mwacksen

Karma: 81

mwacksen 5 Mar 2023 21:55 UTC
7 points
3
on: The Waluigi Effect (mega-post)
I understand that—with some caveats—a waluigi->luigi transition may have low probability in natural language text. However, there’s no reason to think this has to be the case for RLHF text.

mwacksen 8 Nov 2022 21:30 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Lao Mein’s comment on: Ukraine and the Crimea Question

especially if Ukraine disperses their population.

Something that sounds simple—“dispersing” your population—really comes with a huge cost. You can’t just send your population into the fields and expect them to live there.

And trucks can still drive off-road.

For which they require gasoline.

With NATO supply lines, Ukraine can afford to lose a million trucks a month to mud

I don’t think this is accurate, Nato doesn’t just have a million trucks a month lying around somewhere to send.

If the people aren’t in cities, what is Russia going to target?

I don’t particularly enjoy playing this morbid game of guessing what Russia could do, but targeting things like dams, bridges, power-plants, and other infrastructure would do far more damage than you seem to acknowledge.

Then continues to drive into Crimea.

Do they drive through the water, or how does this work? I feel like your arguments prove to much. If Ukraine had it that easy, why haven’t they taken even Kherson yet?

mwacksen 7 Nov 2022 12:06 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: michaelcohen’s comment on: AI X-risk >35% mostly based on a recent peer-reviewed argument

Me: Do you agree reviewers aim to only accept valid papers, and care more about validity than interestingness?

I’ve reviewed papers. I didn’t spend copious amounts of time checking the proofs. Some/most reviewers may claim to only accept “valid papers” (whatever that means), but the way the system is set up peer review serves mainly as a filter to filter out blatantly bad papers. Sure, people try to catch the obviously invalid papers. And sure, many researches really try to find mistakes. But at the end of the day, you can always get your results published somewhere, and once something is published, it is almost never retracted.

If retractions were common, surely you would have said that was evidence peer review didn’t accomplish much!

Sure, let me retract my previous argument and amend it with the additional statement that even when a paper is known to have mistakes by the community, it is almost never retracted.

2: Some amount of trust is taken for granted in science. The existence of trust in a scientific field does not imply that the participants don’t actually care about the truth. Bounded Distrust.

I don’t think that this refutes my argument like you think it does. Reviewers don’t check software because they don’t have the capacity to check software. It is well-known that all non-trivial software contains bugs. Reviewers accept this, because at the end of the day they don’t comprehensively check validity.

because the latter would have rubbed you the wrong way even more

No, I think that peer review at a good journal is worth much more than peer review at a bad journal.

I think our disagreement comes down to the stated intent being to check validity, and me arguing that the actual effect is to offer a filter for poorly written/ not interesting articles. There is obviously some overlap, as nobody will find an obviously invalid article interesting! Depending on the journal, this may come close to checking some kind of validity. I trust an article in Annals of Mathematics to be correct in a way that I don’t trust an article in PNAS to be. We can compare peer-review with the FDA—the stated intent is to offer safe medications to the population. The actual effect is …

mwacksen 7 Nov 2022 11:47 UTC
−1 points
−2
in reply to: Lao Mein’s comment on: Ukraine and the Crimea Question

I previously did an analysis of the tactical utility of nuclear weapons and came to the conclusion that they aren’t as cost-effective as precision weapons.

We still live in a world where all use of nuclear weapons is strategic.

What if the Ukrainians take the nuclear threat seriously and disperse their civilian population?

So what? the point of Russia using nukes is to signal that it will do whatever it takes to defeat Ukraine. The tactical effects are beside the point. It’s hard to predict what will happen exactly, but if a nuke gets used anywhere, there will be panic in every European city worse than the covid panic of 2020. The knock-on effects are debatable, but the ones that primarily affect this conflict will be the effects on the population in the West, who after all elect their leaders and therefore constrain them. I do not think there is an appetite for unlimited support of Ukraine, and I think the use of any nuke fundamentally changes the equation in a way that is very hard to predict. This is especially true if the nuke is used e.g. in the context of a nuclear test on Crimea.

But your discussion on tactical nukes misses an important point: Russia is so far not trying to exterminate Ukraine and its people. If it were willing to do so and use nukes, it could wreck havoc on Ukranian supply-chains and leadership in a way that goes for beyond “50% combat ineffective”. Armies needs supplies, working logistics, etc. If someone is reckless enough to start using nuclear weapons, I don’t think it’s safe to assume they will be prudent enough only to use them on military targets.

mwacksen 6 Nov 2022 22:47 UTC
−1 points
−2
in reply to: mruwnik’s comment on: Ukraine and the Crimea Question
Yes, I agree, and my argument was an oversimplification. That said, I don’t think you’re properly considering its context. The context here is that if Ukraine were to be in a situation where it had no chance of winning the war (e.g. due to nuclear weapons being in play). Here is what I’m replying to:

As for Ukrainians there are reasons to believe they’re much more willing to die than Japanese in 1945. Anecdotes first. I asked a Ukrainian yesterday what should Ukraine do if nuked. She said obviously keep fighting.

Many of your examples (1-3, arguably 4) apply to individual local events/battles, or are hard to apply as-is to this context (6, 8).

There is a lesson here.

The lesson is that even the defenders of Mariupol eventually decided to stop fighting rather than to die. And those defenders were highly motivated, patriotic/nationalistic soldiers. I would expect and hope that the threshold for “normal” citizens is lower.

whether it’s morally good, etc., but they work.

Define “work”. They may “work” for an individual battle, but they tautologically don’t win the war. It’s telling that almost all of your examples are fictional or have unreliable (ancient) sources. I’ve never heard of a last-stand involving an entire army, and even completely crazy countries (WW2 Japan, Germany) capitulate eventually when faced with overwhelming firepower. And nuclear weapons are overwhelming firepower.

mwacksen 6 Nov 2022 22:31 UTC
LW: 2 AF: 1
1
AF
in reply to: michaelcohen’s comment on: AI X-risk >35% mostly based on a recent peer-reviewed argument

Care to bet on the results of a survey of academic computer scientists? If the stakes are high enough, I could try to make it happen.

No, no more than I would bet on a survey of <insert religious group here> whether they think <religious group> is more virtuous than <non-religious group>. Academics may claim that peer review is to check validity but their actions tell a different story. This is especially true in “hard” fields like mathematics where reviewers may even struggle to follow an argument, let alone check its validity. Given that most papers are never read by others, this is really not a big deal though.

But I’ll offer three further arguments for why I don’t think peer review ensures validity.

Argument 1: a) Humans (including reviewers) make mistakes all the time, but b) Retractions/corrections in papers are very rare.

Unless academics are better at spotting mistakes immediately when reviewing than everyone else (they are not), we should expect lots of peer-reviewed articles to therefore have mistakes because invalid papers rarely get retracted.

Argument 2: Computer science papers don’t always include reproducible software, but checking code would absolutely be required to check validity.

Argument 3: It is customary to submit papers that are rejected by one journal to another journal. This means that articles that fail “peer review” at one journal can obtain “peer review” at a different journal.

PS: For CS it’s harder to check “validity”, but here’s how papers replicate in other fields: https://fantasticanachronism.com/2021/11/18/how-i-made-10k-predicting-which-papers-will-replicate/

mwacksen 6 Nov 2022 9:45 UTC
1 point
0
AF
in reply to: michaelcohen’s comment on: AI X-risk >35% mostly based on a recent peer-reviewed argument

Peer review can definitely issue certificates mistakenly, but validity is what it aims to certify.

No it doesn’t. It’s hard to say what the “aims” of peer-review are, but “ensuring validity” is certainly not one of them. As a first approximation, I’d say that peer-review aims to certify that the author is not an obvious crank, and that the argument being made is an interesting one to someone in the field.

mwacksen 6 Nov 2022 9:40 UTC
−3 points
−4
in reply to: throwaway62654’s comment on: Ukraine and the Crimea Question

You just have to twist my words and make such an offensive response, don’t you? To restate—the siege of Mariupol didn’t stop Ukraine from defending Ukraine.

I don’t see what’s offensive, and I’m not twisting your words but pointing out something that’s almost obvious: IF you have no chance of winning THEN you should stop fighting. This was true in Mariupol, and is true for the rest of Ukraine also. The siege of Mariupol absolutely stopped Ukraine from defending Mariupol. The important question is whether the IF applies. But once it does, throwing away human life just to make a point strikes me as somewhat nihilistic.

We’re afraid he may start a nuclear war. That’s pretty bad already.

Yes, is there anyone who could lead Russia of whom you would not be afraid that they’d start a nuclear war?

Yet you want to give him an opportunity to build a bigger army. To eventually give it to a successor who you think will be even worse.

No I don’t “want” to “give” him anything, I’m just recognizing the realities of the situation, and noticing that what you’re describing could happen with or without Putin.

Any proposed solution that relies on him promising to not invade again has very low probability of working.

I agree. But this doesn’t mean that compromises can’t be worked out, see e.g. the Black sea grain deal.

mwacksen 4 Nov 2022 13:04 UTC
0 points
−4
in reply to: throwaway62654’s comment on: Ukraine and the Crimea Question

As I said in the comment above the perfect endgame is Putin no longer in power.

Not it isn’t, because there are alternatives that are worse than Putin. I hope there are alternatives to Putin that are both realistic and also better, but I haven’t seen much evidence for this coming out of Russia.

As for Ukrainians there are reasons to believe they’re much more willing to die than Japanese in 1945

Are you familiar with Japan pre 1945 at all? You have heard of kamikaze pilots at the very least, right? I will quote the Wikipedia article on them: “The tradition of death instead of defeat, capture, and shame was deeply entrenched in Japanese military culture; one of the primary values in the samurai life and the Bushido code was loyalty and honor until death”. Unless your argument is “Ukraine and its leaders are a death cult”, I’m going to respectfully ignore this point as “throwaway62… has no idea what they’re talking about”.

This didn’t stop Ukrainians.

Yes it did. Unless you’re living in a weird alternative history where Ukraine still controls Mariupol. Sure, Ukrainians in the West will wax poetic about how they will rather die than submit, but when push comes to shove one hopes that this kind of idiotic WWI-style nationalism will give way to cooler heads.

Ukrainians understand it too well now and some are just plainly saying that they would rather die than live under Russian rule.

the old lie: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

The legalese was very thinly veiled (removing all NATO forces from those countries).

You’ve made a number of very questionable claims in your comment, so I think I’ll start winding down this conversation. Removing NATO forces from post-soviet countries is not “thinly veiled” legalese for returning Soviet republics to Russia, it’s not even close.

one should treat this as an open declaration of his plans

Words have meanings: is it “thinly veiled”, or is it “open”?

mwacksen 1 Nov 2022 11:34 UTC
1 point
1
in reply to: mruwnik’s comment on: Ukraine and the Crimea Question
I agree, though sanctions are always sold as being strategic even when they are moral.

The fact that Putin has not used nukes yet is to his credit, but I do think that there is a marked shift in his demeanor from how would sound in speeches before to now. Make of that what you will.

mwacksen 1 Nov 2022 11:29 UTC
0 points
−1
in reply to: throwaway62654’s comment on: Ukraine and the Crimea Question

Then yeah, sure. Everybody would laugh themselves to death.

It’s not that simple. Nobody in the West is even in principle open to Crimea becoming Russian (and for good reason). So this wouldn’t be as ridiculous as you make it sound, especially given Putin’s rhetoric over the years and how salty he is about Kosovo.

But that’s the whole point. A dragged out war steadily destroys Russian firepower and manpower.

That’s one way of seeing it, but neither Russian firepower nor manpower should be thought of as a fixed finite resource. If Russia’s current strategy does not work, it would be idiotic for it to keep its current strategy, so it will adapt. We know that it is capable of doing so, see e.g. the withdrawal at Kiev. If Russia were fighting an existential war for survival and had already pulled all the stops, steadily destroying Russia would be a viable strategy. But Russia has no interest in being steadily destroyed, and still has plenty of ways it could escalate, especially when it comes to actions that hurt the West.

At some point Ukraine probably goes “too far” and nukes may be used in Ukraine. At this point the US can either engage directly, continue support Ukraine or negotiate some kind of a deal for Ukraine. The first may start WW3. A deal would mean Putin wins. Continuing to support Ukraine would mean millions more dead. But it would be contained to Ukraine and Russia.

I’m so confused. So the endgame you would like is that Russia nukes Ukraine, but Ukraine keeps fighting Russia (who has nukes, and is willing to use them). Does this keep going until there is no Ukranian left to fight, at which point the US just sends drones to Ukraine to keep fighting? Are Ukranians more willing to die for their country than Japan was in 1945?

But it would be contained to Ukraine and Russia.

It’s already not contained to Ukraine and Russia (see: the shattered remains of NS1 and NS2 on the sea floor), so even more magical thinking here. If Russia detonates a nuke in Ukraine, the best case is that absolute chaos breaks out in European cities.

Make a peace deal. Putin repeats after a couple of years and wins.

Why would he win in a few years if he cannot win now?

As I said before if Putin wins chances of WW3 become too high.

You really haven’t explained this reasoning? So Putin “wins”, and therefore decides to nuke Europe to celebrate?

You could easily solve the whole crisis by admitting Ukraine to NATO overnight with a condition that it recognizes 5 already annexed regions as Russian. But then again, unrealistic.

Russia would call that bluff the moment it was made.

mwacksen 31 Oct 2022 13:58 UTC
3 points
2
in reply to: throwaway62654’s comment on: Ukraine and the Crimea Question

The goal of sanctions is not to incentivize regime change. The goal is to make it a bit more difficult for him to wage the war.

A nice story, but I don’t buy it. How exactly does banning Russian flights to Europe, or banning Russian tourists, or banning Russian bank accounts with more than €100k from transacting make it a bit more difficult for him to wage the war? Or confiscating/stealing the wealth of oligarchs? If Putin “doesn’t care that much” about sanctions, isn’t it pretty stupid that the West is shooting themselves in the foot, and the developing world in the face, by still applying heavy sanctions?

(b) Putin will never allow an election or a referendum that he doesn’t control.

Maybe not, but better than not trying at all. Putin’s rhetoric about the West being hypocritical is spot on, except for the fact that Russia is just as hypocritical. Offering Putin the “rules-based” and law-based international order he has been asking for since at least 2008 is in my opinion a no-brainer, even if he goes on to reject it.

(c) Russian constitution now says Donetsk and Luhansk are parts of Russia.

Yes. Though I’m not sure it’s the constitution that says this or the law. I don’t see how this problem is unique to what I’m proposing, if Ukraine just gradually keeps winning like it is doing right now, the Russian constitution/law will still say this, and it will be an even bigger problem.

The problem is it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem. Which is how Ukraine will protect itself against the next much bigger invasion.

Again: I see this argument thrown around a lot, but nothing solves this fundamental problem, so the existence of this problem proves nothing. Even a long dragged out war doesn’t stop Russia from showing up again, with more firepower, in the future.

Fundamentally, Russia has nukes and Ukraine does not. In this sense, anything that de-escalates this war, while at the same time convincing Russia and China that trying something like this is a bad idea, is the way to go. If Russia decides that it doesn’t like the way the West is supporting Ukraine, it has the means to escalate. In the end, the way I expect this to go is for Russia to credibly threaten/use some kind of nuke in Ukraine, and thereby forcing an agreement with the West. Alternatively, the West gets bored of Ukraine after another year of fighting and Russia slowly but surely takes the regions it has annexed. But saying “I hope everything keeps going like it is going” is magical thinking—the war will end, and I think it makes more sense to reason about the end-state than to pretend it can keep going like this forever.

mwacksen 30 Oct 2022 17:07 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Ukraine and the Crimea Question

I did refer to people who identify as either Ukrainian or Russian and not as Crimean Tartar when I said non-Crimean Tartar. So non-‘Crimean Tartar’.

Aaah got it. My bad.

mwacksen 30 Oct 2022 11:36 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: sylsau’s comment on: Potato diet: A post mortem and an answer to SMTM’s article

the main underlying “promise” that such an experiment holds,

I’m sorry for the (very late) side remark but an “underlying promise” is an oxymoron of sorts—if nothing was explicitly promised, nothing was promised :)

mwacksen 30 Oct 2022 8:26 UTC
7 points
−3
in reply to: throwaway62654’s comment on: Ukraine and the Crimea Question

I don’t see better options. What would you suggest?

The situation is pretty difficult,

a) Providing clear, unambiguous and automatic mechanisms for repealing Western sanctions that are also realistic (i.e. not “we drop sanctions once you get out of Crimea”). While I also like Bryan Caplan’s suggestion to offer asylum + military compensation to defecting Russian soldiers, I recognize that this is politically not feasible.

Sanctions that are not directed at the military antagonize the Russian population. Somewhat counterintuitively, they can even lead ordinary Russians to increase their support for Putin.

b) Recognition of the annexation of Crimea, subject to a (future) internationally recognized referendum legitimized by a UNSC resolution and potentially some kind of autonomy within Russia. Ideally, this would be modeled on Kosovo or Hong-Kong in some way.

c) Some form of Minsk III that gives hard guarantees to Donetsk/Luhansk for a referendum, or makes them de facto independent states that are de-jure part of Ukraine.

d) Making weapons-deliveries to Ukraine conditional on Ukraine stating that it might be willing to give up Crimea + DNR/LNR under suitable terms. Something like this for the Russian side could be (a).

While I recognize that Russia will try to game this as far as possible, the main issue I see with this is that it may incentivize similar behavior by other states in the future. Borders are supposed to be fixed not because this is “fair” or anything, but to avoid people starting wars over borders.

mwacksen 30 Oct 2022 7:50 UTC
4 points
0
in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Ukraine and the Crimea Question

Bandera was in prison when the atrocities in 1943 took place but not when those in 1941 took place.

First of all, thanks for catching this, I was mistaken. That said, it seems somewhat more complex, according to this link “Bandera was in occupied Poland when on June 30, 1941, his comrades proclaimed an independent Ukrainian state in Nazi-occupied Lviv — and the Germans banned him from traveling to Ukraine.”

This doesn’t, of course, vindicate him in any way—he was head of an organisation that performed atrocities and worked with Nazi Germany. But it also doesn’t make him guilty of said atrocities.

It was also the case before 2014 that the majority in Crimea was Russian and there were a lot fewer Crimean Tatars.

I’m loosely familiar with the history of Crimea, my point is that non-Crimean Tartars (many of who live, and have always lived in Russia) are irrelevant to Crimea. But maybe I’m misunderstanding things, and you mean “non-Crimean” Tartars who happen to live in Crimea?

But even if you want to ignore the Russians the poll also separates out self-identfying Ukrainans and a majority of them were also in support of the referendum.

So what? It’s a feature, not a bug, of the modern system of states that not everybody who wants a referendum to secede gets one.

It was a reason why Ukraine got less military support from the EU before the invasion in 2022 than it wanted.

The reason Ukraine got less military support from the EU than it wanted was primarily so as not to antogonize Russia, as far as I can tell.

There are probably also a lot of others who at the European institutional level think “We already have enough problems with Polish and Hungarian nationalists, do we really want to deal with Ukrainian nationalists as well?”

Yes, hence Scholz’s ridiculous pivot away from unanimity in the EU in Prague recently.

mwacksen 30 Oct 2022 7:41 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Ukraine and the Crimea Question
It seems somewhat more complex, according to this link “Bandera was in occupied Poland when on June 30, 1941, his comrades proclaimed an independent Ukrainian state in Nazi-occupied Lviv — and the Germans banned him from traveling to Ukraine.”

mwacksen 29 Oct 2022 11:46 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: gjm’s comment on: Rapid Test Throat Swabbing?
Anecdotally speaking, about two months ago a friend of mine tested this with several tests, and while she was consistently positive with nasal tests, she was only sometimes positive even when she swabbed her throat as much as she could.

mwacksen 29 Oct 2022 11:31 UTC
3 points
0
on: Translated transcripts of Putin’s major speeches from Oct 27, 2022

Bear in mind that foreign authoritarian presidents are generally not considered reliable sources of information

I don’t think the “foreign authoritarian” qualifier is necessary here...

mwacksen 29 Oct 2022 11:11 UTC
6 points
−2
in reply to: mruwnik’s comment on: Ukraine and the Crimea Question

But so far only one side has rape as part of its doctrine.

If you think Russian official military doctrine includes rape, then (and I’m trying to put this as politely as possible) you are deluded.

Only one side is engaged in wide spread plundering etc

Probably true, but I do wish we’d actually know how much plundering is going on relative to how many soldiers are there.

That seems like an important distinction.

I saw some pretty nasty psychological warfare-type stuff the Ukranians were doing that the Russian’s weren’t. Like sending pictures of their dead sons to Russian mothers, and it seems like Ukraine is potentially willing to kill ‘pure’ civilians abroad than Russia is (see the murder of Darya Dugina, yes I know about Russia going after ex-spies and arms-dealers, so it’s not so clear cut). Obviously it’s hard to compare two countries when one is invading, and the other is defending. But nobody can claim that either side hasn’t committed atrocities.