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Sunday, June 11th 2023
Sun, Jun 11th 2023

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25DirectedEvolution5d
Epistemic activism I think LW needs better language to talk about efforts to "change minds." Ideas like asymmetric weapons and the Dark Arts are useful but insufficient. In particular, I think there is a common scenario where: * You have an underlying commitment to open-minded updating and possess evidence or analysis that would update community beliefs in a particular direction. * You also perceive a coordination problem that inhibits this updating process for a reason that the mission or values of the group do not endorse. * Perhaps the outcome of the update would be a decline in power and status for high-status people. Perhaps updates in general can feel personally or professionally threatening to some people in the debate. Perhaps there's enough uncertainty in what the overall community believes that an information cascade has taken place. Perhaps the epistemic heuristics used by the community aren't compatible with the form of your evidence or analysis. * Solving this coordination problem to permit open-minded updating is difficult due to lack of understanding or resources, or by sabotage attempts. When solving the coordination problem would predictably lead to updating, then you are engaged in what I believe is an epistemically healthy effort to change minds. Let's call it epistemic activism for now. Here are some community touchstones I regard as forms of epistemic activism: * The founding of LessWrong and Effective Altruism * The one-sentence declaration on AI risks * The popularizing of terms like Dark Arts, asymmetric weapons, questionable research practices, and "importance hacking." * Founding AI safety research organizations and PhD programs to create a population of credible and credentialed AI safety experts; calls for AI safety researchers to publish in traditional academic journals so that their research can't be dismissed for not being subject to institutionalized peer review
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2Dalcy Bremin6d
Why haven't mosquitos evolved to be less itchy? Is there just not enough selection pressure posed by humans yet? (yes probably) Or are they evolving towards that direction? (they of course already evolved towards being less itchy while biting, but not enough to make that lack-of-itch permanent) this is a request for help i've been trying and failing to catch this one for god knows how long plz halp tbh would be somewhat content coexisting with them (at the level of houseflies) as long as they evolved the itch and high-pitch noise away, modulo disease risk considerations.
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1O O6d
A realistic takeover angle would be hacking into robots once we have them. We probably don’t want any way for robots to get over the air updates but it’s unlikely for this to be banned.