Regex

Karma: 220

Regex 25 Aug 2023 9:58 UTC
3 points
on: Whole Brain Emulation: No Progress on C. elgans After 10 Years
Two years later, there are now whole brain wide recordings on C. Elegans via calcium imaging. This includes models apparently at least partially predictive of behavior and analysis of individual neuron contributions to behavior.

If you want the “brain-wide recordings and accompanying behavioral data” you can apparently download them here!
It is very exciting to finally have measurements for this. I still need to do more than skim the paper though. While reading it, here are the questions on my mind:
* What are the simplest individual neuron models that properly replicates each measured neuron-activation? (There are different cell types so take that into account too)
* If you run those individually measurement-validated neuron models forward in time, do they collectively produce the large scale behavior seen?
* If not, why not? What’s necessary?
* Are these calcium imaging measurements sufficient to construct the above? (Assume individualized connectomes per-worm are gathered prior instead of using averages across population)
* If not, what else is necessary?
* And if it is sufficient, how do you construct the model parameters from the measurements?
* Can we now measure and falsify our models of individual neuron learning?
* If we need something else, what is that something?

Edit: apparently Gwern is slightly ahead of me and pointed at Andrew Leifer whose group an entire year ago who produced a functional atlas of C Elegans that also included calcium imaging. Which I’d just totally missed. One missing element is extrasynaptic signaling, which apparently has a large impact on C Elegans behavior. So in order to predict neuron behavior you need to attend to those as well.

Regex 22 Jun 2020 1:10 UTC
6 points
in reply to: tcheasdfjkl’s comment on: Hammertime Day 10: Murphyjitsu
I expanded ‘shocked at failure’ into:

The plans you make work.

When they fail, it is because of one of the following reasons:
- a predicted reason (you took a risk / made a tradeoff, saw it as low probability or unavoidable)
- violation of an explicit assumption (encryption used is secure, won’t crash on the way to the airport)
- a black swan (coronavirus, 9/11, stock market crash)
When they fail for reasons other than these, you are extremely surprised and can point to exactly what about your worldview and anticipations misled you.

Regex 22 Apr 2020 0:58 UTC
1 point
on: Plan-Bot: A Simple Planning Tool
The planbot link is down.

Regex 18 Apr 2020 18:49 UTC
2 points
on: Archimedes’s Chronophone
I first tried to describe rationality piece by piece, but realized that just comes out as something like: “Enumerate all the principles, fundamentals, and ideas you can think of and find about effective thinking and action. Master all of them. More thoroughly and systematically apply them to every aspect of your life. Use the strongest to solve its most relevant problem. Find their limits. Be unsatisfied. Create new principles, fundamentals, and ideas to master. Become strong and healthy in all ways. ”

Non-meta attempt:

<Epistemic status: I would predict most of these are wrong. In fact, I rather recently proved I didn’t understand fundamental parts of The Sequences. So I know that my beliefs here are weak and thoroughly misled. So my basis of belief for all of these is broken and weak. I am certain my foundation for beliefs is wrong even if all of my actual beliefs here turn out to be basically accurate. I cannot thoroughly justify why they are right.>

General strategy: collect all the important things you think are true, and consider what it means for each to be false.

Starting with a list of the things most important to you, state the most uncontroversial and obvious facts about how those work and why that is the case. Now assume the basic facts about the things most important to you are wrong. The impossible is easy. The probable is actually not true. Your assumptions do not lead to their conclusions. The assumptions are also false. You don’t want the conclusions to be true anyway. The things that you know work, work based on principles other than what you thought. Most of your information about those phenomena is maliciously and systematically corrupted, and all of it is based on wrong thinking. Your very conceptions of the ideas are set up to distort your thinking on this subject.

What if my accepted ideas of civilizational progress are wrong? What if instead of exponential growth, you can basically just skip to the end? Moore’s Law is actually just complacency. You can, at any point, write down the most powerful and correct version of any part of civilization. You can also write down what needs to happen to get there. You can do this without actually performing any research and development in between, or even making prototypes. You don’t need an AGI to do this for you. Your brain and its contents right now are sufficient. You just need to organize them differently. In fact, you already know how to do this. You’re tripping over this ability repeatedly, overlooking the capability to solve everything you care about because you regard it as trash, some useless idea, or even a bad plan. You’ve buried it alongside the garbage of your mind. You’re not actually looking at what is in your head and how it can be used. Even if it feels like you are. Even if you’re already investing all your resources in ‘trying.’ It is possible, easy even. You’re just doing it wrong in an obvious way you refuse to recognize. Probably because you don’t actually want what you feel, think, and say you do. You already know why you’re lying to yourself about this.

You can’t build AGI without understanding what it’ll do first, so AI safety as a separate field is actually not even necessary or especially valuable. You can’t even get started with the tech that really matters until you’ve laid out what is going to happen in advance. That tech can also only be used for good ends. Also, AGI is impossible to build in the first place. Rationality is bunk and contains more traps than valuable thinking techniques. MIRI is totally wrong about AI safety and is functionally incapable of coming anywhere close to what is necessary to align superintelligences. Even over a hundred years it will be mechanically unable to self-correct. CFAR is just very good at making you feel like rationality is being taught. They, don’t understand even the basics of rationality in the first place. Instead they’re just very good at convincing good people to give them money, and everyone including themselves that this is okay. Also, it is okay. Because morality is actually about making you feel like good things are happening, not actually making good things happen. We actually care about the symbol, not the substance.

That rationality cannot, even in its highest principles of telling you how to overcome itself, actually lead you to something better. To that higher unnamed thing which is obviously better once you’re there. There is, in fact, actually no rationality technique for making it easier to invent the next rationality. Or for uncovering the principles it is missing. Even the fact of knowing there are missing principles you must look for when your tools shatter is orthogonal to resolving the problem. It does not help you. Analogously there is no science experiment for inventing rationality. You cannot build an ad-hoc house whose shape is engineering. If it somehow happens, it will be because of something other than the principles you thought you were using. You can keep running science experiments about rationality-like-things and eventually get an interesting output, but the reason it will work is because of something like brute force random search.

That the singularity won’t happen. Exponential growth already ended. But we also won’t destroy ourselves for not being able to stop X-risk. In fact, X-risk is a laughable idea. Humans will survive no matter what happens. It is impossible to actually extinguish the species. S-risk is also crazy, it is okay for uncountable humans to suffer forever, because immense suffering is orthogonal to good/bad. What we actually value has nothing to do with humans and conscious experience at all, actually.

Regex 8 Feb 2020 0:00 UTC
22 points
on: Hammertime Day 1: Bug Hunt
Hopefully, you came up with at least 100 bugs; I came up with 142.
I wrote 20,000 words from these prompts. Not all of those bugs, but also my reactions to them. Ended up doing not much else for about three days, but I went over basically my entire life top to bottom. I now have a thorough overview of my errors. I stopped not because I ran out of things I think I need to fix, but because I realized the list would never end. I was still finding MAJOR areas I need to improve even after all that. I see why the exercise is supposed to only be half an hour now: there are about 200 million insects per person!
Lesson learned: sample, not catalog.

Regex 5 Dec 2018 19:40 UTC
0 points
in reply to: the gears to ascension’s comment on: Frequently Asked Questions for Central Banks Undershooting Their Inflation Target
I’ve only taken a really basic economics course, but found the explanations really straight forward and learned a lot. So I don’t think the topic is as hard to parse as you’d think.

(Alternatively, I may have misunderstood details, overlooked problems, and simply don’t have anything to contrast these statements to. This would make it harder to judge.)

The bank’s persona did however fall flat repeatedly and could have been a lot better by having realistic responses.

Regex 30 Oct 2018 23:55 UTC
1 point
in reply to: quanticle’s comment on: thought: the problem with less wrong’s epistemic health is that stuff isn’t short form
High upvote low reply is less bad, but still feels like it is fundamentally broken in some way. Failing to leave a mark maybe? I think I would mostly be confused given such a reaction. There might be specific types of posts that would generate that, but I feel those qualities do not generalize to the set of “authoritative, well researched and obviously correct” posts.

Regex 26 Oct 2018 17:44 UTC
3 points
in reply to: quanticle’s comment on: thought: the problem with less wrong’s epistemic health is that stuff isn’t short form

Moreover, why should there be discussion? If a post is authoritative, well researched and obviously correct, then the only thing to do is upvote it and move on. A lengthy discussion thread is a sign that either the post is either unclear, incorrect, or has mindkilled its readers.

Alternatively, a length discussion could be a sign that the post inspired connections to related topics and events. Additionally, it may have made a critical advance that furthered understanding of the topic for other people. Even though optimizing for engagement yields divergence from what we want doesn’t mean we should optimize against engagement. Or that a lack of engagement is somehow good.

If there are a bunch of long-form articles for which the only reasonable response is, “Yep, that’s all true. Good article!” that’s a win condition.

I do believe there is a place for that, but were I to repeatedly make posts which were so thoroughly correct and got essentially no engagement I would take that as a sign that people weren’t really interested in it and that I should focus on other topics that have a larger impact.

Regex 26 Oct 2018 17:18 UTC
7 points
on: Less to Greater, Bookmarklet Edition
I independently generated an alternative solution using the redirector extension:

http://einaregilsson.com/writing-a-browser-extension-for-three-browsers/

Pattern:

Example URL: http://lesswrong.com/some_path

Include pattern: *lesswrong*

Redirect to: $1greaterwrong$2

You should get out example result:

http://greaterwrong.com/some_path

(I am using Firefox and I assume it is the same on other browsers)

Regex 19 Oct 2018 2:49 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: UBI for President
I do agree that a graduated UBI (negative income tax) would be cleaner than the current welfare system. A smooth gradient out instead of a sharp cut in benefits. The incentives would align substantially for people seeking to escape the poverty trap.
A major issue for me when I think of this is the incentives for increasing the amount until it is unsustainable. Being able to vote yourself more money is… well. A ticket towards candidates promising to give people more money out of the pockets of others.
This would incentivize brain drain as well as immigration of people in dire straits. It would also incentivize a population boom since people would no longer worry as much about being able to support their family. This in turn makes the problem worse.
Although this applies to any kind of welfare. So it may be strictly easier legally to end the old programs and start on this one. The savings from no longer dealing with red tape, frustration, and bootstrapping from meagre resources may actually be sufficient to counterbalance these negative effects.
I do wonder on the effect of various UBI schemes on people’s productivity and life choices.

Regex 18 Oct 2018 23:32 UTC
4 points
on: UBI for President
~300,000,000 US citizens.
$1,000/month/person = 12,000 $/year/person
$12,000*300,000,000 = $3,600,000,000,000/year = 3.6 trillion dollars a year
For reference, the United States takes in a little over 6 trillion dollars a year in taxes.

Regex 1 Aug 2018 20:34 UTC
8 points
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Thoughts on the REACH Patreon
Found a big list of crowd funding options. Don’t have to set up our own, just need to find one that is both low fee and trustworthy.

https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfunding

Finding a superior option seems doable in 5-10 hours?

Regex 1 Aug 2018 17:18 UTC
3 points
on: Thoughts on the REACH Patreon
There is one pretty big problem with using patreon as their fundraising platform: It eats a little less than 8% of the money you put in. That is money simply lost from the community. This makes patreon an unacceptable medium for transactions.

Now, about 3% of that is from credit card fees. Are there alternatives to that? I am unsure how much the one time donation takes, but I suspect it is only the credit card fees. We’re losing 5% to the convenience of not pressing a button to donate every month.

As of this writing they’re making $5,464/month. I presume that’s pre-fee. I’ll also assume everyone actually pays every month.

They lose $163/month to the credit card fees, and from the remaining another $265/month for a total of $428/month lost all due to the medium of monetary transfer.

That’s about half of what I spend each month to live, so the inefficiency here is costing us 50% of one person’s living situation. Minimum wage is about $8/hour. So a more concrete measure is we’re losing ~60 minimum wage hours a month. We should be willing to pay someone that much to fix this transaction problem.

And that’s just for this one project.

I presume they’re using patreon because people know it and are willing to use it, but this is a coordination problem, and a rather serious one at that should this medium become more popular.

Regex 3 Nov 2017 14:16 UTC
1 point
on: [Error communicating with LW2 server]
https://hivewired.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/an-introduction-to-origin/
[ https://hivewired.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/an-introduction-to-origin/ ] ( https://hivewired.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/an-introduction-to-origin/ )

Regex 3 Nov 2017 13:58 UTC
3 points
on: The Craft & The Community—A Post-Mortem & Resurrection
The Origin Project is also working on the same general problems, and looking to grow. You don’t have to move anywhere, and you can get started right now.

https://hivewired.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/an-introduction-to-origin/

We’ve been working for the last few months on building out a cultural framework that can be used wherever you are, and just with the people around you. To build a sense of community and meaningful interactions.

But we’re not there yet. We’re too few.

Come as you are.

Regex 21 Sep 2017 3:10 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: LessWrong 2.0 Feature Roadmap & Feature Suggestions
Hello, World!

Regex 17 Sep 2017 3:40 UTC
1 point
in reply to: highpriestessofelua_duplicate0.24310534480792523’s comment on: LW 2.0 Open Beta starts 9/20
My impression reading this is that you mostly just want a better Tumblr. Would that be fair?

Regex 15 Sep 2017 16:22 UTC
6 points
in reply to: ozymandias’s comment on: LW 2.0 Strategic Overview
How culture war stuff is dealt with on the various discord servers is having a place to dump it all. This is often hidden to begin with and opt-in only, so people only become aware of it when they start trying to discuss it.

Regex 15 Sep 2017 5:22 UTC
25 points
in reply to: pepe_prime’s comment on: 2017 LessWrong Survey
I have taken the survey… away from everyone.

No one can have it.

It lives under my bed now.

Regex 25 Aug 2017 3:43 UTC
1 point
in reply to: Yosarian2’s comment on: What is Rational?

If he just has an instinct that a 6 should come up again, but can’t explain where that instinct comes from or defend that belief in any kind of rational way other then “it feels right”, then he’s probably not being rational.

Maybe in the specific example of randomness, but I don’t think you can say the general case of ‘it feels so’ is indefensible. This same mechanism is used for really complicated black box intuitive reasoning that underpins any trained skill. So in in areas one has a lot of experience in, or areas which are evolutionary keyed in such as social interactions or in nature this isn’t an absurd belief.

In fact, knowing that these black box intuitions exist means they they have to be included in our information about the world, so ‘give high credence to black box when it says something’ may be the best strategy if ones ability for analytic reasoning is insufficient to determine strategies with results better than that.