Fyi—this series of posts caused me to get a blood test for nutritional deficiencies, learn that I have insufficient vitamin D and folic acid, and take supplements on a bunch of days that I otherwise would not have (though less often than I should given knowledge of a deficiency). Thanks!
Howie Lempel
Karma: 240
Whoops—thanks!
I haven’t kept up with it so can’t really vouch for it but Rohin’s alignment newsletter should also be on your radar. https://rohinshah.com/alignment-newsletter/
Thanks for this! I found this much more approachable than other writing on this topic, which I’ve generally had trouble engaging with because it’s felt like it’s (implicitly or explicitly) claiming that: 1) this mindset is right for ~everyone; and 2) there are ~no tradeoffs (at least in the medium-term) for (almost?) anyone.
Had a few questions:
Your goals and strategies might change, even if your values remain the same.
Have your values in fact remained the same?
For example, as I walked down the self-love path I felt my external obligations start to drop away.
What is your current relationship to external obligations? Do they feel like they exist for you now (whatever that means)?
While things are clearly better now, I’m still figuring out how to be internally motivated and also get shit done, and for a while I got less shit done than when I was able to coerce myself.
Do you now feel as able to get things done as you did when you were able to coerce yourself? What do you expect will be the medium-to-long run effect on your ability to get things done? How confident do you feel in that?
***
More broadly, I’m curious whether this has felt like an unamibiguously positive change by the lights of Charlie from 1-3 years ago (whatever seems like the relevant time period)? In the long-run do you expect it to be a Pareto improvement by past Charlie’s lights?
Someone’s paraphrase of the article: “I actually think they’re worse than before, but being mean is bad so I retract that part”
Weyl’s response: “I didn’t call it an apology for this reason.”
https://twitter.com/glenweyl/status/1446337463442575361
First of all, I think the books are beautiful. This seems like a great project to me and I’m really glad you all put it together.
I didn’t think of this on my own but now that Ozzie raised it, I do think it’s misleading not to mention (or at least suggest) that this is selecting the best posts from a particular year in a salient way on the cover.[1] This isn’t really because anybody cares whether it’s from 2018 or 2019. It’s because I think most reasonable readers looking at a curated collection of LessWrong posts titled “Epistemology,” “Agency,” or “Alignment” would assume that this was a collection of the best ever LW[2] posts on that topic as of ~date of publication. That’s a higher bar than ‘one of the best posts on epistemology on LW in 2018’ and many (most?) readers might prefer it.
Counterargument: maybe all of your customers already know about the project and are sufficiently informed about what this is that putting it on the cover isn’t necessary.
Apologies if the ship’s already sailed on this and feedback is counterproductive at this point. Overall, I don’t think this is a huge deal.
[1] Though not intentionally so.
[2] Maybe people think of LW 2.0 as a sufficient break that they wouldn’t be surprised if it was restricted to that.
“As far as I can tell, it does not net profits against losses before calculating these fees.”
I can confirm this is the case based on the time I lost money on an arbitrage because I assumed the fees were on net profits.
On the documents:
Unfortunately I read them nearly a year ago so my memory’s hazy. But (3) goes over most of the main arguments we talked about in the podcast step by step, though it’s just slides so you may have similar complaints about the lack of close analysis of the original texts.
(1) is a pretty detailed write up of Ben’s thoughts on discontinuities, sudden emergence, and explosive aftermath. To the extent that you were concerned about those bits in particular, I’d guess you’ll find what you’re looking for there.
Thanks! Agree that it’d would’ve been useful to push on that point some more.
I know Ben was writing up some additional parts of his argument at some point but I don’t know whether finishing that up is still something he’s working on.
The Podcast/Interview format is less well suited for critical text analysis, compared to a formal article or a LessWrong post, for 3 reasons:
Lack of precision. It is a difficult skill to place each qualifier carefully and deliberately when speaking, and at several points I was uncertain if I was parsing Ben’s sentences correctly.
Lack of references. The “Classic AI Risk Arguments” are expansive, and critical text analysis require clear pointers to the specific arguments that are being criticized.
Expansiveness. There are a lot of arguments presented, and many of them deserve formal answers. Unfortunately, this is a large task, and I hope you will forgive me for replying in the form of a video.
tl;dw: A number of the arguments Ben Garfinkel criticize are in fact not present in “Superintelligence” and “The AI Foom Debate”. (This summary is incomplete.)
Hi Soren,
I agree that podcasts/interviews have some major disadvantages, though they also have several advantages.
Just wanted to link to Ben’s written versions of some (but not all) of these arguments in case you haven’t seen them. I don’t know whether they address the specific things you’re concerned about. We linked to these in the show notes and if we didn’t explicitly flag that these existed during the episode, we should have.[1]
Imagining the Future of AI: Some Incomplete but Overlong Notes
Slide deck: Unpacking Classic AI Risk Arguments
Slide deck: Potential Existential Risks from Artificial Intelligence
(1) and (3) are most relevant to the things we talked about on the podcast. My memory’s hazy but I think (2) and (4) also have some relevant sections.
Unfortunately, I probably won’t have time to watch your videos though I’d really like to.[2] If you happen to have any easy-to-write-down thoughts on how I could’ve made the interview better (including, for example, parts of the interview where I should’ve pushed back more), I’d find that helpful.
[1] JTBC, I think we should expect that most listeners are going to absorb whatever’s said on the show and not do any additional reading.
[2] ETA: Oh—I just noticed that youtube now has an ‘open transcript’ feature which makes it possible I’ll able to get to this.
Do you still think there’s a >80% chance that this was a lab release?
[I’m not an expert.]
My understanding is that SARS-CoV-1 is generally treated as a BSL-3 pathogen or a BSL-2 pathogen (for routine diagnostics and other relatively safe work) and not BSL-4. At the time of the outbreak, SARS-CoV-2 would have been a random animal coronavirus that hadn’t yet infected humans, so I’d be surprised if it had more stringent requirements.
Your OP currently states: “a lab studying that class of viruses, of which there is currently only one.” If I’m right that you’re not currently confident this is the case, it might be worth adding some kind of caveat or epistemic status flag or something.
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Some evidence:
A 2017 news article in Nature about the Wuhan Institute of Virology suggests China doesn’t require a BSL-4 for SARS-CoV-1. “Future plans include studying the pathogen that causes SARS, which also doesn’t require a BSL-4 lab.”
CDC’s current interim biosafety guidelines on working with SARS-CoV-2 recommend BSL-3 or BSL-2.
WHO biosafety guidelines from 2003 recommend BSL-3 or BSL-2 for SARS-CoV-1. I don’t know if these are up to date.
Outdated CDC guidelines recommend BSL-3 or BSL-2 for SARS-CoV-1. Couldn’t very quickly Google anything current.
I used to play Innovation online here—dunno if it still works. https://innovation.isotropic.org/
Also looks like you can play here: https://en.boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=innovation
Thanks for confirming!
How ill do they have to be? If a contact is feeling under the weather in a nonspecific way and has a cough, is that enough for them to get tested?
Do you feel like you have any insight into whether underreporting of mild/minimally symptomatic/asymptomatic cases?
I was able to buy hand sanitizer after going through security at JFK on Sunday but I wouldn’t count on that. Fwiw, Purell bottles small enough to take through security seem pretty common.
Seems possible but I don’t really understand where China’s claims about asymptomatic cases are coming from so I’ve been hesitant about putting too much weight on them. Copying some thoughts on this over from a FB comment I wrote (apologies that some of it doesn’t make total sense w/o context).
tl;dr I’m pretty unsure whether China actually has so few minimally symptomatic/asymptomatic cases.
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Those 320,000 people were at fever clinics, so I think none of them should be asymptomatic.
The report does say “Asymptomatic infection has been reported, but the majority of the relatively rare cases who are asymptomatic on the date of identification/report went on to develop disease. The proportion of truly asymptomatic infections is unclear but appears to be relatively rare and does not appear to be a major driver of transmission.”
But from a quick skim, I don’t think the basis for that finding is mentioned anywhere in the report. My guess is that Chinese officials told them that there were very few asymptomatic cases among people who were tested through contact tracing (which theoretically should test cases whether or not they’re symptomatic.
I haven’t really read anything from experts on this but my speculative guess is that we shouldn’t rely too heavily on claims about data from China’s contact tracing. The report claims that 100% of contacts were successfully traced in Shenzen and Guangdong and 99% in Sichuan. “100%” is a bit of a red flag coming from that regime.
Fwiw, here’s Anthony Fauci (head of infectious disease for the NIH) assuming* (w/o data afaict) that “the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases.” https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387
Link via Divia Caroline Eden
Some more suggestive evidence that Singapore might not be testing asymptomatic/minimally symptomatic people:
The COVID-19 swab test kit deployed at [travel] checkpoints allows us to test beyond persons who are referred to hospitals, and extend testing to lower-risk symptomatic travellers as an added precautionary measure. This additional testing capability deployed upfront at checkpoints further increases our likelihood of detecting imported cases at the point of entry. As with any test, a negative result does not completely rule out the possibility of infection. As such, symptomatic travellers with a negative test result should continue to minimise social contact and seek medical attention should symptoms not improve over the next three days.
If they were already testing lots of asymptomatic cases, it would be odd to say testing *symptomatic travelers* is allowing them to test beyond people referred to hospitals.”
I wonder if people are assuming that intense contact tracing means that contacts will be tested by default even if asymptomatic. I’m not an expert but my understanding is that this isn’t necessarily the default (and particularly not in a situation where they presumably don’t have an infinite supply of kits or healthcare workers to do the diagnostics). Depends on how close the contact was, the specific disease, etc, but I think default is to call the contact every day to check if they’ve developed symptoms. Would be great if an actual doctor/epidemiologist chimed in.
Singapore’s description of their contact tracing is vague but consistent with my understanding:
Once identified, MOH will closely monitor all close contacts. As a precautionary measure, they will be quarantined for 14 days from their last exposure to the patient. In addition, all other identified contacts who have a low risk of being infected will be under active surveillance, and will be contacted daily to monitor their health status.
14. As of 3 March 2020, 12pm, MOH has identified 3,173 close contacts who have been quarantined. Of these, 336 are currently quarantined, and 2,837 have completed their quarantine.https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/two-new-cases-of-covid-19-infection-confirmed
If they were administering tests to asymptomatic contacts, I think it’s likely they’d have said so here.
Connect these dots, along with the fact that Singapore has been doing extremely aggressive contact tracing and has been successful enough to almost stop the spread, I think Singapore can’t have many uncounted mild or asymptomatic cases, and their severely ill rate is still 10% to 20%.
Do you have a citation for the claim that Singapore can’t have many mild or asymptomatic cases? The article you cite says:
Close contacts are identified and those individuals without symptoms are quarantined for 14 days from last exposure. As of February 19, a total of 2593 close contacts have been identified. Of these, 1172 are currently quarantined and 1421 have completed their quarantine.5 Contacts with symptoms are tested for COVID-19 using RT-PCR.
The bold bit suggests that asymptomatic [or, I suspect, minimally symptomatic] people aren’t being tested
[I’m not a lawyer and it’s been a long time since law school. Also apologies for length]
Sorry—I was unclear. All I meant was that civil cases don’t require *criminal intent.* You’re right that they’ll both usually have some intent component, which will vary by the claim and the jurisdiction (which makes it hard to give a simple answer).
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tl;dr: It’s complicated. Often reckless disregard for the truth r deliberate ignorance is enough to make a fraud case. Sometimes a “negligent misrepresentation” is enough for a civil suit. But overall both criminal and ccivil cases usually have some kind of intent/reckless in difference/deliberate ignorance requirement. Securities fraud in NY is an important exception.
Also I can’t emphasize enough that there are 50 versions in 50 states and also securities fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, etc can all be defined differently in each state.
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After a quick Google., it looks to me like the criminal and civil standards are usually pretty similar.
It looks like criminal fraud typically (but not always) requires “fraudulent intent” or “knowledge that the fraudulent claim was false.” However, it seems “reckless indifference to the truth” is enough to satisfy this in many jurisdictions.[1]
New York is famous for the Martin Act, which outlaws both criminal and civil securities fraud without having any intent requirement at all.[2] (This is actually quite important because a high percentage of all securities transactions go through New York at some point, so NY gets to use this law to prosecute transactions that occur basically anywhere).
The action most equivalent to civil fraud is Misrepresentation of material facts/fraudulent misrepresentation. This seems a bit more likely than criminal law to accept “reckless indifference” as a substitute for actually knowing that the relevant claim was false.[3] For example, thee Federal False Claims Act makes you liable if you display “deliberate ignorance” or “reckless disregard of the truth” even if you don’t knowingly make a false claim.[4]
However, in at least some jurisdictions you can bring a civil claim for negligent misrepresentation of material facts, which seems to basically amount too fraud but with a negligence standard, not an intent standardd.[5]
P.S. Note that we seem to be discussing the aspect of “intent” pertaining to whether the defendant knew the relevant statement was false.There’s also often a required intent to deceive or harm in both the criminal and civil context (I’dd guess the requirement is a bit weaker in civil law.
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[1] “Fraudulent intent is shown if a representation is made with reckless indifference to its truth or falsity.” https://www.justice.gov/jm/criminal-resource-manual-949-proof-fraudulent-intent
[2] “In some instances, particularly those involving civil actions for fraud and securities cases, the intent requirement is met if the prosecution or plaintiff is able to show that the false statements were made recklessly—that is, with complete disregard for truth or falsity.”
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Claims_Act#1986_changes
[4] “Notably, in order to secure a conviction, the state is not required to prove scienter (except in connection with felonies) or an actual purchase or sale or damages resulting from the fraud.[2]
***
.In 1926, the New York Court of Appeals held in People v. Federated Radio Corp. that proof of fraudulent intent was unnecessary for prosecution under the Act.[8] In 1930, the court elaborated that the Act should “be liberally and sympathetically construed in order that its beneficial purpose may, so far as possible, be attained.”[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Act#Investigative_Powers
[5] “Although a misrepresentation fraud case may not be based on negligent or accidental misrepresentations, in some instances a civil action may be filed for negligent misrepresentation. This tort action is appropriate if a defendant suffered a loss because of the carelessness or negligence of another party upon which the defendant was entitled to rely. Examples would be negligent false statements to a prospective purchaser regarding the value of a closely held company’s stock or the accuracy of its financial statements.” https://www.acfe.com/uploadedFiles/Shared_Content/Products/Self-Study_CPE/Fraud-Trial-2011-Chapter-Excerpt.pdf
“I’m pretty sure that most EAs I know have ~100% confidence that what they’re doing is net positive for the long-term future”
Fwiw, I think this is probably true for very few if any of the EAs I’ve worked with, though that’s a biased sample.
I wonder if the thing giving you this vibe might be they they actually think something like “I’m not that confident that my work is net positive for the LTF but my best guess is that it’s net positive in expectation. If what I’m doing is not positive, there’s no cheap way for me to figure it out, so I am confident (though not ~100%) that my work will keep seeming positive EV to me for the near future.” One informal way to describe this is that they are confident that their work is net positive in expectation/ex ante but not that it will be net positive ex post
I think this can look a lot like somebody being ~sure that what they’re doing is net positive even if in fact they are pretty uncertain.