Book Review: Radical Abundance I. Introduction As a materials engineering major with, roughly speaking, a year of full-time experience with molecular dynamics simulations, I have a special place in my heart for high impact materials both literal and figurative. As a lurker in effective altruism, I was delighted to see...
If one accepts Eliezer Yudkowsky's view on consciousness, the complexity of suffering in particular is largely irrelevant. The claim "qualia requires reflectivity" implies all qualia require reflectivity. This includes qualia like "what is the color red like?" and "how do smooth and rough surfaces feel different?" These experiences seem like they have vastly different evolutionary pressures associated with them that are largely unrelated to social accounting.
If you find the question of whether suffering in particular is sufficiently complex that it exists in certain animals but not others by virtue of evolutionary pressure, you're operating in a frame where these arguments are not superseded by the much more generic claim that complex social... (read more)
Forgive me if engage with only part of this, I believe that the OP already acknowledges most of the problem you've described.
No forgiveness needed! I agree that the OP addresses this portion -- I read the OP somewhat quickly the first time and didn't fully process that part of it. And, as I've said, I do appreciate the thought you've put into all this.
I think I differ from the text of the OP in that social-shaming/lack-of-protest-method in rituals is often an okay and sensible thing. It is only when this property is combined with a serious problem with the ritual itself that I get worried -- but I have a hunch that... (read 832 more words →)
You seem to have put a lot of thought into this ritual and I appreciate the consideration you, Ben, and others are giving it. Anyway, here's some raw unfiltered (potentially overly-harsh) criticism/commentary on Petrov Day -- take what you need from it:
In addition to Lethriloth's criticism of LW Petrov Day failing to match the incentives/dynamics associated with Petrov (an important consideration indeed given the importance of incentive consideration in the LW cannon), it is also important to consider that Community Rituals may serve ends wildly disparate from their stated purposes, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
Yes requires the possibility of no. If you are under the impression (as I am), that this Ritual deliberately... (read more)
This is cool! I like speedrunning! There's definitely a connection between speed-running and AI optimization/misalignment (see When Bots Teach Themselves to Cheat, for example). Some specific suggestions:
Thanks, I appreciate the concrete examples of untrustworthiness than don't rely on inferences made about reputation. I am specifically concerned about things like this (which seems like a weird and bad direction to take a conversation (https://sinceriously.fyi/net-negative/). It also seems hard to recount falsely without active deception or complete detachment from reality and I doubt Ziz is completely detached from reality:
They asked if I’d rape their corpse. Part of me insisted this was not going as it was supposed to. But I decided inflicting discomfort in order to get reliable information was a valid tactic.
You say that you "never said that sentence or tried to imply it..." Do you have any sense of why Ziz interpreted you as saying that? I'd like to gauge the distance between what you said and how Ziz interpreted it to gauge degree-of-untrustworthiness.
The article was the first impression I got about Ziz (I live in Germany and never have attended a CFAR workshop) and I would expect that I'm not the only person for which it's true.
Ah, mea culpa. I saw your other comment amount Pasek crashing with you and interpreted it to mean you were pretty close to the Ziz-related part of the community. I'm less hesitant about talking to you now so I'll hop back in.
... (read more)they are done because the person considers expression of their sexual of gender identity to be a sacred value. Sith robes are not expressions of their sexual of gender identity and thus taking the reputational hit for them
Since you've quoted Ziz out of context, let me finish that quote for you. It is clear that the other half of her (whatever that means) did in fact believe those things and it is clear that this was a recounting of a live-conversation rather than a broad strategy. It is not that weird to not have fully processed the things that you partially believe, live, in the middle of a conversation such that you are surprised by them.
... (read more)The other half of me was like isn’t it obvious. They are disturbed at me because intense suffering is scary. Because being trans in a world where it would make things worse to transition
the completely unfounded belief that only good-aligned people can cooperate or use game theory and that nongood people will defect on each other too often to defeat her alliance.
Can you elaborate on why you think this belief is completely unfounded? It seems to me that there are clear asymmetries in coordination capacities of good vs nongood. For example, being more open to the idea of a "Good Person" in power than a "Bad Person" seems like common sense. Similarly, groups of good people are intrinsically value-aligned while teams of bad people are not (each has a distinct selfish motivation) -- and I think value-alignedness increases effectiveness.
Assuming Ziz is being honest, she pulled the stunt at CFAR after she had already been defected against. This does not globally damage her credibility. It does damage her reputation among a) ppl who think they can't defect against her sneakily but plan to try and b) ppl who think she is bad at judging when she's been defected against. I am in neither of those categories so I have no reason to expect Ziz to defect by lying at me.
In contrast, if Ziz was being dishonest, she pulled that stunt for... inscrutable reasons that may or may not be in the web of lies she might have made. I think this... (read 601 more words →)
I've been thinking for a while about the importance of language processing for general intelligence -- mainly because I think it might be one of the easiest ways to achieve it. Here are some vague intuitions that make me think this:
Book Review: Radical Abundance
I. Introduction
As a materials engineering major with, roughly speaking, a year of full-time experience with molecular dynamics simulations, I have a special place in my heart for high impact materials both literal and figurative. As a lurker in effective altruism, I was delighted to see something potentially relevant to my experience show up. I made a post in the "Nanotechnolgy in EA" Facebook group expressing/re-iterating the following thoughts:
Thanks for clarifying. To the extent that you aren't particularly sure about consciousness comes about, it makes sense to reason about all sorts of possibilities related to capacity for experience and intensity of suffering. In general, I'm just kinda surprised that Eliezer's view is so unusual given that he is the Eliezer Yudkowsky of the rationalist community.
My impression is that the justification for the argument your mention is something along the lines of "the primary reason one would develop a coherent picture of their own mind is so they could convey a convincing story about themselves to others -- which only became a relevant need once language developed."
I was under the impression... (read more)