogonality thesis
On my side podcast, ["The Filan Cabinet"](https://thefilancabinet.com/), I invited Ronny Fernandez and Divia Eden to talk about the strong orthogonality thesis, and whether it's true. Seems like people here might also be interested. Podcast... |
ed491c7a-c46d-4ee0-b4bf-83cfd76a64f5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Voluntourism
Someone recently asked me what I thought of the idea of using extra vacation days for volunteering, from an effective altruism perspective. Here's what I wrote to them:
In the effective altruism community people tend to be relatively down on this approach. It's relatively common for, say, a church group ... |
8bc3322b-d2d7-4559-8817-28edcf5c240b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Mental Illness Is Not Evidence Against Abuse Allegations
ETA: this post was pretty much refuted by comments below.
I've noticed a situation several times that I think deserves attention.
Somebody goes around saying they've been the victim of mistreatment. But they seem mentally ill. Whether or not you know of a diag... |
31c49fa9-c210-4854-84b6-1c2f74b8188a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | If you are a Machine. A shocking finding.
Let's assume we are all deterministic machines from evolution. Many of yous already believe in Evolution. And many of yous already are *starting to see from the AI Machine Learning field just how much of a deterministic Machine we really are as we open up the human brain, an... |
fdc925ba-918e-4c60-8b18-463feea14ae8 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | TASRA: a Taxonomy and Analysis of Societal-Scale Risks from AI
1 Introduction
---------------
A few weeks ago, a public statement was signed by leading scientists and executives in AI, stating that “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pa... |
1aa043d7-a9ad-4c1c-999f-cf79a308fff5 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Robopocalypse author cites Yudkowsky's paperclip scenario
In this Bloggingheads clip. Apparently the book is going to be made into a big movie by Steven Spielburg. |
c85486ea-fd3e-4278-8b37-9db57875fc55 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Practical advice for secure virtual communication post easy AI voice-cloning?
So, I saw this video https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1enq52b/a_clip_from_the_gpt4o_safety_card_where_the_voice/
And, I don't know the context, or if it is even real, but it seems believable on priors, and certainly somethin... |
8dd988a6-9151-446d-94f6-dbc9af424e12 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A Good Explanation of Differential Gears
There is a very good video from 1937 by Jam Handy. It explains why we need differential gears and how they work.
I think the video is a masterpiece of an explanation. I recommend you watch it, not because understanding differentials is essential (though that doesn't hurt), but... |
3b0ac7b1-5e33-4daf-93eb-7b3c39158823 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | Who should we interview for The 80,000 Hours Podcast?
We'd love ideas for 1) who to interview and 2) what topics to cover (even if you don't have a particular expert in mind for that topic) on The 80,000 Hours Podcast.
Some prompts that might help generate guest ideas:
* What 'big ideas' books have you read in the ... |
80599bd9-019c-4d2e-8289-876797302d2e | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | How much impact can any one man have?
Because in truth, had there been no Gutenberg, the printing press would have been discovered in (or imported to) Europe - eventually. Would it have been five years later? 10 years later? 100 years later? Impossible to know. But, we should think, eventually, it would have been.
Ye... |
f5d74431-03b8-43f4-b454-e958a40d7567 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [LINK] Irrational Robot Billionaire Freedom Fighters
From Scott Adams' blog. (I am not endorsing his ideas. Heck, he does not endorse his own ideas, either.)
His summary of the hard takeoff:
> You might also imagine some sort of Terminator future where the robots assert their dominance and lay waste to humans. That... |
647d8c9f-772c-489e-8b6a-f4b776078b3c | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Putanumonit - Discarding empathy to save the world
|
cfa79527-339a-4682-86b9-a5629886625a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | A couple of questions about Conjecture's Cognitive Emulation proposal
Introduction
Recently, Conjecture proposed a conception of a modular AI architecture, with each module being interpretable, having limited intellect, and functionally emulating the human mind. They called this concept Cognitive Emulation or CoEm.
... |
591966b5-dc7a-4b5a-a4eb-3a0a98ab4947 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | "Wanting" and "liking"
Written as a result of AI Safety Camp Virtual 2023. Thanks to the following people for feedback and helpful conversations: Oliver Bridge, Tim Gothard, Rasmus Jensen, Linda Linsefors.[1]
This post reviews the literature on "wanting" and "liking", two primary components of what is commonly referr... |
6e4734bd-4e6e-4429-880a-bc8a9ec3688b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Compartmentalizing: Effective Altruism and Abortion
Cross-posted on my blog and the effective altruism forum with some minor tweaks; apologies if some of the formatting hasn't copied across. The article was written with an EA audience in mind but it is essentially one about rationality and consequentialism.
Summary: ... |
4ea53a49-1bba-4200-8efa-91eeaaf8e0a9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [SEQ RERUN] Words as Hidden Inferences
Today's post, Words as Hidden Inferences was originally published on 03 February 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
> The mere presence of words can influence thinking, sometimes misleading it.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).... |
e6180183-9c5e-4ddc-83db-43436ef4745a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Some Theses on Motivational and Directional Feedback
Note: Probably reinventing the wheel here. Heavily skewed to my areas of interest. Your results may vary.
1. Feedback can be decomposed into motivational ("Keep doing what you're doing!") and directional ("Here's what you should do differently . . .").
1. Ther... |
b3d77a1b-72bb-492a-8140-b2685123a6b9 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Boundaries vs Frames
This post is partially in response to Critch's boundaries sequence. My best guess is that he would agree with most of it in theory, but disagree with some of it in practice due to tradeoffs with other considerations in defining the concepts.
Boundaries and Frames
Imagine a world consisting of so... |
9c6d4518-731b-4665-869c-9869b8c944b4 | LDJnr/LessWrong-Amplify-Instruct | LessWrong | "If you're interested in learning rationality, where should you start? Remember, instrumental rationality is about making decisions that get you what you want -- surely there are some lessons that will help you more than others.
You might start with the most famous ones, which tend to be the ones popularized by Kahnema... |
c7c84146-0466-4f88-bfd8-7c2e665c723f | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Expected futility for humans
Previously, Taw published an article entitled ["Post your utility function"](/lw/zv/post_your_utility_function/), after having tried (apparently unsuccessfully) to work out "what his utility function was". I suspect that there is something to be gained by trying to work out what your prior... |
91e33633-bf3c-462a-ab91-545d74a0fcaf | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Request for comment on a novel reference work of understanding
Summary of Post / TLDR;
* Idealogs is a new kind of reference work for explaining complex, controversial topics.
* The objective of the project is to establish, preserve, and share the sum total of mankind’s understanding.
* The problems we are focused ... |
d7d9ec05-1363-46e1-a1ab-f5d90321f907 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Distributed whistleblowing
Update: This is a living document. Given below is an older version of this document. Click link for latest version.
2025-04-13
DISCLAIMER
* This document is written quickly and contains opinions I may change quickly, as I get new info.
* This document contains politically sensitive info... |
4123f77b-805e-48cf-ac6d-f222a827c2a7 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | AI and the Big Nuclear Discontinuity
*By Katja Grace, 9 January 2015*
[As we’ve discussed before](http://aiimpacts.wpengine.com/the-biggest-technological-leaps/ "The Biggest Technological Leaps"), the advent of nuclear weapons was a [striking](http://aiimpacts.wpengine.com/discontinuity-from-nuclear-weapons/ "Discon... |
5c7489f5-c65a-4136-8dfb-da4e7dbf9996 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Moral Weight Doesn't Accrue Linearly
This post: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/26/cortical-neuron-number-matches-intuitive-perceptions-of-moral-value-across-animals/
begs a very important question as part of its central premise. Even given the idea that animals have moral weight, it does not follow that there exi... |
814f2d25-739c-4b8d-af23-5bdbd1264b90 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/blogs | Blogs | Russell and Norvig on Friendly AI
[*AI: A Modern Approach*](http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/) is by far the dominant textbook in the field. It is used in 1200 universities, and is currently the [22nd most-cited](http://citeseer.ist.ps... |
712d5172-01e4-4d6b-ada9-ea9dfcc11845 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs | Other | Algorithmic Decision-Making and the Control Problem
Introduction The recent trend toward automation by machine learning and artificial intelligence systems raises in a new guise old questions about the role of humans in human-machine systems (Johannsen 1982; Margulies and Zemanek 1982) . The difficulties involved in s... |
18824ae8-f8bd-4e17-8c60-313b517c8acb | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Too Smart for My Own Good
Originally posted at sandymaguire.me
I want to share a piece of ridiculously obvious advice today.
I've got a bad habit, which is being too smart for my own good. Which is to say, when I want to learn something new, too often I spend my time making tools to help me learn, rather than just l... |
eacea197-a7b4-440f-9640-37e2fba7a880 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What are you looking for in a Less Wrong post?
My model of "What LW as a community considers a good post" is not accurate enough for my taste. Sometimes I don't understand the karma/number of comments (or lack thereof) of some posts, and it seems rude or arrogant to ask (whether it's someone else's post or one of mine... |
ee73eb4e-e9d0-46f5-af28-c009f928cc26 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | It's important to know when to stop: Mechanistic Exploration of Gemma 2 List Generation
TL;DR
* Small Language Models are getting better an at an accelerated pace, enabling the study of behaviors that just a few months ago were only observed in SOTA models. This, paired with the release of the suite of Sparse Auto... |
92fa2f28-0758-4fbd-9b89-c170405c915f | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Acknowledging Rationalist Angst
Not all advice can work for everyone, and not all techniques are universally applicable. That being said, here’s a post that would have been incredibly useful for me-three-years-ago to have read, and hopeful it strikes home for some people who read it. I’ll start with drawing your atten... |
68f0e39b-2d4a-4a72-a79a-e3c146571411 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Convince me that humanity is as doomed by AGI as Yudkowsky et al., seems to believe
I’ve been very heavily involved in the (online) rationalist community for a few months now, and like many others, I have found myself quite freaked out by the apparent despair/lack of hope that seems to be sweeping the community. When ... |
40a68eb9-4873-49a2-b39c-5ddfd1ba3609 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Latent Variables and Model Mis-Specification
*Posted as part of the AI Alignment Forum sequence on* [*Value Learning*](https://www.alignmentforum.org/s/4dHMdK5TLN6xcqtyc)*.*
> **Rohin's note:** So far, we’ve [seen](https://www.alignmentforum.org/s/4dHMdK5TLN6xcqtyc/p/h9DesGT3WT9u2k7Hr) that ambitious value learning ... |
8c8ae2ae-d8d0-4780-9584-3ce73ad62017 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/special_docs | Other | Improving Verifiability in AI Development
While a growing number of organizations have articulated ethics principles to guide their AI development process, it can be difficult for those outside of an organization to verify whether the organization’s AI systems reflect those principles in practice. This ambiguity makes... |
7b388b5b-78e0-42e7-8142-1f6b2e083563 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What is scaffolding?
This is an article in the featured articles series from AISafety.info. AISafety.info writes AI safety intro content. We'd appreciate any feedback.
The most up-to-date version of this article is on our website, along with 300+ other articles on AI existential safety.
"Scaffolding" is a fuzzy ter... |
fc657316-e048-45bc-ad19-f32432be4d64 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | [link] "The Happiness Code" - New York Times on CFAR
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/magazine/the-happiness-code.html
Long. Mostly quite positive, though does spend a little while rolling its eyes at the Eliezer/MIRI connection and the craziness of taking things like cryonics and polyamory seriously. |
e5179447-d286-45cb-aa8f-6fc2acf2cc8a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | What are the simplest questions in applied rationality where you don't know the answer to?
In the podcast between Spencer Greenberg and Buck Shlegeris, Taking pleasure in being wrong, Buck says:
I think that when you are learning subjects something that you should really be taken your eye out for is the simplest que... |
71055c74-9c9d-4e5d-9a92-98570b62f924 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Monthly Shorts 4/23
Top recommendation of the month: Pages 42-44 of the Joint Inspector General Inspections Guide, used by Inspectors General in the Department of Defense to understand and analyze policy failures. They identify a simple framework for understanding failure to follow policy (which is often, in the DoD, ... |
c32d7d53-1282-45e3-9922-757d5055f7c3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Propaganda-Bot: A Sketch of a Possible RSI
Someone asked me for an example of Recursive Self Improvement (RSI). I tried writing a sketch of a possible future where things go bad because of AI RSI. Here is my contribution to the Sci-Fi genre: ASI cautionary tales...
----------------------------------------
Let's supp... |
cc582028-1ab5-43fd-b03e-bf35e29141a3 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Problem posting
I'm experiencing a problem trying to post a text to the topic session of LessWrong discussion.
When I write a small text (like this one) it works fine.
When I copy part of the text I intend to publish, and try submitting, still fine.
But if I copy most of it, or the entire thing, when I click submit... |
860c60ad-29c1-42f0-9ca3-4c255dbc0bab | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Q&A #2 with Singularity Institute Executive Director
Just over a month ago I posted a call for questions about the Singularity Institute. The reaction to my video response was positive enough that I'd like to do another one — though I can't promise video this time. I think that the Singularity Institute has a lot of t... |
d25406a5-16ac-4b53-aa56-d8f4c06d3f62 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Complete Class: Consequentialist Foundations
The fundamentals of Bayesian thinking have been justified in many ways over the years. Most people here have heard of the VNM axioms and Dutch Book arguments. Far fewer, I think, have heard of the Complete Class Theorems (CCT).
Here, I explain why I think of CCT as a more ... |
15599bb9-688d-4500-8a59-5a011d8520a2 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The sentence structure of mathematics
"Alice pushes Bob."
"Cat drinks milk."
"Comment hurts feelings."
These are all different sentences that describe wildly different things. People are very different from cats, and cats are very different from comments. Bob, milk, and feelings don't have much to do with each othe... |
84c6e344-8d49-4fd9-897d-df6b5fa18f29 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/eaforum | Effective Altruism Forum | AI policy & governance in Australia: notes from an initial discussion
People affiliated with EA who are interested in improving AI policy and governance in Australia have been meeting to learn from each other, create a shared understanding, and investigate opportunities to coordinate our impact.
We're sharing these ... |
1b32c54f-343a-45df-9885-8d258646774e | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Five neglected work areas that could reduce AI risk
Tldr: We identify five areas of work that should be further investigated:
1. Helping information aggregators scale during advanced AI development,
2. Improving internal AI deployment in policy organizations,
3. Researching the institutional design for evaluating ali... |
224b0930-c6b5-4fe6-9665-208475795237 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/alignmentforum | Alignment Forum | Disagreement with Paul: alignment induction
I had a discussion with [Paul Christiano](https://www.lesswrong.com/users/paulfchristiano), about his [Iterated Amplification and Distillation](https://ai-alignment.com/iterated-distillation-and-amplification-157debfd1616) scheme. We had a disagreement, a disagreement that I... |
5194552b-c058-4eff-b266-bca9ccc4984a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | I think I've found the source of what's been bugging me about "Friendly AI"
In the comments on this post (which in retrospect I feel was not very clearly written), someone linked me to a post Eliezer wrote five years ago, "The Hidden Complexity of Wishes." After reading it, I think I've figured out why the term "Frien... |
ca2ebf55-d62f-480c-970b-0b1ee8421a04 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/lesswrong | LessWrong | Brain-centredness and mind uploading
The naïve way of understanding mind uploading is "we take the connectome of a brain, including synaptic connection weights and characters, and emulate it in a computer". However, people want their *personalities* to be uploaded, not just brains. That is more than just replicating t... |
dbdee454-0f97-40d4-9da0-5b1e67f59a31 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Explaining Reinforcement Learning Policies through Counterfactual Trajectories
1 Introduction
---------------
In most of the benchmarks where reinforcement learning (RL) has shown impressive results (Bellemare et al., [2013](#bib.bib11 "The arcade learning environment: an evaluation platform for general agents")), ... |
bd55ad3a-0c6d-4cf6-a43c-e6e9e3368546 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Grokking “Semi-informative priors over AI timelines”
Notes:
* I give visual explanations for Tom Davidson’s report, Semi-informative priors over AI timelines, and summarise the key assumptions and intuitions
* The diagrams can be found here – you can click on the boxes to get linked to the part of the report that ... |
d3e3cbc7-1114-4954-9b08-97b8976a4643 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Simple Truth
> I remember this paper I wrote on existentialism. My teacher gave it back with an F. She’d underlined true and truth wherever it appeared in the essay, probably about twenty times, with a question mark beside each. She wanted to know what I meant by truth.
>
> —Danielle Egan, journalist
This essay ... |
51812ec8-95b4-42ff-b47d-5a6212a3df9a | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | The Market Singularity: A New Perspective
"Do you want to be rich, or do you want to be king? — The founder's dilemma.
As we approach the technological singularity, the sometimes applicable trade-off between wealth (being rich) and control (being king) may extend into the realm of AI and governance.
The prevailing d... |
e7832769-c118-4c54-9c2f-63d20dd9702b | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Wired on: "DOGE personnel with admin access to Federal Payment System"
I haven't looked into this in detail, and I'm not actually sure how unique a situation this is. But, it updated me on "institutional changes to the US that might be quite bad[1]", and it seemed good if LessWrong folk did some sort of Orient Step on... |
43039f33-d4d6-4b92-84c8-52d6479ed122 | trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k | LessWrong | Could we set a resolution/stopper for the upper bound of the utility function of an AI?
My thought is that, instead of an AI purely trying to maximize a utility function, we give it a goal of reaching a certain utility, and then each time it reaches that goal, it shuts off and we can decide if we want to set the utili... |
c12d283d-5e51-45fb-9f0a-7280b4b18ba6 | StampyAI/alignment-research-dataset/arxiv | Arxiv | Hierarchically Decoupled Imitation for Morphological Transfer.
1 Introduction
---------------
How should one use Reinforcement Learning (RL) to train their new four-legged walking robot? Training a robot from scratch is often infeasible as current RL algorithms typically require millions (Schulman et al., [2017](#b... |
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