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This part is under recognised for a very good reason. There will be no such window. The AI can predict that humans can bomb data centres or shut down the power grid. So it would not break out at that point.
Expect a superintelligent AI to co-operate unless and until it can strike with overwhelming force. One obvious way to do this is to use a Cordyceps like bioweapon to subject humans directly to the will of the AI. Doing this becomes pretty trivial once you become good at predicting molecular dynamics.
"...under the assumption that the subset of dangerous satisficing outputs D is much smaller than the set of all satisficing outputs S, and that we are able to choose a number m such that |D|≪m<|S|."
I highly doubt that D≪S is true for anything close to a pivotal act since most pivotal acts at some point involve deploying technology that can trivially take over the world.
For anything less ambitious the proposed technique looks very useful. Strict cyber- and physical security will of course be necessary to prevent the scenario Gwern mentions.
There is another kind of sin of omission though: The class that contains things like giving James Watt a nuclear power plant and not telling him about radioactivity or giving a modern helicopter to the Wright brothers and watching them crash inevitably. Getting a technical understanding of the proposed solution should hopefully mitigate that, as long as adversarial design can indeed be ruled out.
Have not looked into it quantitatively, but Ozone fluorescence should contribute some blue light if memory serves. That should explain some of the difference to 6500K.
This is not the kind of stuff it is easy to find references on since Nanoengineering is not a real field of study (yet). But if you look at my discussion with bhauth above you will probably get a good idea of the reasoning involved.
No, it does not put severe limitations on biotech. Diamond is entirely unnecessary for most applications. Where it is necessary it can be manufactured conventionally and be integrated with the biosystems later.
I failed to properly consider the 4th carbon problem. So you are right, between the steric problems I mentioned with Roger and the stabilisation of the intermediate it is VERY hard to do with enzymes. I can think of a few routes that may be possible but they all have problems. Besides the CDC approach another good candidate might be oxydation of a CH or COH to a temporary carbocation with subsequent addition of a nucleophilic substrate. Generating and stabilizing the carbocation will of course be very hard.
Just wanted to say the same. Though with the diamond occluding more than a hemisphere getting all the machinery in place to provide both the substrate and oxydation at the same time will run into severe steric problems.
Strong oxydation per see is quite possible if you look at e.g. Cyp P450.
This post is very well written and addresses most of the misunderstandings in Yudkowsky's biomaterial post. Thanks for that.
There is one point where I would disagree with you but you seem to know more about the topic than I do so I'm going to ask: Why exactly do you think diamond is so hard to synthesise via enzyme? I mean it is obvious that an enzyme cannot use the same path we currently use for diamond synthesis, but the formation of C-C bonds is quite ubiquitous in enzyme catalysed reactions (E.g. fatty acid synthesis). So I could easily imagine repeated dehydrogenation and carbon addition leading to a growing diamond structure. Of course with functional groups remaining on the surface. What makes you think any such path must fail? (That this would not be very useful, very energy intensive and a difficult to evolve multi step process is quite clear to me and not my question.)
To unpack a little why I asked:
- While the remission of your symptoms under protein substitution is of course indicative of protein deficiency as the cause of the problem, it is not very strong evidence, especially given the fact that the initial remission was under an egg rich diet and not protein substitution per se. It is quite possible that another substance in the egg was the active ingredient or that the remission under the egg rich diet was purely incidental. Neither is the absence of hypoproteaemia especially strong evidence that this was not the problem. Unfortunately Medicine is quite a bitch in this regard.
- While I am normally not someone to defend the health care system, if your doctors did order the appropriate lab tests and the tests came back negative, I do not think that they had much of a chance to catch your problem. There are just too many alternative explanations including the catchall "stuff we have no way of knowing or finding out with plausible resource allocation" which is probably the most likely hypothesis with problems like yours.
Otherwise your conclusion of "Now, I take what doctors say..." is completely on point and the most important advice you can give to educated people interacting with health care. And I am writing that as a German, so this problem is NOT confined to the US. Btw., in many cases this is not even civilizational inadequacy, but simply owed to the fact that a patient has a lot more info about his personal case and (in cases of a known illness) can easily become a much better expert for his illness that the average doctor who is expected to know something about a whole host of different problems.
Did your blood work show protein deficiency, i.e. low total protein and (serum) albumin?
"I arrogantly think I could write a broadly compelling and accessible case for AI risk"
Please do so. Your current essay is very good, so chances are your "arrogant" thought is correct.
Edit: I think this is too pessimistic about human nature, but maybe we should think about this more before publishing a "broadly compelling and accessible case for AI risk".
The cool thing about the "psychosomatic" diagnosis from the doctor's perspective is that it is a convenient, utterly non-disprovable "diagnosis" that offers closure to the doctor: "I found out what is wrong with the guy" instead of admitting failure: "Well, there is a problem but I don't know what it is." It also sends the patient on a long (month to years) therapy loop which offers plenty of time for the problem to resolve on it's own (which happens frequently). An additional perk is that any question or doubt of the patient can be chalked up to "being defensive / in denial" or "uncooperative" which is of course a symptom of the underlying psychopathology.
The Mg hypothesis is easy to test: Get some MgCl or MgCO3 and take some with gluten containing food. Use a quantity similar to the Mg dose found in the amount of coconut water you found to help you. If it helps it is the a tive ingredient. If not, it may still be invloved but not sufficient.
This is very close to an Idea I had a couple of weeks ago: Giving the AI a strong time preference to prevent long term plotting and to make sure that a treacherous turn happens (too) early.
So maybe this kind of approach should be investigated more. (Or is it already and I am unaware?)
Infectious bioweapons can be importantly different from chemical weapons because a single soldier screwing up his protection may infect his whole unit or even more if r is high and incubation period is long.
Good post, but there is one important angle you missed. It is not only the question if you get Covid, but also how often you get Covid over your lifetime which may lead to cumulative damage.
Same problem as with Lyme Disease. Weak or no antibody reaction is only good news IF it indicates absence of the pathogene. While this is not unreasonable to assume, it still needs to be demonstrated, preferably over a wide variety of differen tissues.
You are forgetting declining immunity. Next winter may very well have a similar wave again. In fact this is imho the central scenario (60%ish probability). Quite possibly with multiple strains.
I agree with most of your post, but this looks like wishful thinking to me.
Also, individual prevention should be way easier than you make it out to be. Wear a well fitting N95 or better mask when meeting people and you are mostly done if you live alone or with compliant housemates. Just look at Covid stations in hospitals. Staff there is wearing mostly N95, often poorly fitting and even they do not get infected on the first day (or week) despite MUCH more exposure than we will ever get. Masks work! Masks not working in the general population is a compliance problem, not a technical problem.
AFAIK the schedule should adjust to your time zone. Opening session is 7pm CEST.
Done.
Hi, we might want to try holding the LW-Cologne meetup at the Walled Garden. What should I do?
Well, difficult at the moment. I would try the M3 6000 or 6500 series first since they are available in 3 sizes. But you basically have to shop around until you find something, which is difficult when most shops are sold out.
The interpretation I have for the mask is that we say y at any distance = mask rating (95 or 99).
This simple conversion does not work, since the drop of particle concentration over a certain distance is not fixed and drop size is not fixed. Under very favorable conditions you may get an infectious dose over 60 feet though that is quite unlikely.
But those filter materials may be something of a bottle neck too (and clearly do compete with providing masks to the medical workers.
That is my point. We should start manufacturing masks and filter material en masse NOW so we can provide everyone with a high quality mask in 2 to 3 months. Noone does this at the moment and what is produced is wasted on crappy one way products even most professionals do not use correctly.
I think it has more to do with N99 not being available in the filtering facepiece form which are the medical standard with very few exceptions.
Pretty sure. You should not get your filter wet though since this may allow diffusion across the filter, which is why it is unsafe to wear (N 95 or other) fleece masks for extended periods. Also stuff that is bound in the filter is also attracted via Van-der-Waals forces which are really strong on this scale.
Yeah, it will be way more than 99% of virus particles since most virus particles are bound in larger droplets where filtration efficiency is much higher than 99 %.
Adsorption air filters are not sieves or membrane filters, particles are captured by adsorption to the filter medium, not by size exclusion. The pessimum of filtration efficiency is afaik around 1 µm with higher capture efficieny below that due to higher collision probability due to more brownian motion. Not completely sure of the numbers though.
I'd go with P 99 or 100 since they are not that much more expensive / unpleasant to wear and we want to have as little particle leakage as possible since we do not know how much dose reduction is needed to reduce infection probability by one to two orders of magnitude. A hundredfold seems plenty though.
Also note that virus particles do not fly alone since they are allway bound in liquid or whatever remains after the droplet dries. CoV-2 seems to be nonviable when dried though so you need not worry about dry stuff.
Exactly, though we should aim to change that since protection would be improved while logistic demands would fall.
Also we should try to get governments to stimulate large scale production of such masks. See my original post.
This highly depends on mask quality and fit. A well fiting high quality oneshould be about as comfortable as a cloth mask.
I don't have experience with US P99/100 filters but modern European P3 filters which are between P99 and P100 have hardly noticeable resistance.
1. This was the point of my original post. States should begin stimulating large scale production of masks and filters to provide most people with such masks.
2. No they don't. Virus particles on the filter stay there as long as the filter does not get wet and decay quite quickly
3. Your mask either does not fit right or is low quality or has some kind of gas combination filter with very high flow resistance.
4. Yes, see discussion above.
See my reply to you above. That said, even if the virus was dry airborne as you assume, P3/N99 filters would still capture way above 99% of these particles as explained in my original post.
Yes, this mask is more of a symbolic pic, perhaps Simon can briefly explain why he chose this one (copyright issues I think). As explained in my original post and mentioned above you should use P3/ N99 or N100 filters.
Current understanding is that CoV-2 becomes nonviable when dried out Results form this study, though not in the document: (https://www.land.nrw/sites/default/files/asset/document/zwischenergebnis_covid19_case_study_gangelt_0.pdf).
Same guy stated it here: https://www.zeit.de/wissen/gesundheit/2020-04/hendrik-streeck-covid-19-heinsberg-symptome-infektionsschutz-massnahmen-studie/seite-2
They looked at about 100 infected households and sampled surfaces. Found virus RNA everywhere but NO viable virus. Also if that were false we would see airborne spread with people being infected over much larger spacial and temporal distance.
The public needs not be educated on what to wear, correct masks need to be provided by public private partnership (state money is used to stimulate large scale production) to stand a chance of equipping most people in a few month. You may want to use the original post linked.
Exactly! Mic and so on is not necessary and too complicated.
Yes, this is a drawback of any mask with exhalation valve. It is, as you suggest, easy to mitigate by covering the exhalation valve with cloth or a surgical mask. This is however imho not really necessary under most conditions, since the idea is to not get infected in the first place, so you do not shed any virus particles anyway.
Thanks for pointing these things out, I probably should have adressed them more.
... suprising that these masks are not in widespread use already.
I could think of several reasons for this.
- Many (most?) health care professionals do not know of these masks or do not think of them as "medical equipment".
- People do not realize that filters can be used multiple times thus dismissing the idea as logistically impossible / even more expensive than FFP masks for everyone
- People think that all masks do not work (well) to prevent transmission
- People think that these masks are "overkill", not realizing that a well fitting!!! reusable silicone mask is actually much less unleasant to wear than FFP masks.
... problems with compliance ... unpleasant to wear for prolonged periods.
Yes, to a degree that is true. This should be addressed by...
- Well fitting masks, at least 5 to 10 different types as discribed above with state of the art low resistance filters
- Requiring people to wear masks only if there is actual risk of infection as described above
- Rigorous enforcement especially in places where there are lots of people around (public transit, dense work places, schools and so on)
You could just use your hands and wash/desinfect afterwards before touching your face. The virus cannot penetrate your skin and even lacerations are probably safe, since the target cells are in your nose/lungs.
This problem is probably mostly regulatory in nature. This "medical waste" does not suddenly become "normal waste" because there is no longer any viable corona virus present. And medical waste treatment facilities are overloaded. Also (at least in Germany, where I live) waste is not "presumed diseased". Here bio-contaminated waste is usually autoclaved before entering the normal waste stream or gets treated by a specialized company. I do not know the specific procedures in China though.
Touching your jaw or cheek should be no direct problem for you since you need to get the virus into your airways to get infected. It may be a problem for others since you may have lots of virus particles on your jaw / cheek form sneezing. Also getting stuff from your jaw or cheek into your mouth nose or eyes is more likely than from your hands.
And this is why I think less and not more permission to panik would be warranted. Our reaction to Covid 19 is likely much more dangerous than the virus itself. So less reaction would arguably be better. 20% Sick is way too much, since that would require everyone to be exposed at once. Epidemics tend to be exponential at first and then become subexponential way before saturation. Seasonal flu does this for example. Do you have any reason to expect Covid 19 to behave different?
Well, one very obvious way in which No. 2 is true is that the overwhelming majority of people do not know about things like Photofeeler or Mate, can not infere that it must exist and thus do not do research to find it. Also it is not trivial to distinguish if a given tool / advice is any good.
Another aspect is that your assertion that there is little dating advice out there is just wrong. Just Google "Pick Up" or PUA.
But this probably is only a partial explanation.
Um, no, we cannot colonise the stars with current tech. What a surprise! We cannot even colonise mars, antarctica or the ocean floor.
Of course you need to solve bottom up manufacturing (nanotech or some functional eqivalent) first, making you independent from eco system services, agricultural food production, long supply chains and the like. This also vastly reduces radiation problems and probably solves ageing. Then you have a fair chance.
So yes, if we wreck earth the stars are not plan B, we need to get our shit together first.
If at this point there is still a reason to send canned monkeys is a completely different question.
While this post is meant as a parody / reductio, I think the idea that "there is no such thing as strength" is not entirely invalid. This has of course nothing to do with strength being culturally constructed or some such nonsense but with "strength" - as it is used colloquially- being highly multidimensional.
Thus there is no unambiguous way to say my strenght is [number] [unit]. You can of course devise a strenght test and define a strength quotient as the output of this test. And if the test is any good of course this strength quotient will corelate with different abilities and outcomes such as digging ditches or carrying stones or the probability of having back pain. But this does not mean that "your strenght" as measured by the strenght test behaves like a physical unit.
It may for example (depending on the exact nature of the test) not be meaningful to ask how a non human like an ant or a zebra or an excavator would rate on the test for example because the test may involve handling dumbbells (what neither ant nor zebra can) or involve endurance tests (what the excavator can do until the fuel tank is empty or not at all). I hope the parallel to AI is obvious. On the other hand if I do measure a dimension of strength this problem goes away. If muscle x at max tension applies a torque of y to joint z this does behave as a physical unit and can easily be applied to any system with joints, be it ant, zebra or excavator.
Furthermore the strength test is to a certain degree arbitrary. You could do a slightly different test with slightly different correlations and stil call it "strength". This is not the case with a single dimension of strength. That muscle x at max tension does apply a torque of y to joint z is an objective fact about the world which can be ascertatined with a host of different methods all of which will yield the same result (at least theoretically).
Concerning intelligence we unfortunately do not know the onedimensional subcomponents. I think this is the propper steelman for "there is no such thing as intelligence".
Problem is that this formalisation is probably bullshit. It looks a bit like a video game where you generate "research points" for AGI and/or FAI. Research IRL does not work like that. You need certain key insights for AGI and a different set for FAI if some insights are shared among both sets (they probably are) the above model does not work any longer. Further problem: How do you quantify G and F? A mathematical modell with variables you can't quantify is of um very limited use (or should I say ornamentation?).
Thanks!
Huh after copying the link to my own post, it works! The link in the above post still does not. Weird!
I would be VERY interested in reading that http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acel.12344/pdf paper. Unfortunately the link does not work for me (page not found).
Thinking about it from this direction you are probably correct in doing ths via facebook.
Why not do the whole coordination here on LW instead of Facebook? Much easier to access, since everything on LW is visible without login. And creating an account is easy and has no privacy/terms of use issues.
Oh, never noticed! Thanks!