Natália Mendonça

• Natália Mendonça 12 Apr 2019 18:23 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Matthew Barnett's comment on: The AI al­ign­ment prob­lem as a con­se­quence of the re­cur­sive na­ture of plans

  I agree. I used the mod­ifier “suffi­ciently” in or­der to avoid mak­ing claims about where a hard line be­tween com­plex goals and sim­ple goals would lie. Should have made that clearer.

• Natália Mendonça 12 Apr 2019 18:08 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: John_Maxwell_IV's comment on: The AI al­ign­ment prob­lem as a con­se­quence of the re­cur­sive na­ture of plans

  Thank you for the cor­rec­tion. Think­ing about it, I think that is true even of hu­mans, in a cer­tain sense. I would guess that the abil­ity to hold sev­eral goal-nodes in one’s mind would scale with g and/​or work­ing mem­ory ca­pac­ity. Some­one who is very smart and has tol­er­ance for am­bi­guity would be able to aim for a very com­plex goal while si­mul­ta­neously main­tain­ing a great perfor­mance in the day-to-day mun­dane tasks they need to ac­com­plish which might have seem­ingly no re­sem­blance to the origi­nal goal at all.

  It seems to be a skill that re­quires “buck­ets” https://​​www.less­wrong.com/​​posts/​​EEv9JeuY5xfuDDSgF/​​flinch­ing-away-from-truth-is-of­ten-about-pro­tect­ing-the

  So, both in hu­mans and com­put­ers, I would guess this is an abil­ity that re­quires cer­tain cog­ni­tive or com­pu­ta­tional re­sources. So I main­tain my origi­nal claim granted that those re­sources are con­trol­led for.

The AI al­ign­ment prob­lem as a con­se­quence of the re­cur­sive na­ture of plans

• Natália Mendonça 27 Mar 2019 1:20 UTC

  20 points

  on: Dependability

  I no­ticed re­cently that the trade­off you have to make to be more de­pend­able in that way is to be less open. Less open to new pro­jects, new in­for­ma­tion, new peo­ple. You have to be less malle­able, and more definite. It is largely about be­ing able to know­ingly cut the ma­jor­ity of the world from your at­ten­tion, to ig­nore what isn’t im­por­tant. I don’t think that’s a bad thing—there’s much more joy in be­ing fo­cused and de­ter­mined than in shift­ing your at­ten­tion and com­mit­ment around. But it is some­thing that comes more nat­u­rally to peo­ple once they figure out what seems to them to be the right path, once they figure out a task or pro­ject that de­serves their un­di­vided at­ten­tion and com­mit­ment, once they don’t feel like they’re get­ting stuck in a lo­cal max­i­mum in an avoid­able way.

• Natália Mendonça 23 Mar 2019 3:53 UTC

  2 points

  on: Ret­ro­spec­tive on a quan­ti­ta­tive pro­duc­tivity log­ging attempt

  Who are you and how is it that we don’t we know each other yet?

Perfect­ing The Motion

• Natália Mendonça 21 Jan 2019 11:54 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: ChristianKl's comment on: Life can be bet­ter than you think

  I’m fairly cer­tain that in the vast ma­jor­ity of the time, nega­tive emo­tions are ego-dys­tonic.

  They’re not some­thing ac­tively sought out out of a de­sire for mean­ing, they’re some­thing es­sen­tially in­flicted upon the sufferer by parts of their mind that they can’t con­trol.

  I think ac­cep­tance of nega­tive emo­tion is of­ten driven from be­ing in that po­si­tion, a po­si­tion of hel­pless­ness, of­ten driven out of a de­sire to main­tain a good self-image, and avoid en­ter­ing the nega­tivity loop — and not from a po­si­tion of hav­ing con­trol over whether it hap­pens or not, and seek­ing it be­cause it brings mean­ing.

• Natália Mendonça 21 Jan 2019 7:05 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: shminux's comment on: Life can be bet­ter than you think

  Yeah, it would be in­ter­est­ing to in­ves­ti­gate how that would work. I think the in­sights would serve to set a lower bound to mood, the same as what re­li­gion does for many peo­ple.

• Natália Mendonça 20 Jan 2019 23:49 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: shminux's comment on: Life can be bet­ter than you think

  I get bod­ily fa­tigue when I don’t take it for over five days, I haven’t ven­tured farther than that. No par­tic­u­lar rea­son to.

Life can be bet­ter than you think