trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
“Charity” as a conflationary alliance term
by Jan_Kulveit — 2024-12-12T21:49:50.057Z

Andrew Critch defines a conflationary alliance as a situation where multiple groups deliberately use the same term to describe different concepts or behaviors, because the shared terminology helps each group advance their distinct goals. E.g., people have different notions of justice, but they agree that something-called-justice is very good, so they can agree to team up and fight for justice.

In my view, the term "charity", as used in 2024, represents an example of this pattern. As is often the case, the conflationary nature of the term occasionally leads to confusion or conflict, and this underpins many of the debates and public criticism of effective altruism.

When we say ”charity" or “charitable giving", we're actually talking about at least three distinct behaviors:

Funding public goods through donations
Supporting one's in-group or collective agency through partial philanthropy
Pursuing genuinely impartial benefit for others

Each of these behaviors has different motivations, mechanisms, and moral foundations. Yet they all benefit from being labeled as "charity" - gaining tax advantages, social status, and moral legitimacy from the association.

This conflation isn't necessarily bad. In fact, it's likely emerged because it serves useful purposes for all involved. The public goods funders get tax benefits, the partial philanthropists gain broader legitimacy, and the impartial philanthropists can leverage existing infrastructure and moral intuitions.

Understanding this conflation is useful for thinking more clearly about different types of prosocial behavior. Also, it explains part of the debates and confusions about effective altruism.

Let's examine each of these meaning in detail.

Public Goods Funding

Let me share two examples of how “charitable giving” often means funding public goods directly beneficial to donors.

First, I pay dues to national climbing association. These fees maintain protection in climbing routes and access paths that anyone can use, whether they pay or not. Although I could access these improvements without contributing, paying is socially responsible. Also, I get more value than my dues cost.

Second, consider wealthy donors supporting a local concert hall. Rather than pure philanthropy, this can be viewed as donors collectively funding a public good they personally value: they likely receive more benefit from the venue than ticket prices alone r...
Just one more exposure bro
by Chris Lakin — 2024-12-12T21:37:07.069Z
Link: https://chrislakin.blog/p/just-one-more-exposure-bro

“Just expose yourself to more social situations!” — Ah yes, you felt anxious the first 100 times, but the 101st will be the breakthrough!

“But exposure works!” people yell from across the street. “Like for fear of snakes - you know, those things you see once a year!”

Uh, it’s pretty rational to fear things you have little experience with. But social anxiety… you interact with people everyday! Why would anything change after the first 100 attempts?

I don’t doubt that a couple of exposures can often reduce anxieties. However, if you still feel anxious even after hundreds of social situations and years of trying... then maybe your fear is actually doing something presently useful and you should reconnect with your intuitions.

At a

100% eye contact workshop

I led earlier this year, most people became comfortable quickly with essentially a guided meditation.

But one guy was still struggling. I had him tune into his feelings and ask them: “What bad thing happens if I feel good about eye contact?”

To his own surprise, “heartbreak” was the word that came out.

He felt it out: "We make eye contact… we fall in love… we break up."

This guy could’ve easily spent years forcing himself to make eye contact without discovering that he needed to make heartbreak safe. Had he just followed the standard advice — "Just expose yourself more!" — he likely would’ve gotten hurt!

So once he found a way to make eye contact with heartbreak being safe, for the rest of the night he effortlessly maintained continuous and unbroken eye contact just like every other attendee of the workshop.

This is what I mean when I say emotional issues are often locally optimal strategies — they're often serving a kinda reasonable purpose, even if you don’t “know” it.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/49wHLSvotiJSYwGX6/locally-optimal-psychology

Another person I helped had dealt with

social anxiety his entire life

. Before talking to me, he had tried “1 year of actively seeking exposure to scary situations” and “8 years of talk therapy”.

Instead of more exposure, in a long conversation I helped him locate and reconnect with the strategies of his anxiety (in this case it seemed to be unconscious predictions that if others disliked him, it would be bad). Once he learned to feel okay regardless of others’ reactions — which he determined was safe in his life circu...
The Dangers of Mirrored Life
by Niko_McCarty — 2024-12-12T20:58:32.750Z
Link: https://www.asimov.press/p/mirror-life

The creation of a “mirrored” organism could “trigger severe ecological disruptions,” according to a

300-page technical report

released today. Its authors claim such organisms could quickly spread across the world, fatally infect humans, and “directly drive vulnerable plant and animal species to extinction.” The report accompanies

an article in

Science

, also released today, entitled “Confronting Risks of Mirror Life.”

But what, exactly, is a mirrored organism? To answer that, let’s consider how extant life works.

Proteins, sugars, lipids, and nucleic acids — key molecules used by cellular life — are all “chiral,” a term derived from the Greek for “hand.” Just as our hands cannot be perfectly aligned on top of one another regardless of how they are rotated, despite being mirror images, the same is true of chiral molecules. The two mirror images of a chiral molecule are called its enantiomers; they possess the same atoms connected in the same order, but with mirrored three-dimensional arrangements. One enantiomer of a molecule might fit perfectly into a protein receptor, while the other may not fit at all. This is no mere quirk of biology, but a crucial and ubiquitous feature of it.

A mirrored organism would use right-handed molecules everywhere a naturally-occurring organism uses left-handed ones, and vice versa. It could thus elude the typical chiral interactions by which microorganisms hunt their prey. A mirrored bacterium would be totally resistant to bacteria-infecting viruses, called bacteriophages (or just “phages”). It would also be undetectable by key parts of the human immune system. Such mirrored invaders could theoretically spread across the Earth while evading the biological defenses that have evolved to check such threats.

Experts say that mirrored organisms are still decades away from being a reality. But out of caution, the new report signals alarm well in advance.

For the article in Science, more than 30 scientists from ten countries are calling on the broader community to confront the risks of mirrored life. “In the absence of compelling evidence for reassurance,” they write, “mirror[ed] organisms should not be created.” If a mirrored bacterium were ever released, or accidentally escaped confinement, they warn, it could infect and kill humans, spread through animal or plant populations, and wreak havoc upon ecosystems.

Among the report’s...
Effective Networking as Sending Hard to Fake Signals
by vaishnav92 — 2024-12-12T20:32:24.113Z
Link: https://www.optimaloutliers.com/p/networking-as-sending-hard-to-fake

In my last post

, I argued that digital platforms and resume screeners are likely to filter out even mildly unconventional applicants, since recruiters are forced to optimize on criteria that are readily available to them at that stage of the process. Even if they recognize that these criteria are neither necessary nor sufficient for excelling at the job, the constraints of the hiring funnel leave them little choice.

For candidates whose strengths lie in less easily quantifiable areas, or whose experience doesn't map neatly onto the "preferred qualifications" checklist, this presents a challenge. How can you convey your potential to excel in a role when your resume doesn't fit the standard mold?

The solution, as I alluded to previously, is finding ways to bypass the initial screening process altogether. And the most powerful tool for doing so is to use networks outside the normal recruiting channels to convey this information. You can either find someone who’s already willing to vouch for you or you have to start a process that will make it increasingly likely that one of the people you come in contact with will recommend you for an interview. A trusted referral acts as a de-risking mechanism for employers, providing insight into crucial intangibles that a resume alone could never convey.

Connecting with the “cringe” in networking

For many, the idea of "networking" conjures up images of awkward happy hours and transactional small talk. I want to make two claims:

Going to events with "networking" in the name is likely one of the worst ways to network.
Unlike most others who write about this, I won't give you "pickup artist" advice to "overcome the cringe." A lot of "networking" is cringe, and you should be mindful of sabotaging your reputation. But if you're worried about this, you should worry less. Your hesitation is precisely why you should feel more confident about doing it.

It's worth reflecting on why we find networking cringe. Part of it lies in why we find some forms of self-advocacy cringeworthy. We have norms against bragging, for example. But there are nuances to understand.

Firstly, it's easy to misunderstand this as a norm against self-promotion altogether. If someone whips out a guitar and plays excellent music at a party or seems to know a lot about an obscure topic, we're generally impressed. We don't mind that they've communicated that information imp...
Mini PAPR Review
by jefftk — 2024-12-12T19:10:01.692Z

A standard

respirator, like a

disposable
N95 or an

elastomeric
P100, uses the power of the wearer's lungs to move air through a
filter. An unpowered device has a lot of advantages in simplicity and
reliability, but it can also be tiring, limits filtering capacity to
what the wearer can tolerate, and requires a good seal on the face to
prevent air intrusion during inhalation. An alternative approach is a

Powered
Air-Purifying Respirator (PAPR), which typically uses a
battery-powered fan to push air through a filter.

A high-quality PAPR like the ones in the 3M
Versaflo series will cost you >$1k,
though you can get dubious
cheap ones
for ~$160.

But what if we want to go even farther in the "dubious" direction?
Could we us a tiny fan to pull air through a filter and pipe it
through hole in a KN95? I guess!

A bunch of companies make these for about $40. This one is a Bwinmak Resnr R18, but
you can also buy them from other companies you haven't heard of, like
OFG or 4WDKING.

I got one, and tried it for a bit. It's documented as producing 2-4
m³/h depending on speed, and with it running on high I had
trouble breathing in faster than it could fill the mask with air.
This wouldn't be suitable for an environment where a PAPR is a
requirement, but it's probably better than a disposable mask,
especially if you have facial hair or otherwise aren't getting a good
seal.

The biggest issue I had was with the hose. I wore it on the provided
neck strap and if I got it adjusted correctly and stood still it
worked fine. As I moved my head relative to my body, however,
primarily when looking up or down, it worked less well. When I looked
up the hose would go taut and I'd be supporting the weight of the
filter with my mask. The filter is pretty light, but this would still
tend to pull my mask down and off my face a bit. Looking down was
worse: the hose would kink, and I'd get much less air. You could
imagine using a longer and more robust hose, but since the hose is
held up by your mask I think this wouldn't work well. Instead,
something where the filter was mounted on a hat could be good, and it
comes with a diagram showing how you could velcro it to a hard hat:

I learned about this from Dan
Elton's picture of George
Church wearing one:

I didn't find mine useful enough to keep, and gave it away in the
office Yankee
Swap ...
Biological risk from the mirror world
by jasoncrawford — 2024-12-12T19:07:06.305Z
Link: https://newsletter.rootsofprogress.org/p/biological-risk-from-the-mirror-world

A new article in Science Policy Forum voices concern about a particular line of biological research which, if successful in the long term, could eventually create a grave threat to humanity and to most life on Earth.

Fortunately, the threat is distant, and avoidable—but only if we have common knowledge of it.

What follows is an explanation of the threat, what we can do about it, and my comments.

Background: chirality

Glucose, a building block of sugars and starches, looks like this:

Adapted from Wikimedia

But there is also a molecule that is the exact mirror-image of glucose. It is called simply L-glucose (in contrast, the glucose in our food and bodies is sometimes called D-glucose):

L-glucose, the mirror twin of normal D-glucose. Adapted from Wikimedia

This is not just the same molecule flipped around, or looked at from the other side: it’s inverted, as your left hand is vs. your right.

Some molecules, such as water or glycerol, are symmetric, and so there is no distinction between their “left-handed” and “right-handed” versions. But many, like glucose, have this asymmetry that gives them a mirrored twin. Such asymmetric molecules are called chiral.

Chiral molecules include not only glucose, but proteins, DNA and RNA. In short, life is chiral.

Mirror life

All life on Earth, from bacteria to humans, has matching chirality, reflecting our common biological ancestry: all cells use left-handed amino acids, right-handed nucleotides, etc. But there is no known reason why an entire cell, organism, or ecosystem could not exist with the opposite chirality for each type of molecule. Call it “mirror life.”

Mirror life would interact with Earth life in strange ways, because every subsystem in our bodies is tuned to Earth chirality. Proteins evolved to fit other molecules, and would fit a mirror molecule the way your left shoe fits your right foot. Mirror food, for instance, might be less digestible to animals, because the enzymes that break down our food are chiral.

And, crucially, mirror cells might be largely invisible to the immune system of every organism on the planet.

The threat

A mirror virus would likely be harmless to us: it would be incompatible with our cells’ machinery, and thus unable to replicate in our bodies. A mirror bacterium, on the other hand, could be a lethal threat, even if it is a mirror of a species that is normally harmless.

Mirror bacteria could enter the bo...
Naturalistic dualism
by Arturo Macias — 2024-12-12T16:19:56.307Z

And it's all around us

as ghosted machines […]

And as much as I'd like to

believe there's a truth

about our illusion,

well, I've come to conclude

there's just nothing beyond it

the mind can perceive

except for the pictures

in the space in between.

Jan Blomqvist, The Space In Between

Introduction

I have been a cartesian dualist since I was a teenager. What else can you be, apart from a solipsist? [that strictly carried out coincides with pure realism]. For most of my life I used to think that physicalist dualism was the consensus of analytic philosophers (as it is among hard science fiction writers). Then, I decided to write a booklet of philosophy for Economists, and I began by a literature review of what I expected to be the standard scientific-philosophical cosmovision, based in three pillars: subjectivism, emergentist physicalism, and epiphenomenalism.

But I was surprised to discover that (at least explicitly) the “standard” philosophy was not so standard: it was named “Naturalistic Dualism”, and its canonical text is “The Conscious Mind”, authored by the Australian Philosopher David Chalmers. I found the book correct, and probably definitive, but too long: Chalmers delves in any possible objection to this otherwise supremely clear philosophy, and that detracts from persuasive power and clarity.

Freedom under Naturalistic Dualism

In the age of internet, where the 10-pages essay is King, I finally decided not to write a booklet, but an essay, whose final version was published a few days ago in Journal of NeuroPhilosophy (I want to thank the participants in the Less Wrong post that helped to improve the original article, and the editors of the Journal).

In “Freedom under Naturalistic Dualism” you will find a short piece both introducing, and I hope clarifying Naturalistic Dualism:

First, I wanted to underline that epiphenomenalism is compatible with freedom. While our mind emerges from physically determined and autonomous matter, our experience and its physical substratum are synchronized. Your experiential account of your actions and their internal coherence are the result of a physical process, but the mental process can be logical and true. Freedom is part of the conscious experience and as such is a legitimate concept: by evaluating the set of possible futures conditional on their a...
AI #94: Not Now, Google
by Zvi — 2024-12-12T15:40:06.336Z

At this point, we can confidently say that no, capabilities are not hitting a wall. Capacity density, how much you can pack into a given space, is way up and rising rapidly, and we are starting to figure out how to use it.

Not only did we get o1 and o1 pro and also Sora and other upgrades from OpenAI, we also got Gemini 1206 and then Gemini Flash 2.0 and the agent Jules (am I the only one who keeps reading this Jarvis?) and Deep Research, and Veo, and Imagen 3, and Genie 2 all from Google. Meta’s Llama 3.3 dropped, claiming their 70B is now as good as the old 405B, and basically no one noticed.

This morning I saw Cursor now offers ‘agent mode.’ And hey there, Devin. And Palisade found that a little work made agents a lot more effective.

And OpenAI partnering with Anduril on defense projects. Nothing to see here.

There’s a ton of other stuff, too, and not only because this for me was a 9-day week.

Tomorrow I will post about the o1 Model Card, then next week I will follow up regarding what Apollo found regarding potential model scheming. I plan to get to Google Flash after that, which should give people time to try it out. For now, this post won’t cover any of that.

I have questions for OpenAI regarding the model card, and asked them for comment, but press inquiries has not yet responded. If anyone there can help, please reach out to me or give them a nudge. I am very concerned about the failures of communication here, and the potential failures to follow the preparedness framework.

Table of Contents

Previously this week: o1 turns Pro.

Table of Contents.

Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Cursor gets an agent mode.

A Good Book. The quest for an e-reader that helps us read books the right way.

Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility. Some are not easily impressed.

o1 Pro Versus Claude. Why not both? An o1 (a1?) built on top of Sonnet, please.

AGI Claimed Internally. A bold, and I strongly believe incorrect, claim at OpenAI.

Ask Claude. How to get the most out of your conversations.

Huh, Upgrades. Canvas, Grok Aurora, Gemini 1206, Llama 3.3.

All Access Pass. Context continues to be that which is scarce.

Fun With Image Generation. Sora, if you can access it. Veo, Imagen 3, Genie 2.

Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. Threats of increasing quantity not quality.

They Took Our Jobs. Attempt at a less unrealistic economic projection.

Get Involved. EU A

...
Consciousness, Intelligence, and AI – Some Quick Notes [call it a mini-ramble]
by Bill Benzon — 2024-12-12T15:04:57.398Z

Cross-posted from New Savanna.

Epistemic status? Are you kidding me? I just made this up. How would I know its epistemic status? Sheesh!

The subject of consciousness keeps turning up in current discussions of AI and LLMs. Can AIs be conscious? Are current AIs conscious? Maybe a little?

What do consciousness and intelligence have to do with one another? I see no reason to think that dogs, rats, and cats are not conscious, though I have no idea how far down the phylogenetic chain consciousness exists. No one would argue that dogs, rats, and cats are as intelligence as we are. Intelligence is something different from consciousness, no?

And yet the issue gets raised. One line of (implicit) reasoning seems to go like this: It converses with me in an intelligent way, things that converse with me in an intelligent way (or even at all!) are conscious, therefore it must be conscious. And then there’s the fact that you can ask a chatbot about itself and it will say something, though just what it says depends on what it has been RLHFed to say. But, still, these LLMs have been “trained” on tons of text using the word “consciousness” and all its cognates, so sure, it can use the word in human-seeming ways. That doesn’t make it conscious.

An extra stage?

Fact is, philosophers often argue about consciousness as though it were a further or extra stage in...in what? Human information processing? Thinking? Whatever. It adds something extra, something beyond what was before. Let’s say it adds an extra bit of intelligence. Yeah, let’s say that.

So, a conscious being is more intelligent that its non-conscious simulacrum, to which it is otherwise identical. But then we have those philosophical zombies and they, presumably, are as intelligent as non-zombies.

Reorganization

This strikes me as being wrong-headed. I take my conception of consciousness from Wm Powers (Behavior: The Control of Perception). Consciousness enables reorganization. I explain this in a post from 2022: Consciousness, reorganization and polyviscosity, Part 1: The link to Powers. (It’s complicated, so I’m not going to try to summarize it here.) In that conception, consciousness really isn’t a further step in reasoning, though it may facilitate “moving around” in one’s mind (in particular, think default mode). Reorganization isn’t a further step in reasoning, though it may seem like it. (Should say more about this, but l...