trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Sacrifice for the Big Crunch
by Cerdon — 2022-03-04T21:05:00.563Z

Let us assume that the end of the universe will be consistent with the Big Crunch for the rest of our story, simply the 'event' which is most easily described as the inverse to the Big Bang, the universe contracting into a singularity. Let us also assume that you have, by billions of years worth of advancements in science, remained alive. The end is near, the temperature of space is already several hundred degrees and climbing. Despite our advancements, we are unable to know what exactly will result from the event as we have no prior examples. However, we were aware that, for quite some time, our universe was shrinking. With the forewarning to prepare we created a spaceship capable of exiting the universe entirely, however by the time it has acquired enough power to make such an escape, you have been rendered the last living intelligence in the universe. Therefore humanity has given you command of the spacecraft you're currently inhabiting, given complete freedom, but only two possibilities, with four plausible outcomes.

Option 1: You can choose to remain in the universe, eventually the laws of physics dictate your craft will be unable to resist gravitational forces, the heat, and radiation, you will be consumed as everyone else already has into the event.

O1 Outcome 1: With all matter from which the current universe began being restored into singularity, this universe is repeated. How many times you are consumed and how many times the event has happened in unknowable, but likely approaches infinity. No one will ever know that this is happening. But everyone dies repeatedly, yet everyone always come back to live repeatedly. Death ceases permanence. Yet with repetition comes the destruction of free will, every time you will choose death, and every time this universe will repeat.

O1 Outcome 2: Due to the true randomness in quantum mechanics a completely new universe is created from the old, possibly one with altered properties of physics and thus uninhabitable. Or just slightly off, potentially spawning new intelligent creatures. Whatever the case, the cycle of destruction and creation goes on. You give life yet will never be brought back to experience it.

Option 2: Using the power the spacecraft has gathered you decide to initiate the escape process to leave the universe, hoping to ride out the event.

O2 Outcome 1: You escape and ride out the Big Crunch, returning...
Higher Risk of Nuclear War
by jefftk — 2022-03-04T18:10:02.020Z

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, nuclear war is still very
unlikely, but I'd guess it's the most likely it's been in my lifetime.
It's worth thinking through how this impacts any

disaster plans you might have:

What would you do if you
got an incoming ICBM alert? Are there supplies you would wish you
had that are worth sorting out now?

If you live in a major city or near a likely military target, is
there a level of escalation at which you would want to leave for
somewhere less populous? Is there planning for that which would make
sense to do now?

If war elsewhere causes serious supply chain disruptions, is
there anything you depend on (ex: medication) that it's
worth trying to get extra of now?

(This post started

as
a comment.)
When should you relocate to mitigate the risk of dying in a nuclear war?
by Adam Zerner — 2022-03-04T10:34:57.904Z

Epistemic Status: "Thinking out loud" is probably a good way to describe it. I've been researching and thinking about this stuff on and off for the past few days, and this is the best I've got. I haven't vetted it too closely and probably have made some mistakes.

Some people see me as a very risk-averse person. I wouldn't say that. It's more that I'm death-averse. Risks that involve the possibility of death, I'm very averse to, relative to anyone I've ever met or can think of off the top of my head. Risks that don't involve the possibility of death, I think I'm pretty tolerant of. Financially, I start startups and play poker. Not that either of those things are particularly risky. Physically, an example is that I really don't mind the risks of things like getting mugged or breaking my leg.

I remember the first conversation I had with someone about the Ukraine/Russia conflict (other than my girlfriend). It was with my mom. I was talking on the phone with her and I think I said something like "You see what's going on in the Ukraine?". Her response was something like "Ugh don't remind me. Gas prices are going to skyrocket."

That's not where my mind went. My mind went to death. Nuclear bombs are a thing. Escalation of conflict is a thing. Irrationality is a thing. This very well might end up in a nuclear war that ends up killing me. How high is that risk, and is it worth me doing anything to mitigate it?

My initial instinct was a begrudging yes. I place an extremely high value on life. The risk is actually real. It probably is high enough to justify moving. Which really sucks. I just moved to Portland about a month ago. We're just setting in here. It's been amazing. It's the first time in my life I've been able to live in an urban area, which is awesome because I don't drive. And it's the first time in my life I've gotten to choose my location based on where I want to be, not where I have to be, eg. because of a job.

Next, I ran some quick numbers to get a ballpark of where we're at and whether I need to act fast. Suppose that we value life at $10B (1-3 orders of magnitude higher than you probably do). Suppose that there is a 1/10 chance of me dying if the US is attacked and a 0% chance if I move. If there is a 1/1,000 chance of us getting attacked, staying here would cost $1M. 1/10,000 it costs $100k. 1/100,000 it costs $10k. With that initial analysis, it's not imm...
You'd Want The Right Answer
by ship_shlap — 2022-03-04T02:33:35.161Z

It's quite common to see people bending the truth if it works for them. It happens far more often than you'd like to think. For example, seeing the weak point of a belief but you choose to ignore it and rehearse the strong points. What's the harm in that?

What if the setting changed - You're in an exam in university, and your GPA depends on it. Your degree demands a GPA of 3.7 (or something). You'd definitely want to attack the weak parts of your answer. It would be so much more relaxing to ignore your large possibly-wrong answer. But no matter how much you defy the universe (haha I don't care I'm too tired or I'm too lazy, why don't you make me correct it), you'll get a lower score. When the setting becomes an exam, you'll have to start correcting all possible mistakes.

Life is that exam, and you will face the consequences for having incorrect beliefs. Treat your beliefs the way you treat your answers on an exam (Except in real life you should be rational out of curiosity, not out of duty, of course).
Introducing myself: Henry Lieberman, MIT CSAIL, whycantwe.org
by Henry A Lieberman — 2022-03-03T23:42:01.073Z

I'm Henry Lieberman, Research Scientist at the MIT Computer Science and AI Lab. I'm interested in long-term thinking about the future of humanity, technology and society, and have developed some new ideas, together with my colleague Christopher Fry, about how AI and other technologies can ensure a positive future for humanity. For the full story, see my Web site, https://www.whycantwe.org, where you'll find a 12-minute TED talk; other videos, and writing based on our book, "Why Can't We All Just Get Along?".

For specific thoughts on the Alignment question, here's an abstract (maybe a future paper and/or talk at an appropriate venue):

AI Alignment Depends on Human Alignment

Henry Lieberman – MIT CSAIL

The problem of whether the goals and values of an artificially intelligent agent will align with human goals and values, can be reduced to this problem: Will the goals and values of different human agents ever align with each other?

Regardless of what you believe about the problem for humans, we're likely to get the same answer when we think about intelligent machines. We can only program AI "in our own image", so both the features and bugs of humanity will reappear in AI. Thus, whether AI turns out to be a good thing or a bad thing in the future, depends critically on this question: Will humans cooperate with each other, or will they compete with one another?

Right now, our society is schizophrenic -- some of our institutions are oriented towards cooperation (like science), others (like business and politics) seem to be primarily oriented towards competing. Many of the social problems caused by AI are a result of this schizophrenia. If AI becomes a tool of warring human factions, we're doomed. But it doesn't have to be like that.

With all the evident conflict and disagreement in the world, some despair of the prospect of ever getting people to align their values, substantially, if not perfectly. Yet the technology itself will provide unprecedented opportunities to eliminate the barriers to widespread social cooperation. A positive future for AI depends on changing our competitive mindset (and institutions) towards more cooperative alternatives. I will present some concrete proposals for doing so. Then, we'll get benevolent AI "for free".
Recognizing and Dealing with Negative Automatic Thoughts
by Shmi — 2022-03-03T20:41:55.839Z

Inspired by this post, which is point 3 on the list below, but I can't comment there, so a separate post it is. Copied from here. Basically, this is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in a nutshell.

Recognizing Negative Automatic Thoughts

Overgeneralization: making a general conclusion based on one piece of evidence.
Daniel gets a high glucose reading and thinks “I will never get my numbers under control.”
Filtering: Focusing on negative events, and ignoring positive events, or information that contradicts the negative outlook.
Jo has done really well at following her diet plan all week, but at a work party, she eats more dessert than she should. Later, she reflects on her dessert choices and thinks, “I always fail at sticking to my plan, this is pretty hopeless.”
All or nothing thinking: Thinking that there are only two extremes, with no middle ground.
Daniel is in a rush in the morning and doesn’t eat breakfast, so his numbers are off throughout the day. He thinks “Well, I’ve already screwed up, no point in continuing to try at this point.”
Personalizing: Taking responsibility for something that is not your fault.
Jo is at her doctor’s appointment, but because the office is behind schedule, she does not get answers to all of her questions. When she leaves, she thinks, “Wow, I can’t even ask questions correctly. I don’t do any of this right.”
Catastrophizing: Expecting that the worst will happen.
Daniel is preparing for vacation with his family. He decides not to make a plan to manage his diabetes while on the trip, because, “It’s not like I’ll stick to it at all anyway, because there won’t be any healthy food on the trip.”
Emotional reasoning: Mistaking how you feel about a situation with how the situation really is.
Jo weighs herself after a couple weeks of working out daily, only to find that her weight has not changed. She feels like nothing she’s doing is working and thinks, “I shouldn’t keep trying, because nothing is changing.”
Mind reading: Thinking you know how another person thinks or feels about you without checking evidence from their actions.
Daniel’s doctor is very rushed during his next appointment. Daniel thinks, “She must not like me because I’m not doing good enough at managing my diabetes.
Fortune Telling Error: Anticipating negative outcomes and then thinking your anticipation is fact.
Right after Jo was diagnosed with

...
AI Performance on Human Tasks
by Asher Ellis — 2022-03-03T20:13:18.726Z

This was an independent project with guidance and support from Vael Gates and Richard Korzekwa--thank you both for your mentorship!

Introduction

This project was inspired by a

prompt

from the

AI Impacts

project:

For intellectual skills where machines have surpassed humans, find out how long it took to go from the worst performance to average human skill, and from average human skill to superhuman skill.

I initially tried to answer this question for several task areas. But over the course of this project, I pivoted more towards analyzing the advantages and disadvantages computer programs have over humans in each task, including the sources of error. I made this pivot mostly for practical reasons. For some tasks, machine programs are only tested against expert human performance, making them difficult to compare to “beginner” and “average” humans. In other tasks, the differences between human and machine performance are qualitative rather than quantitative. It seemed most appropriate to describe how machines and humans differ in performance rather than quantify it. I used this information to predict whether AI will replace or augment humans in performing these task areas.

I picked five task areas, each representing different aspects of human cognition:

Poker-playing (strategy and interdependent decision-making)
Image classification (a key subset of vision and perception)
Text-summarization (interpreting and manipulating text)
Creating static visual art (aesthetics and ingenuity)
Human-like dexterity (manipulating physical objects)

Here is a summary of my conclusions:

Task	Current capabilities
Poker	Superhuman (consistently)
Image classification	Superhuman (usually)
Text-summarization	Average human (unreliable)
Static visual art	Superhuman (but requires human input)
Human-like dexterity	Below humans (except specific tasks)

See "Discussion / Personal Predictions" section for my predictions in how AI will machines will replace or augment humans in these tasks.

Task 1: Poker

Poker-playing is a strong

case study

for many aspects of human decision-making. Most significantly, it involves strategic decision-making against an opponent. Strong poker players use betting strategies, each having different consequences, which correspond to risk management and strategy broadly. Unlike chess and checkers, poker requires deciding under imperfect knowledge since you never know y...
PSA: if you are in Russia, probably move out ASAP
by yagudin — 2022-03-03T20:01:07.041Z

The Metaculus crowd thinks that it's very likely that Russia will restrict emigration:

I myself am more optimistic about this question resolving negatively. But even if Russia would not close borders for a notable fraction of its citizens, it seems fairly likely that the aviation industry will collapse or shrink due to sanctions.

Related forecasts:
- https://www.metaculus.com/questions/9918/martial-law-in-russia-before-april-2022/
- https://manifold.markets/DanielFilan/will-martial-law-be-declared-in-rus
A Warm Up Problem for Yudkowsky's New Fiction
by Robert Kennedy — 2022-03-03T15:25:15.402Z

Hello, this is my first post on lesswrong, a community I deeply value. Feel free to tell me to RTFM, especially if you can point me there.

Yesterday I attended the weekly rationalist meetup at "The Territory" in Seattle for the first time. I attended for many reasons, but I was particularly excited to discuss Yudkowsky's new novel with others. His novel can be found here: https://www.glowfic.com/posts/4582

Only one of the eleven or so people there had heard about it, so this post is my attempt to market the book. Since all marketing should also add value, I will now move on to adding value by giving you a warm-up problem for some of the math and concepts you will encounter in this novel.

The problem is as such:

You are playing a game against ROB, the robber. In this game, ROB will choose two distinct arbitrary (real/computable) numbers, A and B. ROB will send both numbers to TABI the arbiter, who will secretly flip a fair coin and then hand you either A or B depending on the outcome of the flip. Your task is to come up with an algorithm which does better than 50% accuracy in determining if you were handed the larger number.

I will post the solution tomorrow, and then I will highlight specific ways I have applied the lessons from Yudkowsky's latest work in real/professional life.

Note that the book will not explicitly spoil this problem for you, and vice versa.

Edit: solution is here.
Covid 3/3/2022: Move Along
by Zvi — 2022-03-03T12:00:01.761Z

The number of Ukrainian Covid-19 cases is now ‘nobody gives a f***.’ Quite right. True existential threats put things in perspective. If you are more worried about catching Covid-19 than you are about the war and its possible escalation, you have a poor threat model.

That does not mean that we can stop paying attention to Covid-19. Prevention efforts continue to hamper our way of life, our social fabric and our lived experience.

The good news is that this is rapidly ramping down in many places, and perhaps coming to an end. The CDC has revised its mask guidelines to target a much more sensible metric, and now recommends unmasking in a large portion of the country. I would go farther, but the offer seems acceptable, and at worst fully in line with their stands against such joys as munching on raw cookie dough. New York where I live is lifting both its mask and vaccine mandates soon, including in schools. Many other states are doing the same.

The other good news is that my wife and I will welcome our third child later today. I managed to finish almost everything for this post yesterday, although I won’t be able to do a proper dive on Biden’s new 96-page plan. I hope to be able to continue updates without interruption, but it is possible next week’s will be an exception or stick to only the bare essentials.

Let’s run the numbers.

Executive Summary

CDC revises masking guidelines to be based on hospital capacity.
Mask and vaccine mandates are being lifted in many places.
Attention rightfully shifts to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Let’s run the numbers.

The Numbers

Predictions

Prediction from last week: 340k cases (-30%) and 10,460 deaths (-20%).

Results: 329k cases (-33%) and 11,333 deaths (-13%).

Prediction for next week: 247k cases (-25%) and 9.200 deaths (-19%).

I keep expecting deaths to drop more than they do, and each week they keep dropping much less than cases drop. That seems like it can’t be sustained, and it feels like we are learning a lot about the time distribution of deaths, but at some point it’s going to have to come down. Nothing changed in terms of the actual death rate, so it doesn’t make any sense. Still, I have to expect something similar to continue for now.

Cases continue to drop at a steady pace. Restrictions are being weakened in many places, so I’d expect the drop to slow down, but I don’t expect it to stall or rever...
The Geometric Series of 1/(d+1) is a Fraction in Base-d
by lsusr — 2022-03-03T05:06:45.837Z

Suppose x is a positive number less than 1. What is the sum of the positive powers of x?

For example, suppose x=12.

∞∑i=1xi=∞∑i=112i=121+122+123+…=12+14+18+…=1

The case where x=12 is intuitively obvious in base-10, but it's even more intuitively obvious in base-2. I will use a subscript to indicate base e.g. 0.5=0.12, 4=1002, 16=100002 and 1017=17.

∞∑i=1xi=∞∑i=1110i2=∞∑i=10.1i2=0.12+0.012+0.0012+0.00012+…=0.1111111112…=0.¯12=1

The above trick works for the inverse of any positive integer. Suppose x=117.

∞∑i=1xi=∞∑i=1110i17=∞∑i=10.1i17=0.117+0.0117+0.00117+0.000117+…=0.11111111117…=0.¯117=116

We can generalize to any denominator d.

∞∑i=11di=1d−1∞∑i=01di=1+1d−1=d−1d−1+1d−1=dd−1=11−1d

The relationship holds even when d is not an integer. Let r=1d.

∞∑i=0ri=11−r

This is the equation for a geometric series.
Understanding Eliezer's "Any Fact Would Move Me in the Same Direction"
by lhc — 2022-03-03T04:30:42.781Z

Eliezer says some confusing things in Biology Inspired Timelines:

Even without knowing the specifics [..] you ought to be able to reason abstractly about a directional update that you would make, if you knew any specifics instead of none.

A few lines down, he admits it might be tricky to get:

(Though I say this without much hope; I have not had very much luck in telling people about predictable directional updates they would make, if they knew something instead of nothing about a subject. I think it's probably too abstract for most people to feel in their gut, or something like that, so their brain ignores it and moves on in the end.

I have had life experience with learning more about a thing, updating, and then going to myself, "Wow, I should've been able to predict in retrospect that learning almost any specific fact would move my opinions in that same direction." But I worry this is not a common experience, for it involves a real experience of discovery, and preferably more than one to get the generalization.)

I can stomach abstract and confusing, but this also smelled like a violation of the law of conservation of expected evidence. An excerpt, from fifteen years ago:

There is no possible plan you can devise, no clever strategy, no cunning device, by which you can legitimately expect your confidence in a fixed proposition to be higher (on average) than before.

So why does he seem to be saying different now? Stop reading now if you want to figure this out for yourself first.

Proof of Eliezer's claim.

Long story short: this way of reasoning would in fact be a refined application of CoEE, not a violation; to get yourself to be more tightly in accord with it. Your prior "should" be the expected posterior. If it isn't, something (the prior) needs to change.

It might help to see the (fairly trivial) math actually say "make your confidence higher than before".

Setup

Let's take:

H:= some hypothesis you're reasoning about. Like "There is a substantial difference between brain machinery and AGI machinery".

E:={w∈ worlds | learning that I'm in world w would move me closer to H}.

or, expressed more mathematically:

E:={w∈ worlds | P(H|{w})≥P(H)}.

Note: This is ever-so-slightly meta, so stare at it a little if you're not used to this. As a reminder: an event is any collection of worlds

...