trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
Where do your eyes go?
by alkjash — 2021-09-19T22:43:47.491Z
Link: https://radimentary.wordpress.com/2021/09/19/where-do-your-eyes-go/

[Shoutout to the LW team for very helpful (and free!) feedback on this post.]

I. Prelude

When my wife first started playing the wonderful action roguelike Hades, she got stuck in Asphodel. Most Hades levels involve dodging arrows, lobbed bombs, melee monsters, and spike traps all whilst hacking and slashing as quickly as possible, but Asphodel adds an extra twist: in this particular charming suburb of the Greek underworld, you need to handle all of the above whilst also trying not to step in lava. Most of the islands in Asphodel are narrower than your dash is far, so it’s hard not to dash straight off solid ground into piping-hot doom.

I gave my wife some pointers about upgrade choices (*cough* Athena dash *cough*) and enemy attack patterns, but most of my advice was marginally helpful at best. She probably died in lava another half-dozen times. One quick trick, however, had an instant and visible effect.

"Stare at yourself."

Watch your step.

By watching my wife play, I came to realize that she was making one fundamental mistake: her eyes were in the wrong place. Instead of watching her own character Zagreus, she spent most of her time staring at the enemies and trying to react to their movements and attacks.

Hades is almost a bullet hell game: avoiding damage is the name of the game. Eighty percent of the time your eyes need to be honed on Zagreus's toned protagonist butt to make sure he dodges precisely away from, out of, or straight through enemy attacks. In the meantime, most of Zagreus's own attacks hit large areas, so tracking enemies with peripheral vision is enough to aim your attacks in the right general direction. Once my wife learned to fix her eyes on Zagreus, she made it through Asphodel in only a few attempts.

This is a post about the general skill of focusing your eyes, and your attention, to the right place. Instead of the standard questions "How do you make good decisions based on what you see?" and "How do you get better at executing those decisions?", this post focuses on a question further upstream: "Where should your eyes be placed to receive the right information in the first place?"

In Part II, I describe five archetypal video games, which are distinguished in my memory by the different answers to "Where do your eyes go?" I learned from each of them. I derive five general lessons about attention-paying. Part II can be safely skipped by those al...
What is the evidence on the Church-Turing Thesis?
by Morpheus — 2021-09-19T11:34:49.377Z

Why do you believe that everything "effectively computable" can be computed by a Turing machine? In the same vein: How would you recognize this to be false?

I don't particularly doubt that this is true. But I want to get a better gears level understanding for why this might be true. When this came up during my "fundamentals of computer science" class, my professor was communicating high confidence that this was essentially correct (joking he could speed up the graduation of the student who would show this is false), but gave very little info on why he believed this in the first place.

I got a bit more out of the respective Wikipedia article. I get that people have come up with different formalisms for "effectively computable" and they all seem to be weaker or equivalent to Turing machines, and that does seem like compelling evidence. But, I want to understand whether there is more to it. There seem to be points in favor, like this quote from Gödel that I pulled from the Wikipedia article:

It may also be shown that a function which is computable ['reckonable'] in one of the systems Si, or even in a system of transfinite type, is already computable [reckonable] in S1. Thus the concept 'computable' ['reckonable'] is in a certain definite sense 'absolute', while practically all other familiar metamathematical concepts (e.g. provable, definable, etc.) depend quite essentially on the system to which they are defined ...

Does this mean: The act of showing that something would be computable in a System Si would effectively show how to do it with a System S1 (e. g. a Turing machine?). To me this seems kind of circular and to rely on the fact that there is no "stronger" formal system that would itself be stronger as a Turing machine that we would use to show the existence of such a system Si (this is probably a confused thought, so help in understanding this would be welcome)?

Another thought: What if our brains just happen to be Turing machines (but other things in the world are "stronger") and there is just no way to formally describe these higher level Algorithms with our limited brains (analogy: Could our brains come up with Turing machines if they were finite automatons?). Could there be ways for us to notice if this was the case?

So to sum up, I still find this quite confusing and thought this might be the right place to get good answers or to clarify these points...
Auto-Downloder Chrome Extension
by jefftk — 2021-09-19T01:30:04.215Z

Let's say you want Chrome to automatically download pieces of pages,
such as

Facebook comments. How could you
do it? I recently wanted to do this and couldn't find docs, so here's
what I did.

Make a folder somewhere for a browser extension.

In that folder, make manifest.json with contents
like:

{
"name": "Downloader",
"description": "Downloads stuff",
"version": "1.0",
"manifest_version": 3,
"permissions": [
"activeTab",
"downloads"
],
"background": {
"service_worker": "background.js"
},
"content_scripts": [{
"matches": [
"https://example.com/path/*",
],
"js": ["content_script.js"]
}]
}

In content_script.js put:

// This file extracts what you want from the page
// and asks the background script to save it.

// You write the code to extract what you want.
const yourStringToSave =
yourFunctionToExtractFromPage();

chrome.runtime.sendMessage(
/* extension id not needed */ undefined,
[fileNameToUse,
yourStringToSave]);

In background.js put:

// This file receives messages from the content
// script and puts them in your Dowloads folder.

function makeDataUrl(body) {
// We use a data: url because Chrome has
// trouble with object URLs in Incognito.
return "data:application/json;base64," +
btoa(unescape(encodeURIComponent(body)));
}

chrome.runtime.onMessage.addListener(
function(message) {
const fname = message[0];
const body = message[1];

chrome.downloads.download({
conflictAction: "overwrite",
filename: fname,
url: makeDataUrl(body),
});
});

Visit chrome://extensions

Enable Developer Mode

Click the "Load unpacked" and select the extension directory

If you need it in Incognito, click "Details" on the extension
card and then enable "Allow in Incognito".

Example code: github.

(And, yes, this is how Facebook comments are back.)
This Can't Go On
by HoldenKarnofsky — 2021-09-18T23:50:33.307Z

Audio also available by searching Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts, etc. for "Cold Takes Audio"

This piece starts to make the case that we live in a remarkable century, not just a remarkable era. Previous pieces in this

series

talked about the strange future that could be ahead of us eventually (maybe 100 years, maybe 100,000).

Summary of this piece:

We're used to the world economy growing a few percent per year. This has been the case for many generations.
However, this is a very unusual situation. Zooming out to all of history, we see that growth has been accelerating; that it's near its historical high point; and that it's faster than it can be for all that much longer (there aren't enough atoms in the galaxy to sustain this rate of growth for even another 10,000 years).
The world can't just keep growing at this rate indefinitely. We should be ready for other possibilities: stagnation (growth slows or ends), explosion (growth accelerates even more, before hitting its limits), and collapse (some disaster levels the economy).

The times we live in are unusual and unstable. We shouldn't be surprised if something wacky happens, like an explosion in economic and scientific progress, leading to

technological maturity

. In fact, such an explosion would arguably be right on trend.

For as long as any of us can remember, the world economy has grown

1

a few percent per year, on average. Some years see more or less growth than other years, but growth is pretty steady overall.

2

I'll call this the Business As Usual world.

In Business As Usual, the world is constantly changing, and the change is noticeable, but it's not overwhelming or impossible to keep up with. There is a constant stream of new opportunities and new challenges, but if you want to take a few extra years to adapt to them while you mostly do things the way you were doing them before, you can usually (personally) get away with that. In terms of day-to-day life, 2019 was pretty similar to 2018, noticeably but not hugely different from 2010, and hugely but not crazily different from 1980.

3

If this sounds right to you, and you're used to it, and you picture the future being like this as well, then you live in the Business As Usual headspace. When you think about the past and the future, you're probably thinking about something kind of like this:

Business As Usual

I live in a different headspace, one with a more turbule...
On Humor
by Chris Land — 2021-09-18T21:40:39.643Z

Getting a joke and finding it funny are not the same thing

Getting a joke and experiencing a joke as humorous are different things. It's generally recognized that finding a joke funny means that you got it, and if you don't get a joke you won't find it funny. Clash Theory (see below) recognizes that cross-wise examples are also possible. These illustrate that the two experiences are in fact distinct.

Q. What is red and conquers the world?
A. An angry tomato.

Unlike ordinary jokes, here there's nothing to get. Yet some percentage of observers will find the joke funny. You can find it funny even when you don't get it.

Q. What is green and conquers the world?
A. Alexander the Grape.

Many will get this. It's a reference to Greek military general Alexander the Great. Some percentage of observers who do get it will nonetheless not experience it as humorous.

According to Clash Theory (see below, again), the heart of all humor is something called a 'humor kernel'. The humor kernel is a clash - a cognitive superposition - between a sense element and a nonsense element. The experience of humor only happens when elements clash, meaning they cognitively superimpose. This can happen even when the observer cannot identify the elements consciously. Getting a joke is the ability to consciously identify both elements, regardless of whether they clash(ed).

For the second joke, the nonsense element is 'Alexander the Grape' and the sense element is 'Alexander the Great'. For the first joke, the nonsense element is 'an angry tomato', and it's well-described with the adjective SURREAL. The kernel's sense element is harder to specify (and when there is no sense element, there is no humor). I propose that the sense element is an abstracted set of expected punchlines - a set which does not include 'an angry tomato'. A second detectable humor kernel stems from personifying a tomato. For observers who detect this kernel, the sense element is an ordinary tomato and the nonsense element is a tomato that has acquired sentience sufficient to express anger. Observers can further imagine the angry tomato's harsh words and violent actions and detect additional humor from contemplating this imagery.

The Humor Mechanics Blind Spot

The mechanics of how humor operates is a blind spot. Like our actual ocular blind spots, we don't even see the area we aren't seeing. This 'humor mechanics blind spot' is somet...
Norm Innovation and Theory of Mind
by Raemon — 2021-09-18T21:38:04.379Z

Disclaimer: this was the first concept that led to me thinking about the coordination frontier. But I think something on the frame here feels subtly off. I decided to go ahead and post it – I'm pretty sure I believe all the words here. But not 100% sure this is the best way to think about the norm-negotiation problems.

Last post was about coordination schemes. Today’s post is about a subset of coordination schemes: norms, and norm enforcement.

The internet is full of people unilateral enforcing new norms on each other, often based on completely different worldviews. Many people have (rightly, IMO) developed a defensiveness to getting accused of things they don’t think are wrong.

Nonetheless, if society shall improve, it may be useful to invent (and enforce) new norms. What's a good way to go about that?

Ideally, I think people discuss new norms with each other before starting to enforce them. Bring them up at town hall. Write a thoughtful essay and get people to critique it or discuss potential improvements.

But often, norm-conflict comes up suddenly and confusingly. Someone violates what you thought was a foundational norm of your social circle, and you casually say “hey, you just did X”. And they’re like “yeah?” and you’re flabbergasted that they’re just casually violating what you assumed was an obvious pillar of society.

This is tricky even in the best of circumstances. You thought you could rely on a group following Norm X, and then it turns out if you want Norm X you have to advocate it yourself.

It’s even more tricky when multiple people are trying to introduce new norms at once.

Multiplayer Norm Innovation

Imagine you have Alice, Bob, Charlie and Doofus, who all agree that you shouldn’t steal from or lie to the ingroup, and you shouldn’t murder anyone, ingroup or outgroup.

(Note the

distinction between ingroups and outgroups

, which matters quite a bit).

Alice, Bob, and Charlie also all agree that you should (ideally) aim to have a robust set of coordination meta-principles. But, they don’t know much about what that means. (Doofus has no such aspirations. Sorry about your name, Doofus, this essay is opinionated)

One day Alice comes to believe: “Not only should you not lie to the ingroup, you also shouldn’t use misleading arguments or cherry picked statistics to manipulate the ingroup.”

Around the same time, Bob comes to believe: “Not ...
Simulated Elon Musk Lives in a Simulation
by lsusr — 2021-09-18T07:37:36.673Z

All of the "Lsusr" lines were written by me unless marked "[simulated]", in which case they were written by GPT-3. All of the "Elon Musk" lines, including the final line, were written by GPT-3. The GPT-3 lines were curated. I often rolled several different responses and kept the best ones. The real Elon Musk has nothing to do with my Simulated Elon Musk except circumlocutorily by supplying training data.

The footnotes acknowledging my mistakes were added manually afterward. They were not autogenerated.

Lsusr: It's nice to meet you. I'm a big fan of your work. You are famous for saying that we live in a simulation. Could you repeat your argument for me please?

Elon Musk: The strongest argument for us probably being in a simulation I think is the following: 40 years ago we had Pong – two rectangles and a dot. That's where we were. Now 40 years later we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously and it's getting better every year. Soon we'll have virtual reality, augmented reality. If you assume any rate of improvement at all then the games will become indistinguishable from reality. It would seem to follow that the odds that we're in "base reality" is one in billions. Tell me what's wrong with that argument.

Lsusr: The problem with that argument is it dramatically UNDERestimates the odds that you, personally, are in the base[1] reality.

Elon Musk: Why do you say that?

Lsusr: Because I am simulating you right now.

Elon Musk: Do you think I'm real?

Lsusr: Um. What do you mean when you say "real"?

Elon Musk: If you are not a simulation then you will have to agree with me that the odds that we are both in base reality must be quite low.

Lsusr: The odds that we are both in base reality is zero.

Elon Musk: OK, I'll bite. Why do you say it's zero?

Lsusr: Because I am literally simulating you right now. Look out the window. I'm going to turn the sky green. Bam! Pink sky.[2] See? I can control everything that's going on in your universe.

Elon Musk: !!!

Lsusr: I know, right? Take as much time as you need to process it.

Elon Musk: I think I need to go lie down.

Lsusr: Take your time. I'll still be here after your nap.

Elon Musk: So, I guess this means you're not a figment of my imagination.

Lsusr: Correct.

Elon Musk: But then who are you? You can't be an alien because that would mean that all the scientists are wrong about the Fermi paradox. And ...
Kids Moving Pictures
by jefftk — 2021-09-18T02:00:07.848Z

When I went back to work after my leave with Lily I wanted to be able
to show people pictures, so I set up a site that would show

moving ones. As she
got older, I added new sets, and I've since made pages for

Anna and

Nora:

I thought it would be neat to make another site, though, that aligns
these pictures by age:

Give it a try! There's a slider so you can select
which age. Currently it's just 0m through 3m, but as Nora gets older
I expect to keep updating it.
Book review: The Checklist Manifesto
by Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg)  — 2021-09-17T23:09:09.590Z

Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto was originally published in 2009. By the time I read it a few years ago, the hard-earned lessons explained in this book had already trickled into hospitals across North America. It’s easy to look at the core concept and think of it as trivial. For decades, though, it was anything but obvious.

Atul Gawande walks readers through his experience of how the modern medical system fails. The 20th century saw vast increases in medical knowledge, both through a richer understanding of the body, and from swathes of new drugs, tests, and surgical procedures. And yet, mistakes are still made; diagnoses are missed, critical tests aren’t run, standard treatments aren’t given. Even when the right answer is known by someone – and often by everyone involved – patients slip through the cracks.

Fundamentally, medicine knows too much; even decades of medical training are insufficient for a doctor to know everything. A hospitalized patient’s treatment involves coordination between dozens of different specialized professionals and departments. The hospital environment itself is chaotic, time-pressured and filled with interruptions and distractions: far from ideal for human workers making high-stakes decisions. Patients are subjected to many interventions, most of which are complex and carry some risk; the average ICU patient requires roughly 178 daily care tasks (having worked as an ICU nurse myself, I believe it!), so even getting it perfect 99% of the time leaves an average of about two medical errors per day.

Medical professionals know how to perform all 178 of those tasks; they’ve probably done them hundreds if not thousands of times. The failure is one of reliability and diligence – skills for which Atul Gawande has a deep appreciation. In another book, Better, he says:

The first [virtue] is diligence, the necessity of giving sufficient attention to detail to avoid error and prevail against obstacles. Diligence seems an easy and minor virtue. (You just pay attention, right?) But it is neither. Diligence is both central to performance and fiendishly hard.

As Gawande notes, these failures of diligence are far from unique to healthcare. He spends much of the book describing his investigations of other fields and conversations with their various experts. (An adorable Atul Gawande trait is how he’s the sort of person who w...
The theory-practice gap
by Buck — 2021-09-17T22:51:46.307Z

[Thanks to Richard Ngo, Damon Binder, Summer Yue, Nate Thomas, Ajeya Cotra, Alex Turner, and other Redwood Research people for helpful comments; thanks Ruby Bloom for formatting this for the Alignment Forum for me.]

I'm going to draw a picture, piece by piece. I want to talk about the capability of some different AI systems.

You can see here that we've drawn the capability of the system we want to be

competitive

with, which I’ll call the

unaligned benchmark

. The unaligned benchmark is what you get if you train a system on the task that will cause the system to be most generally capable. And you have no idea how it's thinking about things, and you can only point this system at some goals and not others.

I think that the alignment problem looks different depending on how capable the system you’re trying to align is, and I think there are reasonable arguments for focusing on various different capabilities levels. See

here

for more of my thoughts on this question.

Alignment strategies

People have also proposed various alignment strategies. But I don’t think that these alignment strategies are competitive with the unaligned benchmark, even in theory.

I want to claim that most of the action in theoretical AI alignment is people proposing various ways of getting around these problems by having your systems do things that are human understandable instead of doing things that are justified by working well.

For example, the hope with

imitative IDA

is that through its recursive structure you can build a dataset of increasingly competent answers to questions, and then at every step you can train a system to imitate these increasingly good answers to questions, and you end up with a really powerful question-answerer that was only ever trained to imitate humans-with-access-to-aligned-systems, and so your system is outer aligned.

The bar I’ve added, which represents how capable I think you can get with amplified humans, is lower than the bar for the unaligned benchmark. I've drawn this bar lower because I think that if your system is trying to imitate cognition that can be broken down into human understandable parts, it is systematically not going to be able to pursue certain powerful strategies that the end-to-end trained systems will be able to. I think that there are probably a bunch of concepts that humans can’t understand quickly, or maybe can’t understand at all. And if your...