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https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fgGPw6qJiphTejJTh/electoral-systems | fgGPw6qJiphTejJTh | Electoral Systems | RedStateBlueState | Crossposting from my substack.
I figured I would crosspost to LessWrong since electoral systems seem like the type of thing rationalists would be interested in.
This is the latest post in my constitutional design series. It is the quintessential topic of constitutional design, the one that everyone loves to talk about.... | 2024-10-20 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JxsJdBnL2gG5oa2Li/overcoming-bias-anthology | JxsJdBnL2gG5oa2Li | Overcoming Bias Anthology | arjun-panickssery | Part 1: Our Thinking
Near and Far
1 Abstract/Distant Future Bias
2 Abstractly Ideal, Concretely Selfish
3 We Add Near, Average Far
4 Why We Don't Know What We Want
5 We See the Sacred from Afar, to See It Together
6 The Future Seems Shiny
7 Doubting My Far Mind
Disagreement
8 Beware the Inside View
9 Are Meta Views Out... | 2024-10-20 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9PirQrvbvzAiDrq5J/advice-on-communicating-concisely | 9PirQrvbvzAiDrq5J | Advice on Communicating Concisely | bioluminescent-darkness | Many people I encounter regularly tell me that I have difficulties communicating spoken ideas in a concise, timely, fashion. I've been reading Less Wrong since I was fifteen, and ask because its likely that people here have useful suggestions. Are there any books on communicating concisely that I ought to read? | 2024-10-20 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DfBQbxqQjqgehjJsx/d-acc-ai-security-salon | DfBQbxqQjqgehjJsx | D/acc AI Security Salon | allison-duettmann | If computer security was important pre AI, it has become critical now. At the same time, AI progress has also made its offense defense balance less predictable.
AI allows for both, better, and easier attack generation and execution but also to harden our defenses. The stakes are high, especially because what is to be... | 2024-10-19 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9LBB39cn3QPKWKbg5/who-should-have-been-killed-and-contains-neato-who-else | 9LBB39cn3QPKWKbg5 | Who Should Have Been Killed, and Contains Neato? Who Else Could It Be, but that Villain Magneto! | Ace Delgado | In 'X-men', Professor X is entirely morally culpable for all of the death, destruction, and antagonism towards mutants wrought by Magneto, because again and again Professor X fails to kill Magneto when he has his seemingly limitless set of chances.
The fact that Professor X seems to do so out of a combination of loyalt... | 2024-10-19 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XCKg2e39J2iMZKC5K/if-far-uv-is-so-great-why-isn-t-it-everywhere | XCKg2e39J2iMZKC5K | If far-UV is so great, why isn't it everywhere? | austin-chen | null | 2024-10-19 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MSRJvdBcRbDM4Pm9W/what-if-agi-was-already-accidentally-created-in-2019 | MSRJvdBcRbDM4Pm9W | What if AGI was already accidentally created in 2019? [Fictional story] | alice-wanderland | I was thinking about recent historical events on earth, and things seemed to be going in awfully convenient ways if I were an AI that needed to gain power. So I asked Claude to help me write up my thoughts (which I modified, see how here) in narrative form for fun!
(The more detailed analysis in non-narrative form is h... | 2024-10-19 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rvDHremM9mo46be3G/jailbreaking-chatgpt-and-claude-using-web-api-context | rvDHremM9mo46be3G | Jailbreaking ChatGPT and Claude using Web API Context Injection | jason-l | Disclaimer
The following content is for educational and research purposes only. It is not intended to encourage or guide any illegal activity. The synthesis of certain substances is illegal under various international and national laws. Model developers have been notified.
tl;dr
This is a short post on an attempt to el... | 2024-10-21 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zqZ5aadL5rDExiJaE/what-actual-bad-outcome-has-ethics-based-rlhf-ai-alignment | zqZ5aadL5rDExiJaE | What actual bad outcome has "ethics-based" RLHF AI Alignment already prevented? | Roko | What actually bad outcome has "ethics-based" AI Alignment prevented in the present or near-past? By "ethics-based" AI Alignment I mean optimization directed at LLM-derived AIs that intends to make them safer, more ethical, harmless, etc.
Not future AIs, AIs that already exist. What bad thing would have happened if they... | 2024-10-19 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iMamkMeSGnye3bJv3/what-s-a-good-book-for-a-technically-minded-11-year-old | iMamkMeSGnye3bJv3 | What's a good book for a technically-minded 11-year old? | sustrik | "I, Robot" comes to mind. What else? | 2024-10-19 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mj68CsoLDoCfTgeiw/methodology-contagious-beliefs | mj68CsoLDoCfTgeiw | Methodology: Contagious Beliefs | james-brown | Simulating Political Alignment
This methodology concerns a simulation tool which has been developed to model how beliefs, that are not directly related, end up correlated in political identities. It models the transmission of beliefs between nodes on a static hexagonal grid, based on a valence matrix. This methodology ... | 2024-10-19 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/M3KttpfR4ddMkmKr4/ai-prejudices-practical-implications | M3KttpfR4ddMkmKr4 | AI Prejudices: Practical Implications | PeterMcCluskey | I see widespread dismissal of AI capabilities. This slows down the
productivity gains from AI, and is a major contributor to disagreements
about the risks of AI.
It reminds me of prejudice against various types of biological minds.
I will try to minimize the moralizing about fairness in this post, and
focus more on sel... | 2024-10-19 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4yWyccoTbsu7yuqnD/start-an-upper-room-uv-installation-company | 4yWyccoTbsu7yuqnD | Start an Upper-Room UV Installation Company? | jkaufman | While this post touches on biosecurity it's a personal post and I'm
not speaking for my employer
If you want to prevent airborne spread of diseases you have a few
options:
Filter breath (masks, PAPRs)
Replace the air (ventilation)
Clean the air (filters, UV light)
Masks, fans, and air filters are widely available, but ... | 2024-10-19 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nnvn6kaBLajiicH8e/sabotage-evaluations-for-frontier-models | nnvn6kaBLajiicH8e | Sabotage Evaluations for Frontier Models | david-duvenaud | This is a linkpost for a new research paper from the Alignment Evaluations team at Anthropic and other researchers, introducing a new suite of evaluations of models' abilities to undermine measurement, oversight, and decision-making. Paper link.
Abstract:
Sufficiently capable models could subvert human oversight and de... | 2024-10-18 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LtE3EkJtfdoJGh97k/how-i-d-like-alignment-to-get-done-as-of-2024-10-18 | LtE3EkJtfdoJGh97k | How I'd like alignment to get done (as of 2024-10-18) | TristanTrim | Preamble
My alignment proposal involves aligning an encoding of human-friendly values and then turning on a self-improving AGI with that encoding as its target. Obviously this involve "aligning an encoding of human-friendly values" and also "turning on a self-improving AGI with a specific target", two things we current... | 2024-10-18 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/G4ywChWbeefb4x3jb/the-daydication-technique | G4ywChWbeefb4x3jb | the Daydication technique | chaosmage | I came up with a technique that I have derived much benefit from; what kids call a "lifehack" these days. I have done this for many months, found it extremely useful and the usefulness has been rising fairly steadily as I got better at it. All the friends I could get to try it gave very good feedback as well, so I hope... | 2024-10-18 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MwYLnBzn4YpyJZ7Z6/d-and-d-sci-coliseum-arena-of-data-evaluation-and-ruleset | MwYLnBzn4YpyJZ7Z6 | D&D.Sci Coliseum: Arena of Data Evaluation and Ruleset | aphyer | This is a follow-up to last week's D&D.Sci scenario: if you intend to play that, and haven't done so yet, you should do so now before spoiling yourself.
There is a web interactive here you can use to test your answer, and generation code available here if you're interested, or you can read on for the ruleset and scores... | 2024-10-29 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3DCYRY7jsb5S5etks/are-there-more-than-12-paths-to-superintelligence | 3DCYRY7jsb5S5etks | Are there more than 12 paths to Superintelligence? | p4rziv4l | Has anyone seen a more detailed AI endgame scenario tree than this? Interesting part after 13:05. | 2024-10-18 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Tzbvdp5rhM4L8aSKL/low-probability-estimation-in-language-models | Tzbvdp5rhM4L8aSKL | Low Probability Estimation in Language Models | gabriel-wu | ARC recently released our first empirical paper: Estimating the Probabilities of Rare Language Model Outputs. In this work, we construct a simple setting for low probability estimation — single-token argmax sampling in transformers — and use it to compare the performance of various estimation methods. ARC views low pro... | 2024-10-18 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qt4vTGjj4mwAMwDsr/the-mysterious-trump-buyers-on-polymarket | qt4vTGjj4mwAMwDsr | The Mysterious Trump Buyers on Polymarket | jorge-velez | How four accounts have shifted the election probabilities narrative
As the US Presidential Election approaches, all eyes are on who will become the next president - Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump. In early October, many analysts believed both candidates had a relatively equal chance of wi... | 2024-10-18 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gQDhqXepYdxWC7gRY/a-short-project-on-mamba-grokking-and-interpretability | gQDhqXepYdxWC7gRY | A short project on Mamba: grokking & interpretability | alejandro-tlaie-boria | Epistemic status: I've worked on this project for ~20h, on my free time and using only a Colab notebook.
Executive summary
I trained a minimalistic implementation of Mamba (details below) on the modular addition task. I found that:
This non-transformer-based model can also exhibit grokking (i.e., the model learns to ge... | 2024-10-18 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hrcYTMyjkHzwxzPdA/species-as-canonical-referents-of-super-organisms | hrcYTMyjkHzwxzPdA | Species as Canonical Referents of Super-Organisms | randomwalks | A species is a reproductively isolated population. In essence, it consists of organisms which can only breed with each other, so its ability to self-replicate is entirely self-contained. In practice, the abstraction only applies well to macroflora and macrofauna, which is still enough to inform our intuitions of super-... | 2024-10-18 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K9AcoesAGsCrKNmnJ/longevity-ai-and-cognitive-research-hackathon-mit | K9AcoesAGsCrKNmnJ | Longevity, AI, and Cognitive Research Hackathon @ MIT | ekkolapto | Hello! First post on LessWrong. I'm posting about this hackathon but I would appreciate genuine feedback on the concept.
A 3-day experimental hackathon focused on producing high-yielding research ideas in unconventional computing, longevity, and cognition. We want participants to explore how unconventional computing me... | 2024-10-22 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8S24JaEKdfjCqZ6Z3/on-intentionality-or-towards-a-more-inclusive-concept-of | 8S24JaEKdfjCqZ6Z3 | On Intentionality, or: Towards a More Inclusive Concept of Lying | Kalciphoz | Intentional actions may be contrasted with unintentional actions, which are generally the result of either instinct or accident. More precisely, we may say that unintentional actions are either the result of some unconscious cognitive process that culminates in that action (eg. habits, instincts), or they are not, as i... | 2024-10-18 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/L3YkTBNrkcbed5TsX/nao-updates-fall-2024 | L3YkTBNrkcbed5TsX | NAO Updates, Fall 2024 | jkaufman | null | 2024-10-18 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4PpRp589zJGEbDhxX/are-we-dropping-the-ball-on-recommendation-ais | 4PpRp589zJGEbDhxX | Are we dropping the ball on Recommendation AIs? | charbel-raphael-segerie | "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us."
— Marshall McLuhan
TL;DR: This post is a two-page introduction to risks associated with recommendation AI. The negative externalities of recommendation AI seem neglected, and there might be comparatively effective work at improving governance and deploying better ... | 2024-10-23 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hhcS3dYZwxGqYCGbx/linkpost-hawkish-nationalism-vs-international-ai-power-and | hhcS3dYZwxGqYCGbx | [Linkpost] Hawkish nationalism vs international AI power and benefit sharing | kryjak | TLDR: In response to Leopold Aschenbrenner’s ‘Situational Awareness’ and its accelerationist national ambitions, we argue against the claim that artificial superintelligence will inevitably be weaponised and turn its country of origin into an untouchable hegemony. Not only do we see this narrative as extremely dangerou... | 2024-10-18 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/YBCrF25QSwbmF3yo3/you-re-playing-a-rough-game | YBCrF25QSwbmF3yo3 | You're Playing a Rough Game | jkaufman | In general, we don't want our kids (10y, 8y) to hit each other.
Learning to control your impulses is an important skill, and resorting
to violence is usually a substitute for other skills we're prefer them
to practice (understanding what the other person wants, negotiating).
Also they could hurt each other.
On the othe... | 2024-10-17 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zSNLvRBhyphwuYdeC/ai-86-just-think-of-the-potential | zSNLvRBhyphwuYdeC | AI #86: Just Think of the Potential | Zvi | Dario Amodei is thinking about the potential. The result is a mostly good essay called Machines of Loving Grace, outlining what can be done with ‘powerful AI’ if we had years of what was otherwise relative normality to exploit it in several key domains, and we avoided negative outcomes and solved the control and alignm... | 2024-10-17 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XjRk3q67SWHj4igHH/understanding-bureaucracy | XjRk3q67SWHj4igHH | understanding bureaucracy | dhruvmethi | Successful organizations maximize the formula shown below:
Meaningful OutputResources Spent
Meaningful output: meaningful output is any output aligned with the organization’s purpose. For example, Feed My Starving Children’s purpose is to deliver food to impoverished areas. A meaningful output for them is a successful ... | 2024-10-17 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WeLupp3b8FxzAcq3F/concrete-benefits-of-making-predictions | WeLupp3b8FxzAcq3F | Concrete benefits of making predictions | jonnyspicer | Your mind is a prediction machine, constantly trying to anticipate the world around you and altering its forecasts based on new information. It’s always doing this as a background process. But what would happen if you deliberately trained this skill? Could you get better at predicting your projects, your life, and the ... | 2024-10-17 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/r2LojHBs3kriafZWi/arithmetic-is-an-underrated-world-modeling-technology | r2LojHBs3kriafZWi | Arithmetic is an underrated world-modeling technology | dynomight | Of all the cognitive tools our ancestors left us, what’s best? Society seems to think pretty highly of arithmetic. It’s one of the first things we learn as children. So I think it’s weird that only a tiny percentage of people seem to know how to actually use arithmetic. Or maybe even understand what arithmetic is for. ... | 2024-10-17 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/roL7BchNM75ew5ntG/the-computational-complexity-of-circuit-discovery-for-inner | roL7BchNM75ew5ntG | The Computational Complexity of Circuit Discovery for Inner Interpretability | bogdan-ionut-cirstea | Authors: Federico Adolfi, Martina G. Vilas, Todd Wareham.
Abstract:
Many proposed applications of neural networks in machine learning, cognitive/brain science, and society hinge on the feasibility of inner interpretability via circuit discovery. This calls for empirical and theoretical explorations of viable algorithmi... | 2024-10-17 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2Gy9tfjmKwkYbF9BY/automation-collapse | 2Gy9tfjmKwkYbF9BY | Automation collapse | Geoffrey Irving | Summary: If we validate automated alignment research through empirical testing, the safety assurance work will still need to be done by humans, and will be similar to that needed for human-written alignment algorithms.
Three levels of automated AI safety
Automating AI safety means developing some algorithm which takes ... | 2024-10-21 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vrouyBjmtSwp5sWd6/is-there-a-big-dictionary-somewhere-with-all-your-jargon-and | vrouyBjmtSwp5sWd6 | is there a big dictionary somewhere with all your jargon and acronyms and whatnot? | avery-liu | it would help newcomers | 2024-10-17 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dbSpJPdu9thNyibow/is-there-a-known-method-to-find-others-who-came-across-the | dbSpJPdu9thNyibow | Is there a known method to find others who came across the same potential infohazard without spoiling it to the public? | hive | Say (in the extreme case) you are Einstein in the moment where he realized that E=mc², and you think so far ahead that you can imagine the nuclear bomb. You don't know if it is possible to build, but you decide to keep your work secret. As the field of physics advances, other will come across the same insight. How can ... | 2024-10-17 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xFZvs4dmkF8mjkLb5/not-all-biases-are-equal-a-study-of-sycophancy-and-bias-in | xFZvs4dmkF8mjkLb5 | Not all biases are equal - a study of sycophancy and bias in fine-tuned LLMs | kryjak | This is a blogpost version of my AI Safety Fundamentals project report. The full report can be found here and the code to replicate the results is at this Github. Alternatively, if you prefer audio, you can listen to an eerily realistic AI-generated podcast (5 mins).
I will be grateful for any feedback and criticism, p... | 2024-11-11 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/A3Np3fKkN4ogYdMWj/it-is-time-to-start-war-gaming-for-agi | A3Np3fKkN4ogYdMWj | It is time to start war gaming for AGI | yanni | In this episode of the Making Sense podcast with Sam Harris, Barton Gellman from The Brennan Center For Justice discusses how he "organized five nonpartisan tabletop exercises premised on an authoritarian candidate winning the presidency to test the resilience of democratic institutions".
"The 175 participants across f... | 2024-10-17 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2uzswrSWMGWEcRFFy/reinforcement-learning-essential-step-towards-agi-or | 2uzswrSWMGWEcRFFy | Reinforcement Learning: Essential Step Towards AGI or Irrelevant? | Double | A friend of mine thinks that RL is a dead end: LLMs are much better at problem solving, exploration, and exploitation than any RL algorithm. And I agree that LLMs are better than RL on RL's tasks: companies even have LLMs controlling robots nowadays.
The part where we disagree is that I see RL as the step that goes bey... | 2024-10-17 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gFPncj5zCPTLFXwq2/endeavorotc-legit | gFPncj5zCPTLFXwq2 | EndeavorOTC legit? | FinalFormal2 | Curious to hear anyone's experience with EndeavorOTC, or opinion on it's effectiveness for treating ADHD. | 2024-10-17 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8Pxp3HtzbGdki6vcQ/factoring-p-doom-into-a-bayesian-network | 8Pxp3HtzbGdki6vcQ | Factoring P(doom) into a bayesian network | joseph-gardi-1 | I wouldn't be surprised if this is already a thing so please let me know if it is. I have tried searching. I'd like a tool like this one for analyzing P(doom): https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/. Other precedents are this model of transformative AI timeline on less wrong and the use of bayesia... | 2024-10-17 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ynsE7aB43bRJpHeNj/the-cognitive-bootcamp-agreement | ynsE7aB43bRJpHeNj | The Cognitive Bootcamp Agreement | Raemon | The Cognitive Bootcamp is intended to be fairly intense intense. I ask attendees to read through the Workshop agreement and a) doublecheck that the workshop is right for them b) let me know how we might want to tailor it to meet their needs.
The target audience is people who:
have decision-making power on a large proje... | 2024-10-16 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AAz8rng2JpFYpEzH9/bitter-lessons-about-lucid-dreaming | AAz8rng2JpFYpEzH9 | Bitter lessons about lucid dreaming | avturchin | The amount of effort is not proportional to the result. One lucid dream (LD) can take hours or even dozens of hours of effort. On average, a practitioner experiences several dozen LDs in their lifetime before quitting. If they don't quit, they dedicate their entire life to it, day and night, trying endless techniques, ... | 2024-10-16 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/HgQXtfatD2ncCkwdZ/p-np | HgQXtfatD2ncCkwdZ | P=NP | OnePolynomial | P = NP: Exploring Algorithms, Learning, and the Abstract Mathematical Universe
This paper presents an informal, amateur proof of P = NP, combining theoretical ideas and personal insights without the constraints of formal academic conventions.
Disclaimer:
I feel completely drained from this work and just want to share i... | 2024-10-17 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vGeHJjRnpgC73QL8Q/why-humans-won-t-control-superhuman-ais | vGeHJjRnpgC73QL8Q | Why humans won't control superhuman AIs. | spiritus-dei | Much of the work in AI safety operates under the flawed assumption that its possible, even likely, that humans will be able to control superhuman AIs. There are several reasons why this is an extremely low probability which I will outline.
I. The first reason is the halting problem.
One of the foundational results in c... | 2024-10-16 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/duQFE2dbAsKdhFzd3/resolving-von-neumann-morgenstern-inconsistent-preferences | duQFE2dbAsKdhFzd3 | Resolving von Neumann-Morgenstern Inconsistent Preferences | niplav | I consider the problem of resolving preferences
that are inconsistent under the von Neumann-Morgenstern
axioms
into consistent preferences. For preferences over deterministic
options, I model inconsistent preferences as directed
graphs,
and the resolution as selecting acyclic
tournaments
with the same vertices and mini... | 2024-10-22 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tdQpPLmHXHYTKL8C5/request-for-advice-research-for-conversational-game-theory | tdQpPLmHXHYTKL8C5 | Request for advice: Research for Conversational Game Theory for LLMs | rome-viharo | Greetings and thank you for your attention. I am an independent researcher and creator of Conversational Game Theory, a novel computational, cognitive, and psychological consensus building game for human to human, AI to human, and AI to AI collaboration. Its notable feature is its ability to reach consensus without vot... | 2024-10-16 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gXmFCfh4SBz2oFuhv/cancer-rates-after-gene-therapy | gXmFCfh4SBz2oFuhv | cancer rates after gene therapy | bhauth | Here's a new paper on cancer developing in patients after receiving gene therapy with eli-cel, brand name Skysona.
What is eli-cel?
Stem cells are isolated and modified by using a lentiviral vector to add the ABCD1 gene. The stem cells in bone marrow are killed with chemotherapy, and replaced with the modified stem cel... | 2024-10-16 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TprdAhgTvr3tuDJsD/against-empathy-by-default | TprdAhgTvr3tuDJsD | Against empathy-by-default | steve2152 | tl;dr
Section 1 presents an argument that I’ve heard from a couple people, that says that empathy[1] happens “for free” as a side-effect of the general architecture of mammalian brains, basically because we tend to have similar feelings about similar situations, and “me being happy” is a kinda similar situation to “som... | 2024-10-16 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/thsskxbxAqLx56ydi/towards-quantitative-ai-risk-management | thsskxbxAqLx56ydi | Towards Quantitative AI Risk Management | henry | Reading guidelines: If you are short on time, just read the section “The importance of quantitative risk tolerance & how to turn it into actionable signals”
Tl;dr: We have recently published an AI risk management framework. This framework draws from both existing risk management approaches and AI risk management practi... | 2024-10-16 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Hq9ccwansFgqTueHA/monthly-roundup-23-october-2024 | Hq9ccwansFgqTueHA | Monthly Roundup #23: October 2024 | Zvi | It’s monthly roundup time again, and it’s happily election-free.
Thinking About the Roman Empire’s Approval Rating
Propaganda works, ancient empires edition. This includes the Roman Republic being less popular than the Roman Empire and people approving of Sparta, whereas Persia and Carthage get left behind. They’re no ... | 2024-10-16 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qo37ZiecP5gRRSBHL/change-my-mind-thirders-in-sleeping-beauty-are-just-doing | qo37ZiecP5gRRSBHL | Change My Mind: Thirders in "Sleeping Beauty" are Just Doing Epistemology Wrong | DragonGod | Preamble
Sleeping Beauty volunteers to undergo the following experiment and is told all of the following details: On Sunday she will be put to sleep. Once or twice, during the experiment, Sleeping Beauty will be awakened, interviewed, and put back to sleep with an amnesia-inducing drug that makes her forget that awaken... | 2024-10-16 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hv7Ekg5sdJvZyFK6R/interest-in-leetcode-but-for-rationality | hv7Ekg5sdJvZyFK6R | Interest in Leetcode, but for Rationality? | gregory-eales | the following is motivated by:
Self-Improvement or Shiny Distraction: Why Less Wrong is anti-Instrumental RationalityThe Martial Art of Rationality
I've been a long time lurker on Less Wrong and I've noticed the recurring criticism that despite its focus on rationality, the community lacks structured training to develo... | 2024-10-16 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FACjYrowStvGr2jJx/after-uploading-your-consciousness | FACjYrowStvGr2jJx | After uploading your consciousness... | jinge-wang | Imagine in the future, there is a technique that can upload your consciousness to a new container, either a biological body or digital space. Once we think of this scenario, we always feel that we are switched to a new body with our mind unchanged. I don't know the best possible way to implement such a technique, but I... | 2024-10-16 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PAoQZgrF7Dtp9wM4x/the-elysium-proposal-extrapolated-volitions-yielding | PAoQZgrF7Dtp9wM4x | The ELYSIUM Proposal -
Extrapolated voLitions Yielding Separate Individualized Utopias for Mankind | Roko | "We ideally want to move reality closer to the efficient frontier of personal utopia production." | 2024-10-16 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aggjdJJiACEHDZfRk/bellevue-meetup | aggjdJJiACEHDZfRk | Bellevue Meetup | xida-ren | Saturday Oct 26 2pm at Bellevue library.
Let's go hang out at the library, chat about SAD lights and other nerdy stuff, and play boardgames.
This is the same location as the [bel-red ACX MeetUp](https://www.lesswrong.com/events/XTraYrzh5p5yt626D/bellevue-redmond-usa-acx-meetups-everywhere-fall-2024) | 2024-10-16 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/f7gd7riceJPaPKkNS/saes-you-can-see-applying-sparse-autoencoders-to-clustering | f7gd7riceJPaPKkNS | SAEs you can See: Applying Sparse Autoencoders to Clustering | Robert_AIZI | TL;DR
We train sparse autoencoders (SAEs) on artificial datasets of 2D points, which are arranged to fall into pre-defined, visually-recognizable clusters. We find that the resulting SAE features are interpretable as a clustering algorithm via the natural rule "a point is in cluster N if feature N activates on it".We p... | 2024-10-28 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yxdHp2cZeQbZGREEN/improving-model-written-evals-for-ai-safety-benchmarking | yxdHp2cZeQbZGREEN | Improving Model-Written Evals for AI Safety Benchmarking | sunishchal-dev | This post was written as part of the summer 2024 cohort of the ML Alignment & Theory Scholars program, under the mentorship of Marius Hobbhahn.
Abstract
As model-written evals (MWEs) become more widely used in AI benchmarking, we need scalable approaches to assessing the quality of the eval questions. Upon examination ... | 2024-10-15 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WjGcbR3RcRfGtmFfJ/d-and-d-sci-coliseum-arena-of-data | WjGcbR3RcRfGtmFfJ | D&D Sci Coliseum: Arena of Data | aphyer | This is an entry in the 'Dungeons & Data Science' series, a set of puzzles where players are given a dataset to analyze and an objective to pursue using information from that dataset.
Estimated Complexity: 4/5 (this is a guess, I will update based on feedback/seeing how the scenario goes)
STORY
The Demon King rises in... | 2024-10-18 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/L3aYFT4RDJYHbbsup/llms-can-learn-about-themselves-by-introspection | L3aYFT4RDJYHbbsup | LLMs can learn about themselves by introspection | fjb | Are LLMs capable of introspection, i.e. special access to their own inner states?
Can they use this access to report facts about themselves that are not in the training data?
Yes — in simple tasks at least!
TLDR: We find that LLMs are capable of introspection on simple tasks. We discuss potential implications of intr... | 2024-10-18 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WZJrgGHrv3eh8Amw8/on-the-practical-applications-of-interpretability | WZJrgGHrv3eh8Amw8 | On the Practical Applications of Interpretability | nick-jiang | In late May, Anthropic released a paper on sparse autoencoders that could interpret the hidden representations of large language models. A great deal of excitement followed in the interpretability community and beyond, with people exclaiming the potential of finally breaking down how LLMs think and process information.... | 2024-10-15 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NRZfxAJztvx2ES5LG/a-path-to-human-autonomy | NRZfxAJztvx2ES5LG | A path to human autonomy | nathan-helm-burger | "Each one of us, and also us as the current implementation of humanity are going to be replaced. Persistence in current form is impossible. It's impossible in biology; every species will either die out or it will change and adapt, in which case it is again not the same species. So the next question is once you've given... | 2024-10-29 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Q7caj7emnwWBxLECF/anthropic-s-updated-responsible-scaling-policy | Q7caj7emnwWBxLECF | Anthropic's updated Responsible Scaling Policy | zac-hatfield-dodds | Today we are publishing a significant update to our Responsible Scaling Policy (RSP), the risk governance framework we use to mitigate potential catastrophic risks from frontier AI systems. This update introduces a more flexible and nuanced approach to assessing and managing AI risks while maintaining our commitment no... | 2024-10-15 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Cur4n3gRGaqysKf5b/an-opinionated-evals-reading-list | Cur4n3gRGaqysKf5b | An Opinionated Evals Reading List | marius-hobbhahn | While you can make a lot of progress in evals with tinkering and paying little attention to the literature, we found that various other papers have saved us many months of research effort. The Apollo Research evals team thus compiled a list of what we felt were important evals-related papers. We likely missed some rele... | 2024-10-15 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KrYNqLkaCnBdHpZAs/anthropic-rewrote-its-rsp | KrYNqLkaCnBdHpZAs | Anthropic rewrote its RSP | Zach Stein-Perlman | Canonical linkpost: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Q7caj7emnwWBxLECF/anthropic-s-updated-responsible-scaling-policy.
Anthropic's new version of its RSP is here at last.
Today we are publishing a significant update to our Responsible Scaling Policy (RSP), the risk governance framework we use to mitigate potential catas... | 2024-10-15 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/GvJe6WQ3jbynyhjxm/intuitive-self-models-6-awakening-enlightenment-pnse | GvJe6WQ3jbynyhjxm | [Intuitive self-models] 6. Awakening / Enlightenment / PNSE | steve2152 | 6.1 Post summary / Table of contents
Part of the Intuitive Self-Models series.
I do have meditation experience—in my lifetime, I have probably logged as much as several hours of total time spent meditating! And I was keeping up my meditation practice until as recently as 2007! OK fine, obviously I won’t be speaking fro... | 2024-10-22 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ru9YGuGscGuDHfXTJ/economics-roundup-4 | ru9YGuGscGuDHfXTJ | Economics Roundup #4 | Zvi | Previous Economics Roundups: #1, #2, #3
Fun With Campaign Proposals (1)
Since this section discusses various campaign proposals, I’ll reiterate:
I could not be happier with my decision not to cover the election outside of the particular areas that I already cover. I have zero intention of telling anyone who to vote for... | 2024-10-15 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZRnEKPQkWxiQWRkQS/is-school-of-thought-related-to-the-rationality-community | ZRnEKPQkWxiQWRkQS | Is School of Thought related to the Rationality Community? | DarkSym | If so, who are they?
Link: https://yourbias.is/
At a gloss the material looks really polished and topical. | 2024-10-15 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8jGWsfvmt39cqe8vT/inverse-problems-in-everyday-life | 8jGWsfvmt39cqe8vT | Inverse Problems In Everyday Life | silentbob | There’s a class of problems broadly known as inverse problems. Wikipedia explains them as follows:
An inverse problem in science is the process of calculating from a set of observations the causal factors that produced them. [...] It is called an inverse problem because it starts with the effects and then calculates th... | 2024-10-15 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BNBqaXJ8CfnaASiZW/thinking-llms-general-instruction-following-with-thought | BNBqaXJ8CfnaASiZW | Thinking LLMs: General Instruction Following with Thought Generation | bogdan-ionut-cirstea | Authors: Tianhao Wu, Janice Lan, Weizhe Yuan, Jiantao Jiao, Jason Weston, Sainbayar Sukhbaatar.
Summary thread: https://x.com/jaseweston/status/1846011492245672043.
Abstract:
LLMs are typically trained to answer user questions or follow instructions similarly to how human experts respond. However, in the standard align... | 2024-10-15 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kduqRKTfJHQGKDdFC/ambiguities-or-the-issues-we-face-with-ai-in-medicine | kduqRKTfJHQGKDdFC | Ambiguities or the issues we face with AI in medicine | Thehumanproject.ai | Abstract
With AI gradually becoming more relevant to healthcare, we are running into a diverse set of issues related to ambiguous medical data, expert disagreement, and biased outcomes. For AI to make accurate medical predictions, significant improvements in data collection, standardization, and ethical oversight are n... | 2024-10-20 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/y3NgXbtCK8qQNzhYq/distillation-of-deepseek-prover-v1-5 | y3NgXbtCK8qQNzhYq | Distillation Of DeepSeek-Prover V1.5 | matthewshing | ERROR: type should be string, got "https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.08152 - \"DeepSeek-Prover-V1.5: Harnessing Proof Assistant Feedback for Reinforcement Learning and Monte-Carlo Tree Search\"\nhttps://github.com/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-Prover-V1.5\nTL;DR\nDeepSeek-Prover-V1.5 is an improved open-source language model for theorem proving in Lean 4.\nThe paper continues pre-training DeepSeekMath-Base, a math foundation model, and then does supervised fine-tuning on a dataset of incomplete proofs in Lean 4, followed by RL with feedback sourced from Lean 4. DeepSeek-Prover-V1.5 finds proofs using truncate-and-resume, which combines existing proof generation techniques, and a novel Monte-Carlo-Tree-Search (MCTS) algorithm for superior performance.\nOverview\nDefinitions:\nTactic - a command used to manipulate the current proof stateProof State/Tactic State - Current state of a proof at a given time, includes a list of goals and context.(tactic state and proof state is often used interchangeably, tactic state is more specific as proof state can also be the state of a proof with a missing step)\nLanguage models trained for theorem proving typically do one of two things:\nProof Step Generation, in which successive tactics are predicted by the prover and verified with a proof assistant. The tactic state is updated and search techniques are used to construct proofs. Each proof step is therefore valid. This method is not computationally efficient because each proof step has to be verified by the proof assistant.Whole Proof Generation, in which the entire proof is generated in a single step based on the theorem statement. If a proof-step is invalid, the model generates a new proof in the next attempt. This is computationally efficient as a proof assistant is not required, but risks more invalid steps.\nDeepSeek-Prover-V1.5 combines proof-step and whole-proof generation, naming the combination truncate-and-resume. Truncate-and-resume starts with whole-proof generation. If Lean detects an error in the proof, all code succeeding the error is removed (truncate), and the valid proof steps are used as a prompt for the next proof segment (resume). This truncate and resume mechanism is used in conjunction with MCTS to search over possible proof states. A reward-free exploration algorithm that uses intrinsic motivation to explore the tactic space is introduced to address reward sparsity.\nPre-Training and SFT\nPre-training:\nFurther pre-training of DeepSeekMath-Base on high-quality mathematics and code data. (lean, Isabelle, MetaMath)\nSupervised fine-tuning:\nThe model is trained for 9 billion tokens on incomplete proofs that end with a natural language description of the tactic state that aims to align lean 4 code and natural language. It learns to predict both the content of this tactic state (as an auxiliary task) and the subsequent proof steps (main objective).\ndataset includes synthetic proof code derived from a range of formal theorems (sourced from Lean 4, Mathlib4 and DeepSeek-Prover-V1.)\nRLPAF\nRL from Proof Assistant Feedback (RLPAF) using Group Relative Policy Optimisation (GRPO), a PPO variant that samples a group of candidate proofs for each theorem prompt and optimizes the model based on the rewards of the outputs (proofs) within the group. No critic model has to be trained as each proof receives a reward of 1 if correct, and 0 otherwise. This binary reward signal is accurate and sparse especially for achievable yet challenging training prompts for the supervised fine-tuned model.Verification results from the Lean Prover serve as reward supervision. It also enhances the training process as the prompt selection process containing both incorrect and correct proofs aligns well with the group-relative nature of GRPO.Uses a subset of theorem statements from supervised fine-tuning as training data. Each theorem is prompted with and without instruction to use CoT to enhance the model's proof generation capabilities.SFT model serves as both the initial model and the reference model for the Kullback-Leibler divergence penalty.\nThought-Augmented Proof Generation:\nNatural language CoT is required before generating the theorem proof code. This encourages correct mathematical reasoning and step planning prior to each tactic.\nMCTS\nThe paper uses a proof tree abstraction that defines a proof state and possible tactics to implement MCTS in the whole proof generation. The proof search tree is constructed at the tactic level, with each edge representing a single tactic state transition\nThe process then proceeds as,\nTruncate\nThe model-generated proof is parsed into tactics, truncated at the first error, and segmented into valid tactic codes with associated comments, each corresponding to a tree edge and forming a path from the root to a specific node.\nResume\nMultiple tactics can lead to the same tactic state, so each tree node stores equivalent tactic codes, with the search agent randomly selecting one for prompting the language model, which uses the incomplete proof code and tactic state information to guide further proof generation.\nIntrinsic Rewards for MCTS are sparse, occurring only when a proof is completely solved, to address this, the RMaxTS algorithm is introduced[1], incorporating intrinsic rewards to encourage the search agent to explore and gather information about the environment, balancing the optimization of extrinsic rewards with the acquisition of general knowledge about the interactive proof environment.\nResults and Evaluations\nThe model is evaluated on the following benchmarks\nMini F2F, which focuses on formal problem-solving skills at a high-school level with emphasis on algebra and number theory.ProofNet, which evaluates formal theorem-proving capabilities at the undergraduate level in mathematics.\nMetrics\nThe paper evaluates theorem proving performance using the pass@K accuracy metric. This measures the model's success in generating a valid proof in k attempts.\nThey compare the DeepSeekProver V1.5 to prior SOTA models.\nDeepSeek-Prover-V1.5-RL achieved highest pass rate at 60.2% --> DeepSeek V1.5 RL + RMaxTS achieved pass rate of 62.7%DeepSeek-Prover-V1.5-RL achieved pass rates of 22.6% and 25.3%. (single passs whole proof generation and with enhancement of RMaxTS, respectively.)Combination of two guiding prompts shows promise in bootstrapping the performance of the proof completion model, achieving a pass rate of 63.5% on miniF2F-test.\n^\nRMax applied to Tree Search" | 2024-10-15 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iscZjSjFyezsquwMD/taking-nonlogical-concepts-seriously | iscZjSjFyezsquwMD | Taking nonlogical concepts seriously | kris-brown | I recently wrote this post for the Topos Institute blog, engaging with some recent work in the philosophy of language which I believe is relevant to foundational questions regarding semantics. Many concepts (which we might call 'fuzzy' or tied up with 'values') aren't amenable to logical formalization, so their input i... | 2024-10-15 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uJvKLDSSYA4y7vzyx/minimal-motivation-of-natural-latents | uJvKLDSSYA4y7vzyx | Minimal Motivation of Natural Latents | johnswentworth | Suppose two Bayesian agents are presented with the same spreadsheet - IID samples of data in each row, a feature in each column. Each agent develops a generative model of the data distribution. We'll assume the two converge to the same predictive distribution, but may have different generative models containing differe... | 2024-10-14 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ErpftGxacD4GyT2dx/how-long-should-political-and-other-terms-be | ErpftGxacD4GyT2dx | How long should political (and other) terms be? | ohmurphy | (Epistemic Status: Superficial application of complex topic to complex domain)
In a representative democracy, there is always a tension between the need for elites to make unpopular decisions and the need for elites to be held responsible for mistakes by the public. In the US, the contrasting term periods of the Senate... | 2024-10-14 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/AZujTpKYiKHJAJdri/rashomon-a-newsbetting-site | AZujTpKYiKHJAJdri | Rashomon - A newsbetting site | ideasthete | Hello Rationalists!
A while ago I created a concept to evaluate political biases that I call "newsbetting" and made a demo site at rashomonnews.com. Essentially, one receives a news article stripped of identifying information (so stuff like title, author, news source, etc) so that they only get the text of the news ar... | 2024-10-15 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3iQyH2kk6Eyn5soGB/singular-learning-theory-for-dummies | 3iQyH2kk6Eyn5soGB | Singular Learning Theory for Dummies | rahul-chand | In this post, I will cover Jesse Hoogland's work on Singular Learning Theory. The post is mostly meant as a dummies guide, and therefore won't be adding anything meaningfully new to his work. As a helpful guide at each point I try to mark the math difficulty of each section, some of it is trivial (I), some of it can be... | 2024-10-15 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4qwtZN5PGsZajKE5G/examples-of-how-i-use-llms | 4qwtZN5PGsZajKE5G | Examples of How I Use LLMs | jkaufman | I often talk to people who don't find LLMs useful. Paraphrasing:
Why would I want to ask questions to a thing that might give me the
right answer but might also make something up that fools me into
thinking it's right? I've played with them, but they don't seem like
they'd save me any time.
My experience with has bee... | 2024-10-14 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tQ4fnus4GHxmX7gPt/lw-resources-on-childhood-experiences | tQ4fnus4GHxmX7gPt | LW resources on childhood experiences? | nahir91595 | Does LW have a curated or tagged set of resources on childhood experiences including "trauma"? Personally I'm interested in perspectives from developing world countries (I belong to one), but I'm totally interested in different people coming at this topic from different angles.
I know Yudkowsky has written about his ex... | 2024-10-14 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9AbYkAy8s9LvB7dT5/the-case-for-unlearning-that-removes-information-from-llm | 9AbYkAy8s9LvB7dT5 | The case for unlearning that removes information from LLM weights | Fabien | What if you could remove some information from the weights of an AI? Would that be helpful?
It is clearly useful against some misuse concerns: if you are concerned that LLMs will make it easier to build bioweapons because they have memorized such information, removing the memorized facts would remove this misuse concer... | 2024-10-14 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DGexQxZDBtEoHgJkj/beyond-defensive-technology | DGexQxZDBtEoHgJkj | Beyond Defensive Technology | ejk64 | I’ve been pretty confused by what it means for a technology or operation to be ‘defensive’.
Technologies do things. What does it mean for a technology to, like, be something that stops bad things? Is an anti-missile missile the same as a missile? Can we come up with a classification system that feels a bit more systema... | 2024-10-14 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/LbfWAq4F8tHaQsTyT/towards-the-operationalization-of-philosophy-and-wisdom | LbfWAq4F8tHaQsTyT | Towards the Operationalization of Philosophy & Wisdom | Thane Ruthenis | Written for the competition on the Automation of Wisdom and Philosophy.
Summary
Philosophy and wisdom, and the processes underlying them, currently lack a proper operationalization: a set of robust formal or semi-formal definitions. If such definitions were found, they could be used as the foundation for a strong metho... | 2024-10-28 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bAy6w3spwFrnguJqe/why-stop-ai-is-barricading-openai | bAy6w3spwFrnguJqe | Why Stop AI is barricading OpenAI | remmelt-ellen | null | 2024-10-14 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FDBrNMJ8fyx3TB9rt/what-ai-companies-should-do-some-rough-ideas | FDBrNMJ8fyx3TB9rt | What AI companies should do: Some rough ideas | Zach Stein-Perlman | This post is incomplete. I'm publishing it because it might be helpful for some readers anyway. A good version of this post would be more detailed: for each proposed action, explain motivation and high-level goal, explain problem to solve, respond to obvious questions/objections, and lay out costs involved and costs wo... | 2024-10-21 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Gbv3vs5BytY28RLEp/it-s-important-to-know-when-to-stop-mechanistic-exploration | Gbv3vs5BytY28RLEp | It's important to know when to stop: Mechanistic Exploration of Gemma 2 List Generation | gerard-boxo | 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 Autoencoders "Gemma Scope" by Google Deep Mind, makes this kind of research possible.Motivated by ... | 2024-10-14 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qEzfxXGt3fJsEzZ2X/some-questionable-space-launch-guns | qEzfxXGt3fJsEzZ2X | some questionable space launch guns | bhauth | high school history
Recently, someone asked me about a startup called Longshot Space. They're trying to make big guns that're useful for space launch. Here's a video on them from Scott Manley. Many startups exist, and normally I wouldn't write a post about something like this, but it reminded me of my younger self.
Yes... | 2024-10-13 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vnvPEfjTCeKwZQ2M8/what-are-your-favorite-books-or-blogs-that-are-out-of-print | vnvPEfjTCeKwZQ2M8 | What are your favorite books or blogs that are out of print, or whose domains have expired (especially if they also aren't on LibGen/Wayback/etc, or on Amazon)? | arjun-panickssery | Also posted the question to r/slatestarcodex. | 2024-10-13 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bipFbSy85ATatDETt/the-explore-vs-exploit-dilemma | bipFbSy85ATatDETt | The Explore vs. Exploit Dilemma | nathanjzhao | I often analogize real-world problems according to their ML-related counterparts. One of them is the exporation-exploitation problem, but it’s often been met with minimal recognition. I wrote this blog as something I can refer to the next time I get a “what do you mean?” | 2024-10-14 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/oJQnRDbgSS8i6DwNu/the-hopium-wars-the-agi-entente-delusion | oJQnRDbgSS8i6DwNu | The Hopium Wars: the AGI Entente Delusion | MaxTegmark | As humanity gets closer to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), a new geopolitical strategy is gaining traction in US and allied circles, in the NatSec, AI safety and tech communities. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and RAND Corporation call it the “entente”, while others privately refer to it as “hegemony" or “crush Chi... | 2024-10-13 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fumRBCtRvEnFiDop4/parental-writing-selection-bias | fumRBCtRvEnFiDop4 | Parental Writing Selection Bias | jkaufman | In general I'd like to see a lot more of people writing about their
failures in addition to their successes. If a bunch of people all try
a thing and have mixed results, and only the people with good results
write about it, people who don't know about this selection bias or
don't realize its extent are going to end up... | 2024-10-13 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rxKzeJnPcvNgzQG2d/free-will-neurotypical-dominance-and-the-path-to-asi-and | rxKzeJnPcvNgzQG2d | Free Will, Neurotypical Dominance, and the Path to ASI and Neuralinks: Evolving Beyond Scarcity | j_passeri | We live in a world shaped by cognitive architectures that prioritize social harmony over rationality, and this has profound implications for everything from societal structures to technological development. When you break down most of the world’s problems, they are rooted in scarcity—of resources, time, and even cognit... | 2024-10-14 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RhBF4Ytxrgomq33mK/personal-philosophy | RhBF4Ytxrgomq33mK | Personal Philosophy | Xor | This is a rough outline of my philosophical framework. Which gives me a context for all of my experiences and knowledge.
Certain Knowledge
We cannot know much for certain. The one exception is the existence of your subjective experience of reality in this very moment of time. As Rene Descartes put it "Cognito ergo sum.... | 2024-10-13 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WsZhPJF7pBEN2F5KT/breakthroughs-neurodivergence-and-working-outside-the-system | WsZhPJF7pBEN2F5KT | Breakthroughs, Neurodivergence, and Working Outside the System | j_passeri | In reflecting on historical figures like Einstein and Tesla, it becomes clear that disproportionate contributions often come from just a few highly impactful individuals—even within neurodivergent populations like those with Asperger’s. While many people with similar cognitive architectures work within conventional sys... | 2024-10-14 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yYHss2pMcQGYdnNfa/contagious-beliefs-simulating-political-alignment | yYHss2pMcQGYdnNfa | Contagious Beliefs—Simulating Political Alignment | james-brown | Humans are social animals, and as such we are influenced by the beliefs of those around us. This simulation explores how beliefs can spread through a population, and how indirect relationships between beliefs can lead to unexpected correlations. The featured simulation only works in the original post. I recommend visit... | 2024-10-13 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vNCAQLcJSzTgjPaWS/standard-saes-might-be-incoherent-a-choosing-problem-and-a | vNCAQLcJSzTgjPaWS | Standard SAEs Might Be Incoherent: A Choosing Problem & A “Concise” Solution | kola-ayonrinde | This work was produced as part of the ML Alignment & Theory Scholars Program - Summer 24 Cohort.
TL;DR
The current approach to explaining model internals is to (1) disentangle the language model representations into feature activations using a Sparse Autoencoder (SAE) and then (2) explain the corresponding feature acti... | 2024-10-30 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3wp7wmeL92f5rBBdz/binary-encoding-as-a-simple-explicit-construction-for | 3wp7wmeL92f5rBBdz | Binary encoding as a simple explicit construction for superposition | tailcalled | Superposition is the possibility of storing more than n features in an n-dimensional vector, by letting the features be slightly correlated with each other. It turns out that one can store exponentially many features in a given vector. The ability to store that many features in a single vector space is sometimes explai... | 2024-10-12 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qpD7qwzNkaacs2keR/how-should-we-use-limited-time-to-maximize-long-term-impact | qpD7qwzNkaacs2keR | How Should We Use Limited Time to Maximize Long-Term Impact? | queelius | I've been reflecting on how researchers—particularly those with limited time or resources—can best contribute to influencing the long-term future.
Assumption: Individually, we may not have the resources to fund large projects, but we still want to make contributions that move the needle, however slightly.
I approach th... | 2024-10-12 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jQrXredzze8dBcNaN/a-percentage-model-of-a-person | jQrXredzze8dBcNaN | A Percentage Model of a Person | Sable | The standard psychological questionnaire for depression doctors have given me is the PHQ-9. It names a symptom, and for each symptom it gives four possible responses in severity. The responses are worth points, the points are totaled, and the final score is supposed to be indicative of how severe a person’s depression ... | 2024-10-12 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5bgLEiTKmhf7JpYbu/i-w-t | 5bgLEiTKmhf7JpYbu | I = W/T? | HNX | What are some of the most deep, profound, meaningful, impactful; ideas, notions, concepts, viewpoints, and considerations, relative to the amount of time an average layman would need to wrap 'eir head around them? Chain of thoughts so far:
not all ideas are created equalsome ideas are clearly better than othersamong th... | 2024-10-12 |
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pvnYS9WrWDRprQGMm/ai-research-assistants-competition-2024q3-tie-between-elicit | pvnYS9WrWDRprQGMm | AI research assistants competition 2024Q3: Tie between Elicit and You.com | pktechgirl | Summary
I make a large part of my living performing literature reviews to answer scientific questions. For years AI has been unable to do anything to lower my research workload, but back in August I tried Perplexity, and it immediately provided value far beyond what I’d gotten from other tools. This wasn’t a fair compa... | 2024-10-12 |
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