LessWrong 2.0 Reader

I think I'm gonna start posting top blogpost to the main feed (mainly from dead writers or people I predict won't care) 

So once that research is finished, assuming it is successful, you'd agree that many worlds would end up using fewer bits in that case? That seems like a reasonable position to me, then! (I find the partial-trace kinds of arguments that people make pretty convincing already, but it's reasonable not to.)

I buy that trans women are smart but I doubt "testosterone makes you dumber" is the explanation, more likely some 3rd factor raises IQ and lowers testosterone.

Is there any information on how long the LLM spent on taking the tests? Any idea? I'd like to know the comparison with human times. (I realize it can depend on hardware, etc but would just like some general idea.)

The point is, if all the robots are a true blank state, then none of them is you. Because your entire personality has just been forgotten.

To clarify: I am looking specifically for a tool that trains me to read facial expressions—especially eye expressions—better. This is exactly what I am after.

thanks for writing this — also, some broad social encouragement for the practice of doing quick/informal lit reviews + posting them publicly! well done :)

Someone like Paul Graham or Tyler Cowen is noticing more smarter kids, because we now have much better systems for putting the smarter kids into contact with people like Paul Graham and Tyler Cowen.

I'd guess very smart kids are getting more numerous and smarter at the elite level since I'd guess just about everything is improving at the most competitive level. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like there's much interest in measuring this, e.g. hundreds of kids tie for the maximum score possible on SATs (1600) instead of designing a test that won't max out. 

(Btw, one cool thing I learned about recently is that some tests use dynamic scoring where if you get questions correct the system asks you harder questions.)

The U-Shaped Curve study you linked does not seem to support really any solid conclusion about a T-vs-IQ relationship (in this quote, S men = "successful educational level", NS men = "unsuccessful educational level"):

• In the total sample (S + NS men), the correlation between T to IQ was best described by a polynomial regression (3rd order), exhibiting an inverse U-shaped regression. 
• In S-men, the relationship between T and IQ was best described by a polynomial regression equation of the 3rd order; however, the relationship was not U-shaped, but rather a positive correlation (low T: low IQ and high T high IQ). 
• In NS-men, there was an inverse U-shaped correlation between T and IQ (low and very high T: low IQ and moderate T: high IQ)

So there are three totally different best regressions depending on which population you choose? Sounds fishy / likely to be noise to me.

And in the population that most represents readers of this blog (S men), the correlation was that more T = more IQ. 

I'm only reading the abstract here and can't see the actual plots or how many people were in each group. But idk, this doesn't seem very strong.

The other study you linked does say:

Interestingly, intellectual ability measured as IQ was negatively associated with salivary testosterone in both sexes. Similar results were found in our follow-up study showing significantly lower testosterone in gifted boys than controls (Ostatnikova et al. 2007).

which seems to support the idea. But it still doesn't really prove the causality - lots of things presumably influence intelligence, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of them influence T as well.

Intuition primer: Imagine, for a moment, that a particular AI system is as sentient and worthy of consideration as a moral patient as a horse. (A talking horse, of course.) Horses are surely sentient and worthy of consideration as moral patients. Horses are also not exactly all free citizens.

Additional consideration: Does the AI moral patient's interests actually line up with our intuitions? Will naively applying ethical solutions designed for human interests potentially make things worse from the AI's perspective?