Thank You to People of the Lightcone: an ambient song

From the window of our room, Isabella and I could see the Lightcone staff office. While I wont name anyone directly, it became a joke between Isabella and I, that no matter the time of day/night, if we looked over to those windows, always, there would be a certain member of the Lightcone staff, sitting, working at that computer. Clearly visible, like a busy fish in a lit tank. Outside of that tank, a half party, half conference chugged on.

Today is Isabella and my last day at Lighthaven. I'd like to pay my respects to people like the aforementioned member of the Lightcone staff, and all other staff at Lighthaven. To the people who gave talks, and the people who talked to me, to the people who told me about their problems, and those who took their own time to solve my problems. I want to honor those who kept fridges stocked, and those who bought marshmallows to share. And of course thank you to the niche-internet-micro-celebrities, that delt with unique social pressures. Oh! And the volunteers, they did so much! Thank you, to all who have touched my life. I am coming away from this place with the distinct feeling, that yes, the Lightcone really is nothing without it's people.

I spent this morning/afternoon generating a song. The song is based on the feeling that being at Lighthaven gives me. It is a melancholic song, because in some way, we are here to stop horrible things from happening. It is a hopeful song, because we are here with friends.

There is the music only version, which I call "An Ode to the People of the Lightcone".

And there is a more personal, home movie music video version, which I call "Something to Protect".

The song is an ambient track, you can listen to it while you work. I recommend listening to it while at Lighthaven (If you are here) in this way, I hope it will always remind you of this place, and this time.

I both, updated a bit on this point, and have a lot of new music to listen to. Thanks a bunch! :D

Domain: Linguistics

Sub Domains: Psychology, Neuroscience, Epistilography, Etymology 

Link: How Language Works

Author(s): David Crystal

Type: Book

Why: Covers every part of language you can dream of. The author is obsessive and meticulous. From hieroglyphs to Heschl's gyri, Crystal covers it all.

Domain: Statistics

Link: Statistics for the Rest of Us

Author(s): Albert Rutherford

Type: Book

Why: I do not recommend this to anyone familiar with statistics. But, I do recommend this as an introduction to many basic topics in stats. I had studied a bit of stats before reading the book, but found it pretty illuminating. I read the entire thing in the course of 1h plane trips. It puts a lot of the abstract math into clear scenarios.

I’m also not a graphic designer. But I agree that both designs give me the ick. I think it’s something about how lazy they both look. They give early 2000s self help book.

To be clear, I’m quite excited for this book, and have preordered! I am just surprised by the covers.

Recently had Justis give me feedback on a post. A bunch of failure modes I tend to fall into were pointed out to me. So, not only was this one post improved, but all the writing I do from now on will be too.

I am excited by this post and was sad when I realized it was written so long ago. I have many thoughts, as this is something I've been focusing on.

Feedback On Writing and Math from an LLM

1. A while ago, I coded an Obsidian plugin for writing. It would take in the last few lines of what you'd written, and Claude would give different types of feedback depending on its system prompt.
   1. Note. This plugin isn't in the store. It is glitchy and not very safe. Still, I am happy to provide the Git to anyone interested in using it. Especially if you want to clean up the bugs and put it in the plugin store as your own work.
2. The problems with this were:
   1. It had a real 'clippy' vibe (It was annoying and often gave bad advice). I suspect this is because I am above average at prompting, but I am no god.
   2. Stopping your writing to read even a sentence of feedback can really break flow.
3. After reading this post though, I can think of a better use:
   1. Feedback Loops on Math: I have self-taught math for the last 3 years using Khan Academy. It can be incredibly frustrating to think you've solved a many-step problem, only to input it and be told it's wrong. Having an LLM check each step along the way would—I hope—prove valuable.
   2. There is probably a better way to improve a person's writing too. Though I think that would involve figuring out your specific failure modes when writing (For example, I tend to switch between past and present tense when I shouldn't) and then have the LLM look out for those specific mistakes and remain silent otherwise.
      1. This might solve the 'clippy' problem but doesn't solve the second problem I listed. For that, we'll need...

Different Input Channels for Feedback

This app creates a feedback loop on the sub-second level, using a different channel (my Occipital Lobe) that doesn't interfere with singing or listening

1. Yep, this seems super important here.
2. For the writing feedback: I imagine a list of 1-20 mistakes that you want to avoid when writing. Have the Clippy Plugin from earlier, but it exists on a backend. If you make one of those mistakes, the LLM outputs the mistake you made, a chime sounds, and the type of mistake gets highlighted in that list.
   1. I think it is important that after you are alerted to a mistake, you are the one that finds where it is and the one who fixes it. Why? Well, I've had autocorrect on my PC my whole life, but I am still terrible at spelling because the mistake is pointed out to me, and I just right-click and select the word I want from a dropdown.
3. For Math: This feels trickier. With just a tone, you then have to search for the mistake. This is easy when you know the formula well but can take a large block of your time and motivation if you can't seem to find the mistake. Instead, I think hints would work better. "Something seems off about the symbols you've used here," "Have you missed a '-' somewhere in this formula?"

Really, I'm just agreeing with what you implied. You want the feedback you are getting to come in from a different sense to the primary one you are using. And you want it to be able to be processed by something other than the processing unit you're using to solve a problem.
 

How I Might Use This in Teaching Acting

1. One of the most common failure modes of a new actor is turning their back to the audience.
2. In the past, I've played a game where if an actor turns their back and I notice, I yell their name, and they lose a limb (Can't use it for the rest of the scene).
3. In the future, I think it'd be nice to develop a simple wearable that starts to vibrate when they turn their chest away from the audience.
   
    

Final Note

I think that this:

measuring a single straightforward variable

Is actually one of the most important parts of this note. But I'm not sure how to think about that yet.

Hi! Did you mean to leave this comment? If you did, would you be able to expand on why?

Thank you for your comment, and your original on the Thesis. I decided not to include the latter in this post, as you've already pointed out the scenario itself is a response.

And yet... If I take the title literally, I am being told that I should quit social media entirely, as soon as possible, because in the near future, it will be so addictive that I will be literally unable to quit.

I would like to confirm I mean the title literally. I don't go into it enough in the post or supplement. But as of now, this is the best strategy I can think of to avoid something I don't want to happen to me. I have started downloading whole YouTube Channels, and setting up ways to auto download content from creators I enjoy. I am trying to take this very seriously.

Well, that's nobody's ideal, but it's not actually worse than the human condition has been, for large numbers of people throughout history.

I think that this is true. But it can be true that the human condition has been bad through most of history, and it can be true that aiming to make the human condition better is virtuous, and worth doing.

In my ideal world, not a single person is "limping through life". But if 90% of people are currently limping through life, and Omega offered me the choice between reducing the amount of limpers by 1%, or leaving it where it is (because I'd prefer my ideal world, over just -1%) then I'd take the 1% reduction!

It's just that I was expecting something more apocalyptic as the payoff, that humanity would be utter captives of the content farms, perhaps later to be herded into Matrix pods or assembled into armies of meme-controlled zombies.

Yeah, I think Miro's story ends early. This is on purpose. I think this is a likely outcome for a large % of self supporting wealthy individuals (By wealthy and self supporting, I mean something like "I pay my own rent by working, though, I still live pay check-to-pay check").

The epilogue for Miro might look like one of the things you described. It would require social media companies to win some sort of battle for ultimate power? Or perhaps they fight for some amount of 'territory' and win. If this did happen, I'd guess it'd look a little like the social media version of Disneyland without Children.

After all, there's actually a lot of good stuff that comes through social media.

I hard agree with everything you say here. I actually think there are many more things you're leaving out. I think social media up-to a certain point was net-good for the world. It certainly accelerated us culturally.

My sister was beaten in high school for being gay. That was in the 2010s. When I teach kids these days, I sometimes have to remind the queer kids that it's actually ok to be straight. I don't think we would have had a drastic transformation like that without the social internet.

It's just that you haven't really made the case, that the social Internet will become nothing but a prison of blighted lives.

I'm not totally sure what you mean here. I'll try to respond in the direction I think you were meaning.

Mainly, I think Social Media has provided great value. However, I now see a trajectory it seems hard to disentangle ourselves from. One where my preference for having free time to write LessWrong posts, see friends, and fall in love, are threatened by an activity I consider less meaningful to my life. An activity that I think will cause me more pain than pleasure.

If living in the city meant I was alone, in a job I didn't enjoy, with a body I was neglecting. But I got to enjoy the conveniences of a city, like food delivery, higher possibility of making friends in the future, higher density of Tinder profiles. Then I would choose not to live in the city. Those benefits are not worth the cost to me.

As AI becomes more and more capable, the question of AI on social media just blends into the broader question of humanity's destiny in a world with AI, and ultimately, a world with artificial superintelligence.

Yes, I think as we move towards ASI the future becomes less certain. This is why I'd really like to emphasise that what I have proposed doesn't need ASI. A lot of this scenario doesn't require AGI. That is why I think GTFO now is the best plan. Even if we manage to align an ASI, it wont be around to save us when this becomes a problem.

I especially want to spread this meme through the alignment community. As I think having many people very focused on this problem is our best chance of solving it. I would dislike if those people fell into the same traps as Miro.

I really appreciate your thoughtful comment here, and the time you took to write it. Strong upvote for your virtue of argument. Thank you!

(Apologies if this isn't the right post to comment this on)

One thing that I've just noticed is that there is no "Share post with another user" button. To share a post, I have to:

1. Hit share
2. Copy the link
3. Go to the user's page
4. Click message
5. Paste the link
6. Hit "Submit"

That's a lot of friction to get a friend's eyeballs on a post. I think it would make collaborating on LW easier if sharing a post to another user was more like sharing a post on X (Formerly Twitter).

--
Related to sharing, I notice that clicking the "Share" button on iPhone takes a long time to load. This limits the amount of LW posts I'm willing to share to my Matter reading queue when triaging the front page. There is an argument to be made that this is a good thing though.