Tobias H

Karma: 722

Tobias H 21 Sep 2026 19:17 UTC
2 points
1
in reply to: Lao Mein’s comment on: The Anatomy of a Chinese AI Researcher
How does 2. fit with Buddhist vegetarianism in China? Not an expert, but my impression is that Buddhism has fairly positive associations among populace, and Buddhist temple restaurants attract many (presumably mostly non-buddhist) customers.

Tobias H 15 Sep 2026 10:44 UTC
1 point
0
on: clearthis’s Shortform
2 days left to apply to mentor for Pivotal’s Q1 2027 AI Safety Fellowship (January–April 2027, 15 weeks).

I, quite self-servingly, believe that most researchers in the field should spend 5-10% of their time supporting junior researchers. Mentorship is the bottleneck right now to get great talent into the field. Pivotal has a large pool of exceptionally great junior researchers to choose from.
You can find more about why you might want to mentor & what it involves here: pivotal-research.org/mentoring-at-pivotal

We’ve changed the format in two ways.
1. The fellowship now runs 15 weeks instead of 9.
2. We also no longer offer extensions by default (though we may still offer them for few exceptional projects). Instead, we aim to publish the research quickly and place fellows at orgs as soon as possible. We also will arrange seed funding for strong projects that should become new orgs.

If you know anyone who might be a good fit, forward it to them. If you have questions, please reach out!

Tobias H 1 Sep 2026 11:24 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Tobias H’s comment on: Charbel-Raphaël’s Shortform
Anthropic published something, and this quote seems relevant:
To be clear about where we stand: we believe the world would benefit if the industry adopted a lawful, verifiable, effective mechanism for coordinated pacing as soon as possible.

Tobias H 1 Sep 2026 5:27 UTC
3 points
0
on: Population ethics is a big deal, which is why I made this population ethics quiz
Very nice, thanks for setting this up!
A way to share your results as an exportable image would make sharing results easier and fun :)

Tobias H 30 Aug 2026 9:22 UTC
37 points
33
in reply to: Thomas Kwa’s comment on: Charbel-Raphaël’s Shortform
Maybe? This is a really hard thing to announce. Having a good sense that someone is lying doesn’t always mean that you can easily express to others why you feel justified in this sense.
But I do agree that they should be able to announce *something*, and that not doing so looks bad.

Tobias H 30 Apr 2026 9:20 UTC
19 points
0
in reply to: Gurkenglas’s comment on: On today’s panel with Bernie Sanders
Full Stream on Bernie Sanders youtube account.

Tobias H 24 Mar 2026 9:00 UTC
9 points
9
in reply to: leogao’s comment on: leogao’s Shortform
What kind of single knob are you using?
I find the design below where ‘left-right’ controls temperature and ‘up-down’ controls flow intuitive and easy to use.

Tobias H 20 Jan 2026 8:22 UTC
7 points
3
in reply to: jenn’s comment on: Five Theses on AI Art
My understanding is that a lot of the slow progress from 1878 to the early 1900s was the “cinema tech stack” needing to become technically and economically viable.
To get good motion you need ~16 frames per second, which means each frame has to be exposed ~1/16 of a second, which in turn means you need stuff like sensitive film stock, lots of light, decent lenses. Then you need a camera that can move film in a way that is at a constant speed but also holds each frame perfectly still briefly, for a precise duration, and without any jitter/warping/etc. Then for economic viability you also need projection that’s bright and safe for a room, plus a practical way to duplicate film at scale.
The starting point for all of this was early photography (e.g. daguerreotypes in the 1830s–40s), which used rigid metal plates and multi-minute exposures in bright daylight.
For some forms of AI art (single images, short clips) the tech stack feels maybe mostly already there, while for others it doesn’t (how to turn short clips into a full-length movie). But maybe that’s just a lack of imagination, and we’ll look back and say something like: “they didn’t realize they needed BCI to really unlock AI art’s potential”.

Tobias H 19 Jan 2026 8:41 UTC
61 points
7
on: Five Theses on AI Art
But the film industry slowly got their act together,
I don’t think it was that slow. Even ‘A trip to the moon’ in 1902 already used stop motion, ‘The great train robbery’ in 1903 had already used more complex cutting & perspectives & even put a camera on a moving train.

By 1930 the film industry had done:
- complex tracking shots (1927)
- experimented with previously impossible perspectives (1930)
- nice visual effects (1927)
- stunts (1923)
- combined a lot of techniques (1924)
  and did various experimental stuff (1929)

Tobias H 2 Jan 2026 10:44 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Random Developer’s comment on: Taiwan war timelines might be shorter than AI timelines
But I rarely see any discussion of whether Taiwan could escalate into a Mutually Assured Destruction dynamic
Not at all an expert either. But MAD doesn’t just assume nukes but also assumes that each side is able to launch on warning/under attack, or to launch a second strike. The former is harder, compared to US-Russia, because of the physical proximity. The latter disadvantages Taiwan because of its smaller land mass and much more limited navy. So maybe experts have very basic reasons to question the viability of MAD?

Tobias H 5 Nov 2025 6:40 UTC
5 points
2
in reply to: Nina Panickssery’s comment on: Nina Panickssery’s Shortform
Generally agree, but disagree with this part:
And so my options are either to overpower them (by not letting them achieve their idea of good when it conflicts with mine) or trade with them.
There’s room for persuasion and deliberation as well. Moral anti-realists can care about how other people form moral beliefs (e.g. quality of justifications, coherence of values, non-coercion).

Tobias H 24 Oct 2025 15:02 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Taylor G. Lunt’s comment on: Guys I might be an e/acc
I was most confused about ‘S’, and likely understood it quite differently than intended.

I understood S as roughly “Humanity stays in control after AGI, but slowly (over decades/centuries) becomes fewer and less relevant”. I’d expect in many of these cases for something morally valuable to replace humans. So I put S lower than R.
Could it make sense to introduce “population after AGI you care about” as a term – I think this could be clearer.

Tobias H 24 Oct 2025 9:21 UTC
2 points
0
in reply to: Anon User’s comment on: Guys I might be an e/acc
Also, is the calculator setting non-doom post-AGI mortality to zero by capping the horizon at AGI and counting only pre-AGI deaths?

For example: time to AGI|no pause = 10y & pause = 10y. Then the calculator will arrive 60m x 10 deaths for no-pause vs 60m x 20 for pause. But if after AGI mortality only halves, the fair comparison no-pause path should be 60m x 10 + 0.5 x 60m x 10.

Tobias H 24 Oct 2025 9:04 UTC
2 points
3
in reply to: Anon User’s comment on: Guys I might be an e/acc
Yes, quite weird to put zero value for people after AGI.

If you e.g. expect p(extinction|no pause)-p(extinction|pause) = 0.1%, and 1 trillion people after AGI, pausing saves a billion people after AGI in expectation.

Tobias H 3 Oct 2025 17:15 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Tobias H’s comment on: Omelas Is Perfectly Misread
I’ve watched Big Joel videos before, which makes me wonder if I have seen this one but forgotten about it. I expressed the same basic idea before this video was released, but the structure I used here is very similar.

Tobias H 3 Oct 2025 17:02 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: CallumMcDougall’s comment on: Omelas Is Perfectly Misread
Yes, for sure – it’s almost identical! Thanks for sharing.

108k views means that many more people have heard of this thesis than I previously thought.

Tobias H 3 Oct 2025 2:43 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Nick_Tarleton’s comment on: Omelas Is Perfectly Misread
The ones who walk away are the ones who recognize all of this and are no longer willing to participate in the collective illusion (hence, alone).
I like this reading, I hadn’t thought about it before!

Tobias H 3 Oct 2025 2:41 UTC
7 points
−2
in reply to: Brendan Long’s comment on: Omelas Is Perfectly Misread
Thanks for pointing out that this is a big omission! I’ve added a bit about it.
I don’t think ‘you’re not able to accept a pure utopia’ is the only theme of the story, but it is a large and (to me) dominant one.
If I read the ending in isolation, it does feel like a critique of utilitarianism. But since the story introduces the suffering child, the ‘utilitarian downside’ of the calculus, as a clear farce, I find it not a plausible reading overall.

Taking the ending seriously is as bit as if you took the following argument against utilitarianism seriously: “Imagine there’s a child drowning in a shallow pond. You’re wearing a swimsuit and could easily save them. Don’t believe me? Okay, let me make it more believable: imagine there’s also a cute puppy guarding the pond that you’d have to kill to reach the child. Would you do it?”
They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
She mentions that they know where they are going, but she doesn’t mention why they are going. It could be because they’d personally be unhappy in such a place. It could be because they think there’s an even better possible place. It could be because they reject the utilitarian calculus. I’m genuinely confused what the end is about.

Tobias H 3 Oct 2025 2:25 UTC
3 points
0
in reply to: Hastings’s comment on: Omelas Is Perfectly Misread
I agree that the ending doesn’t fit either. I’ve mentioned something similar here. I’m genuinely confused what the ending is about, and have mainly settled on ‘the story would be really bleak and unenjoyable without it’.

Tobias H 3 Oct 2025 2:18 UTC
1 point
0
in reply to: Garrett Baker’s comment on: Omelas Is Perfectly Misread
I’m not sure how I missed this one. Thanks!