LessWrong 2.0 Reader

Seems to me that a good system to teach everything needs to have three main functions. The existing solutions I know about only have one or two.

First, a software platform that allows you to do all the things you might want to do: show text, show pictures, show videos, download files, interactive visualizations, tests (of various kinds: multiple choice, enter a number, arrange things into pairs or groups...).

Here, the design problem is that the more universal the platform is, the more complicated it is to let a non-tech user use its capabilities. For an experienced programmer you just need to say "upload the HTML code and other related files here", and the programmer will then be able to write text, show pictures, show videos, and include some JavaScript code for animation and testing. (Basically: SCORM, mostly known as Moodle.)

The obvious problem is that most teachers are not coders. So they would benefit from having some wizard that allows them to choose from some predefined templates, and then e.g. if they choose a template "read some text", they would be given an option to write the text directly in a web editor, or upload an existing Word document. But ideally, you would need to provide some real-world support (which is expensive and does not scale), for example I imagine that many good teachers would have a problem with recording a video, editing it, and uploading the file.

Second, it is not enough to create a platform, because then you have a chicken-and-egg problem: the students won't come because there is nothing to learn, and the teachers won't come because there are no students. So in addition to building the platform, you would also need to provide a nontrivial amount of some initial content. There is a risk that if the initial content sucks, people will conclude that your platform sucks. On the other hand, if your initial content is good, people will first come to learn, then some teachers will recommend the content to their students, and only then some teachers will be like "oh, I can also make my own tests? and my own lessons?"

Third, when people start creating things, on one hand this is what you want, on the other hand, most people are stupid and they produce shit. So the average quality will dramatically drop. But if you set some minimum quality threshold, it may discourage users. Some people produce shit first, and gradually they get better. So what you need instead is some recommendation system, where the platform can handle a lot of shit without that shit being visible and making the average experience worse.

For example, anyone can create their own lesson, but by default the only way to access the lesson is via its URL. So the authors can send links to their lessons by e-mail or by social networks. At some moment, the lessons may get verified, which means that someone independent will confirm that the lesson is more good than bad. (It does not violate the terms of service, and it says true things.) Then verified lessons could then be found by entering the keywords on the platform's main page. Also, users could create their own lists of lessons (their own, or other people's lessons) and share those lists via their URL. For example, a math teacher would not need to create their own lessons for everything, but could instead look at the existing materials, choose the best ones, and send a list of those to their students. Finally, the best lessons would be picked by staff and recommended as the platform's official curriculum -- that is what everyone would see by default on the main page.

Since I am already on the fancy note-taking train, I'd find examples of your actual note files way more interesting.

Does it ever fail to complete a proof, and honestly announce failure? A single time I have gotten claude to successfully disprove a statement that I asked it to prove, after trying to find a proof and instead finding a disproof, but I’ve never had it try for a while and then announce that it has not made progress either way.

I don't make eye contact while speaking but fix people while in silence. Were there people like me? Did they managed to reverse this? The way I feel inside is more like I can't think both about the face of someone and what I am saying at once, too many things to keep track of.

It seems potentially important to compare this to GPT4o. In my experience when asking GPT4 for research papers on particular subjects it seemed to make up non-existent research papers (at least I didn't find them after multiple minutes of searching the web). I don't have any precise statistics on this.

If I value a thing at one period of life and turn away from it later, I have not discovered something about my values. My values have changed. In the case of the teenager we call this process “maturing”. Wine maturing in a barrel is not becoming what it always was, but simply becoming, according to how the winemaker conducts the process.

Your values change according to the process of reflection - the grapes mature into wine through fun chemical reactions.
From what you wrote, it feels like you are mostly considering your 'first-order values'. However, you have an updating process that you also have values about. Like that I wouldn't respect simple mind control that alters my first-order values, because my values consider mind-control as disallowed. Similar to why I wouldn't take a very potent drug even if I know my first-order values would rank the feeling very highly, because I don't endorse that specific sort of change.

I have never eaten escamoles. If I try them, what I will discover is what they are like to eat. If I like them, did I always like them? That is an unheard-falling-trees question.

Then we should split the question. Do you have a value for escamoles specifically before eating them? No. Do you have a system of thought (of updating your values) that would ~always result in liking escamoles? Well, no in full generality. You might end up with some disease that affects your tastebuds permanently. But in some reasonably large class of normal scenarios, your values would consistently update in a way that would end up liking escamoles were you to ever eat them. (But really, the value for escamoles is more instrumental of a value for [insert escamole flavor, texture, etc.] here, that the escamoles are learned to be a good instance of.)

What johnwentworth mentions would then be the question of "Would this approved process of updating my values converge to anything"; or tend to in some reasonable reference class; or at least have some guaranteed properties that aren't freely varying. I don't think he is arguing that the values are necessarily fixed and always persistent (I certainly don't always handle my values according to my professed beliefs about how I should updatethem), but that they're constrained. That the brain also models them as reasonably constrained, and that you can learn important properties of them.

I might get time to right more detail in the future but wanted to say I found this helpful.

Brilliant Pebbles?

See here and here

This idea has come back up, and it could be feasible this time around because of the high launch capability and total reusability of SpaceX's Starship. The idea is a large constellation (~30,000?) of low earth satellites that intercept nuclear launches in their boost phase where they are much slower and more vulnerable to interception. The challenge of course is that you constantly need enough satellites overhead at all times to intercept the entire arsenal of a major power if they launch all at once.

There are obvious positives and risks with this

The main positive is it removes the chance of a catastrophic nuclear war.

Negatives are potentially destabilizing the MAD status quo in the short term, and new risks such as orbital war etc.

Trying to decide if it makes nuclear war more or less likely

This firstly depends on your nuclear war yearly base rate, and projected rate into the foreseeable future.

If you think nuclear war is very unlikely then it is probably not rational to disturb the status quo, and you would reject anything potentially destabilizing like this.

However if you think that we are simply lucky and there was >50% chance of nuclear war in the last 50 years (we are on a "surviving world" from MWI etc), and while the change may be currently low, it will go up a lot again soon, then the "Pebbles" idea is worth being considered even if you think it is dangerous and destabilizing in the short term. Say it directly causes a 5% chance of war to set up, but there is a >20% chance in next 20 years without it, which it stops. In this case you could decide it is worth it as paying 5% to remove 20%.

Practical considerations

How do you set up the system to reduce the risk of it causing a nuclear war as it is setup?

Ideally you would set up the whole system in stealth before anyone was even aware of it. Disguising 30K "Pebbles" satellites as Starlink ones seems at the bounds of credibility.

You would also need to do this without properly testing a single interceptor as such a test would likely be seen and tip other nations off.

New risks

A country with such a system would have a power never seen before over others.

For example the same interceptors could shoot down civilian aircraft, shipping etc totally crippling every other country without loss of life to the attacker.

The most desirable outcome:

1. A country develops the system

2. It uses whatever means to eliminate other countries nuclear arsenals

3. It disestablishes its own nuke arsenal

4. The Pebbles system is then greatly thinned out as there is now no need to intercept ~1000 simul launches.

5. There is no catastrophic nuclear threat anymore, and no other major downside.

My guess as to how other countries would respond if it was actually deployed by the USA

Russia

I don't think it would try to compete nor be at all likely to launch a first strike in response to USA building a system. Especially if the Ukraine war is calmed down. I don't think it regards itself as a serious worldwide power anymore in spite of talk. Russia also isn't worried about a first strike from the USA as it knows this is incredibly unlikely.

China

Has 200-350 nukes vs USA of ~5000

I think China would be very upset, both because it would take fewer "Pebbles" to intercept and it does see itself as a major and rising world power. I also don't think it would launch a first strike, nor could credibly threaten to do so, and this would make it furious.

After this however it is hard to tell, e.g. China could try to destroy the satellite interceptors, say creating a debris cloud that would take many out in the lower orbits, or build thousands of decoys with no nuclear and much smaller missiles that would be hard to tell apart. Such decoys could be incapable of actually making it to orbit but still be effective. To actually reduce the nuclear threat, USA would have to commit to actually destroying China nukes on the ground. This is a pretty extreme measure and its easy to imagine USA not actually doing this leaving an unstable result.

Summary

Its unclear to me all things considered, whether attempting to deploy such a system would make things safer or more risky in total over the long term with regards to nuclear war.

When the US beat Japan with nuclear weapons it was not immediately bad for the US. It led to the cold war which has an extinction risk, but it's not clear if that was avoidable. I'm curious what you're thinking of here.

Re peace = mutual destruction.

I spent some time reading the board game geek discussion threads about cohabitation [LW · GW] games here. There was a group of writers there who judged game success in relative terms and didn't distinguish "everyone wins" from "everyone loses" in games. I wonder if that's going on here.

Could also have been a typo...