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I wanted to share a reflection and look for more interesting points with the group. I continue studying EA and it impacts me that education would not be a priority. See that they invest in AI security for its destructive impact, not for its chances in and of themselves. Investing in food because it shows more effects, including in learning, than investing in a good teacher. And I grew up knowing that education could save the world... But now I see, that apparently the problem could be that the evidence would be costly, slow and hugely dependent on the context. Furthermore, studying people deeply can generate problems related to ethics and morals. So how difficult is it for anyone to invest in education, would anyone have it? Did I leave any large blind spots?
I think you might get more input on this question on the EA forum.
For what it's worth, someone asked me a related question (resources, experts, orgs doing education in the EA space or that have been funded by EA grantmakers), here was my resource dump in case it's useful at all as a compilation of pointers to further reading:
Education
Well, thinking about education and how to gather evidence... but why don't they consider educating using Bayesian rationality as a basis?
I think that investments in education also have longer feedback loops. Suppose that someone in EA invested into elementary schools working with at most 12-year-old kids in 2026 only for an ASI to commit genocide of mankind in 2030. Then kids affected by these investments would be at most 16 years old and would be unlikely to generate any value to the society. Similarly, if someone invested into opening a pedagogic college in 2000, then the first cohort of teachers would start working in schools in 2004. If one of these teachers entered lower elementary schools, then kids taught by such a teacher wouldn't enter the workforce until 2010 or even 2014, if we are takling about college-educated workforce.
You know, it's interesting that many people think creating cognitively enhanced superbabies to work on AI safety is promising, considering the feedback loop is even longer than for education!
Okay, I guess there are reasons for it, like it's easier to unilaterally make a superbaby than to generally improve the education system, and maybe the tails of intelligence are more important than the average "sanity waterline." And LessWrong and the Sequences are sort of a form of education that many young people end up being influenced by. But I feel like rationalists also just like the idea of having really smart kids, despite the long feedback loops and IMO questionable ToC.
As far as I understand, superbabies would be important if, as Yudkowsky believes, SOTA mankind is unlikely to solve alignment because "humans are not at the level of intelligence where thinking they have a solution strongly correlates with them actually having a solution."
Yudkowsky-Soares' longer quote
Humanity often gains its knowledge by struggling, and trying, and failing, and slowly accumulating knowledge. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Einstein was not only able to figure out general relativity; he was able to figure it out by thinking hard about the problem, even before humanity put satellites in orbit and started seeing discrepancies in their clocks with their own two eyes (as discussed in Chapter 6). He had empirical evidence, but he was able to efficiently pinpoint the right answer in response to the first quiet whispers from the empirical record, rather than needing the truth to come banging at his door.
That pathway is rarer and harder to walk, but that kind of scientific genius does exist — albeit rarely, even among the world’s best and brightest.
Humans augmented one or two steps beyond the level of researchers like Einstein or John von Neumann might begin to accurately figure out their own flaws, and correct for them, in dozens of different ways.
They might notice when they were rationalizing or falling victim to confirmation bias. They might go past the point of ever expecting a clever-sounding idea to work when actually it does not work — to the point where whenever they expect to succeed, they do succeed. They might achieve a level of competence where they still make plenty of mistakes, but they aren’t systematically overconfident (or underconfident) in tricky new domains.
Is human intelligence enhancement really a possibility? It seems so to us, having spoken with a number of biotech researchers who think that there are promising near-term angles of attack. Carefully targeted biotech-focused AI might also help accelerate the work. But from our perspective, it remains very uncertain whether a plan like this would realistically pan out. What we feel more confident in saying is that it’s a highly leveraged option that deserves a lot more investment and exploration than it’s currently getting.
We are not recommending enhancing human intelligence as the only post-AI-shutdown strategy we think humanity should heavily invest in. Rather, this is just one of many examples, and the one we currently think holds the most promise. We strongly recommend that humanity look into multiple possible non-AI paths forward, rather than putting all its eggs in one basket.
The main problems which I see with similar arguments are the following:
Interesting, creating super babies can be like creating super intelligent children where we don't gradually build ethical alignment, what does that mean?
So, I saw that there is interest in education in environmental education. For example, I saw evidence here of interventions with tablets that brought benefits. But if the current problem is finding ways to align thinking with life, why don't I find studies or proposals to educate, from an early age, towards Bayesian rationality?
This reminds me of that thread and discussion therein. Additionally, I don't think that it's easy to explain why people should be educated towards Bayesian rationality specifically, and not, say, merely sciences or logic. On the other hand, teaching people to care about the environment has an easy-to-convince effect.
P.S. How could one teach people to reason in Bayesian ways if there is a crisis of basic literacy?
Sorry, I meant to talk about updating beliefs, not necessarily through calculations, but through intuition. I meant something like training reflexes, such as:
predicting before observing;
estimating confidence ("am I 60% or 95% sure?");
looking for contrary evidence;
gradually updating;
I practice mindfulness, especially with the Pomodoro Technique (working for 25 minutes and resting for 5 minutes in mindfulness). I practice mindfulness to be able to rest well during breaks and return to work better. But I have difficulties with mindfulness because I keep ruminating.
I tried using the technique of labeling emotions, and it helped a little at first. But now it's like saying "I'm irritated" and detailing the feeling, but it seems to only make me ruminate more: "Why should I be irritated?" "Should I be less irritated?" "How can I be less irritated?"
Considering my difficulty with mindfulness and the technique of labeling emotions, I speculate that a considerable reason for my mind ruminating is because it doesn't know if it's worth the effort to solve the problem.
You know? When a system doesn't have a stopping criterion, it doesn't know if it's worth solving now, too complex for the moment, or if it has already solved enough to test? It's as if my mind doesn't know whether it's worth investing in solving it or if it's better to file it away for now.
So, I speculate that asking myself some questions, a pre-meditation, like the 5 minutes at the end of a 25-minute Pomodoro, would allow me to align myself enough to improve my mindfulness practice; perhaps my mind would stop searching for solutions for a moment.
Could I set up experiments and measure how much a mindfullness to focus analyzing physical EEG waves?Where does my reasoning break down? Has anyone tried something like this?
Perhaps the kind of meditation where you try to label everything is not a good fit for resting between work? Because it sounds like work, only of a different kind, so you are not really taking a break to relax. Maybe try some loving kindness meditation instead?
Yes! It's work, as I understand it, that kind of pre-meditation work, to properly wrap things up before practicing mindfulness.
Like, to have loving-kindness in my rational side, to align myself properly and finish the work well before truly resting.
You know, when a system doesn't have a stopping criterion, it doesn't know if it's worth resolving now, if it's too complex at the moment, or if it's already resolved enough to rest. So, I'm looking for a way to align my internal investments and be able to pause. Does that make sense?
How do you conclude your rational/productive moment, Viliam?
I am not very productive, but typically my work is concluded when the time runs out or someone interrupts me or the original goal is achieved.
I guess not much, compared to some people I know.
I can procrastinate on a task a lot, like I know that I should do something, but at the same time I am afraid to start, because I am not sure about something or I expect a problem.
So, starting is a big problem for me. Stopping is not. What is done, is done. Maybe it sucks, but I have many other things to do (which doesn't mean that I am actually doing those other things, maybe I am just procrastinating on them).
I know people who make a choice and then spend weeks thinking about whether it was the right choice, sometimes to the extent that they can't focus on other things before them. I am not like that. I think a lot before doing a thing, not after it is done.
.
Right now, our washing machine broke, and we need to buy a new one. So I wrote a list of criteria, found some machines in a shop that seem to fit them, downloaded their manuals, made screenshots of the pages that contain their programs (length, temperature, load). I have been preparing this for a week. Now I will give the summary information and screenshots to my wife and let her choose, and hopefully she will either choose quickly or leave the choice to me (I already have a preference), then I will buy it, and I will no longer think about "what if we bought a different one".
As I know my wife, she will spend the following month second-guessing our choice (and it will be super annoying for me) and then hopefully she will get used to it.
Haha, I hope the laundry's clean by now. I hadn't realized that rumination isn't just about dwelling on the past, but also about ruminating on future predictions... I don't even know what to call overthinking, haha.
For example, I might spend more time considering washing machine options because I enjoy thinking about them. And it's an easier problem to solve than others I work on. So I'd "ruminate" thinking about various aspects, like "which washing machine has the most comfortable button to press?", and I'd stop working, so to speak.
Then, the more time and effort I put into planning my projects, the less time I spend procrastinating. Or does that not make sense?
I don't know if it will work, but I'd like to talk about how to begin testing whether systems theory applied to adolescent attention would be useful. I've been treating the mind as a complex control system to reduce rumination before meditation.
Could I treat the mind as a complex system that I could map and better understand?
Could I map the stages of focus as: input, process, output, and feedback?
Could I map complex functional layers, such as: bodily-reactive, intellectual-predictive, motivational-evaluative, or social-identity?
I would like help with the following:
The challenge would be: Would the algorithm's questions result in fewer priority conflicts, better time allocation, and improved decision-making?
How could I conduct some kind of experiment?
Maybe, conduct a crossover experiment (N=1) (EEG) comparing classical labeling with this systemic mapping of attention as preparation for meditation.