Chi Nguyen

My Un­der­stand­ing of Paul Chris­ti­ano’s Iter­ated Am­plifi­ca­tion AI Safety Re­search Agenda

[Question] How have you be­come more hard-work­ing?

[in­ac­tive] £2000 bounty—con­tra­cep­tives (and UTI) liter­a­ture review

List of how peo­ple have be­come more hard-working

Com­plex­ity of value but not dis­value im­plies more fo­cus on s-risk. Mo­ral un­cer­tainty and prefer­ence util­i­tar­i­anism also do.

Co­op­er­at­ing with aliens and AGIs: An ECL explainer

AI things that are per­haps as im­por­tant as hu­man-con­trol­led AI (Chi ver­sion)

Ev­i­den­tial Co­op­er­a­tion in Large Wor­lds: Po­ten­tial Ob­jec­tions & FAQ

[Question] What’s your stan­dard for good work perfor­mance?

English sum­maries of Ger­man Covid-19 ex­pert podcast

Everett branches, in­ter-light cone trade and other alien mat­ters: Ap­pendix to “An ECL ex­plainer”

• Chi Nguyen 2 May 2024 18:13 UTC

  16 points

  3

  on: Please stop pub­lish­ing ideas/​in­sights/​re­search about AI

  Are there types of published alignment research that you think were (more likely to be) good to publish? If so, I’d be curious to see a list.

• Chi Nguyen 15 Sep 2021 15:46 UTC

  16 points

  on: Open & Wel­come Thread Septem­ber 2021

  I would like if there was a well-researched LessWrong post on the pros and cons of different contraceptives. - Same deal with a good post on how to treat or prevent urinary tract infection, although I’m less excited about that.

  • I’d be willing to pay some from my private money for this to get done. Maybe up to £1000? Open to considering higher amounts.

  • It would mostly be a public service as I’m kind of fine with my current contraception. So, I’m also looking for people to chip in (either to offer more money or just to take some of the monetary burden off me!)

  Examples of content that I would like to see included:

  • Clarity on the contraception and depression question. e.g. apparently theory says that hormonal IUDs should give you less depression risk than pills, but in empirical studies it looks like it’s the other way around? Can I trust the studies?

  • Some perspective on the trade-offs involved. E.g. maybe I can choose between a 5% increased chance of depression vs. a 100% increased chance of blood clots. But maybe basically no one gets blood clots anyway, and then I’d rather take the increased blood clot risk! But because the medical system cares more about death than me, my doctor will never recommend me the blood clot one, or something like that.

  • If there wasn’t already a post on this (but I think there is), info on that it’s totally fine to *not* take 7 day pill breaks every months, but that you can just take the pill all the time. (Although I think it might be recommended to take a short break every X months)

  • Some realistic outlook on how much pain and effects on menstruation I should expect

  • Various potential benefits from contraceptives aside from contraception

  • On the UTI side: Is the cranberry stuff a myth or is it a myth that it’s a myth or is it a myth that it’s a myth that it’s a myth?

  Alternatively: If there actually already are really good resources on this topic out there, please let me know!

[Question] (When) Should you work through the night when in­spira­tion strikes you?

Prob­a­bly tell your friends when they make big mistakes

• Chi Nguyen 16 Oct 2021 20:32 UTC

  10 points

  in reply to: Daniel Kokotajlo’s comment on: Open & Wel­come Thread Oc­to­ber 2021

  edit: We’re sorted :)

  Hello, I’m Chi, the friend, in case you wanna check out my LessWrong, although my EA forum account probably says more. Also, £50 referral bonus if you refer a person we end up moving in with!

  Also, we don’t really know whether the Warren Street place will work out but are looking for flatmates either way. Potential other accommodation would likely be in N1, NW1, W1, or WC1

Slim overview of work one could do to make AI go bet­ter (and a grab-bag of other ca­reer con­sid­er­a­tions)

• Chi Nguyen 10 Jul 2023 17:17 UTC

  9 points

  2

  on: The Seeker’s Game – Vignettes from the Bay

  Thanks for posting this! I really enjoyed the read.

  Feedback on the accompanying poll: I was going to fill it out. Then saw that I have to look up and list the titles I can (not) relate to instead of just being able to click “(strongly) relate/​don’t relate” on a long list of titles. (I think the relevant function for this in forms is “Matrix” or something). And my reaction was “ugh, work”. I think I might still fill it in but I’m muss less likely to. If others feel the same, maybe you wanna change the poll?

• Chi Nguyen 19 Sep 2021 22:46 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: mschons’s comment on: £2000 bounty—con­tra­cep­tives (and UTI) liter­a­ture review

  Hi, thanks for this comment and the links.

  I agree that it’s a pretty vast topic. I agree that the questions are personalized in the sense that there are many different personal factors to this question, although the bullets I listed weren’t actually really personalized to me. One hope I had with posting to LessWrong was that I trust people here to be able to do some of the “what’s most relevant to include” thinking, (e.g.: everything that affects ≥10% of women between 20 and 40 + everything that’s of more interest on LessWrong than elsewhere (e.g. irreversible contraception)) I agree it’s a tall order though.

  For talking to my doctor: I found my experience of talking to doctors pretty frustrating to be honest. I think I’ve learned much more about contraception (including about where my doctors were misinformed) via the internet or friends than doctors. I don’t doubt that there are excellent doctors out there, but it’s difficult to find them. The advice with looking up people who wrote up medical guidelines seems solid.

  That being said, while I’m interested in the topic myself, I was mostly thinking that it would be good for the LessWrong/​EA community to have a reliable source. (I’m mostly constrained to hormonal contraception and have already tried out a couple, so my remaining search space is relatively small.) I think it could save lots of women many hours of research into which contraception to take + productivity loss from trying out or permanently choosing suboptimal contraception.

  You prompted me to try out the D-Mannose, thanks! I’ve had it lying around, but was always to inert to research whether it actually works, so never bothered to take it.

• Chi Nguyen 30 Jan 2023 18:25 UTC

  5 points

  6

  in reply to: LoganStrohl’s comment on: My Model Of EA Burnout

  I find this comment super interesting because

  a) before, I would have expected many more people to be scared of being eaten by piranhas on LessWrong and not the EA Forum than vice versa. In fact, I didn’t even consider that people could find the EA Forum more scary than LessWrong. (well, before FTX anyway)

  b) my current read of the EA Forum (and this has been the case for a while) is that forum people like when you say something like “People should value things other than impact (more)” and that you’re more likely to be eaten by piranhas for saying “People should value impact more” than vice versa.

  Take this a slight nudge towards posting on the EA Forum perhaps, although I don’t really have an opinion on whether 2) and 3) might still be true.