It would be very surprising to me if such ambitious people wanted to leave right before they had a chance to make history though.

They can't do that since it would make it obvious to the target that they should counter-attack.

As an update: Too much psyllium makes me feel uncomfortably full, so I imagine that's part of the weight loss effect of 5 grams of it per meal. I did some experimentation but ended up sticking with 1 gram per meal or snack, in 500 gram capsules and taken with water.

I carry 8 of these pills (enough for 4 meals/snacks) in my pocket in small flat pill organizers.

It's still too early to assess the impact on cholesterol but this helps with my digestive issues, and it seems to help me not overeat delicious foods to the same extent (i.e. on a day where I previously would have eaten 4 slices of pizza for lunch, I find it easy to eat 2 slices + psyllium instead).

Biden and Harris have credibly committed to help Taiwan. Trump appears much more isolationist and less likely to intervene, which might make China more likely to invade.

I personally think it's good for us to protect friendly countries like this, but isn't China invading Taiwan good for AI risk, since destroying the main source of advanced chips would slow down timelines?

You also mention Trump's anti-democratic tendencies, which seem bad for standard reasons, but not really relevant to AI existential risk (except to the extent that he might stay in power and continue making bad decisions 4+ years out).

I think it's important that AIs will be created within an existing system of law and property rights. Unlike animals, they'll be able to communicate with us and make contracts. It therefore seems perfectly plausible for AIs to simply get rich within the system we have already established, and make productive compromises, rather than violently overthrowing the system itself.

I think you disagree with Eliezer on a different crux (whether the alignment problem is easy). If we could create AI's that follows the existing system of law and property rights (including the intent of the laws, and doesn't exploit loopholes, and doesn't maliciously comply with laws, and doesn't try to get the law changed, etc.) then that would be a solution to the alignment problem, but the problem is that we don't know how to do that.

I think trying to be Superman is the problem, but I'm ok if that line of thinking doesn't work for you.

Do you mean in the sense that people who aren't Superman should stop beating themselves up about it (a real problem in EA), or that even if you are (financial) Superman, born in the red-white-and-blue light of a distant star, you shouldn't save people in other countries because that's bad somehow?

The argument using Bernard Arnault doesn't really work. He (probably) won't give you $77 because if he gave everyone $77, he'd spend a very large portion of his wealth. But we don't need an AI to give us billions of Earths. Just one would be sufficient. Bernard Arnault would probably be willing to spend $77 to prevent the extinction of a (non-threatening) alien species.

(This is not a general-purpose argument against worrying about AI or other similar arguments in the same vein, I just don't think this particular argument in the specific way it was written in this post works)

I'm only vaguely connected to EA in the sense of donating more-than-usual amounts of money in effective ways (❤️ GiveDirectly), but this feels like a strawman. I don't think the average EA would recommend charities that hurt other people as side effects, work actively-harmful jobs to make money^[1], or generally Utilitarian-maxxing.

The EA trolley problem is that there are thousands (or millions) of trolleys that have varying difficult of stopping, barreling toward varying groups of people. The problem isn't that stopping them hurts other people (it doesn't), it's just that you can't stop them all. You don't need to be a utilitarian to think that if it's raining planes, Superman should start by catching the 747's.

1. ^{^}

   For example, high-paying finance jobs are high-stress and many people don't like working them, but they're not actually bad for the world.

One listed idea was that you can buy reservations at one website directly from the restaurant, with the price going as a downpayment. The example given was $1,000 for a table for two at Carbone, with others being somewhat less. As is pointed out, that fixes the incentives for booking, but once you show up you are now in all-you-can-eat mode at a place not designed for that.

I've been to several restaurants that do some form of this, from a small booking fee that gets refunded when you check in, to just paying entirely up-front (for restaurants with pre-set menus).

This is built into OpenTable so it's not even that hard. I'm really confused why more restaurants don't do this.

I'm not a video creator, but I wonder if this could be turned into a useful tool that takes the stills from a video and predicts which ones will get the highest engagement.