Thank you! This is such an important crux post, and really gets to the bottom of why the world is still so far from perfect, even though it feels like we’ve been improving it FOREVER. My only critique is that it could have been longer
benjamin.j.campbell
Karma: 110
It’s worse than that. I’ve been aware of this since I was a teenager, but apparently there’s no amount of correction that’s enough. These days I try to avoid making decisions that will be affected in either direction by limerance, or pre-commit firmly to a course of action and then trust that even if I want to update the plan, I’m going to regret not doing what I pre-committed to earlier.
Seconded. The perfect level of detail to be un-put-down-able while still making sure everything is explained in enough detail to be gripping and well understood
Those are some extreme outliers for age. Was that self-reported, or some kind of automated information gathering related to their Positly profiles?
This is targeted at all 3 groups:
Every year, our models of consciousness and machine learning grow more powerful, and better at performing the same forms of reasoning as humans.
Every year, the amount of computing power we can throw at these models ratchets ever higher.
Every year, each human’s baseline capacity for thinking and reasoning remains exactly the same.
There is a time coming in the next decade or so when we will have released a veritable swarm of different genies that are able to understand and improve themselves better than we can. At that point, the genies will not being going back in the bottle, so we can only pray they like us.
By this stage of their careers, they already have those bits of paper. MIRI are asking people who don’t a priori highly value alignment research to jump through extra hoops they haven’t already cleared, for what they probably perceive as a slim chance of a job outside their wheelhouse. I know a reasonable number of hard science academics, and I don’t know any who would put in that amount of effort in the application for a job they thought would be highly applied for by more qualified applicants. The very phrasing makes it sound like they expect hundreds of applicants and are trying to be exclusive. If nothing else is changed, that should be.
I gave this an upvote because it is directly counter to my current belief about how relative/absolute pitch work and interact with each other. I agree that if someone’s internalised absolute pitch can constantly identify out of tune notes, even after minutes of repetition, this is a strong argument against my position. On the other hand, maybe they do produce one internal reference note of set frequency, and when comparing known intervals against this, it returns “out of tune” every time. I can see either story being true, but I would like to hunt down some more information on which of these models is more accurate
I think your suggestion is effectively what everyone with absolute pitch is actually doing, if the reports from the inside I’ve heard are accurate. It’s definitely how I would start converting my relative pitch proficiency into absolute
I know what you mean, and I think that similar to Richard Kennaway says below, we need to teach people new to the sequences and to exotic decision theories not to drive off a cliff because of a thread they couldn’t resist pulling.
I think we really need something in the sequences about how to tell if your wild seeming idea is remotely likely. I.e a “How to Trust Your SatNav” post. The basic content in the post is: remember to stay grounded, and ask how likely this wild new framework might be. Ask others who can understand and assess your theory, and if they say you’re getting some things wrong, take them very seriously. This doesn’t mean you can’t follow your own convictions, it just means you should do it in a way that minimises potential harm.
Now, having read the content you’re talking about, I think a person needs to already be pretty far gone epistemically before this info hazard can “get them,” and I mean either the original idea-haver and also those who receive it via transmission. But I think it’s still going to help very new readers to not drive off so many cliffs. It’s almost like some of them want to, which is… its own class of concerns.
It’s great that you have that satnav. I worry about people like me. I worry about being incapable of leaving those thoughts alone until I’ve pulled the thread enough be sure I should ignore it. In other words, if I think there’s a chance something like that is true, I do want to trust the satnav, but I also want to be sure my “big if true” discovery genuinely isn’t true.
Of course, a good innoculation against this has been reading some intense blogs of people who’ve adopted alternative decision-theories which lead them down really scary paths to watch.
I worry “there but for the grace of chance go I.” But that’s not quite right, and being able to read that content and not go off the deep end myself is evidence that maybe my satnav is functioning just fine after all.
I suspect I’m talking about the same exact class of infohazard as mentioned here. I think I know what’s being veiled and have looked it in the eye.
Within reason, I can see how it might be wise for you. I think the largest uncertainty this question hinges upon is whether hospitals in your area have the capacity to treat you if your case is unexpectedly bad. You can get a good sense of this by monitoring available ICU beds in the immediate/short term, but beyond a week it’s hard to know.
And here’s maybe a more important question, though far harder to model: will hospitals in my area have more/less capacity to treat me later, if I just catch it at the naturally occurring rate?
I’m in NSW, Australia, so even though Omicron is somewhat milder, I’m not inclined to catch it right now. All the hospitals within a reasonable range are getting full and making hard choices. So if I’m going to choose a time to ideally contract it, I’d have to shoot for just after the Omicron wave burns itself out. I’ll get the Pfizer booster in February (after the initial 2x AZ mid-2021) but that’s a month later than I was hoping to.
And thinking about hindsight counter-factuals on what I could have done differently is very confusing in different ways (yes, I agree hindsight counter-factuals are verboten as actual evidence). I should have booked in my booster before everyone else here realised Omicron was going to significantly change the situation, or that could have been a good time to inoculate by contracting it. Unfortunately, by the time I could possibly have had enough information to know it was a good idea, it was too late to beat the rush of cases. Not sure if that dynamic would have been in play where you live, but it fascinates me that 3-4 weeks is long enough to resolve a lot of the very salient things we didn’t know. It may have resolved almost enough unknowns to be sure about when you’d want to catch it. But I’m not sure if we know when people in different locations should contract Covid intentionally. I think my inner jury is out, but I have the sense that I missed the best time I could have caught it.
My use of MicroCovid.org so far has probably been very different to most LWers, as I’m based in Sydney, Australia. So far, I’ve mostly been content to follow public health guidelines and have used MicroCovid.org about 4 times a year for the last 2 years. Each time I used it, I found it very useful for thinking about risk and improving my implicit understanding for how risky different activities were. My usage pattern looks set to change pretty dramatically though, as Australia is in the early stages of Omicron going exponential.
Of all the current features, my favourite is the ability to share the link to a custom scenario you’ve created. I’ve used that a few times in group chats to discuss whether an event should go ahead, and if so, how risky the participants should think it to be. It would be nice if the link-share feature provided shortened links, but I understand the backend implementation of this is probably inconvenient. Given the incoming Omicron burst here, improvement of this feature would be worth $100 to me. This post is my official commitment to donating an extra $100 to MicroCovid.org if this suggestion is implemented (but don’t go out of your way to do more than $100 of work if I’m the only one who wants this).
I’d also highly value model data for Omicron and future strains, but I trust that the team is already weighing the pros and cons of adding the information currently known Vs. waiting for higher accuracy.
A massive thank you to anyone involved in MicroCovid.org if you’re reading this. It has been very useful to so many people, and has collectively helped us all to reduce, manage, and feel comfortable at our chosen level of risk.
There’s an easier solution that doesn’t run the risk of being or appearing manipulative. You can contract external and independent councillors and make them available to your staff anonymously. I don’t know if there’s anything comparable in the US, but in Australia they’re referred to as Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs). Nothing you discuss with the councillor can be disclosed to your workplace, although in rare circumstances there may be mandatory reporting to the police (e.g. if abuse or ongoing risk of a minor is involved).
This also goes a long way toward creating a place where employees can talk about things they’re worried will seem crazy in work contexts.
You and I are quite similar, in that we both default to taking responsibility for the painful outcomes that come our way. I do think though that there is a flaw in one little bit of this mindset (or maybe it’s just the way you expressed it, so tell me if I didn’t get what you were pointing at). It sounds like your formulation is basically “if an outcome is my responsibility, then I refuse to give myself compassion.” It is possible to accept a high degree of responsibility while still being compassionate to yourself. I know, because I have seen others do it well, and for my own mental health, one of my goals has been to get better at this.
I always find this much easier to apply to myself when I imagine that I’m applying it to a friend, or to a clone of myself, as I tend to be more compassionate to others than to myself. Could their fate have been avoided if they had been more vigilant? Yes, almost always. But you can’t be vigilant about everything, and you still need to take a break from self-flagellation long enough to actually live and get things done.
I might be entirely misunderstanding what you mean by compassion, though. The times that I have been less compassionate to myself than I would be to a stranger have usually been fairly extreme. It has been very valuable for me to do less of that kind of shame spiralling. Unproductive responsibility and shame spiralling can still sometimes be induced by someone important telling me that I am responsible and that I should feel bad. That’s a whole different set of problems though.
That doesn’t mean that I take any less responsibility, or don’t try as earnestly to learn from pain. Making ourselves suffer for our mistakes sometimes feels like a necessary step toward learning, but it does not have to be.
Wow! Thank you so, so much for all of this!
I tend to think of myself as very engaged with LW2.0 (despite not commenting or posting often) but I didn’t have a very good idea of how much work you were putting in to add features and fix bugs. I’d love to see more frequent posts like this, so we can all get excited together, and show appreciation for everything you and the team are doing. I’m sure that you have a very clear idea of all the features that are being implemented, and how much effort you’ve been pouring into it, but that isn’t always obvious to the occasional site users who haven’t been back for a while. I (and I would bet ~99% of LW) would love to see more updates and requests for support! Honestly, I look at what you’ve achieved this year, and my only concern is that you’re all doing too much for us and you’ll burn out. I’m not saying that’s definitely true, If that *IS* the case, could you please write a post at some point about how readers/contributors/commenters can help take some of the load?
Side note—in case you’re worried that what you’re doing isn’t having an impact on post volume and quality:
The constant addition of features on LW has directly inspired me to finally start sharing the blog posts I’ve written, and X-posting them on LW.
And it goes deeper. Because what if Mickey never actually woke up, and the brooms had been keeping him asleep the whole time? The Sleeping Beauty problem is actually present in quite a lot of Disney media where the MC goes to sleep. It’s also a theme in Mulan. Maybe she never went to war and made her parents proud. It may well have been a dream she just didn’t wake up from.