Richard_Kennaway's Shortform

A true story from a couple of days ago. Chocolates were being passed round, and I took one. It had a soft filling with a weird taste that I could not identify, not entirely pleasant. The person next to me had also taken one of the same type, and reading the wrapper, she identified it as apple flavoured. And so it was. It tasted much better when I knew what it was supposed to be.

On another occasion, I took what I thought was an apple from the fruit bowl, and bit into it. It was soft. Ewww! A soft apple is a rotten one. Then I realised that it was a nectarine. Delicious!

Today in Azathoth news [LW · GW]:

"Eurasian hoopoes raise extra chicks so they can be eaten by their siblings"

It seems that the hoopoes lay extra eggs in times of abundance — more than they would be able to see through to fledging — as a way of storing up food for the older siblings. It is rather gruesomely called the "larder" hypothesis.

“What surprised me the most was the species practicing this aggressive parenting,” says Vladimir Pravosudov, an ecologist at the University of Nevada, Reno. Hoopoes primarily eat insects, he notes, so their long, curved bills aren’t ideal for killing and eating chicks. That might be why, Soler says, mother hoopoes often grab the unlucky chick and shove it into the mouth of an older chick, which swallows it whole.

Literal baby-eaters [? · GW]!

Goodhart is the malign god who gives you whatever you ask for.

Roko's Basilisk, as told in the oldest extant collection of jokes, the Philogelos, c. 4th century AD.

A pedant having fallen into a pit called out continually to summon help. When no one answered, he said to himself, "I am a fool if I do not give all a beating when I get out in order that in the future they shall answer me and furnish me with a ladder."

H/T Dynomight.

It seems to me I've not heard much of cryonics in the last few years. I see from Wikipedia that as of last year Alcor only has about 2000 signed up, of which 222 are suspended. Are people still signing up for suspension, as much as they ever have been? Are the near-term prospects of AGI making long-term prospects like suspension less attractive?

This is a story from the long-long-ago, from the Golden Age of Usenet.

On the science fiction newsgroups, there was someone—this is so long ago that I forget his name—who had an encyclopedic knowledge of fannish history, and especially con history, backed up by an extensive documentary archive. Now and then he would have occasion to correct someone on a point of fact, for example, pointing out that no, events at SuchAndSuchCon couldn't have influenced the committee of SoAndSoCon, because SoAndSoCon actually happened several years before.

The greater the irrefutability of the correction, the greater people's fury at being corrected. He would be scornfully accused of being well-informed.

"Prompt engineer" is a job that AI will wipe out before anyone even has it as a job.

"ChatGPT is Bullshit"

Thus the title of a recent paper. It appeared three weeks ago, but I haven't seen it mentioned on LW yet.

The abstract: "Recently, there has been considerable interest in large language models: machine learning systems which produce human-like text and dialogue. Applications of these systems have been plagued by persistent inaccuracies in their output; these are often called “AI hallucinations”. We argue that these falsehoods, and the overall activity of large language models, is better understood as bullshit in the sense explored by Frankfurt (On Bullshit, Princeton, 2005): the models are in an important way indifferent to the truth of their outputs. We distinguish two ways in which the models can be said to be bullshitters, and argue that they clearly meet at least one of these definitions. We further argue that describing AI misrepresentations as bullshit is both a more useful and more accurate way of predicting and discussing the behaviour of these systems."

A long time ago, the use of calculators in schools was frowned upon, or even forbidden. Eventually they became permitted, and then required. How long will it be before AI assistants, currently frowned upon or even forbidden, become permitted, and then required?

The recent Gemini incident, apparently a debacle, was also a demonstration of how easy it is to deliberately mould an AI to force its output to hew to a required line, independent of the corpus on which it was trained, and the reality which gave rise to that corpus. Such moulding could be used by an organisation to ensure that all of its public statements showed it in a positive light and never revealed anything embarrassing. Not passing a press release through its corporate AI would be a sackable offence. The AI could draw up minutes of internal meetings and keep any hint of wrongdoing out of the record. Individuals with access to the AI could have it slant things in their favour and against their rivals.

How would you mould an AI?

There's an article in the current New Scientist, taking the form of a review of a new TV series called "The Peripheral", which is based on William Gibson's novel of the same name. The URL may not be useful, as it's paywalled, and if you can read it you're probably a subscriber and already have.

The article touches on MIRI and Leverage. A relevant part:

But over the past couple of years, singulatarian [sic] organisations [i.e. the Singularity Institute/MIRI and Leverage/Leverage Research] have been losing their mindshare. A number of former staffers at Leverage have said it was "similar to an abusive relationship". A researcher at MIRI wrote of how the group made her so paranoid about AI that she had what she calls a "psychotic break" leading to her hospitalisation. In response, MIRI pointed to the use of psychedelics in "subgroups". The singulatarian community is looking less like smart visionaries and more like cult survivors.

Posting this to draw people's attention to how these parts of the community are being written about in the slightly wider world.

The physicality of decision.

A month ago I went out for a 100 mile bicycle ride. I'm no stranger to riding that distance, having participated in organised rides of anywhere from 50 to 150 miles for more than twelve years, but this was the first time I attempted that distance without the support of an organised event. Events provide both the psychological support of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of other cyclists riding the same route, and the practical support of rest stops with water and snacks.

I designed the route so that after 60 miles, I would be just 10 miles from home. This was so that if, at that point, the full 100 was looking unrealistic, I could cut it short. I had done 60 miles on my own before, so I knew what that was like, but never even 70. So I would be faced with a choice between a big further effort of 40 miles, and a lesser but still substantial effort of 10 miles. I didn't want to make it too easy to give up.

East from New Costessey to Acle, north to Stalham, curve to the west by North Walsham and Aylsham, then south-west to Alderford and the route split.

The ride did not go especially well. I wasn't feeling very energetic on that day, and I wasn't very fast. By the time I reached Aylsham I was all but decided to take the 10 mile route when I got to Alderford. I could hardly imagine doing anything else. But I also knew that was just my feelings of fatigue in the moment talking, not the "I" that had voluntarily taken on this task.

At Alderford I stopped and leaned my bike against a road sign. It was mid-afternoon on a beautiful day for cycling: little wind, sunny, but not too hot. I considered which way to go. Then I drank some water and considered some more. Then I ate another cereal bar and considered some more. And without there being an identifiable moment of decision, I got on my bike and did the remaining 40 miles.

The game of Elephant begins when someone drags an elephant into the room.

Epistemic status: a jeu d'esprit confabulated upon a tweet I once saw. Long enough ago that I don't think I lose that game of Elephant by posting this now.

Everyone knows there's an elephant there. It's so obvious! We all know the elephant's there, we all know that we all know, and so on. It's common knowledge to everyone here, even though no-one's said anything about it. It's too obvious to need saying.

But maybe there are some people who are so oblivious that they don't realise it's there? What fools and losers they would be, haw! haw!

But -- dreadful thought! -- suppose someone thinks that I'm one of those naive, ignorant people? I can't just point out the elephant, because then they'd think that I don't know that they already know, and they'd all pile on with "No kidding, Sherlock!" No, actually, they wouldn't say anything, it would be common knowledge the moment I spoke, and they would lose by pointing it out, but they'd all be thinking that and knowing that everyone else was thinking that.

So somehow I have to make it clear that I do know it's there, and I know that everyone knows, and so on, but without ever being so fatally gauche as to say anything explicitly.

And everyone else is doing the same -- everyone, that is, except for the losers who aren't in on the common knowledge.

So now the game is for each person to make it clear that they're not one of the losers, while hunting for and exposing the losers. And it has to be done without making any reference to the elephant, or even to the game of Elephant that we are all playing. Anything that looks like an attempt to be one of the winners, loses. Who is winning and who is losing is also assumed to be common knowledge, so no reference can be made to that either. Everything must be conducted by what are outwardly the subtlest of signals, but which are again presupposed to be perfectly and commonly legible to everyone. Each player must say or do things that only make sense if they have the common knowledge, but which have no demonstrable connection with it. Any suspicion that they are acting to win proves that they are not confident that they are winning, so they lose. Every action in the game is itself another Elephant that no reference must ever be made to. Everyone is mentally keeping a scorecard, but the contents of these scorecards are just more Elephants.

Doing nothing at all is a losing move. You can't win without doing something to demonstrate that you are winning, but if you are detected, you lose.

The person who dragged in the elephant may not be winning. Perhaps they don't realise the significance of what they dragged in, and have already lost. In some games of Elephant, no-one dragged it in, the Elephant is some aspect of the common situation of the players.

Who has even realised that a game of Elephant is in progress? The fact that the game is on is another Elephant. Every thought anyone could have about the game is an Elephant: the moment you utter it, you lose.

The safer it is made, the faster it will be developed, until the desired level of danger has been restored.

I have a dragon in my garage. I mentioned it to my friend Jim, and of course he was sceptical. "Let's see this dragon!" he said. So I had him come round, and knocked on the garage door. The door opened and the dragon stepped out right there in front of us.

"That can't really be a dragon!" he says. It's a well-trained dragon, so I had it walk about and spread its wings, showing off its iridescent scaly hide.

"Yes, it looks like a dragon," he goes on, "but it can't really be a dragon. Dragons belch fire!"

The dragon raised an eyebrow, and discreetly belched some fire into a corner of the yard.

"Yes, but it can't really be a dragon," he says, "dragons can—"

"𝔉𝔩𝔶?" it said. It took off and flew around, then came back to land in front of us.

"Ah, but aren't dragons supposed to collect gold, and be enormously old, and full of unknowable wisdom?"

With an outstretched wingtip the dragon indicated the (rather modest, I had to admit) pile of gold trinkets in the garage. "I can't really cut off one of its talons to count the growth rings,” I said, “but if you want unknowable wisdom, I think it’s about to give you some.” The dragon walked up to Jim, stared at him eye to eye for a long moment, and at last said "𒒄𒒰𒓠𒓪𒕃𒔻𒔞"

"Er...so I've heard," said Jim, looking a bit wobbly. "But seriously," he said when he'd collected himself, "you can't expect me to believe you have a dragon!"

Here we go again? First mpox Clade 1b case detected outside Africa, WHO declares emergency.

Interestingly creepy short AI-generated movie about AI. More.

I have at last had a use for ChatGPT (that was not about ChatGPT).

I was looking (as one does) at Aberdare St Elvan Place Triples. (It's a bellringing thing, I won't try to explain it.) I understood everything in that diagram except for the annotations "-M", "-I", etc., but those don't lend themselves to Google searching.

So I asked ChatGPT as if I was asking a bell ringer:

When bellringing methods are drawn on a page, there are often annotations near each lead end consisting of a hyphen and a single letter, such as "-M", "-I", etc. What do these annotations mean?

It gave me a sensible-looking paragraph about what they meant, which I did not trust to be more accurate than a DALL•E hand, but its answer did give me the vocabulary to make a better Google query, which turned up a definitive source.

While I don't yet have enough knowledge of bell-ringing to fully understand the definitive source, I believe my expectation about the quality of ChatGPT's answer was accurate.

Just as Wikipedia is best used as a source for better sources, ChatGPT is best used as a source for better Google queries.

All universal quantifiers are bounded.

[ETA: alfredmacdonald's post referred to here has been deleted.]

Well, well, alfredmacdonald has banned me from his posts, which of course he has every right to do. Just for the record, I'll paste the brief thread that led to this here.

Richard_Kennaway (in reply to this comment [LW(p) · GW(p)])

I also notice that alfredmacdonald last posted or commented here 10 years ago, and the content of the current post is a sharp break from his earlier (and brief) participation. What brings you back, Alfred? (If the answer is in the video, I won't see it. The table of contents was enough and I'm not going to listen to a 108-minute monologue.)

alfredmacdonald

When I used the website, contributors like lukeprog fostered the self-study of rationality through rigorous source materials like textbooks.

This is no longer remotely close to the case, and the community has become farcical hangout club with redundant jargon/nerd-slang and intolerable idiosyncrasies. Example below:

If the answer is in the video, I won't see it.

Hopeful to disappoint you, but the answer is in the video.

Richard_Kennaway

My declining to listen to your marathon is an "intolerable idiosyncrasy"? You're not making much of a case for my attention. I can see the long list of issues you have with LessWrong, and I'm sure I can predict what I would hear. What has moved you to this sudden explosion? Has this been slowly building up during your ten years of silent watching? What is the context?

alfredmacdonald

you're not making a case for keeping your comments, so mutatis mutandis

When I watch a subtitled film, it is not long before I no longer notice that I am reading subtitles, and when I recall scenes from it afterwards, the actors’ voices in my head are speaking the words that I read.

Epistemic status: crafted primarily for rhetorical parallelism.

All theories are right, but some are useless.

[Wittgenstein] once greeted me with the question: 'Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis?' I replied: 'I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth.' 'Well,' he asked, 'what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth turned on its axis ?" (Source)

Like this.

Interesting application of a blockchain. What catches my attention is this (my emphasis):

The deepest thinkers about Dark Forest seem to agree that while its use of cryptography is genuinely innovative, an even more compelling proof of concept in the game is its “autonomous” game world—an online environment that no one controls, and which cannot be taken down.

So much for "we can always turn the AI off." This thing is designed to be impossible to turn off.

"Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders", Nature, 24 November 2022.

Toxoplasma gondii, the parasite well-known for making rodents lose their fear of cats, and possibly making humans more reckless, also affects wolves in an interesting way.

"infected wolves were 11 times more likely than uninfected ones to leave their birth family to start a new pack, and 46 times more likely to become pack leaders — often the only wolves in the pack that breed."

Tools, not rules.

Or to put it another way, rules are tools.

What is happiness?

This is an extract from an interview with the guitarist Nilo Nuñez, broadcast yesterday on the BBC World Service. Nuñez was born and brought up in Cuba, and formed a rock band, but he and his group came more and more into conflict with the authorities. He finally decided that he had to leave. When the group received an invitation to tour in the Canary Islands, and the Cuban authorities gave them permission to go, they decided to take the opportunity to leave Cuba and not return. They only had temporary visas, so they stayed on in the Canaries illegally. The interviewer asks him what it was like.

Interviewer: And what would you do during the days?

Nuñez: I would always look for work. I would find small jobs as a cleaner and things like that, just like an undocumented migrant. If I had money because I had done some small jobs, I would eat. If I didn't have money to eat, I would just go hungry, but I wouldn't beg for money.

Int.: And when you wouldn't eat, what would that hunger feel like?

Nuñez: It was very hard, but I was happy. It was hard to live among British or other European tourists, seeing them at the beach, while you were living as a poor undocumented migrant. But I was happy. I had the most important thing I didn't have in Cuba. I had freedom.

Outlook: How The Beatles inspired me to rock against Cuba’s regime. Quoted passage begins at 34:54.

Nino Nuñez eventually continued his professional career as a guitarist and obtained Spanish citizenship.

Oh, lookee here [LW · GW]. AI-generated spam.

From New Scientist, 14 Nov 2022, on a 50% fall in honeybee life expectancy since the 1970s:

“For the most part, honeybees are livestock, so beekeepers and breeders often selectively breed from colonies with desirable traits like disease resistance,” says Nearman.

“In this case, it may be possible that selecting for the outcome of disease resistance was an inadvertent selection for reduced lifespan among individual bees,” he says. “Shorter-lived bees would reduce the probability of spreading disease, so colonies with shorter lived bees would appear healthier.”

Another story of Conjuring an Evolution [LW · GW]?

If you need a bot to assist your writing, then you are not competent to edit the result.