@Ruby @RobertM 

I mistyped a bit when I said "relationships". Yes, names and faces both trigger social recognition, but I meant to make the point that they operate in significantly different ways in the brain, and facial recognition is tuned to processing a lot of emotional and social cues that we aren't tuned to from text. I have tons of social associations with people's physical forms that are beyond simply their character.

(A language model helped me write this comment.)

I did find it and we sent him an email, hope he reads it and joins :)

I am fairly strongly against having faces, which I think boot up a lot of social instincts that I disprefer on LessWrong. LessWrong is a space where what matters is which argument is true, not who you like / have relationships with. I think some other sort of unique icon could be good.

Here's a quick mockup of what that might look like.

In my head you the voting UI is available after you click to expand and then scroll down to the bottom of the comment.

Added: Oops, I realize I did the quick takes, not the popular comments. Still, the relevant changes are very similar.

Most people do not have the constitution or agency for criminal murder

I think my model of people is that people are very much changed by the affordances that society gives them and the pressures they are under. In contrast with this statement, a lot of hunter-gatherer people had to be able to fight to the death, so I don't buy that it's entirely about the human constitution. I think if it was a known thing that you could hire an assassin on an employee and unless you messed up and left quite explicit evidence connecting you, you'd get away with it, then there'd be enough pressures to cause people in-extremis to do it a few times per year even in just high-stakes business settings. Also my impression is that business or political assassinations exist to this day in many countries; a little searching suggests Russia, Mexico, Venezuela, possibly Nigeria, and more.

I generally put a lot more importance on tracking which norms are actually being endorsed and enforced by the group / society as opposed to primarily counting on individual ethical reasoning or individual ethical consciences.

(TBC I also am not currently buying that this is an assassination in the US, but I didn't find this reasoning compelling.)

Done.

I wouldn't call this "AI lab watch." "Lab" has the connotation that these are small projects instead of multibillion dollar corporate behemoths.

This seems like a good point. Here's a quick babble of alts (folks could react with a thumbs-up on ones that they think are good).

AI Corporation Watch | AI Mega-Corp Watch | AI Company Watch | AI Industry Watch | AI Firm Watch | AI Behemoth Watch | AI Colossus Watch | AI Juggernaut Watch | AI Future Watch

I currently think "AI Corporation Watch" is more accurate. "Labs" feels like a research team, but I think these orgs are far far far more influenced by market forces than is suggested by "lab", and "corporation" communicates that. I also think the goal here is not to point to all companies that do anything with AI (e.g. midjourney) but to focus on the few massive orgs that are having the most influence on the path and standards of the industry, and to my eye "corporation" has that association more than "company". Definitely not sure though.

What's the chance of a 2nd LessOnline?

Um, one part of me is (as is not uncommon) really believes in this event and thinks it's going to be the best effort investments Lightcone's ever made (though this part of me currently has one or two other projects and ideas that it believes in maybe even more strongly), that's part of me is like "yeah this should absolutely happen every year", though as I say I get this feeling often about projects that often end up looking different to how I dreamed them when they finally show up in reality. I think that part would feel validated by the event turning out to be awesome and people finding it was worthwhile to come. Then there's the question of how much resources Lightcone actually has and whether we'll successfully fundraise and whether this will be one of the few projects we're investing a few staff-months in a year from now. I think my probabilities just went from 80% to 50% to 99% to... 30%. Overall it depends on how good this event is, which varies on a log scale.

I think there are worlds where we do it again and invest less effort into it, also there's worlds where we do it again and invest more effort into it. I think there's also a bunch of worlds where we're happy about this event but try a subtly different one next time (e.g. me and a teammate generated like 5 other serious event contenders before this one, including things more like workshops or academic conferences than like large festivals, and perhaps we'll try a different thing next). I think I like that this event is essentially open-invite and trying to be more big-tent, and I hope to do more things like this, so that even if we change what sorts of events we run anyone will just be able to buy a ticket. There's also worlds where we stop exploring having an events team for our campus and stop running events.

As one datapoint, in 2021 I organized a 60-person private event called the Sanity & Survival Summit for rationalist folk and folks working professionally on x-risk stuff, and I thought we'd maybe make that a yearly thing, and a year later we sort of last-minute/impromptu ran another version of it called Palmcone (it was in the Bahamas) for 80-100 people, and then we made the Lightcone Offices to try and get a more permanent version of the EA/x-risk things in the Bay, and then we scrapped the whole thing as we uninvested in the professional x-risk/EA ecosystem. That's a possible trajectory things could take.

1. I anticipate the vast majority of people going to each of the events will be locals to the state and landmass respectively, so I don't think it's actually particularly costly for them to overlap.
2. That's unfortunate that you are less likely to come, and I'm glad to get the feedback. I could primarily reply with reasons why I think it was the right call (e.g. helpful for getting the event off the ground, helpful for pinpointing the sort of ideas+writing the event is celebrating, I think it's prosocial for me to be open about info like this generally, etc) but I don't think that engages with the fact that it left you personally less likely to come. I still overall think if the event sounds like a good time to you (e.g. interesting conversations with people you'd like to talk to and/or exciting activities) and it's worth the cost to you then I hope you come :-)