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Even expert speed readers do it, they just do it a bit faster than untrained people do. We can check this because that inner voice sends faint communication signals to the vocal cords, as a residue of your internal monolog, and those signals can be measured objectively.
I've heard about that and that looked like an evidence that you are able to untrain only things which are introspectively visible, not that it is somewhat important. Again, what about deaf-mute, what do they subvocalize? And "a bit faster"? 5000 phonemes/min, ~100/s, more looks like 1 phoneme per neuron activation. I doubt you can properly understand speech on 1000wpm.
But in general, when I started, I failed to find existing discourse and decided that it will be quicker to just check. And than it just looked too clear than I actually can at least think just visually and much, much faster than speak.
I'll check the link though. (It's existence explains why not more people checking this)
PS Edit: okay, I've read and I didn't find anything new in this article. I will try to read link on "evidence"
And also just to check, will you also say that it's impossible for ordinary human to read text and speak at the same time?
PPS Edit: and no, second article also hasn't had any evidence. But still thanks, I've found some techniques of speed reading I've never heard before, only thought about by myself, so probably my ideas aren't new even if it's not something like math. And people converge in such topics, and end up having almost fully overlapping ideas, and I'm not exception.
And the reason why such ideas aren't widely used probably isn't that no one discovered that, but because people are sceptical. Like I was. 1000wpm? 20000wpm? Looks like fake for credulous.
But now I'm less sceptical even about such results because I was wrongly sceptical about such things like training of imagination, attention, intelligence, memory and willpower. And was clearly wrong. Btw, what you will say about these things?
Also I was sceptical about thinking multiple thoughts in parallel, but that was mostly because of Feynman's and EY's claim, and now I'm just more doubt them, after I understood it's easily possible.
Do someone know something like "synesthesia" browser extension for better legibility? It should paint black-and-white letters into colored, probably saving intensity.
But it depends which speed do you read? If it's 800-1000wpm (4000-5000 letter/min), then I maybe wrong.
Some apriori reasoning like: pronoucing goes a consequences, one token at time, but brain is 200Hz is consequence, brain is better in being parallel with all these 80M neurons, and also words have meaning as a whole, so most of step by step letters don't even contain meaning.
And next evidence from experience to this apriori reasoning: when I succeed to stop pronouncing I can see and understand three words at a moment. Also I wrote whole shortpost here about my experience with trying to replace usual speech into visual thinking. (you need "visual thinking" section)
IIRC you are wrong, lenses are just different ways to see the page of same topic. They're also used for "version ML programmers", "version for DT professors", "version for usual people". Or for Wikipedia it would be "scientifically precise encyclopedia" and "quickly get useful info about topic for usual person".
Edit: oh, also, as I know, lenses are from tvtropes (caution: addictive memetic hazard)
Very cool. I probably already for two years wondered why to have Arbital as additional site instead of doing it on LW. And that would be very good if now I will be able to read it without bugs and even make edits (easily, by three clicks!). I also like that there are tabs instead of "lenses", I've always thought that "lense" is improper idea if it can show you completely different set of contents.
Also I for a long time thought that it would be good to post Sequences, HPMoR and some other things as wiki pages, they are too crucial for LW to their edits be vetoed as personal blog pages. And also post into them their translations to other languages, so you can read them on LW with all it's functions, in the same place with all the other content (I for a long wasn't on LW because I read Sequences as fb2 translations). And you could add and edit translations in wiki way.
And also probably write one sentence (speaking) names and one paragraph summaries, so you could get quick understanding of Sequences better than "highlights". And probably also figure out which points of sequences are the most important to be convinced in the beginning vs just knowing that it's community opinion.
And probably also find a way to know in advance which point will be more and less obvious for me. Eg Pebble Sorters were completely obvious for me, probably can be checked by Orthogonality Thesis, but Truly Part of You was very unobvious to me and I suspect it's a question of generation. And some points already were in HPMoR, and other people could read planecrash before Sequences or Feynman, GEB, Kahneman.
And just to not forget to say it: I for a long wanted to add spaced repetition reminders for reading posts, otherwise I forget them and forget that I forgot.
(There was some errors, message hadn't sent before now)
Becoming stronger feels like things became lighter. But a lot of things I trying to do are not "just easy"? Also I thought about it more like finding things which you found too hard and gave up. And I am not sure how to just pinpoint easy things, it's like finding details of how you are moving.
(Though I probably should expect that for a lot of people it's actually hard to from the first try read/remember even single time new long words like "cefoperazone" and "ceftazidime" and that wasn't just a trope)
99.9%??? Are you serious? I thought I have a bad memory, but I don't think I will forget more than 70% of what I read THE NEXT DAY. Like, I can remember which tweets and shortforms I've read in the last few days, just trying to remember what I read, not because I found myself in relevant situation.
And that is for random post which I didn't considered important to me like "what to do with AI for a layman?". I remember much better posts which I did considered important, like the one LW about effectively explaining things in the way of "it's like airbnb, but for boats".
I think about it in the way of "which time I can spare if I will find something really important", it's not like now I am going and saying "oh, again I have no idea what to do with my time". It's just that I am not compelled to work, don't have kids etc.
I don't think about it quite that way. Isn't the sense in sharing ideas? You have have ideas, some are more important, and share them is easier than invent and different people find different ideas. So you have a benefit from sharing with each other. So if it was like that I'd expected more like 30K of people showing with great ideas on lesswrong once a week each.
The most useful my ideas to write in details:
- Thinking is the most powerful human ability which differ us from animals
- You can develop any aspect of your brain/thinking/neurons by training
- You don't need to be restricted by existing ones, you can invent them
- You can develop your thinking and next invent by it better ways to develop thinking
- Introspection is really important, because it's really hard to develop thinking blindly
- Ordinary processes of learning are INCREDIBLY ineffective, you can do better
- eg, anki, pomodoro timed learning, remembering images, not words
- You train things in imagination
- You can remember things better by imagining what you need to remember in which situation
- Optimisation of internal dialogue and visual thinking
- Moving your attention from mental things instead of fading them for better remembering
TBC
Whole my life I hated reading. Now I have a better understanding why and what to do with that.
I read slow because I am pronouncing things, I pronounce things because I want to have emotions from intonations, I need that because I don't imagine a lot. And as a bonus I am pronouncing things, not just perceiving audibly, so reading for me is an effort, in comparison with listening.
Unfortunately pronouncing also is a very stable habit, it's really hard to not pronounce things. I will try to use rhythms for speed reading.
My knowledge state
Read books: HPMoR x7, Sequences x3, planecrash x2, "You're joking Mr Feynman" x3, GEB 1/4, Fast and Slow Thinking 1/3
Didn't read: all the other rationalist books. And just almost no books, probably the one I can remember is Better Angels of Our Nature.
Have read some Wikipedia pages.
Have 99.9%, 110K words on Russian on https://myvocab.info
Watched a lot of popular science YouTube videos and lectures, mostly sciences, almost no the most useful ones like evolutionary/behavioral/cognitive psychology, neurobiology, information theory, probability, game theory, DT, or economics and programming, or at least physics, math and human biology. Almost fully illiterate in history, don't know anything except school course (and even my teacher said that schoolbooks we must use are very poor schoolbooks, probably it's Russian specifics). Have at least decent basic biology knowledge, I don't feel like our bodies are squashy but can regenerate because of vital power. Have sort of wide, but unrigorous and non-deep knowledge. Can't derive wave function of atom of hydrogen.
Read really little of fiction, mostly fanfiction, mostly fantasy, almost no sci-fi.
Have done some thinking in intuitive math on topics like connection between 1+i, Pyfagors theorem and level of curve of our space.
TLDR
From Russia, hated reading, was grateful to science, liked clever things, cheats, computers, coded since 9y, was going to become a programmer, read HPMoR at 12, but didn't tried to solve any riddle, didn't read sequences until 16y, until 2023 didn't understood that rationality isn't about Truth, it's about Skills. Now trying to generate maximally useful thoughts, post some on LW.
Current Detailed
I am from Russia. I liked to watch Discovery and other scientific channels from an age of ~7. I never liked to read, only listened sometimes, and when I have gone into school, I understood that books lied, we didn't have nicks, bullies, D-graders or A-graders (I got some As, but Bs too, and no one got only As), there were no any correlation between being a good student, wearing glasses, liking reading and playing chess.
When I was 9 I learned some programming, I decided that I will work as a programmer when I grew up, because programmers do have really good salaries, can work from any point of the world with internet, and don't need to show a diploma, just their skills, so I will not need to go to university, so I will not need to go into last two classes of school, I will just need to practice my skills for next ~7 years. Also it was work with computers and I really liked computers.
When I was 12 I found comment "it's not excellent fic, it's average, excellent is HP and Methods of Rationality". My favourite fictional universe + rationality?? And such characteristic... It even costed to read it, even if it didn't have an audiobook yet. And author was so dear that he said where actually you should drop it if you still don't interested. It said wait until 10th chapter where it starts to be really cool.
But for me it was really cool from the first sentence. I was so interested in reading that one time I almost was late to school (which I never did even closely before). When I ended reading I decided that I will reread this precious treasure for whole my life, so it's better to reread it only once in few year, so it will not become boring, which would be awful, because I've never seen any book even close to that ever before.
In the end there were said "it's only shadow of Sequences". I've "Fable of Science and Politics". And it was not even close that good. So I decided that I will check them all eventually. But not now. I've read them only when was 16y and really regretted that it "only shadow" instead of "how to know everything HJPEV knows and even more". I've all the sequences which were translated on Russian (a lot of even R: AZ weren't). They changed my worldview. But I didn't know English. And for a long time idea of reading through translator didn't come into my mind.
Until 2023 I didn't understood that rationality isn't about Truth, it's about Skills. I was trying to know all the truths to act out of them. I wasn't trying to act by skills of performing such strategies which get maximum expected_utility according to correct models of my preferences and world around me. THAT was moment everything actually changed, not just worldview. In short terms I've started search for creative ideas for enhancing my everyday life, learned how to fully turn off any unwanted emotions (and just as a consequence removed 2-3 fears which were with me for whole my life), learned how to control my thoughts, enhanced my imagination, lifted up my mood, started to invent mental techniques.
Unfortunately I still had a lot of developed psychological blocks, which resisted to thinking about them to fix them. And one of them was making detailed plans for short term and short term future. I fixed this problem in the end. But I still have a lot of issues with motivation.
Now I have a lot of ideas to post on LW, which are probably significantly useful.
EniScien's Bio thread
Optimising internal dialogue
Never repeating thoughts technique
In planecrash EY shows technique of "never repeating same thoughts". And it can look useful, like what if you was repeating your thoughts for 10 times? You could get 10x more thoughts by that. Sort of like if you had 10 times more time for thinking, which looks really useful.
But when I actually started to practice it, I noticed, that actually a lot of time I spend on replacing last word by better synonym, a lot of time I rephrase the end of sentence, or whole sentence, or whole paragraph. That I spend a lot of time trying to think up better words to say.
And the same thoughts... I repeated them not just 10 times for whole time. I repeated a lot of them hundreds times per DAY.
A lot of time I wanted to start new thought and I for a long time (~4/5) explained circumstances, next premises, arguments etc. Like if I was doing that in speech. Because my internal dialogue felt like speech, it wasn't really different that it was in my imagination, not in real world.
So if somebody will say that Yudkowsky thinks 1000 times faster, I can easily believe in that, at least for myself in the span of days. And I can't even compare in the span of weeks.
But never repeating same thoughts is only one technique of optimising your internal dialogue.
I used a lot phrases which were not actually meaningful in thoughts, only in speech. And these probably were 2/3 of my internal dialogues.
I was trying not to use abbreviations, slang etc, and of course not refer to half of ideas like "because of that" if it was something in my visual imagination, or some knowledge I am sure in. I was trying to make my internal speech sound properly in grammatical and rhetorical sense, instead of being maximally compressed.
I was trying to speak only language that I know, Russian or English. Not to mix Russian and English sentences, and even mix words inside of sentences using Russian, English, German, Italian, Esperanto, Japanese, Latin, Greek and some languages that I know a little.
I was not replacing long words and phrases in my speech by imagining of how they will write. And also wasn't doing the same for math formulas and code. And geometrical blueprints. And schemes. And full visual images or even collages of them.
I was trying to speak legibly, and not in maximal possible speed, but in speed on which people in real dialogues didn't start to complain that I speak too fast. Which by itself could make my internal dialogue 2-3 times slower.
I was trying to make my internal speech more precise by sending a little tension on my speaking muscles, instead of just doing it fully in imagination. And... Actually my muscles very much slower than my imagination, it by itself was doing my speech 3-4 times slower.
Visual thinking
But even if I will replace all my internal sentences into saying "that" and just mentally referring to idea, that also will not be the best result. As I noticed, just visual images come to my mind faster that I can say "that", ~2 times faster.
And just the speed is only one parameter in which visual is better than audio. Our world used to refer to video and audio as the same category of information sources. Used to say that you can be visual of audio learner.
But consider the difference in size in video and audio files. 1 min of audio will be ~1mb, 1 min of video ~150mb, 150x (!) difference.
Consider a page of text, it's something like 400 words, 2000 letters + 400 spaces, how much time do you need to see a page by eyes? Something like 1/4 of second maybe. And how much time do you need to listen it as audio? At the maximum speed of human speech it will be 12 syllables, 4 words/s, at x2 8 words, so 1/50, 1/100 for audio of visual. And on normal speed of speech it's more something like 1/200, 1/400.
There are speed reading techniques, and even Wikipedia says that it can give you 5x speed of usual reading in speed (~200wpm, speed of fast speech).
But that is still just 20wps (1000wpm). Human reaction speed is 0.1-0.25s, and in this time yours eyes allegedly can recognise only 2-5 words?? When you are looking on picture you are not restricted by recognising only 2-5 things at the moment, you can see it as a whole.
Though there is a problem of quality of seeing. How how much words you can see in enough quality to recognise? I used a flashlight to create a trace in my eye and next kept it at one word in the center, it looks like I can see in enough quality a square 11x11 or 13x13, 121-169 chars, by one eye, 242-338 chars by both, which could be 50-70 words.
And it's only for speed reading, in your mind there will be no such restrictions. 5x faster thinking by analogy with 5x faster reading via using visual track instead of audio, it's only lower limit of possible.
And you don't need to restrict yourself by usual speech rules than. You can use a lot of long terms and phrases like "utility function", because length is no longer limits your speed.
Now there is a question, will such speech work? Shouldn't speech be audio? I don't think so because of deaf and unable to speak people, who can whole life use gesture language, "speak" by their hands and "hear" by their eyes.
And I suspect that limits on visual thinking should be very high.
Because it works in more natural to brain information processing mode. Not in consequence, but in parallel. Your brain have 200 tacts/s max in consequence, but has 80B neurons.
I was afraid that sentences have dependence of next from previous, so you can't say them in parallel. But... It's only in English and German words order is fixed. In my native Russian you can use words almost in any order, and they still will make almost the same sentence. So I think that no.
And imagining words of sentence visually instead of audibly is only the beginning. Next you can do so much. You can use as your speech emojis and even replace words just by pictures, (again, use code and math, schemes, schemes). You can keep threads of sentences in multiple languages at the same time.
You can see the whole sequence of your thoughts, not just current thought. You can group your thoughts into context, and remember these at one moment. You can colour your words like with synesthesia or like in IDE. You can add comments, and reactions, and marks for yourself.
You can you eyes independently to have two tracks of flat image like on computer screen, or you can use both to have 3d! Use distance, texture as additional type of data, like colour.
Practice
I was somewhat incredulous to all of these thoughts. But next I tried that. And all that actually works. Some time ago I noticed that I am 2-3 times when I am using my just beginner's visual thinking. And I can be now even more faster in learning, because in difference from acting I can learn a few things simultaneously.
Also visual thinking actually helps a lot in navigating in thoughts, not repeating the same a lot of times, because I can just see continuation of this thought sequence.
Problems:
Visual thinking in my case refuses to "just work", I need to every day start it by deliberate practice before it continues to work automatically.
And it's prone to gradually fall out from your mind when I am using audio instead, like when thinking by audio, or talking (much less when listening), or even writing, because I have a habit to pronounce things which I write.
Another problems is that some days I can start using visual thinking almost right after getting up. And some other days my imagination just works worse and I struggle to start visual thinking for whole day.
Also I was used to express emotions by mentally saying sentences by intonation and I didn't find good alternative for that in my visual thinking.
When I started I made a lot of mistakes in the process of training.
Like I thought that if I will make my thoughts less loud and intonated, visual thinking will come by itself. It didn't. My better idea was just break my internal sentences on half and wait before I will be able to notice their meaning without pronouncing.
Something sort of like when I am trying to speak not very well known language, know what I need, but prohibit to myself to speak my native language, and next without words try to find words in another language.
Another mistake was trying to restrict visual thinking. In saying only things that I would say audibly. Or in imagining visual thought only in subjective space. Or in making them look like usual text, instead of just visualing words in any convenient order.
Intuition of "how it will be more convenient to do that mental action" are generally very useful to listen to, because they usually signal which mental actions will train better and faster.
Another mistake was trying to develop visual thinking as different mode, instead of shifting every my action to it just a little.
(That's just short list of thoughts that come to my mind immediately, not even close to full list of ideas. And would be interested to know where do exists some similar ideas. Speed reading or Feynman's modeling method do come to mind, but that's only which I know.)
I am not sure what is unclear. But I many times noticed that my brain is very confused seeing eg EY's recent post about Lies Told to Kids with 360 karma and comparing it some post of sequences that got "pitiful" 100+. And it looked like an example of inflation, that recent much less cool post gets a few times more karma. And I don't know how calibrate my brain, and using some software solution looks easier.
I am suspicious to and don't like using some weird sidesteppings, instead of not being confused while looking on the question from the position of "how it will actually look in the world/situation" (though they can be faster, yeah).
I mean, causes are real, future was caused by you, may be say controlled, and it less feels like controlling something if somebody predicts by wishes and performs them before I can think about their fulfilling.
But these are probably just trade-offs of trying to explain these things to people in plain English.
When I first thought that picking actions by conditional expected utility was obviously correct, I was very confused about the whole DTs situation. So link was very useful, thanks.
What is the Sense of writing quick takes at the same page with worse editor if next you got kicked out to fast takes page?!
I've just found out Inflation Adjusted Karma Sorting and started to wish it be implemented into standard karma viewing system
Update: I am certainly lost some writing skills... Or, more precisely, I can't at the same time use my old writing skills and successfully think new thoughts, they are too distant in mental space. That makes things harder, I am not sure what to do with that.
One of very important problems here is that my old wring skills are to tightly weaven as a habit. Do someone know solution for such problems?
I think I written my bio in some biased way. But yeah, even in modern Russia it's not a very popular frame that you are so unique and exceptional. And our teacher said us "not to run faster than a whole train". And modesty is a virtue, but admitting how very excellent are is not at all.
And in part it were things like my parents were trying to make me less perfectionist about grades by saying that "grades doesn't really matter", then I continued be a perfectionist, but now just thought that grades are not at all a measure of intelligence.
Or that I was programming at 9y because it was interesting and then saying to myself that it's not a reason to be proud by my interests, if they were interested they obviously could too.
Or that I've seen that prideful people in fiction were just doing some stupid short termed or evil things, like beating people because someone said something wrong, and next I concluded that whole emotion of pride is something awful.
And also it young me's failure of putting myself into others shoes. Like, obviously most of kids were not invited to the stage at every end of year, but for me it was just something that happened from the beginning of the time.
And I was very distrusting to people who were saying things like "oh, you know, you are not like the other kids, you are smarter than your age" etc, of course they were just trying to flatter you.
A lot of such things. I actually ended up almost full blown Modest Epistemology by my own.
And that an interesting observation. I somehow missed THAT as a part of my rationalist leanings, but yeah, I can remember reading about Pollyanna (it was before HPMoR) and being outraged about her attitude "how glad I am about crutches as a gift, I don't need them" because...
Doesn't she see how bad everything around her is? She can't see reality. Blind. Lobotomisedly happy not being able to internally react on environment. For me it felt like something worse than death.
And not surprisingly, I was also much more unhappier whole my life than the other people.
(That very resembles EY's attitude. But now I don't believe anymore than emotions are a part of world modeling, of what should reflects traits of reality, and an instrumental good for neural reinforcement by 1 and 2 derivatives of current situation, staying in right mental poses for some activity and others)
And I admit I have much more free time than the most of people. But I am not sure I understood, people with potential didn't have enough time to read LW to become rationalists? Or rationalists don't have time for LW? Isn't posting your thoughts in net is usually a very cost benefit action where thousands of people can read post written once?
Edited: also, I've seen A LOT OF recommendations of HPMoR. And I probably overestimated how much people read it after it. Because I go and it literally after hearing about it the first time in literally the form of pair of fanfic comments "- Wow, this fic is excellent! - No, it's average, excellent is HP and Methods of Rationality"
I think I finally got clear understanding of Newcomb-like problems. I am afraid that I again will think about some EY's post which I read and forgot. But just write it will be faster, than search.
I think the cause of why people stuck with these problems are wrong intuitions that your decisions "change the future". Which are obviously wrong if you think about it, it's not like in Past there was one Future, but now now in Present and Future there are another Future.
It's wrong like think that if you run computer program, in the process of calculation it will "change it's future outcome". Next step cause future steps, but they themselves were caused by previous steps of execution. And your decisions cause, determine the future, but they were themselves caused by past, and there always was just one stream of causes.
The same way, if you decide in the future "one box" and from that decision expect that Omega put 1M, it doesn't mean that your decision "changed the past", not any more that it changed the future. There is just previous state of the world (including you) which synchronously causes you real choice and choice in Omega prediction.
So, probably it makes me think more EDT than TDT?
It's not about being "kind of agent" from my view, it's just some strange crutch. It's more thinking that there was some full system state, some code, which fully caused you to current state, and this code is executed in some other place, and because the system is fully deterministic, the results of execution will always match.
And then if you know that you've done something, you immediately can predict from that evidence that other copy have done the same, because if one copy of deterministic algorithm calculated some expression, you can generally predict that calculation of this expression always return answer X, so everyone who calculated it will get the same answer X. And if you know you calculated it and got Y, you know the answer is X=Y.
So in an expectation of the future where you pick one box, you can expect that your future version will immediately update into that Omega simulation in past also picked that and that caused Omega to put 1M. And vice versa, in an expectation of the future where you pick two boxes, you can update about Omega simulation choice and lack of 1M.
No time travel. Causes indeed go between your decision and past boxes choice. But they go from the past, your decision not only causes things, but WAS caused itself. And the same causes will make both your decision and box content.
I think it would be more obvious if question was starting from Omega visible to you beginning to calculate prediction, hiddenly making a setup and THEN giving you a choice. And not just "everything already happened, choose".
There is a problem though with such thinking that when you tell people that they are fully determined, they start to think that their future is determined not through their ongoing thinking process, but independently from that.
I don't know what to think except: but people who think they can determine the future evidently get better results then those who think that everything is doomed, so definitely you can determine the future by trying to do that, even you don't know how to match that with being determined yourself.
Or maybe: if you now know about being determined and started to think "how me making make future decision usual way is determined by past", it's wrong, it's more levels of putting calculations inside of calculations, so you have less power to spend on making good decision. And of course don't think "how my current future is determined by my past including this thought", it's infinity loop.
Though in the first place I think about it like: if you have examples of previous games and one boxes get better results, then in two future predictions there is one with higher expected utility and it's the one where you decide to pick one box, so decision of picking one box has higher expected utility, so do it.
Or if elaborate, choice of one box is an evidence in our examples for getting 1M. But if you will choose one box, you will not GET this evidence, you will CREATE it. And usually if you do have some evident measure and start to optimise it, it ceases to be evident.
But if we had examples of people who optimised measure and still get the results, then it's still will be valid evidence even if you will optimise the measure. So prediction which starts from picking one box still has better expected utility and is the one you should choose to start by picking one box.
And I prefer to think about whole situation like our world is simulation, Omega copies the computer state from one point, continue before it can see your decision, and next execute copied state the second time, but now puts boxes conditional on your choice from previous run. And in sim 3 uses your choice from sim 2. And so on 1B times.
For me it's obvious then that you should choose one box, because you can't by running the same simulation state get different results on the moment where simulated you makes your choice.
(And when I was trying to think about choice which change the past, and determinism, free will and decisions, my brain felt like it's trying to fold into a pretzel. And I make conclusion, that it's better to never actually act on logic which makes your brain turn into a pretzel, even if it is "perfectly physically grounded". If you have some "perfectly physically grounded logic" you need to unfold it before it become obvious, intuitive and fully visible, because elsewhise you'll just end up making mistakes.)
One of the problems is that if my contribution may be more valuable, then it may be also dangerous. I was trying to create techniques to generally increase intelligence, and it looks like I have at least some success. But they are not rational techniques, not an asymetrical weapon. (Ok, some may be at least a little, if I think)
I think like "may be their using can help with AI alignment", but I don't want to their using instead helped with destroying our world faster.
And probably nothing will happen... I just don't want to be careless and post Roko Basilisk because of "ah, what can happen, I can't actually cause a big damage, it's just hubris"
In the end I have problems with writing lists of the best things, because most things in them are of this question.
Firefox added tab groups! Finally! I'd joked that it's a sign of the end of the world, but it doesn't look very funny now. Unfortunately, the same with vertical tabs, it's on PC, where it's completely useless, where there are tree tabs add-ons which are just better.
Does somebody know, how to get features of Touch-To-Search and fast switching between bottom bar of tabs like in chrome, but with extensions like in Firefox, and with sync, so not kiwi?
The situation with that is so desperate, that I start to want to make VR glasses linux computer like some enthusiasts. Or at least just root one of my phones, install linux and use it as a computer. Or find and buy some PDA (КПК). Or buy a tiny laptop. Or just... something.
Does somebody knows solutions to such problems?
If LW is tiny, I think I understand much better why no one wrote AGI Ruin before EY. I thought about that, but just for a few seconds. I also thought that LW is full of smart people, then if it isn't done yet, not mentioned as "needed task", then probably it's not that good idea, or there are much more important things to spend time on.
(I will consider it as getting some evidence, so, thanks)
I mean, I just thought in the way of "yeah, not all of people on twitter will come to LW", but I was on LW even though I wasn't on twitter. And there are also Facebook, Reddit, SSC and other PBlogs, and people who prefer to meetup instead of using online, and people in other countries.
And also so much people read HPMoR. And I personally, if look back on my life story, don't see any division moments where I was prone even a little to change my direction in which I was going after reading HPMoR, way could be different, but direction is the same.
May be, I was just wrong that I am not unusual. Like, I was probably the best pupil in my class, but that just gives sort of lower bound. What is after that? May be I should take IQ or SAT. But it's long, hard and has side effects.
The most close thing that I've done was to take Vocabulary tests. And I actually found just one (1) site that wasn't terrible. https://www.myvocab.info/ In difference with all the other, it uses adaptive testing, so it takes just like 20 questions and 2 minutes, and author says "Bayes" in description, which are, in the surface, good signs.
And I've got 99.9% for my age. (which is just knowing twice as many words as average, not so much). And I can't remember specifically doing something that could optimise over vocab test.
I don't know, may be almost everyone on LW will get 99.9% for their age or something? (Though, of course I took the test in my native Russian, and for English it's different).
(It's vague, but I'll try it broad right NOW. And then elaborate if necesssary.)
I.
I've just noticed comments of Raemon, Gwern and Vladimir_Nesov on my old post and it struck me that maybe I was wrong and LW community is much tinier than I thought. It explains a lot. Flaws of site design, lack of any galactic ideas I momentarily internally spit out seeing things, whole tiny success of rationality and alignment missions.
Probably there are just not enough people for all of that? And I was wrong estimating by EY's 140K twitter, count of readers of HPMoR. And SHOULD be estimating by amount of votes and reactions. Probably there are just only a few hundreds of people who have account on site to at least vote, not saying "comment", or furthermore "post" on regular basis.
Like, in that case I should be modeling LW much more like hunter gatherer tribe than inexploitable market civilization.
(oops, I lost "try-it-broad")
So:
- How big is LW community?
- How much are there (how to say... high level rationalists?), like, Yudkowsky, Salamon, Muehlhauser... Gwern? I don't know who are actually.
- I don't want to invoke here enormous hubris, but it feels like depending on previous 2 questions, I might hugely underestimate my own ability to contribute something significant. And that my already formed best ideas might be much less of widely known stuff.
- How much are there (how to say... high level rationalists?), like, Yudkowsky, Salamon, Muehlhauser... Gwern? I don't know who are actually.
II.
How strong is consensus on concretely LW (not EA, SSC, whatever), about AI scenario?
I noticed some problems with LW interface, quick list
(Ep status: follow my intuition, by saying "you" instead of "I" mean that I expect that these intuitions will be shared by a lot of other users)
Priority for me of these are such items where using is still very inconvenient, not just hard to understand for new users. There are: 1 - reactions, 2 - markdown OR colours (I don't know, mb obsidian solves markdown)
On android
- I have no Intercom on Android, property checked, on PC I do have
- Reactions
- inline reaction button shows up outside of page bounds, so I need to scroll
- ordinary reaction oppositely show the menu outside of screen bounds, so I can't even scroll
- inline reaction phrases aren't underlined anymore, so it's hard to find them and if something shows on the right, it's out of page bounds.
- User profile button shows you a pop-over while I expect redirection, that confuses me each time
Generally
- Colours
- Where all the COLOURS? What's wrong with them? Why to decolourise the site so hardly? I'd expected precisely opposite thing, add colours, you know, like in IDE, to recognise page elements easier.
- I in the first thought I checked some anti colour option in settings, but no
- Where all the COLOURS? What's wrong with them? Why to decolourise the site so hardly? I'd expected precisely opposite thing, add colours, you know, like in IDE, to recognise page elements easier.
- Settings
- There is this HUGE place next to "submit" button, but instead of adding "rules" button (which shows pop-over), there is non-selectable text about "what you should enter directly into URL line"
- Notifications specific setting are not grouped into collapsable list. AND "remove negative karma" and "batch notifications" options go ONLY AFTER it. (so I just missed them earlier)
- You have this whole list of collapsable option lists and AFTER all of it, little, not standing out button written "submit", like you can open "new option types to site coders suggestion" by that. Instead of floating, bright button "save" and warning if you are leaving the page without saving data.
- Actually, it's how LW itself works for comments. It even has autosaves! What's the problem to do it for settings?
- Reveal check for facilitation option is totally obscure for me in what it does. And has no pop-over tooltip more detailed explanation.
- Hide people names option is totally useless for quick takes list page, because it shows names like "X's Shortform"
- It also could be useful if you could hide-before-hover karma... and probably agrees and reactions. Just show post, comments in sorting order depending on their karma etc and collapse expectedly useless things. Though, even if hide concrete reactions, it would be good to see their existance in principle, and by inlines.
- Markdown
- Quick takes interface definitely shows NO markdown or visual. And again, why?
- Also, why markdown/visual switch is not default for editor?
- And if markdown/docs conversion is lossy, why is it pick-up pop-over, instead of "convert to []" button?
- Markdown not just hides shows when you select a word, in an intuitive way (for example, like it's done in obsidian), it "compiles" and next refuse to be removed and... very inconvenient
- Mb I just should write in Obsidian and paste.
- Sorting
- Also I understood why me and some another people didn't know that LW has filtering options for posts. Different modes look like different modes of sorting, not like different tabs, so you don't expect that you will lose any hint on filtering after switching to "Recommended" (which sort of subconsciously reads like it's recommended by LW authors sorting mode to pick, not recommended posts).
- It would be more intuitive if modes were tabs, not pick buttons (like, overlap on each other? Show content as being inside of button?). Or it could be pick pop-over, but I like such design less, and I don't think that without showing-it-as-a-content it would be more legible.
- Also it may be better if Enriched option had settings gear on it to show that it HAS settings even if it's not selected.
- Notifications: when I subscribe on someone's short form, notification says that somebody replied on my comment instead
That sort of sounds like I complain about site not being able to read my thoughts (or vice versa), but a lot of soft which was otherwise much more poorly designed, iirc was able to do it, was intuitive/conventional in all such things OR had guides and warnings. Idk mb it's just a question of higher count of fail fix iteration with higher amount of users.
And also when I visited site from PC I got visual editor pane. (markdown editor setting was not changed yet) And I still have NO idea why after that it also suddenly appeared on phone where it never appeared before.
Self review 1
Now I suspect that I completely wrongly projected my feelings on reasoning.
Maybe I am just less collectivist, more individual than most people.
Or maybe the question is that don't actually like their country of birth the most (eg I like my species of birth the most), but more On The Side Of Blue Country vs Red. And saying obviously wrong things like everybody going like "MY country is the best". And iirc I was even as a child when seen things like "mom, you're the best in the world" mentally going like "oh, really, by which qualities? And also, did you tried all of moms in the world before you stopped on current or just only the most?" (no, really, what's the people problem with making compliments without lies? "mom, I love you really much" is shorter)
And probably also because they next go into wars in the name of these flavors of ice-cream preferences differences.
Oh. It looks like I just understood what was EY's point in "Keltham wrote first version of [text] and than rewrote it". I just accidentally did this and it seems that it is much more effective and quick to do not any fixes at all on the first writing, just write out thoughts for yourself, and next write version with all the obvious fixes, than to constantly erase and make local fixes. It's just important not to start trying to do second order fixes on "for publication" version.
(Context: earlier he wrote that he has problem with constant fixing/rewriting. I guess it may be representation of his found out fix.)
Somehow I manage to be dismissing/condescending even to myself. Like "oh, this old just didn't thought about writing his reasoning to LW". When actually systematically it turns out that I or someone else thought, even tried, but. This. Thought. Had. Failed. To. Work.
I actually HAD wrote a post with a significant part of my reasoning: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zbSsSwEfdEuaqCRmz/eniscien-s-shortform?commentId=mv3YpuL6tDTtTF7Dv
Self review 1
I was wrong before OP observation, but in "narrow professional skills can't give you Rationality" it wasn't OP's update of "narrow can't", it was "professional skills are narrow". They aren't. Our world just can't systematically define premises on which professional skill works, optimise it to abstract non narrow principle and then teach to everybody who frequently mets these premises.
Self review 2
There is a difference between "better than default option" and "the best of all moderately easily searchable options". And I doubt I've done the second search at all, not just done first and congratulated myself. I definitely wasn't asking "which language is more useful/pleasant to learn - English, German, Japanese, Greek, Latin, Esperanto etc" or "which exercises are the most useful/pleasant - language, mnemonic, speedreading, mental arithmetic etc"
Edit: actually, now I think it would be better to learn speedreading instead of German, then learn English at x5 speed and for read-writing only purpose, and even next learn some conlang, not German. And do it not in "an app which is better than school", but in "the app which is the best from all apps I found".
I tried it. Unfortunately, I was trying to set marks on books by all parameters of being good book, instead of accessing just pleasure of reading, which was the only actually important thing to access, because recommendations for others I can get by other ways. And it ended up that now I don't know how to clear my profile.
Self review
(I've already wrote here something about meaningfulness of competition, but it's hard to parse, so just rewrite)
less try to follow usual society justifications of why thing "makes sense" and more wonder for "which multiple forces conjure thing into reality".
Eg:
different stimuli make people perform different behaviour
you need vengeance to be proportional to harm so people will not eg try hide lesser crimes as stealing by making bigger crimes like killing (those who knew about lesser crimes)
competing with somebody of achievable level make people apply efforts into optimising thing of competition to seize it's prizes
Object level 2y later comments
Now I though think it should be derived apriori, like, as toy model: LET there is 1B people, average can have 1 idea/day, 1 of 1K 100 idea/day, 1 of 1B 1M idea/day, you have 84000s/day and need 84s/idea for comprehension. THEN 1 of 1K has only 1/10 his ideas created by him, so priors to meet somebody with more created ideas than read are lower than 1/1K, AND just the average people create 1M times more ideas than can be read, at best you will know 0.0001% of ideas your world has.
Yeah. I reread today and thought that it could be replaced by link to it and phrase "then if you see that somebody is very smart and spits out brilliant new looks on things, it may be question of cumulative/crystalized intelligence, not only fluid".
(But when I tried to find part about TPOT by using keywords like "Carissa Ri-Dul TPOT Oppara", I found out... the search giving me nothing. So today I didn't have hope to find a fragment in reasonable time)
Wow. I look at it again 2y later and as exception of sort of my personal absolute rule it doesn't look absolutely terrible, it looks almost good. I am not sure about the reasons. Mb I managed to wrote it for external reader, not just spit out thought. I doubt it's because I "acquired decent level of rationality".
That's sort of Welcome (Back) Post. My mistakes analysis. Or confession.
I probably solved a problem that iirc I had my whole life: being VERY upset by losing at all, like, school grades, losing games (even to AI) etc. By posting on LW I could ever get down votes. And did. But I was trying post still, I had ideas I wanted to publish.
And as a full surprise, reinforcement turned out to work such way, that if you overcome it in end-step of thought-action sequence, it will just strike your earlier steps. Eg I became less able to think about posting. And I didn't noticed that before it was too late.
And I didn't even asked about not downvoting me, because, obviously it will look like "can you vote me higher than other users unrelated to posts quality because of these fully trust based reasons how I suffer so much!". And wouldn't it be so wrong and selfish, when I so much liked using downvotes myself?
(of course, as I now understand after thinking about it, I could and should just write out these reasoning fully, maybe someone else had an obvious to him solution)
And so, in fact previous 1.5 years my brain avoided thinking about something that can lead to posting on LW, like having mathy thoughts, or opening the site.
And the problem could be solved if I just managed to not be upset because of downvotes. And yet, even though I acquired good enough general emotional control to fully turn off almost any emotion just few months after stopping posting, being upset by loses was very resistant to that. And I could not introspect why. And now it looks like I finally solved this my whole life problem.
Such happened iirc that when I was little kid, I heard a lot of speech like "boys should not be afraid of pain, should not cry about it". But pain was just the worst thing in my utility function at all, and if somebody advices you into doing exactly reverse thing of your utility function, then it be good idea doing not by their advices, but doing exactly reverse thing of their advices. So I decided to frantically avoid ever doing anything remotely painful, remotely bad-feeling AT ALL.
And hence I could not use my emotional control to make it less painful because it could make higher a probability of happening painful-at-all thing.
Then I noticed that my intuitive expectations about "will I be upset by losing" changed and I immediately tried to get as much profit from this luck as I could. I several times applied emotional control, to be sure that I will not lose this opportunity.
And the problem... Was that I was not sure in my intuition. I needed some way to test it without additional negative reinforcement of important things. And desirable without any consequences at all. And there was such a way!
To explain, I wasn't playing very much of games. Partially, because easy levels were too easy and in hard levels I could lose. But some time ago I was interested to see, how changed my skills of Scrabble, when now I have much higher vocabulary than me as a kid. I played in 1 lvl of AI. And it was incredibly easy. So I tried just 1 lvl higher. And completely losed. And in distinction with me as a kid I was not having tears, screaming, growling, waving hands, throwing things. Not even thinking enraged thoughts. But it didn't matter really much, I just felt how my wish to ever play high levels of Scrabble vanishes to zero. And I couldn't do anything with that.
And now I checked how much of that I will feel when losing? And... Immediately understood that I VASTLY overcorrected. Because I felt nothing at all, not even slightly.
So, I hope now I will be able post my ideas without such enormous psychological obstacles. Because in the last 1.5y I wasn't trying to write my ideas or even think about it, and so had much more ideas than before. More than it is possible to write them, I just don't know which ideas LW consider new and useful relatively to myself. I am going to try to write a mix of detailed myself-best, detailed LW-prediction-best, short namings of first 20 best, and probably something which I just like to write for positive reinforcement. And update my beliefs by reactions added to parts of my posts.
(a lot of things with this post seem very off, as on level of general narrative as on level of grammar. Maybe I lost any skill of writing anything except of maximally short notes to myself. Or... maybe I just became to much quibbling, 1.5y ago I wouldn't be able to write whole post in non native language and notice it only after seeming a lot of offness. I will try to fix it tomorrow with fresh eyes, but post already now to avoid not moving forward because of too much perfecting things, especially because it is fast takes form)
I saw that a lot of people are confused by "what does Yudkowsky mean by this difference between deep causes and surface analogies?". I didn't have this problem, with no delay I had interpretation what he means.
I thought that it's difference between deep and surface regarding to black box metaphor. Difference between searching correlation between similar inputs and outputs and building a structure of hidden nodes and checking the predictions with rewarding correct ones and dividing that all by complexity of internal structure.
Difference between making step from inputs to outputs and having a model. Looking only at visible things and thinking about invisible ones. Looking only at experiment results and building theories from that.
Just like difference between deep neural networks and neural networks with no hidden layers, the first ones are much more powerful.
I am really unsure that it is right, because if it was so, why he just didn't say that? But I write it here just in case.
I noticed that some names here have really bad connotations (although I am not saying that I know which don't, or even that any hasn't).
"LessWrong" looks like "be wrong more rare" and one of obvious ways to it is to avoid difficult things, "be less wrong" is not a way to reach any difficult goal. (Even if different people have different goals)
"Rationality: from A to Z" even worse, it looks like "complete professional guide about rationality" instead of "incomplete basic notes about a small piece of rationality weakly understood by one autodidact" which it actually is.
There are no common words upvote/downvote in Russian, so I just said like/dislike. And it was really a mistake, these are two really different types of positive/negative marks, agree/disagree is third type and there may be any amount of other types. But I named it like/dislike, so I so thought about it like it means your power of liking it in form of outcome to author, not just adjusting the sorting like "do I want to see more posts like that higher in suggestions".
And actually it looks for me like a more general tendency in my behaviour to avoid finding subtle differences between thing and, especially, terms. Probably, I've seen like people are trying to find difference in colloquial terms which are not strictly determined and next argue to that difference, I was annoyed by that and that annoyance forced me to avoid finding subtle differences in terms. Or maybe it is because they said us that synonyms are words with the same meaning, instead of near meanings (or "equal or near meanings"), and didn't show us that there is difference in connotations. Or maybe the first was because of the second. Or maybe it was because I too much used programming languages instead of normal languages when I was only 8. Anyway, I probably need now to start developing a 24/7 automatically working habit to search and notice subtle differences.
Does the LessWrong site use a password strength check like the one Yudkowsky talks about (I don't remember that one)? And if not, why not? It doesn't seem particularly difficult to hook this up to a dictionary or something. Or is it not considered worth implementing because there's Google registration?
Hmm. Judging from the brief view, it feels like I'm the only one who included reactions in my brief forms. I wonder why?
It occurred to me that on LessWrong there doesn't seem to be a division of posts in evaluations into those that you want to promote as relevant right now, and those that you think will be useful over the years. If there was such an evaluation... Or such a response, then you could take a list not of karma posts, which would include those that were only needed sometime in a particular moment, but a list of those that people find useful beyond time.
That is, a short-term post might be well-written, really required for discussion at the time, rather than just reporting news, so there would be no reason to lower its karma, but it would be immediately obvious that it was not something that should be kept forever. In some ways, introducing such a system would make things easier with Best Of. And I also remember when choosing which of the sequences to include in the book, there were a number of grades on scales other than karma. This could also be added as reactions, so that such scores could be left in an independent mode.
A. I saw a post that reactions were added. I was just thinking that this would be very helpful and might solve my problem. Included them for my short forms. I hope people don't just vote no more without asking why through reactions.
On the one hand, I really like that on LessWrong, unlike other platforms, everything unproductive is downgraded in the rating. But on the other hand, when you try to publish something yourself, it looks like a hell of a black box, which gives out positive and negative reinforcements for no reason at all.
This completely chaotic reward system seems to be bad for my tendency to post anything at all on LessWrong, just in the last few weeks that I've been using EverNote, it has counted 400 posts, and by a quick count, I have about 1500 posts lying in Google Keep , at the same time, on LessWrong I have published only about 70 over the past year, that is, this is 6-20 times less, although according to EverNote estimates ~ 97% of these notes belong to the "thoughts" category, and not to something like lists shopping.
I tried literally following the one advice given to me here and treating any scores less than ±5 as noise, but that didn't negate the effect. I don't even know, maybe if the ratings of the best posts here don't match up with my rating of my best posts, I should post a couple of really terrible posts to make sure they get rated extremely bad and not good or not?
I must say, I wonder why I did not see here speed reading and visual thinking as one of the most important tips for practical rationality, that is, a visual image is 2 + 1 d, and an auditory image is 0 + 1 d, plus auditory images use sequential thinking, in which people are very bad, and visual thinking is parallel. And according to Wikipedia, the transition from voice to visual reading should speed you up 5 (!) times, and in the same way, visual thinking should be 5 times faster compared to voice, and if you can read and think 5 times in a lifetime more thoughts, it's just an incredible difference in productivity.
Well, the same applies to the use of visual imagination instead of voice, here you can also use pictures. (I don’t know, maybe it was all in Korzybski’s books and my problem is that I didn’t read them, although I definitely should have done this?)
Yudkowsky says that public morality should be derived from personal morality, and that personal morality is paramount. But I don't think this is the right way to put it, in my view morality is the social relationships that game theory talks about, how not to play games with a negative sum, how to achieve the maximum sum for all participants.
And morality is independent of values, or rather, each value system has its own morality, or even more accurately, morality can work even if you have different value systems. Morality is primarily about questions of justice, sometimes all sorts of superfluous things like god worship are dragged under this kind of human sentiment, so morality and justice may not be exactly equivalent.
And game theory and answers questions about how to achieve justice. Also, justice may concern you as directly one of your values, and then you won't betray even in a one-time prisoner's dilemma without penalty. Or it may not bother you and then you will pass on always when you do not expect to be punished for it.
In other words, morality is universal between value systems, but it cannot be independent of them. It makes no sense to forbid someone to be hurt if he has absolutely nothing against being hurt.
In other words, I mean that adherence to morality just feels different from inside than conformity to your values, the former feels like an obligation and the latter feels like a desire, in one case you say "should" and in the other "wants."
I've read "Sorting Pebbles into Different Piles" several times and never understood what it was about until it was explained to me. Certainly the sorters aren't arguing about morality, but that's because they're not arguing about game theory, they're arguing about fun theory... Or more accurately not really, they are pure consequentialists after all, they don't care about fun or their lives, only piles into external reality, so it's theory of value, but not theory of fun, but theory of prime.
But in any case, I think people might well argue with them about morality. If people can sell primes to sorters and they can sell hedons to people, would it be moral to betray in a prisoner's dilemma and get 2 primes by giving -3 hedons. And most likely they will come to the conclusion that no, that would be wrong, even if it is just ("prime").
That you shouldn't kill people, even if you can get yourself the primeons you so desire, and they shouldn't destroy the right piles, even if they get pleasure from looking at the blowing pebbles.
I added link to comment: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34Tu4SCK5r5Asdrn3/unteachable-excellence