So, does this mean that you have descended past “We need to eliminate the suffering of fruit flies” and gone straight for “We need to eliminate the suffering of atomic nuclei that are forced to fuse together?” This seems like a pretty wildly wrong view, and not because rectifying the problem is beyond our technological abilities. It seems like there is plenty of human suffering to attend to without having to invent new kinds of suffering based on atoms in the sun.
NeroWolfe
Karma: 111
I saw that too and I don’t think it’s a nitpick. All of that was raised in support of the idea that human limits are much greater than we think, so having a couple of examples that are off by a factor of two is not a small difference. In addition to the wild claims about a human with 350 kg of muscle mass, I know the world record for unequipped deadlift is just shy of 1,100 pounds/500kg. “Lifting a car” can’t mean picking it off the ground entirely no matter how small it is; my Miata weighs about 2,400 pounds and other than something like a Lotus Elise it’s right at the lowest weight available. I’m willing to buy “picking up the back of a tiny car while leaving the front wheels on the ground, but again that’s not what you implied.
I have no idea about whether you raised your IQ with your method, but the exaggeration of facts I do know makes me suspicious.
I may have used too much shorthand here. I agree that flying cars are impractical for the reasons you suggest. I also agree that anybody who can justify it uses a helicopter, which is akin to a flying car.
According to Wikipedia, this is not a concept that first took off (hah!) in the 1970s—there have been working prototypes since at least the mid-1930s. The point of mentioning the idea is that it represents a cautionary tale about how hard it is to make predictions, especially about the future. When cars became widely used (certainly post-WWII), futurists started predicting what transportation tech would look like, and flying cars were one of the big topics. The fact that they’re impractical didn’t occur to many of the people making predictions.
I have a strong suspicion that there are flaws in current reasoning about the future, especially as it relates to the threat of AGI. Recall that there was a round of AI hype back in the 1980s that fizzled out when it became clear nothing much worked beyond the toy systems. I think there are good reasons to believe we’re in a very dangerous time, but I think there are also reasons to believe that we’ll figure it out before we all kill ourselves. Frankly, I’m more concerned about global warming, as that requires absolutely no new technology nor policy changes to be able to kill us or at least put a real dent in global human happiness.
My point is simply that deciding that we’re 95% likely to die in the next five years is probably wrong, and if you base your entire set of life choices on that prediction, you are going to be surprised when it turns out differently.
Also, I’m not strongly invested in convincing others of this fact, partly because I don’t think I have any special lock on predicting the future. I’m just suggesting you look back farther than 1980 for examples of how people expected things to turn out vs. how they actually did and factor that into your calculations.
[Small edit in the first paragraph for clearer wording]
I gather from the recent census article that most of the readers of this site are significantly younger than I am, so I’ll relay some first-hand experiences you probably didn’t live through.
I was born in 1964. The Cuban Missle Crisis was only a few years in the past, and Kennedy had just been shot, possibly by Russians, or The Mob, or whomever. Continuing through at least the end of the Cold War in 1989, there was significant public opinion that we were all going to die in a nuclear holocaust (or Nuclear Winter), so really, what was the point in making long-term plans?
Spoiler: things worked out better than expected, although not without significant bumps along the way. Spending all your money on hookers and blow because you might as well enjoy yourself now would not have been a solid investment strategy.
Now, much like the AGI/ASI threat, the nuclear threat could have actually played out. There were other close calls where we (or they) thought the attack had started already (Vasily Arkhipov comes to mind), and of course, Death From AI could well happen. However, you should probably hedge your bets to a certain extent just in case you manage to live to retirement age. Remember, we still don’t have flying cars.
I see a problem with this approach when the speaker does not know the answer to the question:
Under Abs-E, binary questions (“yes”-or-”no”) are less obvious to answer. If your answer would ordinarily be “no”, you must instead reply as if the question was open-ended. For example, your reply to “will you be here tomorrow?” may be “yes”, or “I will be in the office tomorrow”, or “I will stay home tomorrow”. This forces you to speak with more information.
How do you respond when you don’t know what you will be doing tomorrow? This could be a case where you haven’t made up your mind yet (in which case “I will decide on that later” is a valid answer), or it could be because you genuinely don’t have the information and have no way to find it. “What will the closing price of Apple be at the end of the year?” is difficult to answer as far as I can tell, especially if the person asking the question thinks you should know the answer. “You will have to wait for the end of the year before you can know that” doesn’t convey the same information as “Short of stock manipulation, nobody can know the answer to that until the time comes.” The first one could mean that I know the answer but choose not to tell you, while the second one conveys the more reasonable claim that the question cannot be answered in advance.
So, I think this is an interesting thought experiment, but I suspect that the amount of time spent mentally rewording everything before you speak will outweigh any positive value.
But the big caveat is the exception “with the consent of both parties.” I realize that Eliezer doesn’t want to play against all comers, but presumably, nobody is expecting Ra and Datawitch to defend themselves against random members of the public.
I’m willing to believe that the “AI” can win this game since we have multiple claims to have done that, so knowing the method seems like it would benefit everybody.
[edited to fix a misspelling of Eliezer’s name]
In what way is rugby wildly different from combat :-)
I’m skeptical that the government regulation will amount to much that addresses the main problems. Highly profitable industries have routinely engaged in regulatory capture, often for decades, before things are bad enough that the population as a whole demands change. Oil and gas companies, pharmaceutical companies, etc., all come to mind as current examples of “regulated” industries that do pretty much what they like. Before that we had examples like tobacco, asbestos, narcotics-laced health tonics, etc., that took decades before they were really impeded by regulations. Politicians, at least in the U.S., are coin-operated and will put a finger on the scale in whatever direction results in their maximum profit.
Also, note that the examples above are pretty well-understood issues with little technical nuance. The examples of government regulation of technology are even worse; technology advances so much more quickly than legislation that the regulators are generally fighting the last war. I mean, I’m glad that the US Congress decided that it was OK for consumers to use Betamax recorders to tape TV shows and skip the commercials, but I’m not sure they’re going to get any agreement on technical aspects of AI while those particular issues are still relevant.
Don’t underestimate the value of a red-headed woman...
And we knew it is the plural form of “medium,” which is isomorphic to the message.
This is a good presentation of the idea. However, I think there are a few important things missing from the discussion:
Divisibility of goods for barter. You mention it briefly, but this seems like a big reason to pick an arbitrary accounting unit that can be subdivided at will.
Portability. Theoretically, we could agree on grains of wheat as the accounting unit since they are sufficiently fine-grained(hah!) to avoid the divisibility problem. However, having to haul 100 tons of grain down to the auto dealer is pretty inconvenient.
Time-shifting. Again, you touch on this near the end, but one of the reasons that gold and/or silver have been used is that they don’t decay (and it’s not possible to print more of it). If I want to ensure I have access to a slice of cherry pie every day next year, I can’t exactly buy 45 pies today and put them in the cupboard. Being able to exchange my oranges today for silver and then the silver for a slice of pie next year is a win.
Given that it’s been a while since @Kat Woods and @Emerson Spartz claimed they had “incontrovertible proof” that warranted a delay in publishing, I’m hoping it’s coming out soon. If not, a simple “we goofed” response would seem appropriate.
The “give us a week” message appears either misleading or overly optimistic. Unless there have been replies from Nonlinear in a separate thread, I don’t think they have explained anything beyond their initial explanation of getting food. Coupled with the fact that it’s hard to imagine a valid context or explanation for some of the things they confirm to have happened (drug smuggling, driving without a license or much experience), I have to conclude that they’re not likely to change my mind at this point. I realize that probably doesn’t matter to them since I’m just a random person on the internet, but it’s disappointing that they haven’t made a better effort to explain or atone.
Thanks, @Ben Pace, for doing the initial work on this. I agree with your other message stating that you’re done with this; you don’t need to get sucked further down this hole than you already are.
I’m going to have to work the phrase “delusions of grandeur without the substance to back that up” into my repertoire. Sort of like Churchill’s comment about Clement Atlee: “A modest man with much to be modest about.”
I’m not sure if this will improve or harm your understanding, but I appear to have taken a slightly different route to the problem. Rather than having two simultaneous equations, I reasoned as follows:
We’re trying to figure out how much the ball costs, so that’s our X
We know the bat is X + 1
So we know (X) + (X+1) = 1.1, becomes 2X +1 = 1.1, 2X = 0.1, X is 5 cents
That seems simpler to me than the two simultaneous equations, even though it’s essentially the same math. I’m also not sure if I would have gotten this correct as the first time I saw this, it had the giveaway clue “Note: the answer is NOT 10.” I suspect I would have come up with 10 without the warning, but I can’t be sure.
I think it would be good to word this as “and intends to publish a detailed point-by-point response by September 15th,” or whatever the correct date turns out to be.
So, I’m new here, and apparently, I’ve misunderstood something. My comment didn’t seem all that controversial to me, but it’s been down-voted by everybody who gave it a vote. Can somebody pass me a clue as to why there is strong disagreement with my statement? Thanks.
How complicated is providing context for that without a week of work on your side? The only plausible exculpatory context I can imagine is something akin to: “If somebody sent me a text like this, I would sever all contact with them, so I’m providing it as an example of what I consider to be unacceptable.” I fail to see how hard it is to explain why the claims are false now and then provide detailed receipts within the week.
I don’t know any of the parties involved here, but the Nonlinear side seems pretty fishy so far.
I don’t share your optimistic view that transnational agencies such as the IAEA will be all that effective. The history of the nuclear arms race is that those countries that could develop weapons did, leading to extremes such as the Tsar Bomba, a 50-megaton monster that was more of a dick-waving demonstration than a real weapon. The only thing that ended the unstable MAD doctrine was the internal collapse of the Soviet Union. So, while countries have agreed to allow limited inspection of their nuclear facilities and stockpiles, it’s nothing like the level of complete sharing that you envision in your description.
I think there is something to be said for treating AI technology similar to how we treat NBC weapons: tightly regulated and with robust security protocols, all backed up by legal sanctions, based on the degree of danger. However, it seems likely that the major commercial players will fight tooth and nail to avoid that situation, and you’ll have to figure out how to apply similar restrictions worldwide.
So, I think this is an excellent discussion to have, but I’m not convinced that the regulated source model you describe is workable.
Why do you think that the space colonists would be able to create a utopian society just because they are not on earth? You will still have all the same types of people up there as down here, and they will continue to exhibit the Seven Deadly Sins. They will just be in a much smaller and more fragile environment, most likely making the consequences of bad behavior worse than here on earth.