trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
The Three Little Piggies of Rationality
by Sam Enright — 2022-02-15T20:36:33.574Z

There are three related logical fallacies, which I call the Three Little Piggies of rationality. A strawman is when you argue against a simplified view that your opponent doesn’t have. A steelman is when you argue against a more sophisticated view than the one your opponent has. And a weakman is when you argue against your opponent’s actual position, but your opponent is unrepresentatively stupid of people who hold that belief in general.

Strawmanning is obviously bad. It’s less obvious that steelmanning is good. Why argue against a view that your opponent doesn’t have? I can think of a few reasons:

1. The actual view is a logical subset of the more sophisticated view, such that, if you defeat the stronger argument, you defeat the weaker one too.

2. An interlocutor will be insulted if you think they’re dumber than they are, but not if you think they’re smarter than they are. The steelman is the most sophisticated position that they could reasonably have. A steelman is a hedge against being mistaken about what their actual position is.

3. Arguing against unsophisticated positions doesn’t bring you any closer to the truth. Steelman your opponent because that way the belief you’re dealing with has some chance of being true.

Of these, I’m most uncertain of (1). Why would a worse argument be a subset of a better one? You might say that this is just the definition of a steelman: it has the property that, if it’s false, then the view that’s being steelmanned is false. But in this case, a steelman is quite complicated to construct, as you have to ensure it has a precise logical property.

There is a related problem with steelmanning in practice, which is that it is all too often an attempt to shoehorn someone’s argument into your worldview. Imagine a conversation in which a deontologist expresses a belief that is “steelmanned” by a consequentialist:

Deontologist’s belief: Universal healthcare is bad because I shouldn’t have to pay for someone’s bad choices, like being fat or a smoker.

Consequentialist’s steelman: Universal healthcare creates moral hazard, because people do not bear the cost of their irresponsible actions, like eating junk food and smoking.

Notice the bait-and-switch. The initial belief is about moral obligation, and the steelman is only about consequences. A believer in personal responsibility may still favour a market healthcare system even if it incre...
Bazant: An alternate covid calculator
by Elizabeth — 2022-02-15T19:50:08.144Z

Most of what I see people use Microcovid.org for now is estimating risk for large gatherings, which it was not designed for and thus doesn’t handle very well. I spent a few hours going through every covid calculator I could find and this calculator from the Bazant lab at MIT, while less user-friendly than Microcovid and having some flaws of its own, is tailored made for calculating risks for groups indoors, and I think it is worth a shot.

[Note: I’ll be discussing the advanced version of the calculator here; I found the basic version too limited]

The Bazant calculator comes out of physics lab with a very detailed model of how covid particles hang and decay in the air, and how this is affected by ventilation and filtration. I haven’t checked their model, but I never checked Microcovid’s model either. The Bazant calculator lets you very finely adjust the parameters of a room: dimensions, mechanical ventilation, air filtration, etc. It combines those with more familiar parameters like vaccination and mask usage and feeds them into the model in this paper to produce an estimate of how long N people can be in a room before they accumulate a per-person level of risk between 0 and 1 (1 = person is definitely getting covid = 1,000,000 microcovids per person; .1 = 10% chance someone gets sick = 100,000 microcovids per person). It also produces an estimate of how much CO2 should accumulate over that time, letting you use a CO2 monitor to check its work and notice if risk is accumulating more rapidly than expected.

Reasons/scenarios to use the Bazant calculator over Microcovid:

You have a large group and want to set % immunized or effective mask usage for the group as a whole, instead of configuring everyone’s vaccinations and masks individually.
You want to incorporate the mechanics of the room and ventilation in really excruciating detail.
You want to set your own estimate for prevalence based on beliefs about your subpopulation.
You want a live check on your work, in the form of the CO2 estimates.

Reasons to use Microcovid instead:

Your scenario is outside – Bazant calculator doesn’t handle this at all.
You don’t want to have an opinion on infection prevalence, immunization, or mask usage.
Your masks are better than surgical masks (Bazant doesn’t handle N95 or similar. Also, it rates surgical masks as 90% effective, which seems very high to me).
Your per-p

...
The Territory
by LoganStrohl — 2022-02-15T18:56:36.992Z

I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience of hiking in the wilderness with a map and compass but no cell service. I recommend it, if you haven’t.

I somehow did not quite all-the-way understand what a map even is until I was lost on my own under these circumstances. I knew in a “factual knowledge” sense that maps were drawings of the land, and I’d even used them as a kid and teenager to help my family navigate on road trips. But when I was lost in a national park, trying to find my way back to my car, I confronted the incompleteness of my knowledge of maps. There was a shift.

My map had trail lines drawn on it, with labels like “Canyon Trail”. I’d pause my walking to look at the shape of “Canyon Trail”, noting that it intersected "Overlook Trail" somewhere off to the left of where I was standing. Then I would walk again—attempting, I think, to "follow Canyon Trail to Overlook Trail".

I would move back and forth between walking and map consultation, making sure I remembered which way the trails were supposed to go, constantly placing and replacing myself within the borders of the lines drawn on the paper. The more distressed I felt about being lost, the more often I turned to the map, looking for something to hold on to.

The shift happened after… (this is sort of embarrassing, it’s so simple. But it’s true.) The shift happened after, having oriented myself toward “North”, I happened to lower the map a little bit, probably out of exhaustion. I held it a bit below eye level, so that it was no longer taking up my whole field of vision.

I looked at the squiggly blue line on the map, and the close-together lines that I knew indicated steepness. And I saw to my left, because the map was not blocking my vision, a creek. Up ahead, I saw a steep hill.

I realized that the blue line was probably a drawing of that creek.

The contour lines were a drawing of that hill.

And then this wild rushing sensation began to wash over me. I was starting to get it. Slowly, I tilted the paper in my hands from a vertical position, partially blocking my view...

...to a horizontal position, parallel to the ground.

I held the map that way, looking out at the world the cartographer had tried to draw, and it was as though the territory rose up to meet the map, while the map spread itself across the surface of the territory. And I said to myself...
How harmful are improvements in AI? + Poll
by tilmanr — 2022-02-15T18:16:07.854Z

This post was written by Marius Hobbhahn and Tilman Räuker.

Disclaimer: We have previously posted

this piece

on the EA forum. We now post it here because LW allows for polls, and we have worked in additional feedback.

Over the last years, we have encountered stances on development within AI from “all forms of development in AI is bad” over “sometimes development can be justified” to “If it means control over AI technologies, development could be a necessary evil.” We think it is essential to be aware of these different perspectives of development in AI and be able to deduct where other researchers/organizations stand. This post will look at different considerations and trade-offs regarding AI development and possible pitfalls.

You are welcome to add further reasons, trade-offs, etc.

TL;DR: We investigate different views on development and their considerations. We could not identify one view as clearly superior. We think that the interaction with non-aligned actors, e.g. AI researchers/companies, can make it necessary to apply strategies that increase acceleration.

Ozzie has recently posted

13 different stances on AGI

. Our post tries to pick up some of his suggested “next steps.”

Poll

Elicit Prediction (forecast.elicit.org/binary/questions/K2YXvzhG9)

A big clarification

We know that different people and institutions within the EA space hold different beliefs regarding the issue of AI acceleration. Our aim is NOT to single out and criticize them but rather to have a civil discussion on a subject that seems pretty crucial to AI alignment.
We don’t have an inside view into the decision-making that led to the foundation of different institutions. Still, we are optimistic that with multiple founders, grantmakers, and advisors involved, a lot of time went into thinking about the possible downsides of AI acceleration.

Definition

We think of AI alignment as the process of aligning the goals of artificial systems with the broader goals of humanity.

We loosely define AI acceleration as everything that increases the pace of AI development/capabilities i.e. shortens transformative AI (TAI) timelines. In this post, we primarily look at AI acceleration that comes as a byproduct of alignment efforts. Examples include accidentally developing more efficient training techniques while doing alignment research or actively improving state-of-t...
Defending One-Dimensional Ethics
by HoldenKarnofsky — 2022-02-15T17:20:20.107Z

Previously, I introduced the idea of "future-proof ethics." Ethics based on "common sense" and the conventions of the time has a horrible track record; future-proof ethics is about trying to make ethical decisions that we can remain proud of in the future, after a great deal of (societal and/or personal) moral progress.

Here I'm going to examine some of the stranger aspects of the "future-proof" approach I outlined, particularly ways in which it pushes us toward being one-dimensional: allowing our ethical decision-making to be "taken over" by the opportunity to help a large number of persons in the same way.

Utilitarianism implies that providing a modest benefit to a large enough number of persons can swamp all other ethical considerations, so the best way to make the world a better place may involve focusing exclusively on helping animals (who are extremely numerous and relatively straightforward to help), or on people who haven’t been born yet (e.g., via working to reduce existential risks).

It also can (potentially) imply things like: "If you have $1 billion to spend, it might be that you should spend it all on a single global health intervention."

These ideas can be disturbing and off-putting, but I think there is also a strong case for them, for those who wish their ethics to be principled and focused on the interests of others.

I'm genuinely conflicted about how "one-dimensional" my ethics should be, so I'm going to examine these issues via a dialogue between two versions of myself: Utilitarian Holden (UH) and Non-Utilitarian Holden (NUH). These represent actual dialogues I’ve had with myself (so neither side is a pure straw person), although this particular dialogue serves primarily to illustrate UH's views and how they are defended against initial and/or basic objections from NUH. In future dialogues, NUH will raise more sophisticated objections.

I think this topic is important, but it is undoubtedly about philosophy, so if you hate that, probably skip it.

Part 1: enough "nice day at the beach" benefits can outweigh all other ethical considerations

To keep it clear who's talking when, I'm using -UH- for "Utilitarian Holden" and -NUH- for "non-Utilitarian Holden." (In the audio version of this piece, my wife voices NUH.)

-UH-

To set the stage, I think utilitarianism is the best candidate for an other-centered ethics, i.e., an ethi...
Paradigm-building: Conclusion and practical takeaways
by Cameron Berg — 2022-02-15T16:11:08.985Z

Recapping the sequence

Many thanks for reading this sequence all the way through! Recall this chart from the introductory post:

I’ve added some labels to clarify what this sequence was intended (and not intended) to cover. Namely, I take seriously John Wentworth’s claim that AGI safety research is still in a preparadigmatic phase; accordingly, my goal in this sequence was to sketch the space of plausible frameworks for doing technical safety work, starting from first principles, in an attempt to supply the field with a functional and coherent paradigm. Ultimately, I have presented this as a hierarchical series of questions:

What is the predicted architecture of the learning algorithm(s) used by AGI?
What are the most likely bad outcomes of this learning architecture?
What are the control proposals for minimizing these bad outcomes?
What are the implementation proposals for these control proposals?
What is the predicted timeline for the development of AGI?

Surely the boldest claim of this sequence is that these are the right questions to ask—that there is no future in which AGI safety research succeeds without having answered these questions. Though I do believe later questions rely in large part on answers to earlier questions, I do not think it is impossible to make any progress on the later questions—and therefore, that safety research must start paying attention to all of these questions as soon as possible.

I am certain that this framework is still a work in progress, no doubt containing mistakes and ambiguities that require further adjudication (if you think you have found some of either, please leave a comment on the relevant part of the sequence!). My hope is that this framework ultimately represents a logically coherent and methodologically useful synthesis of the wide array of perspectives currently on offer in safety work. As I discussed earlier, I also think that this sequence can be read as a low-resolution prediction about what the end-to-end progress of the field will end up looking like when all is said and done.

Practical takeaways and next steps

I also envision this framework serving as a practical communication tool that enables researchers to speak ‘across the valley’ of (sometimes radically) different priors. I imagine safety research would be far better understood and miscommunications more quickly diffused if researchers included somet...
Productivity Notes I
by matto — 2022-02-15T13:08:12.974Z

Originally published on my blog

Last November I decided to become more intentional about how I go about work. The reasons for this are legion, so I'll save them for another post. Today, I just want to describe the system I pieced together and have been using since November.

The system is split into two parts: one for work and one for my personal life. That's because these two modes are fundamentally different.

My personal life moves slowly. There's a lot of exploration and careful iteration. That means I often find myself coming back to ideas or projects weeks or months after having worked on them. For example, my whole writing practice moves through long cycles of gathering-organizing-writing-reviewing, so each note helps future-Matt pick up where present-Matt left off. This whole thing feels like gardening, really.

But at work, I move through brisk, chaotic streams of tasks. These I try to capture, evaluate, and close out, at least as much as possible. There's less value in pondering things and more in simply not losing track of everything--an ok decision now is worth much more than a perfect decision later. It's also important to note who is involved so I can stay on top of communication, especially since I work remotely.

Anyway, let's dive into the details.

The Personal System

I use a slim version of BASB to keep track of Projects, Resources, Areas, and Archives.

Projects contain everything that I'm working on now or planning to work on.

I keep an index split into sections like "programming" or "writing", which are ordered by how soon I'll likely work on something.

Projects include everything from "Write blog post about X" or "Go through The Little Schemer" to "Fix the dishwasher."

This is where I note down progress and next steps. Doing so makes it much easier to restart work on a project weeks or months later.

Resources are where I dump all my notes, quotes, and files. It's proven especially useful for collecting notes on what I read because otherwise I'd forgot almost everything.

Areas contain personal, long-term streams of work, eg. exercising. However, this space is mostly empty because of how habitual exercise has become.

When a project is finished, I move it to the Archives.

I also keep around a file called INBOX so I can quickly save a quote or idea without have to find a good place for it first.

Every week, I do a short review and plan the nex

...
Becoming Stronger as Epistemologist: Introduction
by adamShimi — 2022-02-15T06:15:04.652Z

Introduction: a new hope

If you’ve read

anything

I

wrote

in the last 6 months, you know that I’m into the epistemology of alignment. More precisely, I’m into figuring out how to leverage epistemic tools and insights for helping both researchers make progress and newcomers find their footing, as well as proposing new directions for interesting research bets.

Yet I’ve been quite miserable these last few weeks, even months, because of a situation I felt trapped in: seeing all these fires that I thought epistemic tools could put out, yet spending so much time on them that I couldn’t learn and build the tools needed in the first place. “How can I possibly take the time to get stronger as an epistemologist?”, I asked myself

Did you notice? This is what Mark Manson

calls a VCR question

: a question that is trivial and easy to answer from the outside, but looks impossible to deal with from the inside. When looking at it objectively, the answer is clearly

That’s what multiple friends in alignment made me realize these last few days. I should and can just dedicate most of my time to that training for the foreseeable future. Moreover, it sounds like a far better idea than trying to put out fire after fire with my current metaphorical glass of water.

So I’ve decided to spend the next 2 months focusing only on that training. I’ll still do a couple of mentoring and field-building activities, but all my research time will be dedicated to finding, learning, building and honing new epistemic tools.

This post is a short explanation of what this will look like, and what I will post on LW as a consequence of this training.

Thanks to Connor, John, Alex, Rob, and Flora for convincing me to just do it.

Scholarship, with applications

What I have in mind amounts to reading and studying a bunch of papers, books and other resources. It’s not a training with particular exercises, but instead a search for the tools of my trade, be they already forged or in need of crafting.

But what exactly will I be reading? That’s the fun part: almost anything works, as long as it points towards interesting epistemology. Philosophy of science of course, but also physics and engineering, science-fiction predictions, evolutionary biology, economic criticism, formalization of sociological theories, principles of animation, and many more. I have a loooooong list of resources to pick from, and will definitely s...
Does Impedance Matter?
by jefftk — 2022-02-15T03:10:03.785Z

Traditionally, you plug an electric instrument into an amp. Amps are big
and heavy, however, so if you are already planning to play with a PA
and monitors you might like to connect your instrument directly to the
PA. There are two main downsides to this:

In many styles of music you use an amp that isn't faithfully
reproducing the input, and these modifications are an important part
of your sound.

Passive pickups are designed to work with high input impedance
(~1MΩ), but a PA's line inputs are much lower (~10kΩ).
When driving a low impedance input you don't get accurate frequency
response, especially at the high end.

I'm primarily interested in the second downside, the loss of high
frequencies, and I'm curious how much of a thing it is. What happens
if I do just go ahead and connect my instrument to the soundboard?
What if I use a passive DI? Let's find out!

I tested with a Gold
Tone GME-4, tone knob at 10 (no low pass). I tried the following
inputs:

Line: the line input of a Soundcraft
EPM-8 analog mixer. Rated 10kΩ.

Line II: the line input of a Mackie
SRM150. Rated 10kΩ.

DI: a Radial
ProDI passive direct box. Rated 140kΩ.

Instrument: the instrument input of a Mackie
SRM150. Rated 1MΩ.

Pedal: a Boss
BD2 in bypass mode. Rated 1MΩ.

Pedal II: an MXR M222 in bypass
mode. Unspecified input impedance.

Here's how they sounded with a range of things I do on the mandolin:

Chords

(

Line, mp3)

(

Line II,
mp3)

(

DI, mp3)

(

Instrument, mp3)

(

Pedal, mp3)

(

Pedal II, mp3)

High riff

(

Line,
mp3)

(

Line II,
mp3)

(

DI,
mp3)

(

Instrument,
mp3)

(

Pedal, mp3)

(

Pedal II,
mp3)

Low riff

(

Line, mp3)

(

Line II,
mp3)

(

DI, mp3)

(

Instrument,
mp3)

(

Pedal, mp3)

(

Pedal II, mp3)

High melody

(

Line, mp3)

(

Line II,
mp3)

(

DI, mp3)

(

Instrument, mp3)

(

Pedal, mp3)

(

Pedal II, mp3)

Medium melody

(

Line, mp3)

(

Line II,
mp3)

(

DI, mp3)

(

Instrument,
mp3)

(

Pedal, mp3)

(

Pedal II, mp3)

Low melody

(

Line, mp3)

(

Line II...
Epsilon is not a probability, it's a cop-out
by Shmi — 2022-02-15T02:48:53.892Z

A lot of people, after learning on this site that 0 and 1 are "not probabilities," (they are, just ask a mathematician, but they are not useful for Bayesian updating) quickly switch to using "epsilon" or "one minus epsilon" instead, meaning "a reeeeaaaalllly tiny number, but not technically zero". My interpretation of this is lazy signaling of "I am a good Bayesian" without actually doing the work. Why? Because if you ask this person what kind of evidence would change their estimate from "epsilon" to, say, 5%, they would be hard pressed to come up with anything sensible.

Well, that's the descriptive part, which is much easier than the prescriptive part: what to do instead of just labeling what you consider a negligible probability epsilon and never updating it. As an aside, the complexity difference between identifying issues and successfully fixing them is generally like P vs. NP.

Probably in some cases one can actually put a number on a tiny probability (e.g. the odds of the sun rising tomorrow, without any additional data, is about 1-1/average number of consecutive sunrises). In other cases it would be more accurate to say "I have no idea, I would be super surprised if the Pascal's mugger was telling the truth, but who knows, I have been super surprised before." In yet other cases what one deems "epsilon" would be something logically inconsistent (like successfully two-boxing in a perfect predictor Newcomb's setup). Surely there are other cases, as well. But I think it pays thinking through what exactly your "epsilon" means in a given situation.