“I feel” are an amazing technique to deescalate conflicts and built rapport. You cannot disagree with my feelings! That’s quite powerful.
Too powerful. You can say anything, claim anything, under the guise of “feeling”, and shut down anyone who disagrees, because “muh FEELINGS!”
Every sentence beginning “I feel that” is false, because what follows those words is always a claim about how the world is, never a feeling.
That would depend on the university’s rules and customs. I think a general rule of thumb might be that a bachelor’s thesis may contain new research, a master’s thesis should, and a doctoral thesis must.
Assuming that the Moon is made of cheese, what sort would you expect it to be?
Goodhart is the malign god who gives you whatever you ask for.
“Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders”, Nature, 24 November 2022.
Toxoplasma gondii, the parasite well-known for making rodents lose their fear of cats, and possibly making humans more reckless, also affects wolves in an interesting way.
“infected wolves were 11 times more likely than uninfected ones to leave their birth family to start a new pack, and 46 times more likely to become pack leaders — often the only wolves in the pack that breed.”
Could such a thing be developed right now? It wouldn’t take any more AI than the recommender systems optimised for clicks. But I’d prefer it be and be called a servant, rather than a “guardian”.
Compare with current culture wars. There are plenty of gullible people around, ready to accept all the mud thrown at them and beg for more.
ETA: For example, Gianni Infantino.
If my uncertainty about a proposition is itself a truth that I want to convey, then I should convey that truth (concretely, not just by sprinkling the writing with vagueries like “I think” or “it seems”). If it is irrelevant to the purpose of what I am writing, I should leave it out.
Is that also useful for human players to do? (I have never played Diplomacy.) That is, in negotiations with other players, be the first to propose a plan and so set the agenda for the conversation.
In this shortform I will try and write the loopiest most LW anthropics memey post I can muster.
In this comment I will try and write the most boring possible reply to these questions. 😊 These are pretty much my real replies.
why are we here?
“Ours not to reason why, ours but to do or do not, there is no try.”
why do we live in such an extraordinary time?
Someone must. We happen to be among them. A few lottery tickets do win, owned by ordinary people who are perfectly capable of correctly believing that they have won. Everyone should be smart enough to collect on a winning ticket, and to grapple with living in interesting (i.e. low-probability) times. Just update already.
Is the simulation hypothesis true? If so, is there a base reality?
It is false. This is base reality. But I can still appreciate Eliezer’s fiction on the subject.
Why do we know we’re not a Boltzmann brain?
The absurdity heuristic. I don’t take BBs seriously.
Is existence observer-dependent?
Even in classical physics there is no observation without interaction. Beyond that, no, however many quantum physicists interpret their findings to the public with those words, or even to each other.
Is there a purpose to existence, a Grand Design?
Not that I know of. (This is not the same as a flat “no”, but for most purposes rounds off to that.)
What will be computed in the Far Future?
Either nothing in the case of x-risk, nothing of interest in the case of a final singleton, or wonders far beyond our contemplation, which may not even involve anything we would recognise as “computing”. By definition, I can’t say what that would be like, beyond guessing that at some point in the future it would stand in a similar relation to the present that our present does to prehistoric times. Look around you. Is this utopia? Then that future won’t be either. But like the present, it will be worth having got to.
Consider a suitable version of The Agnostic Prayer inserted here against the possibility that there are Powers Outside the Matrix who may chance to see this. Hey there! I wouldn’t say no to having all the aches and pains of this body fixed, for starters. Radical uplift, we’d have to talk about first.
Is it not the case that our values have changed pretty radically in the last 100 years, much less the last 800-1000?
To be a little pedantic, the people alive 100 years ago and those alive today are for practical purposes disjoint. No individual’s values need have changed much. The old die, the young replace them, and the middle-aged blow with the wind between.
the solution to all of those, is to bite the bullet of value lock-in.
I do not bite this bullet. I am wise enough to know that I am not wise enough to be Eternal Dictator of the Future Light-Cone. My preferences about the entire future light-cone are several levels of meta removed from trivialities like suffering and satisfaction: there should never be a singleton, regardless of its values. That’s about it.
Oh I’m well versed in the horrors of contemporary religious tradition and ritual. The idea was always to mimic the good without the bad.
That brings its own horrors. See the recent events and commentary around SBF and FTX.
The tradition itself would never be good, it would be the end to which it serves that makes it good. This ideally keeps traditions in check.
When the end is everything, everything else is nothing, and the zealous bull of paperclip utility maximisation tramples every Chesterton fence in sight.
I have not voted on this article, which has just come to my attention, but the flaw that leaps out at me is not in the material that you cite but the trite lesson you draw from it:
Be just a little bit less rational and more human, really. Listen to your grandma. Go play football.
Other commentators have had far more substantial things to say.
It would be easy if it just weren’t so hard.
What makes it easy is that you already know the answer. Almost everything you wrote describes and argues for this answer.
What makes it hard is that you do not like this answer. All that you say against it is “don’t wanna.”
You are asking here in the hope of getting a different answer, in order to sustain the pretence that you do not know what you do know.
I do understand, in the remote part of my brain that processes things rationally
Making it remote is another way of maintaining the pretence. It is as remote or as near as you choose it to be.
I am not one to give advice on this topic, but I think your own post gives you all the advice you need. It reads to me as an argument for just staying friends.
Another reason is that you can laugh at Pascal’s Mugger. , and when (the payoff) is enormous and (the probability of winning) is tiny, but not as tiny as is enormous, then (the fraction of your wealth to bet) is close to , i.e. almost nothing. The Kelly bet is never a greater fraction than the probability of winning.
Substitute an alien with different responses and you get a different set of outcomes. What’s the point?
“Prompt engineer” is a job that AI will wipe out before anyone even has it as a job.