LessWrong 2.0 Reader

I think they meant that as an analogy to how developed/sophisticated it was (ie they're saying that it's still early days for reasoning models and to expect rapid improvement), not that the underlying model size is similar.

There have been comments from OAI staff that o1 is "GPT-2 level" so I wonder if it's a similar size?

I've updated future posts to have start time at 6:30 and doors open at 6pm.

Well that escalated quickly (at the very end).

That was true this week, but the first time I attended (the 12th) I believe it wasn't, I arrived at what I think was 6:20-6:25 and found everything had already started.

cabotage

I assumed this was a typo for 'sabotage' the first time I saw it. For those wondering, here's a definition from google.

restriction of the operation of sea, air, or other transport services within or into a particular country to that country's own transport services.

As a "physicist and dabbler in writing fantasy/science fiction" I assume you took the 10 seconds to do the calculation and found that a 1km radius cylinder would have ~100 kW of losses per person from roller bearings supporting it, for the mass per person of the ISS. But I guess I don't understand how you expect to generate that power or dissipate that heat.

By contrast, a report by the pro-Jones Act American Maritime Partnership claims ‘the Jones Act is responsible for’ 13,000 jobs and adding $3.3 billion to the economy, which means that is currently the value to Hawaii of all shipborne trade with America.

Noob question: is this supposed to be low or high? Or is this just a list of datapoints regardless of how they fall [LW · GW]?

I appreciate and largely agree with the content of this post, but question the framing. I would argue that "wanting" and "preferring" are not useful behaviors in the first place.

Noticing that eating ice cream tends to be a sequence of pleasant sensations is to discover one's personal taste for ice cream. The fact stands without any analysis of why that is the case. I agree that this empirical observation is not a matter of rationality.

However, a decision to eat ice cream can be based on true or untrue beliefs, sound or unsound reasoning.

Perhaps I eat ice cream because I believe tasting its sweetness will cause me to become happier. But if I frequently taste the sweetness of ice cream and fail to become happier, I should notice that my decisions have been based on a world model that leads to poor predictions. Failing to better inform future decisions by updating the model is irrational.

Alternatively, I might eat ice cream because I believe doing so will reduce feelings of hunger that distract me from important work. If eating ice cream indeed enables me to better perform the task at hand, maintaining this understanding is rational.

What about eating ice cream for no reason at all? This would be mindless, random behavior that does not correspond to any world model or process for updating beliefs. Rationality is not possible if actions are purely impulsive and independent of mental processes.

Finally, there's merely wanting as a potential basis of decision-making: "Why should I eat ice cream? Because I notice that I want to eat it, and I do whatever I want." This line of reasoning has nothing to do with ice cream. Rather, it supposes that wanting is somehow a useful process in itself. It is not.

Wanting is a superfluous mental activity that causes unnecessary suffering in the form of a feeling of lack, a debt between a hypothetical preferred experience and the actual experience of life. There is no need to be at odds with reality this way in order to decide and act.

Ice cream may have a pleasant taste, and that's fine. But wanting to experience that particular sensation is an extra, wasteful step of the mind that distracts from perceiving what is happening and places one's emotional state at the mercy of uncontrollable, ever-changing events that can never provide lasting satisfaction. The desired indulgence may never come, and if it does, it will surely end.

Wants and preferences are not things we possess; they are processes we do at an opportunity cost. The world responds lawfully to our actions, but it cares nothing for our wanting, preferring, or fantasizing in general.

Emergency Case Study: Salt Shipment to NJ in the Winter of 2013-2014

In Benefits of the Jones Act, this was used as an example of a problem that the paper claimed was falsely blamed on the Jones Act.

The defense says, look at all the salt, almost all of it, that was indeed delivered as ordered and on time.

Am I expected to read the entire linked book-chapter to find out what exactly happened in New Jersey in 2013? I feel like the post should have a brief summary here.