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4Introduction to Reinforcement Learning
5y
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3A Natural Explanation of Nash Equilibria
5y
6
Why you should eat meat - even if you hate factory farming
Dr. Birdbrain14d30

Where can one buy ostrich eggs?

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Buck's Shortform
Dr. Birdbrain2mo10

This comic by Tim Urban is interesting, but I remember when I first read it, it seemed wrong.

In his framework, I think ASI can only be quantitatively more powerful than human intelligence, not qualitatively.


The reason is simple: humans are already Turing complete. Anything a machine can do, it can only be faster execution of something a human could already do.

I don’t think it has much bearing on the wider discussion of AI/AI-risk, I haven’t heard anybody else think that the distinction of quantitative/qualitative superiority had any bearing on AI risk.

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Towards trying to feel consistently energized
Dr. Birdbrain2mo10

I have similar problems, and I was hoping you had found a solution. One question I have: on a typical night, do you have good sleep quality, for example as measured by a fitness tracker?

Closest thing I have found to a solution of daily energy is creatine, 5g daily, and 10g if I did hard exercise that day. I cycle on it for about two weeks, until it starts to feel like too much of a good thing, then cycle off for a week, repeat.

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Debugging for Mid Coders
Dr. Birdbrain2mo30

Super interesting! I have some follow-up thoughts to this.

  • On the one hand, it seems that this is a case of "having" more working memory.
  • On the other hand, it might be a case of more experience allowing you to filter out irrelevant things and, allowing more working memory to focus on the things that matter.

A classical example of the latter point is when novices learn to play chess. In a typical training session, they will be presented with a position, and be asked to propose a move. They will take a moment, then propose a move that loses a queen in a totally obvious way, and when challenged, they will take a moment and confirm that "oh, yeah, that loses a queen". Typically a novice is overwhelmed by the details of the position, perhaps still remembering how the pieces move, and have no sense of which moves are important and which moves should be ignored. As a result, they can't do "basic" one-step lookahead to see what countermoves the opponent has. Their working memory is too overloaded with all of the possibilities on the board.

This gets resolved with practice, drills, and experience. Eventually the hind-brain simply "surfaces" the information "that square is controlled by an enemy bishop", and in many cases will not even suggest the move that would hazard the queen, it won't even get loaded into conscious attention.

EDIT: Building on this, it's super interesting to watch Grandmasters like Hikaru Nakamura play games live on stream, and comment on their thought process. Yes, they calculate long lines, sometimes branching, but as they talk, partially distracted, they never consider bad moves, they're always analyzing the top moves recommended by the computer.

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Orienting Toward Wizard Power
Dr. Birdbrain4mo51

I love this post, and I have been thinking a lot about it since it came out.


One counter argument I can think of is the following.

  • The wizard capability of a single human is actually not very high
  • Human wizardry achieves greatest power when many wizards join forces and coordinate at scale
  • Hence, the most powerful people are those who can coordinate and direct large groups of wizards, in the language of this article, “kings”
  • So one may argue that it’s rational to seek king-power on this basis
     

    Despite this, I personally resonate very strongly with the image of the wizard, and I think the world would be a better place if we all sought to strengthen our wizarding powers.

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I'm consistently overwhelmed by basic obligations. Are there any paradigm shifts or other rationality-based tips that would be helpful?
Dr. Birdbrain8mo20

Can you say more about what kind of changes you implemented?

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The Online Sports Gambling Experiment Has Failed
Dr. Birdbrain9mo30

A perhaps more interesting interaction is with wills that are managed by trusts. My understanding is that you can put conditions on how the money in a trust will be disbursed to your heirs, for example "as long as they maintain a minimum GPA in college". I have heard lawyers make outrageous jokes like adding a clause that says "as long as they don't marry that person".

It's quite reasonable to expect that some will add a clause to their trust that says "this only pays out if they have placed themselves on the lifetime no-gambling list".

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How have you become more hard-working?
Dr. Birdbrain1y10

a google search suggests desoxyn might be just be a brand of pharmaceutical-grade meth

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Increasing IQ is trivial
Dr. Birdbrain1y10

Would you mind publishing the protocol?

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Increasing IQ is trivial
Dr. Birdbrain1y40

It has been 3 months, is there an update?

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