Michael Roe

Karma: 264

Michael Roe Oct 22, 2024, 10:01 PM
11 points
1
in reply to: Michael Roe’s comment on: If I wanted to spend WAY more on AI, what would I spend it on?
Probably, if some AI were to recommend additional blood testing I could manage to persuade the wctual medical professionals to do it. Recent conversation went some thing like this:

Me: “can I have my thyroid levels checked pleas? And the consultant endocrinologist said he’d like to see a liver function test done next time i give a blood sample.”
Nurse (taking my blood sample and pulling my medical record up in the computer) “you take carbimazole right?”
Me: “yes”
Nurse (ticking boxes on a form on the computer) “… and full blood panel, and electrolytes…”
Probably wouldn’t be hard to get suggestions from an AI added to the list.

Michael Roe Oct 22, 2024, 9:39 PM
1 point
0
on: If I wanted to spend WAY more on AI, what would I spend it on?
Things I might spend more money on, if the were better AI’s to spend it on,

1. I am currently having a lot of blood tests done, with a genuine qualified medical doctor interpreting the results. Just for fun, I can see if AI gives a similar interpretation of the test results (its not bad).
Suppose we had AI that was actually better than human doctors, and cheaper. (Sounds like that might be here real soon, to be honest). I would probably pay money for that.

2. Some work things I am doing involve formally proving correctness of software. AI is not there, quite yet. If it was, I could probably get DARPA to pay the license fee for it, assuming cost isnt absolutely astronomical.

Etc.

On the other hand, this would imply that most doctors, and mathematicians, are out of work.

Michael Roe Oct 19, 2024, 6:00 PM
9 points
0
in reply to: Michael Roe’s comment on: What actual bad outcome has “ethics-based” RLHF AI Alignment already prevented?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67012224

Michael Roe Oct 19, 2024, 5:55 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: Roko’s comment on: What actual bad outcome has “ethics-based” RLHF AI Alignment already prevented?
Replika, I think.

Michael Roe Oct 19, 2024, 2:33 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: Michael Roe’s comment on: What actual bad outcome has “ethics-based” RLHF AI Alignment already prevented?
“self-reported data from demons is questionable for at least two reasons”—Scott Alexander.
He was actually talking about Internal Family Systems, but you could probably be skeptical about what malign AIs are telling you, too.

Michael Roe Oct 19, 2024, 2:21 PM
6 points
0
on: What actual bad outcome has “ethics-based” RLHF AI Alignment already prevented?
Well, we had that guy who tried to assassinate the Queen of England with a crossbow because his AI girlfriend told him to. That was clearly a harm to him, and could have been one for the Queen.

We don’t know how much more “But the AI told me to kill Trump” we’d have with less alignment, but it’s a reasonable guess (given the Replika datapoint) that it might not be zero,

Michael Roe Oct 19, 2024, 10:23 AM
2 points
0
in reply to: avturchin’s comment on: Bitter lessons about lucid dreaming
Discussing sleep paralysis might be an infohazard…

The times I’ve entered sleep paralysis it hasn’t bothered me, as I knew what it was.

Michael Roe Oct 18, 2024, 4:54 PM
7 points
0
in reply to: Michael Roe’s comment on: Bitter lessons about lucid dreaming
And then you get the people who are like, “Great! I’m lucid! Now I shall cast one of those demon summoning spells from Vajrayana Buddhism.”

Michael Roe Oct 18, 2024, 4:50 PM
4 points
0
on: Bitter lessons about lucid dreaming
Lucid dreaming is often like being Sigourney Weaver in Alien while also being on hospital sedatives. (You are, in fact, actually asleep, so it’s kind of a miracle you can reason at all and not the least bit surprising that you feel a bit groggy; also, dream can be nightmarish).

Why people choose to do this for fun is an interesting question.

You do get people who think they might get into lucid dreaming, then they read the dream diaries of some of the experienced lucid dreamers, and then are like “OMG, I never, ever, want to experience that.”

Michael Roe Oct 17, 2024, 7:04 PM
3 points
0
in reply to: Seth Herd’s comment on: Bitter lessons about lucid dreaming
Well, it’s an interesting question whether there might be more efficient ways to do it.

Lucid nightmares are quite a good way of exposing you to real-seeming dangers without actually dying.

Michael Roe Oct 17, 2024, 12:58 PM
1 point
0
on: Bitter lessons about lucid dreaming
Reading this article, I have just realised that a dream I had last night came from reading one of those test cases where people try to bypass the guardrails on LLMs. Only the dream was taken from the innocuous part of the prompt.

At this rate, I’m going to be having dreams about turning Lemsip(*) into meth.

(*) UK cold remedy. Contains pseudoephedrine.

Michael Roe Oct 17, 2024, 11:02 AM
2 points
0
in reply to: Michael Roe’s comment on: Bitter lessons about lucid dreaming
Chöd in a lucid dream if you’re feeling brave.
Like transform into vajrayogini and invite the demons to devour your corpse, etc,

Michael Roe Oct 17, 2024, 11:01 AM
2 points
0
in reply to: Michael Roe’s comment on: Bitter lessons about lucid dreaming
And then there’s the thing where you dispel the entire dream-universe are just there in a black formless void.

Michael Roe Oct 17, 2024, 11:00 AM
1 point
0
in reply to: avturchin’s comment on: Bitter lessons about lucid dreaming
Hmm… but, for example, stabilising a dream is kind of like a meditation, and one of the many ways you can transform your body in a dream is basically a body scan meditation from hatha yoga.

Michael Roe Oct 17, 2024, 9:46 AM
1 point
0
on: Bitter lessons about lucid dreaming
Given the significance of lucid dreaming in Buddhist practise (Siz Yogas of Naropa, etc.) realising that having a lucid dream just for sexual purposes is kind of pointless may lead to you realising that it’s kind of pointless in waking life too. Many of those guys were monks…

Michael Roe Oct 17, 2024, 9:43 AM
5 points
0
on: Bitter lessons about lucid dreaming
I’m not sure about (10).

Whenever someone has a theory that it’s impossible to do thing X in a dream, the regular lucid dreamers will provide a counterecamp,e by deliberately doing X in their next dream.

Computers, clocks, and written text can behave weirdly in dreams. Really, it’s the same things that generative AI has diffuculty with, possibly for information-theory reasons.

Michael Roe Oct 17, 2024, 9:39 AM
4 points
1
on: Bitter lessons about lucid dreaming
A possible benefit: the regulation of your own emotion that you do to keep a dream stable (even when alarming things are happening in it) may help you keep your emotion stable in the waking state too.

Michael Roe Oct 17, 2024, 9:32 AM
1 point
0
on: Bitter lessons about lucid dreaming
I can lucid dream, and I kind of agree here. Sure, lucid dreaming is possible, but why would you do that?

Re (3), a dream you can completely control tells you nothing you didn’t know already. There is some scope for controlling the dream enough to, in effect, set up a question, and then not control the result.

There a running joke in the lucid dreaming community that the first thing everyone tries is either flying or sex. It’s only when you get to #3 on their list of things they want to do that it becomes at all interesting.

Michael Roe Oct 8, 2024, 4:54 PM
3 points
0
in reply to: sarahconstantin’s comment on: sarahconstantin’s Shortform
Some psychiatry textbooks classify “overvalued ideas” as distinct from psychotic delusions.

Depending on how wide you make the definition, a whole rag-bag of diagnoses from the DSM V are overvalued ideas (e.g, anorexia nervosa over valuing being fat).

Michael Roe Oct 6, 2024, 5:55 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: Michael Roe’s comment on: Extended Interview with Zhukeepa on Religion
Possibly similar dilemma with e.g. UK political parties, who generally have a rule that publicly supporting another party’s candidate will get you expelled.
An individual party member, on the other hand, may well support the party’s platform in general, but think that that one particular candidate is an idiot who is unfit to hold political office—but is not permitted to say so,
(There is a joke about the Whitby Goth Weekend that everyone thinks half the bands are rubbish, but there is no consensus on which half that is. Something similar seems to hold for Labour Party supporters.)