LessWrong 2.0 Reader

Noting that a nicer name that's just waiting to be had, in this context, is "Future of the Lightcone Institute" :) 

I can confirm that my PayPal has received the $500, although it'll be frozen for a while.

Thanks! I had a lot of fun doing the research for this and I'm working on an update that'll be out in a few days. 

Is it accurate to summarize the headline result as follows?

• Train a Transformer to predict next tokens on a distribution generated from an HMM.
• One optimal predictor for this data would be to maintain a belief over which of the three HMM states we are in, and perform Bayesian updating on each new token. That is, it maintains $p(\text{hidden state}=H_i)$.
• Key result: A linear probe on the residual stream is able to reconstruct $p(\text{hidden state}=H_i)$.

(I don't know what Computational Mechanics or MSPs are so this could be totally off.)

EDIT: Looks like yes. From this post [LW · GW]:

Part of what this all illustrates is that the fractal shape is kinda… baked into any Bayesian-ish system tracking the hidden state of the Markov model. So in some sense, it’s not very surprising to find it linearly embedded in activations of a residual stream; all that really means is that the probabilities for each hidden state are linearly represented in the residual stream.

Besides math and programming, what are your other skills and interests?

Playing and composing music is the main one.

I have an idea of a puzzle game, not sure if it would be good or bad, I haven’t done even a prototype. So if anyone is interested, feel free to try

Yeah, you're missing out on all the fun in game-making :-) You must build the prototype yourself, play with it yourself, tweak the mechanics, and at some moment the stars will align and something will just work and you'll know it. There's no way anyone else can do it but you.

is that a Möbius strip

It seems to me that the problem in the counterlogical mugging isn't about how much computation is required for getting the answer. It's about whether you trust Omega to have not done the computation beforehand, and whether you believe they actually would have paid you, no matter how hard or easy the computation is. Next to that, all the other discussion in that section seems irrelevant.

Here's the actual paper:

• T Besiroglu et al. (Apr 2024) Chinchilla Scaling: A Replication Attempt

The impact of the Chinchilla paper might be mostly the experimental methodology, not specific scaling laws (apart from the 20x rule of thumb, which the Besiroglu paper upholds). How learning rate has to be chosen for a training horizon, as continued training breaks optimality. And how isoFLOP plots gesture at the correct optimization problem to be solving, as opposed to primarily paying attention to training steps or parameter counts. Subsequent studies build on these lessons towards new regimes, in particular

• N Muennighoff et al. (May 2023) Scaling Data-Constrained Language Models
• Together AI (Dec 2023) StripedHyena
• SY Gadre et al. (Mar 2024) Language Models Scale Reliably with Over-training and on Downstream Tasks

Oh, sure. I was wondering about the reverse question: is there something that doesn't really qualify as torture where subjecting a billion people to it is worse than subjecting one person to torture.

I'm also interested in how this forms some sort of "layered" discontinuous scale. If it were continuous, then you could form a chain of relations of the form "10 people suffering A is as bad as 1 person suffering B", "10 people suffering B is as bad as 1 person suffering C", and so on to span the entire spectrum.

Then it would take some additional justification for saying that 100 people suffering A is not as bad as 1 person suffering C, 1000 A vs 1 D, and so on.

youtube channels

https://www.youtube.com/@RationalAnimations (lesswrong stuff)

https://www.youtube.com/@RobertMilesAI (ai safety in particular)

https://www.youtube.com/@aiexplained-official (less of a particular perspective, more "the only sober analysis of current ai landscape on youtube")

incomplete results of stuff sponsored by givewell

(I was doing this search, but it's annoying to find the actual results so to save others time here are some of them)

We Now Have TOO MANY Bees (You Read That Right) | Lightning Round

The Lifesaving Tech Drivers Hate

The worst vulnerability of the decade?

Steve Hsu on the Future of Everything

Which Energy Source is Best w/ Age of Miracles

DECONSTRUCTION - Terrible Writing Advice

2023: A Year In Climate Change

The Crustacean Tier List

Conservative Populism's Gospel Of Victimhood w/ Paul Elliott Johnson - 12/20/21 | MR Live

Thamslink: London’s Other Cross-City Railway

📈 Chris Rufo vs Claudine Gay #podcast #economics #economy #politics #international #conservative

(editorial note: I link the above link to show that it happened but very much hesitated to do so given that the people there would like me dead)

How Life Survives Inside Underwater Volcanoes

I accidentally found some nearly-lost Scooby-Doo stories (and now they're yours!)

Geosynchronous Orbits are WEIRD

Hiatus.

Balaji Srinivasan and Nathan Labenz on the Future of AI, AI Gods, and AI Control

In Defense of Fairytale Magic

The TRUE VILLAIN of Christmas

How Humans Made Malaria So Deadly

incomplete results of stuff sponsored by 80k hours:

(same as above, but with this search)

Why Doesn’t the Palo Verde Tree Need Water?

Physics Is Nearly Complete.

The Dev's Creed: Being Wrong is Essential

The Questionable Engineering of Oceangate

Crossing the Street Shouldn't Be Deadly (but it is)

The Moon Isn't As Dead As You Think

The Environmentally Friendly Fuel That Can Kill You | Lightning Round

What if Death was a Person?

Why Continents Are High

The Little Prince: Adulthood is a Scam

What’s Up With the Weird Pockmarks Up and Down the East Coast?

Does Antimatter Create Anti-Gravity?

Oppenheimer's warning lives on

6-month-old Steak, Ice Cream Bread & more debunking | How To Cook That Ann Reardon

Why Giants Aren't Actually Monsters

The Best Reading Skill No One Ever Taught You

I Read 2,216 Resumes. Here’s How You Stand Out 🚀

The Problem With Britain's Economy

6 Inventors Who Were Killed By Their Own Inventions

How Altruism Evolved in Humans

Trains’ Weirdly Massive Problem with Leaves

Is The Twilight Zone Still Good?

Why No One’s Sure If This Is Part Of The US Constitution

Can you trick your own brain?

Why 'pudding' refers to sausages and desserts

Ask Adam: Why is European food bland? Are closed mussels actually bad? Career advice? (PODCAST E19)

Johnny Harris Is Wrong About Inflation

The Insane Rise of YEAT

Are The First Stars Really Still Out There?

Maybe vehicles would need to carry some shaped charges to cut a hole in the tube in case of emergency.

That would likely create sparks, and provided the tube has been cut the hydrogen is going to explode.