Double

• DoubleJan 7, 2024, 6:23 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: Neel Nanda’s comment on: A Longlist of The­o­ries of Im­pact for Interpretability

  I’d call that “underselling it”! Your description of Microscope AI may be accurate, but even I didn’t realize you meant “supercharging science”, and I was looking for it in the list!

• DoubleJan 1, 2024, 11:40 PM

  3 points

  on: A Longlist of The­o­ries of Im­pact for Interpretability

  This is a great reference for the importance and excitement in Interpretability.

  I just read this for the first time today. I’m currently learning about Interpretability in hopes I can participate, and this post solidified my understanding of how Interpretability might help.

  The whole field of Interpretability is a test of this post. Some of the theories of change won’t pan out. Hopefully many will. Perhaps more theories not listed will be discovered.

  One idea I’m surprised wasn’t mentioned is the potential for Interpretability to supercharge all of the sciences by allowing humans to extract the things that machine learning models discovered to make their predictions. I remember Chris Olah being excited about this possibility on the 80k Podcast, and that excitement meme has spread to me. Current AIs know so much about how the world works, but we can only indirectly use that knowledge indirectly through their black box interface. I want that knowledge for myself and for humanity! This is another incentive for Interpretability, and although it isn’t a development that clearly leads to “AI less likely to kill us” it will make humanity wiser, more prosperous, and on more even footing with the AIs.

  Nanda’s post probably deserves a spot in a compilation of Alignment plans.

• DoubleDec 20, 2023, 5:40 AM

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: Valentine’s comment on: Here’s the exit.

  I’m glad you enjoyed my review! Real credit for the style goes to whoever wrote the blurb that pops up when reviewing posts; I structured my review off of that.

  When it comes to “some way of measuring the overall direction of some [AI] effort,” conditional prediction markets could help. “Given I do X/​Y, will Z happen?” Perhaps some people need to run a “Given I take a vacation, will AI kill everyone?” market in order to let themselves take a break.

  What would be the next step to creating a LessWrong Mental Health book?

• DoubleDec 19, 2023, 6:13 AM

  4 points

  0

  on: Here’s the exit.

  Ideally reviews would be done by people who read the posts last year, so they could reflect on how their thinking and actions changed. Unfortunately, I only discovered this post today, so I lack that perspective.

  Posts relating to the psychology and mental well being of LessWrongers are welcome and I feel like I take a nugget of wisdom from each one (but always fail to import the entirety of the wisdom the author is trying to convey.)

  
  The nugget from “Here’s the exit” that I wish I had read a year ago is “If your body’s emergency mobilization systems are running in response to an issue, but your survival doesn’t actually depend on actions on a timescale of minutes, then you are not perceiving reality accurately.” I panicked when I first read Death with Dignity (I didn’t realize it was an April Fools Joke… or was it?). I felt full fight-or-flight when there wasn’t any reason to do so. That ties into another piece of advice that I needed to hear, from Replacing Guilt: “stop asking whether this is the right action to take and instead ask what’s the best action I can identify at the moment.” I don’t know if these sentences have the same punch when removed from their context, but I feel like they would have helped me. This wisdom extends beyond AI Safety anxiety and generalizes to all irrational anxiety. I expect that having these sentences available to me will help me calm myself next time something raises my stress level.

  I can’t speak to the rest of the wisdom in this post. “Thinking about a problem as a defense mechanism is worse (for your health and for solving the problem) than thinking about a problem not as a defense mechanism” sounds plausible, but I can’t say much for its veracity or its applicability.

  I would be interested to see research done to test the claim. Does increased sympathetic nervous system activation cause decreased efficacy? A correlational study could classify people in AI safety by (self reported?) efficacy and measure their stress levels, but causation is always trickier than correlation.

  A flood of comments criticized the post, especially for typical-minding. The author responded with many comments of their own, some of which received many upvotes and agreements and some of which received many dislikes and disagreements. A follow up post from Valentine would ideally address the criticism and consolidate the valid information from the comments into the post.

  A sequence or book compiled from the wisdom of many LessWrongers discussing their mental health struggles and discoveries would be extremely valuable to the community (and to me, personally) and a modified version of this post would earn a spot in such a book.

• DoubleDec 7, 2023, 11:27 PM

  1 point

  0

  on: Gem­ini 1.0

  Liv Boeree: This is pretty nuts, looks like they’ve surpassed GPT4 on basically every benchmark… so this is most powerful model in the world?! Woweee what a time to be alive.

  Link doesn’t work. Maybe she changed her mind?

[Question] Should an un­der­grad avoid a ca­pa­bil­ities pro­ject?

• DoubleJul 17, 2023, 4:15 AM

  3 points

  on: Ham­mers and Nails

  Hammer: when there’s low downside, you’re free to try things. (Yeah, this is a corollary of expected utility maximization that seems obvious, but I still feel like I needed to explicitly and recently learn it.) Ten examples:

  1. Spend a few hours on a last-minute scholarship application.

  2. Try out dating apps a little (no luck yet, still looking into more effective use. But I still say that trying it was a good choice.)

  3. Call friends/​parents when feeling sad.

  4. Go to an Effective Altruism retreat for a weekend.

  5. Be (more) honest with friends.

  6. Be extra friendly in general.

  7. Show more gratitude (inspired by “More Dakka”, which I read thanks to the links at the top of this post.

  8. Spend a few minutes writing a response to this post so that I can get practice with the power of internalizing ideas.

  9. When headache → Advil and hot shower. It just works. Why did I keep just waiting and hoping the headache would go away on its own? Takes a few seconds to get some Advil, and I was going to shower anyways. It’s a huge boost to my well-being and productivity with next to no cost.

  10. Ask questions. It seriously seems like I ask >50% of the questions in whatever room I’m in, and people have thanked me for this. They were ashamed or embarrassed to ask questions or something? What’s the downside?

• DoubleMar 2, 2023, 5:04 PM

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: JNS’s comment on: Don’t Jump or I’ll...

  I hadn’t considered this. You point out a big flaw in the neighbor’s strategy. Is there a way to repair it?

• DoubleMar 2, 2023, 4:11 PM

  3 points

  3

  in reply to: cousin_it’s comment on: Don’t Jump or I’ll...

  I only have second-hand descriptions of suicidal thoughts-processes, but I’ve heard from some who say they had become convinced that their existence was a negative on the world and the people they care about, and they came to their decision to commit suicide from a sort of (misguided) utilitarian calculation. I tried to give the man this perspective rather than the apathetic perspective you suggest. There’s diversity in the psychology of suicidal people. Do no suicidal people (or sufficiently few) have the Utilitarian type of psychology?

• DoubleMar 2, 2023, 4:00 PM

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: michael_dello’s comment on: Don’t Jump or I’ll...

  I’m glad you enjoyed it! I had heard of people making promises similar to your Trump-donation one. The idea for this story came from applying that idea to the context of suicide prevention. The part about models is my attempt to explain my (extremely incomplete grasp of) Functional Decision Theory in the context of a story. https://​​www.lesswrong.com/​​tag/​​functional-decision-theory

Don’t Jump or I’ll...

• DoubleFeb 1, 2023, 7:26 PM

  4 points

  0

  on: Vot­ing Re­sults for the 2021 Review

  ⁴⁄₈ of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s posts in this list have a minus 9. Compare this with ¹⁄₇ for duncan_sabien, ⁰⁄₆ for paulfchristiano, ⁰⁄₅ for Daniel Kokotajlo, or ⁰⁄₃ for HoldenKarnofsky. I wonder why that is.

• DoubleJan 11, 2023, 3:04 AM

  3 points

  on: Against neu­tral­ity about cre­at­ing happy lives

  On one level, the post used a simple but emotionally and logically powerful argument to convince me that the creation of happy lives is good.

  On a higher level, I feel like I switch positions of population ethics every time I read something about it, so I am reluctant to predict that I will hold the post’s position for much time. I remain unsettled that the field of population ethics, which is central to long-term visions of what the future should look like, has so little solid knowledge. My thinking, and therefore my actions, will remain split among the convincing population ethics positions.

  This sequence made me doubt the soundness of philosophical arguments founded on what is “intuitive” (which this post very much relies upon). I don’t know how someone might go about doing population ethics from a psychology point of view, but the post’s subtitles “Preciousness,” “Gratitude,” and “Reciprocity” give some clues.

  A testable aspect of the post would be to find out if the responses to the Wilbur and Michael thought experiments are universal. Also, I’d be interested to know how many of the people who read this post in 2021 (and have interacted with population ethics since then) maintain their position.

  Carlsmith should follow up with his take on the Repugnant Conclusion. The Repugnant Conclusion is the central question of population ethics, so excluding it from this post is a major oversight.

  Notes: The “famously hard” link is broken.

  What links here?

  • Raemon's comment on The 2021 Re­view Phase by Raemon (Jan 20, 2023, 8:54 PM; 8 points)
  • Raemon's comment on High­lights and Prizes from the 2021 Re­view Phase by Raemon (Jan 27, 2023, 11:35 PM; 2 points)

• DoubleOct 2, 2022, 1:00 AM

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: Double’s comment on: Evanston, IL – ACX Mee­tups Every­where 2022

  He has shown up.

• DoubleOct 2, 2022, 12:53 AM

  1 point

  0

  on: Evanston, IL – ACX Mee­tups Every­where 2022

  I’m here with a few others in a booth near the door. We haven’t seen Uzair.

• DoubleSep 11, 2022, 11:00 PM

  0 points

  0

  in reply to: simon’s comment on: Gate­keeper Vic­tory: AI Box Reflection

  Yes, it is. I wanted to win, and there is no rule against “going against the spirit” of AI Boxing.

  I think about AI Boxing in the frame of Shut up and Do the Impossible, so I didn’t care that my solution doesn’t apply to AI Safety. Funnily, that makes me an example of incorrect alignment.

Gate­keeper Vic­tory: AI Box Reflection

[Question] AI Box Ex­per­i­ment: Are peo­ple still in­ter­ested?

• DoubleAug 22, 2022, 2:27 AM

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: deepthoughtlife’s comment on: If you know you are un­likely to change your mind, should you be lazier when re­search­ing?

  I have spent many hours on this, and I have to make a decision by two days from now. There’s always the possibility that there is more important information to find, but even if I stayed up all night and did nothing else, I would not be able to read the entirety of the websites, news articles, opinion pieces, and social media posts relating to the candidates. Research costs resources! I suppose what I’m asking for is a way of knowing when to stop looking for more information. Otherwise I’ll keep trying possibility 2 over and over and end up missing the election deadline!

[Question] If you know you are un­likely to change your mind, should you be lazier when re­search­ing?