Interested in math, Game Theory, etc.
Pattern
Karma: 1,593
(Weird meta-note: Are you aware of something unusual about how this comment is posted? I saw a notification for it, but I didn’t see it in the comments section for the post itself until initially submitting this reply. I’m newish to posting on Lightcone forums...)
Ah. When you say lightcone forums, what site are you on? What does the URL look like?
For this point, I’m not sure how it fits into the argument. Could you say more?
It’s probably a tangent. The idea was:
1) Criticism is great.
2) Explaining how that could be improved is marginally better. (I then explained for that case* how citing ‘old evidence’ or ‘old stuff’ could still apply to new stuff. It was kind of a niche application of evidence though. If someone had a good reason for using the old evidence, elaborating on that reason might help.)
*In abstract terms—I didn’t have any examples in mind.
The second point isn’t important, it’s an incorrect inference/hypothesis, predicated on the first bit of information being missing. (So it’s fixed.)
My point was just:
How much thinking/researching would have been necessary to avoid the failure?
5 hours? 5 days? 5 years? 50? What does it take to not make a mistake? (Or just, that one in particular?)
Expanding on what you said:
Or do you think it’s just so hard to figure this stuff out that thinking more about it wouldn’t have helped?
Is it a mistake that wouldn’t have been solved that way? (Or...solved that way easily? Or another way that would have fixed that problem faster?)
For research to trivially solve a problem, it has...someone pointing out it’s a bad idea. (Maybe talking with someone and having them say _ is the fix.)
I thought that Void was something different, but I also feel like I shouldn’t try to explain the difference in my conception of the Void.
Why not?
Instead of ignoring her constituents like most people in this sort of sinecure, she decides to passionately and successfully advocate for her needs. Her advocacy is annoying to powerful people and therefore inconvenient to her boss. But her boss can’t fire her for actually doing her job, so he solves the problem by moving her to a more powerful position.
Her needs? Their needs?
the 501st Legion inexplicably doesn’t betray Darth Vader either
doesn’t inexplicably?
(The obvious change would be: not having some equivalent of the force choking scene with the underlings(?). Less ‘mass defection’ more ‘trouble among the ranks, brutally suppressed by Vader’.)
Massive spoilers.
For the end of course! (Fun unintended.)
(Simple plans also make the character seem more plausibly competent: overcomplicated plans make you suspect the involvement of the author in keeping some random security guard from derailing step three hundred and fourteen.)
Where’s the fatal flaw then? Does he...get old? Get tired of easy wins? What happens?
The paper makes a slightly odd multi-step argument to try to connect to active debates in the field:
This comment is some quick feedback on those:
Weirdly, this even happens in papers that themselves
toshow positive results involving NNs.citations to failures in old systems that we’ve since improved upon significantly.
Might not be a main point, but this could be padded out with an explanation of how something like that could be marginally better. Like adding:
“As opposed to explaining how that is relevant today, like:
[Old technique] had [problem]. As [that area] has matured [problem has been fixed in this way]. However [slower deployment]/[more humans in the loop]/[other fix] would have reduced [problems]. Using [these fixes]/not making them critical systems which is risky because _ can help ensure [this new area] which [has the same problem] and probably will for [time] until it matures, does not have the same problems [old area] did [for length of time].”
But is that actually the right way to minimize the risk of harms? We should expect [that]
Is there any empirical base which could be used to estimate this/provide information on improving things? Anything similar
We should expect the impacts of these technologies to grow dramatically as they get better
What if the impact grows dramatically as...they get deployed widely? Even if it it’s a bad idea, it’s widely done because it’s popular/cool/a fad/etc.?
What approach would work best then?
in particular EV’s [Electric Vehicles]
It wasn’t clear what this meant.
Manages to succeed to a legendary extent; builds not one but two of the worlds leading tech giants.
This made it seem like it was a word for a type of company.
--Importance of research and reflection: It’s not obvious in advance what the most important thing is, or whether it’s good or bad. You need to do research and careful analysis, and even that isn’t a silver bullet, it just improves your odds.
It’s not clear that would have been sufficient to change the outcome (above).
Fair. I was drawing on your comment:
Suppose that (evolved/uplifted/otherwise-advanced-enough-for-sapience) octopuses share some of our values. Now suppose that humans go extinct, and these Octopus sapiens create an advanced civilization, whose products instantiate some values we would recognize, like art, music, science, etc.
Do you mean formatting in:
Comments
Posts
Do you mean formatting like
this? At the start of paragraphs?Or double spacing?
it’s alright to link them, but it’s important that you explain the words as you use them so that the reader doesn’t break focus.
Like having an explanation appear if you hover the link? (This does not work like that, but Wikipedia has something like that. Maybe there's plugins or stuff that does that more broadly?)(When I tried adding four spaces, to show what hitting tab usually looks like in other applications, that triggered some stuff in the writing modes: to the left, and slightly above where it says ‘cancel’ and ‘save’ (or ‘post’:
MarkDown
DraftsJS
LessWrong Docs [Beta]
Eventually I was sort of able to get it to work. I left the...thing above in, because maybe something like that could be used for something readers who are familiar with a concept can skip over. Thought maybe this:
would be more standard to use for something like that.
Consider a human being—specifically not yourself. Why are they relevant to your values but an octopus isn’t?
After answering that:
In a hypothetical where an octopus is an artist, a scientist, an author and a reader, why does the difference remain?
Epistemic note: I’m not Taleuntum.
I think the difference is:
Tale: Today it may be best, to invest elsewhere. But not forever. Security against a dedicated adversary is not always and forever impossible, but a result of continuous investment that is a) eventually achieved, b) requires continuing work going forward (bugs are discovered in resources once thought secure and need patching, malware and threats change, etc.)
In other words, just because it’s not your top priority, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be improved a little bit, now and then. i.e. the difference between 0% and 5% of invested effort, compounds over time.
I thought I’d check because at first glance markets have selection from intelligence. (If I buy coffee from Starbucks, etc.) And seem like a mixture. But evolution arguably has the same property, at a different time scale. So I see why you’d lump them together.
Sometimes something is invented (not necessarily just by one person, and possibly changed by ‘one or more processes you would call ’evolution″,) which makes both more powerful. Writing. Trade networks. The internet. Languages that are a mixture of earlier languages (for easier communication between speakers of one of two languages). Etc.
The distinction is a shaky one. What’s the difference between this ‘Evolution’ and a ‘Market’? Lots of people might want to make lightbulbs or flying cars.
Is Vi a reference to Vim?
People who have been a) wiped, or b) enslaved.
That is, the bodies that are left.
(That is what ancillaries are.)
Can you add a link from where it says “Baba is You” at the top to the page on the main website? (Homepage is here.)
And the ‘bottle cap’ example is not (robust to adding cells, or cells colliding* with it)? But if it was, then it would be an ‘optimizing system’?
*spreading out, and interacting with it