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Why get the pod cover? Just get a decent air conditioning system, it's far better and isn't $2500. Make the entire room cold when you sleep.
I like this post! Saved the comment about the "a day is all you need" induction to my quote bank,
I was guessing this was going in a slightly different direction, namely: tracking progress (in a spreadsheet is what I do) such that you can actually see the fact you're still making progress (this is why video-games with the clear leveling indicators are so addicting!) and you don't mistakenly believe you're stalling and get demotivated.
I like the new skill idea too though. I am already prone to starting over in new arenas a bit too much, but having a set time for a new skill is a good idea.
I suppose modelling a superintelligent agent as a utility maximizer feels a bit weird but not the weirdest thing, and I'm not sure I can mount a good defense saying that a superintelligent agent definitely wouldn't be aptly modeled by that.
More importantly, the 3-step toy model with , , felt like a strange and unrelated leap
I don't know if it's about the not having an answer part. That is probably biasing me. But similar to the cryptography example, if someone defined what security would mean, let's say Indistinguishability under chosen plain text attack. And then proceeded to say "I have no idea how to do that or if it's even possible." Then I would still consider that real even though they didn't give us an answer.
Looking at the paper makes me feel like the authors were just having some fun discussing philosophy and not "ah yes this will be important for the fight later". But it is hard for me to understand why I feel that way.
I am somewhat satisfied by the cryptography comparison for now but definitely hard to see how valuable this is as opposed to general interpretability research.
I do like the comparison to cryptography, as that is a field I "take seriously" and does also have the issue of it being very difficult to "fairly" define terms.
Indistinguishability under chosen plain text attack being the definition for something to be canonically "secure" seems a lot more defensible than "properly modeling this random weird utility game maybe means something for AGI ??" but I get why it's a similar sort of issue
How are we defining tasty foods? I'm sure if the entire world voted, chocolate would clearly be more in the "tasty food" category than rice cakes, but perhaps you really like how rice cakes taste?
What is the difference?
It wasn't my suggestion it was Logan Zoellner's post
Can someone who downvote the agreement karma please enlighten me as to why they disagree? This really seems like the only way forward. (Trying to make my career choice right now as I am beginning my masters research this year)
This kind of post scares away the person who will be the key person in the AI safety field if we define "key person" as the genius main driver behind solving it, not the loudest person. Which is rather unfortunate, because that person is likely to read this post at some point.
I don't believe this post has any "dignity", whatever weird obscure definition dignity has been given now. It's more like flailing around in death throes while pointing fingers and lauding yourself than it is a solemn battle stance against an oncoming impossible enemy.
For context, I'm not some Eliezer hater, I'm a young person doing an ML masters currently who just got into this space and within the past week have become a huge fan of Eliezer Yudkowsky's earlier work while simultaneously very disappointed in the recent, fruitless, output.
You don't have to say the scenario, but was it removed because someone is going to execute it if they see it?
I very much enjoy that type of style of pop-up. It's quick and feels more like adding an optional paragraph versus opening a never-ending portal every 5 seconds. Your link css is also not as jarring as a bright color on a white background compared to regular black text
So this was a phase? You went through it, wrote the article and then came out the other side?
From where I am right now it feels never-ending but I suppose if I can read so much that it stops being so provably distracting, that's a nice upside.
"I realize that the tone of this post may come off as very cynical. "
I actually thought the tone of your post was very optimistic and exciting, that is until you ended it ironically by saying "since this is too cynical, let me lighten it up a bit by reminding everyone here that life is hilariously short and you'll all die so you better enjoy it!"
I do not agree that talking about the greatest sadness in life somehow is a positive nice happy thing, despite people's attempts to twist it in that direction. ("You only can appreciate things that are limited!")
I believe aging is an illness and should be fought against not just accepted as a encourage you to "have fun" and experiment with "innocent-looking gummies".
But to end on a /not mean/ note, this was a really great post (up until the "Enjoy Yourself" subheading) and I very much liked the amalgation of links you found and separately went to go read a lot of those articles. Was very close to saving this in my favorite articles collection due to how well cultivated the quotes and articles in the first bit were.
Yeah I saw this post:
So I'm somewhat confused on how profitable AI is, but maybe I can just start asking random experts and researching AI startups
Apologize for long wall of text, at the bottom I dived into your aside more as that's highly relevant to deciding the course of my next 10 years and would appreciate your weighing-in.
Pre-Lesswrong/my entire life I've been really interested in longevity, and I would do anything to help people have more time with their loved ones (and as a child I thought solving this was the only worthy kind of fame I'd ever want.)
I didn't know how to get there, but it was probably somewhere in math and science so I decided I had to do anything to get into MIT.
My hobbies ended up being CS-y instead of biology-y, and I realized that not only was CS profitable for earn to give, but it also might be the best shot for longevity since AI was just infinitely better at problem solving.
So that's where my AI interest comes from. Not in being afraid of it but in using it to solve mortal problems. But the AI safety thing is something that I of course just hear smart people like Eliezer mention and then I think to myself "hmm well they know more about AI than me and I can't use it to cure aging without the AI also maybe destroying us so I should look into that."
Your crypto comment is surprising though and I'd like to go further on that. I should be more clear, I'm pretty interested in cryptocurrency not just cryptography and so far trading it has been really profitable, and this summer I'm essentially trying to decide if I'll stop my schooling to do a crypto startup or if I'll do my Masters in AI (or potentially also a crypto thing).
Startups seem like the best thing to do for profit and people are falling over themselves to fund them nowadays so I assumed given how many people have offered me funding to do so, that the crypto startup thing would be far easier to profit from than an ML startup (with ML maybe overtaking it in 7 years or so)
If this isn't the case, or we're a year away from the flip to ML being the easier startup, I'd love to know, because I'm right on the precipice between pursuing as much ML knowledge as I can and trying to get a pHd (probably eventually do an ML spin-off), versus trying to crypto startup earn-to-give ala FTX Sam.
I and two of my friends are on the precipice of our careers right now. We are senior CS majors at MIT, and next year we're all doing our Master's here and have been going back and forth on what to pick.
All of us have heavily considered AI of course. I'm torn between that and Distributed Systems/Cryptography things to do Earn to Give. I've been mostly on the AI side of things until today.
This post has singlehandedly convinced two of us (myself included) to not work on AI or help with AI alignment, as if Eliezer, an expert in that field. is correct, then it's hopeless for us to try. So our only hope is that he's wrong and the field is somewhat ridiculous or easily solved.
We're just two people, so it might not mean the world of difference. But I'm sure we're not the only ones who this /type/ of message will reach.
I made an account just to post this, so I'm not sure if it will abide by the rules (I didn't mean for this to be an arguing against people thing) or be deleted. But thought I should post the actual real world impact this piece had on two young AI-prospectives.