LessWrong 2.0 Reader

I currently am completing psychological studies for credit in my university psych course. The entire time, all I can think is “I wonder if that detail is the one they’re using to trick me with?”

I wonder how this impacts results. I can’t imagine being in a heightened state of looking out for deception has no impact.

I agree, I meant that this is the promise (which has yet to be realized).

My guess is that there's no home economic alpha to be had in polyamory, on average. This isn't a very strong opinion, but I expect most efficiencies that can be obtained by a polycule (which are similar to those obtained by a family of the same size with kids), will be offset by increased volatility due to complex relationship dynamics (I'm not saying poly people break up more, but that this is simple math of having more people and holding the base rate of breakups constant).

I think there are ways to make home economics more efficient for any particular household, but they are largely orthogonal to relationship style of the people in the house.

Photonic devices can perform certain operations, such as matrix multiplications (obviously important for deep learning), more efficiently than electronic processors.

In practice, no, they can't. Optical transistors are less efficient. Analog matrix multiplies using light are less efficient. There's no recent lab-scale approach that's more efficient than semiconductor transistors either.

Scott Aaronson (Quantum computing expert) also works at OpenAI. But I don't think he's doing any quantum computer-related research there. As far as I know, he's on the superalignment team.

The LessWrong Review [? · GW] runs every year to select the posts that have most stood the test of time. This post is not yet eligible for review, but will be at the end of 2024. The top fifty or so posts are featured prominently on the site throughout the year. Will this post make the top fifty?

It might be a good on the current margin to have a norm of publicly listing any non-disclosure agreements you have signed (e.g. on one's LW profile), and the rough scope of them, so that other people can model what information you're committed to not sharing, and highlight if it is related to anything beyond the details of technical research being done (e.g. if it is about social relationships or conflicts or criticism).

I have added the one NDA that I have signed to my profile [LW · GW].

Can you speak to any, let's say, "hypothetical" specific concerns that somebody who was in your position at a company like OpenAI might have had that would cause them to quit in a similar way to you?

I’ve got a few questions.

1. What is “WRT brain function”?
2. How does someone train themself out of subvocalising?
3. If you think critically, has speed reading actually increased your learning rate for semantic knowledge?
4. Most things have downsides, what are the downsides of speed reading?
5. What are your Words Per Minute (WPM)?
6. Did you test WPM before learning speed reading?
7. If this was an RPG, what level do you think you are in speed reading from 1-100?
8. How long did it take you to reach your current level in this skill?

Sorry that’s a lot of questions. I’ve been curious about this topic for a while. But the sources I hear it recommended from aren’t ones I completely trust. So it feels like a good opportunity getting to ask a LWer about it.

Yeah most of the time I’ll open my to-do list and just look at one the couple very leftmost columns, and the column has maybe 3 items, and then I’ll pick one and do it (or pick a few and schedule them for that same day).

Occasionally I’ll look at a column farther to the right, and see if any ought to be moved left or right. The further right, the less often I’m checking.