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short lists fit much better into working memory
IMO the main point of a to-do list is to not have the to-do list in working memory. The only thing that should be in working memory is the one thing you're actually supposed to be focusing on and doing, right now. Right?
Or if you're instead in the mode of deciding what to do next, or making a schedule for your day, etc., then that's different, but working memory is still kinda irrelevant because presumably you have your to-do list open on your computer, right in front of your eyes, while you do that, right?
easier and more comprehensive approach would be to use a text editor with proper version control and diff features, and then to name particular versions before making major changes.
Is that what you do? It's not a good fit to my typical workflow. But I'm definitely in favor of trying different things and seeing what works best for you. :)
error on LessOnline (May 31—June 2, Berkeley, CA)I see no general-inquiries address on less.online, so I hope it's okay if I post mine here. Longtime rationalsphere lurker, much rarer poster, considering going. I'm based in Atlanta and pricing the trip:
I am delighted that you chimed in here; these are pleasingly composed and increase my desire to read the relevant sequences. Your post makes me feel like I meaningfully contributed to the improvement of these sequences by merely asking a potentially dumb question in public, which is the internet at its very best.
Artistically, I think the top (fox face) image for lotteries cropped for its bottom 2/3 would be slightly preferable to the other, and the bottom (monochrome white/blue) for geometric makes a nicer banner in the aspect ratio that they're shown as.
wassname on William_S's ShortformHere's something I've been pondering.
hypothesis: If transformers has internal concepts, and they are represented in the residual stream. Then because we have access to 100% of the information then it should be possible for a non-linear probe to get 100% out of distribution accuracy. 100% is important because we care about how a thing like value learning will generalise OOD.
And yet we don't get 100% (in fact most metrics are much easier than what we care about, being in-distribution, or on careful setups). What is wrong with the assumptions hypothesis, do you think?
wassname on William_S's Shortformbetter calibrated than any of these opinions, because most of them don't seem to focus very much on "hedging" or "thoughtful doubting"
new observations > new thoughts when it comes to calibrating yourself.
The best calibrated people are people who get lots of interaction with the real world, not those who think a lot or have a complicated inner model. Tetlock's super forecasters were gamblers and weathermen.
dpiepgrass on "How could I have thought that faster?"I guess you could try it and see if you reach wrong conclusions, but that only works isn't so wired up with shortcuts that you cannot (or are much less likely to) discover your mistakes.
I've been puzzling over why EY's efforts to show the dangers of AGI (most notably this [LW · GW]) have been unconvincing enough so that other experts (e.g. Paul Christiano) and, in my experience, typical rationalists have not adopted p(doom) > 90% like EY, or even > 50%. I was unconvinced because he simply didn't present a chain of reasoning that shows what he's trying to show. Rational thinking is a lot like math: a single mistake in a chain of reasoning can invalidate the whole conclusion. Failure to generate a complete chain of reasoning is a sign that the thinking isn't rational. And failure to communicate a complete chain of reasoning, as in this case, should fail to convince people (except if the audience can mentally reconstruct the missing information).
I read all six "tomes" of Rationality: A-Z and I don't recall EY ever writing about the importance of having a solid and complete chain (or graph) of reasoning―but here is a post about the value of shortcuts (if you can pardon the strawman; I'm using the word "shortcut" as a shortcut). There's no denying that shortcuts can have value, but only if it leads to winning, which for most of us including EY includes having true beliefs, which in turn requires an ability to generate solid and complete chains of reasoning. If you used shortcuts to generate it, that's great insofar as it generates correct results, but mightn't shortcuts make your reasoning less reliable than it first appears? When it comes to AI safety, EY's most important cause, I've seen a shortcut-laden approach (in his communication, if not his reasoning) and wasn't convinced, so I'd like to see him take it slower and give us a more rigorous and clear case for AI doom ― one that either clearly justifies a very high near-term catastrophic risk assessment, or admits that it doesn't.
I think EY must have a mental system that is far above average, but from afar it seems not good enough.
On the other hand, I've learned a lot about rationality from EY that I didn't already know, and perhaps many of the ideas he came up with are a product of this exact process of identifying necessary cognitive work and casting off the rest. Notable if true! But in my field I, too, have had various unique ideas that no one else ever presented, and I came about it from a different angle: I'm always looking for the (subjectively) "best" solutions to problems. Early in my career, getting the work done was never enough, I wanted my code to be elegant and beautiful and fast and generalized too. Seems like I'd never accept the first version, I'd always find flaws and change it immediately after, maybe more than once. My approach (which I guess earns the boring label 'perfectionism') wasn't fast, but I think it built up a lot of good intuitions that many other developers just don't have. Likewise in life in general, I developed nuanced thinking and rationalist-like intuitions without ever hearing about rationalism. So I am fairly satisfied with plain-old perfectionism―reaching conclusions faster would've been great, but I'm uncertain whether I could've or would've found a process of doing that such that my conclusions would've been as correct. (I also recommend always thinking a lot, but maybe that goes without saying around here)
I'm reminded of a great video about two ways of thinking about math problems: a slick way that finds a generalized solution, and a more meandering, exploratory way way that looks at many specific cases and examples. The slick solutions tend to get way more attention, but slower processes are way more common when no one is looking, and famous early mathematicians haven't shied away from long and even tedious work. I feel like EY's saying "make it slick and fast!" and to be fair, I probably should've worked harder at developing Slick Thinking, but my slow non-slick methods also worked pretty well.
review-bot on FHI (Future of Humanity Institute) has shut down (2005–2024)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 2025. The top fifty or so posts are featured prominently on the site throughout the year. Will this post make the top fifty?
gwern on DyslucksiaClassic 'typical mind' like experience: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizing-from-one-example [LW · GW]
gwern on Has Generative AI Already Peaked? - ComputerphileKey graph: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.04125#page=6
I don't think they 'consistently find' anything.
dagon on Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir's Shortform