trentmkelly/LessWrong-43k huggingface dataset:
How might cryptocurrencies affect AGI timelines?
by Dawn Drescher — 2021-02-28T19:16:15.326Z

Summary: Deflation (or so I heard) is considered harmful because it stifles growth. Central banks have been fighting it to keep economies healthy. Cryptocurrencies can be designed to be deflationary. If the market capitalization of cryptocurrencies becomes big, central banks may have no way to contain the deflation. This may be catastrophic in many ways – but might it also slow AGI development and buy safety research more time?

I’ve been wondering what the “crypto endgame” may look like. Crypto may just turn out to have been a bubble or may continue for decades unchanged at its current limited level of significance. But we’re probably sufficiently prepared for those scenarios already.

Instead the crypto market capitalization might take off at a superlinear pace. Bitcoin is currently on rank 14 among the world’s currencies and holds 0.7% of the aggregate value of all of them. All cryptocurrencies together hold about 1.1% of the world’s monetary value.

The crypto space is rife with network effects. Or it is one huge network effect. These are wont to show superlinear growth if they show any growth. Superlinear growth often doesn’t last long enough to be significant, but in other cases it does. So maybe crypto’s market capitalization will grow by an order of magnitude or more within a few years, so before AGI is developed. That might happen if more more companies follow the examples of MicroStrategy or Tesla and invest their spare cash into a cryptocurrency. Phil Bonello, director of research at Grayscale, also mentions a scenario in which governments start buying crypto and thereby force all other governments to follow suit. I don’t know the reasoning behind that, so I don’t know how forcible that effect will be, but it doesn’t seem to be hard to come up with plausible growth scenarios. (At least if you’re incentivized to come up with them the way Grayscale is.)

Some cryptocurrencies, notably Bitcoin, are designed to be deflationary. If companies across the board find that they generate greater profits by investing all their spare cash into deflationary cryptocurrencies rather than reinvesting into their own production, innovation may stall. (Isn’t that one of the typical reasons why deflation is considered harmful?)

So that brings me to my questions:

Conditional on the cryptocurrency market growing by another 1–2 orders of magnitude in the next five years or so, w

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"If You're Not a Holy Madman, You're Not Trying"
by abramdemski — 2021-02-28T18:56:19.560Z

I've been reading the hardcover SSC collection in the mornings, as a way of avoiding getting caught up in internet distractions first thing when I get up. I'd read many of Scott Alexander's posts before, but nowhere near everything posted; and I hadn't before made any attempt to dive the archives to "catch up" to the seeming majority of rationalists who have read everything Scott Alexander has ever written.

(The hardcover SSC collection is nowhere near everything on SSC, not to mention Scott's earlier squid314 blog on livejournal. I'm curious how much shelf space a more complete anthology would occupy.)

Anyway, this has gotten me thinking about the character of Scott Alexander's writing. I once remarked (at a LessWrong meetup) that Scott Alexander "could never be a cult leader". I intended this as a sort of criticism. Scott Alexander doesn't write with conviction in the same way some other prominent rationalist authors do. He usually has the attitude of a bemused bystander who is merely curious about a bunch of things. Some others in the group agreed with me, but took it as praise: compared to some other rationalist authors, Scott Alexander isn't an ideologue.

(now I fear 90% of the comments are going to be some variation of "cults are bad")

What I didn't realize (at the time) was how obsessed Scott Alexander himself is with this distinction. Many of his posts grapple with variations on question of just how seriously we can take our ideas without going insane, contrasting the holy madman in the desert (who takes ideas 100% seriously) with the detached academic (who takes an intellectual interest in philosophy without applying it to life).

Beware Isolated Demands for Rigor is the post which introduces and seriously fleshes out this distinction. Scott says the holy madman and the detached academic are two valid extremes, because both of them are consistent in how they call for principles to be applied (the first always applies their intellectual standards to everything; the second never does). What's invalid is when you use intellectual standards as a tool to get whatever you want, by applying the standards selectively.
Infinite Debt forges a middle path, praising Giving What We Can for telling people that you can just give 10% to charity and be an "Officially Recognized Good Person" -- you don't need to follow your principles all the way to giving away everything,

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Privacy vs proof of character
by DanielFilan — 2021-02-28T02:03:31.009Z

Below, I outline some musings I’ve produced while thinking about the private cryptocurrency Monero. I make no pretense to originality, cleverness, or exhaustiveness in covering considerations.

There are (at least) two distinct types of privacy. For instance, suppose you have an item in your house that you want nobody to see, even an intruder. One way you could handle this would be to buy a large black safe and hide the items in the safe, locked with a key that only you possess, and leave the safe on your desk. The other way would be to build a similar safe into a wall, and put a framed portrait in front of the safe. In the first case, an intruder can tell that they can’t open the black safe, but they know that you have something that you wish to keep hidden. In the second case, unless the intruder is perceptive enough to look behind the portrait, they will not even be able to tell that you have anything to hide. One could imagine an even better-concealed safe that would take painstaking effort to find - for the sake of this post, please imagine that it is very difficult to imagine that there might be anything on the wall behind a portrait.

You might prefer to own the second type of safe rather than the first, because the very fact that you possess something that you do not want others to see conveys almost as much as the sight of the item that you want to conceal. For instance, if you own something that proves that you violate certain social norms, the reason that you want to conceal it is to make others think that you actually abide by social norms - but if people only conceal things that do not abide by social norms, the fact that you are concealing something demonstrates that you do not, the very fact that you wanted others to remain ignorant of!

The hidden safe has another interesting property. If hidden safes exist, and it would be possible for you to install one in your home without others finding out, then it becomes extremely difficult for you to prove to others that you do not own a hidden safe. You could bring others inside your house, but in order to prove that you do not own a hidden safe you would have to take them thru a detailed enough level of search where they could find the hidden safe if it existed, which by hypothesis is no simple matter. Furthermore, in conducting such a search you would not be able to avoid parts of your walls that have em...
Suspected reason that kids usually hate vegetables
by Andrew Vlahos — 2021-02-27T23:52:55.464Z

Here is a common vegetable preparation method in U.S. suburban homes.

Step 1: cut it up

Step 2: boil them in water until the flavor and texture is gone.

Step 3: Serve them without any kind of seasoning, or mixed with another food that could provide flavor and texture. Alternatively, put salt and pepper on them so that all vegetables just taste like salt and pepper.

Step 4: Tell the kids that eating a pile of bland mush with each meal is needed for being healthy.

In high school, me and several other people made the surprising discovery that if you eat vegetables raw, they actually taste alright, and some (like celery) even taste good enough to just snack on plain. Plus, there are things like stir-fry that make vegetables taste great.

I know this was common where I grew up. Do enough other people have similar experiences that raising knowledge of this is a great way to increase healthy eating?

Edit: after viewing the comments, this does not seem like the main reason.
Bootstrapped Alignment
by Gordon Seidoh Worley — 2021-02-27T15:46:29.507Z

NB: I doubt any of this is very original. In fact, it's probably right there in the original Friendly AI writings and I've just forgotten where. Nonetheless, I think this is something worth exploring lest we lose sight of it.

Consider the following argument:

Optimization unavoidably leads to Goodharting (as I like to say, Goodhart is robust)

This happens so long as we optimize (make choices) based on an observation, which we must do because that's just how the physics work.
We can at best make Goodhart effects happen slower, say by quantilization or satisficing.

Attempts to build aligned AI that rely on optimizing for alignment will eventually fail to become or remain aligned due to Goodhart effects under sufficient optimization pressure.
Thus the only way to build aligned AI that doesn't fail to become and stay aligned is to not rely on optimization to achieve alignment.

This means that, if you buy this argument, huge swaths of AI design space is off limits for building aligned AI, and means many proposals are, by this argument, doomed to fail. Some examples of such doomed approaches:

HCH
debate
IRL/CIRL

So what options are left?

Don't build AI

The AI you don't build is vacuously aligned.

Friendly AI

AI that is aligned with humans right from the start because it was programmed to work that way.
(Yes I know "Friendly AI" is an antiquated term, but I don't know a better one to distinguish the idea of building AI that's aligned because it's programmed that way from other ways we might build aligned AI.)

Bootstrapped alignment

Build AI that is aligned via optimization that is not powerful enough or optimized (Goodharted) hard enough to cause existential catastrophe. Use this "weakly" aligned AI to build Friendly AI.

Not building AI is probably not a realistic option unless industrial civilization collapses. And so far we don't seem to be making progress on creating Friendly AI. That just leaves bootstrapping to alignment.

If I'm honest, I don't like it. I'd much rather have the guarantee of Friendly AI. Alas, if we don't know how to build it, and if we're in a race against folks who will build unaligned superintelligent AI if aligned AI is not created first, bootstrapping seems the only realistic option we have.

This puts me in a strange place with regards to how I think about things like HCH, debate, IRL, and CIRL. On the one hand, they might be ways to bootstrap to something that...
Participating in a Covid-19 Vaccine Trial #2: We pretty much knew it would work the whole time
by ejacob — 2021-02-27T00:47:29.017Z

The past few weeks have been uneventful. I spend a few minutes each day filling out a questionnaire on the Patient Cloud app I installed during my first visit. The study is interested in reactions to the injection itself: redness, swelling, pain, etc. around the injection site, and the first section of the questionnaire checks for these symptoms. The next part is a self-screen for Covid-19 itself. Using the thermometer the nurses gave me, I take and report my temperature. There’s a checklist of symptoms to look out for: malaise, nausea, fatigue, etc. I’ve had nothing interesting to report, which I’m sure is a delight to the researchers.

I have my next injection appointment in about a week - I planned to write this second update sometime after that, since I would have a better idea of whether or not I received the placebo treatment. However, I got a very interesting email today (image below):

Dear PREVENT-19 Study Participant:

Novavax is happy to announce that thanks to many volunteers like you, we have completed enrollment in the PREVENT-19 study. We want to thank you for your commitment to participation as without it, we would not be able to progress this very important research into a new COVID-19 vaccine.

We also want to take the opportunity to notify you that the Institutional Review Board (IRB) has approved Novavax's plan for a blinded crossover. What this means is that all participants will eventually receive the real vaccine. For this to happen, we first need to demonstrate that the vaccine is safe and does prevent COVID-19 disease. Participants who choose to remain in the study on their blinded treatment (sic). We anticipate that between one to two more months of follow-up will be required to reach that goal. Crossover vaccinations will be planned to follow thereafter.

We thank you for the extremely valuable contribution you are making to research and to society during these trying and challenging times.

Kind Regards,

The Novavax Team

My first response was a sense of relief that, worst case, I would likely receive the real vaccine within a few months. But then my critical thinking booted up. We are still experiencing a national (and global) shortage of vaccines - If the Novavax vaccines are believed safe and effective, shouldn’t they be going into the same supply of vaccines that everyone else is being served out of? I came up with two possible answers...
The sailor's wife
by krbouchard — 2021-02-27T00:23:24.353Z

The following text accompanies one section of a moral philosophy I'm writing. It's part of an attempt to find an a priori moral law in the vein of Kant. This story comes after the section exploring the moral plasticity of written law, even though the moral character of a particular action, like murder, is not always the same.
I later adapted this parable into a novella exploring the psychology of the sailor's wife on the evening of her crime. Thanks for reading!

PARABLE OF THE SAILOR'S WIFE
A sailing expedition to the arctic seas is trapped in ice. Low on resources, it becomes evident the crew will not survive the winter if things continue as they are. The hell-bent captain refuses to allow his men to reverse course.

That night when the captain is sleeping, two crew members steal away from the ship, dragging a small lifeboat behind them across the ice and making their way south toward home.

The vastness of the icy expanse presents itself to them upon sunrise, and the men begin to wonder if they have made a mistake. Days pass and the rations they stole begin to dwindle. They had not wanted to take too many cans of food away from the fellow sailors they left behind, but the amount they stole for themselves is proving to have been too modest. By the eighth day the food is gone and the men continue marching in hunger.

The days are endless nightmares of brutal sunlight bouncing off the blinding ice, the nights a frozen hell of numbing darkness. The twelfth day passes thus, then the thirteenth day.

Driven to madness, one man accosts the other in the night, strangling and killing him. Blood spills over the white ice as the man is chopped up and stored in a canvas bag. Then a meal is cooked over a meager fire. For the first time in six days, the man has something to eat.

In the morning he continues the trek, tired and cold but fed. Three days later he reaches the ocean and begins his long, dangerous journey across the waters. Storms rage, waves roll, but he is not capsized. His understanding of the stars leads him toward home.

Finally, how many days later he knows not, land is sighted. He rows to shore and finds out he has reached the country neighboring his homeland. A compassionate governor hears the story of the man who sailed alone from the northern sea and arranges to help him return home.

Back in his native city, the man’s return makes head...
Can you be 100% confident in your moral beliefs?
by MaxG — 2021-02-27T00:23:22.509Z

Recently, I had a discussion with a close friend about morality and, let us say, fundamentals of epistemology. This person has no connection to the aspiring rationalist community.

We started out talking about discussion norms. I had sent my friend Julia Galef's talk on scout mindset. In previous discussions, I had gotten the impression that my friend argued to persuade, and I argued to learn something. This had collided and some of these discussions had seemed quite unfruitful to me.

My friend agreed that in factual discussions, scout mindset is the way to go. In moral discussions, my friend argued that one tries to persuade as one is a 100% sure of their moral beliefs. This got me wondering. For a long time, I have held a vague belief that there are no 0s and 1s when it comes to holding true beliefs. I pointed out that I do not think that morality belongs in another category. My friend confronted me with asking how I could say that I am not a 100% sure that murder is wrong. Well, I said, I am like 99.99% sure that it is wrong. Here the discussion got a bit emotional. They said they would not want to be friends with someone who gives even a slight chance that murder, racism, homophobia or any other bad thing might be morally right.

To me, saying I am 99.99% sure feels almost the same as saying I am 100% sure. I just thought that it is not a good idea on principle to assign 0% or 100% to any belief. Many people have been wrong about moral issues in the past, so who am I to be so sure about them.

So, people of Lesswrong, how sure are you that murder is wrong? Are you 100% sure? How would you go about solving the disagreement with my friend?
Why aren't we all using Taffix?
by ChristianKl — 2021-02-26T23:09:35.968Z

Taffix is a nasal powder spray that builds up a protective mechanical barrier against viruses and allergens in the nasal cavity. The EMA allowed them to write on their packaging insert to advertise it's clinical effects by saying:

Taffix was found highly effective in blocking several respiratory viruses including SARS-CoV-2 in laboratory studies.

The idea was conceived in March and they did a study during the Jewish New Year event which was as expect a superspreader event (orthodox Jewish people gathering in close proximity while a lot of them were infected). Among the 83 people who received the intervention only the two people who reported not consistently using the spray (you have to apply it every 5 hours) got infected while in the control group 16 out of 160 got infected. Nobody reported any side-effects.

It seems that the information took month to tickle through to us at LessWrong with ejacob writing in his shortform. Living in Europe I could simply order my Taffix on Amazon and had it delievered soon after. In the spirit of more dakka, it would make sense to everyone to get their Taffix. Maybe we could have even prevented the winter lockdown if everybody would have gotten their Taffix.
Different kinds of language proficiency
by Kaj_Sotala — 2021-02-26T18:20:04.342Z

It’s funny how forms asking for your language proficiency use “native language” to mean “best possible proficiency”.

My native languages are Finnish and Swedish, but I’m out of practice with Swedish so my English vocabulary is way better than my Swedish. Though interestingly, speaking either Finnish and Swedish with someone give me a sense of emotional connection that’s lacking if I use English.

I feel I know English words better than Swedish, but Swedish words have a sense of subtle emotional nuance that’s missing from the English ones. So there’s a dimension on which my Swedish does feel better than my English, but it doesn’t seem to translate directly to fluency in the traditional sense.

Something like… the place in my mind that holds Swedish contains less stuff, but also feels like less effort to access.

Mark Lippmann once described “the felt meaning” as “the place your mind goes to when looking for words”. My Swedish place feels closer to where I am, and easier to go to, than my English place – even if the Swedish place is smaller and has more cobwebs around things, and once there, I may need to rummage around to find where the heck I put that one word again.

That sense of closeness also translates to increased emotional closeness when talking with someone in Swedish. Both Finnish- and Swedish-speakers feel like “my people” in some sense. With English, it always feels like there’s some amount of a chasm between us. We can communicate, and we can definitely connect in quite a few ways, but it’s always shouting over a chasm – even if its presence is sometimes easy to forget.
RadVac Commercial Antibody Test Results
by johnswentworth — 2021-02-26T18:04:09.171Z

Background: Making Vaccine

Results are in from the commercial antibody tests. Both my girlfriend and I came back negative - the test did not detect any Spike antibody response in the blood. This post will talk about how I'm updating based on these results, and the next steps.

Here's our timeline so far; more info on the vaccine is in the original post and the radvac whitepaper:

We've taken five doses, spaced apart weekly (on Tuesdays).
The first three doses only included six of the nine peptides, due to delays from the manufacturer. (Spike 660, Spike 1145, and Orf1 5471T were the three missing.)

The blood draw for this test took place the day after the fifth dose. I expect this is too soon to notice significant impact from the last two doses; vaccines in general seem to typically take 2-3 weeks to kick in, and that is my expectation for this one as well. (Also, it was an "IgG antibody test", and WebMD says these antibodies typically take about 2 weeks to show up after covid symptoms show from an actual infection.) This is intended to mainly be a test of the first three doses.

The test apparently used the "DiaSorin Liaison(R) SARS-CoV-2 S1/S2 IgG assay" (I didn't know this until the results came in). According to the FDA, it has about 92% sensitivity and 99% specificity. The "S1/S2" part indicates that it's testing for response to the S1 and S2 subunits of the spike protein - together, these are essentially the whole spike protein.

Important thing to notice: the test was looking for Spike antibodies, and two of our three missing peptides were Spike peptides. Indeed, there were only 3 Spike peptides among the full 9, so with two missing, we only had one Spike peptide in our first three doses. (The rest target other parts of the virus.) So that makes the test significantly less useful than it would otherwise be, and makes me more inclined to get another test in 2-3 weeks when the doses with the other three peptides have had time to kick in.

How I'm Updating

In the original post, I called this test "searching under the streetlamp". It wasn't super likely to come back positive even assuming the vaccine worked as intended, but it was relatively cheap and easy to run the test, so it was our first check. Given the missing Spike peptides and the test only checking against Spike, it was even more likely to come back negative than I originally estimated.

In Jacob's predict...
"New EA cause area: voting"; or, "what's wrong with this calculation?"
by Optimization Process — 2021-02-26T16:50:54.275Z

Consider my home county:

Number of voters ≈700k

(Corollary: probability of swinging an election: 1/√nVoters≈1/800)

GDP: $400B

Amount by which GDP might go up or down depending on a single election: 0.1%

Probability I support the better side: 60%

Expected GDP increase from my voting

... = (fraction of GDP at stake) * P(I swing election) * (P(I'm good) - P(I'm bad))

... = ($400B * 0.1%) * (1/800) * (60% - 40%)

... = $100k

...which seems absurdly large! And it just gets crazier as you look at larger areas, since GDP goes up like nVoters while P(swing) only goes down like 1/√nVoters. For the United States, the same calculation yields a benefit of $300k.

What's going wrong here? (Or, is nothing going wrong? In which case, I guess I'll stop donating to charity and devote that time and energy to Getting Out The Vote instead.)