LessWrong 2.0 Reader

It does seem worth having a term here! +4 for pointing it out and the attempt.

less than 6% of global GDP; they are exceptions not rules (Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland)

It is 16%, not 6%.

(Approximately, Germany is 4.7% of global GDP, France is 3.1%, Italy 2.2%, Spain 1.5%, Netherlands 1.1%, Switzerland 0.9%, Sweden 0.6%, Austria and Norway 0.5% each, Denmark 0.4%, Finland 0.3%.)

I've been re-reading tons of old posts for the review to remember them and see if they're worth nominating, and then writing a quick review if yes (and sometimes if no).

I've gotten my list of ~40 down to 3 long ones. If anyone wants to help out, here are some I'd appreciate someone re-reading and giving a quick review of in the next 2 days.

1. To Predict What Happens, Ask What Happens [LW · GW] by Zvi
2. A case for AI alignment being difficult [LW · GW] by Jessicata
3. Alexander and Yudkowsky on AGI goals [LW · GW] by Scott Alexander & Eliezer Yudkowsky

A great, short post. I think it retreads [LW · GW] some similar ground that I aim to point at in A Sketch of Good Communication [LW · GW], and I think in at least one important regard it does much better. I give this +4.

I think the analogy in this post makes a great point v clearly, and improves upon the discussion of how those who control the flow of information mislead people. +4

I have various disagreements with some of the points in this post, and I don't think it adds enough new ideas to be strongly worthy of winning the annual review, but I am grateful to have read it, and for worthwhile topics it helps to retread the same ground in slightly different ways with some regularity [LW · GW]. I will give this a +1 vote.

(As an example disagreement, there's a quote of a fictional character saying "There will be time enough for love and beauty and joy and family later. But first we must make the world safe for them." A contrary hypothesis I believe in more is that growing from children into adults involves bringing to life all parts of us that have been suffocated by Moloch, including many of these very powerful very human parts, and it is not good for these parts of us to be lost to the world until after the singularity.)

I like something about this post. It might just be the way it's setting up to save conversations that are going sideways. Anyway, I'd be interested to hear from the author how much use this post ended up getting. For now, I'll give it a positive vote in the review.

You should also read the relevant sequence about dissolving the problem of free will: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/p3TndjYbdYaiWwm9x

You believe that something inert cannot be doing computation. I agree. But you seem to think it's coherent that a system with no action - a post-hoc mapping of states - can be.

The place where comprehension of Chinese exists in the "chinese room" is the creation of the mapping - the mapping itself is a static object, and the person in the room by assumption is doing to cognitive work, just looking up entries. "But wait!" we can object, "this means that the Chinese room doesn't understand Chinese!" And I think that's the point of confusion - repeating someone else telling you answers isn't the same as understanding. The fact that the "someone else" wrote down the answers changes nothing. The question is where and when the computation occurred.

In our scenarios, there are a couple different computations - but the creation of the mapping unfairly sneaks in the conclusion that the execution of the computation, which is required to build the mapping, isn't what creates consciousness!

Short, as near as I can tell, true, and important. This expresses much of my feeling about the world.