Posts

The Comcast Problem 2024-03-21T16:46:50.115Z
Lack of Spider-Man is evidence against the simulation hypothesis 2024-01-06T18:17:20.641Z
What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. 2023-11-06T15:49:10.153Z

Comments

Comment by RamblinDash on Physical Therapy Sucks (but have you tried hiding it in some peanut butter?) · 2024-09-12T14:41:00.693Z · LW · GW

I guess it depends on whether you are trying to maximize the amount of [exercise X] you do, or whether there's a fixed quantity of [exercise X] that you are trying to force yourself to do. If the latter, obviously it will take longer if you do it while playing Civ but that's not necessarily a problem.

Comment by RamblinDash on Physical Therapy Sucks (but have you tried hiding it in some peanut butter?) · 2024-09-10T17:04:15.113Z · LW · GW

Civ is famous for "just one more turn" - maybe you can hide whatever it is in between turns?

Comment by RamblinDash on Nathan Young's Shortform · 2024-08-22T11:35:23.177Z · LW · GW

Just move the percent? Instead of "RFK Jr is very unlikely to win the presidency (0.001%)", say "RFK Jr is very unlikely (0.001%) to win the presidency"

Comment by RamblinDash on Baking vs Patissing vs Cooking, the HPS explanation · 2024-07-17T20:58:32.343Z · LW · GW

I think this post is good but a distracting factual inaccuracy in it is that yeast are not bacteria.

Comment by RamblinDash on Why I don't believe in the placebo effect · 2024-06-10T20:40:21.454Z · LW · GW

If it did work, you might call it "immaculate contraception"!

Comment by RamblinDash on Benaya Koren's Shortform · 2024-06-06T13:31:18.597Z · LW · GW

This is equally applicable under normal law, under which property taxes already exist, they just tax both structures and land instead of just land.

Comment by RamblinDash on D0TheMath's Shortform · 2024-06-05T20:50:12.968Z · LW · GW

For opinions that's right - for news stories about complaints being filed, they are sometimes not publicly available online, or the story might not have enough information to find them, e.g. what specific court they were filed in, the actual legal names of the parties, etc.

Comment by RamblinDash on D0TheMath's Shortform · 2024-06-05T18:04:11.234Z · LW · GW

They also do this with court filings/rulings. The thing they do that's most annoying is that they'll have a link that looks like it should be to the filing/ruling, but when clicked it's just a link to another earlier news story on the same site, or even sometimes a link to the same page I'm already on!

Comment by RamblinDash on OpenAI: Exodus · 2024-05-24T17:25:34.479Z · LW · GW

It's something that kinda falls out of Attorney ethics rules, where a lot of duties attach to representation of a client. So we want to be very clear when we are and are not representing someone. In addition, under state ethics laws (I'm a state government lawyer), we are not authorized to provide legal advice to private parties.

Comment by RamblinDash on Are most people deeply confused about "love", or am I missing a human universal? · 2024-05-24T16:33:40.624Z · LW · GW

I suppose it's related, but I think maybe I was thrown off by the parenthetical. I perceive it as fundamentally different from altruism. This form of 'love as being on the same team' is also about enjoying your loved ones' successes, seeing them learn and grow and triumph, even if you don't particularly give or protect anything in particular. Because when we're on the same team, their win is my win. 

Comment by RamblinDash on Are most people deeply confused about "love", or am I missing a human universal? · 2024-05-23T14:43:10.384Z · LW · GW

Another aspect of Love that's not really addressed here I tend to think of as a sense of 'being on the same team.' When I relate to people I love, I might help them or do something nice for them for the same reasons that Draymond Green passes the ball to Steph Curry - because when Steph makes a 3, the team's score increases and that's what they are trying to do. Draymond doesn't (or at least shouldn't) hold onto the ball and try to score himself unless he has a better shot (he usually doesn't) - points are points.

Whereas when interacting with someone I don't love, I might help them to the extent it advances my own goals, broadly defined (which includes things like 'being well liked', 'getting helped in the future', 'the feeling of doing a good deed').

Comment by RamblinDash on OpenAI: Exodus · 2024-05-20T20:32:39.034Z · LW · GW

In general, courts are not so stupid and the law is not so inflexible to ignore such an obvious fig leaf, if the NDA was otherwise enforceable. Query whether it is, but whether or not you just make your statement openly or whether you have a totally-fictional statement about totally-not-OpenAI would be unlikely to make a difference IMO.

*I don't represent you and this statement should not be taken as legal advice on any particular concrete scenario.

Comment by RamblinDash on Against Student Debt Cancellation From All Sides of the Political Compass · 2024-05-14T13:27:20.770Z · LW · GW

One argument that this post misses is that a significant chunk overall, and much of the most burdensome subset of this debt (which is not the same as the highest volume of the debt), will never be collected anyway, although it still makes the holders' lives worse. So the estimates of the costs of this policy are very inflated if they treat the forgiveness of unsecured debt as costing $1 for $1.

Still, I agree that just plain blanket forgiveness is bad policy. I don't think that's what was ever on the table tho? Forgiving a capped amount (I think $20,000 was proposed?) would alleviate the burdens  of the most burdensome and least-collectible-anyway debt (held by low-income people, many who weren't able to finish their degree for various reasons), while leaving people with high-priced fancy law degrees paying off their loans mostly as normal.

That said, if you think as a policy matter that college should be funded more like high school (free public option, expensive private alternative for those who want to pay), then you could be more justified in enacting that model along with cancellation as a kind of policy retroactiveness, or "reparations for victims of un-free college."

Comment by RamblinDash on Dating Roundup #3: Third Time’s the Charm · 2024-05-09T19:34:59.185Z · LW · GW

So I guess I'm not sure what you mean by that. I think it might be easier to support what I'm saying in the negative. Some example of inauthenticity or un-openness might be:

  • Consciously faking your personality (in a way that you wouldn't want to maintain as an essentially permanent change)
  • Lying about what you want out of the relationship
  • Pretending to like/dislike hobbies or interests that you actually strongly dislike/like

The problem with doing these things is that, to the extent that doing them was necessary to gain the relationship, you are now stuck with a relationship that is built on a papered-over incompatibility. If your plan is that you will fake a completely different personality/goals/interests, then you will now be in a relationship where you have to permanently keep faking that stuff while constantly being wary that your new partner might find out you were faking plus you have to spend a lot of time and energy doing stuff and/or interacting with someone you don't actually like, or else ending the relationship and being back at square 1, except that you've invested time/energy that you won't get back. There can be toned-down good versions of this bad strategy tho, I think, which are more like "putting your best foot forward" than like "being inauthentic."

 

Truth: Looking for a life partner, getting desperate
Good strategy [probably depends on age, for this one]: Open to various possibilities, see how it goes.
Bad strategy: Your date says they are really only looking for short term fun, and you agree that's all you are looking for too.

 

Truth: A talkative person who loves debating ideas
Good strategy: Tone it down a little, try to listen as much as you talk and try to "yes, and" or "that's interesting, tell me more about what led you to that" your date's points rather than "no but" (you can often make similar points either way)
Bad strategy: Just agree with everything your date says; even if you actually have a strong opposing view

 

Truth: Don't really care for hiking much
Good strategy [when trying out someone who loves hiking]: "I haven't been too into that before, tell me what you love about it? I'd be open to giving it another shot"
Bad strategy: "OMG I love hiking too!"

 

The problem that all these bad strategies have in common is that if they are successful,  you end up with something you don't want.

Comment by RamblinDash on Dating Roundup #3: Third Time’s the Charm · 2024-05-09T13:14:52.241Z · LW · GW

[M]aybe being yourself and open works for people who happen to already be relationship-compatible. People who are not would be worse off by trying to be themselves. I think I have been burned in the past a lot by that kind of advice, although my experience is too much of an anecdote to infer an average.

 

I think you are maybe using a different definition of "worse off." I would submit that a relationship that is maintainable only by being inauthentic and unopen is, in the long run, significantly worse than no relationship, both because of the experience of being in it, but also because of opportunity cost.

That's different than holding some things back at the beginning, or keeping some impolite thoughts to yourself sometimes. But if your goal is a long-term partnership, you move further away from that goal by spending time and energy on someone you know you aren't compatible with.

Comment by RamblinDash on Some Experiments I'd Like Someone To Try With An Amnestic · 2024-05-07T17:18:03.771Z · LW · GW

IDK, I think this comment warrants the level of karma. OP is proposing messing around with a drug class that kills thousands of people per year. Even only counting benzo overdoses that don't involve opioids, it kills ~1500 people per year. Source: https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates (you can download the data from that page to see precise numbers).

It's not often that a forum comment could save a life!

Comment by RamblinDash on [Linkpost] Silver Bulletin: For most people, politics is about fitting in · 2024-05-03T00:40:47.141Z · LW · GW

Oh, I wasn't saying that student debt is variable interest, just making a point about debt and inflation in general.

Comment by RamblinDash on [Linkpost] Silver Bulletin: For most people, politics is about fitting in · 2024-05-02T14:29:33.852Z · LW · GW

I think people experience rising prices as inflation, but rising wages as a result of their own hard work. Thus, "inflation" feels bad, even if it actually benefits you. Also, wages are stickier than prices, so even if overall wages are rising your own personal wage might not rise smoothly along.

 

Also, if your debt is variable-interest, then inflation doesn't necessarily benefit you. It only benefits you if you have fixed-interest debt.

Comment by RamblinDash on ChristianKl's Shortform · 2024-05-01T13:26:09.283Z · LW · GW

I feel like this comparison of the enforcement here with the TikTok ban is not directed at the actual primary concern about TikTok, which is content curation by its opaque algorithm, not data privacy per se.

 

By analogy, if a Soviet state-owned enterprise in 1980 wanted to purchase NBC, would/should we have allowed that? If your answer is "no," keeping in mind how many people get their news via TikTok, why would/should we allow what effectively seems to be a CCP-(owned or heavily influenced) company to control what content our people see?

Comment by RamblinDash on Magic by forgetting · 2024-05-01T00:47:13.278Z · LW · GW

I am not a mediator so maybe you have me beat, but it's not immediately clear why you would assume this

Comment by RamblinDash on Magic by forgetting · 2024-04-30T15:49:22.374Z · LW · GW

But don't the non-diseased copies not just need to generally meditate, but to do some special kind of meditation where they forget the affirmative evidence they have that they don't have the disease?

Comment by RamblinDash on Magic by forgetting · 2024-04-29T14:19:39.155Z · LW · GW

In this scenario, why are the non-disease-having copies participating? They are not in a state of ignorance, they know they don't have the disease.

Comment by RamblinDash on [April Fools' Day] Introducing Open Asteroid Impact · 2024-04-03T16:27:07.323Z · LW · GW

Asteroid impacts are a prime candidate to stop global warming.

 

I dunno man, Randall Munroe thinks that they would cause global warming.

Comment by RamblinDash on The Worst Form Of Government (Except For Everything Else We've Tried) · 2024-03-24T00:29:57.255Z · LW · GW

The nicest thing one can say about that arrangement is that it failed to start WW III

You say this like it's some kind of grudging acknowledgement, but it's actually the entire point of the structure and a Big F'n Deal. Recall that there was less than 25 years between WW1 and WW2. It's been almost 80 years without WW3, despite high tensions at various times. WW3 would have been catastrophic, and preventing it is a great accomplishment.

Comment by RamblinDash on The Comcast Problem · 2024-03-22T13:08:43.425Z · LW · GW

If that's what Quinn (comment OP) is saying then I think it's obviously wrong - people really do value the goods and services they access via the internet very highly. This leads me to believe that this is not what Quinn is saying.

What I (post author) am saying is people don't apply even a tiny fraction of the vibes that come with that high value to their actual ISP (or, analogously, airline, electric company etc).

Comment by RamblinDash on The Comcast Problem · 2024-03-21T18:45:38.616Z · LW · GW

I think the lesson of social desirability bias is that valuable services having lower status than they "ought" to is the system working as intended.

 

Can you elaborate? I don't understand your point because it's too compressed. I feel like I need ~3 more sentences here to get it.

Comment by RamblinDash on The Comcast Problem · 2024-03-21T18:42:20.430Z · LW · GW

Yes, my claim is that "The Comcast Problem" is the reason for hatred, as opposed a feeling more like "I really value the service but am annoyed by the customer service and pricing, so overall meh."

On a -5 to +5 scale, I'm saying they are often at like -5 when they really should be somewhere between -1 and +1.

Comment by RamblinDash on The Worst Form Of Government (Except For Everything Else We've Tried) · 2024-03-18T00:23:21.446Z · LW · GW

Well, one additional factor the US has is that various veto points and power centers cycle on different time scales.

Comment by RamblinDash on Storable Votes with a Pay as you win mechanism: a contribution for institutional design · 2024-03-11T16:59:31.989Z · LW · GW

There would also be an incentive to introduce lots of meaningless elections between irrelevant (to you) alternatives in order to abstain and accrue more stored votes.

 

Could also be described as "There would also be an incentive to allow others to make decisions on issue that matter more to them than to you, in order to be more likely to get your way on an issue you care about."

Re-phrased that way, it's not clear to me that this is a bad thing. If they don't care about those other issues either, then you won't gain any stored votes on net relative to other voters.

Comment by RamblinDash on Agreeing With Stalin in Ways That Exhibit Generally Rationalist Principles · 2024-03-04T11:47:58.779Z · LW · GW

Absolutely! I value your voice. But, and excuse me if this is a misread, your posts in this series read to me like you are still trying to convince yourself and/or him.

It reads like you are a sort of rationalist Martin Luther criticizing the Pope. But, like, there are already a lot of metaphorically-protestant rationalists.

Comment by RamblinDash on Agreeing With Stalin in Ways That Exhibit Generally Rationalist Principles · 2024-03-04T04:23:05.215Z · LW · GW

I think I'm trying to make a different point than footnote 20?

It seems like you are taking me to be saying something like "You shouldn't care what EY thinks about this Trans issue because "Everybody Knows" not to take his statements on this seriously" - that's how I read FN20.

Whereas I think my point is much more general and really not specific to Trans at all - like why be so deeply invested in the contents of some one guy's mind, at all? On any issue?

EY wrote some great (book-like objects). Inspiring, even. Worldview changing. But, like, whatever his opinions are today (on any issue), my view is mostly like, who cares? Either his arguments are convincing or they aren't.

By analogy, suppose (counter factually) that I think that Barack Obama was the greatest president in history (he wasn't, but he has to be alive for this analogy to work). Does that mean that I should decide what I think about today's political and policy problems based on what Obama thinks? Such that if Obama was wrong about something, I should engage in an epic quest to Get Obama's Attention and get him to admit he's wrong? I mean, that would be ridiculous, right?

Comment by RamblinDash on Agreeing With Stalin in Ways That Exhibit Generally Rationalist Principles · 2024-03-04T01:28:31.606Z · LW · GW

Maybe I just don't get it because I'm not part of the Berkeley Community, I just read the writing. But my immediate reaction to this is like, why does Zack care so much about what Eliezer (2024) does or does not think? Or even whether, these days, he is or is not a fraud?

Like if you thought what he wrote in 2007 was great, just listen to that? Many (all?) authors who write great books have also written worse books. Maybe Zack's opinion is falling a long way from wherever it was.

But perhaps he would be happier to adopt a more ecumenical non-Berkeley-ite stance, which I think has been common all along outside The Berkeley Community, and which is something like "Eliezer wrote some great stuff that was very influential on my thinking and that I still believe was very insightful, and I really appreciate that. I enjoy reading LW more than I think I'd enjoy the marginal alternative use of reading time, but I don't go too far out of my way to pay attention to or care about what he's up to these days." - rather than assigning himself an Epic Quest to Win This Argument.

Comment by RamblinDash on Boundary Violations vs Boundary Dissolution · 2024-02-26T19:07:55.558Z · LW · GW

One thing to further ponder is the extent to which systematic or repeated boundary violations can effectively amount to a dissolution. Analogous examples:

  • Forcing someone to submit to multiple-times-daily injections, so far all of which have been harmless saline
  • Constantly stealing objects from someone's house in a way that they don't feel like they can meaningfully accumulate personal property
  • Entering a country with closed borders so frequently that its ability to enforce its immigration laws is effectively gummed up
Comment by RamblinDash on The Pareto Best and the Curse of Doom · 2024-02-26T14:15:04.533Z · LW · GW

(See this list of bar associations just for Massachusetts.)

 

Minor point but this is often misunderstood. These bar associations are essentially networking groups for lawyers. They are not required in order to practice. What's required to practice is bar admission which is different. There's also a federal bar admission, but that's only two, not dozens.

Comment by RamblinDash on Balancing Games · 2024-02-26T13:49:33.177Z · LW · GW

In a game where you play a higher number of shorter games, you can ideally have a handicap that adjusts after every game.  For example, in Super Smash Bros, if you turn handicap to "auto" then the stronger player starts with damage, which (in two player) goes up 10% every time they win, and down 10% every time they lose. It gets a little more complicated in 3+ player games, and I'm not sure the exact algorithm, but it works reasonably well. Maybe something to emulate in a game where handicaps can be reasonably granular?

Comment by RamblinDash on johnswentworth's Shortform · 2024-02-16T20:08:30.209Z · LW · GW

Yeah, I mean I guess it depends on what you mean by photorealistic. That cat has three front legs.

Comment by RamblinDash on On the Proposed California SB 1047 · 2024-02-13T05:26:52.078Z · LW · GW

My general principle here is a generalization of the foundations of tort law - if you do an act that causes harm, in a way that's reasonably foreseeable, you are responsible for that. I don't think there should be a special AI exception for that, and I especially don't think there should be an open source exception to that. And I think it's very common in law for legislatures or regulators to pick out a particular subset of reasonably-foreseeable harm to prohibit in advance rather than merely to punish/compensate afterwards.

I'm not sure what "human level" means in this context because it's hard to directly compare given AI's advantages in speed, replicability, and breath of background knowledge. I think it's an empirical question whether any particular AI model is reasonably foreseeable to cause harm. And I think "enable any of [the listed] harms in a way that would be significantly more difficult to cause without access to the model" is an operationalization of foreseeability that makes sense in this context.

So with all that said, should it be illegal to effectively distribute amoral very cheap employees that it's very easy to get to cause harm? Probably. If I ran an employment agency that publicly advertised "hey my employees are super smart and will do anything you tell them, even if it's immoral or if it will help you commit crimes" then yeah I think I'd rightly have law enforcement sniffing around real quick.

Is it your view that there is a substantial list of capabilities it should be legal to freely distribute an AI model with, but which would rightly be illegal to hire a person to do?

Comment by RamblinDash on On the Proposed California SB 1047 · 2024-02-12T21:40:50.551Z · LW · GW

This also would outlaw open source models at a fairly weak capabilities level.

 

That seems good, if those open source models would be used to enable any of the [listed] harms in a way that would be significantly more difficult to cause without access to [the open source] model. All those harms are pretty dang bad! Outside the context of AI, we go to great lengths to prevent them!

Comment by RamblinDash on On the Proposed California SB 1047 · 2024-02-12T20:43:41.797Z · LW · GW

It sounds like some of those examples don't meet "in a way that would be significantly more difficult to cause without access to a covered model" - already covered by the bill.

Comment by RamblinDash on On the Proposed California SB 1047 · 2024-02-12T20:13:18.652Z · LW · GW

Ah, the bill answers this question!

(n) (1) “Hazardous capability” means the capability of a covered model to be used to enable any of the following harms in a way that would be significantly more difficult to cause without access to a covered model:

(A) The creation or use of a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon in a manner that results in mass casualties.

(B) At least five hundred million dollars ($500,000,000) of damage through cyberattacks on critical infrastructure via a single incident or multiple related incidents.

(C) At least five hundred million dollars ($500,000,000) of damage by an artificial intelligence model that autonomously engages in conduct that would violate the Penal Code if undertaken by a human.

(D) Other threats to public safety and security that are of comparable severity to the harms described in paragraphs (A) to (C), inclusive.

And "critical harm" means that same list.

Comment by RamblinDash on On the Proposed California SB 1047 · 2024-02-12T19:37:58.165Z · LW · GW

Sure, but at the same time it's illegal to sell bazookas specifically because there is an unreasonable risk that a user may be able to use them to commit the obvious potential harms. So this is not some general tool-agnostic principle - it's specific to the actual tool in question.

So in this metaphor one must determine, empirically, whether any given AI product is more like a chainsaw or a bazooka. Here, the bill proposes a way to make the categorization.

Comment by RamblinDash on Putting multimodal LLMs to the Tetris test · 2024-02-01T21:28:24.377Z · LW · GW

This bounty might be somewhat controversial here, and I have to be honest that it almost deterred me from posting this on LessWrong, offering a bounty for a "capabilities advance"

I think that this is not a "capabilities advance" in the parlance of around here - where you are looking for ways to elicit more capabilities of existing models, rather than looking for ways to create more powerful models.

Comment by RamblinDash on Notes on Innocence · 2024-01-30T17:51:08.724Z · LW · GW

I live in the Boston area too, and this doesn't exactly sell me on going to one of those meetups :/

Comment by RamblinDash on Why have insurance markets succeeded where prediction markets have not? · 2024-01-22T14:20:59.409Z · LW · GW

But more importantly to the reasons people actually buy insurance, they redistribute comparatively small amounts from the (most people) lucky to pay large amounts to the (few) unlucky. Which, behind the veil of ignorance, you would want, to ensure (insure) that your life is not ruined by bad luck.

Comment by RamblinDash on Why have insurance markets succeeded where prediction markets have not? · 2024-01-22T14:03:42.110Z · LW · GW

And specifically, the risk they hedge against is usually some major risk to themselves. So insurance is similar to a social safety net in some sense. If there's a (totally made up) 1/100 lifetime chance of each person being severely injured in a car crash, and such an injury would both cost me a lot of money and a lot of earning power, then of course I'd want to insure against it. Even though the insurance company takes a cut, I'd much rather lose money on this insurance contract than collect on it. And we hope that market competition prevents the insurers from taking too big of a cut, because the insurers compete on rates. Prediction markets just don't serve this function at all.

 

People in this thread are focusing too much, I think, on bespoke kinds of insurance (which is most kinds of insurance), and not enough on normal everyday insurance (which is most actual insurance contracts).

Comment by RamblinDash on What Software Should Exist? · 2024-01-21T12:11:22.152Z · LW · GW

A search engine that gives results like Google but before everything turned to sludge.

Comment by RamblinDash on Introduce a Speed Maximum · 2024-01-11T20:37:35.985Z · LW · GW

The thought would be that it would be the same car, but with some kind of software/hardware limit that prevents it from continuing to speed up once it reached some set speed, like 85 or 90. Not to limit the power train.

Comment by RamblinDash on Introduce a Speed Maximum · 2024-01-11T13:54:32.769Z · LW · GW

Based on the title, I thought you were going to go another direction. But isn't it insane that a typical consumer car is capable of driving significantly over 100mph? In large parts of the country, there's nowhere that it's legal to drive anywhere near that fast, and an ordinary driver will never have a legitimate reason to drive that speed. I understand why this hasn't happened, but wouldn't it also be better if normal cars just weren't capable of going over, say, 90mph?

Comment by RamblinDash on Lack of Spider-Man is evidence against the simulation hypothesis · 2024-01-06T21:32:18.741Z · LW · GW

I would say that the existence of superheroes/villains, wizards, etc would be the kind of crazy things I'm talking about. I would posit that a pretty high percent of video games (aka low-fidelity simulations) have a player who can do things easily that even the most elite athletes can't approach in real life. I'm talking about having physical abilities like 100x or 1000x average, or abilities different in kind such as the ability to fly unaided, shoot lasers from their eyes, breathe water, throw fireballs, survive dozens of gunshots, etc. That would be essentially "Spider-Man" in my analogy. But you don't see that.

Untrained men's average bench press doesn't have super reliable sources but one source I saw put it at 110 lbs. I think that's a little high, so let's call it more like 75lb. That puts the world record (unaided) bench press at 10x average - not Spider-Man/Superman/Hulk/etc territory. Similarly, average running speed is (conservatively) 5mph. Top sprint speed ever recorded is 28mph - much faster but less than 6x, not The Flash territory.

In short, there are elite athletes but no superheroes or wizards.

Comment by RamblinDash on MonoPoly Restricted Trust · 2024-01-06T20:29:12.356Z · LW · GW

I...am honestly not sure. Probably mix of all? But i see the "probably not a dealbreaker" category as in the nature of "we all sometimes hurt each other, this hurts a lot, but it doesn't necessarily outweigh all the good years and forgiveness is possible" - not like it doesn't matter