I also just want to point out that there should be a base rate here that's higher context in the beginning since before MATS and similar there weren't really that many AI Safety training programs. 

So the intiial people that you get will automatically be higher context because the sample is taken from people who have already worked on it/learnt about it for a while. This should go down over time due to the higher context individuals being taken in?

(I don't know how large this effect would be but I would just want to point it out.)

I liked this book too and I just wanted to share a graphic that was implied in the book between guidance and expertise. It's a pretty obvious idea but for me it was just one of those things you don't think about. The lower context someone has the more guidance they need and vice versa (the trend is not necessarily linear though):

Okay (if possible), I want you to imagine I'm an AI system or similar and that you can give me resources in the context window that increase the probability of me making progress on problems you care about in the next 5 years. Do you have a reading list or similar for this sort of thing? (It seems hard to specify and so it might be easier to mention what resources can bring the ideas forth. I also recognize that this might be one of those applied knowledge things rather than a set of knowledge things.)

Also, if we take the cryptography lens seriously here, an implication might be that I should learn the existing off the shelf solutions in order to "not invent my own". I do believe that there is no such thing as being truly agnostic to a meta-philosophy since you're somehow implicitly projecting your own biases on to the world. 

I'm gonna make this personally applicable to myself as that feels more skin in the game and less like a general exercise.

There are a couple of contexts to draw from here:

1. Traditional philosophy. (I've read the following):
   1. A history of western philosophy
   2. (Plato, Aristotles, Hume, Foucault, Spinoza, Russell, John Rawls, Dennett, Chalmers and a bunch of other non continental philosophers)
2. Eastern philosophy (I've read the following):
   1. Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism (Mainly tibetan buddhism here)
3. Modern more AI related philosophy (I've read the following):
   1. Yudkowsky, Bostrom
   2. (Not at first glance philosophy but): Michael Levin (Diverse Intelligence), Some Category Theory (Composition), 

Which one is the one to double down on? How do they relate to learning more about meta ethics? Where am I missing things within my philosophy education?

(I'm not sure this is a productive road to go down but I would love to learn more about how to learn more about this.)

n=1 evidence but I thought I would share from a random external perspective who enjoys doing some writing and who's in the potential audience for a future version (if run) of inkhaven.

For this version, I had no clue how it would be and so I thought it was too high risk to gamble on it being good. Given what I've seen of the setup this year I would basically be a guaranteed sign up if it was less than 15-20% of my cash reserve to go next year. Potentially upwards of 30-40% (reference class: currently doing more or less independent work and getting by with money for going to uni from the swedish state).

(For some reason I feel a bit weird about making this comment but I also want to practice sending unfinished comments that are more random feedback as it is often useful for the individuals involved given the assumption that my perspective is somewhat indicative of a larger audience.)

Also, don't listen to me, listen to this successful person!: https://youtube.com/shorts/QEsc1ObYeFk?si=X-3PicapZqJ16DHg

(Ethos guru argument successfully applied!)

(This take is like literaly a copy paste from Dr.K validated through my own experience.)

Firstly, that is a pretty amazing data gathering exercise and I'm really impressed. From the frame of the data I would completely agree with you that it doesn't seem to help. 

I think my frame here is slightly different and specifically about non-cold approaches? 

(I want to acknowledge the lack of skin in the game that this view has created for me, I do not care as much about relationships as I find myself quite peaceful and happy without it.)

It is for repeated interactions more? It's also something that kind of changes the approach vector a bit? I don't think I could go through the amount of cold approaches that you have here as I don't care enough for it?

Let me try to give you a mental model of how I think about it and let me know if it makes sense:

Analogously, I would want to imagine that everytime you have a conversation with someone else you create a space, a room. This room can either be cozy with a bunch of nice cushions, maybe it is quite sterile like an operating hall or if it is a more nerdy relationship it might be filled with whiteboards or whatever, there's a vibe. Meditation (or more specifically awareness + metta meditation) is a bit like creating an openness for that room? You're allowing the other person space to place their own things in that room and you can more meet them where they're at and so the conversations become a lot more natural and enjoyable as a consequence. "Oh, you really really want that specific lamp, I guess it doesn't matter to me but that's good to know as I can then place my couch here, instead of where the lamp would be".

When I'm in a warm, open and concentrated state I'm a lot better at conversations. 

Do you have any concrete measurable predictions for what would happen in that case?

What I would track is my personal enjoyment of conversations that I have with people, if I did that sort of meditation I would expect myself to enjoy conversations with others more. (With the caveat of adding some sort of metta practice on top). 

More statistically, If we model relationship probability as a markov chain we get something like (first meeting -> date -> date 2 -> dating -> relationship) and I think your transition probability from first meeting to date to anything beyond that goes up by quite a lot. I think the problem here is that it is more of a poission distribution so it is a bit difficult to do linear prediction on it? (unless you're poly?) It's more like a heuristic optimisation problem where the more warmth you have, the easier it is to have giving conversations with other people? 

Also, it seems to me that long-term relationships seem to more naturally mature from activities with longer time horizons where you meet people repeatedly? (I could find some stats on this but the basic intuition here is that one of the main criteria for women wanting a long-term relationship is safety which is hard to build without repeated interactions. An optimisation setup is then to repeatedly show up at the right sort of events such as interesting book clubs, dance, meditation or other dependent on your preferences for the base person who shows up at such an event.)

Fair warning is that there's some unsolicited armchair psychologist advice below but I want to give a meta comment on the "relationship John arc".

I find it fun, interesting, and sometimes useful to read through these as an underlying investigation of what is true when it comes to dating. (Starting a year ago or so)

So I used to do this cognitive understanding and analysis of relationships a lot but that all changed when the meditation nation attacked? There was this underlying need for love and recognition through a relationship and this underlying want and need for that to feel whole or similar. It's just kind of gone away more and more and I just generally feel happier in life as a consequence? It kind of feels like you're looking to resolve that need through relationships and my brain is like "Why doesn't he just meditate?"

Given the goal is happiness and well-being from this (which it might not be), are there any specific reasons here why you're going the relationship route? From my own research, all (not all) the cool people (QRI & happiness researchers) agree that meditation gives you better vibes than the courtship stuff? 

Finally a weird claim that I'll make is that the relationship stuff is a lot easier when I'm in a good place when it comes to meditation as I find it a lot easier to read and understand people from this place. I like to go salsa dancing and I feel a lot more relaxed and playful when doing it compared to when I was "looking" for romance? I just bring a different more secure energy and I just stop worrying and start vibing? I agree with you that people's signals are extremely unclear but it kind of doesn't matter from that perspective? (You might also already be doing this but meditation probably can make you do this more.)

Therefore, part of me is like, "man he should really stop thinking and start to just sharpen his awareness and attention based systems and he's gonna be a lot better off in these skills compared to the current investigation".

So start meditating for an hour a day for 3 months using the mind illuminated as an experiment (getting some of the cool skills mentioned in Kaj Sotala's sequence?) and see what happens? 

I'm however very much enjoying the series of John applying his intelligence to relationships. So uh, do what you want and have fun!

I really like this direction of work, I think it is quite important to elucidate the connection between power-seeking systems and RL and a more generalised version of variational inference that can be applied to collectives. 

It feels a bit like you did what the following post is pointing at in a better and more formal way, I thought it might be interesting to share it (to potentially help with some framings of how to explain it intuitively?): https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KYxpkoh8ppnPfmuF3/power-seeking-minimising-free-energy

Looking forward to more in this area!