Robert Kennedy

• Robert Kennedy 2 Dec 2022 21:30 UTC

  3 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: ThomasW’s comment on: Did ChatGPT just gaslight me?

  I am sorry for insulting you. My experience in the rationality community is that many people choose abstinence from alcohol, which I can respect, but I forgot that likely in many social circles that choice leads to feelings of alienation. While I thought you were signaling in-group allegiance, I can see that you might not have that connection. I will attempt to model better in the future, since this seems generalizable.

  I’m still interested in whether the beet margarita with OJ was good~

• Robert Kennedy 2 Dec 2022 4:42 UTC

  −7 points

  2 ∶ 5

  on: Did ChatGPT just gaslight me?

  Did you try the beet margarita with orange juice? Was it good?

  To be honest, this exchange seems completely normal for descriptions of alcohol. Tequila is canonically described as sweet. You are completely correct that when people say “tequila is sweet” they are not trying to compared it to super stimulants like orange juice and coke. GPT might not understand this fact. GPT knows that the canonical flavor profile for tequila includes “sweet”, and your friend knows that it’d be weird to call tequila a sweet drink.

  I think the gaslighting angle is rather overblown. GPT knows that tequila is sweet. GPT knows that most the sugar in tequila has been converted to alcohol. GPT may not know how to reconcile these facts.

  Also, I get weird vibes from this post as generally performative about sobriety. You don’t know the flavor profiles of alcohol, and the AI isn’t communicating well the flavor profiles of alcohol. Why are you writing about the AIs lack of knowledge about the difference between tequila’s sweetness and orange juice’s sweetness? You seem like an ill informed person on the topic, and like you have no intention of becoming better informed. From where I stand, it seems like you understand alcohol taste less than GPT.

• Robert Kennedy 11 Nov 2022 3:22 UTC

  12 points

  10 ∶ 4

  on: We must be very clear: fraud in the ser­vice of effec­tive al­tru­ism is unacceptable

  I wish this post talked about object level trade offs. It did that somewhat with the reference to the importance of “have a decision theory that makes it easier to be traded with”. However, the opening was extremely strong and was not supported:

  I care deeply about the future of humanity—more so than I care about anything else in the world. And I believe that Sam and others at FTX shared that care for the world. Nevertheless, if some hypothetical person had come to me several years ago and asked “Is it worth it to engage in fraud to send billions of dollars to effective causes?”, I would have said unequivocally no.

  What level of funding would make fraud worth it?

  Edit to expand: I do not believe the answer is infinite. I believe the answer is possibly less than the amount I understand FTX has contributed (assuming they honor their commitments, which they maybe can’t). I think this post gestures at trading off sacred values, in a way that feels like it signals for applause, without actually examining the trade.

• Robert Kennedy 24 Sep 2022 22:51 UTC

  15 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: janus’s comment on: In­tel­li­gence as a Platform

  Thanks for feedback, I am new to writing in this style and may have erred too much towards deleting sentences while editing. But, if you never cut too much you’re always too verbose, as they say. I in particular appreciate that, when talking about how I am updating, I should make clear where I am updating from.

  For instance, regarding human level intelligence, I was also describing relative to “me a year/​month ago”. I relistened to the Sam Harris/​Yudkowsky podcast yesterday, and they detour for a solid 10 minutes about how “human level” intelligence is a straw target. I think their arguments were persuasive, and that I would have endorsed them a year ago, but that they don’t really apply to GPT. I had pretty much concluded that the difference between a 150 IQ AI and a 350 IQ AI would be a matter of scale. GPT as a simulator/​platform seems to me like an existence proof for a not-artificially-handicapped human level AI attractor state. Since I had previous thought the entire idea was a distraction, this is an update towards human level AI.

  The impact on AI timelines mostly follows from diversion of investment. I will think on if I have anything additional to add on that front.

In­tel­li­gence as a Platform

• Robert Kennedy 7 Sep 2022 20:32 UTC

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: lsusr’s comment on: Nine nines

  Right, okay. I am trying to learn your ontology here, but the concepts are not close to my current inferential distance. I don’t understand what the 95% means. I don’t understand why the d100 has 99% chance to be fixed after one roll, while a d10 only has 90%. By the second roll I think I can start to stomach the logic here though, so maybe we can set that aside.

  In my terms, when you say that a Bayesian wouldn’t bet $1bil:$1 that the sun will rise tomorrow, that doesn’t seem correct to me. It’s true that I wouldn’t actually make that nightly bet, because the risk free rate is like 3% per annum so it’d be a pretty terrible allocation of risk, plus it seems like it’d be an assassination market on the rotation of Earth and I don’t like incentivizing that as a matter of course. But does the math of likelihood ratios not work as well to bury bad theories under a mountain of evidence?

  I think not assigning 1e-40 chance to an event is an epistemological choice separate from Bayesianism. The math seems quite capable of leading to that conclusion, and recovering from that state quickly enough.

  I think maybe the crux is “There is no way for a Bayesian to be wrong. Everything is just an update. But a Frequentist who said the die was fair can be proven wrong to arbitrary precision.” You can, if the Bayesian announces their prior, know precisely how much of your arbitrary evidence they will require to believe the die is loaded.

  Again, I hope this is taken in the spirit I mean it, which is “you are the only self proclaimed Frequentist on this board I know of, so you are a very valuable source of epistemic variation that I should learn how to model”.

• Robert Kennedy 6 Sep 2022 20:34 UTC

  10 points

  1 ∶ 1

  on: Nine nines

  I am not sure I understand, probably because I am too preprogrammed by Bayesianism.

  You roll a d20, it comes up with a number (let’s say 8). The Frequentist now believes there is a 95% chance the die is loaded to produce 8s? But they won’t bet 20:1 on the result, and instead they will do something else with that 95% number? Maybe use it to publish a journal article, I guess.

• Robert Kennedy 1 Sep 2022 0:08 UTC

  1 point

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Dennis Towne’s comment on: Grand Theft Education

  I would like to note that the naive version of this is bad. First, the naive version falls prey to new grads (who generally have nothing) declaring bankruptcy immediately after graduation. Then, lenders are forced to ask for collateral, which gets rid of a GREAT quality our current system has—you can go to college even if your parents weren’t frugal, no matter their income. I think this criticism probably still lands with a 5 year time horizon, maybe less for a 10 year.

  I like the concept that lenders would take an interest in which major you were getting, since that seems like something that could use an actuarial table. I think we would benefit from more directly incentivizing STEM (and other profitable) degrees, which IDR doesn’t seem to do. What if IDR left lenders holding the bag?

• Robert Kennedy 23 Jul 2022 4:03 UTC

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Davis_Kingsley’s comment on: YouTubeTV and Spoilers

  This was the UX I was going to mention—watching GSL (SC:BW) VoDs. There it is tricky, especially since individual games can vary so heavily.

• Robert Kennedy 23 May 2022 2:01 UTC

  1 point

  on: For­mula for a Shortage

  This article was great! Please define WIC much earlier, that was how I felt reading it and the first feedback I got after sharing it. Thanks for writing this!

• Robert Kennedy 22 Apr 2022 0:45 UTC

  2 points

  on: Covid 4/​21/​22: Var­i­ants Work­ing Overtime

  My understanding is that the math textbooks were banned in Florida for their use of the “Common Core” framework. I was a math educator, and my experience is that resistance to Common Core comes primarily from parents who hate math, and are confused why they can’t do their child’s math, and who somehow take this as a failure mode.

• Robert Kennedy 6 Apr 2022 22:35 UTC

  1 point

  on: A Word to the Wise is Suffi­cient be­cause the Wise Know So Many Words

  I really appreciate this post. In Chinese, the vocal pronouns for “he” and “she” are the same (they are distinguished in writing). It is common for Chinese ESL students to mix the words “she” and “he” when speaking. I have been trying to understand this, and relate it to my (embarrassingly recent) understanding that probabilistic forecasts (which I now use ubiquitously) are a different “epistemology” than I used to have. This post is a very concrete exploration of the subject. Thank you!

• Robert Kennedy 1 Apr 2022 22:38 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: MondSemmel’s comment on: They Don’t Know About Se­cond Booster

  I think finding the correct link required a good heart. In the hope Zvi will see you, I am commenting to further boost visibility.

• Robert Kennedy 1 Apr 2022 22:09 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Lanrian’s comment on: Re­plac­ing Karma with Good Heart To­kens (Worth $1!)

  I think top level posts generate much more than 10x the value than the entire comments section combined, based off my impression that the majority of lurkers don’t get deep in the comments. I wonder if top level posts having a x^1.5 exponent would get closer to the ideal… That would also disincentivize post series...

• Robert Kennedy 15 Mar 2022 19:30 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: Prob­a­bil­is­tic Negotiation

  No, since if I had rolled low I wouldn’t want to like, give them significantly more notice than necessary as I job hunted. I offered to do something like hash a seed to use on a RNG, they didn’t think that was necessary.

Prob­a­bil­is­tic Negotiation

• Robert Kennedy 13 Mar 2022 1:08 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: jimv’s comment on: Luna Love­g­ood and the Fidelius Curse—Part 1

  There is a “going going” in this chapter as well

• Robert Kennedy 6 Mar 2022 21:02 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Oscar_Cunningham’s comment on: Deter­minis­tic Strate­gies Can Be Suboptimal

  Actually, for any given P which works, P’(x)=P(x)/​10 is also a valid algorithm.

Deter­minis­tic Strate­gies Can Be Suboptimal

• Robert Kennedy 4 Mar 2022 2:36 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: TLW’s comment on: A Warm Up Prob­lem for Yud­kowsky’s New Fiction

  If I am following, it seems like an agent which says “bet ‘higher’ if positive and ‘lower’ otherwise” does well