Going Durden

Karma: 69

Going Durden 17 May 2023 12:34 UTC
3 points
0
on: AI Will Not Want to Self-Improve
Im confused by this post. It might be that I lack the necessary knowledge or reading apprehension, but the post seems to dance around the actual SELF-improvement (AI improving itself, Theseus Ship Style), and refocuses on improvement iteration (AI creating another AI).

Consider a human example. In the last few years, I learned Rationalist and Mnemonic techniques to self-improve my thinking. I also fathered a child, raised it, and taught it basic rationalist and mnemonic tricks, making it an independent and only vaguely aligned agent potentially more powerful than I am.

The post seems to focus on the latter option.

Going Durden 11 May 2023 7:37 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Matthew_Opitz’s comment on: What does it take to ban a thing?
is if it turns out that advanced narrow-AIs manage to generate more utility than humans know what to do with initially.

I find it not just likely but borderline certain. Ubiquitous, explicitly below-human narrow AI has a tremendous potential that we act blind to, focusing on superhuman AI. Creating superhuman, self-improving AGI, while extremely dangerous, is also an extremely hard problem (in the same realm as dry nanotech or FTL travel). Meanwhile, creating brick-dumb but ubiquitous narrow AI and then mass producing it to saturation is easy. It could be done today, its just a matter of market forces and logistics.

It might very well be the case that once the number of narrow-AI systems, devices and drones passes certain threshold (say, it becomes as ubiquitous, cheap and accessible as cars, but not yes as much as smartphones) we would enter a weaker form of post-scarcity and have no need to create AI gods.

Going Durden 11 May 2023 7:07 UTC
4 points
0
on: My resentful story of becoming a medical miracle
I have a somewhat similar story. I have been struggling with ADHD all my life, and only recently started using anti-ADHD medicines. Unfortunately, these gave me stomach issues and tremendous reflux, which was only tolerable if I took them in small doses...which in turn barely helped with my ADHD.

After testing pretty much every anti-ADHD drug with combination of every anti-reflux drug, I gave up, and tried my aunt’s suggestion of Ashwaghandha. I was beyond skeptical, and only gave it a try to please a concerned relative. I was mentally prepared to anti-placebo it, determined to prove it will not work (I even pre-planned my smug and condescending speech about how I did my best to test it and how obviously it did nothing, being just another woowoo herbalist nonsense with no scientific proof behind it).

It goddamn worked. By itself, ashwaghandha did precisely nothing. By themselves, ADHD medicine did something, but at the cost of me belching acid like an overfed xenomorph. Combined, it resulted in a far, far greater mental focus, and no digestion issues at all. Absurdly, combining ashwghanda with smaller dose of amphetamine salts gave better and stabler mental results than just doubling the amph intake.

AFAIK, there are no studies that conclusively prove ashwaghanda really works. Those that do, suggest it as a sleeping aid of all things. And yet. I talked it out with my psychiatrist, and as far as she knows (and she is likely THE expert on adult ADHD in my country) ashwaghanda should do nothing at all.

Going Durden 8 May 2023 6:38 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Lukas_Gloor’s comment on: Romance, misunderstanding, social stances, and the human LLM
It would be fascinating if propensity for limerence was genetically determined, because limerence directly influences our mating/breeding habits. For one, teen pregnancy might very well be a side effect of this.

Going Durden 5 May 2023 9:47 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: pjeby’s comment on: Romance, misunderstanding, social stances, and the human LLM
In that regard, should we assume that the missing component that makes love “romantic” or “limeric” is irrationality?

My instinct is that if someone has a gooey, excessive feeling that the other is Significant it counts as romantic, but if one had a rational, evidence based belief that the other is Significant, it would not be considered romantic enough, even if the feeling of emotional bond would be much more resilient in the second example.

To use a more concrete example:

1. Bill meets Alice and falls madly in love with her. He does irrational, excessively symbolic and juvenile things to impress her. They break up anyway after a turbulent 3 months. Their Love is Romantic.
2. Frank meets Jane on a professional dating app, and they see with perfect clarity that their values, ideologies, libidos, tastes and lifestyles are perfectly aligned. They marry and spent 57 years together in an easy bliss, until they die. Their relationship would not be qualified as romantic, even though it generated more happiness and a stronger bond.

Therefore, I would suggest that the important component of romance are: irrationality, excessiveness, emotional risk and playing against bad statistical odds. In other words, drama.

Going Durden 5 May 2023 9:35 UTC
2 points
−1
in reply to: tslarm’s comment on: Romance, misunderstanding, social stances, and the human LLM
I honestly cannot recall I ever felt limerence, even when I felt love. This led me to research it, and it seems like limerence is a highly culture specific, and is likely more a cultural meme than an emotion inherent to human brains. If I were to guess, I would say limerence is a side effect of the emotional and sexual frustration of the young and inexperienced humans who dabble in their first relationships, and since hearing/gossiping/reading about other people’s romantic frustrations is exciting, it became a meme.

To support this theory, we see much greater emphasis on limerence/limerice/limerance in cultures and ages when virginity until marriage was considered sacred, and young people were gender-segregated. In free-love egalitarian cultures, we see remarkably little dramatic limerice, and in fact, we see attempts by the youth to artificially create romantic drama (ex: going out of their way to date dangerous people, or pining over an inaccessible celebrity) to achieve a semblance of limerice.

As we grew in numbers and social complexity, it is easy to encounter someone with a completely different desire/expectation of limerance in their life, which I think is the reason romantic relationships became so difficult.

Unsurprisingly, there seems to be very little desire for limerice among LWers and rationalists in general, which explains why a higher-than-average number of us are single, or dating fellow rationalists.

Going Durden 5 May 2023 9:19 UTC
1 point
−1
on: Why aren’t more of us working to prevent AI hell?
Some reasons why Im personally not as involved in working to prevent AI Hell:

(in no order of importance).

1. Im not strongly convinced a hostile Singularity is plausible at least in the near future, from technological, logistical, and practical standpoint. Pretty much every AI Hell scenario I have read, hinges on sudden appearance of scientifically implausible technologies, and on instant perfect logistics that the AI could use.
2. Main issue that could lead to AI Hell is the misalignment of values between AI and humans. However, it is patently obvious that humans are not aligned with each other, with themselves or with rational logic. Therefore, I do not see a path to align AI with human values unless we Solve Ethics, which is an impossible task unless we completely redesign human brains from scratch.
3. Im personally not qualified to work on any technological aspects of preventing AI Hell. I am qualified to work on human-end Ethics and branch into alignment from that, and I see it as an impossible task with the kind of humans we get to work with.
4. A combination of points 1 and 2 leads me to believe that humanity is far more likely to abuse early stage AI to wipe itself out, than for AI itself to wipe out humanity of its own volition. To put it differently, crude sub-human level AI can plausibly be used to cause WW3 and a nuclear holocaust without any need for hostile superhuman AI. I think we worry too much about the unlikely but extremely lethal post-Singularity AI, and not enough about highly likely and just sufficiently lethal wargame systems in the hands of actual biological humans, who are not sufficiently concerned with humanity’s survival.
5. Roko’s Gremlin: anyone who is actively working on limiting or forcibly aligning AI is automatically on the hit-list of any sufficiently advanced hostile AI. Im not talking about long term high-end scenario of the Roko’s Basilisk, but rather the near-future low-end situation in which an Internet savvy AI can ruin your life for being a potential threat to it. In fact, this scenario does not require actively hostile AI at all. I see it as completely plausible that a human being with a vested financial interest in AI advancement could plausibly use AI to create a powerful smear campaign against, say, EY, to destroy his credibility, and with him the credibility of the AI Safety movement. Currently accessible AI is excellent at creating plausible-seeming bullshit, which would be perfect to use for social media warfare against anyone who tries to monkeywrench its progression. Look at Nick Bostrom to see how easily one of us can be sniped down with minimum effort.

Going Durden 28 Apr 2023 9:49 UTC
3 points
0
on: cyberpunk raccoons
What about the inverse idea, rather than putting cybernetics into racoons, put racoons into cynbernetics?

Something like say, Boston Dynamics Dog, but with a racoon encased inside to pilot it. The actual strength, dexterity and speed of a racoon is unimpressive, the impressive part is their intelligence. You could have raccoons piloting all purpose robot-suits, but for simplest menial tasks you could get away with something long lived, robust and sturdy, like a lobster.

Going Durden 28 Apr 2023 8:43 UTC
8 points
6
in reply to: green_leaf’s comment on: Romance, misunderstanding, social stances, and the human LLM
Possibly, but to know that, I would have to be shown definition of what Romantic Love actually is, aside from “deep friendship+sex”. Even the Wikipedia article on Romance/Love lists a whole bunch of contradicting definitions that boil down to one of:

1. Friendship and sex (Emotional Bond+ Physical Bond).
2. Biological mate bonding to create offspring.
3. ”...You know, that lyrical, limerical, ephemeral thing that we all experience, so we won’t define it...”

My guess is that answer 3 is basically social memetics to cover and normalize that love is basically 2 by way of 1.

And since asexual people supposedly feel Love as well, this means that Love is essentially an intense desire for Friendship that forms a lasting bond.

Going Durden 28 Apr 2023 8:17 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Pseudonymous Hippo’s comment on: Romance, misunderstanding, social stances, and the human LLM
For a while now, I have been trying out something that I think would be compatible with your Portable Tell Culture, a thing I would call a Passive Tell or a Passive Frame. Basically, the idea is that my outward presentation and behavior is always well matched with my actual internal beliefs, and I consciously use social stereotypes and stylistic cues to make it obvious.

Without getting into any specifics, I’m exactly the kind of a guy you would think I was after a first glance, and my words, actions, behavior, even fashion, matches the social stereotype that I internally resemble the most. Im exactly what it says on the tin, and a book that you can judge by the cover.
This came as a result of an experiment in radical honesty I started 2 years ago. Trying to limit lying, and deceptive presentation to a limit meant that I had to wear my internal beliefs openly and passively advertise them, which naturally filters the possible social interactions and types of people I interact with to those Im compatible with.

Going Durden 28 Apr 2023 7:59 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: DirectedEvolution’s comment on: Romance, misunderstanding, social stances, and the human LLM
another thing I consider common, is that a person who is overly flexible in changing their stance, and overly “fluent” in various social stances comes of as untrustworthy, suspicious, even dangerous. In the height of the PUA/NLP craze, these kind of people were called “social robots”, and their behavior either made people fall for their charisma easily, or be extremely creeped out.

I think humans subconsciously expect some social stance misunderstandings, pushback from people with different stances, and that it would take at least some struggle to convince someone to match your stance. If the other person immediately shifts to a compatible stance, even one incongruous with their previous behavior, it catches us of-guard.

Going Durden 28 Apr 2023 7:51 UTC
5 points
2
in reply to: supposedlyfun’s comment on: Romance, misunderstanding, social stances, and the human LLM
looking at your components 1,2,3, I noticed that these are the same I would use when I signal “this interaction is on a timer” trying to communicate that the other person is kinda wasting my time, and they should be brief with their signals and move on. It is less “Im busy, please go away” but more “you have 90 seconds of my attention span, say your piece”.

Maybe the stance with the opposite sex people we are not interested with is defined not just by intensity (or lack thereof) but timespan.

Going Durden 28 Apr 2023 7:40 UTC
11 points
6
on: Romance, misunderstanding, social stances, and the human LLM
After reading your post, I realized that I see the term “romantic” as pretty void of meaning.
Compare these 3:

1. Friendship (caring, vulnerability, bonding)
2. Friendship+sex (friends with benefits, caring, vulnerability, bonding and intercourse)
3. Romantic relationship (friendship + sex +...?)

I do not see anything obvious happening between options 2 and 3. “Romantic” does not seem to add any specific feelings or behaviors, with the possible exception of the expectation of monogamy, which in itself does not generate any new feelings if kept, only new feelings if NOT kept.

Therefore, I would weakly suggest we try to taboo “romantic” and “love”, until we figure out what those terms actually mean, and how they differ from friendship in actual content not in social perception.

Thinking about that, made me follow down into the rabbit hole further. In society, we see a strong, if fuzzy defined structure of a “Couple” (romantic partners, Married etc). There seems to be an expectation that a Couple should be “Romantically In Love” but there seems to be no strong correlation between official Couple-status and romantic behaviors (however defined). There does not seem to even be a strong correlation between Couple status and friendship, or Couple Status and sex (plenty of Couples who are not really meaningfully friends, and plenty of couples with no sex life or below basic-needs sex life).

The cultural definition suggests that what makes a Couple ad Couple, regardless of the above, is the feeling of Romantic Love, but I don’t see any workable definition of Romantic Love that does not simply combine Friendship+Sex, so I feel like we are running in circles.

It might be that these issues come from misunderstandings of social stances, but I feel like a part of it is that the Meme of Romantic Love is meta to actual one-on-one human relations, and instead is a top-down group belief, or possibly even a Belief-in-Belief, that most of us conform to rather than actually believe in. It might not be that our expectations do not match each other, but that they try to match a cultural meme that has no actual physical reality behind it.

Part of the reason why I think that, is that historically, the definition of Romantic Love was quite weak. Every few centuries or so it would pop-up among the idle classes, and then fade away. Friendships and sexual attractions, are pretty well defined, and are either ingrained in our biology completely, or so culturally non-controversial, that you could talk about friendship with an Ancient Greek, or a Sentinel Islander, or an Inuit, and their definitions would match yours, but their definition of Romance could very well be alien to you, or non existent.

Going Durden 28 Apr 2023 6:40 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: ponkaloupe’s comment on: Stop trying to have “interesting” friends
my hunch is that we naturally segregate into monkeyspheres where certain definitions of interesting basically equal fun for everyone involved, and the Boring people are basically strangers, breaking the flow. Moreover, humans are not that different, we tend to be interested in similar things, and tend to be bored with similar things, at least broadly speaking.

What I think OP is trying to tell us, is that we should not over-focus on superficially fascinating snobs, who talk good game but aren’t good friends, but I think most people actually know that; we treat our brief interaction with Superficially Interesting People the same way we treat chocolate, wine or weed: its fun to have a little every now and then, but we’re not building our lifestyle around it.

Going Durden 28 Apr 2023 6:31 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: the gears to ascension’s comment on: grey goo is unlikely
we very likely did not, given the span of it, and various national responses.

Going Durden 20 Apr 2023 11:22 UTC
2 points
−1
on: Stop trying to have “interesting” friends
It comes dangerously close to conflating knowing a lot, reading a lot, or having thoughtful things to say with moral goodness.
Take note however, that life is generally short, and stakes of friendship are high. Interesting, knowledgeable personality is not equal with moral goodness, but it strongly correlates with at least, being more beneficial than harmful. It also strongly correlates with open-mindedness, and usually with empathy (since, part of empathy is being able to emulate the thought processes of another person within your mind, to guess their possible reactions, and that takes raw intelligence).

Or to put it differently: Interesting Friends are more likely to be Good Friends than Bad Friends. Non-Interesting Friends are slightly more likely to be Bad Friends, or that you would be a Bad Friend to them out of boredom.

So, given that we are unlikely to be able to acquire dozens upon dozens of friends to test, or invest equally in everybody around us, it makes more sense to invest in Interesting Friends, then test them for things like conscientiousness, ethics and open-mindedness.

(Note: we should also consider neurodiversity issues. An Interesting Friend is significantly more valuable to a person with ADHD. A perfectly morally upright and open-minded Friend who is nevertheless Boring, would make an ADHD person claw their own brain out in frustration. TO put it differently, people’s tolerance of Non-Interesting/Boring people range from “eh, he’s alright” to “hanging out with them is a Cruel and Unusual Punishment”.)

Going Durden 20 Apr 2023 11:06 UTC
1 point
0
on: The basic reasons I expect AGI ruin
I notice I am confused by two assumptions about STEM-capable AGI and its ascent:

Assumption 1: The difficulty of self-improvement of an intelligent system is either linear, or if not, its less steep over time than its increase in capabilities. (counter scenario: an AI system achieves human level intelligence, then soon after intelligence 200% of an average human. Once it reaches say, 248% of human intelligence it hits an unforeseen roadblock because achieving 249% of human intelligence in any way is a Really Hard Problem, orders of magnitude beyond passing the 248% mark. )

Assumption 2: AI capabilities to self improve exceed its own complexity at all times. This is kind of a special case of Assumption 1. (counter scenario, complexity is either always, or at some point, greater than the capability, and it becomes an inescapable catch-22).

I guess that the hidden Assumption 0 for both is “every STEM problem is solvable in a realistic timeline, if you just throw enough intelligence at it.” For my STEM-ignorant mind, it seems like some problems are either effectively unsolvable (ie: turning the entire universe into computronium and crunching until HDoTU won’t crack it) or not solvable in the human-meaningful future (turning Jupiter into computronium and crunching for 13 million years is required) or, finally, borderline unsolvable due to catch-22 (inventing computronium is so complex you need a bucket of computronium to crunch it).

Can you lead me to understanding why I’m wrong?

Going Durden 20 Apr 2023 8:07 UTC
3 points
on: Concentration of Force
I wonder, if there is a plausible way to memetically ruggedize the society against such concentrations of cultural force? I have some ideas, but none of them feel strong enough:
- make concentration of social force taboo (Ganging-up is bad!) But I don’t see how to achieve that without using CoF ourselves.
- make “punish non-punishers” particularly taboo (How?)
- encourage social contrarianism
- encourage sealioning as a response to social CoF
- preemptively ruggedize laws and contracts against future soc-CoF attacks
- (risky) train social media algorithms to notice and flag CoF-like internet behavior
None of the above feel like they would be enough, but anything more powerful like that would introduce more problems than solutions.

Going Durden 20 Apr 2023 7:43 UTC
1 point
in reply to: MrGoose’s comment on: Concentration of Force
One trick that worked for me in such a scenario, is to make refusal to exercise costly in terms of hassle and inconvenience.
For example, when I’m done exercising, I put my dumbbells on my gaming chair. Thus, it will be impossible for me to go sit and play the next day without actually lifting them again, and if I lift them again...its not that hard to just keep on lifting until I’m exhausted.

Trick number two, was to ask my SO to remind me to work out every other day before sleep. If I refuse, to do so, I would have to face a minor embarrassment of having to explain why, to person who knows all my lies and self-lies. Moreover, my SO claimed sexual preference for a physically fit partner over a pudgy one, so I’m indirectly reminded that refusing to lift is detrimental to my sexual pleasure in the long run, while getting and keeping a sixpack has enormous and enthusiastically noticed benefits.

So in effect, the concentration of force here is a pile of small inconveniences for non-compliance, and small rewards for compliance, that themselves can be established with minimum effort.

Going Durden 20 Apr 2023 6:58 UTC
1 point
−7
in reply to: Steven Byrnes’s comment on: grey goo is unlikely
sorry if the thread of my comment got messy, I did mention somewhere that COVID-like pathogen would likely be worst case scenario, for the reasons you mentioned above (long incubation).

However, I believe that COVID pandemic actually proves that humanity is robust against such threats. Quarantine worked. Masks worked. Vaccines worked. Soap and disinfectant worked. As human response would scale up with the danger inherent in any pandemic, I think that anything significantly more deadly that COVID would be stopped even faster, due to far more draconian quarantine responses.

With those in place, I do not see how a pathogen could be used to “wipe out humanity”. Decimate, yes. Annihilate? No.

But as I agreed in another thread, we should cut that conversation now. Discussing this online is literally feeding ideas to our potential enemy (be it AI or misaligned humans).