followthesilence

Seems fairly clear to me.

The disagreement here seems to be around how literally one should interpret the metaphor. 

I agree depression could be more accurately described as "lack of caring" than "must do endless puzzles". However, the purpose of the post is to describe the depressive experience to people who cannot relate.

To that end, I like the sudoku metaphor. If you tell someone "depression means I just don't care and can't muster willpower to do things I should/need to do" a lot of people may -- consciously or not -- judge this as a voluntary condition where the solution a... (read more)

May be a Rorschach... For me, of the dozen or so things i thought about replacing dragons with, "race science" wasn't one of them

Thanks for the intro to Figgie. It makes sense that it's a better game to teach trading concepts given it was designed specifically to teach trading interns, has its own trading platform with bid-ask pricing, and all the other good reasons you mention above.

I would take issue with the first part ("poker is a bad game for teaching epistemics"), especially relative to the universe of well-known games out there. To address your criticisms:

In poker, most decisions don't give you feedback about whether you were right for the right reasons.

This strikes me as mor... (read more)

I'm highly skeptical that it's even possible to create omnicidal machines. Can you point empirically to a single omnicidal machine that's been created? What specifically would an OAL-4 machine look like? Whatever it is, just don't do that. To the extent you do develop anything OAL-4, we should be fine so long as certain safeguards are in place and you encourage others not to develop the same machines. Godspeed.

Post hoc probability calculations like these are a Sisyphean task. There are infinite variables to consider, most can't be properly measured, even ballparked.

On (1), pandemics are arguably more likely to originate in large cities because population density facilitates spread, large wildlife markets are more likely, and they serve as major travel hubs. I'm confused why the denominator is China's population for (1) but all the world's BSL-4 labs in (3). I don't understand the calculation for (2)... that seems the opposite of "fairly easy to get a ballpark figure for." Ditto for (4).

Rootclaim sold the debate as a public good that would enhance knowledge but ultimately shirked responsibility to competently argue for one side of the debate, so it was a very one-sided affair that left viewers (and judges) to conclude this was probably natural origin. Several people on LW say the debate has strongly swayed them against lab leak. 

The winning argument (as I saw it) came down to Peter's presentation of case mapping data (location and chronology) suggesting an undeniable tie to the seafood market. Saar did little to undercut this, which ... (read more)

Zoonotic will win this debate because Peter outclassed Saar on all fronts, from research/preparation to intelligibly engaging with counterclaims and judge's questions. 

Saar seemed too focused on talking his book and presenting slides with conditional probability calculations. He was not well-versed enough in the debate topics to defend anything when Peter undercut a slide's assumptions, nor was he able to poke sufficient holes in Peter's main arguments. Peter relied heavily on case mapping data, and Saar failed to demonstrate the ascertainment bias in... (read more)

Yes, by virtue of the alliance with the "top virologists".

In Feb 2020 Anthony Fauci convened a bunch of virologists to assess SARS-CoV-2 origins. The initial take from the group (revealed in private Slack messages via FOIA requests from 2023) was this was likely engineered. In Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research's view, it was "so friggin likely because they were already doing this work." 

The same month, Fauci held an off-the-record call with the group. After that, everyone's tunes changed and shortly after (in a matter of weeks) we got the Proximal Origins paper, with Kristian Andersen doing a 180 as the ... (read more)

Good post, thank you. I imagine to go undefeated, you must excel at things beyond the dark arts described (in my experience, some judges refuse to buy an argument no matter how poorly opponents respond)? How much of your success do you attribute to 1) your general rhetorical skills or eloquence, and 2) ability to read judges to gauge which dark arts they seem most susceptible to?

"Want" seems ill-defined in this discussion. To the extent it is defined in the OP, it seems to be "able to pursue long-term goals", at which point tautologies are inevitable. The discussion gives me strong stochastic parrot / "it's just predicting next tokens not really thinking" vibes, where want/think are je ne sais quoi words to describe the human experience and provide comfort (or at least a shorthand explanation) for why LLMs aren't exhibiting advanced human behaviors. I have little doubt many are trying to optimize for long-term planning and that AI... (read more)

Not sure if this page is broken or I'm technically inept, but I can't figure out how to reply to qualiia's comment directly:

Primarily #5 and #7 was my gut reaction, but quailia's post articulates rationale better than I could. 

One useful piece of information that would influence my weights: what was OAI's general hiring criteria? If they sought solely "best and brightest" on technical skills and enticed talent primarily with premiere pay packages, I'd lean #5 harder. If they sought cultural/mission fits in some meaningful way I might update lower on #... (read more)

The answer is that apocalypse insurance—unlike liability insurance—must pay out in advance of the destruction of everyone. If somebody wishes to risk killing you (with some probability), there's presumably some amount of money they could pay you now, in exchange for the ability to take that risk.

Pretty sure you mean they should pay premiums rather than payouts? 

I like the spirit of this idea, but think it's both theoretically and practically impossible: how do you value apocalypse? Payouts are incalculable/infinite/meaningless if no on... (read more)

It sounds quite intense, though I'm hesitant to describe it as "too hard" as I don't know how children should be reared. The cringing was more at what I perceive as some cognitive dissonance, with "I didn't want to be a tiger parent" coinciding with informing them they didn't really have a choice because it was their job (I don't see the compromise there, nor do I put much stock in a 3-5 year old's ability to negotiate compromises, though these do sound like extraordinary children). But my views are strongly influenced by my upbringing which was a very han... (read more)

Credit to their dad and these kids who achieved these early results. As noted, genetics could factor into aptitude at such a young age -- I'm curious (if not skeptical) whether this system is reproducible in many children of the same age. The following excerpts in conjunction made me cringe a little bit:

I really, really thought I was pushing too hard; I had no desire to be a "tiger dad", but he took it with extreme grace. I was ready to stop at any moment, but he was fine. 

Hannah went through a phase where she didn't want to do it. We tried to comprom

If Sam is as politically astute as he is made out to be, loading the board with blatant MSFT proxies would be bad optics and detract from his image. He just needs to be relatively sure they won't get in his way or try to coup him again.

This is a great post, synthesizing a lot of recent developments and (I think) correctly identifying a lot of what's going on in real time, at least with the limited information we have to go off of. Just curious what evidence supports the idea of Summers being "bullet-biting" or associated with EA?

Like many I have no idea what's happening behind the scenes, so this is pure conjecture, but one can imagine a world in which Toner "addressed concerns privately" but those concerns fell on deaf ears. At that point, it doesn't seem like "resigning board seat and making case publicly" is the appropriate course of action, whether or not that is a "nonprofit governance norm". I would think your role as a board member, particularly in the unique case of OpenAI, is to honor the nonprofit's mission. If you have a rogue CEO who seems bent on pursuing power, statu... (read more)