MikkW

• MikkW 12 Feb 2024 23:33 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Rafael Harth’s comment on: An In­vi­ta­tion to Refrain from Down­vot­ing Posts into Net-Nega­tive Karma

  “authors will get hurt by people not appreciating their work” is something we just have to accept, even if it’s very harsh

  I don’t really agree with this. Sure, some people are going to write stuff that’s not very good, but that doesn’t mean that we have to go overboard on negative feedback, or be stingy with positive feedback.

  Humans are animals which learn by reinforcement learning, and the lesson they learn when punished is often “stay away from the thing /​ person /​ group that gave the punishment”, much more strongly than “don’t do the thing that made that person /​ thing /​ group punish me”.

  Wheras when they are rewarded, the lesson is “seek out the circumstances /​ context that let me be rewarded (and also do the thing that will make it reward me)”. Nobody is born writing amazingly, they have to learn it over time, and it comes more naturally to some, less to others.

  I don’t want bad writers (who are otherwise intelligent and intellectually engaged, which describes almost everybody who posts on LW) to learn the lesson “stay away from LW”. I want them to receive encouragement (mostly in forms other than karma, e.g. encouraging comments, or inclusion in the community, etc.), leading them to be more motivated to figure out the norms of LW and the art of writing, and try again, with new learning and experience behind them.

  I think the threshold of 0 is largely arbitrary

  It’s not all that arbitrary. Besides the fact that it’s one of the simplest numbers, which makes for an easy to remember /​ communicate heuristic (a great reason that isn’t arbitrary), I actually think it’s quite defensible as a threshold. If I write a post that has a +6 starting karma, and I see it drop down to 1 or 2 (or, yeah, −1), my thought is “that kinda sucked, but whatever, I’ll learn from my mistake and do better next time”.

  But if I see it drop down to, say, −5 or −6, my thought starts to become “why am I even posting on this stupid website that’s so full of anti-social jerks?”. And then I have to talk myself down from deleting my account and removing LW and the associated community from my life.

  (Not that I think LW is actually so full of jerks. There’s a lot of lovable people here who talk about interesting things, and I believe in LW’s raison d’etre, which is why I keep forcing myself to come back)

An In­vi­ta­tion to Refrain from Down­vot­ing Posts into Net-Nega­tive Karma

• MikkW 26 Jan 2024 19:59 UTC

  2 points

  −2

  on: Values Darwinism

  I would like to make a meta-comment, not directly related to this post.

  When I came upon this post, it had a negative karma score. I don’t think it’s good form to have posts receiving negative net karma (except in extreme cases), so I upvoted to provide this with a positive net karma.

  It is unpleasant for an author when they receive a negative karma score on a post which they spent time and effort to make (even when that effort was relatively small), much more so than receiving no karma beyond the starting score. This makes the author less likely to post again in the future, which prevents communication of ideas, and keeps the author from getting better at writing. In particular this creates a risk of LessWrong becoming more like a bubble chamber (which I don’t think is desirable), and makes the community less likely to hear valuable ideas that go against the grain of the local culture.

  A writer who is encouraged to write more will become more clear in their communication, as well as in their thoughts. And they will also get more used to the particular expectations of the culture of LessWrong- norms that have good reason to exist, but which also go against some people’s intuitions or what has worked well for them in other, more “normie” contexts.

  Karma serves as a valuable signal to authors about the extent to which they are doing a good job of writing clearly about interesting topics in a way that provides value to members of the community, but the range of positive integers provides enough signal. There isn’t much lost in excluding the negative range (except in extreme cases).

  Let’s be nice to people who are still figuring writing out, I encourage you to refrain from downvoting them into negative karma.

  What links here?

  • An In­vi­ta­tion to Refrain from Down­vot­ing Posts into Net-Nega­tive Karma by MikkW (26 Jan 2024 20:13 UTC; 2 points)

• MikkW 3 Jan 2024 22:12 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Trad­ing off Lives

  That statement of fact is indeed true. Would you mind saying more about your thoughts regarding it? There seems to be an unstated implication that this is bad. There is a part of me that agrees with that implication, but there are also parts of me that want to say “so what? that’s irrelevant”. (I feel ⌞explaining what the second set of shards is pointing to, would take more time and energy to write up than I am prepared to take right now⌝)

• MikkW 3 Jan 2024 15:31 UTC

  2 points

  −1

  on: Trad­ing off Lives

  On the other side, there’s the cost of ~10min of boredom, for every passenger, on every flight. Instead of playing games, watching movies, or reading, people would mostly be talking, looking out the window, or staring off into space.

  Tangent: I’m not completely sure that this is actually a cost and not an unintended benefit

• MikkW 21 Dec 2023 13:13 UTC

  5 points

  1

  in reply to: Daniel Kokotajlo’s comment on: Daniel Koko­ta­jlo’s Shortform

  Sharing my impression of the comic:

  Insofar as it supports sides, I’d say the first part of the meme is criticism of Eliezer

  The comic does not parse (to my eyes and probably most people’s) as the author intending to criticize Eliezer at any point

  Insofar as it supports sides, I’d say [...] the last part is criticism of those who reject His message

  Only in the most strawman way. It basically feels equivalent to me to “They disagree with the guy I like, therefore they’re dumb /​ unsympathetic”. There’s basically no meat on the bones of the criticism

• MikkW 21 Dec 2023 13:07 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: leogao’s comment on: leogao’s Shortform

  This subjectively seems to me to be the case.

• MikkW 25 Nov 2023 9:51 UTC

  2 points

  2

  in reply to: frontier64’s comment on: OpenAI: The Bat­tle of the Board

  The board’s statement doesn’t mention them having made such a request to Altman which was denied, that’s a strong signal against things having played out that way.

• MikkW 20 Nov 2023 13:46 UTC

  5 points

  1

  on: For Civ­i­liza­tion and Against Niceness

  In the case of the lawyers, this is actually not an example of non-niceness being good for society. The defense attorney who defends a guilty party, their job is not to be a jerk to the prosecutor or to the judge. It is to, as you say, provide the judge with information (including counter-arguments to the other side’s arguments). While his job involves working in an opposite direction from his counterpart, it does not involve being non-nice to his counterpart (and it is indeed most pro-society if the two sides treat eachother well /​ nicely outside of their equal-and-opposite professional duties), and it does not involve being non-nice to the judge, whose job the attorney (as you point is) is actually assisting with. Again, society expects maximum niceness from both attorneys towards the judge outside of ⌞their professional duty to imperfectly represent the truth⌝.

  Society expects niceness to be provided from each of these parties to each of the others: {the judge, the defense attorney, the prosecution attorney}

• MikkW 20 Nov 2023 11:19 UTC

  18 points

  20

  in reply to: lc’s comment on: Sam Alt­man, Greg Brock­man and oth­ers from OpenAI join Microsoft

  This is important news. I personally desire to be kept updated on this, and LW is a convenient (and appropriate) place to get this information. And I expect other users feel similarly.

  What’s different between this and e.g. the developments with Nonlinear, is that the developments here will have a big impact on how the AI field (and by one layer of indirection, the fate of the world) develops.

• MikkW 1 Nov 2023 0:30 UTC

  2 points

  on: MikkW’s Shortform

  I am curious to hear people’s opinions, for my reference:

  Is epistemic rationality or instrumental rationality more important?

  Do you believe epistemic rationality is a requirement for instrumental rationality?

• MikkW 28 Oct 2023 19:35 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Adam Zerner’s comment on: adamz­erner’s Shortform

  Not directly tied to the core of what you’re saying, but I will note that I am example of someone who doesn’t strongly prefer such foods warm. I do weakly prefer it being warm, as long as it’s not too hot (that’s worse than it being cold, because it hurts /​ causes minor injury), but I’m happy eating it room temperature or a bit cold (not necessarily cold steak though)

• MikkW 28 Oct 2023 19:27 UTC

  3 points

  1

  in reply to: Andreas Chrysopoulos’s comment on: An­dreas Chrysopoulos’s Shortform

  My model says that a lot of the changing occurs by gradient descent, which can be interrupted randomly without causing problems. And there’s enough redundancy that the reorganization part can be interrupted without the core information being removed completely from the brain, and the redundancy will be replenished (one of copies I imagine is “locked” while the reorganization happens, and is later reorganized later with another copy “locked”). I also expect this replenishing can happen during awakeness, though not as ideally as when asleep.

  But I will also note that forgetting is a thing that happens, which is indistinguishable from “data corruption”. We’re actually quite good at forgetting things.

• MikkW 28 Oct 2023 18:41 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: quetzal_rainbow’s comment on: quet­zal_rain­bow’s Shortform

  Choosing non-ambiguous pointers to values is likely to not be possible

• MikkW 28 Oct 2023 18:40 UTC

  4 points

  on: MikkW’s Shortform

  I had previously posted thoughts that suggested that the main psychoactive effect of chocolate is due to theobromine (which is chemically similar to caffeine). In the interests of publicly saying “oops”:

  Chocolate also contains substantial amounts of caffeine, and caffeine has a stronger effect per gram, so most of the caffeine-adjacent effect of chocolate comes from caffeine rather than theobromine.

  Theobromine may still contribute to chocolate hitting differently than other caffeinated substances, though I expect there are also other chemicals that also contribute to the effect of chocolate. I assign less than 50% probablity to ⌞theobromine being the cause of the bulk of the difference between chocolate’s psychoactive effects vs. pure caffeine⌝

• MikkW 18 Oct 2023 19:37 UTC

  4 points

  −5

  on: Good­hart’s Law in Re­in­force­ment Learning

  I strong-downvoted this post because sentences like

  use these insights to derive two methods for provably avoiding Goodharting

  Tend to be misleading, pretending that mathematical precision describes the complex and chaotic nature of the real world, where it shouldn’t be assumed to (see John Wentworth’s comment), and in this case it could potentially lead to very bad consequences if misunderstood.

• MikkW 16 Oct 2023 21:27 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: Dat­ing in 2023 sucks. Why isn’t AI helping?

  It takes getting to know more than a few dozen potential mates, at least for some people

• MikkW 14 Oct 2023 13:45 UTC

  5 points

  2

  in reply to: Dutchy’s comment on: The Gods of Straight Lines

  I appreciate your reply. The point I was trying to make is, the contingency of ⌞there being an instance of democratic revolution going smoothly⌝ potentially makes the difference between that straight line happening or not happening. (And if the occurrence took 1000 years—but even that isn’t a given—I would consider that an example of “a god of straight lines” successfully being overpowered.)

  I think that if there was sufficient backlash against democratic revolution (unclear if the American Revolution not happening would be enough cause), the then-existing status quo in the West (monarchy /​ feudalism) would not have gone on- that particular “god of straight lines” dooming feudalism would have been very hard to stop, but the resulting system need not have looked like democracy, and >50% would have been substantially worse by ⌞metrics most westerners care about⌝, though with small probability even better than the form of institutions which we ended up receiving, but largely different from modern notions of democracy.

• MikkW 14 Oct 2023 12:15 UTC

  16 points

  9

  in reply to: Dutchy’s comment on: The Gods of Straight Lines

  Thought 1: Yeah, that’s fair

  Thought 2: Though I also feel like a different country being the first to establish independence, could have made a difference in the long-term trajectory of things. Many of the revolutions that followed the American Revolution (including the French Revolution, which some people view as an even bigger deal than the American) went quite off the rails and were quite unpleasant, and generally soured many people on the idea, while the United States ended up going fairly smoothly after the constitution was implemented. If the French Revolution had happened without the American Revolution, I imagine that could have discredited the ideas behind them, without leaving a successful state built on them.

  (Note that the wave of Revolution really took off not after the first French Revolution in the late 1700′s, but in the 1830′s and 1840′s. If the US wasn’t there as an example of things going right, I can easily imagine that the appetite in Europe and France for revolution could have been spoiled enough to overcome the forces that otherwise would have made it inevitable)

  I think the failure of the Soviet Union could be a similar reference for what the other side can look like. The particular form of the ideas there were destined to fail in any case, but they also did a lot to discredit adjacent ideas that otherwise might have “had their time”, and now won’t.

• MikkW 14 Oct 2023 10:30 UTC

  2 points

  on: MikkW’s Shortform

  One idea that I implicitly follow often is “Never assume anything is on the Pareto frontier”- even if something is good, even if you can’t see how to improve it without sacrificing some other important consideration, it pays off to engage in creative thinking to identify solutions ⌞whose vague shape you haven’t even noticed yet⌝. And if a little bit of creativity doesn’t pay off, then that just means you need to think even more creatively to find the Pareto improvement.

  (Note that I’m not advocating that only Pareto improvements should be aimed for, I believe sometimes the right move is a non-Pareto change)