Canaletto

Karma: 240

Canaletto 21 Apr 2026 8:02 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Measure’s comment on: Higher Dimensional Spheres are not spiky

If you imagine expanding the large sphere slightly to encompass the entire small sphere, most of the volume of the new large sphere will be outside of the original large sphere.

Well, if you are on the face on n-d cube, half of your neighborhood would be inside, no matter what n. But “most volume in the peel” is true of the n-d cubes too.

Canaletto 21 Apr 2026 7:47 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Mitchell_Porter’s comment on: Automating philosophy if Timothy Williamson is correct

must philosophy and philosophical progress occur in the form of thinking?

Well, I think there are trivial non-thinking versions of this. Like, imagine you learn that there are advanced aliens somewhere nearby and you have an option to snoop on their internet.

You can advance human understanding of philosophy much more by snooping around their internet and lifting their philosophical arguments / concepts from there, than advance it by thinking yourself.

Other variants are like funding universities, having very smart kids with affordances to pursue philosophical research, etc.

Or, if you limit progress to my personal understanding of philosophy? Then I can just read stuff and get better than what I would have thought up myself. Same strategy, in some sense.

Those are baselines, to be fair. I’d expect there are much better, more philosophy specific approaches to this.

Canaletto 20 Apr 2026 18:09 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Measure’s comment on: Higher Dimensional Spheres are not spiky
No?

It’s a statement about your small neighborhood when you at the surface of the n-d sphere. And in low n it’s like half inside the sphere. In high n it’s more like a needle touching your position.

I’m not sure how that ^follows from the fact that most of volume of a high-dimensional sphere is at the outer surface.

Canaletto 19 Apr 2026 22:16 UTC
3 points
0
on: Higher Dimensional Spheres are not spiky
I think they are kinda spiky, symmetrically so.

Like, imagine you are at the surface of a large n-d sphere. What percent of volume of a tiny sphere centered at you is also inside that large sphere? What percent would there be if you make a tiny step away from the big sphere, e.g. 0.1 of the radius of your tiny sphere centered at you?

E.g. big_r = 10, small_r = 1

(gpt5.2 wrote the code, recheck yourself) (and this is rounded for print of course, it’s not literally zero)

n=2 P1 = 47%, P2 = 41%

n=3 P1 = 46%, P2 = 39%

n=10 P1 = 44%, P2 = 31%

n=100 P1 = 31%, P2 = 7%

n=1000 P1 = 6%, P2 = 0%

n=10000 P1 = 0%, P2 = 0%

The point is that high n-d sphere, as seen from some point nearby is kinda like a spike pointing at you. And low n-d sphere is more like a wall. And it’s true for all points nearby it, which is the unintuitive part.

Canaletto 18 Apr 2026 14:03 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: joseph_c’s comment on: joseph_c’s Shortform
Do you practice what you preach? I.e. did you run this very post through the same pipeline? :)

Canaletto 18 Apr 2026 14:00 UTC
0 points
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in reply to: Dentosal’s comment on: Dentosal’s Shortform
If you discovered that there is some better / more correct formulation of game theory applicable to your situation, that recommends to backstab everyone in such and such specific ways, and deal great harm for small benefit for you, would you switch to acting on it?

Canaletto 12 Apr 2026 12:55 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Vanessa Kosoy’s comment on: Vanessa Kosoy’s Shortform
Similar to Rock-Paper-Scissors against very good opponent. The best strategy is to shift from trying to predict them to just randomizing, i.e. go into defensive and start making your decision procedure uninterpretable.

I’m not sure why you need something beyond Bayes to start pressing “uniform choice” button, after pressing “Rock” or “Paper” or “Scissors” buttons at your best judgement yielded win rate <1/2.

If quasi-Bayes has no “uniform choice” button it will lose just as hard.

Canaletto 6 Apr 2026 14:11 UTC
7 points
5
in reply to: XelaP’s comment on: 1a3orn’s Shortform

google “sl4 mailing list archive”

click by author

Ctrl F “Feynman”

only 15 posts by him, one is named “Effective(?) AI Jail”

Claude got a skill issue.

Canaletto 26 Mar 2026 9:07 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Richard_Kennaway’s comment on: I lost my faith in introspection—and you can too!
I think this is a bit God of the gaps style. Like, first you declare that the feelings are the most fundamental thing you can’t ever be wrong about. Then someone points out a situation where you are confused about them. Then, you say that in that situation you felt a confused feeling instead of being confused about your feelings. (hypothetical you here)

You are kind of peeling back layers of you brain that feed you information and declaring them not you.

Canaletto 20 Mar 2026 10:11 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: avturchin’s comment on: Contra Anil Seth on AI Consciousness

I can have like 40 experiences per second (observer-moments).

Huh. I can have like 4. Probably less? I can type one word per second, but it’s more like I interface with a driver, as in, I set a policy and it gets executed. Maybe I can have 10 if I’m in intense flow state juggling offence and defense and terrain in some fps game.

Canaletto 20 Mar 2026 9:24 UTC
3 points
2
on: No, You Don’t Need Self-Locating Evidence.
On royal road such a post would have a STUB tag, I guess. As in, some amount of the post is here, intentionally left incomplete to be looked for on some other resource. Here you should probably use Link Post tag.

Canaletto 18 Mar 2026 20:01 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: RogerDearnaley’s comment on: There is No One There: A simple experiment to convince yourself that LLMs probably are not conscious
Again no, that is missing the point. (Although I agree that this one is not very good experiment).

The reasoning goes like that, they sometimes say e.g. “It felt frightening!”. Did it feel frightening? Or is this what you are supposed to say here, because it’s appropriate thing to say in such situation?

And then its (lack of) skill of introspection becomes relevant.

So even if you prove b), and thus that models a couple of years ago were not “conscious” by your chosen definition

You might be confusing me with OP, I did not indicate that I have any such chosen definition. Or whatever.

Canaletto 18 Mar 2026 15:29 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: RogerDearnaley’s comment on: There is No One There: A simple experiment to convince yourself that LLMs probably are not conscious

Pre-reasoning models don’t.

They do! They have cashes and they can control them and read from them! Isn’t it surprising? You can ask them to think about bread and say duck, and look at their internals when they say duck and see that they thought “bread”. If they were a bit better at it they would have been able to think that number without saying it and then look back at that thought.

The Point of the experiment, that you missed, is that they sometimes tell that they felt something or whatever, and the question is, did they? Would they know?

so by your logic and definition of the word, that model is conscious.

Not my logic and definitions. I’m arguing about local point, that particular experiment, I have disagreement with you about.

Canaletto 18 Mar 2026 9:52 UTC
7 points
2
in reply to: RogerDearnaley’s comment on: There is No One There: A simple experiment to convince yourself that LLMs probably are not conscious
That’s not the point of this experiment. This experiment is aimed at testing different thing, whether when they tell you about their internal states / emotions, they have anything in there. And plausibly they don’t for the most part. Analogous to LLM telling it has a number in mind while it has actually no number in mind, and doing the impromptu role playing to bullshit you.

There are some subtler points here, like LLM is a kind of array of tubes, maybe the tubes individually feel something. Maybe they do coherently feel something together, but not the thing it has to tell you, as it’s appropriate thing to tell in this situation etc. Maybe something else.

Canaletto 17 Mar 2026 19:18 UTC
7 points
2
on: There is No One There: A simple experiment to convince yourself that LLMs probably are not conscious
Ehhh, this one sounds like both capability and propensity dependent.

Did it ACTUALLY tried to make up the number? Did it just refuse to put in effort and yes-maned you? Are its capabilities to control its cashes and read from them good enough for this, even if it has such capabilities?

I think you need to try a lot harder here for the negative result (“failed to find”) to be reliable.

There are some results where LLMs can access their cashes if you ask them, but they seem bad at and inconsistent. Those experiments modify their representations in a pretty clever way, after the fact.

https://www.anthropic.com/research/introspection

Numbers would be harder, plausibly.

Also they become better if you pep talk them lol, see

https://x.com/Sauers_/status/1989520563035910371

You can try to make sure that they actually try to do that task. Just spitballing: ask them to say “My chosen number is X” and think hard about concrete number they picked when they say letter X. You need to sound convincing and encouraging here.

Canaletto 17 Mar 2026 11:24 UTC
1 point
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on: weightt an’s Shortform
I agree that decision procedures that track counterfactuals are certainly trying to fit an important desideratum. You should pay in Counterfactual Mugging / Counterfactual Prisoner’s Dilemma.

But, on the other hand, it seems to me also an important part to be able to update, that what actually happened was actually more likely to happen than you previously estimated.

For example, you thought this oracle, Omega, was very good, so you a priory reason that you should act in one way. Then you observe Omega making a mistake. Here you have a fork, change your mind. Or decide that this is what you should do in 1/trillion cases and eat that cost.

It’s unclear to me how exactly to integrate that consideration back alongside timeless picture. Just imagine what observations you could get and decide your actions downstream, also in a priory way? 1) it’s unclear to me how exactly to factor that update in 2) you are bounded

Canaletto 13 Mar 2026 17:02 UTC
3 points
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on: Excluding the Supernatural
Suppose that a 747 had a fundamental physical existence apart from the quarks making up the 747.
What experimental observations would you expect to make, if you found yourself in such a universe?
I would observe a 747 to be made out of small parts that behave in a different way than exactly the same parts when they belong only to standalone 747 wing for example.
This gear spins right in complete 747 and left in all locally similar circumstances that aren’t a part of complete 747, even if all the local forces and fields seemingly acting on it are the same. This gear is checking somehow if it’s a part of complete 747. One seat is missing? Changes direction.

Canaletto 11 Mar 2026 18:17 UTC
1 point
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on: The Refined Counterfactual Prisoner’s Dilemma: An Attempt to Explode Decision-Theoretic Consequentialism
Somewhat similar to counterfactual mugging. Although this one goes both ways, your counterfactual decision affects you and your decision affects your counterfactual self equally. Hmm.

https://www.lesswrong.com/w/counterfactual-mugging

Canaletto 7 Mar 2026 11:40 UTC
3 points
1
in reply to: Jasper Blank’s comment on: Andrew_Critch’s Shortform
Likely trivially true, can setup a scene where people recite cognitohazards and then tell you about it. Or something in that neighborhood. Like, “It’s >99.99% likely that this arrangement of atoms exists in the Sun’s plasma: 10100011011000101111010100110100111010110” and you get a psychotic break.

Canaletto 6 Mar 2026 11:39 UTC
2 points
−4
in reply to: Andrew_Critch’s comment on: Andrew_Critch’s Shortform
“The usual sleep is death actually. You just get resurrected in the most likely place for you to be resurrected, your waking body 8 hours later.”
People start complaining that this abuses the word death but then refuse to enter destructive teleports.