Sweetgum

Karma: 96

Sweetgum 3 Jul 2023 20:18 UTC
17 points
1
in reply to: dr_s’s comment on: Douglas Hofstadter changes his mind on Deep Learning & AI risk (June 2023)?

It’s more akin to me writing down my thoughts and then rereading them to gather my ideas than the kind of loops I imagine our neurons might have.

In a sense, that is what is happening when you think in words. It’s called the phonological loop.

Sweetgum 30 Jul 2023 20:40 UTC
14 points
10
in reply to: Slimepriestess’s comment on: Blanchard’s Dangerous Idea and the Plight of the Lucid Crossdreamer

Like, as far as I’m concerned, I’m trans because I chose to be, because being the way I am seemed like a better and happier life to have than the alternative. Now sure, you could ask, “yeah but why did I think that? Why was I the kind of agent that would make that kind of choice? Why did I decide to believe that?”

Yes, this a non-confused question with a real answer.

Well, because I decided to be the kind of agent that could decide what kind of agent I was. “Alright octavia but come on this can’t just recurse forever, there has to be an actual cause in biology” does there really?

In a literal/trivial sense, all human actions have a direct cause in the biology of the human brain and body. But you are probably using “biology” in a way that refers to “coarse” biological causes like hormone levels in utero, rather than individual connections between neurons, as well as excluding social causes. In that case, it’s at least logically possible that the answer to this question is no. It seems extremely unlikely that coarse biological factors play no role in determining whether someone is trans (I expect coarse biological factors to be at least somewhat involved in determining the variance in every relevant high-level trait of a person), but it’s very plausible that there is not one discrete cause to point to, or that most of the variance in gender identity is explained by social factors.

If a brain scan said I “wasn’t really trans” I would just say it was wrong, because I choose what I am, not some external force.

This seems like a red herring to me—as far as I know no transgender brain research is attempting to diagnose trans people by brain scan in a way that overrides their verbal reports and behavior, but rather to find correlates of those verbal reports and behavior in the brain. If we find a characteristic set of features in the brains of most trans people, but not all, it will then be a separate debate as to whether we should consider this newly discovered thing to be the true meaning of the word “transgender”, or whether we should just keep using the word the same way we used it before, to refer to a pattern of self-identity and behavior, and the “keep using it the same way we did before” side seems quite reasonable. Even now, many people understand the word “transgender” as an “umbrella term” that encompasses people who may not have the same underlying motivations.

Morphological freedom without metaphysical freedom of will is pointless.

If by “metaphysical freedom of will” you are referring to is libertarian free will, then I have to disagree. Even if libertarian free will doesn’t exist (it doesn’t), it is still beneficial to me for society to allow me the option of changing my body. If you are confused about how the concept of “options” can exist without libertarian free will, that problem has already been solved in Possibility and Could-ness.

Sweetgum 9 Jul 2023 16:37 UTC
10 points
on: Taboo Truth
Indeed, it is instrumentally useful for instrumental rationalists to portray themselves as epistemic rationalists. And so this is a common pattern in human politics—“[insert political coalition] care only about themselves, while [insert political coalition] are merely trying to spread truth” is one of the great political cliches for a reason. And because believing one’s own lies can be instrumentally useful, falsely believing oneself to have a holy devotion to the truth is a not-uncommon delusion.
I try to dissuade myself of this delusion.
There’s a subtle paradox here. Can you spot it?
He is trying to dissuade himself of the premise[X] that he is committed to the truth over socially useful falsehoods. But that premise[X] is itself socially useful to believe, and he claims it’s false, so disbelieving it would show that he does sometimes value the truth over socially useful falsehoods, contradicting the point.

More specifically, there are three possibilities here:
1. X is broadly true. He’s just wrong about X, but his statement that X is false is not socially motivated.
2. X is usually false, but his statements about X are a special case for some reason.
3. X is false, but his statement that X is false doesn’t contradict this because denying X is actually the socially useful thing, rather than affirming X. Lesswrong might be the kind of place where denying X (saying that you are committed to spreading socially useful falsehoods over the truth) actually gets you social credit, because readers interpret affirming X as the thing that gets you social credit, so denying it is interpreted as a signal that you are committed to saying the taboo truth (not-X) over what is socially useful (X), the exact opposite of what was stated. If true, this would be quite ironic. This interpretation is self-refuting in multiple ways, both logically (for not-X to be a “taboo truth”, X has to be false, which already rules out the conclusion of this line of reasoning) and causally (if everyone uses this logic, the premise that affirming X is socially useful becomes false, because denying X becomes the socially useful thing.) But that doesn’t mean readers couldn’t actually be drawing this conclusion without noticing the problems.

Sweetgum 2 Aug 2023 17:56 UTC
9 points
8
in reply to: Dumbledore's Army’s comment on: Could we breed/engineer intelligent parrots?

What happens if the parrots have their own ideas about who to breed with? Or the rejected parrots don’t want to be sterilised?

It’s worth noting that both of these things are basically already true, and don’t require great intelligence.

Sweetgum 2 Aug 2023 17:14 UTC
9 points
0
in reply to: False Name’s comment on: The “public debate” about AI is confusing for the general public and for policymakers because it is a three-sided debate

Autonomous lethal weapons (ALWs; we need a more eerie, memetic name)

There’s already a more eerie, memetic name. Slaughterbots.

Sweetgum 12 May 2022 1:59 UTC
6 points
on: What DALL-E 2 can and cannot do
I wonder if you could get it to generate Minecraft screenshots, such as:
- A log cabin in a a clearing in a dark forest, as a screenshot from Minecraft
It would also be interesting to see how “as a screenshot from Minecraft“ combines with other styles:
- A wagon caravan approaches a ruined city in the desert, as a Miyazaki anime, as a screenshot from Minecraft
You could also append “as a screenshot from Minecraft” to more abstract prompts, for example:
- A machine that harvests luck from four leaf clovers, as a screenshot from Minecraft
Finally, some other miscellaneous prompt ideas:
- RGB color model and CMYK color model as sculptures on a stone pedestal
- All seeing eye at the apex of the Maxwell Color Triangle, Illuminati at the top of color triangle

Sweetgum 11 Oct 2022 17:34 UTC
5 points
3
in reply to: anonce’s comment on: Don’t leave your fingerprints on the future
Can you elaborate? Why would locking in Roman values not be a great success for a Roman who holds those values?

Sweetgum 14 Feb 2023 12:14 UTC
4 points
4
in reply to: Jon Leibow’s comment on: How it feels to have your mind hacked by an AI

Logically, I knew it was all zeros and ones, but they felt so real.

There are various reasons to doubt that LLMs have moral relevance/sentience/personhood, but I don’t think being “all zeros and ones” is one of them. Preemptively categorizing all possible digital computer programs as non-people seems like a bad idea.

Sweetgum 4 Aug 2023 19:59 UTC
3 points
2
on: We Are Less Wrong than E. T. Jaynes on Loss Functions in Human Society
Even assuming perfect selfishness, sometimes the best way to get what you want (X) is to coordinate to change the world in a way that makes X plentiful, rather than fighting over the rare Xs that exist now, and in that way, your goals align with other people who want X.

Sweetgum 3 Aug 2023 20:29 UTC
3 points
1
in reply to: Kevin Dorst’s comment on: Rationalization Maximizes Expected Value
I think I got it. Right after the person buys X for $1, you offer to buy it off them for $2, but with a delay, so they keep X for another month before the sale goes through. After the month passes, they now value X at $3 so they are willing to pay $3 to buy it back from you, and you end up with +$1.

Sweetgum 2 Aug 2023 17:07 UTC
3 points
4
in reply to: Stefan_Schubert’s comment on: The “public debate” about AI is confusing for the general public and for policymakers because it is a three-sided debate
Maybe something like “mundane-ist” would be better. The “realists” are people who think that AI is fundamentally “mundane” and that the safety concerns with AI are basically the same as safety concerns with any new technology (increases inequality by making the powerful more powerful, etc.) But of course “mundane-ist” isn’t a real word, which is a bit of a problem.

Sweetgum 31 Jul 2023 23:17 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Ben Pace’s comment on: I’m from a parallel Earth with much higher coordination: AMA
Can’t tell if sarcastic

Sweetgum 27 Mar 2023 1:52 UTC
3 points
3
in reply to: Dana’s comment on: Don’t take bad options away from people
Slavery and theft harm others, so they are not relevant here. Age limits would be the most relevant. We have age limits on certain things because we believe that regardless of whether they want to, underage people deciding to do those things is usually not in their best interest. Similarly, bans on sex for rent and kidney sale could be justified by the belief that regardless of whether they want to, people doing these things is usually not in their best interest. However, this is somewhat hard to back up: It’s pretty unclear whether prostitution or homelessness is worse, and it’s easy to think of situations where selling a kidney definitely would be worth it (like the one given in the post).

I don’t want to live in a world where women have to prostitute themselves to afford rent.

I don’t want to live in that world either, but banning sex for rent doesn’t resolve the issue. It just means we’ve gone from a world where women have to prostitute themselves to afford rent to a world where women just can’t afford rent, period.

What I said here is wrong, see this comment

Have them be homeless until the homelessness situation becomes severe enough that we resolve it. Otherwise, IMO, we are just boiling the frog. There will be no protests, no riots, because selling our kidneys and having sex for rent is just enough for us to get by.

You don’t think having to sell your kidneys and have sex for rent to get by is bad enough to get people to protest/riot?

Also, it seems like you’ve implicitly changed your position here. Previously, you said that when someone sells a kidney/trades sex for rent it would usually not be in their best interest, and that those options would usually only be taken under the influence of addiction or mental illness. Now, when you say that people would do those things “to get by” it sounds like you’re implying that these are rational choices that would be in peoples’ best interest given the bad situation, and would be taken by ordinary people. Which of these do you agree with?

Sweetgum 17 Feb 2023 12:22 UTC
3 points
2
on: Why I like Zulip instead of Slack or Discord
Discord does have allow you to make named threads that branch off of a channel, and later archive them. It’s not the default mode of conversation on Discord but it is available if you care to use it. Also, I am confused what you mean by “threads are made after the fact” on Discord.

Sweetgum 25 Oct 2022 2:16 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Vanessa Kosoy’s comment on: Morality is Scary

But, I still prefer that over paperclips (by far). And, I suspect that most people do (even if they protest it in order to play the game).

What does this even mean? If someone says they don’t want X, and they never take actions that promote X, how can it be said that they “truly” want X? It’s not their stated preference or their revealed preference!

Sweetgum 7 Oct 2022 13:42 UTC
3 points
in reply to: null’s comment on: Ego syntonic thoughts and values
Why work on lowering your expectations rather than working on improving your consistency of success? If you managed to actually satisfy your expectations once, that seems to suggest that they weren’t actually too high (unless the success was heavily luck based, but based on what you said it sounds like it wasn’t.)

Also, that article didn’t sound like it was describing narcissists (at least for the popular conception of the word “narcissist”). It more just sounded like it was describing everyone (everyone has a drive for social success) interspersed with describing unrelated pathologies, like lack of “stamina” to follow through on plans and trouble dealing with life events.

Sweetgum 31 Jul 2023 20:14 UTC
2 points
0
on: Rationalization Maximizes Expected Value
Wild speculation ahead: Perhaps the aversion to this sort of rationalization is not wholly caused by the suboptimality of rationalization, but also by certain individualistic attitudes prevalent here. Maybe I, or Eliezer Yudkowsky, or others, just don’t want to be the sort of person whose preferences the world can bend to its will.

Sweetgum 31 Jul 2023 19:46 UTC
2 points
0
on: Rationalization Maximizes Expected Value
I wish you had gone more into the specific money pump you would be vulnerable to if you rationalize your past choices in this post. I can’t picture what money pump would be possible in this situation (but I believe you that one exists.) Also, you not describing the specific money pump reduces the salience of the concern (improperly, in my opinion.) It’s one thing to talk abstractly about money pumps, and another to see right in front of you how your decision procedure endorses obviously absurd actions.

Sweetgum 17 Jun 2023 17:01 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: David Bravo’s comment on: Trust develops gradually via making bids and setting boundaries

In this cases it can be helpful to imagine your current self in a bargaining game with your future selves, in a sort of prisoner’s dilema. If your current now defects, your future selves will be more prone to defecting as well. If you coordinate and resist tempation now, future resistance will be more likely. In other words, establishing a Schelling fence.

This is an interesting way of looking at it. To elaborate a bit, one day of working toward a long-term goal is essentially useless, so you will only do it if you believe that your future selves will as well. This is some of where the old “You need to believe in yourself to do it!” advice comes from. But there can be good reasons not to believe in yourself as well.

In the context of the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, it’s been investigated what the frequency of random errors (the decision to cooperate or defect being replaced with a random one in x% of instances) can go up to before cooperation breaks down. (I’ll try to find a citation for this later.) This seems similar, but not literally equivalent, to a question we might ask here: What frequency of random motivational lapses can be tolerated before the desire to work towards the goal at all breaks down?

Naturally, the goals that require the most trust are ones that see no benefit until the end, because they require you to trust that your future selves won’t permanently give up on the goal anywhere between now and the end to be worth working towards at all. But most long term goals aren’t really like this. They could be seen to fall on a spectrum between providing no benefit until a certain point and linear benefit the more they are worked towards with the “goal” point being arbitrary. (This is analogous to the concept of a learning curve.) Actions towards a goal may also provide an immediate benefit as well as progress toward the goal, which reduces the need to trust your future selves.

If you don’t trust your future selves very much, you can seek out “half-measure” actions that sacrifice some efficiency toward the goal for immediate benefits, but still contribute some progress toward the goal. You can to some extent set where they are along this spectrum, but you are also limited by the types of actions available to you.

Sweetgum 2 Jun 2023 21:10 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Don’t take bad options away from people
Thanks, this is a great explanation and you changed my mind on this. This is probably the reason why most people have the intuition that legalizing these things makes things worse for everyone. There were many proposed explanations for that intuition in this thread, but none of the others made sense/seemed valid to me, so I was beginning to think the intuition was erroneous.