Randomly noting that this is, IMO, a deeply underrated piece of advice: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bF4uuEpwug64bcGai/seriously-use-text-expansions
davekasten
Karma: 2,465
Just swinging by to say that this is the lowest-upvoted post on Lesswrong that has ever meaningfully increased my productivity, and I am thankful for it. If I could double-strong-upvote this, I would.
I would not disagree with this being a good time for advocacy! I suspect we’ll have at least one bigger shock still, and planning accordingly seems worthwhile. Walk and chew gum, etc.
Interesting! Have you asked the UK-focused groups why they haven’t engaged with them?
On first blush, it seems a little confusing to blame folks working on US political campaigns for not doing enough in your own backyard, but perhaps I’m missing something here.
Remember, PauseAI US is distinct from PauseAI Global! That’s why they fundraise on PauseAI Global posts...wait, I think I missed something
Alvaro, to be clear, are you defending the highly-personal attacks that Holly has engaged in against me, against Zvi, and against Amanda Askell? And if you endorse those attacks, are you doing so in your personal or professional capacity? Here are some clear examples:
Perhaps somehow the item above about Holly making it clear that her tweets are PauseAI US’s strategy (https://x.com/ilex_ulmus/status/2070746368910520506) is insufficient. On many other occasions, Holly insists that she will “continue to berate” (https://x.com/ilex_ulmus/status/2021384678205444511) others and that she will be “merciless” (https://x.com/ilex_ulmus/status/2024337483572662487) in doing so.She’s repeatedly and obsessively attacked me for daring to go to a conference that Anthropic employees were at—despite the fact that many, many other AI safety people were there as well. (See, e.g., https://x.com/ilex_ulmus/status/2004416440263164412 ). She has repeatedly claimed that I am equivalent to a supporter of chattel slavery (see, e.g., https://x.com/ilex_ulmus/status/2004660356212269300 ) and does weird creepy pseudo-psychological analyses of my motivations (see that previous tweet, or many of our other interactions; she’s even quoted the Bible at me at one point).
And it’s not just me; for example, her attacks on Amanda Askell were so unwarranted that Eliezer Yudkowsky spoke up to say he opposed them (https://x.com/allTheYud/status/2028747691690242328?s=20), she’s attacked people who work for ARI (some of AI safety’s strongest soldiers on the Hill), etc.
Many people have asked her to stop this behavior, or tried to communicate to PauseAI US and Global why it’s so hard for us to work with all of you when your boss constantly attacks us in such an unwarranted, vile, personal way. And despite that, I still tell people that PauseAI US is worth donating to if it matches their values, because I’m trying very hard to avoid her bruising personal attacks to affect my values and beliefs. And frankly, it’s especially shitty in that context that you, who are (at least according to LinkedIn), the Development Director for PauseAI US, stick up for your boss treating me so awfully.
Any answer, @Maxime Fournes ?
I think there are worlds where you should still donate to PauseAI US, and worlds where you shouldn’t; I am not advocating in favor of it, or against it.[1] But I do believe anyone considering doing so should peruse Holly Elmore’s twitter account, since she has declared that “my tweets do represent the worldview PauseAI US is trying to evince” (https://x.com/ilex_ulmus/status/2070746368910520506), and decide whether or not you wish to fund more of those tweets, which appears to be their top leadership priority. Her tweets define PauseAI’s brand in the most consequential nation for AI; you should decide if you want to support that work.
Personally, I have several times asked PauseAI US and Global to stand up against these unwarranted, personal, and line-crossing attacks on me and others that Holly engages in; they have refused to do so. I am tired of it.- ^
I’m not unaware that noting their behavior might shape people’s opinions, but for the record, I have absolutely told some people quite recently that, given their personal values and priorities, donating to PauseAI US makes a lot of sense. I think other members of PauseAI US’s team are decent folks trapped in a bad situation; I know something of what that might feel like.
Given my own personal values and priorities, I personally would absolutely never give PauseAI US a single dollar from my own pocket so long as Holly Elmore is associated with it. Nor would I give PauseAI Global a dollar so long as they keep the same name as her organization and fail to accurately describe how closely the orgs were linked at the beginning (despite their formal independence) in posts like this one.
- ^
I think these people are trying to be good people in a tough situation.
But I don’t think it’s possibly tenable to evaluate PauseAI Global without understanding the actions of its US branch. I do not think this attempt to wave away widespread community discussions with a brief mention of “PauseAI US, which is a distinct entity with a different leadership team and approach” is remotely sufficient.
I also do not believe the history provided above is complete or candid without describing PauseAI Global’s co-evolution with PauseAI US in a much more substantive manner.I would recommend greater candor and proactive disclosure while seeking funding.
FWIW, my feeling at the time was, “this is fun, I enjoyed this, but 1. I don’t want to monopolize this experience as there’s only one ball to toss and 2. I’m getting increasingly worried of bonking someone on the head”
I think this might just be a non-ideal case study of the point you’re making, though I do agree with it generally
Concepts where (mostly) everyone agrees that not everyone agrees about whether the thing exists or not, but if it exists, it probably has agency, like divinities.
Orders that people seem to agree exist, even though it’s unclear how to judge them, like “the best band in the world”Objects that when imprecisely called can be either rigid body or ideal gas, like “water”
FWIW, I resonate with some parts of this post—e.g., that a near-ASI endgame is deeply unstable from a risk-of-war perspective.
But I also think it overall has a code smell of what you might call “politics as done by physicists” (https://xkcd.com/793/) : far too much confidence in the exhaustiveness of frameworks; far less respect for friction, uncertainty, and risk-averseness than exists in actual policymaking; and very little exploration of polities and societies as anything other than command-and-control actors.
And I note that, in general, politics as done by “physicists” has failed to work very well. (These are metaphorical “physicists” referencing the XKCD comic—actual literal physicists can become good politicians, if they learn the actual affordances of the societies they live in, however. Metaphorical “physicists” include things like the writings of Karl Marx, in addition to some literal physicists).
It’s helpful, I think, to do so; I don’t know if the mods have declared it an explicit norm, but I do know some folks who’ve had negative experiences when folks thought they were trying to pull a fast one.
(And just to reaffirm—don’t think Max was doing that, that’s why I wrote “misconstrued” above—just trying to help everyone keep their trigger fingers nice and relaxed here)
Max, it might be useful here to disclose your relationship with the same employer as Alex.
(I do agree with some parts of this post and think they are good, disagree with other parts that are weak arguments, but think LessWrong has an intense allergy against anything that could be misconstrued as astroturfing karma. I know you and think you’re a nice dude, so it’s to everyone’s benefit to flag this.)
Perhaps a helpful synthesis: DC and Berkeley spend some of their weirdness points very similarly (e.g., being nerds about esoteric worldshaking topics) and some very differently (e.g., formality of attire, relationship styles)[1]
- ^
Note that a person from Berkeley would not have used this phrasing for either of these points.
- ^
What’s the current state of play on “good fairly quiet indoor air purifiers”? Like, is there a better model than “whatever Lighthaven has” or is that the best call, and if so, what is it called on Amazon?
I think this mostly tracks with how many military professionals talk about this stuff. It’s beneficial for all sides to have rights of surrender in the special case of surrender, even though it’s beneficial for all sides to be clever generally in war. So, we absolutely ban the act of falsely surrendering under a white flag (to, e.g., enable an ambush) as the war crime of perfidy, even though we allow many other “ruses de guerre” that involve deceit in other contexts.
Basic obvious point for some audiences here: if you’re not using LLMs for helping you with basic scutwork tasks, you’re losing leverage that you shouldn’t be on AI policy advocacy. Claude Code makes my job faster and more fun.
This shouldn’t be news, but sometimes people need a self-improvement tip.
(If you have an ethical objection to using them at all, obviously this wouldn’t apply to you.)
One thing I find myself doing increasingly in the AI policy community is connecting people to offices in DC. This is good, but I worry that it leads us to have path-dependency on who people like me know and the logic that we have about where to start, rather than prospecting for new offices that we don’t know as well. It’s plausible that everyone doing this should run rand(535) against a list of all the Senators and Representatives a few times a month and go meet a truly random office and see what happens.
Sure!
“zgpt” is “Write in a polite manner modeled after Patrick “patio11″ McKenzie” (my most useful chatpgt/claude prompt when I need to get it to rewrite something for me into a politer/more elegant mode—this is particularly useful when you’re tired and need to be polite in a note but don’t know how)
″/gcal” gives my Google calendar booking link
“zcontact” add my contact info
″/time” and ”/when” both unpack to “When would you need a response by?”—the most common question I ask
(Note that there’s inconsistency in the formatting here for textexpanders between z and slash, I probably should commit to one or another eventually)