MikkW

Karma: 1,215

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)

MikkW 14 Oct 2023 8:59 UTC
16 points
5
on: The Gods of Straight Lines

In 1776, America rebelled in the name of freedom and democracy: the origin myth of the modern world order. And yet, somehow, unrebellious Canada ended up just as free and democratic. An unrebellious America likely would have too.

I’m dubious of this. I think it’s highly likely that Canada and other British dominions becoming independent was a result of knock-on effects from the American Revolution, e.g. America setting an example for what independance can look like and enable prosperity; American independence causing other colonies to desire independence; Pro-dependence British officials being demoralized in the long term; America itself having a strong effect in the late 1800s and/or 1900s pushing other countries (British and non-British alike) to become independent democracies.

MikkW 12 Oct 2023 9:53 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: mesaoptimizer’s comment on: We don’t understand what happened with culture enough
I agree that conditional on humanity going extinct, the seeming success of our species by a genetic metric would only be a false success.

MikkW 12 Oct 2023 9:43 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: jacob_cannell’s comment on: We don’t understand what happened with culture enough
Your argument indicates that humans are successful (by said metric) among mammals, but doesn’t address how it compares to insects. As I understand it, some insect species have both more many more individuals and much more biomass than humans

MikkW 3 Oct 2023 14:49 UTC
2 points
0
on: Dall-E 3
Thanks for sharing the link

MikkW 29 Sep 2023 13:10 UTC
2 points
1
in reply to: Lachouette’s comment on: A quick update from Nonlinear
When I eat oatmeal or cereal, I almost never eat it with milk (non-vegan or otherwise). I soak oats in boiling water, and eat cereal dry.

MikkW 29 Sep 2023 10:45 UTC
4 points
−3
in reply to: mako yass’s comment on: The point of a game is not to win, and you shouldn’t even pretend that it is
«When the brain generates good feelings, it usually has reasons for doing that» I think is probably true (though as far as the game designer, I suspect some designers are only subconsciously / on a gut-feeling-level aware, rather than consciously aware of all the reasons. Though good ones are probably consciously aware of some of the reasons)

«If you keep trying to make it generate good feelings without respecting the deeper purposes of the source of the feelings, afaik it generally stops working after a bit.» seems false to me.

MikkW 28 Sep 2023 16:32 UTC
2 points
0
on: Petrov Day Retrospective, 2023 (re: the most important virtue of Petrov Day & unilaterally promoting it)
Registering my predictions for which groups clicked the second link most:

Percentagewise, I don’t Groups A and C clicked on it that much (though I’d be surprised if the number from each group isn’t non-zero), since they picked a choice that indicates that they care about making high-quality decisions and cooperating with the rest of the world. A higher proportion of C probably clicked than A, since a person might decide it’s worth it even if they take their time to think it through (I’d disagree, but the commentor you quote fits into that category).

I’d then say the “accurately reporting your epistemic beliefs” group probably clicked on it the most because I don’t model ⌞the kind of person who’d say that is the important trait of Petrov day⌝ as being a particularly ethical person