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Cor­rect­ing a mis­con­cep­tion: con­scious­ness does not need 90 billion neu­rons, at all

• bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv 5 Jan 2024 8:20 UTC

  14 points

  0

  on: Screen-sup­ported Portable Monitor

  DIYPerks on youtube did just that: https://​​www.youtube.com/​​watch?v=J2aY6cvk-WI

• bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv 13 Dec 2023 8:54 UTC

  9 points

  0

  on: Sig­nifi­cantly En­hanc­ing Adult In­tel­li­gence With Gene Edit­ing May Be Possible

  There’s a great youtuber called the thought emporium who did genetic engineering on himself. I highly recommend checking them out :

  https://​​www.youtube.com/​​watch?v=J3FcbFqSoQY

  And the 2year follow up: https://​​www.youtube.com/​​watch?v=aoczYXJeMY4

  The tldr is he created a virus then ate it to make his digestive system have more of the gene that makes lactase as he was very intolerant. 2 years later the effects are starting to wear off as cells get replaced but it seems to have had a very high ROI

• bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv 13 May 2023 9:23 UTC

  9 points

  3

  on: Ad­vice for newly busy people

  b. Saying “no” to a certain activity means saying “yes” to myself and our relationship. When you propose something and I say “no” to it, I’m simultaneously saying “yes” to our relationship. Because when I say “yes” while I’m actually a “no”, I slowly accumulate resentment that poisons the connection between us without you being able to do anything about it. And, you will inevitably sense when I said “yes” to something but my heart is not in it. Having been on both sides of this, I know how awkward that feels. So, the moment when I start to really feel comfortable around someone is when I heard the first “no” from them, and when saying “no” to them has become something casual for me. “No” is actually a very, very precious gift. Let’s treat it as such, and encourage one another to give it more often.

  Here’s a quote from Steve Jobs about that:

  “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” ― Steve Jobs

  source: https://​​www.goodreads.com/​​quotes/​​629613-people-think-focus-means-saying-yes-to-the-thing-you-ve

• bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv 19 Nov 2021 9:48 UTC

  9 points

  on: How To Get Into In­de­pen­dent Re­search On Align­ment/​Agency

  Currently being a medical student that’s very into AI, a dream of mine is to be in independant researcher in computational psychiatry.

  Your post is very inspiring.

• bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv 7 Nov 2023 7:30 UTC

  8 points

  0

  on: Does bulemia work?

  To add some perspective : I suspect some people don’t really understand how large the caloric intake can be in boulemia. I routinely see patients eating upwards of 50 000 calories (even saw 100 000 a few times) per day when crisis occur. Things like eating several large peanut butter jars in a row etc

• bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv 28 Jun 2023 14:09 UTC

  7 points

  0

  on: Re­quest: Put Carl Shul­man’s re­cent pod­cast into an or­ga­nized writ­ten format

  edit: I can make the prompt more or less compressed easily, just ask. The present example is “pretty compressed” but I can make a more verbose one

  Not really what you’re asking but :

  I’m coincidentally working on the side on a DIY summarizer to manage my inputs. I summarized a bit of the beginning of part 1. If you think it has any value I can run the whole thing :

  note that ‘- ---’ indicate the switch to a new chunk of text by the llm

  This is formatted as a logseq /​ obsidian markdown format.

  
  - Carl Shulman (Pt 1) - Intelligence Explosion, Primate Evolution, Robot Doublings, & Alignment - https://​​youtube.com/​​watch?v=_kRg-ZP1vQc
    summarization_date:: 28/​06/​2023
    token_cost:: 12057
    dollar_cost:: 0.01911
    summary_reading_length:: 4.505
    doc_reading_length:: 120.5025
    author:: Dwarkesh Patel
      - Carl Shulman: highly regarded intellectual known for ideas on intelligence explosion and its impacts
        - Advisor to Open Philanthropy project
        - Research associate at Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford
      - Feedback loops and dynamics when approaching human-level intelligence involve:
        - Development of new computer chips, software, and training runs
      - Concept of input-output curves important in understanding increasing difficulty of improving AI
      - Productivity of computing has increased significantly over the years, but investment and labor required for advancements have also increased
      - In a world where AI is doing the work, doubling computing performance translates to a doubling or better of effective labor supply
      - Doubling labor force can result in several doublings of compute, accelerating AI development
      - Bloom paper mentioned:
        − 35% increase in transistor density
        − 7% increase per year in number of researchers required to sustain that pace
      - ---
      - The bloom paper mentioned:
        − 35% increase in transistor density
        − 7% increase per year in the number of researchers required to sustain that pace
      - There is a question of whether AI can be seen as a population of researchers that grows with compute itself.
      - Compute is a good proxy for the number of AI researchers because:
        - If you have an AI worker that can substitute for a human, having twice as many computers allows for running two separate instances and getting more gains.
      - Improvements in hardware and software technology contribute to the progress of AI.
      - The work involved in designing new hardware and software is done by people, but computer time is not the primary cost.
      - The number of people working on AI research is in the low tens of thousands, with companies like Nvidia, TSMC, and DeepMind having significant numbers of employees.
      - The capabilities of AI are doubling on a shorter time scale than the number of people required to develop them.
      - ---
      - The capabilities of AI are doubling faster than the number of people needed to develop them.
        - Hardware efficiency has historically doubled 4-5 times per doubling of human inputs, but this rate has slowed down as Moore’s Law nears its end.
        - On the software side, the doubling time for workers driving software advances is several years, while the doubling time for effective compute from algorithmic progress is faster.
      - Epoch, a group that collects datasets relevant to forecasting AI progress, found the following doubling times:
        - Hardware efficiency doubles in about 2 years.
        - Budget growth doubles in about 6 months.
        - Algorithmic progress doubles in less than 1 year.
      - The growth of effective compute for training big AIs is drastic, with estimates that GPT-4 cost around 50 million dollars to train.
        - Effective compute can increase through greater investment, better models, or cheaper training chips.
      - Software progress is measured by the reduction in compute needed to achieve the same benchmark as before.
      - The feedback loop between AI and compute can help with hardware design and chip improvements.
      - Automating chip design work could lead to faster improvements, but it is less important for the intelligence explosion.
      - ---
      - Improving chip design through AI automation is less important for the intelligence explosion because it only applies to future chips.
        - Faster improvements can be achieved through AI automation.
      - The most disruptive and important aspect of AI automation is on the software side.
        - Improvements can be immediately applied to existing GPUs.
      - The question is when AI will contribute significantly to AI progress and software development.
        - This contribution could be equivalent to having additional researchers.
      - The magnitude of AI’s contribution is crucial.
        - It should boost effective productivity by 50-100% or more.
      - AI can automate certain tasks in the AI research process.
        - This allows for more frequent and cost-effective completion of these tasks.
      - The goal is to have AI that can significantly enhance performance.
        - This is even with its weaknesses, rather than achieving human-level AI with no weaknesses.
      - Existing fabs can produce tens of millions of advanced GPUs per year.
        - If they run AI software as efficient as humans, with extended work hours and education, it can greatly surpass human capabilities.
      - ---
      - The education level of AI models surpasses that of humans and focuses on specific tasks.
        - Tens of millions of GPUs, each equivalent to the work of the best humans, contribute to significant discoveries and technological advancements.
        - Human-level AI is currently experiencing an intelligence explosion, starting from a weaker state.
        - The feedback loop for AI researchers begins when they surpass small productivity increases and reach a level equivalent to or close to human researchers.
        - AI systems can compensate for their weaknesses by deploying multiple less intelligent AIs to match the capabilities of a human worker.
        - AI can be applied to tasks such as voting algorithms, deep search, and designing synthetic training data, which would be impractical for humans.
        - As AI becomes more advanced, it can generate its own data and identify valuable skills to practice.
        - For instance, AlphaZero generated its own data through self-play and followed a curriculum to always compete against an opponent of equal skill.
  
  

• bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv 31 Mar 2023 18:10 UTC

  7 points

  6

  in reply to: Razied’s comment on: Cor­rect­ing a mis­con­cep­tion: con­scious­ness does not need 90 billion neu­rons, at all

  Yes we do, it’s in the sources.

• bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv 2 May 2023 7:41 UTC

  6 points

  1

  in reply to: Andy_McKenzie’s comment on: Ge­off Hin­ton Quits Google

  Fyi actually radiology is not mostly looking at pictures but doing imagery-guided surgery (for example embolisation) which is significantly harder to automate.

  Same for family octors : it’s not just following guidelines and renewing scripts but a good part is physical examination.

  I agree that AI can do a lot of what happens in medicine though.

• bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv 7 Nov 2023 7:48 UTC

  5 points

  0

  in reply to: lc’s comment on: Does bulemia work?

  Na. Although you can see patient having binge that you then understand were just one bigmac, indicating something closer to anorexia.

  The suicide rate is about 2% per 10 year which is insanely high. Also it is not uncommon for people with bulemia to have (sometimes severe) deficiencies regardless of their weight.

• bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv 31 Mar 2023 22:54 UTC

  5 points

  1

  in reply to: Razied’s comment on: Cor­rect­ing a mis­con­cep­tion: con­scious­ness does not need 90 billion neu­rons, at all

  Don’t you agree that certain brain lesion definitely make you not conscious? I think identifying which region is indispensable is important.

  If I had to guess human can be conscious without a cerebellum but not without basal ganglia fwiw

• bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv 18 Aug 2020 16:52 UTC

  5 points

  in reply to: Bucky’s comment on: 10 Fun Ques­tions for LessWrongers

  You are completely right. I should have known better. Allow me to downvote myself.

• bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv 31 Jan 2024 8:22 UTC

  4 points

  0

  on: Clip keys to­gether with tiny carabiners

  I think very cheap carabiners are extremely fragile especially for repeated use. I saw a failing mode where the mobile axis just opens in the wrong way by going around the stator. Keep that in kind when choosing which carabiner to use.

  Might be better to keep using ring keyholders but have one decently strong carabineer to hold the rings together instead of what you did : tiny carabiners that hols onto a ring no?

• bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv 5 Jan 2024 16:15 UTC

  4 points

  0

  in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Screen-sup­ported Portable Monitor

  Also, velcro comes in many strength and sizes. I find heavy duty velcros to be frequently underused in such DIY projects

• bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv 21 Dec 2023 12:59 UTC

  4 points

  1

  on: Le­gal­ize bu­tanol?

  For the curious, famous researcher David Nutt is working on alcohol replacements too. He’s part of Alcarelle, now called gaba labs and IIRC they bet on benzodiazepine derivatives.

• bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv 21 Feb 2023 14:57 UTC

  4 points

  0

  on: AI al­ign­ment re­searchers don’t (seem to) stack

  My first thought : examples that come to my mind of brilliant minds stacked against a problem were incredibly successful :

  • Manhattan project

  • Moon race

• bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv 23 Dec 2022 12:32 UTC

  4 points

  1

  on: Un­der-Ap­pre­ci­ated Ways to Use Flashcards

  Great post! I am extremely happy to see someone using Anki like I do.

  I have a 800 day streak with hundreds of cards on average per day and my use case include all of what you do.

  I also do the following :

  • any kind of insights this ended up the most indispensable use of Anki for me as I can iterate ideas: instead of having weekly ideas on random stuff I end up having ideas over previou ideas. This really increased my reflection on a lot of topic a lot! The way I do this is by just adding an n+1 cloze deletion to my existing card.

  • bookmarks add my bookmarks not only in my browser but also in anki otherwise I forget that I found this shiny new website /​ tool

  • Motor skills like tying knots, how to do a ranger roll to pack things neatly, etc

  • reminders I have a deck that shows the same few cards every day (like a mantra), a deck for cards that repeat over 1 week, 1 month, 6 months etc. This is easy by tweaking the settings and allows to put reminders like “last time you went to this dentist was [DATE], your next date should be around [DATE] and you should tell him that [CONDITION] etc”.

  • door codes of people

  • any kind of repair that I did For example “what kind of glue did you use to fix [something]? {{c1::gel neoprene glue}}”, the cool thing is that when 3 weeks later I find out that it was a terrible idea and some other glue would have been better, I just add “{{c2::Actually it broke after X days and I finally repaired it with NEW_GLUE}}”. Very handy for me. Another example was the type of screws I used when I made shelves for my girlfriend out of wood. And any kind of mistakes I made along the way.

  • the location of some files in my computer for example I very rarely need to use a password wordlist but don’t want to forget that I’m storing it handy in some folder.

  disclaimer: I think I have a pretty bad memory to begin with so I expect my gains from Anki to be greater than for most other people.

• bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv 5 May 2021 10:17 UTC

  4 points

  on: Your Dog is Even Smarter Than You Think

  I don’t think this question has been asked before here but I’m wondering about the effect of the age of the dog at the start of the training.

  1. IIRC feral children that learn to communicate as adults have missed their critical period for grammatical expression. In effect there oral skills are akin to “dog speak”. Maybe if the dog starts at age 0 it can lead to more complex word associations. If indeed there is a “grammatical critical period” for dogs even though dogs don’t ever have to use grammars in their natural state that would be a breakthrough in my opinion.

  2. it would be very interesting to see the impact of missing a sense from birth on this. For example, if a dog is born blind and taught at age 0 to communicate with this kind of device, maybe it could sort of rewire the unused parts of his brain to expand even more his speaking skills. Of course the device would have to be enhanced for blind dogs, maybe using braille bumps on top of the buttons, or scented buttons or by making the buttons emit a very faint tone specific to each button.

[Paper] Tra­jec­to­ries through se­man­tic spaces in schizophre­nia and the re­la­tion­ship to rip­ple bursts

The Peril of the Great Leaks (writ­ten with ChatGPT)