Warning: demon thread ahead
Logan Riggs
Karma: 2,278
I’ve read through your series so far, and I don’t believe your writing quality has dropped. Eliezer’s inadeuqacy sequence went from 200 to 50 karma from beginning to end, and you’ll see the same drop in views in youtube multi-part videos. I believe it’s just barrier-to-entry with each additional post in a sequence because you have to read the other ones first. Posting individual posts and then compiling them as a sequence sounds like a good solution. Have you done a Yoda timer on this yet? lol
I would like to see the dark side technique, which has been stated at Ziz’ blog here and has a basis in Nate Soares’ guilt series. Probably related to goal factoring and internal double crux just by the sound of those topics. If I was to summarize it, it’d be “Never do anything unless you know how it benefits you”
What are your experiences of the “rationalist uncanny valley”? I would assume sunk cost fallacy fallcy you mentioned, but is there anything else? For me personally, it would be “expending too much social capital for truth’s sake” and the above dark side technique. Both of these came from taking those ideas (Truth and Dark Side) seriously, actually trying them in real life, and overdoing it in wrong ways. I did learn from those experiences and am better for it, so trying, failing, learning, repeating was overall beneficial. I assume that’s what you would call the uncanny valley?
If so, to improve it would be to improve that feed-back cycle. Anything that increases trying, minimizes failing, and provides better feedback is a possible research avenue. From your own series (and a couple extra):
Increasing trying: Yoda Timers, TAPs, Aversion Factorying, Design, Dark Side
Minimizing failing/error: general biases, Actually Trying, Murphyjitsu,
Better Feedback: Bug Hunt, CoZe, Time calibration, Focusing
The very top of the post lists several bullet points of “the good” that would happen to you if you had this skill. Is that what you were asking for? Or were you asking for a personal life example, “I used to do [thing], but I gained this skill and now I do [better thing]”. If the latter, then he has a story’s tab for his emotional processing post, and I assume he’ll eventually have a story tab for this post as soon as someone sends him a personal story.
I really enjoyed your list of rejected impositions. It seems you’re optimizing for time, space, and cognitive capacity in order to do [thing] better.
I read the article you linked, and Terence Tao handles 10 short emails at a time, 5 pieces of paperwork at a time, 2 classes at a time, all errands while he’s in town done, etc. (#’s are arbitrary).
When coding games, I would jump through several hoops at a time dealing with Apple Developer to post an app. Now with a different startup, I’ll do all the emails/documentation at one time.
What specific “low-intensity” tasks do you struggle doing all at once? (It seems you already do this when buying in bulk)
This reminds me of the book The Princess Bride (the abridged version, of course) which I adored. Specifically the idea of successively one-up-ing.
Looking forward to the rest!
Thanks for mentioning Duncan’s I want to be healthy, and I deserve rest. That one resonated with me, so I immediately did it with Hardcore Comet King and I’m a human too who deserve’s comfort. Situation: Taking a cold shower to be more focused when meditating.
===============================================
Comfort: *inner scream* cold showers suck!! I don’t like it at all.
Comet King: Yes it sucks, but it’s only a temporary discomfort until ai takeoff, and then you can have all the comfort you could want.
Comfort: …
Me: Comfort could you summarize what was said?
Comfort: Cold showers suck, but once ai takeoff happens, I’ll have a lot of comfort.
[Then I remembered death]
Comfort: *inner scream*
Comet King: If you’ll allow these smaller discomforts, we’ll have a greater chance at avoiding the greater discomforts.
===============================================
And then I took cold shower.
(I don’t feel like I fully captured the conversation, and I feel it had some more dialogue)
I’m not too sure about how to mesh this idea (IDC / fusion) & meditation, specifically noticing intentions. Like I can notice “aversion of taking a cold shower” and focus on it until it fades and goes away, OR I can do IDC/fusion where those aversions/thoughts won’t show up in the first place.
I would say the second one is better, but I’m a novice in both of those so I might be mis-representing them. There might also be different relationships between those ideas that I’ve completely missed.
I’m in a Discord server with a lot of people who have applied, and as far as I can tell, none of us have received an answer yet! One of the MIRI team told us that they’re trying to decide on who, but logistics with multiple decision makers is making it take a bit!
I initially interpreted Mitchell’s as mocking as well, but on a second...third read I interpreted it as:
A reference to a common text book theme “An exercise for the reader” combined with the title of this post. Meant as a funny-joke-but-would-also-be-really-cool-if-someone-actually-did-it. This is just speculation though!! (Is this 100% correct Mitchell?)
I greatly appreciate you standing up for me though!!
If my speculation is correct, then I think the reason both you and I originally interpreted it as mockery would be the “those who are a little more advanced” part (meant as hyperbole) and the “*actually*” part.
Agreed on the “not downvoting any more than it is right now (-2)”. Though I would still like to dissuade any comments not directly related to the content of the post!
Wow! Glad good things are already coming out of this!
Thanks for sharing your experiences and the warning with it (this is the type of post I’d like to promote!), though I predict I’ll do well in this program due to what TurnTrout said in the other comment: I enjoy a lot of what I’m doing! * actually considers each item *… yep! This is honestly what I’d rather be doing than a lot of things, so I feel like Nate Soares in that regard (in his post I linked).
Regarding my why/motivation/someone to protect, I’m going to leave that for a separate post. I wanted this one to be a short & to the point intro. My why post will be much more poetic and wouldn’t fit here, and to separate it more cleanly, I’m referring to a terminal goal here.
Though I would love to clarify my instrumental goals to achieve that terminal goal! Those are those 3 bullet points “better self-model, feedback, & self-improvement”.
Better self-model: I would like to ~maximize my usefulness which would require working hard for several years (So closest to “productivity/ biological limits”). Getting the most bang for my buck those years involves finding a sustainable sprint/jog, so I’m making predictions and testing those predictions to get a more accurate self-model.
Self-improvement: I feel lacking in math and technical knowledge of open-problems in AI safety (as well as how progress has been made so far).
I very much appreciate your comment Mitchell. Your’s and Vanessa’s comment had both stated a possible option that I hadn’t considered before: bringing back those we’ve lost. It’s a low probability in my mind, but it’s at least in my hypothesis space now, so thanks.
The funeral was yesterday and I finally did get to be around people who were also mourning for him. It honestly really did help.
I’m also greatly encouraged and look forward to hearing how your own sprint went. Best of luck until then as well.
Thanks Vanessa
We will not give up even on those who seem to be already gone, until it’s a certainty they can’t be brought back.
I had never even considered this as a possibility beyond cryogenics, but I’ve mulled over yours and Mitchell’s comments for a few days now, and that hypothesis is on my radar now, so thank you. Your quote above captures how I want to respond in light of that.
Thank you Raemon
Thank you Jerry, I appreciate it
In contrast, I really liked it written out (which makes picture integration natural) and I was surprised to find others having problems reading it. My vision is 20⁄50 the last time I checked if that’s relevant.
Thanks renato!
Regarding your first set of questions:
Reading: originally 3 hr. This changed to 0-3 hours depending on when I woke up in the mornings, which meant going to bed around 9-10, which meant making a habit of trying to fall asleep when I get in bed. I did try to read in the evenings as well, but my eyes would glaze over after working for the day.
Tensor flow: originally 2 hr. I dropped this after the first week due to work taking up 2.2x as much time as I initially predicted. I also felt like I wasn’t actually learning anything while going through Google’s tutorials, and TurnTrout convinced me to just learn the pre-reqs and theory of ML first.
AI-Safety reading: originally 1 hr. This became 1-3 hours depending on how interested I was in. I dropped this though after I moved 40 days ago due to habit changes and then simply forgetting! I really enjoyed it and it was a low-spoons activity for me.
Meditate: originally 1 hr. This became 0-1 hours depending on the day. I experimented with doing it at different times, but during my lunch break is probably the best for me at the moment.
Weekends are a different animal. If I had a free one & wasn’t experiencing emotional problems, I would tear into a book, meditate a lot, read AI papers, and just get a lot of reading on LW and SlateStarCodex done which was great! I really wish I didn’t have to work so that could be every day.
So to answer your question, I changed what I was doing after giving it a solid try and adjusting from there if I needed to. After doing that for a couple of months, I have a much better idea of how to do these types of things now.
Regarding “How much efficiency during reading sessions?”
I interpret that to mean “how many pages per day”/”How many chapters per week”/”How many books per month”. If that’s correct, then I would say I could (right now) learn a subject/book a month. Like I could read Linear Algebra Done Right in less than a month and Tao’s Analysis I & II in less than two months, while doing all of the exercises.
If I didn’t have to work, I would predict that I could half that time and finish one in less than 2 weeks.
If that wasn’t what you asked, please let me know!
I appreciate you explicitly stating that it was a lot to deal with. I was actually a bit embarrassed because I didn’t get as much done as I expected, so, again, thanks Raemon.
Edited, thanks!
I’ll look into that course before I start, thanks for the recommendation!
For me, when a tangent conversations starts to die out, I literally say “So… what do you think about [previous topic]?”. The other person will usually laugh, probably because they didn’t even realize that they went off on a tangent.