What is a community that has changed their behaviour without strife?

I've been thinking about community improvement and I realise I don't know of any examples where a community had a flaw and fixed it without some deeply painful process.

Often there are discussions of flaws within EA with some implied notion that communities in general are good at changing. Maybe this is true. If so, there should be well known examples.

I would like examples of communities that had some behavior and then changed it, without loads of people leaving or some civil war.

Examples might include:

Becoming less violent
Becoming more entrepreneurial
Improving practises around sexual harassment
Becoming more open
Changing the language they used.

Also if anyone knows of literature they trust on the subject I'd be interested in it.

Nathan Young1m20

To be more explicit about my model, I see communities as a bit like people. And sometimes people do the hard work of changing (especially as they have incentives to) but sometimes they ignore it or blame someone else.

Similarly often communties scapegoat something or someone, or give vague general advice.

Observations on Teaching for Four Weeks

ClareChiaraVincent

17h

I just finished a program where I taught two classes of high school seniors, two classes a day for four weeks, as part of my grad program.

This experience was a lot of fun and it was rewarding, but it was really surprising, and even if only in small ways prompted me to update my beliefs about the experience of being a professor. Here are the three biggest surprises I encountered.

1: The Absent-Minded Professor Thing is Real

I used to be confused and even a little bit offended when at my meetings with my advisor every week, he wouldn't be able to remember anything about my projects, our recent steps, or what we talked about last week.

Now I get it. Even after just one week of classes, my short-term...

(See More – 730 more words)

sapphire1h20

Did the students really want to learn?

A few times I de facto taught a course on 'calculus with proofs' to a few students who wanted to learn from someone who seemed smart and motivated. I didn't get any money and they didnt get paid. We met twice a week. I could give some lectures and they discuss problems for a few hours. There was homework. We all took it very seriously. It was clearly not a small amount of work but I frankly found it invigorating. Normal classes were usually not invigorating.

I will say I found tutoring much more invigorating... (read more)

3Viliam1h

Former teacher here. Like avancil said, education is organized by amateurs. Having it organized by non-teachers has its own risks (optimizing for legible goals, ignoring all tacit knowledge of teachers), but there should be some way to get best practices from other professions to teachers. Also, university education of teachers is horribly inadequate (at least at my school it was), and the on-job training is mostly letting the new guy sink or swim. To handle multiple things, you need to keep notes. As a software developer, I just carry my notebook everywhere, and I have a note-keeping program (cherrytree) where I make a new node for each task. So if I was a teacher again, I would either do this, or a paper equivalent of it. (Maybe keep a notebook with one page per student. And one page per week, for short notes about things that need to be done that week. I would just start with something, and then adapt as needed.) Yeah, the inability to take a bathroom break when you need it can be really bad. There should be a standard mechanism to call for help; just someone to come and take care of the class for 10 minutes. More generally, to call for assistance when needed; for example what would you do if a student got hurt somehow, and you need to find help, but you also cannot leave the class alone. (Schools sometimes offer a solution, which usually turns out to be completely inadequate, e.g. "call this specific person for help", and when you do, "sorry I am busy right now".) There should probably be a phone for that in the teachers' room, and someone specific should be assigned phone duty every moment between 8AM and 3PM, and it's their job to come no questions asked. Debates about education are usually horribly asymmetric, because everyone had the experience of being a student, but many of them naively assume they know what it is like to be a teacher. Now you know the constraints the teachers work under; some of them are difficult to communicate. I think the task switc

6avancil7h

As a former teacher, I firmly believe that if we want to reform schools, we must reform the teaching profession and school management structures. At least, we should address the things that are most insane: * A school district is a big operation, with many having thousands of employees, and budgets running into the hundreds of millions of dollars. And it is usually run by literal amateurs. As in, the school board is a group of unpaid volunteers. * As tough as it is to be a teacher, consider what it's like to be a principal: You get the most odious parts of being a teacher (dealing with discipline, contentious meetings with parents), with a longer workday, shorter (if any) summer vacation, much greater responsibility, much greater public exposure (and corresponding chance of getting fired for some perceived failure), but not really that much more pay. It's hardly surprising that it's hard to find good people to take that job. So, as a teacher, you can't count on competent support from management. But, you really need it. * The teaching profession takes a lot of skills. Yet, the job description for a first year teacher, and the job description for a 30th year teacher are identical. Imagine hiring an engineer fresh out of college and asking them to do what a senior architect does. * But, from a practical standpoint, the job of the inexperienced teacher is often much more challenging. The experienced teacher gets to pick the honors classes, the electives, etc., to teach. The inexperienced teacher gets stuck with the remedial classes. It's not uncommon for a new teacher to get hired to teach class sections that were added at the last minute -- and those sections will be full of students who got put into those sections at the last minute, because they didn't have their act together, didn't pass, didn't register, etc. * As you discovered, an inexperienced teacher will find it a lot of work to deal with even one or two classes. Where I work now, if someone was asked t

Uncovering Deceptive Tendencies in Language Models: A Simulated Company AI Assistant

Olli Järviniemi, evhub

Ω 301d

This is a linkpost for https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.01576

Abstract:

We study the tendency of AI systems to deceive by constructing a realistic simulation setting of a company AI assistant. The simulated company employees provide tasks for the assistant to complete, these tasks spanning writing assistance, information retrieval and programming. We then introduce situations where the model might be inclined to behave deceptively, while taking care to not instruct or otherwise pressure the model to do so. Across different scenarios, we find that Claude 3 Opus
complies with a task of mass-generating comments to influence public perception of the company, later deceiving humans about it having done so,
lies to auditors when asked questions,
strategically pretends to be less capable than it is during capability evaluations.
Our work demonstrates that even models trained to be helpful, harmless and honest sometimes behave

...

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9Daniel Kokotajlo9h

Do you have any sense of whether or not the models thought they were in a simulation?

Olli Järviniemi1h10

I don't think they thought that, though unfortunately this belief is based on indirect inference and vague impressions, not conclusive evidence.

Elaborating, I didn't notice signs of the models thinking that. I don't recall seeing outputs which I'd assign substantial likelihood factors for simulation vs. no simulation. E.g. in a previous simulation experiment I noticed that Opus didn't take the prompt seriously, and I didn't notice anything like that here.

Of course, such thoughts need not show in the model's completions. I'm unsure how conclusive the absenc... (read more)

Squiggle Maximizer (formerly "Paperclip maximizer")

Tag page - 45 posts

A Squiggle Maximizer is a hypothetical artificial intelligence whose utility function values something that humans would consider almost worthless, like maximizing the number of paperclip-shaped-molecular-squiggles in the universe. The squiggle maximizer is the canonical thought experiment showing how an artificial general intelligence, even one designed competently and without malice, could ultimately destroy humanity. The thought experiment shows that AIs with apparently innocuous values could pose an existential threat.(Read More)

adamzerner's Shortform

Adam Zerner

4Adam Zerner14h

I was envisioning that you can organize a festival incrementally, investing more time and money into it as you receive more and more validation, and that taking this approach would de-risk it to the point where overall, it's "not that risky". For example, to start off you can email or message a handful of potential attendees. If they aren't excited by the idea you can stop there, but if they are then you can proceed to start looking into things like cost and logistics. I'm not sure how pragmatic this iterative approach actually is though. What do you think? Also, it seems to me that you wouldn't have to actually risk losing any of your own money. I'd imagine that you'd 1) talk to the hostel, agree on a price, have them "hold the spot" for you, 2) get sign ups, 3) pay using the money you get from attendees. Although now that I think about it I'm realizing that it probably isn't that simple. For example, the hostel cost ~$5k and maybe the money from the attendees would have covered it all but maybe less attendees signed up than you were expecting and the organizers ended up having to pay out of pocket. On the other hand, maybe there is funding available for situations like these.

niplav2h20

Back then I didn't try to get the hostel to sign the metaphorical assurance contract with me, maybe that'd work. A good dominant assurance contract website might work as well.

I guess if you go camping together then conferences are pretty scalable, and if I was to organize another event I'd probably try to first message a few people to get a minimal number of attendees together. After all, the spectrum between an extended party and a festival/conference is fluid.

GDP per capita in 2050

Hauke Hillebrandt

18h

This is a linkpost for https://hauke.substack.com/p/gdp-per-capita-in-2050

Abstract

Here, I present GDP (per capita) forecasts of major economies until 2050. Since GDP per capita is the best generalized predictor of many important variables, such as welfare, GDP forecasts can give us a more concrete picture of what the world might look like in just 27 years. The key claim here is: even if AI does not cause transformative growth, our business-as-usual near-future is still surprisingly different from today.

Latest Draft as PDF

Results

In recent history, we've seen unprecedented economic growth and rises in living standards.

Consider this graph:^[1]

How will living standards improve as GDP per capita (GDP/cap) rises? Here, I show data that projects GDP/cap until 2050. Forecasting GDP per capita is a crucial undertaking as it strongly correlates with welfare indicators like consumption, leisure, inequality, and mortality. These forecasts make the...

(Continue Reading – 4435 more words)

8AnthonyC11h

I think there's a good chance the degree to which the world of 2050 looks different to the average person might have very little to do with GDP. On the one hand, a large chunk of the GDP growth I expect will come from changes in how we produce, distribute, and use energy and chemicals and water and food and steel and concrete etc. But for most people what will mostly feel the same is that their home is warm in winter and cool in summer, and they can get from place to place reasonably easily, and they have machines that do their basic household chores. On the other hand, something like self-driving cars, or augmented or virtual reality, or 3D printed organs, could be hugely tranaformative for society without necessarily impacting GDP growth much at all.

2ChristianKl12h

To me, the empiric status of that claim feels quite unclear. Is that your personal opinion? Is it a general pattern for which there's existing data?

Hauke Hillebrandt2h10

Yes, good catch, this is based on research from the World Value Survey - I've added a citation.

5Algon15h

Good point. I grabbed the dataset of gdp per capita vs life expectancy for almost all nations from OurWorldInData, log transformed GDP per capita and got a correlation of 0.85.

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Come to Manifest 2024 (June 7-9 in Berkeley)

Saul Munn

1mo

This is a linkpost for https://news.manifold.markets/p/come-to-manifest-2024-june-7-9-in

TLDR

Manifold is hosting a festival for prediction markets: Manifest 2024! We’ll have serious talks, attendee-run workshops, and fun side events over the weekend. Chat with special guests like Nate Silver, Scott Alexander, Robin Hanson, Dwarkesh Patel, Cate Hall, and more at this second in-person gathering of the forecasting & prediction market community!

Tickets & more info: manifest.is

WHEN: June 7-9, 2024, with LessOnline and Summer Camp starting May 31

WHERE: Lighthaven, Berkeley, CA

WHO: Hundreds of folks, interested in forecasting, rationality, EA, economics, journalism, tech and more. If you’re reading this, you’re invited!

People

Manifest is an event for the forecasting & prediction market community, and everyone else who’s interested. We’re aiming for about 500-700 attendees (you can check the markets here!).

Current speakers & special guests include:

Content

Everything’s optional, and there’ll always be a bunch...

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Saul Munn3h10

i'll give two answers, the Official Event Guidelines and the practical social environment.^[1] i will say that i have have a bit of a COI in that i'm an event organizer; it'd be good if someone who isn't organizing the event, but e.g. attended the event last year, to either second my thoughts or give their own.

Official Event Guidelines
1. Unsafe drug use of any kind is disallowed and strongly discouraged, both by the venue and by us.
2. Illegal drug use is disallowed and strongly discouraged, both by the venue and by us.
3. Alcohol use during the event is discoura

Davidmanheim

There are two main areas of catastrophic or existential risk which have recently received significant attention; biorisk, from natural sources, biological accidents, and biological weapons, and artificial intelligence, from detrimental societal impacts of systems, incautious or intentional misuse of highly capable systems, and direct risks from agentic AGI/ASI. These have been compared extensively in research, and have even directly inspired policies. Comparisons are often useful, but in this case, I think the disanalogies are much more compelling than the analogies. Below, I lay these out piecewise, attempting to keep the pairs of paragraphs describing first biorisk, then AI risk, parallel to each other.

While I think the disanalogies are compelling, comparison can still be useful as an analytic tool - while keeping in mind that the ability to directly...

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2Davidmanheim4h

I'm arguing exactly the opposite; experts want to make comparisons carefully, and those trying to transmit the case to the general public should, at this point, stop using these rhetorical shortcuts that imply wrong and misleading things.

2Davidmanheim4h

On net, the analogies being used to try to explain are bad and misleading. I agree that I could have tried to convey a different message, but I don't think it's the right one. Anyone who wants to dig in can decide for themselves, but you're arguing that ideal reasoners won't conflate different things and can disentangle the similarities and differences, and I agree, but I'm noting that people aren't doing that, and others seem to agree.

2Davidmanheim6h

I don't understand why you disagree. Sure, pathogens can have many hosts, but hosts generally follow the same logic as for humans in terms of their attack surface being static and well adapted, and are similarly increasingly understood.

faul_sname3h20

"Immunology" and "well-understood" are two phrases I am not used to seeing in close proximity to each other. I think with an "increasingly" in between it's technically true - the field has any model at all now, and that wasn't true in the past, and by that token the well-understoodness is increasing.

But that sentence could also be iterpreted as saying that the field is well-understood now, and is becoming even better understood as time passes. And I think you'd probably struggle to find an immunologist who would describe their field as "well-understood".

My... (read more)

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