I don't expect the factors to change, they are downstream of our social fabric. A different society won't have these factors, but ours does 

(sorry for the long delay)

This is part of my point. Our culture will not survive such measures. A different culture will result.

I'm familiar, have interviewed them twice, and linked to them in the OP in the culture-ectomy section. :) I don't think their lives work as a model for the majority of people in our culture, and suspect their children either will revert to mean in TFR, or will be drastically different culturally and thus an example of what I'm pointing at with this post.

Revealed preference is my cheeky answer here. "If I had infinite time/money" and "what I am willing to do IRL" are two different types of "want", and I was talking more about the latter.

I'm upping my vote for this in the year-end review based on the latest Zizian murder. :/ https://twitter.com/LexerLux/status/1882438198296744130#

I have very mixed feelings about GlowFic which are a direct result of trying to read PlaneCrash.

Pro: they are a joy for the author, and gets an author to write many hundreds of thousands of words effortlessly, which is great when you want more words from an author. 

Con: the format is anti-conducive to narrative density. The joy is in creating any words, which is great for the author, but bad for audiences. Readers want a high engagement-per-word ratio.

For context, my two favorite works are HPMOR and Worth The Candle, of 660K and 1.6M words. I spent 16 months podcasting a read-through/analysis of Worth The Candle. I'm not shy about reading lots of words. But when I tried to do the same for PlaneCrash I stopped after 200k words. The problem was not the decision theory or the math, which I found interesting in the brief sections they came up. The problem was plot and character development. 200,000 words is two full novels. In  a single novel an author will typically build an entire world and get us to fall in love with the characters, throw them into conflict, build to a climax, drive at least one character through an entire character arc where they develop as a person, and bring an audience through emotional catharsis via a climax and resolution. Often with side-plots or supporting characters fleshed out as well. In 200,000 words this could be done TWICE (maybe 1.5 times if the books run long).

In 200,000 words of PlaneCrash we got through one major plot point and set up the next. It felt like as much action as you get roughly within 25k words normally. That's an order of magnitude more cost-per-payoff compared to any general-audience novel (including HPMOR). This is more than even I am willing to pay.

As Devon Erikson says, every word is a bid for the attention of the reader, it's a price the author is bidding up. They need to recoup that cost by delivering to the reader a greater amount of something the reader wants - enjoyment, excitement, insight, information, emotional release, whatever. In the GlowFic format, authors are primarily writing for their own enjoyment, and perhaps their onlooking friends. Mass audiences don't get the expected per-word payoff. 

I think a serious review of PlaneCrash such as this one should acknowledge that the narrative-to-wordcount ratio is way out of proportion to what most people will accept, and this is the major flaw of the piece.

Really annoying that that's not available on the app! Oliver's added the transcript in the main post now, thankfully. :)

I've been notified that this post was nominated as a finalist for the Less Wrong 2023 Review! This is fantastic news, and I'm deeply honored! As part of the notification I was encouraged to write a self-review, with some example prompts like "Do you still endorse this?" and "What further work do you think should be done exploring the ideas here?”

Fiction is pretty Out Of Distribution for Less Wrong posts. I almost didn’t post it, because what is the point? I mean that literally... what IS the point of fiction on Less Wrong? Most often it’s to help demonstrate a different point that’s the real purpose of the post. That doesn’t make for good fiction, any more than “Bobby has three apples, John steals two of his apples, now Bobby has one apple” makes for good fiction. Sure there’s action and maybe even emotion, but the goal was to teach math.

The goal of a Less Wrong post is to teach. To impart some intellectual insight or real-world observation or new (or updated) technique. That is not the goal of fiction. The goal of fiction is to create an emotion experience or to entertain. Truly skilled authors can achieve both a LW and a Fiction goal in the same work, but I am not that skilled. My goal is a story that entertains and creates emotion before anything else, and for me that means sacrificing the ability for a story to teach rationality.

When I workshopped the first draft of the story I was asked ‘Why would the AI work in that way? It’s impossible for it to have come to such a utility function on accident, and literally no one has the motivation to make it have this utility function.’ ‘Why do these two aspects of the AI act like this, that’s not how a functional entity would act given X-Z.’ The answer to all questions of this type were “Yes, I know. This isn’t meant to be a realistic portrayal of what could happen. This is supposed to be fun. And this personality, and these problems that this personally runs into, are actually really fun! Can you point me to the parts that reduce fun or emotion? I don’t care about the story actually being rational.”

This puts the story directly at odds with what a Less Wrong post is supposed to be. I had severe reservations about posting it. But maybe fiction can have good secondary effects in the rationalist world even if its not at all rational. Terminator 2 is extremely non-rational, and IIRC is often cited by Eliezer as a particularly egregious movie because it primed people to think of AIs as dumb things that would use robot-soldiers we can defeat. It sacrificed rational depiction of AI danger on the alter of making an exciting story that an average person could be a hero within.

And yet, T2 probably has done more to bring the mass of the populace on board with worrying about AI risk than any other single thing in our lifetimes. It was easy to understand, very emotionally compelling (which gives it a long lifespan in our memory and a lot of weight in our pre-deliberative intuitions), and extremely popular (which spread its impact wide and gave everyone a common cultural touchstone). Despite being non-rational (or anti-rational) it was a huge boon to the cause of rationality.

So maybe it’s ok to post a story that isn’t actually rational and doesn’t do any of the things a Less Wrong post is supposed to do. Maybe just sharing a fun story on its own can be worth it if it plants an emotional seed that aligns with the rationalist cause. I do think The Real Fanfic is a fun story. I also think it contains the seed of “even a god that superficially looks like us and seems to have our interests at heart can be incredibly creepy and bad, actually, for reasons that aren’t at all obvious.”

So, if my goal is to give something fun to my fellow rats, this is the best place to do so. And if it can advance rationality in some small way it’s probably even worth doing so, despite being a very non-central post. I figured it was worth a shot. A decent amount of post karma, plus a nomination to the 2023 Review, leads me to suspect some people agreed.

So “Do I still endorse this?” It’s story I’m still proud of. :) Whether you enjoyed it or very much didn’t, I’m excited to read any review.

My answer is going to be unsatisfying - entirely vibes. While there are still significant sections of the populace that have left-over affection for anything that looks like the Civil Rights movement due to how valorized that movement is and how much change it affected, this is seriously waning. The non-effectiveness of movements that just copy the aesthetics are slowly making them look more like cargo-cults that copy the form but without an understanding of the substance that made them successful.

As more people dismiss protestors as performance without substance, protests start getting more awful to get anyone's attention. Destroying social value and public goods for a cause no one else cares about grows increasingly irksome. When major lawlessness threatens people and sets fire to city blocks in the name of activism the good will drains away pretty rapidly. Now the cargo cults are just destroying stuff without any path to how that's supposed to make things better.

It's an ongoing change. We're only seeing the start of it. But IMO its pretty undeniable that a decent percentage of the population thinks of activists as default harmful, and a preference cascade is just over the horizon.

Seems like the best option. Very frustrating to me, who wants to keep on to all four of his current projects. :( But coming to realize this is a terrible idea.

I worry that it's a fundamental enough part of being an intelligent agent that losing this capability will make us less human. Similar to the WALL-E humans that had lost the ability to walk due to never walking. They were legitimately lesser beings due to that. :(

AI is Immersed Mindset On Demand

At The Bayesian Conspiracy we recently spoke with Zoe about pop-up cities and goal-focused group houses (episode coming next week). One of the great things about these settings is that being immersed in your work keeps you in a mental frame where related self-propagating thought patterns are kept alive in your brain and stay processing in the background all the time.

Much of our brain power is ambient. It takes a while to shut down thought patterns that have been oscillating for a while and recruit those neurons into new patterns. In fact I think it’s worse than this - I think it can be very easy to restart patterns every morning that you’ve been using for days, and much harder to restart ones you haven’t used in days, or weeks, or months. Thus the phenomenon of taking several days to get running again when you return from a long vacation.

This is extremely noticeable when trying to write fiction, and it should be true of any major project. Your brain can’t turn deep focus on and off. Your brain is a steam locomotive, with dozens of reinforcing thought oscillations. When you jump off it and run in a different direction for a while that’s fine, you can run back to the tracks and get back to stoking the engine with a prize from your expedition in your back pocket. But the more you slip off for side quests, and the longer you stay away, the more the train tracks will start to re-lay themselves, so the locomotive realigns to follow you, and your previous goal is left behind.

Attention is all you need. Attention is all you have. Everything follows your attention over a long time scale.

AIs Can Imagine It For You Wholesale

Recently we were asked what question we’d would put in a general survey about The Bayesian Conspiracy. I was stumped. I had nothing. My focus is split among 4+ projects, I am not immersed, I would have to sit down and stew on this.

Claude gave a fantastic answer is a split second. Several great answers, actually. It's not that it’s incredibly creative, because it’s not. But it’s great at the basic level of creativity one gets from an immersed mindset. The mental framework that would require ongoing dedication from a human (on the level of daily focus across weeks) is what the AI can deliver on demand.

Now that we have the basic creative output, we can choose among Claude’s suggestions and tighten them up.

I don’t like this. It feels dangerous. It’s too tempting. Being deeply focused on just one topic for weeks means giving up on a LOT of other things that I don’t want to give up on. But if I compensate by relying on this tool I worry I’ll stop going into deep focus entirely, and just lose the knack for it over time. Why wouldn’t most people do so, if they could? How many humans in the present day can memorize and recite long orations? We don’t need to now that we have written language. Per Plato, have we not leaned close to becoming “hearers of many things”, [appearing] as though they were all-knowing, but to actually be learners of nothing.

Soon we won’t even have to think up our own thoughts. Ten years from now ^[1]the AIs will be doing most of the things we think of as creative-generation and humans will mostly be the Deciders, picking among the options presented to get at the true essence of what we want. A cool premise for a sci fi world, but not a world I would choose.

(this is a mirror of a blog post at DeathIsBad)

1. ^{^}

   Given the standard anti-doom caveats

Definitely not wrong, the petitions almost certainly won't change anything. Change.org is not where one goes to actually change things.

I had a quasi-romantic relationship with a fictional character that lived in my head during my worst year, in college. I could sometimes even "see" him. I knew he wasn't real. It did help me out during the darkest times. Probably woulda been even better to be able to have chat conversations that were run by an AI. And I did outgrow that in a few months, when life got better. 

So, basically, this sounds great and I love this perspective. Thank you.

answer:

2 of 7

I have a secret desire for this to become real which I fear may destroy me and/or everything I know.

The graph image is broken. Does anyone have a copy of the image file? I remember what it looked like, and it was super-useful for demonstrating the concept.

Asimov’s Science Fiction has published one of my stories! "Red Legacy," on page 48 of the current issue. Details on how to get it at my blog if you're interested. I think it's a rational story, but I'm interested in opinions if anyone here ends up reading it.

Taught early in high school: How to do sex, in real life. Not STI education, not pregnancy/fertility, not how to be safe, or the biology of penises and vagines. How to go into sex and do it so that it's fun and feels good, how to listen to your body and your partner, maybe how to attract the opposite sex, and so on. Dunno about elsewhere, but in the US guys get all their sex education from porn, and girls used to get none at all. (now... also porn?) Porn is fun, but it's Kabuki Sex, and it only vaguely relates to real-life sex. It'd be like giving a 16-year-old a driver's licence when the entirety of his/her driving education consisted of watch Hollywood Car Chase movies.

Of everything useful I ever learned about sex, 50% of it was from Dan Savage and 50% of it was from my fiance, both many years after I had actually started trying to do sex on my own. This is stupid.

Every single episode seems to have the deep underlying message of "Humans are fucked up, on a fundamental level. This is what it means to be human, and it cannot be changed. Let us revel in it." Sometimes it's melancholy, sometimes it's straight-up sad-as-hell, but there's never a feeling of "things can get better." It's always of "these problems are too large to change, nothing can be done but to embrace and accept it." It is the loss of all hope that makes me want to just give up on everything and crawl into a dark corner for the rest of the day.

It does seem to be there now, so I guess that was it. Thanks!

Hm. Denver meetup isn't showing up on the map on the front page. Is this the write place to mention that? Should someone else be messaged? Thanks,

There is a Starbucks, and last time I was there it had lots of chairs. :) I plan on bringing a large wizard's hat for ease of recognition.

Wanted to mention that the Denver Area meet-up next week is basically new. It's the second of a soon-to-be regular event that TheStevenator is starting up from scratch (mad props to him!). He just moved here and I believe there's no connection to the previous sporadic ones. Sounds like the goal is for these to become regular monthly meets. I'm looking forward to them. :)

Seconded! I literally laughed out loud, which doesn't happen from reading text very often. :)

Taken, in full

I had to stop listening to TAL because I was tired of wanting to kill myself after every episode.

1-2 mg of Melatonin ~20min before you wish to fall asleep

2 hours per day seems like way too much. I work out 3x per week, 1 hour each time. (Though I did start 4x per week, 1 hour each, when I was initially losing weight). Just make sure to keep it high intensity. When I'm tempted to slack off I ask myself if I'm here to kill some time by moving around, or if I'm here to achieve a damn objective as efficiently as I can so I can get back to doing other things. If after an hour is up I'm physically capable of continuing for another hour, I obviously was just wasting my time.

Planet Money is fantastic, I never miss it. Savage Love is equally fantastic, and on a topic too many people neglect because they don't think there's much to learn.

Welcome to Night Vale is quirky and fun. Plus quite popular, so gives you something to talk about with other geeks you run into at random.

This reminds me quite a bit of The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect

Barring catastrophe, I shall indeed be there!

Has anyone posted about Seth Dickinson yet? I don't keep up on the open threads as much as I'd like, but my google-fu says no.

Last year I was blown away by a short story by Seth Dickinson called A Plant (Whose Name is Destroyed). Recently I went and checked out Seth Dickinson's other works. I've read over half of them now, and I gotta say - I STRONGLY recommend this author. Many of his works have a very strong transhumanist message, and some could be called rationalist. I'm kinda surprised I haven't already heard his name brought up on LessWrong, or SlateStarCodex, or /r/rational. I'm fixing that this week.

A few of my favorite stories:

Economies of Force - A post-GAI story where humanity made AI that almost captures our values, but not quite, and it results in the sort of utopia you might expect from that sort of failure. Shades of Amputation of Destiny and Bostrom's Empty Disneyland. If anyone can figure out the significance of the name "Loom", please let me know. It must have been chosen for a reason, but I'm not making the connection.

Sekhmet Hunts the Dying Gnosis: A Computation - A rather literal take on Meditations on Moloch, and/or An Alien God

Morrigan in the Sunglare - Like Bayesians vs Barbarians, told from the PoV of the Barbarians (sort of).

Kumara - a seriously beautiful post-singularity transhumanist story. Just... really beautiful. And murderous.

Yeah, but honestly, try reading Dickens or Shakespeare today. Maybe I'm just an uncultured philistine, but it's not what I would call good. If they weren't so highly regarded I'd never choose to read them myself, and certainly wouldn't recommend them to friends.

200 years from now, you probably wouldn't even want to read any of Eliezer's books (or whoever your favorite author is right now). I'm fairly convinced all fiction is contemporary and fades in relevance in a matter of decades. But would a promise today of another Eliezer work in the future motivate you to sign up for cryo?

That's a good point, and you're right. I wish "person" didn't feel so formal though. I'm having trouble thinking of a gender-neutral word that conveys the same casualness of "guy."

I've written a short fiction piece that has been accepted for publication. My first ever professional publication will appear in February's issue of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine.

Not much has been said cuz there ain't much to say about things that don't exist. Your mind is what your brain does. When the brain stops, so do you. This isn't even advanced rationality - it's reductionism 101. I believe there was a Intelligence Squared debate on it just a few days ago that rehashed all the same old ground if you'd like a refresher. Here we go.

Giving a prior of .5 is ridiculous. Something for which you have no evidence and which breaks several known laws of physics should begin with a seriously tiny prior. You're being heavily influenced by social traditions.

Ever since my brother joined the Military I've thought that could be a potentially good way to push cryonics. The Military is already well-known for forcing technological change, but it's less known that the Military's effort to reduce loss of fighting men to Syphilis (as well as other STIs) was a major contributor to the social acceptance of condoms, which had previously been shunned. The social changes resulting from that campaign are often cited as a precursor to the sexual revolution.

People don't seem to care that much when an old person dies of natural causes, which is the case for most cryo. A young, attractive corpse gathers enough sympathy and attention to get crowd-sourced funding. The Military produces a much higher-than-average number of young, tragic deaths. A fair percentage of them leave the brain intact. It shouldn't be that hard of a case to make that since the Military is the reason that these young people are losing their lives, it has a duty to give them the best chance at getting their lives back.

Difficulty of engineering a moderately-sided canister that can be fitted over the head of a dead soldier and automatically sever and preserve it (obviously opt-in only)? Probably well within DARPA resources. A decade of this being a standard option for military personnel would do wonders to ease social acceptability, no? A family that has a son/brother in cryo now has emotional motivation to consider that it just might, maybe, work some day in the future.

Also -

I actually have a list of about ten of these, which I will happily make available on request (i.e. I’ll write another discussion post about them if people are interested)

I am interested, please consider this +1 requests. :)

UPPP

Not terribly expensive. The recovery is painful. But the pain is temporary, and the improvements are amazing. It was a major turning point in my life, and I'd strongly recommend it to anyone who is considered a good candidate (consult your specialist)

Well, someone's gotta do it.

Interestingly, I've been using card and online banking for so long that I seem to have internalized "money is the number stored in the bank's computer/my mental register". Recently I came into a steady flow of cash (long story), and I didn't want to go to the bank every damn week to deposit it, so I started paying for groceries and restaurants with that cash. It felt like giving away play money and getting real goods and services in exchange. "You mean I can give you some colored paper slips, and you'll just give me $100 worth of groceries? It doesn't reduce the money I have in the bank? And I'm not going to jail for this?" It was weird.

Well, my actual guess is 85%, so it's not a symmetrical split for me. Hopefully I'm not doing confidence intervals wrong..

Personally I picked "monogamous" because it's the closest to how my relationship actually works. Aside from sex with other people, we are a monogamous couple.

I don't think we're using the same definition of 'win'. This is the same thinking that leads to two-boxing.

40-98

So if a group using your decision-making-process all took this survey, "rationally" trying to win the contest, they would end up winning $0. :)

Because I think it's one of the three major relationship models. Pure Monogamy is traditional, and Polyamory is the reaction against it, but Monogamish is how a lot of relationships actually work (while operating under the cloak of monogamy). It's like a worldwide religion survey allowing only "Christian" and "Muslim", and lumping Hinduism under "Other". There's another major option here that should be broken out.

I'm seconding the request for next year to include a Monogamish option. I'm in a basically monogamous relationship, but we both sometimes sleep with friends.

(also I took the survey)

In the spoken presentation I did amend that to "or early next year" :)