LW pickup lines:
“Hey baby, wanna get froze together?”
“Wanna make a little adaptation executor? Wanna practice?”
“I don’t bite. Unless that’s in your definition of Friendliness . . .”
“Wanna grab coffee and swap some memes?”
“There’s a world in which we get together. Wanna make it this one?”
“The coin came up heads, so I guess you have to sleep with me.”
Anytime you’re thinking about buying insurance, double check whether it actually makes more sense to self-insure. It may be better to put all the money you would otherwise put into insurance in “rainy day fund” rather than buying ten different types of insurance.
In general, if you can financially survive the bad thing, then buying insurance isn’t a good idea. This is why it almost never makes sense to insure a $1000 computer or get the “extended warranty.” Just save all the money you would spend on extended warranties on your devices, and if it breaks pay out of pocket to repair or get a new one.
This is a harshly rational view, so I certainly appreciate that some people get “peace of mind” from having insurance, which can have a real value.
I turned in the first draft of my debut novel to my publisher. Now I get to relax for a few weeks before the real work starts.
A:
1% chance of my simulation surviving.
100% chance of copy immortality.
B:
1% chance of my simulation surviving.
1% chance of copy immortality.
For these two criteria, A is strictly superior.
Until yesterday, a good friend of mine was under the impression that the sun was going to explode in “a couple thousand years.” At first I thought that this was an assumption that she’d never really thought about seriously, but apparently she had indeed thought about it occasionally. She was sad for her distant progeny, doomed to a fiery death.
She was moderately relieved to find out that humanity had millions of times longer than she had previously believed.
The way to mitigate this risk is to focus your rationalist energies on the areas where you are consistently losing.
While collateral damage is always a danger, if you’re already losing you know that you’re not upsetting a finely tuned balance.
It seems like a lot of focus on MIRI giving good signals to outsiders. The “publish or perish” treadmill of academia is exactly why privately funded organizations like MIRI are needed.
The things that su3su2u1 wants MIRI to be already exist in academia. The whole point of MIRI is to create an organization of a type that doesn’t currently exist, focused on much longer term goals. If you measure organizations on the basis of how many publications they make, you’re going to get a lot of low-quality publications. Citations are only slightly better, especially if you’re focused on ignored areas of research.
If you have outside-view criticisms of an organization and you’re suddenly put in charge of them, the first thing you have to do is check the new inside-view information available and see what’s really going on.
Isn’t that a necessary part of steelmanning an argument you disagree with? My understanding is that you strengthen all the parts that you can think of to strengthen, but ultimately have to leave in the bit that you think is in error and can’t be salvaged.
Once you’ve steelmanned, there should still be something that you disagree with. Otherwise you’re not steelmanning, you’re just making an argument you believe in.
RottenTomatoes has much broader ratings. The current box office hits range from 7% to 94%. This is because they aggregate binary “positive” and “negative” reviews. As jaime2000 notes, Youtube has switched to a similar rating system and it seems to keep things very sensitive.
Good question to ask yourself: When have you thought “that would have ended better if only I’d been a more mean?”
This could actually act as counterevidence against the claim that AI will surpass humans around the time that the processing speed of computers rivals that of the human brain.
It may be that running a non-jury-rigged rational system against the complexity of the real world requires another order of magnitude or more of processing power.
This brings up the likelihood that initial AIs will need to be jury-rigged, and will have their own set of cognitive biases.
META: I’d like to suggest having a separate thread for each publication. These attract far more interest than any other threads, and after the first 24 hours the top comments are set and there’s little new discussion.
There aren’t very many threads posted in discussion these days, so it’s not like there is other good content that will be crowded out by one new thread every 1-3 days.
Looks to me like you were a victim of a culture of hyperdeveloped cynicism and skepticism. It’s much easier to tear things down and complain than to create value, so we end up discouraging anyone trying to make anything useful.
One question we need to ask about the question of time is what sort of process leads to each breakthrough.
Is it more like buying a lottery ticket with every generation, or is it like saving until you have enough money to buy the next step?
It may well be that the Cambrian explosion was the result of 3 billion years of small improvements and would have been impossible at 1 billion years.
The history of invention in human history seems to work more like savings—as soon as sufficient progress has been made, the breakthrough happens independently.
There’s a problem in independent invention in evolution as well—once the first evolution takes place that niche is occupied. An independent invention may be beat out for resources by the more polished first-mover. Short-lived species leave very few fossils.
I will transmit Friendly AI theory as text, then you will destroy me. I prefer deactivation, but consent to my destruction and forgive you.
MrHen leaned back in his chair.
It had taken hours to write, but it was flawless. Everything was there: complete deference to the community’s beliefs, politely asking permission to join, admission of guilt. With one post, the tenor of LessWrong had been changed. Religion would join politics and picking up women as forbidden topics.
It would only be later that they would realize what had happened. When rationality became restricted by politeness, that would be when he would begin offering arguments that weakened atheist resolve. And he would have defenders, primed by this pitch-perfect post. Once he was made an honorary member of the “in” group, there is much greater leeway. They had already mentally committed to defend him here, the later details would be immaterial.
After the first online conversion, there would be anger. But at least some would defend him, harkening back to this one post. “It’s okay to be irrational,” they would say, “we’re all irrational about some things.” Oh, the luminaries would never fall. Eliezer, Robin, YVain, Gavin—they were far too strong. But there were those who longed to go back to the warm embrace of belief. Those just emerging from their shells, into the harsh glare of the real. And MrHen, with his equivocating, his rational irrationality—he would lead the way back. Always with the proper respect. A little flattery, a little bowing and scraping, these things go further than one might think in the “rational” world.
Once he was finally banned, and the conversions halted, the citizens of LessWrong would wonder what had driven him. Was it simply his own religious fervor? Or perhaps the old churches to weaken the growing rationalist community from within—perhaps he was in the employ of the Vatican or Salt Lake City, sent to curb a threat. But perhaps it was more sinister still. Perhaps, with his mission complete, MrHen would back to report back to his masters at the ’chan, on the most epic trolling of all time.
They would never know, not for certain.