trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
What Would It Cost to Build a World-Class Dredging Vessel in America?
by Zvi — 2022-05-02T17:47:53.570Z

I'm doing some research into questions surrounding the Foreign Dredge Act of 1906, and thought I'd experiment by throwing this out there.

For context, the 31 biggest dredging vessels were not built in America, and thus cannot be used in America by law. We only have a small number of less capable vessels, and they often get redirected to short-term emergency tasks. This is preventing us from doing a bunch of very valuable things, like repairing or expanding ports, which end up taking much more time and money or not happening at all.

This podcast is recommended. You can find a transcript here. They claim that there's no way America will be able to have such capacity for at least decades. I want to verify that (and also check if any other claims here don't ring true)?

As an alternative to repealing the Dredge Act (which I'm exploring and planning to write about) another alternate would be to build world-class dredging vehicles here in America, such that they could be used. Before assuming that this is impossible, and to have a straight answer, what would happen if someone with deep pockets tried to commission a world-class dredging ship that would qualify? Could be done? Are there other impossible barriers to solve? How much would it cost and how much more would that be than building it elsewhere? How long would it take?
So has AI conquered Bridge ?
by Ponder Stibbons — 2022-05-02T15:01:45.638Z

Bridge, like most card games, is a game of incomplete information. It is a game of many facets, most of which will have to remain unstated here. However the calculation of probabilities, and the constant revision of probabilities during play, is a key feature. Much the same can be said of poker and of certain other card games. But bridge is the game I know and I am still learning from, 45 years after I first got infected with the bridge bug

We have Alpha Go and Alpha Zero but the wizards at DeepMind have not yet seen fit to release an Alpha Bridge. Poker is played to high expert standard by specialist AI’s such as Pluribus but bridge playing computers up till today remain well short of that. Those commonly available play parts of the game extremely well, usually making mechanistic decisions correctly yet also make quite surprising and often comical errors. It has been noted bridge would seem to be to be an excellent training ground for AGI, in ways chess and go are not.

The French company NUKKAI has just created somewhat of an earthquake by revealing a bridge playing AI called Nook that, it is claimed, can beat the world’s best players. So has bridge finally been conquered? This post will show this is not yet the case. I hope also to give a flavour of the type of probabilistic problems that routinely need to be solved at the bridge table, by AI or human, where Nook may score over a human and why, and where its performance may be somewhat inflated due to some features specific to the training and test set-up. I’ve tried to write with the non-player in mind and I proffer apologies in advance if I have failed to do that adequately.

NUKKAI have published on You Tube a 5hr commentary on entire event. To my shame my poor French renders me unable to follow it closely and I’d welcome comments from French speakers who have followed it, especially as they may be able to back-up or possibly even refute some of the comments I make. Commentaries in English are also starting to become available. Kit Woolsey, a well known expert, is publishing in depth analyses of the most interesting hands on BridgeWinners.

A word about the mechanics of the game. Please feel free to skip this section if you are familiar with it. The game is a trick taking game played with a full deck of 52 cards, dealt equally between four players, who make up two partnerships sitting in opposition. The...
Squires
by lsusr — 2022-05-02T03:36:13.490Z

Last year, johnswentworth posted The Apprentice Experiment. I tried it out. It was a disaster for me and most of my "apprentices". Since then I have been figuring out how to make apprenticeship work. I currently have two minions. Thanks to them, I finally feel like a proper supervillain.

"How can I live without a human being to pour me drinks and fetch my dirty sandals?" I said.

"You got used to having a servant scarily fast," [Redacted] said.

―April was weird

For starters, I don't use the word "apprentice". The word "apprentice" is pretentious and inaccurate. A teenager's parents pay the master to accept their son[1] as an apprentice. Apprenticeship is like sending a kid to a vocational school. Would I accept apprentices? Possibly. But if you (or your parents) are not paying me for the privilege of my tutelage then you are not an apprentice.

Squires are different. Squires are not students. I don't try to teach my squires anything at all. I just give them the boring tedious work I don't want to do. Surprisingly (to me) they love it.

Teenagers want to be useful. But teenagers have limited skills. I put my squires to work doing the most complicated tasks they are capable of. Today, that meant sweeping the floor. Why is sweeping the floor fun? Because doing the most complicated work you are capable of is fun. Less complicated work is boring. More complicated work is frustrating.

"Fun" is evolution rewarding you for learning optimally.

My squires learn quickly. Last month a squire offered to spellcheck my blog posts. This month, his assignment is to negotiate a business deal with <wearables company> instead. Will he succeed? I don't know. I have better things to do than micromanage my minions. This brings me to the most important trait a squire can have.

Good squires invent work for themselves to do. If the work is valuable (like spellchecking my posts) then I tell the squire to continue doing it. If the work is worthless then I give the squire a useful assignment to do instead. "I want to be your squire. What should I do?" is a bad way to introduce yourself. "I want to be your squire. I can do x" for you is a good way to introduce yourself even if x turns out to be worthless.

The most important trait a squire can have is "eager to work". A squire who is eager to work can usually made useful.

Squiring is for energetic young people who have few ski...
[Linkpost] A conceptual framework for consciousness
by Gunnar_Zarncke — 2022-05-02T01:05:36.129Z

PNAS Paper from April 29th that makes strides to solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness by dissolving it:

A conceptual framework for consciousness

by

Michael S. A. Graziano

Abstract:

This article argues that consciousness has a logically sound, explanatory framework, different from typical accounts that suffer from hidden mysticism. The article has three main parts. The first describes background principles concerning information processing in the brain, from which one can deduce a general, rational framework for explaining consciousness. The second part describes a specific theory that embodies those background principles, the Attention Schema Theory. In the past several years, a growing body of experimental evidence—behavioral evidence, brain imaging evidence, and computational modeling—has addressed aspects of the theory. The final part discusses the evolution of consciousness. By emphasizing the specific role of consciousness in cognition and behavior, the present approach leads to a proposed account of how consciousness may have evolved over millions of years, from fish to humans. The goal of this article is to present a comprehensive, overarching framework in which we can understand scientifically what consciousness is and what key adaptive roles it plays in brain function.

Key quotes:

Principle 1.

Information that comes out of a brain must have been in that brain. [...]

For example, if I believe, think, and claim that an apple is in front of me, then it is necessarily true that my brain contains information about that apple. Note, however, that an actual, physical apple is not necessary for me to think one is present. If no apple is present, I can still believe and insist that one is, although in that case I am evidently delusional or hallucinatory. In contrast, the information in my brain is necessary. Without that information, the belief, thought, and claim are impossible, no matter how many apples are actually present.

[...]

You believe you have consciousness because of information in your brain that depicts you as having it. [...] The existence of an actual feeling of consciousness inside you, associated with the color, is not necessary to explain your belief, certainty, and insistence that you have it. Instead, your belief and claim derive from information about conscious experience. If your brain did not have the information, then the belief and cl

...
What DALL-E 2 can and cannot do
by Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg)  — 2022-05-01T23:51:22.310Z

I got access to DALL-E 2 earlier this week, and have spent the last few days (probably adding up to dozens of hours) playing with it, with the goal of mapping out its performance in various areas – and, of course, ending up with some epic art.

Below, I've compiled a list of observations made about DALL-E, along with examples. If you want to request art of a particular scene, or to test see what a particular prompt does, feel free to comment with your requests.

DALL-E's strengths

Stock photography content

It's stunning at creating photorealistic content for anything that (this is my guess, at least) has a broad repertoire of online stock images – which is perhaps less interesting because if I wanted a stock photo of (rolls dice) a polar bear, Google Images already has me covered. DALL-E performs somewhat better at discrete objects and close-up photographs than at larger scenes, but it can do photographs of city skylines, or National Geographic-style nature scenes, tolerably well (just don't look too closely at the textures or detailing.) Some highlights:

Clothing design: DALL-E has a reasonable if not perfect understanding of clothing styles, and especially for women's clothes and with the stylistic guidance of "displayed on a store mannequin" or "modeling photoshoot" etc, it can produce some gorgeous and creative outfits. It does especially plausible-looking wedding dresses – maybe because wedding dresses are especially consistent in aesthetic, and online photos of them are likely to be high quality?

a "toga style wedding dress, displayed on a store mannequin"

Close-ups of cute animals. DALL-E can pull off scenes with several elements, and often produce something that I would buy was a real photo if I scrolled past it on Tumblr.

"kittens playing with yarn in a sunbeam"

Close-ups of food. These can be a little more uncanny valley – and I don't know what's up with the apparent boiled eggs in there – but DALL-E absolutely has the plating style for high-end restaurants down.

"dessert special, award-winning chef five star restaurant, close-up photograph"

Jewelry. DALL-E doesn't always follow the instructions of the prompt exactly (it seems to be randomizing whether the big pendant is amber or amethyst) but the details are generally convincing and the results are almost always really pretty.

"silver statement necklace with amethysts a

...
Is it desirable for the first AGI to be conscious?
by Charbel-Raphaël — 2022-05-01T21:29:55.103Z

It seems that consciousness is one of the essential things necessary to characterize the moral status of an agent.
It seems that we have very little chance to solve the AI safety problem.
We don't know if the first AGI will be conscious.

Since we are in a certain sense doomed, the future consists of the following 2 cases:

Either the first AGI is not sentient and never becomes sentient.
Or the first AGI acquires sentience at a given moment.

Either the valence of this AGI is positive
Or the valence of this AGI is negative
Either the valence is mixed
Or the AGI reprograms itself to experience a positive valence (instrumental convergence if its well-being is included in the utility function?)

I have no idea which scenario is the most desirable. The uncertainty is multiplied by considering the AGI's superior capabilities, and its ability to multiply. So perhaps we could see it as a utility monster. Therefore, the following questions seem very important:

(1) What do you think is the most likely scenario and (2) the most desirable scenario?

(3|2) Conditional on the scenario that seems most desirable to you, is there a way to steer the future in that direction?
ELK shaving
by Miss Aligned AI — 2022-05-01T21:05:38.080Z

> Paul Christiano's incredibly complicated schemes have no chance of working in real life before DeepMind destroys the world.
> Eliezer in Death With Dignity

Eliciting Latent Knowledge reads to me as an incredibly narrow slice in reasoning space, a hyperbolically branching philosophical rabbit hole of caveats.

For example, this paragraph on page 7translates as:

If you can ask whether AI is saying the truth and it answers "no" then you know it is lying.

But how is trusting this answer different from just trusting AI to not deceive you as a whole?

A hundred pages of an elaborate system with competing actors playing games of causal diagrams trying to solve for the worst case is exciting ✨ precisely because it allows one to "make progress" and have incredibly nuanced discussions (ELK shaving [1]) while failing to address the core AI safety concern:

if AI is sufficiently smart, it can do absolutely whatever

– fundamentally ignoring whatever clever constraints one might come up with.

I am confused why people might be "very optimistic" about ELK, I hope I am wrong.

^“Yak shaving” means performing a seemingly endless series of small tasks that must be completed before the next step in the project can move forward. Elks are kinda like yaks
[Linkpost] Value extraction via language model abduction
by Paul Bricman — 2022-05-01T19:11:15.790Z
Link: https://paulbricman.com/thoughtware/velma

This is my first post on lesswrong. I'll merely be linkposting content on epistemics and alignment here while getting more familiar with the culture.

tl;dr:

We attempt to automatically infer one’s beliefs from their writing in three different ways. Initial results based on Twitter data hint at embeddings and language models being particularly promising approaches.
Less Wrong Community Weekend 2022, open for application!
by UnplannedCauliflower — 2022-05-01T18:52:28.462Z

Less Wrong Community Weekend 2022, open for application!

When: Friday 26th August - Monday 29th August 2022

Where:

jh-wannsee.de

(Berlin)

The tickets:

Regular ticket: 150€

Supporter ticket: 200/300/400€

Angel ticket: 75€

Apply here

!

This year’s awesome keynote speaker will be Duncan Sabien whose talk is: “The moments that matter”. Duncan is the former director of curriculum at CFAR, the primary preparer of the

CFAR handbook

, and a regular producer of consistently interesting and thought provoking essays such as

In Defense of Punch Bug

, and

Lies, Damn Lies, and Fabricated Options

.

From Friday August 26th through Monday August 29th aspiring rationalists from all around Europe and beyond will gather for four days at the lovely Lake Wannsee near Berlin to socialize, run workshops, talk, and enjoy our shared forms of nerdiness.

What the event is like: On Friday afternoon we put up four wall-sized daily planners and by Saturday morning the attendees fill them up with 50+ workshops, talks and activities of their own devising such as Icebreaker games, Rationality techniques, EA community building discussions, Comfort zone exploration workshop, Polyamory and relationships workshops, morning meditation sessions in the Winter garden and many more.

This is our 7th year and we feel that the atmosphere and sense of community at these weekends is something that is really special. If that sounds like something you would enjoy and you have some exciting ideas and skills to contribute come along and get involved.

And of course if you want to spend some time relaxing and recharging on your own you can hike in the forests, sunbathe or stroll lazily along the banks of Lake Wannsee whenever you like. The venue for the event, Wannsee youth hostel, is nestled amongst the beautiful lakes and forests of South West Berlin and provides shared accommodation, a canteen, a selection of large and small seminar rooms and plenty of comfortable spaces inside and out for us to use as we please.

Application Process: There are usually about 20% more people who would like to come than we have spots for, so priority will be given to those who seem particularly interested, or who plan to make interesting contributions by running a talk, workshop or activity. However, everyone is welcome to apply. So apply now and tell us about why it would be awesome to h...
Six Months of ROSE
by  — 2022-05-01T14:42:00.372Z
Link: https://guildoftherose.org/articles/six-months-of-rose?utm_campaign=lw

Six months ago, we launched the Guild Beta. Our goal was -- and is -- to produce people who are impressive in everyday life. We are interested in real-life effectiveness, not armchair philosophy. This attitude is why, when people join the Guild and embark on our Rank Advancement program, we have them make a list of problems they encounter in their day-to-day lives. These problems serve as a guidepost for their Guild endeavors and help keep them anchored to reality.

In that spirit, one of the Council's chief concerns is feedback and iteration. We want to help, and we want to stay tightly bound to reality. Articulation improves clarity of thought, so we strive to be transparent in our activities. This article is a look back on the past six months of the Guild Beta and a look forward at what we want to do with the next six months.
Shared Car: One Year In
by jefftk — 2022-05-01T13:00:03.315Z

We've been

sharing a car with a

housemate for one year now. This has
worked really well. It's convenient being about to drive places, we
can leave the car seats in (though we keep a backup set in case we
need to go somewhere when the car is out), and it's less thinking
about transportation. Neither we nor our housemate use the car that
often, so it's rare that we both want to use it at the same time. We
do have pretty different usage patterns, however:

We have a larger number of shorter trips, while our housemate has
fewer longer trips:

Us
Housemate

Total Mileage
2,248mi
4,865mi

Total Trips
143
47

Mean Distance
17mi
72mi

Median Distance
6mi
11mi

Mean Interval
2-3d
7-8d

Our biggest category by far is driving to the next town over to visit
my dad (and other family), 6mi round trip. Most weeks we drive over
on Tuesday for family dinner, and then many weeks another time as
well. Before we had a car we would typically take the bus over, and
then either take the bus back or my dad would give us a ride. With
covid these weren't options (we weren't being inside with people we
didn't already live with), and would instead bike there and back with
a trailer.
Driving is much faster than either of these, and a lot more
convenient.

In figuring out whether it made sense for us to get a car, Julia and I
had made some ballpark guesses about our usage:

Description
Mileage
Times

Dinner at my dad's
6
48

Kid ferrying
8
40

Family outings
40
16

Dance gigs
180
15

Social
6
12

Shopping
6
5

Vacation
130
1

Total
132
4,180

This was 137 trips (96% actual), totaling 4,180 miles (186% actual).
The biggest delta here is dance gigs: in April 2021 I'd expected that
vaccination rolling out meant dances would resume, but then there was
Delta, seasonality, and Omicron. I think I drove to two gigs (Worcester twice, with Kingfisher in November and
Gianna and Rebecca in March). With that corrected the guesses would
become 124 trips (87% actual) and 1,480mi (66% actual). Looks like
we're using the car in more situations than we'd expected, by a factor
of ~25%?

There was one day when we tried to use the car but couldn't: the
battery died, probably just from age. Aside from that, no other
reliability issues. Maintenance expenses have been pretty low: a total of $319, most of which was an oil change an...
How confident are we that there are no Extremely Obvious Aliens?
by Logan Zoellner — 2022-05-01T10:59:41.956Z

Robin Hanson's writing on Grabby Aliens is interesting to me, since it seems to be one of the more sound attempts to apply mathematical reasoning to the Fermi Paradox. Unfortunately, it still relies on anthropics, so I wouldn't the slightest bit surprised if it was off by an order of magnitude (or two) in either direction.

What I would like to know (preferably from someone with a strong astronomy background) is: how confident are we that there are no (herein defined) Extremely Obvious Aliens?

Extremely Obvious Aliens

Define Extremely Obvious Aliens in the following way:

They colonize every single star that they encounter by building a Dyson swarm around it that reduces visible radiation by at least 50%
They expand in every direction at a speed of at least 0.5C
They have existed for at least 1 billion years

If such aliens existed, it should be really easy to detect they by just looking for a cluster of galaxies that is 50% dimmer than it should be which is at least 0.5Billion light years across.

How confident are we that there are no Extremely Obvious Aliens?

As with Grabby aliens, it is safe to say there are no Extremely Obvious Aliens in the Solar System. Nor, for that matter are there any Extremely Obvious Aliens within 0.5BLY of the Milky Way Galaxy.

So, for my astronomy friends. What is the biggest radius for which we can confidently say there are 0 Extremely Obvious Aliens? The best answer I can come up with is SLOAN, which was done at a redshift of z=0.1, which I think corresponds to a distance of 1.5BLY.

Is this accurate? Namely, is it safe to say (with high confidence) there are no Extremely Obvious Aliens within 1.5BLY of Earth?

Is there another survey that would let us raise this number even higher?

What is the theoretical limit (using something like JWST)?

Has someone written a good paper answering questions like these already?