Posts
Comments
Error checking in important works is moderately valuable.
I recall thinking this article got a lot right.
I remain confused about the non-linear stuff, but I have updated to thinking that norms should be that stories are accurate not merely informative with caveats given.
I am glad people come into this community to give critique like this.
Solid story. I like it. Contains a few useful frames and is memorable as a story.
I have listened to this essay about 3 times and I imagine I might do so again. Has been a valuable addition to my thinking about whether people have contact with reality and what their social goals might be.
I have used this dichotomy, 5 - 100 times during the last few years. I am glad it was brought to my attention.
Sure, but again to discuss what really happened, it wasn't that it wasn't prioritised, it was that I didn't realise it until late into the process.
That isn't prioritisation, in my view, that's halfassing. And I endorse having done so.
Or a coordination problem.
I think coordiantion problems are formed from many bad thinkers working together.
I mean the Democratic party insiders who resisted the idea that Biden was unsuitable for so long and counselled him to stay when he was pressed. I think those people were thinking badly.
Or perhaps I think they were thinking more about their own careers than the next administration being Democrat.
Yes, this is one reason I really like forecasting. I forces me to see if my thinking was bad and learn what good thinking looks like.
I think it caused them to have much less time to choose a candidate and so they chose a less good candidate than they were able to.
If thinking is the process of coming to conclusions you reflectively endorse, I think they did bad thinking and that in time people will move to that view.
Thinking is about choosing the action that actually wins, not the one that is justifiable by social reality, right?
Do you mean this as a rebuke?
I feel a little defensive here, because I think the acknowledgement and subsequent actions were more accurate and information preserving than any others I can think of. I didn't want to rewrite it, I didn't want to quickly hack useful chunks out, I didn't want to pretend I thought things I didn't, I actually did hold these views once.
If you have suggestions for a better course of action, I'm open.
Do you find this an intuitive framework? I find the implication that conversation fits neatly into these boxes or that these are the relevant boxes a little doubtful.
Are you able to quickly give examples in any setting of what 1,2,3 and 4 would be?
I don't really understand the difference between simulacra levels 2 and 3.
- Discussing reality
- Attempting to achieve results in reality by inaccuracy
- Attempting to achieve results in social reality by inaccuracy
I've never really got 4 either, but let's stick to 1 - 3.
Also they seem more like nested circles rather than levels - the jump between 2 and 3 (if I understand it correctly) seems pretty arbitrary.
Upvote to signal: I would buy a button like this, if they existed.
Physical object.
I might (20%) make a run of buttons that say how long since you pressed them. eg so I can push the button in the morning when I have put in my anti-baldness hair stuff and then not have to wonder whether I did.
Would you be interested in buying such a thing?
Perhaps they have a dry wipe section so you can write what the button is for.
If you would, can you upvote the attached comment.
Politics is the Mindfiller
There are many things to care about and I am not good at thinking about all of them.
Politics has many many such things.
Do I know about:
- Crime stats
- Energy generation
- Hiring law
- University entrance
- Politicians' political beliefs
- Politicians' personal lives
- Healthcare
- Immigration
And can I actually confidently think that things you say are actually the case. Or do I have a surface level $100 understanding?
Poltics may or may not be the mindkiller, whatever Yud meant by that, but for me it is the mindfiller, it's just a huge amount of work to stay on top of.
I think it would be healthier for me to focus on a few areas and then say I don't know about the rest.
Some thoughts on Rootclaim
Blunt, quick. Weakly held.
The platform has unrealized potential in facilitating Bayesian analysis and debate.
Either
- The platform could be a simple reference document
- The platform could be an interactive debate and truthseeking tool
- The platform could be a way to search the rootclaim debates
Currently it does none of these and is frustrating to me.
Heading to the site I expect:
- to be able to search the video debates
- to be able to input my own probability estimates to the current bayesian framework
- Failing this, I would prefer to just have a reference document which doesn't promise these
I am not sure most foodies are thinking about food with every new person. Maybe hardcore foodies?
Sure but then those things aren't due to an actual relationship with an actual God, they are for the reasons you state. Which is really really importantly different.
I find it pretty tiring to add all the footnotes in. If the post gets 50 karma or this gets 20 karma, I probably will.
@Ben Pace do you folks have some kind of substack upload tool. I know you upload Katja's stuff. If there were a thing I could put a substack address into and get footnotes properly, that would be great.
Is there a summary of the rationalist concept of lawfulness anywhere. I am looking for one and can't find it.
But isn't the point of karma to be a ranking system? Surely its bad if it's a suboptimal one?
I would have a dialogue with someone on whether Piper should have revealed SBF's messages. Happy to take either side.
Thanks, appreciated.
Sure but shouldn't the karma system be a prioritisation ranking, not just "what is fun to read?"
I would say I took at least 10 hours to write it. I rewrote it about 4 times.
Yeah but the mapping post is about 100x more important/well informed also. Shouldn't that count for something? I'm not saying it's clearer, I'm saying that it's higher priority, probably.
Hmmmm. I wonder how common this is. This is not how I think of the difference. I think of mathematicians as dealing with coherent systems of logic and engineers dealing with building in the real world. Mathematicians are useful when their system maps to the problem at hand, but not when it doesn't.
I should say i have a maths degree so it's possible that my view of mathematicians and the general view are not conincident.
Yeah this seems like a good point. Not a lot to argue with, but yeah underrated.
It is disappointing/confusing to me that of the two articles I recently wrote, the one that was much closer to reality got a lot less karma.
- A new process for mapping discussions is a summary of months of work that I and my team did on mapping discourse around AI. We built new tools, employed new methodologies. It got 19 karma
- Advice for journalists is a piece that I wrote in about 5 hours after perhaps 5 hours of experiences. It has 73 karma and counting
I think this is isn't much evidence, given it's just two pieces. But I do feel a pull towards coming up with theories rather than building and testing things in the real world. To the extent this pull is real, it seems bad.
If true, I would recommend both that more people build things in the real world and talk about them and that we find ways to reward these posts more, regardless of how alive they feel to us at the time.
(Aliveness being my hypothesis - many of us understand or have more live feelings about dealing with journalists than a sort of dry post about mapping discourse)
Hmmm, what is the picture that the analogy gives you. I struggle to imagine how it's misleading but I want to hear.
I common criticism seems to be "this won't change anything" see (here and here). People often believe that journalists can't choose their headlines and so it is unfair to hold them accountable for them. I think this is wrong for about 3 reasons:
- We have a loud of journalists pretty near to us whose behaviour we absolutely can change. Zvi, Scott and Kelsey don't tend to print misleading headlines but they are quite a big deal and to act as if creating better incentives because we can't change everything seems to strawman my position
- Journalists can control their headlines. I have seen 1-2 times journalists change headlines after pushback. I don't think it was the editors who read the comments and changed the headlines of their own accord. I imagine that the journalists said they were taking too much pushback and asked for the change. This is probably therefore an existence proof that journalists can affect headlines. I think reality is even further in my direction. I imagine that journalists and their editors are involved in the same social transactions as exist between many employees and their bosses. If they ask to change a headline, often they can probably shift it a bit. Getting good sources might be enough to buy this from them.
- I am not saying that they must have good headlines, I am just holding the threat of their messages against them. I've only done this twice, but in one case a journalist was happy to give me this leverage. And having it, I felt more confident about the interview.
I think there is a failure mode where some rats hear a system described and imagine that reality matches it as they imagine it. In this case, I think that's mistaken - journalists have incentives to misdescribe their power of their own headlines. And reality is a bit messier than the simple model suggests. And we have more power than I think some commenters think.
I recommend trying this norm. It doesn't cost you much, it is a good red flag if someone gets angry when you suggest it and if they agree you get leverage to use if they betray you. Seems like a good trade that only gets better the more of us do it. Rarely is reality so kind (and hence I may be mistaken)
I don't think that's the case, because the journalist you are speaking to is not the person who's makes the decision.
I think this is incorrect. I imagine journalists have more latitude to influence headlines when they arelly care.
Why do you think it's stretched. It's about the difference between mathematicians and engineers. One group are about relating the real world the other are about logically consistent ideas that may be useful.
I exert influence where I can. I think if all of LessWrong took up this norm we could shift the headline-content accuracy gap.
Sure but I don't agree with their lack of concern for privacy and I think they are wrong to. I think they are making the wrong call here.
I also don't think privacy is a binary. Some things are almost private and some things are almost public. Do you think that a conversation we have in LessWrong dms is as public as if I tweeted it?
Well I do talk to journalists I trust and not those I don't. And I don't give quotes to those who won't take responsibility for titles. But yes, more suggestions appreciated.
I would appreciate feedback on how this article could be better.
The work took me quite a long time and seems in line with a LessWrong ethos. And yet people here didn't seem to like it very much.
Thank you.
Yeah aren't a load of national parks near large US conurbations and hence the opportunity cost in world terms is significant.
What is the best way to take the average of three probabilities in the context below?
- There is information about a public figure
- Three people read this information and estimate the public figure's P(doom)
- (It's not actually p(doom) but it's their probability of something
- How do I then turn those three probabilities into a single one?
Thoughts.
I currently think the answer is something like for probability a,b,c then the group median is 2^((log2a + log2b + log2c)/3). This feels like a way to average the bits that each person gets from the text.
I could just take the geometric or arithmetic mean, but somehow that seems off to me. I guess I might write my intuitions for those here for correction.
Arithmetic mean (a + b + c)/3. So this feels like uncertain probabilities will dominate certain ones. eg (.0000001 + .25)/2 = approx .125 which is the same as if the first person was either significantly more confident or significantly less. It seems bad to me for the final probability to be uncorrelated with very confident probabilities if the probabilities are far apart.
On the other hand in terms of EV calculations, perhaps you want to consider the world where some event is .25 much more than where it is .0000001. I don't know. Is the correct frame possible worlds or the information each person brings to the table?
Geometric mean (a * b * c)^ 1/3. I dunno, sort of seems like a midpoint.
Okay so I then did some thinking. Ha! Whoops.
While trying to think intuitively about what the geometric mean was, I noticed that 2^((log2a + log2b + log2c)/3) = 2^ (log2 (abc) /3) = 2 ^ log 2 (abc)^1/3 = (abc) ^1/3. So the information mean I thought seemed right is the geometric mean. I feel a bit embarrassed, but also happy to have tried to work it out.
This still doesn't tell me whether the arithmetic worlds intuition or the geometric information interpretation is correct.
Any correction or models appreciated.
@Ben Pace I would like a vote here on what percentage chance we think that an omnicient reviewer would say this narrative is true. The display it on an axis, probably with dots (anonymous) for each person. eg like this.
I want to run one of @Ben Pace's polls at the bottom here. Please could people put statements that they might want to agree or disagree with relating to this essay as comments here. Some starters:
- If the UK wants to grow then it would do well to give energy production, housing and infrastructure a higher priority
- France is able to be dysfunctional and still wealthy because it gets the basics of housing, energy and infrastructure right
- The UK Town and Planning act was probably very damaging
- If the UK wants more growth it should build more housing where people want to live
- I think that cities would generally grow more if they had more people in them
I made a poll of statements from the manifold comment section to try and understand our specific disagreements. Feel free to add your own. Takes about 2 minutes to fill in,
I read @TracingWoodgrains piece on Nonlinear and have further updated that the original post by @Ben Pace was likely an error.
I have bet accordingly here.
I am really annoyed by the Twitter thread about this paper. I doubt it will hold up and it's been seen 450k times. Hendryks had ample opportunity after initial skepticism to remove it, but chose not to. I expect this to have reputational costs to him and to AI safety in general. If people think he (and by association some of us) are charlatan's for saying one thing and doing anohter in terms of being careful with the truth, I will have some sympathy with their position.
This market is now both very liquid by manifold standards and confident that there are flaws in the paper.
https://manifold.markets/NathanpmYoung/will-there-be-substantive-issues-wi?r=TmF0aGFucG1Zb3VuZw (I thought manifold embed worked?)
I think the post moved me in your direction, so I think it was fine.
Communication question.
How do I talk about low probability events in a sensical way?
eg "RFK Jr is very unlikely to win the presidency (0.001%)" This statement is ambiguous. Does it mean he's almost certain not to win or that the statement is almost certainly not true?
I know this sounds wonkish, but it's a question I come to quite often when writing. I like to use words but also include numbers in brackets or footnotes. But if there are several forecasts in one sentence with different directions it can be hard to understand.
"Kamala is a slight favourite in the election (54%), but some things are clearer. She'll probably win Virginia (83%) and probably loses North Carolina (43%)"
Something about the North Carolina subclause rubs me the wrong way. It requires several cycles to think "does the 43% mean the win or the loss". Options:
- As is
- "probably loses North Carolina (43% win chance)" - this takes up quite a lot of space while reading. I don't like things that break the flow
As for voids, they can create weak points; I think they were the reason the cybertruck hitch broke off in this test.
Though as I understand it that test was after a load of other tests. Perhaps relevant.