Bucky

Karma: 2,586

Bucky 23 Jul 2022 9:06 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Slider’s comment on: Making DALL-E Count
For the six/man thing my first association was six pack. Obviously the prototypical image would be topless but my guess is topless images aren’t in the training set (or Dall-E is otherwise prevented from producing them)

Bucky 4 Jul 2022 20:00 UTC
2 points
on: Bucky’s Shortform
I realised something a few weeks back which I feel like I should have realised a long time ago.

The size of the human brain isn’t the thing which makes us smart, rather it is an indicator that we are smart.

A trebling of brain size vs a chimp is impressive but trebling a neural network’s size doesn’t give that much of an improvement in performance.

A more sensible story is that humans started using their brains more usefully (evolutionarily speaking) so it made sense for us to devote more of our resources to bigger brains for the marginal gains that would give.

As I said, I feel like I should have known this for ages. I had a cached thought that human’s big brains (and other things) cause us to be smarter and had never re-examined the thought. Now I think that the “and other things” is doing almost all of the heavy lifting and the size is more incidental to the process.

Bucky 3 Jul 2022 19:12 UTC
8 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Trigger-Action Planning
Thanks for publishing this. I’ve been around the rationality community for a few years and heard TAPs mentioned positively a lot without knowing much about them. This roughly matches my best guess as to what they were but the extra detail is super useful, especially in the implementation.

Bucky 28 Jun 2022 19:55 UTC
5 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Rafael Harth’s comment on: Contest: An Alien Message
This suggests a different question. For non-participants who are given the program which creates the data, what probability/timeframe to assign to success.

On this one I think that I would have put a high probability to be solved but would have anticipated a longer timeframe.

Bucky 28 Jun 2022 18:49 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Rafael Harth’s comment on: Contest: An Alien Message

I think the resulting program has lower length (so whatever string it generates has lower KC)

I don’t think this follows—your code is shorter in python but it includes 3 new built in functions which is hidden complexity.

I do agree with the general point that KC isn’t a great measure of difficulty for humans—we are not exactly arbitrary encoders.

Bucky 28 Jun 2022 14:44 UTC
2 points
on: Evaluating a Corsi-Rosenthal Filter Cube
What were the noise levels on the Corsi-Rosenthal?

Bucky 17 Jun 2022 10:18 UTC
16 points
on: Humans are very reliable agents
Humans are very reliable agents for tasks which humans are very reliable for.
For most of these examples (arguably all of them) if humans were not reliable at them then the tasks would not exist or would exist in a less stringent form.

Bucky 16 Jun 2022 19:59 UTC
2 points
in reply to: Yair Halberstadt’s comment on: Against Active Shooter Drills
Curious as to what the get under the desks alarm was supposed to help with and how long ago this was? I’m having trouble fitting it into my world model.

Bucky 16 Jun 2022 15:30 UTC
22 points
on: Contra Hofstadter on GPT-3 Nonsense
I see that the standard Playground Q&A prompt on OpenAI uses a similar technique (although boringly uses “Unknown” instead of “Yo be real”).
I think the thing which throws people off is that when GPT-3 goes wrong it goes wrong in ways that are weird to humans.
I wondered if humans sometimes fail at riddles that GPT-3 would think of as weird. I tried a few that I thought would be promising candidates (no prompt other than the questions itself)
Q: If a red house is made with red bricks, a blue house is made with blue bricks, a pink house is made with pink bricks, a black house is made with black bricks, what is a greenhouse made with?
A: Greenhouses are made with glass.
Say silk 4 times
Silk, silk, silk, silk.
What does a cow drink?
A cow drinks water.
You put a roast in a roaster, what do you put in a toaster?
Bread.
These are very cherry picked—I deliberately chose trick riddles that I thought GPT-3 would be good at. I think there’s possibly something here about how humans vs GPT-3 rely on context.
I imagine a society of GPT-4s discovering a human and discussing how hollow their intelligence is.

Bucky 15 Jun 2022 10:05 UTC
6 points
on: Yes, AI research will be substantially curtailed if a lab causes a major disaster
I think the natural/manmade comparison between COVID and Three Mile has alot of merit but there are other differences which might explain the difference. Some of them would imply that there would be a strong response to an AI , others less so.
Local vs global
To prevent nuclear meltdowns you only need to ban them in the US—it doesn’t matter what you do elsewhere. This is more complicated for pandemic preparedness.
Active spending vs loss of growth
Its easier to pass a law putting in nuclear regulations which limit growth as this isn’t as obvious a loss as spending money from the public purse on measures for pandemics.
Activity of lobbying groups
I get the impression that the anti-nuclear lobby was alot bigger than any pro-pandemic-preparedness lobby. Possibly this is partly caused by the natural vs manmade thing so might be kind of a subpoint.
Tractability of problem
Preventing nuclear disasters seems more tractable than pandemic preparedness
1979 vs 2020
Were our institutions stronger back then?
FWIW I agree that a large AI disaster would cause some strong regulation and international agreements, my concern is more that a small one would not and small ones from weaker AIs seem more likely to happen.

Bucky 7 Jun 2022 10:42 UTC
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: mukashi’s comment on: We will be around in 30 years
Assuming this is the best an AGI can do, I find this alot less comforting than you appear to. I assume “a very moderate chance” means something like 5-10%?
Having a 5% chance of such a plan working out is insufficient to prevent an AGI from attempting it if the potential reward is large enough and/or they expect they might get turned off anyway.
Given sufficient number of AGIs (something we presumably will have in the world that none have taken over) I would expect multiple attempts so the chance of one of them working becomes high.

Bucky 27 May 2022 10:56 UTC
11 points
on: Benign Boundary Violations
There’s a theory of humor called benign violation theory.
The BVT claims that humor occurs when three conditions are satisfied: 1) something threatens one’s sense of how the world “ought to be”, 2) the threatening situation seems benign, and 3) a person sees both interpretations at the same time.
I think your description of pranks etc. fits in nicely with this—you even chose the same words to describe it so maybe you’re already aware?

Bucky 12 May 2022 11:54 UTC
4 points
on: Accounting For College Costs
It’s worth noting that the while number of courses at Berkeley almost doubled in the period shown, the number of courses per student has increased at a lower rate due to an increase in students.
Eyeballing the graph and looking at Berkeley’s enrollment numbers I think the number of courses per student has increased by around 50%. Smaller but still a big effect.

Bucky 24 Apr 2022 17:37 UTC
5 points
on: Slack gives you space to notice/reflect on subtle things
Example:

I have a couple of positions I need to fill at my work. I’ve been off on holiday this week and it occurred to me that I should change one of the roles quite a lot and redistribute work.

I’ve had this issue for a few months and while in work I’ve been a bit overworked to actually take a step back and see this opportunity.

Bucky 1 Apr 2022 19:48 UTC
4 points
in reply to: lc’s comment on: Replacing Karma with Good Heart Tokens (Worth $1!)
That makes me feel less bad for doing the same...

Bucky 30 Mar 2022 13:34 UTC
3 points
on: Beyond Blame Minimization: Thoughts from the comments
To a first order approximation I think of bureaucracies as status maximisers. I’ll admit that status can be a bit nebulous and could be used to explain almost anything but I think a common sense understanding of status gives a good prediction in most cases.
- Will a bureaucracy usually perform its tasks kinda adequately? Yes
- Will a bureaucracy excel at its tasks? Not unless excellence comes with status, so almost never
- Will a bureaucracy look to expand its remit? Yes
- Will a bureaucracy often look like a blame minimiser? Yes (due to asymmetric justice)
For second order effects I would probably say bureaucracies are effort minimisers.If a bureaucracy’s status isn’t going to change much between 2 actions, just do whatever is easiest.

Bucky 22 Mar 2022 8:10 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: How to ventilate
From a practical point of view I would expect the pull fan to better ventilate the corners of the room. On the push side the flow is more directional and I think with a push fan you’re more likely to end up with turbulent flow in the corners which would noticeably slow air transfer from these regions. From this point of view it’s possible that the 2 x pull configuration may actually be better than 2 x push + 2 x pull but I’m no expert.
Of course if the air speed is low then the difference will be minimal.

Bucky 20 Feb 2022 20:26 UTC
11 points
on: 12 interesting things I learned studying the discovery of nature’s laws

One rich dude had a whole island and set it up to have lenses on lots of parts of it, and for like a year he’d go around each day and note down the positions of the stars

You can’t just say that without a name or reference! Not that I don’t believe you—I just want to know more!

Bucky 8 Feb 2022 9:19 UTC
2 points
on: Sledding Is Underrated
Snow scooters!
They’re a bit tricky to get the hang of and are petrifying on steep slopes but I highly recommend. Also make getting to the hill more fun.

Bucky 30 Jan 2022 20:47 UTC
2 points
on: I Am a Dimensional Traveller from a World of Highly Sensitive Rationalists
Something like this is sometimes recommended in marriage courses for dealing with disagreements. The idea is to keep emotions cool and ensure people are understanding what each other are saying.