rotatingpaguro

Karma: 485

rotatingpaguro 24 Jul 2024 22:37 UTC
1 point
0
on: You should go to ML conferences
Learning Universal Predictors explores what happens if you take ideas from Solomonoff Induction and train actual neural network architectures like transformers on data generated from Universal Turing Machines.

I already found this here somehow, I can’t recall where

rotatingpaguro 21 Jul 2024 9:08 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: SimonBaars’s comment on: Me & My Clone
Ok, let’s say the clone is mirrored.
For (1), think about this concrete toy example: say the first thing you do is raising your right hand. The mirror clone rises his left hand. Then say you have an instinctive reaction behaving in this way:
- if I see a person raising his right hand, I repeat that movement.
- if I see a person raising his left hand, I do nothing.
So the next thing you do is nothing, while the next thing the mirror clone does is raising his right hand, which differentiates you from the clone.
HOWEVER, I now realize I was wrong: the mirror clone’s notion of left-right is mirrored as well.

rotatingpaguro 18 Jul 2024 17:07 UTC
2 points
−1
on: Me & My Clone
1. As a human, you react to what other humans do around you. Your reaction algorithms may not allow two copies of you to mirror each other.
2. The clone is not mirrored, so you are not in front of a mirror you, but a rotated you.

rotatingpaguro 18 Jul 2024 16:58 UTC
3 points
0
on: AI #73: Openly Evil AI
Anna Tong and Katie Paul (Reuters): The document describes a project that uses Strawberry models with the aim of enabling the company’s AI to not just generate answers to queries but to plan ahead enough to navigate the internet autonomously and reliably to perform what OpenAI terms “deep research,” according to the source.
Is this by any chance inspired by Yudkowsky’s “clone a strawberry” example?
If you give it proper labels, an LLM can learn that some information (e.g. Wikipedia) is reliable and should be internalized, whereas others (e.g. 4chan) is unreliable and should only be memorized.
Do the labels give the ground truth about which is reliable, or does the LLM learn which is the reliable one?

rotatingpaguro 12 Jul 2024 12:32 UTC
5 points
3
on: Most smart and skilled people are outside of the EA/rationalist community: an analysis
Before doing any project or entering any field, you need to catch up on existing intellectual discussion on the subject.
My current take on this topic is to follow this scheme:
1) dedicate some time to think about the problem on your own, without searching the literature
2) look in the literature, compare with your own thoughts
3) get feedback from a human in the field
4) repeat

Do you think (1) makes sense, or is your position extreme enough to reject (1) altogether, or spend only a very short time on it, say < 1 hour?

rotatingpaguro 20 Jun 2024 12:51 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Linch’s comment on: orthonormal’s Shortform
Isn’t it the opposite? To decimate = to kill 1 in 10 soldiers, figuratively to remove a certain fraction of elements from a set.

rotatingpaguro 12 Jun 2024 11:02 UTC
1 point
0
on: Priors and Prejudice
Simply run experiments and accept every result as true if the probability of it occurring by random chance falls below some threshold we agree on. This will lead us terribly astray every once in a while if we are not careful, but it also enables us to run experiments whose conclusions both of us can trust.^[2]
To minimize the chance of statistical noise or incorrect inference polluting our conclusions, we create experiments with randomly chosen intervention and control groups, so we are sure the intervention is causally connected to the outcome.
As long as we follow these procedures exactly, we can both trust the conclusion. Others can even join in on the fun too.
Together we arrive at a set of ‘randomista’ interventions we both recognize as valuable. Even if we each have differing priors leading us to opposing preferred interventions, pooling our money together on the randomista interventions beats donating to causes which cancel each other out.
The world is some the better.
Problems I see here:
1. In an RCT you can get a causal effect measure rather than just a correlation, but you can’t prove whether it generalizes. Example: If you pick some people and flip a coin for each to decide whether to give them a blerg or a sblarg, and then find out that blergs has a positive effect on self-confidence, the weak spot in your inference is the way you have picked the initial set of people within whom you did the randomization. The debate moves from “you can’t prove it’s a causal effect!” to “your set of people where younger than normal”, “the set of people is from a first-world country”, “people changed too much from when you did the experiment to right now”, etc.
2. Considering only significance and not power (in other words, only checking the probability something would happen “by chance”, rather than the probability it would happen under specific meaningful alternative hypotheses) is limiting and can be misleading enough to be a problem in practice. Read Andrew Gelman for this stuff.
3. By Wald’s complete class theorems, whatever you do with kosher frequentist statistics that you think is good, is equivalent to some specific prior used by a Bayesian guy doing Bayesian things, so if you at any point think “but frequentist” you should also have a caveat like “considering that humans won’t actually use statistics kosher, I can see a pretty precise story for how doing nonsense in this specific way will produce the correct behavior in the end”, which incidentally is reasoning I would not trust people in general to pull off.

rotatingpaguro 7 Jun 2024 15:38 UTC
1 point
0
on: AI #67: Brief Strange Trip
As Ian notes, in theory one could consider ASML or TSMC as more plausible monopolies, but neither is exploiting its position, and also neither is American so we can’t go after them. If anything I find the continued failure of both to raise prices to be a confusing aspect of the world.
Maybe with something that grows exponentially it’s convenient to keep the prices lower to grow the pie faster?
Indeed, I have spoken how I feel proposals such as those in the Gladstone Report go too far, and would indeed carry exactly these risks. I draw a sharp contrast between that and something like SB 1047. I dive into the details to try and punch them up.
I’m not a native English speaker, could someone tell me what “punch smth up” means here? I couldn’t understand searching on wiktionary nor asking claude.

rotatingpaguro 28 May 2024 21:17 UTC
2 points
0
on: Hardshipification
I didn’t play along and ended up saying things like: “Thanks, but I have friends I can talk to if I need it”.
Do you think the default thing to say in these cases should assume you have any friends period, or any “friends” you are willing to speak to?

rotatingpaguro 20 May 2024 20:42 UTC
17 points
0
on: OpenAI: Exodus
Naia: It’s OK, everyone. Mr. Not Consistently Candid says the whole thing was an oopsie, and that he’ll fix things one-by-one for people if they contact him privately. Definitely nothing to worry about, then. Carry on.
I’m wondering, what would happen if you contact Altman privately right now? Would you be added to a list of bad kids? What is the typical level of shadiness of American VCs?

rotatingpaguro 11 May 2024 17:03 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: lc’s comment on: Dating Roundup #3: Third Time’s the Charm
Look, I’ve measured hands with women, and not personally done it out of a relationship but I’ve seen women resting their heads and purring, and I don’t think it was flirting. Either this or I totally don’t understand social relationships (possible!) Do you think this is cultural? I’m Italian, are you US American?

rotatingpaguro 11 May 2024 5:51 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: RamblinDash’s comment on: Dating Roundup #3: Third Time’s the Charm
Ok, then I agreed. I was interpreting the advice in a different way, but your interpretation looks more reasonable.

rotatingpaguro 9 May 2024 18:22 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: RamblinDash’s comment on: Dating Roundup #3: Third Time’s the Charm
Thinking about it, I suspect I was not getting what “authenticity and openness” means. Like, it’s not “being yourself and letting go”, and more “being honest”, I guess? Could you give me >= 2 examples of a person being “authentic and open”?

rotatingpaguro 9 May 2024 0:36 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: Dating Roundup #3: Third Time’s the Charm
Are you libertarian about this specifically? Do you think it’s better if people also have the choice of dating apps? Or would you ban them if given the choice?

rotatingpaguro 9 May 2024 0:33 UTC
1 point
0
on: Dating Roundup #3: Third Time’s the Charm
As noted last time, Rob Henderson finds that women in their twenties swipe right (‘like’) twice as often for a man with a master’s degree over a bachelor’s degree.
Causal or association?
Manifold Love: pro-tip: if a woman measures her hand against yours, this is almost always flirtation.
Totally did not know this. Is this true?
2. Authenticity and openness with your partner tends to be reciprocal and strongly predicts relationship satisfaction. That makes sense, this is underrated.
Is this causal? I mean, maybe being yourself and open works for people who happen to already be relationship-compatible. People who are not would be worse off by trying to be themselves. I think I have been burned in the past a lot by that kind of advice, although my experience is too much of an anecdote to infer an average.

rotatingpaguro 8 May 2024 23:17 UTC
5 points
0
in reply to: Sable’s comment on: Observations on Teaching for Four Weeks
broken link

rotatingpaguro 7 May 2024 18:08 UTC
1 point
0
on: Observations on Teaching for Four Weeks
What are your goals when you teach?
What gives you pleasure when teaching?

rotatingpaguro 24 Apr 2024 23:39 UTC
1 point
0
on: Changes in College Admissions
After the events of April 2024, I cannot say that for Columbia or Yale. No just no.
What are these events?

rotatingpaguro 15 Apr 2024 1:52 UTC
3 points
1
on: Anthropic AI made the right call
Your argument would imply that competition begets worse products?

rotatingpaguro 31 Mar 2024 6:08 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: bhauth’s comment on: Metascience of the Vesuvius Challenge
One big prize, or many small prizes like here?