ICF is the only such mental viz whizz technique that has ever worked for me, and I say that having done CFAR, a dedicated focussing retreat, a weekend vipassana retreat, and a dedicated circling retreat.
technicalities
Karma: 405
ActAdd: Steering Language Models without Optimization
From context I think he meant not fibre laser but “free-space optics”, a then-hyped application of lasers to replace radio. I get this from him mentioning it in the same sentence as satellites and then comparing lasers to radio: “A continuing advance of communications satellites, and the use of laser beams for communication in place of electric currents and radio waves. A laser beam of visible light is made up of waves that are millions of times shorter than those of radio waves”. So I don’t think this rises above the background radiation (ha) of Asimov’s vagueness.
As for 3D TV, if I expand the context you see it’s an explicit replacement for screens: “wall screens will have replaced the ordinary set; but transparent cubes will be making their appearance in which three-dimensional viewing will be possible. In fact, one popular exhibit at the 2014 World’s Fair will be such a 3-D TV, built life-size, in which ballet performances will be seen. The cube will slowly revolve for viewing from all angles.” Also my understanding is that our 3D TVs don’t allow any varying POV, let alone all angles.
Thanks! Added these to the changelog.
Good reason to apply this with nearly equal intensity to mainstream medical arguments, though. (Applies to a lesser extent to evidence-based places like Cochrane, but sadly still applies.)
Good catch! The book is generally written as the history of the world leading up to 2000, and most of its predictions are about that year. But this is clearly an exception and the section offers nothing more precise than “By the year 3000, then, it may well be that Earth will be only a small part of the human realm.” I’ve moved it to the “nonresolved” tab.
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Data collector here. Strongly agree with your general point: most of these entries are extremely far from modern “clairvoyant” (cleanly resolving) forecasting questions.
Space travel. Disagree. In context he means mass space travel. The relevant lead-up is this:
“According to her, the Moon is a great place and she wants us to come visit her.”
“Not likely!” his wife answers. “Imagine being shut up in an air—conditioned cave.”
“When you are Aunt Jane’s age, my honey lamb, and as frail as she is, with a bad heart thrown in, you’ll go to the Moon and like it.”
Re: footnote 1. He was a dishonest bugger in his old age so I don’t doubt he would argue that.
Central piloting. Yep, you’re right. We caught this before, but changed it in the wrong branch of the data. Going to make it ‘ambiguous’; let me know if that seems wrong.
Commercial interplanetary travel. Disagree—“C.O.D.” is an old-timey word meaning something so normal and cheap that you don’t even need to pay for your ticket upfront—which implies that “you” is a consumer, not a government. (But again I see what you’re saying.)
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Is the point that 1) AGI specifically is too weird for normal forecasting to work, or 2) that you don’t trust judgmental forecasting in general, or 3) that respectability bias swamps the gains from aggregating a heavily selected crowd, spending more time, and debiasing in other ways?
The OpenPhil longtermists’ respectability bias seems fairly small to me; their weirder stuff is comparable to Asimov (but not Clarke, who wrote a whole book about cryptids).
And against this, you have to factor in the Big Three’s huge bias towards being entertaining instead of accurate (as well as e.g. Heinlein’s inability to admit error).
Can you point at examples? (Bio anchors?)
Announcing the Alignment of Complex Systems Research Group
Case for emergency response teams
Hinges and crises
Experimental longtermism: theory needs data
Bentham was nonzero discount apparently (fn6). (He used 5% but only as an example.)
Mill thought about personal time preference (and was extremely annoyed by people’s discount there). Can’t see anything about social rate of discounting.
I think Ramsey is also the first (quantitative) longtermist ever (zero discount rate).
Ooh that’s more intense that I realised. There might be plugins for yEd, but I don’t know em. Maybe Tetrad?
Givewell’s fine!
Thanks again for caring about this.
Sounds fine. Just noticed they have a cloth and a surgical treatment. Take the mean?
Great! Comment below if you like this wording and this can be our bond:
”Gavin bets 100 USD to GiveWell, to Mike’s 100 USD to GiveWell that the results of NCT04630054 will show a median reduction in Rt > 15.0 % for the effect of a whole population wearing masks [in whatever venues the trial chose to study].”
This is an interesting counterpoint (though I’d like to see a model of CO2 cost vs thinning cost if you have one), and it’s funny we happen to have such a qualified person on the thread. But your manner is needlessly condescending and—around here—brandishing credentials as a club will seriously undermine you rather than buttressing you.
I’m not seeing anything here about the costs of data collection (for licenced stuff) or curation (probably hundreds of thousands of cheap hours?), apart from one bullet on OAI’s combined costs. As a total outsider I would guess this could move your estimates by 20-100%.