LessWrong 2.0 Reader

Doesn't everybody always code in a strong time-discount? I have never seen code without it.

There are severe issues with the measure I'm about to employ (not least is everything listed in https://www.sqlite.org/cves.html) , but the order of magnitude is still meaningful:

https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=sqlite 170 records

https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=postgresql 292 records (+74 postgres and maybe another 100 or so under pg; the specific spelling “postgresql” isn't used as consistently as “sqlite” and “mysql” is)

https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=mysql 2026 records

Thanks for forwarding my thoughts!

I'm glad your team is equipped to do small, quick grants - from where I am on the outside, it's easy to accidentally think of OpenPhil as a single funding monolith, so I'm always grateful for directional updates that help the community understand how to better orient to y'all.

I agree that 3months seems reasonable when 500k+ is at stake! (I think, just skimming the application, I mentally rounded off "3 months or less" to "about 3 months", as kind of a learned heuristic on how orgs relate to timelines they publish.)

As another data point from the Survival and Flourishing Funds, turnaround (from our application to decision) was about 5 months this year, for an ultimately 90k grant (we were applying for up to 1.2m). I think this year they were unusually slow due to changing over their processes; in past years it's been closer to 2-3 months.

Our own philosophy at Manifund does emphasize "moving money quickly", to almost a sacred level. This comes from watching programs like Fast Grants and Future Fund, and also our own lived experience as grantees. For grantees, knowing 1 month sooner that money is coming, often means that one can start hiring and executing 1 month sooner - and the impact of executing even 1 day sooner can sometimes be immense (see: https://www.1daysooner.org/about/ )

Sorry! My response:

1. Yeah you might be right about this, maybe I should get less excited and say something like "it feels like it should cut in half but taking into account Richard's meta argument I should adjust downwards and maybe it's just a couple percentage points"

2. If the conditional obtains, that's also evidence about a bunch of other correlated good things though (timelines being slightly longer, people being somewhat more reasonable in general, etc.) so maybe it is legit to think this would have quite a big effect

3. Are you sure there are so many different factors that are of this size and importance or bigger, such that my p(doom) should be oscilating wildly etc.? Name three. In particular, name three that are (a) of at least this importance, and (b) that have actually happened (or switched from probabily-will-happen-to-probably-won't) in the last three years. If you can't name three, then it seems like your claim is false; my p(doom) won't be oscilating unduly wildly.

What would be some concrete examples/areas to work on for human flourishing? (Just saw a similar question on the definition; I wonder what could be some concrete areas or examples)

The o1 calculation is correct! https://math.stackexchange.com/a/1264753

.5 * (1 - sqrt(1.5e11^2 - 6.4e6^2)/1.5e11) = 4.55e-10

I am surprised. I have seen it mix up million and billion when calculating how many nukes the solar energy that hits earth is equivalent to.

Of course the sun is not nearly a point but whatever.

My hope is that this can become more feasible if we can provide accurate patterns for how the scissors-generating-process is trying to trick Susan(/Robert). And that if Susan is trying to figure out how she and Robert were tricked, by modeling the tricking process, this can somehow help undo the trick, without needing to empathize at any point with "what if candidate X is great."

This is clarifying...

Does it actually have much to do with Robert? Maybe it would be more helpful to talk with Tusan and Vusan, who are also A-blind, B-seeing, candidate Y supporters. They're the ones who would punish non-punishers of supporting candidate X / talking about A. (Which Susan would become, if she were talking to an A-seer without pushing back, let alone if she could see into her A-blindspot.) You could talk to Robert about how he's embedded in threats of punishment for non-punishment of supporting candidate Y / talking about B, but that seems more confusing? IDK.

EA is neglecting industrial solutions to the industrial problem of successionism.

..because the broader mass of active actors working on such solutions renders the biz areas non-neglected?

Wow, such a badly argued( aka BS) while heavily up-voted article!

Let's start with the Myth #1, what a straw-man! Rather than this extreme statement, most researchers likely believe that in the current environment their safety&alignment advances are likely( with high EV) helpful to humanity. The thing here is they had quite a free hand or at least varied options to pick the environment where they work and publish.

With your examples a bad actor could see a worthy EV even with a capable system that is less obedient and more false. Even if interpretabilty speeds up development, it would direct such development to more transparent models, at least there is a naive chance for that.

Myth #2: I've not yet met anybody in the alighnment circles who believed that. Most are pretty conscious about the double-edgedness and your sub-arguments.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/F2voF4pr3BfejJawL/safety-isn-t-safety-without-a-social-model-or-dispelling-the?commentId=5vB5tDpFiQDG4pqqz [LW(p) · GW(p)] depicts the flaws I point to neatly/gently.

What is malevolence? On the nature, measurement, and distribution of dark traits [LW · GW] was posted two weeks ago (and i recommend it). there was a questionnaire discussed in that post which tries to measure the levels of 'dark traits' in the respondent.

i'm curious about the results^[1] of rationalists^[2] on that questionnaire, if anyone wants to volunteer theirs. there are short and long versions (16 and 70 questions).

1. ^{^}

   (or responses to the questions themselves)

2. ^{^}

   i also posted the same shortform to the EA forum [EA(p) · GW(p)], asking about EAs