It mixes the personal and professional level
Possibly reflective of a wider issue in EA/rationalist spaces where the two are often not very clearly delineated. In that sense EA is more like hobby/fandom communities than professional ones.
Saying that people would be better off taking more risks under a particular model elides the question of why they don't take those risks to begin with, and how we can change that. If its desirable to do so.
The psychological impact of a loss of x is generally higher than that of a corresponding gain. So if I know I will feel worse from losing $10 than I will feel good from gaining $100, then its entirely rational in my utility function to not take a 50/50 bet between those two outcomes. Maybe I would be better off overall if I didn't over weight losses, but utility functions aren't easily rewritable by humans. The closest you could come is some kind of exposure therapy to losses.
Also, we have a huge amount of mental architecture devoted to understanding and remembering spatial relationships of objects (for obvious evolutionary reasons). Using that as a metaphor for purely abstract things allows us to take advantage of that mental architecture to make other tasks easier.
A very structured version of this would be something like a memory palace where you assign ideas to specific locations in a place, but I think we are doing the same thing often when we talk about ideas in spatial relationships, and build loose mental models of them as existing in spatial relationship to one another (or at least I do).
I think the core thing here is same-sidedness.
The converse of this is that the maximally charitable approach can be harmful when the interlocutor is fundamentally not on the same side as you, in trying to honestly discuss a topic and arrive at truth. I've seen people tie themselves in knots when trying to apply the principle of charity, when the most parsimonious explanation is that the other side is not engaging in good faith, and shouldn't be treated as such.
It's taken me a long time to internalise this, because my instinct is to take what people say at face value. But its important to remember that sometimes there isn't anything complex or nuanced going on, people can just lie.
Thanks. This is the kind of content I originally came to LW for a decade ago, but seems to have become less popular
You might find Origins Of Political Order interesting. Emphasis on how the principle agent problem is one of the central issues of governance and how without strong mechanisms systems tend to descend into corruption
Is there any way of reverse engineering from these pictures what existing images were used to generate them? Would be interesting to see how much similarity there is.
So we just need to get two superpowers who currently feel they are in a zero sum competition with each other to stop trying to advance in an area that gives them a potentially infinite advantage? Seems a very classic case of the kind of coordination problems that are difficult to solve, with high rewards for defecting.
We have, partially managed to do this for nuclear and biological weapons. But only with a massive oversight infrastructure that doesn't exist for AI. And relying on physical evidence and materials control that doesn't exist for AI. It's not impossible, but it would require a similar level of concerted international effort that was used for nuclear weapons. Which took a long time, so possibly doesn't fit with your short timeline
A more charitable interpretation of the same evidence would be that as a public health professional Dr Fauci has a lot of experience with the difficulties of communicating complex and messages and the political tradeoffs that are necessary for effective action. And has judged based on that experience what is most effective to say. Do you have data he doesn't? Or a reason to think his experience in his speciality is inapplicable?
Never really got anywhere. Its long enough ago that I don't really remember why, but think I generally found it unengaging. Have periodically tried to teach myself programming through different methods since then but none have stuck. This probably speaks to the difficulty of learning new skills when you have limited time/energy resources, and no specific motivation, more than anything else. (Have had similar difficulties with language learning, but got past them due to short term practical benefits, and devoting specific time to the task).