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There's a market for lemons problem, similar to the used car market, where neither the therapist nor customer can detect all hidden problems, pitfalls, etc., ahead of time. And once you do spend enough time to actually form a reasonable estimate there's no takebacks possible.
So all the actually quality therapists will have no availability and all the lower quality therapists will almost by definition be associated with those with availability.
Edit: Game Theory suggests that you should never engage in therapy or at least never with someone with available time, at least until someone invents the certified pre-owned market.
Employees aren't kept long enough to justify training them!
This is actually a benefit in disguise, at least for the efficiency of management in large organizations. And is probably sufficient to explain a large chunk of the 2x difference.
The hyper effective self learners who thrive in this paradigm and get promoted end up being smarter per unit time than even the best japanese employees. Which translates to being smarter overall after several promotion.
I.e. every minute spent on something reduces their attainable competence somewhere else as schedules are maxed out once you reach middle management. There's only 24 hours a day after all.
That’s true but you still have let’s say 2^1000000 afterwards.
Why does it matter? ‘Vibes’ are nowhere near as good as satisfying shareholders sufficiently or having enough money in the bank account to be a credible operating business, at least in market economies, certainly I imagine Comcast decision makers would care a lot more about the actual legally binding concerns more than all the good ‘vibes’ in the world.
e.g. If their financials seem shaky one day and they could somehow double their cashflow by sacrificing ‘vibes’, they would gladly welcome all the bad ‘vibes’ you could possibly have, times a million. It literally would be a welcome relief to accept this in exchange for more money.
There’s actually a meta-status problem with any group discussion of status, namely that if the group members judge it to have a below average chance of winning a status competition, in whatever sphere of activity they are engaged in, then its members have incentives to block or ignore the discussion.
Or even downplay the group itself, its quality, etc…, if they can’t prevent the discussion, much like hunting groups for meat. This especially applies for group members who perceive themselves to be in the most marginal, low status, cohort.
The core reason is nobody wants to be known as a 100% guaranteed loser, so anyone who already has below average prospects is going to feel extremely sensitive about even the slightest chance of the group losing future status competitions and thus dragging them down even further.
Although this doesn’t apply to the most valuable group members, who presumably view themselves as having above average status, the opposite problem occurs, namely that actually winning a status competition might attract people who are above them into joining, and thus diluting their own influence, or even worse, relegating them to the second tier. (this doesn’t apply if the group is already at the very highest level)
So paradoxically only the ‘middle-class’ members reliably do anything more than empty talking, at least for status constrained issues. Literally everyone else has incentives to talk a big game but also prevent anything decisive.
That seems to be an argument for something more than random noise going on, but not an argument for ‘LLMs are shuggoths’?
This definition seems so vague and broad as to be unusuable.
Both are bad, but only one of them necessarily destroys everything I value.
You don’t value the Sun, or the other stars in the sky?
Even in the most absurdly catastrophic scenarios it doesn’t seem plausible that they could be ‘necessarily destroyed’.
The shorter the better. Or as Lao Tzu said, Those who know don’t talk. Those who talk don’t know…
The disclaimer doesn’t need to enumerate a full list, as long as it points out that a nebulous cloud of potential and actual caveats exists and may apply is sufficient.
The threshold still has to be greater than zero power for its ‘care’ to matter one way or the other. And the risk that you mention needs to be accepted as part of the package, so to speak.
So who gets to decide where to place it above zero?
Why not add a disclaimer spelling out that what’s written could be false or misleading depending on the caveats?
“AI Safety”, especially enforcing anything, does pretty much boil down to human alignment, i.e. politics, but there are practically zero political geniuses among its proponent, so it needs to be dressed up a bit to sound even vaguely plausible.
It’s a bit of a cottage industry nowadays.
Wouldn’t that imply the existence of this essay, available for anyone passing by to read, is a net negative?
Like the parent said "Deport all Rationalists" or even “Deport everyone named Arturo Macias” are entirely feasible to accomplish with available resources…
It seems like the more important issue is who gets to decide what to vote on and what is presented for voting?
e.g. if the limit is say 1 vote per day, allowing for sufficient time for reflection and study of the issue at hand assuming perfect allocation of time, there’s still way more then 365 possible things a year to vote on.
If the agent had no power whatsoever to effect the world then it wouldn’t matter if it cared or not.
So the real desire is that it must have a sufficient amount, but not over some threshold that will prove to be too frightening.
Who gets to decide this threhsold?
But an even larger flaw is that they have very small filter areas for no apparent reason.
Is reducing cost of manufacturing filters 'no apparent reason'?
It seems like literally the most important reason... the profit margin of selling replacement filters would be heavily reduced, assuming pricing remains the same.
That's a really neat point, has it ever been addressed in prior literature, that you've gone over?
Thanks, you've listed some plausible downsides, but the upsides also need to be enumerated too, and then likely several stages of synthesis to arrive at a final, persuasive, argument, one way or the other. I'm not saying you have to do all this work, just that someone does in order to advance the argument.
So far I've never seen such, anywhere online.
Just because the US government contains agents that care about market failures, does not mean that it can be accurately modeled as itself being agentic and caring about market failures.
I agree, just the fact that it contains such does not necessarily imply anything for or against. e.g. It's entirely possible for two or more far flung branches of the USG to work towards opposite ends and end up entirely negating each another.
The more detailed argument would be public choice theory 101, about how the incentives that people in various parts of the government are faced with may or may not encourage market-failure-correcting behavior.
Can you lay out this argument with more detail?
Governments don’t automatically care about market failures
Governments don't care about anything, the people in governments do.
And the USG is large enough that quite literally every second of the day there's likely at least 1 person who cares intensely about 'market failures', likely even far more than you do in writing this. (And conversely at least 1 person that couldn't care less.)
But this group is not static, it's constantly fluctuating depending on the actual people in the USG, their positions, expectations, experiences, resources, opportunities, etc...
So the thrust of your post doesn't quite make sense, since your opinion will literally always be outweighed, at least on a yearly basis, by virtue of the fact that this constantly fluctuating group will inevitably include people with real authority over time.
Can you write down an actual argument, step by step, that can persuade someone with real authority that it's a net positive/net negative?
So are you planning to convince anyone?
Because so far this jumble of thoughts seems unlikely to be genuinely convincing, let alone to move folks in Washington to do something.
Can you reformulate your thoughts to be more readable? It's quite hard to make heads or tails out of the points listed.
What's a realistic reform plan that will get through both Congress, and the White House, and not get struck down by the Supreme court on the first few dozen challenges?
Obamacare had to be watered down many times from its original vision, and encumbered with millions of words of legalese, so much so that it might even have resulted in a net negative to society depending on perspective, and even then it squeaked through by a very slim margin.
I just don't see much of a chance for anything more ambitious.
I was responding to the requirement to be literally 'the best'. Ranked number 1 out of 8 billion plus human beings.
'Expertise' is a similar concept, the point is that they are clearly capable of reliably doing whatever the title implies, and are recognized as such by their peers in that field.
At a lower standard I think it's quite reasonable to assume there are many mathematicians cum guitarists cum computer programmers cum biologists. Of course the vast majority of these only dabble in one area or another, like you said with a small time investment.
However to be literally better than every single one of them would require a lot more time, so I picked 10000 as a nice round number.
Being the world's best mathematician/musician is much easier, especially since there are multiple slots; an amazing mathematician who is also a competent musician, someone who is good at both, and a competent mathematician who is also an amazing musician can all find a niche.
Maybe not quite this easy to be literally the best, number 1 out of 8 billion.
I could see it however for a mixture of three aspects simultaneously, such as being a competent mathematician, an amazing musician, and a competent marine biologist.
Or perhaps more realistically a mixture of four aspects at only a level of reasonable competence, such as being a competent mathematician/musician/marine biologist/Judo instructor.
Assuming that it only takes 10000 hours of focused practice to reach a level of reasonable competence, that's still 40000 hours of practice though to be literally the best at one very specific interdisciplinary niche. Or 20 years assuming 2000 hours of real focused practice per year.
So it's clear why that doesn't happen often, most people just don't have that kind of self-discipline.
And out of those that are capable, most would benefit more from just putting those 40000 hours towards one field, an aspiring mathematician deciding to become a really amazing mathematician and win the Fields Medal for example.
In the end just a small group of bonafide interdisciplinary folks remain, who for whatever reason decided not to concentrate their time in one field.
I still think I understand just fine along with the several other folks expressing skepticism. To be frank your personal opinions can't outweigh anyone else's here so it really isn't a productive line of discussion.
EDIT: Maybe try putting forward actual arguments, or addressing the numerous other comments with substantial points?
I was simply noting it causes a dead weight loss in creative output, which has become much worse by extending copyright to effectively eternity.
How do you know the 'dead weight loss in creative output' outweighs the positive effects in the first place?
It doesn't seem obvious at all to me if there are no such arguments put forward.
I noticed, incidentally via a search, this substantial edit of a brief reply to me, that was politely ignored 5 months ago, and how oddly aggressive the edit sounds.
If your genuinely writing out these comments yourself and not relying on ChatGPT, I'll be kind and clarify why this misses the point.
Linking a question somewhere else on LW, and it's completely different topic, does not demonstrate anything of my intelligence or your intelligence or 'constitutionality of a law'. It seems bizarre to try to connect things this way.
Plus, even if the link was relevant, trying to use it at as proof of some relative measure of intelligent is inevitably going to backfire when written in such a manner, so there's no reason to get so insecure about it.
To actually change the real world in this regard, at least in the US, there will need to be arguments to cross many hurdles, such as to convince a majority of congressmen, and inevitably many judges when it get's challenged. And probably even beyond since the USG has ratified most of WIPO, which it can't unilaterally change.
Inevitably there will have to be convincing legal arguments or else this won't get far enough for it to practically matter.
If you don't have any right now, maybe try focusing your efforts on coming up with some?
What's the actual legal argument against copyright holders from being able to block certain uses they dislike?
They’ll still need to follow their mother country’s constitution, criminal code, and international treaties, but should otherwise be given the freedom to design their own legal code to encourage the growth of new industries
This seems to be a show stopper.
Couldn't the country's Supreme Court just decide anyways one day that the existing 'legal code' apply regardless of what the original intentions of the founders are or what the founding documents say?
It would need a constitutional amendment to credibly enshrine its special status. But why would a supermajority of the politicians and citizens from existing political boundaries ratify that?
In China's case it was clear, they had nothing left to lose in 1978 after hitting rock bottom, but I highly doubt most countries would even exist after 120+ years of the deepest misery and suffering, in order to reach rock bottom.
Well I think I do?, so just opining another LW user doesn’t understand “probability theory” is not going to lead anywhere productive.
If your confused about something in the prior comment, can you specify the exact issue?
Did you misread the comment? Clearly in the real world you will not have such perfect data sources, hence why I wrote “ And we are very far from even that.”
i.e. A practically zero chance in the ideal world turns into a hopeless endeavour, “Sisyphean Task” in the real world. And that’s also while assuming a level of intelligence way beyond you or anyone else.
Isn’t this an implied possibility of having a physical organization handling anything?
Even if it was fully staffed, if the department offices caught on fire you still would have been delayed by this ‘strange ACH corner case’.
So I’m not really sure how it’s a corner case, since there are an infinite number of possible ways the bank’s internal procedures are not completed within that time window.
I would have to agree with the parent, this line of approach, with this kind of calculation attempt is a 'Sisyphean task'. You, along with everyone else on Earth, simply lack the mental capacity to actually accomplish this. Even if you had access to the millions of perfect data sources required.
And we are very far from even that.
Why not try a different approach?
Weird things happen in the murky world of human conflicts.
True, but you still need to demonstrate that your suppositions are more credible/reliable/falsifiable/etc... than someone else's suppositions, in this case many someone else's. Which you have not done yet.
Can you write down something actually rock-solid, (that requires more than a few dozen hours to credibly dismiss)?
It is still true for edge cases like you said--in that case, when there is a severed corpus callous, the model is still there.
Huh? How is the model 'still there' for someone with a severed Corpus callosum?
As far as I'm aware it doesn't grow back within a normal human lifespan...
There just may be systematic overvaluation of what people say instead of what they do, by practically everyone.
For the average person, who is far from producing genuinely original ideas/insights/arguments/etc... Just what they say throughout their entire life might even be worth less, realistically, than a fancy dinner to a random passing reader.
Conversely taking a bit of actual effort in buying said reader a fancy dinner probably more than doubles it, at least in the eyes of the person getting to eat it.
Of course the opposite pretence needs to be maintained very often in normal day to day life, and after enough times, folks start genuinely believing the opposite. That just the mere prospect of losing a minor verbal status game implies that they must fanatically counter-signal.
(i.e. the needle of their perception gets harder and harder to move over time)
Which would explain the observed phenomena throughout history.
It has some other negative side effects, rare for it to be serious, but possible. So it really is just better to 'toughen up' in this case.
"or anyone if they had the equivalent expertise and sensors" includes humans on Earth...
e.g. a lone hunter-gather living in a cave for a long period, coming out to survey the world with the latest tools and then going back into their cave and lifestyle with only the results.
Prediction markets, if they ever become popularized, would practically be redistributing wealth from the below average to the above average.
So it's a critical disadvantage compared to insurance markets.
But that's also why it sounds so highly appealing.
i.e. Trying to collectively outsmart the bottom sounds like it has better prospects than trying to outsmart the top.
Bingo, the root problem is pretending to have any quasi-judicial structure/authority at all.
People of roughly equal status issuing 'judgements' or 'decisions' on each other really doesn't make sense for that reason, at best you can do so within a private club and its property lines.
A federation of private clubs may decide to do so, very rarely, only for the most serious cases, because as mentioned in the OP there's always the risk of some clubs siding with the accused and then deciding to leave, splitting the federation.
Maybe the situation is complex enough that only actual, bonafide, geniuses need apply. Everyone else will just be adding to the noise.
Sure, but that doesn't matter to the alien observers, or anyone if they had the equivalent expertise and sensors. They can still gleam a super-intelligent equivalent amount of knowledge.
Markets don't need to 'transmit information' at all to the observer, in order to be both useful and intelligent. For example, if aliens, who've never seen a single human or single word of human language, came by and inspected the Earth, left, then came back decades later, the changes physically observable to their sensors and associated derivations, would be.
Maybe not in the sense of an active biological intelligence but certainly in the sense such as 'The pyramids of Giza demonstrates their builder's intelligence'.
So we agree to disagree.
EDIT: I wanted to say it was an interesting discussion to be polite, but the juvenile insults and mud slinging tactics are obvious enough that probably zero passing readers would believe it.
Thanks for confirming my suspicions, since the precise wording must have been very embarrassing to intentionally delete without a trace, I won't pry, and I'll let bygones be bygones.
It wasn't my intention to drive you into a hopeless corner, since it seems there was substantial agitation from close to the beginning, but it's hard to ignore deception and false pretences when the LW forum software is literally notifying me of it.
I understand it can be a bit scary and frustrating when someone much more experienced and well established takes a counter-argument line, so I won't provoke whatever root issue(s) is lying beneath all this but I do hope there's some value in what's been written.
Do you realize I can see when you've posted replies and then 'deleted them without a trace' immediately afterwards? The mods can too.
It's a feature of the LW notifications system, with the right timing. So there's no use in pretending.
I didn't want to call this out before, but it's important to set the record straight. And the mods will back me up here.
I can't possibly hope to convince you when you are engaging in abysmally bad faith. My purpose is to call you out, because you should not be getting away with this shit.
Anyways, just going by the writing that is considered not too embarrassing to delete, it's clear who has the better manners in comment writing.